Interview With The Vampire
                                       by Anne Rice
"I see . . .' said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards
the window. For a long time he stood there against the dim light from Divisadero Street
and the passing beams of traffic. The boy could see the furnishings of the room more
clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash basin hung on one wall with a
mirror. He set his brief case on the table and waited.
"But how much tape do you have with you?" asked the vampire, turning now so the boy
could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"
"Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a night if
I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?"
"Admirably fair," the vampire answered. "I would like to tell you the story of my life,
then. I would like to do that very much."
"Great," said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his brief
case, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really anxious to hear why
you believe this, why you . . ."
"No," said the vampire abruptly. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment ready?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."
"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said the boy. "If you think the dark adds to the
atmosphere."
" But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him with his back to the window. The
boy could make out nothing of his face now, and something about the still figure there
distracted him. He started to say something again but he said nothing. And then he sighed
with relief when the vampire moved towards the table and reached for the overhead cord.
At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up at the
vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the table to grasp the
edge. "Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the vampire.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached bone,
and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes
that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then the vampire smiled
almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely
flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon. "Do you see?" he asked softly.
The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light. His eyes
moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the bar, the long
folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the white collar
that was as white as the vampire's flesh. He stared at the vampire's full black hair, the
waves that were combed back over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the
edge of the white collar.
"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked.

The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he said,
"Yes."
The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently,
confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."
And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat running
down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on the boy's shoulder and said,
"Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more important to me than you
can realize now. I want you to begin." And he withdrew his hand and sat collected,
waiting.
It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a handkerchief, to
stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the button, to say that the
machine was on.
"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.
"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five year-old man when I became a
vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one."
The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he asked,
"How did it come about?"
"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple answers," said the
vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story. . . '
"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and wiping
his lips now with it again.
"There was a tragedy . . ." the vampire started. "It was my younger brother . . . . He died."
And then he stopped, so that the boy cleared his throat and wiped at his face again before
stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.
"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.
"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that I've
only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, it's not pa'
"We were living. in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two indigo
plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans . . . ."
"Ah, that's the accent . . ." the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to laugh.
And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked you what
you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's all. I never
guessed it was French."
"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "ran not as shocked as I pretend to be. It's only
that I forget it from time to time. But let me go on. . . . '
"Please . . " said the boy.
"I was talking about the plantations. They had a great deal to do with it, really, my
becoming a vampire. But I'll come to that. Our life there was both luxurious and
primitive. And we ourselves found it extremely attractive. You see, we lived far better

there than we could have ever lived in France. Perhaps the sheer wilderness of Louisiana
only made it seem so, but seeming so, it was. I remember the imported furniture that
cluttered the house." The vampire smiled. "And the harpsichord; that was lovely. My
sister used to play it. On summer evenings, she would sit at the keys with her back to the
open French windows. And I can still remember that thin, rapid music and the vision of
the swamp rising beyond her, the moss-hung cypresses floating against the sky. And
there were the sounds of the swamp, a chorus of creatures, the cry of the birds. I think we
loved it. It made the rosewood furniture all the more precious, the music more delicate
and desirable. Even when the wisteria tore the shutters oft the attic windows and worked
its tendrils right into the whitewashed brick in less than a year . . . . Yes, we loved it. All
except my brother. I don't think I ever heard him complain of anything, but I knew how
he felt. My father was dead then, and I was head of the family and I had to defend him
constantly from my mother and sister. They wanted to take him visiting, and to New
Orleans for parties, but he hated these things. I think he stopped going altogether before
he was twelve: Prayer was what mattered to him, prayer and his leather-bound lives of
the saints.
"Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he began to spend most of
every day there and often the early evening. It was ironic, really. He was so different
from us, so different from everyone, and I was so regular! There was nothing
extraordinary about me whatsoever." The vampire smiled.
"Sometimes in the evening I would go out to him and find him in the garden near the
oratory, sitting absolutely composed on a stone bench there, and I'd tell him my troubles,
the difficulties I had with the slaves, how I distrusted the overseer or the weather or my
brokers . . . all the problems that made up the length and breadth of my existence. And he
would listen, making only a few comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I
had the distinct impression he bad solved everything for me. I didn't think I could deny
him anything, and I vowed that no matter how it would break my heart to lose him, he
could enter the priesthood when the time came. Of course, I was wrong." The vampire
stopped.
For a moment the boy only gazed at him and then he started as if awakened from deep
thought, and he floundered, as if he could not find the right words. "Ali . he didn't want to
be a priest?" the boy asked. The vampire studied him as if trying to discern the meaning
of his expression. Then he said:
"I meant that I was wrong about myself, about my not denying him anything." His eyes
moved over the far wall and fixed on the panes of the window. "He began to see visions."
"Real visions?" the boy asked, but again there was hesitation, as if he were thinking of
something else.
"I didn't think so," the vampire answered. It happened when he was fifteen. He was very
handsome then. He had the smoothest skin and the largest blue eyes. He was robust, not
thin as I am now and was then . . . but his eyes . . . it was as if when I looked into his eyes
I was standing alone on the edge of the world . . . on a windswept ocean beach. There
was nothing but the soft roar of the waves. Well," he said, his eyes still fixed on the
window panes, "he began to see visions. He only hinted at this at first, and he stopped
taking his meals altogether. He lived in the oratory. At any hour of day or night, I could

find him on the bare flagstones kneeling before the altar. And the oratory itself was
neglected. He stopped tending the candles or changing the altar cloths or even sweeping
out the leaves. One night I became really alarmed when I stood in the rose arbor watching
him for one solid hour, during which he never moved from his knees and never once
lowered his arms, which he held outstretched in the form of a cross. The slaves all
thought he was mad." The vampire raised his eyebrows in wonder. "I was convinced that
he was only. . . overzealous. That in his love for God, he had perhaps gone too far. Then
he told me about the visions. Both St. Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary had come to
him in the oratory. They had told him he was to sell all our property in Louisiana,
everything we owned, and use the money to do God's work in France. My brother was to
be a great religious leader, to return the country to its former fervor, to turn the tide
against atheism and the Revolution. Of course, he had no money of his own. I was to sell
the plantations and our town houses in New Orleans and give the money to him."
Again the vampire stopped. And the boy sat motionless regarding him, astonished. "Ali . .
. excuse me," he whispered. "What did you say? Did you sell the plantations?"
"No," said the vampire, his face calm as it had been from the start. "I laughed at him. And
he . . . he became incensed. He insisted his command came from the Virgin herself. Who
was I to disregard it? Who indeed?" he asked softly, as if he were thinking of this again.
"Who indeed? And the more he tried to convince me, the more I laughed. It was
nonsense, I told him, the product of an immature and even morbid mind. The oratory was
a mistake, I said to him; I would have it torn down at once. He would go to school in
New Orleans and get such inane notions out of his head. I don't remember all that I said.
But I remember the feeling. Behind all this contemptuous dismissal on my part was a
smoldering anger and a disappointment. I was bitterly disappointed. I didn't believe him
at all."
"But that's understandable," said the boy quickly when the vampire paused, his
expression of astonishment softening. "I mean, would anyone have believed him?"
"Is it so understandable?" The vampire looked at the boy. "I think perhaps it was vicious
egotism. Let me explain. I loved my brother, as I told you, and at times I believed him to
be a living saint. I encouraged him in his prayer and meditations, as I said, and I was
willing to give him up to the priesthood. And if someone had told me of a saint in Arles
or Lourdes who saw visions, I would have believed it. I was a Catholic; I believed in
saints. I lit tapers before their marble statues in churches; I knew their pictures, their
symbols, their names. But I didn't, couldn't believe my brother. Not only did I not believe
he saw visions, I couldn't entertain the notion for a moment. Now, why? Because he was
my brother. Holy he might be, peculiar most definitely; but Francis of Assisi, no. Not my
brother. No brother of mine could be such. That is egotism. Do you see?"
The boy thought about it before he answered and then he nodded and said that yes, he
thought that he did.
"Perhaps he saw the visions," said the vampire.
"Then you . . . you don't claim to know . . . now . . . whether he did not?"
"No, but I do know that he never wavered in his conviction for a second. That I know
now and knew then the night he left my room crazed and grieved. He never wavered for
an instant. And within minutes, he was dead."

"How?" the boy asked.
"He simply w out of the French doors onto the gallery and stood for a moment at the head
of the brick stairs. And then he fell. He was dead when I reached the bottom, his neck
broken." The vampire shook his head in consternation, but his face was still serene.
"'Did you see him fall?" asked the boy. "Did he lose his footing?"
"No, but two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he had looked up as if he had
just seen something in the air. Then his entire body moved forward as if being swept by a
wind. One of them said he was about to say something when he fell. I thought that he was
about to say something too, but it was at that moment I turned away from the window.
My back was turned when I heard the noise." He glanced at the tape recorder. "I could
not forgive myself. I felt responsible for his death," he said. "And everyone else seemed
to think I was responsible also."
"But how could they? You said they saw him fall"
"It wasn't a direct accusation. They simply knew that something had passed between us
that was unpleasant. That we had argued minutes before the fall.
"The servants had heard us, my mother had heard us. My mother would not stop asking
me what had happened and why my brother, who was so quiet, had been shouting. Then
my sister joined in, and of course I refused to say. I was so bitterly shocked and miserable
that I had no patience with anyone, only the vague determination they would not know
about his `visions.' They would not know that he had become, finally, not a saint, but
only a . . fanatic. My sister went to bed rather than face the funeral, and my mother told
everyone in. the parish that something horrible had happened in my room which I would
not reveal; and even the police questioned me, on the word of my own mother. Finally
the priest came to see me and demanded to know what had gone on. I told no one. It was
only a discussion, I said: I was not on the gallery when he fell, I protested, and they all
stared at me as if rd killed him. And I felt that I'd killed him. I sat in the parlor beside his
coffin for two days thinking, I have killed him. I stared at his face until spots appeared
before my eyes and I nearly fainted. The back of his skull had been shattered on the
pavement, and his head had the wrong shape on the pillow. I forced myself to stare at it,
to study it simply because I could hardly endure the pain and the smell (r)f decay, and I
was tempted over and over to try to open his eyes. All these were mad thoughts, mad
impulses. The main thought was this: I had laughed at him; I had not believed him; I had
not been kind to him. He had fallen because of me."
"This really happened, didn't it?" the boy whispered. "You're telling me something .
.that's true."
"Yes," said the vampire, looking at him without surprise. "I want to go on telling you."
But as his eyes passed over the boy and returned to the window, he showed only faint
interest in the boy, who seemed engaged in some silent inner struggle.
"But you said you didn't know about the visions, that you, a vampire . . . didn't know for
certain whether . .
"I want to take things in order," said the vampire, "I want to go on telling you things as
they happened.

"No, I don't know about the visions. To this day." And again he waited until the boy said.
"Yes, please, please go on."
"Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see the house or the oratory
again. I leased them finally to an agency which would work them for me and manage
things so I need never go there, and I moved my mother and sister to one of the town
houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my brother for a moment. I could
think of nothing but his body rotting in the ground. He was buried in the St. Louis
cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid passing those gates; but still I
thought of him constantly. . Drunk or sober, I saw his body rotting in the coin, and I
couldn't bear it. Over and over I dreamed that he was at the head of the steps and I was
holding his arm, talking kindly to him, urging him back into the bedroom, telling him
gently that I did believe him, that he must pray for me to have faith. Meantime, the slaves
on Pointe du Lac (that was my plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost on the
gallery, and the overseer couldn't keep order. People in society asked my sister offensive
questions about the whole incident, and she became an hysteric. She wasn't really an
hysteric. She simply thought she ought to react that way, so she did. I drank all the time
and was at home as little as possible. I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had
no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in
cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly wished to
be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might have been anyone-and my invitation was
open to sailors, thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me lust a few
steps from my door one night and left me for dead, or so I thought."
"You mean . . . he sucked your, blood?" the boy asked.
"Yes," the vampire laughed. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."
"But you lived," said the young man. "You said he left you for dead."
"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient. I was put
to bed as soon as I was found, confused and really unaware of what had happened to me.
I suppose I thought that drink had finally caused a stroke. I expected to die now and had
no interest in eating of drinking or talking to the doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I
was feverish by then and I told the priest everything, all about my brother's visions and
what I had done. I remember I clung to his arm, making him swear over and over he
would tell no one. `I know I didn't kill him,' I said to the priest finally. `It's that I cannot
live now that he's dead. Not after the way I treated him.'
" 'That's ridiculous,' he answered me. `Of course you can live. There's nothing wrong
with you but self-indulgence. Your mother needs you, not to mention your sister. And as
for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was so stunned when he said
this I couldn't protest. The devil made the visions, he went on to explain. The devil was
rampant. The entire country of France was under the influence of the devil, and. the
Revolution had been his greatest triumph. Nothing would have saved my brother but
exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him down while the devil raged in his body
and tried to throw him about. `The devil threw him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious,'
he declared. `You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to the
devil.' Well, this enraged me. I believed before that I had been pushed to my limits, but I
had not. He went on talking about the devil, about voodoo amongst the slaves and cases

of possession in other parts of the world. And I went wild. I wrecked the room in the
process of nearly killing him."
"But your strength . . . the vampire . . .?" asked the boy.
"I was out of my mind," the vampire explained. "I did things I could not have done in
perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. But I do remember that I
drove him out of the back doors of the house, across the courtyard, and against the brick
wall of the kitchen, where I pounded his head until I nearly killed him. When I was
subdued finally, and exhausted then almost to the point of death, they bled me. The fools.
But I was going to say something else. It was then that I conceived of my own egotism.
Perhaps I'd seen it reflected in the priest. His contemptuous attitude towards my brother
reflected my own; his immediate and shallow carping about the devil; his refusal to even
entertain the idea that sanctity had passed so close."
"But he did believe in possession by the devil."
"That is a much more mundane idea," said the vampire immediately. "People who cease
to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I
do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult. But
you must understand, possession is really another way of saying someone is mad. I felt it
was, for the priest. I'm sure he'd seen madness. Perhaps he had stood right over raving
madness and pronounced it possession. You don't have to see Satan when he is exorcised.
But to stand in the presence of a saint . . . To believe that the saint has seen a vision. No,
it's egotism, our refusal to believe it could occur in our midst."
"I never thought of it in that way," said the boy. "But what happened to you? You said
they bled you to cure you, and that must have nearly killed you."
The vampire laughed. "Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire came back that night. You
see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my plantation.
"It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it were
yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a sound, a
tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost feline quality to his
movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister's eyes and lowered the wick of
the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and the cloth with which she'd bathed my
forehead, and she ,never once stirred under that shawl until morning. But by that time I
was greatly changed."
"What was this change?" asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls. "At first I
thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to try to reason with
me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close to my bed and leaned
down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that he was no ordinary man at all.
His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and the long white hands which hung by his
sides were not those of a human being. I think I knew everything in that instant, and all
that he told me was only aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his
extraordinary aura and knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to
nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being
in its midst was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed

utterly unimportant. I completely forgot myself!" he said, now silently touching his breast
with his fist. "I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew totally the meaning of
possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he talked to me and
told me of what I might become, of what his life had been and stood to be, my past
shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the
constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the
Virgin and a host of saints whose names filled my prayer books, none of whom made the
slightest difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods . .
the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders."
The boy's face was tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so you
decided to become a vampire?" he asked. The vampire was silent for a moment.
"Decided. It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable from the
moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I can't say I
decided. Let me say that when he'd finished speaking, no other decision was possible for
me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance. Except for one."
"Except for one? What?"
"My last sunrise," said the vampire. "That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw
my last sunrise.
"I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise before it. I
remember the light came first to the tops of the French windows, a paling behind the lace
curtains, and then a gleam growing brighter and brighter in patches among the leaves of
the trees. Finally the sun came through the windows themselves and the lace lay in
shadows on the stone floor, and all over the form of my sister, who was still sleeping,
shadows of lace on the shawl over her shoulders and head. As soon as she was warm, she
pushed the shawl away without awakening, and then the sun shone full on her eyes and
she tightened her eyelids. Then it was gleaming on the table where she rested her head on
her arms, and gleaming, blazing, in the water in the pitcher. And I could feel it on my
hands on the counterpane and then on my face. I lay in the bed thinking about all the
things the vampire had told me, and then it was that I said good-bye to the sunrise and
went out to become a vampire. It was . . . the last sunrise."
The vampire was looking out the window again. And when he stopped, the silence was so
sudden the boy seemed to hear it. Then he could hear the noises from the street. The
sound of a truck was deafening. The light cord stirred with the vibration. Then the truck
was gone.
"Do you miss it?" he asked then in a small voice.
"Not really," said the vampire. "There are so many other things. But where were we? You
want to know how it happened, how I became a vampire."
"Yes," said the boy. "How did you change, exactly?"
"I can't tell you exactly," said the vampire. "I can tell you about it, enclose it with words
that will make the value of it to me evident to you. But I can't tell you exactly, any more
than I could tell you exactly what is the experience of sex if you have never had it."

The young man seemed struck suddenly with still another question, but before he could
speak the vampire went on. "As I told you, this vampire Lestat, wanted the plantation. A
mundane reason, surely, for granting me a life which will last until the end of the world;
but he was not a very discriminating person. He didn't consider the world's small
population of vampires as being a select club, I should say. He had human problems, a
blind father who did not know his son was a vampire and must not find out. Living in
New Orleans had become too difficult for him, considering his needs and the necessity to
care for his father, and he wanted Pointe du Lac.
"We went at once to the plantation the next evening, ensconced the blind father in the
master bedroom, and I proceeded to make the change. I cannot say that it consisted in any
one step really-though one, of course, was the step beyond which I could make no return.
But there were several acts involved, and the first was the death of the overseer. Lestat
took him in his sleep. I was to watch and to approve; that is, to witness the taking of a
human life as proof of my commitment and part of my change. This proved without
doubt the most difficult part for me. I've told you I had no fear regarding my own death,
only a squeamishness about taking my life myself. But I had a most high regard for the
life of others, and a horror of death most recently developed because of my brother. I had
to watch the overseer awake with a start, try to throw oft Lestat with both hands, fail, then
lie there struggling under Lestat's grasp, and finally go limp, drained of blood. And die.
He did not die at once. We stood in his narrow bedroom for the better part of an hour
watching him die. Part of my change, as I said. Lestat would never have stayed
otherwise. Then it was necessary to get rid of the overseer's body. I was almost sick from
this. Weak and feverish already, I had little reserve; and handling the dead body with
such a purpose caused me nausea,. Lestat was laughing, telling me callously that I would
feel so different once I was a vampire that I would laugh, too. He was wrong about that. I
never laugh at death, no matter how often and regularly I am the cause of it.
"But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river road until we came to open
fields and leave the overseer there. We tore his coat, stole his money, and saw to it his-
lips were stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who lived in New Orleans, and knew the
state of desperation she would suffer when the body was discovered. But more than
sorrow for her, I felt pain that she would never know what had happened, that her
husband had not been found drunk on the road by robbers. As we beat the body, bruising
the face and the shoulders, I became more and more aroused. Of course, you must realize
that all this time the vampire Lestat was extraordinary. He was no more human to me
than a biblical angel. But under this pressure, my enchantment with him was strained. I
had seen my becoming a vampire in two lights: The first light was simply enchantment;
Lestat had overwhelmed me on my deathbed. But the other light was my wish for self-
destruction. My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the open door through which
Lestat had come on both the first and second occasion. Now I was not destroying myself
but someone else. The overseer, his wife, his family. I recoiled and might have fled from
Lestat, my sanity thoroughly shattered, had not he sensed with an infallible instinct what
was happening. Infallible instinct. . ." The vampire mused. "Let me say the powerful
instinct of a vampire to whom even the slightest change in a human's facial expression is
as apparent as a gesture. Lestat had preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage
and whipped the horses home. `I want to die,' I began to murmur. `This is unbearable. I
want to die. You have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.' I refused to look at him, to

be spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly,
laughing. As I said, he was determined to have the plantation."
"But would he have let you go?" asked the boy. "Under any circumstances?"
"I don't know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he would have killed me rather
than let me go. But this was what I wanted, you see. It didn't matter. No, this was what I
thought I wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped down out of the carriage
and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my brother had fallen. The house had
been unoccupied for months now, the overseer having his own cottage, and the Louisiana
heat and damp were already picking apart the steps. Every crevice was sprouting grass
and even small wildflowers. I remember feeling the moisture which in the night was cool
as I sat down on the lower steps and even rested my head against the brick and felt the
little wax-stemmed wildflowers with my hands. I pulled a clump of them out of ,the easy
dirt in one hand. `I want to die; kill me. Kill me,' I said to the vampire. `Now I am guilty
of murder. I can't live.' He sneered with the impatience of people listening to the obvious
lies of others. And then in a flash he fastened on me just as he had on my man. I thrashed
against him wildly. I dug my boot into his chest and kicked him as fiercely as I could, his
teeth stinging my throat, the fever pounding in my temples. And with a movement of his
entire body, much too fast for me to see, he was suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot
of the steps. `I thought you wanted to die, Louis,' he said."
The boy made a soft, abrupt sound when the vampire said his name which the vampire
acknowledged with the quick statement, "Yes, that is my name," and went on.
"Well, I lay there helpless in the face of my own cowardice and fatuousness again," he
said. "Perhaps so directly confronted with it, I might in time have gained the courage to
truly take my life, not to whine and beg for others to take it. I saw myself turning on a
knife then, languishing in a day-to-day suffering which I found as necessary as penance
from the confessional, truly hoping death would find me unawares and render me ft for
eternal pardon. And also I saw myself as if in a vision standing at the head of the stairs,
just where my brother had stood, and then hurtling my body down on the bricks.
"But there was no time for courage. Or shall I say, there was no time in Lestat's plan for
anything but his plan. `Now listen to me, Louis,' he said, and he lay down beside me now
on the steps, his movement so graceful and so personal that at once it made me think
of a lover. I recoiled. But he put his right arm around me and pulled me close to his chest.
Never had I been this close to him before, and in the dim light I could see the magnificent
radiance of his eye and the unnatural mask of his skin. As I tried to move, he ,pressed his
right fingers against my lips and said, Be still. I am going to drain you now to the very
threshold of death, and I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can almost hear the flow
of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow of that same blood
through mine. It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive.' I wanted to
struggle, but he pressed so hard with his fingers that he held my entire prone body in
check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at rebellion, he sank his teeth into
my neck."
The boy's eyes grew huge. He had drawn farther and farther back in his chair as the
vampire spoke, and now his face was tense, his eyes narrow, as if he were preparing to
weather a blow.

"Have you ever lost a great amount of blood?" asked the vampire. "Do you know the
feeling?"
The boy's lips shaped the word no, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat. "No," he
said.
"Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned the death of the overseer.
An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on the gallery. All of this light coalesced and began
to shimmer, as though a golden presence hovered above me, suspended in the stairwell,
softly entangled with the railings, curling and contracting like smoke. `Listen, keep your
eyes wide,' Lestat whispered to me, his lips moving against my neck. I remember that the
movement of his lips raised the hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through
my body that was not unlike the pleasure of passion. . . "
He mused, his right fingers slightly curled beneath his chin, the first finger appearing to
lightly stroke it. "The result was that within minutes I was weak to paralysis. Panic-
stricken, I discovered I could not even will myself to speak. Lestat still held me, of
course, and his arm was like the weight of an iron bar. I felt his teeth withdraw with such
a keenness that the two puncture wounds seemed enormous, lined with pain. And now he
bent over my helpless head and, taking his right hand off me, bit his own wrist. The blood
flowed down upon my shirt and coat, and he watched it with a narrow, gleaming eye. It
seemed an eternity that he watched it, and that shimmer of light now hung behind his
head like the backdrop of an apparition. I think that I knew what he meant to do even
before he did it, and I was waiting in my helplessness as if I'd been waiting for years. He
pressed his bleeding wrist to my mouth, said firmly, a little impatiently, `Louis, drink.'
And I did. `Steady, Louis,' and `Hurry,' he whispered to me a number of times. I drank,
sucking the blood out of the holes, experiencing for the first time since infancy the
special pleasure of sucking nourishment, the body focused with the mind upon one vital
source. Then something happened." The vampire sat back, a slight frown on his face.
"How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described," he said, his
voice loci almost to a whisper. The boy sat as if frozen.
"I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood. And then this next thing, this next
thing was . . . sound. A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding of a drum,
growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly
through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge drum. And then there came
the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and
each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound
grew louder and louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be
throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins. Above all, in
my veins, drum and then the other drum; and then Lestat pulled his wrist free suddenly,
and I opened my eyes and checked myself in a moment of reaching for his wrist,
grabbing it, forcing it back to my mouth at all costs; I checked myself because I realized
that the drum was my heart, and the second drum had been his." The vampire sighed. "Do
you understand?"
The boy began to speak, and then he shook his head. "No . . I mean, I do," he said. "I
mean, I . . .'
"Of course," said the vampire, looking away.

"Wait, wait!" said the boy in a welter of excitement. "The tape is almost gone. I have to
turn it over." The vampire watched patiently as he changed it.
"What happened then?" the boy asked. His face was moist, and he wiped it hurriedly with
his handkerchief.
"I saw as a- vampire," said -the vampire, his voice now slightly detached. It seemed
almost distracted. Then he drew himself up. "Lestat was standing again at the foot of the
stairs, and I saw him as I could not possibly have seen him before. He had seemed white
to me before, starkly white, so that in the night he was almost luminous; and now I saw
him filled with his own life and own blood: he was radiant, not luminous. And then I saw
that not only Lestat had changed, but all things had changed.
"It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time. I was so
enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long
time. Then Lestat began to laugh, and I heard his laughter as I had never heard anything
before. His heart I still heard like the beating of a drum, and now came this metallic
laughter. It was confusing, each sound running into the next sound, like the mingling
reverberations of bells, until I learned to separate the sounds, and then they overlapped,
each soft but distinct, increasing but discrete, peals of laughter." The vampire smiled with
delight. "Peals of bells.
" `Stop looking at my buttons,' Lestat said. `Go out there into the trees. Rid yourself of all
the human waste in your body, and don't fall so madly in love with the night that you lose
your ways'
"That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon on the flagstones, I became
so enamored with it that I must have spent an hour there. I passed my brother's oratory
without so much as a thought of him, and standing among the cottonwood and oaks, I
heard the night as if it were a chorus of whispering women, all beckoning me to their
breasts. As for my body, it was not yet totally converted, and as soon as I became the
least accustomed to the sounds and sights, it began to ache. All my human fluids were
being forced out of me. I was dying as a human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and
with my awakened senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain
discomfort and then, finally, fear. I ran back up the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was
already at work on the plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits for the last
year. `You're a rich man,' he said to me when I came in. `Something's happening to me,' I
shouted.
" `You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool. Don't you have any oil lamps? All this money
and you can't afford whale oil except for that lantern. Bring me that lantern.'
" `Dying!' I shouted. `Dying!'
" `It happens to everyone,' he persisted, refusing to help me. As I look back on this, I still
despise him for it. Not because I was afraid, but because he might have drawn my
attention to these changes with reverence. He might have calmed me and told me I might
watch my death with the same fascination with which I had watched and felt the night.
But he didn't. Lestat was never the vampire I am. Not at all." The vampire did not say this
boastfully. He said it as if he would truly have had it otherwise.

"Alors," he sighed. "I was dying fast, which meant that my capacity for fear was
diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was not more attentive to the process. Lestat was
being a perfect idiot. `Oh, for the love of hell!' he began shouting. `Do you realize I've
made no provision for you? What a fool I am.' I was tempted to say, `Yes, you are,' but I
didn't. `You'll have to bed down with me this morning. I haven't prepared you a coffin.' "
The vampire laughed. "The coffin struck such a chord of terror in me I think it absorbed
all the capacity for terror I had left. Then came only my mild alarm at having to share a
coffin with Lestat. He was in his father's bedroom meantime, telling the old man
good-bye, that he would return in the morning. But where do you go, why must you live
by such a schedule!' the old man demanded, and Lestat became impatient. Before this,
he'd been gracious to the old man, almost to the point of sickening one, but now he
became a bully. `I take care of you, don't I? I've put a better roof over your head than you
ever put over mine! If I want to sleep all day and drink all night, I'll do it, damn you!' The
old man started to whine. Only my peculiar state of emotions and most unusual feeling of
exhaustion kept me from disapproving. I was watching the scene through the open door,
enthralled with the colors of the counterpane and the positive riot of color in the old
man's face. His blue veins pulsed beneath his pink and grayish flesh. I found even the
yellow of his teeth appealing to me; and I became almost hypnotized by the quivering of
his lip. `Such a son, such a son,' he said, never suspecting, of course, the true nature of his
son. `All right, then, go. I know you keep a woman somewhere; you go to see her as soon
as her husband leaves in the morning. Give me my rosary. What's happened to my
rosary?' Lestat said something blasphemous and gave him the rosary. . . ."
"But . ." the boy started.
"Yes?" said the vampire. "I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask enough questions."
"I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they?"
"Oh, the rumor about crosses!" the vampire laughed "You refer to our being afraid of
crosses?"
"Unable to look on them, I thought; ' said the boy.
"Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I rather like
looking on crucifixes in particular."
"And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can . . . become steam and go
through them."
"I wish I could," laughed the vampire. "How positively delightful. I should like to pass
through all manner of different keyholes and feel the tickle of their peculiar shapes. No."
He shook his head. "That is, how would you say today . . . bullshit?"
The boy laughed despite himself. Then his face grew serious.
"You mustn't be so shy with me," the vampire said. "What is it?"
"The story about stakes through the heart," said the boy, his cheeks coloring slightly.
"The same," said the vampire. "Bull-shit," he said, carefully articulating both syllables, so
that the boy smiled. "No magical power whatsoever. Why don't you smoke one of your
cigarettes? I see you have them in your shirt pocket."

"Oh, thank you," the boy said, as if it were a marvelous suggestion. But once he had the
cigarette to his lips, his hands were trembling so badly that he mangled the first fragile
book match.
"Allow me," said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly put a lighted match to the
boy's cigarette. The boy inhaled, his eyes on the vampire's fingers. Now the vampire
withdrew across the table with a soft rustling of garments. "There's an ashtray on the
basin," he said, and the boy moved nervously to get it. He stared at the few butts in it for
a moment, and then, seeing the small waste basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and
quickly set it on the table. His fingers left damp marks on the cigarette when he put it
down. "Is this your room?" he asked.
"No," answered the vampire. "Just a room."
"What happened then?" the boy asked. The vampire appeared to be watching the smoke
gather beneath the overhead bulb.
"Ah . . . we went back to New Orleans posthaste," he said. "Lestat had his coffin in a
miserable room near the ramparts."
"And you did get into the coffin?"
"I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but he laughed, astonished.
`Don't you know what you are?' he asked. `But is it magical? Must it have this shape?' I
pleaded. Only to hear him laugh again. I couldn't bear the idea; but as we argued, I
realized I had no real fear. It was a strange realization. All my life I'd feared closed
places. Born and bred in French houses with lofty ceilings and floor-length windows, I
had a dread of being enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in the confessional in church. It
was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to Lestat, I did not actually
feel this anymore. I was simply remembering it. Hanging on to it from habit, from a
deficiency of ability to recognize my present and exhilarating freedom. `You're carrying
on badly,' Lestat said finally. `And it's almost dawn. I should let you die. You will die,
you know. The sun will destroy the blood I've given you, in every tissue, every vein. But
you shouldn't be feeling this fear at all. I think you're like a man who loses an arm or a
leg and keeps insisting that he can feel pain where the arm or leg used to be.' Well, that
was positively the most intelligent and useful thing Lestat ever said in my presence, and it
brought me around at once. `Now, I'm getting into the coffin,' he finally said to me in his
most disdainful tone, `and you will get in on top of me if you know what's good for you.'
And I did. I lay face-down on him, utterly confused by my absence of dread and filled
with a distaste for being so close to him, handsome and intriguing though he was. And he
shut the lid. Then I asked him if I was .completely dead. My body was tingling and
itching all over. `No, you're not then,' he said. `When you are, you'll only hear and see it
changing and feel nothing. You should be dead by tonight. Go to sleep."'
"Was he right? Were you . . . dead when you woke up?"
"Yes, changed, I should say. As obviously I am alive. My body was dead. It was some
time before it became absolutely cleansed of the fluids and matter it no longer needed,
but it was dead. And with the realization of it came another stage in my divorce from
human emotions. The first thing which became apparent to me, even while Lestat and I
were loading the coffin into a hearse and stealing another coffin from a mortuary, was
that I did not like Lestat at all. I was far from being his equal yet, but I was infinitely

closer to him than I had been before the death of my body. I can't really make this clear to
you for the obvious reason that you are now as I was before my body died.
You cannot understand. But before I died, Lestat was absolutely the most overwhelming
experience I'd ever had. Your cigarette has become one long cylindrical ash."
"Oh!" The boy quickly ground the filter into the glass. "You mean that when the gap was
closed between you, he lost his . . . spell?" he asked, his eyes quickly fixed on the
vampire, his hands now producing a cigarette and match much more easily than before.
"Yes, that's correct," said the vampire with obvious pleasure. "The trip back to Pointe du
Lac was thrilling. And the constant chatter of Lestat was positively the most boring and
disheartening thing I experienced. Of course as I said, I was far from being his equal. I
had my dead limbs to contend with . . . to use his comparison. And I learned that on that
very night, when I had to make my first kill."
The vampire reached across the table now and gently brushed an ash from the boy's lapel,
and the boy stared at his withdrawing hand in alarm. "Excuse me," said the vampire. "I
didn't mean to frighten you."
"Excuse me," said the boy. "I just got the impression suddenly that your arm was . . .
abnormally long. You reach so far without moving!"
"No," said the vampire, resting his hands again on his crossed knees. "I moved forward
much too fast for you to see. It was an illusion."
"You moved forward? But you didn't. You were sitting just as you are now, with your
back against the chair."
"No," repeated the vampire firmly. "I moved forward as I told you. Here, I'll do it again."
And he did it again, and the boy stared with the same mixture of confusion and fear.
"You still didn't see it," said the vampire. "But, you see, if you look at my outstretched
arm now, it's really not remarkably long at all." And he raised his arm, first finger
pointing heavenward as if he were an angel about to give the Word of the Lord. "You
have experienced a fundamental difference between the way you see and I see. My
gesture appeared slow and somewhat languid to me. And the sound of my finger brushing
your coat was quite audible. Well, I didn't mean to frighten you, I confess. But perhaps
you can see from this that my return to Pointe du Lac was a feast of new experiences, the
mere swaying of a tree branch in the wind a delight."
"Yes," said the boy; but he was still visibly shaken. The vampire eyed him for a moment,
and then he said, "I was telling you . . ."
"About your first kill," said the boy.
"Yes. I should say first, however, that the plantation was in a state of pandemonium. The
overseer's body had been found and so had the blind old man in the master bedroom, and
no one could explain the blind old man's presence. And no one had been able to find me
in New Orleans. My sister had contacted the police, and several of them were at Pointe
du Lac when I arrived. It was already quite dark, naturally, and Lestat quickly explained
to me that I must not let the police see me in even minimal light, especially not with my
body in its present remarkable state; so I talked to them in the avenue of oaks before the
plantation house, ignoring their requests that we go inside. I explained I'd been to Pointe

du Lac the night before and the blind old man was my guest. As for the overseer, he had
not been here, but had gone to New Orleans on business.
"After that was settled, during which my new detachment served me admirably, I had the
problem of the plantation itself. My slaves were in a state of complete confusion, and no
work had been done all day. We had a large plant then for the making of the indigo dye,
and the overseer's management had been most important. But I had several extremely
intelligent slaves who might have done his job just as well a long time before, if I had
recognized their intelligence and not feared their African appearance and manner. I
studied them clearly now and gave the management of things over to them. To the best, I
gave the overseer's house on a promise. Two of the young women were brought back into
the house from the fields to care for Lestat's father, and I told them I wanted as much
privacy as possible and they would all of them be rewarded not only for service but for
leaving me and Lestat absolutely alone. I did not realize at the time that these slaves
would be the first, and possibly the only ones, to ever suspect that Lestat and I were not
ordinary creatures. I failed to realize that their experience with the supernatural was far
greater than that of white men. In my own inexperience I still thought of them as
childlike savages barely domesticated by slavery. I made a bad mistake. But let me keep
to my story. I was going to tell you about my first kill. Lestat bungled it with his
characteristic lack of common sense."
"Bungled it?" asked the boy.
"I should never have started with human beings. But this was something I had to learn by
myself. Lestat had us plunge headlong into the swamps right after the police and the
slaves were settled. It was very late, and the slave cabins were completely dark. Rye soon
lost sight of the lights of Pointe du Lac altogether, and I became very agitated. It was the
same thing again: remembered fears, confusion. Lestat, had he any native intelligence,
might have explained things to me patiently and gently-that I had no need to fear the
swamps, that ;o snakes and insects I was utterly invulnerable, and that I must concentrate
on my new ability to see in total darkness. Instead, he harassed me with condemnations.
He was concerned only with our victims, with finishing my initiation and getting on with
it.
"And when we finally came upon our victims, he rushed me into action. They were a
small camp of runaway slaves. Lestat had visited them before and picked off perhaps a
fourth of their number by watching from the dark for one of them to leave the fire, or by
taking them in their sleep. They knew absolutely nothing of Lestat's presence. We had to
watch for well over an hour before one of the men, they were all men, finally left the
clearing and came just a few paces into the trees. He unhooked his pants now and
attended to an ordinary physical necessity, and as he turned to go, Lestat shook me and
said, `Take him,' " The vampire smiled at the boy's wide eyes. "I think I was about as
horrorstruck as you would be," he said. "But I didn't know then that I might kill animals
instead of humans. I said quickly I could not possibly take him. And the slave heard me
speak. He tamed, his back to the distant fire, and peered into the dark. Then quickly and
silently, he drew a long knife out of his belt. He was naked except for the pants and the
belt, a tall, strong-armed, sleek young man. He said something in the French patois, and
then he stepped forward. I realized that, though I saw him clearly in the dark, he could
not see us. Lestat stepped in back of him with a swiftness that baffled me and got a hold

around his neck while he pinned his left arm. The slave cried out and tried to throw Lestat
off. He sank his teeth now, and the slave froze as if from snakebite. He sank to his knees,
and Lestat fed fast as the other slaves came running. `You sicken me,' he said when he
got back to me. It was as if we were black insects utterly camouflaged in the night,
watching the slaves move, oblivious to us, discover the wounded man, drag him back, fan
out in the foliage searching for the attacker. `Come on, we have to get another one before
they all return to camp,' he said. And quickly we set off after one man who was separated
from the others. I was still terribly agitated, convinced I couldn't bring myself to attack
and feeling no urge to do so. There were many things, as I mention, which Lestat might
have said and done. He might have made the experience rich in so many ways. But he did
not."
"What could he have done?" the boy asked. "What do you mean?"
"Killing is no ordinary act," said the vampire. "One doesn't simply glut oneself on blood."
He shook his head. "It is the experience of another's life for certain, and often the
experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the
experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I sucked the blood from
Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of
that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience." He said this most
seriously, as if he were arguing with someone who held a different view. "I don't think
Lestat ever appreciated that, though how he could not, I don't know. Let me say he
appreciated something, but very little, I think, of what there is to know. In any event, he
took no pains to remind me now of what I'd felt when I clamped onto his wrist for life
itself and wouldn't let it go; or to pick and choose a place for me where I might
experience my first kill with some measure of quiet and dignity. He rushed headlong
through the encounter as if it were something to put behind us as quickly as possible, like
so many yards of the road. Once he had caught the slave, he gagged him and held him,
baring his neck. `Do it,' he said. `You can't turn back now.' Overcome with revulsion and
weak with frustration, I obeyed. I knelt beside the bent, struggling man and, clamping
both my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck. My teeth had only just begun to
change, and I had to tear his flesh, not puncture it; but once the wound was made, the
blood flowed. And once that happened, once I was locked to it, drinking . . . all else
vanished.
"Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant nothing. Lestat might
have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then vanishing m significance. The sucking
mesmerized me; the warm struggling of the man was. soothing to the tension of my
hands; and there came the beating of the drum again, which was the drumbeat of his
heart-only this time it beat in perfect rhythm with the drumbeat of my own heart, the two
resounding in every fiber of my being, until the beat began to grow slower and slower, so
that each was a soft rumble that threatened to go on without end. I was drowsing, falling
into weightlessness; and then Lestat pulled me back. `He's dead, you idiot!' he said with
his characteristic charm and tact. `You don't drink after they're dead! Understand that!' I
was in a frenzy for a moment, not myself, insisting to him that the man's heart still beat,
and I was in an agony to clamp onto him again. I ran my hands over his chest, then
grabbed at his wrists. I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat hadn't pulled me to my feet
and slapped my face. This slap was astonishing. It was not painful in the ordinary way. It

was a sensational shock of another sort, a rapping of the senses, so that I spun in
confusion and found myself helpless and staring, my back against a cypress, the night
pulsing with insects in my ears. `You'll die if you do that,' Lestat was saying. `He'll suck
you right down into death with him if you cling to him in death. And now you've drunk
too much, besides; you'll be ill.' His voice grated on me. I had the urge to throw myself
on him suddenly, but I was feeling just what he'd said. There was a grinding pain in my
stomach, as if some whirlpool there were sucking my insides into itself. It was the blood
passing too rapidly into my own blood, but I didn't know it. Lestat moved through the
night now like a cat and I followed him, my head throbbing, this pain in my stomach no
better when we reached the house of Pointe du Lac.
"As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a game of solitaire on the polished
wood, I sat there staring at him with contempt. He was mumbling nonsense. I would get
used to killing, he said; it would be nothing. I must not allow myself to be shaken. I was
reacting too much as if the `mortal coil' had not been shaken off. I would become
accustomed to things all too quickly. 'Do you think so?' I asked him finally. I really had
no interest in his answer. I understood now the difference between us. For me the
experience of killing had been cataclysmic. So had that of sucking Lestat's wrist. These
experiences so overwhelmed and so changed my view of everything around me, from the
picture of my brother on the parlor wall to the sight of a single star in the topmost pane of
the French window, that I could not imagine another vampire taking them for granted. I
was altered, permanently; I knew it. And what I felt, most profoundly, for everything,
even the sound of the playing cards being laid down one by one upon the shining rows of
the solitaire, was respect. Lestat felt the opposite. Or he felt nothing. He was the sow's ear
out of which nothing fine could be made. As boring as a mortal, as trivial and unhappy as
a mortal, he chattered over the game, belittling my experience, utterly locked against the
possibility of any experience of his own. By morning, I realized that I was his complete
superior and I had been sadly cheated in having him for a teacher. He must guide me
through the necessary lessons, if there were any more real lessons, and I must tolerate in
him a frame of mind which was blasphemous to life itself. I felt cold towards him. I had
no contempt in superiority. Only a hunger for new experience, for that which was
beautiful and as devastating as my kill. And I saw that if I were to maximize every
experience available to me, I must exert my own powers over my learning. Lestat was of
no use.
"It was well past midnight when I finally rose out of the chair and went out on the
gallery. The moon was large over the cypresses, and the candlelight poured from the open
doors. The thick plastered pillars and walls of the house had been freshly whitewashed,
the floorboards freshly swept, and a summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling
with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the
soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in constant battle with a wisteria, and I
thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to
go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me
best to another. What this meant, I wasn't sure myself. Do you understand me when I say
I did not wish to rush headlong into experience, that what I'd felt as a vampire was far too
powerful to be wasted?"
"Yes," said the boy eagerly. "It sounds as if it was like being in love."

The vampire's eyes gleamed. "That's correct. It is like love," he smiled. "And I tell you
my frame of mind that night so you can know there are profound differences between
vampires, and how I came to take a different approach from Lestat. You must understand
I did not snub him because he did not appreciate his experience. I simply could not
understand how such feelings could be wasted. But then Lestat did something which was
to show me a way to go about my learning.
"He had more than a casual appreciation of the wealth at Pointe du Lac. He'd been much
pleased by the beauty of the china used for his father's supper; and he liked the feel of the
velvet drapes, and he traced the patterns of the carpets with his toe. And now he took
from one of the china closets a crystal glass and said, `I do miss glasses.' Only he said
this with an impish delight that caused me to study him with a hard eye. I disliked him
intensely! `I want to show you a little trick,' he said. `That is, if you like glasses.' And
after setting it on the card table he came out on the gallery where I stood and changed his
manner again into that of a stalking animal, eyes piercing the dark beyond the lights of
the house, peering down under the arching branches of the oaks. In an instant, he had
vaulted the railing and dropped softly on the dirt below, and then lunged into the
blackness to catch something in both his hands. When he stood before me with it, I
gasped to see it was a rat. `Don't be such a damned idiot,' he said. `Haven't you ever seen
a rat?' It was a huge, struggling field rat with a long tail. He held its neck so it couldn't
bite. `Rats can be quite nice,' he said. And he took the rat to the wine glass, slashed its
throat, and filled the glass rapidly with blood. The rat then went hurtling over the gallery
railing, and Lestat held the wine glass to the candle triumphantly. `You may well have to
live off rats from time to time, so wipe that expression off your face,' he said. `Rats,
chickens, cattle. Traveling by ship, you damn well better live off rats, if you don't wish to
cause such a panic on board that they search your coffin. You damn well better keep the
ship clean of rats.' And then he sipped the blood as delicately as if it were burgundy. He
made a slight face. `It gets cold so fast.'
" `Do you mean, then, we can live from animals?' I asked.
" `Yes.' He drank it all down and then casually threw the glass at the fireplace. I stared at
the fragments. `You don't mind, do you?' He gestured to the broken glass with a sarcastic
smile. `I surely hope you don't, because there's nothing much you can do about it if you
do mind.'
" `I can throw you and your father out of Pointe du Lac, if I mind,' I said. I believe this
was my first show of temper.
" 'Why would you do that?' he asked with mock alarm. `You don't know everything yet . .
. do you?' He was laughing then and walking slowly about the room. He ran his fingers
over the satin finish of the spinet. `Do you play?' he asked.
"I said something like, `Don't touch it!' and he laughed at me. `I'll touch it if I like!' he
said. `You don't know, for example, all the ways you can die. And dying now would be
such a calamity, wouldn't it?'
" `There must be someone else in the world to teach me these things,' I said. `Certainly
you're not the only vampire! And your father, he's perhaps seventy. You couldn't have
been a vampire long, so someone must have instructed you. . .

" `And do you think you can find other vampires by yourself? They might see you
coming, my friend, but you won't see them. No, I don't think you have much choice about
things at this point, friend. I'm your teacher and you need me, and there isn't much you
can do about it either way. And we both have people to provide for. My father needs a
doctor, and then there is the matter of your mother and sister. Don't get any mortal
notions about telling them you are a vampire. Just provide for them and for my father,
which means that tomorrow night you had better kill fast and then attend to the business
of your plantation. Now to bed. We both sleep in the same room; it makes for far less
risk.'
" 'No, you secure the bedroom for yourself,' I said. `I've no intention of staying in the
same room with you.'
"He became furious. `Don't do anything stupid, Louis. I warn you. There's nothing you
can do to defend yourself once the sun rises, nothing. Separate rooms mean separate
security. Double precautions and double chance of notice.' He then said a score of things
to frighten me into complying, but he might as well have been talking to the walls. I
watched him intently, but I didn't listen to him. He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man
made of dried twigs with a thin, carping voice. `I sleep alone,' I said, and gently put my
hand around the candle flames one by one. `It's almost morning!' he insisted.
" `So lock yourself in,' I said, embracing my coffin, hoisting it and carrying it down the
brick stairs. I could hear the locks snapping on the French doors above, the swoosh of the
drapes. The sky was pale but still sprinkled with stars, and another light rain blew now on
the breeze from the river, speckling the flagstones. I opened the door of my brother's
oratory, shoving back the roses and thorns which had almost sealed it, and set the coffin
on the stone floor before the priedieu. I could almost. make out the images of the saints
on the walls. `Paul,' I said softly, addressing my brother, `for the first time in my life I
feel nothing for you, nothing for your death; arid for the first time I feel everything for
you, feel the sorrow of your loss as if I never before knew feeling.' You see . . . "
The vampire tuned to the boy. "For the first time now I was fully and completely a
vampire. I shut the wood blinds flat upon the small barred windows and bolted the door.
Then I climbed into the satin-lined coffin, barely able to see the gleam of cloth in the
darkness, and locked myself in. That is how I became a vampire."
And There You Were," said the boy after a pause, "with another vampire you hated."
"But I had to stay with him," answered the vampire. "As I've told you, he had me at a
great disadvantage.
He hinted there was much I didn't know and must know and that he alone could tell me.
But in fact, the main part of what he did teach me was practical and not so difficult to
figure out for oneself. How we might travel, for instance, by ship, having our coffins
transported for us as though they contained the remains of loved ones being sent here or
there for burial; how no one would dare to epee such a coffin, and we might rise from it
at night to clean the ship of rats-things of this nature, And then there were the shops and
businessmen he knew who admitted us well after hours to outfit us in the finest Paris
fashions, and those agents willing to transact financial matters in restaurants and cabarets.
And in all of these mundane matters, Lestat was an adequate teacher. What manner of
man he'd been in life, I couldn't tell and didn't care; but he was for all appearances of the

same class now as myself, which meant little to me, except that it made our lives run a
little more smoothly than they might have otherwise. He had impeccable taste, though my
library to him was a `pile of dust,' and he seemed more than once to be infuriated by the
sight of my reading a book or writing some observations in a journal. `That mortal
nonsense,' he would say to me, while at the same time spending so much of my money to
splendidly furnish Pointe du Lac, that even I, who cared nothing for the money, was
forced to wince. And in entertaining visitors at Pointe du Lac-those hapless travelers who
came up the river road by horseback or carriage begging accommodations for the night,
sporting letters of introduction from other planters or officials in New Orleans.-to these
he was so gentle and polite that it made things far easier for me, who found myself
hopelessly locked to him and jarred over and over by his viciousness."
"But he didn't harm these men?" asked the boy.
"Oh yes' often, he did. But I'll tell you a little secret if I may, which applies not only to
vampires, but to generals, soldiers, and kings. Most of us would much rather see
somebody die than be the object of rudeness under our roofs. Strange . . . yes. But very
true, I assure you. That Lestat hunted for mortals every night, I knew. But had he been
savage and ugly to my family, my guests, and my slaves, I couldn't have endured it. He
was not. He seemed particularly to delight in the visitors. But he said we must spare no
expense where our families were concerned. And he seemed to me to push luxury upon
his father to an almost ludicrous point. The old blind man must be told constantly how
fine and expensive were his bed jackets and robes and what imported draperies had just
been fixed to his bed and what French and Spanish wines we had in the cellar and how
much the plantation yielded even in bad years when the coast talked of abandoning the
indigo production altogether and going into sugar. But then at other times he would bully
the old man, as I mentioned. He would erupt into such rage that the old man whimpered
like a child. `Don't I take care of you in baronial splendor!' Lestat would shout at him.
`Don't I provide for your every want! Stop whining to me about going to church or old
friends! Such nonsense. Your old friends are dead. Why don't you die and leave me and
my bankroll in peace!' The old man would cry softly that these things meant so little to
him in old age. He would have been content on his little farm forever. I wanted often to
ask him later, `Where wag this farm? From where did you come to Louisiana?' to get
some clue to that place where Lestat might have known another vampire. But I didn't
dare to bring these things up, lest the old man start crying and Lestat become enraged.
But these fits were no more frequent than periods of near obsequious kindness when
Lestat would bring his father supper on a tray and feed him patiently while talking of the
weather and the New Orleans news and the activities of my mother and sister. It was
obvious that a great gulf existed between father and son, both in education and
refinement, but how it came about, I could not quite guess. And from this whole matter, I
achieved a somewhat consistent detachment.
"Existence, as I've said, was possible. There was always the promise behind his mocking
smile that he knew great things or terrible things, had commerce with levels of darkness I
could not possibly guess at. And all the time, he belittled me and attacked me for my love
of the senses, my reluctance to kill, and the near swoon which killing could produce in
me. He laughed uproariously when I discovered that I could see myself in a mirror and
that crosses had no effect upon me, and would taunt me with sealed lips when I asked

about God or the devil. `I'd like to meet the devil some night,' he said once with a
malignant smile. `I'd chase him from here to the wilds of the Pacific. I am the devil.' And
when I was aghast at this, he went into peals of laughter. But what happened was simply
that in my distaste for him I came to ignore and suspect him, and yet to study him with a
detached fascination. Sometimes I'd find myself staring at his wrist from which rd drawn
my vampire life, and I would fall into such a stillness that my mind seemed to leave my
body or rather my body to become my mind; and then he would see me and stare at me
with a stubborn ignorance of what I felt and longed to know and, reaching over, shake me
roughly out of it. I bore this with an overt detachment unknown to me in mortal life and
came to understand this as a part of vampire nature: that I might sit at home at Pointe du
Lac and think for hours of my brother's mortal life and see it short and rounded in
unfathomable darkness, understanding now the vain and senseless wasting passion with
which rd mourned his loss and turned on other mortals like a maddened animal. All that
confusion was then like dancers frenzied in a fog; and now, now in this strange vampire
nature, I felt a profound sadness. But I did not brood over this. Let me not give you that
impression, for brooding would have been to me the most terrible waste; but rather I
looked around me at all the mortals that I knew and saw all life as precious, condemning
all fruitless guilt and passion that would let it slip through the fingers like sand. It was
only now as a vampire that I did come to know my sister, forbidding her the plantation
for the city life which she so needed in order to know her own time of life and her own
beauty and come to marry, not brood for our lost brother or my going away or become a
nursemaid for our mother. And I provided for them all they might need or want, finding
even the most trivial request worth my immediate attention. My sister laughed at the
transformation in me when we would meet at night and I would take her from our flat out
the narrow wooden streets to walk along the tree-lined levee in the moonlight, savoring
the orange blossoms and the caressing warmth, talking for hours of her most secret
thoughts and dreams, those little fantasies she dared to tell no one and would even
whisper to me when we sat in the dim lit parlor entirely alone. And I would see her sweet
and palpable before me, a shimmering, precious creature soon to grow old, soon to die,
soon to lose these moments that in their tangibility promised to us, wrongly . . . wrongly,
an immortality. As if it were our very birthright, which we could not come to grasp the
meaning of until this time of middle life when we looked on only as many years ahead as
already lay behind us. When every moment, every moment must be first known and then
savored.
"It was detachment that made this possible, a sublime loneliness with which Lestat and I
moved through the world of mortal men. And all material troubles passed from us. I
should tell you the practical nature of it.
"Lestat had always known how to steal from victims chosen for sumptuous dress and
other promising signs of extravagance. But the great problems of shelter and secrecy had
been for him a terrible struggle. I suspected that beneath his gentleman's veneer he was
painfully ignorant of the most simple financial matters. But I was not. And so he could
acquire cash at any moment and I could invest it. If he were not picking the pocket of a
dead man in an alley, he was at the greatest gambling tables in the richest salons of the
city, using his vampire keenness to suck gold and dollars and deeds of property from
young planters' sons who found him deceptive in his friendship and alluring in his charm.
But this had never given him the life he wanted, and so for that he had ushered me into

the preternatural world that he might acquire an investor and manager for whom these
skills of mortal life became most valuable in this life after.
"But, let me describe New Orleans, as it was then, and as it was to become, so you can
understand how simple our lives were. There was no city in America like New Orleans. It
was filled not only with the French and Spanish of all classes who had formed in part its
peculiar aristocracy, but later with immigrants of all kinds, the Irish and the German in
particular. Then there were not only the black slaves, yet unhomogenized and fantastical
in their different tribal garb and manners, but the great growing class of the free people of
color, those marvelous people of our mixed blood and that of the islands, who produced a
magnificent and unique caste of craftsmen, artists, poets, and renowned feminine beauty.
And then there were the Indians, who covered the levee on summer days selling herbs
and crafted wares. And drifting through all, through this medley of languages and colors,
were the people of the port, the sailors of ships, who came in great waves to spend their
money in the cabarets, to buy for the night the beautiful women both dark and light, to
dine on the best of Spanish and French cooking and drink the imported wines of the
world. Then add to these, within years after my transformation, the Americans, who built
the city up river from the old French Quarter with magnificent Grecian houses which
gleamed in the moonlight like temples. And, of course, the planters, always the planters,
coming to town with their families in shining landaus to buy evening gowns and silver
and gems, to crowd the narrow streets on the way to the old French Opera House and the
Theatre d'Orleans and the St. Louis Cathedral, from whose open doors came the chants of
High Mass over the crowds of the Place d'Armes on Sundays, over the noise and
bickering of the French Market, over the silent, ghostly drift of the ships along the raised
waters of the Mississippi, which flowed against the levee above the ground of New
Orleans itself, so that the ships appeared to float against the sky.
"This was New Orleans, a magical and magnificent place to live. In which a vampire,
richly dressed and gracefully walking through the pools of light of one gas lamp after
another might attract no more notice in the evening than hundreds of other exotic
creatures -if he attracted any at all, if anyone stopped to whisper behind a fan, `That man .
. . how pale, how he gleams . . . how he moves. It's not natural!' A city in which a
vampire might be gone before the words had even passed the lips, seeking out the alleys
in which he could see like a cat, the darkened bars in which sailors slept with their heads
on the table, great high-ceilinged hotel rooms where a lone figure might sit, her feet upon
an embroidered cushion, her legs covered with a lace counterpane, her head bent under
the tarnished light of a single candle, never seeing the great shadow move across the
plaster flowers of the ceiling, never seeing the long white finger reached to press the
fragile flame.
"Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of those men and women who
stayed for any reason left behind them some monument, some structure of marble and
brick and stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps went out and the planes
came in and the office buildings crowded the blocks of Canal Street, something
irreducible of beauty and romance remained; not in every street perhaps, but in so many
that the landscape is for me the landscape of those times always, and walking now in the
starlit streets of the Quarter or the Garden District I am in those times again. I suppose
that is the nature of the monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian

columns and wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that this or that man walked
here. No, that what he felt in one time in one spot continues. The moon that rose over
New Orleans then still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. The feeling, at
least here . . . and there . . . it remains the same."
The vampire appeared sad. He sighed, as if he doubted what he had just said. "What was
it?" he asked suddenly as if he were slightly tired. "Yes, money. Lestat and I had to make
money. And I was telling you that he could steal. But it was investment afterwards that
mattered. What we accumulated we must use. But I go ahead of myself. I killed animals.
But I'll get to that in a moment. Lestat killed humans all the time, sometimes two or three
a night, sometimes more. He would drink from one just enough to satisfy a momentary
thirst, and then go on to another. The better the human, as he would say in his vulgar
way, the more he liked it. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite food the first of the
evening; but the triumphant kill for Lestat was a young man. A young man around your
age would have appealed to him in particular."
"Me?" the boy whispered. He had leaned forward on his elbows to peer into the vampire's
eyes, and now he drew up.
"Yes," the vampire went on, as if he hadn't observed the boy's change of expression.
"You see, they represented the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood on the threshold
of the maximum possibility of life. Of course, Lestat didn't understand this himself. I
came to understand it. Lestat understood nothing.
"I shall give you a perfect example of what Lestat liked. Up the river from us was the
Freniere plantation, a magnificent spread of land which had great hopes of making a
fortune in sugar, just shortly after the refining process had been invented. I presume you
know sugar was refined in Louisiana. There is something perfect and ironic about it, this
land which I loved producing refined sugar. I mean this more unhappily than I think you
know. This refined sugar is a poison. It was like the essence of life in New Orleans, so
sweet that it can be fatal, so richly enticing that all other values are forgotten . . . . But as I
was saying up river from us lived the Frenieres, a great old French family which had
produced in this generation five young women and one young man. Now, three of the
young women were destined not to marry, but two were young enough still and all
depended upon the young man. He was to manage the plantation as I bad done for my
mother and sister; he was to negotiate marriages, to put together dowries when the entire
fortune of the place rode precariously on the next year's sugar crop; he was to bargain,
fight, and keep at a distance the entire material world for the world of Freniere. Lestat
decided he wanted him. And when fate alone nearly cheated Lestat, he went wild. He
risked his own life to get the Freniere boy, who had become involved in a duel. He had
insulted a young Spanish Creole at a ball. The whole thing was nothing, really; but like
most young Creoles this one was willing to die for nothing. They were both willing to die
for nothing. The Freniere household was in an uproar. You must understand, Lestat knew
this perfectly. Both of us had hunted the Freniere plantation, Lestat for slaves and chicken
thieves and me for animals."
"You were killing only animals?"
"Yes. But I'll come to that later, as I said. We both knew the plantation, and I had
indulged in one of the greatest pleasures of a vampire, that of watching people

unbeknownst to them. I knew the Freniere sisters as I knew the magnificent rose trees
around my brother's oratory. They were a unique group of women. Each in her own way
was as smart as the brother; and one of them, I shall call her Babette, was not only as
smart as her brother, but far wiser. Yet none had been educated to care for the plantation;
none understood even the simplest facts about its financial state. All were totally
dependent upon young Freniere, and all knew it. And so, larded with their love for him,
their passionate belief that he hung the moon and that any conjugal love they might ever
know would only be a pale reflection of their love for him, larded with this was a
desperation as strong as the will to survive. If Freniere died in the duel, the plantation
would collapse. Its fragile economy, a life of splendor based on the perennial mortgaging
of the next year's crop, was in his hands alone. So you can imagine the panic and misery
in the Freniere household the night that the son went to town to fight the appointed duel.
And now picture Lestat, gnashing his teeth like a comic-opera devil because he was not
going to kill the young Freniere."
"You mean then . . . that you felt for the Freniere women?"
"I felt for them totally," said the vampire. "Their position was agonizing. And I felt for
the boy. That night he locked himself in his father's study and made a will. He knew full
well that if he fell under the rapier at four A.M. the next morning, his family would fall
with him. He deplored his situation and yet could do nothing to help it. To run out on the
duel would not only mean social ruin for him, but would probably have been impossible.
The other young man would have pursued him until he was forced to fight. When he left
the plantation at midnight, he was staring into the face of death itself with the character of
a man who, having only one path to follow, has resolved to follow it with perfect
courage. He would either kill the Spanish boy or die; it was unpredictable, despite all his
skill. His face reflected a depth of feeling and wisdom I'd never seen on the face of any of
Lestat's struggling victims. I had my first battle with Lestat then and there. I'd prevented
him from killing the boy for months, and now he meant to kill him before the Spanish
boy could.
"We were on horseback, racing after the young Freniere towards New Orleans, Lestat
bent on overtaking him, I bent on overtaking Lestat. Well, the duel, as I told you, was
scheduled for four A.M. On the edge of the swamp just beyond the city's northern gate.
And arriving there just shortly before four, we had precious little time to return to Pointe
du Lac, which meant our-own lives were in danger: I was incensed at Lestat as never
before, and he was determined to get the boy. `Give him his chance!' I was insisting,
getting hold of Lestat before he could approach the boy. It was midwinter, bitter-cold and
damp in the swamps, one volley of icy rain after another sweeping the clearing where the
duel was to be fought. Of course, I did not fear these elements in the sense that you
might; they did not numb me, nor threaten me with mortal shivering or illness. But
vampires feel cold as acutely as humans, and the blood of the kill is often the rich,
sensual alleviation of that cold. But what concerned me that morning was not the pain I
felt, but the excellent cover of darkness these elements provided, which made Freniere
extremely vulnerable to Lestat's attack. All he need do would be step away from his two
friends towards the swamp and Lestat might take him. And so I physically grappled with
Lestat. I held him."
"But towards all this you had detachment, distance?"

"Hmmm . . ." the vampire sighed. "Yes. I had it, and with it a supremely resolute anger.
To glut himself upon the life of an entire family was to me Lestat's supreme act of utter
contempt and disregard for all he should have seen with a vampire's depth. So I held him
in the dark, where he spit at me and cursed at me; and young Freniere took his rapier
from his friend and second and went out on the slick, wet grass to meet his opponent.
There was a brief conversation, then the duel commenced. In moments, it was over.
Freniere had mortally wounded the other boy with a swift thrust to the chest. And he
knelt in the grass, bleeding, dying, shouting something unintelligible at Freniere. The
victor simply stood there. Everyone could see there was no sweetness in the victory.
Freniere looked on death as if it were an abomination. His companions advanced with
their lanterns, urging him to come away as soon as possible and leave the dying man to
his friends. Meantime, the wounded one would allow no one to touch him. And then, as
Freniere's group turned to go, the three of them walking heavily towards their horses, the
man on the ground drew a pistol. Perhaps I alone could see this in the powerful dark. But,
in any event, I shouted to Freniere as I ran towards the gun. And this was all that Lestat
needed. While I was lost in my clumsiness, distracting Freniere and going for the gun
itself, Lestat, with his years of experience and superior speed, grabbed the young man
and spirited him into the cypresses. I doubt his friends even knew what had happened.
The pistol had gone off, the wounded man had collapsed, and I was tearing through the
nearfrozen marshes shouting for Lestat.
"Then I saw him. Freniere lay sprawled over the knobbed roots of a cypress, his boots
deep in the murky water, and Lestat was still bent over him, one hand on the hand of
Freniere that still held the foil. I went to pull Lestat off, and that right hand swung at me
with such lightning speed I did not see it, did not know it had struck me until I found
myself in the water also; and, of course, by the time I recovered, Freniere was dead. I saw
him as he lay there, his eyes closed, his lips utterly still as if he were just sleeping. `Damn
you!' I began cursing Lestat. And then I started, for the body of Freniere had begun to slip
down into the marsh. The water rose over his face and covered him completely. Lestat
was jubilant; he reminded me tersely that we had less than an hour to get back to Pointe
du Lac, and he swore revenge on me. `If I didn't like the life of a Southern planter, rd
finish you tonight. I know a way,' he threatened me. `I ought to drive your horse into the
swamps. You'd have to dig yourself a hole and smother!' He rode off.
"Even over all these years, I feel that anger for him like a white-hot liquid filling my
veins. I saw then what being a vampire meant to him."
"He was just a killer," the boy said, his voice reflecting some of the vampire's emotion.
"No regard for anything."
"No. Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against life itself. Every time he
took a life it was revenge. It was no wonder, then, that he appreciated nothing. The
nuances of vampire existence weren't even available to him because he was focused with
a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he'd left. Consumed with hatred, he looked
back. Consumed with envy, nothing pleased him unless he could take it from others; and
once having it, he grew cold and dissatisfied, not loving the thing for itself; and so he
went after something else. Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible.
"But I've spoken to you about the Freniere sisters. It was almost half past five when I
reached their plantation. Dawn would come shortly after six, but I was almost home. I

slipped onto the upper gallery of their house and saw them all gathered in the parlor; they
had never even dressed for bed. The candles burnt low, and they sat already as mourners,
waiting for the word. They were all dressed in black, as was their at-home custom, and in
the dark the, black shapes of their dresses massed together with their raven hair, so that in
the glow of the candles their faces appeared as five soft, shimmering apparitions, each
uniquely sad, each uniquely courageous. Babette's face alone appeared resolute. It was as
if she had already made up her mind to take the burdens of Freniere if her brother died,
and she had that same expression on her face now which had been on her brother's when
he mounted to leave for the duel. What lay ahead of her was nearly impossible. What lay
ahead was the final death of which Lestat was guilty. So I did something then which
caused me great risk. I made myself known to her. I did this by playing the light. As you
can see, my face is very white and has a smooth, highly reflective surface, rather like that
of polished marble."
"Yes," the boy nodded, and appeared flustered. "It's very . . . beautiful, actually," said the
boy. "I wonder if . . . but what happened?"
"You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive," said the vampire. The boy
nodded. "I was. Nothing structurally is changed in me. Only I never knew that I was
handsome. Life whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I've said. I gazed at
nothing, not even a mirror . . . especially not a mirror . . . with a free eye. But this is what
happened. I stepped near to the pane of glass and let the light touch my face. And this I
did at a moment when Babette's eyes were turned towards the panes. Then I appropriately
vanished.
"Within seconds all the sisters knew a `strange creature' had been seen, a ghostlike
creature, and the two slave maids steadfastly refused to investigate. I waited out these
moments impatiently for just that which I wanted to happen: Babette finally took a
candelabrum from a side table, lit the candles and, scorning everyone's fear, ventured out
onto the cold gallery alone to see what was there, her sisters hovering in the door like
great, black birds, one of them crying that the brother was dead and she had indeed seen
his ghost. Of course, . you must understand that Babette, being as strong as she was,
never once attributed what she saw to imagination or to ghosts. I let her come the length
of the dark gallery before I spoke to her, and even then I let her see only the vague outline
of my body beside one of the columns. 'Tell your sisters to go back,' I whispered to her. `I
come to tell you of your brother. Do as I say.' She was still for an instant, and then she
turned to me and strained to see me in the dark. `I have only a little time. I would not
harm you for the -world,' I said. And she obeyed. Saying it was nothing, she told them to
shut the door, and they obeyed as people obey who not only need a leader but are
desperate for one. Then I stepped into the light of Babette's candles."
The boy's eyes were wide. He put his hand to his lips. "Did you look to her . . . as you do
to me?" he asked.
"You ask that with such innocence," said the vampire. "Yes, I suppose I certainly did.
Only, by candlelight I always had a less supernatural appearance. And I made no pretense
with her of being an ordinary creature. `I have only minutes,' I told her at once. `But what
I have to tell you is of the greatest importance. Your brother fought bravely and won the
duel=but wait. . You must know now, he is dead. Death was proverbial with him, the
thief in the night about which all his goodness or courage could do nothing. But this is

not the principal thing which I came to tell you. It is this. You can rule the plantation and
you can save it. All that is required is that you let no one convince you otherwise. You
must assume his position despite any outcry, any talk of convention, any talk of propriety
or common sense. You must listen to nothing. The same land is here now that was here
yesterday, morning when your brother slept above. Nothing is changed. You must take
his place.
If you do not, the land is lost and the family is lost. You will be five women on a small
pension doomed to live but half or less of what life could give you. Learn what you must
know. Stop at nothing until you have the answers. And take my visitation to you to be
your courage whenever you waver. You must take the reins of your own life. Your
brother is dead.'
"I could see by her face that she had heard every word. She would have questioned me
had there been time, but she believed me when I said there was not. Then I used all my
skill to leave her so swiftly I appeared to vanish. From the garden I saw her face above in
the glow of her candles. I saw her search the dark for me, turning around and around.
And then I saw her make the Sign of the Crass and walk back to her sisters within."
The vampire smiled. "There was absolutely no talk on the river coast of any strange
apparition to Babette Freniere, but after the first mourning and sad talk of the women left
all alone, she became the scandal of the neighborhood because she chose to run the
plantation on her own. She managed an immense dowry for her younger sister, and was
married herself in another year. And Lestat and I almost never exchanged words."
"Did he go on living at Pointe du Lac?"
"Yes. I could not be certain he'd told me all I needed to know. And great pretense was
necessary. My sister was married in my absence, for example, while I had a `malarial
chill,' and something similar overcame me the morning of my mother's funeral.
Meantime, Lestat and I sat down to dinner each night with the old man and made nice
noises with our knives and forks, while he told us to eat everything on our plates and not
to drink our wine too fast. With dozens of miserable headaches I would receive my sister
in a darkened bedroom, the covers up to my chin, bid her and her husband bear with the
dim light on account of the pain in my eyes, as I entrusted to them large amounts of
money to invest for us all. Fortunately her husband was an idiot; a harmless one, but an
idiot, the product of four generations of marriages between first cousins.
"But though these things went well, we began to have our problems with the slaves. They
were the suspicious ones; and, as I've indicated, Lestat killed anyone and everyone he
chose. So there was always some talk of mysterious death on the part of the coast. But it
was what they saw of us which began the talk, and I heard it one evening when I was
playing a shadow about the slave cabins.
"Now, let me explain first the character of these slaves. It was only about seventeen
ninety-five, Lestat and I having lived there for four years in relative quiet, I investing the
money which he acquired, increasing our lands, purchasing apartments and town houses
in New Orleans which I rented, the work of the plantation itself producing little . . . more
a cover for us than an investment. I say `our.' This is wrong. I never signed anything over
to Lestat, and, as you realize, I was still legally alive. But in seventeen ninety-five these
slaves did not have the character which you've seen in films and novels of the South.

They were not soft-spoken, brown-skinned people in drab rags who spoke an English
dialect. They were Africans. And they were islanders; that is, some of them had come
from Santo Domingo. They were very black and totally foreign; they spoke in their
African tongues, and they spoke the French patois; and when they sang, they sang
African songs which made the fields exotic and strange, always frightening to me in my
mortal life. They were superstitious and had their own secrets and traditions. In short,
they had not yet been destroyed as Africans completely. Slavery was the curse of their
existence; but they had not been robbed yet of that which had been characteristically
theirs. They tolerated the baptism and modest garments imposed on there by the French
Catholic laws; but in the evenings, they made their cheap fabrics into alluring costumes,
made jewelry of animal bones and bits of discarded metal which they polished to look
like gold; and the slave cabins of Pointe du Lac were a foreign country, an African coast
after dark, in which not even the coldest overseer would want to wander. No fear for the
vampire.
"Not until one summer evening when, passing for a shadow, I heard through the open
doors of the black foreman's cottage a conversation which convinced me that Lestat and I
slept is real danger. The slaves knew now we were not ordinary mortals. In hushed tones,
the maids told of how, through a crack in the door, they had seen us dine on empty plates
with empty silver, lifting empty glasses to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and
ghostly in the candlelight, the blind man a helpless fool in our power. Through keyholes
they had seen Lestat's coffin, and once he had beaten one of them mercilessly for
dawdling by the gallery windows of his room. `There is no bed in there,' they confided
one to the other with nodding heads. `He sleeps in the coffin, I know it.' They were
convinced, on the best of grounds, of what we were. And as for me, they'd seen me
evening after evening emerge from the oratory, which was now little more than a
shapeless mass of brick and vine, layered with flowering wisteria in the spring, wild roses
in summer, moss gleaming on the old unpainted shutters which had never been opened,
spiders spinning in the stone arches. Of course, I'd pretended to visit it in memory of
Paul, but it was clear by their speech they no longer believed such lies. And now they
attributed to us not only the deaths of slaves found in the fields and swamps and also the
dead cattle and occasional horses, but all other strange events; even floods and thunder
were the weapons of God in a personal battle waged with Louis and Lestat. But worse
still, they were not planning to run away. Vice were devils. Our power inescapable. No,
we must be destroyed. And at this gathering, where I became an unseen member, were a
number of the Freniere slaves.
"This meant word would get to the entire coast. And though I firmly believed the entire
coast to be impervious to a wave of hysteria, I did not intend to risk notice of any kind. I
hurried back to the plantation house to tell Lestat our game of playing planter was over.
He'd have to give up his slave whip and golden napkin ring and move into town.
"He resisted, naturally. His father was gravely ill and might not live. Ire had no intention
of running away from stupid slaves. `I'll kill them all,' he said calmly, `in threes and
fours. Some will run away and that will be fine.'
" `You're talking madness. The fact is I want you gone from here.'
" `You want me gone! You,' he sneered. He was building a card palace on the dining
room table with a pack of very fine French cards. `You whining coward of a vampire

who prowls the night killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if they
were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your clothes are drenched and
you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics and have the look of a baffled idiot at the
zoo.'
" `You've nothing more to tell me, and your insistence on recklessness has endangered us
both. I might live in that oratory alone while this house fell to ruin. I don't care about it!' I
told him. Because this was quite true. `But you must have all the things you never had of
life and make of immortality a junk shop in which both of us become grotesque. Now, go
look at your father and tell me how long he has to live, for that's how long you stay, and
only if the slaves don't rise up against us!'
"He told me then to go look at his father myself, since I was the one who was always
`looking,' and I did. The old man was truly dying. I had been spared my mother's death,
more or less, because she had died very suddenly on an afternoon. She'd been found with
her sewing basket, seated quietly in the courtyard; she had died as one goes to sleep. But
now I was seeing a natural death that was too slow with agony and with consciousness.
And I'd always liked the old man; he was kindly and simple and made few demands. By
day, he sat in the sun of the gallery dozing and listening to the birds; by night, any chatter
on our part kept him company. He could play chess, carefully feeling each piece and
remembering the entire state of the board with remarkable accuracy; and though Lestat
would never play with him, I did often. Now he lay gasping for breath, his forehead hot
and wet, the pillow around him stained with sweat. And as he moaned and prayed for
death, Lestat in the other room began to play the spinet. I slammed it shut, barely missing
his fingers. `You won't play while he dies!' I said. `The hell I won't!' he answered me. `I'll
play the drum if I like!' And taking a great sterling silver platter from a sideboard he
slipped a finger through one of its handles and beat it with a spoon.
"I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it. And then we both ceased our noise
because the old man was calling his name. He was saying that he must talk to Lestat now
before he died. I told Lestat to go to him. The sound of his crying was terrible. `Why
should I? I've cared for him all these years. Isn't that enough?' And he drew from his
pocket a nail file, and, seating himself on the foot of the old man's bed, he began to file
his long nails.
"Meantime, I should tell you that I was aware of slaves about the house. They were
watching and listening. I was truly hoping the old man would die within minutes. Once or
twice before I'd dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of several slaves, but never such
a number. I immediately rang for Daniel, the slave to whom I'd given the overseer's house
and position. But while I waited for him, I could hear the old man talking to Lestat;
Lestat, who sat with his legs crossed, filing and filing, one eyebrow arched, his attention
on his perfect nails. `It was the school,' the old man was saying. `Oh, I know you
remember . . . what can I say to you . . .' he moaned.
" `You'd better say it,' Lestat said, `because you're about to die.' The old man let out a
terrible noise, and I suspect I made some sound of my own. I positively loathed Lestat. I
had a mind now to get him out of the room. `Well, you know that, don't you? Even a fool
like you knows that,' said Lestat.
`You'll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after I'm dead,' said the old man.

" I don't know what you're talking about!" said Lestat.
"My patience was becoming exhausted with him, and the old man was becoming more
and more agitated. He was begging Lestat to listen to him with a warm heart. The whole
thing was making me shudder. Meantime, Daniel had come, and I knew the moment I
saw him that everything at Pointe du Lac was lost. Had I been more attentive I'd have
seen signs of it before now. He looked at me with eyes of glass. I was a monster to him.
'Monsieur Lestat's father is very ill. Going,' I said, ignoring his expression. `I want no
noise tonight; the slaves must all stay within the cabins. A doctor is on his way.' He
stared at me as if I were lying. And then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away from
me towards the old man's door. His face underwent such a change that I rose at once and
looked in the room. It was Lestat, slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the bedpost,
his nail file working furiously, grimacing in such a way that both his great teeth showed
prominently."
The vampire stopped, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He was looking at the
boy. And the boy looked shyly at the table. But he had already looked, and fixedly, at the
vampire's mouth. He had seen that the lips were of a different texture from the vampire's
skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like any person's lips, only deadly white;
and he had glimpsed the white teeth. Only, the vampire had such a way of smiling that
they were not completely revealed; and the boy had not even thought of such teeth until
now. "You can imagine," said the vampire, "what this meant.
"I had to kill him."
"You what?" said the boy.
"I had to kill him. He started to run. He would have alarmed everyone. Perhaps it might
have been handled some other way, but I had no time. So I went after him, overpowering
him. But then, finding myself in the act of doing what I had not done for four years, I
stopped. This was a man. He had his bone-handle knife in his hand to defend himself.
And I took it from him easily and slipped it into his heart. He sank to his knees at once,
his fingers tightening on the blade, bleeding on it. And the sight of the blood, the aroma
of it, maddened me. I believe I moaned aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not.
Then I remember seeing Lestat's figure emerge in the mirror over the sideboard. `Why
did you do this!' he demanded. I turned to face him, determined he would not see me in
this weakened state. The old man was delirious, he went on, he could not understand
what the old man was saying. `The slaves, they know . . . you must go to the cabins and
keep watch,' I managed to say to him. `I'll care for the old man.'
" `Kill him,' Lestat said.
" `Are you mad!' I answered. `He's your father!'
" `I know he's my father!' said Lestat. `That's why you have to kill him. I can't kill him! If
I could, I would have done it a long time ago, damn him!' He wrung his hands. `We've
got to get out of here. And look what you've done killing this one. There's no time to lose.
His wife will be wailing up here in minutes . . . or she'll send someone worse!"'
The vampire sighed. "This was all true. Lestat was right. I could hear the slaves gathering
around Daniel's cottage, waiting for him. Daniel had been brave enough to come into the
haunted house alone. When he didn't return, the slaves would panic, become a mob. I told

Lestat to calm them, to use all his power as a white master over them and not to alarm
them with horror, and then I went into the bedroom and shut the door. I had then another
shock in a night of shocks. Because I'd never seen Lestat's father as he was then.
"He was sitting up now, leaning forward, talking to Lestat, begging Lestat to answer ham,
telling him he understood his bitterness better than Lestat did himself. And he Was a
living corpse. Nothing animated his sunken body but a fierce will: hence, his eyes for
their gleam were all the more sunken in his skull, and his lips in their trembling made his
old yellowed mouth more horrible. I sat at the foot of the bed, and, suffering to see him
so, I gave him my hand. I cannot tell you how much his appearance had shaken me. For
when I bring death, it is swift and consciousless, leaving the victim as if in enchanted
sleep. But this was the slow decay, the body refusing to surrender to the vampire of time
which had sucked upon it for years on end. `Lestat,' he said. `Just for once, don't be hard
with me. Just for once, be for me the boy you were. My son.' He said this over and over,
the words, 'My son, my son'; and then he said something I could not hear about innocence
and innocence destroyed. But I could see that he was not out of his mind, as Lestat
thought, but in some terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past Was on him with
full force; and the present, which was only death, which he fought with all his will, could
do nothing to soften that burden. But I knew I might deceive him if I used all my skill,
and, bending close to him now, I whispered the word, `Father.' It was not Lestat's voice, it
was mine, a soft whisper. But he calmed at once and T thought then he might die. But he
held my hand as if he were being pulled under by dark ocean waves and I alone could
save him. He talked now of some country teacher, a name garbled, who. found in Lestat a
brilliant pupil and begged to take him to a monastery for an education. He cursed himself
for bringing Lestat home, for burning his books. `You must forgive me, Lestat,' he cried.
"I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some answer, but he repeated this
again. `You have it all to live for, but you are as cold and brutal as I was then with the
work always there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, you must remember. You were the
gentlest of them all! God will forgive me if you forgive me.'
"Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I gestured for quiet, but he
wouldn't see that. So I had to get up quickly so the father wouldn't hear his voice from a
distance. The slaves had run from him. `But they're out there, they're gathered in the dark.
I hear them,' said Lestat. And then he glared at the old man. `Kill him, Louis!' he said to
me, his voice touched with the first pleading I'd ever heard in it. Then he bit down in
rage. `Do it!'
" `Lean over that pillow and tell him you forgive him all, forgive him for taking you out
of school when you were a boy! Tell him that now.'
" `For what!' Lestat grimaced, so that his face looked like a skull. `Taking me out of
school!' He threw up his hands and let out a terrible roar of desperation. `Damn him! Kill
him!' he said.
" `Nor' I said. `You forgive him. Or you kill him yourself. Go on. Kill your own father.'
"The old man begged to be told what we were saying. He called out, `Son, son,' and
Lestat danced like the maddened Rumpelstiltskin. about to put his foot through the moor.
I went to the lace curtains. I could see and hear the slaves surrounding the house of Pointe
du Lao, forms woven in the shadows, drawing near. `You were Joseph among your

brothers,' the old man said. `The best of them, but how was I to know? It was when you
were gone I knew, when all those years passed and they could offer me no comfort, no
solace. And then you came back to me and took me from the farm, but it wasn't you. It
wasn't the same boy.'
"I turned on Lestat now and veritably dragged him towards the bed. Never had I seen him
so weak, and at the same time enraged. He shook me off and then knelt down near the
pillow, glowering at me. I stood resolute, and whispered, `Forgive!'
"It's all right, Father. You must rest easy. I hold nothing against you," he said, his voice
thin and strained over his anger.
"The old man turned on the pillow, murmuring something soft with relief, but Lestat was
already gone. He stopped short in the doorway, his hands over his ears. `They're coming!'
he whispered; and then, turning just so he could see me, he said, `Take him. For God's
sake'
"The old man never even knew what happened. He never awoke from his stupor. I bled
him just enough, opening the gash so he would then die without feeding my dark passion.
That thought I couldn't bear. I knew now it wouldn't matter if the body was found in this
manner, because I had had enough of Pointe du Lac and Lestat and all this identity of
Pointe du Lac's prosperous master. I would torch the house, and turn to the wealth I'd
held under many names, safe for just such a moment.
"Meantime, Lestat was after the slaves. He would leave such-ruin and death behind him
no one could make a story of that night at Pointe du Lac, and I went with him. As before,
his ferocity was mysterious, but now I bared my fangs on the humans who fled from me,
my steady advance overcoming their clumsy, pathetic speed as the veil of death
descended, or the veil of madness. The power and the proof of the vampire was
incontestable, so that the slaves scattered in all directions. And it was I who ran back up
the steps to put the torch to Pointe du Lac.
"Lestat came bounding after me. `What are you doing!' he shouted. `Are you mad!' But
there was no way to putout the flames. `They're gone and you're destroying it, all of it.'
He turned round and round in the magnificent parlor, amid his fragile splendor. `Get your
coffin out. You have three hours till dawn!' I said. The house was a funeral pyre."
"Could the fire have hurt you?" asked the boy.
"Most definitely!" said the vampire.
"Did you go back to the oratory? Was it safe?"
"No. Not at all. Some fifty-five slaves were scattered around the grounds. Many of them
would not have desired the life of a runaway and would most certainly go right to
Freniere or south to the Bel Jardin plantation down river. I had no intention of staying
there that night. But there was little time to go anywhere else."
"The woman, Babette!" said the boy.
The vampire smiled. "Yes, I went to Babette. She lived now at Freniere with her young
husband. I had enough time to load my coffin into the carriage and go to her."
"But what about Lestat?"

The vampire sighed. "Lestat went with me. It was his intention to go on to New Orleans,
and he was trying to persuade me to do just that. But when he saw l meant to hide at
Freniere, he opted for that also. We might not have ever made it to New Orleans. It was
growing light. Not so that mortal eyes would have seen it, but Lestat and I could see it.
"Now, as for Babette, I had visited her once again. As I told you, she had scandalized the
coast by remaining alone on the plantation without a man in the house, without even an
older woman. Babette's greatest problem was that she might succeed financially only to
suffer the isolation of social ostracism. She had such a sensibility that wealth itself mean
nothing to her; family, a line . . . this meant something to Babette. Though she was able
to hold the plantation together, the scandal was wearing on her. She was giving up inside.
I came to her one night in the garden. Not permitting her to look on me, I told her in a
most gentle voice that I was the same person she'd seen before. That I knew of her life
and her suffering. `Don't expect people to understand it,' I told her. `They are fools. They
want you to retire because of your brother's death. They would use your life as if it were
merely oil for a proper lamp. You must defy them, but you must defy them with purity
and confidence.' She was listening all the while in silence. I told her she was to give a
ball for a cause. And the cause to be religious. She might pick a convent in New Orleans,
any one, and plan for a philanthropic ball. She would invite her deceased mother's dearest
friends to be chaperones and she would do all of this with perfect confidence. Above all,
perfect confidence. It was confidence and purity which were all-important.
"Well, Babette thought this to be a stroke of genius. `I don't know what you are, and you
will not tell me,' she said. (This was true, I would not.) `But I can only think that you are
an angel.' And she begged to see my face. That is, she begged in the manner of such
people as Babette, who are not given to truly begging anyone for anything. Not that
Babette was proud. She was simply strong and honest, which in most cases makes
begging . . . I see you want to ask me a question." The vampire stopped.
"Oh, no," said the boy, who had meant to hide it.
"But you mustn't be afraid to ask me anything. If I held something too close . . . " And
when the vampire said this his face darkened for an instant. He frowned, and as his brows
drew together a small well appeared in the flesh of his forehead over his left brow, as
though someone had pressed it with a finger. It gave him a peculiar look of deep distress.
"If I held something too close for you to ask about it, I would not bring it up in the first
place," he said.
The boy found himself staring at the vampire's eyes, at the eyelashes which were fine
black wires in the tender flesh of the lids.
"Ask me," he said to the boy.
"Babette, the way you speak of her," said the boy. "As if your feeling was special."
"Did I give you the impression I could not feel?" asked the vampire.
"No, not at all. Obviously you felt for the old man. You stayed to comfort him when you
were in danger. And what you felt for young Freniere when Lestat wanted to kill him . . .
all this you explained. But I was wondering . . . did you have a special feeling for
Babette? Was it feeling for Babette all along that caused you to protect Freniere?"
"You mean love," said the vampire. "Why do you hesitate to say it?"

"Because you spoke of detachment," said the boy.
" Do you think that angels are detached?" asked the vampire.
The boy thought for a moment. "Yes," he said.
"But aren't angels capable of love?" asked the vampire. "Don't angels gaze upon the face
of God with complete love?"
The boy thought for a moment. "Love or adoration," he said.
"What is the difference?" asked the vampire thoughtfully. "What is the difference?" It
was clearly not a riddle for the boy. He was asking himself. "Angels feel love, and pride .
. . the pride of The Fall . . . and hatred. The strong overpowering emotions of detached
persons in whom emotion and will are one," he said finally. He stared at the table now, as
though he were thinking this over, was not entirely satisfied with it. "I had for Babette . . .
a strong feeling. It is not the strongest I've ever known for a human being." He looked up
at the boy. "But it was very strong. Babette was to me in her own way an ideal human
being. "
He shifted in his chair, the cape moving softly about him, and turned his face to the
windows. The boy bent forward and checked the tape. Then he took another cassette from
his brief case and, begging the vampire's pardon, fitted it into place, "I'm afraid I did ask
something too personal. I didn't mean . . . " he said anxiously to the vampire.
"You asked nothing of the sort," said the vampire, looking at him suddenly. "It is a
question right to the point. I feel love, and I felt some measure of love for Babette, though
not the greatest love I've ever felt. It was foreshadowed in Babette.
"To return to my story, Babette's charity ball was a success and her re-entry in social life
assured by it. Her money generously underwrote any doubts in the minds of her suitors'
families, and she married. On summer nights, I used to visit her, never letting her see me
or know that I was there. I came to see that she was happy, and seeing her happy I felt a
happiness as the result.
"And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long ago if I
hadn't stopped him, and he thought now that was what I meant to do. `And what peace
would that bring?' I asked. `You call me the idiot, and you've been the idiot all along. Do
you think I don't know why you made me a vampire? You couldn't live by yourself, you
couldn't manage even the simplest things. For years now, I've managed everything while
you sat about making a pretense of superiority. There's nothing left for you to tell me
about life. I have no need of you and no use for you. It's you who need me, and if you
touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I'll get rid of you. It will be a battle between us, and
I needn't point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my little finger than you in
your entire frame. Do as I say.'
"Well, this startled him, though it shouldn't have; and he protested he had much to tell
me, of things and types of people I might kill who would cause sudden death and places
in the world I must never go and so forth and so on, nonsense that I could hardly endure.
But I had no time for him. The overseer's lights were lit at Freniere; he was trying to quell
the excitement of the runaway slaves and his own. And the fire of Pointe du Lac could be
seen still against the sky. Babette was dressed and attending to business, having sent
carriages to Pointe du Lac and slaves to help fight the blaze. The frightened runaways

were kept away from the others, and at that point no one regarded their stories as any
more than slave foolishness. Babette knew something dreadful had happened and
suspected murder, never the supernatural. She was in the study making a note of the fire
in the plantation diary when I found her. It was almost morning. I had only a few minutes
to convince her she must help. I spoke to her at first, refusing to let her turn around, and
calmly she listened. I told her I must have a room for the night, to rest. 'I've never brought
you harm. I ask you now for a key, and your promise that no one will try to enter that
room until tonight. Then I'll tell you all' I was nearly desperate now. The sky was paling.
Lestat was yards off in the orchard with the coffins. `But why have you come to me
tonight?' she asked. `And why not to you?' I replied. `Did I not help you at the very
moment when you most needed guidance, when you alone stood strong among those who
are dependent and weak? Did I not twice offer you good counsel? And haven't I watched
over your happiness ever since?' I could see the figure of Lestat at the window. He was in
a panic. 'Give me the key to a room. Let no one come near it till nightfall. I swear to you I
would never bring you harm.' `And if I don't . . . if I believe you come from the devil!'
she -said now, and meant to turn her head. I reached for the candle and put it out. She saw
me standing with my back to the graying windows. `If you don't, and if you believe me to
be the devil, I shall
die.' I said. `Give me the key. I could kill you now if I chose, do you see?' And now I
moved close to her and showed myself to her more completely, so that she gasped and
drew back, holding to the arm of her chair. `But I would not. I would die rather than kill
you. I will die if you don't give me such a key as I ask.'
"It was accomplished. What she thought, I don't know. But she gave me one of the
ground-floor storage rooms where wine was aged, and I am sure she saw Lestat and me
bringing the coffins. I not only locked the door but barricaded it.
"Lestat was up the next evening when I awoke."
"Then she kept her word."
"Yes. Only she had gone a step further. She had not only respected our locked door; she
had locked it again from without."
"And the stories of the slaves . . . she'd heard them."
"Yes, she had. Lestat was the first to discover we were locked in, however. He became
furious. He had planned to get to New Orleans as fast as possible. He was now
completely suspicious of me. `I only needed you as long as my father lived,' he said,
desperately trying to find some opening somewhere. The place was a dungeon.
" `Now I won't put up with anything from you, I warn you.' He didn't even wish to turn
his back on me. I sat there straining to hear voices in the rooms above, wishing that he
would shut up, not wishing to confide for a moment my feeling for Babette or my hopes.
"I was also thinking something else. You ask me about feeling and detachment. One of its
aspects, detachment with feeling, I should say, is that you can think of two things at the
same time. You can think that you are not safe and may die, and you can think of
something very abstract and remote. And this was definitely so with me. I was thinking at
that moment, wordlessly and rather deeply, how sublime friendship between Lestat and
me might have been; how few impediments to it there would have been, and how much

to be shared. Perhaps it was the closeness of Babette which caused me to feel it, for how
could I truly ever come to know Babette, except, of course, through the one final way; to
take her life, to become one with her in an embrace of death when my soul would become
one with my heart and nourished with it. But my soul wanted to- know Babette without
my need to kill, without robbing her of every breath of life, every drop of blood. But
Lestat, how we might have known each other, had he been a man of character, a man of
even a little thought. The old man's words came back to me; Lestat a brilliant pupil, a
lover of books that had been burned. I knew only the Lestat who sneered at my library,
called it a pile of dust, ridiculed relentlessly my reading, my meditations.
"I became aware now that the house over our heads was quieting. Now and then feet
moved and the boards creaked and the light in the cracks of the boards gave a faint,
uneven illumination. I could see Lestat feeling along the brick walls, his hard enduring
vampire face a twisted mask of human frustration. I was confident we must part ways at
once, that I must if necessary put an ocean between us. And I realized that I'd tolerated
him this long because of self-doubt. I'd fooled myself into believing I stayed for the old
man, and for my sister and her husband. But I stayed with Lestat because I was afraid he
did know essential secrets as a vampire which I could not discover alone and, more
important, because he was the only one of my kind whom I knew. He had never told me
how he had become a vampire or where I might find a single other member of our kind.
This troubled me greatly then, as much as it had for four years. I hated ° and wanted to
leave him; yet could I leave him?
"Meantime, as all this passed through my thoughts, Lestat continued his diatribe: he
didn't need me; he wasn't going to put up with anything, especially not any threat from
the Frenieres. We had to be ready when that door opened. `Remember!' he said to the
finally. `Speed and strength; they cannot match us in that. And fear. Remember always,
to strike fear. Don't be sentimental now! You'll cost us everything.'
" `You wish to be on your own after this?' I asked him. I wanted him to say it. I did not
have the courage. Or, rather, I did not know my own feelings.
" `I want to get to New Orleans!' he said. `I was simply warning you I don't need you. But
to get out of here we need each other. You don't begin to know how to use your powers!
You have no innate sense of what you are! Use your persuasive powers with this woman
if she comes. But if she comes with others, then be prepared to act like what you are.'
" `Which is what?' I asked him, because it had never seemed such a mystery to me as it
did at that time. `What am I?' He was openly disgusted. He threw up his hands.
" `Be prepared . . . he said, now baring his magnificent teeth, `to kill!' He looked
suddenly at the boards overhead. `They're going to bed up there, do you hear them?' After
a long silent time during which Lestat paced and I sat there musing, plumbing my mind
for what I might do or say to Babette or, deeper still, for the answer to a harder question-
what did I feel for Babette? After a long time, a light flared beneath the door. Lestat was
poised to jump whoever should open it. It was Babette alone and she entered with a lamp,
not seeing Lestat, who stood behind her, but looking directly at me.
"I had never seen her as she looked then; her hair was down for bed, a mass of dark
waves behind her white dressing gown; and her face was tight with worry and fear. This
gave it a feverish radiance and made her large brown eyes all the more huge. As I have

told you, I loved her strength and honesty, the greatness of her soul. And I did not feel
passion for her as you would feel it. But I found her more alluring than any woman I'd
known in mortal life. Even in the severe dressing gown, her arms and breasts were round
and soft; and she seemed to me an intriguing soul clothed in rich, mysterious flesh. I who
am hard and spare and dedicated to a purpose, felt drawn to her irresistibly; and, knowing
it could only culminate in death, I turned away from her at once, wondering if when she
gazed into my eyes she found them dead and soulless.
"`You are the one who came to me before,' she said now, as if she hadn't been sure. `And
you are the owner of Pointe du Lac. You argil' I knew as she spoke that she must have
heard the wildest stories of last night, and there would be no convincing her of any lie. I
had used my unnatural appearance twice to reach her, to speak to her; I could not hide it
or minimize it now.
" `I mean you no harm.,' I said to her. `I need only a carriage and horses . . . the horses I
left last night in the pasture.' She didn't seem to hear my words; she drew closer,
determined to catch me in the circle of her light.
"And then I saw Lestat behind her, his shadow merging with her shadow on the brick
wall; he was anxious and dangerous. `You will give me the carriage?' I insisted. She was
looking at me now, the lamp raised; and just when I meant to look away, I saw her face
change. It went still, blank, as if her soul were losing its consciousness. She closed her
eyes and shook her head. It occurred to me that I had somehow caused her to go into a
trance without any effort on my part. `What are you!' she whispered. `You're from the
devil. You were from the devil when you came to met'
" 'The devil!' I answered her. This distressed me more than I thought I could be
distressed. If she believed this, then she would think my counsel bad; she would question
herself. Her life was rich and good, and I knew she mustn't do this. Like all strong people,
she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel
of a certain sort. And the balance by which she lived might be upset if she were to
question her own goodness. She stared at me with undisguised horror. It was as if in
horror she forgot her own vulnerable position. And now Lestat, who was drawn to
weakness like a parched man to water, grabbed her wrist, and she screamed and dropped
the lamp. The flames leaped in the splattered oil, and Lestat pulled her backwards
towards the open door. `You get the carriage!' he said to her. `Get it now, and the horses.
You are in mortal danger; don't talk of devils!'
"I stomped on the flames and went for Lestat, shouting at him to leave her. He had her by
both wrists, and she was furious. `You'll rouse the house if you don't shut up!' he said to
me. `And I'll kill her! Get the carriage . . . lead us. Talk to the stable boy!' he said to her,
pushing her into the open air..
"We moved slowly across the dark court, my distress almost unbearable, Lestat ahead of
me; and before us both Babette, who moved backwards, her eyes peering at us in the
dark. Suddenly she stopped One dim light burned in the house above. `I'll get you
nothing!' she said. I reached for Lestat's arm and told him I must handle this. `She'll
reveal us to everyone unless you let me talk to her,' I whispered to him.
" `Then get yourself in check,' he said disgustedly. `Be strong. Don't quibble with her.'

" `You go as I talk . . . go to the stables and get the carriage and the horses. But don't kill!'
Whether he'd obey me or not I didn't know, but he darted away just as .I stepped up to
Babette. Her face was a mixture of fury and resolution. She said, `Get thee behind me,
Satan.' And I stood there before her then, speechless, just holding her in my glance as
surely as she held me. If she could hear Lestat in the night she gave no indication. Her
hatred for me burned me like fire.
" `Why do you say this to me?' I asked. `Was the counsel I gave you. bad? Did I do you
harm? I came to help you, to give you strength. I thought only of you, when I had no need
to think of you at all.'
"She shook her head. `But why, why do you talk to me like this?' she asked. `I know what
you've done at Pointe du Lac; you've lived there like a devil! The slaves are wild with
stories! All day men have been on the river road on the way to Pointe du Lac; my
husband was there! He saw the house in ruins, the bodies of slaves throughout the
orchards, the fields. What are you! Why do you speak to me gently! What do you want of
me?' She clung now to the pillars of the porch and was backing slowly to the staircase.
Something moved above in the lighted window.
" `I cannot give you such answers now,' I said to her. `Believe me when I tell you I came
to you only to do you goad. And would not have brought worry and care to you last night
for anything, had I the choice!' "
The vampire stopped.
The boy sat forward, his eyes wide. The vampire was frozen, staring off, lost in his
thoughts, his memory. And the boy looked down suddenly, as if this were the respectful
thing to do. He glanced again at the vampire and then away, his own face as distressed as
the vampire's; and then he started to say something, but he stopped.
The vampire turned towards him and studied him, so that the boy flushed and looked
away again anxiously. But then he raised his eyes and looked into the vampire's eyes. He
swallowed, but he held the vampire's gaze.
"Is this what you want?" the vampire whispered. "Is this what you wanted to hear?"
He moved the chair back soundlessly and walked to the window. The boy sat as if
stunned looking at his broad shoulders and the long mass of the cape. The vampire turned
his head slightly. "You don't answer me. I'm not giving you what you want, am I? You
wanted an interview. Something to broadcast on the radio."
"That doesn't matter. I'll throw the tapes away if you want!" The boy rose. "I can't say I
understand all you're telling me. You'd know I was lying if I said I did. So how can I ask
you to go on, except to say what I do understand . . . what I do understand is like nothing
I've ever understood before." He took a step towards the vampire. The vampire appeared
to be looking down into Divisadero Street. Then he turned his head slowly and looked at
the boy and smiled. His face was serene and almost affectionate. And the boy suddenly
felt uncomfortable. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned towards the table.
Then he looked at the vampire tentatively and said. "Will you . . . please go on?"
The vampire turned with folded arms and leaned against the window. "Why?" he asked.
The boy was at a loss. "Because I want to hear it."

He shrugged. "Because I want to know what happened."
"All right," said the vampire, with the same smile playing on his lips. And he went back
to the chair and sat opposite the boy and turned the recorder just a little and said,
"Marvelous contraption, really . . . so let me go on.
"You must understand that what I felt for Babette now was a desire for communication,
stronger than any other desire I then felt . . . except for the physical desire for . . . blood.
It was so strong in me, this desire, that it made me feel the depth of my capacity for
loneliness. When I'd spoken to her before, there had been a brief but direct
communication which was as simple and as satisfying as taking a person's hand. Clasping
it. Letting it go gently. All this in a moment of great need and distress. But now we were
at odds. To Babette, I was a monster; and I found it horrible to myself and would have
done anything to overcome her feeling. I told her the counsel I'd given her was right, that
no instrument of the devil could do right even if he chose.
" `I know!' she answered me. But by this she meant that she could no more trust me than
the devil himself. I approached her and she moved back. I raised my hand and she shrank,
clutching for the railing. `All right, then,' I said, feeling a terrible exasperation. `Why did
you protect me last night! Why have you come to me alone!' What I saw in her face was
cunning. She had a reason, but she would by no means reveal it to me. It was impossible
for her to speak to me freely, openly, to give me the communication I desired. I felt
weary looking at her. The night was already late, and I could see and hear that Lestat had
stolen into the wine cellar and taken our caskets, and I had a need to get away; and other
needs besides . . . the need to kill and drink. But it wasn't that which made me weary. It
was something else, something far worse. It was as if this night were only one of
thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching
line of which I couldn't see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless
stars. I think I turned away from her and put my hand to my eyes. I felt oppressed and
weak suddenly. I think I was making some sound without my will. And then on this vast
and desolate landscape of night, where I was standing alone and where Babette was only
an illusion, I saw suddenly a possibility that I'd never considered before, a possibility
from which I'd fled, rapt as I was with the world, fallen into the senses of the vampire, in
love with color and shape and sound and singing and softness and infinite variation.
Babette was moving, but I took no note of it. She was taking something from her pocket;
her great ring of household keys jingled there. She was moving up the steps. Let her go
away, I was thinking. `Creature of the devil!' I whispered. `Get thee behind me, Satan,' I
repeated. I turned to look at her now. She was frozen on the steps, with wide suspicious
eyes. She'd reached the lantern which hung on the wall, and she held it in her hands just
staring at me, holding it tight, like a valuable purse. `You think I come from the devil?' I
asked her.
"She quickly moved her left fingers around the hook of the lantern and with her right
hand made the sign of the Cross, the Latin words barely audible to me; and her face
blanched and her eyebrows rose when there was absolutely no change because of it. `Did
you expect me to go up in a puff of smoke?' I asked her. I drew closer now, for I had
gained detachment from her by virtue of my thoughts. `And where would I go?' I asked
her. `And where would I go, to hell, from whence I came? To the devil, from whom I
came?' I stood at the foot of the steps. `Suppose I told you I know nothing of the devil.

Suppose I told you that I do not even know if he exists!' It was the devil I'd seen upon the
landscape of my thoughts; it was the devil about whom I thought now. I turned away
from her. She wasn't hearing me as you are now. She wasn't listening. I looked up at the
stars. Lestat was ready, I knew it. It was as if he'd been ready there with the carriage for
years; and she had stood upon the step for years. I had the sudden sensation my brother
was there and had been there for ages also, and that he was talking to me low in an
excited voice, and what he was saying was desperately important but it was going away
from me as fast as he said it, like the rustle of rats in .the rafters of an immense house.
There was a scraping sound and a burst of light. `I don't know whether I come from the
devil or not! I don't know what I am!' I shouted at Babette, my voice deafening in my
own sensitive ears. `I am to live to the end of the world, and I do not even know what I
am!' But the light flared before me; it was the lantern which she had lit with a match and
held now so I couldn't see her face. For a moment I could see nothing but the light, and
then the great weight of the lantern struck me full force in the chest and the glass
shattered on the bricks anti the flames roared on my legs, in my face. Lestat was shouting
from the darkness, `Put it out, put it out, idiot. It will consume you!' And I felt something
thrashing me wildly in my blindness. It was Lestat's jacket. I'd fallen helpless back
against the pillar, helpless as much from the fire and the blow as from the knowledge that
Babette meant to destroy me, as from, the knowledge that I did not know what I was.
"All this happened in a matter of seconds. The fire was out and I knelt in the dark with
my hands on the bricks. Lestat at the top of the stairs had Babette again, and I flew up
after him, grabbing him about the neck and pulling him backwards. He turned on me,
enraged, and kicked me; but I clung to him and pulled him down on top of me to the
bottom. Babette was petrified. I saw her dark outline against the sky and the glint of light
in her eyes. `Come on then!' Lestat said, scrambling to his feet. Babette was putting her
hand to her throat. My injured eyes strained to gather the light to see her. Her throat bled.
`Remember!' I said to her. I might have killed you! Or let him kill you! I did not. You
called me devil. You are wrong.'"
"Then you'd stopped Lestat just in time," said the boy.
"Yes. Lestat could kill and dank like a bolt of lightning. But I had saved only Babette's
physical life. I was not to know that until later."
"In an hour and a half Lestat and I were in New Orleans, the horses nearly dead from
exhaustion, the carriage parked on a side street a block from a new Spanish hotel. Lestat
had an old man by the arm and was putting fifty dollars into his hand. `Get us a suite,' he
directed him, `and order some champagne. Say it is for two gentlemen, and pay in
advance. And when you come back I'll have another fifty for you. And I'll be watching
for you, I wager.' Isis gleaming eyes held the man in thrall. I knew he'd kill him as soon
as he returned with the hotel room keys, and he did. I sat in the carriage watching wearily
as the man grew weaker and weaker and finally died, his body collapsing like a sack of
rocks in a doorway as Lestat let him go. `Good night, sweet prince,' said Lestat `and
here's your fifty dollars.' And he shoved the money into his pocket as if it were a capital
joke.
"Now we slipped in the courtyard doors of the hotel and went up to the lavish parlor of
our suite. Champagne glistened in a frosted bucket. Two glasses stood on the silver tray. I
knew Lestat would fill one glass and sit there staring at the pale yellow color. And I, a

man in a trance, lay on the settee staring at him as if nothing he could do mattered. I have
to leave him or die, I thought. It would be sweet to die, I thought. Yes, die. I wanted to
die before. Now I wish to die. I saw it with such sweet clarity, such dead calm.
" `You're being morbid!' Lestat said suddenly. `It's almost dawn.' He pulled the lace
curtains back, and I could see the rooftops under the dark blue sky, and above, the great
constellation Orion. `Go kill!' said Lestat, sliding up the glass. He stepped out of the sill,
and I heard his feet land softly on the rooftop beside the hotel. He was going for the
coffins, or at least one. My thirst rose in me like fever, and I followed him. My desire to
die was constant, like a pure thought in the mind, devoid of emotion. Yet I needed to
feed. I've indicated to you I would not then kill people. I moved along the rooftop in
search of rats."
"But why . . . you've said Lestat shouldn't have made you start with people. Did you
mean . . . do you mean for you it was an aesthetic choice, not a moral one?"
"Had you asked me then, I would have told you it was aesthetic, that I wished to
understand death in stages. That the death of an animal yielded such pleasure and
experience to me that I had only begun to understand it, and wished to save the
experience of human death for my mature understanding. But it was moral. Because all
aesthetic decisions are moral, really."
"I don't understand," said the boy. "I thought aesthetic decisions could be completely
immoral. What about the cliché of the artist who leaves his wife and children so he can
paint? Or Nero playing the harp while Rome burned?"
"Both were moral decisions. Both served a higher good, in the mind of the artist. The
conflict lies between the
morals of the artist and the morals of society, not between aesthetics and morality: But
often this isn't
understood; and here comes the waste, the tragedy. An artist, stealing paints from a store,
for example, imagines
himself to have made an inevitable but immoral decision, and then he sees ' self as fallen
from grace; what
follows is despair and petty irresponsibility, as if morality were a great glass world which
can be utterly shattered
by one act. But this was not my great concern then. I did not know these things then. I
believed I killed animals
for aesthetic reasons only, and I hedged against the great moral question of whether or
mot by my very nature I
was damned.
"Because, you see, though Lestat had never said anything about devils or hell to me, I
believed I was damned when I went over to him, just as Judas must have believed it when
he put the noose around his neck. You understand?"
The boy said nothing. He started to speak but didn't.
The color burned for a moment in blotches on his cheeks. " Were you?" he whispered.

The vampire only sat there, smiling, a small smile that played on his lips like the light.
The boy was staring at him now as if he were just seeing him for the first time.
"Perhaps . . . " said the vampire drawing himself up and crossing his legs ". . . we should
take things one at a time. Perhaps I should go on with my story."
"Yes, please . . ." said the boy.
"I was agitated that night, as I told you. I had hedged against this question as a vampire
and now it completely overwhelmed me, and in that state I had no desire to live. Well,
this produced in me, as it can in humans, a craving for that which will satisfy at least
physical desire. I think I used it as an excuse. I have told you what the kill means to
vampires; you can imagine from what I've said the difference between a rat and a man.
"I went down into the street after Lestat and walked for blocks. The streets were muddy
then, the actual blocks islands above the gutters, and the entire city so dark compared to
the cities of today. The lights were as beacons in a black sea. Even with morning rising
slowly, only the dormers and high porches of the houses were emerging from the dark,
and to a mortal man the narrow streets I found were like pitch. Am I damned? Am I from
the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil? I was asking myself over and over. And if it
is, why then do I revolt against it, tremble when Babette hurls a flaming lantern at me,
turn away in disgust when Lestat kills? What have I become in becoming a vampire?
Where am I to go? And all the while, as the death wish caused me to neglect my thirst,
my thirst grew hotter; my veins were veritable threads of pain in my flesh; my temples
throbbed; and finally I could stand it no longer. Torn apart by the wish to take no action-
to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and driven to kill on the other-I stood in
an empty, desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying.
"She was within. I drew close to the walls, trying in my habitual detachment only to
understand the nature of her cry. She was weary and aching and utterly alone. She had
been crying for so long now, that soon she would stop from sheer exhaustion. I slipped
my hand up under the heavy wooden shutter and pulled it so the bolt slipped. There she
sat in the dark room beside a dead woman, a woman who'd been dead for some days. The
room itself was cluttered with trunks and packages as though a number of people had
been packing to leave; but the mother lay half clothed, her body already in decay, and no
one else was there but the child. It was moments before she saw me, but when she did she
began to tell me that I must do something to help her mother. She was only five at- most,
and very thin, and her face was stained with dirt and tears. She begged me to help. They
had to take a ship, she said, before the plague came; their father was waiting. She began
to shake her mother now and to cry in the most pathetic and desperate way; and then she
looked at me again and burst into the greatest flow of tears.
"You must understand that by now I was burning with physical need to drink. I could not
have made it through another day without feeding. But there were alternatives: rats
abounded in the streets, and somewhere very near a dog was howling hopelessly. I might
have Pied the room had I chosen and fed and gotten back easily. But the question
pounded in me: Am I dammed? If so, why do I feel such pity for her, for her gaunt face?
Why do I wish to touch her tiny, soft arms, hold her now on my knee as I am doing, feel
her bend her head to my chest as I gently touch the satin hair? Why do I do this? If I am

damned I must want to kill her, I must want to make her nothing but food for a cursed
existence, because being damned I must hate her.
"And when I thought of this, I saw Babette's face contorted with hatred when she had
held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt,
yes, damned and this is hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into her
soft, small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, whispered even as I felt the hot blood on my
lips, `It's only for a moment and there'll be no more pain.' But she was locked to me, and I
was soon incapable of saying anything. For four years I had not savored a human; for
four years I hadn't really known; and now I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, and
such a heart not the heart of a man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of the
child, beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny fist beating on a door,
crying, `I will not die, I will not die, I cannot die, I cannot die . . . .' I think I rose to my
feet still locked to her, the heart pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease, the rich
blood rushing too fast for me, the room reeling, and then, despite myself, I was staring
over her bent head, her open mouth, down through the gloom at the mother's face; and
through the half-mast lids. her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the child
down. She lay like a jointless doll. And turning in blind horror of the mother to flee, I
saw the window filled with a familiar shape. It was Lestat, who backed away from it now
laughing, his body bent as he danced in the mud street. `Louis, Louis,' he taunted me, and
pointed a long, bone-thin finger at me, as if to say he'd caught me in the act. And now he
bounded over the sill, brushing me aside, and grabbed the mother's stinking body from
the bed and made to dance with her."
"Good God!" whispered the boy.
"Yes, I might have said the same," said the vampire. "He stumbled over the child as he
pulled the mother along in widening circles, singing as he danced, her matted hair falling
in her face, as her head snapped back and a black fluid poured out of her mouth. He threw
her down. I was out of the window and running down the street, and he was running after
me. `Are you afraid of me, Louis?' he shouted. `Are you afraid? The child's alive, Louis,
you left her breathing. Shall I go back and make her a vampire? We could use her, Louis,
and think of all the pretty dresses we could buy for her. Louis, wait, Louis! I'll go back
for her if you say!' And so he ran after me all the way back to the hotel, all the way across
the rooftops, where I hoped to lose him, until I leaped in the window of the parlor and
turned in rage and slammed the window shut. He hit it, arms outstretched, like a bird who
seeks to By through glass, and shook the frame. I was utterly out of my mind. I went
round and round the room looking for some way to kill him. I pictured his body burned to
a crisp on the roof below. Reason had altogether left me, so that I was consummate rage,
and when he came through the broken glass, we fought as we'd never fought before. It
was hell that stopped me, the thought of hell, of us being two souls in hell that grappled
in hatred. I lost my confidence, my purpose, my grip. I was down on the floor then, and
he was standing over me, his eyes cold, though his chest heaved. `You're a fool, Louis,'
he said. His voice was calm. It was so calm it brought me around. `The sun's coming up,'
he said, his chest heaving slightly from the struggle, his eyes narrow as he looked at the
window. I'd never seen him quite like this. The fight had got the better of him in some
way; or something had. `Get in your coffin,' he said to me, without even the slightest
anger. `But tomorrow night . . . we talk.'

"Well, I was more than slightly amazed. Lestat talk! I couldn't imagine this. Never had
Lestat and I really talked. I think I have described to you with accuracy our sparring
matches, our angry go-rounds."
"He was desperate for the money, for your houses," said the boy. "Or was it that he was
as afraid to be alone as you were?"
"These questions occurred to me. It even occurred to me that Lestat meant to kill me,
some way that I didn't know. You see, I wasn't sure then why I awoke each evening when
I did, whether it was automatic when the deathlike sleep left me, and why it happened
sometimes earlier than at other times. It was one of the things Lestat would not explain.
And he was often up before me. He was my superior in all the mechanics, as I've
indicated. And I shut the coin that morning with a kind of despair.
"I should explain now, though, that the shutting of the coffin is always disturbing. It is
rather like going under a modern anesthetic on an operating table. Even a casual mistake
on the part of an intruder might mean death."
"But how could he have killed you? He couldn't have exposed you to the light; he
couldn't have stood it himself."
"This is true, but rising before me he might have nailed my coffin shut. Or set it afire.
The principal thing was, I didn't know what he might do, what he might know that I still
did not know.
"But there was nothing to be done about it then, and with thoughts of the dead woman
and child still in any brain, and the sun rising, I had no energy left to argue with him, and
lay down to miserable dreams."
"You do dream!" said the boy.
"Often," said the vampire. "I wish sometimes that I did not. For such dreams, such long
and clear dreams I never had as a mortal; and such twisted nightmares I never had either.
In my early days, these dreams so absorbed me that often it seemed I fought waking as
long as I could and lay sometimes for hours ' g of these dreams until the night was half
gone; and dazed by them I often wandered about seeking to understand their meaning.
They were in many ways as elusive as the dreams of mortals. I dreamed of my brother,
for instance, that he was near me in some state between life and death, calling to me for
help. And often I dreamed of Babette; and often-almost always-there was a great
wasteland backdrop to my dreams, that wasteland of night rd seen when cursed by
Babette as I've told you. It was as if all figures walked and talked on the desolate home of
my damned soul. I don't remember what I dreamed that day, perhaps because I remember
too well what Lestat and I discussed the following evening. I see you're anxious for that,
too.
"Well, as I've said, Lestat amazed me in his new calm, his thoughtfulness. But that
evening I didn't wake to find him the same way, not at first. There were women in the
parlor. The candles were a few, scattered on the small table and the carved buffet, and
Lestat had his arm around one woman and was kissing her: She was very drunk and very
beautiful, a great drugged doll of a woman with her careful coif falling slowly down on
her bare shoulders and over her partially bared breasts. The other woman sat over a
ruined supper table drinking a glass of wine. I could see that the three of them had dined

(Lestat pretending to dine . . . you would be surprised how people do not notice that a
vampire is only pretending to eat), and the woman at the table was bored. All this put me
in a fit of agitation. I did not know what Lestat was up to. If I went into the room, the
woman would turn her attentions to me. And what was to happen, I couldn't imagine,
except that Lestat meant for us to kill them both. The woman on the settee with him was
already teasing about his kisses, his coldness, his lack of desire for her. And the woman
at the table watched with black almond eyes that seemed to be filled with satisfaction;
when Lestat rose and came to her, putting his hands on her bare white arms, she
brightened. Bending now to kiss her, he saw me through the crack in the door. And his
eyes just stared at me for a moment, and then he went on talking with the ladies. He bent
down and blew out the candles on the table. `It's too dark in here,' said the woman on the
couch. `Leave us alone,' said the other woman. Lestat sat down and beckoned her to sit in
his lap. And she did, putting her left arm around his neck, her right hand smoothing back
his yellow hair. `Your skin's icy,' she said, recoiling slightly. `Not always,' said Lestat;
and then he buried his face in the flesh of her neck. I was watching all this with
fascination. Lestat was masterfully clever and utterly vicious, but I didn't know how
clever he was until he sank his teeth into her now, his thumb pressing down on her throat,
his other arm locking her, tight, so that he drank his fill without the other woman even
knowing. `Your friend has no head for wine,' he said slipping out of the chair and seating
the unconscious woman there, her arms folded under her face on the table. `She's stupid,'
said the other woman, who had gone to the window and had been looking out at the
lights. New Orleans was then a city of many low buildings, as you probably know. And
on such clear nights as this, the lamplit streets were beautiful from the high windows of
this new Spanish hotel; and the stars of those days bung low over such dim light as they
do at sea. `I can warm that cold skin of yours better than she can.' She turned to Lestat,
and I must confess I was feeling some relief that he would now take care of her as well.
But he planned nothing so simple. `Do you think so?' he said to her. He took her hand,
and she said, `Why, you're warm"'
"You mean the blood had warmed him," said the boy.
"Oh, yes," said the vampire. "After killing, a vampire is as warm as you are now." And he
started to resume; then, glancing at the boy, he smiled. "As I was saying . . . Lestat now
held the woman's hand in his and said that the other had warmed him. Isis face, of course,
was flushed; much altered. He drew her close now, and she kissed him, remarking
through her laughter that he was a veritable furnace of passion.
" `Ah, but the price is high,' he said to her, affecting sadness. `Your pretty friend . . : He
shrugged his shoulders. `I exhausted her.' And he stood back as if inviting the woman to
walk to the table. And she did, a look of superiority on her small features. She bent down
to see her friend, but then lost interest--until, she saw something. It was a napkin. It had
caught the last drops of blood from the wound in the throat. She picked it up, straining to
see it in the darkness. `Take down your hair,' said Lestat softly. And she dropped it,
indifferent, and took down the last tresses, so that her hair fell blond and wavy down her
back. `Soft,' he said, `so soft. I picture you that way, lying on a bed of satin.'
" `Such things you say!' she scoffed and turned her back on him playfully.
" `Do you know what manner of bed?' he asked. And she laughed and said his bed, she
could imagine. She looked back at him as he advanced; and, never once looking away

from her, he gently tipped the body of her friend, so that it fell backwards from the chair
and lay with staring eyes upon the floor. The woman gasped. She scrambled away from
the corpse, nearly upsetting a small end table. The candle went over and went out. ` "Put
out the light . . . and then put out the light," ' Lestat said softly. And then he took her into
his arms like a struggling moth and sank his teeth into her."
"But what were you thinking as you watched?" asked the boy. "Did you want to stop him
the way you wanted to stop him from killing Freniere?"
"No," said the vampire. "I could not have stopped him. And you must understand I knew
that he killed humans every night. Animals gave him no satisfaction whatsoever. Animals
were to be banked on when all else failed, but never to be chosen. If I felt any sympathy
for the women, it was buried deep in my own turmoil. I still felt in my chest the little
hammer heart of that starving child; I still burned with the questions of my own divided
nature. I was angry that Lestat had staged this show for me, waiting till I woke to kill the
women; and I wondered again if I might somehow break loose from him and felt both
hatred and my own weakness more than ever.
"Meantime, he propped their lovely corpses at the table and went about the room lighting
all the candles until it blazed as if for a wedding. `Come in, Louis,' he said. `I would have
arranged an escort for you, but I know what a man you are about choosing your own. Pity
Mademoiselle Freniere likes to hurl flaming lanterns. It makes a party unwieldy, don't
you think? Especially for a hotel?' He seated the blond-haired girl so that her head lay to
one side against the damask back of the chair, and the darker woman lay with her chin
resting just above her breasts; this one had blanched, and her features had a rigid look to
them already, as though she was one of those women in whom the fire of personality
makes beauty. But the other looked only as if she slept; and I was not sure that she was
even dead. Lestat had made two gashes, one in her throat and one above her left breast,
and both still bled freely. He lifted her wrist now, and slitting it with a knife, filled two
wine glasses and bade me to sit down.
" `I'm leaving you,' I said to him at once. `I wish to tell you that now.'
" `I thought as much,' he answered, sitting back in the chair, `and I thought as well that
you would make a flowery announcement. Tell me what a monster I am; what a vulgar
fiend'
" `I make no judgments upon you. I'm not interested in you. I am interested in my own
nature now, and I've come to believe I can't trust you to tell me the truth about it. You use
knowledge for personal power,' I told him. And I suppose, in the manner of many people
making such an announcement, I was not looking to him at all. I was mainly listening to
my own words. But now I saw that his face was once again the way it had been when
he'd said we would talk. He was listening to me. I was suddenly at a loss. I felt that gulf
between us as painfully as ever.
" 'Why did you become a vampire?' I blurted out. `And why such a vampire as you are!
Vengeful and delighting in taking human life even when you have no need. This girl . . .
why did you kill her when one would have done? And way did you frighten her so before
you killed her? And why have you propped her here in some grotesque manner, as if
tempting the gods to strike you down for your blasphemy?'

"All this he listened to without speaking, and in the pause that followed I again felt at a
loss. Lestat's eyes were large and thoughtful; I'd seen them that way before, but I couldn't
remember when, certainly not when talking to me.
" `What do you think a vampire is?' he asked me sincerely.
" `I don't pretend to know. You pretend to know. What is it?' I asked. And to this he
answered nothing. It was as if he sensed the insincerity of it, the spite. He just sat there
looking at me with the same still expression. Then I said, `I know that after leaving you, I
shall try to find out. I'll travel the world, if I have to, to find other vampires. I know they
must exist; I don't know of any reasons why they shouldn't exist in great numbers. And
I'm confident I shall find vampires who have more in common with me than I with you.
Vampires who understand knowledge as I do and have used their superior vampire nature
to learn secrets of which you don't even dream. If you haven't told me everything, I shall
find things out for myself or from them, when I find them."
"He shook his head. `Louis!' he said. `You are in love with your mortal nature! You chase
after the phantoms of your former self. Freniere, his sister . . . these are images for you of
what you were and what you still long to be. And in your romance with mortal life, you're
dead to your vampire nature!'
"I objected to this at once. 'My vampire nature has been for me the greatest adventure of
my life; ail that went before it was confused, clouded; I went through mortal life like a
blind man groping from solid object to solid object. It was only when I became a vampire
that I respected for the first time all of life. I never saw a living, pulsing human being
until I was a vampire; I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my
lips, my hands!' I found myself staring at the two women, . the darker one now turning a
terrible shade of blue. The blonde was breathing. `She's not dead!' I said to him suddenly.
"'I know. Let her alone,' he said. He lifted her wrist and made a new gash by the scab of
the other and filled his glass. `All that you say makes sense,' he said to me, taking a drink.
`You are an intellect. I've never been. What I've learned I've learned from listening to
men talk, not from books. I never went to school long enough. But I'm not stupid, and
you must listen to me because you are in danger. You do not know your vampire nature.
You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never
appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys,
asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know
their worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer look
"through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with
your new eyes'
" `I know that well enough!' I said. `But what is it that is our nature! If I can live from the
blood of animals, why should I not live from the blood of animals rather than go through
the world bringing misery and death to human creatures!'
" `Does it bring you happiness?' he asked. `You wander through the night, feeding on rats
like a pauper and then moon at Babette's window, filled with care, yet helpless as the
goddess who came by night to watch Endymion sleep and could not have him. And
suppose you could hold her in your arms and she would look on you without horror or
disgust, what then? A few short years to watch her suffer every prick of mortality and
then die before your eyes? Does this give happiness? This is insanity, Louis. This is vain.

And what truly lies before you is vampire nature, which is killing. For I guarantee you
that if you walk the streets tonight and strike down a woman as rich and beautiful as
Babbette and suck her blood until she drops at your feet you will have no hunger left for
Babette's profile in the candlelight or for listening by the window for the sound of her
voice. You will be filled, Louis, as you were meant to be, with all the life that you can
hold; and you will have hunger when that's gone for the same, and the same, and the
same. The red in this glass will be just as red; the roses on the wallpaper just as delicately
drawn. And you'll see the moon the same way, and the same the flicker of a candle. And
with that same sensibility that you cherish you will see death in all its beauty, life as it is
only known on the very point of death. Don't you understand that, Louis? You alone of
all creatures can see death that way with impunity. You . . . alone . . . under the rising
moon . . . can strike like the hand of God!'
"He sat back now and drained the glass, and his eyes moved over the unconscious
woman. Her breasts heaved and her eyebrows knit as if she were coming around: A moan
escaped her lips. He'd never spoken such words to me before, and I had not thought him
capable of it. `Vampires are killers,' he said now. `Predators. Whose all-seeing eyes were
meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with
any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in
having a hand in the divine plan.'
" `That is how you see it!' I protested. The girl moaned again; her face was very white.
Her head rolled against the back of the chair.
" `That is the way it is,' he answered. `You talk of finding other vampires! Vampires are
killers! They don't want you or your sensibility) They'll see you coming long before you
see them, and they'll see your flaw; and, distrusting you, they'll seek to kill you. They'd
seek to kill you even if you were like me. Because they are lone predators and seek for
companionship no more than cats in the jungle. They're jealous of their secret and of their
territory; and if you find one or more of them together it will be for safety only, and one
will be the slave of the other, the way you are of me.'
" `I'm not your slave,' I said to him. But even as he spoke I realized I'd been his slave all
along.
" `That's how vampires increase . . . through slavery. How else?" he asked. He took the
girl's wrist again, and she cried out as the knife cut. She opened her eyes slowly as he
held her wrist over the glass. She blinked and strained to keep them open. It was as if a
veil covered her eyes. `You're tired, aren't you?' he asked her. She gazed at him as if she
couldn't really see him. `Tired!' he said, now leaning close and staring into her eyes. `You
want to sleep.' `Yes . . : she moaned softly. And he picked, her up and took her into the
bedroom. Our coffins rested on the carpet and against the wall; there was a velvet-draped
bed. Lestat did not put her on the bed; he lowered her slowly into his coffin. `What are
you doing?' I asked him, coming to the door sill. The girl was looking around like a
terrified child. `No . . : she was moaning. And then, as he closed the lid, she screamed.
She continued to scream within the coffin.
" `Why do you do this, Lestat?' I asked.
" `I like to do it,' he said. `I enjoy it.' He looked at me. `I don't say that you have to enjoy
it. Take your aesthete's tastes to purer things. Kill them swiftly if you will, but do it!

Learn that you're a killer! Ah!' He threw up his hands in disgust. The girl had stopped
screaming. Now he drew up a little curved-legged chair beside the coffin and, crossing
his legs, he looked at the coffin lid. His was a black varnished coffin, not a pure
rectangular box as they are now, but tapered at both ends and widest where the corpse
might lay his hands upon his chest. It suggested the human form. It
opened, and the girl sat up astonished, wild-eyed, her lips blue and trembling. `Lie down,
love,' he said to her, and pushed her back; and she lay, near-hysterical, staring up at him.
`You're dead, love,' he said to her; and she screamed and turned desperately in the coffin
like a fish, as if her body could escape through the sides, through the bottom. `It's a
coffin, a coffin!' she cried. `Let me out.'
" `But we all must lie in cons, eventually,' he said to her. `Lie still, love. This is your
coffin. Most of us never get to know what it feels like. You know what it feels like!' he
said to her. I couldn't tell whether she was listening or not, or just going wild. But she
saw me in the doorway, and then she lay still, looking at Lestat and then at me. `Help
me!' she said to me.
"Lestat looked at me. 'I expected you to feel these things instinctually, as I did,' he said.
When I gave you that first kill, I thought you would hunger for the next and the next, that
you would go to each human life as if to a full cup, the way I had. But you didn't. And all
this time I suppose I kept from straightening you out because you were best weaker. I'd
watch you playing shadow in the night, staring at the falling rain, and I'd think, He's easy
to manage, he's simple. But you're weak, Louis. You're a mark. For vampires and now for
humans alike. This thing with Babette has exposed us both. It's as if you want us both to
be destroyed.'
"'I can't stand to watch what you're doing,' I said, turning my back. The girl's eyes were
burning into my flesh. She lay, all the time he spoke, staring at me.
"You can stand it!' he said. `I saw you last night with that child. You're a vampire, the
same as I am!'
"He stood up and came towards me, but the girl rose again and he turned to shove her
down. '13o you think we should make her a vampire? Share our lives with her?' he asked.
Instantly I said, `No!'
" `Why, because she's nothing but a whore?' he asked. `A damned expensive whore at
that,' he said.
" `Can she live now? Or has she lost too much?' I asked him.
" `Touching)" he said. `She can't live.'
"'Then kill her.' She began to scream. He just sat there. I turned around. He was smiling,
and the girl had turned her face to the satin and was sobbing. Tier reason had almost
entirely left her; she was crying and praying. She was praying to the Virgin to save her,
her hands over her face now, now over her head, the wrist smearing blood in her hair and
on the satin. I bent over the coffin. She was dying, it was true; her eyes were burning, but
the tissue around them was already bluish and now she smiled. `You won't let me die,
will you?' she whispered. `You'll save me.' Lestat reached over and took her wrist. 'But
it's too late, love,' he said. `Look at your wrist, your breast' And then he touched the
wound in her throat. She put her hands to her throat and gasped, her mouth open, the

scream strangled. I stared at Lestat. I could not understand why he did this. His face was
as smooth as mine is now, more animated for the blood, but cold and without emotion.
"He did not leer like a stage villain, nor hunger for her suffering as if the cruelty fed him.
He simply watched her. `I never meant to be bad,' she was crying. `I only did what I had
to do. You won't let this happen to me, You'll let me go. I can't die like this, I can't!' She
was sobbing, the sobs dry and thin. `You'll let me go. I have to go to the priest. You'll let
me go.' " `But my friend is a priest,' said Lestat, smiling. As if he'd just thought of it as a
joke. `This is your funeral, dear. You see, you were at a dinner party and you died. But
God has given you another chance to be absolved. Don't you see? Tell him your sins'
"She shook her head at first, and then she looked at me again with those pleading eyes.
`Is it true?' she whispered. `Well,' said Lestat, `I suppose you're not contrite, dear. I shall
have to shut the lid!'
" `Stop this, Lestat!' I shouted at him. The girl was screaming again, and I could not stand
the sight of it any longer. I bent down to her and took her hand. `I can't remember my
sins,' she said, just as I was looking at her wrist, resolved to kill her. `You mustn't try.
Tell God only that you are sorry,' I said, `and then you'll die and it will be over.' She lay
back, and her eyes shut. I sank my teeth into her wrist and began to suck her dry. She
stirred once as if dreaming and said a name; and then, when I felt her heartbeat reach that
hypnotic slowness, I drew back from her, dizzy, confused for the moment, my hands
reaching for the door frame. I saw her as if in a dream. The candles glared in the corner
of my eye. I saw her lying utterly still. And Lestat sat composed beside her, like a
mourner. Ibis face was still. `Louis,' he said to me. `Don't you understand? Peace will
only come to you when you can do this every night of your life. There is nothing else.
But this is everything!' Isis voice was almost tender as he spoke, and he rose and put both
his hands on my shoulders. I walked into the parlor, shying away from his touch but not
resolute enough to push him off. `Come with me, out into the streets. It's late. You
haven't drunk enough. Let me show you what you are. Really! Forgive me if I bungled it,
left too much to nature. Come!'
" `I can't bear it, Lestat,' I said to him. `You chose your companion badly.'
" `But Luis,' he said, `you haven't tried!.'
The vampire stopped. He was studying the boy. And the boy, astonished, said nothing.
"It was true what he'd said. I had not drunk enough; and shaken by the girl's fear, I let
him lead me out of the hotel, down the back stairs. People were coming now from the
Conde Street ballroom, and the narrow street was jammed. There were supper parties in
the hotels, and the planter families were lodged in town in great numbers and we passed
through them like a nightmare. My agony was unbearable. Never since I was a human
being had I felt such mental pain. It was because all of Lestat's words had made sense to
me. I knew peace only when I killed, only for that minute; and there was no question in
my mind that the killing of anything less than a human being brought nothing but a vague
longing, the discontent which had brought me close to humans, to watch their lives
through glass. I was no vampire. And in my pain, I asked irrationally, like a child, Could
I not return? Could I not be human again? Even as the blood of that girl was warm in me
and I felt that physical thrill and strength, I asked that question. The faces of humans
passed me like candle flames in the night dancing on dark waves. I was sinking into the

darkness. I was weary of longing. I was ° g around and around in the street, looking at the
stars and thinking, Yes, it's true. I know what he is saying is true, that when I kill there is
no longing; and I can't bear this truth, I can't bear it.
"Suddenly there was one of those arresting moments. The street was utterly quiet. We
had strayed far from the main part of the old town and were near the ramparts. There
were no lights, only the fire in a window and the far-off sound of people laughing. But no
one here. No one near us. I could feel the breeze suddenly from the river and the hot air
of the night rising and Lestat near me, so still he might have been made of stone. Over the
long, low row of pointed roofs were the massive shapes of oak trees in the dark, great
swaying forms of myriad sounds under the lowhung stars. The pain for the moment was
gone; the confusion was gone. I closed my eyes and heard the wind and the sound of
water flowing softly, swiftly in the river. It was enough, for one moment. And I knew that
it would not endure, that it would fly away from me like something torn out of my arms,
and I would By after it, more desperately lonely than any creature under God, to get it
back. And then a voice beside e rumbled deep in the sound of the night, a drumbeat as the
moment ended, saying, `Do what it is your nature to do. This is but a taste of it. Do what
it is your nature to do.' And the moment was gone. I stood like the girl in the parlor in the
hotel, dazed and ready for the slightest suggestion. I was nodding at Lestat as he nodded
at me. `Pain is terrible for you,' he said. `You feel it like no other creature because you
are a vampire. You don't want it to go on.'
" `No,' I answered him. `I'll feel as I felt with her, wed to her and weightless, caught as if
by a dance.'
" `That and more.' His hand tightened on mine. `Don't turn away from it, come with me.'
"He led me quickly through the street, turning every time I hesitated, his hand out for
mine, a smile on his lips, his presence as marvelous to me as the night he'd come in my
mortal life and told me we would be vampires. `Evil is a point of view,' he whispered
now. ' We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience
cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we;
indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures
under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the
stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. I want a child
tonight. I am like a mother. . . I want a child!"
"I should have known what he meant. I did not. He had me mesmerized, enchanted. He
was playing to me as he had when I was mortal; he was leading me. He was saying,
`Your pain will end.'
"We'd come to a street of lighted windows. It was a place of rooming houses, sailors,
flatboat men. We entered a narrow door; and then, in a hollow stone passage in which I
could hear my own breath like the wind, he crept along the wall until his shadow leapt
out in the light of a doorway beside the shadow of another man, their heads bent together,
their whispers like the rustling of dry leaves. `What is it?' I drew near him as he came
back, afraid suddenly this exhilaration in me would die. I saw again that nightmare
landscape I'd seen when I spoke With Babette; I felt the chill of loneliness, the chill of
guilt. `She's there!' he said. `Your wounded one. Your daughter.'
" `What do you say, what are you talking about!'

" `You've saved her,' he whispered. `I. knew it. You left the window wide on her and her
dead mother, and people passing in the street brought her here.'
"`The child. The little girl!' I gasped. But he was already leading me through the door to
stand at the end of the long ward of wooden beds, each with a child beneath a narrow
white blanket, one candle at the end of the ward, where a nurse bent over a small desk.
We walked down the aisle between the rows. `Starving children, orphans,' he said:
`Children of plague and fever.' He stopped. I saw the little girl lying in the bed. And then
the man was coming, and he was whispering with Lestat; such care for the sleeping little
ones. Someone in another room was crying. The nurse rose and hurried away.
"And now the doctor bent and wrapped the child in the blanket. Lestat had taken money
from his pocket and set it on the foot of the bed. The doctor was saying how glad he was
we'd come for her, how most of them were orphans; they came in on the ships,
sometimes orphans too young even to tell which body was that of their mother. He
thought Lestat was the father.
"And in moments, Lestat was running through the streets with her, the white of the
blanket gleaming against his dark coat and cape; and even to my expert vision, as I ran
after him it seemed sometimes as if the blanket dew through the night with no one
holding it, a shifting shape traveling on the wind like a leaf stood upright and sent
scurrying along a passage, trying to gain the wind all the while and truly take flight. I
caught him finally as we approached the lamps near the Place d'Armes. The child lay pale
on his shoulder, her cheeks still full like plums, though she was drained and near death.
She opened her eyes, or rather the lids slid back; and beneath the long curling lashes I
saw a streak of white. `Lestat, what are you doing? Where are you taking her?' I
demanded. But I knew too well. He was heading for the hotel and meant to take her into
our room.
"The corpses were as we left them, one neatly set in the coffin as if an undertaker had
already attended her, the other in her chair at the table. Lestat brushed past them as if he
didn't see them, while I watched him in fascination. The candles had all burned down,
and the only light was that of the moon and the street. I could see his iced and gleaming
profile as he set the child down on the pillow. `Come here, Louis, you haven't fed
enough, I know you haven't,' he said with the same calm, convincing voice he had used
skillfully all evening. He held my hand in his, his own warm and tight. `See her, Louis,
how plump and sweet she looks, as if even death can't take her freshness; the will to live
is too strong! He might make a sculpture of her tiny lips and rounded hands, but he
cannot her faded You remember, the way you wanted her when you saw her in that
room.' I resisted him. I didn't
want to kill her. I hadn't wanted to last night. And then suddenly I remembered two
conflicting things and was
torn in agony: I remembered the powerful beating of her heart against mine and I
hungered for it, hungered for it
so badly I tamed my back on her in the bed and would have rushed out of the room had
not Lestat held me fast;
and I remembered her mother's face and that moment of horror when I'd dropped the
child and he'd come into

the room. But he wasn't mocking me now; he was confusing me. `You want her, Louis.
Don't you see, once
you've taken her, then you can take whomever you wish. You wanted her last night but
you weakened, and that's
why she's not dead.' I could feel it was true, what he said. I could feel again that ecstasy
of being pressed to her,
her little heart going and going. `She's too strong for me . . . her heart, it wouldn't give
up,' I said to him. `Is she
so strong?' he smiled. He drew me close to him. `Take her, Louis, I know you want her.'
And I did. I drew close
to the bed now and just watched her. Her chest barely moved with her breath, and one
small hand was tangled in
her long, gold hair. I couldn't bear it, looking at her, wanting her not to die and wanting
her; and the more I
looked at her, the more I could taste her skin, feel my arm sliding under her back and
pulling her up to me, feeling
her soft neck. Soft, soft, that's what she was, so soft. I tried to tell myself it was best for
her to die--what was to
become of her? but these were lying thoughts. I wanted her! And so I took her in my
arms and held her, her
burning cheek on mine, her hair ` down over my wrists and brushing my eyelids, the
sweet perfume of a child
strong and pulsing in spite of sickness and death. She moaned how, stirred in her sleep,
and that was more than I
could bear. rd kill her before rd let her wake and know it. I went into her throat and heard
Lestat saying to me
strangely, `Just a little tear. It's just a little throat.' And I obeyed him.
"I won't tell you again what it was like, except that it caught me up just as it had done
before, and as killing always does, only more; so that my knees bent and I half lay on the
bed, sucking her dry; that heart pounding again that would not slow, would not give up.
And suddenly, as I went on and on, the instinctual part of me waiting, waiting for the
slowing of the heart which would mean death, Lestat wrenched me from her. `But she's
not dead,' I whispered. But it was over. The furniture of the room emerged from the
darkness. I sat stunned, staring at her, too weak to move, my head rolling back against the
headboard of the bed, my hands pressing down on the velvet spread. Lestat was snatching
her up, talking to her, saying a name. 'Claudia, Claudia, listen to me, come round,
Claudia.' He was carrying her now out of the bedroom into the parlor, and his voice was
so soft I barely heard him. `You're ill, do you hear me? You must do as I tell you to get
well.' And then, in the pause that followed, I came to my senses. I realized what he was
doing, that he had cut his wrist and given it to her and she was drinking. `That's it dear;
more,' he was saying to her. `You must drink it to get well.'

" `Damn you!' I shouted, and he hissed at me with blazing eyes. He sat on the settee with
her locked to his wrist. I saw her white hand clutching at his sleeve, and I could see his
chest heaving for breath and his face contorted the way I'd never seen it. He let out a
moan and whispered again to her to go on; and when I moved from the threshold, he
glared at me again, as if to say, `I'll kill you!'
" `But why, Lestat?' I whispered to him. He was trying now to push her off, and she
wouldn't let go. With her fingers locked around his fingers and arm she held the wrist to
her mouth, a growl coming out of her. `Stop, stop!' he said to her. He was clearly in pain.
He pulled back from her and held her shoulders with both hands. She tried desperately to
reach leis wrist with leer teeth, but she couldn't; and then she looked at him with the most
innocent astonishment. He stood back, his hand out lest she move. Then he clapped a
handkerchief on his wrist and backed away from her, toward the bell rope. He pulled it
sharply, his eyes still fixed on her.
" `What have you done, Lestat?' I asked him. `What have you done?' I stared at her. She
sat composed, revived, filled with life, no sign of pallor or weakness in her, her legs
stretched out straight on the damask, her white gown soft and thin like an angel's gown
around her small form. She was looking at Lestat. `Not me,' he said to her, `ever again.
Do you understand? But I'll show you what to do!' When I tried to make him look at me
and answer a as to what he was doing, he shook me off. a gave me such a blow with his
arm that I hit the wall. Someone was knocking now. I knew what he meant to do. Once
more I tried to reach out for ' but he spun so fast I didn't even see him hit me. When I did
see ' I was sprawled in the chair and he was opening the door. `Yes, come in, please,
there's been an accident,' he said to the young slave boy. And then, shutting the door, he
took him from behind, so that the boy never knew what happened. And even as he knelt
over the body drinking, he beckoned for the child, who slid from the couch and went
down on her knees and took the wrist offered her, quickly pushing back the cuff of the
shirt. She gnawed as if she meant to devour his flesh, and then Lestat showed her what to
do. He sat back and let her have the rest, his eye on the boy's chest, so that when the '
came, he bent forward and said, `No more, he's dying . . . . You must never drink after the
heart stops or you'll be sick again, sick to death. Do you understand?' But she'd had
enough and she sat next to ' their backs against the legs of the settee, their legs stretched
out on the floor. The boy died in seconds. I felt weary and sickened, as if the night had
lasted a thousand years. I sat there watching them, the child drawing close to Lestat now,
snuggling near him as he slipped his arm around her, though his indifferent eyes
remained fixed on the corpse. Then he looked up at me.
" `Where is Mamma?' asked the child softly. She had a voice equal to her physical
beauty; clear like a little silver bell. It was sensual. She was sensual. Her eyes were as
wide and clear as Babette's. You understand that I was barely aware of what all this
meant. I knew what it might mean, but I was aghast. Now Lestat stood up and scooped
her from the floor and came towards me. `She's our daughter,' he said. `You're going to
live with us now.' He beamed at her, but his eyes were cold, as if it were all a horrible
joke; then he looked at me, and his face had conviction. He pushed her towards me. I
found her on my lap, my arms around her, feeling again how soft she was, how plump her
skin was, like the skin of warm fruit, plums warmed by sunlight; her huge luminescent
eyes were fixed on me with trusting curiosity. `This is Louis, and I am Lestat,' he said to

her, dropping down beside her. She looked about and said that it was a pretty room, very
pretty, but she wanted her mamma. He had his comb out and was running it through her
hair, holding the locks so as not to pull with the comb; her hair was untangling and
becoming like satin. She was the most beautiful child I'd ever seen, and now she glowed
with the cold fire of a vampire. Her eyes were a woman's eyes, I could see it already. She
would become white and spare like us but not lose her shape. I understood now what
Lestat had said about death, what he meant. I touched her neck where the two red
puncture wounds were bleeding just a little. I took Lestat's handkerchief from the floor
and touched it to her neck. `Your mamma's left you with us. She wants you to be happy,'
he was saying with that same immeasurable confidence. `She knows we can make you
very happy.'
" `I want some more,' she said, turning to the corpse on the floor.
" `No, not tonight; tomorrow night,' said Lestat. And he went to take the lady out of his
coffin. The child slid off my lap, and I followed her. She stood watching as Lestat put the
two ladies and the slave boy into the bed. He brought the covers up to their chin. `Are
they sick?' asked the child.
" `Yes, Claudia,' he said. `They're sick and they're dead. You see, they die when we drink
from them.' He came towards her and swung her up into his arms again. We stood there
with her between us. I was mesmerized by her, by her transformed, by her every gesture:
She was not a child any longer, she was a vampire child. `Now, Louis was going to leave
us,' said Lestat, his eyes moving from my face to hers. `He was going to go away. But
now he's not. Because he wants to stay and take care of you and make you happy.' He
looked at me. `You're not going, are you, Louis?'
" `You bastard!' I whispered to him. 'You fiend!'
" `Such language in front of your daughter,' he said.
" `I'm not your daughter,' she said with the silvery voice. `I'm my mamma's daughter.'
" `No, dear, not anymore,' he said to her. He glanced at the window, and then he shut the
bedroom door behind us and turned the key in the lock. `You're our daughter, Louis's
daughter and my daughter, do you see? Now, whom should you sleep with? Louis or
me?' And then looking at me, he said, `Perhaps you should sleep with Louis. After all,
when I'm tired . . . I'm not so kind."'
The Vampire Stopped. The boy said nothing. "A child vampire!" he whispered finally.
The vampire glanced up suddenly as though startled, though his body made no
movement. He glared at the tape recorder as if it were something monstrous.
The boy saw that the tape was almost out. Quickly, he opened his brief case and drew out
a new cassette, clumsily fitting it into place. He looked at the vampire as he pressed the
record button. The vampire's face looked weary, drawn, his cheekbones more prominent
and his brilliant green eyes enormous. They had begun at dark, which had come early on
this San Francisco winter night, and now it was just before ten P.m. The vampire
straightened and smiled and said calmly, "We are ready to go on?"
"He'd done this to the little girl just to keep you with him?" asked the boy.

"That is difficult to say. It was a statement. I'm convinced that Lestat was a person who
preferred not to think or talk about his motives or beliefs, even to himself. One of those
people who must act. Such a person must be pushed considerably before he will open up
and confess that there is method and thought to the way he lives. That is what had
happened that night with Lestat. He'd been pushed to where he had to discover even for
himself why he lived as he did. Keeping me with him, that was undoubtedly part of what
pushed him. But I think, in retrospect, that he himself wanted to know his own reasons
for killing, wanted to examine his own life. He was discovering when he spoke what he
did believe. But he did indeed want me to remain. He lived with me in a way he could
never have lived alone. And, as I've told you, I was careful never to sign any property
over to him, which maddened him. That, he could not persuade me to do." The vampire
laughed suddenly, "Look at all the other things he persuaded me to do! How strange. He
could persuade me to kill a child, but not to part with my money." He shook his head.
"But," he said, "it wasn't greed, really, as you can see. It was fear of him that made me
tight with him."
" You speak of him as if he were dead. You say Lestat was this or was that. Is he dead?"
asked the boy.
"I don't know," said the vampire. "I think perhaps he is. But I'll come to that. We were
talking of Claudia, weren't we? There was something else I wanted to say about Lestat's
motives that night. Lestat trusted no one, as you see. He was like a cat, by his own
admission, a lone predator. Yet he had communicated with me that night; he had to some
extent exposed himself simply by telling the truth. He had dropped his mockery, his
condescension. He had forgotten his perpetual anger for just a little while. And this for
Lestat was exposure. When we stood, alone in that dark street, I felt in him a communion
with another I hadn't felt since I died. I rather think that he ushered Claudia into
vampirism for revenge"
"Revenge, not only on you but on the world," suggested the boy.
"Yes. As I said, Lestat's motives for everything revolved around revenge"
"Was it all started with the father? With the school?"
"I don't know. I doubt it," said the vampire. "But I want to go on."
"Oh, please go on. You have to go on! I mean, it's only ten o'clock." The boy showed his
watch.
The vampire looked at it, and then he smiled at the boy. The boy's face changed. It was
blank as if from some sort of shock. "Are you still afraid of me?" asked the vampire.
The boy said nothing, but he shrank slightly from the edge of the table. His body
elongated, his feet moved out over the bare boards and then contracted.
"I should think you'd be very foolish if you weren't," said the vampire. "But don't be.
Shall we go on?"
"Please," said the boy. He gestured towards the machine.
'Well," the vampire began, "our life was much changed with Mademoiselle Claudia, as
you can imagine. Her body died, yet her senses awakened much as mine had. And I
treasured in her the signs of this. But I was not aware for quite a few days how much I

wanted her, wanted to talk with her and be with her. At first, I thought only of protecting
her from Lestat. I gathered her into my coffin every morning and would not let her out of
my sight with him if possible. This was what Lestat wanted, and he gave little
suggestions that he might do her harm. 'A starving child is a frightful sight,' he said to
me, `a starving vampire even worse.' They'd hear her screams in Paris, he said, were he to
lock her away to die. But all this was meant for me, to draw me close and keep me there.
Afraid of fleeing alone, I would not conceive of risking it with Claudia. She was a child.
She needed care.
"And there was much pleasure in caring for her. She forgot her five years of mortal life at
once, or so it seemed, for she was mysteriously quiet. And from time to time I even
feared that she had lost all sense, that the illness of her mortal life, combined with the
great vampire shock, might have robbed her of reason; but this proved hardly the case.
She was simply unlike Lestat and me to such an extent I couldn't comprehend her; for
little child she was, but also fierce killer now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with
all a child's demanding. And though Lestat still threatened me with danger to her, he did
not threaten her at all but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach her that
we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die.
"The plague raged in the city then, as I've indicated, and he took her to the stinking
cemeteries where the yellow fever and plague victims lay in heaps while the sounds of
shovels never ceased all through the day and night. `This is death,' he told her, pointing to
the decaying corpse of a woman, `which we cannot suffer. Our bodies will stay always as
they are, fresh and alive; but we must never hesitate to bring death, because it is how we
live.' And Claudia gazed on this with inscrutable liquid eyes.
"If there was not understanding in the early years, there was no smattering of fear. Mute
and beautiful, she played with dolls, dressing, undressing them by the hour. Mute and
beautiful, she killed. And I, transformed by Lestat's instruction, was now to seek out
humans in much greater numbers. But it was not only the killing of them that soothed
some pain in me which bad been constant in the dark, still nights on Pointe du Lac, when
I sat with only the company of Lestat and the old man; it was their great, shifting
numbers everywhere in streets which never grew quiet, cabarets which never shut their
doors, balls which lasted till dawn, the music and laughter streaming out of the open
windows; people all around me now, my pulsing victims, not seen with that great love I'd
felt for my sister and Babette, but with some new detachment and need. And I did kill
them, kills infinitely varied and great distances apart, as I walked with the vampire's sight
and light movement through this teeming, burgeoning city, my victims surrounding me,
seducing me, inviting me to their supper tables, their carriages, their brothels. I lingered
only a short while, long enough to take what I must have, soothed in my great
melancholy that the town gave me an endless train of magnificent strangers.
"For that was it. I fed on strangers. I drew only close enough to see the pulsing beauty,
the unique expression, the new and passionate voice, then killed before those feelings of
revulsion could be aroused in me, that fear, that sorrow.
"Claudia and Lestat might hunt and seduce, stay long in the company of the doomed
victim, enjoying the splendid humor in his unwitting friendship with death. But I still
could not bear it. And so to me, the swelling population was a mercy, a forest in which I

was lost, unable to stop myself, whirling too fast for thought or pain, accepting again and
again the invitation to death rather than extending it.
"We lived meantime in one of my new Spanish town houses in the Rue Royale, a long,
lavish upstairs flat above a
shop I rented to a tailor, a hidden garden court behind us, a well secure against the street,
with fitted wooden
shutters and a barred carriage door-a place of far greater luxury and security than Pointe
du Lac. Our servants
were free people of color who left us to solitude before dawn for their own homes, and
Lestat bought the very
latest imports from France and Spain: crystal chandeliers and Oriental carpets, silk
screens with aimed birds of
paradise, canaries singing in great do domed, golden cages, and delicate marble Grecian
gods and beautifully
painted Chinese vases. I did not need the luxury anymore than I had needed it before, but
I found myself
enthralled with the new flood of art and craft and design, could stare at the intricate
pattern of the carpets for
hours, or watch the gleam of the lamplight change the somber colors of a Dutch painting.
"All this Claudia found wondrous, with the quiet awe of an unspoiled child, and marveled
when Lestat hired a painter to make the walls of her room a magical forest of unicorns
and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams.
"An endless train of dressmakers and shoemakers and tailors came to our flat to outfit
Claudia in the best of children's fashions, so that she was always a vision, not just of child
beauty, with her curling lashes and her glorious yellow hair, but of the taste of finely
trimmed bonnets and tiny lace gloves, flaring velvet coats and capes, and sheer white
puffed-sleeve gowns with gleaming blue sashes. Lestat played with her as if she were a
magnificent doll, and I played with her as if she were a magnificent doll; and it was her
pleading that forced me to give up my rusty black for dandy jackets and silk ties and soft
gray coats and gloves and black capes. Lestat thought the best color at all times for
vampires was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he steadfastly maintained, but
he wasn't opposed to anything which smacked of style and excess. He loved the great
figure we cut, the three of us in our box at the new French Opera House or the Theatre
d'Orleans, to which we went as often as possible, Lestat having a passion for Shakespeare
which surprised me, though he often dozed through the operas and woke just in time to
invite some lovely lady to midnight supper, where he would use all his skill to make her
love him totally, then dispatch her violently to heaven or hell and come home with her
diamond ring to give to Claudia.
"And all this time I was educating Claudia, whispering in her tiny seashell ear that our
eternal life was useless to us if we did not see the beauty around us, the creation of
mortals everywhere; I was constantly sounding the depth of her still gaze as she took the
books I gave her, whispered the poetry I taught her, and played with a light but confident

touch her own strange, coherent songs on the piano. She could fall for hours into the
pictures in a book and listen to me read until she sat so still the sight of her jarred me,
made me put the book down, and just stare back at her across the lighted room; then she'd
move, a doll coming to life, and say in the softest voice that I must read some more.
"And then strange things began to happen, for though she said little and was the chubby,
round-fingered child
still, I'd find her tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle or Boethius
or a new novel just come
over the Atlantic. Or pecking out the music of Mozart .we'd only heard the night before
with an infallible ear and a
concentration that made her ghostly as she sat there hour after hour discovering the music
the melody, then the
bass, and finally bringing it together. Claudia was mystery. It was not possible to know
what she knew or did not
know. And to watch her kill was chilling. She would sit alone in the dark square waiting
for the kindly gentleman
or woman to find her, her eyes more mindless than I had ever seen Lestat's. Like a child
numbed with fright she
would whisper her plea for help to her gentle, admiring patrons, and as they carried her
out of the square, her
arms would fix about their necks, her tongue between her teeth, her vision glazed with
consuming hunger. They
found death fast in those first years, before she learned to play with them, to lead them to
the doll shop or the
cafe where they gave her steaming cups of chocolate or tea to ruddy her pale cheeks, cups
she pushed away,
waiting, waiting, as if feasting silently on their terrible kindness.
"But when that was done, she was my companion, my pupil, her long hours spent with
me consuming faster and faster the knowledge I gave her, sharing with me some quiet
understanding which could not include Lestat. At dawn she lay with me, her heart beating
against my heart, and many times when I looked at her-when she was at her music or
painting and didn't know I stood in the room-I thought of that singular experience rd had
with her and no other, that I had killed her, taken her life from her, had drunk all of her
life's blood in that fatal embrace I'd lavished on so many others, others who lay now
moldering in the damp earth. But she lived, she lived to put her arms around my neck and
press her tiny cupid's bow to my lips and put her gleaming eye to nay eye until our lashes
touched and, laughing, we reeled about the room as if to the wildest waltz. Father and
Daughter. Lover and Lover. You can imagine how well it was Lestat did not envy us this,
but only smiled on it from afar, waiting until she came to him. Then he would take her
out into the street and they would wave to me beneath the window, off to share what they
shared: the hunt, the seduction, the kill.

"Years passed in this way. Years and years and years. Yet it wasn't until some time had
passed that an obvious fact occurred to me about Claudia. I suppose from the expression
on your face you've already guessed, and you wonder why I didn't guess. I can only tell
you, time is not the same for me, nor was it for us then. Day did not link to day making a
taut and jerking chain; rather, the moon rose over lapping waves."
"Her body!" the boy said. "She was never to grow up."
The vampire nodded. "She was to be the demon child forever," he said, his voice soft as
if he wondered at it. "Just as I am the young man I was when I died. And Lestat? The
same. But her mind It was a vampire's mind. And I strained to know how she moved
towards womanhood. She came to talk more, though she was never other than a reflective
person and could listen to me patiently by the hour without interruption. Yet more and
more her doll-like face seemed to possess two totally aware adult eyes, and innocence
seemed lost somewhere with neglected-toys and the loss of a certain patience. There was
something dreadfully sensual about her lounging on the settee in a tiny nightgown of lace
and stitched pearls; she became an eerie and powerful seductress, her voice as clear and
sweet as ever, though it had a resonance which was womanish, a sharpness sometimes
that proved shocking; After days of her usual quiet, she would scoff suddenly at Lestat's
predictions about the war; or drinking blood from a crystal glass say that there were no
books in the house, we must get more even if we had to steal them, and then coldly tell
me of a library she'd heard of, in a palatial mansion in the Faubourg St.-Marie, a woman
who collected books as if they were rocks or pressed butterflies. She asked if I might get
her into the woman's bedroom.
"I was aghast at such moments; her mind was unpredictable, unknowable. But then she
would sit on my lap and put her fingers in my hair and doze there against my heart,
whispering to me softly I should never be as grown up as she until I knew that killing was
the more serious thing, not the books, the music. `Always the music . . .' she whispered.
`Doll, doll,' I called her. That's what she was. A magic doll. Laughter and infinite intellect
and then the round-checked face, the bud mouth. `Let me dress you, let me brush your
hair,' I would say to her out of old habit, aware of her smiling and watching me with the
thin veil of boredom over her expression. `Do as you like,' she breathed into my ear as I
bent down to fasten her pearl buttons. `Only kill with me tonight. You never let me see
you kill, Louis!'
"She wanted a coffin of her own now, which left me more wounded than I would let her
see. I walked out after giving my gentlemanly consent; for how many years had I slept
with her as if she were part of me I couldn't know. But then I found her near the Ursuline
Convent, an orphan lost in the darkness, and she ran suddenly towards me and clutched at
me with a human desperation. `I don't want it if it hurts you,' she confided so softly that a
human embracing us both could not have heard her or felt her breath. `I'll stay with you
always. But I must see it, don't you understand? A coin for a child.'
"We were to go to the coffinmaker's. A play, a tragedy in one act: I to leave her in his
little parlor and confide to him in the anteroom that she was to die. Talk of love, she must
have the best, but she must not know; and the coffinmaker, shaken with the tragedy of it,
must make it for her, picturing her laid there on the white satin, dabbing a tear from his
eye despite all the years . . . .

" `But, why, Claudia . .' I pleaded with her. I loathed to do it, loathed cat and mouse with
the help less human. But hopelessly her lover, I took her there and set her on the sofa,
where she sat with folded hands in her lap, her tiny bonnet bent down, as if she didn't
know what we whispered about her in the foyer. The undertaker was an old and greatly
refined man of color who drew me swiftly aside lest `the baby' should hear. `But why
must she die?' he begged me, as if I were God who ordained it. `Her heart, she cannot
live,' I said, the words taking on for me a peculiar power, a disturbing resonance. The
emotion in his narrow, heavily lined face disturbed me; something came to my mind, a
quality of light, a gesture, the sound of something . a child crying in a stenchfilled room.
Now he unlocked one after another of his long rooms and showed me the coffins, black
lacquer and silver, she wanted that. And suddenly I found myself backing away from him
out of the coffin-house, hurriedly taking her hand. `The order's been taken,' I said to her.
`It's driving me mad!' I breathed the fresh air of the street as though I'd been suffocated
and then I saw her compassionless face studying mine. She slipped her small gloved hand
back into my own. `I want it, Louis,' she explained patiently.
"And then one night she climbed the undertaker's stairs, Lestat beside her, for the con,
and left the coffinmaker, unawares, dead across the dusty piles of papers on his desk. And
there the coffin lay in our bedroom, where she watched it often by the hour when it was
new, as if the thing were moving or alive or unfolded some mystery to her little by little,
as things do which change. But she did not sleep in it. She slept with me.
"There were other changes in her. I cannot date them or put them in order. She did not
kill indiscriminately. She fell into demanding patterns. Poverty began to fascinate her;
she begged Lestat or me to take a carriage out through the Faubourg St.-Marie to the
riverfront places where the immigrants lived. She seemed obsessed with the women and
children. These things Lestat told me with great amusement, for I was loath to go and
would sometimes not be persuaded under any circumstance. But Claudia had a family
there which she took one by one. And she had asked to enter the cemetery of the suburb
city of Lafayette and there roam the high marble tombs in search of those desperate men
who, having no place else to sleep, spend what little they have on a bottle of wine, and
crawl into a rotting vault. Lestat was impressed, overcome. What a picture he made of
her, the infant death, he called her. Sister death, and sweet death; and for me, mockingly,
he had the term with a sweeping bow, Merciful Death! which he said like a woman
clapping her hands and shouting out a word of exciting gossip: oh, merciful heavens! so
that I wanted to strangle him.
"But there was no quarrelling. We kept to ourselves. We had our adjustments. Books
filled our long fiat from floor to ceiling in row after row of gleaming leather volumes, as
Claudia and I pursued our natural tastes and Lestat went about his lavish acquisitions.
Until she began to ask questions."
The vampire stopped. And the boy looked as anxious as before, as if patience took the
greatest effort. But the vampire had brought his long, white fingers together as if to make
a church steeple and then folded them and pressed his palms tight. It was as if he'd
forgotten the boy altogether. "I should have known," he said, "that it was inevitable, and I
should have seen the signs of it coming. For I was so attuned to her; I loved her so
completely; she was so much the companion of my every waking hour, the only
companion that I had, other than death. I should have known. But something in me was

conscious of an enormous gulf of darkness very close to us, as though we walked always
near a sheer cliff and might see it suddenly but too late if we made the wrong turn or
became too lost in our thoughts. Sometimes the physical world about me seemed
insubstantial except for that darkness. As if a fault in the earth were about to open and I
could see the great crack breaking down the Rue Royale, and all the buildings were
falling to dust in the rumble. But worst of all, they were transparent, gossamer, like stage
drops made of silk. Ah . . . I'm distracted. What do I say? That I ignored the signs in her,
that I clung desperately to the happiness she'd given me. And still gave me; and ignored
all else.
"But these were the signs. She grew cold to Lestat. She fell to staring at him for hours.
When he spoke, often
she ° 't answer him, and one could hardly tell if it was contempt or that she didn't hear.
.And our fragile domestic
tranquility erupted with his outrage. He did not have to be loved, but he would not be
ignored; and once he even
dew at her, shouting that he would slap her, and I found myself in the wretched position
of fighting him as I'd
done years before she'd come to us. `She's not a child any longer,' I whispered to him. `I
don't know what it is.
She's a woman.' I urged him to take it lightly, and he affected disdain and ignored her in
turn. But one evening he
came in flustered and told me she'd followed him though she'd refused to go with him to
kill, she'd followed him
afterwards. `What's the matter with her!' he flared at me, as though rd given birth to her
and must know.
"And then one night our servants vanished. Two of the best maids we'd ever retained, a
mother and daughter. The coachman was sent to their house only to report they'd
disappeared, and then the father was at our door, pounding the knocker. He stood back on
the brick sidewalk regarding me with that grave suspicion that sooner or later crept into
the faces of all mortals who-knew us for any length of time, the forerunner of death, as
pallor might be to a fatal fever; and I tried to explain to him they had not been here,
mother or daughter, and we must begin some search.
" `It's she!' Lestat hissed from the shadows when I shut the gate. `She's done something to
them and brought risk for us all. I'll make her tell me!' And he pounded up the spiral
stairs from the courtyard. I knew that she'd gone, slipped out while I was at the gate, and I
knew something else also: that a vague stench came across the courtyard from the shut,
unused kitchen, a stench that mingled uneasily with the honeysuckle-the stench of
graveyards. I heard Lestat coming down as I approached the warped shutters, locked with
rust to the small brick building. No food was ever prepared there, no work ever done, so
that it lay like an old brick vault under the tangles of honeysuckle. The shutters came
loose, the nails having turned to dust, and I heard Lestat's gasp as we stepped into the
reeking dark. There they lay on the bricks, mother and daughter together, the arm of the
mother fastened around the waist of the daughter, the daughter's head bent against the

mother's breast, both foul with feces and swarming with ' . A great cloud of gnats rose as
the shutter fell back, and I waved them away from me in a convulsive disgust. Ants
crawled undisturbed over the eyelids, the mouths of the dead pair, and in the moonlight I
could see the endless map of silvery paths of snails. `Damn her!' Lestat burst out, and I
grabbed his arm and held him fast, pitting all my strength against him. `What do you
mean to do with her)' I insisted. `What can you do? She's not a child anymore that will do
what we say simply because we say it. We must teach her.'
" `She knows!' He stood back from me brushing his coat. `She knows! She's known for
years what to dot What can be risked and what cannot. I won't have her do this without
my permission) I won't tolerate it.'
" `Then, are you master off us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe
it from my quiet subservience? I don't think so. She sees herself as equal to us now, and
us as equal to each other. I tell you we must reason with her, instruct her to respect what
is ours. As all of us should respect it.'
"He stalked off, obviously absorbed in what rd said, though he would give no admission
of it to me. And he took his vengeance to the city. Yet when he came home, fatigued and
satiated, she was still not there. He sat against the velvet arm of the couch and stretched
his long legs out on the length of it. `Did you bury them?' he asked me.
" `They're gone,' I said. I did not care to say even to myself that I had burned their
remains in the old unused kitchen stove. `But there is the father to deal with, and the
brother,' I said to him. I feared his temper. I wished at once to plan some way to quickly
dispose of the whole problem. But he said now that the father and the brother were no
more, that death had come to dinner in their small house near the ramparts and stayed to
say grace when everyone was done. `Wine,' he whispered now, running his finger on his
lip. `Both of them had drunk too much wine. I found myself tapping the fence posts with
a stick to make a tune,' he laughed. `But I don't like it, the dizziness. Do you like it?' And
when he looked at me I had to smile at him because the wine was working in him and he
was mellow; and in that moment when his face looked warm and reasonable, I leaned
over and said, `I hear Claudia's tap on the stairs. Be gentle with her. It's all done.'
"She came in then, with her bonnet ribbons undone and her little boots caked with dirt. I
watched them tensely, Lestat with a sneer on his lips, she as unconscious of him as if he
weren't there. She had a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in her arms, such a large
bouquet it made her all the more a small child. Her bonnet fell back now, hung on her
shoulder for an instant, and then fell to the carpet. And all through her golden hair I saw
the narrow petals of the chrysanthemums. 'Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints,' she said.
`Do you know?'
" `Yes,' I said to her. It is the day in New Orleans when all the faithful go to the
cemeteries to care for the graves of their loved ones. They whitewash the plaster walls of
the vaults, clean the names cut into the marble slabs. And finally they deck the tombs
with flowers. In the St. Louis Cemetery, which was very near our house, in which all the
great Louisiana families were buried, in which my own brother was buried, there were
even little iron benches set before the graves where the families might sit to receive the
other families who had come to the cemetery for the same purpose. It was a festival in
New Orleans; a celebration of death, it might have seemed to tourists who didn't

understand it, but it was a celebration of the life after. `I bought this from one of the
vendors,' Claudia said. Her voice was soft and inscrutable. Her eyes opaque and without
emotion.
" 'For the two you left in the kitchen!' Lestat said fiercely. She turned to him for the first
time, but she said nothing. She stood there staring at him as if she'd never seen him
before. And then she took several steps towards him and looked at him, still as if she
were positively examining him. I moved forward. I could feel his anger. Her coldness.
And now she turned to me. And then, looking from one to the other of us, she asked:
" `Which of you did it? Which of you made me what I am?'
"I could not have been more astonished at anything she might have said or done. And yet
it was inevitable that her long silence would thus be broken. She seemed very little
concerned with me, though. Her eyes fixed on Lestat. `You speak of us as if we always
existed as we are now,' she said, her voice soft, measured, the child's tone rounded with
the woman's seriousness. `You speak of them out there as mortals, us as vampires. But it
was not always so. Louis had a mortal sister, I remember her. And there is a picture of
her in his trunk. I've seen him look at it! He was mortal the same as she; and so was I.
Why else this size, this shape?' She opened her arms now and let the chrysanthemums fall
to the floor. I whispered her name. I think I meant to distract her. It was impossible. The
tide had turned. Lestat's eyes burned with a keen fascination, a malignant pleasure:
" `You made us what we are, didn't you?' she accused him.
"He raised his eyebrows now in mock amazement. `What you are?' he asked. `And would
you be something other than what you are!' He drew up his knees and leaned forward, his
eyes narrow. `Do you know how long it's been? Can you picture yourself? Must I find a
hag to show you your mortal countenance now if I had let you alone?'
"She turned away from him, stood for a moment as if she had no idea what she would do,
and then she moved towards the chair beside the fireplace and, climbing on it, curled up
like the most helpless child. She brought her knees up close to her, her velvet coat open,
her silk dress tight around her knees, and she stared at the ashes in the hearth. But there
was nothing helpless about her stare. Her eyes had independent life, as if the body were
possessed.
" 'You could be dead by now if you were mortal!' Lestat insisted to her, pricked by her
silence. He drew his legs around and set his boots on the floor. `Do you hear me? Why do
you ask me this now? Why do you make such a thing of it? You've known all your life
you're a vampire.' And so he went on in a tirade, saying much the same things he'd said to
me many times over: know your nature, kill, be what you are. But all of this seemed
strangely beside the point. For Claudia had no qualms about killing. She sat back now
and let her head roll slowly to where she could see him across from her. She was studying
him again, as if he were a puppet on strings. `Did you do it to me? And how?' she asked,
her eyes narrowing. `How did you do it?'
" `And why should I tell you? It's my power.'
" `Why yours alone?' she asked, her voice icy, her eyes heartless. `How was it done?' she
demanded suddenly in rage.

"It was electric. He rose from the couch, and I was on my feet immediately, facing him.
`Stop here' he said to me. He wrung his hands. 'Do something about her! I can't endure
her?' And then he started for the door, but turned and, coming back, drew very close so
that he towered over Claudia, putting- her in a deep shadow. She glared up at him
fearlessly, her eyes moving back and forth over his face with total detachment. `I can
undo what I did. Both to you and to him,' he said to her, his finger pointing at me across
the room. `Be glad I made you what you are,' he sneered. `Or I'll break you in a thousand
pieces!"'
"Well, the peace of the house was destroyed, though there was quiet. Days passed and
she asked no questions, though now she was deep into books of the occult, of witches and
witchcraft, and of vampires. This was mostly fancy, you understand. Myth, tales,
sometimes mere romantic horror tales. But she read it all. Till dawn she read, so that I
had to go and collect her and bring her to bed.
"Lestat, meantime, hired a butler and maid and had a team of workers in to make a great
fountain in the courtyard with a stone nymph pouring water eternal from a widemouthed
shell. He had goldfish brought and boxes of rooted water lilies set into the fountain so
their blossoms rested upon the surface and shivered in the ever-moving water.
"A woman had seen him kill on the Nyades Road, which ran to the town of Carrolton,
and there were stories of it in the papers, associating him with a haunted house near
Nyades and Melpomene, all of which delighted him. He was the Nyades Road ghost for
some time, though it finally fell to the back pages; and then he performed another grisly
murder in another public place and set the imagination of New Orleans to working. But
all this had about it some quality of fear. He was pensive, suspicious, drew close to me
constantly to ask where Claudia was, where she'd gone, and what she was doing.
" `She'll be all right,' I assured him, though I was estranged from her and in agony, as if
she'd been my bride. She hardly saw me now, as she'd not seen Lestat before, and she
might walk away while I spoke to her.
" `She had better be all right!" he said nastily.
" `And what will you do if she's not?' I asked, more in fear than accusation.
"He looked up at me, with his cold gray eyes. `You take care of her, Louis. You talk to
her!' he said. `Everything was perfect, and now this. There's no need for it'
"But it was my choice to let her come to me, and she did. It was early one evening when
I'd just awakened. The house was dark. I saw her standing by the French windows; she
wore puffed sleeves and a pink sash, and was watching with lowered lashes the evening
rush in the Rue Royale. I could hear Lestat in his room, the sound of water splashing
from his pitcher. The faint smell of his cologne came and went like the sound of music
from the cafe two doors down from us. `He'll tell me nothing,' she said softly. I hadn't
realized she knew that I had opened my eyes. I came towards her and knelt beside her.
`You'll tell me, won't you? How it was done.'
" 'Is this what you truly want to know?' I asked, searching her face. `Or is it why it was
done to you . . . and what you were before? I don't understand what you mean by "how,"
for if you mean how was it done so that you in turn may do it. . .

" `I don't even know what it is. What you're saying,' she said with a touch of coldness.
Then she turned full around and put her hands on my face. `Kill with me tonight,' she
whispered as sensuously as a lover. `And tell me all that you know. What are we? Why
are we not like them?' She looked down into the street.
" `I don't know the answers to your questions,' I said to her. Her face contorted suddenly,
as if she were straining to hear me over a sudden noise. And then she shook her head. But
I went on. `I wonder the same things you wonder. I do not know. How I was made, I'll
tell you that . . . that Lestat did it to me. But the real "how" of it, I don't know!' Her face
had that same look of strain. I was seeing in it the first traces of fear, or something worse
and deeper than fear. 'Claudia,' I said to her, putting my hands over her hands and
pressing them gently against my skin. `Lestat has one wise thing to tell you. Don't ask
these questions. You've been my companion for countless years in my search for all that I
could learn of mortal life and mortal creation. Don't be my companion now in this
anxiety. He can't give us the answers. And I have none.'
"I could see she could not accept this, but I hadn't expected the convulsive turning away,
the violence with which she tore at her own hair for an instant and then stopped as if the
gesture were useless, stupid. It filled me with apprehension. She was looking at the sky. It
was smoky, starless, the clouds blowing fast from the direction of the river. She made a
sudden movement of her lips as if she'd bitten into them, then she turned to me and, still
whispering, she said, `Then he made me . . . he did it . . . you did not!' There was
something so dreadful about her expression, I'd left her before I meant to do it. I was
standing before the fireplace lighting a single candle in front of the tall mirror. And there
suddenly, I saw something which startled me, gathering out of the gloom first as a
hideous mask, then becoming its three-dimensional reality: a weathered skull. I stared at
it. It smelled faintly of the earth still, but had been scrubbed. `Why don't you answer me?'
she was asking. I heard Lestat's door open. He would go out to kill at once, at least to
fund the kill. I would not.
"I would let the first hours of the evening accumulate in quiet, as hunger accumulated in
me, till the drive grew almost too strong, so that I might give myself to it all the more
completely, blindly. I heard her question again clearly, as though it had been floating in
the air like the reverberation of a bell . . . and felt my heart pounding. `He did make me,
of course! He said so himself. But you hide something from me. Something he hints at
when I question him. He says that it could not have been done without you!'
"I found myself staring at the skull, yet hearing her as if the words were lashing me,
lashing me to make me tam around and face the lash. The thought went through me more
like a flash of cold than a thought, that nothing should remain of me now but such a skull.
I turned around and saw in the light from the street her eyes, like two dark flames in her
white face. A doll from whom someone had cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them
with a demonic fire. I found myself moving towards her, whispering her name, some
thought forming on my lips, then dying, coming towards her, then away from her, fussing
for her coat and her hat. I saw a tiny glove on the door which was phosphorescent in the
shadows, and for just a moment I thought it a tiny, severed hand.
" `What's the matter with you . . .?' She drew nearer, looking up into my face. `What has
always been the matter? Why do you stare at the skull like that, at the glover She asked
this gently, but . . . not gently enough.

"There was a slight calculation in her voice, an unreachable detachment.
" 'I need you,' I said to her, without wanting to say it. `I cannot bear to lose you. You're
the only companion I have in immortality.'
" 'But surely there must be others! Surely we are not the only vampires on earths' I heard
her saying it as I had said it, heard my own words coming back to me now on the tide of
her self-awareness, her searching. But there's no pain, I thought suddenly. There's
urgency, heartless urgency. I looked down at her. `Aren't you the same as I?' She looked
at me. `You've taught me all I know!'
" `Lestat taught you to kill.' I fetched the glove. `here, come . . . let's go out. I want to go
out. . .
I was stammering, trying to force the gloves on her. I lifted the great curly mass of her
hair and placed it gently over her coat. `But you taught me to see!' she said. `You taught
me the words vampire eyes,' she said. `You taught me to drink the world, to hunger for
more than . . '
" `I never meant those words that way, vampire eyes,' I said to her. `It has a different ring
when you say it . . . .' She was tugging at me, trying to make me look at her. `Come,' I
said to her, `I've something to show you . . . .' And quickly I led her down the passage and
down the spiral stairs through the dark courtyard. But I no more knew what I had to show
her, really, than I knew where I was going. Only that I had to move toward it with a
sublime and doomed instinct.
"We rushed through the early evening city, the sky overhead a pale violet now that the
clouds were gone, the stars small and faint, the air around us sultry and fragrant even as
we moved away from the spacious gardens, towards those mean and narrow streets where
the flowers erupt in the cracks of the stones, and the huge oleander shoots out thick,
waxen stems of white and pink blooms, like a monstrous weed in the empty lots. I heard
the staccato of Claudia's steps as she rushed beside me, never once asking me to slacken
my pace; and she stood finally, her face infinitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and
narrow sheet where a few old slope-roofed French houses remained among the Spanish
facades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered from the moldering brick beneath. I had
found the house now by a blind effort, aware that I had always known where it was and
avoided it, always turned before this dark lampless corner, not wishing to pass the low
window where I'd first heard Claudia cry. The house was standing still. Sunk lower than
it was in those days, the alley way crisscrossed with sagging cords of laundry, the weeds
high along the low foundation, the two dormer windows broken and patched with cloth. I
touched the shutters. `It was here I first saw you,' I said to her, thinking to tell it to her so
she would understand, yet feeling now the chill of her gaze, the distance of her stare. `I
heard you crying. You were there in a room with your mother. And -your mother was
dead. Dead for days, and you didn't know. You clung to her, whining . crying pitifully,
your body white and feverish and hungry. You were trying to wake her from the dead,
you were hugging her for warmth, for fear. It was almost morning and . . '
"I put my hand to my temples. `I opened the shutters . . I came into the room. I felt pity
for you. Pity. But. . . something else.'
"I saw her lips slack, her eyes wide. `You . . . fed on me?' she whispered. `I was your
victim!'

" `Yes!' I said to her. `I did it.'
"There was a moment so elastic and painful as to be unbearable. She stood stark-still in
the shadows, her huge eyes gathering the light, the warm air rising suddenly with a soft
noise. And then she turned. I heard the clicking of her slippers as she ran. And ran. And
ran. I stood frozen, hearing the sound grow smaller and smaller; and then I turned,, the
fear in me unraveling, growing huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her. It was
unthinkable that I not catch her, that I not overtake her at once and tell her that I loved
her, must have her, must keep her, and every second that I ran headlong down the dark
street after her was like her slipping away from me drop by drop; my heart was pounding,
unfed, pounding and rebelling against the strain. Until I came suddenly to a dead stop,
She stood beneath a lamppost, staring mutely, as if she didn't know me. I took her small
waist in both hand; and lifted her into the light. She studied me, her face contorted, her
head turning as if she wouldn't give me her direct glance, as if she must deflect an
overpowering feeling of revulsion. `You killed me,' she whispered `You took my life!'
" 'Yes,' I said to her, holding her so that I cook feel her heart pounding. `Rather, I tried to
take it. To drink it away. But you had a heart like no other hear I've ever felt, a heart that
beat and beat until I had to let you go, had to cast you away from me lest you quickened
my pulse till I would die. And it was Lestat who found me out; Louis the sentimentalist,
the fool feasting on a golden-haired child, a Holy Innocent a little girl. He brought you
back from the hospital where they'd put you, and I never knew what he mean to do except
teach me my nature. "Take her, finish it," he said. And I felt that passion for you again
(r)h, I know I've lost you now forever. I can see it ix your eyes! You look at me as you
look at mortals from aloft, from some region of cold self-sufficiency l can't understand.
But I did it. I felt it for you again, vile unsupportable hunger for your hammering heart
this cheek, this skin. You were pink and fragrant a! mortal children are, sweet with the
bite of salt and dust, I held you again, I took you again. And when I though your heart
would kill me and I didn't care, he parted us and, gashing his own wrist, gave it to you to
drink. And drink you did. And drink and drink until you nearly drained him and he was
reeling. But you were a vampire then. And that very night you drank a human's blood and
have every night thereafter.'
"Her face had not changed. The flesh was like the wax of ivory candles; only the eyes
showed life. There was nothing more to say to her. I set her down. `I took your life,' I
said. `He gave it back to you.'
" `And here it is,' she said under her breath. `And I hate you both!"'
The vampire stopped.
"But why did you tell her?" asked the boy after a respectful pause.
"How could I not tell her?" The vampire looked up in mild astonishment. "She had to
know it. She had to weigh one thing against the other. It was not as if Lestat had taken
her full from life as he had taken me; I had stricken her. She would have died! There
would have been no mortal life for her. But what's the difference? For all of us it's a
matter of years, dying! So what she saw more graphically then was what all men knew:
that death will come inevitably, unless one chooses . . . this!" He opened his white hands
now and looked at the palms.
"And did you lose her? Did she go?"

"Go! Where would she have gone? She was a child no bigger than that. Who would have
sheltered her? Would she have found some vault, like a mythical vampire, lying down
with worms and ants by day and rising to haunt some small cemetery and its
surroundings? But that's not why she didn't go. Something in her was as akin to me as
anything in her could have been. That thing in Lestat was the same. We could not bear to
live alone! We needed our little company! A wilderness of mortals surrounded us,
groping, blind, preoccupied, and the brides and bridegrooms of death.
" `Locked together in hatred,' she said to me calmly afterwards. I found her by the empty
hearth, picking the small blossoms from a long stem of lavender. I was so relieved to see
her there that I would have done anything, said anything. And when I heard her ask me in
a low voice if I would tell her all I knew, I did this gladly. For all the rest was nothing
compared to that old secret, that I had claimed her life. I told her of myself as I've told
you, of how Lestat came to me and what went on the night he carried her from the little
hospital. She asked no questions and only occasionally looked up from her flowers. An
then, when it was finished and I was sitting there, staring again at that wretched skull and
listening to the soft slithering of the petals of the flowers on her dress and feeling a dull
misery in my limbs and mind, she said to me, `I don't despise you!' I wakened. She
slipped off the high, rounded damask cushion an came towards me, covered with the
scent of flower. the petals in her hand. `Is this the aroma of mortal child?' she whispered.
`Louis. Lover.' I remember holding her and burying my head in her small chest, crushing
her bird-shoulders, her small hands working into my hair, soothing me, holding me. `I
was mortal b you,' she said, and when I lifted my eyes I saw he smiling; but the softness
on her lips was evanescent and in a moment she was looking past me like some one
listening for faint, important music. `You gave m your immortal kiss,' she said, though
not to me, but to herself. `You loved me with your vampire nature.'
" `I love you now with my human nature, if ever had it,' I said to her.
" `Ah yes . . .' she answered, still musing. `Yes, and that's your flaw, and why your face
was miserable when I said as humans say, "I hate you," and why you look at me as you
do now. Human nature. I have no human nature. And no short story of a mother' corpse
and hotel rooms where children learn monstrosity can give me one. I have none. Your
eyes grow cold with fear when I say this to you. Yet I have you tongue. Your passion for
the truth. Your need to drive the needle of the mind right to the heart of it all like the beak
of the hummingbird, who beats so wild and fast that mortals might think he had no tiny
feet could never set, just go from quest to quest, going again and again for the heart of it.
I am your vampire self more than you are. And now the sleep of sixty five years has
ended'
"The sleep of sixty-five years hers ended! I heard he! say it, disbelieving, not wanting to
believe she knee and meant precisely what she'd said. For it had beer. exactly that since
the night I tried to leave Lestat and failed and, falling in love with her, forgot my teeming
brain, my awful questions. And now she had the awful questions on her lips and must
know. She'd strolled slowly to the center of the room and strewn the crumpled lavender
all around her. She broke the brittle stem and touched it to her lips. And having heard the
whole story said, `He made me then . . . to be your companion. No chains could have
held you in your loneliness, and he could give you nothing. He gives me nothing .... I
used to think him charming. I liked the way he walked, the way he tapped the flagstones

with his walking stick and swung me in his arms. And the abandon with which he killed,
which was as I felt. But I no longer find him charming. And you never have. And we've
been his puppets, you and I; you remaining to take care of him, and I your saving
companion. Now's time to end it, Louis. Now's time to leave him.'
"Time to leave him.
"I hadn't thought of it, dreamed of it in so long; I'd grown accustomed to him, as if he
were a condition of life itself. I could hear a vague mingling of sounds now, which meant
he had entered the carriage way, that he would soon be on the back stairs. And I thought
of what I always felt when I heard him coming, a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then
the thought of being free of him forever rushed over me like water I'd forgotten, waves
and waves of cool water. I was standing now, whispering to her that he was coming.
" `I know,' she smiled. `I heard him when he turned the far corner.'
" `But he'll never let us leave,' I whispered, though I'd caught the implication of her
words; her vampire sense was keen. She stood en garde magnificently. `But you don't
know him if you think he'll let us leave,' I said to her, alarmed at her self-confidence. `He
will not let us go.'
"And she, still smiling, said, `Oh . . . really?"'
"It was agreed then to make plans. At once. The following night my agent came with his
usual complaints about doing business by the light of one wretched candle and took my
explicit orders for an ocean crossing. Claudia and I would go to Europe, on the first
available ship, regardless of what port we had to settle for. And paramount was that an
important chest be shipped with us, a chest which might have to be fetched carefully from
our house during the day and put on board, not in the freight but in our cabin. And then
there were arrangements for Lestat. I had planned to leave him the rents for several shops
and town houses and a small construction company operating in the Faubourg Marigny. I
put my signature to these things readily. I wanted to buy our freedom: to convince Lestat
we wanted only to take a. trip together and that he could remain in the style to which he
was accustomed; he would have his own money and need come to me for nothing. For all
these years, rd kept ` dependent on me. Of course, he demanded his funds from me as if I
were merely his banker, and thanked me with the most acrimonious words at his
command; but he loathed his dependence. I hoped to deflect his suspicion by playing to
his greed. And, convinced that he could read any emotion in my face, I was more than
fearful. I did not believe it would be possible to escape him. Do you understand what that
means? .I acted as though I believed it, but I did not.
"Claudia, meantime, was flirting with disaster, her equanimity overwhelming to me as
she read her vampire books and asked Lestat questions. She remained undisturbed by his
caustic outbursts, sometimes asking the same question over and over again in different
ways and carefully considering what little information he might let escape in spite of
himself. `What vampire made you what you are?' she asked, without looking up from her
book and keeping her lids lowered under his onslaught. `Why do you never talk about
him? she went on, as if his fierce objections were thin air. She seemed immune to his
irritation.
" 'You're greedy, both of you!' he said the next night as he paced back and forth in the
dark of the center of the room, turning a vengeful eye on Claudia, who was fitted into her

corner, in the circle of her candle flame, her books in stacks about her. `Immortality is not
enough for you! No, you would look the Gift Horse of God in the mouth! I could offer it
to any man out there in the street and he would jump for it..."
" `Did you jump for it?' she asked softly, her lips barely moving . . . . but you, you would
know the reason for it. Do you want to end it? I can give you death more easily than I
gave you life!' He turned to me, her fragile flame throwing his shadow across me. It made
a halo around his blond hair and left his face, except for the gleaming cheekbone, dark.
`Do you want death'
" `Consciousness is not death,' she whispered.
" `Answer me' Do you want death!'
" `And you give all these things. They proceed from you. Life and death,' she whispered,
mocking him.
" `I have,' he said. `I do.'
" `You know nothing,' she said to him gravely, her voice so low that the slightest noise
from the street interrupted it, might carry her words away, so that I found myself
straining to hear her against myself as I lay with my head back against the chair. `And
suppose the vampire who made you knew nothing, and the vampire who made that
vampire knew nothing, and the vampire before him knew nothing, and so it goes back
and back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing! And we must live with
the knowledge that there is no knowledge.'
" `Yes!' he cried out suddenly, his hands out, his voice tinged with something other than
anger.
"He was silent. She was silent. He turned, slowly, as if I'd made some movement which
alerted him, as if I were rising behind him. It reminded me of the way humans tam when
they feel my breath against them and know suddenly that where they thought themselves
to be utterly alone . . . that moment of awful suspicion before they see my face and gasp.
He was looking at me now, and I could barely see his lips moving. And then I sensed it.
He was afraid. Lestat afraid.
"And she was staring at him with the same level gaze, evincing no emotion, no thought.
" `You infected her with this . . .' he whispered.
"He struck a match now with a sharp crackle and lit the mantel candles, lifted the smoky
shades of the lamps, went around the room making light, until Claudia's small flame took
on a solidity and he stood with his back to the marble mantel looking from light to light
as if they restored some peace. 'I'm going out,' he said.
"She rose the instant he had reached the street, and suddenly she stopped in the center of
the room and stretched, her tiny back arched, her arms straight up into small fists, her
eyes squeezed shut for a moment and then wide open as if she were waking to the room
from a dream. There was something obscene about her gesture; the room seemed to
shimmer with Lestat's fear, echo with his last response. It demanded her attention. I must
have made some involuntary movement to turn away from her, because she was standing
at the arm of my chair now and pressing her hand fiat upon my book, a book I hadn't
been reading for hours. 'Come out with me.'

" `You were right. He knows nothing. There is nothing he can tell us,' I said to her.
"'Did you ever really ° that he did?' she asked me in the same small voice. `We'll find
others of our kind,' she said. `We'll find them in central Europe. That is where they live in
such numbers that the stories, both fiction and fact, fill volumes. I'm convinced it was
from there that all vampires came, if they came from any place at all. We've tarried too
long with him. Come out. Let the flesh instruct the mind'
"I think I felt a tremor of delight when she said these words, Let the flesh instruct the
mind. 'Put books aside and kill,' she was whispering to me. I followed her down the
stairs, across the courtyard and down a narrow alley to another street. Then she turned
with outstretched arms for me to pick her up and carry her, though, of course, she was not
tired; she wanted only to be rear my ear, to clutch my neck. 'I haven't told him my plan,
about the voyage, the money,' I was saying to her, conscious of something about her that
was beyond me as she rode my measured steps, weightless in my arms.
"'He killed the other vampire,' she said.
" `No, why do you say this?' I asked her. But it wasn't the saying of it that disturbed me,
stirred my soul as if it were a pool of water longing to be -still. I felt as if she were
moving me slowly towards something, as if she were the pilot of our slow walk through
the dark street. `Because I know it now,' she said with authority. `The vampire made a
slave of him, and he would no more be a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed-
him. Killed him before he knew what he might know, and then in panic made a slave of
you. And you've been his slave'
" `Never really . . ' I whispered to her. I felt the press of her cheek against my temple. She
was cold and needed the kill. `Not a slave. Just some sort of mindless accomplice,' I
confessed to her, confessed to myself. I could feel the fever for the kill rising in me, a
knot of hunger in my insides, a throbbing in the temples, as if the veins were contracting
and my body might become a map of tortured vessels.
"'No, slave,' she persisted in her grave monotone, as though thinking aloud, the words
revelations, pieces of a puzzle. `And I shall free us both.'
"I stopped. Her hand pressed me, urged me on. We were walking down the long wide
alley beside the cathedral, towards the lights of Jackson Square, the water rushing fast in
the gutter down the center of the alley, silver in the moonlight. She said, 'I will kill him.'
"I stood still at the end of the alley. I felt her shift in my arm, move down as if she could
accomplish being free of me without the awkward aid of my hands. I set her on the stone
sidewalk. I said no to her, I shook my head. I had that feeling then which I described
before, that the building around me--the Cabildo, the cathedral, the apartments along the
square-all this was silk and illusion and would ripple suddenly in a horrific wind, and a
chasm would open in the earth that was the reality. 'Claudia,' I gasped, turning away from
her.
" `And why not kill him!' she said now, her voice rising, silvery and finally shrill. `I have
no use for him] I can get nothing from him! And he causes me pain, which I will not
abide!'
" `And if he had so little use for us!' I said to her. But the vehemence was false. Hopeless.
She was at a distance from me now, small shoulders straight and determined, her pace

rapid, like a little girl who, walking out on Sundays with her parents, wants to walk ahead
and pretend she is all alone. `Claudia!' I called after her, catching up with her in a stride. I
reached for the small waist and felt her stiffen as if she had become iron. 'Claudia, you
cannot kill him!' I whispered. She moved backwards, skipping, clicking on the stones,
and moved out into the open street. A cabriolet rolled past us with a sudden surge of
laughter and the clatter of horses and wooden wheels. The street was suddenly silent. I
reached out for her and moved forward over an immense space and found her standing at
the gate of Jackson Square, hands gripping the wrought-iron bars. I drew down close to
her. `I don't care what you feel, what you say, you cannot mean to kill him,' I said to her.
" `And why not? Do you think ham so strong!' she said, her eyes on the statue in the
square, two immense pools of light.
" `He is stronger than you know! Stronger than you dream! How do you mean to kill
him? You can't measure his skill. You don't know!' I pleaded with her but could see her
utterly unmoved, like a child staring in fascination through the window of a toy shop. Her
tongue moved suddenly between her teeth and touched her lower lip in a strange flicker
that sent a mild shock through my body. I tasted blood. I felt something palpable and
helpless in my hands. I wanted to kill. I could smell and hear humans on the paths of the
square, moving about the market, along the levee. I was about to take her, making her
look at me, shake her if I had to, to make her listen, when she turned to me with her great
liquid eyes. `I love you, Louis,' she said.
`Then listen to me, Claudia, I beg you,' I whispered, holding her, pricked suddenly by a
nearby collection of whispers, the slow, rising articulation of human speech over the
mingled sounds of the night. `He'll destroy you if you try to kill him. There is no way you
can do such a thing for sure. You don't know how. And pitting yourself against him you'll
lose everything. Claudia, I can't bear this.'
"There was a barely perceptible smile on her lips. `No, Louis,' she whispered. `I can kill
him. And I want to tell you something else now, a secret between you and me.'
"I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering her lids so that her rich
lashes almost brushed the roundness of her cheeks. `The secret is, Louis, that I want to
kill him. I will enjoy it!'
"I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they'd done so often in the past;
and then she said, `I kill humans every night. I seduce them, draw them close to me, with
an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something . . . something, I don't
know what it is . . : She brought her fingers to her lips now and pressed her lips, her
mouth partly open so I could see the gleam of her teeth. `And I care nothing about them-
where they came from, where they would go-if I did not meet them on the way. But I
dislike him! I want him dead and will have him dead. I shall enjoy it.'
" `But Claudia, he is not mortal. He's immortal. No illness can touch him. Age has no
power over him. You threaten a life which might endure to the end of the world!'
" `Ah, yes, that's it, precisely!' she said with reverential awe. `A lifetime that might have
endured for centuries. Such blood, such power. Do you think I'll possess his power and
my own power when I take him''

"I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her. I could hear the
whispering of humans near me. They were whispering of the father and the daughter, of
some frequent sight of loving devotion. I realized they were talking of us.
" `It's not necessary,' I said to her. `It goes beyond all need, all common sense, all . .
" `What' Humanity? He's a killer!' she hissed. `Lone predator!' She repeated his own
term, mocking it. `Don't interfere with me or seek to know the time I choose to do it, nor
try to come between us. .
She raised her hand now to hush me and caught mine in an iron grasp, her tiny fingers
biting into my tight, tortured flesh. `If you do, you will bring me destruction by your
interference. I can't be discouraged.'
"She was gone then in a flurry of bonnet ribbons and clicking slippers. I turned, paying
no attention to where I went, wishing the city would swallow me, conscious now of the
hunger rising to overtake reason. I was almost loath to put an end to it. I needed to let the
lust, the excitement blot out all consciousness, and I thought of the kill over and over and
over, walking slowly up this street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it,
saying, It's a string which is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not pulling the string.
The string is pulling me . . . . And then I stood in the Rue Conti listening to a dull
thundering, a familiar sound. It was the fencers above in the salon, advancing on the
hollow wooden floor, forward, back again, scuttling, and the silver zinging of the foils. I
stood back against the wall, where I could see them through the high naked windows, the
young men dueling late into the night, left ,arm poised like the arm of a dancer, grace
advancing towards death, grace thrusting for the heart, images of the young Freniere now
driving the silver blade forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had come
down the narrow wooden steps to the street-a young boy, a boy so young he had the
smooth, plump cheeks of a child; his face was pink and flushed from the fencing, and
beneath his smart gray coat and ruffled shirt there was the sweet smell of cologne and
salt. I could feel his heat as he emerged from the dim light of the stairwell. He was
laughing to himself, talking almost inaudibly to himself, his brown hair falling down over
his eyes as he went along, shaking his head, the whispers rising, then falling off. And
then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He stared, and his eyelids quivered and he laughed
quickly, nervously. `Excuse me!' he said now in French. `You gave me a start!' And then,
just as he moved to make a ceremonial bow and perhaps go around me, he stood still, and
the shock spread over his flushed face. I could see the heart beating in the pink flesh of
his cheeks, smell the sudden sweat of his young, taut body.
" `You saw-me in the lamplight,' I said to him. `And my face looked to you like the mask
of death.'
"His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he nodded, his eyes dazed.
" `Pass by!' I said to him. `Fast!"
The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he stretched his long legs
under the table and, leaning back, pressed his hands to his head as if exerting a great
pressure on his temples.

The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position, his hands hugging his arms,
unwound slowly. He glanced at the tapes and then back at the vampire. "But you killed
someone that night," he said.
"Every night," said the vampire.
"Why did you let him go then?" asked the boy.
"I don't know," said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of truly I don't know, but
rather, let it be. "You look tired," said the vampire. "You look cold."
"It doesn't matter," said the boy quickly. "The room's a little cold; I don't care about that.
You're not cold, are you?"
"No." The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with silent laughter.
A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking and the boy to be studying
the vampire's face. The vampire's eyes moved to the boy's watch.
"She didn't succeed, did she?" the boy asked softly.
"What do you honestly think?" asked the vampire. He had settled back in his chair. He
looked at the boy intently.
"That she was . . . as you said, destroyed," said the boy; and he seemed to feel the words,
so that he swallowed after he'd said the word destroyed. "Was she?" he asked.
"Don't you think that she could do it?" asked the vampire.
"But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew what powers he had, what
secrets he knew. How could she even be sure how to kill him? How did she try?"
The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression unreadable to the boy, who
found himself looking away, as though the vampire's eyes were burning lights. "Why
don't you drink from that bottle in your pocket?" asked the vampire. "It will make you
warm."
"Oh, that . .. : ' said the boy. "I was going to. I just. . : '
The vampire laughed. "You didn't think it was polite!" he said, and he suddenly slapped
his thigh.
"That's true," the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of his jacket
pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the
vampire.
"No," the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the offer.
Then his face became serious again and, sitting back, he went on.
"Lestat had a musician friend in the Rue Dumaine. We had seen him at a recital in the
home of a Madame LeClair, who lived there also, which was at that time an extremely
fashionable street; and this Madame LeClair, with whom Lestat was also occasionally
amusing himself, had found the musician a room in another mansion nearby, where
Lestat visited him often. I told you he played with his victims, made friends with them,
seduced them into trusting and liking him, even loving him, before he killed. So he
apparently played with this young boy, though it had gone on longer than any other such
friendship I had ever observed. The young boy wrote good music, and often Lestat

brought fresh sheets of it home and played the songs on the square grand in our parlor.
The boy had a great talent, but you could tell that this music would not sell, because it
was too disturbing. Lestat gave him money and spent evening after evening with him,
often taking him to restaurants the boy could have never afforded, and he bought him all
the paper and pens which he needed for the writing of his music.
"As I said, it had gone on far longer than any such friendship Lestat had ever had. And I
could not tell whether he had actually become fond of a mortal in spite of himself or was
simply moving towards a particularly grand betrayal and cruelty. Several times he'd
indicated to Claudia and me that he was headed out to kill the boy directly, but he had
not. And, of course, I never asked him what he felt because it wasn't worth the great
uproar my question would have produced. Lestat entranced with a mortal! He probably
would have destroyed the parlor furniture in a rage.
"The next night-after that which I just described to you-he jarred me miserably by asking
me to go with him to the boy's flat. He was positively friendly, in one of those moods
when he wanted my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that out of him. Wanting to
see a good play, the regular opera, the ballet. He always wanted me, along. I think I must
have seen Macbeth with him fifteen times. We went to every Performance, even those by
amateurs, and Lestat would stride home afterwards, repeating the lines to me and even
shouting out to passers-by with an Outstretched finger, `Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow!' until they skirted him as if he were drunk. But this effervescence was frenetic
and likely to vanish in an instant; just a word or two of amiable feeling on my part, some
suggestion that I found his companionship pleasant, could banish all such affairs for
months. Even years. But now he came to me in such a mood and asked me to go to the
boy's room. He was not above pressing my arm as he urged me. And I, dull, catatonic,
gave him some miserable excuse, thinking only of Claudia, of the agent, of imminent
disaster. I could feel it and wondered that he did not feel it. And finally he picked up a
book from the floor and threw it at me, shouting, `Read your damn poems, then! Rot!'
And he bounded out.
"This disturbed me. I cannot tell you how it disturbed me. I wished him cold, impassive,
gone. I resolved to plead with Claudia to drop this. I felt powerless, and hopelessly
fatigued. But her door had been locked until she left, and I had glimpsed her only for a
second while Lestat was chattering, a vision of lace and loveliness as she slipped on her
coat; puffed sleeves again and a violet ribbon on her breast, her white lace stockings
showing beneath the hem of the little gown, and her white slippers immaculate. She cast
a cold look at me as she went out.
"When I returned later, satiated and for a while too sluggish for my own thoughts to
bother me, I gradually began to sense that this was the night. She would try tonight.
"I cannot tell you how I knew this. Things about the flat disturbed me, alerted me.
Claudia moved in the back parlor behind closed doors. And I fancied I heard another
voice there, a whisper. Claudia never brought anyone to our flat; no one did except
Lestat, who brought his women of the streets. But I knew there was someone there, yet I
got no strong scent, no proper sounds. And then there were aromas in the air of food and
drink. And chrysanthemums stood in the silver vase on the square grand-flowers which,
to Claudia, meant death.

"Then Lestat came, singing something soft under his breath, his walking stick making a
rat-tat-tat on the rails of the spiral stairs. He came down the long hall, his face flushed
from the kill, his lips pink; and he set his music on the piano. `Did I kill him or did I not
kill him!' He Bashed the question at me now with a pointing finger.- `What's your guess?'
" 'You did not,' I said numbly. Because you invited me to go with you, and would never
have invited me to share that kill.'
" `Ah, but! Did I kill him in a rage because you would not go. with me!' he said and threw
back the cover from the keys. I could see that he would be able to go on like this until
dawn. He was exhilarated.
I watched him flip through the music, thinking, Can he die? Can he actually die? And
does she mean to do this? At one point, I wanted to go to her and tell her we must
abandon everything, even the proposed trip, and live as we had before. But I had the
feeling now that there was no retreat. Since the day she'd begun to question him, this-
whatever it was to be-was inevitable. And I felt a weight on me, holding me in the chair.
"He pressed two chords with his hands. He had an immense reach and even in life could
have been a fine pianist. But lie played without feeling; he was always outside the music,
drawing it out of the piano as if by magic, by the virtuosity of his vampire senses and
control; the music did not come through him, was not drawn through him by himself.
`Well, did I kill him?' he asked me again.
" `No, you did not,' I said again, though I could just as easily have said the opposite. I was
concentrating on keeping my face a mask.
"'You're right. I did not,' he said. `It excites me to be close to him, to think over and over,
I can kill him and I will kill him but not now. And then to leave him and find someone
who looks as nearly like him as possible. If he had brothers . . . why, rd kill them one by
one. The family would succumb to a mysterious fever which dried up the very blood in
their bodies!' he said, now mocking a barker's tone. `Claudia has a taste for families.
Speaking of families, I suppose you heard. The Freniere place is supposed to be haunted;
they can't keep an overseer and the slaves run away.'
"This was something I did not wish to hear in particular. Babette had died young, insane,
restrained finally from wandering towards the ruins of Pointe du Lac, insisting she had
seen the devil there and must find him; I'd heard of it in wisps of gossip. And then came
the funeral notices: rd thought occasionally of going to her, of trying some way to rectify
what I had done; and other times I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of
nightly killing, I had grown far from the attachment rd felt for her or for my sister or any
mortal. And I watched the tragedy finally as one might from a theater balcony, moved
from time to time, but never sufficiently to jump the railing and join the players on the
stage.
" `Don't talk of her,' I said.
"`Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your lady love, your fancy.' He
smiled at me. `You know, I had it all my way finally in the end, didn't I? But I was telling
you about my young friend and how. .
" I wish you .would play the music,' I said softly, unobtrusively, but as persuasively as
possible. Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something just right he found

himself doing what I'd said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say, `You
fool,' he began playing the music. I heard the doors of the back parlor open and Claudia's
steps move down the hall. Don't come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it
before we're all destroyed. But she came on steadily until she reached the hall mirror. I
could hear her opening the small table drawer, and then the zinging of her hairbrush. She
was wearing a floral perfume. I turned slowly to face her as she appeared in the door, still
all in white, and moved across the carpet silently toward the piano. She stood at the end
of the keyboard, her hands folded on the wood, her chin resting on her hands, her eyes
fixed on Lestat.
"I could see his profile and her small face beyond, looking up at him. 'What is it now!' he
said, turning the page and letting his hand drop to his thigh. `You irritate me. Your very
presence irritates me!' His eyes moved over the page.
" `Does it?' she said in her sweetest voice.
"'Yes, it does. And I'll tell you something else. I've met someone who would make a
better vampire than you do.'
"This stunned me. But I didn't have to urge him to go on. `Do you get my meaning?' he
said to her.
" `Is it supposed to frighten me?' she asked.
" `You're spoiled because you're an only child,' he said. `You need a brother. Or rather, I
need a brother. I get weary of you both. Greedy, brooding vampires that haunt our own
lives. I dislike it.'
" 'I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us,' she said.
" `You think so!' he said, smiling, his voice with a note of triumph. Do you think you
could do it? I suppose Louis has told you how it was done or how he thinks it was done.
You don't have the power. Either of you,' he said.
"This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted for. She was studying him.
I could see she did not entirely believe him.
" `And what gave you the power?' she asked softly, but with a touch of sarcasm.
" `That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never know. For even the Erebus
in which we live must have its aristocracy.'
" `You're a liar,' she said with a short laugh. And just as he touched his fingers to the keys
again, she said, `But you upset my plans.'
"'Your plans?' he asked.
"'I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of lies. You're my father,' she
said. `I want to make peace with you. I want things to be as they were.'
"Now he was the one who did not believe. He threw a glance at me, then looked at her.
`That can be. Just stop asking me questions. Stop following me. Stop searching in every
alleyway for other vampires. There are no other vampires! And this is where you live and
this is where you stay!' He looked confused for the moment, as if raising his own voice
had confused him. `I take care of you. You don't need anything.'

" `And you don't know anything, and that is why you detest my questions. All that's clear.
So now let's have peace, because there's nothing else to be had. I have a present for you.'
" `And I hope it's a beautiful woman with endowments you'll never possess;' he said,
looking her up and down. Her face changed when he did this. It was as if she almost lost
some control I'd never seen her lose. But then she just shook her head and reached out
one small, rounded arm and tugged at his sleeve.
" `I meant what I said. I'm weary of arguing with you. Hell is hatred, people living
together in eternal hatred. We're not in hell. You can take the present or not, I don't care.
It doesn't matter. Only let's have an end to all this. Before Louis, in disgust, leaves us
both.' She was urging him now to leave the piano, bringing down the wooden cover again
over the keys, turning him on the piano stool until his eyes followed her to the door.
" `You're serious. Present, what do you mean, present?'
" `You haven't fed enough, I can tell by your color, by your eyes. You've never fed
enough at this hour. Let's say that I can give you a precious moment. Suffer the little
children to come unto me;' she whispered, and was gone. He looked at me. I said nothing.
I night as well have been drugged. I could see the curiosity in his face, the suspicion. He
followed her down the hall. And then I heard him let out a long, conscious moan, a
perfect mingling of hunger and lust'
"When I reached the door, and I took my time, he was bending over the settee. Two small
boys lay there, nestled among the soft velvet pillows, totally abandoned to sleep as
children can be, their pink mouths open, their small round faces utterly smooth. Their
skin was moist, radiant, the curls of the darker of the two damp and pressed to the
forehead. I saw at once by their pitiful and identical clothes that they were orphans. And
they had ravaged a meal set before them on our best china. The tablecloth was stained
with wine, and a small bottle stood half full among the greasy plates and forks. But there
was an aroma in the room I did not like. I moved closer, better to see the sleeping ones,
and I could see their throats were bare but untouched. Lestat had sunk down beside the
darker one; he was by far the more beautiful. He might have been lifted to the painted
dome of a cathedral. No more than seven years old, he had that perfect beauty that is of
neither sex, but angelic. Lestat brought his hand down gently on the pale throat, and then
he touched the silken lips. He let out a sigh which had again that longing, that sweet,
painful anticipation. `Oh . . . Claudia . . : he sighed. `You've outdone yourself. Where did
you find them?'
"She said nothing. She had receded to a dark armchair and sat back against two large
pillows, her legs out straight on the rounded cushion, her ankles drooping so that you did
not see the bottom of her white slippers but the curved insteps and the tight, delicate little
straps. She was staring at Lestat. `Drunk on brandy wine,' she said. `A thimbleful!' and
gestured to the table. 'I thought of you when I saw them . . . I thought if I share this with
him, even he will forgive.'
"He was warmed by her flattery. He looked at her now and reached out and clutched her
white lace ankle. `Ducky!' he whispered to, her and laughed, but then he hushed, as if he
didn't wish to wake the doomed children. He gestured to her, intimately, seductively,
`Come sit beside him. You take him, and I'll take this one. Come.' He embraced her as
she passed and nestled beside the other boy. He stroked the boy's moist hair, he ran his

fingers over the rounded lids and along the fringe of lashes. And then he put his whole
softened hand across the boy's face and felt at the temples, cheeks, and jaw, massaging
the unblemished flesh. He had forgotten I was there or she was there, but he withdrew his
hand and sat still for a moment, as though his desire was making him dizzy. He glanced
at the ceiling and then down at the perfect feast. He turned the boy's head slowly against
the back of the couch, and the boy's eyebrows tensed for an instant and a moan escaped
his lips.
"Claudia's eyes were steady on Lestat, though now she raised her left hand and slowly
undid the buttons of the child who lay beside her and reached inside the shabby little shirt
and felt the bare flesh. Lestat did the same, but suddenly it was as if his hand had life
itself and drew his arm into the shirt and around the boy's small chest in a. tight embrace;
and Lestat slid down off the cushions of the couch to his knees on the floor. his arm
locked to the boy's body. Pulling it up close to him so that his face was buried in the boy's
neck. His lips moved over the neck and over the chest and over the tiny nipple of the
chest and then, putting his other arm into the open shirt, so that the boy lay hopelessly
wound in both arms, he drew the boy up tight and sank his teeth into his throat. The boy's
head fell back, the curls loose as he was lifted, and again he let out a small moan and his
eyelids fluttered-but never opened. And Lestat knelt, the boy pressed against him,
sucking hard, his own back arched and rigid, his body rocking back and forth carrying the
boy, his long moans rising and falling in time with the slow rocking, until suddenly his
whole body tensed, and his hands seemed to grope for some way to push the boy away,
as if the boy himself in his helpless slumber were clinging to Lestat; and finally he
embraced the boy again and moved slowly forward over him, letting him down among
the pillows, the sucking softer, now almost inaudible.
"He withdrew. His hands pressed the boy down. He knelt there, his head thrown back, so
the wavy blond hair bung loose and disheveled. And then he slowly sank to the floor,
turning, his back against the leg of the couch. `Ah . . . God . . : he whispered, his head
back, his lids half-mast. I could see the color rushing to his cheeks, rushing into his
hands. One hand lay on his bent knee, fluttering, and then it lay still.
"Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside the unharmed boy. The
other's body already withered, the neck like a fractured stem, the heavy head falling now
at an odd angle, the angle of death, into the pillow.
"But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I could see his tongue
between his teeth. He lay too still, the tongue, as it were, trying to get out of the mouth,
trying to move past the barrier of the teeth and touch the lip. He appeared to shiver, his
shoulders convulsing . . . then relaxing heavily; yet he did not move. A veil had fallen
over his clear gray eyes. He was peering at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I
stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway, but Claudia said in a sharp hiss, `Go
back!'
" `Louis . . : he was saying. I could hear it now . . `Louis . . . Louis. . .'
" `Don't you like it, Lestat?' she asked him.
" `Something's wrong with it,' he gasped, and his eyes widened as if the mere speaking
were a colossal effort. He could not move. I saw it. He could not move at all. `Claudia!'
He gasped again, and his eyes rolled towards her.

" `Don't you like the taste of children's blood . . . ?' she asked softly.
" `Louis . . : he whispered, finally lifting his head just for an instant. It fell back on the
couch. `Louis, it's . . . it's absinthe! Too much absinthe!' he gasped. `She's poisoned them
with it. She's poisoned me. Louis. . . : He tried to raise his hand. I drew nearer, the table
between us.
" `Stay back!' she said again. And now she slid off the couch and approached him,
peering down into his face as he had peered at the child. `Absinthe, Father,' she said, `and
laudanum!'
" `Demon!' he said to her. `Louis . . . put me in my coffin.' He struggled to rise. `Put me
in my coffin!' His voice was hoarse, barely audible. The hand fluttered, lifted, and fell
back.
" 'I'll put you in your coffin, Father,' she said, as though she were soothing him. `I'll put
you in it forever.' And then, from beneath the pillows of the couch, she drew a kitchen
knife.
" 'Claudia! Don't do this thing!' I said to her. But she flashed at me a virulency I'd never
seen in her face, and as I stood there paralyzed, she gashed his throat, and he let out a
sharp, choking cry. `God!' he shouted out. `God!'
"The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his coat. It poured as it might
never pour from a human being, all the blood with which he had filled himself before the
child and from the child; and he kept turning his head, twisting, making the bubbling
gash gape. She sank the knife into his chest now and he pitched forward, his mouth wide,
his fangs exposed, both hands convulsively flying towards the knife, fluttering around its
handle, slipping off its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes.
`Louis! Louis!' He let out one more gasp and fell sideways on the carpet. She stood
looking down at him. The blood flowed everywhere like water. He was groaning, trying
to raise himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other shoving at the floor. And
now, suddenly, she flew at him and clamping both arms about his neck, bit deep into him
as he struggled. `Louis, Louis!' he gasped over and over, struggling, trying desperately to
throw her off; but she rode him, her body lifted by his shoulder, hoisted and dropped,
hoisted and dropped, until she pulled away; and, finding the floor quickly, she backed
away from him, her hands to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I
turned away from her, my body convulsed by what I'd seen, unable to look any longer.
`Louis!' she said; but I only shook my head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to
sway. But she said, `Look what's happening to him!'
"He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shriveling,
drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed
through it. I gasped, but I could not take my eyes off it, even as the shape of the bones
began to show through, his lips drawing back from his teeth, the flesh of his nose drying
to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling,
the irises dancing from side to side, even as the flesh cleaved to the bones, became
nothing but a parchment wrapping for the bones, the clothes hollow and limp over the
skeleton that remained. Finally the irises rolled to the top of his head, and the whites of
his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, a pair of
gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring helplessly at it."

"For a long time, Claudia merely stood there. Blood had soaked the carpet, darkening the
woven wreaths of flowers. It gleamed sticky and black on the floorboards. It stained her
dress, her white shoes, her cheek. She wiped at it with a crumpled napkin, took a swipe at
the impossible stains of the dress, and then she said, `Louis, you must help me get him
out of here!'
"I said, `Not' I'd turned my back on her, on the corpse at her feet.
" `Are you mad, Louis? It can't remain here!' she said to me. `And the boys. You must
help met The other one's dead from the absinthe! Louis!'
"I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed impossible.
"She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the way. We found the kitchen
stove still heaped with the bones of the mother and daughter she'd killed-a dangerous
blunder, a stupidity. So she scraped them out now into a sack and dragged the sack across
the courtyard stones to the carriage. I hitched the horse myself, shushing the groggy
coachman, and drove the hearse out of the city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St. Jean,
towards the dark swamp that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain. She sat beside me, silent, as
we rode on and on until we'd passed the gas-lit gates of the few country houses, and the
shell road narrowed and became rutted, the swamp rising on either side of us, a great wall
of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I could smell the stench of the muck, hear
the rustling of the animals.
"Claudia had wrapped Lestat's, body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and then, to
my horror, she had sprinkled it over with the long-stemmed chrysanthemums. So it had a
sweet, funereal smell as I lifted it last of all from the carriage. It was almost weightless,
as limp as something made of knots and cords, as I put it over my shoulder and moved
down into the dark water, the water rising and filling my boots, my feet seeking some
path in the ooze beneath, away from where I'd laid the two boys. I went deeper and
deeper in with Lestat's remains, though why, I did not know. And finally, when I could
barely see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to
dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I stood there shaken,
looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy surface. The
numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to lift
and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of
transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if
some force were urging me to go down with him, to descend into the dark water and
never come back. It was so distinct and so strong that it made the articulation of voices
seem only a murmur by comparison. It spoke without language, saying, `You know what
you must do. Come down into the darkness. Let it all go away.'
"But at that moment I heard Claudia's voice. She was calling my name. I turned, and,
through the tangled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint
luminescent shell road.
"That morning, she wound her arms around me, pressed her head against my chest in the
closeness of the coffin, whispering she loved me, that we were free now of Lestat forever.
`I love you, Louis,' she said over and over as the darkness finally came down with the lid
and mercifully blotted out all consciousness.

"When I awoke, she was going through his things. It was a tirade, silent, controlled, but
filled with a fierce anger. She pulled the contents from cabinets, emptied drawers onto the
carpets, pulled one jacket after another from his armoires, turning the pockets inside out,
throwing the coins and theater tickets and bits and pieces of paper away. I stood in the.
door of his room, astonished, watching her. His coffin lay there, heaped with scarves and
pieces of tapestry. I had the compulsion to open it. I had the wish to see him there.
`Nothing!' she finally said in disgust. .She wadded the clothes into the grate. `Not a hint
of where he came from, who made him!' she said. `Not a scrap' She looked to me as if for
sympathy. I turned away from her. I was unable to look at her. I moved back into that
bedroom which I kept for myself, that room filled with my own books and what things I'd
saved from my mother and sister, and I sat on .the bed. I could hear her at the door, but I
would not look at her. `He deserved to die!' she said to me.
" `Then we deserve to die. The same way. Every night of our lives,' I said back to her.
`Go away from me.' It was as if my words were my thoughts, my mind alone only
formless confusion. `I'll care for you because you can't care for yourself. But I don't want
you near me. Sleep in that box you bought for yourself. Don't come near me.'
" `I told you I was going to do it. I told you . : ' she said. Never had her voice sounded so
fragile, so like a little silvery bell. I looked up at her, startled but unshaken. Her face
seemed not her face. Never had anyone shaped such agitation into the features of a doll.
`Louis, I told you!' she said, her lips quivering. `I did it for us. So we could be free.' I
couldn't stand the sight of her. Her beauty, her seeming innocence, and this terrible
agitation. I went past her, perhaps knocking her backwards, I don't know. And I was
almost to the railing of the steps when I heard a strange sound.
"Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this sound. Never since the night
long ago when I had first found her, a mortal child, clinging to her mother. She was
crying!
"It drew me back now against my will. Yet it sounded so unconscious, so hopeless, as
though she meant no one to hear it, or didn't care if it were heard by the whole world. I
found her lying on my bed in the place where I often sat to read, her knees drawn up, her
whole frame shaking with her sobs. The sound of it was terrible. It was more heartfelt,
more awful than her mortal crying had ever been. I sat down slowly, gently, beside her
and put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head, startled, her eyes wide, her mouth
trembling. Her face was stained with tears, tears that were tinted with blood. Her eyes
brimmed with them, and the faint touch of red stained her tiny hand. She didn't seem to
be conscious of this, to see it. She pushed her hair back from her forehead. Her body
quivered then with a long, low, pleading sob.
" `Louis . . . if I lose you, I have nothing,' she whispered. `I would undo it to have you
back. I can't undo what I've done.' She put her arms around me, climbing up against me,
sobbing against my heart. My hands were reluctant to touch her; and then they moved as
if I couldn't stop them, to enfold her and hold her and stroke her hair. `I can't live without
you . . : she whispered. `I would die rather than live without you. I would die the same
way he died. I can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not
love Mel' Her sobs grew worse, more bitter, until finally I bent and kissed her soft neck
and' cheeks. Winter plums. Plums from an enchanted wood where the fruit never falls
from the boughs. Where the flowers never wither and die. `All right, my dear . .

I said to her. `All right, my love . . : And I rocked her slowly, gently in my arms, until she
dozed, murmuring something about our being eternally happy, free of Lestat forever,
beginning the, great adventure of our lives."
"The great adventure of our lives. What does It mean to die when you can live until the
end of the world? And what is `the end of the world' except a phrase, because who knows
even what is the world itself? I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one
utterly shattered by the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, . possessing no
illusions, living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking
in a void: the, painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking
out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which God
made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the
clock, in a room as vast as the universe.
"I was walking the streets again, Claudia gone her way to kill, the perfume of her hair and
dress lingering on my fingertips, on my coat, my eyes moving far ahead of me like the
pale beam of a lantern. I found myself at the cathedral: What does it mean to die when
you can live until the end of the world? I was thinking of my brother's death, of the
incense and the rosary. I had the desire suddenly to be in that funeral room, listening to
the sound of the women's voices rising and falling with the Aves, the clicking of the
beads, the smell of the wax. I could remember the crying. It was palpable, as if it were
just yesterday, just behind a door. I saw myself walking fast down a corridor and gently
giving the door a shove.
"The great facade of the cathedral rose in a dark mass opposite the square, but the doors
were open and I could see a soft, flickering light within. It was Saturday evening early,
and the people were going to confession for Sunday Mass and Communion. Candles
burned dim in the chandeliers. At the far end of the nave the altar loomed out of the
shadows, laden with white flowers. It was to the old church on this spot that they had
brought my brother for the final service before the cemetery. And I realized suddenly that
I hadn't been in this place since, never once come up the stone steps, crossed the porch,
and passed through the open doors.
"I had no fear. If anything, perhaps, I longed for something to happen, for the stones to
tremble as I entered the shadowy foyer and saw the distant tabernacle on the altar. I
remembered now that I had passed here once when the windows were ablaze and the
sound of singing poured out into Jackson Square. I had hesitated then, wondering if there
were some secret Lestat had never told me, something which might destroy me were I to
enter. I'd felt compelled to enter, but I had pushed this out of my mind, breaking loose
from the fascination of the open doors, the throng of people making one voice. I had, had
something for Claudia, a doll I was taking to her, a bridal doll I'd lifted from a darkened
toy shop window and placed in a great box with ribbons and tissue paper. A doll for
Claudia. I remembered pressing on with it, hearing the heavy vibrations of the organ
behind me, my eyes narrow from the great blaze of the candles.
"Now I thought of that moment; that fear in me at the very sight of the altar, the sound of
the Pange Lingua. And I thought again, persistently, of my brother. I could see the coin
rolling along up the center aisle, the procession of mourners behind it. I felt no fear now.
As I said, I think if anything I felt a longing for some fear, for some reason for fear as I
moved slowly along the dark, stone walls. The air was chill and damp in spite of summer.

The thought of Claudia's doll came back to me. Where was that doll? For years Claudia
had played with that doll. Suddenly I saw myself searching for the doll, in the relentless
and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors
that won't open or drawers that won't shut, struggling over and over against the same
meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight
of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.
"I was in the cathedral. A woman stepped out of the confessional and passed the long line
of those who waited. A man who should have stepped up neat did not move; and my eye,
sensitive even in my vulnerable condition, noted this, and I turned to see him. He was
staring at me. Quickly I turned my back on him. I heard him enter the confessional and
shut the door. I walked up the aisle of the church and then, more from exhaustion than
from any conviction, went into an empty pew and sat down. I had almost genuflected
from old habit. My mind seemed as muddled and tortured as that of any human. I closed
my eyes for a moment and tried to banish all thoughts. Hear and see, I said to myself.
And with this act of will, my senses emerged from the torment. All around me in the
gloom I heard the whisper of prayers, the tiny click of the rosary beads; soft the sighing
of the woman who knelt now at the Twelfth Station. Rising from the sea of wooden pews
came the scent of rats. A rat moving somewhere near the altar, a rat in the great
woodcarved side altar of the Virgin Mary. The gold candlesticks shimmered on the altar;
a rich white chrysanthemum bent suddenly on its stem, droplets glistening on the
crowded petals, a sour fragrance rising from a score of vases, from altars and side altars,
from statues of Virgins and Christs and saints. I stared at the statues; I became obsessed
suddenly and completely with the lifeless profiles, the staring eyes, the empty hands, the
frozen folds. Then my body convulsed with such violence that I found myself pitched
forward, my hand on the pew before me. It was a cemetery of dead forms, of funereal
effigy and stone angels. I looked up and saw myself in a most palpable vision ascending
the altar steps, opening the tiny sacrosanct tabernacle, reaching with monstrous hands for
the consecrated ciborium, and taking the Body of Christ and strewing Its white wafers all
over the carpet; and walking then on the sacred wafers, walking up and down before the
altar, giving Holy Communion to the dust. I rose up now in the pew and stood there
staring at this vision. I knew full well the meaning of it.
"God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to nothingness. 1 was the
supernatural in this cathedral. I was the only supermortal thing that stood conscious under
this roof! Loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness. The cathedral crumbled in my
vision; the saints listed and fell. Rats ate the Holy Eucharist and nested on the sills. A
solitary rat with an enormous tail stood tugging and gnawing at the rotted altar cloth until
the candlesticks fell and rolled on the slime-covered stones. And I remained standing.
Untouched. Undead-reaching out suddenly for the plaster hand of the Virgin and seeing it
break in my hand, so that I held the hand crumbling in my palm, the pressure of my
thumb turning it to powder.
"And then suddenly through the ruins, up through the open door through which I could
see a wasteland in all directions, even the great river frozen over and stuck with the
encrusted ruins of ships, up through these ruins now came a funeral procession, a band of
pale, white men and women, monsters with gleaming eyes and flowing black clothes, the
coffin rumbling on the wooden wheels, the rats scurrying across the broken and buckling

marble, the procession advancing, so that I could see then Claudia in the procession, her
eyes staring from behind a thin black veil, one gloved hand locked upon a black prayer
book, the other on the coffin as it moved beside her. And there now in the coffin; beneath
a glass cover, I saw to my horror the skeleton of Lestat, the wrinkled skin now pressed
into the very texture of his bones, his eyes but sockets, his blond hair billowed on the
white satin.
"The procession stopped. The mourners moved out, filling the dusty pews without a
sound, and Claudia, turning with her book, opened it and lifted the veil back from her
face, her eyes fixed on me as her finger touched the page. `And now art thou cursed from
the earth,' she whispered, her whisper rising in echo in the ruins. `And now art thou
cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from
thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her
strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth . . . and whoever slayeth
thee, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold.'
"I shouted at her, I screamed, the scream rising up out of the depths of my being like
some great rolling black force that broke from my lips and sent my body reeling against
my will. A terrible sighing rose from the mourners, a chorus growing louder and louder,
as I turned to see them all about me, pushing me into the aisle against the very sides of
the coffin, so that I turned to get my balance and found both my hands upon it. And I
stood there staring down not at the remains of Lestat, but at the body of my mortal
brother. A quiet descended, as if a veil had fallen over all and made their forms dissolve
beneath its soundless folds. There was my brother, blond and young and sweet as he had
been in life, as real and warm to me now as he'd been years and years beyond which I
could never have remembered him thus, so perfectly was he re-created, so perfectly in
every detail. His blond hair brushed back from his forehead, his eyes closed as if he slept,
his smooth fingers around the crucifix on his breast, his lips so pink and silken I could
hardly bear to see them and not touch them.
And as I reached out just to touch the softness of his skin, the vision ended.
"I was sitting still in the Saturday night cathedral, the smell of the tapers thick in the
motionless air, the woman of the stations gone and darkness gathering behind me, across
from me, and now above me. A boy appeared in the black cassock of a lay brother, with a
long extinguisher on a golden pole, putting its little funnel down upon one candle and
then another and then another. I was stupefied He glanced at me and then away, as if not
to disturb a man deep in prayer. And then, as he moved on up to the next chandelier, I felt
a hand on my shoulder.
"That two humans should pass this close to me without my hearing, without my even
caring, registered somewhere within me that I was in danger, but I did not care. I looked
up now and saw a gray-haired priest. `You wish to go to confession?' he asked. 'I was
about to lock up the church.' He narrowed his eyes behind his thick glasses. The only
light now came from the racks of little red-glass candles which burned before the saints;
and shadows leaped upon the towering walls. `You are troubled, aren't you? Can I help
you?'

" `It's too late, too late,' I whispered to him, and rose to go. He backed away from me, still
apparently unaware of anything about my appearance that should alarm him, and said
kindly, to reassure me, `No, it's still early. Do you want to come into the confessional?'
"For a moment I just stared at him. I was tempted to smile. And then it occurred to me to
do it. But even as I followed him down the aisle, in the shadows of the vestibule, I knew
this would be nothing, that it. was madness. Nevertheless, I knelt down in the small
wooden booth,. my hands folded on the priedieu as he sat in the booth beside it and slid
back the panel to show me the dim outline of his profile. I stared at him for a moment.
And then I said it, lifting my hand to make the Sign of the Cross. `Bless me, father,. for I
have sinned, sinned so often and so long I do not know how to change, nor how to
confess before God what I've done.'
"' Son. God is infinite in His capacity to forgive,' he whispered to me. `Tell Him in the
best way you know how and from your heart.'
" `Murders, father, death after death. The woman who died two nights ago in Jackson
Square, I killed her, and thousands of others before her, one and two a night, father, for
seventy years. I have walked the streets of New Orleans like the Grim Reaper and fed on
human life for my own existence. I am not mortal, father, but immortal and damned, like
angels put in hell by God. I am a vampire.'
"The priest turned. 'What is this, some sort of sport for you? Some joke? You take
advantage of an old man!' he said. He slid the wooden panel back with a splat. Quickly I
opened the door and stepped out to see him standing there. `Young man, do you fear God
at all? Do you know the meaning of sacrilege?' He glared at me. Now I moved closer to
him, slowly, very slowly, and at first he merely stared at me, outraged. Then, confused,
he took a step back. The church was hollow, empty, black, the sacristan gone and the
candles throwing ghastly fight only on the distant altars. They made a wreath of soft, gold
fibers about his gray head and face. 'Then there is no mercy!' I said to him and suddenly
clamping my hands on his shoulders, I held him in a preternatural lock from which he
couldn't hope to move and held him close beneath my face. His mouth fell open in horror.
`Do you see what I am! Why, if God exists, does He suffer me to exist!' I said to him.
`You talk of sacrilege!' He dug his nails into my hands, trying to free himself, his missal
dropping to the floor, his rosary clattering in the folds of his cassock. He might as well
have fought the animated statues of the saints. I drew my lips back and showed him my
virulent teeth. `Why does He suffer me to live?' I said. His face infuriated me, his fear,
his contempt, his rage. I saw in it all the hatred rd seen in Babette, and he hissed at me,
`Let me go! Devil!' in sheer mortal panic.
"I released him, watching with a sinister fascination as he floundered, moving up the
center aisle as if he plowed through snow. And then I was after him, so swift that I
surrounded him in an instant with my
outstretched arms, my cape throwing him into darkness, his legs scrambling still. He was
cursing me, calling on God at the altar. And then I grabbed him on the very steps to the
Communion rail and pulled him down to face me there and sank my teeth into his neck."
The vampire stopped.
Sometime before, the boy had been about to light a cigarette. And he sat now with the
match in one hand, the cigarette in the other, still as a store dummy, staring at the

vampire. The vampire was looking at the floor. He turned suddenly, took the book of
matches from the boy's hand, struck the match, and held it out. The boy bent the cigarette
to receive it. He inhaled and let the smoke out quickly. He uncapped the bottle and took a
deep drink, his eyes always on the vampire.
He was patient again, waiting until the vampire was ready to resume.
"I didn't remember Europe from my childhood. Not even the voyage to America, -really.
That I had been born there was an abstract idea. Yet it had a hold over me which was as
powerful as the hold France can have on a colonial. I spoke French, read French,
remembered waiting for the reports of the Revolution and reading the Paris newspaper
accounts of Napoleon's victories. I remember the anger I felt when he sold the colony of
Louisiana to the United States. How long the mortal Frenchman lived in me I don't know.
He was gone by this time, really, but there was in me that great desire to see Europe and
to know it, which comes not only from the reading of all the literature and the
philosophy, but from the feeling of having been shaped by Europe more deeply and
keenly than the rest of Americans. I was a Creole who wanted to see where it had all
begun.
"And so I turned my mind to this now. To divesting my closets and trunks of everything
that was not essential to me. And very little was essential to me, really. And much of that
might remain in the town house, to which I was certain I would return sooner or later, if
only to move my possessions to another similar one and start a new life in New Orleans. I
couldn't conceive of leaving it forever. Wouldn't. But I fixed my mind and heart on
Europe.
"It began to penetrate for the first time that I might see the world if I wanted. That I was,
as Claudia said, free.
"Meantime, she made a plan. It was her idea most definitely that we must go first to
central Europe, where the vampire seemed most prevalent. She was certain we could find
something there that would instruct us, explain our origins. But she seemed anxious for
more than answers: a communion with her own kind. She mentioned this over and over,
`My own kind,' and she said it with a different intonation than I might have used. She
made me feel the gulf that separated us. In the first years of our life together, I had
thought her like Lestat, imbibing his instinct to kill, though she shared my tastes in
everything else. Now I knew her to be less human than either of us, less human than
either of us might have dreamed. Not the faintest conception bound her to the sympathies
of human existence. Perhaps this explained why-despite everything I had done or failed
to do-she clung to me. I was not her own kind. Merely the closest thing to it."
"But wouldn't it have been possible," asked the boy suddenly, "to instruct her in the ways
of the human heart the way you'd instructed her in everything else?"
"To what avail?" asked the vampire frankly. "So she night suffer as I did? Oh, I'll grant
you I should have taught her something to prevail against her desire to kill Lestat. For my
own sake, I should have done that. But you see, I had no confidence in anything else.
Once fallen from grace, I had confidence in nothing."
The boy nodded. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. You were coming to something," he..
said.

"Only to the point that it was possible to forget what had happened to Lestat by turning
my mind to Europe. And the thought of the other vampires inspired me also. I had not
been cynical for one moment about the existence of God. Only lost from it. Drifting,
preternatural, through the natural world.
"But we had another matter before we left for Europe. Oh, a great deal happened indeed.
It began with the musician. He had called while I was gone that evening to the cathedral,
and the next night he was to come again. I had dismissed the servants and went down to
him myself. And his appearance startled me at once.
"He was much thinner than rd remembered him and very pale, with a moist gleam about
his face that suggested fever. And he was perfectly miserable. When I told him Lestat had
gone away, he refused at first to believe me and began insisting Lestat would have left
him some message, something. And then he went off up the Rue Royale, talking to
himself about it, as if he had little awareness of anyone around him. I caught up with him
under a gas lamp. `He did leave you something,' I said, quickly feeling for my wallet. I
didn't know how much I had in it, but I planned to give it to him. It was several hundred
dollars. I put it into his hands. They were so thin I could see the blue veins pulsing
beneath the watery skin. Now he became exultant, and I sensed at once that the matter
went beyond the money. `Then he spoke of me, he told you to give this to me!' he said,
holding onto it as though it were a relic. `He must have said something else to you!' He
stared at me with bulging, tortured eyes. I didn't answer him at once, because during
these moments I had seen the puncture wounds in his neck. Two red scratch-like marks to
the right, just above his soiled collar. The money flapped in his hand; he was oblivious to
the evening traffic of the street, the people who pushed close around us. `Put it away,' I
whispered. `He did speak of you, that it was important you go 'on with your music.'
"He stared at me as if anticipating something else. `Yes? Did he say anything else?' he
asked me. I didn't know what to tell him. I would have made up anything if it would have
given him comfort, and also kept him away. It was painful for me to speak of Lestat; the
words evaporated on my lips. And the puncture wounds amazed me. I couldn't fathom
this. I was saying nonsense to the boy finally-that Lestat wished him well, that he had to
take a steamboat up to St. Louis, that he would be back, that war was imminent and he
had business there . . . the boy hungering after every word, as if he couldn't possibly get
enough and was pushing on with it for the thing he wanted. He was trembling; the sweat
broke out fresh on his forehead as he stood there pressing me, and suddenly he bit his lip
hard and said, `But why did he go!' as if nothing had sufficed.
" `What is it?' I asked him. `What did you need from him? I'm sure he would want me to .
.
" `He was my friend!' He turned on me suddenly, his voice dropping with repressed
outrage.
" `You're not well,' I said to him. `You need rest. There's something . . .' and now I
pointed to it, attentive to his every move `. . . on your throat.' He didn't even know what I
meant. His fingers searched for the place, found it., rubbed it.
"'What does it matter? I don't know. The insects, they're everywhere,' he said, turning
away from me. `Did he say anything else?'

"For a long while I watched him move up the Rue Royale, a frantic, lanky figure in rusty
black, for whom the bulk of the traffic made way.
"I told Claudia at once about the wound on his throat.
"It was our last night in New Orleans. We'd board the ship just before midnight tomorrow
for an earlymorning departure. We had agreed to walk out together. She was being
solicitous, and there was something remarkably sad in her face, something which had not
left after she had cried. `What could the marks mean?' she asked me now. `That he fed on
the boy when the boy slept, that the boy allowed it? I can't imagine . . .' she said.
" `Yes, that must be what it is.' But I was uncertain. I remembered now Lestat's remark to
Claudia that he knew a boy who would make a better vampire than she. Had he planned
to do that? Planned to make another one of us?
" `It doesn't matter now, Louis,' she reminded me. We had to say our farewell to New
Orleans. We were walking away from the crowds of the Rue Royale. My senses were
keen to all around me, holding it close, reluctant to say this was the last night.
"The old French city had been for the most part burned a long time ago, and the
architecture of these days was as it is now, Spanish, which meant that, as we walked
slowly through the very narrow street where one cabriolet had to stop for another, we
passed whitewashed walls and great courtyard gates that revealed distant lamplit
courtyard paradises like our own, only each seemed to hold such promise, such sensual
mystery. Great banana trees stroked the galleries of the inner courts, and masses of fern
and flower crowded the mouth of the passage. Above, in the dark, figures sat on the
balconies, their backs to the open doors, their hushed voices and the flapping of their fans
barely audible above the soft river breeze; and over the walls grew wisteria and passiflora
so thick that we could brush against it as we passed and stop occasionally at this place or
that to pluck a luminescent rose or tendrils of honeysuckle. Through the high windows
we saw again and again the play of candlelight on richly embossed plaster ceilings and
often the bright iridescent wreath of a crystal chandelier. Occasionally a figure dressed
for evening appeared at the railings, the glitter of jewels at her throat, her perfume adding
a lush evanescent spice to the flowers in the air.
"We had our favorite streets, gardens, corners, but inevitably we reached the outskirts of
the old city and saw the rise of swamp. Carriage after carriage passed us coming in from
the Bayou Road bound for the theater or the opera. But now the lights of the city lay
behind us, and its mingled scents were drowned in the thick odor of swamp decay. The
very sight of the tall, wavering trees, their limbs hung with moss, had sickened me, made
me think of Lestat. I was thinking of him as I'd thought of my brother's body. I was
seeing him sunk deep among the roots of cypress and oak, that hideous withered form
folded in the white sheet. I wondered if the creatures of the dark shunned him, knowing
instinctively the parched, crackling thing there was virulent, or whether they swarmed
about him in the reeking water, picking his ancient dried flesh from the bones.
"I turned away from the swamps, back to the heart of the old city, and felt the gentle
press of Claudia's hand comforting. She had gathered a natural bouquet from all the
garden walls, and she held it crushed to the bosom of her yellow dress, her face buried in
its perfume. Now she said to me in such a whisper that I bent my ear to her, 'Louis, it
troubles you. You know the remedy. Let the flesh . . . let the flesh instruct the mind.' She

let my hand go, and I watched her move away from me, turning once to whisper the same
command. 'Forget him. Let the flesh instruct the mind. . .
It brought back to me that book of poems I'd held in my hand when she first spoke these
words to me, and I save the verse upon the page:
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as
white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood
with cold.
"She was smiling from the far corner, a bit of yellow silk visible for a moment in the
narrowing dark, then gone. My companion, my companion forever.
"I was turning into the Rue Dumaine, moving past darkened windows. A lamp died very
slowly behind a broad scrim of heavy lace, the shadow of the pattern on the brick
expanding, growing fainter, then vanishing into blackness. I moved on, nearing the house
of Madame LeClair, hearing faint but shrill the violins from the upstairs parlor and then
the thin metallic laughter of the guests. I stood across from the house in the shadows,
seeing a small handful of them moving in the lighted room; from window to window to
window moved one guest, a pale lemon-colored wine in his stem glass, his face turned
towards the moon as if he sought something from a better vantage and found it finally at
the last window, his hand on the dark drape.
"Across from me a door stood open in the brick wall, and a light fell on the passage at the
far end. I moved silently over the narrow street and met the thick aromas of the kitchen
rising on the air past the gate. The slightly nauseating smell of cooking meat. I stepped
into the passage. Someone had just walked fast across the courtyard and shut a rear door.
But then I saw another figure. She stood by the kitchen fire, a lean black woman with a
brilliant tignon around her head, her features delicately chiseled and gleaming in the light
like a figure in diorite. She stirred the mixture in the kettle. I caught the sweet smell of
the spices and the fresh green of marjoram and bay; and then in a wave came the horrid
smell of the cooking meat, the blood and flesh decaying in the boiling fluids. I drew near
and saw her set down her long iron spoon and stand with her hands on her generous,
tapered hips, the white of her apron sash outlining her small, fine waist. The juices of the
pot foamed on the lip and spit in the glowing coals below. Her dark odor came to me, her
dusky spiced perfume, stronger than the curious mixture from the pot, tantalizing as I
drew nearer and rested back against a wall of matted vine. Upstairs the thin violins began
a waltz, and the floorboards groaned with the dancing couples. The jasmine of the wall
enclosed me and then receded like water leaving the clean-swept beach; and again I
sensed her salt perfume. She had moved to the kitchen door, her long black neck
gracefully bent as she peered into the shadows beneath the lighted window. 'Monsieur!'
she said, and stepped out now into the shaft of yellow light. It fell on her great round
breasts and long sleek silken arms and now on the long cold beauty of her face. 'You're
looking for the party, Monsieur?' she asked. 'The party's upstairs. . .
" 'No, my dear, I wasn't looking for the party,' I said to her, moving forward out of the
shadows. 'I was looking for you."'
"Everything was ready when I woke the neat evening: the wardrobe trunk on its way to
the ship as well as chest which contained a coffin; the servants gone; the furnishings
draped in white. The sight of the tickets and a collection of notes of credit and some other

papers all placed together in a flat black wallet made the trip emerge into the bright fight
of reality. I would have forgone killing had that been possible, and so I took care of this
early, and perfunctorily, as did Claudia; and as it neared time for us to leave, I was alone
in the flat, waiting for her. She had been gone too long for my nervous frame of mind. I
feared for her-though she could bewitch almost anyone into assisting her if she found
herself too far away from home, and had many times persuaded strangers to bring her to
her very door, to her father, who thanked them profusely for returning his lost daughter.
"When she came now she was running, and I fancied as I put my book down that she had
forgotten the time. She thought it later than it was. By my pocket watch we had an hour.
But the instant she reached the door, I knew that this was wrong. `Louis, the doors!' she
gasped, her chest heaving, her hand at her heart. She ran back down the passage with me
behind her and, as she desperately signaled me, I shut up the doors to the gallery. `What
is it?' I asked her. `What's come over you?' But she was moving to the front windows
now, the long French windows which opened onto the narrow balconies over the street.
She lifted the shade of the lamp and quickly blew out the fame. The room went dark, and
then lightened gradually with the illumination of the street. She stood panting, her hand
on her breast, and then she reached out for me and drew me close to her beside the
window.
" `Someone followed me,' she whispered now. °I could hear him block after block behind
me. At first, I thought it was nothing!' She stopped for breath, her face blanched in the
bluish light that came from the windows across the way. `Louis, it was the musician,' she
whispered.
" But what does that matter? He must have seen you with Lestat.'
" `Louis, he's down there. Look out the window. Try to see him.' She seemed so shaken,
almost afraid.
As if she would not stand exposed on the threshold. I stepped out on the balcony, though
I held her hand as she hovered by the drape; and she held me so tightly that it seemed she
feared for me. It was eleven o'clock and the Rue Royale for the moment was quiet: shops
shut, the traffic of the theater just gone away. A door slammed somewhere to my right,
and I saw a woman and a man emerge and hurry towards the corner, the woman's face
hidden beneath an enormous white hat. Their steps died away. I could see no one, sense
no one. I could hear Claudia's labored breathing. Something stirred in the house; I started,
.then recognized it as the jingling and rustling of the birds. We'd forgotten the birds. But
Claudia had started worse than I, and she pulled near to me. `There is no one, Claudia . . :
I started to whisper to her.
"Then I saw the musician.
"He had been standing so still in the doorway of the furniture shop that I had been totally
unaware of him, and he must have wanted this to be so. For now he turned his face
upwards, towards me, and it shone from the dark like a white light. The frustration and
care were utterly erased from his stark features; his great dark eyes peered at me from the
white flesh. He had become a vampire.
" `I see him,' I murmured to her, my lips as still as possible, my eyes holding his eyes. I
felt her move closer, her hand trembling, a heart beating in the palm of her hand. She let
out a gasp when she saw him now. But at that same moment, something chilled me even

as I stared at him and he did not move. Because I heard a step in the lower passage. I
heard the gate hinge groan. And then that step again, deliberate, loud, echoing under the
arched ceiling of the carriage way, deliberate, familiar. That step advancing now up the
spiral stairs. A thin scream rose from Claudia, and then she caught it at once with her
hand. The vampire in the furniture shop door bad not moved. And I knew the step on the
stairs. I knew the step on the porch. It was Lestat. Lestat pulling on the door, now
pounding on it, now ripping at it, as if to tear it loose from the very wall. Claudia moved
back into the corner of the room, her body bent, as if someone had struck her a sharp
blow, her eyes moving frantically from the figure in the street to me. The pounding on the
door grew louder. And then I heard his voice. `Louis!' he called to me. `Louis!' he roared
against the door. And then came the smash of the back parlor window. And I could hear
the latch turning from within. Quickly, I grabbed the lamp, struck a match hard and broke
it in my frenzy, then got the flame as I wanted it and held the small vessel of kerosene
poised in my hand `Get away from the window. Shut it,' I told her. And she obeyed as if
the sudden clear, spoken command released her from a paroxysm of fear. `And light the
other lamps, now, at once.' I heard her crying as she struck the match. Lestat was coming
down the hallway.
"And then he stood at the door. I let out a gasp, and, not meaning to, I must have taken
several steps backwards when I saw him. I could hear Claudia's cry. It was Lestat beyond
question, restored and intact as he hung in the doorway, his head thrust forward, his eyes
bulging, as if he were drunk and needed the door jamb to keep him from plunging
headlong into the room. His skin was a mass of scars, a hideous covering of injured flesh,
as though every wrinkle of his `death' had left its mark upon him. He was seared and
marked as if by the random strokes of a hot poker, and his once clear gray eyes were shot
with hemorrhaged vessels.
" `Stay back . . . for the love of God . . : I whispered. `I'll throw it at you. I'll burn you
alive,' I said to him. And at the same moment I could hear a sound to my left, something
scraping, scratching against the facade of the town house. It was the other one. I saw his
hands now on the wrought-iron balcony. Claudia let out a piercing scream as he threw his
weight against the glass doors.
"I cannot tell you all that happened then. I cannot possibly recount it as it was. I
remember heaving the lamp at Lestat; it smashed at his feet and the flames rose at once
from the carpet. I had a torch then in my hands, a great tangle of sheet I'd pulled from the
couch and ignited in the flames. But I was struggling with him before that, kicking and
driving savagely at his great strength. And somewhere in the background were Claudia's
panicked screams. And the other lamp was broken. And the drapes of the windows
blazed. I remember that his clothes reeked of kerosene and that he was at one point
smacking wildly at the flames. He was clumsy, sick, unable to keep his balance; but when
he had me in his grip, I even tore at his fingers with my teeth to get him -off. There was
noise rising in the street, shouts, the sound of a bell. The room itself had fast become an
inferno, and I did see in one clear blast of light Claudia battling the fledgling vampire. He
seemed unable to close his hands on her, like a clumsy human after a bird. I remember
rolling over and over with Lestat in the flames, feeling the suffocating heat in my face,
seeing the flames above his back when I rolled under him. And then Claudia rose up out
of the confusion and was striking at him over and over with the poker until his grip broke

and I scrambled loose from him. I saw the poker coming down again and again on him
and could hear the snarls rising from Claudia in time with the poker, like the stress of an
unconscious animal. Lestat was holding his hand, his face a grimace of pain. And there,
sprawled on the smoldering carpet, lay the other one, blood flowing from his head.
"What happened then is not clear to me. I think I grabbed the poker from her and gave
him one fine blow with it to the side of the head. I remember that he seemed unstoppable,
invulnerable to the blows. The heat, by this time, was singeing my clothes, had caught
Claudia's gossamer gown, so that I grabbed her up and ran down the passage trying to
stifle the flames with my body. I remember taking off my coat and beating at the flames
in the open sir, and men rushing up the stairs and past me. A great crowd swelled from
the passage into the courtyard, and someone stood on the sloped roof of the brick kitchen.
I had Claudia in my arms now and was rushing past them all, oblivious to the questions,
thrusting a shoulder through them, making them divide. And then I was free with her,
hearing her pant and sob in my ear, running blindly down the Rue Royale, down the first
narrow street, running and running until there was no sound but the sound of any running.
And her breath. And we stood there, the man and the child, scorched and breathing deep
in the quiet of night."
PART II
All night long I stood on the deck of the French ship Mariana, watching the gangplanks.
The long levee was crowded, and parties lasted late in the lavish staterooms, the decks
rumbling with passengers and guests. But finally, as the hours moved toward dawn, the
parties were over one by one, and carriages left tile narrow riverfront streets. A few late
passengers came aboard, a couple lingered for hours at the rail nearby. But Lestat and his
apprentice, if they survived the fire (and I was convinced that they had) did not find their
way to the ship. Our luggage had left the flat that day; and if anything had remained to let
them know our destination, I was sure it had been destroyed. Yet still I watched. Claudia
sat securely locked in our stateroom, her eyes fixed on the porthole. But Lestat did not
come.
"Finally, as I'd hoped, the commotion of putting ant commenced before daylight. A few
people waved from the pier and the grassy hump of the levee as the great ship began first
to shiver, then to jerk violently to one side, and then to slide out in one great majestic
motion into the current of the Mississippi.
"The lights of New Orleans grew small and dim until there appeared behind us only a
pale phosphorescence against the lightening clouds. I was fatigued beyond my worst
memory, yet I stood on the deck for as long as I could see that fight, knowing that I might
never see it again. In moments we were carried downstream past the piers of Freniere and
Pointe du Lac and then, as I could see the great wall of cottonwood and cypress growing
green out of the darkness along the shore, I knew it was almost morning. Too perilously
close.
"And as I put the key into the lock of the cabin I felt the greatest exhaustion perhaps that
I'd ever known. Never in all the years I'd lived in our select family had I known the fear
I'd experienced tonight, the vulnerability, the sheer terror. And there was to be no sudden
relief from it. No sudden sense of safety. Only that relief which weariness at last imposes,
when neither mind nor body can endure the terror any longer. For though Lestat was now

miles away from us, he had in his resurrection awakened in me a tangle of complex fears
which I could not escape. Even as Claudia said to me, 'We're safe, Louis, safe,' and I
whispered the word yes to her, I could see Lestat hanging in the doorway, see those
bulbous eyes, that scarred flesh. How had he come back, how had he triumphed over
death? How could any creature have survived that shriveled ruin he'd become? Whatever
the answer, what did it mean-not only for him, but for Claudia, for me? Safe from him we
were, but safe from ourselves?
"The ship was struck by a strange 'fever.' It was amazingly clean of vermin, however,
though occasionally their bodies might be found, weightless and dry, as if the creatures
had been dead for days. Yet there was this fever. It struck a passenger first in the form of
weakness and a soreness about the throat; occasionally there were marks there, and
occasionally the marks were someplace else; or sometimes there were no recognizable
marks at all, though an old wound was reopened and painful again. And sometimes the
passenger who fell to sleeping more and more as the voyage progressed and the fever
progressed died in his sleep. So there were burials at sea on several occasions as we
crossed the Atlantic. Naturally afraid of fever, I shunned the passengers, did not wish to
join them in the smoking room, get to know their stories, hear their dreams and
expectations. I took my 'meals' alone. But Claudia liked to watch the passengers, to stand
on deck and see them come and go in the early evening, to say softly to me later as I sat
at the porthole, 'I think she'll fall prey . . . . '
"I would put the book down and look out the porthole, feeling the gentle rocking of the
sea, seeing the stars, more clear and brilliant than they had ever been on land, dipping
down to touch the waves. It seemed at moments, when I sat alone in the dark stateroom,
that the sky had come down to meet the sea and that some great secret was to be revealed
in that meeting, some great gulf miraculously closed forever. But who was to make this
revelation when the sky and sea became indistinguishable and neither any longer was
chaos? God? Or Satan? It struck me suddenly what consolation it would be to know
Satan, to look upon his face, no matter how terrible that countenance was, to know that I
belonged to him totally, and thus put to rest forever the torment of this ignorance. To step
through some veil that would forever separate me from all that I called human nature.
"I felt the ship moving closer and closer to this secret. There was no visible end to the
firmament; it closed about us with breathtaking beauty and silence. But then the words
put to rest became horrible. Because there would be no rest in damnation, could be no
rest; and what was this torment compared to the restless fires of hell? The sea rocking
beneath those constant stars-those stars themselves-what had this to do with Satan? And
those images which sound so static to us in childhood when we are all so taken up with
mortal frenzy that we can scarce imagine them desirable: seraphim gazing forever upon
the face of God-and the face of God itself-this was rest eternal, of which this gentle,
cradling sea was only the faintest promise.
"But even in these moments, when the ship slept and all the world slept, neither heaven
nor hell seemed more than a tormenting fancy. To know, to believe, in one or the other . .
. that was perhaps the only salvation for which I could dream.
"Claudia, with Lestat's liking for light, lit the lamps when she rose. She had a marvelous
pack of playing cards, acquired from a lady on board; the picture cards were in the
fashion of Marie Antoinette, and the backs of the cards bore gold fleurs-de-lis on

gleaming violet. She played a game of solitaire in which the cards made the numbers of a
clock. And she asked me until I finally began to answer her, how Lestat had
accomplished it. She was no longer shaken. If she remembered her screams in the fire she
did not care to dwell on them. If she remembered that, before the fire, she had wept real
tears in my arms, it made no change in her; she was, as always in the past, a person of
little indecision, a person for whom habitual quiet did not mean anxiety or regret.
" `We should have burned him,' she said. 'We were fools to think from his appearance
that he was dead.'
" `But how could he have survived?' I asked her. `You saw him, you know what became
of him.' I had no taste for it, really. I would have gladly pushed it to the back of my mind,
but my mind would not allow me to. And it was she who gave me the answers now, for
the dialogue was really with herself. `Suppose, though, he had ceased to fight us,' she
explained, `that he was still living, locked in that helpless dried corpse, conscious and
calculating. . .
" `Conscious in that state!' I whispered.
" `And suppose, when he reached the swamp waters and heard the sounds of our carriage
going away, that he had strength enough to propel those limbs to move. There were
creatures all around him in the dark. I saw him once rip the head of a small garden lizard
and watch the blood run down into a glass. Can you imagine the tenacity of the will to
live in him, his hands groping in that water for anything that moved?'
" `The will to live? Tenacity?' I murmured. `Suppose it was something else . . . .'
" `And then, when he'd felt the resuscitation of his strength, just enough perhaps to have
sustained him to the road, somewhere along that road he found someone. Perhaps he
crouched, waiting for a passing carriage; perhaps he crept, gathering still what blood he
could until he came to the shacks of those immigrants or those scattered country houses.
And what a spectacle he must have been!' She gazed at the hanging lamp, her eyes
narrow, her voice muted, without emotion. `And then what did he do? It's clear to me. If
he could not have gotten back to New Orleans in time, he could most definitely have
reached the Old Bayou cemetery. The charity hospital feeds it fresh coffins every day.
And I can see him clawing his way through the moist earth for such a coffin, dumping the
fresh contents out in the swamps, and securing himself until the next nightfall in that
shallow grave where no manner of man would be wont to disturb him. Yes . . . that is
what he did, I'm certain.'
"I thought of this for a long time, picturing it, seeing that it must have happened. And
then I heard her add thoughtfully, as she laid down her card and looked at the oval face of
a white-coiffed king, `I could have done it.
" `And why do you look that way at me?' she asked, gathering up her cards, her small
fingers struggling to make a neat pack of them and then to shuffle them.
" `But you do believe . . . that had we burned his remains he would have died?' I asked.
" `Of course I believe it. If there is nothing to rise, there is nothing to rise. What are you
driving at?' She was dealing out the cards now, dealing a hand for me on the small oak
table. I looked at the cards, but I did not touch them.

" `I don't know . . : I whispered to her. `Only that perhaps there was no will to live, no
tenacity . . . because very simply there was no need of either.'
"Her eyes gazed at me steadily, giving no hint of her thoughts or that she understood
mine.
" `Because perhaps he was incapable of dying . . . perhaps he is, and we are . . . truly
immortal?'
"For a longtime she sat there looking at me.
" `Consciousness in that state . . : I finally added, as I looked away from her. `If it were
so, then mightn't there be consciousness in any other? Fire, sunlight . . . what does it
matter?'
" `Louis,' she said, her voice soft. `You're afraid. You don't stand en garde against fear.
You don't understand the danger of fear itself. We'll know these answers when we find
those who can tell us, those who've possessed knowledge for centuries, for however long
creatures such as ourselves have walked the earth. That knowledge was our birthright,
and he deprived us. He earned his death.'
" 'But he didn't die . . .' I said.
" `He's dead,' she said. `No one could have escaped that house unless they'd run with us,
at our very side. No. He's dead, and so is that trembling aesthete, his friend.
Consciousness, what does it matter?'
"She gathered up the cards and put them aside, gesturing for me to hand her the books
from the table beside the bunk, those books which she'd unpacked immediately on board,
the few select records of vampire lore which she'd taken to be her guides. They included
no wild romances from England, no stories of Edgar Allan Poe, no fancy. Only those few
accounts of the vampires of eastern Europe, which had become for her a sort of Bible. In
those countries indeed they did burn the remains of the vampire when they found him,
and the heart was staked and the head severed. She would read these now for hours, these
ancient books which had been read and reread before they ever found their way across
the Atlantic; they were travelers' tales, the accounts of priests and scholars. And she
would plan our trip, not with the need of any pen or paper, only in her mind. A trip that
would take us at once away from the glittering capitals of Europe towards the Black Sea,
where we would dock at Varna and begin that search in the rural countryside of the
Carpathians.
"For me it was a grim prospect, bound as I was to it, for there were longings in me for
other places and other knowledge which Claudia did not begin to comprehend. Seeds of
these longings had been planted in me years ago, seeds which came to bitter flower as our
ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
"I wanted those waters to be blue. And they were not. They were the nighttime waters,
and how I suffered then, straining to remember the seas that a young man's untutored
senses had taken for granted, that an undisciplined memory had let slip away for eternity.
The Mediterranean was black, black off the coast of Italy, black off the coast of Greece,
black always, black when in the small cold hours before dawn, as even Claudia slept,
weary of her books and the meager fare that caution allowed her vampire hunger, I
lowered a lantern down, down through the rising vapor until the fire blazed right over the

lapping waters; and nothing came to light on that heaving surface but the light itself, the
reflection of that beam traveling constant with me, a steady eye which seemed to fix on
me from the depths and say, `Louis, your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your
sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men's treasures are not yours.'
"But oh, how the quest for the Old World vampires filled me with bitterness in those
moments, a bitterness I could all but taste, as if the very air had lost its freshness. For
what secrets, what truths had those monstrous creatures of night to give us? What, of
necessity, must be their terrible limits, if indeed we were to find them at all? What can
the damned really say to the damned?
"I never stepped ashore at Piraeus. Yet in my mind I roamed the Acropolis at Athens,
watching the moon rise through the open roof of the Parthenon, measuring my height by
the grandeur of those columns, walking the streets of those Greeks who died at Marathon,
listening to the sound of wind in the ancient olives. These were the monuments of men
who could not die, not the stones of the living dead; here the secrets that had endured the
passage of time, which I had only dimly begun to understand. And yet nothing turned me
from our quest and nothing could. turn me, but over and over, committed as I was, I
pondered the great risk of our questions, the risk of any question that is truthfully asked;
for the answer must carry an incalculable price, a tragic danger. Who knew that better
than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither
and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me
forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
"The sea lulled me to bad dreams, to sharp remembrances. A winter night in New Orleans
when I wandered through the St. Louis cemetery and saw my sister, old and bent, a
bouquet of white roses in her arms, the thorns carefully bound in an old parchment, her
gray head bowed, her steps carrying her steadily along through the perilous dark to the
grave where the stone of her brother Louis was set, side by side with that of his younger
brother. . Louis, who had died in the fire of Pointe du Lac leaving a generous legacy to a
godchild and namesake she never knew. Those flowers were for Louis, as if it had not
been half a century since his death, as if her memory, like Louis's memory, left her no
peace. Sorrow sharpened her ashen beauty, sorrow bent her narrow back. And what I
would not have given, as I watched her, to touch her silver hair, to whisper love to her, if
love would not have loosed on her remaining years a horror worse than grief. I left her
with grief. Over and over and over.
"And I dreamed now too much. I dreamed too long, in the prison of this ship, in the
prison of my body, attuned as
it was to the rise of every sun as no mortal body had ever been. And my heart beat faster
for the mountains of
eastern Europe, finally, beat faster for the one hope that somewhere we might find in that
primitive countryside
the answer to why under God this suffering was allowed to exist why under God it was
allowed to begin, and how
under God it might be ended. I had not the courage to end it, I knew, without that answer.
And in time the waters

of the Mediterranean became, in fact, the waters of the Black Sea"
The vampire sighed. The boy was resting on his elbow, his face cradled in his right palm;
and his avid expression was incongruous with the redness of his eyes.
"Do you think I'm playing with you?" the vampire asked, his fine dark eyebrows knitted
for an instant.
"No," the boy said quickly. "I know better than to ask you any more questions. You'll tell
me everything in your own time." And his mouth settled, and he looked at the vampire as
though he were ready for him to begin again.
There was a sound then from far off. It came from somewhere in the old Victorian
building around them, the first such sound they'd heard. The boy looked up towards the
hallway door. It was as if he'd forgotten the building existed. Someone walked heavily on
the old boards. But the vampire was undisturbed. He looked away as if he were again
disengaging himself from the present.
"That village. I can't tell you the name of it; the name's gone. I remember it was miles
from the coast, however, and we'd been traveling alone by carriage. And such a carriage!
It was Claudia's doing, that carriage, and I should have expected it; but then, things are
always taking me unawares. From the first moment we. arrived in Varna, I had perceived
certain changes in her which made me at once aware she was Lestat's daughter as well as
my own. From me she had learned the value of money, but from Lestat she had inherited
a passion for spending it; and she wasn't to leave without the most luxurious black coach
we could manage, outfitted with leather seats that might have accommodated a band of
travelers, let alone a man and a child who used the magnificent compartment only for the
transportation of an ornately carved oak chest. To the back were strapped two trunks of
the finest clothes the shops there could provide; and we went speeding along, those light
enormous wheels and fine springs carrying that bulk with a frightening ease over the
mountain roads. There was a thrill to that when there was nothing else in this strange
country, those horses at a gallop and the gentle listing of that carriage.
"And it was strange country. Lonely, dark, as rural country is. always dark, its castles and
ruins often obscured when the moon passed behind the clouds, so that I felt an anxiety
during those hours I'd never quite experienced in New Orleans. And the people
themselves were no relief. We were naked and lost in their tiny hamlets, and conscious
always that amongst them we were in grave danger.
"Never in New Orleans had the kill to be disguised. The ravages of fever, plague, crime--
these things competed with us always there, and outdid us. But here we had to go to great
lengths to make the kill unnoticed. Because these simple country people, who might have
found the crowded streets of New Orleans terrifying, believed completely that the dead
did walk and did drink the blood of the living. They knew our names: vampire, devil.
And we, who were on the lookout for the slightest rumor, wanted under no circumstances
to create rumor ourselves.
"We traveled alone and fast and lavishly amongst them, struggling to be safe within our
ostentation, finding talk of vampires all too cheap by the inn fires, where, my daughter
sleeping peacefully against my chest, I invariably found someone amongst the peasants
or guests who spoke enough German or, at times, even French to discuss with me the
familiar legends.

"But finally we came to that village which was to be the turning point in our travels. I
savor nothing about that journey, not the freshness of the air, the coolness of the nights. I
don't talk of it without a vague tremor even now.
"We had been at a farmhouse the night before, and so no news prepared us---only the
desolate appearance of the place: because it wasn't late when we reached it, not late
enough for all the shutters of the little street to be bolted or for a darkened lantern to be
swinging from the broad archway of the inn.
"Refuse was collected in the doorways. And there were other signs that something was
wrong. A small box of withered flowers beneath a shuttered shop window. A barrel
rolling back and forth in the center of the inn yard. The place had the aspect of a town
under siege by the plague.
"But even as I was setting Claudia down on the packed earth beside the carriage, I saw
the crack of light beneath the inn door. 'Put the hood of your cape up,' she said quickly.
'They're coming.' Someone inside was pulling back the latch.
"At first all I saw was the light behind the figure in the very narrow margin she allowed.
Then the light from the carriage lanterns glinted in her eye.
"'A room for the night!' I said in German. 'And my horses need tending, badly!'
"'The night's no time for traveling . . .' she said to me in a peculiar, flat voice. 'And with a
child.' As she said this, I noticed others in the room behind her. I could hear their
murmurings and see the flickering of a fire. From what I could see there were mostly
peasants gathered around it, except for one man who was dressed much like myself in a
tailored coat, with an overcoat over his shoulders; but his clothes were neglected and
shabby. His red hair gleamed in the firelight. He was a foreigner, like ourselves, and he
was the only one not looking at us. His head wagged slightly as if he were drunk.
"'My daughter's tired,' I said to the woman. 'we've no place to stay but here' And now I
took Claudia into my arms. She turned her face towards me, and I heard her whisper,
'Louis, the garlic, the crucifix above the doom'
"I had not seen these things. It was a small crucifix, with the body of Christ in bronze
fixed to the wood, and the garlic was wreathed around it, a fresh garland entwined with
an old one, in which the buds were withered and dried. The woman's eye followed my
eyes, and then she looked at me sharply and I could see how exhausted she was, how red
were her pupils, and how the hand which clutched at the shawl at her breast trembled.
Her black hair was completely disheveled. I pressed nearer until I was almost at the
threshold, and she opened the door wide suddenly as if she'd only just decided to let us in.
She said a prayer as I passed her, I was sure of it, though I couldn't understand the Slavic
words.
"The small, low-beamed room was filled with people, men and women along the rough,
paneled walls, on benches and even on the floor. It was as if the entire village were
gathered there. A child slept in a woman's lap and another slept on the staircase, bundled
in blankets, his knees tucked in against one step, his arms making a pillow for his head on
the next. And everywhere there was the garlic hanging from nails and hooks, along with
the cooking pots and flagons. The fire was the only light, and it threw distorting shadows
on the still faces as they watched us.

"No one motioned for us to sit or offered us anything, and finally the woman told me in
German I might take the horses into the stable if I liked. She was staring at me with those
slightly wild, red-rimmed eyes, and then her face softened. She told me she'd stand at the
inn door for me with a lantern, but I must hurry and leave the child here.
"But something else had distracted me, a scent I detected beneath the heavy fragrance of
burning wood and the wine. It was the scent of death. I could feel Claudia's hand press
my chest, and I saw her tiny finger pointing to a door at the foot of the stairs. The scent
came from there.
"The woman had a cup of wine waiting when I returned, and a bowl of broth. I sat down,
Claudia on my knee, her head turned away from the fire towards that mysterious door.
All eyes were fixed on us as before, except for the foreigner. I could see his profile now
clearly. He was much younger than I'd thought, his haggard appearance stemming from
emotion. He had a lean but very pleasant face actually, his light, freckled skin making
him seem like a boy. His wide, blue eyes were fixed on the fire as though he were talking
to it, and his eyelashes and eyebrows were golden in the light, which gave him a very
innocent, open expression. But he was miserable, disturbed, drunk. Suddenly he turned to
me, and I saw he'd been crying. `Do you speak English?' he said, his voice booming in
the silence.
" `Yes, I do,' I said to him. And he glanced at the others, triumphantly. They stared at him
stonily.
" `You speak English!' he cried, his lips stretching into a bitter smile, his eyes moving
around the ceiling and then fixing on mine. `Get out of this country,' he said. `Get out of
it now. Tales your carriage, your horses, drive them till they drop, but get out of it!' Then
his shoulders convulsed as if he were sick. He put his hand to his mouth. The woman
who stood against the wall now, her arms folded over her soiled apron, said calmly in
German, `At dawn you can go. At dawn.'
" `But what is it?' I whispered to her; and then I looked to him. He was watching me, his
eyes glassy and red. No one spoke. A log fell heavily in the fire.
" `Won't you tell me?' I asked the Englishman gently. He stood up. For a moment I
thought he was going to fall. He loomed over me, a much taller man than myself, his
head pitching forward, then backward, before he righted himself and put his hands on the
edge of the table. His black coat was stained with wine, and so was his shirt cuff. `You
want to see?' he gasped as he peered into my eyes. `Do you want to see for yourself?'
There was a soft, pathetic tone to his voice as he spoke these words.
" 'Leave the child!' said the woman abruptly, with a quick, imperious gesture.
" `She's sleeping,' I said. And, rising, I followed the Englishman to the door at the foot of
the stairs.
"There was a slight commotion as those nearest the door moved away from it. And we
entered a small parlor together.
"Only one candle burned on the sideboard, and the first thing I saw was a row of
delicately painted plates on a shelf. There were curtains on the small ,window, and a
gleaming picture of the Virgin Mary and Christ child on the wall. But the walls and
chairs barely enclosed a great oak table, and on that table lay the body of a young

woman, her white hands folded on her breast, her auburn hair mussed and tucked about
her thin, white throat and under her shoulders. Her pretty face was already hard with
death. Amber rosary beads gleamed around her wrist and down the side of her dark wool
skirt. And beside her lay a very pretty red felt hat with a wide, soft brim and a 'veil, and a
pair of dark gloves. It was all laid there as if she would very soon rise and put these
things on. And the Englishman patted the hat carefully now as he drew close to her. He
was on the verge of breaking down altogether. He'd drawn a large handkerchief out of his
coat, and he had put it to his face. `Do you know what they want to do with her?' he
whispered as he looked at me. `Do you have any idea?'
"The woman came in behind us and reached for his arm, but he roughly shook her off.
`Do you know?' he demanded of me with his eyes fierce. `Savages!'
" `You stop now! she said under her breath.
"He clenched his teeth and shook his head, so that a shock of his red hair loosened in his
eyes. `You get away from me,' he said to the woman in German. `Get away from me.'
Someone was whispering in the other room. The Englishman looked again at the young
woman, and his eyes filled with tears. `So innocent,' he said softly; and then he glanced at
the ceiling and, making a fist with his right hand, he gasped, `Damn you . . . God! Damn
you!'
" `Lord,' the woman whispered, and quickly she made the Sign of the Cross.
" `Do you see this?' he asked me. And he pried very carefully at the lace of the dead
woman's throat, as though he could not, did not wish to actually touch the hardening
flesh. Thereon her throat, unmistakable, were the two puncture wounds, as I'd seen them
a thousand times upon a thousand, engraved in the yellowing skin. The man drew his
hands up to his face, his tall, lean body rocking on the balls of his feet. `I think I'm going
mad!' he said.
" `Come now,' said the woman, holding onto him as he struggled, her face suddenly
flushed.
" 'Let him be,' I said to her. 'Just let him be. I'll take care of him.'
"Her mouth contorted. `I'll throw you all out of here, out into that dark, if you don't stop.'
She was too weary for this, too close to some breaking point herself. But then she turned
her back on us, drawing her shawl tight around her, and padded softly out, the men who'd
gathered at the door making way for her.
"The Englishman was crying.
"I could see what I must do, but it wasn't only that I wanted so much to learn from him,
my heart pounding with silent excitement. It was heartrending to see him this way. Fate
brought me too mercilessly close to him.
" `I'll stay with you,' I offered. And I brought two chairs up beside the table. He sat down
heavily, his eyes on the flickering candle at his side. I shut the door, and the walls seemed
to recede and the circle of the candle to grow brighter around his bowed head. He leaned
back against the sideboard and wiped his face with his handkerchief. Then he drew a
leatherbound flask from his pocket and offered it to me, and I said no.
" `Do you want to tell me what happened?'

"He nodded. " `Perhaps you can bring some sanity to this place,' he said. `You're a
Frenchman, aren't you? You know, I'm English.'
" `Yes,' I nodded.
"And then, pressing my hand fervently, the liquor so dulling his senses that he never felt
the coldness of it, he told me his name was Morgan and he needed me desperately, more
than he'd ever needed anyone in his life. And at that moment, holding that hand, feeling
the fever of it, I did a strange thing. I told him my name, which I confided to almost no
one. But he was looking at the dead woman as if he hadn't heard me, his lips forming
what appeared to be the faintest smile, the tears standing in his eyes. His expression
would have moved any human being; it might have been more than some could bear.
" `I did this,' he said, nodding. `I brought her here.' And he raised his eyebrows as if
wondering at it.
" `No,' I said quickly. `You didn't do it. Tell me who did.'
"But then he seemed confused, lost in thought. 'I'd never been out of England,' he started.
`I was painting, you see . . . as if it mattered now . . . the paintings, the book! I thought it
all so quaint! So picturesque!' His eyes moved over the room, his voice trailing off. For a
long time he looked at her again, and then softly he said to her, `Emily,' and I felt I'd
glimpsed something precious he held to his heart.
"Gradually, then, the story began to come. A honeymoon journey, through Germany, into
this country, wherever the regular coaches would carry them, wherever Morgan found
scenes to paint. And they'd come to this remote place finally because there was a ruined
monastery nearby which was said to be a very well reserved place.
"But Morgan and Emily had never reached that monastery. Tragedy had been waiting for
them here.
"It turned out the regular coaches did not come this way, and Morgan had paid a farmer
to bring them by cart. But the afternoon they arrived, there was a great commotion in the
cemetery outside of town. The farmer, taking one look, refused to leave his cart to see
further.
" `It was some kind of procession, it seemed,' Morgan said, `with all the people outfitted
in their best, and some with flowers; and the truth was I thought it quite fascinating. I
wanted to see it. I was so eager I had the fellow leave us, bags and all. We could see the
village just up ahead. Actually it was I more than Emily, of course, but she was so
agreeable, you see. I left her, finally, seated on our suitcases, and I went on up the hill
without her. Did you see it when you were coming, the cemetery? No, of course you
didn't. Thank God that carriage of yours brought you here safe and sound. Though, if
you'd driven on, no matter how bad off your horses were . . ' He stopped.
" `What's the danger?' I urged him, gently.
" 'Ah . . . danger! Barbarians!' he murmured. And he glanced at the door. Then he took
another drink from his flask and capped it.
" Well, it was no procession. I saw that right off,' he said. `The people wouldn't even
speak to me when I came up-you know what they are; but they had no objection to letting
me watch. The truth was, you wouldn't have thought I was standing there at all. You

won't believe me when I tell you what I saw, but you must believe me; because if you
don't, I'm mad, I know it.'
" `I will believe you, go on,' I said.
" `Well, the cemetery was full of fresh graves, I saw that at once, some of them with new
wooden crosses and some of them just mounds of earth with flowers still fresh; and the
peasants there, they were holding flowers, a few of them, as though they meant to be
trimming these graves; but all of them were standing stock-still, their eyes on these two
fellows who had a white horse by the bridle-and what an animal that was! It was pawing
and stomping and shying to one side, as if it wanted no part of the place; a beautiful thing
it was, though, a splendid animal-a stallion, and pure white. Well, at some point-and I
couldn't tell you how they agreed upon it, because not a one of them said a word-one
fellow, the leader, I think, gave the horse a tremendous whack with the handle of a
shovel,, and it took off up the hill, just wild. You can imagine, I thought that was the last
we'd see of that horse for a while for sure. But I was wrong. In a minute it had slowed to
a gallop, and it was turning around amongst the old graves and coming back down the
hill towards the newer ones. And the people all stood there watching it. No one made a
sound. And here it came trotting right over the mounds, right through the flowers, and no
one made a move to get hold of the bridle. And then suddenly it came to a stop, right on
one of the graves'
"He wiped at his eyes, but the tears were almost gone. He seemed fascinated with his tale,
as I was.
" `Well, here's what happened,' he continued. `The animal just stood there. And suddenly
a cry went up from the crowd. No, it wasn't a cry, it was as though they were all gasping
and moaning, and then everything went quiet. And the horse was just standing there,
tossing its head; and finally this fellow who was the leader burst forward and shouted to
several of the others; and one of the women-she screamed, and threw herself on the grave
almost under the horse's hooves. I came up then as close as I could. I could see the stone
with the deceased's name on it; it was a young woman, dead only six months, the dates
carved right there, and there was this miserable woman on her knees in the dirt, with her
arms around the stone now, as if she meant to pull it right up out of the earth. And these
fellows trying to pick her up and get her away.
" `Now I almost turned back, but I couldn't, not until I saw what they meant to do. And,
of course, Emily was quite safe, and none of these people took the slightest notice of
either of us. Well, two of them finally did have that woman up, and then the other had
come with shovels and had begun to dig right into the grave. Pretty soon one of them was
down in the grave, and everyone was so still you could hear the slightest sound, that
shovel digging in there and the earth thrown up in a heap. I can't tell you what it was like.
Here was the sun high above us and not a cloud in the sky, and all of them standing
around, holding onto one another now, and even that pathetic woman . . .' He stopped
now, because his eyes had fallen on Emily. I just sat there waiting for him. I could hear
the whiskey when he lifted the flask again, and I felt glad for him that there was so much
there, that he could drink it and deaden this pain. `It might as well have been midnight on
that hill,' he said, looking at me, his voice very low. `That's how it felt. And then I could
hear this fellow in the grave. He was cracking the coffin lid with his shovel! Then out
came the broken boards. He was just tossing them out, right and left. And suddenly he let

out an awful cry. The other fellows drew up close, and all at once there was a rush to the
grave; and then they all fell back like a wave, all of them crying out, and some of them
turning and trying to push away. And the poor woman, she was wild, bending her knees,
and trying to get free of those men that were holding onto her. Well, I couldn't help but
go up. I don't suppose anything could have kept me away; and I'll tell you that's the first
time I've ever done such a thing, and, God help me, it's to be the last. Now, you must
believe me, you must! But there, right there in that coffin, with that fellow standing on
the broken boards over her feet, was the dead woman, and I tell you . . . I tell you she was
as fresh, as pink =his voice cracked, and he sat there, his eyes wide, his hand poised as if
he held something invisible in his fingers, pleading with me to believe him-`as pink as if
she were alive! Buried six months! And there she lay! The shroud was thrown back off
her, and her hands lay on her breast just as if she were asleep.'
"He sighed. His hand dropped to his leg and he shook his head, and for a moment he just
sat staring. `I swear to you!' he said. `And then this fellow who was in the grave, he bent
down and lifted the dead woman's hand. I tell you that arm moved as freely as my arm!
And he held her hand out as if he were looking at her nails. Then he shouted; and that
woman beside the grave, she was kicking at those fellows and shoving at the earth with
her foot, so it fell right down in the corpse's face and hair. And oh, she was so pretty, that
dead woman; oh, if you could have seen her, and what they did then!'
" `Tell me what they did,' I said to him softly. But I knew before he said it.
" `I tell you . . .' he said. `We don't know the meaning of something like that until we see
it!' And he looked at me, his eyebrow arched as if he were confiding a terrible secret. `We
just don't know.'
" `No, we don't,' I said.
" `I'll tell you. They took a stake, a wooden stake, mind you; and this one in the grave, he
took -the stake with a hammer and he put it right to her breast. I didn't believe it! And
then with one great blow he drove it right into her. I tell you, I couldn't have moved even
if I'd wanted to; I was rooted there. And then that fellow, that beastly fellow, he reached
up for his shovel and with both his arms he drove it sharp, right into the dead woman's
throat. The head was off like that' He shut his eyes, his face contorted, and put his head to
the side.
"I looked at him, but I wasn't seeing him at all. I was seeing this woman in her grave with
the head severed, and I was feeling the most keen revulsion inside myself, as if a hand
were pressing on my throat and my insides were coming up inside me and I couldn't
breathe. Then I felt Claudia's lip against my wrist She was staring at Morgan, and
apparently she had been for some time.
"Slowly Morgan looked up at me, his eyes wild. `It's what they want to do with her,' he
said. `With Emily! Well I won't let them.' He shook his head adamantly. `I won't let them.
You've got to help me, Louis.' His lips were trembling, and his face so distorted now by
his sudden desperation that I might have recoiled from it despite myself. `The same blood
flows in our veins, you and I. I mean, French, English, we're civilized men, Louis.
They're savages!'
"`Try to be calm now, Morgan,' I said, reaching out for him. `I want you to tell me what
happened then. You and Emily. '

"He was struggling for his bottle. I drew it out of his pocket, and he took off the cap.
`That's a fellow, Louis; that's a friend,' he said emphatically. `You see, I took her away
fast. They were going to burn that corpse right there in the cemetery; and Emily was not
to see that, not while I . . .' He shook his head `There wasn't a carriage to be found that
would take us out of here; not a single one of them would leave now for the two days'
drive to get us to a decent place!'
" `But how did they explain it to you, Morgan?' insisted. I could see he did not have much
time left.
" `Vampires!' he burst out, the whiskey sloshing on his hand. `Vampires, Louis. Can you
believe that!' And he gestured to the door with the bottle. 'A plague of vampires! All this
in whispers, as if the devil himself were listening at the door! Of course, God have
mercy, they put a stop to it. That unfortunate woman in the cemetery, they'd stopped her
from clawing her way up nightly to feed on the rest of us!' He put the bottle to his lips.
`Oh . . . God . . .' he moaned.
"I watched him drink, patiently waiting.
" `And Emily . . : he continued. `She thought it fascinating. What with the fire out there
and a decent dinner and a proper glass of wine. She hadn't seen that woman! She hadn't
seen what they'd done,' he said desperately. `Oh, I wanted to get out of here; I offered
them money. "If it's over," I kept saying to them, "one of you ought to want this money, a
small fortune just to drive us out of here."'
" But it wasn't over . . ' I whispered.
"And I could see the tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth twisting with pain.
" `How did it happen to her?' I asked him.
" `I don't know,' he gasped, shaking his head, the flask pressed to his forehead as if it
were something cool, refreshing, when it was not.
" `It came into the inn?'
" `They said she went out to it,' he confessed, the tears coursing down his cheeks.
`Everything was locked! They saw to that. Doors, windows! Then it was morning and
they were all shouting, and she was gone. The window stood wide open, and she wasn't
there. I didn't even take time for my robe. I was running. I came to a dead halt over her,
out there, behind the inn. My foot all but came down on her . . . she was just lying there
under the peach trees. She held an empty cup. Clinging to it, an empty cup! They said it
lured her . . . she was trying to give it water. . .
"The flask slipped from his hands. He clapped his hands over his ears, his body bent, his
head bowed.
"For a long time I sat there watching him; I had no words to say to him. And when he
cried softly that they wanted to desecrate her, that they said she, Emily, was now a
vampire, I assured him softly, though I don't think he ever heard me, that she was not.
"He moved forward finally, as if he might fall. He appeared to be reaching for the candle,
and before his arm rested on the buffet, his finger touched it so the hot wax extinguished
the tiny bit that was left of the wick. We were in darkness then, and his head had fallen
on his arm.

"All of the light of the room seemed gathered now in Claudia's eyes. But as the silence
lengthened and I sat there, wondering, hoping Morgan wouldn't lift his head again, the
woman came to the door. Her candle illuminated him, drunk, asleep.
" `You go now,' she said to me. Dark figures crowded around her, and the old wooden inn
was alive with the shuffling of men and women. `Go by the fire!'
" `What are you going to do!' I demanded of her, rising and holding Claudia. `I want to
know what you propose to do!'
" `Go by the fire,' she commanded.
"'No, don't do this,' I said. But she narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. `You go!' she
growled.
" `Morgan,' I said to him; but he didn't hear me, he couldn't hear me.
" `Leave him be,' said the woman fiercely.
" `But it's stupid, what you're doing; don't you understand? This woman's dead!' I pleaded
with her.
" `Louis,' Claudia whispered, so that they couldn't hear her, her arm tightening around my
neck beneath the fur of my hood. `Let these people alone.'
"The others were moving into the room now, encircling the table, their faces grim as they
looked at us.
" `But where do these vampires come from!' I whispered. `You've searched your
cemetery! If it's vampires, where do they hide from you? This woman can't do you harm.
Hunt your vampires if you must'
" `By day,' she said gravely, winking her eye and slowly nodding her head. `By day. We
get them, by day-.'
" `Where, out there in the graveyard, digging up the graves of your own villagers?'
"She shook her head. `The ruins,' she said. `It was always the ruins. We were wrong. In
my grandfather's time it was the ruins, and it is the ruins again. We'll take them down
stone by stone if we have to. But you . . . you go now. Because if you don't go, we'll drive
you out there into that dark now!'
"And then out from behind her apron she drew her clenched fist with the stake in it and
held it up in the flickering light of the candle. `You hear me, you go!' she said; and the
men pressed in close behind her, their mouths set, their eyes blazing in the light.
" `Yes . . : I said to her. `Out there. I would prefer that. Out there.' And I swept past her,
almost throwing her aside, seeing them scuttle back to make way. I had my hand on the
latch of the inn door and slid it back with one quick gesture.
" `No!' cried the woman in her guttural German. `You're mad!' And she rushed up to me
and then stared at the latch, dumbfounded. She threw her hands up against the rough
boards of the door. `Do you know what you do!'
" `Where are the ruins?' I asked her calmly. `How far? Do they lie to the left of the road,
or to the right?'

" `No, no' She shook her head violently. I pried the door back and felt the cold blast of sir
on my face. One of the women said something sharp and angry from the wall, and one of
the children moaned in its sleep. 'I'm going. I want one thing from you. Tell me where the
ruins lie, so I may stay clear of them. Tell me.'
" 'You don't know, you don't know,' she said; and then I laid my hand on her warm wrist
and drew her slowly through the door, her feet scraping on the boards, her eyes wild. The
men moved nearer but, as she stepped out against her will into the night, they stopped.
She tossed her head, her hair falling down into her eyes, her eyes glaring at my hand and
at my face. `Tell me . . ' I said.
"I could see she was staring not at me but at Claudia. Claudia had turned towards her, and
the light from the fire was on her face. The woman did not see the rounded cheeks nor the
pursed lips, I knew, but Claudia's eyes, which were gazing at her with a dark, demonic
intelligence. The woman's teeth bit down into the flesh of her lip.
" `To the north or south?'
" To the north.. . ' she whispered.
" `To the left or the right?'
" `The left.'
" `And how far?'
"Her hand struggled desperately. `Three miles,' she gasped. And I released her, so that
she fell back against the door, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. I had turned to go,
but suddenly behind me she cried out for me to wait. I turned to see she'd ripped the
crucifix from the beam over her head, and she had it thrust out towards me now. And out
of the dark nightmare landscape of my memory I saw Babette gazing at me as she had so
many years ago, saying those words, `Get thee behind me, Satan.' But the woman's face
was desperate. `Take it, please, in the name of God,' she said. `And ride fast' And the
door shut, leaving Claudia and me in total darkness."
"In minutes the tunnel of the night closed upon the weak lanterns of our carriage, as if the
village had never existed. We lurched forward, around a bend, the springs creaking, the
dim moon revealing for an instant the pale outline of the mountains beyond the pines. I
could not stop thinking of Morgan, stop hearing his voice. It was all tangled with my own
horrified anticipation of meeting the thing which had killed Emily, the thing which was
unquestionably one of our own. But Claudia was in a frenzy. If she could have driven the
horses herself, she would have taken the reins. Again and again she urged me to use the
whip. She struck savagely at the few low branches that dipped suddenly into the lamps
before our faces; and the arm that clung to my waist on the rocking bench was as firm as
iron.
"I remember the road turning sharply, the lanterns clattering, and Claudia calling out over
the wind: `There, Louis, do you see it?' And I jerked hard on the reins.
"She was on her knees, pressed against me, and the carnage was swaying like a ship at
sea.
"A great fleecy cloud had released the moon, and high above us loomed the dark outline
of the tower. One long window showed the pale sky beyond it. I sat there, clutching the

bench, trying to steady a motion that continued in my head as the carriage settled on its
springs. One of the horses whinnied. Then everything was still.
"Claudia was saying, `Louis, come ....'
"I whispered something, a swift irrational negation. I had the distinct and terrifying
impression that Morgan was near to me, talking to me in that low, impassioned way he'd
pleaded with me in the inn. Not a living creature stirred in the night around us. There was
only the wind and the soft rustling of the leaves.
" `Do you think he knows we're coming?' I asked, my voice unfamiliar to me over this
wind. I was in that little parlor, as if there were no escape from it, as if this dense forest
were not real. I think I shuddered. And then I felt Claudia's hand very gently touch the
hand I- lifted to my eyes. The thin pines were billowing behind her and the rustle of the
leaves grew louder, as if a great mouth sucked the breeze and began a whirlwind. `They'll
bury her at the crossroads? Is that what they'll do? An Englishwoman!' I whispered.
" `Would that I had your size . . ' Claudia was saying. `And would that you had my heart.
Oh, Louis. . .'
And her head inclined to me now, so like the attitude of the vampire bending to kiss that I
shrank back from her; but her lips only gently pressed my own, finding a part there to
suck the breath and let it flow back into me as my arms enclosed her. `Let me lead you . .
' she pleaded. `There's no turning back now. Take me in your arms,' she said, `and let me
down, on the road'
"But it seemed an eternity that I just sat there feeling her lips on my face and on my
eyelids. Then she moved, the softness of her small body suddenly snatched from me, in a
movement so graceful and swift that she seemed now poised in the air beside the
carriage, her hand clutching mine for an instant, then letting it go. And then I looked
down to see her looking up at me, standing on the road in the shuddering pool of light
beneath the lantern. She beckoned to me, as she stepped backwards, one small boot
behind the other. `Louis, come down . . ' until she threatened to vanish into the darkness.
And in a second I'd unfastened the lamp from its hook, and I stood beside her in the tall
grass.
" `Don't you sense the danger?' I whispered to her. `Can't you breathe it like the air?' One
of those quick, elusive smiles played on her lips, as she turned towards the slope. The
lantern pitched a pathway through the rising forest. One small, white hand drew the wool
of her cape close, and she moved forward.
" `Wait only for a moment. . .'
" `Fear's your enemy. . .' she answered, but she did not stop.
"She proceeded ahead of the light, feet sure, even as the tall grass gave way gradually to
low heaps of rubble, and the forest thickened, and the distant tower vanished with the
fading of the moon and the great weaving of the branches overhead. Soon the sound and
scent of the horses died on the low wind. 'Be en garde,' Claudia whispered, as she moved,
relentlessly, pausing only now and again where the tangled vines and rock made it seem
for moments there was a shelter. But the ruins were ancient. Whether plague or fire or a
foreign enemy had ravaged the town, we couldn't know. Only the monastery truly
remained.

"Now something whispered in the dark that was like the wind and the leaves, but it was
neither. I saw Claudia's back straighten, saw the flash of her white palm as she slowed
her step. Then I knew it was water, winding its way slowly down the mountain, and I saw
it far ahead through the black trunks, a straight, moonlit waterfall descending to a boiling
pool below. Claudia emerged silhouetted against the fall, her hand clutching a bare root
in the moist earth beside it; and now I saw her climbing hand over hand up the overgrown
cliff, her arm trembling ever so slightly, her small boots dangling, then digging in to hold,
then swinging free again. The water was cold, and it made the air fragrant and light all
around it, so that for a moment I rested. Nothing stirred around me in the forest. I
listened, senses quietly separating the tune of the leaves, but nothing else stirred. And
then it struck me gradually, like a chill coming over my arms and my throat and finally
my face, that the night was too desolate, too lifeless. It was as if even the birds had
shunned this place, as well as all the myriad creatures that should have been moving
about the banks of this stream. But Claudia, above me on the ledge, was reaching for the
lantern, her cape brushing my face. I lifted it, so that suddenly she sprang into light, like
an eerie cherub. She put her hand out for me as if, despite her small size, she could help
me up the embankment. In a moment we were moving on again, over the stream, up the
mountain. `Do you sense it?' I whispered. `It's too still.'
"But her hand tightened on mine, as if to say, `Quiet.' The hill was growing steeper, and
the quiet was unnerving. I tried to stare at the limits of the light, to see each new bark as it
loomed before us. Something did move, and I reached for Claudia, almost pulling her
sharply near to me. But it was only a reptile, shooting through the leaves with a whip of
his tail. The leaves settled. But Claudia moved back against me, under the folds of my
cape, a hand firmly clasping the cloth of my coat; and she seemed to propel me forward,
my cape falling over the loose fabric of her own.
"Soon the scent of the water was gone, and when the moon shone clear for an instant I
could see right ahead of us what appeared to be a break in the woods. Claudia firmly
clasped the lantern and shut its metal door. I moved to stop this, my hand struggling with
hers; but then she said to me quietly, `Close your eyes for an instant, and then open them
slowly. And when you do, you will see it.'
"A chill rose over me as I did this, during which I held fast to her-shoulder. But then I
opened my eyes and saw beyond the distant bark of the trees the long, low walls of the
monastery and the high square top of the massive tower. Far beyond it, above an
immense black valley, gleamed the snow-capped peaks of the mountains. 'Come,' she
said to me, `quiet, as if your body has no weight.' And she started without hesitation right
towards those walls, right towards whatever might have been waiting in their shelter.
"In moments we had found the gap that would admit us, the great opening that was
blacker still than the walls around it, the vines encrusting its edges as if to hold the stones
in place. High above, through the open room, the damp smell of the stones strong in my
nostrils, I saw, beyond the streaks of clouds, a faint sprinkling of stars. A great staircase
moved upward, from corner to corner, all the way to the narrow windows that looked out
upon the valley. And beneath the first rise of the stair, out of the gloom emerged the vast,
dark opening to the monastery's remaining rooms.
"Claudia was still now, as if she had become the stones. In the damp enclosure not even
the soft tendrils of her hair moved. She was listening. And then I was listening with her.

There was only the low backdrop of the wind. She moved, slowly, deliberately, and with
one pointed foot gradually cleared a space in the moist earth in front of her. I could see a
flat stone there, and it sounded hollow as she gently tapped it with her heel. Then I could
see the broad size of it and how it rose at one distant corner; and an image came to mind,
dreadful in its sharpness, of that band of men and women from the village surrounding
the stone, raising it with a giant lever. Claudia's eyes moved over the staircase and then
fixed on the crumbling doorway beneath it. The moon shone for an instant through a lofty
window. Then Claudia moved, so suddenly that she stood beside me without having
made a sound. `Do you hear it?' she whispered. `Listen.'
"It was so low no mortal could have heard it. And it did not come from the ruins. It came
from far off, not the long, meandering way that we had come up the slope, but another
way, up the spine of the hill, directly from the village. Just a rustling now, a scraping, but
it was steady; and then slowly the round tramping of a foot began to distinguish itself.
Claudia's hand tightened on mine, and with a gentle pressure she moved me silently
beneath the slope of the stairway. I could see the folds of her dress heave slightly beneath
the edge of her cape. The tramp of the feet grew louder, and I began to sense that one step
preceded the other very sharply, the second dragging slowly across the earth. It was a
limping step, drawing nearer and nearer over the low whistling of the wind. My own
heart beat hard against my chest, and I felt the veins in my temples tighten, a tremor
passing through my limbs, so that I could feel the fabric of my shirt against me, the stiff
cut of the collar, the very scraping of the buttons against my cape.
"Then a faint scent came with the wind. It was the scent of blood, at once arousing me,
against my will, the warm, sweet scent of human blood, blood that was spilling, flowing
and then I sensed the smell of living flesh and I heard in time with the feet a dry, hoarse
breathing. But with it came another sound, faint and intermingled with the first, as the
feet tramped closer and closer to the walls, the sound of yet another creature's halting,
strained breath. And I could hear the heart of that creature, beating irregularly, a fearful
throbbing; but beneath that was another heart, a steady, pulsing heart growing louder and
louder, a heart as strong as my own? Then, in the jagged gap through which we'd come, I
saw him.
`His great, huge shoulder emerged first and one long, loose arm and hand, the fingers
curved; then I saw his head. Over his other shoulder he was carrying a body. In the
broken doorway he straightened and shifted the weight and stared directly into the
darkness towards us. Every muscle in me became iron as I looked at him, saw the outline
of his head looming there against the sky. But nothing of his face was visible except the
barest glint of the moon on his eye as if it were a fragment of glass. Then I saw it glint on
his buttons and heard them rustle as his arm swung free again and one long leg bent as he
moved forward and proceeded into the tower right towards us.
"I held fast to Claudia, ready in an instant to shove her behind me, to step forward to
meet him. But then I saw with astonishment that his eyes did not see me as I saw him,
and he was trudging under the weight of the body he carried towards the monastery door.
The moon fell now on his bowed head, on a mass of wavy black hair that touched his
bent shoulder, and on the full black sleeve of his coat. I saw something about his coat; the
flap of it was badly torn and the sleeve appeared to be ripped from the seam. I almost
fancied I could see his flesh through the shoulder. The human in his arms stirred now,

and moaned miserably. And the figure stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke the
human with his hand. And at that moment I stepped forward from the wall and went
towards him.
"No words passed my lips: I knew none to say. I only knew that I moved into the light of
the moon before him and that his dark, wavy head rose with a jerk, and that I saw his
eyes.
"For one full instant he looked at me, and I saw the light shining in those eyes and then
glinting on two sharp canine teeth; and then a low strangled cry seemed to rise from the
depths of his throat which, for a second, I thought to be my own. The human crashed to
the stones, a shuddering moan escaping his lips. And the vampire lunged at me, that
strangled cry rising again as the stench of fetid breath rose in my nostrils and the clawlike
fingers cut into the very fur of my cape. I fell backwards, my head cracking against the
wall, my hands grabbing at his head, clutching a mass of tangled filth that was his hair.
At once the wet, rotting fabric of his coat ripped in my grasp, but the arm that held me
was like iron; and, as I struggled to pull the head backwards, the fangs touched the flesh
of my throat. Claudia screamed behind him. Something hit his head hard, which stopped
him suddenly; and then he was hit again. He turned as if to strike her a blow, and I sent
my fist against his face as powerfully as I could. Again a stone struck him as she darted
away, and I threw my full weight against him and felt his crippled leg buckling. I
remember pounding his head over and over, my fingers all but pulling that filthy hair out
by the roots, his fangs projected towards me, his hands scratching, clawing at me. We
rolled over and over, until I pinned him down again and the moon shone full on his face.
And I realized, through my frantic sobbing breaths, what it was I held in my arms. The
two huge eyes bulged from naked sockets and two small, hideous holes made up his nose;
only a putrid, leathery flesh enclosed his skull, and the rank, rotting rags that covered his
frame were thick with earth and slime and blood. I was battling a mindless, animated
corpse. But no more.
"From above him, a sharp stone fell full on his forehead, and a fount of blood gushed
from between his eyes. He struggled, but another stone crashed with such force I heard
the bones shatter. Blood seeped out beneath the matted hair, soaking into the stones and
grass. The chest throbbed beneath me, but the arms shuddered and grew still. I drew up,
my throat knotted, my heart burning, every fiber of my body aching from the struggle.
For a moment the great tower seemed to tilt, but then it righted itself. I lay against the
wall, staring at the thing, the blood rushing in my ears. Gradually I realized that Claudia
knelt on his chest, that she was probing the mass of hair and bone that had been his head.
She was scattering the fragments of his skull. We had met the European vampire, the
creature of the Old World. He was dead"
"For a long time I lay on the broad stairway, oblivious to the thick earth that covered it,
my head feeling very cool against the earth, just looking at him. Claudia stood at his feet,
hands hanging limply at her sides. I saw her eyes close for an instant, two tiny lids that
made her face like a small, moonlit white statue as she stood there. And then her body
began to rock very slowly. 'Claudia,' I called to her. She awakened. She was gaunt such
as I had seldom seen her. She pointed to the human who lay far across the floor of the
tower near the wall. He was still motionless, but I knew that he was not dead. I'd
forgotten him completely, my body aching as it was, my senses still clouded with the

stench of the bleeding corpse. But now I saw the man. And in some part of my mind I
knew what his fate would be, and I cared nothing for it. I knew it was only an hour at
most before dawn.
" `He's moving,' she said to me. And I tried to rise off the steps. Better that he not wake,
better that he never wake at all, I wanted to say; she was walking towards him, passing
indifferently the dead thing that had nearly killed us both. I saw her back and the man
stirring in front of her, his foot twisting in the grass. I don't know what I expected to see
as I drew nearer, what terrified peasant or farmer, what miserable wretch that had already
seen the face of that thing that had brought it here. And for a moment I did not realize
who it was that lay there, that it was Morgan, whose pale face showed now in the moon,
the marks of the vampire on his throat, his blue eyes staring mute and expressionless
before him.
"Suddenly they widened as I drew close to him. `Louis!' he whispered in astonishment,
his lips moving as if he were trying to frame words but could not. `Louis . . .' he said
again; and then I saw he was smiling. A dry, rasping sound came from him as he
struggled to his knees, and he reached out for me. His blanched, contorted face strained
as the sound died in his throat, and he nodded desperately, his red hair loose and
disheveled, falling into his eyes. I turned and ran from him. Claudia shot past me,
gripping me by the arm. `Do you see the color of the sky!' she hissed at me. Morgan fell
forward on his hands behind her. `Louis,' he called out again, the light gleaming in his
eyes. He seemed blind to the ruins, blind to the night, blind to everything but a face he
recognized, that one word again issuing from his lips. I put my hands to my ears, backing
away from him. His hand was bloody now as he lifted it. I could smell the blood as well
as see it. And Claudia could smell it, too.
"Swiftly she descended on him, pushing him down against the stones, her white fingers
moving through his red hair. He tried to raise his head. His outstretched hands made a
frame about her face, and then suddenly he began to stroke her yellow curls. She sank her
teeth, and the hands dropped helpless at his side.
"I was at the edge of the forest when she caught up with me. `You must go to him, take
him,' she commanded. I could smell the blood on her lips, see the warmth in her cheeks.
Her wrist burned against me, yet I did not move. `Listen to me, Louis,' she said, her voice
at once desperate and angry. `I left him for you, but he's dying . . . there's no time.'
"I swung her up into my arms and started the long descent. No need for caution, no need
for stealth, no preternatural host waiting. The door to the secrets of eastern Europe was
shut against us. I was plowing through the dark to the road. `Will you listen to me,' she
cried out. But I went on in spite of her, her hands clutching at my coat, my hair. `Do you
see the sky; do you see it!' she railed.
"She was all but sobbing against my breast as I splashed through the icy stream and ran
headlong in search of the lantern at the road.
"The sky was a dark blue when I found the carriage. :Give me the crucifix,' I shouted to
Claudia as I cracked the whip. `There's only one place to go.' She was thrown against me
as the carriage rocked into its turn and headed for the village.
"I had the eeriest feeling then as I could see the mist rising amongst the dark brown trees.
The air was cold and fresh and the birds had begun. It was as if the sun were rising. Yet I

did not care. And yet I knew that it was not rising, that there was still time. It was a
marvelous, quieting feeling. The scrapes and cuts burned my flesh and my heart ached
with hunger, but my head felt marvelously light. Until I saw the gray shapes of the inn
and the steeple of the church; they were too clear. And the stars above were fading fast.
"In a moment I was hammering on the door of the inn. As it opened, I put my hood up
around my face tightly and held Claudia beneath my cape in a bundle. `Your village is rid
of the vampire!' I said to the woman, who stared at me in astonishment. I was clutching
the crucifix which she'd given me. `Thanks be to God he's dead. You'll find the remains
in the tower. Tell this to your people at once.' I pushed past her into the inn.
"The gathering was roused into commotion instantly, but I insisted that I was tired
beyond endurance. I must pray and rest. They were-to get my chest from the carriage and
bring it to a decent room where I might sleep. But a message was to come for me from
the bishop at Varna and for this, and this only, was I to be awakened. `Tell the good
father when he arrives that the vampire is dead, and then give him food and drink and
have him wait for me,' I said. The woman was crossing herself. `You understand,' I said
to her, as I hurried towards the stairs, `I couldn't reveal my mission to you until after the
vampire had been. . .
`Yes, yes,' she said to me. `But you are not a priest . . . the child!' `No, only too well-
versed in these matters. The Unholy One is no match for me,' I said to her. I stopped. The
door of the little parlor stood open, with nothing but a white square of cloth on the oak
table. `Your friend,' she said to me, and she looked at the floor. `He rushed out into the
night . . . he was mad.' I only nodded.
"I could hear them shouting when I shut the door of the room. They seemed to be running
in all directions; and then came the sharp sound of the church bell in the rapid peal of
alarm. Claudia had slipped down from my arms, and she was staring at me gravely as I
bolted the door. Very slowly I unlatched the shutter of the window. An icy light seeped
into the room. Still she watched me. Then I felt her at my side. I looked down to see she
was holding out her hand to me. `Here,' she said. She must have seen I was confused. I
felt so weak that her face was shimmering as I looked at it, the blue of her eyes dancing
on her white cheeks.
" `Drink,' she whispered, drawing nearer. `Drink.' And she held the soft, tender flesh of
the wrist towards me. 'No, I know what to do; haven't I done it in the past?' I said to her.
It was she who bolted the window tight, latched the heavy door. I remember kneeling by
the small grate and feeling the ancient paneling. It was rotten behind the varnished
surface, and it gave under my fingers. Suddenly I saw my fist go through it and felt the
sharp jab of splinter in my wrist. And then I remember feeling in the dark and catching
hold of something warm and pulsing. A rush of cold, damp air hit my face and I saw a
darkness rising about me, cool and damp as if this air were a silent water that seeped
through the broken wall and filled the room. The room was gone. I was drinking from a
never-ending stream of warm blood that flowed down my throat and through my pulsing
heart and through my veins, so that my skin warmed against this cool, dark water. And
now the pulse of the blood I drank slackened, and all my body cried out for it not to
slacken, my heart pounding, trying to make that heart pound with it. I felt myself rising,
as if I were floating in the darkness, and then the darkness, like the heartbeat, began to
fade.. Something glimmered in my swoon; it shivered ever so slightly with the pounding

of feet on the stairs, on the floorboards, the rolling of wheels and horses' hooves on the
earth, and it gave off a tinkling sound as it shivered. It had a small wooden frame around
it, and in that frame there emerged, through the glimmer, the figure of a man. He was
familiar. I knew his long, slender build, his black, wavy hair. Then I saw that his green
eyes were gazing at me. And in his teeth, in his teeth, he was clutching something huge
and soft and brown, which he pressed tightly with both his hands. It was a rat. A great
loathsome brown rat he held, its feet poised, its mouth agape, its great curved tail frozen
in the air. Crying out, he threw it down and stared aghast, blood flowing from his open
mouth.
"A searing light hit my eyes. I struggled to open them against it, and the entire room was
glowing. Claudia was right in front of me. She was not a tiny child, but someone much
larger who drew me forward towards her with both hands. She was on her knees, and my
arms encircled her waist. Then darkness descended, and I had her folded against me. The
lock slid into place. Numbness carne over my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion."
And that was how it was throughout Transylvania and Hungary and Bulgaria, and
through all those countries where the peasants know that the living dead walk, and the
legends of the vampires abound. In every village where we did encounter the vampire, it
was the same."
"A mindless corpse?" the boy asked.
"Always," said the vampire. "When we found these creatures at all. I remember a handful
at most. Sometimes we only watched them from a distance, all too familiar with their
wagging, bovine heads, their haggard shoulders, their rotted, ragged clothing. In one
hamlet it was a woman, only dead for perhaps a few months; the villagers had glimpsed
her and knew her by name. It was she who gave us the only hope we were to experience
after the monster in Transylvania, and that hope came to nothing. She fled from us
through the forest and we ran after her, reaching out for her long, black hair. Her white
burial gown was soaked with dried blood, her fingers caked with the dirt of the grave.
And her eyes . . . they were mindless, two pools that reflected the moon. No secrets, no
truths, only despair."
"But what were these creatures? Why were they like this?" asked the boy, his lips
grimacing with disgust. "I don't understand. How could they be so different from you and
Claudia, yet exist?"
"I had my theories. So did Claudia. But the main thing which I had then was despair. And
in despair the recurring fear that we had killed the only other vampire like us, Lestat. Yet
it seemed unthinkable. Had he possessed the wisdom of a sorcerer, the powers of a. witch
. . . I might have come to understand that he had somehow managed to wrest a conscious
life from the same forces that governed these monsters. But he was only Lestat, as I've
described him to you: devoid of mystery, finally, his limits as familiar to me in those
months in eastern Europe as. his charms. I wanted to forget -him, and yet it seemed I
thought of him always. It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And
sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the
room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow there was a disturbing
comfort in that, and, despite myself, I'd envision his face-not as it had been the last night
in the fire, but on other nights, that last evening he spent with us at home, his hand

playing idly with the keys of the spinet, his head tilted to one side. A sickness rose in me
more wretched than anguish when I saw what my dreams were doing. I wanted him alive!
In the dark nights of eastern Europe, Lestat was the only vampire I'd found.
"But Claudia's waking thoughts were of afar more practical nature. Over and over, she
had me recount that night in the hotel in New Orleans when she'd become a vampire, and
over and over she searched the process for some clue to why these things we met in the
country graveyards had no mind. What if, after Lestat's infusion of blood, she'd been put
in a grave, closed up in it until the preternatural drive for blood caused her to break the
stone door of the vault that held her, what then would her mind have been, starved, as it
were, to the breaking point? Her body might have saved itself when no mind remained.
And through the world she would have blundered, ravaging where she could, as we saw
these creatures do. That was how she explained them. But what had fathered them, how
had they begun? That was what she couldn't explain and what gave her hope of discovery
when I, from sheer exhaustion, had none. `They spawn their own kind, it's obvious, but
where does it begin?' she asked. And then, somewhere near the outskirts of Vienna, she
put the question to me which had never before passed her lips. Why could I not do what
Lestat had done with both of us? Why could I not make another vampire? I don't know
why at first I didn't even understand her, except that in loathing what I was with every
impulse in me I had a particular fear of that question, which was almost worse than any
other. You see, I didn't understand something strong in myself. Loneliness had caused me
to think on that very possibility years before, when I had fallen under the spell of Babette
Freniere. But I held it locked inside of me like an unclean passion. I shunned mortal life
after her. I killed strangers. And the Englishman Morgan, because I knew him, was as
safe from my fatal embrace as Babette had been. They both caused me too much pain.
Death I couldn't think of giving them. Life in death-it was monstrous. I turned away from
Claudia. I wouldn't answer her. But angry as she was, wretched as was her impatience,
she could not stand this turning away. And she drew near to me, comforting me with her
hands and her eyes as if she were my loving daughter.
" `Don't think on it, Louis,' she said later, when we were comfortably situated in a small
suburban hotel. I was standing at the window, looking at the distant glow of Vienna, so
eager for that city, its civilization, its sheer size. The night was clear and the haze of the
city was on the sky. `Let me put your conscience at ease, though I'll never know precisely
what it is,' she said into my ear, her hand stroking my hair.
" `Do that, Claudia,' I answered her. `Put it at ease. Tell me that you'll never speak to me
of making vampires again.'
" `I want no orphans such as ourselves!' she said, all too quickly. My words annoyed her.
My feeling annoyed her. `I want answers, knowledge, she said. But tell me, Louis, what
makes you so certain that you've never done this without your knowing it?'
"Again there was that deliberate obtuseness in me. I must look at her as if I didn't know
the meaning of her words. I wanted her to be silent and to be near me, and for us to be in
Vienna. I drew her hair back and let my fingertips touch her long lashes and looked away
at the light.

" `After all, what does it take to make those creatures?' she went on. `Those vagabond
monsters? How many drops of your blood intermingled with a man's blood . . . and what
kind of heart to survive that first attack?'
"I could feel her watching my face, and I stood there, my arms folded, my back to the
side of the window, looking out.
" `That pale-faced Emily, that miserable Englishman . . .' she said, oblivious to the flicker
of pain in my face. `Their hearts were nothing, and it was the fear of death as much as the
drawing of blood that killed them. The idea killed them. But what of the hearts that
survive? Are you sure you haven't fathered a league of monsters who, from time to time,
struggled vainly and instinctively to follow in your footsteps? What was their life span;
these orphans you left behind you-a day there, a week here, before the sun burnt them to
ashes or some mortal victim cut them down?'
" `Stop it,' I begged her. 'If you knew how completely I envision everything you describe,
you would not describe it. I tell you it's never happened! Lestat drained me to the point of
death to make me a vampire. And gave back all that blood mingled with his own. That is
how it was done!'
"She looked away from me, and then it seemed she was looking down at her hands. I
think I heard her sigh, but I wasn't certain. And then her eyes moved over me, slowly, up
and down, before they finally met mine. Then it seemed she smiled. `Don't be frightened
of my fancy,' she said softly. `After all, the final decision will always rest with you. Is
that not so?'
" `I don't understand,' I said. And a cold laughter erupted from her as she turned away.
" `Can you picture it?' she said, so softly I scarcely heard. BA coven of children? That is
all I could provide. . '
" `Claudia,' I murmured.
" `Rest easy,' she said abruptly, her voice still low. `I tell you that as much as I hated
Lestat . . ' She stopped.
" `Yes . . ' I whispered. `Yes. . . .'
" 'As much as I hated him, with him we were . . . complete.' She looked at me, her eyelids
quivering, as if the slight rise in her voice had disturbed her even as it had disturbed me.
" `No, only you were complete . . .' I said to her. `Because there were two of us, one on
either side of you, from the beginning.'
"I thought I saw her smile then, but I was not certain. She bowed her head, but I could see
her eyes moving beneath the lashes, back and forth, back and forth. Then she said, `The
two of you at my side. Do you picture that as you say it, as you picture everything else?'
"One night, long gone by, was as material to me as if I were in it still, but I didn't tell her.
She was desperate in that night, running away from Lestat, who had urged her to kill a
woman in the street from whom she'd backed off, clearly alarmed. I was sure the woman
had resembled her mother. Finally she'd escaped us entirely, but I'd found her in the
armoire, beneath the jackets and coats, clinging to her doll. And, carrying her to her crib,
I sat beside her and sang to her, and she stared at me as she clung to that doll, as if trying
blindly and mysteriously to calm a pain she herself did not begin to understand. Can you

picture it, this splendid domesticity, dim lamps, the vampire father singing to the vampire
daughter? Only the doll had a human face, only the doll.
" `But we must get away from here!' said the present Claudia suddenly, as though the
thought had just taken shape in her mind with a special urgency. She had her hand to her
ear, as if clutching it against some awful sound. `From the roads behind us, from what I
see in your eyes now, because I give voice to thoughts which are nothing more to me than
plain considerations . . '
" `Forgive me,' I said as gently as I could, withdrawing slowly from that long-ago room,
that ruffled crib, that frightened monster child and monster voice. And Lestat, where was
Lestat? A match striking in the other room, a shadow leaping suddenly into life, as light
and dark come alive where there was only darkness.
" `No, you forgive me . . .' she was saying to me now, in this little hotel room near the
first capital of western Europe. `No, we forgive each other. But we don't forgive him;
and, without him, you see what things are between us:
" `Only now because we are tired, and things are dreary . . ' I said to her and to myself,
because there was no one else in the world to whom I could speak.
" `Ah, yes; and that is what must end. I tell you, I begin to understand that we have done
it all wrong from the start. We must bypass Vienna. We need our language, our people. I
want to go directly now to Paris.'
PART III
"l think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary, a
relief so near to well-being that I was amazed, not only that I could feel it, but that I'd so
nearly forgotten it.
"I wonder if you can understand what it meant. My expression can't convey. it now, for
what Paris means to me is very different from what it meant then, in those days, at that
hour; but still, even now, to think of it, I feel something akin to that happiness. And I've
more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever
deserve to know. I am not so much in love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me
feel it.
"Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing I
felt so hopelessly in the Mediterranean Sea. But Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart,
so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that doted
on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more
richly than any promise.
"It was the mother of New Orleans, understand that first; it had given New Orleans its
life, its first populace; and it was what New Orleans had for so long tried to be. But New
Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was
something forever savage and primitive there, something that threatened the exotic and
sophisticated life both from within and without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a
brick of the crowded Spanish houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that
forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague-and
the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone
facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a dream in the imagination of her

striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a tenacious, though
unconscious, collective will.
"But Paris, Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by
history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her
massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets-as vast
and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted
populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to
genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if
all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful,
what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that
graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine,
contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so
shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris.
"We were alive again. We were in love, and so euphoric was I after those hopeless nights
of wandering in eastern Europe that I yielded completely when Claudia moved us into the
Hote1 Saint-Gabriel on the Boulevard des Capucines. It was rumored to be one of the
largest hotels in Europe, its immense rooms dwarfing the memory of our old town house,
while at the same time recalling it with a comfortable splendor. We were to have one of
the finest suites. Our windows looked out over the gas-lit boulevard itself where, in the
early evening, the asphalt sidewalks teemed with strollers and an endless stream of
carriages flowed past, taking lavishly dressed ladies and their gentlemen to the Opera or
the Opera Comique, the ballet, the theaters, the balls and receptions without end at the
Tuileries.
"Claudia put her reasons for expense to me gently and logically, but I could see that she
became impatient ordering everything through me; it was wearing for her. The hotel, she
said, quietly afforded us complete freedom, our nocturnal habits going unnoticed in the
continual press of European tourists, our rooms immaculately maintained by an
anonymous staff, while the immense price we paid guaranteed our privacy and our
security. But there was more to it than that. There was a feverish purpose to her buying.
" `This is my world,' she explained to me as she sat in a small velvet chair before the
open balcony, watching the long row of broughams stopping one by one before the hotel
doors. `I must have it as I like,' she said, as if speaking to herself. And so it was as she
liked, stunning wallpaper of rose and gold, an abundance of damask and velvet furniture,
embroidered pillows and silk trappings for the fourposter bed. Dozens of roses appeared
daily for the marble .mantels and the inlaid tables, crowding the curtained alcove of her
dressing room, reflected endlessly in tilted mirrors. And finally she crowded the high
French windows with a veritable garden of camellia and fern. `I miss the flowers; more
than anything else I miss the flowers,' she mused. And sought after them even in the
paintings which we brought from the shops and the galleries, magnificent canvases such
as I'd never seen in New Orleans-from the classically executed lifelike bouquets,
tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new
and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they
destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like to those states when I'm
nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of
lamps. Paris flowed into these rooms.

"I found myself at home there, again forsaking dreams of ethereal simplicity for what
another's gentle insistence had given me, because the air was sweet like the air of our
courtyard in the Rue Royale, and all was alive with a shocking profusion of gas light that
rendered even the ornate lofty ceilings devoid of shadows. The light raced on the gilt
curlicues, flickered in the baubles of the chandeliers. Darkness did not exist. Vampires
did not exist.
"And even bent as I was on my quest, ' it was sweet to think that, for an hour, father and
daughter climbed into the cabriolet from such civilized luxury only to ride along the
banks of the Seine, over the bridge into the Latin Quarter to roam those darker, narrower
streets in search of history, not victims. And then to return to the ticking clock and the
brass andirons and the playing cards laid out upon the table. Books of poets, the program
from a play, and all around the soft humming of the vast hotel, distant violins, a woman
talking in a rapid, animated voice above the zinging of a hairbrush, and a man high above
on the top floor repeating over and over to the night air, `I understand, I am just
beginning, I am just beginning to understand. . .
`Is it as you would have it?' Claudia asked, perhaps just to let me know she hadn't
forgotten me, for she was quiet now for hours; no talk of vampires. But something was
wrong. It was not the old serenity, the pensiveness that was recollection. There was a
brooding there, a smoldering dissatisfaction. And though it would vanish from her eyes
when I would call to her or answer her, anger seemed to settle very near the surface.
" `Oh, you know how I would have it,' I answered, persisting in the myth of my own will.
`Some garret near the Sorbonne, near enough to the noise of the Rue St. Michel, far
enough away. But I would mainly have it as you would have it' And I could see her
warmed, but looking past me, as if to say, `You have no remedy; don't draw too near;
don't ask of me what I ask of you: are you content?'
"My memory is too clear; too sharp; things should wear at the edges, and what is
unresolved should soften. So, scenes are near my heart like pictures in lockets, yet
monstrous pictures no artist or camera would ever catch; and over and over I would see
Claudia at the piano's edge that last night when Lestat was playing, preparing to die, her
face when he was taunting her, that contortion that at once became a mask; attention
might have saved his life, if, in fact, he were dead at all.
"Something was collecting in Claudia, revealing itself slowly to the most unwilling
witness in the world. She had a new passion for rings and bracelets children did not wear.
Her jaunty, straight-backed walk was not a child's, and often she entered small boutiques
ahead of me and pointed a commanding finger at the perfume or the gloves she would
then pay for herself. I was never far away, and always uncomfortable--not because I
feared anything in this vast city, but because I feared her. She'd always been the `lost
child' to her victims, the `orphan,' and now it seemed she would be something else,
something wicked and shocking to the passers-by who succumbed to her. But this was
often private; I was left for an hour haunting the carved edifices of Notre-Dame, or sitting
at the edge of a park in the carriage.
"And then one night, when I awoke on the lavish bed in the suite of the hotel, my book
crunched uncomfortably under me, I found her gone altogether. I didn't dare ask the
attendants if they'd seen her. It was our practice to spirit past them; we had no name. I

searched the corridors for her, the side streets, even the ballroom, where some almost
inexplicable dread came over me at the thought of her there alone. But then I finally saw
her coming through the side doors of the lobby, her hair beneath her bonnet brim
sparkling from the light rain, the child rushing as if on a mischievous escapade, lighting
the faces of doting men and women as she mounted the grand staircase and passed me, as
if she hadn't seen me at all. An impossibility, a strange graceful slight.
"I shut the door behind me just as she was taking off her cape, and, in a flurry of golden
raindrops, she shook it, shook her hair. The ribbons crushed from the bonnet fell loose
and I felt a palpable relief to see the childish dress, those ribbons, and something
wonderfully comforting in her arms, a small china doll. Still she said nothing to me; she
was fussing with the doll. Jointed somehow with hooks or wire beneath its flouncing
dress, its tiny feet tinkled like a bell. `it's a lady, doll,' she said, looking up at me. `See? A
lady doll.' She put it on the dresser.
" 'So it is,' I whispered.
"'A woman made it,' she said. `She makes baby dolls, all the same, baby dolls, a shop of
baby dolls, until I said to her, "I want a lady doll."'
"It was taunting, mysterious. She sat there now with the wet strands of hair streaking her
high forehead, intent on that doll. `Do you know why she made it for me?' she asked. I
was wishing now the room had shadows, that I could retreat from the warm circle of the
superfluous fire into some darkness, that I wasn't sitting on the bed as if on a lighted
stage, seeing her before me and in her mirrors, puffed sleeves and puffed sleeves.
" `Because you are a beautiful child and she wanted to make you happy,' I said, my voice
small and foreign to myself.
"She was laughing soundlessly. `A beautiful child,' she said glancing up at me. 'Is that
what you still think I am?' And her face went dark as again she played with the doll, her
fingers pushing the tiny crocheted neckline down toward the china breasts. `Yes, I
resemble her baby dolls, I am her baby dolls. You should see her working in that shop;
bent on her dolls, each with the same face, lips.' Her finger touched her own lip.
Something seemed to shift suddenly, something within the very walls of the room itself,
and the mirrors trembled with her image as if the earth had sighed beneath the
foundations. Carriages rumbled in the streets; but they were too far away. And then I saw
what her still childish figure was doing: in one hand she held the doll, the other to her
lips; and the hand that held the doll was crushing it, crushing it and popping it so it
bobbed and broke in a heap of glass that fell now from her open, bloody hand onto the
carpet. She wrung the tiny dress to make a shower of littering particles as I averted my
eyes, only to see her in the tilted mirror over the fire, see her eyes scanning me from my
feet to the top of my head. She moved through that mirror towards me and drew close on
the bed.
" `Why do you look away, why don't you look at me?' she asked, her voice very smooth,
very like a silver bell. But then she laughed softly, a woman's laugh, and said, `Did you
think I'd be your daughter forever? Are you the father of fools, the fool of fathers?'
" `Your tone is unkind with me,' I answered.

" `Hmmm . . . unkind.' I think she nodded. She was a blaze in the corner of my eye, blue
flames, golden flames.
" `And what do they think of you,' I asked as gently as I could, `out there?' I gestured to
the open window.
" `Many things.' She smiled. `Many things. Men are marvelous at explanations: Have you
see the "little people" in the parks, the circuses, the freaks that men pay money to laugh
at?'
"'I was a sorcerer's apprentice only!' I burst out suddenly, despite myself. `Apprentice!' I
said. I wanted to touch her, to stroke her hair, but I sat there afraid of her, her anger like a
match about to kindle.
"Again she smiled, and then she drew my hand into her lap and covered it as best she
could with her own. `Apprentice, yes,' she laughed. `But tell me one thing, one thing
from that lofty height. What was it like . . . making love?'
"I was walking away from her before I meant to, I was searching like a dim-wilted mortal
man for cape and gloves. `You don't remember?' she asked with perfect calm, as I put my
hand on the brass door handle.
"I stopped, feeling her eyes on my back, ashamed, and then I turned around and made as
if to think, Where am I going, what shall I do, why do I stand here?
" `It was something hurried,' I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How perfectly, coldly
blue they were. How earnest. `And . . . it was seldom savored . . . something acute that
was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.'
"'Ahhh . . .' she said. `Like hurting you as I do now . . . that is also the pale shadow of
killing.'
" 'Yes, madam,' I said to her. `I am inclined to believe that is correct.' And bowing
swiftly, I bade her good-night."
"It was a long time after I'd left her that I slowed my pace. I'd crossed the Seine. I wanted
darkness. To hide from her and the feelings that welled up in me, and the great
consuming fear that I was utterly inadequate to make her happy, or to make myself happy
by pleasing her.
"I would have given the world to please her; the world we now possessed, which seemed
at once empty and eternal. Yet I was injured by her words and by her eyes, and no
amount of explanations to her which passed through and through my mind now, even
forming on my lips in desperate whispers as I left the Rue St. Michel and went deeper
and deeper into the older, darker streets of the Latin Quarter-no amount of explanations
seemed to soothe what I imagined to be her grave dissatisfaction, or my own pain.
"Finally I left off words except for a strange chant.
I was in the black silence of a medieval street, and blindly I followed its sharp turns,
comforted by the height of its narrow tenements, which seemed at any moment capable
of falling together, closing this alleyway under the indifferent stars like a seam. `I cannot
make her happy, I do not make her happy; and her unhappiness increases every day.' This
was my chant, which I repeated like a rosary, a charm to change the facts, her inevitable
disillusionment with our quest, which left us in this limbo where I felt her drawing away

from me, dwarfing me with her enormous need. I even conceived a savage jealousy of the
dollmaker to whom she'd confided her request for that tinkling diminutive lady, because
that dollmaker had for a moment given her something which she held close to herself in
my presence as if I were not there at all.
"What did it amount to, where could it lead?
"Never since I'd come to Paris months before did I so completely feel the city's immense
size, how I might pass from this twisting, blind street of my choice into a world of
delights, and never had I so keenly felt its uselessness. Uselessness to her if she could not
abide this anger, if she could not somehow grasp the limits of which she seemed so
angrily, bitterly aware. I was helpless. She was helpless. But she was stronger than I. And
I knew, had known even at the moment when I turned away from her in the hotel, that
behind her eyes there was for me her continuing love.
"And dizzy and weary and now comfortably lost, I became aware with a vampire's
inextinguishable senses that I was being followed.
"my first thought was irrational. She'd come out after me. And, cleverer than I, had
tracked me at a great distance. But as surely as this came to mind, another thought
presented itself, a rather cruel thought in light of all that had passed between us. The steps
were too heavy for hers. It was just some mortal walking in this same alley, walking
unwarily towards death.
"So I continued on, almost ready to fall into my pain again because I deserved it, when
my mind said, You are a fool; listen. And it dawned on me that these steps, echoing as
they were at a great distance behind me, were in perfect time with my own. An accident.
Because if mortal they were, they were too far off for mortal hearing. But as I stopped
now to consider that, they stopped. And as I turned saying, Louis, you deceive yourself,
and started up, they started up. Footfall with my footfall, gaining-speed now as I gained
speed. And then something remarkable, undeniable occurred. En garde as I was for the
steps that were behind me, I tripped on a fallen roof tile and was pitched against the wall.
And behind me, those steps echoed to perfection the sharp shuffling rhythm of my fall.
"I was astonished. And in a state of alarm well beyond fear. To the right and left of me
the street was dark. Not even a tarnished light shone in a garret window. And the only
safety afforded me, the great distance between myself and these steps, was as I said the
guarantee that they were not human. I was at a complete loss as to what I might do. I had
the nearirresistible desire to call out to this being and welcome it, to let it know as quickly
and as completely as possible that I awaited it, had been searching for it, would confront
it. Yet I was afraid. What seemed sensible was to resume walking, waiting for it to gain
on me; and as I did so I was again mocked by my own pace, and the distance between us
remained the same. The tension mounted in me, the dark around me becoming more and
more menacing; and I said over and over, measuring these steps, Why do you track me,
why do you let me know you are there?
"Then I rounded a sharp turn in the street, and a gleam of light showed ahead of me at the
next corner. The street sloped up towards it, and I moved on very slowly, my heart
deafening in my ears, reluctant to eventually reveal myself in that light.
"And as I hesitated-stopped, in fact right before the turn; something rumbled and
clattered above, as if the roof of the house beside me had all but collapsed. I jumped

back just in time, before a load of tiles crashed into the street, one of them brushing my
shoulder. All was quiet now. I stared at the tiles, listening, waiting. And then slowly I
edged around the turn into the light, only to see there looming over me at the top of the
street beneath the gas lamp the unmistakable figure of another vampire.
" He was enormous in height though gaunt as myself, his long, white face very bright
under the lamp, his large, black eyes staring .at me in what seemed undisguised wonder.
His right leg was slightly bent as though he'd just come to a halt in mid-step. And then
suddenly I realized that not only was his black hair long and full and combed precisely
like my own, and not only was he dressed in identical coat and cape to my own, but he
stood imitating my stance and facial expression to perfection. I swallowed and let my
eyes pass over him slowly, while I struggled t(r) hide from him the rapid pace of my
pulse as his eyes in. like manner passed over me. And when I saw him blink I realized I
had just blinked, and as I drew my arms up and folded them across my chest he slowly
did the same. It was maddening. Worse than maddening. Because, as I barely moved my
lips, he barely moved his lips, and I found the words dead and I couldn't make other
words to confront this, to stop it. And all the while, there was that height and those sharp
black eyes and that powerful attention which was, of course, perfect mockery, but
nevertheless riveted to myself. He was the vampire; I seemed the mirror.
" `Clever,' I said to him shortly and desperately, and, of course, he echoed that word as
fast as I said it. And maddened as I was more by that than anything else, I found myself
yielding to a slow smile, defying the sweat which had broken from every pore and the
violent tremor in my legs. He also smiled, but his -eyes had a ferocity that was animal,
unlike my own, and the smile was sinister in its sheer mechanical quality.
"Now I took a step forward and so did he; and when I ,stopped short, staring, so did he.
But then he slowly, very slowly, lifted his right arm, though mine remained poised and
gathering his fingers into a fist, he now struck at his chest in quickening time to mock my
heartbeat. Laughter erupted from him. He threw back his head, showing his canine teeth,
and the laughter seemed to fill the alleyway. I loathed him. Completely.
" `You mean me harm?' I asked, only to hear the words mockingly obliterated.
" `Trickster!' I said sharply. Buffoon!'
"That word stopped him. Died on his lips even as he was saying it, and his face went
hard.
"What I did then was impulse. I turned my back on him and started away, perhaps to
make him come after me and demand to know who I was. But in a movement so swift I
couldn't possibly have seen it, he stood before me again, as if he had materialized there.
Again I turned my back on him-only to face him under the lamp again, the settling of his
dark, wavy hair the only indication that he had in fact moved.
" `I've been looking for you! I've come to Paris looking for you!' I forced myself to say
the words, seeing that he didn't echo them or move, only stood staring at me.
"Now he moved forward slowly, gracefully, and I saw his own body and his own manner
had regained possession of him and, extending his hand as if he meant to ask for mine, he
very suddenly pushed me backwards, off-balance. I could feel my shirt drenched and
sticking to my flesh as I righted myself, my hand grimed from the damp wall.

"And as I turned to confront him, he threw me completely down.
"I wish I could describe to you his power. You would know, if I were to attack you, to
deal you a sharp blow with an arm you never saw move towards you.
"But something in me said, Show him your own power; and I rose up fast, going right for
him with both arms out. And I hit the night, the empty night swirling beneath that
lamppost, and stood there looking about me, alone and a complete fool. This was a test of
some sort, I knew it then, though consciously I fixed my attention of the dark street, the
recesses of the doorways, anyplace he might have hidden. I wanted no part of this test,
but saw no way out of it. And I was contemplating some way to disdainfully make that
clear when suddenly he appeared again, jerking me around and flinging me down the
sloping cobblestones where I'd fallen before. I felt his boot against my ribs. And,
enraged, I grabbed hold of his leg, scarcely believing it when I felt the cloth and the bone.
He'd fallen against the stone wall opposite and let out a snarl of unrepressed anger.
"What happened then was pure confusion. I held tight to that leg, though the boot strained
to get at me. And at some point, after he'd toppled over me and pulled loose from me, I
was lifted into the air by strong hands. What might have happened I can well imagine. He
could have flung me several yards from himself, he was easily that strong. And battered,
severely injured, I might have lost consciousness. It was violently disturbing to me even
in that melee that I didn't know whether I could lose consciousness. But it was never put
to a test. For, confused as I was, I was certain someone else had come between us,
someone who was battling him decisively, forcing him to relinquish his hold.
"When I looked up, I was in the street, and I saw two figures only for an instant, like the
flicker of an image after the eye is shut. Then there was only a swirling of black
garments, a boot striking the stones, and the night was empty. I sat, panting, the sweat
pouring down my face, staring around me and then up at the narrow ribbon of faint sky.
Slowly, only because my eye was totally concentrated upon it now, a figure emerged
from the darkness of the wall above me. Crouched on the jutting stones of the lintel, it
turned so that I saw the barest gleam of light on the hair and then the stark, white face. A
strange face, broader and not so gaunt as the other, a large dark eye that was holding me
steadily. A whisper came from the lips, though they never appeared to move. `You are all
right.'
"I was more than all right. I was on my feet, ready to attack. But the figure remained
crouched, as if it were part of the wall. I could see a white hand working in what
appeared to be a waistcoat pocket. A card appeared, white as the fingers that extended it
to me. I didn't move to take it. `Come to us, tomorrow night,' said that same whisper from
the smooth, expressionless face, which still showed only one eye to the light. `I won't
harm you,' he said, `And neither will that other. I won't allow it.' And his hand did that
thing which vampires can make happen; that is, it seemed to leave his body in the dark to
deposit the card in my hand, the purple script immediately shining in the light. And the
figure, moving upwards like a cat on the wall, vanished fast between the garret gables
overhead.
"I knew I was alone now, could feel it. And the pounding of my heart seemed to fill the
empty little street as I stood under the lamp reading that card. The address I knew well

enough, because I had been to theaters along that street more than once. But the name
was astonishing: `Theatre des Vampires,' and the time noted, nine P.m.
"I turned it over and discovered written there the note, `Bring the petite beauty with you.
You are most welcome. Armand!
"There was no doubt that the figure who'd given it to me had written this message. And I
had only a very short time to get to the hotel and to tell Claudia of these things before
dawn. I was running fast, so that even the people I passed on the boulevards did not
actually see the shadow that brushed them."
The Theatre des Vampires was by invitation only, and the next night the doorman
inspected my card for a moment while the rain fell softly all around us: on the man and
the woman stopped at the shut-up box office; on the crinkling posters of penny-dreadful
vampires with their outstretched arms and cloaks resembling bat wings ready to close on
the naked shoulders of a mortal victim; on the couple that pressed past us into the packed
lobby, where I could easily perceive that the crowd was all human, no vampires among
them, not even this boy who admitted us finally into the press of conversation and damp
wool and ladies' gloved fingers fumbling with felt-brimmed hats and wet curls. I pressed
for the shadows in a feverish excitement. We had fed earlier only so that in the bustling
street of this theater our skin would not be too white, our eyes too unclouded. And that
taste of blood which I had not enjoyed had left me all the more uneasy; but I had no time
for it. This was no night for killing. This was to be a night of revelations, no matter how it
ended. I was certain.
"Yet here we stood with this all too human crowd, the doors opening now on the
auditorium, and a young boy pushing towards us, beckoning, pointing above the
shoulders of the crowd to the stairs. Ours was a box, one of the best in the house, and if
the blood had not dimmed my skin completely nor made Claudia into a human child as
she rode in my arms, this usher did not seem at all to notice it nor to care. In fact, he
smiled all too readily as he drew back the curtain for us on two chairs before the brass
rail.
" `Would you put it past them to have human slaves?' Claudia whispered.
" `But Lestat never trusted human slaves,' I answered. I watched the seats fill, watched
the marvelously flowered hats navigating below me through the rows of silk chairs.
White shoulders gleamed in the deep curve of the balcony spreading out from us;
diamonds glittered in the gas light. `Remember, be sly for once,' came Claudia's whisper
from beneath her bowed blond head. `You're too much of a gentleman.'
"The lights were going out, first in the balcony, and then along the walls of the main
floor. A knot of musicians had gathered in the pit below the stage, and at the foot of the
long, green velvet curtain the gas flickered, then brightened, and the audience receded as
if enveloped by a gray cloud through which only the diamonds sparkled, on wrists, on
throats, on fingers. And a hush descended like that gray cloud until all the sound was
collected in one echoing persistent cough. Then silence. And the slow, rhythmical beating
of a tambourine. Added to that was the thin melody of a wooden flute, which seemed to
pick up the sharp metallic tink of the bells of the tambourine, winding them into a
haunting melody that was medieval in sound. Then the strumming of strings that
emphasized the tambourine. And the flute rose, in that melody singing of something

melancholy, sad. It had a charm to it, this music, and the whole audience seemed stilled
and united by it, as if the music of that flute were a luminous ribbon unfurling slowly in
the dark. Not even the rising curtain broke the silence with the slightest sound. The lights
brightened, and it seemed the stage was not the stage but a thickly wooded place, the light
glittering on the roughened tree trunks and the thick clusters of leaves beneath the arch of
darkness above; and through the trees could be seen what appeared the low, stone bank of
a river and above that, beyond that, the glittering waters of the river itself, this whole
three-dimensional world produced in painting upon a fine silk scrim that shivered only
slightly in a faint draft.
"A sprinkling of applause greeted the illusion, gathering adherents from all parts of the
auditorium until it reached its short crescendo and died away. A dark, draped figure was
moving on the stage from tree trunk to tree trunk, so fast that as he stepped into the lights
he seemed to appear magically in the center, one arm flashing out from his cloak to show
a silver scythe and the other to hold a mask on a slender stick before the invisible face, a
mask which showed the gleaming countenance of Death, a painted skull.
"There were gasps from the crowd. It was Death standing before the audience, the scythe
poised, Death at the edge of a dark wood. And something in me was responding now as
the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile
painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there, the world in which this figure moved
in his billowing black cloak, back and forth before the audience with the grace of a great
panther, drawing forth, as it were, those gasps, those sighs, those reverent murmurs.
"And now, behind this figure, whose very gestures seemed to have a captivating power
like the rhythm of the music to which it moved, came other figures from the wings. First
an old woman, very stooped and bent, her gray hair like moss, her arm hanging down
with the weight of a great basket of flowers. Her shuttling steps scraped on the stage, and
her head bobbed with the rhythm of the music and the darting steps of the Grim Reaper.
And then she started back as she laid eyes on him and, slowly setting down her basket,
made her hands into the attitude of prayer. She was tired; her head leaned now on her
hands as if in sleep, and she reached out for him, supplicating. But as he came towards
her, he bent to look directly into her face, which was all shadows to us beneath her hair,
and started back then, waving his hand as if to freshen the air. Laughter erupted
uncertainly from the audience. But as the old woman rose and took after Death, the
laughter took over.
"The music broke into a jig with their running, as round and round the stage the old
woman pursued Death, until he finally flattened himself into the dark of a tree trunk,
bowing his masked face under his wing like a bird. And the old woman, lost, defeated,
gathered up her basket as the music softened and slowed to her pace, and made her way
off the stage. I did not like it. I did not like the laughter. I could see the other figures
moving in now, the music orchestrating their gestures, cripples on crutches and beggars
with rags the color of ash, all reaching out for Death, who whirled, escaping this one with
a sudden arching of the back, fleeing from that one with an effeminate gesture of disgust,
waving them all away finally in a foppish display of weariness and boredom.
"It was then I realized that the languid, white hand that made these comic arcs was not
painted white. It was a vampire hand which wrung laughter from the crowd. A vampire
hand lifted now to the grinning skull, as the stage was finally clear, as if stifling a yawn.

And then this vampire, still holding the mask before his face, adopted marvelously the
attitude of resting his weight against a painted silken tree, as if he were falling gently to
sleep. The music twittered like birds, rippled like the flowing of the water; and the
spotlight, which encircled him in a yellow pool, grew dim, all but fading away as he
slept.
"And another spot pierced the scrim, seeming to melt it altogether, to reveal a young
woman standing alone far upstage. She was majestically tall and all but enshrined by a
voluminous mane of golden blond hair. I could feel the awe of the audience as she
seemed to founder in the spotlight, the dark forest rising on the perimeter, so that she
seemed to be lost in the trees. And she was lost; and not a vampire. The soil on her mean
blouse and skirt was not stage paint, and nothing had touched her perfect face, which
gazed into the light now, as beautiful and finely chiseled as the face of a marble Virgin,
that hair her haloed veil. She could not see in the light, though all could see her. And the
moan which escaped her lips as she floundered seemed to echo over the thin, romantic
singing of the flute, which was a tribute to that beauty. The figure of Death woke with a
start in his pale spotlight and turned to see her as the audience had seen her, and to throw
up his free hand in tribute, in awe.
"The twitter of laughter died before it became real. She was too beautiful, her gray eyes
too distressed. The performance too perfect. And then the skull mask was thrown
suddenly into the wings and Death showed a beaming white face to the audience, his
hurried
hands stroking his handsome black hair, straightening a waistcoat, brushing imaginary
dust from his lapels. Death in love. And clapping rose for the luminous countenance, the
gleaming cheekbones, the winking black eye, as if it were all masterful illusion when in
fact it was merely and certainly the face of a vampire, the vampire who had accosted me
in the Latin Quarter, that leering, grinning vampire, harshly illuminated by the yellow
spot.
"My hand reached for Claudia's in the dark and pressed it tightly. But she sat still, as if
enrapt. The forest of the stage, through which that helpless mortal girl stared blindly
towards the laughter, divided in two phantom halves, moving away from the center,
freeing the vampire to close in on her.
"And she who had been advancing towards the foot lights, saw him suddenly and came to
a halt, making a moan like a child. Indeed, she was very like a child, though clearly a
full-grown woman. Only a slight wrinkling of the tender flesh around her eyes betrayed
her age. Her breasts though small were beautifully shaped beneath her blouse, and her
hips though narrow gave her long, dusty skirt a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved
back from the vampire, I saw the tears standing in her eyes like glass in the flicker of the
lights, and I felt my spirit contract in fear for her, and in longing. Her beauty was
heartbreaking.
"Behind her, a number of painted skulls suddenly moved against the blackness, the
figures that carried the masks invisible in their black clothes, except for free white hands
that clasped the edge of a cape, the folds of a skirt. Vampire women were there, moving
in with the men towards the victim, and now they all, one by one, thrust the masks away -
so they fell in an artful pile, the sticks like bones, the skulls grinning into the darkness

above. And there they stood, seven vampires, the women vampires three in number, their
molded white breasts shining over the tight black bodices of their gowns, their hard
luminescent faces staring with dark eyes beneath curls of black hair. Starkly beautiful, as
they seemed to float close around that florid human figure, yet pale and cold compared to
that sparkling golden hair, that petal-pink skin. I could hear the breath of the audience,
the halting, the soft sighs. It was a spectacle, that circle of white faces pressing closer and
closer, and that leading figure, that Gentleman Death, turning to the audience now with
his hands crossed over his heart, his head bent in longing to elicit their sympathy: was she
not irresistible! A murmur of accenting laughter, of sighs.
"But it was she who broke the magic silence.
" `I don't want to die . . : she whispered. Her voice was like a bell.
" `We are death,' he answered her; and from around her came the whisper, `Death.' She
turned, tossing her hair so it became a veritable shower of gold, a rich and living thing
over the dust off her poor clothing. `Help me?' she cried out softly, as if afraid even to
raise her voice. `Someone . . .' she said to the crowd she knew must tae there. A soft
laughter cane from Claudia. The girl on stage only vaguely understood where she was,
what was happening, but knew infinitely more than this house of people that gaped at her.
" `I don't want to die! I don't want to!' Her delicate voice broke, her eyes fixed on the tall,
malevolent leader vampire, that demon trickster who now stepped out of the circle of the
others towards her.
" `We all die,' he answered her. `The one thing you share with every mortal is death.' His
hand took in the orchestra, the distant faces of the balcony, the boxes.
" `No,' she protested in disbelief. `I have so many years, so many . . . .' Her voice was
light, lilting in her pain. It made her irresistible, just as did the movement of her naked
throat and the hand that fluttered there.
" `Years!' said the master vampire. `How do you know you have so many years? Death is
no respecter of age! There could be a sickness in your body now, already devouring you
from within. or, outside, a man might be waiting to kill you simply for your yellow hair!'
And his fingers reached for it, the sound of his deep, preternatural voice sonorous. `Need
I tell what fate may have in store for you?'
" `I don't care . . . I'm not afraid,' she protested, her clarion voice so fragile after him. `I
would take my chance. . . '
" `And if you do take that chance and live, live for years, what would be your heritage?
The humpbacked, toothless visage of old age?' And now he lifted her hair behind her
back, exposing her pale throat. And slowly he drew the string from the loose gathers of
her blouse. The cheap fabric opened, the sleeves slipping off her narrow, pink shoulders;
and she clasped it, only to have him take her wrists and thrust them sharply away. The
audience seemed to sigh in a body, the women behind their opera glasses, the men
leaning forward in their chairs. I could see the cloth falling, see the pale, flawless skin
pulsing with her heart and the tiny nipples letting the cloth slip precariously, the vampire
holding her right wrist tightly at her side, the tears coarsing down her blushing cheeks,
her teeth biting into the flesh of her lip. `Just as sure as this flesh is pink, it will turn gray,
wrinkled with age,' he said.

" `Let me live, please,' she begged, her face turning away from him. `I don't care . . . I
don't care.'
" `But then, why should you care if you die now? If these things don't frighten you . . .
these horrors?'
"She shook her head, baffled, outsmarted, helpless. I felt the anger in my veins, as sure as
the passion. With a bowed head she bore the whole responsibility for defending life, and
it was unfair, monstrously unfair that she should have to pit logic against his for what was
obvious and sacred and so beautifully embodied in her. But he made her speechless,
made her overwhelming instinct seem petty, confused. I could feel her dying inside,
weakening, and I hated him.
"The blouse slipped to her waist. A murmur moved through the titillated crowd as her
small, round breasts stood exposed. She struggled to free her wrist, but he held it fast.
" `And suppose we were to let you go . . . suppose the Grim Reaper had a heart that could
resist your beauty . . . to whom would he turn his passion? Someone must die in your
place. Would you pick the person for us? The person to stand here and suffer as yoga
suffer now?' He gestured to the audience. Her confusion was terrible. `Have you a sister .
. . a mother... a child?'
" `No,' she gasped. `No . . : shaking the mane of hair.
" `Surely someone could take your place, a friend? Choose!'
" `I can't. I wouldn't. . . : She writhed in his tight grasp. The vampires around her looked
on, still, their faces evincing no emotion, as if the preternatural flesh were masks. `Can't
you do it?' he taunted her. And I knew, if she said she could, how he would only
condemn her, say she was as evil as he for marking someone for death, say that she
deserved her fate.
" `Death waits for you everywhere,' he sighed now as if he were suddenly frustrated. The
audience could not perceive it, I could. I could see the muscles of his smooth face
tightening. He was trying to keep her gray eyes on his eyes, but she looked desperately,
hopefully away from him. On the warm, rising air I could smell the dust and perfume of
her skin, hear the soft beating of her heart. `Unconscious death . . . the fate of all mortals.'
He bent closer to her, musing, infatuated with her, but struggling. `Hmmm. . . . but we are
conscious death! That would make you a bride. Do you know what it means to be loved
by Death?' He all but kissed her face, the brilliant stain of her tears. `Do you know what it
means to have Death know your name?'
"She looked at him, overcome with fear. And then her eyes seemed to mist over, her lips
to go slack. She was staring past him at the figure of another vampire who had emerged
slowly from the shadows. For a long time he had stood on the periphery of the gathering,
his hands clasped, his large, dark eyes very still. His attitude was not the attitude of
hunger. He did not appear rapt. But she was looking into his eyes row, and her pain
bathed her in a beauteous light, a light which made her irresistibly alluring. It was 'his
that held the jaded audience, this terrible pain. I could feel her skin, feel the small,
pointed breasts, feel my arms caressing her. I shut my eyes against it and saw her starkly
against that private darkness. It was what they felt all around her, this community of
vampires. She had no chance.

"And, looking up again, I saw her shimmering in the smoky light of the footlamps, saw
her tears like gold as soft from that other vampire who stood at a distance came the words
. . . `No pain.'
"I could see the trickster stiffen, but no one else would see it. They would see only the
girl's smooth, childlike face, those parted lips, slack with innocent wonder as she gazed at
that distant vampire, hear her soft voice repeat after him, 'No pain?'
" `Your beauty is a gift to us.' Iris rich voice effortlessly filled the house, seemed to fix
and subdue the mounting wave of excitement. And slightly, almost imperceptibly, his
hand moved. The trickster was receding, becoming one of those patient, white faces,
whose hunger and equanimity were strangely one. And slowly, gracefully, the other
moved towards her. She was languid, her nakedness forgotten, those lids fluttering, a sigh
escaping her moist lips. 'No pain,' she accented. I could hardly bear it, the sight of her
yearning towards him, seeing her dying now, under this vampire's power. I wanted to cry
out to her, to break her swoon. And I wanted her. Wanted her, as he was moving in on
her, his hand out now for the drawstring of her skirt as she inclined towards him, her head
back, the black cloth slipping over her hips, over the golden gleam of the hair between
her legs-a child's down, that delicate curl-the skirt dropping to her feet. And this vampire
opened his arms, his back to the flickering footlights, his auburn hair seeming to tremble
as the gold of her hair fell around his black coat. `No pain . . . no pain . . .' he was
whispering to her, and she was giving herself over.
"And now, turning her slowly to the side so that they could all see her serene face, he was
lifting her, her back arching as her naked breasts touched his buttons, her pale arms
enfolded his neck. She stiffened, cried out as he sank his teeth, and her face was still as
the dark theater reverberated with shared passion. Isis white hand shone on her florid
buttocks, her hair dusting it, stroking it. He lifted her off the boards as he drank, her
throat gleaming against his white cheek. I felt weak, dazed, hunger rising in me, knotting
my heart, my veins. I felt my hand gripping the brass bar of the box, tighter, until I could
feel the metal creaking in its joints. And that soft, wrenching sound which none of those
mortals might hear seemed somehow to hook me to the solid place where I was.
"I bowed my head; I wanted to shut my eyes. The air seemed fragrant with her salted
skin, and close and hot and sweet. Around her the other vampires drew in, the white hand
that held her tight quivered, and the auburn-haired vampire let her go, turning her,
displaying her, her head fallen back as he gave her over, one of those starkly beautiful
vampire women rising behind her, cradling her, stroking her as she bent to drink. They
were all about her now, as she was passed from one to another and to another, before the
enthralled crowd, her head thrown forward over the shoulder of a vampire man, the nape
of her neck as enticing as the small buttocks or the flawless skin of her long thighs, the
tender creases behind her limply bent knees.
"I was sitting back in the chair, my mouth full of the taste of her, my veins in torment.
And in the corner of my eyes was that auburn-haired vampire who had conquered her,
standing apart as he had been before, his dark eyes seeming to pick me from the darkness,
seeming to fix on me over the currents of warm air.
"One by one the vampires were withdrawing. The painted forest came back, sliding
soundlessly into place. Until the mortal girl, frail and very white, lay naked in that

mysterious wood, nestled in the silk of a black bier as if on the floor of the forest itself;
and the music had begun again, eerie and alarming, growing louder as the lights grew
dimmer. All the vampires were gone, except the trickster, who had gathered his scythe
from the shadows and also his hand-held mask. And he crouched near the sleeping girl as
the lights slowly faded, and the music alone had power and force in the enclosing dark.
And then that died also.
"For a moment, the entire crowd was utterly still.
"Then applause began here and there and suddenly united everyone around us. The lights
rose in the sconces on the walls and heads turned to one another, conversation erupting
all round. A woman rising in the middle of a row to pull her fox fur sharply from the
.chair, though no one had yet made way for her; someone else pushing out quickly to the
carpeted aisle; and the whole body was on its feet as if driven to the exits.
"But then the hum became the comfortable, jaded hum of the sophisticated and perfumed
crowd that had filled the lobby and the vault of the theater before. The spell was broken.
The doors were flung open on the fragrant rain, the clop of horses' hooves, and voices
calling for taxis. Down in the sea of slightly askew chairs, a white glove gleamed on a
green sill cushion.
"I sat watching, listening, one hand shielding my lowered face from anyone and no one,
my elbow resting on the rail, the passion in me subsiding, the taste of the girl on my lips.
It was as though on the smell of the rain came her perfume still, and in the empty theater I
could hear the throb of her beating heart. I sucked in my breath, tasted the rain, and
glimpsed Claudia sitting infinitely still, her gloved hands in her lap.
"There was a bitter taste in my mouth, and confusion. And then I saw a lone usher
moving on the aisle below, righting the chairs, reaching for the scattered programs that
littered the carpet. I was aware that this ache in me, this confusion, this blinding passion
which only let me go with a stubborn slowness would be obliterated if I were to drop
down to one of those curtained archways beside him and draw him up fast in the darkness
and take him as that girl was taken. I wanted to do it, and I wanted nothing. Claudia said
near my bowed ear, `Patience, Louis. Patience'
"I opened my eyes. Someone was near, on the periphery of my vision; someone who had
outsmarted my hearing, my keen anticipation, which penetrated like a sharp antenna even
this distraction, or so I thought. But there he was, soundless, beyond the curtained
entrance of the box, that vampire with the auburn hair, that detached one; standing on the
carpeted stairway looking at us. I knew him now to be, as I'd suspected, the vampire who
had given me the card admitting us to the theater. Armand.
"He would have startled me, except for his stillness, the remote dreamy quality of his
expression. It seemed he'd been standing against that wall for the longest time, and
betrayed no sign of change as we looked at him, then came towards him. Had he not so
completely absorbed me, I would have been relieved he was not the tall, black-haired
one; but I didn't think of this. Now his eyes moved languidly over Claudia with no tribute
whatsoever to the human habit of disguising the stare. I placed my hand on Claudia's
shoulder. `We've been searching for you a very long time,' I said to him, my heart
growing calmer, as if his calm were drawing off my trepidation, my care, like the sea
drawing something into itself from the land. I cannot exaggerate this quality in him. Yet I

can't describe it and couldn't then; and the fact that my mind sought to describe it even to
myself unsettled me. He gave me the very feeling that he knew what I was doing, and his
still posture and his deep, brown eyes seemed to say there was no use in what I was
thinking, or particularly the words I was struggling to form now. Claudia said nothing.
"He moved away from the wall and began to walk down the stairs, while at the same time
he made a gesture that welcomed us and bade us follow; but all this was fluid and fast.
My gestures were the caricature of human gestures compared to his. He opened a door in
the lower wall and admitted us to the rooms below the theater, his feet only brushing the
stone stairway as we descended, his back to us with complete trust.
"And now we entered what appeared to be a vast subterranean ballroom, carved, as it
were, out of a cellar more ancient than the building overhead. Above us, the door that he
had opened fell shut, and the light died away before I could get a fair impression of the
room. I heard the rustle of his garments in the dark and then the sharp explosion of a
match. His face appeared like a great flame over the match. And then a figure moved into
the light beside him, a young boy, who brought him a candle. The sight of the boy
brought back to me in a shock the teasing pleasure of the naked woman on the stage, her
prone body, the pulsing blood. And he turned and gazed at me now, much in the manner
of the auburn-haired vampire, who had lit the candle and whispered to him, `Go.' The
light expanded to the distant walls, and the vampire held the light up and moved along
the wall, beckoning us both to follow.
"I could see a world of frescoes and murals surrounded us, their colors deep and vibrant
above the dancing flame, and gradually the theme and content beside us came clear. It
was the terrible `Triumph of Death' by Breughel, painted on such a massive scale that all
the multitude of ghastly figures towered over us in the gloom, those ruthless skeletons
ferrying the helpless dead in a fetid moat or pulling a cart of human skulls, beheading an
outstretched corpse or hanging humans from the gallows. A bell tolled over the endless
hell of scorched and smoking land, towards which great armies of men came with the
hideous, mindless march of soldiers to a massacre. I turned away, but the auburn-haired
one touched my hand and led me further along the wall to see `The Fall of the Angels'
slowly materializing with the damned being driven from the celestial heights into a lurid
chaos of feasting monsters. So vivid, so perfect was it, I shuddered. The hand that had
touched me did the same again, and I stood still despite it, deliberately looking above to
the very height of the mural, where I could make out of the shadows two beautiful angels
with trumpets to their lips. And for a second the spell was broken. I had the strong sense
of the first evening I had entered Notre-Dame, but then that was gore, like something
gossamer and precious snatched away from me.
"The candle rose. And horrors rose all around me: the dumbly passive and, degraded
damned of Bosch, the bloated coned corpses of Traini, the monstrous horsemen of Durer,
and blown out of all endurable scale a promenade of medieval woodcut, emblem, and
engraving. The very ceiling writhed with skeletons and moldering dead, with demons and
the instruments of pain, as if this were the cathedral of death itself.
"Where we stood finally in the center of the room, the candle seemed to pull the images
to life everywhere around us. Delirium threatened, that awful shifting of the room began,
that sense of falling. I reached out for Claudia's hand. She stood musing, her face passive,
her eyes distant when I looked to her, as if she'd have me let her alone; and then her feet

shot off from me with a rapid tapping on the stone floor that echoed all along the walls,
like fingers tapping on my temples, on my skull. I held my temples, staring dumbly at the
floor in search of shelter, as if to lift my eyes would force me to look on some wretched
suffering I would not, could not endure. Then again I saw the vampire's face floating in
his flame, his ageless eyes circled in dark lashes. His lips were very still, but as I stared at
him he seemed to smile without making even the slightest movement. I watched him all
the harder, convinced it was some powerful illusion I could penetrate with keen attention;
and the more I watched, the more he seemed to smile and finally to be animated with a
soundless whispering, musing, singing. I could hear it like something curling in the dark,
as wallpaper curls in the blast of a fire or paint peels from the face of a burning doll. I had
the urge to reach for him, to shake him violently so that his still face would move, admit
to this soft singing; and suddenly I found him pressed against me, his arm around my
chest, his lashes so close I could see them matted and gleaming above the incandescent
orb of his eye, his soft, tasteless breath against my skin. It was delirium.
"I moved to get away from him, and yet I was drawn to him and I didn't move at all, his
arm exerting its firm pressure, his candle blazing now against my eye, so that I felt the
warmth of it; all my cold flesh yearned for that warmth, but suddenly I waved to snuff it
but couldn't find it, and all I saw was his radiant face, as I had never seen Lestat's face,
white and poreless and sinewy and male. The other vampire. All other vampires. An
infinite procession of my own kind.
"The moment ended.
"I found myself with my hand outstretched, touching his face; but he was a distance away
from me, as if he'd never moved near me, making no attempt to brush my hand away. I
drew back, flushed, stunned.
"Far away in the Paris night a bell chimed, the dull, golden circles of sound seeming to
penetrate the walls, the timbers that carried that sound down into the earth like great
organ pipes. Again came that whispering, that inarticulate singing. And through the
gloom I saw that mortal boy watching me, and I smelled the hot aroma of his flesh. The
vampire's facile hand beckoned him, and he came towards me, his eyes fearless and
exciting, and he drew up to me in the candlelight and put his arms around my shoulders.
"Never had I felt this, never had I experienced it, this yielding of a conscious mortal. But
before I could push him away for his own sake, I saw the bluish bruise on his tender
neck. He was offering it to me. He was pressing the length of his body against me now,
and I felt the hard strength of his sex beneath his clothes pressing against my leg. A
wretched gasp escaped my lips, but he bent close, his lips on what must have been so
cold, so lifeless for him; and I sank my teeth into his skin, my body rigid, that hard sex
driving against me, and I lifted him in passion off the floor. Wave after wave of his
beating heart passed into me as, weightless, I rocked with him, devouring him, his
ecstasy, his conscious pleasure.
"Then, weak and gasping, I saw him at a distance from me, my arms empty, my mouth
still flooded with the taste of his blood. He lay against that auburnhaired vampire, his arm
about the vampire's waist, and he gazed at me in that same pacific manner of the vampire,
his eyes misted over and weak from the loss of life. I remember moving mutely forward,
drawn to him and seemingly unable to control it, that gaze taunting me, that conscious

life defying me; he should die and would not die; he would live on, comprehending,
surviving that intimacy! I turned. The host of vampires moved in the shadows, their
candles whipped and fleeting on the cool air; and above them loomed a great broadcast of
ink-drawn figures: the sleeping corpse of a woman ravaged by a vulture with a human
face; a naked man bound hand and foot to a tree, beside him hanging the torso of another,
his severed arms tied still to another branch, and on a spike this dead man's staring head.
"Me singing came again, that thin, ethereal singing. Slowly the hunger in me subsided,
obeyed, but my head throbbed and the flames of the candles seemed to merge in
burnished circles of light. Someone touched me suddenly, pushed me roughly, so that I
almost lost my balance, and when I straitened I saw the thin, angular face of the trickster
vampire I despised. He reached out for me with his white hands. But the other one, the
distant one, moved forward suddenly and stood between us. It seemed he struck the other
vampire, that I saw him move, and then again I did not see him move; both stood still like
statues, eyes fixed on one another, and time passed like wave after wave of water rolling
back from a still beach. I cannot say how long we stood there, the three of us in those
shadows, and how utterly still they seemed to me, only the shimmering flames seeming to
have life behind them. Then I remember floundering along the wall and finding a large
oak chair into which I all but collapsed. It seemed Claudia was near and speaking to
someone in a hushed but sweet voice. My forehead teemed with blood, with heat.
" `Come with me,' said the auburn-haired vampire. I was searching his face for the
movement of his lips that must have preceded the sound, yet it was so hopelessly long
after the sound. And then we were walking, the three of us, down a long stone stairway
deeper beneath the city, Claudia ahead of us, her shadow long against the wall. The air
grew cool and refreshing with the fragrance of water, and I could see the droplets
bleeding through the stones like beads of gold in the light of the vampire's candle.
"It was a small chamber we entered, a fire burning in a deep fireplace cut into the stone
wall. A bed lay at the other end, fitted into the rock and enclosed with two brass gates. At
first I saw these things clearly, and saw the long wall of books opposite the fireplace and
the wooden desk that was against it, and the coffin to the other side. But then the room
began to waver, and the auburn-haired vampire put his hands on my shoulders and guided
me down into a leather chair. The fire was intensely hot against my legs, but this felt
good to me, sharp and clear, something to draw me out of this confusion. I sat back, my
eyes only half open, and tried to see again what was about me. It was as if that distant bed
were a stage and on the linen pillows of the little stage lay that boy, his black hair parted
in the middle and curling about his ears, so that he looked now in his dreamy, fevered
state like one of those lithe androgynous creatures of a Botticelli painting; and beside
him, nestled against him, her tiny white hand stark against his ruddy flesh, lay Claudia,
her face buried in his neck. The masterful auburn-haired vampire looked on, his hands
clasped in front of him; and when Claudia rose now, the boy shuddered. The vampire
picked her up, gently, as I might pick her up, her hands finding a hold on his neck, her
eyes half shut with the swoon, her lips rouged with blood. He set her gently on the desk,
and she lay back against the leatherbound books, her hands falling gracefully into the lap
of her lavender dress. The gates closed on the boy and, burying his face in the pillows, he
slept.

"There was something disturbing to me in the room, and g didn't know what it was. I
didn't in truth know what was wrong with me, only that I'd been drawn forcefully either
by myself or someone else from two fierce, consuming states: an absorption with those
grim paintings, and the kill to which I'd abandoned myself, obscenely, in the eyes of
others.
"I didn't know what it was that threatened me now, what it was that my mind sought
escape from. I kept looking at Claudia, the way she lay against the books, the way she sat
amongst the objects of the desk, the polished white skull, the candle-holder, the open
parchment book whose hand-painted script gleamed in the light; and then above her there
emerged into focus the lacquered and shimmering painting of a medieval devil, horned
and hoofed, his bestial figure looming over a coven of worshipping witches. Her head
was just beneath it, the loose curling strands of her hair just stroking it; and she watched
the brown-eyed vampire with wide, wondering eyes. I wanted to pick her up suddenly,
and frightfully, horribly, I saw her in my kindled imagination flopping like a doll. I was
gazing at the devil, that monstrous face preferable to the sight of her in her eerie stillness.
" `You won't awaken the boy if you speak,' said the brown-eyed vampire. `You've come
from so far, you've traveled so long.' And gradually my confusion subsided, as if smoke
were rising and moving away on a current of fresh air. And I lay awake and very calm,
looking at him as he sat in the opposite chair. Claudia, too, looked at him. And he looked
from one to the other of us, his smooth face and pacific eyes very like they'd been all
along, as though there had never been any change in him at all.
"'My name is Armand,' he said. 'I sent Santiago to give you the invitation. I know your
names. I welcome you to my house'
"I gathered my strength to speak, my voice sounding strange to me when I told him that
we had feared we were alone.
" But how did you come into existence?' he asked. Claudia's hand rose ever so slightly
from her lap, her eyes moving mechanically from his face to mine. I saw this and knew
that he must have seen it, and yet he gave no sign. I knew at once what she meant to tell
me. 'You don't want to answer,' said Armand, his voice low and even more measured than
Claudia's voice, far less human than my own. I sensed myself slipping away again into
contemplation of that voice and those eyes, from which I had to draw myself up with
great effort.
" `Are you the leader of this group?' I asked him.
"`Not in the way you mean leader,' he answered. But if there were a leader here, I would
be that one.'
"'I haven't come . . . you'll forgive me . . . to talk of how I came into being. Because that's
no mystery to me, it presents no question. So if you have no power to which I might be
required to render respect, I don't wish to talk of those things:
"'If I told you I did have such power, would you respect it?' he asked.
"I wish I could describe his manner of speaking, how each time he spoke he seemed to
arise out of a state of contemplation very like that state into which I felt I was drifting,
from which it took so much to wrench myself; and yet he never moved, and seemed at all
times alert. This distracted me while at the same time I was powerfully attracted by it, as

I was by this room, its simplicity, its rich, w combination of essentials: the books, the
desk, the two chairs by the fire, the coffin, the pictures. The luxury of those rooms in the
hotel seemed vulgar, but more than that, meaningless, beside this room. I understood all
of it except for the mortal boy, the sleeping boy, whom I didn't understand at all.
"'I'm not certain,' I said, unable to keep my eyes off that awful medieval Satan. 'I would
have to know from what . . . from whom it comes. Whether it came from other vampires .
. . or elsewhere'
"'Elsewhere . . ' he said. 'What is elsewhere?
"'That?' I pointed to the medieval picture.
" 'That is a picture,' he said.
"'Nothing more?'
"'Nothing more.'
"'Then Satan . . . some satanic power doesn't give you your power here, either as leader or
as vampire?'
"'No,' he said calmly, so calmly it was impossible for me to know what he thought of my
questions, if he thought of them at all in the manner which I knew to be thinking.
" `And the other vampires?'
" "No,' he said.
" `Then we are not . . .' I sat forward. `. . . the children of Satan?'
" `How could we be the children of Satan?' he asked. `Do you believe that Satan made
this world around you?'
" `No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also must have made Satan,
and I want to know if we are his children!'
" `Exactly, and consequently if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all
Satan's power comes from God and that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are
God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really.'
"I couldn't disguise my feelings at this. I sat back against the leather, looking at that small
woodcut of the devil, released for the moment from any sense of obligation to Armand's
presence, lost in my thoughts, in the undeniable implications of his simple logic.
" 'But why does this concern you? Surely what I say doesn't surprise you,' he said. `Why
do you let it affect you?'
"'Let me explain,' I began. `I know that you're a master vampire. I respect you. But I'm
incapable of your detachment. I know what it is, and I do not possess it and I doubt that I
ever will. I accept this.'
" `I understand,' he nodded. `I saw you in the theater, your suffering, your sympathy with
that girl. I saw your sympathy for Denis when I offered him to you; you die when you
kill, as if you feel that you deserve to die, and you stint on nothing. But why, with this
passion and this sense of justice, do you wish to call yourself the child of Satan!'

" `I'm evil, evil as any vampire who ever lived! I've killed over and over and will do it
again. I took that boy, Denis, when you gave him to me, though I was incapable of
knowing whether he would survive or not.'
" 'Why does that make you as evil as any vampire? Aren't there gradations of evil? Is evil
a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth?'
" `Yes, I think it is,' I said to him. `It's not logical, as you would make it sound. But it's
that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation.'
" `But you're not being fair,' he said with the first glimmer of expression in his voice.
`Surely you attribute great degrees and variations to goodness. There is the goodness of
the child which is innocence, and then there is the goodness of the monk who has given
up everything to others and lives a life of self-deprivation and service. The goodness of
saints, the goodness of good housewives. Are all these the same?'
" `No. But equally and infinitely different from evil.' I answered.
"I didn't know I thought these things. I spoke them now as my thoughts. And they were
my most profound feelings taking a shape they could never have taken had I not spoken
them, had I not thought them out this way in conversation with another. I thought myself
then possessed of a passive mind, in a sense. I mean that my mind could only pull itself
together, formulate thought out of the muddle of longing and pain, when it was touched
by another mind; fertilized by it; deeply excited by that other mind and driven to form
conclusions. I felt now the rarest, most acute alleviation of loneliness. I could easily
visualize and suffer that moment years before in another century, when I had stood at the
foot of Babette's stairway, and feel the perpetual metallic frustration of years with Lestat;
and then that passionate and doomed affection for Claudia which made loneliness retreat
behind the soft indulgence of the senses, the same senses that longed for the kill. And I
saw the desolate mountaintop in eastern Europe where I had confronted that mindless
vampire and killed him in the monastery ruins. And it was as if the great feminine
longing of my mind were being awakened again to be satisfied. And this I felt despite my
own words: `But it's that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation.'
"I looked at Armand, at his large brown eyes in that taut, timeless face, watching me
again like a painting; and I felt the slow shifting of the physical world I'd felt in the
painted ballroom, the pull of my old delirium, the wakening of a need so terrible that the
very promise of its fulfillment contained the unbearable possibility of disappointment.
And yet there was the question, the awful, ancient, hounding question of evil.
"I think I put my hands to my head as mortals do when so deeply troubled that they
instinctively cover the face, reach for the brain as if they could reach through the skull
and massage the living organ out of its agony.
" `And how is this evil achieved?' he asked. `How does one fall from grace and become
in one instant as evil as the snob tribunal of the Revolution or the most cruel of the
Roman emperors? Does one merely have to miss Mass on Sunday, or bite down on the
Communion Host? (r)r steal a loaf of bread . . . or sleep with a neighbor's wife?'
" `No . . . .' I shook my head. `No.'
" `But if evil is without gradation, and it does exist, this state of evil, then only one sin is
needed. Isn't that what you are saying? That God exists and. . .

" `I don't know if God exists,' I said. `And for all I do know . . . He doesn't exist.'
" `Then no sin matters,' he said. `No sin. achieves evil.'
" `That's not true. Because if God doesn't exist we are the creatures of highest
consciousness in the universe. We alone understand the passage of time and the value off
every minute of human life. And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single
human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or the day after or eventually . . .
it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, this life . . . every second of it . . . is all
we have.'
"He sat back, as if for the moment stopped, his large eyes narrowing, then fixing on the
depths of the fire. This was the first time since he had come for me that he had looked
away from me, and I found myself looking at him unwatched. For a long time he sat in
this manner and I could all but feel his thoughts, as if they were palpable in the air like
smoke. Not read them, you understand, but feel the power of them. It seemed he
possessed an aura and even though his face was very young, which I knew meant
nothing, he appeared infinitely old, wise. I could not define it, because I could not explain
how the youthful lines of his face, how his eyes expressed innocence and this age and
experience at the same time.
"He rose now and looked at Claudia, his hands loosely clasped behind his back. Her
silence all this time had been understandable to me. These were not her questions, yet she
was fascinated with him and was waiting for him and no doubt learning from him all the
while that he spoke to me. But I understood something else now as they looked at each
other. He had moved to his feet with a body totally at his command, devoid of the habit
of human gesture, gesture rooted in necessity, ritual, fluctuation of mind; and his stillness
now was unearthly. And she, as I'd never seen before, possessed the same stillness. And
they were gazing at each other with a preternatural understanding from which I was
simply excluded.
"I was something whirling and vibrating to them, as mortals were to me. And I knew
when he turned towards me again that he'd come to understand she did not believe or
share my concept of evil.
"His speech commenced without the slightest warning. `This is the only real evil left,' he
said to the flames.
" `Yes,' I answered, feeling that all-consuming subject alive again, obliterating all
concerns as it always had for me.
" `It's true,' he said, shocking me, deepening my sadness, my despair.
" `Then God does not exist . . . you have no knowledge of His existence?'
"'None,' he said.
" `No knowledge!' I said it again, unafraid of my simplicity, my miserable human pain.
" `None.'
" `And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the devil!'
" `No vampire that I've ever known,' he said, musing, the fire dancing in his eyes. `And as
far as I know today, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.'

"I stared at him, astonished.
"Then it began to sink in. It was as I'd always feared, and it was as lonely, it was as
totally without hope. Things would go on as they had before, on and on. My search was
over. I sat back listlessly watching those licking flames.
"It was futile to leave him to continue it, futile to travel the world only to hear again the
same story. `Four hundred years'-I think I repeated the words `four hundred years.' I
remember staring at the fire. There was a log falling very slowly in the fire, drifting
downwards in a process that would take it the night, and it was pitted with tiny holes
where some substance that had larded it through and through had burned away fast, and
in each of these tiny holes there danced a flame amid the larger flames: and all of these
tiny flames with their black mouths seemed to me faces that made a chorus; and the
chorus sang without singing. The chorus had no need of singing; in one breath in the fire,
which was continuous, it made its soundless song.
"All at once Armand moved in a loud rustling of garments, a descent of crackling shadow
and light that left him kneeling at my feet, his hands outstretched holding my head, his
eyes burning.
" `This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from bitterness! Don't you see?
Children of Satan! Children of God! Is this the only question you bring to me, is this the
only power that obsesses you, so that you must make us gods and devils yourself when
the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How could you believe in these old
fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of the supernatural?' He snatched the devil
from above Claudia's still countenance so swiftly that I couldn't see the gesture, only the
demon leering before me and then crackling in the flames.
"Something was broken inside me when he said this; something ripped aside, so that a
torrent of feeling became one with my muscles in every limb. I was on my feet now,
backing away from him.
" `Are you mad?' I asked, astonished at my own anger, my own despair. `We stand here,
the two of us, immortal, ageless, rising nightly to feed that immortality on human blood;
and there on your desk against the knowledge of the ages sits a flawless child as demonic
as ourselves; and you ask me how I could believe I would find a meaning in the
supernatural! I tell you, after seeing what I have become, I could damn well believe
anything! Couldn't you? And believing thus, being thus confounded, I can now accept the
most fantastical truth of all: that there is no meaning to any of this!'
"I backed towards the door, away from his astonished face, his hand hovering before his
lips, the finger curling to dig into his palm. `Don't! Come back . . : he whispered.
" `No, not now. Let me go. Just a while . . . let me go. . . . Nothing's changed; it's all the
same. Let that sink into me . . . just let me go.'
"I looked back before I shut the door. Claudia's face was turned towards me, though she
sat as before, her hands clasped on her knee. She made a gesture then, subtle as her smile,
which was tinged with the faintest sadness, that I was to go on.
"It was my desire to escape the theater then entirely, to find the streets of Paris and
wander, letting the vast accumulation of shocks gradually wear away. But, as I groped
along the stone passage of the lower cellar, I became confused. I was perhaps incapable

of exerting my own will. It seemed more than ever absurd to me that Lestat should have
died, if in fact he had; and looking back on him, as it seemed I was always doing, I saw
him more kindly than before. Lost like the rest of us. Not the jealous protector of any
knowledge he was afraid to share. He -knew nothing. There was nothing to know.
"Only, that was not quite the thought that was gradually coming clear to me. I had hated
him for all the wrong reasons; yes, that was true. But I did not fully understand it yet.
Confounded, I found myself sitting finally on those dark steps, the light from the
ballroom throwing my own shadow on the rough floor, my hands holding my head, a
weariness overcoming me. My mind said, Sleep. But more profoundly, my mind said,
Bream. And yet I made no move to return to the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, which seemed a
very secure and airy place to me now, a place of subtle and luxurious mortal consolation
where I might lie in a chair of puce velvet, put one foot on an ottoman and watch the fire
lick the marble tile, looking for all the world to myself in the long mirrors like a
thoughtful human. Flee to that, I thought, flee all that is pulling you. And again came that
thought: I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him for all the wrong reasons. I whispered it
now, trying to withdraw it from the dark, inarticulate pool of my mind, and the
whispering made a scratching sound in the stone vault of the stairs.
"But then a voice came softly to me on the air, too faint for mortals: `How is this so?
How did you wrong him?'
"I turned round so sharp that my breath left me. A vampire sat near me, so near as to
almost brush my shoulder with the tip of his boot, his legs drawn up close to him, his
hands clasped around them. For -a moment I thought my eyes deceived me. It was the
trickster vampire, whom Armand had called Santiago.
"Yet nothing in his manner indicated his former self, that devilish, hateful self that I had
seen, even only a few hours ago when he had reached out for me and Armand had struck
him. He was staring at me over his drawn-up knees, his hair disheveled, his mouth slack
and without cunning.
" `It makes no difference to anyone else,' I said to him, the fear in me subsiding.
" `But you said a name; I heard you say a name,' he said.
" 'A name I don't want to say again,' I answered, looking away from him. I could see now
how he'd fooled me, why his shadow had not fallen over mine; he crouched in my
shadow. The vision of him slithering down those stone stairs to sit behind me was slightly
disturbing. Everything about him was disturbing, and
I reminded myself that he could in no way be trusted. It seemed to me then that Armand,
with his hypnotic power, aimed in some way for the maximum truth in presentation of
himself: he lead drawn out of me without words my state of mind. But this vampire was a
liar. And I could feel his power, a crude, pounding power that was almost as strong as
Arm,-,P-Xs.
" `You come to Paris in search of us, and then you sit alone on. the stairs . . : he said, in a
conciliatory tone. `Why don't you come up with us? Why don't you speak to us and talk
to us of this person whose name you spoke; I know who it was, I know the name.'

" `You don't know, couldn't know. It was a mortal,' I said now, more front instinct than
conviction. Time thought of Lestat disturbed me, the thought that this creature should
know of Lestat's death.
" `You care here to ponder mortals, justice done to mortals?' he asked; but there was no
reproach or mockery in his tone.
" `I came to be alone, let me not offend you. It's a fact,' I murmured.
"'But alone in this frame of mind, when you don't even hear my steps. . . I like you. I
want you to come upstairs' And as he said this, he slowly pulled me to my feet beside
him.
"At that moment the door of Armand's cell threw a long light into the passage. I heard
him conning, and Santiago let me go. I was standing there baffled. Armand appeared at
the foot of the steps, with Claudia in lids arms. She had that same dull expression on her
face which she'd had all during my talk with Armand. It was as if she were deep in her
own considerations and saw nothing around her; and I remember noting this, though not
knowing what to think of it, that it persisted even now. I took her quickly from Armand,
and felt her soft limbs against me as if we were both in. the coffin, yielding to that
paralytic sleep.
"And then, with a powerful thrust of his arm, Armand pushed Santiago away. It seemed
he fell backwards, but was up again only to have Armand gull him towards the head of
the steps, all of this happening so swiftly I could only see the blur of their garments and
hear the scratching of their boots. Then Armand stood alone at the head of the steps, and I
went upward towards him.
" 'You cannot safely leave the theater tonight,' he whispered to me. 'He is suspicious of
you. And my having brought you here, he feels that it is his right to know you better. Our
security depends on it.' He guided me slowly into the ballroom. But then he turned to me
and pressed his lips almost to my ear: `I must warn you. Answer no questions. Ask and
you open one bud of truth for yourself after another. But give nothing, nothing, especially
concerning your origin.'
"He moved away from us now, but beckoning for us to follow ' into the gloom where the
others were gathered, clustered like remote marble statues, their faces and hands all too
like our own. I had the strong sense then of how we were all made from the same
material, a thought which had only occurred to me occasionally in all the long years in
New Orleans; and it disturbed me, particularly when I saw one or more of the others
reflected in the long mirrors that broke the density of those awful murals.
"Claudia seemed to awaken as I found one of the carved oak chairs and settled into it.
She leaned towards me and said something strangely incoherent, which seemed to mean
that I must do as Armand said: say nothing of our origin. I wanted to talk with her now,
but I could see that tall vampire, Santiago, watching us, his eyes moving slowly from us
to Armand. Several women vampires had gathered around Armand, and I felt a tumult of
feeling as I saw them put their arms around his waist. And what appalled me as I watched
was not their exquisite form, their delicate features and graceful hands made hard as glass
by vampire nature, or their bewitching eyes which fixed on me now in a sudden silence;
what appalled me was my own fierce jealousy. I was afraid when I saw them so close to

him, afraid when he turned and kissed them each. And, as he brought them near to me
now, I was unsure and confused.
"Estelle and Celeste are the names I remember, porcelain beauties, who fondled Claudia
with the license of the blind, running their hands over her radiant hair, touching even her
lips, while she, her eyes still misty and distant, tolerated it all, knowing what I also knew
and what they seemed unable to grasp: that a woman's mind as sharp and distinct as their
own lived within that small body. It made me wonder as I watched her turning about for
them, holding out her lavender skirts and smiling coldly at their adoration, how many
times I must have forgotten, spoken to her as if she were the child, fondled her too freely,
brought her into my arms with an adult's abandon. My mind went in three directions: that
last night in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, which seemed a year ago, when she talked of love
with rancor; my reverberating shock at Armand's revelations or lack of them; and a quiet
absorption of the vampires around me, who whispered in the dark beneath the grotesque
murals. For I could learn much from the vampires without ever asking a question, and
vampire life in Paris was all that I'd feared it to be, all that the little stage in the theater
above had indicated it was.
"'The dim lights of the house were mandatory, and the paintings appreciated in full,
added to almost nightly when some vampire brought a new engraving or picture by a
contemporary artist into the house. Celeste, with her cold hand on my arm, spoke with
contempt of men as the originators of these pictures, and Estelle, who now held Claudia
on her lap, emphasized to me, the naive colonial, that vampires had not made such
horrors themselves but merely collected them, confirming over and over that men were
capable of far greater evil than vampires.
"'There is evil in making such paintings?' Claudia asked softly in her toneless voice.
"Celeste threw back her black curls and laughed.
" `What can be imagined can be done,' slue answered quickly, but her eyes reflected a
certain contained hostility. `Of course, we strive to rival men in kills of all kinds, do we
riot!~ Sloe leaned forward arid touched Claudia's knee. But Claudia merely looked at her,
watching her laugh nervously and continue. Santiago drew near, to bring up the subject of
our rooms in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel; frightfully unsafe, he said, with an exaggerated
stage gesture of the hands. And he showed a knowledge of those rooms which was
amazing. He knew the chest in which we slept; it struck him as vulgar. `Come here!' he
said to me, with that near childlike simplicity he had evinced on the steps. `Live with us
and such disguise is unnecessary. We have our guards. And tell me, where do you come
from!' he said, dropping to his knees, his hand on the arm of my chair. `Your voice, I
know that accent; speak again.'
"I was vaguely horrified at the thought of having an accent to my French, but this wasn't
my immediate concern. He was strong-willed and blatantly possessive, throwing back at
me an image of that possessiveness which was flowering in me more fully every moment.
And meanwhile, the vampires around us talked on, Estelle explaining that black was the
color for a vampire's clothes, that Claudia's lovely pastel dress was beautiful but tasteless.
`We blend with the night,' she said. `We have a funereal gleam.' And now, bending her
cheek next to Claudia's cheek, she laughed to soften her criticism; and Celeste laughed,
and Santiago laughed, and the whole room seemed alive with unearthly tinkling laughter,

preternatural voices echoing against the painted walls, rippling the feeble candle flames.
`Ah, but to cover up such curls,' said Celeste, now playing with Claudia's golden hair.
And I realized what must have been obvious: that all of them had dyed their hair black,
but for Armand; and it was that, along with the black clothes, that added to the disturbing
impression that we were statues from the same chisel and paint brush. I cannot emphasize
too much how disturbed I was by that impression. It seemed to stir something in me deep
inside, something I couldn't fully grasp.
"I found myself wandering away from them to one of the narrow mirrors and watching
them all over my shoulder. Claudia gleamed like a jewel in their midst; so would that
mortal boy who slept below. The realization was coming to me that I found them dull in
some awful way: dull, dull everywhere that I looked, their sparkling vampire eyes
repetitious, their wit like a dull, brass bell.
"Only the knowledge I needed distracted me from these thoughts. `The vampires of
eastern Europe . .
Claudia was saying. `Monstrous creatures, what have they to do with us?'
" `Revenants,' Armand answered softly over the distance that separated them, playing on
faultless preternatural ears to hear what was more muted than a whisper. The room fell
silent. `Their blood is different, vile. They increase as we do but without skill or care. In
the old days-' Abruptly he stopped. I could see his face in the mirror. It was strangely
rigid.
" `Oh, but tell us about the old days,' said Celeste, her voice shrill, at human pitch. There
was something vicious in her tone.
"And now Santiago took up the same baiting manner. `Yes, tell us of the covens, and the
herbs that would render us invisible.' He smiled. `And the burnings at the stake!'
"Armand fixed his eyes on Claudia. `Beware those monsters,' he said, and calculatedly
his eyes passed over Santiago and then Celeste. `Those revenants. They will attack you as
if you were human'
"Celeste shuddered, uttering something in contempt, an aristocrat speaking of vulgar
cousins who bear the same name. But I was watching Claudia because it seemed her eyes
were misted again as before. She looked away from Armand suddenly.
"The voices of the others rose again, affected party voices, as they conferred with one
another on the night's kills, describing this or that encounter without a smattering of
emotion, challenges to cruelty erupting from time to time like flashes of white lightning:
a tall, thin vampire being accosted in one corner for a needless romanticizing of mortal
life, a lack of spirit, a refusal to do the most entertaining thing at the moment it was
available to him. He was simple, shrugging, stow at words, and would fall for long
periods into a stupefied silence, as if, near-choked with blood, he would as soon have
gone to his coffin as remained here. And yet he remained, held by the pressure of this
unnatural group who had made of immortality a conformist's club. How would Lestat
have found it? Had he been here? What had caused him to leave? No one had dictated to
Lestat he was master of his small circle; but how they would have praised his
inventiveness, his catlike toying with his victims. And waste . . . that word, that value
which had been all-important to me as a fledgling vampire; was spoken of often. You

`wasted' the opportunity to kill this child. You `wasted' the opportunity to frighten this
poor woman or drive that man to madness, which only a little prestidigitation Would
have accomplished.
"My head was spinning. A common mortal headache. I longed to get away from these
vampires, and only the distant figure of Armand held me, despite his warnings. He
seemed remote from the others now, though he nodded often enough and uttered a few
words here and there so that he seemed a part of them, his hand only occasionally rising
from the lion's paw of his chair. And my heart expanded when I saw him this way, saw
that no one amongst the small throng caught his glance as I caught his glance, and no one
held it from time to time as I held it. Yet he remained aloof from me, his eyes alone
returning to me. His warning echoed in my ears, yet I disregarded it. I longed to get away
from the theater altogether and stood listlessly, garnering information at last that was
useless and infinitely dull.
" `But is there no crime amongst you, no cardinal crime?' Claudia asked. Her violet eyes
seemed fixed on me, even in the mirror, as I stood with my back to her.
" `Crime! Boredom!' cried out Estelle, and she pointed a white finger at Armand. He
laughed softly with her from his distant position at the end of the room. `Boredom is
death!' she cried and bared her vampire fangs, so that Armand put a languid hand to his
forehead in a stage gesture of fear and falling.
"But Santiago, who was watching with his hands behind his back, intervened. `Crime!' he
said. `Yes, there is a crime. A crime for which we would hunt another vampire down
until we destroyed him. Can you guess what that is?' He glanced from Claudia to me and
back again to her masklike face. `You should know, who are so secretive about the
vampire that made you.'
" `And why is that?' she asked, her eyes widening ever so slightly, her hands resting still
in her lap.
"A hush fell over the room, gradually then completely, all those white faces turned to
face Santiago as he stood there, one foot forward, his hands clasped behind his back,
towering over Claudia. His eyes gleamed as he saw he had the floor. And then he broke
away and crept up behind me, putting his hand on my shoulder. `Can you guess what that
crime is? Didn't your vampire master tell you?'
"And drawing me slowly around with those invading familiar hands, he tapped my heart
lightly in time with its quickening pace.
" `It is the crime that means death to any vampire anywhere who commits it. It is to kill
your own kind!'
" `Aaaaah!' Claudia cried out, and lapsed into peals of laughter. She was walking across
the floor now with swirling lavender silk and crisp resounding steps. Taking my hand,
she said, `I was so afraid it was to be born like Venus out of the foam, as we were!
Master vampire! Come, Louis, let's go!' she beckoned, as she pulled me away.
"Armand was laughing. Santiago was still. And it was Armand who rose when we
reached the door. `You're welcome tomorrow night,' he said. `And the night after.'

"I don't think I caught my breath until rd reached the street. The rain was still falling, and
all of the street seemed sodden and desolate in the rain, but beautiful. A few scattered bits
of paper blowing in the wind, a gleaming carriage passing slowly with the thick, rhythmic
clop of the horse. The sky was pale violet. I sped fast, with Claudia beside me leading the
way, then finally frustrated with the length of my stride, riding in my arms.
" `I don't like them,' she said to me with a steel fury as we neared the Hotel Saint-Gabriel.
Even its immense, brightly lit lobby was still in the pre-dawn hour. I spirited past the
sleepy clerks, the long faces at the desk. `I've searched for them the world over, and I
despise them!' She threw off her cape and walked into the center of the room. A volley of
rain hit the French windows. I found myself turning up the lights one by one and lifting
the candelabrum to the gas flames as if I were Lestat or Claudia. And then, seeking the
puce velvet chair I'd envisioned in that cellar, I slipped down into it, exhausted. It seemed
for the moment as if the room blazed about me; as my eyes fixed on a gilt-framed
painting of pastel trees and serene waters, the vampire spell was broken. They couldn't
touch us here, and yet I knew this to be a lie, a foolish lie.
" `I am in danger, danger,' Claudia said with that smoldering wrath.
" But how can they know what we did to him? Besides, we are in danger! Do you think
for a moment I don't acknowledge my own guilt! And if you wire the only one . . : I
reached out for her now as she drew near, but her fierce eyes settled on me and I let my
hands drop back limp. `Do you think I would leave you in danger?'
"She was smiling. For a moment I didn't believe my eyes. `No, you would not, Louis.
You would not. Danger holds you to me. . .
" `Love holds me to you,' I said softly.
" `Love?' she mused. `What do you mean by love?' And then, as if she could see the pain
in my face, she came close and put her hands on my cheek. She was cold, unsatisfied, as I
was cold and unsatisfied, teased by that mortal boy but unsatisfied.
" `That you take my love for granted always,' I said to her. `That we are wed. . . ' But
even as I said these words I felt my old conviction waver; I felt that torment I'd felt last
night when she had taunted me about mortal passion. I turned away from her.
" `You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned to you ....
" `Never . . : I said to her.
" `You would leave me, and he wants you as you want him. He's been waiting for you. . .
" `Never. . . .' I rose now and made my way to that chest. The doors were locked, but they
would not keep those vampires out. Only we could keep them out by rising as early as the
light would let us. I turned to her and told her to come. And she was at my side. I wanted
to bury my face in her hair, I wanted to beg her forgiveness. Because, in truth, she was
right; and yet I loved her, loved her as always. And now, as I drew her in close to me, she
said `Do you know what it was that he told me over and over without ever speaking a
word; do you know what was the kernel of the trance he put me in so my eyes could only
look at him, so that he pulled me as if my heart were on a string?'
" 'So you felt it . . : I whispered. `So it was the same.'

" `He rendered me powerless!' she said. I saw the image of her against those books above
his desk, her limp neck, her dead hands.
" `But what are you saying? That he spoke to you, that he . . .'
" `Without words!' she repeated. I could see the gaslights going dim, the candle flames
too solid in their stillness. The rain beat on the panes. `Do you know what he said . . . that
I should die!' she whispered. `That I should let you go.'
"I shook my head, and yet in my monstrous heart I felt a surge of excitement. She spoke
the truth as she believed it. There was a film in her eyes, glassy and silver. `He draws life
out of me into himself,' she said, her lovely lips trembling so, I couldn't bear it. I held her
tight, but the tears stood in her eyes. `Life out of the boy who is his slave, life out of me
whom he would make his slave. He loves you. He loves you. He would have you, and he
would not have me stand in the way.'
" `You don't understand him!' I fought it, kissing her; I wanted to shower her with kisses,
her cheek, her lips.
" `No, I understand him only too well,' she whispered to my lips, even as they kissed her.
`It is you who don't understand him. Love's blinded you, your fascination with his
knowledge, his power. If you knew how he drinks death you'd hate him more than you
ever hated Lestat. Louis, you must never return to him. I tell you, I'm in danger!' "
"Early the next night, I left her, convinced that Armand alone among the vampires of the
theater could be trusted. She let me go reluctantly, and I was troubled, deeply, by the
expression in her eyes. Weakness was unknown to her, and yet I saw fear and something
beaten even now as she let me go. And I hurried on my mission, waiting outside the
theater until the last of the patrons had gone and the doormen were tending to the locks.
"What they thought I was, I wasn't certain. An actor, like the others, who did not take off
his paint? It didn't matter. What mattered was that they let me through, and I passed them
and the few vampires in the ballroom, unaccosted, to stand at last at Armand's open door.
He saw me immediately, no doubt had heard my step a long way off, and he welcomed
me at once and asked me to sit down. He was busy with his human boy, who was dining
at the desk on a silver plate of meats and fish. A decanter of white wine stood next to
him, and though he was feverish and weak from last night, his skin was florid and his
heat and fragrance were a torment to me. Tot apparently to Armand, who sat in the
leather chair by the fire opposite me, turned to the human, his arms folded on the leather
arm. The boy filled his glass and held it up now in a salute. 'My master,' he said, his eyes
flashing on me as he smiled; but the toast was to Armand.
" `Your slave,' Armand whispered with a deep intake of breath that was passionate. And
he watched, as the boy drank deeply. I could see him savoring the wet lips, the mobile
flesh of the throat as the wine went down. And now the boy took a morsel of white meat,
making that same salute, and consumed it slowly, his eyes fixed on Armand. It was as
though Armand feasted upon the feast, drinking in that part of life which he could not
share any longer except with his eyes. And lost though he seemed to it, it was calculated;
not that torture I'd felt years ago when I stood outside Babette's window longing for her
human life.

"When the boy had finished, he knelt with his arms around Armand's neck as if he
actually savored the icy flesh. And I could remember the night Lestat first came to me,
how his eyes seemed to burn, how his white face gleamed. You know what I am to you
now.
"Finally, it was finished. He was to sleep, and Armand locked the brass gates against him.
And in minutes, heavy with his meal, he was dozing, and Armand sat opposite me, his
large, beautiful eyes tranquil and seemingly innocent. When I felt them pull me towards
him, I dropped my eyes, wished for a fire in the grate, but there were only ashes.
"`You told me to say nothing of my origin, why was this?' I asked, looking up at him. It
was as if he could sense my holding back, yet wasn't offended, only regarding me with a
slight wonder. But I was weak, too weak for his wonder, and again I looked away from
him.
" `Did you kill this vampire who made you? Is that why you are here without him, why
you won't say his name? Santiago thinks that you did.'
"`And if this is true, or if we can't convince you otherwise, you would try to destroy us?' I
asked.
" `I would not try to do anything to you,' he said, calmly. `But as I told you, I am not the
leader here in the sense that you asked.'
" `Yet they believe you to be the leader, don't they? And Santiago, you shoved him away
from me twice.'
"'I'm more powerful than Santiago, older. Santiago is younger than you are,' he said. His
voice was simple, devoid of pride. These were facts.
"'We want no quarrel with you.'
"`It's begun,' he said. `But not with me. With those above.'
" `But what reason has he to suspect us?'
"He seemed to be thinking now, his eyes cast down, his chin resting on his closed fist.
After a while which seemed interminable, he looked up. `I could give you reasons,' he
said. `That you are too silent. That the vampires of the world are a small number and live
in terror of strife amongst themselves and choose their fledglings with great care, making
certain that they respect the other vampires mightily. There are fifteen vampires in this
house, and the number is jealously guarded. And weak vampires are feared; I should say
this also. That you are flawed is obvious to them: you feel too much, you think too much.
As you said yourself, vampire detachment is not of great value to you. And then there is
this mysterious child: a child who can never grow, never be self-sufficient. I would not
make a vampire of that boy there now if his life, which is so precious to me, were in
serious danger, because he is too young, his limbs not strong enough, his mortal cup
barely tasted: yet you bring with you this child. What manner of vampire made her, they
ask; did you make her? So, you see, you bring with you these flaws and this mystery and
yet you are completely silent. And so you cannot be trusted. And Santiago looks for an
excuse. But there is another reason closer to the truth than all those things which I've just
said to you. And that is simply this: that when you first encountered Santiago in the Latin
Quarter you . . . unfortunately . . . called him a buffoon.'

" `Aaaaah.' I sat back.
" 'It would perhaps have been better all around if you had said nothing.' And he smiled to
see that I understood with him the irony of this.
"I sat reflecting upon what he'd said, and what weighed as heavily upon me through all of
it were Claudia's strange admonitions, that this gentle-eyed young man had said to her,
'Die,' and beyond that my slowly accumulating disgust with the vampires in the ballroom
above.
"I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him of these things. Of her fear, no, not yet,
though I couldn't believe when I looked into his eyes that he'd tried to wield this power
over her: his eyes said, Live. His eyes said, Learn. And oh, how much I wanted to confide
to him the breadth of what I didn't understand; how, searching all these years, I'd been
astonished to discover those vampires above had made of immortality a club of fads and
cheap conformity. And yet through this sadness, this confusion, came the clear
realization: Why should it be otherwise? What had I expected? What right had I to be so
bitterly disappointed in Lestat that I would let him diet Because he wouldn't show me
what I must find in myself? Armand's words, what had they been? The only power that
exists is inside ourselves . . . .
" `Listen to me,' he said now. `You must stay away from them. Your face hides nothing.
You would yield to me now were I to question you. Look into my eyes'
"I didn't do this. I fined my eyes firmly on one of those small paintings above his desk
until it ceased to be the Madonna and Child and became a harmony of line and color.
Because I knew what he was saying to me was true.
" `Stop them if you will, advise them that we don't mean any harm. Why can't you do
this? You say yourself we're not your enemies, no matter what we've done. . . '
"I could hear him sigh, faintly. `I have stopped them for the time being,' he said. `But I
don't want such power over them as would be necessary to stop them entirely. Because if
I exercise such power, then I must protect it. I will make enemies. And I would have
forever to deal with my enemies when all I want here as a certain space, a certain peace.
Or not to be here at all. I accept the scepter of sorts they've given me, but not to rule over
them, only to keep them at a distance.'
" `I should have known,' I said, my eyes still fired on that painting.
" `Then, you must stay away. Celeste has a great deal of power, being one of the oldest,
and she is jealous of the child's beauty. And Santiago, as you can see, is only waiting for
a shred of proof that you're outlaws.'
"I turned slowly and looked at him again where he sat with that eerie vampire stillness, as
if he were in fact not alive at all. The moment lengthened. I heard his words just as if he
were speaking them again: `All I want here is a certain space, a certain peace. (r)r not to
be here at all.' And I felt a longing for him so strong that it took all my strength to contain
it, merely to sit there gazing at him, fighting it. I wanted it to be this way: Claudia safe
amongst these vampires somehow, guilty of no crime they might ever discover from her
or anyone else, so that I might be free, free to remain forever in this cell as long as I could
be welcome, even tolerated, allowed here on any condition whatsoever.

"I could see that mortal boy again as if he were not asleep on the bed but kneeling at
Armand's side with his arms around Armand's neck. It was an icon for me of love. The
love I felt. Not physical love, you must understand. I don't speak of that at all, though
Armand was beautiful and simple, and no intimacy with him would ever have been
repellent. For vampires, physical love culminates and is satisfied in one thing, the kill. I
speak of another kind of love which drew me to him completely as the teacher which
Lestat had never been. Knowledge would never be withheld by Armand, I knew it. I
would pass through him as through a pane of glass so that I might bask in it and absorb it
and grow. I shut my eyes. And I thought I heard him speak, so faintly I wasn't certain. It
seemed he said, `Bo you know why I am here?'
"I looked up at him again, wondering if he knew my thoughts, could actually read them,
if such could conceivably be the extent of that power. Now after all these years I could
forgive Lestat for being nothing but an ordinary creature who could riot show me the uses
of my powers; and yet I still longed for this, could fall into it without resistance. A
sadness pervaded it all, sadness for my own weakness and my own awful dilemma.
Claudia waited for me. Claudia, who was my daughter and my love.
" `What am I to do?' I whispered. `Go away from them, go away from you? After all
these years . .
" `They don't matter to you,' he said
"I smiled and nodded.
" `What is it you want to do?' he asked. And his voice assumed the most gentle,
sympathetic tone.
" `Don't you know, don't you have that power?' I asked. `Can't you read my thoughts as if
they were words?'
"He shook his head. `Not the way you mean. I only know the danger to you and the child
is real because it's real to you. And I know your loneliness even with her love is almost
more terrible than you can bear.'
"I stood up then. It would seem a simple thing to do, to rise, to go to the door, to hurry
quickly down that passage; and yet it took every ounce of strength, every smattering of
that curious thing I've called my detachment.
" `I ask you to keep them away from us,' I said at the door; but I couldn't look back at
him, didn't even want the soft intrusion of his voice.
" `Don't go,' he said.
" `I have no choice.'
"I was in the passage when I heard him so close to me that I started. He stood beside me,
eye level with my eye, and in his hand he held a key which he pressed into mine.
" `There is a door there,' he said, gesturing to the dark end, which I'd thought to be merely
a wall. `And a stairs to the side street which no one uses but myself. Go this way now, so
you can avoid the others. You are anxious and they will see it' I turned around to go at
once, though every part of my being wanted to remain there. 'But let me tell you this,' he
said, and lightly he pressed the back of his hand against my heart. `Use the power inside
you. Don't abhor it anymore. Use that power! And when they see you in the streets above,

use that power to make your face a mask and think as you gaze on them as on anyone:
beware. Take that word as if it were an amulet rd given you to wear about your neck. And
when your eyes meet Santiago's eyes, or the eyes of any other vampire, speak to them
politely what you will, but think of that word and that word only. Remember what I say. I
speak to you simply because you respect what is simple. You understand this. That's your
strength.'
"I took the key from him, and I don't remember actually putting it into the lock or going
up the steps. Or where he was or what he'd done. Except that, as I was stepping into the
dark side street behind the theater, I heard ham say very softly to me from someplace
close to me: `Come here, to me, when you can.' I looked around for him but was not
surprised that I couldn't see him. He had told me also sometime or other that I must not
leave the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, that I must not give the others the shred of evidence of
guilt they wanted. `You see,' he said, `killing other vampires is very exciting; that is why
it is forbidden under penalty of death.'
"And . then I seemed to awake. To the Paris street sharing with rain, to the tall, narrow
buildings on either side of me, to the fact that the door had shut to make a solid dark wall
behind me and that Armand was no longer there.
"And though I knew Claudia waited for me, though I passed her in the hotel window
above the gas lamps, a tiny figure standing among waxen petaled flowers, I moved away
from the boulevard, letting the darker streets swallow me, as so often the streets of New
Orleans had done.
"It was not that I did not love her; rather, it was that I knew I loved her only too well, that
the passion for her was as great as the passion for Armand. And I fled them both now,
letting the desire for the kill rise in me like a welcome fever, threatening consciousness,
threatening pain.
"Out of the mist which had followed the rain, a man was walking towards me. I can
remember him as roaming on the landscape of a dream, because the night around me was
dark and unreal. The hill might have been anywhere in the world, and the soft lights of
Paris were an amorphous shimmering in the fog. And sharp-eyed and drunk, he was
walking blindly into the arms of death itself, his pulsing fingers reaching out to touch the
very bones of my face.
"I was not crazed yet, not desperate. I might have said to him, `Pass by.' I believe my lips
did form the word Armand had given me, `Beware.' Yet I let him slip his bold, drunken
arm around my waist; I yielded to his adoring eyes, to the voice that begged to paint me
now and spoke of warmth, to the rich, sweet smell of the oils that streaked his loose shirt.
I was following him, through Montmartre, and I whispered to him, `You are not a
member of the dead.' He was leading me through an overgrown garden, through the
sweet, wet grasses, and he was laughing as I said, `Alive, alive,' his hand touching my
cheek, stroking my face, clasping finally my chin as he guided me into the light of the
low doorway, his reddened face brilliantly illuminated by the oil lamps, the warmth
seeping about. us as the door closed.
"I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins that reached for the dark
centers, that warm hand burning my cold hunger as he guided me to a chair. And then all
around me I saw faces blazing, faces rising in the smoke of the lamps, in the shimmer of

the burning stove, a wonderland of colors on canvases surrounding us beneath the small,
sloped roof, a blaze of beauty that pulsed and throbbed. `Sit down, sit down . . ' he said to
me, those feverish hands against my chest, clasped by my hands, yet sliding away, my
hunger rising in waves.
"And now I saw him at a distance, eyes intent, the palette in his hand, the huge canvas
obscuring the arm that moved. And mindless and helpless, I sat there drifting with his
paintings, drifting with those adoring eyes, letting it go on and on till Armand's eyes were
gone and Claudia was running down that stone passage with clicking heels away from
me, away from me.
" `You are alive . . : I whispered. `Bones,' he answered me. `Bones . . .' And I saw them in
heaps, taken from those shallow graves in New Orleans as they are and put in chambers
behind the sepulcher so that another can be laid in that narrow plot. I felt my eyes close; I
felt my hunger become agony, my heart crying out for a living heart; and then I felt him
moving forward, hands out to right my face-that fatal step, that fatal lurch. A sigh
escaped my lips. `Save yourself,' I whispered to him. `Beware.'
"And then something happened in the moist radiance of his face, something drained the
broken vessels of his fragile skin. He backed away from me, the . brush falling from ills
hands. And I rose over him, feeling my teeth against my lip, feeling my eyes fill with the
colors of his face, my ears fill with his struggling cry, my hands fill with that strong,
fighting flesh until I drew him up to me, helpless, and tore that flesh and had the blood
that gave it life. `Die,' I whispered when I held him loose now, his head bowed against
my coat, `die,' and felt him struggle to look up at. me. And again I drank and again he
fought, until at last he slipped, limp and shocked and near to death, on the floor. Yet his
eyes did not close.
"I settled before his canvas, weak, at peace, gazing down at him, at his vague, graying
eyes, my own hands florid, my skin so luxuriously warm. `I am mortal again,' I
whispered to him. `I am alive. With your blood I am alive.' His eyes closed. I sank back
against the wall and found myself gazing at my own face.
"A sketch was all he'd done, a series of bold black lines that nevertheless made up my
face and shoulders perfectly, and the color was already begun in dabs and splashes: the
green of my eyes, the white of my cheek. But the horror, the horror of seeing my
expression! For he had captured it perfectly, and there was nothing of horror in it. Those
green eyes gazed at me from out of that loosely drawn shape with a mindless innocence,
the expressionless wonder of that overpowering craving which he had not understood.
Louis of a hundred years ago lost in listening to the sermon of the priest at Mass, lips
parted and slack, hair careless, a hand curved in the lap and limp. A mortal Louis. I
believe I was laughing, putting my hands to my face and laughing so that the tears nearly
rose in my eyes; and when I took my fingers down, there was the stain of the tears, tinged
with mortal blood. And already there was begun in me the tingling of the monster that
had killed, and would kill again, who was gathering up the painting now and starting to
flee with it from the small house.
"When suddenly, up from the floor, the man rose with an animal groan and clutched at
my boot, his hands sliding off the leather. With some colossal spirit that defied me, he
reached up for the painting and held fast to it with his whitening hands. `Give it back!' he

growled at me. `Give it back!' And we held fast, the two of us, I staring at him and at my
own hands that held so easily what he sought so desperately to rescue, as if he would take
it to heaven or hell; I the thing that his blood could not make human, he the man that my
evil had not overcome. And then, as if I were not myself, I tore the painting loose from
him and, wrenching him up to my lips with one arm, gashed his throat in rage."
"Entering the rooms of the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, I set the picture on the mantel above the
fire and looked at it a long time. Claudia was somewhere in the rooms, and some other
presence intruded, as though on one of the balconies above a woman or a man stood near,
giving off an unmistakable personal perfume. I didn't know why I had taken the picture,
why I'd fought for it so that it shamed me now worse than the death, and why I still held
onto it at the marble mantel, my head bowed, my hands visibly trembling. And then
slowly I turned my head. I wanted the rooms to take shape around me; I wanted the
flowers, the velvet, the candles in their sconces. To be mortal and trivial and safe. And
then, as if in a mist, I saw a woman there.
"She was seated calmly at that lavish table where Claudia attended to her hair; and so still
she sat, so utterly without fear, her green taffeta sleeves reflected in the tilted mirrors, her
skirts reflected, that she was not one still woman but a gathering of women. Her dark-red
hair was parted in the middle and drawn back to her ears, though a dozen little ringlets
escaped to make a frame for her pale face. And she was looking at me with two calm,
violet eyes and a child's mouth that seemed almost obdurately soft, obdurately the cupid's
bow unsullied by paint or personality; and the mouth smiled now and said, as those eyes
seemed to fire: `Yes, he's as you said he would be, and I love him already. He's as you
said.' She rose now, gently lifting that abundance of dark taffeta, and the three small
mirrors emptied at once.
"And utterly baffled and almost incapable of speech, I turned to see Claudia far off on the
immense bed, her small face rigidly calm, though she clung to the silk curtain with a tight
fist. 'Madeleine,' she said under her breath, `Louis is shy.' And she watched with cold
eyes as Madeleine only smiled when she said this and, drawing closer to me, put both of
her hands to the lace fringe around her throat, moving it back so I could see the two small
marks there. Then the smile died on her lips, and they became at once sullen and sensual
as her eyes narrowed and she breathed the word, `Drink.'
"I turned away from her, my fist rising in a consternation for which I couldn't find words.
But then Claudia had hold of that fist and was looking up at me with relentless eyes. `Do
it, Louis,' she commanded. `Because I cannot do it.' Her voice was painfully calm, all the
emotion under the hard, measured tone. `I haven't the size, I haven't the strength! You
saw to that when you made me! Do it!'
"I broke away from her, clutching my wrist as if she'd burned it. I could see the door, and
it seemed to me the better part of wisdom to leave by it at once. I could feel Claudia's
strength, her will, and the mortal woman's eyes seemed afire with that same will. But
Claudia held me, not with a gentle pleading, a miserable coaxing that would have
dissipated that power, making me feel pity for her as I gathered my own forces. She held
me with the emotion her eyes had evinced even through her coldness and the way that she
turned away from me now, almost as if she'd been instantly defeated. I did not understand
the manner in which she sank back on the bed, her head bowed, her lips moving
feverishly, her eyes rising only to scan the walls. I wanted to touch her and say to her that

what she asked was impossible; I wanted to soothe that fire that seemed to be consuming
her from within.
"And the soft, mortal woman had settled into one of the velvet chairs by the fire, with the
rustling and iridescence of her taffeta dress surrounding her like part of the mystery of
her, of her dispassionate eyes which watched us now, the fever of her pale face. I
remember turning to her, spurred on by that childish, pouting mouth set against the
fragile face. The vampire kiss had left no visible trace except the wound, no inalterable
change on the pale pink flesh. `How do we appear to you?' I asked, seeing her eyes on
Claudia. She seemed excited by the diminutive beauty, the awful woman's-passion
knotted in the small dimpled hands.
"She broke her gaze and looked up at me. `I ask you . . . how do we appear? Do you think
us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? (r)h, I remember perfectly what
mortal vision was, the dimness of it, and how the vampire's beauty burned through that
veil, so powerfully alluring, so utterly deceiving! Drink, you tell me. You haven't the
vaguest conception under God of what you ask!'
"But Claudia rose from the bed and came towards me. `How dare you!' she whispered.
`How dare you make this decision for both of us! Do you know how I despise you! Do
you know that I despise you with a passion that eats at me like a canker!' Her small form
trembled, her hands hovering over the pleated bodice of her yellow gown. `Don't you
look away from me! I am sick at heart with your looking away, with your suffering. You
understand nothing. Your evil is that you cannot be evil, and I must suffer for it. I tell
you, I will suffer no longer!' Her fingers bit into the flesh of my wrist; I twisted, stepping
back from her, foundering in the face of the hatred, the rage rising like some dormant
beast in her, looking out through her eyes. `Snatching me from mortal hands like two
grim monsters in a nightmare fairy tale, you idle, blind parents! Fathers!' She spat the
word. `Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven't tears enough for what you've done to
me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight . . I might have had that shape!' Her pointed
finger flew at Madeleine, whose hands had risen to her face, whose eyes were clouded
over. Her moan was almost Claudia's name. But Claudia did not hear her. `Yes, that
shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your side. Monsters! To give me
immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form!' The tears stood in her eyes. The
words had died away, drawn in, as it were, on her breast.
" `Now, you give her to met' she said, her head bowing, her curls tumbling down to make
a concealing veil. `You give her to me. You do this, or you finish what you did to me that
night in the hotel in New Orleans. I will not live with this hatred any longer, I will not
live with this rage! I cannot. I will not abide it!' And tossing her hair, she put her hands to
her ears as if to stop the sound of her own words, her breath, drawn in rapid gasps, the
tears seeming to scald her cheeks.
"I had sunk to my knees at her side, and my arms were outstretched as if to enfold her.
Yet I dared not touch her, dared not even say her name, lest my own pain break from me
with the first syllable in a monstrous outpouring of hopelessly inarticulate cries. `Oooh.'
She shook her head now, squeezing the tears out onto her cheeks, her teeth clenched tight
together. `I love you still, that's the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The
measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I
hate you!' She flashed at me through the red film that covered her eyes.

" `Yes,' I whispered. I bowed my head. But she was gone from me into the arms of
Madeleine, who enfolded her
desperately, as if she might protect Claudia from me-the irony of it, the pathetic irony-
protect Claudia from
herself. She ,was whispering to Claudia, `Don't cry, don't cry?' her hands stroking
Claudia's face and hair
with a fierceness that would have bruised a human child.
"But Claudia seemed lost against her breast suddenly, her eyes closed, her face smooth,
as if all passion were drained away from her, her arm sliding up around Madeleine's neck,
her head falling against the taffeta and lace. She lay still, the tears staining her cheeks, as
if all this that had risen to the surface had left her weak and desperate for oblivion, as if
the room around her, as if I, were not there.
"And there they were together, a tender mortal crying unstintingly now, her warm arms
holding what she could not possibly understand, this white and fierce and unnatural child
thing she believed she loved. And if I had not felt for her, this mad and reckless woman
flirting with the damned, if I had not felt all the sorrow for her I felt for my mortal self, I
would have wrested the demon thing from her arms, held it tight to me, denying over and
over the words I'd just heard. But I knelt there still, thinking only, The love is equal to the
hatred; gathering that selfishly to my own breast, holding onto that as I sank back against
the bed.
"A long time before Madeleine was to know it, Claudia had ceased crying and sat still as
a statue on Madeleine's lap, her liquid eyes fixed on me, oblivious to the soft, red hair
that fell around her or the woman's hand that still stroked her. And I sat slumped against
the bedpost, staring back at those vampire eyes, unable and unwilling to speak in my
defense. Madeleine was whispering into Claudia's ear, she was letting her tears fall into
Claudia's tresses. And then gently, Claudia said to her, `Leave us.'
" `No.' She shook her head, holding fight to Claudia. And then she shut her eyes and
trembled all over with some terrible vexation, some awful torment. But Claudia was
leading her from the chair, and she was now pliant and shocked and white-faced, the
green taffeta ballooning around the' small yellow silk dress.
"In the archway of the parlor they stopped, and Madeleine stood as if confused, her hand
at her throat, beating like a wing, then going still. She looked about her like that hapless
victim on the stage of the Theatre des Vampires who did not know where she was. But
Claudia had gone for something. And I saw her emerge from the shadows with what
appeared to be a large doll. I rose on my knees to look at it. It was a doll, the doll of a
little girl with raven hair and green eyes, adorned with lace and ribbons, sweet-faced and
wide-eyed, its porcelain feet tinkling as Claudia put it into Madeleine's arms. And
Madeleine's eyes appeared to harden as she held the doll, and her Lips drew back from
her teeth in a grimace as she stroked its hair. She was laughing low under her breath. `Lie
down,' Claudia said to her; and together they appeared to sink into the cushions of the
couch, the green taffeta rustling and giving way as Claudia lay with her and put her arms
around her neck. I saw the doll sliding, dropping to the floor, yet Madeleine's hand
moped for it and held it dangling, her own head thrown back, her eyes shut tight, and
Claudia's curls stroking her face.

"I settled back on the floor and leaned against the soft siding of the bed. Claudia was
speaking now in a low voice, barely above a whisper, telling Madeleine to be patient, to
be still, I dreaded the sound of her step on the carpet; the sound of the doors sliding
closed to shut Madeleine away from us, and the hatred that lay between us like a killing
vapor.
"But when I looked up to her, Claudia was standing there as if transfixed and lost in
thought, all rancor and bitterness gone from her face, so that she had the blank expression
of that doll.
" 'All you've said to me is true,' I said to her. `I deserve your hatred. I've deserved it from
those first moments when Lestat put you in my arms.'
"She seemed unaware of me, and her eyes were infused with a soft light. Her beauty
burned into my soul so that I could hardly stand it, and then she said, wondering, `You
could have killed me then, despite him. You could have done it.' Then her eyes rested on
me calmly. `Do you wish to do it now?'
" `Do it now!' I put my arm around her, moved her close to me, warmed by her softened
voice. `Are you mad, to say such things to me? Do I want to do it now!"
" `I want you to do it,' she said. `Bend down now as you did then, draw the blood out of
me drop by drop, all you have the strength for; push my heart to the brink. I am small,
you can take me. I won't resist you, I am something frail you can crush like a flower.'
" `You mean these things? You mean what you say to me?' I asked. `Why don't you place
the knife here, why don't you turn it?'
" `Would you die with me?' she asked, with a sly, mocking smile. `Would you in fact die
with me?' she pressed. `Don't you understand what is happening to me? That he's killing
me, that master vampire who has you in thrall, that he won't share your love with me, not
a drop of it? I see his power in your eyes. I sea your misery, your distress, the love for
him you can't hide. Turn around, I'll make you look at me with those eyes that want him,
I'll make you listen'
" `Don't anymore, don't . . . I won't leave you. I've sworn to you, don't you see? I cannot
give you that woman'
" `But I'm fighting for my life! Give her to me so she can care for me, complete the guise
I must have to live! And be can have you then! I am fighting for my life!'
"I all but shoved her off. `No, no, it's madness, it's witchery,' I said, trying to defy her.
`It's you who will not share me with him, it's you who want every drop of that love. H not
from me, from her. He overpowers you, he disregards you, and it's you who wish him
dead the way that you killed Lestat. Well, you won't make me a party to this death, I tell
you, not this death! I will not make her one of us, I will not damn the legions of mortals
who'll die at her hands if I dot Your power over me is broken. I will not!'
"Oh, if she could only have understood!
"Not for a moment could I truly believe her words against Armand, that out of that
detachment which was beyond revenge he could selfishly wish for her death. But that
was nothing to me now; something far more terrible than I could grasp was happening,
something I was only beginning to understand, against which my anger was nothing but a

mockery, a hollow attempt to oppose her tenacious will. She hated me, she loathed me, as
she herself had confessed, and my heart shriveled inside me, as if, in depriving me of that
love which 'had sustained me a lifetime, she had dealt me a mortal blow. The knife was
there. I was dying for her, dying for that love as I was that very first night when Lestat
gave her to me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name; that love which had
warmed me in my self-hatred, allowed me to exist. Oh, how Lestat had understood it, and
now at last his plan was undone.
"But it went beyond that, in some region from which I was shrinking as I strode back and
forth, back and forth, my hands opening and closing at my sides, feeling not only that
hatred in her liquid eyes: It was her pain. She had shown me her pain! To give me
immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form. I put my hands to my ears, as if she
spoke the words yet, and the tears flowed. For all these years I had depended utterly upon
her cruelty, her absolute lack of pain! And pain was what she showed to me, undeniable
pain. Oh, how Lestat would have laughed at us. That was why she had put the knife to
him, because he would have laughed. To destroy me utterly she need only show me that
pain. The child I made a vampire suffered. Tier agony was as my own.
"There was a coffin in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to which Claudia retreated to
leave me alone with what I could not abide. I welcomed the silence. And sometime
during the few hours that remained of the night I found myself at the open window,
feeling the slow mist of the rain. It glistened on the fronds of the ferns, on sweet white
flowers that listed, bowed, and finally broke from their stems. A carpet of flowers
littering the little balcony, the petals pounded softly by the rain. I felt weak now, and
utterly alone. What had passed between us tonight could never be undone, and what had
been done to Claudia by me could never be undone.
"But I was somehow, to my own bewilderment, empty of all regret. Perhaps it was the
night, the starless sky, the gas lamps frozen in the mist that gave some strange comfort
for which I never asked and didn't know how, in this emptiness and aloneness, to receive.
I am alone, I was thinking. I am alone. It seemed dust, perfectly, and so to have a
pleasing, inevitable form. And I pictured myself then forever alone, as if on gaining that
vampire strength the night of my death I had left Lestat and never looked back for him, as
I had moved on away from him, beyond the need of him and anyone else. As if the might
had said to me, `You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in
its arms.' One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
"Yet I could feel. the end of this peace as surely as td felt my brief surrender to it, and it
was breaking like the dark clouds. The urgent pain of Claudia's loss pressed in on me,
behind me, like a shape gathered from the corners of this cluttered and oddly alien room.
But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel
something calling to me, something inanimate which I'd never known. And a power
within me seemed to answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable,
chilling strength.
"I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors until I saw, in the dim
light cast by the flickering gas flames behind me, that sleeping woman lying in my
shadow on the couch, the doll limp against her breast. Sometime before I knelt at her side

I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in the collected dark those other eyes
watching me, that breathless tiny vampire face waiting.
" `Will you care for her, Madeleine?' I saw her hands clutch at the doll, turning its face
against her breast. And my own hand went out for it, though I did not know why, even as
.she was answering me.
" `Yes!' She repeated it again desperately.
" `Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?' I asked her, my hand closing on the doll's
head, only to feel her snatch it away from me, see her teeth clenched as she glared at me.
" `A child who can't die! That's what she is,' she said, as if she were pronouncing a curse.
" `Aaaaah . . .' I whispered.
" `I've done with dolls,' she said, shoving it away from her into the cushions of the couch.
She was fumbling with something on her breast, something she wanted me to see and not
to see, her fingers catching hold of it and closing over it. I mew what it was, had noticed
it before. A locket fixed with a gold pin. I wish I could describe the passion that infected
her round features, how her soft baby mouth was distorted.
" `And the child who did die?' I guessed, watching her. I was picturing a doll shop, dolls
with the same face. She shook her head, her hand pulling hard on the locket so the pin
ripped the taffeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming panic: And her hand bled as
she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket from her fingers. `My daughter,' she
whispered, her lip trembling.
"It was a doll's face on the small fragment of porcelain, Claudia's face, a baby face, a
saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence an artist had painted there, a child with raven
hair like the doll. And the mother, terrified, was staring at the darkness an front of her.
" `Grief . . .' I said gently.
" `I've done with grief,' she said, her eyes narrowing as .she looked up at me. `If you
knew how I long to have your power; I'm ready for it, I hunger for it.' And she turned to
me, breathing deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under her dress.
"A violent frustration rent her face then. She turned away from me, shaking her head, her
curls. `If you were a mortal man; man and monster!' she said angrily. `If I could only
show you my power . . : and she smiled malignantly, defiantly at me `. . . I could make
you want me, desire me! But you're unnatural!' Her mouth went down at the corners.
`What can I give you! What can I do to make you give me what you have!' Her hand
hovered over her breasts, seeming to caress them like a man's hand.
"It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never have predicted the feeling her
words incited in me, the way that I saw her now with that small enticing waist, saw the
round, plump curve of her breasts and those delicate, pouting lips. She never dreamed
what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I was by the blood I'd only just drunk.
Desire her I did, more than she knew; because she didn't understand the nature of the kill.
And with a man's pride I wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her for what she had
said to me, for the cheap vanity of her provocation and the eyes that looked away from
me now in disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to grant eternal life.
"And cruelly, surely, I said to her, `Did you love this child?'

"I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the absolute hatred. `Yes.' She all
but hissed the words at me. `How dare you!' She reached for the locket even as I clutched
it. It was guilt that was consuming her, not love. It was guilt-that shop of dolls Claudia
had described to me, shelves and shelves of the effigy of that dead child. But guilt that
absolutely understood the finality of death. There was something as hard in her as the evil
in myself, something as powerful. She had her hand out towards me. She touched my
waistcoat and opened her fingers there, pressing them against my chest. And I was on my
knees, drawing close to her, her hair brushing my face.
" `Hold fast to me when I take you,' I said to her, seeing her eyes grow wide, her mouth
open. `And when the swoon is strongest, listen all the harder for the beating of my heart.
Hold and say over and over, "I will live."'
"'Yes, yes,' she was nodding, her heart pounding with her excitement.
"Her hands burned on my neck, fingers forcing their way into my collar. `Look beyond
me at that distant light; don't take your eyes off of it, not for a second, and say over and
over, "I will live."'
"She gasped as I broke the flesh, the warm current coming into me, her breasts crushed
against me, her body arching up, helpless, from the couch. And I could see her eyes, even
as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth. I was drawing on her, hard,
lifting her, and I could feel her weakening, her hands dropping limp at her sides. `Tight,
tight,' I whispered over the hot stream of. her blood, her heart thundering in my ears, her
blood swelling my satiated veins. `The lamp,' I whispered, 'look at it!' Her heart was
slowing, stopping, and her head dropped back from me on the velvet, her eyes dull to the
point of death. It seemed dying for her, dying for that love as I was that very first night
when Lestat gave her to me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name; that love
which had warmed me in my self-hatred, allowed me to exist. Oh, how Lestat had
understood it, and now at last his plan was undone.
"But it went beyond that, in some region from which I was shrinking as I strode back and
forth, back and forth, my hands opening and closing at my silos, feeling not only that
hatred in her liquid eyes: It was her pain. She had shown me her pain! To give me
immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form. I put my hands to my ears, as if she
spoke the words yet, and the tears flowed. For all these years I had depended utterly upon
her cruelty, her absolute lack of pain! And pain was what she showed to me, undeniable
pain. Oh, how Lestat would have laughed at us. That was why she had put the knife to
him, because he would have laughed. To destroy me utterly she need only show me that
pain. The child I made a vampire suffered. Her agony was as my own.
"There was a coffin in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to which Claudia retreated to
leave me alone with what I could not abide. I welcomed the silence. And sometime
during the few hours that remained of the night I found myself at the open window,
feeling the slow mist of the rain. It glistened on the fronds of the ferns, on sweet white
flowers that listed, bowed, and finally broke from their stems. A carpet of flowers
littering the little balcony, the petals pounded softly by the rain. I felt weak now, and
utterly alone. What had passed between us tonight could never he undone, and what had
been done to Claudia by me could never be undone.

"But I was somehow, to my own bewilderment, empty of all regret. Perhaps it was the
night, the starless sky, the gas lamps frozen in the mist that gave some strange comfort
for which I never asked and didn't know how, in this emptiness and aloneness, to receive.
I am alone, I was thinking. I am alone. It seemed dust, perfectly, and so to have a
pleasing, inevitable form. And I pictured myself then forever alone, as if on gaining that
vampire strength the night of my death I had left Lestat and never looked back for him, as
if I had moved on away from him, beyond the need of him and anyone else. As if the
night had said to me, `You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds
you in its arms.' One with the shadow. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
"Yet I could feel. the end of this peace as surely as I'd felt my brief surrender to it, and it
was breaking like the dark clouds. The urgent pain of Claudia's loss pressed in on me,
behind me, like a shape gathered from the corners of this cluttered and oddly alien room.
But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel
something calling to me, something inanimate which rd never known. And a power
within me seemed to answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable,
chilling strength.
"I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors until I saw, in the dim
light cast by the flickering gas flames behind me, that sleeping woman lying in my
shadow on the couch, the doll lung against her breast. Sometime before I knelt at her side
I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in the collected dark those other eyes
watching me, that breathless tiny vampire face waiting.
" `Will you care for her, Madeleine?' I saw her hands clutch at the doll, turning its face
against her breast. And my own hand went out for it, though I did not know why, even as
she was answering me.
" `Yes!' She repeated it again desperately.
"`Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?' I asked her, my hand closing on the doll's
head, only to feel her snatch it away from me, see her teeth clenched as she glared at me.
" `A child who can't die! That's what she is,' she said, as if she were pronouncing a curse.
" `Aaaaah . . .' I whispered.
" `I've done with dolls,' she said, shoving it away from her into the cushions of the couch.
She was fumbling with something on her breast, something she wanted me to see and not
to see, her fingers catching hold of it and closing over it. I knew what it was, had noticed
it before. A locket fixed with a gold pin. I wish I could describe the passion that infected
her round features, how her soft baby mouth was distorted.
" `And the .child who did die?' I guessed, watching her. I was picturing a doll shop, dolls
with the same face. She shook her head, her hand pulling hard on the locket so the pin
ripped the taffeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming panic: And her hand bled as
she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket from her fingers. `My daughter,' she
whispered, her lip trembling.
"It was a doll's face on the small fragment of porcelain, Claudia's face, a baby face, a
saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence an artist had painted there, a child with raven
hair like the doll. And the mother, terrified, was staring at the darkness in front of her.

" `Grief . . .' I said gently.
" `I've done with grief,' she said, her eyes narrowing as -she looked up at me. `If you
knew how I long to have your power; I'm ready for it, I hunger for it' And she turned to
me, breathing deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under her dress.
"A violent frustration sent her face then. She turned away from me, shaking her head, her
curls. `If you were a mortal man; man tend monster!' she said angrily. `If I could only
show you my power . . : and she smiled malignantly, defiantly at me `. . . I could make
you want me, desire me! But you're unnatural!' Her mouth went down at the corners.
`what can I give you! What can I do to make you give me what you have!' Her hand
hovered over her breasts, seeming to caress them like a man's hand.
"It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never have predicted the feeling her
words incited in me, the way that I saw her now with that small enticing waist, saw the
round, plump curve of her breasts and those delicate, pouting lips. She never dreamed
what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I was by the blood I'd only just drunk.
Desire her I did, more than she knew; because she didn't understand the nature of the kill.
And with a man's pride I wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her for what she had
said to me, for the cheap vanity of her provocation and the eyes that looked away from
me now in disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to grant eternal life.
"And cruelly, surely, I said to leer, `Did you love this child?'
"I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the absolute hatred. `Yes.' She all
but hissed the words at me. `How dare you!' She reached for the locket even as I clutched
it. It was guilt that was consuming her, not love. It was guilt-that shop of dolls Claudia
had described to me, shelves and shelves of the effigy of that dead child. But guilt that
absolutely understood the finality of death. There was something as hard in her as the evil
in myself, something as powerful. She had her hand out towards me. She touched my
waistcoat and opened her fingers there, pressing them against my chest. And I was on my
knees, drawing close to her, her hair brushing my face.
" `Hold fast to me when I take you,' I said to her, seeing her eyes grow wide, her mouth
open. `And when the swoon is strongest, listen all the harder for the beating of my heart.
Hold and say over and over, "I will live."'
" `Yes, yes,' she was nodding, her heart pounding with her excitement.
"Her hands burned on my neck, fingers forcing their way into my collar. `Look beyond
me at that distant light; don't take your eyes off of it, not for a second, and say over and
over, "I will live."'
"She gasped as I broke the flesh, the warn current coming into me, her breasts crushed
against me, her body arching up, helpless, from the couch. And I could see her eyes, even
as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth. I was drawing on her, hard,
lifting her, and I could feel her weakening, her hands dropping limp at her sides. `Tight,
tight,' I whispered over the hot stream of her blood, her heart thundering in my ears, her
blood swelling my satiated veins. `The lamp,' I whispered, `look at it!' Her heart was
slowing, stopping, and her head dropped back from me on the velvet, her eyes dull to the
point of death. It seemed for a moment I couldn't move, yet I knew I had to, that someone
else was lifting my wrist to my mouth as the room turned round and round, that I was

focusing on that light as I had told her to do, as I tasted my own blood from my own
wrist, and then forced it into her mouth. `Drink it. Drink,' I said to her. But she lay as if
dead. I gathered her close to me, the blood pouring over her lips. Then she opened her
eyes, and I felt the gentle pressure of her mouth, and then her hands closing tight on the
arm as she began to suck. I was rocking her, whispering to her, trying desperately to
break my swoon; and then I felt her powerful pull. Every blood vessel felt it. I was
threaded through and through with her pulling, my hand holding fast to the couch now,
her heart beating fierce against my heart, her fingers digging deep into my arm, my
outstretched palm. It was cutting me, scoring me, so I all but cried out as it went on and
on, and I was backing away from her, yet pulling her with me, my life passing through
my arm, her moaning breath in time with her pulling. And those strings which were my
veins, those searing wires pulled at my very heart harder and harder until, without will or
direction, I had wrenched free of her and fallen away from her, clutching that bleeding
wrist tight with my own hand.
"She was staring at me, the blood staining her open mouth. An eternity seemed to pass as
she stared. She doubled and tripled in my blurred vision, then collapsed into one
trembling shape. , Her hand moved to her mouth, yet her eyes did not move but grew
large in her face as she stared. And then she rose slowly, not as if by her own power but
as if lifted from the couch bodily by some invisible force which held her now, staring as
she turned round and round, her massive skirt moving stiff as if she were all of a piece,
turning like some great calved ornament on a music box that dances helplessly round and
round to the music. And suddenly she was staring down at the taffeta, grabbing hold of it,
pressing it between her fingers so it zinged and rustled, and she let it fall, quickly
covering her ears, her eyes shut tight, then opened wide again. And then it seemed she
saw the lamp, the distant, low gas lamp of the other room that gave a fragile light through
the double doors. And she ran to it and stood beside it, watching it as if it were alive.
`Don't touch it . . ' Claudia said to her, and gently guided her away. But Madeleine had
seen the flowers on the balcony and she was drawing close to them now, her outstretched
palms brushing the petals and then pressing the droplets of rain to her face.
"I was hovering on the fringes of the room, watching her every move, how she took the
flowers and crushed them in her hands and let the petals fall all around her and how she
pressed her fingertips to the mirror and stared into her own eyes. My own pain had
ceased, a handkerchief bound the wound, and I was waiting, waiting, seeing now that
Claudia had no knowledge from memory of what was to come nest. They were dancing
together, as Madeleine's skin grew paler and paler in the unsteady golden light. She
scooped Claudia into her arms, and Claudia rode round in circles with her, her own small
face alert and wary behind her smile.
"And then Madeleine weakened. She stepped backwards and seemed to- lose her balance.
But quickly she righted herself and let Claudia go gently down to the ground. On tiptoe,
Claudia embraced her. `Louis.' She signaled to me under her breath. `Louis. . .
"I beckoned for her to come away. And Madeleine, not seeming even to see us, was
staring at her own outstretched hands. Her face was blanched and drawn, and suddenly
she was scratching at her lips and staring at the dark stains on her fingertips. `No, no!' I
cautioned her gently, taking Claudia's hand and holding her close to my side. A long
moan escaped Madeleine's lips.

" 'Louis,' Claudia whispered in that preternatural voice which Madeleine could not yet
hear.
" `She is dying, which your child's mind can't remember. You were spared it, it left no
mark on you,' I whispered to her, brushing the hair beak from her ear, my eyes never
leaving Madeleine, who was wandering from mirror to mirror, the tears flowing freely
now, the body giving up its life.
" `But, Louis, if she dies. . .' Clauda cried.
" `No.' I knelt down, seeing the distress in her small face. `The blood was strong enough,
she will live. But she will be afraid, terribly afraid.' And gently, firmly, I pressed
Claudia's hand and kissed her cheek. She looked at me then with mingled wonder and
fear. And she watched me with that same expression as I wandered closer to Madeleine,
drawn by her cries. She reeled now, her hands out, and I caught her and held her close.
Her eyes already burned with unnatural light, a violet ire reflected in her tears.
" `It's mortal death, only mortal death,' I said to her gently. `Do you see the sky? We must
leave it now and you must hold tight to me, lie by my side. A sleep as heavy as death will
come over my limbs, and I won't be able to solace you. And you will lie there and you
will struggle with it. But you hold tight to. me in the darkness, do you hear? You hold
tight to my hands, which will hold your hands as long as I have feeling.'
"She seemed lost for the moment in my gaze, and I sensed the wonder that surrounded
her, how the radiance of my eyes was the radiance of all colors and how all those colors
were all the more reflected for her in my eyes. I guided her gently to the coffin, telling
her again not to be afraid. 'When you arise, you will be immortal,' I said. `No natural
cause of death can harm you. Come, lie down.' I could see her fear of it, see her shrink
from the narrow boa, its satin no comfort. Already her skin began to glisten, to have that
brilliance that Claudia and I shared. I knew now she would not surrender until I lay with
her.
"I held her and looked across the long vista of the room to where Claudia stood, with that
strange coffin, watching me. Her eyes were still but dark with an undefined suspicion, a
cool distrust. I set Madeleine down beside her bed and moved towards those eyes. And,
kneeling calmly beside her, I gathered Claudia in my arms. `Don't you recognize me?' I
asked her. `Don't you know who I am?'
"She looked at me. 'No.' she said.
"I smiled. I nodded. `Bear me no ill will,' I said. `We are even.'
"At that she moved her head to one side and studied me carefully, then seemed to smile
despite herself and to nod in assent.
" `For you see,' I said to her in that same calm voice, `what died tonight an this room was
not that woman. It will take her many nights to die, perhaps years. What has died in this
room tonight is the last vestige is me of what was human'
"A shadow fell over her face; clear, as if the composure were rent like a veil. And her lips
parted, but only with a short intake of breath. Then she said, `Well, then you are right.
Indeed. We axe even."'
" `I want to burn the doll shop!'

"Madeleine told us this. She was feeding to the fire in the grate the folded dresses of that
dead daughter, white lace and beige linen, crinkled shoes, bonnets that smelled of
camphor balls and sachet. `It means nothing now, any of it' She stood back watching the
fire blaze. And she looked at Claudia with triumphant, fiercely devoted eyes.
"I did not believe her, so certain I was-even though night after night I had to lead her
away from men and women she could no longer drain dry, so satiated was she with the
blood of earlier kills, often lifting her victims off their feet in her passion, crushing their
throats with her ivory fingers as surely as she drank their blood-so certain I was that
sooner or later this mad intensity must abate, and she would take hold of the trappings of
this nightmare, her own luminescent flesh, these lavish rooms of the Hotel Saint-Gabriel,
and cry out to be awakened; to be free. She did not understand it was no experiment;
showing her fledgling teeth to the gilt-edged mirrors, she was mad.
"But I still did not realize how mad she was, and how accustomed to dreaming; and that
she would not cry out for reality, rather would feed reality to her dreams, a demon elf
feeding her spinning wheel with the reeds of the world so she might make her own
weblike universe.
"I was just beginning to understand her avarice, her magic.
"She had a dollmaker's craft from making with her old lover over and over the replica of
her dead child, which I was to understand crowded the shelves of this shop we were soon
to visit. Added to that was a vampire's skill and a vampire's intensity, so that in the space
of one night when I had turned her away from killing, she, with that same insatiable need,
created out of a few sticks of wood, with her chisel and knife, a perfect rocking chair, so
shaped and proportioned for Claudia that seated in it by the fire, she appeared a woman.
To that must be added, as the nights passed, a table of the same scale; and from a toy
shop a tiny oil lamp, a china cup and saucer; and from a lady's purse a little leather-bound
book for notes which in Claudia's hands became a large volume. The world crumbled and
ceased to exist at the boundary of the small space which soon became the length and
breadth of Claudia's dressing room: a bed whose posters reached only to my breast
buttons, and small mirrors that reflected only the legs of an unwieldy giant when I found
myself lost among them; paintings hung low for Claudia's eye; and finally, upon her little
vanity table, black evening gloves for tiny fingers, a woman's low-cut gown of midnight
velvet, a tiara from a child's masked ball. And Claudia, the crowning jewel, a fairy queen
with bare white shoulders wandering with her sleek tresses among the rich items of her
tiny world while I watched from the doorway, spellbound, ungainly, stretched out on the
carpet so I could lean my head on my elbow and gaze up into my paramour's eyes, seeing
them mysteriously softened for the time being by the perfection of this sanctuary. How
beautiful she was in black lace, a cold, flaxen-haired woman with a kewpie doll's face
and liquid eyes which gazed at me so serenely and so long that, surely, I must have been
forgotten; the eyes must be seeing something other than me as I lay there on the floor
dreaming; something other than the clumsy universe surrounding me, which was now
marked off and nullified by someone who had suffered in it, someone who had suffered
always, but who was not seeming to suffer now, listening as it were to the tinkling of a
toy music box, putting a hand on the toy clock. I saw a vision of shortened hours and
little golden minutes. I felt I was mad.

"I put my hands under my head and gazed at the chandelier; it was hard to disengage
myself from one world and enter the other. And Madeleine, on the couch, was working
with that regular passion, as if immortality could not conceivably mean rest, sewing
cream lace to lavender satin for the small bed, only stopping occasionally to blot the
moisture tinged with blood from her white forehead.
"I wondered, if I shut my eyes, would this realm of tiny things consume the rooms around
me, and would I, like Gulliver, awake to discover myself bound hand and foot, an
unwelcome giant? I had a vision of houses made for Claudia in whose garden mice would
be monsters, and tiny carriages, and flowery shrubbery become trees. Mortals would be
so entranced, and drop to their knees to look into the small windows. Like the spider's
web, it would attract.
"I was bound hand and foot here. Not only by that fairy beauty-that exquisite secret of
Claudia's white shoulders and the rich luster of pearls, bewitching languor, a tiny bottle
of perfume, now a decanter, from which a spell is released that promises Eden-I was
bound by fear. That outside these rooms, where I supposedly presided over the education
of Madeleine -erratic conversations about killing and vampire nature in which Claudia
could have instructed so much more easily than I, if she had ever showed the desire to
take the lead-that outside these rooms, where nightly I was reassured with soft kisses and
contented looks that the hateful passion which Claudia had shown once and once only
would not return that outside these rooms, I would find that I was, according to my own
hasty admission, truly changed: the mortal part of me was that part which had loved, I
was certain. So what did I feel then for Armand, the creature for whom I'd transformed
Madeleine, the creature for whom I had wanted to be free? A curious and disturbing
distance? A dull pain? A nameless tremor? Even in this worldly clutter, I saw Armand in
his monkish cell, saw his dark-brown eyes, and felt that eerie magnetism.
"And yet I did not move to go to him. I did not dare discover the extent of what I might
have lost. Nor try to separate that loss from some other oppressive realization: that in
Europe I'd found no truths to lessen loneliness, transform despair. Rather, I'd found only
the inner workings of my own small soul, the pain of Claudia's, and a passion for a
vampire who was perhaps more evil than Lestat, for whom I became as evil as Lestat, but
in whom I saw the only promise of good in evil of which I could conceive.
"It was all beyond me, finally. And so the clock ticked on the mantel; and Madeleine
begged to see the performances of the Theatres des Vampires and swore to defend
Claudia against any vampire who dared insult her; and Claudia spoke of strategy and
said, `Not yet, not now,' and I lay back observing with some measure of relief
Madeleine's love for Claudia; her blind covetous passion. Oh, I have so little compassion
in my heart or memory for Madeleine. I thought she had only seen the first vein of
suffering, she had no understanding of death. She was so easily sharpened, so easily
driven to wanton violence. I supposed in my colossal conceit and self-deception that my
own grief for my dead brother was the only true emotion. I allowed myself to forget how
totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-
colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the
power to walk on water.
"What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? Dress
well, to begin with. And have a luxurious head of pampered yellow hair.

"I hated myself. And it seemed, lulled half to sleep as I was so often by their
conversation-Claudia whispering of killing and speed and vampire craft, Madeleine bent
over her singing needle-it seemed then the only emotion of which I was still capable:
hatred of self. I love them. I hate them. I do not care if they are there. Claudia puts her
hands on my hair as if she wants to tell me with the old familiarity that her heart's at
peace. I do not care. And there is the apparition of Armand, that power, that
heartbreaking clarity. Beyond a glass, it seems. And g Claudia's playful hand, I
understand for the first time in any life what she feels when she forgives me for being
myself whom she says she hates and loves: she feels almost nothing."
"It was a week before we accompanied Madeleine on her errand, to torch a universe of
dolls behind a plate-glass window. I remember wandering up the street away from it,
round a turn into a narrow cavern of darkness where the falling rain was the only sound.
But then I saw the red glare against the clouds. Bells clanged and men shouted, and
Claudia beside me was talking softly of the nature of fire. The thick smoke rising in that
dickering glare unnerved me. I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something
cold like a hook in may side. ' fear-it was the old town house burning in the Rue Royale,
Lestat in the attitude of sleep on the burning floor.
" `Fire purifies . . : Claudia said. And I said, `No, fire merely destroys . . . .'
"Madeleine had gone past us and was roaming at the top of the street, a phantom in the
rain, her white hands whipping the air, beckoning to us, white arcs, of white fireflies. And
I remember Claudia leaving me for her. The sight of wilted, writhing yellow hair as she
told me to follow. A ribbon fallen underfoot, flapping and floating in a swirl of black
water. It seemed they were gone. And I bent to retrieve that ribbon. But another hand
reached out for it. It was
Armand who gave it to me now.
"I was shocked to see him there, so near, the figure of Gentleman Death in a doorway,
marvelously real in his black cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the shadows in his stillness.
There was the faintest glimmer of the fire in his eyes, red warming the blackness there to
the richer brown.
"And I woke suddenly as if rd been dreaming, woke to the sense of him, to his hand
enclosing mine, to his head inclined as if to let me know he wanted me to follow-awoke
to my own excited experience of his presence, which consumed me as surely as it had
consumed me in his cell. We were walking together now, fast, nearing the Seine, moving
so swiftly and artfully through a gathering of men that they scarce saw us, that we scarce
saw them. That I could keep up with him easily amazed me. He was forcing me into
some acknowledgment of my powers, that the paths I'd normally chosen were human
paths I no longer need follow.
"I wanted desperately to talk to him, to stop him with both my hands on his shoulders,
merely to look into his eyes again as I'd done that last night, to fix him in some time and
place, so that I could deal with the excitement inside me. There was so much I wanted to
tell him, so much I wanted to explain. And yet 1 didn't know what to say or why I would
say it, only that the fullness of the feeling continued to relieve me almost to tears. This
was what I'd feared lost.

"I didn't knew where we were now, only that in my wanderings I'd passed here before: a
street of ancient mansions, of garden walls and carriage doors grad towers overhead and
windows of leaded glass beneath stone arches. Houses of other centuries, gnarled trees,
that sudden thick and silent tranquility which means that the masses are shut out; a
handful of mortals inhabit this vast region of highceilinged rooms; stone absorbs the
sound of breathing, the space of whole lives.
"Armand was step a wall now, his arm against the overhanging bough of a tree, his hand
reaching for me; and in ors instant I stood beside him, tire wet foliage brushing any face.
Above, I could see story after story rising to a lone tower that barely emerged from the
dark, teeming rain. `Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,' Armand was
saying.
" `I cannot . . it's impassible . . . I'
" `You don't begin to know your own powers. You can climb easily. Remember, if you
fall you will not be injured. Do as I do. But note this. The inhabitants of this house have
known me far a hundred years and think me a spirit; so if by chance they see you, or you
see them through those windows, remember what they believe you to be and show no
consciousness of them lest you disappoint them or confuse them. Do you hear? You are
perfectly safe.'
"I wasn't sure what frightened me more, the climb itself or the notion of being seen as a
ghost; but I had no time for comforting witticisms, even to myself. Armand had begun,
his boots finding the crack between the stones, his hands sure as claws in the crevices;
and I was moving after him, tight to the wall, not daring to look down, clinging for a
moment's rest to the thick, carved arch over a window, glimpsing inside, over a licking
fire, a dark shoulder, a hand stroking with a poker, some figure that moved completely
without knowledge that it was watched. Gone. Higher and higher we climbed, until we
had reached the window of the tower itself, which Armand quickly wrenched open, his
long legs disappearing over the sill; and I rose up after him, feeling his arm out around
my shoulders.
"I sighed despite myself, as I stood in the room, rubbing the backs of my arms, looking
around this wet, strange place. The rooftops were silver below, turrets rising here and
there through the huge, rustling treetops; and far off glimmered the broken chain of a
lighted boulevard. The room seemed as damp as the night outside. Armand was making a
fire.
"From a molding pile of furniture he was picking chairs, breaking them into wood easily
despite the thickness of their rungs. There was something grotesque about him, sharpened
by his grace and the imperturbable calm of his white face. He did what any vampire
could do, cracking these thick pieces of wood into splinters, yet he did what only a
vampire could do. And there seemed nothing human about him; even his handsome
features and dark hair became the attributes of a terrible angel who shared with the rest of
us only a superficial resemblance. The tailored coat was a mirage. And though I felt
drawn to him, more strongly perhaps than I'd ever been drawn to any living creature save
Claudia, he excited me in other ways which resembled fear. I was not surprised that,
when he finished, he set a heavy oak chair down for me, but retired himself to the marble

mantelpiece and sat there warming his hands over the fire, the flames throwing red
shadows into his face.
" `I can hear the inhabitants of the house,' I said to him. The warmth was good. I could
feel the leather of my boots drying, feel the warmth in my fingers.
" `Then you know that I can hear them,' he said softly; and though this didn't contain a
hint of reproach, I realized the implications of my own words.
" `And if they comet' I insisted, studying him.
"'Can't you tell by my manner that they won't come? he asked. `We could sit here all
night, and never speak of them. I want you to know that if we speak of them it is because
you want to do so.' And when I said nothing, whey perhaps I looked a little defeated, he
said gently that they had long ago sealed off this tower and left it undisturbed; and if in
fact they saw the smoke from the chimney or the light in the window, none of them
would venture up until tomorrow.
"I could see now there were several shelves of books at one side of the fireplace, and a
writing table. The pages on top were wilted, but there was an inkstand and several pens. I
could imagine the room a very comfortable place when it was not storming, as it was
now, or after the fire had dried out the air.
" `You see,' Armand said, `you really have no need of the rooms you have at the hotel.
You really have need of very little. But each of us mast decide how much he wants.
These people in this house have a name for me; encounters with me cause talk for twenty
years. They are only isolated instants in my time which mean nothing. They cannot hurt
me, and I use their house to be alone. No one of the Theatre des Vampires knows of my
coming here. This is my secret.'
"I had watched him intently as he was speaking, and thoughts which had occurred to me
in the cell at the theater occurred to me again. Vampires do not age, and I wondered how
his youthful face and manner might differ now from what he had been a century before or
a century before that; for his face, though not deepened by the lessons of maturity, was
certainly no mask. It seemed powerfully expressive as was his unobtrusive voice, and I
was at a loss finally to fully anatomize why. I knew only I was as powerfully drawn to
him as before; and to some extent the words I spoke now were a subterfuge. `But what
holds you to 'the Theatre des Vampires?' I asked.
" `A need, naturally. But I've found what I need,' he said. `Why do you shun me?'
" `I never shunned you,' I said, trying to hide the excitement these words produced in me.
`You understand I have to protect Claudia, that she has no one but me. Or at least she had
no one until . .
" `Until Madeleine came to live with you. . .
" `Yes . . .' I said.
" But now Claudia has released you, yet still yon stay with her, and stay bound to her as
your paramour,' he said.
" `No, she's no paramour of mine; you don't understand,' I said. `Rather, she's my child,
and I don't know that she can release me. . . ' These were thoughts I'd gone over and over

in my mind. `I don't knew if the child possesses the power to release the parent. I don't
know that I won't be bound to her for as long as she '
"I stopped. I was gong to say, `for as long as she lives.' But I realized it was a hollow
mortal clicle6. She would live forever, as I would live forever. But wasn't it so for mortal
fathers? Their daughters live forever because these fathers die first. I was at a loss
suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened: that he listened in the way
that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did
not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something
before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse-the things
which often make dialogue impossible.
"And after a long interval he said, `I want you. I want you more than anything in the
world.'
"For a moment I doubted what I'd heard. It struck me as unbelievable. And I was
hopelessly disarmed by it, and the wordless vision of our living together expanded and
obliterated every other consideration in my mind.
" `I said that I want you. I want you more than anything in the world,' he repeated, with
only a subtle change of expression. And then he sat waiting, watching. His face was as
tranquil as always, his smooth, white forehead beneath the shock of his auburn hair
without a trace of care, his large eyes reflecting on me, his lips still.
" `You want this of me, yet you don't come to me,' he said: `There are things you want to
know, and you don't ask. You see Claudia slipping away from you, yet you seem
powerless to prevent it, and then you would hasten it, and yet you do nothing.!
" 'I don't understand my own feelings. Perhaps they are clearer to you than they are to me.
. . '
" `You don't begin to know what a mystery you are!' he said.
" `But at least you know yourself thoroughly. I can't claim that,' I said. `I love her, yet I
am not close to her. I mean that when I am with you as I am now, I know that I know
nothing of her, nothing of anyone.'
" `She's an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you break with her, you break
with the only one alive who has shared that time with you. You fear that, the isolation of
it, the burden, the scope of eternal life.'
" `Yes, that's true, but that's only a small part of it. The era, it doesn't mean much to me.
She made it mean something. Other vampires must experience this and survive it, the
passing of a hundred eras.'
" `But they don't survive it,' he said. `The world would be choked with vampires if they
survived it. How do you think I come to be the eldest here or anywhere?' he asked.
"I thought about this. And then I ventured, `They die by violence?'
" `No, almost never. It isn't necessary. How many vampires do you think have the
stamina for immortality? They have the cost dismal notions of immortality to begin with.
For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fined as they are and
incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which
suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood

and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything
except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an
inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a
penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible
and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps
for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That whatever style or
fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to him has been swept off the
face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer freedom from despair except the act of
killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will find his remains. No one will know
where he has gone. And often no one around him-should he still seek the company of
other vampires--no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to
speak- of himself or of anything. He will vanish.'
"I sat back impressed by the obvious truth of it, and yet at the same time, everything in
me revolted against that prospect. I became aware of the depth of my hope and my terror;
how very different those feelings were from the alienation that he described, how very
different from that awful wasting despair. There was something outrageous and repulsive
in that despair suddenly. I couldn't accept it.
" `But you wouldn't allow such a state of mind in yourself. Look at you,' I found myself
answering. `If there weren't one single work of art left in this world . . . and there are
thousands . . . if there weren't a single natural beauty . . . if the world were reduced to one
empty cell and one fragile candle, I can't help but see you studying that candle, absorbed
in the flicker of its light, the change of its colors . . . how long could that sustain you . . .
what possibilities would it create? Am I wrong? Am I such a crazed idealist?'
" `No,' he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an evanescent flush of pleasure. But
then he went on simply. `But you feel an obligation to a world you love because that
world for you is still intact. It is conceivable your own sensitivity might become the
instrument of madness. You speak of works of art and natural beauty. I wish I had the
artist's power to bring alive for you the Venice of the fifteenth century, my master's
palace there, the love I felt for him when I was a mortal boy, and the love he felt for me
when he made me a vampire. Oh, if I could make those times come alive for either you or
me . . . for only an instant! What would that be worth? And what a sadness it is to me that
time doesn't dim the memory of that period, that it becomes all the richer and more
magical in light of the world I see today.'
" `Love?' I asked. `There was love between you and the vampire who made you?' I leaned
forward.
" `Yes,' he said. `A love so strong he couldn't allow me to grow old and die. A love that
waited patiently until I was strong enough to be born to darkness. Do you mean to tell me
there was no bond of love between you and the vampire who made you?'
" `None,' I said quickly. I couldn't repress a bitter smile.
"He studied me. `Why then did he give you these powers?' he asked.
"I sat back. `You see these powers as a gift!' I said. `Of course you do. Forgive me, but it
amazes me, how in your complexity you are so profoundly simple.' I laughed.

" `Should I be insulted?" he smiled. And his whole manner only confirmed me in what rd
just said. He seemed so innocent. I was only beginning to understand him.
" `No, not by me,' I said, my pulse quickening as I looked at him. `You're everything I
dreamed of when I became a vampire. You see these powers as a gift!' I repeated it. `But
tell me . . . do you now feel love for this vampire who gave you eternal life? Do you feel
this now?'
"He appeared to be thinking, and then he sand slowly, `Why does this matter?' But went
on: `I don't think I've been fortunate in feeling love for many people or many things. But
yes, I love him. Perhaps I do not love him as you mean. It seems you confuse me, rather
effortlessly. You are a mystery. I do not need him, this vampire, anymore.'
" `I was gifted with eternal life, with heightened perception, and with the need to kill,' I
quickly explained, `because the vampire who made me wanted the house I owned and my
money. Do you understand such a thing?' I asked. `Ah, but there is so much else behind
what I say. It makes itself known to me so slowly, so incompletely! You see, it's as if
you've cracked a door for me, and light is streaming from that door and I'm yearning to
get to it, to push it back, to enter the region you say exists beyond it! When, in fact, I
don't believe it! The vampire who made me was everything that I truly believed evil to
be: he was as dismal, as literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I
believed evil had to be! I know that now. But you, you are something totally beyond that
conception! Open the door for me, push it back all the way. Tell me about this palace in
Venice, this love affair with damnation. I want to understand it'
" `You trick yourself. The palace means nothing to you,' he said. `The doorway you see
leads to me, now. To your coming to live with me as I am. I am evil with infinite
gradations and without guilt.'
" `Yes, exactly,' I murmured.
" `Arid this makes you unhappy,' he said. `You, who came to me in my cell and said there
was only one sin left, the willful taking of an innocent human life.'
" `Yes . . ' I said. `How you must have been laughing at me. . . '
" `I never laughed at you,' he said. `I cannot afford to laugh at you. It is through you that I
can save myself from the despair which I've described to you as our death. It is through
you that I must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to understand it in a
way that will revitalize me, which I so desperately need It is for you that I've been
waiting at the Theatre des Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that
focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I've
had to wait and watch for you. And now I'll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am
in love? Is this what you meant by love?'
" `Oh, but you'd be making a terrible mistake,' I said, looking him in the eyes. His words
were only slowly sinking in. Never had I felt my all-consuming frustration to be so clear.
I could not conceivably satisfy him. I could not satisfy Claudia. I'd never been able to
satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal brother, Paul: how dismally, mortally I had
disappointed him!

" `No. I must make contact with the age,' he said to me calmly. `And I can do this through
you . . . not to learn things from you which I can see in a moment in an art gallery or read
in an hour in the thickest books . . . you are the spirit, you are the heart,' he persisted.
" `No, no.' I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter, hysterical laughter. `Don't
you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been!
I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!' It was too painful, too
perfectly true.
"But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge of
laughing at .me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter. `lout Louis,' he
said softly. `This is the very spirit of your age. Don't you see that? 'Everyone else feels as
you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.'
"I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring into the fire. It had all but
consumed the wood and was a wasteland of smoldering ash, a gray and red landscape that
would have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet it was very warm, and still gave off
powerful light. I saw my life in complete perspective
"'And the vampires of the Theatre . . : I asked softly.
" `They reflect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of possibilities,
fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the parody of the miraculous, decadence whose last
refuge is self-ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw them; you've known them all
your life. You reflect your age differently. You reflect its broken heart.'
" `This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don't begin to understand.'
" `I don't doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you unhappy. Tell me why for
a period of seven days you haven't come to me, though you were burning to come. Tell
me what holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.'
"I shook my head. `You don't know what you ask. You see, it was immensely difficult for
me to perform the act of making Madeleine into a vampire. I broke a promise to myself
that I would never do this, that my own loneliness would never drive me to do it. I don't
see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven't the courage to die. But to
make another vampire! To bring this suffering on another, and to condemn to death all
those men and women whom that vampire must subsequently kill! I broke a grave
promise. And in so doing . . '
" `But if it's any consolation to you . . . surely you realize I had a hand in it.'
" `That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you . . . yes, I realize that. But
the ultimate responsibility lies with me!' I said.
" `No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my
strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn't you know this?' Woe.
"I bowed my head.
" 'I would have made this woman a vampire,' he said softly. `But I thought it best you
have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted
it. . .
" `I loathe what I did!' I said.

" `Then loathe me, not yourself.'
" `No. You don't understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this
happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn't even know it was your force
which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I
was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!'
" `But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to
name it. If it were not alive there wouldn't be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn't be
rage in your voice,' he said.
"For the moment, I couldn't answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak again. `You
must never force me to do something against my will! You must never exert such power .
. ' I stammered.
" `No,' he said at once. `I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at some
threshold. There I am powerless, however . . . this creation of Madeleine is done. You are
free.'
" `And you are satisfied,' I said, gaining control of myself. `I don't mean to be harsh. You
have me. I love you. But I'm mystified. You're satisfied?'
" `How could I not be?' he asked. `I am satisfied, of course.'
"I stood up and went to the window. The last embers were dying. The light came from the
gray sky. I heard Armand follow me to the window ledge. I could feel him beside me
now, my eyes growing more and more accustomed to the luminosity of the sky, so that
now I could see his profile and his eye on the falling rain. The sound of the rain was
everywhere and different: flowing in the gutter along the roof, tapping the shingles,
falling softly through the shimmering layers of tree branches, splattering on the sloped
stone sill in front of my hands. A soft intermingling of sounds that drenched and colored
all of the night.
" To you forgive me . . . for forcing you with the woman?' he asked.
" `You don't need my forgiveness'
" `You need it,' he said. `Therefore, I need it.' Ids face was as always utterly calm.
" `Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?' I asked.
" `She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will care for Claudia. She
has never lived a moment of life alone; it is natural to her that she be devoted to her
companions. She need not have particular reasons for loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to
her needs, she does have particular reasons. Claudia's beautiful surface, Claudia's quiet,
Claudia's dominance and control. They are perfect together. But I think . . . that as soon
as possible they should leave Paris:
" `Why?'
" `You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires watch them with suspicion.
All the vampires have sees Madeleine. They fear her because she knows about them and
they don't know her. They don't let others alone who know about them'
" `And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?'
" `He's dead,' he answered.

"I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. `You killed him?' I gasped.
"He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed entranced with me, with
the emotion, the shock I didn't try to conceal. His soft, subtle smile seemed to draw me
close to him; his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill and I felt my body turning
to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I were being moved not by myself but by
him. `It was best,' he conceded to me gently. And then said, `We must go now. . . : And
he glanced at the street below.
" `Armand,' I said. `I can't...'
" `Louis, come after me,' he whispered. And then on the ledge, he stopped. `Been if you
were to fall on the cobblestones there,' he said, `you would only be hurt for a while. You
would heal so rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would show no sign of it, your
bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge free you to do what you can so
easily do already. Climb down, now.'
" `What can kill me?' I asked.
"Again he stopped. `The destruction of your remains,' he said. `Don't you know this?
Fire, dismemberment . . . the heat of the sun. Nothing else. You can be scarred, yes; but
you are resilient. You are immortal.'
"I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness. Then .a light flickered
beneath the shifting tree limbs, and the pale beams of the light made the street appear.
Wet cobblestones, the iron hook of the carriage-house bell, the vines clinging to the top
off the wall. The huge black hulk of a carriage brushed the vines, and then the light grew
weak, the street went from yellow to silver and vanished altogether, as if the dark trees
had swallowed it up. Or, rather, as if it had all been subtracted from the dark. I felt dizzy.
I felt the building move. Armand was seated on the window sill looking down at me.
" `Louis, come with me tonight,' he whispered suddenly, with an urgent inflection.
" `No,' I said gently. `It's too soon. I can't leave them yet'
"I watched him turn away and look at the dark sky. He appeared to sigh, but I didn't hear
it. I felt his hand close on mine on the window sill. `Very well . . .' he said.
" `A little more time . . ' I said. And he nodded and patted my hand as if to say it was all
right. Then he swung his legs over and disappeared. For only a moment I hesitated,
mocked by the pounding of my heart. But then I climbed over the sill and commenced to
hurry after him, never daring to look down."
"It was very near dawn when I put my key into the lock at the hotel. The gas light flared
along the walls. And Madeleine, her needle and thread in her hands, had fallen asleep by
the grate. Claudia stood still, looking at me from among the ferns at the window, in
shadow. She had her hairbrush in her hands. Her hair was gleaming.
"I stood there absorbing some shock, as if all the sensual pleasures and confusions of
these rooms were passing over me like waves and my body were being permeated with
these things, so different from the spell of Armand and the tower room where we'd been.
There was something comforting here, and it was disturbing. I was looking for my chair.
I was sitting in it with my hands on my temples. And then I felt Claudia near me, and I
felt her dips against my forehead.

" `You've been with Armand,' she said. `You want to go with him.'
"I looked up at her. How soft and beautiful her face was, and, suddenly, so much mine. I
felt no compunction in yielding to my urge to touch her cheeks, to lightly touch her
eyelids---familiarities, liberties I hadn't taken with her since the night of our quarrel. `I'll
see you again; not here, in other places. Always I'll know where you are!' I said.
"She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I closed my eyes and buried
my face in her hair. I was covering her neck with my kisses. I had hold of her round, firm
little arms. I was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation of the flesh in the crooks of
her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her forgers stroking my hair, my face.
`Whatever you wish,' she vowed. `Whatever you wish.'
" `Are you happy? Do you have what you want?' I begged her.
" `Yes, Louis.' She held me against her dress, her fingers clasping the back of my neck. `I
have all that I want` But do you truly know what you want?' She was lifting my face so I
had to look into her eyes. `It's you I fear for, you who might be making the mistake. Why
don't you leave Paris with us!' the said suddenly. `We have the world, come with us!'
" `No.' I drew back from her. `You want it to as it was with Lestat. It can't be that way
again, ever. It won't be.'
" `It will be something new and different with Madoleine. I don't ask for that again. It was
I who put an end to that,' she said. `But do you truly understand what you are choosing in
Armand?'
"I tanned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious inn her dislike of
him, in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death,
which I did not believe. She didn't realize what I realized: he could not want her death,
because I didn't want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous
and blind in my love of him. `It's meant to be. It's almost that sort of direction,' I said, as
if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. `He alone can give me
the strength to be what I am. I can't continue to live divided and consumed with misery.
Either I go with him, or I die,' I said. `And it's something else, which is irrational and
unexplainable and which satisfies only me. . .
" `Which is?' she asked.
" `That I love him,' I said.
" `No doubt you do,' she mused. `But then, you could love even me.'
" `Claudia, Claudia.' I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up
close to my chest.
" `T only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me . . .' she whispered. `That
I can get back to you . . . I've hurt you so often, I've caused you so much pain.' Her words
trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, In a little while, I
won't have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such
pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
"It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp air that much light was
suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was sitting on the verge of dream. Had I been mortal I
would have been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, comfortable state I had a

strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would wake me gently later and I would
have that rich, habitual vision of the ferns in the sunshine and the sunshine an the droplets
of rain. I indulged that feeling. I half closed my eyes.
"Often afterwards I tried to remember those moments. Tried over and over to recall just
what it was in those rooms as we rested there, that began to disturb me, should have
disturbed me. How, being off my guard, I was somehow insensible to the subtle changes
which must have been taking place there. Long after, bruised and robbed and embittered
beyond my wildest dreams, I sifted through those moments, those drowsy quiet early-
hour moments when the clock ticked almost imperceptibly on the mantelpiece, and the
sky grew paler and paler; and all I could remember-despite the desperation with which I
lengthened and fixed that time, in which I held out my hands to stop the clock-all I could
remember was the soft changing of tight.
"On guard, I would never have let it pass. Deluded with larger concerns, I made no note
of it. A lamp gone out, a candle extinguished by the shiver of its own hot pool of wax.
My eyes half shut, I had the sense then. of impending darkness, of being shut up in
darkness.
"And then I opened my eyes, not thinking of lamps or candles. And it was too late. I
remember standing upright, Claudia's hand slipping on my arm, and the vision of a host
of black-dressed men and women moving through the rooms, their garments seeming to
garner light from every gilt edge or lacquered surface, seeming to drain all light away. I
shouted out against them, shouted for Madeleine, saw her wake with a start, terrified
fledgling, clinging to the arm of the couch, then down on her knees as they reached out
for her. There was Santiago and Celeste coming towards us, and behind them, Estelle and
others whose names I didn't know filling the mirrors and crowding together to make
walls of shifting, menacing shadow. I was shouting to Claudia to run, having pulled back
the door. I was shoving her through it and then was stretched across it, kicking out at
Santiago as he came.
"That weak defensive position rd held against him in the Latin Quarter was nothing
compared to my strength now. I was too flawed perhaps to ever fight with conviction for
my own protection. But the instinct to protect Madeleine and Claudia was overpowering.
I remember kicking Santiago backwards and then striking out at that powerful, beautiful
Celeste, who sought to get by me. Claudia's feet sounded on the distant marble stairway.
Celeste was reeling, clawing at me, catching hold of me and scratching my face so the
blood ran down over my collar. I could see it blazing in the comer of my eye. I was on
Santiago now, turning with him, aware of the awful strength of the arms that held me, the
hands that sought to get a hold on my throat. `Fight them, Madeleine,' I was shouting to
her. But all I could hear was her sobbing. Then I saw her in the whirl, a fixed, frightened
thing, surrounded by other vampires. They were laughing that hollow vampire laughter
which is like tinsel or silverbells. Santiago was clutching at his face. My teeth had drawn
blood there. I struck at his chest, at his head, the pain searing through my arm, something
enclosing my chest like two arms, which I shook off, hearing the crash of broken glass
behind me. But something else, someone else had hold of my arm with two arms and was
pulling me with tenacious strength.
"I don't remember weakening. I don't remember any turning point when anyone's strength
overcame my own. I remember simply being outnumbered. Hopelessly, by sheer numbers

and persistence, I was stilled, surrounded, and forced out of the rooms. In a press of
vampires, I was being forced along the passageway, and then I was falling down the
steps, free for a moment before the narrow back doors of the hotel, only to be surrounded
again and held tight. I could see Celeste's face very near me and, if I could have, I would
have wounded her with my teeth. I was bleeding badly, and one of my wrists was held so
tightly that there was no feeling in that hand. Madeleine was next to me sobbing still.
And all of us were pressed into a carnage. Over and over I was struck, and still I did not
lose consciousness. I remember clinging tenaciously to consciousness, feeling these
blows on the back of my head, feeling the back of my head wet with blood that trickled
down my neck as I lay on the carriage floor. I was thinking only, I can feel the carnage
moving; I am alive; I am conscious.
"And as soon as we were dragged into the Theatre des Vampires, I was crying out for
Armand.
"I was let go, only to stagger on the cellar steps, the horde of them behind me and in front
of me, pushing me with menacing hands. At one point I got hold of Celeste, and she
screamed and someone struck me from behind.
"And then I saw Lestat- the blow that was more crippling than any blow. Lestat, standing
there in the center of the ballroom, erect, his gray eyes sharp and focused, his mouth
lengthening in a cunning smile. Impeccably dressed he was, as always, and as splendid an
his rich black cloak and fine linen. But those scars still scored every inch of his white
flesh. And how they distorted the taut, handsome face, the fine, hard threads cutting the
delicate skin above his lip, the lids of his eyes, the smooth rise of his forehead. And the
eyes, they burned with a silent rage that seemed infused with vanity, an awful relentless
vanity that said, `See what I am.'
" `This is the one?' said Santiago, thrusting me forward.
"But Lestat turned sharply to him and said in a harsh low voice, `I told you I wanted
Claudia, the child! She was the one!' And now I saw his head moving involuntarily with
his outburst, and his hand reaching out as if for the arm of a chair only to close as he
drew himself up again, eyes to me.
" `Lestat,' I began, seeing now the few straws left to me. `You are alive! You have your
life! Tell them how you treated us. . .
" `No,' he shook his head furiously. `You come back to me, Louis,' he said.
"For a moment I could not believe my ears. Some saner, more desperate part of me said,
Reason with him, even as the sinister laughter erupted from my lips. `Are you mad!'
" `I'll give you back your life!' he said, his eyelids quivering with the stress of his words,
his chest heaving, that hand going out again and closing impotently in the dark. `You
promised me,' he said to Santiago, `I could take him back with me to New Orleans.' And
then, as he looked from one to the other of them as they surrounded us, his breath became
frantic, and he burst out, 'Claudia, where is she? She's the one who did it to me, I told
you!'
" `By and by,' said Santiago. And when he reached out for Lestat, Lestat drew back and
almost lost his balance. He had found the chair arm he needed and stood holding fast to
it, his eyes closed, regaining his control.

" `But he helped her, aided her . . ' said Santiago, drawing nearer to him. Lestat looked
up.
"'No,' he said. 'Louis, you must come back to me. There's something I must tell you . . .
about that night in the swamp.' But then he stopped and looked about again, as though he
were caged, wounded, desperate.
" `Listen to me, Lestat,' I began now. `You let her go, you free her . . . and I will . . . I'll
return to you,' I said, the words sounding hollow, metallic. I tried to take a step towards
him, to make my eyes hard and unreadable, to feel my power emanating from them like
two beams of light. He was looking at me, studying me, struggling all the while against
his own fragility. And Celeste had her hand on my wrist. `You must tell them,' I went on,
`how you treated us, that we didn't know the laws, that she didn't know of other
vampires,' I said. And I was thinking steadily, as that mechanical voice came out of me:
Armand must return tonight, Armand must come back. He will stop this, he won't let it go
on.
"'There was a sound then of something dragging across the floor. I could hear
Madeleine's exhausted crying. I looked around and saw her in a chair, and when she saw
my eyes on her, her terror seemed to increase. She tried to rise but they stopped her.
`Lestat,' I said. `What do you want of me? I'll give it to you. . .
"And then I saw the thing that was making the noise. And Lestat had seen it too. It was a
coffin with large iron locks on it that was being dragged into the room. I understood at
once. `Where is Armand?' I said desperately.
" `She did it to me, Louis. She did it to me. You didn't! She has to dies' said Lestat, his
voice becoming thin, rasping, as if it were an effort for him to speak. `Get that thing away
from here, he's coming home with me,' he said furiously to Santiago. And Santiago only
laughed, and Celeste laughed, and the laughter seemed to infect them all.
" `You promised me,' said Lestat to them.
" `I promised you nothing,' said Santiago.
" `They've made a fool of you,' I said to him bitterly as they were opening the coffin. 'A
fool of you! You must reach Armand, Armand 13 the leader here,' I burst out. But he
didn't seem to understand.
"What happened then was desperate axed clouded and miserable, my kicking at them,
struggling to free my arms, raging against them that Armand would stop what they were
doing, that they dare not hurt Claudia. Yet they forced me down into the coffin, my
frantic efforts serving no purpose against them except to take my mind off the sound of
Madeleine's cries, her awful wailing cries, and the fear that at any moment Claudia's cries
might be added to them. I remember rising against the crushing lid, holding it at bay for
an instant before it was forced shut on me and the locks were being shut with the grinding
of metal and keys. Words of long ago came back to me, a strident and smiling Lestat in
that faraway, trouble-free place where the three of us had, quarreled together: `A starving
child is a frightful sight . . . a starving vampire even worse. They'd hear her screams in
Paris.' And my wet and trembling body went limp in the suffocating coffin, and I said,
Armand will not let it happen; there isn't a place secure enough for them to place us.

"The coffin was lifted, there was the scraping of boots, the swinging from side to side;
my arms braced against the sides of the box, my eyes shut perhaps for a moment, I was
uncertain. I told myself not to reach out for the sides, not to feel the thin margin of air
between my face and the lid; and I felt the coffin swing and tilt as their steps found the
stairs. Vainly I tried to make out Madeleine's cries, for it seemed that she was crying for
Claudia, calling out to her as if she could help us all. Call for Armand; he must come
home this night, I thought desperately. And only the thought of the awful humiliation of
hearing my own cry closed in with me, flooding my ears, yet locked in with me,
prevented me from calling out.
"But another thought had come over me even as 1'd phrased those words: What if he did
not come? What if somewhere in that mansion he had a coffin hidden to which he
returned . . . B And then it seemed my body broke suddenly, without warning, from the
control of my mind, and I flailed at the wood around me, struggling to turn over and pit
the strength of my back against the coffin lid. Yet I could not: it was too close; and my
head fell back on the boards, and the sweat poured down my back and sides.
"Madeleine's cries were gone. All I heard were the boots, and my own breathing. Then,
tomorrow night he will
come-yes, tomorrow night and they will tell him, and he will find us and release us. The
coffin swayed. The smell
of water filled my nostrils, its coolness palpable through the close heat of the coffin; and
then with the smell of
the water was the smell of the deep earth. The coffin was set down roughly, and my limbs
ached and I rubbed the
backs of my arms with my hands, struggling not to touch the coffin lid, not to sense how
close it was, afraid of my
own feat rising to panic, to terror.
"I thought they would leave me now, but they did not. They were near at hand and bogy,
and another odor came to my nostrils which was raw and not known to me. But then, as I
lay very still, I realized they were laying bricks and that the odor came from the mortar.
Slowly, carefully, I brought my hand up to wipe my face. All right, then, tomorrow night,
I reasoned with myself, even as my shoulders seemed to grow large against the coffin
walls. All right, then, tomorrow night he will come; and until then this is merely the
confines of my own coffin, the price I've paid for all of this, night after night after night.
`But the tears were welling in my eyes, and I could see myself flailing again at the wood;
and y head was turning from side to side, my mind rushing on to tomorrow and the night
after and the night after that. And then, as if to distract myself from this madness, I
thought of Claudia-only to feel her arms around me in the dim light of those rooms in the
Hotel Saint-Gabriel, only to see the curve of her cheek in the light, the soft, languid
flutter of her eyelashes, the silky touch of her lip. My body stiffened, my feet kicked at
the boards. The sound of the bricks was gone, and the muffled steps were gone. And I
cried out for her, 'Claudia,' until my neck was twisted with pain as I tossed, and my nails
had dug into my palms; and slowly, like an icy stream, the paralysis of sleep came over
me. I tried to call out to Armand-foolishly, desperately, only dimly aware as my lids grew

heavy and my hands lay limp that the sleep was on him too somewhere, that he lay still in
his resting place. One last time I struggled. My eyes saw the dark, my hands felt the
wood. But I was weak. And then there was nothing."
"I awoke to a voice. It was distant but distinct. It said my name twice. For an instant I
didn't know where I was. I'd been dreaming, something desperate which was threatening
to vanish completely without the slightest clue to what it had been, and something terrible
which I was eager, willing to let go. Then I opened my eyes and felt the top of the coffin.
I knew where I was at the same instant that, mercifully, I knew it was Armand who was
calling me. I answered him, but my voice was locked in with me and it was deafening. In
a moment of terror, I thought, He's searching for me, and I can't tell him that I am here.
But then I heard him speaking to me, telling me not to be afraid. And I heard a loud
noise. And another. And there was a cracking sound, and then the thunderous falling of
the bricks. It seemed several of them struck the coffin. And then I heard them lifted off
one by one. It sounded as though he were pulling off the locks by the nails.
"The hard wood of the top creaked. A pinpoint of light sparkled before my eyes. I drew
breath from it, and felt the sweat break out on my face. The lid creaked open and for an
instant I was blinded; then I was sitting up, seeing the bright light of a lamp through my
fingers.
" `Hurry,' he said to me. 'Don't make a sound'
" `But where are we going?' I asked. I could see a passage of rough bricks stretching out
from the doorway he'd broken down. And all along that passage were doors which were
sealed, as this door had been. I had a vision at once of coffins behind those bricks, of
vampires starved and decayed there. But Armand was pulling me up, telling me again to
make no sound; we were creeping along the passage. He stopped at a wooden door, and
then he extinguished the lamp. It was completely black for an instant until the seam of
light beneath the door brightened. He opened the door so gently the hinges did not make
a sound. I could hear my own breathing now, and I tried to stop it. We were entering that
lower passageway which led to his cell. But as I raced along behind him I became aware
of one awful truth. He was rescuing me, but me alone. I put out my hand to stop him, but
he only pulled me after him. Only when we stood in the alleyway beside the Theatre des
Vampires was I able to make him stop. And even then, he was on the verge of going on.
He began shaking his head even before I spoke.
" `I can't save her!' he said.
" `You don't honestly expect me to leave without her! They have her in there!' I was
horrified. 'Armand, you must save her! You have no choice!'
" `Why do you say this?' he answered. `I don't have the power, you must understand.
They'll rise against me. There is no reason why they should not. Louis, I tell you, I cannot
save her. I will only risk losing you. You can't go back.'
"I refused to admit this could be true. I had no hope other than Armand. But I can
truthfully say that I was beyond being afraid. I knew only that I had to get Claudia back
or die in the effort. It was really very simple; not a matter of courage at all. And I knew
also, could tell in everything about Armand's passivity, the manner in which he spoke,
that he would follow me if I returned, that he would not try to prevent me.

"I was right. I was rushing back into the passage and he was just behind me, heading for
the stairway to the ballroom. I could hear the ether vampires. I could hear all manner of
sounds. The Paris traffic. What sounded very much like a congregation in the vault of the
theater above. And then, as I reached the top of the steps, I saw Celeste in the door of the
ballroom. She held one of those stage masks in her hand. She was merely looking at me.
She did not appear alarmed. In fact, she appeared strangely indifferent.
"If she had rushed at me, if she had sounded a general alarm, these things I could have
understood. But she did nothing. She stepped backwards into the ballroom; she turned,
seeming to enjoy the subtle movement of her skirts, seeming to turn for the love of
making her skirts flare out, and she drifted in a widening circle to the center of the room.
She put the mask to her face, and said softly behind the painted skull, `Lestat . . . it is
your friend Louis come calling. Look sharp, Lestat!' She dropped the mask, and there was
a ripple of laughter from somewhere. I saw they were all about the room, shadowy things,
seated here and there, standing together. And Lestat, in an armchair, sat with his
shoulders hunched and his face turned away from me. It seemed he was working
something with his hands, something I couldn't see; and slowly he looked up, his full
yellow hair falling into his eyes. There was fear in them. It was undeniable. Now he was
looking at Armand. And Armand was moving silently through the room with slow,
steady steps, and all of the vampires moved back away from him, watching him.
`Bonsoir, Monsieur,' Celeste bowed to him as he passed her, that mask in her hand like a
scepter. He did not look at her in particular. He looked down at Lestat. `Are you
satisfied?' he asked him.
"Lestat's gray eyes seemed to regard Armand with wonder, and his lips straggled to form
a word. I could see that his eyes were filling with tears. `Yes . . : he whispered now, his
hand struggling with the thing he concealed beneath his black cloak. But then he looked
at me, and the tears spilled down his face. `Louis,' he said, his voice deep and rich now
with what seemed an unbearable struggle. `Please, you must listen to me. You must come
back. . . .' And then, bowing his head, he grimaced with shame.
"Santiago was laughing somewhere. Armand was saying softly to Lestat that he must get
out, leave Paris; he was outcast.
"And Lestat sat there with his eyes closed, his face transfigured with his pain. It seemed
the double of Lestat, some wounded, feeling creature I'd never known. `Please,' he said,
the voice eloquent and gentle as he implored me.
" `I can't talk to you here! I can't make you understand. You'll come with me . . . for only
a little while . . . until I am myself again?'
" `This is madness! . . .' I said, my hands rising suddenly to my temples. `Where is she!
Where is she!' I looked about me, at their still, passive faces, those inscrutable smiles.
`Lestat ' I turned him now, grabbing at the black wool of his lapels:
"And then I' saw the think in his hands. I knew what it was. And in an instant rd ripped it
from him and was staring at it, at the fragile silken thing that it was-Claudia's yellow
dress. His hand rose to his lips, his face turned away. And the soft, subdued sops broke
from him as he sat back while I stared at him, while I stared at the dress. My fingers
moved slowly over the tears in it, the stains of blood; my hands closing, trembling as I
crushed it against my chest.

"For a long moment it seemed I simply stood there; time had no bearing upon me nor
upon those shifting vampires with their light, ethereal laughter filling my ears. I
remember thinking that I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I wouldn't let go of
the dress, couldn't stop trying to make it so small that it was hidden within my hands. I
remember a row of candles burning, an uneven row coming to light one by one against
the painted walls. A door stood open to the rain, and all the candies spluttered and blew
on the wind as if the flames were being lifted from the wicks. But they clung to the wicks
and were all right. I knew that Claudia was through the doorway. The candles moved.
The vampires had hold of them. Santiago had a candle and was bowing to me and
gesturing for me to pass through the door. I was barely aware of him. I didn't care about
him or the others at all. Something in me said, If you care about them you will go mad.
And they don't matter, really. She matters. Where is she? Find her. And their laughter
was remote, and it seemed to have a color and a shape but to be part of nothing.
"Then I saw something through the open doorway which was something I'd seen before, a
long, long time ago. No one knew of this thing I'd seen years before except myself. No.
Lestat knew. But it didn't matter. He wouldn't know now or understand. That he and I had
seen this thing, standing at the door of that brick kitchen in the Rue Royale, two wet
shriveled things that had been alive, mother and daughter in one another's arms, the
murdered pair on the kitchen floor. But these two lying under the gentle rain were
Madeleine and Claudia, and Madeleine's lovely red hair mingled with the gold of
Claudia's hair, which stirred and glistened in the wind that sucked through the open
doorway. Only that which was living had been burnt away-not the hair, not the long,
empty velvet dress, not the small bloodstained chemise with its eyelets of white lace. And
the blackened, burnt, and drawn thing that was Madeleine -still bore the stamp of her
living face, and the hand that clutched at the child was whole like a mummy's hand. But
the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was ashes.
"A cry rose in me, a wild, consuming cry that came from the bowels of my being, rising
up like the wind in that narrow place, the wind that swirled the rains teeming on those
ashes, beating at the trace of a tiny hand against the bricks, that golden hair lifting, those
loose strands rising, flying upwards. And a blow struck me even as I cried out; and I had
hold of something that I believed to be Santiago, and I was pounding, against him,
destroying him, twisting that grinning white face around with hands from which he
couldn't free himself, hands against which he railed, crying out, his cries mingling with
my cries, his boots coming down into those ashes, as I threw him backwards away from
them, my own eyes blinded with the rain, with my tears, until he lay back away from me,
and I was reaching out for him even as he held out his hand. And the one I was struggling
against was Armand. Armand, who was forcing me out of the tiny graveyard into the
whirling colors of the ballroom, the cries, the mingling voices, that searing, silver
laughter.
"And Lestat was calling out, `Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must talk to you!'
"I could see Armand's rich, brown eye close to mine, and I felt weak all over and vaguely
aware that Madeleine and Claudia were dead, his voice saying softly, perhaps
soundlessly, `I could not prevent it, I could not prevent it. . : And they were dead, simply
dead. And I was losing consciousness. Santiago was near them somewhere there where

they were still, that hair lifted on the wind, swept across those bricks, unraveling locks.
But I was losing consciousness.
"I could not-gather their bodies up with me, could not take them out. Armand had his arm
around my back, his hand under my arm, and he, was all but carrying me through some
hollow wooden echoing place, and the smells of the street were rising, the fresh smell of
the horses and the leather, and there were the gleaming carriages stopped there. And I
could see myself clearly running down the Boulevard des Capucines with a small coffin
under my arm and the people making way for me and dozens of people rising around the
crowded tables of the open cafe and a man lifting his arm. It seemed I stumbled then, the
Louis whom Armand held in his arm, and again I saw his brown eyes looking at me, and
felt that drowsiness, that sinking. And yet I walked, I moved, I saw the gleam of my own
boots on the pavement. `Is he mad, that he says these things to me?' I was asking of
Lestat, my voice shrill and angry, even the sound of it giving me some comfort. I was
laughing, laughing loudly. `He's stark-raving mad to speak to me in this manned Did you
hear him?' I demanded. And Armand's eye said, Sleep. I wanted to say something about
Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave them there, and I felt that cry again rising
inside of me, that cry that pushed everything else out of its way, my teeth clenched to
keep it in, because it was so loud and so full it would destroy me if I let it go.
"And then I conceived of everything too clearly. We were walking now, a belligerent,
blind sort of walking that men do when they are wildly drunk and filled with hatred for
others, while at the same time they feel invincible. I was walking in such a manner
through New Orleans the night I'd first encountered Lestat, that drunken walking which is
a battering against things, which is miraculously sure-footed and finds its path. I saw a
drunken man's hands fumbling miraculously with a match. Flame touched to the pipe, the
smoke drawn in. I was standing at a cafe window. The man was drawing on his pipe. He
was not at all drunk. Armand stood beside me waiting, and we were in the crowded
Boulevard des Capucines. Or was it the Boulevard do Temple? I wasn't sure. I was
outraged that their bodies remained there in that vile place. I saw Santiago's foot touching
the blackened burned thing that had been my child! I was crying out through clenched
teeth, and the man had risen from his table and steam spread out on the glass in front of
his face. `Get away from me,' I was saying to Armand. `Damn you into hell, don't come
near me. I warn you, don't come near me.' I was walking away from him up the
boulevard, and I could see a man and a woman stepping aside for me, the man with his
arm out to protect the woman.
"Then I was running. People saw me running. I wondered how it appeared to them, what
wild, white thing they saw that moved too fast for their eyes. I remember that by the time
I stopped, I was weak and sick, and my veins were burning as if I were starved. I thought
of killing, and the thought filled me with revulsion. I was sitting on the stone steps beside
a church, at one of those small side doors, carved into the stone, which was bolted and
locked for the night. The rain had abated. Or so it seemed. And the street was dreary and
quiet, though a man passed a long way off with a bright, black umbrella. Armand stood at
a distance under the trees. Behind him it seemed there was a great expanse of trees and
wet grasses and moist rising as if the ground were warm.
"By thinking of only one thing, the sickness in my stomach and head and the tightening
in my throat, was I able to return to a state of calm. By the time these things had died

away and I was feeling clear again, I was aware of all that had happened, the great
distance we'd come from the theater, and that the remains of Madeleine and Claudia were
still there. Victims of a holocaust in each other's arms. And I felt resolute and very near to
my own destruction.
" `I could not prevent it,' Armand said softly to me. And I looked up to see his face
unutterably sad. He looked away from me as if he felt it was futile to try to convince me
of this, and I could feel his overwhelming sadness, his near defeat. I had the feeling that if
I were to vent all my anger on him he would do little to resist me. And I could feel that
detachment, that passivity in him as something pervasive which was at the root of what
he insisted to me again, `I could not have prevented it.'
" `Oh, but you could have prevented it!' I said softly. `You know full well that you could
have. You were the leader! You were the only one who knew the limits of your own
power. They didn't know. They didn't understand. Your understanding surpassed theirs.'
"He looked away still. But I could see the effect of my words on him. I could see the
weariness in his face, the dull lusterless sadness of his eyes.
" `You held sway over them. They feared you!' I went on. `You could have stopped them
if you'd been willing to use that power even beyond your own selfprescribed limits. It
was your sense of yourself you would not violate. Your own precious conception of
truth! I understand you perfectly. I see in you the reflection of myself!'
"His eyes moved gently to engage mine. But he said nothing. The pain of his face was
terrible. It was softened and desperate with pain and on the verge of some terrible explicit
emotion he would not be able to control. He was in fear of that emotion. I was not. He
was feeling my pain with that great spellbinding power of his which surpassed mine. I
was not feeling his pain. It did not matter to me.
" `I understand you only too well . . .' I said. `That passivity in me has been the core of it
all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid
morality, that awful pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it
was wrong. For that, I let Claudia become the vampire she became, when I knew it was
wrong. For that, I stood by and let her kill Lestat, when 1 knew that was wrong, the very
thing that was her undoing. I lifted not a finger to prevent it. And Madeleine, Madeleine,
I let her come to that, when I should never have made her a creature like ourselves. I
knew that was wrong! Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that has
spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I remain its stultified victim. It's
over! I know now what I must do. And I warn you, for whatever mercy you've shown me
in digging me out of that grave tonight where I would have died: Do not seek your cell in
the Theatre des Vampires again. Do not go near it."'
"I didn't wait to hear his answer. Perhaps he never attempted one. I don't know. I left him
without looking back. If he followed me I was not conscious of it. I did not seek to know.
I did not care.
"It was to the cemetery in Montmartre that I retreated. Why that place, I'm not certain,
except that it wasn't far from the Boulevard des Capucines, and Montmartre was
countryfied then, and dark and peaceful compared to the metropolis. Wandering among
the low houses with their kitchen gardens, I killed without the slightest measure of
satisfaction, and then sought out the coffin where I was to lie by day in the cemetery. I

scraped the remains out of it with my bare hands and lay down to a bed of foulness, of
damp, of the stench of death. I cannot say this gave me comfort. Rather, it gave me what I
wanted. Closeted in that dark, smelling the earth, away from all humans and all living
human forms, I gave myself over to everything that invaded and stifled my senses. And,
in so doing, gave myself over to my grief.
"But that was short.
"When the cold, gray winter sun had set the next night, I was awake, feeling the tingling
numbness leave me soon, as it does in winter, feeling the dark, living things that
inhabited the coffin scurrying around me, fleeing my resurrection. I emerged slowly
under the faint moon, savoring the coldness, the utter smoothness of the marble slab I
shifted to escape. And, wandering out of the graves and out of the cemetery, I went over a
plan in my mind, a plan on which I was willing to gamble my life with the powerful
freedom of a being who truly does not care for that life, who has the extraordinary
strength of being willing to die.
"In a kitchen garden I saw something, something that had only been vague in my
thoughts until I had my hands on it. It was a small scythe, its sharp curved blade still
caked with green weeds from the last mowing. And once I'd wiped it clean and run my
finger along the sharp blade, it was as if my plan came clear to me and I could move fast
to my other errands: the getting of a carriage and a driver who could do my bidding for
days-dazzled by the cash I gave him and the promises of more; the removing of my chest
from the Hotel Saint-Gabriel to the inside of that carriage; and the procuring of all the
other things which I needed. And then there were the long hours of the night, when I
could pretend to drink with my driver and talk with him and obtain his expensive
cooperation in driving me at dawn from Paris to Fontainebleau. I slept within the
carriage, where my delicate health required I not be disturbed under any circumstances -
this privacy being so important that I was more than willing ,to add a generous sum to the
amount I was already paying him simply for his not touching even the door handle of the
carriage until I emerged from it.
"And when I was convinced he was in agreement and quite drank enough to be oblivious
to almost everything but the gathering up of the reins for the journey for Fountainebleau,
we drove slowly, cautiously, into the street of the Theatre des Vampires and waited some
distance away for the sky to begin to grow light.
"The theater was shut up and locked against the coming day. I crept towards it when the
air and the light told me I had at most fifteen minutes to execute my plan. I knew that,
closeted far within, the vampires of the theater were in their coffins already. And that
even if one late vampire lingered on the verge of going to bed, he would not hear these
first preparations. Quickly I put pieces of wood against the bolted doors. Quickly I drove
in the nails, which then locked these doors from the outside. A passer-by took some note
of what I did but went on, believing me perhaps to be boarding up the establishment with
the authority of the owner. I didn't know. I did know, however, that before I was finished
I might encounter those ticket-sellers, those ushers, those men who swept up after, and
might well remain inside to guard the vampires in their daily sleep.
"It was of those men I was thinking as I led the carriage up to Armand's alley and left it
there, taking with me two small barrels of kerosene to Armand's door.

"The key admitted me easily as rd hoped, and once inside the lower passage, I opened the
door of his cell to find he was not there. The coffin was gone. In fact, everything was
gone but the furnishings, including the dead boy's enclosed bed. Hastily I opened one
barrel and, rolling the other before me towards the stairs, I hurried along, splashing the
exposed beams with kerosene and flinging it on the wooden doors of the other cells. The
smell of it was strong, stronger and more powerful than any sound I might have made to
alert anyone. And, though I stood stark still at the stairs with the barrels and the scythe,
listening, I heard nothing, nothing of those guards I presumed to be there, nothing of the
vampires themselves. And clutching the handle of the scythe I ventured slowly upwards
until I stood in the door of the ballroom. No one was there to see me splash the kerosene
on the horsehair chairs or on the draperies' or to see me hesitate just for an instant at that
doorway of the small yard where Madeleine and Claudia had been killed. Oh, how I
wanted to open that door. It so tempted me that for a minute I almost forgot my plan. I
almost dropped the barrels and turned the knob. But I could see the light through the
cracks of the old wood of the door. And I knew I had to go on. Madeleine and Claudia
were not there. They were dead. And what would I have done had I opened that doorway,
had I been confronted again with those remains, that matted, disheveled golden hair?
There was no time, no purpose. I was running through dark corridors I hadn't explored
before, bathing old wooden doors with the kerosene, certain that the vampires lay
closeted within, rushing on cat feet into the theater itself, where a cold, gray light,
seeping from the bolted front entrance, sped me on to fling a dark -stain across the great
velvet stage curtain, the padded chairs, the draperies of the lobby doors.
"And finally the barrel was empty and thrown away, and I was pulling out the crude torch
I'd made, putting my match to its kerosene-drenched rags, and setting the chairs alight,
the flames licking their thick silk and padding as I ran towards the stage and sent the fire
rushing up that dark curtain into a cold, sucking draft.
"In seconds the theater blazed as with the light of day, and the whole frame of it seemed
to creak and groan as the fire roared up the walls, licking the great proscenium arch, the
plaster curlicues of the overhanging boxes. But I had no time to admire it, to savor the
smell and the sound of it, the sight of the nooks and crannies coming to light in the fierce
illumination that would soon consume them. I was geeing to the lower floor again,
thrusting the torch into the horsehair couch of the ballroom, into the curtains, into
anything that would burn.
"Someone thundered on the boards above-in rooms I'd never seen. And then I heard the
unmistakable opening of a door. But it was too late, I told myself, gripping both the
scythe and the torch. The building was alight. They would be destroyed. I ran for the
stairs, a distant cry rising over the crackling and roaring of the flames, my torch scraping
the kerosene-soaked rafters above me, the flames enveloping the old wood, curling
against the damp ceiling. It was Santiago's cry, I was sure of it; and then, as I hit the
lower floor, I saw him above, behind me, coming down the stairs, the smoke filling the
stairwell around him, his eyes watering, his throat thickened with his choking, his hand
out towards me as he stammered, `You . . .you . . . damn you!' And I froze, narrowing my
eyes against the smoke, feeling the water rising in them, burning in them, but never
letting go of his image for an instant, the vampire using all his power now to fly at me
with such speed that he would become invisible. And as the dark thing that was his

clothes rushed down, I swung the scythe and saw it strike his neck and felt the weight of
his neck and saw him fall sideways, both hands reaching for the appalling wound. The air
was full of cries, of screams, and a white face loomed above Santiago, a mask of terror.
Some other vampire ran through the passage ahead of me towards that secret alleyway
door. But I stood there poised, staring at Santiago, seeing him rise despite the wound.
And I swung the scythe again, catching him easily. And there was no wound. Just two
hands groping for a head that was no longer there.
"And the head, blood coursing from the torn neck, the eyes staring wild under the flaming
rafters, the dark silky hair matted and wet with blood, fell at my feet. I struck it hard with
my boot, I sent it flying along the passage. And I ran after it; the torch and the scythe
thrown aside as my arms went up to protect me from the blaze of white light that flooded
the stairs to the alley.
"The rain descended in shimmering needles into my eyes, eyes that squinted to see the
dark outline of the carriage flicker against the sky. The slumped driver straightened at my
hoarse command, his clumsy hand going instinctively for the whip, and the carriage
lurched as I pulled open the door, the horses driving forward fast as I grappled with the
lid of the chest, my body thrown roughly to one side, my burnt hands slipping down into
the cold protecting silk, the lid coming down into concealing darkness.
"The pace of the horses increased driving away from the corner of the burning building.
Yet I could still smell the smoke; it choked me; it burnt my eyes and my lungs, even as
my hands were burnt and my forehead was burnt from the first diffused light of the sun.
"But we were driving on, away from the smoke and the cries. We were leaving Paris. I
had done it. The Theatre des Vampires was burning to the ground,
"And as I felt my head fall back, I saw Claudia and Madeleine again in one another's
arms in that grin yard, and I said to them softly, bending down to the soft heads of hair
that glistened in the candlelight, `I couldn't take you away. I couldn't take you. But they
will lie ruined and dead all around you. If the fire doesn't consume them, it will be the
sun. If they are not burnt out, then it will be the people who will come to fight the fire
who will find them and expose them to the light of day. But I promise you, they will all
die as you have died, everyone who was closeted there this dawn will die. And they are
the only deaths I have caused in my long life which are both exquisite and good.' "
Two nights later I returned. I had to see that rain-flooded cellar where every brick was
scorched, crumbling, where a few skeletal rafters jabbed at the sky like stakes. Those
monstrous murals that once enclosed the ballroom were blasted fragments in the rubble, a
painted face here, a patch of angel's wing there, the only identifiable things that remained.
"With the evening newspapers, I pushed my way to the back of a crowded little theater
cafe across the street; and there, under the cover of the dim gas lamps and thick
cigarsmoke, I read the accounts of the holocaust. Few bodies were found in the burnt-out
theater, but clothing and costumes had been scattered everywhere, as though the famous
vampire mummers had in fact vacated the theater in haste long before the fire. In other
words, only the younger vampire had left their bones; the ancient ones had suffered total
obliteration. No mention of an eye-witness or a surviving victim. How could there have
been?

"Yet something bothered me considerably. I did not fear any vampires who had escaped.
I had no desire to hunt them out if they had. That most of the crew had died I was certain.
But why had there been no human guards? I was certain Santiago had mentioned guards,
and I'd supposed them to be the ushers and doormen who staffed the theater before the
performance. And I had even been prepared to encounter them with my scythe. But they
had not been there. It was strange. And my mind was not entirely comfortable with the
strangeness.
"But, finally, when I put the papers aside and sat thinking these things over, the
strangeness of it didn't matter. What mattered was that I was more utterly alone in the
world than I had ever been in all my life. That Claudia was gone beyond reprieve. And I
had less reason to live than I'd ever had, and less desire.
"And yet my sorrow. did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not make of
me the wracked and desperate creature I might have expected to become. Perhaps it was
not possible to sustain the torment I'd experienced when I saw Claudia's burnt remains.
Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over any period of time. I wondered
vaguely, as the hours passed, as the smoke of the cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain
of the little lamplit stage rose and fell, and robust women sang there, the light glittering
on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad-I wondered
vaguely what it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be deserving
of sympathy, of solace. I would not have told my woe to a living creature. My own tears
meant nothing to me.
"Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me. Strange how
I wandered out of the cafe then, circling the ruined theater, wandering finally towards the
broad Avenue Napoleon and following it towards the palace of the Louvre. It was as if
that place called to me, and yet I had never been inside its walls. I'd passed its long
facade a thousand times, wishing that I could live as a mortal man for one day to move
through those many rooms and see those many magnificent paintings. I was bent on it
now, possessed only of some vague notion that in works of art I could find some solace
while bringing nothing of death to what was inanimate and yet magnificently possessed
of the spirit of life itself.
"Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step behind me which I knew to be
Armand's. He was signaling, letting me know that he was near. Yet I did nothing other
than slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a long while we walked,
saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of course, I'd been thinking of him all the while,
and how if we were men and Claudia had been my love I might have fallen helpless in his
arms finally, the need to share some common grief so strong, so consuming. The dam
threatened to break now; and yet it did not break. I was numbed and I walked as one
numbed.
" `You know what I've done,' I said finally. We had turned off the avenue and I could see
ahead of me the long row of double columns on the facade of the Royal Museum. `You
removed your coffin as I warned you. '
" `Yes,' he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort in the sound of his
voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too remote from pain, too tired.
" `And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge them?'

" `No,' he said.
" `They were your fellows, you were their leader,' I said. `Yet you didn't warn them I was
out for them, as I warned you?'
" `No,' he said.
" `But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some rule, some allegiance to your
own kind.'
" `No,' he said softly.
"It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even though I couldn't explain it or
understand it.
"And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of my own relentless
considerations. `There were guards; there were those ushers who slept in the theater. Why
weren't they there when I entered? Why weren't they there to protect the sleeping
vampires?'
" `Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I sent them away,' Armand
said.
"I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as soon as our eyes met I
wished the world were not one black empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it were
fresh and beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each other. `You
did this, knowing what I planned to do?
" `Yes,' he said.
" `But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in you. They lived with
you!' I said. `I don't understand you . . . why . . .?'
" `Think of any answer you like,' he said calmly and sensitively, as if he didn't wish to
bruise me with any accusation or disdain, but wanted me merely to consider this literally.
`I can think of many. Think of the one you need and believe it. It's as likely as any other.
I shall give you the real reason for what I did, which is the least true: I was leaving Paris.
The theater belonged to me. So I discharged them.'
" `But with what you knew . . .'
" `I told you, it was the actual reason and it was the least true,' he said patiently.
" `Would you destroy me as easily as you let them be destroyed?' I demanded.
" `Why should I?' he asked.
" `My God,' I whispered.
" `You're much changed,' he said. `But in a way, you are much the same.'
"I walked on for a while and then, before the entrance to the Louvre, I stopped. At first it
seemed to me that its many windows were dark and silver with the moonlight and the thin
rain. But then I thought I saw a faint light moving within, as though a guard walked
among the treasures. I envied him completely. And I fixed my thoughts an him
obdurately, that guard, calculating how a vampire might get to him, how take his life and
his lantern and his keys. The plan was confusion. I was incapable of plans. I had made
only one real plan in my life, and it was finished.

"And then finally I surrendered. I turned to Armand again and let my eyes penetrate his
eyes, and let him draw close to me as if he meant to make me his victim, and I bowed my
head and felt his firm arm around my shoulder. And, remembering suddenly and keenly
Claudia's words, what were very nearly her last . words -that admission that she knew
that I could love Armand because I had been able to love even her-those words struck me
as rich and ironical, more filled with meaning than she could have guessed.
" `Yes,' I said softly to him, `that is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to
love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of
compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything
but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.'
"And for a long moment, he stood there looking at me, drawing nearer, his head
gradually inclining to one side, his lips parted as if he meant to speak. But then he only
smiled and shook his head gently to confess he didn't understand.
"But I wasn't thinking of him anymore. I had one of those rare moments when it seemed I
thought of nothing. My mind had no shape. I saw that the rain had stopped. I saw that the
air was clear and cold. That the street was luminous. And I wanted to enter the Louvre. I
formed words to tell Armand this, to ask him if he might help me do what was necessary
to have the Louvre till dawn.
"He thought it a very simple request. He said only he wondered why I had waited so
long."
"We left Paris very soon after that. I told Armand that I wanted to return to the
Mediterranean-not to Greece, as I had so long dreamed. I wanted to go to Egypt. I wanted
to see the desert there and, more importantly, I wanted to see the pyramids and the graves
of the kings. I wanted to make contact with those grave-thieves who know snore of the
graves than do scholars, and I wanted to go down into the graves yet unopened and see
the kings as they were buried, see those furnishings and works of art stored with them,
and the paintings on their walls. Armand was more than willing. And we took leave of
Paris early one evening by carriage without the slightest hint of ceremony.
"I had done one thing which I should note. I had gone back to my rooms in the hotel
Saint-Gabriel. It was my purpose to take up some things of Claudia and Madeleine and
put them into coffins and have graves prepared for them in the cemetery of Montmartre. I
did not do this. I stayed a short while in the rooms, where all was neat and put right by
the staff, so that it seemed Madeleine and Claudia might return at any time. Madeleine's
embroidery ring lay with her bundles of thread on a chair-side table. I looked at that and
at everything else, and my task seemed meaningless. So I left.
"But something had occurred to me there; or, rather, something I had already been aware
of merely became clearer. I had gone to the Louvre that night to lay down my soul, to
find some transcendent pleasure that would obliterate pain and make me utterly forget
ever! myself. I'd been upheld in this. As I stood on the sidewalk before the doors of the
hotel waiting for the carriage that would take me to meet Armand, I saw the people who
walked there-the restless boulevard crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the
hawkers of papers, the carriers of luggage, the drivers of carriages-all these in a new
light. Before, all art had held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human
heart. Now the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it. I simply forgot it. The

magnificent paintings of the Louvre were not for me intimately connected with the hands
that had painted them. They were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone. Like
Claudia, severed from her mother, preserved for decades in pearl and hammered gold.
Like Madeleine's dolls. And of course, like Claudia and Madeleine and myself, they
could all be reduced to ashes."
PART IV
"And that is the end of the story, really.
"Of course, I know you wonder what happened to us afterwards. What became of
Armand? Where did I go? What did I do? But I tell you nothing really happened. Nothing
that wasn't merely inevitable. And my journey through the Louvre that last night I've
described to you, that was merely prophetic.
"I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which
is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought
to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world
as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was
changeless. The story ended in Paris, as I've said.
"For a long time I thought that Claudia's death had been the cause of the end of things.
That if I had seen Madeleine and Claudia leave Paris safely, things might have been
different with me and Armand. I might have loved again and desired again, and sought
some semblance of mortal life which would have been rich and varied, though unnatural.
But now I have come to see that was false. Even if Claudia had not died, even if I had not
despised Armand for letting her die, it would have all turned out the same. Coming
slowly to know his evil, or being catapulted into it . . . was all the same. I wanted none of
it finally. And, deserving nothing better, I closed up like a spider in the flame of a match.
And even Armand who was my constant companion, and my only companion, existed at
a great distance from me, beyond that veil which separated me from all living things, a
veil which was a form of shroud.
"But I know you are eager to hear what became of Armand. And the night is almost
ended. I want to tell you this because it is very important. The story is incomplete without
it.
"We traveled the world after we left Paris, as I've told you; first Egypt, then Greece, then
Italy, Asia Minor-wherever I chose to lead us, really, and wherever my pursuit of art led
me. Time ceased to exist on any meaningful basis during these years, and I was often
absorbed in very simple things-a painting in a museum, a cathedral window, one single
beautiful statue-for long periods of time.
"But all during these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I
never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those
flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for
my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.
And, from time to time, Armand would ask me to take him there. And I, being aware in a
gentlemanly manner that I did little to please him and often went for long periods without
really speaking to him or seeking him out, wanted to do this because he asked me. It
seemed his asking caused me to forget some vague fear that I might feel pain in New
Orleans, that I might experience again the pale shadow of my former unhappiness and

longing. But I put it off. Perhaps the fear was stronger than I knew. We came to America
and lived in New York for a long time. I continued to put it off. Then, finally, Armand
urged me in another way. He told me something he'd concealed from me since the time
we were in Paris.
"Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, and
when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told
me now that this wasn't so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run away from
Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires who had been made
with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.
"I cannot convey to you the feeling that came over me when I heard this. Of course,
Armand told me he had protected me from this knowledge, hoping that I would not
undertake a long journey merely for revenge, a journey that would have caused me pain
and grief at the time. But I didn't really care. I hadn't thought of Lestat at all the night I'd
torched the theater. I'd thought of Santiago and Celeste and the others who had destroyed
Claudia. Lestat, in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn't wished to confide in
anyone, feelings I'd wished to forget, despite Claudia's death. Hatred had not been one of
them.
"But when I heard this now from Armand it was as if the veil that protected me were thin
and transparent, and though it still hung between me and the world of feeling, I perceived
through it Lestat, and that I wanted to see him again. And with that spurring me on, we
returned to New Orleans.
"It was late spring of this year. And as soon as I emerged from the railway station, I knew
that I had indeed come home. It was as if the very air were perfumed and peculiar there,
and I felt an extraordinary ease walking on those warm, flat pavements, under those
familiar oaks, and listening to the ceaseless vibrant living sounds of the night.
"Of course, New Orleans was changed. But far from lamenting those changes, I was
grateful for what seemed still the same. I could find in the uptown Garden District, which
had been in my time the Faubourg St: Marie, one of the stately old mansions that dated
back to those times, so removed from the quiet brick street that, walking out in the
moonlight under its magnolia trees, I knew the same sweetness and peace I'd known in
the old days; not only in the dark, narrow streets of the Vieux Carre but in the wilderness
of Pointe du Lac. There were the honeysuckle and the roses, and the glimpse of
Corinthian columns against the stars; and outside the gate were dreamy streets, other
mansions . . . it was a citadel of grace.
"In the Rue Royale, where I took Armand past tourists and antique shops and the bright-
lit entrances of fashionable restaurants, I was astonished to discover
the town house where Lestat and Claudia and I had made our home, the facade little
changed by fresh plaster and whatever repairs had been done within. Its two French
windows still opened onto the small balconies over the shop below, and I could see in the
soft brilliance of the electric chandeliers an elegant wallpaper that would not have been
unfamiliar in those days before the war. I had a strong sense of Lestat there, more of a
sense of him than of Claudia, and I felt certain, though he was nowhere near this town
house, that I'd find him in New Orleans.

"And I felt something else; it was a sadness that came over me then, after Armand had
gone on his way. But this sadness was not painful, nor was it passionate. It was
something rich, however, and almost sweet, like the fragrance of the jasmine and the
roses that crowded the old courtyard garden which I saw through the iron gates. And this
sadness gave a subtle satisfaction and held me a long time in that spot; arid it held me to
the city; and it didn't really leave me that night when I went away.
"I wonder now what might have come of this sadness, what it might have engendered in
me that could have become stronger than itself. But I jump ahead of my story.
"Because shortly after that I saw a vampire in New Orleans, a sleek white-faced young
man walking alone on the broad sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue in the early hours
before dawn. And I was at once convinced that if Lestat still lived here that vampire
might know him and might even lead me to him. Of course, the vampire didn't see me. I
had long ago learned to spot my own kind in large cities without their having a chance to
see me. Armand, in his brief visits with vampires in London and Rome, had learned that
the burning of the Theatre des Vampires was known throughout the world, and that both
of us were considered outcasts. Battles over this meant nothing to me, and I have avoided
them to this day. But I began to watch for this vampire in New Orleans and to follow
him, though often he led me merely to theaters or other pastimes in which I had no
interest. But one night, finally, things changed.
"It was a very warts evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw him on St. Charles that he
had someplace to go. He was not only walking fast, but he seemed a little distressed. And
when he turned off St. Charles finally on a narrow street which became at once shabby
and dark, I felt sure he was headed for something that would interest me.
"But then he entered one side of a small wooden duplex and brought death to a woman
there. This he did very fast, without a trace of pleasure; and after he was finished, he
gathered her child up from the bassinet, wrapped it gently in a blue wool blanket, and
came out again into the street.
"Only a block or two after that, he stopped before a vine-covered iron fence that enclosed
a large overgrown yard. I could see an old house beyond the trees, dark, the paint peeling,
the ornate iron railings of its long upper and lower galleries caked with orange rust. It
seemed a doomed house, stranded here among the numerous small wooden houses, its
high empty windows looking out on what must have been a dismal clutter of low roofs, a
comer grocery, and a small adjacent bar.. But the broad, dark grounds protected the house
somewhat from these things, and I had to move along the fence quite a few feet before I
finally spotted a faint glimmer in one of the lower windows through the thick branches of
the trees. The vampire had gone through the gate. I could hear the baby wailing, and then
nothing. And I followed, easily mounting the old fence and dropping down into the
garden and coming up quietly onto the long front porch.
"It was an amazing sight I saw when I crept up to one of the long, floor-length windows.
For despite the heat of this breezeless evening when the gallery, even with its warped and
broken boards, might have been the only tolerable place for human or vampire, a fire
blazed in the grate of the parlor and all its windows were shut, and the young vampire sat
by that fire talking to another vampire who hovered very near it, his slippered feet right
up against the hot grate, his trembling fingers pulling over and over at the lapels of his

shabby blue robe. And, though a frayed electric cord dangled from a plaster wreath of
roses in the ceiling, only an oil lamp added its dim light to the fire, an oil lamp which
stood by the wailing child on a nearby table.
"My eyes widened as I studied this stooped and shivering vampire whose rich blond hair
hung down in loose waves covering his face. I longed to wipe away the dust on the
window glass which would not let me be certain of what I suspected. `You all leave me!'
he whined now in a thin, high-pitched voice.
" `You can't keep us with you! said the stiff young vampire sharply. He sat with his legs
crossed, his arms folded on his narrow chest, his eyes looking around the dusty, empty
room disdainfully. `Oh, hush!' he said to the baby, who let out a sharp cry. `Stop it, stop
it.'
" `The wood, the wood,' said the blond vampire feebly, and, as he motioned to the other
to hand him the fuel by his chair, I saw clearly, unmistakably, the profile of Lestat, that
smooth skin now devoid of even the faintest trace of his old scars.
" `If you'd just go out,' said the other angrily, heaving the chunk of wood into the blaze.
`If you'd just hunt something other than these miserable animals . . . :And he looked
about himself in disgust. I saw then, in the shadows, the small furry bodies of several
cats, lying helter-skelter in the dust. A most remarkable thing, because a vampire can no
more endure to be near his dead victims than any mammal can remain near any place
where he has left his waste. 'Do you know that it's summer?' demanded the young one.
Lestat merely rubbed his hands. The baby's howling cued off, yet the young vampire
added, `Get on with it, take it so you'll be warm.'
" `You might have brought me something else!' said Lestat bitterly. And, as he looked at
the baby, I saw his eyes squinting against the dull light of the smoky lamp. I felt a shock
of recognition at those eyes, even at the expression beneath the shadow of the deep wave
of his yellow hair. And yet to hear that whining voice, to see that bent and quivering
back! Almost without thinking I rapped hard on the glass. The young vampire was up at
once affecting a hard, vicious expression; but I merely motioned for him to turn the latch.
And Lestat, clutching his bathrobe to his throat, rose from the chair.
" `It's Louis! Louis!' he said. `Let him in' And he gestured frantically, like an invalid, for
the young `nurse' to obey.
"As soon as the window opened I breathed the stench of the room and its sweltering heat.
The swarming of the insects on the rotted animals scratched at my senses so that I
recoiled despite myself, despite Lestat's desperate pleas for me to come to him. There, in
the far corner, was the coffin where he slept, the lacquer peeling from the wood, half
covered with piles of yellow newspapers. And bones lay in the corners, picked clean
except for bits and tufts of fur. But Lestat had his dry hands on mine now, drawing me
towards him and towards the warmth, and I could see the tears welling in his eyes; and
only when his mouth was stretched in a strange smile of desperate happiness that was
near to pain did I see the faint traces of the old scars. How baffling and awful it was, this
smoothfaced, shimmering immortal man bent and rattled and whining like a crone.
" `Yes, Lestat,' I said softly. `I've come to see you' I pushed his hand gently, slowly away
and moved towards the baby, who was crying desperately now from fear as well as
hunger. As soon as I lifted it up and loosened the covers, it quieted a little, and then I

patted it and rocked it. Lestat was whispering to me now in quick, half-articulated words
I couldn't understand, the tears streaming down his cheeks, the young vampire at the open
window with a look of disgust on his face and one hand (r)n the window latch, as if he
meant at any minute to bolt.
" `So you're Louis,' said the young vampire. This seemed to increase Lestat's
inexpressible. excitement, and he wiped frantically at his tears with the hem of his robe.
"A fly lit on the baby's forehead, and involuntarily I gasped as I pressed it between two
fingers and dropped it dead to the floor. The child was no longer crying. It was looking
up at me with extraordinary blue eyes, dark-blue eyes, its round face glistening from the
heat, and a smile played on its lips, a smile that grew brighter like a flame. I had never
brought death to anything so young, so innocent, and I was aware of this now as I held
the child with an odd feeling of sorrow, stronger even than that feeling which had come
over me in the Rue Royale. And, rocking the child gently, I pulled the young vampire's
chair to the fire and sat down.
" `Don't try to speak . . . it's all right,' I said to Lestat, who dropped down gratefully into
his chair and reached out to stroke the lapels of my coat with both hands.
" `But I'm so glad to see you,' he stammered through his tears. `I've dreamed of your
coming . . . coming. . ' he said. And then he grimaced, as if he were feeling a pain he
couldn't identify, and again the fine map of scars appeared for an instant. He was looking
off, his hand up to his ear, as if he meant to cover it to defend himself from some terrible
sound. `I didn't . . ' he started; and then he shook his head, his eyes clouding as he opened
them wide, strained to focus them. `I didn't mean to let them do it, Louis . . . I mean that
Santiago . . . that one, you know, he didn't tell me what they planned to do.'
" `That's all past, Lestat,' I said.
" `Yes, yes,' he nodded vigorously. `Past. She should never . . . why, Louis, you know. . .
' And he was shaking his head, his voice seeming to gain in strength, to gain a little in
resonance with his effort. `She should have never been one of us, Louis.' And he rapped
his sunken chest with his fist as he said `Us' again softly.
"She. It seemed then that she had never existed That she had been some illogical,
fantastical dream that, was too precious and too personal for me ever to confide in
anyone. And too long gone. I looked at him. I stared at him. And tried to think, Yes, the
three of us together.
" `Don't fear me, Lestat,' I said, as though talking to myself. `I bring you no harm.'
" `You've come back to me, Louis,' he whispered in that thin, high-pitched voice. `You've
come home again to me, Louis, haven't you?' And again he bit his lip and looked at me
desperately.
" `No, Lestat.' I shook my head. He was frantic for a moment, and again he commenced
one gesture and then another and finally sat there with his hands over his face in a
paroxysm of distress. The other vampire, who was studying me coldly, asked:
" `Are you . . . have you come back to him?'

" `No, of course not,' I answered. And he smirked, as if this was as he expected, that
everything fell to him again, and he walked out onto the porch. I could hear him there
very near, waiting.
" `I only wanted to see you, Lestat,' I said. But Lestat didn't seem to hear me. Something
else had distracted him. And he was gazing off, his eyes wide, his hands hovering near
his ears. Then I heard it also. It was a siren. And as it grew louder, his eyes shut tight
against it and his fingers covered his ears. And it grew louder and louder, coming up the
street from downtown. `Lestat!' I said to him, over the baby's cries, which rose now in the
same terrible fear of the siren. But his agony obliterated me. His lips were drawn back
from his teeth in a terrible grimace of pain. `Lestat, it's only a siren!' I said to him
stupidly. And then he came forward out of the chair and took hold of me and held tight to
me, and, despite myself, I took his hand. He bent down, pressing his head against my
chest and holding my hand so tight that he caused me pain. The room was filled with the
flashing red light of the siren, and then it was going away.
" `Louis, I can't bear it, I can't bear it,' he growled through his tears. `Help me, Louis, stay
with me.'
" `But why are you afraid?' I asked. `Don't you know what these things are?' And as I
looked down at him, as I saw his yellow hair pressed against my coat, I had a vision of
him from long ago, that tall, stately gentleman in the swirling black cape, with his head
thrown back, his rich, flawless voice singing the lilting air of the opera from which we'd
only just come, his walking stick tapping the cobblestones in time with the music, his
large, sparkling eye catching the young woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a smile
spread over his face as the song died on his lips; and for one moment, that one moment
when his eye met hers, all evil seemed obliterated in that flush of pleasure, that passion
for merely being alive.
"Was this the price of that involvement? A sensibility shocked by change, shriveling
from fear? I thought quietly of all' the things I might say to him, how I might remind him
that he was immortal, that nothing condemned him to this retreat save himself, and that
he was surrounded with the unmistakable signs of inevitable death. But I did not say
these things, and I knew that I would not.
"It seemed the silence of the room rushed back around us, like a dark sea that the siren
had driven away. The flies swarmed on the festering body of a rat, and the child looked
quietly up at me as though my eyes were bright baubles, and its dimpled hand closed on
the finger that I poised above its tiny petal mouth.
"Lestat had risen, straightened, but only to bend over and slink into the chair. `You won't
stay with me,' he sighed. But then he looked away and seemed suddenly absorbed.
" `I wanted to talk to you so much,' he said. `That night I came home in the Rue Royale I
only wanted to talk to you!' He shuddered violently, eyes closed, his throat seeming to
contract. It was as if the blows I'd struck him then were falling now. He stared blindly
ahead, his tongue moistening his lip, his voice low, almost natural. `I went to Paris after
you. . . '
" `What was it you wanted to tell me?' I asked. `What was it you wanted to talk about?'

"I could well remember his mad insistence in the Theatre des Vampires. I hadn't thought
of it in years. No, I had never thought of it. And I was aware that I spoke of it now with
great reluctance.
"But he only .smiled at me, and insipid, near apologetic smile. And shook his head. I
watched his eyes fill with a soft, bleary despair.
"I felt a profound, undeniable relief.
" `But you will stay!' he insisted.
" `No,' I answered.
" `And neither will I!' said that young vampire from the darkness outside. And he stood
for a second in the open window looking at us. Lestat looked up at him and then
sheepishly away, and his lower lip seemed to thicken and tremble. `Close it, close it,' he
said, waving his finger at the window. Then a sob burst from him and, covering his
mouth with his hand, he put his head down and cried.
"The young vampire was gone. I heard his steps moving fast on the walk, heard the heavy
chink of the iron gate. And I was alone with Lestat, and he was crying. It seemed a long
time before he stopped, and during all that time I merely watched him. I was thinking of
all the things that had passed between us. I was remembering things which I supposed I
had completely forgotten. And I was conscious then of that same overwhelming sadness
which I'd felt when I saw the place in the Rue Royale where we had lived. Only, it didn't
seem to me to be a sadness for Lestat, for that smart, gay vampire who used to live there
then. It seemed a sadness for something else, something beyond Lestat that only included
him and` was part of the great awful sadness of all the things I'd ever lost or loved or
known. It seemed then I was in a different place, a different time. And this different place
and time was very real, and it was a room where the insects had hummed as they were
humming here and the air had been close and thick with death and with the spring
perfume. And I was on the verge of knowing that place and knowing with it a terrible
pain, a pain so terrible that my mind veered away from it, said, No, don't take me back to
that place-and suddenly it was receding, and I was with Lestat here now. Astonished, I
saw my own tear fall onto the face of the child. I saw it glisten on the child's cheek, and I
saw the cheek become very plump with the child's smile. It must have been seeing the
fight in the tears.
I put my hand to my face and wiped at the tears that were in fact there and looked at them
in amazement.
" `But Louis . . .' Lestat was saying softly. `How can you be as you are, how can you
stand it?' He was looking up at me, his mouth in that same grimace, his face wet with
tears. `Tell me, Louis, help me to understand! How can you understand it all, how can
you endure?' And I could see by the desperation in his eyes and the deeper tone which his
voice had taken that he, too; was pushing himself towards something that for him was
very painful, towards a place where he hadn't ventured in a long time. But then, even as I
looked at him, his eyes appeared to become misty, confused. And he pulled the robe up
tight, and shaking his head, he looked at the fire. A shudder passed through him and he
moaned.

" `I have to go now, Lestat,' I said to him. I felt weary, weary of him and weary of this
sadness. And I longed again for the stillness outside, that perfect quiet to which I'd
become so completely accustomed. But I realized, as I rose to my feet, that I was taking
the little baby with me.
"Lestat looked up at me now with his large, agonized eyes and his smooth, ageless face.
`But you'll come back . . . you'll come to visit me . . . Louis?' he said.
"I turned away from him, hearing him calling after me, and quietly left the house. When I
reached the street, I looked back and I could see him hovering at the window as if he
were afraid to go out. I realized he had not gone out for a long, long time, and it occurred
to me then that perhaps he would never go out again.
"I returned to the small house from which the vampire had taken the child, and left it
there in its crib."
"Not very long after that I told Armand I'd seen Lestat. Perhaps it was a month, I'm not
certain. Time meant little to me then, as it means little to me now. But it meant a great
deal to Armand. He was amazed that I hadn't mentioned this before.
"We were walking that night uptown where the city gives way to the Audubon Park and
the levee is a deserted, grassy slope that descends to a muddy beach heaped here and
there with driftwood, going out to the lapping waves of the river. On the far bank were
the very dim lights of industries and river-front companies, pinpoints of green or red that
flickered in the distance like stars. And the moon showed the broad, strong current
moving fast between the two shores; and even the summer heat was gone here, with the
cool breeze coming off the water and gently lifting the moss that hung from the twisted
oak where we sat. I was picking at the grass, and tasting it, though the taste was bitter and
unnatural. The gesture seemed natural. I was feeling almost that I might never leave New
Orleans. But then, what are such thoughts when you can live forever? Never leave New
Orleans `again?' Again seemed a human word.
" `But didn't you feel any desire for revenge?' Armand asked. He lay on the grass beside
me, his weight on his elbow, his eyes fixed on me.
" `Why?' I asked calmly. I was wishing, as I often wished, that he was not there, that I
was alone. Alone with this powerful and cool river under the dim moon. `He's met with
his own perfect revenge. He's dying, dying of rigidity, of fear. His mind cannot accept
this time. Nothing as serene and graceful as that vampire death you once described to me
in Paris. I think he is dying as clumsily and grotesquely as humans often die in this
century . . . of old age.'
" `But you . . . what did you feel?' he insisted softly. And I was struck by the personal
quality of that question, and how long it had been since either of us had spoken to the
other in that way. I had a strong sense of him then, the separate being that he was, the
calm and collected creature with the straight auburn hair and the large, sometimes
melancholy eyes, eyes that seemed often to be seeing nothing but their own thoughts.
Tonight they were lit with a dull fire that was unusual.
" `Nothing,' I answered.
"`Nothing one way or the other?'

"I answered no. I remembered palpably that sorrow. It was as if the sorrow hadn't left me
suddenly, but had been near me all this time, hovering, saying, 'Come.' But I wouldn't tell
this to Armand, wouldn't reveal this. And I had the strangest sensation of feeling his need
for me to tell him this . . this, or something . . . a need strangely akin to the need for living
blood.
" `But did he tell you anything, anything that made you feel the old hatred . . .' he
murmured. And it was at this point that I became keenly aware of how distressed he was.
" `What is it, Armand? Why do you ask this?' I said.
"But he lay back on the steep levee then, and for a long time he appeared to be looking at
the stars. The stars brought back to me something far too specific, the ship that had
carried Claudia and me to Europe, and those nights at sea when it seemed the stars came
down to touch the waves.
" `I thought perhaps he would tell you something about Paris . .' Armand said.
" `What should he say about Paris? That he didn't want Claudia to die?' I asked. Claudia
again; the name sounded strange. Claudia spreading out that game of solitaire on the table
that shifted with the shifting of the sea, the lantern creaking on its hook, the black
porthole full of the stars. She had her head bent, her fingers poised above her ear as if
about to loosen strands of her hair. And I had the most disconcerting sensation: that in my
memory she would look up from that game of solitaire, and the sockets of her eyes would
be empty.
" `You could have told me anything you wanted about Paris, Armand,' I said. `Long
before now. It wouldn't have mattered.'
" `Even that it was I who . . ?'
"I turned to him as he lay there looking at the sky. And I saw the extraordinary pain in his
face, in his eyes. It seemed his eyes were huge, too huge, and the white face that framed
them too gaunt.
`That it was you who killed her? Who forced her out into that yard and locked her there?'
I asked. I smiled. `Don't tell me you have been feeling pain for it all these years, not you.'
"And then he closed his eyes and turned his face away, his hand resting on his chest as if
I'd struck him an awful, sudden blow.
" `You can't convince me you care about this,' I said to him coldly. And I looked out
towards the water, and again that feeling came over me . . . that I wished to be alone. In a
little while I knew I would get up and go off by myself. That is, if he didn't leave me first.
Because I would have liked to remain there actually. It was a quiet, secluded place.
" `You care about nothing . . .' he was saying. And then he sat up slowly and turned to me
so again I could see that dark fire in his eyes. `I thought you would at least care about
that. I thought you would feel the old passion, the old anger if you were to see him again.
I thought something would quicken and come alive in you if you saw him . . . if you
returned to this place.'
" 'That I would come back to life?' I said softly. And I felt the cold metallic hardness of
my words as I spoke, the modulation, the control. It was as if I were cold all over, made
of metal, and he were fragile suddenly; fragile, as he had been, actually, for a long time.

" `Yes!' he cried out. `Yes, back to life!' And then he seemed puzzled, positively
confused. And a strange thing occurred. He bowed his head at that moment as if he were
defeated. And something in the way that he felt that defeat, something in the way his
smooth white face reflected it only for an instant, reminded me of someone else I'd seen
defeated in just that way. And it was amazing to me that it took me such a long moment
to see Claudia's face in that attitude; Claudia, as she stood by the bed in the room at the
Hotel Saint-Gabriel pleading with me to transform Madeleine into one of us. That same
helpless look, that defeat which seemed to be so heartfelt that everything beyond it was
forgotten. And then he, like Claudia, seemed to rally, to pull on some reserve of strength.
But he said softly to the air, `I am dying!'
"And I, watching him, hearing him, the only creature under God who heard him, knowing
completely that it was true, said nothing.
"A long sigh escaped his lips. His head was' bowed. His right hand lay limp beside him in
the grass. `Hatred. . . that is passion,' he said `Revenge, that is passion.. '
" `Not from me . . ' I murmured softly. `Not now.'
"And then his eyes fixed on me and his face seemed very calm. `I used to believe you
would get over it, that when the pain of all of it left you, you would grow warm again and
filled with love, and filled with that wild and insatiable curiosity with which you first
came to me, that inveterate conscience, and that hunger for knowledge that brought you
all the way to Paris to my cell. I thought it was a part of you that couldn't die. And I
thought that when the pain was gone you would forgive me for what part I played in her
death. She never loved you, you know. Not in the way that I loved you, and the way that
you loved us both. I knew this! I understood it! And I believed I would gather you to me
and hold you. And time would open to us, and we would be the teachers of one another.
All the things that gave you happiness would give me happiness; and I would be the
protector of your pain. My power would be your power. My strength the same. But you're
dead inside to me, you're cold and beyond my reach! It is as if I'm not here, beside you.
And, not being here with you, I have the dreadful feeling that I don't exist at all. And you
are as cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms
that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age
which have no human form. I shudder when I'm near you. I look into your eyes and my
reflection isn't there . . . .'
" `What you asked was impossible!' I said quickly. `Don't you see? What I asked was
impossible, too, from the start.'
"He protested, the negation barely forming on his lips, his hand rising as if to thrust it
away.
" `I wanted love and goodness in this which is living death,' I said. `It was impossible
from the beginning, because you cannot have love and goodness when you do what you
know to be evil, what you know to be wrong. You can only have the desperate confusion
and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its human form. I knew the real
answer to my quest before I ever reached Paris. I knew it when I first took a human life to
feed my craving. It was my death. And yet I would not accept it, could not accept it,
because like all creatures I don't wish to die! And so I sought for other vampires, for Cod,
for the devil, for a hundred things under a hundred names. And it was all the same, all

evil. And all wrong. Because no one could in any guise convince me of what I myself
knew to be true, that I was damned in my own mind and soul. And when I came to Paris I
thought you were powerful and beautiful and without regret, and I wanted that
desperately. But you were a destroyer just as I was a destroyer, more ruthless and
cunning even than I. You showed me the only thing that I could really hope to become,
what depth of evil, what degree of coldness I would have to attain to end my pain. And I
accepted that. And so that passion, that love you saw in me, was extinguished. And you
see now simply a mirror of yourself.'
"A very long time passed before he spoke. He'd risen to his feet, and he stood with his
back to me looking down the river, head bowed as before, his hands at his sides. I was
looking at the river also. I was thinking quietly, There is nothing more I can say, nothing
more I can do.
" `Louis,' he said now, lifting his head, his voice very thick and unlike itself.
" `Yes, Armand,' I said.
" `Is there anything else you want of me, anything else you require?'
" `No,' I said. `What do you mean?'
"He didn't answer this. He began to slowly walk away. I think at first I thought he only
meant to walk a few paces, perhaps to wander by himself along the muddy beach below.
And by the time I realized that he was leaving me, he was a mere speck down there
against the occasional flickering in the water under the moon. I never saw him again.
"Of course, it was several nights later before I realized he was gone. His coffin remained.
But he did not return to it. And it was several months before I had that coffin taken to the
St. Louis cemetery and put into the crypt beside my own. The grave, long neglected
because my family was gone, received the only thing he'd left behind. But then I began to
be uncomfortable with that. I thought of it on waking, and again at dawn right before I
closed my eyes. And I went downtown one night and took the coffin out, and broke it
into pieces and left it in the narrow aisle of the cemetery in the tall grass.
"That vampire who was Lestat's latest child accosted me one evening not long after. He
begged me to tell him all I knew of the world, to become his companion and his teacher. I
remember telling him that what I chiefly knew was that I'd destroy him if I ever saw him
again. `You see, someone must die every night that I walk, until I've the courage to end
it,' I told him. `And you're an admirable choice for that victim, a killer as evil as myself.'
"And I left New Orleans the next night because the sorrow wasn't leaving me. And I
didn't want to think of that old house where Lestat was dying. Or that sharp, modem
vampire who'd fled me. Or of Armand.
"I wanted to be where there was nothing familiar to me. And nothing mattered.
"And that's the end of it. There's nothing else."
The boy sat mute, staring at the vampire. And the vampire sat collected, his hands folded
on the table, his narrow, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the turning tapes. His face was so
gaunt now that the veins of his temples showed as if carved out of stone. And he sat so
still that only his green eyes evinced life, and that life was a dull fascination with the
turning of the tapes.

Then the boy drew back and ran the fingers of his right hand loosely through his hair.
"No," he said with a short intake of breath. Then he said it again louder, "No!"'
The vampire didn't appear to bear him. His eyes moved away from the tapes towards the
window, towards the dark, gray sky.
"It didn't have to end like that!" said the boy, leaning forward.
The vampire, who continued to look at the sky, uttered a short, dry laugh.
"All the things you felt in Paris!" said the boy, his voice increasing in volume. "The love
of Claudia, the feeling, even the feeling for Lestat! It didn't have to end, not in this, not in
despair! Because that's what it is, isn't it? Despair!"
"Stop," said the vampire abruptly, lifting his right hand. His eyes shifted almost
mechanically to the boy's face. "I tell you and I have told you, that it could not have
ended any other way."
"I don't accept it," said the boy, and he folded his arms across his chest, shaking his head
emphatically. "I can't!" And the emotion seemed to build in him, so that without meaning
to, he scraped his chair back on the bare boards and rose to pace the floor. But then, when
he turned and looked at the vampire's face again, the words he was about to speak died in
his throat. The vampire was merely staring at him, and his face had that long drawn
expression of both outrage and bitter amusement.
"Don't you see how you made it sound? It was an adventure like I'll never know in my
whole life! You talk about passion, you talk about longing! You talk about things that
millions of us won't ever taste or come to understand. And then you tell me it ends like
that. I tell you . . ." And he stood over the vampire now, his hands outstretched before
him. "If you were to give me that power! The power to see and feel and live forever!"
The vampire's eyes slowly began to widen, his lips parting. "What!" he demanded softly.
" What!"
"Give it to me!" said the boy, his right hand tightening in a fist, the fist pounding his
chest. "Make me a vampire now!" he said as the vampire stared aghast.
What happened then was swift and confused, but it ended abruptly with the vampire on
his feet holding the boy by the shoulders, the boy's moist face contorted with fear, the
vampire glaring at him in rage. "This is what you want?" he whispered, his pale lips
manifesting only the barest trace of movement. "This . . . after all I've told you . . . is what
you ask for?"
A small cry escaped the boy's lips, and he began to tremble all over, the sweat breaking
out on his forehead and on the skin above his upper lip. His hand reached gingerly for the
vampire's arm. "You don't know what human life is like!." he said, on the edge of
breaking into tears. "You've forgotten. You don't even understand the meaning of your
own story, what it means to a human being like me." And then a choked sob interrupted
his words, and his fingers clung to the vampire's arm.
"God," the vampire uttered and, turning away from him, almost pushed the boy off-
balance against the wall. Ire stood with his back to the boy, staring at the gray window.
"I beg you . . . give it all one more chance. One more chance in me!" said the boy.

The vampire turned to him, his face as twisted with anger as before. And then, gradually,
it began to become smooth. The lids came down slowly over his eyes and his lips
lengthened in a smile. He looked again at the boy. "I've failed," he sighed, smiling still. "I
have completely failed. . "
"No . . ." the boy protested.
"Don't say any more," said the vampire emphatically. "I have but one chance left. Do you
see the reels? They still turn. I have but one way to show you the meaning of what I've
said." And then he reached out for the boy so fast that the boy found himself grasping for
something, pushing against something that was not there, so his hand was outstretched
still when the vampire had him pressed to his chest, the boy's neck bent beneath his lips.
"Do you see?" whispered the vampire, and the long, silky lips drew up over his teeth and
two long fangs came down into the boy's flesh. The boy stuttered, a low guttural sound
coming out of his throat, his hand struggling to close on something, his eyes widening
only to become dull and gray as the vampire drank. And the vampire meantime looked as
tranquil as someone in sleep. His narrow chest heaved so subtly with his sigh that he
seemed to be rising slowly from the floor and then settling again with that same
somnambulistic grace. There was a whine coming from the boy, and when the vampire
let him go he held him out with both hands and looked at the damp white face, the limp
hands, the eyes half closed.
The boy was moaning, his lower lip loose and trembling as if in nausea. He moaned again
louder, and his head fell back and his eyes rolled up into his head. The vampire set him
down gently in the chair. The boy was straggling to speak, and the tears which sprang
now to his eyes seemed to come as much from that effort to speak as from anything . else.
His head fell forward, heavily, drunkenly, and his hand rested on the table. The vampire
stood looking down at him, and his white skin became a soft luminous pink. It was as if a
pink light were shining on him and his entire being seemed to give back that light. The
flesh of his lips was dark, almost rose in color, and the veins of his temples and his hands
were mere traces on his skin, and his face was youthful and smooth.
"Will I . . . die?" the boy whispered as he looked up slowly, his mouth wet and slack.
"Will I die?" he groaned, his lip trembling.
"I don't know," the vampire said, and he smiled.
The boy seemed on the verge of saying something more, but the hand that rested on the
table slid forward on the boards, and his head lay down beside it as he lost consciousness.
When next he opened his eyes, the boy saw the sun. It filled the dirty, undressed window
and was hot on the side of his face and his hand. For a moment, he lay there, his face
against the table and then with a great effort, he straightened, took a long deep breath and
closing his eyes, pressed his hand to that place where the vampire had drawn blood.
When his other hand accidentally touched a band of metal on the top of the tape recorder,
he let out a sudden cry because the metal was hot.
Then he rose, moving clumsily, almost falling, until he rested both his hands on the white
wash basin. Quickly he turned on the tap, splashed his face with cold water, and wiped it
with a soiled towel that hung there on a nail. He was breathing regularly now and he
stood still, looking into the mirror without any support. Then he looked at his watch. It
was as if the watch shocked him, brought him more to life than the sun or the water. And

he made a quick search of the room, of the hallway, and, finding nothing and no one, he
settled again into the chair. Then, drawing a small white pad out of his pocket, and a pen,
he set these on the table and touched the button of the recorder. The tape spun fast
backwards until he shut it off. When he heard the vampire's voice, he leaned forward,
listening very carefully, then hit the button again for another place, and, hearing that, still
another. But then at last his face brightened, as the reels turned and the voice spoke in an
even modulated tone: "It was a very warm evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw him
on St. Charles that he had someplace to go . . .'"
And quickly the boy noted:
"Lestat . . . off St. Charles Avenue. Old house crumbling . . . shabby neighborhood. Look
for rusted railings."
And then, stuffing the notebook quickly in his pocket, he gathered the tapes into his brief
case, along with the small recorder, and hurried down the long hallway and down the
stairs to the street, where in front of the corner bar his car was parked.

1

      The Vampire Lestat

                                   By

                               Anne Rice


 This book is dedicated with love to Stan Rice, Karen O'Brien, and
Allen Daviau


 "WONDERFUL . . . THE BEST NEWS IS THAT THIS IS THE
MIDDLE BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE VAMPIRES. "
Playboy

 "Where Rice excels is in evoking the elusive nature of vampiric
sexuality, the urgency of the quest for self- knowledge, the thin line
between arrogance and terror, the loneliness of what is necessarily a
solitary existence. " Houston Post

 "Lestat is more than a sequel to Interview; it's also a prequel and a
supplement, swallowing the earlier novel whole.... Lestat is fiercely
ambitious, nothing less than a complete unnatural history of
vampires.... In Anne Rice's hands, vampires have come of age. They
now have a history and a vital new tradition; instead of creeping about
in charnel houses, they stand center stage, with a thousand spotlights
on them. And they smile straight at the camera, licking without shame
their voluptuous lips and white, sharp teeth. " The Village Voice




                                                                       2

  THE VAMPIRE LESTAT 1 Downtown Saturday Night In The
Twentieth Century 4 1984 4 The Early Education And Adventures Of
The Vampire Lestat 16 Part I - Lelio Rising 16 Part II - The Legacy of
Magnus 53 Part III - Viaticum For The Marquise 102 Part IV - The
Children Of Darkness 140 Part V - The Vampire Armand 184 Part VI -
On The Devil's Road From Paris To Cairo 219 Part VII - Ancient
Magic, Ancient Mysteries 247



  Downtown Saturday Night In The Twentieth Century 1984

  I am The Vampire Lestat. I'm immortal. More or less. The light of
the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might
destroy me. But then again, they might not. I'm six feet tall, which
was fairly impressive in the 1780s when I was a young mortal man. It's
not bad now. I have thick blond hair, not quite shoulder length, and
rather curly, which appears white under fluorescent light. My eyes are
gray, but they absorb the colors blue or violet easily from surfaces
around them. And I have a fairly short narrow nose, and a mouth that
is well shaped but just a little too big for my face. It can look very
mean, or extremely generous, my mouth. It always looks sensual. But
emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I
have a continuously animated face. My vampire nature reveals itself in
extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered
down for cameras of any kind. And if I'm starved for blood I look like
a perfect horrorskin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of
my bones. But I don't let that happen now. And the only consistent
indication that I am not human is my fingernails. It's the same with all
vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice
that when they don't notice anything else. Right now I am what
America calls a Rock Superstar. My first album has sold 4 million
copies. I'm going to San Francisco for the first spot on a nationwide
concert tour that will take my band from coast to coast. MTV, the
rock music cable channel, has been playing my video clips night and
day for two weeks. They're also being shown in England on "Top of
the Pops " and on the Continent, probably in some parts of Asia, and
in Japan. Video cassettes of the whole series of clips are selling
worldwide. I am also the author of an autobiography which was
published last week. Regarding my English-the language I use in my
autobiography-I first learned it from a flatboatmen who came down
the Mississippi to New Orleans about two hundred years ago. I

                                                                       1

learned more after that from the English language writers-everybody
from Shakespeare through Mark Twain to H. Rider Haggard, whom I
read as the decades passed. The final infusion I received from the
detective stories of the early twentieth century in the Black Mask
magazine. The adventures of Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett in
Black Mask were the last stories I read before I went literally and
figuratively underground. That was in New Orleans in 1929. When I
write I drift into a vocabulary that would have been natural to me in
the eighteenth century, into phrases shaped by the authors I've read.
But in spite of my French accent, I talk like a cross between a
flatboatman and detective Sam Spade, actually. So I hope you'll bear
with me when my style is inconsistent. When I blow the atmosphere
of an eighteenth century scene to smithereens now and then. I came
out into the twentieth century last year. What brought me up were
two things. First-the information I was receiving from amplified
voices that had begun their cacophony in the air around the time I lay
down to sleep. I'm referring here to the voices of radios, of course,
and phonographs and later television machines. I heard the radios in
the cars that passed in the streets of the old Garden District near the
place where I lay. I heard the phonographs and TVs from the houses
that surrounded mine. Now, when a vampire goes underground as we
call it when he ceases to drink blood and he just lies in the earth he
soon becomes too weak to resurrect himself, and what follows is a
dream state. In that state, I absorbed the voices sluggishly,
surrounding them with my own responsive images as a mortal does in
sleep. But at some point during the past fifty-five years I began to
  "remember " what I was hearing, to follow the entertainment
programs, to listen to the news broadcasts, the lyrics and rhythms of
the popular songs. And very gradually, I began to understand the
caliber of the changes that the world had undergone. I began listening
for specific pieces of information about wars or inventions, certain
new patterns of speech. Then a self-consciousness developed in me. I
realized I was no longer dreaming. I was thinking about what I heard.
I was wide awake. I was lying in the ground and I was starved for
living blood. I started to believe that maybe all the old wounds I'd
sustained had been healed by now. Maybe my strength had come
back. Maybe my strength had actually increased as it would have done
with time if I'd never been hurt. I wanted to find out. I started to
think incessantly of drinking human blood. The second thing that
brought me back-the decisive thing really-was the sudden presence
near me of a band of young rock singers who called themselves Satan's
Night Out. They moved into a house on Sixth Street-less than a block

                                                                       2

away from where I slumbered under my own house on Prytania near
the Lafayette Cemetery-and they started to rehearse their rock music
in the attic some time in 1984. I could hear their whining electric
guitars, their frantic singing. It was as good as the radio and stereo
songs I heard, and it was more melodic than most. There was a
romance to it in spite of its pounding drums. The electric piano
sounded like a harpsichord. I caught images from the thoughts of the
musicians that told me what they looked like, what they saw when they
looked at each other and into mirrors. They were slender, sinewy, and
altogether lovely young mortals-beguilingly androgynous and even a
little savage in their dress and movements-two male and one female.
They drowned out most of-the other amplified voices around me
when they were playing. But that was perfectly all right. I wanted to
rise and join the rock band called Satan's Night Out. I wanted to sing
and to dance. But I can't say that in the very beginning there was great
thought behind my wish. It was rather a ruling impulse, strong
enough to bring me up from the earth. I was enchanted by the world
of rock music-the way the singers could scream of good and evil,
proclaim themselves angels or devils, and mortals would stand up and
cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness.
And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their
performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in a way that I don't think
the world of ages past had ever seen. Of course it was metaphor, the
raving. None of them believed in angels or devils, no matter how well
they assumed their parts. And the players of the old Italian commedia
had been as shocking, as inventive, as lewd. Yet it was entirely new,
the extremes to which they took it, the brutality and the defiance-and
the way they were embraced by the world from the very rich to the
very poor. Also there was something vampiric about rock music. It
must have sounded supernatural even to those who don't believe in
the supernatural. I mean the way the electricity could stretch a single
note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until
you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was,
this music. The world just didn't have it in any form before. Yes, I
wanted to get closer to it. I wanted to do it. Maybe make the little
unknown band of Satan's Night Out famous. I was ready to come up.
It took a week to rise, more or less. I fed on the fresh blood of the little
animals who live under the earth when I could catch them. Then I
started clawing for the surface, where I could summon the rats. From
there it wasn't too difficult to take felines and finally the inevitable
human victim, though I had to wait a long time for the particular kind
I wanted-a man who had killed other mortals and showed no remorse.

                                                                           3

One came along eventually, walking right by the fence, a young male
with a grizzled beard who had murdered another, in some far-off place
on the other side of the world. True killer, this one. And oh, that first
taste of human struggle and human blood! Stealing clothes from
nearby houses, getting some of the gold and jewels I'd hidden in the
Lafayette Cemetery, that was no problem. Of course I was scared from
time to time. The stench of chemicals and gasoline sickened me. The
drone of air conditioners and the whine of the jet planes overhead hurt
my ears. But after the third night up, I was roaring around New
Orleans on a big black Harley-Davidson motorcycle making plenty of
noise myself. I was looking for more killers to feed on. I wore
gorgeous black leather clothes that I'd taken from my victims, and I
had a little Sony Walkman stereo in my pocket that fed Bach's Art of
the Fugue through tiny earphones right into my head as I blazed along.
I was the vampire Lestat again. I was back in action. New Orleans was
once again my hunting ground. As for my strength, well, it was three
times what it had once been. I could leap from the street to the top of
a four-story building. I could pull iron gratings off windows. I could
bend a copper penny double. I could hear human voices and
thoughts, when I wanted to, for blocks around. By the end of the fast
week I had a pretty female lawyer in a downtown glass and steel
skyscraper who helped me procure a legal birth certificate, Social
Security card, and driver's license. A good portion of my old wealth
was on its way to New Orleans from coded accounts in the immortal
Bank of London and the Rothschild Bank. But more important, I was
swimming in realizations. I knew that everything the amplified voices
had told me about the twentieth century was true. As I roamed the
streets of New Orleans in 1984 this is what I beheld: The dark dreary
industrial world that I'd gone to sleep on had burnt itself out finally,
and the old bourgeois prudery and conformity had lost their hold on
the American mind. People were adventurous and erotic again the
way they'd been in the old days, before the great middle-class
revolutions of the late 1700s. They even looked the way they had in
those times. The men didn't wear the Sam Spade uniform of shirt, tie,
gray suit, and gray hat any longer. Once again, they costumed
themselves in velvet and silk and brilliant colors if they felt like it.
They did not have to clip their hair like Roman soldiers anymore; they
wore it any length they desired. And the women-ah, the women were
glorious, naked in the spring warmth as they'd been under the
Egyptian pharaohs, in skimpy short skirts and tunic like dresses, or
wearing men's pants and shirts skintight over their curvaceous bodies
if they pleased. They painted, and decked themselves out in gold and

                                                                         4

silver, even to walk to the grocery store. Or they went fresh scrubbed
and without ornament-it didn't matter. They curled their hair like
Marie Antoinette or cut it off or let it blow free. For the first time in
history, perhaps, they were as strong and as interesting as men. And
these were the common people of America. Not just the rich who've
always achieved a certain androgyny, a certain joie de vivre that the
middle-class revolutionaries called decadence in the past. The old
aristocratic sensuality now belonged to everybody. It was wed to the
promises of the middle-class revolution, and all people had a right to
love and to luxury and to graceful things. Department stores had
become palaces of near Oriental loveliness-merchandise displayed
amid soft tinted carpeting, eerie music, amber light. In the all-night
drugstores, bottles of violet and green shampoo gleamed like gems on
the sparkling glass shelves. Waitresses drove sleek leather-lined
automobiles to work. Dock laborers went home at night to swim in
their heated backyard pools. Charwomen and plumbers changed at
the end of the day into exquisitely cut manufactured clothes. In fact
the poverty and filth that had been common in the big cities of the
earth since time immemorial were almost completely washed away.
You just didn't see immigrants dropping dead of starvation in the
alleyways. There weren't slums where people slept eight and ten to a
room. Nobody threw the slops in the gutters. The beggars, the
cripples, the orphans, the hopelessly diseased were so diminished as to
constitute no presence in the immaculate streets at all. Even the
drunkards and lunatics who slept on the park benches, and in the bus
stations had meat to eat regularly, and even radios to listen to, and
clothes that were washed. But this was just the surface. I found myself
astounded by the more profound changes that moved this awesome
current along. For example, something altogether magical had
happened to time. The old was not being routinely replaced by the
new anymore. On the contrary, the English spoken around me was
the same as it had been in the 1800s. Even the old slang ( "the coast is
clear " or "bad luck " or "that's the thing ") was still "current. " Yet
fascinating new phrases like
  "they brainwashed you " and "it's so Freudian " and "I can't relate to
it " were on everyone's lips. In the art and entertainment worlds all
prior centuries were being "recycled. " Musicians performed Mozart as
well as jazz and rock music; people went to see Shakespeare one night
and a new French film the next. In giant fluorescent-lighted
emporiums you could buy tapes of medieval madrigals and play them
on your car stereo as you drove ninety miles an hour down the
freeway. In the bookstores Renaissance poetry sold side by side with

                                                                         5

the novels of Dickens or Ernest Hemingway. Sex manuals lay on the
same tables with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Sometimes the
wealth and the cleanliness everywhere around me became like an
hallucination. I thought I was going out of my head. Through shop
windows I gazed stupefied at computers and telephones as pure in
form and color as nature's most exotic shells. Gargantuan silver
limousines navigated the narrow French Quarter streets like
indestructible sea beasts. Glittering office towers pierced the night sky
like Egyptian obelisks above the sagging brick buildings of old Canal
Street. Countless television programs poured their ceaseless flow of
images into every air-cooled hotel room. But it was no series of
hallucinations. This century had inherited the earth in every sense.
And no small part of this unpredicted miracle was the curious
innocence of these people in the very midst of their freedom and their
wealth. The Christian god was as dead as he had been in the 1700s.
And no new mythological religion had arisen to take the place of the
old. On the contrary, the simplest people of this age were driven by a
vigorous secular morality as strong as any religious morality I had ever
known. The intellectuals carried the standards. But quite ordinary
individuals all over America cared passionately about "peace " and "the
poor " and "the planet " as if driven by a mystical zeal. Famine they
intended to wipe out in this century. Disease they would destroy no
matter what the cost. They argued ferociously about the execution of
condemned criminals, the abortion of unborn babies. And the threats
of "environmental pollution " and "holocaustal war " they battled as
fiercely as men have battled witchcraft and heresy in the ages past. As
for sexuality, it was no longer a matter of superstition and fear. The
last religious overtones were being stripped from it. That was why the
people went around half naked. That was why they kissed and hugged
each other in the streets. They talked ethics now and responsibility
and the beauty of the body. Procreation and venereal disease they had
under control. Ah, the twentieth century. Ah, the turn of the great
wheel. It had outdistanced my wildest dreams of it, this future. It had
made fools of grim prophets of ages past. I did a lot of thinking about
this sinless secular morality, this optimism. This brilliantly lighted
world where the value of human life was greater than it had ever been
before. In the amber electric twilight of a vast hotel room I watched
on the screen before me the stunningly crafted film of war called
Apocalypse Now. Such a symphony of sound and color it was, and it
sang of the age-old battle of the Western world against evil. "You must
make a friend of horror and moral terror, " says the mad commander
in the savage garden of Cambodia, to which the Western man answers

                                                                        6

as he has always answered: No. No. Horror and moral terror can
never be exonerated. They have no real value. Pure evil has no real
place. And that means, doesn't it, that I have no place. Except,
perhaps, the art that repudiates evil-the vampire comics, the horror
novels, the old gothic tales-or in the roaring chants of the rock stars
who dramatize the battles against evil that each mortal fights within
himself. It was enough to make an old world monster go back into the
earth, this stunning irrelevance to the mighty scheme of things,
enough to make him lie down and weep. Or enough to make him
become a rock singer, when you think about it .... But where were the
other old world monsters? I wondered. How did other vampires exist
in a world in which each death was recorded in giant electronic
computers, and bodies were carried away to refrigerated crypts?
Probably concealing themselves like loathsome insects in the shadows,
as they have always done, no matter how much philosophy they talked
or how many covens they formed. Well, when I raised my voice with
the diode band called Satan's Night Out, I would bring them all into
the light soon enough. I continued my education. I talked to mortals
at bus stops and at gas stations and in elegant drinking places. I read
books. I decked myself out in the shimmering dream skins of the
fashionable shops. I wore white turtleneck shirts and crisp khaki safari
jackets, or lush gray velvet blazers with cashmere scarves. I powdered
down my face so that I could "pass " beneath the chemical lights of the
all-night supermarkets, the hamburger joints, the carnival
thoroughfares called nightclub strips. I was learning. I was in love.
And the only problem I had was that murderers to feed upon were
scarce. In this shiny world of innocence and plenty, of kindness and
gaiety and full stomachs, the common cutthroat thieves of the past and
their dangerous waterfront hangouts were almost gone. And so I had
to work for a living. But I'd always been a hunter. I liked the dim
smoky poolrooms with the single light shining on the green felt as the
tattooed ex-convicts gathered around it as much as I liked the shiny
satin-lined nightclubs of the big concrete hotels. And I was learning
more all the time about my killers-the drug dealers, the pimps, the
murderers who fell in with the motorcycle gangs. And more than ever,
I was resolute that I would not drink innocent blood. Finally it was
time to call upon my old neighbors, the rock band called Satan's Night
Out. At six thirty on a hot sticky Saturday night, I rang the doorbell of
the attic music studio. The beautiful young mortals were all lying
about in their rainbow-colored silk shirts and skintight dungarees
smoking hashish cigarettes and complaining about their rotten luck
getting "gigs " in the South. They looked like biblical angels, with their

                                                                         7

long clean shaggy hair and feline movements; their jewelry was
Egyptian. Even to rehearse they painted their faces and their eyes. I
was overcome with excitement and love just looking at them, Alex and
Larry and the succulent little Tough Cookie. And in an eerie moment
in which the world seemed to stand still beneath me, I told them what
I was. Nothing new to them, the word "vampire. " In the galaxy in
which they shone, a thousand other singers had worn the theatrical
fangs and the black cape. And yet it felt so strange to speak it aloud to
mortals, the forbidden truth. Never in two hundred years had I
spoken it to anyone who had not been marked to become one of us.
Not even to my victims did I confide it before their eyes closed. And
now I said it clearly and distinctly to these handsome young creatures.
I told them that I wanted to sing with them, that if they were to trust
to me, we would all be rich and famous. That on a wave of
preternatural and remorseless ambition, I should carry them out of
these rooms and into the great world. Their eyes misted as they
looked at me. And the little twentieth-century chamber of stucco and
pasteboard rang with their laughter and delight. I was patient. Why
shouldn't I be? I knew I was a demon who could mimic almost any
human sound or movement. But how could they be expected to
understand? I went to the electric piano and began to play and to sing.
I imitated the rock songs as I started, and then old melodies and lyrics
came back to me- French songs buried deep in my soul yet never
abandoned-and I wound these into brutal rhythms, seeing before me a
tiny crowded little Paris theater of centuries ago. A dangerous passion
welled in me. It threatened my equilibrium. Dangerous that this
should come so soon. Yet I sang on, pounding the slick white keys of
the electric piano, and something in my soul was broken open. Never
mind that these tender mortal creatures gathered around me should
never know. It was sufficient that they were jubilant, that they loved
the eerie and disjointed music, that they were screaming, that they saw
prosperity in the future, the impetus that they had lacked before. They
turned on the tape machines and we began singing and playing
together, jamming as they called it. The studio swam with the scent of
their blood and our thunderous songs. But then came a shock I had
never in my strangest dreams anticipated-something that was as
extraordinary as my little revelation to these creatures had been. In
fact, it was so overwhelming that it might have driven me out of their
world and back underground. I don't mean I would have gone into
the deep slumber again. But I might have backed off from Satan's
Night Out and roamed about for a few years, stunned and trying to
gather my wits. The men-Alex, the sleek delicate young drummer, and

                                                                        8

his taller blond-haired brother, Larry- recognized my name when I
told them it was Lestat. Not only did they recognize it, but they
connected it with a body of information about me that they had read
in a book. In fact, they thought it was delightful that I wasn't just
pretending to be any vampire. Or Count Dracula. Everybody was sick
of Count Dracula. They thought it was marvelous that I was
pretending to be the vampire Lestat.
  "Pretending to be the vampire Lestat? " I asked. They laughed at my
exaggeration, my French accent. I looked at all of them for a long
moment, trying to scan their thoughts. Of course I hadn't expected
them to believe I was a real vampire. But to have read of a fictional
vampire with a name as unusual as mine? How could this be
explained? But I was losing my confidence. And when I lose my
confidence, my powers drain. The little room seemed to be getting
smaller. And there was something insectile and menacing about the
instruments, the antenna, the wires.
  "Show me this book, " I said. From the other room they brought it, a
small pulp paper "novel " that was falling to pieces. The binding was
gone, the cover ripped, the whole held together by a rubber band. I
got a preternatural chill of sorts at the sight of the cover. Interview
with the Vampire. Something to do with a mortal boy getting one of
the undead to tell the tale. With their permission, I went into the
other room, stretched out on their bed, and began to read. When I
was halfway finished, I took the book with me and left the house. I
stood stock- still beneath a street lamp with the book until I finished it.
Then I placed it carefully in my breast pocket. I didn't return to the
band for seven nights. During much of that time, I was roaming
again, crashing through the night on my Harley- Davidson motorcycle
with the Bach Goldberg Variations turned up to full volume. And I
was asking myself, Lestat, what do you want to do now? And the rest
of the time I studied with a renewed purpose. I read the fat paperback
histories and lexicons of rock music, the chronicles of its stars. I
listened to the albums and pondered in silence the concert video tapes.
And when the night was empty and still, I heard the voices of
Interview with the Vampire singing to me, as if they sang from the
grave. I read the book over and over. And then in a moment of
contemptible anger, I shredded it to bits. Finally, I came to my
decision. I met my young lawyer, Christine, in her darkened
skyscraper office with only the downtown city to give us light. Lovely
she looked against the glass wall behind her, the dim buildings beyond
forming a harsh and primitive terrain in which a thousand torches
burned.

                                                                         9

  "It is not enough any longer that my little rock band be successful, " I
told her. "We must create a fame that will carry my name and my
voice to the remotest parts of the world. " Quietly, intelligently, as
lawyers are wont to do, she advised me against risking my fortune. Yet
as I continued with maniacal confidence, I could feel her seduction,
the, slow dissolution of her common sense.
  "The best French directors for the rock video films, " I said. "You
must lure them from New York and Los Angeles. There is ample
money for that. And here you can find the studios, surely, in which we
will do our work. The young record producers who mix the sound
after- again, you must hire the best. It does not matter what we spend
on this venture. What is important is that it be orchestrated, that we
do our work in secret until the moment of revelation when our albums
and our films are released with the book that I propose to write. "
Finally her head was swimming with dreams of wealth and power.
Her pen raced as she made her notes. And what did I dream of as I
spoke to her? Of an unprecedented rebellion, a great and horrific
challenge to my kind all over the world.
  "These rock videos, " I said. "You must find directors who'll realize
my visions. The films are to be sequential. They must tell the story
that is in the book I want to create. And the songs, many of them I've
already written. You must obtain superior instruments-synthesizers,
the finest sound systems, electric guitars, violins. Other details we can
attend to later. The designing of vampire costumes, the method of
presentation to the rock television stations, the management of our
first public appearance in San Francisco-all that in good time. What is
important now is that you make the phone calls, get the information
you need to begin. " I didn't go back to Satan's Night Out until the
first agreements were struck and signatures had been obtained. Dates
were fixed, studios rented, letters of agreement exchanged. Then
Christine came with me, and we had a great leviathan of a limousine
for my darling young rock players, Larry and Alex and Tough Cookie.
We had breathtaking sums of money, we had papers to be signed.
Under the drowsy oaks of the quiet Garden District street, I poured
the champagne into the glistening crystal glasses for them:
  "To The Vampire Lestat, " we all sang in the moonlight. It was to be
the new name of the band, of the book I'd write. Tough Cookie threw
her succulent little arms around me. We kissed tenderly amid the
laughter and the reek of wine. Ah, the smell of innocent blood! And
when they had gone off in the velvet-lined motor coach, I moved alone
through the balmy night towards St. Charles Avenue, and thought
about the danger facing them, my little mortal friends. It didn't come

                                                                       10

from me, of course. But when the long period of secrecy was ended,
they would stand innocently and ignorantly in the international
limelight with their sinister and reckless star. Well, I would surround
them with bodyguards and hangers-on for every conceivable purpose.
I would protect them from other immortals as best I could. And if the
immortals were anything like they used to be in the old days, they'd
never risk a vulgar struggle with a human force like that. As I walked
up to the busy avenue, I covered my eyes with mirrored sunglasses. I
rode the rickety old St. Charles streetcar downtown. And through the
early evening crowd I wandered into the elegant double-decker
bookstore called de Ville Books, and there stared at the small
paperback of Interview with the vampire on the shelf. I wondered how
many of our kind had "noticed " the book. Never mind for the
moment the mortals who thought it was fiction. What about other
vampires? Because if there is one law that all vampires hold sacred it is
that you do not tell mortals about us. You never pass on our "secrets "
to humans unless you mean to bequeath the Dark Gift of our powers
to them. You never name other immortals. You never tell where their
lairs might be. My beloved Louis, the narrator of Interview with the
Vampire, had done all this. He had gone far beyond my secret little
disclosure to my rock singers. He had told hundreds of thousands of
readers. He had all but drawn them a map and placed an X on the
very spot in New Orleans where I slumbered, though what he really
knew about that, and what his intentions were, was not clear.
Regardless, for what he'd done, others would surely hunt him down.
And there are very simple ways to destroy vampires, especially now. If
he was still in existence, he was an outcast and lived in a danger from
our kind that no mortal could ever pose. All the more reason far me
to bring the book and the band called The Vampire Lestat to fame as
quickly as possible. I had to find Louis. I had to talk to him. In fact,
after reading his account of things, I ached for him, ached for his
romantic illusions, and even his dishonesty. I ached even for his
gentlemanly malice and his physical presence, the deceptively soft
sound of his voice. Of course I hated him for the lies he told about
me. But the love was far greater than the hate. He had shared the dark
and romantic years of the nineteenth century with me, he was my
companion as no other immortal had ever been. And I ached to write
my story for him, not an answer to his malice in Interview with the
Vampire, but the tale of all the things I'd seen and learned before I
came to him, the story I could not tell him before. Old rules didn't
matter to me now, either. I wanted to break every one of them. And I
wanted my band and my book to draw out not only Louis but all the

                                                                       11

other demons that I had ever known and loved. I wanted to find my
lost ones, awaken those who slept as I had slept. Fledglings and
ancient ones, beautiful and evil and mad and heartless-they'd all come
after me when they saw those video clips and heard those records,
when they saw the book in the windows of the bookstores, and they'd
know exactly where to find me. I'd be Lestat, the rock superstar. Just
come to San Francisco for my first live performance. I'll be there. But
there was another reason for the whole adventure-a reason even more
dangerous and delicious and mad. And I knew Louis would
understand. It must have been behind his interview, his confessions. I
wanted mortals to know about us. I wanted to proclaim it to the
world the way I'd told it to Alex and Larry and Tough Cookie, and my
sweet lawyer, Christine. And it didn't matter that they didn't believe it.
It didn't matter that they thought it was art. The fact was that, after
two centuries of concealment, I was visible to mortals! I spoke my
name aloud. I told my nature. I was there! But again, I was going
farther than Louis. His story, for all its peculiarities, had passed for
fiction. In the mortal world, it was as safe as the tableaux of the old
Theater of the Vampires in the Paris where the fiends had pretended to
be actors pretending to be fiends on a remote and gas lighted stage. I'd
step into the solar lights before the cameras, I'd reach out and touch
with my icy fingers a thousand warm and grasping hands. I'd scare the
hell out of them if it was possible, and charm them and lead them into
the truth of it if I could. And suppose-just suppose-that when the
corpses began to turn up in ever greater numbers, that when those
closest to me began to hearken to their inevitable suspicions-just
suppose that the art ceased to be art and became real! I mean what if
they really believed it, really understood that this world still harbored
the Old World demon thing, the vampire-oh, what a great and
glorious war we might have then! We would be known, and we would
be hunted, and we would be fought in this glittering urban wilderness
as no mythic monster has ever been fought by man before. How could
I not love it, the mere idea of it? How could it not be worth the
greatest danger, the greatest and most ghastly defeat? Even at the
moment of destruction, I would be alive as I have never been. But to
tell the truth, I didn't think it would ever come to that-I mean, mortals
believing in us. Mortals have never made me afraid. It was the other
war that was going to happen, the one in which we'd all come together,
or they would all come to fight me. That was the real reason for The
Vampire Lestat. That was the kind of game I was playing. But that
other lovely possibility of real revelation and disaster . . . Well, that
added a hell of a lot of spice! Out of the gloomy waste of canal street, I

                                                                         12

went back up the stairs to my rooms in the old- fashioned French
Quarter hotel. Quiet it was, and suited to me, with the Vieux Carrel
spread out beneath its windows, the narrow little streets of Spanish
town houses I'd known for so long. On the giant television set I played
the cassette of the beautiful Visconti film Death in Venice. An actor
said at one point that evil was a necessity. It was food for genius. I
didn't believe that. But I wish it were true. Then I could just be Lestat,
the monster, couldn't I? And I was always so good at being a monster!
Ah, well... I put a fresh disk into the portable computer word
processor and I started to write the story of my life.


 The Early Education And Adventures Of The Vampire Lestat




                                                                       13

  Part I - Lelio Rising

  1

  In the winter of my twenty-first year, I went out alone on horseback
to kill a pack of wolves. This was on my father's land in the Auvergne
in France, and these were the last decades before the French
Revolution. It was the worst winter that I could remember, and the
wolves were stealing the sheep from our peasants and even running at
night through the streets of the village. These were bitter years for me.
My father was the Marquis, and I was the seventh son and the
youngest of the three who had lived to manhood. I had no claim to
the title or the land, and no prospects. Even in a rich family, it might
have been that way for a younger boy, but our wealth had been used
up long ago. My eldest brother, Augustin, who was the rightful heir to
all we possessed, had spent his wife's small dowry as soon as he
married her. My father's castle, his estate, and the village nearby were
my entire universe. And I'd been born restless-the dreamer, the angry
one, the complainer. I wouldn't sit by the fire and talk of old wars and
the days of the Sun King. History had no meaning for me. But in this
dim and old-fashioned world, I had become the hunter. I brought in
the pheasant, the venison, and the trout from the mountain streams-
whatever was needed and could be got- to feed the family. It had
become my life by this time-and one I shared with no one else-and it
was a very good thing that I'd taken it up, because there were years
when we might have actually starved to death. Of course this was a
noble occupation, hunting one's ancestral lands, and we alone had the
right to do it. The richest of the bourgeois couldn't lift his gun in my
forests. But then again he didn't have to lift his gun. He had money.
Two times in my life I'd tried to escape this life, only to be brought
back with my wings broken. But I'll tell more on that later. Right now
I'm thinking about the snow all over those mountains and the wolves
that were frightening the villagers and stealing my sheep. And I'm
thinking of the old saying in France in those days, that if you lived in
the province of Auvergne you could get no farther from Paris.
Understand that since I was the lord and the only lord anymore who
could sit a horse and fire a gun, it was natural that the villagers should
come to me, complaining about the wolves and expecting me to hunt
them. It was my duty. I wasn't the least afraid of the wolves either.
Never in my life had I seen or heard of a wolf attacking a man. And I
would have poisoned them, if I could, but meat was simply too scarce
to lace with poison. So early on a very cold morning in January, I

                                                                         14

armed myself to kill the wolves one by one. I had three flintlock guns
and an excellent flintlock rifle, and these I took with me as well as my
muskets and my father's sword. But just before leaving the castle, I
added to this little arsenal one or two ancient weapons that I'd never
bothered with before. Our castle was full of old armor. My ancestors
had fought in countless noble wars since the times of the Crusades
with St. Louis. And hung on the walls above all this clattering junk
were a good many lances, battleaxes, flails, and maces. It was a very
large mace--that is, a spiked club-that I took with me that morning,
and also a good-sized flail: an iron ball attached to a chain that could
be swung with immense force at an attacker. Now remember this was
the eighteenth century, the time when white-wigged Parisians tiptoed
around in high-heeled satin slippers, pinched snuff, and dabbed at
their noses with embroidered handkerchiefs. And here I was going out
to hunt in rawhide boots and buckskin coat, with these ancient
weapons tied to the saddle, and my two biggest mastiffs beside me in
their spiked collars. That was my life. And it might as well have been
lived in the Middle Ages. And I knew enough of the fancy-dressed
travelers on the post road to feel it rather keenly. The nobles in the
capital called us country lords "harecatchers. " Of course we could
sneer at them and call them lackeys to the king and queen. Our castle
had stood for a thousand years, and not even the great Cardinal
Richelieu in his war on our kind had managed to pull down our
ancient towers. But as I said before, I didn't pay much attention to
history. I was unhappy and ferocious as I rode up the mountain. I
wanted a good battle with the wolves. There were five in the pack
according to the villagers, and I had my guns and two dogs with jaws
so strong they could snap a wolf's spine in an instant. Well, I rode for
an hour up the slopes. Then I came into a small valley I knew well
enough that no snowfall could disguise it. And as I started across the
broad empty field towards the barren wood, I heard the first howling.
Within seconds there had come another howling and then another,
and now the chorus was in such harmony that I couldn't tell the
number of the pack, only that they had seen me and were signaling to
each other to come together, which was just what I had hoped they
would do. I don't think I felt the slightest fear then. But I felt
something, and it caused the hair to rise on the backs of my arms. The
countryside for all its vastness seemed empty. I readied my guns. I
ordered my dogs to stop their growling and follow me, and some
vague thought came to me that I had better get out of the open field
and into the woods and hurry. My dogs gave their deep baying alarm.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the wolves hundreds of yards

                                                                       15

behind me and streaking straight towards me over the snow. Three
giant gray wolves they were, coming on in a line. I broke into a run for
the forest. It seemed I would make it easily before the three reached
me, but wolves are extremely clever animals, and as I rode hard for the
trees I saw the rest of the pack, some five full-grown animals, coming
out ahead of me to my left. It was an ambush, and I could never make
the forest in time. And the pack was eight wolves, not five as the
villagers had told me. Even then I didn't have sense enough to be
afraid. I didn't ponder the obvious fact that these animals were
starving or they'd never come near the village. Their natural reticence
with men was completely gone. I got ready for battle. I stuck the flail
in my belt, and with the rifle I took aim. I brought down a big male
yards away from me and had time to reload as my dogs and the pack
attacked each other. They couldn't get my dogs by the neck on
account of the spiked collars. And in this first skirmish my dogs
brought down one of the wolves in their powerful jaws immediately. I
fired and brought down a second. But the pack had surrounded the
dogs. As I fired again and again, reloading as quickly as I could and
trying to aim clear of the dogs, I saw the smaller dog go down with its
hind legs broken. Blood streamed over the snow; the second dog
stood off the pack as it tried to devour the dying animal, but within
two minutes, the pack had torn open the second dog's belly and killed
it. Now these were powerful beasts, as I said, these mastiffs. I'd bred
them and trained them myself. And each weighed upwards of two
hundred pounds. I always hunted with them, and though I speak of
them as dogs now, they were known only by their names to me then,
and when I saw them die, I knew for the first time what I had taken on
and what might happen. But all this had occurred in minutes. Four
wolves lay dead. Another was crippled fatally. But that left three, one
of whom had stopped in the savage feasting upon the dogs to fix its
slanted eyes on me. I fired the rifle, missed, fired the musket, and my
horse reared as the wolf shot towards me. As if pulled on strings, the
other wolves turned, leaving the fresh kill. And jerking the reins hard,
I let my horse run as she wanted, straight for the cover of the forest. I
didn't look back even when I heard the growling and snapping. But
then I felt the teeth graze my ankle. I drew the other musket, turned to
the left, and fired. It seemed the wolf went up on his hind legs, but it
was too quickly out of sight and my mare reared again. I almost fell. I
felt her back legs give out under me. We were almost to the forest and
I was off her before she went down. I had one more loaded gun.
Turning and steadying it with both hands, I took dead aim at the wolf
who bore down on me and blasted away the top of his skull. It was

                                                                       16

now two animals. The horse was giving off a deep rattling whinny that
rose to a trumpeting shriek, the worst sound I have ever heard from
any living thing. The two wolves had her. I bolted over the snow,
feeling the hardness of the rocky land under me, and made it to the
tree. If I could reload I could shoot them down from there. But there
was not a single tree with limbs low enough for me to catch hold of. I
leapt up trying to catch hold, my feet slipping on the icy bark, and fell
back down as the wolves closed in. There was no time to load the one
gun I had left to me. It was the flail and the sword because the mace I
had lost a long way back. I think as I scrambled to my feet, I knew I
was probably going to die. But it never even occurred to me to give
up. I was maddened, wild. Almost snarling, I faced the animals and
looked the closest of the two wolves straight in the eye. I spread my
legs to anchor myself. With the flail in my left hand, I drew the sword.
The wolves stopped. The first, after staring back, bowed its head and
trotted several paces to the side. The other waited as if for some
invisible signal. The first looked at me again in that uncannily calm
fashion and then plunged forward. I started swinging the flail so that
the spiked ball went round in a circle. I could hear my own growling
breaths, and I know I was bending my knees as if I would spring
forward, and I aimed the flail for the side of the animal's jaw, bashing
it with all my strength and only grazing it. The wolf darted off and the
second ran round me in a circle, dancing towards me and then back
again. They both lunged in close enough to make me swing the flail
and slash with the sword, then they ran off again. I don't know how
long this went on, but I understood the strategy. They meant to wear
me down and they had the strength to do it. It had become a game to
them. I was pivoting, thrusting, struggling back, and almost falling to
my knees. Probably it was no more than half an hour that this went
on. But there is no measuring time like that. And with my legs giving
out, I made one last desperate gamble. I stood stock-still, weapons at
my sides. And they came in for the kill this time just as I hoped they
would. At the last second I swung the flail, felt the ball crack the bone,
saw the head jerked upwards to the right, and with the broadsword I
slashed the wolf's neck open. The other wolf was at my side. I felt its
teeth rip into my breeches. In one second it would have torn my leg
out of the socket. But I slashed at the side of its face, gashing open its
eye. The ball of the flail crashed down on it. The wolf let go. And
springing back, I had enough room for the sword again and thrust it
straight into the animal's chest to the hilt before I drew it out again.
That was the end of it. The pack was dead. I was alive. And the only
sound in the empty snow-covered valley was my own breathing and

                                                                         17

the rattling shriek of my dying mare who lay yards away from me. I'm
not sure I had my reason. I'm not sure the things that went through
my mind were thoughts. I wanted to drop down in the snow, and yet I
was walking away from the dead wolves towards the dying horse. As I
came close to her, she lifted her neck, straining to rise up on her front
legs, and gave one of those shrill trumpeting pleas again. The sound
bounced off the mountains. It seemed to reach heaven. And I stood
staring at her, staring at her dark broken body against the whiteness of
the snow, the dead hindquarters and the struggling forelegs, the nose
lifted skyward, ears pressed back, and the huge innocent eyes rolling
up into her head as the rattling cry came out of her. She was like an
insect half mashed into a floor, but she was no insect. She was my
struggling, suffering mare. She tried to lift herself again. I took my
rifle from the saddle. I loaded it. And as she lay tossing her head,
trying vainly to lift herself once more with that shrill trumpeting, I
shot her through the heart. Now she looked all right. She lay still and
dead and the blood ran out of her and the valley was quiet. I was
shuddering. I heard an ugly choking noise come from myself, and I
saw the vomit spewing out onto the snow before I realized it was mine.
The smell of wolf was all over me, and the smell of blood. And I
almost fell over when I tried to walk. But not even stopping for a
moment, I went among the dead wolves, and back to the one who had
almost killed me, the last one, and slung him up to carry over my
shoulders, and started the trek homeward. It took me probably two
hours. Again, I don't know. But whatever I had learned or felt when I
was fighting those wolves went on in my mind even as I walked. Every
time I stumbled and fell, something in me hardened, became worse.
By the time I reached the castle gates; I think I was not Lestat. I was
someone else altogether, staggering into the great hall, with that wolf
over my shoulders, the heat of the carcass very much diminished now
and the sudden blaze of the fire an irritant in my eyes. I was beyond
exhaustion. And though I began to speak as I saw my brothers rising
from the table and my mother patting my father, who was blind
already then and wanted to know what was happening, I don't know
what I said. I know my voice was very flat, and there was some sense
in me of the simplicity of describing what had happened:
  "And then . . . and then. . . " Sort of like that. But my brother
Augustin suddenly brought me to myself. He came towards me, with
the light of the fire behind him, and quite distinctly broke the low
monotone of my words with his own:
  "You little bastard, " he said coldly. "You didn't kill eight wolves! "
His face had an ugly disgusted look to it. But the remarkable thing was

                                                                        18

this: Almost as soon as he spoke these words, he realized for some
reason that he had made a mistake. Maybe it was the look on my face.
Maybe it was my mother's murmured outrage or my other brother not
speaking at all. It was probably my face. Whatever it was, it was
almost instantaneous, and the most curious look of embarrassment
came over him. He started to babble something about how incredible,
and I must have been almost killed, and would the servants heat some
broth for me immediately, and all of that sort of thing, but it was no
good. What had happened in that one single moment was irreparable,
and the next thing I knew I was lying alone in my room. I didn't have
the dogs in bed with me as always in winter because the dogs were
dead, and though there was no fire lighted, I climbed, filthy and
bloody, under the bed covers and went into deep sleep. For days I
stayed in my room. I knew the villagers had gone up the mountain,
found the wolves, and brought them back down to the castle, because
Augustin came and told me these things, but I didn't answer. Maybe a
week passed. When I could stand having other dogs near me, I went
down to my kennel and brought up two pups, already big animals, and
they kept me company. At night I slept between them. The servants
came and went. But no one bothered me. And then my mother came
quietly and almost stealthily into the room.

  2

  It was evening. I was sitting on the bed, with one of the dogs
stretched out beside me and the other stretched out under my knees.
The fire was roaring. And there was my mother coming at last, as I
supposed I should have expected. I knew her by her particular
movement in the shadows, and whereas if anyone else had come near
me I would have shouted "Go away, " I said nothing at all to her. I had
a great and unshakable love of her. I don't think anyone else did. And
one thing that endeared her to me always was that she never said
anything ordinary.
  "Shut the door, " "Eat your soup, " "Sit still, " things like that never
passed her lips. She read all the time; in fact, she was the only one in
our family who had any education, and when she did speak it was
really to speak. So I wasn't resentful of her now. On the contrary she
aroused my curiosity. What would she say, and would it conceivably
make a difference to me? I had not wanted her to come, nor even
thought of her, and I didn't turn away from the fire to look at her. But
there was a powerful understanding between us. When I had tried to
escape this house and been brought back, it was she who had shown

                                                                          19

me the way out of the pain that followed. Miracles she'd worked for
me, though no one around us had ever noticed. Her first intervention
had come when I was twelve, and the old parish priest, who had taught
me some poetry by rote and to read an anthem or two in Latin, wanted
to send me to school at the nearby monastery. My father said no, that
I could learn all I needed in my own house. But it was my mother who
roused herself from her books to do loud and vociferous battle with
him. I would go, she said, if I wanted to. And she sold one of her
jewels to pay for my books and clothing. Her jewels had all come
down to her from an Italian grandmother and each had its story, and
this was a hard thing for her to do. But she did it immediately. My
father was angry and reminded her that if this had happened before he
went blind, his will would have prevailed surely. My brothers assured
him that his youngest son wouldn't be gone long. I'd come running
home as soon as I was made to do something I didn't want to do.
Well, I didn't come running home. I loved the monastery school. I
loved the chapel and the hymns, the library with its thousands of old
books, the bells that divided the day, the ever repeated rituals. I loved
the cleanliness of the place, the overwhelming fact that all things here
were well kept and in good repair, that work never ceased throughout
the great house and the gardens. When I was corrected, which wasn't
often, I knew an intense happiness because someone for the first time
in my life was trying to make me into a good person, one who could
learn things. Within a month I declared my vocation. I wanted to
enter the order. I wanted to spend my life in those immaculate
cloisters, in the library writing on parchment and learning to read the
ancient books. I wanted to be enclosed forever with people who
believed I could be good if I wanted to be. I was liked there. And that
was a most unusual thing. I didn't make other people there unhappy
or angry. The Father Superior wrote immediately to ask my father's
permission. And frankly I thought my father would be glad to be rid
of me. But three days later my brothers arrived to take me home with
them. I cried and begged to stay, but there was nothing the Father
Superior could do. And as soon as we reached the castle, my brothers
took away my books and locked me up. I didn't understand why they
were so angry. There was the hint that I had behaved like a fool for
some reason. I couldn't stop crying. I was walking round and round
and smashing my fist into things and kicking the door. Then my
brother Augustin started coming in and talking to me. He'd circle the
point at first, but what came clear finally was that no member of a
great French family was going to be a poor teaching brother. How
could I have misunderstood everything so completely? I was sent there

                                                                        20

to learn to read and write. Why did I always have to go to extremes?
Why did I behave habitually like a wild creature? As for becoming a
priest with real prospects within the Church, well, I was the youngest
son of this family, now, wasn't I? I ought to think of my duties to my
nieces and nephews. Translate all that to mean this: We have no
money to launch a real ecclesiastical career for you, to make you a
bishop or cardinal as befits our rank, so you have to live out your life
here as an illiterate and a beggar. Come in the great hall and play chess
with your father. After I got to understand it, I wept right at the
supper table, and mumbled words no one understood about this
house of ours being "chaos, " and was sent back to my room for it.
Then my mother came to me. She said: "You don't know what chaos
is. Why do you use words like that? "
  "I know, " I said. I started to describe to her the dirt and the decay
that was everywhere here and to tell how the monastery had been,
clean and orderly, a place where if you set your mind to it, you could
accomplish something. She didn't argue. And young as I was, I knew
that she was warming to the unusual quality of what I was saying to
her. The next morning, she took me on a journey. We rode for half a
day before we reached the impressive chateau of a neighboring lord,
and there she and the gentleman took me out to the kennel, where she
told me to choose my favorites from a new litter of mastiff puppies. I
have never seen anything as tender and endearing as these little mastiff
pups. And the big dogs were like drowsy lions as they watched us.
Simply magnificent. I was too excited almost to make the choice. I
brought back the male and female that the lord advised me to pick,
carrying them all the way home on my lap in a basket. And within a
month, my mother also bought for me my first flintlock musket and
my first good horse for riding. She never did say why she'd done all
this. But I understood in my own way what she had given me. I raised
those dogs, trained them, and founded a great kennel upon them. I
became a true hunter with those dogs, and by the age of sixteen I lived
in the field. But at home, I was more than ever a nuisance. Nobody
really wanted to hear me talk of restoring the vineyards or replanting
the neglected fields, or of making the tenants stop stealing from us. I
could affect nothing. The silent ebb and flow of life without change
seemed deadly to me. I went to church on all the feast days just to
break the monotony of life. And when the village fairs came round, I
was always there, greedy for the little spectacles I saw at no other time,
anything really to break the routine. It might be the same old jugglers,
mimes, and acrobats of years past, but it didn't matter. It was
something more than the change of the seasons and the idle talk of

                                                                        21

past glories. But that year, the year I was sixteen, a troupe of Italian
players came through, with a painted wagon in back of which they set
up the most elaborate stage I'd ever seen. They put on the old Italian
comedy with Pantaloon and Pulcinella and the young lovers, Lelio and
Isabella, and the old doctor and all the old tricks. I was in raptures
watching it. I'd never seen anything like it, the cleverness of it, the
quickness, the vitality. I loved it even when the words went so fast I
couldn't follow them. When the troupe had finished and collected
what they could from the crowd, I hung about with them at the inn
and stood them all to wine I couldn't really afford, just so that I could
talk to them. I felt inexpressible love for these men and women. They
explained to me how each actor had his role for life, and how they did
not use memorized words, but improvised everything on the stage.
You knew your name, your character, and you understood him and
made him speak and act as you thought he should. That was the
genius of it. It was called the commedia dell'arte. I was enchanted. I
fell in love with the young girl who played Isabella. I went into the
wagon with the players and examined all the costumes and the painted
scenery, and when we were drinking again at the tavern, they let me
act out Lelio, the young lover to Isabella, and they clapped their hands
and said I had the gift. I could make it up the way they did. I thought
this was all flattery at first, but in some very real way, it didn't matter
whether or not it was flattery. The next morning when their wagon
pulled out of the village, I was in it. I was hidden in the back with a
few coins I'd managed to save and all my clothes tied in a blanket. I
was going to be an actor. Now, Lelio in the old Italian comedy is
supposed to be quite handsome; he's the lover, as I have explained,
and he doesn't wear a mask. If he has manners, dignity, aristocratic
bearing, so much the better because that's part of the role. Well, the
troupe thought that in all these things I was blessed. They trained me
immediately for the next performance they would give. And the day
before we put on the show, I went about the town, a much larger and
more interesting place than our village, to be certain-advertising the
play with the others. I was in heaven. But neither the journey nor the
preparations nor the camaraderie with my fellow players came near to
the ecstasy I knew when I finally stood on that little wooden stage. I
went wildly into the pursuit of Isabella. I found a tongue for verses
and wit I'd never had in life. I could hear my voice bouncing off the
stone walls around me. I could hear the laughter rolling back at me
from the crowd. They almost had to drag me off the stage to stop me,
but everyone knew it had been a great success. That night, the actress
who played my inamorata gave me her own very special and intimate

                                                                          22

accolades. I went to sleep in her arms, and the last thing I remember
her saying was that when we got to Paris we'd play the St. Germain
Fair, and then we'd leave the troupe and we'd stay in Paris working on
the boulevard du Temple until we got into the Comedie-Francaise
itself and performed for Marie Antoinette and King Louis. When I
woke up the next morning, she was gone and so were all the players,
and my brothers were there. I never knew if my friends had been
bribed to give me over, or just frightened off. More likely the latter.
Whatever the case, I was taken back home again. Of course my family
was perfectly horrified at what I'd done. Wanting to be a monk when
you are twelve is excusable. But the theater had the taint of the devil.
Even the great Moliere had not been given a Christian burial. And I'd
run off with a troupe of ragged vagabond Italians, painted my face
white, and acted with them in a town square for money. I was beaten
severely, and when I cursed everyone, I was beaten again. The worst
punishment, however, was seeing the look on my mother's face. I
hadn't even told her I was going. And I had wounded her, a thing that
had never really happened before. But she never said anything about
it. When she came to me, she listened to me cry. I saw tears in her
eyes. And she laid her hand on my shoulder, which for her was
something a little remarkable. I didn't tell her what it had been like,
those few days. But I think she knew. Something magical had been
lost utterly. And once again, she defied my father. She put an end to
the condemnations, the beatings, the restrictions. She had me sit
beside her at the table. She deferred to me, actually talked to me in
conversation that was perfectly unnatural to her, until she had
subdued and dissolved the rancor of the family. Finally, as she had in
the past, she produced another of her jewels and she bought the fine
hunting rifle that I had taken with me when I killed the wolves. This
was a superior and expensive weapon, and in spite of my misery, I was
fairly eager to try it. And she added to that another gift, a sleek
chestnut mare with strength and speed I'd never known in an animal
before. But these things were small compared to the general
consolation my mother had given me. Yet the bitterness inside me did
not subside. I never forgot what it had been like when I was Lelio. I
became a little crueler for what had happened, and I never, never went
again to the village fair. I conceived of the notion that I should never
get away from here, and oddly enough as my despair deepened, so my
usefulness increased. I alone put the fear of God into the servants or
tenants by the time I was eighteen. I alone provided the food for us.
And for some strange reason this gave me satisfaction. I don't know
why, but I liked to sit at the table and reflect that everyone there was

                                                                        23

eating what I had provided. So these moments had bound me to my
mother. These moments had given us a love for each other unnoticed
and probably unequaled in the lives of those around us. And now she
had come to me at this odd time, when for reasons I didn't understand
myself, I could not endure the company of any other person. With my
eyes on the fire, I barely saw her climb up and sink down into the
straw mattress beside me. Silence. Just the crackling of the fire, and
the deep respiration of the sleeping dogs beside me. Then I glanced at
her, and I was vaguely startled. She'd been ill all winter with a cough,
and now she looked truly sickly, and her beauty, which was always
very important to me, seemed vulnerable for the first time. Her face
was angular and her cheekbones perfect, very high and broadly spaced
but delicate. Her jaw line was strong yet exquisitely feminine. And
she had very clear cobalt blue eyes fringed with thick ashen lashes. If
there was any flaw in her it was perhaps that all her features were too
small, too kittenish, and made her look like a girl. Her eyes became
even smaller when she was angry, and though her mouth was sweet, it
often appeared hard. It did not turn down, it wasn't twisted in any
way, it was like a little pink rose on her face. But her cheeks were very
smooth and her face narrow, and when she looked very serious, her
mouth, without changing at all, looked mean for some reason. Now
she was slightly sunken. But she still looked beautiful to me. She still
was beautiful. I liked looking at her. Her hair was full and blond, and
that I had inherited from her. In fact I resemble her at least
superficially. But my features are larger, cruder, and my mouth is
more mobile and can be very mean at times. And you can see my
sense of humor in my expression, my capacity for mischievousness
and near hysterical laughing, which I've always had no matter how
unhappy I was. She did not laugh often. She could look profoundly
cold. Yet she had always a little girl sweetness. Well, I looked at her as
she sat on my bed-I even stared at her, I suppose-and immediately she
started to talk to me.
  "I know how it is, " she said to me. "You hate them. Because of what
you've endured and what they don't know. They haven't the
imagination to know what happened to you out there on the
mountain. " I felt a cold delight in these words. I gave her the silent
acknowledgment that she understood it perfectly.
  "It was the same the first time I bore a child, " she said. "I was in
agony for twelve hours, and I felt trapped in the pain, knowing the
only release was the birth or my own death. When it was over, I had
your brother Augustin in my arms, but I didn't want anyone else near
me. And it wasn't because I blamed them. It was only that I'd suffered

                                                                        24

like that, hour after hour, that I'd gone into the circle of hell and come
back out. They hadn't been in the circle of hell. And I felt quiet all
over. In this common occurrence, this vulgar act of giving birth, I
understood the meaning of utter loneliness. "
  "Yes, that's it, " I answered. I was a little shaken. She didn't respond.
I would have been surprised if she had. Having said what she'd come
to say, she wasn't going to converse, actually. But she did lay her hand
on my forehead-very unusual for her to do that-and when she
observed that I was wearing the same bloody hunting clothes after all
this time, I noticed it too, and realized the sickness of it. She was silent
for a while. And as I sat there, looking past her at the fire, I wanted to
tell her a lot of things, how much I loved her particularly. But I was
cautious. She had a way of cutting me off when I spoke to her, and
mingled with my love was a powerful resentment of her. All my life I'd
watched her read her Italian books and scribble letters to people in
Naples, where she had grown up, yet she had no patience even to teach
me or my brothers the alphabet. And nothing had changed after I
came back from the monastery. I was twenty and I couldn't read or
write more than a few prayers and my name. I hated the sight of her
books; I hated her absorption in them. And in some vague way, I
hated the fact that only extreme pain in me could ever wring from her
the slightest warmth or interest. Yet she'd been my savior. And there
was no one but her. And I was as tired of being alone, perhaps, as a
young person can be. She was here now, out of the confines of her
library, and she was attentive to me. Finally I was convinced that she
wouldn't get up and go away, and I found myself speaking to her.
  "Mother, " I said in a low voice, "there is more to it. Before it
happened, there were times when I felt terrible things. " There was no
change in her expression. "I mean I dream sometimes that I might kill
all of them, " I said. "I kill my brothers and my father in the dream. I
go from room to room slaughtering them as I did the wolves. I feel in
myself the desire to murder... "
  "So do I, my son, " she said. "So do I " And her face was lighted with
the strangest smile as she looked at me. I bent forward and looked at
her more closely. I lowered my voice.
  "I see myself screaming when it happens, " I went on. "I see my face
twisted into grimaces and I hear bellowing coming out of me. My
mouth is a perfect O, and shrieks, cries, come out of me. " She nodded
with that same understanding look, as if alight were flaring behind her
eyes.
  "And on the mountain, Mother, when I was fighting the wolves . . .
it was a little like that. "

                                                                         25

  "Only a little? " she asked. I nodded.
  "I felt like someone different from myself when I killed the wolves.
And now I don't know who is here with you-your son Lestat, or that
other man, the killer. " She was quiet for a long time.
  "No, " she said finally. "It was you who killed the wolves. You're the
hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your
tragedy. " I shook my head. That was true, but it didn't matter. It
couldn't account for unhappiness such as this. But what was the use of
saying it? She looked away for a moment, then back to me.
  "But you're many things, " she said. "Not only one thing. You're the
killer and the man. And don't give in to the killer in you just because
you hate them. You don't have to take upon yourself the burden of
murder or madness to be free of this place. Surely there must be other
ways. " Those last two sentences struck me hard. She had gone to the
core. And the implications dazzled me. Always I'd felt that I couldn't
be a good human being and fight them. To be good meant to be
defeated by them. Unless of course I found a more interesting idea of
goodness. We sat still for a few moments. And there seemed an
uncommon intimacy even for us. She was looking at the fire,
scratching at her thick hair which was wound into a circle on the back
of her head.
  "You know what I imagine, " she said, looking towards me again.
"Not so much the murdering of them as an abandon which disregards
them completely. I imagine drinking wine until I'm so drunk I strip
off my clothes and bathe in the mountain streams naked. " I almost
laughed. But it was a sublime amusement. I looked up at her,
uncertain for a moment that I was hearing her correctly. But she had
said these words and she wasn't finished.
  "And then I imagine going into the village, " she said, "and up into
the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there-crude men,
big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after
another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute
release without a thought of what happens to your father or your
brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely
myself. I belong to no one. " I was too shocked and amazed to say
anything. But again this was terribly, terribly amusing. When I
thought of my father and brothers and the pompous shopkeepers of
the village and how they would respond to such a thing, I found it
damn near hilarious. If I didn't laugh aloud it was probably because
the image of my mother naked made me think I shouldn't. But I
couldn't keep altogether quiet. I laughed a little, and she nodded, half
smiling. She raised her eyebrows, as if to say, 'We understand each

                                                                      26

other'. Finally I roared laughing. I pounded my knee with my fist and
hit my head on the wood of the bed behind me. And she almost
laughed herself. Maybe in her own quiet way she was laughing.
Curious moment. Some almost brutal sense of her as a human being
quite removed from all that surrounded her. We did understand each
other, and all my resentment of her didn't matter too much. She
pulled the pin out of her hair and let it tumble down to her shoulders.
We sat quiet for perhaps an hour after that. No more laughter or talk,
just the fire blazing, and her near to me. She had turned so she could
see the fire. Her profile, the delicacy of her nose and lips, were
beautiful to look at. Then she looked back at me and in the same
steady voice without undue emotion she said:
  "I'll never leave here. I am dying now. " I was stunned. The little
shock before was nothing to this.
  "I'll live through this spring, " she continued, "and possibly the
summer as well. But I won't survive another winter. I know. The
pain in my lungs is too bad. " I made some little anguished sound. I
think I leaned forward and said, "Mother! "
  "Don't say any more, " she answered. I think she hated to be called
mother, but I hadn't been able to help it.
  "I just wanted to speak it to another soul, " she said. "To hear it out
loud. I'm perfectly horrified by it. I'm afraid of it. " I wanted to take
her hands, but I knew she'd never allow it. She disliked to be touched.
She never put her arms around anyone. And so it was in our glances
that we held each other. My eyes filled with tears looking at her. She
patted my hand.
  "Don't think on it much, " she said. "I don't. Just only now and
then. But you must be ready to live on without me when the time
comes. That may be harder for you than you realize. " I tried to say
something; I couldn't make the words come. She left me just as she'd
come in, silently. And though she'd never said anything about my
clothes or my beard or how dreadful I looked, she sent the servants in
with clean clothes for me, and the razor and warm water, and silently I
let myself be taken care of by them.




  3

  I began to feel a little stronger. I stopped thinking about what
happened with the wolves and I thought about her. I thought about

                                                                        27

the words "perfectly horrified, " and I didn't know what to make of
them except they sounded exactly true. I'd feel that way if I were dying
slowly. It would have been better on the mountain with the wolves.
But there was more to it than that. She had always been silently
unhappy. She hated the inertia and the hopelessness of our life here as
much as I did. And now, after eight children, three living, five dead,
she was dying. This was the end for her. I determined to get up if it
would make her feel better, but when I tried I couldn't. The thought
of her dying was unbearable. I paced the floor of my room a lot, ate
the food brought to me, but still I wouldn't go to her. But by the end
of the month, visitors came to draw me out. My mother came in and
said I must receive the merchants from the village who wanted to
honor me for killing the wolves.
  "Oh, hell with it, " I answered.
  "No, you must come down, " she said. "They have gifts for you.
Now do your duty. " I hated all this. When I reached the hall, I found
the rich shopkeepers there, all men I knew well, and all dressed for the
occasion. But there was one startling young man among them I didn't
recognize immediately. He was my age perhaps, and quite tall, and
when our eyes met I remembered who he was. Nicolas de Lenfent,
eldest son of the draper, who had been sent to school in Paris. He was
a vision now. Dressed in a splendid brocade coat of rose and gold, he
wore slippers with gold heels, and layers of Italian lace at his collar.
Only his hair was what it used to be, dark and very curly, and boyish
looking for some reason though it was tied back with a fine bit of silk
ribbon. Parisian fashion, all this-the sort that passed as fast as it could
through the local post house. And here I was to meet him in
threadbare wool and scuffed leather boots and yellowed lace that had
been seventeen times mended. We bowed to each other, as he was
apparently the spokesman for the town, and then he unwrapped from
its modest covering of black serge a great red velvet cloak lined in fur.
Gorgeous thing. His eyes were positively shining when he looked at
me. You would have thought he was looking at a sovereign.
  "Monsieur, we beg you to accept this, " he said very sincerely. "The
forest fur of the wolves has been used to line it and we thought it
would stand you well in the winter, this fur lined cloak, when you ride
out to hunt. "
  "And these too, Monsieur, " said his father, producing a finely sewn
pair of fur-lined boots in black suede. "For the hunt, Monsieur, " he
said. I was a little overcome. They meant these gestures in the kindest
way, these men who had the sort of wealth I only dreamed of, and they
paid me respect as the aristocrat. I took the cloak and the boots. I

                                                                         28

thanked them as effusively as I'd ever thanked anybody for anything.
And behind me, I heard my brother Augustin say:
  "Now he will really be impossible! " I felt my face color. Outrageous
that he should say this in the presence of these men, but when I
glanced to Nicolas de Lenfent I saw the most affectionate expression
on his face.
  "I too am impossible, Monsieur, " he whispered as I gave him the
parting kiss. "Someday, will you let me come to talk to you and tell me
how you killed them all? Only the impossible can do the impossible. "
None of the merchants ever spoke to me like that. We were boys again
for a moment. And I laughed out loud. His father was disconcerted.
My brothers stopped whispering, but Nicolas de Lenfent kept smiling
with a Parisian's composure. As soon as they had left I took the red
velvet cloak and the suede boots up into my mother's room. She was
reading as always while very lazily she brushed her hair. In the weak
sunlight from the window, I saw gray in her hair for the first time. I
told her what Nicolas de Lenfent had said.
  "Why is he impossible? " I asked her. "He said this with feeling, as if
it meant something. " She laughed.
  "It means something all right, " she said. "He's in disgrace. " She
stopped looking at her book for a moment and looked at me. "You
know how he's been educated all his life to be a little imitation
aristocrat. Well, during his first term studying law in Paris, he fell
madly in love with the violin, of all things. Seems he heard an Italian
virtuoso, one of those geniuses from Padua who is so great that men
say he has sold his soul to the devil. Well, Nicolas dropped everything
at once to take lessons from Wolfgang Mozart. He sold his books. He
did nothing but play and play until he failed his examinations. He
wants to be a musician. Can you imagine? "
  "And his father is beside himself. "
  "Exactly. He even smashed the instrument, and you know what a
piece of expensive merchandise means to the good draper. " I smiled.
  "And so Nicolas has no violin now? "
  "He has a violin. He promptly ran away to Clermont and sold his
watch to buy another. He's impossible all right, and the worst part of
it is that he plays rather well. "
  "You've heard him? " She knew good music. She grew up with it in
Naples. All I'd ever heard were the church choir, the players at the
fairs.
  "I heard him Sunday when I went to mass, " she said. "He was
playing in the upstairs bedroom over the shop. Everyone could hear
him, and his father was threatening to break his hands. " I gave a little

                                                                       29

gasp at the cruelty of it. I was powerfully fascinated! I think I loved
him already, doing what he wanted like that.
  "Of course he'll never be anything, " she went on.
  "Why not? "
  "He's too old. You can't take up the violin when you're twenty. But
what do I know? He plays magically in his own way. And maybe he
can sell his soul to the devil. " I laughed a little uneasily. It sounded
magic.
  "But why don't you go down to the town and make a friend of him?
" she asked.
  "Why the hell should I do that? " I asked.
  "Lestat, really. Your brothers will hate it. And the old merchant will
be beside himself with joy. His son and the Marquis's son. "
  "Those aren't good enough reasons. "
  "He's been to Paris, " she said. She watched me for a long moment.
Then she went back to her book, brushing her hair now and then
lazily. I watched her reading, hating it. I wanted to ask her how she
was, if her cough was very bad that day. But I couldn't broach the
subject to her.
  "Go on down and talk to him, Lestat, " she said, without another
glance at me.

  4

  It took me a week to make up my mind I would seek out Nicolas de
Lenfent. I put on the red velvet fur-lined cloak and fur lined suede
boots, and I went down the winding main street of the village towards
the inn. The shop owned by Nicolas's father was right across from the
inn, but I didn't see or hear Nicolas. I had no more than enough for
one glass of wine and I wasn't sure just how to proceed when the
innkeeper came out, bowed to me, and set a bottle of his best vintage
before me. Of course these people had always treated me like the son
of the lord. But I could see that things had changed on account of the
wolves, and strangely enough, this made me feel even more alone than
I usually felt. But as soon as I poured the first glass, Nicolas appeared,
a great blaze of color in the open doorway. He was not so finely
dressed as before, thank heaven, yet everything about him exuded
wealth. Silk and velvet and brand-new leather. But he was flushed as
if he'd been running and his hair was windblown and messy, and his
eyes full of excitement. He bowed to me, waited for me to invite him
to sit down, and then he asked me:


                                                                         30

  "What was it like, Monsieur, killing the wolves? " And folding his
arms on the table, he stared at me.
  "Why don't you tell me what's it like in Paris, Monsieur? " I said, and
I realized right away that it sounded mocking and rude. "I'm sorry, " I
said immediately. "I would really like to know. Did you go to the
university? Did you really study with Mozart? What do people in
Paris do? What do they talk about? What do they think? " He laughed
softly at the barrage of questions. I had to laugh myself. I signaled for
another glass and pushed the bottle towards him.
  "Tell me, " I said, "did you go to the theaters in Paris? Did you see
the Comedie-Francaise? "
  "Many times, " he answered a little dismissively. "But listen, the
diligence will be coming in any minute. There'll be too much noise.
Allow me the honor of providing your supper in a private room
upstairs. I should so like to do it- " And before I could make a
gentlemanly protest, he was ordering everything. We were shown up
to a crude but comfortable little chamber. I was almost never in small
wooden rooms, and I loved it immediately. The table was laid for the
meal that would come later on, the fire was truly warming the place,
unlike the roaring blazes in our castle, and the thick glass of the
window was clean enough to see the blue winter sky over the snow-
covered mountains.
  "Now, I shall tell you everything you want to know about Paris, " he
said agreeably, waiting for me to sit first. "Yes, I did go to the
university. " He made a little sneer as if it had all been contemptible.
"And I did study with Mozart, who would have told me I was hopeless
if he hadn't needed pupils. Now where do you want me to begin? The
stench of the city, or the infernal noise of it? The hungry crowds that
surround you everywhere? The thieves in every alley ready to cut your
throat? " I waved all that away. His smile was very different from his
tone, his manner open and appealing.
  "A really big Paris theater... " I said. "Describe it to me . . . what is it
like? " I think we stayed in that room for four solid hours and all we
did was drink and talk. He drew plans of the theaters on the tabletop
with a wet finger, described the plays he had seen, the famous actors,
the little houses of the boulevards. Soon he was describing all of Paris
and he'd forgotten to be cynical, my curiosity firing him as he talked of
the Ile de la Cite, and the Latin Quarter, the Sorbonne, the Louvre.
We went on to more abstract things, how the newspapers reported
events, how his student cronies gathered in cafes to argue. He told me
men were restless and out of love with the monarchy. That they
wanted a change in government and wouldn't sit still for very long.

                                                                          31

He told me about the philosophers, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau. I
couldn't understand everything he said. But in rapid, sometimes
sarcastic speech he gave me a marvelously complete picture of what
was going on. Of course, it didn't surprise me to hear that educated
people didn't believe in God, that they were infinitely more interested
in science, that the aristocracy was much in ill favor, and so was the
Church. These were times of reason, not superstition, and the more
he talked the more I understood. Soon he was outlining the
Encyclopedie, the great compilation of knowledge supervised by
Diderot. And then it was the salons he'd gone to, the drinking bouts,
his evenings with actresses. He described the public balls at the Palms
Royal, where Marie Antoinette appeared right along with the common
people.
  "I'll tell you, " he said finally, "it all sounds a hell of a lot better in this
room than it really is. "
  "I don't believe you, " I said gently. I didn't want him to stop talking.
I wanted it to go on and on.
  "It's a secular age, Monsieur, " he said, filling our glasses from the
new bottle of wine. "Very dangerous. "
  "Why dangerous? " I whispered. "An end to superstition? What
could be better than that? "
  "Spoken like a true eighteenth-century man, Monsieur, " he said with
a faint melancholy to his smile. "But no one values anything anymore.
Fashion is everything. Even atheism is a fashion. " I had always had a
secular mind, but not for any philosophical reason. No one in my
family much believed in God or ever had. Of course they said they
did, and we went to mass. But this was duty. Real religion had long
ago died out in our family, as it had perhaps in the families of
thousands of aristocrats. Even at the monastery I had not believed in
God. I had believed in the monks around me. I tried to explain this in
simple language that would not give offense to Nicolas, because for his
family it was different. Even his miserable money-grubbing father
(whom I secretly admired) was fervently religious.
  "But can men live without these beliefs? " Nicolas asked almost
sadly. "Can children face the world without them? " I was beginning
to understand why he was so sarcastic arid cynical. He had only
recently lost that old faith. He was bitter about it. But no matter how
deadening was this sarcasm of his, a great energy poured out of him,
an irrepressible passion. And this drew me to him. I think I loved
him. Another two glasses of wine and I might say something
absolutely ridiculous like that.
  "I've always lived without beliefs, " I said.

                                                                               32

  "Yes. I know, " he answered. "Do you remember the story of the
witches? The time you cried at the witches' place? "
  "Cried over the witches? " I looked at him blankly for a moment.
But it stirred something painful, something humiliating. Too many of
my memories had that quality. And now I had to remember crying
over witches. "I don't remember, " I said.
  "We were little boys. And the priest was teaching us our prayers.
And the priest took us out to see the place where they burnt the
witches in the old days, the old stakes and the blackened ground. "
  "Ah, that place. " I shuddered. "That horrid, horrid place. "
  "You began to scream and to cry. They sent someone for the
Marquise herself because your nurse couldn't quiet you. "
  "I was a dreadful child, " I said, trying to shrug it off. Of course I did
remember now-screaming, being carried home, nightmares about the
fires. Someone bathing my forehead and saying,
  "Lestat, wake up. " But I hadn't thought of that little scene in years.
It was the place itself I thought about whenever I drew near it-the
thicket of blackened stakes, the images of men and women and
children burnt alive. Nicolas was studying me. "When your mother
came to get you, she said it was all ignorance and cruelty. She was so
angry with the priest for telling us the old tales. " I nodded. The final
horror to hear they had all died for nothing, those long-forgotten
people of our own village, that they had been innocent. "Victims of
superstition, " she had said. "There were no real witches. " No wonder
I had screamed and screamed.
  "But my mother, " Nicolas said, "told a different story, that the
witches had been in league with the devil, that they'd blighted the
crops, and in the guise of wolves killed the sheep and the children- "
  "And won't the world be better if no one is ever again burnt in the
name of God? " I asked. "If there is no more faith in God to make
men do that to each other? What is the danger in a secular world
where horrors like that don't happen? " He leaned forward with a
mischievous little frown.
  "The wolves didn't wound you on the mountain, did they? " he
asked playfully. "You haven't become a werewolf, have you, Monsieur,
unbeknownst to the rest of us? " He stroked the furred edge of the
velvet cloak I still had over my shoulders. "Remember what the good
father said, that they had burnt a good number of werewolves in those
times. They were a regular menace. " I laughed.
  "If I turn into a wolf, " I answered, "I can tell you this much. I won't
hang around here to kill the children. I'll get away from this miserable
little hellhole of a village where they still terrify little boys with tales of

                                                                             33

burning witches. I'll get on the road to Paris and never stop till I see
her ramparts. "
  "And you'll find Paris is a miserable hellhole, " he said. "Where they
break the bones of thieves on the wheel for the vulgar crowds in the
place de Greve. "
  "No, " I said. "I'll see a splendid city where great ideas are born in the
minds of the populace, ideas that go forth to illuminate the darkened
comers of this world. "
  "Ah, you are a dreamer! " he said, but he was delighted. He was
beyond handsome when he smiled.
  "And I'll know people like you, " I went on, "people who have
thoughts in their heads and quick tongues with which to voice them,
and we'll sit in cafes and we'll drink together and we'll clash with each
other violently in words, and we'll talk for the rest of our lives in divine
excitement. " He reached out and put his arm around my neck and
kissed me. We almost upset the table we were so blissfully drunk.
  "My lord, the wolfkiller, " he whispered. When the third bottle of
wine came, I began to talk of my life, as I'd never done before-of what
it was like each day to ride out into the mountains, to go so far I
couldn't see the towers of my father's house anymore, to ride above
the tilled land to the place where the forest seemed almost haunted.
The words began to pour out of me as they had out of him, and soon
we were talking about a thousand things we had felt in our hearts,
varieties of secret loneliness, and the words seemed to be essential
words the way they did on those rare occasions with my mother. And
as we came to describe our longings and dissatisfactions, we were
saying things to each other with great exuberance, like "Yes, yes, " and
"Exactly, " and "I know completely what you mean, " and "And yes, of
course, you felt that you could not bear it, " etc. Another bottle, and a
new fire. And I begged Nicolas to play his violin for me. He rushed
home immediately to get it. It was now late afternoon. The sun was
slanting through the window and the fire was very hot. We were very
drunk. We had never ordered supper. And I think I was happier than
I had ever been in my life. I lay on the lumpy straw mattress of the
little bed with my hands under my head watching him as he took out
the instrument. He put the violin to his shoulder and began to pluck
at it and twist the pegs. Then he raised the bow and drew it down hard
over the strings to bring out the first note. I sat up and pushed myself
back against the paneled wall and stared at him because I couldn't
believe the sound I was hearing. He ripped into the song. He tore the
notes out of the violin and each note was translucent and throbbing.
His eyes were closed, his mouth a little distorted, his lower lip sliding

                                                                          34

to the side, and what struck my heart almost as much as the song itself
was the way that he seemed with his whole body to lean into the
music, to press his soul like an ear to the instrument. I had never
known music like it, the rawness of it, the intensity, the rapid glittering
torrents of notes that came out of the strings as he sawed away. It was
Mozart that he was playing, and it had all the gaiety, the velocity, and
the sheer loveliness of everything Mozart wrote. When he'd finished, I
was staring at him and I realized I was gripping the sides of my head.
  "Monsieur, what's the matter! " he said, almost helplessly, and I
stood up and threw my arms around him and kissed him on both
cheeks and kissed the violin.
  "Stop calling me Monsieur, " I said. "Call me by my name. " I lay
back down on the bed and buried my face on my arm and started to
cry, and once I'd started I couldn't stop it. He sat next to me, hugging
me and asking me why I was crying, and though I couldn't tell him, I
could see that he was overwhelmed that his music had produced this
effect. There was no sarcasm or bitterness in him now. I think he
carried me home that night. And the next morning I was standing in
the crooked stone street in front of his father's shop, tossing pebbles
up at his window. When he stuck his head out, I said:
  "Do you want to come down and go on with our conversation? "

  5

  From then on, when I was not hunting, my life was with Nicolas and
"our conversation. " Spring was approaching, the mountains were
dappled with green, the apple orchard starting back to life. And
Nicolas and I were always together. We took long walks up the rocky
slopes, had our bread and wine in the sun on the grass, roamed south
through the ruins of an old monastery. We hung about in my rooms
or sometimes climbed to the battlements. And we went back to our
room at the inn when we were too drunk and too loud to be tolerated
by others. And as the weeks passed we revealed more and more of
ourselves to each other. Nicolas told me about his childhood at
school, the little disappointments of his early years, those whom he
had known and loved. And I started to tell him the painful things-and
finally the old disgrace of running off with the Italian players. It came
to that one night when we were in the inn again, and we were drunk as
usual. In fact we were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of
us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense.
We always tried to stretch out that moment, and then inevitably one of
us would confess, "I can't follow anymore, I think the Golden

                                                                         35

Moment's passed. " On this night, looking out the window at the
moon over the mountains, I said that at the Golden Moment it was
not so terrible that we weren't in Paris, that we weren't at the Opera or
the Comedie, waiting for the curtain to rise.
 "You and the theaters of Paris, " he said to me. "No matter what
we're talking about you bring it back to the theaters and the actors-'
His brown eyes were very big and trusting. And even drunk as he was,
he looked spruce in his red velvet Paris frock coat.
 "Actors and actresses make magic, " I said. "They make things
happen on the stage; they invent; they create. "
 "Wait until you see the sweat streaming down their painted faces in
the glare of the footlights, " he answered.
 "Ah, there you go again, " I said. "And you, the one who gave up
everything to play the violin. " He got terribly serious suddenly,
looking off as if he were weary of his own struggles.
 "That I did, " he confessed. Even now the whole village knew it was
war between him and his father. Nicki wouldn't go back to school in
Paris.
 "You make life when you play, " I said. "You create something from
nothing. You make something good happen. And that is blessed to
me. "
 "I make music and it makes me happy, " he said. "What is blessed or
good about that? " I waved it away as I always did his cynicism now.
 "I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and
change nothing, " I said.
 "Actors and musicians-they're saints to me. "
 "Saints? " he asked. "Blessedness? Goodness? Lestat, your language
baffles me. " I smiled and shook my head.
 "You don't understand. I'm speaking of the character of human
beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't
accept a useless lie, just because they were born to it. I mean those
who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do
things. . . " He was moved by this, and I was a little surprised that I'd
said it. Yet I felt I had hurt him somehow.
 "There is blessedness in that, " I said. "There's sanctity. And God or
no God, there is goodness in it. I know this the way I know the
mountains are out there, that the stars shine. " He looked sad for me.
And he looked hurt still. But for the moment I didn't think of him. I
was thinking of the conversation I had had with my mother and my
perception that I couldn't be good and defy my family. But if I
believed what I was saying . . . As if he could read my mind, he asked:
 "But do you really believe those things? "

                                                                       36

  "Maybe yes. Maybe no, " I said. I couldn't bear to see him look so
sad. And I think more on account of that than anything else I told
him the whole story of how I'd run off with the players. I told him
what I'd never told anyone, not even my mother, about those few days
and the happiness they'd given me.
  "Now, how could it not have been good, " I asked, "to give and
receive such happiness? We brought to life that town when we put on
our play. Magic, I tell you. It could heal the sick, it could. " He shook
his head. And I knew there were things he wanted to say which out of
respect for me he was leaving to silence.
  "You don't understand, do you? " I asked.
  "Lestat, sin always feels good, " he said gravely. "Don't you see that?
Why do you think the Church has always condemned the players? It
was from Dionysus, the wine god, that the theater came. You can read
that in Aristotle. And Dionysus was a god that drove men to
debauchery. It felt good to you to lie on that stage because it was
abandoned and lewd-the age-old service of the god of the grape-and
you were having a high time of it defying your father-'
  "No, Nicki. No, a thousand times no. "
  "Lestat, we're partners in sin, " he said, smiling finally.
  "We've always been. We've both behaved badly, both been utterly
disreputable. It's what binds us together. " Now it was my turn to
look sad and hurt. And the Golden Moment was gone beyond
reprieve- unless something new was to happen.
  "Come on, " I said suddenly. "Get your violin, and we'll go off
somewhere in the woods where the music won't wake up anybody.
We'll see if there isn't some goodness in it. "
  "You're a madman! " he said. But he grabbed the unopened bottle
by the neck and headed for the door immediately. I was right behind
him. When he came out of his house with the violin, he said:
  "Let's go to the witches' place! Look, it's a half moon. Plenty of light.
We'll do the devil's dance and play for the spirits of the witches. " I
laughed. I had to be drunk to go along with that. "We'll reconsecrate
the spot, " I insisted,
  "with good and pure music. " It had been years and years since I'd
walked in the witches' place. The moon was bright enough, as he'd
said, to see the charred stakes in their grim circle and the ground in
which nothing ever grew even one hundred years after the burnings.
The new saplings of the forest kept their distance. And so the wind
struck the clearing, and above, clinging to the rocky slope, the village
hovered in darkness. A faint chill passed over me, but it was the mere
shadow of the anguish I'd felt as a child when I'd heard those awful

                                                                        37

words "roasted alive, " when I had imagined the suffering. Nicki's
white lace shoes shone in the pale light, and he struck up a gypsy song
at once and danced round in a circle as he played it. I sat on a broad
burned stump of tree and drank from the bottle. And the
heartbreaking feeling came as it always did with the music. What sin
was there, I thought, except to live out my life in this awful place? And
pretty soon I was silently and unobtrusively crying. Though it seemed
the music had never stopped, Nicki was comforting me. We sat side
by side and he told me that the world was full of inequities and that we
were prisoners, he and I, of this awful corner of France, and someday
we would break out of it. And I thought of my mother in the castle
high up the mountain, and the sadness numbed me until I couldn't
bear it, and Nicki started playing again, telling me to dance and to
forget everything. Yes, that's what it could make you do, I wanted to
say. Is that sin? How can it be evil? I went after him as he danced in a
circle. The notes seemed to be flying up and out of the violin as if they
were made of gold. I could almost see them flashing. I danced round
and round him now and he sawed away into a deeper and more
frenzied music. I spread the wings of the fur lined cape and threw
back my head to look at the moon. The music rose all around me like
smoke, and the witches' place was no more. There was only the sky
above arching down to the mountains. We were closer for all this in
the days that followed. But a few nights later, something altogether
extra-ordinary happened. It was late. We were at the inn again and
Nicolas, who was walking about the room and gesturing dramatically,
declared what had been on our minds all along. That we should run
away to Paris, even if we were penniless, that it was better than
remaining here. Even if we lived as beggars in Paris! It had to be
better. Of course we had both been building up to this.
  "Well, beggars in the streets it might be, Nicki, " I said. "Because I'll
be damned in hell before I'll play the penniless country cousin begging
at the big houses. "
  "Do you think I want you to do that? " he demanded. "I mean run
away, Lestat, " he said. "Spite them, every one of them. " Did I want to
go on like this? So our fathers would curse us. After all, our life was
meaningless here. Of course, we both knew this running off together
would be a thousand times more serious than what I had done before.
We weren't boys anymore, we were men. Our fathers would curse us,
and this was something neither of us could laugh off. Also we were old
enough to know what poverty meant.
  "What am I going to do in Paris when we get hungry? " I asked.
"Shoot rats for supper? "

                                                                         38

  "I'll play my violin for coins on the boulevard du Temple if I have to,
and you can go to the theaters! " Now he was really challenging me.
He was saying, Is it all words with you, Lestat?
  "With your looks, you know, you'd be on the stage in the boulevard
du Temple in no time. " I loved this change in "our conversation "! I
loved seeing him believe we could do it. All his cynicism had vanished,
even though he did throw in the word "spite " every ten words or so. It
seemed possible suddenly to do all this. And this notion of the
meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us. I took up the
theme again that music and acting were good because they drove back
chaos. Chaos was the meaninglessness of day-to-day life, and if we
were to die now, our lives would have been nothing but
meaninglessness. In fact, it came to me that my mother dying soon
was meaningless and I confided in Nicolas what she had said. "I'm
perfectly horrified. I'm afraid. " Well, if there had been a Golden
Moment in the room it was gone now. And something different
started to happen. I should call it the Dark Moment, but it was still
high-pitched and full of eerie light. We were talking rapidly, cursing
this meaninglessness, and when Nicolas at last sat down and put his
head in his hands, I took some glamourous and hearty swigs of wine
and went to pacing and gesturing as he had done before. I realized
aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably
don't find out the answer as to why we were ever alive. Even the
avowed atheist probably thinks that in death he'll get some answer. I
mean God will be there, or there won't be anything at all.
  "But that's just it, " I said, "we don't make any discovery at that
moment! We merely stop! We pass into nonexistence without ever
knowing a thing. " I saw the universe, a vision of the sun, the planets,
the stars, black night going on forever. And I began to laugh.
  "Do you realize that! We'll never know why the hell any of it
happened, not even when it's over! " I shouted at Nicolas, who was
sitting back on the bed, nodding and drinking his wine out of a flagon.
"We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this
meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won't any
longer be witnesses to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to
give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead,
without ever knowing! " But I had stopped laughing. I stood still and
I understood perfectly what I was saying! There was no judgment day,
no final explanation, no luminous moment in which all terrible
wrongs would be made right, all horrors redeemed. The witches burnt
at the stake would never be avenged. No one was ever going to tell us
anything! No, I didn't understand it at this moment. I saw it! And I

                                                                       39

began to make the single sound: "Oh! " I said it again "Oh! " and then
I said it louder and louder and louder, and I dropped the wine bottle
on the floor. I put my hands to my head and I kept saying it, and I
could see my mouth opened in that perfect circle that I had described
to my mother and I kept saying, "Oh, oh, oh! " I said it like a great
hiccupping that I couldn't stop. And Nicolas took hold of me and
started shaking arse, saying:
  "Lestat, stop! " I couldn't stop. I ran to the window, unlatched it and
swung out the heavy little glass, and stared at the stars. I couldn't
stand seeing them. I couldn't stand seeing the pure emptiness, the
silence, the absolute absence of any answer, and I started roaring as
Nicolas pulled me back from the windowsill and pulled shut the glass.
  "You'll be all right, " he said over and over. Someone was beating on
the door. It was the innkeeper, demanding why we had to carry on
like this.
  "You'll feel all right in the morning, " Nicolas kept insisting. "You
just have to sleep. " We had awakened everyone. I couldn't be quiet. I
kept making the same sound over again. And I ran out of the inn with
Nicolas behind me, and down the street of the village and up towards
the castle with Nicolas trying to catch up with me, and through the
gates and up into my roam.
  "Sleep, that's what you need, " he kept saying to me desperately. I
was lying against the wall with my hands aver my ears, and that sound
kept coming. "Oh, oh, oh. "
  "In the morning, " he said, "it will be better. " Well, it was not better
in the morning. And it was no better by nightfall, and in fact it got
worse with the coming of the darkness. I walked and talked and
gestured like a contented human being, but I was flayed. I was
shuddering. My teeth were chattering. I couldn't stop it. I was staring
at everything around me in horror. The darkness terrified me. The
sight of the old suits of armor in the hall terrified me. I stared at the
mace and the flail I'd taken out after the wolves. I stared at the faces of
my brothers. I stared at everything, seeing behind every configuration
of color and light and shadow the same thing: death. Only it wasn't
just death as I'd thought of it before, it was death the way I saw it now.
Real death, total death, inevitable, irreversible, and resolving nothing!
And in this unbearable state of agitation I commenced to do
something I'd never done before. I turned to those around me and
questioned them relentlessly.
  "But do you believe in God? " I asked my brother Augustin. "How
can you live if you don't! "


                                                                         40

  "But do you really believe in anything! " I demanded of my blind
father. "If you knew you were dying at this very minute, would you
expect to see God or darkness! Tell me. "
  "You're mad, you've always been mad! " he shouted. "Get out of this
house! You'll drive us all crazy. " He stood up, which was hard for
him, being crippled and blind, and he tried to throw his goblet at me
and naturally he missed. I couldn't look at my mother. I couldn't be
near her. I didn't want to make her suffer with my questions. I went
down to the inn. I couldn't bear to think of the witches' place. I
would not have walked to that end of the village for anything! I put
my hands over my ears and shut my eyes.
  "Go away! " I said at the thought of those who'd died like that
without ever, ever understanding anything. The second day it was no
better. And it wasn't any better by the end of the week either. I ate,
drank, slept, but every waking moment was pure panic and pure pain.
I went to the village priest and demanded did he really believe the
Body of Christ was present on the altar at the Consecration. And after
hearing his stammered answers, and seeing the fear in his eyes, I went
away more desperate than before.
  "But how do you live, how do you go on breathing and moving and
doing things when you know there is no explanation? " I was raving
finally. And then Nicolas said maybe the music would make me feel
better. He would play the violin.

  I was afraid of the intensity of it. But we went to the orchard and in
the sunshine Nicolas played every song he knew. I sat there with my
arms folded and my knees drawn up, my teeth chattering though we
were right in the hot sun, and the sun was glaring off the little polished
violin, and I watched Nicolas swaying into the music as he stood
before me, the raw pure sounds swelling magically to fill the orchard
and tile valley, though it wasn't magic, and Nicolas put his arms
around me finally and we just sat there silent, and then he said very
softly, "Lestat, believe me, this will pass. "
  "Play again, " I said. "The music is innocent. " Nicolas smiled and
nodded. Pamper the madman. And I knew it wasn't going to pass,
and nothing for the moment could make me forget, but what I felt was
inexpressible gratitude for the music, that in this horror there could be
something as beautiful as that. You couldn't understand anything;
and you couldn't change anything. But you could make music like
that. And I felt the same gratitude when I saw the village children
dancing, when I saw their arms raised and their knees bent, and their
bodies turning to the rhythm of the songs they sang. I started to cry

                                                                        41

watching them. I wandered into the church and on my knees I leaned
against the wall and I looked at the ancient statues and I felt the same
gratitude looking at the finely carved fingers and the noses and the ears
and the expressions on their faces and the deep folds in their garments,
and I couldn't stop myself from crying. At least we had these beautiful
things, I said. Such goodness. But nothing natural seemed beautiful
to me now! The very sight of a great tree standing alone in a field
could make me tremble and cry out. Fill the orchard with music. And
let me tell you a little secret. It never did pass, really.

  6

  What caused it? Was it the late night drinking and talking, or did it
have to do with my mother and her saying she was going to die? Did
the wolves have something to do with it? Was it a spell cast upon the
imagination by the witches' place? I don't know. It had come like
something visited upon me from outside. One minute it was an idea,
and the next it was real. I think you can invite that sort of thing, but
you can't make it come. Of course it was to slacken. But the sky was
never quite the same shade of blue again. I mean the world looked
different forever after, and even in moments of exquisite happiness
there was the darkness lurking, the sense of our frailty and our
hopelessness. Maybe it was a presentiment. But I don't think so. It
was more important than that, and frankly I don't believe in
presentiments. But to return to the story, during all this misery I kept
away from my mother. I wasn't going to say these monstrous things
about death and chaos to her. But she heard from everyone else that
I'd lost my reason. And finally, on the first Sunday night of Lent, she
came to me. I was alone in my room and the whole household had
gone down to the village at twilight for the big bonfire that was the
custom every year on this evening. I had always hated the celebration.
It had a ghastly aspect to it-the roaring flames, the dancing and
singing, the peasants going afterwards through the orchards with their
torches to the tune of their strange chanting. We had had a priest for a
little while who called it pagan. But they got rid of him fast enough.
The farmers of our mountains kept to their old rituals. It was to make
the trees bear and the crops grow, all this. And on this occasion, more
than any other, I felt I saw the kind of men and women who could
burn witches. In my present frame of mind, it struck terror. I sat by
my own little fire, trying to resist the urge to go to the window and
look down on the big fire that drew me as strongly as it scared me. My


                                                                        42

mother came in, closed the door behind her, and told me that she
must talk to me. Her whole manner was tenderness.
  "Is it on account of my dying, what's come over you? " she asked.
"Tell me if it is. And put your hands in mine. " She even kissed me.
She was frail in her faded dressing gown, and her hair was undone. I
couldn't stand to see the streaks of gray in it. She looked starved. But
I told her the truth. I didn't know, and then I explained some of what
had happened in the inn. I tried not to convey the horror of it, the
strange logic of it. I tried not to make it so absolute. She listened and
then she said, "You're such a fighter, my son. You never accept. Not
even when it's the fate of all mankind, will you accept it. "
  "I can't! " I said miserably.
  "I love you for it, " she said. "It's all too like you that you should see
this in a tiny bedroom in the inn late at night when you're drinking
wine. And it's entirely like you to rage against it the way you rage
against everything else. " I started to cry again though I knew she
wasn't condemning me. And then she took out a handkerchief and
opened it to reveal several gold coins.
  "You'll get over this, " she said. "For the moment, death is spoiling
life for you, that's all. But life is more important than death. You'll
realize it soon enough. Now listen to what I have to say. I've had the
doctor here and the old woman in the village who knows more about
healing than he knows. Both agree with me I won't live too long. "
  "Stop, Mother, " I said, aware of how selfish I was being, but unable
to hold back. "And this time there'll be no gifts. Put the money away.
"
  "Sit down, " she said. She pointed to the bench near the hearth.
Reluctantly I did as I was told. She sat beside me.
  "I know, " she said, "that you and Nicolas are talking of running
away. "
  "I won't go, Mother. . . "
  "What, until I'm dead? " I didn't answer her. I can't convey to you
the frame of mind. I was still raw, trembling, and we had to talk about
the fact that this living, breathing woman was going to stop living and
breathing and start to putrefy and rot away, that her soul would spin
into an abyss, that everything she had suffered in life, including the
end of it, would come to nothing at all. Her little face was like
something painted on a veil. And from the distant village came the
thinnest sound of the singing villagers.
  "I want you to go to Paris, Lestat, " she said. "I want you to take this
money, which is all I have left from my family. I want to know you're
in Paris, Lestat, when my-time comes. I want to die knowing you are

                                                                           43

in Paris. " I was startled. I remembered her stricken expression years
ago when they'd brought me back from the Italian troupe. I looked at
her for a long moment. She sounded almost angry in her
persuasiveness.
  "I'm terrified of dying, " she said. Her voice went almost dry. "And I
swear I will go mad if I don't know you're in Paris and you're free
when it finally comes. " I questioned her with my eyes. I was asking
her with my eyes, "Do you really mean this? "
  "I have kept you here as surely as your father has, " she said. "Not on
account of pride, but on account of selfishness. And now I'm going to
atone for it. I'll see you go. And I don't care what you do when you
reach Paris, whether you sing while Nicolas plays the violin, or turn
somersaults on the stage at the St. Germain Fair. But go, and do what
you will do as best you can. " I tried to take her in my arms. She
stiffened at first but then I felt her weaken and she melted against me,
and she gave herself over so completely to me in that moment that I
think I understood why she had always been so restrained. She cried,
which I'd never heard her do. And I loved this moment for all its pain.
I was ashamed of loving it, but I wouldn't let her go. I held her tightly,
and maybe kissed her for all the times she'd never let me do it. We
seemed for the moment like two parts of the same thing. And then she
grew calm. She seemed to settle into herself, and slowly but very
firmly she released me and pushed me away. She talked for a long
time. She said things I didn't understand then, about how when she
would see me riding out to hunt, she felt some wondrous pleasure in
it, and she felt that same pleasure when I angered everyone and
thundered my questions at my father and brothers as to why we had to
live the way we lived. She spoke in an almost eerie way of my being a
secret part of her anatomy, of my being the organ for her which
women do not really have.
  "You are the man in me, " she said. "And so I've kept you here,
afraid of living without you, and maybe now in sending you away, I
am only doing what I have done before. " She shocked me a little. I
never thought a woman could feel or articulate anything quite like
this.
  "Nicolas's father knows about your plans, " she said. "The innkeeper
overheard you. It's important you leave right away. Take the diligence
at dawn, and write to me as soon as you reach Paris. There are letter
writers at the cemetery of les Innocents near the St. Germain Market.
Find one who can write Italian for you. And then no one will be able
to read the letter but me. " When she left the room, I didn't quite
believe what had happened. For a long moment I stood staring before

                                                                       44

me. I stared at my bed with its mattress of straw, at the two coats I
owned and the red cloak, and my one pair of leather shoes by the
hearth. I stared out the narrow slit of a window at the black hulk of
the mountains I'd known all my life. The darkness, the gloom, slid
back from me for a precious moment. And then I was rushing down
the stairs and down the mountain to the village to find Nicolas and to
tell him we were going to Paris! We were going to do it. Nothing
could stop us this time. He was with his family watching the bonfire.
And as soon as he saw me, he threw his arm around my neck, and I
hooked my arm around his waist and I dragged him away from the
crowds and the blaze, and towards the end of the meadow. The air
smelled fresh and green as it does only in spring. Even the villagers'
singing didn't sound so horrible. I started dancing around in a circle.
  "Get your violin! " I said. "Play a song about going to Paris, we're on
our way. We're going in the morning! "
  "And how are we going to feed ourselves in Paris? " he sang out as he
made with his empty hands to play an invisible violin. "Are you going
to shoot rats for our supper? "
  "Don't ask what we'll do when we get there! " I said. "The important
thing is just to get there. "

  7

  Not even a fortnight passed before I stood in the midst of the
noonday crowds in the vast public cemetery of les Innocents, with its
old vaults and stinking open graves-the most fantastical marketplace I
had ever beheld-and, amid the stench and the noise, bent over an
Italian letter writer dictating my first letter to my mother. Yes, we had
arrived safely after traveling day and night, and we had rooms in the lie
de la Cite, and we were inexpressibly happy, and Paris was warm and
beautiful and magnificent beyond all imagining. I wished I could have
taken the pen myself and written to her. I wished I could have told her
what it was like, seeing these towering mansions, ancient winding
streets aswarm with beggars, peddlers, noblemen, houses of four and
five stories banking the crowded boulevards. I wished I could have
described the carriages to her, the rumbling confections of gilt and
glass bullying their way over the Pont Neuf and the Pont Notre Dame,
streaming past the Louvre, the Palais Royal. I wished I could describe
the people, the gentlemen with their clocked stockings and silver
walking sticks, tripping through the mud in pastel slippers, the ladies
with their pearl- encrusted wigs and swaying panniers of silk and
muslin, my first certain glimpse of Queen Marie Antoinette herself

                                                                       45

walking boldly through the gardens of the Tuileries. Of course she'd
seen it all years and years before I was born. She'd lived in Naples and
London and Rome with her father. But I wanted to tell her what she
had given to me, how it was to hear the choir in Notre Dame, to push
into the jam-packed cafes with Nicolas, talk with his old student
cronies over English coffee, what it was like to get dressed up in
Nicolas's fine clothes-he made me do it-and stand below the footlights
at the Comedie-Francaise gazing up in adoration at the actors on the
stage. But all I wrote in this letter was perhaps the very best of it, the
address of the garret rims we called our home in the lie de la Cite, and
the news:
  "I have been hired in a real theater to study as an actor with a fine
prospect of performing very soon. " What I didn't tell her was that we
had to walk up six flights of stairs to our rooms, that men and women
brawled and screamed in the alleyways beneath our windows, that we
had run out of money already, thanks to my dragging us to every
opera, ballet, and drama in town. And that the establishment where I
worked was a shabby little boulevard theater, one step up from a
platform at the fair, and my jobs were to help the players dress, sell
tickets, sweep up, and throw out the troublemakers. But I was in
paradise again. And so was Nicolas though no decent orchestra in the
city would hire him, and he was now playing solos with the little
bunch of musicians in the theater where I worked, and when we were
really pinched he did play right on the boulevard, with me beside him,
holding out the hat. We were shameless! We ran up the steps each
night with our bottle of cheap wine and a loaf of fine sweet Parisian
bread, which was ambrosia after what we'd eaten in the Auvergne.
And in the light of our one tallow candle, the garret was the most
glorious place I'd ever inhabited. As I mentioned before, I'd seldom
been in a little wooden roam except in the inn. Well, this room had
plaster walls and a plaster ceiling! It was really Paris! It had polished
wood flooring, and even a tiny little fireplace with a new chimney
which actually made a draft. So what if we had to sleep on lumpy
pallets, and the neighbors woke us up fighting. We were waking up in
Paris, and could roam arm in arm for hours through streets and
alleyways, peering into shops full of jewelry and plate, tapestries and
statues, wealth such as I'd never seen. Even the reeking meat markets
delighted me. The crash and clatter of the city, the tireless busyness of
its thousands upon thousands of laborers, clerks, craftsmen, the
comings and goings of an endless multitude. By day I almost forgot
the vision of the inn, and the darkness. Unless, of course, I glimpsed
some uncollected corpse in a filthy alleyway, of which there were

                                                                          46

many, or I happened upon a public execution in the place de Grave.
And I was always happening upon a public execution in the place de
Grave. I'd wander out of the square shuddering, almost moaning. I
could become obsessed with it if not distracted. But Nicolas was
adamant.
  "Lestat, no talk of the eternal, the immutable, the unknowable! " He
threatened to hit me or shake me if I should start. And when twilight
came on-the time I hated more than ever-whether I had seen an
execution or not, whether the day had been glorious or vexing, the
trembling would start in me. And only one thing saved me from it:
the warmth and excitement of the brightly lighted theater, and I made
sure that before dusk I was safely inside. Now, in the Paris of those
times, the theaters of the boulevards weren't even legitimate houses at
all. Only the Comedie-Francaise and the Theatre des Italians were
government- sanctioned theaters, and to them all serious drama
belonged. This included tragedy as well as comedy, the plays off
Racine, Corneille, the brilliant Voltaire. But the old Italian commedia
that I loved-Pantaloon, Harlequin, Scaramouche, and the rest- lived
on as they always had, with tightrope walkers, acrobats, jugglers, and
puppeteers, in the platform spectacles at the St. Germain and the St.
Laurent fairs. And the boulevard theaters had grown out of these fairs.
By my time, the last decades of the eighteenth century, they were
permanent establishments along the boulevard du Temple, and
though they played to the poor who couldn't afford the grand houses,
they also collected a very well-to-do crowd. Plenty of the aristocracy
and the rich bourgeoisie crowded into the loges to see the boulevard
performances, because they were lively and full of good talent, and not
so stiff as the plays of the great Racine or the great Voltaire. We did
the Italian comedy just as I'd learned it before, full of improvisation so
that every night it was new and different yet always the same. And we
also did singing and all kinds of nonsense, not just because the people
loved it, but because we had to: we couldn't be accused of breaking the
monopoly of the state theaters on straight plays. The house itself was a
rickety wooden rattrap, seating no more than three hundred, but its
little stage and props were elegant, it had a luxurious blue velvet stage
curtain, and its private boxes had screens. And its actors and actresses
were seasoned and truly talented, or so it seemed to me. Even if I
hadn't had this newly acquired dread of the dark, this "malady of
mortality, " as Nicolas persisted in calling it, it couldn't have been
more exciting to go through that stage door. For five to six hours
every evening, I lived and breathed in a little universe of shouting and
laughing and quarreling men and women, struggling for this one and

                                                                        47

against that one, aid of us comrades in the wings even if we weren't
friends. Maybe it was like being in a little boat on the ocean, all of us
pulling together, unable to escape each other. It was divine. Nicolas
was slightly less enthusiastic, but then that was to be expected. And he
got even more ironical when his rich student friends came around to
talk to him. They thought he was a lunatic to live as he did. And for
me, a nobleman shoveling actresses into their costumes and emptying
slop buckets, they had not words at all. Of course all that these young
bourgeois really wanted was to be aristocrats. They bought titles,
married into aristocratic families whenever they could. And it's one of
the little jokes of history that they got mixed up in the Revolution, and
helped to abolish the class which in fact they really wanted to join. I
didn't care if we ever saw Nicolas's friends again. The actors didn't
know about my family, and in favor of the very simple Lestat de
Valois, which meant nothing actually, I'd dropped my real name, de
Lioncourt. I was learning everything I could about the stage. I
memorized, I mimicked. I asked endless questions. And only stopped
my education long enough each night for that moment when Nicolas
played his solo on the violin. He'd rise from his seat in the tiny
orchestra, the spotlight would pick him out from the others, and he
would rip into a little sonata, sweet enough and just short enough to
bring down the house. And all the while I dreamed of my own
moment; when the old actors, whom I studied and pestered and
imitated and waited upon like a lackey, would finally say: "All right,
Lestat, tonight we need you as Lelio. Now you ought to know what to
do. " It came in late August at last. Paris was at its warmest, and the
nights were almost balmy and the house was full of a restless audience
canning itself with handkerchiefs and handbills. The thick white paint
was melting on my face as I put it on. I wore a pasteboard sword with
Nicolas's best velvet coat, and I was trembling before I stepped on the
stage thinking, 'This is like waiting to be executed or something.' But
as soon as I stepped out there, I turned and looked directly into the
jam-packed hall and the strangest thing happened. The fear
evaporated. I beamed at the audience and very slowly I bowed. I
stared at the lovely Flaminia as if I were seeing her for the first time. I
had to win her. The romp began. The stage belonged to me as it had
years and years ago in that far-off " country town. And as we pranced
madly together across the boards-quarreling, embracing, clowning-
laughter rocked the house. I could feel the attention as if it were an
embrace. Each gesture, each line brought a roar from the audience-it
was too easy almost-and we could have worked it for another half
hour if the other actors, eager to get into the next trick as they called it,

                                                                         48

hadn't forced us finally towards the wings. The crowd was standing up
to applaud us. And it wasn't that country audience under the open
sky. These were Parisians shouting for Lelio and Flaminia to come
back out. In the shadows off the wings, I reeled. I almost collapsed. I
could not see anything for the moment but the vision of the audience
gazing up at me over the footlights. I wanted to go right back on stage.
I grabbed Flanunia and kissed her and realized that she was kissing me
back passionately. Then Renaud, the old manager, pulled her away.
  "All right, Lestat, " he said as if he were cross about something. "All
right, you've done tolerably well, I'm going to let you go on regularly
from now on. " But before I could start jumping up and down for joy,
half the troup materialized around us. And Luchina, one of the
actresses, immediately spoke up.
  "Oh no, you'll not let him go on regularly " she said. "He's the
handsomest actor on the boulevard du Temple and you'll hire him
outright for it, and pay him outright for it, and he doesn't touch
another broom or mop. " I was terrified. My career had just started
and it was about to be over, but to my amazement Renaud agreed to
all her terms. Of course I was very flattered to be called handsome,
and I understood as I had years ago that Lelio, the lover, is supposed to
have considerable style. An aristocrat with any breeding whatsoever
was perfect for the part. But if I was going to make the Paris audiences
really notice me, if I was going to have them talking about me at the
Comedic-Francaise, I had to be more than some yellow-haired angel
fallen out of a marquis's family onto the stage. I had to be a great
actor, and that is exactly what I determined to be.

  That night Nicolas and I celebrated with a colossal drunk. We had
all the troupe up to our rooms for it, and I climbed out on the slippery
rooftops and opened my arms to Paris and Nicolas played his violin in
the window until we'd awakened the whole neighborhood. The music
was rapturous, yet people were snarling and screaming up the
alleyways, and banging on pots and pans. We paid no attention. We
were dancing and singing as we had in the witches' place. I almost fell
off the window ledge. The next day, bottle in hand, I dictated the
whole story to the Italian letter writer in the stinking sunshine in les
Innocents and saw that the letter went off to my mother at once. I
wanted to embrace everybody I saw in the streets. I was Lelio. I was
an actor. By September I had my name on the handbills. And I sent
those to my mother, too. And we weren't doing the old commedia.
We were performing a farce by a famous writer who, on account of a
general playwrights' strike, couldn't get it performed at the Comedie-

                                                                        49

Francaise. Of course we couldn't say his name, but everyone knew it
was his work, and half the court was packing Renaud's House of
Thesbians every night. I wasn't the lead, but I was the young lover, a
sort of Lelio again really, which was almost better than the lead, and I
stole every scene in which I appeared. Nicolas had taught me the part,
bawling me out constantly for not learning to read. And by the fourth
performance, the playwright had written extra lines for me. Nicki was
having his own moment at the intermezzo, when his latest rendering
of a frothy little Mozart sonata was keeping the house in its seats. Even
his student friends were back. We were getting invitations to private
balls. I went tearing off to les Innocents every few days to write to my
mother, and finally I had a clipping from an English paper, The
Spectator, to send her, which praised our little play and in particular
the blond-haired rogue who steals the hearts of the ladies in the third
and fourth acts. Of course I couldn't read this clipping. But the
gentleman who'd brought it to me said it was complementary, and
Nicolas swore it was too. When the first chill nights of fall came on, I
wore the fur lined red cloak on the stage. You could have seen it in the
back row of the gallery even if you were almost blind. I had more skill
now with the white makeup, shading it here and there to heighten the
contours of my face, and though my eyes were ringed in black and my
lips reddened a little, I looked both startling and human at the same
time. I got love notes from the women in the crowd. Nicolas was
studying music in the mornings with an Italian maestro. Yet we had
money enough for good food, wood, and coal. My mother's letters
came twice a week and said her health had taken a turn for the better.
She wasn't coughing as badly as last winter. She wasn't in pain. But
our fathers had disowned us and would not acknowledge any mention
of our names. We were too happy to worry about that. But the dark
dread, the "malady of mortality, " was with me a lot when the cold
weather came on. The cold seemed worse in Paris. It wasn't clean as it
had been in the mountains. The poor hovered in doorways, shivering
and hungry, the crooked unpaved streets were thick with filthy slush. I
saw barefoot children suffering before my very eyes, and more
neglected corpses lying about then ever before. I was never so glad of
the fur-lined cape as I was then. I wrapped it around Nicolas and held
him close to me when we went out together, and we walked in a tight
embrace through the snow and the rain. Cold or no cold, I can't
exaggerate the happiness of these days. Life was exactly what I thought
it could be. And I knew I wouldn't be long in Renaud's theater.
Everybody was saying so. I had visions of the big stages, of touring
London and Italy and even America with a great troupe of actors. Yet

                                                                       50

there was no reason to hurry. My cup was full. But in the month of
October when Paris was already freezing, I commenced to see, quite
regularly, a strange face in the audience that invariably distracted me.
Sometimes it almost made me forget what I was doing, this face. And
then it would be gone as if I'd imagined it. I must have seen it off and
on for a fortnight before I finally mentioned it to Nicki. I felt foolish
and found it hard to put into words:
  "There is someone out there watching me, " I said.
  "Everyone's watching you, " Nicki said. "That's what you want. " He
was feeling a little sad that evening, and his answer was slightly sharp.
Earlier when he was making the fire, he had said he would never
amount to much with the violin. In spite of his ear and his skill, there
was too much he didn't know. And I would be a great actor, he was
sure. I had said this was nonsense, but it was a shadow falling over my
soul. I remembered my mother telling me that it was too late for him.
He wasn't envious, he said. He was just unhappy a little, that's all. I
decided to drop the matter of the mysterious face. I tried to think of
some way to encourage him. I reminded him that his playing
produced profound emotions in people, that even the actors backstage
stopped to listen when he played. He had an undeniable talent.
  "But I want to be a great violinist, " he said. "And I'm afraid it will
never be. As long as we were at home, I could pretend that it was
going to be. "
  "You can't give up on it! " I said.
  "Lestat, let me be frank with you, " he said. "Things are easy for you.
What you set your sights on you get for yourself. I know what you're
thinking about all the years you were miserable at home. But even
then, what you really set your mind to, you accomplished. And we left
for Paris the very day that you decided to do it. "
  "You don't regret coming to Paris, do you? " I asked.
  "Of course not. I simply mean that you think things are possible
which aren't possible! At least not for the rest of us. Like killing the
wolves... " A coldness passed over me when he said this. And for some
reason I thought of that mysterious face again in the audience, the one
watching. Something to do with the wolves. Something to do with the
sentiments Nicki was expressing. Didn't make sense. I tried to shrug
it off.
  "If you'd set out to play the violin, you'd probably be playing for the
Court by now, " he said.
  "Nicki, this kind of talk is poison, " I said under my breath. "You
can't do anything but try to get what you want. You knew the odds


                                                                         51

were against you when you started. There isn't anything else . . .
except... "
  "I know. " He smiled. "Except the meaninglessness. Death. "
  "Yes, " I said. "All you can do is make your life have meaning, make
it good. "
  "Oh, not goodness again, " he said. "You and your malady of
mortality, and your malady of goodness. " He had been looking at the
fire and he turned to me with a deliberately scornful expression.
"We're a pack of actors and entertainers who can't even be buried in
consecrated ground. We're outcasts. "
  "God, if you could only believe in it, " I said, "that we do good when
we make others forget their sorrow, make them forget for a little while
that. . . "
  "What? That they are going to die? " He smiled in a particularly
vicious way. "Lestat, I thought all this would change with you when
we got to Paris. "
  "That was foolish of you, Nick, " I answered. He was making me
angry now. "I do good in the boulevard du Temple. I feel it- " I
stopped because I saw the mysterious face again and a dark feeling had
passed over me, something of foreboding. Yet even that startling face
was usually smiling, that was the odd thing. Yes, smiling . . .
enjoying . . .
  "Lestat, I love you, " Nicki said gravely. "I love you as I have loved
few people in my life, but in a real way you're a fool with all your ideas
about goodness. " I laughed.
  "Nicolas, " I said, "I can live without God. I can even come to live
with the idea there is no life after. But I do not think I could go on if I
did not believe in the possibility of goodness. Instead of mocking me
for once, why don't you tell me what you believe? "
  "As I see it, " he said, "there's weakness and there's strength. And
there is good art and bad art. And that is what I believe in. At the
moment we are engaged in making what is rather bad art and it has
nothing to do with goodness! "
  "Our conversation " could have fumed into a full-scale fight here if I
had said all that was on my mind about bourgeois pomposity. For I
fully believed that our work at Renaud's was in many ways finer than
what I saw at the grand theaters. Only the framework was less
impressive. Why couldn't a bourgeois gentleman forget about the
frame? How could he be made to look at something other than the
surface? I took a deep breath.
  "If goodness does exist, " he said, "then I'm the opposite of it. I'm
evil and I revel in it. I thumb my nose at goodness. And if you must

                                                                        52

know, I don't play the violin for the idiots who come to Renaud's to
make them happy. I play it for me, for Nicolas. " I didn't want to hear
any more. It was time to go to bed. But I was bruised by this little talk
and he knew it, and as I started to pull off my boots, he got up from
the chair and came and sat next to me.
  "I'm sorry, " he said in the most broken voice. It was so changed
from the posture of a minute ago that I looked up at him, and he was
so young and so miserable that I couldn't help putting my arm around
him and telling him that he must not worry about it anymore.
  "You have a radiance in you, Lestat, " he said. "And it draws
everyone to you. It's there even when you're angry, or discouraged. "
  "Poetry, " I said. "We're both tired. "
  "No, it's true, " he said. "You have a light in you that's almost
blinding. But in me there's only darkness. Sometimes I think it's like
the darkness that infected you that night in the inn when you began to
cry and to tremble. You were so helpless, so unprepared for it. I try to
keep the darkness from you because I need your light. I need it
desperately, but you don't need the darkness. "
  "You're the mad one, " I said. "If you could see yourself, hear your
own voice, your music-which of course you play for yourself-you
wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your
own. Somber, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a
thousand different patterns. " The next night the performance went
especially well. The audience was a lively one, inspiring all of us to
extra tricks. I did some new dance steps that for some reason never
proved interesting in private rehearsal but worked miraculously on the
stage. And Nicki was extraordinary with the violin, playing one of his
own compositions. But towards the end of the evening I glimpsed the
mysterious face again. It jarred me worse than it ever had, and I
almost lost the rhythm of my song. In fact it seemed my head for a
moment was swimming. When Nicki and I were alone I had to talk
about it, about the peculiar sensation that I had fallen asleep on the
stage and had been dreaming. We sat by the hearth together with our
wine on the top of a little barrel, and in the firelight Nicki looked as
weary and dejected as he had the night before. I didn't want to trouble
him, but I couldn't forget about the face.
  "Well, what does he look like? " Nicolas asked. He was warming his
hands. And over his shoulder, I saw through the window a city of
snow-covered rooftops that made me feel more cold. I didn't like this
conversation.
  "That's the worst part of it, " I said. "All I see is a face. He must be
wearing something black, a cloak and even a hood. But it looks like a

                                                                          53

mask to me, the face, very white and strangely clear. I mean the lines
in his face are so deep they seemed to be etched with black greasepaint.
I see it for a moment. It veritably glows. Then when I look again,
there's no one there. Yet this is an exaggeration. It's more subtle than
that, the way he looks and yet . . . " The description seemed to
disturb Nicki as much as it disturbed me. He didn't say anything. But
his face softened somewhat as if he were forgetting his sadness.
  "Well, I don't want to get your hopes up, " he said. He was very kind
and sincere now. "But maybe it is a mask you're seeing. And maybe
it's someone from the Comedie-Francaise come to see you perform. "
I shook my head. "I wish it was, but no one would wear a mask like
that. And I'll tell you something else, too. " He waited, but I could see
I was passing on to him some of my own apprehension. He reached
over and took the wine bottle by the neck and poured a little in my
glass.
  "Whoever he is, " I said, "he knows about the wolves. "
  "He what? "
  "He knows about the wolves. " I was very unsure of myself. It was
like recounting a dream I had all but forgotten. "He knows I killed the
wolves back home. He knows the cloak I wear is lined with their fur. "
  "What are you talking about? You mean you've spoken to him? "
  "No, that's just it, " I said. This was so confusing to me, so vague. I
felt that swimming sensation again. "That's what I'm trying to tell you.
I've never spoken to him, never been near him. But he knows. "
  "Ah, Lestat, " he said. He sat back on the bench. He was smiling at
me in the most endearing way. "Next you'll be seeing ghosts. You
have the strongest imagination of anyone I've ever known. "
  "There are no ghosts, " I answered softly. I scowled at our little fire.
I laid a few more lumps of coal on it. All the humor went out of
Nicolas.
  "How in the hell could he know about the wolves? And how could
you... "
  "I told you already, I don't know. " I said. I sat thinking and not
saying anything, disgusted, maybe, at how ridiculous it all seemed.
And then as we remained silent together, and the fire was the only
sound or movement in the room, the name Wolfkiller came to me
very distinctly as if someone had spoken it. But nobody had. I looked
at Nicks, painfully aware that his lips had never moved, and I think all
the blood drained from my face. I felt not the dread of death as I had
on so many other nights, but an emotion that was really alien to me:
fear. I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything,
when Nicolas kissed me.

                                                                         54

"Let's go to bed, " he said softly.




                                       55

  Part II - The Legacy of Magnus

  It must have been three o'clock in the morning; I'd heard the church
bells in my sleep. And like all sensible men in Paris, we had our door
barred and our window locked. Not good for a room with a coal fire,
but the roof was a path to our window. And we were locked in. I was
dreaming of the wolves. I was on the mountain and surrounded and I
was swinging the old medieval flail. Then the wolves were dead again,
and the dream was better, only I had all those miles to walk in the
snow. The horse screamed in the snow. My mare turned into a
loathsome insect half smashed on the stone floor. A voice said
"Wolfkiller " long and low, a whisper that was like a summons and a
tribute at the same time. I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did. And
there was someone standing in the room. A tall, bent figure with its
back to the little hearth. Embers still glowed on the hearth. The light
moved upwards, etching the edges of the figure clearly, then dying out
before it reached the shoulders, the head. But I realized I was looking
right at the white face I'd seen in the audience at the theater, and my
mind, opening, sharpening, realized the room was locked, that Nicolas
lay beside me, that this figure stood over our bed. I heard Nicolas's
breathing. I looked into the white face.
  "Wolfkiller, " came the voice again. But the lips hadn't moved, and
the figure drew nearer and I saw that the face was no mask. Black eyes,
quick and calculating black eyes, and white skin, and some appalling
smell coming from it, like the smell of moldering clothes in a damp
room. I think I rose up. Or perhaps I was lifted. Because in an instant
I was standing on my feet. The sleep was slipping off me like
garments. I was backing up into the wall. The figure had my red cloak
in its hands. Desperately I thought of my sword, my muskets. They
were under the bed on the floor. And the thing thrust the red cloak
towards me and then, through the fur-lined velvet, I felt its hand close
on the lapel of my coat. I was torn forward. I was drawn off my feet
across the room. I shouted for Nicolas. I screamed,
  "Nicki, Nicki! " as loud as I could. I saw the partially opened
window, and then suddenly the glass burst into thousands of
fragments and the wooden frame was broken out. I was flying over the
alleyway, six stories above the ground. I screamed. I kicked at this
thing that was carrying me. Caught up in the red cloak, I twisted,
trying to get loose. But we were flying over the rooftop, and now
going up the straight surface of a brick wall! I was dangling in the arm
of the creature, and then very suddenly on the surface of a high place, I
was thrown down. I lay for a moment seeing Paris spread out before

                                                                       56

me in a great circle-the white snow, and chimney pots and church
belfries, and the lowering sky. And then I rose up, stumbling over the
fur-lined cloak, and I started to run. I ran to the edge of the roof and
looked down. Nothing but a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, and then
to another edge and it was exactly the same. I almost fell! I turned
desperate, panting. We were on the top of some square tower, no
more than fifty feet across! And I could see nothing higher in any
direction. And the figure stood staring at me, and I heard come out of
it a low rasping laughter just like the whisper before.
  "Wolfkiller, " it said again.
  "Damn you! " I shouted. "Who the hell are you! " And in a rage I
flew at it with my fists. It didn't move. I struck it as if I were striking
the brick wall. I veritably bounced off it, losing my footing in the snow
and scrambling up and attacking it again. Its laughter grew louder and
louder, and deliberately mocking, but with a strong undercurrent of
pleasure that was even more maddening than the mockery. I ran to
the edge of the tower and then fumed on the creature again.
  "What do you want with me! " I demanded. "Who are you! " And
when it gave nothing but this maddening laughing, I went for it again.
But this time I went for the face and the neck, and I made my hands
like claws to do it, and I pulled off the hood and saw the creature's
black hair and the full shape of its human-looking head. Soft skin. Yet
it was as immovable as before. It backed up a little, raising its arms to
play with me, to push me back and forth as a man would push a little
child. Too fast for my eyes, it moved its face away from me, fuming to
one side and then the other, and all of these movements with seeming
effortlessness, as I frantically tried to hurt it and could feel nothing but
that soft white skin sliding under my fingers and maybe once or twice
its fine black hair.
  "Brave strong little Wolfkiller, " it said to me now in a rounder,
deeper voice. I stopped, panting and covered with sweat, staring at it
and seeing the details of its face. The deep lines I had only glimpsed in
the theater, its mouth drawn up in a jester's smile.
  "Oh, God help me; help me... " I said as I backed away. It seemed
impossible that such a face should move, show expression, and gaze
with such affection on me as it did. "God! "
  "What god is that, Wolfkiller? " it asked. I turned my back on it, and
let out a terrible roar. I felt its hands close on my shoulders like things
forged of metal, and as I went into a last frenzy of struggling, it
whipped me around so that its eyes were sight before me, wide and
dark, and the lips were closed yet still smiling, and then it bent down
and I felt the prick of its teeth on my neck. Out of all the childhood

                                                                          57

tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing
shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light.
  "Vampire! " I gave one last frantic cry, shoving at the creature with
all I had. Then there was silence. Stillness. I knew that we were still
on the roof. I knew that I was being held in the thing's arms. Yet it
seemed we had risen, become weightless, were traveling through the
darkness even more easily than we had traveled before.
  "Yes, yes, " I wanted to say, "exactly. " And a great noise was echoing
all around me, enveloping me, the sound of a deep gong perhaps,
being struck very slowly in perfect rhythm, its sound washing through
me so that I felt the most extraordinary pleasure through all my limbs.
My lips moved, but nothing came out of them; yet this didn't really
matter. All the things I had ever wanted to say were clear to me and
that is what mattered, not that they be expressed. And there was so
much time, so much sweet time in which to say anything and do
anything. There was no urgency at all. Rapture. I said the word, and
it seemed clear to me, that one word, though I couldn't speak or really
move my lips. And I realized I was no longer breathing. Yet
something was making me breathe. It was breathing for me and the
breaths came with the rhythm of the gong which was nothing to do
with my body, and I loved it, the rhythm, the way that it went on and
on, and I no longer had to breathe or speak or know anything. My
mother smiled at me. And I said, "I love you... " to her, and she said,
"Yes, always loved, always loved... " And I was sitting in the monastery
library and I was twelve years old and the monk said to me, "A great
scholar, " and I opened all the books and could read everything, Latin,
Greek, French. The illuminated letters were indescribably beautiful,
and I fumed around and faced the audience in Renaud's theater and
saw all of them on their feet, and a woman moved the painted fan
from in front of her face, and it was Marie Antoinette. She said
  "Wolfkiller, " and Nicolas was running towards me, crying for me to
come back. His face was full of anguish. His hair was loose and his
eyes were rimmed with blood. He tried to catch me. I said, "Nicki, get
away from me! " and I realized in agony, positive agony, that the
sound of the gong was fading away. I cried out, I begged. Don't stop
it, please, please. I don't want to . . . I don't . . . please.
  "Lelio, the Wolfkiller, " said the thing, and it was holding me in its
arms and I was crying because the spell was breaking.
  "Don't, don't. " I was heavy all over, my body had come back to me
with its aches and its pains and my own choking cries, and I was being
lifted, thrown upwards, until I fell over the creature's shoulder and I
felt its arm around my knees. I wanted to say God protect me, I

                                                                        58

wanted to say it with every particle of me but I couldn't say it, and
there was the alleyway below me again, that drop of hundreds of feet,
and the whole of Paris tilted at an appalling angle, and there was the
snow and the searing wind.




  2

  I was awake and I was very thirsty. I wanted a great deal of very cold
white wine, the way it is when you bring it up out of the cellar in
autumn. I wanted something fresh and sweet to eat, like a ripe apple.
It did occur to me that I had lost my reason, though I couldn't have
said why. I opened my eyes and knew it was early evening. The light
might have been morning light, but too much time had passed for
that. It was evening. And through a wide, heavily barred stone
window I saw hills and woods, blanketed with snow, and the vast tiny
collection of rooftops and towers that made up the city far away. I
hadn't seen it like this since the day I came in the post carriage. I
closed my eyes and the vision of it remained as if I'd never opened my
eyes at all. But it was no vision. It was there. And the room was warm
in spite of the window. There had been a fire in the room, I could
smell it, but the fire had gone out. I tried to reason. But I couldn't
stop thinking about cold white wine, and apples in the basket. I could
see the apples. I felt myself drop down out of the branches of the tree,
and I smelled all around me the freshly cut grass. The sunlight was
blinding on the green fields. It shone on Nicolas's brown hair, and on
the deep lacquer of the violin. The music climbed up to the soft,
rolling clouds. And against the sky I saw the battlements of my father's
house. Battlements. I opened my eyes again. And I knew I was lying
in a high tower room several miles from Paris. And just in front of
me, on a crude little wooden table, was a bottle of cold white wine,
precisely as I had dreamed it. For a long time I looked at it, looked at
the frost of droplets covering it, and I could not believe it possible to
reach for it and drink. Never had I known the thirst I was suffering
now. My whole body thirsted. And I was so weak. And I was getting
a little cold. The room moved when I moved. The sky gleamed in the
window. And when at last I did reach for the bottle and pull the cork
from it and smell the tart, delicious aroma, I drank and drank without
stopping, not caring what would happen to me, or where I was, or why
the bottle had been set here. My head swung forward. The bottle was

                                                                         59

almost empty and the faraway city was vanishing in the black sky,
leaving a little sea of lights behind it. I put my hands to my head. The
bed on which I'd been sleeping was no more than stone with straw
strewn upon it, and it was coming to me slowly that I might be in
some sort of jail. But the wine. It had been too good for a jail. Who
would give a prisoner wine like that, unless of course the prisoner was
to be executed. And another aroma came to me, rich and
overpowering and so delicious that it made me moan. I looked about,
or I should say, I tried to look about because I was almost too weak to
move. But the source of this aroma was near to me, and it was a large
bowl of beef broth. The broth was thick with bits of meat, and I could
see the steam rising from it. It was still hot. I grabbed it in both hands
immediately and I drank it as thoughtlessly and greedily as I'd chunk
the wine. It was so satisfying it was as if I'd never known any food like
it, that rich boiled-down essence of the meat, and when the bowl was
empty I fell back, full, almost sick, on the straw. It seemed something
moved in the darkness near me. But I was not sure. I heard the chink
of glass.
  "More wine, " said a voice to me, and I knew the voice. Gradually, I
began remembering everything. Scaling the walls, the small square
rooftop, that smiling white face. For one moment, I thought, No,
quite impossible, it must have been a nightmare. But this just wasn't
so. It had happened, and I remembered the rapture suddenly, the
sound of the gong, and I felt myself grow dizzy as though I were losing
consciousness again. I stopped it. I wouldn't let it happen. And fear
crept over me so that I didn't dare to move.
  "More wine, " said the voice again. Turning my head slightly I saw a
new bottle, corked, but ready for me, outlined against the window's
luminous glow. I felt the thirst again, and this time it was heightened
by the salt of the broth. I wiped my lips and then I reached for the
bottle and again I drank. I fell back against the stone wall, and I
struggled to look clearly through the darkness, half afraid of what I
knew I would see. Of course I was very drunk now. I saw the window,
the city. I saw the little table. And as my eyes moved slowly over the
dusky corners of the room, I saw him there. He no longer wore his
black hooded cape, and he didn't sit or stand as a man might. Rather
he leaned to rest, it seemed, upon the thick stone frame of the window,
one knee bent a little towards it, the other long spindly leg sprawled
out to the other side. His arms appeared to hang at his sides. And the
whole impression was of something limp and lifeless, and yet his face
was as animated as it had been the night before. Huge black eyes
seeming to stretch the white flesh in deep folds, the nose long and thin,

                                                                        60

and the mouth the jester's smile. There were the fang teeth, just
touching the colorless lip, and the hair, a gleaming mass of black and
silver growing up high from the white forehead, and flowing down
over his shoulders and his arms. I think that he laughed. I was beyond
terror. I could not even scream. I had dropped the wine. The glass
bottle was rolling on the floor. And as I tried to move forward, to
gather my senses and make my body more than something drunken
and sluggish, his thin, gangly limbs found animation ail at once. He
advanced on me. I didn't cry out. I gave a low roar of angry terror
and scrambled up off the bed, tripping over the small table and
running from him as fast as I could. But he caught me in long white
fingers that were as powerful and as cold as they had been the night
before.
  "Let me go, damn you, damn you, damn you! " I was stammering.
My reason told me to plead, and I tried. "I'll just go away, please. Let
me out of here. You have to. Let me go. " His gaunt face loomed over
me, his lips drawn up sharply into his white cheeks, and he laughed a
low riotous laugh that seemed endless. I struggled, pushing at him
uselessly, pleading with him again, stammering nonsense and
apologies, and then I cried, "God help me! " He clapped one of those
monstrous hands over my mouth.
  "No more of that in my presence, Wolfkiller, or I'll feed you to the
wolves of hell, " he said with a little sneer. "Hmmmm? Answer me.
Hmmmm? " I nodded and he loosened his grip. His voice had had a
momentary calming effect. He sounded capable of reason when he
spoke. He sounded almost sophisticated. He lifted his hands and
stroked my head as I cringed.
  "Sunlight in the hair, " he whispered, "and the blue sky fixed forever
in your eyes. " He seemed almost meditative as he looked at me. His
breath had no smell whatsoever, nor did his body, it seemed. The
smell of mold was coming from his clothes. I didn't dare to move,
though he was not holding me. I stared at his garments. A ruined silk
shirt with bag sleeves and smocking at the neck of it. And worsted
leggings and short ragged pantaloons. In sum he was dressed as men
had been centuries before. I had seen such clothes in tapestries in my
home, in the paintings of Caravaggio and La Tour that hung in my
mother's rooms.
  "You're perfect, my Lelio, my Wolfkiller, " he said to me, his long
mouth opening wide so that again I saw the small white fangs. They
were the only teeth he possessed. I shuddered. I felt myself dropping
to the floor. But he picked me up easily with one arm and laid me
down gently on the bed. In my mind I was praying fiercely, God help

                                                                       61

me, the Virgin Mary help me, help me, help me, as I peered up into his
face. What was it I was seeing? What had I seen the night before? The
mask of old age, this grinning thing cut deeply with the marks of time
and yet frozen, it seemed, and hard as his hands. He wasn't a living
thing. He was a monster. A vampire was what he was, a blood-
sucking corpse from the grave gifted with intellect! And his limbs, why
did they so horrify me?. He looked like a human, but he didn't move
like a human. It didn't seem to matter to him whether he walked or
crawled, bent over or knelt. It filled me with loathing. Yet he
fascinated me. I had to admit it. He fascinated me. But I was in too
much danger to allow such a strange state of mind. He gave a deep
laugh now, his knees wide apart, his fingers resting on my cheek as he
made a great arc over me.
  "Yeeeees, lovely one, I'm hard to look at! " he said. His voice was
still a whisper and he spoke in long gasps. "I was old when I was made.
And you're perfect, my Lelio, my blue-eyed young one, more beautiful
even without the lights of the stage. " The long white hand played with
my hair again, lifting up the strands and letting them drop as he
sighed.
  "Don't weep, Wolfkiller, " he said. "You're chosen, and your tawdry
little triumphs in the House of Thesbians will be nothing once this
night comes to a close. " Again came that low riot of laughter. There
was no doubt in my mind, at least at this moment, that he was from
the devil, that God and the devil existed, that beyond the isolation I'd
known only hours ago lay this vast realm of dark beings and hideous
meanings and I had been swallowed into it somehow. It occurred to
me quite clearly I was being punished for my life, and yet that seemed
absurd. Millions believed as I believed the world over. Why the hell
was this happening to me? And a grim possibility started irresistibly to
take shape, that the world was no more meaningful than before, and
this was but another horror...
  "In God's name, get away! " I shouted. I had to believe in God now.
I had to. That was absolutely the only hope. I went to make the Sign
of the Cross. For one moment he stared at me, his eyes wide with rage.
And then he remained still. He watched me make the Sign of the
Cross. He listened to me call upon God again and again. He only
smiled, making his face a perfect mask of comedy from the
proscenium arch. And I went into a spasm of crying like a child.
"Then the devil reigns in heaven and heaven is hell, " I said to him.
"Oh, God, don't desert me. . . " I called on all the saints I had ever for
a little while loved. He struck me hard across the face. I fell to one
side and almost slipped from the bed to the floor. The room went

                                                                        62

round. The sour taste of the wine rose in my mouth. And I felt his
fingers again on my neck.
  "Yes, fight, Wolfkiller, " he said. "Don't go into hell without a battle.
Mock God. "
  "I don't mock! " I protested. Once again he pulled me to himself.
And I fought him harder than I had ever fought anyone or anything in
my existence, even the wolves. I beat on him, kicked him, tore at his
hair. But I might as well have fought the animated gargoyles from a
cathedral, he was that powerful. He only smiled. Then all the
expression went out of his face. It seemed to become very long. The
cheeks were hollow, the eyes wide and almost wondering, and he
opened his mouth. The lower lip contracted. I saw the fangs.
  "Damn you, damn you, damn you! " I was roaring and bellowing.
And he drew closer and the teeth went through my flesh. Not this
time, I was raging, not this time. I will not feel it. I will resist. I will
fight for my soul this time. But it was happening again. The sweetness
and the softness and the world far away, and even he in his ugliness
was curiously outside of me, like an insect pressed against a glass who
causes no loathing in us because he cannot touch us, and the sound of
the gong, and the exquisite pleasure, and then I was altogether lost. I
was incorporeal and the pleasure was incorporeal. I was nothing but
pleasure. And I slipped into a web of radiant dreams. A catacomb I
saw, a rank place. And a white vampire creature waking in a shallow
grave. Bound in heavy chains he was, the vampire; and over him bent
this monster who had abducted me, and I knew that his name was
Magnus, and that he was mortal still in this dream, a great and
powerful alchemist. And he had unearthed and bound this
slumbering vampire right before the crucial hour of dusk. And now as
the light died out of the heavens, Magnus drank from his helpless
immortal prisoner the magical and accursed blood that would make
him one of the living dead. Treachery it was, the theft of immortality.
A dark Prometheus stealing a luminescent fire. Laughter in the
darkness. Laughter echoing in the catacomb. Echoing as if down the
centuries. And the stench of the grave. And the ecstasy, absolutely
fathomless, and irresistible, and then drawing to a finish. I was crying.
I lay on the straw and I said:
  "Please, don't stop it. . . " Magnus was no longer holding me and
my breathing was once again my own, and the dreams were dissolved.
I fell down and down as the nightful of stars slid upwards, jewels
affixed to a dark purple veil. "Clever that. I had thought the sky
was...real. " The cold winter air was moving just a little in this room. I
felt the tears on my face. I was consumed with thirst! And far, far

                                                                            63

away from me, Magnus stood looking down at me, his hands dangling
low beside his thin legs. I tried to move. I was craving. My whole
body was thirsty.
  "You're dying, Wolfkiller, " he said. "The light's going out of your
blue eyes as if all the summer days are gone... "
  "No, please... " This thirst was unbearable. My mouth was open,
gaping, my back arched. And it was here at last, the final horror, death
itself, like this.
  "Ask for it, child, " he said, his face no longer the grinning mask, but
- utterly transfigured with compassion. He looked almost human,
almost naturally old. "Ask and you shall receive, " he said. I saw water
rushing down all the mountain streams of my childhood. "Help me.
Please. "
  "I shall give you the water of all waters, " he said in my ear, and it
seemed he wasn't white at all. He was just an old man, sitting there
beside me. His face was human, and almost sad. But as I watched his
smile and his gray eyebrows rise in wonder, I knew it wasn't true. He
wasn't human. He was that same ancient monster only he was filled
with my blood!
  "The wine of all wines, " he breathed. "This is my Body, this is my
Blood. " And then his arms surrounded me. They drew me to him
and I felt a great warmth emanating from him, and he seemed to be
filled not with blood but with love for me.
  "Ask for it, Wolfkiller, and you will live forever, " he said, but his
voice sounded weary and spiritless, and there was something distant
and tragic in his gaze. I felt my head turn to the side, my body a heavy
and damp thing that I couldn't control. I will not ask, I will die
without asking, and then the great despair I feared so much lay before
me, the emptiness that was death, and still I said No. In pure horror I
said No. I will not bow down to it, the chaos and the horror. I said
No.
  "Life everlasting, " he whispered. My head fell on his shoulder.
  "Stubborn Wolfkiller. " His lips touched me, warm, odorless breath
on my neck.
  "Not stubborn, " I whispered. My voice was so weak I wondered if
he could hear me. "Brave. Not stubborn. " It seemed pointless not to
say it. What was vanity now? What was anything at all? And such a
trivial word was stubborn, so cruel . . . He lifted my face, and holding
me with his right hand, he lifted his left hand and gashed his own
throat with his nails. My body bent double in a convulsion of terror,
but he pressed my face to the wound, as he said: "Drink. " I heard my
scream, deafening in my own ears. And the blood that was flowing out

                                                                         64

of the wound touched my parched and cracking lips. The thirst
seemed to hiss aloud. My tongue licked at the blood. And a great
whiplash of sensation caught me. And my mouth opened and locked
itself to the wound. I drew with all my power upon the great fount
that I knew would satisfy my thirst as it had never been satisfied
before. Blood and blood and blood. And it was not merely the dry
hissing coil of the thirst that was quenched and dissolved, it was all my
craving, all the want and misery and hunger that I had ever known.
My mouth widened, pressed harder to him. I felt the blood coursing
down the length of my throat. I felt his head against me. I felt the
tight enclosure of his arms. I was against him and I could feel his
sinews, his bones, the very contour of his hands. I knew his body.
And yet there was this numbness creeping through me and a rapturous
tingling as each sensation penetrated the numbness, and was amplified
in the penetration so that it became fuller, keener, and I could almost
see what I felt. But the supreme part of it remained the sweet, luscious
blood filling me, as I drank and drank. More of it, more, this was all I
could think, if I thought at all, and for all its thick substance, it was like
light passing into me, so brilliant did it seem to the mind, so blinding,
that red stream, and all the desperate desires of my life were a
thousand fold fed. But his body, the scaffolding to which I clung, was
weakening beneath me. I could hear his breath in feeble gasps. Yet he
didn't make me stop. Love you, I wanted to say, Magnus, my
unearthly master, ghastly thing that you are, love you, love you, this
was what I had always so wanted, wanted, and could never have, this,
and you've given it to me! I felt I would die if it went on, and on it did
go, and I did not die. But quite suddenly I felt his gentle loving hands
caressing my shoulders and with his incalculable strength, he forced
me backwards. I let out a long mournful cry. Its misery alarmed me.
But he was pulling me to my feet. He still held me in his arms. He
brought me to the window, and I stood looking out, with my hands
out to the stone on either side. I was shaking and the blood in me
pulsed in all my veins. I leaned my forehead against the iron bars. Far,
far below lay the dark cusp of a hill, overgrown with trees that
appeared to shimmer in the faint light of the stars. And beyond, the
city with its wilderness of little lights sunk not in darkness but in a soft
violet mist. The snow everywhere was luminescent, melting.
Rooftops, towers, walls, all were myriad facets of lavender, mauve,
rose. This was the sprawling metropolis. And as I narrowed my eyes, I
saw a million windows like so many projections of beams of light, and
then as if this were not enough, in the very depths I saw the
unmistakable movement of the people. Tiny mortals on tiny streets,

                                                                           65

heads and hands touching in the shadows, a lone man, no more than a
speck ascending a windblown belfry. A million souls on the tessellated
surface of the night, and coming soft on the air a dim mingling of
countless human voices. Cries, songs, the faintest wisps of music, the
muted throb of bells. I moaned. The breeze seemed to lift my hair
and I heard my own voice as I had never heard it before crying. The
city dimmed. I let it go, its swarming millions lost again in the vast
and wondrous play of lilac shadow and fading light.
  "Oh, what have you done, what is this that you've given to me! " I
whispered. And it seemed my words did not stop one after another,
rather they ran together until all of my crying was one immense and
coherent sound that perfectly amplified my horror and my joy. If
there was a God, he did not matter now. He was part of some dull and
dreary realm whose secrets had long ago been plundered, whose lights
had long ago gone out. This was the pulsing center of life itself round
which all true complexity revolved. Ah, the allure of that complexity,
the sense of being there . . . Behind me the scratch of the monster's
feet came on the stones. And when I turned I saw him white and bled
dry and like a great husk of himself. His eyes were stained with blood-
red tears and he reached out to me as if in pain. I gathered him to my
chest. I felt such love for him as I had never known before.
  "Ah, don't you see? " came the ghastly voice with its long words,
whispers without end, "My heir chosen to take the Dark Gift from me
with more fiber and courage than ten mortal men, what a Child of
Darkness you are to be. " I kissed his eyelids. I gathered his soft black
hair in my hands. He was no ghastly thing to me now but merely that
which was strange and white, and full of some deeper lesson perhaps
than the sighing trees below or the shimmering city calling me over the
miles. His sunken cheeks, his long throat, the thin legs . . . these were
but the natural parts of him.
  "No, fledgling, " he sighed. "Save your kisses for the world. My time
has come and you owe me but one obeisance only. Follow me now. "

  3

  Down a winding stairs he drew me. And every thing I beheld
absorbed me. The rough-cut stones seemed to give forth their own
light, and even the rats shooting past in the dark had a curious beauty.
Then he unlocked a thick iron-studded wooden door and, giving over
his heavy key ring to me, led me into a large and barren room.
  "You are now my heir, as I told you, " he said. "You'll take
possession of this house and all my treasure. But you'll do as I say

                                                                        66

first. " The barred windows gave a limitless view of the moonlit
clouds, and I saw the soft shimmering city again as if it were spreading
its arms:
  "Ah, later you may drink your fill of all you see, " he said. He turned
me towards him as he stood before a huge heap of wood that lay in the
center of the floor.
  "Listen carefully, " he said. "For I'm about to leave you. " He
gestured to the wood offhandedly.
  "And there are things you must know. You're immortal now. And
your nature shall lead you soon enough to your first human victim.
Be swift and show no mercy. But stop your feasting, no matter how
delicious, before the victim's heart ceases to beat. "
  "In years to come, you'll be strong enough to feel that great moment,
but for the present pass the cup to time just before it's empty. Or you
may pay heavily for your pride. "

  "But why are you leaving me! " I asked desperately. I clung to him.
Victims, mercy, feasting . . . I felt myself bombarded by these words
as if I were being physically beaten. He pulled away so easily that my
hands were hurt by his movement, and I wound up staring at them,
marveling at the strange quality of the pain. It wasn't like mortal pain.
He stopped, however, and pointed to the stones of the wall opposite. I
could see that one very large stone had been dislodged and lay a foot
from the unbroken surface around it.
  "Grasp that stone, " he said, "and pull it out of the wall. "
  "But I can't, " I said. "It must weigh- "
  "Pull it out! " He pointed with one of his long bony fingers and
grimaced so that I tried to do it as he said. To my pure astonishment I
was able to move the stone easily, and I saw beyond it a dark opening
just large enough for a man to enter if he crawled on his face. He gave
a dry cackling laugh and nodded his head.
  "There, my son, is the passageway that leads to my treasure, " he said.
"Do with my treasure as you like, and with all my earthly property.
But for now, I must have my vows. " And again astonishing me, he
snatched up two twigs from the wood and rubbed them together so
fiercely they were soon burning with bright small flames. This he
tossed at the heap, and the pitch in it caused the fire to leap up at once,
throwing an immense light over the curved ceiling and the stone walls.
I gasped and stepped back. The riot of yellow and orange color
enchanted and frightened me, and the heat, though I felt it, did not
cause me a sensation I understood. There was no natural alarm that I
should be burned by it. Rather the warmth was exquisite and I

                                                                        67

realized for the first time how cold I had been. The cold was an icing
on me and the fire melted it and I almost moaned. He laughed again,
that hollow, gasping laugh, and started to dance about in the light, his
thin legs snaking him look like a skeleton dancing, with the white face
of a man. He crooked his arms over his head, bent his torso and his
knees, and turned round and round as he circled the fire.
  "Mon Dieu! " I whispered. I was reeling. Horrifying it might have
been only an hour ago to see him dancing like this, but now in the
flickering glare he was a spectacle that drew me after it step by step.
The light exploded on his satin rags, the pantaloons he wore, the
tattered shirt.
  "But you can't leave me! " I pleaded, trying to keep my thoughts
clear, trying to realize what he had been saying. My voice was
monstrous in my ears. I tried to make it lower, softer, more like it
should have been. "Where will you go! " He gave his loudest laugh
then, slapping his thigh and dancing faster and farther away from me,
his hands out as if to embrace the fire. The thickest logs were only
now catching. The room for all its size was like a great clay oven,
smoke pouring out its windows.
  "Not the fire. " I flew backwards, flattening myself against the wall.
"You can't go into the fire! " Fear was overwhelming me, as every sight
and sound had overwhelmed me. It was like every sensation I had
known so far. I couldn't resist it or deny it. I was half whimpering and
half screaming.
  "Oh, yes I can, " he laughed. "Yes, I can! " He threw back his head
and let his laughter stretch into howls. "But from you, fledgling, " he
said, stopping before me with his finger out again,
  "promises now. Come, a little mortal honor, my brave Wolfkiller, or
though it will cleave my heart in two, I shall throw you into the fire
and claim for myself another offspring. Answer me! " I tried to speak.
I nodded my head. In the raging light I could see my hands had
become white. And I felt a stab of pain in my lower lip that almost
made me cry out. My eyeteeth had become fangs already! I felt them
and looked at him in panic, but he was leering at me as if he enjoyed
my terror.
  "Now, after I am burned up, " he said, snatching my wrist, "and the
fire is out, you must scatter the ashes. Hear me, little one. Scatter the
ashes. Or else I might return, and in what shape that would be, I dare
not contemplate. But mark my words, if you allow me to come back,
more hideous than I am now, I shall hunt you down and burn you till
you are scarred the same as I, do you hear me? " I still couldn't bring


                                                                        68

myself to answer. This was not fear. It was hell. I could feel my teeth
growing and my body tingling all over. Frantically, I nodded my head.
  "Ah, yes. " He smiled, nodding too, the fire licking the ceiling behind
him, the light leaking all about the edges of his face. "It's only mercy I
ask, that I go now to find hell, if there is a hell, or sweet oblivion which
surely I do not deserve. If there is a Prince of Darkness, then I shall set
eyes upon him at last. I shall spit in his face.
  "So scatter what is burned, as I command you, and when that is
done, take yourself to my lair through that low passage, being most
careful to replace the stone behind you as you enter there. Within you
will find my coffin. And in that box or the like of it, you must seal
yourself by day or the sun's light shall bum you to a cinder. Mark my
words, nothing on earth can end your life save the sun, or a blaze such
as you see before you, and even then, only, and I say, only if your ashes
are scattered when it is done. " I turned my face away from him and
away from the flames. I had begun to cry and the only thing that kept
me from sobbing was the hand I clapped to my mouth. But he pulled
me about the edge of the fire until we stood before the loose stone, his
finger pointing at it again.
  "Please stay with me, please, " I begged him. "Only a little while, only
one night, I beg you! " Again the volume of my voice terrified me. It
wasn't my voice at all. I put my arms around him. I held tight to him.
His gaunt white face was inexplicably beautiful to me, his black eyes
filled with the strangest expression. The light flickered on his hair, his
eyes, and then again he made his mouth into a jester's smile.
  "Ah, greedy son, " he said. "Is it not enough to be immortal with all
the world your repast? Good-bye, little one. Do as I say. Remember,
the ashes! And beyond this stone the inner chamber. Therein lies all
that you will need to prosper. " I straggled to hold on to him. And he
laughed low in my ear, marveling at my strength.
  "Excellent, excellent, " he whispered. "Now, live forever, beautiful
Wolfkiller, with the gifts which I have added to the lot. " He sent me
stumbling away from him. And he leapt so high and so far into the
very middle of the flames he appeared to be flying. I saw him descend.
I saw the fire catch his garments. It seemed his head became a torch,
and then all of a sudden his eyes grew wide and his mouth became a
great black cavern in the radiance of the flames and his laughter rose in
such piercing volume, I covered my ears. He appeared to jump up and
down on all fours in the flames, and suddenly I realized that my cries
had drowned out his laughter. The spindly black arms and legs rose
and fell, rose and fell and then suddenly appeared to wither. The fire
shifted, roared. And in the heart of it I could see nothing now but the

                                                                          69

blaze itself. Yet still I cried. I fell down upon my knees, my hands over
my eyes. But against my closed lids I could still see it, one vast
explosion of sparks after another until I pressed my forehead on the
stones.




  4

  For years it seemed I lay on the floor watching the fire burn itself out
to charred timbers. The room had cooled. The freezing air moved
through the open window. And again and again I wept. My own sobs
reverberated in my ears until I felt I couldn't endure the sound of
them. And it was no comfort to know that all things were magnified
in this state, even the misery that I felt. Now and then I prayed again.
I begged for forgiveness, though forgiveness for what I couldn't have
said. I prayed to the Blessed Mother, to the saints. I murmured the
Aves over and over until they became a senseless chant. And my tears
were blood, and they left their stain on my hands when I wiped at my
face. Then I lay flat on the stones, murmuring not prayers any longer
but those inarticulate pleas we make to all that is powerful, all that is
holy, all that may or may not exist by any and all names. Do not leave
me alone here. Do not abandon me. I am in the witches' place. It's
the witches' place. Do not let me fall even farther than I have already
fallen this night. Do not let it happen . . . Lestat, wake up. But
Magnus's words came back to me, over and over: To find hell, if there
is a hell . . . If there is a Prince of Darkness... Finally I rose on my
hands and knees. I felt light-headed and mad, and almost giddy. I
looked at the fire and saw that I might still bring it back to a roaring
blaze and throw myself into it. But even as I forced myself to imagine
the agony of this, I knew that I had no intention of doing it. After all,
why should I do it? What had I done to deserve the witches' fate? I
didn't want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't
going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever
he might be! On the contrary, if I was a damned thing, then let the son
of a bitch come for me! Let him tell me why I was meant to suffer. I
would truly like to know. As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little
while for that. We can think this over for a little while . . . at least.
An alien calm crept slowly over me. I was dark, full of bitterness and
growing fascination. I wasn't human anymore. And as I crouched
there thinking about it, and looking at the dying embers, an immense

                                                                         70

strength was gathering in me. Gradually my boyish sobs died away.
And I commenced to study the whiteness of my skin, the sharpness of
the two evil little teeth, and the way that my fingernails gleamed in the
dark as though they'd been lacquered. All the little familiar aches were
gone out of my body. And the remaining warmth that came from the
smoking wood was good to me, as something laid over me or wrapped
about me. Time passed; yet it did not pass. Each change in the
moving air was caressing. And when there came from the softly
lighted city beyond a chorus of dim church bells ringing the hour, they
did not mark the passage of mortal time. They were only the purest
music, and I lay stunned, my mouth open, as I stared at the passing
clouds. But in my chest I started to feel a new pain, very hot and
mercurial. It moved through my veins, tightened about my head, and
then seemed to collect itself in my bowels and belly. I narrowed my
eyes. I cocked my head to one side. I realized I wasn't afraid of this
pain, rather I was feeling it as if I were listening to it. And I saw the
cause of it then. My waste was leaving me in a small torrent. I found
myself unable to control it. Yet as I watched the foulness stain my
clothes, this didn't disgust me. Rats creeping into the very room,
approaching this filth on their tiny soundless feet, even these did not
disgust me. These things couldn't touch me, even as they crawled over
me to devour the waste. In fact, I could imagine nothing in the dark,
not even the slithering insects of the grave, that could bring about
revulsion in me. Let them crawl on my hands and face, it wouldn't
matter now. I wasn't part of the world that cringed at such things.
And with a smile, I realized that I was of the dark ilk that makes others
cringe. Slowly and with great pleasure, I laughed. And yet my grief
was not entirely gone from me. It lingered like an idea, and that idea
had a pure truth to it. I am dead, I am a vampire. And things will die
so that I may live; I will drink their blood so that I may live. And I will
never, never see Nicolas again, nor my mother, nor any of the humans
I have known and loved, nor any of my human family. I'll drink
blood. And I'll live forever. That is exactly what will be. And what
will be is only beginning; it is just born! And the labor that brought it
forth was rapture such as I have never known. I climbed to my feet. I
felt myself light and powerful, and strangely numbed, and I went to
the dead fire, and walked through the burnt timbers. There were no
bones. It was as if the fiend had disintegrated. What ashes I could
gather in my hands I took to the window. And as the wind caught
them, I whispered a farewell to Magnus, wondering if he could yet
hear me. At last only charred logs were left and the soot that I wiped


                                                                         71

up with my hands and dusted off into the darkness. It was time now
to examine the inner room.




  5

  The stone moved out easily enough, as I'd seen before, and it had a
hook on the inside of it by which I could pull it closed behind me. But
to get into the narrow dark passage I had to lie on my belly. And when
I dropped down on my knees and peered into it, I could see no visible
light at the end. I didn't like the look of it. I knew that if I'd been
mortal still, nothing could have induced me to crawl into a passage
like this. But the old vampire had been plain enough in telling me the
sun could destroy me as surely as the fire. I had to get to the coffin.
And I felt the fear coming back in a deluge. I got down flat on the
ground, and crawled as a lizard might into the passage. As I feared, I
could not really raise my head. And there was no room to turn and
reach for the hook in the stone. I had to slip my foot into the hook
and crawl forward to pull the stone behind me. Total darkness. With
room to rise only a few inches on my elbows. I gasped, and the fear
welled and I almost went mad thinking about the fact that I couldn't
raise my head and finally I smacked it against the stone and lay still,
whimpering. But what was I to do? I must reach the coffin. So telling
myself to stop this whining, I commenced to crawl, faster and faster.
My knees scraped the stone. My hands sought crevices and cracks to
pull me along. My neck ached with the strain as I struggled not to try
to lift my head again in panic. And when my hand suddenly felt solid
stone ahead, I pushed upon it with all my strength. I felt it move as a
pale light seeped in. I scrambled out of the passage, and found myself
standing in a small room. The ceiling was low, curved, and the high
window was narrow with the familiar heavy grid of iron bars. But the
sweet, violet light of the night poured in revealing a great fireplace cut
in the far wall, the wood ready for the torch, and beside it, beneath the
window, an ancient stone sarcophagus. My red velvet fur-lined cape
lay over the sarcophagus. And on a rude bench I glimpsed a splendid
suit of red velvet worked with gold, and much Italian lace, as well as
red silk breeches and white silk hose and red-heeled slippers. I
smoothed back my hair from my face and wiped the thin film of sweat
from my upper lip and my forehead. It was bloody, this sweat, and

                                                                        72

when I saw this on my hands, I felt a curious excitement. Ah, what am
I, I thought, and what lies before me? For a long moment I looked at
this blood and then I licked my fingers. A lovely zinging pleasure
passed through me. It was a moment before I could collect myself
sufficiently to approach the fireplace. I lifted two sticks of kindling as
the old vampire had done and, rubbing them very hard and fast, saw
them almost disappear as the flame shot up from them. There was no
magic in this, only skill. And as the fire warmed me, I took off my
soiled clothes, and with my shirt wiped every last trace of human waste
away, and threw all this in the fire, before putting on the new
garments. Iced, dazzling red. Not even Nicolas had had such clothes
as these. They were clothes for the Court at Versailles, with pearls and
tiny rubies worked into their embroidery. The lace of the shirt was
Valenciennes, which I had seen on my mother's wedding gown. I put
the wolf cape over my shoulders. And though the white chill was gone
from my limbs, I felt like a creature carved from ice. My smile felt
hard and glittering to me and strangely slow as I allowed myself to feel
and to see these garments. In the blaze of the fire, I looked at the
coffin. The effigy of an old man was carved upon its heavy lid, and I
realized immediately it was the likeness of Magnus. But here he lay in
tranquility, his jester's mouth sealed, his eyes staring mildly at the
ceiling, his hair a neat mane of deeply carved waves and ringlets.
Three centuries old was this thing surely. He lay with his hands folded
on his chest, his garments long robes, and from his sword that had
been carved into the stone, someone had broken out the hilt and part
of the scabbard. I stared at this for an interminable length of time,
seeing that it had been carefully chipped away with much effort. Was
it the shape of the cross that someone had sought to remove? I traced
it over with my finger. Nothing happened of course, any more than
when I'd murmured all those prayers. And squatting in the dust
beside the coffin, I drew a cross there. Again, nothing. Then to the
cross I added a few strokes to suggest the body of Christ, his arms, the
crook of his knees, his bowed head. I wrote "The Lord Jesus Christ, "
the only words I could write well, save for my own name, and again
nothing. And still glancing back uneasily at the words and the little
crucifix, I tried to lift the lid of the coffin. Even with this new strength,
it was not easy. And no mortal man alone could have done it. But
what perplexed me was the extent of my difficulty. I did not have
limitless strength. And certainly I didn't have the strength of the old
vampire. Maybe the strength of three men was what I now possessed,
or the strength of four; it was impossible to calculate. It seemed pretty
damned impressive to me at the moment. I looked into the coffin.

                                                                          73

Nothing but a narrow place, full of shadows, where I couldn't imagine
myself lying. There were Latin words inscribed around the rim, and I
couldn't read them. This tormented me. I wished the words weren't
there, and my longing for Magnus, my helplessness, threatened to
close in on me. I hated him for leaving me! And it struck me with full
ironic force that I'd felt love for him before he'd leapt into the fire. I'd
felt love for him when I saw the red garments. Do devils love each
other? Do they walk arm in arm in hell saying, "Ah, you are my friend,
how I love you, " things like that to each other? It was a rather
detached intellectual question I was asking, as I did not believe in hell.
But it was a matter of a concept of evil, wasn't it? All creatures in hell
are supposed to hate one another, as all the saved hate the damned,
without reservation. I'd known that all my life. It had terrified me as a
child, the idea that I might go to heaven and my mother might go to
hell and that I should hate her. I couldn't hate her. And what if we
were in hell together? Well, now I know, whether I believe in hell or
not, that vampires can love each other, that in being dedicated to evil,
one does not cease to love. Or so it seemed for that brief instant. But
don't start crying again. I can't abide all this crying. I turned my eyes
to a large wooden chest that was partially hidden at the head of the
coffin. It wasn't locked. Its rotted wooden lid fell almost off the
hinges wheat I opened it. And though the old master had said he was
leaving me his treasure, I was flabbergasted by what I saw here. The
chest was crammed with gems and gold and silver. There were
countless jeweled rings, diamond necklaces, ropes of pearls, plate and
coins and hundreds upon hundreds of miscellaneous valuables. I ran
my fingers lightly over the heap and then held up handfuls of it,
gasping as the light ignited the red of the rubies, the green of the
emeralds. I saw refractions of color of which I'd never dreamed, and
wealth beyond any calculation. It was the fabled Caribbean pirates'
chest, the proverbial king's ransom. And it was mine now. More
slowly I examined it. Scattered throughout were personal and
perishable articles. Satin masks rotting away from their trimming of
gold, lace handkerchiefs and bits of cloth to which were fixed pins and
brooches. Here was a strip of leather harness hung with gold bells, a
moldering bit of lace slipped through a ring, snuffboxes by the dozens,
lockets of velvet ribbon. Had Magnus taken all this from his victims?
I lifted up a jewel-encrusted sword, far too heavy for these times, and a
worn slipper saved perhaps for its rhinestone buckle. Of course he had
taken what he wanted. Yet he himself had worn rags, the tattered
costume of another age, and he lived here as a hermit might have lived
in some earlier century. I couldn't understand it. But there were other

                                                                          74

objects scattered about in this treasure. Rosaries made up of gorgeous
gems, and they still had their crucifixes! I touched the small sacred
images. I shook my head and bit my lip, as if to say, How awful that
he should have stolen these! But I also found it very funny. And
further proof that God had no power over me. And as I was thinking
about this, trying to decide if it was as fortuitous as it seemed for the
moment, I lifted from the treasure an exquisite pearl-handled mirror.
I looked into it almost unconsciously as one often glances in mirrors.
And there I saw myself as a man might expect, except that my skin was
very white, as the old fiend's had been white, and my eyes had been
transformed from their usual blue to a mingling of violet and cobalt
that was softly iridescent. My hair had a high luminous sheen, and
when I ran my fingers back through it I felt a new and strange vitality
there. In fact, this was not Lestat in the mirror at all, but some replica
of him made of other substances! And the few lines time had given me
by the age of twenty years were gone or greatly simplified and just a
little deeper than they had been. I stared at my reflection. I became
frantic to discover myself in it. I rubbed my face, even rubbed the
mirror and pressed my lips together to keep from crying. Finally I
closed my eyes and opened them again, and I smiled very gently at the
creature. He smiled back. That was Lestat, all right. And there
seemed nothing in his face that was any way malevolent. Well, not
very malevolent, just the old mischief, the impulsiveness. He could
have been an angel, in fact, this creature, except that when his tears did
rise, they were red, and the entire image was tinted red because his
vision was red. And he had these evil little teeth that he could press
into his lower lip when he smiled that made him look absolutely
terrifying. A good enough face with one thing horribly, horribly
wrong with it! But it suddenly occurred to me, I am looking at my
own reflection! And hadn't it been said enough that ghosts and spirits
and those who have, lost their souls to hell have no reflections in
mirrors? A lust to know all things about what I was came over me. A
lust to know how I should walk among mortal men. I wanted to walk
in the streets of Paris, seeing with my new eyes all the miracles of life
that I'd ever glimpsed. I wanted to see the faces of the people, to see
the flowers in bloom, and the butterflies. To see Nicki, to hear Nicki
play his music-no. Forswear that. But there were a thousand forms of
music, weren't there? And as I closed my eyes I could almost hear the
orchestra of the Opera, the arias rising in my ears. So sharp the,
recollection so clear. But nothing would be ordinary now. Not joy or
pain, or the simplest memory. All would possess this magnificent
luster, even grief for things that were forever lost. I put down the

                                                                         75

mirror, and taking one of the old yellowed lace handkerchiefs from the
chest, I wiped my tears. I turned and sat down slowly before the fire.
Delicious the warmth on my face and hands. A great sweet drowsiness
came over me and as I closed my eyes again I felt myself immersed
suddenly in the strange dream of Magnus stealing the blood. A sense
of enchantment returned, of dizzying pleasure-Magnus holding me,
connected to me, my blood flowing into him. But I heard the chains
scraping the floor of the old catacomb, I saw the defenseless vampire
thing in Magnus's arms. Something more to it... something
important. A meaning. About theft, treachery, about surrendering to
no one, not God, not demon, and never man. I thought and thought
about it, half awake, half dreaming again, and the maddest thought
came to me, that I would tell Nicki all about this, that as soon as I got
home I would lay it all out, the dream, the possible meaning and we
would talk. With an ugly shock, I opened my eyes. The human in me
looked helplessly about this chamber. He started to weep again and
the newborn fiend was too young yet to rein him in. The sobs came
up like hiccups, and I put my hand over my mouth. Magnus, why did
you leave me? Magnus, what I am supposed to do, how do I go on? I
drew up my knees and rested my head on them, and slowly my head
began to clear. Well, it has been great fun pretending you will be this
vampire creature, I thought, wearing these splendid clothes, running
your fingers through all that glorious lucre. But you can't live as this!
You can't feed on living beings! Even if you are a monster, you have a
conscience in you, natural to you . . . Good and Evil, good and evil.
You cannot live without believing in- You cannot abide the acts that-
Tomorrow you will . . . you will . . . you will what? You will drink
blood, won't you? The gold and the precious stones glowed like
embers in the nearby chest, and beyond the bars of the window, there
rose against the gray clouds the violet shimmer of the distant city.
What is their blood like? Hot living blood, not monster blood. My
tongue pushed at the roof of my mouth, at my fangs. Think on it,
Wolfkiller. I rose to my feet slowly. It was as if the will made it
happen rather than the body, so easy was it. And I picked up the iron
key ring which I'd brought with me from the outer chamber and I
went to inspect the rest of my tower.




 6


                                                                        76

  Empty chambers. Barred windows. The great endless sweep of the
night above the battlements. That is all I found aboveground. But on
the lower floor of the tower, just outside the door to the dungeon
stairs, there was a resin torch in the sconce, and a tinderbox in the
niche beside it. Tracks in the dust. The lock well oiled and easy to
turn when I finally found the right key for it. I shone the torch before
me on a narrow screw stairway and started down, a little repelled by a
stench that rose from somewhere quite far below me. Of course I
knew that stench. It was common enough in every cemetery in Paris.
In les Innocents it was thick as noxious gas, and you had to live with it
to shop the stalls there, deal with the letter writers. It was the stench of
decomposing bodies. And though it sickened me, made me back up a
few steps, it wasn't all that strong, and the odor of the burning resin
helped to subdue it. I went on down. If there were dead mortals here,
well, I couldn't run away from them. But on the first level beneath the
ground, I found no corpses. Only a vast cool burial chamber with its
rusted iron doors open to the stairs, and three giant stone sarcophagi
in the center of it. It was very like Magnus's cell above, only much
larger. It had the same low curved ceiling, the same crude and gaping
fireplace. And what could that mean, except that other vampires had
once slept here? No one puts fireplaces in burial vaults. At least not
that I had ever known. And there were even stone benches here. And
the sarcophagi were like the one above, with great figures carved on
them. But years of dust overlay everything. And there were so many
spider webs. Surely no vampires dwelled here now. Quite impossible.
Yet it was very strange. Where were those who had lain in these
coffins? Had they burnt themselves up like Magnus? Or were they still
existing somewhere? I went in and opened the sarcophagi one by one.
Nothing but dust inside. No evidence of other vampires at all, no
indication that any other vampires existed. I went out and continued
down the stairway, even though the smell of the decay grew stronger
and stronger. In fact, it very quickly became unbearable. It was
coming from behind a door that I could see below, and I had real
difficulty in making myself approach it. Of course as a mortal man I'd
loathed this smell, but that was nothing to the aversion I felt now. My
new body wanted to run from it. I stopped, took a deep breath, and
forced myself towards the door, determined to see what the fiend had
done here. Well, the stench was nothing to the sight of it. In a deep
prison cell lay a heap of corpses in all states of decay, the bones and
rotted flesh crawling with worms and insects. Rats ran from the light
of the torch, brushing past my legs as they made for the stairs. And my
nausea became a knot in my throat. The stench suffocated me. But I

                                                                         77

couldn't stop staring at these bodies. There was something important
here, something terribly important, to be realized. And it came to me
suddenly that all these dead victims had been men-their boots and
ragged clothing gave evidence of that-and every single one of them had
yellow hair, very much like my own hair. The few who had features
left appeared to be young men, tall, slight of build. And the most
recent occupant here-the wet and reeking corpse that lay with its arms
outstretched through the bars-so resembled me that he might have
been a brother. In a daze, I moved forward until the tip of my boot
touched his head. I lowered the torch, my mouth opening as if to
scream. The wet sticky eyes that swarmed with gnats were blue eyes! I
stumbled backwards. A wild fear gripped me that the thing would
move, grab hold of my ankle. And I knew why it would. As I drew up
against the wall, I tripped on a plate of rotted food and a pitcher. The
pitcher went over and broke, and out of it the curdled milk spilled like
vomit. Pain circled my ribs. Blood came up like liquid fire into my
mouth and it shot out of my lips, splashing on the floor in front of me.
I had to reach for the open door to steady myself. But through the
haze of nausea, I stared at the blood. I stared at the gorgeous crimson
color of it in the light of the torch. I watched the blood darken as it
sank into the mortar between the stones. The blood was alive and the
sweet smell of it cut like a blade through the stench of the dead.
Spasms of thirst drove away the nausea. My back was arching. I was
bending lower and lower to the blood with astonishing elasticity. And
all the while, my thoughts raced: This young man had been alive in
this cell; this rotted food and milk were here either to nourish or
torment him. He had died in the cell, trapped with those corpses,
knowing full well he would soon be one of them. God, to suffer that!
To suffer that! And how many others had known exactly the same
fate, young men with yellow hair, all of them. I was down on my
knees and bending over. I held the torch low with my left hand and
my head went all the way down to the blood, my tongue flashing out
of my mouth so that I saw it like the tongue of a lizard. It scraped at
the blood on the floor. Shivers of ecstasy. Oh, too lovely! Was I doing
this? Was I lapping up this blood not two inches from this dead body?
Was my heart heaving with every taste not two inches from this dead
boy whom Magnus had brought here as he brought me? This boy that
Magnus had then condemned to death instead of immortality? The
filthy cell flickered on and off like a flame as I licked up the blood. The
dead man's hair touched my forehead. His eye like a fractured crystal
stared at me. Why wasn't I locked in this cell? What test had I passed
that I was not screaming now as I shook the bars, the horror that I had

                                                                         78

foreseen in the village inn slowly closing in on me? The blood tremors
passed through my arms and legs. And the sound I heard-the
gorgeous sound, as enthralling as the crimson of the blood, the blue of
the boy's eye, the glistening wings of the gnat, the sliding opaline body
of the worm, the blaze of the torch-was my own raw and guttural
screaming. I dropped the torch and struggled backwards on my knees,
crashing against the tin plate and the broken pitcher. I climbed to my
feet and ran up the stairway. And as I slammed shut the dungeon
door, my screams rose up and up to the very top of the tower. I was
lost in the sound as it bounced off the stones and came back at me. I
couldn't stop, couldn't close my mouth or cover it. But through the
barred entranceway and through a dozen narrow windows above I saw
the unmistakable light of morning coming. My screams died. The
stones had begun to glow. The light seeped around me like scalding
steam, burning my eyelids. I made no decision to run. I was simply
doing it, running up and up to the inner chamber. As I came out of
the passage, the room was full of a dim purple fire. The jewels
overflowing the chest appeared to be moving. I was almost blind as I
lifted the lid of the sarcophagus. Quickly, it fell into place above me.
The pain in my face and hands died away, and I was still and I was
safe, and fear and sorrow melted into a cool and fathomless darkness.




  7

  It was thirst that awakened me. And I knew at once where I was, and
what I was, too. There were no sweet mortal dreams of chilled white
wine or the fresh green grass beneath the apple trees in my father's
orchard. In the narrow darkness of the stone coffin, I felt of my fangs
with my fingers and found them dangerously long and keen as little
knife blades. And a mortal was in the tower, and though he hadn't
reached the door of the outer chamber I could hear his thoughts. I
heard his consternation when he discovered the door to the stairs
unlocked. That had never happened before. I heard his fear as he
discovered the burnt timbers on the floor and called out "Master. " A
servant was what he was, and a somewhat treacherous one at that. It
fascinated me, this soundless hearing of his mind, but something else
was disturbing me. It was his scent! I lifted the stone lid of the
sarcophagus and climbed out. The scent was faint, but it was almost
irresistible. It was the musky smell of the first whore in whose bed I

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had spent my passion. It was the roasted venison after days and days
of starvation in winter. It was new wine, or fresh apples, or water
roaring over a cliff's edge on a hot day when I reached out to gulp it in
handfuls. Only it was immeasurably richer than that, this scent, and
the appetite that wanted it was infinitely keener and more simple. I
moved through the secret tunnel like a creature swimming through the
darkness and, pushing out the stone in the outer chamber, rose to my
feet. There stood the mortal, staring at me, his face pale with shock.
An old, withered man he was, and by some indefinable tangle of
considerations in his mind, I knew he was a stable master and a
coachman. But the hearing of this was maddeningly imprecise. Then
the immediate malice he felt towards me came like the heat of a stove.
And there was no misunderstanding that. His eyes raced over my face
and form. The hatred boiled, crested. It was he who had procured the
fine clothes I wore. He who had tended the unfortunates in the
dungeon while they had lived. And why, he demanded in silent
outrage, was I not there? This made me love him very much, as you
can imagine. I could have crushed him to death in my bare hands for
this.
  "The master! " he said desperately. "Where is he? Master! " But
what did he think the master was? A sorcerer of some kind, that was
what he thought. And now I had the power. In sum, he didn't know
anything that would be of use to me. But as I comprehended all this,
as I drank it up from his mind, quite against his will, I was becoming
entranced with the veins in his face and in his hands. And that smell
was intoxicating me. I could feel the dim throbbing of his heart, and
then I could taste his blood, just what it would be like, and there came
to me some full-blown sense of it, rich and hot as it filled me.
  "The master's gone, burned in the fire, " I murmured, hearing a
strange monotone coming from myself. I moved slowly towards him.
He glanced at the blackened floor. He looked up at the blackened
ceiling. "No, this is a lie, " he said. He was outraged, and his anger
pulsed like a light in my eye. I felt the bitterness of his mind and its
desperate reasoning. Ah, but that living flesh could look like this! I
was in the grip of remorseless appetite. And he knew it. In some wild
and unreasoning way, he sensed it; and throwing me one last
malevolent glance he ran for the stairway. Immediately I caught him.
In fact, I enjoyed catching him, so simple it was. One instant I was
willing myself to reach out and close the distance between us. The
next I had him helpless in my hands, holding him off the floor so that
his feet swung free, straining to kick me. I held him as easily as a
powerful man might hold a child, that was the proportion. His mind

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was a jumble of frantic thoughts, and he seemed unable to decide
upon any course to save himself. But the faint humming of these
thoughts was being obliterated by the vision he presented to me. His
eyes weren't the portals of his soul anymore. They were gelatinous
orbs whose colors tantalized me. And his body was nothing but a
writhing morsel of hot flesh and blood, that I must have or die
without. It horrified me that this food should be alive, that delicious
blood should flow through these struggling arms and fingers, and then
it seemed perfect that it should. He was what he was, and I was what I
was, and I was going to feast upon him. I pulled him to my lips. I tore
the bulging artery in his neck. The blood hit the roof of my mouth. I
gave a little cry as I crushed him against me. It wasn't the burning
fluid the master's blood had been, not that lovely elixir I had drunk
from the stones of the dungeon. No, that had been light itself made
liquid. Rather this was a thousand times more luscious, tasting of the
thick human heart that pumped it, the very essence of that hot, almost
smoky scent. I could feel my shoulders rising, my fingers biting deeper
into his flesh, and almost a humming sound rising out of me. No
vision but that of his tiny gasping soul, but a swoon so powerful that
he himself, what he was, had no part in it. It was with all my will that,
before the final moment, I forced him away. How I wanted to feel his
heart stop. How I wanted to feel the beats slow and cease and know I
possessed him. But I didn't dare. He slipped heavily from my arms,
his limbs sprawling out on the stones, the whites of his eyes showing
beneath his half-closed eyelids. And I found myself unable to turn
away from his death, mutely fascinated by it. Not the smallest detail
must escape me. I heard his breath give out, I saw the body relax into
death without struggle. The blood warmed me. I felt it beating in my
veins. My face was hot against the palms of my hands, and my vision
had grown powerfully sharp. I felt strong beyond all imagining. I
picked up the corpse and dragged it down and down the winding steps
of the tower, into the stinking dungeon, and threw it to rot with the
rest there.




  8

  It was time to go, time to test my powers.
  I filled my purse and my pockets with as much money as they would
comfortably hold, and I buckled on a jeweled sword that was not too

                                                                       81

old-fashioned, and then went down, locking the iron gate to the tower
behind me. The tower was obviously all that remained of a ruined
house. But I picked up the scent of horses on the wind-strong, very
nice smell, perhaps the way an animal would pick up the scent and I
made my way silently around the back to a makeshift stable. It
contained not only a handsome old carriage, but four magnificent
black mares. Perfectly wonderful that they weren't afraid of me. I
kissed their smooth flanks and their long soft noses. In fact, I was so in
love with them I could have spent hours just learning all I could of
them through my new senses. But I was eager for other things. There
was a human in the stable also, and I'd caught his scent too as soon as I
entered. But he was sound asleep, and when I roused him, I saw he
was a dull-wilted boy who posed no danger to me.
  "I'm your master now, " I said, as I gave him a gold coin, "but I won't
be needing you tonight, except to saddle a horse for me. " He
understood well enough to tell me there was no saddle in the stable
before he fell back to dozing. All right. I cut the long carriage reins
from one of the bridles, put it on the most beautiful of the mares
myself, and rode out bareback. I can't tell you what it was like, the
burst of the horse under me, the chilling wind, and the high arch of
the night sky. My body was melded to animal. I was flying over the
snow, laughing aloud and now and then singing. I hit high notes I had
never reached before, then plunged into a lustrous baritone.
Sometimes I was simply crying out in something like joy. It had to be
joy. But how could a monster feel joy? I wanted to ride to Paris, of
course. But I knew I wasn't ready. There was too much I didn't know
about my powers yet. And so I rode in the opposite direction, until I
came to the outskirts of a small village. There were no humans about,
and as I approached the little church, I felt a human rage and
impulsiveness breaking through my strange, translucent happiness. I
dismounted quickly and tried the sacristy door. Its lock gave and I
walked through the nave to the Communion rail. I don't know what I
felt at this moment. Maybe I wanted something to happen. I felt
murderous. And lightning did not strike. I stared at the red glare of
the vigil lights on the altar. I looked up at the figures frozen in the
unilluminated blackness of the stained glass. And in desperation, I
went up over the Communion rail and put my hands on the
tabernacle itself. I broke open its tiny little doors, and I reached in and
took out the jeweled ciborium with its consecrated Hosts. No, there
was no power here, nothing that I could feel or see or know with any
of my monstrous senses, nothing that responded to me. There were
wafers and gold and wax and light. I bowed my head on the altar. I

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must have looked like the priest in the middle of mass. Then I shut up
everything in the tabernacle again. I closed it all up just fine, so
nobody would know a sacrilege had been committed.

  And then I made my way down one side of the church and up the
other, the lurid paintings and statues captivating me. I realized I was
seeing the process of the sculptor and the painter, not merely the
creative miracle. I was seeing the way the lacquer caught the light. I
was seeing little mistakes in perspective, flashes of unexpected
expressiveness. What will the great masters be to my eyes, I was
thinking. I found myself staring at the simplest designs painted in the
plaster walls. Then I knelt down to look at the patterns in the marble,
until I realized I was stretched out, staring wideeyed at the floor under
my nose. This is getting out of hand, surely. I got up, shivering a little
and crying a little, and looking at the candles as if they were alive, and
getting very sick of this. Time to get out of this place and go into the
village. For two hours I was in the village, and for most of that time I
was not seen or heard by anyone. I found it absurdly easy to jump
over the garden walls, to spring from the earth to low rooftops. I
could leap from a height of three stories to the ground, and climb the
side of a building digging my nails and my toes into the mortar
between the stones. I peered in windows. I saw couples asleep in their
ruffled beds, infants dozing in cradles, old women sewing by feeble
light. And the houses looked like dollhouses to me in their
completeness. Perfect collections of toys with their dainty little
wooden chairs and polished mantelpieces, mended curtains and well-
scrubbed floors. I saw all this as one who had never been a part of life,
gazing lovingly at the simplest details. A starched white apron on its
hook, worn boots on the hearth, a pitcher beside a bed. And the
people . . . oh, the people were marvels. Of course I picked up their
scent, but I was satisfied and it didn't make me miserable. Rather I
doted upon their pink skin and delicate limbs, the precision with
which they moved, the whole process of their lives as if I had never
been one of them at all. That they had five fingers on each hand
seemed remarkable. They yawned, cried, shifted in sleep. I was
entranced with them. And when they spoke, the thickest walls could
not prevent me from hearing their words. But the most beguiling
aspect of my explorations was that I heard the thoughts of these
people, just as I had heard the evil servant whom I killed.
Unhappiness, misery, expectation. These were currents in the air,
some weak, some frighteningly strong, some no more than a glimmer
gone before I knew the source. But I could not, strictly speaking, read

                                                                         83

minds. Most trivial thought was veiled from me, and when I lapsed
into my own considerations, even the strongest passions did not
intrude. In sum, it was intense feeling that carried thought to me and
only when I wished to receive it, and there were some minds that even
in the heat of anger gave me nothing. These discoveries jolted me and
almost bruised me, as did the common beauty everywhere I looked,
the splendor in the ordinary. But I knew perfectly well there was an
abyss behind it into which I might quite suddenly and helplessly drop.
After all, I wasn't one of these warm and pulsing miracles of
complication and innocence. They were my victims. Time to leave
the village. I'd learned enough here. But just before I left, I performed
one final act of daring. I couldn't help myself. I just had to do it.
Pulling up the high collar of my red cloak, I went into the inn, sought
a corner away from the fire, and ordered a glass of wine. Everyone in
the little place gave me the eye, but not because they knew there was a
supernatural being in their midst. They were merely glancing at the
richly dressed gentleman! And for twenty minutes I remained, testing
it even further. No one, not even the man who served me, detected
anything! Of course I didn't touch the wine. One whiff of it and I
knew that my body could not abide it. But the point was, I could fool
mortals! I could move among them! I was jubilant when I left the inn.
As soon as I reached the woods, I started to run. And then I was
running so fast that the sky and the trees had become a blur. I was
almost flying. Then I stopped, leapt, danced about. I gathered up
stones and threw them so far I could not see them land. And when I
saw a fallen tree limb, thick and full of sap, I picked it up and broke it
over my knee as if it were a twig. I shouted, then sang at the top of my
lungs again. I collapsed on the grass laughing. And then I rose, tore
off my cloak and my sword, and commenced to turn cartwheels. I
turned cartwheels just like the acrobats at Renaud's. And then I
somersaulted perfectly. I did it again, and this time backwards, and
then forward, and then I turned double somersaults and triple
somersaults, and leapt straight up in the air some fifteen feet off the
ground before landing squarely on my feet, somewhat out of breath,
and wanting to do these tricks some more. But the morning was
coming. Only the subtlest change in the air, the sky, but I knew it as if
Hell's Bells were ringing. Hell's Bells calling the vampire home to the
sleep of death. Ah, the melting loveliness of the sky, the loveliness of
the vision of dim belfries. And an odd thought came to me, that in
hell the light of the fires would be so bright it would be like sunlight,
and this would be the only sunlight I would ever see again. But what
have I done? I thought. I didn't ask for this, I didn't give in. Even

                                                                         84

when Magnus told me I was dying, I fought him, and yet I am hearing
Hell's Bells now. Well, who gives a damn? When I reached the
Churchyard, quite ready for the ride home, something distracted me.
I stood holding the rein of my horse and looking at the small field of
graves and could not quite figure what it was. Then again it came, and
I knew. I felt a distinct presence in the churchyard. I stood so still I
heard the blood thundering in my veins. It wasn't human, this
presence! It had no scent. And there were no human thoughts
coming from it. Rather it seemed veiled and defended and it knew I
was here. It was watching me. Could I be imagining this? I stood
listening, looking. A scattering of gray tombstones poked through the
snow. And far away stood a row of old crypts, larger, ornamented, but
just as ruined as the stones. It seemed the presence lingered
somewhere near the crypts, and then I felt it distinctly as it moved
towards the enclosing trees.
  "Who are you! " I demanded. I heard my voice like a knife. "Answer
me! " I called out even louder. I felt a great tumult in it, this presence,
and I was certain that it was moving away very rapidly. I dashed across
the churchyard after it, and I could feel it receding. Yet I saw nothing
in the barren forest. And I realized I was stronger than it, and that it
had been afraid of me! Well, fancy that. Afraid of me. And I had no
idea whether or not it was corporeal, vampire the same as I was, or
something without a body.
  "Well, one thing is sure, " I said. "You're a coward! " Tingling in the
air. The forest seemed to breathe for an instant. A sense of my own
might came over me that had been brewing all along. I was in fear of
nothing. Not the church, not the dark, not the worms swarming over
the corpses in my dungeon. Not even this strange eerie force that had
retreated into the forest, and seemed to be near at hand again. Not
even of men. I was an extraordinary fiend! If I'd been sitting on the
steps of hell with my elbows on my knees and the devil had said,
"Lestat, come, choose the form of the fiend you wish to be to roam the
earth, " how could I have chosen a better fiend that what I was? And it
seemed suddenly that suffering was an idea I'd known in another
existence and would never know again. I can't help but laugh now
when I think of that first night, especially of that particular moment.




  9


                                                                        85

  The next night I went tearing into Paris with as much gold as I could
carry. The sun had just sunk beneath the horizon when I opened my
eyes, and a clear azure light still emanated from the sky as I mounted
and rode off to the city. I was starving. And as luck would have it, I
was attacked by a cutthroat before I ever reached the city walls. He
came thundering out of the woods, pistol blazing, and I actually saw
the ball leave the barrel of the gun and go past me as I leapt off my
horse and went at him. He was a powerful man, and I was astonished
at how much I enjoyed his cursing and struggling. The vicious servant
I'd taken last night had been old. This was a hard young body. Even
the roughness of his badly shaven beard tantalized me, and I loved the
strength in his hands as he struck at me. But it was no sport. He froze
as I sank my teeth into the artery, and when the blood came it was
pure voluptuousness. In fact, it was so exquisite that I forgot
completely about drawing away before the heart stopped. We were on
our knees in the snow together, and it was a wallop, the life going into
me with the blood. I couldn't move for a long moment. Hmmm,
broke the rules already, I thought. Am I supposed to die now?
Doesn't look like that is going to happen. Just this rolling delirium.
And the poor dead bastard in my arms who would have blown my face
off with his pistol if I had let him. I kept staring at the darkening sky,
at the great spangled mass of shadows ahead that was Paris. And there
was only this warmth after, and obviously increasing strength. So far
so good. I climbed to my feet and wiped my lips. Then I pitched the
body as far as I could across the unbroken snow. I was more powerful
than ever. And for a little while I stood there, feeling gluttonous and
murderous, just wanting to kill again so this ecstasy would go on
forever. But I couldn't have drunk any more blood, and gradually I
grew calm and changed somewhat. A desolate feeling came over me.
An aloneness as though the thief had been a friend to me or kin to me
and had deserted me. I couldn't understand it, except that the
drinking had been so intimate. His scent was on me now, and I sort of
liked it. But there he lay yards away on the crumpled crust of the
snow, hands and face looking gray under the rising moon. Hell, the
son of a bitch was going to kill me, wasn't he? Within an hour I had
found a capable attorney, name of Pierre Roget, at his home in the
Marais, an ambitious young man with a mind that was completely
open to me. Greedy, clever, conscientious. Exactly what I wanted.
Not only could I read his thoughts when he wasn't talking, but he
believed everything I told him. He was most eager to be a service to
the husband of an heiress from Saint-Domingue. And certainly he
would put out all the candles, save one, if my eyes were still hurting

                                                                        86

from tropical fever. As for my fortune in gems, he dealt with the most
reputable jewelers. Bank accounts and letters of exchange for my
family in the Auvergne-yes, immediately. This was easier than playing
Lelio. But I was having a hell of a time concentrating. Everything was
a distraction-the smoky flame of the candle on the brass inkstand, the
gilded pattern of the Chinese wallpaper, and Monsieur Roget's
amazing little face, with its eyes glistening behind tiny octagonal
spectacles. His teeth kept making me think of clavier keys. Ordinary
objects in the room appeared to dance. A chest stared at me with its
brass knobs for eyes. And a woman singing in an upstairs room over
the low rumble of a stove seemed to be saying something in a low and
vibrant secret language, such as Come to me. But it was going to be
this way forever apparently, and I had to get myself in hand. Money
must be sent by courier this very night to my father and my brothers,
and to Nicolas de Lenfent, a musician with Renaud's House of
Thesbians, who was to be told only that the wealth had come from his
friend Lestat de Lioncourt. It was Lestat de Lioncourt's wish that
Nicolas de Lenfent move at once to a decent flat on the St. Louis or
some other proper place, and Roget should, of course, assist in this,
and thereafter Nicolas de Lenfent should study the violin. Roget
should buy for Nicolas de Lenfent the best available violin, a
Stradivarius. And finally a separate letter was to be written to my
mother, the Marquise Gabrielle de Lioncourt, in Italian, so that no one
else could read it, and a special purse was to be sent to her. If she
could undertake a journey to southern Italy, the place where she'd
been born, maybe she could stop the course of her consumption. It
made me positively dizzy to think of her with the freedom to escape. I
wondered what she would think about it. For a long moment I didn't
hear anything Roget said. I was picturing her dressed for once in her
life as the marquise she was, and riding out of the gates of our castle in
her own coach and six. And then I remembered her ravaged face and
heard the cough in her lungs as if she were here with me.
  "Send the letter and the money to her tonight, " I said. "I don't care
what it costs. Do it. " I laid down enough gold to keep her in comfort
for a lifetime, if she had a lifetime.
  "Now, " I said, "do you know of a merchant who deals in fine
furnishings--paintings, tapestries? Someone who might open his
shops and storehouses to us this very evening? "
  "Of course, Monsieur. Allow me to get my coat. We shall go
immediately. " We were headed for the faubourg St. Denis within
minutes. And for hours after that, I roamed with my mortal
attendants through a paradise of material wealth, claiming everything

                                                                        87

that I wanted. Couches and chairs, china and silver plate, drapery and
statuary-all things were mine for the taking. And in my mind I
transformed the castle where I'd grown up as more and more goods
were carried out to be crated and shipped south immediately. To my
little nieces and nephews I sent toys of which they'd never dreamed-
tiny ships with real sails, dollhouses of unbelievable craft and
perfection. I learned from each thing that I touched. And there were
moments when all the color and texture became too lustrous, too
overpowering. I wept inwardly. But I would have got away with
playing human to the hilt during all this time, except for one very
unfortunate mishap. At one point as we wandered through the
warehouse, a rat appeared as bold city rats will, racing along the wall
very close to us. I stared at it. Nothing unusual of course. But there
amid plaster and hardwood and embroidered cloth, the rat looked
marvelously particular. And the men, misunderstanding of course,
began mumbling frantic apologies for the rat and stamping their feet
to drive it away from us. To me, their voices became a mixture of
sounds like stew bubbling in a pot. All I could think was that the rat
had very tiny feet, and that I had not yet examined a rat nor any small
warm- blooded creature. I went and caught the rat, rather too easily I
think, and looked at its feet. I wanted to see what kind of little toenails
it had, and what was the flesh like between its little toes, and I forgot
the men entirely. It was their sudden silence that brought me back to
myself. They were both staring dumbfounded at me. I smiled at them
as innocently as I could, let the rat go, and went back to purchasing.
Well, they never said anything about it. But there was a lesson in this.
I had really frightened them. Later that night, I gave my lawyer one
last commission: He must send a present of one hundred crowns to a
theater owner by the name of Renaud with a note of thanks from me
for his kindness.
  "Find out the situation with this little playhouse, " I said. "Find out if
there are any debts against it. " Of course, I'd never go near the
theater. They must never guess what had happened, never be
contaminated by it. And for now I had done what I could for all those
I loved, hadn't I? And when all this was finished, when the church
clocks struck three over the white rooftops and I was hungry enough
to smell blood everywhere that I turned, I found myself standing in the
empty boulevard du Temple. The dirty snow had turned to slush
under the carriage wheels, and I was looking at the House of Thesbians
with its spattered walls and its torn playbills and the name of the
young mortal actor, Lestat de Valois, still written there in red letters.


                                                                         88

  10

  The following nights were a rampage. I began to drink up Paris as if
the city were blood. In the early evening I raided the worst sections,
tangling with thieves and killers, often giving them a playful chance to
defend themselves, then snarling them in a fatal embrace and feasting
to the point of gluttony. I savored different types of kills: big
lumbering creatures, small wiry ones, the hirsute and the dark-
skinned, but my favorite was the very young scoundrel who'd kill you
for the coins in your pocket. I loved their grunting and cursing.
Sometimes I held them with one hand and laughed at them till they
were in a positive fury, and I threw their knives over the rooftops and
smashed their pistols to pieces against the walls. But in all this my full
strength was like a cat never allowed to spring. And the one thing I
loathed in them was fear. If a victim was really afraid I usually lost
interest. As time went on, I learned to postpone the kill. I drank a
little from one, and more from another, and then took the grand
wallop of the death itself from the third or the fourth one. It was the
chase and the struggle that I was multiplying for my own pleasure.
And when I'd had enough of all this hunting and drinking in an
evening to content some six healthy vampires, I turned my eyes to the
rest of Paris, all the glorious pastimes I couldn't afford before. But not
before going to Roget's house for news off Nicolas or my mother. Her
letters were brimming with happiness at my good fortune, and she
promised to go to Italy in the spring if only she could get the strength
to do it. Right now she wanted books from Paris, of course, and
newspapers, and keyboard music for the harpsichord I'd sent. And she
had to know, Was I truly happy? Had I fulfilled my dreams? She was
leery of wealth. I had been so happy at Renaud's. I must confide in
her. It was agony to hear these words read to me. Time to become a
liar in earnest, which I had never been. But for her I would do it. As
for Nicki, I should have known he wouldn't settle for gifts and vague
tales, that he would demand to see me and keep on demanding it. He
was frightening Roget a little bit. But it didn't do any good. There was
nothing the attorney could tell him except what I've explained. And I
was so wary of seeing Nicki that I didn't even ask for the location of
the house into which he'd moved. I told the lawyer to make certain he
studied with his Italian maestro and that he had everything he could
possibly desire. But I did manage somehow to hear quite against my

                                                                        89

will that Nicolas hadn't quit the theater. He was still playing at
Renaud's House of Thesbians. Now this maddened me. Why the hell,
I thought, should he do that? Because he loved it there, the same as I
had, that was why. Did anybody really have to tell me this? We had all
been kindred in that little rattrap playhouse. Don't think about the
moment when the curtain goes up, when the audience begins to clap
and shout... No. Send cases of wine and champagne to the theater.
Send flowers for Jeannette and Luchina, the girls I had fought with the
most and most loved, and more gifts of gold for Renaud. Pay off the
debts he had. But as the nights passed and these gifts were dispatched,
Renaud became embarrassed about all this. A fortnight later, Roget
told me Renaud had made a proposal. He wanted me to buy the
House of Thesbians and keep him on as manager with enough capital
to stage larger and more wondrous spectacles than he'd ever before
attempted. With my money and his cleverness, we could make the
house the talk of Paris. I didn't answer right away. It took me more
than a moment to realize that I could own the theater just like that.
Own it like the gems in the chest, or the clothes I wore, or the
dollhouse I'd sent to my nieces. I said no, and went out slamming the
door. Then I came right back.
  "All right, buy the theater, " I said, "and give him ten thousand
crowns to do whatever he wants. " This was a fortune. And I didn't
even know why I had done this. This pain will pass, I thought, it has
to. And I must gain some control over my thoughts, realize that these
things cannot affect me. After all, where did I spend my time now? At
the grandest theaters in Paris. I had the finest seats for the ballet and
the opera, for the dramas of Moliere and Racine. I was hanging about
before the footlights gazing up at the great actors and actresses. I had
suits made in every color of the rainbow, jewels on my fingers, wigs in
the latest fashion, shoes with diamond buckles as well as gold heels.
And I had eternity to be drunk on the poetry I was hearing, drunk on
the singing and the sweep of the dancer's arms, drunk on the organ
throbbing in the great cavern of Notre Dame and drunk on the chimes
that counted out the hours to me, drunk on the snow falling
soundlessly on the empty gardens of the Tuileries. And each night I
was becoming less wary among mortals, more at ease with them. Not
even a month had passed before I got up the courage to plunge right
into a crowded ball at the Palais Royal. I was warm and ruddy from
the kill and at once I joined the dance. I didn't arouse the slightest
suspicion. Rather the women seemed drawn to me, and I loved the
touch of their hot fingers and the soft crush of their arms and their
breasts. After that, I bore right into the early evening crowds in the

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boulevards. Rushing past Renaud's, I squeezed into the other houses
to see the puppet shows, the mimes, and the acrobats. I didn't flee
from street lamps anymore. I went into cafes and bought coffee just to
feel the warmth of it against my fingers, and I spoke to men when I
chose. I even argued with them about the state of the monarchy, and I
went madly into mastering billiards and card games, and it seemed to
me I might go right into the House of Thesbians if I wanted to, buy a
ticket, and slip up into the balcony and see what was going on. See
Nicolas! Well, I didn't do that. What was I dreaming of to go near to
Nicki? It was one thing to fool strangers, men and women who'd
never known me, but what would Nicolas see if he looked into my
eyes? What would he see when he looked at my skin? Besides I had
too much to do, I told myself. I was learning more and more about
my nature and my powers. My hair, for example, was lighter, yet
thicker, and grew not at all. Nor did my fingernails and toenails,
which had a greater luster, though if I filed them away, they would
regenerate during the day to the length they had been when I died.
And though people couldn't discern such secrets on inspection, they
sensed other things, an unnatural gleam to my eyes, too many
reflected colors in them, and a faint luminescence to my skin. When I
was hungry this luminescence was very marked. All the more reason
to feed. And I was learning that I could put people in thrall if I stared
at them too hard, and my voice required very strict modulation. I
might speak too low for mortal hearing, and were I to shout or laugh
too loud, I could shatter another's ears. I could hurt my own ears.
There were other difficulties: my movements. I tended to walk, to run,
to dance, and to smile and gesture like a human being, but if surprised,
horrified, grieved, my body could bend and contort like that of an
acrobat. Even my facial expressions could be wildly exaggerated.
Once forgetting myself as I walked in the boulevard du Temple,
thinking of Nicolas naturally, I sat down beneath a tree, drew up my
knees, and put my hands to the side of my head like a stricken elf in a
fairy tale. Eighteenth-century gentlemen in brocade frock coats and
white silk stockings didn't do things like that, at least not on the street.
And another time, while deep in contemplation of the changing of the
light on surfaces, I hopped up and sat with my legs crossed on the top
of a carriage, with my elbows on my knees. Well, this startled people.
It frightened them. But more often than not, even when frightened by
the whiteness of my skin, they merely looked away. They deceived
themselves, I quickly realized, that everything was explainable. It was
the rational eighteenth-century habit of mind. After all there hadn't
been a case of witchcraft in a hundred years, the last that I knew of

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being the trial of La Voisin, a fortune-teller, burnt alive in the time of
Louis the Sun King. And this was Paris. So if I accidentally crashed
crystal glasses when I lifted them, or slammed doors back into the
walls when opening them, people assumed I was drunk. But now and
then I answered questions before mortals had asked them of me. I fell
into stuporous states just looking at candles or tree branches, and
didn't move for so long that people asked if I was ill. And my worst
problem was laughter. I would go into fits of laughter and I couldn't
stop. Anything could set me off. The sheer madness of my own
position might set me off. This can still happen to me fairly easily. No
loss, no pain, no deepening understanding of my predicament changes
it. Something strikes me as funny. I begin to laugh and I can't stop. It
makes other vampires furious, by the way. But I jump ahead of the
tale. As you have probably noticed, I have made no mention of other
vampires. The fact was I could not find any. I could find no other
supernatural being in all of Paris. Mortals to the left of me, mortals to
the right of me, and now and then-just when I'd convinced myself it
wasn't happening at all-I'd feel that vague and maddeningly elusive
presence. It was never any more substantial than it had been the first
night in the village churchyard. And invariably it was in the vicinity of
a Paris cemetery. Always, I'd stop, turn, and try to draw it out. But it
was never any good, the thing was gone before I could be certain of it.
I could never find it on my own, and the stench of city cemeteries was
so revolting I wouldn't, couldn't, go into them. This was coming to
seem more than fastidiousness or bad memories of my own dungeon
beneath the tower. Revulsion at the sight or smell of death seemed
part of my nature. I couldn't watch executions any more than when I
was that trembling boy from the Auvergne, and corpses made me
cover my face. I think I was offended by death unless I was the cause
of it! And I had to get clean away from my dead victims almost
immediately. But to return to the matter of the presence. I came to
wonder if it wasn't some other species of haunt, something that
couldn't commune with me. On the other hand, I had the distinct
impression that the presence was watching me, maybe even
deliberately revealing itself to me. Whatever the case, I saw no other
vampires in Paris. And I was beginning to wonder if there could be
more than one of us at any given time. Maybe Magnus destroyed the
vampire from whom he stole the blood. Maybe he had to perish once
he passed on his powers. And I too would die if I were to make
another vampire. But no, that didn't make sense. Magnus had had
great strength even after giving me his blood. And he had bound his
vampire victim in chains when he stole his powers. An enormous

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mystery, and a maddening one. But for the moment, ignorance was
truly bliss. And I was doing very well discovering things without the
help of Magnus. And maybe this was what Magnus had intended.
Maybe this had been his way of learning centuries ago. I remembered
his words, that in the secret chamber of the tower I would find ail that
I needed to prosper. The hours flew as I roamed the city. And only to
conceal myself in the tower by day did I ever deliberately leave the
company of human beings. Yet I was beginning to wonder: "If you can
dance with them, and play billiards with them and talk with them,
then why can't you dwell among them, just the way you did when you
were living? Why couldn't you pass for one of them? And enter again
into the very fabric of life where there is . . . what? Say it! " And here
it was nearly spring. And the nights were getting warmer, and the
House of Thesbians was putting on a new drama with new acrobats
between the acts. And the trees were in bloom again, and every
waking moment I thought of Nicki. One night in march, I realized as
Roget read my mother's letter to me that I could read as well as he
could. I had learned from a thousand sources how to read without
even trying. I took the letter home with me. Even the inner chamber
was no longer really cold. And I sat by the window reading my
mother's words for the first time in private. I could almost hear her
voice speaking to me:
  "Nicolas writes that you have purchased Renaud's. So you own the
little theater on the boulevard where you were so happy. But do you
possess the happiness still? When will you answer me? " I folded up
the letter and put it in my pocket. The blood tears were coming into
my eyes. Why must she understand so much, yet so little?




  11

  The wind had lost it's sting. All the smells of the city were coming
back. And the markets were full of flowers. I dashed to Roget's house
without even thinking of what I was doing and demanded that he tell
me where Nicolas lived. I would just have a look at him, make certain
he was in good health, be certain the house was fine enough. It was on
the Ile St. Louis, and very impressive just as I'd wanted, but the
windows were all shuttered along the quais. I stood watching it for a
long time, as one carriage after another roared over the nearby bridge.
And I knew that I had to see Nicki. I started to climb the wall just as I

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had climbed walls in the village, and I found it amazingly easy. One
story after another I climbed, much higher than I had ever dared to
climb in the past, and then I sped over the roof, and down the inside of
the courtyard to look for Nicki's flat. I passed a handful of open
windows before I came to the right one. And then there was Nicolas in
the glare of the supper table and Jeannette and Luchina were with him,
and they were having the late night meal that we used to take together
when the theater closed. At the first sight of him, I drew back away
from the casement and closed my eyes. I might have fallen if my right
hand hadn't held fast to the wall as if with a will of its own. I had seen
the room for only an instant, but every detail was fixed in my mind.
He was dressed in old green velvet, finery he'd worn so casually in the
crooked streets at home. But everywhere around him were signs of the
wealth I'd sent him, leather-bound books on the shelves, and an inlaid
desk with an oval painting above it, and the Italian violin gleaming
atop the new pianoforte. He wore a jeweled ring I'd sent, and his
brown hair was tied back with a black silk ribbon, and he sat brooding
with his elbows on the table eating nothing from the expensive china
plate before him. Carefully I opened my eyes and looked at him again.
All his natural gifts were there in a blaze of light: the delicate but
strong limbs, large sober brown eyes, and his mouth that for all the
irony and sarcasm that could come out of it was childlike and ready to
be kissed. There seemed in him a frailty I'd never perceived or
understood. Yet he looked infinitely intelligent, my Nicki, full of
tangled uncompromising thoughts, as he listened to Jeannette, who
was talking rapidly.
  "Lestat's married, " she said as Luchina nodded, "the wife's rich, and
he can't let her know he was a common actor, it's simple enough. "
  "I say we let him in peace, " Luchina said. "He saved the theater from
closing, and he showers us with gifts.. . "
  "I don't believe it, " Nicolas said bitterly. "He wouldn't be ashamed
of us. " There was a suppressed rage in his voice, an ugly grief. "And
why did he leave the way he did? I heard him calling me! The window
was smashed to pieces! I tell you I was half awake, and I heard his
voice... " An uneasy silence fell among them. They didn't believe his
account of things, how I'd vanished from the garret, and telling it
again would only isolate him and embitter him further. I could sense
this from all their thoughts.
  "You didn't really know Lestat, " he said now, almost in a surly
fashion, returning to the manageable conversation that other mortals
would allow him. "Lestat would spit in the face of anyone who would
be ashamed of us! He sends me money. What am I supposed to do

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with it? He plays games with us! " No answer from the others, the
solid, practical beings who would not speak against the mysterious
benefactor. Things were going too well. And in the lengthening
silence, I felt the depth of Nicki's anguish, I knew it as if I were peering
into his skull. And I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear delving into his
soul without his knowing it. Yet I couldn't stop myself from sensing a
vast secret terrain inside him, grimmer perhaps than I had ever
dreamed, and his words came back to me that the darkness in him was
like the darkness I'd seen at the inn, and that he tried to conceal it
from me. I could almost see it, this terrain. And in a real way it was
beyond his mind, as if his mind were merely a portal to a chaos
stretching out from the borders of all we know. Too frightening that.
I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to feel what he felt! But what
could I do for him? That was the important thing. What could I do to
stop this torment once and for all? Yet I wanted so to touch him-his
hands, his arms, his face. I wanted to feel his flesh with these new
immortal fingers. And I found myself whispering the word "Alive. "
Yes, you are alive and that means you can die. And everything I see
when I look at you is utterly insubstantial. It is a commingling of tiny
movements and indefinable colors as if you haven't a body at all, but
are a collection of heat and light. You are light itself, and what am I
now? Eternal as I am, I curl like a cinder in that blaze. But the
atmosphere of the room had changed. Luchina and Jeannette were
taking their leave with polite words. He was ignoring them. He had
turned to the window, and he was rising as if he'd been called by a
secret voice. The look on his face was indescribable. He knew I was
there! Instantly, I shot up the slippery wall to the roof. But I could
still hear him below. I looked down and I saw his naked hands on the
window ledge. And through the silence I heard his panic. He'd sensed
that I was there! My presence, mind you, that is what he sensed, just
as I sensed the presence in the graveyards, but how, he argued with
himself, could Lestat have been here? I was too shocked to do
anything. I clung to the roof gutter, and I could feel the departure of
the others, feel that he was now alone. And all I could think was, What
in the name of hell is this presence that he felt? I mean I wasn't Lestat
anymore, I was this demon, this powerful and greedy vampire, and yet
he felt my presence, the presence of Lestat, the young man he knew! It
was a very different thing from a mortal seeing my face and blurting
out my name in confusion. He had recognized in my monster self
something that he knew and loved. I stopped listening to him. I
merely lay on the roof. But I knew he was moving below. I knew it
when he lifted the violin from its place on the pianoforte, and I knew

                                                                          95

he was again at the window. And I put my hands over my ears. Still
the sound came. It came rising out of the instrument and cleaving the
night as if it were some shining element, other than air and light and
matter, that might climb to the very stars. He bore down on the
strings, and I could almost see him against my eyelids, swaying back
and forth, his head bowed against the violin as if he meant to pass into
the music, and then all sense of him vanished and there was only the
sound. The long vibrant notes, and the chilling glissandos, and the
violin singing in its own tongue to make every other form of speech
seem false. Yet as the song deepened, it became the very essence of
despair as if its beauty were a horrid coincidence, grotesquery without
a particle of truth. Was this what he believed, what he had always
believed when I talked on and on about goodness? Was he making the
violin say it? Was he deliberately creating those long, pure liquid notes
to say that beauty meant nothing because it came from the despair
inside him, and it had nothing to do with the despair finally, because
the despair wasn't beautiful, and beauty then was a horrid irony? I
didn't know the answer. But the sound went beyond him as it always
had. It grew bigger than the despair. It fell effortlessly into a slow
melody, like water seeking its own downward mountain path. It grew
richer and darker still and there seemed something undisciplined and
chastening in it, and heartbreaking and vast. I lay on my back on the
roof now with my eyes on the stars. Pinpoints of light mortals could
not have seen. Phantom clouds. And the raw, piercing sound of the
violin coming slowly with exquisite tension to a close. I didn't move. I
was in some silent understanding of the language the violin spoke to
me. Nicki, if we could talk again . . . If "our conversation " could
only continue. Beauty wasn't the treachery he imagined it to be, rather
it was an uncharted land where one could make a thousand fatal
errors, a wild and indifferent paradise without signposts of evil or
good. In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to
make art-the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling
grandeur of Fragonard's canvases-beauty was savage. It was as
dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one
single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on
tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden. So why must it wound
him that the most despairing music is full of beauty? Why must it hurt
him and make him cynical and sad and untrusting? Good and evil,
those are concepts man has made. And man is better, really, than the
Savage Garden. But maybe deep inside Nicki had always dreamed of a
harmony among all things that I had always known was impossible.
Nicki had dreamed not of goodness, but of justice. But we could never

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discuss these things now with each other. We could never again be in
the inn. Forgive me, Nicki. Good and evil exist still, as they always
will. But "our conversation " is over forever. Yet even as I left the roof,
as I stole silently away from the Ile St. Louis, I knew what I meant to
do. I didn't admit it to myself but I knew. The next night it was
already late when I reached the boulevard de Temple. I'd fed well in
the Ile de la Cite, and the first act at Renaud's House of Thesbians was
already under way.




  12

  I'd dressed as if I were going to court, in silver brocade with a
lavender velvet roquelaure over my shoulders. I had a new sword with
a deep-carved silver handle and the usual heavy, ornate buckles on my
shoes, the usual lace gloves, tricorne. And I came to the theater in a
hired carriage. But as soon as I paid the driver I went back the alley
and opened the stage door exactly as I used to do. At once the old
atmosphere surrounded me, the smell of the thick greasepaint and the
cheap costumes full of sweat and perfume, and the dust. I could see a
fragment of the lighted stage burning beyond the helter-skelter of
hulking props and hear bursts of laughter from the hall. A group of
acrobats waited to go on at the intermezzo, a crowd of jesters in red
tights, caps and dagged collars studded with little gold bells. I felt
dizzy, and for a moment afraid. The place felt close and dangerous
over my head, and yet it was wonderful to be inside it again. And a
sadness was swelling inside me, no, a panic, actually. Luchina saw me
and she let out a shriek. Doors opened everywhere on the cluttered
little dressing rooms. Renaud plunged toward me and pumped my
hand. Where there had been nothing but wood and drapery a
moment before, there was now a little universe of excited human
beings, faces full of high color and dampness, and I found myself
drawing back from a smoking candelabra with the quick words, "My
eyes . . . put it out. "
  "Put out the candles, they hurt his eyes, can't you see that? "
Jeannette insisted sharply. I felt her wet lips open against my face.
Everyone was around me, even the acrobats who didn't know me, and
the old scene painters and carpenters who had taught me so many
things. Luchina said, "Get Nicki, " and I almost cried No. Applause
was shaking the little house. The curtain was being pulled closed from

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either side. At once the old actors were upon me, and Renaud was
calling for champagne. I was holding my hands over my eyes as if like
the basilisk I'd kill every one of them if I looked at them, and I could
feel tears and knew that before they saw the blood in the tears, I had to
wipe the tears away. But they were so close I couldn't get to my
handkerchief, and with a sudden terrible weakness, I put my arms
around Jeannette and Luchina, and I pressed my face against Luchina's
face. Like birds they were, with bones full of air, and hearts like
beating wings, and for one second I listened with a vampire's ear to the
blood in them, but that seemed an obscenity. And I just gave in to the
hugging and the kissing, ignoring the thump of their hearts, and
holding them and smelling their powdered skin, and feeling again the
press of their lips.
  "You don't know how you worried us! " Renaud was booming.
"And then the stories of your good fortune! Everyone, everyone! " He
was clapping his hands. "It's Monsieur de Valois, the owner of this
great theatrical establishment. . . " and he said a lot of other
pompous and playful things, dragging up the new actors and actresses
to kiss my hand, I suppose, or my feet. I was holding tight to the girls
as if I'd explode into fragments if I let them go, and then I heard Nicki,
and knew he was only a foot away, staring at me, and that he was too
glad to see me to be hurt anymore. I didn't open my eyes but I felt his
hand on my face, then holding tight to the back of my neck. They
must have made way for him and when he came into my arms, I felt a
little convulsion of terror, but the light was dim here, and I had fed
furiously to be warm and human-looking, and I thought desperately I
don't know to whom I pray to make the deception work. And then
there was only Nicolas and I didn't care. I looked up and into his face.
How to describe what humans look like to us! I've tried to describe it
a little, when I spoke of Nicki's beauty the night before as a mixture of
movement and color. But you can't imagine what it's like for us to
look on living flesh. There are those billions of colors and tiny
configurations of movement, yes, that make up a living creature on
whom we concentrate. But the radiance mingles totally with the
carnal scent. Beautiful, that's what any human being is to us, if we
stop to consider it, even the old and the diseased, the downtrodden
that one doesn't really "see " in the street. They are all like that, like
flowers ever in the process of opening, butterflies ever unfolding out of
the cocoon. Well, I saw all this when I saw Nicki, and I smelled the
blood pumping in him, and for one heady moment I felt love and only
love obliterating every recollection of the horrors that had deformed
me. Every evil rapture, every new power with its gratification, seemed

                                                                          98

unreal. Maybe I felt a profound joy, too, that I could still love, if I'd
ever doubted it, and that a tragic victory had been confirmed. All the
old mortal comfort intoxicated me, and I could have closed my eyes
and slipped from consciousness carrying him with me, or so it seemed.
But something else stirred in me, collecting strength so fast my mind
raced to catch up with it and deny it even as it threatened to grow out
of control. And I knew it for what it was, something monstrous and
enormous and natural to me as the sun was unnatural. I wanted
Nicki. I wanted him as surely as any victim I'd ever struggled with in
the Ile de la Cite. I wanted his blood flowing into me, wanted its taste
and its smell and its heat. The little place shook with shouts and
laughter, Renaud telling the acrobats to get on with the intermezzo
and Luchina opening the champagne. But we were closed off in this
embrace. The hard heat of his body made me stiffen and draw back,
though it seemed I didn't move at all. And it maddened me suddenly
that this one whom I loved even as I loved my mother and my
brothers-this one who had drawn from me the only tenderness I'd ever
felt-was an unconquerable citadel, holding fast in ignorance against
my thirst for blood when so many hundreds of victims had so easily
given it up. This was what I'd been made for. This was the path I had
been meant to walk. What were those others to me now-the thieves
and killers I'd cut down in the wilderness of Paris? This was what I
wanted. And the great awesome possibility of Nicki's death exploded
in my brain. The darkness against my closed eyelids had become
blood red. Nicki's mind emptying in that last moment, giving up its
complexity with its life. I couldn't move. I could feel the blood as if it
were passing into me and I let my lips rest against his neck. Every
particle in me said, "Take him, spirit him out of this place and away
from it and feed on him and feed on him... until... " Until what! Until
he's dead! I broke loose and pushed him away. The crowd around us
roared and rattled. Renaud was shouting at the acrobats, who stood
staring at these proceedings. The audience outside demanded the
intermezzo entertainment with a steady rhythmic clap. The orchestra
was fiddling away at the lively ditty that would accompany the
acrobats. Bones and flesh poked and pushed at me. A shambles it had
become, rank with the smell of those ready for the slaughter. I felt the
all too human rise of nausea. Nicki seemed to have lost his
equilibrium, and when our eyes met, I felt the accusations emanating
from him. I felt the misery and, worse, the near despair. I pushed past
all of them, past the acrobats with the jingling bells, and I don't know
why I went forward to the wings instead of out the side door. I wanted
to see the stage. I wanted to see the audience. I wanted to penetrate

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deeper into something for which I had no name or word. But I was
mad in these moments. To say I wanted or I thought makes no sense
at all. My chest was heaving and the thirst was like a cat clawing to get
out. And as I leaned against the wooden beam beside the curtain,
Nicki, hurt and misunderstanding everything, came to me again. I let
the thirst rage. I let it tear at my insides. I just clung to the rafter and I
saw in one great recollection all my victims, the scum of Paris, scraped
up from its gutters, and I knew the madness of the course I'd chosen,
and the lie of it, and what I really was. What a sublime idiocy that I
had dragged that paltry morality with me, striking down the damned
ones onlyseeking to be saved in spite of it all? What had I thought I
was, a righteous partner to the judges and executioners of Paris who
strike down the poor for crimes that the rich commit every day?
Strong wine I'd had, in chipped and broken vessels, and now the priest
was standing before me at the foot of the altar with the golden chalice
in his hands, and the wine inside it was the Blood of the Lamb. Nicki
was talking rapidly:
  "Lestat, what is it? Tell me! " as if the others couldn't hear us.
"Where have you been? What's happened to you? Lestat! "
  "Get on that stage! " Renaud thundered at the gaping acrobats. They
trotted past us into the smoky blaze of the footlamps and went into a
chain of somersaults. The orchestra made its instruments into
twittering birds. A flash of red, harlequin sleeves, bells jangling, taunts
from the unruly crowd, "Show us something, really show us
something! " Luchina kissed me and I stared at her white throat, her
milky hands. I could see the veins in Jeannette's face and the soft
cushion of her lower lip coming ever closer. The champagne, splashed
into dozens of little glasses, was being drunk. Some speech was issuing
forth from Renaud about our "partnership " and how tonight's little
farce was but the beginning and we would soon be the grandest theater
on the boulevards. I saw myself decked out for the part of Lelio, and
heard the ditty I had sung to Flaminia on bended knee. Before me,
little mortals flip-flopped heavily and the audience was howling as the
leader of the acrobats made some vulgar movement with his hind end.
Before I even meant to do it, I had gone out on the stage. I was
standing in the very center, feeling the heat of the footlights, the smoke
stinging my eyes. I stared at the crowded gallery, the screened boxes,
the rows and rows of spectators to the back wall. And I heard myself
snarl a command for the acrobat to get away. It seemed the laughter
was deafening, and the taunts and shouts that greeted me were spasms
and eruptions, and quite plainly behind every face in the house was a
grinning skull. I was humming the little ditty I'd sung as Lelio, no

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more than a fragment of the part, but the one I'd carried in the streets
afterwards with me, "lovely, lovely, Flaminia, " and on and on, the
words forming meaningless sounds. Insults were cutting through the
din.
  "On with the performance! " and "You're handsome enough, now
let's see some action! " From the gallery someone threw a half-eaten
apple that came thumping just past my feet. I unclasped the violet
roquelaure and let it fall. I did the same with the silver sword. The
song had become an incoherent humming behind my lips, but mad
poetry was pounding in my head. I saw the wilderness of beauty and
its savagery, the way I'd seen it last night when Nicki was playing, and
the moral world seemed some desperate dream of rationality that in
this lush and fetid jungle had not the slightest chance. It was a vision
and I saw rather than understood, except that I was part of it, natural
as the cat with her exquisite and passionless face digging her claws into
the back of the screaming rat.
  " `Handsome enough' is this Grim Reaper, " I half uttered, "who can
snuff all these `brief candles,' every fluttering soul sucking the air, from
this hall. " But the words were really beyond my reach. They floated
in some stratum perhaps where a god existed who understood the
colors patterned on a cobra's skin and the eight glorious notes that
make up the music erupting out of Nicki's instrument, but never the
principle, beyond ugliness or beauty, "Thou shalt not kill. " Hundreds
of greasy faces peered back at me from the gloom. Shabby wigs and
paste jewels and filthy finery, skin like water flowing over crooked
bones. A crew of ragged beggars whistled and hooted from the gallery,
humpback and one eye, and stinking underarm crutch, and teeth the
color of the skull's teeth you sift from the dirt of the grave. I threw out
my arms. I crooked my knee, and I began turning as the acrobats and
dancers could turn, round and round on the ball of one foot,
effortlessly, going faster and faster, until I broke, flipping over
backwards into a circle of cartwheels, and then somersaults, imitating
everything I had ever seen the players at the fairs perform. Applause
came immediately. I was agile as I'd been in the village, and the stage
was tiny and hampering, and the ceiling seemed to press down on me,
and the smoke from the footlights to close me in. The little song to
Flaminia came back to me and I started singing it loudly as I turned
and jumped and spun again, and then gazing at the ceiling I willed my
body upwards as I bent my knees to spring. In an instant I touched
the rafters and I was dropping down gracefully, soundlessly to the
boards. Gasps rose from the audience. The little crowd in the wings
was stunned. The musicians in the pit who had been silent all the

                                                                         101

while were turning to one another. They could see there was no wire.
But I was soaring again to the delight of the audience, this time
somersaulting all the way up, beyond the painted arch again to
descend in even slower, finer turns. Shouts and cheers broke out over
the clapping, but those backstage were mute. Nicki stood at the very
edge, his lips silently shaping my name.
  "It has to be trickery, an illusion. " The same avowals came from all
directions. People demanded agreement from those around them.
Renaud's face shone before me for an instant with gaping mouth and
squinting eyes. But I had gone into a dance again. And this time the
grace of it no longer mattered to the audience. I could feel it, because
the dance became a parody, each gesture broader, longer, slower than
a human dancer could have sustained. Someone shouted from the
wings and was told to be still. And little cries burst from the musicians
and those in the front rows. People were growing uneasy and
whispering to one another, but the rabble in the gallery continued to
clap. I dashed suddenly towards the audience as if I meant to
admonish it for its rudeness. Several persons were so startled they rose
and tried to escape into the aisles. One of the hornplayers dropped his
instrument and climbed out of the pit. I could see the agitation, even
the anger in their faces. What were these illusions? It wasn't amusing
them suddenly; they couldn't comprehend the skill of it; and
something in my serious manner made them afraid. For one terrible
moment, I felt their helplessness. And I felt their doom. A great horde
of jangling skeletons snared in flesh and rags, that's what they were,
and yet their courage blazed out of them, they shouted at me in their
irrepressible pride. I raised my hands slowly to command their
attention, and very loudly and steadily I sang the ditty to Flaminia, my
lovely Flaminia, a dull little couplet spilling into another couplet, and I
let my voice grow louder and louder until suddenly people were rising
and screaming before me, but louder still I sang it until it obliterated
every other noise and in the intolerable roar I saw them all, hundreds
of them, overturning the benches as they stood up, their hands
clamped to the sides of their heads. Their mouths were grimaces,
toneless screams. Pandemonium. Shrieks, curses, all stumbling and
struggling towards the doors. Curtains were pulled from their
fastenings. Men dropped down from the gallery to rush for the street.
I stopped the horrid song. I stood watching them in a ringing silence,
the weak, sweating bodies straining clumsily in every direction. The
wind gusted from the open doorways, and I felt a strange coldness over
all my limbs and it seemed my eyes were made of glass. Without
looking, I picked up the sword and put it on again, and hooked my

                                                                       102

finger into the velvet collar of my crumpled and dusty roquelaure. All
these gestures seemed as grotesque as everything else I had done, and it
seemed of no import that Nicolas was trying to get loose from two of
the actors who held him in fear of his life as he shouted my name. But
something out of the chaos caught my attention. It did seem to
matter-to be terribly, terribly important, in fact that there was a figure
standing above in one of the open boxes who did not struggle to
escape or even move. I turned slowly and looked up at him, daring
him, it seemed, to remain there. An old man he was, and his dull gray
eyes were boring into me with stubborn outrage, and as I glared at
him, I heard myself let out a loud open-mouthed roar. Out of my soul
it seemed to come, this sound. It grew louder and louder until those
few left below cowered again with their ears stopped, and even Nicolas,
rushing forward, buckled beneath the sound of it, both hands clasped
to his head. And yet the man stood there in the loge glowering,
indignant and old, and stubborn, with furrowed brows under his gray
wig. I stepped back and leapt across the empty house, landing in the
box directly before him, and his jaw fell in spite of himself and his eyes
grew hideously wide. He seemed deformed with age, his shoulders
rounded, his hands gnarled, but the spirit in his eyes was beyond
vanity and beyond compromise. His mouth hardened and his chin
jutted. And from under his frock coat he pulled his pistol and he
aimed it at me with both hands.
  " Lestat! " Nicki shouted. But the shot exploded and the ball hit me
with full force. I didn't move. I stood as steady as the old man had
stood before, and the pain rolled through me and stopped, leaving in
its wake a terrible pulling in all my veins. The blood poured out. It
flowed as I have never seen blood flow. It drenched my shirt and I
could feel it spilling down my back. But the pulling grew stronger and
stronger, and a warm tingling sensation had commenced to spread
across the surface of my back and chest. The man stared,
dumbfounded. The pistol dropped out of his hand. His head went
back, eyes blind, and his body crumpled as if the air had been let out of
it, and he lay on the floor. Nicki had raced up the stairs and was now
rushing into the box. A low hysterical murmuring was issuing from
him. He thought he was witnessing my death. And I stood still
hearkening to my body in that terrible solitude that had been mine
since Magnus made me the vampire. And I knew the wounds were no
longer there. The blood was drying on the silk vest, drying on the back
of my torn coat. My body throbbed where the bullet had passed
through me and my veins were alive with the same pulling, but the
injury was no more. And Nicolas, coming to his senses as he looked at

                                                                       103

me, realized I was unharmed, though his reason told him it couldn't be
true. I pushed past him and made for the stairs. He flung himself
against me and I threw him off. I couldn't stand the sight of him, the
smell of him.
  "Get away from me! " I said. But he came back again and he locked
his arm around my neck. His face was bloated and there was an awful
sound coming out of him.
  "Let go of me. Nicki! " I threatened him. If I shoved him off too
roughly, I'd tear his arms out of the sockets, break his back. Break his
back . . . He moaned, stuttered. And for one harrowing split second
the sounds he made were as terrible as the sound that had come from
my dying animal on the mountain, my horse, crushed like an insect
into the snow. I scarcely knew what I was doing when I pried loose his
hands. The crowd broke, screaming, when I walked out onto the
boulevard. Renaud ran forward, in spite of those trying to restrain
him.
  "Monsieur! " He grabbed my hand to kiss it and stopped, staring at
the blood.
  "Nothing, my dear Renaud, " I said to him, quite surprised at the
steadiness of my voice and its softness. But something distracted me
as I started to speak again, something I should hearken to, I thought
vaguely, yet I went on.
  "Don't give it a thought, my dear Renaud, " I said. "Stage blood,
nothing but an illusion. It was all an illusion. A new kind of
theatrical. Drama of the grotesque, yes, the grotesque. " But again
came that distraction, something I was sensing in the melee around
me, people shuffling and pushing to get close but not too close,
Nicolas stunned and staring.
  "Go on with your plays, " I was saying, almost unable to concentrate
on my own words, "Your acrobats, your tragedies, your more civilized
theatricals, if you like. " I pulled the bank notes out of my pocket and
put them in his unsteady hand. I spilled gold coins onto the
pavement. The actors darted forward fearfully to gather them up. I
scanned the crowd around for the source of this strange distraction,
what was it, not Nicolas in the door of the deserted theater, watching
me with a broken soul. No, something else both familiar and
unfamiliar, having to do with the dark.
  "Hire the finest mummers, " I was half babbling, "the best musicians,
the great scene painters. " More bank notes. My voice was getting
loud again, the vampire voice, I could see the grimaces again and the
hands going up, but they were afraid to let me see them cover their
ears. "There is no limit, NO LIMIT, to what you can do here! " I

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broke away, dragging my roquelaure with me, the sword clanking
awkwardly because it was not buckled right. Something of the dark.
And I knew when I hurried into the first alleyway and started to run
what it was that I had heard, what had distracted me, it had been the
presence, undeniably, in the crowd! I knew it for one simple reason: I
was running now in the back streets faster than a mortal can run. And
the presence was keeping time with me and the presence was more
than one! I came to a halt when I knew it for certain. I was only a mile
from the boulevard and the crooked alley around me narrow and
black as any in which I had ever been. And I heard them before they
seemed, quite purposefully and abruptly, to silence themselves. I was
too anxious and miserable to play with them! I was too dazed. I
shouted the old question, "Who are you, speak to me! " The glass
panes rattled in the nearby windows. Mortals stirred in their little
chambers. There was no cemetery here. "Answer me, you pack of
cowards. Speak if you have a voice or once and for all get away from
me! " And then I knew, though how I knew, I can't tell you, that they
could hear me and they could answer me, if they chose. And I knew
that what I had always heard was the irrepressible evidence of their
proximity and their intensity, which they could disguise. But their
thoughts they could cloak and they had. I mean, they had intellect,
and they had words. I let out a long low breath. I was stung by their
silence, but I was stung a thousand times more by what had just
happened, and as I'd done so many times in the past I turned my back
on them. They followed me. This time they followed, and no matter
how swiftly I moved, they came on. And I did not lose the strange
toneless shimmer of them until I reached the place de Greve and went
into the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I spent the remainder of the night
in the cathedral, huddled in a shadowy place by the right wall. I
hungered for the blood I'd lost, and each time a mortal drew near I felt
a strong pulling and tingling where the wounds had been. But I
waited. And when a young beggar woman with a little child
approached, I knew the moment had come. She saw the dried blood,
and became frantic to get me to the nearby hospital, the Hotel-Dieu.
Her face was thin with hunger, but she tried to lift me herself with her
little arms. I looked into her eyes until I saw them glaze over. I felt the
heat of her breasts swelling beneath her rags. Her soft, succulent body
tumbled against me, giving itself to me, as I nestled her in all the
bloodstained brocade and lace. I kissed her, feeding on her heat as I
pushed the dirty cloth away from her throat, and I bent for the drink
so skillfully that the sleepy child never saw it. Then I opened with
careful trembling fingers the child's ragged shirt. This was mine, too,

                                                                       105

this little neck. There weren't any words for the rapture. Before I'd
had all the ecstasy that rape could give. But these victims had been
taken in the perfect semblance of love. The very blood seemed warmer
with their innocence, richer with their goodness. I looked at them
afterwards, as they slept together in death. They had found no
sanctuary in the cathedral on this night. And I knew my vision of the
garden of savage beauty had been a true vision. There was meaning in
the world, yes, and laws, and inevitability, but they had only to do with
the aesthetic. And in this Savage Garden, these innocent ones
belonged in the vampire's arms. A thousand other things can be said
about the world, but only aesthetic principles can be verified, and
these things alone remain the same. I was now ready to go home. And
as I went out in the early morning, I knew that the last barrier between
my appetite and the world had been dissolved. No one was safe from
me now, no matter how innocent. And that included my dear friends
at Renaud's and it included my beloved Nicki.




  13

  I wanted them gone from Paris. I wanted the playbills down, the
doors shut; I wanted silence and darkness in the little rattrap theater
where I had known the greatest and most sustained happiness of my
mortal life. Not a dozen innocent victims a night could make me stop
thinking about them, could make this ache in me dissolve. Every
street in Paris led to their door. And an ugly shame came over me
when I thought of my frightening them. How could I have done that
to them? Why did I need to prove to myself with such violence that I
could never be part of them again? No. I'd bought Renaud's. I'd
turned it into the showcase of the boulevard. Now I would close it
down. It was not that they suspected anything, however. They
believed the simple stupid excuses Roget gave them, that I was just
back from the heat of the tropical colonies, that the good Paris wine
had gone right to my head. Plenty of money again to repair the
damage. God only knows what they really thought. The fact was, they
went back to regular performances the following evening, and the
jaded crowds of the boulevard du Temple undoubtedly put upon the
mayhem a dozen sensible explanations. There was a queue under the
chestnut trees. Only Nicki was having none of it. He had taken to
heavy drinking and refused to return to the theater or study his music

                                                                      106

anymore. He insulted Roget when he came to call. To the worse cafes
and taverns he went, and wandered alone through the dangerous
nighttime streets. Well, we have that in common, I thought. All this
Roget told me as I paced the floor a good distance from the candle on
his table, my face a mask of my true thoughts.
  "Money doesn't mean very much to the young man, Monsieur, " he
said. "The young man has had plenty of money in his life, he reminds
me. He says things that disturb me, Monsieur. I don't like the sound
of them. " Roget looked like a nursery rhyme figure in his flannel cap
and gown, legs and feet naked because I had roused him again in the
middle of the night and given him no time to put on his slippers even
or to comb his hair.
  "What does he say? " I demanded.
  "He talks about sorcery, Monsieur. He says that you possess unusual
powers. He speaks of La Voisin and the Chambre Ardente, an old case
of sorcery under the Sun King, the witch who made charms and
poisons for members of the Court. "
  "Who would believe that trash now? " I affected absolute
bewilderment. The truth was, the hair was standing up on the back of
my neck.
  "Monsieur, he says bitter things, " he went on. "That your kind, as he
puts it, has always had access to great secrets. He keeps speaking of
some place in your town, called the witches' place. "
  "My kind! "
  "That you are an aristocrat, Monsieur, " Roget said. He was a little
embarrassed. "When a man is angry as Monsieur de Lenfent is angry,
these things come to be important. But he doesn't whisper his
suspicions to the others. He tells only me. He says that you will
understand why he despises you. You have refused to share with him
your discoveries! Yes, Monsieur, your discoveries. He goes on about
La Voisin, about things between heaven and earth for which there are
no rational explanations. He says he knows now why you cried at the
witches' place. " I couldn't look at Roget for a moment. It was such a
lovely perversion of everything! And yet it hit right at the truth. How
gorgeous, and how perfectly irrelevant. In his own way, Nicki was
right.
  "Monsieur, you are the kindest man- " Roget said.
  "Spare me, please.. . "
  "But Monsieur de Lenfent says fantastical things, things he should
not say even in this day and age, that he saw a bullet pass through your
body that should have killed you. "


                                                                     107

  "The bullet missed me, " I said. "Roget, don't go on with it. Get
them out of Paris, all of them. "
  "Get them out? " he asked. "But you've put so much money into this
little enterprise. . . "
  "So what? Who gives a damn? " I said. "Send them to London, to
Drury Lane. Offer Renaud enough for his own London theater. From
there they might go to America-Saint-Domingue, New Orleans, New
York. Do it, Monsieur. I don't care what it takes. Close up my theater
and get them gone! " And then the ache will be gone, won't it? I'll
stop seeing them gathered around me in the wings, stop thinking
about Lelio, the boy from the provinces who emptied their slop
buckets and loved it. Roget looked so profoundly timid. What is it
like, working for a well-dressed lunatic who pays you triple what
anyone else would pay you to forget your better judgment? I'll never
know. I'll never know what it is like to be human in any way, shape, or
form again.
  "As for Nicolas, " I said. "You're going to persuade him to go to Italy
and I'll tell you how. "
  "Monsieur, even persuading him to change his clothes would take
some doing. "
  "This will be easier. You know how ill my mother is. Well, get him
to take her to Italy. It's the perfect thing. He can very well study
music at the conservatories in Naples, and that is exactly where my
mother should go. "
  "He does write to her... is very fond of her. "
  "Precisely. Convince him she'll never make the journey without him.
Make all the arrangements for him. Monsieur, you must accomplish
this. He must leave Paris. I give you till the end of the week, and then
I'll be back for the news that he's gone. " It was asking a lot of Roget,
of course. But I could think of no other way. Nobody would believe
Nicki's ideas about sorcery, that was no worry. But I knew now that if
Nicki didn't leave Paris, he would be driven slowly out of his mind. As
the nights passed, I fought with myself every waking hour not to seek
him out, not to risk one last exchange. I just waited, knowing full well
that I was losing him forever and that he would never know the
reasons for anything that had come to pass. I, who had once railed
against the meaninglessness of our existence, was driving him off
without explanation, an injustice that might torment him to the end of
his days. Better that than the truth, Nicki. Maybe I understand all
illusions a little better now. And if you can only get my mother to go
to Italy, if there is only time for my mother still . . . Meantime I could
see for myself that Renaud's House of Thesbians was closed down. In

                                                                       108

the nearby cafe, I heard talk of the troupe's departure for England. So
that much of the plan had been accomplished. It was near dawn on
the eighth night when I finally wandered up to Roget's door and pulled
the bell. He answered sooner than I expected, looking befuddled and
anxious in the usual white flannel nightshirt.
  "I'm getting to like that garb of yours, Monsieur, " I said wearily. "I
don't think I'd trust you half as much if you wore a shirt and breeches
and a coat.. . "
  "Monsieur, " he interrupted me. "Something quite unexpected- "
  "Answer me first. Renaud and the others went happily to England? "
  "Yes, Monsieur. They're in London by now, but- "
  "And Nicki? Gone to my mother in the Auvergne. Tell me I'm right.
It's done. "
  "But Monsieur! " he said. And then he stopped. And quite
unexpectedly, I saw the image of my mother in his mind. Had I been
thinking, I would have known what it meant. This man had never to
my knowledge laid eyes upon my mother, so how could he picture her
in his thoughts? But I wasn't using my reason. In fact my reason had
flown.
  "She hasn't . . . you're not telling me that it's too late, " I said.
  "Monsieur, let me get my coat... " he said inexplicably. He reached
for the bell. And there it was, her image again, her face, drawn and
white, and all too vivid for me to stand it. I took Roget by the
shoulders.
  "You've seen her! She's here. "
  "Yes, Monsieur. She's in Paris. I'll take you to her now. Young de
Lenfent told me she was coming. But I couldn't reach you, Monsieur!
I never know where to reach you. And yesterday she arrived. " I was
too stunned to answer. I sank down into the chair, and my own
images of her blazed hot enough to eclipse everything that was
emanating from him. She was alive and she was in Paris. And Nicki
was still here and he was with her. Roget came close to me, reached
out as if he wanted to touch me:
  "Monsieur, you go ahead while I dress. She is in the Ile St. Louis,
three doors to the right of Monsieur Nicolas. You must go at once. " I
looked up at him stupidly. I couldn't even really see him. I was seeing
her. There was less than an hour before sunrise. And it would take me
three-quarters of that time to reach the tower.
  "Tomorrow . . . tomorrow night, " I think I stammered. That line
came back to me from Shakespeare's Macbeth.. . "Tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow... "


                                                                        109

  "Monsieur, you don't understand! There will be no trips to Italy for
your mother. She has made her last journey in coming here to see
you. " When I didn't answer he grabbed hold of me and tried to shake
me. I'd never seen him like this before. I was a boy to him and he was
the man who had to bring me to my senses.
  "I've gotten lodgings for her, " he said. "Nurses, doctors, all that you
could wish. But they aren't keeping her alive. You are keeping her
alive, Monsieur. She must see you before she closes her eyes. Now
forget the hour and go to her. Even a will as strong as hers can't work
miracles. " I couldn't answer. I couldn't form a coherent thought. I
stood up and went to the door, pulling him along with me. "Go to her
now, " I said, "and tell her I'll be there tomorrow night. " He shook his
head. He was angry and disgusted. And he tried to turn his back on
me. I wouldn't let him.
  "You go there at once, Roget, " I said. "Sit with her all day, do you
understand, and see that she waits-that she waits for me to come!
Watch her if she sleeps. Wake her and talk to her if she starts to go.
But don't let her die before I get there! "




                                                                        110

  Part III - Viaticum For The Marquise

  1

  In vampire parlance, I am an early riser. I rise when the sun has just
sunk below the horizon and there is still red light in the sky. Many
vampires don't rise until there is full darkness, and so I have a
tremendous advantage in this, and in that they must return to the
grave a full hour or more before I do. I haven't mentioned it before
because I didn't know it then, and it didn't come to matter until much
later. But the next night, I was on the road to Paris when the sky was
on fire. I'd clothed myself in the most respectable garments I
possessed before I slipped into the sarcophagus, and I was chasing the
sun west into Paris. It looked like the city was burning, so bright was
the light to me and so terrifying, until finally I came pounding over the
bridge behind Notre Dame, into the Ile St. Louis. I didn't think about
what I would do or say, or how I might conceal myself from her. I
knew only I had to see her and hold her and be with her while there
was still time. I couldn't truly think of her death. It had tile fullness of
catastrophe, and belonged to the burning sky. And maybe I was being
the common mortal, believing if I could grant her last wish, then
somehow the horror was under my command. Dusk was just bleeding
the light away when I found her house on the quais. It was a stylish
enough mansion. Roget had done well, and a clerk was at the door
waiting to direct me up the stairs. Two maids and a nurse were in the
parlor of the flat when I came in.
  "Monsieur de Lenfent is with her, Monsieur, " the nurse said. "She
insisted on getting dressed to see you. She wanted to sit in the window
and look at the towers of the cathedral, Monsieur. She saw you ride
over the bridge. "
  "Put out the candles in the room, except for one, " I said. "And tell
Monsieur de Lenfent and my lawyer to come out. " Roget came out at
once, and then Nicolas appeared. He too had dressed for her, all in
brilliant red velvet, with his old fancy linen and his white gloves. The
recent drinking had left him thinner, almost haggard. Yet it made his
beauty all the more vivid. When our eyes met, the malice leapt out of
him, scorching my heart.
  "The Marquise is a little stronger today, Monsieur, " Roget said, "but
she's hemorrhaging badly. The doctor says she will not- " He stopped
and glanced back at the bedroom. I got it clear from his thought. She
won't last through the night.
  "Get her back to bed, Monsieur, as fast you can. "

                                                                        111

  "For what purpose do I get her back to bed? " I said. My voice was
dull, a murmur. "Maybe she wants to die at the damned window.
Why the hell not? "
  "Monsieur! " Roget implored me softly. I wanted to tell him to leave
with Nicki. But something was happening to me. I went into the hall
and looked towards the bedroom. She was in there. I felt a dramatic
physical change in myself. I couldn't move or speak. She was in there
and she was really dying. All the little sounds of the flat became a
hum. I saw a lovely bedroom through the double doors, a white
painted bed with gold hangings, and the windows draped in the same
gold, and the sky in the high panes of the windows with only the
faintest wisps of gold cloud. But all this was indistinct and faintly
horrible, the luxury I'd wanted to give her and she about to feel her
body collapse beneath her. I wondered if it maddened her, made her
laugh. The doctor appeared. The nurse came to tell me only one
candle remained, as I had ordered. The smell of medicines intruded
and mingled with a rose perfume, and I realized I was hearing her
thoughts. It was the dull throb of her mind as she waited, her bones
aching in her emaciated flesh so that to sit at the window even in the
soft velvet chair with the comforter surrounding her was almost
unendurable pain. But what was she thinking, beneath her desperate
anticipation? Lestat, Lestat, and Lestat, I could hear that. But beneath
it:
  "Let the pain get worse, because only when the pain is really dreadful
do I want to die. If the pain would just get bad enough so that I'd be
glad to die and I wouldn't be so frightened. I want it to be so terrible
that I'm not frightened. "
  "Monsieur. " The doctor touched my arm. "She will not have the
priest come. "
  "No . . . she wouldn't. " She had turned her head towards the door.
If I didn't come in now, she would get up, no matter how it hurt her,
and come to me. It seemed I couldn't move. And yet I pushed past
the doctor and the nurse, and I went into the room and closed the
doors. Blood scent. In the pale violet light of the window she sat,
beautifully dressed in dark blue taffeta, her hand in her lap and the
other on the arm of the chair, her thick yellow hair gathered behind
her ears so that the curls spilled over her shoulders from the pink
ribbons. There was the faintest bit of rouge on her cheeks. For one
eerie moment she looked to me as she had when I was a little boy. So
pretty. The symmetry of her face was unchanged by time or illness,
and so was her hair. And a heartbreaking happiness came over me, a
warm delusion that I was mortal again, and innocent again, and with

                                                                      112

her, and everything was all right, really truly all right. There was no
death and no terror, just she and I in her bedroom, and she would take
me in her arms. I stopped. I'd come very close to her, and she was
crying as she looked up. The girdle of the Paris dress bound her too
tightly, and her skin was so thin and colorless over her throat and her
hands that I couldn't bear to look at them, and her eyes looked up at
me from flesh that was almost bruised. I could smell death on her. I
could smell decay. But she was radiant, and she was mine; she was as
she'd always been, and I told her so silently with all my power, that she
was lovely as my earliest memory of her when she had had her old
fancy clothes still, and she would dress up so carefully and carry me on
her lap in the carriage to church. And in this strange moment when I
gave her to know this, how much I cherished her, I realized she heard
me and she answered me that she loved me and always had. It was the
answer to a question I hadn't even asked. And she knew the
importance of it; her eyes were clear, unentranced. If she realized the
oddity of this, that we could talk to each other without words, she gave
no clue. Surely she didn't grasp it fully. She must have felt only an
outpouring of love.
  "Come here so I can see you, " she said, "as you are now. " The
candle was by her arm on the windowsill. And quite deliberately I
pinched it out. I saw her frown, a tightening of her blond brows, and
her blue eyes grew just a little larger as she looked at me, at the bright
silk brocade and the usual lace I'd chosen to wear for her, and the
sword on my hip with its rather imposing jeweled hilt.
  "Why don't you want me to see you? " she asked. "I came to Paris to
see you. Light the candle again. " But there was no real chastisement
in the words. I was here with her and that was enough. I knelt down
before her. I had some mortal conversation in mind, that she should
go to Italy with Nicki, and quite distinctly, before I could speak, she
said:
  "Too late, my darling, I could never finish the journey. I've come far
enough. " A clamp of pain stopped her, circling her waist where the
girdle bound it, and to hide it from me, she made her face very blank.
She looked like a girl when she did this, and again I smelt the sickness
in her, the decay in her lungs, and the clots of blood. Her mind
became a riot of fear. She wanted to scream out to me that she was
afraid. She wanted to beg me to hold on to her and remain with her
until it was finished, but she couldn't do this, and to my astonishment,
I realized she thought I would refuse her. That I was too young and
too thoughtless to ever understand. This was agony. I wasn't even
conscious of moving away from her, but I'd walked across the room.

                                                                        113

Stupid little details embedded themselves in my consciousness:
nymphs playing on the painted ceiling, the high gilt door handles and
the melted wax in brittle stalactites on the white candles that I wanted
to break off and crumple in my hand. The place looked hideous,
overdressed. Did she hate it? Did she want those barren stone rooms
again? I was thinking about her as if there were "tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow.. . " I looked back at her, her stately figure
holding to the windowsill. The sky had deepened behind her and a
new light, the light of house lamps and passing carriages and nearby
windows, gently touched the small inverted triangle of her thin face.
  "Can't you talk to me, " she said softly. "Can't you tell me how it's
come about? You've brought such happiness to all of us. " Even
talking hurt her. "But how does it go with you? With YOU! " I think I
was on the verge of deceiving her, of creating some strong emanation
of contentment with all the powers I had. I'd tell mortal lies with
immortal skill. I'd start talking and talking and testing my every word
to make it perfect. But something happened in the silence. I don't
think I stood still more than a moment, but something changed inside
of me. An awesome shift took place. In one instant I saw a vast and
terrifying possibility, and in that same instant, without question, I
made up my mind. It had no words to it or scheme or plan. And I
would have denied it had anyone questioned me at that moment. I
would have said, "No, never, farthest from my thoughts. What do you
think I am, what sort of monster " . . . And yet the choice had been
made. I understood something absolute. Her words had completely
died away, she was afraid again and in pain again, and in spite of the
pain, she rose from her chair. I saw the comforter slip away from her,
and I knew she was coming towards me and that I should stop her, but
I didn't do it. I saw her hands close to me, reaching for me, and the
next thing I knew she had leapt backwards as if blown by a mighty
wind. She had scuffed backwards across the carpet, and fallen past the
chair against the wall. But she grew very still quickly as though she
willed it, and there wasn't fear in her face, even though her heart was
racing. Rather there was wonder and then a baffled calm. If I had
thoughts at that moment, I don't know what they were. I came
towards her just as steadily as she had come towards me. Gauging her
every reaction, I drew closer until we were as near to each other as we
had been when she leapt away. She was staring at my skin and my
eyes, and quite suddenly she reached out again and touched my face.
  "Not alive! " That was the horrifying perception that came from her
silently. "Changed into something. But NOT ALIVE. " Quietly I said
no. That was not right. And I sent a cool torrent of images to her, a

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procession of glimpses of what my existence had become. Bits, pieces
of the fabric of the nighttime Paris, the sense of a blade cutting
through the world soundlessly. With a little hiss she let out her breath.
The pain balled its fist in her, opened its claw. She swallowed, sealing
her lips against it, her eyes veritably burning into me. She knew now
these were not sensations, these communications, but that they were
thoughts.
  "How then? " she demanded. And without questioning what I
meant to do I gave her the tale link by link, the shattered window
through which I'd been torn by the ghostly figure who had stalked me
at the theater, the tower and the exchange of blood. I revealed to her
the crypt in which I slept, and its treasure, my wanderings, my powers,
and above all, the nature of the thirst. The taste of blood and the feel
of blood, and what it meant for all passion, all greed to be sharpened
in that one desire, and that one desire to be satisfied over and over
with the feeding and the death. The pain ate at her but she no longer
felt it. Her eyes were all that was left of her as she stared at me. And
though I didn't mean to reveal all these things, I found I had taken
hold of her and was turning so that the light of the carriages crashing
along the quaff below fell full on my face. Without taking my eyes
from her, I reached for the silver candelabra on the windowsill, and
lifting it I slowly bent the metal, working it with my fingers into loops
and twists. The candle fell to the floor. Her eyes rolled up into her
head. She slipped backwards and away from me, and as she caught the
curtains of the bed in her left hand, the blood came up out of her
mouth. It was coming from her lungs in a great silent cough. She was
slipping down on her knees, and the blood was all over the side of the
draped bed. I looked at the twisted silver thing in my hands, the
idiotic loops that meant nothing, and I let it drop. And I stared at her,
her struggling against unconsciousness and pain, and wiping her
mouth suddenly in sluggish gestures, like a vomiting drunk, on the
bedclothes, as she sank unable to support herself to the floor. I was
standing over her. I was watching her, and her momentary pain
meant nothing in light of the vow that I was speaking to her now. No
words again, just the silent thrust of it, and the question, more
immense than could ever be put into words, Do you want to come
with me now? DO YOU WANT TO COME WITH ME INTO THIS
NOW? I hide nothing from you, not my ignorance, not my fear, not
the simple terror that if I try I might fail. I do not even know if it is
mine to give more than once, or what is the price of giving it, but I will
risk this for you, and we will discover it together, whatever the mystery


                                                                         115

and the terror, just as I've discovered alone all else. With her whole
being she said Yes.
  "Yes! " she screamed aloud suddenly, drunkenly, the voice maybe
that had always been her voice yet one that I had never heard. Her
eyes closed and tightened and her head turned from the left and to the
right. "Yes! " I leant forward and kissed the blood on her open lips. It
sent a zinging through all my limbs and the thirst leapt out for her and
tried to transform her into mere flesh. My arms slipped around her
light little form and I lifted her up and up, until I was standing with
her against the window, and her hair was falling down behind her, and
the blood came up in her out of her lungs again, but it didn't matter
now. All the memories of my life with her surrounded us; they wove
their shroud around us and closed us off from the world, the soft
poems and songs of childhood, and the sense of her before words
when there had only been the flicker of the light on the ceiling above
her pillows and the smell of her all around me and her voice silencing
my crying, and then the hatred of her and the need of her, and the
losing of her behind a thousand closed doors, and cruel answers, and
the terror of her and her complexity and her indifference and her
indefinable strength. And jetting up into the current came the thirst,
not obliterating but heating every concept of her, until she was flesh
and blood and mother and lover and all things beneath the cruel
pressure of my fingers and my lips, everything I had ever desired. I
drove my teeth into her, feeling her stiffen and gasp, and I felt my
mouth grow wide to catch the hot flood when it came. Her heart and
soul split open. There was no age to her, no single moment. My
knowledge dimmed and flickered and there was no mother anymore,
no petty need and petty terror; she was simply who she was. She was
Gabrielle. And all her life came to her defense, the years and years of
suffering and loneliness, the waste in those damp, hollow chambers to
which she'd been condemned, and the books that were her solace, and
the children who devoured her and abandoned her, and the pain and
disease, her final enemy, which had, in promising release, pretended to
be her friend.. Beyond words and images there came the secret
thudding of her passion, her seeming madness, her refusal to despair.
I was holding her, holding her off her feet, my arms crossed behind her
narrow back, my hand cradling her limp head, and I was groaning so
loud against her with the pumping of the blood that it was a song in
time with her heart. But the heart was slowing too quickly. Her death
was coming, and with all her will she pumped against it, and in a final
burst of denial I pushed her away from me and held her still. I was
almost swooning. The thirst wanted her heart. It was no alchemist,

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the thirst. And I was standing there with my lips parted and my eyes
glazed and I held her far, far away from me as if I were two beings, the
one wanting to crush her and the other to bring her to me. Her eyes
were open and seemingly blind. For a moment she was in some place
beyond all suffering, where there was nothing but sweetness and even
something that might be understanding, but then I heard her calling to
me by name. I lifted my right wrist to my mouth and slashed the vein
and pushed it against her lips. She didn't move as the blood spilled
over her tongue.
  "Mother, drink, " I said frantically, and pushed it harder, but some
change had already commenced. Her lips quivered, and her mouth
locked to me and the pain whipped through me suddenly encircling
my heart. Her body lengthened, tensed, her left hand rising to grasp
my wrist as she swallowed the first spurt. And the pain grew stronger
and stronger so that I almost cried out. I could see it as if it were
molten metal coursing through my vessels, branching through every
sinew and limb. Yet it was only her pulling, her sucking, her taking the
blood out of me that I had taken from her. She was standing now on
her own feet, her head barely leaning against my chest. And a
numbness crept over me with the pulling burning through the
numbness, and my heart thundered against it, feeding the pain as it fed
her-pulling with every beat. Harder and harder she drew and faster,
and I felt her grip tighten and her body grow hard. I wanted to force
her away, but I would not do it, and when my legs gave under me it
was she who held me up. I was swaying and the room was tilting, but
she went on with it and a vast silence stretched out in all directions
from me and then without will or conviction, I thrust her backwards
away. She stumbled and stood before the window, her long fingers
pressed flat against her open mouth. And before I turned and
collapsed into the nearby chair I looked full at her white face for an
instant, and her form swelling, it seemed, under the thin peeling of
dark blue taffeta, her eyes like two crystal orbs gathering the light. I
think I said, "Mother, " in that instant like some stupid mortal, and I
closed my eyes.

  2

  I was sitting in the chair it seemed I'd been asleep forever, but I
hadn't been asleep at all. I was home in my father's house. I looked
around for the fire poker and my dogs, and to see if there was any wine
left, and then I saw the gold drapery around the windows and the back
of Notre Dame against the evening stars, and I saw her there. We were

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in Paris. And we were going to live forever. She had something in her
hands. Another candelabra. A tinderbox. She stood very straight and
her movements were quick. She made a spark and touched it to the
candles one by one. And the little flames rose, and the painted flowers
on the walls rolled up to the ceiling and the dancers on the ceiling
moved for one moment and then were frozen in their circle again. She
was standing in front of me, the candelabra to the right of her. And
her face was white and perfectly smooth. The dark bruises under her
eyes had gone away, in fact every blemish or flaw she had ever had had
gone away, though what those flaws had been I couldn't have told you.
She was perfect now. And the lines given her by age had been reduced
and curiously deepened, so that there were tiny laugh lines at the edge
of each eye, and a very tiny crease on either side of her mouth. The
barest fold of extra flesh remained to each eyelid, heightening her
symmetry, the sense of triangles in her face, and her lips were the
softest shade of pink. She looked delicate as a diamond can look
delicate when preyed upon by the light. I closed my eyes and opened
them again and saw it was no delusion, any more than her silence was
a delusion. And I saw that her body was even more profoundly
changed. She had the fullness of young womanhood again, the breasts
that the illness had withered away. They were swelling above the dark
blue taffeta of her corset, the pale pink tint of her flesh so subtle it
might have been reflected light. But her hair was even more
astonishing because it appeared to be alive. So much color moved in it
that the hair itself appeared to be writhing, billions of tiny strands
stirring around the flawless white face and throat. The wounds on her
throat were gone. Now nothing remained but the final act of courage.
Look into her eyes. Look with these vampire eyes at another being like
yourself for the first time since Magnus leapt into the fire. I must have
made some sound because she responded ever so slightly as if I had.
Gabrielle, that was the only name I could ever call her now. "Gabrielle,
" I said io her, never having called her that except in some very private
thoughts, and I saw her almost smile. I looked down at my wrist. The
wound was gone but the thirst gnashed in me. My veins spoke to me
as if I had spoken to them. And I stared at her and saw her lips move
in a tiny gesture of hunger. And she gave me a strange, meaningful
expression as if to say, "Don't you understand? " But I heard nothing
from her. Silence, only the beauty of her eyes looking full at me and
the love perhaps with which we saw each other, but silence stretching
in all directions, ratifying nothing. I couldn't fathom it. Was she
closing her mind? I asked her silently and she didn't appear to
comprehend.

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  "Now, " she said, and her voice startled me. It was softer, more
resonant than before. For one moment we were in Auvergne, the
snow was falling, and she was singing to me and it was echoing as if in
a great cave. But that was finished. She said, "Go . . . done with all of
this, quickly-now! " She nodded to coax me and she came closer and
she tugged at my hand.
  "Look at yourself in the minor, " she whispered. But I knew. I had
given her more blood than I had taken from her. I was starved. I
hadn't even fed before I came to her. But I was so taken with the
sound of the syllables and that glimpse of snow falling and the
memory of the singing that for a moment I didn't respond. I looked at
her fingers touching mine. I saw our flesh was the same. I rose up out
of the chair and held her two hands and then I felt of her arms and her
face. It was done and I was alive still! She was with me now. She had
come through that awful solitude and she was with me, and I could
think of nothing suddenly except holding her, crushing her to me,
never letting her go. I lifted her off her feet. I swung her up in my
arms and we turned round and round. She threw back her head and
her laughter shook loose from her, growing louder and louder, until I
put my hand over her mouth.
  "You can shatter all the glass in the room with your voice, " I
whispered. I glanced towards the doors. Nicki and Roget were out
there.
  "Then let me shatter it! " she said, and there was nothing playful in
her expression. I set her on her feet. I think we embraced again and
again almost foolishly. I couldn't keep myself from it. But other
mortals were moving in the flat, the doctor and the nurses thinking
that they should come in. I saw her look to the door. She was hearing
them too. But why wasn't I hearing her? She broke away from me,
eyes darting from one object to another. She snatched up the candles
again and brought them to the mirror where she looked at her face. I
understood what was happening to her. She needed time to see and to
measure with her new vision. But we had to get out of the flat. I could
hear Nicki's voice through the wall, urging the doctor to knock on the
door. How was I to get her out of here, get rid of them?
  "No, not that way, " she said when she saw me look at the door. She
was looking at the bed, the objects on the table. She went to the bed
and took her jewels from under the pillow. She examined them and
put them back into the worn velvet purse. Then she fastened the purse
to her skirt so that it was lost in the folds of cloth. There was an air of
importance to these little gestures. I knew even though her mind was
giving me nothing that this was all she wanted from this room. She

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was taking leave of things, the clothes she'd brought with her, her
ancient silver brush and comb, and the tattered books that lay on the
table by the bed. There was knocking at the door.
  "Why not this way? " she asked, and turning to the window, she
threw open the glass. The breeze gusted into the gold draperies and
lifted her hair off the back of her neck, and when she turned I shivered
at the sight of her, her hair tangling around her face, and her eyes wide
and filled with myriad fragments of color and an almost tragic light.
She was afraid of nothing. I took hold of her and for a moment
wouldn't let her go. I nestled my face into her hair, and all I could
think again was that we were together and nothing was ever going to
separate us now. I didn't understand her silence, why I couldn't hear
her, but I knew it wasn't her doing, and perhaps I believed it would
pass. She was with me. That was the world. Death was my
commander and I gave him a thousand victims, but I'd snatched her
right out of his hand. I said it aloud. I said other desperate and
nonsensical things. We were the same terrible and deadly beings, the
two of us, we were wandering in the Savage Garden and I tried to
make it real for her with images, the meaning of the Savage Garden,
but it didn't matter if she didn't understand.
  "The Savage Garden, " she repeated the words reverently, her lips
making a soft smile. It was pounding in my head. I felt her kissing me
and making some little whisper as if in accompaniment to her
thoughts. She said, "But help me, now, I want to see you do it, now,
and we have forever to hold to each other. Come. " Thirst. I should
have been burning. I positively required the blood, and she wanted
the taste, I knew she did. Because I remembered that I had wanted it
that very first night. It struck me then that the pain of her physical
death . . . the fluids leaving her... might be lessened if she could first
drink. The knocking came again. The door wasn't locked. I stepped
up on the sill of the window and reached for her, and immediately she
was in my arms. She weighed nothing, but I could feel her power, the
tenacity of her grip. Yet when she saw the alley below, the top of the
wall and the quai beyond, she seemed for a moment to doubt.
  "Put your arms around my neck, " I said, "and hold tight. " I climbed
up the stones, carrying her with her feet dangling, her face turned
upwards to me, until we had reached the slippery slates of the roof.
Then I took her hand and pulled her after me, running faster and
faster, over the gutters and the chimney pots, leaping across the
narrow alleys until we had reached the other side of the island. I'd
been ready any moment for her to cry out or cling to me, but she
wasn't afraid. She stood silent, looking over the rooftops of the Left

                                                                       120

Bank, and down at the river crowded with thousands of dark little
boats full of ragged beings, and she seemed for the moment simply to
feel the wind unraveling her hair. I could have fallen in a stupor
looking at her, studying her, all the aspects of the transformation, but
there was an immense excitement in me to take her through the entire
city, to reveal all things to her, to teach her everything I'd learned. She
knew nothing of physical exhaustion now any more than I did. And
she wasn't stunned by any horror such as I had been when Magnus
went into the fire. A carriage came speeding along the quai below,
listing badly towards the river, the driver hunched over, trying to keep
his balance on the high bench. I pointed to it as it drew near and I
clasped her hand. We leapt as it came beneath us, landing soundlessly
on the leather top. The busy driver never looked around. I held tight
to her, steadying her, until we were both riding easily, ready to jump
off the vehicle when we chose. It was indescribably thrilling, doing
this with her. We were thundering over the bridge and past the
cathedral, and on through the crowds on the Pont Neuf. I heard her
laughter again. I wondered what those in the high windows saw when
they looked down on us, two gaily dressed figures clinging to the
unsteady roof of the carriage like mischievous children as if it were a
raft. The carriage swerved. We were racing towards St. Germain des-
Pres, scattering the crowds before us and roaring past the intolerable
stench of the cemetery of les Innocents as towering tenements closed
in. For one second, I felt the shimmer of the presence, but it was gone
so quickly I doubted myself. I looked back and could catch no
glimmer of it. And I realized with extraordinary vividness that
Gabrielle and I would talk about the presence together, that we would
talk about everything together, and approach all things together. This
night was as cataclysmic in its own way as the night Magnus had
changed me, and this night had only begun. The neighborhood was
perfect now. I took her hand again, and pulled her after me, off the
carriage, down into the street. She stared dazed at the spinning wheels,
but they were immediately gone. She didn't even look disheveled so
much as she looked impossible, a woman torn out of time and place,
clad only in slippers and dress, no chains on her, free to soar. We
entered a narrow alleyway and ran together, arms around each other,
and now and then I looked down to see her eyes sweeping the walls
above us, the scores of shuttered windows with their little streaks of
escaping light. I knew what she was seeing. I knew the sounds that
pressed in on her. But still I could hear nothing from her, and this
frightened me a little to think maybe she was deliberately shutting me
out. But she had stopped. She was having the first spasm of her death.

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I could see it in her face. I reassured her, and reminded her in quick
words of the vision I'd given her before.
  "This is brief pain, nothing compared to what you've known. It will
be gone in a matter of hours, maybe less if we drink now. " She
nodded, more impatient with it than afraid. We came out into a little
square. In the gateway to an old house a young man stood, as if
waiting for someone, the collar of his gray cloak up to shield his face.
Was she strong enough to take him? Was she as strong as I? This was
the time to find out.
  "If the thirst doesn't carry you into it, then it's too soon, " I told her.
I glanced at her and a coldness crept over me. Her look of
concentration was almost purely human, so intent was it, so fixed; and
her eyes were shadowed with that same sense of tragedy I'd glimpsed
before. Nothing was lost on her. But when she moved towards the
man she wasn't human at all. She had become a pure predator, as only
a beast can be a predator, and yet she was a woman walking slowly
towards a man-a lady, in fact, stranded here without cape or hat or
companions, and approaching a gentleman as if to beg for his aid. She
was all that. It was ghastly to watch it, the way that she moved over the
stones as if she did not even touch them, and the way that everything,
even the wisps of her hair blown this way and that by the breeze,
seemed somehow under her command. She could have moved
through the wall itself with that relentless step. I drew back into the
shadows. The man quickened, turned to her with the faint grind of his
boot heel on the stones, and she rose on tiptoe as if to whisper in his
ear. I think for one moment she hesitated. Perhaps she was faintly
horrified. If she was, then the thirst had not had time enough to grow
strong. But if she did question it, it was for no more than that second.
She was taking him and he was powerless and I was too fascinated to
do anything but watch. But it came to me quite unexpectedly that I
hadn't warned her about the heart. How could I have forgotten such a
thing? I rushed towards her, but she had already let him go. And he
had crumpled against the wall, his head to one side, his hat fallen at his
feet. He was dead. She stood looking down at him, and I saw the
blood working in her, heating her and deepening her color and the red
of her lips. Her eyes were a flash of violet when she glanced at me,
almost exactly the color the sky had been when I'd come into her
bedroom. I was silent watching her as she looked down at the victim
with a curious amazement as if she did not completely accept what she
saw. Her hair was tangled again and I lifted it back from her. She
slipped into my arms. I guided her away from the victim. She glanced
back once or twice, then looked straight forward.

                                                                          122

  "It's enough for this night. We should go home to the tower, " I said.
I wanted to show her the treasure, and just to be with her in that safe
place, to hold her and comfort her if she began to go mad over it all.
She was feeling the death spasms again. There she could rest by the
fire.
  "No, I don't want to go yet, " she said. "The pain won't go on long,
you promised it wouldn't. I want it to pass and then to be here. " She
looked up at me, and she smiled. "I came to Paris to die, didn't I? "
she whispered. Everything was distracting her, the dead man back
there, slumped in his gray cape, the sky shimmering on the surface of a
puddle of water, a cat streaking atop a nearby wall. The blood was hot
in her, moving in her. I clasped her hand and urged her to follow me.
"I have to drink, " I said.
  "Yes, I see it, " she whispered. "You should have taken him. I should
have thought . . . And you are the gentleman, even still. "
  "The starving gentleman. " I smiled. "Let's not stumble over
ourselves devising an etiquette for monsters. " I laughed. I would
have kissed her, but I was suddenly distracted. I squeezed her hand
too tightly. Far away, from the direction of les Innocents, I heard the
presence as strongly as ever before. She stood as still as I was, and
inclining her head slowly to one side, moved the hair back from her
ear.
  "Do you hear it? " I asked. She looked up at me. "Is it another one!
" She narrowed her eyes and glanced again in the direction from which
the emanation had come.
  "Outlaw! " she said aloud.
  "What? " Outlaw, outlaw, outlaw. I felt a wave of lightheadedness,
something of a dream remembered. Fragment of a dream. But I
couldn't think. I'd been damaged by doing it to her. I had to drink.
  "It called us outlaws, " she said. "Didn't you hear it? " And she
listened again, but it was gone and neither of us heard it, and I
couldn't be certain that I received that clear pulse, outlaw, but it
seemed I had!
  "Never mind it, whatever it is, " I said. "It never comes any closer
than that. " But even as I spoke I knew it had been more virulent this
time. I wanted to get away from les Innocents. "It lives in graveyards,
" I murmured. "It may not be able to live elsewhere . . . for very long.
" But before I finished speaking, I felt it again, and it seemed to expand
and to exude the strongest malevolence I'd received from it yet.
  "It's laughing! " she whispered. I studied her. Without doubt, she
was hearing it more clearly than I.


                                                                       123

  "Challenge it! " I said. "Call it a coward! Tell it to come out! " She
gave me an amazed look.
  "Is that really what you want to do? " she questioned me under her
breath. She was trembling slightly, and I steadied her. She put her
arm around her waist as if one of the spasms had come again.
  "Not now then, " I said. "This isn't the time. And we'll hear it again,
just when we've forgotten all about it. "
  "It's gone, " she said. "But it hates us, this thing. . . "
  "Let's get away from it, " I said contemptuously, and putting my arm
around her I hurried her along. I didn't tell her what I was thinking,
what weighed on me far more than the presence and its usual tricks. If
she could hear the presence as well as I could, better in fact, then she
had all my powers, including the ability to send and hear images and
thoughts. Yet we could no longer hear each other!

  3

  I found a victim as soon as we had crossed the river, and as soon as I
spotted the man, there came the deepening awareness that everything I
had done alone I would now do with her. She would watch this act,
learn from it. I think the intimacy of it made the blood rush to my
face. And as I lured the victim out of the tavern, as I teased him,
maddened him, and then took him, I knew I was showing off for her,
making it a little crueler, more playful. And when the kill came, it had
an intensity to it that left me spent afterwards. She loved it. She
watched everything as if she could suck up the very vision as she
sucked. blood. We came together again and I took her in my arms
and I felt her heat and she felt my heat. The blood was flooding my
brain. And we just held each other, even the thin covering of our
garments seeming alien, two burning statues in the dark. After that,
the night lost all ordinary dimensions. In fact, it remains one of the
longest nights I have ever endured in my immortal life. It was endless
and fathomless and dizzying, and there were times when I wanted
some defense against its pleasures and its surprises, arid I had none.
And though I said her name over and over, to make it natural, she
wasn't really Gabrielle yet to me. She was simply she, the one I had
needed all of my life with all of my being. The only woman I had ever
loved. Her actual death didn't take long. We sought out an empty
cellar room where we remained until it was finished. And there I held
on to her and talked to her as it went on. I told her everything that
had happened to me again, in words this time. I told her all about the
tower. I told everything that Magnus had said. I explained all the

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occurrences of the presence. And how I had become almost used to it
and contemptuous of it, and not willing to chase it down. Over and
over again I tried to send her images, but it was useless. I didn't say
anything about it. Neither did she. But she listened very attentively. I
talked to her about Nicki's suspicions, which of course he had not
mentioned to her at all. And I explained that I feared for him even
more now. Another open window, another empty room, and this
time witnesses to verify the strangeness of it all. But never mind, I
should tell Roget some story that would make it plausible. I should
find some means to do right by Nicki, to break the chain of suspicions
that was binding him to me. She seemed dimly fascinated by all of
this, but it didn't really matter to her. What mattered to her was what
lay before her now. And when her death was finished, she was
unstoppable. There was no wall that she could not climb, no door she
wouldn't enter, no rooftop terrain too steep. It was as if she did not
believe she would live forever; rather she thought she had been granted
this one night of supernatural vitality and all things must be known
and accomplished before death would come for her at dawn. Many
times I tried to persuade her to go home to the tower. As the hours
passed, a spiritual exhaustion came over me. I needed to be quiet
there, to think on what had happened. I'd open my eyes and see only
blackness for an instant. But she wanted only experiment, adventure.
She proposed that we enter the private dwellings of mortals now to
search for the clothes she needed. She laughed when I said that I
always purchased my clothes in the proper way.
  "We can hear if a house is empty, " she said, moving swiftly through
the streets, her eyes on the windows of the darkened mansions. "We
can hear if the servants are asleep. " It made perfect sense, though I'd
never attempted such a thing. And I was soon following her up
narrow back stairs and down carpeted corridors, amazed at the ease of
it all, and fascinated by the details of the informal chambers in which
mortals lived. I found I liked to touch personal things: fans,
snuffboxes, the newspaper the master of the house had been reading,
his boots on the hearth. It was as much fun as peering into windows.
But she had her purpose. In a lady's dressing room in a large St.
Germain house, she found a fortune in lavish clothes to fit her new
and fuller form. I helped to peel off the old taffeta and to dress her up
in pink velvet, gathering her hair in tidy curls under an ostrich-plume
hat. I was shocked again by the sight of her, and the strange eerie
feeling of wandering with her through this over furnished house full of
mortal scents. She gathered objects from the dressing table. A vial of
perfume, a small gold pair of scissors. She looked at herself in the

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glass. I went to kiss her again and she didn't stop me. We were lovers
kissing. And that was the picture we made together, white-faced
lovers, as we rushed down the servants' stairs and out into the late
evening streets. We wandered in and out of the Opera and the
Comedie before they closed, then through the ball in the Palais Royal.
It delighted her the way mortals saw us, but did not see us, how they
were drawn to us, and completely deceived. We heard the presence
very sharply after that, as we explored the churches, then again it was
gone. We climbed belfries to survey our kingdom, and afterwards
huddled in crowded coffeehouses for a little while merely to feel and
smell the mortals around us, to exchange secret glances, to laugh
softly, tete-a-tete. She fell into dream states, looking at the steam
rising from the mug of coffee, at the layers of cigarette smoke hovering
around the lamps. She loved the dark empty streets and the fresh air
more than anything else. She wanted to climb up into the limbs of the
trees and onto the rooftops again. She marveled that I didn't always
travel through the city by means of the rooftops, or ride about atop
carriages as we had done. Some time after midnight, we were in the
deserted market, just walking hand in hand. We had just heard the
presence again but neither of us could discern a disposition in it as we
had before. It was puzzling me. But everything around us was
astonishing her still-the refuse, the cats that chased the vermin, the
bizarre stillness, the way that the darkest comers of the metropolis held
no danger for us. She remarked on that. Perhaps it was that which
enchanted her most of all, that we could slip past the dens of thieves
unheard, that we could easily defeat anyone who should be fool
enough to trouble us, that we were both visible and invisible, palpable
and utterly unaccountable. I didn't rash her or question her. I was
merely borne along with her and content and sometimes lost in my
own thoughts about this unfamiliar content. And when a handsome,
slightly built young man came riding through the darkened stalls I
watched him as if he were an apparition, something coming from the
land of the living into the land of the dead. He reminded me of
Nicolas because of his dark hair and dark eyes, and something
innocent yet brooding in the face. He shouldn't have been in the
market alone. He was younger than Nicki and very foolish, indeed.
But just how foolish he was I didn't realize until she moved forward
like a great pink feline, and brought him down almost silently from the
horse. I was shaken. The innocence of her victims didn't trouble her.
She didn't fight my moral battles. But then I didn't fight them
anymore either, so why should I judge her? Yet the ease with which
she slew the young man-gracefully breaking his neck when the little

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drink she took was not enough to kill him-angered me though it had
been extremely exciting to watch. She was colder than I. She was
better at all of it, I thought. Magnus had said, "Show no mercy. " But
had he meant us to kill when we did not have to kill? " It came clear in
an instant why she'd done it. She tore off the pink velvet girdle and
skirts right there and put on the boy's clothes. She'd chosen him for
the fit of the clothes. And to describe it more truly, as she put on his
garments, she became the boy. She put on his cream silk stockings and
scarlet breeches, the lace shirt and the yellow waistcoat and then the
scarlet frock coat, and even took the scarlet ribbon from the boy's hair.
Something in me rebelled against the charm of it, her standing so
boldly in these new garments with all her hair still full over her
shoulders looking more the lion's mane now than the lovely mass of
woman's tresses it had been moments before. Then I wanted to ravage
her. I closed my eyes. When I looked at her again, my head was
swimming with all that we'd seen and done together. I couldn't
endure being so near to the dead boy. She tied all of her blond hair
together with the scarlet ribbon and let the long locks hang down her
back. She laid the pink dress over the body of the boy to cover him,
and she buckled on his sword, and drew it once and sheathed it again,
and took his cream-colored roquelaure.
 "Let's go, then, darling, " she said, and she kissed me. I couldn't
move. I wanted to go back to the tower, and just be close to her. She
looked at me and pressed my hand to spur me on. And she was almost
immediately running ahead. She had to feel the freedom of her limbs,
and I found myself pounding after her, having to exert myself to catch
up. That had never happened with me and any mortal, of course. She
seemed to be flying. And the sight of her flashing through the
boarded-up stalls and the heaps of garbage made me almost lose my
balance. Again I stopped. She came back to me and kissed me. "But
there's no real reason for me to dress that way anymore, is there? " she
asked. She might have been talking to a child.
 "No, of course there isn't, " I said. Maybe it was a blessing that she
couldn't read my thoughts. I couldn't stop looking at her legs, so
perfect in the cream-colored stockings. And the way that the frock
coat gathered at her small waist. Her face was like a flame. Remember
in those times you never saw a woman's legs like that. Or the silk of
breeches tight over her small belly, or thighs. But she was not really a
woman now, was she? Any more than I was a man. For one silent
second the horror of it all bled through.
 "Come, I want to take to the roofs again, " she said. "I want to go to
the boulevard du Temple. I should like to see the theater, the one that

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you purchased and then shut up. Will you show that to me? " She was
studying me as she asked this.
  "Of course, " I said. "Why not? " We had two hours left of the
endless night when we finally returned to the Ile St. Louis and stood
on the moonlit quais. Far down the paved street I saw my mare
tethered where I'd left her. Perhaps she had gone unnoticed in the
confusion that must have followed our departure. We listened
carefully for any sign of Nicki or Roget, but the house appeared
deserted and dark.
  "They are near, however, " she whispered. "I think somewhere
further down . . . "
  "Nicki's flat, " I said. "And from Nicki's flat someone could be
watching the mare, a servant posted to watch in case we came back. "
  "Better to leave the horse and steal another, " she said.
  "No, it's mine, " I said. But I felt her grip on my hand tighten. Our
old friend again, the presence, and this time it was moving along the
Seine on the other side of the island and toward the Left Bank.
  "Gone, " she said. "Let's go. We can steal another mount. "
  "Wait, I'm going to try to get her to come to me. To break the tether.
"
  "Can you do that? "
  "We'll see. " I concentrated all my will on the mare, telling her
silently to back up, to pull loose from the bond holding her and come.
In a second, the horse was prancing, jerking at the leather. Then she
reared and the tether broke. She came clattering towards us over the
stones, and we were on her immediately, Gabrielle leaping up first and
I right behind her, gathering up what was left of the rein as I urged the
horse to go into a dead run. As we crossed the bridge I felt something
behind us, a commotion, the tumult of mortal minds. But we were
lost in the black echo chamber of the Ile de la City. When we reached
the tower, I lighted the resin torch and took her down with me into the
dungeon. There was no time now to show her the upper chamber.
Her eyes were glassy and she looked about herself sluggishly as we
descended the screw stairs. Her scarlet clothes gleamed against the
dark stones. Ever so slightly she recoiled from the dampness. The
stench from the lower prison cells disturbed her, but I told her gently
it was nothing to do with us. And once we had entered the huge burial
crypt, the smell was shut out by the heavy iron-studded door. The
torchlight spread out to reveal the low arches of the ceiling, the three
great sarcophagi with their deeply graven images. She did not seem
afraid. I told her that she must see if she could lift the stone lid of the
one she chose for herself. I might have to do it for her. She studied

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the three carved figures. And after a moment's reflection, she chose
not the woman's sarcophagus but the one with the knight in armor
carved on the top of it. And slowly she pushed the stone lid out of
place so she could look into the space within. Not as much strength as
I possessed but strong enough.
  "Don't be frightened, " I said.
  "No, you mustn't ever worry on that account, " she answered softly.
Her voice had a lovely frayed sound to it, a faint timbre of sadness.
She appeared to be dreaming as she ran her hands over the stone.
  "By this hour, " she said, "she might have already been laid out, your
mother. And the room would be full of evil smells and the smoke of
hundreds of candles. Think how humiliating it is, death. Strangers
would have taken off her clothes, bathed her, dressed her-strangers
seen her emaciated and defenseless in the final sleep. And those
whispering in the corridors would have talked of their good health,
and how they have never had the slightest illness in their families, no,
no consumption in their families. `The poor Marquise,' they would
have said. They would have been wondering, did she have any money
of her own? Did she leave it to her sons? And the old woman when
she came to collect the soiled sheets, she would have stolen one of the
rings off the dead woman's hand. " I nodded. And so we stand in this
dungeon crypt, I wanted to say, and we prepare to lie down on stone
beds, with only rats to keep us company. But it's infinitely better than
that, isn't it? It has its dark splendor, to walk the nightmare terrain
forever. She looked wan, cold all over. Sleepily, she drew something
out of her pocket. It was the golden scissor she'd taken from the lady's
table in the faubourg St. Germain. Sparkling in the light of the torch
like a bauble.
  "No, Mother, " I said. My own voice startled me. It leapt out
echoing too sharply under the arched ceiling. The figures on the other
sarcophagi seemed merciless witnesses. The hurt in my heart stunned
me. Evil sound, the snipping, the shearing. Her hair fell down in great
long locks on the floor.
  "Ooooh, Mother. " She looked down at it, scattering it silently with
the tip of her boot, and then she looked up at me, and she was a young
man now certainly, the short hair curling against her cheek. But her
eyes were closing. She reached out to me and the scissors fell out of
her hands.
  "Rest now, " she whispered.
  "It's only the rising sun, " I said to reassure her. She was weakening
sooner than I did. She turned away from me and moved towards the
coffin. I lifted her and her eyes shut. Pushing the lid of the

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sarcophagus even farther to the right, I laid her down inside, letting
her pliant limbs arrange themselves naturally and gracefully. Her face
had already smoothed itself into sleep, her hair framing her face with a
young boy's locks. Dead, she seemed, and gone, the magic undone. I
kept looking at her. I let my teeth cut into the tip of my tongue until I
felt the pain and tasted the hot blood there. Then bending low I let the
blood fall in tiny shining droplets on her lips. Her eyes opened. Violet
blue and glittering, they stared up at me. The blood flowed into her
opening mouth and slowly she lifted her head to meet my kiss. My
tongue passed into her. Her lips were cold. My lips were cold. But
the blood was hot and it flowed between us.
  "Good night, my darling one, " I said. "My dark angel Gabrielle. "
She sank back into stillness as I let her go. I closed the stone over her.

  4

  I did not like rising in the black underground crypt. I didn't like the
chill in the air, and that faint stench from the prison below, the feeling
that this was where all the dead things lay. A fear overcame me. What
if she didn't rise? What if her eyes never opened again? What did I
know of what I'd done? Yet it seemed an arrogant thing, an obscene
thing to move the lid of the coffin again and gaze at her in her sleep as
I had done last night. A mortal shame came over me. At home, I
would never have dared to open her door without knocking, never
dared to draw back the curtains of her bed. She would rise. She had
to. And better that she should lift the stone for herself, know how to
rise, and that the thirst should drive her to it at the proper moment as
it had driven me. I lighted the torch on the wall for her, and went out
for a moment to breathe the fresh air. Then leaving gates and doors
unlocked behind me, I went up into Magnus's cell to watch the
twilight melt from the sky. I'd hear her, I thought, when she
awakened. An hour must have passed. The azure light faded, the stars
rose, and the distant city of Paris lighted its myriad tiny beacons. I left
the windowsill where I had sat against the iron bars and I went to the
chest and began to select jewels for her. Jewels she still loved. She had
taken her old keepsakes with her when we left her room. I lighted the
candles to help me see, though I didn't really need them. The
illumination was beautiful to me. Beautiful on the jewels. And I
found very delicate and lovely things for her- pearl-studded pins that
she might wear in the lapels of her mannish little coat, and rings that
would look masculine on her small hands if that was what she wanted.
I listened now and then for her. And this chill would clutch my heart.

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What if she did not rise? What if there had been only that one night
for her? Horror thudding in me. And the sea of jewels in the chest,
the candlelight dancing in the faceted stones, the gold settings-it meant
nothing. But I didn't hear her. I heard the wind outside, the great soft
rustle of the trees, the faint distant whistling of the stable boy as he
moved about the barn, the neighing of my horses. Far off a village
church bell rang. Then very suddenly there came over me the feeling
that someone was watching me. This was so unfamiliar to me that I
panicked. I turned, almost stumbling into the chest, and stared at the
mouth of the secret tunnel. No one there. No one in this small empty
sanctum with the candlelight playing on the stones and Magnus's grim
countenance on the sarcophagus. Then I looked straight in front of
me at the barred window. And I saw her looking back at me. Floating
in the air she seemed to be, holding to the bars with both hands, and
she was smiling. I almost cried out. I backed up and the sweat broke
out all over my body. I was embarrassed suddenly to be caught off
guard, to be so obviously startled. But she remained motionless,
smiling still, her expression gradually changing from serenity to
mischievousness. The candlelight made her eyes too brilliant.
  "It's not very nice to frighten other immortals like that, " I said. She
laughed more freely and easily than she ever had when she was alive.
Relief coursed through me as she moved, made sounds. I knew I was
blushing.
  "How did you get there! " I said. I went to the window and reached
through the bars and clasped both her wrists. Her little mouth was all
sweetness and laughter. Her hair was a great shimmering mane
around her face.
  "I climbed the wall, of course, " she said. "How do you think I got
here? "
  "Well, go down. You can't come through the bars. I'll go to meet
you. "
  "You're very right about that, " she said. "I've been to all the
windows. Meet me on the battlements above. It's faster. " She started
climbing, hooking her boots easily into the bars, then she vanished.
She was all exuberance as she'd been the night before as we came down
the stairs together.
  "Why are we lingering here? " she said. "Why don't we go on now to
Paris? " Something was wrong with her, lovely as she was, something
not right . . . what was it? She didn't want kisses now, or even talk,
really. And that had a little sting to it.
  "I want to show you the inner room, " I said. "And the jewels. "


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  "The jewels? " she asked. She hadn't seen them from the window.
The cover of the chest had blocked her view. She walked ahead of me
into the room where Magnus had burned, and then she lay down to
crawl through the tunnel. As soon as she saw the chest, she was
shocked by it. She tossed her hair a little impatiently over her shoulder
and bent to study the brooches, the rings, the small ornaments so like
those heirlooms she'd had to sell long ago one by one.
  "Why, he must have been collecting them for centuries, " she said.
"And such exquisite things. He chose what he would take, didn't he?
What a creature he must have been. " Again, almost angrily, she
pushed her hair out of her way. It seemed paler, more luminous,
fuller. A glorious thing.
  "The pearls, look at them, " I said. "And these rings. " I showed her
the ones I'd already chosen for her. I took her hand and slipped the
rings on her fingers. Her fingers moved as if they had life of their own,
could feel delight, and again she laughed.
  "Ah, but we are splendid devils, aren't we? "
  "Hunters of the Savage Garden, " I said.
  "Then let's go into Paris, " she said. Faint touch of pain in her face,
the thirst. She ran her tongue over her lips. Was I half as fascinating
to her as she was to me? She raked her hair back from her forehead,
and her eyes darkened with the intensity of her words.
  "I wanted to feed quickly tonight, " she said, "then go out of the city,
into the woods. Go where there are no men and women about. Go
where there is only the wind and the dark trees, and the stars overhead.
Blessed silence. " She went to the window again. Her back was narrow
and straight, and her hands at her sides, alive with the jeweled rings.
And coming as they did out of the thick cuffs of the man's coat, her
hands looked all the more slender and exquisite. She must have been
looking at the high dim clouds, the stars that burned through the
purple layer of evening mist.
  "I have to go to Roget, " I said under my breath. "I have to take care
of Nicki, tell them some lie about what's happened to you. " She
turned, and her face looked small and cold suddenly, the way it could
at home when she was disapproving. But she'd never really look that
way again.
  "Why tell them anything about me? " she asked. "Why ever even
bother with them again? " I was shocked by this. But it wasn't a
complete surprise to me. Perhaps I'd been waiting for it. Perhaps I'd
sensed it in her all along, the unspoken questions. I wanted to say
Nicki sat by your bed when you were dying, does that mean nothing?


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But how sentimental, how mortal that sounded, how positively
foolish. Yet it wasn't foolish.
  "I don't mean to judge you, " she said. She folded her arms and
leaned against the window. "I simply don't understand. Why did you
write to us? Why did you send us all the gifts? Why didn't you take
this white fire from the moon and go where you wanted with it? "
  "But where should I want to go? " I said. "Away from all those I'd
known and loved? I did not want to stop thinking of you, of Nicki,
even of my father and my brothers. I did what I wanted, " I said.
  "Then conscience played no role in it? "
  "If you follow your conscience, you do what you want, " I said. "But
it was simpler than that. I wanted you to have the wealth I gave you. I
wanted you . . . to be happy. " She reflected for a long time.
  "Would you have had me forget you? " I demanded. It sounded
spiteful, angry. She didn't answer immediately.
  "No, of course not, " she said. "And had it been the other way
around, I would never have forgotten you either. I'm sure of it. But
the rest of them? I don't give a damn about them. I shall never
exchange words with them again. I shall never lay eyes on them. " I
nodded. But I hated what she was saying. She frightened me.
  "I cannot overcome this notion that I've died, " she said. "That I am
utterly cut off from all living creatures. I can taste, I can see, I can feel.
I can drink blood. But I am like something that cannot be seen,
cannot affect things. "
  "It's not so, " I said. "And how long do you think it will sustain you,
feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No
one with you? " The same uncomprehending expression.
  "Oh, why do I bother to tell you this? " I said. "I am with you.
We're together. You don't know what it was like when I was alone.
You can't imagine it. "
  "I trouble you and I don't mean to, " she said. "Tell them what you
will. Maybe you can somehow make up a palatable story. I don't
know. If you want me to go with you, I'll go. I'll do what you ask of
me. But I have one more question for you. " She dropped her voice.
"Surely you don't mean to share this power with them! "
  "No, never. " I shook my head as if to say the thought was incredible.
I was looking at the jewels, thinking of all the gifts I'd sent, thinking of
the dollhouse. I had sent them a dollhouse. I thought of Renaud's
players safely across the Channel.

  "Not even with Nicolas? "


                                                                          133

  "No, God, no! " I looked at her. She nodded slightly as if she
approved of this answer. And she pushed at her hair again in a
distracted way.
  "Why not with Nicolas? " she asked. I wanted this to stop.
  "Because he's young, " I said, "and he has life before him. He's not
on the brink of death. " Now I was more than uneasy. I was
miserable. "In time, he'll forget about us. . . " I wanted to say "about
our conversation. "
  "He could die tomorrow, " she said. "A carriage could crush him in
the streets. . . "
  "Do you want me to do it! " I glared at her.
  "No, I don't want you to do it. But who am I to tell you what to do?
I am trying to understand you. " Her long heavy hair had slipped over
her shoulders again, and exasperated, she took hold of it in both
hands. Then suddenly she made a low hissing sound, and her body
went rigid. She was holding her long tresses and staring at them.
  "My God, " she whispered. And then in a spasm, she let go of her
hair and screamed. The sound paralyzed me. It sent a flash of white
pain through my head. I had never heard her scream. And she
screamed again as if she were on fire. She had fallen back against the
window and she was screaming louder as she looked at her hair. She
went to touch it and then pulled her fingers back from it as if it were
blazing. And she struggled against the window, screaming and
twisting from side to side, as if she were trying to get away from her
own hair.
  "Stop it! " I shouted. I grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her.
She was gasping. I realized instantly what it was. Her hair had grown
back! It had grown back as she slept until it was as long as it had been
before. And it was thicker even, more lustrous. That is what was
wrong with the way she looked, what I had noticed and not noticed!
And what she herself had just seen.
  "Stop it, stop it now! " I shouted louder, her body shaking so
violently I could hardly keep her in my arms. "It's grown back, that's
all! " I insisted. "It's natural to you, don't you see? It's nothing! " She
was choking, trying to calm herself, touching it and then screaming as
if her fingertips were blistered. She tried to get away from me, and
then ripped at her hair in pure terror. I shook her hard this time.
  "Gabrielle! " I said. "Do you understand me? It's grown back, and it
will every time you cut it! There's no horror in it, for the love of hell,
stop! " I thought if she didn't stop, I'd start to rave myself. I was
trembling as badly as she was. She stopped screaming and she was
giving little gasps. I'd never seen her like this, not in all the years and

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years in Auvergne. She let me guide her towards the bench by the
hearth, where I made her sit down. She put her hands to her temples
and tried to catch her breath, her body rocking back and forth slowly.
I looked about for a scissor. I had none. The little gold scissor had
fallen on the floor of the crypt below. I took out my knife. She was
sobbing softly in her hands.
  "Do you want me to cut it off again? " I asked. She didn't answer.
  "Gabrielle, listen to me. " I took her hands from her face, "I'll cut it
again if you like. Each night, cut it, and burn it. That's all. " She
stared at me in such perfect stillness suddenly that I didn't know what
to do. Her face was smeared with blood from her tears, and there was
blood on her linen. Blood all over her linen.
  "Shall I cut it? " I asked her again. She looked exactly as if someone
had hit her and made her bleed. Her eyes were wide and wondering,
the blood tears seeping out of them down her smooth cheeks. And as I
watched, the flow stopped and the tears darkened and dried to a crust
on her white skin. I wiped her face carefully with my lace
handkerchief. I went to the clothing I kept in the tower, the garments
made for me in Paris that I'd brought back and kept here now. I took
off her coat. She made no move to help me or stop me and I
unhooked the linen shirt that she wore. I saw her breasts and they
were perfectly white except for the palest pink tint to the small nipples.
Trying not to look at them, I put the fresh shirt on her and buttoned it
quickly. Then I brushed her hair, brushed it and brushed it, and not
wanting to hack at it with the knife, I braided it for her in one long
plait, and I put her coat back on her. I could feel her composure and
her strength coming back. She didn't seem ashamed of what had
happened. And I didn't want her to be. She was merely considering
things. But she didn't speak. She didn't move. I started talking to her.
  "When I was little, you used to tell me about all the places you'd
been. You showed me pictures of Naples and Venice, remember?
Those old books? And you had things, little keepsakes from London
and St. Petersburg, all the places you'd seen. " She didn't answer.
  "I want us to go to all those places. I want to see them now. I want
to see them and live in them. I want to go farther even, places I never
dreamed of seeing when I was alive. " Something changed in her face.
  "Did you know it would grow back? " she asked in a whisper.
  "No. I mean yes, I mean, I didn't think. I should have known it
would do that. " For a long time she stared at me again in the same
still, listless fashion.
  "Does nothing about it all . . . ever . . . frighten you? " she asked.
Her voice was guttural and unfamiliar. "Does nothing . . . ever . . .

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stop you? " she asked. Her mouth was open and perfect and looked
like a human mouth.
  "I don't know, " I whispered helplessly. "I don't see the point, " I
said. But I felt confused now. Again I told her to cut it each night and
to bum it. Simple.
  "Yes, bum it, " she sighed. "Otherwise it should fill all the rooms of
the tower in time, shouldn't it? It would be like Rapunzel's hair in the
fairy tale. It would be like the gold that the miller's daughter had to
spin from straw in the fairy tale of the mean dwarf, Rumpelstiltskin. "
  "We write our own fairy tales, my love, " I said. "The lesson in this is
that nothing can destroy what you are now. Every wound will heal.
You are a goddess. "
  "And the goddess thirsts, " she said. Hours later, as we walked arm in
arm like two students through the boulevard crowds, it was already
forgotten. Our faces were ruddy, our skin warm. But I did not leave
her to go to my lawyer. And she did not seek the quiet open country
as she had wanted to do. We stayed close to each other, the faintest
shimmer of the presence now and then making us turn our heads.

  5

  By the hour of three, when we reached the livery stables, we knew we
were being stalked by the presence. For half an hour, forty-five
minutes at a time, we wouldn't hear it. Then the dull hum would
come again. It was maddening me. And though we tried hard to hear
some intelligible thoughts from it, all we could discern was malice, and
an occasional tumult like the spectacle of dry leaves disintegrated in
the roar of the blaze. She was glad that we were riding home. It wasn't
that the thing annoyed her. It was only what she had said earlier-she
wanted the emptiness of the country, the quiet. When the open land
broke before us, we were going so fast that the wind was the only
sound, and I think I heard her laughing but I wasn't sure. She loved
the feel of the wind as I did, she loved the new brilliance of the stars
over the darkened hills. But I wondered if there had been moments
tonight when she had wept inwardly and I had not known. There had
been times when she was obscure and silent, and her eyes quivered as
if they were crying, but there were absolutely no tears. I was deep into
thoughts of that, I think, when we neared a dense wood that grew
along the banks of a shallow stream, and quite suddenly the mare
reared and lurched to the side. I was almost thrown, it was so
unexpected. Gabrielle held on tight to my right arm. Every night I
rode into this little glade, crashing over the narrow wooden bridge

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above the water. I loved the sound of the horse's hooves on the wood
and the climb up the sloping bank. And my mare knew the path. But
now, she would have none of it. Shying, threatening to rear again, she
turned of her own accord and galloped back towards Paris until, with
all the power of my will, I commanded her, reining her in. Gabrielle
was staring back at the thick copse, the great mass of dark, swaying
branches that concealed the stream. And there came over the thin
howling of the wind and that soft volume of rustling leaves, the
definite pulse of the presence in the trees. We heard it at the same
moment, surely, because I tightened my arm around Gabrielle as she
nodded, gripping my hand.
  "It's stronger! " she said to me quickly. "And it is not one alone. "
  "Yes, " I said, enraged, "and it stands between me and my lair! " I
drew my sword, bracing Gabrielle in my left arm.
  "You're not riding into it, " she cried out.
  "The hell I'm not! " I said, trying to steady the horse. "We don't have
two hours before sunrise. Draw your sword! " She tried to turn to
speak to me, but I was already driving the horse forward. And she
drew her sword as I'd told her to do, her little hand knotted around it
as firmly as that of a man. Of course, the thing would flee as soon as
we reached the copse, I was sure of that. I mean the damned thing had
never done anything but turn tail and run. And I was furious that it
had frightened my mount, and that it was frightening Gabrielle. With
a sharp kick, and the full force of my mental persuasion, I sent the
horse racing straight ahead to the bridge. I locked my hand to the
weapon. I bent low with Gabrielle beneath me. I was breathing rage
as if I were a dragon, and when the mare's hooves hit the hollow wood
over the water, I saw them, the demons, for the first time! White faces
and white arms above us, glimpsed for no more than a second, and out
of their mouths the most horrid shrieking as they shook the branches
sending down on us a shower of leaves.
  "Damn you, you pack of harpies! " I shouted as we reached the
sloping bank on the other side, but Gabrielle had let out a scream.
Something had landed on the horse behind me, and the horse was
slipping in the damp earth, and the thing had hold of my shoulder and
the arm with which I tried to swing the sword. Whipping the sword
over Gabrielle's head and down past my left arm, I chopped at the
creature furiously, and saw it fly off, a white blur in the darkness, while
another one sprang at us with hands like claws. Gabrielle's blade sliced
right through its outstretched arm. I saw the arm go up into the air,
the blood spurting as if from a fountain. The screams became a
searing wail. I wanted to slash every one of them to pieces. I turned

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the horse back too sharply so that it reared and almost fell. But
Gabrielle had hold of the horse's mane and she drove it again towards
the open road. As we raced for the tower, we could hear them
screaming as they came on. And when the mare gave out, we
abandoned her and ran, hand in hand, towards the gates. I knew we
had to get through the secret passage to the inner chamber before they
climbed the outside wall. They must not see us take the stone out of
place. And locking the gates and doors behind me as fast as I could, I
carried Gabrielle up the stairs. By the time we reached the secret room
and pushed the stone into place again, I heard their howling and
shrieking below and their first scraping against the walls. I snatched
up an armful of firewood and threw it beneath the window.
  "Hurry, the kindling, " I said. But there were half a dozen white faces
already at the bars. Their shrieks echoed monstrously in the little cell.
For one moment I could only stare at them as I backed away. They
clung to the iron grating like so many bats, but they weren't bats.
They were vampires, and vampires as we were vampires, in human
form. Dark eyes peered at us from under mops of filthy hair, howls
growing louder and fiercer, the fingers that clung to the grating caked
with filth. Such clothing as I could see was no more than colorless
rags. And the stench coming from them was the graveyard stench.
Gabrielle pitched the kindling at the wall, and she jumped away as they
reached to catch hold of her. They bared their fangs. They screeched.
Hands struggled to pick up the firewood and throw it back at us. All
together they pulled at the grating as if they might free it from the
stone.
  "Get the tinderbox, " I shouted. I grabbed up one of the stouter
pieces of wood and thrust it right at the closest face, easily flinging the
creature out and off the wall. Weak things. I heard its scream as it fell,
but the others had clamped their hands on the wood and they
struggled with me now as I dislodged another dirty little demon. But
by this time Gabrielle had lighted the kindling. The flames shot
upwards. The howling stopped in a frenzy of ordinary speech:
  "It's fire, get back, get down, get out of the way, you idiots! Down,
down. The bars are hot! Move away quickly! " Perfectly regular
French! In fact an ever increasing flood of pretty vernacular curse
words. I burst out laughing, stomping my foot and pointing to them,
as I looked at Gabrielle.
  "A curse on you, blasphemer! " one of them screamed. Then the fire
licked at his hands and he howled, falling backwards.
  "A curse on the profaners, the outlaws! " came screams from below.
It caught on quickly and became a regular chorus. "A curse on the

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outlaws who dared to enter the House of God! " But they were
scrambling down to the ground. The heavy timbers were catching,
and the fire was roaring to the ceiling.
  "Go back to the graveyard where you came from, you pack of
pranksters! " I said. I would have thrown the fire down on them if I
could have gotten near the window. Gabrielle stood still with her eyes
narrow, obviously listening. Cries and howls continued from below.
A new anthem of curses upon those who broke the sacred laws,
blasphemed, provoked the wrath of God and Satan. They were pulling
on the gates and lower windows. They were doing stupid things like
throwing rocks at the wall.
  "They can't get in, " Gabrielle said in a low monotone, her head still
cocked attentively. "They can't break the gate. " I wasn't so certain.
The gate was rusted, very old. Nothing to do but wait. I collapsed on
the floor, leaning against the side of the sarcophagus, my arms around
my chest and my back bent. I wasn't even laughing anymore. She too
sat down against the wall with her legs sprawled out before her. Her
chest heaved a little, and her hair was coming loose from the braid. It
was a cobra's hood around her face, loose strands clinging to her white
cheeks. Soot clung to her garments. The heat of the fire was crushing.
The airless room shimmered with vapors and the flames rose to shut
out the night. But we could breathe the little air there was. We
suffered nothing except the fear and the exhaustion. And gradually I
realized she was right about the gate. They hadn't managed to break it
down. I could hear them drawing away.
  "May the wrath of God punish the profane! " There was some faint
commotion near the stables. I saw in my mind my poor half-witted
mortal stable boy dragged in terror from his hiding place, and my rage
was redoubled. They were sending me images of it from their
thoughts, the murder of that poor boy. Damn them.
  "Be still, " Gabrielle said. "It's too late. " Her eyes widened and then
grew small again as she listened. He was dead, the poor miserable
creature. I felt the death just as if I had seen a small dark bird
suddenly rising from the stables. And she sat forward as though seeing
it too, and then settled back as if she had lost consciousness, though
she had not. She murmured and it sounded like "red velvet, " but it
was under her breath and I didn't catch the words.
  "I'll punish you for this, you gang of ruffians! " I said aloud. I sent it
out towards them. "You trouble my house. I swear you'll pay for this.
" But my limbs were getting heavier and heavier. The heat of the fire
was almost drugging. All the night's strange happenings were taking
their toll. In my exhaustion and in the glare of the fire I could not

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guess the hour. I think I fell to dreaming for an instant, and woke
myself with a shiver, unsure of how much time had passed. I looked
up and saw the figure of an unearthly young boy, an exquisite young
boy, pacing the floor of the chamber. Of course it was only Gabrielle.

  6

  She gave the impression of almost rampant strength as she walked
back and forth. Yet all of it was contained in an unbroken grace. She
kicked at the timbers and watched the blackened ruin of the fire flare
for a moment before settling into itself again. I could see the sky. An
hour perhaps remained.
  "But who are they? " she asked. She stood over me, her legs apart,
her hands in two liquid summoning gestures. "Why do they call us
outlaws and blasphemers? "
  "I've told you everything I know, " I confessed. "Until tonight I
didn't think they possessed faces or limbs or real voices. " I climbed to
my feet and brushed off my clothes.
  "They damned us for entering the churches! " she said. "Did you
catch it, those images coming from them? And they don't know how
we managed to do it. They themselves would not dare. " For the first
time I observed that she was trembling. There were other small signs
of alarm, the way the flesh quivered around her eyes, the way that she
kept pushing the loose strands of her hair out of her eyes again.
  "Gabrielle, " I said. I tried to make my tone authoritative, reassuring.
"The important thing is to get out of here now. We don't know how
early those creatures rise, or how soon after sunset they'll return. We
have to discover another hiding place. "
  "The dungeon crypt, " she said.
  "A worse trap than this, " I said, "if they break through the gate. " I
glanced at the sky again. I pulled the stone out of the low passage.
"Come on, " I said.
  "But where are we going? " she asked. For the first time tonight she
looked almost fragile.
  "To a village east of here, " I said. "It's perfectly obvious that the
safest place is within the village church itself. "
  "Would you do that? " she asked. "In the church? "
  "Of course I would. As you just said, the little beasts would never
dare to enter! And the crypts under the altar will be as deep and dark
as any grave. "
  "But Lestat, to rest under the very altar! "


                                                                        140

  "Mother, you astonish me, " I said. "I have taken victims under the
very roof of Notre Dame. " But another little idea came to me. I went
to Magnus's chest and started picking at the heap of treasure. I pulled
out two rosaries, one of pearls, another of emeralds, both having the
usual small crucifix. She watched me, her face white, pinched.
  "Here, you take this one, " I said, giving her the emerald rosary.
"Keep it on you. If and when we do meet with them, show them the
crucifix. If I am right, they'll run from it. "
  "But what happens if we don't find a safe place in the church? "
  "How the hell should I know? We'll come back here! " I could feel a
fear collecting in her and radiating from her as she hesitated, looking
through the windows at the fading stars. She had passed through the
veil into the promise of eternity and now she was in danger again.
Quickly, I took the rosary from her and kissed her and slipped the
rosary into the pocket of her frock coat.
  "Emeralds mean eternal life, Mother, " I said. She appeared the boy
standing there again, the last glow of the fire just tracing the line of her
cheek and mouth.
  "It's as I said before, " she whispered. "You aren't afraid of anything,
are you? "
  "What does it matter if I am or not? " I shrugged. I took her arm
and drew her to the passage.
  "We are the things that others fear, " I said. "Remember that. "
When we reach the stable, I saw the boy had been hideously murdered.
His broken body lay twisted on the hay strewn floor as if it had been
flung there by a Titan. The back of his head was shattered. And to
mock him, it seemed, or to mock me, they had dressed him in a
gentleman's fancy velvet frock coat. Red velvet. Those were the words
she'd murmured when they had done the crime. I'd seen only the
death. I looked away now in disgust. All the horses were gone.
  "They'll pay for that, " I said. I took her hand. But she stared at the
miserable boy's body as if it drew her against her will. She glanced at
me.
  "I feel cold, " she whispered. "I'm losing the strength in my limbs. I
must, I must get to where it's dark. I can feel it. " I led her fast over
the rise of the nearby hill and towards the road. There were no
howling little monsters hidden in the village churchyard, of course. I
didn't think there would be. The earth hadn't been turned up on the
old graves in a long time. Gabrielle was past conferring with me on
this. I half carried her to the side door of the church and quietly broke
the latch.


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  "I'm cold all over. My eyes are burning, " she said again under her
breath. "Someplace dark. " But as I started to take her in, she stopped.
  "What if they're right, " she said. "And we don't belong in the House
of God. "
  "Gibberish and nonsense. God isn't in the House of God. "
  "Don't! . . . " She moaned. I pulled her through the sacristy and
out before the altar. She covered her face, and when she looked up it
was at the crucifix over the tabernacle. She let out a long low gasp.
But it was from the stained-glass windows that she shielded her eyes,
turning her head towards me. The rising sun that I could not even feel
yet was already burning her! I picked her up as I had done last night. I
had to find an old burial crypt, one that hadn't been used in years. I
hurried towards the Blessed Virgin's altar, where the inscriptions were
almost worn away. And kneeling, I hooked my fingernails around a
slab and quickly lifted it to reveal a deep sepulcher with a single rotted
coffin. I pulled her down into the sepulcher with me and moved the
slab back into place. Inky blackness, and the coffin splintering under
me so that my right hand closed on a crumbling skull. I felt the
sharpness of other bones under my chest. Gabrielle spoke as if in a
trance:
  "Yes. Away from the light. "
  "We're safe, " I whispered. I pushed the bones out of the way,
making a nest of the rotted wood and the dust that was too old to
contain any smell of human decay. But I did not fall into the sleep for
perhaps an hour or more. I kept thinking over and over of the stable
boy, mangled and thrown there in that fancy red velvet frock coat. I
had seen that coat before and I couldn't remember where I had seen it.
Had it been one of my own? Had they gotten into the tower? No, that
was not possible, they couldn't have gotten in. Had they had a coat
made up identical to one of my own? Gone to such lengths to mock
me? No. How could such creatures do a thing like that? But still . . .
that particular coat. Something about it...

  7

  I heard the softest, loveliest singing when I opened my eyes. And as
sound can often do, even the most precious fragments, it took me back
to childhood, to some night in winter when all my family had gone
down to the church in our village and stood for hours among the
blazing candles, breathing the heavy, sensual smell of the incense as
the priest walked in procession with the monstrance lifted high. I
remembered the sight of the round white Host behind the thick glass,

                                                                       142

the starburst of gold and jewels surrounding it, and overhead the
embroidered canopy, swaying dangerously as the altar boys in their
lace surplices tried to steady it as they moved on. A thousand
Benedictions after that one had engraved into my mind the words of
the old hymn.

  O Salutaris Hostia Quae caeli pandis ostium Bella premunt hostilia,
Da robur, fer auxilium . . .

  And as I lay in the remains of this broken coffin under the white
marble slab at the side altar in this large country church, Gabrielle
clinging to me still in the paralysis of sleep, I realized very slowly that
above me were hundreds upon hundreds of humans who were singing
this very hymn right now. The church was full of people! And we
could not get out of this damned nest of bones until all of them went
away. Around me in the dark, I could feel creatures moving. I could
smell the shattered, crumbling skeleton on which I lay. I could smell
the earth, too, and feel dampness and the harshness of the cold.
Gabrielle's hands were dead hands holding to me. Her face was as
inflexible as bone. I tried not to brood on this, but to lie perfectly still.
Hundreds of humans breathed and sighed above. Perhaps a thousand
of them. And now they moved on into the second hymn. What
comes now, I thought dismally. The litany, the blessings? On this of
all nights, I had no time to lie here musing. I must get out. The image
of that red velvet coat came to me again with an irrational sense of
urgency, and a flash of equally inexplicable pain. And quite suddenly,
it seemed, Gabrielle opened her eyes. Of course I didn't see it. It was
utterly black here. I felt it. I felt her limbs come to life. And no
sooner had she moved than she grew positively rigid with alarm. I
slipped my hand over her mouth.
  "Be still, " I whispered, but I could feel her panic. All the horrors of
the preceding night must be coming back to her, that she was now in a
sepulcher with a broken skeleton, that she lay beneath a stone she
could hardly lift.
  "We're in the church! " I whispered. "And we're safe. " The singing
surged on. "Tantum ergo Sacramentum, Veneremur cernui. "
  "No, it's a Benediction, " Gabrielle gasped. She was trying to lie still,
but abruptly she lost the struggle, and I had to grip her firmly in both
arms.
  "We must get out, " she whispered. "Lestat, the Blessed Sacrament is
on the altar, for the love of God! " The remains of the wooden coffin


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clattered and creaked against the stone beneath it, causing me to roll
over on top of her and force her flat with my weight.
  "Now lie still, do you hear me! " I said. "We have no choice but to
wait. " But her panic was infecting me. I felt the fragments of bone
crunching beneath my knees and smelled the rotting cloth. It seemed
the death stench was penetrating the walls of the sepulcher, and I knew
I could not bear to be shut up with that stench.
  "We can't, " she gasped. "We can't remain here. I have to get out! "
She was almost whimpering. "Lestat, I can't. " She was feeling the
walls with both hands, and then the stone above us. I heard a pure
toneless sound of terror issue from her lips. Above the hymn had
stopped. The priest would go up the altar steps, lift the monstrance in
both hands. He would turn to the congregation and raise the Sacred
Host in blessing. Gabrielle knew that of course, and Gabrielle
suddenly went mad, writhing under me, almost heaving me to the
side.
  "All right, listen to me! " I hissed. I could control this no longer.
"We are going out. But we shall do it like proper vampires, do you
hear! There are one thousand people in the church and we are going
to scare them to death. I will lift the stone and we will rise up together,
and when we do, raise your arms and make the most horrible face you
can muster and cry out if you can. That will make them fall back,
instead of pouncing upon us and dragging us off to prison, and then
we'll rush to the door. " She couldn't even stop to answer, she was
already struggling, slamming the rotted boards with her heels. I rose
up, giving the marble slab a great shove with both hands, and leapt out
of the vault just as I had said I would do, pulling my cloak up in a giant
arc. I landed upon the floor of the choir in a blaze of candlelight,
letting out the most powerful cry I could make. Hundreds rose to
their feet before me, hundreds of mouths opening to scream. Giving
another shout, I grabbed Gabrielle's hand and lunged towards them,
leaping over the Communion rail. She gave a lovely high-pitched wail,
her left hand raised as a claw as I pulled her down the aisle.
Everywhere there was panic, men and women clutching for children,
shrieking and falling backwards. The heavy doors gave at once on the
black sky and the gusting breeze. I threw Gabrielle ahead of me and,
turning back, made the loudest shriek that I could. I bared my fangs at
the writhing, screaming congregation, and unable to tell whether some
pursued or merely fell towards me in panic, I reached into my pockets
and showered the marble floor with gold coins.
  "The devil throws money! " someone screeched. We tore through
the cemetery and across the fields. Within seconds, we had gained the

                                                                       144

woods and I could smell the stables of a large house that lay ahead of
us beyond the trees. I stood still, bent almost double in concentration,
and summoned the horses. And we ran towards them, hearing the
dull thunder of their hooves against the stalls. Bolting over the low
hedge with Gabrielle beside me, I pulled the door off its hinges just as a
fine gelding raced out of his broken stall, and we sprang onto his back,
Gabrielle scrambling into place before me as I threw my arm around
her. I dug my heels into the animal and rode south into the woods
and towards Paris.

  8

  I Tried to form a plan as we approached the city, but in truth I was
not sure at all how to proceed. There was no avoiding these filthy little
monsters. We were riding towards a battle. And it was little different
from the morning on which I'd gone out to kill the wolves, counting
upon my rage and my will to carry me through. We had scarcely
entered the scattered farmhouses of Montmartre when we heard for a
split second their faint murmuring. Noxious as a vapor, it seemed.
Gabrielle and I knew we had to drink at once, in order to be prepared
for them. We stopped at one of the small farms, crept through the
orchard to the back door, and found inside the man and wife dozing at
an empty hearth. When it was finished, we came out of the house
together and into the little kitchen garden where we stood still for a
moment, looking at the pearl gray sky. No sound of others. Only the
stillness, the clarity of the fresh blood, and the threat of rain as the
clouds gathered overhead. I turned and silently bid the gelding to
come to me. And gathering the reins, I turned to Gabrielle.
  "I see no other way but to go into Paris, " I told her, "to face these
little beasts head on. And until they show themselves and start the war
all over again, there are things that I must do. I have to think about
Nicki. I have to talk to Roget. "
  "This isn't the time for that mortal nonsense, " she said. The dirt of
the church sepulcher still clung to the cloth of her coat and to her
blond hair, and she looked like an angel dragged in the dust.
  "I won't have them come between me and what I mean to do, " I
said. She took a deep breath.
  "Do you want to lead these creatures to your beloved Monsieur
Roget? " she asked. That was too dreadful to contemplate. The first
few drops of rain were falling and I felt cold in spite of the blood. In a
moment it would be raining hard.


                                                                        145

  "All right, " I said. "Nothing can be done until this is finished! " I
said. I mounted the horse and reached for her hand.
  "Injury only spurs you on, doesn't it? " she asked. She was studying
me. "It would only strengthen you, whatever they did or tried to do. "
  "Now this is what I call mortal nonsense! " I said. "Come on! "
  "Lestat, " she said soberly. "They put your stable boy in a
gentleman's frock coat after they killed him. Did you see the coat?
Hadn't you seen it before? " That damned red velvet coat . . .
  "I have seen it, " she said. "I had looked at it for hours at my bedside
in Paris. It was Nicolas de Lenfent's coat. " I looked at her for a long
moment. But I don't think I saw her at all. The rage building in me
was absolutely silent. It will be rage until I have proof that it must be
grief, I thought. Then I wasn't thinking. Vaguely, I knew she had no
notion yet how strong our passions could be, how they could paralyze
us. I think I moved my lips, but nothing came out.
  "I don't think they've killed him, Lestat, " she said. Again I tried to
speak. I wanted to ask, Why do you say that, but I couldn't. I was
staring forward into the orchard.
  "I think he is alive, " she said. "And that he is their prisoner.
Otherwise they would have left his body there and never bothered with
that stable boy. "
  "Perhaps, perhaps not. " I had to farce my mouth to form the words.
  "The coat was a message. " I couldn't stand this any longer.
  "I'm going after them, " I said. "Do you want to return to the tower?
If I fail at this. . . "
  "I have no intention of leaving you, " she said. The rain was falling in
earnest by the time we reached the boulevard du Temple, and the wet
paving stones magnified a thousand lamps. My thoughts had
hardened into strategies that. were more instinct than reason. And I
was as ready for a fight as I have ever been. But we had to find out
where we stood. How many of them were there? And what did they
really want? Was it to capture and destroy us, or to frighten us and
drive us off? I had to quell my rage, I had to remember they were
childish, superstitious, conceivably easy to scatter or scare. As soon as
we reached the high ancient tenements near Notre Dame, I heard
them near us, the vibration coming as in a silver flash and vanishing as
quickly again. Gabrielle drew herself up, and I felt her left hand on my
wrist. I saw her right hand on the hilt of her sword. We had entered a
crooked alleyway that turned blindly in the dark in front of us, the
iron clatter of the horse's shoes shattering the silence, and I struggled
not to be unnerved by the sound itself. It seemed we saw them at the
same moment. Gabrielle pressed back against me, and I swallowed the

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gasp that would have given an impression of fear. High above us, on
either side of the narrow thoroughfare, were their white faces just over
the eaves of the tenements, a faint gleam against the lowering sky and
the soundless drifts of silver rain. I drove the horse forward in a rush
of scraping and clattering. Above they streaked like rats over the roof.
Their voices rose in a faint howling mortals could never have heard.
Gabrielle stifled a little cry as we saw their white arms and legs
descending the walls ahead of us, and behind I heard the soft thud of
their feet on the stones.
  "Straight on, " I shouted, and drawing my sword, I drove right over
the two ragged figures who'd dropped down in our path. "Damnable
creatures, out of my way, " I shouted, hearing their screams underfoot.
I glimpsed anguished faces for a moment. Those above vanished and
those behind us seemed to weaken and we bore ahead, putting yards
between us and our pursuers as we came into the deserted place de
Grave. But they were regathering on the edges of the square, and this
time I was hearing their distinct thoughts, one of them demanding
what power was it we had, and why should they be frightened, and
another insisting that they close in. Some force surely came from
Gabrielle at that moment because I could see them visibly fall back
when she threw her glance in their direction and tightened her grip on
the sword.
  "Stop, stand them off! " she said under her breath. "They're
terrified. " Then I heard her curse. Because flying towards us out of
the shadows of the Hotel-Dieu, there came at least six more of the little
demons, their thin white limbs barely swathed in rags, their hair flying,
those dreadful wails coming out of their mouths. They were rallying
the others. The malice that surrounded us was gaining force. The
horse reared, and almost threw us. They were commanding it to halt
as surely as I commanded it to go on. I grabbed Gabrielle about the
waist, leapt off the horse, and ran top speed to the doors of Notre
Dame. A horrid derisive babble rose silently in my ears, wails and cries
and threats:
  "You dare not, you dare not! " Malice like the heat of a blast furnace
opened upon us, as their feet came . thumping and splashing around
us, and I felt their hands struggling to grab hold of my sword and my
coat. But I was certain of what would happen when we reached the
church. I gave it one final spurt, heaving Gabrielle ahead of me so that
together we slid through the doors across the threshold of the
cathedral and landed sprawling within on the stones. Screams.
Dreadful dry screams curling upwards and then an upheaval, as if the
entire mob had been scattered by a cannon blast. I scrambled to my

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feet, laughing out loud at them. But I was not waiting so near the door
to hear more. Gabrielle was on her feet and pulling me after her and
together we hurried deep into the shadowy nave, past one lofty
archway after another until we were near the dim candles of the
sanctuary, and then seeking a dark and empty comer by a side altar, we
sank down together on our knees.
  "Just like those damned wolves! " I said. "A bloody ambush. "
  "Shhhhh, be quiet a moment, " Gabrielle said as she clung to me.
"Or my immortal heart will burst. "

  9

  After a long moment, I felt her stiffen. She was looking towards the
square.
  "Don't think of Nicolas, " she said. "They are waiting and they are
listening. They are hearing everything that goes on in our minds. "
  "But what are they thinking? " I whispered. "What is going on in
their heads? " I could feel her concentration. I pressed her close, and
looked straight at the silver light that came through the distant open
doors. I could hear them too now, but just that low shimmer of sound
coming from all of them collected there. But as I stared at the rain,
there came over me the strongest sense of peace. IL was almost
sensuous. It seemed to me we could yield to them, that it was foolish
to resist them further. All things would be resolved were we merely to
go out to them and give ourselves over. They would not torture
Nicolas, whom they had in their power; they would not tear him limb
from limb. I saw Nicolas in their hands. He wore only his lace shirt
and breeches because they had taken the coat. And I heard his screams
as they pulled his arms from the sockets. I cried out No, putting my
own hand over my mouth so that I did not rouse the mortals in the
church. Gabrielle reached up and touched my lips with her fingers.
  "It's not being done to him, " she said under her breath. "It's merely
a threat. Don't think of him. "
  "He's still alive, then, " I whispered.
  "So they want us to believe. Listen! " There came again the sense of
peace, the summons, that's what it was, to join them, the voice saying
Come out of the church. Surrender to us, we welcome you, and we
will not harm either of you if only you come. I turned towards the
door and rose to my feet. Anxiously Gabrielle rose beside me,
cautioning me again with her hand. She seemed wary of even speaking
to me as we both looked at that great archway of silvery light. You are
lying to us, I said. You have no power over us! It was a rolling current

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of defiance moving through the distant door. Surrender to you? If we
do that then what's to stop you from holding the three of us? Why
should we come out? Within this church we are safe; we can conceal
ourselves in its deepest burial vaults. We could hunt among the
faithful, drink their blood in the chapels and niches so skillfully we'd
never be discovered, sending our victims out confused to die in the
streets afterwards. And what would you do, you who cannot even
cross the door! Besides, we don't believe you have Nicolas. Show him
to us. Let him come to the door and speak. Gabrielle was in a welter
of confusion. She was scanning me, desperate to know what I said.
And she was clearly hearing them, which I could not do when I was
sending these impulses. It seemed their pulse weakened, but it had not
stopped. It went on as it had before, as if I'd not answered it, as if it
were someone humming. It was promising truce again, and now it
seemed to speak of rapture, that in the great pleasure of joining with it,
all conflict would be resolved. It was sensuous again, it was beautiful.
  "Miserable cowards, the lot of you. " I sighed. I said the words aloud
this time, so that Gabrielle could hear as well. "Send Nicolas into the
church. " The hum of the voices became thin. I went on, but beyond
it there was a hollow silence as if other voices had been withdrawn and
only one or two remained now. Then I heard the thin, chaotic strains
of argument and rebellion. Gabrielle's eyes narrowed. Silence. Only
mortals out there now, weaving their way against the wind across the
place de Grave. I didn't believe they would withdraw. Now what do
we do to save Nicki? I blinked my eyes. I felt weary suddenly; it was
almost a feeling of despair. And I thought confusedly, This is
ridiculous, I never despair! Others do that, not me. I go on fighting
no matter what happens. Always. And in my exhaustion and anger, I
saw Magnus leaping and jumping in the fire, I saw the grimace of his
face before the flames consumed him and he disappeared. Was that
despair? The thought paralyzed me. Horrified me as the reality of it
had done then. And I had the oddest feeling that someone else was
speaking to me of Magnus. That is why the thought of Magnus had
come into my head!
  "Too clever... " Gabrielle whispered.
  "Don't listen to it. It's playing tricks with our very thoughts, " I said.
But as I stared past her at the open doorway, I saw a small figure
appear. Compact it was, the figure of a young boy, not a man. I ached
for it to be Nicolas, but knew immediately that it was not. It was
smaller than Nicolas, though rather heavier of build. And the creature
was not human. Gabrielle made some soft wondering sound. It
sounded almost like prayer in its reference. The creature wasn't

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dressed as men dress now. Rather he wore a belted tunic, very
graceful, and stockings on his wellshaped legs. His sleeves were deep,
hanging at his sides. He was clothed like Magnus, actually, and for one
moment I thought madly that by some magic it was Magnus returned.
Stupid thought. This was a boy, as I had said, and he had a head of
long curly hair, and he walked very straight and very simply through
the silvery light and into the church. He hesitated for a moment. And
by the tilt of the head, it seemed he was looking up. And then he came
on through the nave and towards us, his feet making not the faintest
sound on the stones. He moved into the glow of the candles on the
side altar. His clothes were black velvet, once beautiful, and now eaten
away by time, and crusted with dirt. But his face was shining white,
and perfect, the countenance of a god it seemed, a Cupid out of
Caravaggio, seductive yet ethereal, with auburn hair and dark brown
eyes. I held Gabrielle closer as I looked at him, and nothing so startled
me about him, this inhuman creature, as the manner in which he was
staring at us. He was inspecting every detail of our persons, and then
he reached out very gently and touched the stone of the altar at his
side. He stared at the altar, at its crucifix and its saints, and then he
looked back to us. He was only a few yards away, and the soft
inspection of us yielded to an expression that was almost sublime.
And the voice I'd heard before came out of this creature, summoning
us again, calling upon us to yield, saying with indescribable gentleness
that we must love one another, he and Gabrielle, whom he didn't call
by name, and I. There was something naive about it, his sending the
summons as he stood there. I held fast against him. Instinctively. I
felt my eyes becoming opaque as if a wall had gone up to seal off the
windows of my thoughts. And yet I felt such a longing for him, such a
longing to fall into him and follow him and be led by him, that all my
longings of the past seemed nothing at all. He was all mystery to me as
Magnus had been. Only he was beautiful, indescribably beautiful, and
there seemed in him an infinite complexity and depth which Magnus
had not possessed. The anguish of my immortal life pressed in on me.
He said, "Come to me. Come to me because only I, and my like, can
end the loneliness you feel. It touched a well of inexpressible sadness.
" It sounded the depth of the sadness, and my throat went dry with a
powerful little knot where my voice might have been, yet I held fast.
We two are together, I insisted, tightening my grip on Gabrielle. And
then I asked him, Where is Nicolas? I asked that question and clung to
it, yielding to nothing that I heard or saw. He moistened his lips; very
human thing to do. And silently he approached us until he was


                                                                         150

standing no more than two feet from us, looking from one of us to the
other. And in a voice very unlike a human voice, he spoke.
  "Magnus, " he said. It was unobtrusive. It was caressing. "He went
into the fire as you said? "
  "I never said it, " I answered. The human sound of my own voice
startled me. But I knew now he meant my thoughts of only moments
before. "It's quite true, " I answered. "He went into the fire. " Why
should I deceive anyone on that account? I tried to penetrate his
mind. He knew I was doing it and he threw up against me such
strange images that I gasped. What was it I'd seen for an instant? I
didn't even know. Hell and heaven, or both made one, vampires in a
paradise drinking blood from the very flowers that hung, pendulous
and throbbing, from the trees. I felt a wave of disgust. It was as if he
had come into my private dreams like a succubus. But he had
stopped. He let his eyes pucker slightly and he looked down out of
some vague respect. My disgust was withering him. He hadn't
anticipated my response. He hadn't expected . . . what? Such
strength? Yes, and he was letting me know it in an almost courteous
way. I returned the courtesy. I let him see me in the tower room with
Magnus; I recalled Magnus's words before he went into the fire. I let
him know all of it. He nodded and when I told the words Magnus had
said, there was a slight change in his face as if his forehead had gone
smooth, or all of his skin had tightened. He gave me no such
knowledge of himself in answer. On the contrary, much to my
surprise, he looked away from us to the main altar of the church. He
glided past us, turning his back to us as if he had nothing to fear from
us and had for the moment forgotten us. He moved towards the great
aisle and slowly up it, but he did not appear to walk in a human way.
Rather he moved so swiftly from one bit of shadow to another that he
seemed to vanish and reappear. Never was he visible in the light. And
those scores of souls milling in the church had only to glance at him
for him to instantly disappear. I marveled at his skill, because that is
all it was. And curious to see if I could move like that, I followed him
to the choir. Gabrielle came after without a sound. I think we both
found it simpler than we had imagined it would be. Yet he was clearly
startled when he saw us at his side. And in the very act of being
startled, he gave me a glimpse of his great weakness, pride. He was
humiliated that we had crept up on him, moving so lightly and
managing at the same time to conceal our thoughts. But worse was to
come. When he realized that I had perceived this . . . it was revealed
for a split second. . . he was doubly enraged. A withering heat
emanated from him that wasn't heat at all. Gabrielle made a little

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scornful sound. Her eyes flashed on him for a second in some
shimmer of communication between them that excluded me. He
seemed puzzled. But he was in the grip of some greater battle I was
struggling to understand. He looked at the faithful around him, and at
the altar and all the emblems of the Almighty and the Virgin Mary
everywhere that he turned. He was perfectly the god out of
Caravaggio, the light playing on the hard whiteness of his innocent-
looking face. Then he put his arm about my waist, slipping it under
my cloak. His touch was so strange, so sweet and enticing, and the
beauty of his face so entrancing that I didn't move away. He put his
other arm around Gabrielle's waist, and the sight of them together,
angel and angel, distracted me. He said: You must come.
  "Why, where? " Gabrielle asked. I felt an immense pressure. He was
attempting to move me against my will, but he could not. I planted
myself on the stone floor. I saw Gabrielle's face harden as she looked
at him. And again, he was amazed. He was maddened and he couldn't
conceal it from us. So he had underestimated our physical strength as
well as our mental strength. Interesting.
  "You must come now, " he said, giving me the great force of his will,
which I could see much too clearly to be fooled. "Come out and my
followers won't harm you. "
  "You're lying to us, " I said. "You sent your followers away, and you
want us to come out before your followers return, because you don't
want them to see you come out of the church. You don't want them to
know you came into it! " Again Gabrielle gave a little scornful laugh. I
put my hand on his chest and tried to move him away. He might have
been as strong as Magnus. But I refused to be afraid. "Why don't you
want them to see? " i whispered, peering into his face. The change in
him was so startling and so ghastly that I found myself holding my
breath. His angelic countenance appeared to wither, his eyes widening
and his mouth twisting down in consternation. His entire body
became quite deformed as if he were trying not to grit his teeth and
clench his fists. Gabrielle drew away. I laughed. I didn't really mean
to, but I couldn't help it. It was horrifying. But it was also very funny.
With stunning suddenness this awful illusion, if that is what it was,
faded, and he came back to himself. Even the sublime expression
returned. He told me in a steady stream of thought that I was
infinitely stronger than he supposed. But it would frighten the others
to see him emerge from the church, and so we should go at once.
  "Lies again, " Gabrielle whispered. And I knew this much pride
would forgive nothing. God help Nicolas if we couldn't trick this one!
Turning, I took Gabrielle's hand and we started down the aisle to the

                                                                       152

front doors, Gabrielle glancing back at him and to me questioningly,
her face white and tense.
  "Patience, " I whispered. I turned to see him far away from us, his
back to the main altar, and his eyes were so big as he stared that he
looked horrible to me, loathsome, like a ghost. When I reached the
vestibule I sent out my summons to the others with all my power.
And I whispered aloud for Gabrielle as I did so. I told them to come
back and into the church if they wanted to, that nothing could harm
them, their leader was inside the church standing at the very altar,
unharmed. I spoke the words louder, pumping the summons under
the words, and Gabrielle joined me, repeating the phrases in unison
with me. I felt him coming towards us from the main altar, and then
suddenly I lost him. I didn't know where he was behind us. He
grabbed hold of me suddenly, materializing at my side, and Gabrielle
was thrown to the floor. He was attempting to lift me and pitch me
through the door. But I fought him. And desperately collecting
everything I remembered of Magnus-his strange walk, and this
creature's strange manner of moving-I hurled him, not off balance as
one might do to a heavy mortal, but straight up in the air. Just as I
suspected, he went over in a somersault, crashing into the wall.
Mortals stirred. They saw movement, heard noises. But he'd vanished
again. And Gabrielle and I looked no different from other young
gentlemen in the shadows. I motioned for Gabrielle to get out of the
way. Then he appeared, shooting towards me, but I perceived what
was to happen and stepped aside. Some twenty feet away from me, I
saw him sprawled on the stones staring at me with positive awe, as if I
were a god. His long auburn hair was tossed about, his brown eyes
enormous as he looked up. And for all the gentle innocence of his
face, his will was rolling over me, a hot stream of commands, telling
me I was weak and imperfect and a fool, and I would be torn limb
from limb by his followers as soon as they appeared. They would roast
my mortal lover slowly till he died. I laughed silently. This was as
ludicrous as a fight out of the old commedia. Gabrielle was staring
from one to the other of us. I sent the summons again to the others,
and this time when I sent it, I heard them answering, questioning.
  "Come into the church. " I repeated it over and over, even as he rose
and ran at me again in blind and clumsy rage. Gabrielle caught him
just as I did, and we both had hold of him and he couldn't move. In a
moment of absolute horror for me he tried to sink his fangs into my
neck. I saw his eyes round and empty as the fangs descended over his
drawn lip. I flung him back and again he vanished. They were coming
nearer, the others.

                                                                     153

 "He's in the church, your leader, look at him! " I repeated it. "And
any of you can come into the church. You won't be hurt. " I heard
Gabrielle let out a scream of warning. And too late. He rose up right
in front of me, as if out of the floor itself, and struck my jaw, jerking
my head back so that I saw the church ceiling. And before I could
recover, he had dealt me one fine blow in the middle of the back that
sent me flying out the door and onto the stones of the square.




                                                                        154

  Part IV - The Children Of Darkness

  1

  I could see nothing but the rain. But I could hear them all around
me. And he was giving his command.
  "They have no great power, these two, " he was telling them in
thoughts that had a curious simplicity to them, as if he were
commanding vagrant children. "Take them both prisoner. " Gabrielle
said: "Lestat, don't fight. It's useless to prolong it. " And I knew she
was right. But I'd never surrendered to anybody in my life. And
pulling her with me past the Hotel-Dieu, I made for the bridge. We
tore through the press of wet cloaks and mud-spattered carriages, yet
they were gaining upon us, rushing so fast they were almost invisible
to mortals, and with only a little fear of us now. In the dark streets of
the Left Bank, the game was finished. White faces appeared above and
below me as though they were demonic cherubs, and when I tried to
draw my weapon, I felt their hands on my arms. I heard Gabrielle say,
"Let it be done. " I held fast to my sword but I couldn't stop them
from lifting me off the ground. They were lifting Gabrielle too. And
in a blaze of hideous images, I understood where they were taking us.
It was to les Innocents, only yards away. I could already see the flicker
of the bonfires that burned each night among the stinking open graves,
the flames that were supposed to drive away the effluvia. I locked my
arm around Gabrielle's neck and cried out that I couldn't bear that
stench, but they were carrying us on swiftly through the darkness,
through the gates and past the white marble crypts.
  "Surely you can't endure it, " I said, struggling. "So why do you live
among the dead when you were made to feed on life? " But I felt such
revulsion now I couldn't keep it up, the verbal or physical struggle. All
around us lay bodies in various states of decomposition, and even
from the rich sepulchers there came that reek. And as we moved into
the darker part of the cemetery, as we entered an enormous sepulcher,
I realized that they too hated the stench, as much as I. I could feel
their disgust, and yet they opened their mouths and their lungs as if
they were eating it. Gabrielle was trembling against me, her fingers
digging into my neck. Through another doorway we passed, and then,
by dim torchlight, down an earthen stairs. The smell grew stronger. It
seemed to ooze from the mud walls. I turned my face down and
vomited a thin stream of glittering blood upon the steps beneath me,
which vanished as we moved swiftly on.


                                                                       155

  "Live among graves, " I said furiously. "Tell me, why do you suffer
hell already by your own choice? "
  "Silence, " whispered one of them close to me, a dark-eyed female
with a witch's mop of hair.
  "You blasphemer, " she said. "You cursed profaner. "
  "Don't be a fool for the devil, darling! " I sneered. We were eye to
eye. "Unless he treats you a damn sight better than the Almighty! "
She laughed. Or rather she started to laugh, and she stopped as if she
weren't allowed to laugh. What a gay and interesting little get-together
this was going to be! We were going lower and lower into the earth.
Flickering light, the scrape of their bare feet on the dirt, filthy rags
brushing my face. For an instant, I saw a grinning skull. Then
another, then a heap of them filling a niche in the wall. I tried to
wrench free and my foot hit another heap and sent the bones clattering
on the stairs. The vampires tightened their grip, trying to lift us
higher. Now we passed the ghastly spectacle of rotted corpses fixed in
the walls like statues, bones swathed in rotted rags.
  "This is too disgusting'. " I said with my teeth clenched. We had
come to the foot of the steps and were being carried through a great
catacomb. I could hear the low rapid beat of kettledrums. Torches
blazed ahead, and over a chorus of mournful wails, there came other
cries, distant but filled with pain. Yet something beyond these
puzzling cries had caught my attention. Amid all the foulness, I sensed
a mortal was near. It was Nicolas and he was alive and I could hear
him, vulnerable current of his thoughts mingled with his scent. And
something was terribly wrong with his thoughts. They were chaos. I
couldn't know if Gabrielle had caught it. We were quite suddenly
thrown down together, in the dust. And the others backed away from
us. I climbed to my feet, lifting Gabrielle with me. And I saw that we
were in a great domed chamber, scarcely illuminated by three torches
which the vampires held to form a triangle, in the center of which we
stood. Something huge and black to the back of the chamber; smell of
wood and pitch, smell of damp, moldering cloth, smell of living
mortal. Nicolas there. Gabrielle's hair had come loose entirely from
the ribbon, and it fell around her shoulders as she cleaved to me,
looking about with seemingly calm, cautious eyes. Wails rose all
around us, but the most piercing supplications came from those other
beings we had heard before, creatures somewhere deep in the earth.
And I realized these were entombed vampires screaming, screaming
for blood, and screaming for forgiveness and release, screaming even
for the fires of hell. The sound was as unbearable as the stench. No
real thoughts from Nicki, only the formless shimmer of his mind. Was

                                                                        156

he dreaming? Was he mad? The roll of the drums was very loud and
very close, and yet those screams pierced the rumbling again and again
without rhythm or warning. The wailing of those nearest us died
away, but the drums went on, the pounding suddenly coming from
inside my head. Trying desperately not to clamp my hands to my ears,
I looked about. A great circle had been formed, and there were ten of
them at least, these creatures. I saw young ones, old ones, men and
women, a young boy-and all clothed in the remnants of human
garments, caked with earth, feet bare, hair tangled with filth. There
was the woman I had spoken to on the stairs, her well-shaped body
clothed in a filthy robe, her quick black eyes glinting like jewels in the
dirt as she studied us. And beyond these, the advance guard, were a
pair in the shadows beating the kettledrums. I begged silently for
strength. I tried to hear Nicolas without actually thinking of him.
Solemn vow: l shall get us all out of here, though at the moment I do
not know exactly how. The drumbeat was slowing, becoming an ugly
cadence that made the alien feeling of fear a fist against my throat.
One of the torchbearers approached. I could feel the anticipation of
the others, a palpable excitement as the flames were thrust at me. I
snatched the torch from the creature, twisting his right hand until he
was flung down on his knees. With a hard kick, I sent him sprawling,
and as the others rushed in, I swung the torch wide driving them back.
Then defiantly, I threw down the torch. This caught them off guard
and I sensed a sudden quietness. The excitement was drained away, or
rather it had lapsed into something more patient and less volatile. The
drums beat insistently, but it seemed they were ignoring the drums.
They were staring at the buckles on our shoes, at our hair, and at our
faces, with such distress they appeared menacing and hungry. And the
young boy, with a look of anguish, reached out to touch Gabrielle.
  "Get back! " I hissed. And he obeyed, snatching up the torch from
the ground as he did. But I knew it for certain now-we were
surrounded by envy and curiosity, and this was the strongest
advantage we possessed. I looked from one to the other of them. And
quite slowly, I commenced to brush the filth from my frock coat and
breeches. I smoothed my cloak as I straightened my shoulders. Then I
ran a hand through my hair, and stood with my arms folded, the
picture of righteous dignity, gazing about. Gabrielle gave a faint smile.
She stood composed, her hand on the hilt of her sword. The effect of
this on the others was universal amazement. The dark-eyed female
was enthralled. I winked at her. She would have been gorgeous if
someone had thrown her into a waterfall and held her there for half an
hour and I told her so silently. She took two steps backwards and

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pulled closed her robe over her breasts. Interesting. Very interesting
indeed.
  "What is the explanation for all this? " I asked, staring at them one
by one as if they were quite peculiar. Again Gabrielle gave her faint
smile.
  "What are you meant to be? " I demanded. "The images of chain-
rattling ghosts who haunt cemeteries and ancient castles? " They were
glancing to one another, getting uneasy. The drums had stopped.
  "My childhood nurse many a time thrilled me with tales of such
fiends, " I said. "Told me they might at any moment leap out of the
suits of armor in our house to carry me away screaming. " I stomped
my foot and dashed forward. "IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE? " They
shrieked and shrank back. The black-eyed woman didn't move,
however. I laughed softly.
  "And your bodies are just like ours, aren't they? " I asked slowly.
"Smooth, without flaw, and in your eyes I can see evidence of my own
powers. Most strange... " Confusion coming from them. And the
howling in the walls seemed fainter as if the entombed were listening
in spite of their pain.
  "Is it great fun living in filth and stench such as this? " I asked. "Is
that why you do it? " Fear. Envy again. How had we managed to
escape their fate?
  "Our leader is Satan, " said the dark-eyed woman sharply. Cultured
voice. She'd been something to reckon with when she was mortal.
"And we serve Satan as we are meant to do. "
  "Why? " I asked politely. Consternation all around. Faint shimmer
of Nicolas. Agitation without direction. Had he heard my voice?
  "You will bring down the wrath of God on all of us with your
defiance, " said the boy, the smallest of them, who couldn't have been
more than sixteen when he was made. "In vanity and wickedness you
disregard the Dark Ways. You live among mortals! You walk in the
places of light. "
  "And why don't you? " I asked. "Are you to go to heaven on white
wings when this penitential sojourn of yours is ended? Is that what
Satan promises? Salvation? I wouldn't count on it, if I were you. "
  "You will be thrown into the pit of hell for your sins! " said one of
the others, a tiny hag of a woman. "You will have power to do evil on
earth no more. "
  "When is that supposed to happen? " I asked. "For half a year I've
been what I am. God and Satan have not troubled me! It is you who
trouble me! " They were paralyzed for the moment. Why hadn't we
been struck dead when we entered the churches? How could we be

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what we were? It was very likely they could have been scattered now
and beaten. But what about Nicki? If only his thoughts were directed,
I could have gained some image of exactly what lay behind that great
heap of moldering black cloth. I kept my eyes on the vampires.
Wood, pitch, a pyre there surely. And these damned torches. The
dark-eyed woman edged in. No malice, only fascination. But the boy
pushed her to the side, infuriating her. He stepped so close I could feel
his breath on my face:
  "Bastard! " he said. "You were made by the outcast, Magnus, in
defiance of the coven, and in defiance of the Dark Ways. And so you
gave the Dark Gift to this woman in rashness and vanity as it was given
to you. "
  "If Satan does not punish, " said the tiny woman, "we will punish as
is our duty and our right! " The boy pointed to the black draped pyre.
He motioned for the others to draw back. The kettledrums came up
again, fast and loud. The circle widened, the torchbearers drawing
near to the cloth. Two of the others tore down the ragged drapery,
great sheets of black serge that sent up the dust in a suffocating cloud.
The pyre was as big as the one that had consumed Magnus. And on
top of the pyre in a crude wooden cage, Nicolas knelt slumped against
the bars. He stared blindly at us, and I could find no recognition in his
face or his thoughts. The vampires held their torches high for us to
see. And I could feel their excitement rising again as it had when they
had first brought us into the room. Gabrielle was cautioning me with
the press of her hand to be calm. Nothing changed in her expression.
There were bluish marks on Nicki's throat. The lace of his shirt was
filthy as were their rags, and his breeches were snagged and torn. He
was in fact covered with bruises and drained almost to the point of
death. The fear silently exploded in my heart, but I knew this was
what they wanted to see. And I sealed it within. The cage is nothing, I
can break it. And there are only three torches. The question is when
to move, how. We would not perish like this, not like this. I found
myself staring coldly at Nicolas, coldly at the bundles of kindling, the
crude chopped wood. The anger rolled out of me. Gabrielle's face was
a perfect mask of hate. The group seemed to feel this and to move ever
so slightly away from it, and then to draw in, confused and uncertain
again. But something else was happening. The circle was tightening.
Gabrielle touched my arm.
  "The leader is coming, " she said. A door had opened somewhere.
The drums surged and it seemed those imprisoned in the walls went
into agony, pleading to be forgiven and released. The vampires
around us took up the cries in a frenzy. It was all I could do not to

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cover my ears. A strong instinct told me not to look at the leader. But
I couldn't resist him, and slowly I turned to look at him and measure
his powers again.

  2

  He was moving towards the center of the great circle, his back to the
pyre, a strange woman vampire at his side. And when I looked full at
him in the torchlight I felt the same shock I had experienced when he
entered Notre Dame. It wasn't merely his beauty; it was the
astonishing innocence of his boyish face. He moved so lightly and
swiftly I could not see his feet actually take steps. His huge eyes
regarded us without anger, his hair, for all the dust in it, giving off
faint reddish glints. I tried to feel his mind, what it was, why such a
sublime being should command these sad ghosts when it had the
world to roam. I tried to discover again what I had almost discovered
when we stood before the altar of the cathedral, this creature and I. If
I knew that, maybe I could defeat him and defeat him I would. I
thought I saw him respond to me, some silent answer, some flash of
heaven in the very pit of hell in his innocent expression, as if the devil
still retained the face and form of the angel after the fall. But
something was very wrong. The leader was not speaking. The drums
beat on anxiously, yet there was no communal conviction. The dark-
eyed woman vampire was not joined with the others in their wailing.
And others had stopped as well. And the woman who had come in
with the leader, a strange creature clothed as an ancient queen might
have been in ragged gown and braided girdle, commenced to laugh.
The coven or whatever it called itself was quite understandably
stunned. One of the kettledrums stopped. The queen creature
laughed louder and louder. Her white teeth flashed through the filthy
veil of her snarled hair. Beautiful she'd been once. And it wasn't
mortal age that had ravaged her. Rather, she appeared the lunatic, her
mouth a horrid grimace, her eyes staring wildly before her, her body
bent suddenly in an arc with her laughing, as Magnus had bent when
he danced around his own funeral pyre.
  "Did I not warn you? " she screamed. "Did I not? " Far behind her,
Nicolas moved in the little cage. I felt the laughter scorning him. But
he was looking steadily at me, and the old sensibility was stamped on
his features in spite of their distortion. Fear struggled with malice in
him, and this was tangled with wonder and near despair. The auburn-
haired leader stared at the queen vampire, his expression unreadable,
and the boy with the torch stepped forward and shouted for the

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woman to be silent at once. He made himself rather regal now, in
spite of his rags. The woman turned her back on him and faced us.
She sang her words in a hoarse, sexless voice that gave way to a
galloping laughter.
  "A thousand times I said it, yet you would not listen to me, " she
declared. Her gown shivered about her as she trembled. "And you
called me mad, time's martyr, a vagrant Cassandra corrupt by too long
a vigil on this earth. Well, you see, every one of my predictions has
come true. " The leader gave her not the slightest recognition.
  "And it took this creature, " she approached me, her face a hideous
comic mask as Magnus's face had been, "this romping cavalier to
prove it to you once and for all. " She hissed, drew in her breath, and
stood erect. And for one moment in perfect stillness she passed into
beauty. I longed to comb her hair, to wash it with my own hands, and
to clothe her in a modern dress, to see her in the mirror of my time.
In fact, my mind went suddenly wild with the idea of it, the reclaiming
of her and the washing away of her evil disguise. I think for one
second the concept of eternity burned in me. I knew then what
immortality was. All things were possible with her, or so for that one
moment it seemed. She gazed at me and caught the visions, and the
loveliness of her face deepened, but the mad humor was coming back.
  "Punish them, " the boy screamed. "Call down the judgment of
Satan. Light the fire. " But no one moved in the vast room. The old
woman hummed with her lips closed, some eerie melody with the
cadence of speech. The leader stared as before. But the boy in panic
advanced upon us. He bared his fangs, raised his hand in a claw. I
snatched the torch from him and dealt him an indifferent blow to the
chest that sent him across the dusty circle, sliding into the kindling
banked against the pyre. I ground out the torch in the dirt. The queen
vampire let out a shriek of laughter that seemed to terrify the others,
but nothing changed in the leader's face.
  "I won't stand here for any judgment of Satan! " I said, glancing
around the circle. "Unless you bring Satan here. "
  "Yes, tell them, child! Make them answer to you! " the old woman
said triumphantly. The boy was on his feet again.
  "You know the crimes, " he roared as he reentered the circle. He was
furious now, and he exuded power, and I realized how impossible it
was to judge any of them by the mortal form they retained. He might
well have been an elder, the tiny old woman a fledgling, the boyish
leader the eldest of them all.
  "Behold, " he said, stepping closer, his gray eyes gleaming as he felt
the attention of the others. "This fiend was no novice here or

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anywhere; he did not beg to be received. He made no vows to Satan.
He did not on his deathbed give up his soul, and in fact, he did not die!
" His voice went higher, grew louder.
  "He was not buried! He has not risen from the grave as a Child of
Darkness! Rather he dares to roam the world in the guise of a living
being! And in the very midst of Paris conducts business as a mortal
man! " Shrieks answered him from the walls. But the vampires of the
circle were silent as he gazed at them. His jaw trembled. He threw up
his arms and wailed. One or two of the others answered. His face was
disfigured with rage. The old queen vampire gave a shiver of laughter
and looked at me with the most maniacal smile. But the boy wasn't
giving up.
  "He seeks the comforts of the hearth, strictly forbidden, " he
screamed, stamping his foot and shaking his garments. "He goes into
the very palaces of carnal pleasure, and mingles there with mortals as
they play music! As they dance! "
  "Stop your raving! " I said. But in truth, I wanted to hear him out.
He plunged forward, sticking his finger in my face.
  "No rituals can purify him! " he shouted. "Too late for the Dark
Vows, the Dark Blessings... "
  "Dark Vows? Dark Blessings? " I turned to the old queen. "What do
you say to all this? You're as old as Magnus was when he went into the
fire .... Why do you suffer this to go on? " Her eyes moved in her head
suddenly as if they alone possessed life, and there came that racing
laughter out of her again.
  "I shall never harm you, young one, " she said. "Either of you. " She
looked lovingly at Gabrielle.
  "You are on the Devil's Road to a great adventure. What right have I
to intervene in what the centuries have in store for you? " The Devil's
Road. It was the first phrase from any of them that had rung a clarion
in my soul. An exhilaration took hold of me merely looking at her. In
her own way, she was Magnus's twin.
  "Oh yes, I am as old as your progenitor! " She smiled, her white
fangs just touching her lower lip, then vanishing. She glanced at the
leader, who watched her without the slightest interest or spirit. "I was
here, " she said, "within this coven when Magnus stole our secrets from
us, that crafty one, the alchemist, Magnus . . . when he drank the
blood that would give him life everlasting in a manner which the
World of Darkness had never witnessed before. And now three
centuries have passed and he has given his pure and undiluted Dark
Gift to you, beautiful child! " Her face became again that leering,
grinning mask of comedy, so much like Magnus's face.

                                                                     162

  "Show it to me, child, " she said, "the strength he gave you. Do you
know what it means to be made a vampire by one that powerful, who
has never given the Gift before? It's forbidden here, child, no one of
such age conveys his power! For if he should, the fledgling born of
him should easily overcome this gracious leader and his coven here. "
  "Stop this ill-conceived lunacy! " the boy interrupted. But everyone
was listening. The pretty dark-eyed woman had come nearer to us, the
better to see the old queen, and completely forgetting to fear or hate us
now.
  "One hundred years ago you'd said enough, " the boy roared at the
old queen, with his hand up to command her silence. "You're mad as
all the old ones are mad. It's the death you suffer. I tell you all this
outlaw must be punished. Order shall be restored when he and the
woman he made are destroyed before us all. " With renewed fury, he
turned on the others.
  "I tell you, you walk this earth as all evil things do, by the will of God,
to make mortals suffer for his Divine Glory. And by the will of God
you can be destroyed if you blaspheme, and thrown in the vats of hell
now, for you are damned souls, and your immortality is given you
only at the price of suffering and torment. " A burst of wailing
commenced uncertainly.
  "So there it is finally, " I said. "'The whole philosophy and the whole
is founded upon a lie. And you cower like peasants, in hell already by
your own choosing, enchained more surely than the lowest mortal,
and you wish to punish us because we do not? Follow our examples
because we do not! " The vampires were some of them staring at us,
others in frantic conversations that broke out all around. Again and
again they glanced to the leader and to the old queen. But the leader
would say nothing. The boy screamed for order:
  "It is not enough that he has profaned holy places, " he said, "not
enough that he goes about as a mortal man. This very night in a
village in the banlieue he terrified the congregation of an entire
church. All of Paris is talking of this horror, the ghouls rising from the
graves beneath the very altar, he and this female vampire on whom he
worked the Dark Trick without consent or ritual, just as he was made.
" There were gasps, more murmurs. But the old queen screamed with
delight.
  "These are high crimes, " he said. "I tell you, they cannot go
unpunished. And who among you does not know of his mockeries on
the stage of the boulevard theater which he himself holds as property
as a mortal man! There to a thousand Parisians he flaunted his powers
as a Child of Darkness! And the secrecy we have protected for

                                                                         163

centuries was broken for his amusement and the amusement of a
common crowd. " The old queen rubbed her hands together, cocking
her head to the side as she looked at me.
  "Is it all true, child? " she asked. "Did you sit in a box at the Opera?
Did you stand there before the footlights of the Theatre-Francaise?
Did you dance with the king and queen in the palace of the Tuileries,
you and this beauty you made so perfectly? Is it true you traveled the
boulevards in a golden coach? " She laughed and laughed, her eyes
now and then scanning the others, subduing them as if she gave forth a
beam of warm light.
  "Ah, such finery and such dignity, " she continued. "What happened
in the great cathedral when you entered it? Tell me now! "
  "Absolutely nothing, madam! " I declared.
  "High crimes! " roared the outraged boy vampire. "These are frights
enough to rouse a city, if not a kingdom against us. And after
centuries in which we have preyed upon this metropolis in stealth,
giving birth only to the gentlest whispers of our great power. Haunts
we are, creatures of the right, meant to feed the fears of man, not
raving demons! "
  "Ah, but it is too sublime, " sang the old queen with her eyes on the
domed ceiling. "From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the
mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies
as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries, I have
known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And
though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the
strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its
heart. " The gray-eyed boy was beside himself.
  "Dispense with the trial, " he said, glaring at the leader. "Light the
pyre now. " The queen stepped back out of my way with an
exaggerated gesture, as the boy reached for the torch nearest him, and
I rushed at him, snatching the torch away from him, and heaving him
up towards the ceiling, head over heels, so that he came tumbling in
that manner all the way down. I stamped out the torch. That left one
more. And the coven was in perfect disorder, several rushing to aid
the boy, the others murmuring to one another, the leader stock-still as
if in a dream. And in this interval I went forward, climbed up the pyre
and tore loose the front of the little wooden cage. Nicolas looked like
an animated corpse. His eyes were leaden, and his mouth twisted as if
he were smiling at me, hating me, from the other side of the grave. I
dragged him free of the cage and brought him down to the dirt floor.
He was feverish, and though I ignored and would have concealed it if I
could, he shoved at me and cursed me under his breath. The old

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queen watched in fascination. I glanced at Gabrielle, who watched
without a particle of fear. I drew out the pearl rosary from my
waistcoat and letting the crucifix dangle, I placed the rosary around
Nicolas's neck. He stared stuporously down at the little cross, and
then he began to laugh. The contempt, the malice, came out of him in
this low metallic sound. It was the very opposite of the sounds made
by the vampires. You could hear the human blood in it, the human
thickness of it, echoing against the walls. Ruddy and hot and strangely
unfinished he seemed suddenly, the only mortal among us, like a child
thrown among porcelain dolls. The coven was more confused than
ever. The two burntout torches still lay untouched.
  "Now, by your own rules, you cannot harm him, " I said. "Yet it's a
vampire who has given him the supernatural protection. Tell me, how
to compass that? " I carried Nicki forward. And Gabrielle at once
reached out to take him in her arms. He accepted this, though he
stared at her as if he didn't know her and even lifted his fingers to
touch her face. She took his hand away as she might the hand of a
baby, and kept her eyes fixed on the leader and on me.
  "If your leader has no words for you now, I have words, " I said. "Go
wash yourselves in the waters of the Seine, and clothe yourselves like
humans if you can remember how, and prowl among men as you are
obviously meant to do. " The defeated boy vampire stumbled back
into the circle, pushing roughly away those who had helped him to his
feet.

  "Armand, " he implored the silent auburn-haired leader. "Bring the
coven to order! Armand! Save us now! "
  "Why in the name of hell, " I outshouted him, "did the devil give you
beauty, agility, eyes to see visions, minds to cast spells? " Their eyes
were fixed on me, all of them. The gray-haired boy cried out the name
"Armand " again, but in vain.
  "You waste your gifts! " I said. "And worse, you waste your
immortality! Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and
contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the
superstitions of the past. " Perfect silence reigned. I could hear Nicki's
slow breathing. I could feel his warmth. I could feel his numbed
fascination struggling against death itself.
  "Have you no cunning? " I asked the others, my-voice swelling in the
stillness. "Have you no craft? How did I, an orphan, stumble upon so
much possibility, when you, nurtured as you are by these evil parents,
" I broke off to stare at the leader and the furious boy, "grope like blind
things under the earth? "

                                                                        165

  "The power of Satan will blast you into hell, " the boy bellowed,
gathering all his remaining strength.
  "You keep saying that! " I said. "And it keeps not happening, as we
can all see! " Loud murmurs of assent!
  "And if you really thought it would happen, " I said, "you would
never have bothered to bring me here. " Louder voices in agreement.
I looked at the small forlorn figure of the leader. And all eyes turned
away from me to him. Even the mad queen vampire looked at him.
And in the stillness I heard him whisper:
  "It is finished. " Not even the tormented ones in the wall made a
sound. And the leader spoke again:
  "Go now, all of you, it is at an end. "
  "Armand, no! " the boy pleaded. But the others were backing away,
faces concealed behind hands as they whispered. The drums were cast
aside, the single torch was hung upon the wall. I watched the leader. I
knew his words weren't meant to release us. And after he had silently
driven out the protesting boy with the others, so that only the queen
remained with him, he turned his gaze once again to me.

  3

  The great empty room beneath its immense dome, with only the two
vampires watching us, seemed all the more ghastly, the one torch
giving a feeble and gloomy light. Silently I considered: Will the others
leave the cemetery, or hover at the top of the stairs? Will any of them
allow me to take Nicki alive from this place? The boy will remain near,
but the boy is weak; the old queen will do nothing. That leaves only
the leader, really. But I must not be impulsive now. He was still
staring at me and saying nothing.
  "Armand? " I said respectfully. "May I address you in this way? " I
drew closer, scanning him for the slightest change of expression. "You
are obviously the leader. And you are the one who can explain all this
to us. " But these words were a poor cover for my thoughts. I was
appealing to him. I was asking him how he had led them in all this, he
who appeared as ancient as the old queen, compassing some depth
they would not understand. I pictured him standing before the altar
of Notre Dame again, that ethereal expression on his face. And I
found myself perfectly in him, and the possibility of him, this ancient
one who had stood silent all this while. I think I searched him now for
just an instant of human feeling! That's what I thought wisdom would
reveal. And the mortal in me, the vulnerable one who had cried in the
inn at the vision of the chaos, said:

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  "Armand, what is the meaning of all this? " It seemed the brown eyes
faltered. But then the face so subtly transformed itself to rage, that I
drew back. I didn't believe my senses. The sudden changes he had
undergone in Notre Dame were nothing to this. And such a perfect
incarnation of malice I'd never seen. Even Gabrielle moved away. She
raised her right hand to shield Nicki, and I stepped back until I was
beside her and our arms touched. But in the same miraculous way,
the hatred melted. The face was again that of a sweet and fresh mortal
boy. The old queen vampire smiled almost wanly and ran her white
claws through her hair.
  "You turn to me for explanations? " the leader asked. His eyes
moved over Gabrielle and the dazed figure of Nicolas against her
shoulder. Then returned to me.
  "I could speak until the end of the world, " he said, "and I could
never tell you what you have destroyed here. " I thought the old queen
made some derisive sound, but I was too engaged with him, the
softness of his speech and the great raging anger within.
  "Since the beginning of time, " he said, "these mysteries have existed.
" He seemed small standing in this vast chamber, the voice issuing
from him effortlessly, his hands limp at his sides. "Since the ancient
days there have been our kind haunting the cities of man, preying
upon him by night as God and the devil commanded us to do. The
chosen of Satan we are, and those admitted to our ranks had first to
prove themselves through a hundred crimes before the Dark Gift of
immortality was given to them. " He came just a little nearer to me,
the torchlight glimmering in his eyes.
  "Before their loved ones they appeared to die, " he said, "and with
only a small infusion of our blood did they endure the terror of the
coffin as they waited for us to come. Then and only then was the Dark
Gift given, and they were sealed again in the grave after, until their
thirst should give them the strength to break the narrow box and rise.
" His voice grew slightly louder, more resonant.
  "It was death they knew in those dark chambers, " he said. "It was
death and the power of evil they understood as they rose, breaking
open the coffin, and the iron doors that held them in. And pity the
weak, those who couldn't break out. Those whose wails brought
mortals the day after-for none would answer by night. We gave no
mercy to them.
  "But those who rose, ah, those were the vampires who walked the
earth, tested, purified, Children of Darkness, born of a fledgling's
blood, never the full power of an ancient master, so that time would
bring the wisdom to use the Dark Gifts before they grew truly strong.

                                                                       167

And on these were imposed the Rules of Darkness. To live among the
dead, for we are dead things, returning always to one's own grave or
one very nearly like it. To shun the places of light, luring victims away
from the company of others to suffer death in unholy and haunted
places. And to honor forever the power of God, the crucifix about the
neck, the Sacraments. And never, never to enter the House of God,
lest he strike you powerless, casting you into hell, ending your reign on
earth in blazing torment. " He paused. He looked at the old queen for
the first time, and it seemed, though I could not truly tell, that her face
maddened him.
  "You scorn these things, " he said to her. "Magnus scorned these
things! " He commenced to tremble. "It was the nature of his
madness, as it is the nature of yours, but I tell you, you do not
understand these mysteries! You shatter them like so much glass, but
you have no strength, no power save ignorance. You break and that is
all. " He turned away, hesitating as if he would not go on, and looking
about at the vast crypt. I heard the old vampire queen very softly
singing. She was chanting something under her breath, and she began
to rock back and forth, her head to one side, her eyes dreamy. Once
again, she looked beautiful.
  "It is finished for my children, " the leader whispered. "It is finished
and done, for they know now they can disregard all of it. The things
that bound us together, gave us the strength to endure as damned
things! The mysteries that protected us here. " Again he looked at me.
  "And you ask me for explanations as if it were inexplicable! " he said.
"You, for whom the working of the Dark Trick is an act of shameless
greed. You gave it to the very womb that bore you! Why not to this
one, the devil's fiddler, whom you worship from afar every night? "
  "Have I not told you? " sang the vampire queen. "Haven't we always
known? There is nothing to fear in the sign of the Cross, nor the Holy
Water, nor the Sacrament itself... " She repeated the words, varying the
melody under her breath, adding as she went on. "And the old rites,
the incense, the fire, the vows spoken, when we thought we saw the
Evil One in the dark, whispering... "
  "Silence! " said the leader, dropping his voice. His hands almost
went to his ears in a strangely human gesture. Like a boy he looked,
almost lost. God, that our immortal bodies could be such varied
prisons for us, that our immortal faces should be such masks for our
true souls. Again he fixed his eyes on me. I thought for a moment
there would be another of those ghastly transformations or that some
uncontrollable violence would come from him, and I hardened myself.
But he was imploring me silently. Why did this come about! His

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voice almost dried in his throat as he repeated it aloud, as he tried to
curb his rage. "You explain to me! Why you, you with the strength of
ten vampires and the courage of a hell full of devils, crashing through
the world in your brocade and your leather boots! Lelio, the actor
from the House of Thesbians, making us into grand drama on the
boulevard! Tell me! Tell me why! "
  "It was Magnus's strength, Magnus's genius, " sang the woman
vampire with the most wistful smile.
  "No! " He shook his head. "I tell you, he is beyond all account. He
knows no limit and so he has no limit. But why! " He moved just a
little closer, not seeming to walk but to come more clearly into focus
as an apparition might.
  "Why you, " he demanded, "with the boldness to walk their streets,
break their locks, call them by name. They dress your hair, they fit
your clothes! You gamble at their tables! Deceiving them, embracing
them, drinking their blood only steps from where other mortals laugh
and dance. You who shun cemeteries and burst from crypts in
churches. Why you! Thoughtless, arrogant, ignorant, and disdainful!
You give me the explanation. Answer me! " My heart was racing. My
face was warm and pulsing with blood. I was in no fear of him now,
but I was angry beyond all mortal anger, and I didn't fully understand
why. His mind-I had wanted to pierce his mind-and this is what I
heard, this superstition, this absurdity. He was no sublime spirit who
understood what his followers had not. He had not believed it. He
had believed in it, a thousand times worse! And I realized quite clearly
what he was not demon or angel at all, but a sensibility forged in a
dark time when the small orbs of the sun traveled the dome of the
heavens, and the stars were no more than tiny lanterns describing gods
and goddesses upon a closed night. A time when man was the center
of this great world in which we roam, a time when for every question
there had been an answer. That was what he was, a child of olden days
when witches had danced beneath the moon and knights had battled
dragons. Ah, sad lost child, roaming the catacombs beneath a great
city and an incomprehensible century. Maybe your mortal form is
more fitting than I supposed. But there was no time to mourn for
him, beautiful as he was. Those entombed in the walls suffered at his
command. Those he had sent out of the chamber could be called
back. I had to think of a reply to his question that he would be able to
accept. The truth wasn't enough. It had to be arranged poetically the
way that the older thinkers would have arranged it in the world before
the age of reason had come to me.


                                                                       169

  "My answer? " I said softly. I was gathering my thoughts and I could
almost feel Gabrielle's warning, Nicki's fear. "I'm no dealer in
mysteries, " I said. "No lover of philosophy. But it's plain enough
what has happened here. " He studied me with a strange earnestness.
  "If you fear so much the power of God, " I said, "then the teachings
of the Church aren't unknown to you. You must know that the forms
of goodness change with the ages, that there are saints for all times
under heaven. " Visibly he hearkened to this, warmed to the words I
used.
  "In ancient days, " I said, "there were martyrs who quenched the
flames that sought to burn them, mystics who rose into the air as they
heard the voice of God. But as the world changed, so changed the
saints. What are they now but obedient nuns and priests? They build
hospitals and orphanages, but they do not call down the angels to rout
armies or tame the savage beast. " I could see no change in him but I
pressed on.
  "And so it is with evil, obviously. It changes its form. How many
men in this age believe in the crosses that frighten your followers? Do
you think mortals above are speaking to each other of heaven and hell?
Philosophy is what they talk about, and science! What does it matter
to them if white-faced haunts prowl a churchyard after dark? A few
more murders in a wilderness of murders? How can this be of interest
to God or the devil or to man? " I heard again the old queen vampire
laughing. But Armand didn't speak or move.
  "Even your playground is about to be taken from you, " I continued.
"This cemetery in which you hide is about to be removed altogether
from Paris. Even the bones of our ancestors are no longer sacred in
this secular age. " His face softened suddenly. He couldn't conceal his
shock.
  "Les Innocents destroyed! " he whispered. "You're lying to me... "
  "I never lie, " I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love. The
people of Paris don't want the stench of graveyards around them
anymore. The emblems of the dead don't matter to them as they
matter to you. Within a few years, markets, streets, and houses will
cover this spot. Commerce. Practicality. That is the eighteenth-
century world. "
  "Stop! " he whispered. "Les Innocents has existed as long as I have
existed! " His boyish face was strained. The old queen was
undisturbed.
  "Don't you see? " I said softly. "It is a new age. It requires a new evil.
And I am that new evil. " I paused, watching him. "I am the vampire
for these times. " He had not foreseen my point. And I saw in him for

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the first time a glimmer of terrible understanding, the first glimmer of
real fear. I made a small accepting gesture.
  "This incident in the village church tonight, " I said cautiously, "it
was vulgar, I'm inclined to agree. My actions on the stage of theater,
worse still. But these were blunders. And you know they aren't the
source of your rancor. Forget them for the moment and try to
envision my beauty and my power. Try to see the evil that I am. I
stalk the world in mortal dressthe worst of fiends, the monster who
looks exactly like everyone else. " The woman vampire made a low
song of her laughter. I could feel only pain from him, and from her
the warm emanation of her love.
  "Think of it, Armand, " I pressed carefully. "Why should Death lurk
in the shadows? Why should Death wait at the gate? There is no
bedchamber, no ballroom that I cannot enter. Death in the glow of
the hearth, Death on tiptoe in the corridor, that is what I am. Speak to
me of the Dark Gifts-I use them. I'm Gentleman Death in silk and
lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose.
" There was a faint moan from Nicolas. I think I heard Armand sigh.
  "There is no place where they can hide from me, " I said, "these
godless and powerless ones who would destroy les Innocents. There is
no lock that can keep me out. " He stared back at me silently. He
appeared sad and calm. His eyes were darkened slightly, but they were
untroubled by malice or rage. He didn't speak for a long moment, and
then:
  "A splendid mission, that, " he said, "to devil them mercilessly as you
live among them. But it's you still who don't understand. "
  "How so? " I asked.
  "You can't endure in the world, living among men, you cannot
survive. "
  "But I do, " I said simply. "The old mysteries have given way to a
new style. And who knows what will follow? There's no romance in
what you are. There is great romance in what I am! "
  "You can't be that strong, " he said. "You don't know what you're
saying, you have only just come into being, you are young. "
  "He is very strong, however, this child, " mused the queen, "and so is
his beautiful newborn companion. They are fiends of high-blown
ideas and great reason, these two. "
  "You can't live among men! " Armand insisted again. His face
colored for one second. But he wasn't my enemy now; rather he was
some wondering elder struggling to tell me a critical truth. And at the
same moment he seemed a child imploring me, and in that struggle lay


                                                                        171

his essence, parent and child, pleading with me to listen to what he had
to say.
  "And why not? I tell you I belong among men. It is their blood that
makes me immortal. "
  "Ah, yes, immortal, but you have not begun to understand it, " he
said. "It's no more than a word. Study the fate of your maker. Why
did Magnus go into the flames? It's an age-old truth among us, and
you haven't even guessed it. Live among men, and the passing years
will drive you to madness. To see others grow old and die, kingdoms
rise and fall, to lose all you understand and cherish-who can endure it?
It will drive you to idiot raving and despair. Your own immortal kind
is your protection, your salvation. The ancient ways, don't you see,
which never changed! " He stopped, shocked that he had used this
word, salvation, and it reverberated through the room, his lips shaping
it again.
  "Armand, " the old queen sang softly. "Madness may come to the
eldest we know, whether they keep to the old ways or abandon them. "
She made a gesture as if to attack him with her white claws, screeching
with laughter as he stared coldly back. "I have kept to the old ways as
long as you have and I am mad, am I not? Perhaps that is why I have
kept them so well! " He shook his head angrily in protest. Was he not
the living proof it need not be so? But she drew near to me and took
hold of my arm, turning my face towards hers.
  "Did Magnus tell you nothing, child? " she asked. I felt an immense
power flowing from her.
  "While others prowled this sacred place, " she said, "I went alone
across the snow-covered fields to find Magnus. My strength is so great
now it is as if I have wings. I climbed to his window to find him in his
chamber, and together we walked the battlements unseen by all save
the distant stars. " She drew even closer, her grip tightening.
  "Many things, Magnus knew, " she said. "And it is not madness
which is your enemy, not if you are really strong. The vampire who
leaves his coven to dwell among human beings faces a dreadful hell
long before madness comes. He grows irresistibly to love mortals! He
comes to understand all things in love. "
  "Let me go, " I whispered softly. Her glance was holding me as surely
as her hands.
  "With the passage of time he comes to know mortals as they may
never know each other, " she continued, undaunted, her eyebrows
rising, "and finally there comes the moment when he cannot bear to
take life, or bear to make suffering, and nothing but madness or his
own death will ease his pain. That is the fate of the old ones which

                                                                     172

Magnus described to me, Magnus who suffered all afflictions in the
end. " At last she released me. She receded from me as if she were an
image in a sailor's glass.
  "I don't believe what you're saying, " I whispered. But the whisper
was like a hiss. "Magnus? Love mortals? "
  "Of course you do not, " she said with her graven jester's smile.
Armand, too, was looking at her as if he did not understand.
  "My words have no meaning now, " she added. "But you have all the
time in the world to understand! " Laughter, howling laughter,
scraping the ceiling of the crypt. Cries again from within the walls.
She threw back her head with her laughter. Armand was horror-
stricken as he watched her. It was as if he saw the laughter emanating
froth her like so much glittering light.
  "No, but it's a lie, a hideous simplification! " I said. My head was
throbbing suddenly. My eyes were throbbing. "I mean it's a concept
born out of moral idiocy, this idea of love! " I put my hands to my
temples. A deadly pain in me was growing. The pain was dimming
my vision, sharpening my memory of Magnus's dungeon, the mortal
prisoners who had died among the rotted bodies of those condemned
before them in the stinking crypt. Armand looked to me now as if I
were torturing him as the old queen tortured him with her laughter.
And her laughter went right on, rising and falling away. Armand's
hands went out towards me as if he would touch me but did not dare.
All the rapture and pain I'd known in these past months came together
inside me. I felt quite suddenly as if I would begin to roar as I had that
night on Renaud's stage. I was aghast at these sensations. I was
murmuring nonsense syllables again aloud.
  "Lestat! " Gabrielle whispered.
  "Love mortals? " I said. I stared at the old queen's inhuman face,
horrified suddenly to see the black eyelashes like spikes about her
glistening eyes, her flesh like animated marble. "Love mortals? Does it
take you three hundred years! " I glared at Gabrielle. "From the first
nights when I held them close to me, I loved them. Drinking up their
life, their death, I love them. Dear God, is that not the very essence of
the Dark Gift? " My voice was growing in volume as it had that night
in the theater. "Oh, what are you that you do not? What vile things
that this is the sum of your wisdom, the simple capacity to feel! " I
backed away from them, looking about me at this giant tomb, the
damp earth arching over our heads. The place was passing out of the
material into a hallucination.
  "God, do you lose your reason with the Dark Trick, " I asked, "with
your rituals, your sealing up of the fledglings in the grave? Or were

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you monsters when you were living? How could we not all of us love
mortals with every breath we take! " No answer. Except the senseless
cries of the starving ones. No answer. Just the dim beating of Nicki's
heart.
  "Well, hear me, whatever the case, " I said. I pointed my finger first
at Armand, at the old queen.
  "I never promised my soul to the devil for this! And when I made
this one it was to save her from the worms that eat the corpses around
here. If loving mortals is the hell you speak of, I am already in it. I
have met my fate. Leave me to it and all scores are settled crow. " My
voice had broken. I was gasping. I ran my hands back through my
hair. Armand seemed to shimmer as he came close to me. His face
was a miracle of seeming purity and awe.
  "Dead. things, dead things. . . " I said. "Come no closer. Talking of
madness and love, in this reeking place! And that old monster,
Magnus, locking them up in his dungeon. How did he love them, his
captives? The way boys love butterflies when they rip off their wings!
"
  "No, child, you think you understand but you do not, " sang the
woman vampire unperturbed.
  "You have only just begun your loving. " She gave a soft lilting laugh.
"You feel sorry for them, that is all. And for yourself that you cannot
be both human and inhuman. Isn't it so? "
  "Lies! " I said. I moved closer to Gabrielle. I put my arm around
her.
  "You will come to understand all things in love, " the old queen went
on, "when you are a vicious and hateful thing. This is your
immortality, child. Ever deeper understanding of it. " And throwing
up her arms, again she howled.
  "Damn you, " I said. I picked up Gabrielle and Nicki and carried
them backwards towards the doors. "You're in hell already, " I said,
"and I intend to leave you in hell now. " I took Nicolas out of
Gabrielle's arms and we ran through the catacomb towards the stairs.
The old queen was in a frenzy of keening laughter behind us. And
human as Orpheus perhaps, I stopped and glanced back.
  "Lestat, hurry! " Nicolas whispered in my ear. And Gabrielle gave a
desperate gesture for me to come. Armand had not moved, and the
old woman stood beside him laughing still.
  "Good-bye, brave child, " she cried. "Ride the Devil's Road bravely.
Ride the Devil's Road as long as you can. " The coven scattered like
frightened ghosts in the cold rain as we burst out of the sepulcher.
And baffled, they watched as we sped out of les Innocents into the

                                                                       174

crowded Paris streets. Within moments we had stolen a carriage and
were on our way out of the city into the countryside. I drove the team
on relentlessly. Yet I was so mortally tired that preternatural strength
seemed purely an idea. At every thicket and turn of the road I
expected to see the filthy demons surrounding us again. But somehow
I managed to get from a country inn the food and drink Nicolas would
need, and the blankets to keep him warm. He was unconscious long
before we reached the tower, and I carried him up the stairs to that
high cell where Magnus had first kept me. His throat was still swollen
and bruised from their feasting on him. And though he slept deeply as
I laid him on the straw bed, I could feel the thirst in him, the awful
craving that I'd felt after Magnus had drunk from me. Well, there was
plenty of wine for him when he awakened, and plenty of food. And I
knew- though how I couldn't tell that he wouldn't die. What his
daylight hours would be like, I could hardly imagine. But he would be
safe once I turned the key in the lock. And no matter what he had
been to me, or what he stood to be in the future, no mortal could
wander free in my lair while I slept. Beyond that I couldn't reason. I
felt like a mortal walking in his sleep. I was still staring down at him,
hearing his vague jumbled dreams-dreams of the horrors of les
Innocents-when Gabrielle came in. She had finished burying the poor
unfortunate stable boy, and she looked like a dusty angel again, her
hair stiff and tangled and full of delicate fractured light. She looked
down at Nicki for a long moment and then she drew me out of the
room. After I had locked the door, she led me down to the lower
crypt. There she put her arms tightly around me and held me, as if she
too were worn almost to collapse.
  "Listen to me, " she said finally, drawing back and putting her hands
up to hold my face. "We'll get him out of France as soon as we rise.
No one will ever believe his mad tales. " I didn't answer. I could
scarce understand her, her reasoning or her intentions. My head
swam.
  "You can play the puppeteer with him, " she said, "as you did with
Renaud's actors. You can send him off to the New World. "
  "Sleep, " I whispered. I kissed her open mouth. I held her with my
eyes closed. I saw the crypt again, heard their strange, inhuman voices.
All this would not stop.
  "After he's gone, then we can talk about these others, " she said
calmly. "Whether to leave Paris altogether for a while.. . " I let her go,
and I turned away from her and I went to the sarcophagus and rested
for a moment against the stone lid. For the first time in my immortal
life I wanted the silence of the tomb, the feeling that all things were out

                                                                       175

of my hands. It seemed she said something else then. Do not do this
thing.

  4

  When I awoke, I heard his cries. He was beating on the oaken door,
cursing me for keeping him prisoner. The sound filled the tower, and
the scent of him came through the stone walls: succulent, oh so
succulent, smell of living flesh and blood, his flesh and blood. She
slept still. Do not do this thing. Symphony of malice, symphony of
madness coming through the walls, straining to contain the ghastly
images, the torture, to surround it with language . . . When I stepped
into the stairwell, it was like being caught in a whirlwind of his cries,
his human smell. And all the remembered scents mingled with it-the
afternoon sunshine on a wooden table, the red wine, the smoke of the
little fire.
  "Lestat! Do you hear me! Lestat! " Thunder of fists against the door.
Memory of childhood fairy tale: the giant says he smells the blood of a
human in his lair. Horror. I knew the giant was going to find the
human. I could hear him coming after the human, step by step. I was
the human. Only no more. Smoke and salt and flesh and pumping
blood.
  "This is the witches' place! Lestat, do you hear me! This is the
witches' place! " Dull tremor of the old secrets between us, the love,
the things that only we had known, felt. Dancing in the witches' place.
Can you deny it? Can you deny everything that passed between us?
Get him out of France. Send him to the New World. And then what?
All his life he is one of those slightly interesting but generally tiresome
mortals who have seen spirits, talk of them incessantly, and no one
believes him. Deepening madness. Will he be a comical lunatic
finally, the kind that even the ruffians and bullies look after, playing
his fiddle in a dirty coat for the crowds on the streets of Port-au-
Prince?
  "Be the puppeteer again, " she had said. Is that what I was? No one
will ever believe his mad tales. But he knows the place where we lie,
Mother. He knows our names, the name of our kin-too many things
about us. And he will never go quietly to another country. And they
may go after him; they will never let him live now. Where are they? I
went up the stairs in the whirlwind of his echoing cries, looked out the
little barred window at the open land. They'll be coming again. They
have to come. First I was alone, then I had her with me, and now I
have them! But what was the crux? That he wanted it? That he had

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screamed over and over that I had denied him the power? Or was it
that I now had the excuses I needed to bring him to me as I had
wanted to do from the first moment? My Nicolas, my love. Eternity
awaits. All the great and splendid pleasures of being dead. I went
further up the stairs towards him and the thirst sang in me. To hell
with his cries. The thirst sang and I was an instrument of its singing.
And his cries had become inarticulate-the pure essence of his curses, a
dull punctuating to the misery that I could hear without need of any
sound. Something divinely carnal in the broken syllables coming from
his lips, like the low gush of blood through his heart. I lifted the key
and put it in the lock and he went silent, his thoughts washing
backwards and into him as if the ocean could be sucked back into the
tiny mysterious coils of a single shell. I tried to see him in the shadows
of the room, and not it the love for him, the aching, wrenching
months of longing for him, the hideous and unshakable human need
for him, the lust. I tried to see the mortal who didn't know what he
was saying as he glared at me:
  "You, and your talk of goodness "-low seething voice, eyes glittering-
"your talk of good and evil, your talk of what was right and what was
wrong and death, oh yes, death, the horror, the tragedy . . . " Words.
Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in
the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart:
  ". . . and you shared it with her, the lord's son giveth to the lord's
wife his great gift, the Dark Gift. Those who live in the castle share the
Dark Gift-never were they dragged to the witches' place where the
human grease pools on the ground at the foot of the burnt stake, no,
kill the old crone who can no longer see to sew, and the idiot boy who
cannot till the field. And what does he give us, the lord's son, the
wolfkiller, the one who screamed in the witches' place? Coin of the
realm! That's good enough for us! " Shuddering. Shirt soaked with
sweat. Gleam of taut flesh through the torn lace. Tantalizing, the
mere sight of it, the narrow tightly muscled torso that sculptors so love
to represent, nipples pink against the dark skin.
  "This power "-sputtering as if all day long he had been saying the
words over with the same intensity, and it does not really matter that
now I am present- "this power that made all the lies meaningless, this
dark power that soared over everything, this truth that obliterated. . .
" No. Language. No truth. The wine bottles were empty, the food
devoured. His lean arms were hardened and tense for the struggle-but
what struggle?-his brown hair fallen out of its ribbon, his eyes
enormous and glazed. But suddenly he pushed against the wall as if
he'd go through it to get away from me-dim remembrance of their

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drinking from him, the paralysis, the ecstasy-yet he was drawn
immediately forward again, staggering, putting his hands out to steady
himself by taking hold of things that were not there. But his voice had
stopped. Something breaking in his face.
  "How could you keep it from me! " he whispered. Thoughts of old
magic, luminous legend, some great eerie strata in which all the
shadowy things thrived, an intoxication with forbidden knowledge in
which the natural things become unimportant. No miracle anymore
to the leaves falling from the autumn trees, the sun in the orchard.
No. The scent was rising from him like incense, like the heat and the
smoke of church candles rising. Heart thumping under the skin of his
naked chest. Tight little belly glistening with sweat, sweat staining the
thick leather belt. Blood full of salt. I could scarce breathe. And we
do breathe. We breathe and we taste and we smell and we feel and we
thirst.
  "You have misunderstood everything. " Is this Lestat speaking? It
sounded like some other demon, some loathsome thing for whom the
voice was the imitation of a human voice. "You have misunderstood
everything you have seen and heard. "
  "I would have shared anything I possessed with you! " Rage building
again. He reached out. "It was you who never understood, " he
whispered.
  "Take your life and leave with it. Run. "
  "Don't you see it's the confirmation of everything? That it exists is
the confirmation-pure evil, sublime evil! " Triumph in his eyes. He
reached out suddenly and closed his hand on my face.
  "Don't taunt me! " I said. I struck him so hard he fell back wards,
chastened, silent. "When it was offered me I said no. I tell you I said
no. With my last breath, I said no. "
  "You were always the fool, " he said. "I told you that. " But he was
breaking down. He was shuddering and the rage was alchemizing into
desperation. He lifted his arms again and then stopped. "You believed
things that didn't matter, " he said almost gently. "There was
something you failed to see. Is it impossible you don't know yourself
what you possess now? " The glaze over his eyes broke instantly into
tears. His face knotted. Unspoken words coming from him of love.
And an awful self-consciousness came over me. Silent and lethal, I felt
myself flooded with the power I had over him and his knowledge of it,
and my love for him heated the sense of power, driving it towards a
scorching embarrassment which suddenly changed into something
else. We were in the wings of the theater again; we were in the village
in Auvergne in that little inn. I smelled not merely the blood in him,

                                                                      178

but the sudden terror. He had taken a step back. And the very
movement stoked the blaze in me, as much as the vision of his stricken
face. He grew smaller, more fragile. Yet he'd never seemed stronger,
more alluring than he was now. All the expression drained from his
face as I drew nearer. His eyes were wondrously clear. And his mind
was opening as Gabrielle's mind had opened, and for one tiny second
there flared a moment of us together in the garret, talking and talking
as the moon glared on the snow-covered roofs, or walking through the
Paris streets, passing the wine back and forth, heads bowed against the
first gust of winter rain, and there had been the eternity of growing up
and growing old before us, and so much joy even in misery, even in
the misery-the real eternity, the real forever-the mortal mystery of
that. But the moment faded in the shimmering expression on his face.
  "Come to me, Nicki, " I whispered. I lifted both hands to beckon. "If
you want it, you must come... " I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above
the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and
the endless waves over which it flew. Higher and higher it went and
the sky turned to silver and then gradually the silver faded and the sky
went dark. The darkness of evening nothing to fear, really, nothing.
Blessed darkness. But it was falling gradually and inexorably over
nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great
wasteland that was the world. Empty caves, empty sands, empty sea.
All I had ever loved to look upon, or listen to, or felt with my hands
was gone, or never existed, and the bird, circling and gliding, flew on
and on, upwards past me, or more truly past no one, holding the
entire landscape, without history or meaning, in the flat blackness of
one tiny eye. I screamed but without a sound. I felt my mouth full of
blood and each swallow passing down my throat and into fathomless
thirst. And I wanted to say, yes, I understand now, I understand how
terrible, how unbearable, this darkness. I didn't know. Couldn't
know. The bird sailing on through the darkness over the barren shore,
the seamless sea. Dear God, stop it. Worse than the horror in the inn.
Worse than the helpless trumpeting of the fallen horse in the snow.
But the blood was the blood after all, and the heart-the luscious heart
that was all hearts-was right there, on tiptoe against my lips. Now, my
love, now's the moment. I can swallow the life that beats from your
heart and send you into the oblivion in which nothing may ever be
understood or forgiven, or I can bring you to me. I pushed him
backwards. I held him to me like a crushed thing. But the vision
wouldn't stop. His arms slipped around my neck, his face wet, eyes
rolling up into his head. Then his tongue shot out. It licked hard at
the gash I had made for him in my own throat. Yes, eager. But please

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stop this vision. Stop the upward flight and the great slant of the
colorless landscape, the cawing that meant nothing over the howl of
the wind. The pain is nothing compared to this darkness. I don't
want to . . . I don't want to . . . But it was dissolving. Slowly
dissolving. And finally it was finished. The veil of silence had come
down, as it had with her. Silence. He was separate. And I was holding
him away from me, and he was almost falling, his hands to his mouth,
the blood running down his chin in rivulets. His mouth was open and
a dry sound came out of it, in spite of the blood, a dry scream. And
beyond him, and beyond the remembered vision of the metallic sea
and the lone bird who was its only witness-I saw her in the doorway
and her hair was a Virgin Mary veil of gold around her shoulders, and
she said with the saddest expression on her face:
  "Disaster, my son. " By midnight it was clear that he would not
speak or answer to any voice, or move of his own volition. He
remained still and expressionless in the places to which he was taken.
If the death pained him he gave no sign. If the new vision delighted
him, he kept it to himself. Not even the thirst moved him. And it was
Gabrielle who, after studying him quietly for hours, took him in hand,
cleaning him and putting new clothes on him. Black wool she chose,
one of the few somber coats I owned. And modest linen that made
him look oddly like a young cleric, a little too serious, a little naive.
And in the silence of the crypt as I watched them, I knew without
doubt that they could hear each other's thoughts. Without a word she
guided him through the grooming. Without a word she sent him back
to the bench by the fire. Finally, she said, "He should hunt now, " and
when she glanced at him, he rose without looking at her as if pulled by
a string. Numbly I watched them going. Heard their feet on the stairs.
And then I crept up after them, stealthily, and holding to the bars of
the gate I watched them move, two feline spirits, across the field. The
emptiness of the night was an indissoluble cold settling over me,
closing me in. Not even the fire on the hearth warmed me when I
returned to it. Emptiness here. And the quiet I had told myself that I
wanted-just to be alone after the grisly struggle in Paris. Quiet, and
the realization gnawing at my insides like a starved animal-that I
couldn't stand the sight of him now.

  5

  When I opened my eyes the next night, I knew what I meant to do.
Whether or not I could stand to look at him wasn't important. I had
made him this, and I had to rouse him from his stupor somehow. The

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hunt hadn't changed him, though apparently he'd drunk and killed
well enough. And now it was up to me to protect him from the
revulsion I felt, and to go into Paris and get the one thing that might
bring him around. The violin was all he'd ever loved when he was
alive. Maybe now it would awaken him. I'd put it in his hands, and
he'd want to play it again, he'd want to play it with his new skill, and
everything would change and the chill in my heart would somehow
melt. As soon as Gabrielle rose, I told her what I meant to do. "But
what about the others? " she said. "You can't go riding into Paris
alone. "
  "Yes, I can, " I said. "You're needed here with him. If the little pests
should come round, they could lure him into the open, the way he is
now. And besides, I want to know what's happening under les
Innocents. If we have a real truce, I want to know. "
  "I don't like your going, " she said, shaking her head. "I tell you, if I
didn't believe we should speak to the leader again, that we had things
to learn from him and the old woman, I'd be for leaving Paris tonight.
"
  "And what could they possibly teach us? " I said coldly. "That the
sun really revolves around the earth? That the earth is flat? " But the
bitterness of my words made me feel ashamed. One thing they could
tell me was why the vampires I'd made could hear each other's
thoughts when I could not. But I was too crestfallen over my loathing
of Nicki to think of all these things. I only looked at her and thought
how glorious it had been to see the Dark Trick work its magic in her,
to see it restore her youthful beauty, render her again the goddess
she'd been to me when I was a little child. To see Nicki change had
been to see him die. Maybe without reading the words in my soul she
understood it only too well. We embraced slowly. "Be careful, " she
said. I should have gone to the flat right away to look for his violin.
And there was still my poor Roget to deal with. Lies to tell. And this
matter of getting out of Paris-it seemed more and more the thing for
us to do. But for hours I did just what I wanted. I hunted the
Tuileries and the boulevards, pretending there was no coven under les
Innocents, that Nicki was alive still and safe somewhere, that Paris was
all mine again. But I was listening for them every moment. I was
thinking about the old queen. And I heard them when I least expected
it, on the boulevard du Temple, as I drew near to Renaud's. Strange
that they'd be in the places of light, as they called them. But within
seconds, I knew that several of them were hiding behind the theater.
And there was no malice this time, only a desperate excitement when
they sensed that I was near. Then I saw tile white face of the woman

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vampire, the darkeyed pretty one with the witch's hair. She was in the
alleyway beside the stage door, and she darted forward to beckon to
me. I rode back and forth for a few moments. The boulevard was the
usual spring evening panorama: hundreds of strollers amid the stream
of carriage traffic, lots of street musicians, jugglers and tumblers, the
lighted theaters with their doors open to invite the crowd. Why
should I leave it to talk to these creatures? I listened. There were four
of them actually, and they were desperately waiting for me to come.
They were in terrible fear. All right. I turned the horse and rode into
the alley and all the way to the back where they hovered together
against the stone wall. The gray-eyed boy was there, which surprised
me, and he had a dazed expression on his face. A tall blond male
vampire stood behind him with a handsome woman, both of them
swathed in rags like lepers. It was the pretty one, the dark-eyed one
who had laughed at my little jest on the stairs under les Innocents, who
spoke:
  "You have to help us! " she whispered.
  "I do? " I tried to steady the mare. She didn't like their company.
"Why do I have to help you? " I demanded.
  "He's destroying the coven, " she said.
  "Destroying us... " the boy said. But he didn't look at me. He was
staring at the stones in front of him, and from his mind I caught
flashes of what was happening, of the pyre lighted, of Armand forcing
his followers into the fire. I tried to get this out of my head. But the
images were now coming from all of them. The dark- eyed pretty one
looked directly into my eyes as she strove to sharpen the pictures
Armand swinging a great charred beam of wood as he drove the others
into the blaze, then stabbing them down into the flames with the beam
as they struggled to escape.
  "Good Lord, there were twelve of you! " I said. "Couldn't you fight?
"
  "We did and we are here, " said the woman. "He burned six together,
and the rest of us fled. In terror, we sought strange resting places for
the day. We had never done this before, slept away from our sacred
graves. We didn't know what would happen to us. And when we rose
he was there. Another two he managed to destroy. So we are all that is
left. He has even broken open the deep chambers and burned the
starved ones. He has broken loose the earth to block the tunnels to
our meeting place. " The boy looked up slowly.
  "You did this to us, " he whispered. "You have brought us all down.
" The woman stepped in front of him.


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  "You must help us, " she said. "Make a new coven with us. Help us
to exist as you exist. " She glanced impatiently at the boy.
  "But the old woman, the great one? " I asked.
  "It was she who commenced it, " said the boy bitterly. "She threw
herself into the fire. She said she would go to join Magnus. She was
laughing. It was then that he drove the others into the flames as we
fled. " I bowed my head. So she was gone. And all she had known
and witnessed had gone with her, and what had she left behind but the
simple one, the vengeful one, the wicked child who believed what she
had known to be false.
  "You must help us, " said the dark-eyed woman. "You see, it's his
right as coven master to destroy those who are weak, those who can't
survive. "
  "He couldn't let the coven fall into chaos, " said the other woman
vampire who stood behind the boy. "Without the faith in the Dark
Ways, the others might have blundered, alarmed the mortal populace.
But if you help us to form a new coven, to perfect ourselves in new
ways. . . "
  "We are the strongest of the coven, " said the man. "And if we can
fend him off long enough, and manage to continue without him, then
in time he may leave us alone. "
  "He will destroy us, " the boy muttered. "He will never leave us
alone. He will lie in wait for the moment when we separate. . . "
  "He isn't invincible, " said the tall male. "And he's lost all conviction.
Remember that. "
  "And you have Magnus's tower, a safe place... " said the boy
despairingly as he looked up at me.
  "No, that I can't share with you, " I said. "You have to win this battle
on your own. "
  "But surely you can guide us... " said the man.
  "You don't need me, " I said. "What have you already learned from
my example? What did you learn from the things I said last night? "
  "We learned more from what you said to him afterwards, " said the
dark-eyed woman. "We heard you speak to him of a new evil, an evil
for these times destined to move through the world in handsome
human guise. "
  "So take on the guise, " I said. "Take the garments of your victims,
and take the money from their pockets. And you can then move
among mortals as I do. In time you can gain enough wealth to acquire
your own little fortress, your secret sanctuary. Then you will no longer
be beggars or ghosts. " I could see the desperation in their faces. Yet
they listened attentively.

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  "But our skin, the timbre of our voices.. . " said the darkeyed
woman.
  "You can fool mortals. It's very easy. It just takes a little skill. "
  "But how do we start? " said the boy dully, as if he were only
reluctantly being brought into it.
  "What sort of mortals do we pretend to be? "
  "Choose for yourself! " I said. "Look around you. Masquerade as
gypsies if you will-that oughtn't to be too difficult-or better yet
mummers, " I glanced towards the light of the boulevard.
  "Mummers! " said the dark-eyed woman with a little spark of
excitement.
  "Yes, actors. Street performers. Acrobats. Make yourselves
acrobats. Surely you've seen them out there. You can cover your
white faces with greasepaint, and your extravagant gestures and facial
expressions won't even be noticed. You couldn't choose a more nearly
perfect disguise than that. On the boulevard you'll see every manner
of mortal that dwells in this city. You'll learn all you need to know. "
She laughed and glanced at the others. The man was deep in thought,
the other woman musing, the boy unsure.
  "With your powers, you can become jugglers and tumblers easily, " I
said. "It would be nothing for you. You could be seen by thousands
who'd never guess what you are. "
  "That isn't what happened with you on the stage of this little theater,
" said the boy coldly. "You put terror into their hearts. "
  "Because I chose to do it, " I said. Tremor of pain. "That's my
tragedy. But I can fool anyone when I want to and so can you. " I
reached into my pockets and drew out a handful of gold crowns. I
gave them to the dark- eyed woman. She took them in both hands
and stared at them as if they were burning her. She looked up and in
her eyes I saw the image of myself on Renaud's stage performing those
ghastly feats that had driven the crowd into the streets. But she had
another thought in her mind. She knew the theater was abandoned,
that I'd sent the troupe off. And for one second, I considered it, letting
the pain double itself and pass through me, wondering if the others
could feel it. What did it really matter, after all?
  "Yes, please, " said the pretty one. She reached up and touched my
hand with her cool white fingers. "Let us inside the theater! Please. "
She turned and looked at the back doors of Renaud's. Let them inside.
Let them dance on my grave. But there might be old costumes there
still, the discarded trappings of a troupe that had had all the money in
the world to buy itself new finery. Old pots of white paint. Water still
in the barrels. A thousand treasures left behind in the haste of

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departure. I was numb, unable to consider all of it, unwilling to reach
back to embrace all that had happened there.
  "Very well, " I said, looking away as if some little thing had distracted
me. "You can go into the theater if you wish. You can use whatever is
there. " She drew closer and pressed her lips suddenly to the back of
my hand.
  "We won't forget this, " she said. "My name is Eleni, this boy is
Laurent, the man here is Felix, and the woman with him, Eugenie. If
Armand moves against you, he moves against us. "
  "I hope you prosper, " I said, and strangely enough, I meant it. I
wondered if any of them, with all their Dark Ways and Dark Rituals,
had ever really wanted this nightmare that we all shared. They'd been
drawn into it as I had, really. And we were all Children of Darkness
now, for better or worse.
  "But be wise in what you do here, " I warned. "Never bring victims
here or kill near here. Be clever and keep your hiding place safe. " It
was three o'clock before I rode over the bridge on to the Ile St.Louis. I
had wasted enough time. And now I had to find the violin. But as
soon as I approached Nicki's house on the quai I saw that something
was wrong. The windows were empty. All the drapery had been
pulled down, and yet the place was full of light, as if candles were
burning inside by the hundreds. Most strange. Roget couldn't have
taken possession of the flat yet. Not enough time had passed to
assume that Nicki had met with foul play. Quickly, I went up over the
roof and down the wall to the courtyard window, and saw that the
drapery had been stripped away there too. And candles were burning
in all the candelabra and in the wall sconces. And some were even
stuck in their own wax on the pianoforte and the desk. The room was
in total disarray. Every book had been pulled off the shelf. And some
of the books were in fragments, pages broken out. Even the music had
been emptied sheet by sheet onto the carpet, and all the pictures were
lying about on the tables with other small possessions-coins, money,
keys. Perhaps the demons had wrecked the place when they took
Nicki. But who had lighted all these candles? It didn't make sense. I
listened. No one in the flat. Or so it seemed. But then I heard not
thoughts, but tiny sounds. I narrowed my eyes for a moment, just
concentrating, and it came to me that I was hearing pages turn, and
then something being dropped. More pages turning, stiff, old
parchment pages. Then again the book dropped. I raised the window
as quietly as I could. The little sounds continued, but no scent of
human, no pulse of thought. Yet there was a smell here. Something
stronger than the stale tobacco and the candle wax. The smell the

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vampires carried with them from the cemetery soil. More candles in
the hallway. Candles in the bedroom and the same disarray, books
open as they lay in careless piles, the bedclothes snarled, the pictures in
a heap. Cabinets emptied, drawers pulled out. And no violin
anywhere, I managed to note that. And those little sounds coming
from another room, pages being turned very fast. Whoever he was-
and of course I knew who he had to be-he did not give a damn that I
was there! He had not even stopped to take a breath. I went farther
down the hall and stood in the door of the library and found myself
staring right at him as he continued with his task. It was Armand, of
course. Yet I was hardly prepared for the sight he presented here.
Candle wax dripped down the marble bust of Caesar, flowed over the
brightly painted countries of the world globe. And the books, they lay
in mountains on the carpet, save for those of the very last shelf in the
corner when he stood, in his old rags still, hair full of dust, ignoring
me as he ran his hand over page after page, his eyes intent on the
words before him, his lips half open, his expression like that of an
insect in its concentration as it chews through a leaf. Perfectly horrible
he looked, actually. He was sucking everything out of the books!
Finally he let this one drop and took down another, and opened it and
started devouring it in the same manner, fingers moving down the
sentences with preternatural speed. And I realized that he had been
examining everything in the flat in this fashion, even the bed sheets
and curtains, the pictures that had been taken off their hooks, the
contents of cupboards and drawers. But from the books he was taking
concentrated knowledge. Everything from Caesar's Gallic Wars to
modern English novels lay on the floor. But his manner wasn't the
entire horror. It was the havoc he was leaving behind him, the utter
disregard of everything he used. And his utter disregard of me. He
finished his last book, or broke off from it, and went to the old
newspapers stacked on a lower shelf. I found myself backing out of the
room and away from him, staring numbly at his small dirty figure.
His auburn hair shimmered despite the dirt in it; his eyes burned like
two lights. Grotesque he seemed, among all the candles and the
swimming colors of the flat, this filthy waif of the netherworld, and yet
his beauty held sway. He hadn't needed the shadows of Notre Dame
or the torchlight of the crypt to flatter him. And there was a fierceness
in him in this bright light that I hadn't seen before. I felt an
overwhelming confusion. He was both dangerous and compelling. I
could have looked on him forever, but an overpowering instinct said:
Get away. Leave the place to him if he wants it. What does it matter
now? The violin. I tried desperately to think about the violin. To stop

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watching the movement of his hands over the words in front of him,
the relentless focus of his eyes. I turned my back on him and went into
the parlor. My hands were trembling. I could hardly endure knowing
he was there. I searched everywhere and didn't find the damned
violin. What could Nicki have done with it? I couldn't think. Pages
turning, paper crinkling. Soft sound of the newspaper dropping to the
floor. Go back to the tower at once. I went to pass the library quickly,
when without warning his soundless voice shot out and stopped me.
It was like a hand touching my throat. I turned and saw him staring at
me. Do you love them, your silent children? Do they love you? That
was what he asked, the sense disentangling itself from an endless echo.
I felt the blood rise to my face. The heat spread out over me like a
mask as I looked at him. All the books in the room were now on the
floor. He was a haunt standing in the ruins, a visitant from the devil
he believed in. Yet his face was so tender, so young. The Dark Trick
never brings love, you see, it brings only the silence. His voice seemed
softer in its soundlessness, clearer, the echo dissipated. We used to say
it was Satan's will, that the master and the fledgling not seek comfort
in each other. It was Satan who had to be served, after all. Every word
penetrated me. Every word was received by a secret, humiliating
curiosity and vulnerability. But I refused to let him see this. Angrily I
said:
  "What do you want of me? " It was shattering something to speak. I
was feeling more fear of him at this moment than ever during the
earlier battles and arguments, and I hate those who make me feel fear,
those who know things that I need to know, who have that power over
me.
  "It is like not knowing how to read, isn't it? " he said aloud. "And
your maker, the outcast Magnus, what did he care for your ignorance?
He did not tell you the simplest things, did he? " Nothing in his
expression moved as he spoke.
  "Hasn't it always been this way? Has anyone ever cared to teach you
anything? "
  "You're taking these things from my mind. . . " I said. I was
appalled. I saw the monastery where I'd been as a boy, the rows and
rows of books that I could not read, Gabrielle bent over her books, her
back to all of us. "Stop this! " I whispered. It seemed the longest time
had passed. I was becoming disoriented. He was speaking again, but
in silence. They never satisfy you, the ones you make. In silence the
estrangement and the resentment only grow. I willed myself to move
but I wasn't moving. I was merely looking at him as he went on. You
long for me and 1 for you, and we alone in all this realm are worthy of

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each other. Don't you know this? The toneless words seemed to be
stretched, amplified, like a note on the violin drawn out forever and
ever.
  "This is madness, " I whispered. I thought of all the things he had
said to me, what he had blamed me for, the horrors the others had
described-that he had thrown his followers into the fire.
  "Is it madness? " he asked. "Go then to your silent ones. Even now
they say to each other what they cannot say to you. "
  "You're lying... " I said.
  "And time will only strengthen their independence. But learn for
yourself. You will find me easily enough when you want to come to
me. After all, where can I go? What can I do? You have made me an
orphan again. "
  "I didn't- " I said.
  "Yes, you did, " he said. "You did it. You brought it down. " Still
there was no anger. "But I can wait for you to come, wait for you to
ask the questions that only I can answer. " I stared at him for a long
moment. I don't know how long. It was as if I couldn't move, and I
couldn't see anything else but him, and the great sense of peace I'd
known in Notre Dame, the spell he cast, was again working. The lights
of the room were too bright. There was nothing else but light
surrounding him, and it was as if he were coming closer to me and I to
him, yet neither of us was moving. He was drawing me, drawing me
towards him. I turned away, stumbling, losing my balance. But I was
out of the room. I was running down the hallway, and then I was
climbing out of the back window and up to the roof. I rode into the
Ile de la Cite as if he were chasing me. And my heart didn't stop its
frantic pace until I had left the city behind. Hell's Bells ringing. The
tower was in the darkness against the first glimmer of the morning
light. My little coven had already gone to rest in their dungeon crypt.
I didn't open the tombs to look at them, though I wanted desperately
to do it, just to see Gabrielle and touch her hand. I climbed alone
towards the battlements to look out at the burning miracle of the
approaching morning, the thing I should never see to its finish again.
Hell's Bells ringing, my secret music . . . But another sound was
comming to me. I knew it as I went up the stairs. And I marveled at
its power to reach me. It was like a song arching over an immense
distance, low and sweet. Once years ago, I had heard a young farm
boy singing as he walked along the high road out of the village to the
north. He hadn't known anyone was listening. He had thought
himself alone in the open country, and his voice had a private power
and purity that gave it unearthly beauty. Never mind the words of his

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old song. This was the voice that was calling to me now. The lone
voice, rising over the miles that separated us to gather all sounds into
itself. I was frightened again. Yet I opened the door at the top of the
staircase and went out onto the stone roof. Silken the morning breeze,
dreamlike the twinkling of the last stars. The sky was not so much a
canopy as it was a mist rising endlessly above me, and the stars drifted
upwards, growing ever smaller, in the mist. The faraway voice
sharpened, like a note sung in the high mountains, touching my chest
where I had laid my hand. It pierced me as a beam pierces darkness,
singing Come to me; all things will be forgiven if only you come to me.
I am more alone than I have ever been. And there came in time with
the voice a sense of limitless possibility, of wonder and expectation
that brought with it the vision of Armand standing alone in the open
doors of Notre Dame. Time and space were illusions. He was in a pale
wash of light before the main altar, a lissome shape in regal tatters,
shimmering as he vanished, and nothing but patience in his eyes.
There was no crypt under les Innocents now. There was no
grotesquery of the ragged ghost in the glare of Nicki's library, throwing
down the books when he had finished with them as if they were empty
shells. I think I knelt down and rested my head against the jagged
stones. I saw the moon like a phantom dissolving, and the sun must
have touched her because she hurt me and I had to close my eyes. But
I felt an elation, an ecstasy. It was as if my spirit could know the glory
of the Dark Trick without the blood flowing, in the intimacy of the
voice dividing me and seeking the tenderest, most secret part of my
soul. What do you want of me, I wanted to say again. How can there
be this forgiveness when there was such rancor only a short while ago?
Your coven destroyed. Horrors I don't want to imagine . . . I wanted
to say it all again. But I couldn't shape the words now any more than I
could before. And this time, I knew that if I dared to try, the bliss
would melt and leave me and the anguish would be worse than the
thirst for blood. Yet even as I remained still, in the mystery of this
feeling, I knew strange images and thoughts that weren't my own. I
saw myself retreat to the dungeon and lift up the inanimate bodies of
those kindred monsters I loved. I saw myself carrying them up to the
roof of the tower and leaving them there in their helplessness at the
mercy of the rising sun. Hell's Bells rang the alarm in vain for them.
And the sun took them up and made them cinders with human hair.
My mind recoiled from this; it recoiled in the most heartbreaking
disappointment.
  "Child, still, " I whispered. Ah, the pain of this disappointment, the
possibility diminishing...

                                                                       189

  "How foolish you are to think that such things could be done by me.
" The voice faded; it withdrew itself from me. And I felt my aloneness
in every pore of my skin. It was as if all covering had been taken from
me forever and I would always be as naked and miserable as I was
now. And I felt far off a convulsion of power, as if the spirit that had
made the voice was curling upon itself like a great tongue.
  "Treachery! " I said louder. "But oh, the sadness of it, the
miscalculation. How can you say that you desire me! " Gone it was.
Absolutely gone. And desperately, I wanted it back even if it was to
fight with me. I wanted that sense of possibility, that lovely flare again.
And I saw his face in Notre Dame, boyish and almost sweet, like the
face of an old da Vinci saint. A horrid sense of fatality passed over me.

  6

  As soon as Gabrielle rose, I drew her away from Nicki, out into the
quiet of the forest, and I told her all that had taken place the preceding
night. I told her all that Armand had suggested and said. In an
embarrassed way, I spoke of the silence that existed between her and
me, and of how I knew now that it wasn't to change.
  "We should leave Paris as soon as possible, " I said finally. "This
creature is too dangerous. And the ones to whom I gave the theater-
they don't know anything other than what they've been taught by him.
I say let them have Paris. And let's take the Devil's Road, to use the old
queen's words. " I had expected anger from her, and malice towards
Armand. But through the whole story she remained calm.
  "Lestat, there are too many unanswered questions, " she said. "I want
to know how this old coven started, I want to know all that Armand
knows about us. "
  "Mother, I am tempted to turn my back on it. I don't care how it
started. I wonder if he himself even knows. "
  "I understand, Lestat, " she said quietly. "Believe me, I do. When all
is said and done, I care less about these creatures than I do about the
trees in this forest or the stars overhead. I'd rather study the currents
of wind or the patterns in the falling leaves. . . "
  "Exactly. "
  "But we mustn't be hasty. The important thing now is for the three
of us to remain together. We should go into the city together and
prepare slowly for our departure together. And together, we must try
your plan to rouse Nicolas with the violin. " I wanted to talk about
Nicki. I wanted to ask her what lay behind his silence, what could she
divine? But the words dried up in my throat. I thought as I had all

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along of her judgment in those first moments: "Disaster, my son. " She
put her arm around me and led me back towards the tower.
  "I don't have to read your mind, " she said, "to know what's in your
heart. Let's take him to Paris. Let's try to find the Stradivarius. " She
stood on tiptoe to kiss me. "We were on the Devil's Road together
before all this happened, " she said. "We'll be on it soon again. " It was
as easy to take Nicolas into Paris as to lead him in everything else. Like
a ghost he mounted his horse and rode alongside of us, only his dark
hair and cape seemingly animate, whipped about as they were by the
wind. When we fed in the Ile de la Cite, I found I could not watch him
hunt or kill. It gave me no hope to see him doing these simple things
with the sluggishness of a somnambulist. It proved nothing more than
that he could go like this forever, our silent accomplice, little more
than a resuscitated corpse. Yet an unexpected feeling came over me as
we moved through the alleyways together. We were not two, but
three, now. A coven. And if only I could bring him around. But the
visit to Roget had to come first. I alone had to confront the lawyer. So
I left them to wait only a few doors from his house, and as I pounded
the knocker, I braced myself for the most grueling performance yet of
my theatrical career. Well, I was very quickly to learn an important
lesson about mortals and their willingness to be convinced that the
world is a safe place. Roget was overjoyed to see me. He was so
relieved that I was "alive and in good health " and still wanted his
services, that he was nodding his acceptance before my preposterous
explanations had even begun. (And this lesson about mortal peace of
mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces,
throwing tin pans all over, pouring water on pillows, making clocks
chime at all hours, mortals will accept almost any "natural explanation
" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural
one, for what is going on.) Also it became clear almost at once that he
believed Gabrielle and I had slipped out of the flat by the servants'
door to the bedroom, a nice possibility I hadn't considered before. So
all I did about the twisted-up candelabra was mumble something
about having been mad with grief when I saw my mother, which he
understood right off. As for the reason for our leaving, well, Gabrielle
insisted upon being removed from everyone and taken to a convent,
and there she was right now.
  "Ah, Monsieur, it's a miracle, her improvement, " I said. "If you
could only see her-but never mind. We're going on to Italy
immediately with Nicolas de Lenfent, and we need currency, letters of
credit, whatever, and a traveling coach, a huge traveling coach, and a
good team of six. You take care of it. Have it all ready by Friday

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evening early. And write to my father and tell him we're taking my
mother to Italy. My father is all right, I presume? "
  "Yes, yes, of course, I didn't tell him anything but the most
reassuring- "
  "How clever of you. I knew I could trust you. What would I do
without you? And what about these rubies, can you turn them into
money for me immediately? And I have here some Spanish coins to
sell, quite old, I think. " He scribbled like a madman, his doubts and
suspicions fading in the heat of my smiles. He was so glad to have
something to do!
  "Hold my property in the boulevard du Temple vacant, " I said.
"And of course, you'll manage everything for me. And so forth and so
on. " My property in the boulevard de Temple, the hiding place of a
ragged and desperate band of vampires unless Armand had already
found them and burnt them up like old costumes. I should find the
answer to that question soon enough. I came down the steps whistling
to myself in strictly human fashion, overjoyed that this odious task had
been accomplished. And then I realized that Nicki and Gabrielle were
nowhere in sight. I stopped and turned around in the street. I saw
Gabrielle just at the moment I heard her voice, a young boyish figure
emerging full blown from an alleyway as if she had just made herself
material on the spot.
  "Lestat, he's gone-vanished, " she said. I couldn't answer her. I said
something foolish, like "What do you mean, vanished! " But my
thoughts were more or less drowning out the words in my own head.
If I had doubted up until this moment that I loved him, I had been
lying to myself.
  "I turned my back, and it was that quick, I tell you, " she said. She
was half aggrieved, half angry.
  "Did you hear any other... "
  "No. Nothing. He was simply too quick. "
  "Yes, if he moved on his own, if he wasn't taken... "
  "I would have heard his fear if Armand had taken him, " she insisted.
  "But does he feel fear? Does he feel anything at all? " I was utterly
terrified and utterly exasperated. He'd vanished in a darkness that
spread out all around us like a giant wheel from its axis. I think I
clenched my fist. I must have made some uncertain little gesture of
panic.
  "Listen to me, " she said. "There are only two things that go round
and round in his mind... "
  "Tell me! "


                                                                      192

  "One is the pyre under les Innocents where he was almost burned.
And the other is a small theater-footlights, a stage. "
  "Renaud's, " I said. She and I were archangels together. It didn't take
us a quarter of an hour to reach the noisy boulevard and to move
through its raucous crowd past the neglected facade of Renaud's and
back to the stage door. The boards had all been ripped down and the
locks broken. But I heard no sound of Eleni or the others as we
slipped quietly into the hallway that went round the back of the stage.
No one here. Perhaps Armand had gathered his children home after
all, and that was my doing because I would not take them in. Nothing
but the jungle of props, the great painted scrims of night and day and
hill and dale, and the open dressing rooms, those crowded little closets
where here and there a mirror glared in the light that seeped through
the open door we had left behind. Then Gabrielle's hand tightened on
my sleeve. She gestured towards the wings proper. And I knew by her
face that it wasn't the other ones. Nicki was there. I went to the side
of the stage. The velvet curtain was drawn back to both sides and I
could see his dark figure plainly in the orchestra pit. He was sitting in
his old place, his hands folded in his lap. He was facing me but he
didn't notice me. He was staring off as he had done all along. And the
memory came back to me of Gabrielle's strange words the night after I
had made her, that she could not get over the sensation that she had
died and could affect nothing in the mortal world. He appeared that
lifeless and that translucent. He was the still, expressionless specter
one almost stumbles over in the shadows of the haunted house, all but
melded with the dusty furnishings-the fright that is worse perhaps
than any other kind. I looked to see if the violin was there-on the
floor, or against his chair-and when I saw that it wasn't, I thought,
Well, there is still a chance.
  "Stay here and watch, " I said to Gabrielle. But my heart was
knocking in my throat when I looked up at the darkened theater, when
I let myself breathe in the old scents. Why did you have to bring us
here, Nicki? To this haunted place? But then, who am I to ask that? I
had come back, had I not? I lighted the first candle I found in the old
prima donna's dressing room. Open pots of paint were scattered
everywhere, and there were many discarded costumes on the hooks.
All the rooms I passed were full of cast-off clothing, forgotten combs
and brushes, withered flowers still in the vases, powder spilled on the
floor. I thought of Eleni and the others again, and I realized that the
faintest smell of les Innocents lingered here. And I saw very distinct
naked footprints in the spilled powder. Yes, they'd come in. And they
had lighted candles, too, hadn't they? Because the smell of the wax was

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too fresh. Whatever the case, they hadn't entered my old dressing
room, the room that Nicki and I had shared before every performance.
It was locked still. And when I broke open the door, I got an ugly
shock. The room was exactly the way I'd left it. It was clean and
orderly, even the mirror polished, and it was filled with my belongings
as it had been on the last night I had been here. There was my old coat
on the hook, the castoff I'd worn from the country, and a pair of
wrinkled boots, and my pots of paint in perfect order, and my wig,
which I had worn only at the theater, on its wooden head. Letters
from Gabrielle in a little stack, the old copies of English and French
newspapers in which the play had been mentioned, and a bottle of
wine still half full with a dried cork. And there in the darkness beneath
the marble dressing table, partly covered by a bundled black coat, lay a
shiny violin case. It was not the one we'd carried all the way from
home with us. No. It must hold the precious gift I'd bought for him
with the "coin of the realm " after, the Stradivarius violin. I bent down
and opened the lid. It was the beautiful instrument all right, delicate
and darkly lustrous, and lying here among all these unimportant
things. I wondered whether Eleni and the others would have taken it
had they come into this room. Would they have known what it could
do? I set down the candle for a moment and took it out carefully, and
I tightened the horsehair of the bows as I'd seen Nicki do a thousand
times. And then I brought the instrument and the candle back to the
stage again, and I bent down and commenced to light the long string
of candle footlights. Gabrielle watched me impassively. Then she
came to help me. She lit one candle after another and then lighted the
sconce in the wings. It seemed Nicki stirred. But maybe it was only
the growing illumination on his profile, the soft light that emanated
out from the stage into the darkened hall. The deep folds of the velvet
came alive everywhere; the ornate little mirrors affixed to the front of
the gallery and the loges became lights themselves. Beautiful this little
place, our place. The portal to the world for us as mortal beings. And
the portal finally to hell. When I was finished, I stood on the boards
looking at the gilded railings, the new chandelier that hung from the
ceiling, and up at the arch overhead with its masks of comedy and
tragedy like two faces stemming from the same neck. It seemed so
much smaller when it was empty, this house. No theater in Paris
seemed larger when it was full. Outside was the low thunder of the
boulevard traffic, tiny human voices rising now and then like sparks
over the general hum. A heavy carriage must have passed then because
everything within the theater shivered slightly: the candle flames
against their reflectors, the giant stage curtain gathered to right and

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left, the scrim behind of a finely painted garden with clouds overhead.
I went past Nicki, who had never once looked up at me, and down the
little stairs behind him, and came towards him with the violin.
Gabrielle stood back in the wings again, her small face cold but
patient. She rested against the beam beside her in the easy manner of a
strange long-haired man. I lowered the violin over Nicki's shoulder
and held it in his lap. I felt him move, as if he had taken a great breath.
The back of his head pressed against me. And slowly he lifted his left
hand to take the neck of the violin and he took the bow with his right.
I knelt and put my hands on his shoulders. I kissed his cheek. No
human scent. No human warmth. Sculpture of my Nicolas.
  "Play it, " I whispered. "Play it here just for us. " Slowly he turned to
face me, and for the first time since the moment of the Dark Trick, he
looked into my eyes. He made some tiny sound. It was so strained it
was as if he couldn't speak anymore. The organs of speech had closed
up. But then he ran his tongue along his lip, and so low I scarcely
heard him, he said:
  "The devil's instrument. "
  "Yes, " I said. If you must believe that, then believe it. But play. His
fingers hovered above the strings. He tapped the hollow wood with his
fingertip. And now, trembling, he plucked at the strings to tune them
and wound the pegs very slowly as if he were discovering the process
with perfect concentration for the first time. Somewhere out on the
boulevard children laughed. Wooden wheels made their thick clatter
over the cobblestones. The staccato notes were sour, dissonant, and
they sharpened the tension. He pressed the instrument to his ear for a
moment. And it seemed to me he didn't move again for an eternity,
and then he slowly rose to his feet. I went back out of the pit and into
the benches, and I stood staring at his black silhouette against the glow
of the lighted stage. He turned to face the empty theater as he had
done so many times at the moment of the intermezzo, and he lifted
the violin to his chin. And in a movement so swift it was like a flash of
light in my eye, he brought the bow down across the strings. The first
full-throated chords throbbed in the silence and were stretched as they
deepened, scraping the bottom of sound itself. Then the notes rose,
rich and dark and shrill, as if pumped out of the fragile violin by
alchemy, until a raging torrent of melody suddenly flooded the hall. It
seemed to roll through my body, to pass through my very bones. I
couldn't see the movement of his fingers, the whipping of the bow; all
I could see was the swaying of his body, his tortured posture as he let
the music twist him, bend him forward, throw him back. It became
higher, shriller, faster, yet the tone of each note was perfection. It was

                                                                       195

execution without effort, virtuosity beyond mortal dreams. And the
violin was talking, not merely singing, the violin was insisting. The
violin was telling a tale. The music was a lamentation, a future of
terror looping itself into hypnotic dance rhythms, jerking Nicki even
more wildly from side to side. His hair was a glistening mop against
the footlights. The blood sweat had broken out on him. I could smell
the blood. But I too was doubling over; I was backing away from him,
slumping down on the bench as if to cower from it, as once before in
this house terrified mortals had cowered before me. And I knew, knew
in some full and simultaneous fashion, that the violin was telling
everything that had happened to Nicki. It was the darkness exploded,
the darkness molten, and the beauty of it was like the glow of
smoldering coals; just enough illumination to show how much
darkness there really was. Gabrielle too was straining to keep her body
still under the onslaught, her face constricted, her hands to her head.
Her lion's mane of hair had shaken loose around her, her eyes were
closed. But another sound was coming through the pure inundation
of song. They were here. They had come into the theater and were
moving towards us through the wings. The music reached impossible
peaks, the sound throttled for an instant and then released again. The
mixture of feeling and pure logic drove it past the limits of the
bearable. And yet it went on and on. And the others appeared slowly
from behind the stage curtain-first the stately figure of Eleni, then the
boy Laurent, and finally Mix and Eugenie. Acrobats, street players,
they had become, and they wore the clothes of such players, the men
in white tights beneath dagged harlequin jerkins, the women in full
bloomers and ruffled dresses and with dancing slippers on their feet.
Rouge gleamed on their immaculate white faces; kohl outlined their
dazzling vampire eyes. They glided towards Nicki as if drawn by a
magnet, their beauty flowering ever more fully as they came into the
glare of the stage candles, their hair shimmering, their movements
agile and feline, their expressions rapt. Nicki turned slowly to face
them as he writhed, and the song went into frenzied supplication,
lurching and climbing and roaring along its melodic path. Eleni stared
wide-eyed at him as if horrified and enchanted. Then her arms rose
straight up above her head in a slow dramatic gesture, her body
tensing, her neck becoming ever more graceful and long. The other
woman had made a pivot and lifted her knee, toe pointed down, in the
first step of a dance. But it was the tall man who suddenly caught the
pace of Nicki's music as he jerked his head to the side and moved his
legs and arms as if he were a great marionette controlled from the
rafters above by four strings. The others saw it. They had seen the

                                                                       196

marionettes of the boulevard. And suddenly they all went into the
mechanical attitude, their sudden movements like spasms, their faces
like wooden faces, utterly blank. A great cool rush of delight passed
through me, as if I could breathe suddenly in the blasted heat of the
music, and I moaned with pleasure watching them flip and flop and
throw up their legs, toes to the ceiling, and twirl on their invisible
strings. But it was changing. He was playing to them now even as they
danced to him. He took a stride towards the stage, and leapt up over
the smoky trough of the footlights, and landed in their midst. The
light slithered off the instrument, off his glistening face. A new
element of mockery infected the never ending melody, a syncopation
that staggered the song and made it all the more bitter and-all the
more sweet at the same time. The jerking stiff-jointed puppets circled
him, shuffling and bobbing along the floorboards. Fingers splayed,
heads rocking from side to side, they jigged and twisted until all of
them broke their rigid form as Nicki's melody melted into harrowing
sadness, the dance becoming immediately liquid and heartbroken and
slow. It was as if one mind controlled them, as if they danced to
Nicki's thoughts as well as his music, and he began to dance with them
as he played, the beat coming faster, as he became the country fiddler
at the Lenten bonfire, and they leapt in pairs like country lovers, the
skirts of the women flaring, the men bowing their legs as they lifted the
women, all creating postures of tenderest love. Frozen, I stared at the
image: the preternatural dancers, the monster violinist, limbs moving
with inhuman slowness, tantalizing grace. The music was like a fire
consuming us all. Now it screamed of pain, of horror, of the pure
rebellion of the soul against all things. And they again carried it into
the visual, faces twisted in torment, like the mask of tragedy graven on
the arch above them, and I knew that if I didn't turn my back on this I
would cry. I didn't want to hear any more or see any more. Nicki was
swinging to and fro as if the violin were a beast he could no longer
control. And he was stabbing at the strings with short rough strokes of
the bow. The dancers passed in front of him, in back of him,
embraced him, and caught him suddenly as he threw up his hands, the
violin held high over his head. A loud piercing laughter erupted from
him. His chest shivered with it, his arms and legs quaking with it.
And then he lowered his head and he fixed his eyes on me. And at the
top of his voice he screamed:
  "I GIVE YOU THE THEATER OF THE VAMPIRES! THE
THEATER OF THE VAMPIRES! THE GREATEST SPECTACLE OF
THE BOULEVARD! " Astonished, the others stared at him. But
again, all of one mind, they "clapped " their hands and roared. They

                                                                       197

leapt into the air, giving out shrieks of joy. They threw their arms
about his neck and kissed him. And dancing around him in a circle,
they turned him with their arms. The laughter rose, bubbling out of
all of them, as he brought them close in his arms and answered their
kisses, and with their long pink tongues they licked the blood sweat off
his face.
  "The Theater of the Vampires! " They broke from him and bawled it
to the nonexistent audience, to the world. They bowed to the
footlights, and frolicking and screaming they leapt up to the rafters
and then let themselves drop down with a stoma of reverberation of
the boards. The last shimmer of the music was gone, replaced by this
cacophony of shrieking and stomping and laughter, like the clang of
bells. I do not remember turning my back on them. I don't remember
walking up the steps to the stage and going past them. But I must
have. Because I was suddenly sitting on the low narrow table of my
little dressing room, my back against the corner, my knee crooked, my
head against the cold glass of the mirror, and Gabrielle was there. I
was breathing hoarsely and the sound of it bothered me. I saw things-
the wig I'd worn on the stage, the pasteboard shield-and these evoked
thundering emotions. But I was suffocating. I could not think. Then
Nicki appeared in the door, and he moved Gabrielle to the side with a
strength that astonished her and astonished me, and he pointed his
finger at me:
  "Well, don't you like it, my lord patron? " he asked, advancing, his
words flowing in an unbroken stream so that they sounded like one
great word. "Don't you admire its splendor, its perfection? Won't you
endow the Theater of the Vampires with the coin of the realm which
you possess in such great abundance?- How was it now, `the new evil,
the canker in the heart of the rose, death in the very midst of things' . .
. " From a mute he had passed into mania, and even when he broke
off talking, the low senseless frenzied sounds still issued from his lips
like water from a spring. His face was drawn and hard and glistening
with the blood droplets clinging to it, and staining the white linen at
his neck. And behind him there came an almost innocent laughter
from the others, except for Eleni, who watched over his shoulder,
trying very hard to comprehend what was really happening between
us. He drew closer, half laughing, grinning, stabbing at my chest with
his finger:
  "Well, speak. Don't you see the splendid mockery, the genius? " He
struck his own chest with his fist. "They'll come to our performances,
fill our coffers with gold, and never guess what they harbor, what
flourishes right in the comer of the Parisian eye. In the back alleys we

                                                                       198

feed on them and they clap for us before the lighted stage.. . "
Laughter from the boy behind him. The tink of a tambourine, the thin
sound of the other woman singing. A long streak of the man's
laughter-like a ribbon unfurling, charting his movement as he rushed
around in a circle through the rattling scrims. Nicki drew in so that
the light behind him vanished. I couldn't see Eleni.
  "Magnificent evil! " he said. He was full of menace and his white
hands looked like the claws of a sea creature that could at any given
moment move to tear me to bits. "To serve the god of the dark wood
as he has not been served ever and here in the very center of
civilization. And for this you saved the theater. Out off your gallant
patronage this sublime offering is born. "
  "It is petty! " I said. "It is merely beautiful and clever and nothing
more. " My voice had not been very loud but it brought him to
silence, and it brought the others to silence. And the shock in me
melted slowly into another emotion, no less painful, merely easier to
contain. Nothing but the sounds again from the boulevard. A
glowering anger flowed out of him, his pupils dancing as he looked at
me.
  "You're a liar, a contemptible liar, " he said.
  "There is no splendor in it, " I answered. "There is nothing sublime.
Fooling helpless mortals, mocking them, and then going out from here
at night to take life in the same old petty manner, one death after
another in all its inevitable cruelty and shabbiness so that we can live.
And man can kill another man! Play your violin forever. Dance as
you wish. Give them their money's worth if it keeps you busy and eats
up eternity! It's simply clever and beautiful. A grove in the Savage
Garden. Nothing more. "
  "Vile liar! " he said between his teeth. "You are God's fool, that's
what you are. You who possessed the dark secret that soared above
everything, rendered everything meaningless, and what did you do
with it, in those months when you ruled alone from Magnus's tower,
but try to live like a good man! A good man! " He was close enough
to kiss me, the blood of his spittle hitting my face.
  "Patron of the arts, " he sneered. "Giver of gifts to your family, giver
of gifts to us! " He stepped back, looking down on me
contemptuously.
  "Well, we will take the little theater that you painted in gold, and
hung with velvet, " he said,
  "and it will serve the forces of the devil more splendidly than he was
ever served by the old coven. " He turned and glanced at Eleni. He
glanced back at the others. "We will make a mockery of all things

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sacred. We will lead them to ever greater vulgarity and profanity. We
will astonish. We will beguile. But above all, we will thrive on their
gold as well as their blood and in their midst we will grow strong. "
  "Yes, " said the boy behind him. "We will become invincible. " His
face had a crazed look, the look of the zealot as he gazed at Nicolas.
"We will have names and places in their very world. "
  "And power over them, " said the other woman, "and a vantage point
from which to study them and know them and perfect our methods of
destroying them when we choose. "
  "I want the theater, " Nicolas said to me. "I want it from you. The
deed, the money to reopen it. My assistants here are ready to listen to
me. "
  "You may have it, if you wish, " I answered. "It is yours if it will take
you and your malice and your fractured reason off my hands. " I got
up off the dressing table and went towards him and I think that he
meant to block my path, but something unaccountable happened.
When I saw he wouldn't move, my anger rose up and out of me like an
invisible fist. And I saw him moved backwards as if the fist had struck
him. And he hit the wail with sudden force. I could have been free of
the place in an instant. I knew Gabrielle was only waiting to follow
me. But I didn't leave. I stopped and looked back at him, and he was
still against the wall as if he couldn't move. And he was watching me
and the hatred was as pure, as undiluted by remembered love, as it had
been all along. But I wanted to understand, I wanted really to know
what had happened. And I came towards him again in silence and this
time it was I who was menacing, and my hands looked like claws and I
could feel his fear. They were all, except for Eleni, full of fear. I
stopped when I was very close to him and he looked directly at me,
and it was as if he knew exactly what I was asking him.
  "All a misunderstanding, my love, " he said. Acid on the tongue.
The blood sweat had broken out again, and his eyes glistened as if they
were wet. "It was to hurt others, don't you see, the violin playing, to
anger them, to secure for me an island where they could not rule.
They would watch my ruin, unable to do anything about it. " I didn't
answer. I wanted him to go on.
  "And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in
Paris, that we would go down and down and down. It was what I
wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should
rise for them. I thought we would go down! We were supposed to go
down. "
  "Oh, Nicki... " I whispered.


                                                                        200

  "But you didn't go down, Lestat, " he said, his eyebrows rising. "The
hunger, the cold-none of it stopped you. You were a triumph! " The
rage thickened his voice again. "You didn't drink yourself to death in
the gutter. You turned everything upside down! And for every aspect
of our proposed damnation you found exuberance, and there was no
end to your enthusiasm and the passion coming out of you-and the
light, always the light. And in exact proportion to the light coming out
of you, there was the darkness in me! Every exuberance piercing me
and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair! And then,
the magic, when you got the magic, irony of ironies, you protected me
from it! And what did you do with it but use your Satanic powers to
simulate the actions of a good man! " I turned around. I saw them
scattered in the shadows, and farthest away, the figure of Gabrielle. I
saw the light on her hand as she raised it, beckoning for me to come
away. Nicki reached up and touched my shoulders. I could feel the
hatred coming through his touch. Loathsome to be touched in hate.
  "Like a mindless beam of sunlight you routed the bats of the old
coven! " he whispered. "And for what purpose? What does it mean,
the murdering monster who is filled with light! " I turned and
smacked him and sent him hurtling into the dressing room, his right
hand smashing the mirror, his head cracking against the far wall. For
one moment he lay like something broken against the mass of old
clothing, and then his eyes gathered their determination again, and his
face softened into a slow smile. He righted himself and slowly, as an
indignant mortal might, he smoothed his coat and his rumpled hair.
It was like my gestures under les Innocents when my captors had sent
me down in the dirt. And he came forward with the same dignity, and
the smile was as ugly as any I had ever seen.
  "I despise you, " he said. "But I am done with you. I have the power
from you and I know how to use it, which you do not. I am in a realm
at last where I choose to triumph! In darkness, we're equal now. And
you will give me the theater, that because you owe it to me, and you
are a giver of things, aren't you-a giver of gold coins to hungry
children-and then I won't ever look upon your light again. " He
stepped around me and stretched out his arms to the others:
  "Come, my beauties, come, we have plays to write, business to attend
to. You have things to learn from me. I know what mortals really are.
We must get down to the serious invention of our dark and splendid
art. We will make a coven to rival all covens. We will do what has
never been done. " The others looked at me, frightened, hesitant. And
in this still and tense moment I heard myself take a deep breath. My
vision broadened. I saw the wings around us again, the high rafters,

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the walls of scenery transecting the darkness, and beyond, the little
blaze along the foot of the dusty stage. I saw the house veiled in
shadow and knew in one limitless recollection all that had happened
here. And I saw a nightmare hatch another nightmare, and I saw a
story come to an end.
  "The Theater of the Vampires, " I whispered. "We have worked the
Dark Trick on this little place. " No one of the others dared to answer.
Nicolas only smiled. And as I turned to leave the theater I raised my
hand in a gesture that urged them all towards him. I said my farewell.
We were not far from the lights of the boulevard when I stopped in my
tracks. Without words a thousand horrors came to me-that Armand
would come to destroy him, that his newfound brothers and sisters
would tire of his frenzy and desert him, that morning would find him
stumbling through the streets unable to find a hiding place from the
sun. I looked up at the sky. I couldn't speak or breathe. Gabrielle put
her arms around me and I held her, burying my face in her hair. Like
cool velvet was her skin, her face, her lips. And her love surrounded
me with a monstrous purity that had nothing to do with human hearts
and human flesh. I lifted her off her feet embracing her. And in the
dark, we were like lovers carved out of the same stone who had no
memory of a separate life at all.
  "He's made his choice, my son, " she said. "What's done is done, and
you're free of him now. "
  "Mother, how can you say it? " I whispered. "He didn't know. He
doesn't know still... "
  "Let him go, Lestat, " she said. "They will care for him. "
  "But now I have to find that devil, Armand, don't I? " I said wearily.
"I have to make him leave them alone. " The following evening when I
came into Paris, I learned that Nicki had already been to Roget. He
had come an hour earlier pounding the doors like a madman. And
shouting from the shadows, he had demanded the deed to the theater,
and money that he said I promised to him. He had threatened Roget
and his family. He had also told Roget to write to Renaud and his
troupe in London and to tell them to come home, that they had a new
theater awaiting them, and he expected them back at once. When
Roget refused, he demanded the address of the players in London, and
began to ransack Roget's desk. I went into a silent fury when I heard
this. So he would make them all vampires, would he, this demon
fledgling, this reckless and frenzied monster? This would not come to
pass. I told Roget to send a courier to London, with word that Nicolas
de Lenfent had lost his reason. The players must not come home.
And then I went to the boulevard du Temple and I found him at his

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rehearsals, excited and mad as he had been before. He wore his fancy
clothes again and his old jewels from the time when he had been his
father's favorite son, but his tie was askew, his stockings crooked, and
his hair was as wild and unkempt as the hair of a prisoner in the
Bastille who hadn't seen himself in a mirror in twenty years. Before
Eleni and the others I told him he would get nothing from me unless I
had the promise that no actor or actress of Paris would ever be slain or
seduced by the new coven, that Renaud and his troupe would never be
brought into the Theater of the Vampires now or in the years to come,
that Roget, who would hold the purse strings of the theater, must
never come to the slightest harm. He laughed at me, he ridiculed me
as he had before. But Eleni silenced him. She was horrified to learn of
his impulsive designs. It was she who gave the promises, and exacted
them from the others. It was she who intimidated him and confused
him with jumbled language of the old ways, and made him back down.
And it was to Eleni finally that I gave control of the Theater of the
Vampires, and the income, to pass through Roget, which would allow
her to do with it what she pleased. Before I left her that night, I asked
her what she knew of Armand. Gabrielle was with us. We were in the
alleyway again, near the stage door.
  "He watches, " Eleni answered. "Sometimes he lets himself be seen. "
Her face was very confusing to me. Sorrowful. "But God only knows
what he will do, " she added fearfully, "when he discovers what is really
going on here. "




                                                                       203

  Part V - The Vampire Armand

  1

  Spring rain. Rain of light that saturated every new leaf of the trees in
the street, every square of paving, drift of rain threading light through
the empty darkness itself. And the ball in the Palais Royal. The king
and queen were there, dancing with the people. Talk in the shadows of
intrigue. Who cares? Kingdoms rise and fall. Just don't burn the
paintings in the Louvre, that's all. Lost in a sea of mortals again; fresh
complexions and ruddy cheeks, mounds of powdered hair atop
feminine heads with all manner of millinery nonsense in them, even
minute ships with three masts, tiny trees, little birds. Landscapes of
pearl and ribbon. Broad-chested men like cocks in satin coats like
feathered wings. The diamonds hurt my eyes. The voices touched the
surface of my skin at times, the laughter the echo of unholy laughter,
wreaths of candles blinding, the froth of music positively lapping the
walls. Gusts of rain from the open doors. Scent of humans gently
stoking my hunger. White shoulders, white necks, powerful hearts
running at that eternal rhythm, so many gradations among these
naked children hidden in riches, savages laboring beneath a swaddling
of chenille, encrustations of embroidery, feet aching over high heels,
masks like scabs about their eyes. The air comes out of one body and
is breathed into another. The music, does it pass out of one ear and
into another, as the old expression goes? We breathe the light, we
breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us.
Now and then eyes settled on me with some vague air of expectation.
My white skin made them pause, but what was that when they let
blood out of their veins themselves to keep their delicate pallor? (Let
me hold the basin for you and drink it afterwards.) And my eyes, what
were those, in this sea of paste jewels? Yet their whispers slithered
around me. And those scents, ah, not a one was like another. And as
clearly as if spoken aloud it came, the summons from mortals here and
there, sensing what I was, and the lust. In some ancient language they
welcomed death; they ached for death as death was passing through
the room. But did they really know? Of course they didn't know. And
I did not know! That was the perfect horror! And who am I to bear
this secret, to hunger so to impart it, to want to take that slender
woman there and suck the blood right out of the plump flesh of her
round little breast. The music rushed on, human music. The colors of
the room flamed for an instant as if the whole would melt. The
hunger sharpened. It was no longer an idea. My veins were throbbing

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with it. Someone would die. Sucked dry in less than a moment. I
cannot stand it, thinking of it, knowing it's about to happen, fingers on
the throat feeling the blood in the vein, feeling the flesh give, give it to
me! Where? This is my body, this is my blood. Send out your power,
Lestat, like a reptile tongue to gather in a flick the appropriate heart.
Plump little arms ripe for the squeezing, men's faces on which the
close-shaven blond beard all but glitters, muscle struggling in my
fingers, you haven't got a chance! And beneath this divine chemistry
suddenly, this panorama of the denial of decay, I saw the bones! Skulls
under these preposterous wigs, two gaping holes peering from behind
the uplifted fan. A room of wobbling skeletons waiting only for the
tolling of the bell. Just as I had seen the audience that night in the pit
of Renaud's when I had done the tricks that terrified them. The horror
should be visited upon every other being in this room. I had to get
out. I'd made a terrible miscalculation. This was death and I could get
away from it, if I could just get out! But I was tangled in mortal beings
as if this monstrous place were a snare for a vampire. If I bolted, I'd
send the entire ballroom into panic. As gently as I could I pushed to
the open doors. And against the far wall, a backdrop of satin and
filigree, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, like something imagined,
Armand. Armand. If there had been a summons, I never heard it. If
there was a greeting, I didn't sense it now. He was merely looking at
me, a radiant creature in jewels and scalloped lace. And it was
Cinderella revealed at the ball, this vision, Sleeping Beauty opening her
eyes under a mesh of cobwebs and wiping them all away with one
sweep of her warm hand. The sheer pitch of incarnate beauty made
me gasp. Yes, perfect mortal raiment, and yet he seemed all the more
supernatural, his face too dazzling, his dark eyes fathomless and just
for a split second glinting as if they were windows to the fires of hell.
And when his voice came it was low and almost teasing, forcing me to
concentrate to hear it: All night you've been searching for me, he said,
and here I am, waiting for you. I have been waiting for you all along. I
think I sensed even then, as I stood unable to look away, that never in
my years of wandering this earth would I ever have such a rich
revelation of the true horror that we are. Heartbreakingly innocent he
seemed in the midst of the crowd. Yet I saw crypts when I looked at
him, and I heard the beat of the kettledrums. I saw torchlit fields
where I had never been, heard vague incantations, felt the heat of
raging fires on my face. And they didn't come out of him, these
visions. Rather I drew them out on my own. Yet never had Nicolas,
mortal or immortal, been so alluring. Never had Gabrielle held me so
in thrall. Dear God, this is love. This is desire. And all my past

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amours have been but the shadow of this. And it seemed in a
murmuring pulse of thought he gave me to know that I had been very
foolish to think it would not be so. Who can love us, you and I, as we
can love each other, he whispered and it seemed his lips actually
moved. Others looked at him. I saw them drifting with a ludicrous
slowness; I saw their eyes pass over him, I saw the light fall on him at a
rich new angle as he lowered his head. I was moving towards him. It
seemed he raised his right hand and beckoned and then he didn't, and
he had turned and I saw the figure of a young boy ahead of me, with
narrow waist and straight shoulders and high firm calves under silk
stockings, a boy who turned as he opened a door and beckoned again.
A mad thought came to me. I was moving after him, and it seemed
that none of the other things had happened. There was no crypt under
les Innocents, and he had not been that ancient fearful fiend. We were
somehow safe. We were the sum of our desires and this was saving us,
and the vast untasted horror of my own immortality did not lie before
me, and we were navigating calm seas with familiar beacons, and it was
time to be in each other's arms. A dark room surrounded us, private,
cold. The noise of the ball was far away. He was heated with the blood
he'd drunk and I could hear the strong force of his heart. He drew me
closer to him, and beyond the high windows there flashed the passing
lights of the carriages, with dim incessant sounds that spoke of safety
and comfort, and all the things that Paris was. I had never died. The
world was beginning again. I put out my arms and felt his heart
against me, and calling out to my Nicolas, I tried to warn him, to tell
him we were all of us doomed. Our life was slipping inch by inch from
us, and seeing the apple trees in the orchard, drenched in green
sunlight, I felt I would go mad.
  "No, no, my dearest one, " he was whispering, "nothing but peace
and sweetness and your arms in mine. "
  "You know it was the damnedest luck! " I whispered suddenly. "I
am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go
home. " Yes, yes, his lips tasted like blood, but it was not human
blood. It was that elixir that Magnus had given me, and I felt myself
recoil. I could get away this time. I had another chance. The wheel
had turned full round. I was crying out that I wouldn't drink; I
wouldn't, and then I felt the two hot shafts driven hard through my
neck and down to my soul. I couldn't move. It was coming as it had
come that night, the rapture, a thousandfold what it was when I held
mortals in my arms. And I knew what he was doing! He was feeding
upon me! He was draining me. And going down on my knees, I felt


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myself held by him, the blood pouring out of me with a monstrous
volition I couldn't stop.
  "Devil! " I tried to scream. I forced the word up and up until it
broke from my lips and the paralysis broke from my limbs. "Devil! " I
roared again and I caught him in his swoon and hurled him backwards
to the floor. In an instant, I had my hands upon him and, shattering
the French doors, had dragged him out with me into the night. His
heels were scraping on the stones, his face had become pure fury. I
clutched his right arm and swung him from side. to side so that his
head snapped back and he could not see nor gauge where he was, nor
catch hold of anything, and with my right hand I beat him and beat
him, until the blood was running out of his ears and his eyes and his
nose. I dragged him through the trees away from the lights of the
Palais. And as he struggled, as he sought to resurrect himself with a
burst of force, he shot his declaration at me that he would kill me
because he had my strength now. He'd drunk it out of me and
coupled with his own strength it would make him impossible to
defeat. Maddened, I clutched at his neck, pushing his head down
against the path beneath me. I pinned him down, strangling him,
until the blood in great gushes poured out of his open mouth. He
would have screamed if he could. My knees drove into his chest. His
neck bulged under my fingers and the blood spurted and bubbled out
of him and he turned his head from side to side, his eyes growing
bigger and bigger, but seeing nothing, and then when I felt him weak
and limp, I let him go. I beat him again, turning him this way and
that. And then I drew my sword to sever his head. Let him live like
that if he can. Let him be immortal like that if he can. I raised the
sword and when I looked down at him, the rain was pelting his face,
and he was staring up at me, as one half alive, unable to plead for
mercy, unable to move. I waited. I wanted him to beg. I wanted him
to give me that powerful voice full of lies and cunning, the voice that
had made me believe for one pure and dazzling instant that I was alive
and free and in the state of grace again. Damnable, unforgivable lie.
Lie I'd never forget for as long as I walked the earth. I wanted the rage
to carry me over the threshold to his grave. But nothing came from
him. And in this moment of stillness and misery for him, his beauty
slowly returned. He lay a broken child on the gravel path, only yards
from the passing traffic, the ring of horses' hooves, the rumble of the
wooden wheels. And in this broken child were centuries of evil and
centuries of knowledge, and out of him there came no ignominious
entreaty but merely the soft and bruised sense of what he was. Old,
old evil, eyes that had seen dark ages of which I only dream. I let him

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go, and I stood up and sheathed my sword. I walked a few paces from
him, and collapsed upon a wet stone bench. Far away, busy figures
labored about the shattered window of the palace. But the night lay
between us and those confused mortals, and I looked at him listlessly
as he lay still. His face was turned to me, but not by design, his hair a
tangle of curls and blood. And with his eyes closed, and his hand open
beside him, he appeared the abandoned offspring of time and
supernatural accident, someone as miserable as myself. What had he
done to become what he was? Could one so young so long ago have
guessed the meaning off any decision, let alone the vow to become
this? I rose, and walking slowly to him, I stood over him and looked at
him, at the blood that soaked his lace shirt and stained his face. It
seemed he sighed, that I heard the passage of his breath. He didn't
open his eyes, and to mortals perhaps there would have been no
expression there. But I felt his sorrow. I felt its immensity, and I
wished I didn't feel it, and for one moment I understood the gulf that
divided us, and the gulf that divided his attempt to overpower me
from my rather simple defense of myself. Desperately he had tried to
vanquish what he did not comprehend. And impulsively and almost
effortlessly I had beaten him back. All my pain with Nicolas came
back to me and Gabrielle's words and Nicolas's denunciations. My
anger was nothing to his misery, his despair. And this perhaps was the
reason that I reached down and gathered him up. And maybe I did it
because he was so exquisitely beautiful and so lost, and we were after
all of the same ilk. Natural enough, wasn't it, that one of his own
should take him away from this place where mortals would sooner or
later have approached him, driven him stumbling away. He gave no
resistance to me. In a moment he was standing on his own feet. And
then he walked drowsily beside me, my arm about his shoulder,
bolstering him and steadying him until we were moving away from the
Palais Royal, towards the rue St. Honor. I only half glanced at the
figures passing us, until I saw a familiar shape under the trees, with no
scent of mortality coming from it, and I realized that Gabrielle had
been there for some time. She came forward hesitantly and silently,
her face stricken when she saw the blood-drenched lace and the
lacerations on his white skin, and she reached out as if to help me with
the burden of him though she did not seem to know how. Somewhere
far off in the darkened gardens, the others were near. I heard them
before I saw them. Nicki was there too. They had come as Gabrielle
had come, drawn over the miles, it seemed, by the tumult, or what
vague messages I could not imagine, and they merely waited and
watched as we moved away.

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  2

  We took him with us to the livery stables, and there I put him on my
mare. But he looked as if he would let himself fall off at any moment,
and so I mounted behind him, and the three of us rode out. All the
way through the country, I wondered what I would do. I wondered
what it meant to bring him to my lair. Gabrielle didn't give any
protest. Now and then she glanced over at him. I heard nothing from
him, and he was small and self-contained as he sat in front of me, light
as a child but not a child. Surely he had always known where the
tower was, but had its bars kept him out? Now I meant to take him
inside it. And why didn't Gabrielle say something to me? It was the
meeting we had wanted, it was the thing for which we had waited, but
surely she knew what he had just done. When we finally dismounted,
he walked ahead of me, and he waited for me to reach the gate. I had
taken out the iron key to the lock and I studied him, wondering what
promises one exacts from such a monster before opening one's door.
Did the ancient laws of hospitality mean anything to the creatures of
the night? His eyes were large and brown and defeated. Almost
drowsy they seemed. He regarded me for a long silent moment and
then he reached out with his left hand, and his fingers curled around
the iron crossbar in the center of the gate. I stared helplessly as with a
loud grinding noise the gate started to rip loose from the stone. But he
stopped and contented himself with merely bending the iron bar a
little. The point had been made. He could have entered this tower
anytime that he wished. I examined the iron bar that he'd twisted. I
had beaten him. Could I do what he had just done? I didn't know.
And unable to calculate my own powers, how could I ever calculate
his?
  "Come, " Gabrielle said a little impatiently. And she led the way
down the stairs to the dungeon crypt. It was cold here as always, the
fresh spring air never touching the place. She made a big fire in the
old hearth while I lighted the candles. And as he sat on the stone
bench watching us, I saw the effect of the warmth on him, the way that
his body seemed to grow slightly larger, the way that he breathed it in.
As he looked about, it was as if he were absorbing the light. His gaze
was clear. Impossible to overestimate the effect of warmth and light
on vampires. Yet the old coven had forsworn both. I settled on
another bench, and I let my eyes roam about the broad low chamber
as his eyes roamed. Gabrielle had been standing all this while. And
now she approached him. She had taken out a handkerchief and she

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touched this to his face. He stared at her in the same way that he
stared at the fire and the candles, and the shadows leaping on the
curved ceiling. This seemed to interest him as simply as anything else.
And I felt a shudder when I realized the bruises on his face were now
almost gone! The bones were whole again, the shape of the face having
been fully restored, and he was only a little gaunt from the blood he
had lost. My heart expanded slightly, against my will, as it had on the
battlements when I had heard his voice. I thought of the pain only half
an hour ago in the Palais when the lie had broken with the stab of his
fangs into my neck. I hated him. But I couldn't stop looking at him.
Gabrielle combed his hair for him. She took his hands and wiped the
blood from them. And he seemed helpless as all this was done. And
she had not so much the expression of a ministering angel as an
expression of curiosity, a desire to be near him and to touch him and
examine him. In the quavering illumination they looked at one
another. He hunched forward a little, eyes darkening and full of
expression now as they turned again to the grate. Had it not been for
the blood on his lace ruff, he might have looked human. Might...
  "What will you do now? " I asked. I spoke to make it clear to
Gabrielle. "Will you remain in Paris and let Eleni and the others go
on? " No answer from him. He was studying me, studying the stone
benches, the sarcophagi. Three sarcophagi.
  "Surely you know what they're doing, " I said. "Will you leave Paris
or remain? " It seemed he wanted to tell me again the magnitude of
what I had done to him and the others, but this faded away. For one
moment his face was wretched. It was defeated and warm and full of
human misery. How old was he, I wondered. How long ago had he
been a human who looked like that? He heard me. But he didn't give
an answer. He looked to Gabrielle, who stood near the fire, and then
to me. And silently, he said, Love me. You have destroyed everything!
But if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me. This
silent entreaty had an eloquence, however, that I can't put into words.
  "What can I do to make you love me? " he whispered. "What can I
give? The knowledge of all I have witnessed, the secrets of our powers,
the mystery of what I am? " It seemed blasphemous to answer. And as
I had on the battlements, I found myself on the edge of tears. For all
the purity of his silent communications, his voice gave a lovely
resonance to his sentiments when he actually spoke. It occurred to me
as it had in Notre Dame that he spoke the way angels must speak, if
they exist. But I was awakened from this irrelevant thought, this
obviating thought, by the fact that he was now beside me. He was
closing his arm round me, and pressing his forehead against my face.

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He gave that summons again, not the rich, thudding seduction of that
moment in the Palais Royal, but the voice that had sung to me over the
miles, and he told me there were things the two of us would know and
understand as mortals never could. He told me that if I opened to him
and gave him my strength and my secrets that he would give me his.
He had been driven to try to destroy me, and he loved me all the more
that he could not. That was a tantalizing thought. Yet I felt danger.
The word that came unbidden to me was Beware. I don't know what
Gabrielle saw or heard. I don't know what she felt. Instinctively I
avoided his eyes. There seemed nothing in the world I wanted more at
this moment than to look right at him and understand him, and yet I
knew I must not. I saw the bones under les Innocents again, the
flickering hellfires I had imagined in the Palais Royal. And all the lace
and velvet in the eighteenth century could not give him a human face.
I couldn't keep this from him, and it pained me that it was impossible
for me to explain it to Gabrielle. And the awful silence between me
and Gabrielle was at that moment almost too much to bear. With
him, I could speak, yes, with him I could dream dreams. Some
reverence and terror in me made me reach out and embrace him, and I
held him, battling my confusion and my desire.
  "Leave Paris, yes, " he whispered. "But take me with you. I don't
know how to exist here now. I stumble through a carnival of horrors.
Please. . . " I heard myself say: "No. "
  "Have I no value to you? " he asked. He turned to Gabrielle. Her
face was anguished and still as she looked at him. I couldn't know
what went on in her heart, and to my sadness, I realized that he was
speaking to her and locking me out. What was her answer? But he
was imploring both of us now. "Is there nothing outside yourself you
would respect? "
  "I might have destroyed you tonight, " I said. "It was respect which
kept me from that. "
  "No. " He shook his head in a startlingly human fashion. "That you
never could have done. " I smiled. It was probably true. But we were
destroying him quite completely in another way.
  "Yes, " he said, "that's true. You are destroying me. Help me, " he
whispered. "Give me but a few short years of all you have before you,
the two of you. I beg you. That is all I ask. "
  "No, " I said again. He was only a foot from me on the bench. He
was looking at me. And there came the horrible spectacle again of his
face narrowing and darkening and caving in upon itself in rage. It was
as if he had no real substance. Only will kept him robust and
beautiful. And when the flow of his will was interrupted, he melted

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like a wax doll. But, as before, he recovered himself almost instantly.
The "hallucination " was past. He stood up and backed away from me
until he was in front of the fire. The will coming from him was
palpable. His eyes were like something that didn't belong to him, nor
to anything on earth. And the fire blazing behind him made an eerie
nimbus around his head.
  "I curse you! " he whispered. I felt a jet of fear.
  "I curse you, " he said again and came closer. "Love mortals then,
and live as you have lived, recklessly, with appetite for everything and
love for everything, but there will come a time when only the love of
your own kind can save you. " He glanced at Gabrielle. "And I don't
mean children such as this! " This was so strong that I couldn't
conceal its effect on me, and I realized I was rising from the bench and
slipping away from him towards Gabrielle.
  "I don't come empty-handed to you, " he pressed, his voice
deliberately softening. "I don't come begging with nothing to give of
my own. Look at me. Tell me you don't need what you see in me, one
who has the strength to take you through the ordeals that lie ahead. "
His, eyes flashed on Gabrielle and for one moment he remained locked
to her and I saw her harden and begin to tremble.
  "Let her be! " I said.
  "You don't know what I say to her, " he said coldly. "I do not try to
hurt her. But in your love of mortals, what have you already done? "
He would say something terrible if I didn't stop him, something to
wound me or Gabrielle. He knew all that had happened with Nicki. I
knew that he did. If, somewhere deep down in my soul, I wished for
the end of Nicki, he would know that too! Why had I let him in? Why
had I not known what he could do?
  "Oh, but it's always a travesty, don't you see? " he said with that
same gentleness. "Each time the death and the awakening will ravage
the mortal spirit, so that one will hate you for taking his life, another
will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and
raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of
your superiority, another shut you out. " And here he shot his glance
to Gabrielle again and half smiled. "And the veil will always come
down between you. Make a legion. You will be, always and forever,
alone! "
  "I don't want to hear this. It means nothing, " I said. Gabrielle's face
had undergone some ugly change. She was staring at him with hatred
now, I was sure of it. He made that bitter little noise that is a laugh but
isn't a laugh at all.


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  "Lovers with a human face, " he mocked me. "Don't you see your
error? The other one hates you beyond all reason, and she-why, the
dark blood has made her even colder, has it not? But even for her,
strong as she is, there will come moments when she fears to be
immortal, and who will she blame for what was done to her? "
  "You are a fool, " Gabrielle whispered.
  "You tried to protect the violinist from it. But you never sought to
protect her. "
  "Don't say any more, " I answered. "You make me hate you. Is that
what you want? "
  "But I speak the truth and you know it. And what you will never
know, either of you, is the full depth of each other's hatreds and
resentments. Or suffering. Or love. " He paused and I could say
nothing. He was doing exactly what I feared he would, and I didn't
know how to defend myself.
  "If you leave me now with this one, " he continued, "you will do it
again. Nicolas you never possessed. And she already wonders how she
will ever get free of you. And unlike her, you cannot stand to be alone.
" I couldn't answer. Gabrielle's eyes became smaller, her mouth a little
more cruel.
  "So the time will come when you will seek other mortals, " he went
on, "hoping once more that the Dark trick will bring you the love you
crave. And of these newly mutilated and unpredictable children you'll
try to fashion your citadels against time. Well, they will be prisons if
they last for half a century. I warn you. It is only with those as
powerful and wise as yourself that the true citadel against time can be
built. " The citadel against time. Even in my ignorance the words had
their power. And the fear in me expanded, reached out to compass a
thousand other causes. He seemed distant for a moment,
indescribably beautiful in the firelight, the dark auburn strands of his
hair barely touching his smooth forehead, his lips parted in a beatific
smile.
  "If we cannot have the old ways, can't we have each other? " he
asked, and now his voice was the voice of the summons again. "Who
else can understand your suffering? Who else knows what passed
through your mind the night you stood on the stage of your little
theater and you frightened all those you had loved? "
  "Don't speak about that, " I whispered. But I was softening all over,
drifting into his eyes and his voice. Very near to me was the ecstasy I'd
felt that night on the battlements. With all my will I reached out for
Gabrielle.


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  "Who understands what passed through your mind when my
renegade followers, reveling in the music of your precious fiddler,
devised their ghastly boulevard enterprise? " he asked. I didn't speak.
  "The Theater of the Vampires! " His lips lengthened in the saddest
smile. "Does she comprehend the irony of it, the cruelty? Does she
know what it was like when you stood on that stage as a young man
and you heard the audience screaming for you? When time was your
friend, not your enemy as it is now? When in the wings, you put out
your arms and your mortal darlings came to you, your little family,
folding themselves against you. . . "
  "Stop, please. I ask you to stop. "
  "Does anyone else know the size of your soul? " Witchcraft. Had it
ever been used with more skill? And what was he really saying to us
beneath this liquid flow of beautiful language: Come to me, and I shall
be the sun round which you are locked in orbit, and my rays shall lay
bare the secrets you keep from each other, and I, who possess charms
and powers of which you have no inkling, shall control and possess
and destroy you!
  "I asked you before, " I said. "What do you want? Really want? "
  "You! " he said. "You and her! That we become three at this
crossroads! " Not that we surrender to you? I shook my head. And I
saw the same wariness and recoiling in Gabrielle. He was not angry;
there was no malice now. Yet he said again, in the same beguiling
voice:
  "I curse you, " and I felt it as if he'd declaimed it.
  "I offered myself to you at the moment you vanquished me, " he said.
"Remember that when your dark children strike out at you, when they
rise up against you. Remember me. " I was shaken, more shaken even
than I had been in the sad and awful finish with Nicolas at Renaud's. I
had never once known fear in the crypt under les Innocents. But I had
known it in this room since we came in. And some anger boiled in
him again, something too dreadful for him to control. I watched him
bow his head and turn away. He became small, light, and held his
arms close to himself as he stood before the blaze and he thought of
threats now to hurt me, and I heard them though they died before they
ever reached his lips. But something disturbed my vision for a fraction
of a second. Maybe it was a candle guttering. Maybe it was the blink
of my eye. Whatever it was, he vanished. Or he tried to vanish, and I
saw him leaping away from the fire in a great dark streak.
  "No! " I cried out. And lunging at something I couldn't even see, I
held him, material again, in my hands. He had only moved very fast,
and I had moved faster, and we stood facing each other in the doorway

                                                                    214

of the crypt, and again I said that single negation and I wouldn't let
him go.
  "Not like this, we can't part. We can't leave each other in hatred, we
can't. " And my will dissolved suddenly as I embraced him and held
tight to him so that he couldn't free himself nor even move. I didn't
care what he was, or what he had done in that doomed moment of
lying to me, or even trying to overpower me, I didn't care that I was no
longer mortal and would never be again. i wanted only that he should
remain. I wanted to be with him, what he was, and all the things he
had said were true. Yet it could never be as he wished it to be. He
could not have this power over us. He could not divide Gabrielle from
me. Yet I wondered, did he himself really understand what he was
asking? Was it possible that he believed the more innocent words he
spoke? Without speaking, without asking his consent, I led him back
to the bench by the fire. I felt danger again, terrible danger. But it
didn't really matter. He had to remain here with us now. Gabrielle
was murmuring to herself. She was walking back and forth and her
cloak hung from one shoulder and she seemed almost to have
forgotten we were there. Armand watched her, and when she turned
to him, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, she spoke aloud.
  "You come to him and you say; `Take me with you.' You say, `Love
me,' and you hint of superior knowledge, secrets, yet you give us
nothing, either of us, except lies. "
  "I showed my power to understand, " he answered in a soft murmur.
  "No, you did tricks with your understanding, " she replied. "You
made pictures. And rather childish pictures. You have done this all
along. You lure Lestat in the Palais with the most gorgeous illusions
only to attack him. And here, when there is a respite in the struggle,
what do you do but try to sow dissension between us... "
  "Yes, illusions before, I admit it, " he answered. "But the things I've
spoken here are true. Already you despise your son for his love of
mortals, his need to be ever near them, his yielding to the violinist.
You knew the Dark Gift would madden that one, and that it will
finally destroy him. You do wish for your freedom, from all the
Children of Darkness. You can't hide that from me. "
  "Ah, but you're so simple, " she said. "You see, but you don't see.
How many mortal years did you live? Do you remember anything of
them? What you've perceived is not the sum total of the passion I feel
for my son. I have loved him as I have never loved any other being in
creation. In my loneliness, my son is everything to me. How is it you
can't interpret what you see? "


                                                                       215

  "It's you who fail to interpret, " he answered in the same soft manner.
"If you had ever felt real longing for any other one, you would know
that what you feel for your son is nothing at all. "
  "This is futile, " I said, "to talk like this. "
  "No, " she said to him without the slightest wavering. "My son and I
are kin to each other in more ways than one. In fifty years of life, I've
never known anyone as strong as myself, except my son. And what
divides us we can always mend. But how are we to make you one of us
when you use these things like wood for fire! But understand my
larger point: what is it of yourself that you can give that we should
want you? "
  "My guidance is what you need, " he answered. "You've only begun
your adventure and you have no beliefs to hold you. You cannot live
without some guidance... "
  "Millions live without belief or guidance. It is you who cannot live
without it, " she said. Pain coming from him. Suffering. But she went
on, her voice so steady and without expression it was almost a
monologue:
  "I have my questions, " she asked. "There are things I must know. I
cannot live without some embracing philosophy, but it has nothing to
do with old beliefs in gods or devils. " She started pacing again,
glancing to him as she spoke.
  "I want to know, for example, why beauty exists, " she said, "why
nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of
a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God
does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical
system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat
calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough. And I must
confess that this, this maniacal curiosity or call it what you will, leads
me away from my human victims. It leads me into the open
countryside, away from human creation. And maybe it will lead me
away from my son, who is under the spell of all things human. " She
came up to him, nothing in her manner suggesting a woman now, and
she narrowed her eyes as she looked into his face.
  "But that is the lantern by which I see the Devil's Road, " she said.
"By what lantern have you traveled it? What have you really learned
besides devil worship and superstition? What do you know about us,
and how we came into existence? Give that to us, and it might be
worth something. And then again, it might be worth nothing. " He
was speechless. He had no art to hide his amazement. He stared at her
in innocent confusion. Then he rose and he slipped away, obviously
trying to escape her, a battered spirit as he stared blankly before him.

                                                                        216

The silence closed in. And I felt for the moment strangely protective
for him. She had spoken the unadorned truth about the things that
interested her as had been her custom ever since I could remember,
and as always, there was something violently disregarding about it.
She spoke of what mattered to her with no thought of what had
befallen him. Come to a different plane, she had said, my plane. And
he was stymied and belittled. The degree of his helplessness was
becoming alarming. He was not recovering from her attack. He
turned and he moved towards the benches again, as if he would sit,
then towards the sarcophagi, then towards the wall. It seemed these
solid surfaces repelled him as though his will confronted them first in
an invisible field and he was buffeted about. He drifted out of the
room and into the narrow stone stairwell and then he turned and
came back. His thoughts were locked inside himself or, worse, there
were no thoughts! There were only the tumbling images of what he
saw before him, simple material things glaring back at him, the
ironstudded door, the candles, the fire. Some full-blown evocation of
the Paris streets, the vendors and the hawkers of papers, the cabriolets,
the blended sound of an orchestra, a horrid din of words and phrases
from the books he had so recently read. I couldn't bear this, but
Gabrielle gestured sternly that I should stay where I was. Something
was building in the crypt. Something was happening in the very air
itself. Something changed even as the candles melted, and the fire
crackled and licked at the blackened stones behind it, and the rats
moved in the chambers of the dead below. Armand stood in the
arched doorway, and it seemed hours had passed though they hadn't
and Gabrielle was a long distance away in the corner of the room, her
face cool in its concentration, her eyes as radiant as they were small.
Armand was going to speak to us, but it was no explanation he was
going to give. There was no direction even to the things he would say,
and it was as if we'd cut him open and the images were coming out like
blood. Armand was just a young boy in the doorway, holding the
backs of his own arms. And I knew what I felt. It was a monstrous
intimacy with another being, an intimacy that made even the rapt
moments of the kill seem dim and under control. He was opened and
could no longer contain the dazzling stream of pictures that made his
old silent voice seem thin and lyrical and made up. Had this been the
danger all along, the trigger of my fear? Even as I recognized it, I was
yielding, and it seemed the great lessons of my life had all been learned
through the renunciation of fear. Fear was once again breaking the
shell around me so that something else could spring to life. Never,


                                                                      217

never in all my existence, not mortal or immortal, had I been
threatened with an intimacy quite like this.

  THE STORY OF ARMAND

  3

  The chamber had faded. The walks were gone. Horsemen came. A
gathering cloud on the horizon. Then screams of terror. And an
auburn- haired child in crude peasant's clothes running on and on, as
the horsemen broke loose in a horde and the child fighting and kicking
as he was caught and thrown over the saddle of a rider who bore him
away beyond the end of the world. Armand was this child. And these
were the southern steppes of Russia, but Armand didn't know that it
was Russia. He knew Mother and Father and Church and God and
Satan, but he didn't even understand the name of home, or the name
of his language, or that the horsemen who carried him away were
Tartars and that he would never see anything that he knew or loved
again. Darkness, the tumultuous movement of the ship and its never
ending sickness, and emerging out of the fear and the numbing
despair, the vast glittering wilderness of impossible buildings that was
Constantinople in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, with her
fantastical multitudes and her slave-auction blocks. The menacing
babble of foreign tongues, threats made in the universal language of
gesture, and all around him the enemies he could not distinguish or
placate or escape. Years and years would pass, beyond a mortal
lifetime, before Armand would look back on that awesome moment
and give them names and histories, the Byzantine officials of the
courts who would have castrated him and the harem keepers of Islam
who would have done the same, and the proud Mameluke warriors of
Egypt who would have taken him to Cairo with them had he been
fairer and stronger, and the radiant softspoken Venetians in their
leggings and velvet doublets, the most dazzling creatures of all,
Christians even as he was a Christian, yet laughing gently to one
another as they examined him, as he stood mute, unable to answer, to
plead, even to hope. I saw the seas before him, the great rolling blue of
the Aegean and the Adriatic, and his sickness again in the hold and his
solemn vow not to live. And then the great Moorish palaces of Venice
rising from the gleaming surface of the lagoon, and the house to which
he was taken, with its dozens and dozens of secret chambers, the light
of the sky glimpsed only through barred windows, and the other boys
speaking to him in that soft strange tongue that was Venetian and the

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threats and the cajoling as he was convinced, against all his fear and
superstitions, of the sins that he must commit with the endless
procession of strangers in this landscape of marble and torchlight, each
chamber opening to a new tableau of tenderness that surrendered to
the same ritual and inexplicable and finally cruel desire. And at last
one night when, for days and days he had refused to submit and he
was hungry and sore and would not speak any longer to anyone, he
was pushed through one of those doors again, just as he was, soiled
and blind from the dark room in which he'd been locked, and the
creature standing there to receive him, the tall one in red velvet, with
the lean and almost luminous face, touched him so gently with cool
fingers that, half dreaming, he didn't cry as he saw the coins exchange
hands. But it was a great deal of money. Too much money. He was
being sold off. And the face, it was too smooth, it might have been a
mask. At the final moment, he screamed. He swore he would obey, he
wouldn't fight anymore. Will someone tell him where he's being
taken, he won't disobey anymore, please, please. But even as he was
pulled down the stairs towards the dank smell of the water, he felt the
firm, delicate fingers of his new Master again, and on his neck cool and
tender lips that could never, never hurt him, and that first deadly and
irresistible kiss. Love and love and love in the vampire kiss. It bathed
Armand, cleansed him, this is everything, as he was carried into the
gondola and the gondola moved like a great sinister beetle through the
narrow stream into the sewers beneath another house. Drunk on
pleasure. Drunk on the silky white hands that smoothed back his hair
and the voice that called him beautiful; on the face that in moments of
feeling was suffused with expression only to become as serene and
dazzling as something made of jewels and alabaster in repose. Like a
pool of moonlit water it was. Touch it even with the fingertip and all
its life rises to the surface only to vanish in quiet once again. Drunk in
the morning light on the memory of those kisses as, alone, he opened
one door after another upon books and maps and statues in granite
and marble, the other apprentice finding him and leading him
patiently to his work-letting him watch as they ground the brilliant
pigments, teaching him to blend the pure color with the yellow egg
yolk, and how to spread the lacquer of the egg yolk over the panels,
and taking him up on the scaffolding as they worked with careful
strokes on the very edges of the vast depiction of sun and clouds,
showing him those great faces and hands and angels' wings which only
the Master's brush would touch. Drunk as he sat at the long table with
them, gorging himself on the delicious foods that he had never tasted
before, and the wine which never ran out. And falling asleep finally to

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wake at that moment of twilight when the Master stood beside the
enormous bed, gorgeous as something imagined in his red velvet, with
his thick white hair glistening in the lamplight, and the simplest
happiness in his brilliant cobalt blue eyes. The deadly kiss.
 "Ah, yes, never to be separated from you, yes, . . . not afraid. "
 "Soon, my darling one, we will be truly united soon. " Torches
blazing throughout the house. The Master atop the scaffolding with
the brush in his hand: "Stand there, in the light, don't move, " and
hours and hours frozen in the same position, and then before dawn,
seeing his own likeness there in the paint, the face of the angel, the
Master smiling as he moved down the endless corridor...
 "No, Master, don't leave me, let me stay with you, don't go... Day
again, and money in his pockets, real gold, and the grandeur of Venice
with her dark green waterways walled in palaces, and the other
apprentices walking arm in arm with him, and the fresh air and the
blue sky over the Piazza San Marco like something he had only
dreamed in childhood, and the palazzo again at twilight, and the
Master coming, the Master bent over the smaller panel with the brush,
working faster and faster as the apprentices gazed on half horrified,
half fascinated, the Master looking up and seeing him and putting
down the brush, and taking him out of the enormous studio as the
others worked until the hour of midnight, his face in the Master's
hands as, alone in the bedchamber again, that secret, never tell anyone,
kiss. Two years? Three years? No words to recreate it or embrace it,
the glory that was those times-the fleets that sailed away to war from
that port, the hymns that rose before those Byzantine altars, the
passion plays and the miracle plays performed on their platforms in
the churches and in the piazza with their hell's mouth and cavorting
devils, and the glittering mosaics spreading out over the walls of San
Marco and San Zanipolo and the Palazzo Ducale, and the painters who
walked those streets, Giambono, Uccello, the Vivarini and the Bellini;
and the endless feast days and processions, and always in the small
hours in the vast torchlighted rooms of the palazzo, alone with the
Master when the others slept safely locked away. The Master's brush
racing over the panel before it as if uncovering the painting rather than
creating it-sun and sky and sea spreading out beneath the canopy of
the angel's wings. And those awful inevitable moments when the
Master would rise screaming, hurling the pots of paint in all
directions, clutching at his eyes as if he would pull them out of his
head.
 "Why can I not see? Why can I not see better than mortals see? "
Holding tight to the Master. Waiting for the rapture of the kiss. Dark

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secret, unspoken secret. The Master slipping out of the door
sometime before dawn.
  "Let me go with you, Master. "
  "Soon, my darling, my love, my little one, when you're strong
enough and tall enough, and there is no flaw in you anymore. Go
now, and have all the pleasures that await you, have the love of a
woman, and have the love of a man as well in the nights that follow.
Forget the bitterness you knew in the brothel and taste of these things
while there is still time. " And rarely did the night close that there
wasn't that figure come back again, just before the rising sun, and this
time ruddy and warm as it bent over him to give him the embrace that
would sustain him through the daylight hours until the deadly kiss at
twilight again. He learned to read and write. He took the paintings to
their final destinations in the churches and the chapels of the great
palaces, and collected the payments and bargained for the pigments
and the oils. He scolded the servants when the beds weren't made and
the meals weren't ready. And beloved by the apprentices, he sent them
to their new service when they were finished, with tears. He read
poetry to the Master as the Master painted, and he learned to play the
lute and to sing songs. And during those sad times when the Master
left Venice for many nights, it was he who governed in the Master's
absence, concealing his anguish from the others, knowing it would end
only when the Master returned. And one night finally, in the small
hours when even Venice slept:
  "This is the moment, beautiful one. For you to come to me and
become like me. Is it what you wish? "
  "Yes. "
  "Forever to thrive in secret upon the blood of the evildoer as I thrive,
and to abide with these secrets until the end of the world. "
  "I take the vow, I surrender, I will . . . to be with you, my Master,
always, you are the creator of all things that I am. There has never
been any greater desire. " The Master's brush pointing to the painting
that reached to the ceiling above the tiers of scaffolding.
  "This is the only sun that you will ever see again. But a millennium
of nights will be yours to see light as no mortal has ever seen it, to
snatch from the distant stars as if you were Prometheus an endless
illumination by which to understand all things. " How many months
were there after? Reeling in the power of the Dark Gift. This
nighttime life of drifting through the alleyways and the canals
together-at one with the danger of the dark and no longer afraid of it-
and the age-old rapture of the killing, and never, never the innocent
souls. No, always the evildoer, the mind pierced until Typhon, the

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slayer of his brother, was revealed, and then the drinking up of the evil
from the mortal victim and the transmuting of it into ecstasy, the
Master leading the way, the feast shared. And the painting afterwards,
the solitary hours with the miracle of the new skill, the brush
sometimes moving as if by itself across the enameled surface, and the
two of them painting furiously on the triptych, and the mortal
apprentices asleep among the paint pots and the wine bottles, and only
one mystery disturbing the serenity, the mystery that the Master, as in
the past, must now and then leave Venice for a journey that seemed
endless to those left behind. All the more terrible now the parting. To
hunt alone without the Master, to lie alone in the deep cellar after the
hunt, waiting. Not to hear the ring of the Master's laughter or the beat
of the Master's heart.
  "But where do you go? Why can't I go with you? " Armand pleaded.
Didn't they share the secret? Why was this mystery not explained?
  "No, my lovely one, you are not ready for this burden. For now, it
must be, as it has been for over a thousand years, mine alone.
Someday you will help me with what I have to do, but only when you
are ready for the knowledge, when you have shown that you truly wish
to know, and when you are powerful enough that no one can ever take
the knowledge from you against your will. Until then understand I
have no choice but to leave you. I go to tend to Those Who Must Be
Kept as I have always done. " Those Who Must Be Kept. Armand
brooded upon it; it frightened him. But worst of all it took the Master
from him, and only did he learn not to fear it when the Master
returned to him again and again.
  "Those Who Must Be Kept are in peace, or in silence, " he would say
as he took the red velvet cloak from his shoulders. "More than that we
may never know. " And to the feast again, the stalking of the evildoer
through the alleys of Venice, he and the Master would go. How long
might it have continued-through one mortal lifetime? Through a
hundred? Not a half year in this dark bliss before the evening at
twilight when the Master stood over his coffin in the deep cellar just
above the water, and said:

  "Rise, Armand, we must leave here. They have come! "
  "But who are they, Master? Is it Those Who Must Be Kept? "
  "No, my darling. It is the others. Come, we must hurry! "
  "But how can they hurt us? Why must we go? " The white faces at
the windows, the pounding at the doors. Glass shattering. The Master
turning this way and that as he looked at the paintings. The smell of


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smoke. The smell of burning pitch. They were coming up from the
cellar. They were coming down from above.
  "Run, there is not time to save anything. " Up the stairs to the roof.
Black hooded figures heaving their torches through the doorways, the
fire roaring in the rooms below, exploding the windows, boiling up the
stairway. All the paintings were burning.
  "To the roof, Armand. Come! " Creatures like ourselves in these
dark garments! Others like ourselves. The Master scattered them in
all directions as he raced up the stairway, bones cracking as they struck
the ceiling and the walls.
  "Blasphemer, heretic! " the alien voices roared. The arms caught
Armand and held him, and above at the very top of the stairway the
Master turned back for him:
  "Armand! Trust your strength. Come! " But they were swarming
behind the Master. They were surrounding him. For each one hurled
into the plaster, three more appeared, until fifty torches were plunged
into the Master's velvet garments, his long red sleeves, his white hair.
The fire roared up to the ceiling as it consumed him, making of him a
living torch, even as with flaming arms he defended himself, igniting
his attackers as they threw the blazing torches like firewood at his feet.
But Armand was being borne down and away, out of the burning
house, with the screaming mortal apprentices. And over the water and
away from Venice, amid cries and wailing, in the belly of a vessel as
terrifying as the slave ship, to an open clearing under the night sky.
  "Blasphemer, blasphemer! " The bonfire growing, and the chain of
hooded figures around it, and the chant rising and rising, "Into the
fire. "
  "No, don't do it to me, no! " And as he watched, petrified, he saw
brought towards the pyre the mortal apprentices, his brothers, his only
brothers, roaring in panic as they were hurled upwards and over into
the flames.
  "No . . . stop this, they're innocent! For the love of God, stop,
innocent!... " He was screaming, but now his time had come. They
were lifting him as he struggled, and he was flung up and up to fall
down into the blast.
  "Master, help me! " Then all words giving way to one wailing cry.
Thrashing, screaming, mad. But he had been taken out of it. Snatched
back into life. And he lay on the ground looking at the sky. The
flames licked the stars, it seemed, but he was far away from them, and
couldn't even feel the heat anymore. He could smell his burnt clothing
and his burnt hair. The pain in his face and hands was the worst and


                                                                      223

the blood was leaking out of him and he could scarcely move his lips .
. .
  ". . . All thy Master's vain works destroyed, all the vain creations
which he made among mortals with his Dark Powers, images of angels
and saints and living mortals! Wilt thou, too, be destroyed? Or serve
Satan? Make thy choice. Thou hast tasted the fire, and the fire waits
for thee, hungry for thee. Hell waits for thee. Wilt thou make thy
choice? "
  "...yes... "
  ". . . to serve Satan as he is meant to be served. "
  "Yes... "
  ". . . That all things of the world are vanity, and thou shalt never
use thy Dark Powers for any mortal vanity, not to paint, not to create
music, not to dance, nor to recite for the amusement of mortals but
only and forever in the service of Satan, thy Dark Powers to seduce
and to terrify and to destroy, only to destroy. . . "
  "Yes... "
  ". . . consecrated to thy one and only master, Satan, Satan forever,
always and forever. . . to serve thy true master in darkness and pain
and in suffering, to surrender thy mind and thy heart. . . "
  "Yes. "
  "And to keep from thy brethren in Satan no secret, to yield all
knowledge of the blasphemer and his burden... " Silence.
  "To yield all knowledge of the burden, child! Come now, the flames
wait. "
  "I do not understand you... "
  "Those Who Must Be Kept. Tell. "
  "Tell what? I do not know anything, except that I do not wish to
suffer. I am so afraid. "
  "The truth, Child of Darkness. Where are they? Where are Those
Who Must Be Kept? "
  "I do not know. Look into my mind if you have that same power.
There is nothing I can tell. "
  "But what, child, what are they? Did he never tell you? What are
Those Who Must Be Kept? " And so they did not understand it either.
It was no more than a phrase to them as it was to him. When you are
powerful enough that no one can ever take the knowledge from you
against your will. The Master had been wise.
  "What is its meaning! Where are they? We must have the answer. "
  "I swear to you, I do not have it. I swear on my fear which is all I
possess now, I do not know! " White faces appearing above him, one
at a time. The tasteless lips giving hard, sweet kisses, hands stroking

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him, and from their wrists the glittering droplets of blood. They
wanted the truth to come out in the blood. But what did it matter?
The blood was the blood.
  "Thou art the devil's child now. "
  "Yes. "
  "Don't weep for thy master, Marius. Marius is in hell where he
belongs. Now drink the healing blood and rise and dance with thine
own kind for the glory of Satan! And immortality will be truly thine! "
  "Yes "-the blood burning his tongue as he lifted his head, the blood
filling him with torturous slowness. "Oh, please. " All around him
Latin phrases, and the low beat of drums. They were satisfied. They
knew he had spoken the truth. They would not kill him and the
ecstasy dimmed all considerations. The pain in his hands and his face
had melted into this ecstasy "Rise, young one, and join the Children of
Darkness. "
  "Yes, I do. " White hands reaching for his hands. Horns and lutes
shrilling over the thud of the drums, the harps plucked into an
hypnotic strumming as the circle commenced to move. Hooded
figures in mendicant black, robes flowing as they lifted their knees
high and bent their backs. And breaking hands, they whirled, leapt,
and came down again, spinning round and round, and a humming
song rose louder and louder from their closed lips. The circle swept
on faster. The humming was a great melancholy vibration without
shape or continuity and yet it seemed to be a form of speaking, to be
the very echo of thought. Louder and louder it came like a moan that
could not break into a cry. He was making the same sound with it,
and then turning, and dizzy with turning, he leapt high into the air.
Hands caught him, lips kissed him, he was whirling about and pulled
along by the others, someone crying out in Latin, another answering,
another crying louder, and another answer coming again. He was
flying, no longer bound to the earth and the awful pain of his Master's
death, and the death of the paintings, and death of the mortals he
loved. The wind sailed past him, and the heat blasted his face and
eyes. But the singing was so beautiful that it didn't matter that he
didn't know the words, or that he couldn't pray to Satan, didn't know
how to believe or make such a prayer. No one knew that he didn't
know and they were all in a chorus together and they cried and
lamented and tamed and leapt again and then, swaying back and forth,
threw their heads back as the fire blinded them and licked them and
someone shouted "Yes, YES! " And the music surged. A barbarous
rhythm broke loose all around him from drums and tambourines,
voices in lurid rushing melody at last. The vampires threw up their

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arms, howled, figures flickering past him in riotous contortions, backs
arched, heels stomping. The jubilation of imps in hell. It horrified
him and it called to him, and when the hands clutched at him and
swung him around, he stomped and twisted and danced like the
others, letting the pain course through him, bending his limbs and
giving the alarm to his cries. And before dawn, he was delirious, and
he had a dozen brothers around him, caressing him and soothing him,
and leading him down a staircase that had opened in the bowels of the
earth. It seemed that some time in the months that followed Armand
dreamed his Master had not been burnt to death. He dreamed his
Master had fallen from the roof, a blazing comet, into the saving
waters of the canal below. And deep in the mountains of northern
Italy, his Master survived. His Master called to him to come. His
Master was in the sanctuary of Those Who Must Be Kept. Sometimes
in the dream his Master was as powerful and radiant as he had ever
been; beauty seemed his raiment. And at others he was burnt black
and shriveled, a breathing cinder, his eyes huge and yellow, and only
his white hair as lustrous and full as it had been. He crept along the
ground in his weakness, pleading for Armand to help him. And
behind him, warm light spilled from the sanctuary of Those Who
Must Be Kept; there came the smell of incense, and there seemed some
promise of ancient magic there, some promise of cold and exotic
beauty beyond all evil and all good. But these were vain imaginings.
His Master had told him that fire and the light of the sun could
destroy them, and he himself had seen his Master in flames. It was like
wishing for his mortal life to come again to have these dreams. And
when his eyes were open on the moon and the stars, and the still
mirror of the sea before him, he knew no hope, and no grief, and no
joy. All those things had come from the Master, and the Master was
no more.
  "I am the devil's child. " That was poetry. All will was extinguished
in him, and there was nothing but the dark confraternity, and the kill
was now of the innocent as well as the guilty. The kill was above all
cruel. In Rome in the great coven in the catacombs, he bowed before
Santino, the leader, who came down the stone steps to receive him
with outstretched arms. This great one had been Born to Darkness in
the time of the Black Death, and he told Armand of the vision that had
come to him in the year 1349 when the plague raged, that we were to
be as the Black Death itself, a vexation without explanation, to cause
man to doubt the mercy and intervention of God. Into the sanctum
lined with human skulls Santino took Armand, telling him of the
history of the vampires. From all times we have existed, as wolves

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have, a source of mortals. And in the coven of Rome, dark shadow of
the Roman Church, lay our final perfection. Armand already knew the
rituals and common prohibitions; now he must learn the great laws:
One-that each coven must have its leader and only he might order the
working of the Dark Trick upon a mortal, seeing that the methods and
the rituals were properly observed. Two-that the Dark Gifts must
never be given to the crippled, the maimed, or to children, or to those
who cannot, even with the Dark Powers, survive on their own. Be it
further understood that all mortals who would receive the Dark Gifts
should be beautiful in person so that the insult to God might be
greater when the Dark Trick is done. Three-that never should an old
vampire work this magic lest the blood of the fledgling be too strong.
For all our gifts increase naturally with age, and the old ones have too
much strength to pass on. Injury, burning-these catastrophes, if they
do not destroy the Child of Satan, will only increase his powers when
he is healed. Yet Satan guards the flock from the power of old ones,
for almost all, without exception, go mad. In this particular, let
Armand observe that there was no vampire then living who was more
than three hundred years old. No one alive then could remember the
first Roman coven. The devil frequently calls his vampires home. But
let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is
unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and
with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born
to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more
than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with
skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided
as well as those who have none. Four-that no vampire may ever
destroy another vampire, except that the coven master has the power
of life and death over all of his flock. And it is, further, his obligation
to lead the old ones and the mad ones into the fire when they can no
longer serve Satan as they should. It is his obligation to destroy all
vampires who are not properly made. It is his obligation to destroy
those who are so badly wounded that they cannot survive on their
own. And it is his obligation finally to seek the destruction of all
outcasts and all who have broken the laws. Five-that no vampire shall
ever reveal his true nature to a mortal and allow that mortal to live.
No vampire must ever reveal the history of the vampires to a mortal
and let the mortal live. No vampire must commit to writing the
history of the vampires or any true knowledge of vampires lest such a
history be found by mortals and believed. And a vampire's name must
never be known to mortals, save from his tombstone, and never must
any vampire reveal to mortals the location of his or any other

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vampire's lair. These then were the great commandments, which all
vampires must obey. And this was the condition of existence among
all the Undead. Yet Armand should know that there had always been
stories of ancient ones, heretic vampires of frightening power who
submitted to no authority, not even that of the devil- vampires who
had survived for thousands of years. Children of the Millennia, they
were sometimes called. In the north of Europe there were tales of
Mael, who dwelt in the forests of England and Scotland; and in Asia
Minor the legend of Pandora. And in Egypt, the ancient tale of the
vampire Ramses, seen again in this very time. In all parts of the world
one found such tales. And one could easily dismiss them as fanciful
save for one thing. The ancient heretic Marius had been found in
Venice, and there punished by the Children of Darkness. The legend
of Marius had been true. But Marius was no more. Armand said
nothing to this last judgment. He did not tell Santino of the dreams he
had had. In truth the dreams had dimmed inside Armand as had the
colors of Marius's paintings. They were no longer held in Armand's
mind or heart to be discovered by others who might try to see. When
Santino spoke of Those Who Must Be Kept, Armand again confessed
that he did not know the meaning of it. Neither did Santino, nor any
vampire that Santino had ever known. Dead was the secret. Dead was
Marius. And so consign to silence the old and useless mystery. Satan
is our Lord and Master. In Satan, all is understood and all is known.
Armand pleased Santino. He memorized the laws, perfected his
performance of the ceremonial incantations, the rituals, and the
prayers. He saw the greatest Sabbats he was ever to witness. And he
learned from the most powerful and skillful and beautiful vampires he
was ever to know. He learned so well that he became a missionary sent
out to gather the vagrant Children of Darkness into covens, and guide
others in the performance of the Sabbat, and the working of the Dark
Trick when the world and the flesh and the devil called for it to be
done. In Spain and in Germany and in France, he had taught the Dark
Blessings and Dark Rituals, and he had known savage and tenacious
Children of Darkness, and dim flames had flared in him in their
company and in those moments when the coven surrounded him,
comforted by him, deriving its unity from his strength. He had
perfected the act of killing beyond the abilities of all the Children of
Darkness that he knew. He had learned to summon those who truly
wished to die. He had but to stand near the dwellings of mortals and
call silently to see his victim appear. Old, young, wretched, diseased,
the ugly or the beautiful, it did not matter because he did not choose.
Dazzling visions he gave, if they should want to receive, but he did not

                                                                       228

move towards them nor even close his arms around them. Drawn
inexorably towards him, it was they who embraced him. And when
their warm living flesh touched him, when he opened his lips and felt
the blood spill, he knew the only surcease from misery that he could
know. It seemed to him in the best of these moments that his way was
profoundly spiritual, uncontaminated by the appetites and confusions
that made up the world, despite the carnal rapture of the kill. In that
act the spiritual and the carnal came together, and it was the spiritual,
he was convinced, that survived. Holy Communion it seemed to him,
the Blood of the Children of Christ serving only to bring the essence of
life itself into his understanding for the split second in which death
occurred. Only the great saints of God were his equals in this
spirituality, this confrontation with mystery, this existence of
meditation and denial. Yet he had seen the greatest of his companions
vanish, bring destruction upon themselves, go mad. He had witnessed
the inevitable dissolution of covens, seen immortality defeat the most
perfectly made Children of Darkness, and it seemed at times some
awesome punishment that it never defeated him. Was he destined to
be one of the ancient ones? The Children of the Millennia? Could one
believe those stories which persisted still? Now and then a roaming
vampire would speak of the fabled Pandora glimpsed in the far-off
Russian city of Moscow, or of Mael living on the bleak English coast.
The wanderers told even of Marius-that he had been seen again in
Egypt, or in Greece. But these storytellers had not themselves laid eyes
upon the legendary ones. They knew nothing really. These were
often- repeated tales. They did not distract or amuse the obedient
servant of Satan. In quiet allegiance to the Dark Ways, Armand
continued to serve. Yet in the centuries of his long obedience, Armand
kept two secrets to himself. These were his property, these secrets,
more purely his than the coffin in which he locked himself by day, or
the few amulets he wore. The first was that no matter how great his
loneliness, or how long the search for brothers and sisters in whom he
might find some comfort, he never worked the Dark Trick himself.
He wouldn't give that to Satan, no Child of Darkness made by him.
And the other secret, which he kept from his followers for their sake,
was simply the extent of his ever deepening despair. That he craved
nothing, cherished nothing, believed nothing finally, and took not one
particle of pleasure in his ever increasing and awesome powers, and
existed from moment to moment in a void broken once every night of
his eternal life by the kill-that secret he had kept from them as long as
they had needed him and it had been possible to lead them because his
fear would have made them afraid. But it was finished. A great cycle

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had ended, and even years ago he had felt it closing without
understanding it was a cycle at all. From Rome there came the garbled
travelers' accounts, old when they were told to him, that the leader,
Santino, had abandoned his flock. Some said he had gone mad into
the countryside, others that he had leapt into the fire, others that "the
world " had swallowed him, that he had been borne off in a black
coach with mortals never to be seen again.
  "We go into the fire or we go into legend, " said a teller of the tale.
Then came accounts of chaos in Rome, of dozens of leaders who put
on the black hood and the black robes to preside over the coven. And
then it seemed there were none. Since the year 1700 there had been no
word anymore from Italy. For half a century Armand had not been
able to trust to his passion or that of the others around him to create
the frenzy of the true Sabbat. And he had dreamed of his old Master,
Marius, in those rich robes of red velvet, and seen the palazzo full of
vibrant paintings, and he had been afraid. Then another had come.
His children rushed down into the cellars beneath les Innocents to
describe to him this new vampire, who wore a furlined cloak of red
velvet and could profane the churches and strike down those who
wore crosses and walk in the places of light. Red velvet. It was mere
coincidence, and yet it maddened him and seemed an insult to him, a
gratuitous pain that his soul couldn't bear. And then the woman had
been made, the woman with the hair of a lion and the name of an
angel, beautiful and powerful as her son. And he had come up the
stairway out of the catacomb, leading the band against us, as the
hooded ones had come to destroy him and his Master in Venice
centuries before. And it had failed. He stood dressed in these strange
lace and brocade garments. He carried coins in his pockets. His mind
swam with images from the thousands of books he had read. And he
felt himself pierced with all he had witnessed in the places of light in
the great city called Paris, and it was as if he could hear his old Master
whispering in his ear: But a millennium of nights will be yours to see
light as no mortal has ever seen it, to snatch from the distant stars as if
you were Prometheus an endless illumination in which to understand
all things.
  "All things have eluded my understanding, " he said. "I am as one
whom the earth has given back, and you, Lestat and Gabrielle, are like
the images painted by my old Master in cerulean and carmine and
gold. " He stood still in the doorway, his hands on the backs of his
arms, and he was looking at us, asking silently: What is there to know?
What is there to give? We are the abandoned of God. And there is no


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Devil's Road spinning out before me and there are no bells of hell
ringing in my ears.

  4

  An hour passed, perhaps more. Armand sat by the fire. No marks
any longer on his face from the long-forgotten battle. He seemed, in
his stillness, to be as fragile as an emptied shell. Gabrielle sat across
from him, and she too stared at the flames in silence, her face weary
and seemingly compassionate. It was painful for me not to know her
thoughts. I was thinking of Marius. And Marius and Marius . . . the
vampire who had painted pictures in and of the real world. Triptychs,
portraits, frescoes on the walls of his palazzo. And the real world had
never suspected him nor hunted him nor cast him out. It was this
band of hooded fiends who came to burn the paintings, the ones who
shared the Dark Gift with him-had he himself ever called it the Dark
Gift?-they were the ones who said he couldn't live and create among
mortals. Not mortals. I saw the little stage at Renaud's and I heard
myself sing and the singing become a roar. Nicolas said, "It is
splendid. " I said, "It is petty. " And it was like striking Nicolas. In my
imagination he said what he had not said that night: "Let me have
what I can believe in. You would never do that. " The triptychs of
Marius were in churches and convent chapels, maybe on the walls of
the great houses in Venice and Padua. The vampires would not have
gone into holy places to pull them down. So they were there
somewhere, with a signature perhaps worked into the detail, these
creations of the vampire who surrounded himself with mortal
apprentices, kept a mortal lover from whom he took the little drink,
went out alone to kill. I thought of the night in the inn when I had
seen the meaninglessness of life, and the soft fathomless despair of
Armand's story seemed an ocean in which I might drown. This was
worse than the blasted shore in Nicki's mind. This was for three
centuries, this darkness, this nothingness. The radiant auburn-haired
child by the fire could open his mouth again and out would come
blackness like ink to cover the world. That is, if there had not been
this protagonist, this Venetian master, who had committed the
heretical act of making meaning on the panels he painted-it had to be
meaning-and our own kind, the elect of Satan, had made him into a
living torch. Had Gabrielle seen these paintings in the story as I had
seen them? Did they burn in her mind's eye as they did in mine?
Marius was traveling some route into my soul that would let him roam
there forever, along with the hooded fiends who turned the paintings

                                                                         231

into chaos again. In a dull sort of misery, I thought of the traveler's
tales that Marius was alive, seen in Egypt or Greece. I wanted to ask
Armand, wasn't it possible? Marius must have been so very strong . .
. But it seemed disrespectful of him to ask.
  "Old legend, " he whispered. His voice was as precise as the inner
voice. Unhurriedly, he continued without ever looking away from the
flames. "Legend from the olden times before they destroyed us both. "
  "Perhaps not, " I said. Echo of the visions, paintings on the walls.
"Maybe Marius is alive. "
  "We are miracles or horrors, " he said quietly, "depending upon how
you wish to see us. And when you just know about us, whether it's
through the dark blood or promises or visitations, you think anything
is possible. But that isn't so. The world closes tight around this
miracle soon enough; and you don't hope for other miracles. That is,
you become accustomed to the new limits and the limits define
everything once again. So they say Marius continues. They all
continue somewhere, that's what you want to believe.
  "Not a single one remains in the coven in Rome from those nights
when I was taught the ritual; and maybe the coven itself is no longer
even there. Years and years have passed since there was any
communication from the coven. But they all exist somewhere, don't
they? After all, we can't die. " He sighed. "Doesn't matter, " he said.
Something greater and more terrible mattered, that this despair might
crush Armand beneath it. That in spite of the thirst in him now, the
blood lost when we had fought together, and the silent furnace of his
body healing the bruises and the broken flesh, he could not will
himself into the world above to hunt. Rather suffer the thirst and the
heat of the silent furnace. Rather stay here and be with us. But he
already knew the answer, that he could not be with us. Gabrielle and I
didn't have to speak to let him know. We did not even have to resolve
the question in our minds. He knew, the way God might know the
future because God is the possessor of all the facts. Unbearable
anguish. And Gabrielle's expression all the more weary, sad.
  "You know that with all my soul I do want to take you with us, " I
said. I was surprised at my own emotion. "But it would be disaster for
us all. " No change in him. He knew. No challenge from Gabrielle.
  "I cannot stop thinking of Marius, " I confessed. I know. And you
do not think of Those Who Must Be Kept, which is most strange.
  "That is merely another mystery, " I said. "And there are a thousand
mysteries. I think of Marius! And I'm too much the slave of my own
obsessions and fascination. It's a dreadful thing to linger so on


                                                                       232

Marius, to extract that one radiant figure from the tale. " Doesn't
matter. If it pleases you, take it. I do not lose what I give.
  "When a being reveals his pain in such a torrent, you are bound to
respect the whole of the tragedy. You have to try to comprehend. And
such helplessness, such despair is almost incomprehensible to me.
That's why I think of Marius. Marius I understand. You I don't
understand. " Why? Silence. Didn't he deserve the truth?
  "I've been a rebel always, " I said. "You've been the slave of
everything that ever claimed you. "
  "I was the leader of my coven! "
  "No. You were the slave of Marius and then of the Children of
Darkness. You fell under the spell of one and then the other. What
you suffer now is the absence of a spell. I think I shudder that you
caused me so to understand it for a little while, to know it as if I were a
different being than I am. "
  "Doesn't matter, " he said, eyes still on the fire. "You think too much
in terms of decision and action. This tale is no explanation. And I am
not a being who requires a respectful acknowledgment in your
thoughts or in words. And we all know the answer you have given is
too immense to be voiced and we all three of us know that it is final.
What I don't know is why. So I am a creature very different from you,
and so you cannot understand me. Why can't I go with you? I will do
whatever you wish if you take me with you. I will be under your spell.
" I thought of Marius with his brush and the pots of egg tempera.
  "How could you have ever believed anything that they told you after
they burned those paintings? " I asked. "How could you have given
yourself over to them? " Agitation, rising anger. Caution in Gabrielle's
face, but not fear.
  "And you, when you stood on the stage and you saw the audience
screaming to get out of the theater-how my followers described this to
me, the vampire terrifying the crowd and the crowd streaming into the
boulevard du Temple-what did you believe? That you did not belong
among mortals, that's what you believed. You knew you did not. And
there was no band of fiends in hooded robes to tell you. You knew.
So Marius did not belong among mortals. So I did not. "
  "Ah, but it's different. "
  "No, it is not. That's why you scorn the Theater of the Vampires
which is now at this very moment working out its little dramas to
bring in the gold from the boulevard crowds. You do not wish to
deceive as Marius deceived. It divides you ever more from mankind.
You want to pretend to be mortal, but to deceive makes you angry and
it makes you kill. "

                                                                       233

  "In that moment on the stage, " I said, "I revealed myself. I did the
very opposite of deceiving. I wanted somehow in making manifest the
monstrosity of myself to be joined with my fellow humans again.
Better they should run from me than not see me. Better they should
know I was something monstrous than for me to glide through the
world unrecognized by those upon whom I preyed. "
  "But it was not better. "
  "No. What Marius did was better. He did not deceive. "
  "Of course he did. He fooled everyone! "
  "No. He found a way to imitate mortal life. To be one with mortals.
He slew only the evildoer, and he painted as mortals paint. Angels and
blue skies, clouds, those are the things you made me see when you
were telling. He created good things. And I see wisdom in him and a
lack of vanity. He did not need to reveal himself. He had lived a
thousand years and he believed more in the vistas of heaven that he
painted than in himself. " Confusion. Doesn't matter now, devils who
paint angels.
  "Those are only metaphors, " I said. "And it does matter! If you are
to rebuild, if you are to find the Devil's Road again, it does matter!
There are ways for us to exist. If I could only imitate life, just find a
way. . .
  "You say things that mean nothing to me. We are the abandoned of
God. " Gabrielle glanced at him suddenly. "Do you believe in God? "
she asked.
  "Yes, always in God, " he answered. "It is Satan-our master-who is
the fiction and that is the fiction which has betrayed me. "
  "Oh, then you are truly damned, " I said. "And you know full well
that your retreat into the fraternity of the Children of Darkness was a
retreat from a sin that was not a sin. " Anger.
  "Your heart breaks for something you'll never have, " he countered,
his voice rising suddenly.
  "You brought Gabrielle and Nicolas over the barrier to you, but you
could not go back. "
  "Why is it you don't hearken to your own story? " I asked. "Is it that
you have never forgiven Marius for not warning you about them,
letting you fall into their hands? You will never take anything, not
example or inspiration, from Marius again? I am not Marius, but I tell
you since I set my feet on the Devil's Road, I have heard of only one
elder who could teach me anything, and that is Marius, your Venetian
master. He is talking to me now. He is saying something to me of a
way to be immortal. "


                                                                        234

  "Mockery. "
  "No. It wasn't mockery! And you are the one whose heart breaks for
what he will never have: another body of belief, another spell. " No
answer.
  "We cannot be Marius for you, " I said, "or the dark lord, Santino.
We are not artists with a great vision that will carry you forward. And
we are not evil coven masters with the conviction to condemn a legion
to perdition. And this domination-this glorious mandate-is what you
must have. " I had risen to my feet without meaning to. I had come
close to the fireplace and I was looking down at him. And I saw, out of
the comer of my eye, Gabrielle's subtle nod of approval, and the way
that she closed her eyes for a moment as if she were allowing herself a
sigh of relief. He was perfectly still.
  "You have to suffer through this emptiness, " I said, "and find what
impels you to continue. If you come with us we will fail you and you
will destroy us. "
  "How suffer through it? " He looked up at me and his eyebrows
came together in the most poignant frown. "How do I begin? You
move like the right hand of God! But for me the world, the real world
in which Marius lived, is beyond reach. I never lived in it. I push
against the glass. But how do I get in? "
  "I can't tell you that, " I said.
  "You have to study this age, " Gabrielle interrupted. Her voice was
calm but commanding. He looked towards her as she spoke.
  "You have to understand the age, " she continued, "through its
literature and its music and its art. You have come up out of the earth,
as you yourself put it. Now live in the world. " No answer from him.
Flash of Nicki's ravaged flat with all its books on the floor. Western
civilization in heaps.
  "And what better place is there than the center of things, the
boulevard and the theater? " Gabrielle asked. He frowned, his head
turning dismissively, but she pressed on.
  "Your gift is for leading the coven, and your coven is still there. " He
made a soft despairing sound.
  "Nicolas is a fledgling, " she said. "He can teach them much about
the world outside, but he cannot really lead them. The woman, Eleni,
is amazingly clever, but she will make way for you. "
  "What is it to me, their games? " he whispered.
  "It is a way to exist, " she said. "And that is all that matters to you
now. "
  "The Theater of the Vampires! I should rather the fire. "


                                                                         235

  "Think of it, " she said. "There's a perfection in it you can't deny.
We are illusions of what is mortal, and the stage is an illusion of what
is real. "
  "It's an abomination, " he said. "What did Lestat call it? Petty? "
  "That was to Nicolas because Nicolas would build fantastical
philosophies upon it, " she said.
  "You must live now without fantastical philosophies, the way you did
when you were Marius's apprentice. Live to learn the age. And Lestat
does not believe in the value of evil. But you do believe in it. I know
that you do. "
  "I am evil, " he said half smiling. He almost laughed. "It's not a
matter of belief, is it? But do you think I could go from the spiritual
path I followed for three centuries to voluptuousness and debauchery
such as that? We were the saints of evil, " he protested. "I will not be
common evil. I will not. "
  "Make it uncommon, " she said. She was growing impatient. "If you
are evil, how can voluptuousness and debauchery be your enemies?
Don't the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire equally against man?
" He shook his head, as if to say he did not care.
  "You are more concerned with what is spiritual than with evil, " I
interjected, watching him closely. "Is that not so? "
  "Yes, " he said at once.
  "But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be
spiritual, " I continued. ` "The look in a face, the music of a violin. A
Paris theater can be infused with the spiritual for all its solidity.
There's nothing in it that hasn't been shaped by the power of those
who possessed spiritual visions of what it could be. " Something
quickened in him, but he pushed it away.
  "Seduce the public with voluptuousness, " Gabrielle said. "For God's
sake, and the devil's, use the power of the theater as you will. "
  "Weren't the paintings of your master spiritual? " I asked. I could
feel a warming in myself now at the thought of it. "Can anyone look
on the great works of that time and not call them spiritual? "
  "I have asked myself that question, " Armand answered, "many times.
Was it spiritual or was it voluptuous? Was the angel painted on the
triptych caught in the material, or was the material transformed? "
  "No matter what they did to you after, you never doubted the beauty
and the value of his work, " I said. "I know you didn't. And it was the
material transformed. It ceased to be paint and it became magic, just
as in the kill the blood ceases to be blood and becomes life. " His eyes
misted, but no visions came from him. Whatever road he traveled
back in his thoughts, he traveled alone.

                                                                       236

  "The carnal and the spiritual, " Gabrielle said, "come together in the
theater as they do in the paintings. Sensual fiends we are by our very
nature. Take this as your key. " He closed his eyes for a moment as if
he would shut us out.
  "Go to them and listen to the music that Nicki makes, " she said.
"Make art with them in the Theater of the Vampires. You have to pass
away from what failed you into what can sustain you. Otherwise-there
is no hope. " I wished she had not said it so abruptly, brought it so to
the point. But he nodded and his lips pressed together in a bitter
smile.
  "The only thing really important for you, " she said slowly, "is that
you go to an extreme. " He stared at her blankly. He could not
possibly understand what she meant by this. And I thought it too
brutal a truth to say. But he didn't resist it. His face became
thoughtful and smooth and childlike again. For a long time he looked
at the fire. Then he spoke:
  "But why must you go at all? " he asked. "No one is at war with you
now. No one is trying to drive you out. Why can't you build it with
me, this little enterprise? " Did that mean he would do it, go to the
others and become part of the theater in the boulevard? He didn't
contradict me. He was asking again why couldn't I create the
imitation of life, if that was what I wanted to call it, right in the
boulevard? But he was also giving up. He knew I couldn't endure the
sight of the theater, or the sight of Nicolas. I couldn't even really urge
him towards it. Gabrielle had done that. And he knew that it was too
late to press us anymore. Finally Gabrielle said:
  "We can't live among our own kind, Armand. " And I thought, yes,
that is the truest answer of all, and I don't know why I couldn't speak it
aloud.
  "The Devil's Road is what we want, " she said. "And we are enough
for each other now. Maybe years and years into the future, when
we've been a thousand places and seen a thousand things, we'll come
back. We'll talk then together as we have tonight. " This came as no
real shock to him. But it was impossible now to know what he
thought. For a long time we didn't speak. I don't know how long we
remained quiet together in the room. I tried not to think of Marius
anymore, or of Nicolas either. All sense of danger was gone now, but I
was afraid of the parting, of the sadness of it, of the feeling that I had
taken from this creature his astonishing story and given him precious
little for it in return. It was Gabrielle who finally broke the quiet. She
rose and moved gracefully to the bench beside him.


                                                                         237

  "Armand, " she said. "We are going. If I have my way we'll be miles
from Paris before midnight tomorrow night. " He looked at her with
calm and acceptance. Impossible to know now what he chose to
conceal.
  "Even if you do not go to the theater, " she said, "accept the things
that we can give you. My son has wealth enough to make an entrance
into the world very easy for you. "
  "You can take this tower for your lair, " I said. "Use it as long as you
wish. Magnus found it safe enough. " After a moment, he nodded
with a grave politeness, but he didn't say anything.
  "Let Lestat give you the gold needed to make you a gentleman, "
Gabrielle said. "And all we ask in return is that you leave the coven in
peace if you do not choose to lead it. " He was looking at the fire
again, face tranquil, irresistibly beautiful. Then again he nodded in
silence. And the nod itself meant no more than that he had heard, not
that he would promise anything.
  "If you will not go to them, " I said slowly, "then do not hurt them.
Do not hurt Nicolas. " And when I spoke these words, his face
changed very subtly. It was almost a smile that crept over his features.
And his eyes shifted slowly to me. And I saw the scorn in them. I
looked away but the look had affected me as much as a blow.
  "I don't want him to be harmed, " I said in a tense whisper.
  "No. You want him destroyed, " he whispered back. "So that you
need never fear or grieve for him anymore. " And the look of scorn
sharpened hideously. Gabrielle intervened.
  "Armand, " she said, "he is not dangerous to them. The woman
alone can control him. And he has things to teach all of you about this
time if you will listen. " They looked at each other for some time in
silence. And again his face was soft and gentle and beautiful. And in a
strangely decorous manner he took Gabrielle's hand and held it firmly.
Then they stood up together, and he let her hand go, and he drew a
little away from her and squared his shoulders. He looked at both of
us.
  "I'll go to them, " he said in the softest voice. "And I will take the
gold you offer me, and I will seek refuge in this tower. And I will learn
from your passionate fledgling whatever he has to teach me. But I
reach for these things only because they float on the surface of the
darkness in which I am drowning. And I would not descend without
some finer understanding. I would not leave eternity to you without .
. . without some final battle. " I studied him. But no thoughts came
from him to clarify these words.


                                                                        238

  "Maybe as the years pass, " he said, "desire will come again to me. I
will know appetite again, even passion. Maybe when we meet in
another age, these things will not be abstract and fleeting. I'll speak
with a vigor that matches yours, instead of merely reflecting it. And
we will ponder matters of immortality and wisdom. We will talk
about vengeance or acceptance then. For now it's enough for me to
say that I want to see you again. I want our paths to cross in the
future. And for that reason alone, I will do as you ask and not what
you want: I will spare your ill-fated Nicolas. " I gave an audible sigh of
relief. Yet his tone was so changed, so strong, that it sounded a deep
silent alarm in me. This was the coven master, surely, this quiet and
forceful one, the one who would survive, no matter how the orphan in
him wept. But then he smiled slowly and gracefully, and there was
something sad and endearing in his face. He became the da Vinci saint
again, or more truly the little god from Caravaggio. And it seemed for
a moment he couldn't be anything evil or dangerous. He was too
radiant, too full of all that was wise and good.
  "Remember my warnings, " he said. "Not my curses. " Gabrielle and
I both nodded.
  "And when you have need of me, " he said, "I will be here. " Then
Gabrielle did the totally surprising thing of embracing him and kissing
him. And I did the same. He was pliant and gentle and loving in our
arms. And he let us know without words that he was going to the
coven, and we could find him there tomorrow night. The next
moment he was gone, and Gabrielle and I were there alone together, as
if he'd never been in the room. I could hear no sound anywhere in the
tower. Nothing but the wind in the forest beyond. And when I
climbed the steps, I found the gate open and the fields stretching to the
woods in unbroken quiet. I loved him. I knew it, as incomprehensible
to me as he was. But I was so glad it was finished. So glad that we
could go on. Yet I held to the bars for a long time just looking at the
distant woods, and the dim glow far beyond that the city made upon
the lowering clouds. And the grief I felt was not only for the loss of
him, it was for Nicki, and for Paris, and for myself.

  5

  When I came back down to the crypt I saw her building up the fire
again with the last of the wood. In a slow, weary fashion, she stoked
the blaze, and the light was red on her profile and in her eyes. I sat
quietly on the bench watching her, watching the explosion of sparks
against the blackened bricks.

                                                                       239

  "Did he give you what you wanted? " I asked.
  "In his own way, yes, " she said. She put the poker aside and sat
down opposite, her hair spilling down over her shoulders as she rested
her hands beside her on the bench. "I tell you, I don't care if I never
look upon another one of our kind, " she said coldly. "I am done with
their legends, their curses, their sorrows. And done with their
insufferable humanity, which may be the most astonishing thing
they've revealed. I'm ready for the world again, Lestat, as I was on the
night I died. "
  "But Marius- " I said excitedly. "Mother, there are ancient ones-ones
who have used immortality in a wholly different way. "
  "Are there? " she asked. "Lestat, you're too generous with your
imagination. The story of Marius has the quality of a fairy tale. "
  "No, that's not true. "
  "So the orphan demon claims descent not from the filthy peasant
devils he resembles, " she said, "but from a lost lord, almost a god. I
tell you any dirty-faced village child dreaming at the kitchen fire can
tell you tales like that. "
  "Mother, he couldn't have invented Marius, " I said. "I may have a
great deal of imagination, but he has almost none. He couldn't have
made up the images. I tell you he saw those things... "
  "I hadn't thought of it exactly that way, " she admitted with a little
smile. "But he could well have borrowed Marius from the legends he
heard... "
  "No, " I said. "There was a Marius and there is a Marius still. And
there are others like him. There are Children of the Millennia who
have done better than these Children of Darkness with the gifts given
them. "
  "Lestat, what is important is that we do better, " she said. "All I
learned from Armand, finally, was that immortals find death seductive
and ultimately irresistible, that they fail to conquer death or humanity
in their minds. Now I want to take that knowledge and wear it like
armor as I move through the world. And luckily, I don't mean the
world of change which these creatures have found so dangerous. I
mean the world that for eons has been the same. " She tossed her hair
back as she looked at the fire again. "It's of snow-covered mountains I
dream, " she said softly, "of desert wastes-of impenetrable jungles, or
the great north woods of America where they say white men have
never been. " Her face warmed just a little as she looked at me. "Think
on it, " she said. "There is nowhere that we cannot go. And if the
Children of the Millennia do exist, maybe that is where they are-far
from the world of men. "

                                                                       240

  "And how do they live if they are? " I asked. I was picturing my own
world and it was full of mortal beings, and the things that mortal
beings made. "It's man we feed on, " I said.
  "There are hearts that beat in those forests, " she said dreamily.
"There is blood that flows for the one who takes it . . . I can do the
things now that you used to do. I could fight those wolves on my
own... " Her voice trailed off as she was lost in her thoughts. "The
important thing, " she said after a long moment, "is that we can go
wherever we wish now, Lestat. We're free. "
  "I was free before, " I said. "I never cared for what Armand had to
tell. But Marius-I know that Marius is alive. I feel it. I felt it when
Armand told the tale. And Marius knows things and I don't mean just
about us, or about Those Who Must Be Kept or whatever the old
mystery-he knows things about life itself, about how to move through
time. "
  "So let him be your patron saint if you need it, " she said. This
angered me, and I didn't say anything more. The fact was her talk of
jungles and forests frightened me. And all the things Armand said to
divide us came back to me, just as I'd known they would when he had
spoken his well-chosen words. And so we live with our differences, I
thought, just as mortals do, and maybe our divisions are exaggerated
as are our passions, as is our love.
  "There was one inkling... " she said as she watched the fire, "one little
indication that the story of Marius had truth. "
  "There were a thousand indications, " I said.
  "He said that Marius slew the evildoer, " she continued, "and he
called the evildoer Typhon, the slayer of his brother. Do you
remember this? "
  "I thought that he meant Cain who had slain Abel. It was Cain I saw
in the images, though I heard the other name. "
  "That's just it. Armand himself didn't understand the name Typhon.
Yet he repeated it. But I know what it means. "
  "Tell me. "
  "It's from the Greek and Roman myths-the old story of the Egyptian
god, Osiris, slain by his brother Typhon, so that he became lord of the
Underworld. Of course Armand could have read it in Plutarch, but he
didn't, that's the strange thing. "
  "Ah, you see then, Marius did exist. When he said he'd lived for a
millennium he was telling the truth. "
  "Perhaps, Lestat, perhaps, " she said.
  "Mother, tell me this again, this Egyptian story... 'Lestat, you have
years to read all the old tales for yourself. " She rose and bent to kiss

                                                                        241

me, and I sensed the coldness and sluggishness in her that always came
before dawn. "As for me, I am done with books. They are what I read
when I could do nothing else. " She took my two hands in hers. "Tell
me that we'll be on the road tomorrow. That we won't see the
ramparts of Paris again until we've seen the other side of the world. "
  "Exactly as you wish, " I said. She started up the stairs.
  "But where are you going? " I said as I followed her. She opened the
gate and went out towards the trees.
  "I want to see if I can sleep in the raw earth itself, " she said over her
shoulder. "If I don't rise tomorrow you'll know I failed. "
  "But this is madness, " I said, coming after her. I hated the very idea
of it. She went ahead into a thicket of old oaks, and kneeling, she dug
into the dead leaves and damp soil with her hands. Ghastly she
looked, as if she were a beautiful blondhaired witch scratching with the
speed of a beast. Then she rose and waved a farewell kiss to me. And
commanding all her strength, she descended as the earth belonged to
her. And I was left staring in disbelief at the emptiness where she had
been, and the leaves that had settled as if nothing had disturbed the
spot. I was away from the woods. I walked south away from the
tower. And as my step quickened, I started singing softly to myself
some little song, maybe a bit of melody that the violins had played
earlier this night in the Palais Royal. And the sense of grief came back
to me, the realization that we were really going, that it was finished
with Nicolas and finished with the Children of Darkness and their
leader, and I wouldn't see Paris again, or anything familiar to me, for
years and years. And for all my desire to be free, I wanted to weep.
But it seems I had some purpose in my wandering that I hadn't
admitted to myself. A half hour or so before the morning light I was
on the post road near the ruin of an old inn. Falling down it was, this
outpost of an abandoned village, with only the heavily mortared walls
left intact. And taking out my dagger, I began to carve deep in the soft
stone: MARIUS, THE ANCIENT ONE: LESTAT IS SEARCHING FOR
YOU. IT IS THE MONTH OF MAY, IN THE YEAR 1780 AND I GO
SOUTH FROM PARIS TOWARDS LYONS. PLEASE MAKE
YOURSELF KNOWN TO ME. What arrogance it seemed when I
stepped back from it. And I had already broken the dark
commandments, telling the name of an immortal, and putting it into
written words. Well, it gave me a wondrous satisfaction to do it. And
after all, I had never been very good at obeying rules.




                                                                          242

  Part VI - On The Devil's Road From Paris To Cairo


  1

  The last time we saw Armand in the eighteenth century, he was
standing with Eleni and Nicolas and the other vampire mummers
before the door of Renaud's theater, watching as our carriage made its
way into the stream of traffic on the boulevard. I'd found him earlier
closeted in my old dressing room with Nicolas in the midst of a
strange conversation dominated by Nicki's sarcasm and peculiar fire.
He wore a wig and a somber red frock coat, and it seemed to me that
he had already acquired a new opacity, as if every waking moment
since the death of the old coven was giving him greater substance and
strength. Nicki and I had no words for each other in these last
awkward moments, but Armand politely accepted the keys of the
tower from me, and a great quantity of money, and the promise of
more when he wanted it from Roget. His mind was closed to me, but
he said again that Nicolas would come to no harm from him. And as
we said our farewells, I believed that Nicolas and the little coven had
every chance for survival and that Armand and I were friends. By the
end of that first night, Gabrielle and I were far from Paris, as we vowed
we would be, and in the months that followed, we went on to Lyons,
Turin, and Vienna, and after that to Prague and Leipzig and St.
Petersburg, and then south again to Italy, where we were to settle for
many years. Eventually we went on to Sicily, then north into Greece
and Turkey, and then south again through the ancient cities of Asia
Minor and finally to Cairo, where we remained for some time. And in
all these places I was to write my messages to Marius on the walls.
Sometimes it was no more than a few words that I scratched with the
tip of my knife. In other places, I spent hours chiseling my
ruminations into the stone. But wherever I was, I wrote my name, the
date, and my future destination, and my invitation: "Marius, make
yourself known to me. " As for the old covens, we were to come upon
them in a number of scattered places, but it was clear from the outset
that the old ways were everywhere breaking down. Seldom more than
three or four vampires carried on the old rituals, and when they came
to realize that we wanted no part of them or their existence they let us
alone. Infinitely more interesting were the occasional rogues we
glimpsed in the middle of society, lone and secretive vampires
pretending to be mortal just as skillfully as we could pretend. But we
never got close to these creatures. They ran from us as they must have

                                                                      243

from the old covens. And seeing nothing more than fear in their eyes,
I wasn't tempted to give chase. Yet it was strangely reassuring to know
that I hadn't been the first aristocratic fiend to move through the
ballrooms of the world in search of my victims-the deadly gentleman
who would soon surface in stories and poetry and penny dreadful
novels as the very epitome of our tribe. There were others appearing
all the time. But we were to encounter stranger creatures of darkness
as we moved on. In Greece we found demons who did not know how
they had been made, and sometimes even mad creatures without
reason or language who attacked us as if we were mortal, and ran
screaming from the prayers we said to drive them away. The vampires
in Istanbul actually dwelt in houses, safe behind high wall and gates,
their graves in their gardens, and dressed as all humans do in that part
of the world, in flowing robes, to hunt the nighttime streets. Yet even
they were quite horrified to see me living amongst the French and the
Venetians, riding in carriages, joining the gatherings at the European
embassies and homes. They menaced us, shouting incantations at us,
and then ran in panic when we turned on them, only to come back
and devil us again. The revenants who haunted the Mameluke tombs
in Cairo were beastly wraiths, held to the old laws by hollow-eyed
masters who lived in the ruins of a Coptic monastery, their rituals full
of Eastern magic and the evocation of many demons and evil spirits
whom they called by strange names. They stayed clear of us, despite all
their acidic threats, yet they knew our names. As the years passed, we
learned nothing from all these creatures, which of course was no great
surprise to me. And though vampires in many places had heard the
legends of Marius and the other ancient ones, they had never seen such
beings with their own eyes. Even Armand had become a legend to
them, and they were likely to ask: "Did you really see the vampire
Armand? " Nowhere did I meet a truly old vampire. Nowhere did I
meet a vampire who was in any way a magnetic creature, a being of
great wisdom or special accomplishment, an unusual being in whom
the Dark Gift had worked any perceivable alchemy that was of interest
to me. Armand was a dark god compared to these beings. And so was
Gabrielle and so was I. But I jump ahead of my tale. Early on, when
we first came into Italy, we gained a fuller and more sympathetic
knowledge of the ancient rituals. The Roman coven came out to
welcome us with open arms. "Come to the Sabbat, " they said. "Come
into the catacombs and join in the hymns. " Yes, they knew that we'd
destroyed the Paris coven, and bested the great master of dark secrets,
Armand. But they didn't despise us for it. On the contrary, they could
not understand the cause of Armand's resignation of his power. Why

                                                                     244

hadn't the coven changed with the times? For even here where the
ceremonies were so elaborate and sensuous that they took my breath
away, the vampires, far from eschewing the ways of men, thought
nothing of passing themselves off as human whenever it suited their
purposes. It was the same with the two vampires we had seen in
Venice, and the handful we were later to meet in Florence as well. In
black cloaks, they penetrated the crowds at the opera, the shadowy
corridors of great houses during balls and banquets, and even
sometimes sat amid the press in lowly taverns or wine shops, peering
at humans quite close at hand. It was their habit here more than
anywhere to dress in the costumes of the time of their birth, and they
were often splendidly attired and most regal, possessing jewels and
finery and showing it often to great advantage when they chose. Yet
they crept back to their stinking graveyards to sleep, and they fled
screaming from any sign of heavenly power, and they threw
themselves with savage abandon into their horrifying and beautiful
Sabbats. In comparison, the vampires of Paris had been primitive,
coarse, and childlike; but I could see that it was the very sophistication
and worldliness of Paris that had caused Armand and his flock to
retreat so far from mortal ways. As the French capital became secular,
the vampires had clung to old magic, while the Italian fiends lived
among deeply religious humans whose lives were drenched in Roman
Catholic ceremony, men and women who respected evil as they
respected the Roman Church. In sum the old ways of the fiends were
not unlike the old ways of people in Italy, and so the Italian vampires
moved in both worlds. Did they believe in the old ways? They
shrugged. The Sabbat for them was a grand pleasure. Hadn't
Gabrielle and I enjoyed it? Had we not finally joined in the dance?
  "Come to us anytime that you wish, " the Roman vampires told us.
As for this Theater of the Vampires in Paris, this great scandal which
was shocking our kind the world over, well, they would believe that
when they saw it with their own eyes. Vampires performing on a
stage, vampires dazzling mortal audiences with tricks and mimicry-
they thought it was too terribly Parisian! They laughed. Of course I
was hearing more directly about the theater all the time. Before I'd
even reached St. Petersburg, Roget had sent me a long testament to the
"cleverness " of the new troupe: They have gotten themselves up like
giant wooden marionettes [he wrote]. Gold cords come down from
the rafters to their ankles and their wrists and the tops of their heads,
and by these they appear to be manipulated in the most charming
dances. They wear perfect circles of rouge on their white cheeks, and
their eyes are wide as glass buttons. You cannot believe the perfection

                                                                       245

with which they make themselves appear inanimate. But the orchestra
is another marvel. Faces blank and painted in the very same style, the
players imitate mechanical musicians-the jointed dolls one can buy
that, on the winding of a key, saw away at their little instruments, or
blow their little horns, to make real music! It is such an engaging
spectacle that ladies and gentlemen of the audience quarrel amongst
themselves as to whether or not these players are dolls or real persons.
Some aver that they are all made of wood and the voices coming out of
the actors' mouths are the work of ventriloquists. As for the plays
themselves, they would be extremely unsettling were they not so
beautiful and skillfully done. There is one most popular drama they
do which features a vampire revenant, risen from the grave through a
platform in the stage. Terrifying is the creature with rag mop hair and
fangs. But lo, he falls in love at once with a giant wooden puppet
woman, never guessing that she is not alive. Unable to drink blood
from her throat, however, the poor vampire soon perishes, at which
moment the marionette reveals that she does indeed live, though she is
made of wood and with an evil smile she performs a triumphant dance
upon the body of the defeated fiend. I tell you it makes the blood run
cold to see it. Yet the audience screams and applauds. In another little
tableau, the puppet dancers make a circle about a human girl and
entice her to let herself be bound up with golden cords as if she too
were a marionette. The sorry result is that the strings make her dance
till the life goes out off her body. She pleads with eloquent gestures to
be released, but the real puppets only laugh and cavort as she expires.
The music is unearthly. It brings to mind the gypsies of the country
fairs. Monsieur de Lenfent is the director. And it is the sound of his
violin which often opens the evening fare. I advise you as your
attorney to claim some of the profits being made by this remarkable
company. The lines for each performance stretch a considerable
length down the boulevard. Roget's letters always unsettled me. They
left me with my heart tripping, and I couldn't help but wonder: What
had I expected the troupe to do? Why did their boldness and
inventiveness surprise me? We all had the power to do such things.
By the time I settled in Venice, where I spent a great deal of time
looking in vain for Marius's paintings, I was hearing from Eleni
directly, her letters inscribed with exquisite vampiric skill. They were
the most popular entertainment in nighttime Paris, she wrote to me.
"Actors " had come from all over Europe to join them. So their troupe
had swelled to twenty in number, which even that metropolis could
scarce "support. "


                                                                      246

  "Only the most clever artists are admitted, those who possess truly
astonishing talent, but we prize discretion above all else. We do not
like scandal, as you can well guess. " As for their "Dear Violinist, " she
wrote of him affectionately, saying he was their greatest inspiration,
that he wrote the most ingenious plays, taking them from stories that
he read. "But when he is not at work, he can be quite impossible. He
must be watched constantly so that he does not enlarge our ranks. His
dining habits are extremely sloppy. And on occasion he says most
shocking things to strangers, which fortunately they are too sensible to
believe. " In other words, he tried to make other vampires. And he
didn't hunt in stealth. In the main it is Our Oldest Friend [Armand,
obviously] who is relied upon to restrain him. And that he does with
the most caustic threats. But I must say that these do not have an
enduring effect upon our Violinist. He talks often of old religious
customs, of ritual fires, of the passage into new realms of being. I
cannot say that we do not love him. For your sake we would care for
him even if we did not. But we do love him. And Our Oldest Friend,
in particular, bears him great affection. Yet I should remark that in
the old times, such persons would not have endured among us for very
long. As for Our Oldest Friend, I wonder if you would know him
now. He has built a great manse at the foot of your tower, and there
he lives among books and pictures very like a scholarly gentleman with
little care for the real world. Each night, however, he arrives at the
door of the theater in his black carriage. And he watches from his own
curtained box. And he comes after to settle all disputes among us, to
govern as he always did, to threaten Our Divine Violinist, but he will
never, never consent to perform on the stage. It is he who accepts new
members among us. As I told you, they come from all over. We do
not have to solicit them. They knock upon our door .... Come back to
us [she wrote in closing]. You will find us more interesting than you
did before. There are a thousand dark wonders which I cannot
commit to paper. We are a starburst in the history of our kind. And
we could not have chosen a more perfect moment in the history of this
great city for our little contrivance. And it is your doing, this splendid
existence we sustain. Why did you leave us? Come home.

  I saved these letters. I kept them as carefully as I kept the letter from
my brothers in the Auvergne. I saw the marionettes perfectly in my
imagination. I heard the cry of Nicki's violin. I saw Armand, too,
arriving in his dark carriage, taking his seat in the box. And I even
described all of this in veiled and eccentric terms in my long messages
to Marius, working in a little frenzy now and then with my chisel in a

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dark street while mortals slept. But for me, there was no going back to
Paris, no matter how lonely I might become. The world around me
had become my lover and my teacher. I was enraptured with the
cathedrals and castles, the museums and palaces that I saw. In every
place I visited, I went to the heart of society: I drank up its
entertainments and its gossip, its literature and its music, its
architecture and its art. I could fill volumes with the things I studied,
the things I struggled to understand. I was enthralled by gypsy
violinists and street puppeteers as I was by great castrati sopranos in
gilded opera houses or cathedral choirs. I prowled the brothels and
the gambling dens and the places where the sailors drank and
quarreled. I read the newspapers everywhere I went and hung about
in taverns, often ordering food I never touched, merely to have it in
front of me, and I talked to mortals incessantly in public places,
buying countless glasses of wine for others, smelling their pipes and
cigars as they smoked, and letting all these mortal smells get into my
hair and clothes. And when I wasn't out roaming, I was traveling the
realm of the books that had belonged to Gabrielle so exclusively all
through those dreary mortal years at home. Before we even got to
Italy, I knew enough Latin to be studying the classics, and I made a
library in the old Venetian palazzo I haunted, often reading the whole
night long. And of course it was the tale off Osiris that enchanted me,
bringing back with it the romance of Armand's story and Marius's
enigmatic words. As I pored over all the old versions, I was quietly
thunderstruck by what I read. Here we have an ancient king, Osiris, a
man of unworldly goodness who turns the Egyptians away from
cannibalism and teaches them the art of growing crops and making
wine. And how is he murdered by his brother Typhon? Osiris is
tricked into lying down in a box made to the exact size of his body,
and his brother Typhon then nails shut the lid. He is then thrown into
the river, and when his faithful Isis finds his body, he is again attacked
by Typhon, who dismembers him. All parts of his body are found save
one. Now, why would Marius make reference to a myth such as this?
And how could I not think on the fact that all vampires sleep in coffins
which are boxes made to the size off their bodies- even the miserable
rabble of les Innocents slept in their coffins. Magnus said to me, "In
that box or its like you must always lie. " As for the missing part of the
body, the part that Isis never found, well, there is one part of us which
is not enhanced by the Dark Gift, isn't there? We can speak, see, taste,
breathe, move as humans move, but we cannot procreate. And neither
could Osiris, so he became Lord of the Dead. Was this a vampire god?
But so much puzzled me and tormented me. This god Osiris was the

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god of wine to the Egyptians, the one later called Dionysus by the
Greeks. And Dionysus was the "dark god " of the theater, the devil god
whom Nicki described to me when we were boys at home. And now
we had the theater full of vampires in Paris. Oh, it was too rich. I
couldn't wait to tell all this to Gabrielle. But she dismissed it
indifferently, saying there were hundreds of such old stories.
  "Osiris was the god of the corn, " she said. "He was a good god to the
Egyptians. What could this have to do with us? " She glanced at the
books I was studying. "You have a great deal to learn, my son. Many
an ancient god was dismembered and mourned by his goddess. Read
of Actaeon and Adonis. The ancients loved those stories. " And she
was gone. And I was alone in the candlelighted library, leaning on my
elbows amid all these books. I brooded on Armand's dream of the
sanctuary of Those Who Must Be Kept in the mountains. Was it a
magic that went back to the Egyptian times? How had the Children of
Darkness forgotten such things? Maybe it had all been poetry to the
Venetian master, the mention of Typhon, the slayer of his brother,
nothing more than that. I went out into the night with my chisel. I
wrote my questions to Marius on stones that were older than us both.
Marius had become so real to me that we were talking together, the
way that Nicki and I had once done. He was the confidant who
received my excitement, my enthusiasm, my sublime bewilderment at
all the wonders and puzzles of the world. But as my studies deepened,
as my education broadened, I was getting that first awesome inkling of
what eternity might be. I was alone among humans, and my writing to
Marius couldn't keep me from knowing my own monstrosity as I had
in those first Paris nights so long ago. After all, Marius wasn't really
there. And neither was Gabrielle. Almost from the beginning,
Armand's predictions had proved true.

  2

  Before we were even out of France, Gabrielle was breaking the
journey to disappear for several nights at a time. In Vienna, she often
stayed away for over a fortnight, and by the time I settled in the
palazzo in Venice she was going away for months on end. During my
first visit to Rome, she vanished for a half year. And after she left me
in Naples, I returned to Venice without her, angrily leaving her to find
her way back to Veneto on her own, which she did. Of course it was
the countryside that drew her, the forest or the mountains, or islands
on which no human beings lived. And she would return in such a
tattered state-her shoes worn out, her clothes ripped, her hair in

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hopeless tangles-that she was every bit as frightening to look at as the
ragged members of the old Paris coven had been. Then she'd walk
about my rooms in her dirty neglected garments staring at the cracks
in the plaster or the light caught in the distortions of the handblown
window glass. Why should immortals pore over newspapers, she
would ask, or dwell in palaces? Or carry gold in their pockets? Or
write letters to a mortal family left behind? In this eerie, rapid
undertone she'd speak of cliffs she had climbed, the drifts of snow
through which she had tumbled, the caves full of mysterious markings
and ancient fossils that she had found. Then she would go as silently
as she'd come, and I would be left watching for her and waiting for
her-and bitter and angry at her, and resenting her when she finally
came back. One night during our first visit to Verona, she startled me
in a dark street.
  "Is your father still alive? " she asked. Two months she'd been gone
that time. I'd missed her bitterly, and there she was asking about them
as if they mattered finally. Yet when I answered,
  "yes, and very ill, " she seemed not to hear. I tried to tell her then
that things in France were bleak indeed. There would surely be a
revolution. She shook her head and waved it all away.
  "Don't think about them anymore, " she said. "Forget them. " And
once again, she was gone. The truth was, I didn't want to forget them.
I never stopped writing to Roger for news of my family. I wrote to
him more often than I wrote to Eleni at the theater. I'd sent for
portraits of my nieces and nephews. I sent presents back to France
from every place in which I stopped. And I did worry about the
revolution, as any mortal Frenchman might. And finally, as Gabrielle's
absences grew longer and our times together more strained and
uncertain, I started to argue with her about these things.
  "Time will take our family, " I said. "Time will take the France we
knew. So why should I give them up now while I can still have them?
I need these things, I tell you. This is what life is to me! " But this was
only the half of it. I didn't have her any more than I had the others.
She must have known what I was really saying. She must have heard
the recrimination behind it all. Little speeches like this saddened her.
They brought out the tenderness in her. She'd let me get clean clothes
for her, comb out her hair. And after that we'd hunt together and talk
together. Maybe she would even go to the casinos with me, or to the
opera. She'd be a great and beautiful lady for a little while. And those
moments still held us together. They perpetuated our belief that we
were still a little coven, a pair of lovers, prevailing against the mortal
world. Gathered by the fire in some country villa, riding together on

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the driver's seat of the coach as I held the reins, walking together
through the midnight forest, we still exchanged our various
observations now and then. We even went in search of haunted
houses together-a newfound pastime that excited us both. In fact,
Gabrielle would sometimes return from one of her journeys precisely
because she had heard of a ghostly visitation and she wanted me to go
with her to see what we could. Of course, most of the time we found
nothing in the empty buildings where spirits were supposed to appear.
And those wretched persons supposed to be possessed by the devil
were often no more than commonly insane. Yet there were times
when we saw fleeting apparitions or mayhem that we couldn't explain-
objects flung about, voices roaring from the mouths of possessed
children, icy currents that blew out the candles in a locked room. But
we never learned anything from all this. We saw no more than a
hundred mortal scholars had already described. It was just a game to
us finally. And when I look back on it now, I know we went on with it
because it kept us together gave us convivial moments which otherwise
we would not have had. But Gabrielle's absences weren't the only
thing destroying our affection for each other as the years passed. It
was her manner when she was with me-the ideas she would put forth.
She still had that habit of speaking exactly what was on her mind and
little more. One night in our little house in the Via Ghibellina in
Florence, she appeared after a month's absence and started to expound
at once.
  "You know the creatures of the night are ripe for a great leader, " she
said. "Not some superstitious mumbler of old rites, but a great dark
monarch who will galvanize us according to new principles. "
  "What principles? " I asked. Ignoring the question, she went on.
  "Imagine, " she said, "not merely this stealthy and loathsome feeding
on mortals, but something grand as the Tower of Babel was grand
before it was brought down by the wrath off God. I mean a leader set
up in a Satanic palace who sends out his followers to turn brother
against brother, to cause mothers to kill their children, to put all the
fine accomplishments of mankind to the torch, to scorch the land itself
so that all would die of hunger, innocent and guilty! Make suffering
and chaos wherever you turn, and strike down the forces of good so
that men despair. Now that is something worthy of being called evil.
That is what the work of a devil really is. We are nothing, you and I,
except exotica in the Savage Garden, as you told me. And the world of
men is no more or less now than what I saw in my books in the
Auvergne years ago. " I hated this conversation. And yet I was glad
she was in the room with me, that I was speaking to somebody other

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than a poor deceived mortal. That I wasn't alone with my letters from
home.
  "But what about your aesthetic questions? " I asked. "What you
explained to Armand before, that you wanted to know why beauty
existed and why it continues to affect us? " She shrugged.
  "When the world of man collapses in ruin, beauty will take over. The
trees shall grow again where there were streets; the flowers will again
cover the meadow that is now a dank field of hovels. That shall be the
purpose of the Satanic master, to see the wild grass and the dense
forest cover up all trace of the once great cities until nothing remains.
"
  "And why call all this Satanic? " I asked. "Why not call it chaos?
That is all it would be. "
  "Because, " she said, "that is what men would call it. They invented
Satan, didn't they? Satanic is merely the name they give to the
behavior of those who would disrupt the orderly way in which men
want to live. "
  "I don't see it. "
  "Well, use your preternatural brain, my blue-eyed one, " she
answered, "my golden-haired son, my handsome wolfkiller. It is very
possible that God made the world as Armand said. "
  "This is what you discovered in the forest? You were told this by the
leaves? " She laughed at me.
  "Of course, God is not necessarily anthropomorphic, " she said. "Or
what we would call, in our colossal egotism and sentimentality, `a
decent person.' But there is probably God. Satan, however, was man's
invention, a name for the force that seeks to overthrow the civilized
order of things. The first man who made laws-be he Moses or some
ancient Egyptian king Osiris- that lawmaker created the devil. The
devil meant the one who tempts you to break the laws. And we are
truly Satanic in that we follow no law for man's protection. So why
not truly disrupt? Why not make a blaze of evil to consume all the
civilizations of the earth? " I was too appalled to answer.
  "Don't worry. " She laughed. "I won't do it. But I wonder what will
happen in the decades to come. Will not somebody do it? "
  "I hope not! " I said. "Or let me put it this way. If one of us tries,
then there shall be war. "
  "Why? Everyone will follow him. "
  "I will not. I will make the war. "
  "Oh, you are too amusing, Lestat, " she said.
  "It's petty, " I said.


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  "Petty! " She had looked away, out into the courtyard, but she
looked back and the color rose in her face. "To topple all the cities of
the earth? I understood when you called the Theater of the Vampires
petty, but now you are contradicting yourself. "
  "It is petty to destroy anything merely for the sake of the destroying,
don't you think? "
  "You're impossible, " she said. "Sometime in the far future there may
be such a leader. He will reduce man to the nakedness and fear from
which he came. And we shall feed upon him effortlessly as we have
always done, and the Savage Garden, as you call it, will cover the
world. "
  "I almost hope someone does attempt it, " I said. "Because I would
rise up against him and do everything to defeat him. And possibly I
could be saved, I could be good again in my own eyes, as I set out to
save man from this. " I was very angry. I'd left my chair and walked
out into the courtyard. She came right behind me.
  "You have just given the oldest argument in Christendom for the
existence of evil, " she said.
  "It exists so that we may fight it and do good. "
  "How dreary and stupid, " I said.
  "What I don't understand about you is this, " she said. "You hold to
your old belief in goodness with a tenacity that is virtually unshakable.
Yet you are so good at being what you are! You hunt your victims like
a dark angel. You kill ruthlessly. You feast all the night long on
victims when you choose. "
  "So? " I looked at her coldly. "I don't know how to be bad at being
bad. " She laughed.
  "I was a good marksman when I was a young man, " I said, "a good
actor on the stage. And now I am a good vampire. So much for our
understanding of the word `good. "' After she had gone, I lay on my
back on the flagstones in the courtyard and looked up at the stars,
thinking of all the paintings and the sculptures that I had seen merely
in the single city of Florence. I knew that I hated places where there
are only towering trees, and the softest and sweetest music to me was
the sound of human voices. But what did it matter really what I
thought or felt? But she didn't always bludgeon me with strange
philosophy. Now and then when she appeared, she spoke of the
practical things she'd learned. She was actually braver and more
adventurous than I was. She taught me things. We could sleep in the
earth, she had ascertained that before we ever left France. Coffins and
graves did not matter. And she would find herself rising naturally out
of the earth at sunset even before she was awake. And those mortals

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who did find us during the daylight hours, unless they exposed us to
the sun at once, were doomed. For example, outside Palermo she had
slept in a cellar far below an abandoned house, and when she had
awakened, her eyes and face were burning as if they had been scalded,
and she had in her right hand a mortal, quite dead, who had
apparently attempted to disturb her rest.
  "He was strangled, " she said, "and my hand was still locked on his
throat. And my face had been burned by the little light that leaked
down from the opened door. "
  "What if there had been several mortals? " I asked, vaguely
enchanted with her. She shook her head and shrugged. She always
slept in the earth now, not in cellars or coffins. No one would ever
disturb her rest again. It did not matter to her. I did not say so, but I
believed there was a grace in sleeping in the crypt. There was a
romance to rising from the grave. I was in fact going to the very
opposite extreme in that I had coffins made for myself in places where
we lingered, and I slept not in the graveyard or the church, as was our
most common custom, but in hiding places within the house. I can't
say that she didn't sometimes patiently listen to me when I told her
these things. She listened when I described to her the great works of
art I had seen in the Vatican museum, or the chorus I had heard in the
cathedral, or the dreams I had in the last hour before rising, dreams
that seemed to be sparked by the thoughts of mortals passing my lair.
But maybe she was watching my lips move. Who could possibly tell?
And then she was gone again without explanation, and I walked the
streets alone, whispering aloud to Marius and writing to him the long,
long messages that took the whole night sometimes to complete.
What did I want of her, that she be more human, that she be like me?
Armand's predictions obsessed me. And how could she not think of
them? She must have known what was happening, that we were
growing ever farther apart, that my heart was breaking and I had too
much pride to say it to her.
  "Please, Gabrielle, I cannot endure the loneliness! Stay with me. " By
the time we left Italy I was playing dangerous little games with mortals.
I'd see a man, or a woman-a human being who looked perfect to me
spiritually- and I would follow the human about. Maybe for a week
I'd do this, then a month, sometimes even longer than that. I'd fall in
love with the being. I'd imagine friendship, conversation, intimacy
that we could never have. In some magical and imaginary moment I
would say: "But you see what I am, " and this human being, in
supreme spiritual understanding, would say: "Yes, I see. I understand.
" Nonsense, really. Very like the fairy tale where the princess gives her

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selfless love to the prince who is enchanted and he is himself again and
the monster no more. Only in this dark fairy tale I would pass right
into my mortal lover. We would become one being, and I would
beflesh and blood again. Lovely idea, that. Only I began to think
more and more of Armand's warnings, that I'd work the Dark Trick
again for the same reasons I'd done it before. And I stopped playing
the game altogether. I merely went hunting with all the old vengeance
and cruelty, and it wasn't merely the evildoer I brought down. In the
city of Athens I wrote the following message to Marius:
  "I do not know why I go on. I do not search for truth. I do not
believe in it. I hope for no ancient secrets from you, whatever they
may be. But I believe in something. Maybe simply in the beauty of the
world through which I wander or in the will to live itself. This gift was
given to me too early. It was given for no good reason. And already at
the age of thirty mortal years, I have some understanding as to why so
many of our kind have wasted it, given it up. Yet I continue. And I
search for you. " How long I could have wandered through Europe
and Asia in this fashion I do not know. For all my complaints about
loneliness, I was used to it all. And there were new cities as there were
new victims, new languages, and new music to hear. No matter what
my pain, I fixed my mind on a new destination. I wanted to know all
the cities of the earth, finally, even the far-off capitals of India and
China, where the simplest objects would seem alien and the minds I
pierced as strange as those of creatures from another world. . But as
we went south from Istanbul into Asia Minor, Gabrielle felt the allure
of the new and strange land even more strongly, so that she was
scarcely ever at my side. And things were reaching a horrid climax in
France, not merely with the mortal world I still grieved for, but with
the vampires of the theater as well.

  3

  Before I ever left Greece, I'd been hearing disturbing news from
English and French travelers of the troubles at home. And when I
reached the European hostelry in Ankara there was a large packet of
letters waiting for me. Roget had moved all of my money out of
France, and into foreign banks. "You must not consider returning to
Paris, " he wrote. "I have advised your father and your brothers to
keep out of all controversy. It is not the climate for monarchists here.
" Eleni's letters spoke in their own way of the same things: Audiences
want to see the aristocracy made fools of. Our little play featuring a
clumsy queen puppet, who is trampled mercilessly by the mindless

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troop of puppet soldiers whom she seeks to command, draws loud
laughter and screams. The clergy is also ripe for derision: In another
little drama we have a bumptious priest come to chastise a group of
dancing-girl marionettes for their indecent conduct. But alas, their
dancing master, who is in fact a redhorned devil, turns the unfortunate
cleric into a werewolf who ends his days kept by the laughing girls in a
golden cage. All this is the genius of Our Divine Violinist, but we must
now be with him every waking moment. To force him to write we tie
him to the chair. We put ink and paper in front of him. And if this
fails, we make him dictate as we write down the plays. In the streets he
would accost the passers-by and tell them passionately there are
horrors in this world of which they do not dream. And I assure you, if
Paris were not so busy reading pamphlets that denounce Queen Marie
Antoinette, he might have undone us all by now. Our Oldest Friend
becomes more angry with every passing night. Of course I wrote to
her at once, begging her to be patient with Nicki, to try to help him
through these first years. "Surely he can be influenced, " I said. And
for the first time I asked: "Would I have the power to alter things if I
were to return? " I stared at the words for a long time before signing
my name. My hands were trembling. Then I sealed the letter and
posted it at once. How could I go back? Lonely as I was, I couldn't
bear the thought of returning to Paris, of seeing that little theater
again. And what would I do for Nicolas when I got there? Armand's
long-ago admonition was a din in my ears. In fact, it seemed no
matter where I was that Armand and Nicki were both with me,
Armand full of grim warnings and predictions, and Nicolas taunting
me with the little miracle of love turned into hate. I had never needed
Gabrielle as I did now. But she had gone ahead on our journey long
ago. Now and then I remembered the way it had been before we ever
left Paris. But I didn't expect anything from her anymore. At
Damascus, Eleni's answer was waiting for me. He despises you as
much as ever. When we suggest that perhaps he should go to you, he
laughs and laughs. I tell you these things not to haunt you but to let
you know that we do our utmost to protect this child who should
never have been Born to Darkness. He is overwhelmed by his powers,
dazzled and maddened by his vision. We have seen it all and its sorry
finish before. Yet he has written his greatest play this last month. The
marionette dancers, sans strings for this one, are, in the flower of their
youth, struck down by a pestilence and laid beneath tombstones and
flower wreaths to rest. The priest weeps over them before he goes
away. But a young violinist magician comes to the cemetery. And by
means of his music makes them rise. As vampires dressed all in black

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silk ruffles and black satin ribbons, they come out of the graves,
dancing merrily as they follow the violinist towards Paris, a beautifully
rendered painting on the scrim. The crowd positively roars. I tell you
we could feast on mortal victims on the stage and the Parisians,
thinking it all the most novel illusion, would only cheer. There was
also a frightening letter from Roget: Paris was in the grip of
revolutionary madness. King Louis had been forced to recognize the
National Assembly. The people of all classes were uniting against him
as never before. Roget had sent a messenger south to see my family
and try to determine the revolutionary mood in the countryside for
himself. I answered both letters with all the predictable concern and
all the predictable feeling of helplessness. But as I sent my belongings
on to Cairo, I had the dread that all those things upon which I
depended were in danger. Outwardly, I was unchanged as I continued
my masquerade as the traveling gentleman; inwardly the demon
hunter of the crooked back streets was silently and secretly lost. Of
course I told myself that it was important to go south to Egypt, that
Egypt was a land of ancient grandeur and timeless marvels, that Egypt
would enchant me and make me forget the things happening in Paris
which I was powerless to change. But there was a connection in my
mind. Egypt, more than any other land the world over, was a place in
love with death. Finally Gabrielle came like a spirit out of the Arabian
desert, and together we set sail. It was almost a month before we
reached Cairo, and when I found my belongings waiting for me in the
European hostelry there was a strange package there. I recognized
Eleni's writing immediately, but I could not think why she would send
me a package and I stared at the thing for a full quarter of an hour, my
mind as blank as it had ever been. There was not a word from Roget.
Why hasn't Roget written to me, I thought. What is this package?
Why is it here? At last I realized that for an hour I had been sitting in a
room with a lot of trunks and packing cases and staring at a package
and that Gabrielle, who had not seen fit to vanish yet, was merely
watching me.
  "Would you go out? " I whispered.
  "If you wish, " she said. It was important to open this, yes, to open it
and find out what it was. Yet it seemed just as important for me to
look around the barren little room and imagine that it was a room in a
village inn in the Auvergne.
  "I had a dream about you, " I said aloud, glancing at the package. "I
dreamed that we were moving through the world together, you and I,
and we were both serene and strong. I dreamed we fed on the evildoer
as Marius had done, and as we looked about ourselves we felt awe and

                                                                       257

sorrow at the mysteries we beheld. But we were strong. We would go
on forever. And we talked. `Our conversation' went on and on. " I
tore back the wrapping and saw the case of the Stradivarius violin. I
went to say something again, just to myself, but my throat closed. And
my mind couldn't carry out the words on its own. I reached for the
letter which had slipped to one side over the polished wood.

  It has come to the worst, as I feared. Our Oldest Friend, maddened
by the excesses of Our Violinist, finally imprisoned him in your old
residence. And though his violin was given him in his cell, his hands
were taken away. But understand that with us, such appendages can
always be restored. And the appendages in question were kept safe by
Our Oldest Friend, who allowed our wounded one no sustenance for
rave nights. Finally, after the entire troupe had prevailed upon Our
Oldest Friend to release N. and give back to him all that was his, it was
done. But N., maddened by the pain and the starvation, for this can
alter the temperament completely, slipped into unbreakable silence
and remained so for a considerable length of time. At last he came to
us and spoke only to tell us that in the manner of a mortal he had put
in order his business affairs. A stack of freshly written plays was ours
to have. And we must call together for him somewhere in the
countryside the ancient Sabbat with its customary blaze. If we did not,
then he would make the theater his funeral pyre. Our Oldest Friend
solemnly granted his wish and you have never seen such a Sabbat as
this, for I think we looked all the more hellish in our wigs and fine
clothes, our black ruffled vampire dancing costumes, forming the old
circle, singing with an actor's bravado the old chants.
  "We should have done it on the boulevard, " he said. "But here, send
this on to my maker, " and he put the violin in my hands. We began
to dance, all of us, to induce the customary frenzy, and I think we were
never more moved, never more in terror, never more sad. He went
into the flames. I know how this news will affect you. But understand
we did all that we could to prevent what occurred. Our Oldest Friend
was bitter and grieved. And I think you should know that when we
returned to Paris, we discovered that N. had ordered the theater to be
named officially the Theater of the Vampires and these words had
already been painted on the front. As his best plays have always
included vampires and werewolves and other such supernatural
creatures, the public thinks the new title very amusing, and no one has
moved to change it. It is merely clever in the Paris of these times.



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  Hours later when I finally went down the stairs into the street, I saw
a pale and lovely ghost in the shadows-image of the young French
explorer in soiled white linen and brown leather boots, straw hat down
over the eyes. I knew who she was, of course, and that we had once
loved each other, she and I, but it seemed for the moment to be
something I could scarce remember, or truly believe. I think I wanted
to say something mean to her, to wound her and drive her away. But
when she came up beside me and walked with me, I didn't say
anything. I merely gave the letter to her so that we didn't have to talk.
And she read it and put it away, and then she had her arm around me
again the way she used to long ago, and we were walking together
through the black streets. Smell of death and cooking fires, of sand
and camel dung. Egypt smell. Smell of a place that has been the same
for six thousand years.
  "What can I do for you, my darling? " she whispered. "Nothing, " I
said. It was I who did it, I who seduced him, made him what he was,
and left him there. It was I who subverted the path his life might have
taken. And so in dark obscurity, removed from its human course, it
comes to this. Later she stood silent as I wrote my message to Marius
on an ancient temple wall. I told about the end of Nicolas, the
violinist of the Theater of the Vampires, and I carved my words deep
as any ancient Egyptian craftsman might have done. Epitaph for
Nicki, a milestone in oblivion, which none might ever read or
understand. It was strange to have her there. Strange to have her
staying with me hour by hour.
  "You won't go back to France, will you? " she asked me finally. "You
won't go back on account of what he's done? "
  "The hands? " I asked her. "The cutting off of the hands? " She
looked at me and her face smoothed out as if some shock had robbed
it of expression. But she knew. She had read the letter. What shocked
her? The way I said it perhaps.
  "You thought I would go back to get revenge? " She nodded
uncertainly. She didn't want to put the idea in my head.
  "How could I do that? " I said. "It would be hypocrisy, wouldn't it,
when I left Nicolas there counting on them all to do whatever had to
be done? " The changes in her face were too subtle to describe. I
didn't like to see her feel so much. It wasn't like her.
  "The fact is, the little monster was trying to help when he did it, don't
you think, when he cut off the hands. It must have been a lot of
trouble to him, really, when he could have burnt up Nicki so easily
without a backward glance. " She nodded, but she looked miserable,


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and as luck would have it, beautiful, too. "I rather thought so, " she
said. "But I didn't think you would agree. "
  "Oh, I'm monster enough to understand it, " I said. "Do you
remember what you told me years ago, before we ever left home? You
said it the very day that he came up the mountain with the merchants
to give me the red cloak. You said that his father was so angry with
him for his violin playing that he was threatening to break his hands.
Do you think we find our destiny somehow, no matter what happens?
I mean, do you think that even as immortals we follow some path that
was already marked for us when we were alive? Imagine it, the coven
master cut off his hands. " It was clear in the nights that followed that
she didn't want to leave me alone. And I sensed that she would have
stayed on account of Nicki's death, no matter where we were. But it
made a difference that we were in Egypt. It helped that she loved these
ruins and these monuments as she had loved none before. Maybe
people had to be dead six thousand years for her to love them. I
thought of saying that to her, teasing her with it a little, but the
thought merely came and went. These monuments were as old as the
mountains she loved. The Nile had coursed through the imagination
of man since the dawn of recorded time. We scaled the pyramids
together, we climbed into the arms of the giant Sphinx. We pored
over inscriptions of ancient stone fragments. We studied the
mummies one could buy from thieves for a pittance, bits of old
jewelry, pottery, glass. We let the water of the river move through our
fingers, and we hunted the tiny streets of Cairo together, and we went
into the brothels to sit back on the pillows and watch the boys dance
and hear the musicians play a heated erotic music that drowned out
for a little while the sound of a violin that was always in my head. I
found myself rising and dancing wildly to these exotic sounds,
imitating the undulations of those who urged me on, as I lost all sense
of time or reason in the wail of the horns, the strumming of the lutes.
Gabrielle sat still, smiling, with the brim of her soiled white straw hat
over her eyes. We did not talk to each other anymore. She was just
some pale and feline beauty, cheek smudged with dirt, who drifted
through the endless night at my side. Her coat cinched by a thick
leather belt, her hair in a braid down her back, she walked with a
queen's posture and a vampire's languor, the curve of her cheek
luminous in the darkness, her small mouth a blur of rose red. Lovely
and soon to be gone again, no doubt. Yet she remained with me even
when I leased a lavish little dwelling, once the house of a Mameluke
lord, with gorgeously tiled floors and elaborate tentwork hanging from
its ceilings. She even helped me fill the courtyard with bougainvillea

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and palms and every kind of tropical plant until it was a verdant little
jungle. She brought in the caged parrots and finches and brilliant
canaries herself. She even nodded now and then sympathetically when
I murmured there were no letters from Paris, and I was frantic for
news. Why hadn't Roget written to me? Had Paris erupted into riots
and mayhem? Well, it would never touch my distant provincial
family, would it? But had something happened to Roget? Why didn't
he write? She asked me to go upriver with her. I wanted to wait for
letters, to question the English travelers. But I agreed. After all, it was
rather remarkable really that she wanted me to come with her. She
was caring for me in her own way. I knew she'd taken to dressing in
fresh white linen frock coats and breeches only to please me. For me,
she brushed out her long hair. But it did not matter at all. I was
sinking. I could feel it. I was drifting through the world as if it were a
dream. It seemed very natural and reasonable that around me I
should see a landscape that looked exactly as it had thousands of years
ago when artists painted it on the walls of royal tombs. Natural that
the palm trees in the moonlight should look exactly as they looked
then. Natural that the peasant should draw his water from the river in
the same manner as he had done then. And the cows he watered were
the same too. Visions of the world when the world had been new.
Had Marius ever stood in these sands? We wandered through the
giant temple of Ramses, enchanted by the millions upon millions of
tiny pictures cut into the walls. I kept thinking of Osiris, but the little
figures were strangers. We prowled the ruins of Luxor. We lay in the
riverboat together under the stars. On our way back to Cairo when we
came to the great Colossi of Memnon, she told me in a passionate
whisper how Roman emperors had journeyed to marvel at these
statues just as we did now.
  "They were ancient in the times of the Caesars, " she said, as we rode
our camels through the cool sands. The wind was not so bad as it
could have been on this night. We could see the immense stone
figures clearly against the deep blue sky. Faces blasted away, they
seemed nevertheless to stare forward, mute witnesses to the passage of
time, whose stillness made me sad and afraid. I felt the same wonder I
had known before the pyramids. Ancient gods, ancient mysteries. It
made the chills rise. And yet what were these figures now but faceless
sentinels, rulers of an endless waste?
  "Marius, " I whispered to myself. "Have you seen these? Will any
one of us endure so long? " But my reverie was broken by Gabrielle.
She wanted to dismount and walk the rest of the way to the statues. I
was game for it, though I didn't really know what to do with the big

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smelly stubborn camels, how to make them kneel down and all that.
She did it. And she left them waiting for us, and we walked through
the sand.
  "Come with me into Africa, into the jungles, " she said. Her face was
grave, her voice unusually soft. I didn't answer for a moment.
Something in her manner alarmed me. Or at least it seemed I should
have been alarmed. I should have heard a sound as sharp as the
morning chime of Hell's Bells. I didn't want to go into the jungles of
Africa. And she knew I didn't. I was anxiously awaiting news of my
family from Roget, and I had it in my mind to seek the cities of the
Orient, to wander through India into China and on to Japan.
  "I understand the existence you've chosen, " she said. "And I've
come to admire the perseverance with which you pursue it, you must
know that. "
  "I might say the same of you, " I said a little bitterly. She stopped.
We were as near to the colossal statues as one should get, I suppose.
And the only thing that saved them from overwhelming me was that
there was nothing near at hand to put them in scale. The sky overhead
was as immense as they were, and the sands endless, and the stars
countless and brilliant and rising forever overhead.
  "Lestat, " she said slowly, measuring her words, "I am asking you to
try, only once, to move through the world as I do. " The moon shone
full on her, but the hat shadowed her small angular white face.
  "Forget the house in Cairo, " she said suddenly, dropping her voice as
if in respect for the importance of what she said.

  "Abandon all your valuables, your clothes, the things that link you
with civilization. Come south with me, up the river into Africa.
Travel with me as I travel. " Still I didn't answer. My heart was
pounding. She murmured softly under her breath that we would see
the secret tribes of Africa unknown to the world. We would fight the
crocodile and the lion with our bare hands. We might find the source
of the Nile itself. I began to tremble all over. It was as if the night were
full of howling winds. And there was no place to go. You are saying
you will leave me forever if I don't come. Isn't that it? I looked up at
these horrific statues. I think I said:
  "So it comes to this. " And this was why she had stayed close to me,
this was why she had done so many little things to please, this was why
we were together now. It had nothing to do with Nicki gone into
eternity. It was another parting that concerned her now. She shook
her head as if communing with herself, debating on how to go on. In a


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hushed voice she described to me the heat of tropical nights, wetter,
sweeter than this heat.
  "Come with me, Lestat, " she said. "By day I sleep in the sand. By
night I am on the wing as if I could truly fly. I need no name. I leave
no footprints. I want to go down to the very tip of Africa. I will be a
goddess to those I slay. " She approached and slipped her arm about
my shoulder and pressed her lips to my cheek, and I saw the deep
glitter of her eyes beneath the brim of her hat. And the moonlight
icing her mouth. I heard myself sigh. I shook my head.
  "I can't and you know it, " I said. "I can't do it any more than you
can stay with me. " All the way back to Cairo, I thought on it, what
had come to me in those painful moments. What I had known but
not said as we stood before the Colossi of Memnon in the sand. She
was already lost to me! She had been for years. I had known it when I
came down the stairs from the room in which I grieved for Nicki and I
had seen her waiting for me. It had all been said in one form or
another in the crypt beneath the tower years ago. She could not give
me what I wanted of her. There was nothing I could do to make her
what she would not be. And the truly terrible part was this: she really
didn't want anything of me! She was asking me to come because she
felt the obligation to do so. Pity, sadness-maybe those were also
reasons. But what she really wanted was to be free. She stayed with
me as we returned to the city. She did and said nothing. And I was
sinking even lower, silent, stunned, knowing that another dreadful
blow would soon fall. There was the clarity and the horror. She will
say her farewell, and I can't prevent it. When do I start to lose my
senses? When do I begin to cry uncontrollably? Not now. As we
lighted the lamps of the little house, the colors assaulted me-Persian
carpets covered with delicate flowers, the tentwork woven with a
million tiny mirrors, the brilliant plumage of the fluttering birds. I
looked for a packet from Roget but there was none, and I became
angry suddenly. Surely he would have written by now. I had to know
what was going on in Paris! Then I became afraid.
  "What the hell is happening in France? " I murmured. "I'll have to
go and find other Europeans. The British, they always have
information. They drag their damned Indian tea and their London
Times with them wherever they go. " I was infuriated to see her
standing there so still. It was as if something were happening in the
room-that awful sense of tension and anticipation that I'd known in
the crypt before .Armand told us his long tale. But nothing was
happening, only that she was about to leave me forever. She was about


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to slip into time forever. And how would we ever find each other
again!
  "Damn it, " I said. "I expected a letter. " No servants. They hadn't
known when we would be back. I wanted to send someone to hire
musicians. I had just fed, and I was warm and I told myself that I
wanted to dance. She broke her stillness suddenly. She started to
move in a rather deliberate way. With uncommon directness she went
into the courtyard. I watched her kneel down by the pond. There she
lifted two blocks of paving, and she took out a packet and brushed the
sandy earth off it, and she brought it to me. Even before she brought it
into the light I saw it was from Roget. This had come before we had
ever gone up the Nile, and she had hidden it!
  "But why did you do this! " I said. I was in a fury. I snatched the
package from her and put it down on the desk. I was staring at her
and hating her, hating her as never before. Not even in the egotism of
childhood had I hated her as I did now!
  "Why did you hide this from me! " I said.
  "Because I wanted one chance! " she whispered. Her chin was
trembling. Her lower lip quivered and I saw the blood tears. "But
without this even, " she said, "you have made your choice. " I reached
down and tore the packet apart. The letter slipped out of it, along with
folded clippings from an English paper. I unraveled the letter, my
hands shaking, and I started to read:

  Monsieur, As you must know by now, on July 14, the mobs of Paris
attacked the Bastille. The city is in chaos. There have been riots all
over France. For months I have sought in vain to reach your people,
to get them out of the country safely if I could. But on Monday last I
received the word that the peasants and tenant farmers had risen
against your father's house. Your brothers, their wives and children,
and all who tried to defend the castle were slain before it was looted.
Only your father escaped. Loyal servants managed to conceal him
during the siege and later to get him to the coast. He is, on this very
day, in the city of New Orleans in the former French colony of
Louisiana. And he begs you to come to his aid. He is grief-stricken
and among strangers. He begs for you to come.

  There was more. Apologies, assurances, particulars . . . it ceased to
make sense. I put the letter down on the desk. I stared at the wood
and the pool of light made by the lamp.
  "Don't go to him, " she said. Her voice was small and insignificant in
the silence. But the silence was like an immense scream.

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  "Don't go to him, " she said again. The tears streaked her face like
clown paint, two long streams of red coming from her eyes.
  "Get out, " I whispered. The word trailed off and suddenly my voice
swelled again. "Get out, " I said. And again my voice didn't stop. It
merely went on until I said the words again with shattering violence:
"GET OUT! "

  4

  I dreamed a dream of family. We were all embracing one another.
Even Gabrielle in a velvet gown was there. The castle was blackened,
all burnt up. The treasures I had deposited were melted or turned into
ashes. It always comes back to ashes. But is the old quote actually
ashes to ashes or dust to dust? Didn't matter. I had gone back and
made them all into vampires, and there we were, the House de
Lioncourt, whitefaced beauties even to the bloodsucking baby that lay
in the cradle and the mother who bent to give it the wriggling
longtailed gray rat upon which it was to feed. We laughed and we
kissed one another as we walked through the ashes, my white brothers,
their white wives, the ghostly children chattering together about
victims, my blind father, who like a biblical figure had risen, crying:
  "I CAN SEE! " My oldest brother put his arm around me. He looked
marvelous in decent clothes. I'd never seen him look so good, and the
vampiric blood had made him so spare and so spiritual in expression.
  "You know it's a damn good thing you came when you did with all
the Dark Gifts. " He laughed cheerfully.
  "The Dark Tricks, dear, the Dark Tricks, " said his wife.
  "Because if you hadn't, " he continued, "why, we'd all be dead! "

  5

  The house was empty. The trunks had been sent on. The ship would
leave Alexandria in two nights. Only a small valise remained with me.
On shipboard the son of the Marquis must now and then change his
clothes. And, of course, the violin. Gabrielle stood by the archway to
the garden, slender, longlegged, beautifully angular in her white cotton
garments, the hat on as always, her hair loose. Was that for me, the
long loose hair? My grief was rising, a tide that included all the losses,
the dead and the undead. But it went away and the sense of sinking
returned, the sense of the dream in which we navigate with or without
will. It struck me that her hair might have been described as a shower
of gold, that all the old poetry makes sense when you look at one

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whom you have loved. Lovely the angles of her face, her implacable
little mouth.
  "Tell me what you need of me, Mother, " I said quietly. Civilized this
room. Desk. Lamp. Chair. All my brilliantly colored birds given
away, probably for sale in the bazaar. Gray African parrots that live to
be as old as men. Nicki had lived to be thirty.
  "Do you require money from me? " Great beautiful flush to her face,
eyes a flash of moving light-blue and violet. For a moment she looked
human. We might as well have been standing in her room at home.
Books, the damp walls, the fire. Was she human then? The brim of
the hat covered her face completely for an instant as she bowed her
head. Inexplicably she asked:
  "But where will you go? "
  "To a little house in the race Dumaine in the old French city of New
Orleans, " I answered coldly, precisely. "And after he has died and is at
rest, I haven't the slightest idea. "
  "You can't mean this, " she said.
  "I am booked on the next ship out of Alexandria, " I said.
  "I will go to Naples, then on to Barcelona. I will leave from Lisbon
for the New World. " Her face seemed to narrow, her features to
sharpen. Her lips moved just a little but she didn't say anything. And
then I saw the tears rising in her eyes, and I felt her emotion as if it
were reaching out to touch me. I looked away, busied myself with
something on the desk, then simply held my hands very still so they
wouldn't tremble. I thought, I am glad Nicki took his hands with him
into the fire, because if he had not, I would have to go back to Paris
and get them before I could go on.
  "But you can't be going to him! " she whispered. Him? Oh. My
father.
  "What does it matter? I am going! " I said. She moved her head just
a little in a negative gesture. She came near to the desk. Her step was
lighter than Armand's.
  "Has any of our kind ever made such a crossing? " she asked under
her breath.
  "Not that I know of. In Rome they said no. "
  "Perhaps it can't be done, this crossing. "
  "It can be done. You know it can. " We had sailed the seas before in
our cork-lined coffins. Pity the leviathan who troubles me. She came
even nearer and looked down at me. And the pain in her face couldn't
be concealed anymore. Ravishing she was. Why had I ever dressed her
in ball gowns or plumed hats or pearls?


                                                                        266

  "You know where to reach me, " I said, but the bitterness of my tone
had no conviction to it.
  "The addresses of my banks in London and Rome. Those banks have
lived as long as vampires already. They will always be there. You
know all this, you've always known... "
  "Stop, " she said under her breath. "Don't say these things to me. "
What a lie all this was, what a travesty. It was just the kind of exchange
she had always detested, the kind of talk she could never make herself.
In my wildest imaginings, I had never expected it to be like this-that I
should say cold things, that she should cry. I thought I would bawl
when she said she was going. I thought I would throw myself at her
very feet. We looked at each other for a long moment, her eyes tinged
with red, her mouth almost quivering. And then I lost my control. I
rose and I went to her, and I gathered her small, delicate limbs in my
arms. I determined not to let her go, no matter how she struggled.
But she didn't struggle, and we both cried almost silently as if we
couldn't make ourselves stop. But she didn't yield to me. She didn't
melt in my embrace. And then she drew back. She stroked my hair
with both her hands, and leant forward and kissed me on the lips, and
then moved away lightly and soundlessly.
  "All right, then, my darling, " she said. I shook my head. Words and
words and words unspoken. She had no use for them, and never had.
In her slow, languid way, hips moving gracefully, she went to the door
to the garden and looked up at the night sky before she looked back at
me.
  "You must promise me something, " she said finally. Bold young
Frenchman who moved with the grace of an Arab through places in a
hundred cities where only an alleycat could safely pass.
  "Of course, " I answered. But I was so broken in spirit now I didn't
want to talk anymore. The colors dimmed. The night was neither hot
nor cold. I wished she would just go, yet I was terrified of the moment
when that would happen, when I couldn't get her back.
  "Promise me you will never seek to end it, " she said, "without first
being with me, without our coming together again. " For a moment I
was too surprised to answer. Then I said:
  "I will never seek to end it. " I was almost scornful. "So you have my
promise. It's simple enough to give. But what about you giving a
promise to me? That you'll let me know where you go from here,
where I can reach you-that you won't vanish as if you were something
I imagined- " I stopped. There had been a note of urgency in my
voice, of rising hysteria. I couldn't imagine her writing a letter or


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posting it or doing any of the things that mortals habitually did. It was
as if no common nature united us, or ever had.
  "I hope you're right in your estimation of yourself, " she said.
  "I don't believe in anything, Mother, " I said. "You told Armand long
ago that you believe you'll find answers in the great jungles and forests;
that the stars will finally reveal a vast truth. But I don't believe in
anything. And that makes me stronger than you think. "
  "Then why am I so afraid for you? " she asked. Her voice was little
more than a gasp. I think I had to see her lips move in order to hear
her.
  "You sense my loneliness, " I answered, "my bitterness at being shut
out of life. My bitterness that I'm evil, that I don't deserve to be loved
and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself
to mortals. But these things don't stop me, Mother. I'm too strong for
them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being
what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that's
all. "
  "I love you, my son, " she said. I wanted to say something about her
promising, about the agents in Rome, that she would write. I wanted
to say . . .
  "Keep your promise, " she said. And quite suddenly I knew this was
our last moment. I knew it and I could do nothing to change it.
  "Gabrielle! " I whispered. But she was already gone. The room, the
garden outside, the night itself, were silent and still. Some time before
dawn I opened my eyes. I was lying on the floor of the house, and I
had been weeping and then I had slept. I knew I should start for
Alexandria, that I should go as far as I could and then down into the
sand when the sun rose. It would feel so good to sleep in the sandy
earth. I also knew that the garden gate stood open. That all the doors
were unlocked. But I couldn't move. In a cold silent way I imagined
myself looking throughout Cairo for her. Calling her, telling her to
come back. It almost seemed for a moment that I had done it, that,
thoroughly humiliated, I had run after her, and I had tried to tell her
again about destiny: that I had been meant to lose her just as Nicki had
been meant to lose his hands. Somehow we had to subvert the destiny.
We had to triumph after all. Senseless that. And I hadn't run after
her. I'd hunted and I had come back. She was miles from Cairo by
now. And she was as lost from me as a tiny grain of sand in the air.
Finally after a long time I turned my head. Crimson sky over the
garden, crimson light sliding down the far roof. The sun coming-and
the warmth coming and the awakening of a thousand tiny voices all
through the tangled alleyways of Cairo, and a sound that seemed to

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come out of the sand and the trees and the patch of grass themselves.
And very slowly, as I heard these things, as I saw the dazzle of the light
moving on the roof, I realized that a mortal was near. He was standing
in the open gate of the garden, peering at my still form within the
empty house. A young fair-haired European in Arab robes, he was.
Rather handsome. And by the early light he saw me, his fellow
European lying on the tile floor in the abandoned house. I lay staring
at him as he came into the deserted garden, the illumination of the sky
heating my eyes, the tender skin around them starting to burn. Like a
ghost in a white sheet he was in his clean headdress and robe. I knew
that I had to run. I had to get far away immediately and hide myself
from the coming sun. No chance now to go into the crypt beneath the
floor. This mortal was in my lair. There was not time enough even to
kill him and get rid of him, poor unlucky mortal. Yet I didn't move.
And he came nearer, the whole sky flickering behind him, so that his
figure narrowed and became dark.
  "Monsieur! " The solicitous whisper, like the woman years and years
ago in Notre Dame who had tried to help me before I made a victim of
her and her innocent child. "Monsieur, what is it? May I be of help? "
Sunburnt face beneath the folds of the white headdress, golden
eyebrows glinting, eyes gray like my own. I knew I was climbing to my
feet, but I didn't will myself to do it. I knew my lips were curling back
from my teeth. And then I heard a snarl rise out of me and saw the
shock on his face.
  "Look! " I hissed, the fangs coming down over my lower lip. "Do
you see! " And rushing towards him, I grabbed his wrist and forced his
open hand flat against my face.
  "Did you think I was human? " I cried. And then I picked him up,
holding him off his feet before me as he kicked and struggled uselessly.
"Did you think I was your brother? " I shouted. And his mouth
opened with a dry rasping noise, and then he screamed. I hurled him
up into the air and out over the garden, his body spinning round with
arms and legs out before it vanished over the shimmering roof. The
sky was blinding fire. I ran out of the garden gate and into the
alleyway. I ran under tiny archways and through strange streets. I
battered down gates and doorways, and hurled mortals out of my
path. I bore through the very walls in front of me, the dust of the
plaster rising to choke me, and shot out again into the packed mud
alley and the stinking air. And the light came after me like something
chasing me on foot. And when I found a burnt-out house with its
lattices in ruins, I broke into it and went down into the garden soil,
digging deeper and deeper and deeper until I could not move my arms

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or my hands any longer. I was hanging in coolness and in darkness. I
was safe.

  6

  I was dying. Or so I thought. I couldn't count how many nights had
passed. I had to rise and go to Alexandria. I had to get across the sea.
But this meant moving, turning over in the earth, giving in to the
thirst. I wouldn't give in. The thirst came. The thirst went. It was the
rack and the fire, and my brain thirsted as my heart thirsted, and my
heart grew bigger and bigger, and louder and louder, and still I
wouldn't give in. Maybe mortals above could hear my heart. I saw
them now and then, spurts of flame against the darkness, heard their
voices, babble of foreign tongue. But more often I saw only the
darkness. Heard only the darkness. I was finally just the thirst lying in
the earth, with red sleep and red dreams, and the slow knowledge that
I was now too weak to push up through the soft sandy clods, too weak,
conceivably, to turn the wheel again. That's right. I couldn't rise if I
wanted to. I couldn't move at all. I breathed. I went on. But not the
way that mortals breathe. My heart sounded in my ears. Yet I didn't
die. I just wasted. Like those tortured beings in the walls under les
Innocents, deserted metaphors of the misery that is everywhere
unseen, unrecorded, unacknowledged, unused. My hands were claws,
and my flesh was shrunk to the bones, and my eyes bulged from the
sockets. Interesting that we can go on like this forever, that even when
we don't drink, don't surrender to the luscious and fatal pleasure, we
go on. Interesting that is, if each beat of the heart wasn't such agony.
And if I could stop thinking: Nicolas de Lenfent is gone. My brothers
are gone. Pale taste of wine, sound of applause. "But don't you think
it's good what we do when we are there, that we make people happy? "
  "Good? What are you talking about? Good? "
  "That it's good, that it does some good, that there is good in it! Dear
God, even if there is no meaning in this world, surely there can still be
goodness. It's good to eat, to drink, to laugh . . . to be together. . . "
Laughter. That insane music. That din, that dissonance, that never
ending shrill articulation of the meaninglessness . . . Am I awake?
Am I asleep? I am sure of one thing. I am a monster. And because I
lie in torment in the earth, certain human beings move on through the
narrow pass of life unmolested. Gabrielle may be in the jungles of
Africa now. Sometime or other mortals came into the burnt-out
house above, thieves hiding. Too much babble of foreign tongue. But
all I had to do was sink deeper inside myself, withdraw even from the

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cool sand around me not to hear them. Am I really trapped? Stink of
blood above. Maybe they are the last hope, these two camping in the
neglected garden, that the blood will draw me upwards, that it will
make me turn over and stretch out these hideous-they must be- claws.
I will frighten them to death before I even drink. Shameful. I was
always such a beautiful little devil, as the expression goes. Not now.
Now and then, it seems, Nicki and I are engaged in our best
conversations. "I am beyond all pain and sin, " he says to me. "But do
you feel anything? " I ask. "Is that what it means to be free of this, that
you no longer feel? " Not misery, not thirst, not ecstasy? It is
interesting to me in these moments that our concept of heaven is one
of ecstasy. The joys of heaven. That our concept of hell is pain. The
fires of hell. So we don't think it very good not to feel anything, do
we? Can you give it up, Lestat? Or isn't it true that you'd rather fight
the thirst with this hellish torment than die and feel nothing? At least
you have the desire for blood, hot and delicious and filling every
particle of you-blood. How long are these mortals going to be here,
above in my ruined garden? One night, two nights? I left the violin in
the house where I lived. I have to get it, give it to some young mortal
musicians, someone who will... Blessed silence. Except for the playing
of the violin. And Nicki's white fingers stabbing at the strings, and the
bow streaking in the light, and the faces of the immortal marionettes,
half entranced, half amused. One hundred years ago, the people of
Paris would have got him. He wouldn't have had to bum himself. Got
me too maybe. But I doubt it. No, there never would have been any
witches' place for me. He lives on in my mind now. Pious mortal
phrase. And what kind of life is that? I don't like living here myself!
What does it mean to live on in the mind of another? Nothing, I
think. You aren't really there, are you? Cats in the garden. Stink of
cat blood. Thank you, but I would rather suffer, rather dry up like a
husk with teeth.

  7

  There was a sound in the night. What was it like? The giant bass
drum beaten slowly in the street of my childhood village as the Italian
players announced the little drama to be performed from the back of
their painted wagon. The great bass drum that I myself had pounded
through the street of the town during those precious days when I, the
runaway boy, had been one of them. But it was stronger than that.
The booming of a cannon echoing through valleys and mountain
passes? I felt it in my bones. I opened my eyes in the dark, and I knew

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it was drawing nearer. The rhythm of steps, it had, or was it the
rhythm of a heart beating? The world was filled with the sound. It was
a great ominous din that drew closer and closer. And yet some part of
me knew there was no real sound, nothing a mortal ear could hear,
nothing that rattled the china on its shelf or the glass windows. Or
made the cats streak to the top of the wall. Egypt lies in silence.
Silence covers the desert on both sides of the mighty river. There is
not even the bleat of sheep or the lowing of cattle. Or a woman crying
somewhere. Yet it was deafening, this sound. For one second I was
afraid. I stretched in the earth. I forced my fingers up towards the
surface. Sightless, weightless, I was floating in the soil, and I couldn't
breathe suddenly, I couldn't scream, and it seemed that if I could have
screamed, I would have cried out so loud all the glass for miles about
me would have been shattered. Crystal goblets would have been
blown to bits, windows exploded. The sound was louder, nearer. I
tried to roll over and to gain the air but I couldn't. And it seemed then
I saw the thing, the figure approaching. A glimmer of red in the dark.
It was someone coming, this sound, some creature so powerful that
even in the silence the trees and the flowers and the air itself did feel it.
The dumb creatures of the earth did know. The vermin ran from it,
the felines darting out of its path. Maybe this is death, I thought.
Maybe by some sublime miracle it is alive, Death, and it takes us into
its arms, and it is no vampire, this thing, it is the very personification
of the heavens. And we rise up and up into the stars with it. We go
past the angels and the saints, past illumination itself and into the
divine darkness, into the void, as we pass out of existence. In oblivion
we are forgiven all things. The destruction of Nicki becomes a tiny
pinpoint of vanishing light. The death of my brothers disintegrates
into the great peace of the inevitable. I pushed at the soil. I kicked at
it, but my hands and legs were too weak. I tasted the sandy mud in my
mouth. I knew I had to rise, and the sound was telling me to rise. I
felt it again like the roar of artillery: the cannon boom. And quite
completely I understood that it was looking for me, this sound, it was
seeking me out. It was searching like a beam of light. I couldn't lie
here anymore. I had to answer. I sent it the wildest current of
welcome. I told it I was here, and I heard my own miserable breaths as
I struggled to move my lips. And the sound grew so loud that it was
pulsing through every fiber of me. The earth was moving with it
around me. Whatever it was, it had come into the burnt-out ruined
house. The door had been broken away, as if the hinges had been
anchored not in iron but in plaster. I saw all this against the backdrop
of my closed eyes. I saw it moving under the olive trees. It was in the

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garden. In a frenzy again I clawed towards the air. But the low,
common noise I heard now was of a digging through the sand from
above. I felt something soft like velvet brush my face. And I saw
overhead the gleam of the dark sky and the drift of the clouds like a
veil over the stars, and never had the heavens in all their simplicity
looked so blessed. My lungs filled with air. I let out a loud moan at
the pleasure of it. But all these sensations were beyond pleasure. To
breathe, to see light, these were miracles. And the drumming sound,
the great deafening boom seemed the perfect accompaniment. And
he, the one who had been looking for me, the one from whom the
sound came, was standing over me. The sound melted; it disintegrated
until it was no more than the aftersound of a violin string. And I was
rising, just as if I were being lifted, up out of the earth, though this
figure stood with its hands at its side. At last, it lifted its arms to enfold
me and the face I saw was beyond the realm of possibility. What one
of us could have such a face? What did we know of patience, of
seeming goodness, of compassion? No, it wasn't one of us. It couldn't
have been. And yet it was. Preternatural flesh and blood like mine.
Iridescent eyes, gathering the light from all directions, tiny eyelashes
like strokes of gold from the finest pen. And this creature, this
powerful vampire, was holding me upright and looking into my eyes,
and I believe that I said some mad thing, voiced some frantic thought,
that I knew now the secret of eternity.
  "Then tell it to me, " he whispered, and he smiled. The purest image
of human love.
  "O God, help me. Damn me to the pit of hell. " This was my voice
speaking. I can't look on this beauty. I saw my arms like bones, hands
like birds' talons. Nothing can live and be what I am now, this wraith.
I looked down at my legs. They were sticks. The clothing was falling
off me. I couldn't stand or move, and the remembered sensation of
blood flowing in my mouth suddenly overcame me. Like a dull blaze
before me I saw his red velvet clothes, the cloak that covered him to
the ground, the dark red gloved hands with which he held me. His
hair was thick, white and gold strands mingled in waves fallen loosely
around his face, and over his broad forehead. And the blue eyes might
have been brooding under their heavy golden brows had they not been
so large, so softened with the feeling expressed in the voice. A man in
the prime of life at the moment of the immortal gift. And the square
face, with its slightly hollowed cheeks, its long full mouth, stamped
with terrifying gentleness and peace.
  "Drink, " he said, eyebrows rising slightly, lips shaping the word
carefully, slowly, as if it were a kiss. As Magnus had done on that

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lethal night so many eons ago, he raised his hand now and moved the
cloth back from his throat. The vein, dark purple beneath the
translucent preternatural skin, offered itself. And the sound
commenced again, that overpowering sound, and it lifted me right off
the earth and drew me into it. Blood like light itself, liquid fire. Our
blood. And my arms gathering incalculable strength, winding round
his shoulders, my face pressed to his cool white flesh, the blood
shooting down into my loins and every vessel in my body ignited with
it. How many centuries had purified this blood, distilled its power? It
seemed beneath the roar of the flow he spoke. He said again:
  "Drink, my young one, my wounded one. " I felt his heart swell, his
body undulate, and we were sealed against each other. I think I heard
myself say:
  "Marius. " And he answered:
  "Yes. "




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  Part VII - Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries

  1

  When I awoke, I was on board a ship. I could hear the creak of the
boards, smell the sea. I could smell the blood of those who manned
the ship. And I knew that it was a galley because I could hear the
rhythm of the oars under the low rumbling of the giant canvas sails. I
couldn't open my eyes, couldn't make my limbs move. Yet I was calm.
I didn't thirst. In fact, I experienced an extraordinary sense of peace.
My body was warm as if I had only just fed, and it was pleasant to lie
there, to dream waking dreams on the gentle undulation of the sea.
Then my mind began to clear. I knew that we were slipping very fast
through rather still waters. And that the sun had just gone down. The
early evening sky was darkening, the wind was dying away. And the
sound of the oars dipping and rising was as soothing as it was clear.
My eyes were now open. I was no longer in the coffin. I had just come
out of the rear cabin of the long vessel and I was standing on the deck.
I breathed the fresh salt air and I saw the lovely incandescent blue of
the twilight sky and the multitude of brilliant stars overhead. Never
from land do the stars look like that. Never are they so near. There
were dark mountainous islands on either side of us, cliffs sprinkled
with tiny flickering lights. The air was full of the scent of green things,
of flowers, of land itself. And the small sleek vessel was moving fast to
a narrow pass through the cliffs ahead. I felt uncommonly clearheaded
and strong. There was a moment's temptation to try to figure out how
I had gotten here, whether I was in the Aegean or the Mediterranean
itself, to know when we had left Cairo and if the things I remembered
had really taken place. But this slipped away from me in some quiet
acceptance of what was happening. Marius was up ahead on the
bridge before the mainmast. I walked towards the bridge and stood
beside it, looking up. He was wearing the long red velvet cloak he had
worn in Cairo, and his full white blond hair was blown back by the
wind. His eyes were fixed on the pass before us, the dangerous rocks
that protruded from the shallow water, his left hand gripping the rail
of the little deck. I felt an overpowering attraction to him, and the
sense of peace in me expanded. There was no forbidding grandeur to
his face or his stance, no loftiness that might have humbled me and
made me afraid. There was only a quiet nobility about him, his eyes
rather wide as they looked forward, the mouth suggesting a disposition
of exceptional gentleness as before. Too smooth the face, yes. It had
the sheen of scar tissue, it was so smooth, and it might have startled,

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even frightened, in a dark street. It gave off a faint light. But the
expression was too warm, too human in its goodness to do anything
but invite. Armand might have looked like a god out of Caravaggio,
Gabrielle a marble archangel at the threshold of a church. But this
figure above me was that of an immortal man. And the immortal
man, with his right hand outstretched before him, was silently but
unmistakably piloting the ship through the rocks before the pass. The
waters around us shimmered like molten metal, flashing azure, then
silver, then black. They sent up a great white froth as the shallow
waves beat upon the rocks. I drew closer and as quietly as I could I
climbed the small steps to the bridge. Marius didn't take his eyes off
the waters for an instant, but he reached out with his left hand and
took my hand, which was at my side. Warmth. Unobtrusive pressure.
But this wasn't the moment for speaking and I was surprised that he
had acknowledged me at all. His eyebrows came together and his eyes
narrowed slightly, and, as if impelled by his silent command, the
oarsmen slowed their stroke. I was fascinated by what I was watching,
and I realized as I deepened my own concentration that I could feel the
power emanating from him, a low pulse that came in time with his
heart. I could also hear mortals on the surrounding cliffs, and on the
narrow island beaches stretching out to our right and to our left. I saw
them gathered on the promontories, or running towards the edge of
the water with torches in their hands. I could hear thoughts ringing
out like voices from them as they stood in the thin evening darkness
looking out to the lanterns of our ship. The language was Greek and
not known to me, but the message was clear: The lord is passing.
Come down and look: the lord is passing. And the word "lord "
incorporated in some vague way the supernatural in its meaning. And
a reverence, mingled with excitement, emanated like a chorus of
overlapping whispers from the shores. I was breathless listening to
this! I thought of the mortal I'd terrified in Cairo, the old debacle on
Renaud's stage. But for those two humiliating incidents, I'd passed
through the world invisibly for ten years, and these people, these dark-
clad peasants gathered to watch the passing of the ship, knew what
Marius was. Or at least they knew something of what he was. They
were not saying the Greek word for vampire, which I had come to
understand. But we were leaving the beaches behind. The cliffs were
closing on either side of us. The ship glided with its oars above water.
The high walls diminished the sky's light. In a few moments, I saw a
great silver bay opening before us, and a sheer wall of rock rising
straight ahead, while gentler slopes enclosed the water on either side.
The rock face was so high and so steep that I could make out nothing

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at the top. The oarsmen cut their speed as we came closer. The boat
was turning ever so slightly to the side. And as we drifted on towards
the cliff, I saw the dim shape of an old stone embankment covered
with gleaming moss. The oarsmen had lifted their oars straight
towards the sky. Marius was as still as ever, his hand exerting a gentle
force on mine, as with the other he pointed towards the embankment
and the cliff that rose like the night itself, our lanterns sending up their
glare on the wet rock. When we were no more than five or six feet
from the embankment-dangerously close for a ship of this size and
weight it seemed-I felt the ship stop. Then Marius took my hand and
we went across the deck together and mounted the side of the ship. A
dark-haired servant approached and placed a sack in Marius's hand.
And together, Marius and I leapt over the water to the stone
embankment, easily clearing the distance without a sound. I glanced
back to see the ship rocking slightly. The oars were being lowered
again. Within seconds the ship was heading for the distant lights of a
tiny town on the far side of the bay. Marius and I stood alone in the
darkness, and when the ship had become only a dark speck on the
glimmering water, he pointed to a narrow stairway cut into the rock.
  "Go before me, Lestat, " he said. It felt good to be climbing. It felt
good to be moving up swiftly, following the rough-cut steps and the
zigzag turns, and feeling the wind get stronger, and seeing the water
become ever more distant and frozen as if the movement of the waves
had been stopped. Marius was only a few steps behind me. And again,
I could feel and hear that pulse of power. It was like a vibration in my
bones. The rough-cut steps disappeared less than halfway up the cliff,
and I was soon following a path not wide enough for a mountain goat.
Now and then boulders or outcroppings of stone made a margin
between us and a possible fall to the water below. But most of the time
the path itself was the only outcropping on the cliff face, and as we
went higher and higher, even I became afraid to look down. Once,
with my hand around a tree branch, I looked back and saw Marius
moving steadily towards me, the bag slung over his shoulder, his right
hand hanging free. The bay, the distant little town; and the harbor, all
this appeared toylike, a map made by a child on a tabletop with a
mirror and sand and tiny bits of wood. I could even see beyond the
pass into the open water, and the deep shadowy shapes of other islands
rising out of the motionless sea. Marius smiled and waited. Then he
whispered very politely:
  "Go on. " I must have been spellbound. I started up again and didn't
stop until I reached the summit. I crawled over a last jut of rocks and
weeds and climbed to my feet in soft grass. Higher rocks and cliffs lay

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ahead, and seeming to grow out of them was an immense fortress of a
house. There were lights in its windows, lights on its towers. Marius
put his arm around my shoulder and we went towards the entrance. I
felt his grip loosen on me as he paused in front of the massive door.
Then came the sound of a bolt sliding back inside. The door swung
open and his grip became firm again. He guided me into the hallway
where a pair of torches provided an ample light. I saw with a little
shock that there was no one there who could have moved the bolt or
opened the door for us. He turned and he looked at the door and the
door closed.
  "Slide the bolt, " he said. I wondered why he didn't do it the way he
had done everything else. But I put it in place immediately as he
asked.
  "It's easier that way, by far, " he said, and a little mischief came into
his expression. "I'll show you to the room where you may sleep safely,
and you may come to me when you wish. " I could hear no one else in
the house. But mortals had been here, that I could tell. They'd left
their scent here and there. And the torches had all been lighted only a
short time ago. We went up a little stairway to the right, and when I
came out into the room that was to be mine, I was stunned. It was a
huge chamber, with one entire wall open to a stonerailed terrace that
hung over the sea. When I turned around, Marius was gone. The sack
was gone. But Nicki's violin and my valise of belongings lay on a stone
table in the middle of the room. A current of sadness and relief passed
through me at the sight of the violin. I had been afraid that I had lost
it. There were stone benches in the room, a lighted oil lamp on a
stand. And in a far niche was a pair of heavy wooden doors. I went to
these and opened them and found a little passage which turned sharply
in an L. Beyond the bend was a sarcophagus with a plain lid. It had
been cleanly fashioned out of diorite, which to my knowledge is one of
the hardest stones on earth. The lid was immensely heavy, and when I
examined the inside of it I saw that it was plated in iron and contained
a bolt that could be slipped from within. Several glittering objects lay
on the bottom of the box itself. As I lifted them, they sparkled almost
magically in the light that leaked in from the room. There was a
golden mask, its features carefully molded, the lips closed, the eye
holes narrow but open, attached to a hood made up of layered plates
of hammered gold. The mask itself was heavy but the hood was very
light and very flexible, each little plate strung to the others by gold
thread. And there was also a pair of leather gloves covered completely
in tinier more delicate gold plates like scales. And finally a large folded
blanket of the softest red wool with one side sewn with larger gold

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plates. I realized that if I put on this mask and these gloves-if I laid
over me the blanket-then I would be protected from the light if anyone
opened the lid of the sarcophagus while I slept. But it wasn't likely
that anyone could get into the sarcophagus. And the doors of this L-
shaped chamber were also covered with iron, and they too had their
iron bolt. Yet there was a charm to these mysterious objects. I liked to
touch them, and I pictured myself wearing them as I slept. The mask
reminded me of the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. All of these
things suggested the burial of an ancient king. I left these things a little
reluctantly. I came back out into the room, took off the garments I'd
worn during my nights in the earth in Cairo, and put on fresh clothes.
I felt rather absurd standing in this timeless place in a violet blue frock
coat with pearl buttons and the usual lace shirt and diamond buckle
satin shoes, but these were the only clothes I had. I tied back my hair
in a black ribbon like any proper eighteenth-century gentleman and
went in search of the master of the house.

  2

  Torches had been lighted throughout the house. Doors lay open.
Windows were uncovered as they looked out over the firmament and
the sea. And as I left the barren little stairs that led down from my
room, I realized that for the first time in my wandering I was truly in
the safe refuge of an immortal being, furnished and stocked with all
the things that an immortal being might want. Magnificent Grecian
urns stood on pedestals in the corridors, great bronze statues from the
Orient in their various niches, exquisite plants bloomed at every
window and terrace open to the sky. Gorgeous rugs from India,
Persia, China covered the marble floors wherever I walked. I came
upon giant stuffed beasts mounted in lifelike attitudes-the brown bear,
the lion, the tiger, even the elephant standing in his own immense
chamber, lizards as big as dragons, birds of prey clutching dried
branches made to look like the limbs of real trees. But the brilliantly
colored murals covering every surface from floor to ceiling dominated
all. In one chamber was a dark vibrant painting of the sunburnt
Arabian desert complete with an exquisitely detailed caravan of camels
and turbaned merchants moving over the sand. In another room a
jungle came to life around me, swarming with delicately rendered
tropical blossoms, vines, carefully drawn leaves. The perfection of the
illusion startled me, enticed me, but the more I peered into the
pictures the more I saw. There were creatures everywhere in the
texture of the jungle-insects, birds, worms in the soil- a million aspects

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of the scene that gave me the feeling, finally, that I had slipped out of
time and space into something that was more than a painting. Yet it
was all quite flat upon the wall. I was getting dizzy. Everywhere I
turned walls gave out on new vistas. I couldn't name some of the tints
and hues I saw. As for the style of all this painting, it baffled me as
much as it delighted me. The technique seemed utterly realistic, using
the classical proportions and skills that one sees in all the later
Renaissance painters: da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, as well as the
painters of more recent times, Wateau, Fragonard. The use of light
was spectacular. Living creatures seemed to breathe as I looked on.
But the details. The details couldn't have been realistic or in
proportion. There were simply too many monkeys in the jungle, too
many bugs crawling on the leaves. There were thousands of tiny
insects in one painting of a summer sky. I came into a large gallery
walled on either side by painted men and women staring at me, and I
almost cried out. Figures from all ages these were-bedouins,
Egyptians, then Greeks and Romans, and knights in armor, and
peasants and kings and queens. There were Renaissance people in
doublets and leggings, the Sun King with his massive mane of curls,
and finally the people of our own age. But again, the details made me
feel as if I were imagining them-the droplets of water clinging to a
cape, the cut on the side of a face, the spider half-crushed beneath a
polished leather boot. I started to laugh. It wasn't funny. It was just
delightful. I began to laugh and laugh. I had to force myself out of
this gallery and the only thing that gave me the willpower was the sight
of a library, blazing with light. Walls and walls of books and rolled
manuscripts, giant glistening world globes in their wooden cradles,
busts of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, great sprawling maps.
Newspapers in all languages lay in stacks on tables. And there were
strewn everywhere curious objects. Fossils, mummified hands, exotic
shells. There were bouquets of dried flowers, figurines and fragments
of old sculpture, alabaster jars covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
And everywhere in the center of the room, scattered among the tables
and the glass cases, were comfortable chairs with footstools, and
candelabra or oil lamps. In fact, the impression was one of
comfortable messiness, of great long hours of pure enjoyment, of a
place that was human in the extreme. Human knowledge, human
artifacts, chairs in which humans night sit. I stayed a long time here,
perusing the Latin and Greek titles. I felt a little drunk, as if I'd
happened on a mortal with a lot of wine in his blood. But I had to find
Marius. I went on out of this room, down a little stairs, and through
another painted hallway to an even larger room that was also full of

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light. I heard the singing of the birds and smelled the perfume of the
flowers before I even reached this place. And then I found myself lost
in a forest of cages. There were not only birds of all sizes and colors
here, there were monkeys and baboons, all of them gone wild in their
little prisons as I made my way around the room. Potted plants
crowded against the cages-ferns and banana trees, cabbage roses,
moonflower, jasmine, and other sweetly fragrant nighttime vines.
There were purple and white orchids, waxed flowers that trapped
insects in their maw, little trees groaning with peaches and lemons and
pears. When I finally emerged from this little paradise, it was into a
hall of sculptures equal to any gallery in the Vatican museum. And I
glimpsed adjoining chambers full of paintings, Oriental furnishings,
mechanical toys. Of course I was no longer lingering on each object or
new discovery. To learn the contents of this house would have taken a
lifetime. And I pressed on. I didn't know where I was going. But I
knew that I was being allowed to see all these things. Finally I heard
the unmistakable sound of Marius, that low rhythmic beat of the heart
which I had heard in Cairo. And I moved toward it.

  3

  I came into a brightly illuminated eighteenth Century salon. The
stone walls had been covered in fine rosewood paneling with framed
mirrors rising to the ceiling. There were the usual painted chests,
upholstered chairs, dark and lush landscapes, porcelain clocks. A
small collection of books in the glass-doored bookcases, a newspaper
of recent date lying on a small table beside a brocaded winged chair.
High narrow French doors opened onto the stone terrace. where
banks of white lilies and red roses gave off their powerful perfume.
And there, with his back to me, at the stone railing stood an
eighteenth-century man. It was Marius when he turned around and
gestured for me to come out. He was dressed as I was dressed. The
frock coat was red, not violet, the lace Valenciennes, not Bruxelles.
But he wore very much the same costume, his shining hair tied back
loosely in a dark ribbon just as mine was, and he looked not at all
ethereal as Armand might have, but rather like a superpresence, a
creature of impossible whiteness and perfection who was nevertheless
connected to everything around him -the clothes he wore, the stone
railing on which he laid his hand, even the moment itself in which a
small cloud passed over the bright half moon. I savored the moment:
that he and I were about to speak, that I was really here. I was still
clearheaded as I had been on the ship. I couldn't feel thirst. And I

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sensed that it was his blood in me that was sustaining me. All the old
mysteries collected in me, arousing me and sharpening me. Did Those
Who Must Be Kept lie somewhere on this island? Would all these
things be known? I went up to the railing and stood beside him,
glancing out over the sea. His eyes were now fixed on an island not a
half mile off the shore below. He was listening to something that I
could not hear. And the side of his face, in the light from the open
doors behind us, looked too frighteningly like stone. But immediately,
he turned to me with a cheerful expression, the smooth face vitalized
impossibly for an instant, and then he put his arm around me and
guided me back into the room. He walked with the same rhythm as a
mortal man, the step light but firm, the body moving through space in
the predictable way. He led me to a pair of winged chairs that faced
each other and there we sat down. This was more or less the center of
the room. The terrace was to my right, and we had a clear
illumination from the chandelier above as well as a dozen or so
candelabra and sconces on the paneled walls. Natural, civilized it all
was. And Marius settled in obvious comfort on the brocade cushions
and let his fingers curl around the arms of the chair. As he smiled, he
looked entirely human. All the lines, the animation were there until
the smile melted again. I tried not to stare at him, but I couldn't help
it. And something mischievous crept into his face. My heart was
skipping.
  "What would be easier for you? " he asked in French. "That I tell
you why I brought you here, or that you tell me why you asked to see
me? "
  "Oh, the former would be easier, " I said. "You talk. " He laughed in
a soft ingratiating fashion.
  "You're a remarkable creature, " he said. "I didn't expect you to go
down into the earth so soon. Most of us experience the first death
much later-after a century, maybe even two. "
  "The first death? You mean it's common-to go into the earth the
way I did? "
  "Among those who survive, it's common. We die. We rise again.
Those who don't go into the earth for periods of time usually do not
last. " I was amazed, but it made perfect sense. And the awful thought
struck me that if only Nicki had gone down into the earth instead of
into the fire- But I couldn't think of Nicki now. I would start asking
inane questions if I did. Is Nicki somewhere? Has Nicki stopped? Are
my brothers somewhere? Have they simply stopped?
  "But I shouldn't have been so surprised that it happened when it did
in your case, " he resumed as if he hadn't heard these thoughts, or

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didn't want to address them just yet. "You've lost too much that was
precious to you. You saw and learned a great deal very fast. "
  "How do you know what's been happening to me? " I asked. Again,
he smiled. He almost laughed. It was astonishing the warmth
emanating from him, the immediacy. The manner of his speech was
lively and absolutely current. That is, he spoke like a well-educated
Frenchman.
  "I don't frighten you, do I? " he asked.
  "I didn't think that you were trying to, " I said.
  "I'm not. " He made an offhand gesture. "But your selfpossession is
a little surprising, nevertheless. To answer your question, I know
things that happen to our kind all over the world. And frankly I do
not always understand how or why I know. The power increases with
age as do all our powers, but it remains inconsistent, not easily
controlled. There are moments when I can hear what is happening
with our kind in Rome or even in Paris. And when another calls to me
as you have done, I can hear the call over amazing distances. I can find
the source of it, as you have seen for yourself.
  "But information comes to me in other ways as well. I know of the
messages you left for me on walls throughout Europe because I read
them. And I've heard of you from others. And sometimes you and I
have been near to each other-nearer than you ever supposed-and I
have heard your thoughts. I can hear your thoughts now, of course, as
I'm sure you realize. But I prefer to communicate with words. "
  "Why? " I asked. "I thought the older ones would dispense with
speech altogether. "
  "Thoughts are imprecise, " he said. "If I open my mind to you I
cannot really control what you read there. And when I read your
mind it is possible for me to misunderstand what I hear or see. I
prefer to use speech and let my mental facilities work with it. I like the
alarm of sound to announce my important communications. For my
voice to be received. I do not like to penetrate the thoughts of another
without warning. And quite frankly. I think speech is the greatest gift
mortals and immortals share. " I didn't know what to answer to this.
Again, it made perfect sense. Yet I found myself shaking my head.
"And your manner, " I said. "You don't move the way Armand or
Magnus moved, the way I thought the ancient ones- "
  "You mean like a phantom? Why should I? " He laughed again,
softly, charming me. He slumped back in the chair a little further and
raised his knee, resting his foot on the seat cushion just as a man might
in his private study.


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  "There were times, of course, " he said, "when all of that was very
interesting. To glide without seeming to take steps, to assume physical
positions that are uncomfortable or impossible for mortals. To fly
short distances and land without a sound. To move objects by the
mere wish to do so. But it can be crude, finally. Human gestures are
elegant. There is wisdom in the flesh, in the way the human body does
things. I like the sound of my foot touching the ground, the feel of
objects in my fingers. Besides, to fly even short distances and to move
things by sheer will alone is exhausting. I can do it when I have to, as
you've seen, but it's much easier to use my hands to do things. " I was
delighted by this and didn't try to hide it.
  "A singer can shatter a glass with the proper high note, " he said, "but
the simplest way for anyone to break a glass is simply to drop it on the
floor. " I laughed outright this time. I was already getting used to the
shifts in his face between masklike perfection and expression, and the
steady vitality of his gaze that united both. The impression remained
one of evenness and openness-of a startlingly beautiful and perceptive
man. But what I could not get used to was the sense of presence, that
something immensely powerful, dangerously powerful, was so
contained and immediately there. I became a little agitated suddenly,
a little overwhelmed. I felt the unaccountable desire to weep. He
leaned forward and touched the back of my hand with his fingers, and
a shock coursed through me. We were connected in the touch. And
though his skin was silky like the skin of all vampires, it was less pliant.
It was like being touched by a stone hand in a silk glove.
  "I brought you here because I want to tell you what I know, " he said.
"I want to share with you whatever secrets I possess. For several
reasons, you have attracted me. " I was fascinated. And I felt the
possibility of an overpowering love.
  "But I warn you, " he said, "there's a danger in this. I don't possess
the ultimate answers. I can't tell you who made the world or why man
exists. I can't tell you why we exist. I can only tell you more about us
than anyone else has told you so far. I can show you Those Who Must
Be Kept and tell you what I know of them. I can tell you why I think I
have managed to survive for so long. This knowledge may change you
somewhat. That's all knowledge ever really does, I suppose... "
  "Yes- "
  "But when I've given all I have to give, you will be exactly where you
were before: an immortal being who must find his own reasons to
exist. "
  "Yes, " I said, "reasons to exist. " My voice was a little bitter. But it
was good to hear it spelled out that way. But I felt a dark sense of

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myself as a hungry, vicious creature, who did a very good job of
existing without reasons, a powerful vampire who always took exactly
what he wanted, no matter who said what. I wondered if he knew how
perfectly awful I was. The reason to kill was the blood.
Acknowledged. The blood and the sheer ecstasy of the blood. And
without it we are husks as I was in the Egyptian earth.
  "Just remember my warning, " he said, "that the circumstances will
be the same afterwards. Only you might be changed. You might be
more bereft than before you came here. "
  "But why have you chosen to reveal things to me? " I asked. "Surely
others have gone looking for you. You must know where Armand is.
"
  "There are several reasons, as I told you, " he said. "And probably the
strongest reason is the manner in which you sought me. Very few
beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few
really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the
answers they have already shaped in their own minds-justifications,
confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on.
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may
annihilate the question and the questioner. But you have been truly
asking since you left Paris ten years ago. " I understood this, but only
inarticulately.
  "You have few preconceptions, " he said. "In fact, you astound me
because you admit to such extraordinary simplicity. You want a
purpose. You want love. "
  "True, " I said with a little shrug. "Rather crude, isn't it? " He gave
another soft laugh.
  "No. Not really. It's as if eighteen hundred years of Western
civilization have produced an innocent. "
  "An innocent? You can't be speaking of me. "
  "There is so much talk in this century of the nobility of the savage, "
he explained, "of the corrupting force of civilization, of the way we
must find our way back to the innocence that has been lost. Well, it's
all nonsense really. Truly primitive people can be monstrous in their
assumptions and expectations. They cannot conceive of innocence.
Neither can children. But civilization has at last created men who
behave innocently. For the first time they look about themselves and
say, `What the hell is all this! "'
  "True. But I'm not innocent, " I said. "Godless yes. I come from
godless people, and I'm glad of it. But I know what good and evil are
in a very practical sense, and I am Typhon, the slayer of his brother,
not the killer of Typhon, as you must know. " He nodded with a slight

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lift of his eyebrows. He did not have to smile anymore to look human.
I was seeing an expression of emotion now even when there were no
lines whatsoever in his face.
  "But you don't seek any system to justify it either, " he said. "That's
what I mean by innocence. You're guilty of killing mortals because
you've been made into something that feeds on blood and death, but
you're not guilty of lying, of creating great dark and evil systems of
thought within yourself. "
  "True. "
  "To be godless is probably the first step to innocence, " he said, "to
lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things
supposed to be lost. "
  "So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an
absence of illusions. "
  "An absence of need for illusions, " he said. "A love of and respect
for what is right before your eyes. " I sighed. I sat back in the chair for
the first time, thinking this over, what it had to do with Nicki and what
Nicki said about the light, always the light. Had he meant this?
Marius seemed now to be pondering. He too was sitting back in his
chair, as he had been all along, and he was looking off at the night sky
beyond the open doors, his eyes narrow, his mouth a little tense.
  "But it wasn't merely your spirit that attracted me, " he said, "your
honesty, if you will. It was the way you came into being as one of us. "
  "Then you know all that, too. "
  "Yes, everything, " he said, dismissing that. "You have come into
being at the end of an era, at a time when the world faces changes
undreamed of. And it was the same with me. I was born and grew to
manhood in a time when the ancient world, as we call it now, was
coming to a close. Old faiths were worn out. A new god was about to
rise. "
  "When was this time? " I asked excitedly.
  "In the years of Augustus Caesar, when Rome had just become an
empire, when faith in the gods was, for all lofty purposes, dead. " I let
him see the shock and the pleasure spread over my face. I never
doubted him for a moment. I put my hand to my head as if I had to
steady myself a little. But he went on:
  "The common people of those days, " he said, "still believed in
religion just as they do now. And for them it was custom, superstition,
elemental magic, the use of ceremonies whose origins were lost in
antiquity, just as it is today. But the world of those who originated
ideas- those who ruled and advanced the course of history-was a


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godless and hopelessly sophisticated world like that of Europe in this
day and age. "
  "When I read Cicero and Ovid and Lucretius, it seemed so to me. " I
said. He nodded and gave a little shrug.
  "It has taken eighteen hundred years, " he said, "to come back to the
skepticism, the level of practicality that was our daily frame of mind
then. But history is by no means repeating itself. That is the amazing
thing. "
  "How do you mean? "
  "Look around you! Completely new things are happening in Europe.
The value placed upon human life is higher than ever before. Wisdom
and philosophy are coupled with new discoveries in science, new
inventions which will completely alter the manner in which humans
live. But that is a story unto itself. That is the future. The point is that
you were born on the cusp of the old way of seeing things. And so was
I. You came of age without faith, and yet you aren't cynical. And so it
was with me. We sprang up from a crack between faith and despair, as
it were. " And Nicki fell into that crack and perished, I thought.
  "That's why your questions are different, " he said, "from those who
were born to immortality under the Christian god. " I thought of my
conversation with Gabrielle in Cairo my last conversation. I myself
had told her this was my strength.
  "Precisely, " he said. "So you and I have that in common. We did
not grow to manhood expecting very much of others. And the burden
of conscience was private, terrible though it might be. "
  "But was it under the Christian god . . . in the very first days of the
Christian god that you were- born to immortality-as you said? "
  "No, " he said with a hint of disgust. "We never served the Christian
god. That you can put out of your mind right now. "
  "But the forces of good and evil behind the names of Christ and
Satan? "
  "Again, they have very little if anything to do with us. "
  "But the concept of evil in some form surely. . . "
  "No. We are older than that, Lestat. The men that made me were
worshipers of gods, true. And they believed in things that I did not
believe. But their faith hearkened back to a time long before the
temples of the Roman Empire, when the shedding of innocent human
blood could be done on a massive scale in the name of good. And evil
was the drought and the plague of the locust and the death of the
crops. I was made what I am by these men in the name of good. "
This was too enticing, too enthralling. All the old myths came to my
mind, in a chorus of dazzling poetry. Osiris was a good god to the

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Egyptians, a god of the corn. What has this to do with us? My
thoughts were spinning. In a flash of mute pictures, I recalled the
night I left my father's house in the Auvergne when the villagers had
been dancing round the Lenten fire, and making their chants for the
increase of the crops. Pagan, my mother had said. Pagan, had
declared the angry priest they had long ago sent away. And it all
seemed more than ever the story of the Savage Garden, dancers in the
Savage Garden, where no law prevailed except the law of the garden,
which was the aesthetic law. That the crops shall grow high, that the
wheat shall be green and then yellow, that the sun shall shine. Look at
the perfectly shaped apple that the tree has made, fancy that! The
villagers would run through the orchards with their burning brands
from the Lenten bonfire, to make the apples grow.
  "Yes, the Savage Garden, " Marius said with a spark of light in his
eyes. "And I had to go out of the civilized cities of the Empire to find
it. I had to go into the deep woods of the northern provinces, where
the garden still grew at its lushest, the very land of Southern Gaul in
which you were born. I had to fall into the hands of the barbarians
who gave us both our stature, our blue eyes, our fair hair. I had it
through the blood of my mother, who had come from those people,
the daughter of a Keltic chieftain married to a Roman patrician. And
you have it through the blood of your fathers directly from those days.
And by a strange coincidence, we were both chosen for immortality
for the very same reason-you by Magnus and I by my captors-that we
were the nonpareils of our blood and blueeyed race, that we were taller
and more finely made than other men. "
  "Ooooh, you have to tell me all of it! You have to explain everything!
" I said.
  "I am explaining everything, " he said. "But first, I think it is time for
you to see something that will be very important as we go on. " He
waited for a moment for the words to sink in. Then he rose slowly in
human fashion, assisting himself easily with his hands on the arms of
the chair. He stood looking down at me and waiting.
  "Those Who Must Be Kept? " I asked. My voice had gotten terribly
small, terribly unsure of itself. And I could see a little mischief again in
his face, or rather a touch of the amusement that was never far away.
  "Don't be afraid, " he said soberly, trying to conceal the amusement.
"It's very unlike you, you know. " I was burning to see them, to know
what they were, and yet I didn't move. I'd really thought that I would
see them. I'd never really thought what it would mean . . .
  "Is it... is it something terrible to see? " I asked. He smiled slowly
and affectionately and placed his hand on my shoulder.

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  "Would it stop you if I said yes? "
  "No, " I said. But I was afraid.
  "It's only terrible as time goes on, " he said. "In the beginning, it's
beautiful. " He waited, watching me, trying to be patient. Then he
said softly:
  "Come, let's go. "

  4

  A stairway into the earth. It was much older than the house, this
stair way, though how I knew I couldn't say. Steps worn concave in
the middle from the feet that have followed them. Winding deeper
and deeper down into the rock. Now and then a rough-cut portal to
the sea, an opening too small for a man to climb through, and a shelf
upon which birds have nested, or where the wild grass grew out of the
cracks. And then the chill, the inexplicable chill that you find
sometimes in old monasteries, rained churches, haunted rooms. I
stopped and rubbed the backs of my arms with my hands. The chill
was rising through the steps.
  "They don't cause it, " he said gently. He was waiting for me on the
steps just below. The semidarkness broke his face into kindly patterns
of light and shadow, gave the illusion of mortal age that wasn't there.
  "It was here long before I brought them, " he said. "Many have come
to worship on this island. Maybe it was there before they came, too. "
He beckoned to me again with his characteristic patience. His eyes
were compassionate.
  "Don't be afraid, " he said again as he started down. I was ashamed
not to follow. The steps went on and on. We came on larger portals
and the noise of the sea. I could feel the cool spray on my hands and
face, see the gleam of the damp on the stones. But we went on down
farther and farther, the echo of our shoes swelling against the rounded
ceiling, the rudely finished walls. This was deeper than any dungeon,
this was the pit you dig in childhood when you brag to your mother
and father that you will make a tunnel to the very center of the earth.
Finally I saw a burst of light as we rounded another bend. And at last,
two lamps burning before a pair of doors. Deep vessels of oil fed the
wicks of the lamps. And the doors themselves were bolted by an
enormous beam of oak. It would have taken several men to lift it,
possibly levers, ropes. Marius lifted this beam and laid it aside easily,
and then he stood back and looked at the doors. I heard the sound of
another beam being moved on the inside. Then the doors opened
slowly, and I felt my breathing come to a halt. It wasn't only that he'd

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done it without touching them. I had seen that little trick before. It
was that the room beyond was full of the same lovely flowers and
lighted lamps that I had seen in the house above. Here deep
underground were lilies, waxen and white, and sparkling with droplets
of moisture, roses in rich hues of red and pink ready to fall from their
vines. It was a chapel, this chamber with the soft flicker of votive
candles and the perfume of a thousand bouquets. The walls were
painted in fresco like the walls of ancient Italian churches, with gold
leaf hammered into the design. But these were not the pictures of
Christian saints. Egyptian palm trees, the yellow desert, the three
pyramids, the blue waters of the Nile. And the Egyptian men and
women in their gracefully shaped boats sailing the river, the
multicolored fishes of the deep beneath them, the purple-winged birds
of the air above. And the gold worked into it all. Into the sun that
shone from the heavens, and the pyramids that gleamed in the
distance, into the scales of the fishes and the feathers of the birds, and
the ornaments of the lithe and delicate Egyptian figures who stood
frozen looking forward, in their long narrow green boats. I closed my
eyes for a moment. I opened them slowly and saw the whole like a
great shrine. Banks of lilies on a low stone altar which held an
immense golden tabernacle worked all over with fine engraving of the
same Egyptian designs. And the air coming down through deep shafts
in the rock above, stirring the flames of the ever burning lamps,
ruffling the tall green bladelike leaves of the lilies as they stood in their
vessels of water giving off their heady perfume. I could almost hear
hymns in this place. I could hear chants and ancient invocations. And
I was no longer afraid. The beauty was too soothing, too grand. But I
stared at the gold doors of the tabernacle on the altar. The tabernacle
was taller than I was. It was broader by three times. And Marius, too,
was looking at it. And I felt the power moving out of him, the low
heat of his invisible strength, and I heard the inside lock of the
tabernacle doors slide back. I would have moved just a little closer to
him had I dared. I wasn't breathing as the gold doors opened
completely, folding back to reveal two splendid Egyptian figures-a
man and a woman-seated side by side. The light moved over their
slender, finely sculpted white faces, their decorously arranged white
limbs; it flashed in their dark eyes. They were as severe as all the
Egyptian statues I had ever seen, spare of detail, beautiful in contour,
magnificent in their simplicity, only the open and childlike expression
on the faces relieving the feeling of hardness and cold. But unlike all
the others, they were dressed in real fabric and real hair. I had seen
saints in Italian churches dressed in this manner, velvet hung on

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marble, and it was not always pleasing. But this had been done with
great care. Their wigs were of long thick black locks, cut straight
across the forehead and crowned with circlets of gold. Round their
naked arms were bracelets like snakes, and on their fingers were rings.
The clothes were the finest white linen, the man naked to the waist and
wearing only a skirt of sorts, and the woman in a long, narrow,
beautifully pleated dress. Both wore many gold necklaces, some inlaid
with precious stones. Almost the same size they were, and they sat in
the very same manner, hands laid flat before them on their thighs.
And this sameness astonished me somehow, as much as their stark
loveliness, and the jewellike quality of their eyes. Not in any sculpture
anywhere had I ever seen such a lifelike attitude, but actually there was
nothing lifelike about them at all. Maybe it was a trick of the
accoutrements, the twinkling of the lights on their necklaces and rings,
the reflected light in their gleaming eyes. Were they Osiris and Isis?
Was it tiny writing I saw on their necklaces, on the circlets of their
hair? Marius said nothing. He was merely gazing at them as I was, his
expression unreadable, perhaps sad.
  "May I go near to them, " I whispered.
  "Of course, " he said. I moved towards the altar like a child in a
cathedral, getting ever more tentative with each step. I stopped only a
few feet before them and looked directly into their eyes. Oh, too
gorgeous in depth and variegation. Too real. With infinite care each
black eyelash had been fixed, each black hair of their gently curved
brows. With infinite care their mouths made partly open so that one
could see the glimmer of teeth. And the faces and the arms had been
so polished that not the slightest flaw disturbed the luster. And in the
manner of all statues or painted figures who stare directly forward,
they appeared to be looking at me. I was confused. If they were not
Osiris and Isis, who were they meant to be? Of what old truth were
they the symbols, and why the imperative in that old phrase. Those
Who Must Be Kept? I fell into contemplating them, my head a little to
the side. The eyes were really brown, with the black deep in their
centers, the whites moist looking as though covered with the clearest
lacquer, and the lips were the softest shade of ashen rose.
  "Is it permissible . . .? " I whispered, turning back to Marius, but
lacking confidence I stopped.
  "You may touch them, " he said. Yet it seemed sacrilegious to do it.
I stared at them a moment longer, at the way that their hands opened
against their thighs, at the fingernails, which looked remarkably like
our fingernails-as if someone had made them of inlaid glass. I thought
that I could touch the back of the man's hand, and it wouldn't seem so

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sacrilegious, but what I really wanted to do was to touch the woman's
face. Finally I raised my fingers hesitantly to her cheek. And I just let
my fingertips graze the whiteness there. And then I looked into her
eyes. It couldn't be stone I was feeling. It couldn't . . . Why, it felt
exactly like . . . And the woman's eyes, something- I jumped
backwards before I could stop myself. In fact I shot backwards,
overturning the vases of lilies, and slammed against the wall beside the
door. I was trembling so violently, my legs could hardly hold me.
  "They're alive! " I said. "They aren't statues! They're vampires just
like us! "
  "Yes, " Marius said. "That word, however, they wouldn't know. " He
was just ahead of me and he was still looking at them, his hands at his
sides, just as he had been all along. Slowly, he turned and came up to
me and took my right hand. The blood had rushed to my face. I
wanted to say something but I couldn't. I kept staring at them. And
now I was staring at him and staring at the white hand that held mine.
  "It's quite all right, " he said almost sadly. "I don't think they dislike
your touching them. " For a moment I couldn't understand him.
Then I did understand. "You mean you . . . You don't know
whether... They just sit there and . . . Oooh God! " And his words of
hundreds of years ago, embedded in Armand's tale, came back to me:
Those Who Must Be Kept are at peace, or in silence. More than that
we may never know. I was shuddering all over. I couldn't stop the
tremors in my arms and my legs.
  "They're breathing, thinking, living, as we are, " I stammered. "How
long have they been like this, how long? "
  "Calm yourself, " he said, patting my hand.
  "Oh God, " I said again stupidly. I kept saying it. No other words
sufficed. "But who are they? " I asked finally. My voice was rising
hysterically. "Are they Osiris and Isis? Is that who they are? "
  "I don't know. "
  "I want to get away from them. I want to get out of here. "
  "Why? " he asked calmly.
  "Because they . . . they are alive inside their bodies and they . . .
they can't speak or move! "
  "How do you know they can't? " he said. His voice was low,
soothing as before.
  "But they don't. That's the whole point. They don't- "
  "Come, " he said. "I want you to look at them a little more. And
then I'll take you back up and I'll tell you everything, as I've already
said I would. "


                                                                          292

  "I don't want to look at them anymore, Marius, honestly I don't, " I
said, trying to get my hand free, and shaking my head. But he was
holding on to me as firmly as a statue might, it seemed, and I couldn't
stop thinking how much like their skin was his skin, how he was taking
on the same impossible luster, how when his face was in repose, it was
as smooth as theirs! He was becoming like them. And sometime in
the great yawn of eternity, I would become like him! If I survived that
long.
  "Please, Marius... " I said. I was beyond shame and vanity. I wanted
to get out of the room.
  "Wait for me then, " he said patiently. "Stay here. " And he let my
hand go. He turned and looked down at the flowers I had crushed, the
spilled water. And before my eyes these things were corrected, the
flowers put back in the vase, the water gone from the floor. He stood
looking at the two before him, and then I heard his thoughts. He was
greeting them in some personal way that did not require an address or
a title. He was explaining to them why he had been away the last few
nights. He had gone into Egypt. And he had brought back gifts for
them which he would soon bring. He would take them out to look at
the sea very soon. I started to calm down a little. But my mind was
now anatomizing all that had come clear to me at the moment of
shock. He cared for them. He had always cared for them. He made
this chamber beautiful because they were staring at it, and they just
might care about the beauty of the paintings and the flowers he
brought. But he didn't know. And all I had to do was look squarely at
them again to feel horror, that they were alive and locked inside
themselves!
  "I can't bear this, " I murmured. I knew, without his ever telling me,
the reason that he kept them. He could not bury them deep in the
earth somewhere because they were conscious. He would not burn
them because they were helpless and could not give their consent. Oh,
God, it was getting worse and worse. But he kept them as the ancient
pagans kept their gods in temples that were their houses. He brought
them flowers. And now as I watched, he was lighting incense for them,
a small cake that he had taken out of a silk handkerchief. This he told
them had come from Egypt. And he was putting it to burn in a small
bronze dish. My eyes began to tear. I actually began to cry. When I
looked up, he was standing with his back to them, and I could see
them over his shoulder. He looked shockingly like them, a statue
dressed in fabric. And I felt maybe he was doing it deliberately, letting
his face go blank.
  "I've disappointed you, haven't I? " I whispered.

                                                                      293

  "No, not at all, " he said kindly. "You have not. "
  "I'm sorry that I- "
  "No, you have not. " I drew a little closer. I felt I had been rude to
Those Who Must Be Kept. I had been rude to him. He had revealed
to me this secret and I had shown horror and recoiling. I had
disappointed myself. I moved even closer. I wanted to make up for
what I'd done. He turned towards them again and he put his arm
around me. The incense was intoxicating. Their dark eyes were full of
the eerie movement of the flames of the lamps. No ridge of vein
anywhere in the white skin, no fold or crease. Not even the penstroke
lines in the lips which even Marius still had. They did not move with
the rise and fall of breath. And listening in the stillness I heard no
thought from them, no heartbeat, no movement of blood.
  "But it's there, isn't it? " I whispered.
  "Yes, it's there. "
  "And do you-? " Bring the victims to them, I wanted to ask.
  "They no longer drink. " Even that was ghastly! They had not even
that pleasure. And yet to imagine it-how it would have been-their
firing with movement long enough to take the victim and lapsing back
into stillness, ah! No, I should have been relieved. But I was not.
  "Long, long ago, they still drank, but only once in a year. I would
leave the victims in the sanctuary for them-evildoers who were weak
and close to death. I would come back and find that they had been
taken, and Those Who Must Be Kept would be as they were before.
Only the color of the flesh was a little different. Not a drop of blood
had been spilt.
  "It was at the full moon always that this was done, and usually in the
spring. Other victims left were never taken. And then even this yearly
feast stopped. I continued to bring victims now and then. And once
after a decade had passed, they took another. Again, it was the time of
the full moon. It was spring. And then no more for at least half a
century. I lost count. I thought perhaps they had to see the moon,
that they had to know the change of the seasons. But as it turned out,
this did rot matter.
  "They have drunk nothing since the time before I took them into
Italy. That was three hundred years ago. Even in the warmth of Egypt
they do not drink. "
  "But even when it happened, you never saw it with your own eyes? "
  "No, " he said.
  "You've never seen them move? "
  "Not since . . . the beginning. " I was trembling again. As I looked
at them, I fancied I saw them breathing, fancied I saw their lips change.

                                                                       294

I knew it was illusion. But it was driving me wild. I had to get out of
here. I would start crying again.
  "Sometimes when I come to them, " Marius said, "I find things
changed. "
  "How? What? "
  "Little things, " he said. He looked at them thoughtfully. He reached
out and touched the woman's necklace. "She likes this one. It is the
proper kind apparently. There was another which I used to find
broken on the floor. "
  "Then they can move. "
  "I thought at first the necklace had fallen. But after repairing it three
times I realized that was foolish. She was tearing it off her neck, or
making it fall with her mind. " I made some little horrified whisper.
And then I felt absolutely mortified that I had done this in her
presence. I wanted to go out at once. Her face was like a mirror for all
my imaginings. Her lips curved in a smile but did not curve.
  "It has happened with other ornaments, ornaments bearing the
names of gods whom they do not like, I think. A vase I brought from a
church was broken once, blown to tiny fragments as if by their glance.
And then there have been more startling changes as well. "
  "Tell me. "
  "I have come into the sanctuary and found one or the other of them
standing. " This was too terrifying. I wanted to tug his hand and pull
him out of here.
  "I found him once several paces from the chair. And the woman,
another time, at the door. "
  "Trying to get out? " I whispered.
  "Perhaps, " he said thoughtfully. "But then they could easily get out
if they wanted to. When you hear the whole story you can judge.
Whenever I've found them moved, I've carried them back. I've
arranged their limbs as they were before. It takes enormous strength
to do it. They are like flexible stone, if you can imagine it. And if I
have such strength, you can imagine what theirs might be. "
  "You say want . . . wanted to. What if they want to do everything
and they no longer can? What if it was the limit of her greatest effort
even to reach the door! "
  "I think she could have broken the doors, had she wanted to. If I can
open bolts with my mind, what can she do? " I looked at their cold,
remote faces, their narrow hollowed cheeks, their large and serene
mouths.



                                                                        295

  "But what if you're wrong. And what if they can hear every word
that we are saying to each other, and it angers them, outrages them.. .
"
  "I think they do hear, " he said, trying to calm me again, his hand on
mine, his tone subdued,
  "but I do not think they care. If they cared, they would move. "
  "But how can you know that? "
  "They do other things that require great strength. For example, there
are times when I lock the tabernacle and they at once unlock it and
open the doors again. I know they are doing it because they are the
only ones who could be doing it. The doors fly back and there they
are. I take them out to look at the sea. And before dawn, when I come
to fetch them, they are heavier, less pliant, almost impossible to move.
There are times when I think they do these things to torment me as it
were, to play with me. "
  "No. They are trying and they can't. "
  "Don't be so quick to judge, " he said. "I have come into their
chamber and found evidence of strange things indeed. And of course,
there are the things that happened in the beginning... " But he stopped.
Something had distracted him.
  "Do you hear thoughts from them? " I asked. He did seem to be
listening. He didn't answer. He was studying them. It occurred to me
that something had changed! I used every bit of my will not to turn
and run. I looked at them carefully. I couldn't see anything, hear
anything, feel anything. I was going to start shouting and screaming if
Marius didn't explain why he was staring.
  "Don't be so impetuous, Lestat, " he said finally, smiling a little, his
eyes still fixed on the male.
  "Every now and then I do hear them, but it is unintelligible, it is
merely the presence of them- you know the sound. "
  "And you heard him just then. "
  "Yeeesss . . . Perhaps. "
  "Marius, please let us go out of here, I beg you. Forgive me, I can't
bear it! Please, Marius, let's go. "
  "All right, " he said kindly. He squeezed my shoulder. "But do
something for me first. "
  "Anything you ask. "
  "Talk to them. It need not be out loud. But talk. Tell them you find
them beautiful. "
  "They know, " I said. "They know I find them indescribably
beautiful. " I was certain that they did. But he meant tell them in a


                                                                        296

ceremonial way, and so I cleared my mind of all fear and all mad
suppositions and I told them this.
  "Just talk to them, " Marius said, urging me on. I did. I looked into
the eyes of the man and into the eyes of the woman. And the strangest
feeling crept over me. I was repeating the phrases I find you beautiful,
I find you incomparably beautiful with the barest shape of real words.
I was praying as I had when I was very, very little and I would lie in the
meadow on the side of the mountain and ask God please please to help
me get away from my father's house. I talked to her like this now and I
said I was grateful that I had been allowed to come near her and her
ancient secrets, and this feeling became physical. It was all over the
surface of my skin and at the roots of my hair. I could feel tension
draining from my face. I could feel it leaving my body. I was light all
over, and the incense and the flowers were enfolding my spirit as I
looked into the black centers of her deep brown eyes.
  "Akasha, " I said aloud. I heard the name at the same moment of
speaking it. And it sounded lovely to me. The hairs rose all over me.
The tabernacle became like a flaming border around her, and there
was only something indistinct where the male figure sat. I drew close
to her without willing it, and I leaned forward and I almost kissed her
lips. I wanted to. I bent nearer. Then I felt her lips. I wanted to make
the blood come up in my mouth and pass it to her as I had that time to
Gabrielle when she lay in the coffin. The spell was deepening, and I
looked right into the fathomless orbs of her eyes. I am kissing the
goddess on her mouth, what is the matter with me! Am I mad to think
of it! I moved back. I found myself against the wall again, trembling,
with my hands clamped to the sides of my head. At least this time I
had not upset the lilies, but I was crying again. Marius closed the
tabernacle doors. He made the bolt inside slip into place. We went
into the passage and he made the inner bolt rise and go into its
brackets. He put the outside bolt in with his hands.
  "Come, young one, " he said. "Let's go upstairs. " But we had walked
only a few yards when we heard a crisp clicking sound, and then
another. He turned and looked back.
  "They did it again, " he said. And a look of distress divided his face
like a shadow.
  "What? " I backed up against the wall.
  "The tabernacle, they opened it. Come. I'll return later and lock it
before the sun rises. Now we will go back to my drawing room and I
will tell you my tale. " When we reached the lighted room, I collapsed
in the chair with my head in my hands. He was standing still just
looking at me, and when I realized it, I looked up.

                                                                      297

  "She told you her name, " he said.
  "Akasha! " I said. It was snatching a word out of the whirlpool of a
dissolving dream. "She did tell me! I said Akasha out loud. " I looked
at him, imploring him for answers. For some explanation of the
attitude with which he stared at me. I thought I'd lose my mind if his
face didn't become expressive again.
  "Are you angry with me? "
  "Shhh. Be quiet, " he said. I could hear nothing in the silence.
Except maybe the sea. Maybe a sound from the wicks of the candles in
the room. Maybe the wind. Not even their eyes had appeared more
lifeless than his eyes now seemed.
  "You cause something to stir in them, " he whispered. I stood up.
  "What does it mean? "
  "I don't know, " he said. "Maybe nothing. The tabernacle is still
open and they are merely sitting there as always. Who knows? " And I
felt suddenly all his long years of wanting to know. I would say
centuries, but I cannot really imagine centuries. Not even now. I felt
his years and years of trying to elicit from them the smallest signs and
getting nothing, and I knew that he was wondering why I had drawn
from her the secret of her name. Akasha. Things had happened, but
that had been in the time of Rome. Dark things. Terrible things.
Suffering, unspeakable suffering. The images went white. Silence. He
was stranded in the room like a saint taken down off an altar and left
in the aisle of a church.
  "Marius! " I whispered. He woke and his face warmed slowly, and
he looked at me affectionately, almost wonderingly.
  "Yes, Lestat, " he said and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. He
seated himself and gestured for me to do the same, and we were once
again facing each other comfortably. And the even light of the room
was reassuring. It was reassuring to see, beyond the windows, the
night sky. His former quickness was returning, the glint of good
humor in his eyes.
  "It's not yet midnight, " he said. "And all is well on the islands. If
I'm not disturbed, I think there is time for me to tell you the whole
tale. "

  MARIUS'S STORY

  5




                                                                        298

  "It happened in my fortieth year, on a warm spring night in the
Roman Gallic city of Massilia, when in a dirty waterfront tavern I sat
scribbling away on my history of the world.
  "The tavern was deliciously filthy and crowded, a hangout for sailors
and wanderers, travelers like me, I fancied, loving them all in a general
sort of way, though most of them were poor and I wasn't poor, and
they couldn't read what I wrote when they glanced over my shoulder.
  "I'd come to Massilia after a long and studious journey that had
taken me through all the great cities of the Empire. To Alexandria,
Pergamon, Athens I'd traveled, observing and writing about the
people, and now I was making my way through the cities of Roman
Gaul.
  "I couldn't have been more content on this night had I been in my
library at Rome. In fact, I liked the tavern better. Everywhere I went I
sought out such places in which to write, setting up my candle and ink
and parchment at a table close to the wall, and I did my best work
early in the evening when the places were at their noisiest.
  "In retrospect, it's easy to see that I lived my whole life in the midst
of frenzied activity. I was used to the idea that nothing could affect me
adversely.
  "I'd grown up an illegitimate son in a rich Roman household-loved,
pampered, and allowed to do what I wanted. My legitimate brothers
had to worry about marriage, politics, and war. By the age of twenty,
I'd become the scholar and the chronicler, the one who raised his voice
at drunken banquets to settle historical and military arguments.
  "When I traveled I had plenty of money, and documents that opened
doors everywhere. And to say life had been good to me would be an
understatement. I was an extraordinarily happy individual. But the
really important point here is that life had never bored me or defeated
me.
  "I carried within me a sense of invincibility, a sense of wonder. And
this was as important to me later on as your anger and strength have
been to you, as important as despair or cruelty can be in the spirits of
others.
  "But to continue . . . If there was anything I'd missed in my rather
eventful life-and I didn't think of this too much-it was the love and
knowledge of my Keltic mother. She'd died when I was born, and all I
knew of her was that she'd been a slave, daughter of the warlike Gauls
who fought Julius Caesar. I was blond and blue-eyed as she was. And
her people had been giants it seemed. At a very young age, I towered
over my father and my brothers.


                                                                        299

  "But I had little or no curiosity about my Gallic ancestors. I'd come
to Gaul as an educated Roman, through and through, and I carried
with me no awareness of my barbarian blood, but rather the common
beliefs of my time-that Caesar Augustus was a great ruler, and that in
this blessed age of the Pax Romana, old superstition was being
replaced by law and by reason throughout the Empire. There was no
place too wretched for the Roman roads, and for the soldiers, the
scholars, and the traders who followed them.
  "On this night I was writing like a madman, scribbling down
descriptions of the men who came and went in the tavern, children of
all races it seemed, speakers of a dozen different languages.
  "And for no apparent reason, I was possessed of a strange idea about
life, a strange concern that amounted almost to a pleasant obsession. I
remember that it came on me this night because it seemed somehow
related to what happened after. But it wasn't related. I had had the
idea before. That it came to me in these last free hours as a Roman
citizen was no more than coincidence.
  "The idea was simply that there was somebody who knew everything,
somebody who had seen everything. I did not mean by this that a
Supreme Being existed, but rather that there was on earth a continual
intelligence, a continual awareness. And I thought of it in practical
terms that excited me and soothed me simultaneously. There was an
awareness somewhere of all things i had seen in my travels, an
awareness of what it had been like in Massilia six centuries ago when
the first Greek traders came, an awareness of what it had been like in
Egypt when Cheops built the pyramids. Somebody knew what the
light had been like in the late afternoon on the day that Troy fell to the
Greeks, and someone or something knew what the peasants said to
each other in their little farmhouse outside Athens right before the
Spartans brought down the walls.
  "My idea of who or what it was, was vague. But I was comforted by
the notion that nothing spiritual-and knowing was spiritual-was lost
to us. That there was this continuous knowing . . .
  "And as I drank a little more wine, and thought about it, and wrote
about it, I realized it wasn't so much a belief of mine as it was a
prejudice. I just felt that there was a continual awareness.
  "And the history that I was writing was an imitation of it. I tried to
unite all things I had seen in my history, linking my observations of
lands and people with all the written observations that had come down
to me from the Greeks-from Xenophon and Herodotus, and
Poseidonius-to make one continuous awareness of the world in my


                                                                       300

lifetime. It was a pale thing, a limited thing, compared to the true
awareness. Yet I felt good as I continued writing.
  "But around midnight, I was getting a little tired, and when I
happened to look up after a particularly long period of unbroken
concentration, I realized something had changed in the tavern.
  "It was unaccountably quieter. In fact, it was almost empty. And
across from me, barely illuminated by the sputtering light of the
candle, there sat a tall fair-haired man with his back to the room who
was watching me in silence. I was startled, not so much by the way he
looked- though this was startling in itself-but by the realization that he
had been there for some time, close to me, observing me, and I hadn't
noticed him.
  "He was a giant of a Gaul as they all were, even taller than I was, and
he had a long narrow face with an extremely strong jaw and hawklike
nose, and eyes that gleamed beneath their bushy blond brows with a
childlike intelligence. What I mean to say is he looked very, very
clever, but very young and innocent also. And he wasn't young. The
effect was perplexing.
  "And it was made all the more so by the fact that his thick and coarse
yellow hair wasn't clipped short in the popular Roman style, but was
streaming down to his shoulders. And instead of the usual tunic and
cloak which you saw everywhere in those times, he wore the old belted
leather jerkin that had been the barbarian dress before Caesar.
  "Right out of the woods this character looked, with his gray eyes
burning through me, and I was vaguely delighted with him. I wrote
down hurriedly the details of his dress, confident he couldn't read the
Latin.
  "But the stillness in which he sat unnerved me a little. His eyes were
unnaturally wide, and his lips quivered slightly as if the mere sight of
me excited him. His clean and delicate white hand, which casually
rested on the table before him, seemed out of keeping with the rest of
him.
  "A quick glance about told me my slaves weren't in the tavern. Well,
they're probably next door playing cards, I thought, or upstairs with a
couple of women. They'll stop in any minute.
  "I forced a little smile at my strange and silent friend, and went back
to writing. But directly he started talking.
  "' You are an educated man, aren't you?' he asked. He spoke the
universal Latin of the Empire, but with a thick accent, pronouncing
each word with a care that was almost musical.



                                                                       301

  "I told him, yes, I was fortunate enough to be educated, and I started
to write again, thinking this would surely discourage him. After all, he
was fine to look at, but I didn't really want to talk to him.
  " `And you write both in Greek and in Latin, don't you?' he asked,
glancing at the finished work that lay before me.
  "I explained politely that the Greek I had written on the parchment
was a quotation from another text. My text was in Latin. And again I
started scribbling.
  " `But you are a Keltoi, are you not?' he asked this time. It was the
old Greek word for the Gauls.
  "'Not really, no. I am a Roman,' I answered.
  " `You look like one of us, the Keltoi,' he said. `You are tall like us,
and you walk the way we do.'
  "This was a strange statement. For hours I'd been sitting here, barely
sipping my wine. I hadn't walked anywhere. But I explained that my
mother had been Keltic, but I hadn't known her. My father was a
Roman senator.
  "`And what is it you write in Greek and Latin?' he asked. `What is it
that arouses your passion?'
  "I didn't answer right away. He was beginning to intrigue me. But I
knew enough at forty to realize that most people you meet in taverns
sound interesting for the first few minutes and then begin to weary
you beyond endurance.
  "`Your slaves say,' he announced gravely, `that you are writing a great
history.'
  "'Do they?' I answered, a bit stiffly. `And where are my slaves, I
wonder!' Again I looked around. Nowhere in sight. Then I conceded
to him that it was a history I was writing.
  " `And you have been to Egypt,' he said. And his hand spread itself
out flat on the table.
  "I paused and took another good look at him. There was something
otherworldly about him, the way that he sat, the way he used this one
hand to gesture. It was the decorum primitive people often have that
makes them seem repositors of immense wisdom, when in fact all they
possess is immense conviction.
  "`Yes,' I said a little warily. `I've been to Egypt.'
  "Obviously this exhilarated him. His eyes widened slightly, then
narrowed, and he made some little movement with his lips as though
speaking to himself.
  "'And you know the language and the writing of Egypt?' he asked
earnestly, his eyebrows knitting. `You know the cities of Egypt?'


                                                                        302

  " `The language as it is spoken, yes, I do know it. But if by the
writing you mean the old picture writing, no, I can't read it. I don't
know anyone who can read it. I've heard that even the old Egyptian
priests can't read it. Half the texts they copy they can't decipher.'
  "He laughed in the strangest way. I couldn't tell whether this was
exciting him or he knew something I didn't know. He appeared to
take a deep breath, his nostrils dilating a little. And then his face
cooled. He was actually a splendid-looking man.

  " `The gods can read it,' he whispered.
  "'Well, I wish they'd teach it to me,' I said pleasantly.
  "`You do!' he said in an astonished gasp. He leant forward over the
table. `Say this again!'
  "'I was joking,' I said. 'I only meant I wished I could read the old
Egyptian writing. If I could read it, then I could know true things
about the people of Egypt, instead of all the nonsense written by the
Greek historians. Egypt is a misunderstood land- I stopped myself.
Why was I talking to this man about Egypt?
  "`In Egypt there are true gods still,' he said gravely, `gods who have
been there forever. Have you been to the very bottom of Egypt?'
  "This was a curious way to put it. I told him I had been up the Nile
quite far, that I had seen many wonders. `But as for there being true
gods,' I said, `I can scarce accept the veracity of gods with the heads of
animals-'
  "He shook his head almost a little sadly.
  " `The true gods require no statues of them to be erected,' he said.
`They have the heads of man and they themselves appear when they
choose, and they are living as the crops that come from the earth are
living, as all things under the heavens are living, even the stones and
the moon itself, which divides time in the great silence of its never
changing cycles.'
  " `Very likely,' I said under my breath, not wishing to disturb him.
So it was zeal, this mixture of cleverness and youthfulness I had
perceived in him. I should have known it. And something came back
to me from Julius Caesar's writings about Gaul, that the Keltoi had
come from Dis Pater, the god of the night. Was this strange creature a
believer in these things?
  " `There are old gods in Egypt,' he said softly, `and there are old gods
in this land for those who know how to worship them. I do not mean
in your temples round which merchants sell the animals to defile the
altars, and the butchers after sell the meat that is left over. I speak of


                                                                        303

the proper worship, the proper sacrifice for the god, the one sacrifice
to which he will hearken.'
  " `Human sacrifice, you mean, don't you?' I said unobtrusively.
Caesar had described well enough that practice among the Keltoi, and
it rather curdled my blood to think of it. Of course I'd seen ghastly
deaths in the arena in Rome, ghastly deaths at the places of execution,
but human sacrifice to the gods, that we had not done in centuries. If
ever.
  "And now I realized what this remarkable man might actually be. A
Druid, a member of the ancient priesthood of the Keltoi, whom Caesar
had also described, a priesthood so powerful that nothing like it
existed, so far as I knew, anywhere in the Empire. But it wasn't
supposed to exist in Roman Gaul anymore either.
  "Of course the Druids were always described as wearing long white
robes. They went into the forests and collected mistletoe off the oak
trees with ceremonial sickles. And this man looked more like a farmer,
or a soldier. But then what Druid was going to wear his white robes
into a waterfront tavem? And it wasn't lawful anymore for the Druids
to go about being Druids.
  " `Do you really believe in this old worship?' I asked, leaning
forward. `Have you yourself been down to the bottom of Egypt?'
  "If this was a real live Druid, I had made a marvelous catch, I was
thinking. I could get this man to tell me things about the Keltoi that
nobody knew. And what on earth did Egypt have to do with it, I
wondered?
  " `No,' he said. `I have not been to Egypt, though from Egypt our
gods came to us. It is not my destiny to, go there. It is not my destiny
to learn to read the ancient language. The tongue I speak is enough
for the gods. They give ear to it.'
  "'And what tongue is that?'
  " `The tongue of the Keltoi, of course,' he said. `You know that
without asking.'
  " `And when you speak to your gods, how do you know that they
hear you?'
  "His eyes widened again, and his mouth lengthened in an
unmistakable look of triumph.
  " `My gods answer me,' he said quietly.
  "Surely he was a Druid. And he appeared to take on a shimmer,
suddenly. I pictured him in his white robes. There might have been
an earthquake then in Massilia, and I doubt I would have noticed it.
  " `Then you yourself have heard them,' I said.


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  "`I have laid eyes upon my gods,' he said. `And they have spoken to
me both in words and in silence.'
  "`And what do they say? What do they do that makes them different
from our gods, I mean aside from the nature of the sacrifice?'
  "His voice took on the lilting reverence of a song as he spoke. `They
do as gods have always done; they divide the evil from the good. They
bring down blessings upon all who worship them. They draw the
faithful into harmony with all the cycles of the universe, with the cycles
of the moon, as I have told you. They fructify the land, the gods do.
All things that are good proceed from them.'
  "Yes, I thought, the old old religion in its simplest forms, and the
forms that still held a great spell for the common people of the
Empire.
  " `My gods sent me here,' he said. `To search for you.'
  " `For me?' I asked. I was startled.
  " `You will understand all these things,' he said. `Just as you will
come to know the true worship of ancient Egypt. The gods will teach
you.'
  "`Why ever would they do that?' I asked.
  " `The answer is simple,' he said. `Because you are going to become
one of them.'
  "I was about to answer when I felt a sharp blow to the back of my
head and the pain spread out in all directions over my skull as if it
were water. I knew I was going out. I saw the table rising, saw the
ceiling high above me. I think I wanted to say if it is ransom you want,
take me to my house, to my steward. " But I knew even then that the
rules of my world had absolutely nothing to do with it.
  "When I woke it was daylight and I was in a large wagon being pulled
fast along an unpaved road through an immense forest. I was bound
hand and foot and a loose cover was thrown over me. I could see to
the left and right, through the wicker sides of the cart, and I saw the
man who had talked to me, riding beside me. There were others riding
with him, and all were dressed in the trousers and belted leather
jerkins, and they wore iron swords and iron bracelets. Their hair was
almost white in the dappled sun, and they didn't talk as they rode
beside the cart together.
  "This forest itself seemed made to the scale of Titans. The oaks were
ancient and enormous, the interlacing of their limbs blocked out most
of the light, and we moved for hours through a world of damp and
dark green leaves and deep shadow.
  "I do not remember towns. I do not remember villages. I remember
only a crude fortress. Once inside the gates I saw two rows of

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thatched-roof houses, and everywhere the leatherclad barbarians. And
when I was taken into one of the houses, a dark low place, and left
there alone, I could hardly stand for the cramps in my legs, and I was
as wary as I was furious.
  "I knew now that I was in an undisturbed enclave of the ancient
Keltoi, the very same fighters who had sacked the great shrine of
Delphi only a few centuries ago, and Rome itself not too long after, the
same warlike creatures who rode stark naked into battle against
Caesar, their trumpets blasting, their cries affrighting the disciplined
Roman soldiers.
  "In other words, I was beyond the reach of everything I counted
upon. And if all this talk about my becoming one of the gods meant I
was to be slain on some blood-stained altar in an oak grove, then I had
better try to get the hell out of here. "

  6

  "When my captor appeared again, he was in the fabled long white
robes, and his coarse blond hair had been combed, and he looked
immaculate and impressive and solemn. There were other tall white-
robed men, some old, some young, and all with the same gleaming
yellow hair, who came into the small shadowy room behind him.
  "In a silent circle they enclosed me. And after a protracted silence, a
riff of whispers passed amongst them.
  " `You are perfect for the god,' said the eldest, and I saw the silent
pleasure in the one who had brought me here. 'You are what the god
has asked for,' the eldest said. `You will remain with us until the great
feast of Samhain, and then you will be taken to the sacred grove and
there you will drink the Divine Blood and you will become a father of
gods, a restorer of all the magic that has inexplicably been taken from
us.'
  " `And will my body die when this happens?' I asked. I was looking
at them, their sharp narrow faces, their probing eyes, the gaunt grace
with which they surrounded me. What a terror this race must have
been when its warriors swept down on the Mediterranean peoples. No
wonder there had been so much written about their fearlessness. But
these weren't warriors. These were priests, judges, and teachers. These
were the instructors of the young, the keepers of the poetry and the
laws that were never written in any language.
  "`Only the mortal part of you will die,' said the one who had spoken
to me all along.
  "`Bad luck,' I said. 'Since that's about all there is to me.'

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  "`No,' he said. 'Your form will remain and it will become glorified.
You will see. Don't fear. And besides, there is nothing you can do to
change these things. Until the feast of Samhain, you will let your hair
grow long, and you will learn our tongue, and our hymns and our
laws. We will care for you. My name is Mael, and I myself will teach
you.'
  "`But I am not willing to become the god,' I said. `Surely the gods
don't want one who is unwilling.'
  "`The old god will decide,' said Mael. `But I know that when you
drink the Divine Blood you will become the god, and all things will be
clear to you.'
  "Escape was impossible.
  "I was guarded night and day. I was allowed no knife with which I
might cut off my hair or otherwise damage myself. And a good deal of
the time I lay in the dark empty room, drunk on wheaten beer and
satiated with the rich roasted meats they gave to me. I had nothing
with which to write and this tortured me.
  "Out of boredom I listened to Mael when he came to instruct me. I
let him sing anthems to me and tell me old poems and talk on about
laws, only now and then taunting him with the obvious fact that a god
should not have to be so instructed.
  "This he conceded, but what could he do but try to make me
understand what would happen to me.
  "`You can help me get out of here, you can come with me to Rome,' I
said. `I have a villa all my own on the cliffs above the Bay of Naples.
You have never seen such a beautiful spot, and I would let you live
there forever if you would help me, asking only that you repeat all
these anthems and prayers and laws to me so that I might record
them.'
  "`Why do you try to corrupt me?' he would ask, but I could see he
was tantalized by the world I came from. He confessed that he had
searched the Greek city of Massilia for weeks before my arrival, and he
loved the Roman wine and the great ships that he had seen in the port,
and the exotic foods he had eaten.
  " `I don't try to corrupt you,' I said. `I don't believe what you believe,
and you've made me your prisoner:'
  "But I continued to listen to his prayers out of boredom and
curiosity, and the vague fear of what was in store for me.
  "I began waiting for him to come, for his pale, wraithlike figure to
illuminate the barren room like a white light, for his quiet, measured
voice to pour forth with all the old melodious nonsense.


                                                                        307

  "It soon came clear that his verses did not unfold continuous stories
of the gods as we knew them in Greek and Latin. But the identity and
characteristics of the gods began to emerge in the many stanzas.
Deities of all the predictable sorts belonged to the tribe of the heavens.
  "But the god I was to become exerted the greatest hold over Mael and
those he instructed. He had no name, this god, though he had
numerous titles, and the Drinker of the Blood was the most often
repeated. He was also the White One, the God of the Night, the God
of the Oak, the Lover of the Mother.
  "This god took blood sacrifice at every full moon. But on Samhain
(the first of November in our present Christian calendar-the day that
has become the Feast of All Saints or the Day of the Dead) this god
would accept the greatest number of human sacrifices before the
whole tribe for the increase of the crops, as well as speak all manner of
predictions and judgments.
  "It was the Great Mother he served, she who is without visible form,
but nevertheless present in all things, and the Mother of all things, of
the earth, of the trees, of the sky overhead, of all men, of the Drinker of
the Blood himself who walks in her garden.
  "My interest deepened but so did my apprehension. The worship of
the Great Mother was certainly not unknown to me. The Mother
Earth and the Mother of All Things was worshiped under a dozen
names from one end of the Empire to the other, and so was her lover
and son, her Dying God, the one who grew to manhood as the crops
grow, only to be cut down as the crops are cut down, while the Mother
remains eternal. It was the ancient and gentle myth of the seasons.
But the celebration anywhere and at any time was hardly ever gentle.
  "For the Divine Mother was also Death, the earth that swallows the
remains of that young lover, the earth that swallows all of us. And in
consonance with this ancient truth-old as the sowing of seed itself-
there came a thousand bloody rituals.
  "The goddess was worshiped under the name of Cybele in Rome, and
I had seen her mad priests castrating themselves in the midst of their
devoted frenzy. And the gods of myth met their ends even more
violently-Attis gelded, Dionysus rent limb from limb, the old Egyptian
Osiris dismembered before the Great Mother Isis restored him.
  "And now I was to be that God of Growing Things-the vine god, the
corn god, the god of the tree, and I knew that whatever happened it
was going to be something appalling.
  "And what was there to do but get drunk and murmur these anthems
with Mael, whose eyes would cloud with tears from time to time as he
looked at me.

                                                                      308

  "`Get me out of here, you wretch,' I said once in pure exasperation.
`Why the hell don't you become the God of the Tree? Why am I so
honored?'
  "`I have told you, the god confided to me his wishes. I wasn't
chosen.'
  " `And would you do it, if you were chosen?' I demanded.
  "I was sick of hearing of these old rites by which any man threatened
by illness or misfortune must serve up a human sacrifice to the god if
he wished to be spared, and all the other sacrosanct beliefs that had to
them the same childlike barbarity.
  " `I would fear but I would accept,' he whispered. `But do you know
what is so terrible about your fate? It is that your soul will be locked in
your body forever. It will have no chance in natural death to pass into
another body or another lifetime. No, all through time your soul will
be the soul of the god. The cycle of death and rebirth will be closed in
you.'
  "In spite of myself and my general contempt for his belief in
reincarnation, this silenced me. I felt the eerie weight of his
conviction, I felt his sadness.
  "My hair grew longer and fuller. And the hot summer melted into
the cooler days of fall, and we were nearing the great annual feast of
Samhain. '
  "Yet I wouldn't let up on the questions.
  "`How many have you brought to be gods in this manner? What was
it in me that caused you to choose me?'
  "`I have never brought a man to be a god,' he said. `But the god is
old; he is robbed of his magic. A terrible calamity has befallen him,
and I can't speak of these things. He has chosen his successor.' He
looked frightened. He was saying too much. Something was stirring
the deepest fears in him.
  " `And how do you know he will want me? Have you sixty other
candidates stashed in this fortress?'
  "He shook his head and in a moment of uncharacteristic rawness, he
said:
  "'Marius, if you fail to Drink the Blood, if you do not become the
father of a new race of gods, what will become of us?'
  " `I wish I could care, my friend' " I said.
  " `Ah, calamity,' he whispered. And there followed a long subdued
observation of the rise of Rome, the terrible invasions of Caesar, the
decline of a people who had lived in these mountains and forests since
the beginning of time, scorning the cities of the Greek and the


                                                                       309

Etruscan and the Roman for the honorable strongholds of powerful
tribal leaders.
  "`Civilizations rise and fall, my friend,' I said. `Old gods give way to
new ones.'
  "`You don't understand, Marius,' he said. `Our god was not defeated
by your idols and those who tell their frivolous and lascivious stories.
Our god was as beautiful as if the moon itself had fashioned him with
her light, and he spoke with a voice that was as pure as the light, and
he guided us in that great oneness with all things that is the only
cessation of despair and loneliness. But he was stricken with terrible
calamity, and all through the north country other gods have perished
completely. It was the revenge of the sun god upon him, but how the
sun entered into him in the hours of darkness and sleep is not known
to us, nor to him. You are our salvation, Marius. You are the mortal
Who Knows, and is Learned and Can Learn, and Who Can Go Down
into Egypt.'
  "I thought about this. I thought of the old worship of Isis and Osiris,
and of those who said she was the Mother Earth and he the corn, and
Typhon the slayer of Osiris was the fire of the sunlight.
  "And now this pious communicator with the god was telling me that
the sun had found his god of the night and caused great calamity.
  "Finally my reason gave out on me.
  "Too many days passed in drunkenness and solitude.
  "I lay down in the dark and I sang to myself the hymns of the Great
Mother. She was no goddess to me, however. Not Diana of Ephesus
with her rows and rows of milk-filled breasts, or the terrible Cybele, or
even the gentle Demeter, whose mourning for Persephone in the land
of the dead had inspired the sacred mysteries of Eleusis. She was the
strong good earth that I smelled through the small barred windows of
this place, the wind that carried with it the damp and the sweetness of
the dark green forest. She was the meadow flowers and the blowing
grass, the water I heard now and then gushing as if from some
mountain spring. She was all the things that I still had in this rude
little wooden room where everything else had been taken from me.
And I knew only what all men know, that the cycle of winter and
spring and all growing things has within itself some sublime truth that
restores without myth or language.
  "I looked through, the bars to the stars overhead, and it seemed to
me I was dying in the most absurd and foolish way, among people I
did not admire and customs I would have abolished. And yet the
seeming sanctity of it all infected me. It caused me to dramatize and


                                                                        310

to dream and to give in, to see myself at the center of something that
possessed its own exalted beauty.
  "I sat up one morning and touched my hair, and realized it was thick
and curling at my shoulders.
  "And in the days that followed, there was endless noise and
movement in the fortress. Carts were coming to the gates from all
directions. Thousands on foot passed inside. Every hour there was the
sound of people on the move, people coming.
  "At last Mael and eight of the Druids came to me. Their robes were
white and fresh, smelling of the spring water and sunshine in which
they'd been washed and dried, and their hair was brushed and shining.
  "Carefully, they shaved all the hair from my chin and upper lip.
They trimmed my fingernails. They brushed my hair and put on me
the same white robes. And then shielding me on all sides with white
veils they passed me out of the house and into a white canopied
wagon.
  "I glimpsed other robed men holding back an enormous crowd, and
I realized for the first time that only a select few of the Druids had been
allowed to see me.
  "Once Mael and I were under the canopy of the cart, the flaps were
closed, and we were completely hidden. We seated ourselves on rude
benches as the wagon started to move. And we rode for hours without
speaking.
  "Occasional rays of sun pierced the white fabric of the tentlike
enclosure. And when I put my face close to the cloth I could see the
forest-deeper, thicker than I remembered. And behind us came an
endless train, and great wagons of men who clung to wooden bars and
cried out to be released, their voices commingling in an awful chorus.
  "`Who are they? Why do they cry like that?' I asked finally. I
couldn't stand the tension any longer.
  "Mael roused himself as if from a dream. `They are evildoers,
thieves, murderers, all justly condemned, and they shall perish in
sacred sacrifice.'
  "`Loathsome,' I muttered. But was it? We condemned our criminals
to die on crosses in Rome, to be burnt at the stake, to suffer all manner
of cruelties. Did it make us more civilized that we didn't call it a
religious sacrifice? Maybe the Keltoi were wiser than we were in not
wasting the deaths.
  "But this was nonsense. My head was light. The cart was creeping
along. I could hear those who passed us on foot as well as on
horseback. Everyone going to the festival of Samhain. I was about to
die. I didn't want it to be fire. Mael looked pale and frightened. And

                                                                       311

the wailing of the men in the prison carts was driving me to the edge of
madness.
  "What would I think when the fire was lighted? What would I think
when I felt myself start to burn? I couldn't stand this.
  "`What is going to happen to me!' I demanded suddenly. I had the
urge to strangle Mael. He looked up and his brows moved ever so
slightly.
  " `What if the god is already dead. . . ' he whispered.
  " `Then we go to Rome, you and I, and we get drunk together on
good Italian wine!' I whispered.
  "It was late afternoon when the cart came to a stop. The noise
seemed to rise like steam all around us.
  "When I went to look out, Mael didn't stop me. I saw we had come
to an immense clearing hemmed on all sides by the giant oaks. All the
carts including ours were backed into the trees, and in the middle of
the clearing hundreds worked at some enterprise involving endless
bundles of sticks and miles of rope and hundreds of great rough-hewn
tree trunks.
  "The biggest and longest logs I had ever seen were being hefted
upright in two giant X's.
  "The woods were alive with those who watched. The clearing could
not contain the multitudes. Yet more and more carts wound their way
through the press to find a spot at the edges of the forest.
  "I sat back and pretended to myself that I did not know what they
were doing out there, but I did. And before the sunset I heard louder
and more desperate screams from those in the prison carts.
  "It was almost dusk. And when Mael lifted the flap for me to see, I
stared in horror at two gargantuan wicker figures-a man and a woman,
it seemed, from the mass of vines that suggested dress and hair-
constructed all of logs and osiers and ropes, and filled from top to
bottom with the bound and writhing bodies of the condemned who
screamed in supplication.
  "I was speechless looking at these two monstrous giants. I could not
count the number of wriggling human bodies they held, victims
stuffed into the hollow framework of their enormous legs, their torsos,
their arms, even their hands, and even into their immense and faceless
cagelike heads, which were crowned with ivy leaves and flowers.
Ropes of flowers made up the woman's gown, and stalks of wheat were
stuffed into the man's great belt of ivy. The figures shivered as if they
might at any moment fall, but I knew the powerful cross scaffolding of
timbers supported them as they appeared to tower over the distant
forest. And all around the feet of these figures were stacked the

                                                                       312

bundles of kindling and pitch-soaked wood that would soon ignite
them.
  " `And all these who must die are guilty of some wrongdoing, you
wish me to believe that?' I asked of Mael.
  "He nodded with his usual solemnity. This didn't concern him.
  "`They have waited months, some years, to be sacrificed,' he said
almost indifferently. `They come from all over the land. And they
cannot change their fate any more than we can change ours. It is to
perish in the forms of the Great Mother and her Lover.'
  "I was becoming ever more desperate. I should have done anything
to escape. But even now some twenty Druids surrounded the cart and
beyond them was a legion of warriors. And the crowd itself went so
far back into the trees that I could see no end to it.
  "Darkness was falling quickly, and everywhere torches were being
lighted.
  "I could feel the roar of excited voices. The screams of the
condemned grew ever more piercing and beseeching.
  "I sat still and tried to deliver my mind from panic. If I could not
escape, then I would meet these strange ceremonies with some degree
of calm, and when it came clear what a sham they were, I would with
dignity and righteousness pronounce my judgments loud enough for
others to hear them. That would be my last act-the act of the god-and
it must be done with authority, or else it would do nothing in the
scheme of things.
  "The cart began to move. There was much noise, shouting, and Mael
rose and took my arm and steadied me. When the flap was opened we
had come to a stop deep in the woods many yards from the clearing. I
glanced back at the lurid sight of the immense figures, torchlight
glinting on the swarm of pathetic movement inside them. They
seemed animate, these horrors, like things that would suddenly start to
walk and crush all of us. The play of light and shadow on those stuffed
into the giant heads gave a false impression of hideous faces.
  "I couldn't make myself turn away from it, and from the sight of the
crowd gathered all around, but Mael tightened his grip on my arm and
said that I must come now to the sanctuary of the god with the elect of
the priesthood.
  "The others closed me in, obviously trying to conceal me. I realized
the crowd did not know what was happening now. In all likelihood
they knew only that the sacrifices would soon begin, and some
manifestation of the god would be claimed by the Druids.



                                                                      313

  "Only one of the band carried a torch, and he led the way deeper into
the evening darkness, Mael at my side, and other white-robed figures
ahead of me, flanking me, and behind me.
  "It was still. It was damp. And the trees rose to such dizzying heights
against the vanishing glow of the distant sky that they seemed to be
growing even as I looked up at them.
  "I could run now, I thought, but how far would I get before this
entire race of people came thundering after me?
  "But we had come into a grove, and I saw, in the feeble light of the
flames, dreadful faces carved into the barks of the trees and human
skulls on stakes grinning in the shadows. In carved-out tree trunks
were other skulls in rows, piled one row upon another. In fact, the
place was a regular charnel house, and the silence that enclosed us
seemed to give life to these horrid things, to let them speak suddenly.
  "I tried to shake the illusion, the sense that these staring skulls were
watching.
  "There is no one really watching, I thought, there is no continuous
awareness of anything.
  "But we had paused before a gnarled oak of such enormous girth that
I doubted my senses. How old it must have been, this tree, to have
grown to such width I couldn't imagine. But when I looked up I saw
that its soaring limbs were still alive, it was still in green leaf, and the
living mistletoe everywhere decorated it.
  "The Druids had stepped away to right and left. Only Mael remained
near me. And I stood facing the oak, with Mael at my far right, and I
saw that hundreds of bouquets of flowers had been laid at the base of
the tree, their little blooms barely showing any color anymore in the
gathering shadows.
  "Mael had bowed his head. His eyes were closed. And it seemed the
others were in the same attitude, and their bodies were trembling. I
felt the cool breeze stir the green grass. I heard the leaves ail around us
carry the breeze in a loud and long sigh that died away as it had come
in the forest.
  "And then very distinctly, I heard words spoken in the dark that had
no sound to them!
  "They came undeniably from within the tree itself, and they asked
whether or not all the conditions had been met by him who would
drink the Divine Blood tonight.
  "For a moment I thought that I was going mad. They had drugged
me. But I had drunk nothing since morning! My head was clear, too
painfully clear, and I heard the silent pulse of this personage again and
it was asking questions:

                                                                           314

  "He is a man of learning?
  "Mael's slender form seemed to shimmer as surely he expressed the
answer. And the faces of the others had become rapt, their eyes fixed
on the great oak, the flutter of the torch the only movement.
  "Can he go down into Egypt?
  "I saw Mael nod. And the tears rose in his eyes, and his pale throat
moved as he swallowed.
  "Yes, I live, my faithful one, and I speak, and you have done well, and
I shall make the new god. Send him in to me.
  "I was too astonished to speak, and I had nothing to say either.
Everything had changed. Everything that I believed, depended upon,
had suddenly been called into question. I hadn't the slightest fear,
only paralyzing amazement. Mael took me by the arm. The other
Druids came to assist him, and I was led around the oak, clear of the
flowers heaped at its roots, until we stood behind it before a huge pile
of stones banked against it.
  "The grove had its carved images on this side as well, its troves of
skulls, and the pale figures of Druids whom I had not seen before.
And it was these men, some with long white beards, who drifted
forward to lay their hands on the stones and start to remove them.
  "Mael and the others worked with them, silently lifting these great
rocks and casting them aside, some of the stones so heavy that three
men had to lift them.
  "And finally there was revealed in the base of the oak a heavy
doorway of iron with huge locks over it. Mael drew out an iron key
and he said some long words in the language of the Keltoi, to which
the others gave responses. Mael's hand was shaking. But he soon had
all the locks undone, and then it took four of the Druids to pull back
the door. And then the torchbearer lighted another brand for me and
placed it in my hands and Mael said:
  "`Enter, Marius.'
  "In the wavering light, we glanced at each other. He seemed a
helpless creature, unable to move his limbs, though his heart brimmed
as he looked at me. I knew now the barest glimpse of the wonder that
had shaped him and enflamed him, and was utterly humbled and
baffled by its origins.
  "But from within the tree, from the darkness beyond this rudely cut
doorway, there came the silent one again:
  "Do not be afraid, Marius. I wait for you. Take the light and come
to me. "

  7

                                                                      315

  "When I stepped through the doorway, the Druids closed it. And I
realized that I stood at the top of a long stone stairs. It was a
configuration I was to see over and over again in the centuries that
followed, and you have already seen it twice and you will see it again,
the steps leading down into the Mother Earth, into the chambers
where Those Who Drink the Blood always hide.
  "The oak itself contained a chamber, low and unfinished, the light off
my torch glinting on the rude marks left everywhere in the wood by
the chisels, but the thing that called me was at the bottom of the stairs.
And again, it told me that I must not be afraid.
  "I was not afraid. I was exhilarated beyond my wildest dreams. I was
not going to die as simply as I had imagined. I was descending to a
mystery that was infinitely more interesting than I had ever thought it
would be.
  "But when I reached the bottom of the narrow steps and stood in the
small stone chamber there, I was terrified by what I saw-terrified and
repelled by it, the loathing and fear so immediate that I felt a lump
rising to suffocate me or make me uncontrollably sick.
  "A creature sat on a stone bench opposite the foot of the stairway,
and in the full light of the torch I saw that it had the face and limbs of
a man. But it was burnt black all over, horribly burnt, its skin
shriveled to its very bones. In fact it appeared a yellow-eyed skeleton
coated in pitch, only its flowing main of white hair untouched. It
opened its mouth to speak and I saw its white teeth, its fang teeth, and
I gripped the torch firmly, trying not to scream like a fool.
  " `Do not come too close to me,' it said. `Stand there where I may
really see you, not as they see you, but as my eyes can still see.'
  "I swallowed, tried to breathe easily. No human being could have
been burnt like that and survived. And yet the thing lived-naked and
shrunken and black. And its voice was low and beautiful. It rose, and
then moved slowly across the chamber.
  "It pointed its finger at me, and the yellow eyes widened slightly,
revealing a blood red tinge in the light.
  "`What do you want of me?' I whispered before I could stop myself.
`Why have I been brought here?'
  " `Calamity,' he said in the same voice, colored with genuine feeling-
not the rasping sound I had expected from such a thing. `I will give
you my power. Marius, I will make you a god and you will be
immortal. But you must leave here when it is finished. You must
somehow escape our faithful worshipers, and you must go down into
Egypt to find why this . . . this . . . has befallen me.'

                                                                       316

  "He appeared to be floating in the darkness, his hair a mop of white
straw around him, his jaws stretching the blackened leathery skin that
clung to his skull as he spoke.
  " `You see, we are the enemies of light, we gods of darkness, we serve
the Holy Mother and we live and rule only by the light of the moon.
But our enemy, the sun, has escaped his natural path and sought us
out in darkness. All over the north country where we worshiped, in
the sacred groves from the lands of snow and ice, down into this
fruitful country, and to the east, the sun has found its way into the
sanctuary by day or the world by night and burned the gods alive. The
youngest of these perished utterly, some exploding like comets before
their worshipers! Others died in such heat that the sacred tree itself
became a funeral pyre. Only the old ones-the ones who have long
served the Great Mother-continued to walk and to talk as I do, but in
agony, affrighting the faithful worshipers when they appeared.
  " `There must be a new god, Marius, strong and beautiful as I was,
the lover of the Great Mother, but more truly there must be one strong
enough to escape the worshipers, to get out of the oak somehow, and
to go down into Egypt and seek out the old gods and find why this
calamity has occurred. You must go to Egypt, Marius, you must go
into Alexandria and into the older cities, and you must summon the
gods with the silent voice that you will have after I make you, and you
must find who lives still and who walks still, and why this calamity has
occurred.'
  "It closed its eyes now. It stood still, its light frame wavering
uncontrollably as if it were a thing made of black paper, and I saw
suddenly, unaccountably, a spill of violent images-these gods of the
grove bursting into flame. I heard their screams. My mind, being
rational, being Roman, resisted these images. It tried to memorize and
contain them, rather than yield to them, but the maker of the images-
this thing-was patient and the images went on. I saw the country that
could only be Egypt, the burnt yellow look to all things, the sand that
overlies everything and soils it and dusts it to the same color, and I saw
more stairways into the earth and I saw sanctuaries . . .
  "`Find them,' he said. `Find why and how this has come to pass. See
to it that it never comes to pass again. Use your powers in the streets
of Alexandria until you find the old ones. Pray the old ones are there
as I am still here.'
  "I was too shocked to answer, too humbled by the mystery. And
perhaps there was even a moment when I accepted this destiny,
accepted it completely, but I am not sure.


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  "`I know,' he said. `From me you can keep no secrets. You do not
wish to be the God of the Grove, and you will seek to escape. But you
see, this disaster may seek you out wherever you are unless you
discover the cause and the prevention of it. So I know you will go into
Egypt, else you too in the womb of the night or the womb of the dark
earth may be burnt by this unnatural sun.'
  "It came towards me a little, dragging its dried feet on the stone floor.
`Now mark my words, you must escape this very night,' it said. `I will
tell the worshipers that you must go down into Egypt, for the salvation
of all of us, but having a new and able god, they will be loath to part
with him. But you must go down. And you must not let them
imprison you in the oak after the festival. You must travel fast. And
before sunrise, go into the Mother Earth to escape the light. She will
protect you. Now come to me. I will give you The Blood. And pray I
still have the power to give you my ancient strength. It will be slow. It
will be long. I will take and I will give, and I will take and I will give,
but I must do it, and you must become the god, and you must do as I
have said.'
  "Without waiting for my compliance, it was suddenly on me, its
blackened fingers clutching at me, the torch falling from my hands. I
fell backwards on the stairs, but its teeth were already in my throat.
  "You know what happened, you know what it was to feel the blood
being drawn, to feel the swoon. I saw in those moments the tombs
and temples of Egypt. I saw two figures, resplendent as they sat side by
side as if on a throne. I saw and heard other voices speaking to me in
other languages. And underneath it all, there came the same
command: serve the Mother, take the blood of the sacrifice, preside
over the worship that is the only worship, the eternal worship of the
grove.
  "I was struggling as one struggles in dreams, unable to cry out,
unable to escape. And when I realized I was free and no longer pinned
to the floor, I saw the god again, black as he had been before, but this
time he was robust, as if the blaze had only baked him and he retained
his full strength. His face had definition, even beauty, features well
formed beneath the cracked casing of blackened leather that was his
skin. The yellow eyes had round them now tire natural folds of flesh
that made them portals of a soul. But he was still crippled, still
suffering, almost unable to move.
  " `Rise, Marius,' he said. `You thirst and I will give you to drink.
Rise and come to me.'



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  "And you know then the ecstasy I felt when his blood came into me,
when it worked its way into every vessel, every limb. But the horrid
pendulum had only begun to swing.
  "Hours passed in the oak, as he took the blood out of me and gave it
back over and over again. I lay sobbing on the floor when I was
drained. I could see my hands like bones in front of me. I was
shriveled as he had been. And again he would give me the blood to
drink and I would rise in a frenzy of exquisite feeling, only to have him
take it out of me again.
  "With every exchange there came the lessons: that I was immortal,
that only the sun and the fire could kill me, that I would sleep by day
in the earth, that I should never know illness or natural death. That
my soul should never migrate from my form into another, that I was
the servant of the Mother, and that the moon would give me strength.
  "That I would thrive on the blood of the evildoers, and even of the
innocent who were sacrificed to the Mother, that I should remain in
starvation between sacrifices, so that my body would become dry and
empty like the dead wheat in the fields at winter, only to be filled with
the blood of the sacrifice and to become full and beautiful like the new
plants of the spring.
  "In my suffering and ecstasy there would be the cycle of the seasons.
And the powers of my mind, to read the thoughts and intentions of
others, these I should use to make the judgments for my worshipers, to
guide them in their justice and their laws. Never should I drink any
blood but the blood of the sacrifice. Never should I seek to take my
powers for my own.
  "These things I learned, these things I understood. But what was
really taught to me during those hours was what we all learn at the
moment of the Drinking of the Blood, that I was no longer a mortal
man-that I had passed away from all I knew into something so
powerful that these old teachings could barely harness or explain it,
that my destiny, to use Mael's words, was beyond all the knowledge
that anyone-mortal or immortal-could give.
  "At last the god prepared me to go out off the tree. He drained so
much blood from me now that I was scarcely about to stand. I was a
wraith. I was weeping from thirst, I was seeing blood and smelling
blood, and would have rushed at him and caught him and drained
him had I the strength. But the strength, of course, was his.
  " `You are empty, as you will always be at the commencement of the
festival,' he said, `so that you may drink your fill of the sacrificial
blood. But remember what I have told you. After you preside, you
must find a way to escape. As for me, try to save me. Tell them that I

                                                                        319

must be kept with you. But in all likelihood my time has come to an
end.'
  "`Why, how do you mean?' I asked.
  "`You will see. There need be only one god here, one good god,' he
said. `If I could only go with you to Egypt, I could drink the blood of
the old ones and it might heal me. As it is, I will take hundreds of
years to heal. And I shall not be allowed that time. But remember, go
into Egypt. Do all that I have said.'
  "He turned me now and pushed me towards the stairs. The torch lay
blazing in the corner, and as I rose towards the door above, I smelled
the blood of the Druids waiting, and I almost wept.
  " `They will give you all the blood that you can take,' he said behind
me. `Place yourself in their hands. "'

  8

  "You can well imagine how I looked when I stepped from the oak.
The Druids had waited for my knock upon the door, and in my silent
voice, I had said:
  "Open. It is the god.
  "My human death was long finished, I was ravenous, and surely my
face was no more than a living skull. No doubt my eyes were bulging
from their sockets, and my teeth were bared. The white robe hung on
me as on a skeleton. And no clearer evidence of my divinity could
have been given to the Druids, who stood awestruck as I came out of
the tree.
  "But I saw not merely their faces, I saw into their hearts. I saw the
relief in Mael that the god within had not been too feeble to create me.
I saw the confirmation in him of all that he believed.
  "And I saw the other great vision that is ours to see-the great spiritual
depth of each man buried deep within a crucible of heated flesh and
blood.
  "My thirst was pure agony. And summoning all my new strength, I
said. `Take me to the altars. The Feast of Samhain is to begin.'
  "The Druids let out chilling screams. They howled in the forest.
And far beyond the sacred grove there came a deafening roar from the
multitudes who had waited for that cry.
  "We walked swiftly, in procession towards the clearing, and more
and more of the white- robed priests came out to greet us and I found
myself pelted with fresh and fragrant flowers from all sides, blossoms I
crushed under my feet as I was saluted with hymns.


                                                                       320

  "I need not tell you how the world looked to me with the new vision,
how I saw each tint and surface beneath the thin veil of darkness, how
these hymns and anthems assaulted my ears.
  "Marius, the man, was disintegrated inside this new being.
  "Trumpets blared from the clearing as I mounted the steps of the
stone altar and looked out over the thousands gathered there-the sea
of expectant faces, the giant wicker figures with their doomed victims
still struggling and caging inside.
  "A great silver caldron of water stood before the altar, and as the
priests sang, a chain of prisoners was led to this caldron, their arms
bound behind their backs.
  "The voices were singing in concert around me as the priests placed
the flowers in my hair, on my shoulders, at my feet.
  "`Beautiful one, powerful one, god of the woods and the fields, drink
now the sacrifices offered to you, and as your wasted limbs fill with
life, so the earth will renew itself. So you will forgive us for the cutting
of the corn which is the harvest, so you will bless the seed we sow.'
  "And I saw before me those selected to be my victims, three stout
men, bound as the others were bound, but clean and dressed also in
white robes, with flowers on their shoulders and in their hair. Youths
they were, handsome and innocent and overcome with awe as they
awaited the will of the god.
  "The trumpets were deafening. The roaring was ceaseless. I said:
  "`Let the sacrifices begin!' And as the first youth was delivered up to
me, as I prepared to drink for the very first time from that truly divine
cup which is human life, as I held the warm flesh of the victim in my
hands, the blood ready for my open mouth, I saw the fires lighted
beneath the towering wicker giants, I saw the first two prisoners forced
head down into the water of the silver caldron.
  "Death by fire, death by water, death by the. piercing teeth of the
hungry god.
  "Through the age-old ecstasy, the hymns continued: `God of the
waning and waxing moon, god of the woods and fields, you who are
the very image of death in your hunger, grow strong with the blood of
the victims, grow beautiful so that the Great Mother will take you to
herself.'
  "How long did it last? I do not know. It was forever-the blaze of the
wicker giants, the screaming of the victims, the long procession of
those who must be drowned. I drank and drank, not merely from the
three selected for me, but from a dozen others before they were
returned to the caldron, or forced into the blazing giants. The priests


                                                                         321

cut the heads from the dead with great bloody swords, stacking them
in pyramids to either side of the altar, and the bodies were borne away.
  "Everywhere I turned I saw rapture on sweating faces, everywhere I
turned I heard the anthems and cries. But at last the frenzy was dying
out. The giants were fallen into a smoldering heap upon which men
poured more pitch, more kindling.
  "And it was now time for the judgments, for men to stand before me
and present their cases for vengeance against others, and for me to
look with my new eyes into their souls. I was reeling. I had drunk too
much blood, but I felt such power in me I could have leapt up and
over the clearing and deep into the forest. I could have spread
invisible wings, or so it seemed.
  "But I carried out my `destiny' as Mael would have called it. I found
this one just, that one in error, this one innocent, that one deserving of
death.
  "I don't know how long it went on because my body no longer
measured time in weariness. But finally it was finished, and I realized
the moment of action had come.
  "I had somehow to do what the old god had commanded me, which
was to escape the imprisonment in the oak. And I also had precious
little time in which to do it, no more than an hour before dawn.
  "As for what lay ahead in Egypt, I had not made my decision yet. But
I knew that if I let the Druids enclose me in the sacred tree again, I
would starve in there until the small offering at the next full moon.
And all of my nights until that time would be thirst and torture, and
what the old one had called `the god's dreams' in which I'd learn the
secrets of the tree and the grass that grew and the silent Mother.
  "But these secrets were not for me.
  "The Druids surrounded me now and we proceeded to the sacred
tree again, the hymns dying to a litany which commanded me to
remain within the oak to sanctify the forest, to be its guardian, and to
speak kindly through the oak to those of the priesthood who would
come from time to time to ask guidance of me.
  "I stopped before we reached the tree. A huge pyre was blazing in the
middle of the grove, casting ghastly light on the carved faces and the
heaps off human skulls. The rest of the priesthood stood round it
waiting. A current of terror shot through me with all the new power
that such feelings have for us.
  "I started talking hastily. In an authoritative voice I told them that I
wished them all to leave the grove. That I should seal myself up in the
oak at dawn with the old god. But I could see it wasn't working. They


                                                                      322

were staring at me coldly and glancing one to the other, their eyes
shallow like bits of glass.
  "`Mael!' I said. `Do as I command you. Tell these priests to leave
the grove.'
  "Suddenly, without the slightest warning, half the assemblage of
priests ran towards the tree. The other took hold of my arms.
  "I shouted for Mael, who led the siege on the tree, to stop. I tried to
get loose but some twelve of the priests gripped my arms and my legs.
  "If I had only understood the extent of my strength, I might easily
have freed myself. But I didn't know. I was still reeling from the feast,
too horrified by what I knew would happen now. As I struggled,
trying to free my arms, even kicking at those who held me, the old god,
the naked and black thing, was borne out of the tree and heaved into
the fire.
  "Only for a split second did I see him, and all I beheld was
resignation. He did not once lift his arms to fight. His eyes were
closed and he did not look at me, nor at anyone or anything, and I
remembered in that moment what he had told me, of his agony, and I
started to cry.
  "I was shaking violently as they burned him. But from the very midst
of the flames I heard his voice. `Do as I commanded you, Marius.
You are our hope.' That meant Get Out of Here Now.
  "I made myself still and small in the grip of those who held me. I
wept and wept and acted like I was just the sad victim of all this magic,
just the poor god who must mourn his father who had gone into the
flames. And when I felt their hands relax, when I saw that, one and all,
they were gazing into the pyre, I pivoted with all my strength, tearing
loose from their grip, and I ran as fast as I could for the woods.
  "In that initial sprint, I learned for the first time what my powers
were. I cleared the hundreds of yards in an instant, my feet barely
touching the ground.
  "But the cry rang out immediately: `THE GOD HAS FLOWN!' and
within seconds the multitude in the clearing was screaming it over and
over as thousands of mortals plunged into the trees.
  "How on earth did this happen, I thought suddenly, that I'm a god,
full of human blood, and running from thousands of Keltic barbarians
through this damned woods!
  "I didn't even stop to tear the white robe off me, but ripped it off
while I was still running, and then I leapt up to the branches overhead
and moved even faster through the tops of the oaks.
  "Within minutes I was so far away from my pursuers that I couldn't
hear them anymore. But I kept running and running, leaping from

                                                                      323

branch to branch, until there "was nothing to fear anymore but the
morning sun.
  "And I learned then what Gabrielle learned so early in your
wanderings, that I could easily dig into the earth to save myself from
the light.
  "When I awoke the heat of my thirst astonished me. I could not
imagine how the old god had endured the ritual starvation. I could
think only of human blood.
  "But the Druids had had the day in which to pursue me. I had to
proceed with great care.
  "And I starved all that night as I sped through the forest, not
drinking until early morning when I came upon a band of thieves in
the woods which provided me with the blood of an evildoer, and a
good suit of clothes.
  "In those hours just before dawn, I took stock of things. I had
learned a great deal about my powers, I would learn more. And I
would go down to Egypt, not for the sake of the gods or their
worshipers, but to find out what this was all about.
  "And so even then you see, more than seventeen hundred years ago,
we were questing, we were rejecting the explanations given us, we were
loving the magic and the power for its own sake.
  "On the third night of my new life, I wandered into my old house in
Massilia and found my library, my writing table, my books all there
still. And my faithful slaves overjoyed to see me. What did these
things mean to me? What did it mean that I had written this history,
that I had lain in this bed?
  "I knew I could not be Marius, the Roman, any longer. But I would
take from him what I could. I sent my beloved slaves back home. I
wrote my father to say that a serious illness compelled me to live out
my remaining days in the heat and dryness of Egypt. I packed off the
rest of my history to those in Rome who would read it and publish it,
and then I set out for Alexandria with gold in my pockets, with my old
travel documents, and with two dull-witted slaves who never
questioned that I traveled by night.
  "And within a month of the great Samhain Feast in Gaul, I was
roaming the black crooked nighttime streets of Alexandria, searching
for the old gods with my silent voice.
  "I was mad, but I knew the madness would pass. I had to find the
old gods. And you know why I had to find them. It was not only the
threat of the calamity again, the sun god seeking me out in the
darkness of my daytime slumber, or visiting me with obliterating fire
in the full darkness of the night.

                                                                     324

  "I had to find the old gods because I could not bear to be alone
among men. The full horror of it was upon me, and though I killed
only the murderer, the evildoer, my conscience was too finely tuned
for self-deception. I could not bear the realization that I, Marius, who
had known and enjoyed such love in his life, was the relentless bringer
of death. "

  9

  "Alexandria was not an old city. It had existed for just a little over
three hundred years. But it was a great port and the home of the
largest libraries in the Roman world. Scholars from all over the
Empire came to study there, and I had been one of them in another
lifetime, and now I found myself there again.
  "Had not the god told me to come, I would have gone deeper into
Egypt, `to the bottom,' to use Mael's phrase, suspecting that the
answers to all riddles lay in the older shrines.
  "But a curious feeling came on me in Alexandria. I knew the gods
were there. I knew they were guiding my feet when I sought the streets
of the whorehouses and the thieves' dens, the places where men went
to lose their souls.
  "At night I lay on my bed in my little Roman house and I called to
the gods. I grappled with my madness. I puzzled just as you have
puzzled over the power and strength and crippling emotions which I
now possessed. And one night just before morning, when the light of
only one lamp shone through the sheer veils of the bed where I lay, I
turned my eyes towards the distant garden doorway and saw a still
black figure standing there.
  "For one moment it seemed a dream, this figure, because it carried
no scent, did not seem to breathe, did not make a sound. Then I knew
it was one of the gods, but it was gone and I was left sitting up and
staring after it, trying to remember what I had seen: a black naked
thing with a bald head and red piercing eyes, a thing that seemed lost
in its own stillness, strangely diffident, only marshaling its strength to
move at the last moment before complete discovery.
  "The next night in the back streets I heard a voice telling me to come.
But it was a less articulate voice than that which had come from the
tree. It made known to me only that the door was near. And finally
there came the still and silent moment when I stood before the door.
  "It was a god who opened it for me. It was a god who said Come.
  "I was frightened as I descended the inevitable stairway, as I followed
a steeply sloping tunnel. I lighted the candle I had brought with me,

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and I saw that I was entering an underground temple, a place older
than the city of Alexandria, a sanctuary built perhaps under the
ancient pharaohs, its walls covered with tiny colored pictures depicting
the life of old Egypt.
  "And then there was the writing, the magnificent picture writing with
its tiny mummies and birds and embracing arms without bodies, and
coiling snakes.
  "I moved on, coming into a vast place of square pillars and a soaring
ceiling. The same paintings decorated every inch of stone here.
  "And then I saw in the comer of my eye what seemed at first a statue,
a black figure standing near a pillar with one hand raised to rest
against the stone. But I knew it was no statue. No Egyptian god made
out of diorite ever stood in this attitude nor wore a real linen skirt
about its loins.
  "I turned slowly, bracing myself against the full sight of it, and saw
the same burnt flesh, the same streaming hair, though it was black, the
same yellow eyes. The lips were shriveled around the teeth and the
gums, and the breath came out of its throat full of pain.
  " `How and whence did you come?' he asked in Greek.
  "I saw myself as he saw me, luminous and strong, even my blue eyes
something of an incidental mystery, and I saw my Roman garments,
my linen tunic gathered in gold buckles on my shoulders, my red
cloak. With my long yellow hair, I must have looked like a wanderer
from the north woods, `civilized' only on the surface, and perhaps this
was now true.
  "But he was the one who concerned me. And I saw him more fully,
the seamed flesh burnt to his ribs and molded to his collarbone and
the jutting bones of his hips. He was not starved, this thing. He had
recently drunk human blood. But his agony was like heat coming
from him, as though the fire still cooked him from within, as though
he were a self-contained hell.
  "`How have you escaped the burning?' he asked. `What saved you?
Answer!'
  "`Nothing saved me,' I said, speaking Greek as he did.
  "I approached him holding the candle to the side when he shied from
it. He had been thin in life, broad-shouldered like the old pharaohs,
and his long black hair was cropped straight across the forehead in that
old style.
  " `I wasn't made when it happened,' I said, `but afterwards, by the
god of the sacred grove in Gaul.'
  " `Ah, then he was unharmed, this one who made you.'


                                                                       326

  " `No, burned as you are, but he had enough strength to do it. He
gave and took the blood over and over again. He said, "Go into Egypt
and find why this has happened. " He said the gods of the wood had
burst into flames, some in their sleep and some awake. He said this
had happened all over the north.'
  "`Yes.' He nodded, and he gave a dry rasping laugh that shook his
entire form. `And only the ancient had the strength to survive, to
inherit the agony which only immortality can sustain. And so we
suffer. But you have been made. You have come. You will make
more. But is it justice to make more? Would the Father and the
Mother have allowed this to happen to us if the time had not come?'
  " `But who are the Father and the Mother?' I asked. I knew he did
not mean the earth when he said Mother.
  " `The first of us,' he answered, `those from whom all of us descend.'
  "I tried to penetrate his thoughts, feel the truth of them, but he knew
what I was doing, and his mind folded up like a flower at dusk.
  " `Come with me,' he said. And he commenced to walk with a
shuffling step out of the large room and down a long corridor,
decorated as the chamber had been.
  "I sensed we were in an even older place, something built before the
temple from which we'd just come. I do not know how I knew it. The
chill you felt on the steps here on the island was not there. You don't
feel such things in Egypt. You feel something else. You feel the
presence of something living in the air itself.
  "But there was more palpable evidence of antiquity as we walked on.
The paintings on these walls were older, the colors fainter, and here
and there was damage where the colored plaster had flaked and fallen
away. The style had changed. The black hair of the little figures was
longer and fuller, and it seemed the whole was more lovely, more full
of light and intricate design.
  "Somewhere far off water dripped on stone. The sound gave a
songlike echo through the passage. It seemed the walls had captured
life in these delicate and tenderly painted figures, it seemed that the
magic attempted again and again by the ancient religious artists had its
tiny glowing kernel of power. I could hear whispers of life where there
were no whispers. I could feel the great continuity of history even if
there was no one who was aware.
  "The dark figure beside me paused as I looked at the walls. He made
an airy gesture for me to follow him through a doorway, and we
entered a long rectangular chamber covered entirely with the artful
hieroglyphs. It was like being encased in a manuscript to be inside it.


                                                                       327

And I saw two older Egyptian sarcophagi placed head to head against
the wall.
  "These were boxes carved to conform to the shape of the mummies
for which they were made, and fully modeled and painted to represent
the dead, with faces of hammered gold, the eyes of inlaid lapis lazuli.
  "I held the candle high. And with great effort my guide opened the
lids of these cases and let them fall back so that I might see inside.
  "I saw what at first appeared to be bodies, but when I drew closer I
realized that they were heaps of ash in manly form. Nothing of tissue
remained to them except a white fang here, a chip of bone there.
  " `No amount of blood can bring them back now,' said my guide.
`They are past all resurrection. The vessels of the blood are gone.
Those who could rise have risen, and centuries will pass before we are
healed, before we know the cessation of our pain.'
  "Before he closed the mummy cases, I saw that the lids inside were
blackened by the fire that had immolated these two. I wasn't sorry to
see them shut up again.
  "He turned and moved towards the doorway again, and I followed
with the candle, but he paused and glanced back at the painted coffins.
  " `When the ashes are scattered,' he said, `their souls are free.'
  "`Then why don't you scatter the ashes!' I said, trying not to sound
so desperate, so undone.
  "`Should I?' he asked of me, the crisped flesh around his eyes
widening. `Do you think that I should?'
  "`You ask me!' I said.
  "He gave one of those dry laughs again, that seemed to carry agony
with it, and he led on down the passage to a lighted room.
  "It was a library we entered, where a few scattered candles revealed
the diamond-shaped wooden racks of parchment and papyrus scrolls.
  "This delighted me, naturally, because a library was something I
could understand. It was the one human place in which I still felt
some measure of old sanity.
  "But I was startled to see another one-another one of us sitting to the
side behind the writing table, his eyes on the floor.
  "This one had no hair whatsoever, and though he was pitch black all
over, his skin was full and well-modeled and gleamed as if it had been
oiled. The planes of his face were beautiful, the hand that rested in the
lap of his white linen kilt was gracefully curled, all the muscles of his
naked chest well defined.
  "He turned and looked up at me. And something immediately
passed between us, something more silent than silence, as it can be
with us.

                                                                        328

  "`This is the Elder,' said the weaker one who'd brought me here.
`And you see for yourself how he withstood the fire. But he will not
speak. He has not spoken since it happened. Yet surely he knows
where are the Mother and the Father, and why this was allowed to
pass.'
  "The Elder merely looked forward again. But there was a curious
expression on his face, something sarcastic and faintly amused, and a
little contemptuous.
  " `Even before this disaster,' the other one said. `the Elder did not
often speak to us. The fire did not change him, make him more
receptive. He sits in silence, more and more like the Mother and the
Father. Now and then he reads. Now and then he walks in the world
above. He's the Blood, he listens to the singers. Now and then he will
dance. He speaks to mortals in the streets of Alexandria, but he will
not speak to us. He has nothing to say to us. But he knows.... He
knows why this happened to us.'
  " `Leave me with him,' I said.
  "I had the feeling that all beings have in such situations. I will make
the man speak. I will draw something out of him, as no one else has
been able to do. But it wasn't mere vanity that impelled me. This was
the one who had come to me in the bedroom of my house, I was sure
of it. This was the one who had stood watching me in my door.
  "And I had sensed something in his glance. Call it intelligence, call it
interest, call it recognition of some common knowledge-there was
something there.
  "And I knew that I carried with me the possibilities of a different
world, unknown to the God of the Grove and even to this feeble and
wounded one beside me who looked at the Elder in despair.
  "The feeble one withdrew as I had asked. I went to the writing table
and looked at the Elder.
  "`What should I do?' I asked in Greek.
  "He looked up at me abruptly, and I could see this thing I call
intelligence in his face.
  " `Is there any point,' I asked, `to questioning you further?'
  "I had chosen my tone carefully. There was nothing formal in it,
nothing reverential. It was as familiar as it could be.
  "`And just what is it you seek?' he asked in Latin suddenly, coldly,
his mouth turning down at the ends, his attitude one of abruptness
and challenge.
  "It relieved me to switch to Latin.
  " `You heard what I told the other,' I said in the same informal
manner, `how I was made by the God of the Grove in the country of

                                                                       329

the Keltoi, and how I was told to discover why the gods had died in
flames.'
  "`You don't come on behalf of the Gods of the Grove!' he said,
sardonic as before. He had not lifted his head, merely looked up,
which made his eyes seem all the more challenging and contemptuous.
  " `I do and I don't,' I said. `If we can perish in this way, I would like
to know why. What happened once can happen a second time. And I
would like to know if we are really gods, and if we are, then what are
our obligations to man. Are the Mother and the Father true beings, or
are they legend? How did all this start? I would like to know that, of
course.'
  " `By accident,' he said.
  "`By accident?' I leaned forward. I thought I had heard wrong.
  "`By accident it started,' he said coolly, forbiddingly, with the clear
implication that the question was absurd. `Four thousand years ago,
by accident, and it has been enclosed in magic and religion ever since.'
  " `You are telling me the truth, aren't you?'
  " `Why shouldn't I? Why should I protect you from the truth? Why
should I bother to lie to you? I don't even know who you are. I don't
care.'
  "`Then will you explain to me what you mean, that it happened by
accident,' I pressed.
  " `I don't know. I may. I may not. I have spoken more in these last
few moments than I have in years. The story of the accident may be
no more true than the myths that delight the others. The others have
always chosen the myths. It's what you really want, is it not?' His
voice rose and he rose slightly out of the chair as if his angry voice
were impelling him to his feet.
  "`A story of our creation, analogous to the Genesis of the Hebrews,
the tales in Homer, the babblings of your Roman poets Ovid and
Virgil-a great gleaming morass of symbols out of which life itself is
supposed to have sprung.' He was on his feet and all but shouting, his
black forehead knotted with veins, his hand a fist on the desk. `It is
that kind of tale that fills the documents in these rooms, that emerges
in fragments from the anthems and the incantations. Want to hear it?
It's as true as anything else.'
  "`Tell me what you will,' I said. I was trying to keep calm. The
volume of his voice was hurting my ears. And I heard things stirring
in the rooms near us. Other creatures, like that dried-up wisp of a
thing that had brought me in here, were prowling about.
  "`And you might begin,' I said acidly, 'by confessing why you came to
me in my rooms here in Alexandria. It was you who led me here.

                                                                         330

Why did you do that? To rail at me? To curse me for asking you how
it started?'
  " `Quiet yourself.'
  " `I might say the same to you.'
  "He looked me up and down calmly, and then he smiled. He opened
both his hands as if in greeting or offering, and then he shrugged.
  " `I want you to tell me about the accident,' I said. `I would beg you
to tell me if I thought it would do any good. What can I do for you to
make you tell?'
  "His face underwent several remarkable transformations. I could feel
his thoughts, but not hear them, feel a high-pitched humor. And
when he spoke again, his voice was thickened as if he were fighting
back sorrow, as if it were strangling him.
  " `Hearken to our old story,' he said. `The good god, Osiris, the first
pharaoh of Egypt, in the eons before the invention of writing, was
murdered by evil men. And when his wife, Isis, gathered together the
parts of his body, he became immortal and thereafter ruled in the
realm of the dead. This is the realm of the moon, and the night, in
which he reigned, and to him were brought the blood sacrifices for the
great goddess which he drank. But the priests tried to steal from him
the secret of his immortality, and so his worship became secret, and his
temples were known only to those of his cult who protected him from
the sun god, who might at any time seek to destroy Osiris with the
sun's burning rays. But you can see the truth in the legend. The early
king discovered something-or rather he was the victim of an ugly
occurrence-and he became unnatural with a power that could be used
for incalculable evil by those around him, and so he made a worship of
it, seeking to contain it in obligation and ceremony, seeking to limit
The Powerful Blood to those who would use it for white magic and
nothing else. And so here we are.'
  " `And the Mother and Father are Isis and Osiris?'
  "`Yes and no. They are the first two. Isis and Osiris are the names
that were used in the myths that they told, or the old worship onto
which they grafted themselves.'
  "`What was the accident, then? How was this thing discovered?'
  "He looked at me for a long period of silence, and then he sat down
again, turning to the side and staring off as he'd been before.
  "`But why should I tell you?' he asked, yet this time he put the
question with new feeling, as though he meant it sincerely and had to
answer it for himself. `Why should I do anything? If the Mother and
the Father will not rise from the sands to save themselves as the sun


                                                                      331

comes over the horizon, why should I move? Or speak? Or go on?'
Again he looked up at me.
  " `This is what happened, the Mother and the Father went out into
the sun?'
  "`Were left in the sun, my dear Marius,' he said, astonishing me with
the knowledge of my name. `Left in the sun. The Mother and the
Father do not move of their own volition, save now and then to
whisper to each other, to knock those of us down who would come to
them for their healing blood. They could restore all of us who were
burned, if they would let us drink the healing blood. Four thousand
years the Father and Mother have existed, and our blood grows
stronger with every season, every victim. It grows stronger even with
starvation, for when the starvation is ended, new strength is enjoyed.
But the Father and the Mother do not care for their children. And
now it seems they do not care for themselves. Maybe after four
thousand nights, they merely wished to see the sun!
  "`Since the coming of the Greek into Egypt, since the perversion of
the old art, they have not spoken to us. They have not let us see the
blink of their eye. And what is Egypt now but the granary of Rome?
When the Mother and the Father strike out to drive us away from the
veins in their necks, they are as iron and can crush our bones. And if
they do not care anymore, then why should I?'
  "I studied him for a long moment.
  " `And you are saying,' I asked, `that this is what caused the others to
burn up? That the Father and Mother were left out in the sun?'
  "He nodded.
  "`Our blood comes from them!' he said. `It is their blood. The line
is direct, and what befalls them befalls us. If they are burnt, we are
burnt.'
  "`We are connected to them!' I whispered in amazement.
  " `Exactly, my dear Marius,' he said, watching me, seeming to enjoy
my fear. `That is why they have been kept for a thousand years, the
Mother and the Father, that is why victims are brought to them in
sacrifice, that is why they are worshiped. What happens to them
happens to us.'
  "`Who did it? Who put them in the sun?'
  "He laughed without making a sound.
  "`The one who kept them,' he said, `the one who couldn't endure it
any longer, the one who had had this solemn charge for too long, the
one who could persuade no one else to accept the burden, and finally,
weeping and shivering, took them out into the desert sands and left
them like two statues there.'

                                                                      332

 " `And my fate is linked to this,' I murmured.
 " `Yes. But you see, I do not think he believed it any longer, the one
who kept them. It was just an old tale. After all, they were worshiped
as I told you, worshiped by us, as we are worshiped by mortals, and no
one dared to harm them. No one held a torch to them to see if it made
the rest of us feel pain. No. He did not believe it. He left them in the
desert, and that night when he opened his eyes in his coffin and found
himself a burnt and unrecognizable horror, he screamed and
screamed.'
 " `You got them back underground.'
 "`Yes.'
 "`And they are blackened as you are...'
 " `No.' He shook his head. `Darkened to a golden bronze, like the
meat turning on the spit. No more than that. And beautiful as before,
as if beauty has become part of their heritage, beauty part and parcel of
what they are destined to be. They stare forward as they always have,
but they no longer incline their heads to each other, they no longer
hum with the rhythm of their secret exchanges, they no longer let us
drink their blood. And the victims brought to them, they will not take,
save now and then, and only in solitude. No one knows when they
will drink, when they will not.'
 "I shook my head. I moved back and forth, my head bowed, the
candle fluttering in my hand, not knowing what to say to all this,
needing time to think it out.
 "He gestured for me to take the chair on the other side of the writing
table, and without thinking of it, I did.
 " `But wasn't it meant to happen, Roman?' he asked. `Weren't they
meant to meet their death in the sands, silent, unmoving, like statues
cast there after a city is sacked by the conquering army, and were we
not meant to die too? Look at Egypt. What is Egypt, I ask you again,
but the granary of Rome? Were they not meant to burn there day after
day while all of us burned like stars the world over?'
 "`Where are they?' I asked.
 "`Why do you want to know?' he sneered. `Why should I give you
the secret? They cannot be hacked to pieces, they are too strong for
that, a knife will barely pierce their skin. Yet cut them and you cut us.
Burn them and you burn us. And whatever they make us feel, they feel
only a particle of it because their age protects them. And yet to destroy
every one of us, you have merely to bring them annoyance! The blood
they do not even seem to need! Maybe their minds are connected to
ours as well. Maybe the sorrow we feel, the misery, the horror at the
fate of the world itself, comes from their minds, as locked in their

                                                                      333

chambers they dream! No. I cannot tell you where they are, can I?
Until I decide for certain that I am indifferent, that it is time for us to
die out.'
  "`Where are they?' I said again.
  "`Why should I not sink them into the very depths of sea?' he asked.
`Until such time as the earth herself heaves them up into the sunlight
on the crest of a great wave?'
  "I didn't answer. I was watching him, wondering at his excitement,
understanding it but in awe of it just the same.
  "`Why should I not bury them in the depths of the earth, I mean the
darkest depths beyond the faintest sounds of life, and let them lie in
silence there, no matter what they think and feel?'
  "What answer could I give? I watched him. I waited until he seemed
calmer. He looked at me and his face became tranquil and almost
trusting.
  " `Tell me how they became the Mother and the Father,' I said.
  " 'Why?,
  "`You know damn good and well why. I want to know! Why did
you come into my bedroom if you didn't mean to tell me?' I asked
again.
  "`So what if I did?' he said bitterly. `So what if I wanted to see the
Roman with my own eyes? We will die and you will die with us. So I
wanted to see our magic in a new form. Who worships us now, after
all? Yellow-haired warriors in the northern forests? Old old Egyptians
in secret crypts beneath the sands? We do not live in the temples of
Greece and Rome. We never did. And yet they celebrate our myth-the
only myth they call the names of the Mother and the Father. . .'
  " `I don't give a damn,' I said. `You know I don't. We are alike, you
and I. I won't go back to the northern forests to make a race of gods
for those people! But I came here to know and you must tell me!'
  " `All right. So that you can understand the futility of it, so that you
can understand the silence of the Mother and the Father, I will tell.
But mark my words, I may yet bring us all down. I way yet burn the
Mother and the Father in the heat of a kiln! But we will dispense with
lengthy initiations and high-blown language. We will do away with
the myths that died in the sand the day the sun shone on the Mother
and the Father. I will tell you what all these scrolls left by the Father
and the Mother reveal. Set down your candle. And listen to me. ' "

  9



                                                                         334

  " `What the scrolls will tell you' he said, `if you could decipher them,
is that we have two human beings, Akasha and Enkil, who had come
into Egypt from some other, older land. This was in the time long
before the first writing, before the first pyramids, when the Egyptians
were still cannibals and hunted for the bodies of enemies to eat.
  " `Akasha and Enkil directed the people away from these practices.
They were worshipers of the Good Mother Earth and they taught the
Egyptians how to sow seed in the Good Mother, and how to herd
animals for meat and milk and skins.
  "`In all probability, they were not alone as they taught these things,
but rather the leaders of a people who had come with them from older
cities whose names are now lost beneath the sands of Lebanon, their
monuments laid waste.
  "`Whatever is the truth, these were benevolent rulers, these two, in
whom the good of others was the commanding value, as the Good
Mother was the Nourishing Mother and wished for all men to live in
peace, and they decided all questions of justice for the emerging land.
  " `Perhaps they would have passed into myth in some benign form
had it not been for a disturbance in the house of the roval steward
which began with the antics of a demon that hurled the furniture
about.
  "`Now this was no more than a common demon, the kind one hears
of in all lands at all times. He devils those who live in a certain place
for a certain while. Perhaps he enters into the body of some innocent
and roars through her mouth with a loud voice. He may cause the
innocent one to belch obscenities and carnal invitations to those
around her. Do you know of these things?'
  "I nodded. I told him you always heard such stories. Such a demon
was supposed to have possessed a vestal virgin in Rome. She made
lewd overtures to all those around her, her face turning purple with
exertion, then fainted. But the demon had somehow been driven out.
`I thought the girl was simply mad,' I said. `That she was, shall we say,
not suited to be a vestal virgin. . .'
  "`Of course!' he said with a note of rich irony. `And I would assume
the same thing, and so would most any intelligent man walking the
streets of Alexandria above us. Yet such stories come and go. And if
they are remarkable for any one thing, it is that they do not affect the
course of human events. These demons rather trouble some
household, some person, and then they are gone into oblivion and we
are right where we started again.'
  "`Precisely,' I said.


                                                                        335

  "`But you understand this was old old Egypt. This was a time when
men ran from the thunder, or ate the bodies of the dead to absorb
their souls.'
  " `I understand,' I said.
  " `And this good King Enkil decided that he would himself address
the demon who had come into his steward's house. This thing was out
of harmony, he said. The royal magicians begged, of course, to be
allowed to see to this, to drive the demon out. But this was a king who
would do good for everyone. He had some vision of all things being
united in good, of all forces being made to go on the same divine
course. He would speak to this demon, try to harness its power, so to
speak, for the general good. And only if that could not be done would
he consent to the demon's being driven out.
  " `And so he went into the house of his steward, where furniture was
being flung at the walls, and jars broken, and doors slammed. And he
commenced to talk to this demon and invite it to talk to him.
Everyone else ran away.
  "'A full night passed before he came out of the haunted house and he
had amazing things to say:
  " "`These demons are mindless and childlike, " he told his magicians,
"but I have studied their conduct and I have learned from all the
evidence why it is that they rage. They are maddened that they do not
have bodies, that they cannot feel as we feel. They make the innocent
scream filth because the rites of love and passion are things that they
cannot possibly know. They can work the body parts but not truly
inhabit them, and so they are obsessed with the flesh that they cannot
invade. And with their feeble powers they bump upon objects, they
make their victims twist and jump. This longing to be carnal is the
origin of their anger, the indication of the suffering which is their lot.
" And with these pious words he prepared to lock himself in the
haunted chambers to learn more.
  " `But this time his wife came between him and his purpose. She
would not let him stay with the demons. He must look into the
mirror, she said. He had aged remarkably in the few hours that he had
remained in the house alone.
  " `And when he would not be deterred, she locked herself in with
him, and all those who stood outside the house heard the crashing and
banging of objects, and feared for the moment when they would hear
the King and the Queen themselves screaming or raging in spirit
voices. The noise from the inner chambers was alarming. Cracks were
appearing in the walls.


                                                                       336

  " `All fled as before, except for a small party of interested men. Now
these men since the beginning of the reign had been the enemies of the
King. These were old warriors who had led the campaigns of Egypt in
search of human flesh, and they had had enough of the King's
goodness, enough of the Good Mother and farming and the like, and
they saw in this spirit adventure not only more of the King's vain
nonsense, but a situation that nevertheless provided a remarkable
opportunity for them.
  "`When night fell, they crept into the haunted house. They were
fearless of spirits, just as the grave robbers are who rifle the tombs of
the pharaohs. They believe, but not enough to control their greed.
  " `And when they saw Enkil and Akasha together in the middle of
this room full of flying objects, they set upon them and they stabbed
the King over and over, as your Roman senators stabbed Caesar, and
they stabbed the only witness, his wife.
  " `And the King cried out, "No, don't you see what you have done?
You have given the spirits a way to get in! You have opened my body
to them! Don't you see! " But the men fled, sure of the death of the
King and the Queen, who was on her hands and knees, cradling her
husband's head in her hands, both bleeding from more wounds than
one could count.
  "'Now the conspirators stirred up the populace. Did everyone know
that the King had been killed by the spirits? He should have left the
demons to his magicians as any other king would have done. And
bearing torches, all flocked to the haunted house, which had grown
suddenly and totally quiet.
  "`The conspirators urged the magicians to enter, but they were
afraid. "Then we will go in and see what's happened, " said the evil
ones, and they threw open the doors.
  " `There stood the King and the Queen, staring calmly at the
conspirators, and all of their wounds were healed. And their eyes had
taken on an eerie light, their skin a white shimmer, their hair a
magnificent gleam. Out of the house they came as the conspirators
ran in terror, and they dismissed all the people and the priests and
went back to the palace alone.
  " `And though they confided in no one, they knew what had
happened to them.
  " `They had been entered through their wounds by the demon at the
point when mortal life itself was about to escape. But it was the blood
that the demon permeated in that twilight moment when the heart
almost stopped. Perhaps it was the substance that he had always
sought in his ragings, the substance that he had tried to bring forth

                                                                       337

from his victims with his antics, but he had never been able to inflict
enough wounds before his victim died. But now he was in the blood,
and the blood was not merely the demon, or the blood of the King and
Queen, but a combination of the human and the demon which was an
altogether different thing.
  " `And all that was left of the King and Queen was what this blood
could animate, what it could infuse and claim for its own. Their
bodies were for all other purposes dead. But the blood flowed through
the brain and through the heart and through the skin, and so the
intelligence of the King and Queen remained. Their souls, if you will,
remained, as the souls reside in these organs, though why we do not
know. And though the demon blood had no mind of its own, no
character of its own that the King and Queen could discover, it
nevertheless enhanced their minds and their characters, for it flowed
through the organs that create thought. And it added to their faculties
its purely spiritual powers, so that the King and Queen could hear the
thoughts of mortals, and sense things and understand things that
mortals could not.
  " `In sum, the demon had added and the demon had taken away, and
the King and Queen were New Things. They could no longer eat food,
or grow, or die, or have children, yet they could feel with an intensity
that terrified them. And the demon had what it wanted: a body to live
in, a way to be in the world at last, a way to feel.
  "`But then came the even more dreadful discovery, that to keep their
corpses animate, the blood must be fed. And all it could convert to its
use was the selfsame thing of which it was made: blood. Give it more
blood to enter, give it more blood to push through the limbs of the
body in which it enjoyed such glorious sensations, of blood it could
not get enough.
  "`And oh, the grandest of all sensations was the drinking in which it
renewed itself, fed itself, enlarged itself. And in that moment of
drinking it could feel the death of the victim, the moment it pulled the
blood so hard out of the victim that the victim's heart stopped.
  "`The demon had them, the King and Queen. They were Drinkers of
the Blood; and whether or not the demon knew of them, we will never
be able to tell. But the King and Queen knew that they had the demon
and could not get rid of it, and if they did they would die because their
bodies were already dead. And they learned immediately that these
dead bodies, animated as they were entirely by this demonic fluid,
could not withstand fire or the light of the sun. On the one hand, they
seemed as fragile white flowers that can be withered black in the
daytime desert heat. On the other, it seemed the blood in them was so

                                                                      338

volatile that it would boil if heated, thereby destroying the fibers
through which it moved.
  " `It has been said that in these very early times, they could withstand
no brilliant illumination, that even a nearby fire would cause their skin
to smoke.
  "`Whatever, they were of a new order of being, and their thoughts
were of a new order of being, and they tried to understand the things
that they saw, the dispositions that afflicted them in this new state.
  " `All discoveries are not recorded. There is nothing in writing or in
the unwritten tradition about when they first chose to pass on the
blood, or ascertained the method by which it must be done-that the
victim must be drained to the twilight moment of approaching death,
or the demonic blood given him cannot take hold.
  "`We do know through the unwritten tradition that the King and
Queen tried to keep secret what had happened to them, but their
disappearance by day aroused suspicions. They could not attend to
the religious duties in the land.
  " `And so it came to pass that even before they had formed their
clearest decisions, they had to encourage the populace to a worship of
the Good Mother in the light of the moon.
  " `But they could not protect themselves from the conspirators, who
still did not understand their recovery and sought to do away with
them again. The attack came despite all precautions and the strength
of the King and the Queen proved overwhelming to the conspirators,
and they were all the more frightened by the fact that those wounds
they managed to inflict upon the King and the Queen were
miraculously and instantly healed. An arm was severed from the King
and this he put back on his shoulder and it came to life again and the
conspirators fled.
  "`And through these attacks, these battles, the secret came into the
possession not only of the King's enemies but the priests as well.
  " `And no one wanted to destroy the King and the Queen now; rather
they wanted to take them prisoner and gain the secret of immortality
from them, and they sought to take the blood from them, but their
early attempts failed.
  "`The drinkers were not near to death; and so they became hybrid
creatures-half god and half human-and they perished in horrible ways.
Yet some succeeded. Perhaps they emptied their veins first. It isn't
recorded. But in later ages, this has always proved a way to steal the
blood.
  " `And perhaps the Mother and the Father chose to make fledglings.
Maybe out of loneliness and fear, they chose to pass on the secret to

                                                                       339

those of good mettle whom they could trust. Again we are not told.
Whatever the case, other Drinkers of the Blood did come into being,
and the method of making them was eventually known.
  " `And the scrolls tell us that the Mother and the Father sought to
triumph in their adversity. They sought to find some reason in what
had happened, and they believed that their heightened senses must
surely serve some good. The Good Mother had allowed this to
happen, had she not?
  " `And they must sanctify and contain. what was done by mystery, or
else Egypt might become a race of blood-drinking demons who would
divide the world into Those Who Drink the Blood and those who are
bred only to give it, a tyranny that once achieved might never be
broken by mortal men alone.
  " `And so the good King and Queen chose the path of ritual, of myth.
They saw in themselves the images of the waning and waxing moon,
and in their drinking of the blood the god incarnate who takes unto
himself his sacrifice, and they used their superior powers to divine and
predict and judge. They saw themselves as truly accepting the blood
for the god, which otherwise would run down the altar. They girded
with the symbolic and the mysterious what could not be allowed to
become common, and they passed out of the sight of mortal men into
the temples, to be worshiped by those who would bring them blood.
They took to themselves the most fit sacrifices, those that had always
been made for the good of the land. Innocents, outsiders, evildoers,
they drank the blood for the Mother and for the Good.
  "'They set into motion the tale of Osiris, composed in part of their
own terrible suffering-the attack of the conspirators, the recovery,
their need to live in the realm of darkness, the world beyond life, their
inability to walk anymore in sun. And they grafted this upon the older
stories of the gods who rise and fall in their love of the Good Mother,
which were already there in the land from which they came.
  "`And so these stories came down to us; these stories spread beyond
the secret places in which the Mother and the Father were worshiped,
in which those they made with the blood were installed.
  " `And they were already old when the first pharaoh built his first
pyramid. And the earliest texts record them in broken and strange
form.
  "`A hundred other gods ruled in Egypt, just as they rule in all lands.
But the worship of the Mother and Father and Those Who Drink the
Blood remained secret and powerful, a cult to which the devoted went
to hear the silent voices of the gods, to dream their dreams.


                                                                      340

  " `We are not told who were the first fledglings of the Mother and
Father. We know only that they spread the religion to the islands of
the great sea, and to the lands of the two rivers, and to the north
woods. That in shrines everywhere the moon god ruled and drank his
blood sacrifices and used his powers to look into the hearts of men.
During the periods between sacrifice, in starvation, the god's mind
could leave his body; it could travel the heavens; he could learn a
thousand things. And those mortals of the greatest purity of heart
could come to the shrine and hear the voice of the god, and he could
hear them.
  "`But even before my time, a thousand years ago, this was all an old
and incoherent story. The gods of the moon had ruled in Egypt for
maybe three thousand years. And the religion had been attacked again
and again.
  " `When the Egyptian priests turned to the sun god Amon Ra, they
opened the crypts of the moon god and let the sun burn him to
cinders. And many of our kind were destroyed. The same happened
when the first rude warriors rode down into Greece and broke open
the sanctuaries and killed what they did not understand.
  "`Now the babbling oracle of Delphi rules where we once ruled, arid
statues stand where we once stood. Our last hour is enjoyed in the
north woods whence you came, among those who still drench our
altars with the blood of the evildoer, and in the shah villages of Egypt,
where one or two priests tend the god in the crypt and allow the
faithful to bring to him the evildoers; for they cannot take the innocent
without arousing suspicion, and of evildoers and outsiders there are
always some to be had. And down in the jungles of Africa, near the
ruins of old cities that no one remembers, there, too, we are still
obeyed.
  "'But our history is punctuated by tales of rogues-the, Drinkers of the
Blood who look to no goddess for guidance and have always used their
powers as they chose.
  " `In Rome they live, in Athens, in all cities of the Empire, these
rogues hearken to no laws of right and wrong and use their powers for
their own ends.
  "`Ana they died horribly in the heat and the flame just as did the gods
in the groves and the sanctuaries, and if any have survived they
probably do not even guess why they were subjected to the killing
flame, of how the Mother and the Father were put into the sun.'
  "He had stopped. "
  " He was studying my reaction. The library was quiet and if the
others prowled behind the walls, I couldn't hear them anymore.

                                                                      341

  " `I don't believe a word of it,' I said.
  "He stared at me in stupefied silence for a moment and then he
laughed and laughed.
  "In a rage, I left the library and went out through the temple rooms
and up through the tunnel and into the street. "

  11

  "This was very uncharacteristic of me, to leave in temper, to break off
abruptly and depart. I had never done that sort of thing when I was a
mortal man. But as I've said, I was on the edge of madness, the first
madness many of us suffer, especially those who have been brought
into this by force.
  "I went back to my little house near the great library of Alexandria,
and I lay down on my bed as if I could really let myself fall asleep there
and escape from this thing.
  "`Idiot nonsense,' I murmured to myself.
  "But the more I thought about the story, the more it made sense. It
made sense that something was in my blood impelling me to drink
more blood. It made sense that it heightened all sensations, that it
kept my body-a mere imitation now of a human body- functioning
when it should have come to a stop. And it made sense that this thing
had no mind of its own but was nevertheless a power, an organization
of force with a desire to live all its own.
  "And then it even made sense that we could all be connected to the
Mother and the Father because this thing was spiritual, and had no
bodily limits except the limits of the individual bodies in which it had
gained control. It was the vine, this thing, and we were the flowers,
scattered over great distances, but connected by the twining tendrils
that could reach all over the world.
  "And this was why we gods could hear each other so well, why I
could know the others were in Alexandria, even before they called to
me. It was why they could come and find me in my house, why they
could lead me to the secret door.
  "All right. Maybe it was true. And it was an accident, this melding of
an unnamed force and a human body and mind to make the New
Thing as the Elder had said.
  "But still-I didn't like it.
  "I revolted against all of it because if I was anything, I was an
individual, a particular being, with a strong sense of my own rights
and prerogatives. I could not realize that I was host to an alien entity.
I was still Marius, no matter what had been done to me.

                                                                      342

  "I was left finally with one thought and one thought only: if I was
connected to this Mother and Father then I must see them, and I must
know that they were safe. I could not live with the thought that I
could die at any moment on account of some alchemy I could neither
control nor understand.
  "But I didn't return to the underground temple. I spent the next few
nights feasting on blood until my miserable thoughts were drowned in
it, and then in the early hours I roamed the great library of Alexandria,
reading as I had always done.
  "Some of the madness dissolved in me. I stopped longing for my
mortal family. I stopped being angry at that cursed thing in the cellar
temple, and I thought rather of this new strength I possessed. I would
live for centuries: I would know the answers to all kinds of questions. I
would be the continual awareness of things as time passed! And as
long as I slew only the evildoer, I could endure my blood thirst, revel
in it, in fact. And when the appropriate time came, I would make my
companions and make them well.
  "Now what remained? Go back to the Elder and find out where he
had put the Mother and the Father. And see these creatures for
myself. And do the very thing the Elder had threatened, sink them so
deep into the earth that no mortal could ever find them and expose
them to the light.
  "Easy to think about this, easy to imagine them as so simply
dispatched.
  "Five nights after I'd left the Elder, when all these thoughts had had
time to develop in me, I lay resting in my bedroom, with the lamps
shining through the sheer bed curtains as before. In filtered and
golden light, I listened to the sounds of sleeping Alexandria, and
slipped into thin and glittering waking dreams. I wondered if the
Elder would come to me again, disappointed that I had not returned-
and as the thought came clear to me, I realized that someone was
standing in the doorway again.
  "Someone was watching me. I could feel it. To see this person I had
but to turn my head. And then I would have the upper hand with the
Elder. I would say, `So you've come out of loneliness and
disillusionment and now you want to tell me more, do you? Why
don't you go back and sit in silence to wound your wraithlike
companions, the brotherhood of the cinders?' Of course I wouldn't
say such a thing to him. But I wasn't above thinking about it and
letting him-if he was the one in the doorway-hear these thoughts.
  "The one who was there did not go away.


                                                                      343

  "And slowly I turned my eyes in the direction of the door, and it was
a woman I saw standing there. And not merely a woman, but a
magnificent bronze-skinned Egyptian woman as artfully bejeweled and
dressed as the old queens, in fine pleated linen, with her black hair
down to her shoulders and braided with strands of gold. An immense
force emanated from her, an invisible and commanding sense of her
presence, her occupation of this small and insignificant room.
  "I sat up and moved back the curtains, and the lamps in the room
went out. I saw the smoke rising from them in the dark, gray wisps
like snakes coiling towards the ceiling and then gone. She was still
there, the remaining light defining her expressionless face, sparkling
on the jewels around her neck and in her large almond-shaped eyes.
And silently she said:
  "Marius, take us out of Egypt.
  "And then she was gone.
  "My heart was knocking in me uncontrollably. I went into the
garden looking for her. I leapt over the wall and stood alone listening
in the empty unpaved street.
  "I started to run towards the old section where I had found the door.
I meant to get into the underground temple and find the Elder and tell
him that he must take me to her, I had seen her, she had moved, she
had spoken, she had come to me! I was delirious, but when I reached
the door, I knew that I didn't have to go down. I knew that if I went
out of the city into the sands I could find her. She was already leading
me to where she was.
  "In the hour that followed I was to remember the strength and the
speed I'd known in the forests of Gaul, and had not used since. I went
out from the city to where the stars provided the only light, and I
walked until I came to a ruined temple, and there I began to dig in the
sand. It would have taken a band of mortals several hours to discover
the trapdoor, but I found it quickly, and I was able to lift it, which
mortals couldn't have done.
  "The twisting stairs and corridors I followed were not illuminated.
And I cursed myself for not bringing a candle, for being so swept off
my feet by the sight of her that I had rushed after her as if I were in
love.
  "'Help me, Akasha,' I whispered. I put my hands out in front of me
and tried not to feel mortal fear of the blackness in which I was as
blind as an ordinary man.
  "My hands touched something hard before me. And I rested,
catching my breath, trying to command myself. Then my hands
moved on the thing and felt what seemed the chest of a human statue,

                                                                       344

its shoulders, its arms. But this was no statue, this thing, this thing was
made of something more resilient than stone. And when my hand
found the face, the lips proved just a little softer than all the rest of it,
and I drew back.
  "I could hear my heart beat. I could feel the sheer humiliation of
cowardice. I didn't dare say the name Akasha. I knew that this thing I
had touched had a man's form. It was Enkil.
  "I closed my eyes, trying to gather my wits, form some plan of action
that didn't include turning and running like a madman, and I heard a
dry, crackling sound, and against my closed lids saw fire.
  "When I opened my eyes, I saw a blazing torch on the wall beyond
him, and his dark outline looming before me, and his eyes animate,
and looking at me without question, the black pupils swimming in a
dull gray light. He was otherwise lifeless, hands limp at his sides. He
was ornamented as she had been, and he wore the glorified dress of the
pharaoh and his hair too was plaited with gold. His skin was bronze
all over, as hers had been, enhanced, as the Elder had said. And he was
the incarnation of menace in his stillness as he stood staring at me.
  "In the barren chamber behind him, she sat on a stone shelf, with her
head at an angle, her arms dangling, as if she were a lifeless body flung
there. Her linen was smeared with sand, her sandaled feet caked with
it, and her eyes were vacant and staring. Perfect attitude of death.
  "And he like a stone sentinel in a royal tomb blocked my path.
  "I could hear no more from either of them than you heard from
them when I took you down to the chamber here on the island. And I
thought I might expire on the spot from fear.
  " Yet there was the sand on her feet and on her linen. She'd come to
me! She had!
  "But someone had come into the corridor behind me. Someone was
shuffling along the passage, and when I turned, I saw one of the burnt
ones-a mere skeleton, this one, with black gums showing and the fangs
cutting into the shiny black raisin skin of his lower lip.
  "I swallowed a gasp at the sight of him, his bony limbs, feet splayed,
arms jiggling with every step. He was plowing towards us, but he did
not seem to see me. He put his hands up and shoved at Enkil.
  "`No, no, back into the chamber!' he whispered in a low, crackling
voice. `No, no!' and each syllable seemed to take all he had. His
withered arms shoved at the figure. He couldn't budge it.
  "`Help me!' he said to me. `They have moved. Why did they move?
Make them go back. The further they move, the harder it is to get
them back.'


                                                                          345

  "I stared at Enkil and I felt the horror that you felt to see this statue
with life in it, seemingly unable or unwilling to move. And as I
watched the spectacle grew even more horrible, because the blackened
wraith was now screaming and scratching at Enkil, unable to do
anything with him. And the sight of this thing that should have been
dead wearing itself out like this, and this other thing that looked so
perfectly godlike and magnificent just standing there, was more than I
could bear.
  " `Help me!' the thing said. `Get him back into the chamber. Get
them back where they must remain.'
  "How could I do this? How could I lay hands on this being? How
could I presume to push him where he did not wish to go?
  "`They will be all right, if you help me,' the thing said. `They will be
together and they will be at peace. Push on him. Do it. Push! Oh,
look at her, what's happened to her. Look.'
  " `All right, damn it!' I whispered, and overcome with shame, I tried.
I laid my hands again on Enkil and I pushed at him, but it was
impossible. My strength meant nothing here, and the burnt one
became all the more irritating with his useless ranting and shoving.
  "But then he gasped and cackled and threw his skeletal arms up in
the air and backed up.
  "`What's the matter with you!' I said, trying not to scream and run.
But I saw soon enough.
  "Akasha had appeared behind Enkil. She was standing directly
behind him and looking at me over his shoulder, and I saw her
fingertips come round his muscular arms. Her eyes were as empty in
their glazed beauty as they had been before. But she was making him
move, and now came the spectacle of these two things walking of their
own volition, he backing up slowly, feet barely leaving the ground, and
she shielded by him so that I saw only her hands and the top of her
head and her eyes.
  "I blinked, trying to clear my head.
  "They were sitting on the shelf again, together, and they had lapsed
into the same posture in which you saw them downstairs on this island
tonight.
  "The burnt creature was near to collapse. He had gone down on his
knees, and he didn't have to explain to me why. He had found them
many a time in different positions, but he had never witnessed their
movement. And he had never seen her as she had been before.
  "I was bursting with the knowledge of why she had been as she was
before. She had come to me. But there was a point at which my pride


                                                                         346

and exhilaration gave way to what it should have been: overwhelming
awe, and finally grief.
  "I started to cry. I started to cry uncontrollably as I had not cried
since I had been with the old god in the grove and my death had
occurred, and this curse, this great luminous and powerful curse, had
descended on me. I cried as you cried when you first saw them. I
cried for their stillness and their isolation, and this horrible little place
in which they stared forward at nothing or sat in darkness while Egypt
died above.
  "The goddess, the mother, the thing, whatever she was, the mindless
and silent or helpless progenitor was looking at me. Surely it wasn't an
illusion. Her great glossy eyes, with their black fringe of lashes, were
fixed upon me. And there came her voice again, but it had nothing of
its old power, it was merely the thought, quite beyond language, inside
my head.
  "Take us out of Egypt, Marius. The Elder means to destroy us.
Guard us, Marius. Or we perish here.
  " `Do they want blood?' the burnt one cried. `Did they move
because they would have sacrifice?' the dried one begged.
  " `Go get them a sacrifice,' I said.
  " "I cannot now. I haven't the strength. And they won't give their
healing blood to me. Would they but allow me a few drops, my burnt
flesh might restore itself, the blood in me would be replenished, and I
should bring them glorious sacrifices. . . "
  "But there was an element of dishonesty in this little speech, because
they didn't desire glorious sacrifices anymore.
  " `Try again to drink their blood,' I said and this was horribly selfish
of me. I just wanted to see what would happen.
  "Yet to my humiliation, he did approach them, bent over and
weeping, begging them to give their powerful blood, their old blood,
so that his burns might heal faster, saying that he was innocent, he had
not put them in the sand-it had been the Elder-please, please, would
they let him drink from the original fount.
  "And then ravenous hunger consumed him. And convulsing, he
distended his fangs as a cobra might and he shot forward, his black
claws out, to the neck of Enkil.
  "Enkil's arm rose as the Elder said it would, and it flung the burnt
one across the chamber on his back before it returned to its proper
place.
  "The burnt one was sobbing and I was even more ashamed. The
burnt one was too weak to hunt for victims or bring victims. I had
urged him on to this to see it. And the gloom of this place, the gritty

                                                                          347

sand on the floor, the barrenness, the stink of the torch, and the ugly
sight of the burnt one writhing and crying, all this was dispiriting
beyond words.
  " `Then drink from me,' I said, shuddering at the sight of him, the
fangs distended again, the hands out to grasp me. But it was the least I
could do. "
  "As soon as I was done with that creature, I ordered him to let no
one enter the crypt. How the hell he was supposed to keep anyone out
I couldn't imagine, but I told him this with tremendous authority and
I hurried away.
  "I went back into Alexandria, and I broke into a shop that sold
antique things and I stole two fine painted and gold-plated mummy
cases, and I took a great deal of linen for wrapping, and I went back to
the desert crypt.
  "My courage and my fear were at their peak.
  "As often happens when we give the blood or take it from another of
our kind, I had seen things, dreamed things as it were, when the burnt
one had his teeth in my throat. And what I had seen and dreamed had
to do with Egypt; the age of Egypt, the fact that for four thousand years
this land had known little change in language, religion, or art. And for
the first time this was understandable to me and it put me in profound
sympathy with the Mother and the Father as relics of this country, as
surely as the pyramids were relics. It intensified my curiosity and
made it something more akin to devotion.
  "Though to be honest, I would have stolen the Mother and the
Father just in order to survive.
  "This new knowledge, this new infatuation, inspired me as I
approached Akasha and Enkil to put them in the wooden mummy
cases, knowing full well that Akasha would allow it and that one blow
from Enkil could probably crush my skull.
  "But Enkil yielded as well as Akasha. They allowed me to wrap them
in linen, to make mummies of them, and to place them into the
shapely wooden coffins which bore the painted faces of others, and the
endless hieroglyph instructions for the dead, and to take them with me
into Alexandria, which I did.
  "I left the wraith being in a terrible state of agitation as I went off
dragging a mummy case under each arm.
  "When I reached the city I hired men to carry these coffins properly
to my house, out of a sense of fittingness, and then I buried them deep
beneath the garden, explaining to Akasha and Enkil all the while aloud
that their stay in the earth would not be long.


                                                                         348

  "I was in terror to leave them the next night. I hunted and killed
within yards of my own garden gate. And then I sent my slaves to
purchase horses and a wagon for me, and to make preparations for a
journey around the coast to Antioch, on the Orontes River, a city I
knew and loved, and in which I felt I would be safe.
  "As I feared, the Elder soon appeared. I was actually waiting for him
in the shadowy bedroom, seated on my couch like a Roman, one lamp
beside me, as old copy of some Roman poem in my hand. I wondered
if he would sense the location of Akasha and Enkil, and deliberately
imagined false things -that I had shut them up in the great pyramid
itself.
  "I still dreamed the dream of Egypt that had come to me from the
burnt one: a land in which the laws and the beliefs had remained the
same for longer than we could imagine, a land that had known the
picture writing and the pyramids and the myths of Osiris and Isis
when Greece had been in darkness and when there was no Rome. I
saw the river Mile overflowing her banks. I saw the mountains on
either side which created the valley. I saw time with a wholly different
idea of it. And it was not merely the dream of the burnt one-it was all
I had ever seen or known in Egypt, a sense of things beginning there
which I had learned from books long before I had become the child of
the Mother and the Father, whom I meant now to take.
  "`What makes you think that we would entrust them to you!' the
Elder said as soon as he appeared in the doorway.
  "He appeared enormous as, girded only in the short linen kilt, he
walked around my room. The lamplight shone on his bald head, his
round face, his bulging eyes. `How dare you take the Mother and the
Father! What have you done with them!' he said.
  " `It was you who put them in the sun,' I answered. `You who sought
to destroy them. You were the one who didn't believe the old story.
You were the guardian of the Mother and the Father, and you lied to
me. You brought about the death of our kind from one end of the
world to the other. You, and you lied to me.'
  "He was dumbfounded. He thought me proud and impossible
beyond words. So did I. But so what? He had the power to burn me
to ashes if and when he burnt the Mother and the Father. And she had
come to me! To me!
  " `I did not know what would happen!' he said now, his veins
cording against his forehead, his fists clenched. He looked like a great
bald Nubian as he tried to intimidate me. `I swear to you by all that is
sacred, I didn't know. And you cannot know what it means to keep
them, to look at them year after year, decade after decade, century

                                                                     349

after century, and know that they could speak, they could move, and
they will not!'
  "I had no sympathy for him and what he said. He was merely an
enigmatic figure poised in the center of this small room in Alexandria
railing at me of sufferings beyond the imagination. How could I
sympathize with him?
  "`I inherited them,' he said. `They were given to me! What was I to
do?' he declared. `And I must contend with their punishing silence,
their refusal to direct the tribe they had loosed into the world. And
why came this silence? Vengeance, I tell you. Vengeance on us. But
for what? Who exists who can remember back a thousand years now?
No one. Who understands all these things? The old gods go into the
sun, into the fire, or they meet with obliteration through violence, or
they bury themselves in the deepest earth never to rise again. But the
Mother and the Father go on forever, and they do not speak. Why
don't they bury themselves where no harm can come to them? Why
do they simply watch and listen and refuse to speak? Only when one
tries to take Akasha from Enkil does he move, does he strike out and
then batter down his foes as if he were a stone colossus come to life. I
tell you when I put them in the sand they did not try to save
themselves! They stood facing the river as I ran!'
  " `You did it to see what would happen, if it would make them
move!'
  " `To free myself! To say, "I will keep you no longer. Move. Speak.
" To see if it was true, the old story, and if it was true, then let us all die
in flames.'
  "He had exhausted himself. In a feeble voice he said finally, `You
cannot take the Mother and the Father. How could you think that I
would allow you to do this! You who might not last out the century,
you who ran from the obligations of the grove. You don't really know
what the Mother and the Father are. You have heard more than one
lie from me.'
  " `I have something to tell you,' I said. `You are free now. You know
that we're not gods. And we're not men, either. We don't serve the
Mother Earth because we do not eat her fruits and we do not naturally
descend to her embrace. We are not of her. And I leave Egypt without
further obligation to you, and I take them with me because it is what
they have asked me to do and I will not suffer them or me to be
destroyed.'
  "He was again dumbfounded. How had they asked me? But he
couldn't find words, he was so angry, and so full of hatred suddenly,
and so full of dark wrathful secrets that I could not even glimpse. He

                                                                           350

had a mind as educated as mine, this one, but he knew things about
our powers that I didn't guess. I had never slain a man when I was
mortal. I did not know how to kill any living thing, save in the tender
and remorseless need for blood.
  "He knew how to use his supernatural strength. He closed his eyes to
slits, and his body hardened. Danger radiated from him.
  "He approached me and his intentions went before him, and in an
instant I had risen off my couch, and I was trying to ward off his
blows. He had me by the throat and he threw me against the stone
wall so that the bones of my shoulder and right arm were crushed. In
a moment of exquisite pain, I knew he would bash my head against the
stone and crush all my limbs, and then he would pour the oil of the
lamp over me and burn me, and I would be gone out of his private
eternity as if I had never known these secrets or dared to intrude.
  "I fought as I never could have before. But my battered arm was a
riot of pain, and his strength was to me what mine would be to you.
But instead of clawing at his hands as they locked round my throat,
instead of trying to free my throat as was instinctive, I shot my thumbs
into his eyes. Though my arm blazed with pain, I used all my strength
to push his eyes backwards into his head.
  "He let go of me and he wailed. Blood was pouring down his face. I
ran clear of him and towards the garden door. I still could not breathe
from the damage he'd done to my throat, and as I clutched at my
dangling arm, I saw things out of the comer of my eye that confused
me, a great spray of earth flying up from the garden, the air dense as if
with smoke. I bumped the door frame, losing my balance, as if a wind
had moved me, and glancing back I saw him coming on, eyes still
glittering, though from deep inside his head. He was cursing me in
Egyptian. He was saying that I should go into the netherworld with
the demons, unmourned.
  "And then his face froze in a mask of fear. He stopped in his tracks
and looked almost comical in his alarm.
  "Then I saw what he saw-the figure of Akasha, who moved past me
to my right. The linen wrapping had been ripped from around her
head, and her arms were torn free, and she was covered with the sandy
earth. Her eyes had the same expressionless stare they always had, and
she bore down on him slowly, drawing ever closer because he could
not move to save himself.
  "He went down on his knees, babbling to her in Egyptian, first with a
tone of astonishment and then with incoherent fright. Still she came
on, tracking the sand after her, the linen falling off her as each slow
sliding step ruptured the wrappings more violently. He turned away

                                                                       351

and fell forward on his hands and started to crawl as if, by some
unseen force, she prevented him from rising to his feet. Surely that
was what she was doing, because he lay prone finally, his elbows
jutting up, unable to move himself.
  "Quietly and slowly, she stepped on the back of his right knee,
crushing it flat beneath her foot, the blood squirting from under her
heel. And with the next step she crushed his pelvis just as flat while he
roared like a dumb beast, the blood gushing from his mangled parts.
Then came her next step down upon his shoulder and the next upon
his head, which exploded beneath her weight as if it had been an
acorn. The roaring ceased. The blood spurted from all his remains as
they twitched.
  "Turning, she revealed to me no change in expression, signifying
nothing of what had happened to him, indifferent even to the lone and
horrified witness who shrank back against the wall. She walked back
and forth over his remains with the same slow and effortless gait, and
crushed the last of him utterly.
  "What was left was not even the outline of a man, but mere blood-
soaked pulp upon the floor, and yet it glittered, bubbled, seemed to
swell and contract as if there were still life in it.
  "I was petrified, knowing that there was life in it, that this was what
immortality could mean.
  "But she had come to a stop, and she turned to her left so slowly it
seemed the revolution of a statue on a chain, and her hand rose and
the lamp beside the couch rose in the air and fell down upon the
bloody mass, the flame quickly igniting the oil as it spilled.
  "Like grease he went up, flames dancing from one end of the dark
mass to the other, the blood seeming to feed the fire, the smoke acrid
but only with the stench of the oil.
  "I was on my knees, with my head against the side of the doorway. I
was as near to losing consciousness from shock as I have ever been. I
watched him burn to nothing. I watched her standing there, beyond
the flames, her bronze face giving forth not the slightest sign of
intelligence or triumph or will.
  "I held my breath, expecting her eyes to move to me. But they didn't.
And as the moment lengthened, as the fire died, I realized that she had
ceased to move. She had returned to the state of absolute silence and
stillness that all the others had come to expect of her.
  "The room was dark now. The fire had gone out. The smell of
burning oil sickened me. She looked like an Egyptian ghost in her torn
wrappings, poised there before the glittering embers, the gilded
furnishings glinting in the light from the sky, bearing, for all their

                                                                       352

Roman craftsmanship, some resemblance to the elaborate and delicate
furnishings of a royal burial chamber.
  "I rose to my feet, and the pain in my shoulder and in my arm
throbbed. I could feel the blood rushing to heal it, but the damage was
considerable. I did not know how long I would have this.
  "I did know, of course, that if I were to drink from her, the healing
would be much faster, perhaps instantaneous, and we could start our
journey out of Alexandria tonight. I could take her far far away from
Egypt.
  "Then I realized that she was telling me this. The words, far far away,
were breathed in by me sensuously.
  "And I answered her: I have been all through the world and I will
take you to safe places. But then again perhaps this dialogue was all
my doing. And the soft, yielding sensation of love for her was my
doing. And I was going completely mad, knowing this nightmare
would never, never end except in fires such as that, that no natural old
age or death would ever quiet my fears and dull my pains, as I had
once expected it to do.
  "It ceased to matter. What mattered was that I was alone with her,
and in this darkness she might have been a human woman standing
there, a young god woman full of vitality and full of lovely language
and ideas and dreams.
  "I moved closer to her and it seemed then that she was this pliant
and yielding creature, and some knowledge of her was inside me;
waiting to be remembered, waiting to be enjoyed. Yet I was afraid.
She could do to me what she had done to the Elder. But that was
absurd. She would not. I was her guardian now. She would never let
anyone hurt me. No. I was to understand that. And I came closer and
closer to her, until my lips were almost at her bronze throat, and it was
decided when I felt the firm cold press of her hand on the back of my
head. "

  13

  "I won't try to describe the ecstasy. You know it. You knew it when
you took the blood from Magnus. You knew it when I gave you the
blood in Cairo. You know it when you kill. And you know what it
means when I say it was that, but a thousand times that.
  "I neither saw nor heard nor felt anything but absolute happiness,
absolute satisfaction.
  "Yet I was in other places, other rooms from long ago, and voices
were talking and battles were being lost. Someone was crying in

                                                                      353

agony. Someone was screaming in words I knew and didn't know: I
do not understand. l do not understand. A great pool of darkness
opened and there came the invitation to fall and to fall and to fall and
she sighed and said: I can fight no longer.
  "Then I awoke, and found myself lying on my couch. She was in the
center of the room, still as before, and it was late in the night, and the
city of Alexandria murmured around us in its sleep.
  "I knew a multitude of other things.
  "I knew so many things that it would have taken hours if not nights
for me to learn them if they'd been confided in mortal words. And I
had no inkling of how much time had passed.
  "I knew that thousands of years ago there had been great battles
among the Drinkers of the Blood, and many of them after the first
creation had become ruthless and profane bringers of death. Unlike
the benign lovers of the Good Mother who starved and then drank her
sacrifices, these were death angels who could swoop down upon any
victim at any moment, glorying in the conviction that they were part
of the rhythm of all things in which no individual human life matters,
in which death and life are equal-and to them belonged suffering and
slaughter as they chose to mete it out.
  "And these terrible gods had their devoted worshipers among men,
human slaves who brought victims to them, and quaked in fear of the
moment when they themselves might fall to the god's whim.
  "Gods of this kind had ruled in ancient Babylon, and in Assyria, and
in cities long forgotten, and in far-off India, and in countries beyond
whose names I did not understand.
  "And even now, as I sat silent and stunned by these images, I
understood that these gods had become part of the Oriental world
which was alien to the Roman world to which I'd been born. They
were part of the world of the Persians whose men were abject slaves to
their king, while the Greeks who had fought them had been free men.
'No matter what our cruelties and our excesses, even the lowliest
peasant had value to us. Life had value. And death was merely the end
of life, something to be faced with bravery when honor left no choice.
Death was not grand to us. In fact, I don't think death was anything
really to us. It certainly was not a state preferable to life.
  "And though these gods had been revealed to me by Akasha in all
their grandeur and mystery, I found them appalling. I could not now
or ever embrace them and I knew that the philosophies that proceeded
from them or justified them would never justify my killing, or give me
consolation as a Drinker of the Blood. Mortal or immortal, I was of


                                                                        354

the West. And I loved the ideas of the West. And I should always be
guilty of what I did.
 "Nevertheless I saw the power of these gods, their incomparable
loveliness. They enjoyed a freedom I would never know. And I saw
their contempt for all those who challenged them. And I saw them
wearing in the pantheon of other countries their glittering crowns.
 "And I saw them come to Egypt to steal the original and all-powerful
blood of the Father and the Mother, and to ensure that the Father and
the Mother did not burn themselves to bring an end to the reign of
these dark and terrible gods for whom all the good gods must be
brought down.
 "And I saw the Mother and the Father imprisoned. I saw them
entombed with blocks of diorite and granite pressed against their very
bodies in an underground crypt, only their heads and their necks free.
In this manner the dark gods could feed the Mother and the Father the
human blood they could not resist, and take from their necks the
powerful blood against their will. And all the dark gods of the world
came to drink from this oldest of founts.
 "The Father and the Mother screamed in torment. They begged to
be released. But this meant nothing to the dark gods, who relished
such agony, who drank it as they drank human blood. The dark gods
wore human skulls dangling from their girdles; their garments were
dyed with human blood. The Mother and the Father refused sacrifice,
but this only increased their helplessness. They did not take the very
thing that might have given them the strength to move the stones, and
to affect objects by mere thought.
 "Nevertheless their strength increased.
 "Years and years of this torment, and wars among the gods, wars
among the sects that held to life and those who held to death.
 "Years beyond counting, until finally the Mother and the Father
became silent, and there were none in existence who could even
remember a time when they begged or fought or talked. Years came
when nobody could remember who had imprisoned the Mother and
the Father, or why the Mother and the Father must not ever be let out.
Some did not believe that tile Mother and the Father were even the
originals or that their immolation would harm anyone else. It was just
an old tale.
 "And all the while Egypt was Egypt and its religion, uncorrupted by
outsiders, finally moved on towards the belief in conscience, the
judgment after death of all beings, be they rich or poor, the belief in
goodness on earth and life after death.


                                                                      355

  "And then the night came when the Mother and the Father were
found free of their prison, and those who tended them realized that
only they could have moved the stones. In silence, their strength had
grown beyond all reckoning. Yet they were as statues, embracing each
other in the middle of the dirty and darkened chamber where for
centuries they had been kept. Naked and shimmering they were, all
their clothing having long ago rotted away.
  "If and when they drank from the victims offered, they moved with
the sluggishness of reptiles in winter, as though time had taken on an
altogether different meaning for them, and years were as nights to
them, and centuries as years.
  "And the ancient religion was strong as ever, not of the East and not
really of the West. The Drinkers of the Blood remained good symbols,
the luminous image of life in the afterworld which even the lowliest
Egyptian soul might come to enjoy.
  "Sacrifice could only be the evildoer in these later times. And by this
means the gods drew the evil out of the people, and protected the
people, and the silent voice of the god consoled the weak, telling the
truths learned by the god in starvation: that the world was full of
abiding beauty, that no soul here is really alone.
  "The Mother and the Father were kept in the loveliest of all shrines
and all the gods came to them and took from them, with their will,
droplets of their precious blood.
  "But then the impossible was happening. Egypt was reaching its
finish. Things thought to be unchangeable were about to be utterly
changed. Alexander had come, the Ptolemies were the rulers, Caesar
and Antony-all rude and strange protagonists of the drama which was
simply The End of All This.
  "And finally the dark and cynical Elder, the wicked one, the
disappointed one, who put the Mother and Father in the sun.
  "I got up off the couch and I stood in this room in Alexandria
looking at the motionless and staring figure of Akasha and the soiled
linen hanging from her seemed an insult. And my head swam with old
poetry. And I was overcome with love. '
  "There was no more pain in my body from the battle with the Elder.
The bones were restored. And I went down on my knees, and I kissed
the fingers of the right hand that hung at Akasha's side. I looked up
and I saw her looking down at me, her head tilted, and the strangest
look passed over her; it seemed as pure in its suffering as the happiness
I had just known. Then her head, very slowly, inhumanly slowly,
returned to its position of facing forward, and I knew in that instant
that I had seen and known things that the Elder had never known.

                                                                      356

  "As I wrapped her body again in linen, I was in a trance. More than
ever I felt the mandate to take care of her and Enkil, and the horror of
the Elder's death was flashing before me every second, and the blood
she had given me had increased my exhilaration as well as my physical
strength.
  "And as I prepared to leave Alexandria, I suppose I dreamed of
waking Enkil and Akasha, that in the years to come they would recover
all the vitality stolen from them, and we would know each other in
such intimate and astonishing ways that these dreams of knowledge
and experience given me in the blood would pale.
  "My slaves had long ago come back with the horses and the wagons
for our journey, with the stone sarcophagi and the chains and locks I
had told them to procure. They waited outside the walls.
  "I placed the mummy cases with the Mother and the Father in the
sarcophagi side by side in the wagon, and I covered them with locks
and chains and heavy blankets, and we set out, heading towards the
door to the underground temple of the gods on our way to the city
gates.
  "When I reached the door, I left my slaves with firm orders to give a
loud alarm if anyone approached, and then I took a leather sack and
went down into the temple, and into the library of the Elder, and I put
all the scrolls I could find into the sack. I stole every bit of portable
writing that was in the place. I wished I could have taken the writing
off the walls.
  "There were others in the chambers, but they were too terrified to
come out. Of course they knew I had stolen the Mother and the
Father. And they probably knew of the Elder's death.
  "It didn't matter to me. I was getting out of old Egypt, and I had the
source of all our power with me. And I was young and foolish and
enflamed.
  "When I finally reached Antioch on the Orontes-A great and
wonderful city that rivaled Rome in population and wealth-I read
these old papyri and they told of all the things Akasha had revealed to
me.
  "And she and Enkil had the first of many chapels I would build for
them all over Asia and Europe, and they knew that I would always care
for them and I knew that they would let no harm come to me.
  "Many centuries after, when I was set afire in Venice by the band of
the Children of Darkness, I was too far from Akasha for rescue, or
again, she would have come. And when I did reach the sanctuary,
knowing full well the agony that the burnt gods had known, I drank of
her blood until I was healed.

                                                                         357

  "But by the end of the first century of keeping them in Antioch I had
despaired that they would ever `come to life,' as it were. Their silence
and stillness was almost continuous as it is now. Only the skin
changed dramatically with the passing years, losing the damage of the
sun until it was like alabaster again.
  "But by the time I realized all this I was powerfully engaged in
watching the goings-on of the city and the changing of the times. I
was madly in love with a beautiful brown-haired Greek courtesan
named Pandora, with the loveliest arms I have ever beheld on a human
being, who knew what I was from the first moment she set eyes on me
and bided her time, enchanting me and dazzling me until I was ready
to bring her over into the magic, at which time she was allowed the
blood from Akasha and became one of the most powerful supernatural
creatures I have ever known. Two hundred years I lived and fought
and loved with Pandora. But that is another tale.
  "There are a million tales I could tell of the centuries I have lived
since then, of my journeys from Antioch to Constantinople, back to
Alexandria and on to India and then to Italy again and from Venice to
the bitter cold highlands of Scotland and then to this island in the
Aegean, where we are now.
  "I could tell you of the tiny changes in Akasha and Enkil over the
years, of the puzzling things they do, and the mysteries they leave
unsolved.
  "Perhaps some night in the far distant future, when you've returned
to me, I'll talk of the other immortals I've known, those who were
made as I was made by the last of the gods who survived in various
lands-some the servants of the Mother and others of the terrible gods
out of the East.
  "I could tell you how Mael, my poor Druid priest, finally drank from
a wounded god himself and in one instant lost all his belief in the old
religion, going on to become as enduring and dangerous a rogue
immortal as any of us. I could tell you how the legends of Those Who
Must be Kept spread through the world. And of the times other
immortals have tried to take them from me out of pride or sheer
destructiveness, wanting to put an end to us all.
  "I will tell you of my loneliness, of the others I made, and how they
met their ends. Of how I have gone down into the earth with Those
Who Must Be Kept, and risen again, thanks to their blood, to live
several mortal lifetimes before burying myself again. I will tell you of
the other truly eternal ones whom I meet only now and then. Of the
last time I saw Pandora in the city of Dresden, in the company of a
powerful and vicious vampire from India, and of how we quarreled

                                                                       358

and separated, and of how I discovered too late her letter begging me
to meet her in Moscow, a fragile piece of writing that had fallen to the
bottom of a cluttered traveling case. Too many things, too many
stories, stories with and without lessons . . .
  "But I have told you the most important things-how I came into
possession of Those Who Must Be Kept, and who we really were.
  "What is crucial now is that you understand this:
  "As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan
world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless
to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another
God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done
before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother
again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in
it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old
knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood.
  "But this had to happen. Human sacrifice had been a horror to the
Greeks and Romans. I had thought it ghastly that the Keltoi burned
for the god their evildoers in the wicker colossi as I described. And so
it was to the Christians. So how could we, gods who fed upon human
blood, have been seen as `good'?
  "But the real perversion of us was accomplished when the Children
of Darkness came to believe they served the Christian devil, and like
the terrible gods of the East, they tried to give value to evil, to believe
in its power in the scheme of things, to give it a just place in the world.
  "Hearken to me when I say: There has never been a just place for evil
in the Western world. There has never been an easy accommodation
of death.
  "No matter how violent have been the centuries since the fall of
Rome, no matter how terrible the wars, the persecutions, the
injustices, the value placed upon human life has only increased.
  "Even as the Church erected statues and pictures of her bloody
Christ and her bloody martyrs, she held the belief that these deaths, so
well used by the faithful, could only have come at the hands of
enemies, not God's own priests.
  "It is the belief in the value of human life that has caused the torture
chambers and the stake and the more ghastly means of execution to be
abandoned all over Europe in this time. And it is the belief in the
value of human life that carries man now out of the monarchy into the
republics of America and France.
  "And now we stand again on the cusp of an atheistic agean age where
the Christian faith is losing its hold, as paganism once lost its hold, and


                                                                         359

the new humanism, the belief in man and his accomplishments and
his rights, is more powerful than ever before.
  "Of course we cannot know what will happen as the old religion
thoroughly dies out. Christianity rose on the ashes of paganism, only
to carry forth the old worship in new form. Maybe a new religion will
rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and
selfishness because he really needs his gods.
  "But maybe something more wonderful will take place: the world
will truly move forward, past all gods and goddesses, past all devils and
angels. And in such a world, Lestat, we will have less of a place than
we have ever had.
  "All the stories I have told you are finally as useless as all ancient
knowledge is to man and to us. Its images and its poetry can be
beautiful; it can make us shiver with the recognition of things we have
always suspected or felt. It can draw us back to times when the earth
was new to man, and wondrous. But always we come back to the way
the earth is now.
  "And in this world the vampire is only a Dark God. He is a Child of
Darkness. He can't be anything else. And if he wields any lovely
power upon the minds of men, it is only because the human
imagination is a secret place of primitive memories and unconfessed
desires. The mind of each man is a Savage Garden, to use your phrase,
in which all manner of creatures rise and fall, and anthems are sung
and things imagined that must finally be condemned and disavowed.
  "Yet men love us when they come to know us. They love us even
now. The Paris crowds love what they see on the stage of the Theater
of the Vampires. And those who have seen your like walking through
the ballrooms of the world, the pale and deadly lord in the velvet
cloak, have worshiped in their own way at your feet.
  "They thrill at the possibility of immortality, at the possibility that a
grand and beautiful being could be utterly evil, that he could feel and
know all things yet choose willfully to feed his dark appetite. Maybe
they wish they could be that lusciously evil creature. How simple it all
seems. And it is the simplicity of it that they want.
  "But give them the Dark Gift and only one in a multitude will not be
as miserable as you are.
  "What can I say finally that will not confirm your worst fears? I have
lived over eighteen hundred years, and I tell you life does not need us.
I have never had a true purpose. We have no place. "

  14


                                                                        360

  Marius paused. He looked away from me for the first time and
towards the sky beyond the windows, as if he were listening to island
voices I couldn't hear.
  "I have a few more things to tell you, " he said, "things which are
important, though they are merely practical things. . . " But he was
distracted. "And there are promises, " he said, finally,
  "which I must exact.. . " And he slipped into quiet, listening, his face
too much like that of Akasha and Enkil. There were a thousand
questions I wanted to ask. But more significant perhaps there were a
thousand statements of his I wanted to reiterate, as if I had to say them
aloud to grasp them. If I talked, I wouldn't make very good sense. I
sat back against the cool brocade of the winged chair with my hands
together in the form of a steeple, and I just looked ahead of me, as if
his tale were spread out there for me to read over, and I thought of the
truth of his statements about good and evil, and how it might have
horrified me and disappointed me had he tried to convince me of the
rightness of the philosophy of the terrible gods of the East, that we
could somehow glory in what we did. I too was a child of the West,
and all my brief life I had struggled with the Western inability to
accept evil or death. But underneath all these considerations lay the
appalling fact that Marius could annihilate all of us by destroying
Akasha and Enkil. Marius could kill every single one of us in existence
if he were to burn Akasha and Enkil and thereby get rid of an old and
decrepit and useless form of evil in the world. Or so it seemed. And
the horror of Akasha and Enkil themselves.. . What could I say to this,
except that I too had felt the first glimmer of what he once felt, that I
could rouse them, I could make them speak again, I could make them
move. Or more truly, I had felt when I saw them that someone should
and could do it. Someone could end their open-eyed sleep. And what
would they be if they ever walked and talked again? Ancient Egyptian
monsters. What would they do? I saw the two possibilities as
seductive suddenly-rousing them or destroying them. Both tempted
the mind. I wanted to pierce them and commune with them, and yet I
understood the irresistible madness of trying to destroy them. Of
going out in a blaze of light with them that would take all our doomed
species with it. Both attitudes had to do with power. And some
triumph over the passage of time.
  "Aren't you ever tempted to do it? " I asked, and my voice had pain
in it. I wondered if down in their chapel they heard. He awakened
from his listening and turned to me and he shook his head. No.
  "Even though you know better than anyone that we have no place? "
Again he shook his head. No.

                                                                       361

  "I am immortal, " he said, "truly immortal. To be perfectly honest, I
do not know what can kill me now, if anything. But that isn't the
point. I want to go on. I do not even think of it. I am a continual
awareness unto myself, the intelligence I longed for years and years ago
when I was alive, and I'm in love as I've always been with the great
progress of mankind. I want to see what will happen now that the
world has come round again to questioning its gods. Why, I couldn't
be persuaded now to close my eyes for any reason. " I nodded in
understanding.
  "But I don't suffer what you suffer, " he said. "Even in the grove in
northern France, when I was made into this, I was not young. I have
been lonely since, I have known near madness, indescribable anguish,
but I was never immortal and young. I have done over and over what
you have yet to do the thing that must take you away from me very
very soon. "
  "Take me away? But I don't want- "
  "You have to go, Lestat, " he said. "And very soon, as I said. You're
not ready to remain here with me. This is one of the most important
things I have left to tell you and you must listen with the same
attention with which you listened to the rest. "
  "Marius, I can't imagine leaving now. I can't even... " I felt anger
suddenly. Why had he brought me here to cast me out? And I
remembered all Armand's admonitions to me. It is only with the old
ones that we find communion, not with those we create. And I had
found Marius. But these were mere words. They didn't touch the core
of what I felt, the sudden misery and fear of separation.
  "Listen to me, " he said gently. "Before I was taken by the Gauls, I
had lived a good lifetime, as long as many a man in those days. And
after I took Those Who Must Be Kept out of Egypt, I lived again for
years in Antioch as a rich Roman scholar might live. I had a house,
slaves, and the love of Pandora. We had life in Antioch, we were
watchers of all that passed. And having had that lifetime, I had the
strength for others later on. I had the strength to become part of the
world in Venice, as you know. I had the strength to rule on this island
as I do. You, like many who go early into the fire or the sun, have had
no real life at all.
  "As a young man, you tasted real life for no more than six months in
Paris. As a vampire, you have been a roamer, an outsider, haunting
houses and other lives as you drifted from place to place.
  "If you mean to survive, you must live out one complete lifetime as
soon as you can. To forestall it may be to lose everything, to despair
and to go into the earth again, never to rise. Or worse. . . "

                                                                      362

  "I want it. I understand, " I said. "And yet when they offered it to
me in Paris, to remain with the Theater, I couldn't do it. "
  "That was not the right place for you. Besides, the Theater of the
Vampires is a coven. It isn't the world any more than this island
refuge of mine is the world. And too many horrors happened to you
there.
  "But in this New World wilderness to which you're headed, this
barbaric little city called New Orleans, you may enter into the world as
never before. You may take up residence there as a mortal, just as you
tried to do so many times in your wanderings with Gabrielle. There
will be no old covens to bother you, no rogues to try to strike you
down out of fear. And when you make others-and you will, out of
loneliness, make others-make and keep them as human as you can.
Keep them close to you as members of a family, not as members of a
coven, and understand the age you live in, the decades you pass
through. Understand the style of garment that adorns your body, the
styles of dwellings in which you spend your leisure hours, the place in
which you hunt. Understand what it means to feel the passage of time!
"
  "Yes, and feel all the pain of seeing things die... " All the things
Armand advised against.
  "Of course. You are made to triumph over time, not to run from it.
And you will suffer that you harbor the secret of your monstrosity and
that you must kill. And maybe you will try to feast only on the
evildoer to assuage your conscience, and you may succeed, or you may
fail. But you can come very close to life, if you will only lock the secret
within you. You are fashioned to be close to it, as you yourself once
told the members of the old Paris coven. You are the imitation of a
man. "
  "I want it, I do want it- "
  "Then do as I advise. And understand this also. In a real way,
eternity is merely the living of one human lifetime after another. Of
course, there may be long periods of retreat; times of slumber or of
merely watching. But again and again we plunge into the stream, and
we swim as long as we can, until time or tragedy brings us down as
they will do mortals. "
  "Will you do it again? Leave this retreat and plunge into the stream?
"
  "Yes, definitely. When the right moment presents itself. When the
world is so interesting again that I can't resist it. Then I'll walk city
streets. I'll take a name. I'll do things. "


                                                                         363

  "Then come now, with me! " Ah, painful echo of Armand. And of
the vain plea from Gabrielle ten years after.
  "It's a more tempting invitation than you know, " he answered, "but
I'd do you a great disservice if I came with you. I'd stand between you
and the world. I couldn't help it. " I shook my head and looked away,
full of bitterness.
  "Do you want to continue? " he asked. "Or do you want Gabrielle's
predictions to come true? "
  "I want to continue, " I said.
  "Then you must go, " he said. "A century from now, maybe less, we'll
meet again. I won't be on this island. I will have taken Those Who
Must Be Kept to another place. But wherever I am and wherever you
are, I'll find you. And then I'll be the one who will not want you to
leave me. I'll be the one who begs you remain. I'll fall in love with
your company, your conversation, the mere sight of you, your stamina
and your recklessness, and your lack of belief in anything-all the things
about you I already love rather too strongly. " I could scarcely listen to
this without breaking down. I wanted to beg him to let me remain.
  "Is it absolutely impossible now? " I asked. "Marius, can't you spare
me this lifetime? "
  "Quite impossible, " he said. "I can tell you stories forever, but they
are no substitute for life. Believe me, I've tried to spare others: I've
never succeeded. I can't teach what one lifetime can teach. I never
should have taken Armand in his youth, and his centuries of folly and
suffering are a penance to me even now. You did him a mercy driving
him into the Paris of this century, but I fear for him it is too late.
Believe me, Lestat, when I say this has to happen. You must have that
lifetime, for those who are robbed of it spin in dissatisfaction until
they finally live it somewhere or they are destroyed. "
  "And what about Gabrielle? "
  "Gabrielle had her life; she had her death almost. She has the
strength to reenter the world when she chooses, or to live on its fringes
indefinitely. "
  "And do you think she will ever reenter? "
  "I don't know, " he said. "Gabrielle defies my understanding. Not
my experience-she's too like Pandora. But I never understood
Pandora. The truth is most women are weak, be they mortal or
immortal. But when they are strong, they are absolutely
unpredictable. " I shook my head. I closed my eyes for a moment. I
didn't want to think of Gabrielle. Gabrielle was gone, no matter what
we said here. And I still could not accept that I had to go. this seemed
an Eden to me. But I didn't argue anymore. I knew he was resolute,

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and I also knew that he wouldn't force me. He'd let me start worrying
about my mortal father, and he'd let me come to him and say I had to
go. I had a few nights left.
  "Yes, " he answered softly. "And there are other things I can tell you.
" I opened my eyes again. He was looking at me patiently,
affectionately. I felt the ache of love as strongly as I'd ever felt it for
Gabrielle. I felt the inevitable tears and did my best to suppress them.
  "You've learned a great deal from Armand, " he said, his voice steady
as if to help me with this little silent struggle. "And you learned much
more on your own. But there are still some things I might teach you.
"
  "Yes, please, " I said.
  "Well, for one thing, " he said, "your powers are extraordinary, but
you can't expect those you make in the next fifty years to equal you or
Gabrielle. Your second child didn't have half Gabrielle's strength and
later children will have even less. The blood I gave you will make some
difference. If you drink . . . if you drink from Akasha and Enkil,
which you may choose not to do . . . that will make some difference
too. But no matter, only so many children can be made by one in a
century. And new offspring will be weak. However, this is not
necessarily a bad thing. The rule of the old covens had wisdom in it
that strength should come with time. And then again, there is the old
truth: you might make titans or imbeciles, no one knows why or how.
  "Whatever will happen will happen, but choose your companions
with care. Choose them because you like to look at them and you like
the sound of their voices, and they have profound secrets in them that
you wish to know. In other words, choose them because you love
them. Otherwise you will not be able to bear their company for very
long. "
  "I understand, " I said. "Make them in love. "
  "Exactly, make them in love. And make certain they have had some
lifetime before you make them; and never never make one as young as
Armand. That is the worst crime I have ever committed against my
own kind, the taking of the young boy child Armand. "
  "But you didn't know the Children of Darkness would come when
they did, and separate him from you. "
  "No. But still, I should have waited. It was loneliness that drove me
to it. And Armand's helplessness, that his mortal life was so
completely in my hands. Remember, beware of that power, and the
power you have over those who are dying. Loneliness in us, and that
sense of power, can be as strong as the thirst for blood. If there were


                                                                           365

not an Enkil there might be no Akasha, and if there were not an
Akasha, then there would be no Enkil. "
  "Yes. And from everything you said, it seems Enkil covets Akasha.
That Akasha is the one who now and then... "
  "Yes, that's true. " His face became very somber suddenly, and his
eyes had a confidential look in them as if we were whispering to each
other and fearful another might hear. He waited for a moment as if
thinking what to say. "Who knows what Akasha might do if there
were no Enkil to hold her? " he whispered. "And why do I pretend
that he can't hear this even when I think it? Why do I whisper? He
can destroy me anytime that he likes. Maybe Akasha is the only thing
keeping him from it. But then what would become of them if he did
away with me? "
  "Why did they let themselves be burnt by the sun? " I asked.
  "How can we know? Perhaps they knew it wouldn't hurt them. It
would only hurt and punish those who had done it to them. Perhaps
in the state they live in they are slow to realize what is going on outside
them. And they did not have time to gather their forces, to wake from
their dreams and save themselves. Maybe their movements after it
happened-the movements of Akasha I witnessed-were only possible
because they had been awakened by the sun. And now they sleep again
with their eyes open. And they dream again. And they do not even
drink. "
  "What did you mean . . . if I choose to drink their blood? " I asked.
"How could I not choose? "
  "That is something we have to think on, both of us, " he said. "And
there is always the possibility that they won't allow you to drink. " I
shuddered thinking of one of those arms striking out at me, knocking
me twenty feet across the chapel, or perhaps right through the stone
floor itself.
  "She told you her name, Lestat, " he said. "I think she will let you
drink. But if you take her blood, then you will be even more resilient
than you are now. A few droplets will strengthen you, but if she gives
you more than that, a full measure, hardly any force on earth can
destroy you after that. You have to be certain you want it. "
  "Why wouldn't I want it? " I said.
  "Do you want to be burnt to a cinder and live on in agony? Do you
want to be slashed with knives a thousand times over, or shot through
and through with guns, and yet live on, a shredded husk that cannot
fend for itself? Believe me, Lestat, that can be a terrible thing. You
could suffer the sun even, and live through it, burnt beyond
recognition, wishing as the old gods did in Egypt that they had died. "

                                                                       366

  "But won't I heal faster? "
  "Not necessarily. Not without another infusion of her blood in the
wounded state. Time with its constant measure of human victims or
the blood of old ones-these are the restoratives. But you may wish you
had died. Think on this. Take your time. "

  "What would you do if you were I? "
  "I would drink from Those Who Must Be Kept, of course. I would
drink to be stronger, more nearly immortal. I would beseech Akasha
on my knees to allow it, and then I would go into her arms. But it's
easy to say these things. She has never struck out at me. She has never
forbidden me, and I know that I want to live forever. I would endure
the fire again. I would endure the sun. And all manner of suffering in
order to go on. You may not be so sure that eternity is what you want.
"
  "I want it, " I said. "I could pretend to think about it, pretend to be
clever and wise as I weigh it. But what the hell? I wouldn't fool you,
would I? You knew what I would say. " He smiled.
  "Then before you leave we will go into the chapel and we will ask her,
humbly, and we will see what she says. "
  "And for now, more answers? " I asked. He gestured for me to ask.
  "I've seen ghosts, " I said. "Seen the pesty demons you described.
I've seen them possess mortals and dwellings. "
  "I know no more than you do. Most ghosts seem to be mere
apparitions without knowledge that they are being watched. I have
never spoken to a ghost nor been addressed by one. As for the pesty
demons, what can I add to Enkil's ancient explanation, that they rage
because they do not have bodies. But there are other immortals that
are more interesting. "
  "What are they? "
  "There are at least two in Europe who do not and have never drunk
blood. They can walk in the daylight as well as in the dark, and they
have bodies and they are very strong. They look exactly like men.
There was one in ancient Egypt, known as Ramses the Damned to the
Egyptian court, though he was hardly damned as far as I can tell. His
name was taken off all the royal monuments after he vanished. You
know the Egyptians used to do that, obliterate the name as they sought
to kill the being. And I don't know what happened to him. The old
scrolls didn't tell. "
  "Armand spoke of him, " I said. "Armand told of legends, that
Ramses was an ancient vampire. "


                                                                       367

  "He is not. But I didn't believe what I read of him till I'd seen the
others with my own eyes. And again, I have not communicated with
them. I have only seen them, and they were terrified of me and fled. I
fear them because they walk in the sun. And they are powerful and
bloodless and who knows what they might do? But you may live
centuries and never see them. "
  "But how old are they? How long has it been? "
  "They are very old, probably as old as I am. I can't tell. They live as
wealthy, powerful men. And possibly there are more of them, they
may have some way of propagating themselves, I'm not sure. Pandora
said once that there was a woman too. But then Pandora and I
couldn't agree upon anything about them. Pandora said they had been
what we were, and they were ancient, and had ceased to drink as the
Mother and the Father have ceased to drink. I don't think they were
ever what we are. They are something else without blood. They don't
reflect light as we do. They absorb it. They are just a shade darker
than mortals. And they are dense, and strong. You may never see
them, but I tell you to warn you. You must never let them know
where you lie. They can be more dangerous than humans. "
  "But are humans really dangerous? I've found them so easy to
deceive. "
  "Of course they're dangerous. Humans could wipe us out if they
ever really understood about us. They could hunt us by day. Don't
ever underestimate that single advantage. Again, the rules of the old
covens have their wisdom. Never, never tell mortals about us. Never
tell a mortal where you lie or where any vampire lies. It is absolute
folly to think you can control mortals. " I nodded, though it was very
hard for me to fear mortals. I never had.
  "Even the vampire theater in Paris, " he cautioned, "does not flaunt
the simplest truths about us. It plays with folklore and illusions. Its
audience is completely fooled. " I realized this was true. And that even
in her letters to me Eleni always disguised her meanings and never
used our full names. And something about this secrecy oppressed me
as it always had. But I was racking my brain, trying to discover if I'd
ever seen the bloodless things . . . The truth was, I might have
mistaken them for rogue vampires.
  "There is one other thing I should tell you about supernatural beings,
" Marius said.
  "What is it? "
  "I am not certain of this, but I'll tell you what I think. I suspect that
when we are burnt-when we are destroyed utterly-that we can come
back again in another form. I don't speak of man now, of human

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reincarnation. I know nothing of the destiny of human souls. But we
do live forever and I think we come back. "
  "What makes you say this? " I couldn't help but think of Nicolas.
  "The same thing that makes mortals talk of reincarnation. There are
those who claim to remember other lives. They come to us as mortals,
claiming to know all about us, to have been one of us, and asking to be
given the Dark Gift again. Pandora was one of these. She knew many
things, and there was no explanation for her knowledge, except
perhaps that she imagined it, or drew it, without realizing it, out of my
mind. That's a real possibility, that they are merely mortals with
hearing that allows them to receive our undirected thoughts.
  "Whatever the case, there are not many of them. If they were
vampires, then surely they are only a few of those who have been
destroyed. So the others perhaps do not have the strength to come
back. Or they do not choose to do so. Who can know? Pandora was
convinced she had died when the Mother and the Father had been put
in the sun. "
  "Dear God, they are born again as mortals and they want to be
vampires again? " Marius smiled.
  "You're young, Lestat, and how you contradict yourself. What do
you really think it would be like to be mortal again? Think on this
when you set eyes on your mortal father. " Silently I conceded the
point. But what I had made of mortality in my imagination I didn't
really want to lose. I wanted to go on grieving for my lost mortality.
And I knew that my love of mortals was all bound up with my not
being afraid of them. Marius looked away, distracted once more. The
same perfect attitude of listening. And then his face became attentive
to me again.
  "Lestat, we should have no more than two or three nights, " he said
sadly.
  "Marius! " I whispered. I bit down on the words that wanted to spill
out. My only consolation was the expression on his face, and it
seemed now he had never looked even faintly inhuman.
  "You don't know how I want you to stay here, " he said. "But life is
out there, not here. When we meet again I'll tell you more things but
you have all you need for now. You have to go to Louisiana and see
your father to the finish of his life and learn from that what you can.
I've seen legions of mortals grow old and die. You've seen none. But
believe me, my young friend, I want you desperately to remain with
me. You don't know how much. I promise you that I will find you
when the time comes. "
  "But why can't I return to you? Why must you leave here? "

                                                                      369

  "It's time, " he said. "I've ruled too long over these people as it is. I
arouse suspicions, and besides, Europeans are coming into these
waters. Before I came here I was hidden in the buried city of Pompeii
below Vesuvius, and mortals, meddling and digging up those ruins,
drove me out. Now it's happening again. I must seek some other
refuge, something more remote, and more likely to remain so. And
frankly I would never have brought you here if I planned to remain. "
  "Why not? "
  "You know why not. I can't have you or anyone else know the
location of Those Who Must Be Kept. And that brings us now to
something very important: the promises I must have from you. "
  "Anything, " I said. "But what could you possibly want that I could
give? "
  "Simply this. You must never tell others the things that I have told
you. Never tell of Those Who Must Be Kept. Never tell the legends of
the old gods. Never tell others that you have seen me. " I nodded
gravely. I had expected this, but I knew without even thinking that
this might prove very hard indeed.
  "If you tell even one part, " he said, "another will follow, and with
every telling of the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept you increase the
danger of their discovery. "
  "Yes, " I said. "But the legends, our origins . . . What about those
children that I make? Can't I tell them- "
  "No. As I told you, tell part and you will end up telling all. Besides,
if these fledglings are children of the Christian god, if they are
poisoned as Nicolas was with the Christian notion of Original Sin and
guilt, they will only be maddened and disappointed by these old tales.
It will all be a horror to them that they cannot accept. Accidents,
pagan gods they don't believe in, customs they cannot understand.
One has to be ready for this knowledge, meager as it may be. Rather
listen hard to their questions and tell them what you must to make
them contented. And if you find you cannot lie to them, don't tell
them anything at all. Try to make them strong as godless men today
are strong. But mark my words, the old legends never. Those are
mine and mine alone to tell. "
  "What will you do to me if I tell them? " I asked. This startled him.
He lost his composure for almost a full second, and then he laughed.
  "You are the damnedest creature, Lestat, " he murmured. "The point
is I can do anything I like to you if you tell. Surely you know that. I
could crush you underfoot the way Akasha crushed the Elder. I could
set you ablaze with the power of my mind. But I don't want to utter
such threats. I want you to come back to me. But I will not have these

                                                                         370

secrets known. I will not have a band of immortals descend upon me
again as they did in Venice. I will not be known to our kind. You
must never-deliberately or accidentally-send anyone searching for
Those Who Must Be Kept or for Marius. You will never utter my
name to others. "
  "I understand, " I said.
  "Do you? " he asked. "Or must I threaten you after all? Must I warn
you that my vengeance can be terrible? That my punishment would
include those to whom you've told the secrets as well as you? Lestat, I
have destroyed others of our kind who came in search of me. I have
destroyed them simply because they knew the old legends and they
knew the name of Marius, and they would never give up the quest. "
  "I can't bear this., " I murmured. "I won't tell anyone, ever, I swear.
But I'm afraid of what others can read in my thoughts, naturally. I fear
that they might take the images out of my head. Armand could do it.
What if- "
  "You can conceal the images. You know how. You can throw up
other images to confuse them. You can lock your mind. It's a skill
you already know. But let's be done with threats and admonitions. I
feel love for you. " I didn't respond for a moment. My mind was
leaping ahead to all manner of forbidden possibilities. Finally I put it
in words:
  "Marius, don't you ever have the desire to tell all of it to all of them!
I mean, to make it known to the whole world of our kind., and to draw
them together? "
  "Good God, no, Lestat. Why would I do that? " He seemed
genuinely puzzled.
  "So that we might possess our legends, might at least ponder the
riddles of our history, as men do. So that we might swap our stories
and share our power-
  "And combine to use it as the Children of Darkness have done,
against men? "
  "No . . . Not like that. "
  "Lestat, in eternity, covens are actually rare. Most vampires are
distrustful and solitary beings and they do not love others. They have
no more than one or two well-chosen companions from time to time,
and they guard their hunting grounds and their privacy as I do mine.
They wouldn't want to come together, and if they did overcome the
viciousness and suspicions that divide them, their convocation would
end in terrible battles and struggles for supremacy like those revealed
to me by Akasha, which happened thousands of years ago. We are evil
things finally. We are killers. Better that those who unite on this earth

                                                                         371

be mortal and that they unite for the good. " I accepted this, ashamed
of how it excited me, ashamed of all my weaknesses and all my
impulsiveness. Yet another realm of possibilities was already obsessing
me.
  "And what about to mortals, Marius? Have you never wanted to
reveal yourself to them, and tell them the whole story? " Again, he
seemed positively baffled by the notion.
  "Have you never wanted the world to know about us, for better or
for worse? Has it never seemed preferable to living in secret? " He
lowered his eyes for a moment and rested his chin against his closed
hand. For the first time I perceived a communication of images
coming from him, and I felt that he allowed me to see them because he
was uncertain of his answer. He was remembering with a recall so
powerful that it made my powers seem fragile. And what he
remembered were the earliest times, when Rome had still ruled the
world, and he was still within the range of a normal human lifetime.
  "You remember wanting to tell them all, " I said. "To make it
known, the monstrous secret. "
  "Perhaps, " he said, "in the very beginning, there was some desperate
passion to communicate. "
  "Yes, communicate, " I said, cherishing the word. And I
remembered that long-ago night on the stage when I had so frightened
the Paris audience.
  "But that was in the dim beginning, " he said slowly, speaking of
himself. His eyes were narrow and remote as if he were looking back
over all the centuries. "It would be folly, it would be madness. Were
humanity ever really convinced, it would destroy us. I don't want to
be destroyed. Such dangers and calamities are not interesting to me. "
I didn't answer.
  "You don't feel the urge yourself to reveal these things, " he said to
me almost soothingly. But I do, I thought. I felt his fingers on the
back of my hand. I was looking beyond him, back over my brief past-
the theater, my fairy-tale fantasies. I felt paralyzed in sadness.
  "What you feel is loneliness and monstrousness, " he said. "And
you're impulsive and defiant. "
  "True. "
  "But what would it matter to reveal anything to anyone? No one can
forgive. No one can redeem. It's a childish illusion to think so. Reveal
yourself and be destroyed, and what have you done? The Savage
Garden would swallow your remains in pure vitality and silence.
Where is there justice or understanding? " I nodded. I felt his hand


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close on mine. He rose slowly to his feet, and I stood up, reluctantly
but compliantly.
  "It's late, " he said gently. His eyes were soft with compassion.
"We've talked enough for now. And I must go down to my people.
There's trouble in the nearby village, as I feared there would be. And it
will take what time I have until dawn, and then more tomorrow
evening. It may well be after midnight tomorrow before we can talk- "
He was distracted again, and he lowered his head and listened.
  "Yes, I have to go, " he said. And we embraced lightly and very
comfortably. And though I wanted to go with him and see what
happened in the village-how he would conduct his affairs there-I
wanted just as much to seek my rooms and look at the sea and finally
sleep.
  "You'll be hungry when you rise, " he said. "I'll have a victim for you.
Be patient till I come. "
  "Yes, of course . . . "
  "And while you wait for me tomorrow, " he said, "do as you like in
the house. The old scrolls are in the cases in the library. You may look
at them. Wander all the rooms. Only the sanctuary of Those Who
Must Be Kept should not be approached. You must not go down the
stairs alone. " I nodded. I waited to ask him one thing more. When
would he hunt? When would he drink? His blood had sustained me
for two nights, maybe more. But whose blood sustained him? Had he
taken a victim earlier? Would he hunt now? I had a growing
suspicion that he no longer needed the blood as much as I did. That,
like Those Who Must Be Kept, he had begun to drink less and less.
And I wanted desperately to know if this was true. But he was leaving
me. The village was definitely calling him. He went out onto the
terrace and then he disappeared. For a moment I thought he had gone
to the right or left beyond the doors. Then I came to the doors and
saw the terrace was empty. I went to the rail and I looked down and I
saw the speck of color that was his frock coat against the rocks far
below. And so we have all this to look forward to, I thought: that we
may not need the blood, that our faces will gradually lose all human
expression, that we can move objects with the strength of our minds,
that we can all but fly. That some night thousands of years hence we
may sit in utter silence as Those Who Must Be Kept are sitting now?
How often tonight had Marius looked like them? How long did he sit
without moving when no one was here? And what would half a
century mean to him, during which time I was to live out that one
mortal life far across the sea? I turned away and went back through
the house to the bedchamber I'd been given. And I sat looking at the

                                                                      373

sea and the sky until the light started to come. When I opened the
little hiding place of the sarcophagus, there were fresh flowers there. I
put on the golden mask headdress and the gloves and I lay down in the
stone coffin, and I could still smell the flowers as I closed my eyes. The
fearful moment was coming. The loss of consciousness. And on the
edge of dream, I heard a woman laugh. She laughed lightly and long
as though she were very happy and in the midst of conversation, and
just before I went into darkness, I saw her white throat as she bent her
head back.

  15

  When I opened my eyes I had an idea. It came full blown to me, and
it immediately obsessed me so that I was scarcely conscious of the
thirst I felt, of the sting in my veins.
  "Vanity, " I whispered. But it had an alluring beauty to it, the idea.
No, forget about it. Marius said to stay away from the sanctuary, and
besides he will be back at midnight and then you can present the idea
to him. And he can . . . what? Sadly shake his head. I came out in
the house and all was as it had been the night before, candles burning,
windows open to the soft spectacle of the dying light. It didn't seem
possible that I would leave here soon. And that I would never come
back to it, that he himself would vacate this extraordinary place. I felt
sorrowful and miserable, And then there was the idea. Not to do it in
his presence, but silently and secretly so that I did not feel foolish, to
go all alone. No. Don't do it. After all, it won't do any good. Nothing
will happen when you do it. But if that's the case, why not do it? Why
not do it now? I made my rounds again, through the library and the
galleries and the room full of birds and monkeys, and on into other
chambers where I had not been. But that idea stayed in my head. And
the thirst nagged at me, making me just a little more impulsive, a little
more restless, a little less able to reflect on all the things Marius had
told me and what they might mean as time went on. He wasn't in the
house. That was certain. I had been finally through all the rooms.
Where he slept was his secret, and I knew there were ways to get in and
out of the house that were his secret as well. But the door to the
stairway down to Those Who Must Be Kept, that I discovered again
easily enough. And it wasn't locked. I stood in the wallpapered salon
with its polished furniture looking at the clock. Only seven in the
evening, five hours till he came back. Five hours of the thirst burning
in me. And the idea . . . The idea. I didn't really decide to do it. I
just turned my back on the clock and started walking back to my

                                                                         374

room. I knew that hundreds of others before me must have had such
ideas. And how well he had described the pride he felt when he
thought he could rouse them. That he might make them move. No. I
just want to do it, even if nothing happens, which is exactly how it will
go. I just want to go down there alone and do it. It has something to
do with Nicki maybe. I don't know. I don't know! I went into my
chamber and in the incandescent light rising from the sea, I unlocked
the violin case and I looked at the Stradivarius violin. Of course I
didn't know how to play it, but we are powerful mimics. As Marius
said, we have superior concentration and superior skills. And I had
seen Nicki do it so often. I tightened the bow now and rubbed the
horsehair with the little piece of resin, as I had seen him do. Only two
nights ago, I couldn't have thought of the idea of touching this thing.
Hearing it would have been pure pain. Now I took it out of its case
and I carried it through the house, the way I'd carried it to Nicki
through the wings of the Theater of the Vampires, and not even
thinking of vanity, I rushed faster and faster towards the door to the
secret stairs. It was as if they were drawing me to them, as if I had no
will. Marius didn't matter now. Nothing much mattered, except to be
going down the narrow damp stone steps faster and faster, past the
windows full of sea spray and early evening light. In fact, my
infatuation was getting so strong, so total that I stopped suddenly,
wondering if it was originating with me. But that was foolishness.
Who could have put it in my head? Those Who Must Be Kept? Now
that was real vanity, and besides, did these creatures know what this
strange, delicate little wooden instrument was? It made a sound, did it
not, that no one had ever heard in the ancient world, a sound so
human and so powerfully affecting that men thought the violin the
work of the devil and accused its finest players of being possessed. I
was slightly dizzy, confused. How had I gotten so far down the steps,
and didn't I remember that the door was bolted from inside? Give me
another five hundred years and I might be able to open that bolt, but
not just now. Yet I went on down, these thoughts breaking up and
disintegrating as fast as they'd come. I was on fire again, and the thirst
was making it worse, though the thirst had nothing to do with it. And
when I came round the last turn I saw the doors to the chapel were
open wide. The light of the lamps poured out into the stairwell. And
the scent of the flowers and incense was suddenly overwhelming and
made a knot in my throat. I drew nearer, holding the violin with both
hands to my chest, though why I didn't know. And I saw that the
tabernacle doors were open, and there they sat. Someone had brought
them more flowers. Someone had laid out the incense in cakes on

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golden plates. And I stopped just inside the chapel, and I looked at
their faces and they seemed as before to look directly at me. White, so
white I could not imagine them bronzed, and as hard, it seemed, as the
jewels they wore. Snake bracelet around her upper arm. Layered
necklace on her breast. Tiniest lip of flesh from his chest covering the
top of the clean linen shirt he wore. Her face was narrower than his
face, her nose just a little longer. His eyes were slightly longer, the
folds of flesh defining them a little thicker. Their long black hair was
very much the same. I was breathing uneasily. I felt suddenly weak
and let the scent of the flowers and the incense fill my lungs. The light
of the lamps danced in a thousand tiny specks of gold in the murals. I
looked down at the violin and tried to remember my idea, and I ran
my fingers along the wood and wondered what this thing looked like
to them. In a hushed voice I explained what it was, that I wanted them
to hear it, that I didn't really know how to play it but that I was going
to try. I wasn't speaking loud enough to hear myself, but surely they
could hear it if they chose to listen. And I lifted the violin to my
shoulder, braced it under my chin, and lifted the bow. I closed my
eyes and I remembered music, Nicki's music, the way that his body
had moved with it and his fingers came down with the pressure of
hammers and he let the message travel to his fingers from his soul. I
plunged into it, the music suddenly wailing upwards and rippling
down again as my fingers danced. It was a song, all right, I could make
a song. The tones were pure and rich as they echoed off the close walls
with a resounding volume, creating the wailing beseeching voice that
only the violin can make. I went madly on with it, rocking back and
forth, forgetting Nicki, forgetting everything but the feel of my fingers
stabbing at the soundboard and the realization that I was making this,
this was coming out of me, and it plummeted and climbed and
overflowed ever louder and louder as I bore down upon it with the
frantic sawing of the bow. I was singing with it, I was humming and
then singing loudly, and all the gold of the little room was a blur. And
suddenly it seemed my own voice became louder, inexplicably louder,
with a pure high note which I knew that I myself could not possibly
sing. Yet it was there, this beautiful note, steady and unchanging and
growing even louder until it was hurting my ears. I played harder,
more frantically, and I heard my own gasps coming, and I knew
suddenly that I was not the one making this strange high note! The
blood was going to come out of my ears if the note did not stop. And I
wasn't making the note! Without stopping the music, without giving
in to the pain that was splitting my head, I looked forward and I saw
Akasha had risen and her eyes were very wide and her mouth was a

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perfect O. The sound was coming from her, she was making it, and
she was moving off the steps of the tabernacle towards me with her
arms outstretched and the note pierced my eardrums as if it were a
blade of steel. I couldn't see. I heard the violin hit the stone floor. I
felt my hands on the sides of my head. I screamed and screamed, but
the note absorbed my screaming.
  "Stop it! Stop it! " I was roaring. But all the light was there again
and she was right in front of me and she was reaching out.
  "O God, Marius! " I turned and ran towards the doors. And the
doors flew shut against me, knocking my face so hard I fell down on
my knees. Under the high shrill continuum of the note I was sobbing.
  "Marius, Marius, Marius! " And turning to see what was about to
happen to me, I saw her foot come down on the violin. It popped and
splintered under her heel. But the note she sang was dying. The note
was fading away. And I was left in silence, deafness, unable to hear my
own screams for Marius which were going on and on, as I scrambled
to my feet. Ringing silence, shimmering silence. She was right in front
of me, and her black eyebrows came together delicately, barely
creasing her white flesh, her eyes full of torment and questioning and
her pale pink lips opened to reveal her fang teeth. Help me, help me,
Marius, help me, I was stammering, unable to hear myself except in
the pure abstraction of intention in my mind. And then her arms
enclosed me, and she drew me closer, and I felt the hand as Marius
had described it, cupping my head gently, very gently, and I felt my
teeth against her neck. I did not hesitate. I did not think about the
limbs that were locked around me, that could crush the life out of me
in a second. I felt my fangs break through the skin as if through a
glacial crust, and the blood came steaming into my mouth. Oh, yes,
yes . . . oh, yes. I had thrown my arm over her left shoulder, I was
clinging to her, my living statue, and it didn't matter that she was
harder than marble, that was the way it was supposed to be, it was
perfect, my Mother, my lover, my powerful one, and the blood was
penetrating every pulsing particle of me with the threads of its burning
web. But her lips were against my throat. She was kissing me, kissing
the artery through which her own blood so violently flowed. Her lips
were opening on it, and as I drew upon her blood with all my strength,
sucking, and feeling that gush again and again before it spread itself
out into me, I felt the unmistakable sensation of her fangs going into
my neck. Out of every zinging vessel my blood was suddenly drawn
into her, even as hers was being drawn into me. I saw it, the
shimmering circuit, and more divinely I felt it because nothing else
existed but our mouths locked to each other's throats and the

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relentless pounding path of the blood. There were no dreams, there
were no visions, there was just this, this-gorgeous and deafening and
heated-and nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, except that this
never stop. The world of all things that had weight and filled space
and interrupted the flow of light was gone. And yet some horrid noise
intruded, something ugly, like the sound of stone cracking, like the
sound of stone dragged across the floor. Marius coming. No, Marius,
don't come. Go back, don't touch. Don't separate us. But it wasn't
Marius, this awful sound, this intrusion, this sudden disruption of
everything, this thing grabbing hold of my hair and tearing me off her
so the blood spurted out of my mouth. It was Enkil. And his powerful
hands were clamped on the sides of my head. The blood gushed down
my chin. I saw her stricken face! I saw her reach out for him. Her
eyes blazed with common anger, her glistening white limbs animate as
she grabbed at the hands that held my head. I heard her voice rise out
of her, screaming, shrieking, louder than the note she had sung, the
blood drooling from the end of her mouth. The sound took sight as
well as sound with it. The darkness swirled, broken into mullions of
tiny specks. My skull was going to crack. He was forcing me down on
my knees. He was bent over me, and suddenly I saw his face
completely and it was as impassive as ever, only the stress of the
muscles in his arms evincing true life. And even through the
obliterating sound of her scream I knew the door behind me quaked
with Marius's pounding, his shouts almost as loud as her cries. The
blood was coming out of my ears from her screams. I was moving my
lips. The vise of stone clamped to my head suddenly let go. I felt
myself hit the floor. I was sprawled out flat, and I felt the cold pressure
of his foot on my chest. He would crush my heart in a second, and
she, her screams growing ever louder, ever more piercing, was on his
back with her arm locked around his neck. I saw her knotted
eyebrows, her flying black hair. But it was Marius I heard through the
door talking to him, cutting through the white sound of her screams.
Kill him, Enkil, and I will take her away from you forever, and she will
help me to do it! I swear! Sudden silence. Deafness again. The
warmth of blood trickling down the sides of my neck. She stepped
aside and she looked straight forward and the doors flew open,
smacking the side of the narrow stone passage, and Marius was
suddenly standing above me with his hands on Enkil's shoulders and
Enkil seemed unable to move. The foot slid down, bruising my
stomach, and then it was gone. And Marius was speaking words I
could hear only as thoughts. Get out, Lestat. Run. I struggled to sit
up, and I saw him driving them both slowly back towards the

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tabernacle, and I saw them both staring not forward, but at him,
Akasha clutching Enkil's arm, and I saw their faces blank again, but for
the first time the blankness seemed listless and not the mask of
curiosity but the mask of death.
  "Lestat, run! " he said again, without turning. And I obeyed.

  16

  I was at the farthest corner of the terrace when Marius finally came
into the lighted salon. There was a heat in all my veins still that
breathed as if it had its own life. And I could see far beyond the dim
hulking shapes of the islands. I could hear the progress of a ship along
a distant coast. But all I kept thinking was that if Enkil came at me
again, I could jump over this railing. I could get into the sea and
swim. I kept feeling his hands on the sides of my head, his foot on my
chest. I stood against the stone railing, shivering, and there was blood
all over my hands still from the bruises on my face which had already
completely healed.
  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did it, " I said as soon as Marius came out of
the salon. "I don't know why I did it. I shouldn't have done it. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry, I swear it, I'm sorry, Marius. I'll never never do
anything you tell me not to do again. " He stood with his arms folded
looking at me. He was glowering.
  "Lestat, what did I say last night? " he asked. "You are the
damnedest creature! "
  "Marius, forgive me. Please forgive me. I didn't think anything
would happen. I was sure nothing would happen... " He gestured for
me to be quiet, for us to go down onto the rocks together, and he
slipped over the railing and went first. I came behind him vaguely
delighted with the ease of it, but too dazed still to care about things
like that. Her presence was all over me like a fragrance, only she had
had no fragrance, except that of the incense and the flowers that must
have somehow managed to permeate her hard white skin. How
strangely fragile she had seemed in spite of that hardness. We went
down over the slippery boulders until we reached the white beach and
we walked together in silence, looking out over the snow-white froth
that leapt against the rocks or streaked towards us on the smooth
hard-packed white sand. The wind roared in my ears, and I felt the
sense of solitude this always creates in me, the roaring wind that blots
out all other sensations as well as sound. And I was getting calmer and
calmer, and more and more agitated and miserable at the same time.
Marius had slipped his arm around me the way Gabrielle used to do it,

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and I paid no attention to where we were going, quite surprised when I
saw we'd come to a small inlet of the water where a longboat lay at
anchor with only a single pair of oars. When we stopped I said again,
"I'm sorry I did it! I swear I am. I didn't believe. . . "
  "Don't tell me you regret it, " Marius said calmly. "You are not at all
sorry that it occurred, and that you were the cause of it, now that you
are safe, and not crushed like an eggshell on the chapel floor. "
  "Oh, but that's not the point, " I said. I started crying. I took out my
handkerchief, grand accoutrement of an eighteenth century
gentleman, and wiped the blood off my face. I could feel her holding
me, feel her blood, feel his hands. The whole thing commenced to
reenact itself. If Marius hadn't come in time.. .
  "But what did happen, Marius? What did you see? "
  "I wish we could get beyond his hearing, " Marius said wearily. "It's
madness to speak or think anything that could disturb him any
further. I have to let him lapse back. " And now he seemed truly
furious and he turned his back on me. But how could I not think
about it? I wished I could open my head and pull the thoughts out of
it. They were rocketing through me, like her blood. In her body was
locked a mind still, an appetite, a blazing spiritual core whose heat had
moved through me like liquid lightning, and without question Enkil
had a deathhold upon her! I loathed him. I wanted to destroy him.
And my brain seized upon all sorts of mad notions, that somehow he
could be destroyed without endangering us as long as she remained!
But that made little sense. Hadn't the demons entered first into him?
But what if that wasn't so . . .
  "Stop it, young one! " Marius flashed. I went to crying again. I felt
my neck where she had touched it, and licked my lips and tasted her
blood again. I looked at the scattered stars above and even these
benign and eternal things seemed menacing and senseless and I felt a
scream swelling dangerously in my throat. The effects of her blood
were waning already. The first clear vision was clouded, and my limbs
were once again my limbs. They might be stronger, yes, but the magic
was dying. The magic had left only something stronger than memory
of the circuit of the blood through us both.
  "Marius, what happened! " I said, shouting over the wind. "Don't be
angry with me, don't turn away from me. I can't... "
  "Shhh, Lestat, " he said. He came back and took me by the arm.
"Don't worry about my anger, " he said. "It's unimportant, and it is
not directed at you. Give me a little more time to collect myself. "



                                                                       380

  "But did you see what happened between her and me? " He was
looking out to sea. The water looked perfectly black and the foam
perfectly white.
  "Yes, I saw, " he said.
  "I took the violin and I wanted to play it for them, I was thinking- "
  "Yes, I know, of course... "
  "-that music would affect them, especially that music, that strange
unnatural-sounding music, you know how a violin... "
  "Yes "
  "Marius, she gave me . . . she . . . and she took- "
  "I know. "
  "And he keeps her there! He keeps her prisoner! "
  "Lestat, I beg you... " He was smiling wearily, sadly. Imprison him,
Marius, the way that they did, and let her go!
  "You dream, my child, " he said. "You dream. " He turned and he
left me, gesturing for me to leave him alone. He went down to the wet
beach and let the water lap at him as he walked back and forth. I tried
to get calm again. It seemed unreal to me that I had ever been any
place but this island, that the world of mortals was out there, that the
strange tragedy and menace of Those Who Must Be Kept was
unknown beyond these wet and shining cliffs. Finally Marius made his
way back.
  "Listen to me, " he said. "Straight west is an island that is not under
my protection and there is an old Greek city on the northern tip of it
where the seamen's taverns stay open all night. Go there now in the
boat. Hunt and forget what has happened here. Assess the new
powers you might have from her. But try not to think of her or him.
Above all try not to plot against him. Before dawn, come back to the
house. It won't be difficult. You'll find a dozen open doors and
windows. Do as I say, now, for me. " I bowed my head. It was the one
thing under heaven that could distract me, that could wipe out any
noble or enervating thoughts. Human blood and human struggle and
human death. And without protest, I made my way out through the
shallow water to the boat. In the early hours I looked at my reflection
in a fragment of metallic mirror pinned to the wall of a seaman's filthy
bedroom in a little inn. I saw myself in my brocade coat and white
lace, and my face warm from killing, and the dead man sprawled
behind me across the table. He still held the knife with which he'd
tried to cut my throat. And there was the bottle of wine with the drug
in it which I'd kept refusing, with playful protestations, until he'd lost
his temper and tried the last resort. His companion lay dead on the
bed. I looked at the young blond-haired rake in the mirror.

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  "Well, if it isn't the vampire Lestat, " I said. But all the blood in the
world couldn't stop the horrors from coming over me when I went to
my rest. I couldn't stop thinking of her, wondering if it was her laugh
I had heard in my sleep the night before. And I wondered that she had
told me nothing in the blood, until I closed my eyes and quite
suddenly things came back to me, of course, wonderful things,
incoherent as they were magical. She and I were walking down a
hallway together-not here but in a place I knew. I think it was a palace
in Germany where Haydn wrote his music-and she spoke casually as
she had a thousand times to me. But tell me about all this, what do the
people believe, what turns the wheels inside of them, what are these
marvelous inventions . . . She wore a fashionable black hat with a
great white plume on its broad brim and a white veil tied round the
top of it and under her chin, and her face was merely beginning,
merely young. When I opened my eyes, I knew Marius was waiting for
me. I came out into the chamber and saw him standing by the empty
violin case, with his back to the open window over the sea.
  "You have to go now, my young one, " he said sadly. "I had hoped
for more time, but that is impossible. The boat is waiting to take you
away. "
  "Because of what I did... " I said miserably. So I was being cast out.
  "He's destroyed the things in the chapel, " Marius said, but his voice
was asking for calm. He put his arm around my shoulder, and he took
my valise in his other hand. We went towards the door. "I want you
to go now because it is the only thing that will quiet him, and I want
you to remember not his anger, but everything that I told you, and to
be confident that we will meet again as we said. "
  "But are you afraid of him, Marius? "
  "Oh, no, Lestat. Don't carry this worry away with you. He has done
little things like this before, now and then. He does not know what he
does, really. I am convinced of that. He only knows that someone
stepped between him and Akasha. Time is all that is required for him
to lapse back. " There it was, that phrase again, "lapse back. "
  "And she sits as if she never moved, doesn't she? " I asked.
  "I want you away now so that you don't provoke him, " Marius said,
leading me out of the house and towards the cliffside stairs. He
continued speaking:
  "Whatever ability we creatures have to move objects mentally, to
ignite them, to do any real harm by the power of the mind does not
extend very far from the physical spot where we stand. So I want you
gone from here tonight and on your way to America. All the sooner to
return to me when he is no longer agitated and no longer remembers,

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and I will have forgotten nothing and will be waiting for you. " I saw
the galley in the harbor below when we reached the edge of the cliff.
The stairs looked impossible, but they weren't impossible. What was
impossible was that I was leaving Marius and this island right now.
  "You needn't come down with me, " I said, taking the valise from
him. I was trying not to sound bitter and crestfallen. After all, I had
caused this. "I would rather not weep in front of others. Leave me
here. "
  "I wish we had had a few more nights together, " he said, "for us to
consider in quiet what took place. But my love goes with you. And try
to remember the things I've told you. When we meet again we'll have
much to say to each other. " He paused.
  "What is it, Marius? "
  "Tell me truthfully, " he asked. "Are you sorry that I came for you in
Cairo, sorry that I brought you here? "
  "How could I be? " I asked. "I'm only sorry that I'm going. What if I
can't find you again or you can't find me? "
  "When the time is right, I'll find you, " he said. "And always
remember: you have the power to call to me, as you did before. When
I hear that call, I can bridge distances to answer that I could never
bridge on my own. If the time is right, I will answer. Of that you can
be sure. " I nodded. There was too much to say and I didn't speak a
word. We embraced for a long moment, and then I turned and slowly
started my descent, knowing he would understand why I didn't look
back.

  17

  I did not know how much I wanted "The World " until my ship
finally made its way up the murky Bayou St. Jean towards the city of
New Orleans, and I saw the black ragged line of the swamp against the
luminous sky. The fact that none of our kind had ever penetrated this
wilderness excited me and humbled me at the same time. Before the
sun rose on that first morning, I'd fallen in love with the low and
damp country, as I had with the dry heat of Egypt, and as time passed I
came to love it more than any spot on the globe. Here the scents were
so strong you smelled the raw green of the leaves as well as the pink
and yellow blossoms. And the great brown river, surging past the
miserable little Place d'Armes and its tiny cathedral, threw into eclipse
every other fabled river I'd ever seen. Unnoticed and unchallenged, I
explored the ramshackle little colony with its muddy streets and
gunwale sidewalks and dirty Spanish soldiers lounging about the

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calaboose. I lost myself in the dangerous waterfront shacks full of
gambling and brawling flatboatmen and lovely dark- skinned
Caribbean women, wandering out again to glimpse the silent flash of
lightning, hear the dim roar of the thunder, feel the silky warmth of
the summer rain. The low-slung roofs of the little cottages gleamed
under the moon. Light skittered on the iron gates of the fine Spanish
town houses. It flickered behind real lace curtains hung inside freshly
washed glass doors. I walked among the crude little bungalows that
spread out to the ramparts, peeping through windows at gilded
furniture and enameled bits of wealth and civilization that in this
barbaric place seemed priceless and fastidious and even sad. Now and
then through the mire there came a vision: a real French gentleman
done up in snow-white wig and fancy frock coat, his wife in panniers,
and a black slave carrying clean slippers for the two high above the
flowing mud. I knew that I had come to the most forsaken outpost of
the Savage Garden, and that this was my country and I would remain
in New Orleans, if New Orleans could only manage to remain.
Whatever I suffered should be lessened in this lawless place, whatever I
craved should give me more pleasure once I had it in my grasp. And
there were moments on that first night in this fetid little paradise when
I prayed that in spite of all my secret power, I was somehow kin to
every mortal man. Maybe I was not the exotic outcast that I imagined,
but merely the dim magnification of every human soul. Odd truths
and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us
from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all. And weary
finally of this complexity, we dream of that long ago time when we sat
upon our mother's knee and each kiss was the perfect consummation
of desire. What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now
contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and again.

  Epilogue Interview With The Vampire

  1

  And so I came to the end of The Early Education and Adventures of
the Vampire Lestat, the tale that I set out to tell. You have the account
of Old World magic and mystery which I have chosen, despite all
prohibitions and injunctions, to pass on. But my story isn't finished,
no matter how reluctant I might be to continue it. And I must
consider, at least briefly, the painful events that led to my decision to
go down into the earth in 1929. That was a hundred and forty years
after I left Marius's island. And I never set eyes upon Marius again.

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Gabrielle also remained completely lost to me. She'd vanished that
night in Cairo never to be heard from by anyone mortal or immortal
that I was ever to know. And when I made my grave in the twentieth
century, I was alone and weary and badly wounded in body and soul.
I'd lived out my "one lifetime " as Marius advised me to do. But I
couldn't blame Marius for the way in which I'd lived it, and the
hideous mistakes I'd made. Sheer will had shaped my experience more
than any other human characteristic. And advice and predictions
notwithstanding, I courted tragedy and disaster as I have always done.
Yet I had my rewards, I can't deny that. For almost seventy years I had
my fledgling vampires Louis and Claudia, two of the most splendid
immortals who ever walked the earth, and I had them on my terms.
Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a
young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious
of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self destructiveness the
very twin of Nicolas. He had Nicki's grim intensity, his rebelliousness,
his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to
despair. Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than
Nicolas had ever had. Even in his cruelest moments, Louis touched
the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his
infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken word. And his
naiveté conquered me always, his strange bourgeois faith that God was
still God even if he turned his back on us, that damnation and
salvation established the boundaries of a small and hopeless world.
Louis was a sufferer, a thing that loved mortals even more than I did.
And I wonder sometimes if I didn't look to Louis to punish me for
what had happened to Nicki, if I didn't create Louis to be my
conscience and to mete out year in and year out the penance I felt I
deserved. But I loved him, plain and simple. And it was out of the
desperation to keep him, to bind him closer to me at the most
precarious of moments, that I committed the most selfish and
impulsive act of my entire life among the living dead. It was the crime
that was to be my undoing: the creation with Louis and for Louis of
Claudia, a stunningly beautiful vampire child. Her body wasn't six
years old when I took her, and though she would have died if I hadn't
done it (just as Louis would have died if I hadn't taken him also), this
was a challenge to the gods for which Claudia and I would both pay.
But this is the tale that was told by Louis in Interview with the
Vampire, which for all its contradictions and terrible
misunderstandings manages to capture the atmosphere in which
Claudia and Louis and I came together and stayed together for sixty-
five years. During that time, we were nonpareils of our species, a silk

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and velvet-clad trio of deadly hunters, glorifying in our secret and in
the swelling city of New Orleans that harbored us in luxury and
supplied us endlessly with fresh victims. And though Louis did not
know it when he wrote his chronicle, sixty-five years is a phenomenal
time for any bond in our world. As for the lies he told, the mistakes he
made, well, I forgive him his excess of imagination, his bitterness, and
his vanity, which was, after all, never very great. I never revealed to
him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and
self-loathing from using even half of his own. Even his unusual beauty
and unfailing charm were something of a secret to him. When you
read his statement that I made him a vampire because I coveted his
plantation house, you can write that off to modesty more easily than
stupidity, I suppose. As for his belief that I was a peasant, well that was
understandable. He was, after all, a discriminating and inhibited child
of the middle class, aspiring as all the colonial planters did to be a
genuine aristocrat though he had never met one, and I came from a
long line of feudal lords who licked their fingers and threw the bones
over their shoulders to the dogs as they dined. When he says I played
with innocent strangers, befriending them and then killing them, how
was he to know that I hunted almost exclusively among the gamblers,
the thieves, and the killers, being more faithful to my unspoken vow to
kill the evildoer than even I had hoped I would be? (The young
Freniere, for example, a planter whom Louis romanticizes hopelessly
in his text, was in fact a wanton killer and a cheater at cards on the
verge of signing over his family's plantation for debt when I struck him
down. The whores I feasted upon in front of Louis once, to spite him,
had drugged and robbed many a seaman who was never seen alive
again.) But little things like this don't really matter. He told the tale as
he believed it. And in a real way, Louis was always the sum of his
flaws, the most beguilingly human fiend I have ever known. Even
Marius could not have imagined such a compassionate and
contemplative creature, always the gentleman, even teaching Claudia
the proper use of table silver when she, bless her little black heart, had
not the slightest need ever to touch a knife or a fork. His blindness to
the motives or the suffering of others was as much a part of his charm
as his soft unkempt black hair or the eternally troubled expression in
his green eyes. And why should I bother to tell of the times he came to
me in wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times
we walked together and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for
Claudia's amusement, or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront
taverns or to waltz with the dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated
quadroon balls? Read between the lines. I betrayed him when I

                                                                        386

created him, that is the significant thing. Just as I betrayed Claudia.
And I forgive the nonsense he wrote, because he told the truth about
the eerie contentment he and Claudia and I shared and had no right to
share in those long nineteenth-century decades when the peacock
colors of the ancient regime died out and the lovely music of Mozart
and Haydn gave way to the bombast of Beethoven, which could sound
at times too remarkably like the clang of my imaginary Hell's Bells. I
had what I wanted, what I had always wanted. I had them. And I
could now and then forget Gabrielle and forget Nicki, and even forget
Marius and the blank staring face of Akasha, or the icy touch of her
hand or the heat of her blood. But I had always wanted many things.
What accounted for the duration of the life he described in Interview
with the Vampire? Why did we last so long? All during the nineteenth
century, vampires were "discovered " by the literary writers of Europe.
Lord Ruthven, the creation of Dr. Polidori, gave way to Sir Francis
Varney in the penny dreadfuls, and later came Sheridan Le Fanu's
magnificent and sensuous Countess Carmilla Karnstein, and finally
the big ape of the vampires, the hirsute Slav Count Dracula, who
though he can turn himself into a bat or dematerialize at will,
nevertheless crawls down the wall of his castle in the manner of a
lizard apparently for fun-all of these creations and many like them
feeding the insatiable appetite for "gothic and fantastical tales. " We
were the essence of that nineteenth-century conception,
aristocratically aloof, unfailingly elegant, and invariably merciless, and
cleaving to each other in a land ripe for, but untroubled by, others of
our kind. Maybe we had found the perfect moment in history, the
perfect balance between the monstrous and the human, the time when
that "vampiric romance " born in my imagination amid the colorful
brocades of the ancient regime should find its greatest enhancement in
the flowing black cape, the black top hat, and the little girl's luminous
curls spilling down from their violet ribbon to the puffed sleeves of her
diaphanous silk dress. But what had I done to Claudia? And when
would I have to pay for that? How long was she content to be the
mystery that bound Louis and me so tightly together, the muse of our
moonlit hours, the one object of devotion common to us both? Was it
inevitable that she who would never have a woman's form would strike
out at the demon father who condemned her to the body of a little
china doll? I should have listened to Marius's warning. I should have
stopped for one moment to reflect on it as I stood on the edge of that
grand and intoxicating experiment: to make a vampire of "the least of
these. " I should have taken a deep breath. But you know, it was like
playing the violin for Akasha. I wanted to do it. I wanted to see what

                                                                       387

would happen, I mean, with a beautiful little girl like that! Oh, Lestat,
you deserve everything that ever happened to you. You'd better not
die. You might actually go to hell. But why was it that for purely
selfish reasons, I didn't listen to some of the advice given me? Why
didn't I learn from any of them-Gabrielle, Armand, Marius? But then,
I never have listened to anyone, really. Somehow or other, I never can.
And I cannot say even now that I regret Claudia, that I wish I had
never seen her, nor held her, nor whispered secrets to her, nor heard
her laughter echoing through the shadowy gaslighted rooms of that all
too human town house in which we moved amid the lacquered
furniture and the darkening oil paintings and the brass flowerpots as
living beings should. Claudia was my dark child, my love, evil of my
evil. Claudia broke my heart. And on a warm sultry night in the
spring of the year 1860, she rose up to settle the score. She enticed me,
she trapped me, and she plunged a knife over and over again into my
drugged and poisoned body, until almost every drop of the vampiric
blood gushed out of me before my wounds had the precious few
seconds in which to heal. I don't blame her. It was the sort of thing I
might have done myself. And those delirious moments will never be
forgotten by me, never consigned to some unexplored compartment
of the mind. It was her cunning and her will that laid me low as surely
as the blade that slashed my throat and divided my heart. I will think
on those moments every night for as long as I go on, and of the chasm
that opened under me, the plunge into mortal death that was nearly
mine. Claudia gave me that. But as the blood flowed, taking with it all
power to see or hear or move finally, my thoughts traveled back and
back, way beyond the creation of the doomed vampire family in their
paradise of wallpaper and lace curtains, to the dimly envisioned groves
of mythical lands where the old Dionysian god of the wood had felt
again and again his flesh torn, his blood spilled. If there was not
meaning, at least there was the luster of congruence, the stunning
repetition of the same old theme. And the god dies. And the god rises.
But this time no one is redeemed. With the blood of Akasha, Marius
had said to me, you will survive disasters that would destroy others of
our kind. Later, abandoned in the stench and darkness of the swamp,
I felt the thirst define my proportions, I felt the thirst propel me, I felt
my jaws open in the rank water and my fangs seek the warm-blooded
things that could put my feet on the long road back. And three nights
later, when again I had been beaten and my children left me once and
for all in the blazing inferno of our town house, it was the blood of the
old ones, Magnus and Marius and Akasha, that sustained me as I
crawled away from the flames. But without more of that healing

                                                                         388

blood, without a fresh infusion, I was left at the mercy of time to heal
my wounds. And what Louis could not describe in his story is what
happened to me after, how for years I hunted on the edge of the
human herd, a hideous and crippled monster, who could strike down
only the very young or infirm. In constant danger from my victims, I
became the very antithesis of the romantic demon, bringing terror
rather than rapture, resembling nothing so much as the old revenants
of les Innocents in their filth and rags. The wounds I'd suffered
affected my very spirit, my capacity to reason. And what I saw in the
mirror every time I dared to look further shriveled my soul. Yet not
once in all this time did I call out to Marius, did I try to reach him over
the miles. I could not beg for his healing blood. Better suffer
purgatory for a century than Marius's condemnation. Better suffer the
worst loneliness, the worst anguish, than discover that he knew
everything I'd done and had long ago turned his back on me. As for
Gabrielle, who would have forgiven me anything, whose blood was
powerful enough at least to hasten my recovery, I did not know even
where to look. When I had recovered sufficiently to make the long
voyage to Europe, I turned to the only one that I could turn to:
Armand. Armand who lived still on the land I'd given him, in the very
tower where I'd been made by Magnus, Armand who still commanded
the thriving coven of the Theater of the Vampires in the boulevard du
Temple, which still belonged to me. After all, I owed Armand no
explanations. And did he not owe something to me? It was a shock to
see him when he came to answer the knock on his door. He looked
like a young man out of the novels of Dickens in his somber and
sleekly tailored black frock coat, all the Renaissance curls clipped away.
His eternally youthful face was stamped with the innocence of a David
Copperfield and the pride of a Steerforth-anything but the true nature
of the spirit within. For one moment a brilliant light burned in him as
he looked at me. Then he stared slowly at the scars that covered my
face and hands, and he said softly and almost compassionately:
  "Come in, Lestat. " He took my hand. And we walked together
through the house he had built at the foot of Magnus's tower, a dark
and dreary place fit for all the Byronic horrors of this strange age.
  "You know, the rumor is that you met the end somewhere in Egypt,
or the Far East, " he said quickly in everyday French with an animation
I'd never seen in him before. He was skilled now at pretending to be a
living being. "You went with the old century, and no one has heard of
you since. "
  "And Gabrielle? " I demanded immediately, wondering that I had
not blurted it out at the door.

                                                                       389

  "No one has ever seen her or heard of her since you left Paris, " he
said. Once again his eyes moved over me caressingly. And there was
thinly veiled excitement in him, a fever that I could feel like the
warmth of the nearby fire. I knew he was trying to read my thoughts.
  "What's happened to you? " he asked. My scars were puzzling him.
They were too numerous, too intricate, scars of an attack that should
have meant death. I felt a sudden panic that in my confusion I'd reveal
everything to him, the things that Marius had long ago forbidden me
to tell. But it was the story of Louis and Claudia that came rushing
out, in stammering and half truths, sans one salient fact: that Claudia
had been only . . . a child. I told briefly of the years in Louisiana, of
how they had finally risen against me just as he had predicted my
children might. I conceded everything to him, without guile or pride,
explaining that it was his blood I needed now. Pain and pain and pain,
to lay it out for him, to feel him considering it. To say, yes, you were
right. It isn't the whole story. But in the main, you were right. Was it
sadness I saw in his face then? Surely it wasn't triumph.
Unobtrusively, he watched my trembling hands as I gestured. He
waited patiently when I faltered, couldn't find the right words. A small
infusion of his blood would hasten my healing, I whispered. A small
infusion would clear my mind. I tried not to be lofty or righteous
when I reminded him that I had given him this tower, and the gold
he'd used to build this house, that I still owned the Theater of the
Vampires, that surely he could do this little thing, this intimate thing,
for me now. There was an ugly naiveté to the words I spoke to him,
addled as I was, and weak and thirsting and afraid. The blaze of the
fire made me anxious. The light on the dark grain of the woodwork of
these stuffy rooms made imagined faces appear and disappear.
  "I don't want to stay in Paris, " I said. "I don't want to trouble you or
the coven at the theater. I am asking this small thing. I am asking... "
It seemed my courage and the words had run out. A long moment
passed:
  "Tell me again about this Louis, " he said. The tears rose to my eyes
disgracefully. I repeated some foolish phrases about Louis's
indestructible humanity, his understanding of things that other
immortals couldn't grasp. Carelessly I whispered things from the
heart. It wasn't Louis who had attacked me. It was the woman,
Claudia... I saw something in him quicken. A faint blush came to his
cheeks.
  "They have been seen here in Paris, " he said softly. "And she is no
woman, this creature. She is a vampire child. " I can't remember what
followed. Maybe I tried to explain the blunder. Maybe I admitted

                                                                       390

there was no accounting for what I'd done. Maybe I brought us round
again to the purpose of my visit, to what I needed, what I must have. I
remember being utterly humiliated as he led me out of the house and
into the waiting carriage, as he told me that I must go with him to the
Theater of the Vampires.
  "You don't understand, " I said. "I can't go there. I will not be seen
like this by the others. You must stop this carriage. You must do as I
ask. "
  "No, you have it backwards, " he said in the tenderest voice. We
were already in the crowded Paris streets. I couldn't see the city I
remembered. This was a nightmare, this metropolis of roaring steam
trains and giant concrete boulevards. Never had the smoke and filth
of the industrial age seemed so hideous as it was here in the City of
Light. I scarcely remember being forced by him out of the carriage
and stumbling along the broad pavements as he pushed me towards
the theater doors. What was this place, this enormous building? Was
this the boulevard du Temple? And then the descent into that hideous
cellar full of ugly copies of the bloodiest paintings of Goya and
Brueghel and Bosch. And finally starvation as I lay on the floor of a
brick-lined cell, unable even to shout curses at him, the darkness full
of the vibrations of the passing omnibuses and tramcars, penetrated
again and again by the distant screech of iron wheels. Sometime in the
dark, I discovered a mortal victim there. But the victim was dead.
Cold blood, nauseating blood. The worst kind of feeding, lying on
that clammy corpse, sucking up what was left. And then Armand was
there, standing motionless in the shadows, immaculate in his white
linen and black wool. He spoke in an undertone about Louis and
Claudia, that there would be some kind of trial. Down on his knees he
came to sit beside me, forgetting for a moment to be human, the boy
gentleman sitting in this filthy damp place. "You will declare it before
the others, that she did it, " he said. And the others, the new ones,
came to the door to look at me one by one.
  "Get clothing for him, " Armand said. His hand was resting on my
shoulder. "He must look presentable, our lost lord, " he told them.
"That was always his way. " They laughed when I begged to speak to
Eleni or Felix or Laurent. They did not know those names. Gabrielle-
it meant nothing. And where was Marius? How many countries,
rivers, mountains lay between us? Could he hear and see these things?
High above, in the theater, a mortal audience, herded like sheep into a
corral, thundered on the wooden staircases, the wooden floors. I
dreamed of getting away from here, getting back to Louisiana, letting
time do its inevitable work. I dreamed of the earth again, its cool

                                                                      391

depths which I'd known so briefly in Cairo. I dreamed of Louis and
Claudia and that we were together. Claudia had grown miraculously
into a beautiful woman, and she said, laughing, "You see this is what I
came to Europe to discover, how to do this! " And I feared that I was
never to be allowed out of here, that I was to be entombed as those
starving ones had been under les Innocents, that I had made a fatal
mistake. I was stuttering and crying and trying to talk to Armand.
And then I realized Armand was not even there. If he had come, he
had gone as quickly. I was having delusions. And the victim, the
warm victim- "Give it to me, I beg you! "-and Armand saying:
  "You will say what I have told you to say. " It was a mob tribunal of
monsters, white-faced demons shouting accusations, Louis pleading
desperately, Claudia staring at me mute, and my saying, yes, she was
the one who did it, yes, and then cursing Armand as he shoved me
back into the shadows, his innocent face radiant as ever.
  "But you have done well, Lestat. You have done well. " What had I
done? Borne testimony against them that they had broken the old
rules? They'd risen against the coven master? What did they know of
the old rules? I was screaming for Louis. And then I was drinking
blood in the darkness, living blood from another victim, and it wasn't
the healing blood, it was just blood. We were in the carriage again and
it was raining. We were riding through the country. And then we
went up and up through the old tower to the roof. I had Claudia's
bloody yellow dress in my hands. I had seen her in a narrow wet place
where she had been burnt by the sun.
  "Scatter the ashes! " I had said. Yet no one moved to do it. The torn
bloody yellow dress lay on the cellar floor. Now I held it in my hands.
"They will scatter the ashes, won't they? " I said.
  "Didn't you want justice? " Armand asked, his black wool cape close
around him in the wind, his face dark with the power of the recent kill.
What did it have to do with justice? Why did I hold this thing, this
little dress? I looked out from Magnus's battlements and I saw the city
had come to get me. It had reached out its long arms to embrace the
tower, and the air stank of factory smoke. Armand stood still at the
stone railing watching me, and he seemed suddenly as young as
Claudia had seemed. And make sure they have had some lifetime
before you make them; and never, never make one as young as
Armand. In death she said nothing. She had looked at those around
her as if they were giants jabbering in an alien tongue. Armand's eyes
were red.
  "Louis-where is he? " I asked. "They didn't kill him. I saw him. He
went out into the rain... "

                                                                     392

  "They have gone after him, " he answered. "He is already destroyed.
" Liar, with the face of a choirboy.
  "Stop them, you have to! If there's still time. . . " He shook his
head.
  "Why can't you stop them? Why did you do it, the trial, all of it,
what do you care what they did to me? "
  "It's finished. " Under the roar of the winds came the scream of a
steam whistle. Losing the train of thought. Losing it . . . Not
wanting to go back. Louis, come back.
  "And you don't mean to help me, do you? " Despair. He leaned
forward, and his face transformed itself as it had done years and years
ago, as if his rage were melting it from within.
  "You, who destroyed all of us, you who took everything. Whatever
made you think that I would help you! " He came closer, the face all
but collapsed upon itself. "You who put us on the lurid posters in the
boulevard du Temple, you who made us the subject of cheap stories
and drawing room talk! "
  "But I didn't. You know I . . . I swear . . . It wasn't me! "
  "You who carried our secrets into the limelight-the fashionable one,
the Marquis in the white gloves, the fiend in the velvet cape! "
  "You're mad to blame it all on me. You have no right, " I insisted,
but my voice was faltering so badly I couldn't understand my own
words. And his voice shot out of him like the tongue of a snake.
  "We had our Eden under that ancient cemetery, " he hissed. "We
had our faith and our purpose. And it was you who drove us out of it
with a flaming sword. What do we have now! Answer me! Nothing
but the love of each other and what can that mean to creatures like us!
"
  "No, it's not true, it was all happening already. You don't
understand anything. You never did. " But he wasn't listening to me.
And it didn't matter whether or not he was listening. He was drawing
closer, and in a dark flash his hand went out, and my head went back,
and I saw the sky and the city of Paris upside down. I was falling
through the air. And I went down and down past the windows of the
tower, until the stone walkway rose up to catch me, and every bone in
my body broke within its thin case of preternatural skin.

  2

  Two years passed before I was strong enough to board a ship for
Louisiana. And I was still badly crippled, still scarred. But I had to
leave Europe, where no whisper had come to me of my lost Gabrielle

                                                                      393

or of the great and powerful Marius, who had surely rendered his
judgment upon me. I had to go home. And home was New Orleans,
where the warmth was, where the flowers never stopped blooming,
where I still owned, through my never ending supply of "coin of the
realm, " a dozen empty old mansions with rotting white columns and
sagging porches round which I could roam. And I spent the last years
of the 1800s in complete seclusion in the old Garden District a block
from the Lafayette Cemetery, in the finest of my houses, slumbering
beneath towering oaks. I read by candle or oil lamp all the books I
could procure. I might as well have been Gabrielle trapped in her
castle bedroom, save there was no furniture here. And the stacks of
books reached to the ceiling in one room after another as I went on to
the next. Now and then I mustered enough stamina to break into a
library or an old bookstore for new volumes, but less and less I went
out. I wrote off for periodicals. I hoarded candles and bottles and tin
cans of oil. I do not remember when it became the twentieth century,
only that everything was uglier and darker, and the beauty I'd known
in the old eighteenth-century days seemed more than ever some kind
of fanciful idea. The bourgeois ran the world now upon dreary
principles and with a distrust of the sensuality and the excess that the
ancient regime had so loved. But my vision and thoughts were getting
ever more clouded. I no longer hunted humans. And a vampire
cannot thrive without human blood, human death. I survived by
luring the garden animals of the old neighborhood, the pampered
dogs and cats. And when they couldn't be got easily, well, then there
was always the vermin that I could call to me like the Pied Piper, fat
long-tailed gray rats. One night I forced myself to make the long trek
through the quiet streets to a shabby little theater called the Happy
Hour near the waterfront slums. I wanted to see the new silent
moving pictures. I was wrapped in a greatcoat with a muffler hiding
my gaunt face. I wore gloves to hide my skeletal hands. The sight of
the daytime sky even in this imperfect film terrified me. But it seemed
the dreary tones of black and white were perfect for a colorless age. I
did not think about other immortals. Yet now and then a vampire
would appear-some orphaned fledgling who had stumbled on my lair,
or a wanderer come in search of the legendary Lestat, begging for
secrets, power. Horrid, these intrusions. Even the timbre of the
supernatural voice shattered my nerves, drove me into the farthest
corner. Yet no matter how great the pain, I scanned each new mind
for knowledge of my Gabrielle. I never discovered any. Nothing to do
after that but ignore the poor human victims the fiend would bring in
the vain hope of restoring me. But these encounters were over soon

                                                                      394

enough. Frightened, aggrieved, shouting curses, the intruder would
depart, leaving me in blessed silence. I'd slip a little deeper away from
things, just lying there in the dark. I wasn't even reading much
anymore. And when I did read, I read the Black Mask magazine. I
read the stories of the ugly nihilistic men of the twentieth century-the
gray-clad crooks and the bank robbers and the detectives-and I tried to
remember things. But I was so weak. I was so tired.

  And then early one evening, Armand came. I thought at first it was a
delusion. He was standing so still in the ruined parlor, looking
younger than ever with his short auburn cap of twentieth-century hair
and narrow little, suit of dark cloth. It had to be an illusion, this figure
coming into the parlor and looking down at me as I lay on my back on
the floor by the broken French window reading Sam Spade by the light
of the moon. Except for one thing. If I were going to conjure up an
imaginary visitor, it certainly wouldn't have been Armand. I glanced
at him and some vague shame passed over me, that I was so ugly, that I
was no more than a skeleton with bulging eyes lying there. Then I
went back to reading about the Maltese Falcon, my lips moving to
speak Sam Spade's lines. When I looked up again, Armand was still
there. It might have been the same night, or the next night, for all I
knew. He was talking about Louis. He had been for some time. And I
realized it was a lie he'd told me in Paris about Louis. Louis had been
with Armand all these years. And Louis had been looking for me.
Louis had been downtown in the old city looking for me near the town
house where we had lived for so long. Louis had come finally to this
very place and seen me through the windows. I tried to imagine it.
Louis alive. Louis here, so close, and I had not even known it. I think
I laughed a little. I couldn't keep it clear in my mind that Louis wasn't
burnt up. But it was really wonderful that Louis still lived. It was
wonderful that there existed still that handsome face, the poignant
expression, that tender and faintly imploring voice. My beautiful
Louis surviving, instead of dead and gone with Claudia and Nicki. But
then maybe he was dead. Why should I believe Armand? I went back
to reading by the moonlight, wishing the garden out there hadn't
gotten so high. A good thing for Armand to do, I told him, would be
to go out there and pull down some of those vines, since Armand was
so strong. The morning-glory vines and the wisteria were dripping off
the upstairs porches and they blocked out the moonlight and then
there were the old black oaks that had been here when there was
nothing but swamp. I don't think I actually suggested this to Armand.
And I only vaguely remember Armand letting me know that Louis was

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leaving him and he, Armand, did not want to go on. Hollow he
sounded. Dry. Yet he gathered the moonlight to him as he stood
there. And his voice still had its old resonance, its pure undertone of
pain. Poor Armand. And you told me Louis was dead. Go dig a room
for yourself under the Lafayette Cemetery. It's just up the street. No
words spoken. No audible laughter, just the secret enjoyment of
laughter in me. I remember one clear image of him stranded in the
middle of the dirty empty room, looking at the walls of books on all
sides. The rain had bled down from leaks in the roof and melded the
books together like papier-mâché bricks. And I noticed it distinctly
when I saw him standing there against the backdrop of it. And I knew
all the rooms in the house were walled in books like this. I hadn't
thought about it until that moment, when he started to look at it. I
hadn't been in the other rooms in years. It seems he came back several
times after that. I didn't see him, but I would hear him moving
through the garden outside, looking for me with his mind, like a beam
of light. Louis had gone away to the west. One time, when I was lying
in the rubble under the foundations, Armand came to the grating and
peered in at me, and I did see him, and he hissed at me and called me
ratcatcher. You've gone mad-you, the one who knew everything, the
one who scoffed at us! You're mad and you feed on the rats. You
know, in France in the old days what they called your kind, you
country lords, they called you harecatchers, because you hunted the
hare so you wouldn't starve. And now what are you in this house, a
ragged haunt, a ratcatcher. You're mad as the ancient ones who cease
to talk sense arid jabber at the wind! And yet you hunt the rats as you
were born to do. Again I laughed. I laughed and laughed. I
remembered the wolves and I laughed.
  "You always make me laugh, " I told him. "I would have laughed at
you under that cemetery in Paris, except it didn't seem the kind thing
to do. And even when you cursed me and blamed me for all the
stories about us, that was funny too. If you hadn't been about to
throw me off the tower I would have laughed. You always make me
laugh. " Delicious it was, the hatred between us, or so I thought. Such
unfamiliar excitement, to have him there to ridicule and despise. Yet
suddenly the scene about me began to change. I wasn't lying in the
rubble. I was walking through my house. And I wore not the filthy
rags that had covered me for years, but a fine black tailcoat and a satin-
lined cape. And the house, why, the house was beautiful, and all the
books were in their proper place upon shelves. The parquet floor
glistened in the light of the chandelier and there was music coming
from everywhere, the sound of a Vienna waltz, the rich harmony of

                                                                      396

violins. With each step I felt powerful again, and light, marvelously
light. I could have easily taken the stairs two by two. I could have
flown out and up through the darkness, the cloak like black wings.
And then I was moving up in the darkness, and Armand and I stood
together on the high roof. Radiant he was, in the same old-fashioned
evening clothes, and we were looking over the jungle of dark singing
treetops at the distant silver curve of the river and the low heavens
where the stars burned through the pearl gray clouds. I was weeping
at the sheer sight of it, at the feel of the damp wind against my face.
And Armand stood beside me, with his arm around me. And he was
talking of forgiveness and sadness, of wisdom and things learned
through pain. "I love you, my dark brother, " he whispered. And the
words moved through me like blood itself.
  "It wasn't that I wanted vengeance, " he whispered. His face was
stricken, his heart broken. He said. "But you came to be healed, and
you did not want me! A century I had waited, and you did not want
me! " And I knew, as I had all along really, that my restoration was
illusion, that I was the same skeleton in rags, of course. And the house
was still a ruin. And in the preternatural being who held me was the
power that could give me back the sky and the wind.
  "Love me and the blood is yours, " he said. "This blood that I have
never given to another. " I felt his lips against my face.
  "I can't deceive you, " I answered. "I can't love you. What are you to
me that I should love you? A dead thing that hungers for the power
and the passion of others? The embodiment of thirst itself? " And in a
moment of incalculable power, it was I who struck him and knocked
him backwards and off the roof. Absolutely weightless he was, his
figure dissolving into the gray night. But who was defeated? Who fell
down and down again through the soft tree branches to the earth
where he belonged? Back to the rags and filth beneath the old house.
Who lay finally in the rubble, with hands and face against the cool soil?
Yet memory plays its tricks. Maybe I imagined it, his last invitation,
and the anguish after. The weeping. I do know that as the months
passed he was out there again. I heard him from time to time just
walking those old Garden District streets. And I wanted to call to him,
to tell him that it was a lie I'd spoken to him, that I did love him. I did.
But it was my time to be at peace with all things. It was my time to
starve and to go down into the earth finally, and maybe at last to
dream the god's dreams. And how could I tell Armand about the god's
dreams? There were no more candles, and there was no more oil for
the lamps. Somewhere was a strongbox full of money and jewels and
letters to my lawyers and bankers who would continue to administer

                                                                        397

these properties I owned forever, on account of sums I had left with
them. And so why not go now into the ground, knowing that it would
never be disturbed, not in this old city with its crumbling replicas of
other centuries. Everything would just go on and on and on. By the
light of the heavens I read more of the story of Sam Spade and the
Maltese Falcon. I looked at the date on the magazine and I knew it
was 1929, and I thought, oh, that's not possible, is it? And I drank
enough from the rats to have the strength to dig really deep. The earth
was holding me. Living things slithered through its thick and moist
clods against my dried flesh. And I thought if I ever do rise again, if I
ever see even one small patch of the night sky full of stars, I will never,
never do terrible things. I will never slay innocents. Even when I
hunted the weak, it was the hopeless and the dying I took, I swear it
was. I will never never work the Dark Trick again. I will just . . . you
know, be the "continual awareness " for no purpose, no purpose at all.
Thirst. Pain as clear as light. I saw Marius. I saw him so vividly that I
thought, this can't be a dream! And my heart expanded painfully.
How splendid Marius looked. He wore a narrow plain modern suit of
clothes, but it was made of red velvet, and his white hair was cut short
and brushed back from his face. He had a glamour to him, this
modern Marius, and a sprightliness that his costume of the old days
had apparently concealed. And he was doing the most remarkable
things. He had before him a black camera upon three spider legs, and
this he cranked with his right hand as he made motion pictures of
mortals in a studio full of incandescent light. How my heart was
swelling to see this, the way that he spoke to these mortal beings, told
them how they must hold one another, dance, move about. Painted
scenery behind them, yes. And outside the windows of his studio were
high brick buildings, and the noise of motor coaches in the streets.
No, this isn't a dream, I told myself. It is happening. He is there. And
if only I try I can see the city beyond the windows, know where he is.
If only I try I can hear the language that he speaks to the young
players. "Marius! " I said, but the earth around me devoured the
sound. The scene changed. Marius rode in the great cage of an
elevator down into a cellar. Metal doors screeched and clanked. And
into the vast sanctum of Those Who Must Be Kept he went, and how
different it all was. No more the Egyptian paintings, the perfume of
flowers, the glitter of gold. The high walls were covered with the
dappled colors of the impressionists building out of myriad fragments
a vibrant twentieth-century world. Airplanes flew over sunlit cities,
towers rose beyond the arch of steel bridges, iron ships drove through
silver seas. A universe it was, dissolving the walls on which it was

                                                                        398

rendered, surrounding the motionless and unchanged figures of
Akasha and Enkil. Marius moved about the chapel. He moved past
dark tangled sculptures, telephone devices, typewriting machines upon
wooden stands. He, set before Those Who Must Be Kept a large and
stately gramophone. Delicately he put the tiny needle to its task upon
the revolving record. A thin and rasping Vienna waltz poured forth
from the metal horn. I laughed to see it, this sweet invention, set
before them like an offering. Was the waltz like incense rising in the
air? But Marius had not completed his tasks. A white screen he had
unrolled down the wall. And now from a high platform behind the
seated god and goddess, he projected moving pictures of mortals onto
the white screen. Those Who Must Be Kept stared mute at the
flickering images. Statues in a museum, the electric light glaring on
their white skin. And then the most marvelous thing happened. The
jittery little figures in the motion picture began to talk. Above the
grind of the gramophone waltz they actually talked. And as I watched,
frozen in excitement, frozen in joy to see it all, a great sadness
suddenly engulfed me, a great crushing realization. It was just a
dream, this. Because the truth was, the little figures in the moving
pictures couldn't possibly talk. The chamber and all its little wonders
lost its substance, went dim. Ah, horrid imperfection, horrid little
giveaway that I'd made it all up. And out of real bits and pieces, too-
the silent movies I'd seen myself at the little theater called the Happy
Hour, the gramophones I'd heard around me from a hundred houses
in the dark. And the Vienna waltz, ah, taken from the spell Armand
had worked upon me, too heartbreaking to think of that. Why hadn't
I been just a little more clever in fooling myself, kept the film silent as
it should have been, and I might have gone on believing it was a true
vision after all. But here was the final proof of my invention, this
audacious and self-serving fancy: Akasha, my beloved, was speaking to
me! Akasha stood in the door of the chamber gazing down the length
of the underground corridor to the elevator by which Marius had
returned to the world above. Her black hair hung thickly and heavily
about her white shoulders. She raised her cold white hand to beckon.
Her mouth was red.
  "Lestat! " she whispered. "Come. " Her thoughts flowed out of her
soundlessly in the words of the old queen vampire who had spoken
them to me under les Innocents years and years before: From my stone
pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard
its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have
envisioned its fantastical discoveries, I have known its courage in the
timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its

                                                                        399

dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to
ride the Devil's Road through its heart.
  "Lestat! " she whispered again, her marble face tragically animate.
"Come! "
  "Oh, my darling, " I said, tasting the bitter earth between my lips, "if
only I could. "

  Lestat de Lioncourt In the year of his Resurrection 1984

  Dionysus in San Francisco 1985

  1

  The week before our record album went on sale, they reached out for
the first time to threaten us over the telephone wires. Secrecy
regarding the rock band called The Vampire Lestat had been expensive
but almost impenetrable. Even the book publishers of my
autobiography had cooperated in full. And during the long months of
recording and filmmaking, I hadn't seen a single one of them in New
Orleans, nor heard them roaming about. Yet somehow they had
obtained the unlisted number and into the electronic answering
machine they issued their admonitions and epithets.
  "Outcast. We know what you are doing. We are ordering you to
stop. " "Come out where we can see you. We dare you to come out. "
I had the band holed up in a lovely old plantation house north of New
Orleans, pouring the Dom Perignon for them as they smoked their
hashish cigarettes, all of us weary of anticipation and preparation,
eager for the first live audience in San Francisco, the first certain taste
of success. Then my lawyer, Christine, sent on the first phone
messages-uncanny how the equipment captured the timbre of the
unearthly voices-and in the middle of the night, I drove my musicians
to the airport and we flew west. After that, even Christine didn't know
where we were hiding. The musicians themselves were not entirely
sure. In a luxurious ranch house in Carmel Valley we heard our music
for the first time over the radio. We danced as our first video films
appeared nationwide on the television cable. And each evening I went
alone to the coastal city of Monterey to pick up Christine's
communications. Then I went north to hunt. I drove my sleek
powerful black Porsche all the way to San Francisco, taking the hairpin
curves of the coast road at intoxicating speed. And in the immaculate
yellow gloom of the big city skid row I stalked my killers a little more
cruelly and slowly than before. The tension was becoming unbearable.

                                                                        400

Still I didn't see the others. I didn't hear them. All I had were those
phone messages from immortals I'd never known:
  "We warn you. Do not continue this madness. You are playing a
more dangerous game than you realize. " And then the recorded
whisper that mortal ears could not hear:
  "Traitor! " "Outcast! " "Show yourself, Lestat! " If they were hunting
San Francisco, I didn't see them. But then San Francisco is a dense
and crowded city. And I was sly and silent as I had always been.
Finally the telegrams came pouring in to the Monterey postbox. We
had done it. Sales of our album were breaking records here and in
Europe. We could perform in any city we wanted after San Francisco.
My autobiography was in all the bookstores from coast to coast. The
Vampire Lestat was at the top of the charts. And after the nightly hunt
in San Francisco, I started riding the long length of Divisadero Street.
I let the black carapace of the Porsche crawl past the ruined Victorian
houses, wondering in which one of these-if any-Louis had told the tale
of Interview with the Vampire to the mortal boy. I was thinking
constantly about Louis and Gabrielle. I was thinking about Armand. I
was thinking about Marius, Marius whom I had betrayed by telling the
whole tale. Was The Vampire Lestat stretching its electronic tentacles
far enough to touch them? Had they seen the video films: The Legacy
of Magnus, The Children of Darkness, Those Who Must Be Kept? I
thought of the other ancient ones whose names I'd revealed: Mael,
Pandora, Ramses the Damned. The fact was, Marius could have found
me no matter what the secrecy or the precautions. His powers could
have bridged even the vast distances of America. If he was looking, if
he had heard . . . The old dream came back to me of Marius cranking
the motion picture camera, of the flickering patterns on the wall of the
sanctum of Those Who Must Be Kept. Even in recollection it seemed
impossibly lucid, made my heart trip. And gradually I realized that I
possessed a new concept of loneliness, a new method of measuring a
silence that stretched to the end of the world. And all I had to
interrupt it were those menacing recorded preternatural voices which
carried no images as their virulency increased:
  "Don't dare to appear on stage in San Francisco. We warn you.
Your challenge is too vulgar, too contemptuous. We will risk
anything, even a public scandal, to punish you. " I laughed at the
incongruous combination of archaic language and the unmistakable
American sound. What were they like, those modern vampires? Did
they affect breeding and education once they walked with the undead?
Did they assume a certain style? Did they live in covens or ride about
on big black motorcycles, as I liked to do? The excitement was

                                                                      401

building in me uncontrollably. And as I drove alone through the night
with the radio blaring our music, I sensed a purely human enthusiasm
mounting in me. I wanted to perform the way my mortals, Tough
Cookie and Alex and Larry, wanted to perform. After the grueling
work of building the records and films, I wanted us to raise our voices
together before the screaming throng. And at odd moments I
remembered those long- ago nights at Renaud's little theater too
clearly. The strangest details came back, the feel of the white paint as I
had smoothed it over my face, the smell of the powder, the instant of
stepping before the footlights. Yes, it was all coming together, and if
the wrath of Marius came with it, well, I deserved it, did I not? San
Francisco charmed me, subdued me somewhat. Not hard to imagine
my Louis in this place. Almost Venetian, it seemed, the somber
multicolored mansions and tenements rising wall to wall over the
narrow black streets. Irresistible the lights sprinkled over hilltop and
vale; and the hard brilliant wilderness of downtown skyscrapers
shooting up like a fairytale forest out of an ocean of mist. Each night
on my return to Carmel Valley, I took out the sacks of fan mail
forwarded to Monterey from New Orleans, and I looked through them
for the vampire writing: characters inscribed a little too heavily, style
slightly old-fashioned maybe a more outrageous display of
supernatural talent in a handwritten letter made to look as if it had
been printed in Gothic style. But there was nothing but the fervent
devotion of mortals.

  Dear Lestat, My friend Sheryl and I love you, and we can't get tickets
for the San Francisco concert even though we stood in line for six
hours. Please send us two tickets. We will be your victims. You can
drink our blood.

  Three o'clock in the morning on the night before the San Francisco
concert: The cool green paradise of Carmel Valley was asleep. I was
dozing in the giant "den " before the glass wall that faced the
mountains. I was dreaming off and on of Marius. Marius said in my
dream:
  "Why did you risk my vengeance? " And I said: "You turned your
back on me. "
  "That is not the reason, " he said. "You act on impulse, you want to
throw all the pieces in the air. "
  "I want to affect things, to make something happen! " I said. In the
dream I shouted, and I felt suddenly the presence of the Carmel Valley
house around me. Just a dream, a thin mortal dream. Yet something,

                                                                       402

something else . . . a sudden "transmission " like a vagrant radio wave
intruding upon the wrong frequency, a voice saying Danger. Danger
to us all. For one split second the vision of snow, ice. Wind howling.
Something shattered on a stone floor, broken glass. Lestat! Danger! I
awoke. I was not lying on the couch any longer. I was standing and
looking towards the glass doors. I could hear nothing, see nothing but
the dim outline of the hills, the black shape of the helicopter hovering
over its square of concrete like a giant fly. With my soul I listened. I
listened so hard I was sweating. Yet no more of the "transmission. "
No images. And then the gradual awareness that there was a creature
outside in the darkness, that I was hearing tiny physical sounds.
Someone out there walking in the stillness. No human scent. One of
them was out there. One of them had penetrated the secrecy and was
approaching beyond the distant skeletal silhouette of the helicopter,
through the open field of high grass. Again I listened. No, not a
shimmer to reinforce the message of Danger. In fact the mind of the
being was locked to me. I was getting only the inevitable signals of a
creature passing through space. The rambling low-roofed house
slumbered around me-a giant aquarium, it seemed, with its barren
white walls and the blue flickering light of the silent television set.
Tough Cookie and Alex in each other's arms on the rug before the
empty fireplace. Larry asleep in the cell-like bedroom with the
carnally indefatigable groupie called Salamander whom they had
"picked up " in New Orleans before we came west. Sleeping
bodyguards in the other low-ceilinged modern chambers, and in the
bunkhouse beyond the great blue oyster-shell swimming pool. And
out there under the clear black sky this creature coming, moving
towards us from the highway, on foot. This thing that I sensed now
was completely alone. Beat of a supernatural heart in the thin
darkness. Yes, I can hear it very distinctly. The hills were like ghosts
in the distance, the yellow blossoms of the acacias gleaming white
under the stars. Not afraid of anything, it seemed. Just coming. And
the thoughts absolutely impenetrable. That could mean one of the old
ones, the very skilled ones, except the skilled ones would never crush
the grass underfoot. This thing moved almost like a human. This
vampire had been "made " by me. My heart was skipping. I glanced at
the tiny lights of the alarm box half concealed by the gathered drapery
in the corner. Promise of sirens if anything, mortal or immortal, tried
to penetrate this house. On the edge of the white concrete he
appeared. Tall, slender figure. Short dark hair. And then he paused as
if he could see me in the electric blue haze behind the glass veil. Yes,
he saw me. And he moved towards me, towards the light. Agile,

                                                                       403

traveling just a little too lightly for a mortal. Black hair, green eyes,
and the limbs shifting silkily under the neglected garments: a frayed
black sweater that hung shapelessly from his shoulders, legs like long
black spokes. I felt the lump come up in my throat. I was trembling. I
tried to remember what was important, even in this moment, that I
must scan the night for others, must be careful. Danger. But none of
that mattered now. I knew. I shut my eyes for a second. It did not
help anything, make anything easier. Then my hand went out to the
alarm buttons and I turned them off. I opened the giant glass doors
and the cold fresh air moved past me into the room. He ran past the
helicopter, turning and stepping away like a dancer to look up at it, his
head back, his thumbs hooked very casually in the pockets of his black
jeans. When he looked at me again, I saw his face distinctly. And he
smiled. Even our memories can fail us. He was proof of that, delicate
and blinding as a laser as he came closer, all the old images blown away
like dust. I flicked on the alarm system again, closed the doors on my
mortals, and turned the key in the lock. For a second I thought, I
cannot stand this. And this is only the beginning. And if he is here,
only a few steps away from me now, then surely the others, too, will
come. They will all come. I turned and went towards him, and for a
silent moment I just studied him in the blue light falling through the
glass. My voice was tight when I spoke:
  "Where's the black cape and `finely tailored' black coat and the silk
tie and all that foolishness? " I asked. Eyes locked on each other.
Then he broke the stillness and laughed without making a sound. But
he went on studying me with a rapt expression that gave me a secret
joy. And with the boldness of a child, he reached out and ran his
fingers down the lapel of my gray velvet coat.
  "Can't always be the living legend, " he said. The voice was like a
whisper that wasn't a whisper. And I could hear his French accent so
clearly, though I had never been able to hear my own. I could scarcely
bear the sound of the syllables, the complete familiarity of it. And I
forgot all the stiff surly things I had planned to say and I just took him
in my arms. We embraced the way we never had in the past. We held
each other the way Gabrielle and I used to do. And then I ran my
hands over his hair and his face, just letting myself really see him, as if
he belonged to me. And he did the same. Seems we were talking and
not talking. True silent voices that didn't have any words. Nodding a
little. And I could feel him brimming with affection and a feverish
satisfaction that seemed almost as strong as my own. But he was quiet
suddenly, and his face became a little drawn.


                                                                         404

  "I thought you were dead and gone, you know, " he said. It was
barely audible.
  "How did you find me here? " I asked.
  "You wanted me to, " he answered. Flash of innocent confusion. He
gave a slow shrug of the shoulders. Everything he did was magnetizing
me just the way it had over a century ago. Fingers so long and delicate,
yet hands so strong.
  "You let me see you and you let me follow you, " he said. "You drove
up and down Divisadero Street looking for me. "
  "And you were still there? "
  "The safest place in the world for me, " he said. "I never left it. They
came looking for me and they didn't find me and then they went away.
And now I move among them whenever I want and they don't know
me. They never knew what I looked like, really. "
  "And they'd try to destroy you if they knew, " I said.
  "Yes, " he answered. "But they've been trying to do that since the
Theater of the Vampires and the things that happened there. Of
course Interview with the Vampire gave them some new reasons. And
they do need reasons to play their little games. They need the impetus,
the excitement. They feed upon it like blood. " His voice sounded
labored for a second. He took a deep breath. Hard to talk about all
this. I wanted to put my arms around him again but I didn't.
  "But at the moment, " he said, "I think you are the one that they want
to destroy. And they do know what you look like. " Little smile.
"Everybody knows now what you look like. Monsieur Le Rock Star. "
He let his smile broaden. But the voice was polite and low as it had
always been. And the face suffused with feeling. There had been not
the slightest change there yet. Maybe there never would be. I slipped
my arm around his shoulder and we walked together away from the
lights of the house. We walked past the great gray hulk of the copter
and into the dry sunbaked field and towards the hills. I think to be
this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.
  "Are you going to go through with it? " he asked. "The concert
tomorrow night? " Danger to us all. Had it been a warning or a
threat?
  "Yes, of course, " I said. "What in hell could stop me from it? "
  "I would like to stop you, " he answered. "I would have come sooner
if I could. I spotted you a week ago, then lost you. "
  "And why do you want to stop me? "
  "You know why, " he said. "I want to talk to you. " So simple, the
words, and yet they had such meaning.


                                                                       405

  "There'll be time after, " I answered. "`Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow.' Nothing is going to happen. You'll see. " I kept glancing
at him and away from him, as if his green eyes were hurting me. In
modern parlance he was a laser beam. Deadly and delicate he seemed.
His victims had always loved him. And I had always loved him, hadn't
I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you
had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time
to renew its momentum, its heat?
  "How can you be sure of that, Lestat? " he asked. Intimate his
speaking my name. And I had not brought myself to say Louis in that
same natural way. We were walking slowly now, without direction,
and his arm was around me loosely as mine was around him.
  "I have a battalion of mortals guarding us, " I said. "There'll be
bodyguards on the copter and in the limousine with my mortals. I'll
travel alone from the airport in the Porsche so I can more easily defend
myself, but we'll have a veritable motorcade. And just what can a
handful of hateful twentieth century fledglings do anyway? These idiot
creatures use the telephone for their threats. "
  "There are more than a handful, " he said. "But what about Marius?
Your enemies out there are debating it, whether the story of Marius
was true, whether Those Who Must Be Kept exist or not- "
  "Naturally, and you, did you believe it? "
  "Yes, as soon as I read it, " he said. And there passed between us a
moment of silence, in which perhaps we were both remembering the
questing immortal of long ago who had asked me over and over, where
did it begin? Too much pain to be reinvoked. It was like taking
pictures from the attic, cleaning away the dust and finding the colors
still vibrant. And the pictures should have been portraits of dead
ancestors and they were pictures of us. I made some little nervous
mortal gesture, raked my hair back off my forehead, tried to feel the
cool of the breeze.
  "What makes you so confident, " he asked, "that Marius won't end
this experiment as soon as you step on the stage tomorrow night? "
  "Do you think any of the old ones would do that? " I answered. He
reflected for a long moment, slipping deep into his thoughts the way
he used to do, so deep it was as if he forgot I was there. And it seemed
that old rooms took shape around him, gaslight gave off its unsteady
illumination, there came the sounds and scents of a former time from
outside streets. We two in that New Orleans parlor, coal fire in the
grate beneath the marble mantel, everything growing older except us.
And he stood now a modern child in sagging sweater and worn denim
gazing off towards the deserted hills. Disheveled, eyes sparked with an

                                                                     406

inner fire, hair mussed. He roused himself slowly as if coming back to
life.
  "No. I think if the old ones trouble themselves with it at all, they will
be too interested to do that. "
  "Are you interested? "
  "Yes, you know I am, " he said. And his face colored slightly. It
became even more human. In fact, he looked more like a mortal man
than any of our kind I've ever known. "I'm here, aren't I? " he said.
And I sensed a pain in him, running like a vein of ore through his
whole being, a vein that could carry feeling to the coldest depths. I
nodded'. I took a deep breath and looked away from him, wishing I
could say what I really wanted to say. That I loved him. But I couldn't
do that. The feeling was too strong.
  "Whatever happens, it will be worth it, " I said. "That is, if you and I,
and Gabrielle, and Armand . . . and Marius are together even for a
short while, it will be worth it. Suppose Pandora chooses to show
herself. And Mael. And God only knows how many others. What if
all the old ones come. It will be worth it, Louis. As for the rest, I don't
care. "
  "No, you care, " he said, smiling. He was deeply fascinated. "You're
just confident that it's going to be exciting, and that whatever the
battle, you'll win. " I bowed my head. I laughed. I slipped my hands
into the pockets of my pants the way mortal men did in this day and
age, and I walked on through the grass. The field still smelled of sun
even in the cool California night. I didn't tell him about the mortal
part, the vanity of wanting to perform, the eerie madness that had
come over me when I saw myself on the television screen, saw my face
on the album covers plastered to the windows of the North Beach
record store. He followed at my side.
  "If the old ones really wanted to destroy me, " I said, "don't you think
it would already be done? "
  "No, " he said. "I saw you and I followed you. But before that, I
couldn't find you. As soon as I heard that you'd come out, I tried. "
  "How did you hear? " I asked.
  "There are places in all the big cities where the vampires meet, " he
said. "Surely you know this by now. "
  "No, I don't. Tell me, " I said.
  "They are the bars we call the Vampire Connection, " he said, smiling
a little ironically as he said it. "They are frequented by mortals, of
course, and known to us by their names. There is Dr. Polidori in
London, and Larnia in Paris. There is Bela Lugosi in the city of Los
Angeles,, and Carmilla and Lord Ruthven in New York. Here in San

                                                                       407

Francisco we have the most beautiful of them all, possibly, the cabaret
called Dracula's Daughter, on Castro Street. " I started laughing. I
couldn't help it and I could see that he was about to laugh, too.
  "And where are the names from Interview with the Vampire? " I
asked with mock indignation.
  "Verboten, " he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. "They are not
fictional. They are real. But I will tell you they are playing your video
clips on Castro Street now. The mortal customers demand it, They
toast you with their vodka Bloody Marys. The Dance of les Innocents
is pounding through the walls. " A real laughing fit was definitely
coming. I tried to stop it. I shook my head.
  "But you've effected something of a revolution in speech in the back
room as well, " he continued in the same mock sober fashion, unable
to keep his face entirely straight.
  "What do you mean? "
  "Dark Trick, Dark Gift, Devil's Road-they're all bantering those
words about, the crudest fledglings who never even styled themselves
vampires. They're imitating the book even though they condemn it
utterly. They are loading themselves down with Egyptian jewelry.
Black velvet is once again de rigueur. "
  "Too perfect, " I said. "But these places, what are they like? "
  "They're saturated with the vampire trappings, " he said. "Posters
from the vampire films adorn the walls, and the films themselves are
projected continuously on high screens. The mortals who come are a
regular freak show of theatrical types-punk youngsters, artists, those
done up in black capes and white plastic fangs. They scarcely notice
us. We are often drab by comparison. And in the dim lights we might
as well be invisible, velvet and Egyptian jewelry and all. Of course, no
one preys upon these mortal customers. We come to the vampire bars
for information. The vampire bar is the safest place for a mortal in all
Christendom. You cannot kill in the vampire bar. "
  "Wonder somebody didn't think of it before, " I said.
  "They did think of it, " he said. "In Paris, it was the Theatre des
Vampyres. "
  "Of course, " I admitted. He went on:
  "The word went out a month ago on the Vampire Connection that
you were back. And the news was old then. They said you were
hunting New Orleans, and then they learned what you meant to do.
They had early copies of your autobiography. There was endless talk
about the video films. "
  "And why didn't I see them in New Orleans? " I asked.


                                                                       408

  "Because New Orleans has been for half a century Armand's
territory. No one dares to hunt New Orleans. They learned through
mortal sources of information, out of Los Angeles and New York. "
  "I didn't see Armand in New Orleans, " I said.
  "I know, " he answered. He looked troubled, confused for a
moment. I felt a little tightening in the region of the heart.
  "No one knows where Armand is, " he said a little dully. "But when
he was there, he killed the young ones. They left New Orleans to him.
They say that many of the old ones do that, kill the young ones. They
say it of me, but it isn't so. I haunt San Francisco like a ghost. I do not
trouble anyone save my unfortunate mortal victims. " All this didn't
surprise me much.
  "There are too many of us, " he said, "as there always have been. And
there is much warring. And a coven in any given city is only a means
by which three or more powerful ones agree not to destroy each other,
and to share the territory according to the rules. "
  "The rules, always the rules, " I said.
  "They are different now, and more stringent. Absolutely no evidence
of the kill must ever be left about. Not a single corpse must be left for
mortals to investigate. "
  "Of course. "
  "And there must be no exposure whatsoever in the world of close-up
photography and zoom lenses, of freeze-frame video examination-no
risk that could lead to capture, incarceration, and scientific verification
by the mortal world. " I nodded. But my pulse was racing. I loved
being the outlaw, the one who had already broken every single law.
And so they were imitating my book, were they? Oh, it was started
already. Wheels set into motion.
  "Lestat, you think you understand, " he said patiently, "but do you?
Let the world have but one tiny fragment of our tissue for their
microscopes, and there will be no arguments anymore about legend or
superstition. The proof will be there. "
  "I don't agree with you, Louis, " I said. "It isn't that simple. "
  "They have the means to identify and classify us, to galvanize the
human race against us. "
  "No, Louis. Scientists in this day and age are witch doctors
perpetually at war. They quarrel over the most rudimentary questions.
You would have to spread that supernatural tissue to every microscope
in the world and even then the public might not believe a word of it. "
He reflected for a moment.
  "One capture then, " he said. "One living specimen in their hands. "


                                                                       409

  "Even that wouldn't do it, " I said. "And how could they ever hold
me? " But it was too lovely to contemplate-the chase, the intrigue, the
possible capture and escape. I loved it. He was smiling now in a
strange way. Full of disapproval and delight.
  "You are madder than you ever were, " he said under his breath.
"Madder than when you used to go about New Orleans deliberately
scaring people in the old days. " I laughed and laughed. But then I got
quiet. We didn't have that much time before morning. And I could
laugh all the way into San Francisco tomorrow night.
  "Louis, I've thought this over from every angle, " I said. "It will be
harder to start a real war with mortals than you think- "
  "-And you're bound and determined to start it, aren't you? You
want everyone, mortal or immortal, to come after you. "
  "Why not? " I asked. "Let it begin. And let them try to destroy us
the way they have destroyed their other devils. Let them try to wipe us
out. " He was watching me with that old. expression of awe and
incredulity that I had seen a thousand times on his face. I was a fool
for it, as the expression goes. But the sky was paling overhead, the
stars drifting steadily away. Only precious moments we had together
before the early spring morning.
  "And so you really mean for it to happen, " he said earnestly, his tone
gentler than before.
  "Louis, I mean for something and everything to happen, " I said. "I
mean for all that we have been to change! What are we but leeches
now-loathsome, secretive, without justification. The old romance is
gone. So let us take on a new meaning. I crave the bright lights as I
crave blood. I crave the divine visibility. I crave war. "
  "The new evil, to use your old words, " he said. "And this time it is
the twentieth-century evil. "
  "Precisely, " I said. But again, I thought of the purely mortal
impulse, the vain impulse, for worldly fame, acknowledgment. Faint
blush of shame. It was all going to be such a pleasure.
  "But why, Lestat? " he asked a little suspiciously. "Why the danger,
the risk? After all, you have done it. You have come back. You're
stronger than ever. You have the old fire as if it had never been lost,
and you know how precious this is, this will simply to go on. Why risk
it immediately? Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the
world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves? "
  "Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say? "
His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.
  "I'm not mocking you, Louis, " I said.


                                                                       410

  "You've come back to me, Lestat, " he said evenly, looking at me
again. "When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula's Daughter, I
felt something that I thought was gone forever- " He paused. But I
knew what he was talking about. He had already said it. And I had
understood it centuries ago when I felt Armand's despair after the
death of the old coven. Excitement, the desire to continue, these
things were priceless to us. All the more reason for the rock concert,
the continuation, the war itself.
  "Lestat, don't go on the stage tomorrow night, " he said. "Let the
films and the book do what you want. But protect yourself. Let us
come together and let us talk together. Let us have each other in this
century the way we never did in the past. And I do mean all of us. "
  "Very tempting, beautiful one, " I said. "There were times in the last
century when I would have given almost anything to hear those words.
And we will come together, and we will talk, all of us, and we will have
each other. It will be splendid, better than it ever was before. But I am
going on the stage. I am going to be Lelio again the way I never was in
Paris. I will be the Vampire Lestat for all to see. A symbol, an outcast,
a freak of nature-something loved, something despised, all of those
things. I tell you I can't give it up. I can't miss it. And quite frankly I
am not the least afraid. " I braced myself for a coldness or a sadness to
come over him. And I hated the approaching sun as much as I ever
had in the past. He turned his back to it. The illumination was
hurting him a little. But his face was as full of warm expression as
before.
  "Very well, then, " he said. "I would like to go into San Francisco
with you. I would like that very much. Will you take me with you? " I
couldn't immediately answer. Again, the sheer excitement was
excruciating, and the love I felt for him was positively humiliating.
  "Of course I'll take you with me, " I said. We looked at each other for
a tense moment. He had to leave now. The morning had come for
him.
  "One thing, Louis, " I said.
  "Yes? "
  "Those clothes. Impossible. I mean, tomorrow night, as they say in
the twentieth century, you will lose that sweater and those pants. "
The morning was too empty after he had gone. I stood still for a while
thinking of that message, Danger. I scanned the distant mountains,
the never ending fields. Threat, warning- what did it matter? The
young ones dial the telephones. The old ones raise their supernatural
voices. Was it so strange? I could only think of Louis now, that he was
with me. And of what it would be like when the others came.

                                                                        411

  2

  The vast sprawling parking lots of the San Francisco Cow Palace
were overflowing with frenzied mortals as our motorcade pushed
through the gates, my musicians in the limousine ahead, Louis in the
leatherlined Porsche beside me. Crisp and shining in the black-caped
costume of the band, he looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of
his own story, his green eyes passing a little fearfully over the
screaming youngsters and motorcycle guards who kept them back and
away from us. The hall had been sold out for a month; the
disappointed fans wanted the music broadcast outside so they could
hear it. Beer cans littered the ground. Teenagers sat atop car roofs
and on trunks and hoods, radios blaring The Vampire Lestat at
appalling volume. Alongside my window, our manager ran on foot
explaining that we would have the outside video screens and speakers.
The San Francisco police had given the go-ahead to prevent a riot. I
could feel Louis's mounting anxiety. A pack of youngsters broke
through the police lines and pressed themselves against his window as
the motorcade made its sharp turn and plowed on towards the long
ugly tube-shaped hall. I was positively enthralled with what was
happening. And the recklessness in me was cresting. Again and again
the fans surrounded the car before they were swept back, and I was
beginning to understand how woefully I had underestimated this
entire experience. The filmed rock shows I'd watched hadn't prepared
me for the crude electricity that was already coursing through me, the
way the music was already surging in my head, the way the shame for
my mortal vanity was evaporating. It was mayhem getting into the
hall. Through a crush of guards, we ran into the heavily secured
backstage area, Tough Cookie holding tight to me, Alex pushing Larry
ahead of him. The fans tore at our hair, our capes. I reached back and
gathered Louis under my wing and brought him through the doors
with us. And then in the curtained dressing rooms I heard it for the
first time, the bestial sound of the crowd-fifteen thousand souls
chanting and screaming under one roof. No, I did not have this under
control, this fierce glee that made my entire body shudder. When had
this ever happened to me before, this near hilarity? I pushed up to the
front and looked through the peephole into the auditorium. Mortals
on both sides of the long oval, up to the very rafters. And in the vast
open center, a mob of thousands dancing, caressing, pumping fists
into the smoky haze, vying to get close to the stage platform. Hashish,
beer, human blood smell swirled on the ventilation currents. The

                                                                     412

engineers were shouting that we were set. Face paint had been
retouched, black velvet capes brushed, black ties straightened. No
good to keep this crowd waiting a moment longer. The word was
given to kill the houselights. And a great inhuman cry swelled in the
darkness, rolling up the walls. I could feel it in the floor beneath me.
It grew stronger as a grinding electronic buzz announced the
connection of "the equipment. " The vibration went through my
temples. A layer of skin was being peeled off. I clasped Louis's arm,
gave him a lingering kiss, and then felt him release me. Everywhere
beyond the curtain people snapped on their little chemical cigarette
lighters, until thousands and thousands of tiny flames trembled in the
gloom. Rhythmic clapping erupted, died out, the general roar rolling
up and down, pierced by random shrieks. My head was teeming. And
yet I thought of Renaud's so long ago. I positively saw it. But this
place was like the Roman Colosseum! And making the tapes, the
films-it had been so controlled, so cold. It had given no taste of this.
The engineer gave the signal, and we shot through the curtain, the
mortals fumbling because they couldn't see, as I maneuvered
effortlessly over the cables and wires. I was at the lip of the stage right
over the heads of the swaying, shouting crowd. Alex was at the drums.
Tough Cookie had her flat shimmering electric guitar in hand, Larry
was at the huge circular keyboard of the synthesizer. I turned around
and glanced up at the giant video screens which would magnify our
images for the scrutiny of every pair of eyes in the house. Then back at
the sea of screaming youngsters. Waves and waves of noise inundated
us from the darkness. I could smell the heat and the blood. Then the
immense bank of overhead lights went on. Violent beams of silver,
blue, red crisscrossed as they caught us, and the screaming reached an
unbelievable pitch. The entire hall was on its feet. I could feel the light
crawling on my white skin, exploding in my yellow hair. I glanced
around to see my mortals glorified and frenzied already as they
perched amid the endless wires and silver scaffolding. The sweat broke
out on my forehead as I saw the fists raised everywhere in salute. And
scattered all through the hall were youngsters in their Halloween
vampire clothes, faces gleaming with artificial blood, some wearing
floppy yellow wigs, some with black rings about their eyes to make
them all the more innocent and ghastly. Catcalls and hoots and
raucous cries rose above the general din. No, this was not like making
the little films. This was nothing like singing in the air-cooled cork-
lined chambers of the studio. This was a human experience made
vampiric, as the music itself was vampiric, as the images of the video
film were the images of the blood swoon. I was shuddering with pure

                                                                        413

exhilaration and the red-tinged sweat was pouring down my face. The
spotlights swept the audience, leaving us bathed in a mercuric twilight,
and everywhere the light hit, the crowd went into convulsions,
redoubling their cries. What was it about this sound? It signaled man
turned into mob-the crowds surrounding the guillotine, the ancient
Romans screaming for Christian blood. And the Keltoi gathered in
the grove awaiting Marius, the god. I could see the grove as I had
when Marius told the tale; had the torches been any more lurid than
these colored beams? Had the horrific wicker giants been larger than
these steel ladders that held the banks of speakers and incandescent
spotlights on either side of us? But there was no violence here; there
was no death-only this childish exuberance pouring forth from young
mouths and young bodies, an energy focused and contained as
naturally as it was cut loose. Another wave of hashish from the front
ranks. Long-haired leather-clad bikers with spoked leather bracelets
clapping their hands above their heads-ghosts of the Keltoi, they
seemed, barbarian locks streaming. And from all corners of this long
hollow smoky place an uninhibited wash of something that felt like
love. The lights were flashing on and off so that the movement of the
crowd seemed fragmented, to be happening in fits and jerks. They
were chanting in unison, now the volume swelling, what was it,
LESTAT, LESTAT, LESTAT. Oh, this is too divine. What mortal
could withstand this indulgence, this worship? I clasped the ends of
my black cloak, which was the signal. I shook out my hair to its fullest.
And these gestures sent a current of renewed screaming to the very
back of the hall. The lights converged on the stage. I raised my cloak
on either side like bat wings. The screams fused into a great
monolithic roar.
  "I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT! " I shouted at the top of my lungs
as I stepped way back from the microphone, and the sound was almost
visible as it arched over the length of the oval theater, and the voice of
the crowd rose even higher, louder, as if to devour the ringing sound.
  "COME ON, LET ME HEAR YOU! YOU LOVE ME! " I shouted
suddenly, without deciding to do it. Everywhere people were
stomping. They were stomping not only on the concrete floors but on
the wooden seats.
  "HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD BE VAMPIRES? " The roar
became a thunder. Several people were trying to scramble up onto the
front of the stage, the bodyguards pulling them off. One of the big
dark shaggy-haired bikers was jumping straight up and down, a beer
can in each hand. The lights went brighter like the glare of an
explosion. And there rose from the speakers and equipment behind

                                                                       414

me the fullthroated engine of a locomotive at stultifying volume as if
the train were racing onto the stage. Every other sound in the
auditorium was swallowed by it. In blaring silence the crowd danced
and bobbed before me. Then came the piercing, twanging fury of the
electrical guitar. The drums boomed into a marching cadence, and the
grinding locomotive sound of the synthesizer crested, then broke into
a bubbling caldron of noise in time with the march. It was time to
begin the chant in the minor key, its puerile lyrics leaping over the
accompaniment:

  I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT YOU ARE HERE FOR THE GRAND
SABBAT BUT I PITY YOU YOUR LOT

  I grabbed the microphone from the stand and ran to one side of the
stage and then to the other, the cape flaring out behind me:

  YOU CAN'T RESIST THE LORDS OF NIGHT THEY HAVE NO
MERCY ON YOUR PLIGHT IN YOUR FEAR THEY TAKE
DELIGHT

  They were reaching out for my ankles, throwing kisses, girls lifted by
their male companions to touch my cape as it swirled over their heads.

  YET IN LOVE, WE WILL TAKE YOU, AND IN RAPTURE, WE'LL
BREAK YOU AND IN DEATH WE'LL RELEASE YOU NO ONE CAN
SAY YOU WERE NOT WARNED.

  Tough Cookie, strumming furiously, danced up beside me, gyrating
wildly, the music peaking in a shrill glissando, drums and cymbals
crashing, the bubbling caldron of the synthesizer rising again. I felt the
music come up into my bones. Not even at the old Roman Sabbat had
it taken hold of me like this. I pitched myself into the dance, swinging
my hips elastically, then pumping them as the two of us moved
towards the edge of the stage. We were performing the free and erotic
contortions of Punchinello and Harlequin and all the old commedia
players improvising now as they had done, the instruments cutting
loose from the thin melody, then finding it again, as we urged each
other on with our dancing, nothing rehearsed, everything within
character, everything utterly new. The guards shoved people back
roughly as they tried to join us. Yet we danced over the edge of the
platform as if taunting them, whipping our hair around our faces,
turning round to see ourselves above in an impossible hallucination

                                                                      415

on the giant screens. The sound traveled up through my body as I
turned back to the crowd. It traveled like a steel ball finding one
pocket after another in my hips, my shoulders, until I knew I was
rising off the floor in a great slow leap, and then descending silently
again, the black cape flaring, my mouth open to reveal the fang teeth.
Euphoria. Deafening applause. And everywhere I saw pale mortal
throats bared, boys and girls shoving their collars down and stretching
their necks. And they were gesturing to me to come and take them,
inviting me and begging me, and some of the girls were crying. The
blood scent was thick as the smoke in the air. Flesh and flesh and
flesh. And yet everywhere the canny innocence, the unfathomable
trust that it was art, nothing but art! No one would be hurt. It was
safe, this splendid hysteria. When I screamed, they thought it was the
sound system. When I leapt, they thought it was a trick. And why not,
when magic was blaring at them from all sides and they could forsake
our flesh and blood for the great glowing giants on the screens above
us? Marius, I wish you could behold this! Gabrielle, where are you?
The lyrics poured out, sung by the whole band again in unison, Tough
Cookie's lovely soprano soaring over the others, before she wrung her
head round and round in a circle, her hair flopping down to touch the
boards in front of her feet, her guitar jerking lasciviously like a giant
phallus, thousands and thousands stamping and clapping in unison.
  "I AM TELLING YOU I AM A VAMPIRE! " I screamed suddenly.
Ecstasy, delirium.
  "I AM EVIL! EVIL! "
  "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, YES, YES, YES. " I threw out my arms, my hands
curved upwards:
  "I WANT TO DRINK UP YOUR SOULS! " The big woolly-haired
biker in the black leather jacket backed up, knocking over those
behind him, and leapt on the stage next to me, fists over his head. The
bodyguards went to tackle him but I had him, locking him to my
chest, lifting him off his feet in one arm and closing my mouth on his
neck, teeth just touching him, just touching that geyser of blood ready
to spew straight upwards! But they had torn him loose, thrown him
back like a fish into the sea. Tough Cookie was beside me, the light
skittering on her black satin pants, her whirling cape, her arm out to
steady me, even as I tried to slip free. Now I knew all that had been left
out of the pages I had read about the rock singers-this mad marriage of
the primitive and the scientific, this religious frenzy. We were in the
ancient grove all right. We were all with the gods. And we were
blowing out the fuses on the first song. And rolling into the next, as
the crowd picked up the rhythm, shouting the lyrics they knew from

                                                                        416

the albums and the clips. Tough Cookie and I sang, stomping in time
with it:

  CHILDREN OF DARKNESS MEET THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT
CHILDREN OF MAN, FIGHT THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT

  And again they cheered and bellowed and wailed, unmindful of the
words. Could the old Keltoi have cut loose with lustier ululations on
the verge of massacre? But again there was no massacre, there was no
burnt offering. Passion rolled towards the images of evil, not evil.
Passion embraced the image of death, not death. I could feel it like the
scalding illumination on the pores of my skin, in the roots of my hair,
Tough Cookie's amplified scream carrying the next stanza, my eyes
sweeping the farthest nooks and crannies, the amphitheater become a
great wailing soul. Deliver me from this, deliver me from loving it.
Deliver me from forgetting everything else, and sacrificing all purpose,
all resolve to it. I want you, my babies. I want your blood, innocent
blood. I want your adoration at the moment when I sink my teeth.
Yes, this is beyond all temptation. But in this moment of precious
stillness and shame, I saw them for the first time, the real ones out
there. Tiny white faces tossed like masks on the waves of shapeless
mortal faces, distinct as Magnus's face had been in that long-ago little
boulevard hall. And I knew that back beyond the curtains, Louis also
saw them. But all I saw in them, all I felt emanating from them, was
wonder and fear.

  "ALL YOU REAL VAMPIRES OUT THERE, " I shouted. "REVEAL
YOURSELVES! " And they remained changeless, as the painted and
costumed mortals about them went wild. For three solid hours we
danced, we sang, we beat the hell out of the metallic instruments, the
whiskey splashing back and forth among Alex and Larry and Tough
Cookie, the crowd surging towards us over and over until the phalanx
of police had doubled, and the lights had been raised. Wooden seats
were breaking in the high corners of the auditorium, cans rolled on the
concrete floors. The real ones never ventured a step closer. Some
vanished. That's how it was. Unbroken screaming, like fifteen
thousand drunks on the town, right up to the final moments, when it
was the ballad from the last clip, Age of Innocence. And then the
music softening. The drums rolling out, and the guitar dying, and the
synthesizer throwing up the lovely translucent notes of an electric
harpsichord, notes so light yet profuse that it was as if the air were
showered with gold. One mellow spot hit the place where I stood, my

                                                                      417

clothes streaked with blood sweat, my hair wet with it and tangled, the
cape dangling from one shoulder. Into a great yawning mouth of rapt
and drunken attention I raised my voice slowly, letting each phrase
become clear:

  This is the Age of Innocence True Innocence All your Demons are
visible All your Demons are material Call them Pain Call them Hunger
Call them War Mythic evil you don't need anymore. Drive out the
vampires and the devils With the gods you no longer adore
Remember: The Man with the fangs wears a cloak. What passes for
charm Is a charm Understand what you see When you see me! Kill us,
my brothers and sisters The war is on Understand what you see When
you see me.

  I closed my eyes on the rising walls of applause. What were they
really clapping for? What were they celebrating? Electric daylight in
this giant auditorium. The real ones were vanishing in the shifting
throng. The uniformed police had jumped up onto the platform to
make a solid row in front of us. Alex was tugging at me as we went
through the curtain:
  "Man, we have to run for it. They've got the damned limo
surrounded. And you'll never make it to your own car. " I said no,
they had to go on, to take the limo, to get going now. And to my left I
saw the hard white face of one of the real ones as he shoved his way
through the press. He wore the black leather skins of the motorcycle
riders, his silken preternatural hair a gleaming black mop. The
curtains were ripping from their overhead rods, letting the house flow
into the backstage area. Louis was beside me. I saw another immortal
on my right, a thin grinning male with tiny dark eyes. Blast of cold air
as we pushed into the parking lot, and pandemonium of squirming,
struggling mortals, the police yelling for order, the limo rocking like a
boat as Tough Cookie and Alex and Larry were shoved into it. One of
the bodyguards had the engine of the Porsche running for me, but the
youngsters were beating on the hood and the roof as if it were a drum.
Behind the black haired vampire male there appeared another demon,
a woman, and the pair were pushing inexorably closer. What the hell
did they think they were going to do? The giant motor of the
limousine was growling like a lion at the children who wouldn't make
way for it, and the motorcycle guards gunned their little engines,
spewing fumes and noise into the throng. The vampire trio was
suddenly surrounding the Porsche, the tall male's face ugly with fury,
and one thrust of his powerful arm lifted the low-slung car in spite of

                                                                      418

the youngsters who held to it. It was going to capsize. I felt an arm
around my throat suddenly. And I felt Louis's body pivot, and I heard
the sound of his fist strike the preternatural skin and bone behind me,
heard the whispered curse. Mortals everywhere were suddenly
screaming. A policeman exhorted the crowd over a loudspeaker to
clear out. I rushed forward, knocking down several of the youngsters,
and steadied the Porsche just before it went over like a scarab on its
back. As I struggled to open the door, I felt the crowd crushing against
me. Any moment this would become a riot. There would be a
stampede. Whistles, screams, sirens. Bodies shoving Louis and me
together, and then the leather-clad vampire male rising on the other
side of the Porsche, a great silver scythe flashing in the floodlights as he
swung it over his head. I heard Louis's shout of warning. I saw
another scythe gleaming in the comer of my eye. But a preternatural
screech cut through the cacophony as in a blinding flash the vampire
male burst into flames. Another blaze exploded beside me. The scythe
clattered to the concrete. And yards away yet another vampiric figure
suddenly went up in a crackling gust. The crowd was in utter panic,
rushing back into the auditorium, streaming out into the parking lot,
running anyplace it could to escape the whirling figures as they were
burnt black in their own private infernos, their limbs melting in the
heat to mere bones. And I saw other immortals streaking away at
invisible speed through the sluggish human press. Louis was stunned
as he turned to me, and surely the look of amazement on my face only
stunned him more. Neither of us had done this! Neither of us had the
power! I knew but one immortal who did. But I was suddenly
slammed back by the car door opening and a small delicate white hand
reached out to pull me inside.
  "Hurry, both of you! " said a female voice in French suddenly.
"What are you waiting for, the Church to pronounce it a miracle? "
And I was jerked into the leather bucket seat before I realized what was
happening, dragging Louis in on top of me so that he had to scramble
over me into the compartment in back. The Porsche lurched forward,
scattering the fleeing mortals in front of its headlights. I stared at the
slender figure of the driver beside me, her yellow hair streaming over
her shoulders, her soiled felt hat smashed down over her eyes. I
wanted to throw my arms around her, to crush her with kisses, to
press my heart against her heart and forget absolutely everything else.
The hell with these idiot fledglings. But the Porsche almost went over
again as she made the sharp right out of the gate and into the busy
street.


                                                                        419

  "Gabrielle, stop! " I shouted, my hand closing on her arm. "You
didn't do that, burn them like that-! "
  "Of course not, " she said, in sharp French still, barely glancing at me.
She looked irresistible as with two fingers she twisted the wheel again,
swinging us into yet another ninety-degree turn. We were headed for
the freeway.
  "Then you're driving us away from Marius! " I said. "Stop. "
  "So let him blow up the van that's following us! " she cried. "Then
I'll stop. " She had the gas pedal floored, her eyes fixed on the road in
front of her, her hands locked to the leatherclad wheel. I turned to see
it over Louis's shoulder, a monster of a vehicle bearing down with
surprising speed-an overgrown hearse it seemed, hulking and black,
with a mouthful of chromium teeth across the snub-nosed front and
four of the undead leering at us from behind the tinted windshield
glass.
  "We can't get clear of this traffic to outrun them! " I said.
  "Turn around. Go back to the auditorium. Gabrielle, turn around!
" But she bore on, weaving in and out of the motor coaches wildly,
driving some of them in sheer panic to the side. The van was gaining.
  "It's a war machine, that's what it is! " Louis said. "They've rigged it
with an iron bumper. They're going to try to ram us, the little
monsters! " Oh, I had played this one wrong. I had underestimated. I
had envisioned my own resources in this modem age, but not theirs.
And we were moving farther and farther away from the one immortal
who could blow them to Kingdom Come. Well, I would handle them
with pleasure. I'd smash their windshield to pieces for starters, then
tear off their heads one by one. I opened the window, climbing
halfway up and out of it, the wind whipping my hair, as I glared at
them, their ugly white faces behind the glass. As we shot up the
freeway ramp, they were almost on top of us. Good. Just a little closer
and I would spring. But our car was skidding to a halt. Gabrielle
couldn't clear the path ahead.
  "Hold on, it's coming! " she screamed.
  "Like hell it is! " I shouted, and in an instant I would have jumped
off the roof and gone into them like a battering ram. But I didn't have
that instant. They had struck us full force, and my body flew up in the
air, diving over the side of the freeway as the Porsche shot out in front
of me, sailing into space. I saw Gabrielle break through the side door
before the car hit the ground. And she and I were both rolling over on
the grassy slope as the car capsized and exploded with a deafening
roar.


                                                                        420

  "Louis! " I shouted. I scrambled towards the blaze. I would have
gone right into it after him: But the glass of the back portal splintered
as he came through it. He hit the embankment just as I reached him.
And with my cape I beat at his smoking garments, Gabrielle ripping
off her jacket to do the same. The van had stopped at the freeway
railing high above. The creatures were dropping over the edge, like big
white insects, and landing on their feet on the slope. And I was ready
for them. But again, as the first one skidded down towards us, scythe
raised, there came that ghastly preternatural scream again and the
blinding combustion, the creature's face a black mask in a riot of
orange flame. The body convulsed in a horrid dance. The others
turned and ran under the freeway. I started after them, but Gabrielle
had her arms around me and wouldn't let me go. Her strength
maddened me and amazed me.
  "Stop, damn it! " she said. "Louis, help me! "
  "Let me loose! " I said furiously. "I want one of them, just one of
them. I can get the hindmost in the pack! " But she wouldn't release
me, and I certainly wasn't going to fight her, and Louis had joined with
her in her angry and desperate entreaties.
  "Lestat, don't go after them! " he said, his polite manner strained to
the fullest. "We've had quite enough. We must leave here now. "
  "All right! " I said, giving it up resentfully. Besides, it was too late.
The burnt one had expired in smoke and sputtering flames, and the
others were gone into silence and darkness without a trace. The night
around us was suddenly empty, except for the thunder of the freeway
traffic high above. And there we were, the three of us, standing
together in the lurid glaze of the blazing car. Louis wiped the soot
from his face wearily, his stiff white shirtfront smudged, his long velvet
opera cape burnt and torn. And there was Gabrielle, the waif just as
she'd been so long ago, the dusty, ragged boy in frayed khaki jungle
jacket and pants, the squashed brown felt hat askew on her lovely
head. Out of the cacophony of city noises, we heard the thin whine of
sirens approaching. Yet we stood motionless, the three of us, waiting,
glancing to one another. And I knew we were all scanning for Marius.
Surely it was Marius. It had to be. And he was with us, not against us.
And he would answer us now. I said his name aloud softly. I peered
into the dark under the freeway, and out over the endless army of little
houses that crowded the surrounding slopes. But all I could hear were
the sirens growing louder and the murmur of human voices as mortals
began the long climb from the boulevard below. I saw fear in
Gabrielle's face. I reached out for her, went towards her, in spite of all
the hideous confusion, the mortals coming nearer and nearer, the

                                                                          421

vehicles stopped on the freeway above. Her embrace was sudden,
warm. But she gestured for me to hurry.
  "We're in danger! All of us, " she whispered. "Terrible danger.
Come! "

  3

  It was five o'clock in the morning and I stood alone at the glass doors
of the Carmel Valley ranch house. Gabrielle and Louis had gone into
the hills together to find their rest. A phone call north had told me
that my mortal musicians were safe in the new Sonoma hideaway,
partying madly behind electric fences and gates. As for the police and
the press and all their inevitable questions, well, that would have to
wait. And now I waited alone for the morning light as I'd always done,
wondering why Marius hadn't shown himself, why he had saved us
only to vanish without a word.
  "And suppose it wasn't Marius, " Gabrielle had said anxiously as she
paced the floor afterwards. "I tell you I felt an overwhelming sense of
menace. I felt danger to us as well as to them. I felt it outside the
auditorium when I drove away. I felt it when we stood by the burning
car. Something about it. It wasn't Marius, I'm convinced- "
  "Something almost barbaric about it, " Louis had said. "Almost but
not quite. "
  "Yes, almost savage, " she had answered, glancing to him in
acknowledgment. "And even if it was Marius, what makes you think
he didn't save you so that he could take his private vengeance in his
own way? "
  "No, " I had said, laughing softly. "Marius doesn't want revenge, or
he would already have it, that much I know. " But I had been too
excited just watching her, the old walk, the old gestures. And ah, the
frayed safari clothing. After two hundred years, she was still the
intrepid explorer. She straddled the chair like a cowboy when she sat
down, resting her chin on her hands on the high back. We had so
much to talk about, to tell each other, and I was simply too happy to
be afraid. And besides, being afraid was too awful, because I knew
now I had made another serious miscalculation. I'd realized it for the
first time when the Porsche exploded with Louis still inside it. This
little war of mine would put all those I loved in danger. What a fool
I'd been to think I could draw the venom to myself. We had to talk all
right. We had to be cunning. We had to take great care. But for now
we were safe. I'd told her that soothingly. She and Louis didn't feel
the menace here; it had not followed us to the valley. And I had never

                                                                      422

felt it. And our young and foolish immortal enemies had scattered,
believing that we possessed the power to incinerate them at will.
  "You know a thousand times, a thousand times, I pictured our
reunion, " Gabrielle said. "And never once was it anything like this. "
  "I rather think it went splendidly! " I said. "And don't suppose for a
moment that I couldn't have gotten us out of it! I was about to
throttle that one with the scythe, toss him over the auditorium. And I
saw the other one coming. I could have broken him in half. I tell you
one of the frustrating things about all this is I didn't get the chance- "
  "You, Monsieur, are an absolute imp! " she said. "You are
impossible! You are-what did Marius himself call you-the damnedest
creature! I am in full accord. " I laughed delightedly. Such sweet
flattery. And how lovely the old-fashioned French. And Louis had
been so taken with her, sitting back in the shadows as he watched her,
reticent, musing as he'd always been. Immaculate he was again, as if
his garments were entirely at his command, and we'd just come from
the last act of La Traviata to watch the mortals drink their champagne
at the marble-top cafe tables as the fashionable carriages clattered past.
Feeling of the new coven formed, magnificent energy, the denial of the
human reality, the three of us together against all tribes, all worlds.
And a profound feeling of safety, of unstoppable momentum-how to
explain that to them.
  "Mother, stop worrying, " I had said finally, hoping to settle it all, to
create a moment of pure equanimity. "It's pointless. A creature
powerful enough to bum his enemies can find us anytime that he
chooses, do exactly what he likes. "
  "And this should stop me from worrying? " she said. I saw Louis
shake his head.
  "I don't have your powers, " he said unobtrusively, "nevertheless I felt
this thing. And I tell you it was alien, utterly uncivilized, for want of a
better word. "
  "Ah, you've hit it again, " Gabrielle interjected. "It was completely
foreign as if coming from a being so removed... "
  "And your Marius is too civilized, " Louis insisted, "too burdened
with philosophy. That's why you know he doesn't want revenge. "
  "Alien? Uncivilized? " I glanced at both of them. "Why didn't I feel
this menace! " I asked.
  "Mon Dieu, it could have been anything, " Gabrielle had said finally.
"That music of yours could wake the dead. " I had thought of last
night's enigmatic message, "Lestat! Danger! " but it had been too close
to dawn for me to worry them with it. And besides, it explained
nothing. It was merely another fragment of the puzzle, and one

                                                                        423

perhaps that did not belong at all. And now they were gone together,
and I was standing alone before the glass doors watching the gleam of
light grow brighter and brighter over the Santa Lucia Mountains,
thinking:
  "Where are you, Marius? Why the hell don't you reveal yourself? " It
could damn well be true, everything that Gabrielle said. "Is it a game
to you? " And was it a game to me that I didn't really call out to him?
I mean raise my secret voice with its full power, as he had told me two
centuries ago that I might do? Through all my struggles, it had
become such a matter of pride not to call to him, but what did that
pride matter now? Maybe it was the call he required of me. Maybe he
was demanding that call. All the old bitterness and stubbornness were
gone from me now. Why not make that effort, at least? And closing
my eyes, I did what I had not done since those old eighteenth-century
nights when I'd talked to him aloud in the streets of Cairo or Rome.
Silently, I called. And I felt the voiceless cry rising out of me and
traveling into oblivion. I could almost feel it traverse the world of
visible proportions, feel it grow fainter and fainter, feel it burn out.
And there it was again for a split second, the distant unrecognizable
place I had glimpsed last night. Snow, endless snow, and some sort of
stone dwelling, windows encrusted with ice. And on a high
promontory a curious modern apparatus, a great gray metal dish
turning on an axis to draw to itself the invisible waves that crisscross
the earth skies. Television antenna! Reaching from this snowy waste
to the satellite-that is what it was! And the broken glass on the floor
was the glass of a television screen. I saw it. Stone bench . . . a
broken television screen. Noise. Fading. MARIUS! Danger, Lestat.
All of us in danger. She has . . . I cannot . . . Ice. Buried in ice.
Flash of shattered glass on a stone floor, the bench empty, the clang
and vibration of The Vampire Lestat throbbing from the speakers-
"She has . . . Lestat, help me! All of us . . . danger. She has... "
Silence. The connection broken. MARIUS! Something, but too faint.
For all its intensity simply too faint! MARIUS! I was leaning against
the window, staring right into the morning light as it grew brighter,
my eyes watering, the tips of my fingers almost burning on the hot
glass. Answer me, is it Akasha? Are you telling me that it is Akasha,
that she is the one, that it was she? But the sun was rising over the
mountains. The lethal rays were spilling down into the valley, ranging
across the valley floor. I ran out of the house, across the field and
towards the hills, my arm up to shield my eyes. And within moments I
had reached my hidden underground crypt, pulled back the stone, and
I went down the crudely dug little stairs. One more turn and then

                                                                        424

another and I was in cold and safe blackness, earth smell, and I lay on
the mud floor of the tiny chamber, my heart thudding, my limbs
trembling. Akasha! That music of yours could wake the dead.
Television set in the chamber, of course, Marius had given them that,
and the broadcasts right off the satellite. They had seen the video
films! I knew it, I knew it as certainly as if he had spelled it out to the
last detail. He had brought the television down into their sanctum,
just as he had brought the movies to them years and years ago. And
she had been awakened, she had risen. That music of yours could
wake the dead. I'd done it again. Oh, if only I could keep my eyes
open, could only think, if the sun wasn't rising. She had been there in
San Francisco, she had been that close to us, burning our enemies.
Alien, utterly foreign, yes. But not uncivilized, no, not savage. She
was not that. She was only just reawakened, my goddess, risen like a
magnificent butterfly from its cocoon. And what was the world to her?
How had she come to us? What was the state of her mind? Danger to
all of us. No. I don't believe it! She had slain our enemies. She had
come to us. But I couldn't fight the drowsiness and heaviness any
longer. Pure sensation was driving out all wonder and excitement.
My body grew limp and helplessly still against the earth. And then I
felt a hand suddenly close on mine. Cold as marble it was, and just
about that strong. My eyes snapped open in the darkness. The hand
tightened its grip. A great mass of silken hair brushed my face. A cold
arm moved across my chest. Oh, please, my darling, my beautiful one,
please! I wanted to say. But my eyes were closing! My lips wouldn't
move. I was losing consciousness. The sun had risen above.




                                                                         425



I'M THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. REMEMBER ME? THE vampire who became a super rock
star, the one who wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair
and the gray eyes, and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame?
You remember. I wanted to be a symbol of evil in a shining century that
didn't have any place for the literal evil that I am. I even figured I'd
do some good in that fashion-playing the devil on the painted stage.

And I was off to a good start when we talked last. I'd just made my
debut in San Francisco-first "live concert" for me and my mortal band.
Our album was a huge success. My autobiography was doing respectably
with both the dead and the undead.

Then something utterly unforeseen took place. Well, at least I hadn't
seen it coming. And when I left you, I was hanging from the proverbial
cliff, you might say.

Well, it's all over now-what followed. I've survived, obviously. I
wouldn't be talking to you if I hadn't. And the cosmic dust has finally
settled; and the small rift in the world's fabric of rational beliefs
has been mended, or at least closed.

I'm a little sadder for all of it, and a little meaner and a little more
conscientious as well. I'm also infinitely more powerful, though the
human in me is closer to the surface than ever-an anguished and hungry
being who both loves and detests this invincible immortal shell in which
I'm locked.

The blood thirst? Insatiable, though physically I have never needed the
blood less. Possibly I could exist now without it altogether. But the
lust I feel for everything that walks tells me that this will never be
put to the test.

You know, it was never merely the need for the blood anyway, though the
blood is all things sensual that a creature could desire; it's the
intimacy of that moment-drinking, killing-the great heart-to-heart dance
that takes place as the victim weakens and I feel myself expanding,
swallowing the death which, for a split second, blazes as large as the
life.

That's deceptive, however. No death can be as large as a life. And
that's why I keep taking life, isn't it? And I'm as far from salvation
now as I could ever get. The fact that I know it only makes it worse.

Of course I can still pass for human; all of us can, in one way or
another, no matter how old we are. Collar up, hat down, dark glasses,
hands in pockets-it usually does the trick. I like slim leather jackets
and tight jeans for this disguise now, and a pair of plain black boots
that are good for walking on any terrain. But now and then I wear the
fancier silks which people like in these southern climes where I now
reside.

If someone does look too closely, then there is a little telepathic
razzle-dazzle: Perfectly normal, what you see. And a flash of the old
smile, fang teeth easily concealed, and the mortal goes his way.

Occasionally I throw up all the disguises; I just go out the way I am.
Hair long, a velvet blazer that makes me think of the olden times, and
an emerald ring or two on my right hand. I walk fast right through the
downtown crowds in this lovely corrupt southern city; or stroll slowly

along the beaches, breathing the warm southern breeze, on sands that are
as white as the moon.

Nobody stares for more than a second or two. There are too many other
inexplicable things around us-horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you
in and then inevitably disenchant you. Back to the predictable and
humdrum. The prince is never going to come, everybody knows that; and
maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.

It's the same for the others who have survived with me, and who share
this hot and verdant little corner of the universe-the southeastern tip
of the North American continent, the glistering metropolis of Miami, a
happy hunting ground for bloodthirsting immortals if ever there was such
a place.

It's good to have them with me, the others; it's crucial, really- and
what I always thought I wanted: a grand coven of the wise, the enduring,
the ancient, and the careless young.

But ah, the agony of being anonymous among mortals has never been worse
for me, greedy monster that I am. The soft murmur of preternatural
voices can't distract me from it. That taste of mortal recognition was
too seductive-the record albums in the windows, the fans leaping and
clapping in front of the stage. Never mind that they didn't really
believe I was a vampire; for that moment we were together. They were
calling my name!

Now the record albums are gone, and I will never listen to those songs
again. My book remains-along with Interview with the Vampire-safely
disguised as fiction, which is, perhaps, as it should be. I caused
enough trouble, as you will see.

Disaster, that's what I wrought with my little games. The vampire who
would have been a hero and a martyr finally for one moment of pure
relevance . . .

You'd think I'd learn something from it, wouldn't you? Well, I did,
actually. I really did.

But it's just so painful to shrink back into the shadows-Lestat, the
sleek and nameless gangster ghoulie again creeping up on helpless
mortals who know nothing of things like me. So hurtful to be again the
outsider, forever on the fringes, struggling with good and evil in the
age-old private hell of body and soul.

In my isolation now I dream of finding some sweet young thing in a
moonlighted chamber-one of those tender teenagers, as they call them
now, who read my book and listened to my songs; one of the idealistic
lovelies who wrote me fan letters on scented paper, during that brief
period of ill-fated glory, talking of poetry and the power of illusion,
saying she wished I was real; I dream of stealing into her darkened
room, where maybe my book lies on a bedside table, with a pretty velvet
marker in it, and I dream of touching her shoulder and smiling as our
eyes meet. "Lestat! I always believed in you. I always knew you would
come!"

I clasp her face in both hands as I bend to kiss her. "Yes, darling," I
answer, "and you don't know how I need you, how I love you, how I always
have."

Maybe she would find me more charming on account of what's befallen me-
the unexpected horror I've seen, the inevitable pain Pve endured. It's
an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to
our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't
destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the
capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable
things.

Please forgive me if I sound bitter.

I don't have any right to be. I started the whole thing; and I got out
in one piece, as they say. And so many of our kind did not. Then there
were the mortals who suffered. That part was inexcusable. And surely I
shall always pay for that.

But you see, I still don't really fully understand what happened. I
don't know whether or not it was a tragedy, or merely a meaningless
venture. Or whether or not something absolutely magnificent might have
been born of my blundering, something that could have lifted me right
out of irrelevance and nightmare and into the burning light of
redemption after all.

I may never know, either. The point is, it's over. And our world-our
little private realm-is smaller and darker and safer than ever. It will
never again be what it was.

It's a wonder that I didn't foresee the cataclysm, but then I never
really envision the finish of anything that I start. It's the risk that
fascinates, the moment of infinite possibility. It lures me through
eternity when all other charms fail.

After all, I was like that when I was alive two hundred years ago-the
restless one, the impatient one, the one who was always spoiling for
love and a good brawl. When I set out for Paris in the 17805 to be an
actor, all I dreamed of were beginnings-the moment each night when the
curtain went up.

Maybe the old ones are right. I refer now to the true immortals-the
blood drinkers who've survived the millennia-who say that none of us
really changes over time; we only become more fully what we are.

To put it another way, you do get wiser when you live for hundreds of
years; but you also have more time to turn out as badly as your enemies
always said you might.

And I'm the same devil I always was, the young man who would have center
stage, where you can best see me, and maybe love me. One's no good
without the other. And I want so much to amuse you, to enthrall you, to
make you forgive me everything. ... Random moments of secret contact and
recognition will never be enough, I'm afraid. But I'm jumping ahead now,
aren't I? If you've read my autobiography then you want to know what I'm
talking about. What was this disaster of which I speak?

Well, let's review, shall we? As I've said, I wrote the book and made
the album because I wanted to be visible, to be seen for what I am, even
if only in symbolic terms.

As to the risk that mortals might really catch on, that they might
realize I was exactly what I said I was-I was rather excited by that
possibility as well. Let them hunt us down, let them destroy us, that

was in a way my fondest wish. We don't deserve to exist; they ought to
kill us. And think of the battles! Ah, fighting those who really know
what I am. But I never really expected such a confrontation; and the
rockmusician persona, it was too marvelous a cover for a fiend like me.

It was my own kind who took me literally, who decided to punish me for
what I had done. And of course I'd counted on that too.

After all, I'd told our history in my autobiography; I'd told our
deepest secrets, things I'd been sworn never to reveal. And I was
strutting before the hot lights and the camera lenses. And what if some
scientist had gotten hold of me, or more likely a zealous police officer
on a minor traffic violation five minutes before sunup, and somehow I'd
been incarcerated, inspected, identified, and classified-all during the
daylight hours while I lay helpless-to the satisfaction of the worst
mortal skeptics worldwide?

Granted, that wasn't very likely. Still isn't. (Though it could be such
fun, it really could!)

Yet it was inevitable that my own kind should be infuriated by the risks
I was taking, that they would try to burn me alive, or chop me up in
little immortal pieces. Most of the young ones, they were too stupid to
realize how safe we were.

And as the night of the concert approached, I'd found myself dreaming of
those battles, too. Such a pleasure it was going to be to destroy those
who were as evil as I was; to cut a swathe through the guilty; to cut
down my own image again and again.

Yet, you know, the sheer joy of being out there, making music, making
theater, making magic!-that's what it was all about in the end. I wanted
to be alive, finally. I wanted to be simply human. The mortal actor
who'd gone to Paris two hundred years ago and met death on the
boulevard, would have his moment at test.

But to continue with the review-the concert was a success. I had my
moment of triumph before fifteen thousand screaming mortal fans; and two
of my greatest immortal loves were there with me-Gabrielle and Louis-my
fledglings, my paramours, from whom I'd been separated for too many dark
years.

Before the night was over, we licked the pesty vampires who tried to
punish me for what I was doing. But we'd had an invisible ally in these
little skirmishes; our enemies burst into flames before they could do us
harm.

·As morning approached, I was too elated by the whole night Ib take the
question of danger seriously. I ignored Gabrielle's impassioned
warnings-too sweet to hold her once again; and I dismissed Louis's dark
suspicions as I always had.

And then the jam, the cliffhanger ...

Just as the sun was rising over Carmel Valley and I was closing my eyes
as vampires must do at that moment, I realized I wasn't alone in my
underground lair. It wasn't only the young vampires I'd reached with my
music; my songs had roused from their slumber the very oldest of our
kind in the world.

And I found myself in one of those breathtaking instants of risk and
possibility. What was to follow? Was I to die finally, or perhaps to be
reborn?

Now, to tell you the full story of what happened after that, I must move
back a little in time.

I have to begin some ten nights before the fatal concert and I have to
let you slip into the minds and hearts of other beings who were
responding to my music and my book in ways of which I knew little or
nothing at the time.

In other words, a lot was going on which I had to reconstruct later. And
it is the reconstruction that I offer you now.

So we will move out of the narrow, lyrical confines of the first person
singular; we will jump as a thousand mortal writers have done into the
brains and souls of "many characters." We will gallop into the world of
"third person" and "multiple point of view."

And by the way, when these other characters think or say of me that I am
beautiful or irresistible, etc., don't think I put these words in their
heads. I didn't! It's what was told to me after, or what I drew out of
their minds with infallible telepathic power; I wouldn't lie about that
or anything else. I can't help being a gorgeous fiend. It's just the
card I drew. The bastard monster who made me what I am picked me on
account of my good looks. That's the long and short of it. And accidents
like that occur all the time.

We live in a world of accidents finally, in which only aesthetic
principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong
we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an
ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps
or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky-such brutal
beauty is beyond dispute.

Now, be assured: though I am leaving you, I will return with full flair
at the appropriate moment. The truth is, I hate not being the first
person narrator all the way through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I
don't know whether I'm the hero or the victim of this tale. But either
way, shouldn't I dominate it? I'm the one really telling it, after all.

Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity
must wait. I want you to know what really took place with us, even if
you never believe it. In fiction if nowhere else, I must have a little
meaning, a little coherence, or I will go mad.

So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish
you were here ... in my arms.

CONTENTS

PROEM

PART I THE ROAD TO THE VAMPIRE LESTAT

The Legend of the Twins

The Short Happy Life of Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang

The Goddess Pandora

The Story of Daniel, the Devil's Minion, or the Boy from Interview with
the Vampire

Khayman, My Khayman

The Story of Jesse, the Great Family, and the Talamasca

PART II ALL HALLOW'S EVE

PART III AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE

Lestat: In the Arms of the Goddess

Marius: Coming Together

Lestat: The Queen of Heaven

The Story of the Twins, Part I

Lestat: This Is My Body; This Is My Blood

The Story of the Twins, Part II

Lestat: The Kingdom of Heaven

The Story of the Twins, Conclusion

PART IV THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED


PART V . . . WORLD WITHOUT END, AMEN

PROEM

DECLARATION IN THE FORM OF GRAFFITI
-written in black felt-tip pen on a red wall in the back room of a bar
called Dracula's Daughter in San Francisco-

Children of Darkness Be Advised of the Following:

BOOK ONE: Interview with the Vampire, published in 1976, was a true
story. Any one of us could have written it-an account of becoming what
we are, of the misery and the searching. Yet Louis, the two-hundred-
year-old immortal who reveals all, insists on mortal sympathy. Lestat,
the villain who gave Louis the Dark Gift, gave him precious little else
in the way of explanations or consolation. Sound familiar? Louis hasn't
given up the search for salvation yet, though even Armand, the oldest
immortal he was ever to find, could tell him nothing of why we are here
or who made us. Not very surprising, is it, vampire boys and girls?
After all, there has never been a Baltimore Catechism for vampires.

That is, there wasn't until the publication of:

BOOK Two: The Vampire Lestat, this very week. Subtitle: His "early
education and adventures." You don't believe it? Check with the nearest
mortal bookseller. Then go into the nearest record store and ask to see
the album which has only just arrived-also entitled The Vampire Lestat,
with predictable modesty. Or if all else fails, switch on your cable TV,

if you don't disdain such things, and wait for one of Lestat's numerous
rock video films which began to air with nauseating frequency only
yesterday. You will know Lestat for what he is immediately. And it may
not surprise you to be told that he plans to compound these
unprecedented outrages by appearing "live" on stage in a debut concert
in this very city. Yes, on Halloween, you guessed it.

But let us forget for the moment the blatant insanity of his
preternatural eyes flashing from every record store window, or his
powerful voice singing out the secret names and stories of the most
ancient among us. Why is he doing all this? What do his songs tell us?
It is spelled out in his book. He has given us not only a catechism but
a Bible.

And deep into biblical times we are led to confront our first parents:
Enkil and Akasha, rulers of the valley of the Nile before it was ever
called Egypt. Kindly disregard the gobbledygook of how they became the
first bloodsuckers on the face of the earth; it makes only a little more
sense than the story of how life formed on this planet in the first
place, or how human fetuses develop from microscopic cells within the
wombs of their mortal mothers. The truth is we are descended from this
venerable pair, and like it or no, there is considerable reason to
believe that the primal generator of all our delicious and indispensable
powers resides in one or the other of their ancient bodies. What does
this mean? To put it bluntly, if Akasha and Enkil should ever walk hand
in hand into a furnace, we should all burn with them. Crush them to
glittering dust, and we are annihilated.

Ah, but there's hope. The pair haven't moved in over fifty centuries!
Yes, that's correct. Except of course that Lestat claims to have wakened
them both by playing a violin at the foot of their shrine. But if we
dismiss his extravagant tale that Akasha took him in her arms and shared
with him her primal blood, we are left with the more likely state of
affairs, corroborated by stories of old, that the two have not batted an
eyelash since before the fall of the Roman Empire. They've been kept all
this time in a nice private crypt by Marius, an ancient Roman vampire,
who certainly knows what's best for all of us. And it was he who told
the Vampire Lestat never to reveal the secret.

Not a very trustworthy confidant, the Vampire Lestat. And what are his
motives for the book, the album, the films, the concert? Quite
impossible to know what goes on in the mind of this fiend, except that
what he wants to do he does, with reliable consistency. After all, did
he not make a vampire child? And a vampire of his own mother, Gabrielle,
who for years was his loving companion? He may set his sights upon the
papacy, this devil, out of sheer thirst for excitement!

So that's the gist: Loiiis, a wandering philosopher whom none of us can
find, has confided our deepest moral secrets to countless strangers. And
Lestat has dared to reveal our history to the world, as he parades his
supernatural endowments before the mortal public.

Now the Question: Why are these two still in existence? Why have we not
destroyed them already? Oh, the danger to us from the great mortal herd
is by no means a certainty. The villagers are not yet at the door,
torches in hand, threatening to burn the castle. But the monster is
courting a change in mortal perspective. And though we are too clever to
corroborate for the human record his foolish fabrications, the outrage
exceeds all precedent. It cannot go unpunished.

Further observations: If the story the Vampire Lestat has told is true-
and there are many who swear it is, though on what account they cannot
tell you-may not the two-thousand-year-old Marius come forward to punish
Lestat's disobedience? Or perhaps the King and Queen, if they have ears
to hear, will waken at the sound of their names carried on radio waves
around the planet. What might happen to us all if this should occur?
Shall we prosper under their new reign? Or will they set the time for
universal destruction? Whatever the case, might not the swift
destruction of the Vampire Lestat avert it?

The Plan: Destroy the Vampire Lestat and all his cohorts as soon as they
dare to show themselves. Destroy all those who show him allegiance.

A Warning: Inevitably, there are other very old blood with nauseating
frequency only yesterday. You will know Lestat for what he is
immediately. And it may not surprise you to be told that he plans to
compound these unprecedented outrages by appearing "live" on stage in a
debut concert in this very city. Yes, on Halloween, you guessed it.

But let us forget for the moment the blatant insanity of his
preternatural eyes flashing from every record store window, or his
powerful voice singing out the secret names and stories of the most
ancient among us. Why is he doing all this? What do his songs tell us?
It is spelled out in his book. He has given us not only a catechism but
a Bible.

And deep into biblical times we are led to confront our first parents:
Enkil and Akasha, rulers of the valley of the Nile before it was ever
called Egypt. Kindly disregard the gobbledygook of how they became the
first bloodsuckers on the face of the earth; it makes only a little more
sense than the story of how life formed on this planet in the first
place, or how human fetuses develop from microscopic cells within the
wombs of their mortal mothers. The truth is we are descended from this
venerable pair, and like it or no, there is considerable reason to
believe that the primal generator of all our delicious and indispensable
powers resides in one or the other of their ancient bodies. What does
this mean? To put it bluntly, if Akasha and Enkil should ever walk hand
in hand into a furnace, we should all burn with them. Crush them to
glittering dust, and we are annihilated.

Ah, but there's hope. The pair haven't moved in over fifty centuries!
Yes, that's correct. Except of course that Lestat claims to have wakened
them both by playing a violin at the foot of their shrine. But if we
dismiss his extravagant tale that Akasha took him in her arms and shared
with him her primal blood, we are left with the more likely state of
affairs, corroborated by stories of old, that the two have not batted an
eyelash since before the fall of the Roman Empire. They've been kept all
this time in a nice private crypt by Marius, an ancient Roman vampire,
who certainly knows what's best for all of us. And it was he who told
the Vampire Lestat never to reveal the secret.

Not a very trustworthy confidant, the Vampire Lestat. And what are his
motives for the book, the album, the films, the concert? Quite
impossible to know what goes on in the mind of this fiend, except that
what he wants to do he does, with reliable consistency. After all, did
he not make a vampire child? And a vampire of his own mother, Gabrielle,
who for years was his loving companion? He may set his sights upon the
papacy, this devil, out of sheer thirst for excitement!

So that's the gist: Louis, a wandering philosopher whom none of us can
find, has confided our deepest moral secrets to countless strangers. And
Lestat has dared to reveal our history to the world, as he parades his
supernatural endowments before the mortal public.

Now the Question: Why are these two still in existence? Why have we not
destroyed them already? Oh, the danger to us from the great mortal herd
is by no means a certainty. The villagers are not yet at the door,
torches in hand, threatening to burn the castle. But the monster is
courting a change in mortal perspective. And though we are too clever to
corroborate for the human record his foolish fabrications, the outrage
exceeds all precedent. It cannot go unpunished.

Further observations: If the story the Vampire Lestat has told is true-
and there are many who swear it is, though on what account they cannot
tell you-may not the two-thousand-year-old Marius come forward to punish
Lestat's disobedience? Or perhaps the King and Queen, if they have ears
to hear, will waken at the sound of their names carried on radio waves
around the planet. What might happen to us all if this should occur?
Shall we prosper under their new reign? Or will they set the time for
universal destruction? Whatever the case, might not the swift
destruction of the Vampire Lestat avert it?

The Plan: Destroy the Vampire Lestat and all his co-'. horts as soon as
they dare to show themselves. Destroy all those who show him allegiance.

A Warning: Inevitably, there are other very old blood drinkers out
there. We have all from time to time glimpsed them, or felt their
presence. Lestat's revelations do not shock so much as they rouse some
unconscious awareness within us. And surely with their great powers,
these old ones can hear Lestat's music. What ancient and terrible
beings, incited by history, purpose, or mere recognition, might be
moving slowly and inexorably to answer his summons?

Copies of this Declaration have to been sent to every meeting place on
the Vampire Connection, and to coven houses the world over. But you must
take heed and spread the word: The Vampire Lestat is to be destroyed and
with him his mother, Gabrielle, his cohorts, Louis and Armand, and any
and all immortals who show him loyalty.

Happy Halloween, vampire boys and girls. We shall see you at the
concert. We shall see that the Vampire Lestat never leaves it.

The blond-haired figure in the red velvet coat read the declaration over
again from his comfortable vantage point in the far corner. His eyes
were almost invisible behind his dark tinted glasses and the brim of his
gray hat. He wore gray suede gloves, and his arms were folded over his
chest as he leaned back against the high black wainscoting, one boot
heel hooked on the rung of his chair.

"Lestat, you are the damnedest creature!" he whispered under his breath.
"You are a brat prince." He gave a little private laugh. Then he scanned
the large shadowy room.

Not unpleasing to him, the intricate black ink mural drawn with such
skill, like spiderwebs on the white plaster wall. He rather enjoyed the
ruined castle, the graveyard, the withered tree clawing at the full
moon. It was the cliche reinvented as if it were not a cliche, an
artistic gesture he invariably appreciated. Very fine too was the molded
ceiling with its frieze of prancing devils and hags upon broomsticks.

And the incense, sweet-an old Indian mixture which he himself had once
burnt in the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept centuries ago.

Yes, one of the more beautiful of the clandestine meeting places.

Less pleasing were the inhabitants, the scattering of slim white figures
who hovered around candles set on small ebony tables.

I Far too many of them for this civilized modern city. And they g knew
it. To hunt tonight, they would have to roam far and wide, and young
ones always have to hunt. Young ones have to kill.

They are too hungry to do it any other way. ::·! But they thought
only of him just now - who was he, where had he come from? Was he very
old and very strong, and what would he do before he left here? Always
the same questions, though he tried to slip into their "vampire bars"
like any vagrant blood drinker, eyes averted, mind closed. Time to leave
their questions unanswered. He had what he wanted, a fix on their
intentions. And Lestat's small audio cassette in his jacket pocket. He
would have a tape of the video rock films before he went home.

He rose to go. And one of the young ones rose also. A stiff jf silence
fell, a silence in thoughts as well as words as he and the jj| young one
both approached the door. Only the candle flames moved, throwing their
shimmer on the black tile floor as if it were in water.

"Where do you come from, stranger?" asked the young one |r politely. He
couldn't have been more than twenty when he died, and that could not
have been ten years ago. He painted his eyes, waxed his lips, streaked
his hair with barbaric color, as if the preternatural gifts were not
enough. How extravagant he looked, not unlike what he was, a spare and
powerful revenant who could with luck survive the millennia.

What had they promised him with their modern jargon? That gfite should
know the Bardo, the Astral Plane, etheric realms, the fiStousic of the
spheres, the sound of one hand clapping? :|||: Again he spoke: "Where
do you stand on the Vampire Lestat, and the Declaration?"

"You must forgive me. I'm going now."

But surely you know what Lestat's done," the young one , slipping
between him and the door. Now, this was not good manners.

He studied this brash young male more closely. Should he do something to
stir them up? To have them talking about it for centuries? He couldn't
repress a smile. But no. There'd be enough excitement soon, thanks to
his beloved Lestat.

"Let me give you a little piece of advice in response," he said quietly
to the young inquisitor. "You cannot destroy the Vampire Lestat; no one
can. But why that is so, I honestly can't tell you."

The young one was caught off guard, and a little insulted.

"But let me ask you a question now," the other continued. "Why this
obsession with the Vampire Lestat? What about the content of his
revelations? Have you fledglings no desire to seek Marius, the guardian
of Those Who Must Be Kept? To see for yourselves the Mother and the
Father?"

The young one was confused, then gradually scornful. He could not form a
clever answer. But the true reply was plain enough in his soul-in the
souls of all those listening and watching. Those Who Must Be Kept might
or might not exist; and Marius perhaps did not exist either. But the
Vampire Lestat was real, as real as anything this callow immortal knew,
and the Vampire Lestat was a greedy fiend who risked the secret
prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals.

He almost laughed in the young one's face. Such an insignificant battle.
Lestat understood these faithless times so beautifully, one had to admit
it. Yes, he'd told the secrets he'd been warned to keep, but in so
doing, he had betrayed nothing and no one.

"Watch out for the Vampire Lestat," he said to the young one finally
with a smile. "There are very few true immortals walking this earth. He
may be one of them."

Then he lifted the young one off his feet and set him down out of the
way. And he went out the door into the tavern proper.

The front room, spacious and opulent with its black velvet hangings and
fixtures of lacquered brass, was packed with noisy mortals. Cinema
vampires glared from their gilt frames on satin-lined walls. An organ
poured out the passionate Toccata and Fugue of Bach, beneath a babble of
conversation and violent riffs of drunken laughter. He loved the sight
of so much exuberant life. He loved even the age-old smell of the malt
and the wine, and the perfume of the cigarettes. And as he made his way
to the front, he loved the crush of the soft fragrant humans against
him. He loved the fact that the living took not .the; slightest notice
of him.

At last the moist air, the busy early evening pavements of Castro
Street. The sky still had a polished silver gleam. Men and women rushed
to and fro to escape the faint slanting rain, to be clotted at the
corners, waiting for great bulbous colored lights to wink and signal.

The speakers of the record store across the street blared Le-stat's
voice over the roar of the passing bus, the hiss of wheels on the wet
asphalt:

In my dreams, I hold her still, Angel, lover, Mother. And in my dreams,
I kiss her lips, Mistress, Muse, Daughter.

She gave me life I gave her death My beautiful Marquise.

And on the Devil's Road we walked Two orphans then together.

And does she hear my hymns tonight of Kings and Queens and Ancient
truths? Of broken vows and sorrow?

Or does she climb some distant path where rhyme and song can't find her?

Come back to me, my Gabrielle My Beautiful Marquise. The castle's ruined
on the hill The village lost beneath the snow But you are mine forever.

Was she here already, his mother?

The voice died away in a soft drift of electric notes to be swallowed
finally by the random noise around him. He wandered out into the wet
breeze and made his way to the corner. Pretty, the busy little street.

The flower vendor still sold his blooms beneath the awning. The butcher
was thronged with after-work shoppers. Behind the cafe windows, mortals
took their evening meals or lingered with their newspapers. Dozens
waited for a downhill bus, and a line had formed across the way before
an old motion picture theater.

She was here, Gabrielle. He had a vague yet infallible sense of it.

When he reached the curb, he stood with his back against the iron street
lamp, breathing the fresh wind that came off the mountain. It was a good
view of downtown, along the broad straight length of Market Street.
Rather like a boulevard in Paris. And all around the gentle urban slopes
covered with cheerful lighted windows.

Yes, but where was she, precisely? Gabrielle, he whispered. He closed
his eyes. He listened. At first there came the great boundless roar of
thousands of voices, image crowding upon image. The whole wide world
threatened to open up, and to swallow him with its ceaseless
lamentations. Gabrielle. The thunderous clamor slowly died away. He
caught a glimmer of pain from a mortal passing near. And in a high
building on the hill, a dying woman dreamed of childhood strife as she
sat listless at her window. Then in a dim steady silence, he saw what he
wanted to see: Gabrielle, stopped in her tracks. She'd heard his voice.
She knew that she was watched. A tall blond female, hair in a single
braid down her back, standing in one of the clean deserted streets of
downtown, not far from him. She wore a khaki jacket and pants, a worn
brown sweater. And a hat not unlike his own that covered her eyes, only
a bit of her face visible above her upturned collar. Now she closed her
mind, effectively surrounding herself with an invisible shield. The
image vanished.

Yes, here, waiting for her son, Lestat. Why had he ever feared for her-
the cold one who fears nothing for herself, only for Lestat. All right.
He was pleased. And Lestat would be also.

But what about the other? Louis, the gentle one, with the black hair and
green eyes, whose steps made a careless sound when he walked, who even
whistled to himself in dark streets so that mortals heard him coming.
Louis, where are you?

Almost instantly, he saw Louis enter an empty drawing room. He had only
just come up the stairs from the cellar where he had slept by day in a
vault behind the wall. He had no awareness at all of anyone watching. He
moved with silky strides across the dusty room, and stood looking down
through the soiled glass at the thick flow of passing cars. Same old
house on Divisadero Street. In fact, nothing changed much at all with
this elegant and sensuous creature who had caused such a little tumult
with his story in Interview with the Vampire. Except that now he was
waiting for Lestat. He had had troubling dreams; he was fearful for
Lestat, and full of old and unfamiliar longings.

Reluctantly, he let the image go. He had a great affection for that one,
Louis. And the affection was not wise because Louis had a tender,
educated soul and none of the dazzling power of Gabrielle or her
devilish son. Yet Louis might survive as long as they, he was sure of
that. Curious the kinds of courage which made for endurance. Maybe it
had to do with acceptance. But then how account for Lestat, beaten,
scarred, yet risen again? Lestat who never accepted anything?

They had not found each other yet, Gabrielle and Louis. But it was all
right. What was he to do? Bring them together? The very idea. . . .
Besides, Lestat would do that soon enough.

But now he was smiling again. "Lestat, you are the damnedest creature!
Yes, a brat prince." Slowly, he reinvoked every detail of Lestat's face
and form. The ice-blue eyes, darkening with laughter; the generous
smile; the way the eyebrows came together in a boyish scowl; the sudden
flares of high spirits and blasphemous humor. Even the catlike poise of
the body he could envisage. So uncommon in a man of muscular build. Such
strength, always such strength and such irrepressible optimism.

The fact was, he did not know his own mind about the entire enterprise,
only that he was amused and fascinated. Of course there was no thought
of vengeance against Lestat for telling his secrets. And surely Lestat
had counted upon that, but then one never knew. Maybe Lestat truly did
not care. He knew no more than the fools back there in the bar, on that
score.

What mattered to him was that for the first time in so many years, he
found himself thinking in terms of past and future; he found himself
most keenly aware of the nature of this era. Those Who Must Be Kept were
fiction even to their own children! Long gone were the days when fierce
rogue blood drinkers searched for their shrine and their powerful blood.
Nobody believed or even cared any longer!

And there lay the essence of the age; for its mortals were of an even
more practical ilk, rejecting at every turn the miraculous. With
unprecedented courage, they had founded their greatest ethical advances
squarely upon the truths embedded in the physical.

Two hundred years since he and Lestat had discussed these very things on
an island in the Mediterranean-the dream of a godless and truly moral
world where love of one's fellow man would be the only dogma. A world in
which we do not belong. And now such a world was almost realized. And
the Vampire Lestat had passed into popular art where all the old devils
ought to go, and would take with him the whole accused tribe, including
Those Who Must Be Kept, though they might never know it.

It made him smile, the symmetry of it. He found himself not merely in
awe but strongly seduced by the whole idea of what Lestat had done. He
could well understand the lure of fame.

Why, it had thrilled him shamelessly to see his own name scrawled on the
wall of the bar. He had laughed; but he had enjoyed the laughter
thoroughly.

Leave it to Lestat to construct such an inspiring drama, and that's what
it was, all right. Lestat, the boisterous boulevard actor of the ancien
regime, now risen to stardom in this beauteous and innocent era.

But had he been right in his little summation to the fledgling in the
bar, that no one could destroy the brat prince? That was sheer romance.
Good advertising. The fact is, any of us can be destroyed... one way or
another. Even Those Who Must Be Kept, surely.

They were weak, of course, those fledgling "Children of Darkness," as
they styled themselves. The numbers did not increase their strength
significantly. But what of the older ones? If only Lestat had not used
the names of Mael and Pandora. But were there not blood drinkers older

even than that, ones of whom he himself knew nothing? He thought of that
warning on the wall: "ancient and terrible beings ... moving slowly and
inexorably to answer his summons."

A frisson startled him; coldness, yet for an instant he thought he saw a
jungle-a green, fetid place, full of unwholesome and smothering warmth.
Gone, without explanation, like so many sudden signals and messages he
received. He'd learned long ago to shut out the endless flow of voices
and images that his mental powers enabled him to hear; yet now and then
something violent and unexpected, like a sharp cry, came through.

Whatever, he had been in this city long enough. He did not know that he
meant to intervene, no matter what happened! He was angry with his own
sudden warmth of feeling. He wanted to be home now. He had been away
from Those Who Must Be Kept for too long.

But how he loved to watch the energetic human crowd, the clumsy parade
of shining traffic. Even the poison smells of the city he did not mind.
They were no worse than the stench of ancient Rome, or Antioch, or
Athens-when piles of human waste fed the flies wherever you looked, and
the air reeked of inevitable disease and hunger. No, he liked the clean
pastel-colored cities of California well enough. He could have lingered
forever among their clear-eyed and purposeful inhabitants.

But he must go home. The concert was not for many nights, and he would
see Lestat then, if he chose.... How delicious not to know precisely
what he might do, any more than others knew, others who didn't even
believe in him!

He crossed Castro Street and went swiftly up the wide pavement of
Market. The wind had slackened; the air was almost warm. He took up a
brisk pace, even whistling to himself the way that Louis often did. He
felt good. Human. Then he stopped before the store that sold television
sets and radios. Lestat was singing on each and every screen, both large
and small.

He laughed under his breath at the great concert of gesture and
movement. The sound was oft", buried in tiny glowing seeds within the
equipment. He'd have to search to receive it. But wasn't there a charm
in merely watching the antics of the yellow-haired brat' prince in
merciless silence?

The camera drew back to render the full figure of Lestat who played a
violin as if in a void. A starry darkness now and then enclosed him.
Then quite suddenly a pair of doors were opened- it was the old shrine
of Those Who Must Be Kept, quite exactly! And there-Akasha and Enkil, or
rather actors made up to play the part, white-skinned Egyptians with
long black silken hair and glittering jewelry.

Of course. Why hadn't he guessed that Lestat would carry it to this
vulgar and tantalizing extreme? He leant forward, listening for the
transmission of the sound. He heard the voice of Lestat above the
violin:

Akasha! Enkil!

Keep your secrets

Keep your silence

It is a better gift than truth.

And now as the violin player closed his eyes and bore down on his music,
Akasha slowly rose from the throne. The violin fell from Lestat's hands
as he saw her; like a dancer, she wrapped her arms around him, drew him
to her, bent to take the blood from him, while pressing his teeth to her
own throat.

It was rather better than he had ever imagined-such clever craft. Now
the figure of Enkil awakened, rising and walking like a mechanical doll.
Forward he came to take back his Queen. Lestat was thrown down on the
floor of the shrine. And there the film ended. The rescue by Marius was
not part of it.

"Ah, so I do not become a television celebrity," he whispered with a
faint smile. He went to the entrance of the darkened store.

The young woman was waiting to let him in. She had the black plastic
video cassette in her hand.

"All twelve of them,'* she said. Fine dark skin and large drowsy brown
eyes. The band of silver around her wrist caught the light. He found it
enticing. She took the money gratefully, without counting it. "They've
been playing them on a dozen channels. I caught them all over, actually.
Finished it yesterday afternoon."

"You've served me well," he answered. "I thank you." He produced another
thick fold of bills.

"No big thing," she said. She didn't want to take the extra money.

You will.

She took it with a shrug and put it in her pocket.

No big thing. He loved these eloquent modern expressions. He loved the
sudden shift of her luscious breasts as she'd shrugged, and the lithe
twist of her hips beneath the coarse denim clothes that made her seem
all the more smooth and fragile. An incandescent flower. As she opened
the door for him, he touched the soft nest of her brown hair. Quite
unthinkable to feed upon one who has served you; one so innocent. He
would not do this! Yet he turned her around, his gloved fingers slipping
up through her hair to cradle her head:

"The smallest kiss, my precious one."

Her eyes closed; his teeth pierced the artery instantly and his tongue
lapped at the blood. Only a taste. A tiny flash of heat that burnt
itself out in his heart within a second. Then he drew back, his lips
resting against her frail throat. He could feel her pulse. The craving
for the full draught was almost more than he could bear. Sin and
atonement. He let her go. He smoothed her soft, springy curls, as he
looked into her misted eyes.

Do not remember.

"Good-bye now," she said, smiling.

He stood motionless on the deserted sidewalk. And the thirst, ignored
and sullen, gradually died back. He looked at the cardboard sheath of
the video cassette.

"A dozen channels," she had said. "I caught them all over, actually."
Now if that was so, his charges had already seen Lestat, inevitably, on
the large screen positioned before them in the shrine. Long ago, he'd
set the satellite dish on the slope above the roof to bring them
broadcasts from all the world. A tiny computer device changed the
channel each hour. For years, they'd stared expressionless as the images
and colors shifted before their lifeless eyes. Had there been the
slightest flicker when they heard Lestat's voice, or saw their very own
image? Or heard their own names sung as if in a hymn?

Well, he would soon find out. He would play the video cassette for them.
He would study their frozen, gleaming faces for something-anything-
besides the mere reflection of the light.

"Ah, Marius, you never despair, do you? You are no better than Lestat,
with your foolish dreams."

It was midnight before he reached home.

He shut the steel door against the driving snow, and, standing still for
a moment, let the heated air surround him. The blizzard through which
he'd passed had lacerated his face and his ears, even his gloved
fingers. The warmth felt so good.

In the quiet, he listened for the familiar sound of the giant
generators, and the faint electronic pulse of the television set within
the shrine many hundreds of feet beneath him. Could that be Lestat
singing? Yes. Undoubtedly, the last mournful words of some other song.

Slowly he peeled off his gloves. He removed his hat and ran his hand
through his hair. He studied the large entrance hall and the adjacent
drawing room for the slightest evidence that anyone else had been here.

Of course that was almost an impossibility. He was miles from the
nearest outpost of the modern world, in a great frozen snow-covered
waste. But out of force of habit, he always observed everything closely.
There were some who could breach this fortress, if only they knew where
it was.

All was well. He stood before the giant aquarium, the great room-sized
tank which abutted the south wall. So carefully he had constructed this
thing, of the heaviest glass and the finest equipment. He watched the
schools of multicolored fishes dance past him, then alter their
direction instantly and totally in the artificial gloom. The giant sea
kelp swayed from one side to another, a forest caught in a hypnotic
rhythm as the gentle pressure of the aerator drove it this way and that.
It never failed to captivate him, to lock him suddenly to its
spectacular monotony. The round black eyes of the fish sent a tremor
through him; the high slender trees of kelp with their tapering yellow
leaves thrilled him vaguely; but it was the movement, the constant
movement that was the crux.

Finally he turned away from it, glancing back once into that pure,
unconscious, and incidentally beautiful world.

Yes, all was well here.

Good to be in these warm rooms. Nothing amiss with the soft leather
furnishings scattered about the thick wine-colored carpet. Fireplace
piled with wood. Books lining the walls. And there the great bank of
electronic equipment waiting for him to insert Lestat's tape. That's
what he wanted to do, settle by the fire and watch each rock film in
sequence. The craft intrigued him as well as the songs themselves, the
chemistry of old and new-how Lestat had used the distortions of media to
disguise himself so perfectly as another mortal rock singer trying to
appear a god.

He took off his long gray cloak and threw it on the chair. Why did the
whole thing give him such an unexpected pleasure! Do we all long to
blaspheme, to shake our fists in the faces of the gods? Perhaps so.
Centuries ago, in what is now called "ancient Rome," he, the well-
mannered boy, had always laughed at the antics of bad children.

He should go to the shrine before he did anything else, he knew that.
Just for a few moments, to make certain things were as they should be.
To check the television, the heat, and all the complex electrical
systems. To place fresh coals and incense in the brazier. It was so easy
to maintain a paradise for them now, with the livid lights that gave the
nutrients of the sun to trees and flowers that had never seen the
natural lights of heaven. But the incense, that must be done by hand, as
always. And never did he sprinkle it over the coals that he did not
think of the first time he'd ever done it.

Time to take a soft cloth, too, and carefully, respectfully, wipe the
dust from the parents-from their hard unyielding bodies, even- from
their lips and their eyes, their cold unblinking eyes. And to think, it
had been a full month. It seemed shameful.

Have you missed me, my beloved Akasha and Enkil? Ah, the old game.

His reason told him, as it always had, that they did not know or care
whether he came or went. But his pride always teased with another
possibility. Does not the crazed lunatic locked in the madhouse cell
feel something for the slave who brings it water? Perhaps it wasn't an
apt comparison. Certainly not one that was kind.

Yes, they had moved for Lestat, the brat prince, that was true-Akasha to
offer the powerful blood and Enkil to take vengeance. And Lestat could
make his video films about it forever. But had it not merely proved once
and for all that there was no mind left in either of them? Surely no
more than an atavistic spark had flared for an instant; it had been too
simple to drive them back to silence and stillness on their barren
throne.

Nevertheless, it had embittered him. After all, it had never been his
goal to transcend the emotions of a thinking man, but rather to refine
them, reinvent them, enjoy them with an infinitely perfectible
understanding. And he had been tempted at the very moment to turn on
Lestat with an all-too-human fury.

Young one, why don't you take Those Who Must Be Kept since they have
shown you such remarkable favor? I should like to be rid of them now. I
have only had this burden since the dawn of the Christian era.

But in truth that wasn't his finer feeling. Not then, not now. Only a
temporary indulgence. Lestat he loved as he always had. Every realm

needs a brat prince. And the silence of the King and Queen was as much a
blessing as a curse, perhaps. Lestat's song had been quite right on that
point. But who would ever settle the question?

Oh, he would go down later with the video cassette and watch for
himself, of course. And if there were just the faintest flicker, the
faintest shift in their eternal gaze.

But there you go again.... Lestat makes you young and stupid. Likely to
feed on innocence and dream of cataclysm.

How many times over the ages had such hopes risen, only to leave him
wounded, even heartbroken. Years ago, he had brought them color films of
the rising sun, the blue sky, the pyramids of Egypt. Ah, such a miracle!
Before their very eyes the sundrenched waters of the Nile flowed. He
himself had wept at the perfection of illusion. He had even feared the
cinematic sun might hurt him, though of course he knew that it could
not. But such had been the caliber of the invention. That he could stand
there, watching the sunrise, as he had not seen it since he was a mortal
man.

But Those Who Must Be Kept had gazed on in unbroken indifference, or was
it wonder-great undifferentiated wonder that held the particles of dust
in the air to be a source of endless fascination?

Who will ever know? They had lived four thousand years before he was
ever born. Perhaps the voices of the world roared in their brains, so
keen was their telepathic hearing; perhaps a billion shifting images
blinded them to all else. Surely such things had almost driven him out
of his mind until he'd learned to control them.

It had even occurred to him that he would bring modern medical tools to
bear on the matter, that he would hook electrodes to their very heads to
test the patterns of their brains! But it had been too distasteful, the
idea of such callous and ugly instruments. After all, they were his King
and his Queen, the Father and Mother of us all. Under his roof, they had
reigned without challenge for two millennia.

One fault he must admit. He had an acid tongue of late in speaking to
them. He was no longer the High Priest when he entered the chamber. No.
There was something flippant and sarcastic in his tone, and that should
be beneath him. Maybe it was what they called "the modern temper." How
could one live in a world of rockets to the moon without an intolerable
self-consciousness threatening every trivial syllable? And he had never
been oblivious to the century at hand.

Whatever the case, he had to go to the shrine now. And he would purify
his thoughts properly. He would not come with resentment or despair.
Later, after he had seen the videos, he would play the tape for them. He
would remain there, watching. But he did not have the stamina for it
now.

He entered the steel elevator and pressed the button. The great
electronic whine and the sudden loss of gravity gave him a faint
sensuous pleasure. The world of this day and age was full of so many
sounds that had never been heard before. It was quite refreshing. And
then there was the lovely ease of plummeting hundreds of feet in a shaft
through solid ice to reach the electrically lighted chambers below.

He opened the door and stepped into the carpeted corridor. It was Lestat
again singing within the shrine, a rapid, more joyful song, his voice
battling a thunder of drums and the twisted undulating electronic moans.

But something was not quite right here. Merely looking at the long
corridor he sensed it. The sound was too loud, too clear. The
antechambers leading to the shrine were open!

He went to the entrance immediately. The electric doors had been
unlocked and thrown back. How could this be? Only he knew the code for
the tiny series of computer buttons. The second pair of doors had been
opened wide as well and so had the third. In fact he could see into the
shrine itself, his view blocked by the white marble wall of the small
alcove. The red and blue flicker of the television screen beyond was
like the light of an old gas fireplace.

And Lestat's voice echoed powerfully over the marble walls, the vaulted
ceilings.

Kill us, my brothers and sisters The war is on.

Understand what you see, When you see me.

He took a slow easy breath. No sound other than the music, which was
fading now to be replaced by characterless mortal chatter. And no
outsider here. No, he would have known. No one in his lair. His
instincts told him that for certain.

There was a stab of pain in his chest. He even felt a warmth in his
face. How remarkable.

He walked through the marble antechambers and stopped at the door of the
alcove. Was he praying? Was he dreaming? He knew what he would soon see-
Those Who Must be Kept-just as they had always been. And some dismal
explanation for the doors, a shorted circuit or a broken fuse, would
soon present itself.

Yet he felt not fear suddenly but the raw anticipation of a young mystic
on the verge of a vision, that at last he would see the living Lord, or
in his own hands the bloody stigmata.

Calmly, he stepped into the shrine.

For a moment it did not register. He saw what he expected to see, the
long room filled with trees and flowers, and the stone bench that was
the throne, and beyond it the large television screen pulsing with eyes
and mouths and unimportant laughter. Then he acknowledged the fact:
there was only one figure seated on the throne; and this figure was
almost completely transparent! The violent colors of the distant
television screen were passing right through it!

No, but this is quite out of the question! Marius, look carefully. Even
your senses are not infallible. Like a flustered mortal he put his hands
to his head as if to block out all distraction.

He was gazing at the back of Enkil, who, save for his black hair, had
become some sort of milky glass statue through which the colors and the
lights moved with faint distortion. Suddenly an uneven burst of light
caused the figure to radiate, to become a source of faint glancing
beams.

He shook his head. Not possible. Then he gave himself a little shake all
over. "All right, Marius," he whispered. "Proceed slowly."

But a dozen unformed suspicions were sizzling in his mind. Someone had
come, someone older and more powerful than he, someone who had
discovered Those Who Must Be Kept, and done something unspeakable! And
all this was Lestat's doing! Lestat, who had told the world his secret.

His knees were weak. Imagine! He had not felt such mortal debilities in
so long that he had utterly forgotten them. Slowly he removed a linen
handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped at the thin layer of blood sweat
that covered his forehead. Then he moved towards the throne, and went
round it, until he stood staring directly at the figure of the King.

Enkil as he had been for two thousand years, the black hair in long tiny
plaits, hanging to his shoulders. The broad gold collar lying against
his smooth, hairless chest, the linen of his kilt immaculate with its
pressed pleats, the rings still on his motionless fingers.

But the body itself was glass! And it was utterly hollow! Even the huge
shining orbs of the eyes were transparent, only shadowy circles defining
the irises. No, wait. Observe everything. And there, you can see the
bones, turned to the very same substance as the flesh, they are there,
and also the fine crazing of veins and arteries, and something like
lungs inside, but it is all transparent now, it is all of the same
texture. But what had been done to him!

And the thing was changing still. Before his very eyes, it was losing
its milky cast. It was drying up, becoming ever more transparent.

Tentatively, he touched it. Not glass at all. A husk.

But his careless gesture had upset the thing. The body teetered, then
fell over onto the marble tile, its eyes locked open, its limbs rigid in
their former position. It made a sound like the scraping of an insect as
it settled.

Only the hair moved. The soft black hair. But it too was changed. It was
breaking into fragments. It was breaking into tiny shimmering splinters.
A cool ventilating current was scattering it like straw. And as the hair
fell away from the throat, he saw two dark puncture wounds in it. Wounds
that had not healed as they might have done because all the healing
blood had been drawn out of the thing.

"Who has done this?" He whispered aloud, tightening the fingers of his
right fist as if this would keep him from crying out. Who could have
taken every last drop of life from him?

And the thing was dead". There wasn't the slightest doubt of it. And
what was revealed by this awful spectacle?

Our King is destroyed, our Father. And I still live; I breathe. And this
can only mean that she contains the primal power. She was the first, and
it has always resided in her. And someone has taken her!

Search the cellar. Search the house. But these were frantic, foolish
thoughts. No one had entered here, and he knew it. Only one creature
could have done this deed! Only one creature would have known that such
a thing was finally possible.

He didn't move. He stared at the figure lying on the floor, watching it
lose the very last trace of opacity. And would that he could weep for
the thing, for surely someone should. Gone now with all that it had ever
known, all that it had ever witnessed. This too coming to an end. It
seemed beyond his ability to accept it.

But he wasn't alone. Someone or something had just come out of the
alcove, and he could feel it watching him.

For one moment-one clearly irrational moment-he kept his eyes on the
fallen King. He tried to comprehend as calmly as he could everything
that was occurring around him. The thing was moving towards him now,
without a sound; it was becoming a graceful shadow in the corner of his
eye, as it came around the throne and stood beside him.

He knew who it was, who it had to be, and that it had approached with
the natural poise of a living being. Yet, as he looked up, nothing could
prepare him for the moment.

Akasha, standing only three inches away from him. Her skin was white and
hard and opaque as it had always been. Her cheek shone like pearl as she
smiled, her dark eyes moist and enlivened as the flesh puckered ever so
slightly around them. They positively glistered with vitality.

Speechless, he stared. He watched as she lifted her jeweled fingers to
touch his shoulder. He closed his eyes, then opened them. Over thousands
of years he had spoken to her in so many tongues-prayers, pleas,
complaints, confessions-and now he said not a word. He merely looked at
her mobile lips, at the flash of white fang teeth, and the cold glint of
recognition in her eyes, and the soft yielding cleft of the bosom moving
beneath the gold necklace.

"You've served me well," she said. "I thank you." Her voice was low,
husky, beautiful. But the intonation, the words; it was what he'd said
hours ago to the girl in the darkened store in the city!

The fingers tightened on his shoulder.

"Ah, Marius," she said, imitating his tone perfectly again, "you never
despair, do you? You are no better than Lestat, with your foolish
dreams."

His own words again, spoken to himself on a San Francisco street. She
mocked him!

Was this terror? Or was it hatred that he felt-hatred that had lain
waiting in him for centuries, mixed with resentment and weariness, and
grief for his human heart, hatred that now boiled to a heat he could
never have imagined. He didn't dare move, dare speak. The hate was fresh
and astonishing and it had taken full possession of him and he could do
nothing to control it or understand it. All judgment had left him.

But she knew. Of course. She knew everything, every thought, word, deed,
that's what she was telling him. She had always known, everything and
anything that she chose to know! And she'd known that the mindless thing
beside her was past defending itself. And this, which should have been a
triumphant moment, was somehow a moment of horror!

She laughed softly as she looked at him. He could not bear the sound of
it. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to destroy her, all her monstrous
children be damned! Let us all perish with her! If he could have done
it, he would have destroyed her!

It seemed she nodded, that she was telling him she understood. The
monstrous insult of it. Well, he did not understand. And in another
moment, he would be weeping like a child. Some ghastly error had been
made, some terrible miscarriage of purpose.

"My dear servant," she said, her lips lengthening in a faint bitter
smile. "You have never had the power to stop me."

"What do you want! What do you mean to do!"

"You must forgive me," she said, oh, so politely, just as he had said
the very words to the young one in the back room of the bar. "I'm going
now."

He heard the sound before the floor moved, the shriek of tearing metal.
He was falling, and the television screen had blown apart, the glass
piercing his flesh like so many tiny daggers. He cried out, like a
mortal man, and this time it was fear. The ice was cracking, roaring, as
it came down upon him.

"Akasha!"

He was dropping into a giant crevasse, he was plunging into scalding
coldness.

"Akasha!" he cried again.

But she was gone, and he was still falling. Then the broken tumbling ice
caught him, surrounded him, and buried him, as it crushed the bones of
his arms, his legs, his face. He felt his blood pouring out against the
searing surface, then freezing. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe.
And the pain was so intense that he couldn't bear it. He saw the jungle
again, inexplicably for an instant, as he had seen it earlier. The hot
fetid jungle, and something moving through it. Then it was gone. And
when he cried out this time, it was to Lestat: Danger, Lestat, beware.
We are all in danger.

Then there was only the cold and the pain, and he was losing
consciousness. A dream coming, a lovely dream of warm sun shining on a
grassy clearing. Yes, the blessed sun. The dream had him now. And the
women, how lovely their red hair. But what was it, the thing that was
lying there, beneath the wilted leaves, on the altar?

PART I

THE ROAD TO THE VAMPIRE LESTAT

Tempting to place in coherent collage the bee, the mountain range, the
shadow of my hoof-tempting to join them, enlaced by logical vast &
shining molecular thought-thread thru all Substance-Tempting to say I
see in all I see the place where the needle began in the tapestry-but
ah, it all looks whole and part- long live the eyeball and the lucid
heart.
-STAN RICE from "Four Days in Another City" Some Lamb (1975)

THE LEGEND OF THE TWINS

Tell it in rhythmic continuity.
Detail by detail the living creatures.
Tell it as must, the rhythm solid in the shape.
Woman. Arms lifted. Shadow eater.
-STAN RICE from "Elegy" Whiteboy (1976)

"CALL HER FOR ME," HE SAID. "TELL HER I HAVE had the strangest dreams,
that they were about the twins. You must call her!" His daughter didn't
want to do it. She watched him fumble with the book. His hands were his
enemies now, he often said. At ninety-one, he. could scarcely hold a
pencil or turn a page. "Daddy," she said, "that woman's probably dead."
Everybody he had known was dead. He'd outlived his colleagues; he'd
outlived his brothers and sisters, and even two of his children. In a
tragic way, he had outlived the twins, because no one read his book now.
No one cared about "the legend of the twins."

"No, you call her," he said. "You must call her. You tell her that I
dreamed of the twins. I saw them in the dream."

"Why would she want to know that, Daddy?"

His daughter took the little address book and paged through it slowly.
Dead all these people, long dead. The men who had worked with her father
on so many expeditions, the editors and photographers who had worked
with him on his book. Even his enemies who had said his life was wasted,
that his research had come to nothing; even the most scurrilous, who had
accused him of doctoring pictures and lying about the caves, which her
father had never done.

Why should she be still alive, the woman who had financed his long-ago
expeditions, the rich woman who had sent so much money for so many
years?

"You must ask her to come! Tell her it's very important. I must describe
to her what I've seen."

To come? All the way to Rio de Janeiro because an old man had had
strange dreams? His daughter found the page, and yes, there was the name
and the number. And the date beside it, only two years old.

"She lives in Bangkok, Daddy." What time was it in Bangkok? She had no
idea.

"She'll come to me. I know she will."

He closed his eyes and settled back onto the pillow. He was small now,
shrunken. But when he opened his eyes, there was her father looking at
her, in spite of the shriveling yellowed skin, the dark spots on the
backs of his wrinkled hands, the bald head.

He appeared to be listening to the music now, the soft singing of the
Vampire Lestat, coming from her room. She would turn it down if it kept
him awake. She wasn't much for American rock singers, but this one she'd
rather liked. >

"Tell her I must speak to her!" he said suddenly, as though coming back
to himself.

"All right, Daddy, if you want me to." She turned off the lamp by the
bed. "You go back to sleep."

"Don't give up till you find her. Tell her... the twins! I've seen the
twins."

But as she was leaving, he called her back again with one of those
sudden moans that always frightened her. In the light from the hall, she
could see he was pointing to the books on the far wall.

"Get it for me," he said. He was struggling to sit up again.

"The book, Daddy?"

"The twins, the pictures . . ."

She took down the old volume and brought it to him and put it in his
lap. She propped the pillows up higher for him and turned on the lamp
again.

It hurt her to feel how light he was as she lifted him; it hurt her to
see him struggle to put on his silver-rimmed glasses. He took the pencil
in hand, to read with it, ready to write, as he had always done, but
then he let it fall and she caught it and put it back on the table.

"You go call her!" he said.

She nodded. But she stayed there, just in case he needed her. The music
from her study was louder now, one of the more metallic and raucous
songs. But he didn't seem to notice. Very gently she opened the book for
him, and turned to the first pair of color pictures, one filling the
left page, the other the right.

How well she knew these pictures, how well she remembered as a little
girl making the long climb with him to the cave on Mount Carmel, where
he had led her into the dry dusty darkness, his flashlight lifted to
reveal the painted carvings on the wall.

"There, the two figures, you see them, the red-haired women?"

It had been difficult at first to make out the crude stick figures in
the dim beam of the flashlight. So much easier later to study what the
close-up camera so beautifully revealed.

But she would never forget that first day, when he had shown her each
small drawing in sequence: the twins dancing in rain that fell in tiny
dashes from a scribble of cloud; the twins kneeling on either side of
the altar upon which a body lay as if in sleep or death; the twins taken
prisoner and standing before a tribunal of scowling figures; the twins
running away. And then the damaged pictures of which nothing could be
recovered; and finally the one twin alone weeping, her tears falling in
tiny dashes, like the rain, from eyes that were tiny black dashes too.

They'd been carved in the rock, with pigments added-orange for the hair,
white chalk for the garments, green for the plants that grew around
them, and even blue for the sky over their heads. Six thousand years had
passed since they had been created in the deep darkness of the cave.

And no less old were the near identical carvings, in a shallow rock
chamber high on the slope of Huayna Picchu, on the other side of the
world.

She had made that journey also with her father, a year later, across the
Urubamba River and up through the jungles of Peru. She'd seen for
herself the same two women in a style remarkably similar though not the
same.

There again on the smooth wall were the same scenes of the rain falling,
of the red-haired twins in their joyful dance. And then the somber altar
scene in loving detail. It was the body of a woman lying on the altar,
and in their hands the twins held two tiny, carefully drawn plates.
Soldiers bore down upon the ceremony with swords uplifted. The twins
were taken into bondage, weeping. And then came the hostile tribunal and
the familiar escape. In another picture, faint but still discernible,
the twins held an infant between them, a small bundle with dots for eyes
and the barest bit of red hair; then to others they entrusted their
treasure as once more the menacing soldiers appeared.

And lastly, the one twin, amid the full leafy trees of the jungle, her
arms out as if reaching for her sister, the red pigment of her hair
stuck to the stone wall with dried blood.

How well she could recall her excitement. She had shared her father's
ecstasy, that he had found the twins a world apart from each other, in
these ancient pictures, buried in the mountain caves of Palestine and
Peru.

It seemed the greatest event in history; nothing could have been so
important. Then a year later a vase had been discovered in a Berlin
museum that bore the very same figures, kneeling, plates in hand before
the stone bier. A crude thing it was, without documentation. But what
did that matter? It had been dated 4000 B.C. by the most reliable
methods, and there unmistakably, in the newly translated language of
ancient Sumer, were the words that meant so much to all of them:

"The Legend of the Twins"

Yes, so terribly significant, it had all seemed. The foundation of a
life's work, until he presented his research.

They'd laughed at him. Or ignored him. Not believable, such a link
between the Old World and the New. Six thousand years old, indeed!
They'd relegated him to the "crazy camp" along with those who talked of
ancient astronauts, Atlantis, and the lost kingdom of Mu.

How he'd argued, lectured, begged them to believe, to journey with him
to the caves, to see for themselves! How he'd laid out the specimens of
pigment, the lab reports, the detailed studies of the plants in the
carvings and even the white robes of the twins.

Another man might have given it up. Every university and foundation had
turned him away. He had no money even to care for his children. He took
a teaching position for bread and butter, and, in the evenings, wrote
letters to museums all over the world. And a clay tablet, covered with
drawings, was found in Manchester, and another in London, both clearly
depicting the twins! On borrowed money he journeyed to photograph these
artifacts. He wrote papers on them for obscure publications. He
continued his search.

Then she had come, the quiet-spoken and eccentric woman who had listened
to him, looked at his materials, and then given him an ancient papyrus,
found early in this century in a cave in Upper Egypt, which contained
some of the very same pictures, and the words "The Legend of the Twins."

"A gift for you," she'd said. And then she'd bought the vase for him
from the museum in Berlin. She obtained the tablets from England as
well.

But it was the Peruvian discovery that fascinated her most of all. She
gave him unlimited sums of money to go back to South America and
continue his work.

For years he'd searched cave after cave for more evidence, spoken to
villagers about their oldest myths and stories, examined ruined cities,
temples, even old Christian churches for stones taken from pagan
shrines.

But decades passed and he found nothing.

It had been the ruin of him finally. Even she, his patron, had told him
to give it up. She did not want to see his life spent on this. He should
leave it now to younger men. But he would not listen. This was his
discovery! The Legend of the Twins! And so she wrote the checks for him,
and he went on until he was too old to climb the mountains and hack his
way through the jungle anymore.

In the last years, he lectured only now and then. He could not interest
the new students in this mystery, even when he showed the papyrus, the
vase, the tablets. After all, these items did not fit anywhere really,
they were of no definable period. And the caves, could anyone have found
them now?

But she had been loyal, his patron. She'd bought him this house in Rio,
created a trust for him which would come to his daughter when he died.
Her money had paid for his daughter's education, for so many other
things. Strange that they lived in such comfort. It was as if he had
been successful after all.

"Call her," he said again. He was becoming agitated, empty hands
scraping at the photographs. After all, his daughter had not moved. She
stood at his shoulder looking down at the pictures, at the figures of
the twins.

"All right, Father." She left him with his book.

It was late afternoon the next day when his daughter came in to kiss
him. The nurse said that he'd been crying like a child. He opened his
eyes as his daughter squeezed his hand.

"I know now what they did to them," he said. "I've seen it! It was
sacrilege what they did."

His daughter tried to quiet him. She told him that she had called the
woman. The woman was on her way.

"She wasn't in Bangkok, Daddy. She's moved to Burma, to Rangoon. But I
reached her there, and she was so glad to hear from you. She said she'd
leave within a few hours. She wants to know about the dreams."

He was so happy. She was coming. He closed his eyes and turned his head
into the pillow. "The dreams will start again, after dark," he
whispered. "The whole tragedy will start again."

"Daddy, rest," she said. "Until she comes."

Sometime during the night he died. When his daughter came in, he was
already cold. The nurse was waiting for her instructions. He had the
dull, half-lidded stare of dead people. His pencil was lying on the
coverlet, and there was a piece of paper-the flyleaf of his precious
book-crumpled under his right hand.

She didn't cry. For a moment she didn't do anything. She remembered the
cave in Palestine, the lantern. "Do you see? The two women?"

Gently, she closed his eyes, and kissed his forehead. He'd written
something on the piece of paper. She lifted his cold, stiff fingers and
removed the paper and read the few words he'd scrawled in his uneven
spidery hand:

"IN THE JUNGLES-WALKING."

What could it mean?

And it was too late to reach the woman now. She would probably arrive
sometime that evening. All that long way. . . .

Well, she would give her the paper, if it mattered, and tell her the
things he'd said about the twins.

THE    SHORT    HAPPY     LIFE

OF    BABY    JENKS AND    THE    FANG    GANG

The Murder Burger is served right here. You need not wait at the gate of
Heaven for unleavened death. You can be a goner on this very corner.

Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh. If you wish to eat it you must
feed it. "Yall come back." "You bet."
STAN RICE - from "Texas Suite" Some Lamb (1975)

BABY JENKS PUSHED HER HARLEY TO SEVENTY miles an hour, the wind freezing
her naked white hands. She'd been fourteen last summer when they'd done
it to her, made her one of the Dead, and "dead weight" she was eighty-
five pounds max. She hadn't combed out her hair since it happened-didn't
have to-and her two little blond braids were swept back by the wind, off
the shoulders of her black leather jacket. Bent forward, scowling with
her little pouting mouth turned down, she looked mean, and deceptively
cute. Her big blue eyes were vacant.

The rock music of The Vampire Lestat was blaring through her earphones,
so she felt nothing but the vibration of the giant motorcycle under her,
and the mad lonesomeness she had known all the way from Gun Barrel City
five nights ago. And there was a dream that was bothering her, a dream
she kept having every night right before she opened her eyes.

She'd see these redheaded twins in the dream, these two pretty ladies,
and then all these terrible things would go down. No, she didn't like it
one damn bit and she was so lonely she was going out of her head.

The Fang Gang hadn't met her south of Dallas as they had promised. She
had waited two nights by the graveyard, then she had known that
something was really, really wrong. They would never have headed out to
California without her. They were going to see the Vampire Lestat on
stage in San Francisco, but they'd had plenty of time. No, something was
wrong. She knew it.

Even when she had been alive, Baby Jenks could feel things like that.
And now that she was Dead it was ten times what it had been then. She
knew the Fang Gang was in deep trouble. Killer and Davis would never
have dumped her. Killer said he loved her. Why the hell else would he
have ever made her, if he didn't love her? She would have died in
Detroit if it hadn't been for Killer.

She'd been bleeding to death, the doctor had done it to her all right,
the baby was gone and all, but she was going to die too, he'd cut
something in there, and she was so high on heroin she didn't give a
damn. And then that funny thing happened. Floating up to the ceiling and
looking down at her body! And it wasn't the drugs either. Seemed to her
like a whole lot of other things were about to happen.

But down there, Killer had come into the room and from up where she was
floating she could see that he was a Dead guy. Course she didn't know
what he called himself then. She just knew he wasn't alive. Otherwise he
just looked kind of ordinary. Black jeans, black hair, real deep black
eyes. He had "Fang Gang" written on the back of his leather jacket. He'd
sat down on the bed by her body and bent over it.

"Ain't you cute, little girl!" he'd said. Same damn thing the pimp had
said to her when he made her braid her hair and put plastic barrettes in
it before she went out on the street.

Then whoom! She was back in her body all right, and she was just full of
something warmer and better than horse and she heard him say: "You're
not going to die, Baby Jenks, not ever!" She had her teeth in his
goddamn neck, and boy, was that heaven!

But the never dying part? She wasn't so sure now.

Before she'd lit out of Dallas, giving up on the Fang Gang for good,
she'd seen the coven house on Swiss Avenue burnt to timbers. All the
glass blown out of the windows. It had been the same in Oklahoma City.
What the hell had happened to all those Dead guys in those houses? And
they were the big city bloodsuckers, too, the smart ones that called
themselves vampires.

How she'd laughed when Killer and Davis had told her that, that those
Dead guys went around in three-piece suits and listened to classical
music and called themselves vampires. Baby Jenks could have laughed
herself to death. Davis thought it was pretty funny too, but Killer just
kept warning her about them. Stay away from them.

Killer and Davis, and Tim and Russ, had taken her by the Swiss Avenue
coven house just before she left them to go to Gun Barrel City.

"You got to always know where it is," Davis had said. "Then stay away
from it."

They'd showed her the coven houses in every big city they hit. But it
was when they showed her the first one in St. Louis that they'd told her
the whole story.

She'd been real happy with the Fang Gang since they left Detroit,
feeding off the men they lured out of the roadside beer joints. Tim and
Russ were OK guys, but Killer and Davis were her special friends and
they were the leaders of the Fang Gang.

Now and then they'd gone into town and found some little shack of a
place, all deserted, with maybe two bums in there or something, men who
looked kinda like her dad, wearing bill caps and with real calloused
hands from the work they did. And they'd have a feast in there on those
guys. You could always live off that kind, Killer told her, because
nobody gives a damn what happens to them. They'd strike fast, kachoom!-
drinking the blood quick, draining them right down to the last
heartbeat. It wasn't fun to torture people like that, Killer said. You
had to feel sorry for them. You did what you did, then you burnt down
the shack, or you took them outside and dug a hole real deep and stuck
them down there. And if you couldn't do anything like that to cover it
up, you did this little trick: cut your finger, let your Dead blood run
over the bite where you'd sucked them dry, and look at that, the little
puncture wounds just like to vanished. Flash! Nobody'd ever figure it
out; it looked like stroke or heart attack.

Baby Jenks had been having a ball. She could handle a full-sized Harley,
carry a dead body with one arm, leap over the hood of a car, it was
fantastic. And she hadn't had the damn dream then, the dream that had
started up in Gun Barrel City-with those redheaded twins and that
woman's body lying on an altar. What were they doing?

j What would she do now if she couldn't find the Fang Gang? Out
in California the Vampire Lestat was going on stage two ' nights from
now. And every Dead guy in creation would be there, leastways that's how
she figured it, and that's how the Fang Gang had figured it and they
were all supposed to be together. So what the hell was she doing lost
from the Fang Gang and headed for a jerkwater city like St. Louis?

All she wanted was for everything to be like it had been before,
goddamn it. Oh, the blood was good, yum, it was so good, even     now
that she was alone and had to work up her nerve, the way     it had been
this evening, to pull into a gas station and lure the old     guy out
back. Oh, yeah, snap, when she'd gotten her hands on his neck, and the
blood came, it had been just fine, it was hamburgers and french fries
and strawberry shakes, it was beer and chocolate sundaes. It was
mainline, and coke and hash. It was better than screwing! It was all of
it.

But everything had been better when the Fang Gang was with her. And they
had understood when she got tired of the chewed-up old guys and said she
wanted to taste something young and tender. No problem. Hey, it was a
nice little runaway kid she needed, Killer said. Just close your eyes
and wish. And sure enough, like that, they found him hitchhiking on the
main road, just five miles out of some town in northern Missouri, name
of Parker. Real pretty boy with long shaggy black hair, just twelve
years old, but real tall for his age, with some beard on his chin, and
trying to pass for sixteen. He'd climbed on her bike and they'd taken
him into the woods. Then Baby Jenks laid down with him, real gentle
like, and slurp, that was it for Parker.

It was delicious all right, juicy was the word. But she didn't know
really whether it was any better than the mean old guys when you got
down to it. And with them it was more sport. Good ole boy blood, Davis
called it.

Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy,
as Baby Jenks saw it. His skin had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow
which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were
standing in a fluorescent light all the time. Davis had beautiful
eyelashes too, just damn near unbelievably long and thick, and he decked
himself out in all the gold he could find. He stole the gold rings and
watches and chains and things off the victims.

Davis loved to dance. They all loved to dance. But Davis could outdance
any of them. They'd go to the graveyards to dance, maybe round three
a.m., after they'd all fed and buried the dead and all that jazz. They'd
set the ghetto blaster radio on a tombstone and turn it way up, with the
Vampire Lestat roaring. "The Grand Sabbat" song, that was the one that
was good for dancing. And oh, man, how good it felt, twisting and
turning and leaping in the air, or just watching Davis move and Killer
move and Russ spinning in circles till he fell down. Now that was real
Dead guy dancing.

Now if those big city bloodsuckers weren't hip to that, they were crazy.

God, she wished now that she could tell Davis about this dream she'd
been having since Gun Barrel City. How it had come to her in her mom's
trailer, zap, the first time when she'd been sitting waiting. It was so
clear for a dream, those two women with the red hair, and the body lying
there with its skin all black and crackled like. And what the hell was
that on the plates in the dream? Yeah, it had been a heart on one plate
and a brain on the other. Christ. All those people kneeling around that
body and those plates. It was creepy. And she'd had it over and over
again since then. Why, she was having it every goddamn time she shut her
eyes and again right before she dug her way out of wherever she'd been
hiding by daylight.

Killer and Davis would understand. They'd know if it meant something.
They wanted to teach her everything.

When they first hit St. Louis on their way south, the Fang Gang had
headed off the boulevard into one of those big dark streets with iron
gates that they call "a private place" in St. Louis. It was the Central
West End down here, they said. Baby Jenks had liked those big trees.
There just aren't enough big trees in south Texas. There wasn't much of
nothing in south Texas. And here the trees were so big their branches
made a roof over your head. And the streets were full of noisy rustling
leaves and the houses were big, with peaked roofs and the lights buried
deep inside them. The coven house was made of brick and had what Killer
called Moorish arches.

"Don't go any closer," Davis had said. Killer just laughed. Killer
wasn't scared of the big city Dead. Killer had been made sixty years
ago, he was old. He knew everything.

"But they will try to hurt you, Baby Jenks," he said, walking his Harley
just a little farther up the street. He had a lean long face, wore a
gold earring in his ear, and his eyes were small, kind of thoughtful.
"See, this one's an old coven, been in St. Louis since the turn of the
century."

"But why would they want to hurt us?" Baby Jenks had asked. She was real
curious about that house. What did the Dead do who lived in houses? What
kind of furniture did they have? Who paid the bills, for God's sakes?

Seems like she could see a chandelier in one of those front rooms,
through the curtains. A big fancy chandelier. Man! Now that's living.

"Oh, they got all that down," said Davis, reading her mind. "You don't
think the neighbors think they're real people? Look at that car in the
drive, you know what that is? That's a Bugatti, baby. And the other one
beside it, a Mercedes-Benz."

What the hell was wrong with a pink Cadillac? That's what she'd like to
have, a big gas-guzzling convertible that she could push to a hundred
and twenty on the open stretch. And that's what had got her into
trouble, got her to Detroit, an asshole with a Cadillac convertible. But
just 'cause you were Dead didn't mean you had to drive a Harley and
sleep in the dirt every day, did it?

"We're free, darlin'," Davis said, reading her thoughts. "Don't you see?
There's a lotta baggage goes with this big city life. Tell her, Killer.
And you ain't getting me in no house like that, sleeping in a box under
the floorboards."

He broke up. Killer broke up. She broke up too. But what the hell was it
like in there? Did they turn on the late show and watch the vampire
movies? Davis was really rolling on the ground.

"The fact is, Baby Jenks," Killer said, "we're rogues to them, they
wanna run everything. Like they don't think we have a right to be Dead.
Like when they make a new vampire as they call it, it's a big ceremony."

"Like what happens, like a wedding or something you mean?"

More laughter from those two.

"Not exactly," Killer said, "more like a funeral!"

They were making too much noise. Surely those Dead guys in the house
were going to hear them. But Baby Jenks wasn't afraid if Killer wasn't
afraid. Where were Russ and Tim, gone off hunting?

"But the point is, Baby Jenks," said Killer, "they have all these rules,
and I'll tell you what, they're spreading it all over that they're going
to get the Vampire Lestat the night of his concert, but you know what,
they're reading his book like it was the Bible.

They're using all that language he used, Dark Gift, Dark Trick, I tell
you it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen, they're going to burn the
guy at the stake and then use his book like it was Emily Post or Miss
Manners-"

"They'll never get Lestat," Davis had sneered. "No way, man. You can't
kill the Vampire Lestat, that is flat out impossible. It has been tried,
you see, and it has failed. Now that is one cat who is utterly and
completely immortal."

"Hell, they're going out there same as we are," Killer said, "to join up
with the cat if he wants us."

Baby Jenks didn't understand the whole thing. She didn't know who Emily
Post was or Miss Manners either. And weren't we all supposed to be
immortal? And why would the Vampire Lestat want to be running around
with the Fang Gang? I mean he was a rock star, for Chrissakes. Probably
had his own limousine. And was he ever one adorable-looking guy, Dead or
alive! Blond hair to die for and a smile that just made you wanna roll
over and let him bite your goddamn neck!

She'd tried to read the Vampire Lestat's book-the whole history of Dead
guys back to ancient times and all-but there were just too many big
words and konk, she was asleep.

Killer and Davis said she'd find out she could read real fast now if she
just stuck with it. They carried copies of Lestat's book around with
them, and the first one, the one with the title she could never get
straight, something like "conversations with the vampire," or "talking
with the vampire," or "getting to meet the vampire," or something like
that. Davis would read out loud from that one sometimes, but Baby Jenks
couldn't take it in, snore! The Dead Guy, Louis, or whoever he was, had
been made Dead down in New Orleans and the book was full of stuff about
banana leaves and iron railings and Spanish moss.

"Baby Jenks, they know everything, the old European ones," Davis had
said. "They know how it started, they know we can go on and on if we
hang in there, live to be a thousand years old and turn into white
marble."

"Gee, that's just great, Davis," Baby Jenks said. "It's bad enough now
not being able to walk into a Seven Eleven under those lights without
people looking at you. Who wants to look like white marble?"

"Baby Jenks, you don't need anything anymore from the Seven Eleven,"
Davis said real calmly. But he got the point.

Forget the books. Baby Jenks did love the Vampire Lestat's music, and
those songs just kept giving her a lot, especially that one about Those
Who Must Be Kept-the Egyptian King and Queen-though to tell the truth
she didn't know what the hell it meant till Killer explained.

"They're the parents of all vampires, Baby Jenks, the Mother and the
Father. See, we're all an unbroken line of blood coming down from the
King and the Queen in ancient Egypt who are called Those Who Must Be
Kept. And the reason you gotta keep them is if you destroy them, you
destroy all of us, too."

Sounded like a bunch of bull to her.

"Lestat's seen the Mother and the Father," Davis said. "Found them
hidden on a Greek island, so he knows that it's the truth. That's what
he's been telling everybody with these songs-and it's the truth."

"And the Mother and the Father don't move or speak or drink blood, Baby
Jenks," Killer said. He looked real thoughtful, sad, almost. "They just
sit there and stare like they've done for thousands of years. Nobody
knows what those two know."

"Probably nothing," Baby Jenks had said disgustedly. "And I tell you,
this is some kind of being immortal! What do you mean the big city Dead
guys can kill us? Just how can they manage that?"

"Fire and sun can always do it," Killer answered just a touch impatient.
"I told you that. Now mind me, please. You can always fight the big city
Dead guys. You're tough. Fact is, the big city Dead are as scared of you
as you will ever be of them. You just beat it when you see a Dead guy
you don't know. That's a rule that's followed by everybody who's Dead."

After they'd left the coven house, she'd got another big surprise from
Killer: he'd told her about the vampire bars. Big fancy places in New
York and San Francisco and New Orleans, where the Dead guys met in the
back rooms while the damn fool human beings drank and danced up front.
In there, no other Dead guy could kill you, city slicker, European, or
rogue like her.

"You run for one of those places," he told her, "if the big city Dead
guys ever get on your case."

"I'm not old enough to go in a bar," Baby Jenks said.

That really did it. He and Davis laughed themselves sick. They were
falling off their motorcycles.

"You find a vampire bar, Baby Jenks," Killer said, "you just give them
the Evil Eye and say 'Let me in.'"

Yeah, she'd done that Evil Eye on people and made them do stuff, it
worked OK. And truth was, they'd never seen the vampire bars. Just heard
about them. Didn't know where they were. She'd had lots of questions
when they finally left St. Louis.

But as she made her way north towards the same city now, the only thing
in the world she cared about was getting to that same damned coven
house. Big city Dead guys, here I come. She'd go clean out of her head
if she had to go on alone.

The music in the earphones stopped. The tape had run out. She couldn't
stand the silence in the roar of the wind. The dream came back; she saw
those twins again, the soldiers coming. Jesus. If she didn't block it
out, the whole damn dream would replay itself like the tape.

Steadying the bike with one hand, she reached in her jacket to open the
little cassette player. She flipped the tape over. "Sing on, man!" she
said, her voice sounding shrill and tiny to her over the roar of the
wind, if she heard it at all.

Of Those Who Must Be Kept

What can we know?

Can any explanation save us?

Yes sir, that was the one she loved. That's the one she'd been listening
to when she fell asleep waiting for her mother to come home from work in
Gun Barrel City. It wasn't the words that got to her, it was the way he
sang it, groaning like Bruce Springsteen into the mike and making it
just break your heart.

It was kind of like a hymn in a way. It had that kind of sound, yet
Lestat was right there in the middle of it, singing to her, and there
was a steady drumbeat that went to her bones.

"OK, man, OK, you're the only goddamn Dead guy I've got now, Lestat,
keep singing!"

Five minutes to St. Louis, and there she was thinking about her mother
again, how strange it had all been, how bad.

Baby Jenks hadn't even told Killer or Davis why she was going home,
though they knew, they understood.

Baby Jenks had to do it, she had to get her parents before the Fang Gang
went out west. And even now she didn't regret it. Except for that
strange moment when her mother was dying there on the floor.

Now Baby Jenks had always hated her mother. She thought her mother was
just a real fool, making crosses every day of her life with little pink
seashells and bits of glass and then taking them to the Gun Barrel City
Flea Market and selling them for ten dollars. And they were ugly, too,
just real ready-made junk, those things with a little twisted-up Jesus
in the middle made up of tiny red and blue beads and things.

But it wasn't just that, it was everything her mother had ever done that
got to Baby Jenks and made her disgusted. Going to church, that was bad
enough, but talking the way she did to people so sweet and just putting
up with her husband's drinking and always saying nice things about
everybody.

Baby Jenks never bought a word of it. She used to lie there on her bunk
in the trailer thinking to herself, What really makes that lady tick?
When is she going to blow up like a stick of dynamite? Or is she just
too stupid? Her mother had stopped looking Baby Jenks in the eye years
ago. When Baby Jenks was twelve she'd come in and said, "You know I done
it, don't you? I hope to God you don't think I'm no virgin." And her
mother just faded out, like, just looked away with her eyes wide and
empty and stupid, and went back to her work, humming like always as she
made those seashell crosses.

One time some big city person told her mother that she made real folk
art. "They're making a fool of you," Baby Jenks had said. "Don't you
know that? They didn't buy one of those ugly things, did they? You know
what those things look like to me? I'll tell you what they look like.
They look like great big dime-store earrings!"

No arguing. Just turning the other cheek. "You want some supper, honey?"

It was like an open and shut case, Baby Jenks figured. So she had headed
out of Dallas early, making Cedar Creek Lake in less than an hour, and
there was the familiar sign that meant her sweet little old home town:

WELCOME TO GUN BARREL CITY. WE SHOOT STRAIGHT WITH YOU.

She hid her Harley behind the trailer when she got there, nobody home,
and lay down for a nap, Lestat singing in the earphones, and the steam
iron ready by her side. When her mother came in, slam bam, thank you,
ma'am, she'd take her out with it.

Then the dream happened. Why, she wasn't even asleep when it started. It
was like Lestat faded out, and the dream pulled her down and snap: ·

She was in a place full of sunlight. A clearing on the side of a
mountain. And these two twins were there, beautiful women with soft wavy
red hair, and they knelt like angels in church with their hands folded.
Lots of people around, people in long robes, like people in the Bible.
And there was music, too, a creepy thumping and the sound of a horn
playing, real mournful. But the worst part was the dead body, the burned
body of the woman on a stone slab. Why, she looked like she'd been
cooked, lying there! And on the plates, there was a fat shiny heart and
a brain. Yep, sure thing, that was a heart and a brain.

Baby Jenks had woken up, scared. To hell with that. Her mother was
standing in the door. Baby Jenks jumped up and banged her with the steam
iron till she stopped moving. Really bashed in her head. And she should
have been dead, but she wasn't yet, and then that crazy moment came.

Her mother was lying there on the floor, half dead, staring, just like
her daddy would be later. And Baby Jenks was sitting in the chair, one
blue jean leg thrown over the arm, leaning on her elbow, or twirling one
of her braids, just waiting, thinking about the twins in the dream sort
of, and the body and the things on the plates, what was it all for? But
mostly just waiting. Die, you stupid bitch, go on, die, I'm not slamming
you again!

Even now Baby Jenks wasn't sure what had happened. It was like her
mother's thoughts had changed, grown wider, bigger. Maybe she was
floating up on the ceiling somewhere the way Baby Jenks had been when
she nearly died before Killer saved her. But whatever was the cause, the
thoughts were just amazing. Just flat out amazing. Like her mother knew
everything! All about good and bad and how important it was to love,
really love, and how it was so much more than just all the rules about
don't drink, don't smoke, pray to Jesus. It wasn't preacher stuff. It
was just gigantic.

Her mother, lying there, had thought about how the lack of love in her
daughter, Baby Jenks, had been as awful as a bad gene that made Baby
Jenks blind and crippled. Yet it didn't matter. It was going to be all
right. Baby Jenks would rise out of what was going on now, just as she
had almost done before Killer had got to her, and there would be a finer
understanding of everything. What the hell did that mean? Something
about everything around us being part of one big thing, the fibers in
the carpet, the leaves outside the window, the water dripping in the
sink, the clouds moving over Cedar Creek Lake, and the bare trees, and
they weren't really so ugly as Baby Jenks had thought. No, the whole
thing was almost too beautiful to describe suddenly. And Baby Jenks'
mother had always known about this! Seen it that way. Baby Jenks's
mother forgave Baby Jenks everything. Poor Baby Jenks. She didn't know.
She didn't know about the green grass. Or the seashells shining in the
light of the lamp.

Then Baby Jenks's mother had died. Thank God! Enough! But Baby Jenks had
been crying. Then she'd carried the body out of the trailer and buried
it in back, real deep, feeling how good it was to be one of the Dead and
so strong and able to just heft those shovels full of dirt.

Then her father came home. This one's really for fun! She buried him
while he was still alive. She'd never forget the look on his face when
he came in the door and saw her with the fire ax. "Well, if it ain't
Lizzie Borden."

Who the hell was Lizzie Borden?

Then the way his chin stuck out, and his fist came flying towards her,
he was so sure of himself! "You little slut!" She split his goddamn
forehead in half. Yeah, that part was great, feeling the skull cave-"Go
down, you bastard!"-and so was shoveling dirt on his face while he was
still looking at her. Paralyzed, couldn't move, thinking he was a kid
again on a farm or something in New Mexico. Just baby talk. You son of a
bitch, I always knew you had shit for brains. Now I can smell it!

But why the hell had she ever gone down there? Why had she left the Fang
Gang?

If she'd never left them, she'd be with them now in San Francisco, with
Killer and Davis, waiting to see Lestat on the stage. They might have
even made the vampire bar out there or something. Leastways, if they had
ever gotten there. If something wasn't really really wrong.

And what the hell was she doing now backtracking? Maybe she should have
gone along out west. Two nights, that was all that was left.

Hell, maybe she'd rent a motel room when the concert happened, so she
could watch it on TV. But before that, she had to find some Dead guys in
St. Louis. She couldn't go on alone.

How to find the Central West End. Where was it?

This boulevard looked familiar. She was cruising along, praying no
meddling cop would start after her. She'd outrun him of course, she
always did, though she dreamed of getting just one of those damn sons-a-
bitches on a lonely road. But the fact was she didn't want to be chased
out of St. Louis.

Now this looked like something she knew. Yeah, this was the Central West
End or whatever they called it and she turned off now to the right and
went down an old street with those big cool leafy trees all around her.
Made her think of her mother again, the green grass, the clouds. Little
sob in her throat.

If she just wasn't so damn lonesome! But then she saw the gates, yeah,
this was the street. Killer had told her that Dead guys never really
forget anything. Her brain would be like a little computer. Maybe it was
true. These were the gates all right, great big iron gates, opened wide
and covered with dark green ivy. Guess they never really close up "a
private place."

She slowed to a rumbling crawl, then cut the motor altogether. Too noisy
in this dark valley of mansions. Some bitch might call the cops. She had
to get off to walk her bike. Her legs weren't long enough to do it any
other way. But that was OK. She liked walking in these deep dead leaves.
She liked this whole quiet street.

Boy, if I was a big city vampire I'd live here too, she thought, and
then far off down the street, she saw the coven house, saw the brick
walls and the white Moorish arches. Her heart was really going!

Burnt up!

At first she didn't believe it! Then she saw it was true all right, big
streaks of black on the bricks, and the windows all blown out, not a
pane of glass left anywhere. Jesus Christ! She was going crazy. She

walked her bike up closer, biting her lip so hard she could taste her
own blood. Just look at it. Who the hell was doing it! Teeny bits of
glass all over the lawn and even in the trees so the whole place was
kind of sparkling in a way that human beings probably couldn't make out.
Looked to her like nightmare Christmas decorations. And the stink of
burning wood. It was just hanging there.

She was going to cry! She was going to start screaming! But then she
heard something. Not a real sound, but the things that Killer had taught
her to listen for. There was a Dead guy in there!

She couldn't believe her luck, and she didn't give a damn what happened,
she was going in there. Yeah, somebody in there. It was real faint. She
went a few more feet, crunching real loud in the dead leaves. No light
but something moving in there, and it knew she was coming. And as she
stood there, heart hammering, afraid, and frantic to go in, somebody
came out on the front porch, a Dead guy looking right at her.

Praise the Lord, she whispered. And he wasn't no jerkoff in a three-
piece suit, either. No, he was a young kid, maybe no more than two years
older than her when they did it to him, and he looked real special. Like
he had silver hair for one thing, just real pretty short curly gray
hair, and that always looked great on a young person. And he was tall
too, about six feet, and skinny, a real elegant guy, the way she saw it.
He had an icy look to his skin it was so white, and he wore a dark brown
turtleneck shirt, real smooth across his chest, and a fancy cut brown
leather jacket and pants, nothing at all like biker leather. Really
boss, this guy, and cuter than any Dead guy in the Fang Gang.

"Come inside!" he said in a hiss. "Hurry."

She like to flew up the steps. The air was still full of tiny ashes, and
it hurt her eyes and made her cough. Half the porch had fallen in.
Carefully she made her way into the hallway. Some of the stairs was
left, but the roof way above was wide open. And the chandelier had
fallen down, all crushed and full of soot. Real spooky, like a haunted
house this place.

The Dead guy was in the living room or what was left of it, kicking and
picking through burnt-up stuif, furniture and things, sort of in a rage,
it looked like.

"Baby Jenks, is it?" he said, flashing her a weird fake smile, full of
pearly teeth including his little fangs, and his gray eyes glittering
kind of. "And you're lost, aren't you?"

OK, another goddamn mind reader like Davis. And one with a foreign
accent.

"Yeah, so what?" she said. And real surprising, she caught his name like
as if it was a ball and he'd tossed it to her: Laurent. Now that was a
classy name, French sounding.

"Stay right there, Baby Jenks," he said. The accent was French too,
probably. "There were three in this coven and two were incinerated. The
police can't detect the remains but you will know them if you step on
them and you will not like it."

Christ! And he was telling her the truth, 'cause there was one of them
right there, no jive, at the back of the hall, and it looked like a

half-burnt suit of clothes lying there, kind of vaguely in the outline
of a man, and sure thing, she could tell by the smell, there'd been a
Dead guy in the clothes, and just the sleeves and the pant legs and
shoes were left. In the middle of it all there was a kind of grayish
messy stuff, looked more like grease and powder than ashes. Funny the
way the shirt sleeve was still neatly sticking out of the coat sleeve.
Now that had been a three-piece suit maybe.

She was getting sick. Could you get sick when you were Dead? She wanted
to get out of here. What if whatever had done this was coming back?
Immortal, tie a can to it!

"Don't move," the Dead guy said to her, "and we'll be leaving together
just as soon as we can."

"Like now, OK!" she said. She was shaking, goddamn it. This is what they
meant when they said cold sweat!

He'd found a tin box and he was taking all the unburnt money out of it.

"Hey, man, I'm splitting," she said. She could feel something around
here, and it had nothing to do with that grease spot on the floor. She
was thinking of the burnt-up coven houses in Dallas and Oklahoma City,
the way the Fang Gang had vanished on her. He got all that, she could
tell. His face got soft, real cute again. He threw down the box and came
towards her so fast it scared her worse.

"Yes, ma chere," he said in a real nice voice, "all those coven houses,
exactly. The East Coast has been burnt out like a circuit of lights.
There is no answer at the coven house in Paris or the coven house in
Berlin."

He took her arm as they headed for the front door.

"Who the hell's doing this!" she said.

"Who the hell knows, cherie? It destroys the houses, the vampire bars,
whatever rogues it finds. We have got to get out of here. Now make the
bike go."

But she had come to a halt. Something out here. She was standing at the
edge of the porch. Something. She was as scared to go on as she was to
go back in the house.

"What's wrong?" he asked her in a whisper.

How dark this place was with these great big trees and the houses, they
all looked haunted, and she could hear something, something real low
like... like something's breathing. Something like that.

"Baby Jenks? Move it now!"

"But where are we going?" she asked. This thing, whatever it was, it was
almost a sound.

"The only place we can go. To him, darling, to the Vampire Lestat. He is
out there in San Francisco waiting, unharmed!"

"Yeah?" she said, staring at the dark street in front of her. "Yeah,
right, to the Vampire Lestat." Just ten steps to the bike.

Take it, Baby Jenks. He was about to leave without her. "No, don't you
do that, you son of a bitch, don't you touch my bike!"

But it was a sound now, wasn't it? Baby Jenks had never heard anything
quite like it. But you hear a lot of things when you're Dead. You hear
trains miles away, and people talking on planes over your head.

The Dead guy heard it. No, he heard her hearing it! "What is it?" he
whispered. Jesus, he was scared. And now he heard it all by himself too.

He pulled her down the steps. She stumbled and almost fell, but he
lifted her off her feet and put her on the bike.

The noise was getting really loud. It was coming in beats like music.
And it was so loud now she couldn't even hear what this Dead guy was
saying to her. She twisted the key, turned the handles to give the
Harley gas, and the Dead guy was on the bike behind her, but Jesus, the
noise, she couldn't think. She couldn't even hear the engine of the
bike!

She looked down, trying to see what the hell was going on, was it
running, she couldn't even feel it. Then she looked up and she knew she
was looking towards the thing that was sending the noise. It was in the
darkness, behind the trees.

The Dead guy had leaped off the bike, and he was jabbering away at it,
as if he could see it. But no, he was looking around like a crazy man
talking to himself. But she couldn't hear a word. She just knew it was
there, it was looking at them, and the crazy guy was wasting his breath!

She was off the Harley. It had fallen over. The noise stopped. Then
there was a loud ringing in her ears.

"-anything you want!" the Dead guy next to her was saying, "just
anything, name it, we will do it. We are your servants-!" Then he ran
past Baby Jenks, nearly knocking her over and grabbing up her bike.

"Hey!" she shouted, but just as she started for him, he burst into
flames! He screamed.

And then Baby Jenks screamed too. She screamed and screamed. The burning
Dead guy was turning over and over on the ground, just pinwheeling. And
behind her, the coven house exploded. She felt the heat on her back. She
saw stuff flying through the air. The sky looked like high noon.

Oh, sweet Jesus, let me live, let me live!

For one split second she thought her heart had burst. She meant to look
down to see if her chest had broken open and her heart was spewing out
blood like molten lava from a volcano, but then the heat built up inside
her head and swoosh! she was gone.

She was rising up and up through a dark tunnel, and then high above she
floated, looking down on the whole scene.

Oh yeah, just like before. And there it was, the thing that had killed
them, a white figure standing in a thicket of trees. And there was the
Dead guy's clothes smoking on the pavement. And her own body just
burning away.

Through the flames she could see the pure black outline of her own skull
and her bones. But it didn't frighten her. It didn't really seem that
interesting at all.

It was the white figure that amazed her. It looked just like a statue,
like the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic church. She stared at the
sparkling silver threads that seemed to move out from the figure in all
directions, threads made out of some kind of dancing light. And as she
moved higher, she saw that the silver threads stretched out, tangling
with other threads, to make a giant net all over the whole world. All
through the net were Dead guys, caught, like helpless flies in a web.
Tiny pinpoints of light, pulsing, and connected to the white figure, and
almost beautiful, the sight of it, except it was so sad. Oh, poor souls
of all the Dead guys locked in indestructible matter unable to grow old
or die.

But she was free. The net was way far away from her now. She was seeing
so many things.

Like there were thousands and thousands of other dead people floating up
here, too, in a great hazy gray layer. Some were lost, others were
fighting with each other, and some were looking back down to where
they'd died, so pitiful, like they didn't know or wouldn't believe they
were dead. There was even a couple of them trying to be seen and heard
by the living, but that they could not do.

She knew she was dead. This had happened before. She was just passing
through this murky lair of sad lingering people. She was on her way! And
the pitifulness of her life on earth caused her sorrow. But it was not
the important thing now.

The light was shining again, the magnificent light she'd glimpsed when
she'd almost died that first time around. She moved towards it, into it.
And this was truly beautiful. Never had she seen such colors, such
radiance, never had she heard the pure music that she was hearing now.
There were no words to describe this; it was beyond any language she'd
ever known. And this time nobody would bring her back!

Because the one coming towards her, to take her and to help her-it was
her mother! And her mother wouldn't let her go.

Never had she felt such love as she felt for her mother; but then love
surrounded her; the light, the color, the love-these things were utterly
indistinguishable.

Ah, that poor Baby Jenks, she thought as she looked down to earth just
one last time. But she wasn't Baby Jenks now. No, not at all.

THE GODDESS PANDORA

Once we had the words.

Ox and Falcon. Plow.

There was clarity.

Savage as horns curved.

We lived in stone rooms.

We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men.

A garden behind the ears, the curls.

On each hill a king of that hill. At night the threads were pulled out
of the tapestries. The unravelled men screamed.

All moons revealed. We had the words.

STAN RICE

from "The Words Once" Whiteboy (1976)

SHE WAS A TALL CREATURE, CLAD IN BLACK, WITH only her eyes uncovered,
her strides long as she moved with   inhuman   speed   up the
treacherous snow-covered path.

Almost clear this night of tiny stars in the high thin air of the
Himalayas, and far ahead-beyond her powers of reckoning distance-loomed
the massive pleated flank of Everest, splendidly visible above a thick
wreath of turbulent white cloud. It took her breath away each time she
glanced at it, not only because it was so beautiful, but because it was
so seemingly full of meaning, though no true meaning was there.

Worship this mountain? Yes, one could do that with impunity, because the
mountain would never answer. The whistling wind that chilled her skin
was the voice of nothing and no one. And this incidental and utterly
indifferent grandeur made her want to cry.

So did the sight of the pilgrims far below her, a thin stream of ants it
seemed, winding their way up an impossibly narrow road. Too unspeakably
sad their delusion. Yet she moved towards the same hidden mountain
temple. She moved towards the same despicable and deceiving god.

She was suffering from the cold. Frost covered her face, her eyelids. It
clung in tiny crystals to her eyelashes. And each step in the driving
wind was hard even for her. Pain or death it couldn't cause her, really;
she was too old for that. It was something mental, her suffering. It
came from the tremendous resistance of the elements, from seeing nothing
for hours but the sheer white and dazzling snows.

No matter. A deep shiver of alarm had passed through her nights ago, in
the crowded stinking streets of Old Delhi, and every hour or so since
had repeated itself, as if the earth had begun to tremble at its core.

At certain moments, she was sure that the Mother and the Father must be
waking. Somewhere far away in a crypt where her beloved Marius had
placed them, Those Who Must Be Kept had stirred at last. Nothing less
than such a resurrection could transmit this powerful yet vague signal-
Akasha and Enkil rising, after six thousand years of horrifying
stillness, from the throne they shared.

But that was fancy, wasn't it? Might as well ask the mountain to speak.
For these were no mere legend to her, the ancient parents of all blood
drinkers. Unlike so many of their spawn, she had seen them with her own
eyes. At the door of their shrine she had been made immortal; she had
crept forward on her knees and touched the Mother; she had pierced the
smooth shining surface that had once been the Mother's human skin and
caught in her open mouth the gushing stream of the Mother's blood. What

a miracle it had been even then, the living blood pouring forth from the
lifeless body before the wounds miraculously closed.

But in those early centuries of magnificent belief she had shared
Marius's conviction that the Mother and Father merely slumbered, that
the time would come when they would wake and speak to their children
once again.

In the candlelight, she and Marius had sung hymns to them together; she
herself had burnt the incense, placed before them the flowers; she had
sworn never to reveal the location of the sanctuary lest other blood
drinkers come to destroy Marius, to steal his charges and feast
gluttonously on the original and most powerful blood.

But that was long ago when the world was divided among tribes and
empires, when heroes and emperors were made gods in a day. In that time
elegant philosophical ideas had caught her fancy. She knew now what it
meant to live forever. Tell it to the mountain.

Danger. She felt it again coursing through her, a scorching current.
Then gone. And then a glimpse of a green and humid place, a place of
soft earth and stifling growth. But it vanished almost immediately.

She paused, the moonlit snow blinding her for a moment, and she raised
her eyes to the stars, twinkling through a thin fleece of passing cloud.
She listened for other immortal voices. But she heard no clear and vital
transmission-only a dim throb from the temple to which she was going,
and from far behind her, rising out of the dark warrens of a dirty
overcrowded city, the dead, electronic recordings of that mad blood
drinker, "the rock star," the Vampire Lestat.

Doomed that impetuous modern fledgling who had dared to fashion garbled
songs of bits and pieces of old truths. She had seen countless young
ones rise and fall.

Yet his audacity intrigued her, even as it shocked her. Could it be that
the alarm she heard was somehow connected to his plaintive yet raucous
songs?

Akasha, Enkil

Hearken to your children

How dare he speak the ancient names to the mortal world? It seemed
impossible, an offense to reason, that such a creature not be dismissed
out of hand. Yet the monster, reveling in improbable celebrity, revealed
secrets he could have learned only from Marius himself. And where was
Marius, who for two thousand years had taken Those Who Must Be Kept from
one secret sanctuary to another? Her heart would break if she let
herself think of Marius, of the quarrels that had long ago divided them.

But the recorded voice of Lestat was gone now, swallowed by other faint
electric voices, vibrations rising from cities and villages, and the
ever audible cry of mortal souls. As so often happened, her powerful
ears could separate no one signal. The rising tide had overwhelmed her-
shapeless, horrific-so that she closed herself off. Only the wind again.

Ah, what must the collective voices of the earth be to the Mother and
the Father whose powers had grown, inevitably, from the dawn of recorded
time? Had they the power, as she had still, to shut off the flow, or to

select from time to time the voices they might hear? Perhaps they were
as passive in this regard as in any other, and it was the unstoppable
din that kept them fixed, unable to reason, as they heard the endless
cries, mortal and immortal, of the entire world.

She looked at the great jagged peak before her. She must continue. She
tightened the covering over her face. She walked on.

And as the trail led her to a small promontory, she saw her destination
at last. Across an immense glacier, the temple rose from a high cliff, a
stone structure of near invisible whiteness, its bell tower disappearing
into the swirling snow that had just begun to fall.

How long would it take her to reach it, even fast as she could walk? She
knew what she must do, yet she dreaded it. She must lift her arms, defy
the laws of nature and her own reason, and rise over the gulf that
separated her from the temple, gently descending only when she had
reached the other side of the frozen gorge. No other power she possessed
could make her feel so insignificant, so inhuman, so far from the common
earthly being she had once been.

But she wanted to reach the temple. She had to. And so she did raise her
arms slowly, with conscious grace. Her eyes closed for the moment as she
willed herself upwards, and she felt her body rising immediately as if
it were weightless, a force seemingly unfettered by substance, riding by
sheer intention the wind itself.

For a long moment she let the winds buffet her; she let her body twist,
drift. She rose higher and higher, allowing herself to turn away from
the earth altogether, the clouds flying past her, as she faced the
stars. How heavy her garments felt; was she not ready to become
invisible? Would that not be the next step? A speck of dust in the eye
of God, she thought. Her heart was aching. The horror of this, to be
utterly unconnected. . . . The tears welled in her eyes.

And as always happened in such moments, the vague shining human past she
clung to seemed more than ever a myth to be cherished as all practical
belief died away. That I lived, that I loved, that my flesh was warm.
She saw Marius, her maker, not as he was now, but then, a young immortal
burning with a supernatural secret: "Pandora, my dearest . . ." "Give it
to me, I beg you." "Pandora, come with me to ask the blessing of the
Mother and the Father. Come into the shrine."

Unanchored, in despair, she might have forgotten her destination. She
could have let herself drift towards the rising sun. But the alarm came
again, the silent, pulsating signal of Danger, to remind her of her
purpose. She spread out her arms, willed herself to face the earth
again, and saw the temple courtyard with its smoking fires directly
below. Yes, there.

The speed of her descent astonished her; momentarily, it shattered her
reason. She found herself standing in the courtyard, her body aching for
one flashing instant, and then cold and still.

The scream of the wind was distant. The music of the temple came through
the walls, a dizzying throb, the tambourines and drums driving with it,
voices melding into one gruesome and repetitive sound. And before her
were the pyres, spitting, crackling, the dead bodies darkening as they
lay heaped on the burning wood. The stench sickened her. Yet for a long
time, she watched the flames working slowly at the sizzling flesh, the

blackening stumps, the hair that gave off sudden wisps of white smoke.
The smell suffocated her; the cleansing mountain air could not reach her
here.

She stared at the distant wooden door to the inner sanctum. She would
test the power again, bitterly. There. And she found herself moving over
the threshold, the door opened, the light of the inner chamber dazzling
her, along with the warm air and the deafening chant.

"Azim! Azim! Azim!" the celebrants sang over and over, their backs
turned to her as they pressed to the center of the candle-lighted hall,
their hands raised, twisting at the wrists in rhythm with their rocking
heads. "Azim! Azim! Azim-Azim-Azim! Ahhhh Zeeeem!" Smoke rose from the
censers; an endless swarm of figures turned, circling in place on their
bare feet, but they did not see her. Their eyes were closed, their dark
faces smooth, only their mouths moving as they repeated the revered
name.

She pushed into the thick of them, men and women in rags, others in
gorgeous colored silks and clattering gold jewelry, all repeating the
invocation in horrifying monotony. She caught the smell of fever,
starvation, dead bodies fallen in the press, unheeded in the common
delirium. She clung to a marble column, as if to anchor herself in the
turbulent stream of movement and noise.

And then she saw Azim in the middle of the crush. His dark bronze skin
was moist and gleaming in the light of the candles, his head bound in a
black silk turban, his long embroidered robes stained with a mingling of
mortal and immortal blood. His black eyes, ringed in kohl, were
enormous. To the hard underlying beat of the drums, he danced,
undulating, thrusting his fists forward and drawing them back as though
pounding upon an invisible wall. His slippered feet tapped the marble in
frenzied rhythm. Blood oozed from the corners of his mouth. His
expression was one of utter mindless absorption.

Yet he knew that she had come. And from the center of his dance, he
looked directly at her, and she saw his blood-smeared lips curl in a
smile.

Pandora, my beautiful immortal Pandora. . . .

Glutted with the feast he was, plump and heated with it as she had
seldom ever seen an immortal become. He threw back his head, spun round,
and gave a shrill cry. His acolytes came forward, slashing at his
outstretched wrists with their ceremonial knives.

And the faithful surged against him, mouths uplifted to catch the sacred
blood as it gushed out. The chant grew louder, more insistent over the
strangled cries of those nearest him. And suddenly, she saw him being
lifted, his body stretched out full length on the shoulders of his
followers, golden slippers pointed to the high tessellated ceiling, the
knives slashing at his ankles and again at his wrists where the wounds
had already closed.

The maddened crowd seemed to expand as its movements grew more frantic,
reeking bodies slamming against her, oblivious to the coldness and
hardness of the ancient limbs beneath her soft shapeless wool clothes.
She did not move. She let herself be surrounded, drawn in. She saw Azim
lowered to the ground once more; bled, moaning, wounds already healed.
He beckoned to her to join him. Silently she refused.

She watched as he reached out and snatched a victim, blindly, at random,
a young woman with painted eyes and dangling golden earrings, gashing
open her slender throat.

The crowd had lost the perfect shape of the syllables it chanted; it was
now a simple wordless cry that came from every mouth.

Eyes wide as if in horror at his own power, Azim sucked the woman dry of
blood in one great draught, then dashed the body on the stones before
him where it lay mangled as the faithful surrounded it, hands out in
supplication to their staggering god.

She turned her back; she went out in the cold air of the courtyard,
moving away from the heat of the fires. Stink of urine, offal. She stood
against the wall, gazing upwards, thinking of the mountain, paying no
heed when the acolytes dragged past her the bodies of the newly dead and
threw them into the flames.

She thought of the pilgrims she had seen on the road below the temple,
the long chain that moved sluggishly day and night through the
uninhabited mountains to this unnamed place. How many died without ever
reaching this precipice? How many died outside the gates, waiting to be
let in?

She loathed it. And yet it did not matter. It was an ancient horror. She
waited. Then Azim called her.

She turned and moved back through the door and then through another into
a small exquisitely painted antechamber where, standing on a red carpet
bordered with rubies, he waited silently for her, surrounded by random
treasures, offerings of gold and silver, the music in the hall lower,
full of languor and fear.

"Dearest," he said. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. A
heated stream of blood flowed out of his mouth into her, and for one
rapturous moment her senses were filled with the song and dance of the
faithful, the heady cries. Flooding warmth of mortal adoration,
surrender. Love.

Yes, love. She saw Marius for one instant. She opened her eyes, and
stepped back. For a moment she saw the walls with their painted
peacocks, lilies; she saw the heaps of shimmering gold. Then she saw
only Azim.

He was changeless as were his people, changeless as were the villages
from which they had come, wandering through snow and waste to find this
horrid, meaningless end. One thousand years ago, Azim had begun his rule
in this temple from which no worshiper ever departed alive. His supple
golden skin nourished by an endless river of blood sacrifice had paled
only slightly over the centuries, whereas her own flesh had lost its
human blush in half the time. Only her eyes, and her dark brown hair
perhaps, gave an immediate appearance of life. She had beauty, yes, she
knew that, but he had a great surpassing vigor. Evil. Irresistible to
his followers, shrouded in legend, he ruled, without past or future, as
incomprehensible to her now as he had ever been.

She didn't want to linger. The place repelled her more than she wanted
him to know. She told him silently of her purpose, the alarm that she
had heard. Something wrong somewhere, something changing, something that

has never happened before! And she told him too of the young blood
drinker who recorded songs in America, songs full of truths about the
Mother and the Father, whose names he knew. It was a simple opening of
her mind, without drama.

She watched Azim, sensing his immense power, the ability with which he'd
glean from her any random thought or idea, and shield from her the
secrets of his own mind.

"Blessed Pandora," he said scornfully. "What do I care about the Mother
and the Father? What are they to me? What do I care about your precious
Marius? That he calls for help over and over! This is nothing to me!"

She was stunned. Marius calling for help. Azim laughed. "Explain what
you're saying," she said. Again laughter. He turned his back to her.
There was nothing she could do but wait. Marius had made her. All the
world could hear Marius's voice, but she could not hear it. Was it an
echo that had reached her, dim in its deflection, of a powerful cry that
the others had heard? Tell me, Azim. Why make an enemy of me? When he
turned to her again, he was thoughtful, his round face plump, human-
looking as he yielded to her, the backs of his hands fleshy and dimpled
as he pressed them together just beneath his moist lower lip. He wanted
something of her. There was no scorn or malice now.

"It's a warning," he said. "It comes over and over, echoing through a
chain of listeners who carry it from its origins in some far-off place.
We are all in danger. Then it is followed by a call for help, which is
weaker. Help him that he may try to avert the danger. But in this there
is little conviction. It is the warning above all that he would have us
heed."

"The words, what are they?"

He shrugged. "I do not listen. I do not care."

"Ah!" She turned her back now on him. She heard him come towards her,
felt his hands on her shoulders.

"You must answer my question now," he said. He turned her to face him.
"It is the dream of the twins that concerns me. What does this mean?"

Dream of the twins. She didn't have an answer. The question didn't make
sense to her. She had had no such dream.

He regarded her silently, as if he believed she was lying. Then he spoke
very slowly, evaluating her response carefully.

"Two women, red hair. Terrible things befall them. They come to me in
troubling and unwelcome visions just before I would open my eyes. I see
these women raped before a court of onlookers. Yet I do not know who
they are or where this outrage takes place. And I am not alone in my
questioning. Out there, scattered through the world, there are other
dark gods who have these dreams and would know why they come to us now."

Dark gods! We are not gods, she thought contemptuously.

He smiled at her. Were they not standing in his very temple? Could she
not hear the moaning of the faithful? Could she not smell their blood?

"I know nothing of these two women," she said. Twins, red hair. No. She
touched his fingers gently, almost seductively. "Azim, don't torment me.
I want you to tell me about Marius. From where does his call come?"

How she hated him at this moment, that he might keep this secret from
her.

"From where?" he asked her defiantly. "Ah, that is the crux, isn't it?
Do you think he would dare to lead us to the shrine of the Mother and
the Father? If I thought that, I would answer him, oh, yes, oh, truly. I
would leave my temple to find him, of course. But he cannot fool us. He
would rather see himself destroyed than reveal the shrine."

"From where is he calling?" she asked patiently.

"These dreams," he said, his face darkening with anger. "The dreams of
the twins, this I would have explained!"

"And I would tell you who they are and what they mean, if only I knew."
She thought of the songs of Lestat, the words she'd heard. Songs of
Those Who Must Be Kept and crypts beneath European cities, songs of
questing, sorrow. Nothing there of red-haired women, nothing. . . .

Furious, he gestured for her to stop. "The Vampire Lestat," he said,
sneering. "Do not speak of this abomination to me. Why hasn't he been
destroyed already? Are the dark gods asleep like the Mother and the
Father?"

He watched her, calculating. She waited.

"Very well. I believe you," he said finally. "You've told me what you
know."

"Yes."

"I close my ears to Marius. I told you. Stealer of the Mother and the
Father, let him cry for help until the end of time. But you, Pandora,
for you I feel love as always, and so I will soil myself with these
affairs. Cross the sea to the New World. Look in the frozen north beyond
the last of the woodlands near the western sea. And there you may find
Marius, trapped in a citadel of ice. He cries that he is unable to move.
As for his warning, it is as vague as it is persistent. We are in
danger. We must help him so that he may stop the danger. So that he may
go to the Vampire Lestat."

"Ah. So it is the young one who has done this!"

The shiver passed through her, violent, painful. She saw in her mind's
eye the blank, senseless faces of the Mother and the Father,
indestructible monsters in human form. She looked at Azim in confusion.
He had paused, but he wasn't finished. And she waited for him to go on.

"No," he said, his voice dropping, having lost its sharp edge of anger.
"There is a danger, Pandora, yes. Great danger, and it does not require
Marius to announce it. It has to do with the red-haired twins." How
uncommonly earnest he was, how unguarded. "This I know," he said,
"because I was old before Marius was made. The twins, Pandora. Forget
Marius. And hearken to your dreams."

She was speechless, watching him. He looked at her for a long moment,
and then his eyes appeared to grow smaller, to become solid. She could
feel him drawing back, away from her and all the things of which they'd
spoken. Finally, he no longer saw her.

He heard the insistent wails of his worshipers; he felt thirst again; he
wanted hymns and blood. He turned and started out of the chamber, then
he glanced back.

"Come with me, Pandora! Join me but for an hour!" His voice was drunken,
unclear.

The invitation caught her off guard. She considered. It had been years
since she had sought the exquisite pleasure. She thought not merely of
the blood itself, but of the momentary union with another soul. And
there it was, suddenly, waiting for her, among those who had climbed the
highest mountain range on earth to seek this death. She thought also of
the quest that lay before her-to find Marius-and of the sacrifices it
would entail.

"Come, dearest."

She took his hand. She let herself be led out of the room and into the
center of the crowded hall. The brightness of the light startled her;
yes, the blood again. The smell of humans pressed in on her, tormenting
her.

The cry of the faithful was deafening. The stamp of human feet seemed to
shake the painted walls, the glimmering gold ceiling. The incense burned
her eyes. Faint memory of the shrine, eons ago, of Marius embracing her.
Azim stood before her as he removed her outer cloak, revealing her face,
her naked arms, the plain gown of black wool she wore, and her long
brown hair. She saw herself reflected in a thousand pairs of mortal
eyes.

"The goddess Pandora!" he cried out, throwing back his head.

Screams rose over the rapid thudding of drums. Countless human hands
stroked her. "Pandora, Pandora, Pandora!" The chant mingled with the
cries of "Azim!"

A young brown-skinned man danced before her, white silk shirt plastered
to the sweat of his dark chest. His black eyes, gleaming under low dark
brows, were fired with the challenge. I am your victim! Goddess! She
could see nothing suddenly in the flickering light and drowning noise
but his eyes, his face. She embraced him, crushing his ribs in her
haste, her teeth sinking deep into his neck. Alive. The blood poured
into her, reached her heart and flooded its chambers, then sent its heat
through all her cold limbs. It was beyond remembrance, this glorious
sensation- and the exquisite lust, the wanting again! The death shocked
her, knocked the breath out of her. She felt it pass into her brain. She
was blinded, moaning. Then instantly, the clarity of her vision was
paralyzing. The marble columns lived and breathed. She dropped the body,
and took hold of another young male, half starved, naked to the waist,
his strength on the verge of death maddening her.

She broke his tender neck as she drank, hearing her own heart swell,
feeling even the surface of her skin flooded with blood. She could see
the color in her own hands just before she closed her eyes, yes, human

hands, the death slower, resistant, and then yielding in a rush of
dimming light and roaring sound. Alive.

"Pandora! Pandora! Pandora!"

God, is there no justice, is there no end?

She stood rocking back and forth, human faces, each discrete, lurid,
dancing in front of her. The blood inside her was boiling as it sought
out every tissue, every cell. She saw her third victim hurling himself
against her, sleek young limbs enfolding her, so soft this hair, this
fleece on the back of his arms, the fragile bones, so light, as if she
were the real being and these were but creatures of the imagination.

She ripped the head half off the neck, staring at the white bones of the
broken spinal cord, then swallowing the death instantly with the violent
spray of blood from the torn artery. But the heart, the beating heart,
she would see it, taste it. She threw the body back over her right arm,
bones cracking, while with her left hand she split the breast bone and
tore open the ribs, and reached through the hot bleeding cavity to pull
the heart free.

Not dead yet this, not really. And slippery, glistening like wet grapes.
The faithful crushed against her as she held it up over her head,
squeezing it gently so that the living juice ran down her fingers and
into her open mouth. Yes, this, forever and ever.

"Goddess! Goddess!"

Azim was watching her, smiling at her. But she did not look at him. She
stared at the shriveled heart as the last droplets of blood left it. A
pulp. She let it fall. Her hands glowed like living hands, smeared with
blood. She could feel it in her face, the tingling warmth. A tide of
memory threatened, a tide of visions without understanding. She drove it
back. This time it wouldn't enslave her.

She reached for her black cloak. She felt it enclosing her, as warm,
solicitous human hands brought the soft wool covering up over her hair,
over the lower part of her face. And ignoring the heated cries of her
name all around her, she turned and went out, her limbs accidentally
bruising the frenzied worshipers who stumbled into her path.

So deliciously cold the courtyard. She bent her head back slightly,
breathing a vagrant wind as it gusted down into the enclosure, where it
fanned the pyres before carrying their bitter smoke away. The moonlight
was clear and beautiful falling on the snow-covered peaks beyond the
walls.

She stood listening to the blood inside her, and marveling in a crazed,
despairing way that it could still refresh her and strengthen her, even
now. Sad, grief-stricken, she looked at the lovely stark wilderness
encircling the temple, she looked up at the loose and billowing clouds.
How the blood gave her courage, how it gave her a momentary belief in
the sheer rightness of the universe-fruits of a ghastly, unforgivable
act.

If the mind can find no meaning, then the senses give it. Live for this,
wretched being that you are.

She moved towards the nearest pyre and, careful not to singe her
clothes, reached out to let the fire cleanse her hands, burn away the
blood, the bits of heart. The licking flames were nothing to the heat of
the blood inside her. When finally the faintest beginning of pain was
there, the faintest signal of change, she drew back and looked down at
her immaculate white skin.

But she must leave here now. Her thoughts were too full of anger, new
resentment. Marius needed her. Danger. The alarm came again, stronger
than ever before, because the blood made her a more powerful receptor.
And it did not seem to come from one. Rather it was a communal voice,
the dim clarion of a communal knowledge. She was afraid.

She allowed her mind to empty itself, as tears blurred her vision. She
lifted her hands, just her hands, delicately. And the ascent was begun.
Soundlessly, swiftly, as invisible to mortal eyes, perhaps, as the wind
itself.

High over the temple, her body pierced a soft thin agitated mist. The
degree of light astonished her. Everywhere the shining whiteness. And
below the crenellated landscape of stone peak and blinding glacier
descending to a soft darkness of lower forests and vale. Nestled here
and there were clusters of sparkling lights, the random pattern of
villages or towns. She could have gazed on this forever. Yet within
seconds an undulating fleece of cloud had obscured all of it. And she
was with the stars alone.

The stars-hard, glittering, embracing her as though she were one of
their own. But the stars claimed nothing, really, and no one. She felt
terror. Then a deepening sorrow, not unlike joy, finally. No more
struggle. No more grief.

Scanning the splendid drift of the constellations, she slowed her scent
and reached out with both hands to the west. The sunrise lay nine hours
behind her. And so she commenced her journey away from it, in time with
the night on our way to the other side of the world.

THE STORY OF DANIEL THE DEVIL'S MINION, OR THE BOY FROM INTERVIEW WITH
THE VAMPIRE

Who are these shades we wait for and believe will come some evening in
limousines from Heaven? The rose though it knows is throatless and
cannot say. My mortal half laughs. The code and the message are not the
same. And what is an angel but a ghost in drag?

STAN RICE

from "Of Heaven" Body of Work (1983)

HE WAS A TALL, SLENDER YOUNG MAN, WITH ashen hair and violet eyes. He
wore a dirty gray sweatshirt and jeans, and in the icy wind whipping
along Michigan Avenue at five o'clock, he was cold.

Daniel Molloy was his name. He was thirty-two, though he looked younger,
a perennial student, not a man, that kind of youthful face. He murmured
aloud to himself as he walked. " Ar-mand, I need you. Armand, that
concert is tomorrow night. And something terrible is going to happen,
something terrible. ..."

He was hungry. Thirty-six hours had passed since he'd eaten. There was
nothing in the refrigerator of his small dirty hotel room, and besides,
he had been locked out of it this morning because he had not paid the
rent. Hard to remember everything at once.

Then he remembered the dream that he kept having, the dream that came
every time he closed his eyes, and he didn't want to eat at all.

He saw the twins in the dream. He saw the roasted body of the I woman
before them, her hair singed away, her skin crisped. Her heart lay
glistening like a swollen fruit on the plate beside her. :The brain on
the other plate looked exactly like a cooked brain. Armand knew about
it, he had to know. It was no ordinary I dream, this. Something to do
with Lestat, definitely. And Armand would come soon.

God, he was weak, delirious. Needed something, a drink at least. In his
pocket there was no money, only an old crumpled royalty check for the
book Interview with the Vampire, which he I had "written" under a
pseudonym over twelve years ago. Another world, that, when he had been a
young reporter, roaming the bars of the world with his tape recorder,
trying to get the flotsam and jetsam of the night to tell him some
truth. I Well, one night in San Francisco he had found a magnificent
subject for his investigations. And the light of ordinary life had
suddenly gone out.

Now he was a ruined thing, walking too fast under the lowering night sky
of Chicago in October. Last Sunday he had been in Paris, and the Friday
before that in Edinburgh. Before Edinburgh, he had been in Stockholm and
before that he couldn't recall. The royalty check had caught up with him
in Vienna, but he did not know how long ago that was.

In all these places he frightened those he passed. The Vampire Lestat
had a good phrase for it in his autobiography: "One of those tiresome
mortals who has seen spirits . . ." That's me!

Where was that book, The Vampire Lestat? Ah, somebody had stolen it off
the park bench this afternoon while Daniel slept. Well, let them have
it. Daniel had stolen it himself, and he'd read it three times already.

But if only he had it now, he could sell it, maybe get enough for a
glass of brandy to make him warm. And what was his net worth at this
moment, this cold and hungry vagabond that shuffled along Michigan
Avenue, hating the wind that chilled him I through his worn and dirty
clothes? Ten million? A hundred million? He didn't know. Armand would
know. I       You want money, Daniel? I'll get it for you. It's simpler
than you '   think.

A thousand miles south Armand waited on their private island, the island
that belonged in fact to Daniel alone. And if only he had a quarter now,
just a quarter, he could drop it into a pay phone and tell Armand that
he wanted to come home. Out of the sky, they'd come to get him. They
always did. Either the big plane with the velvet bedroom on it or the
smaller one with the low ceiling and the leather chairs. Would anybody
on this street lend him a quarter in exchange for a plane ride to Miami?
Probably not.

Armand, now I want to be safe with you when Lestat goes on that stage
tomorrow night.

Who would cash this royalty check? No one. It was seven o'clock and the
fancy shops along Michigan Avenue were for the most part closed, and he
had no identification because his wallet had somehow disappeared day
before yesterday. So dismal this glaring gray winter twilight, the sky
boiling silently with low metallic clouds. Even the stores had taken on
an uncommon grimness, with their hard facades of marble or granite, the
wealth within gleaming like archaeological relics under museum glass. He
plunged his hands in his pockets to warm them, and he bowed his head as
the wind came with greater fierceness and the first sting of rain.

He didn't give a damn about the check, really. He couldn't imagine
pressing the buttons of a phone. Nothing here seemed particularly real
to him, not even the chill. Only the dream seemed real, and the sense of
impending disaster, that the Vampire Lestat had somehow set into motion
something that even he could never control.

Eat from a garbage can if you have to, sleep somewhere even if it's a
park. None of that matters. But he'd freeze if he lay down again in the
open air, and besides the dream would come back.

It was coming now every time he closed his eyes. And each time, it was
longer, more full of detail. The red-haired twins were so tenderly
beautiful. He did not want to hear them scream.

The first night in his hotel room he'd ignored the whole thing.
Meaningless. He'd gone back to reading Lestat's autobiography, and
glancing up now and then as Lestat's rock video films played themselves
out on the little black and white TV that came with that kind of dump.

He'd been fascinated by Lestat's audacity; yet the masquerade as rock
star was so simple. Searing eyes, powerful yet slender limbs, and a
mischievous smile, yes. But you really couldn't tell. Or could you? He
had never laid eyes on Lestat.

But he was an expert on Armand, wasn't he, he had studied every detail
of Armand's youthful body and face. Ah, what a delirious pleasure it had
been to read about Armand in Lestat's pages, wondering all the while if
Lestat's stinging insults and worshipful analyses had put Armand himself
into a rage.

In mute fascination, Daniel had watched that little clip on MTV
portraying Armand as the coven master of the old vampires beneath the
Paris cemetery, presiding over demonic rituals until the Vampire Lestat,
the eighteenth-century iconoclast, had destroyed the Old Ways.

Armand must have loathed it, his private history laid bare in flashing
images, so much more crass than Lestat's more thoughtful written
history. Armand, whose eyes scanned perpetually the living beings around
him, refusing even to speak of the undead. But it was impossible that he
did not know.

And all this for the multitudes-like the paperback report of an
anthropologist, back from the inner circle, who sells the tribe's
secrets for a slot on the best-seller list.

So let the demonic gods war with each other. This mortal has been to the
top of the mountain where they cross swords. And he has come back. He
has been turned away.

The next night, the dream had returned with the clarity of a
hallucination. He knew that it could not have been invented by him. He
had never seen people quite like that, seen such simple jewelry made of
bone and wood.

The dream had come again three nights later. He'd been watching a Lestat
rock video for the fifteenth time, perhaps-this one about the ancient
and immovable Egyptian Father and Mother of the vampires, Those Who Must
Be Kept:

Akasha and Enkil, We are your children, but what do you give us? Is your
silence A better gift than truth?

And then Daniel was dreaming. And the twins were about to begin the
feast. They would share the organs on the earthen plates. One would take
the brain, the other the heart.

He'd awakened with a sense of urgency, dread. Something terrible going
to happen, something going to happen to all of us .. . And that was the
first time he'd connected it with Lestat. He had wanted to pick up the
phone then. It was four o'clock in the morning in Miami. Why the hell
hadn't he done it? Armand would have been sitting on the terrace of the
villa, watching the tireless fleet of white boats wend its way back and
forth from the Night Island. "Yes, Daniel?" That sensuous, mesmerizing
voice. "Calm down and tell me where you are, Daniel."

But Daniel hadn't called. Six months had passed since he had left the
Night Island, and this time it was supposed to be for good. He had once
and for all forsworn the world of carpets and limousines and private
planes, of liquor closets stocked with rare vintages and dressing rooms
full of exquisitely cut clothing, of the quiet overwhelming presence of
his immortal lover who gave him every earthly possession he could want.

But now it was cold and he had no room and no money, and he was afraid.

You know where I am, you demon. You know what Lestat's done. And you
know I want to come home.

What would Armand say to that?

But I don't know, Daniel. I listen. I try to know. I am not God, Daniel.

Never mind. Just come, Armand. Come. It's dark and cold in Chicago. And
tomorrow night the Vampire Lestat will sing his songs on a San Francisco
stage. And something bad is going to happen. This mortal knows.

Without slowing his pace, Daniel reached down under the collar of his
sagging sweat shirt and felt the heavy gold locket he always wore-the
amulet, as Armand called it with his unacknowledged yet irrepressible
flair for the dramatic-which held the tiny vial of Armand's blood.

And if he had never tasted that cup would he be having this dream, this
vision, this portent of doom?

People turned to look at him; he was talking to himself again, wasn't
he? And the wind made him sigh loudly. He had the urge for the first
time in all these years to break open the locket and the vial, to feel
that blood burn his tongue. Armand, come!

The dream had visited him in its most alarming form this noon.

He'd been sitting on a bench in the little park near the Water Tower
Place. A newspaper had been left there, and when he opened it he saw the
advertisement: "Tomorrow Night: The Vampire Lestat Live on Stage in San
Francisco." The cable would broadcast the concert at ten o'clock Chicago
time. How nice for those who still lived indoors, could pay their rent,
and had electricity. He had wanted to laugh at the whole thing, delight
in it, revel in it, Lestat surprising them all. But the chill had passed
through him, becoming a deep jarring shock.

And what if Armand does not know? But the record stores on the Night
Island must have The Vampire Lestat in their windows. In the elegant
lounges, they must be playing those haunting and hypnotic songs.

It had even occurred to Daniel at that moment to go on to California on
his own. Surely he could work some miracle, get his passport from the
hotel, go into any bank with it for identification. Rich, yes so very
rich, this poor mortal boy. . . .

But how could he think of something so deliberate? The sun had been warm
on his face and shoulders as he'd lain down on the bench. He'd folded
the newspaper to make of it a pillow.

And there was the dream that had been waiting all the time. . . .

Midday in the world of the twins: the sun pouring down onto the
clearing. Silence, except for the singing of the birds.

And the twins kneeling quite still together, in the dust. Such pale
women, their eyes green, their hair long and wavy and coppery red. Fine
clothes they wore, white linen dresses that had come all the way from
the markets of Nineveh, bought by the villagers to honor these powerful
witches, whom the spirits obey.

The funeral feast was ready. The mud bricks of the oven had been torn
down and carried away, and the body lay steaming hot on the stone slab,
the yellow juices running out of it where the crisp skin had broken, a
black and naked thing with only a covering of cooked leaves. It
horrified Daniel.

But it horrified no one present, this spectacle, not the twins or the
villagers who knelt to watch the feast begin.

This feast was the right and the duty of the twins. This was their
mother, the blackened body on the stone slab. And what was human must
remain with the human. A day and night it may take to consume the feast,
but all will keep watch until it is done.

Now a current of excitement passes through the crowd around the
clearing. One of the twins lifts the plate on which the brain rests
together with the eyes, and the other nods and takes the plate that
holds the heart.

And so the division has been made. The beat of a drum rises, though
Daniel cannot see the drummer. Slow, rhythmic, brutal.

"Let the banquet begin."

But the ghastly cry comes, just as Daniel knew it would. Stop the
soldiers. But he can't. All this has happened somewhere, of that he is

now certain. It is no dream, it is a vision. And he is not there. The
soldiers storm the clearing, the villagers scatter, the twins set down
the plates and fling themselves over the smoking feast. But this is
madness.

The soldiers tear them loose so effortlessly, and as the slab is lifted,
the body falls, breaking into pieces, and the heart and the brain are
thrown down into the dust. The twins scream and scream.

But the villagers are screaming too, the soldiers are cutting them down
as they run. The dead and the dying litter the mountain paths. The eyes
of the mother have fallen from the plate into the dirt, and they, along
with the heart and brain, are trampled underfoot.

One of the twins, her arms pulled behind her back, cries to the spirits
for vengeance. And they come, they do. It is a whirlwind. But not
enough.

If only it were over. But Daniel can't wake up.

Stillness. The air is full of smoke. Nothing stands where these people
have lived for centuries. The mud bricks are scattered, clay pots are
broken, all that will burn has burned. Infants with their throats slit
lie naked on the ground as the flies come. No one will roast these
bodies, no one will consume this flesh. It will pass out of the human
race, with all its power and its mystery. The jackals are already
approaching. And the soldiers have gone. Where are the twins! He hears
the twins crying, but he cannot find them. A great storm is rumbling
over the narrow road that twists down through the valley towards the
desert. The spirits make the thunder. The spirits make the rain.

His eyes opened. Chicago, Michigan Avenue at midday. The dream had gone
out like a light turned off. He sat there shivering, sweating.

A radio had been playing near him, Lestat singing in that haunting
mournful voice of Those Who Must Be Kept.

Mother and Father.

Keep your silence,

Keep your secrets,

But those of you with tongues,

sing my song.

Sons and daughters Children of darkness

Raise your voices Make a chorus Let heaven hear us

Come together, Brother and sisters, Come to me.

He had gotten up, started walking. Go into the Water Tower Place, so
like the Night Island with its engulfing shops, endless music and
lights, shining glass.

And now it was almost eight o'clock and he had been walking
continuously, running from sleep and from the dream. He was far from any

music and light. How long would it go on next time? Would he find out
whether they were alive or dead? My beauties, my poor beauties. . . .

He stopped, turning his back to the wind for a moment, listening to the
chimes somewhere, then spotting a dirty clock above a dime store lunch
counter; yes, Lestat had risen on the West ICoast. Who is with him? Is
Louis there? And the concert, a little jover twenty-four hours.
Catastrophe! Armand, please. The wind gusted, pushed him back a few
steps on the pave-'ment, left him shivering violently. His hands were
frozen. Had he lever been this cold in his life? Doggedly, he crossed
Michigan Avenue with the crowd at the stoplight and stood at the plate
glass windows of the bookstore, where he could see the book, The Vampire
Lestat, on display.

1 Surely Armand had read it, devouring every word in that eerie, I
horrible way he had of reading, of turning page after page without
pause, eyes flashing over the words, until the book was finished, and
then tossing it aside. How could a creature shimmer with such beauty yet
incite such... what was it, revulsion? No, he had never been revolted by
Armand, he had to admit it. What he I always felt was ravening and
hopeless desire. A young girl inside the warmth of the store picked up a
copy of Lestat's book, then stared at him through the window. His I
breath made steam on the glass in front of him. Don't worry, my darling,
I am a rich man. I could buy this whole store full of books [ and make
it a present to you. I am lord and master of my own island, I am the
Devil's minion and he grants my every wish. Want to come take my arm?

It had been dark for hours on the Florida coast. The Night Island was
already thronged.

The shops, restaurants, bars had opened their broad, seamless plate
glass doors at sunset, on five levels of richly carpeted hallway. The
silver escalators had begun their low, churning hum. Daniel closed his
eyes and envisioned the walls of glass rising above the harbor terraces.
He could almost hear the great roar of the dancing fountains, see the
long narrow beds of daffodils and tulips blooming eternally out of
season, hear the hypnotic music that beat like a heart beneath it all.

And Armand, he was probably roaming the dimly lighted rooms of the
villa, steps away from the tourists and the shoppers, yet utterly cut
off by steel doors and white walls-a sprawling palace of floor-length
windows and broad balconies, perched over white sand. Solitary, yet near
to the endless commotion, its vast living room facing the twinkling
lights of the Miami shore.

Or maybe he had gone through one of the many unmarked doors into the
public galleria itself. "To live and breathe among mortals" as he called
it in this safe and self-contained universe which he and Daniel had
made. How Armand loved the warm breezes of the Gulf, the endless
springtime of the Night Island.

No lights would go out until dawn.

"Send someone for me, Armand, I need you! You know you want me to come
home."

Of course it had happened this way over and over again. It did not need
strange dreams, or Lestat to reappear, roaring like Lucifer from tape
and film.

Everything would go all right for months as Daniel felt compelled to
move from city to city, walking the pavements of New York or Chicago or
New Orleans. Then the sudden disintegration. He'd realize he had not
moved from his chair in five hours. Or he'd wake suddenly in a stale and
unchanged bed, frightened, unable to remember the name of the city where
he was, or where he'd been for days before. Then the car would come for
him, then the plane would take him home.

Didn't Armand cause it? Didn't he somehow drive Daniel to these periods
of madness? Didn't he by some evil magic dry up every source of
pleasure, every fount of sustenance until Daniel welcomed the sight of
the familiar chauffeur come to drive him to the airport, the man who was
never shocked by Daniel's demeanor, his unshaven face, his soiled
clothes?

When Daniel finally reached the Night Island, Armand would deny it.

"You came back to me because you wanted to, Daniel," Armand always said
calmly, face still and radiant, eyes full of love. I "There is nothing
for you now, Daniel, except me. You know that. Madness waits out there."

"Same old dance," Daniel invariably answered. And all that luxury, so
intoxicating, soft beds, music, the wine glass placed in I his hand. The
rooms were always full of flowers, the foods he craved came on silver
trays.

Armand lay sprawled in a huge black velvet wing chair gazing at the
television, Ganymede in white pants and white silk shirt, I watching the
news, the movies, the tapes he'd made of himself reading poetry, the
idiot sitcoms, the dramas, the musicals, the silent films.

"Come in, Daniel, sit down. I never expected you back so soon."

"You son of a bitch," Daniel would say. "You wanted me here, you
summoned me. I couldn't eat, sleep, nothing, just wander and think of
you. You did it."

Armand would smile, sometimes even laugh. Armand had a ' rich, beautiful
laugh, always eloquent of gratitude as well as humor. He looked and
sounded mortal when he laughed. "Calm yourself, Daniel. Your heart's
racing. It frightens me." Small crease to the smooth forehead, the voice
for a moment deepened by compassion. "Tell me what you want, Daniel, and
I'll get it for you. Why do you keep running away?"

"Lies, you bastard. Say that you wanted me. You'll torment me forever,
won't you, and then you'll watch me die, and you'll find I that
interesting, won't you? It was true what Louis said. You watch them die,
your mortal slaves, they mean nothing to you. You'll watch the colors
change in my face as I die."

"That's Louis's language," Armand said patiently. "Please don't quote
that book to me. I'd rather die than see you die, Daniel."

"Then give it to me! Damn you! Immortality that close, as close as your
arms."

"No, Daniel, because I'd rather die than do that, too."

But even if Armand did not cause this madness that brought Daniel home,
surely he always knew where Daniel was. He could hear Daniel's call. The

blood connected them, it had to-the precious tiny drinks of burning
preternatural blood. Never enough to do more than awaken dreams in
Daniel, and the thirst for eternity, to make the flowers in the
wallpaper sing and dance. Whatever, Armand could always find him, of
that he had no doubt.

In the early years, even before the blood exchange, Armand had pursued
Daniel with the cunning of a harpy. There had been no place on earth
that Daniel could hide.

Horrifying yet tantalizing, their beginning in New Orleans, twelve years
ago when Daniel had entered a crumbling old house in the Garden District
and known at once that it was the vampire Lestat's lair.

Ten days before he'd left San Francisco after his night-long interview
with the vampire Louis, suffering from the final confirmation of the
frightening tale he had been told. In a sudden embrace, Louis had
demonstrated his supernatural power to drain Daniel almost to the point
of death. The puncture wounds had disappeared, but the memory had left
Daniel near to madness. Feverish, sometimes delirious, he had traveled
no more than a few hundred miles a day. In cheap roadside motels, where
he forced himself to take nourishment, he had duplicated the tapes of
the interview one by one, sending the copies off to a New York
publisher, so that a book was in the making before he ever stood before
Lestat's gate.

But that had been secondary, the publication, an event connected with
the values of a dimming and distant world.

He had to find the vampire Lestat. He had to unearth the immortal who
had made Louis, the one who still survived somewhere in this damp,
decadent, and beautiful old city, waiting perhaps for Daniel to awaken
him, to bring him out into the century that had terrified him and driven
him underground.

It was what Louis wanted, surely. Why else had he given this mortal
emissary so many clues as to where Lestat could be found? Yet some of
the details were misleading. Was this ambivalence on Louis's part? It
did not matter, finally. In the public records, Daniel had found the
title to the property, and the street number, under the unmistakable
name: Lestat de Lioncourt.

The iron gate had not even been locked, and once he'd hacked his way
through the overgrown garden, he had managed easily to break the rusted
lock on the front door.

Only a small pocket flash helped him as he entered. But the moon had
been high, shining its full white light here and there 1 through the oak
branches. He had seen clearly the rows and rows of books stacked to the
ceiling, making up the very walls of every room. No human could or would
have done such a mad and methodical thing. And then in the upstairs
bedroom, he had knelt I down in the thick dust that covered the rotting
carpet and found the gold pocket watch on which was written the name
Lestat. Ah, that chilling moment, that moment when the pendulum swung
away from ever increasing dementia to a new passion-he would track to
the ends of the earth these pale and deadly beings whose existence he
had only glimpsed.

What had he wanted in those early weeks? Did he hope to possess the
splendid secrets of life itself? Surely he would gain from this

knowledge no purpose for an existence already fraught with
disappointment. No, he wanted to be swept away from everything he had
once loved. He longed for Louis's violent and sensuous world. Evil. He
was no longer afraid.

Maybe he was like the lost explorer who, pushing through the jungle,
suddenly sees the wall of the fabled temple before him, its carvings
overhung with spiderwebs and vines; no matter that he may not live to
tell his story; he has beheld the truth with his own eyes.

But if only he could open the door a little further, see the full
magnificence. If they would only let him in Maybe he just wanted to live
forever. Could anyone fault him for that?

He had felt good and safe standing alone in the ruin of Lestat's old
house, with the wild roses crawling at the broken window and the four-
poster bed a skeleton, its hangings rotting away.

Near them, near to their precious darkness, their lovely devouring
gloom. How he had loved the hopelessness of it all, the moldering chairs
with their bits of carving, shreds of velvet, and the slithering things
eating the last of the carpet away.

But the relic; ah, the relic was everything, the gleaming gold watch
that bore an immortal's name!

After a while, he had opened the armoire; the black frock coats fell to
pieces when he touched them. Withered and curling boots lay on the cedar
boards.

But Lestat, you are here. He had taken the tape recorder out, set it
down, put in the first tape, and let the voice of Louis rise softly in
the shadowy room. Hour by hour, the tapes played. Then just before dawn
he had seen a figure in the hallway, and known that he was meant to see
it. And he had seen the moon strike the boyish face, the auburn hair.
The earth tilted, the darkness came down. The last word he uttered had
been the name Armand.

He should have died then. Had a whim kept him alive?

He'd awakened in a dark, damp cellar. Water oozed from the walls.
Groping in the blackness, he'd discovered a bricked-up window, a locked
door plated with steel.

And what was his comfort, that he had found yet another god of the
secret pantheon-Armand, the oldest of the immortals whom Louis had
described, Armand, the coven master of the nineteenth-century Theater of
the Vampires in Paris, who had confided his terrible secret to Louis: of
our origins nothing is known.

For three days and nights, perhaps, Daniel had lain in this prison.
Impossible to tell. He had been near to dying certainly, the stench of
his own urine sickening him, the insects driving him mad. Yet his was a
religious fervor. He had come ever nearer to the dark pulsing truths
that Louis had revealed. Slipping in and out of consciousness, he
dreamed of Louis, Louis talking to him in that dirty little room in San
Francisco, there have always been things such as we are, always, Louis
embracing him, his green eyes darkening suddenly as he let Daniel see
the fang teeth.

The fourth night, Daniel had awakened and known at once that someone or
something was in the room. The door lay open to a passage. Water was
flowing somewhere fast as if in a deep underground sewer. Slowly his
eyes grew accustomed to the dirty greenish light from the doorway and
then he saw the pale white-skinned figure standing against the wall.

So immaculate the black suit, the starched white shirt-like the
imitation of a twentieth-century man. And the auburn hair clipped short
and the fingernails gleaming dully even in this semi-darkness. Like a
corpse for the coffin-that sterile, that well prepared.

The voice had been gentle with a trace of an accent. Not European;
something sharper yet softer at the same time. Arabic or Greek perhaps,
that kind of music. The words were slow and without anger.

"Get out. Take your tapes with you. They are there beside you. I know of
your book. No one will believe it. Now you will go and take these
things."

Then you won't kill me. And you won't make me one of you either.
Desperate, stupid thoughts, but he couldn't stop them. He had seen the
power! No lies, no cunning here. And he'd felt himself crying, so
weakened by fear and hunger, reduced to a child.

"Make you one of us?" The accent thickened, giving a fine lilt to the
words. "Why would I do that?" Eyes narrowing. "I would not do that to
those whom I find to be despicable, whom I would see burning in hell as
a matter of course. So why should I do it to an innocent fool-like you?"

I want it. I want to live forever. Daniel had sat up, climbed to his
feet slowly, struggling to see Armand more clearly. A dim bulb burned
somewhere far down the hall. I want to be with Lquis and with you.

Laughter, low, gentle. But contemptuous. "I see why he chose you for his
confidant. You are naive and beautiful. But the beauty could be the only
reason, you know."

Silence.

"Your eyes are an unusual color, almost violet. And you are strangely
defiant and beseeching in the same breath."

Make me immortal. Give it to me!

Laughter again. Almost sad. Then silence, the water rushing fast in that
distant someplace. The room had become visible, a filthy basement hole.
And the figure more nearly mortal. There was even a faint pink tinge to
the smooth skin.

"It was all true, what he told you. But no one will ever believe it. And
you will go mad in time from this knowledge. That's what always happens.
But you're not mad yet."

No. This is real, it's all happening. You're Armand and we're talking
together. And I'm not mad.

"Yes. And I find it rather interesting . . . interesting that you know
my name and that you're alive. I have never told my name to anyone who
is alive." Armand hesitated. "I don't want to kill you. Not just now."

Daniel had felt the first touch of fear. If you looked closely enough at
these beings you could see what they were. It had been the same with
Louis. No, they weren't living. They were ghastly imitations of the
living. And this one, the gleaming manikin of a young boy!

"I am going to let you leave here," Armand had said. So politely,
softly. "I want to follow you, watch you, see where you go. As long as I
find you interesting, I won't kill you. And of course, I may lose
interest altogether and not bother to kill you.

That's always possible. You have hope in that. And maybe with luck I'll
lose track of you. I have my limitations, of course. You have the world
to roam, and you can move by day. Go now. Start running. I want to see
what you do, I want to know what you are."

Go now, start running!

He'd been on the morning plane to Lisbon, clutching Lestat's gold watch
in his hand. Yet two nights later in Madrid, he'd turned to find Armand
seated on a city bus beside him no more than inches away. A week later
in Vienna he'd looked out the window of a cafe to see Armand watching
him from the street. In Berlin, Armand slipped into a taxi beside him,
and sat there staring at him, until finally Daniel had leapt out in the
thick of the traffic and run away.

Within months, however, these shattering silent confrontations had given
way to more vigorous assaults.

He woke in a hotel room in Prague to find Armand standing over him,
crazed, violent. "Talk to me now! I demand it. Wake up. I want you to
walk with me, show me things in this city. Why did you come to this
particular place?"

Riding on a train through Switzerland, he looked up suddenly to see
Armand directly opposite watching him over the upturned cover of his
fur-lined coat. Armand snatched the book out of his hand and insisted
that he explain what it was, why he read it, what did the picture on the
cover mean?

In Paris Armand pursued him nightly through the boulevards and the back
streets, only now and then questioning him on the places he went, the
things he did. In Venice, he'd looked out of his room at the Danieli, to
see Armand staring from a window across the way.

Then weeks passed without a visitation. Daniel vacillated between terror
and strange expectation, doubting his very sanity again. But there was
Armand waiting for him in the New York airport. And the following night
in Boston, Armand was in the dining room of the Copley when Daniel came
in. Daniel's dinner was already ordered. Please sit down. Did Daniel
know that Interview with the Vampire was in the bookstores?

"I must confess I enjoy this small measure of notoriety," Armand had
said with exquisite politeness and a vicious smile. "What puzzles me is
that you do not want notoriety! You did not list yourself as the
'author,' which means that you are either very modest or a coward.
Either explanation would be very dull."

"I'm not hungry, let's get out of here," Daniel had answered weakly. Yet
suddenly dish after dish was being placed on the table; everyone was
staring.

"I didn't know what you wanted," Armand confided, the smile becoming
absolutely ecstatic. "So I ordered everything that they had."

"You think you can drive me crazy, don't you?" Daniel had snarled.
"Well, you can't. Let me tell you. Every time I lay eyes on you, I
realize that I didn't invent you, and that I'm sane!" And he had started
eating, lustily, furiously-a little fish, a little beef, a little veal,
a little sweetbreads, a little cheese, a little everything, put it all
together, what did he care, and Armand had been so delighted, laughing
and laughing like a schoolboy as he sat watching, with folded arms. It
was the first time Daniel had ever heard that soft, silky laughter. So
seductive. He got drunk as fast as he could.

The meetings grew longer and longer. Conversations, sparring matches,
and downright fights became the rule. Once Armand had dragged Daniel out
of bed in New Orleans and shouted at him: "That telephone, I want you to
dial Paris, I want to see if it can really talk to Paris."

"Goddamn it, do it yourself," Daniel had roared. "You're five hundred
years old and you can't use a telephone? Read the directions. What are
you, an immortal idiot? I will do no such thing!"

How surprised Armand had looked.

"All right, I'll call Paris for you. But you pay the bill."

"But of course," Armand had said innocently. He had drawn dozens of
hundred-dollar bills out of his coat, sprinkling them on Daniel's bed.

More and more they argued philosophy at these meetings. Pulling Daniel
out of a theater in Rome, Armand had asked what did Daniel really think
that death was? People who were still living knew things like that! Did
Daniel know what Armand truly feared?

As it was past midnight and Daniel was drunk and exhausted and had been
sound asleep in the theater before Armand found him, he did not care.

"I'll tell you what I fear," Armand had said, intense as any young
student. "That it's chaos after you die, that it's a dream from which
you can't wake. Imagine drifting half in and out of consciousness,
trying vainly to remember who you are or what you were. Imagine
straining forever for the lost clarity of the living."

It had frightened Daniel. Something about it rang true. Weren't there
tales of mediums conversing with incoherent yet powerful presences? He
didn't know. How in hell could he know? Maybe when you died there was
flat out nothing. That terrified Armand, no effort expended to conceal
the misery.

"You don't think it terrifies me?" Daniel had asked, staring at the
white-faced figure beside him. "How many years do I have? Can you tell
just by looking at me? Tell me."

When Armand woke him up in Port-au-Prince, it was war he wanted to talk
about. What did men in this century actually think of war? Did Daniel
know that Armand had been a boy when this had begun for him? Seventeen
years old, and in those times that was young, very young. Seventeen-
year-old boys in the twentieth century were virtual monsters; they had

beards, hair on their chests, and yet they were children. Not then. Yet
children worked as if they were men.

But let us not get sidetracked. The point was, Armand didn't know what
men felt. He never had. Oh, of course he'd known the pleasures of the
flesh, that was par for the course. Nobody then thought children were
innocent of sensuous pleasures. But of true aggression he knew little.
He killed because it was his nature as a vampire; and the blood was
irresistible. But why did men find war irresistible? What was the desire
to clash violently against the will of another with weapons? What was
the physical need to destroy?

At such times, Daniel did his best to answer: for some men it was the
need to affirm one's own existence through the annihilation of another.
Surely Armand knew these things.

"Know? Know? What does that matter if you don't understand," Armand had
asked, his accent unusually sharp in his agitation, "if you cannot
proceed from one perception to another? Don't you see, this is what I
cannot do."

When he found Daniel in Frankfurt, it was the nature of history, the
impossibility of writing any coherent explanation of events that was not
in itself a lie. The impossibility of truth being served by
generalities, and the impossibility of learning proceeding without them.

Now and then these meetings had not been entirely selfish. In a country
inn in England Daniel woke to the sound of Armand's voice warning him to
leave the building at once. A fire destroyed the inn in less than an
hour.

Another time he had been in jail in New York, picked up for drunkenness
and vagrancy when Armand appeared to bail him out, looking all too human
as he always did after he had fed, a young lawyer in a tweed coat and
flannel pants, escorting Daniel to a room in the Carlyle, where he left
him to sleep it off with a suitcase full of new clothes waiting, and a
wallet full of money hidden in a pocket.

Finally, after a year and a half of this madness, Daniel began to
question Armand. What had it really been like in those days in Venice?
Look at this film, set in the eighteenth century, tell me what is wrong.

But Armand was remarkably unresponsive. "I cannot tell you those things
because I have no experience of them. You see, I have so little ability
to synthesize knowledge; I deal in the immediate with a cool intensity.
What was it like in Paris? Ask me if it rained on the night of Saturday,
June 5, 1793. Perhaps I could tell you I that."

! Yet at other moments, he spoke in rapid bursts of the things around
him, of the eerie garish cleanliness of this era, of the horrid
acceleration of change.

"Behold, earthshaking inventions which are useless or obsolete within
the same century-the steamboat, the railroads; yet do you know what
these meant after six thousand years of galley slaves and men on
horseback? And now the dance hall girl buys a chemical to kill the seed
of her lovers, and lives to be seventy-five in a room full of gadgets
which cool the air and veritably eat the dust. And yet for all the
costume movies and the paperback history thrown at you in every
drugstore, the public has no accurate memory of anything; every social

problem is observed in relation to 'norms' which in fact never existed,
people fancy themselves 'deprived' of luxuries and peace and quiet which
in fact were never common to any people anywhere at all." "But the
Venice of your time, tell me. . . ." "What? That it was dirty? That it
was beautiful? That people went about in rags with rotting teeth and
stinking breath and laughed at public executions? You want to know the
key difference? There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time.
No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I
was still among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and
now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy,
gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and
touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge,
some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so
alone."

Daniel found himself fascinated, sometimes trying to write down the
things Armand told him. Yet Armand continued to frighten him. Daniel was
ever on the move.

He wasn't quite sure how long it had gone on before he stopped running,
though the night itself was quite impossible to forget.

Maybe four years had passed since the game had begun. Daniel had spent a
long quiet summer in southern Italy during which he had not seen his
demon familiar even once.

In a cheap hotel only a half block from the ruins of ancient Pompeii, he
had spent his hours reading, writing, trying to define what his glimpse
of the supernatural had done to him, and how he must learn again to
want, to envision, to dream. Immortality on this earth was indeed
possible. This he knew without question, but what did it matter if
immortality was not Daniel's to have?

By day he walked the broken streets of the excavated Roman city. And
when the moon was full he wandered there, alone, by night as well. It
seemed sanity had come back to him. And life might soon come back too.
Green leaves smelled fresh when he crushed them in his fingers. He
looked up at the stars and did not feel resentful so much as sad.

Yet at other times, he burned for Armand as if for an elixir without
which he could not go on. The dark energy that had fired him for four
years was now missing. He dreamed Armand was near him; he awoke weeping
stupidly. Then the morning would come and he would be sad but calm.

Then Armand had returned.

It was late, perhaps ten o'clock in the evening, and the sky, as it is
so often in southern Italy, was a brilliant dark blue overhead. Daniel
had been walking alone down the long road that leads from Pompeii proper
to the Villa of the Mysteries, hoping no guards would come to drive him
away.

As soon as he'd reached the ancient house, a stillness had descended. No
guards here. No one living. Only the sudden silent appearance of Armand
before the entrance. Armand again.

He'd come silently out of the shadows into the moonlight, a young boy in
dirty jeans and worn denim jacket, and he had slipped his arm around
Daniel and gently kissed Daniel's face. Such warm skin, full of the

fresh blood of the kill. Daniel fancied he could smell it, the perfume
of the living clinging to Armand still.

"You want to come into this house?" Armand had whispered. No locks ever
kept Armand from anything. Daniel had been trembling, on the edge of
tears. And why was that? So glad to see him, touch him, ah, damn him!

They had entered the dark, low-ceilinged rooms, the press of Armand's
arm against Daniel's back oddly comforting. Ah, yes, this intimacy,
because that's what it is, isn't it? You, my secret . . .

Secret lover.

Yes.

Then the realization had come to Daniel as they stood together in the
ruined dining room with its famous murals of ritual flagellation barely
visible in the dark: He isn't going to kill me after all. He isn't going
to do it. Of course he won't make me what he is, but he isn't going to
kill me. The dance will not end like that.

"But how could you not know such a thing," Armand had said, reading his
thoughts. "I love you. If I hadn't grown to love you, I would have
killed you before now, of course."

The moonlight poured through the wooden lattices. The lush figures of
the murals came to life against their red backdrop, the color of dried
blood.

Daniel stared hard at the creature before him, this thing that looked
human and sounded human but was not. There was a horrid shift in his
consciousness; he saw this being like a great insect, a monstrous evil
predator who had devoured a million human lives. And yet he loved this
thing. He loved its smooth white skin, its great dark brown eyes. He
loved it not because it looked like a gentle, thoughtful young man, but
because it was ghastly and awful and loathsome, and beautiful all at the
same time. He loved it the way people love evil, because it thrills them
to the core of their souls. Imagine, killing like that, just taking life
any time you want it, just doing it, sinking your teeth into another and
taking all that that person can possibly give.

Look at the garments he wore. Blue cotton shirt, brass-buttoned denim
jacket. Where had he gotten them? Off a victim, yes, like taking out his
knife and skinning the kill while it was still warm? No wonder they
reeked of salt and blood, though none was visible. And the hair trimmed
just as if it weren't going to grow out within twenty-four hours to its
regular shoulder length. This is evil. This is illusion. This is what I
want to be, which is why I cannot stand to look at him.

Armand's lips had moved in a soft, slightly concealed smile. And then
his eyes had misted and closed. He had bent close to Daniel, pressed his
lips to Daniel's neck.

And once again, as he had in a little room on Divisadero Street in San
Francisco with the vampire Louis, Daniel felt the sharp teeth pierce the
surface of his skin. Sudden pain and throbbing warmth. "Are you killing
me finally?" He grew drowsy, on fire, filled with love. "Do it, yes."

But Armand had taken only a few droplets. He'd released Daniel and
pressed gently on his shoulders, forcing Daniel down to his knees.

Daniel had looked up to see the blood flowing from Armand's wrist. Great
electric shocks had passed through Daniel at the taste of that blood. It
had seemed in a flash that the city of Pompeii was full of a whispering,
a crying, some vague and pulsing imprint of long-ago suffering and
death. Thousands perishing in smoke and ash. Thousands dying together.
Together. Daniel had clung to Armand. But the blood was gone. Only a
taste-no more.

"You are mine, beautiful boy," Armand had said.

The following morning when he awoke in bed at the Excelsior in Rome,
Daniel knew that he would not run away from Armand ever again. Less than
an hour after sunset, Armand came to him. They would go to London now,
the car was waiting to take them to the plane. But there was time
enough, wasn't there, for another embrace, another small exchange of
blood. "Here from my throat," Armand had whispered, cradling Daniel's
head in his hand. A fine soundless throbbing. The light of the lamps
expanded, brightened, obliterated the room.

Lovers. Yes, it had become an ecstatic and engulfing affair.

"You are my teacher," Armand told him. "You will tell me everything
about this century. I am learning secrets already that have eluded me
since the beginning. You'll sleep when the sun rises, if you wish, but
the nights are mine."

Into the very midst of life they plunged. At pretense Armand was a
genius, and killing early on any given evening, he passed for human
everywhere that they went. His skin was burning hot in those early
hours, his face full of passionate curiosity, his embraces feverish and
quick.

It would have taken another immortal to keep up with him. Daniel nodded
off at symphonies and operas or during the hundreds upon hundreds of
films that Armand dragged him to see. Then there were the endless
parties, the cluttered noisy gatherings from Chelsea to Mayfair where
Armand argued politics and philosophy with students, or women of
fashion, or anyone who would give him the slightest chance. His eyes
grew moist with excitement, his voice lost its soft preternatural
resonance and took on the hard human accent of the other young men in
the room.

Clothes of all kinds fascinated him, not for their beauty but for what
he thought they meant. He wore jeans and sweatshirts like Daniel; he
wore cable-knit sweaters and workmen's brogans, leather windbreakers,
and mirrored sunglasses pushed up on his head. He wore tailored suits,
and dinner jackets, and white tie and tails when the fancy suited him;
his hair was cut short one night so he looked like any young man down
from Cambridge, and left curly and long, an angel's mane, the next.

It seemed that he and Daniel were always walking up four unlighted
flights of stairs to visit some painter, sculptor, or photographer, or
to see some special never-released yet revolutionary film. They spent
hours in the cold-water flats of dark-eyed young women who played rock
music and made herbal tea which Armand never drank.

Men and women fell in love with Armand, of course, "so innocent, so
passionate, so brilliant!" You don't say. In fact, Armand's power to
seduce was almost beyond his control. And it was Daniel who must bed
these unfortunates, if Armand could possibly arrange it, while he

watched from a chair nearby, a dark-eyed Cupid with a tender approving
smile. Hot, nerve-searing, this witnessed passion, Daniel working the
other body with ever greater abandon, aroused by the dual purpose of
every intimate gesture. Yet he lay empty afterwards, staring at Armand,
resentful, cold.

In New York they went tearing to museum openings, cafes, bars, adopted a
young dancer, paying all his bills through school. They sat on the
stoops in SoHo and Greenwich Village whiling the hours away with anybody
who would stop to join them. They went to night classes in literature,
philosophy, art history, and politics. They studied biology, bought
microscopes, collected specimens. They studied books on astronomy and
mounted giant telescopes on the roofs of the buildings in which they
lived for a few days or a month at most. They went to boxing matches,
rock concerts, Broadway shows.

Technological inventions began to obsess Armand, one after the other.
First it was kitchen blenders, in which he made frightful concoctions
mostly based on the colors of the ingredients; then microwave ovens, in
which he cooked roaches and rats. Garbage disposers enchanted him; he
fed them paper towels and whole packages of cigarettes. Then it was
telephones. He called long distance all over the planet, speaking for
hours with "mortals" in Australia or India. Finally television caught
him up utterly, so that the flat was full of blaring speakers and
flickering screens.

Anything with blue skies enthralled him. Then he must watch news
programs, prime time series, documentaries, and finally every film,
regardless of merit, ever taped.

At last particular movies struck his fancy. Over and over he watched
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, fascinated by Rutger Hauer, the powerfully
built actor who, as the leader of the rebel androids, confronts his
human maker, kisses him, and then crushes his skull. It would bring a
slow and almost impish laugh from Armand, the bones cracking, the look
in Hauer's ice-cold blue eye.

"That's your friend, Lestat, there," Armand whispered once to Daniel.
"Lestat would have the . . . how do you say? . . . guts? ... to do
that!"

After Blade Runner it was the idiotic and hilarious Time Bandits, a
British comedy in which five dwarfs steal a "Map of Creation" so they
can travel through the holes in Time. Into one century after another
they tumble, thieving and brawling, along with a little boy companion,
until they all wind up in the devil's lair.

Then one scene in particular became Armand's favorite: the dwarfs on a
broken-down stage in Castelleone singing "Me and My Shadow" for Napoleon
really sent Armand out of his mind. He lost all supernatural composure
and became utterly human, laughing till the tears rose in his eyes.

Daniel had to admit there was a horrible charm to it, the "Me and My
Shadow" number, with the dwarfs stumbling, fighting with each other,
finally lousing up the whole proceedings, and the dazed eighteenth-
century musicians in the pit not knowing what to make of the twentieth-
century song. Napoleon was stupefied, then delighted! A stroke of comic
genius, the entire scene. But how many times could a mortal watch it?
For Armand there seemed no end.

Yet within six months he had dropped the movies for video cameras and
must make his own films. All over New York he dragged Daniel, as he
interviewed people on the nighttime streets. Armand had reels of himself
reciting poetry in Italian or Latin, or merely staring with his arms
folded, a gleaming white presence slipping in and out of focus in
eternally dim bronze light.

Then somewhere, somehow, in a place unbeknownst to Daniel, Armand made a
long tape of himself lying in the coffin during his daytime deathlike
sleep. Daniel found this impossible to look at. Armand sat before the
slow-moving film for hours, watching his own hair, cut at sunrise,
slowly growing against the satin as he lay motionless with closed eyes.

Next it was computers. He was filling disk after disk with his secret
writings. He rented additional apartments in Manhattan to house his word
processors and video game machines.

Finally he turned to planes.

Daniel had always been a compulsive traveler, he had fled Armand to
cities worldwide, and certainly he and Armand had taken planes together.
Nothing new in that. But now it was a concentrated exploration; they
must spend the entire night in the air. Flying to Boston, then
Washington, then to Chicago, then back to New York City, was not
unusual. Armand observed everything, passengers, stewardesses; he spoke
with the pilots; he lay back in the deep first-class seats listening to
the engines roar. Double-decker jets particularly enchanted him. He must
try longer, more daring adventures: all the way to Port-au-Prince or San
Francisco, or Rome, or Madrid or Lisbon, it didn't matter, as long as
Armand was safely landed by dawn.

Armand virtually disappeared at dawn. Daniel was never to know where
Armand actually slept. But then Daniel was dead on his feet by daybreak
anyway. Daniel didn't see high noon for five years.

Often Armand had been in the room some time before Daniel awakened. The
coffee would be perking, the music going- Vivaldi or honky-tonk piano,
as Armand loved both equally- and Armand would be pacing, ready for
Daniel to get up.

"Come, lover, we're going to the ballet tonight. I want to see
Baryshnikov. And after that, down to the Village. You remember that jazz
band I loved last summer, well, they've come back. Come on, I'm hungry,
my beloved. We must go."

And if Daniel was sluggish, Armand would push him into the shower, soap
him all over, rinse him off, drag him out, dry him thoroughly, then
shave his face as lovingly as an old-fashioned barber, and finally dress
him after carefully selecting from Daniel's wardrobe of dirty and
neglected clothes.

Daniel loved the feel of the hard gleaming white hands moving over his
naked flesh, rather like satin gloves. And the brown eyes that seemed to
draw Daniel out of himself; ah, the delicious disorientation, the
certainty that he was being carried downwards, out of all things
physical, and finally the hands closing on his throat gently, and the
teeth breaking through the skin.

He closed his eyes, his body heating slowly, only to burn truly when
Armand's blood touched his lips. He heard the distant sighs again, the

crying, was it of lost souls? It seemed a great luminous continuity was
there, as if all his dreams were suddenly connected and vitally
important, yet it was all slipping away. . . .

Once he'd reached out, held Armand with all his strength, and tried to
gash the skin of his throat. Armand had been so patient, making the tear
for him, and letting him close his mouth on it for the longest time-yes,
this-then guiding him gently away.

Daniel was past all decision. Daniel lived only in two alternating
states: misery and ecstasy, united by love. He never knew when he'd be
given the blood. He never knew if things looked different because of it-
the carnations staring at him from their vases, skyscrapers hideously
visible like plants sprung up from steel seeds overnight-or because he
was just going out of his mind.

Then had come the night when Armand said he was ready to enter this
century in earnest, he understood enough about it now. He wanted
"incalculable" wealth. He wanted a vast dwelling full of all those
things he'd come to value. And yachts, planes, cars- millions of
dollars. He wanted to buy Daniel everything that Daniel might ever
desire.

"What do you mean, millions!" Daniel had scoffed. "You throw your
clothes away after you wear them, you rent apartments and forget where
they are. Do you know what a zip code is, or a tax bracket? I'm the one
who buys all the goddamned airline tickets. Millions. How are we going
to get millions! Steal another Maserati and be done with it, for God's
sakes!"

"Daniel, you are a gift to me from Louis," Armand had said tenderly.
"What would I do without you? You misunderstand everything." His eyes
were large, childlike. "I want to be in the vital center of things the
way I was years ago in Paris in the Theater of the Vampires. Surely you
remember. I want to be a canker in the very eye of the world."

Daniel had been dazzled by the speed with which things happened.

It had begun with a treasure find in the waters off Jamaica, Armand
chartering a boat to show Daniel where salvage operations must begin.
Within days a sunken Spanish galleon loaded with bullion and jewels had
been discovered. Next it was an archaeological find of priceless Olmec
figurines. Two more sunken ships were pinpointed in rapid succession. A
cheap piece of South American property yielded a long forgotten emerald
mine.

They purchased a mansion in Florida, yachts, speedboats, a small but
exquisitely appointed jet plane. And now they must be outfitted like
princes for all occasions. Armand himself supervised the measurements
for Daniel's custom-made shirts, suits, shoes. He chose the fabrics for
an endless parade of sports coats, pants, robes, silk foulards. Of
course Daniel must have for colder climes mink-lined raincoats, and
dinner jackets for Monte Carlo, and jeweled cuff links, and even a long
      black suede cloak, which Daniel with his "twentieth-century
height" could carry off quite well.

At sunset when Daniel awoke, his clothes had already been laid out for
him. Heaven help him if he were to change a single item, from the linen
handkerchief to the black silk socks. Supper awaited in the immense
dining room with its windows open to the pool. Armand was already at his

desk in the adjoining study. There was work to do: maps to consult, more
wealth to be acquired.

"But how do you do it!" Daniel had demanded, as he watched Armand making
notes, writing directions for new acquisitions.

"If you can read the minds of men, you can have anything that you want,"
Armand had said patiently. Ah, that soft reasonable voice, that open and
almost trusting boyish face, the auburn hair always slipping into the
eye a bit carelessly, the body so suggestive of human serenity, of
physical ease.

"Give me what I want," Daniel had demanded.

"I'm giving you everything you could ever ask for."

"Yes, but not what I have asked for, not what I want!"

"Be alive, Daniel." A low whisper, like a kiss. "Let me tell you from my
heart that life is better than death."

"I don't want to be alive, Armand, I want to live forever, and then I
will tell you whether life is better than death."

The fact was, the riches were maddening him, making him feel his
mortality more keenly than ever before. Sailing the warm Gulf Stream
with Armand under a clear night sky, sprinkled with countless stars, he
was desperate to possess all of this forever. With hatred and love he
watched Armand effortlessly steering the vessel. Would Armand really let
him die?

The game of acquisition continued.

Picassos, Degas, Van Goghs, these were but a few of the stolen paintings
Armand recovered without explanation and handed over to Daniel for
resales or rewards. Of course the recent owners would not dare to come
forward, if in fact they had survived Armand's silent nocturnal visit to
the sanctums where these stolen treasures had been displayed. Sometimes
no clear title to the work in question existed. At auction, they brought
millions. But even this was not enough.

Pearls, rubies, emeralds, diamond tiaras, these he brought to Daniel.
"Never mind, they were stolen, no one will claim them." And from the
savage narcotics traders off the Miami coast, Armand stole anything and
everything, guns, suitcases full of money, even their boats.

Daniel stared at the piles and piles of green bills, as the secretaries
counted them and wrapped them for coded accounts in European banks.

Often Daniel watched Armand go out alone to hunt the warm southern
waters, a youth in soft black silk shirt and black pants, manning a
sleek unlighted speedboat, the wind whipping his uncut long hair. Such a
deadly foe. Somewhere far out there, beyond sight of land, he finds his
smugglers and he strikes-the lone pirate, death. Are the victims dropped
into the deep, hair billowing perhaps for one moment while the moon can
still illuminate them as they look up for a last glimpse at what has
been their ruin? This boy! They thought they were the evil ones. . . .

"Would you let me go with you? Would you let me see it when you do it?"

"No."

Finally enough capital had been amassed; Armand was ready for real
action.

He ordered Daniel to make purchases without counsel or hesitation: a
fleet of cruise ships, a chain of restaurants and hotels. Four private
planes were now at their disposal. Armand had eight phones.

And then came the final dream: the Night Island, Armand's own personal
creation with its five dazzling glass stories of theaters, restaurants,
and shops. He drew the pictures for the architects he'd chosen. He gave
them endless lists of the materials he wanted, the fabrics, the
sculptures for the fountains, even the flowers, the potted trees.

Behold, the Night Island. From sunset till dawn, the tourists mobbed it,
as boat after boat brought them out from the Miami docks. The music
played eternally in the lounges, on the dance floors. The glass
elevators never stopped their climb to heaven; ponds, streams,
waterfalls glittered amid banks of moist, fragile blooms.

You could buy anything on the Night Island-diamonds, a Coca-Cola, books,
pianos, parrots, designer fashions, porcelain dolls. All the fine
cuisines of the world awaited you. Five films played nightly in the
cinemas. Here was English tweed and Spanish leather, Indian silk,
Chinese carpets, sterling silver, ice-cream cones or cotton candy, bone
china, and Italian shoes.

Or you could live adjacent to it, in secret luxury, slipping in and out
of the whirl at will.

"All this is yours, Daniel," Armand said, moving slowly through the
spacious airy rooms of their very own Villa of the Mysteries, which
covered three stories-and cellars, to Daniel-windows open to the distant
burning nightscape of Miami, to the dim high clouds rolling above.

Gorgeous the skilled mixture of old and new. Elevator doors rolling back
on broad rectangular rooms full of medieval tapestries and antique
chandeliers; giant television sets in every room. Renaissance paintings
filled Daniel's suite, where Persian rugs covered the parquet. The
finest of the Venetian school surrounded Armand in his white carpeted
study full of shining computers, intercoms, and monitors. The books,
magazines, newspapers came from all over the world.

"This is your home, Daniel."

And so it had been and Daniel had loved it, he had to admit that, and
what he had loved even more was the freedom, the power, and the luxury
that attended him everywhere that he went.

He and Armand had gone into the depths of the Central American jungles
by night to see the Mayan ruins; they had gone up the flank of Annapurna
to glimpse the distant summit under the light of the moon. Through the
crowded streets of Tokyo they had wandered together, through Bangkok and
Cairo and Damascus, through Lima and Rio and Kathmandu. By day Daniel
wallowed in comfort at the best of the local hostelries; by night he
wandered fearless with Armand at his side.

Now and then, however, the illusion of civilized life would break down.
Sometimes in some far-flung place, Armand sensed the presence of other

immortals. He explained that he had thrown his shield around Daniel, yet
it worried him. Daniel must stay at his side.

"Make me what you are and worry no more."

"You don't know what you're saying," Armand had answered. "Now you're
one of a billion faceless humans. If you were one of us, you'd be a
candle burning in the dark."

Daniel wouldn't accept it.

"They would spot you without fail," Armand continued. He had become
angry, though not at Daniel. The fact was he disliked any talk at all of
the undead. "Don't you know the old ones destroy the young ones out of
hand?" he'd asked. "Didn't your beloved Louis explain that to you? It's
what I do everywhere that we settle-I clean them out, the young ones,
the vermin. But I am not invincible." He'd paused as though debating
whether or not he should continue. Then: "I'm like any beast on the
prowl. I have enemies who are older and stronger who would try to
destroy me if it interested them to do so, I am sure."

"Older than you are? But I thought you were the oldest," Daniel had
said. It had been years since they'd spoken of Interview with the
Vampire. They had, in fact, never discussed its contents in detail.

"No, of course I'm not the oldest," Armand had answered. He seemed
slightly uneasy. "Merely the oldest your friend Louis was ever to find.
There are others. I don't know their names, I've seldom seen their
faces. But at times, I feel them. You might say that we feel each other.
We send our silent yet powerful signals. 'Keep away from me.' "

The following night, he'd given Daniel the locket, the amulet as he
called it, to wear. He'd kissed it first and rubbed it in his hands as
if to warm it. Strange to witness this ritual. Stranger still to see the
thing itself with the letter A carved on it, and inside the tiny vial of
Armand's blood.

"Here, snap the clasp if they come near you. Break the vial instantly.
And they will feel the power that protects you. They will not dare-"

"Ah, you'll let them kill me. You know you will," Daniel had said
coldly. Shut out. "Give me the power to fight for myself."

But he had worn the locket ever since. Under the lamp, he'd examined the
A and the intricate carvings all over the thing to find they were tiny
twisted human figures, some mutilated, others writhing as if in agony,
some dead. Horrid thing actually. He had dropped the chain down into his
shirt, and it was cold against his naked chest, but out of sight.

Yet Daniel was never to see or sense the presence of another
supernatural being. He remembered Louis as if he'd been a hallucination,
something known in a fever. Armand was Daniel's single oracle, his
merciless and all-loving demonic god.

More and more his bitterness increased. Life with Armand inflamed him,
maddened him. It had been years since Daniel had even thought of his
family, of the friends he used to know. Checks went out to kin, of that
he'd made certain, but they were just names now on a list.

"You'll never die, and yet you look at me and you watch me die, night
after night, you watch it."

Ugly fights, terrible fights, finally, Armand broken down, glassy-eyed
with silent rage, then crying softly but uncontrollably as if some lost
emotion had been rediscovered which threatened to tear him apart. "I
will not do it, I cannot do it. Ask me to kill you, it would be easier
than that. You don't know what you ask for, don't you see? It is always
a damnable error! Don't you realize that any one of us would give it up
for one human lifetime?"

"Give up immortality, just to live one life? I don't believe you. This
is the first time you have told me an out-and-out lie."

"How dare you!"

"Don't hit me. You might kill me. You're very strong."

"I'd give it up. If I weren't a coward when it gets right down to it, if
I weren't after five hundred greedy years in this whirlwind still
terrified to the marrow of my bones of death."

"No, you wouldn't. Fear has nothing to do with it. Imagine one lifetime
back then when you were born. And all this lost? The future in which you
know power and luxury of which Genghis Khan never dreamed? But forget
the technical miracles. Would you settle for ignorance of the world's
destiny? Ah, don't tell me you would."

No resolution in words was ever reached. It would end with the embrace,
the kiss, the blood stinging him, the shroud of dreams closing over him
like a great net, hunger! I love you! Give me more! Yes, more. But never
enough.

It was useless.

What had these transfusions done to his body and soul? Made him see the
descent of the falling leaf in greater detail? Armand was not going to
give it to him!

Armand would see Daniel leave time and again, and drift off into the
terrors of the everyday world, risk that, rather than do it. There was
nothing Daniel could do, nothing he could give.

And the wandering started, the escaping, and Armand did not follow him.
Armand would wait each time until Daniel begged to come back. Or until
Daniel was beyond calling, until Daniel was on the verge of death
itself. And then and only then, Armand would bring him back.

The rain hit the wide pavements of Michigan Avenue. The bookstore was
empty, the lights had gone out. Somewhere a clock had struck the hour of
nine. He stood against the glass watching the traffic stream past in
front of him. Nowhere to go. Drink the tiny drop of blood inside the
locket. Why not?

And Lestat in California, on the prowl already, perhaps stalking a
victim even now. And they were preparing the hall for the concert,
weren't they? Mortal men rigging up lights, microphones, concession
stands, oblivious to the secret codes being given, the sinister audience
that would conceal itself in the great indifferent and inevitably

hysterical human throng. Ah, maybe Daniel had made a horrible
miscalculation. Maybe Armand was there!

At first it seemed an impossibility, then a certainty. Why hadn't Daniel
realized this before?

Surely Armand had gone! If there was any truth at all in what Lestat had
written, Armand would go for a reckoning, to witness, to search perhaps
for those he'd lost over the centuries now drawn to Lestat by the same
call.

And what would a mortal lover matter then, a human who'd been no more
than a toy for a decade? No. Armand had gone on without him. And this
time there would be no rescue.

He felt cold, small, as he stood there. He felt miserably alone. It
didn't matter, his premonitions, how the dream of the twins descended
upon him and then left him with foreboding. These were things that were
passing him by like great black wings. You could feel the indifferent
wind as they swept over. Armand had proceeded without him towards a
destiny that Daniel would never fully understand.

It filled him with horror, with sadness. Gates locked. The anxiety
aroused by the dream mingled with a dull sickening fear. He had come to
the end of the line. What would he do? Wearily, he envisioned the Night
Island locked against him. He saw the villa behind its white walls, high
above the beach, impossible to reach. He imagined his past gone, along
with his future. Death was the understanding of the immediate present:
that there is finally nothing else.

He walked on a few steps; his hands were numb. The rain had drenched his
sweatshirt. He wanted to lie down on the very pavement and let the twins
come again. And Lestat's phrases ran through his head. The Dark Trick he
called the moment of rebirth. The Savage Garden he called the world that
could embrace such exquisite monsters, ah, yes.

But let me be a lover in the Savage Garden with you, and the light that
went out of life would come back in a great burst of glory. Out of
mortal flesh I would pass into eternity. I would be one of you.

Dizzy. Did he almost fall? Someone talking to him, someone asking if he
was all right. No, of course not. Why should I be?

But there was a hand on his shoulder.

Daniel.

He looked up.

Armand stood at the curb.

At first he could not believe it, he wanted it so badly, but there was
no denying what he saw. Armand stood there. He was peering silently from
the unearthly stillness he seemed to carry with him, his face flushed
beneath the faintest touch of unnatural pallor. How normal he looked, if
beauty is ever normal. And yet how strangely set apart from the material
things touching him, the rumpled white coat and pants he wore. Behind
him the big gray hulk of a Rolls waited, like an ancillary vision,
droplets teeming on its silver roof.

Come on, Daniel. You made it hard for me this time, didn't you, so hard.

Why the urgency of the command when the hand that pulled him forward was
so strong? Such a rare thing to see Armand truly angry. Ah, how Daniel
loved this anger! His knees went out from under him. He felt himself
lifted. And then the soft velvet of the back seat of the car spread out
under him. He fell over on his hands. He closed his eyes.

But Armand gently pulled him upright, held him. The car rocked gently,
deliciously as it moved forward. So nice to sleep at last in Armand's
arms. But there was so much he must tell Armand, so much about the
dream, the book.

"Don't you think I know?" Armand whispered. A strange light in the eye,
what was it? Something raw and tender in the way Armand looked, all the
composure stripped away. He lifted a tumbler half full of brandy and put
it in Daniel's hand.

"And you running from me," he said, "from Stockholm and Edinburgh and
Paris. What do you think I am that I can follow you at such speed down
so many pathways? And such danger-"

Lips against Daniel's face, suddenly, ah, that's better, I like kissing.
And snuggling with dead things, yes, hold me. He buried his face in
Armand's neck. Your blood.

"Not yet, my beloved." Armand pushed him forward, pressing his fingers
to Daniel's lips. Such uncommon feeling in the low, controlled voice.
"Listen to what I'm saying to you. All over the world, our kind are
being destroyed."

Destroyed. It sent a current of panic through him, so that his body
tensed in spite of his exhaustion. He tried to focus on Armand, but he
saw the red-haired twins again, the soldiers, the blackened body of the
mother being overturned in the ashes. But the meaning, the continuity .
. . Why?

"I cannot tell you," Armand said. And he meant the dream when he spoke,
because he'd had the dream too. He lifted the brandy to Daniel's lips.

Oh, so warm, yes. He would slip into unconsciousness if he didn't hold
tight. They were racing silently along the freeway now, out of Chicago,
the rain flooding the windows, locked together in this warm, velvet-
lined little place. Ah, such lovely silver rain. And Armand had turned
away, distracted, as if listening to some faraway music, his lips
parted, frozen on the verge of speech.

I'm with you, safe with you.

"No, Daniel, not safe," he answered. "Maybe not even for a night or so
much as an hour."

Daniel tried to think, to form a question, but he was too weak, too
drowsy. The car was so comfortable, the motion of it so soothing. And
the twins. The beautiful red-haired twins wanted in now! His eyes closed
for a split second and he sank against Armand's shoulder, feeling
Armand's hand on his back.

Far away he heard Armand's voice: "What do I do with you, my beloved?
Especially now, when I myself am so afraid."

Darkness again. He held fast to the taste of the brandy in his mouth, to
the touch of Armand's hand, but he was already dreaming.

The twins were walking in the desert; the sun was high above. It burned
their white arms, their faces. Their lips were swollen and cracked from
thirst. Their dresses were stained with blood.

"Make the rain fall," Daniel whispered aloud, "you can do it, make the
rain fall." One of the twins fell down on her knees, and her sister
knelt and put her arms around her. Red hair and red hair.

Somewhere far off he heard Armand's voice again. Armand said that they
were too deep in the desert. Not even their spirits could make rain in
such a place.

But why? Couldn't spirits do anything? "    He felt Armand kiss him
gently again.

The twins have now entered a low mountain pass. But there is no shade
because the sun is directly above them, and the rocky slopes are too
treacherous for them to climb. On they walk. Can't someone help them?
They stumble and fall every few steps now. The rocks look too hot to
touch. Finally one of them falls face down in the sand, and the other
lies over her, sheltering her with her hair.

Oh, if only evening would come, with its cold winds.

Suddenly the twin who is protecting her sister looks up. Movement on the
cliffs. Then stillness again. A rock falls, echoes with a soft clear
shuffling sound. And then Daniel sees the men moving over the
precipices, desert people as they have looked for thousands of years
with their dark skin and heavy white robes.

The twins rise on their knees together as these men approach. The men
offer them water. They pour the cool water over the twins. Suddenly the
twins are laughing and talking hysterically, so great is their relief,
but the men don't understand. Then it is gestures, so purely eloquent,
as one twin points to the belly of her sister, and then folding her arms
makes the universal sign for rocking a child. Ah, yes. The men lift the
pregnant woman. And all move together towards the oasis, round which
their tents stand.

At last by the light of a fire outside the tent, the twins sleep, safe,
among the desert people, the Bedouins. Could it be that the Bedouins are
so very ancient, that their history goes back thousands and thousands of
years? At dawn, one of the twins rises, the one who does not carry a
child. As her sister watches, she walks out towards the olive trees of
the oasis. She lifts her arms, and at first it seems she is only
welcoming the sun. Others have awakened; they gather to see. Then a wind
rises, gently, moving the branches of the olive trees. And the rain, the
light sweet rain begins to fall.

He opened his eyes. He was on the plane.

He recognized the small bedroom immediately by the white plastic walls
and the soothing quality of the dim yellow light. Everything synthetic,
hard and gleaming like the great rib bones of prehistoric creatures.
Have things come full circle? Technology has recreated Jonah's chamber
deep within the belly of the whale.

He was lying on the bed that had no head or foot or legs or frame to it.
Someone had washed his hands and his face. He was clean-shaven. Ah, that
felt so good. And the roar of the engines was a huge silence, the whale
breathing, slicing through the sea. That made it possible for him to see
things around him very distinctly. A decanter. Bourbon. He wanted it.
But he was too exhausted to move. And something not right, something.
... He reached up, felt his neck. The amulet was gone! But it didn't
matter. He was with Armand.

Armand sat at the little table near the whale's eye window, the white
plastic lid pulled all the way down. He had cut his hair. And he wore
black wool now, neat and fine, like the corpse again dressed for the
funeral even to the shining black shoes. Grim all this. Someone will now
read the Twenty-third Psalm. Bring back the white clothes.

"You're dying," Armand said softly.

" 'And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,' et
cetera," Daniel whispered. His throat was so dry. And his head ached.
Didn't matter saying what was really on his mind. AH been said long ago.

Armand spoke again silently, a laser beam touching Daniel's brain:

Shall we bother with the particulars? You weigh no more than a hundred
and thirty pounds now. And the alcohol is eating at your insides. You
are half mad. There is almost nothing left in the world that you enjoy.

"Except talking to you now and then. It's so easy to hear everything you
say."

If you were never to see me again, that would only make things worse. If
you go on as you are, you won't live another five days.

Unbearable thought, actually. But if that's so, then why have I been
running away?

No response.

How clear everything seemed. It wasn't only the roar of the engines, it
was the curious movement of the plane, that never-ending irregular
undulation as if it rode the air in bumps and dips and over curbs and
now and then uphill. The whale speeding along on the whale path, as
Beowulf called it.

Armand's hair was brushed to one side, neatly. Gold watch on his wrist,
one of those high-tech numbers he so adored. Think of that thing
flashing its digits inside a coffin during the day. And the black
jacket, old-fashioned rather with narrow lapels. The vest was black
silk, it looked like that anyway. But his face, ah, he had fed all
right. Fed plenty.

Do you remember anything I said to you earlier?

"Yes," Daniel said. But the truth is he had trouble remembering. Then it
came back suddenly, oppressively. "Something about destruction
everywhere. But I'm dying. They're dying, I'm dying. They got to be
immortal before it happened; I am merely alive. See? I remember. I would
like to have the bourbon now."

There is nothing I can do to make you want to live, isn't that so?

"Not that again. I will jump out of the plane if you go on."

Will you listen to me, then? Really listen?

"How can I help it? 1 can't get away from your voice when you want me to
listen; it's like a tiny microphone inside my head. What is this, tears?
You're going to weep over me?"

For one second, he looked so young. What a travesty.

"Damn you, Daniel," he said, so that Daniel heard the words aloud.

A chill passed over Daniel. Horrid to see him suffering. Daniel said
nothing.

"What we are," Armand said, "it wasn't meant to be, you know that. You
didn't have to read Lestat's book to find it out. Any one of us could
have told you it was an abomination, a demonic fusion-"

"Then what Lestat wrote was true." A demon going into the ancient
Egyptian Mother and the Father. Well, a spirit anyway. They had called
it a demon back then.

"Doesn't matter whether or not it's true. The beginning is no longer
important. What matters is that the end may be at hand."

Deep tightening of panic, the atmosphere of the dream return ing, the
shrill sound of the twins' screams.

"Listen to me," Armand said patiently, calling him back away from the
two women. "Lestat has awakened something or someone-"

"Akasha . . . Enkil."

"Perhaps. It may be more than one or two. No one knows for certain.
There is a vague repeated cry of danger, but no one seems to know whence
it comes. They only know that we are being sought out and annihilated,
that coven houses, meeting places, go up in flames."

"I've heard the cry of danger," Daniel whispered. "Sometimes very strong
in the middle of the night, and then at other moments like an echo."
Again he saw the twins. It had to be connected to the twins. "But how do
you know these things, about the coven houses, about-"

"Daniel, don't try me. There isn't much time left. I know. The others
know. It's like a current, running through the wires of a great web."

"Yes." Whenever Daniel had tasted the vampiric blood, he had glimpsed
for one instant that great glittering mesh of knowledge, connections,
half-understood visions. And it was true then. The web had begun with
the Mother and the Father-

"Years ago," Armand interrupted, "it wouldn't have mattered to me, all
this."

"What do you mean?"

"But I don't want it to end now. I don't want to continue unless you-"
His face changed slightly. Faint look of surprise. "I don't want you to
die."

Daniel said nothing.

Eerie the stillness of this moment. Even with the plane riding the air
currents gently. Armand sitting there, so self-contained, so patient,
with the words belying the smooth calm of the voice.

"I'm not afraid, because you're here," Daniel said suddenly.

"You're a fool then. But I will tell you another mysterious part of it."

"Yes?"

"Lestat is still in existence. He goes on with his schemes. And those
who've gathered near him are unharmed."

"But how do you know for certain?"

Short little velvet faugh. "There you go again. So irrepressibly human.
You overestimate me or underestimate me. Seldom do you ever hit the
mark."

"I work with limited equipment. The cells in my body are subject to
deterioration, to a process called aging and-"

"They're gathered in San Francisco. They crowd the back rooms of a
tavern called Dracula's Daughter. Perhaps I know because others know it
and one powerful mind picks up images from another and unwittingly or
deliberately passes those images along. Perhaps one witness telegraphs
the image to many. I can't tell. Thoughts, feelings, voices, they're
just there. Traveling the web, the threads. Some are clear, others
clouded. Now and then the warning overrides everything. Danger. It is as
if our world falls silent for one instant. Then other voices rise
again."

"And Lestat. Where is Lestat?"

"He's been seen but only in glimpses. They can't track him to his lair.
He's too clever to let that happen. But he teases them. He races his
black Porsche through the streets of San Francisco. He may not know all
that's happened."

"Explain."

"The power to communicate varies. To listen to the thoughts of others is
often to be heard oneself. Lestat is concealing his presence. His mind
may be completely cut off."

"And the twins? The two women in the dream, who are they?"

"I don't know. Not all have had these dreams. But many know of them, and
all seem to fear them, to share the conviction that somehow Lestat is to
blame. For all that's happened, Lestat is to blame."

"A real devil among devils." Daniel laughed softly.

With a subtle nod, Armand acknowledged the little jest wearily. He even
smiled.

Stillness. Roar of the engines.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you? There have been attacks upon
our kind everywhere but there."

"Where Lestat is."

"Precisely. But the destroyer moves erratically. It seems it must be
near to the thing it would destroy. It may be waiting for the concert in
order to finish what it has begun."

"It can't hurt you. It would have already-"

The short, derisive laugh again, barely audible. A telepathic laugh?

"Your faith touches me as always, but don't be my acolyte just now. The
thing is not omnipotent. It can't move with infinite speed. You have to
understand the choice I've made. We're going to him because there isn't
any other safe place to go. It has found rogues in far-flung places and
burnt them to ashes-"

"And because you want to be with Lestat."

No answer.

"You know you do. You want to see him. You want to be there if he needs
you. If there's going to be a battle . . ."

No answer.

"And if Lestat caused it, maybe he can stop it."

Still Armand didn't answer. He appeared confused.

"It is simpler than that," he said finally. "I have to go."

The plane seemed a thing suspended on a spume of sound. Daniel looked
drowsily at the ceiling, at the light moving.

To see Lestat at last. He thought of Lestat's old house in New Orleans.
Of the gold watch he'd recovered from the dusty floor. And now it was
back to San Francisco, back to the beginning, back to Lestat. God, he
wanted the bourbon. Why wouldn't Armand give it to him? He was so weak.
They'd go to the concert, he'd see Lestat-

But then the sense of dread came again, deepening, the dread which the
dreams inspired. "Don't let me dream any more of them," he whispered
suddenly.

He thought he heard Armand say yes.

Suddenly Armand stood beside the bed. His shadow fell over Daniel. The
whale's belly seemed smaller, no more than the light surrounding Armand.

"Look at me, beloved," he said.

Darkness. And then the high iron gates opening, and the moon flooding
down on the garden. What is this place?

Oh, Italy, it had to be, with this gentle embracing warm air and a full
moon shining down on the great sweep of trees and flowers, and beyond,
the Villa of the Mysteries at the very edge of ancient Pompeii.

"But how did we get here!" He turned to Armand, who stood beside him
dressed in strange, old-fashioned velvet clothes. For one moment he
could do nothing but stare at Armand, at the black velvet tunic he wore
and the leggings, and his long curling auburn hair.

"We aren't realty here," Armand said. "You know we aren't." He turned
and walked into the garden towards the villa, his heels making the
faintest sound on the worn gray stones.

But it was real! Look at the crumbling old brick walls, and the flowers
in their long deep beds, and the path itself with Armand's damp
footprints! And the stars overhead, the stars! He turned around and
reached up into the lemon tree and broke off a single fragrant leaf.

Armand turned, reached back to take his arm. The smell of freshly turned
earth rose from the flower beds. Ah, I could die here.

"Yes," said Armand, "you could. And you will. And you know, I've never
done it before. I told you but you never believed me. Now Lestat's told
you in his book. I've never done it. Do you believe him?"

"Of course I believed you. The vow you made, you explained everything.
But Armand, this is my question, to whom did you make this vow?"

Laughter.

Their voices carried over the garden. Such roses and chrysanthemums, how
enormous they were. And light poured from the doorways of the Villa of
the Mysteries. Was there music playing? Why, the whole ruined place was
brilliantly illuminated under the incandescent blue of the night sky.

"So you would have me break my vow. You would have what you think you
want. But look well at this garden, because once I do it, you'll never
read my thoughts or see my visions again. A veil of silence will come
down."

"But we'll be brothers, don't you see?" Daniel asked.

Armand stood so close to him they were almost kissing. The flowers were
crushed against them, huge drowsing yellow dahlias and white gladioli,
such lovely drenching perfume. They had stopped beneath a dying tree in
which the wisteria grew wild. Its delicate blossoms shivered in
clusters, its great twining arms white as bone. And beyond voices poured
out of the Villa. Were there people singing?

"But where are we really?" Daniel asked. "Tell me!"

"I told you. It's just a dream. But if you want a name, let me call it
the gateway of life and death. I'll bring you with me through this
gateway. And why? Because I am a coward. And I love you too much to let
you go."

Such joy Daniel felt, such cold and lovely triumph. And so the moment
was his, and he was lost no more in the awesome free fall of time. No
more one of the teeming millions who would sleep in this dank
odoriferous earth, beneath the broken withered flowers, without name or
knowledge, all vision lost.

"I promise you nothing. How can I? I've told you what lies ahead."

"I don't care. I'll go towards it with you."

Armand's eyes were reddened, weary, old. Such delicate clothes these
were, hand sewn, dusty, like the clothes of a ghost. Were they what the
mind conjured effortlessly when it wanted to be purely itself?

"Don't cry! It's not fair," Daniel said. "This is my rebirth. How can
you cry? Don't you know what this means? Is it possible you never knew?"
He looked up suddenly, to catch the whole sweep of this enchanted
landscape, the distant Villa, the rolling land above and below. And then
he turned his face upwards, and the heavens astonished him. Never had he
seen so many stars.

Why, it seemed as if the sky itself went up and up forever with stars so
plentiful and bright that the constellations were utterly lost. No
pattern. No meaning. Only the gorgeous victory of sheer energy and
matter. But then he saw the Pleiades-the constellation beloved of the
doomed red-haired twins in the dream-and he smiled. He saw the twins
together on a mountaintop, and they were happy. It made him so glad.

"Say the word, my love," Armand said. "I'll do it. We'll be in hell
together after all."

"But don't you see," Daniel said, "all human decisions are made like
this. Do you think the mother knows what will happen to the child in her
womb? Dear God, we are lost, I tell you. What does it matter if you give
it to me and it's wrong! There is no wrong! There is only desperation,
and I would have it! I want to live forever with you."

He opened his eyes. The ceiling of the cabin of the plane, the soft
yellow lights reflected in the warm wood-paneled walls, and then around
him the garden, the perfume, the sight of the flowers almost breaking
loose from their stems.

They stood beneath the dead tree twined full of airy purple wisteria
blossoms. And the blossoms stroked his face, the clusters of waxy
petals. Something came back to him, something he had known long ago-that
in the language of an ancient people the word for flowers was the same
as the word for blood. He felt the sudden sharp stab of the teeth in his
neck.

His heart was caught suddenly, wrenched in a powerful grip! The pressure
was more than he could bear. Yet he could see over Armand's shoulder and
the night was sliding down around him, the stars growing as large as
these moist and fragrant blooms. Why, they were rising into the sky!

For a split second he saw the Vampire Lestat, driving, plunging through
the night in his long sleek black car. How like a lion Lestat looked
with his mane of hair blown back by the wind, his eyes filled with mad
humor and high spirits. And then he turned and looked at Daniel, and
from his throat came a deep soft laugh.

Louis was there too. Louis was standing in a room on Divisadero Street
looking out of the window, waiting, and then he said, "Yes, come,
Daniel, if that is what must happen."

But they didn't know about the burnt-out coven houses! They didn't know
about the twins! About the cry of danger!

They were all in a crowded room, actually, inside the Villa, and Louis
was leaning against the mantel in a frock coat. Everyone was there! Even
the twins were there! "Thank God, you've come," Daniel said. He kissed
Louis on one cheek and then the other decorously. "Why, my skin is as
pale as yours!"

He cried out suddenly as his heart was let go, and the air filled his
lungs. The garden again. The grass was all around him. The garden grew
up over his head. Don't leave me here, not here against the earth.

"Drink, Daniel." The priest said the Latin words as he poured the Holy
Communion wine into his mouth. The red-haired twins took the sacred
plates-the heart, the brain. "This the brain and the heart of my mother
I devour with all respect for the spirit of my mother-"

"God, give it to me!" He'd knocked the chalice to the marble floor of
the church, so clumsy, but God! The blood!

He sat up, crushing Armand to him, drawing it out of him, draught after
draught. They had fallen over together in the soft bank of flowers.
Armand lay beside him, and his mouth was open on Armand's throat, and
the blood was an unstoppable fount.

"Come into the Villa of the Mysteries," said Louis to him. Louis was
touching his shoulder. "We're waiting." The twins were embracing each
other, stroking each other's long curling red hair.

The kids were screaming outside the auditorium because there were no
more tickets. They would camp in the parking lot until tomorrow night.

"Do we have tickets?" he asked. "Armand, the tickets!"

Danger. Ice. It's coming from the one trapped beneath the ice!

Something hit him, hard. He was floating.

"Sleep, beloved."

"I want to go back to the garden, the Villa." He tried to open his eyes.
His belly was hurting. Strangest pain, it seemed so far away.

"You know he's buried under the ice?"

"Sleep," Armand said, covering him with the blanket. "And when you wake,
you'll be just like me. Dead."

San Francisco. He knew he was there before he even opened his eyes. And
such a ghastly dream, he was glad to leave it-suffocating, blackness,
and riding the rough and terrifying current of the sea! But the dream
was fading. A dream without sight, and only the sound of the water, the
feel of the water! A dream of unspeakable fear. He'd been a woman in it,
helpless, without a tongue to scream.

Let it go away.

Something about the wintry air on his face, a white freshness that he
could almost taste. San Francisco, of course. The cold moved over him
like a tight garment, yet inside he was deliciously warm.

Immortal. Forever.

He opened his eyes. Armand had put him here. Through the viscid darkness
of the dream, he'd heard Armand telling him to remain. Armand had told
him that here he would be safe.

Here.

The French doors stood open all along the far wall. And the room itself,
opulent, cluttered, one of those splendid places that Armand so often
found, so dearly loved.

Look at the sheer lace panel blown back from the French doors. Look at
the white feathers curling and glowing in the Aubusson carpet. He
climbed to his feet and went out through the open doors.

A great mesh of branches rose between him and the wet shining sky. Stiff
foliage of the Monterey cypress. And down there, through the branches,
against a velvet blackness, he saw the great burning arc of the Golden
Gate Bridge. The fog poured like thick white smoke past the immense
towers. In fits and gusts it tried to swallow the pylons, the cables,
then vanished as if the bridge itself with its glittering stream of
traffic burnt it away.

Too magnificent, this spectacle-and the deep dark outline of the distant
hills beneath their mantle of warm lights. Ah, but to take one tiny
detail-the damp rooftops spilling downhill away from him, or the gnarled
branches rising in front of him. Like elephant hide, this bark, this
living skin.

Immortal. . , forever.

He ran his hands back through his hair and a gentle tingling passed
through him. He could feel the soft imprint of his fingers on his scalp
after he had taken his hands away. The wind stung him exquisitely. He
remembered something. He reached up to find his fang teeth. Yes, they
were beautifully long and sharp.

Someone touched him. He turned so quickly he almost lost his balance.
Why, this was all so inconceivably different! He steadied himself, but
the sight of Armand made him want to cry. Even in deep shadow, Armand's
dark brown eyes were filled with a vibrant light. And the expression on
his face, so loving. He reached out very carefully and touched Armand's
eyelashes. He wanted to touch the tiny fine lines in Armand's lips.
Armand kissed him. He began to tremble. The way it felt, the cool silky
mouth, like a kiss of the brain, the electric purity of a thought!

"Come inside, my pupil," Armand said. "We have less than an hour left."

"But the others-"

Armand had gone to discover something very important. What was it?
Terrible things happening, coven houses burned. Yet nothing at the

moment seemed more important than the warmth inside him, and the
tingling as he moved his limbs.

"They're thriving, plotting," Armand said. Was he speaking out loud? He
must have been. But the voice was so clear! "They're frightened of the
wholesale destruction, but San Francisco isn't touched. Some say Lestat
has done it to drive everyone to him. Others that it's the work of
Marius, or even the twins. Or Those Who Must Be Kept, who strike with
infinite power from their shrine."

The twins! He felt the darkness of the dream again around him, a woman's
body, tongueless, terror, closing him in. Ah, nothing could hurt him
now. Not dreams or plots. He was Armand's child.

"But these things must wait," Armand said gently. "You must come and do
as I tell you. We must finish what was begun."

"Finish?" It was finished. He was reborn.

Armand brought him in out of the wind. Glint of the brass bed in the
darkness, of a porcelain vase alive with gilded dragons. Of the square
grand piano with its keys like grinning teeth. Yes, touch it, feel the
ivory, the velvet tassels hanging from the lampshade. . . .

The music, where did the music come from? A low, mournful jazz trumpet,
playing all alone. It stopped him, this hollow melancholy song, the
notes flowing slowly into one another. He did not want to move just now.
He wanted to say he understood what was happening, but he was absorbing
each broken sound.

He started to say thank you for the music, but again, his voice sounded
so unaccountably strange-sharper, yet more resonant. Even the feel of
his tongue, and out there, the fog, look at it, he pointed, the fog
blowing right past the terrace, the fog eating the night!

Armand was patient. Armand understood. Armand brought him slowly through
the darkened room.

"I love you," Daniel said.

"Are you certain?" Armand answered.

It made him laugh.

They had come into a long high hallway. A stairs descending in deep
shadow. A polished balustrade. Armand urged him forward. He wanted to
look at the rug beneath him, a long chain of medallions woven with
lilies, but Armand had brought him into a brightly lighted room.

He caught his breath at the sheer flood of illumination, light moving
over the low-slung leather couches, chairs. Ah, but the painting on the
wall!

So vivid the figures in the painting, formless creatures who were
actually great thick smears of glaring yellow and red paint. Everything
that looked alive was alive, that was a distinct possibility. You
painted armless beings, swimming in blinding color, and they had to
exist like that forever. Could they see you with all those tiny,
scattered eyes? Or did they see only the heaven and hell of their own

shining realm, anchored to the studs in the wall by a piece of twisted
wire?

He could have wept to think of it, wept at the deep-throated moan of the
trumpet-and yet he wasn't weeping. He had caught a strong seductive
aroma. God, what is it? His whole body seemed to harden inexplicably.
Then suddenly he was staring at a young girl.

She sat in a small gilded straight-back chair watching him, ankles
crossed, her thick brown hair a gleaming mop around her white face. Her
scant clothes were dirty. A little runaway with her torn jeans and
soiled shirt. What a perfect picture, even to the sprinkling of freckles
across her nose, and the greasy backpack that lay at her feet. But the
shape of her little arms, the way her legs were made! And her eyes, her
brown eyes! He was laughing softly, but it was humorless, crazed. It had
a sinister sound to it; how strange! He realized he had taken her face
in his hands and she was staring up at him, smiling, and a faint scarlet
blush came in her warm little cheeks.

Blood, that was the aroma! His fingers were burning. Why, he could even
see the blood vessels beneath her skin! And the sound of her heart, he
could hear it. It was getting louder, it was such a ... a moist sound.
He backed away from her.

"God, get her out of here!" he cried.

"Take her," Armand whispered. "And do it now."




KHAYMAN, MY KHAYMAN

No one is listening.

Now you may sing the selfsong, as the bird does, not for territory or
dominance, but for self-enlargement.

Let something come from nothing.

STAN RICE

from "Texas Suite" Body of Work (1983)

UNTIL THIS NIGHT, THIS AWFUL NIGHT, HE'D HAD A little joke about
himself: He didn't know who he was, or where he'd come from, but he knew
what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on
the corners, the big steel and glass buildings full of milky evening
light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the bought
things of shining plastic and metal-toys, computers, telephones-it
didn't matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them
into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss
through plate glass windows when nobody was about.

He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in
books.

He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps.
And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles,
above the clouds.

He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up
there when one of the planes flew overhead.

Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had
sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night.
He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with its
tiny bits of light. How soothing it was to have the company of
television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to
you in friendship from the glowing screen.

The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked all music. He liked the
Vampire Lestat singing "Requiem for the Marquise." He didn't pay
attention to the words much. It was the melancholy, and the dark
undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance.

He liked giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in
the big cities with men in uniforms crawling all over them; he liked the
double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals
everywhere-he liked them, too, of course.

He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden
flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks,
Persians, Egyptians in these streets.

He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient
monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs
of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on these
pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of
Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the
modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes.

Oh, yes, much to like all around him always-the violin music of Bartok,
little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight
having sung at the Christmas mass.

He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without
saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him.
He stalked his prey in silence; he didn't want to know his victims. All
a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper,
as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed beings and then gobble
their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs
to a dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently.
He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the
desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from
thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

Yet he was sure, absolutely sure, that he had been a human being once.
Walking in the sun in the heat of the day, yes, he had once done that,
even though he certainly couldn't do it now. He envisioned himself
sitting at a plain wood table and cutting open a ripe peach with a small
copper knife. Beautiful the fruit before him. He knew the taste of it.
He knew the taste of bread and beer. He saw the sun shining on the dull
yellow sand that stretched for miles and miles outside. "Lie down and
rest in the heat of the day," someone had once said to him. Was this the
last day that he had been alive? Rest, yes, because tonight the King and
the Queen will call all the court together and something terrible,
something. . . .

But he couldn't really remember.

No, he just knew it, that is, until this night. This night . . .

Not even when he'd heard the Vampire Lestat did he remember. The
character merely fascinated him a little-a rock singer calling himself a
blood drinker. And he did look unearthly, but then that was television,
wasn't it? Many humans in the dizzying world of rock music appeared
unearthly. And there was such human emotion in the Vampire Lestat's
voice.

It wasn't merely emotion; it was human ambition of a particular sort.
The Vampire Lestat wanted to be heroic. When he sang, he said: "Allow me
my significance! I am the symbol of evil; and if I am a true symbol,
then I do good."

Fascinating. Only a human being could think of a paradox like that. And
he himself knew this, because he'd been human, of course.

Now he did have a supernatural understanding of things. That was true.
Humans couldn't look at machines and perceive their principles as he
could. And the manner in which everything was "familiar" to him-that had
to do with his superhuman powers as well. Why, there was nothing that
surprised him really. Not quantum physics or theories of evolution or
the paintings of Picasso or the process by which children were
inoculated with germs to protect them from disease. No, it was as if
he'd been aware of things long before he remembered being here. Long
before he could say: "I think; therefore I am."

But disregarding all that, he still had a human perspective. That no one
would deny. He could feel human pain with an eerie and frightening
perfection. He knew what it meant to love, and to be lonely, ah, yes, he
knew that above all things, and he felt it most keenly when he listened
to the Vampire Lestat's songs. That's why he didn't pay attention to the
words.

And another thing. The more blood he drank the more human-looking he
became.

When he'd first appeared in this time-to himself and others- he hadn't
looked human at all. He'd been a filthy skeleton, walking along the
highway in Greece towards Athens, his bones enmeshed in tight rubbery
veins, the whole sealed beneath a layer of toughened white skin. He'd
terrified people. How they had fled from him, gunning the engines of
their little cars. But he'd read their minds-seen himself as they saw
him-and he understood, and he was so sorry, of course.

In Athens, he'd gotten gloves, a loose wool garment with plastic
buttons, and these funny modern shoes that covered up your whole foot.
He'd wrapped rags around his face with only holes for his eyes and
mouth. He'd covered his filthy black hair with a gray felt hat.

They still stared but they didn't run screaming. At dusk, he roamed
through the thick crowds in Omonia Square and no one paid him any mind.
How nice the modem bustle of this old city, which in long ago ages had
been just as vital, when students came there from all over the world to
study philosophy and art. He could look up at the Acropolis and see the
Parthenon as it had been then, perfect, the house of the goddess. Not
the ruin it was today.

The Greeks as always were a splendid people, gentle and trusting, though
they were darker of hair and skin now on account of their Turkish blood.
They didn't mind his strange clothes. When he talked in his soft,
soothing voice, imitating their language perfectly-except for a few
apparently hilarious mistakes-they loved him. And in private, he had
noticed that his flesh was slowly filling out. It was hard as a rock to
the touch. Yet it was changing. Finally, one night when he unwrapped the
ragged covering, he had seen the contours of a human face. So this is
what he looked like, was it?

Big black eyes with fine soft wrinkles at the corners and rather smooth
lids. His mouth was a nice, smiling mouth. The nose was neat and finely
made; he didn't disdain it. And the eyebrows: he liked these best of all
because they were very black and straight, not broken or bushy, and they
were drawn high enough above his eyes so that he had an open expression,
a look of veiled wonder that others might trust. Yes, it was a very
pretty young male face.

After that he'd gone about uncovered, wearing modem shirts and pants.
But he had to keep to the shadows. He was just too smooth and too white.

He said his name was Khayman when they asked him. But he didn't know
where he'd gotten it. And he had been called Benjamin once, later, he
knew that, too. There were other names. ... But when? Khayman. That was
the first and secret name, the one he never forgot. He could draw two
tiny pictures that meant Khayman, but where these symbols had come from
he had no idea.

His strength puzzled him as much as anything else. He could walk through
plaster walls, lift an automobile and hurl it into a nearby field. Yet
he was curiously brittle and light. He drove a long thin knife right
through his own hand. Such a strange sensation! And blood everywhere.
Then the wounds closed and he had to open them again to pull the knife
out.

As for the lightness, well, there was nothing that he could not climb.
It was as though gravity had no control over him once he decided to defy
it. And one night after climbing a tall building in the middle of the
city, he flew off the top of it, descending gently to the street below.

Lovely, this. He knew he could traverse great distances if only he
dared. Why, surely he had once done it, moving into the very clouds. But
then . . . maybe not.

He had other powers as well. Each evening as he awakened, he found
himself listening to voices from al! over the world. He lay in the
darkness bathed in sound. He heard people speaking in Greek, English,
Romanian, Hindustani. He heard laughter, cries of pain. And if he lay
very still, he could hear thoughts from people-a jumbled undercurrent
full of wild exaggeration that frightened him. He did not know where
these voices came from. Or why one voice drowned out another. Why, it
was as if he were God and he were listening to prayers.

And now and then, quite distinct from the human voices, there came to
him immortal voices too. Others like him out there, thinking, feeling,
sending a warning? Far away their powerful silvery cries, yet he could
easily separate them from the human warp and woof.

But this receptiveness hurt him. It brought back some awful memory of
being shut up in a dark place with only these voices to keep him company

for years and years and years. Panic. He would not remember that. Some
things one doesn't want to remember. Like being burned, imprisoned. Like
remembering everything and crying, terrible anguished crying. I Yes, bad
things had happened to him. He had been here on this earth under other
names and at other times. But always with this same gentle and
optimistic disposition, loving things. Was his a migrant soul? No, he
had always had this body. That's why it was so light and so strong.

Inevitably he shut off the voices. In fact, he remembered an old
admonition: If you do not learn to shut out the voices, they will drive
you mad. But with him now, it was simple. He quieted them simply by
rising, opening his eyes. Actually, it would have required an effort to
listen. They just went on and on and became one irritating noise.

The splendor of the moment awaited him. And it was easy to drown out the
thoughts of mortals close at hand. He could sing, for instance, or fix
his attention hard upon anything around him. Blessed quiet. In Rome
there were distractions everywhere. How he loved the old Roman houses
painted ocher and burnt sienna and dark green. How he loved the narrow
stone streets. He could drive a car very fast through the broad
boulevard full of wreckless mortals, or wander the Via Veneto until he
found a woman with whom to fall in love for a little while.

And he did so love the clever people of this time. They were still
people, but they knew so much. A ruler was murdered in India, and within
the hour all the world could mourn. All manner of disasters, inventions,
and medical miracles weighed down upon the mind of the ordinary man.
People played with fact and fancy. Waitresses wrote novels at night that
would make them famous. Laborers fell in love with naked movie queens in
rented cassette films. The rich wore paper jewelry, and the poor bought
tiny diamonds. And princesses sallied forth onto the Champs Elysees in
carefully faded rags.

Ah, he wished he was human. After all, what was he? What were the others
like?-the ones whose voices he shut out. Not the First Brood, he was
sure of it. The First Brood could never contact each other purely
through the mind. But what the hell was the First Brood? He couldn't
remember! A little panic seized him. Don't think of those things. He
wrote poems in a notebook-modern and simple, yet he knew that they were
in the earliest style he'd ever known.

He moved ceaselessly about Europe and Asia Minor, sometimes walking,
sometimes rising into the air and willing himself to a particular place.
He charmed those who would have interfered with him and slumbered
carelessly in dark hiding places by day. After all, the sun didn't burn
him anymore. But he could not function in the sunlight. His eyes began
to close as soon as he saw light in the morning sky. Voices, all those
voices, other blood drinkers crying in anguish-then nothing. And he
awoke at sunset, eager to read the age-old pattern of the stars.

Finally he grew brave with his flying. On the outskirts of Istanbul he
went upwards, shooting like a balloon far over the roofs. He tossed and
tumbled, laughing freely, and then willed himself to Vienna, which he
reached before dawn. Nobody saw him. He moved too fast for them to see
him. And besides he .did not try these little experiments before prying
eyes.

He had another interesting power too. He could travel without his body.
Well, not really travel. He could send out his vision, as it were, to
look at things far away. Lying still, he would think, for example, of a

distant place that he would like to see, and suddenly he was there
before it. Now, there were some mortals who could do that too, either in
their dreams or when they were awake, with great and deliberate
concentration. Occasionally he passed their sleeping bodies and
perceived that their souls were traveling elsewhere. But the souls
themselves he could never see. He could not see ghosts or any kind of
spirit for that matter. . . .

But he knew they were there. They had to be.

And some old awareness came to him, that once as a mortal man, in the
temple, he had drunk a strong potion given to him by the priests, and
had traveled in the very same way, up out of his body, and into the
firmament. The priests had called him back. He had not wanted to come.
He was with those among the dead whom he loved. But he had known he must
return. That was what was expected of him.

He'd been a human being then, all right. Yes, definitely. He could
remember the way the sweat had felt on his naked chest when he lay in
the dusty room and they brought the potion to him. Afraid. But then they
all had to go through it.

Maybe it was better to be what he was now, and be able to fly about with
body and soul together.

But not knowing, not really remembering, not understanding how he could
do such things or why he lived off the blood of humans-all this caused
him intense pain.

In Paris, he went to "vampire" movies, puzzling over what seemed true
and what was false. Familiar all this, though much of it was silly. The
Vampire Lestat had taken his garments from these old black and white
films. Most of the "creatures of the night" wore the same costume--the
black cloak, the stiff white shirt, the fine black jacket with tails,
the black pants.

Nonsense of course, yet it comforted him. After all, these were blood
drinkers, beings who spoke gently, liked poetry, and yet killed mortals
all the time.

He bought the vampire comics and cut out certain pictures of beautiful
gentlemen blood drinkers like the Vampire Lestat. Maybe he himself
should try this lovely costume; again, it would be a comfort. It would
make him feel that he was part of something, even if the something
didn't really exist.

In London, past midnight in a darkened store, he found his vampire
clothes. Coat and pants, and shining patent leather shoes; a shirt as
stiff as new papyrus with a white silk tie. And oh, the black velvet
cloak, magnificent, with its lining of white satin; it hung down to the
very floor.

He did graceful turns before the mirrors. How the Vampire Lestat would
have envied him, and to think, he, Khayman, was no human pretending; he
was real. He brushed out his thick black hair for the first time. He
found perfumes and unguents in glass cases and anointed himself properly
for a grand evening. He found rings and cuff links of gold.

Now he was beautiful, as he had once been in other garments long ago.
And immediately in the streets of London people adored him! This had

been the right thing to do. They followed him as he walked along smiling
and bowing, now and then, and winking his eye. Even when he killed it
was better. The victim would stare at him as if seeing a vision, as if
understanding. He would bend-as the Vampire Lestat did in the television
songs- and drink first, gently, from the throat, before ripping the
victim apart.

Of course this was all a joke. There was something frightfully trivial
about it. It had nothing to do with being a blood drinker, that was the
dark secret, nothing to do with the faint things he only half
remembered, now and then, and pushed from his mind. Nevertheless it was
fun for the moment to be "somebody" and "something."

Yes, the moment, the moment was splendid. And the moment was all he ever
had. After all, he would forget this time too, wouldn't he? These nights
with their exquisite details would vanish from him; and in some even
more complex and demanding future he would be loosed again, remembering
only his name.

Home to Athens he went finally.

Through the museum by night he roamed with a stub of candle, inspecting
the old tombstones with their carved figures which made him cry. The
dead woman seated-always the dead are seated-reaches out for the living
baby she has left behind, who is held in her husband's arm. Names came
back to him, as if bats were whispering in his ear. Go to Egypt; you 'I!
remember. But he would not. Too soon to beg for madness and
forgetfulness. Safe in Athens, roaming the old cemetery beneath the
Acropolis, from which they'd taken all the stele; never mind the traffic
roaring by; the earth here is beautiful. And it still belongs to the
dead.

He acquired a wardrobe of vampire garments. He even bought a coffin, but
he did not like to get inside. For one thing, it was not shaped like a
person, this coffin, and it had no face on it, and no writings to guide
the soul of the dead. Not proper. Rather like a box for jewelry, as he
saw it. But still, being a vampire, well, he thought he should have it
and it was fun. Mortals who came to the fiat loved it. He served them
bloodred wine in crystal glasses. He recited "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner" for them or sang songs in strange tongues which they loved.
Sometimes he read his poems. What good-hearted mortals. And the coffin
gave them something to sit on in a flat that contained nothing else.

But gradually the songs of the American rock singer, the Vampire Lestat,
had begun to disturb him. They weren't fun anymore. Neither were the
silly old films. But the Vampire Lestat really bothered him. What blood
drinker would dream of acts of purity and courage? Such a tragic tone to
the songs.

Blood drinker. . . . Sometimes when he awoke, alone on the floor of the
hot airless flat with the last light of day fading through the curtained
windows, he felt a heavy dream lift from him in which creatures sighed
and groaned in pain. Had he been following through a ghastly nightscape
the path of two beautiful red-haired women who suffered unspeakable
injustice, twin beauties to whom he reached out again and again? After
they cut out her tongue, the red-haired woman in the dream snatched the
tongue back from the soldiers and ate it. Her courage had astonished
them-

Ah, do not look at such things!

His face hurt, as if he had been crying also or miserably anxious. He
let himself relax slowly. Behold the lamp. The yellow flowers. Nothing.
Just Athens with its miles and miles of undistinguished stucco
buildings, and the great broken temple of Athena on the hill, looming
over all despite the smoke-filled air. Evening time. The divine rush as
thousands in their drab workaday clothes poured down the escalators to
the underground trains. Syntagma Square scattered with the lazy drinkers
of retsina or ouzo, suffering beneath the early evening heat. And the
little kiosks selling magazines and papers from all lands.

He didn't listen to any more of the Vampire Lestat's music. He left the
American dance halls where they played it. He moved away from the
students who carried small tape players clipped to their belts.

Then one night in the heart of the Plaka, with its glaring lights and
noisy taverns, he saw other blood drinkers hurrying through the crowds.
His heart stopped. Loneliness and fear overcame him. He could not move
or speak. Then he tracked them through the steep streets, in and out of
one dancing place after another where the electronic music blared. He
studied them carefully as they rushed on through the crush of tourists,
not aware that he was there.

Two males and a female in scant black silk garments, the woman's feet
strapped painfully into high-heeled shoes. Silver sunglasses covered
their eyes; they whispered together and gave out sudden piercing bursts
of laughter; decked with jewels and scent, they flaunted their shining
preternatural skin and hair.

But never mind these superficial matters, they were very different from
him. They were nothing as hard and white, to begin with. In fact they
were made up of so much soft human tissue that they were animated
corpses still. Beguilingly pink and weak. And how they needed the blood
of their victims. Why, they were suffering agonies of thirst right now.
And surely this was their fate nightly. Because the blood had to work
endlessly on all the soft human tissue. It worked not merely to animate
the tissue, but to convert it slowly into something else.

As for him, he was all made up of that something else. He had no soft
human tissue left. Though he lusted for blood, it was not needed for
this conversion. Rather he realized suddenly that the blood merely
refreshed him, increased his telepathic powers, his ability to fly, or
to travel out of his body, or his prodigious strength. Ah, he understood
it! For the nameless power that worked in all of them, he was now a
nearly perfected host.

Yes, that was it exactly. And they were younger, that's all.

They had merely begun their journey towards true vampiric immortality.
Didn't he remember-? Well, not actually, but he knew it, that they were
fledglings, no more than one or two hundred years along the way! That
was the dangerous time, when you first went mad from it, or the others
got you, shut you up, burned you, that sort of thing. Many did not
survive those years. And how long ago it had been for him, of the First
Brood. Why, the amount of time was almost inconceivable! He stopped
beside the painted wall of a garden, reaching up to rest his hand on a
gnarled branch, letting the cool fleecy green leaves touch his face. He
felt himself washed in sadness suddenly, sadness more terrible than
fear. He heard someone crying, not here but in his head. Who was it?
Stop!

Well, he would not hurt them, these tender children! No, he wanted only
to know them, to embrace them. After all, we are of the same family,
blood drinkers, you and I!

But as he drew nearer, as he sent out his silent yet exuberant greeting,
they turned and looked at him with undisguised terror. They fled.
Through a dark tangle of hillside lanes they descended, away from the
lights of the Plaka, and nothing he could say or do would make them
stop.

He stood rigid and silent, feeling a sharp pain he had not known before.
Then a curious and terrible thing happened. He went after them till he
had them in sight again. He became angry, really angry. Damn you. Punish
you that you hurt me! And lo and behold he felt a sudden sensation in
his forehead, a cold spasm just behind the bone. Out of him, a power
seemed to leap as if it were an invisible tongue. Instantly it
penetrated the hindmost of the fleeing trio, the female, and her body
burst into flame.

Stupefied he watched this. Yet he realized what had happened. He had
penetrated her with some sharply directed force. It had kindled the
powerful combustible blood that he and she had in common, and at once
the fire had shot through the circuit of her veins. Invading the marrow
of her bones, it had caused her body to explode. In seconds, she was no
more.

Ye gods! He had done this! In grief and terror, he stood staring down at
her empty clothes, unburnt, yet blackened and stained with grease. Only
a little of her hair was left on the stones, and this burnt away to
wisps of smoke as he watched.

Maybe there was some mistake. But no, he knew he'd done it. He'd felt
himself doing it. And she had been so afraid!

In shocked silence, he made his way home. He knew he'd never used this
power before, or even been aware of it. Had it come to him only now,
after centuries of the blood working, drying out his cells, making them
thin and white and strong like the chambers of a wasps' nest?

Alone in his flat, with the candles and incense burning to comfort him,
he pierced himself again with his knife and watched the blood gush.
Thick and hot it was, pooling on the table before him, glittering in the
light of the lamp as if it was alive. And it was!

In the mirror, he studied the darkening radiance which had returned to
him after so many weeks of dedicated hunting and drinking. A faint
yellow tinge to his cheeks, a trace of pink to his lips. But never mind,
he was as the abandoned skin of the snake lying on the rock-dead and
light and crisp save for the constant pumping of this blood. This vile
blood. And his brain, ah, his brain, what did it look like now?
Translucent as a thing made of crystal with the blood surging through
its tiny compartments? And therein the power lived, did it not, with its
invisible tongue?

Going out again, he tried this newfound force upon animals, upon the
cats, for which he had an unreasonable loathing-evil things, those
creatures-and upon rats, which all men disdain. Not the same. He killed
these creatures with the invisible tongue flick of energy, but they
didn't catch fire. Rather the brains and hearts suffered some sort of

fatal rupture, but the natural blood in them, it was not combustible.
And so they did not burn.

This fascinated him in a cold, harrowing fashion. "What a subject I am
for study," he whispered, eyes shining suddenly with unwelcome tears.
Capes, white ties, vampire movies, what was this to him! Who in hell was
he? The fool of the gods, roaming the road from moment to moment through
eternity? When he saw a great lurid poster of the Vampire Lestat mocking
him in a video store window, he turned and with the tongue flick of
energy shattered the glass.

Ah, lovely, lovely. Give me the forests, the stars. He went to Delphi
that night, ascending soundlessly above the darkened land. Down into the
moist grass he went to walk where the oracle had once sat, in this the
ruin of the god's house.

But he would not leave Athens. He must find the two blood drinkers, and
tell them he was sorry, that he would never, never use this power
against them. They must talk to him! They must be with him-! Yes.

The next night upon awakening, he listened for them. And an hour later,
he heard them as they rose from their graves. A house in the Plaka was
their lair, with one of those noisy, smoky taverns open to the street.
In its cellars they slept by day, he realized, and came up by dark to
watch the mortals of the tavern sing and dance. Lamia, the old Greek
word for vampire, was the name of this establishment in which the
electric guitars played the primitive Greek music, and the young mortal
men danced with one another, hips churning with all the seductiveness of
women, as the retsina flowed. On the walls hung pictures from the
vampire movies- Bela Lugosi as Dracula, the pale Gloria Holden as his
daughter- and posters of the blond and blue-eyed Vampire Lestat.

So they too had a sense of humor, he thought gently. But the vampire
pair, stunned with grief and fear, sat together, staring at the open
door as he peered in. How helpless they looked!

They did not move when they saw him standing on the threshold with his
back to the white glare of the street. What did they think when they saw
his long cloak? A monster come alive from their own posters to bring
them destruction when so little else on earth could?

I come in peace. I only wish to speak with you. Nothing shall anger me.
I come in . . . love.

The pair appeared transfixed. Then suddenly one of them rose from the
table, and both gave a spontaneous and horrid cry. Fire blinded him as
it blinded the mortals who pushed past him in their sudden stampede to
the street. The blood drinkers were in flames, dying, caught in a
hideous dance with twisted arms and legs. The house itself was burning,
rafters smoking, glass bottles exploding, orange sparks shooting up to
the lowering sky.

Had he done this! Was he death to the others, whether he willed such a
thing or not?

Blood tears flowed down his white face onto his stiff shirt front. He
lifted his arm to shield his face with his cloak. It was a gesture of
respect for the horror happening before him-the blood drinkers dying
within.

No, couldn't have done it, couldn't. He let the mortals push him and
shove him out of the way. Sirens hurt his ears. He blinked as he tried
to see, despite the flashing lights.

And then in a moment of violent understanding he knew that he had not
done it. Because he saw the being who had! There covered in a cloak of
gray wool, and half hidden in a dark alleyway, stood the one, silently
watching him.

And as their eyes met, she softly whispered his name:

"Khayman, my Khayman!"

His mind went blank. Wiped clean. It was as though a white light
descended on him, burning out all detail. He felt nothing for one serene
moment. He heard no noise of the raging fire, nothing of those who still
jostled him as they went past.

He merely stared at this thing, this beautiful and delicate being,
exquisite as ever she had been. An unsupportable horror overcame him. He
remembered everything-everything he had ever seen or been or known.

The centuries opened before him. The millennia stretched out, going back
and back to the very beginning, first Brood. He knew it all. He was
shuddering, crying. He heard himself say with all the rancor of an
accusation:

"You!"

Suddenly, in a great withering flash he felt the full force of her
undisguised power. The heat struck him in the chest, and he felt himself
staggering backwards.

Ye gods, you will kill me, too! But she could not hear his thoughts! He
was knocked against the whitewashed wall. A tierce pain collected in his
head.

Yet he continued to see, to feel, to think! And his heart beat steadily
as before. He was not burning!

And then with sudden calculation, he gathered his strength and fought
this unseen energy with a violent thrust of his own.

"Ah, it is malice again, my sovereign," he cried out in the ancient
language. How human the sound of his voice!

But it was finished. The alleyway was empty. She was gone.

Or more truly she had taken flight, rising straight upwards, just as he
himself had often done, and so fast that the eye could not see. Yes, he
felt her receding presence. He looked up and, without effort, found her-
a tiny pen stroke moving towards the west above the bits and pieces of
pale cloud.

Raw sounds shocked him-sirens, voices, the crackle of the burning house
as its last timbers collapsed. The little narrow street was jam-crowded;
the bawling music of the other taverns had not stopped. He drew back,
away from the place, weeping, with one backward glance for the domain of
the dead blood drinkers. Ah, how many thousands of years he could not
count, and yet it was still the same war.

For hours he wandered the dark back streets. Athens grew quiet. People
slept behind wooden walls. The pavements shone in the mist that came as
thick as rain. Like a giant snail shell was his history, curling and
immense above him, pressing him down to the earth with its impossible
weight.

Up a hill he moved finally, and into the cool luxurious tavern of a
great modern steel and glass hotel. Black and white this place, just as
he was, with its checkered dance floor, black tables, black leather
banquettes.

Unnoticed he sank down on a bench in the flickering dimness, and he let
his tears flow. Like a fool he cried, with his forehead pressed to his
arm.

Madness did not come to him; neither did forgetfulness. He was wandering
the centuries, revisiting the places he had known with tender
thoughtless intimacy. He cried for all those he had known and loved.

But what hurt him above all things was the great suffocating sense of
the beginning, the true beginning, even before that long ago day when he
had lain down in his house by the Nile in the noon stillness, knowing he
must go to the palace that night.

The true beginning had been a year before when the King had said to him,
"But for my beloved Queen, I would take my pleasure of these two women.
I would show that they are not witches to be feared. You will do this in
my stead."

It was as real as this moment; the uneasy court gathered there watching;
biack-eyed men and women in their fine linen skirts and elaborate black
wigs, some hovering behind the carved pillars, others proudly close to
the throne. And the red-haired twins standing before him, his beautiful
prisoners whom he had come to love in their captivity. I cannot do this.
But he had done it. As the court waited, as the King and the Queen
waited, he had put on the King's necklace with its gold medallion, to
act for the King. And he had gone down the steps from the dais, as the
twins stared at him, and he had defiled them one after the other.

Surely this pain couldn't last.

Into the womb of the earth he would have crawled, if he had had the
strength for it. Blessed ignorance, how he wanted it. Go to Delphi,
wander in the high sweet-smelling green grass. Pick the tiny wild
flowers. Ah, would they open for him, as for the light of the sun, if he
held them beneath the lamp?

But then he did not want to forget at all. Something had changed;
something had made this moment like no other. She had risen from her
long slumber! He had seen her in an Athens street with his own eyes!
Past and present had become one.

As his tears dried, he sat back, listening, thinking.

Dancers writhed on the lighted checkerboard before him. Women smiled at
him. Was he a beautiful porcelain Pierrot to them, with his white face
and red-stained cheeks? He raised his eyes to the video screen pulsing
and glittering above the room. His thoughts grew strong like his
physical powers.

This was now, the month of October, in the late twentieth century after
the birth of Christ. And only a handful of nights ago, he had seen the
twins in his dreams! No. There was no retreat. For him the true agony
was just beginning, but that did not matter. He was more alive than he
had ever been.

He wiped his face slowly with a small linen handkerchief. He washed his
fingers in the glass of wine before him, as if to consecrate them. And
he looked up again to the high video screen where the Vampire Lestat
sang his tragic song.

Blue-eyed demon, yellow hair flung wild about him, with the powerful
arms and chest of a young man. Jagged yet graceful his movements, lips
seductive, voice full of carefully modulated pain.

And all this time you have been telling me, haven't you? Calling me!
Calling her name!

The video image seemed to stare at him, respond to him, sing to him,
when of course it could not see him at all. Those Who Must Be Kept! My
King and my Queen. Yet he listened with his full attention to each
syllable carefully articulated above the din of horns and throbbing
drums.

And only when the sound and the image faded did he rise and leave the
tavern to walk blindly through the cool marble corridors of the hotel
and into the darkness outside.

Voices called out to him, voices of blood drinkers the world over,
signaling. Voices that had always been there. They spoke of calamity, of
converging to prevent some horrid disaster. The Mother Walks. They spoke
of the dreams of the twins which they did not understand. And he had
been deaf and blind to all this!

"How much you do not understand, Lestat," he whispered.

He climbed to a dim promontory finally and gazed at the High City of
temples far beyond-broken white marble gleaming beneath the feeble
stars.

"Damn you, my sovereign!" he whispered. "Damn you into hell for what you
did, to all of us!" And to think that in this world of steel and
gasoline, of roaring electronic symphonies and silent gleaming computer
circuitry, we wander still.

But another curse came back to him, far stronger than his own.

It had come a year after the awful moment when he had raped the two
women-a curse screamed within the courtyard of the palace, under a night
sky. as distant and uncaring as this.

"Let the spirits witness: for theirs is the knowledge of the future-both
what it would be, and what I will: You are the Queen of the Damned,
that's what you are! Evil is your only destiny. But at your greatest
hour, it is I who will defeat you. Look well on my face. It is I who
will bring you down."

How many times during the early centuries had he remembered those words?
In how many places across desert and mountains and through fertile river

valleys had he searched for the two red-haired sisters? Among the
Bedouins who had once sheltered them, among the hunters who wore skins
still and the people of Jericho, the oldest city in the world. They were
already legend.

And then blessed madness had descended; he had lost all knowledge,
rancor, and pain. He was Khayman, filled with love for all he saw around
him, a being who understood the world.

Could it be that the hour had come? That the twins had somehow endured
just as he had? And for this great purpose his memory had been restored?

Ah, what a lustrous and overwhelming thought, that the First Brood would
come together, that the First Brood would finally know victory.

But with a bitter smile, he thought of the Vampire Lestat's human hunger
for heroism. Yes, my brother, forgive me for my scorn. I want it too,
the goodness, the glory. But there is likely no destiny, and no
redemption. Only what I see before me as I stand above this soiled and
ancient landscape-just birth and death, and horrors await us all.

He took one last look at the sleeping city, the ugly and careworn modern
place where he had been so content, wandering over countless old graves.

And then he went upwards, rising within seconds above the clouds. Now
would come the greatest test of this magnificent gift, and how he loved
the sudden sense of purpose, illusory though it might be. He moved west,
towards the Vampire Lestat, and towards the voices that begged for
understanding of the dreams of the twins. He moved west as she had moved
before him.

His cloak flared like sleek wings, and the delicious cold air bruised
him and made him laugh suddenly as if for one moment he were the happy
simpleton again.

THE STORY OF JESSE, THE GREAT FAMILY, AND THE TALAMASCA

The dead don't share. Though they reach towards us from the grave (I
swear they do) they do not hand their hearts to you. They hand their
heads, the part that stares.

STAN RICE - from "Their Share" Body of Work (1983)


Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle; she died young.

JOHN WEBSTER
THE TALAMASCA
Investigators of the Paranormal
We watch And we are always here.
London Amsterdam Rome 136

JESSE WAS MOANING IN HER SLEEP. SHE WAS A delicate woman of thirty-five
with long curly red hair. She lay deep in a shapeless feather mattress,
cradled in a wooden bed which hung from the ceiling on four rusted
chains.

Somewhere in the big rambling house a clock chimed. She must wake up.
Two hours until the Vampire Lestat's concert. But she could not leave
the twins now.

This was new to her, this part unfolding so rapidly, and the dream was
maddeningly dim as all the dreams of the twins had been. Yet she knew
the twins were in the desert kingdom again. The mob surrounding the
twins was dangerous. And the twins, how different they looked, how pale.
Maybe it was an illusion, this phosphorescent luster, but they appeared
to glow in the semidark-ness, and their movements were languid, almost
as if they were caught in the rhythm of a dance. Torches were thrust at
them as they embraced one another; but look, something was wrong, very
wrong. One of them was now blind.

Her eyelids were shut tight, the tender flesh wrinkled and sunken. Yes,
they have plucked out her eyes. And the other one, why does she make
those terrible sounds? "Be still, don't fight anymore," said the blind
one, in the ancient language which was always understandable in the
dreams. And out of the other twin came a horrid, guttural moaning. She
couldn't speak. They'd cut out her tongue!

I don't want to see any more, I want to wake up. But the soldiers were
pushing their way through the crowd, something dreadful was to happen,
and the twins became suddenly very still. The soldiers took hold of
them, dragged them apart.

Don't separate them! Don't you know what this means to them? Get the
torches away. Don't set them on fire! Don't burn their red hair.

The blind twin reached out for her sister, screaming her name: "Mekare!"
And Mekare, the mute one, who could not answer, roared like a wounded
beast.

The crowd was parting, making way for two immense stone coffins, each
carried on a great heavy bier. Crude these sarcophagi, yet the lids had
the roughened shape of human faces, limbs. What have the twins done to
be put in these coffins? I can't stand it, the biers being set down, the
twins dragged towards the coffins, the crude stone lids being lifted.
Don't do it! The blind one is fighting as if she can see it, yet they
are overpowering her, lifting her and putting her inside the stone box.
In mute terror, Mekare is watching, though she herself is being dragged
to the other bier. Don't lower the lid, or I will scream for Mekare! For
both of them-

Jesse sat up, her eyes open. She had screamed.

Alone in this house, with no one to hear her, she'd screamed, and she
could feel the echo still. Then nothing but the quiet settling around
her, and the faint creaking of the bed as it moved on its chains. The
song of the birds outside in the forest, the deep forest; and her own
curious awareness that the clock had struck six.

The dream was fading rapidly. Desperately she tried to hold on to it, to
see the details that always slipped away-the clothing of these strange
people, the weapons the soldiers carried, the faces of the twins! But it
was already gone. Only the spell remained and an acute awareness of what
had happened-and the certainty that the Vampire Lestat was linked to
these dreams.

Sleepily, she checked her watch. No time left. She wanted to be in the
auditorium when the Vampire Lestat entered; she wanted to be at the very
foot of the stage.

Yet she hesitated, staring at the white roses on the bedside table.
Beyond, through the open window, she saw the southern sky full of a
faint orange light. She picked up the note that lay beside the flowers
and she read it through once more.

My darling,

I have only just received your letter, as I am far from home and it took
some time for this to reach me. I understand the fascination which this
creature, Lestat, holds for you. They are playing his music even in Rio.
I have already read the books which you have enclosed. And I know of
your investigation of this creature for the Talamasca. As for your
dreams of the twins, this we must talk about together. It is of the
utmost importance. For there are others who have had such dreams. But I
beg you-no, I order you not to go to this concert. You must remain at
the Sonoma compound until I get there. ( am leaving Brazil as soon as I
can.

Wait for me. I love you.

Your aunt Maharet

"Maharet, I'm sorry," she whispered. But it was unthinkable that she not
go. And if anyone in the world would understand, it was Maharet.

The Talamasca, for whom she'd worked for twelve long years, would never
forgive her for disobeying their orders. But Maharet knew the reason;
Maharet was the reason. Maharet would forgive.

Dizzy. The nightmare still wouldn't let go. The random objects of the
room were disappearing in the shadows, yet the twilight burned so clear
suddenly that even the forested hills were giving back the light. And
the roses were phosphorescent, like the white flesh of the twins in the
dream.

White roses, she tried to remember something she'd heard about white
roses. You send white roses for a funeral. But no, Maharet could not
have meant that.

Jesse reached out, took one of the blossoms in both hands, and the
petals came loose instantly. Such sweetness. She pressed them to her
lips, and a faint yet shining image came back to her from that long ago
summer of Maharet in this house in a candle-lighted room, lying on a bed
of rose petals, so many white and yellow and pink rose petals, which she
had gathered up and pressed to her face and her throat.

Had Jesse really seen such a thing? So many rose petals caught in
Maharet's long red hair. Hair like Jesse's hair. Hair like the hair of
the twins in the dream-thick and wavy and streaked with gold.

It was one of a hundred fragments of memory which she could never
afterwards fit into a whole. But it no longer mattered, what she could
or could not remember of that dreamy lost summer. The Vampire Lestat
waited: there would be a finish if not an answer, not unlike the promise
of death itself.

She got up. She put on the worn hacking jacket that was her second skin
these days, along with the boy's shirt, open at the neck, and the jeans
she wore. She slipped on her worn leather boots. Ran the brush through
her hair.

Now to take leave of the empty house she'd invaded this morning. It hurt
her to leave it. But it had hurt her more to come at all.

At the first light, she'd arrived at the edge of the clearing, quietly
stunned to discover it unchanged after fifteen years, a rambling
structure built into the foot of the mountain, its roofs and pillared
porches veiled in blue morning glory vines. High above, half hidden in
the grassy slopes, a few tiny secret windows caught the first flash of
morning light.

Like a spy she'd felt as she came up the front steps with the old key in
her hand. No one had been here in months, it seemed. Dust and leaves
wherever she looked.

Yet there were the roses waiting in their crystal vase, and the letter
for her pinned to the door, with the new key in the envelope.

For hours, she'd wandered, revisited, explored. Never mind that she was
tired, that she'd driven all night. She had to walk the long shaded
galleries, to move through the spacious and overwhelming rooms. Never
had the place seemed so much like a crude palace with its enormous
timbers shouldering the rough-sawn plank ceilings, the rusted smokestack
chimneys rising from the round stone hearths.

Even the furnishings were massive-the millstone tables, chairs and
couches of unfinished lumber piled with soft down pillows, bookshelves
and niches carved into the unpainted adobe walls.

It had the crude medieval grandeur, this place. The bits and pieces of
Mayan art, the Etruscan cups and Hittite statues, seemed to belong here,
amid the deep casements and stone floors. It was like a fortress. It
felt safe.

Only Maharet's creations were full of brilliant color as if they'd drawn
it from the trees and sky outside. Memory hadn't exaggerated their
beauty in the least. Soft and thick the deep hooked wool rugs carrying
the free pattern of woodland flower and grass everywhere as if the rug
were the earth itself. And the countless quilted pillows with their
curious stick figures and odd symbols, and finally the giant hanging
quilts-modern tapestries that covered the walls with childlike pictures
of fields, streams, mountains and forests, skies full of sun and moon
together, of glorious clouds and even falling rain. They had the vibrant
power of primitive painting with their myriad tiny bits of fabric sewn
so carefully to create the detail of cascading water or falling leaf.

It had killed Jesse to see all this again.

By noon, hungry and light-headed from the long sleepless night, she'd
gotten the courage to lift the latch from the rear door that led into
the secret windowless rooms within the mountain itself. Breathless, she
had followed the stone passage. Her heart pounded as she found the
library unlocked and switched on the lamps.

Ah, fifteen years ago, simply the happiest summer of her life. All her
wonderful adventures afterwards, ghost hunting for the Talamasca, had
been nothing to that magical and unforgettable time.

She and Maharet in this library together, with the fire blazing. And the
countless volumes of the family history, amazing her and delighting her.

The lineage of "the Great Family," as Maharet always called it-"the
thread we cling to in the labyrinth which is life." How lovingly she had
taken down the books for Jesse, unlocked for her the caskets that
contained the old parchment scrolls.

Jesse had not fully accepted it that summer, the implications of all
she'd seen. There had been a slow confusion, a delicious suspension of
ordinary reality, as if the papyruses covered with a writing she could
not classify belonged more truly to dream. After all, Jesse had already
become a trained archaeologist by that time. She'd done her time on digs
in Egypt and at Jericho. Yet she could not decipher those strange
glyphs. In the name of God, how old were these things?

For years after, she'd tried to remember other documents she'd seen.
Surely she had come into the library one morning and discovered a back
room with an open door.

Into a long corridor, she'd gone past other unlighted rooms. She'd found
a light switch finally, and seen a great storage place full of clay
tablets-clay tablets covered with tiny pictures! Without doubt, she'd
held these things in her hands.

Something else had happened; something she had never really wanted to
recall. Was there another hallway? She knew for certain that there had
been a curving iron stairway which took her down into lower rooms with
plain earthen walls. Tiny bulbs were fixed in old porcelain light
sockets, She had pulled chains to turn them on.

Surely she had done that. Surely she had opened a heavy redwood door . .
.

For years after, it had come back to her in little flashes-a vast, low-
ceilinged room with oak chairs, a table and benches that looked as if
they were made from stone. And what else? Something that at first seemed
utterly familiar. And then-

Later that night, she'd remembered nothing but the stairway. Suddenly it
was ten o'clock, and she'd just awakened and Maharet was standing at the
foot of her bed. Maharet had come to her and kissed her. Such a lovely
warm kiss; it had sent a low throbbing sensation through her. Maharet
said they'd found her down by the creek, asleep in the clearing, and at
sunset, they'd brought her in.

Down by the creek? For months after, she'd actually "remembered" falling
asleep there. In fact, it was a rather rich "recollection" of the peace
and stillness of the forest, of the water singing over the rocks. But it
had never happened, of that she was now sure.

But on this day, some fifteen years later, she had found no evidence one
way or the other of these half-remembered things. Rooms were bolted
against her. Even the neat volumes of the family history were in locked
glass cases which she dared not disturb.

Yet never had she believed so firmly in what she could recall. Yes, clay
tablets covered with nothing but tiny stick figures for persons, trees,
animals. She'd seen them, taken them off the shelves and held them under
the feeble overhead light. And the stairway, and the room that
frightened her, no, terrified her, yes ... all there.

Nevertheless, it had been paradise here, in those warm summer days and
nights, when she had sat by the hour talking to Maharet, when she had
danced with Mael and Maharet by the light of the moon. Forget for now
the pain afterwards, trying to understand why Maharet had sent her back
home to New York never to come here again.

My darling,

The fact is I love you too much. My life will engulf yours if we are not
separated. You must have freedom, Jesse, to devise your own plans,
ambitions, dreams . . .

It was not to relive the old pain that she had returned, it was to know
again, for a little while, the joy that had gone before.

Fighting weariness this afternoon, she'd wandered out of the house
finally, and down the long lane through the oaks. So easy to find the
old paths through the dense redwoods. And the clearing, ringed in fern
and clover on the steep rocky banks of the shallow rushing creek.

Here Maharet had once guided her through total darkness, down into the
water and along a path of stones. Mael had joined them. Maharet had
poured the wine for Jesse, and they had sung together a song Jesse could
never recall afterwards, though now and then she would find herself
humming this eerie melody with inexplicable accuracy, then stop, aware
of it, unable to find the proper note again.

She might have fallen asleep near the creek in the deep mingled sounds
of the forest, so like the false "recollection" of years ago.

So dazzling the bright green of the maples, catching the rare shafts of
light. And the redwoods, how monstrous they seemed in the unbroken
quiet. Mammoth, indifferent, soaring hundreds of feet before their
somber lacy foliage closed on the frayed margin of sky.

And she'd known what the concert tonight, with Lestat's screaming fans,
would demand of her. But she'd been afraid that the dream of the twins
would start again.

Finally, she'd gone back to the house, and taken the roses and the
letter with her. Her old room. Three o'clock. Who wound the clocks of
this place that they knew the hour? The dream of the twins was stalking
her. And she was simply too tired to fight anymore. The place felt so
good to her. No ghosts here of the kind she'd encountered so many times
in her work. Only the peace. She'd lain down on the old hanging bed, on
the quilt that she herself had made so carefully with Maharet that
summer. And sleep-and the twins-had come together.

Now she had two hours to get to San Francisco, and she must leave this
house, maybe in tears, again. She checked her pockets. Passport, papers,
money, keys.

She picked up her leather bag, slung it over her shoulder, and hurried
through the long passage to the stairs. Dusk was coming fast, and when
darkness did cover the forest, nothing would be visible at all.

There was still a bit of sunlight in the main hall when she reached it.
Through the western windows, a few long dusty rays illuminated the giant
tapestry quilt on the wall.

Jesse caught her breath as she looked at it. Always her favorite, for
its intricacy, its size. At first it seemed a great mass of random tiny
prints and patches-then gradually the wooded landscape emerged from the
myriad pieces of cloth. One minute you saw it; the next it was gone.
That's how it had happened over and over again that summer when, drunk
with wine, she had walked back and forth before it, losing the picture,
then recovering it: the mountain, the forest, a tiny village nestled in
the green valley below.

"I'm sorry, Maharet-," she whispered again softly. She had to go. Her
journey was nearly ended.

But as she looked away, something in the quitted picture caught her eye.
She turned back, studied it again. Were there figures there, which she
had never seen? Once more it was a swarm of stitched-together fragments.
Then slowly the flank of the mountain emerged, then the olive trees, and
finally the rooftops of the village, no more than yellow huts scattered
on the smooth valley floor. The figures? She could not find them. That
is, until she again turned her head away. In the corner of her eye, they
were visible for a split second. Two tiny figures holding each other,
women with red hair!

Slowly, almost cautiously she turned back to the picture. Her heart was
skipping. Yes, there. But was it an illusion?

She crossed the room until she stood directly before the quilt. She
reached up and touched it. Yes! Each little rag-doll being had a tiny
pair of green buttons for its eyes, a carefully sewn nose and red mouth!
And the hair, the hair was red yarn, crimped into jagged waves and
delicately sewn over the white shoulders.

She stared at it, half disbelieving. Yet there they were-the twins! And
as she stood there, petrified, the room began to darken. The last light
had slipped below the horizon. The quilt was fading before her eyes into
an unreadable pattern.

In a daze, she heard the clock strike the quarter hour. Call the
Talamasca. Call David in London. Tell him part of it, anything- But that
was out of the question and she knew it. And it broke her heart to
realize that no matter what did happen to her tonight, the Talamasca
would never know the whole story.

She forced herself to leave, to lock the door behind her and walk across
the deep porch and down the long path.

She didn't fully understand her feelings, why she was so shaken and on
the verge of tears. It confirmed her suspicions, all she thought she
knew. And yet she was frightened. She was actually crying.

Wail for Maharet.

But that she could not do. Maharet would charm her, confuse her, drive
her away from the mystery in the name of love. That's what had happened
in that long ago summer. The Vampire Lestat withheld nothing. The
Vampire Lestat was the crucial piece in the puzzle. To see him and touch
him was to validate everything.

The red Mercedes roadster started instantly. And with a spray of gravel
she backed up, turned, and made for the narrow un-paved road. The
convertible top was down; she'd be frozen by the time she reached San

Francisco, but it didn't matter. She loved the cold air on her face, she
loved to drive fast.

The road plunged at once into the darkness of the woods. Not even the
rising moon could penetrate here. She pushed to forty, swinging easily
into the sudden turns. Her sadness grew heavier suddenly, but there were
no more tears. The Vampire Lestat . . . almost there.

When at last she hit the county road, she was speeding, singing to
herself in syllables she could hardly hear above the wind. Full darkness
came just as she roared through the pretty little city of Santa Rosa and
connected with the broad swift current of Highway 101 south.

The coastal fog was drifting in. It made ghosts of the dark hills to the
east and west. Yet the bright flow of tail lamps illuminated the road
ahead of her. Her excitement was mounting. One hour to the Golden Gate.
The sadness was leaving her. All her life she'd been confident, lucky;
and sometimes impatient with the more cautious people she'd known. And
despite her sense of fatality on this night, her keen awareness of the
dangers she was approaching, she felt her usual luck might be with her.
She wasn't really afraid.

She'd been born lucky, as she saw it, found by the side of the road
minutes after the car crash that had killed her seven-months-pregnant
teenaged mother-a baby spontaneously aborted from the dying womb, and
screaming loudly to clear her own tiny lungs when the ambulance arrived.

She had no name for two weeks as she languished in the county hospital,
condemned for hours to the sterility and coldness of machines; but the
nurses had adored her, nicknaming her "the sparrow," and cuddling her
and singing to her whenever allowed.

Years later they were to write to her, sending along the snapshots
they'd taken, telling her little stories, which had greatly amplified
her early sense of having been loved.

It was Maharet who at last came for her, identifying her as the sole
survivor of the Reeves family of South Carolina and taking her to New
York to live with cousins of a different name and background. There she
was to grow up in a lavish old two-story apartment on Lexington Avenue
with Maria and Matthew Godwin, who gave her not only love but everything
she could want. An English nanny had slept in her room till Jesse was
twelve years old.

She could not remember when she'd learned that her aunt Maharet had
provided for her, that she could go on to any college and any career she
might choose. Matthew Godwin was a doctor, Maria was a sometime dancer
and teacher; they were frank about their attachment to Jesse, their
dependence upon her. She was the daughter they had always wanted, and
these had been rich and happy years.

The letters from Maharet started before she was old enough to read. They
were wonderful, often full of colorful postcards and odd pieces of
currency from the countries where Maharet lived. Jesse had a drawer full
of rupees and lire by the time she was seventeen. But more important,
she had a friend in Maharet, who answered every line she ever wrote with
feeling and care.

It was Maharet who inspired her in her reading, encouraged her music
lessons and painting classes, arranged her summer tours of Europe and

finally her admission to Columbia, where Jesse studied ancient languages
and art.

It was Maharet who arranged her Christmas visits with European cousins-
the Scartinos of Italy, a powerful banking family who lived in a villa
outside Siena, and the humbler Borchardts of Paris, who welcomed her to
their overcrowded but cheerful home.

The summer that Jesse turned seventeen she went to Vienna to meet the
Russian emigre branch of the family, young fervent intellectuals and
musicians whom she greatly loved. Then it was off to England to meet the
Reeves family, directly connected to the Reeveses of South Carolina, who
had left England centuries ago.

When she was eighteen, she'd gone to visit the Petralona cousins in
their villa on Santorini, rich and exotic-looking Greeks. They had lived
in near feudal splendor, surrounded by peasant servants, and had taken
Jesse with them on a spur-of-the-moment voyage aboard their yacht to
Istanbul, Alexandria, and Crete.

Jesse had almost fallen in love with young Constantin Petralona. Maharet
had let her know the marriage would have everyone's blessing, but she
must make her own decision. Jesse had kissed her lover good-bye and
flown back to America, the university, and preparation for her first
archaeological dig in Iraq.

But even through the college years, she remained as close to the family
as ever. Everyone was so good to her. But then everyone was good to
everyone else. Everyone believed in the family. Visits among the various
branches were common; frequent intermarriage had made endless
entanglements; every family house contained rooms in constant readiness
for relatives who might drop in. Family trees seemed to go back forever;
people passed on funny stories about famous relatives who had been dead
for three or four hundred years. Jesse had felt a great communion with
these people, no matter how different they seemed.

In Rome she was charmed by the cousins who drove their sleek Ferraris at
breakneck speed, stereos blaring, and went home at night to a charming
old palazzo where the plumbing didn't work and the roof leaked. The
Jewish cousins in southern California were a dazzling bunch of
musicians, designers, and producers who had one way or the other been
connected with the motion pictures and the big studios for fifty years.
Their old house off Hollywood Boulevard was home to a score of
unemployed actors. Jesse could live in the attic if she wanted to;
dinner was served at six to anybody and everybody who walked in.

But who was this woman Maharet, who had always been Jesse's distant but
ever attentive mentor, who guided her studies with frequent and
thoughtful letters, who gave her the personal direction to which she so
productively responded and which she secretly craved?

To all the cousins whom Jesse was ever to visit, Maharet was a palpable
presence though her visits were so infrequent as to be remarkable. She
was the keeper of the records of the Great Family, that is, all the
branches under many names throughout the world. It was she who
frequently brought members together, even arranging marriages to unite
different branches, and the one who could invariably provide help in
times of trouble, help that could sometimes mean the difference between
life and death.

Before Maharet, there had been her mother, now called Old Maharet, and
before that Great-aunt Maharet and so forth and so on as long as anybody
could remember. "There will always be a Maharet" was an old family
saying, rattled off in Italian as easily as in German or Russian or
Yiddish or Greek. That is, a single female descendant in each generation
would take the name and the record-keeping obligations, or so it seemed,
anyhow, for no one save Maharet herself really knew those details.

"When will I meet you?" Jesse had written many times over the years. She
had collected the stamps off the envelopes from Delhi and Rio and Mexico
City, from Bangkok, and Tokyo and Lima and Saigon and Moscow.

All the family were devoted to this woman and fascinated by her, but
with Jesse there was another secret and powerful connection.

From her earliest years, Jesse had had "unusual" experiences, unlike
those of the people around her.

For example, Jesse could read people's thoughts in a vague, wordless
way. She "knew" when people disliked her or were lying to her. She had a
gift for languages because she frequently understood the "gist" even
when she did not know the vocabulary.

And she saw ghosts-people and buildings that could not possibly be
there.

When she was very little she often saw the dim gray outline of an
elegant town house across from her window in Manhattan. She'd known it
wasn't real, and it made her laugh at first, the way it came and went,
sometimes transparent, other times as solid as the street itself, with
lights behind its lace-curtained windows. Years passed before she
learned that the phantom house had once been the property of architect
Stanford White. It had been torn down decades ago.

The human images she saw were not at first so well formed. On the
contrary, they were brief flickering apparitions that often compounded
the inexplicable discomfort she felt in particular places.

But as she got older these ghosts became more visible, more enduring.
Once on a dark rainy afternoon, the translucent figure of an old woman
had ambled towards her and finally passed right through her. Hysterical,
Jesse had run into a nearby shop, where clerks had called Matthew and
Maria. Over and over Jesse tried to describe the woman's troubled face,
her bleary-eyed stare which seemed utterly blind to the real world about
her.

Friends often didn't believe Jesse when she described these things. Yet
they were fascinated and begged her to repeat the stories. It left Jesse
with an ugly vulnerable feeling. So she tried not to tell people about
the ghosts, though by the time she was in her early teens she was seeing
these lost souls more and more often.

Even walking in the dense crowds of Fifth Avenue at midday she glimpsed
these pale searching creatures. Then one morning in Central Park, when
Jesse was sixteen, she saw the obvious apparition of a young man sitting
on a bench not far from her. The park was crowded, noisy; yet the figure
seemed detached, a part of nothing around it, The sounds around Jesse
began to go dim as if the thing were absorbing them. She prayed for it
to go away. Instead it turned and fixed its eyes on her. It tried to
speak to her.

Jesse ran all the way home. She was in a panic. These things knew her
now, she told Matthew and Maria. She was afraid to leave the apartment.
Finally Matthew gave her a sedative and told her she would be able to
sleep. He left the door of her room open so she wouldn't be frightened.

As Jesse lay there halfway between dream and waking, a young girl came
in. Jesse realized she knew this young girl; of course, she was one of
the family, she'd always been here, right by Jesse, they'd talked lots
of times, hadn't they, and no surprise at all that she was so sweet, so
loving, and so familiar. She was just a teenager, no older than Jesse.

She sat on Jesse's bed and told Jesse not to worry, that these spirits
could never hurt her. No ghost had ever hurt anybody. They didn't have
the power. They were poor pitiful weak things. "You write to Aunt
Maharet," the girl said, and then she kissed Jesse and brushed the hair
back out of Jesse's face. The sedative was really working then. Jesse
couldn't even keep her eyes open. There was a question she wanted to ask
about the car wreck when she was born, but she couldn't think of it.
"Good-bye, sweetheart," said the girl and Jesse was asleep before the
girl had left the room.

When she woke up it was two o'clock in the morning. The fiat was dark.
She began her letter to Maharet immediately, recounting every strange
incident that she could remember.

It wasn't until dinnertime that she thought of the young girl with a
start. Impossible that such a person had been living here and was
familiar and had always been around. How could she have accepted such a
thing? Even in her letter she had said, "Of course Miriam was here and
Miriam said . . ." And who was Miriam? A name on Jesse's birth
certificate. Her mother.

Jesse told no one what had happened. Yet a comforting warmth enveloped
her. She could feel Miriam here, she was sure of it.

Maharet's letter came five days later. Maharet believed her. These
spirit apparitions were nothing surprising at all. Such things most
certainly did exist, and Jesse was not the only person who saw them:

Our family over the generations has contained many a seer of spirits.
And as you know these were the sorcerers and witches of ages past.
Frequently this power appears in those who are blessed with your
physical attributes: your green eyes, pale skin, and red hair. It would
seem the genes travel together. Maybe science one day will explain this
to us. But for now be assured that your powers are entirely natural.

This does not mean, however, that they are constructive. Though spirits
are real, they make almost no difference in the scheme of things! They
can be childish, vindictive, and deceitful. By and large you cannot help
the entities who try to communicate with you, and sometimes you are
merely gazing at a lifeless ghost-that is, a visual echo of a
personality no longer present.

Don't fear them, but do not let them waste your time. For that they love
to do, once they know that you can see them. As for Miriam, you must
tell me if you see her again. But as you have done as she asked in
writing to me I do not think she will find it necessary to return. In
all probability she is quite above the sad antics of those whom you see

most often. Write to me about these things whenever they frighten you.
But try not to tell others. Those who do not see will never believe you.

This letter proved invaluable to Jesse. For years she carried it with
her, in her purse or pocket wherever she went. Not only had Maharet
believed her, but Maharet had given her a way to understand and survive
this troublesome power. Everything that Maharet said had made sense.

After that Jesse was occasionally frightened again by spirits; and she
did share these secrets with her closest friends. But by and large she
did as Maharet had instructed her, and the powers ceased to bother her.
They seemed to go dormant. She forgot them for long periods.

Maharet's letters came with ever greater frequency. Maharet was her
confidante, her best friend. As Jesse entered college, she had to admit
that Maharet was more real to her through the letters than anyone else
she had ever known. But she had long come to accept that they might
never see each other.

Then one evening during Jesse's third year at Columbia she had opened
the door of her apartment to discover the lights burning, and a fire
going under the mantel, and a tall, thin red-haired woman standing at
the andirons with the poker.

Such beauty! That had been Jesse's first overwhelming impression.
Skillfully powdered and painted, the face had an Oriental artifice, save
for the remarkable intensity of the green eyes and the thick curly red
hair pouring down over the shoulders. "My darling," the woman said.
"It's Maharet." Jesse had rushed into her arms. But Maharet had caught
her, gently holding her apart as if to look at her. Then she'd covered
Jesse with kisses, as if she dared not touch her in any other way, her
gloved hands barely holding Jesse's arms. It had been a lovely and
delicate moment. Jesse had stroked Maharet's soft thick red hair. So
like her own.

"You are my child," Maharet had whispered. "You are everything 1 had
hoped you would be. Do you know how happy I am?" Like ice and fire,
Maharet had seemed that night. Immensely strong, yet irrepressibly warm.
A thin, yet statuesque creature with a tiny waist and flowing skins, she
had the high-toned mystery of fashion manikins, the eerie glamour of
women who have made of themselves sculpture, her long brown wool cape
moving with sweeping grace as they left the flat together. Yet how easy
with one another they had been.

It had been a long night on the town; they'd gone to galleries, the
theater, and then to a late night supper though Maharet had wanted
nothing. She was too excited, she said. She did not even remove her
gloves. She wanted only to listen to all that Jesse had to tell her. And
Jesse had talked unendingly about everything- Columbia, her work in
archaeology, her dreams of fieldwork in

Mesopotamia.

So different from the intimacy of letters. They had even walked through
Central Park in the pitch darkness together, Maharet telling Jesse there
was not the slightest reason to be afraid. And it had seemed entirely
normal then, hadn't it? And so beautiful, as if they were following the
paths of an enchanted forest, fearing nothing, talking in excited yet
hushed voices. How divine to feel so safe! Near dawn, Maharet left Jesse

at the apartment with promises to bring her to visit in California very
soon. Maharet had a house there, in the Sonoma mountains.

But two years were to pass before the invitation ever came. Jesse had
just finished her bachelor's degree. She was scheduled to work on a dig
in Lebanon in July.

"You must come for two weeks," Maharet had written. The plane ticket was
enclosed. Mael, "a dear friend," would fetch her from the airport.

Though Jesse hadn't admitted it at the time, there had been strange
things happening from the start.

Mael, for instance, a tall overpowering man with long wavy blond hair
and deep-set blue eyes. There had been something almost eerie about the
way he moved, the timbre of his voice, the precise way he handled the
car as they drove north to Sonoma County. He'd worn the rawhide clothes
of a rancher it seemed, even to the alligator boots, except for a pair
of exquisite black kid gloves and a large pair of gold-rimmed blue-
tinted glasses.

And yet he'd been so cheerful, so glad to see her, and she'd liked him
immediately. She'd told him the story of her life before they reached
Santa Rosa. He had the most lovely laugh. But Jesse had gotten
positively dizzy looking at him once or twice. Why? The compound itself
was unbelievable. Who could have built such a place? It was at the end
of an impossible unpaved road, to begin with; and its back rooms had
been dug out of the mountain, as if by enormous machines. Then there
were the roof timbers. Were they primeval redwood? They must have been
twelve feet in girth. And the adobe walls, positively ancient. Had there
been Europeans in California so long ago that they could have . . . but
what did it matter? The place was magnificent, finally. She loved the
round iron hearths and animal-skin rugs, and the huge library and the
crude observatory with its ancient brass telescope.

She had loved the good-hearted servants who came each morning from Santa
Rosa to clean, do laundry, prepare the sumptuous meals. It did not even
bother her that she was alone so much. She loved walking in the forest.
She went into Santa Rosa for novels and newspapers. She studied the
tapestried quilts. There were ancient artifacts here she could not
identify; which she loved examining. Aerials high on the maintain
brought television broadcasts from far and wide. There was a cellar
movie theater complete with projector, screen, and n immense collection
of films. On warm afternoons she swam in the pond to the south of the
house. As dusk fell bringing the inevitable northern California chill,
huge fires blazed in every room of the house. Of course the grandest
discovery for her had been the family history that there were countless
leader volumes tracing the lineage of all the branches of the Great
family for centuries back. She was thrilled to discover photograph
albums by the hundreds, and trunks full of painted portraits, some no
more than tiny oval miniatures others large canvases now layered with
dust.

At once she devoured the history of the Reeveses of South Carolina, her
own people-rich before the Civil War, and ruined after Their photographs
were almost more than she could bear. Here at last were the forebears
she truly resembled; she could see her features in their faces. They had
her pale skin even her expression! And two of them had her long curly
red hair. To Jesse an adopted child, this had a very special
significance.

It was only towards the end of her stay that Jesse began to realize the
implications of the family records, as she opened scrolls covered with
ancient Latin, Greek, and finally Egyptian hieroglyphics Never
afterwards was she able to pinpoint the discovery of the clay tablets
deep within the cellar room. But the recovery of the memory of her
conversations with Maharet were never clouded. They'd talked for hours
about the family chronicles.

Jesse had begged to work with the family history. She would have given
up school for this library. She wanted to translate and adapt the old
records and feed them into computers. Why not publish the story of the
Great Family? For surely such a long lineage was highly unusual, if not
absolutely unique! Even the crowned heads of Europe could not trace
themselves this far back.

Maharet had been patient with Jesses enthusiasm, reminding her that it
was time-consuming and unrewarding work. After all, it was only the
story of one family's progress through the centuries- sometimes there
were only lists of names in the record or short descriptions of
uneventful lives, tallies of births and deaths, and records of
migration.

Good memories, those conversations. And the soft mellow light of the
library, the delicious smells of the old leather and parchment, of the
candles and the blazing fire. And Maharet by the hearth, the lovely
manikin, her pale green eyes covered with large faintly tinted glasses,
cautioning Jesse that the work might engulf her, keep her from better
things. It was the Great Family that mattered, not the record of it, it
was the vitality in each generation, and the knowledge and love of one's
kin. The record merely made this possible.

Jesse's longing for this work was greater than anything she'd ever
known. Surely Maharet would let her stay here! She'd have years in this
library, discovering finally the very origins of the family!

Only afterwards did she see it as an astounding mystery, and one among
many during that summer. Only afterwards, had so many little things
preyed on her mind.

For example, Maharet and Mael simply never appeared until after dark,
and the explanation-they slept all day-was no explanation at all. And
where did they sleep?-that was another question. Their rooms lay empty
all day with the doors open, the closets overflowing with exotic and
spectacular clothes. At sunset they would appear almost as if they'd
materialized. Jesse would look up. Maharet would be standing by the
hearth, her makeup elaborate and flawless, her clothes dramatic, her
jeweled earrings and necklace sparkling in the broken light. Mael,
dressed as usual in soft brown buckskin jacket and pants, stood silently
against the wall.

But when Jesse asked about their strange hours, Maharet's answers were
utterly convincing! They were pale beings, they detested sunlight, and
they did stay up so late! True. Why, at four in the morning, they were
still arguing with each other about politics or history, and from such a
bizarre and grand perspective, calling cities by their ancient names,
and sometimes speaking in a rapid, strange tongue that Jesse could not
classify, let alone understand. With her psychic gift, she sometimes
knew what they were saying; but the strange sounds baffled her.

And something about Mael rankled Maharet, it was obvious. Was he her
lover? It did not really seem so.

Then it was the way that Mael and Maharet kept speaking to each other,
as if they were reading each other's minds. All of a sudden, Mael would
say, "But I told you not to worry," when in fact Maharet had not said a
word out loud. And sometimes they did it with Jesse too. One time, Jesse
was certain, Maharet had called her, asked her to come down to the main
dining hall, though Jesse could have sworn she heard the voice only in
her head. Of course Jesse was psychic. But were Mael and Maharet both
powerful psychics as well?

Dinner: that was another thing-the way that Jesse's favorite dishes
appeared. She didn't have to tell the servants what she liked and didn't
like. They knew! Escargots, baked oysters, fettucini alia carbonara,
beef Wellington, any and all her favorites were the nightly fare. And
the wine, she had never tasted such delicious vintages. Yet Maharet and
Mael ate like birds, or so it seemed. Sometimes they sat out the entire
meal with their gloves on.

And the strange visitors, what about them? Santino, for instance, a
black-haired Italian, who arrived one evening on foot, with a youthful
companion named Eric. Santino had stared at Jesse as if she were an
exotic animal, then he'd kissed her hand and given her a gorgeous
emerald ring, which had disappeared without explanation several nights
later. For two hours Santino had argued with Maharet in that same
unusual language, then left in a rage, with the flustered Eric.

Then there were the strange nighttime parties. Hadn't Jesse awakened
twice at three or four in the morning to find the house full of people?
There had been people laughing and talking in every room. And all of
these people had something in common. They were very pale with
remarkable eyes, much like Mael and Maharet. But Jesse had been so
sleepy. She couldn't even remember going back to bed. Only that at one
point she had been surrounded by several very beautiful young men who
filled a glass of wine for her, and the next thing she knew it was
morning. She was in bed. The sun was pouring through the window. The
house was empty.

Also, Jesse had heard things at odd hours. The roar of helicopters,
small planes. Yet no one said a word about such things.

But Jesse was so happy! These things seemed of no consequence! Maharet's
answers would banish Jesse's doubts in an instant. Yet how unusual that
Jesse would change her mind like that. Jesse was such a confident
person. Her own feelings were often known to her at once. She was
actually rather stubborn.

And yet she always had two attitudes towards various things Maharet told
her. On the one hand, "Why, that's ridiculous," and on the other, "Of
course!"

But Jesse was having too much fun to care. She spent the first few
evenings of her visit talking with Maharet and Mael about archaeology.
And Maharet was a fund of information though she had some very strange
ideas.

For example, she maintained that the discovery of agriculture had
actually come about because tribes who lived very well by hunting wanted
to have hallucinogenic plants ever available to them for religious

trances. And also they wanted beer. Never mind that there wasn't a shred
of archaeological evidence. Just keep digging. Jesse would find out.

Mael read poetry out loud beautifully; Maharet sometimes played the
piano, very slowly, meditatively. Eric reappeared for a couple of
nights, joining them enthusiastically in their singing. He'd brought
films with him from Japan and Italy, and they'd had a splendid time
watching these. Kwaidan, in particular, had been quite impressive,
though frightening. And the Italian Juliet of the Spirits had made Jesse
break into tears.

All of these people seemed to find Jesse interesting. In fact, Mael
asked her incredibly odd questions. Had she ever in her life smoked a
cigarette? What did chocolate taste like? How could she dare to go with
young men alone in automobiles or to their apartments? Didn't she
realize they might kill her? She had almost laughed. No, but seriously,
that could happen, he insisted. He worked himself into a state over it.
Look at the papers. Women of the modern cities were hunted by men like
deer in the wood.

Best to get him off that subject, and onto his travels. His descriptions
of all the places he'd been were marvelous. He'd lived for years in the
jungles of the Amazon. Yet he would not fly in "an aeroplane." That was
too dangerous. What if it exploded? And he didn't like "cloth garments"
because they were too fragile.

Jesse had a very peculiar moment with Mael. They'd been talking together
at the dining table. She'd been explaining about the ghosts she
sometimes saw, and he had referred to these crossly as the addlebrained
dead, or the insane dead, which had made her laugh in spite of herself.
But it was true; ghosts did behave as if they were a little
addlebrained, that was the horror of it. Do we cease to exist when we
die? Or do we linger in a stupid state, appearing to people at odd
moments and making nonsensical remarks to mediums? When had a ghost ever
said anything interesting?

"But they are merely the earthbound, of course," Mael had said, "Who
knows where we go when we at last let loose of the flesh and all its
seductive pleasures?"

Jesse had been quite drunk by this time, and she felt a a terrible dread
coming over her-thoughts of the old ghost mansion of Stanford White, and
the spirits roaming the New York crowds, She'd focused sharply upon
Mael, who for once was not wearing his gloves or his tinted glasses.
Handsome Mael, whose eyes were very blue except for a bit of blackness
at the centers.

"Besides," Mael had said, "there are other spirits who have always been
here. They were never flesh and blood; and it makes them so angry."

What a curious idea. "How do you know this?" Jesse had asked, still
staring at Mael. Mael was beautiful. The beauty was the sum of the
faults-the hawk nose, the too prominent jaw, the leanness of the face
with the wild wavy straw-colored hair around it. Even the eyes were too
deep-set, yet all the more visible for it. Yes, beautiful-to embrace, to
kiss, to invite to bed ... In fact, the attraction she'd always felt to
him was suddenly overwhelming.

Then, an odd realization had seized her. This isn't a human being. This
is something pretending to be a human being. It was so clear. But it was

also ridiculous! If it wasn't a human being, what the hell was it? It
certainly was no ghost or spirit. That was obvious.

"I guess we don't know what's real or unreal," she had said without
meaning to. "You stare at anything long enough and suddenly it looks
monstrous." She had in fact turned away from him to stare at the bowl of
flowers in the middle of the table. Old tea roses, falling to pieces
amid the baby's breath and fern and purple zinnias. And they did look
absolutely alien, these things, the way that insects always do, and sort
of horrible! What were these things, really? Then the bowl broke into
pieces and the water went everywhere. And Mael had said quite sincerely,
"Oh, forgive me. I didn't mean to do that."

Now that had happened, without question. Yet it had made not the
slightest impact. Mael had slipped away for a walk in the woods, kissing
her forehead before he went, his hand trembling suddenly as he reached
to touch her hair and then apparently thought the better of it.

Of course, Jesse had been drinking. In fact, Jesse drank too much the
entire time she was there. And no one seemed to notice. Now and then
they went out and danced in the clearing under the moon. It was not an
organized dancing. They would move singly, in circles, gazing up at the
sky. Mael would hum or Maharet would sing songs in the unknown language.

What had been her state of mind to do such things for hours? And why had
she never questioned, even in her mind, Mael's strange manner of wearing
gloves about the house, or walking in the dark with his sunglasses on?

Then one morning well before dawn, Jesse had gone to bed drunk and had a
terrible dream. Mael and Maharet were fighting with each other. Mael
kept saying over and over:

"But what if she dies? What if somebody kills her, or a car hits her?
What if, what if, what if..." It had become a deafening roar. Then
several nights later the awful and final catastrophe had begun. Mael had
been gone for a while, but then he'd returned. She'd been drinking
burgundy all evening long, and she was standing on the terrace with him
and he had kissed her and she had lost consciousness and yet she knew
what was going on. He was holding her, kissing her breasts, yet she was
slipping down through a fathomless darkness. Then the girl had come
again, the teenaged girl who'd come to her that time in New York when
she was so afraid. Only Maef couldn't see the girl, and of course Jesse
knew exactly who she was, Jesse's mother, Miriam, and that Miriam was
afraid. Mael had suddenly released Jesse. "Where is she!" he'd cried out
angrily. Jesse had opened her eyes. Maharet was there. She struck Mael
so hard he flew backwards over the railing of the terrace. And Jesse
screamed, pushing aside the teenaged girl accidentally as she ran to
look over the edge.

Far down there in the clearing Mael stood, unhurt. Impossible, yet
obviously the case. He was on his feet already, and he made Maharet a
deep ceremonial bow. He stood in the light falling from the windows of
the lower rooms, and he blew a kiss to Maharet. Maharet looked sad, but
she smiled. She'd said something under her breath and made a little
dismissive gesture to Mael, as if to say she wasn't angry.

Jesse was in a panic that Maharet would be angry with her, but when she
looked into Maharet's eyes she knew that there was no cause for worry.
Then Jesse looked down and saw that the front of her dress was torn. She

felt a sharp pain where Mae! had been kissing her, and when she turned
to Maharet, she became disoriented, unable to hear her own words.

She was sitting on her bed somehow, propped against the pillows, and she
wore a long flannel gown. She was telling Maharet that her mother had
come again, she'd seen her on the terrace. But that was only part of
what she'd been saying because she and Maharet had been talking for
hours about the whole thing. But what whole thing? Maharet told her she
would forget.

Oh, God, how she tried to recall after. Bits and pieces had tormented
her for years. Maharet's hair was down, and it was very long and full.
They had moved through the dark house together, like ghosts, she and
Maharet, Maharet holding her, and now and then stopping to kiss her, and
she had hugged Maharet. Maharet's body felt like stone that could
breathe.

They were high up in the mountain in a secret room. Massive computers
were there, with their reels and red lights, giving off a low electronic
hum. And there, on an immense rectangular screen that stretched dozens
of feet up the wall, was an enormous family tree drawn electronically by
means of light. This was the Great Family, stretching back through all
the millennia. Ah, yes, to one root! The plan was matrilineal, which had
always been the way with the ancient peoples-as it had been with the
Egyptians, yes, descent through the princesses of the royal house. And
as it was, after a fashion, with the Hebrew tribes to this day.

All the details had been plain to Jesse at this moment-ancient names,
places, the beginning!-God, had she known even the beginning?-the
staggering reality of hundreds of generations charted before her eyes!
She had seen the progress of the family through the ancient countries of
Asia Minor and Macedonia and Italy and finally up through Europe and
then to the New World! And this could have been the chart of any human
family!

Never after was she able to reinvoke the details of that electronic map.
No, Maharet had told her she would forget it. The miracle was that she
remembered anything at all.

But what else had happened? What had been the real thrust of their long
talk?

Maharet crying, that she remembered. Maharet weeping with the soft
feminine sound of a young girl. Maharet had never appeared so alluring;
her face had been softened, yet luminous, the lines so few and so
delicate. But it had been shadowy then, and Jesse could scarcely see
anything clearly. She remembered the face burning like a white ember in
the darkness, the pale green eyes clouded yet vibrant, and the blond
eyelashes glistening as if the tiny hairs had been stroked with gold.

Candles burning in her room. The forest rising high outside the window.
Jesse had been begging, protesting. But what in God's name was the
argument about?

You will forget this. You will remember nothing.

She'd known when she opened her eyes in the sunlight that it was over;
they had gone. Nothing had come back to her in those first few moments,
except that something irrevocable had been said.

Then she had found the note on the bedside table:

My darling,

It is no longer good for you to be around us. I fear we have all become
too enamored of you and would sweep you off your feet and take you away
from those things which you have set out to do.

You will forgive us for leaving so suddenly. I am confident that this is
best for you. I have arranged for the car to take you to the airport.
Your plane leaves at four o'clock. Your cousins Maria and Matthew will
meet you in New York.

Be assured I love you more than words can say. My letter will be waiting
for you when you reach home. Some night many years from now we will
discuss the family history again. You may become my helper with these
records if you still wish it. But for now this must not engulf you. It
must not lead you away from life itself.

Yours always,

with unquestioning love,

Maharet

Jesse had never seen Maharet again.

Her letters came with the same old regularity, full of affection,
concern, advice. But never again was there to be a visit. Never was
Jesse invited back to the house in the Sonoma forest.

In the following months, Jesse had been showered with presents-a
beautiful old town house on Washington Square in Greenwich Village, a
new car, a heady increase in income, and the usual plane tickets to
visit members of the family all over the world. Eventually, Maharet
underwrote a substantial part of Jesse's archaeological work at Jericho.
In fact, as the years passed she gave Jesse anything and everything
Jesse could possibly desire.

Nevertheless, Jesse had been damaged by that summer. Once in Damascus
she had dreamed of Mael and awakened crying.

She was in London, working at the British Museum, when the memories
began to come back with full force. She never knew what triggered them.
Maybe the effect of Maharet's admonition-You will forget-had simply worn
off. But there might have been another reason. One evening in Trafalgar
Square, she'd seen Mael or a man who looked exactly like him. The man,
who stood many feet away, had been staring at her when their eyes met.
Yet when she'd waved, he'd turned his back and walked off without the
slightest recognition. She'd run after him trying to catch up with him;
but he was gone as if he'd never been there.

It had left her hurt and disappointed. Yet three days later she'd
received an anonymous gift, a bracelet of hammered silver. It was an
ancient Celtic relic, she soon found out, and probably priceless. Could
Mael have sent her this precious and lovely thing? She wanted so to
believe it.

Holding the bracelet tightly in her hand she felt his presence. She
remembered the long ago night when they'd spoken of addle-brained

ghosts. She smiled. It was as if he were there, holding her, kissing
her. She told Maharet about the gift when she wrote. She wore the
bracelet ever after that.

Jesse kept a diary of the memories that came back to her. She (wrote
down dreams, fragments she saw in flashes. But she did not mention any
of this in her letters to Maharet.

She had a love affair while she was in London. It ended badly, and she
felt rather alone. It was at that time that the Talamasca contacted her
and the course of her life was changed forever.

Jesse had been living in an old house in Chelsea, not far from where
Oscar Wilde had once lived. James McNeill Whistler had once shared the
neighborhood and so had Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. It was a
place that Jesse loved. But unbeknownst to her, the house in which she'd
leased her rooms had been haunted for many years. Jesse saw several
strange things within the first few months. They were faint, flickering,
apparitions of the kind one frequently sees in such places; echoes, as
Maharet had called them, of people who'd been there years before. Jesse
ignored them.

However when a reporter stopped her one afternoon, explaining that he
was doing a story on the haunted house, she told him rather matter-of-
factly about the things she'd seen. Common enough ghosts for London-an
old woman carrying a pitcher from the pantry, a man in a frock coat and
top hat who would appear for a second or more on the stair.

It made for a rather melodramatic article. Jesse had talked too much,
obviously. She was called a "psychic" or "natural medium" who saw these
things all the time. One of the Reeves family in Yorkshire called to
tease her a little about it. Jesse thought it was funny too. But other
than that, she didn't much care. She was deep into her studies at the
British Museum. It just didn't matter at all.

Then the Talamasca, having read the paper, came to call.

Aaron Lightner, an old-fashioned gentleman with white hair and exquisite
manners, asked to take Jesse to lunch. In an old but meticulously
maintained Rolls Royce, he and Jesse were driven through London to a
small and elegant private club.

Surely it was one of the strangest meetings Jesse had ever had. In fact,
it reminded her of the long ago summer, not because it was like it, but
because both experiences were so unlike anything else that had ever
happened to Jesse.

Lightner was a bit on the glamorous side, as Jesse saw it. His white
hair was quite full and neatly groomed, and he wore an impeccably
tailored suit of Donegal tweed. He was the only man she'd ever seen with
a silver walking stick.

Rapidly and pleasantly he explained to Jesse that he was a "psychic
detective"; he worked for a "secret order called the Talamasca," whose
sole purpose was to collect data on "paranormal" experiences and
maintain those records for the study of such phenomena. The Talamasca
held out its hand to people with paranormal powers. And to those of
extremely strong ability, it now and then offered membership, a career
in "psychic investigation," which was in fact more truly a vocation, as

the Talamasca demanded full devotion, loyalty, and obedience to its
rules.

Jesse almost laughed. But Lightner was apparently prepared for her
skepticism. He had a few "tricks" he always used at such introductory
meetings. And to Jesse's utter amazement, he managed to move several
objects on the table without touching them. A simple power, he said,
which functioned as a "calling card."

As Jesse watched the salt shaker dance back and forth of its own
volition, she was too amazed to speak. But the real surprise came when
Lightner confessed he knew all about her. He knew where she'd come from,
where she'd studied. He knew that she'd seen spirits when she was a
little girl, it had come to the attention of the order years ago through
"routine channels," and a file had been created for Jesse. She must not
be offended.

Please understand the Talamasca proceeded in its investigations with the
utmost respect for the individual. The file contained only hearsay
reports of things that Jesse had told neighbors, teachers, and school
friends. Jesse could see the file any time she wanted. That was always
the way it was with the Talamasca. Contact was always eventually
attempted with subjects under observation. Information was freely given
to the subject, though it was otherwise confidential.

Jesse questioned Lightner rather relentlessly. It soon became clear that
he did know a great deal about her, but he knew nothing whatsoever about
Maharet or the Great Family.

And it was this combination of knowledge and ignorance that lured Jesse.
One mention of Maharet and she would have turned her back on the
Talamasca forever, for to the Great Family Jesse was unfailingly loyal.
But the Talamasca cared only about Jesse's abilities. And Jesse, in
spite of Maharet's advice, had always cared about them, too.

Then the history of the Talamasca itself proved powerfully attractive.
Was this man telling the truth? A secret order, which traced its
existence back to the year 758, an order with records of witches,
sorcerers, mediums, and seers of spirits going back to that remote
period? It dazzled her as the records of the Great Family had once
dazzled her.

And Lightner graciously withstood another round of relentless
questioning. He knew his history and his geography, that was clear
enough. He spoke easily and accurately of the persecution of the
Cathars, the suppression of the Knights Templar, the execution of
Grandier, and a dozen other historical "events." In fact, Jesse couldn't
stump him. On the contrary, he referred to ancient "magicians" and
"sorcerers" of whom she had never heard.

That evening, when they arrived at the Motherhouse outside London,
Jesse's fate was pretty much sealed. She didn't leave the Motherhouse
for a week, and then only to close up her fiat in Chelsea and return to
the Talamasca.

The Motherhouse was a mammoth stone structure built in the 1505 and
acquired by the Talamasca "only" two hundred years ago. Though the
sumptuous paneled libraries and parlors had been created in the
eighteenth century, along with appropriate plasterwork and friezes, the

dining room and many of the bedchambers dated back to the Elizabethan
period.

Jesse loved the atmosphere immediately, the dignified furnishings, the
stone fireplaces, the gleaming oak floors. Even the quiet civil members
of the order appealed to her, as they greeted her cheerfully, then
returned to their discussions or the reading of the evening papers, as
they sat about the vast, warmly lighted public rooms. The sheer wealth
of the place was startling. It lent substance to Lightner's claims. And
the place felt good. Psychically good. People here were what they said
they were.

But it was the libraries themselves that finally overwhelmed her, and
brought her back to that tragic summer when another library and its
ancient treasures had been shut against her. Here were countless volumes
chronicling witch trials and hauntings and poltergeist investigations,
cases of possession, of psychokinesis, reincarnation, and the like. Then
there were museums beneath the building, rooms crammed with mysterious
objects connected with paranormal occurrences. There were vaults to '
which no one was admitted except the senior members of the order.
Delicious, the prospect of secrets revealed only over a I period of
time.

"So much work to be done, always," Aaron had said casually. "Why, all
these old records, you see, are in Latin, and we can no longer demand
that the new members read and write Latin. It's simply out of the
question in this day and age. And these storage rooms, you see, the
documentation on most of these objects hasn't been reevaluated in four
centuries-"

Of course Aaron knew that Jesse could read and write not only Latin, but
Greek, ancient Egyptian, and ancient Sumerian as well. What he didn't
know was that here Jesse had found a replacement for the treasures of
that lost summer. She had found another "Great Family."

That night a car was sent to get Jesse's clothing and whatever she might
want from the Chelsea flat. Her new room was in the southwest corner of
the Motherhouse, a cozy little affair with a coffered ceiling and a
Tudor fireplace.

Jesse never wanted to leave this house, and Aaron knew it. On Friday of
that week, only three days after her arrival, she was received into the
order as a novice. She was given an impressive allowance, a private
parlor adjacent to her bedroom, a full-time driver, and a comfortable
old car. She left her job at the British Museum as soon as possible.

The rules and regulations were simple. She would spend two years in
full-time training, traveling with other members when and where
necessary throughout the world. She could talk about the order to
members of her family or friends, of course. But all subjects, files,
and related details remained confidential. And she must never seek to
publish anything about the Talamasca. In fact, she must never contribute
to any "public mention" of the Talamasca. References to specific
assignments must always omit names and places, and remain vague.

Her special work would be within the archives, translating and
"adapting" old chronicles and records. And in the museums she would work
on organizing various artifacts and relics at least one day of each
week. But fieldwork-investigations of hauntings and the like-would take
precedence over research at any time.

It was a month before she wrote to Maharet of her decision. And in her
letter she poured out her soul. She loved these people and their work.
Of course the library reminded her of the family archive in Sonoma, and
the time when she'd been so happy. Did Maharet understand?

Maharet's answer astonished her. Maharet knew what the Talamasca was. In
fact, Maharet seemed quite thoroughly familiar with the history of the
Talamasca. She said without preamble that she admired enormously the
efforts of the order during the witchcraft persecutions of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries to save the innocent from the stake.

Surely they have told you of their "underground railroad" by means of
which many accused persons were taken from the villages and hamlets
where they might have been burnt and given refuge in Amsterdam, an
enlightened city, where the lies and foolishness of the witchcraft era
were not long believed.

Jesse hadn't known anything about this, but she was soon to confirm
every detail. However, Maharet had her reservations about the Talamasca.

Much as I admire their compassion for the persecuted of all eras, you
must understand that I do not think their investigations amount to much.
To clarify spirits, ghosts, I vampires, werewolves, witches, entities
that defy description all these may exist and the Talamasca may spend
another millennium studying them, but what difference will this make to
the destiny of the human race? I Undoubtedly there have been, in the
distant past, individuals who saw visions and spoke to spirits. And
perhaps as witches or shamans, these people had some value for their
tribes or nations. But complex and fanciful religions have been founded
upon such simple and deceptive experiences, giving mythical names to
vague entities, and creating an enormous vehicle for compounded
superstitious belief. Have not these religions been more evil than good?

Allow me to suggest that, however one interprets history, we are now
well past the point where contact with spirits can be of any use. A
crude but inexorable justice may be at work in the skepticism of
ordinary individuals regarding ghosts, mediums, and like company. The
supernatural, in whatever form it exists, should not interfere in human
history.

In sum, I am arguing that, except for comforting a few confused souls
here and there, the Talamasca compiles records of things that are not
important and should not be important. The Talamasca is an interesting
organization. But it cannot accomplish great things.

I love you. I respect your decision. But I hope for your sake that you
tire of the Talamasca-and return to the real world-very soon.

Jesse thought carefully before answering. It tortured her that Maharet
didn't approve of what she had done. Yet Jesse knew there was a
recrimination in her decision. Maharet had turned her away from the
secrets of the family; the Talamasca had taken her in.

When she wrote, she assured Maharet that the members of the order had no
illusions about the significance of their work. They had told Jesse it
was largely secret; there was no glory, sometimes no real satisfaction.
They would agree in full with Maharet's opinions about the
insignificance of mediums, spirits, ghosts.

But did not millions of people think that the dusty finds of
archaeologists were of little significance as well? Jesse begged Maharet
to understand what this meant to her. And lastly she wrote, much to her
own surprise, the following lines:

I will never tell the Talamasca anything about the Great Family. I will
never tell them about the house in Sonoma and the mysterious things that
happened to me while I was there. They would be too hungry for this sort
of mystery. And my loyalty is to you. But some day, I beg you, let me
come back to the California house. Let me talk to you about the things
that I saw. I've remembered things lately. I have had puzzling dreams.
But I trust your judgment in these matters. You've been so generous to
me. I don't doubt that you love me. Please understand how much I love
you.

Maharet's response was brief.

Jesse, I am an eccentric and willful being; very little has ever been
denied me. Now and then I deceive myself as to the effect I have upon
others. I should never have brought you to the Sonoma house; it was a
selfish thing to do, for which I cannot forgive myself. But you must
soothe my conscience for me. Forget the visit ever took place. Do not
deny the truth of what you recall; but do not dwell on it either. Live
your life as if it had never been so recklessly interrupted. Some day I
will answer all your questions, but never again will I try to subvert
your destiny. I congratulate you on your new vocation. You have my
unconditional love forever.

Elegant presents soon followed. Leather luggage for Jesse's travels and
a lovely mink-lined coat to keep her warm in "the abominable British
weather." It is a country "only a Druid could love," Maharet wrote.

Jesse loved the coat because the mink was inside and didn't attract
attention. The luggage served her well. And Maharet continued to write
twice and three times a week. She remained as solicitous as ever.

But as the years passed, it was Jesse who grew distant- her letters
brief and irregular-because her work with the Talamasca was
confidential. She simply could not describe what she did.

Jesse still visited members of the Great Family, at Christmas and
Easter. Whenever cousins came to London, she met them for sight-seeing
or lunch. But all such contact was brief and superficial. The Talamasca
soon became Jesse's life.

A world was revealed to Jesse in the Talamasca archives as she began her
translations from the Latin: records of psychic families and
individuals, cases of "obvious" sorcery, "real" maleficia, and finally
the repetitive yet horribly fascinating transcripts of actual witchcraft
trials which invariably involved the innocent and the powerless. Night
and day she worked, translating directly into the computer, retrieving
invaluable historical material from crumbling parchment pages.

But another world, even more seductive, was opening up to her , in the
field. Within a year of joining the Talamasca, Jesse had seen I
poltergeist hauntings frightening enough to send grown men running out
of the house and into the street. She had seen a telekinetic child lift
an oak table and send it crashing through a window. She had communicated
in utter silence with mind readers who received any message she sent to
them. She had seen ' ghosts more palpable than anything she had ever

believed could exist. Feats of psychometry, automatic writing,
levitation, trance mediumship-all these she witnessed, jotting down her
notes afterwards, and forever marveling at her own surprise. '. Would
she never get used to it? Take it for granted? Even the older members of
the Talamasca confessed that they were continually shocked by the things
they witnessed, ' And without doubt Jesse's power to "see" was
exceptionally strong. With constant use it developed enormously. Two
years after entering the Talamasca, Jesse was being sent to haunted
houses all over Europe and the United States. For every day or two spent
in the peace and quiet of the library, there was a week in some drafty
hallway watching the intermittent appearances of a silent specter who
had frightened others.

Jesse seldom came to any conclusions about these apparitions. Indeed,
she learned what all members of the Talamasca knew: there was no single
theory of the occult to embrace all the strange things one saw or heard.
The work was tantalizing, but ultimately frustrating. Jesse was unsure
of herself when she addressed these "restless entities," or addlebrained
spirits as Mael had once rather accurately described them. Yet Jesse
advised them to move on to "higher levels," to seek peace for themselves
and thereby leave mortals at peace also.

It seemed the only possible course to take, though it frightened her
that she might be forcing these ghosts out of the only life that
remained to them. What if death were the end, and hauntings came about
only when tenacious souls would not accept it? Too awful to think of
that-of the spirit world as a dim and chaotic afterglow before the
ultimate darkness.

Whatever the case, Jesse dispelled any number of hauntings. And she was
constantly comforted by the relief of the living. There developed in her
a profound sense of the specialness of her life. It was exciting. She
wouldn't have swapped it for anything in the world.

Well, not for almost anything. After all, she might have left in a
minute if Maharet had appeared on her doorstep and asked her to return
to the Sonoma compound and take up the records of the Great Family in
earnest. And then again perhaps not.

Jesse did have one experience with the Talamasca records, however, which
caused her considerable personal confusion regarding the Great Family.

In transcribing the witch documents Jesse eventually discovered that the
Talamasca had monitored for centuries certain "witch families" whose
fortunes appeared to be influenced by supernatural intervention of a
verifiable and predictable sort. The Talamasca was watching a number of
such families right now! There was usually a "witch" in each generation
of such a family, and this witch could, according to the record, attract
and manipulate supernatural forces to ensure the family's steady
accumulation of wealth and other success in human affairs. The power
appeared to be hereditary-i.e., based in the physical-but no one knew
for sure. Some of these families were now entirely ignorant as to their
own history; they did not understand the "witches" who had manifested in
the twentieth century. And though the Talamasca attempted regularly to
make "contact" with such people, they were often rebuffed, or found the
work too "dangerous" to pursue. After all, these witches could work
actual maleficia.

Shocked and incredulous, Jesse did nothing after this discovery for
several weeks. But she could not get the pattern out of her mind. It was
too like the pattern of Maharet and the Great Family.

Then she did the only thing she could do without violating her loyalty
to anybody. She carefully reviewed the records of every witch family in
the Talamasca files. She checked and double-checked. She went back to
the oldest records in existence and went over them minutely.

No mention of anyone named Maharet. No mention of anyone connected to
any branch or surname of the Great Family that Jesse had ever heard of.
No mention of anything even vaguely suspicious.

Her relief was enormous, but in the end, she was not surprised. Her
instincts had told her she was on the wrong track. Maharet was no witch.
Not in this sense of the word. There was more to it than that.

Yet in truth, Jesse never tried to figure it all out. She resisted
theories about what had happened as she resisted theories about
everything. And it occurred to her, more than once, that she had sought
out the Talamasca in order to lose this personal mystery in a wilderness
of mysteries. Surrounded by ghosts and poltergeists and possessed
children, she thought less and less about Maharet and the Great Family.

By the time Jesse became a full member, she was an expert on the rules
of the Talamasca, the procedures, the way to record investigations, when
and how to help the police in crime cases, how to avoid all contact with
the press. She also came to respect that the Talamasca was not a
dogmatic organization. It did not require its members to believe
anything, merely to be honest and careful about all the phenomena that
they observed.

Patterns, similarities, repetitions-these fascinated the Talamasca.
Terms abounded, but there was no rigid vocabulary. The files were merely
cross-referenced in dozens of different ways.

Nevertheless members of the Talamasca studied the theoreticians. Jesse
read the works of all the great psychic detectives, mediums, and
mentalists. She studied anything and everything related to the occult.

And many a time she thought of Maharet's advice. What Maharet had said
was true. Ghosts, apparitions, psychics who could read minds and move
objects telekinetically-it was all fascinating to those who witnessed it
firsthand. But to the human race at large it meant very little. There
was not now, nor would there ever be, any great occult discovery that
would alter human history.

But Jesse never tired of her work. She became addicted to the
excitement, even the secrecy. She was within the womb of the Talamasca,
and though she grew accustomed to the elegance of her surroundings-to
antique lace and poster beds and sterling silver, to chauffeured cars
and servants-she herself became ever more simple and reserved.

At thirty she was a fragile-looking light-skinned woman with her curly
red hair parted in the middle and kept long so that it would fall behind
her shoulders and leave her alone. She wore no cosmetics, perfume, or
jewelry, except for the Celtic bracelet. A cashmere blazer was her
favorite garment, along with wool pants, or jeans if she was in America.
Yet she was an attractive person, drawing a little more attention from

men than she thought was best. Love affairs she had, but they were
always short. And seldom very important.

What mattered more were her friendships with the other members of the
order; she had so many brothers and sisters. And they cared about her as
she cared about them. She loved the feeling of the community surrounding
her. At any hour of the night, one could go downstairs to a lighted
parlor where people were awake-reading, talking, arguing perhaps in a
subdued way. One could wander into the kitchen where the night cook was
ever ready to prepare an early breakfast or a late dinner, whatever one
might desire.

Jesse might have gone on forever with the Talamasca. Like a Catholic
religious order, the Talamasca took care of its old and infirm. To die
within the order was to know every luxury as well as every medical
attention, to spend your last moments the way you wanted, alone in your
bed, or with other members near you, comforting you, holding your hand.
You could go home to your relatives if that was your choice. But most,
over the years, chose to die in the Motherhouse. The funerals were
dignified and elaborate. In the Talamasca, death was a part of life. A
great gathering of black-dressed men and women witnessed each burial.

Yes, these had become Jesse's people. And in the natural course of
events she would have remained forever.

But when she reached the end of her eighth year, something happened that
was to change everything, something that led eventually to her break
with the order.

Jesse's accomplishments up to that point had been impressive. But in the
summer of 1981, she was still working under the direction of Aaron
Lightner and she had seldom even spoken to the governing council of the
Talamasca or the handful of men and women who were really in charge.

So when David Talbot, the head of the entire order, called her up to his
office in London, she was surprised. David was an energetic man of
sixty-five, heavy of build, with iron-gray hair and a consistently
cheerful manner. He offered Jesse a glass of sherry and talked
pleasantly about nothing for fifteen minutes before getting to the
point.

Jesse was being offered a very different sort of assignment. He gave her
a novel called Interview with the Vampire. He said, "I want you to read
this book."

Jesse was puzzled. "The fact is, I have read it," she said. "It was a
couple of years ago. But what does a novel like this have to do with
us?"

Jesse had picked up a paperback copy at the airport and devoured it on a
long transcontinental flight. The story, supposedly told by a vampire to
a young reporter in present-day San Francisco, had affected Jesse rather
like a bad dream. She wasn't sure she liked it. Matter of fact, she'd
thrown it away later, rather than leave it on a bench at the next
airport for fear some unsuspecting person might find it.

The main characters of the work-rather glamorous immortals when you got
right down to it-had formed an evil little family in antebellum New
Orleans where they preyed on the populace for over fifty years. Lestat
was the villain of the piece, and the leader. Louis, his anguished

subordinate, was the hero, and the one telling the tale. Claudia, their
exquisite vampire "daughter," was a truly tragic figure, her mind
maturing year after year while her body remained eternally that of a
little girl. Louis's fruitless quest for redemption had been the theme
of the book, obviously, but Claudia's hatred for the two male vampires
who had made her what she was, and her own eventual destruction, had had
a much stronger effect upon Jesse.

"The book isn't fiction," David explained simply. "Yet the purpose of
creating it is unclear. And the act of publishing it, even as a novel,
has us rather alarmed."

"Not fiction?" Jesse asked. "I don't understand."

"The author's name is a pseudonym," David continued, "and the royalty
checks go to a nomadic young man who resists all our attempts at
contact. He was a reporter, however, much like the boy interviewer in
the novel. But that's neither here nor there at the moment. Your job is
to go to New Orleans and document the events in the story which took
place there before the Civil War."

"Wait a minute. You're telling me there are vampires? That these
characters-Louis and Lestat and the little girl Claudia- are real!"

"Yes, exactly," David answered. "And don't forget about Ar-mand, the
mentor of the Theatre des Vampires in Paris. You do remember Armand."

Jesse had no trouble remembering Armand or the theater. Armand, the
oldest immortal in the novel, had had the face and form of an adolescent
boy. As for the theater, it had been a gruesome establishment where
human beings were killed on stage before an unsuspecting Parisian
audience as part of the regular fare.

The entire nightmarish quality of the book was coming back to Jesse.
Especially the parts that dealt with Claudia. Claudia had died in the
Theater of the Vampires. The coven, under Armand's command, had
destroyed her.

"David, am I understanding you correctly? You're saying these creatures
exist?"

"Absolutely," David answered. "We've been observing this type of being
since we came into existence. In a very real way, the Talamasca was
formed to observe these creatures, but that's another story. In all
probability, there are no fictional characters in this little novel
whatsoever, but that would be your assignment, you see-to document the
existence of the New Orleans coven, as described here-Claudia, Louis,
Lestat."

Jesse laughed. She couldn't help it. She really laughed. David's patient
expression only made her laugh more. But she wasn't surprising David,
any more than her laughter had surprised Aaron Lightner eight years ago
when they first met.

"Excellent attitude," David said, with a little mischievous smile. "We
wouldn't want you to be too imaginative or trusting. But this field
requires great care, Jesse, and strict obedience to the rules. Believe
me when I say that this is an area which can be extremely dangerous. You
are certainly free to turn down the assignment right now."

"I'm going to start laughing again," Jesse said. She had seldom if ever
heard the word "dangerous" in the Talamasca. She had seen it in writing
only in the witch family files. Now, she could believe in a witch family
without much difficulty. Witches were human beings, and spirits could be
manipulated, most probably. But vampires?

"Well, let's approach it this way," David said. "Before you make up your
mind, we'll examine certain artifacts pertaining to these creatures
which we have in the vaults."

The idea was irresistible. There were scores of rooms beneath the
Motherhouse to which Jesse had never been admitted. She wasn't going to
pass up this opportunity.

As she and David went down the stairs together, the atmosphere of the
Sonoma compound came back to her unexpectedly and rather vividly. Even
the long corridor with its occasional dim electric bulbs reminded her of
Maharet's cellar. She found herself all the more excited.

She followed David silently through one locked storage room after
another. She saw books, a skull on a shelf, what seemed old clothing
heaped on the floor, furniture, oil paintings, trunks and strongboxes,
dust.

"All this paraphernalia," David said, with a dismissive gesture, "is in
one way or another connected to our blood-drinking immortal friends.
They tend to be a rather materialistic lot, actually. And they leave
behind them all sorts of refuse. It is not unknown for them to leave an
entire household, complete with furnishings, clothing, and even coffins-
very ornate and interesting coffins-when they tire of a particular
location or identity. But there are some specific things which I must
show you. It will all be rather conclusive, I should think."

Conclusive? There was something conclusive in this work? This was
certainly an afternoon for surprises.

David led her into a final chamber, a very large room, paneled in tin
and immediately illuminated by a bank of overhead lights.

She saw an enormous painting against the far wall. She placed it at once
as Renaissance, and probably Venetian. It was done in egg tempera on
wood. And it had the marvelous sheen of such paintings, a gloss that no
synthetic material can create. She read the Latin title along with the
name of the artist, in small Roman-style letters painted in the lower
right corner.

"The Temptation of Amadeo" by Marius

She stood back to study it.

A splendid choir of black-winged angels hovered around a single kneeling
figure, that of a young auburn-haired boy. The cobalt sky behind them,
seen through a series of arches, was splendidly done with masses of
gilded clouds. And the marble floor before the figures had a
photographic perfection to it. One could feel its coldness, see the
veins in the stone.

But the figures were the true glory of the picture. The faces of the
angels were exquisitely modeled, their pastel robes and black feathered
wings extravagantly detailed. And the boy, the boy was very simply

alive! His dark brown eyes veritably glistened as he stared forward out
of the painting. His skin appeared moist. He was about to move or speak.

In fact, it was all too realistic to be Renaissance. The figures were
particular rather than ideal. The angels wore expressions of faint
amusement, almost bitterness. And the fabric of the boy's tunic and
leggings, it was too exactly rendered. She could even see the mends in
it, a tiny tear, the dust on his sleeve. There were other such details--
dried leaves here and there on the floor, and two paintbrushes lying to
one side for no apparent reason.

"Who is this Marius?" she whispered. The name meant nothing. And never
had she seen an Italian painting with so many disturbing elements.
Black-winged angels . . .

David didn't answer. He pointed to the boy. "It's the boy I want you to
observe," he said. "He's not the real subject of your investigation,
merely a very important link."

Subject? Link. . . . She was too engrossed in the picture. "And look,
bones in the corner, human bones covered with dust, as if someone had
merely swept them out of the way. But what on earth does it all mean?"

"Yes," David murmured. "When you see the word 'temptation,' usually
there are devils surrounding a saint."

"Exactly," she answered. "And the craft is exceptional." The more she
stared at the picture, the more disturbed she became. "Where did you get
this?"

"The order acquired it centuries ago," David answered. "Our emissary in
Venice retrieved it from a burnt-out villa on the Grand Canal. These
vampires are endlessly associated with fires, by the way. It is the one
weapon they can use effectively against one another. There are always
fires. In Interview with the Vampire, there were several fires, if you
recall. Louis set fire to a town house in New Orleans when he was trying
to destroy his maker and mentor, Lestat. And later, Louis burned the
Theater of the Vampires in Paris after Claudia's death." Claudia's
death. It sent a shiver through Jesse, startling her slightly.

"But look at this boy carefully," David said. "It's the boy we're
discussing now."

Amadeo. It meant "one who loves God." He was a handsome creature, all
right. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, with a square, strongly proportioned
face and a curiously imploring expression.

David had put something in her hand. Reluctantly she took her eyes off
the painting. She found herself staring at a tintype, a late-nineteenth-
century photograph. After a moment, she whispered: "This is the same
boy!"

"Yes. And something of an experiment," David said. "It I was most likely
taken just after sunset in impossible lighting conditions which might
not have worked with another subject. Notice not much is really visible
but his face." True, yet she could see the style of the hair was of the
period. I "You might look at this as well," David said. And this time he
gave her an old magazine, a nineteenth-century journal, the I kind with
narrow columns of tiny print and ink illustrations. There was the same

boy again alighting from a barouche-a I hasty sketch, though the boy was
smiling.

"The article's about him, and about his Theater of the Vampires. Here's
an English journal from 1789. That's a full eighty years earlier, I
believe. But you will find another very thorough description of the
establishment and the same young man." "The Theater of the Vampires . .
." She stared up at the auburn-haired boy kneeling in the painting.
"Why, this is Ar-i rnand, the character in the novel!"

"Precisely. He seems to like that name. It may have been Amadeo when
he was in Italy, but it became Armand by the eighteenth century and he's
used Armand ever since."

"Slow down, please," Jesse said. "You're telling me that the   Theater
of the Vampires has been documented? By our people?" I
"Thoroughly. The file's enormous. Countless memoirs describe the
theater. We have the deeds to the property as well. And here we come to
another link with our files and this little novel, Interview with the
Vampire. The name of the owner of the theater was Lestat de Lioncourt,
who purchased it in 1789. And the property in modern Paris is in the
hands of a man by the same name even now."

"This is verified?" Jesse said.

"It's all in the file," David said, "photostats of the old records and
the recent ones. You can study the signature of Lestat if you like.
Lestat does everything in a big way-covers half the page with his
magnificent lettering. We have photostats of several examples. We want
you to take those photostats to New Orleans with you. There's a
newspaper account of the fire which destroyed the theater exactly as
Louis described it. The date is consistent with the facts of the story.
You must go over everything, of course. And the novel, do read it again
carefully."

By the end of the week, Jesse was on a plane for New Orleans. She was to
annotate and document the novel, in every way possible, searching
property titles, transfers, old newspapers, journals-anything she could
find to support the theory that the characters and events were real.

But Jesse still didn't believe it. Undoubtedly there was "something
here," but there had to be a catch. And the catch was in all probability
a clever historical novelist who had stumbled upon some interesting
research and woven it into a fictional story. After all, theater
tickets, deeds, programs, and the like do not prove the existence of
bloodsucking immortals.

As for the rules Jesse had to follow, she thought they were a scream.

She was not allowed to remain in New Orleans except between the hours of
sunrise and four p.m. At four p.m. she had to drive north to the city of
Baton Rouge and spend the nights safe within a sixteenth-story room in a
modern hotel. If she should have the slightest feeling that someone was
watching her or following her, she was to make for the safety of a large
crowd at once. From a well-lighted and populated place, she was to call
the Talamasca long distance in London immediately.

Never, under any circumstances, must she attempt a "sighting" of one of
these vampire individuals. The parameters of vampiric power were not
known to the Talamasca. But one thing was certain: the beings could read

minds. Also, they could create mental confusion in human beings. And
there was considerable evidence that they were exceptionally strong.
Most certainly they could kill.

Also some of them, without doubt, knew of the existence of the
Talamasca. Over the centuries, several members of the order had
disappeared during this type of investigation.

Jesse was to read the daily papers scrupulously. The Talamasca had
reason to believe that there were no vampires in New Orleans at present.
Or Jesse would not be going there. But at any time, Lestat, Armand, or
Louis might appear. If Jesse came across an article about a suspicious
death she was to get out of the city and not return.

Jesse thought al! this was hilarious. Even a handful of old items about
mysterious deaths did not impress her or frighten her. After all, these
people could have been the victims of a satanic cult. And they were all
too human. But Jesse had wanted this assignment. On the way to the
airport, David had asked her why. "If you really can't accept what I'm
telling you, then why do you want to investigate the book?"

She'd taken her time in answering. "There is something obscene about
this novel. It makes the lives of these beings seem attractive. You
don't realize it at first; it's a nightmare and you can't get out of it.
Then all of a sudden you're comfortable there. You want to remain. Even
the tragedy of Claudia isn't really a deterrent." "And?"

"I want to prove it's fiction," Jesse said. That was good enough for the
Talamasca, especially coming from a trained investigator.

But on the long flight to New York, Jesse had realized there was
something she couldn't tell David. She had only just faced it herself.
Interview with the Vampire "reminded" her of that long ago summer with
Maharet, though Jesse didn't know why. Again and again she stopped her
reading to think about that summer. And little things were coming back
to her. She was even dreaming about it again. Quite beside the point,
she told herself. Yet there was some connection, something to do with
the atmosphere of the book, the mood, even the attitudes of the
characters, and the whole manner in which things seemed one way and were
really not that way at all. But Jesse could not figure it out. Her
reason, like her memory, was curiously blocked.

Jesse's first few days in New Orleans were the strangest in her entire
psychic career.

The city had a moist Caribbean beauty, and a tenacious colonial flavor
that charmed her at once. Yet everywhere Jesse went she "felt" things.
The entire place seemed haunted. The awesome antebellum mansions were
seductively silent and gloomy. Even the French Quarter streets, crowded
with tourists, had a sensuous and sinister atmosphere that kept her
forever walking out of her way or stopping for long periods to dream as
she sat slumped on a bench in Jackson Square.

She hated to leave the city at four o'clock. The high-rise hole! in
Baton Rouge provided a divine degree of American luxury. Jesse liked
that well enough. But the soft lazy ambience of New Orleans clung to
her. She awoke each morning dimly aware that she'd dreamed of the
vampire characters. And of Maharet.

Then, four days into her investigation, she made a series of discoveries
that sent her directly to the phone. There most certainly had been a
Lestat de Lioncourt on the tax rolls in Louisiana. In fact, in 1862 he
had taken possession of a Royal Street town house from his business
partner, Louis de Pointe du Lac. Louis de Pointe du Lac had owned seven
different pieces of Louisiana property, and one of them had been the
plantation described in Interview with the Vampire. Jesse was
flabbergasted. She was also delighted.

But there were even more discoveries. Somebody named Lestat de Lioncourt
owned houses all over the city right now. And this person's signature,
appearing in records dated 1895 and 1910, was identical to the
eighteenth-century signatures.

Oh, this was too marvelous. Jesse was having a wonderful time.

At once she set out to photograph Lestat's properties. Two were Garden
District mansions, clearly uninhabitable and falling to ruin behind
rusted gates. But the rest, including the Royal Street town house-the
very same deeded to Lestat in 1862-were rented by a local agency which
made payment to an attorney in Paris.

This was more than Jesse could bear. She cabled David for money. She
must buy out the tenants in Royal Street, for this was surely the house
once inhabited by Lestat, Louis, and the child Claudia. They may or may
not have been vampires, but I they lived there!

David wired the money immediately, along with strict instructions that
she mustn't go near the ruined mansions she'd described. Jesse answered
at once that she'd already examined these places. Nobody had been in
them for years. It was the town house that mattered. By week's end she'd
1 bought out the lease. The tenants left cheerfully with fists full of
cash. And early on a Monday morning, Jesse walked into the empty second-
floor flat.

Deliciously dilapidated. The old mantels, moldings, doors all there!

Jesse went to work with a screwdriver and chisel in the front rooms.
Louis had described a fire in these parlors in which Lestat had been
badly burnt. Well, Jesse would find out. Within an hour she had
uncovered the burnt timbers! And the plasterers-bless them-when they had
come to cover up the damage, they had stuffed the holes with old
newspapers dated 1862. This fitted with Louis's account perfectly. He'd
signed the town house over to Lestat, made plans to leave for Paris,
then came the fire during which Louis and Claudia had fled.

Of course Jesse told herself she was still skeptical, but the characters
of the book were becoming curiously real. The old black telephone in the
hall had been disconnected. She had to go out to call David, which
annoyed her. She wanted to tell , him everything right now. But she
didn't go out. On the contrary, she merely sat in the parlor for hours,
feeling the warm sun on the rough floorboards around her, listening to
the creaking of the building. A house of this age is never quiet, not in
a humid climate. It feels like a living thing. No ghosts here, not that
she could see I anyway. Yet she didn't feel alone. On the contrary,
there was I an embracing warmth. Someone shook her to wake her up I
suddenly. No, of course not. No one here but her. A clock chiming four .
. .

The next day she rented a wallpaper steamer and went to work in the
other rooms. She must get down to the original coverings. Patterns could
be dated, and besides she was looking for something in particular. But
there was a canary singing nearby, possibly in another flat or shop, and
the song distracted her. So lovely. Don't forget the canary. The canary
will die if you forget it. Again, she fell asleep.

It was well after dark when she awakened. She could hear the nearby
music of a harpsichord. For a long time, she'd listened before opening
her eyes. Mozart, very fast. Too fast, but what skill. A great rippling
riff of notes, a stunning virtuosity. Finally she forced herself to get
up and turn on the overhead lights and plug in the steamer again.

The steamer was heavy; the hot water dripped down her arm. In each room
she stripped a section of wall to the original plaster, then she moved
on. But the droning noise of the thing bothered her. She seemed to hear
voices in it-people laughing, talking to one another, someone speaking
French in a low urgent whisper, and a child crying-or was it a woman?

She'd turn the damn thing off. Nothing. Just a trick of the noise itself
in the empty echoing flat.

She went back to work with no consciousness of time, or that she had not
eaten, or that she was getting drowsy. On and on she moved the heavy
thing until quite suddenly in the middle bedroom she found what she'd
been seeking-a hand-painted mural on a bare plaster wall.

For a moment, she was too excited to move. Then she went to work in a
frenzy. Yes, it was the mural of the "magical forest" that Lestat had
commissioned for Claudia. And in rapid sweeps of the dripping steamer
she uncovered more and more.

"Unicorns and golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling
streams." It was exactly as Louis had described it. Finally she had laid
bare a great portion of the mural running around all four walls.
Claudia's room, this, without question. Her head was spinning. She was
weak from not eating. She glanced at her watch. One o'clock.

One o'clock! She'd been here half the night. She should go now,
immediately! This was the first time in all these years that she'd
broken a rule!

Yet she could not bring herself to move. She was so tired, in spite of
her excitement. She was sitting against the marble mantel, and the light
from the ceiling bulb was so dreary, and her head hurt, too. Yet she
kept staring at the gilded birds, the small, wonderfully wrought flowers
and trees. The sky was a deep vermilion, yet there was a full moon in it
and no sun, and a great drifting spread of tiny stars. Bits of hammered
silver still clinging to the stars.

Gradually she noticed a stone wall painted in the background in one
corner. There was a castle behind it. How lovely to walk through the
forest towards it, to go through the carefully painted wooden gate. Pass
into another realm. She heard a song in her head, something she'd all
but forgotten, something Maharet used to sing.

Then quite abruptly she saw that the gate was painted over an actual
opening in the wall!

She sat forward. She could see the seams in the plaster. Yes, a square
opening, which she had not seen, laboring behind the heavy steamer. She
knelt down in front of it and touched it. A wooden door. Immediately she
took the screwdriver and tried to pry it open. No luck. She worked on
one edge and then the other. But she was only scarring the picture to no
avail. She sat back on her heels and studied it. A painted gate covering
a wooden door. And there was a worn spot right where the painted handle
was. Yes! She reached out and gave the worn spot a little jab. The door
sprang open. It was as simple as that.

She lifted her flashlight. A compartment lined in cedar. And there were
things there. A small white leather-bound book! A rosary, it looked
like, and a doll, a very old porcelain doll.

For a moment she couldn't bring herself to touch these objects. It was
like desecrating a tomb. And there was a faint scent there as of
perfume. She wasn't dreaming, was she? No, her head hurt too much for
this to be a dream. She reached into the compartment, and removed the
doll first.

The body was crude by modern standards, yet the wooden limbs were well
jointed and formed. The white dress and lavender sash were decaying,
falling into bits and pieces. But the porcelain head was lovely, the
large blue paperweight eyes perfect, the wig of flowing blond hair still
intact.

"Claudia," she whispered.

Her voice made her conscious of the silence. No traffic now at this
hour. Only the old boards creaking. And the soft soothing flicker of an
oil lamp on a nearby table. And then that harpsichord from somewhere,
someone playing Chopin now, the Minute Waltz, with the same dazzling
skill she'd heard before. She sat still, looking down at the doll in her
lap. She wanted to brush its hair, fix its sash.

The climactic events of Interview with the Vampire came back to her-
Claudia destroyed in Paris. Claudia caught by the deadly light of the
rising sun in a brick-lined airshaft from which she couldn't escape.
Jesse felt a dull shock, and the rapid silent beat of her heart against
her throat. Claudia gone, while the others continued. Lestat, Louis,
Armand. . . .

Then with a start, she realized she was looking at the other things
inside the compartment. She reached for the book.

A diary! The pages were fragile, spotted. But the old-fashioned sepia
script was still readable, especially now that the oil lamps were all
lighted, and the room had a cozy brightness to it. She could translate
the French effortlessly. The first entry was September 21, 1836:

This is my birthday present from Louis. Use as I like, he tells me. But
perhaps I should like to copy into it those occasional poems which
strike my fancy, and read these to him now and then?

I do not understand entirely what is meant by birthday. Was I born into
this world on the list of September or was it on that day that I
departed all things human to become this?

My gentlemen parents are forever reluctant to illuminate such simple
matters. One would think it bad taste to dwell on such subjects. Louis

looks puzzled, then miserable, before he returns to the evening paper.
And Lestat, he smiles and plays a little Mozart for me, then answers
with a shrug: "It was the day you were born to us."

Of course, he gave me a doll as usual, the replica of me, which as
always wears a duplicate of my newest dress. To France he sends for
these dolls, he wants me to know. And what should I do with it? Play
with it as if I were really a child?

"Is there a message here, my beloved father?" I asked him this evening.
"That I shall be a doll forever myself?" He has given me thirty such
dolls over the years if recollection serves me. And recollection never
does anything else. Each doll has been exactly like the rest. They would
crowd me out of my bedroom if I kept them. But I do not keep them. I
burn them, sooner or later. I smash their china faces with the poker. I
watch the fire eat their hair. I can't say that I like doing this. After
all, the dolls are beautiful. And they do resemble me. Yet, it becomes
the appropriate gesture. The doll expects it. So do I.

And now he has brought me another, and he stands in my doorway staring
at me afterwards, as if my question cut him. And the expression on his
face is so dark suddenly, I think, this cannot be my Lestat.

I wish that I could hate him. I wish that I could hate them both. But
they defeat me not with their strength but with their weakness. They are
so loving! And so pleasing to look at. Mon Dieu, how the women go after
them!

As he stood there watching me, watching me examine this doll he had
given me, I asked him sharply:

"Do you like what you see?"

"You don't want them anymore, do you?" he whispered.

"Would you want them," I asked, "if you were me?"

The expression on his face grew even darker. Never have I seen him the
way he looked. A scorching heat came into his face, and it seemed he
blinked to clear his vision. His perfect vision. He left me and went
into the parlor. I went after him. In truth, I couldn't bear to see him
the way he was, yet I pursued him. "Would you like them," I asked, "if
you were me?"

He stared at me as if I frightened him, and he a man of six feet and I a
child no more than half that, at best.

"Am I beautiful to you?" I demanded.

He went past me down the hall, out the back door. But I caught up with
him. I held tight to his sleeve as he stood at the top of the stairs.
"Answer me!" I said to him. "Look at me. What do you see?"

He was in a dreadful state. I thought he'd pull away, laugh, flash his
usual brimming colors. But instead he dropped to his knees before me and
took hold of both my arms. He kissed me roughly on-the mouth. "I love
you," he whispered. "I love you!" As if it were a curse he laid on me,
and then he spoke this poetry to me:

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.

Webster it is, I am almost certain. One of those plays Lestat so loves.
I wonder . . . will Louis be pleased by this little poem? I cannot
imagine why not. It is small but very pretty.

Jesse closed the book gently. Her hand was trembling. She lifted the
doll and held it against her breast, her body rocking slightly as she
sat back against the painted wall.

"Claudia," she whispered.

Her head throbbed, but it didn't matter. The light of the oil lamps was
so soothing, so different from the harsh electric bulb. She sat still,
caressing the doll with her fingers almost in the manner of a blind
woman, feeling its soft silken hair, its stiff starched little dress.
The clock chimed again, loudly, each somber note echoing through the
room. She must not faint here. She must get up somehow. She must take
the little book and the doll and the rosary and leave.

The empty windows were like mirrors with the night behind them. Rules
broken. Call David, yes, call David now. But the phone was ringing. At
this hour, imagine. The phone ringing. And David didn't have any number
for this flat because the phone. . . . She tried to ignore it, but it
went on and on ringing. All right, answer it!

She kissed the doll's forehead. "Be right back, my darling," she
whispered.

Where was the damn phone in this flat anyway? In the niche in the
hallway, of course. She had almost reached it when she saw the wire with
the frayed end, curled around it. It wasn't connected. She could see it
wasn't connected. Yet it was ringing, she could hear it, and it was no
auditory hallucination, the thing was giving one shrill pulse after
another! And the oil lamps! My God, there were no oil lamps in this
fiat!

All right, you've seen things like this before. Don't panic, for the
love of God. Think! What should you do? But she was about to scream. The
phone would not stop ringing! If you panic, you will lose control
utterly. You must turn off these lamps, stop this phone! But the lamps
can't be real. And the living room at the end of the hall-the
furniture's not real! The flicker of the fire, not real! And the person
moving in there, who is it, a man? Don't look up at him! She reached out
and shoved the phone out of the niche so that it fell to the floor. The
receiver rolled on its back. Tiny and thin, a woman's voice came out of
it.

"Jesse?"

In blind terror, she ran back to the bedroom, stumbling over the leg of
a chair, falling against the starched drapery of a four-poster bed. Not
real. Not there. Get the doll, the book, the rosary! Stuffing them in
her canvas bag, she climbed to her feet and ran out of the flat to the
back stairway. She almost fell as her feet hit the slippery iron. The
garden, the fountain- But you know there's nothing there but weeds.
There was a wrought-iron gate blocking her path. Illusion. Go through
it! Run!

It was the proverbial nightmare and she was caught in it, the sounds of
horses and carriages thudding in her ears as she ran down the

cobblestone pavement. Each clumsy gesture stretched over eternity, her
hands struggling to get the car keys, to get the door open, and then the
car refusing to start.

By the time she reached the edge of the French Quarter, she was sobbing
and her body was drenched with sweat. On she drove through the shabby
garish downtown streets towards the freeway. Blocked at the on-ramp, she
turned her head. Back seat empty. OK, they didn't follow. And the canvas
bag was in her lap; she could feel the hard porcelain head of the doll
against her breast. She floored it to Baton Rouge.

She was sick by the time she reached the hotel. She could barely walk to
the desk. An aspirin, a thermometer. Please help me to the elevator.

When she woke up eight hours later, it was noon. The canvas bag was
still in her arms. Her temperature was 104. She called David, but the
connection was dreadful. He called her back; it was still no good.
Nevertheless she tried to make herself understood. The diary, it was
Claudia's, absolutely, it confirmed everything! And the phone, it wasn't
connected, yet she heard the woman's voice! The oil lamps, they'd been
burning when she ran out of the flat. The flat had been filled with
furniture; there'd been fires in the grates. Could they burn down the
flat, these lamps and fires? David must do something! And he was
answering her, but she could barely hear him. She had the bag, she told
him, he must not worry.

It was dark when she opened her eyes. The pain in her head had woken her
up. The digital clock on the dresser said ten thirty. Thirst, terrible
thirst, and the glass by the bed was empty. Someone else was in the
room.

She turned over on her back. Light through the thin white curtains. Yes,
there. A child, a little girl. She was sitting in the chair against the
wall.

Jesse could just see the outline clearly-the long yellow hair, the puff-
sleeved dress, the dangling legs that didn't touch the floor. She tried
to focus. Child . . . not possible. Apparition. No. Something occupying
space. Something malevolent. Menace- And the child was looking at her.

Claudia.

She scrambled out of the bed, half falling, the bag in her arms still as
she backed up against the wall. The little girl got up. There was the
clear sound of her feet on the carpet. The sense of menace seemed to
grow stronger. The child moved into the light from the window as she
came towards Jesse, and the light struck her blue eyes, her rounded
cheeks, her soft naked little arms.

Jesse screamed. Clutching the bag against her, she rushed blindly in the
direction of the door. She clawed at the lock and chain, afraid to look
over her shoulder. The screams were coming out of her uncontrollably.
Someone was calling from the other side, and finally she had the door
open and she was stumbling out into the hallway.

People surrounded her; but they couldn't stop her from getting away from
the room. But then someone was helping her up because apparently she'd
fallen again. Someone else had gotten a chair. She cried, trying to be
quiet, yet unable to stop it, and she held the bag with the doll and the
diary in both hands.

When the ambulance arrived, she refused to let them take the bag away
from her. In the hospital they gave her antibiotics, sedatives, enough
dope to drive anyone to insanity. She lay curled up like a child in the
bed with the bag beside her under the covers. If the nurse so much as
touched it, Jesse woke at once.

When Aaron Lightner arrived two days later, she gave it to him. She was
still sick when she got on the plane for London. The bag was in his lap,
and he was so good to her, calming her, caring for her, as she slept on
and off on the long flight home. It was only just before they landed
that she realized her bracelet was gone, her beautiful silver bracelet.
She'd cried softly with her eyes closed. Mael's bracelet gone.

They pulled her off the assignment.

She knew even before they told her. She was too young for this work,
they said, too inexperienced. It had been their mistake, sending her. It
was simply too dangerous for her to continue. Of course what she had
done was of "immense value." And the haunting, it had been one of
unusual power. The spirit of a dead vampire? Entirely possible. And the
ringing phone, well, there were many reports of such things-entities
used various means to "communicate" or frighten. Best to rest now, put
it out of her mind. Others would continue the investigation.

As for the diary, it included only a few more entries, nothing more
significant than what she herself had read. The psychometrics who had
examined the rosary and the doll learned nothing. These things would be
stored with utmost care. But Jesse really must remove her mind from all
this immediately.

Jesse argued. She begged to go back. She threw a scene of sorts,
finally. But it was like talking to the Vatican. Some day, ten years
from now, maybe twenty, she could enter this particular field again. No
one was ruling out such a possibility, but for the present the answer
was no. Jesse was to rest, get better, forget what had taken place.

Forget what had taken place. . . .

She was sick for weeks. She wore white flannel gowns all day long and
drank endless cups of hot tea. She sat in the window seat of her room.
She looked out on the soft deep greenery of the park, at the heavy old
oak trees. She watched the cars come and go, tiny bits of soundless
color moving on the distant gravel road. Lovely here, such stillness.
They brought her delicious things to eat, to drink. David came and
talked softly to her of anything but the vampires. Aaron filled her room
with flowers. Others came.

She talked little, or not at all. She could not explain to them how
deeply this hurt her, how it reminded her of the long ago summer when
she'd been pushed away from other secrets, other mysteries, other
documents in vaults. It was the same old story. She'd glimpsed something
of inestimable importance, only to have it locked away.

And now she would never understand what she'd seen or experienced. She
must remain here in silence with her regrets. Why hadn't she picked up
that phone, spoken into it, listened to the voice on the other end?

And the child, what had the spirit of the child wanted! Was it the diary
or the doll! No, Jesse had been meant to find them and remove them! And

yet she had turned away from the spirit of the child! She who had
addressed so many nameless entities, who had stood bravely in darkened
rooms talking to weak flickering things when others fled in panic. She
who comforted others with the old assurance: these beings, whatever they
are, cannot do us harm!

One more chance, she pleaded. She went over everything that had
happened. She must return to that New Orleans flat. David and Aaron were
silent. Then David came to her and put his arm around her.

"Jesse, my darling," he said. "We love you. But in this area above all
others, one simply does not break the rules."

At night she dreamed of Claudia. Once she woke at four o'clock and went
to the window and looked out over the park straining to see past the dim
lights from the lower windows. There was a child out there, a tiny
figure beneath the trees, in a red cloak and hood, a child looking up at
her. She had run down the stairs, only to find herself stranded finally
on the empty wet grass with the cold gray morning coming.

In the spring they sent her to New Delhi.

She was to document evidence of reincarnation, reports from little
children in India that they remembered former lives. There had been much
promising work done in this field by a Dr. Ian Stevenson. And Jesse was
to undertake an independent study on behalf of the Talamasca which might
produce equally fruitful results.

Two elder members of the order met her in Delhi. They made her right at
home in the old British mansion where they lived. She grew to love the
work; and after the initial shocks and minor discomforts, she grew to
love India as well. By the end of the year she was happy-and useful-
again.

And something else happened, a rather small thing, yet it seemed a good
omen. In a pocket of her old suitcase-the one Maharet had sent her years
ago-she'd found Mael's silver bracelet.

Yes, happy she had been.

But she did not forget what had happened. There were nights when she
would remember so vividly the image of Claudia that she would get up and
turn on every light in the room. At other times she thought she saw
around her in the city streets strange white-faced beings very like the
characters in Interview with the Vampire. She felt she was being
watched.

Because she could not tell Maharet about this strange adventure, her
letters became even more hurried and superficial. Yet Maharet was as
faithful as ever. When members of the family came to Delhi, they visited
Jesse. They tried to keep her in the fold. They sent her news of
weddings, births, funerals. They begged her to visit during the
holidays. Matthew and Maria wrote from America, begging Jesse to come
home soon. They missed her.

Jesse spent four happy years in India. She documented over three hundred
individual cases which included startling evidence of reincarnation. She
worked with some of the finest psychic investigators she had ever known.
And she found her work continuously rewarding, almost comforting. Very
unlike the chasing of haunts which she had done in her early years.

In the fall of her fifth year, she finally yielded to Matthew and Maria.
She would come home to the States for a four-week visit. They were
overjoyed.

The reunion meant more to Jesse than she had ever thought it would. She
loved being back in the old New York apartment. She loved the late night
dinners with her adopted parents. They didn't question her about her
work. Left alone during the day, she called old college friends for
lunch or took long solitary walks through the bustling urban landscape
of all her childhood hopes and dreams and griefs.

Two weeks after her return, Jesse saw The Vampire Lestat in the window
of a bookstore. For a moment, she thought she'd made a mistake. Not
possible. But there it was. The bookstore clerk told her of the record
album by the same name, and the upcoming San Francisco concert. Jesse
bought a ticket on the way home at the record store where she purchased
the album.

All day Jesse lay alone in her room reading the book. It was as if the
nightmare of Interview with [he Vampire had returned and, once again,
she could not get out of it. Yet she was strangely compelled by every
word. Yes, real, all of you. And how the tale twisted and turned as it
moved back in time to the Roman coven of Santino, to the island refuge
of Marius, and to the Druid grove of Mael. And finally to Those Who Must
Be Kept, alive yet hard and white as marble.

Ah, yes, she had touched that stone! She had looked into Mael's eyes;
she had felt the clasp of Santino's hand. She had seen the painting done
by Marius in the vault of the Talamasca!

When she closed her eyes to sleep, she saw Maharet on the balcony of the
Sonoma compound. The moon was high above the tips of the redwoods. And
the warm night seemed unaccountably full of promise and danger. Eric and
Mael were there. So were others whom she'd never seen except in Lestat's
pages. All of the same tribe; eyes incandescent, shimmering hair, skin a
poreless shining substance. On her silver bracelet she had traced a
thousand times the old Celtic symbols of gods and goddesses to whom the
Druids spoke in woodland groves like that to which Marius had once been
taken prisoner. How many links did she require between these esoteric
fictions and the unforgettable summer?

One more, without question. The Vampire Lestat himself-in San Francisco,
where she would see him and touch him-that would be the final link. She
would know then, in that physical moment, the answer to everything.

The clock ticked. Her loyalty to the Talamasca was dying in the warm
quiet. She could tell them not a word of it. And such a tragedy it was,
when they would have cared so much and so selflessly; they would have
doubted none of it.

The lost afternoon. She was there again. Going down into Maharet's
cellar by the spiral stairway. Could she not push back the door? Look.
See what you saw then. Something not so horrible at first glance-merely
those she knew and loved, asleep in the dark, asleep. But Mael lies on
the cold floor as if dead and Maharet sits against the wall, upright
like a statue. Her eyes are open!

She awoke with a start, her face flushed, the room cold and dim around
her. "Miriam," she said aloud. Gradually the panic subsided. She had

drawn closer, so afraid. She had touched Maharet. Cold, petrified. And
Mael dead! The rest was darkness.

New York. She lay on the bed with the book in her hand. And Miriam
didn't come to her. Slowly, she climbed to her feet and walked across
the bedroom to the window.

There, opposite in the dirty afternoon gloom, stood the high narrow
phantom town house of Stanford White. She stared until the bulky image
gradually faded.

From the album cover propped on the dresser the Vampire Lestat smiled at
her.

She closed her eyes. She envisioned the tragic pair of Those Who Must Be
Kept. Indestructible King and Queen on their Egyptian throne, to whom
the Vampire Lestat sang his hymns out of the radios and the jukeboxes
and From the little tapes people carried with them. She saw Maharet's
white face glowing in the shadows. Alabaster. The stone that is always
full of light.

Dusk falling, suddenly as it does in the late fall, the dull afternoon
fading into the sharp brightness of evening. Traffic roared through the
crowded street, echoing up the sides of the buildings. Did ever traffic
sound so loud as in the streets of New York? She leaned her forehead
against the glass. Stanford White's house was visible in the corner of
her eye. There were figures moving inside it.

Jesse left New York the next afternoon, in Matt's old roadster. She paid
him for the car in spite of his arguments. She knew she'd never bring it
back. Then she embraced her parents and, as casually as she could, she
told them all the simple heartfelt things she'd always wanted them to
know.

That morning, she had sent an express letter to Maharet, along with the
two "vampire" novels. She explained that she had left the Talamasca, she
was going to the Vampire Lestat's concert out west, and she wanted to
stop at the Sonoma compound. She had to see Lestat, it was of crucial
importance. Would her old key fit the lock of the Sonoma house? Would
Maharet allow her to stop there?

It was the first night in Pittsburgh that she dreamed of the twins. She
saw the two women kneeling before the altar. She saw the cooked body
ready to be devoured. She saw one twin lift the plate with the heart;
the other the plate with the brain. Then the soldiers, the sacrilege.

By the time she reached Salt Lake City she had dreamed of the twins
three times. She had seen them raped in a hazy and terrifying scene. She
had seen a baby born to one of the sisters. She had seen the baby hidden
when the twins were again hunted down and taken prisoner. Had they been
killed? She could not tell. The red hair. If only she could see their
faces, their eyes! The red hair tormented her.

Only when she called David from a roadside pay phone did she learn that
others had had these dreams-psychics and mediums the world over. Again
and again the connection had been made to the Vampire Lestat. David told
Jesse to come home immediately.

Jesse tried to explain gently. She was going to the concert to see
Lestat for herself. She had to. There was more to tell, but it was too
late now. David must try to forgive her.

"You will not do this, Jessica," David said. "What is happening is no
simple matter for records and archives. You must come back, Jessica. The
truth is, you are needed here. You are needed desperately. It's
unthinkable that you should attempt this 'sighting' on your own. Jesse,
listen to what I'm telling you."

"I can't come back, David. I've always loved you. Loved you all. But
tell me. It's the last question I'll ever ask you. How can you not come
yourself?"

"Jesse, you're not listening to me."

"David, the truth. Tell me the truth. Have you ever really believed in
them? Or has it always been a question of artifacts and files and
paintings in vaults, things you can see and touch! You know what I'm
saying, David. Think of the Catholic priest, when he speaks the words of
consecration at Mass. Does he really believe Christ is on the altar? Or
is it just a matter of chalices and sacramental wine and the choir
singing?"

Oh, what a liar she had been to keep so much from him yet press him so
hard. But his answer had not disappointed her.

"Jesse, you've got it wrong. I know what these creatures are. I've
always known. There's never been the slightest doubt with me. And on
account of that, no power on earth could induce me to attend this
concert. It is you who can't accept the truth. You'll have to see it to
believe it! Jesse, the danger's real. Lestat is exactly what he
professes to be, and there will be others there, even more dangerous,
others who may spot you for what you are and try to hurt you. Realize
this and do as I tell you. Come home now."

What a raw and painful moment. He was striving to reach her, and she was
only telling him farewell. He had said other things, that he would tell
her "the whole story," that he would open the files to her, that she was
needed on this very matter by them all.

But her mind had been drifting. She couldn't tell him her "whole story,"
that was the sorrow. She'd been drowsy again, the dream threatening as
she hung up the phone. She'd seen the plates, the body on the altar.
Their mother. Yes, their mother. Time to sleep. The dream wants in. And
then go on.

Highway 101. Seven thirty-five p.m. Twenty-five minutes until the
concert.

She had just come through the mountain pass on the Waldo Grade and there
was the old miracle-the great crowded skyline of San Francisco tumbling
over the hills, far beyond the black glaze of the water. The towers of
the Golden Gate loomed ahead of her, the ice cold wind off the Bay
freezing her naked hands as she gripped the steering wheel.

Would the Vampire Lestat be on time? It made her laugh to think of an
immortal creature having to be on time. Well, she would be on time; the
journey was almost ended.

All grief was gone now, for David and Aaron and those she'd loved. There
was no grief either for the Great Family. Only the gratitude for all of
it. Yet maybe David was right. Perhaps she had not accepted the cold
frightening truth of the matter, but had merely slipped into the realm
of memories and ghosts, of pale creatures who were the proper stuff of
dreams and madness.

She was walking towards the phantom town house of Stanford White, and it
didn't matter now who lived there. She would be welcome. They had been
trying to tell her that ever since she could remember.

PART

ALL HALLOW'S EVE

Very little is more worth our time than understanding the talent of
Substance, A bee, a living bee, at the windowglass, trying to get out,
doomed, it can'{ understand.

STAN RICE

Untitled Poem from Pig's Progress (1976)

Daniel

LONG CURVING LOBBY; THE CROWD WAS LIKE liquid sloshing against the
colorless walls. Teenagers in Halloween costume poured through the front
doors; lines were forming to purchase yellow wigs, black satin capes-
"Fang teeth, fifty cents!"-glossy programs. Whiteface everywhere he
looked. Painted eyes and mouths. And here and there bands of men and
women carefully done up in authentic nineteenth-century clothes, their
makeup and coiffed hair exquisite.

A velvet-clad woman tossed a great shower of dead rosebuds into the air
above her head. Painted blood flowed down her ashen cheeks. Laughter.

He could smell the greasepaint, and the beer, so alien now to his
senses: rotten. The hearts beating all around him made a low, delicious
thunder against the tender tympana of his ears.

He must have laughed out loud, because he felt the sharp pinch of
Armand's fingers on his arm. "Daniel!"

"Sorry, boss," he whispered. Nobody was paying a damn bit of attention
anyway; every mortal within sight was disguised; and who were Armand and
Daniel but two pale nondescript young men in the press, black sweaters,
jeans, hair partially hidden under sailor's caps of blue wool, eyes
behind dark glasses. "So what's the big deal? I can't laugh out loud,
especially now that everything is so funny?"

Armand was distracted; listening again. Daniel couldn't get it through
his head to be afraid. He had what he wanted now. None of you my
brothers and sisters!

Armand had said to him earlier, "You take a lot of teaching." That was
during the hunt, the seduction, the kill, the flood of blood through his
greedy heart. But he had become a natural at being unnatural, hadn't he,
after the clumsy anguish of the first murder, the one that had taken him
from shuddering guilt to ecstasy within seconds. Life by the mouthful.
He'd woken up thirsting.

And thirty minutes ago, they'd taken two exquisite little vagabonds in
the ruins of a derelict school by the park where the kids lived in
boarded-up rooms with sleeping bags and rags and little cans of Sterno
to cook the food they stole from the Haight-Ashbury dumpsters. No
protests this time around. No, just the thirsting and the ever
increasing sense of the perfection and the inevitability of it, the
preternatural memory of the taste faultless. Hurry. Yet there had been
such an art to it with Armand, none of the rush of the night before when
time had been the crucial element.

Armand had stood quietly outside the building, scanning it, waiting for
"those who wanted to die"; that was the way he liked to do it; you
called to them silently and they came out. And the death had a serenity
to it. He'd tried to show that trick to Louis long ago, he'd said, but
Louis had found it distasteful.

And sure enough the denim-clad cherubs had come wandering through the
side door, as if hypnotized by the music of the Pied Piper. "Yes, you
came, we knew you'd come...." Dull flat voices welcoming them as they
were led up the stairs and into a parlor made out of army blankets on
ropes. To die in this garbage in the sweep of the passing headlights
through the cracks in the plywood.

Hot dirty little arms around Daniel's neck; reek of hashish in her hair;
he could scarcely stand it, the dance, her hips against him, then
driving his fangs into the flesh. "You love me, you know you do," she'd
said. And he'd answered yes with a clear conscience. Was it going to be
this good forever? He'd clasped her chin with his hand, underneath,
pushing her head back, and then, the death like a doubled fist going
down his throat, to his gut, the heat spreading, flooding his loins and
his brain.

He'd let her drop. Too much and not enough. He'd clawed at the wall for
a moment thinking it must be flesh and blood, too, and were it flesh and
blood it could be his. Then such a shock to know he wasn't hungry
anymore. He was filled and complete and the night waited, like something
made out of pure light, and the other one was dead, folded up like a
baby in sleep on the grimy floor, and Armand, glowing in the dark, just
watching.

It was getting rid of the bodies after that had been hard. Last night
that had been done out of his sight, as he wept. Beginner's luck. This
time Armand said "no trace means no trace." So they'd gone down together
to bury them deep beneath the basement floor in the old furnace room,
carefully putting the paving stones back in place. Lots of work even
with such strength. So loathsome to touch the corpse like that. Only for
a second did it flicker in his mind: who were they? Two fallen beings in
a pit. No more now, no destiny. And the waif last night? Was somebody
looking for her somewhere? He'd been crying suddenly. He'd heard it,
then reached up and touched the tears coming out of his eyes.

"What do you think this is?" Armand had demanded, making him help with
the paving stones. "A penny dreadful novel? You don't feed if you can't
cover it up."

The building had been crawling with gentle humans who noticed not a
thing as they'd stolen the clothes they now wore, uniforms of the young,
and left by a broken door into an alley. Not my brothers and sisters
anymore. The woods have always been filled with these soft doe-eyed

things, with hearts beating for the arrow, the bullet, the lance. And
now at last I reveal my secret identity: I have always been the
huntsman.

"Is it all right, the way I am now?" he'd asked Armand. "Are you happy?"
Haight Street, seven thirty-five. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, junkies
screaming on the corner. Why didn't they just go on to the concert?
Doors open already. He couldn't bear the anticipation.

But the coven house was near, Armand had explained, big tumbledown
mansion one block from the park, and some of them were still hanging
back in there plotting Lestat's ruin. Armand wanted to pass close, just
for a moment, know what was going on.

"Looking for someone?" Daniel had asked. "Answer me, are you pleased
with me or not?"

What had he seen in Armand's face? A sudden flare of humor, lust? Armand
had hurried him along the dirty stained pavements, past the bars, the
cafes, the stores crowded with stinking old clothes, the fancy clubs
with their gilded letters on the greasy plate glass and overhead fans
stirring the fumes with gilded wooden blades, while the potted ferns
died a slow death in the heat and the semidarkness. Past the first
little children-"Trick or treat!"-in their taffeta and glitter costumes.

Armand had stopped, at once surrounded by tiny upturned faces covered in
store-bought masks, plastic spooks, ghouls, witches; a lovely warm light
had filled his brown eyes; with both hands he'd dropped shiny silver
dollars in their little candy sacks, then taken Daniel by the arm and
led him on.

"I love it well enough the way you turned out," he had whispered with a
sudden irrepressible smile, the warmth still there. "You're my
firstborn," he'd said. Was there a catch in his throat, a sudden
glancing from right to left as if he'd found himself cornered? Back to
the business at hand. "Be patient. I am being afraid for us both,
remember?"

Oh, we shall go to the stars together! Nothing can stop us. All the
ghosts running through these streets are mortal!

Then the coven house had blown up.

He'd heard the blast before he saw it-and a sudden rolling plume of
flame and smoke, accompanied by a shrill sound he would never before
have detected: preternatural screams like silver paper curling in the
heat. Sudden scatter of shaggy-haired humans running to see the blaze.

Armand had shoved Daniel off the street, into the stagnant air of a
narrow liquor store. Bilious glare; sweat and reek of tobacco; mortals,
oblivious to the nearby conflagration, reading the big glossy girlie
magazines. Armand had pushed him to the very rear of the tiny corridor.
Old lady buying tiny carton of milk and two cans of cat food out of the
icebox. No way out of here.

But how could one hide from the thing that was passing over, from the
deafening sound that mortals could not even hear? He'd lifted his hands
to his ears, but that was foolish, useless. Death out there in
alleyways. Things like him running through the debris of backyards,
caught, burnt in their tracks. He saw it in sputtering flashes. Then

nothing. Ringing silence. The clanging bells and squealing tires of the
mortal world.

Yet he'd been too enthralled still to be afraid. Every second was
eternal, the frost on the icebox door beautiful. The old lady with the
milk in her hand, eyes like two small cobalt stones.

Armand's face had gone blank beneath the mask of his dark glasses, hands
slipped into his tight pants pockets. The tiny bell on the door jangled
as a young man entered, bought a single bottle of German beer, and went
out.

"It's over, isn't it?"

"For now," Armand had answered.

Not until they'd gotten in the cab did he say more.

"It knew we were there; it heard us."

"Then why didn't it-?"

"I don't know. I only know it knew we were there. It knew before we
found shelter."

And now, push and shove inside the hall, and he loved it, the crowd
carrying them closer and closer to the inner doors. He could not even
raise his arms, so tight was the press; yet young men and women elbowed
past him, buffeted him with delicious shocks; he laughed again as he saw
the life-sized posters of Lestat plastered to the walls.

He felt Armand's fingers against his back; he felt a subtle change in
Armand's whole body. A red-haired woman up ahead had turned around and
was facing them as she was moved along towards the open door.

A soft warm shock passed through Daniel. "Armand, the red hair." So like
the twins in the dream! It seemed her green eyes locked on him as he
said, "Armand, the twins!"

Then her face vanished as she turned away again and disappeared inside
the hall.

"No," Armand whispered. Small shake of his head. He was in a silent
fury, Daniel could feel it. He had the rigid glassy look he always got
when profoundly offended. "Talamasca," he whispered, with a faint
uncharacteristic sneer.

"Talamasca." The word struck Daniel suddenly as beautiful. Talamasca. He
broke it down from the Latin, understood its parts. Somewhere out of his
memory bank it came: animal mask. Old word for witch or shaman.

"But what does it really mean?" he asked.

"It means Lestat is a fool," Armand said. Flicker of deep pain in his
eyes. "But it makes no difference now."

Khayman

Khayman watched from the archway as the Vampire Lestat's car entered the
gates of the parking lot. Almost invisible Khayman was, even in the

stylish denim coat and pants he'd stolen earlier from a shop manikin. He
didn't need the silver glasses that covered his eyes. His glowing skin
didn't matter. Not when everywhere he looked he saw masks and paint,
glitter and gauze and sequined costumes.

He moved closer to Lestat, as if swimming through the wriggling bodies
of the youngsters who mobbed the car. At last he glimpsed the creature's
blond hair, and then his violet blue eyes as he smiled and blew kisses
to his adorers. Such charm the devil had. He drove the car himself,
gunning the motor and forcing the bumper against these tender little
humans even as he flirted, winked, seduced, as if he and his foot on the
gas pedal weren't connected to each other.

Exhilaration. Triumph. That's what Lestat felt and knew at this moment.
And even his reticent companion, Louis, the dark-haired one in the car
beside him, staring timidly at the screaming children as if they were
birds of paradise, didn't understand what was truly happening.

Neither knew that the Queen had waked. Neither knew the dreams of the
twins. Their ignorance was astonishing. And their young minds were so
easy to scan. Apparently the Vampire Lestat, who had hidden himself
quite well until this night, was now prepared to do battle with
everyone. He wore his thoughts and intentions like a badge of honor.

"Hunt us down!" That's what he said aloud to his fans, though they
didn't hear. "Kill us. We're evil. We're bad. It's perfectly fine to
cheer and sing with us now. But when you catch on, well, then the
serious business will begin. And you'll remember that I never lied to
you."

For one instant his eyes and Khayman's eyes met. I want to be good! I
would die for that! But there was no recognition of who or what received
this message.

Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure
and simple. The two had found each other only last night, and theirs had
been an extraordinary reunion. Louis would go where Lestat led him.
Louis would perish if Lestat perished. But their fears and hopes for
this night were heartbreakingly human.

They did not even guess that the Queen's wrath was close at hand, that
she'd burnt the San Francisco coven house within the hour. Or that the
infamous vampire tavern on Castro Street was burning now, as the Queen
hunted down those fleeing from it.

But then the many blood drinkers scattered throughout this crowd did not
know these simple facts either. They were too young to hear the warnings
of the old, to hear the screams of the doomed as they perished. The
dreams of the twins had only confused them. From various points, they
glared at Lestat, overcome with hatred or religious fervor. They would
destroy him or make of him a god. They did not guess at the danger that
awaited them.

But what of the twins themselves? What was the meaning of the dreams?

Khayman watched the car move on, forcing its way towards the back of the
auditorium. He looked up at the stars overhead, the tiny pinpricks of
light behind the mist that hung over the city. He thought he could feel
the closeness of his old sovereign.

He turned back towards the auditorium and made his way carefully through
the press. To forget his strength in such a crowd as this would have
been disaster. He would bruise flesh and break bones without even
feeling it.

He took one last look at the sky, and then he went inside, easily
befuddling the ticket taker as he went through the little turnstile and
towards the nearest stairway.

The auditorium was almost filled. He looked about himself thoughtfully,
savoring the moment somewhat as he savored everything. The hall itself
was nothing, a shell of a place to hold light and sound-utterly modern
and unredeemably ugly.

But the mortals, how pretty they were, glistering with health, their
pockets full of gold, sound bodies everywhere, in which no organ had
been eaten by the worms of disease, no bone ever broken.

In fact the sanitized well-being of this entire city rather amazed
Khayman. True, he'd seen wealth in Europe such as he could never have
imagined, but nothing equaled the flawless surface of this small and
overpopulated place, even to the San Francisco peasantry, whose tiny
stucco cottages were choked with luxuries of every description.
Driveways here were jammed with handsome automobiles. Paupers drew their
money from bank machines with magic plastic cards. No slums anywhere.
Great towers the city had, and fabulous hostelries; mansions in
profusion; yet girded as it was by sea and mountains and the glittering
waters of the Bay, it seemed not so much a capital as a resort, an
escape from the world's greater pain and ugliness.

No wonder Lestat had chosen this place to throw down the gauntlet, in
the main, these pampered children were good. Deprivation had never
wounded or weakened them. They might prove perfect combatants for real
evil. That is, when they came to realize that the symbol and the thing
were one and the same. Wake up and smell the blood, young ones.

But would there be time for that now?

Lestat's great scheme, whatever it truly was, might be stillborn; for
surely the Queen had a scheme of her own, and Lestat knew nothing of it.

Khayman made his way now to the top of the hall. To the very last row of
wooden seats where he had been earlier. He settled comfortably in the
same spot, pushing aside the two "vampire books," which still lay on the
floor, unnoticed.

Earlier, he had devoured the texts-Louis's testament: "Behold, the
void." And Lestat's history: "And this and this and this, and it means
nothing." They had clarified for him many things. And what Khayman had
divined of Lestat's intentions had been confirmed completely. But of the
mystery of the twins, of course, the book told nothing.

And as for the Queen's true intent, that continued to baffle him.

She had slain hundreds of blood drinkers the world over, yet left others
unharmed-Even now, Marius lived. In destroying her shrine, she had
punished him but not killed him, which would have been simple. He called
to the older ones from his prison of ice, warning, begging for
assistance. And effortlessly, Khayman sensed two immortals moving to
answer Marius's call, though one, Marius's own child, could not even

hear it. Pandora was that one's name; she was a lone one, a strong one.
The other, called Santino, did not have her power, but he could hear
Marius's voice, as he struggled to keep pace with her.

Without doubt the Queen could have struck them down had she chosen to do
it. Yet on and on they moved, clearly visible, clearly audible, yet
unmolested.

How did the Queen make such choices? Surely there were those in this
very hall whom she had spared for some purpose. . . .

Daniel

They had reached the doors, and now had to push the last few feet down a
narrow ramp into the giant open oval of the main floor.

The crowd loosened, like marbles rolling in all directions. Daniel moved
towards the center, his fingers hooked around Armand's belt so as not to
lose him, his eyes roaming over the horseshoe-shaped theater, the high
banks of seats rising to the ceiling. Mortals everywhere swarmed the
cement stairs, or hung over iron railings, or flowed into the milling
crowd around him.

A blur it was suddenly, the noise of it like the low grind of a giant
machine. But then in the moment of deliberately distorted vision, he saw
the others. He saw the simple, inescapable difference between the living
and the dead. Beings like himself in every direction, concealed in the
mortal forest, yet shining like the eyes of an owl in the light of the
moon. No paint or dark glasses or shapeless hats or hooded capes could
ever conceivably hide them from each other. And it wasn't merely the
unearthly sheen to their faces or hands. It was the slow, lissome grace
of their movements, as if they were more spirit than flesh.

Ah, my brothers and sisters, at last!

But it was hatred he felt around him. A rather dishonest hatred! They
loved Lestat and condemned him simultaneously. They loved the very act
of hating, punishing. Suddenly, he caught the eye of a powerful hulking
creature with greasy black hair who bared his fangs in an ugly flash and
then revealed the plan in stunning completeness. Beyond the prying eyes
of mortals, they would hack Lestat's limbs from his body; they would
sever his head; then the remains would be burnt on a pyre by the sea.
The end of the monster and his legend. Are you with us or against us?

Daniel laughed out loud. "You'll never kill him," Daniel said. Yet he
gaped as he glimpsed the sharpened scythe the creature held against his
chest inside his coat. Then the beast turned and vanished. Daniel gazed
upwards through the smoky light. One of them now. Know all their
secrets! He felt giddy, on the verge of madness.

Armand's hand closed on his shoulder. They had come to the very center
of the main floor. The crowd was getting denser by the second. Pretty
girls in black silk gowns shoved and pushed against the crude bikers in
their worn black leather. Soft feathers brushed his cheek; he saw a red
devil with giant horns; a bony skeleton face topped with golden curls
and pearl combs. Random cries rose in the bluish gloom. The bikers
howled like wolves; someone shouted "Lestat" in a deafening voice, and
others took up the call instantly.

Armand again had the lost expression, the expression that belonged to
deep concentration, as if what he saw before him meant nothing at all.

"Thirty perhaps," he whispered in Daniel's ear, "no more than that, and
one or two so old they could destroy the rest of us in an instant."

"Where, tell me where?"

"Listen," Armand said. "And see for yourself. There is no hiding from
them."

Khayman

Maharet's child. Jessica. The thought caught Khayman off guard. Protect
Maharet's child. Somehow escape from here.

He roused himself, senses sharpened. He'd been listening to Marius
again, Marius trying to reach the young untuned ears of the Vampire
Lestat, who preened backstage, before a broken mirror. What could this
mean, Maharet's child, Jessica, and when the thoughts pertained, without
doubt, to a mortal woman?

It came again, the unexpected communication of some strong yet unveiled
mind: Take care of Jesse. Somehow stop the Mother .... But there were no
words really-it was no more than a shining glimpse into another's soul,
a sparkling overflow.

Khayman's eyes moved slowly over the balconies opposite, over the
swarming main floor. Far away in some remote corner of the city, an old
one wandered, full of fear of the Queen yet longing to look upon her
face. He had come here to die, but to know her face in the final
instant.

Khayman closed his eyes to shut this out.

Then he heard it again suddenly. Jessica, my Jessica. And behind the
soulful call, the knowledge of Maharet! The sudden vision of Maharet,
enshrined in love, and ancient and white as he himself was. It was a
moment of stunning pain. He slumped back in the wooden seat and bowed
his head just a little. Then he looked out again over the steel rafters,
the ugly tangles of black wire and rusted cylindrical lights. Where are
you?

There, far away against the opposite wall, he saw the figure from whom
the thoughts were coming. Ah, the oldest he had seen so far. A giant
Nordic blood drinker, seasoned and cunning, dressed in coarse brown
rawhide garments, with flowing straw-colored hair, his heavy brows and
small deep-set eyes giving him a brooding expression.

The being was tracking a small mortal woman who fought her way through
the crowds of the main floor. Jesse, Maharet's mortal daughter.

Maddened, disbelieving, Khayman focused tightly on the small woman. He
felt his eyes mist with tears as he saw the astonishing resemblance.
Here was Maharet's long coppery red hair, curling, thick, and the same
tall birdlike frame, the same clever and curious green eyes, sweeping
the scene as the female let herself be turned around and around by those
who pushed against her.

Maharet's profile. Maharet's skin, which had been so pale and almost
luminous in life, so like the inner lining of a seashell.

In a sudden vivid memory, he saw Maharet's skin through the mesh of his
own dark fingers. As he had pushed her face to the side during the rape,
his fingertips had touched the delicate folds of flesh over her eyes.
Not till a year later had they plucked out her eyes and he had been
there remembering the moment, the feel of the flesh. That is before he
had picked up the eyes themselves and ....

He shuddered. He felt a sharp pain in his lungs. His memory wasn't going
to fail him. He would not slip away from this moment, the happy clown
remembering nothing.

Maharet's child, all right. But how? Through how many generations had
these characteristics survived to flower again in this small female who
appeared to be fighting her way towards the stage at the end of the
hall?

It was not impossible, of course. He quickly realized it. Perhaps three
hundred ancestors stood between this twentieth-century woman and the
long ago afternoon when he had put on the King's medallion and stepped
down from the dais to commit the King's rape. Maybe even less than that.
A mere fraction of this crowd, to put it more neatly in perspective.

But more astonishing than this, that Maharet knew her own descendants.
And know this woman Maharet did. The tall blood drinker's mind yielded
that fact immediately.

He scanned the tall Nordic one. Maharet, alive. Maharet, the guardian of
her mortal family. Maharet, the embodiment of illimitable strength and
will. Maharet who had given him, this blond servant, no explanation of
the dreams of the twins, but had sent him here instead to do her
bidding: save Jessica.

Ah, but she lives, Khayman thought. She lives, and if she lives then in
a real way, they both live, the red-haired sisters!

Khayman studied the creature even more intently, probing even deeper.
But all he caught now was the fierce protectiveness.

Rescue Jesse, not merely from the danger of the Mother but from this
place altogether, where Jesse's eyes would see what no one could ever
explain away.

And how he loathed the Mother, this tall, fair being with the posture of
a warrior and a priest in one. He loathed that the Mother had disrupted
the serenity of his timeless and melancholy existence; loathed that his
sad, sweet love for this woman, Jessica, exacerbated the alarm he felt
for himself. He knew the extent of the destruction too, that every blood
drinker from one end of this continent to the other had been destroyed,
save for a precious few, most of whom were under this roof, never
dreaming of the fate that threatened them.

He knew as well of the dreams of the twins, but he did not understand
them. After all, two redheaded sisters he had never known; only one red-
haired beauty ruled his life. And once again Khayman saw Maharet's face,
a vagrant image of softened weary human eyes peering from a porcelain
mask: Mael, do not ask me anything more. But do as I tell you.

Silence. The blood drinker was aware of the surveillance suddenly. With
a little jerk of his head he looked around the hall, trying to spot the
intruder.

The name had done it, as names so often do. The creature had felt
himself known, recognized. And Khayman had recognized the name at once,
connecting it with the Mael of Lestat's pages. Undoubtedly they were one
and the same-this was the Druid priest who had lured Marius into the
sacred grove where the blood god had made him one of its own, and sent
him off to Egypt to find the Mother and the Father.

Yes, this was the same Mael. And the creature felt himself recognized
and hated it.

After the initial spasm of rage, all thought and emotion vanished. A
rather dizzying display of strength, Khayman conceded. He relaxed in the
chair. But the creature couldn't find him. Two dozen other white faces
he picked out of the crowd, but not Khayman.

Intrepid Jessica had meantime reached her destination. Ducking low,
she'd slipped through the heavy-muscled motorcycle riders who claimed,
the space before the stage as their own, and had risen to take hold of
the lip of the wooden platform.

Flash of her silver bracelet in the light. And that might as well have
been a tiny dagger to the mental shield of Mael, because his love and
his thoughts were wholly visible again for one fluid instant.

This one is going to die, too, if he doesn't become wise, Khayman
thought. He'd been schooled by Maharet, no doubt, and perhaps nourished
by her powerful blood; yet his heart was undisciplined, and his temper
beyond his control, it was obvious.

Then some feet behind Jesse, in the swirling color and noise, Khayman
spied another intriguing figure, much younger, yet almost as powerful in
his own fashion as the Gaul, Mael.

Khayman sought for the name, but the creature's mind was a perfect
blank; not so much as a glimmer of personality escaped from it. A boy
he'd been when he died, with straight dark auburn hair, and eyes a
little too big for his face. But it was easy, suddenly, to filch the
being's name from Daniel, his newborn fledgling who stood beside him.
Armand. And the fledgling, Daniel, was scarcely dead. All the tiny
molecules of his body were dancing with the demon's invisible chemistry.

Armand immediately attracted Khayman. Surely he was the same Armand of
whom Louis and Lestat had both written-the immortal with the form of a
youth. And this meant that he was no more than five hundred years old,
yet he veiled himself completely. Shrewd, cold he seemed, yet without
flair-a stance that required no room in which to display itself. And
now, sensing infallibly that he was watched, he turned his large soft
brown eyes upward and fixed instantly upon the remote figure of Khayman.

"No harm meant to you or your young one," Khayman whispered, so that his
lips might shape and control the thoughts. "No friend to the Mother,"

Armand heard but gave no answer. Whatever terror he felt at the sight of
one so old, he masked completely. One would have thought he was looking
at the wall behind Khayman's head, at the steady stream of laughing and
shouting children who poured down the steps from the topmost doorways.

And, quite inevitably, this oddly beguiling little five-hundred-year-old
being fixed his eyes upon Mael as the gaunt one felt another
irresistible surge of concern for his fragile Jesse.

Khayman understood this being, Armand. He felt he understood him and
liked him completely. As their eyes met again, alt that had been written
of this creature in the two little histories was informed and balanced
by the creature's innate simplicity. The loneliness which Khayman had
felt in Athens was now very strong.

"Not unlike my own simple soul," Khayman whispered. "You're lost in all
this because you know the terrain too well. And that no matter how far
you walk, you come again to the same mountains, the same valley."

No response. Of course. Khayman shrugged and smiled. To this one he'd
give anything that he could; and guilelessly, he let Armand know it.

Now the question was, how to help them, these two that might have some
hope of sleeping the immortal sleep until another sunset. And most
important of all, how to reach Maharet, to whom the fierce and
distrusting Mael was unstintingly devoted.

To Armand, Khayman said with the slightest movement of his lips: "No
friend of the Mother. I told you. And keep with the mortal crowd. She'll
pick you out when you step apart. It's that simple."

Armand's face registered no change. Beside him, the fledgling Daniel was
happy, glorying in the pageant that surrounded him. He knew no fear, no
plans or dreams. And why not? He had this extremely powerful creature to
take care of him. He was a damn sight luckier than the rest,

Khayman rose to his feet. It was the loneliness as much as anything
else. He would be near to one of these two, Armand or Mael. That's what
he had wanted in Athens when all this glorious remembering and knowing
had begun. To be near another like himself. To speak, to touch . . .
something.

He moved along the top aisle of the hall, which circled the entire room,
save for a margin at the far end behind the stage which belonged to the
giant video screen.

He moved with slow human grace, careful not to crush the mortals who
pushed against him. And also he wanted this slow progress because he
must give Mael the opportunity to see him.

He knew instinctively that if he snuck up on this proud and quarrelsome
thing, the insult would never be borne. And so he proceeded, only
picking up his pace when he realized Mael was now aware of his approach.

Mael couldn't hide his fear as Armand could. Mael had never seen a blood
drinker of Khayman's age save for Maharet; he was gazing at a potential
enemy. Khayman sent the same warm greeting he had sent to Armand-Armand
who watched-but nothing in the old warrior's stance changed.

The auditorium was now full and locked; outside children screamed and
beat upon the doors. Khayman heard the whine and belch of the police
radios.

The Vampire Lestat and his cohorts stood spying upon the hall through
the holes in a great serge curtain.

Lestat embraced his companion Louis, and they kissed on the mouth, as
the mortal musicians put their arms around both of them.

Khayman paused to feel the passion of the crowd, the very air charged
with it.

Jessica had rested her arms on the edge of the platform. She had rested
her chin upon the back of her hands. The men behind her, hulking
creatures clothed in shiny black leather, shoved her brutally, out of
carelessness and drunken exuberance, but they couldn't dislodge her.

Neither could Mael, should he make the attempt.

And something else came clear to Khayman suddenly, as he looked down at
her. It was the single word Talamasca. This woman belonged to them; she
was part of the order.

Not possible, he thought again, then laughed silently at his own foolish
innocence. This was a night of shocks, was it not? Yet it seemed quite
incredible that the Talamasca should have survived from the time he had
known it centuries before, when he had played with its members and
tormented them, and then turned his back on them out of pity for their
fatal combination of innocence and ignorance.

Ah, memory was too ghastly a thing. Let his past lives slip into
oblivion! He could see the faces of those vagabonds, those secular monks
of the Talamasca who had so clumsily pursued him across Europe,
recording glimpses of him in great leather-bound books, their quill pens
scratching late into the night. Benjamin had been his name in that brief
respite of consciousness, and Benjamin the Devil they had labeled him in
their fancy Latin script, sending off crackling parchment epistles with
big sloppy wax seals to their superiors in Amsterdam.

It had been a game to him, to steal their letters and add his notes to
them; to frighten them; to crawl out from under their beds in the night
and grab them by the throats and shake them; it had been fun; and what
was not? When the fun stopped, he'd always lost his memory again.

But he had loved them; not exorcists they, or witch-hunting priests, or
sorcerers who hoped to chain and control his power. It had even occurred
to him once that when it came time to sleep, he would choose the vaults
beneath their moldy Motherhouse. For all their meddlesome curiosity,
they would never have betrayed him.

And now to think that the order had survived, with the tenacity of the
Church of Rome, and this pretty mortal woman with the shining bracelet
on her arm, beloved of Maharet and Mael, was one of their special breed.
No wonder she had fought her way to the front ranks, as if to the bottom
step of the altar.

Khayman drew closer to Mael, but he stopped short of him by several
feet, the crowd passing ceaselessly in front of them. This he did out of
respect for Mael's apprehension, and the shame the creature felt for
being afraid. It was Mael who approached and stood at Khayman's side.

The restless crowd passed them as if they were the wall itself. Mael
leant close to Khayman, which in its own way was a greeting, an offering

of trust. He looked out over the hall, where no empty seat was visible,
and the main floor was a mosaic of flashing colors and glistening hair
and tiny upthrust fists. Then he reached out and touched Khayman as if
he couldn't prevent himself from doing it. With his fingertips he
touched the back of Khayman's left hand. And Khayman remained still to
allow this little exploration.

How many times had Khayman seen such a gesture between immortals, the
young one verifying for himself the texture and hardness of the elder's
flesh. Hadn't some Christian saint slipped his hand in Christ's wounds
because the sight of them had not been sufficient? More mundane
comparisons made Khayman smile. It was like two fierce dogs tentatively
examining each other.

Far below, Armand remained impassive as he kept his eyes upon the two
figures. Surely he saw Mael's sudden disdainful glance, but he did not
acknowledge it.

Khayman turned and embraced Mael, and smiled at him. But this merely
frightened Mael, and Khayman felt the disappointment heavily. Politely,
he stepped away. For a moment he was painfully confused. He stared down
at Armand. Beautiful Armand who met his gaze with utter passivity. But
it was time to say now what he'd come to say.

"You must make your shield stronger, my friend," he explained to Mael
gently. "Don't let your love for that girl expose you. The girl will be
perfectly safe from our Queen if you curb your thoughts of the girl's
origins and her protector. That name is anathema to the Queen. It always
has been."

"And where is the Queen?" Mael asked, his fear surging again, along with
the rage that he needed to fight it.

"She's close."

"Yes, but where?"

"I cannot say. She's burnt their tavern house. She hunts the few rogues
who haven't come to the hall. She takes her time with it. And this I've
learned through the minds of her victims."

Khayman could see the creature shudder. He could see subtle changes in
him that marked his ever increasing anger. Well and good. The fear
withered in the heat of the anger. But what a basically quarrelsome
creature this one was. His mind did not make sophisticated distinctions.

"And why do you give me this warning," demanded Mael, "when she can hear
every word we speak to each other?"

"But I don't think that she can," Khayman replied calmly. "I am of the
First Brood, friend. To hear other blood drinkers as we hear mortal men,
that curse belongs only to distant cousins. I could not read her mind if
she stood on this spot; and mine is closed to her as well, you can be
sure of it. And so it was with all our kind through the early
generations."

That clearly fascinated the blond giant. So Maharet could not hear the
Mother! Maharet had not admitted this to him.

"No," Khayman said, "and the Mother can only know of her through your
thoughts, so kindly guard them. Speak to me now in a human voice, for
this city is a wilderness of such voices."

Mael considered, brows puckered in a frown. He glared at Khayman as if
he meant to hit him.

"And this will defeat her?"

"Remember," Khayman said, "that excess can be the very opposite of
essence." He looked back at Armand as he spoke. "She who hears a
multitude of voices may not hear any one voice. And she who would listen
closely to one, must shut out the others. You are old enough to know the
trick."

Mael didn't answer out loud. But it was clear that he understood. The
telepathic gift had always been a curse to him, too, whether he was
besieged by the voices of blood drinkers or humans.

Khayman gave a little nod. The telepathic gift. Such nice words for the
madness that had come on him eons ago, after years of listening, years
of lying motionless, covered with dust in the deep recesses of a
forgotten Egyptian tomb, listening to the weeping of the world, without
knowledge of himself or his condition.

"Precisely my point, my friend," he said. "And for two thousand years
you have fought the voices while our Queen may well have been drowned by
them. It seems the Vampire Lestat has outshouted the din; he has, as it
were, snapped his fingers in the corner of her eye and brought her to
attention. But do not overestimate the creature who sat motionless for
so long. It isn't useful to do so."

These ideas startled Mael somewhat. But he saw the logic of them. Below,
Armand remained attentive.

"She can't do all things," Khayman said, "whether she herself knows it
or not. She was always one to reach for the stars, and then draw back as
if in horror."

"How so?" Mael said. Excited, he leaned closer. "What is she really
like!" he whispered.

"She was full of dreams and high ideals. She was like Lestat." Khayman
shrugged. "The blond one down there who would be good and do good and
gather to himself the needy worshipers."

Mael smiled, coldly, cynically.

"But what in the name of hell does she mean to do?" he asked. "So he has
waked her with his abominable songs. Why does she destroy us?"

"There's a purpose, you can be sure of it. With our Queen there has
always been a purpose. She could not do the smallest thing without a
grand purpose. And you must know we do not really change over time; we
are as flowers unfolding; we merely become more nearly ourselves." He
glanced again at Armand. "As for what her purpose may be, I can give you
only speculations . . ."

"Yes, tell me."

"This concert will take place because Lestat wants it. And when it is
finished, she will slaughter more of our kind. But she will leave some,
some to serve this purpose, some perhaps to witness."

Khayman gazed at Armand. Marvelous how his expressionless face conveyed
wisdom, while the harried, weary face of Mael did not. And who can say
which one understood the most? Mael gave a little bitter laugh.

"To witness?" Mael asked. "I think not. I think she is cruder than that.
She spares those whom Lestat loves, it's that simple."

This hadn't occurred to Khayman.

"Ah, yes, think on it," Mael said, in the same sharply pronounced
English. "Louis, Lestat's companion. Is he not alive? And Gabrielle, the
mother of the fiend, she is near at hand, waiting to rendezvous with her
son as soon as it is wise to do so. And Armand, down there, whom you so
like to look at, it seems Lestat would see him again, so he is alive,
and that outcast with him, the one who published the accursed book, the
one the others would tear limb from limb if only they guessed . . ."

"No, there's more to it than that. There has to be," Khayman said. "Some
of us she can't kill. And those who go to Marius now, Lestat knows
nothing of them but their names."

Mael's face changed slightly; it underwent a deep, human flush, as his
eyes narrowed. It was clear to Khayman that Mael would have gone to
Marius if he could. He would have gone this very night, if only Maharet
had come to protect Jessica. He tried now to banish Maharet's name from
his thoughts. He was afraid of Maharet, deeply afraid.

"Ah, yes, you try to hide what you know," Khayman said. "And this is
just what you must reveal to me."

"But I can't," Mael said. The wall had gone up. Impenetrable. "I am not
given answers, only orders, my friend. And my mission is to survive this
night, and to take my charge safely out of here."

Khayman meant to press, to demand. But he did neither. He had felt a
soft, subtle change in the atmosphere around him, a change so
insignificant yet pure that he couldn't call it movement or sound.

She was coming. She was moving close to the hall. He felt himself slip
away from his body into pure listening; yes, it was she. All the sounds
of the night rose to confuse him, yet he caught it; a low irreducible
sound which she could not veil, the sound of her breathing, of the beat
of her heart, of a force moving through space at tremendous and
unnatural speed, causing the inevitable tumult amid the visible and the
invisible.

Mael sensed it; so did Armand. Even the young one beside Armand heard
it, though so many other young ones did not. Even some of the more
finely tuned mortals seemed to feel it and to be distracted by it.

"I must go, friend," Khayman said. "Remember my advice." Impossible to
say more now.

She was very close. Undoubtedly she scanned; she listened.

He felt the first irresistible urge to see her, to scan for the minds of
those hapless souls out there in the night whose eyes might have passed
over her.

"Good-bye, friend," he said. "It's no good for me to be near you."

Mael looked at him in confusion. Below, Armand gathered Daniel to him
and made for the edge of the crowd.

The hall went dark suddenly; and for one split second Khayman thought it
was her magic, that some grotesque and vengeful judgment would now be
made.

But the mortal children all around him knew the ritual. The concert was
about to begin! The hall went mad with shrieks, and cheers, and
stomping. Finally it became a great collective roar. He felt the floor
tremble.

Tiny flames appeared as mortals struck their matches, ignited their
chemical lighters. And a drowsy beautiful illumination once again
revealed the thousands upon thousands of moving forms. The screams were
a chorus from all sides.

"I am no coward," Mael whispered suddenly, as if he could not remain
silent. He took hold of Khayman's arm, then let it go as if the hardness
of it repelled him.

"I know," Khayman said.

"Help me. Help Jessica."

"Don't speak her name again. Stay away from her as I've told you. You
are conquered again, Druid. Remember? Time to fight with cunning, not
rage. Stay with the mortal herd. I will help you when and if I can."

There was so much more he wanted to say! Tell me where Maharet is! But
it was too late now for that. He turned away and moved along the aisle
swiftly until he came to an open place above a long narrow flight of
cement stairs.

Below on the darkened stage, the mortal musicians appeared, darting over
wires and speakers to gather their instruments from the floor.

The Vampire Lestat came striding through the curtain, his black cloak
flaring around him, as he moved to the very front of the platform. Not
three feet from Jesse he stood with microphone in hand.

The crowd had gone into ecstasies. Clapping, hooting, howling, it was a
noise such as Khayman had never actually heard. He laughed in spite of
himself at the stupid frenzy, at the tiny smiling figure down there who
loved it utterly, who was laughing even as Khayman laughed.

Then in a great white flash, light flooded the small stage. Khayman
stared, not at the small figures strutting in their finery, but at the
giant video screen that rose behind them to the very roof. The living
image of the Vampire Lestat, thirty feet in height, blazed before
Khayman. The creature smiled; he lifted his arms, and shook his mane of
yellow hair; he threw back his head and howled.

The crowd was on its feet in delirium; the very structure rumbled; but
it was the howl that filled all ears. The Vampire Lestat's powerful
voice swallowed every other sound in the auditorium.

Khayman closed his eyes. In the heart of the monstrous cry of the
Vampire Lestat, he listened again for the sound of the Mother, but he
could no longer find it.

"My Queen," he whispered, searching, scanning, hopeless though it was.
Did she stand up there on some grassy slope listening to the music of
her troubadour? He felt the soft damp wind and saw the gray starless sky
as random mortals felt and saw these things. The lights of San
Francisco, its spangled hills and glowing towers, these were the beacons
of the urban night, as terrible suddenly as the moon or the drift of the
galaxies.

He closed his eyes. He envisioned her again as she'd been in the Athens
street watching the tavern burn with her children in it; her tattered
cape had hung loose over her shoulders, the hood thrown back from her
plaited hair. Ah, the Queen of Heaven she'd seemed, as she had once so
loved to be known, presiding over centuries of litany. Her eyes had been
shining and empty in the electric light; her mouth soft, guileless. The
sheer sweetness of her face had been infinitely beautiful.

The vision carried him back now over the centuries to a dim and awful
moment, when he'd come, a mortal man, heart pounding to hear her will.
His Queen, now cursed and consecrated to the moon, the demon in her
demanding blood, his Queen who would not allow even the bright lamps to
be near to her. How agitated she had been, pacing the mud floor, the
colored walls around her full of silent painted sentinels.

"These twins," she'd said, "these evil sisters, they have spoken such
abominations."

"Have mercy," he had pleaded. "They meant no harm, I swear they tell the
truth. Let them go again, Your Highness. They cannot change it now."

Oh, such compassion he had felt for all of them! The twins, and his
afflicted sovereign.

"Ah, but you see, we must put it to the test, their revolting lies," she
had said. "You must come closer, my devoted steward, you who have always
served me with such devotion-"

"My Queen, my beloved Queen, what do you want of me?"

And with the same lovely expression on her face, she had lifted her icy
hands to touch his throat, to hold him fast suddenly with a strength
that terrified him. In shock, he'd watched her eyes go blank, her mouth
open. The two tiny fang teeth he'd seen, as she rose on tiptoe with the
eerie grace of nightmare. Not me. You would not do this to me! My Queen,
I am Khayman!

He should have perished long before now, as so many blood drinkers had
afterwards. Gone without a trace, like the nameless multitudes dissolved
within the earth of all lands and nations. But he had not perished. And
the twins-at least one-had lived on also.

Did she know it? Did she know those terrible dreams? Had they come to
her from the minds of all the others who had received them? Or had she

traveled the night around the world, dreamless, and without cease, arid
bent upon one task, since her resurrection?

They live, my Queen, they live on in the one if not in the two together.
Remember the old prophecy! If only she could hear his voice!

He opened his eyes. He was back again in the moment, with this ossified
thing that was his body. And the rising music saturated him with its
remorseless rhythm. It pounded against his ears. The flashing lights
blinded him.

He turned his back and put his hand against the wall. Never had he been
so engulfed by sound. He felt himself losing consciousness, but Lestat's
voice called him back.

With his fingers splayed across his eyes, Khayman looked down at the
fiery white square of the stage. Behold the devil dance and sing with
such obvious joy. It touched Khayman's heart in spite of himself.

Lestat's powerful tenor needed no electric amplification. And even the
immortals lost among their prey were singing with him, it was so
contagious, this passion. Everywhere he looked Khayman saw them caught
up, mortal and immortal alike. Bodies twisted in time with the bodies on
the stage. Voices rose; the hall swayed with one wave of movement after
another.

The giant face of Lestat expanded on the video screen as the camera
moved in upon it. The blue eye fixed upon Khayman and winked. "WHY DON'T
YOU KILL ME! YOU KNOW WHAT I AM!"

Lestat's laughter rose above the twanging scream of the guitars.

"DON'T YOU KNOW EVIL WHEN YOU SEE IT?"

Ah, such a belief in goodness, in heroism. Khayman could see it even in
the creature's eyes, a dark gray shadow there of tragic need. Lestat
threw back his head and roared again; he stamped his feet and howled; he
looked to the rafters as if they were the firmament.

Khayman forced himself to move; he had to escape. He made his way
clumsily to the door, as if suffocating in the deafening sound. Even his
sense of balance had been affected. The blasting music came after him
into the stairwell, but at least he was sheltered from the flashing
lights. Leaning against the wall, he tried to clear his vision.

Smell of blood. Hunger of so many blood drinkers in the hall. And the
throb of the music through the wood and the plaster.

He moved down the steps, unable to hear his own feet on the concrete,
and sank down finally on a deserted landing. He wrapped his arms around
his knees and bowed his head.

The music was like the music of old, when all songs had been the songs
of the body, and the songs of the mind had not yet been invented.

He saw himself dancing; he saw the King-the mortal king he had so loved-
turn and leap into the air; he heard the beat of the drums; the rise of
the pipes; the King put the beer in Khayman's hand. The table sagged
beneath its wealth of roasted game and glistening fruit, its steaming
loaves of bread. The Queen sat in her golden chair, immaculate and

serene, a mortal woman with a tiny cone of scented wax atop her
elaborate hair, melting slowly in the heat to perfume her plaited
tresses.

Then someone had put the coffin in his hand; the tiny coffin that was
passed now among those who feasted; the little reminder: Eat. Drink. For
Death awaits all of us.

He held it tight; should he pass it now to the King?

He felt the King's lips against his face suddenly. "Dance, Khayman.
Drink. Tomorrow we march north to slay the last of the flesh eaters."
The King didn't even look at the tiny coffin as he took it; he slipped
it into the Queen's hands and she, without looking down, gave it to
another.

The last of the flesh eaters. How simple it had all seemed; how good.
Until he had seen the twins kneeling before that altar.

The great rattle of drums drowned out Lestat's voice. Mortals passed
Khayman, hardly noticing him huddled there; a blood drinker ran quickly
by without the slightest heed of him.

The voice of Lestat rose again, singing of the Children of Darkness,
hidden beneath the cemetery called Les Innocents in superstition and
fear.

Into the light

We come

My Brothers and Sisters!

KILL US!

My Brothers and Sisters!

Sluggishly, Khayman rose. He was staggering, but he moved on, downward
until he had come out in the lobby where the noise was just a little
muted, and he rested there, across from the inner doors, in a cooling
draft of fresh air.

Calm was returning to him, but only slowly, when he realized that two
mortal men had paused nearby and were staring at him as he stood against
the wall with his hands in his pockets, his head bowed.

He saw himself suddenly as they saw him. He sensed their apprehension,
mingled with a sudden irrepressible sense of victory. Men who had known
about his kind, men who had lived for a moment such as this, yet dreaded
it, and never truly hoped for it.

Slowly, he looked up. They stood some twenty feet away from him, near to
the cluttered concession stand, as if it could hide them-proper British
gentlemen. They were old, in fact, learned, with heavily creased faces
and prim formal attire. Utterly out of place here their fine gray
overcoats, the bit of starched collar showing, the gleaming knot of silk
tie. They seemed explorers from another world among the flamboyant youth
that moved restlessly to and fro, thriving on the barbaric noise and
broken chatter.

And with such natural reticence they stared; as if they were too polite
to be afraid. Elders of the Talamasca looking for Jessica.

Know us? Yes, you do of course. No harm. Don't care.

His silent words drove the one called David Talbot back a pace. The
man's breathing became hurried, and there was a sudden dampness on his
forehead and upper lip. Yet such elegant composure. David Talbot
narrowed his eyes as if he would not be dazzled by what he saw; as if he
would see the tiny dancing molecules in the brightness.

How small it seemed suddenly the span of a human life; look at this
fragile man, for whom education and refinement have only increased all
risks. So simple to alter the fabric of his thought, his expectations.
Should Khayman tell them where Jesse was? Should he meddle? It would
make no difference ultimately.

He sensed now that they were afraid to go or to remain, that he had them
fixed almost as if he'd hypnotized them. In a way, it was respect that
kept them there, staring at him. It seemed he had to offer something, if
only to end this awful scrutiny.

Don't go to her. You 'd be fools if you did; She has others like me now
to look after her. Best leave here. I would if I were you.

Now, how would all this read in the archives of the Talamasca? Some
night he might find out. To what modern places had they removed their
old documents and treasures?

Benjamin, the Devil. That's who I am. Don't you know me? He smiled at
himself. He let his head droop, staring at the floor. He had not known
he possessed this vanity. And suddenly he did not care what this moment
meant to them.

He thought listlessly of those olden times in France when he had played
with their kind. "Allow us but to speak to you!" they'd pleaded. Dusty
scholars with pale eternally red-rimmed eyes and worn velvet clothing,
so unlike these two fine gentlemen, for whom the occult was a matter of
science, not philosophy. The hopelessness of that time suddenly
frightened him; the hopelessness of this time was equally frightening.

Go away.

Without looking up, he saw that David Talbot had nodded. Politely, he
and his companion withdrew. Glancing back over their shoulders, they
hurried down the curve of the lobby, and into the concert.

Khayman was alone again, with the rhythm of the music coming from the
doorway, alone and wondering why he had come here, what it was he
wanted; wishing that he could forget again; that he was in some lovely
place full of warm breezes and mortals who didn't know what he was, and
twinkling electric lights beneath the faded clouds, and flat endless
city pavements to walk until morning.

Jesse

"Let me alone, you son of a bitch!' Jesse kicked the man beside her, the
one who had hooked his arm around her waist and lifted her away from the
stage. "You bastard!" Doubled over with the pain in his foot, he was no
match for her sudden shove. He toppled and went down.

Five times she'd been swept back from the stage. She ducked and pushed
through the little cluster that had taken her place, sliding against
their black leather flanks as if she were a fish and rising up again to
grab the apron of unpainted wood, one hand taking hold of the strong
synthetic cloth that decorated it, and twisting it into a rope.

In the flashing lights she saw the Vampire Lestat leap high into the air
and come down without a palpable sound on the boards, his voice rising
again without benefit of the mike to fill the auditorium, his guitar
players prancing around him like imps.

The blood ran in tiny rivulets down his white face, as if from Christ's
Crown of Thorns, his long blond hair flying out as he turned full
circle, his hand ripping at his shirt, tearing it open down his chest,
the black tie loose and falling. His pale crystalline blue eyes were
glazed and shot with blood as he screamed the unimportant lyrics.

Jesse felt her heart knocking again as she stared up at him, at the
rocking of his hips, the tight cloth of the black pants revealing the
powerful muscles of his thighs. He leapt again, rising effortlessly, as
if he would ascend to the very ceiling of the hall.

Yes, you see it, and there is no mistake! No other explanation!

She wiped at her nose. She was crying again. But touch him, damn it, you
have to! In a daze she watched him finish the song, stomping his foot to
the last three resounding notes, as the musicians danced back and forth,
taunting, tossing their hair over their heads, their voices lost in his
as they struggled to meet his pace.

God, how he loved it! There was not the slightest pretense. He was
bathed in the adoration he was receiving. He was soaking it up as if it
were blood.

And now as he went into the frenzied opening of another song, he ripped
off the black velvet cloak, gave it a great twirl, and sent it flying
into the audience. The crowd wailed, shifted. Jesse felt a knee in her
back, a boot scraping her heel, but this was her chance, as the guards
jumped down off the boards to stop the melee.

With both hands pressed down hard on the wood, she sprang up and over on
her belly and onto her feet. She ran right towards the dancing figure
whose eyes suddenly looked into hers.

"Yes, you! You!" she cried out. In the corner of her eye was the
approaching guard. She threw her full weight at the Vampire Lestat.
Shutting her eyes, she locked her arms around his waist. She felt the
cold shock of his silky chest against her face, she tasted the blood
suddenly on her lip!

"Oh, God, real!" she whispered. Her heart was going to burst, but she
hung on. Yes, Mael's skin, like this, and Maharet's skin, like this, and
all of them. Yes, this! Real, not human. Always. And it was all here in
her arms and she knew and it was too late for them to stop her now!

Her left hand went up, and caught a thick tangle of his hair, and as she
opened her eyes, she saw him smiling down at her, saw the poreless
gleaming white skin, and the tiny fang teeth.

"You devil!" she whispered. She was laughing like a mad woman, crying
and laughing.

"Love you, Jessica," he whispered back at her, smiling at her as if he
were teasing her, the wet blond hair tumbling down into his eyes.

Astonished, she felt his arm around her, and then he lifted her on his
hip, swinging her in a circle. The screaming musicians were a blur; the
lights were violent streaks of white, red. She was moaning; but she kept
looking up at him, at his eyes, yes, real. Desperately she hung on, for
it seemed he meant to throw her high into the air over the heads of the
crowd. And then as he set her down and bowed his head, his hair falling
against her cheek, she felt his mouth close on hers.

The throbbing music went dim as if she'd been plunged into the sea. She
felt him breathe into her, sigh against her, his smooth fingers sliding
up her neck. Her breasts were pressed against the beat of his heart; and
a voice was speaking to her, purely, the way a voice had long ago, a
voice that knew her, a voice that understood her questions and knew how
they must be answered.

Evil, Jesse. As you have always known.

Hands pulled her back. Human hands. She was being separated from him.
She screamed.

Bewildered, he stared at her. He was reaching deep, deep into his dreams
for something he only faintly remembered. The funeral feast; the red-
haired twins kneeling on either side of the altar. But it was no more
than a split second; then gone; he was baffled; his smile flashed again,
impersonal, like one of the lights that were constantly blinding her.
"Beautiful Jesse!" he said, his hand lifted as if in farewell. They were
carrying her backwards away from him, off the stage.

She was laughing when they set her down.

Her white shirt was smeared with blood. Her hands were covered with it-
pale streaks of salty blood. She felt she knew the taste of it. She
threw back her head and laughed; and it was so curious not to be able to
hear it, only to feel it, to feel the shudder running through her, to
know she was crying and laughing at the same time. The guard said
something rough to her, something crude, threatening. But that didn't
matter.

The crowd had her again. It just swallowed her, tumbling against her,
driving her out of the center. A heavy shoe crushed her right foot. She
stumbled, and turned, and let herself be pushed along ever more
violently, towards the doors.

Didn't matter now. She knew. She knew it all. Her head spun. She could
not have stood upright if it were not for the shoulders knocking against
her. And never had she felt such wondrous abandon. Never had she felt
such release.

The crazy cacophonous music went on; faces flickered and disappeared in
a wash of colored light. She smelled the marijuana, the beer. Thirst.
Yes, something cold to drink. Something cold. So thirsty. She lifted her
hand again and licked at the salt and the blood. Her body trembled,
vibrated, the way it so often did on the verge of sleep. A soft

delicious tremor that meant that dreams were coming. She licked at the
blood again and closed her eyes.

Quite suddenly she felt herself pass into an open place. No one shoving
her. She looked up and saw that she had come to the doorway, to the
slick ramp that led some ten feet into the lobby below. The crowd was
behind her, above her. And she could rest here. She was all right.

She ran her hand along the greasy wall, stepping over the crush of paper
cups, a fallen wig with cheap yellow curls. She lay her head back
suddenly and merely rested, the ugly light from the lobby shining in her
eyes. The taste of the blood was on the tip of her tongue. It seemed she
was going to cry again, and it was a perfectly fine thing to do. For the
moment, there was no past or present, no necessity, and all the world
was changed, from the simplest things to the grandest. She was floating,
as if in the center of the most seductive state of peace and acceptance
that she had ever known. Oh, if only she could tell David these things;
if only somehow she could share this great and overwhelming secret.

Something touched her. Something hostile to her. Reluctantly she turned
and saw a hulking figure at her side. What? She struggled to see it
clearly.

Bony limbs, black hair slicked back, red paint on the twisted ugly
mouth, but the skin, the same skin. And the fang teeth. Not human. One
of them! Talamasca?

It came at her like a hiss. It struck her in the chest. Instinctively
her arms rose, crossing over her breasts, fingers locking on her
shoulders. Talamasca?

It was soundless yet deafening in its rage. She moved to back away, but
his hand caught her, fingers biting into her neck. She tried to scream
as she was lifted off her feet. Then she was flying across the lobby and
she was screaming until her head slammed into the wall.

Blackness. She saw the pain. It flashed yellow and then white as it
traveled down her backbone and then spread out as if into a million
branches in her limbs. Her body went numb. She hit the floor with
another shocking pain in her face and in the open palms of her hands and
then she rolled over on her back.

She couldn't see. Maybe her eyes were closed, but the funny thing was,
if they were, she couldn't open them. She heard voices, people shouting.
A whistle blew, or was it the clang of a bell? There was a thunderous
noise, but that was the crowd inside applauding. People near her argued.
Someone close to her ear said: "Don't touch her. Her neck's broken!"
Broken? Can you live when your neck is broken? Someone laid a hand on
her forehead. But she couldn't really feel it so much as a tingling
sensation, as if she were very cold, walking in snow, and all real
feeling had left her. Can't see.

"Listen, honey." A young man's voice. One of those voices you could hear
in Boston or New Orleans or New York City. Fire-fighter, cop, saver of
the injured. "We're taking care of you, honey. The ambulance is on its
way. Now lie still, honey, don't you worry."

Someone touching her breast. No, taking the cards out of her pocket.
Jessica Miriam Reeves. Yes.

She stood beside Maharet and they were looking up at the giant map with
all the tiny lights. And she understood. Jesse born of Miriam, who was
born of Alice, who was born of Carlotta, who was born of Jane Marie, who
was born of Anne, who was born of Janet Belle, who was born of
Elizabeth, who was born of Louise, who was born of Frances, who was born
of Frieda, who was born of-

"If you will allow me, please, we are her friends-"

David.

They were lifting her; she heard herself scream, but she had not meant
to scream. She saw the screen again and the great tree of names. "Frieda
born of Dagmar, born of . . ."

"Steady now, steady! Goddamn it!"

The air changed; it went cool and moist; she felt the breeze moving over
her face; then all feeling left her hands and feet completely. She could
feel her eyelids but not move them.

Maharet was talking to her. "... came out of Palestine, down into
Mesopotamia and then up slowly through Asia Minor and into Russia and
then into Eastern Europe. Do you see?"

This was either a hearse or an ambulance and it seemed too quiet to be
the latter, and the siren, though steady, was too far away. What had
happened to David? He wouldn't have let her go, unless she was dead. But
then how could David have been there? David had told her nothing could
induce him to come. David wasn't here. She must have imagined it. And
the odd thing was, Miriam wasn't here either. "Holy Mary, Mother of God
. . . now and at the hour of our death

She listened: they were speeding through the city; she felt them turn
the corner; but where was her body? She couldn't feel it. Broken neck.
That meant surely that one had to be dead.

What was that, the light she could see through the jungle? A river? It
seemed too wide to be a river. How to cross it. But it wasn't Jesse who
was walking through the jungle, and now along the bank of the river. It
was somebody else. Yet she could see the hands out in front of her,
moving aside the vines and the wet sloppy leaves, as if they were her
hands. She could see red hair when she looked down, red hair in long
curling tangles, full of bits of leaf and earth. . . .

"Can you hear me, honey? We've got you. We're taking care of you. Your
friends are in the car behind us. Now don't you worry."

He was saying more. But she had lost the thread. She couldn't hear him,
only the tone of it, the tone of loving care. Why did he fee! so sorry
for her? He didn't even know her. Did he understand that it wasn't her
blood all over her shirt? Her hands? Guilty. Lestat had tried to tell
her it was evil, but that had been so unimportant to her, so impossible
to relate to the whole. It wasn't that she didn't care about what was
good and what was right; it was that this was bigger for the moment.
Knowing. And he'd been talking as if she meant to do something and she
hadn't meant to do anything at all.

That's why dying was probably just fine. If only Maharet would
understand. And to think, David was with her, in the car behind them.

David knew some of the story, anyway, and they would have a file on her:
Reeves, Jessica. And it would be more evidence. "One of our devoted
members, definitely the result of ... most dangerous . . . must not
under any circumstances attempt a sighting. . ."

They were moving her again. Cool air again, and smells rising of
gasoline and ether. She knew that just on the other side of this
numbness, this darkness, there was terrible pain and it was best to lie
very still and not try to go there. Let them carry you along; let them
move the gurney down the hallway.

Someone crying. A little girl.

"Can you hear me, Jessica? I want you to know that you're in the
hospital and that we are doing everything we can for you. Your friends
are outside. David Talbot and Aaron Lightner. We've told them that you
must lie very still. . . ."

Of course. When your neck is broken you are either dead or you die if
you move. That was it. Years ago in a hospital she had seen a young girl
with a broken neck. She remembered now. And the girl's body had been
tied to a huge aluminum frame. Every now and then a nurse would move the
frame to change the girl's position. Will you do that to me?

He was talking again but this time he was farther away. She walked a
little faster through the jungle, to get closer, to hear over the sound
of the river. He was saying . . .

". . . of course we can do all that, we can run those tests, of course,
but you must understand what I'm saying, this situation is terminal. The
back of the skull is completely crushed. You can see the brain. And the
obvious injury to the brain is enormous. Now, in a few hours the brain
will begin to swell, if we even have a few hours. . . ."

Bastard, you killed me. You threw me against the wall. If I could move
anything-my eyelids, my lips. But I'm trapped inside here. I have no
body anymore yet I'm trapped in here! When I was little, used to think
it would be like this, death. You'd be trapped in your head in the
grave, with no eyes to see and no mouth to scream. And years and years
would pass.

Or you roamed the twilight realm with the pale ghosts; thinking you were
alive when you were really dead. Dear God, I have to know when I'm dead.
I have lo know when it's begun!

Her lips. There was the faintest sensation. Something moist, warm.
Something parting her lips- But there's no one here, is there? They were
out in the hallway, and the room was empty. She would have known if
someone was here. Yet now she could taste it, the warm fluid flowing
into her mouth.

What is it? What are you giving me? I don't want to go under. Sleep, my
beloved.

I don't want to. I want to feel it when I die. I want to know! But the
fluid was filling her mouth, and she was swallowing. The muscles of her
throat were alive. Delicious the taste of it, the saltiness of it. She
knew this taste! She knew this lovely, tingling sensation. She sucked
harder. She could feel the skin of her face come alive, and the air
stirring around her. She could feel the breeze moving through the room.

A lovely warmth was moving down her spine. It was moving through her
legs and her arms, taking exactly the path the pain had taken, and all
her limbs were coming back. Sleep, beloved.

The back of her head tingled; and the tingling moved through the roots
of her hair.

Her knees were bruised but her legs weren't hurt and she'd be able to
walk again, and she could feel the sheet under her hand. She wanted to
reach up, but it was too soon for that, too soon to move.

Besides she was being lifted, carried.

And it was best to sleep now. Because if this was death ... well, it was
just fine. The voices she could barely hear, the men arguing,
threatening, they didn't matter now. It seemed David was calling out to
her. But what did David want her to do? To die? The doctor was
threatening to call the police. The police couldn't do anything now.
That was almost funny.

Down and down the stairs they went. Lovely cold air.

The sound of the traffic grew louder; a bus roaring past. She had never
liked these sounds before but now they were like the wind itself, that
pure. She was being rocked again, gently, as if in a cradle. She felt
the car move forward with a sudden lurch, and then the smooth easy
momentum. Miriam was there and Miriam wanted Jesse to look at her, but
Jesse was too tired now.

"I don't want to go, Mother."

"But Jesse. Please. It's not too late. You can still come!" Like David
calling. "Jessica."

Daniel

About halfway through, Daniel understood. The white-faced brothers and
sisters would circle each other, eye each other, even threaten each
other all during the concert, but nobody would do anything. The rule was
too hard and fast: leave no evidence of what we are-not victims, not a
single cell of our vampiric tissue.

Lestat was to be the only kill and that was to be done most carefully.
Mortals were not to see the scythes unless it was unavoidable. Snatch
the bastard when he tried to take his leave, that was the scheme;
dismember him before the cognoscenti only. That is, unless he resisted,
in which case he must die before his fans, and the body would have to be
destroyed completely.

Daniel laughed and laughed. Imagine Lestat allowing such a thing to
happen.

Daniel laughed in their spiteful faces. Pallid as orchids, these vicious
souls who filled the hall with their simmering outrage, their envy,
their greed. You would have thought they hated Lestat if for no other
reason than his flamboyant beauty.

Daniel had broken away from Armand finally. Why not?

Nobody could hurt him, not even the glowing stone figure he'd seen in
the shadows, the one so hard and so old he looked like the Golem of
legend. What an eerie thing that was, that stone one staring down at the
wounded mortal woman who lay with her neck broken, the one with the red
hair who looked like the twins in the dream. And probably some stupid
human being had done that to her, broken her neck like that. And the
blond vampire in the buckskin, pushing past them to reach the scene, he
had been an awe-inspiring sight as well, with the hardened veins bulging
on his neck and on the backs of his hands when he reached the poor
broken victim. Armand had watched the men take the red-haired woman away
with the most unusual expression on his face, as if he should somehow
intervene; or maybe it was only that the Golem thing, standing idly by,
made him wary. Finally, he'd shoved Daniel back into the singing crowd.
But there was no need to fear. It was sanctuary for them in this place,
this cathedral of sound and light.

And Lestat was Christ on the cathedral cross. How describe his
overwhelming and irrational authority? His face would have been cruel if
it hadn't been for the childlike rapture and exuberance. Pumping his
fist into the air, he bawled, pleaded, roared at the powers that be as
he sang of his downfall-Lelio, the boulevard actor turned into a
creature of night against his will!

His soaring tenor seemed to leave his body utterly as he recounted his
defeats, his resurrections, the thirst inside him which no measure of
blood could ever quench. "Am I not the devil in you all!" he cried, not
to the moonflower monsters in the crowd but to the mortals who adored
him.

And even Daniel was screaming, bellowing, leaping off his feet as he
cried in agreement, though the words meant nothing finally; it was
merely the raw force of Lestat's defiance. Lestat cursed heaven on
behalf of all who had ever been outcasts, all who had ever known
violation, and then turned, in guilt and malice, on their own kind.

It seemed to Daniel at the highest moments as though it were an omen
that he should find immortality on the eve of this great Mass. The
Vampire Lestal was God; or the nearest thing he had ever known to it.
The giant on the video screen gave his benediction to all that Daniel
had ever desired.

How could the others resist? Surely the fierceness of their intended
victim made him all the more inviting. The final message behind all
Lestat's lyrics was simple: Lestat had the gift that had been promised
to each of them; Lestat was unkillable. He devoured the suffering forced
upon him and emerged all the stronger. To join with him was to live
forever:

This is my Body. This is my Blood.

Yet the hate boiled among the vampire brothers and sisters. As the
concert came to a close, Daniel felt it keenly-an odor rising from the
crowd-an expanding hiss beneath the strum of the music.

Kill the god. Tear him limb from limb. Let the mortal worshipers do as
they have always done-mourn for him who was meant to die. "Go, the Mass
is ended."

The houselights went on. The fans stormed the wooden stage, tearing down
the black serge curtain to follow the fleeing musicians.

Armand grabbed Daniel's arm. "Out the side door," he said. "Our only
chance is to get to him quickly."

Khayman

It was just as he had expected. She struck out at the first of those who
struck at him. Lestat had come through the back door, Louis at his side,
and made a dash for his black Porsche when the assassins set upon him.
It seemed a rude circle sought to close, but at once the first, with
scythe raised, went up in flames. The crowd panicked, terrified children
stampeding in all directions. Another immortal assailant was suddenly on
fire. And then another.

Khayman slipped back against the wall as the clumsy humans hurtled past
him. He saw a tall elegant female blood drinker slice unnoticed through
the mob, and slide behind the wheel of Lestat's car, calling to Louis
and Lestat to join her. It was Gabrielle, the fiend's mother. And
logically enough the lethal fire did not harm her. There wasn't a
particle of fear in her cold blue eyes as she readied the vehicle with
swift, decisive gestures.

Lestat meantime turned around and around in a rage. Maddened, robbed of
the battle, he finally climbed into the car only because the others
forced him to do so.

And as the Porsche plowed viciously through the rushing youngsters,
blood drinkers burst into flame everywhere. In a horrid silent chorus,
their cries rose, their frantic curses, their final questions.

Khayman covered his face. The Porsche was halfway to the gates before
the crowd forced it to stop. Sirens screamed; voices roared commands;
children had fallen with broken limbs. Mortals cried in misery and
confusion.

Get to Armand, Khayman thought. But what was the use? He saw them
burning everywhere he looked in great writhing plumes of orange and blue
flame that changed suddenly to white in their heat as they released the
charred clothes which fell to the pavements. How could he come between
the fire and Armand? How could he save the young one, Daniel?

He looked up at the distant hills, at a tiny figure glowing against the
dark sky, unnoticed by all who screamed and fled and cried for help
around him.

Suddenly he felt the heat; he felt it touch him as it had in Athens. He
felt it dance about his face, he felt his eyes watering. Steadily he
regarded the distant tiny source. And then for reasons that he might
never himself understand, he chose not to drive back the fire, but
rather to see what it might do to him. Every fiber of his being said,
Give it back. Yet he remained motionless, washed of thought, and feeling
the sweat drip from him. The fire circled him, embraced him. And then it
moved away, leaving him alone, cold, and wounded beyond his wildest
imagining. Quietly he whispered a prayer: May the twins destroy you.

Daniel

"Fire!" Daniel caught the rank greasy stench just as he saw the flames
themselves breaking out here and there all through the multitude. What
protection was the crowd now? Like tiny explosions the fires were, as

groups of frantic teenagers stumbled to get away from them, and ran in
senseless circles, colliding helplessly with one another.

The sound. Daniel heard it again. It was moving above them. Armand
pulled him back against the building. It was useless. They could not get
to Lestat. And they had no cover. Dragging Daniel after him, Armand
retreated into the hall again. A pair of terrified vampires ran past the
entrance, then exploded into tiny conflagrations.

In horror, Daniel watched the skeletons glowing as they melted within
the pale yellow blaze. Behind them in the deserted auditorium a fleeing
figure was suddenly caught in the same ghastly flames. Twisting,
turning, he collapsed on the cement floor, smoke rising from his empty
clothing- A pool of grease formed on the cement, then dried up even as
Daniel stared at it.

Out into the fleeing mortals, they ran again, this time towards the
distant front gates over yards and yards of asphalt.

And suddenly they were traveling so fast that Daniel's feet had left the
ground. The world was nothing but a smear of color. Even the piteous
cries of the frightened fans were stretched, softened. Abruptly they
stopped at the gates, just as Lestat's black Porsche raced out of the
parking lot,-past them, and onto the avenue. Within seconds it was gone,
like a bullet traveling south towards the freeway.

Armand made no attempt to follow it; he seemed not even to see it. He
stood near the gatepost looking back over the heads of the crowd, beyond
the curved roof of the hall to the distant horizon. The eerie telepathic
noise was deafening now. It swallowed every other sound in the world; it
swallowed every sensation.

Daniel couldn't keep his hands from going to his ears, couldn't keep his
knees from buckling. He felt Armand draw close. But he could no longer
see. He knew that if it was meant to happen it would be now, yet still
he couldn't feel the fear; still he couldn't believe in his own death;
he was paralyzed with wonder and confusion.

Gradually the sound faded. Numb, he felt his vision clear; he saw the
great red shape of a lumbering ladder truck approach, the firemen
shouting for him to move out of the gateway. The siren came as if from
another world, an invisible needle through his temples.

Armand was gently pulling him out of the path. Frightened people
thundered past as if driven by a wind. He felt himself fall. But Armand
caught him. Into the warm crush of mortals, outside the fence they
passed, slipping among those who peered through the chain mesh at the
melee.

Hundreds still fled. Sirens, sour and discordant, drowned out their
cries. One fire engine after another roared up to the gates, to nudge
its way through dispersing mortals. But these sounds were thin and
distant, dulled still by the receding supernatural noise. Armand clung
to the fence, his eyes closed, his forehead pressed against the metal.
The fence shuddered, as if it alone could hear the thing as they heard
it.

It was gone.

An icy quiet descended. The quiet of shock, emptiness. Though the
pandemonium continued, it did not touch them.

They were alone, the mortals loosening, milling, moving away.

And the air carried those lingering preternatural cries like burning
tinsel again; more dying, but where?

Across the avenue he moved at Armand's side. Unhurried. And down a dark
side street they made their way, past faded stucco houses and shabby
corner stores, past sagging neon signs and over cracked pavements.

On and on, they walked. The night grew cold and still around them. The
sound of the sirens was remote, almost mournful.

As they came to a broad garish boulevard, a great lumbering trolleybus
appeared, flooded with a greenish light. Like a ghost it seemed,
proceeding towards them, through the emptiness and the silence. Only a
few forlorn mortal passengers peered from its smeared and dirty windows.
The driver drove as if in his sleep.

Armand raised his eyes, wearily, as if only to watch it pass. And to
Daniel's amazement the bus came to a halt for them.

They climbed aboard together, ignoring the little coin box, and sank
down side by side on the long leather bench seat. The driver never
turned his head from the dark windshield before him. Armand sat back
against the window. Dully, he stared at the black rubber floor. His hair
was tousled, his cheek smudged with soot. His lower lip protruded ever
so slightly. Lost in thought, he seemed utterly unconscious of himself.

Daniel looked at the lackluster mortals: the prune-faced woman with a
slit for a mouth who looked at him angrily; the drunken man, with no
neck, who snored on his chest; and the small-headed teenage woman with
the stringy hair and the sores at the corners of her mouth who held a
giant toddler on her lap with skin like bubblegum. Why, something was
horribly wrong with each of them. And there, the dead man on the back
seat, with his eyes half mast and the dried spit on his chin. Did nobody
know he was dead? The urine stank as it dried beneath him.

Daniel's own hands look dead, lurid. Like a corpse with one live arm,
the driver seemed, as he turned the wheel. Was this a hallucination? The
bus to hell?

No. Only a trolleybus like a million he had taken in his lifetime, on
which the weary and the down-and-out rode the city's streets through the
late hours. He smiled suddenly, foolishly. He was going to star!
laughing, thinking of the dead man back there, and these people just
riding along, and the way the light made everyone look, but then a sense
of dread returned.

The silence unnerved him. The slow rocking of the bus unnerved him; the
parade of dingy houses beyond the windows unnerved him; the sight of
Armand's listless face and empty stare was unbearable.

"Will she come back for us?" he asked. He could not endure it any
longer.

"She knew we were there," Armand said, eyes dull, voice low. "She passed
us over."

Khayman

He had retreated to the high grassy slope, with the cold Pacific beyond
it.

It was like a panorama now; death at a distance, lost in the lights, the
vapor-thin wails of preternatural souls interwoven with the darker,
richer voices of the human city.

The fiends had pursued Lestat, forcing the Porsche over the edge of the
freeway. Unhurt, Lestat had emerged from the wreck, spoiling for battle;
but the fire had struck again to scatter or destroy those who surrounded
him.

Finally left alone with Louis and Gabrielle, he had agreed to retreat,
uncertain of who or what had protected him.

And unbeknownst to the trio, the Queen pursued their enemies for them.

Over the roofs, her power moved, destroying those who had fled, those
who had tried to hide, those who had lingered near fallen companions in
confusion and anguish.

The night stank of their burning, these wailing phantoms that left
nothing on the empty pavement but their ruined clothes. Below, under the
arc lamps of the abandoned parking lots, the lawmen searched in vain for
bodies; the firefighters looked in vain for those to assist. The mortal
youngsters cried pit-eously.

Small wounds were treated; the crazed were narcotized and taken away
gently. So efficient the agencies of this plentiful time. Giant hoses
cleaned the lots. They washed away the scorched rags of the burnt ones.

Tiny beings down there argued and swore that they had witnessed these
immolations. But no evidence remained. She had destroyed completely her
victims.

And now she moved on far away from the hall, to search the deepest
recesses of the city. Her power turned corners and entered windows and
doorways. There would be a tiny burst of flame out there like the
striking of a sulphur match; then nothing.

The night grew quieter. Taverns and shops shut their doors, winking out
in the thickening darkness. Traffic thinned on the highways.

The ancient one she caught in the North Beach streets, the one who had
wanted but to see her face; she had burned him slowly as he crawled
along the sidewalk. His bones turned to ash, the brain a mass of glowing
embers in its last moments. Another she struck down upon a high flat
roof, so that he fell like a shooting star out over the glimmering city.
His empty clothes took flight like dark paper when it was finished.

And south Lestat went, to his refuge in Carmel Valley. Jubilant, drunk
on the love he felt for Louis and Gabrielle, he spoke of old times and
new dreams, utterly oblivious to the final slaughter.

"Maharet, where are you?" Khayman whispered. The night gave no answer.
If Mael was near, if Mael heard the call, he gave no sign of it. Poor,
desperate Mael, who had run out into the open after the attack upon

Jessica. Mael, who might have been slain now, too. Mael staring
helplessly as the ambulance carried Jesse away from him.

Khayman could not find him.

He combed the light-studded hills, the deep valleys in which the beat of
souls was like a thunderous whisper. "Why have I witnessed these
things?" he asked. "Why have the dreams brought me here?"

He stood listening to the mortal world.

The radios chattered of devil worship, riots, random fires, mass
hallucinations. They whined of vandalism and crazed youth. But it was a
big city for all its geographic smallness. The rational mind had already
encapsulated the experience and disregarded it. Thousands took no
notice. Others slowly and painstakingly revised in memory the impossible
things they had seen. The Vampire Lestat was a human rock star and
nothing more, his concert the scene of predictable though uncontrollable
hysteria.

Perhaps it was part of the Queen's design to so smoothly abort Lestat's
dreams. To burn his enemies off the earth before the frail blanket of
human assumptions could be irreparably damaged.

If this was so, would she punish the creature himself finally?

No answer came to Khayman.

His eyes moved over the sleepy terrain. An ocean fog had swept in,
settling in deep rosy layers beneath the-tops of the hills. The whole
had a fairy-tale sweetness to it now in the first hour past midnight.

Collecting his strongest power, he sought to leave the confines of his
body, to send his vision out of himself like the wandering ka of the
Egyptian dead, to see those whom the Mother might have spared, to draw
close to them.

"Armand," he said aloud. And then the lights of the city went dim. He
felt the warmth and illumination of another place, and Armand was there
before him.

He and his fledgling, Daniel, had come safely again to the mansion where
they would sleep beneath the cellar floor unmolested. Groggily the young
one danced through the large and sumptuous rooms, his mind full of
Lestat's songs and rhythms. Armand stared out into the night, his
youthful face as impassive as before. He saw Khayman! He saw him
standing motionless on the faraway hill, yet felt him near enough to
touch. Silently, invisibly, they studied one another.

It seemed Khayman's loneliness was more than he could bear; but the eyes
of Armand held no emotion, no trust, no welcome.

Khayman moved on, drawing on ever greater strength, rising higher and
higher in his search, so far from his body now that he could not for the
moment even locate it. To the north he went, calling the names Santino,
Pandora.

In a blasted field of snow and ice he saw them, two black figures in the
endless whiteness-Pandora's garments shredded by the wind, her eyes full
of blood tears as she searched for the dim outline of Marius's compound.

She was glad of Santino at her side, this unlikely explorer in his fine
clothes of black velvet. The long sleepless night through which Pandora
had circled the world had left her aching in every limb and near to
collapsing. All creatures must sleep; must dream. If she did not lie
down soon in some dark place, her mind would be unable to fight the
voices, the images, the madness. She did not want to take to the air
again, and this Santino could not do such things, and so she walked
beside him.

Santino cleaved to her, feeling only her strength, his heart shrunken
and bruised from the distant yet inescapable cries of those whom the
Queen had slaughtered. Feeling the soft brush of Khayman's gaze, he
pulled his black cloak tight around his face. Pandora took no notice
whatsoever.

Khayman veered away. Softly, it hurt him to see them touch; it hurt him
to see the two of them together.

In the mansion on the hill, Daniel slit the throat of a wriggling rat
and let its blood flow into a crystal glass. "Lestat's trick," he said
studying it in the light. Armand sat still by the fire, watching the red
jewel of blood in the glass as Daniel lifted it to his lips lovingly.

Back into the night Khayman moved, wandering higher again, far from the
city lights as if in a great orbit.

Mael, answer me. Let me know where you are. Had the Mother's cold fiery
beam struck him, too? Or did he mourn now so deeply for Jesse that he
hearkened to nothing and no one? Poor Jesse, dazzled by miracles, struck
down by a fledgling in the blink of an eye before anyone could prevent
it.

Maharet's child, my child!

Khayman was afraid of what he might see, afraid of what he dared not
seek to alter. But maybe the Druid was simply too strong for him now;
the Druid concealed himself and his charge from all eyes and all minds.
Either that or the Queen had had her way and it was finished.

Jesse

So quiet here. She lay on a bed that was hard and soft, and her body
felt floppy like that of a rag doll. She could lift her hand but then it
would drop, and still she could not see, except in a vague ghostly way
things that might have been an illusion.

For example lamps around her; ancient clay lamps shaped like fish and
filled with oil. They gave a thick odoriferous perfume to the room. Was
this a funeral parlor?

It came again, the fear that she was dead, locked in the flesh yet
disconnected. She heard a curious sound; what was it? A scissors
cutting. It was trimming the edges of her hair; the feel of it traveled
to her scalp. She felt it even in her intestines.

A tiny vagrant hair was plucked suddenly from her face; one of those
annoying hairs, quite out of place, which women so hate. She was being
groomed for the coffin, wasn't she? Who else would take such care,
lifting her hand now, and inspecting her fingernails so carefully.

But the pain came again, an electric flash moving down her back and she
screamed. She screamed aloud in this room where she'd been only hours
before in this very bed with the chains creaking.

She heard a gasp from someone near her. She tried to see, but she only
saw the lamps again. And some dim figure standing in the window. Miriam
watching.

"Where?" he asked. He was startled, trying to see the vision. Hadn't
this happened before?

"Why can't I open my eyes?" she asked. He could look forever and he
would never see Miriam.

"Your eyes are open," he said. How raw and tender his voice sounded. "I
can't give you any more unless I give it all. We are not healers. We are
slayers. It's time for you to tell me what you want. There is no one to
help me."

I don't know what I want. All I know is 1 don't want to die! I don't
want to stop living. What cowards we are, she thought, what liars. A
great fatalistic sadness had accompanied her all the way to this night,
yet there had been the secret hope of this always! Not merely to see, to
know, but to be part of....

She wanted to explain, to hone it carefully with audible words, but the
pain came again. A fiery brand touched to her spine, the pain shooting
into her legs. And then the blessed numbness. It seemed the room she
couldn't see grew dark and the flames of the ancient lamps sputtered.
Outside the forest whispered. The forest writhed in the dark. And Mael's
grip on her wrist was weak suddenly, not because he had let her go but
because she couldn't any longer feel it.

"Jesse!"

He shook her with both his hands, and the pain was like lightning
shattering the dark. She screamed through her clenched teeth. Miriam,
stony-eyed and silent, glared from the window.

"Mael, do it!" she cried.

With all her strength, she sat up on the bed. The pain was without shape
or limit; the scream strangled inside her. But then she opened her eyes,
truly opened them. In the hazy light, she saw Miriam's cold unmerciful
expression. She saw the tall bent figure of Mael towering over the bed.
And then she turned to the open door. Maharet was coming.

Mael didn't know, didn't realize, till she did. With soft silky steps,
Maharet came up the stairs, her long skirts moving with a dark rustling
sound; she came down the corridor.

Oh, after all these years, these long years! Through her tears, Jesse
watched Maharet move into the light of the lamps; she saw her shimmering
face, and the burning radiance of her hair. Maharet gestured for Mael to
leave them.

Then Maharet approached the bed. She lifted her hands, palms open, as if
in invitation; she raised her hands as if to receive a baby.

"Yes, do it."

"Say farewell then, my darling, to Miriam."

In olden times there was a terrible worship in the city of Carthage. To
the great bronze god Baal, the populace offered in sacrifice their
little children. The small bodies were laid on the statue's outstretched
arms, and then by means of a spring, the arms would rise and the
children would fall into the roaring furnace of the god's belly.

After Carthage was destroyed, only the Romans carried the old tale, and
as the centuries passed wise men came not to believe it. Too terrible,
it seemed, the immolation of these children. But as the archaeologists
brought their shovels and began to dig, they found the bones of the
small victims in profusion. Whole necropolises they unearthed of nothing
but little skeletons.

And the world knew the old legend was true; that the men and women of
Carthage had brought their offspring to the god and stood in obeisance
as their children tumbled screaming into the fire. It was religion.

Now as Maharet lifted Jesse, as Maharet's lips touched her throat, Jesse
thought of the old legend. Maharet's arms were like the hard metal arms
of the god Baal, and in one fiery instant Jesse knew unspeakable
torment.

But it was not her own death that Jesse saw; it was the deaths of
others-the souls of the immolated undead, rising upwards away from
terror and the physical pain of the flames that consumed their
preternatural bodies. She heard their cries; she heard their warnings;
she saw their faces as they left the earth, dazzling as they carried
with them still the stamp of human form without its substance; she felt
them passing from misery into the unknown; she heard their song just
beginning.

And then the vision paled, and died away, like music half heard and half
remembered. She was near to death; her body gone, all pain gone, all
sense of permanence or anguish.

She stood in the clearing in the sunshine looking down at the mother on
the altar. "In the flesh," Maharet said. "In the flesh all wisdom
begins. Beware the thing that has no flesh. Beware the gods, beware the
idea, beware the devil."

Then the blood came; it poured through every fiber of her body; she was
legs and arms again as it electrified her limbs, her skin stinging with
the heat; and the hunger making her body writhe as the blood sought to
anchor her soul to substance forever.

They lay in each other's arms, she and Maharet, and Maharet's hard skin
warmed and softened so that they became one wet and tangled thing, hair
enmeshed, Jesse's face buried in Maharet's neck as she gnawed at the
fount, as one shock of ecstasy passed through her after another.

Suddenly Maharet drew away and turned Jesse's face against the pillow.
Maharet's hand covered Jesse's eyes, and Jesse felt the tiny razor-sharp
teeth pierce her skin; she felt it all being taken back, drawn out. Like
the whistling wind, the sensation of being emptied, of being devoured;
of being nothing!

"Drink again, my darling." Slowly she opened her eyes; she saw the white
throat and the white breasts; she reached out and caught the throat in
her hands, and this time it was she who broke the flesh, she tore it.
And when the first spill of blood hit her tongue, she pulled Maharet
down under her. Utterly compliant Maharet was; hers; Maharet's breasts
against her breasts; Maharet's lips against her face, as she sucked the
blood, sucked it harder and harder. You are mine, you are utterly and
completely mine. All images, voices, visions, gone now.

They slept, or almost slept, folded against one another. It seemed the
pleasure left its shimmer; it seemed that to breathe was to feel it
again; to shift against the silken sheets or against Maharet's silken
skin was to begin again.

The fragrant wind moved through the room. A great collective sigh rose
from the forest. No more Miriam, no more the spirits of the twilight
realm, caught between life and death. She had found her place; her
eternal place.

As she closed her eyes, she saw the thing in the jungle stop and look at
her. The red-haired thing saw her and saw Maharet in her arms; it saw
the red hair; two women with red hair; and the thing veered and moved
towards them.

Khayman

Dead quiet the peace of Carmel Valley. So happy were the little coven in
the house, Lestat, Louis, Gabrielle, so happy to be together. Lestat had
rid himself of his soiled clothes and was resplendent again in shining
"vampire attire," even to the black velvet cloak thrown casually over
one shoulder. And the others, how animated they were, the woman
Gabrielle unbraiding her yellow hair rather absently as she talked in an
easy, passionate manner. And Louis, the human one, silent, yet
profoundly excited by the presence of the other two, entranced, as it
were, by their simplest gestures.

At any other time, how moved Khayman would have been by such happiness.
He would have wanted to touch their hands, look into their eyes, tell
them who he was and what he had seen, he would have wanted just to be
with them.

But she was near. And the night was not finished.

The sky paled and the faintest warmth of the morning crept across the
fields. Things stirred in the growing light. The trees shifted, their
leaves uncurling ever so slowly.

Khayman stood beneath the apple tree, watching the color of the shadows
change; listening to the morning. She was here, without question.

She concealed herself, willfully, and powerfully. But Khayman she could
not deceive. He watched; he waited, listening to the laughter and talk
of the small coven.

At the doorway of the house, Lestat embraced his mother, as she took
leave of him. Out into the gray morning she came, with a sprightly step,
in her dusty neglected khaki clothes, her thick blond hair brushed back,
the picture of a carefree wanderer. And the black-haired one, the pretty
one, Louis, was beside her.

Khayman watched them cross the grass, the female moving on into the open
field before the woods where she meant to sleep within the earth itself,
while the male entered the cool darkness of a small outbuilding.
Something so refined about that one, even as he slipped beneath the
floorboards, something about the way that he lay down as if in the
grave; the way he composed his limbs, falling at once into utter
darkness.

And the woman; with stunning violence, she made her deep and secret
hiding place, the leaves settling as if she had never been there. The
earth held her outstretched arms, her bent head. Into the dreams of the
twins she plunged, into images of jungle and river she would never
remember.

So far so good. Khayman did not want them to die, to burn up. Exhausted,
he stood with his back to the apple tree, the pungent green fragrance of
the apples enveloping him.

Why was she here? And where was she hiding? When he opened himself to
it, he felt the low radiant sound of her presence, rather like an engine
of the modern world, giving off some irrepressible whisper of itself and
its lethal power.

Finally Lestat emerged from the house and hurried towards the lair he
had made for himself beneath the acacia trees against the hillside.
Through a trapdoor he descended, down earthen steps, and into a dank
chamber.

So it was peace for them all, peace until tonight when he would be the
bringer of bad tidings.

The sun rose closer to the horizon; the first deflected rays appeared,
which always dulled Khayman's vision. He focused upon the soft deepening
colors of the orchard as all the rest of the world lost its distinct
lines and shapes. He closed his eyes for a moment, realizing that he
must go into the house, that he must seek some cool and shadowy place
where mortals were unlikely to disturb him.

And when the sun set, he'd be waiting for them when they woke. He would
tell them what he knew; he would tell them about the others. With a
sudden stab of pain he thought of Mael, and of Jesse, whom he could not
find, as if the earth had devoured them.

He thought of Maharet and he wanted to weep. But he made his way towards
the house now. The sun was warm on his back; his limbs were heavy.
Tomorrow night, whatever else came to pass, he wouldn't be alone. He
would be with Lestat and his cohorts; and if they turned him away, he
would seek out Armand. He would go north to Marius.

He heard the sound first-a loud, crackling roar. He turned, shielding
his eyes from the rising sun. A great spray of earth shot up from the
floor of the forest. The acacias swayed as if in a storm, limbs
cracking, roots heaved up from the soil, trunks falling helter-skelter.

In a dark streak of windblown garments the Queen rose with ferocious
speed, the limp body of Lestat dangling from her arms as she made for
the western sky away from the sunrise.

Khayman gave a loud cry before he could stop himself. And his cry rang
out over the stillness of the valley. So she had taken her lover.

Oh, poor lover, oh, poor beautiful blond-haired prince . . .

But there was no time to think or to act or to know his own heart; he
turned to the shelter of the house; the sun had struck the clouds and
the horizon had become an inferno.

Daniel stirred in the dark. The sleep seemed to lift like a blanket that
had been about to crush him. He saw the gleam of Armand's eye. He heard
Armand's whisper: "She's taken him."

Jesse moaned aloud. Weightless, she drifted in the pearly gloom. She saw
the two rising figures as if in a dance-the Mother and the Son. Like
saints ascending on the painted ceiling of a church. Her lips formed the
words "the Mother."

In their deep-dug grave beneath the ice, Pandora and Santino slept in
each other's arms. Pandora heard the sound. She heard Khayman's cry. She
saw Lestat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back, rising in
Akasha's embrace. She saw Akasha's black eyes fixed upon his sleeping
face. Pandora's heart stopped in terror.

Marius closed his eyes. He could keep them open no longer. Above the
wolves howled; the wind tore at the steel roof of the compound. Through
the blizzard the feeble rays of the sun came as if igniting the swirling
snow, and he could feel the dulling heat move down through layer upon
layer of ice to numb him.

He saw the sleeping figure of Lestat in her arms; he saw her rising into
the sky. "Beware of her, Lestat," he whispered with his last conscious
breath. "Danger."

On the cool carpeted floor, Khayman stretched out and buried his face in
his arm. And a dream came at once, a soft silky dream of a summer night
in a lovely place, where the sky was big over the city lights, and they
were all together, these immortals whose names he knew and held to his
heart now.


AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE...

Hide me from me. Fill these holes with eyes for mine are not mine. Hide
me head & need for I am no good so dead in life so much time. Be wing,
and shade my me from my desire to be hooked fish. That worm wine looks
sweet and makes my me blind. And, too, my heart hide for I shall at this
rate it also eat in time.

STAN RICE - "Cannibal" Some Lamb (1975)

LESTAT :

IN THE ARMS OF THE GODDESS

I CAN'T SAY WHEN I AWOKE, WHEN I FIRST CAME to my senses.

I remember knowing that she and I had been together for a long time,
that I'd been feasting on her blood with an animal abandon, that Enkil
was destroyed and she alone held the primeval power; and that she was
causing me to see things and understand things that made me cry like a
child.

Two hundred years ago, when I'd drunk from her in the shrine, the blood
had been silent, eerily and magnificently silent. Now it was an utter
transport of images-ravishing the brain just as the blood itself
ravished the body; I was learning everything that had happened; I was
there as the others died one by one in that horrible way.

And then there were the voices: the voices that rose and fell, seemingly
without purpose, like a whispering choir in a cave.

It seemed there was a lucid moment in which I connected everything-the
rock concert, the house in Carmel Valley, her radiant face before me.
And the knowledge that I was here now with her, in this dark snowy
place. I'd waked her. Or rather I had given her the reason to rise as
she had said it. The reason to turn and stare back at the throne on
which she'd sat and take those first faltering steps away from it.

Do you know what it meant to lift my hand and see it move in the light?
Do you know what it meant to hear the sudden sound of my own voice
echoing in that marble chamber?

Surely we had danced together in the dark snow-covered wood, or was it
only that we had embraced over and over again?

Terrible things had happened. Over the whole world, terrible things. The
execution of those who should never have been born. Evil spawn. The
massacre at the concert had been only the finish.

Yet I was in her arms in this chilling darkness, in the familiar scent
of winter, and her blood was mine again, and it was enslaving me- When
she drew away, I felt agony. I had to clear my thoughts, had to know
whether or not Marius was alive, whether or not Louis and Gabrielle, and
Armand, had been spared. I had to find myself again, somehow.

But the voices, the rising tide of voices! Mortals near and far.
Distance made no difference. Intensity was the measure. It was a million
times my old hearing, when I could pause on a city street and hear the
tenants of some dark building, each in his own chamber, talking,
thinking, praying, for as long and as closely as I liked.

Sudden silence when she spoke:

"Gabrielle and Louis are safe. I've told you this. Do you think I would
hurt those you love? Look into my eyes now and listen only to what I
say. I have spared many more than are required. And this I did for you
as well as for myself, that I may see myself reflected in immortal eyes,
and hear the voices of my children speaking to me. But I chose the ones
you love, the ones you would see again. I could not take that comfort
from you. But now you are with me, and you must see and know what is
being revealed to you. You must have courage to match mine."

I couldn't endure it, the visions she was giving me-that horrid little
Baby Jenks in those last moments; had it been a desperate dream the
moment of her death, a string of images flickering within her dying
brain? I couldn't bear it. And Laurent, my old companion Laurent, drying
up in the flames on the pavement; and on the other side of the world,
Felix, whom I had known also at the Theater of the Vampires, driven,
burning, through the alleyways of Naples, and finally into the sea. And
the others, so many others, the world over; I wept for them; I wept for
all of it. Suffering without meaning. "A life like that," I said of Baby

Jenks, crying. "That's why I showed you all of it," she answered.
"That's why it is finished. The Children of Darkness are no more. And we
shall have only angels now."

"But the others," I asked. "What has happened to Armand?" And the voices
were starting again, the low humming that could mount to a deafening
roar.

"Come now, my prince," she whispered. Silence again. She reached up and
held my face in her hands. Her black eyes grew larger, the white face
suddenly supple and almost soft. "If you must see it, I'll show you
those who still live, those whose names will become legend along with
yours and mine."

Legend?

She turned her head ever so slightly; it seemed a miracle when she
closed her eyes; because then the visible life went out of her
altogether. A dead and perfect thing, fine black eyelashes curling
exquisitely. I looked down at her throat; at the pale blue of the artery
beneath the flesh, suddenly visible as if she meant for me to see it.
The lust I felt was unsupportable. The goddess, mine! I took her roughly
with a strength that would have hurt a mortal woman. The icy skin seemed
absolutely impenetrable and then my teeth broke through it and the hot
fount was roaring into me again.

The voices came, yet they died back at my command. And there was nothing
then but the low rush of the blood and her heart beating slowly next to
my own.

Darkness. A brick cellar. A coffin made of oak and polished to a fine
luster. Locks of gold. The magic moment; the locks opened as if sprung
by an invisible key. The lid rose, revealing the satin lining. There was
a faint scent of Eastern perfume. I saw Armand lying on the white satin
pillow, a seraph with long full auburn hair; head to one side, eyes
blank, as if to wake was unfailingly startling. 1 watched him rise from
the coffin, with slow, elegant gestures; our gestures, for we are the
only beings who routinely rise from coffins. I saw him close the lid.
Across the damp brick floor, he walked to yet another coffin. And this
one he opened reverently, as if it were a casket containing a rare
prize. Inside, a young man lay sleeping; lifeless, yet dreaming.
Dreaming of a jungle where a red-haired woman walked, a woman I could
not clearly see. And then the most bizarre scene, something I'd glimpsed
before, but where? Two women kneeling beside an altar. That is, I
thought it was an altar. . . .

A tensing in her; a tightening. She shifted against me like a statue of
the Virgin ready to crush me. I swooned; I thought I heard her speak a
name. But the blood came in another gush and my body was throbbing again
with the pleasure; no earth; no gravity.

The brick cellar once more. A shadow had fallen over the young man's
body. Another had come into the cellar and placed a hand on Armand's
shoulder. Armand knew him. Mael was his name. Come.

But where is he taking them?

Purple evening in the redwood forest. Gabrielle was walking in that
careless, straight-backed, unstoppable way of hers, her eyes like two
chips of glass, giving back nothing to what she saw around her, and

there was Louis beside her, struggling gracefulK to keep up. Louis
looked so touchingly civilized in the wilderness; so hopelessly out of
place. The vampire guise of last night had been discarded; yet he seemed
even more the gentleman in his worn old clothing, merely a little down
on his luck. Out of his league with her, and does she know it? Will she
take care of him? Bui they're both afraid, afraid for me!

The tiny sky above was turning to polished porcelain; the trees seemed
to bring the light down their massive trunks almost to the roots. I
could hear a creek rushing in the shadows. Then I saw it. Gabrielle
walked right into the water in her brown boots. But where are they
going? And who was the third one with them, who came into view only as
Gabrielle turned back to look at him?- my God, such a face, and so
placid. Ancient, powerful, yet letting the two young ones walk before
him. Through the trees I could see a clearing, a house. On a high stone
veranda stood a red-haired woman; the woman whom I'd seen in the jungle?
Ancient expressionless mask of a face like the face of the male in the
forest who was looking up at her; face like the face of my Queen.

Let them come together. I sighed as the blood poured into me. II will
make it all the simpler. But who were they, these ancient ones, these
creatures with countenances washed as clean as her own?

The vision shifted. This time the voices were a soft wreath around us,
whispering, crying. And for one moment I wanted to listen, to try to
detach from the monstrous chorus one fleeting mortal song. Imagine it,
voices from all over, from the mountains of India, from the streets of
Alexandria, from the tiny hamlets near and far.

But another vision was coming.

Marius. Marius was climbing up out of a bloodstained pit of broken ice
with Pandora and Santino to aid him. They had just managed to reach the
jagged shelf of a basement floor. The dried blood was a crust covering
half of Marius's face; he looked angry, bitter, eyes dull, his long
yellow hair matted with blood. With a limp he went up a spiraling iron
stairs, Pandora and Santino in his wake. It was like a pipe through
which they ascended. When Pandora tried to help him he brushed her aside
roughly.

Wind. Bitter cold. Marius's house lay open to the elements as if an
earthquake had broken it apart. Sheets of glass were shattered into
dangerous fragments; rare and beautiful tropical fish were frozen on the
sand floor of a great ruined tank. Snow blanketed the furnishings and
lay heaped against the bookshelves, against the statues, against the
racks of records and tapes. The birds were dead in their cages. The
green plants were dripping with icicles. Marius stared at the dead fish
in the murky margin of ice in the bottom of the tank. He stared at the
great dead stalks of seaweed that lay among the shards of gleaming
glass.

Even as I watched, I saw him healing; the bruises seemed to melt from
his face; I saw fhe face itself regain its natural shape. His leg was
mending. He could stand almost straight. In rage he stared at the tiny
blue and silver fish. He looked up at the sky, at the white wind that
obliterated the stars completely. He brushed the flakes of dried blood
from his face and hair.

Thousands of pages had been scattered about by the wind- pages of
parchment, old crumbling paper. The swirling snow came down now lightly

into the ruined parlor. There Marius took up the brass poker for a
walking stick, and stared out through the ruptured wall at the starving
wolves howling in their pen. No food for them since he, their master,
had been buried. Ah, the sound of the wolves howling. I heard Santino
speak to Marius, try to tell him that they must go, they were expected,
that a woman waited for them in the redwood forest, a woman as old as
the Mother, and the meeting could not begin until they had come. A chord
of alarm went through me, What was this meeting? Marius understood but
he didn't answer. He was listening to the wolves. To the wolves. . . .

The snow and the wolves. I dreamed of wolves. I felt myself drift away,
back into my own mind, into my own dreams and memories. I saw a pack of
fleet wolves racing over the newly fallen snow.

I saw myself as a young man fighting them-a pack of wolves that had come
in deep winter to prey upon my father's village two hundred years ago. I
saw myself, the mortal man, so close to death that I could smell it. But
I had cut down the wolves one by one. Ah, such coarse youthful vigor,
the pure luxury of thoughtless irresistible life! Or so it seemed. At
the time it had been misery, hadn't it? The frozen valley, my horse and
dogs slain. But now all I could do was remember, and ah, to see the snow
covering the mountains, my mountains, my father's land.

I opened my eyes. She had let me go and forced me back a pace. For the
first time I understood where we really were. Not in some abstract
night, but in a real place and a place that had once, for all purposes,
been mine. "Yes," she whispered. "Look around you." I knew it by the
air, by the smell of winter, and as my vision cleared again, I saw the
broken battlements high above, and the tower.

"This is my father's house!" I whispered. "This is the castle in which I
was born."

Stillness. The snow shining white over the old floor. This had been the
great hall, where we now stood. God, to see it in ruins; to know that it
had been desolate for so long. Soft as earth the old stones seemed; and
here had been the table, the great long table fashioned in the time of
the Crusades; and there had been the gaping hearth, and there the front
door.

The snow was not falling now. I looked up and I saw the stars. The tower
had its round shape still, soaring hundreds of feet above the broken
roof, though all the rest was as a fractured shell. My father's house. .
. .

Lightly she stepped away from me, across the shimmering whiteness of the
floor, turning slowly in a circle, her head back, as if she were
dancing.

To move, to touch solid things, to pass from the realm of dreams into
the real world, of all these joys she'd spoken earlier. It took my
breath away, watching her. Her garments were timeless, a black silk
cloak, a gown of silken folds that swirled gently about her narrow form.
Since the dawn of history women have worn such garments, and they wear
them now into the ballrooms of the world. I wanted to hold her again,
but she forbade it with a soft sudden gesture. What had she said? Can
you imagine it? When I realized that he could no longer keep me there?
That f was standing before the throne, and he had not stirred.' That not
the faintest response came from him?

She turned; she smiled; the pale light of the sky struck the lovely
angles of her face, the high cheekbones, the gentle slope of her chin.
Alive she looked, utterly alive.

Then she vanished!

"Akasha!"

"Come to me," she said.

But where was she? Then I saw her far, far away from me at the very end
of the hall. A tiny figure at the entrance to the tower. I could scarce
make out the features of her face now, yet I could see behind her the
black rectangle of the open door.

I started to walk towards her.

"No," she said. "Time to use the strength I've given you. Merely come!"

I didn't move. My mind was clear. My vision was clear. And I knew what
she meant. But I was afraid. I'd always been the sprinter, the leaper,
the player of tricks. Preternatural speed that baffled mortals, that was
not new to me. But she asked for a different accomplishment. I was to
leave the spot where I stood and locate myself suddenly beside her, with
a speed which I myself could not track. It required a surrender, to try
such a thing.

"Yes, surrender," she said gently. "Come."

For a tense moment I merely looked at her, her white hand gleaming on
the edge of the broken door. Then I made the decision to be standing at
her side. It was as if a hurricane touched me, full of noise and random
force. Then I was there! I felt myself shudder all over. The flesh of my
face hurt a little, but what did that matter! I looked down into her
eyes and I smiled.

Beautiful she was, so beautiful. The goddess with her long black plaited
hair. Impulsively I took her in my arms and kissed her; kissed her cold
lips and felt them yield to me just a little.

Then the blasphemy of it struck me. It was like the time I'd kissed her
in the shrine. I wanted to say something in apology, but I was staring
at her throat again, hungry for the blood. It tantalized me that I could
drink it and yet she was who she was; she could have destroyed me in a
second with no more than the wish to see me die. That's what she had
done to the others. The danger thrilled me, darkly. I closed my fingers
round her arms, felt the flesh give ever so slightly. I kissed her
again, and again. I could taste blood in it.

She drew back and placed her finger on my lips. Then she took my hand
and led me through the tower door. Starlight fell through the broken
roof hundreds of feet above us, through a gaping hole in the floor of
the highest room.

"Do you see?" she said. "The room at the very top is still there? The
stairs are gone. The room is unreachable. Except for you and me, my
prince."

Slowly she started to rise. Never taking her eyes off me she traveled
upwards, the sheer silk of her gown billowing only slightly. I watched

in astonishment as she rose higher and higher, her cloak ruffled as if
by a faint breeze. She passed through the opening and then stood on the
very edge.

Hundreds of feet! Not possible for me to do this. - - .

"Come to me, my prince," she said, her soft voice carrying in the
emptiness. "Do as you have already done. Do it quickly, and as mortals
so often say, don't look down." Whispered laughter.

Suppose I got a fifth of the way up-a good leap, the height, say, of a
four-story building, which was rather easy for me but also the limit of-
Dizziness. Not possible. Disorientation. How had we come to be here? It
was all spinning again. I saw her but it was dreamlike, and the voices
were intruding. I didn't want to lose this moment. I wanted to remain
connected with time in a series of linked moments, to understand this on
my terms.

"Lestat!" she whispered. "Now." Such a tender thing, her small gesture
to me to be quick.

I did what I had done before; I looked at her and decided that I should
instantly be at her side.

The hurricane again, the air bruising me; I threw up my arms and fought
the resistance. I think I saw the hole in the broken boards as I passed
through it. Then I was standing there, shaken, terrified I would fall.

It sounded as if I were laughing; but I think I was just going mad a
little. Crying actually. "But how?" I said. "I have to know how I did
it."

"You know the answer," she said. "The intangible thing which animates
you has much more strength now than it did before. It moved you as it
has always moved you. Whether you take a step or take flight, it is
simply a matter of degree."

"I want to try it again," I said.

She laughed very softly, but spontaneously, "Look about this room," she
said. "Do you remember it?"

I nodded. "When I was a young man, I came here all the time," I said. I
moved away from her. I saw piles of ruined furniture- the heavy benches
and stools that had once filled our castle, medieval work so crude and
strong it was damn near indestructible, like the trees that fall in the
forest and remain for centuries, the bridges over streams, their trunks
covered with moss. So these things had not rotted away. Even old caskets
remained, and armor. Oh, yes, the old armor, ghosts of past glory. And
in the dust I saw a faint bit of color. Tapestries, but they were
utterly destroyed.

In the revolution, these things must have been brought here for
safekeeping and then the stairs had fallen away.

I went to one of the tiny narrow windows and I looked out on the land.
Far below, nestled in the mountainside, were the electric lights of a
little city, sparse, yet there. A car made its way down the narrow road.
Ah, the modern world so close yet far away. The castle was the ghost of
itself.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked her. "It's so painful to see this,
as painful as everything else."

"Look there, at the suits of armor," she said. "At what lies at their
feet. You remember the weapons you took with you the day you went out to
kill the wolves?"

"Yes. I remember them."

"Look at them again. I will give you new weapons, infinitely more
powerful weapons with which you will kill for me now."

"Kill?"

I glanced down at the cache of arms. Rusted, ruined it seemed; save for
the old broadsword, the fine one, which had been my father's and given
to him by his father, who had got it from his father, and so forth and
so on, back to the time of St. Louis. The lord's broadsword, which I,
the seventh son, had used on that long ago morning when I'd gone out
like a medieval prince to kill the wolves.

"But whom will I kill?" I asked.

She drew closer. How utterly sweet her face was, how brimming with
innocence. Her brows came together; there was that tiny vertical fold of
flesh in her forehead, just for an instant. Then all went smooth again.

"I would have you obey me without question," she said gently. "And then
understanding would follow. But this is not your way." "No," I
confessed. "I've never been able to obey anyone, not for very long."

"So fearless," she said, smiling.

She opened her right hand gracefully; and quite suddenly she was holding
the sword. It seemed I'd felt the thing moving towards her, a tiny
change of atmosphere, no more. I stared at it, at the jeweled scabbard
and the great bronze hilt that was of course a cross. The belt still
hung from it, the belt I'd bought for it, during some long ago summer,
of toughened leather and plaited steel.

It was a monster of a weapon, as much for battering as for slashing or
piercing. I remembered the weight of it, the way it had made my arm ache
when I had slashed again and again at the attacking wolves. Knights in
battle had often held such weapons with two hands.

But then what did I know of such battles? I'd been no knight. I'd
skewered an animal with this weapon. My only moment of mortal glory, and
what had it got me? The admiration of an accursed bloodsucker who chose
to make me his heir. She placed the sword in my hands.

"It's not heavy now, my prince," she said. "You are immortal. Truly
immortal. My blood is in you. And you will use your new weapons for me
as you once used this sword."

A violent shudder went through me as I touched the sword; it was as if
the thing held some latent memory of what it had witnessed; I saw the
wolves again; I saw myself standing in the blackened frozen forest ready
to kill.

And I saw myself a year later in Paris, dead, immortal; a monster, and
on account of those wolves. "Wolfkiller," the vampire had called me. He
had picked me from the common herd because I had slain those cursed
wolves! And worn their fur so proudly through the winter streets of
Paris.

How could I feel such bitterness even now? Did I want to be dead and
buried down below in the village graveyard? I looked out of the window
again at the snow-covered hillside. Wasn't the same thing happening now?
Loved for what I'd been in those early thoughtless mortal years. Again I
asked, "But whom or what will I kill?" No answer.

I thought of Baby Jenks again, that pitiful little thing, and all the
blood drinkers who were now dead. And I had wanted a war with them, a
little war. And they were all dead. All who had responded to the battle
call-dead. I saw the coven house in Istanbul burning; I saw an old one
she had caught and burned so slowly; one who had fought her and cursed
her. I was crying again.

"Yes, I took your audience from you," she said- "I burnt away the arena
in which you sought to shine. I stole the battle! But don't you see? I
offer you finer things than you have ever reached for. I offer you the
world, my prince."

"How so?"

"Stop the tears you shed for Baby Jenks, and for yourself. Think on the
mortals you should weep for. Envision those who have suffered through
the long dreary centuries-the victims of famine and deprivation and
ceaseless violence. Victims of endless injustice and endless battling.
How then can you weep for a race of monsters, who without guidance or
purpose played the devil's gambit on every mortal they chanced to meet!"

"I know. I understand-"

"Do you? Or do you merely retreat from such things to play your symbolic
games? Symbol of evil in your rock music. That is nothing, my prince,
nothing at all."

"Why didn't you kill me along with the rest of them?" I asked,
belligerently, miserably. I grasped the hilt of the sword in my right
hand. I fancied I could see the dried blood of the wolf still on it. I
pulled the blade free of the leather scabbard. Yes, the blood of the
wolf. "I'm no better than they are, am I?" I said. "Why spare any of
us?"

Fear stopped me suddenly. Terrible fear for Gabrielle and Louis and
Armand. For Marius. Even for Pandora and Mael. Fear for myself. There
isn't a thing made that doesn't fight for life, even when there is no
real justification. I wanted to live; I always had.

"I would have you love me," she whispered tenderly. Such a voice. In a
way, it was like Armand's voice; a voice that could caress you when it
spoke to you. Draw you into itself. "And so I take time with you," she
continued. She put her hands on my arms, and looked up into my eyes. "I
want you to understand. You are my instrument! And so the others shall
be if they are wise. Don't you see? There has been a design to all of
it-your coming, my waking. For now the hopes of the millennia can be
realized at last. Look on the little town below, and on this ruined

castle. This could be Bethlehem, my prince, my savior. And together we
shall realize all the world's most enduring dreams."

"But how could that possibly be?" I asked. Did she know how afraid I
was? That her words moved me from simple fear into terror? Surely she
did.

"Ah, you are so strong, princeling," she said. "But you were destined
for me, surely. Nothing defeats you. You fear and you don't fear. For a
century I watched you suffer, watched you grow weak and finally go down
in the earth to sleep, and I then saw you rise, the very image of my own
resurrection."

She bowed her head now as if she were listening to sounds from far away.
The voices rising. I heard them too, perhaps because she did. I heard
the ringing din. And then, annoyed, I pushed them away

"So strong," she said. "They cannot drag you down into them, the voices,
but do not ignore this power; it's as important as any other you
possess. They are praying to you just as they have always prayed to me."

I understood her meaning. But I didn't want to hear their prayers; what
could I do for them? What had prayers to do with the thing thai I was?

"For centuries they were my only comfort," she continued. "By the hour,
by the week, by the year I listened; it seemed in early times that the
voices I heard had woven a shroud to make of me a dead and buried thing,
Then I learned to listen more carefully. I learned to select one voice
from the many as if picking a thread from the whole. To that voice alone
I would listen and through it I knew the triumph and ruin of a single
soul."

I watched her in silence.

"Then as the years passed, I acquired a greater power-to leave my body
invisibly and to go to the single mortal whose voice I listened to, to
see then through that mortal's eyes. I would walk in the body of this
one, or that one. I would walk in sunshine and in darkness; I would
suffer; I would hunger; I would know pain. Sometimes I walked in the
bodies of immortals as I walked in the body of Baby Jenks. Often, I
walked with Marius. Selfish, vain Marius, Marius who confuses greed with
respect, who is ever dazzled by the decadent creations of a way of life
as selfish as he is. Oh, don't suffer so. I loved him. I love him now;
he cared for me. My keeper." Her voice was bitter but only for that
instant. "But more often I walked with one among the poor and the
sorrowful. It was the rawness of true life I craved."

She stopped; her eyes clouded; her brows came together and the tears
rose in her eyes, I knew the power of which she spoke, but only
slightly. I wanted so to comfort her but when I reached out to embrace
her she motioned for me to be still.

"I would forget who I was, where I was," she continued. "I would be that
creature, the one whose voice I had chosen. Sometimes for years. Then
the horror would return, the realization that I was a motionless,
purposeless thing condemned to sit forever in a golden shrine! Can you
imagine the horror of waking suddenly to that realization? That all you
have seen and heard and been is nothing but illusion, the observation of
another's life? I would return to myself. I would become again what you
see before you. This idol with a heart and brain." I nodded. Centuries

ago when I had first laid eyes upon her, I had imagined unspeakable
suffering locked within her. I had imagined agonies without expression.
And I had been right.

"I knew he kept you there," I said. I spoke of Enkil. Enkil who was now
gone, destroyed. A fallen idol. I was remembering the moment in the
shrine when I'd drunk from her and he'd come to claim her and almost
finished me then and there. Had he known what he meant to do? Was all
reason gone even then?

She only smiled in answer. Her eyes were dancing as she looked out into
the dark. The snow had begun again, swirling almost magically, catching
the light of the stars and the moon and diffusing it through all the
world, it seemed.

"It was meant, what happened," she answered finally. "That I should pass
those years growing ever more strong. Growing so strong finally that no
one ... no one can be my equal." She stopped. Just for a moment her
conviction seemed to waver. But then she grew confident again. "He was
but an instrument in the end, my poor beloved King, my companion in
agony. His mind was gone, yes. And I did not destroy him, not really. I
took into myself what was left of him. And at times I had been as empty,
as silent, as devoid of the will even to dream as he was. Only for him
there was no returning. He had seen his last visions. He was of no use
anymore. He has died a god's death because it only made me stronger. And
it was all meant, my prince. All meant from start to finish." "But how?
By whom?"

"Whom?" She smiled again. "Don't you understand? You need look no
further for the cause of anything. I am the fulfillment and I shall from
this moment on be the cause. There is nothing and no one now who can
stop me." Her face hardened for a second. That wavering again. "Old
curses mean nothing. In silence I have attained such power that no force
in nature could harm me. Even my first brood cannot harm me though they
plot against me. It was meant that those years should pass before you
came." "How did I change it?"

She came a step closer. She put her arm around me and it felt soft for
the moment, not like the hard thing it truly was. We were just two
beings standing near to each other, and she looked indescribably lovely
to me, so pure and otherworldly. I felt the awful desire for the blood
again. To bend down, to kiss her throat, to have her as I had had a
thousand mortal women, yet she the goddess, she with the immeasurable
power. I felt the desire rising, cresting.

Again, she put her finger on my lips, as if to say be still.

"Do you remember when you were a boy here?" she asked. "Think back now
on the time when you begged them to send you to the monastery school. Do
you remember the things the brothers taught you? The prayers, the hymns,
the hours you worked in the library, the hours in the chapel when you
prayed alone?"

"I remember, of course." I felt the tears coming again. I could see it
so vividly, the monastery library, and the monks who had taught me and
believed I could be a priest. I saw the cold little cell with its bed of
boards; I saw the cloister and the garden veiled in rosy shadow; God, I
didn't want to think now of those times. But some things can never be
forgotten.

"Do you remember the morning that you went into the chapel," she
continued, "and you knelt on the bare marble floor, with your arms out
in the form of the cross, and you told God you would do anything if only
he would make you good?"

"Yes, good. . . ." Now it was my voice that was tinged with bitterness.

"You said you would suffer martyrdom; torments unspeakable; it did not
matter; if only you were to be someone who was good."

"Yes, I remember." I saw the old saints; I heard the hymns that had
broken my heart. I remembered the morning my brothers had come to take
me home, and I had begged them on my knees to let me stay there.

"And later, when your innocence was gone, and you took the high road to
Paris, it was the same thing you wanted; when you danced and sang for
the boulevard crowds, you wanted to be good."

"I was," I said haltingly. "It was a good thing to make them happy and
for a little while I did."

"Yes, happy," she whispered.

"I could never explain to Nicolas, my friend, you know, that it was so
important to ... believe in a concept of goodness, even if we make it up
ourselves. We don't really make it up. It's there, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, it's there," she said. "It's there because we put it there."

Such sadness. I couldn't speak. I watched the falling snow. I clasped
her hand and felt her lips against my cheek.

"You were born for me, my prince," she said. "You were tried and
perfected. And in those first years, when you went into your mother's
bedchamber and brought her into the world of the undead with you, it was
but a prefigurement of your waking me. I am your true Mother, the Mother
who will never abandon you, and I have died and been reborn, too. All
the religions of the world, my prince, sing of you and of me."

"How so?" I asked. "How can that be?"

"Ah, but you know. You know!" She took the sword from me and examined
the old belt slowly, running it across the open palm of her right hand.
Then she dropped it down into the rusted heap-the last remnants on earth
of my mortal life. And it was as if a wind touched these things, blowing
them slowly across the snow-covered floor, until they were gone.

"Discard your old illusions," she said. "Your inhibitions. They are no
more of use than these old weapons. Together, we will make the myths of
the world real."

A chill cut through me, a dark chill of disbelief and then confusion;
but her beauty overcame it.

"You wanted to be a saint when you knelt in that chapel," she said. "Now
you shall be a god with me."

There were words of protest on the tip of my tongue; I was frightened;
some dark sense overcame me. Her words, what could they possibly mean?

But suddenly I felt her arm around me, and we were rising out of the
tower up through the shattered roof. The wind was so fierce it cut my
eyelids. I turned towards her. My right arm went round her waist and I
buried my head against her shoulder.

I heard her soft voice in my ear telling me to sleep. It would be hours
before the sun set on the land to which we were going, to the place of
the first lesson.

Lesson. Suddenly I was weeping again, clinging to her, weeping because I
was lost, and she was all there was to cling to. And I was in terror now
of what she would ask of me.

MARIUS COMING TOGETHER

THEY MET AGAIN AT THE EDGE OF THE REDWOOD forest, their clothes
tattered, their eyes tearing from the wind. Pandora stood to the right
of Marius, San-tino to the left. And from the house across the clearing,
Mael came towards them, a lanky figure almost loping over the mown
grass.

Silently, he embraced Marius.

"Old friend," Marius said. But his voice had no vitality. Exhausted, he
looked past Mael towards the lighted windows of the house. He sensed a
great hidden dwelling within the mountain behind the visible structure
with its peaked and gabled roof.

And what lay there waiting for him? For all of them? If only he had the
slightest spirit for it; if only he could recapture the smallest part of
his own soul.

"I'm weary," he said to Mael. "I'm sick from the journey. Let me rest
here a moment longer. Then I'll come."

Marius did not despise the power to fly, as he knew Pandora did,
nevertheless it invariably chastened him. He had been defenseless
against it on this night of all nights; and he had now to feel the earth
under him, to smell the forest, and to scan the distant house in a
moment of uninterrupted quiet. His hair was tangled from the wind and
still matted with dried blood. The simple gray wool jacket and pants he
had taken from the ruins of his house barely gave him warmth. He brought
the heavy black cloak close around him, not because the night here
required it, but because he was still chilled and sore from the wind.

Mael appeared not to like his hesitation, but to accept it. Suspiciously
he gazed at Pandora, whom he had never trusted, and then with open
hostility he stared at Santino, who was busy brushing off his black
garments and combing his fine, neatly trimmed black hair. For one
second, their eyes met, Santino bristling with viciousness, then Mael
turned away.

Marius stood still listening, thinking. He could feel the last bit of
healing in his body; it rather amazed him that he was once again whole.
Even as mortals learn year by year that they are older and weaker, so
immortals must learn that they are stronger than ever they imagined they
would be. It maddened him at the moment.

Scarcely an hour had passed since he was helped from the icy pit by
Santino and Pandora, and now it was as if he had never been there,

crushed and helpless, for ten days and nights, visited again and again
by the nightmares of the twins. Yet nothing could ever be as it had
been.

The twins. The red-haired woman was inside the house waiting. Santino
had told him this. Mael knew it too. But who was she? And why did he not
want to know the answers? Why was this the blackest hour he had ever
known? His body was fully healed, no doubt about it; but what was going
to heal his soul?

Armand in this strange wooden house at the base of the mountain? Armand
again after all this time? Santino had told him about Armand also, and
that the others-Louis and Gabrielle- had also been spared.

Mael was studying him. "He's waiting for you," he said. "Your Amadeo."
It was respectful, not cynical or impatient.

And out of the great bank of memories that Marius carried forever with
him, there came a long neglected moment, startling in its purity-Mael
coming to the palazzo in Venice in the contented years of the fifteenth
century, when Marius and Armand had known such happiness, and Mael
seeing the mortal boy at work with the other apprentices on a mural
which Marius had only lately left to their less competent hands. Strange
how vivid, the smell of the egg tempera, the smell of the candles, and
that familiar smell-not unpleasant now in remembering-which permeated
all Venice, the smell of the rottenness of things, of the dark and
putrid waters of the canals. "And so you would make that one?" Mael had
asked with simple directness. "When it's time," Marius had said
dismissively, "when it's time." Less than a year later, he had made his
little blunder. "Come into my arms, young one, I can live without you no
more."

Marius stared at the distant house. My world trembles and I thinkofhim,
my Amadeo, my Armand. The emotions he felt were suddenly as bittersweet
as music, the blended orchestral melodies of recent centuries, the
tragic strains of Brahms or Shostakovich which he had come to love.

But this was no time for cherishing this reunion. No time to feel the
keen warmth of it, to be glad of it, and to say all the things to Armand
that he so wanted to say.

Bitterness was something shallow compared to his present state of mind.
Should have destroyed them, the Mother and the Father. Should have
destroyed us all.

"Thank the gods," Mael said, "that you did not."

"And why?" Marius demanded. "Tell me why?"

Pandora shuddered. He felt her arm come around his waist. And why did
that make him so angry? He turned sharply to her; he wanted to strike
her, push her away. But what he saw stopped him. She wasn't even looking
at him; and her expression was so distant, so soul weary that he felt
his own exhaustion all the more heavily. He wanted to weep. The well-
being of Pandora had always been crucial to his own survival. He did not
need to be near her-better that he was not near her-but he had to know
that she was somewhere, and continuing, and that they might meet again.
What he saw now in her-had seen earlier-filled him with foreboding. If
he felt bitterness, then Pandora felt despair.

"Come," Santino said, "they're waiting." It was said with courtly
politeness.

"I know," Marius answered.

"Ah, what a trio we are!" Pandora whispered suddenly. She was spent,
fragile, hungering for sleep and dreams, yet protectively she tightened
her grip on Marius's waist.

"I can walk unaided, thank you," he said with uncharacteristic meanness,
and to this one, the one he most loved.

"Walk, then," she answered. And just for a second, he saw her old
warmth, even a spark of her old humor. She gave him a little shove, and
then started out alone towards the house.

Acid. His thoughts were acid as he followed. He could not be of use to
these immortals. Yet he walked on with Mael and Santino into the light
streaming from the windows beyond. The redwood forest receded into
shadow; not a leaf moved. But the air was good here, warm here, full of
fresh scents and without the sting of the north.

Armand. It made him want to weep.

Then he saw the woman appear in the doorway. A sylph with her long curly
red hair catching the hallway light.

He did not stop, but surely he felt a little intelligent fear. Old as
Akasha she was, certainly. Her pale eyebrows were all but faded into the
radiance of her countenance. Her mouth had no color anymore. And her
eyes. . . . Her eyes were not really her eyes. No, they had been taken
from a mortal victim and they were already failing her. She could not
see very well as she looked at him- Ah, the blinded twin from the
dreams, she was. And she felt pain now in the delicate nerves connected
to the stolen eyes.

Pandora stopped at the edge of the steps.

Marius went past her and up onto the porch. He stood before the red-
haired woman, marveling at her height-she was as tall as he was-and at
the fine symmetry of her masklike face. She wore a flowing gown of black
wool with a high neck and full dagged sleeves. In long loose gores the
cloth fell from a slender girdle of braided black cord just beneath her
small breasts. A lovely garment really. It made her face seem ail the
more radiant and detached from everything around it, a mask with the
light behind it, glowing in a frame of red hair.

But there was a great deal more to marvel at than these simple
attributes which she might have possessed in one form or another six
thousand years ago. The woman's vigor astonished him. It gave her an air
of infinite flexibility and overwhelming menace. Was she the true
immortal?-the one who had never slept, never gone silent, never been
released by madness? One who had walked with a rational mind and
measured steps through all the millennia since she had been born?

She let him know, for what it was worth, that this was exactly what she
was.

He could see her immeasurable strength as if it were incandescent light;
yet he could sense an immediate informality, the immediate receptivity
of a clever mind.

How to read her expression, however. How to know what she really felt.

A deep, soft femininity emanated from her, no less mysterious than
anything else about her, a tender vulnerability that he associated
exclusively with women though now and then he found it in a very young
man. In the dreams, her face had evinced this tenderness; now it was
something invisible but no less real. At another time it would have
charmed him; now he only took note of it, as he noted her gilded
fingernails, so beautifully tapered, and the jeweled rings she wore.

"All those years you knew of me," he said politely, speaking in the old
Latin. "You knew I kept the Mother and the Father.

Why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

She considered for a long moment before answering, her eyes moving back
and forth suddenly over the others who drew close to him now.

Santino was terrified of this woman, though he knew her very well. And
Mael was afraid of her too, though perhaps a little less. In fact, it
seemed that Mael loved her and was bound to her in some subservient way.
As for Pandora, she was merely apprehensive. She drew even closer to
Marius as if to stand with him, regardless of what he meant to do.

"Yes, I knew of you," the woman said suddenly. She spoke English in the
modern fashion. But it was the unmistakable voice of the twin in the
dream, the blind twin who had cried out the name of her mute sister,
Mekare, as both had been shut up in stone coffins by the angry mob.

Our voices never really change, Marius thought. The voice was young,
pretty. It had a reticent softness as she spoke again.

"I might have destroyed your shrine if I had come," she said. "I might
have buried the King and the Queen beneath the sea. 1 might even have
destroyed them, and so doing, destroyed ail of us. And this I didn't
want to do. And so I did nothing. What would you have had me do? I
couldn't take your burden from you. I couldn't help you. So I did not
come."

It was a better answer than he had expected. It was not impossible to
like this creature. On the other hand, this was merely the beginning.
And her answer-it wasn't the whole truth.

"No?" she asked him. Her face revealed a tracery of subtle lines for an
instant, the glimpse of something that had once been human. "What is the
whole truth?" she asked. "That I owed you nothing, least of all the
knowledge of my existence and that you are impertinent to suggest that I
should have made myself known to you? I have seen a thousand like you. I
know when you come into being. I know when you perish. What are you to
me? We come together now because we have to. We are in danger. All
living things are in danger! And maybe when this is finished we will
love each other and respect each other. And maybe not. Maybe we'll all
be dead."

"Perhaps so," he said quietly. He couldn't help smiling. She was right.
And he liked her manner, the bone-hard way in which she spoke.

It had been his experience that all immortals were irrevocably stamped
by the age in which they were born. And so it was true, also, of even
this ancient one, whose words had a savage simplicity, though the timbre
of the voice had been soft.

"I'm not myself," he added hesitantly. "I haven't survived all this as
well as I should have survived it. My body's healed-the old miracle." He
sneered. "But I don't understand my present view of things. The
bitterness, the utter-" He stopped.

"The utter darkness," she said.

"Yes. Never has life itself seemed so senseless," he added. "I don't
mean for us. I mean-to use your phrase-for all living things. It's a
joke, isn't it? Consciousness, it's a kind of joke."

"No," she said. "That's not so."

"I disagree with you. Will you patronize me? Tell me now how many
thousands of years you've lived before I was born? How much you know
that I don't know?" He thought again of his imprisonment, the ice
hurting him, the pain shooting through his limbs. He thought of the
immortal voices that had answered him; the rescuers who had moved
towards him, only to be caught one by one by Akasha's fire. He had heard
them die, if he had not seen them! And what had sleep meant for him? The
dreams of the twins.

She reached out suddenly and caught his right hand gently in both of
hers. It was rather like being held in the maw of a machine; and though
Marius had inflicted that very impression upon many young ones himself
over the years, he had yet to feel such overpowering strength himself.

"Marius, we need you now," she said warmly, her eyes glittering for an
instant in the yellow light that poured out of the door behind her, and
out of the windows to the right and to the left.

"For the love of heaven, why?"

"Don't jest," she answered. "Come into the house. We must talk while we
have time."

"About what?" he insisted. "About why the Mother has allowed us to live?
I know the answer to that question. It makes me laugh. You she cannot
kill, obviously, and we ... we are spared because Lestat wants it. You
realize this, don't you? Two thousand years I cared for her, protected
her, worshiped her, and she has spared me now on account of her love for
a two-hundred-year-old fledgling named Lestat."

"Don't be so sure of it!" Santino said suddenly.

"No," the woman said. "It's not her only reason. But there are many
things we must consider-"

"I know you're right." he said. "But I haven't the spirit for it. My
illusions are gone, you see, and I didn't even know they were illusions.
I thought I had attained such wisdom! It was my principal source of
pride. I was with the eternal things. Then, when I saw her standing
there in the shrine, I knew that all my deepest hopes and dreams had

come true! She was alive inside that body. Alive, while I played the
acolyte, the slave, the eternal guardian of the tomb!"

But why try to explain it? Her vicious smile, her mocking words to him,
the ice falling. The cold darkness afterwards and the twins. Ah, yes,
the twins. That was at the heart of it as much as anything else, and it
occurred to him suddenly that the dreams had cast a spell on him. He
should have questioned this before now. He looked at her, and the dreams
seemed to surround her suddenly, to take her out of the moment back to
those stark times. He saw sunlight; he saw the dead body of the mother;
he saw the twins poised above the body. So many questions . . .

"But what have these dreams to do with this catastrophe!" he demanded
suddenly. He had been so defenseless against those endless dreams.

The woman looked at him for a long moment before answering. "This I will
tell you, insofar as I know. But you must calm yourself. It's as if
you've got your youth back, and what a curse it must be."

He laughed. "I was never young. But what do you mean by this?"

"You rant and rave. And I can't console you."

"And you would if you could?"

"Yes."

He laughed softly.

But very gracefully she opened her arms to him. The gesture shocked him,
not because it was extraordinary but because he had seen her so often go
to embrace her sister in this manner in the dreams. "My name is
Maharet," she said. "Call me by my name and put away your distrust. Come
into my house."

She leant forward, her hands touching the sides of his face as she
kissed him on the cheek. Her red hair touched his skin and the sensation
confused him. The perfume rising from her clothes confused him-the faint
Oriental scent that made him think of incense, which always made him
think of the shrine.

"Maharet," he said angrily. "If I am needed, why didn't you come for me
when I lay in that pit of ice? Could she have stopped you?"

"Marius, I have come," she said. "And you are here now with us." She
released him, and let her hands fall, gracefully clasped before her
skirts. "Do you think I had nothing to do during these nights when all
our kind were being destroyed? To the left and right of me, the world
over, she slew those I had loved or known. I could not be here and there
to protect these victims. Cries reached my ears from every corner of the
earth. And I had my own quest, my own sorrow-" Abruptly she stopped.

A faint carnal blush came over her; in a warm flash the normal
expressive lines of her face returned. She was in pain, both physical
and mental, and her eyes were clouding with thin blood tears. Such a
strange thing, the fragility of the eyes in the indestructible body. And
the suffering emanating from her-he could not bear it-it was like the
dreams themselves. He saw a great riff of images, vivid yet wholly
different. And quite suddenly he realized-

"You aren't the one who sent the dreams to us!" he whispered. "You are
not the source."

She didn't answer.

"Ye gods, where is your sister! What does all this mean?"

There was a subtle recoiling, as if he'd struck her heart. She tried to
veil her mind from him; but he felt the unquenchable pain. In silence,
she stared at him, taking in all of his face and figure slowly and
obviously, as if to let him know that he had unforgivably transgressed.

He could feel the fear coming from Mael and Santino, who dared to say
nothing. Pandora drew even closer to him and gave him a little warning
signal as she clasped his hand.

Why had he spoken so brutally, so impatiently? My quest, my own sorrow.
. . . But damn it all!

He watched her close her eyes, and press her fingers tenderly to her
eyelids as if she would make the ache in her eyes go away, but she could
not.

"Maharet," he said with a soft, honest sigh. "We're in a war and we
stand about on the battlefield speaking harsh words to each other. I am
the worst offender. I only want to understand."

She looked up at him, her head still bowed, her hand hovering before her
face. And the look was fierce, almost malicious. Yet he found himself
staring senselessly at the delicate curve of her fingers, at the gilded
nails and the ruby and emerald rings which flashed suddenly as if
sparked with electric light. The most errant and awful thought came to
him, that if he didn't stop being so damned stupid he might never see
Armand. She might drive him out of here or worse. . . . And he wanted
!so-before it was over-to see Armand.

"You come in now, Marius," she said suddenly, her voice :polite,
forgiving. "You come with me, and be reunited with your ·old child, and
then we'll gather with the others who have the same 'questions. We will
begin."

"Yes, my old child. . . ." he murmured. He felt the longing for Armand
again like music, like Bartok's violin phrases played in a remote and
safe place where there was all the time in the world to hear. Yet he
hated her; he hated all of them. He hated himself. The other twin, where
was the other twin? Flashes of heated jungle. Flashes of the vines torn
and the saplings breaking underfoot. He tried to reason, but he
couldn't. Hatred poisoned him.

Many a time he had witnessed this black denial of life in mortals. He
had heard the wisest of them say, "Life is not worth it," and he had
never fathomed it; well, he understood it now.

Vaguely he knew she had turned to those around him. She was welcoming
Santino and Pandora into the house.

As if in a trance, he saw her turn to lead the way. Her hair was so long
it fell to her waist in back, a great mass of soft red curls. And he
felt the urge to touch it, see if it was as soft as it looked. How
positively remarkable that he could be distracted by something lovely at

this moment, something impersonal, and that it could make him feel all
right; as if nothing had happened; as if the world were good. He beheld
the shrine intact again; the shrine at the center of his world. Ah, the
idiot human brain, he thought, I how it seizes whatever it can. And to
think Armand was waiting, so near. . . .

She led them through a series of large, sparely furnished rooms.

The place for all its openness had the air of a citadel; the ceiling
beams were enormous; the fireplaces, each with a roaring blaze, were no
more than open stone hearths.

So like the old meeting halls of Europe in the dark times, when the
Roman roads had fallen to ruin and the Latin tongue had been forgotten,
and the old warrior tribes had risen again. The Celts had been
triumphant in the end really. They were the ones who conquered Europe;
its feudal castles were no more than Celtic encampments; even in the
modern states, the Celtic superstitions, more than Roman reason, lived
on.

But the appointments of this place hearkened back to even earlier times.
Men and women had lived in cities built like this before the invention
of writing; in rooms of plaster and wood; among things woven, or
hammered by hand.

He rather liked it; ah, the idle brain again, he thought, that he could
like something at such a time. But the places built by immortals always
intrigued him. And this one was a place to study slowly, to come to know
over a great span of time.

Now they passed through a steel door and into the mountain itself. The
smell of the raw earth enclosed him. Yet they walked in new metal
corridors, with walls of tin. He could hear the generators, the
computers, all the sweet humming electrical sounds that had made him
feel so safe in his own house.

Up an iron stairs they went. It doubled back upon itself again and again
as Maharet led them higher and higher. Now roughened walls revealed the
innards of the mountain, its deep veins of colored clay and rock. Tiny
ferns grew here; but where did the light come from? A skylight high
above. Little portal to heaven. He glanced up thankfully at the bare
glimmer of blue light.

Finally they emerged on a broad landing and entered a small darkened
room. A door lay open to a much larger chamber where the others waited;
but all Marius could see for the moment was the bright shock of distant
firelight, and it made him turn his eyes away.

Someone was waiting here in this little room for him, someone whose
presence he had been unable, except by the most ordinary means, to
detect. A figure who stood behind him now. And as Maharet went on into
the large room, taking Pandora and Santino and Mael with her, he
understood what was about to happen. To brace himself he took a slow
breath and closed his eyes.

How trivial all his bitterness seemed; he thought of this one whose
existence had been for centuries unbroken suffering; whose youth with
all its needs had been rendered truly eternal; this one whom he had
failed to save, or to perfect. How many times over the years had he
dreamed of such a reunion, and he had never had the courage for it; and

now on this battlefield, in this time of ruin and upheaval, they were at
last to meet.

"My love," he whispered. He felt himself chastened suddenly as he had
been earlier when he had flown up and up over the Snowy wastes past the
realm of the indifferent clouds. Never had he spoken words more
heartfelt. "My beautiful Amadeo," he said.

And reaching out he felt the touch of Armand's hand-Supple still this
unnatural flesh, supple as if it were human, and cool and so soft. He
couldn't help himself now. He was weeping. He opened his eyes to see the
boyish figure standing before him. Oh, such an expression. So accepting,
so yielding. Then he opened his arms.

Centuries ago in a palazzo in Venice, he had tried to capture in
imperishable pigment the quality of this love. What had been its lesson?
That in all the world no two souls contain the same secret, the same
gift of devotion or abandon; that in a common child, a wounded child, he
had found a blending of sadness and simple grace that would forever
break his heart? This one had understood him! This one had loved him as
no other ever had. Through his tears he saw no recrimination for the
grand experiment that had gone wrong. He saw the face that he had
painted, now darkened slightly with the thing we naively call wisdom;
and he saw the same love he had counted upon so totally in those lost
nights.

If only there were time, time to seek the quiet of the forest- some
warm, secluded place among the soaring redwoods-and there talk together
by the hour through long unhurried nights. But the others waited; and so
these moments were all the more precious, and all the more sad.

He tightened his arms around Armand. He kissed Armand's lips, and his
long loose vagabond hair. He ran his hand covetously over Armand's
shoulders. He looked at the slim white hand he held in his own. Every
detail he had sought to preserve forever on canvas; every detail he had
certainly preserved in death.

"They're waiting, aren't they?" he asked. "They won't give us more than
a few moments now."

Without judgment, Armand nodded. In a low, barely audible voice, he
said, "It's enough. I always knew that we would meet again." Oh, the
memories that the timbre of the voice brought back. The palazzo with its
coffered ceilings, beds draped in red velvet. The figure of this boy
rushing up the marble staircase, his face flushed from the winter wind
off the Adriatic, his brown eyes on fire. "Even in moments of the
greatest jeopardy," the voice continued, "I knew we would meet before I
would be free to die." "Free to die?" Marius responded. "We are always
free to die, aren't we? What we must have now is the courage to do it,
if indeed it is the right thing to do."

Armand appeared to think on this for a moment. And the soft distance
that crept into his face brought back the sadness again to Marius. "Yes,
that's true," he said.

"I love you," Marius whispered suddenly, passionately as a mortal man
might. "I have always loved you. I wish that I could believe in anything
other than love at this moment; but I can't."

Some small sound interrupted them. Maharet had come to the door.

Marius slipped his arm around Armand's shoulder. There was one final
moment of silence and understanding between them. And then they followed
Maharet into an immense mountaintop room.

All of glass it was, except for the wall behind him, and the distant
iron chimney that hung from the ceiling above the blazing fire. No other
light here save the blaze, and above and beyond, the sharp tips of the
monstrous redwoods, and the bland Pacific sky with its vaporous clouds
and tiny cowardly stars.

But it was beautiful still, wasn't it? Even if it was not the sky over
the Bay of Naples, or seen from the flank of Annapurna or from a vessel
cast adrift in the middle of the blackened sea. The mere sweep of it was
beautiful, and to think that only moments ago he had been high up there,
drifting in the darkness, seen only by his fellow travelers and by the
stars themselves. The joy came back to him again as it had when he
looked at Maharet's red hair. No sorrow as when he thought of Armand
beside him; just joy, impersonal and transcendent. A reason to remain
alive.

It occurred to him suddenly that he wasn't very good at bitterness or
regret, that he didn't have the stamina for them, and if he was to
recapture his dignity, he had better shape up fast.

A little laugh greeted him, friendly, unobtrusive; a little drunken
maybe, the laugh of a fledgling who lacked common sense. He smiled in
acknowledgment, darting a glance at the amused one, Daniel. Daniel the
anonymous "boy" of Interview with the Vampire. It hit him quickly that
this was Armand's child, the only child Armand had ever made. A good
start on the Devil's Road this creature had, this exuberant and
intoxicated being, strengthened with all that Armand had to give.

Quickly he surveyed the others who were gathered around the oval table.

To his right and some distance away, there was Gabrielle, with her blond
hair in a braid down her back and her eyes full of undisguised anguish;
and beside her, Louis, unguarded and passive as always, staring at
Marius mutely as if in scientific inquiry or worship or both; then came
his beloved Pandora, her rippling brown hair free over her shoulders and
still speckled with the tiny sparkling droplets of melted frost. Santino
sat to her right, finally, looking composed once more, all the dirt gone
from his finely cut black velvet clothes.

On his left sat Khayman, another ancient one, who gave his name silently
and freely, a horrifying being, actually, with a face even smoother than
that of Maharet. Marius found he couldn't take his eyes off this one.
Never had the faces of the Mother and the Father so startled him, though
they too had had these black eyes and jet black hair. It was the smile,
wasn't it? The open, affable expression fixed there in spite of all the
efforts of time to wash it away. The creature looked like a mystic or a
saint, yet he was a savage killer. Recent feasts of human blood had
softened his skin just a little, and given a faint blush to his cheeks.

Mael, shaggy and unkempt as always, had taken the chair to Khayman's
left. And after him came another old one, Eric, past three thousand
years by Marius's reckoning, gaunt and deceptively fragile in
appearance, perhaps thirty when he died. His soft brown eyes regarded
Marius thoughtfully. His handmade clothes were like exquisite replicas
of the store-bought goods men of business wore today.

But what was this other being? The one who sat to the right of Maharet,
who stood directly opposite Marius at the far end? Now, this one truly
gave him a shock. The other twin was his first rash conjecture as he
stared at her green eyes and her coppery red hair.

But this being had been alive yesterday, surely. And he could find no
explanation for her strength, her frigid whiteness; the piercing manner
in which she stared at him; and the overwhelming telepathic power that
emanated from her, a cascade of dark and finely delineated images which
she seemed unable to control. She was seeing with uncanny accuracy the
painting he had done centuries ago of his Amadeo, surrounded by black-
winged angels as he knelt in prayer. A chill passed over Marius.

"In the crypt of the Talamasca," he whispered. "My painting?" He
laughed, rudely, venomously. "And so it's there!"

The creature was frightened; she hadn't meant to reveal her thoughts.
Protective of the Talamasca, and hopelessly confused, she shrank back
into herself. Her body seemed to grow smaller and yet to redouble its
power. A monster. A monster with green eyes and delicate bones. Born
yesterday, yes, exactly as he had figured it; there was living tissue in
her; and suddenly he understood all about her. This one, named Jesse,
had been made by Maharet. This one was an actual human descendant of the
woman; and now she had become the fledgling of her ancient mother. The
scope of it astonished him and frightened him slightly. The blood racing
through the young one's veins had a potency that was unimaginable to
Marius. She was absolutely without thirst; yet she wasn't even really
dead.

But he must stop this, this merciless and rummaging appraisal. They
were, after all, waiting for him. Yet he could not help but wonder where
in God's name were his own mortal descendants, spawn of the nephews and
nieces he had so loved when he was alive? For a few hundred years, true,
he had followed their progress; but finally, he could no longer
recognize them; he could no longer recognize Rome itself. And he had let
it all go into darkness, as Rome had passed into darkness. Yet surely
there were those walking the earth today who had that old family blood
in their veins.

He continued to stare at the red-haired young one. How she resembled her
great mother; tall, yet frail of bone, beautiful yet severe. Some great
secret here, something to do with the lineage, the family.... She wore
soft dark clothes rather similar to those of the ancient one; her hands
were immaculate; she wore no scent or paint.

They were all of them magnificent in their own way. The tall heavily
built Santino was elegant in his priestly black, with his lustrous black
eyes and a sensuous mouth. Even the unkempt Mael had a savage and
overpowering presence as he glowered at the ancient woman with an
obvious mixture of love and hate. Armand's angelic face was beyond
description; and the boy Daniel, a vision with his ashen hair and
gleaming violet eyes.

Was nobody ugly ever given immortality? Or did the dark magic simply
make beauty out of whatever sacrifice was thrown into the blaze? But
Gabrielle had been a lovely thing in life surely, with all her son's
courage and none of his impetuosity, and Louis, ah, well, Louis of
course had been picked for the exquisite bones of his face, for the
depth of his green eyes. He had been picked for the inveterate attitude

of somber appreciation that he revealed now. He looked like a human
being lost among them, his face softened with color and feeling; his
body curiously defenseless; his eyes wondering and sad. Even Khayman had
an undeniable perfection of face and form, horrifying as the total
effect had come to be.

As for Pandora, he saw her alive and mortal when he looked at her, he
saw the eager innocent woman who had come to him so many eons ago in the
ink-black nighttime streets of Antioch, begging to be made immortal, not
the remote and melancholy being who sat so still now in her simple
biblical robes, staring through the glass wall opposite her at the
fading galaxy beyond the thickening clouds.

Even Eric, bleached by the centuries and faintly radiant, retained, as
Maharet did, an air of great human feeling, made all the more appealing
by a beguiling androgynous grace.

The fact was, Marius had never laid eyes on such an assemblage-a
gathering of immortals of all ages from the newborn to the most ancient;
and each endowed with immeasurable powers and weaknesses, even to the
delirious young man whom Armand had skillfully created with all the
unspent virtue of his virgin blood. Marius doubted that such a "coven"
had ever come together before.

And how did he fit into the picture, he who had been the eldest of his
own carefully controlled universe in which the ancients had been silent
gods? The winds had cleansed him of the dried blood that had clung to
his face and shoulder-length hair. His long black cloak was damp from
the snows from which he'd come. And as he approached the table, as he
waited belligerently for Maharet to tell him he might be seated, he
fancied he looked as much the monster as the others did, his blue eyes
surely cold with the animosity that was burning him from within.

"Please," she said to him graciously. She gestured to the empty wooden
chair before him, a place of honor obviously, at the foot of the table;
that is, if one conceded that she stood at the head.

Comfortable it was, not like so much modern furniture. Its curved back
felt good to him as he seated himself, and he could rest his hand on the
arm, that was good, too. Armand took the empty chair to his right.

Maharet seated herself without a sound. She rested her hands with
fingers folded on the polished wood before her. She bowed her head as if
collecting her thoughts to begin.

"Are we all that is left?" Marius asked. "Other than the Queen and the
brat prince and-" He paused.

A ripple of silent confusion passed through the others. The mute twin,
where was she? What was the mystery?

"Yes," Maharet answered soberly. "Other than the Queen, and the brat
prince, and my sister. Yes, we are the only ones left. Or the only ones
left who count."

She paused as if to let her words have their full effect. Her eyes
gently took in the complete assembly.

"Far off," she said, "there may be others-old ones who choose to remain
apart. Or those she hunts still, who are doomed. But we are what remains
in terms of destiny or decision. Or intent,"

"And my son," Gabrielle said. Her voice was sharp, full of emotion, and
subtle disregard for those present. "Will none of you tell me what she's
done with him and where he is?" She looked from the woman to Marius,
fearlessly and desperately. "Surely you have the power to know where he
is."

Her resemblance to Lestat touched Marius. It was from this one that
Lestat had drawn his strength, without doubt. But there was a coldness
in her that Lestat would never understand.

"He's with her, as I've already told you," Khayman said, his voice deep
and unhurried. "But beyond that she doesn't let us know."

Gabrielle did not believe it, obviously. There was a pulling away in
her, a desire to leave here, to go off alone. Nothing could have forced
the others away from the table. But this one had made no such commitment
to the meeting, it was clear.

"Allow me to explain this," Maharet said, "because it's of the utmost
importance. The Mother is skillful at cloaking herself, of course. But
we of the early centuries have never been able to communicate silently
with the Mother and the Father or with each other. We are all simply too
close to the source of the power that makes us what we are. We are deaf
and blind to each other's minds just as master and fledgling are among
you. Only as time passed and more and more blood drinkers were created
did they acquire the power to communicate silently with each other as we
have done with mortals all along."

"Then Akasha couldn't find you," Marius said, "you or Khayman-if you
weren't with us."

"That's so. She must see us through your minds or not at all.

And so we must see her through the minds of others. Except of course &>r
a certain sound we hear now and then on the approach of the powerful, a
sound that has to do with a great exertion of energy, and with breath
and blood."

"Yes, that sound," Daniel murmured softly. "That awful relentless
sound."

"But is there nowhere we can hide from her?" Eric asked. "Those of us
she can hear and see?" It was a young man's voice, of course, and with a
heavy undefinable accent, each word rather beautifully intoned.

"You know there isn't," Maharet answered with explicit patience. "But we
waste time talking of hiding. You are here either because she cannot
kill you or she chooses not to. And so be it. We must go on."

"Or she hasn't finished," Eric said disgustedly. "She hasn't made up her
infernal mind on the matter of who shall die and who shall live!"

"I think you are safe here," Khayman said. "She had her chance with
everyone present, did she not?"

But that was just it, Marius realized. It was not at all clear that the
Mother had had her chance with Eric, Eric who traveled, apparently, in
the company of Maharet. Eric's eyes locked on Maharet. There was some
quick silent exchange but it wasn't telepathic. What came clear to
Marius was that Maharet had made Eric, and neither knew for certain
whether Eric was too strong now for the Mother. Maharet was pleading for
calm.

"But Lestat, you can read his mind, can't you?" Gabrielle said. "Can't
you discover them both through him?"

"Not even I can always cover a pure and enormous distance," Maharet
answered. "If there were other blood drinkers left who could pick up
Lestat's thoughts and relay them to me, well, then of course I could
find him in an instant. But in the main, those blood drinkers are no
more. And Lestat has always been good at cloaking his presence; it's
natural to him. It's always that way with the strong ones, the ones who
are self-sufficient and aggressive. Wherever he is now, he instinctively
shuts us out."

"She's taken him," Khayman said. He reached across the table and laid
his hand on Gabrielle's hand. "She'll reveal everything to us when she
is ready. And if she chooses to harm Lestat in the meantime there is
absolutely nothing that any of us can do."

Marius almost laughed. It seemed these ancient ones thought statements
of absolute truth were a comfort; what a curious combination of vitality
and passivity they were. Had it been so at the dawn of recorded history?
When people sensed the inevitable, they stood stock-still and accepted
it? It was difficult for him to grasp.

"The Mother won't harm Lestat," he said to Gabrielle, to all of them.
"She loves him. And at its core it's a common kind of love. She won't
harm him because she doesn't want to harm herself. And she knows all his
tricks, I'll wager, just as we know them. He won't be able to provoke
her, though he's probably foolish enough to try."

Gabrielle gave a little nod at that with a trace of a sad smile. It was
her considered opinion that Lestat could provoke anyone, finally, given
enough time and opportunity; but she let it pass.

She was neither consoled nor resigned. She sat back in the wooden chair
and stared past them as if they no longer existed. She felt no
allegiance to this group; she felt no allegiance to anyone but Lestat.

"All right then," she said coldly. "Answer the crucial question. If I
destroy this monster who's taken my son, do we all die?" "How the hell
are you going to destroy her?" Daniel asked in amazement. Eric sneered.

She glanced at Daniel dismissively. Eric she ignored. She looked at
Maharet. "Well, is the old myth true? If I waste this bitch, to use the
vernacular, do I waste the rest of us too?"

There was faint laughter in the gathering. Marius shook his head. But
Maharet gave a little smile of acknowledgment as she nodded:

"Yes. It was tried in the earlier times. It was tried by many a fool who
didn't believe it. The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy
the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither
slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the

Damned, and the Damned can't live without her. Enkil was only her
consort, and that is why it does not matter now that she has slain him
and drunk his blood to the last drop."

"The Queen of the Damned." Marius whispered it aloud softly. There had
been a strange inflection when Maharet had said it, as if memories had
stirred in her, painful and awful, and undimmed by time. Undimmed as the
dreams were undimmed. Again he had a sense of the starkness and severity
of these ancient beings, for whom language perhaps, and all the thoughts
governed by it, had not been needlessly complex.

"Gabrielle," Khayman said, pronouncing the name exquisitely, "we cannot
help Lestat. We must use this time to make a plan." He turned to
Maharet. "The dreams, Maharet. Why have the dreams come to us now? This
is what we all want to know."

There was a protracted silence. All present had known, in some form,
these dreams. Only lightly had they touched Gabrielle and Louis, so
lightly in fact that Gabrielle had, before this night, given no thought
to them, and Louis, frightened by Lestat, had pushed them out of his
mind. Even Pandora, who confessed no personal knowledge of them, had
told Marius of Azim's warning. Santino had called them horrid trances
from which he couldn't escape.

Marius knew now that they had been a noxious spell for the young ones,
Jesse and Daniel, almost as cruel as they had been for him.

Yet Maharet did not respond. The pain in her eyes had intensified;
Marius felt it like a soundless vibration. He felt the spasms in the
tiny nerves.

He bent forward slightly, folding his hands before him on the table.

"Maharet," he said. "Your sister is sending the dreams. Isn't this so?"

No answer.

"Where is Mekare?" he pushed.

Silence again.

He felt the pain in her. And he was sorry, very sorry once more for the
bluntness of his speech. But if he was to be of use here, he must push
things to a conclusion. He thought of Aka-sha in the shrine again,
though why he didn't know. He thought of the smile on her face. He
thought of Lestat-protectively, desperately. But Lestat was just a
symbol now. A symbol of himself. Of them all.

Maharet was looking at him in the strangest way, as if he were a mystery
to her. She looked at the others. Finally she spoke:

"You witnessed our separation," she said quietly. "All of you. You saw
it in the dreams. You saw the mob surround me and my sister; you saw
them force us apart; in stone coffins they placed us, Mekare unable to
cry out to me because they had cut out her tongue, and I unable to see
her for the last time because they had taken my eyes.

"But I saw through the minds of those who hurt us. I knew it was to the
seashores that we were being taken. Mekare to the west; and I to the
east. "Ten nights I drifted on the raft of pitch and logs, entombed

alive in the stone coffin. And finally when the raft sank and the water
lifted the stone lid, 1 was free. Blind, ravenous, I swam ashore and
stole from the first poor mortal I encountered the eyes to see and the
blood to live. "But Mekare? Into the great western ocean she had been
cast- the waters that ran to the end of the world. "Yet from that first
night on I searched for her; I searched through Europe, through Asia,
through the southern jungles and the frozen lands of the north. Century
after century I searched, finally crossing the western ocean when
mortals did to take my quest to the New World as well.

"I never found my sister. I never found a mortal or immortal who had set
eyes upon her or heard her name. Then in this century, in the years
after the second great war, in the high mountain jungles of Peru, the
indisputable evidence of my sister's presence was discovered by a lone
archaeologist on the walls of a shallow cave-pictures my sister had
created-of stick figures and crude pigment which told the tale of our
lives together, the sufferings you all know.

"But six thousand years ago these drawings had been carved into the
stone. And six thousand years ago my sister had been taken from me. No
other evidence of her existence was ever found.

"Yet I have never abandoned the hope of finding my sister. I have always
known, as only a twin might, that she walks this earth still, that I am
not here alone.

"And now, within these last ten nights, I have, for the first time,
proof that my sister is still with me. It has come to me through the
dreams.

"These are Mekare's thoughts; Mekare's images; Mekare's rancor and
pain."

Silence. All eyes were fixed on her. Marius was quietly stunned. He
feared to be the one to speak again, but this was worse than he had
imagined and the implications were now entirely clear. The origin of
these dreams was almost certainly not a conscious survivor of the
millennia; rather the visions had-very possibly- come from one who had
no more mind now than an animal in whom memory is a spur to action which
the animal does not question or understand. It would explain their
clarity; it would explain their repetition.

And the flashes he had seen of something moving through the jungles,
this was Mekare herself.

"Yes," Maharet said immediately. " 'In the jungles. Walking,' " she
whispered. "The words of the dying archaeologist, scribbled on a piece
of paper and left for me to find when I came. 'In the jungles. Walking.'
But where?"

It was Louis who broke the silence.

"Then the dreams may not be a deliberate message," he said, his words
marked by a slight French accent. "They may simply be the outpouring of
a tortured soul."

"No. They are a message," Khayman said. "They are a warning. They are
meant for all of us, and for the Mother as well."

"But how can you say this?" Gabrielle asked him. "We don't know what her
mind is now, or that she even knows that we are here."

"You don't know the whole story," Khayman said. "I know it. Maharet will
tell it." He looked to Maharet.

"I saw her," Jesse said unobtrusively, her voice tentative as she looked
at Maharet. "She's crossed a great river; she's coming. I saw her! No,
that's not right. I saw as if I were she."

"Yes," Marius answered. "Through her eyes!"

"I saw her red hair when I looked down," Jesse said. "I saw the jungle
giving way with each step."

"The dreams must be a communication," Mael said with sudden impatience.
"For why else would the message be so strong? Our private thoughts don't
carry such power. She raises her voice; she wants someone or something
to know what she is thinking. . . ."

"Or she is obsessed and acting upon that obsession," Marius answered.
"And moving towards a certain goal." He paused. "To be united with you,
her sister! What else could she possibly want?"

"No," Khayman said. "That is not her goal." Again he looked at Maharet.
"She has a promise to keep to the Mother, and that is what the dreams
mean."

Maharet studied him for a moment in silence; it seemed this was almost
beyond her endurance, this discussion of her sister, yet she fortified
herself silently for the ordeal that lay ahead.

"We were there in the beginning," Khayman said. "We were the first
children of the Mother; and in these dreams lies the story of how it
began." "Then you must tell us ... all of it,   Manus said as gently as
he could.

"Yes." Maharet sighed. "And I will." She looked at each of them in turn
and then back to Jesse. "I must tell you the whole story," she said, "so
that you can understand what we may be powerless to avert. You see, this
is not merely the story of the beginning. It may be the story of the end
as well." She sighed suddenly as if the prospect were too much for her.
"Our world has never seen such upheaval," she said, looking at Marius.
"Le-stat's music, the rising of the Mother, so much death."

She looked down for a moment, as if collecting herself again for the
effort. And then she glanced at Khayman and at Jesse, who were the ones
she most loved.

"I have never told it before," she said as if pleading for indulgence.
"It has for me now the hard purity of mythology-those times when I was
alive. When I could still see the sun. But in this mythology is rooted
all the truths that I know. And if we go back, we may find the future,
and the means to change it. The very least that we can do is seek to
understand."

A hush fell. All waited with respectful patience for her to begin.

"In the beginning," she said, "we were witches, my sister and I. We
talked to the spirits and the spirits loved us. Until she sent her
soldiers into our land."

LESTAT -THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN

SHE LET ME GO. INSTANTLY I BEGAN TO PLUMMET; the wind was a roar in my
ears. But the worst part was that I couldn't see! I heard her say Rise.

There was a moment of exquisite helplessness. I was plunging towards the
earth and nothing was going to stop it; then I looked up, my eyes
stinging, the clouds closing over me, and I remembered the tower, and
the feeling of rising. I made the decision. Go up! And my descent
stopped at once.

It was as if a current of air had caught me. I went up hundreds of feet
in one instant, and then the clouds were below me-a white light that I
could scarcely see. I decided to drift. Why did I have to go anywhere
for the moment? Maybe I could open my eyes fully, and see through the
wind, if I wasn't afraid of the pain.

She was laughing somewhere-in my head or over it, I didn't know which.
Come on, prince, come higher.

I spun around and shot upwards again, until I saw her coming towards me,
her garments swirling about her, her heavy plaits lifted more gently by
the wind.

She caught me and kissed me. I tried to steady myself, holding onto her,
to look down and really see something through the breaks in the clouds.
Mountains, snow-covered and dazzling in the moonlight, with great bluish
flanks that disappeared into deep valleys of fathomless snow.

"Lift me now," she whispered in my ear. "Carry me to the northwest."

"I don't know the direction."

"Yes, you do. The body knows it. Your mind knows it. Don't ask them
which way it is. Tell them that is the way you wish to go. You know the
principles. When you lifted your rifle, you looked at the wolf running;
you didn't calculate the distance or the speed of the bullet; you fired;
the wolf went down."

I rose again with that same incredible buoyancy; and then I realized she
had become a great weight in my arm. Her eyes were fixed on me; she was
making me carry her. I smiled, I think I laughed aloud. I lifted her and
kissed her again, and continued the ascent without interruption. To the
northwest. That is to the right and to the right again and higher. My
mind did know it; it knew the terrain over which we'd come. I made a
little artful turn and then another; I was spinning, clutching her close
to me, rather loving the weight of her body, the press of her breasts
against me, and her lips again closing delicately on mine.

She drew close to my ear. "Do you hear it?" she asked.

I listened; the wind seemed annihilating; yet there came a dull chorus
from the earth, human voices chanting; some in time with each other,
others at random; voices praying aloud in an Asian tongue. Far far away
I could hear them, and then near at hand. Important to distinguish the
two sounds. First, there was a long procession of worshipers ascending

through the mountain passes and over the cliffs, chanting to keep
themselves alive as they trudged on in spite of weariness and cold. And
within a building, a loud, ecstatic chorus, chanting fiercely over the
clang of cymbals and drums.

1 gathered her head close to mine and looked down, but the clouds had
become a solid bed of whiteness. Yet I could see through the minds of
the worshipers the brilliant vision of a courtyard and a temple of
marble arches and vast painted rooms. The procession wound towards the
temple.

"I want to see it!" I said. She didn't answer, but she didn't stop me as
I drifted downward, stretching out on the air as if I were a bird
flying, yet descending until we were in the very middle of the clouds.
She had become light again, as if she were nothing.

And as we left the sea of whiteness, I saw the temple gleaming below, a
tiny clay model of itself, it seemed, the terrain buckling here and
there beneath its meandering walls. The stench of burning bodies rose
from its blazing pyres. And towards this cluster of roofs and towers,
men and women wound their way along perilous paths from as far as 1
could see.

"Tell me who is inside, my prince," she said. "Tell me who is the god of
this temple."

See it! Draw close to it. The old trick, but all at once I began to
fall. I let out a terrible cry. She caught me.

"More care, my prince," she said, steadying me.

I thought my heart was going to burst.

"You cannot move out of your body to look into the temple and fly at the
same time. Look through the eyes of the mortals the way you did it
before."

I was still shaking, clutching hold of her.

"I'll drop you again if you don't calm yourself," she said gently. "Tell
your heart to do as you would have it do."

I gave a great sigh. My body ached suddenly from the constant force of
the wind. And my eyes, they were stinging so badly again, I couldn't see
anything- But I tried to subdue these little pains; or rather to ignore
them as if they didn't exist. I took hold of her firmly and started
down, telling myself to go slowly; and then again I tried to find the
minds of the mortals and see what they saw:

Gilded walls, cusped arches, every surface glittering with decoration;
incense rising, mingling with the scent of fresh blood. In blurred
snatches I saw him, "the god of the temple."

"A vampire," I whispered. "A bloodsucking devil. He draws them to
himself, and slaughters them at his leisure. The place reeks of death."

"And so there shall be more death," she whispered, kissing my face again
tenderly. "Now, very fast, so fast mortal eyes can't see you. Bring us
down to the courtyard beside the funeral pyre."

I could have sworn it was done before I'd decided it; I'd done no more
than consider the idea! And there I was fallen against a rough plaster
wall, with hard stones under my feet, trembling, my head reeling, my
innards grinding in pain. My body wanted to keep going down, right
through solid rock.

Sinking back against the wall, I heard the chanting before I could see
anything. I smelt the fire, the bodies burning; then I saw the flames.

"That was very clumsy, my prince," she said softly. "We almost struck
the wall."

"I don't exactly know how it happened."

"Ah, but that's the key," she said, "the word 'exact.' The spirit in you
obeys swiftly and completely. Consider a little more. You don't cease to
hear and see as you descend; it merely happens faster than you realize.
Do you know the pure mechanics of snapping your fingers? No, you do not.
Yet you can do it. A mortal child can do it."

I nodded. The principle was clear all right, as it had been with the
target and the gun.

"Merely a matter of degrees," I said.

"And of surrender, fearless surrender."

I nodded. The truth was I wanted to fall on a soft bed and sleep. I
blinked my eyes at the roaring fire, the sight of the bodies going black
in the flames. One of them wasn't dead; an arm was raised, fingers
curled. Now he was dead. Poor devil. All right.

Her cold hand touched my cheek. It touched my lips, and then she
smoothed back the tangled hair of my head.

"You've never had a teacher, have you?" she asked. "Magnus orphaned you
the night he made you. Your father and brothers were fools. As for your
mother, she hated her children."

"I've always been my own teacher," I said soberly. "And I must confess
I've always been my favorite pupil as well."

Laughter.

"Maybe it was a little conspiracy," I said. "Of pupil and teacher. But
as you said, there was never anyone else."

She was smiling at me. The fire was playing in her eyes. Her face was
luminous, frighteningly beautiful.

"Surrender," she said, "and I'll teach you things you never dreamed of.
You've never known battle. Real battle. You've never felt the purity of
a righteous cause."

I didn't answer. I felt dizzy, not merely from the long journey through
the air, but from the gentle caress of her words, and the fathomless
blackness of her eyes. It seemed a great part of her beauty was the
sweetness of her expression, the serenity of it, the way that her eyes
held steady even when the glistening white flesh of her face moved
suddenly with a smile or a subtle frown. I knew if I let myself, I'd be

terrified of what was happening. She must have known it too. She took me
in her arms again. "Drink, prince," she whispered. "Take the strength
you need to do as I would have you do."

I don't know how many moments passed. When she pulled away, I was
drugged for an instant, then the clarity was as always overwhelming. The
monotonous music of the temple was thundering through the walls.

"Azim! Azim! Azim!"

As she drew me along after her, it seemed my body didn't exist anymore
except as a vision I kept in place. I felt of my own face, the bones
beneath my skin, to touch something solid that was myself; but this
skin, this sensation. It was utterly new. What was left of me?

The wooden doors opened as if by magic before us. We passed silently
into a long corridor of slender white marble pillars and scalloped
arches, but this was but the outer border of an immense central room.
And the room was filled with frenzied, screaming worshipers who did not
even see us or sense our presence as they continued to dance, to chant,
to leap into the air in the hopes of glimpsing their one and only god.

"Keep at my side, Lestat," she said, the voice cutting through the din
as if I'd been touched by a velvet glove.

The crowd parted, violently, bodies thrust to right and left. Screaming
replaced the chant immediately; the room was in chaos, as a path lay
open for us to the center of the room. The cymbals and drums were
silenced; moans and soft piteous cries surrounded us.

Then a great sigh of wonder rose as Akasha stepped forward and threw
back her veil.

Many feet away, in the center of the ornate floor stood the blood god,
Azim, clothed in a black silk turban and jeweled robes. His face was
disfigured with fury as he stared at Akasha, as he stared at me.

Prayers rose from the crowd around us; a shrill voice cried out an
anthem to "the eternal mother."

"Silence!" Azim commanded. I didn't know the language; but I understood
the word.

I could hear the sound of human blood in his voice; I could see tt
rushing through his veins. Never in fact had I seen any vampire or blood
drinker so choked with human blood as was this one; he was as old as
Marius, surely, yet his skin had a dark golden gleam. A thin veil of
blood sweat covered it completely, even to the backs of his large, soft-
looking hands.

"You dare to come into my temple!" he said, and again the language
itself eluded me but the meaning was telepathically clear.

"You will die now!" Akasha said, the voice even softer than it had been
a moment ago. "You who have misled these hopeless innocents; you who
have fed upon their lives and their blood like a bloated leech."

Screams rose from the worshipers, cries for mercy. Again, Azim told them
to be quiet.

"What right have you to condemn my worship," he cried, pointing his
finger at us, "you who have sat silent on your throne since the
beginning of time!"

"Time did not begin with ,you, my cursed beauty," Akasha answered. "I
was old when you were born. And I am risen now to rule as I was meant to
rule. And you shall die as a lesson to your people. You are my first
great martyr. You shall die now!"

He tried to run at her; and I tried to step between them; but it was all
too fast to be seen. She caught him by some invisible means and shoved
him backwards so that his feet slid across the marble tile and he
teetered, almost falling and then dancing as he sought to right himself,
his eyes rolling up into his head.

A deep gurgling cry came out of him. He was burning. His garments were
burning; and then the smoke rose from him gray and thin and writhing in
the gloom as the terrified crowd gave way to screams and wails. He was
twisting as the heat consumed him; then suddenly, bent double, he rose,
staring at her, and flew at her with his arms out.

!t seemed he would reach her before she thought what to do. And again, I
tried to step before her, and with a quick shove of her right hand she
threw me back into the human swarm. There were half-naked bodies all
around, struggling to get away from me as I caught my balance.

I spun around and saw him poised not three feet from her, snarling at
her, and trying to reach her over some invisible and unsurmountable
force.

"Die, damnable one!" she cried out. (I clamped my hands over my ears.)
"Go into the pit of perdition. I create it for you now."

Azim's head exploded. Smoke and flame poured out of his ruptured skull.
His eyes turned black. With a flash, his entire frame ignited; yet he
went down in a human posture, his fist raised against her, his legs
curling as if he meant to try to stand again. Then his form disappeared
utterly in a great orange blaze.

Panic descended upon the crowd, just as it had upon the rock fans
outside the concert hall when the fires had broken out and Gabrielle and
Louis and I had made our escape.

Yet it seemed the hysteria here reached a more dangerous pitch. Bodies
crashed against the slender marble pillars. Men and women were crushed
instantly as others rushed over them to the doors.

Akasha turned full circle, her garments caught in a brief dance of black
and white silk around her; and everywhere human beings were caught as if
by invisible hands and flung to the floor. Their bodies went into
convulsions. The women, looking down at the stricken victims, wailed and
tore their hair.

It took me a moment to realize what was happening, that she was killing
the men. It wasn't fire. It was some invisible attack upon the vital
organs. Blood poured from their ears and their eyes as they expired.
Enraged, several of the women ran at her, only to meet the same fate.
The men who attacked her were vanquished instantly.

Then I heard her voice inside my head:

Kill them, Lestat. Slaughter the males to the last one.

I was paralyzed. I stood beside her, lest one of them get close to her.
But they didn't have a chance. This was beyond nightmare, beyond the
stupid horrors to which I'd been a party all of my accursed life.

Suddenly she was standing in front of me, grasping my arms. Her soft icy
voice had become an engulfing sound in my brain.

My prince, my love. You will do this for me. Slaughter the males so that
the legend of their punishment will surpass the legend of the temple.
They are the henchmen of the blood god. The women are helpless. Punish
the males in my name.

"Oh, God help me, please don't ask this of me," I whispered. "They are
pitiful humans!"

The crowd seemed to have lost its spirit. Those who had run into the
rear yard were trapped. The dead and the mourning lay everywhere around
us, while from the ignorant multitude at the front gates there rose the
most piteous pleas.

"Let them go, Akasha, please," I said to her. Had I ever in my life
begged for anything as I did now? What had these poor beings to do with
us?

She drew closer to me. I couldn't see anything now but her black eyes.

"My love, this is divine war. Not the loathsome feeding upon human life
which you have done night after night without scheme or reason save to
survive. You kill now in my name and for my cause and I give you the
greatest freedom ever given man: I tell you that to slay your mortal
brother is right. Now use the new power I've given you. Choose your
victims one by one, use your invisible strength or the strength of your
hands."

My head was spinning. Had I this power to make men drop in their tracks?
I looked around me in the smoky chamber where the incense still poured
from the censers and bodies tumbled over one another, men and women
embracing each other in terror, others crawling into corners as if there
they would be safe.

"There is no life for them now, save in the lesson," she said. "Do as I
command."

It seemed I saw a vision; for surely this wasn't from my heart or mind;
I saw a thin emaciated form rise before me; I gritted my teeth as I
glared at it, concentrating my malice as if it were a laser, and then I
saw the victim rise off his feet and tumble backwards as the blood came
out of his mouth. Lifeless, withered, he fell to the floor. It had been
like a spasm; and then as effortless as shouting, as throwing one's
voice out unseen yet powerful, over a great space.

Yes, kill them. Strike for the tender organs; rupture them; make the
blood flow. You know that you have always wanted to do it. To kill as if
it were nothing, to destroy without scruple or regret!

It was true, so true; but it was also forbidden, forbidden as nothing
else on earth is forbidden. . . .

My love, it is as common as hunger; as common as time. And now you have
my power and command. You and I shall put an end to it through what we
will do now.

A young man rushed at me, crazed, hands out to catch my throat. Kill
him. He cursed me as I drove him backwards with the invisible power,
feeling the spasm deep in my throat and my belly; and then a sudden
tightening in the temples; I felt it touching him, I felt it pouring out
of me; I felt it as surely as if I had penetrated his skull with my
fingers and was squeezing his brain. Seeing it would have been crude;
there was no need to see it. All I needed to see was the blood spurting
from his mouth and his ears, and down his naked chest.

Oh, was she ever right, how I had wanted to do it! How I had dreamed of
it in my earliest mortal years! The sheer bliss of killing them, killing
them under all their names which were the same name-enemy-those who
deserved killing, those who were born for killing, killing with full
force, my body turning to solid muscle, my teeth clenched, my hatred and
my invisible strength made one.

In all directions they ran, but that only further inflamed me. I drove
them back, the power slamming them into the walls. I aimed for the heart
with this invisible tongue and heard the heart when it burst. I turned
round and round, directing it carefully yet instantly at this one, and
that one, and then another as he ran through the doorway, and yet
another as he rushed down the corridor, and yet another as he tore the
lamp from its chains and hurled it foolishly at me.

Into the back rooms of the temple I pursued them, with exhilarating ease
through the heaps of gold and silver, tossing them over on their backs
as if with long invisible fingers, then clamping those invisible fingers
on their arteries until the blood gushed through the bursting flesh.

The women crowded together weeping; others fled. I heard bones break as
I walked over the bodies. And then I realized that she too was killing
them; that we were doing it together, and the room was now littered with
the mutilated and the dead. A dark, rank smell of blood permeated
everything; the fresh cold wind could not dispel it; the air was filled
with soft, despairing cries.

A giant of a man raced at me, eyes bulging as he tried to stop me with a
great curved sword. In rage I snatched the sword from him and sliced
through his neck. Right through the bone the blade went, breaking as it
did so, and head and broken blade fell at my feet.

I kicked aside the body. I went in the courtyard and stared at those who
shrank from me in terror. I had no more reason, no more conscience. It
was a mindless game to chase them, corner them, thrust aside the women
behind whom they hid, or who struggled so pitifully to hide them, and
aim the power at the right place, to pump the power at that vulnerable
spot until they lay still.

The front gates! She was calling me. The men in the courtyard were dead;
the women were tearing their hair, sobbing. I walked through the ruined
temple, through the mourners and the dead they mourned. The crowd at the
gates was on its knees in the snow, ignorant of what had gone on inside,
voices raised in desperate entreaty.

Admit me to the chamber: admit me to the vision and the hunger of the
lord.

At the sight of Akasha, their cries rose in volume. They reached out to
touch her garments as the locks broke and the gates swung open. The wind
howled down the mountain pass; the bell in the tower above gave a faint
hollow sound.

Again I shoved them down, rupturing brains and hearts and arteries. I
saw their thin arms flung out in the snow. The wind itself stank of
blood. Akasha's voice cut through the horrid screams, telling the women
to draw back and away and they would be safe.

Finally I was killing so fast I couldn't even see it anymore: The males.
The males must die. I was rushing towards completion, that every single
male thing that moved or stirred or moaned should be dead.

Like an angel I moved on down the winding path, with an invisible sword.
And finally all the way down the cliff they dropped to their knees and
waited for death. In a ghastly passivity they accepted it!

Suddenly I felt her holding me though she was nowhere near me. I heard
her voice in my head:

Well done, my prince.

I couldn't stop. This invisible thing was one of my limbs now. I
couldn't withdraw it and bring it back into myself. It was as if I was
poised to take a breath, and if I did not take that breath I should die.
But she held me motionless, and a great calm was coming over me, as if a
drug had been fed into my veins. Finally I grew still and the power
concentrated itself within me and became part of me and nothing more.

Slowly I turned around. I looked at the clear snowy peaks, the perfectly
black sky, and at the long line of dark bodies that lay on the path from
the temple gates. The women were clinging to one another, sobbing in
disbelief, or giving off low and terrible moans. I smelled death as I
have never smelled it; I looked down at the bits of flesh and gore that
had splashed my garments. But my hands! My hands were so white and
clean. Dear God, I didn't do it! Not me. I didn't. And my hands, they
are clean!

Oh, but I had! And what am I that I could do it? That I loved it, loved
it beyond all reason, loved it as men have always loved it in the
absolute moral freedom of war-

It seemed a silence had fallen.

If the women still cried I didn't hear them. I didn't hear the wind
either. I was moving, though why I didn't know. I had dropped down to my
knees and I reached out for the last man I had slain, who was flung like
broken sticks in the snow, and I put my hand into the blood on his mouth
and then I smeared this blood all over both my hands and pressed them to
my face.

Never had I killed in two hundred years that I hadn't tasted the blood,
and taken it, along with the life, into myself. And that was a monstrous
thing. But more had died here in these few ghastly moments than all
those I'd ever sent to their untimely graves. And it had been done with

the ease of thought and breath. Oh, this can never be atoned for! This
can never never be justified!

I stood staring at the snow, through my bloody fingers; weeping and yet
hating that as well. Then gradually I realized that some change had
taken place with the women. Something was happening around me, and I
could feel it as if the cold air had been warmed and the wind had risen
and left the steep slope undisturbed. Then the change seemed to enter
into me, subduing my anguish and even slowing the beat of my heart.

The crying had ceased. Indeed the women were moving by twos and threes
down the path as if in a trance, stepping over the dead. It seemed that
sweet music was playing, and that the earth had suddenly yielded spring
flowers of every color and description, and that the air was full of
perfume.

Yet these things weren't happening, were they? In a haze of muted
colors, the women passed me, in rags and silks, and dark cloaks. I shook
myself all over. I had to think clearly! This was no time for
disorientation. This power and these dead bodies were no dream and I
could not, absolutely could not, yield to this overwhelming sense of
well-being and peace.

"Akasha!" I whispered.

Then lifting my eyes, not because I wanted to, but because I had to, I
saw her standing on a far promontory, and the women, young and old, were
moving towards her, some so weak from the cold and from hunger that
others had to carry them over the frozen ground.

A hush had fallen over all things.

Without words she began to speak to those assembled before her. It
seemed she addressed them in their own language, or in something quite
beyond specific language. I couldn't tell.

In a daze, I saw her stretch out her arms to them. Her black hair
spilled down on her white shoulders, and the folds of her long simple
gown barely moved in the soundless wind. It struck me that never in all
my life had I beheld anything quite as beautiful as she was, and it was
not merely the sum of her physical attributes, it was the pure serenity,
the essence that I perceived with my innermost soul. A lovely euphoria
came over me as she spoke.

Do not be afraid, she told them. The bloody reign of your god is over,
and now you may return to the truth.

Soft anthems rose from the worshipers. Some dipped their foreheads to
the ground before her. And it appeared that this pleased her or at least
that she would allow it.

You must return now to your villages, she said. You must tell those who
knew of the blood god that he is dead. The Queen of Heaven has destroyed
him. The Queen will destroy all those males who still believe in him.
The Queen of Heaven will bring a new reign of peace on earth. There will
be death for the males who have oppressed you, but you must wait for my
sign.

As she paused the anthems rose again. The Queen of Heaven, the Goddess,
the Good Mother-the old litany sung in a thousand tongues the world over
was finding a new form.

I shuddered. I made myself shudder. I had to penetrate that spell! It
was a trick of the power, just as the killing had been a trick of the
power-something definable and measurable, yet I remained drugged by the
sight of her, and by the anthems. By the soft embrace of this feeling:
all is well; all is as it should be. We are all safe.

Somewhere, from the sunlit recesses of my mortal memory a day came back,
a day like many before it, when in the month of May in our village we
had crowned a statue of the Virgin amid banks of sweet-smelling flowers,
when we had sung exquisite hymns. Ah, the loveliness of that moment,
when the crown of white lilies had been lifted to the Virgin's veiled
head. I'd gone home that night singing those hymns. In an old prayer
book, I'd found a picture of the Virgin, and it had filled me with
enchantment and wondrous religious fervor such as I felt now.

And from somewhere deeper in me even, where the sun had never
penetrated, came the realization that if I believed in her and what she
was saying, then this unspeakable thing, this slaughter that I had
committed against fragile and helpless mortals would somehow be
redeemed.

You kill now in my name and for my cause and I give you the greatest
freedom ever given man: I tell you that to slay your brother is right.

"Go on," she said aloud. "Leave this temple forever. Leave the dead to
the snow and the winds. Tell the people. A new era is coming when those
males who glorify death and killing shall reap their reward; and the era
of peace shall be yours. I will come again to you. I will show you the
way. Await my coming. And I will tell you then what you must do. For
now, believe in me and what you have seen here. And tell others that
they too may believe. Let the men come and see what awaits them. Wait
for signs from me."

In a body they moved to obey her command; they ran down the mountain
path towards those distant worshipers who had fled the massacre; their
cries rose thin and ecstatic in the snowy void.

The wind gusted through the valley; high on the hill, the temple bell
gave another dull peal. The wind tore at the scant garments of the dead.
The snow had begun to fall, softly and then thickly, covering brown legs
and arms and faces, faces with open eyes. The sense of well-being had
dissipated, and all the raw aspects of the moment were clear and
inescapable again. These women, this visitation. . . . Bodies in the
snow! Undeniable displays of power, disruptive and overwhelming.

Then a soft little sound broke the silence; things shattering in the
temple above; things falling, breaking apart.

I turned and looked at her. She stood still on the little promontory,
the cloak very loose over her shoulders, her flesh as white as the
falling snow. Her eyes were fixed on the temple. And as the sounds
continued, I knew what was happening within.

Jars of oil breaking; braziers falling. The soft whisper of cloth
exploding into flame. Finally the smoke rose, thick and black, billowing
from the bell tower, and from over the rear wall-

The bell tower trembled; a great roaring noise echoed against the far
cliffs; and then the stones broke loose; the tower collapsed. It fell
down into the valley, and the bell, with one final peal, disappeared
into the soft white abyss. The temple was consumed in fire.

I stared at it, my eyes watering from the smoke that blew down over the
path, carrying with it tiny ashes and bits of soot.

Vaguely, I was aware that my body wasn't cold despite the snow. That it
wasn't tired from the exertion of killing. Indeed my flesh was whiter
than it had been. And my lungs took in the air so efficiently that I
couldn't hear my own breathing; even my heart was softer, steadier. Only
my soul was bruised and sore. For the first time ever in my life, either
mortal or immortal, I was afraid that I might die. I was afraid that she
might destroy me and with reason, because I simply could not do again
what I'd just done. I could not be part of this design. And I prayed I
couldn't be made to do it, that I would have the strength to refuse. I
felt her hands on my shoulders. "Turn and look at rne, Lestat,' she
said. I did as she asked. And there it was again, the most seductive
beauty I'd ever beheld.

And I am yours, my love. You are my only true companion, my finest
instrument. You know this, do you not?

Again, a deliberate shudder. Where in God's name are you, Lestat! Are
you going to shrink from speaking your heart?

"Akasha, help me," I whispered. "Tell me. Why did you want me to do
this, this killing? What did you mean when you told them that the males
would be punished? That there would be a reign of peace on earth?" How
stupid my words sounded. Looking into her eyes, I could believe she was
the goddess. It was as if she drew my conviction out of me, as if it
were merely blood.

I was quaking suddenly with fear. Quaking. I knew what the word meant
for the first time. I tried to say more but I merely stammered. Finally
I blurted it out:

"In the name of what morality will all this be done?"

"In the name of my morality!" she answered, the faint little smile as
beautiful as before. "I am the reason, the justification, the right by
which it is done!" Her voice was cold with anger, but her blank, sweet
expression had not changed. "Now, listen to me, beautiful one," she
said. "I love you. You've awakened me from my long sleep and to my great
purpose; it gives me joy merely to look at you, to see the light in your
blue eyes, and to hear the sound of your voice. It would wound me beyond
your understanding of pain to see you die. But as the stars are my
witness, you will aid me in my mission. Or you will be no more than the
instrument for the commencement, as Judas was to Christ. And I shall
destroy you as Christ destroyed Judas once your usefulness is past."

Rage overcame me. I couldn't help myself. The shift from fear to anger
was so fast, I was boiling inside.

"But how do you dare to do these things!" I asked. "To send these
ignorant souls abroad with mad lies!"

She stared at me in silence; it seemed she would strike out at me; her
face became that of a statue again; and I thought, Well, the moment is
now. I will die the way I saw Azim die. I can't save Gabrielle or Louis.
I can't save Armand. I won't fight because it's useless. I won't move
when it happens. I'll go deep into myself, perhaps, if I must run from
the pain. I'll'find some last illusion like Baby Jenks did and cling to
it until I am no longer Lestat.

She didn't move. The fires on the hill were burning down. The snow was
coming more thickly and she had become like a ghost standing there in
the silent snowfall, white as the snow was white.

"You really aren't afraid of anything, are you?" she said.

"I'm afraid of you," I said.

"Oh, no, I do not think so."

I nodded. "I am. And I'll tell you what else I am. Vermin on the face of
the earth. Nothing more than that. A loathsome killer of human beings.
But I know that's what I am! I do not pretend to be what I am not! You
have told these ignorant people that you are the Queen of Heaven! How do
you mean to redeem those words and what they will accomplish among
stupid and innocent minds?"

"Such arrogance," she said softly. "Such incredible arrogance, and yet I
love you. I love your courage, even your rashness, which has always been
your saving grace. I even love your stupidity. Don't you understand?
There is no promise now that I cannot keep! I shall make the myths over!
I am the Queen of Heaven. And Heaven shall reign on earth finally. I am
anything that I say I am!"

"Oh, lord, God," whispered.

"Do not speak those hollow words. Those words that have never meant
anything to anyone! You stand in the presence of the only goddess you
will ever know. You are the only god these people will ever know! Well,
you must think like a god now, my beauty. You must reach for something
beyond your selfish little ambitions. Don't you realize what's taken
place?"

I shook my head. "I don't know anything. I'm going mad."

She laughed. She threw back her head and laughed. "We are what they
dream of, Lestat. We cannot disappoint them. If we did, the truth
implicit in the earth beneath our feet would be betrayed."

She turned away from me. She went back up again to the small outcropping
of snow-covered rock where she had stood before. She was looking down
into the valley, at the path that cut along the sheer cliff beneath her,
at the pilgrims turning back now as the fleeing women gave them the
word.

I heard cries echo off the stone face of the mountain. I heard the men
dying down there, as she, unseen, struck them with that power, that
great seductive and easy power. And the women stammering madly of
miracles and visions. And then the wind rose, swallowing everything, it
seemed; the great indifferent wind. I saw her shimmering face for an
instant; she came towards me; I thought this is death again, this is

death coming, the woods and the wolves coming, and no place to hide; and
then my eyes closed.

When I awoke I was in a small house. I didn't know how we'd gotten here,
or how long ago the slaughter in the mountains had been. I'd been
drowning in the voices, and now and then a dream had come to me, a
terrible yet familiar dream. I had seen two redheaded women in this
dream. They knelt beside an altar where a body lay waiting for them to
perform some ritual, some crucial ritual. And I'd been struggling
desperately to understand the dream's content, for it seemed that
everything depended upon it; I must not forget it again.

But now all that faded. The voices, the unwelcome images; the moment
pressed in.

The place where I lay was dark and dirty, and full of foul smells. In
little dwellings all around us, mortals lived in misery, babies crying
in hunger, amid the smell of cooking fires and rancid grease.

There was war in this place, true war. Not the debacle of the
mountainside, but old-fashioned twentieth-century war. From the minds of
the afflicted I caught it in viscid glimpses-an endless existence of
butchery and menace-buses burned, people trapped inside beating upon the
locked windows; trucks exploding, women and children running from
machine gun fire.

I lay on the floor as if someone had flung me there. And Akasha stood in
the doorway, her cloak wrapped tightly around her, even to her eyes, as
she peered out into the dark.

When I had climbed to my feet and come up beside her, I saw a mud alley
full of puddles and other small dwellings, some with roofs of tin and
others with roofs of sagging newspaper. Against the filthy walls men
slept, wrapped from head to toe as if in shrouds. But they were not
dead; and the rats they sought to avoid knew it. And the rats nibbled at
the wrappings, and the men twitched and jerked in their sleep.

It was hot here, and the warmth cooked the stenches of the place-urine,
feces, the vomit of dying children. I could even smell the hunger of the
children, as they cried in spasms. I could smell the deep dank sea smell
of the gutters-and the cesspools.

This was no village; it was a place of hovels and shacks, of
hopelessness. Dead bodies lay between the dwellings. Disease was
rampant; and the old and the sick sat silent in the dark, dreaming of
nothing, or of death perhaps, which was nothing, as the babies cried.

Down the alley there came now a tottering child with a swollen belly,
screaming as it rubbed with a small fist its swollen eye.

It seemed not to see us in the darkness. From door to door it went
crying, its smooth brown skin glistening in the dim flicker of the
cooking fires as it moved away.

"Where are we?" I asked her.

Astonished, I saw her turn and lift her hand tenderly to stroke my hair
and my face. Relief washed through me. But the raw suffering of this
place was too great for that relief to matter. So she had not destroyed
me; she had brought me to hell. What was the purpose? All around me I

felt the misery, the despair. What could alter the suffering of these
abject people?

"My poor warrior," she said. Her eyes were full of blood tears. "Don't
you know where we are?"

I didn't answer.

She spoke slowly, close to my ear. "Shall I recite the poetry of names?"
she asked. "Calcutta, if you wish, or Ethiopia; or the streets of
Bombay; these poor souls could be the peasants of Sri Lanka; of
Pakistan; of Nicaragua, of El Salvador. It does not matter what it is;
it matters how much there is of it; that all around the oases of your
shining Western cities it exists; it is three-fourths of the world! Open
your ears, my darling; listen to their prayers; listen to the silence of
those who've learned to pray for nothing. For nothing has always been
their portion, whatever the name of their nation, their city, their
tribe."

We walked out together into the mud street; past piles of dung and
filthy puddles and the starving dogs that came forth, and the rats that
darted across our path. Then we came to the ruins of an ancient palace.
Reptiles slithered among the stones. The blackness swarmed with gnats.
Derelicts slept in a long row beside a running gutter. Beyond in the
swamp, bodies rotted, bloated and forgotten.

Far away on the highway, the trucks passed, sending their rumble through
the stifling heat like thunder. The misery of the place was like a gas,
poisoning me as I stood there. This was the ragged edge of the savage
garden of the world in which hope could not flower. This was a sewer.

"But what can we do?" I whispered. "Why have we come here?" Again, I was
distracted by her beauty, the look of compassion that suddenly infected
her and made me want to weep.

"We can reclaim the world," she said, "as I've told you. We can make the
myths real; and the time will come when this will be a myth, that humans
ever knew such degradation. We shall see to that, my love."

"But this is for them to solve, surely. It isn't only their obligation,
it's their right. How can we aid in such a thing? How can our
interference not lead to catastrophe?"

"We shall see that it does not," she said calmly. "Ah, but you don't
begin to comprehend. You don't realize the strength we now possess.
Nothing can stop us. But you must watch now. You are not ready and I
would not push you again. When you kill again for me you must have
perfect faith and perfect conviction. Be assured that I love you and I
know that a heart can't be educated in the space of a night. But learn
from what you see and hear."

She went back out in the street. For one moment she was merely a frail
figure, moving through the shadows. Then suddenly I could hear beings
roused in the tiny hovels all around us, and I saw the women and
children emerge. Around me the sleeping forms began to stir. I shrank
back into the dark.

I was trembling. I wanted desperately to do something, to beg her to
have patience!

But again that sense of peace descended, that spell of perfect
happiness, and I was traveling back through the years to the little
French church of my childhood as the hymns began. Through my tears I saw
the shining altar. I saw the icon of the Virgin, a gleaming square of
gold above the flowers; I heard the Aves whispered as if they were a
charm. Under the arches of Notre Dame de Paris I heard the priests
singing "Salve Regina."

Her voice came, clear, inescapable as it had been before, as if it were
inside my brain. Surely the mortals heard it with the same irresistible
power. The command itself was without words; and the essence was beyond
dispute-that a new order was to begin, a new world in which the abused
and injured would know peace and justice finally. The women and the
children were exhorted to rise, and to slay all males within this
village. All males save one in a hundred should be killed, and all male
babies save one in a hundred should also be slaughtered immediately.
Peace on earth would follow once this had been done far and wide; there
would be no more war; there would be food and plenty.

I was unable to move, or to voice my terror. In panic I heard the
frenzied cries of the women. Around me, the sleeping derelicts rose from
their wrappings, only to be driven back against the walls, dying as I
had seen the men die in Azim's temple.

The street rang with cries. In clouded flashes, I saw people running; I
saw the men rushing out of the houses, only to drop in the mud. On the
distant road the trucks went up in flames, wheels screeching as the
drivers lost control. Metal was hurled against metal. Gas tanks
exploded; the night was full of magnificent light. Rushing from house to
house, the women surrounded the men and beat them with any weapon they
could find. Had the village of shanties and hovels ever known such
vitality as it did now in the name of death?

And she, the Queen of Heaven, had risen and was hovering above the tin
rooftops, a stark delicate figure burning against the clouds as if made
of white flame.

I closed my eyes and turned towards the wall, fingers clutching at the
crumbling rock. To think that we were solid as this, she and I. Yet not
of it. No, never of it. And we did not belong here! We had no right.

But even as I wept, I felt the soft embrace of the spell again; the
sweet drowsy sensation of being surrounded by flowers, of slow music
with its inevitable and enthralling rhythm. I felt the warm air as it
passed into my lungs; I felt the old stone tiles beneath my feet.

Soft green hills stretched out before me in hallucinatory perfection-a
world without war or deprivation in which women roamed free and
unafraid, women who even under provocation would shrink from the common
violence that lurks in the heart of every man.

Against my will I lingered in this new world, ignoring the thud of
bodies hitting the wet earth, and the final curses and cries of those
who were being killed.

In great dreamy flashes, I saw whole cities transformed; I saw streets
without fear of the predatory and the senselessly destructive; streets
in which beings moved without urgency or desperation. Houses were no
longer fortresses; gardens no longer needed their walls.

"Oh, Marius, help me," I whispered, even as the sun poured down on the
tree-lined pathways and endless green fields. "Please, please help me."

And then another vision shocked me, crowding out the spell. I saw fields
again, but there was no sunlight; this was a real place somewhere-and I
was looking through the eyes of someone or something walking in a
straight line with strong strides at incredible speed. But who was this
someone? What was this being's destination? Now, this vision was being
sent; it was powerful, refusing to be ignored. But why?

It was gone as quickly as it had come.

I was back in the crumbling palace arcade, among the scattered dead;
staring through the open archway at the rushing figures; hearing the
high-pitched cries of victory and jubilation,

Come out, my warrior, where they can see you. Come to me.

She stood before me with her arms extended. God, what did they think
they were seeing? For a moment I didn't move, then I went towards her,
stunned and compliant, feeling the eyes of the women, their worshipful
gaze. They fell down on their knees as she and I came together. I felt
her hand close too tightly; I felt my heart thudding. Akasha, this is a
lie, a terrible lie. And the evil sown here will flourish for a century.

Suddenly the world tilted. We weren't standing on the ground anymore.
She had me in her embrace and we were rising over the tin roofs, and the
women below were bowing and waving their arms, and touching their
foreheads to the mud.

"Behold the miracle, behold the Mother, behold the Mother and her Angel
..."

Then in an instant, the village was a tiny scattering of silver roofs
far below us, all that misery alchemized into images, and we were
traveling once again on the wind.

I glanced back, trying in vain to recognize the specific location-the
dark swamps, the lights of the nearby city, the thin strip of road where
the overturned trucks still burned. But she was right, it really didn't
matter.

Whatever was going to happen had now begun, and I did not know what
could possibly stop it.

THE STORY OF THE TWINS,

PART I

ALL EYES WERE FIXED ON MAHARET AS SHE paused. Then she began again, her
words seemingly spontaneous, though they came slowly and were carefully
pronounced. She seemed not sad, but eager to reexamine what she meant to
describe.

"Now, when I say that my sister and I were witches, I mean this: we
inherited from our mother-as she had from her mother-the power to
communicate with the spirits, to get them to do our bidding in small and
significant ways. We could feel the presence of the spirits-which are in
the main invisible to human eyes-and the spirits were drawn to us.

"And those with such powers as we had were greatly revered amongst our
people, and sought after for advice and miracles and glimpses into the
future, and occasionally for putting the spirits of the dead to rest.
"What I am saying is that we were perceived as good; and we had our
place in the scheme of things.

"There have always been witches, as far as I know. And there are witches
now, though most no longer understand what their powers are or how to
use them. Then there are those known as clairvoyants or mediums, or
channelers. Or even psychic detectives. It is all the same thing. These
are people who for reasons we may never understand attract spirits.
Spirits find them downright irresistible; and to get the notice of these
people, the spirits will do all kinds of tricks.

"As for the spirits themselves, I know that you're curious about their
nature and properties, that you did not-all of you-believe the story in
Lestat's book about how the Mother and the Father were made. I'm not
sure that Marius himself believed it, when he was told the old story, or
when he passed it on to Lestat."

Marius nodded. Already he had numerous questions. But Maharet gestured
for patience. "Bear with me," she said. "I will tell you all we knew of
the spirits then, which is the same as what I know of them now.
Understand of course that others may use a different name for these
entities. Others may define them more in the poetry of science than I
will do.

"The spirits spoke to us only telepathically; as I have said, they were
invisible; but their presence could be felt; they had distinct
personalities, and our family of witches had over many generations given
them various names.

"We divided them as sorcerers have always done into the good and the
evil; but there is no evidence that they themselves have a sense of
right and wrong. The evil spirits were those who were openly hostile to
human beings and who liked to play malicious tricks such as the throwing
of stones, the making of wind, and other such pesty things. Those who
possess humans are often 'evil' spirits; those who haunt houses and are
called poltergeists fall into this category, too.

"The good spirits could love, and wanted by and large to be loved as
well. Seldom did they think up mischief on their own. They would answer
questions about the future; they would tell us what was happening in
other, remote places; and for very powerful witches such as my sister
and me, for those whom the good spirits really loved, they would do
their greatest and most taxing trick: they would make the rain.

"But you can see from what I'm saying that labels such as good and evil
were self-serving. The good spirits were useful; the bad spirits were
dangerous and nerve-wracking. To pay attention to the bad spirits-to
invite them to hang about-was to court disaster, because ultimately they
could not be controlled.

"There was also abundant evidence that what we called bad spirits envied
us that we were fleshly and also spiritual-that we had the pleasures and
powers of the physical while possessing spiritual minds. Very likely,
this mixture of flesh and spirit in human beings makes all spirits
curious; it is the source of our attraction for them; but it rankles the
bad spirits; the bad spirits would know sensuous pleasure, it seems; yet
they cannot. The good spirits did not evince such dissatisfaction.

"Now, as to where these spirits came from-they used to tell us that they
had always been here. They would brag that they had watched human beings
change from animals into what they were. We didn't know what they meant
by such remarks. We thought they were being playful or just lying. But
now, the study of human evolution makes it obvious that the spirits had
witnessed this development. As for questions about their nature-how they
were made or by whom-well, these they never answered. I don't think they
understood what we were asking. They seemed insulted by the questions or
even slightly afraid, or even thought the questions were humorous.

"I suspect that someday the scientific nature of spirits will be known.
I suspect that they are matter and energy in sophisticated balance as is
everything else in our universe, and that they are no more magical than
electricity or radio waves, or quarks or atoms, or voices over the
telephone-the things that seemed supernatural only two hundred years
ago. In fact the poetry of modern science has helped me to understand
them in retrospect better than any other philosophical tool. Yet I cling
to my old language rather instinctively.

"It was Mekare's contention that she could now and then see them, and
that they had tiny cores of physical matter and great bodies of whirling
energy which she compared to storms of lightning and wind. She said
there were creatures in the sea which were equally exotic in their
organization; and insects who resembled the spirits, too. It was always
at night that she saw their physical bodies, and they were never visible
for more than a second, and usually only when the spirits were in a
rage.

"Their size was enormous, she said, but then they said this too. They
told us we could not imagine how big they were; but then they love to
brag; one must constantly sort from their statements the part which
makes sense.

"That they exert great force upon the physical world is beyond doubt.
Otherwise how could they move objects as they do in poltergeist
hauntings? And how could they have brought together the clouds to make
the rain? Yet very little is really accomplished by them for all the
energy they expend. And that was a key, always, to controlling them.
There is only so much they can do, and no more, and a good witch was
someone who understood that perfectly.

"Whatever their material makeup is, they have no apparent biological
needs, these entities. They do not age; they do not change. And the key
to understanding their childish and whimsical behavior lies in this.
They have no need to do anything; they drift about unaware of time, for
there is no physical reason to care about it, and they do whatever
strikes the fancy. Obviously they see our world; they are part of it;
but how it looks to them I can't guess.

"Why witches attract them or interest them I don't know either. But
that's the crux of it; they see the witch, they go to her, make
themselves known to her, and are powerfully flattered when they are
noticed; and they do her bidding in order to get more attention; and in
some cases, in order to be loved.

"And as this relationship progresses, they are made for the love of the
witch to concentrate on various tasks. It exhausts them but it also
delights them to see human beings so impressed.

"But imagine now, how much fun it is for them to listen to prayers and
try to answer them, to hang about altars and make thunder after
sacrifices are offered up. When a clairvoyant calls upon the spirit of a
dead ancestor to speak to his descendants, they are quite thrilled to
start chattering away in pretense of being the dead ancestor, though of
course they are not that person; and they will telepathically extract
information from the brains of the descendants in order to delude them
all the more.

"Surely all of you know the pattern of their behavior. It's no different
now than it was in our time. But what is different is the attitude of
human beings to what spirits do; and that difference is crucial.

"When a spirit in these times haunts a house and makes predictions
through the vocal cords of a five-year-old child, no one much believes
it except those who see and hear it. It does not become the foundation
of a great religion.

"It is as if the human species has grown immune to such things; it has
evolved perhaps to a higher stage where the antics of spirits no longer
befuddle it. And though religions linger-old religions which became
entrenched in darker times-they are losing their influence among the
educated very rapidly.

"But I'll say more on this later on. Let me continue now to define the
properties of a witch, as such things relate to me and my sister, and to
what happened to us.

"It was an inherited thing in our family. It may be physical for it
seemed to run in our family line through the women and to be coupled
invariably with the physical attributes of green eyes and red hair. As
all of you know-as you've come to learn in one way or another since you
entered this house-my child, Jesse, was a witch. And in the Talamasca
she used her powers often to comfort those who were plagued by spirits
and ghosts.

"Ghosts, of course, are spirits too. But they are without question
spirits of those who have been human on earth; whereas the spirits I
have been speaking of are not. However, one can never be too sure on
this point. A very old earthbound ghost could forget that he had ever
been alive; and possibly the very malevolent spirits are ghosts; and
that is why they hunger so for the pleasures of the flesh; and when they
possess some poor human being they belch obscenities. For them, the
flesh is filth and they would have men and women believe that erotic
pleasures and malice are equally dangerous and evil.

"But the fact is, given the way spirits lie-if they don't want to tell
you-there's no way to know why they do what they do. Perhaps their
obsession with the erotic is merely something abstracted from the minds
of men and women who have always felt guilty about such things.

'To return to the point, it was mostly the women in our family who were
witches. In other families it passes through both men and women. Or it
can appear full-blown in a human being for reasons we can't grasp.

"Be that as it may, ours was an old, old family of witches. We could
count witches back fifty generations, to what was called The Time Before
the Moon. That is, we claimed to have lived in the very early period of
earth history before the moon had come into the night sky.

"The legends of our people told of the coming of the moon, and the
floods, storms, and earthquakes that attended it. Whether such a thing
really happened I don't know. We also believed that our sacred stars
were the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, that all blessings came from
that constellation, but why, I never knew or cannot remember.

"I talk of old myths now, beliefs that were old before I was born. And
those who commune with spirits become for obvious reasons rather
skeptical of things.

"Yet science even now cannot deny or verify the tales of The Time Before
the Moon. The coming of the moon-its subsequent gravitational pull-has
been used theoretically to explain the shifting of the polar caps and
the late ice ages. Maybe there was truth in the old stories, truths that
will someday be clarified for us all.

"Whatever the case, ours was an old line. Our mother had been a powerful
witch to whom the spirits told numerous secrets, reading men's minds as
they do. And she had a great effect upon the restless spirits of the
dead.

"In Mekare and me, it seemed her power had been doubled, as is often
true with twins. That is, each of us was twice as powerful as our
mother. As for the power we had together, it was incalculable. We talked
to the spirits when we were in the cradle. We were surrounded by them
when we played. As twins, we developed our own secret language, which
not even our mother understood. But the spirits knew it. The spirits
would understand anything we said to them; they could even speak our
secret language back to us.

"Understand, I don't tell you all this out of pride. That would be
absurd. I tell you so that you will grasp what we were to each other and
to our own people before the soldiers of Akasha and Enkil came into our
land. I want you to understand why this evil-this making of the blood
drinkers-eventually happened!

"We were a great family. We had lived in the caves of Mount Carmel for
as long as anybody knew. And our people had always built their
encampments on the valley floor at the foot of the mountain. They lived
by herding goats and sheep. And now and then they hunted; and they grew
a few crops, for the making of the hallucinogenic drugs we took to make
trances-this was part of our religion-and also for the making of beer.
They cut down the wild wheat which grew then in profusion.

"Small round mud-brick houses with thatched roofs made up our village,
but there were others which had grown into small cities, and some in
which all the houses were entered from the roofs.

"Our people made a highly distinctive pottery which they took to the
markets of Jericho for trade. From there they brought back lapis lazuli,
ivory, incense, and mirrors of obsidian and other such fine things. Of
course we knew of many other cities, vast and beautiful as Jericho,
cities which are now buried completely under the earth and which may
never be found.

"But by and large we were simple people. We knew what writing was-that
is, the concept of it. But it did not occur to us to use such a thing,
as words had a great power and we would not have dared to write our
names, or curses or truths that we knew. If a person had your name, he
could call on the spirits to curse you; he could go out of his body in a

trance and travel to where you were. Who could know what power you would
put into his hands if he could write your name on stone or papyrus?

Even for those who weren't afraid, it was distasteful at the very least.

"And in the large cities, writing was largely used for financial records
which we of course could keep in our heads.

"In fact, all knowledge among our people was committed to memory; the
priests who sacrificed to the bull god of our people- in whom we did not
believe, by the way-committed his traditions and beliefs to memory and
taught them to the young priests by rote and by verse. Family histories
were told from memory, of course.

"We did however paint pictures; they covered the walls of the bull
shrines in the village.

"And my family, living in the caves on Mount Carmel as we had always,
covered our secret grottoes with paintings which no one saw but us.
Therein we kept a kind of record. But this was done with caution. I
never painted or drew the image of myself, for example, until after
catastrophe had struck and I and my sister were the things which we all
are.

"But to return to our people, we were peaceful; shepherds, sometime
craftsmen, sometime traders, no more, no less. When the armies of
Jericho went to war, sometimes our young men joined them; but that was
what they wanted to do. They wanted to be young men of adventure, and to
be soldiers and know glory of that sort. Others went to the cities, to
see the great markets, the majesty of the courts, or the splendor of the
temples. And some went to ports of the Mediterranean to see the great
merchant ships. But for the most part life went on in our villages as it
had for many centuries without change. And Jericho protected us, almost
indifferently, because it was the magnet which drew an enemy's force
unto itself.

"Never, never, did we hunt men to eat their flesh! This was not our
custom! And I cannot tell you what an abomination such cannibalism would
have been to us, the eating of enemy flesh. Because we were cannibals,
and the eating of the flesh had a special significance-we ate the flesh
of our dead."

Maharet paused for a moment as if she wanted the significance of these
words to be plain to all.

Marius saw the image again of the two red-haired women kneeling before
the funeral feast. He felt the warm midday stillness, and the solemnity
of the moment. He tried to clear his mind and see only Maharet's face.

"Understand," Maharet said. "We believed that the spirit left the body
at death; but we also believed that the residue of all living things
contains some tiny amount of power after life itself is gone. For
example, a man's personal belongings retain some bit of his vitality;
and the body and bones, surely. And of course when we consumed the flesh
of our dead this residue, so to speak, would be consumed as well.

"But the real reason we ate the dead was out of respect. It was in our
view the proper way to treat the remains of those we loved. We took into
ourselves the bodies of those who'd given us life, the bodies from which
our bodies had come. And so a cycle was completed. And the sacred

remains of those we loved were saved from the awful horror of
putrefaction within the earth, or from being devoured by wild beasts, or
burnt as if they were fuel or refuse.

"There is a great logic to it if you think on it. But the important
thing to realize is that it was part and parcel of us as a people. The
sacred duty of every child was to consume the remains of his parents;
the sacred duty of the tribe was to consume the dead.

"Not a single man, woman, or child died in our village whose body was
not consumed by kith or kin. Not a single man, woman, or child of our
village had not consumed the flesh of the dead."

Again, Maharet paused, her eyes sweeping the group slowly before she
went on.

"Now, it was not a time of great wars," she said. "Jericho had been at
peace for as long as anyone could remember. And Nineveh had been at
peace as well.

"But far away, to the southwest in the Nile Valley, the savage people of
that land made war as they had always done upon the jungle peoples south
of them so that they might bring back captives for their spits and pots.
For not only did they devour their own dead with all proper respect as
we did, they ate the bodies of their enemies; they gloried in it. They
believed the strength of the enemy went into their bodies when they
consumed his flesh. Also they liked the taste of the flesh.

"We scorned what they did, for the reasons I've explained. How could
anyone want the flesh of an enemy? But perhaps the crucial difference
between us and the warlike dwellers of the Nile Valley was not that they
ate their enemies, but that they were warlike and we were peaceful. We
did not have any enemies.

"Now, about the time that my sister and I reached our sixteenth year, a
great change occurred in the Nile Valley. Or so we were told.

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

"And so it would have been with this young King Enkil if he had had a
sister, but he did not. He did not even have a royal cousin or aunt to
marry. But he was young and strong and determined to rule his land.
Finally, he settled upon a new bride, not from his own people, but from
those of the city of Uruk in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley.

"And this was Akasha, a beauty of the royal family, and a worshiper of
the great goddess Inanna, and one who could bring into Enkil's kingdom
the wisdom of her land. Or so the gossip went in the marketplaces of
Jericho and Nineveh and with the caravans that came to trade for our
wares.

"Now the people of the Nile were farmers already, but they tended to
neglect this to hunt to make war for human flesh. And this horrified the

beautiful Akasha, who set about at once to turn them away from this
barbaric habit as possibly anyone of higher civilization might do.

"She probably also brought with her writing, as the people of Uruk had
it-they were great keepers of records-but as writing was something
largely scorned by us, I do not know this for sure. Perhaps the
Egyptians had already begun to write on their own.

"You cannot imagine the slowness with which such things affect a
culture. Records of taxation might be kept for generations before anyone
commits to a clay tablet the words of a poem. Peppers and herbs might be
cultivated by a tribe for two hundred years before anyone thinks to grow
wheat or corn. As you know, the Indians of South America had toys with
wheels when the Europeans swept down upon them; and jewelry they had,
made of metal. But they had no wheels in use in any other form
whatsoever; and they did not use metal for their weapons. And so they
were defeated by the Europeans almost at once.

"Whatever the case, I don't know the full story of the knowledge Akasha
brought with her from Uruk. I do know that our people heard great gossip
about the ban upon all cannibalism in the Nile Valley, and how those who
disobeyed were cruelly put to death. The tribes who had hunted for flesh
for generations were infuriated that they could no longer enjoy this
sport; but even greater was the fury of all the people that they could
not eat their own dead. Not to hunt, that was one thing, but to commit
one's ancestors to the earth was a horror to them as it would have been.

"So in order that Akasha's edict would be obeyed, the King decreed that
all the bodies of the dead must be treated with unguents and wrapped up.
Not only could one not eat the sacred flesh of mother or father, but it
must be secured in linen wrappings at great expense, and these intact
bodies must be displayed for all to see, and then placed in tombs with
proper offerings and incantation of the priest.

"The sooner the wrapping was done the better; because no one could then
get to the flesh.

"And to further assist the people in this new observance, Akasha and
Enkil convinced them that the spirits of the dead would fare better in
the realm to which they had gone if their bodies were preserved in these
wrappings on earth. In other words, the people were told, 'Your beloved
ancestors are not neglected; rather they are well kept.'

"We thought it was very amusing when we heard it-wrapping the dead and
putting them away in furnished rooms above or below the desert sand. We
thought it amusing that the spirits of the dead should be helped by the
perfect maintenance of their bodies on earth. For as anyone knows who
has ever communicated with the dead, it is better that they forget their
bodies; it is only when they relinquish their earthly image that they
can rise to the higher plane.

"And now in Egypt in the tombs of the very rich and very religious,
there lay these things-these mummies in which the flesh rotted away.

"If anyone had told us that this custom of mummification would become
entrenched in that culture, that for four thousand years the Egyptians
would practice it, that it would become a great and enduring mystery to
the entire world-that little children in the twentieth century would go
into museums to gaze at mummies-we would not have believed such a thing.

"However, it did not matter to us, really. We were very far from the
Nile Valley. We could not even imagine what these people were like. We
knew their religion had come out of Africa, that they worshiped the god
Osiris, and the sun god, Ra, and animal gods as well. But we really
didn't understand these people. We didn't understand their land of
inundation and desert. When we held in our hands fine objects which they
had made, we knew some faint shimmer of their personalities, but it was
alien. We felt sorry for them that they could not eat their dead.

"When we asked the spirits about them, the spirits seemed mightily
amused by the Egyptians. They said the Egyptians had 'nice voices' and
'nice words' and that it was pleasurable to visit their temples and
altars; they liked the Egyptian tongue. Then they seemed to lose
interest in the question, and to drift off as was often the case.

"What they said fascinated us but it didn't surprise us. We knew how the
spirits liked our words and our chants and our songs. So the spirits
were playing gods there for the Egyptians. The spirits did that sort of
thing all the time.

"As the years passed, we heard that Enkil, to unite his kingdom and stop
the rebellion and resistance of the die-hard cannibals, had made a great
army and embarked on conquests to north and south. He had launched ships
in the great sea. It was an old trick: get them all to fight an enemy
and they'll stop quarreling at home.

"But again, what had this to do with us? Ours was a land of serenity and
beauty, of laden fruit trees and fields of wild wheat free for anyone to
cut with the scythe. Ours was a land of green grass and cool breezes.
But there wasn't anything that anyone would want to take from us. Or so
we believed.

"My sister and I continued to live in perfect peace on the gentle slopes
of Mount Carmel, often speaking to our mother and to each other
silently, or with a few private words, which we understood perfectly;
and learning from our mother all she knew of the spirits and men's
hearts.

"We drank the dream potions made by our mother from the plants we grew
on the mountain, and in our trances and dream states, we traveled back
into the past and spoke with our ancestors-very great witches whose
names we knew. In sum, we lured the spirits of these ancient ones back
to earth long enough to give us some knowledge. We also traveled out of
our bodies and high over the land.

"I could spend these hours telling what we saw in these trances; how
once Mekare and I walked hand in hand through the streets of Nineveh,
gazing on wonders which we had not imagined; but these things are not
important now.

"Let me say only what the company of the spirits meant to the soft
harmony in which we lived with all living things around us and with the
spirits; and how at moments, the love of the spirits was palpable to us,
as Christian mystics have described the love of God or his saints, "We
lived in bliss together, my sister and I and our mother. The caves of
our ancestors were warm and dry; and we had all things that we needed-
fine robes and jewelry and lovely combs of ivory and sandals of leather-
brought to us by the people as offerings, for no one ever paid us for
what we did.

"And every day the people of our village came to consult with us, and we
would put their questions to the spirits. We would try to see the
future, which of course the spirits can do after a fashion, insofar as
certain things tend to follow an inevitable course.

"We looked into minds with our telepathic power and we gave the best
wisdom that we could. Now and then those possessed were brought to us.
And we drove out the demon, or the bad spirit, for that is all it was.
And when a house was bedeviled, we went there and ordered the bad spirit
away.

"We gave the dream potion to those who requested it. And they would fall
into the trance, or sleep and dream heavily in vivid images, which we
sought then to interpret or explain.

"For this we didn't really need the spirits though sometimes we sought
their particular advice. We used our own powers of understanding and
deep vision, and often the information handed down to us, as to what
various images mean.

"But our greatest miracle-which took all our power to accomplish, and
which we could never guarantee-was the bringing down of the rain.

"Now, in two basic ways we worked this miracle-'little rain,' which was
largely symbolic and a demonstration of power and a great healing thing
for our people's souls. Or 'big rain,' which was needed for the crops,
and which was very hard, indeed, to do if we could do it at all.

"Both required a great wooing of the spirits, a great calling of their
names, and demanding that they come together and concentrate and use
their force at our command. 'Little rain' was often done by our most
familiar spirits, those who loved Mekare and me most particularly, and
had loved our mother and her mother, and all our ancestors before us,
and could always be counted upon to do hard tasks out of love.

"But many spirits were required for 'big rain' and since some of these
spirits seemed to loathe each other and to loathe cooperation, a great
deal of flattery had to be thrown into the bargain. We had to do chants,
and a great dance. For hours, we worked at it as the spirits gradually
took interest, came together, became enamored of the idea, and then
finally set to work.

"Mekare and I were able to accomplish 'big rain' only three times. But
what a lovely thing it was to see the clouds gather over the valley, to
see the great blinding sheets of rain descend. All our people ran out
into the downpour; the land itself seemed to swell, to open, to give
thanks.

" 'Little rain' we did often; we did it for others, we did it for joy.

"But it was the making of'big rain' that really spread our fame far and
wide. We had always been known as the witches of (he mountain; but now
people came to us from the cities of the far north, from lands whose
names we didn't know.

"Men waited their turn in the village to come to the mountain and drink
the potion and have us examine their dreams. They waited their turn to
seek our counsel or sometimes merely to see us. And of course our
village served them meat and drink and took an offering for this, and
all profited, or so it seemed. And in this regard what we did was not so

different from what doctors of psychology do in this century; we studied
images; we interpreted them; we sought for some truth from the
subconscious mind; and the miracles of 'little rain' and 'big rain'
merely bolstered the faith of others in our abilities.

"One day, half a year I think before our mother was to die, a letter
came into our hands. A messenger had brought it from the King and Queen
of Kemet, which was the land of Egypt as the Egyptians called it
themselves. It was a letter written on a clay tablet as they wrote in
Jericho and Nineveh, and there were little pictures in the clay, and the
beginnings of what men would later call cuneiform.

"Of course we could not read it; in fact, we found it frightening, and
thought that it might be a curse. We did not want to touch it, but touch
it we had to do if we were to understand anything about it that we
should know.

"The messenger said that his sovereigns Akasha and Enkil had heard of
our great power and would be honored if we would visit at their court;
they had sent a great escort to accompany us to Kemet, and they would
send us home with great gifts.

"We found ourselves, all three, distrustful of this messenger. He was
speaking the truth as far as he knew it, but there was more to the whole
thing.

"So our mother took the clay tablet into her hands. Immediately, she
felt something from it, something which passed through her fingers and
gave her great distress. At first she wouldn't tell us what she had
seen; then taking us aside, she said that the King and Queen of Kemet
were evil, great shedders of blood, and very disregarding of others'
beliefs. And that a terrible evil would come to us from this man and
woman, no matter what the writing said.

"Then Mekare and I touched the letter and we too caught the presentiment
of evil. But there was a mystery here, a dark tangle, and caught up with
the evil was an element of courage and what seemed good. In sum this was
no simple plot to steal us and our power; there was some genuine
curiosity and respect.

"Finally we asked the spirits-those two spirits which Mekare and I most
loved. They came near to us and they read the letter which was a very
easy thing for them to do. They said that the messenger had told the
truth. But some terrible danger would come to us if we were to go to the
King and Queen of Kemet.

" 'Why?' we asked the spirits.

" 'Because the King and Queen will ask you questions, the spirits
answered, 'and if you answer truthfully, which you will, the King and
Queen will be angry with you, and you will be destroyed.'

"Of course we would never have gone to Egypt anyway. We didn't leave our
mountain. But now we knew for sure that we must not. We told the
messenger with all respect that we could not leave the place where we
had been born, that no witch of our family had ever left here, and we
begged him to tell this to the King and Queen.

"And so the messenger left and life returned to its normal routine.

"Except that several nights later, an evil spirit came to us, one which
we called Amel. Enormous, powerful, and full of rancor, this thing
danced about the clearing before our cave trying to get Mekare and me to
take notice of him, and telling us that we might soon need his help.

"We were long used to the blandishments of evil spirits; it made them
furious that we would not talk to them as other witches and wizards
might. But we knew these entities to be untrustworthy and uncontrollable
and we had never been tempted to use them and thought that we never
would.

"This Amel, in particular, was maddened by our 'neglect' of him, as he
called it. And he declared over and over again that he was 'Amel, the
powerful,' and 'Amel, the invincible,' and we should show him some
respect. For we might have great need of him in the future. We might
need him more than we could imagine, for trouble was coming our way.

"At this point, our mother came out of the cave and demanded of this
spirit what was this trouble that he saw.

"This shocked us because we had always been forbidden by her to speak to
evil spirits; and when she had spoken to them it was always to curse
them or drive them away; or to confuse them with riddles and trick
questions so that they got angry, felt stupid, and gave up.

"Amel, the terrible, the evil, the overwhelming-whatever he called
himself, and his boasting was endless-declared only that great trouble
was coming and we should pay him the proper respect if we were wise. He
then bragged of all the evil he had worked for the wizards of Nineveh.
That he could torment people, bedevil them, and even prick them as if he
were a swarm of gnats! He could draw blood from humans, he declared; and
he liked the taste of it; and he would draw blood for us.

"My mother laughed at him. 'How could you do such a thing?' she
demanded. 'You are a spirit; you have no body; you can taste nothing!'
she said. And this is the sort of language which always made spirits
furious, for they envy us the flesh, as I've said.

"Well, this spirit, to demonstrate his power, came down upon our mother
like a gale; and immediately her good spirits fought him and there was a
terrible commotion over the clearing, but when it had died away and Amel
had been driven back by our guardian spirits, we saw that there were
tiny pricks upon our mother's hand. Amel, the evil one, had drawn blood
from her, exactly as he had said he would-as if a swarm of gnats had
tormented her with little bites.

"My mother looked at these tiny pinprick wounds; the good spirits went
mad to see her treated with such disrespect, but she told them to be
still. Silently she pondered this thing, how it could be possible, and
how this spirit might taste the blood that he had drawn.

"And it was then that Mekare explained her vision that these spirits had
infinitesimal material cores at the very center of their great invisible
bodies, and it was possibly through this core that the spirit tasted the
blood. Imagine, Mekare said, the wick of a lamp, but a tiny thing within
a flame. The wick might absorb blood. And so it was with the spirit who
appeared to be all flame but had that tiny wick in it.

"Our mother was scornful but she did not like this thing. She said
ironically that the world was full of wonders enough without evil

spirits with a taste for blood. 'Be gone, Amel,' she said, and laid
curses on him, that he was trivial, unimportant, did not matter, was not
to be recognized, and might as well blow away. In other words the things
she always said to get rid of pesty spirits-the things which priests say
even now in slightly different form when they seek to exorcise children
who are possessed.

"But what worried our mother more than AmePs antics was his warning,
that evil was coming our way. It deepened the distress she had felt when
she took hold of the Egyptian tablet. Yet she did not ask the good
spirits for comfort or advice. Maybe she knew better than to ask them.
But this I can never know. Whatever was the case, our mother knew
something was going to happen, and clearly she felt powerless to prevent
it. Perhaps she understood that sometimes, when we seek to prevent
disaster, we play into its hands.

"Whatever was the truth of it, she grew sick in the days that followed,
then weak, and then unable to speak.

"For months she lingered, paralyzed, half asleep. We sat by her night
and day and sang to her. We brought flowers to her and we tried to read
her thoughts. The spirits were in a terrible state of agitation as they
loved her. And they made the wind blow on the mountain; they tore the
leaves from the trees.

"All the village was in sorrow. Then one morning the thoughts of our
mother took shape again; but they were fragments. We saw sunny fields
and flowers and images of things she'd known in childhood; and then only
brilliant colors and little more.

"We knew our mother was dying, and the spirits knew it. We did our best
to calm them, but some of them had gone into a rage. When she died, her
ghost would rise and pass through the realm of the spirits and they
would lose her forever and go mad for a while in their grief.

"But finally it happened, as it was perfectly natural and inevitable,
and we came out of the cave to tell the villagers our mother had gone to
higher realms. All the trees of the mountain were caught in the wind
made by the spirits; the air was full of green leaves. My sister and I
wept; and for the first time in my life I thought I heard the spirits; I
thought I heard their cries and lamentations over the wind.

"At once the villagers came to do what must be done.

"First our mother was laid out on a stone slab as was the custom so that
all could come and pay their respects. She was dressed in the white gown
she so loved in life, of Egyptian linen, and all her fine jewelry from
Nineveh and the rings and necklaces of bone which contained tiny bits of
our ancestors, and which would soon come to us.

"And after ten hours had passed, and hundreds had come to visit, both
from our village and all the surrounding villages, we then prepared the
body for the funeral feast. For any other dead person of our village,
the priests would have done this honor. But we were witches and our
mother was a witch; and we alone could touch her. And in privacy, and by
the light of oil lamps, my sister and I removed the gown from our mother
and covered her body completely with fresh flowers and leaves. We sawed
open her skull and lifted the top carefully so that it remained intact
at the forehead, and we removed her brain and placed it on a plate with
her eyes. Then with an equally careful incision we removed the heart and

placed it on another plate. Then these plates were covered with heavy
domes of clay to protect them.

"And the villagers came forward and built a brick oven around the body
of our mother on the stone slab, with the plates beside her, and they
put the fire in the oven, beneath the slab, between the rocks upon which
it rested, and the roasting began.

"All night it took place. The spirits had quieted because the spirit of
our mother was gone. I don't think the body mattered to them; what we
did now did not matter, but it certainly mattered to us.

"Because we were witches and our mother was a witch, we alone would
partake of her flesh. It was all ours by custom and right. The villagers
would not assist in the feast as they might have done at any other where
only two offspring were left with the obligation. No matter how long it
took we would consume our mother's flesh. And the villagers would keep
watch with us.

"But as the night wore on, as the remains of our mother were prepared in
the oven, my sister and I deliberated over the heart and the brain. We
would divide these organs of course; and which should take which organ,
that was what concerned us; for we had strong beliefs about these organs
and what resided in each.

"Now to many peoples of that time, it was the heart that mattered. To
the Egyptians, for example, the heart was the seat of conscience. This
was even so to the people of our village; but we as witches believed
that the brain was the residence of the human spirit: that is, the
spiritual part of each man or woman that was like unto the spirits of
the air. And our belief that the brain was important came from the fact
that the eyes were connected to the brain; and the eyes were the organs
of sight. And seeing is what we did as witches; we saw into hearts, we
saw into the future; we saw into the past. Seer, that was the word for
what we were in our language; that is what 'witch' meant.

"But again, this was largely ceremony of which we spoke; we believed our
mother's spirit had gone. Out of respect for her, we consumed these
organs so that they should not rot. So it was easy for us to reach
agreement; Mekare would take the brain and the eyes; and I would take
the heart.

"Mekare was the more powerful witch; the one born first; and the one who
always took the lead in things; the one who spoke out immediately; the
one who acted as the older sister, as one twin invariably does. It
seemed right that she should take the brain and the eyes; and I, who had
always been quieter of disposition, and slower, should take the organ
which was associated with deep feeling, and love-the heart.

"We were pleased with the division and as the morning sky grew light we
slept for a few hours, our bodies weak from hunger and the fasting that
prepared us for the feast.

"Sometime before dawn the spirits waked us. They were making the wind
come again. I went out of the cave; the fire glowed in the oven. The
villagers who kept watch were asleep. Angrily I told the spirits to keep
quiet. But one of them, that one which 1 most loved, said that strangers
were gathered on the mountain, many many strangers who were most
impressed with our power and dangerously curious about the feast.

" These men want something of you and Mekare,' the spirit told me. These
men are not for the good.'

"I told him that strangers always came here; that this was nothing, and
that he must be quiet now, and let us do what we had to do. But then I
went to one of the men of our village and asked that' the village be
ready in case some trouble was to happen, that the men bring their arms
with them when they gathered for the feast to begin.

"It wasn't such a strange request. Most men carried their weapons with
them wherever they went. Those few who had been professional soldiers or
could afford swords frequently wore them; those with knives kept them
tucked in their belt.

"But in the main I was not concerned about such things; after all,
strangers from far and wide came to our village; it was only natural
that they would for this special event-the death of a witch.

"But you know what was to happen. You saw it in your dreams. You saw the
villagers gather around the clearing as the sun rose towards the high
point of noon. Maybe you saw the bricks taken down slowly from the
cooling oven; or only the body of our mother, darkened, shriveled, yet
peaceful as in sleep, revealed on the warm slab of stone. You saw the
wilted flowers covering her, and you saw the heart and the brain and the
eyes upon their plates.

"You saw us kneel on either side of our mother's body. And you heard the
musicians begin to play.

"What you could not see, but you know now, is that for thousands of
years our people had gathered at such feasts. For thousands of years we
had lived in that valley and on the slopes of the mountain where the
high grass grew and the fruit fell from the trees. This was our land,
our custom, our moment.

"Our sacred moment.

"And as Mekare and I knelt opposite each other, dressed in the finest
robes we possessed and wearing now the jewelry of our mother as well as
our own adornments, we saw before us, not the warnings of the spirits,
or the distress of our mother when she had touched the tablet of the
King and Queen of Kemet. We saw our own lives-with hope, long and happy-
to be lived here among our own.

"I don't know how long we knelt there; how long we prepared our souls. I
remember that finally, in unison, we lifted the plates which contained
the organs of our mother; and the musicians began to play. The music of
the flute and the drum filled the air around us; we could hear the soft
breath of the villagers; we could hear the song of the birds.

"And then the evil came down upon us; came so suddenly with the tramp of
feet and loud shrill war cries of the Egyptian soldiers, that we scarce
knew what was happening. Over our mother's body, we threw ourselves,
seeking to protect the sacred feast; but at once they had pulled us up
and away, and we saw the plates falling into the dirt, and the slab
overturned!

"I heard Mekare screaming as I had never heard a human scream. But I too
was screaming, screaming as I saw my mother's body thrown down into the
ashes.

"Yet curses filled my ears; men denouncing us as flesh eaters,
cannibals, men denouncing us as savages and those who must be put to the
sword.

"Only no one harmed us. Screaming, struggling, we were bound and kept
helpless, though all of our kith and kin were slaughtered before our
eyes. Soldiers tramped on the body of our mother; they tramped on her
heart and her brain and her eyes. They tramped back and forth in the
ashes, while their cohorts skewered the men and women and children of
our village.

"And then, through the chorus of screams, through the hideous outcry of
all those hundreds dying on the side of the mountain, I heard Mekare
call on our spirits for vengeance, call on them to punish the soldiers
for what they had done.

"But what was wind or rain to such men as these? The trees shook; it
seemed the earth itself trembled; leaves filled the air as they had the
night before. Rocks rolled down the mountain; dust rose in clouds. But
there was no more than a moment's hesitation, before the King, Enkil,
himself stepped forth and told his men that these were but tricks that
all men had witnessed, and we and our demons could do no more.

"It was all too true, this admonition; and the massacre went on
unabated. My sister and I were ready to die. But they did not kill us.
It was not their intention to kill us, and as they dragged us away, we
saw our village burning, we saw the fields of wild wheat burning, we saw
all the men and women of our tribe lying dead, and we knew their bodies
would be left there for the beasts and the earth to consume, in utter
disregard and abandon."

Maharet stopped. She had made a small steeple of her hands and now she
touched the tips of her fingers to her forehead, and rested it seemed
before she went on. When she continued, her voice was roughened slightly
and lower, but steady as it had been before.

"What is one small nation of villages? What is one people-or even one
life?

"Beneath the earth a thousand such peoples are buried. And so our people
are buried to this day.

"All we knew, all we had been, was laid waste within the space of an
hour. A trained army had slaughtered our simple shepherds, our women,
and our helpless young. Our villages lay in ruins, huts pulled down;
everything that could burn was burned.

"Over the mountain, over the village that lay at the foot of it, I felt
the presence of the spirits of the dead; a great haze of spirits, some
so agitated and confused by the violence done them that they clung to
the earth in terror and pain; and others rising above the flesh to
suffer no more.

"And what could the spirits do?

"All the way to Egypt, they followed our procession; they bedeviled the
men who kept us bound and carried us by means of a litter on their
shoulders, two weeping women, snuggling close to each other in terror
and grief.

"Each night when the company made camp, the spirits sent wind to tear up
their tents and scatter them. Yet the King counseled his soldiers not to
be afraid. The King said the gods of Egypt were more powerful than the
demons of the witches. And as the spirits were in fact doing all that
they were capable of, as things got no worse, the soldiers obeyed.

"Each night the King had us brought before him. He spoke our language,
which was a common one in the world then, spoken all through the Tigris
and Euphrates Valley and along the flanks of Mount Carmel. 'You are
great witches,' he would say, his voice gentle and maddeningly sincere.
'I have spared your life on this account though you were flesh eaters as
were your people, and you were caught in the very act by me and my men.
I have spared you because I would have the benefit of your wisdom. I
would learn from you, and my Queen would learn as well. Tell me what I
can give you to ease your suffering and I will do it. You are under my
protection now; I am your King.'

"Weeping, refusing to meet his eyes, saying nothing, we stood before him
until he tired of all this, and sent us back to sleep in the small
crowded litter-a tiny rectangle of wood with only small windows-as we
had been before.

"Alone once more, my sister and I spoke to each other silently, or by
means of our language, the twin language of gestures and abbreviated
words that only we understood. We recalled what the spirits had said to
our mother; we remembered that she had taken ill after the letter from
the King of Kemet and she had never recovered. Yet we weren't afraid.

"We were too stricken with grief to be afraid. It was as if we were
already dead. We'd seen our people massacred, we'd seen our mother's
body desecrated. We did not know what could be worse. We were together;
maybe separation would be worse.

"But during this long journey to Egypt, we had one small consolation
which we were not later to forget. Khayman, the King's steward, looked
upon us with compassion, and did everything that he could, in secret, to
ease our pain."

Maharet stopped again and looked at Khayman, who sat with his hands
folded before him on the table and his eyes down. It seemed he was deep
in his recollection of the things which Maharet described. He accepted
this tribute but it didn't seem to console him. Then finally he looked
to Maharet in acknowledgment. He seemed dazed and full of questions. But
he didn't ask them. His eyes passed over the others, acknowledging their
glances as well, acknowledging the steady stare of Armand, and of Ga-
brielle, but again, he said nothing.

Then Maharet continued:

"Khayman loosened our" bonds whenever possible; he allowed us to walk
about in the evening; he brought us meat and drink. And there was a
great kindness in that he didn't speak to us when he did these things;
he did not ask for our gratitude. He did these things with a pure heart.
It was simply not to his taste to see people suffer.

"It seemed we traveled ten days to reach the land of Kemet. Maybe it was
more; maybe it was less. Some time during that journey the spirits tired
of their tricks; and we, dejected and without courage, did not call upon

them. We sank into silence finally, only now and then looking into each
other's eyes.

"At last we came into a kingdom the like of which we had never seen.
Over scorching desert we were brought to the rich black land that
bordered the Nile River, the black earth from which the word Kemet
derives; and then over the mighty river itself by raft we were taken as
was all the army, and into a sprawling city of brick buildings with
grass roofs, of great temples and palaces built of the same coarse
materials, but all very fine.

"This was long before the time of the stone architecture for which the
Egyptians would become known-the temples of the pharaohs which have
stood to this day.

"But already there was a great love of show and decoration, a movement
towards the monumental. Unbaked bricks, river reeds, matting-all of
these simple materials had been used to make high walls which were then
whitewashed and painted with lovely designs.

"Before the palace into which we were taken as royal prisoners were
great columns made from enormous jungle grasses, which had been dried
and bound together and plastered with river mud; and within a closed
court a lake had been made, full of lotus blossoms and surrounded by
flowering trees.

"Never had we seen people so rich as these Egyptians, people decked out
with so much jewelry, people with beautifully plaited hair and painted
eyes. And their painted eyes tended to unnerve us. For the paint
hardened their stare; it gave an illusion of depth where perhaps there
was no depth; instinctively, we shrank from this artifice.

"But all we saw merely inspired further misery in us. How we hated
everything around us. And we could sense from these people-though we
didn't understand their strange tongue-that they hated and feared us
too. It seemed our red hair caused great confusion among them; and that
we were twins, this too produced fear.

"For it had been the custom among them now and then to kill twin
children; and the red-haired were invariably sacrificed to the gods. It
was thought to be lucky.

"All this came clear to us in wanton flashes of understanding;
imprisoned, we waited grimly to see what would be our fate.

"As before, Khayman was our only consolation in those first hours.
Khayman, the King's chief steward, saw that we had comforts in our
imprisonment. He brought us fresh linen, and fruit to eat and beer to
drink. He brought us even combs for our hair and clean dresses; and for
the first time he spoke to us; he told us that the Queen was gentle and
good, and we must not be afraid.

"We knew that he was speaking the truth, there was no doubt of it; but
something was wrong, as it had been months before with the words of the
King's messenger. Our trials had only begun.

"We also feared the spirits had deserted us; that maybe they did not
want to come into this land on our behalf. But we didn't call upon the
spirits; because to call and not to be answered-well, that would have
been more than we could bear.

"Then evening came and the Queen sent for us; and we were brought before
the court.

"The spectacle overwhelmed us, even as we despised it: Akasha arid Enkil
upon their thrones. The Queen was then as she is now a woman of straight
shoulders and firm limbs with a face almost too exquisite to evince
intelligence, a being of enticing prettiness with a soft treble voice.
As for the King, we saw him now not as a soldier but as a sovereign. His
hair was plaited, and he wore his formal kilt and jewels. His black eyes
were full of earnestness as they had always been; but it was clear,
within a moment, that it was Akasha who ruled this kingdom and always
had. Akasha had the language-the verbal skill.

"At once, she told us that our people had been properly punished for
their abominations; that they had been dealt with mercifully, as all
flesh eaters are savages, and they should have, by right, suffered a
slow death. And she said that we had been shown mercy because we were
great witches, and the Egyptians would learn from us; they would know
what wisdom of the realms of the invisible we had to impart.

"Immediately, as if these words were nothing, she went into her
questions. Who were our demons? Why were some good, if they were demons?
Were they not gods? How could we make the rain fall?

"We were too horrified by her callousness to respond. We were bruised by
the spiritual coarseness of her manner, and had begun to weep again. We
turned away from her and into each other's arms.

"But something else was also coming clear to us-something very plain
from the manner in which this person spoke. The speed of her words,
their flippancy, the emphasis she put upon this or that syllable-all
this made known to us that she was lying and did not herself know that
she lied.

"And looking deep into the lie, as we closed our eyes, we saw the truth
which she herself would surely deny:

"She had slaughtered our people in order to bring us here! She had sent
her King and her soldiers upon this 'holy war' simply because we had
refused her earlier invitation, and she wanted us at her mercy. She was
curious about us.

"This was what our mother had seen when she held the tablet of the King
and Queen in her hands. Perhaps the spirits in their own way had
foreseen it. We only understood the full monstrous-ness of it now.

"Our people had died because we had attracted the interest of the Queen
just as we attracted the interest of the spirits; we had brought this
evil upon all.

"Why, we wondered, hadn't the soldiers merely taken us from our helpless
villagers? Why had they brought to ruin all that our people were?

"But that was the horror! A moral cloak had been thrown over the Queen's
purpose, a cloak through which she could not see any more than anyone
else.

"She had convinced herself that our people should die, yes, that their
savagery merited it, even though they were not Egyptians and our land

was far from her home. And oh, wasn't it rather convenient, that then we
should be shown mercy and brought here to satisfy her curiosity at last.
And we should, of course, be grateful by then and willing to answer her
questions.

"And even deeper beyond her deception, we beheld the mind that made such
contradictions possible.

"This Queen had no true morality, no true system of ethics to govern the
things which she did. This Queen was one of those many humans who sense
that perhaps there is nothing and no reason to anything that can ever be
known. Yet she cannot bear the thought of it. And so she created day in
and day out her ethical systems, trying desperately to believe in them,
and they were all cloaks for things she did for merely pragmatic
reasons. Her war on the cannibals, for instance, had stemmed more from
her dislike of such customs than anything else. Her people of Uruk
hadn't eaten human flesh; and so she would not have this offensive thing
happening around her; there really wasn't a whole lot more to it than
that. For always in her there was a dark place full of despair. And a
great driving force to make meaning because there was none.

"Understand, it was not a shallowness we perceived in this woman. It was
a youthful belief that she could make the light shine if she tried; that
she could shape the world to comfort herself; and it was also a lack of
interest in the pain of others. She knew others felt pain, but well, she
could not really dwell on it.

"Finally, unable to bear the extent of this obvious duplicity, we turned
and studied her, for we must now contend with her. She was not twenty-
five years old, this Queen, and her powers were absolute in this land
which she had dazzled with her customs from Uruk. And she was almost too
pretty to be truly beautiful, for her loveliness overcame any sense of
majesty or deep mystery; and her voice contained still a childish ring
to it, a ring which evokes tenderness instinctively in others, and gives
a faint music to the simplest words. A ring which we found maddening.

"On and on she went with her questions. How did we work our miracles?
How did we look into men's hearts? Whence came our magic, and why did we
claim that we talked to beings who were invisible? Could we speak in the
same manner to her gods? Could we deepen her knowledge or bring her into
closer understanding of what was divine? She was willing to pardon us
for our savagery if we were to be grateful; if we were to kneel at her
altars and lay before her gods and before her what we knew.

"She pursued her various points with a single-mindedness that could make
a wise person laugh.

"But it brought up the deepest rage from Mekare. She who had always
taken the lead in anything spoke out now.

" 'Stop your questions. You speak in stupidities,* she declared. 'You
have no gods in this kingdom, because there are no gods. The only
invisible inhabitants of the world are spirits, and they play with you
through your priests and your religion as they play with everyone else.
Ra, Osiris-these are merely made-up names with which you flatter and
court the spirits, and when it suits their purposes they give you some
little sign to send you scurrying to flatter them some more.'

"Both the King and Queen stared at Mekare in horror. But Mekare went on:

" 'The spirits are real, but they are childlike and capricious. And they
are dangerous as well. They marvel at us and envy us that we are both
spiritual and fleshly, which attracts them and makes them eager to do
our will. Witches such as we have always known how to use them; but it
takes great skill and great power to do it, and this we have and you do
not have. You are fools, and what you have done to take us prisoner is
evil; it is dishonest; you live in the lie! But we will not lie to you.'

"And then, half weeping, half choking with rage, Mekare accused the
Queen before the entire court of duplicity, of massacring our peaceable
people simply so that we might be brought here. Our people had not
hunted for human flesh in a thousand years, she told this court; and it
was a funeral feast that was desecrated at our capture, and all this
evil done so that the Queen of Kernel might have witches to talk to,
witches of whom to ask questions, witches in her possession whose power
she would seek to use for herself.

"The court was in an uproar. Never had anyone heard such disrespect,
such blasphemy, and so forth and so on. But the old lords of Egypt,
those who still chafed at the ban on sacred cannibalism, they were
horrified by this mention of the desecrated funeral feast. And others
who also feared the retribution of heaven for not devouring the remains
of their parents were struck dumb with fear.

"But in the main, it was confusion. Except for the King and the Queen,
who were strangely silent and strangely intrigued.

"Akasha didn't make any answer to us, and it was clear that something in
our explanation had rung true for her in the deeper regions of her mind.
There flared for the moment a deadly earnest curiosity. Spirits who
pretend to be gods? Spirits who envy the flesh? As for the charge that
she had sacrificed our people needlessly, she didn't even consider it.
Again, it did not interest her. It was the spiritual question which
fascinated her, and in her fascination the spirit was divorced from the
flesh.

"Allow me to draw your attention to what I have just said. It was the
spiritual question which fascinated her-you might say the abstract idea;
and in her fascination the abstract idea was everything. I do not think
she believed that the spirits could be childlike and capricious. But
whatever was there, she meant to know of it; and she meant to know of it
through us. As for the destruction of our people, she did not care!

"Meantime the high priest of the temple of Ra was demanding our
execution. So was the high priest of the temple of Osiris. We were evil;
we were witches; and all those with red hair should be burned as had
always been done in the land of Kernel. And at once the assemblage
echoed these denunciations. There should be a burning. Within moments it
seemed a riot would have broken out in the palace.

"But the King ordered all to be quiet. We were taken to our cell again,
and put under heavy guard.

"Mekare, enraged, paced the floor, as I begged her not to say any more.
I reminded her of what the spirits had told us: that if we went to
Egypt, the King and Queen would ask us questions, and if we answered
truthfully, which we would, the King and Queen would be angry with us,
and we would be destroyed.

"But this was like talking to myself now; Mekare wouldn't listen. Back
and forth she walked, now and then striking her breast with her fist. I
felt the anguish she felt.

" 'Damnable,' she was saying. 'Evil.' And then she'd fall silent and
pace, and then say these words again.

"I knew she was remembering the warning of Amel, the evil one. And I
also knew that Amel was near; I could hear him, sense him.

"I knew that Mekare was being tempted to call upon him; and I felt that
she must not. What would his silly torments mean to the Egyptians? How
many mortals could he afflict with his pinpricks? It was no more than
the storms of wind and flying objects which we could already produce.
But Amel heard these thoughts; and he began to grow restless.

" 'Be quiet, demon,' Mekare said. 'Wait until I need you!' Those were
the first words I ever heard her speak to an evil spirit, and they sent
a shiver of horror through me.

"I don't remember when we fell asleep. Only that sometime after midnight
I was awakened by Khayman.

"At first I thought it was Amel doing some trick, and I awoke in a
frenzy. But Khayman gestured for me to be quiet. He was in a terrible
state. He wore only a simple bed gown and no sandals, and his hair was
mussed. It seemed he'd been weeping. His eyes were red.

"He sat down beside me. Tell me, is this true, what you said of the
spirits?' I didn't bother to tell him it was Mekare who said it. People
always confused us or thought of us as one being. I merely to!d him,
yes, it was true.

"I explained that there have always been these invisible entities; that
they themselves had told us there were no gods or goddesses of which
they knew. They had bragged to us often of the tricks they played at
Sumer or Jericho or in Nineveh at the great temples. Now and then they
would come booming that they were this or that god. But we knew their
personalities, and when we called them by their old names, they gave up
the new game at once.

"What I did not say was that I wished Mekare had never made known such
things. What purpose could it serve now?

"He sat there defeated, listening to me, listening as if he had been a
man lied to all his life and now he saw truth. For he had been deeply
moved when he had seen the spirits strike up the wind on our mountain
and he had seen a shower of leaves fall upon the soldiers; it had
chilled his soul. And that is always what produces , that mixture of
truth and a physical manifestation.

'But then I perceived there was an even greater burden upon his
conscience, or on his reason, one might say. 'And the massacre of your
people, this was a holy war; it was not a selfish thing, as you said.'

" 'Oh, no,' I told him. 'It was a selfish and simple thing, I can't say
otherwise.' I told him of the tablet sent to us by the messenger, of
what the spirits had said, of my mother's fear and her illness, and of
my own power to hear the truth in the Queen's words, the truth which she
herself might not be able to accept.

"But long before I'd finished, he was defeated again. He knew, from his
own observations, that what I was saying was true. He had fought at the
King's side through many a campaign against foreign peoples. That an
army should fight for gain was nothing to him. He had seen massacres and
cities burned; he had seen slaves taken; he had seen men return laden
with booty. And though he himself was no soldier, these things he
understood.

"But there had been no booty worth taking in our villages; there had
been no territory which the King would retain. Yes, it had been fought
for our capture, he knew it. And he too felt the distaste for the lie of
a holy war against flesh eaters. And he felt a sadness that was even
greater than his defeat. He was of an old family; he had eaten the flesh
of his ancestors; and he found himself now punishing such traditions
among those whom he had known and loved. He thought of the mummification
of the dead with repugnance, but more truly he felt repugnance for the
ceremony which accompanied it, for the depth of superstition in which
the land had been steeped. So much wealth heaped upon the dead; so much
attention to those putrefying bodies simply so men and women would not
feel guilty for abandoning the older customs.

"Such thoughts exhausted him; they weren't natural to him; what obsessed
him finally were the deaths he had seen; executions; massacres. Just as
the Queen could not grasp such things, he could not forget them and he
was a man losing his stamina; a man drawn into a mire in which he might
drown.

"Finally he took his leave of me. But before he went he promised that he
would do his best to see that we were released. He did not know how he
could do it, but he would try to do it. And he begged me not to be
afraid. I felt a great love for him at thai moment. He had then the same
beautiful face and form which he has now; only then he was dark-skinned
and leaner and the curls had been ironed from his hair and it had been
plaited and hung long to his shoulders, and he had the air of the court
about him, the air of one who commands, and one who stands in the warm
love of his prince.

"The following morning the Queen sent for us again. And this time we
were brought privately to her chamber, where only the King was with her,
and Khayman.

"It was a more lavish place even than the great hall of the palace; it
was stuffed to overflowing with fine things, with a couch made of carved
leopards, and a bed hung with sheer silk; and with polished mirrors of
seemingly magical perfection. And the Queen herself, like a temptress
she was, bedecked with finery and perfume, and fashioned by nature into
a thing as lovely as any treasure around her.

"Once again she put her questions.

"Standing together, our hands bound, we had to listen to the same
nonsense.

"And once again Mekare told the Queen of the spirits; she explained that
the spirits have always existed; she told how they bragged of playing
with the priests of other lands. She told how the spirits had said the
songs and chants of the Egyptians pleased them. It was all a game to the
spirits, and no more.

" 'But these spirits! They are the gods, then, that is what you are
saying!* Akasha said with great fervor. 'And you speak to them? I want
to see you do it! Do it for me now.'

" 'But they are not gods,' I said. That is what we are trying to tell
you. And they do not abhor the eaters of the flesh as you say your gods
do. They don't care about such things. They never have.' Painstakingly I
strove to convey the difference; these spirits had no code; they were
morally inferior to us. Yet I knew this woman couldn't grasp what I was
telling her.

"I perceived the war inside her, between the handmaiden of the goddess
Inanna who wanted to believe herself blessed, and the dark brooding soul
who believed finally in nothing. A chill place was her soul; her
religious fervor was nothing but a blaze which she fed constantly,
seeking to warm that chill place.

" 'Everything you say is a lie!' she said finally. 'You are evil women!'
She ordered our execution. We should be burnt alive the next day and
together, so that we might see each other suffer and die. Why had she
ever bothered with us?

"At once the King interrupted her. He told her that he had seen the
power of the spirits; so had Khayman. What might not the spirits do if
we were so treated? Wouldn't it be better to let us go?

"But there was something ugly and hard in the Queen's gaze. The King's
words meant nothing; our lives were being taken from us. What could we
do? And it seemed she was angry with us because we had not been able to
frame our truths in ways which she could use or take pleasure in. Ah, it
was an agony to deal with her. Yet her mind is a common mind; there are
countless human beings who think and feel as she did then; and does now,
in all likelihood.

"Finally Mekare seized the moment. She did the thing which I did not
dare to do. She called the spirits-all of them by name, but so quickly
this Queen would never remember the words. She screamed for them to come
to her and do her bidding; and she told them to show their displeasure
at what was happening to those mortals-Maharet and Mekare-whom they
claimed to love.

"It was a gamble. But if nothing happened, if they had deserted us as I
feared, well, then she could call on Amel, for he was there, lurking,
waiting. And it was the only chance we had finally.

"Within an instant the wind had begun. It howled through the courtyard
and whistled through the corridors of the palace. The draperies were
torn by it; doors slammed; fragile vessels were smashed. The Queen was
in a state of terror as she felt it surround her. Then small objects
began to fly through the air. The spirits gathered up the ornaments of
her dressing table and hurled them at her; the King stood beside her,
striving to protect her, and Khayman was rigid with fear.

"Now, this was the very limit of the spirits' power; and they would not
be able to keep it up for very long. But before the demonstration
stopped, Khayman begged the King and Queen to revoke the sentence of
execution. And on the spot they did.

"At once Mekare, sensing that the spirits were spent anyway, ordered
them with great pomp to stop. Silence fell. And the terrified slaves ran
here and there to gather up what had been thrown about.

"The Queen was overcome. The King tried to tell her that he had seen
this spectacle before and it had not harmed him; but something deep had
been violated within the Queen's heart. She'd never witnessed the
slightest proof of the supernatural; and she was struck dumb and still
now. In that dark faithless place within her, there had been a spark of
light; true light. And so old and certain was her secret skepticism,
that this small miracle had been for her a revelation of great
magnitude; it was as if she had seen the face of her gods.

"She sent the King and Khayman away from her. She said she would speak
with us alone. And then she implored us to talk to the spirits so that
she could hear it. There were tears in her eyes.

"It was an extraordinary moment, for I sensed now what I'd sensed months
ago when I'd touched the clay tablet-a mixture of good and evil that
seemed more dangerous than evil itself.

"Of course we couldn't make the spirits speak so that she could
understand it, we told her. But perhaps she would give us some questions
that they might answer. At once she did.

"These were no more than the questions which people have been putting to
wizards and witches and saints ever since. 'Where is the necklace I lost
as a child? What did my mother want to tell me the night she died when
she could no longer speak? Why does my sister detest my company? Will my
son grow to manhood? Will he be brave and strong?'

"Struggling for our lives, we put these questions patiently to the
spirits, cajoling them and flattering them to make them pay attention.
And we got answers which veritably astonished Aka-sha. The spirits knew
the name of her sister; they knew the name of her son. She seemed on the
edge of madness as she considered these simple tricks.

"Then Amel, the evil one, appeared-obviously jealous of all these
goings-on-and suddenly flung down before Akasha the lost necklace of
which she'd been speaking-a necklace lost in Uruk; and this was the
final blow. Akasha was thunderstruck.

"She wept now, holding on to this necklace. And then she begged us to
put to the spirits the really important questions whose answers she must
know.

"Yes, the gods were made up by her people, the spirits said. No, the
names in the prayers didn't matter. The spirits merely liked the music
and rhythm of the language-the shape of the words, so to speak. Yes,
there were bad spirits who liked to hurt people, and why not? And there
were good spirits who loved them, too. And would they speak to Akasha if
we were to leave the kingdom? Never. They were speaking now, and she
couldn't hear them, what did she expect them to do? But yes, there were
witches in the kingdom who could hear them, and they would tell those
witches to come to the court at once if that was what she wanted.

"But as this communication progressed, a terrible change came over
Akasha.

"She went from jubilance to suspicion and then misery. Because these
spirits were only telling her the same dismal things that we had already
told her.

" 'What do you know of the life after?' she asked. And when the spirits
said only that the souls of the dead either hovered about the earth,
confused and suffering, or rose and vanished from it completely, she was
brutally disappointed. Her eyes dulled; she was losing all appetite for
this. When she asked what of those who had lived bad lives, as opposed
to those who had lived good lives, the spirits could give no answer.
They didn't know what she meant.

"Yet it continued, this interrogation. And we could sense that the
spirits were tiring of it, and playing with her now, and that the
answers would become more and more idiotic.

" 'What is the will of the gods?' she asked. 'That you sing all the
time,' said the spirits. 'We like it.'

"Then all of a sudden, Amel, the evil one, so proud of the trick with
the necklace, flung another great string of jewels before Akasha. But
from this she shrank back in horror.

"At once we saw the error. It had been her mother's necklace, and lay on
her mother's body in the tomb near Uruk, and of course Amel, being only
a spirit, couldn't guess how bizarre and distasteful it could be to
bring this thing here. Even now he did not catch on. He had seen this
necklace in Akasha's mind when she had spoken of the other one. Why
didn't she want it too? Didn't she like necklaces?

"Mekare told Amel this had not pleased. It was the wrong miracle. Would
he please wait for her command, as she understood this Queen and he
didn't.

"But it was too late. Something had happened to the Queen which was
irrevocable. She had seen two pieces of evidence as to the power of the
spirits, and she had heard truth and nonsense, neither of which could
compare to the beauty of the mythology of her gods which she had always
forced herself to believe in. Yet the spirits were destroying her
fragile faith. How would she ever escape the dark skepticism in her own
soul if these demonstrations continued?

"She bent down and picked up the necklace from her mother's tomb. 'How
was this got!* she demanded. But her heart wasn't really in the
question. She knew the answer would be more of what she'd been hearing
since we had arrived. She was frightened.

"Nevertheless I explained; and she listened to every word.

"The spirits read our minds; and they are enormous and powerful. Their
true size is difficult for us to imagine; and they can move with the
swiftness of thought; when Akasha thought of this second necklace, the
spirit saw it; he went to look for it; after all, one necklace had
pleased her, so why not another? And so he had found it in her mother's
tomb; and brought it out by means perhaps of some small opening. For
surely it could not pass through stone. That was ridiculous.

"But as I said this last part I realized the truth. This necklace had
probably been stolen from the body of Akasha's mother, and very possibly
by Akasha's father. It had never been buried in any tomb. That is why

Amel could find it. Maybe even a priest had stolen it. Or so it very
likely seemed to Akasha, who was holding the necklace in her hand. She
loathed this spirit that he made known such an awful thing to her.

"In sum, all the illusions of this woman lay now in complete ruin; yet
she was left with the sterile truth she had always known. She had asked
her questions of the supernatural-a very unwise thing to do-and the
supernatural had given her answers which she could not accept; yet she
could not refute them either.

" 'Where are the souls of the dead?" she whispered, staring at this
necklace.

"As softly as I could I said, The spirits simply do not know.'

"Horror. Fear. And then her mind began to work, to do what it had always
done-find some grand system to explain away what caused pain; some grand
way to accommodate what she saw before her. The dark secret place inside
her was becoming larger; it was threatening to consume her from within;
she could not let such a thing happen; she had to go on. She was the
Queen of Kernel.

"On the other hand, she was angry, and the rage she felt was against her
parents and against her teachers, and against the priests and
priestesses of her childhood, and against the gods she had worshiped and
against anyone who had ever comforted her, or told her that life was
good.

"A moment of silence had fallen; something was happening in her
expression; fear and wonder had gone; there was something cold and
disenchanted and, finally, malicious in her gaze.

"And then with her mother's necklace in hand she rose and declared that
all we had said were lies. These were demons to whom we were speaking,
demons who sought to subvert her and her gods, who looked with favor
upon her people. The more she spoke the more she believed what she was
saying; the more the elegance of her beliefs seized her; the more she
surrendered to their logic. Until finally she was weeping and denouncing
us, and the darkness within had been denied. She evoked the images of
her gods; she evoked her holy language.

"But then she looked again at the necklace; and the evil spirit, Amel,
in a great rage-furious that she was not pleased with his little gift
and was once again angry with us-told us to tell her that if she did us
any harm he would hurl at her every object, jewel, wine cup, looking
glass, comb, or other such item that she ever so much as asked for, or
imagined, or remembered, or wished for, or missed.

"I could have laughed had we not been in such danger; it was such a
wonderful solution in the mind of the spirit; and so perfectly
ridiculous from a human point of view. Yet it certainly wasn't something
that one would want to happen.

"And Mekare told Akasha exactly what Amel had said.

" 'He that can produce this necklace can inundate you in such reminders
of suffering,' Mekare said. 'And I do not know that any witch on earth
can stop him, should he so begin.'

" 'Where is he?' Akasha screamed. 'Let me see this demon thing you speak
to!'

"And at this, Amel, in vanity and rage, concentrated all his power and
dove at Akasha, declaring 'I am Amel, the evil one, who pierces!' and he
made the great gale around her that he had made around our mother; only
it was ten times that. Never had I seen such fury. The room itself
appeared to tremble as this immense spirit compressed himself and
directed himself into this tiny place. I could hear the cracking of the
brick walls. And all over the Queen's beautiful face and arms the tiny
bitelike wounds appeared as so many red dots of blood.

"She screamed helplessly. Amel was in ecstasy. Amel could do wondrous
things! Mekare and I were in terror.

"Mekare commanded him to stop. And now she heaped flattery upon him, and
great thanks, and told him he was very simply the most powerful of all
spirits, but he must obey her now, to demonstrate his great wit as well
as his power; and that she would allow him to strike again at the right
time.

"Meantime, the King rushed to the aid of Akasha; Khayman ran to her; all
the guards ran to her. But when the guards raised their swords to strike
us down, she ordered them to leave us alone. Mekare and I stood staring
at her, silently threatening her with this spirit's power, for it was
all that we had left. And Amel, the evil one, hovered above us, filling
the air with the most eerie of all sounds, the great hollow laughter of
a spirit, that seemed then to fill the entire world.

"Alone in our cell again, we could not think what to do or how to use
what little advantage we now had in Amel.

"As for Amel himself, he would not leave us. He ranted and stormed in
the little cell; he made the reed mats rustle, and made our garments
move; he sent winds through our hair. It was a nuisance. But what
frightened me was to hear the things of which he boasted. That he liked
to draw blood; that it plumped him up inside and made him slow; but that
it tasted good; and when the peoples of the world made blood sacrifice
upon their altars he liked to come down and slurp up that blood. After
all, it was there for him, was it not? More laughter.

"There was a great recoiling in the other spirits. Mekare and I both
sensed this. Except for those who were faintly jealous and demanded to
know what this blood tasted like, and why he liked such a thing so much.

"And then it came out-that hatred and jealousy of the flesh which is in
so many evil spirits, that feeling that we are abominations, we humans,
because we have both body and soul, which should not exist on this
earth. Amel ranted of the times when there had been but mountains and
oceans and forests and no living things such as us. He told us that to
have spirit within mortal bodies was a curse.

"Now, I had heard these complaints among the evil ones before; but I had
never thought much about them. For the first time I believed them, just
a little, as I lay there and I saw my people put to the sword in my
mind's eye. I thought as many a man or woman has thought before and
since that maybe it was a curse to have the concept of immortality
without the body to go with it.

"Or as you said, on this very night, Marius-life seemed not worth it; it
seemed a joke. My world was darkness at that moment, darkness and
suffering. All that I was no longer mattered; nothing I looked at could
make me want to be alive.

"But Mekare began to speak to Amel again, informing him that she would
much rather be what she was than what he was- drifting about forever
with nothing important to do. And this sent Amel into a rage again. He
would show her what he could do!

" 'When I command you, Amel!* she said. 'Count upon me to choose the
moment. Then all men will know what you can do.' And this childish vain
spirit was contented, and spread himself out again over the dark sky.

"For three nights and days we were kept prisoner. The guards would not
look at us or come near us. Neither would the slaves. In fact, we would
have starved had it not been for Khayman, the royal steward, who brought
us food with his own hands.

"Then he told us what the spirits had already told us. A great
controversy raged; the priests wanted us put to death. But the Queen was
afraid to kill us, that we'd loose these spirits on her, and there would
be no way she could drive them off. The King was intrigued by what had
happened; he believed that more could be learned from us; he was curious
about the power of the spirits, and to what uses it could be put. But
the Queen feared it; the Queen had seen enough.

"Finally we were brought before the entire court in the great open
atrium of the palace.

"It was high noon in the kingdom and the King and Queen made their
offerings to the sun god Ra as was the custom, and this we were made to
watch. It meant nothing to us to see this solemnity; we were afraid
these were the last hours of our lives. I dreamed then of our mountain,
our caves; I dreamed of the children we might have borne-fine sons and
daughters, and some of them who would have inherited our power-I dreamed
of the life that had been taken from us, of the annihilation of our kith
and kindred which might soon be complete. I thanked whatever powers that
be that I could see blue sky above my head, and that Mekare and I were
still together.

"At last the King spoke. There was a terrible sadness and weariness in
him. Young as he was, he had something of an old man's soul in these
moments. Ours was a great gift, he told us, but we had misused it,
clearly, and could be no use to anyone else. For lies, for the worship
of demons, for black magic, he denounced us. He would have us burned, he
said, to please the people; but he and his Queen felt sorry for us. The
Queen in particular wanted him to have mercy on us.

"It was a damnable lie, but one look at her face told us she'd convinced
herself that it was true. And of course the King believed it. But what
did this matter? What was this mercy, we wondered, trying to look deeper
into their souls.

"And now the Queen told us in tender words that our great magic had
brought her the two necklaces she most wanted in all the world and for
this and this alone she would let us live. In sum, the lie she spun grew
larger and more intricate, and more distant from the truth.

"And then the King said he would release us, but first he would
demonstrate to all the court that we had no power, and therefore the
priests would be appeased.

"And if at any moment an evil demon should manifest himself and seek to
abuse the just worshipers of Ra or Osiris, then our pardon should be
revoked and we should be put to death at once. For surely the power of
our demons would die with us. And we would have forfeited the Queen's
mercy which we scarce deserved as it was.

"Of course we realized what was to happen; we saw it now in the hearts
of the King and the Queen. A compromise had been struck. And we had been
offered a bargain. As the King removed his gold chain and medallion and
put it around the neck of Khayman, we knew that we were to be raped
before the court, raped as common female prisoners or slaves would have
been raped in any war. And if we called the spirits we'd die. That was
our position.

" 'But for the love of my Queen,' said Enkil, 'I would take my pleasure
of these two women, which is my right; I would do it before you all to
show that they have no power and are not great witches, but are merely
women, and my chief steward, Khayman, my beloved Khayman, will be given
the privilege of doing it in my stead.'

"All the court waited in silence as Khayman looked at us, and prepared
to obey the King's command. We stared at him, daring him in our
helplessness not to do it-not to lay hands upon us or to violate us,
before these uncaring eyes.

"We could feel the pain in him and the tumult. We could feel the danger
that surrounded him, for were he to disobey he would surely have died.
Yet this was our honor he meant to take; he meant to desecrate us; ruin
us as it were; and we who had lived always in the sunshine and peace on
our mountain knew nothing really of the act which he meant to perform.

"I think, as he came towards us, I believed he could not do it, that a
man could not feel the pain which he felt and still sharpen his passion
for this ugly work. But I knew little of men then, of how the pleasures
of the flesh can combine in them with hatred and anger; of how they can
hurt as they perform the act which women perform, more often than not,
for love.

"Our spirits clamored against what was to happen; but for our very
lives, we told them to be quiet. Silently I pressed Mekare's hand; I
gave her to know that we would live when this was over; we would be
free; this was not death after all; and we would leave these miserable
desert people to their lies and their illusions; to their idiot customs;
we would go home.

"And then Khayman set about to do what he had to do. Khayman untied our
bonds; he took Mekare to himself first, forcing her down on her back
against the matted floor, and lifting her gown, as I stood transfixed
and unable to stop him, and then I was subjected to the same fate.

"But in his mind, we were not the women whom Khayman raped. As his soul
trembled, as his body trembled, he stoked the fire of his passion with
fantasies of nameless beauties and half remembered moments so that body
and soul could be one.

"And we, our eyes averted, closed our souls to him and to these vile
Egyptians who had done to us these terrible things; our souls were alone
and untouched within our bodies; and all around us, I heard without
doubt the weeping of the spirits, the sad, terrible weeping, and in the
distance, the low rolling thunder of Amel.

"You are fools to bear this, witches.

"It was nightfall when we were left at the edge of the desert. The
soldiers gave us what food and drink was allowed. It was nightfall as we
started our long journey north. Our rage then was as great as it had
ever been.

"And Amel came, taunting us and raging at us; why did we not want him to
exact vengeance?

" 'They will come after us and kill us!' Mekare said. 'Now go away from
us.' But that did not do the trick. So finally she tried to put Amel to
work on something important. 'Amel, we want to reach our home alive.
Make cool winds for us; and show us where we can find water.'

"But these are things which evil spirits never do. Amel lost interest.
And Amel faded away, and we walked on through the cold desert wind, arm
in arm, trying not to think of the miles that lay before us.

"Many things befell us on our long journey which are too numerous here
to tell.

"But the good spirits had not deserted us; they made the cooling winds,
and they led us to springs where we could find water and a few dates to
eat; and they made 'little rain' for us as long as they could; but
finally we were too deep in the desert for such a thing, and we were
dying, and I knew I had a child from Khayman in my womb, and I wanted my
child to live.

"It was then that the spirits led us to the Bedouin peoples, and they
took us in, they cared for us.

"I was sick, and for days I lay singing to my child inside my body, and
driving away my sickness and my moments of worst remembering with my
songs. Mekare lay beside me, holding me in her arms.

"Months passed before I was strong enough to leave the Bedouin camps,
and then I wanted my child to be born in our land and I begged Mekare
that we should continue our journey.

"At last, with the food and drink the Bedouins had given us, and the
spirits to guide us, we came into the green fields of Palestine, and
found the foot of the mountain and the shepherd peoples-so like our own
tribe-who had come down to claim our old grazing places.

"They knew us as they had known our mother and all our kindred and they
called us by name, and immediately took us in.

"And we were so happy again, among the green grasses and the trees and
the flowers that we knew, and my child was growing bigger inside my
womb. It would live; the desert had not killed it.

"So, in my own land I gave birth to my daughter and named her Miriam as
my mother had been named before me. She had Khayman's black hair but the

green eyes of her mother. And the love I felt for her and the joy I knew
in her were the greatest curative my soul could desire. We were three
again. Mekare, who knew the birth pain with me, and who lifted the child
out of my body, carried Miriam in her arms by the hour and sang to her
just as I did. The child was ours, as much as it was mine. And we tried
to forget the horrors we had seen in Egypt.

"Miriam thrived. And finally Mekare and I vowed to climb the mountain
and find the caves in which we'd been born. We did not know yet how we
would live or what we would do, so many miles from our new people. But
with Miriam, we would go back to the place where we had been so happy;
and we would call the spirits to us, and we would make the miracle of
rain to bless my newborn child.

"But this was never to be. Not any of it.

"For before we could leave the shepherd people, soldiers came again,
under the command of the King's high steward, Khayman, soldiers who had
passed out gold along the way to any tribe who had seen or heard of the
red-haired twins and knew where they might be.

"Once again at midday as the sun poured down on the grassy fields, we
saw the Egyptian soldiers with their swords raised. In all directions
the people scattered, but Mekare ran out and dropped down on her knees
before Khayman and said, 'Don't harm our people again.'

"Then Khayman came with Mekare to the place where I was hiding with my
daughter, and I showed him this child, which was his child, and begged
him for mercy, for justice, that he leave us in peace.

"But I had only to look at him to understand that he would be put to
death if he did not bring us back. His face was thin and drawn and full
of misery, not the smooth white immortal face that you see here at this
table tonight.

"Enemy time has washed away the natural imprint of his suffering. But it
was very plain on that long ago afternoon.

"In a soft, subdued voice he spoke to us. 'A terrible evil has come over
the King and the Queen of Kemet,' he said. 'And your spirits have done
it, your spirits that tormented me night and day for what I did to you,
until the King sought to drive them out of my house.'

"He stretched out his arms to me that I could see the tiny scars that
covered him where this spirit had drawn blood. Scars covered his face
and his throat.

" 'Oh, you don't know the misery in which I have lived,' he said, "for
nothing could protect me from these spirits; and you don't know the
times I cursed you, and cursed the King for what he made me do to you,
and cursed my mother that I'd been born.'

" 'Oh, but we have not done this!' Mekare said. "We have kept faith with
you. For our lives we left you in peace. But it is Amel, the evil one,
who has done this! Oh, this evil spirit! And to think he has deviled you
instead of the King and Queen who made you do what you did! We cannot
stop him! I beg you, Khayman, let us go.'

" 'Whatever Amel does," I said, 'he will tire of, Khayman. If the King
and Queen are strong, he will eventually go away. You are looking now

upon the mother of your child, Khayman. Leave us in peace. For the
child's sake, tell the King and Queen that you could not find us. Let us
go if you fear justice at all.'

"But he only stared at the child as if he did not know what it was. He
was Egyptian. Was this child Egyptian? He looked at us:

'All right, you did not send this spirit,' he said. 'I believe you. For
you do not understand what this spirit has done, obviously. His
bedeviling has come to an end. He has gone into the King and Queen of
Kemet! He is in their bodies! He has changed the very substance of their
flesh!'

"For a long time, we looked at him and considered his words, and we
understood that he did not mean by this that the King and the Queen were
possessed. And we understood also that he himself had seen such things
that he could not but*come for us himself and try on his life to bring
us back.

"But I didn't believe what he was saying. How could a spirit be made
flesh!

" 'You do not understand what has happened in our kingdom,' he
whispered. 'You must come and see with your own eyes.' He stopped then
because there was more, much more, that he wanted to tell us, and he was
afraid. Bitterly he said, 'You must undo what has been done, even if it
is not your doing!'

"Ah, but we could not undo it. That was the horror. And even then we
knew it; we sensed it. We remembered our mother standing before the cave
gazing at the tiny wounds on her hand.

"Mekare threw back her head now and called to Amel, the evil one, to
come to her, to obey her command. In our own tongue, the twin tongue,
she screamed, "Come out of the King and Queen of Kemet and come to me,
Amel. Bow down before my will. You did this not by my command.'

"It seemed all the spirits of the world listened in silence; this was
the cry of a powerful witch; but there was no answer; and then we felt
it-a great recoiling of many spirits as if something beyond their
knowledge and beyond their acceptance had suddenly been revealed. It
seemed the spirits were shrinking from us; and then coming back, sad and
undecided; seeking our love, yet repelled.

" 'But what is it?' Mekare screamed. 'What is it!' She called to the
spirits who hovered near her, her chosen ones. And then in the
stillness, as the shepherds waited in fear, and the soldiers stood in
anticipation, and Khayman stared at us with tired glazed eyes, we heard
the answer. It came in wonder and uncertainty.

" 'Amel has now what he has always wanted; Amel has the flesh. But Amel
is no more.'

"What could it mean?

"We could not fathom it. Again, Mekare demanded of the spirits that they
answer, but it seemed that the uncertainty of the spirits was now
turning to fear.

" 'Tell me what has happened!' Mekare said. 'Make known to me what you
know!' It was an old command used by countless witches. 'Give me the
knowledge which is yours to give.'

"And again the spirits answered in uncertainty:

" ' Amel is in the flesh; and Amel is not Amel; he cannot answer now.'

" 'You must come with me,' Khayman said. 'You must come. The King and
Queen would have you come!"

"Mutely, and seemingly without feeling, he watched as I kissed my baby
girl and gave her to the shepherd women who would care for her as their
own. And then Mekare and I gave ourselves up to him; but this time we
did not weep. It was as if all our tears had been shed. Our brief year
of happiness with the birth of Miriam was past now-and the horror that
had come out of Egypt was reaching out to engulf us once more.

Maharet closed her eyes for a moment; she touched the lids with her
fingers, and then looked up at the others, as they waited, each in his
or he? own thoughts and considerations, each reluctant for the narrative
to be broken, though they all knew that it must.

The young ones were drawn and weary; Daniel's rapt expression had
changed little. Louis was gaunt, and the need for blood was hurting him,
though he paid it no mind. "I can tell you no more now," Maharet said.
"It's almost morning; and the young ones must go down to the earth. I
have to prepare the way for them.

"Tomorrow night we will gather here and continue. That is, if our Queen
will allow. The Queen is nowhere near us now; I cannot hear the faintest
murmur of her presence; I cannot catch the faintest flash of her
countenance in another's eyes. If she knows what we do, she allows it.
Or she is far away and indifferent, and we must wait to know her will.

"Tomorrow, I'll tell you what we saw when we went into Kernel."

"Until then, rest safe within the mountain. All of you. It has kept my
secrets from the prying eyes of mortal men for countless years. Remember
not even the Queen can hurt us until nightfall."

Marius rose as Maharet did. He moved to the far window as the others
slowly left the room. It was as if Maharet's voice were still speaking
to him. And what affected him most deeply was the evocation of Akasha,
and the hatred Maharet felt for her; because Marius felt that hatred
too; and he felt more strongly than ever that he should have brought
this nightmare to a close while he'd had the power to do it.

But the red-haired woman could not have wanted any Such thing to happen.
None of them wanted to die any more than he did. And Maharet craved
life, perhaps, more fiercely than any immortal he'd ever known.

Yet her tale seemed to confirm the hopelessness of it all. What had
risen when the Queen stood up from her throne? What was this being that
had Lestat in its maw? He could not imagine.

We change, but we do not change, he thought. We grow wise, but we are
fallible things! We are only human for however long we endure, that was
the miracle and the curse of it.

He saw again the smiling face he had seen as the ice began to fall. Is
it possible that he loved as strongly still as he hated? That in his
great humiliation, clarity had escaped him utterly? He honestly didn't
know.

And he was tired suddenly, craving sleep, craving comfort; craving the
soft sensuous pleasure of lying in a clean bed. Of sprawling upon it and
burying his face in a pillow; of letting his limbs assemble themselves
in the most natural and comfortable position.

Beyond the glass wall, a soft radiant blue light was filling the eastern
sky, yet the stars retained their brilliance, tiny and distant though
they seemed. The dark trunks of the redwoods had become visible; and a
lovely green smell had come into the house from the forest as always
happens near dawn.

Far below where the hillside fell away and a clearing full of clover
moved out to the woods, Marius saw Khayman walking alone. His hands
appeared to glow in the thin, bluish darkness, and as he turned and
looked back-up at Marius-his face was an eyeless mask of pure white.

Marius found himself raising his hand in a small gesture of friendship
towards Khayman. And Khayman returned the gesture and went on into the
trees.

Then Marius turned and saw what he already knew, that only Louis
remained with him in the room. Louis stood quite still looking at him as
he had earlier, as though he were seeing a myth made real.

Then he put the question that was obsessing him, the question he could
not lose sight of, no matter how great was Maharet's spell. "You know
whether or not Lestat's still alive, don't you?" he asked. 'It had a
simple human tone to it, a poignant tone, yet the voice was so reserved.

Marius nodded. "He's alive. But I don't really know that the way you
think I do. Not from asking or receiving the answer. Not from using all
these lovely powers which plague us. I know it simply because I know."

He smiled at Louis. Something in the manner of this one made Marius
happy, though he wasn't sure why. He beckoned for Louis to come to him
and they met at the foot of the table and walked together out of the
room. Marius put his arm around Louis's shoulder and they went down the
iron stairs together, through the damp earth, Marius walking slowly and
heavily, exactly like a human being might walk.

"And you're sure of it?" Louis asked respectfully.

Marius stopped. "Oh, yes, quite sure." They looked at one another for a
moment, and again Marius smiled. This one was so gifted yet not gifted
at the same time; he wondered if the human light would go out of Louis's
eyes if he ever gained more power, if he ever had, for instance, a
little of the blood of Marius in his veins.

And this young one was hungry too; he was suffering; and he seemed to
like it, to like the hunger and the pain.

"Let me tell you something," Marius said now, agreeably. "1 knew the
first moment I ever laid eyes on Lestat that nothing could kill him.
That's the way it is with some of us. We can't die." But why was he
saying this? Did he believe it again as he had before these trials had

begun? He thought back to that night in San Francisco when he had walked
down the broad clean-swept pavements of Market Street with his hands in
his pockets, unnoticed by mortal men.

"Forgive me," Louis said, "but you remind me of the things they said of
him at Dracula's Daughter, the talk among the ones who wanted to join
him last night."

"I know," Marius said. "But they are fools and I'm right." He laughed
softly. Yes, he did believe it. Then he embraced Louis again warmly.
Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he
might lose the human tenderness, the human wisdom that no one could give
another; the gift of knowing others' suffering with which Louis had
probably been born.

But the night was over now for this one. Louis took Marius's hand, and
then turned and walked down the tin-walled corridor to where Eric waited
to show him the way.

Then Marius went up into the house.

He had perhaps a full hour more before the sun forced him into sleep,
and tired as he was, he would not give it up. The lovely fresh smell of
the woods was overpowering. And he could hear the birds now, and the
clear singing of a deep creek.

He went into the great room of the adobe dwelling, where the fire had
burnt down on the central hearth. He found himself standing before a
giant quilt that covered almost half the wall.

Slowly he realized what he was seeing before him-the mountain, the
valley, and the tiny figures of the twins as they stood together in the
green clearing beneath the burning sun. The slow rhythm of Maharet's
speech came back to him with the faint shimmer of all the images her
words had conveyed. So immediate was that sun-drenched clearing, and how
different it seemed now from the dreams. Never had the dreams made him
feel close to these women! And now he knew them; he knew this house.

It was such a mystery, this mixture of feeling, where sorrow touched
something that was undeniably positive and good. Maharet's soul
attracted him; he loved the particular complexity of it, and he wished
he could somehow tell her so.

Then it was as if he caught himself; he realized that he had forgotten
for a little while to be bitter, to be in pain. Maybe his soul was
healing faster than he had ever supposed it could.

Or maybe it was only that he had been thinking about others- about
Maharet, and before that about Louis, and what Louis needed to believe.
Well, hell, Lestat probably was immortal. In fact, the sharp and bitter
fact occurred to him that Lestat might survive all this even if he,
Marius, did not.

But that was a little supposition that he could do without. Where was
Armand? Had Armand gone down into the earth already? If only he could
see Armand just now. . . .

He went towards the cellar door again but something distracted him.
Through an open doorway he saw two figures, very like the figures of the
twins on the quilt. But these were Maharet and Jesse, arm in arm before

an eastern window, watching motionless as the light grew brighter in the
dark woods.

A violent shudder startled him. He had to grip the door frame to steady
himself as a series of images flooded his mind. Not the jungle now;
there was a highway in the distance, winding north, it seemed, through
barren burnt land. And the creature had stopped, shaken, but by what? An
image of two red-haired women? He heard the feet begin their relentless
tramp again; he saw the feet caked with earth as if they were his feet;
the hands caked with earth as if they were his hands. And then he saw
the sky catching fire, and he moaned aloud.

When he looked up again, Armand was holding him. And with her bleary
human eyes Maharet was imploring him to tell her what he had just seen.
Slowly the room came alive around him, the agreeable furnishings, and
then the immortal figures near him, who were of it, yet of nothing. He
closed his eyes and opened them again.

"She's reached our longitude," he said, "yet she's miles to the east.
The sun's just risen there with blazing force." He had felt it, that
lethal heat! But she had gone into the earth; that too he had felt.

"But it's very far south of here," Jesse said to him. How frail she
looked in the translucent darkness, her long thin fingers hugging the
backs of her slender arms.

"Not so far," Armand said. "And she was moving very fast." "But in what
direction does she move!" Maharet asked. "Is she coming towards us?"

She didn't wait for an answer. And it didn't seem that they could give
it. She lifted her hand to cover her eyes as if the pain there was now
intolerable; and then gathering Jesse to her, and kissing her suddenly,
she bid the others good sleep.

Marius closed his eyes; he tried to see again the figure he had seen
before. The garment, what was it? A rough thing thrown over the body
like a peasant poncho, with a torn opening for the head. Bound at the
waist, yes, he'd felt it. He tried to see more but he could not. What he
had felt was power, illimitable power and unstoppable momentum, and
almost nothing other than that. When he opened his eyes again the
morning shimmered in the room around him. Armand stood close to him,
embracing him still, yet Armand seemed alone and perturbed by nothing;
his eyes moved only a little as he looked at the forest, which now
seemed to press against the house through every window, as if it had
crept to the very edge of the porch.

Marius kissed Armand's forehead. And then he did exactly what Armand was
doing.

He watched the room grow lighter; he watched the light fill the
windowpanes; he watched the beautiful colors brighten in the vast
network of the giant quilt.

LESTAT:

THIS IS MY BODY;

THIS IS MY BLOOD

WHEN I AWOKE IT WAS QUIET, AND THE AIR WAS clean and warm, with the
smell of the sea.

I was now thoroughly confused as to time. And I knew from my light-
headedness that I had not slept through a day. Also I wasn't in any
protective enclosure.

We'd been following the night around the world, perhaps, or rather
moving at random in it, as Akasha maybe didn't need at all to sleep.

I needed it, that was obvious. But I was too curious not to want to be
awake. And frankly too miserable. Also I'd been dreaming of human blood.

I found myself in a spacious bedroom with terraces to the west and to
the north. I could smell the sea and I could hear it, yet the air was
fragrant and rather still. Very gradually, I took stock of the room.

Lavish old furnishings, most likely Italian-delicate yet ornamented-were
mingled with modern luxuries everywhere I looked. The bed on which I lay
was a gilded four-poster, hung with gauzy curtains, and covered with
down pillows and draperies of silk. A thick white carpet concealed the
old floor.

There was a dressing table littered with glittering jars and silver
objects, and a curious old-fashioned white telephone. Velvet chairs; a
monster of a television set and shelves of stereo music equipment; and
small polished tables everywhere, strewn with newspapers, ashtrays,
decanters of wine.

People had lived here up till an hour ago; but now the people were dead.
In fact, there were many dead on this island. And as I lay there for a
moment, drinking in the beauty around me, I saw the village in my mind
where we had been before. I saw the filth, the tin roofs, the mud. And
now I lay in this bower, or so it seemed.

And there was death here too. We had brought it.

I got up off the bed and went out onto the terrace and looked down over
the stone railing at a white beach. No land on the horizon, only the
gently rolling sea. The lacy foam of the receding waves glistening under
the moon. And I was in an old weathered palazzo, probably built some
four centuries ago, decked with urns and cherubs and covered with
stained plaster, a rather beautiful place. Electric lights shone through
the green-painted shutters of other rooms. Nestled on a lower terrace
just beneath me was a little swimming pool.

And ahead where the beach curved to the left, I saw another old graceful
dwelling nestled into the cliffs. People had died in there too. This was
a Greek island, I was sure of it; this was the Mediterranean Sea.

When I listened, I heard cries coming from the land behind me, over the
crest of the hill. Men being slain. I leaned against the frame of the
door. I tried to stop my heart from racing.

Some sudden memory of the slaughter in Azim's temple gripped me-a flash
of myself walking through the human herd, using the invisible blade to
pierce solid flesh. Thirst. Or was it merely lust? I saw those mangled
limbs again; wasted bodies contorted in the final struggle, faces
smeared with blood.

Not my doing, I couldn't have . . . But I had.

And now I could smell fires burning, fires like those fires in Azim's
courtyard where the bodies were being burnt. The smell nauseated me. I
turned towards the sea again and took a deep clean breath. If I let
them, the voices would come, voices from all over the island, and from
other islands, and from the nearby land, too. I could feel it, the
sound, hovering there waiting; I had to push it back.

Then I heard more immediate noise. Women in this old mansion. They were
approaching the bedchamber. I turned around just in time to see the
double doors opened, and the women, dressed in simple blouses and skirts
and kerchiefs, come into the room.

It was a motley crowd of all ages, including young beauties and stout
older matrons, and even some rather frail creatures with darkly wrinkled
skin and snow white hair. They brought vases of flowers with them; they
were placing them everywhere. And then one of the women, a tentative
slender thing with a beautiful long neck, moved forward with beguiling
natural grace, and began to turn on the many lamps.

Smell of their blood. How could it be so strong and so enticing, when I
felt no thirst?

Suddenly they all came together in the center of the room and they
stared at me; it was as if they'd fallen into a trance. I was standing
on the terrace, merely looking at them; then I realized what they saw.
My torn costume-the vampire rags-black coat, white shirt, and the cloak-
all spattered with blood.

And my skin, that had changed measurably. I was whiter, more ghastly to
look at, of course. And my eyes must have been brighter; or maybe I was
being deceived by their naive reactions. When had they seen one of us
before?

Whatever ... it all seemed to be some sort of dream, these still women
with their black eyes and their rather somber faces-even the stout ones
had rather gaunt faces-gathered there staring at me, and then their
dropping one by one to their knees. Ah, to their knees. I sighed. They
had the crazed expression of people who had been delivered out of the
ordinary; they were seeing a vision and the irony was that they looked
like a vision to me.

Reluctantly, I read their thoughts.

They had seen the Blessed Mother. That is what she was here. The
Madonna, the Virgin. She'd come to their villages and told them to
slaughter their sons and husbands; even the babies had been slaughtered.
And they had done it, or witnessed the doing of it; and they were now
carried upon a wave of belief and joy. They were witnesses to miracles;
they had been spoken to by the Blessed Mother herself. And she was the
ancient Mother, the Mother who had always dwelt in the grottoes of this
island, even before Christ, the Mother whose tiny naked statues were now
and then found in the earth.

In her name they had knocked down the columns of the ruined temples, the
ones the tourists came here to see; they had burned the only church on
the island; they had knocked out its windows with sticks and stones.
Ancient murals had burned in the church. The marble columns, broken into
fragments, had fallen into the sea.

As for me, what was I to them? Not merely a god. Not merely the chosen
of the Blessed Mother. No, something else. It puzzled me as I stood
there, trapped by their eyes, repelled by their convictions, yet
fascinated and afraid.

Not of them, of course, but of everything that was happening. Of this
delicious feeling of mortals looking at me, the way they had been
looking when I'd been on the stage. Mortals looking at me and sensing my
power after all the years of hiding, mortals come here to worship.
Mortals like all those poor creatures strewn over the path in the
mountains. But they'd been worshipers of Azim, hadn't they? They'd gone
there to die.

Nightmare. Have to reverse this, have to stop it; have to stop myself
from accepting it or any aspect of it!

I mean I could start believing that I was really- But I know what I am,
don't I? And these are poor, ignorant women; women for whom television
sets and phones are miracles, these are women for whom change itself is
a form of miracle.... And they will wake up tomorrow and they will see
what they have done! But now the feeling of peace came over us-the women
and me. The familiar scent of flowers, the spell. Silently, through
their minds, the women were receiving their instructions.

There was a little commotion; two of them rose from their knees and
entered an adjoining bath-one of those massive marble affairs that
wealthy Italians and Greeks seem to love. Hot water was flowing; steam
poured out of the open doors.

Other women had gone to the closets, to take out clean garments. Rich,
whoever he was, the poor bastard who had owned this little palace, the
poor bastard who had left that cigarette in the ashtray and the faint
greasy fingerprints on the white phone. Another pair of women came
towards me. They wanted to lead me into the bath. I did nothing. I felt
them touch me-hot human fingers touching me and all the attendant shock
and excitement in them as they felt the peculiar texture of my flesh. It
sent a powerful and delicious chill through me, these touches. Their
dark liquid eyes were beautiful as they looked at me. They tugged at me
with their warm hands; they wanted me to come with them. All right. I
allowed myself to be taken along. White marble tile, carved gold
fixtures; an ancient Roman splendor, when you got right down to it, with
gleaming bottles of soaps and scents lining marble shelves. And the Rood
of hot water in the pool, with the jets pumping it full of bubbles, it
was all very inviting; or might have been at some other time.

They stripped my garments off me. Absolutely fascinating feeling. No one
had ever done such a thing to me. Not since I'd been alive and then only
when I was a very small child. I stood in the flood of steam from the
bath, watching all these small dark hands, and feeling the hairs rise
all over my body; feeling the adoration in the women's eyes. Through the
steam I looked into the mirror-a wall of mirror actually, and I saw
myself for the first time since this sinister odyssey had begun. The
shock was more for a moment than I could handle. This can't be me.

I was much paler than I'd imagined. Gently I pushed the women away and
went towards the mirror wall. My skin had a pearlescent gleam to it; and
my eyes were even brighter, gathering all the colors of the spectrum and
mingling them with an icy light. Yet I didn't look like Marius. I didn't
look like Akasha. The lines in my face were still there!

In other words I'd been bleached by Akasha's blood, but I hadn't become
smooth yet. I'd kept my human expression. And the odd thing was, the
contrast now made these lines all the more visible. Even the tiny lines
all over my fingers were more clearly etched than before.

But what consolation was this when I was more than ever .noticeable,
astonishing, unlike a human being? In a way, this was worse than that
first moment two hundred years ago, when an hour or so after my death
I'd seen myself in a mirror, and tried to find my humanity in what I was
seeing. I was just as afraid right now.

I studied my reflection-my chest was like a marble torso in a museum,
that white. And the organ, the organ we don't need, poised as if ready
for what it would never again know how to do or want to do, marble, a
Priapus at a gate.

Dazed, I watched the women draw closer; lovely throats, breasts, dark
moist limbs. I watched them touch me all over again. I was beautiful to
them, all right.

The scent of their blood was stronger in here, in the rising steam. Yet
I wasn't thirsty, not really. Akasha had filled me, but the blood was
tormenting me a little. No, quite a lot.

I wanted their blood-and it had nothing to do with thirst. I wanted it
the way a man can want vintage wine, though he's drunk water. Only
magnify that by twenty or thirty or a hundred. In fact, it was so
powerful I could imagine taking all of them, tearing at their tender
throats one after another and leaving their bodies lying here on the
floor.

No, this is not going to take place, I reasoned. And the sharp,
dangerous quality of this lust made me want to weep. What's been done to
me! But then I knew, didn't I? I knew I was so strong now that twenty
men couldn't have subdued me. And think what I could do to them. I could
rise up through the ceiling if I wanted to and get free of here. I could
do things of which I'd never dreamed. Probably I had the fire gift now;
I could burn things the way she could burn them, the way Marius said
that he could. Just a matter of strength, that's all it was. And
dizzying levels of awareness, of acceptance. . . .

The women were kissing me. They were kissing my shoulders. Just a lovely
little sensation, the soft pressure of the lips on my skin. I couldn't
help smiling, and gently I embraced them and kissed them, nuzzling their
heated little necks and feeling their breasts against my chest. I was
utterly surrounded by these malleable creatures, I was blanketed in
succulent human flesh.

I stepped into the deep tub and allowed them to wash me. The hot water
splashed over me deliciously, washing away easily all the din that never
really clings to us, never penetrates us. I looked up at the ceiling and
let them brush the hot water through my hair.

Yes, extraordinarily pleasurable, all of it. Yet never had I been so
alone. I was sinking into these mesmerizing sensations; I was drifting.
Because really, there was nothing else that I could do. When they were
finished I chose the perfumes that I wanted and told them to get rid of
the others. I spoke in French but they seemed to understand- Then they
dressed me with the clothes I selected from what they presented to me,

The master of this house had liked handmade linen shirts, which were
only a little too large for me. And he'd liked handmade shoes as well,
and they were a tolerable fit.

1 chose a suit of gray silk, very fine weave, and rather jaunty modern
cut. And silver jewelry. The man's silver watch, and his cuff links
which had tiny diamonds embedded in them. And even a tiny diamond pin
for the narrow lapel of the coat. But all these clothes felt so strange
on me; it was as if I could feel the surface of my own skin yet not feel
it. And there came that deja vu. Two hundred years ago. The old mortal
questions. Why in the hell is this happening? How can I gain control of
it?

I wondered for a moment, was it possible not to care what happened? To
stand back from it and view them all as alien creatures, things upon
which I fed? Cruelly I'd been ripped out of their world! Where was the
old bitterness, the old excuse for endless cruelty? Why had it always
focused itself upon such small things? Not that a life is small. Oh, no,
never, not any life! That was the whole point actually. Why did I who
could kill with such abandon shrink from the prospect of seeing their
precious traditions laid waste?

Why did my heart come up in my throat now? Why was I crying inside, like
something dying myself?

Maybe some other fiend could have loved it; some twisted and
conscienceless immortal could have sneered at her visions, yet slipped
into the robes of a god as easily as I had slipped into that perfumed
bath.

But nothing could give me that freedom, nothing. Her permissions meant
nothing; her power finally was but another degree of what we all
possessed. And what we all possessed had never made the struggle simple;
it had made it agony, no matter how often we won or lost.

It couldn't happen, the subjugation of a century to one will; the design
had to be foiled somehow, and if I just maintained my calm, I'd find the
key.

Yet mortals had inflicted such horrors upon others; barbarian hordes had
scarred whole continents, destroying everything in their path. Was she
merely human in her delusions of conquest and domination? Didn't matter.
She had inhuman means to see her dreams made real!

I would start weeping again if I didn't stop reaching now for the
solution; and these poor tender creatures around me would be even more
damaged and confused than before.

When I lifted my hands to my face, they didn't move away from me. They
were brushing my hair. Chills ran down my back. And the soft thud of the
blood in their veins was deafening suddenly.

I told them I wanted to be alone. I couldn't endure the temptation any
longer. And I could have sworn they knew what I wanted. Knew it, and
were yielding to it. Dark salty flesh so close to me. Too much
temptation. Whatever the case, they obeyed instantly, and a little
fearfully. They left the room in silence, backing away as if it weren't
proper to simply walk out.

I looked at the face of the watch. I thought it was pretty funny, me
wearing this watch that told the time. And it made me angry suddenly.
And then the watch broke! The glass shattered; everything flew out of
the ruptured silver case. The strap broke and the thing fell off my
wrist onto the floor. Tiny glittering wheels disappeared into the
carpet.

"Good God!" I whispered. Yet why not?-if I could rupture an artery or a
heart. But the point was to control this thing, to direct it, not let it
escape like that.

I looked up and chose at random a small mirror, one standing on the
dresser in a silver frame. 1 thought Break and it exploded into gleaming
fragments. In the hollow stillness I could hear the pieces as they
struck the walls and the dresser top.

Well, that was useful, a hell of a lot more useful than being able to
kill people. I stared at the telephone on the edge of the dresser. I
concentrated, let the power collect, then consciously subdued it and
directed it to push the phone slowly across the glass that covered the
marble. Yes. AH right. The little bottles tumbled and fell as it was
pushed into them. Then I stopped them; 1 couldn't right them however. I
couldn't pick them up. Oh, but wait, yes I could. I imagined a hand
righting them. And certainly the power wasn't literally obeying this
image; but I was using it to organize the power. I righted all the
little bottles. I retrieved the one which had fallen and put it back in
place.

I was trembling just a little. 1 sat on the bed to think this over, but
I was too curious to think. The important thing to realize was this: it
was physical; it was energy. And it was no more than an extension of
powers I'd possessed before. For example, even in the beginning, in the
first few weeks after Magnus had made me, I'd managed once to move
another-my beloved Nicolas with whom I'd been arguing-across a room as
if I'd struck him with an invisible fist. I'd been in a rage then; I
hadn't been able to duplicate the little trick later. But it was the
same power; the same verifiable and measurable trait.

"You are no god," I said. But this increase of power, this new
dimension, as they say so aptly in this century.... Hmmmm.... Looking up
at the ceiling, I decided I wanted to rise slowly and touch it, run my
hands over the plaster frieze that ran around the cord of the
chandelier. I felt a queasiness; and then I realized 1 was floating just
beneath the ceiling. And my hand, why, it looked like my hand was going
through the plaster. I lowered myself a little and looked down at the
room.

Dear God, I'd done this without taking my body with me! I was still
sitting there, on the side of the bed. I was staring at myself, at the
top of my own head. I-my body at any rate-sat there motionless,
dreamlike, staring. Back, And I was there again, thank God, and my body
was all right, and then looking up at the ceiling, I tried to figure
what this was all about. Well, I knew what it was all about, too. Akasha
herself had told me how her spirit could travel out of her body. And
mortals had always done such things, or so they claimed. Mortals had
written of such invisible travel from the most ancient times.

I had almost done it when I tried to see into Azim's temple, gone there
to see, and she had stopped me because when I left my body, my body had

started to fall. And long before that, there had been a couple of other
times.... But in general, I'd never believed all the mortal stories.

Now I knew I could do this as well. But I certainly didn't want to do it
by accident. I made the decision to move to the ceiling again but this
time with my body, and it was accomplished at once! We were there
together, pushing against the plaster and this time my hand didn't go
through. All right.

I went back down and decided to try the other again. Now only in spirit.
The queasy feeling came, I took a glance down at my body, and then I was
rising right through the roof of the palazzo. I was traveling out over
the sea- Yet things looked unaccountably different; I wasn't sure this
was the literal sky or the literal sea. It was more like a hazy
conception of both, and I didn't like this, not one bit. No, thank you.
Going home now! Or should I bring my body to me? I tried, but absolutely
nothing happened, and that didn't surprise me actually. This was some
kind of hallucination. I hadn't reaily left my body, and ought to just
accept that fact.

And Baby Jenks, what about the beautiful things Baby Jenks had seen when
she went up? Had they been hallucinations? I would never know, would I?

Back!

Sitting. Side of the bed. Comfortable. The room. I got up and walked
around for a few minutes, merely looking at the flowers, and the odd way
the white petals caught the lamplight and how dark the reds looked; and
how the golden light was caught on the surfaces of the mirrors, all the
other lovely things.

It was overwhelming suddenly, the pure detail surrounding me; the
extraordinary complexity of a single room.

Then I practically fell into the chair by the bed. I lay back against
the velvet, and listened to my heart pounding. Being invisible, leaving
my body, I hated it! I wasn't going to do it again!

Then I heard laughter, faint, gentle laughter. I realized Akasha was
there, somewhere behind me, near the dresser perhaps.

There was a sudden surge in me of gladness to hear her voice, to feel
her presence. In fact I was surprised at how strong these sensations
were. I wanted to see her but I didn't move just yet.

"This traveling without your body-it's a power you share with mortals,"
she said. "They do this little trick of traveling out of their bodies
all the time."

"I know," I said dismally. "They can have it. If I can fly with my body,
that's what 1 intend to do."

She laughed again; soft, caressing laughter that I'd heard in my dreams.

"In olden times," she said, "men went to the temple to do this; they
drank the potions given them by the priests; it was in traveling the
heavens that men faced the great mysteries of life and death."

"I know," I said again. "I always thought they were drunk or stoned out
of their minds as one says today."

"You're a lesson in brutality," she whispered. "Your responses to things
are so swift."

"That's brutal?" I asked. I caught a whiff again of the fires burning on
the island. Sickening. Dear God. And we talk here as if this isn't
happening, as if we hadn't penetrated their world with these horrors. .
. .

"And flying with your body does not frighten you?" she asked.

"It all frightens me, you know that," I said. "When do I discover the
limits? Can I sit here and bring death to mortals who are miles away?"

"No," she said. "You'll discover the limits rather sooner than you
think. It's like every other mystery. There really is no mystery."

I laughed. For a split second I heard the voices again, the tide rising,
and then it faded into a truly audible sound-cries on the wind, cries
coming from villages on the island. They had burned the little museum
with the ancient Greek statues in it; and with the icons and the
Byzantine paintings.

All that art going up in smoke. Life going up in smoke.

I had to see her suddenly. I couldn't find her in the mirrors, the way
they were. I got up.

She was standing at the dresser; and she too had changed her garments,
and the style of her hair. Even more purely lovely, yet timeless as
before. She held a small hand mirror, and she was looking at herself in
it; but it seemed she was not really looking at anything; she was
listening to the voices; and I could hear them again too. A shiver went
through me; she resembled her old self, the frozen self sitting in the
shrine.

Then she appeared to wake; to look into the mirror again, and then at me
as she put the mirror aside.

Her hair had been loosened; all those plaits gone. And now the rippling
black waves came down free over her shoulders, heavy, glossy, and
inviting to kiss. The dress was similar to the old one, as if the women
had made it for her out of dark magenta silk that she had found here. It
gave a faint rosy blush to her cheeks, and to her breasts which were
only half covered by the loose folds that went up over her shoulders,
gathered there by tiny gold clasps.

The necklaces she wore were all modern jewelry, but the profusion made
them look archaic, pearls and gold chains and opals and even rubies.

Against the luster of her skin, all this ornament appeared somehow
unreal! It was caught up in the overall gloss of her person; it was like
the light in her eyes, or the luster of her lips.

She was something fit for the most lavish palace of the imagination;
something both sensuous and divine. I wanted her blood again, the blood
without fragrance and without killing. I wanted to go to her and lift my
hand and touch the skin which seemed absolutely impenetrable but which
would break suddenly like the most fragile crust.

"All the men on the island are dead, aren't they?" I asked. I shocked
myself.

"All but ten. There were seven hundred people on this island. Seven have
been chosen to live."

"And the other three?"

"They are for you."

I stared at her. For me? The desire for blood shifted a little, revised
itself, included her and human blood-the hot, bubbling, fragrant kind,
the kind that- But there was no physical need. I could still call it
thirst, technically, but it was actually worse.

"You don't want them?" she said, mockingly, smiling at me. "My reluctant
god, who shrinks from his duty? You know all those years, when I
listened to you, long before you made songs to me, I loved it that you
took only the hard ones, the young men. I loved it that you hunted
thieves and killers; that you liked to swallow their evil whole. Where's
your courage now? Your impulsiveness? Your willingness to plunge, as it
were?"

"Are they evil?" I said. "These victims who are waiting for me?"

She narrowed her eyes for a momennt. "Is it cowardice finally?" she
asked. "Does the grandeur of the plan frighten? For surely the killing
means little."

"Oh, but you're wrong," I said. "The killing always means something. But
yes, the grandeur of the plan terrifies me. The chaos, the total loss of
all moral equilibrium, it means everything. But that's not cowardice, is
it?" How calm I sounded. How sure of myself. It wasn't the truth, but
she knew it,

"Let me release you from all obligation to resist," she said. "You
cannot stop me. I love you, as I told you. I love to look at you. It
fills me with happiness. But you can't influence me. Such an idea is
absurd."

We stared at each other in silence. I was trying to find words to tell
myself how lovely she was, how like the old Egyptian paintings of
princesses with shining tresses whose names are now forever lost. I was
trying to understand why my heart hurt even looking at her; and yet I
didn't care that she was beautiful; I cared about what we said to each
other.

"Why have you chosen this way?" I asked. "You know why," she said with a
patient smile. "It is the best way. It is the only way; it is the clear
vision after centuries of searching for a solution."

"But that can't be the truth, I can't believe it." "Of course it can. Do
you think this is impulse with me? I don't make my decisions as you do,
my prince. Your youthful exuberance is something I treasure, but such
small possibilities are long gone for me, You think in terms of
lifetimes; in terms of small accomplishments and human pleasures. I have
thought out for thousands of years my designs for the world that is now
mine. And the evidence is overwhelming that I must proceed as I have
done. I cannot turn this earth into a garden, I cannot create the Eden
of human imagination-unless I eliminate the males almost completely."

"And by this you mean kill forty percent of the population of the earth?
Ninety percent of all males?"

"Do you deny that this will put an end to war, to rape, to violence?"

"But the point . . ."

"No, answer my question. Do you deny that it will put an end to war, to
rape, and to violence?" "Killing everyone would put an end to those
things!" "Don't play games with me. Answer my question."

"Isn't that a game? The price is unacceptable. It's madness; it's mass
murder; it's against nature."

"Quiet yourself- None of what you say is true. What is natural is simply
what has been done. And don't you think the peoples of this earth have
limited in the past their female children? Don't you think they have
killed them by the millions, because they wanted only male children so
that those children could go to war? Oh, you cannot imagine the extent
to which such things have been done.

"And so now they will choose female over male and there will be no war.
And what of the other crimes committed by men against women? If there
were any nation on earth which had committed such crimes against another
nation, would it not be marked for extermination? And yet nightly,
daily, throughout this earth these crimes are perpetrated without end."

"All right, that's true. Undoubtedly that's true. But is your solution
any better? It's unspeakable, the slaughter of all things male. Surely
if you want to rule-" But even this to me was unthinkable. I thought of
Marius's old words, spoken long ago to me when we existed still in the
age of powdered wigs and satin slippers-that the old religion,
Christianity, was dying, and maybe no new religion would rise:

"Maybe something more wonderful will take place," Marius had said, "the
world will truly move forward, past all gods and goddesses, past all
devils and angels . . ."

Wasn't that the destiny of this world, really? The destiny to which it
was moving without our intervention?

"Ah, you are a dreamer, my beautiful one," she said harshly. "How you
pick and choose your illusions! Look to the eastern countries, where the
desert tribes, now rich on the oil they have pulled up from beneath the
sands, kill each other by the thousands in the name of Allah, their god!
Religion is not dead on this earth; it never will be. You and Marius,
what chess players you are; your ideas are nothing but chess pieces. And
you cannot see beyond the board on which you place them in this or that
pattern as suits your small ethical souls."

"You're wrong," I said angrily. "Not about us perhaps. We don't matter.
You're wrong in all this that you've begun. You're wrong."

"No, I am not wrong," she said. "And there is no one who can stop me,
male or female. And we shall see for the first time since man lifted the
club to strike down his brother, the world that women would make and
what women have to teach men. And only when men can be taught, will they
be allowed to run free among women again!"

"There must be some other way! Ye gods, I'm a flawed thing, a weak
thing, a thing no better than most of the men who've ever lived. I can't
argue for their lives now. I couldn't defend my own. But, Akasha, for
the love of all things living, I'm begging you to turn away from this,
this wholesale murder-"

"You speak to me of murder? Tell me the value of one human life, Lestat.
Is it not infinite? And how many have you sent to the grave? We have
blood on our hands, all of us, just as we have it in our veins."

"Yes, exactly. And we are not all wise and all knowing. I'm begging you
to stop, to consider . . . Akasha, surely Marius-" "Marius!" Softly she
laughed. "What did Marius teach you? What did he give you? Really give
you!"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. And her beauty was confusing me! So
confusing to see the roundness of her arms; the tiny dimple in her
cheek.

"My darling," she said, her face suddenly tender and soft as her voice
was. "Bring to mind your vision of the Savage Garden, in which aesthetic
principles are the only enduring principles-the laws that govern the
evolution of all things large and small, of colors and patterns in
glorious profusion, and beauty! Beauty everywhere one looks. That is
nature. And death is everywhere in it.

"And what I shall make is Eden, the Eden all long for, and it shall be
better than nature! It shall take things a step further; and the utter
abusive and amoral violence of nature shall be redeemed. Don't you
understand that men will never do more than dream of peace? But women
can realize that dream? My vision is amplified in the heart of every
woman. But it cannot survive the heat of male violence! And that heat is
so terrible that the earth itself may not survive."

"What if there's something you don't understand," I said. I was
struggling, grasping for the words. "Suppose the duality of masculine
and feminine is indispensable to the human animal. Suppose the women
want the men; suppose they rise against you and seek to protect the men.
The world is not this little brutal island! All women are not peasants
blinded by visions!"

"Do you think men are what women want?" she asked. She drew closer, her
face changing imperceptibly in the play of the light. "Is that what
you're saying? If it is so, then we shall spare a few more of the men,
and keep them where they may be looked at as the women looked at you,
and touched as the women touched you. We'll keep them where the women
may have them when they want them, and I assure you they shall not be
used as women have been used by men."

I sighed. It was useless to argue. She was absolutely right and
absolutely wrong.

"You do yourself an injustice," she said. "I know'your arguments. For
centuries I have pondered them, as I've pondered so many questions. You
think I do what I do with human limitations. I do not. To understand me,
you must think in terms of abilities yet unimagined. Sooner will you
understand the mystery of splitting atoms or of black holes in space."

"There has to be a way without death. There has to be a way that
triumphs over death."

"Now that, my beauty, is truly against nature," she said. "Even I cannot
put an end to death." She paused; she seemed suddenly distracted; or
rather deeply distressed by the words she'd just spoken. "An end to
death," she whispered. It seemed some personal sorrow had intruded on
her thoughts. "An end to death," she said again. But she was drifting
away from me. I watched her close her eyes, and lift her fingers to her
temples.

She was hearing the voices again; letting them come. Or maybe even
unable to stop them for a moment. She said some words in an ancient
tongue, and I didn't understand them. I was struck by her sudden seeming
vulnerability, the way the voices seemed to be cutting her off; the way
her eyes appeared to search the room and then to fix on me and brighten.

I was speechless and overwhelmed with sadness. How small had my visions
of power always been! To vanquish a mere handful of enemies, to be seen
and ioved by mortals as an image; to find some place in the great drama
of things which was infinitely larger than I was, a drama whose study
could occupy the mind of one being for a thousand years. And we stood
outside time suddenly; outside of justice; capable of collapsing whole
systems of thought. Or was it just an illusion? How many others had
reached for such power, in one form or another?

"They were not immortals, my beloved." It was almost an entreaty.

"But it's an accident that we are," I said. "We're things that never
should have come into existence." .

"Don't speak those words!"

"I can't help it."

"It doesn't matter now. You fail to grasp how little anything matters. I
give you no sublime reason for what I do because the reasons are simple
and practical; how we came into being is irrelevant. What matters is
that we have survived. Don't you see? That is the utter beauty of it,
the beauty out of which all other beauties will be born, that we have
survived."

I shook my head. I was in a panic. I saw again the museum that the
villagers on this island had only just burnt. I saw the statues
blackened and lying on the floor. An appalling sense of loss engulfed
me.

"History does not matter," she said. "Art does not matter; these things
imply continuities which in fact do not exist. They cater to our need
for pattern, our hunger for meaning. But they cheat us in the end. We
must make the meaning."

I turned my back. I didn't want to be drugged by her resolution or her
beauty; by the glimmer of light in her jet black eyes. I felt her hands
on my shoulders; her lips against my neck.

"When the years have passed," she said, "when my garden has bloomed
through many summers and gone to sleep through many winters; when the
old ways of rape and war are nothing but memory, and women watch the old
films in mystification that such things could ever have been done; when
the ways of women are inculcated into every member of the population,
naturally, as aggression is now inculcated, then perhaps the males can

return. Slowly, their numbers can be increased. Children will be reared
in an atmosphere where rape is unthinkable, where war is unimaginable.
And then . . - then . . . there can be men. When the world is ready for
them." "It won't work. It can't work."

"Why do you say so? Let us look to nature, as you wanted to do only
moments ago. Go out in the lush garden that surrounds this villa; study
the bees in their hives and the ants who labor as they have always done.
They are female, my prince, by the millions. A male is only an
aberration and a matter of function. They learned the wise trick a long
time before me of limiting the males. "And we may now live in an age
where males are utterly unnecessary. Tell me, my prince, what is the
primary use of men now, if it is not to protect women from other men?"

"What is it that makes you want me here!" I said desperately. I turned
around to face her again. "Why have you chosen me as your consort! For
the love of heaven, why don't you kill me with the other men! Choose
some other immortal, some ancient being who hungers for such power!
There must be one. I don't want to rule the world! I don't want to rule
anything! 1 never did."

Her face changed just a little. It seemed there was a faint, evanescent
sadness in her that made her eyes even deeper in their darkness for an
instant. Her lip quivered as if she wanted to say something but
couldn't. Then she did answer.

"Lestat, if all the world were destroyed, I would not destroy you," she
said. "Your limitations are as radiant as your virtues for reasons I
don't understand myself. But more truly perhaps, I love you because you
are so perfectly what is wrong with all things male. Aggressive, full of
hate and recklessness, and endlessly eloquent excuses for violence-you
are the essence of masculinity; and there is a gorgeous quality to such
purity. But only because it can now be controlled."

"By you."

"Yes, my darling. This is what I was born for. This is why I am here.
And it does not matter if no one ratifies my purpose. I shall make it
so. Right now the world burns with masculine fire; it is a
conflagration. But when that is corrected, your fire shall burn ever
more brightly-as a torch burns."

"Akasha, you prove my point! Don't you think the souls of women crave
that very fire? My God, would you tamper with the stars themselves?"

"Yes, the soul craves it. But to see it in the blaze of a torch as I
have indicated, or in the flame of a candle. But not as it rages now
through every forest and over every mountain and in every glen. There is
no woman alive who has ever wanted to be burnt by it! They want the
light, my beauty, the light! And the warmth! But not the destruction.
How could they? They are only women. They are not mad."

"All right. Say you accomplish your purpose. That you begin this
revolution and it sweeps the world-and mind you I don't think such a
thing will happen! But if you do, is there nothing under heaven that
will demand atonement for the death of so many millions? If there are no
gods or goddesses, is there not some way in which humans themselves-and
you and I-shall be made to pay?"

"It is the gateway to innocence and so it shall be remembered. And never
again will the male population be allowed to increase to such
proportions, for who would want such horrors again?"

"Force the men to obey you. Dazzle them as you've dazzled the women, as
you've dazzled me."

"But Lestat, that is just the point; they would never obey. Will you
obey? They would die first, as you would die. They would have another
reason for rebellion, as if any were ever wanting. They would gather
together in magnificent resistance. Imagine a goddess to fight. We shall
see enough of that by and by as it is. They cannot help but be men. And
I could rule only through tyranny, by endless killing. And there would
be chaos. But this way, there shall be a break in the great chain of
violence. There shall be an era of utter and perfect peace."

I was quiet again. I could think of a thousand answers but they were all
short-circuited. She knew her purpose only too well. And the truth was,
she was right in many things she said.

Ah, but it was fantasy! A world without males. What exactly would have
been accomplished? Oh, no. No, don't even accept the idea for a moment.
Don't even. . . . Yet the vision returned, the vision I'd glimpsed in
that miserable jungle village, of a world without fear.

Imagine trying to explain to them what men had been like. Imagine trying
to explain that there had been a time when one could be murdered in the
streets of the cities; imagine trying to explain what rape meant to the
male of the species . . . imagine. And I saw their eyes looking at me,
the uncomprehending eyes as they tried to fathom it, tried to make that
leap of understanding. I felt their soft hands touching me.

"But this is madness!" I whispered.

"Ah, but you fight me so hard, my prince," she whispered. There was a
flash of anger, hurt. She came near to me. If she kissed me again I was
going to start weeping. I'd thought I knew what beauty was in women; but
she'd surpassed all the language I had for it.

"My prince," she said again in a low whisper. "The logic of it is
elegant. A world in which only a handful of males are kept for breeding
shall be a female world. And that world will be what we have never known
in all our bloody miserable history, in which men now breed germs in
vials with which to kill continents in chemical warfare, and design
bombs which can knock the earth from its path around the sun."

"What if the women divide along principles of masculine and feminine,
the way men so often divide if there are no females there?"

"You know that's a foolish objection. Such distinctions are never more
than superficial. Women are women! Can you conceive of war made by
women? Truly, answer me. Can you? Can you conceive of bands of roving
women intent only on destruction? Or rape? Such a thing is preposterous.
For the aberrant few justice will be immediate. But overall, something
utterly unforeseen will take place. Don't you see? The possibility of
peace on earth has always existed, and there have always been people who
could realize it, and preserve it, and those people are women. If one
takes away the men."

I sat down on the bed in consternation, like a mortal man. I put my
elbows on my knees. Dear God, dear God! Why did those two words keep
coming to me? There was no God! I was in the room with God.

She laughed triumphantly.

"Yes, precious one," she said. She touched my hand and turned me around
and drew me towards her. "But tell me, doesn't it excite you even a
little?"

I looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"You, the impulsive one. You who made that child, Claudia, into a blood
drinker, just to see what would happen?" There was mockery in her tone
but it was affectionate. "Come now, don't you want to see what will
happen if all the males are gone? Aren't you even a little curious?
Reach into your soul for the truth. It is a very interesting idea, isn't
it?"

I didn't answer. Then I shook my head. "No," I said.

"Coward," she whispered.

No one had ever called me that, no one.

"Coward," she said again. "Little being with little dreams."

"Maybe there would be no war and no rape and no violence," I said, "if
all beings were little and had little dreams, as you put it."

She laughed softly. Forgivingly.

"We could argue these points forever," she whispered. "But very soon we
will know. The world will be as I would have it be; and we shall see
what happens as I said."

She sat beside me. For a moment it seemed I was losing my mind. She
slipped her smooth naked arms around my neck. It seemed there had never
been a softer female body, never anything as yielding and luscious as
her embrace. Yet she was so hard, so strong.

The lights in the room were dimming. And the sky outside seemed ever
more vivid and darkly blue.

"Akasha," I whispered. I was looking beyond the open terrace at the
stars. I wanted to say something, something crucial that would sweep
away all arguments; but the meaning escaped me. I was so drowsy; surely
it was her doing. It was a spell she was working, yet knowing it did not
release me. I felt her lips again on my lips, and on my throat. I felt
the cool satin of her skin.

"Yes, rest now, precious one. And when you wake, the victims will be
waiting."

"Victims. . . ." Almost dreaming, as I held her in my arms.

"But you must sleep now. You are young still and fragile. My blood's
working on you, changing you, perfecting you."

Yes, destroying me; destroying my heart and my will. I was vaguely
conscious of moving, of lying down on the bed. I fell back into the
silken pillows, and then there was the silk of her hair near me, the
touch of her fingers, and again, her lips on my mouth. Blood in her
kiss; blood thundering beneath it,

"Listen to the sea," she whispered. "Listen to the flowers open. You can
hear them now, you know. You can hear the tiny creatures of the sea if
you listen. You can hear the dolphins sing, for they do." Drifting. Safe
in her arms; she the powerful one; she was the one they all feared.

Forget the acrid smell of the burning bodies; yes, listen to the sea
pounding like guns on the beach beneath us; listen to the sound of a
rose petal breaking loose and falling onto marble. And the world is
going to hell, and I cannot help it, and I am in her arms and I am going
to sleep.

"Hasn't that happened a million times, my love?" she whispered. "On a
world full of suffering and death, you turned your back as millions of
mortals do every night?"

Darkness. Splendid visions taking place; a palace even more lovely than
this. Victims. Servants. The mythical existence of pashas, and emperors.

"Yes, my darling, anything that you desire, All the world at your feet.
I shall build you palace upon palace; they shall do it; they that
worship you. That is nothing. That is the simplest part of it. And think
of the hunting, my prince. Until the killing is done, think of the
chase. For they would surely run from you and hide from you, yet you
would find them."

In the dwindling light-just before dreams come-I could see it. I could
see myself traveling through the air, like the heroes of old, over the
sprawling country where their campfires flickered.

In packs like wolves they would travel, through the cities as well as
the woods, daring to show themselves only by day; for only then would
they be safe from us. When night fell, we would come; and we would track
them by their thoughts and by their blood, and by the whispered
confessions of the women who had seen them and maybe even harbored them.
Out in the open they might run, firing their useless weapons. And we
would swoop down; we would destroy them one by one, our prey, save for
those we wanted alive, those whose blood we would take slowly,
mercilessly.

And out of that war shall come peace? Out of that hideous game shall
come a garden?

I tried to open my eyes. I felt her kiss my eyelids.

Dreaming.

A barren plain and the soil breaking. Something rising, pushing the
dried clods of earth out of its way. I am this thing. This thing walking
across the barren plain as the sun sinks. The sky is still full of
tight. I look down at the stained cloth that covers me, but this is not
me. I'm only Lestat. And I'm afraid. I wish Gabrielle were here. And
Louis. Maybe Louis could make her understand. Ah, Louis, of all of us,
Louis who always knew. . . .

And there is the familiar dream again, the redheaded women kneeling by
the altar with the body-their mother's body and they are ready to
consume it. Yes, it's their duty, their sacred right-to devour the brain
and the heart. Except that they never will because something awful
always happens. Soldiers come. ... I wish I knew the meaning.

Blood. I woke up with a start. Hours had passed. The room had cooled
faintly. The sky was wondrously clear through the open windows.

From her came all the light that filled the room. "The women are
waiting, and the victims, they are afraid." The victims. My head was
spinning. The victims would be full of luscious blood. Males who would
have died anyway. Young males all mine to take.

"Yes. But come, put an end to their suffering." Groggily I got up. She
wrapped a long cloak over my shoulders, something simpler than her own
garment, but warm and soft to touch. She stroked my hair with her two
hands.

"Masculine-feminine. Is that all there ever was to it?" I whispered. My
body wanted to sleep some more. But the blood.

She reached up and touched my cheek with her fingers. Tears again?

We went out of the room together, and onto a long landing with a marble
railing, from which a stairs descended, turning once, into an immense
room. Candelabra everywhere. Dim electric lamps creating a luxurious
gloom.

At the very center, the women were assembled, perhaps two hundred or
more of them, standing motionless and looking up at us, their hands
clasped as if in prayer.

Even in their silence, they seemed barbaric, amid the European
furniture, the Italian hardwoods with their gilt edges, and the old
fireplace with its marble scrolls. I thought of her words suddenly:
"history doesn't matter; art doesn't matter." Dizzy. On the walls, there
ran those airy eighteenth-century paintings, full of gleaming clouds and
fat-cheeked angels, and skies of luminescent blue.

The women stood looking past this wealth which had never touched them
and indeed meant nothing to them, looking up at the vision on the
landing, which now dissolved, and in a rush of whispered noise and
colored light, materialized suddenly at the foot of the stairs.

Sighs rose, hands were raised to shield bowed heads as if from a blast
of unwelcome light. Then all eyes were fixed upon the Queen of Heaven
and her consort, who stood on the red carpet, only a few feet above the
assembly, the consort a bit shaken and biting his lip a little and
trying to see this thing clearly, this awful thing that was happening,
this awful mingling of worship and blood sacrifice, as the victims were
brought forth.

Such fine specimens. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, Mediterranean men. Every
bit as beautiful as the young women. Men of that stocky build and
exquisite musculature that has inspired artists for thousands of years.
Ink black eyes and darkly shaved faces; and deep cunning; and deep anger
as they looked upon these hostile supernatural creatures who had decreed
the death of their brothers far and wide.

With leather straps they'd been bound-probably their own belts, and the
belts of dozens of others; but the women had done it well. Their ankles
were tethered even, so that they could walk but not kick or run. Naked
to the waist they were, and only one was trembling, as much with anger
as with fear. Suddenly he began to struggle. The other two turned,
stared at him, and started to struggle as well.

But the mass of women closed on them, forcing them to their knees. I
felt the desire rise in me at the sight of it, at the sight of leather
belts cutting into the dark naked flesh of the men's arms. Why is this
so seductive! And the women's hands holding them, those tight menacing
hands that could be so soft otherwise. They couldn't fight so many
women. Heaving sighs, they stopped the rebellion, though the one who had
started the struggle looked up, accusingly, at me.

Demons, devils, things from hell, that is what his mind told him; for
who else could have done such things to his world? Oh, this is the
beginning of darkness, terrible darkness!

But the desire was so strong. You are going to die and I am going to do
it! And he seemed to hear it, and to understand it. And a savage hatred
of the women rose out of him, replete with images of rape and
retribution that made me smile, and yet I understood. Rather completely
I understood. So easy to feel that contempt for them, to be outraged
that they had dared to become the enemy, the enemy in the age-old
battle, they, the women! And it was darkness, this imagined retribution,
it was unspeakable darkness, too.

I felt Akasha's fingers on my arm. The feeling of bliss came back; the
delirium. I tried to resist it, but I felt it as before. Yet the desire
didn't go away. The desire was in my mouth now. I could taste it.

Yes, pass into the moment; pass into pure function; let the bloody
sacrifice begin.

The women went down on their knees en masse, and the men who were
already kneeling seemed to grow calm, their eyes glazing over as they
looked at us, their lips trembling and loose.

I stared at the muscled shoulders of the first one, the one who had
rebelled. I imagined as I always do at such moments the feel of his
coarse rough-shaven throat when my lips would touch it, and my teeth
would break through the skin-not the icy skin of the goddess-but hot,
salty human skin.

Yes, beloved. Take him. He is the sacrifice that you deserve. You are a
god now. Take him. Do you know how many wait for you?

It seemed the women understood what to do. They lifted him as I stepped
forward; there was another struggle, but it was no more than a spasm in
the muscles as I took him into my arms.

My hand closed too hard on his head; I didn't know my new strength, and
I heard the bones cracking even as my teeth went in. But the death came
almost instantly, so great was my first draught of blood. I was burning
with hunger; and the whole portion, complete and entire in one instant,
had not been enough. Not nearly enough!

At once I took the next victim, trying to be slow with it, so that I
would tumble into the darkness as I'd so often done, with only the soul

speaking to me. Yes, telling me its secrets as the blood spurted into my
mouth, as I let my mouth fill before I swallowed. Yes, brother. I am
sorry, brother. And then staggering forward, I stepped on the corpse
before me and crushed it underfoot.

"Give me the last one."

No resistance. He stared up at me in utter quiet, as if some light had
dawned in him, as if he'd found in theory or belief some perfect rescue.
I pulled him to me-gently, Lestat-and this was the real fount I wanted,
this was the slow, powerful death I craved, the heart pumping as if it
would never stop, the sigh slipping from his lips, my eyes clouded
still, even as I let him go, with the fading images of his brief and
unrecorded life, suddenly collapsed into one rare second of meaning.

I let him drop. Now there was no meaning.

There was only the light before me, and the rapture of the women who had
at last been redeemed through miracles.

The room was hushed; not a thing stirred; the sound of the sea came in,
that distant monotonous booming.

Then Akasha's voice:

The sins of the men have now been atoned for; and those who are kept
now, shall be well cared for, and loved. But never give freedom to those
who remain, those who have oppressed you.

And then soundlessly, without distinct words, the lesson came.

The ravening lust which they had just witnessed, the deaths they had
seen at my hands-that was to be the eternal reminder of the fierceness
that lived in all male things and must never be allowed free again. The
males had been sacrificed to the embodiment of their own violence.

In sum, these women had witnessed a new and transcendent ritual; a new
holy sacrifice of the Mass. And they would see it again; and they must
always remember it.

My head swam from the paradox. And my own small designs of not very long
ago were there to torment me. I had wanted the world of mortals to know
of me. I had wanted to be the image of evil in the theater of the world
and thereby somehow do good.

And now I was that image all right, I was its literal embodiment,
passing through the minds of these few simple souls into myth as she had
promised. And there was a small voice whispering in my ear, hammering me
with that old adage: be careful what you wish for; your wish might come
true.

Yes, that was the heart of it; all I'd ever wished for was coming true.
In the shrine I had kissed her and longed to awaken her, and dreamt of
her power; and now we stood together, she and I, and the hymns rose
around us. Hosannas. Cries of joy.

The doors of the palazzo were thrown open.

And we were taking our leave; we were rising in splendor and in magic,
and passing out of the doors, and up over the roof of the old mansion,
and then out over the sparkling waters into the calm sweep of the stars,

I had no fear of falling anymore; I had no fear of anything so
insignificant. Because my whole soul-petty as it was and always had
been-knew fears I'd never imagined before.

THE STORY OF THE TWINS,

PART II

SHE WAS DREAMING OF KILLING. IT WAS A GREAT dark city like London or
Rome, and she was hurrying through it, on an errand of killing, to bring
down the first sweet human victim that would be her own. And just before
she opened her eyes, she had made the leap from the things she had
believed all her life, to this simple amoral act-killing. She had done
what the reptile does when it hoists in its leathery slit of a mouth the
tiny crying mouse that it will crush slowly without ever hearing that
soft heartbreaking song.

Awake in the dark; and the house alive above her; the old ones saying
Come. A television talking somewhere. The Blessed Virgin Mary had
appeared on an island in the Mediterranean Sea.

No hunger. Maharet's blood was too strong. The idea was growing,
beckoning like a crone in a dark alley. Killing.

Rising from the narrow box in which she lay, she tiptoed through the
blackness until her hands felt the metal door. She went into the hallway
and looked up the endless iron stairs, crisscrossing back over itself as
if it were a skeleton, and she saw the sky through the glass like smoke.
Mael was halfway up, at the door of the house proper, gazing down at
her.

She reeled with it-I am one of you and we are together-and the feel of
the iron rail under her hand, and some sudden grief, just a fleeting
thing, for all she had been before this fierce beauty had grabbed her by
the hair.

Mael came down as if to retrieve her, because it was carrying her away.

They understood, didn't they, the way the earth breathed for her now,
and the forest sang, and the roots prowled the dark, coming through
these earthen walls.

She stared at Mael. Faint smell of buckskin, dust. How had she ever
thought such beings were human? Eyes glittering like that. And yet the
time would come when she would be walking among human beings again, and
she would see their eyes linger and then suddenly move away. She'd be
hurrying through some dark city like London or Rome. Looking into the
eyes of Mael, she saw the crone again in the alleyway; but it had not
been a literal image. No she saw the alleyway, she saw the killing,
purely. And in silence, they both looked away at the same instant, but
not quickly, rather respectfully. He took her hand; he looked at the
bracelet he'd given her. He kissed her suddenly on the cheek. And then
he led her up the stairs towards the mountaintop room.

The electronic voice of the television grew louder and louder, speaking
of mass hysteria in Sri Lanka. Women killing men. Even male babies

murdered. On the island of Lynkonos there had been mass hallucinations
and an epidemic of unexplained deaths.

Only gradually did it dawn on her, what she was hearing. So it wasn't
the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she had thought how lovely, when she first
heard it, that they can believe something like that. She turned to Mael
but he was looking ahead. He knew these things. The television had been
playing its words to him for an hour.

Now she saw the eerie blue flicker as she came into the mountaintop
room. And the strange spectacle of these her new brethren in the Secret
Order of the Undead, scattered about like so many statues, glowing in
the blue light, as they stared fixedly at the large screen.

". . . outbreaks in the past caused by contaminants in food or water.
Yet no explanation has been found for the similarity of the reports from
widely divergent places, which now include several isolated villages in
the mountains of Nepal. Those apprehended claim to have seen a beautiful
woman, called variously the Blessed Virgin, or the Queen of Heaven, or
simply the Goddess, who commanded them to massacre the males of their
village, except for a few carefully chosen to be spared. Some reports
describe a male apparition also, a fair-haired deity who does not speak
and who as yet has no official or unofficial title or name . . ."

Jesse looked at Maharet, who watched without expression, one hand
resting on the arm of her chair.

Newspapers covered the table. Papers in French and Hindustani as well as
English.

" . . from Lynkonos to several other islands before the militia was
called in. Early estimates indicate some two thousand men may have been
killed in this little archipelago just off the tip of Greece."

Maharet touched the small black control under her hand and the screen
vanished. It seemed the entire apparatus vanished, fading into the dark
wood, as the windows became transparent and the treetops appeared in
endless, misted layers against the violent sky. Far away, Jesse saw the
twinkling lights of Santa Rosa cradled in the dark hills. She could
smell the sun that had been in this room; she could feel the heat rising
slowly through the glass ceiling.

She looked at the others who were sitting there in stunned silence.
Marius glared at the television screen, at the newspapers spread out
before him.

"We have no time to lose," Khayman said quickly to Maharet. "You must
continue the tale. We don't know when she will come here."

He made a small gesture, and the scattered newspapers were suddenly
cleared away, crushed together, and hurtling soundlessly into the fire
which devoured them with a gust that sent a shower of sparks up the
gaping smokestack.

Jesse was suddenly dizzy. Too fast, all of that. She stared at Khayman.
Would she ever get used to it? Their porcelain faces and their sudden
violent expressions, their soft human voices, and their near invisible
movements?

And what was the Mother doing? Males slaughtered. The fabric of life for
these ignorant people utterly destroyed. A cold sense of menace touched
her. She searched Maharet's face for some insight, some understanding.

But Maharet's features were" utterly rigid. She had not answered
Khayman. She turned towards the table slowly and clasped her hands under
her chin. Her eyes were dull, remote, as if she saw nothing before her.

"The fact is, she has to be destroyed," Marius said, as if he could hold
it in no longer. The color flared in his cheeks, shocking Jesse, because
all the normal lines of a man's face had been there for an instant. And
now they were gone, and he was visibly shaking with anger. "We've loosed
a monster, and it's up to us to reclaim it."

"And how can that be done?" Santino asked. "You speak as if it's a
simple matter of decision. You cannot kill her!"

"We forfeit our lives, that's how it's done," Marius said. "We act in
concert, and we end this thing once and for all as it should have been
ended long ago." He glanced at them all one by one, eyes lingering on
Jesse. Then shifting to Maharet. "The body isn't indestructible. It
isn't made of marble. It can be pierced, cut. I've pierced it with my
teeth. I've drunk its blood!"

Maharet made a small dismissive gesture, as if to say I know these
things and you know I know.

"And as we cut it, we cut ourselves?" Eric said. "I say we leave here. I
say we hide from her. What do we gain staying in this place?"

"No!" Maharet said.

"She'll kill you one by one if you do that," Khayman said. "You're alive
because you wait now for her purpose."

"Would you go on with the story," Gabrielle said, speaking directly to
Maharet. She'd been withdrawn all this time, only now and then listening
to the others. "I want to know the rest," she said. "I want to hear
everything." She sat forward, arms folded on the table.

"You think you'll discover some way to vanquish her in these old tales?"
Eric asked. "You're mad if you think that."

"Go on with the story, please," Louis said. "I want to ..." He
hesitated. "I want to know what happened also."

Maharet looked at him for a long moment.

"Go on, Maharet," Khayman said. "For in all likelihood, the Mother will
be destroyed and we both know how and why, and all this talk means
nothing."

"What can prophecy mean now, Khayman?" Maharet asked, her voice low,
devitalized. "Do we fall into the same errors that ensnare the Mother?
The past may instruct us. But it won't save us."

"Your sister comes, Maharet. She comes as she said she would."

"Khayman," Maharet said with a long, bitter smile.

"Tell us what happened," Gabrielle said.

Maharet sat still, as if trying to find some way to begin. The sky
beyond the windows darkened in the interval. Yet a faint tinge of red
appeared in the far west, growing brighter and brighter against the gray
clouds. Finally, it faded, and they were wrapped in absolute darkness,
except for the light of the fire, and the dull sheen of the glass walls
which had become mirrors.

"Khayman took you to Egypt," Gabrielle said. "What did you see there?"

"Yes, he took us to Egypt," Maharet said. She sighed as she sat back in
the chair, her eyes fixed on the table before her. "There was no escape
from it; Khayman would have taken us by force.

And in truth, we accepted that we had to go. Through twenty generations,
we had gone between man and the spirits. If Amel had done some great
evil, we would try to undo it. Or at least ... as I said to you when we
first came to this table ... we would seek to understand.

"I left my child. I left her in the care of those women 1 trusted most.
I kissed her. I told her secrets. And then I left her, and we set out,
carried in the royal litter as if we were guests of the King and Queen
of Kemet and not prisoners, just as before.

"Khayman was gentle with us on the long march, but grim and silent, and
refusing to meet our gaze. And it was just as well, for we had not
forgotten our injuries. Then on the very last night when we camped on
the banks of the great river, which we would cross in the morning to
reach the royal palace, Khayman called us into his tent and told us all
that he knew.

"His manner was courteous, decorous. And we tried to put aside our
personal suspicions of him as we listened. He told us of what the demon-
as he called it-had done.

"Only hours after we had been sent out of Egypt, he had known that
something was watching him, some dark and evil force. Everywhere that he
went, he felt this presence, though in the light of day it tended to
wane.

"Then things within his house were altered-little things which others
did not notice. He thought at first he was going mad. His writing things
were misplaced; then the seal which he used as great steward. Then at
random moments-and always when he was alone-these objects came flying at
him, striking him in the face, or landing at his feet. Some turned up in
ridiculous places. He would find the great seal, for instance, in his
beer or his broth.

"And he dared not tell the King and Queen. He knew it was our spirits
who were doing it; and to tell would be a death sentence for us.

"And so he kept this awful secret, as things grew worse and worse.
Ornaments which he had treasured from childhood were now rent to pieces
and made to rain down upon him. Sacred amulets were hurled into the
privy; excrement was taken from the well and smeared upon the walls.

"He could barely endure his own house, yet he admonished his slaves to
tell no one, and when they ran off in fear, he attended to his own
toilet and swept the place like a lowly servant himself.

"But he was now in a state of terror. Something was there with him in
his house. He could hear its breath upon his face. And now and then he
would swear that he felt its needlelike teeth.

"At last in desperation he began to talk to it, beg it to get out. But
this seemed only to increase its strength. With the talking, it
redoubled its power. It emptied his purse upon the stones and made the
gold coins jingle against each other all night long. It upset his bed so
that he landed on his face on the floor. It put sand in his food when he
wasn't looking.

"Finally six months had passed since we had left the kingdom. He was
growing frantic. Perhaps we were beyond danger. But he could not be
sure, and he did not know where to turn, for the spirit was really
frightening him.

"Then in the dead of night, as he lay wondering what the thing was up
to, for it had been so quiet, he heard suddenly a great pounding at his
door. He was in terror. He knew he shouldn't answer, that the knocking
didn't come from a human hand. But finally he could bear it no longer.
He said his prayers; he threw open the door. And what he beheld was the
horror of horrors- the rotted mummy of his father, the filthy wrappings
in tatters, propped against the garden wall.

"Of course, he knew there was no life in the shrunken face or dead eyes
that stared at him. Someone or something had unearthed the corpse from
its desert mastaba and brought it there. And this was the body of his
father, putrid, stinking; the body of his father, which by all things
holy, should have been consumed in a proper funeral feast by Khayman and
his brothers and sisters.

"Khayman sank to his knees weeping, half screaming. And then, before his
unbelieving eyes, the thing moved! The thing began to dance! Its limbs
were jerked hither and thither, the wrappings breaking to bits and
pieces, until Khayman ran into the house and shut the door against it.
And then the corpse was flung, pounding its fist it seemed, upon the
door, demanding entrance.

"Khayman called on all the gods of Egypt to be rid of this monstrosity.
He called out to the palace guards; he called to the soldiers of the
King. He cursed the demon thing and ordered it to leave him; and Khayman
became the one flinging objects now, and kicking the gold coins about in
his rage.

"All the palace rushed through the royal gardens to Khayman's house. But
the demon now seemed to grow even stronger. The shutters rattled and
then were torn from their pivots. The few bits of fine furniture which
Khayman possessed began to skitter about.

"Yet this was only the beginning. At dawn when the priests entered the
house to exorcise the demon, a great wind came out of the desert,
carrying with it torrents of blinding sand. And everywhere Khayman went,
the wind pursued him; and finally he looked down to see his arms covered
with tiny pinpricks and tiny droplets of blood. Even his eyelids were
assaulted. In a cabinet he flung himself to get some peace. And the
thing tore up the cabinet. And all fled from it. And Khayman was left
crying on the floor.

"For days the tempest continued. The more the priests prayed and sang,
the more the demon raged.

"The King and Queen were beside themselves in consternation. The priests
cursed the demon. The people blamed it upon the red-haired witches. They
cried that we should never have been allowed to leave the land of Kemet.
We should be found at all costs and brought back to be burnt alive. And
then the demon would be quiet.

"But the old families did not agree with this verdict. To them the
judgment was clear. Had not the gods unearthed the putrid body of
Khayman's father, to show that the flesh eaters had always done what was
pleasing to heaven? No, it was the King and Queen who were evil, the
King and Queen who must die. The King and Queen who had filled the land
with mummies and superstition.

"The kingdom, finally, was on the verge of civil war.

"At last the King himself came to Khayman, who sat weeping in his house,
a garment drawn over him like a shroud. And the King talked to the
demon, even as the tiny bites afflicted Khayman and made drops of blood
on the cloth that covered Khayman.

" 'Now think what those witches told us,' the King said. These are but
spirits, not demons. And they can be reasoned with. If only I could make
them hear me as the witches could; and make them answer.'

"But this little conversation only seemed to enrage the demon. It broke
what little furniture it had not already smashed. It tore the door off
its pivots; it uprooted the trees from the garden and flung them about.
In fact, it seemed to forget Khayman altogether for the moment, as it
went tearing through the palace gardens destroying all that it could.

"And the King went after it, begging it to recognize him and to converse
with him, and to impart to him its secrets. He stood in the very midst
of the whirlwind created by this demon, fearless and en rapt.

"Finally the Queen appeared. In a loud piercing voice she addressed the
demon too. 'You punish us for the affliction of the red-haired sisters!'
she screamed. 'But why do you not serve us instead of them!' At once the
demon tore at her clothes and greatly afflicted her, as it had done to
Khayman before. She tried to cover her arms and her face, but it was
impossible. And so the King took hold of her and together they ran back
to Khayman's house.

" 'Now, go,' said the King to Khayman. 'Leave us alone with this thing
for I will learn from it, I will understand what it wants.' And calling
the priests to him, he told them through the whirlwind what we had said,
that the spirit hated mankind because we were both spirit and flesh. But
he would ensnare it and reform it and control it. For he was Enkil, King
of Kemet, and he could do this thing.

"Into Khayman's house, the King and the Queen went together, and the
demon went with them, tearing the place to pieces, yet there they
remained. Khayman, who was now free of the thing, lay on the floor of
the palace exhausted, fearing for his sovereigns but not knowing what to
do.

"The entire court was in an uproar; men fought one another; women wept,
and some even left the palace for fear of what was to come.

"For two whole nights and days, the King remained with the demon; and so
did the Queen. And then the old families, the flesh eaters, gathered
outside the house. The King and Queen were in error; it was time to
seize the future of Kemet. At nightfall, they went into the house on
their deadly errand with daggers raised. They would kill the King and
Queen; and if the people raised any outcry, then they would say that the
demon had done it; and who could say that the demon had not? And would
not the demon stop when the King and Queen were dead, the King and Queen
who had persecuted the red-haired witches?

"It was the Queen who saw them coming; and as she rushed forward, crying
in alarm, they thrust their daggers into her breast and she sank down
dying. The King ran to her aid, and they struck him down too, just as
mercilessly; and then they ran out of the house, for the demon had not
stopped his persecutions.

"Now Khayman, all this while, had knelt at the very edge of the garden,
deserted by the guards who had thrown in with the flesh eaters. He
expected to die with other servants of the royal family. Then he heard a
horrid wailing from the Queen. Sounds such as he had never heard before.
And when the flesh eaters heard these sounds, they deserted the place
utterly.

"It was Khayman, loyal steward to the King and Queen, who snatched up a
torch and went to the aid of his master and mistress.

"No one tried to stop him. All crept away in fear. Khayman alone went
into the house.

"It was pitch-black now, save for the torchlight. And this is what
Khayman saw:

"The Queen lay on the floor writhing as if in agony, the blood pouring
from her wounds, and a great reddish cloud enveloped her; it was like a
whirlpool surrounding her, or rather a wind sweeping up countless tiny
drops of blood. And in the midst of this swirling wind or rain or
whatever it could be called, the Queen twisted and turned, her eyes
rolling up in her head. The King lay sprawled on his back.

"All instinct told Khayman to leave this place. To get as far away from
it as he could. At that moment, he wanted to leave his homeland forever.
But this was his Queen, who lay there gasping for breath, her back
arched, her hands clawing at the floor.

"Then the great blood cloud that veiled her, swelling and contracting
around her, grew denser and, all of a sudden, as if drawn into her
woundst disappeared. The Queen's body went still; then slowly she sat
upright, her eyes staring forward, and a great guttural cry broke from
her before she fell quiet.

"There was no sound whatsoever as the Queen stared at Khayman, except
for the crackling of the torch.- And then hoarsely the Queen began to
gasp again, her eyes widening, and it seemed she should die; but she did
not. She shielded her eyes from the bright light of the torch as though
it was hurting her, and she turned and saw her husband lying as if dead
at her side.

"She cried a negation in her agony; it could not be so. And at the same
instant, Khayman beheld that all her wounds were healing; deep gashes
were no more than scratches upon the surface of her skin.

" 'Your Highness!' he said. And he came towards her as she crouched
weeping and staring at her own arms, which had been torn with the
slashes of the daggers, and at her own breasts, which were whole again.
She was whimpering piteously as she looked at these healing wounds. And
suddenly with her long nails, she tore at her own skin and the blood
gushed out and yet the wound healed!

" 'Khayman, my Khayman!' she screamed, covering her eyes so that she did
not see the bright torch. 'What has befallen me!' And her screams grew
louder and louder; and she fell upon the King in panic, crying, 'Enkil,
help me. Enkil, do not die!' and all the other mad things that one cries
in the midst of disaster. And then as she stared down at the King, a
great ghastly change came over her, and she lunged at the King, as if
she were a hungry beast, and with her long tongue, she lapped at the
blood that covered his throat and his chest.

"Khayman had never seen such a spectacle. She was a lioness in the
desert lapping the blood from a tender kill. Her back was bowed, and her
knees were drawn up, and she pulled the helpless body of the King
towards her and bit the artery in his throat.

"Khayman dropped the torch. He backed halfway from the open door. Yet
even as he meant to run for his life, he heard the King's voice. Softly
the King spoke to her. 'Akasha,' he said. 'My Queen.' And she, drawing
up, shivering, weeping, stared at her own body, and at his body, at her
smooth flesh, and his torn still by so many wounds. 'Khayman,' she
cried. 'Your dagger. Give it to me. For they have taken their weapons
with them. Your dagger. I must have it now.'

"At once Khayman obeyed, though he thought it was to see his King die
once and for all. But with the dagger the Queen cut her own wrists and
watched the blood pour down upon the wounds of her husband, and she saw
it heal them. And crying out in her excitement, she smeared the blood
all over his torn face.

"The King's wounds healed. Khayman saw it. Khayman saw the great gashes
closing. He saw the King tossing, heaving his arms this way and that.
His tongue lapped at Akasha's spilt blood as it ran down his face. And
then rising in that same animal posture that had so consumed the Queen
only moments before, the King embraced his wife, and opened his mouth on
her throat.

"Khayman had seen enough. In the flickering light of the dying torch
these two pale figures had become haunts to him, demons themselves. He
backed out of the little house and up against the garden wall. And there
it seems he lost consciousness, feeling the grass against his face as he
collapsed.

"When he waked, he found himself lying on a gilded couch in the Queen's
chambers. All the palace lay quiet. He saw that his clothes had been
changed, and his face and hands bathed, and that there was only the
dimmest light here and sweet incense, and the doors were open to the
garden as if there was nothing to fear.

"Then in the shadows, he saw the King and the Queen looking down at him;
only this was not his King and not his Queen. It seemed then that he

would cry out; he would give voice to screams as terrible as those he
had heard from others; but the Queen quieted him.

" 'Khayman, my Khayman,' she said. She handed to him his beautiful gold-
handled dagger, 'You have served us well.'

"There Khayman paused in his story. 'Tomorrow night,' he said, 'when the
sun sets, you will see for yourselves what has happened. For then and
only then, when all the light is gone from the western sky, will they
appear together in the rooms of the palace, and you will see what I have
seen.

' 'But why only in the night?' I asked him. 'What is the significance of
this?'

"And then he told us, that not one hour after he'd waked, even before
the sun had risen, they had begun to shrink from the open doors of the
palace, to cry that the light hurt their eyes. Already they had fled
from torches and lamps; and now it seemed the morning was coming after
them; and there was no place in the palace that they could hide.

"In stealth they left the palace, covered in garments. They ran with a
speed no human being could match. They ran towards the mastabas or tombs
of the old families, those who had been forced with pomp and ceremony to
make mummies of their dead. In sum, to the sacred places which no one
would desecrate, they ran so fast that Khayman could not follow them.
Yet once the King stopped. To the sun god, Ra, he called out for mercy.
Then weeping, hiding their eyes from the sun, crying as if the sun burnt
them even though its light had barely come into the sky, the King and
the Queen disappeared from Khayman's sight.

" 'Not a day since have they appeared before sunset; they come down out
of the sacred cemetery, though no one knows from where. In fact the
people now wait for them in a great multitude, hailing them as the god
and the goddess, the very image of Osiris and Isis, deities of the moon,
and tossing flowers before them, and bowing down to them.

" 'For the tale spread far and wide that the King and Queen had
vanquished death at the hands of their enemies by some celestial power;
that they are gods, immortal and invincible; and that by that same power
they can see into men's hearts. No secret can be kept from them; their
enemies are immediately punished; they can hear the words one speaks
only in one's head. All fear them.

" 'Yet I know as all their faithful servants know that they cannot bear
a candle or a lamp too close to them; that they shriek at the bright
light of a torch; and that when they execute their enemies in secret,
they drink their blood! They drink it, I tell you. Like jungle cats,
they feed upon these victims; and the room after is as a lion's den. And
it is I, Khayman, their trusted steward, who must gather these bodies
and heave them into the pit.' And then Khayman stopped and gave way to
weeping.

"But the tale was finished; and it was almost morning. The sun was
rising over the eastern mountains; we made ready to cross the mighty
Nile. The desert was warming; Khayman walked to the edge of the river as
the first barge of soldiers went across. He was weeping still as he saw
the sun come down upon the river; saw the water catch fire.

" The sun god, Ra, is the oldest and greatest god of all Kemet,' he
whispered. 'And this god has turned against them. Why? In secret they
weep over their fate; the thirst maddens them; they are frightened it
will become more than they can bear. You must save them. You must do it
for our people. They have not sent for you to blame you or harm you.
They need you. You are powerful witches. Make this spirit undo his
work.' And then looking at us, remembering all that had befallen us, he
gave way to despair.

"Mekare and I made no answer. The barge was now ready to carry us to the
palace. And we stared across the glare of the water at the great
collection of painted buildings that was the royal city, and we wondered
what the consequences of this horror would finally be.

"As I stepped down upon the barge, I thought of my child, and I knew
suddenly I should die in Kemet. I wanted to close my eyes, and ask the
spirits in a small secret voice if this was truly meant to happen, yet I
did not dare. I couid not have my last hope taken from me."

Maharet tensed.

Jesse saw her shoulders straighten; saw the fingers of her right hand
move against the wood, curling and then opening again, the gold nails
gleaming in the firelight.

"I do not want you to be afraid," she said, her voice slipping into
monotone. "But you should know that the Mother has crossed the great
eastern sea. She and Lestat are closer now . . ."

Jesse felt the current of alarm passing through all those at the table.
Maharet remained rigid, listening, or perhaps seeing; the pupils of her
eyes moving only slightly.

"Lestat calls," Maharet said. "But it is too faint for me to hear words;
too faint,for pictures. He is not harmed, however; that much I know, and
that I have little time now to finish this story. . . ."

LESTAT: THE KINGDOM HEAVEN OF THE CARIBBEAN. HAITI. THE GARDEN OF. GOD.

I stood on the hilltop in the moonlight and I tried not to see this
paradise. I tried to picture those I loved. Were they gathered still
together in that fairy-tale wood of monster trees, where I had seen my
mother walking? If only I could see their faces or hear their voices.
Marius, do not be the angry father. Help me! Help us all! I do not give
in, but I am losing. I am losing my soul and my mind. My heart is
already gone. It belongs to her.

But they were beyond my reach; the great sweep of miles closed us off; I
had not the power to overarch that distance.

I looked instead on these verdant green hills, now patched with tiny
farms, a picture book world with flowers blooming in profusion, the red
poinsettia as tall as trees. And the clouds, ever changing, borne like
the tall sailing ships on brisk winds. What had the first Europeans
thought when they looked upon this fecund land surrounded by the
sparkling sea? That this was the Garden of God?

And to think, they had brought such death to it, the natives gone within
a few short years, destroyed by slavery, disease, and endless cruelty.
Not a single blood descendant remains of those peaceful beings who had

breathed this balmy air, and plucked the fruit from the trees which
ripened all year round, and thought their visitors gods perhaps, who
could not but return their kindness.

Now, below in the streets of Port-au-Prince, riots and death, and not of
our making. Merely the unchanging history of this bloody place, where
violence has flourished for four hundred years as flowers flourish;
though the vision of the hills rising into the mist could break the
heart.

But we had done our work all right, she because she did it, and I
because I did nothing to stop it-in the small towns strewn along the
winding road that led to this wooded summit. Towns of tiny pastel
houses, and banana trees growing wild, and the people so poor, so
hungry. Even now the women sang their hymns and, by the light of candles
and the burning church, buried the dead.

We were alone. Far beyond the end of the narrow road; where the forest
grew again, hiding the ruins of this old house that had once overlooked
the valley like a citadel. Centuries since the planters had left here;
centuries since they danced and sang and drank their wine within these
shattered rooms while the slaves wept.

Over the brick walls, the bougainvillea climbed, fluorescent in the
light of the moon. And out of the flagstone floor a great tree had
risen, hung with moon blossoms, pushing back with its gnarled limbs the
last remnants of the old timbers that had once held the roof.

Ah, to be here forever, and with her. And for the rest to be forgotten.
No death, no killing.

She sighed; she said: "This is the Kingdom of Heaven."

In the tiny hamlet below, the women had run barefoot after the men with
clubs in hand. And the voodoo priest had screamed his ancient curses as
they caught him in the graveyard. I had left the scene of the carnage;
I'd climbed the mountain alone. Fleeing, angry, unable any longer to
bear witness.

And she had come after, finding me in this ruin, clinging to something
that I could understand. The old iron gate, the rusted bell; the brick
pillars swathed in vines; things, fashioned by hands, which had endured.
Oh, how she had mocked me.

The bell that had called the slaves, she said; this was the dwelling
place of those who'd drenched this earth in blood; why was I hurt and
driven here by the hymns of simple souls who had been exalted? Would
that every such house had fallen to ruin. We had fought. Really fought,
as lovers fight.

"Is that what you want?" she had said. "Not ever to taste blood again?"

"I was a simple thing, dangerous yes, but simple. I did what I did to
stay alive."

"Oh, you sadden me. Such lies. Such lies. What must I do to make you
see? Are you so blind, so selfish!"

I'd glimpsed it again, the pain in her face, the sudden flash of hurt
that humanized her utterly. I'd reached out for her.

And for hours we had been in each other's arms, or so it seemed.

And now the peace and the stillness; I walked back from the edge of the
cliff, and I held her again. I heard her say as she looked up at the
great towering clouds through which the moon poured forth its eerie
light: "This is the Kingdom of Heaven."

It did not matter anymore such simple things as lying down together, or
sitting on a stone bench. Standing, my arms wound around her, this was
pure happiness. And I'd drunk the nectar again, her nectar, even though
I'd been weeping, and thinking ah, well, you are being dissolved as a
pearl in wine. You're gone, you little devil-you're gone, you know-into
her. You stood and watched them die; you stood and watched.

"There is no life without death," she whispered. "I am the way now, the
way to the only hope of life without strife that there may ever be." I
felt her lips on my mouth. I wondered, would she ever do what she had
done in the shrine? Would we lock together like that, taking the heated
blood from each other?

"Listen to the singing in the villages, you can hear it."

"Yes."

"And then listen hard for the sounds of the city far below. Do you know
how much death is in that city tonight? How many have been massacred? Do
you know how many more will die at the hands of men, if we do not change
the destiny of this place? If we do not sweep it up into a new vision?
Do you know how long this battle has gone on?"

Centuries ago, in my time, this had been the richest colony of the
French crown. Rich in tobacco, indigo, coffee. Fortunes had been made
here in one season. And now the people picked at the earth; barefoot
they walked through the dirt streets of their towns; machine guns barked
in the city of Port-au-Prince; the dead in colored cotton shirts lay in
heaps on the cobblestones. Children gathered water in cans from the
gutters. Slaves had risen; slaves had won; slaves had lost everything.

But it is their destiny; their world; they who are human.

She laughed softly. "And what are we? Are we useless? How do we justify
what we are! How do we stand back and watch what we are unwilling to
alter?"

"And suppose it is wrong," I said, "and the world is worse for it, and
it is all horror finally-unrealizable, unexecutable, what then? And all
those men in their graves, the whole earth a graveyard, a funeral pyre.
And nothing is better. And it's wrong, wrong."

"Who's to tell you it is wrong?"

I didn't answer.

"Marius?" How scornfully she laughed. "Don't you realize there are no
fathers now? Angry or no?"

"There are brothers. And there are sisters," I said. "And in each other
we find our fathers and mothers, isn't that so?"

Again she laughed, but it was gentle.

"Brothers and sisters," she said. "Would you like to see your real
brothers and sisters?"

I lifted my head from her shoulder. I kissed her cheek. "Yes. I want to
see them." My heart was racing again. "Please," I said, even as I kissed
her throat, and her cheekbones and her closed eyes. "Please."

"Drink again," she whispered. I felt her bosom swell against me. I
pressed my teeth against her throat and the little miracle happened
again, the sudden breaking of the crust, and the nectar poured into my
mouth.

A great hot wave consumed me. No gravity; no specific time or place.
Akasha.

Then I saw the redwood trees; the house with the lights burning in it,
and in the high mountaintop room, the table and all of them around it,
their faces reflected in the walls of dark glass, and the fire dancing.
Marius, Gabrielle, Louis, Armand. They're together and they're safe! Am
I dreaming this? They're listening to a red-haired woman. And I know
this woman! I've seen this woman.

She was in the dream of the red-haired twins. But I want to see this-
these immortals gathered at the table. The young red-haired one, the one
at the woman's side, I've seen her too. But she'd been alive then. At
the rock concert, in the frenzy, I'd put my arm around her and looked
into her crazed eyes. I'd kissed her and said her name; and it was as if
a pit had opened under me, and I was falling down into those dreams of
the twins that I could never really recall. Painted walls; temples.

It all faded suddenly. Gabrielle. Mother. Too late. I was reaching out;
I was spinning through the darkness.

You have all of my powers now. You need only time to perfect them. You
can bring death, you can move matter, you can make fire. You are ready
now to go to them. But we will let them finish their reverie: their
stupid schemes and discussion. We will show them a little more of our
power; please, Akasha, please, let's go to them.

She drew away from me; she struck me.

I reeled from the shock. Shuddering, cold, I felt the pain spread out
through the bones of my face, as if her fingers were still splayed and
pressed there. In anger I bit down, letting the pain swell and then
recede. In anger I clenched my fists and did nothing.

She walked across the old flags with crisp steps, her hair swaying as it
hung down her back. And then she stopped at the fallen gate, her
shoulders rising slightly, her back curved as if she were folding into
herself.

The voices rose; they reached a pitch before I could stop them. And then
they lapsed back, like water receding after a great flood.

I saw the mountains again around me; I saw the ruined house. The pain in
my face was gone; but I was shaking.

She turned and looked at me, tensely, her face sharpened, and her eyes
slightly narrowed. "They mean so much to you, don't they? What do you
think they will do, or say? You think Marius will turn me from my
course? I know Marius as you could never know him. I know every pathway
of his reason. He is greedy as you are greedy. What do you think I am
that I am so easily swayed? I was born a Queen. I have always ruled;
even from the shrine I ruled." Her eyes were glazed suddenly. I heard
the voices, a dull hum rising. "I ruled if only in legend; if only in
the minds of those who came to me and paid me tribute. Princes who
played music for me; who brought me offerings and prayers. What do you
want of me now? That for you, I renounce my throne, my destiny!"

What answer could I make?

"You can read my heart," I said. "You know what I want, that you go to
them, that you give them a chance to speak on these things as you've
given me the chance. They have words I don't have. They know things I
don't know."

"Oh, but Lestat, I do not love them. I do not love them as I love you.
So what does it matter to me what they say? I have no patience for
them!"

"But you need them. You said that you did. How can you begin without
them? I mean really begin, not with these backward villages, I mean in
the cities where the people will fight. Your angels, that's what you
called them."

She shook her head sadly. "I need no one," she said, "except ...
Except..." She hesitated, and then her face went blank with pure
surprise.

I made some little soft sound before I could stop myself; some little
expression of helpless grief. I thought I saw her eyes dim; and it
seemed the voices were rising again, not in my ears but in hers; and
that she stared at me, but that she didn't see me.

"But I will destroy you all if I have to," she said, vaguely, eyes
searching for me, but not finding me. "Believe me when I say it. For
this time I will not be vanquished; I will not lapse back. I will see my
dreams realized."

I looked away from her, through the ruined gateway, over the broken edge
of the cliff, and down over the valley. What would I have given to be
released from this nightmare? Would I be willing to die by my own hand?
My eyes were filled with tears, looking over the dark fields. It was
cowardice to think of it; this was my doing! There was no escape now for
me.

Stark still she stood, listening; and then she blinked slowly; her
shoulders moved as if she carried a great weight inside her. "Why can
you not believe in me?" she said.

"Abandon it!" I answered. "Turn away from all such visions." I went to
her and took hold of her arms. Almost groggily she looked up. "This is a
timeless place we stand in-and those poor villages we've conquered, they
are the same as they've been for thousands of years. Let me show you my
world, Akasha; let me show you the tiniest part of it! Come with me,
like a spy into the cities; not to destroy, but to see!"

Her eyes were brightening again; the lassitude was breaking. She
embraced me; and suddenly I wanted the blood again. It was all I could
think of, even though I was resisting it; even though I was weeping at
the pure weakness of my will. I wanted it. I wanted her and I couldn't
fight it; yet my old fantasies came back to me, those long ago visions
in which I imagined myself waking her, and taking her with me through
the opera houses, and the museums and the symphony halls, through the
great capitals and their storehouses of all things beautiful and
imperishable that men and women had made over the centuries, artifacts
that transcended all evil, all wrongs, all fallibility of the individual
soul.

"But what have I to do with such paltry things, my love?" she whispered.
"And you would teach me of your world? Ah, such vanity. I am beyond time
as I have always been."

But she was gazing at me now with the most heartbroken expression.
Sorrow, that's what I saw in her.

"I need you!" she whispered. And for the first time her eyes filled with
tears.

1 couldn't bear it. I felt the chills rise, as they always do, at
moments of surprising pain. But she put her fingers to my lips to
silence me.

"Very well, my love," she said. "We'll go to your brothers and sisters,
if you wish it. We'll go to Marius. But first, let me hold you one more
time, close to my heart. You see, I cannot be other than what I would
be. This is what you waked with your singing; this is what I am!"

I wanted to protest, to deny it; I wanted again to begin the argument
that would divide us and hurt her. But I couldn't find the words as I
looked into her eyes. And suddenly I realized what had happened.

I had found the way to stop her; I had found the key; it had been there
before me all the time. It was not her love for me; it was her need of
me; the need of one ally in all the great realm; one kindred soul made
of the same stuff that she was made of. And she had believed she could
make me like herself, and now she knew she could not.

"Ah, but you are wrong," she said, her tears shimmering. "You are only
young and afraid." She smiled. "You belong to me. And if it has to be,
my prince, I'll destroy you."

I didn't speak. I couldn't. I knew what I had seen; I knew even as she
couldn't accept it. Not in all the long centuries of stillness had she
ever been alone; had she ever suffered the ultimate isolation. Oh, it
was not such a simple thing as Enkil by her side, or Marius come to lay
before her his offerings; it was something deeper, infinitely more
important than that; she had never all alone waged a war of reason with
those around her!

The tears were flowing down her cheeks. Two violent streaks of red. Her
mouth was slack; her eyebrows knit in a dark frown, though her face
would never be anything but radiant.

"No, Lestat," she said again. "You are wrong. But we must see this
through now to the finish; if they must die-all of them-so that you
cleave to me, so be it." She opened her arms.

I wanted to move away; I wanted to rail against her again, against her
threats; but I didn't move as she came closer.

Here; the warm Caribbean breeze; her hands moving up my back; her
fingers slipping through my hair. The nectar flowing into me again,
flooding my heart And her lips on my throat finally the sudden stab of
her teeth through my flesh Yes! As it had been in the shrine, so long
ago, yes! Her blood and my blood. And the deafening thunder of her
heart, yes! And it was ecstasy and yet I couldn't yield; I couldn't do
it; and she knew it.

THE STORY OF THE TWINS,

CONCLUSION

WE FOUND THE PALACE THE SAME AS WE remembered it, or perhaps a little
more lavish, with more booty from conquered lands. More gold drapery,
and even more vivid paintings; and twice as many slaves about, as if
they were mere ornaments, their lean naked bodies hung with gold and
jewels.

"To a royal cell we were now committed, with graceful chairs and tables,
and a fine carpet, and dishes of meat and fish to eat.

"Then at sunset, we heard cheers as the King and the Queen appeared in
the palace; all the court went to bow to them, singing anthems to the
beauty of their pale skin and their shimmering hair; and to the bodies
that had miraculously healed after the assault of the conspirators; all
the palace echoed with these hymns of praise.

"But when this little spectacle was finished, we were taken into the
bedchamber of the royal couple, and for the first time, by the small
light of distant lamps, we beheld the transformation with our own eyes.

"We saw two pale yet magnificent beings, resembling in all particulars
what they had been when they were alive; but there was an eerie
luminescence surrounding them; their skin was no longer skin. And their
minds were no longer entirely their minds. Yet gorgeous they were. As
you can well imagine, all of you. Oh, yes, gorgeous, as though the moon
had come down from heaven and fashioned them with its light. Amid their
dazzling gold furniture they stood, draped in finery, and staring at us
with eyes that gleamed like obsidian. And then, with a wholly different
voice, a voice softly shaded by music, it seemed, the King spoke:

" 'Khayman's told you what has befallen us,' he said. 'We stand before
you the beneficiaries of a great miracle; for we have triumphed over
certain death. We are now quite beyond the limitations and needs of
human beings; and we see and understand things which were withheld from
us before.'

"But the Queen's facade gave way immediately. In a hissing whisper she
said, 'You must explain this to us! What has your spirit done?'

"We were in worse danger than ever from these monsters; and I tried to
convey this warning to Mekare, but at once the Queen laughed. 'Do you
think I don't know what you are thinking?' she said.

"But the King begged her to be silent. 'Let the witches use their
powers,1 he said. 'You know that we have always revered you.'

" 'Yes.' The Queen sneered. 'And you sent this curse upon us.'

"At once I averred that we had not done it, that we had kept faith when
we left the kingdom, that we had gone back to our home. And as Mekare
studied the pair of them in silence, I begged them to understand that if
the spirit had done this, he had done it of his own whim.

" 'Whim!' the Queen said. 'What do you mean by such a word as whim? What
has happened to us? What are we!' she asked again. Then she drew back
her lips for us to see her teeth. We beheld the fangs in her mouth,
tiny, yet sharp as knives. And the King demonstrated to us this change
as well.

" 'The better to draw the blood,' he whispered. 'Do you know what this
thirst is to us! We cannot satisfy it! Three, four men a night die to
feed us, yet we go to our bed tortured by thirst.'

"The Queen tore at her hair as if she would give in to screaming. But
the King laid his hand on her arm. 'Advise us, Mekare and Maharet,' he
said. 'For we would understand this transformation and how it might be
used for good.'

" 'Yes,' the Queen said, struggling to recover. "For surely such a thing
cannot happen without reason. . . .' Then losing her conviction, she
fell quiet. Indeed it seemed her small pragmatic view of things, ever
puny and seeking for justifications, had collapsed utterly, while the
King clung to his illusions as men often do, until very late in life.

"Now, as they fell silent, Mekare went forward and laid her hands upon
the King. She laid her hands upon his shoulders; and closed her eyes.
Then she laid her hands upon the Queen in the same manner, though the
Queen glared at her with venom in her eyes. " 'Explain to us,' Mekare
said, looking at the Queen, 'what happened at the very moment. What do
you remember? What did you see?'

"The Queen was silent, her face drawn and suspicious. Her beauty had
been, in truth, enhanced by this transformation, yet there was something
repellent in her, as if she were not the flower now but the replica of
the flower made of pure white wax. And as she grew reflective she
appeared somber and vicious, and instinctively I drew close to Mekare to
protect her from what might take place.

"But then the Queen spoke:

" 'They came to kill us, the traitors! They would blame it on the
spirits; that was the plan. And all to eat the flesh again, the flesh of
their mothers and fathers, and the flesh for which they loved to hunt.
They came into the house and they stabbed me with their daggers, I their
sovereign Queen.' She paused as if seeing these things again before her
eyes. 'I fell as they slashed at me, as they drove their daggers into my
breast. One cannot live with such wounds as I received; and so as I fell
to the floor, I knew that I was dead! Do you hear what I am saying? I
knew that nothing could save me. My blood was pouring out onto the
floor.

" 'But even as I saw it pooling before me, I realized 1 was not in my
wounded body, that I had already left it, that death had taken me and
was drawing me upwards sharply as if through a great tunnel to where I
would suffer no more!

" 'I wasn't frightened; I felt nothing; I looked down and saw myself
lying pale and covered with blood in that little house. Yet I did not
care. I was free of it. But suddenly something took hold of me, took
hold of my invisible being! The tunnel was gone; I was caught in a great
mesh like a fisherman's net. With all my strength I pushed against it,
and it gave with my strength but it did not break and it gripped me and
held me fast and I could not rise through it.

" 'When I tried to scream I was in my body again! I felt the agony of my
wounds as if the knives were cutting me afresh. But this net, this great
net, it still had a hold of me, and instead of being the endless thing
it had been before, it was now contracted into a tighter weave like the
weave of a great silk veil.

" 'And all about me this thing-visible yet invisible-whirled as if it
were wind, lifting me, casting me down, turning me about. The blood
gushed from my wounds. And it ran into the weave of this veil, just as
it might into the mesh of any fabric.

" 'And that which had been transparent was now drenched in blood. And a
monstrous thing I saw, shapeless, and enormous, with my blood broadcast
throughout it. And yet this thing had another property to it, a center,
it seemed, a tiny burning center which was in me, and ran riot in my
body like a frightened animal. Through my limbs it ran, thumping and
beating. A heart with legs scampering. In my belly it circled as I
clawed at myself. I would have cut myself open to get this thing out of
me!

" 'And it seemed the great invisible part of this thing-the blood mist
that surrounded me and enveloped me-was controlled by this tiny center,
twisting this way and that as it scurried within me, racing into my
hands one moment and into my feet the next. Up my spine it ran.

" 'I would die, surely I would die, I thought. Then came a moment of
blindness! Silence. It had killed me, I was certain. I should rise
again, should I not? Yet suddenly I opened my eyes; I sat up off the
floor as if no attack had befallen me; and I saw so clearly! Khayman,
the glaring torch in his hand!-the trees of the garden-why, it was as if
I had never truly seen such simple things for what they were! The pain
was gone completely, from inside and from my wounds as well. Only the
light hurt my eyes; I could not endure its brilliance. Yet I had been
saved from death; my body had been glorified and made perfect. Except
that-' And there she stopped.

"She stared before her, indifferent for a moment. Then she said,
'Khayman has told you all the rest.' She looked to the King who stood
beside her, watching her; trying to fathom the things she said, just as
we tried to fathom them.

" 'Your spirit,' she said. 'It tried to destroy us. But something else
had happened; some great power has intervened to triumph over its
diabolical evil.' Then again her conviction deserted her. The lies
stopped on her tongue. Her face was suddenly cold with menace. And
sweetly she said: 'Tell us, witches, wise witches. You who know all the
secrets. What is the name for what we are!' "Mekare sighed. She looked
at me. I knew she didn't want to speak now on this thing. And the old
warning of the spirits came back. The Egyptian King and Queen would ask
us questions and they would not like our answers. We would be destroyed.
- . -"Then the Queen turned her back. She sat down and bowed her head.

And it was then, and only then, that her true sadness came to the fore.
The King smiled at us, wearily. 'We are in pain, witches, he said. 'We
could bear the burden of this transformation if only we understood it
better. You, who have communed with all things invisible; tell us what
you know of such magic; help us if you will, for you know that we never
meant to harm you, only to spread the truth and the law.'

"We did not dwell on the stupidity of this statement-the virtue of
spreading the truth through wholesale slaughter and so forth and so on.
But Mekare demanded that the King now tell what he could recall.

"He spoke of things which you-all of you seated here-surely know. Of how
he was dying; and how he tasted the blood from his wife which had
covered his face; and of how his body quickened, and wanted this blood,
and then how he took it from his wife and she gave it; and then he
became as she was. But for him there was no mysterious cloud of blood.
There was no thing running rampant within him. The thirst, it's
unbearable,' he said to us. 'Unbearable.' And he too bowed his head.

"We stood in silence for a moment looking at each other, Mekare and I,
and as always, Mekare spoke first;

" 'We know no name for what you are,' she said. 'We know no stories of
such a thing ever happening in this world before. But it's plain enough
what took place.' She fixed her eyes upon the Queen. 'As you perceived
your own death, your soul sought to make its swift escape from suffering
as souls so often do. But as it rose, the spirit Amel seized it, this
thing being invisible as your soul was invisible; and in the normal
course of things you might have easily overcome this earthbound entity
and gone on to realms we do not know.

" 'But this spirit had long before wrought a change within himself; a
change that was utterly new. This spirit had tasted the blood of humans
whom he had pierced or tormented, as you yourself have seen him do. And
your body, lying there, and full of blood despite its many wounds, had
life still.

" 'And so the spirit, thirsting, plunged down into your body, his
invisible form still wedded to your soul.

" "Still you might have triumphed, fighting off this evil thing as
possessed persons often do. But now the tiny core of this spirit- the
thing of matter which is the roaring center of all spirits, from which
their endless energy conies-was suddenly filled with blood as never in
the past.

" 'And so the fusion of blood and timeless tissue was a million times
magnified and accelerated; and blood flowed through all his body, both
material and nonmaterial, and this was the blood cloud that you saw.

" 'But it is the pain you felt which is most significant, this pain
which traveled through your limbs. For surely as inevitable death came
to your body, the spirit's tiny core merged with the flesh of your body
as its energy had already merged with your soul. It found some special
place or organ in which matter merged with matter as spirit had already
merged with spirit; and a new thing was formed.'

" 'Its heart and my heart,' the Queen whispered. 'They became one.' And
closing her eyes, she lifted her hand and laid it on her breast.

"We said nothing, for this seemed a simplification, and we did not
believe the heart was the center of intellect or emotion. For us, it had
been the brain which controlled these things. And in that moment, both
Mekare and I saw a terrible memory-our mother's heart and brain thrown
down and trampled in ashes and dust.

"But we fought this memory. It was abhorrent that this pain should be
glimpsed by those who had been its cause.

"The King pressed us with a question. 'Very well,' he said, 'you've
explained what has happened to Akasha. This spirit is in her, core
wedded perhaps to core. But what is in me? I felt no such pain, no such
scurrying demon. I felt... I felt only the thirst when her bloodied
hands touched my lips.' He looked to his wife.

"The shame, the horror, they felt over the thirst was clear.

" 'But the same spirit is in you, too,' Mekare answered. There is but
one Amel. Its core resides in the Queen, but it is in you also.'

" 'How is such a thing possible?' asked the King.

" 'This being has a great invisible part,' Mekare said. 'Were you to
have seen it in its entirety, before this catastrophe took place, you
would have seen something almost without end.'

" 'Yes,' the Queen confessed. 'It was as if the net covered the whole
sky.'

"Mekare explained: 'It is only by concentrating such immense size that
these spirits achieve any physical strength. Left on their own, they are
as clouds over the horizon; greater even; they have now and then boasted
to us that they have no true boundaries, though this is not likely the
truth.'

"The King stared at his wife.

" 'But how can it be released!' demanded Akasha.

"Yes. How can it be made to depart!' the King asked.

"Neither of us wanted to answer. We wondered that the answer was not
obvious to them both. 'Destroy your body,' Mekare said to the Queen
finally. 'And it will be destroyed as well.'

"The King looked at Mekare with disbelief**Destroy her body!' Helplessly
he looked at his wife.

"But Akasha merely smiled bitterly. The words came as no surprise to
her. For a long moment, she said nothing. She merely looked at us with
plain hatred; then she looked at the King. When she looked to us, she
put the question. 'We are dead things, aren't we? We cannot live if it
departs. We do not eat; we do not drink, save for the blood it wants;
our bodies throw off no waste any longer; we have not changed in one
single particular since that awful night; we are not alive anymore.'

"Mekare didn't answer. I knew that she was studying them; struggling to
see their forms not as a human would see them but as a witch would see
them, to let the quiet and the stillness collect around them, so that
she might observe the tiny imperceptible aspects of this which eluded

regular gaze. Into a trance she fell as she looked at them and listened.
And when she spoke her voice was flat, dull:

" 'It is working on your body; it is working and working as fire works
on the wood it consumes; as worms work on the carcass of an animal. It
is working and working and its work is inevitable; it is the continuance
of the fusion which has taken place; that is why the sun hurts it, for
it is using all of its energy to do what it must do; and it cannot
endure the sun's heat coming down upon it.'

" 'Or the bright light of a torch even,' the King sighed.

" 'At times not even a candle flame,' said the Queen.

" 'Yes,' Mekare said, shaking off the trance finally. 'And you are
dead,' she said in a whisper. 'Yet you are alive! If the wounds healed
as you say they did; if you brought the King back as you say you did,
why, you may have vanquished death. That is, if you do not go into the
burning rays of the sun.'

" 'No, this cannot continue!' the King said. 'The thirst, you don't know
how terrible is the thirst.'

"But the Queen only smiled bitterly again. These are not living bodies
now. These are hosts for this demon.' Her lip trembled as she looked at
us. "Either that or we are truly gods!*

" 'Answer us, witches,' said the King. 'Could it be that we are divine
beings now, blessed with gifts that only gods share?' He smiled as he
said it; he so wanted to believe it. 'Could it not be that when your
demon sought to destroy us, our gods intervened?'

"An evil light shone in the Queen's eye. How she loved this idea, but
she didn't believe it ... not really.

"Mekare looked at me. She wanted me to go forward and to touch them as
she had done. She wanted me to look at them as she had done. There was
something further that she wanted to say, yet she was not sure of it.
And in truth, I had slightly stronger powers of the instinctive nature,
though less of a gift for words than she.

"I went forward; I touched their white skin, though it repelled me as
they repelled me for all that they had done to our people and us. I
touched them and then withdrew and gazed at them; and I saw the work of
which Mekare spoke, I could even hear it, the tireless churning of the
spirit within. I stilled my mind; I cleared it utterly of all
preconception or fear and then as the calmness of the trance deepened in
me, I allowed myself to speak. *' 'It wants more humans,' I said. I
looked at Mekare. This was what she had suspected.

" 'We offer to it all we can!' the Queen gasped. And the blush of shame
came again, extraordinary in its brightness to her pale cheeks. And the
King's face colored also. And I understood then, as did Mekare, that
when they drank the blood they felt ecstasy. Never had they known such
pleasure, not in their beds, not at the banquet table, not when drunk
with beer or wine. That was the source of the shame. It hadn't been the
killing; it had been the monstrous feeding. It had been the pleasure.
Ah, these two were such a pair.

"But they had misunderstood me. 'No,* I explained. 'It wants more like
you. It wants to go in and make blood drinkers of others as it did with
the King; it is too immense to be contained within two small bodies. The
thirst will become bearable only when you make others, for they will
share the burden of it with you.' " 'No!' the Queen screamed. 'That is
unthinkable.' " 'Surely it cannot be so simple!' the King declared.
'Why, we were both made at one and the same terrible instant, when our
gods warred with this demon. Conceivably, when our gods warred and won.'
" 'I think not,' I said.

" 'You mean to say,' the Queen asked, 'that if we nourish others with
this blood that they too will be so infected?' But she was recalling now
every detail of the catastrophe. Her husband dying, the heartbeat gone
from him, and then the blood trickling into his mouth.

" 'Why, I haven't enough blood in my body to do such a thing!' she
declared. 'I am only what I am!' Then she thought of the thirst and all
the bodies that had served it.

"And we realized the obvious point; that she had sucked the blood out of
her husband before he had taken it back from her, and that is how the
thing had been accomplished; that and the fact that the King was on the
edge of death, and most receptive, his own spirit shaking loose and
ready to be locked down by the invisible tentacles of Amel.

"Of course they read our thoughts, both of them.

" 'I don't believe what you say,' said the King. 'The gods would not
allow it. We are the King and Queen of Kemet. Burden or blessing, this
magic has been meant for us.'

"A moment of silence passed. Then he spoke again, most sincerely. 'Don't
you see, witches? This was destiny. We were meant to invade your lands,
to bring you and this demon here, so that this might befall us. We
suffer, true, but we are gods now; this is a holy fire; and we must give
thanks for what has happened to us.'

"I tried to stop Mekare from speaking. I clasped her hand tightly. But
they already knew what she meant to say. Only her conviction jarred
them.

" 'It could very likely pass into anyone,' she said, 'were the
conditions duplicated, were the man or woman weakened and dying, so that
the spirit could get its grip.'

"In silence they stared at us. The King shook his head. The Queen looked
away in disgust. But then the King whispered, 'If this is so, then
others may try to take this from us!'

" 'Oh, yes,' Mekare whispered. 'If it would make them immortal? Most
surely, they would. For who would not want to live forever?'

"At this the King's face was transformed. He paced back and forth in the
chamber. He looked at his wife, who stared forward as one about to go
mad, and he said to her most carefully, Then we know what we must do. We
cannot breed a race of such monsters! We know!'

"But the Queen threw her hands over her ears and began to scream. She
began to sob, and finally to roar in her agony, her fingers curling into
claws as she looked up at the ceiling above her.

"Mekare and I withdrew to the edges of the room, and held tight to each
other. And then Mekare began to tremble, and to cry also, and I felt
tears rise in my eyes.

" 'You did this to us!' the Queen roared, and never had we heard a human
voice attain such volume. And as she went mad now, shattering everything
within the chamber, we saw the strength of Amel in her, for she did
things no human could do. The mirrors she hurled at the ceiling; the
gilded furniture went to splinters under her fists. 'Damn you into the
lower world among demons and beasts forever!' she cursed us, 'for what
you have done to us. Abominations. Witches. You and your demon! You say
you did not send this thing to us. But in your hearts you did. You sent
this demon! And he read it from your hearts, just as I read it now, that
you wished us evil!'

"But then the King caught her in his arms and hushed her and kissed her
and caught her sobs against his chest.

"Finally she broke away from him. She stared at us, her eyes brimming
with blood. 'You lie!' she said. 'You lie as your demons lied before. Do
you think such a thing could happen if it was not meant to happen!' She
turned to the King. Oh, don't you see, we've been fools to listen to
these mere mortals, who have not such powers as we have! Ah, but we are
young deities and must struggle to learn the designs of heaven. And
surely our destiny is plain; we see it in the gifts we possess.'

"We didn't respond to what she had said. It seemed to me at least for a
few precious moments that it was a mercy if she could believe such
nonsense. For all I could believe was that Amel, the evil one, Amel, the
stupid, the dull-witted, the imbecile spirit, had stumbled into this
disastrous fusion and that perhaps the whole world would pay the price.
My mother's warning came back to me. All our suffering came back to me.
And then such thoughts- wishes for the destruction of the King and
Queen-seized me that I had to cover my head with my hands and shake
myself and try to clear my mind, lest I face their wrath.

"But the Queen was paying no mind to us whatsoever, except to scream to
her guards that they must at once take us prisoner, and that tomorrow
night she would pass judgment upon us before the whole court.

"And quite suddenly we were seized; and as she gave her orders with
gritted teeth and dark looks, the soldiers dragged us away roughly and
threw us like common prisoners into a lightless cell. "Mekare took hold
of me and whispered that until the sun rose we must think nothing that
could bring us harm; we must sing the old songs we knew and pace the
floor so that as not even to dream dreams that would offend the King and
Queen, for she was mortally afraid.

"Now I had never truly seen Mekare so afraid. Mekare was always the one
to rave in anger; it was I who hung back imagining the most terrible
things.

"But when dawn came, when she was sure the demon King and Queen had gone
to their secret retreat, she burst into tears.

" 'I did it, Maharet,' she said to me. 'I did it. I sent him against
them. I tried not to do it; but Amel, he read it in my heart. It was as
the Queen said, exactly.'

"There was no end to her recriminations. It was she who had spoken to
Amel; she who had strengthened him and puffed him up and kept his
interest; and then she had wished his wrath upon the Egyptians and he
had known.

"I tried to comfort her. I told her none of us could control what was in
our hearts; that Amel had saved our lives once; that no one could fathom
these awful choices, these forks in the road; and we must now banish all
guilts and look only to the future. How could we get free of this place?
How could we make these monsters release us? Our good spirits would not
frighten them now; not a chance of it; we must think; we must plan; we
must do something.

"Finally, the thing for which I secretly hoped happened: Khayman
appeared. But he was even more thin and drawn than before.

" 'I think you are doomed, my red-haired ones, he said to us. 'The King
and Queen were in a quandary over the things which you said to them;
before morning they went to the temple of Osiris to pray. Could you not
give them any hope of reclamation? Any hope this horror would come to an
end?'

" 'Khayman, there is one hope,' Mekare whispered. 'Let the spirits be my
witness; I don't say that you should do it. I only answer your question.
If you would put an end to this, put an end to the King and Queen. Find
their hiding place and let the sun come down upon them, the sun which
their new bodies cannot bear.'

"But he turned away, terrified by the prospect of such treason. Only to
look back and sigh and say, 'Ah, my dear witches. Such things I've seen.
And yet I dare not do such a thing.'

"As the hours passed we went through agony, for surely we would be put
to death. But there were no regrets any longer in us for the things we'd
said, or the things we'd done. And as we lay in the dark in one
another's arms, we sang the old songs again from our childhood; we sang
our mother's songs; I thought of my little baby and I tried to go to
her, to rise in spirit from this place and be close to her, but without
the trance potion, I could not do it. I had never learned such skill.

"Finally dusk fell. And soon we heard the multitude singing hymns as the
King and Queen approached. The soldiers came for us. Into the great open
court of the palace we were brought as we had been before. Here it was
that Khayman had laid his hands upon us and we had been dishonored, and
before those very same spectators we were brought, with our hands bound
again.

"Only it was night and the lamps burnt low in the arcades of the court;
and an evil light played upon the gilded lotus blossoms of the pillars,
and upon the painted silhouettes which covered the walls. Al last the
King and Queen stepped upon the dais. And all those assembled fell to
their knees. The soldiers forced us into the same subservience. And then
the Queen stepped forward and began to speak.

"In a quavering voice, she told her subjects that we were monstrous
witches, and that we had loosed upon this kingdom the demon which had
only lately plagued Khayman and tried its evil devilment upon the King
and Queen themselves. But lo, the great god Osiris, oldest of all the
gods, stronger even than the god Ra, had cast down this diabolical force
and raised up into celestial glory the King and the Queen.

"But the great god could not look kindly upon the witches who had so
troubled his beloved people. And he demanded now that no mercy be shown.

" 'Mekare, for your evil lies and your discourse with demons,1 the Queen
said, 'your tongue shall be torn from your mouth. And Maharet, for the
evil which you have envisioned and sought to make us believe in, your
eyes shall be plucked out! And all night, you shall be bound together,
so that you may hear each other's weeping, the one unable to speak, the
other unable to see. And then at high noon tomorrow in the public place
before the palace you shall be burnt alive for all the people to see.

" 'For behold, no such evil shall ever prevail against the gods of Egypt
and their chosen King and Queen. For the gods have looked upon us with
benevolence and special favor, and we are as the King and Queen of
Heaven, and our destiny is for the common good!'

"I was speechless as I heard the condemnation; my fear, my sorrow lay
beyond my reach. But Mekare cried out at once in defiance. She startled
the soldiers as she pulled away from them and stepped forward. Her eyes
were on the stars as she spoke. And above the shocked whispers of the
court she declared:

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

"And no sooner had she spoken this oath, this prophecy, than the
spirits, gathering, began their whirlwind and the doors of the palace
were flung open and the sands of the desert salted the air.

"Screams rose from the panic-stricken courtiers.

"But the Queen cried out to her soldiers: 'Cut out her tongue as I have
commanded you!' and though the courtiers were clinging to the walls in
terror, the soldiers came forward and caught hold of Mekare and cut out
her tongue.

"In cold horror I watched it happen; I heard her gasp as it was done.
And then with astonishing fury, she thrust them aside with her bound
hands and going down on her knees snatched up the bloody tongue and
swallowed it before they would tramp upon it or throw it aside.

"Then the soldiers laid hold of me.

"The last things I beheld were Akasha, her finger pointed, her eyes
gleaming. And then the stricken face of Khayman with tears streaming
down his cheeks. The soldiers clamped their hands on my head and pushed
back my eyelids and tore all vision from me, as I wept without a sound.

"Then suddenly, I felt a warm hand lay hold of me; and I felt something
against my lips. Khayman had my eyes; Khayman was pressing them to my
lips. And at once I swallowed them lest they be desecrated or lost.

"The wind grew fiercer; sand swirled about us, and I heard the courtiers
running now in all directions, some coughing, others gasping, and many
crying as they fled, while the Queen implored her subjects to be calm. I

turned, groping for Mekare, and felt her head come down on my shoulder,
her hair against my cheek.

" 'Burn them now!' declared the King.

" 'No, it is too soon,' said the Queen. 'Let them suffer.'

"And we were taken away, and bound together, and left alone finally on
the floor of the little cell.

"For hours the spirits raged about the palace; but the King and Queen
comforted their people, and told them not to be afraid. At noon tomorrow
all evil would be expurgated from the kingdom; and until then let the
spirits do what they would.

"Finally, it was still and quiet as we lay together. It seemed nothing
walked in the palace save the King and the Queen. Even our guards slept.

"And these are the last hours of my life, I thought. And will her
suffering be more than mine in the morning, for she shall see me burn,
whereas I cannot see her, and she cannot even cry out. I held Mekare to
me. She laid her head against my heartbeat. And so the minutes passed.

"Finally, it must have been three hours before morning, I heard noises
outside the cell. Something violent; the guard giving a sharp cry and
then falling. The man had been slain. Mekare stirred beside me. I heard
the lock pulled, and the pivots creak. Then it seemed I heard a noise
from Mekare, something like unto a moan.

"Someone had come into the cell, and I knew by my old instinctive power
that it was Khayman. As he cut the ropes which bound us, I reached out
and clasped his hand. But instantly 1 thought, this is not Khayman! And
then I understood. They have done it to you! They have worked it on
you.'

" 'Yes,' he whispered, and his voice was full of wrath and bitterness,
and a new sound had crept into it, an inhuman sound. 'They have done it!
To put it to the test, they have done it! To see if you spoke the truth!
They have put this evil into me.' It seemed he was sobbing; a rough dry
sound, coming from his chest. And I could feel the immense strength of
his fingers, for though he didn't want to hurt my hand, he was.

" 'Oh, Khayman,' I said, weeping. 'Such treachery from those you've
served so well.' "

" 'Listen to me, witches,' he said, his voice guttural and full of rage.
'Do you want to die tomorrow in fire and smoke before an ignorant
populace; or would you fight this evil thing? Would you be its equal and
its enemy upon this earth? For what stays the power of mighty men save
that of others of the same strength? What stops the swordsman but a
warrior of the same mettle? Witches, if they could do this to me, can I
not do it to you?'

"I shrank back, away from him, but he wouldn't let me go. I didn't know
if it was possible. I knew only that I didn't want it.

" 'Maharet,' he said. They shall make a race of fawning acolytes unless
they are beaten, and who can beat them save ones as powerful as
themselves!'

" 'No, I would die first,' I said, yet even as the words left me I
thought of the waiting flames. But no, it was unforgivable. Tomorrow I
should go to my mother; I should leave here forever, and nothing could
make me remain.

" 'And you, Mekare?' I heard him say. 'Will you reach now for ,, the
fulfillment of your own curse? Or die and leave it to the spirits who
have failed you from the start?'

"The wind came up again, howling about the palace; I heard the outside
doors rattling; I heard the sand flung against the walls. Servants ran
through distant passages; sleepers rose from their beds. I could hear
the faint, hollow, and unearthly wails of the spirits I most loved.

" 'Be still,' I told them, T will not do it. I will not let this evil
in.'

"But as I knelt there, leaning my head against the wall, and reasoning
that I must die, and must somehow find the courage for it, I realized
that within the small confines of this cell, the unspeakable magic was
being worked again. As the spirits railed against it, Mekare had made
her choice. I reached out and felt these two forms, man and woman,
melded like lovers; and as I struggled to part them, Khayman struck me,
knocking me unconscious on the floor.

"Surely only a few minutes passed. Somewhere in the blackness, the
spirits wept. The spirits knew the final outcome before I did. The winds
died away; a hush fell in the blackness; the palace was still.

"My sister's cold hands touched me. I heard a strange sound like
laughter; can those who have no tongue laugh? I made no decision really;
I knew only that all our lives we had been the same; twins and mirror
images of each other; two bodies it seemed and one soul. And I was
sitting now in the hot close darkness of this little place, and I was in
my sister's arms, and for the first time she was changed and we were not
the same being; and yet we were. And then I felt her mouth against my
throat; I felt her hurting me; and Khayman took his knife and did the
work for her; and the swoon began.

"Oh, those divine seconds; those moments when I saw again within my
brain the lovely light of the silver sky; and my sister there before me
smiling, her arms uplifted as the rain came down. We were dancing in the
rain together, and all our people were there with us, and our bare feet
sank into the wet grass; and when the thunder broke and the lightning
tore the sky, it was as if our souls had released all their pain.
Drenched by the rain we went deep into the cave together; we lighted one
small lamp and looked at the old paintings on the walls-the paintings
done by all the witches before us; huddling together, with the sound of
the distant rain we lost ourselves in these paintings of witches
dancing; of the moon coming for the first time into the night sky.

"Khayman fed me the magic; then my sister; then Khayman again. You know
what befell me, don't you? But do you know what the Dark Gift is for
those who are blind? Tiny sparks flared in the gaseous gloom; then it
seemed a glowing light began to define the shapes of things around me in
weak pulses; like the afterimages of bright things when one closes one's
eyes.

"Yes, I could move through this darkness. I reached out to verify what I
beheld. The doorway, the wall; then the corridor before me; a faint map
flashed for a second of the path ahead.

"Yet never had the night seemed so silent; nothing inhuman breathed in
the darkness. The spirits were utterly gone.

"And never, never again did I ever hear or see the spirits. Never ever
again were they to answer my questions or my call. The ghosts of the
dead yes, but the spirits, gone forever.

"But I did not realize this abandonment in those first few moments, or
hours, or even in the first few nights.

"So many other things astonished me; so many other things filled me with
agony or joy.

"Long before the sunrise, we were hidden, as the King and Queen were
hidden, deep within a tomb. It was to the grave of Khayman's own father
that he took us, the grave to which the poor desecrated corpse had been
restored. I had by then drunk my first draught of mortal blood. I had
known the ecstasy which made the King and Queen blush for shame. But I
had not dared to steal the eyes of my victim; I had not even thought
such a thing might work.

"It was five nights later that I made such a discovery; and saw as a
blood drinker truly sees for the first time.

"By then we had fled the royal city, moving north all night. And in
place after place, Khayman had revealed the magic to various persons
declaring that they must rise up against the King and Queen, for the
King and Queen would have them believe they alone had the power, which
was only the worst of their many lies.

"Oh, the rage Khayman felt in those early nights. To any who wanted the
power he gave it, even when he was so weakened that he could scarce walk
at our side. That the King and the Queen should have worthy enemies,
that was his vow. How many blood drinkers were created in those
thoughtless weeks, blood drinkers who would increase and multiply and
create the battles of which Khayman dreamed?

"But we were doomed in this first stage of the venture- doomed in the
first rebellion, doomed in our escape. We were soon to be separated
forever-Khayman, Mekare, and I.

"Because the King and Queen, horrified at Khayman's defection, and
suspecting that he had given us the magic, sent their soldiers after us,
men who could search by day as well as night. And as we hunted
ravenously to feed our newborn craving, our trail was ever easy to
follow along the small villages of-the river-bank or even to the
encampments of the hills.

"And finally not a fortnight after we had fled the royal palace, we were
caught by the mobs outside the gates of Saqqara, less than two nights'
walk from the sea.

"If only we had reached the sea. If only we had remained together. The
world had been born over again to us in darkness; desperately we loved
one another; desperately we had exchanged our secrets by the light of
the moon.

"But a trap lay waiting for us at Saqqara. And though Khayman did manage
to fight his way to freedom, he saw that he could not possibly save us,
and went deep into the hills to wait his moment, but it never came.

"Mekare and I were surrounded as you remember, as you have seen in your
dreams. My eyes were torn from me again; and we feared the fire now, for
surely that could destroy us; and we prayed to all things invisible for
final release.

"But the King and the Queen feared to destroy our bodies. They had
believed Mekare's account of the one great spirit, Amel, who infected
all of us, and they feared that whatever pain we might feel would then
be felt by them. Of course this was not so; but who could know it then?

"And so into the stone coffins we were put, as I've told you. One to be
taken to the east and one to the west. The rafts had already been made
to set us adrift in the great oceans. I had seen them even in my
blindness; we were being carried away upon them; and I knew from the
minds of my captors what they meant to do. I knew also that Khayman
could not follow, for the march would go on by day as it had by night,
and surely this was true.

"When I awoke, I was drifting on the breast of the sea. For ten nights
the raft carried me as I've told you. Starvation and terror I suffered,
lest the coffin sink to the bottom of the waters; lest I be buried alive
forever, a thing that cannot die. But this did not happen. And when I
came ashore at last on the eastern coast of lower Africa, I began my
search for Mekare, crossing the continent to the west.

"For centuries I searched from one tip of the continent to the other. I
went north in Europe. I traveled up and down along the rocky beaches,
and even into the northern islands, until I reached the farthest wastes
of ice and snow. Over and over again, however, I journeyed back to my
own village, and that part of the story I will tell you in a moment, for
it is very important to me that you know it, as you will see.

"But during those early centuries I turned my back upon Egypt; I turned
my back upon the King and Queen.

"Only much later, did I learn that the King and Queen made a great
religion of their transformation; that they took upon themselves the
identity of Osiris and Isis, and darkened those old myths to suit
themselves.

" 'God of the underworld' Osiris became-that is, the King who could
appear only in darkness. And the Queen became Isis, the Mother, who
gathers up her husband's battered and dismembered body and heals it and
brings it back to life.

"You've read in Lestat's pages-in the tale Marius told to Lestat as it
was told to him-of how the blood gods created by the Mother and Father
took the blood sacrifice of evildoers in shrines hidden within the hills
of Egypt; and how this religion endured until the time of Christ.

"And you have learned something also of how Khayman's rebellion
succeeded, how the equal enemies of the King and Queen whom he had
created eventually rose up against the Mother and Father; and how great
wars were fought among the blood drinkers of the world. Akasha herself
revealed these things to Marius, and Marius revealed them to Lestat.

"In those early centuries, the Legend of the Twins was born; for the
Egyptian soldiers who had witnessed the events of our lives from the
massacre of our people to our final capture were to tell the tales. The
Legend of the Twins was even written by the scribes of Egypt in later
times. It was believed that one day Mekare would reappear to strike down
the Mother, and all the blood drinkers of the world would die as the
Mother died.

"But all this happened without my knowledge, my vigilance, or my
collusion, for I was long gone from such things.

"Only three thousand years later did I come to Egypt, an anonymous
being, swathed in black robes, to see for myself what had become of the
Mother and Father-listless, staring statues, shut up in stone in their
underground temple, with only their heads and throats exposed. And to
the priestly blood drinkers who guarded them, the young ones came,
seeking to drink from the primal fount.

"Did I wish to drink, the young blood drinker priest asked me. Then I
must go to the Elders and declare my purity and my devotion to the old
worship, declare that I was not a rogue bent upon selfish ends. I could
have laughed.

"But oh, the horror to see those staring things! To stand before them
and whisper the names Akasha and Enkil, and see not a flicker within the
eye or the tiniest twitch of the white skin.

"And so they had been for as long as anyone could remember, and so the
priests told me; no one even knew anymore if the myths of the beginning
were true. We-the very first children-had come to be called merely the
First Brood who had spawned the rebels; but the Legend of the Twins was
forgotten; and no one knew the names Khayman or Mekare or Maharet.

"Only one time later was I to see them, the Mother and the Father.
Another thousand years had passed. The great burning had just happened
when the Elder in Alexandria-as Lestat has told you-sought to destroy
the Mother and the Father by placing them in the sun. They'd been merely
bronzed by the day's heat as Lestat told it, so strong had they become;
for though we all sleep helplessly by day, the light itself becomes less
lethal with the passage of time.

"But all over the world blood drinkers had gone up in flames during
those daylight hours in Egypt; while the very old ones had suffered and
darkened but nothing more. My beloved Eric was then one thousand years;
we lived together in India; and he was during those interminable hours
severely burned. It took great draughts of my blood to restore him. I
myself was bronzed only, and though I lived with great pain for many
nights, there was a curious side effect to it: it was then easier for me
to pass among human beings with this dark skin.

"Many centuries later, weary of my pale appearance, I was to burn myself
in the sun deliberately. I shall probably do it again.

"But it was all a mystery to me the first time it happened. I wanted to
know why I had seen fire and heard the cries of so many perishing in my
dreams, and why others whom I had made-beloved fledglings-had died this
unspeakable death.

"And so I journeyed from India to Egypt, which to me has always been a
hateful place. It was then I heard tell of Marius, a young Roman blood
drinker, miraculously unburnt, who had come and stolen the Mother and
Father and taken them out of Alexandria where no one could ever burn
them-or us-again. "It was not difficult to find Marius. As I've told
you, in the early years we could never hear each other. But as time
passed we could hear the younger ones just as if they were human beings.
In Antioch, I discovered Marius's house, a virtual palace where he lived
a life of Roman splendor though he hunted the dark streets for human
victims in the last hours before dawn.

"He had already made an immortal of Pandora, whom he loved above all
other things on earth. And the Mother and Father he had placed in an
exquisite shrine, made by his own hands of Carrara marble and mosaic
flooring, in which he burned incense as if it were a temple, as if they
were truly gods.

"I waited for my moment. He and Pandora went to hunt. And then I entered
the house, making the locks give way from the inside.

"I saw the Mother and Father, darkened as I had been darkened, yet
beautiful and lifeless as they'd been a thousand years before. On a
throne he'd placed them, and so they would sit for two thousand years,
as you all know. I went to them; I touched them. I struck them. They did
not move. Then with a long dagger I made my test. I pierced the flesh of
the Mother, which had become an elastic coating as my flesh had become.
I pierced the immortal body which had become both indestructible and
deceptively fragile, and my blade went right through her heart. From
right to left I slashed with it, then stopped.

"Her blood poured viscous and thick for a moment; for a moment the heart
ceased to beat; then the rupture began to heal; the spilt blood hardened
like amber as I watched.

"But most significant, I had felt that moment when the heart failed to
pump the blood; I had felt the dizziness, the vague disconnection; the
very whisper of death. No doubt, all through the world blood drinkers
had felt it, perhaps the young ones strongly, a shock which knocked them
off their feet. The core of Amel was still within her; the terrible
burning and the dagger, these things proved that the life of the blood
drinkers resided within her body as it always would.

"I would have destroyed her then, if it had not been so. I would have
cut her limb from limb; for no span of time could ever cool my hatred
for her; my hatred for what she had done to my people; for separating
Mekare from me. Mekare my other half; Mekare my own self.

"How magnificent it would have been if the centuries had schooled me in
forgiveness; if my soul had opened to understand all the wrongs done me
and my people.

"But I tell you, it is the soul of humankind which moves towards
perfection over the centuries, the human race which learns with each
passing year how better to love and forgive. I am anchored to the past
by chains I cannot break.

"Before I left, I wiped away all trace of what I had done. For an hour
perhaps I stared at the two statues, the two evil beings who had so long
ago destroyed my kindred and brought such evil upon me and my sister;
and who had known such evil in return.

" 'But you did not win, finally,' I said to Akasha. 'You and your
soldiers and their swords. For my child, Miriam, survived to carry the
blood of my family and my people forward in time; and this, which may
mean nothing to you as you sit there in silence, means all things to
me.'

"And the words I spoke were true. But I will come to the story of my
family in a moment. Let me deal now with Akasha's one victory: that
Mekare and I were never united again.

"For as I have told you, never in all my wanderings did I ever find a
man, woman, or blood drinker who had gazed upon Mekare or heard her
name. Through all the lands of the world I wandered, at one time or
another, searching for Mekare. But she was gone from me as if the great
western sea had swallowed her; and I was as half a being reaching out
always for the only thing which can render me complete.

"Yet in the early centuries, I knew Mekare lived; there were times when
the twin I was felt the suffering of the other twin; in dark dreamlike
moments, I knew inexplicable pain. But these are things which human
twins feel for each other. As my body grew harder, as the human in me
melted away and this more powerful and resilient immortal body grew
dominant, I lost the simple human link with my sister. Yet I knew, I
knew that she was alive.

"I spoke to my sister as I walked the lonely coast, glancing out over
the ice cold sea. And in the grottoes of Mount Carmel I made our story
in great drawings-all that we had suffered-the panorama which you beheld
in the dreams.

"Over the centuries many mortals were to find that grotto, and to see
those paintings; and then they would be forgotten again, to be
discovered anew.

"Then finally in this century, a young archaeologist, hearing tell of
them, climbed Mount Carmel one afternoon with a lantern in his hand. And
when he gazed on the pictures that I had long ago made, his heart leapt
because he had seen these very same images on a cave across the sea,
above the jungles in Peru.

"It was years before his discovery was known to me. He had traveled far
and wide with his bits and pieces of evidence- photographs of the cave
drawings from both the Old World and the New; and a vase he found in the
storage room of a museum, an ancient artifact from those dim forgotten
centuries when the Legend of the Twins was still known.

"I cannot tell you the pain and happiness I experienced when I looked at
the photographs of the pictures he had discovered in a shallow cave in
the New World.

"For Mekare had drawn there the very same things that I had drawn; the
brain, the heart, and the hand so much like my own had given expression
to the same images of suffering and pain. Only the smallest differences
existed. But the proof was beyond denial.

"Mekare's bark had carried her over the great western ocean to a land
unknown in our time. Centuries perhaps before man had penetrated the
southern reaches of the jungle continent, Mekare had come ashore there,

perhaps to know the greatest loneliness a creature can know. How long
had she wandered among birds and beasts before she'd seen a human face?

"Had it been centuries, or millennia, this inconceivable isolation? Or
had she found mortals at once to comfort her, or run from her in terror?
I was never to know. My sister may have lost her reason long before the
coffin which carried her ever touched the South American shore.

"All I knew was that she had been there; and thousands of years ago she
had made those drawings, just as I had made my own.

"Of course I lavished wealth upon this archaeologist; I gave him every
means to continue his research into the Legend of the Twins. And I
myself made the journey to South America. With Eric and Mael beside me,
I climbed the mountain in Peru by the light of the moon and saw my
sister's handiwork for myself. So ancient these paintings were. Surely
they had been done within a hundred years of our separation and very
possibly less.

"But we were never to find another shred of evidence that Mekare lived
or walked in the South American jungles, or anywhere else in this world.
Was she buried deep in the earth, beyond where the call of Mael or Eric
could reach her? Did she sleep in the depths of some cave, a white
statue, staring mindlessly, as her skin was covered with layer upon
layer of dust?

"I cannot conceive of it. I cannot bear to think on it.

"I know only, as you know now, that she has risen. She has waked from
her long slumber. Was it the songs of the Vampire Lestat that waked her?
Those electronic melodies that reached the far corners of the world? Was
it the thoughts of the thousands of blood drinkers who heard them,
interpreted them, and responded to them? Was it Marius's warning that
the Mother walks?

"Perhaps it was some dim sense collected from all these signals-that the
time had come to fulfill the old curse. I cannot tell you. I know only
that she moves northward, that her course is erratic, and that all
efforts on my part through Eric and Mael to find her have failed.

"It is not me she seeks. I am convinced of it. It is the Mother. And the
Mother's wanderings throw her off course.

"But she will find the Mother if that is her purpose! She will find the
Mother! Perhaps she will come to realize that she can take to the air as
the Mother can, and she will cover the miles in the blink of an eye when
that discovery is made.

"But she will find the Mother. I know it. And there can be but one
outcome. Either Mekare will perish; or the Mother will perish, and with
the Mother so shall all of us.

"Mekare's strength is equal to mine, if not greater. It is equal to the
Mother's; and she may draw from her madness a ferocity which no one can
now measure or contain.

"I am no believer of curses; no believer of prophecy; the spirits that
taught me the validity of such things deserted me thousands of years
ago. But Mekare believed the curse when she uttered it. It came from the
depths of her being; she set it into motion. And her dreams now speak

only of the beginning, of the sources of her rancor, which surely feed
the desire for revenge.

"Mekare may bring about the fulfillment; and it may be the better thing
for us all. And if she does not destroy Akasha, if we do not destroy
Akasha, what will be the outcome? We know now what evils the Mother has
already begun to do. Can the world stop this thing if the world
understands nothing of it? That it is immensely strong, yet certainly
vulnerable; with the power to crush, yet skin and bone that can be
pierced or cut? This thing that can fly, and read minds, and make fire
with its thoughts; yet can be burnt itself?

"How can we stop her and save ourselves, that is the question. I want to
live, as I have always wanted it. I do not want to close my eyes on this
world. I do not want those I love to come to harm. Even the young ones,
who must take life, I struggle in my mind to find some way to protect
them. Is this evil of me? Or are we not a species, and do we not share
the desire of any species to live on?

"Hearken to everything that I've told you of the Mother. To what I've
said of her soul, and of the nature of the demon that resides in her-its
core wedded to her core. Think on the nature of this great invisible
thing which animates each one of us, and every blood drinker who has
ever walked.

"We are as receptors for the energy of this being; as radios are
receptors for the invisible waves that bring sound. Our bodies are no
more than shells for this energy. We are-as Marius so long ago described
it-blossoms on a single vine.

"Examine this mystery. For if we examine it closely perhaps we can yet
find a way to save ourselves.

"And I would have you examine one thing further in regard to it; perhaps
the single most valuable thing which I have ever learned.

"In those early times, when the spirits spoke to my sister and me on the
side of the mountain, what human being would have believed that the
spirits were irrelevant things? Even we were captives of their power,
thinking it our duty to use the gifts we possessed for the good of our
people, just as Akasha would later believe.

"For thousands of years after that, the firm belief in the supernatural
has been part of the human soul. There were times when I would have said
it was natural, chemical, an indispensable ingredient in the human
makeup; something without which humans could not prosper, let alone
survive.

"Again and again we have witnessed the birth of cults and religions-the
dreary proclamations of apparitions and miracles and the subsequent
promulgation of the creeds inspired by these 'events.'

"Travel the cities of Asia and Europe-behold the ancient temples still
standing, and the cathedrals of the Christian god in which his hymns are
still sung. Walk through the museums of all countries; it is religious
painting and sculpture that dazzles and humbles the soul.

"How great seems that achievement; the very machinery of culture
dependent upon the fuel of religious belief.

"Yet what has been the price of that faith which galvanizes countries
and sends army against army; which divides up the map of nations into
victor and vanquished; which annihilates the worshipers of alien gods.

"But in the last few hundred years, a true miracle has happened which
has nothing to do with spirits or apparitions, or voices from the
heavens telling this or that zealot what he must now do!

"We have seen in the human animal a resistance finally to the
miraculous; a skepticism regarding the works of spirits, or those who
claim to see them and understand them and speak their truths.

"We have seen the human mind slowly abandon the traditions of law based
upon revelation, to seek ethical truths through reason; and a way of
life based upon respect for the physical and the spiritual as perceived
by all human beings.

"And with this loss of respect for supernatural intervention; with this
credulity of all things divorced from the flesh, has come the most
enlightened age of all; for men and women seek for the highest
inspiration not in the realm of the invisible, but in the realm of the
human-the thing which is both flesh and spirit; invisible and visible;
earthly and transcendent.

"The psychic, the clairvoyant, the witch, if you will, is no longer of
value, I am convinced of it. The spirits can give us nothing more. In
sum, we have outgrown our susceptibility to such madness, and we are
moving to a perfection that the world has never known.

"The word has been made flesh at last, to quote the old biblical phrase
with all its mystery; but the word is the word of reason; and the flesh
is the acknowledgment of the needs and the desires which all men and
women share.

"And what would our Queen do for this world with her intervention? What
would she give it-she whose very existence is now irrelevant, she whose
mind has been locked for centuries in a realm of unenlightened dreams?

"She must be stopped; Marius is right; who could disagree with him? We
must stand ready to help Mekare, not to thwart her, even if it means the
end for us all.

"But let me lay before you now the final chapter of my tale in which
lies the fullest illumination of the threat that the Mother poses to us
all:

"As I've already said, Akasha did not annihilate my people. They lived
on in my daughter Miriam and in her daughters, and those daughters born
to them.

"Within twenty years I had returned to the village where I'd left
Miriam, and found her a young woman who had grown up on the stories that
would become the Legend of the Twins.

"By the light of the moon I took her with me up the mountain and
revealed to her the caves of her ancestors, and gave her the few
necklaces and the gold that was still hidden deep within the painted
grottoes where others feared to go. And I told Miriam all the stories of
her ancestors which I knew. But I adjured her: stay away from the

spirits; stay away from all dealings with things invisible, whatever
people call them, and especially if they are called gods.

"Then I went to Jericho, for there in the crowded streets it was easy to
hunt for victims, for those who wished for death and would not trouble
my conscience; and easy to hide from prying eyes.

"But I was to visit Miriam many times over the years; and Miriam gave
birth to four daughters and two sons, and these gave birth in turn to
some five children who lived to maturity and of these five, two were
women, and of those women eight different children were born. And the
legends of the family were told by their mothers to these children; the
Legend of the Twins they also learned-the legend of the sisters who had
once spoken to spirits, and made the rain fall, and were persecuted by
the evil King and Queen.

"Two hundred years later, I wrote down for the first time all the names
of my family, for they were an entire village now, and it took four
whole clay tablets for me to record what I knew. I then filled tablet
after tablet with the stories of the beginning, of the women who had
gone back to The Time Before the Moon.

"And though I wandered sometimes for a century away from my homeland,
searching for Mekare, hunting the wild coasts of northern Europe, I
always came back to my people, and to my secret hiding places in the
mountains and to my house in Jericho, and I wrote down again the
progress of the family, which daughters had been born and the names of
those daughters born to them. Of the sons, too, I wrote in detail-of
their accomplishments, and personalities, and sometime heroism-as I did
with the women. But of their offspring no. It was not possible to know
if the children of the men were truly of my blood, and of my people's
blood. And so the thread became matrilineal as it has always been since.

"But never, never, in all this time, did I reveal to my family the evil
magic which had been done to me. I was determined that this evil should
never touch the family; and so if I used my ever increasing supernatural
powers, it was in secret, and in ways that could be naturally explained.

"By the third generation, I was merely a kinswoman who had come home
after many years in another land. And when and if I intervened, to bring
gold or advice to my daughters, it was as a human being might do it, and
nothing more.

"Thousands of years passed as I watched the family in anonymity, only
now and then playing the long lost kinswoman to come into this or that
village or family gathering and hold the children in my arms.

"But by the early centuries of the Christian era, another concept had
seized my imagination. And so I created the fiction of a branch of the
family which kept all its records-for there were now tablets and scrolls
in abundance, and even bound books. And in each generation of this
fictional branch, there was a fictional woman to whom the task of
recordkeeping was passed. The name of Maharet came with the honor; and
when time demanded it, old Maharet would die, and young Maharet would
inherit the task.

"And so I myself was within the family; and the family knew me; and I
knew the family's love. I became the writer of letters; the benefactor;
the unifier; the mysterious yet trusted visitor who appeared to heal
breaches and right wrongs. And though a thousand passions consumed me;

though I lived for centuries in different lands, learning new languages
and customs, and marveling at the infinite beauty of the world, and the
power of the human imagination, I always returned to the family, the
family which knew me and expected things from me.

"As the centuries passed, as the millennia passed, I never went down
into the earth as many of you have done. I never faced madness and loss
of memory as was common among the old ones, who became often like the
Mother and Father, statues buried beneath the ground. Not a night has
passed since those early times that I have not opened my eyes, known my
own name, and looked with recognition upon the world around me, and
reached for the thread of my own life.

"But it was not that madness didn't threaten. It was not that weariness
did not sometimes overwhelm. It was not that grief did not embitter me,
or that mysteries did not confuse me, or that I did not know pain.

"It was that I had the records of my family to safeguard; I had my own
progeny to look after, and to guide in the world. And so even in the
darkest times, when all human existence seemed monstrous to me and
unbearable, and the changes of the world beyond comprehension, I turned
to the family as if it were the very spring of life itself.

"And the family taught me the rhythms and passions of each new age; the
family took me into alien lands where perhaps I would never have
ventured alone; the family took me into realms of art which might have
intimidated me; the family was my guide through time and space. My
teacher, my book of life. The family was all things."

Maharet paused.

For a moment it seemed she would say something more. Then she rose from
the table. She glanced at each of the others, and then she looked at
Jesse.

"Now I want you to come with me. I want to show you what this family has
become."

Quietly, all rose and waited as Maharet walked round the table and then
they followed her out of the room. They followed her across the iron
landing in the earthen stairwell, and into another great mountaintop
chamber, with a glass roof and solid walls.

Jesse was the last to enter, and she knew even before she had passed
through the door what she would see. An exquisite pain coursed through
her, a pain full of remembered happiness and unforgettable longing. It
was the windowless room in which she'd stood long ago.

How clearly she recalled its stone fireplace, and the dark leather
furnishings scattered over the carpet; and the air of great and secret
excitement, infinitely surpassing the memory of the physical things,
which had forever haunted her afterwards, engulfing her in half-
remembered dreams.

Yes, there the great electronic map of the world with its flattened
continents, covered with thousands and thousands of tiny glowing lights.

And the other three walls, so dark, seemingly covered by a fine black
wire mesh, until you realized what you were seeing: an endless ink-drawn
vine, crowding every inch between floor and ceiling, growing from a

single root in one corner into a million tiny swarming branches, each
branch surrounded by countless carefully inscribed names.

A gasp rose from Marius as he turned about, looking from the great
glowing map to the dense and delicately drawn family tree. Armand gave a
faint sad smile also, while Mael scowled slightly, though he was
actually amazed.

The others stared in silence; Eric had known these secrets; Louis, the
most human of them all, had tears standing in his eyes. Daniel gazed in
undisguised wonder. While Khayman, his eyes dulled as if with sadness,
stared at the map as if he did not see it, as if he were still looking
deep into the past.

Slowly Gabrielle nodded; she made some little sound of approval, of
pleasure.

"The Great Family," she said in simple acknowledgment as she looked at
Maharet.

Maharet nodded.

She pointed to the great sprawling map of the world behind her, which
covered the south wall.

Jesse followed the vast swelling procession of tiny lights that moved
across it, out of Palestine, spreading all over Europe, and down into
Africa, and into Asia, and then finally to both continents of the New
World. Countless tiny lights flickering in various colors; and as Jesse
deliberately blurred her vision, she saw the great diffusion for what it
was. She saw the old names, too, of continents and countries and seas,
written in gold script on the sheet of glass that covered the three-
dimensional illusion of mountains, plains, valleys.

"These are my descendants," Maharet said, "the descendants of Miriam,
who was my daughter and Khayman's daughter, and of my people, whose
blood was in me and in Miriam, traced through the maternal line as you
see before you, for six thousand years."

"Unimaginable!" Pandora whispered. And she too was sad almost to the
point of tears. What a melancholy beauty she had, grand and remote, yet
reminiscent of warmth as if it had once been there, naturally,
overwhelmingly. It seemed to hurt her, this revelation, to remind her of
all that she had long ago lost.

"It is but one human family," Maharet said softly. "Yet there is no
nation on earth that does not contain some part of it, and the
descendants of males, blood of our blood and uncounted, surely exist in
equal numbers to all those now known by name. Many who went into the
wastes of Great Russia and into China and Japan and other dim regions
were lost to this record. As are many of whom I lost track over the
centuries for various reasons. Nevertheless their descendants are there!
No people, no race, no country does not contain some of the Great
Family. The Great Family is Arab, Jew, Anglo, African; it is Indian; it
is Mongolian; it is Japanese and Chinese. In sum, the Great Family is
the human family."

"Yes," Marius whispered. Remarkable to see the emotion in his face, the
faint blush of human color again and the subtle light in the eyes that
always defies description. "One family and all families-" he said. He

went towards the enormous map and lifted his hands irresistibly as he
looked up at it, studying the course of lights moving over the carefully
modeled terrain.

Jesse felt the atmosphere of that long ago night enfold her; and then
unaccountably those memories-flaring for an instant- faded, as though
they didn't matter anymore. She was here with all the secrets; she was
standing again in this room.

She moved closer to the dark, fine engraving on the wall. She looked at
the myriad tiny names inscribed in black ink; she stood back and
followed the progress of one branch, one thin delicate branch, as it
rose slowly to the ceiling through a hundred different forks and twists.

And through the dazzle of all her dreams fulfilled now, she thought
lovingly of all those souls who had made up the Great Family that she
had known; of the mystery of heritage and intimacy. The moment was
timeless; quiet for her; she didn't see the white faces of her new kin,
the splendid immortal forms caught in their eerie stillness.

Something of the real world was alive still for her now, something that
evoked awe and grief and perhaps the finest love she had ever been
capable of; and it seemed for one moment that I natural and
supernatural possibility were equal in their mystery.

They were equal in their power. And all the miracles of the immortals
could not outshine this vast and simple chronicle. The Great Family.

Her hand rose as if it had a life of its own. And as the fight caught
Mael's silver bracelet which she wore around her wrist still, she laid
her fingers out silently on the wall. A hundred names covered by the
palm of her hand. .

"This is what is threatened now," Marius said, his voice softened by
sadness, his eyes still on the map.

It startled her, that a voice could be so loud yet so soft. No, she
thought, no one will hurt the Great Family. No one will hurt the Great
Family!

She turned to Maharet; Maharet was looking at her. And here we are,
Jesse thought, at the opposite ends of this vine, Maharet and I.

A terrible pain welled in Jesse. A terrible pain. To be swept away from
all things real, that had been irresistible, but to think that all
things real could be swept away was unendurable.

During all her long years with the Talamasca, when she had seen spirits
and restless ghosts, and poltergeists that could terrify their baffled
victims, and clairvoyants speaking in foreign tongues, she had always
known that somehow the supernatural could never impress itself upon the
natural. Maharet had been so right! Irrelevant, yes, safely irrelevant-
unable to intervene!

But now that stood to be changed. The unreal had been made real. It was
absurd to stand in this strange room, amid these stark and imposing
forms, and say, This cannot happen. This thing, this thing called the
Mother, could reach out from behind the veil that had so long separated
her from mortal eyes and touch a million human souls.

What did Khayman see when he looked at her now, as if he understood her.
Did he see his daughter in Jesse?

"Yes," Khayman said. "My daughter. And don't be afraid. Mekare will
come. Mekare will fulfill the curse. And the Great Family will go on."

Maharet sighed. "When I knew the Mother had risen, I did not guess what
she might do. To strike down her children, to annihilate the evil that
had come out of her, and out of Khayman and me and all of us who out of
loneliness have shared this power- that I could not really question!
What right have we to live? What right have we to be immortal? We are
accidents; we are horrors. And though I want my life, greedily, I want
it as fiercely as ever I wanted it-I cannot say that it is wrong that
she has slain so many-"

"She'll slay more!" Eric said desperately.

"But it is the Great Family now which falls under her shadow," Maharet
said. "It is their world! And she would make it her own. Unless . . ."

"Mekare will come," Khayman said. The simplest smile animated his face.
"Mekare will fulfill the curse. I made Mekare what she is, so that she
would do it. It is our curse now."

Maharet smiled, but it was vastly different, her expression. It was sad,
indulgent, and curiously cold. "Ah, that you believe in such symmetry,
Khayman."

"And we'll die, all of us!" Eric said.

"There has to be a way to kill her," Gabrielle said coldly, "without
killing us. We have to think on this, to be ready, to have some sort of
plan."

"You cannot change the prophecy," Khayman whispered.

"Khayman, if we have learned anything," Marius said, "it is that there
is no destiny. And if there is no destiny then there is no prophecy.
Mekare comes here to do what she vowed to do; it may be all she knows
now or all she can do, but that does not mean that Akasha can't defend
herself against Mekare. Don't you think the Mother knows Mekare has
risen? Don'1 you think the Mother has seen and heard her children's
dreams?"

"Ah, but prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves," Khayman said.
"That's the magic of it. We all understood it in ancient times. The
power of charms is the power of the will; you might say that we were all
great geniuses of psychology in those dark days, that we could be slain
by the power of another's designs. And the dreams, Marius, the dreams
are but part of a great design."

"Don't talk of it as if it were already done," Maharet said. "We have
another tool. We can use reason. This creature speaks now, does she not?
She understands what is spoken to her. Perhaps she can be diverted-"

"Oh, you are mad, truly mad!" Eric said. "You are going to speak to this
monster that roamed the world incinerating her offspring!" He was
becoming more frightened by the minute. "What does this thing know of
reason, that inflames ignorant women to rise against their men? This
thing knows slaughter and death and violence, that is all it has ever

known, as your story makes plain. We don't change, Maharet. How many
times have you told me. We move ever closer to the perfection of what we
were meant to be."

"None of us wants to die, Eric," Maharet said patiently. But something
suddenly distracted her.

At the same moment, Khayman too felt it. Jesse studied both of them,
attempting to understand what she was seeing. Then she realized that
Marius had undergone a subtle change as well. Eric was petrified. Mael,
to Jesse's surprise, was staring fixedly at her.

They were hearing some sound. It was the way they moved their eyes that
revealed it; people listen with their eyes; their eyes dance as they
absorb the sound and try to locate its source.

Suddenly Eric said: "The young ones should go to the cellar
immediately."

"That's no use," Gabrielle said. "Besides, I want to be here." She
couldn't hear the sound, but she was trying to hear it.

Eric turned on Maharet. "Are you going to let her destroy us, one by
one?"

Maharet didn't answer. She turned her head very slowly and looked
towards the landing.

Then Jesse finally heard the sound herself. Certainly human ears
couldn't hear it; it was like the auditory equivalent of tension without
vibration, coursing through her as it did through every particle of
substance in the room. It was inundating and disorienting, and though
she saw that Maharet was speaking to Khayman and that Khayman was
answering, she couldn't hear what they were saying. Foolishly, she'd put
her hands to her ears. Dimly, she saw that Daniel had done the same
thing, but they both knew it did no good at all.

The sound seemed suddenly to suspend all time; to suspend momentum.
Jesse was losing her balance; she backed up against the wall; she stared
at the map across from her, as if she wanted it somehow to sustain her.
She stared at the soft flow of the lights streaming out of Asia Minor
and to the north and to the south.

Some dim, inaudible commotion filled the room. The sound had died away,
yet the air rang with a deafening silence.

In a soundless dream, it seemed, she saw the figure of the Vampire
Lestat appear in the door; she saw him rush into Ga-brielle's arms; she
saw Louis move towards him and then embrace him. And then she saw the
Vampire Lestat look at her-and she caught the flashing image of the
funeral feast, the twins, the body on the altar. He didn't know what it
meant! He didn't know.

It shocked her, the realization. The moment on the stage came back to
her, when he had obviously struggled to recognize some fleeting image,
as they had drawn apart.

Then as the others drew him away now, with embraces and kisses again-and
even Armand had come to him with his arms out-he gave her the faintest
little smile. "Jesse," he said.

He stared at the others, at Marius, at the cold and wary faces. And how
white his skin was, how utterly white, yet the warmth, the exuberance,
the almost childlike excitement-it was exactly as it had been before.

PART V

THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED

Wings stir the sunlit dust of the cathedral in which the Past is buried
to its chin in marble.

STAN RICE - From "Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness" Body of Work
(1983)

In the glazed greenery of hedge,
and ivy,
and inedible strawberries
the lilies are white; remote; extreme.
Would they were our guardians.
They are barbarians.

STAN RICE - from "Greek Fragments" Body of Work (1983)

SHE SAT AT THE END OF THE TABLE, WAITING FOR them; so still, placid, the
magenta gown giving her skin a deep carnal glow in the light of the
fire.

The edge of her face was gilded by the glow of the flames, and the dark
window glass caught her vividly in a flawless mirror, as if the
reflection were the real thing, floating out there in the transparent
night.

Frightened. Frightened for them and for me. And strangely, for her. It
was like a chill, the presentiment. For her. The one who might destroy
all that I had ever loved.

At the door, I turned and kissed Gabrielle again. I felt her body
collapse against me for an instant; then her attention locked on Akasha.
I felt the faint tremor in her hands as she touched my face. I looked at
Louis, my seemingly fragile Louis with his seemingly invincible
composure; and at Armand, the urchin with the angel's face. Finally
those you love are simply . . . those you love.

Marius was frigid with anger as he entered the room; nothing could
disguise this. He glared at me-I, the one who had slain those poor
helpless mortals and left them strewn down the mountain. He knew, did he
not? And all the snow in the world couldn't cover it up. I need you,
Marius. We need you.

His mind was veiled; all their minds were veiled. Could they keep their
secrets from her?

As they filed into the room, I went to her right hand because she wanted
me to. And because that's where I knew I ought to be. I gestured for
Gabrielle and Louis to sit opposite, close, where I could see them. And
the look on Louis's face, so resigned, yet sorrowful, struck my heart.

The red-haired woman, the ancient one called Maharet, sat at the
opposite end of the table, the end nearest the door. Marius and Armand

were on her right. And on her left was the young red-haired one, Jesse.
Maharet looked absolutely passive, collected, as if nothing could alarm
her. But it was rather easy to see why. Akasha couldn't hurt this
creature; or the other very old one, Khayman, who sat down now to my
right.

The one called Eric was terrified, it was obvious. Only reluctantly did
he sit at the table at all. Mael was afraid too, but it made him
furious. He glowered at Akasha, as if he cared nothing about hiding his
disposition.

And Pandora, beautiful, brown-eyed Pandora-she looked truly uncaring as
she took her place beside Marius. She didn't even look at Akasha. She
looked out through the glass walls, her eyes moving slowly, lovingly, as
she saw the forest, the layers and layers of dim forest, with their dark
streaks of redwood bark and prickling green.

The other one who didn't care was Daniel. This one I'd seen at the
concert too. I hadn't guessed that Armand had been with him! Hadn't
picked up the faintest indication that Armand had been there, And to
think, whatever we might have said to each other, it was lost now
forever. But then that couldn't be, could it? We would have our time
together, Armand and I; all of us. Daniel knew it, pretty Daniel, the
reporter with his little tape recorder who with Louis in a room on
Divisadero Street had somehow started all of this! That's why he looked
so serenely at Akasha; that's why he explored it moment by moment.

I looked at the black-haired Santino-a rather regal being, who was
appraising me in a calculating fashion. He wasn't afraid either. But he
cared desperately about what happened here. When he looked at Akasha he
was awed by her beauty; it touched some deep wound in him. Old faith
flared for a moment, faith that had meant more to him than survival, and
faith that had been bitterly burnt away.

No time to understand them all, to evaluate the links which connected
them, to ask the meaning of that strange image-the two red-haired women
and the body of the mother, which I saw again in a glancing flash when I
looked at Jesse,

I was wondering if they could scan my mind and find in it ail the things
I was struggling to conceal; the things I unwittingly concealed from
myself.

Gabrielle's face was unreadable now. Her eyes had grown small and gray,
as if shutting out all light and color; she looked from me to Akasha and
back again, as if trying to figure something out.

And a sudden terror crept over me. Maybe it had been there all the time.
They would never yield either. Something inveterate would prevent it,
just as it had with me. And some fatal resolution would come before we
left this room.

For a moment I was paralyzed. I reached out suddenly and took Akasha's
hand, I felt her fingers close delicately around mine.

"Be quiet, my prince," she said, unobtrusively and kindly. "What you
feel in this room is death, but it is the death of beliefs and
strictures. Nothing more." She looked at Maharet. "The death of dreams,
perhaps," she said, "which should have died a long time ago."

Maharet looked as lifeless and passive as a living thing can look. Her
violet eyes were weary, bloodshot. And suddenly I realized why. They
were human eyes. They were dying in her head. Her blood was infusing
them over and over again with life but it wasn't lasting. Too many of
the tiny nerves in her own body were dead.

I saw the dream vision again. The twins, the body before them. What was
the connection?

"It is nothing," Akasha whispered. "Something long forgotten; for there
are no answers in history now. We have transcended history. History is
built on errors; we will begin with truth."

Marius spoke up at once:

"Is there nothing that can persuade you to stop?" His tone was
infinitely more subdued than I'd expected. He sat forward, hands folded,
in the attitude of one striving to be reasonable. "What can we say? We
want you to cease the apparitions. We want you not to intervene."

Akasha's fingers tightened on mine.- The red-haired woman was staring at
me now with her bloodshot violet eyes.

"Akasha, I beg you," Marius said. "Stop this rebellion. Don't appear
again to mortals; don't give any further commands."

Akasha laughed softly. "And why not, Marius? Because it so upsets your
precious world, the world you've been watching for two thousand years,
the way you Romans once watched life and death in the arena, as if such
things were entertainment or theater, as if it did not matter-the
literal fact of suffering and death- as long as you were enthralled?"

"I see what you mean to do," Marius said. "Akasha, you do not have the
right."

"Marius, your student here has given me those old arguments," she
answered. Her tone was now as subdued and eloquent of patience as his.
"But more significantly, I have given them a thousand times to myself.
How long do you think I have listened to the prayers of the world,
pondering a way to terminate the endless cycle of human violence? It is
time now for you to listen to what I have to say."

"We are to play a role in this?" Santino asked. "Or to be destroyed as
the others have been destroyed?" His manner was impulsive rather than
arrogant.

And for the first time the red-haired woman evinced a flicker of
emotion, her weary eyes fixing on him immediately, her mouth tense.

"You will be my angels," Akasha answered tenderly as she looked at him.
"You will be my gods. If you do not choose to follow me, I'll destroy
you. As for the old ones, the old ones whom I cannot so easily
dispatch"--she glanced at Khayman and Maharet again-"if they turn
against me, they shall be as devils opposing me, and all humanity shall
hunt them down, and they shall through their opposition serve the scheme
quite well. But what you had before-a world to roam in stealth-you shall
never have again."

It seemed Eric was losing his silent battle with fear. He moved as if he
meant to rise and leave the room.

"Patience," Maharet said, glancing at him. She looked back at Akasha.

Akasha smiled.

"How is it possible," Maharet asked in a low voice, "to break a cycle of
violence through more wanton violence? You are destroying the males of
the human species. What can possibly be the outcome of such a brutal
act?"

"You know the outcome as well as I do," Akasha said. "It's too simple
and too elegant to be misunderstood. It has been unimaginable until now.
All those centuries I sat upon my throne in Marius's shrine; I dreamed
of an earth that was a garden, a world where beings lived without the
torment that I could hear and feel. I dreamed of people achieving this
peace without tyranny. And then the utter simplicity of it struck me; it
was like dawn coming. The people who can realize such a dream are women;
but only if all the men-or very nearly all the men-are removed.

"In prior ages, such a thing would not have been workable. But now it is
easy; there is a vast technology which can reinforce it. After the
initial purgation, the sex of babies can be selected; the unwanted
unborn can be mercifully aborted as so many of both sexes are now. But
there is no need to discuss this aspect of it, really. You are not
fools, any of you, no matter how emotional or impetuous you are.

"You know as I know that there will be universal peace if the male
population is limited to one per one hundred women. All forms of random
violence will very simply come to an end.

"The reign of peace will be something the world has never known. Then
the male population can be increased gradually. But for the conceptual
framework to be changed, the males must be gone. Who can dispute that?
It may not even be necessary to keep the one in a hundred. But it would
be generous to do so. And so I will allow this. At least as we begin."

I could see that Gabrielle was about to speak. I tried to give her a
silent signal to be quiet, but she ignored me.

"All right, the effects are obvious," she said. "But when you speak in
terms of wholesale extermination, then questions of peace become
ridiculous. You're abandoning one half of the world's population. If men
and women were born without arms and legs, this might be a peaceful
world as well."

"The men deserve what will happen to them. As a species, they will reap
what they have sown. And remember, I speak of a temporary cleansing-a
retreat, as it were. It's the simplicity of it which is beautiful.
Collectively the lives of these men do not equal the lives of women who
have been killed at the hands of men over the centuries. You know it and
I know it. Now, tell me, how many men over the centuries have fallen at
the hands of women? If you brought back to life every man slain by a
woman, do you think these creatures would fill even this house?

"But you see, these points don't matter. Again, we know what I say is
true. What matters-what is relevant and even more exquisite than the
proposition itself-is that we now have the means to make it happen. I am
indestructible. You are equipped to be my angels. And there is no one
who can oppose us with success."

"That's not true," Maharet said.

A little flash of anger colored Akasha's cheeks; a glorious blush of red
that faded and left her as inhuman looking as before.

"You are saying that you can stop me?" she asked, her mouth stiffening.
"You are rash to suggest this. Will you suffer the death of Eric, and
Mael, and Jessica, for such a point?"

Maharet didn't answer. Mael was visibly shaken but with anger not fear.
He glanced at Jesse and at Maharet and then at me. I could feel his
hatred.

Akasha continued to stare at Maharet.

"Oh, I know you, believe me," Akasha went on, her voice softening
slightly. "I know how you have survived through all the years unchanged.
I have seen you a thousand times in the eyes of others; I know you dream
now that your sister lives. And perhaps she does-in some pathetic form.
I know your hatred of me has only festered; and you reach back in your
mind, all the way back, to the very beginning as if you could find there
some rhyme or reason for what is happening now. But as you yourself told
me long ago when we talked together in a palace of mud brick on the
banks of the Nile River, there is no rhyme or reason. There is nothing!
There are things visible and invisible; and horrible things can befall
the roost innocent of us all. Don't you see-this is as crucial to what I
do now as all else."

Again, Maharet didn't answer. She sat rigid, only her darkly beautiful
eyes showing a faint glimmer of what might have been pain.

"1 shall make the rhyme or reason," Akasha said, with a trace of anger.
"I shall make the future; I shall define goodness; I shall define peace.
And I don't call on mythic gods or goddesses or spirits to justify my
actions, on abstract morality. I do not call on history either! I don't
look for my mother's heart and brain in the dirt!"

A shiver ran through the others. A little bitter smile played on
Santino's lips. And protectively, it seemed, Louis looked towards the
mute figure of Maharet.

Marius was anxious lest this go further.

"Akasha," he said in entreaty, "even if it could be done, even if the
mortal population did not rise against you, and the men did not find
some way to destroy you long before such a plan could be accomplished-"

"You're a fool, Marius, or you think I am. Don't you think I know what
this world is capable of? What absurd mixture of the savage and the
technologically astute makes up the mind of modern man?"

"My Queen, I don't think you know it!" Marius said. "Truly, I don't. I
don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the
world is. None of us can; it is too varied, too immense; we seek to
embrace it with our reason; but we can't do it. You know a world; but it
is not the world; it is the world you have selected from a dozen other
worlds for reasons within yourself."

She shook her head; another flare of anger, "Don't try my patience,
Marius," she said. "I spared you for a very simple reason. Lestat wanted

you spared. And because you are strong and you can be of help to me. But
that is all there is to it, Marius. Tread with care."

A silence fell between them. Surely he realized that she was lying. I
realized it. She loved him and it humiliated her, and so she sought to
hurt him. And she had. Silently, he swallowed his rage.

"Even if it could be done," he pressed gently, "can you honestly say
that human beings have done so badly that they should receive such a
punishment as this?"

I felt the relief course through me. I'd known he would have the
courage, I'd known that he would find some way to take it into the
deeper waters, no matter how she threatened him; he would say all that I
had struggled to say.

"Ah, now you disgust me," she answered.

"Akasha, for two thousand years I have watched," he said. "Call me the
Roman in the arena if you will and tell me tales of the ages that went
before. When I knelt at your feet I begged you for your knowledge. But
what I have witnessed in this short span has filled me with awe and love
for all things mortal; I have seen revolutions in thought and philosophy
which I believed impossible. Is not the human race moving towards the
very age of peace you describe?"

Her face was a picture of disdain.

"Marius," she said, "this will go down as one of the bloodiest centuries
in the history of the human race. What revolutions do you speak of, when
millions have been exterminated by one small European nation on the whim
of a madman, when entire cities were melted into oblivion by bombs? When
children in the desert countries of the East war on other children in
the name of an ancient and despotic God? Marius, women the world over
wash the fruits of their wombs down public drains. The screams of the
hungry are deafening, yet unheard by the rich who cavort in
technological citadels; disease runs rampant among the starving of whole
continents while the sick in palatial hospitals spend the wealth of the
world on cosmetic refinements and the promise of eternal life through
pills and vials." She laughed softly. "Did ever the cries of the dying
ring so thickly in the ears of those of us who can hear them? Has ever
more blood been shed!"

I could feel Marius's frustration. I could feel the passion that made
him clench his fist now and search his soul for the proper words.

"There's something you cannot see," he said finally. "There is something
that you fail to understand."

"No, my dear one. There is nothing wrong with my vision. There never
was. It is you who fail to see. You always have."

"Look out there at the forest!" he said, gesturing to the glass walls
around us, "Pick one tree; describe it, if you will, in terms of what it
destroys, what it defies, and what it does not accomplish, and you have
a monster of greedy roots and irresistible momentum that eats the light
of other plants, their nutrients, their air. But that is not the truth
of the tree. That is not the whole truth when the thing is seen as part
of nature, and by nature I mean nothing sacred, I mean only the full
tapestry, Akasha. I mean only the larger thing which embraces all."

"And so you will select now your causes for optimism," she said, "as you
always have. Come now. Examine for me the Western cities where even the
poor are given platters of meat and vegetables daily and tell me hunger
is no more. Well, your pupil here has given me enough of that pap
already-the idiot foolishness upon which the complacency of the rich has
always been based. The world is sunk into depravity and chaos; it is as
it always was or worse."

"Oh, no, not so," he said adamantly. "Men and women are learning
animals. If you do not see what they have learned, you're blind. They
are creatures ever changing, ever improving, ever expanding their vision
and the capacity of their hearts. You are not fair to them when you
speak of this as the most bloody century; you are not seeing the light
that shines ever more radiantly on account of the darkness; you are not
seeing the evolution of the human soul!"

He rose from his place at the table, and came round towards her on the
left-hand side. He took the empty chair between her and Gabrielle. And
then he reached out and he lifted her hand.

I was frightened watching him. Frightened she wouldn't allow him to
touch her; but she seemed to like this gesture; she only smiled.

"True, what you say about war," he said, pleading with her, and
struggling with his dignity at the same time. "Yes, and the cries of the
dying, I too have heard them; we have all heard them, through all the
decades; and even now, the world is shocked by daily reports of armed
conflict. But it is the outcry against these horrors which is the light
I speak of; it's the attitudes which were never possible in the past. It
is the intolerance of thinking men and women in power who for the first
time in the history of the human race truly want to put an end to
injustice in all forms."

"You speak of the intellectual attitudes of a few."

"No," he said. "I speak of changing philosophy; I speak of idealism from
which true realities will be born. Akasha,, flawed, as they are, they
must have the time to perfect their own dreams, don't you see?"

"Yes!" It was Louis who spoke out.

My heart sank. So vulnerable! Were she to turn her anger on him-But in
his quiet and refined manner, he was going on:

"It's their world, not ours," he said humbly. "Surely we forfeited it
when we lost our mortality. We have no right now to interrupt their
struggle. If we do we rob them of victories that have cost them too
much! Even in the last hundred years their progress has been miraculous;
they have righted wrongs that mankind thought were inevitable; they have
for the first time developed a concept of the true family of man."

"You touch me with your sincerity," she answered. "I spared you only
because Lestat loved you. Now I know the reason for that love. What
courage it must take for you to speak your heart to me. Yet you yourself
are the most predatory of all the immortals here. You kill without
regard for age or sex or will to live."

"Then kill me!" he answered. "I wish that you would. But don't kill
human beings! Don't interfere with them. Even if they kill each other!

Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the
West, corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering
and blighted world."

"Time," Maharet said. "Maybe that is what we are asking for. Time. And
that is what you have to give."

There was a pause.

Akasha didn't want to look again at this woman; she didn't want to
listen to her. I could feel her recoiling. She withdrew her hand from
Marius; she looked at Louis for a long moment and then she turned to
Maharet as if it couldn't be avoided, and her face became set and almost
cruel.

But Maharet went on:

"You have meditated in silence for centuries upon your solutions. What
is another hundred years? Surely you will not dispute that the last
century on this earth was beyond all prediction or imagining-and that
the technological advances of that century can conceivably bring food
and shelter and health to all the peoples of the earth."

"Is that really so?" Akasha responded. A deep smoldering hate heated her
smile as she spoke. "This is what technological advances have given the
world. They have given it poison gas, and diseases bom in laboratories,
and bombs that could destroy the planet itself. They have given the
world nuclear accidents that have contaminated the food and drink of
entire continents. And the armies do what they have always done with
modern efficiency. The aristocracy of a people slaughtered in an hour in
a snow-filled wood; the intelligentsia of a nation, including all those
who wear eyeglasses, systematically shot. In the Sudan, women are still
habitually mutilated to be made pleasing to their husbands; in Iran the
children run into the fire of guns!"

"This cannot be all you've seen," Marius said. "I don't believe it.
Akasha, look at me. Look kindly on me, and what I'm trying to say."

"It doesn't matter whether or not you believe it!" she said with the
first sustained anger. "You haven't accepted what I've been trying to
tell you. You have not yielded to the exquisite image I've presented to
your mind. Don't you realize the gift I offer you? I would save you! And
what are you if I don't do this thing! A blood drinker, a killer!"

I'd never heard her voice so heated. As Marius started to answer, she
gestured imperiously for silence. She looked at Santino and at Armand.

"You, Santino," she said. "You who governed the Roman Children of
Darkness, when they believed they did God's will as the Devil's
henchmen-do you remember what it was like to have a purpose? And you,
Armand, the leader of the old Paris coven; remember when you were a
saint of darkness? Between heaven and hell, you had your place. I offer
you that again; and it is no delusion! Can you not reach for your lost
ideals?"

Neither answered her. Santino was horror-struck; the wound inside him
was bleeding. Armand's face revealed nothing but despair.

A dark fatalistic expression came over her. This was futile. None of
them would join her. She looked at Marius.

"Your precious mankind!" she said. "It has learned nothing in six
thousand years! You speak to me of ideals and goals! There were men in
my father's court in Uruk who knew the hungry ought to be fed. Do you
know what your modern world is? Televisions are tabernacles of the
miraculous and helicopters are its angels of death!"

"All right, then, what would your world be?" Marius said. His hands were
trembling. "You don't believe that the women aren't going to fight for
their men?"

She laughed. She turned to me. "Did they fight in Sri Lanka, Lestat? Did
they fight in Haiti? Did they fight in Lynkonos?"

Marius stared at me. He waited for me to answer, to take my stand with
him. I wanted to make arguments; to reach for the threads he'd given me
and take it further. But my mind went blank.

"Akasha," I said. "Don't continue this bloodbath. Please. Don't lie to
human beings or befuddle them anymore."

There it was-brutal and unsophisticated, but the only truth I could
give.

"Yes, for that's the essence of it," Marius said, his tone careful
again, fearful, and almost pleading. "It's a lie, Akasha; it's another
superstitious lie! Have we not had enough of them? And now, of all
times, when the world's waking from its old delusions. When it has
thrown off the old gods."

"A lie?" she asked. She drew back, as if he'd hurt her. "What is the
lie? Did I lie when I told them I would bring a reign of peace on earth?
Did I lie when I told them I was the one they had been waiting for? No,
I didn't lie. What I can do is give them the first bit of truth they've
ever had! I am what they think I am. I am eternal, and all powerful, and
shall protect them-"

"Protect them?" Marius asked. "How can you protect them from their most
deadly foes?"

"What foes?"

"Disease, my Queen. Death. You are no healer. You cannot give life or
save it. And they will expect such miracles. All you can do is kill. "

Silence. Stillness. Her face suddenly as lifeless as it had been in the
shrine; eyes staring forward; emptiness or deep thought, impossible to
distinguish.

No sound but the wood shifting and falling into the fire.

"Akasha," I whispered. "Time, the thing that Maharet asked for. A
century. So little to give."

Dazed, she looked at me. I could feel death breathing on my face, death
close as it had been years and years ago when the wolves tracked me into
the frozen forest, and I couldn't reach up high enough for the limbs of
the barren trees.

"You are all my enemies, aren't you?" she whispered. "Even you, my
prince. You are my enemy. My lover and my enemy at the same time."

"I love you!" I said. "But I can't lie to you. I cannot believe in it!
It is wrong! It is the very simplicity and the elegance which make it so
wrong!"

Her eyes moved rapidly over their faces. Eric was on the verge of panic
again. And I could feel the anger cresting in Mael.

"Is there not one of you who would stand with me?" she whispered. "Not
one who would reach for that dazzling dream? Not even one who is ready
to forsake his or her small and selfish world?" Her eyes fixed on
Pandora. "Ah, you, poor dreamer, grieving for your lost humanity; would
you not be redeemed?"

Pandora stared as if through a dim glass. "I have no taste for bringing
death," she answered in an even softer whisper. "It is enough for me to
see it in the falling leaves. I cannot believe good things can come from
bloodshed. For that's the crux, my Queen. Those horrors happen still,
but good men and women everywhere deplore them; you would reclaim such
methods; you would exonerate them and bring the dialogue to an end." She
smiled sadly. "I am a useless thing to you. I have nothing to give."

Akasha didn't respond. Then her eyes moved over the others again; she
took the measure of Mael, of Eric. Of Jesse.

"Akasha," I said. "History is a litany of injustice, no one denies it.
But when has a simple solution ever been anything but evil? Only in
complexity do we find answers. Through complexity men struggle towards
fairness; it is slow and clumsy, but it's the only way. Simplicity
demands too great a sacrifice. It always has."

"Yes," Marius said. "Exactly. Simplicity and brutality are synonymous in
philosophy and in actions. It is brutal what you propose!"

"Is there no humility in you?" she asked suddenly. She turned from me to
him. "Is there no willingness to understand? You are so proud, all of
you, so arrogant. You want your world to remain the same on account of
your greed!"

"No," Marius said.

"What have I done that you should set yourselves so against me?" she
demanded. She looked at me, then at Marius, and finally to Maharet.
"From Lestat I expected arrogance," she said. "I expected platitudes and
rhetoric, and untested ideas. But from many of you I expected more. Oh,
how you disappoint me. How can you turn away from the destiny that
awaits you? You who could be saviors! How can you deny what you have
seen?"

"But they'd want to know what we really are," Santino said. "And once
they did know, they'd rise against us. They'd want the immortal blood as
they always do."

"Even women want to live forever," Maharet 'said coldly. "Even women
would kill for that."

"Akasha, it's folly," said Marius. "It cannot be accomplished. For the
Western world, not to resist would be unthinkable."

"It is a savage and primitive vision," Maharet said with cold scorn.

Akasha's face darkened again with anger. Yet even in rage, the
prettiness of her expression remained. "You have always opposed me!" she
said to Maharet. "I would destroy you if I could. I would hurt those you
love."

There was a stunned silence. I could smell the fear of the others,
though no one dared to move or speak.

Maharet nodded. She smiled knowingly.

"It is you who are arrogant," she answered. "It is you who have learned
nothing. It is you who have not changed in six thousand years. It is
your soul which remains unperfected, while mortals move to realms you
will never grasp. In your isolation you dreamed dreams as thousands of
mortals have done, protected from all scrutiny or challenge; and you
emerge from your silence, ready to make these dreams real for the world?
You bring them here to this table, among a handful of your fellow
creatures, and they crumble. You cannot defend them. How could anyone
defend them? And you tell us we deny what we see!"

Slowly Maharet rose from the chair. She leant forward slightly, her
weight resting on her fingers as they touched the wood.

"Well, I'll tell you what I see," she went on. "Six thousand years ago,
when men believed in spirits, an ugly and irreversible accident
occurred; it was as awful in its own way as the monsters born now and
then to mortals which nature does not suffer to live. But you, clinging
to life, and clinging to your will, and clinging to your royal
prerogative, refused to take that awful mistake with you to an early
grave. To sanctify it, that was your purpose. To spin a great and
glorious religion; and that is still your purpose now. But it was an
accident finally, a distortion, and nothing more.

"And look now at the ages since that dark and evil moment' look at the
other religions founded upon magic; founded upon some apparition or
voice from the clouds! Founded upon the intervention of the supernatural
in one guise or another-miracles, revelations, a mortal man rising from
the dead!

"Look on the effect of your religions, those movements that have swept
up millions with their fantastical claims. Look at what they have done
to human history. Look at the wars fought on account of them; look at
the persecutions, the massacres. Look at the pure enslavement of reason;
look at the price of faith and zeal.

"And you tell us of children dying in the Eastern countries, in the name
of Allah as the guns crackle and the bombs fall!

"And the war of which you speak in which one tiny European nation sought
to exterminate a people. ... In the name of what grand spiritual design
for a new world was that done? And what does the world remember of it?
The death camps, the ovens in which bodies were burnt by the thousands.
The ideas are gone!

"I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil-
religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the
elegant simple abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in

suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively
to its knees.

"Don't you see? It is not man who is the enemy of the human species. It
is the irrational; it is the spiritual when it is divorced from the
material; from the lesson in one beating heart or one bleeding vein.

"You accuse us of greed. Ah, but our greed is our salvation. Because we
know what we are; we know our limits and we know our sins; you have
never known yours.

"You would begin it all again, wouldn't you? You would bring a new
religion, a new revelation, a new wave of superstition and sacrifice and
death."

"You lie," Akasha answered, her voice barely able to contain her fury.
"You betray the very beauty I dream of; you betray it because you have
no vision, you have no dreams."

"The beauty is out there!" Maharet said. "It does not deserve your
violence! Are you so merciless that the lives you would destroy mean
nothing! Ah, it was always so!"

The tension was unbearable. The blood sweat was breaking out on my body.
I could see the panic all around. Louis had bowed his head and covered
his face with his hands. Only the young Daniel seemed hopelessly
enraptured. And Armand merely gazed at Akasha as if it were all out of
his hands.

Akasha was silently struggling. But then she appeared to regain her
conviction.

"You lie as you have always done," she said desperately. "But it does
not matter whether you fight on my side. I will do what I mean to do; I
will reach back over the millennia and I will redeem that long ago
moment, that long ago evil which you and your sister brought into our
land; I will reach back and raise it up in the eyes of the world until
it becomes the Bethlehem of the new era; and peace on earth will exist
at last. There is no great good that was ever done without sacrifice and
courage. And if you all turn against me, if you all resist me, then I
shall make of better mettle the angels I require."

"No, you will not do it," Maharet said.

"Akasha, please," Marius said. "Grant us time. Agree only to wait, to
consider. Agree that nothing must come from this moment."

"Yes," I said. "Give us time. Come with me. Let us go together out
there-you and I and Marius-out of dreams and visions and into the world
itself."

"Oh, how you insult me and belittle me," she whispered. Her anger was
turned on Marius but it was about to turn on me.

"There are so many things, so many places," he said, "that I want to
show you! Only give me a chance. Akasha, for two thousand years I cared
for you, I protected you ..."

"You protected yourself! You protected the source of your power, the
source of your evil!"

"I'm imploring you," Marius said. "I will get on my knees to you. A
month only, to come with me, to let us talk together, to let us examine
all the evidence . . ."

"So small, so selfish," Akasha whispered. "And you feel no debt to the
world that made you what you are, no debt to give it now the benefit of
your power, to alchemize yourselves from devils into gods!"

She turned to me suddenly, the shock spreading over her face.

"And you, my prince, who came into my chamber as if I were the Sleeping
Beauty, who brought me to life again with your passionate kiss. Will you
not reconsider? For my love!" The tears again were standing in her eyes.
"Must you join with them now against me, too?" She reached up and placed
her two hands on the sides of my face. "How can you betray me?" she
said. "How can you betray such a dream? They are slothful beings;
deceitful; full of malice. But your heart was pure. You had a courage
that transcended pragmatism. You had your dreams too!"

I didn't have to answer. She knew. She could see it better perhaps than
I could see it. And all I saw was the suffering in her black eyes. The
pain, the incomprehension; and the grief she was already experiencing
for me.

It seemed she couldn't move or speak suddenly. And there was nothing I
could do now; nothing to save them; or me. I loved her! But I couldn't
stand with her! Silently, I begged her to understand and forgive.

Her face was frozen, almost as if the voices had reclaimed her, it was
as if I were standing before her throne in the path of her changeless
gaze.

"I will kill you first, my prince," she said, her fingers caressing me
all the more gently. "I want you gone from me. I will not look into your
face and see this betrayal again."

"Harm him and that shall be our signal," Maharet whispered. "We shall
move against you as one."

"And you move against yourselves!" she answered, glancing at Maharet.
"When I finish with this one I love, I shall kill those you love; those
who should have been dead already; I shall destroy all those whom I can
destroy; but who shall destroy me?"

"Akasha," Marius whispered. He rose and came towards her; but she moved
in the blink of an eye and knocked him to the floor. I heard him cry out
as he fell. Santino went to his aid.

Again, she looked at me; and her hands closed on my shoulders, gentle
and loving as before. And through the veil of my tears, I saw her smile
sadly. "My prince, my beautiful prince," she said.

Khayman rose from the table. Eric rose. And Mae!. And then the young
ones rose, and lastly Pandora, who moved to Marius's side.

She released me. And she too rose to her feet. The night was so quiet
suddenly that the forest seemed to sigh against the glass.

And this is what I've wrought, I who alone remained seated, looking not
at any of them, but at nothing. At the small glittering sweep of my
life, my little triumphs, my little tragedies, my dreams of waking the
goddess, my dreams of goodness, and of fame.

What was she doing? Assessing their power? Looking from one to the
other, and then back to me. A stranger looking down from some lofty
height. And so now the fire comes, Lestat. Don't dare to look at
Gabrielle or Louis, lest she turn it that way. Die first, like a coward,
and then you don't have to see them die.

And the awful part is, you won't know who wins finally- whether or not
she triumphs, or we all go down together. Just like not knowing what it
was all about, or why, or what the hell the dream of the twins meant, or
how this whole world came into being. You just won't ever know.

I was weeping now and she was weeping and she was that tender fragile
being again, the being I had held on Saint-Domingue, the one who needed
me, but that weakness wasn't destroying her after all, though it would
certainly destroy me.

"Lestat," she whispered as if in disbelief.

"I can't follow you," I said, my voice breaking. Slowly I rose to my
feet. "We're not angels, Akasha; we are not gods. To be human, that's
what most of us long for. It is the human which has become myth to us."

It was killing me to look at her. I thought of her blood flowing " into
me; of the powers she'd given me. Of what it had been like to travel
with her through the clouds. I thought of the euphoria in the Haitian
village when the women had come with their candles, singing their hymns.

"But that is what it will be, my beloved," she whispered. "Find your
courage! It's there." The blood tears were coursing down her face. Her
lip trembled and the smooth flesh of her forehead was creased with those
perfectly straight lines of utter distress.

Then she straightened. She looked away from me: and her face went blank
and beautifully smooth again. She looked past us, and I felt she was
reaching for the strength to do it, and the others had better act fast.
I wished for that-like sticking a dagger into her; they had better bring
her down now, and I could feel the tears sliding down my face.

But something else was happening. There was a great soft musical sound
from somewhere. Glass shattering, a great deal of glass. There was a
sudden obvious excitement in Daniel. In Jesse, But the old ones stood
frozen, listening. Again, glass breaking; someone entering by one of the
many portals of this rambling house.

She took a step back. She quickened as if seeing a vision; and a loud
hollow sound filled the stairwell beyond the open door. Someone down
below in the passage.

She moved away from the table, towards the fireplace. She seemed for all
the world afraid.

Was that possible? Did she know who was coming, and was it another old
one? And was that what she feared-that more could accomplish what these
few could not?

It was nothing so calculated finally; I knew it; she was being defeated
inside. All courage was leaving her. It was the need, the loneliness,
after all! It had begun with my resistance, and they had deepened it,
and then I had dealt her yet another blow. And now she was transfixed by
this loud, echoing, and impersonal noise. Yet she did know who this
person was, I could sense it. And the others knew too.

The noise was growing louder. The visitor was coming up the stairs. The
skylight and the old iron pylons reverberated with the shock of each
heavy step.

"But who is it!" I said suddenly. I could stand it no longer. There was
that image again, that image of the mother's body and the twins.

"Akasha!" Marius said. "Give us the time we ask for. Forswear the
moment. That is enough!"

"Enough for what!" she cried sharply, almost savagely.

"For our lives, Akasha," he said. "For all our lives!"

I heard Khayman laugh softly, the one who hadn't spoken even once.

The steps had reached the landing.

Maharet stood at the edge of the open doorway, and Mael was beside her.
I hadn't even seen them move.

Then I saw who and what it was. The woman I'd glimpsed moving through
the jungles, clawing her way out of the earth, walking the long miles on
the barren plain. The other twin of the dreams I'd never understood! And
now she stood framed in the dim light from the stairwell, staring
straight at the distant figure of Akasha, who stood some thirty feet
away with her back to the glass wall and the blazing fire.

Oh, but the sight of this one. Gasps came from the others, even from the
old ones, from Marius himself.

A thin layer of soil encased her all over, even the rippling shape of
her long hair. Broken, peeling, stained by the rain even, the mud still
clung to her, clung to her naked arms and bare feet as if she were made
of it, made of earth itself. It made a mask of her face. And her eyes
peered out of the mask, naked, rimmed in red.

A rag covered her, a blanket filthy and torn, and tied with a hemp rope
around her waist.

What impulse could make such a being cover herself, what tender human
modesty had caused this living corpse to stop and make this simple
garment, what suffering remnant of the human heart?

Beside her, staring at her, Maharet appeared to weaken suddenly all over
as if her slender body were going to drop.

"Mekare!" she whispered.

But the woman didn't see her or hear her; the woman stared at Akasha,
the eyes gleaming with fearless animal cunning as Akasha moved back
towards the table, putting the table between herself and this creature,
Akasha's face hardening, her eyes full of undisguised hate.

"Mekare!" Maharet cried. She threw out her hands and tried to catch the
woman by the shoulders and turn her around.

The woman's right hand went out, shoving Maharet backwards so that she
was thrown yards across the room until she tumbled against the wall.

The great sheet of plate glass vibrated, but did not shatter. Gingerly
Maharet touched it with her fingers; then with the fluid grace of a cat,
she sprang up and into the arms of Eric, who was rushing to her aid.

Instantly he pulled her back towards the door. For the woman now struck
the enormous table and sent it sliding northward, and then over on its
side.

Gabrielle and Louis moved swiftly into the northwest corner, Santino and
Armand the other way, towards Mael and Eric and Maharet.

Those of us on the other side merely backed away, except for Jesse, who
had moved towards the door.

She stood beside Khayman and as I looked at him now I saw with amazement
that he wore a thin, bitter smile.

"The curse, my Queen," he said, his voice rising sharply to fill the
room.

The woman froze as she heard him behind her. But she did not turn
around.

And Akasha, her face shimmering in the firelight, quavered visibly, and
the tears flowed again.

"All against me, all of you!" she said. "Not a one who would come to my
side!" She stared at me, even as the woman moved towards her.

The woman's muddy feet scraped the carpet, her mouth gaping and her
hands only slightly poised, her arms still down at her sides. Yet it was
the perfect attitude of menace as she took one slow step after another.

But again Khayman spoke, bringing her suddenly to a halt.

In another language, he cried out, his voice gaining volume untii it was
a roar. And only the dimmest translation of it came clear to me.

"Queen of the Damned . . . hour of worst menace ... I shall rise to stop
you. ..." I understood. It had been Mekare's-the woman's-prophecy and
curse. And everyone here knew it, understood it. It had to do with that
strange, inexplicable dream.

"Oh, no, my children!" Akasha screamed suddenly. "It is not finished!"

I could feel her collecting her powers; I could see it, her body
tensing, breasts thrust forward, her hands rising as if reflexively,
fingers curled.

The woman was struck by it, shoved backwards, but instantly resisted.
And then she too straightened, her eyes widening, and she rushed forward
so swiftly I couldn't follow it, her hands out for the Queen.

I saw her fingers, caked with mud, streaking towards Akasha; I saw
Akasha's face as she was caught by her long black hair. I heard her
scream. Then I saw her profile, as her head struck the western window
and shattered it, the glass crashing down in great ragged shards.

A violent shock passed through me; I could neither breathe nor move. I
was falling to the floor. I couldn't control my limbs. Akasha's headless
body was sliding down the fractured glass wall, the shards still falling
around it. Blood streamed down the broken glass behind her. And the
woman held Akasha's severed head by the hair!

Akasha's black eyes blinked, widened. Her mouth opened as if to scream
again.

And then the light was going out all around me; it was as if the fire
had been extinguished, only it hadn't, and as I rolled over on the
carpet, crying, my hand clawing at it involuntarily, I saw the distant
flames through a dark rosy haze.

I tried to lift my weight. I couldn't. I could hear Marius calling to
me, Marius silently calling only my name.

Then I was rising, just a little, and all my weight pressed against my
aching arms and hands.

Akasha's eyes were fixed on me. Her head was lying there almost within
my reach, and the body lay on its back, blood gushing from the stump of
the neck. Suddenly the right arm quivered; it was lifted, then it
flopped back down to the floor. Then it rose again, the hand dangling.
It was reaching for the head!

I could help it! I could use the powers she'd given me to try to move
it, to help it reach the head. And as I struggled to see in the dimming
light, the body lurched, shivered, and flopped down closer to the head.

But the twins! They were beside the head and the body. Mekare, staring
at the head dully, with those vacant red-rimmed eyes. And Maharet, as if
with the last breath in her, kneeling now beside her sister, over the
body of the Mother, as the room grew darker and colder, and Akasha's
face began to grow pale and ghostly white as if all the light inside
were going out.

I should have been afraid; I should have been in terror; the cold was
creeping over me, and I could hear my own choking sobs. But the
strangest elation overcame me; I realized suddenly what I was seeing:

"It's the dream," I said. Far away I could hear my own voice. "The twins
and the body of the Mother, do you see it! The image from the dream!"

Blood spread out from Akasha's head into the weave of the carpet;
Maharet was sinking down, her hands out flat, and Mekare too had
weakened and bent down over the body, but it was still the same image,
and I knew why I'd seen it now, I knew what it meant!

"The funeral feast!" Marius cried. "The heart and the brain, one of you-
take them into yourself. It is the only chance."

Yes, that was it. And they knew! No one had to tell them. They knew!

That was the meaning! And they'd all seen it, and they all knew. Even as
my eyes were closing, I realized it; and this lovely feeling deepened,
this sense of completeness, of something finished at last. Of something
known!

Then I was floating, floating in the ice cold darkness again as if I
were in Akasha's arms, and we were rising into the stars.

A sharp crackling sound brought me back. Not dead yet, but dying. And
where are those I love?

Fighting for life still, I tried to open my eyes; it seemed impossible.
But then I saw them in the thickening gloom-the two of them, their red
hair catching the hazy glow of the fire; the one holding the bloody
brain in her mud-covered fingers, and the other, the dripping heart. All
but dead they were, their own eyes glassy, their limbs moving as if
through water. And Akasha stared forward still, her mouth open, the
blood gushing from her shattered skull. Mekare lifted the brain to her
mouth; Maharet put the heart in her other hand; Mekare took them both
into herself.

Darkness again; no firelight; no point of reference; no sensation except
pain; pain all through the thing that I was which had no limbs, no eyes,
no mouth to speak. Pain, throbbing, electrical; and no way to move to
lessen it, to push it this way, or that way, or tense against it, or
fade into it. Just pain.

Yet I was moving. I was thrashing about on the floor. Through the pain I
could feel the carpet suddenly; I could feel my feet digging at il as if
I were trying to climb a steep cliff. And then I heard the unmistakable
sound of the fire near me; and I felt the wind gusting through the
broken window, and I smelled all those soft sweet scents from the forest
rushing into the room. A violent shock coursed through me, through every
muscle and pore, my arms and legs flailing. Then still.

The pain was gone.

I lay there gasping, staring at the brilliant reflection of the fire in
the glass ceiling, and feeling the air fill my lungs, and I realized I
was crying again, broken heartedly, like a child.

The twins knelt with their backs to us; and they had their arms around
each other, and their heads were together, their hair mingling, as they
caressed each other, gently, tenderly, as if talking through touch
alone.

I couldn't muffle my sobs. I turned over and drew my arm up under my
face and just wept.

Marius was near me. And so was Gabrielle. 1 wanted to take Gabrielle
into my arms. I wanted to say all the things 1 knew I should say-that it
was over and we had survived it, and it was finished-but I couldn't.

Then slowly I turned my head and looked at Akasha's face again, her face
still intact, though all the dense, shining whiteness was gone, and she
was as pale, as translucent as glass! Even her eyes, her beautiful ink
black eyes were becoming transparent, as if there were no pigment in
them; it had all been the blood.

Her hair lay soft and silken beneath her cheek, and the dried blood was
lustrous and ruby red.

I couldn't stop crying. I didn't want to. I started to say her name and
it caught in my throat. It was as if I shouldn't do it. 1 never should
have. I never should have gone up those marble steps and kissed her face
in the shrine.

They were all coming to life again, the others. Armand was holding
Daniel and Louis, who were both groggy and unable yet to stand; and
Khayman had come forward with Jesse beside him, and the others were all
right too. Pandora, trembling, her mouth twisted with her crying, stood
far apart, hugging herself as if she were cold.

And the twins turned around and stood up now, Maharet's arm around
Mekare. And Mekare stared forward, expressionless, uncomprehending, the
living statue; and Maharet said:

"Behold. The Queen of the Damned."


PART

...WORLD WITHOUT END, AMEN

Some things lighten nightfall and make a Rembrandt of a grief. But
mostly the swiftness of time is a joke; on us. The flame-moth is unable
to laugh. What luck. The myths are dead.

STAN RICE

"Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness" Body of Work (1983)

MIAMI.

A vampire's city-beautiful.   Melting hot, teeming, and embracingly hot,
marketplace, playground.

Where the desperate and the greedy are locked in subversive commerce,
and the sky belongs to everyone, and the beach goes on forever; and the
lights outshine the heavens, and the sea is as warm as blood.

Miami. The happy hunting ground of the devil.

That's why we are here, in Armand's large, graceful white villa on the
Night Island, surrounded by every conceivable luxury, and the wide open
southern night.

Out there, across the water, Miami beckons; victims just waiting: the
pimps, the thieves, the dope kings, and the killers. The nameless ones;
so many who are almost as bad as I am, but not quite.

Armand had gone over at sunset with Marius; and they were back now,
Armand playing chess with Santino in the drawing room, Marius reading as
he did constantly, in the leather chair by the window over the beach.

Gabrielle had not appeared yet this evening; since Jesse left, she was
frequently alone.

Khayman sat in the downstairs study talking with Daniel now, Daniel who
liked to let the hunger build, Daniel who wanted to know all about what
it had been like in ancient Miletus, and Athens, and Troy. Oh, don't
forget Troy. I myself was vaguely intrigued by the idea of Troy.

I liked Daniel. Daniel who might go with me later if I asked him; if I
could bring myself to leave this island, which I have done only once
since I arrived. Daniel who still laughed at the path the moon made over
the water, or the warm spray in his face. For Daniel, all of it-her
death even-had been spectacle. But he cannot be blamed for that.

Pandora almost never moved from the television screen. Marius had
brought her the stylish modern garments she wore; satin shirt, boots to
the knee, cleaving velvet skirt. He'd put the bracelets on her arms, and
the rings on her fingers, and each evening he brushed her long brown
hair. Sometimes he presented her with little gifts of perfume. If he did
not open them for her, they lay on the table untouched. She stared the
way Armand did at the endless progression of video movies, only now and
then breaking off to go to the piano in the music room and play softly
for a little while.

I liked her playing; rather like the Art of the Fugue, her seamless
variations. But she worried me; the others didn't. The others had all
recovered from what had happened, more quickly than I had ever imagined
they could. She'd been damaged in some crucial way before it all began.

Yet she liked it here; I knew she did. How could she not like it? Even
though she never listened to a word that Marius said.

We all liked it. Even Gabrielle.

White rooms filled with gorgeous Persian carpets and endlessly
intriguing paintings-Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Giotto, Geri-cault. One
could spend a century merely looking at the paintings; Armand was
constantly changing them, shifting their positions, bringing up some new
treasure from the cellar, slipping in little sketches here and there.

Jesse had loved it here too, though she was gone now, to join Maharet in
Rangoon.

She had come here into my study and told me her side of it very
directly, asking me to change the names she'd used and to leave out the
Talamasca altogether, which of course I wouldn't do. I'd sat silently,
scanning her mind as she talked, for all the little things she was
leaving out. Then I'd poured it into the computer, while she sat
watching, thinking, staring at the dark gray velvet curtains, and the
Venetian clock; and the cool colors of the Morandi on the wall.

I think she knew I wouldn't do what she told me to do. She also knew it
wouldn't matter. People weren't likely to believe in the Talamasca any
more than they would ever believe in us. That is, unless David Talbot or
Aaron Lightner came to call on them the way that Aaron had called on
Jesse.

As for the Great Family, well, it wasn't likely that any of them would
think it more than a fiction, with a touch here and there of truth; that
is, if they ever happened to pick up the book.

That's what everybody had thought of Interview with the Vampire and my
autobiography, and they would think it about The Queen of the Damned
too.

And that's how it should be. Even I agree with that now. Maharet was
right. No room for us; no room for God or the Devil; it should be
metaphor-the supernatural-whether it's High Mass at St. Patrick's
Cathedral, or Faust selling his soul in an opera, or a rock star
pretending to be the Vampire Lestat.

Nobody knew where Maharet had taken Mekare. Even Eric probably didn't
know now either, though he'd left with them, promising to meet Jesse in
Rangoon.

Before she left the Sonoma compound, Maharet had startled me with a
little whisper: "Get it straight when you tell it-the Legend of the
Twins."

That was permission, wasn't it? Or cosmic indifference, I'm not sure
which. I'd said nothing about the book to anyone; I'd only brooded on it
in those long painful hours when I couldn't really think, except in
terms of chapters: an ordering; a road map through the mystery; a
chronicle of seduction and pain.

Maharet had looked worldly yet mysterious that last evening, coming to
find me in the forest, garmented in black and wearing her fashionable
paint, as she called it-the skillful cosmetic mask that made her into an
alluring mortal woman who could move with only admiring glances through
the real world. What a tiny waist she had, and such long hands, even
more graceful, it seemed, for the tight black kid gloves she wore. So
carefully she had stepped through the ferns and past the tender
saplings, when she might have pushed the trees themselves out of her
path.

She'd been to San Francisco with Jessica and Gabrielle; they had walked
past houses with cheerful lights; on clean narrow pavements; where
people lived, she'd said. How crisp her speech had been, how
effortlessly contemporary; not like the timeless woman I had first
encountered in the mountaintop room.

And why was I alone again, she'd asked, sitting by myself near the
little creek that ran through the thick of the redwoods? Why would I not
talk to the others, even a little? Did I know how protective and fearful
they were?

They are still asking me those questions now.

Even Gabrielle, who in the main never bothers with questions, never says
much of anything. They want to know when I'm going to recover, when I'm
going to talk about what happened, when I'm going to stop writing all
through the night.

Maharet had said that we would see her again very soon. In the spring
perhaps we should come to her house in Burma. Or maybe she'd surprise us
one evening. But the point was, we were never to be isolated from one
another; we had ways to find each other, no matter where we might roam.

Yes, on that vital point at least everyone had agreed. Even Gabrielle,
the loner, the wanderer, had agreed.

Nobody wanted to be lost in time again.

And Mekare? Would we see her again? Would she ever sit with us around a
table? Speak to us with a language of gestures and signs?

I had laid eyes upon her only once after that terrible night. And it had
been entirely unexpected, as I came through the forest, back to the
compound, in the soft purple light just before dawn.

There had been a mist crawling over the earth, thinning above the ferns
and the few scattered winter wild flowers, and then paling utterly into
phosphorescence as it rose among the giant trees.

And the twins had come through the mist together, walking down into the
creek bed to make their way along the stones, arms locked around each
other, Mekare in a long wool gown as beautiful as her sister's, her hair
brushed and shining as it hung down around her shoulders and over her
breasts.

It seemed Maharet had been speaking softly in Mekare's ear. And it was
Mekare who stopped to look at me, her green eyes wide and her face for
one moment unaccountably frightening in its blankness, as I'd felt my
grief like a scorching wind on my heart.

I'd stood entranced looking at her, at both of them, the pain in me
suffocating, as if my lungs were being dried up.

I don't know what my thoughts were; only that the pain seemed
unbearable. And that Maharet had made some little tender motion to me of
greeting, and that I should go my way. Morning coming. The forest was
waking all around us. Our precious moments slipping by. My pain had been
finally loosened, like a moan coming out of me, and I'd let it go as I'd
turned away.

I'd glanced back once to see the two figures moving eastward, down the
rippling silver creek bed, swallowed as it were by the roaring music of
the water that followed its relentless path through the scattered rocks.

The old image of the dream had faded just a little. And when I think of
them now, I think not of the funeral feasts but of that moment, the two
sylphs in the forest, only nights before Maharet left the Sonoma
compound taking Mekare away.

I was glad when they were gone because it meant that we would be going.
And I did not care if I ever saw the Sonoma compound again. My sojourn
there had been agony, though the first few nights after the catastrophe
had been the worst.

How quickly the bruised silence of the others had given way to endless
analysis, as they strained to interpret what they'd seen and felt. How
had the thing been transferred exactly? Had it abandoned the tissues of
the brain as they disintegrated, racing through Mekare's bloodstream
until it found the like organ in her? Had the heart mattered at all?

Molecular; nucleonic; solitons; protoplasm; glittering modern words!
Come now, we are vampires! We thrive on the blood of the living; we
kill; and we love it. Whether we need to do it or not.

I couldn't bear to listen to them; I couldn't bear their silent yet
obsessive curiosity: What was it like with her? What did you do in those

few nights? I couldn't get away from them either; I certainly hadn't the
will to leave altogether; I trembled when I was with them; trembled when
I was apart.

The forest wasn't deep enough for me; I'd roamed for miles through the
mammoth redwoods, and then through scrub oaks and open fields and into
dank impassable woods again. No getting away from their voices: Louis
confessing how he had lost consciousness during those awful moments;
Daniel saying that he had heard our voices, yet seen nothing; Jesse, in
Khayman's arms, had witnessed it all.

How often they had pondered the irony-that Mekare had brought down her
enemy with a human gesture; that, knowing nothing of invisible powers,
she had struck out as any human might, but with inhuman speed and
strength.

Had any of her survived in Mekare? That was what I kept wondering.
Forget the "poetry of science" as Maharet had called it. That was what I
wanted to know. Or had her soul been released at last when the brain was
torn loose?

Sometimes in the dark, in the honeycombed cellar with its tin-plated
walls and its countless impersonal chambers, I'd wake, certain that she
was right there beside me, no more than an inch from my face; I'd feel
her hair again; her arm around me; I'd see the black glimmer of her eye.
I'd grope in the darkness; nothing but the damp brick walls.

Then I'd lie there and think of poor little Baby Jenks, as she had shown
her to me, spiraling upwards; I'd see the varicolored lights enveloping
Baby Jenks as she looked down on the earth for the last time. How could
Baby Jenks, the poor biker child, have invented such a vision? Maybe we
do go home, finally.

How can we know?

And so we remain immortal; we remain frightened; we remain anchored to
what we can control. It all starts again; the wheel turns; we are the
vampires; because there are no others; the new coven is formed.

Like a gypsy caravan we left the Sonoma compound, a parade of shining
black cars streaking through the American night at lethal speed on
immaculate roads. It was on that long ride that they told me everything-
spontaneously and sometimes unwittingly as they conversed with one
another. Like a mosaic it came together, all that had gone before. Even
when I dozed against the blue velvet upholstery, I heard them, saw what
they had seen.

Down to the swamplands of south Florida; down to the great decadent city
of Miami, parody of both heaven and hell.

Immediately I locked myself in this little suite of tastefully appointed
rooms; couches, carpet, the pale pastel paintings of Piero della
Francesca; computer on the table; the music of Vivaldi pouring from tiny
speakers hidden in the papered walls. Private stairway to the cellar,
where in the steel-lined crypt the coffin waited: black lacquer; brass
handles; a match and the stub of a candle; lining stitched with white
lace.

Blood lust; how it hurt; but you don't need it; yet you can't resist it;
and it's going to be like this forever; you never get rid of it; you
want it even more than before.

When I wasn't writing, I lay on the gray brocade divan, watching the
palm fronds move in the breeze from the terrace, listening to their
voices below.

Louis begging Jesse politely to describe one more time the apparition of
Claudia. And Jesse's voice, solicitous, confidential: "But Louis, it
wasn't real."

Gabrielle missed Jesse now that she was gone; Jesse and Ga-brielle had
walked on the beach for hours. It seemed not a word passed between them;
but then, how couid I be sure?

Gabrielle was doing more and more little things to make me happy:
wearing her hair brushed free because she knew I loved it; coming up to
my room before she vanished with the morning. Now and then she'd look at
me, probing, anxious.

"You want to leave here, don't you?" I'd ask fearfully; or something
like it.

"No," she said. "I like it here. It suits me." When she got restless now
she went to the islands, which weren't so very far away. She rather
liked the islands. But that wasn't what she wanted to talk about. There
was always something else on her mind. Once she had almost voiced it.
"But tell me ..." And then she'd stopped.

"Did I love her?" I asked. "Is that what you want to know? Yes, I loved
her."

And I still couldn't say her name.

Mael came and went.

Gone for a week; here again tonight-downstairs-trying to draw Khayman
into conversation; Khayman, who fascinated everybody, First Brood. All
that power. And to think, he had walked the streets of Troy.

The sight of him was continuously startling, if that is not a
contradiction in terms.

He went to great lengths to appear human. In a warm place like this,
where heavy garments are conspicuous, it isn't an easy thing. Sometimes
he covered himself with a darkening pigment-burnt sienna mixed with a
little scented oil. It seemed a crime to do so, to mar the beauty; but
how else could he slice through the human crowd like a greased knife?

Now and then he knocked on my door. "Are you ever coming out?" he would
ask. He'd look at the stack of pages beside the computer; the black
letters: The Queen of the Damned. He'd stand there, letting me search
his mind for all the little fragments, half-remembered moments; he
didn't care. I seemed to puzzle him, but why I couldn't imagine. What
did he want from me? Then he'd smile that shocking saintly smile.

Sometimes he took the boat out-Armand's black racer-and he let it drift
in the Gulf as he lay under the stars. Once Gabrielle went with him, and

I was tempted to listen to them, over all that distance, their voices so
private and intimate. But I hadn't done it. Just didn't seem fair.

Sometimes he said he feared the memory loss; that it would come
suddenly, and he wouldn't be able to find his way home to us. But then
it had come in the past on account of pain, and he was so happy. He
wanted us to know it; so happy to be with us all.

It seemed they'd reached some kind of agreement down there-that no
matter where they went, they would always come back. This would be the
coven house, the sanctuary; never would it be as it had been before.

They were settling a lot of things. Nobody was to make any others, and
nobody was to write any more books, though of course they knew that was
exactly what I was doing, gleaning from them silently everything that I
could; and that I didn't intend to obey any rules imposed on me by
anybody, and that I never had.

They were relieved that the Vampire Lestat had died in the pages of the
newspapers; that the debacle of the concert had been forgotten. No
provable fatalities, no true injuries; everybody bought off handsomely;
the band, receiving my share of everything, was touring again under its
old name.

And the riots-the brief era of miracles-they too had been forgotten,
though they might never be satisfactorily explained.

No, no more revelations, disruptions, interventions; that was their
collective vow; and please cover up the kill.

They kept impressing that upon the delirious Daniel, that even in a
great festering urban wilderness tike Miami, one could not be too
careful with the remnants of the meal.

Ah, Miami. I could hear it again, the low roar of so many desperate
humans; the churning of all those machines both great and small. Earlier
I had let its voices sweep over me, as I'd lain stock-stili on the
divan. It was not impossible for me to direct this power; to sift and
focus, and amplify an entire chorus of different sounds. Yet I drew back
from it, unable yet to really use it with conviction, just as I couldn't
use my new strength.

Ah, but I loved being near to this city. Loved its sleaze and glamour;
the old ramshackle hotels and spangled high rises; its sultry winds; its
flagrant decay. I listened now to that never ending urban music, a low
throbbing hum.

"Why don't you go there, then?"

Marius.

I looked up from the computer. Slowly, just to needle him a little,
though he was the most patient of immortal men.

He stood against the frame of the terrace door, with his arms folded,
one ankle crossed over the other. The lights out there behind him. In
the ancient world had there been anything like it? The spectacle of an
electrified city, dense with towers glowing like narrow grids in an old
gas fire?

He'd clipped his hair short; he wore plain yet elegant twentieth-century
clothes: gray silk blazer and pants, and the red this time, for there
was always red, was the dark turtleneck shirt.

"I want you to put the book aside and come join us," he said. "You've
been locked in here for over a month."

"I go out now and then," I said. I liked looking at him, at the neon
blue of his eyes.

"This book," he said. "What's the purpose of it? Would you tell me that
much?"

I didn't answer. He pushed a little harder, tactful though the tone was.

"Wasn't it enough, the songs and the autobiography?"

I tried to decide what made him look so amiable really. Maybe it was the
tiny lines that still came to life around his eyes, the little crinkling
of flesh that came and went as he spoke.

Big wide eyes like Khayman's had a stunning effect.

I looked back at the computer screen. Electronic image of language.
Almost finished. And they all knew about it; they'd known all along.
That's why they volunteered so much information: knocking, coming in,
talking, then going away.

"So why talk about it?" I asked. "I want to make the record of what
happened. You knew that when you told me what it had been like for you."

"Yes, but for whom is this record being made?"

I thought of all the fans again in the auditorium; the visibility; and
then those ghastly moments, at her side, in the villages, when I'd been
a god without a name. I was cold suddenly in spite of the caressing
warmth, the breeze that came in from the water. Had she been right when
she called us selfish, greedy? When she'd said it was self-serving of us
to want the world to remain the same?

"You know the answer to that question," he said. He drew a little
closer. He put his hand on the back of my chair.

"It was a foolish dream, wasn't it?" I asked. It hurt to say it. "It
could never have been realized, not even if we had proclaimed her the
goddess and obeyed her every command."

"It was madness," he answered. "They would have stopped her; destroyed
her; more quickly than she ever dreamed."

Silence.

"The world would not have wanted her," he added. "That's what she could
never comprehend."

"I think in the end she knew it; no place for her; no way for her to
have value and be the thing that she was. She knew it when she looked
into our eyes and saw the wall there which she could never breach. She'd
been so careful with her visitations, choosing places as primitive and
changeless as she was herself."

He nodded. "As I said, you know the answers to your questions. So why do
you continue to ask them? Why do you lock yourself here with your
grief?"

I didn't say anything. I saw her eyes again. Why can't you believe in
me!

"Have you forgiven me for all of it?" I asked suddenly.

"You weren't to blame," he said. "She was waiting, listening. Sooner or
later something would have stirred the will in her. The danger was
always there. It was as much an accident as the beginning, really, that
she woke when she did." He sighed. He sounded bitter again, the way he'd
been in the first nights after, when he had grieved too. "I always knew
the danger," he murmured. "Maybe I wanted to believe she was a goddess;
until she woke. Until she spoke to me. Until she smiled."

He was off again, thinking of the moment before the ice had fallen and
pinned him helplessly for so long.

He moved away, slowly, indecisively, and then went out onto the terrace
and looked down at the beach. Such a casual way of moving. Had the
ancient ones rested their elbows like that on stone railings?

I got up and went after him. I looked across the great divide of black
water. At the shimmering reflection of the skyline. I looked at him.

"Do you know what it's like, not to carry that burden?" he whispered.
"To know now for the first time that I am free?"

I didn't answer. But I could most certainly feel it. Yet I was afraid
for him, afraid perhaps that it had been the anchor, as the Great Family
was the anchor for Maharet.

"No," he said quickly, shaking his head. "It's as if a curse has been
removed. I wake; I think I must go down to the shrine; I must burn the
incense; bring the flowers; I must stand before them and speak to them;
and try to comfort them if they are suffering inside. Then I realize
that they're gone. It's over, finished. I'm free to go wherever I would
go and do whatever I would like." He paused, reflecting, looking at the
lights again. Then, "What about you? Why aren't you free too? I wish I
understood you."

"You do. You always have," I said. I shrugged.

"You're burning with dissatisfaction. And we can't comfort you, can we?
It's their love you want." He made a little gesture towards the city.

"You comfort me," I answered. "AH of you. I couldn't think of leaving
you, not for very long, anyway. But you know, when I was on that stage
in San Francisco ..." I didn't finish. What was the use of saying it, if
he didn't know. It had been everything I'd ever wanted it to be until
the great whirlwind had descended and carried me away.

"Even though they never believed you?" he asked. "They thought you were
merely a clever performer? An author with a hook, as they say?"

"They knew my name!" I answered. "It was my voice they heard. They saw
me up there above the footlights."

He nodded. "And so the book, The Queen of the Damned," he said.

No answer.

"Come down with us. Let us try to keep you company. Talk to us about
what took place."

"You saw what took place."

I felt a little confusion suddenly; a curiosity in him that he was
reluctant to reveal. He was still looking at me.

I thought of Gabrielle, the way she would start to ask me questions and
stop. Then I realized. Why, I'd been a fool not to see it before. They
wanted to know what powers she'd given me; they wanted to know how much
her blood had affected me; and all this time I'd kept those secrets
locked inside. I kept them locked there now. Along with the image of
those dead bodies strewn throughout Azim's temple; along with the memory
of the ecstasy I'd felt when I'd slain every man in my path. And along
with yet another awful and unforgettable moment: her death, when I had
failed to use the gifts to help her!

And now it started again, the obsession with the end. Had she seen me
lying there so close to her? Had she known of my refusal to aid her? Or
had her soul risen when the first blow was struck?

Marius looked out over the water, at the tiny boats speeding towards the
harbor to the south. He was thinking of how many centuries it had taken
him to acquire the powers he now possessed. Infusions of her blood alone
had not done it. Only after a thousand years had he been able to rise
towards the clouds as if he were one of them, unfettered, unafraid. He
was thinking of how such things vary from one immortal to another; how
no one knows what power is locked inside another; no one knows perhaps
what power is locked within oneself.

All very polite; but I could not confide in him or anyone just yet.

"Look," I said. "Let me mourn just a little while more. Let me create my
dark images here, and have the written words for friends. Then later
I'll come to you; I'll join you all. Maybe I'll obey the rules. Some of
them, anyway, who knows? What are you going to do if I don't, by the
way, and haven't I asked you this before?"

He was clearly startled.

"You are the damnedest creature!" he whispered. "You make me think of
the old story about Alexander the Great. He wept when there were no more
worlds to conquer. Will you weep when there are no more rules to break?"

"Ah, but there are always rules to break."

He laughed under his breath. "Burn the book."

"No."

We looked at each other for a moment; then I embraced him, tightly and
warmly, and I smiled. I didn't even know why I'd done it, except that he
was so patient and so earnest, and there had been some profound change

in him as there had been in all of us, but with him it was dark and
hurtful as it had been with me.

It had to do with the whole struggle of good and evil which he
understood exactly the way I did, because he was the one who had taught
me to understand it years ago. He was the one who had told me how we
must wrestle forever with those questions, how the simple solution was
not what we wanted, but what we must always fear.

I'd embraced him also because I loved him and wanted to be near to him,
and I didn't want him to leave just now, angry or disappointed in me.

"You will obey the rules, won't you?" he asked suddenly. Mixture of
menace and sarcasm. And maybe a little affection, too.

"Of course!" Again I shrugged. "What are they, by the way?

I've forgotten. Oh, we don't make any new vampires; we do not wander off
without a trace; we cover up the kill."

"You are an imp, Lestat, you know it? A brat."

"Let me ask you a question," I said. I made my hand into a fist and
touched him lightly on the arm. "That painting of yours, The Temptation
of Amadeo, the one in the Talamasca crypt . . ."

"Yes?"

"Wouldn't you like to have it back?"

"Ye gods, no. It's a dreary thing, really. My black period, you might
say. But I do wish they'd take it out of the damned cellar. You know,
hang it in the front hall? Some decent place."

I laughed.

Suddenly he became serious. Suspicious.

"Lestat!" he said sharply.

"Yes, Marius."

"You leave the Talamasca alone!"

"Of course!" Another shrug. Another smile. Why not?

"I mean it, Lestat. I'm quite serious. Do not meddle with the Talamasca.
Do we understand each other, you and I?"

"Marius, you are remarkably easy to understand. Did you hear that? The
clock's striking midnight. I always take my little walk around the Night
Island now. Do you want to come?"

I didn't wait for him to answer. I heard him give one of those lovely
forbearing sighs of his as I went out the door.

Midnight. The Night Island sang. I walked through the crowded galleria.
Denim jacket, white T-shirt, face half covered by giant dark glasses;
hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans. I watched the hungry shoppers

dipping into the open doorways, perusing stacks of shining luggage, silk
shirts in plastic, a sleek black manikin swathed in mink.

Beside the shimmering fountain, with its dancing plumes of myriad
droplets, an old woman sat curled on a bench, paper cup of steaming
coffee in her trembling hand. Hard for her to raise it to her lips; when
I smiled as I passed she said in a quavering voice: "When you're old you
don't need sleep anymore."

A soft whoozy music gushed out of the cocktail lounge. The young toughs
prowled the video emporium; blood lust! The raucous zip and flash of the
arcade died as I turned my head away. Through the door of the French
restaurant I caught the swift beguiling, movement of a woman lifting a
glass of champagne; muted laughter. The theater was full of black and
white giants speaking French.

A young woman passed me; dark skin, voluptuous hips, little pout of a
mouth. The blood lust crested. I walked on, forcing it back into its
cage. Do not need the blood. Strong now as the old ones. But I could
taste it; I glanced back at her, saw her seated on the stone bench,
naked knees jutting from her tight little skirt; eyes fixed on me.

Oh, Marius was right about it; right about everything. I was burning
with dissatisfaction; burning with loneliness. I want to pull her up off
that bench: Do you know what I am! No, don't settle for the other; don't
lure her out of here, don't do it; don't take her down on the white
sands, far beyond the lights of the galleria, where the rocks are
dangerous and the waves are breaking violently in the little cove.

I thought of what she had said to us, about our selfishness, our greed!
Taste of blood on my tongue. Someone's going to die if I linger here. .
. .

End of the corridor. I put my key into the steel door between the shop
that sold Chinese rugs made by little girls and the tobacconist who
slept now among the Dutch pipes, his magazine over his face.

Silent hallway into the bowels of the villa.

One of them was playing the piano. I listened for a long moment.
Pandora, and the music as always had a dark sweet luster, but it was
more than ever like an endless beginning-a theme ever building to a
climax which would never come.

I went up the stairs and into the living room. Ah, you can tell this is
a vampire house; who else could live by starlight and the glow of a few
scattered candles? Luster of marble and velvet. Shock of Miami out there
where the lights never go out.

Armand still playing chess with Khayman and losing. Daniel lay under the
earphones listening to Bach, now and then glancing to the black and
white board to see if a piece had been moved.

On the terrace, looking out over the water, her thumbs hooked in her
back pockets, Gabrielle stood. Alone. I went out to her, kissed her
cheek, and looked into her eyes; and when 1 finally won the begrudging
little smile I needed, then I turned and wandered back into the house.

Marius in the black leather chair reading the newspaper, folding it as a
gentleman might in a private club.

"Louis is gone," he said, without looking up from the paper.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"To New Orleans," Armand said without looking up from the chessboard.
"To that fiat you had there. The one where Jesse saw Claudia."

"The plane's waiting," Marius said, eyes still on the paper.

"My man can drive you down to the landing strip," Armand said with his
eyes still on the game.

"What is this? Why are you two being so helpful? Why should I go get
Louis?"

"I think you should bring him back," Marius said. "It's no good his
being in that old flat in New Orleans."

"I think you should get out and do something," Armand said. "You've been
holed up here too long."

"Ah, I can see what this coven is going to be like, advice from all
sides, and everyone watching everyone else out of the corner of an eye.
Why did you ever let Louis go off to New Orleans anyway? Couldn't you
have stopped him?"

I landed in New Orleans at two o'clock. Left the limousine at Jackson
Square.

So clean it all was; with the new flagstones, and the chains on the
gates, imagine, so the derelicts couldn't sleep on the grass in the
square the way they'd done for two hundred years. And the tourists
crowding the Cafe du Monde where the riverfront taverns had been; those
lovely nasty places where the hunting was irresistible and the women
were as tough as the men.

But I loved it now; always would love it. The colors were somehow the
same. And even in this blasted cold of January, it had the old tropical
feel to it; something to do with the flatness of the pavements; the low
buildings; the sky that was always in motion; and the slanting roofs
that were gleaming now with a bit of icy rain.

I walked slowly away from the river, letting the memories rise as if
from the pavements; hearing the hard, brassy music of the Rue Bourbon,
and then turning into the quiet wet darkness of the Rue Royale.

How many times had I taken this route in the old days, coming back from
the riverfront or the opera house, or the theater, and stopping here on
this very spot to put my key in the carriage gate?

Ah, the house in which I'd lived the span of a human lifetime, the house
in which I'd almost died twice.

Someone up there in the old flat. Someone who walks softly yet makes the
boards creak.

The little downstairs shop was neat and dark behind its barred windows;
porcelain knickknacks, dolls, lace fans. I looked up at the balcony with
its wrought-iron railings; I could picture Claudia there, on tiptoe,

looking down at me, little fingers knotted on the rail. Golden hair
spilling down over her shoulders, long streak of violet ribbon. My
little immortal six-year-old beauty; Lestat, where have you been?

And that's what he was doing, wasn't he? Picturing things like that.

It was dead quiet; that is, if you didn't hear the televisions
chattering behind the green shutters and the old vine-covered walls; and
the raucous noise from Bourbon; a man and a woman fighting deep within a
house on the other side of the street.

But no one about; only the shining pavements; and the shut-up shops; and
the big clumsy cars parked over the curb, the rain falling soundlessly
on their curved roofs.

No one to see me as I walked away and then turned and made the quick
feline leap, in the old manner, to the balcony and came down silently on
the boards. I peered through the dirty glass of the French doors.

Empty; scarred walls; the way Jesse had left them. A board nailed up
here, as though someone had tried once to break in and had been found
out; smell of burnt timbers in there after ail these years.

I pulled down the board silently; but now there was the lock on the
other side. Could I use the new power? Could I make it open? Why did it
hurt so much to do it-to think of her, to think that, in that last
flickering moment, I could have helped her; I could have helped head and
body to come together again; even though she had meant to destroy me;
even though she had not called my name.

I looked at the little lock. Turn, open. And with tears rising, I heard
the metal creak, and saw the latch move. Little spasm in the brain as I
kept my eye on it; and then the old door popped from its warped frame,
hinges groaning, as if a draft inside had pushed it out.

He was in the hallway, looking through Claudia's door.

The coat was perhaps a little shorter, a little less full than those old
frock coats had been; but he looked so very nearly like himself in the
old century that it made the ache in me deepen unbearably. For a moment
I couldn't move. He might as well have been a ghost there: his black
hair full and disheveled as it had always been in the old days, and his
green eyes full of melancholy wonder, and his arms rather limp at his
sides.

Surely he hadn't contrived to fit so perfectly into the old context. Yet
he was a ghost in this Rat, where Jesse had been so frightened; where
she'd caught in chilling glimpses the old atmosphere I'd never forget.

Sixty years here, the unholy family. Sixty years Louis, Claudia, Lestat.

Could I hear the harpsichord if I tried?-Claudia playing her Haydn; and
the birds singing because the sound always excited them; and the
collected music vibrating in the crystal baubles that hung from the
painted glass shades of the oil lamps, and in the wind chimes even that
hung in the rear doorway before the curving iron stairs.

Claudia. A face for a locket; or a small oval portrait done on porcelain
and kept with a curl of her golden hair in a drawer. But how she would
have hated such an image, such an unkind image.

Claudia who sank her knife into my heart and twisted it, and watched as
the blood poured down my shirt. Die, Father. I'll put you in your coffin
forever.

I will kill you first, my prince.

I saw the little mortal child, lying there in the soiled covers; smell
of sickness. I saw the black-eyed Queen, motionless on her throne. And I
had kissed them both, the Sleeping Beauties! Claudia, Claudia, come
round now, Claudia . . . That's it, dear, you must drink it to get well.

Akasha!

Someone was shaking me. "Lestat," he said.

Confusion.

"Ah, Louis, forgive me." The dark neglected hallway. I shuddered. "I
came here because I was so concerned . . . about you."

"No need," he said considerately. "It was just a little pilgrimage I had
to make."

I touched his face with my fingers; so warm from the kill.

"She's not here, Louis," I said. "It was something Jesse imagined."

"Yes, so it seems," he said.

"We live forever; but they don't come back."

He studied me for a long moment; then he nodded. "Come on," he said.

We walked down the long hallway together; no, I did not like it; I did
not want to be here. It was haunted; but real hauntings have nothing to
do with ghosts finally; they have to do with the menace of memory; that
had been my room in there; my room.

He was struggling with the back door, trying to make the old weathered
frame behave. I gestured for him to go out on the porch and then I gave
it the shove it needed. Locked up tight.

So sad to see the overgrown courtyard; the fountain ruined; the old
brick kitchen crumbling, and the bricks becoming earth again.

"I'll fix it all for you if you want," I told him. "You know, make it
like it was before."

"Not important now," he said. "Will you come with me, walk with me a
little?"

We went down the covered carriageway together, water rushing through the
little gutter. I glanced back once. Saw her standing there in her white
dress with the blue sash. Only she wasn't looking at me. I was dead, she
thought, wrapped in the sheet that Louis thrust into the carriage; she
was taking my remains away to bury me; yet there she stood, and our eyes
met.

I felt him tugging on me. "No good to stay here any longer," he said.

I watched him close the gate up properly; and then his eyes moved
sluggishly over the windows again, the balconies, and the high dormers
above. Was he saying farewell, finally? Maybe not.

We went together up to the Rue Ste. Anne, and away from the river, not
speaking, just walking, the way we'd done so many times back then. The
cold was biting at him a little, biting at his hands. He didn't like to
put his hands in his pockets the way men did today. He didn't think it a
graceful thing to do.

The rain had softened into a mist.

Finally, he said: "You gave me a little fright; I didn't think you were
real when I first saw you in the hallway; you didn't answer when I said
your name."

"And where are we going now?" I asked. I buttoned up my denim jacket.
Not because I suffered from cold anymore; but because being warm felt
good.

"Just one last place, and then wherever you wish. Back to the coven
house, I should think. We don't have much time. Or maybe you can leave
me to my meanderings, and I'll be back in a couple of nights."

"Can't we meander together?"

"Yes," he said eagerly.

What in God's name did I want? We walked beneath the old porches, past
the old solid green shutters; past the walls of peeling plaster and
naked brick, and through the garish light of the Rue Bourbon and then I
saw the St. Louis Cemetery up ahead, with its thick whitewashed walls.

What did I want? Why was my soul aching still when all the rest of them
had struck some balance? Even Louis had struck a balance, and we had
each other, as Marius had said.

I was happy to be with him, happy to be walking these old streets; but
why wasn't it enough?

Another gate now to be opened; I watched him break the lock with his
fingers. And then we went into the little city of white graves with
their peaked roofs and urns and doorways of marble, and the high grass
crunching under our boots. The rain made every surface luminous; the
lights of the city gave a pearl gleam to the clouds traveling silently
over our heads.

I tried to find the stars. But I couldn't. When I looked down again, I
saw Claudia; I felt her hand touch mine.

Then I looked at Louis again, and saw his eyes catch the dim and distant
light and I winced. I touched his face again, the cheekbones, the arch
beneath the black eyebrow. What a finely made thing he was.

"Blessed darkness!" I said suddenly. "Blessed darkness has come again."

"Yes," he said sadly, "and we rule in it as we have always done."

Wasn't that enough?

He took my hand-what did it feel like now?-and led me down the narrow
corridor between the oldest, the most venerable tombs; tombs that went
back to the oldest time of the colony, when he and I had roamed the
swamps together, the swamps that threatened to swallow everything, and I
had fed on the blood of roustabouts and cutthroat thieves.

His tomb. I realized I was looking at his name engraved on the marble in
a great slanting old-fashioned script.

Louis de Pointe du Lac 1766-1794

He rested against the tomb behind him, another one of those little
temples, like his own, with a peristyle roof.

"I only wanted to see it again," he said. He reached out and touched the
writing with his finger.

It had faded only slightly from the weather wearing at the surface of
the stone. The dust and grime had made it all the clearer, darkening
each letter and numeral. Was he thinking of what the world had been in
those years?

I thought of her dreams, her garden of peace on earth, with flowers
springing from the blood-soaked soil.

"Now we can go home," he said.

Home. I smiled. I reached out and touched the graves on either side of
me; I looked up again at the soft glow of the city lights against the
ruffled clouds.

"You're not going to leave us, are you?" he asked suddenly, voice
sharpened with distress.

"No," I said. I wished I could speak of it, all the things that were in
the book. "You know, we were lovers, she and I, as surely as a mortal
man and woman ever were."

"Of course, I know," he said.

I smiled. I kissed him suddenly, thrilled by the warmth of him, the soft
pliant feel of his near human skin. God, how I hated the whiteness of my
fingers touching him, fingers that could have crushed him now
effortlessly. I wondered if he even guessed.

There was so much I wanted to say to him, to ask him. Yet I couldn't
find the words really, or a way to begin. He had always had so many
questions; and now he had his answers, more answers perhaps than he
could ever have wanted; and what had this done to his soul? Stupidly I
stared at him. How perfect he seemed to me as he stood there waiting
with such kindness and such patience. And then, like a fool, I came out
with it.

"Do you love me now?" I asked.

He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten
simultaneously when he smiled. "Yes," he said.

"Want to go on a little adventure?" My heart was thudding suddenly. It
would be so grand if- "Want to break the new rules?"

"What in the world do you mean?" he whispered.

I started laughing, in a low feverish fashion; it felt so good. Laughing
and watching the subtle little changes in his face. I really had him
worried now. And the truth was, I didn't know if I could do it. Without
her. What if I plunged like Icarus-?

"Oh, come now, Louis," I said. "Just a little adventure. I promise, I
have no designs this time on Western civilization, or even on the
attentions of two million rock music fans. I was thinking of something
small, really. Something, well, a little mischievous. And rather
elegant. I mean, I've been awfully good for the last two months, don't
you think?"

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Are you with me or not?"

He gave another little shake of his head again. But it wasn't a No. He
was pondering. He ran his fingers back through his hair. Such fine black
hair. The first thing I'd ever noticed about him-well, after his green
eyes, that is-was his black hair. No, all that's a lie. It was his
expression; the passion and the innocence and the delicacy of
conscience. I just loved it!

"When does this little adventure begin?"

"Now," I said. "You have four seconds to make up your mind."

"Lestat, it's almost dawn."

"It's almost dawn here," I answered.

"What do you mean?"

"Louis, put yourself in my hands. Look, if I can't pull it off, you
won't really be hurt. Well, not that much. Game? Make up your mind. I
want to be off now."

He didn't say anything. He was looking at me, and so affectionately that
I could hardly stand it.

"Yes or no."

"I'm probably going to regret this, but. . . ."

"Agreed then." I reached out and placed my hands firmly on his arms and
I lifted him high off his feet. He was flabbergasted, looking down at
me. It was as if he weighed nothing. I set him down.

"Mon Dieu," he whispered.

Well, what was I waiting for? If I didn't try it, I'd never find out.
There came a dark, dull moment of pain again; of remembering her; of us
rising together. I let it slowly slip away.

I swung my arm around his waist. Upwards now. I lifted my right hand,
but that wasn't even necessary. We were climbing on the wind that fast.

The cemetery was spinning down there, a tiny sprawling toy of itself
with little bits of white scattered all over under the dark trees.

I could hear his astonished gasp in my ear.

"Lestat!"

"Put your arm around my neck," I said. "Hold on tight. We're going west,
of course, and then north, and we're going a very long distance, and
maybe we'll drift for a while. The sun won't set where we're going for
some time."

The wind was ice cold. I should have thought of that, that he'd suffer
from it; but he gave no sign. He was merely gazing upwards as we pierced
the great snowy mist of the clouds.

When he saw the stars, I felt him tense against me; his face was
perfectly smooth and serene; and if he was weeping the wind was carrying
it away. Whatever fear he'd felt was gone now, utterly; he was lost as
he looked upward; as the dome of heaven came down around us, and the
moon shone full on the endless thickening plain of whiteness below.

No need to tell him what to observe, or what to remember. He always knew
such things. Years ago, when I'd done the dark magic on him, I hadn't
had to tell him anything; he had savored the smallest aspects of it all
on his own. And later he'd said I'd failed to guide him. Didn't he know
how unnecessary that had always been?

But I was drifting now, mentally and physically; feeling him a snug yet
weightless thing against me; just the pure presence of Louis, Louis
belonging to me, and with me. And no burden at all.

I was plotting the course firmly with one tiny part of my mind, the way
she'd taught me to do it; and I was also remembering so many things; the
first time, for example, that I'd ever seen him in a tavern in New
Orleans. He'd been drunk, quarreling; and I'd followed him out into the
night. And he had said in that last moment before I'd let him slip
through my hands, his eyes closing:

"But who are you!"

I'd known I'd come back for him at sunset, that I'd find him if I had to
search the whole city for him, though I was leaving him then half dead
in the cobblestone street. I had to have him, had to. Just the way I had
to have everything I wanted; or had to do everything I'd ever wanted to
do.

That was the problem, and nothing she'd given me-not suffering, or
power, or terror finally-had changed it one bit.

Four miles from London.

One hour after sunset. We lay in the grass together, in the cold
darkness under the oak. There was a little light coming from the huge
manor house in the middle of the park, but not much. The small deep-cut
leaded windows seemed made to keep it all inside. Cozy in there,
inviting, with all the book-lined walls, and the flicker of flames from

those many fireplaces; and the smoke belching up from the chimneys into
the foggy dark.

Now and then a car moved on the winding road beyond the front gates; and
the beams would sweep the regal face of the old building, revealing the
gargoyles, and the heavy arches over the windows, and the gleaming
knockers on the massive front doors.

I have always loved these old European dwellings, big as landscapes; no
wonder they invite the spirits of the dead to come back.

Louis sat up suddenly, looking about himself, and then hastily brushed
the grass from his coat. He had slept for hours, inevitably, on the
breast of the wind, you might say, and in the places where I'd rested
for a little while, waiting for the world to turn. "Where are we?" he
whispered, with a vague touch of alarm.

"Talamasca Motherhouse, outside London," I said. I was lying there with
my hands cradling my head. Lights on in the attic. Lights on in the main
rooms of the first floor. I was thinking, what way would be the most
fun?

"What are we doing here?"

"Adventure, I told you."

"But wait a minute. You don't mean to go in there."

"Don't I? They have Claudia's diary in there, in their cellar, along
with Marius's painting. You know all that, don't you? Jesse told you
those things."

"Well, what do you mean to do? Break in and rummage through the cellar
till you find what you want?"

I laughed. "Now, that wouldn't be very much fun, would it? Sounds more
like dreary work. Besides, it's not really the diary I want. They can
keep the diary. It was Claudia's. I want to talk to one of them, to
David Talbot, the leader. They're the only mortals in the world, you
know, who really believe in us."

Twinge of pain inside. Ignore it. The fun's beginning.

For the moment he was too shocked to answer. This was even more
delicious than I had dreamed.

"But you can't be serious," he said. He was getting wildly indignant.
"Lestat, let these people alone. They think Jesse is dead. They received
a letter from someone in her family."

"Yes, naturally. So I won't disabuse them of that morbid notion. Why
would I? But the one who came to the concert-David Talbot, the older
one-he fascinates me. I suppose I want to know. ... But why say it? Time
to go in and find out."

"Lestat!"

"Louis!" I said, mocking his tone. I got up and helped him up, not
because he needed it, but because he was sitting there glowering at me,

and resisting me, and trying to figure out how to control me, all of
which was an utter waste of his time.

"Lestat, Marius will be furious if you do this!" he said earnestly, his
face sharpening, the whole picture of high cheekbones and dark probing
green eyes firing beautifully. "The cardinal rule is-"

"Louis, you're making it irresistible!" I said.

He took hold of my arm. "What about Maharet? These were Jesse's
friends!"

"And what is she going to do? Send Mekare to crush my head like an egg!"

"You are really past all patience!" he said. "Have you learned anything
at all!"

"Are you coming with me or not?"

"You're not going into that house."

"You see that window up there?" I hooked my arm around his waist. Now,
he couldn't get away from me. "David Talbot is in that room. He's been
writing in his journal for about an hour. He's deeply troubled. He
doesn't know what happened with us. He knows something happened; but
he'll never really figure it out. Now, we're going to enter the bedroom
next to him by means of that little window to the left."

He gave one last feeble protest, but I was concentrating on the window,
trying to visualize a lock. How many feet away was it? I felt the spasm,
and then I saw, high above, the little rectangle of leaded glass swing
out. He saw it too, and while he was standing there, speechless, I
tightened my grip on him and went up.

Within a second we were standing inside the room. A small Elizabethan
chamber with dark paneling, and handsome period furnishings, and a busy
little fire.

Louis was in a rage. He glared at me as he straightened his clothes now
with quick, furious gestures. I liked the room. David Talbot's books;
his bed.

And David Talbot staring at us through the half-opened door to his
study, from where he sat in the light of one green shaded lamp on his
desk. He wore a handsome gray silk smoking jacket, tied at the waist. He
had his pen in hand. He was as still as a creature of the wood, sensing
a predator, before the inevitable attempt at flight.

Ah, now this was lovely!

I studied him for a moment; dark gray hair, clear black eyes,
beautifully lined face; very expressive, immediately warm. And the
intelligence of the man was obvious. All very much as Jesse and Khayman
had described.

I went into the study.

"You'll forgive me," I said. "I should have knocked at the front door.
But I wanted our meeting to be private. You know who I am, of course."

Speechless.

I looked at the desk. Our files, neat manila folders with various
familiar names: "Theatre des Vampires" and "Armand" and "Benjamin, the
Devil." And "Jesse."

Jesse. There was the letter from Jesse's aunt Maharet lying there beside
the folder. The letter which said that Jesse was dead.

I waited, wondering if I should force him to speak first. But then
that's never been my favorite game. He was studying me very intensely,
infinitely more intensely than I had studied him. He was memorizing me,
using little devices he'd learned to record details so that he would
remember them later no matter how great the shock of an experience while
it was going on.

Tall, not heavy, not slender either. A good build. Large, very well-
formed hands. Very well groomed, too. A true British gentleman; a lover
of tweed and leather and dark woods, and tea, and dampness and the dark
park outside, and the lovely wholesome feeling of this house.

And his age, sixty-five or so. A very good age. He knew things younger
men just could not possibly know. This was the modern equivalent of
Marius's age in ancient times. Not really old for the twentieth century
at all.

Louis was still in the other room, but he knew Louis was there. He
looked towards the doorway now. And then back to me.

Then he rose, and surprised me utterly. He extended his hand.

"How do you do?" he said.

I laughed. I took his hand and shook it firmly and politely, observing
his reactions, his astonishment when he felt how cold my flesh was; how
lifeless in any conventional sense.

He was frightened all right. But he was also powerfully curious;
powerfully interested.

Then very agreeably and very courteously he said, "Jesse isn't dead, is
she?"

Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness.
The world's great diplomats, surely. I found myself wondering what their
gangsters were like. Yet there was such grief there for Jesse, and who
was I to dismiss another being's grief?

I looked at him solemnly. "Oh, yes," I said. "Make no mistake about it.
Jesse is dead." I held his gaze firmly; there was no misunderstanding.
"Forget about Jesse," I said. He gave a little nod, eyes glancing off
for a moment, and then he looked at me again, with as much curiosity as
before. I made a little circle in the center of the room. Saw Louis
back there in the shadows, standing against the side of the bedroom
fireplace watching me with such scorn and disapproval. But this was no
time to laugh. I didn't feel at all like laughing. I was thinking of
something Khayman had told me. "I have a question for you now," I said.
"Yes."

"I'm here. Under your roof. Suppose when the sun rises, I go down into
your cellar. I slip into unconsciousness there. You know." I made a
little offhand gesture. "What would you do? Would you kill me while I
slept?" He thought about it for less than two seconds.

"No."

"But you know what I am. There isn't the slightest doubt in your mind,
is there? Why wouldn't you?"

"Many reasons," he said. "I'd want to know about you. I'd want to talk
to you. No, I wouldn't kill you. Nothing could make me do that." I
studied him; he was telling the truth completely. He didn't elaborate on
it, but he would have thought it frightfully callous and disrespectful
to kill me, to kill a thing as mysterious and old as I was.

"Yes, precisely," he said, with a little smile.

Mind reader. Not very powerful however. Just the surface thoughts.

"Don't be so sure." Again it was said with remarkable politeness.

"Second question for you," I said.

"By all means." He was really intrigued now. The fear had absolutely
melted away.

"Do you want the Dark Gift? You know. To become one of us." Out of the
corner of my eye I saw Louis shake his head. Then he turned his back.
"I'm not saying that I'd ever give it you. Very likely, I would not. But
do you want it? If I was willing, would you accept it from me?"

"No."

"Oh, come now."

"Not in a million years would I ever accept it. As God is my witness,
no."

"You don't believe in God, you know you don't."

"Merely an expression. But the sentiment is true."

I smiled. Such an affable, alert face. And I was so exhilarated; the
blood was moving through my veins with a new vigor; I wondered if he
could sense it; did I look any less like a monster? Were there all those
little signs of humanity that I saw in others of our kind when they were
exuberant or absorbed?

"I don't think it will take a million years for you to change your
mind," I said. "You don't have very much time at all, really. When you
think about it."

"I will never change my mind," he said. He smiled, very sincerely. He
was holding his pen in both hands. And he toyed with it, unconsciously
and anxiously for a second, but then he was still.

"I don't believe you," I said. I looked around the room; at the small
Dutch painting in its lacquered frame: a house in Amsterdam above a
canal. I looked at the frost on the leaded window. Nothing visible of

the night outside at all. I felt sad suddenly; only it wasn't anything
as bad as before. It was just an acknowledgment of the bitter loneliness
that had brought me here, the need with which I'd come, to stand in his
little chamber and feet his eyes on me; to hear him say that he knew who
I was.

The moment darkened. I couldn't speak.

"Yes," he said in a timid tone behind me. "I know who you are."

I turned and looked at him. It seemed I'd weep suddenly. Weep on account
of the warmth here, and the scent of human things; the sight of a living
man standing before a desk, I swallowed. I wasn't going to lose my
composure, that was foolish.

"It's quite fascinating really," I said. "You wouldn't kilt me. But you
wouldn't become what I am."

"That's correct."

"No. I don't believe you," I said again.

A little shadow came into his face, but it was an interesting shadow. He
was afraid I'd seen some weakness in him that he wasn't aware of
himself.

I reached for his pen. "May I? And a piece of paper please?"

He gave them to me immediately. I sat down at the desk in his chair. All
very immaculate-the blotter, the small leather cylinder in which he kept
his pens, and even the manila folders. Immaculate as he was, standing
there watching as I wrote.

"It's a phone number," I said. I put the piece of paper in his hand.
"It's a Paris number, an attorney, who knows me under my proper name,
Lestat de Lioncourt, which I believe is in your files? Of course he
doesn't know the things about me you know. But he can reach me. Or,
perhaps it would be accurate to say that I am always in touch with him."

He didn't say anything, but he looked at the paper, and he memorized the
number.

"Keep it," I said. "And when you change your mind, when you want to be
immortal, and you're willing to say so, call the number. And I'll come
back."

He was about to protest. I gestured for silence.

"You never know what may happen," I told him. I sat back in his chair,
and crossed my hands on my chest. "You may discover you have a fatal
illness; you may find yourself crippled by a bad fall. Maybe you'll just
start to have nightmares about being dead; about being nobody and
nothing. Doesn't matter. When you decide you want what I have to give,
call. And remember please, I'm not saying I'll give it to you. I may
never do that. I'm only saying that when you decide you want it, then
the dialogue will begin."

"But it's already begun."

"No, it hasn't."

"You don't think you'll be back?" he asked. "I think you will, whether I
call or not."

Another little surprise. A little stab of humiliation. I smiled at him
in spite of myself. He was a very interesting man. "You silver-tongued
British bastard," I said. "How dare you say that to me with such
condescension? Maybe I should kill you right now."

That did it. He was stunned. Covering it up rather well but I could
still see it. And I knew how frightening I could look, especially when I
smiled.

He recovered himself with amazing swiftness. He folded the paper with
the phone number on it and slipped it into his pocket.

"Please accept my apology," he said. "What I meant to say was that I
hope you'll come back."

"Call the number," I said. We looked at each other for a long moment;
then I gave him another little smite. I stood up to take my leave. Then
I looked down at his desk.

"Why don't I have my own file?" I asked.

His face went blank for a second; then he recovered again, miraculously-
"Ah, but you have the book!" He gestured to The Vampire Lestat on the
shelf.

"Ah, yes, right. Well, thank you for reminding me." I hesitated. "But
you know, I think I should have my own file."

"I agree with you," he said. "I'll make one up immediately. It was
always . . . just a matter of time."

I laughed softly in spite of myself. He was so courteous. I made a
little farewell bow, and he acknowledged it gracefully.

And then I moved past him, as fast as I could manage it, which was quite
fast, and I caught hold of Louis, and left immediately through the
window, moving out and up over the grounds until I came down on a lonely
stretch of the London road.

It was darker and colder here, with the oaks closing out the moon, and I
loved it. I loved the pure darkness! I stood there with my hands shoved
into my pockets looking at the faint faraway aureole of light hovering
over London; and laughing to myself with irrepressible glee.

"Oh, that was wonderful; that was perfect!" I said, rubbing my hands
together; and then clasping Louis's hands, which were even colder than
mine.

The expression on Louis's face sent me into raptures. This was a real
laughing fit coming on.

"You're a bastard, do you know that!" he said. "How could you do such a
thing to that poor man! You're a fiend, Lestat. You should be walled up
in a dungeon!"

"Oh, come on, Louis," I said. I couldn't stop laughing. "What do you
expect of me? Besides, the man's a student of the supernatural. He isn't
going to go stark raving mad. What does everybody expect of me?" I threw
my arm around his shoulder. "Come on, let's go to London. It's a long
walk, but it's early. I've never been to London. Do you know that? I
want to see the West End, and Mayfair, and the Tower, yes, let's do go
to the Tower. And I want to feed in London! Come on."

"Lestat, this is no joking matter. Marius will be furious. Everyone will
be furious!"

My laughing fit was getting worse. We started down the road at a good
clip. It was so much fun to walk. Nothing was ever going to take the
place of that, the simple act of walking, feeling the earth under your
feet, and the sweet smell of the nearby chimneys scattered out there in
the blackness; and the damp cold smell of deep winter in these woods.
Oh, it was all very lovely. And we'd get Louis a decent overcoat when we
reached London, a nice long black overcoat with fur on the collar so
that he'd be warm as I was now.

"Do you hear what I'm saying to you?" Louis said. "You haven't learned
anything, have you? You're more incorrigible than you were before!"

I started to laugh again, helplessly.

Then more soberly, I thought of David Talbot's face, and that moment
when he'd challenged me. Well, maybe he was right. I'd be back. Who said
I couldn't come back and talk to him if I wanted to? Who said? But then
I ought to give him just a little time to think about that phone number;
and slowly lose his nerve.

The bitterness came again, and a great drowsy sadness suddenly that
threatened to sweep my little triumph away. But I wouldn't let it. The
night was too beautiful. And Louis's diatribe was becoming all the more
heated and hilarious:

"You're a perfect devil, Lestat!" he was saying. "That's what you are!
You are the devil himself!"

"Yes, I know," I said, loving to look at him, to see the anger pumping
him so full of life. "And I love to hear you say it, Louis. I need to
hear you say it. I don't think anyone will ever say it quite like you
do. Come on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It
makes me feel so good!"

THE END


THE Vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you, It's about something that happened
to me.

It begins in Miami, in the year 1990, and I really want to start right there. But it's
important that I tell you about the dreams I'd been having before that time, for they are
very much part of the tale too. I'm talking now about dreams of a child vampire with a
woman's mind and an angel's face, and a dream of my mortal friend David Talbot.

But there were dreams also of my mortal boyhood in France- of winter snows, my
father's bleak and ruined castle in the Auvergne, and the time I went out to hunt a pack of
wolves that were preying upon our poor village.

Dreams can be as real as events. Or so it seemed to me afterwards.

And I was in a dark frame of mind when these dreams began, a vagabond vampire
roaming the earth, sometimes so covered with dust that no one took the slightest notice of
me. What good was it to have full and beautiful blond hair, sharp blue eyes, razzle-dazzle
clothes, an irresistible smile, and a well-proportioned body six feet in height that can, in
spite of its two hundred years, pass for that of a twenty-year-old mortal. I was still a man
of reason however, a child of the eighteenth century, in which I'd actually lived before I
was Born to Darkness.

But as the 1980s were drawing to a close I was much changed from the dashing fledgling
vampire I had once been, so attached to his classic black cape and Bruxelles lace, the
gentleman with walking stick and white gloves, dancing beneath the gas lamp.

I had been transformed into a dark god of sorts, thanks to suffering and triumph, and too
much of the blood of our vampire elders. I had powers which left me baffled and
sometimes even frightened, I had powers which made me sorrowful though I did not
always understand the reason for it.

I could, for example, move high into the air at will, traveling the night winds over great
distances as easily as a spirit. I could effect or destroy matter with the power of my mind.
I could kindle afire by the mere wish to do so. I could also call to other immortals over
countries and continents with my preternatural voice, and I could effortlessly read the
minds of vampires and humans.

Not bad, you might think. I loathed it. Without doubt, I was grieving for my old selves-
the mortal boy, the newborn revenant once determined to be good at being bad if that was
his predicament.

I'm not a pragmatist, understand. I have a keen and merciless conscience. I could have
been a nice guy. Maybe at times I am. But always, I've been a man of action. Grief is a
waste, and so is fear. And action is what you will get here, as soon as I get through this
introduction.

Remember, beginnings are always hard and most are artificial. It was the best of times
and the worst of times-really? When! And all happy families are not alike; even Tolstoy
must have realized that. I can't get away with "In the beginning," or "They threw me off
the hay truck at noon," or I would do it. I always get away with whatever I can, believe
me. And as Nabokov said in the voice of Humbert Humbert, "You can always count on a
murderer for a fancy prose style. " Can't fancy mean experimental? I already know of
course that I am sensuous, florid, lush, humid-enough critics have told me that.

Alas, I have to do things my own way. And we will get to the beginning-if that isn't a
contradiction in terms-I promise you.

Right now I must explain that before this adventure commenced, I was also grieving for
the other immortals I had known and loved, because they had long ago scattered from our
last late-twentieth century gathering place. Folly to think we wanted to create a coven
again. They had one by one disappeared into time and the world, which was inevitable.

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

Out of that need I'd made my fledglings-Louis de Pointe du Lac, who became my patient
and often loving nineteenth-century comrade, and with his unwitting aid, the beautiful
and doomed child vampire, Claudia. And during these lonely vagabond nights of the late
twentieth century, Louis was the only immortal whom I saw quite often. The most human
of us all, the most ungodlike.

I never stayed away too long from his shack in the wilderness of uptown New Orleans.
But you'll see. I'll get to that. Louis is in this story.

The point is-you find precious little here about the others. Indeed, almost nothing.

Except for Claudia. I was dreaming more and more often of Claudia. Let me explain
about Claudia. She'd been destroyed over a century before, yet I felt her presence all the
time as if she were just around the corner.

It was 1794 when I made this succulent little vampire out of a dying orphan, and sixty
years passed before she rose up against me. "I'll put you in your coffin forever, Father."

I did sleep in a coffin then. And it was a period piece, that lurid attempted murder,
involving as it did mortal victims baited with poisons to cloud my mind, knives tearing
my white flesh, and the ultimate abandonment of my seemingly lifeless form in the rank
waters of the swamp beyond the dim lights of New Orleans.

Well, it didn't work. There are very few sure ways to kill the undead. The sun, fire... One
must aim for total obliteration. And after all, we are talking about the Vampire Lestat
here.

Claudia suffered for this crime, being executed later by an evil coven of blood drinkers
who thrived in the very heart of Paris in the infamous Theatre of the Vampires. I'd broken
the rules when I made a blood drinker of a child so small, and for that reason alone, the
Parisian monsters might have put an end to her. But she too had broken their rules in
trying to destroy her maker, and that you might say was their logical reason for shutting
her out into the bright light of day which burnt her to ashes.

It's a hell of a way to execute someone, as far as I'm concerned, because those who lock
you out must quickly retire to their coffins and are not even there to witness the mighty
sun carrying out their grim sentence. But that's what they did to this exquisite and
delicate creature that I had fashioned with my vampiric blood from a ragged, dirty waif in
a ramshackle Spanish colony in the New World-to be my friend, my pupil, my love, my
muse, my fellow hunter. And yes, my daughter.

If you read Interview with the Vampire, then you know all about this. It's Louis's version
of our time together. Louis tells of his love for this our child, and of his vengeance
against those who destroyed her.

If you read my autobiographical books, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the
Damned, you know all about me, also. You know our history, for what it's worth-and
history is never worth too much-and how we came into being thousands of years ago and
that we propagate by carefully giving the Dark Blood to mortals when we wish to take
them along the Devil's Road with us.

But you don't have to read those works to understand this one. And you won't find here
the cast of thousands that crowded The Queen of the Damned, either. Western
civilization will not for one second teeter on the brink. And there will be no revelations
from ancient times or old ones confiding half-truths and riddles and promising answers
that do not in fact exist and never have existed.

No, I have done all that before.

This is a contemporary story. It's a volume in the Vampire Chronicles, make no mistake.
But it is the first really modern volume, for it accepts the horrifying absurdity of
existence from the start, and it takes us into the mind and the soul of its hero- guess
who?-for its discoveries.

Read this tale, and I will give you all you need to know about us as you turn the pages.
And by the way, lots of things do happen! I'm a man of action as I said-the James Bond
of the vampires, if you will-called the Brat Prince, and the Damnedest Creature, and "you
monster" by various and sundry other immortals.

The other immortals are still around, of course-Maharet and Mekare, the eldest of us all,
Khayman of the First Brood, Eric, Santino, Pandora, and others whom we call the
Children of the Millennia. Armand is still about, the lovely five-hundred-year-old boy-

faced ancient who once ruled the Theatre des Vampires, and before that a coven of devil
worshiping blood drinkers who lived beneath the Paris Cemetery, Les Innocents.
Armand, I hope, will always be around.

And Gabrielle, my mortal mother and immortal child will no doubt turn up one of these
nights sometime before the end of another thousand years, if I'm lucky.

As for Marius, my old teacher and mentor, the one who kept the historical secrets of our
tribe, he is still with us and always will be. Before this tale began, he would come to me
now and then to scold and plead: Would I not stop my careless kills which invariably
found their way into the pages of mortal newspapers! Would I not stop deviling my
mortal friend David Talbot, and tempting him with the Dark Gift of our blood? Better we
make no more, did I not know this?

Rules, rules, rules. They always wind up talking about rules. And I love to break the rules
the way mortals like to smash their crystal glasses after a toast against the bricks of the
fireplace.

But enough about the others. The point is-this is my book from start to finish.

Let me speak now of the dreams that had come to trouble me in my wanderings.

With Claudia, it was almost a haunting. Just before my eyes would close each dawn, I'd
see her beside me, hear her voice in a low and urgent whisper. And sometimes I'd slide
back over the centuries to the little colonial hospital with its rows of tiny beds where the
orphan child had been dying.

Behold the sorrowful old doctor, potbellied and palsied, as he lifts the child's body. And
that crying. Who is crying? Claudia was not crying. She slept as the doctor entrusted her
to me, believing me to be her mortal father. And she is so pretty in these dreams. Was she
that pretty then? Of course she was.

"Snatching me from mortal hands like two grim monsters in a nightmare fairy tale, you
idle, blind parents!"

The dream of David Talbot came once only.

David is young in the dream and he is walking in a mangrove forest. He was not the man
of seventy-four who had become my friend, the patient mortal scholar who regularly
refused my offer of the Dark Blood, and laid his warm, fragile hand on my cold flesh
unflinchingly to demonstrate the affection and trust between us.

No. This is young David Talbot of years and years ago, when his heart didn't beat so fast
within his chest. Yet he is in danger.

Tyger, tyger burning bright.

Is that his voice, whispering those words or is it mine?

And out of the dappled light it comes, its orange and black stripes like the light and shade
itself so that it is scarcely visible. I see its huge head, and how soft its muzzle, white and
bristling with long, delicate whiskers. But look at its yellow eyes, mere slits, and full of
horrid mindless cruelty. David, its fangs! Can't you see these fangs!

But he is curious as a child, watching its big pink tongue touch his throat, touch the thin
gold chain he wears around his throat. Is it eating the chain? Good God, David! The
fangs.

Why is my voice dried up inside me? Am I even there in the mangrove forest? My body
vibrates as I struggle to move, dull moans coming from behind my sealed lips, and each
moan taxes every fiber of my being. David, beware!

And then I see that he is down on one knee, with the long shiny rifle cocked against his
shoulder. And the giant cat is still yards away, bearing down on him. On and on it rushes,
until the crack of the gun stops it in its tracks, and over it goes as the gun roars once
again, its yellow eyes full of rage, its paws crossed as they push in one last final breath at
the soft earth.

I wake.

What does this dream mean-that my mortal friend is in danger? Or simply that his genetic
clock has ticked to a stop. For a man of seventy-four years, death can come at any instant.

Do I ever think of David that I do not think of death?

David, where are you?

Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.

"I want you to ask me for the Dark Gift,'' I'd said to him when first we met. "I may not
give it to you. But I want you to ask."

He never had. He never would. And now I loved him. I saw him soon after the dream. I
had to. But I could not forget the dream and perhaps it did come to me more than once in
the deep sleep of my daylight hours when I am stone cold and helpless under literal cover
of darkness.

All right, you have the dreams now.

But picture the winter snow in France one more time, if you would, piling about the
castle walls, and a young male mortal asleep on his bed of hay, in the light of the fire,
with his hunting dogs beside him. This had become the image of my lost human life,

more truly than any remembrance of the boulevard theatre in Paris, where before the
Revolution I'd been so very happy as a young actor.

Now we are truly ready to begin. Let's turn the page, shall we?

THE TALE OF THE BODY THIEF

ONE

MIAMI-the vampires' city. This is South Beach at sunset, in the luxurious warmth of the
winterless winter, clean and thriving and drenched in electric light, the gentle breeze
moving in from the placid sea, across the dark margin of cream-colored sand, to cool the
smooth broad pavements full of happy mortal children.

Sweet the parade of fashionable young men displaying their cultured muscles with
touching vulgarity, of young women so proud of their streamlined and seemingly sexless
modern limbs, amid the soft urgent roar of traffic and human voices.

Old stucco hostelries, once the middling shelters of the aged, were now reborn in smart
pastel colors, sporting their new names in elegant neon script. Candles flickered on the
white-draped tables of the open-porch restaurants. Big shiny American cars pushed their
way slowly along the avenue, as drivers and passengers viewed the dazzling human
parade, lazy pedestrians here and there blocking the thoroughfare.

On the distant horizon the great white clouds were mountains beneath a roofless and star-
filled heaven. Ah, it never failed to take my breath away-this southern sky filled with
azure light and drowsy relentless movement.

To the north rose the towers of new Miami Beach in all their splendour. To the south and
to the west, the dazzling steel skyscrapers of the downtown city with its high roaring
freeways and busy cruise-ship docks. Small pleasure boats sped along the sparkling
waters of the myriad urban canals.

In the quiet immaculate gardens of Coral Gables, countless lamps illuminated the
handsome sprawling villas with their red-tiled roofs, and swimming pools shimmering
with turquoise light. Ghosts walked in the grand and darkened rooms of the Biltmore.
The massive mangrove trees threw out their primitive limbs to cover the broad and
carefully tended streets.

In Coconut Grove, the international shoppers thronged the luxurious hotels and
fashionable malls. Couples embraced on the high balconies of their glass-walled
condominiums, silhouettes gazing out over the serene waters of the bay. Cars sped along
the busy roads past the ever-dancing palms and delicate rain trees, past the squat concrete
mansions draped with red and purple bougainvillea, behind their fancy iron gates.

All of this is Miami, city of water, city of speed, city of tropical flowers, city of enormous
skies. It is for Miami, more than any other place, that I periodically leave my New
Orleans home. The men and women of many nations and different colors live in the great
dense neighborhoods of Miami. One hears Yiddish, Hebrew, the languages of Spain, of
Haiti, the dialects and accents of Latin America, of the deep south of this nation and of
the far north. There is menace beneath the shining surface of Miami, there is desperation
and a throbbing greed; there is the deep steady pulse of a great capital-the tow grinding
energy, the endless risk.

It's never really dark in Miami. It's never really quiet.

It is the perfect city for the vampire; and it never fails to yield to me a mortal killer-some
twisted, sinister morsel who will give up to me a dozen of his own murders as I drain his
memory banks and his blood.

But tonight it was the Big-Game Hunt, the unseasonal Easter feast after a Lent of
starvation-the pursuit of one of those splendid human trophies whose gruesome modus
operandi reads for pages in the computer files of mortal law enforcement agencies, a
being anointed in his anonymity with a flashy name by the worshipful press: "Back Street
Strangler."

I lust after such killers!

What luck for me that such a celebrity had surfaced in my favorite city. What luck that he
has struck six times in these very streets-slayer of the old and the infirm, who have come
in such numbers to live out their remaining days in these warm climes. Ah, I would have
crossed a continent to snap him up, but he is here waiting for me. To his dark history,
detailed by no less than twenty criminologists, and easily purloined by me through the
computer in my New Orleans lair, I have secretly added the crucial elements-his name
and mortal habitation.

A simple trick for a dark god who can read minds. Through his blood-soaked dreams I
found him. And tonight the pleasure will be mine of finishing his illustrious career in a
dark cruel embrace, without a scintilla of moral illumination.

Ah, Miami. The perfect place for this little Passion Play.

I always come back to Miami, the way I come back to New Orleans. And I'm the only
immortal now who hunts this glorious corner of the Savage Garden, for as you have seen,
the others long ago deserted the coven house here-unable to endure each other's company
any more than I can endure them.

But so much the better to have Miami all to myself.

I stood at the front windows of the rooms I maintained in the swanky little Park Central
Hotel on Ocean Drive, every now and then letting my preternatural hearing sweep the

chambers around me in which the rich tourists enjoyed that premium brand of solitude-
complete privacy only steps from the flashy street-my Champs Elysees of the moment,
my Via Veneto.

My strangler was almost ready to move from the realm of his spasmodic and fragmentary
visions into the land of literal death. Ah, time to dress for the man of my dreams.

Picking from the usual wilderness of freshly opened cardboard boxes, suitcases, and
trunks, I chose a suit of gray velvet, an old favorite, especially when the fabric is thick,
with only a subtle luster. Not very likely for these warm nights, I had to admit, but then I
don't feel hot and cold the way humans do. And the coat was slim with narrow lapels,
very spare and rather like a hacking jacket with its fitted waist, or, more to the point, like
the graceful old frock coats of earlier times. We immortals forever fancy old-fashioned
garments, garments that remind us of the century in which we were Born to Darkness.
Sometimes you can gauge the true age of an immortal simply by the cut of his clothes.

With me, it's also a matter of texture. The eighteenth century was so shiny! I can't bear to
be without a little luster. And this handsome coat suited me perfectly with the plain tight
velvet pants. As for the white silk shirt, it was a cloth so soft you could ball the garment
in the palm of your hand. Why should I wear anything else so close to my indestructible
and curiously sensitive skin? Then the boots. Ah, they look like all my fine shoes of late.
Their soles are immaculate, for they so seldom touch the mother earth.

My hair I shook loose into the usual thick mane of glowing yellow shoulder-length
waves. What would I look like to mortals? I honestly don't know. I covered up my blue
eyes, as always, with black glasses, lest their radiance mesmerize and entrance at
random-a real nuisance-and over my delicate white hands, with their telltale glassy
fingernails, I drew the usual pair of soft gray leather gloves.

Ah, a bit of oily brown camouflage for the skin. I smoothed the lotion over my
cheekbones, over the bit of neck and chest that was bare.

I inspected the finished product in the mirror. Still irresistible. No wonder I'd been such a
smash in my brief career as a rock singer. And I've always been a howling success as a
vampire. Thank the gods I hadn't become invisible in my airy wanderings, a vagabond
floating far above the clouds, light as a cinder on the wind. I felt like weeping when I
thought of it.

The Big-Game Hunt always brought me back to the actual. Track him, wait for him,
catch him just at the moment that he would bring death to his next victim, and take him
slowly, painfully, feasting upon his wickedness as you do it, glimpsing through the filthy
lens of his soul all his earlier victims . . .

Please understand, there is no nobility in this. I don't believe that rescuing one poor
mortal from such a fiend can conceivably save my soul. I have taken life too often-unless
one believes that the power of one good deed is infinite. I don't know whether or not I

believe that. What I do believe is this: The evil of one murder is infinite, and my guilt is
like my beauty-eternal. I cannot be forgiven, for there is no one to forgive me for all I've
done.

Nevertheless I like saving those innocents from their fate. And! like taking my killers to
me because they are my brothers, and we belong together, and why shouldn't they die in
my arms instead of some poor merciful mortal who has never done anyone any willful
harm? These are the rules of my game. I play by these rules because I made them. And I
promised myself, I wouldn't leave the bodies about this time; I'd strive to do what the
others have always ordered me to do. But still... I liked to leave the carcass for the
authorities. I liked to fire up the computer later, after I'd returned to New Orleans, and
read the entire postmortem report.

Suddenly I was distracted by the sound of a police car passing slowly below, the men
inside it speaking of my killer, that he will strike soon again, his stars are in the correct
positions, the moon is at the right height. It will be in the side streets of South Beach
most certainly, as it has been before. But who is he? How can he be stopped?

Seven o'clock. The tiny green numerals of the digital clock told me it was so, though I
already knew, of course. I closed my eyes, letting my head drop just a little to one side,
bracing myself perhaps for the full effects of this power which I so loathed. First came an
amplification of the hearing again, as if I had thrown a modern technological switch. The
soft purring sounds of the world became a chorus from hell-full of sharp-edged laughter
and lamentation, full of lies and anguish and random pleas. I covered my ears as if that
could stop it, then finally I shut it off.

Gradually I saw the blurred and overlapping images of their thoughts, rising like a
million fluttering birds into the firmament. Give me my killer, give me his vision!

He was there, in a small dingy room, very unlike this one, yet only two blocks from it,
just rising from his bed. His cheap clothes were rumpled, sweat covering his coarse face,
a thick nervous hand going for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, then letting them go-
already forgotten. A heavy man he was, of shapeless facial features and a look full of
vague worry, or dim regret.

It did not occur to him to dress for the evening, for the Feast for which he'd been
hungering. And now his waking mind was almost collapsed beneath the burden of his
ugly palpitating dreams. He shook himself all over, loose greasy hair falling onto his
sloping forehead, eyes like bits of black glass.

Standing still in the silent shadows of my room, I continued to track him, to follow down
a back stairs, and out into the garish light of Collins Avenue, past dusty shop windows
and sagging commercial signs, propelled onward, towards the inevitable and yet
unchosen object of his desire.

And who might she be, the lucky lady, wandering blindly and inexorably towards this
horror, through the sparse and dismal crowds of the early evening in this same dreary
region of town? Does she carry a carton of milk and a head of lettuce in a brown paper
bag? Will she hurry at the sight of the cutthroats on the corner? Does she grieve for the
old beachfront where she lived perhaps so contentedly before the architects and the
decorators drove her to the cracked and peeling hostelries further away?

And what will he think when he finally spots her, this filthy angel of death? Will she be
the very one to remind him of the mythic shrew of childhood, who beat him senseless
only to be elevated to the nightmare pantheon of his subconscious, or are we asking too
much?

I mean there are killers of this species who make not the smallest connection between
symbol and reality, and remember nothing for longer than a few days. What is certain is
only that their victims don't deserve it, and that they, the killers, deserve to meet with me.

Ah, well, I will tear out his menacing heart before he has had a chance to "do" her, and he
will give me everything that he has, and is.

I walked slowly down the steps, and through the smart, glittering art deco lobby with its
magazine-page glamour. How good it felt to be moving like a mortal, to open the doors,
to wander out into the fresh air. I headed north along the sidewalk among the evening
strollers, eyes drifting naturally over the newly refurbished hotels and their little cafes.

The crowd thickened as I reached the corner. Before a fancy open-air restaurant, giant
television cameras focused their lenses on a stretch of sidewalk harshly illuminated by
enormous white lights. Trucks blocked the traffic; cars slowed to a stop. A loose crowd
had gathered of young and old, only mildly fascinated, for television and motion picture
cameras in the vicinity of South Beach were a familiar sight.

I skirted the lights, fearing their effect upon my highly reflective face. Would I were one
of the tan-skinned ones, smelling of expensive beach oils, and half naked in friable cotton
rags. I made my way around the corner. Again, I scanned for the prey. He was racing, his
mind so thick with hallucinations that he could scarce control his shuffling, sloppy steps.

There was no time left.

With a little spurt of speed, I took to the low roofs. The breeze was stronger, sweeter.
Gentle the roar of excited voices, the dull natural songs of radios, the sound of the wind
itself.

In silence I caught his image in the indifferent eyes of those who passed him; in silence I
saw his fantasies once more of withered hands and withered feet, of shrunken cheeks and
shrunken breasts. The thin membrane between fantasy and reality was breaking.

I hit the pavements of Collins Avenue, so swiftly perhaps I simply seemed to appear. But
nobody was looking. I was the proverbial tree falling in the uninhabited forest.

And in minutes, I was ambling along, steps behind him, a menacing young man perhaps,
piercing the little clusters of tough guys who blocked the path, pursuing the prey through
the glass doors of a giant ice-cooled drugstore. Ah, such a circus for the eye-this low-
ceilinged cave-chock-full of every imaginable kind of packageable and preserved
foodstuff, toilet article, and hair accoutrement, ninety percent of which existed not at all
in any form whatsoever during the century when I was bora.

We're talking sanitary napkins, medicinal eyedrops, plastic bobby pins, felt-tip markers,
creams and ointments for all nameable parts of the human body, dishwashing liquid in
every color of the rainbow, and cosmetic rinses in some colors never before invented and
yet undefined. Imagine Louis XVI opening a noisy crackling plastic sack of such
wonders? What would he think of Styrofoam coffee cups, chocolate cookies wrapped in
cellophane, or pens that never run out of ink?

Well, I'm still not entirely used to these items myself, though I've watched the progress of
the Industrial Revolution for two centuries with my own eyes. Such drugstores can keep
me enthralled for hours on end. Sometimes I become spellbound in the middle of Wal-
Mart.

But this time I had a prey hi my sights, didn't I? Later for Time and Vogue, pocket
computer language translators, and wristwatches that continue to tell time even as you
swim in the sea.

Why had he come to this place? The young Cuban families with babies in tow were not
his style. Yet aimlessly he wandered the narrow crowded aisles, oblivious to the
hundreds of dark faces and the fast riffs of Spanish around him, unnoticed by anyone but
me, as his red-rimmed eyes swept the cluttered shelves.

Lord God, but he was filthy-all decency lost in his mania, craggy face and neck creased
with dirt. Will I love it? Hell, he's a sack of blood. Why push my luck? I couldn't kill
little children anymore, could I? Or feast on waterfront harlots, telling myself it's all
perfectly fine, for they have poisoned their share of flat-boatmen. My conscience is
killing me, isn't it? And when you're immortal that can be a really long and ignominious
death. Yeah, look at him, this dirty, stinking, lumbering killer. Men in prison get better
chow than this.

And then it hit me as I scanned his mind once more as if cutting open a cantaloupe. He
doesn't know what he is! He has never read his own headlines! And indeed he does not
remember episodes of his life in any discerning order, and could not in truth confess to
the murders he has committed for he does not truly recall them, and he does not know
that he will kill tonight! He does not know what I know!

Ah, sadness and grief, I had drawn the very worst card, no doubt about it. Oh, Lord God!
What had I been thinking of to hunt this one, when the starlit world is full of more
vicious and cunning beasts? I wanted to weep.

But then came the provocative moment. He had seen the old woman, seen her bare
wrinkled arms, the small hump of her back, her thin and shivering thighs beneath her
pastel shorts. Through the glare of fluorescent light, she made her way idly, enjoying the
buzz and throb of those around her, face half hidden beneath the green plastic of a visor,
hair twisted with dark pins on the back of her small head.

She carried in her little basket a pint of orange juice in a plastic bottle, and a pair of
slippers so soft they were folded up into a neat little roll. And now to this she added, with
obvious glee, a paperback novel from the rack, which she had read before, but fondled
lovingly, dreaming of reading it again, like visiting with old acquaintances. A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn. Yes, I loved it too.

In a trance, he fell in behind her, so close that surely she felt his breath on her neck. Dull-
eyed and stupid, he watched as she inched her way closer and closer to the register,
drawing out a few dirty dollar bills from the sagging collar of her blouse.

Out the doors they went, he with the listless plodding style of a dog after a bitch in heat,
she making her way slowly with her gray sack drooping from its cut-out handles, veering
broadly and awkwardly around the bands of noisy and brazen youngsters on the prowl. Is
she talking to herself? Seems so. I didn't scan her, this little being walking faster and
faster. I scanned the beast behind her, who was wholly unable to see her as the sum of her
parts.

Pallid, feeble faces flashed through his mind as he trailed behind her. He hungered to lie
on top of old flesh; he hungered to put a hand over an old mouth.

When she reached her small forlorn apartment building, made of crumbling chalk, it
seemed, like everything else in this seedy section of town, and guarded by bruised
palmettos, he came to a sudden swaying stop, watching mutely as she walked back the
narrow tiled courtyard and up the dusty green cement steps. He noted the number of her
painted door as she unlocked it, or rather he clamped on to the location, and sinking back
against the wall, he began to dream very specifically of killing her, in a featureless and
empty bedroom that seemed no more than a smear of color and light.

Ah, look at him resting against the wall as if he had been stabbed, head lolling to one
side. Impossible to be interested in him. Why don't I kill him now!

But the moments ticked, and the night lost its twilight incandescence. The stars grew ever
more brilliant. The breeze came and went.

We waited.

Through her eyes, I saw her parlour as if I could really see through walls and floors-
clean, though filled with careless old furniture of ugly veneer, round-shouldered,
unimportant to her. But all had been polished with a scented oil she loved. Neon light
passed through the Dacron curtains, milky and cheerless as the view of the yard below.
But she had the comforting glow of her small carefully positioned lamps. That was what
mattered to her.

In a maple rocking chair with hideous plaid upholstery, she sat composed, a tiny but
dignified figure, open paperback novel hi hand. What happiness to be once more with
Francie Nolan. Her thin knees were barely hidden now by the flowered cotton robe she
had taken from her closet, and she wore the little blue slippers like socks over her small
misshapen feet. She had made of her long gray hair one thick and graceful braid.

On the small black-and-white television screen before her, dead movie stars argued
without making a sound. Joan Fon-taine thinks Gary Grant is trying to kill her. And
judging by the expression on his face, it certainly did seem that way to me. How could
anyone ever trust Gary Grant, I wondered-a man who looked as though he were made
entirely of wood?

She didn't need to hear their words; she had seen this movie, by her careful count, some
thirteen times. She had read this novel in her lap only twice, and so it will be with very
special pleasure that she revisits these paragraphs, which she does not know yet by heart.

From the shadowy garden below, I discerned her neat and accepting concept of self,
without drama and detached from the acknowledged bad taste that surrounded her. Her
few treasures could be contained in any cabinet. The book and the lighted screen were
more important to her than anything else she owned, and she was well aware of their
spirituality. Even the color of her functional and styleless clothes was not worth her
concern.

My vagabond killer was near paralysis, his mind a riot of moments so personal they
defied interpretation.

I slipped around the little stucco building and found the stairs to her kitchen door. The
lock gave easily when I commanded it to do so. And the door opened as if I had touched
it, when I had not.

Without a sound I slipped into the small linoleum-tiled room. The stench of gas rising
from the small white stove was sickening to me. So was the smell of the soap in its sticky
ceramic dish. But the room touched my heart instantly. Beautify! the cherished china of
Chinese blue and white, so neatly stacked, with plates displayed. Behold the dog-eared
cookbooks. And how spotless her table with its shining oilcloth of pure yellow, and
waxen green ivy growing in a round bowl of clear water, which projected upon the low
ceiling a single quivering circle of light.

But what filled my mind as I stood there, rigid, pushing the door shut with my fingers,
was that she was unafraid of death as she read her Betty Smith novel, as she occasionally
glanced at the glittering screen. She had no inner antenna to pick up the presence of the
spook who stood, sunk into madness, in the nearby street, or the monster who haunted
her kitchen now.

The killer was immersed so completely in his hallucinations that he did not see those who
passed him by. He did not see the police car prowling, or the suspicious and deliberately
menacing looks of the uniformed mortals who knew all about him, and that he would
strike tonight, but not who he was.

A thin line of spit moved down his unshaven chin. Nothing was real to him-not his life by
day, not fear of discovery- only the electric shiver which these hallucinations sent
through his hulking torso and clumsy arms and legs. His left hand twitched suddenly.
There was a catch at the left side of his mouth.

I hated this guy! I didn't want to drink his blood. He was no classy killer. It was her blood
I craved.

How thoughtful she was in her solitude and silence, how small, how contented, her
concentration as fine as a light beam as she read the paragraphs of this story she knew so
well. Traveling, traveling back to those days when she first read this book, at a crowded
soda fountain on Lexington Avenue in New York City, when she was a smartly dressed
young secretary in a red wool skirt and a white ruffled blouse with pearl buttons on the
cuffs. She worked in a stone office tower, infinitely glamorous, with ornate brass doors
on its elevators, and dark yellow marble tile in its halls.

I wanted to press my lips to her memories, to the remembered sounds of her high heels
clicking on the marble, to the image of her smooth calf beneath the pure silk stocking as
she put it on so carefully, not to snag it with her long enameled nails. I saw her red hair
for an instant. I saw her extravagant and potentially hideous yet charming yellow
brimmed hat.

That's blood worth having. And I was starving, starving as I have seldom been in all these
decades. The unseasonal Lenten fast had been almost more than I could endure. Oh, Lord
God, I wanted so to kill her!

Below in the street, a faint gurgling sound came from the lips of the stupid, clumsy killer.
It cleared its way through the raging torrent of other sounds that poured into my vampiric
ears.

At last, the beast lurched away from the wall, listing for a moment as if he would go
sprawling, then sauntered towards us, into the little courtyard and up the steps.

Will I let him frighten her? It seemed pointless. I have him in my sights, do I not? Yet I
allowed him to put his small metal tool into the round hole in her doorknob, I gave him
time to force the lock. The chain tore loose from the rotten wood.

He stepped into the room, fixing upon her without expression. She was terrified,
shrinking back in her chair, the book slipping from her lap.

Ah, but then he saw me in the kitchen doorway-a shadowy young man in gray velvet,
glasses pushed up over his forehead. I was gazing at him in his own expressionless
fashion. Did he see these iridescent eyes, this skin like polished ivory, hair like a
soundless explosion of white light? Or was I merely an obstacle between him and his
sinister goal, all beauty wasted?

In a second, he bolted. He was down the steps as the old woman screamed and rushed
forward to slam the wooden door.

I was after him, not bothering to touch terra firma, letting him see me poised for an
instant under the street lamp as he turned the corner. We went for half a block before I
drifted towards him, a blur to the mortals, who didn't bother to notice. Then I froze beside
him, and heard his groan as he broke into a run.

For blocks we played this game. He ran, he stopped, he saw me behind him. The sweat
poured down his body. Indeed the thin synthetic fabric of the shirt was soon translucent
with it, and clinging to the smooth hairless flesh of his chest.

At last he came to his seedy flophouse hotel and pounded up the stairs. I was in the small
top-floor room when he reached it. Before he could cry out, I had him in my arms. The
stench of his dirty hair rose in my nostrils, mingled with a thin acidic smell from the
chemical fibers of the shirt. But it didn't matter now. He was powerful and warm in my
arms, a juicy capon, chest heaving against me, the smell of his blood flooding my brain. I
heard it pulsing through ventricles and valves and painfully constricted vessels. I licked
at it in the tender red flesh beneath his eyes.

His heart was laboring and nearly bursting-careful, careful, don't crush him, I let my teeth
clamp down on the wet leathery skin of his neck. Hmmm. My brother, my poor
befuddled brother. But this was rich, this was good.

The fountain opened; his life was a sewer. All those old women, those old men. They
were cadavers floating in the current; they tumbled against each other without meaning,
as he went limp in my arms. No sport. Too easy. No cunning. No malice. Crude as a
lizard he had been, swallowing fly after fly. Lord God, to know this is to know the time
when the giant reptiles ruled the earth, and for a million years, only their yellow eyes
beheld the falling rain, or the rising sun.

Never mind. I let him go, tumbling soundlessly out of my grip. I was swimming with his
mammalian blood. Good enough. I closed my eyes, letting this hot coil penetrate my

intestines, or whatever was down there now in this hard powerful white body. In a daze, I
saw him stumbling on his knees across the floor. So exquisitely clumsy. So easy to pick
him up from the mess of twisted and tearing newspapers, the overturned cup pouring its
cold coffee into the dust-colored rug.

I jerked him back by his collar. His big empty eyes rolled up into his head. Then he
kicked at me, blindly, this bully, this killer of the old and weak, shoe scuffing my shin. I
lifted him to my hungry mouth again, fingers sliding through his hair, and felt him stiffen
as if my fangs were dipped in poison.

Again the blood flooded my brain. I felt it electrify the tiny veins of my face. I felt it
pulse even into my fingers, and a hot prickling warmth slide down my spine. Draught
after draught filled me. Succulent, heavy creature. Then I let him go once more, and
when he stumbled away this time, I went after him, dragging him across the floor, turning
his face to me, then tossing him forward and letting him struggle again.

He was speaking to me now in something that ought to have been language, but it wasn't.
He pushed at me but he could no longer see clearly. And for the first time a tragic dignity
infused him, a vague look of outrage, blind as he was. It seemed I was embellished and
enfolded now in old tales, in memories of plaster statues and nameless saints. His fingers
clawed at the instep of my shoe. I lifted him up, and when I tore his throat this time, the
wound was too big. It was done.

The death came like a fist in the gut. For a moment I felt nausea, and then simply the
heat, the fullness, the sheer radiance of the living blood, with that last vibration of
consciousness pulsing through all my limbs.

I sank down on his soiled bed. I don't know how long I lay there.

I stared at his low ceiling. And then when the sour musty smells of the room surrounded
me, and the stench of his body, I rose and stumbled out, an ungainly figure as surely as he
had been, letting myself go soft in these mortal gestures, in rage and hatred, in silence,
because I didn't want to be the weightless one, the winged one, the night traveler. I
wanted to be human, and feel human, and his blood was threaded all through me, and it
wasn't enough. Not nearly enough!

Where are all my promises? The stiff and bruised palmettos rattle against the stucco
walls.

"Oh, you're back," she said to me.

Such a low, strong voice she had, no tremor in it. She was standing in front of the ugly
plaid rocker, with its worn maple arms, peering at me through her silver-rimmed glasses,
the paperback novel clasped in her hand. Her mouth was small and shapeless and
showing a bit of yellow teeth, a hideous contrast to the dark personality of the voice,
which knew no infirmity at all.

What in God's name was she thinking as she smiled at me? Why doesn't she pray?

"I knew you'd come," she said. Then she took off the glasses, and I saw that her eyes
were glazed. What was she seeing? What was I making her see? I who can control all
these elements flawlessly was so baffled I could have wept. "Yes, I knew."

"Oh? And how did you know?" I whispered as I approached her, loving the embracing
closeness of the common little room.

I reached out with these monstrous fingers too white to be human, strong enough to tear
her head off, and I felt her little throat. Smell of Chantilly-or some other drugstore scent.

"Yes," she said airily but definitely. "I always knew."

"Kiss me, then. Love me."

How hot she was, and how tiny were her shoulders, how gorgeous in this the final
withering, the flower tinged with yellow, yet full of fragrance still, pale blue veins
dancing beneath her flaccid skin, eyelids perfectly molded to her eyes when she closed
them, the skin flowing over the bones of her skull.

"Take me to heaven," she said. Out of the heart came the voice.

"I can't. I wish I could," I was purring into her ear.

I closed my arms around her. I nuzzled her soft nest of gray hair. I felt her fingers on my
face like dried leaves, and it sent a soft chill through me. She, too, was shivering. Ah,
tender and worn little thing, ah, creature reduced to thought and will with a body
insubstantial like a fragile flame! Just the "little drink," Lestat, no more.

But it was too late and I knew it when the first spurt of blood hit my tongue. I was
draining her. Surely the sounds of my moans must have alarmed her, but then she was
past hearing... They never hear the real sounds once it's begun.

Forgive me.

Oh, darling!

We were sinking down together on the carpet, lovers in a patch of nubby faded flowers. I
saw the book fallen there, and the drawing on the cover, but this seemed unreal. I hugged
her so carefully, lest she break. But I was the hollow shell. Her death was coming swiftly,
as if she herself were walking towards

me in a broad corridor, in some extremely particular and very important place. Ah, yes,
the yellow marble tile. New York City, and even up here you can hear the traffic, and that
low boom when a door slams on a stairway, down the hall.

"Good night, my darling," she whispered.

Am I hearing things? How can she still make words?

I love you. Yes, darling. I love you too."

She stood in the hallway. Her hair was red and stiff and curling prettily at her shoulders;
she was smiling, and her heels had been making that sharp, enticing sound on the marble,
but there was only silence around her as the folds of her woolen skirt still moved; she
was looking at me with such a strange clever expression; she lifted a small black snub-
nosed gun and pointed it at me.

What the hell are you doing?

She is dead. The shot was so loud that for a moment I could hear nothing. Only ringing in
my ears. I lay on the floor staring blankly at the ceiling overhead, smelling cordite in a
corridor in New York.

But this was Miami. Her clock was ticking on the table. From the overheated heart of the
television came the pinched and tiny voice of Gary Grant telling Joan Fontaine that he
loved her. And Joan Fontaine was so happy. She'd thought for sure Gary Grant meant to
kill her.

And so had I.

South Beach. Give me the Neon Strip once more. Only this time I walked away from the
busy pavements, out over the sand and towards the sea.

On and on I went until there was no one near-not even the beach wanderers, or the night
swimmers. Only the sand, blown clean already of ail the day's footprints, and the great
gray nighttime ocean, throwing up its endless surf upon the patient shore. How high the
visible heavens, how full of swiftly moving clouds and distant unobtrusive stars.

What had I done? I'd killed her, his victim, pinched out the light of the one I'd been
bound to save. I'd gone back to her and I'd lain with her, and I'd taken her, and she'd fired
the invisible shot too late.

And the thirst was there again.

I'd laid her down on her small neat bed afterwards, on the dull quilted nylon, folding her
arms and closing her eyes.

Dear God, help me. Where are my nameless saints? Where are the angels with their
feathered wings to carry me down into hell? When they do come, are they the last
beautiful thing that you see? As you go down into the lake of fire, can you still follow
their progress heavenward? Can you hope for one last glimpse of their golden trumpets,
and their upturned faces reflecting the radiance of the face of God? What do I know of
heaven?

For long moments I stood there, staring at the distant night-scape of pure clouds, and then
back at the twinkling lights of the new hotels, flash of headlamps.

A lone mortal stood on the far sidewalk, staring in my direction, but perhaps he did not
note my presence at all-a tiny figure on the lip of the great sea. Perhaps he was only
looking towards the ocean as I had been looking, as if the shore were miraculous, as if
the water could wash our souls clean.

Once the world was nothing but the sea; rain fell for a hundred million years! But now
the cosmos crawls with monsters. He was still there, that lone and staring mortal. And
gradually I realized that over the empty sweep of beach and its thin darkness, his eyes
were fixed intently on mine. Yes, looking at me.

I scarce thought about it, looking at him only because I did not bother to turn away. Then
a curious sensation passed over me-and one which I had never felt before.

I was faintly dizzy as it began, and a soft tingling vibration followed, coursing through
my trunk and then my arms and legs. It felt as if my limbs were growing tighter,
narrower, and steadily compressing the substance within. Indeed, so distinct was this
feeling that it seemed I might be squeezed right out of myself. I marveled at it. There was
something faintly delicious about it, especially to a being as hard and cold and
impervious to all sensations as I am. It was overwhelming, very like the way the drinking
of blood is overwhelming, though it was nothing as visceral as that. Also no sooner had I
analyzed it than I realized it was gone.

I shuddered. Had I imagined the entire thing? I was still staring at that distant mortal-
poor soul who gazed back at me without the slightest knowledge of who or what I was.
There was a smile on his young face, brittle and full of crazed wonder. And gradually I
realized I had seen this face before. I was further startled to make out in his expression
now a certain definite recognition, and the odd attitude of expectation. Suddenly he
raised his right hand and waved.

Balfling.

But I knew this mortal. No, more nearly accurate to say I had glimpsed him more than
once, and then the only certain recollections returned to me with full force.

In Venice, hovering on the edge of the Piazza San Marco, and months after in Hong
Kong, near the Night Market, and both times I had taken particular notice of him because

he had taken particular notice of me. Yes, there stood the same tall, powerfully built
body, and the hair was the same thick, wavy brown hair.

Not possible. Or do I mean probable, for there he stood!

Again he made the little gesture of greeting, and then hurriedly, indeed very awkwardly,
he ran towards me, coming closer and closer with his strange ungainly steps as I watched
in cold unyielding amazement.

I scanned his mind. Nothing. Locked up tight. Only his grinning face coming clearer and
clearer as he entered the brighter luminous glare of the sea. The scent of his fear filled my
nostrils along with the smell of his blood. Yes, he was terrified, and yet powerfully
excited. Very inviting he looked suddenly- another victim all but thrown into my arms.

How his large brown eyes glittered. And what shining teeth he had.

Coming to a halt some three feet from me, his heart pounding, he held out a fat crumpled
envelope in his damp and trembling hand.

I continued to stare at him, revealing nothing-not injured pride nor respect for this
astonishing accomplishment that he could find me here, that he would dare. I was just
hungry enough to scoop him up now and feed again without giving it another thought. I
wasn't reasoning anymore as I looked at him. I saw only blood.

And as if he knew it, indeed sensed it in full, he stiffened, glared at me fiercely for one
moment, and then tossed the thick envelope at my feet and danced back frantically over
the loose sand. It seemed his legs might go out from under him. He almost fell as he
turned and fled.

The thirst subsided a little. Maybe I wasn't reasoning, but I was hesitating, and that did
seem to involve some thought. Who was this nervy young son of a bitch?

Again, I tried to scan him. Nothing. Most strange. But there are mortals who cloak
themselves naturally, even when they have not the slightest awareness that another might
pry into their minds.

On and on he sped, desperately and in ungainly fashion, disappearing in the darkness of a
side street as he continued his progress away from me.

Moments passed.

Now I couldn't pick up his scent anymore at all, save from the envelope, which lay where
he had thrown it down.

What on earth could all this mean? He'd known exactly what I was, no doubt of it. Venice
and Hong Kong had not been coincidence. His sudden fear, if nothing else, had made it
plain. But I had to smile at his overall courage. Imagine, following such a creature as me.

Was he some crazed worshiper, come to pound on the temple door in the hopes I'd give
him the Dark Blood simply out of pity or reward for his temerity? It made me angry
suddenly, and bitter, and then again I simply didn't care.

I picked up the envelope, and saw that it was blank and unsealed. Inside, I found, of all
things, a printed short story clipped apparently from a paperback book.

It made a small thick wad of pulp pages, stapled together in the upper-left-hand corner.
No personal note at all. The author of the story was a lovable creature I knew well, H. P.
Lovecraft by name, a writer of the supernatural and the macabre. In fact, I knew the
story, too, and could never forget its title: "The Thing on the Doorstep." It had made me
laugh.

"The Thing on the Doorstep." I was smiling now. Yes, I remembered the story, that it was
clever, that it had been fun.

But why would this strange mortal give such a story to me? It was ludicrous. And
suddenly I was angry again, or as angry as my sadness allowed me to be.

I shoved the packet in my coat pocket absently. I pondered. Yes, the fellow was
definitely gone. Couldn't even pick up an image of him from anyone else.

Oh, if only he had come to tempt me on some other night, when my soul wasn't sick and
weary, when I might have cared just a little-enough at least to have found out what it was
all about.

But it seemed already that eons had passed since he had come and gone. The night was
empty save for the grinding roar of the big city, and the dim crash of the sea. Even the
clouds had thinned and disappeared. The sky seemed endless and harrowingly still.

I looked to the hard bright stars overhead, and let the low sound of the surf wrap me in
silence. I gave one last grief-stricken look to the lights of Miami, this city I so loved.

Then I went up, simple as a thought to rise, so swift no mortal could have seen it, this
figure ascending higher and higher through the deafening wind, until the great sprawling
city was nothing but a distant galaxy fading slowly from view.

So cold it was, this high wind that knows no seasons. The blood inside me was
swallowed up as if its sweet warmth had never existed, and soon my face and hands wore
a sheathing of cold as if I'd frozen solid, and that sheathing moved underneath my fragile
garments, covering all my skin.

But it caused no pain. Or let us say it did not cause enough pain.

Rather it simply dried up comfort. It was only dismal, dreary, the absence of what makes
existence worth it-the blazing warmth of fires and caresses, of kisses and arguments, of
love and longing and blood.

Ah, the Aztec gods must have been greedy vampires to convince those poor human souls
that the universe would cease to exist if the blood didn't flow. Imagine presiding over
such an altar, snapping your fingers for another and another and another, squeezing those
fresh blood-soaked hearts to your lips like bunches of grapes.

I twisted and turned with the wind, dropped a few feet, then rose again, arms outstretched
playfully, then falling at my sides. I lay on my back like a sure swimmer, staring again
into the blind and indifferent stars.

By thought alone, I propelled myself eastward. The night still stretched over the city of
London, though its clocks ticked out the small hours. London.

There was time to say farewell to David Talbot-my mortal friend.

It had been months since our last meeting in Amsterdam, and I had left him rudely,
ashamed for that and for bothering him at all. I'd spied upon him since, but not troubled
him. And I knew that I had to go to him now, whatever my state of mind.

There wasn't any doubt he would want me to come. It was the proper, decent thing to do.

For one moment I thought of my beloved Louis. No doubt he was in his crumbling little
house in its deep swampy garden in New Orleans, reading by the light of the moon as he
always did, or giving in to one shuddering candle should the night be cloudy and dark.
But it was too late to say farewell to Louis ... If there was any being among us who would
understand, it was Louis. Or so I told myself. The opposite is probably closer to the truth
. . .

On to London I went.

Two

THE Motherhouse of the Talamasca, outside London, silent in its great park of ancient
oaks, its sloped rooftops and its vast lawns blanketed with deep clean snow.

A handsome four-storey edifice full of lead-mulhoned windows, and chimneys ever
sending their winding plumes of smoke into the night.

A place of dark wood-paneled libraries and parlours, bedrooms with coffered ceilings,
thick burgundy carpets, and dining rooms as quiet as those of a religious order, and
members dedicated as priests and nuns, who can read your mind, see your aura, tell your

future from the palm of your hand, and make an educated guess as to who you might
have been in a past life.

Witches? Well, some of them are, perhaps. But in the main they are simply scholars-
those who have dedicated their lives to the study of the occult in all its manifestations.
Some know more than others. Some believe more than others. For example, there are
those members in this Motherhouse-and in other

motherhouses, in Amsterdam or Rome or the depths of the Louisiana swamp-who have
laid eyes upon vampires and werewolves, who have felt the potentially lethal physical
telekinetic powers of mortals who can set fires or cause death, who have spoken to ghosts
and received answers from them, who have battled invisible entities and won-or lost.

For over one thousand years, this order has persisted. It is in fact older, but its origins are
shrouded in mystery-or, to put it more specifically, David will not explain them to me.

Where does the Talamasca get its money? There is a staggering abundance of gold and
jewels in its vaults. Its investments in the great banks of Europe are legendary. It owns
property in all its home cities, which alone could sustain it, if it did not possess anything
else. And then there are its various archival treasures-paintings, statues, tapestries,
antique furnishings and ornaments-all of which it has acquired in connection with various
occult cases and upon which it places no monetary value, for the historical and scholarly
value far exceeds any appraisal which could be made.

Its library alone is worth a king's ransom in any earthly currency. There are manuscripts
in all languages, indeed some from the famous old library of Alexandria burnt centuries
ago, and others from the libraries of the martyred Cathars, whose culture is no more.
There are texts from ancient Egypt for a glimpse of which archaeologists might
cheerfully commit murder. There are texts by preternatural beings of several known
species, including vampires. There are letters and documents in these archives which
have been written by me.

None of these treasures interest me. They never have. Oh, in my more playful moments I
have toyed with the idea of breaking into the vaults and reclaiming a few old relics that
once belonged to immortals I loved. I know these scholars have collected possessions
which I myself have abandoned-the contents of rooms in Paris near the end of the last
century, the books and furnishings of my old house in the tree-shaded streets of the
Garden District, beneath which I slumbered for decades, quite oblivious to those who
walked the rotted floors above. God knows what else they have saved from the gnawing
mouth of time.

But I no longer cared about those things. That which they had salvaged they might keep.

What I cared about was David, the Superior General who had been my friend since the
long ago night when I came rudely and impulsively through the fourth-storey window of
his private rooms.

How brave and poised he had been. And how I had liked to look at him, a tall man with a
deeply lined face and iron-gray hair. I wondered then if a young man could ever possess
such beauty. But that he knew me, knew what I was-that had been his greatest charm for
me.

What if I make you one of us. I could do it, you know . . .

He's never wavered in his conviction. "Not even on my deathbed will I accept," he'd said.
But he'd been fascinated by my mere presence, he couldn't conceal it, though he had
concealed his thoughts well enough from me ever since that first time.

Indeed his mind had become like a strongbox to which there was no key. And I'd been
left only with his radiant and affectionate facial expressions and a soft, cultured voice
that could talk the Devil into behaving well.

As I reached the Motherhouse now in the small hours, amid the snow of the English
winter, it was to David's familiar windows that I went, only to find his rooms empty and
dark.

I thought of our most recent meeting. Could he have gone to Amsterdam again?

That last trip had been unexpected or so I was able to find out, when I came to search for
him, before his clever flock of psychics sensed my meddlesome telepathic scanning-
which they do with remarkable efficiency-and quickly cut me off.

Seems some errand of great importance had compelled David's presence in Holland.

The Dutch Motherhouse was older than the one outside London, with vaults beneath it to
which the Superior General alone had the key. David had to locate a portrait by
Rembrandt, one of the most significant treasures in the possession of the order, have it
copied, and send that copy to his close friend Aaron Lightner, who needed it hi
connection with an important paranormal investigation being carried on in the States.

I had followed David to Amsterdam and spied on him there, telling myself that I would
not disturb him, as I had done many times before.

Let me tell the story of that episode now. At a safe distance I had tracked him as he
walked briskly in the late evening, masking my thoughts as skillfully as he always
masked his own. What a striking figure he made under the elm trees along the Singel
gracht, as he stopped again and again to admire the narrow old three- and four-storey
Dutch houses, with their high step gables, and bright windows left undraped, it seemed,
for the pleasure of the passersby.

I sensed a change in him almost at once. He carried his cane as always, though it was
plain he still had no need of it, and he flipped it upon his shoulder as he'd done before.

But there was a brooding to him as he walked; a pronounced dissatisfaction; and hour
after hour passed during which he wandered as if time were of no importance at all.

It was very clear to me soon that David was reminiscing, and now and then I did manage
to catch some pungent image of his youth in the tropics, even flashes of a verdant jungle
so very different from this wintry northern city, which was surely never warm. I had not
had my dream of the tiger yet. I did not know what this meant.

It was tantalizingly fragmentary. David's skills at keeping his thoughts inside were
simply too good.

On and on he walked, however, sometimes as if he were being driven, and on and on I
followed, feeling strangely comforted by the mere sight of him several blocks ahead.

Had it not been for the bicycles forever whizzing past him, he would have looked like a
young man. But the bicycles startled him. He had an old man's inordinate fear of being
struck down and hurt. He'd look resentfully after the young riders. Then he'd fall back
into his thoughts.

It was almost dawn when he inevitably returned to the Motherhouse. And surely he must
have slept the greater part of each day.

He was already walking again when I caught up with him one evening, and once again
there seemed no destination in particular. Rather he meandered through Amsterdam's
many small cobblestoned streets. He seemed to like it as much as I knew he liked Venice,
and with reason, for the cities, both dense and darkly colored, have, in spite of all their
marked differences, a similar charm. That one is a Catholic city, rank and full of lovely
decay, and the other is Protestant and therefore very clean and efficient, made me, now
and then, smile.

The following night, he was again on his own, whistling to himself as he covered the
miles briskly, and it soon came clear to me that he was avoiding the Motherhouse.
Indeed, he seemed to be avoiding everything, and when one of his old friends-another
Englishman and a member of the order- chanced to meet him unexpectedly near a
bookseller's in the Leidsestraat, it was plain from the conversation that David had not
been himself for some time.

The British are so very polite in discussing and diagnosing such matters. But this is what
I separated out from all the marvelous diplomacy. David was neglecting his duties as
Superior General. David spent all his time away from the Mother-house. When in
England, David went to his ancestral home in the Cotswolds more and more often. What
was wrong?

David merely shrugged off all these various suggestions as if he could not retain interest
in the exchange. He made some vague remark to the effect that the Talamasca could run
itself without a Superior General for a century, it was so well disciplined and tradition

bound, and filled with dedicated members. Then off he went to browse in the
bookseller's, where he bought a paperback translation in English of Goethe's Faust. Then
he dined alone in a small Indonesian restaurant, with Faust propped before him, eyes
racing over the pages, as he consumed his spicy feast.

As he was busy with his knife and fork, I went back to the bookstore and bought a copy
of the very same book. What a bizarre piece of work!

I can't claim to have understood it, or why David was reading it. Indeed it frightened me
that the reason might be obvious and perhaps I rejected the idea at once.

Nevertheless I rather loved it, especially the ending, where Faust went to heaven, of
course. I don't think that happened in the older legends. Faust always went to hell. I wrote
it off to Goethe's Romantic optimism, and the fact that he had been so old by the time he
wrote the end. The work of the very old is always extremely powerful and intriguing, and
infinitely worth pondering, and all the more perhaps because creative stamina deserts so
many artists before they are truly old.

In the very small hours, after David had vanished into the Motherhouse, I roamed the city
alone. I wanted to know it because he knew it, because Amsterdam was part of his life.

I wandered through the enormous Rijksmuseum, perusing the paintings of Rembrandt,
whom I had always loved. I crept like a thief through the house of Rembrandt in the
Jodenbree-straat, now made into a little shrine for the public during daylight hours, and I
walked the many narrow lanes of the city, feeling the shimmer of olden times.
Amsterdam is an exciting place, swarming with young people from all over the new
homogenized Europe, a city that never sleeps.

I probably would never have come here had it not been for David. This city had never
caught my fancy. And now I found it most agreeable, a vampire's city for its vast late-
night crowds, but it was David of course that I wanted to see. I realized I could not leave
without at least exchanging a few words.

Finally, a week after my arrival, I found David in the empty Rijksmuseum, just after
sunset, sitting on the bench before the great Rembrandt portrait of the Members of the
Drapers' Guild.

Did David know, somehow, that I'd been there? Impossible, yet there he was.

And it was obvious from his conversation with the guard- who was just taking his leave
of David-that his venerable order of mossback snoops contributed mightily to the arts of
the various cities in which they were domiciled. So it was an easy thing for the members
to gain access to museums to see their treasures when the public was barred.

And to think, I have to break into these places like a cheap crook!

It was completely silent in the high-ceilinged marble halls when I came upon him. He sat
on the long wooden bench, his copy of Faust, now very dog-eared and full of bookmarks,
held loosely and indifferently in his right hand.

He was staring steadily at the painting, which was that of several proper Dutchmen,
gathered at a table, dealing with the affairs of commerce, no doubt, yet staring serenely at
the viewer from beneath the broad brims of their big black hats. This is scarcely the total
effect of this picture. The faces are exquisitely beautiful, full of wisdom and gentleness
and a near angelic patience. Indeed, these men more resemble angels than ordinary men.

They seemed possessed of a great secret, and if all men were to learn that secret, there
would be no more wars or vice or malice on earth. How did such persons ever become
members of the Drapers' Guild of Amsterdam in the 1600s? But then I move ahead of my
tale . . . David gave a start when I appeared, moving slowly and silently out of the
shadows towards him. I took a place beside him on the bench.

I was dressed like a tramp, for I had acquired no real lodgings in Amsterdam, and my hair
was tangled from the wind.

I sat very still for a long moment, opening my mind with an act of will that felt rather like
a human sigh, letting him know how concerned I was for his well-being, and how I'd
tried for his sake to leave him in peace.

His heart was beating rapidly. His face, when I turned to him, was filled with immediate
and generous warmth.

He reached over with his right hand and grasped my right arm. "I'm glad to see you as
always, so very glad."

"Ah, but I've done you harm. I know I have." I didn't want to say how I'd followed him,
how I'd overheard the conversation between him and his comrade, or dwell upon what I
saw with my own eyes.

I vowed I would not torment him with my old question. And yet I saw death when I
looked at him, even more perhaps for his brightness and cheerfulness, and the vigor in his
eyes.

He gave me a long lingering thoughtful look, and then he withdrew his hand, and his eyes
moved back to the painting.

"Are there any vampires in this world who have such faces?" he asked. He gestured to the
men staring down at us from the canvas. "I am speaking of the knowledge and
understanding which lies behind these faces. I'm speaking of something more indicative
of immortality than a preternatural body anatomically dependent upon the drinking of
human blood."

"Vampires with such faces?" I responded. "David, that is unfair. There are no men with
such faces. There never were. Look at any of Rembrandt's paintings. Absurd to believe
that such people ever existed, let alone that Amsterdam was full of them in Rembrandt's
time, that every man or woman who ever darkened his door was an angel. No, it's
Rembrandt you see in these faces, and Rembrandt is immortal, of course."

He smiled. "It's not true what you're saying. And what a desperate loneliness emanates
from you. Don't you see I can't accept your gift, and if I did, what would you think of
me? Would you still crave my company? Would I crave yours?"

I scarce heard these last words. I was staring at the painting, staring at these men who
were indeed like angels. And a quiet anger had come over me, and I didn't want to linger
there anymore. I had forsworn the assault, yet he had defended himself against me. No, I
should not have come.

Spy on him, yes, but not linger. And once again, I moved swiftly to go.

He was furious with me for doing it. I heard his voice ring out in the great empty space.

"Unfair of you to go like that! Positively rude of you to do it! Have you no honor? What
about manners if there is no honor left?" And then he broke off, for I was nowhere near
him, it was as if I'd vanished, and he was a man alone in the huge and cold museum
speaking aloud to himself.

I was ashamed but too angry and bruised to go back to him, though why, I didn't know.
What had I done to this being! How Marius would scold me for this.

I wandered about Amsterdam for hours, purloining some thick parchment writing paper
of the kind I most like, and a fine-pointed pen of the automatic kind that spews black ink
forever, and then I sought a noisy sinister little tavern in the old red-light district with its
painted women and drugged vagabond youths, where I could work on a letter to David,
unnoticed and undisturbed as long as I kept a mug of beer at my side.

I didn't know what I meant to write, from one sentence to the next, only that I had to tell
him hi some way that I was sorry for my behavior, and that something had snapped in my
soul when I beheld the men in the Rembrandt portrait, and so I wrote, in a hasty and
driven fashion, this narrative of sorts.

You are right. It was despicable the way I left you. Worse, it was cowardly. I promise
you that when we meet again, I shall let you say all you have to say.

I myself have this theory about Rembrandt. I have spent many hours studying his
paintings everywhere-in Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, or wherever I find them-and I
do believe as I told you that so many great souls could not have existed as Rembrandt's
paintings would have us believe.

This is my theory, and please bear in mind when you read it that it accommodates all the
elements involved. And this accommodation used to be the measure of the elegance of
theories . . . before the word "science" came to mean what it means today.

I believe that Rembrandt sold his soul to the Devil when he was a young man. It was a
simple bargain. The Devil promised to make Rembrandt the most famous painter of his
time. The Devil sent hordes of mortals to Rembrandt for portraits. He gave wealth to
Rembrandt, he gave him a charming house in Amsterdam, a wife and later a mistress,
because he was sure he would have Rembrandt's soul in the end.

But Rembrandt had been changed by his encounter with the Devil. Having seen such
undeniable evidence of evil, he found himself obsessed with the question What is good?
He searched the faces of his subjects for their inner divinity; and to his amazement he
was able to see the spark of it in the most unworthy of men.

His skill was such-and please understand, he had got no skill from the Devil; the skill
was his to begin with- that not only could he see that goodness, he could paint it; he
could allow his knowledge of it, and his faith in it, to suffuse the whole.

With each portrait he understood the grace and goodness of mankind ever more deeply.
He understood the capacity for compassion and for wisdom which resides in every soul.
His skill increased as he continued; the flash of the infinite became ever more subtle; the
person himself ever more particular; and more grand and serene and magnificent each
work.

At last the faces Rembrandt painted were not flesh-and-blood faces at all. They were
spiritual countenances, portraits of what lay within the body of the man or the woman;
they were visions of what that person was at his or her finest hour, of what that person
stood to become.

This is why the merchants of the Drapers' Guild look like the oldest and wisest of God's
saints.

But nowhere is this spiritual depth and insight more clearly manifest than in Rembrandt's
self-portraits. And surely you know that he left us one hundred and twenty-two of these.

Why do you think he painted so many? They were his personal plea to God to note the
progress of this man who, through his close observation of others like him, had been
completely religiously transformed. "This is my vision," said Rembrandt to God.

Towards the end of Rembrandt's life, the Devil grew suspicious. He did not want his
minion to be creating such magnificent paintings, so full of warmth and kindness. He bad
believed the Dutch to be a materialistic and therefore worldly people. And here in
pictures full of rich clothing and expensive possessions, gleamed the undeniable evidence
that human beings are wholly unlike any other animal in the cosmos-they are a precious
mingling of the flesh and immortal fire.

Well, Rembrandt suffered all the abuse heaped upon him by the Devil. He lost his fine
house in the Jodenbree-straat. He lost his mistress, and finally even his son. Yet on and
on he painted, without a trace of bitterness or perversity; on and on he infused his
paintings with love.

Finally he lay on his deathbed. The Devil pranced about, gleefully, ready to snatch
Rembrandt's soul and pinch it between evil little fingers. But the angels and saints cried
to God to intervene.

"In all the world, who knows more about goodness?" they asked, pointing to the dying
Rembrandt. "Who has shown more than this painter? We look to his portraits when we
would know the divine in man."

And so God broke the pact between Rembrandt and the Devil. He took to himself the
soul of Rembrandt, and the Devil, so recently cheated of Faust for the very same reason,
went mad with rage.

Well, he would bury the life of Rembrandt in obscurity. He would see to it that all the
man's personal possessions and records were swallowed by the great flow of time. And
that is of course why we know almost nothing of Rembrandt's true life, or what sort of
person he was.

But the Devil could not control the fate of the paintings. Try as he might, he could not
make people burn them, throw them away, or set them aside for the newer, more
fashionable artists. In fact, a curious thing happened, seemingly without a marked
beginning. Rembrandt became the most admired of all painters who had ever lived;
Rembrandt became the greatest painter of all time.

That is my theory of Rembrandt and those faces.

Now if I were mortal, I would write a novel about Rembrandt, on this theme. But I am
not mortal. I cannot save my soul through art or Good Works. I am a creature like the
Devil, with one difference. I love the paintings of Rembrandt!

Yet it breaks my heart to look at them. It broke my heart to see you there in the museum.
And you are perfectly right that there are no vampires with faces like the saints of the
Drapers' Guild.

That's why I left you so rudely in the museum. It was not the Devil's Rage. It was merely
sorrow.

Again, I promise you that next time we meet, I shall let you say all that you want to say.

I scribbled the number of my Paris agent on the bottom of this letter, along with the post
address, as I had done in the past when writing to David though David had never replied.

Then I went on a pilgrimage of sorts, revisiting the paintings of Rembrandt in the great
collections of the world. I saw nothing in my travels to sway me in my belief in
Rembrandt's goodness. The pilgrimage proved penitential, for I clung to my fiction about
Rembrandt. But I resolved anew never to bother David again.

Then I had the dream. Tyger, tyger . . . David in danger. I woke with a start in my chair in
Louis's little shack-as if I'd been shaken by a warning hand.

Night had almost ended in England. I had to hurry. But when I finally found David, he
was in a quaint little tavern in a village in the Cotswolds which can only be reached by
one narrow and treacherous road.

This was his home village, not far from his ancestral manor, I quickly divined from
scanning those around him-a little one-street place of sixteenth-century buildings,
housing shops and an inn now dependent upon the fickleness of tourists, which David
had restored from his own pocket, and visited more and more often to escape his London
life.

Positively eerie little spot!

All David was doing, however, was guzzling his beloved single-malt Scotch and
scribbling drawings of the Devil on napkins. Mephistopheles with his lute? The horned
Satan dancing under the light of the moon? It must have been his dejection I had sensed
over the miles, or more truly the concern of those watching him. It was their image of
him which I had caught.

I wanted so to talk to him. I didn't dare to do it. I would have created too much of a stir in
the little tavern, where the concerned old proprietor and his two hulking and silent
nephews remained awake and smoking their odoriferous pipes only on account of the
august presence of the local lord-who was getting as drunk as a lord.

For an hour, I had stood near, peering through the little window. Then I'd gone away.

Now-many, many months later-as the snow fell over London, as it fell in big silent flakes
over the high facade of the Motherhouse of the Talamasca, I searched for him, in a dull
weary state, thinking that there was no one in all the world whom I must see but him. I
scanned the minds of the members, sleeping and awake. I roused them. I heard them
come to attention as clearly as if they had snapped on their lights on rising from bed.

But I had what I wanted before they could shut me out.

David was gone to the manor house in the Cotswolds, somewhere, no doubt, in the
vicinity of that curious little village with its quaint tavern.

Well, I could find it, couldn't I? I went to seek him there.

The snow was failing ever more heavily as I traveled close to the earth, cold and angry,
with all memory of the blood I'd drunk now wiped away.

Other dreams came back to me, as they always do in bitter winter, of the harsh and
miserable snows of my mortal boyhood, of the chill stone rooms of my father's castle,
and of the little fire, and my great mastiffs snoring in the hay beside me, keeping me snug
and warm.

Those dogs had been slain on my last wolf hunt.

I hated so to remember it, and yet it was always sweet to think I was there again-with the
clean smell of the little fire and of those powerful dogs tumbled against me, and that I
was alive, truly alive!-and the hunt had never taken place. I'd never gone to Paris, I'd
never seduced the powerful and demented vampire Magnus. The little stone room was
full of the good scent of the dogs, and I could sleep now beside them, and be safe.

At last I drew near to a small Elizabethan manor house in the mountains, a very beautiful
stone structure of deep-pitched roofs and narrow gables, of deep-set thick glass windows,
far smaller than the Motherhouse, yet very grand on its own scale.

Only one set of windows was lighted, and when I approached I saw that it was the library
and David was there, seated by a great noisily burning fire.

He had his familiar leatherbound diary in his hand, and he was writing with an ink pen,
very rapidly. He had no sense at all that he was being watched. Now and then he
consulted another leatherbound book, on the table at his side. I could easily see that this
was a Christian Bible, with its double columns of small print and the gilt edges of its
pages, and the ribbon that marked his place.

With only a little effort I observed it was the Book of Genesis from which David was
reading, and apparently making notes. There was his copy of Faust beside it. What on
earth interested him in all this?

The room itself was lined with books. A single lamp burned over David's shoulder. It was
as many a library in northern climes-cozy and inviting, with a low beamed ceiling, and
big comfortable old leather chairs.

But what rendered it unusual were the relics of a life lived in another clime. There were
his cherished mementos of those remembered years.

The mounted head of a spotted leopard was perched above the glowing fireplace. And the
great black head of a buffalo was fixed to the far right wall. There were many small
Hindu statues of bronze here and there on shelves and on tables. Small jewel-like Indian
rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows.

And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the room,
its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I had seen
with such horrid vividness in my dream.

It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking his
eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. Nothing. Why
had I bothered? Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a beast might
have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting his pen, sank
deep into his thoughts.

Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed many
framed photographs in the shadows-pictures of David when he'd been young, and many
obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep porches and a high
roof. Pictures of his mother and father.

Pictures of him with the animals he'd killed. Did this explain my dream?

I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even
my loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn.

I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and
entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and
through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a
shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded
me. I smelled the aroma of the distant fire.

I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come
near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with snow
and a thin layer of ice.

We went into the library together and I took the chair opposite his. He left me for a
moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet
that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words.
My hands were as white as the snow was white.

When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped my
face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt.

"Thank you," I said.

"You looked a statue," he said.

'"Yes, I do look that way, now, don't I? I'm going on."

"What do you mean?" He sat down across from me. "Explain."

"I'm going to a desert place. I've figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a simple
matter at all."

"Why do you want to do that?"

"Don't want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don't look forward to
death the way you do. It isn't that. Tonight I-" I stopped. I saw the old woman in her neat
bed, in her flowered robe, against the quilted nylon. Then I saw that strange brown-haired
man watching me, the one who had come to me on the beach and given me the story
which I still had, crammed inside my coat.

Meaningless. You come too late, whoever you are.

Why bother to explain?

I saw Claudia suddenly as if she were standing there in some other realm, staring at me,
waiting for me to see her. How clever that our minds can invoke an image so seemingly
real. She might as well have been right there by David's desk in the shadows. Claudia,
who had forced her long knife through my chest. "I'll put you in your coffin forever,
Father." But then I saw Claudia ail the time now, didn't I? I saw Claudia in dream after
dream . . .

"Don't do this," David said.

"It's tune, David," I whispered, thinking in a vague and distant way how disappointed
Marius would be.

Had David heard me? Perhaps my voice had been too soft. Some small crackling sound
came from the fire, a bit of kindling collapsing perhaps or sap still moist and sizzling
within the huge log. I saw that cold bedchamber in my boyhood home again, and
suddenly, I had my arm around one of those big dogs, those lazy loving dogs. To see a
wolf slay a dog is monstrous!

I should have died that day. Not even the best of hunters should be able to slay a pack of
wolves. And maybe that was the cosmic error. I'd been meant to go, if indeed there is any
such continuity, and in overreaching, had caught the devil's eye. "Wolf killer." The
vampire Magnus had said it so lovingly, as he had carried me to his lair.

David had sunk back in the chair, putting one foot absently on the fender, and his eyes
were fixed on the flames. He was deeply distressed, even a little frantic, though he held it
inside very well.

"Won't it be painful?" he asked, looking at me.

Just for a moment, I didn't know what he meant. Then I remembered.

I gave a little laugh.

"I came to say good-bye to you, to ask you if you're certain about your decision. It
seemed somehow the right thing to tell you I was going, and that this would be your last
chance. It seemed sporting, actually. You follow me? Or do you think it's simply another
excuse? Doesn't matter really."

"Like Magnus in your story," he said. "You'd make your heir, then go into the fire."

"It wasn't merely a story," I said, not meaning to be argumentative, and wondering why it
sounded that way. "And yes, perhaps it's like that. I honestly don't know."

"Why do you want to destroy yourself?" He sounded desperate. How I had hurt this man.

I looked at the sprawling tiger with its magnificent black stripes and deep orange fur.

"That was a man-eater, wasn't it?" I asked.

He hesitated as if he didn't fully understand the question, then as if waking, he nodded.
"Yes." He glanced at the tiger, then he looked at me. "I don't want you to do it. Postpone
it, for the love of heaven. Don't do it. Why tonight, of all times?"

He was making me laugh against my will. "Tonight's a fine night for doing it," I said.
"No, I'm going." And suddenly there was a great exhilaration in me because I realized I
meant it! It wasn't just some fancy. I would never have told him if it was. "I've figured a
method. I'll go as high as I can before the sun comes over the horizon. There won't be any
way to find shelter. The desert there is very hard."

And I will die in fire. Not cold, as I'd been on that mountain when the wolves surrounded
me. In heat, as Claudia had died.

"No, don't do it," he said. How earnest he was, how persuasive. But it didn't work.

"Do you want the blood?" I asked. "It doesn't take very long. There's very little pain. I'm
confident the others won't hurt you. I'll make you so strong they'd have a devil of a time
if they tried."

Again, it was so like Magnus, who'd left me an orphan without so much as a warning that
Armand and his ancient coven could come after me, cursing me and seeking to put an end
to my newborn life. And Magnus had known that I would prevail.

"Lestat, I do not want the blood. But I want you to stay here. Look, give me a matter of a
few nights only. Just that much. On account of friendship, Lestat, stay with me now.
Can't you give me those few hours? And then if you must go through with it, I won't
argue anymore."

"Why?"

He looked stricken. Then he said, "Let me talk to you, let me change your mind,"

"You killed the tiger when you were very young, didn't you? It was in India." I gazed
around at the other trophies. "I saw the tiger in a dream."

He didn't answer. He seemed anxious and perplexed.

"I've hurt you," I said. "I've driven you deep into memories of your youth. I've made you
aware of time, and you weren't so aware of it before."

Something happened in his face. I had wounded him with these words. Yet he shook his
head.

"David, take the blood from me before I go!" I whispered suddenly, desperately. "You
don't have a year left to you. I can hear it when I'm near you! I can hear the weakness in
your heart."

"You don't know that, my friend," he said patiently, "Stay here with me. I'll tell you all
about the tiger, about those days in India. I hunted in Africa then, and once in the
Amazon. Such adventures. I wasn't the musty scholar then as I am now . . ."

"I know." I smiled. He had never spoken this way to me before, never offered so much.
"It's too late, David," I said. Again, I saw the dream. I saw that thin gold chain around
David's neck. Had the tiger been going for the chain? That didn't make sense. What
remained was the sense of danger.

I stared at the skin of the beast. How purely vicious was his face.

"Was it fun to kill the tiger?" I asked.

He hesitated. Then forced himself to answer. "It was a man-eater. It feasted on children.
Yes, I suppose it was fun."

I laughed softly. "Ah, well, then we have that in common, me and the tiger. And Claudia
is waiting for me."

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"No. I guess if I did, I'd be afraid to die." I saw Claudia quite vividly... a tiny oval portrait
on porcelain-golden hair, blue eyes. Something fierce and true in the expression, in spite
of the saccharine colors and the oval frame. Had I ever possessed such a locket, for that is
what it was, surely. A locket. A chill came over me. I remembered the texture of her hair.
Once again, it was as if she were very near me. Were I to turn, I might see her beside me

in the shadows, with her hand on the back of my chair. I did turn around. Nothing. I was
going to lose my nerve if I didn't get out of here.

"Lestat!" David said urgently. He was scanning me, desperately trying to think of
something more to say. He pointed to my coat. "What's that in your pocket? A note
you've written? You mean to leave it with me? Let me read it now."

"Oh, this, this strange little story," I said, "here, you may

have it. I bequeath it to you. Fitting that it should be in a library, perhaps wedged
somewhere on one of these shelves." I took out the little folded packet and glanced at it.
"Yes, I've read this. It's sort of amusing." I tossed the packet into his lap. "Some fool
mortal gave it to me, some poor benighted soul who knew who I was and had just enough
courage to toss it at my feet."

"Explain this to me," said David. He unfolded the pages. "Why are you carrying it with
you? Good Lord-Lovecraft." He gave a little shake of his head.

"I just did explain it," I said. "It's no use, David, I can't be talked down from the high
ledge. I'm going. Besides, the story doesn't mean a thing. Poor fool. . ."

He had had such strange glittering eyes. Whatever had been so wrong about the way he
came running towards me across the sand? About his awkward panic-stricken retreat?
His manner had indicated such importance! Ah, but this was foolish. I didn't care, and I
knew I didn't. I knew what I meant to do.

"Lestat, stay here!" David said. "You promised the very next time we met, you would let
me say all I have to say. You wrote that to me, Lestat, you remember? You won't go back
on your word."

"Well, I have to go back on it, David. And you have to forgive me because I'm going.
Perhaps there is no heaven or hell, and I'll see you on the other side."

"And what if there is both? What then?"

"You've been reading too much of the Bible. Read the Love-craft story." Again, I gave a
short laugh. I gestured to the pages he was holding. "Better for your peace of mind. And
stay away from Faust, for heaven's sake. You really think angels will come in the end and
take us away? Well, not me, perhaps, but you?"

"Don't go," he said, and his voice was so soft and imploring that it took my breath away.

But I was already going.

I barely heard him call out behind me:

"Lestat, I need you. You're the only friend I have."

How tragic those words! I wanted to say I was sorry, sorry for all of it. But it was too late
now for that. And besides, I think he knew.

I shot upwards in the cold darkness, driving through the descending snow. All life
seemed utterly unbearable to me, both in its horror and its splendour. The tiny house
looked warm down there, its light spilling on the white ground, its chimney giving forth
that thin coil of blue smoke.

I thought of David again walking alone through Amsterdam, but then I thought of
Rembrandt's faces. And I saw David's face again in the library fire. He looked like a man
painted by Rembrandt. He had looked that way ever since I'd known him. And what did
we look like-frozen forever hi the form we had when the Dark Blood entered our veins?
Claudia had been for decades that child painted on porcelain. And I was like one of
Michelangelo's statues, turning white as marble. And just as cold.

I knew I would keep my word.

But you know there is a terrible lie in all this. I didn't really believe I could be killed by
the sun anymore. Well, I was certainly going to give it a good try.

THREE

THE Gobi Desert. Eons ago, in the saurian age, as men have called it, great lizards died
in this strange part of the world by the thousands. No one knows why they came here;
why they perished. Was it a realm of tropical trees and steaming swamps? We don't
know. All we have now in this spot is the desert and millions upon millions of fossils,
telling a fragmentary tale of giant reptiles who surely made the earth tremble with each
step they took.

The Gobi Desert is therefore an immense graveyard and a fitting place for me to look the
sun in the face. I lay a long time in the sand before the sunrise, collecting my last
thoughts,

The trick was to rise to the very limit of the atmosphere, into the sunrise, so to speak.
Then when I lost consciousness I would

tumble down in the terrible heat, and my body would be shattered by this great fall upon
the desert floor. How could it then dig in beneath the surface, as it might have done, by
its own evil volition, were I whole and in a land of soft soil?

Besides, if the blast of light was sufficiently strong to burn me up, naked and so high
above the earth, perhaps I would be dead and gone before my remains ever struck the
hard bed of sand.

As the old expression goes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Nothing much could
have deterred me. Yet I did wonder if the other immortals knew what I meant to do and
whether or not they were in the least concerned. I certainly sent them no farewell
messages; I threw out no random images of what I meant to do.

At last the great warmth of dawn crept across the desert. I rose to my knees, stripped off
my clothing, and began the ascent, my eyes already burning from the faintest bit of light.

Higher and higher I went, propelling myself well beyond the place where my body
tended to stop and begin to float of its own accord. Finally I could not breathe, as the air
was very thin, and it took a great effort to support myself at this height.

Then the light came. So immense, so hot, so blinding that it seemed a great roaring noise
as much as a vision filling my sight. I saw yellow and orange fire covering everything. I
stared right into it, though it felt like scalding water poured into my eyes. I think I opened
my mouth as if to swallow it, this divine fire! The sun was mine suddenly. I was seeing
it; I was reaching for it. And then the light was covering me like molten lead, paralyzing
me and torturing me beyond endurance, and my own cries filled my ears. Still I would
not look away, still I would not fall!

Thus I defy you, heaven! And there were no words suddenly and no thoughts. I was
twisting, swimming in it. And as the darkness and the coldness rose up to envelop me-it
was nothing but the loss of consciousness-I realized that I had begun to fall.

The sound was the sound of the air rushing past me, and it seemed that the voices of
others were calling to me, and through the horrid mingled roar, I heard distinctly the
voice of a child.

Then nothing . . .

Was I dreaming?

We were in a small close place, a hospital smelling of sickness and death, and I was
pointing to the bed, and the child who lay on the pillow, white and small and half dead.

There was a sharp riff of laughter. I smelled an oil lamp- that moment when the wick has
blown out.

"Lestat," she said. How beautiful her little voice.

I tried to explain about my father's castle, about the snow falling, and my dogs waiting
there. That's where I had wanted to go. I could hear them suddenly, that deep baying bark
of the mastiffs, echoing up the snow-covered slopes, and I could almost see the towers of
the castle itself.

But then she said:

"Not yet."

It was night again when I awoke. I was lying on the desert floor. The dunes bestirred by
the wind had spread a fine mist of sand over all my limbs. I felt pain all over. Pain even
in the roots of my hair. I felt such pain I couldn't will myself to move.

For hours I lay there. Now and then I gave a soft moan. It made no difference in the pain
I felt. When I moved my limbs even a little, the sand was like tiny particles of sharp glass
against my back and my calves and the heels of my feet.

I thought of all those to whom I might have called for help. I did not call. Only gradually
did I realize that if I remained here, the sun would come again, naturally enough, and I
would be caught once more and burned once more. Yet still I might not die.

I had to remain, didn't I? What sort of coward would seek shelter now?

But all I had to do was look at my hands in the light of the stars to see that I was not
going to die. I was burnt, yes, my skin was brown and wrinkled and roaring with pain.
But I was nowhere near death.

At last I rolled over and tried to rest my face against the sand, but this was no more
comforting than staring up into the stars.

Then I felt the sun coming. I was weeping as the great orange light spilled over all the
world. The pain caught my back first and then I thought my head was burning, that it
would explode, and that the fire was eating my eyes. I was mad when the darkness of
oblivion came, absolutely mad.

When I awoke the following evening, I felt sand in my mouth, sand covering me in my
agony. In that madness, I'd apparently buried myself alive.

For hours I remained so, thinking only that this pain was more than any creature could
endure.

Finally I struggled to the surface, whimpering like an animal, and I climbed to my feet,
each gesture pulling at the pain and intensifying it, and then I willed myself into the air
and I started the slow journey west and into the night.

No diminishing of my powers. Ah, only the surface of my body had been deeply harmed.

The wind was infinitely softer than the sand. Nevertheless it brought its own torment, like
fingers stroking my burnt skin all over and tugging at the burnt roots of my hair. It stung
my burnt eyelids; and scraped at my burnt knees.

I traveled gently for hours, willing myself to David's house once more and feeling the
most glorious relief for a few moments as I descended through the cold wet snow.

It was just before morning in England.

I entered by the rear door again, each step an excruciating ordeal. Almost blindly, I found
the library and I went down on my knees, ignoring the pain, and collapsed upon the
tigerskin rug.

I laid my head beside the tiger's head, and my cheek against its open jaws. Such fine,
close fur! I stretched out my arms on its legs and felt its smooth, hard claws under my
wrists. The pain shot through me in waves. The fur felt almost silky and the room was
cool in its darkness. And in faint shimmers of silent visions, I saw the mangrove forests
of India,! saw dark faces, and heard distant voices. And once very clearly for a full
instant I saw David as a young man, as I'd seen him in my dream.

It seemed such a miracle, this living young man, full of blood and tissue and such
miraculous achievements as eyes and a beating heart and five fingers to each long slender
hand.

I saw myself walking in Paris in the old days when I was alive. I was wearing the red
velvet cloak, lined with the fur of the wolves I'd killed back in my native Auvergne,
never dreaming that things lurked in the shadows, things that could see you and fall in
love with you, just because you were young, things that could take your life, just because
they loved you and you'd slain a whole pack of wolves . . .

David, the hunter! In belted khaki, with that magnificent gun.

Slowly, I became aware that the pain was already lessened. Good old Lestat, the god,
healing with preternatural speed. The pain was like a deep glow settling over my body. I
imagined myself giving a warm light to the entire room.

I picked up the scent of mortals. A servant had come into the room and quickly gone out.
Poor old guy. It made me laugh to myself in my half sleep, to think what he had seen-a
dark-skinned naked man, with a mop of unkempt blond hair, lying atop David's tiger in
the darkened room.

Suddenly, I caught David's scent, and I heard again the low familiar thunder of blood in
mortal veins. Blood. I was so thirsty for blood. My burnt skin cried for it, and my burning
eyes.

A soft flannel blanket was laid over me, very light and cool-feeling to me. There
followed a series of little sounds. David was pulling the heavy velvet draperies closed
over the windows, which he had not bothered to do all winter. He was fussing with the
cloth so that there would be no seams of light.

"Lestat," he whispered. "Let me take you down into the cellar, where you'll surely be
safe."

"Doesn't matter, David. May I stay here in this room?"

"Yes, of course, you may stay." Such solicitude.

"Thank you, David." I started to sleep again, and snow was blowing through the window
of my room in the castle, but then it was wholly different. I saw the little hospital bed
once more, and the child was in it, and thank God that nurse wasn't there but had gone to
stop the one who was crying. Oh, such a terrible, terrible sound. I hated it. I wanted to be
... where? Home in the deep French winter, of course.

This time the oil lamp was being lighted, instead of going out.

"I told you it wasn't time." Her dress was so perfectly white, and look, how very tiny her
pearl buttons! And what a fine band of pretty roses around her head.

"But why?" I asked.

"What did you say?" David asked.

"Talking to Claudia," I explained. She was sitting in the petit-point armchair with her
legs straight out before her, toes together and pointed at the ceiling. Were those satin
slippers? I grabbed her ankle and kissed it, and when I looked up I saw her chin and her
eyelashes as she threw back her head and laughed. Such an exquisite full-throated laugh.

"There are others out there," David said.

I opened my eyes, though it hurt to do it, hurt to see the dim shapes of the room. Sun
almost coining. I felt the claws of the tiger under my fingers. Ah, precious beast. David
stood at the window. He was peering through a tiny seam between the two panels of
drapery.

"Out there," he went on. "They've come to see that you're all right."

Imagine that. "Who are they?" I couldn't hear them, didn't want to hear them. Was it
Marius? Surely not the very ancient ones. Why would they care about such a thing?

"I don't know," he said. "But they are there."

"You know the old story," I whispered. "Ignore them and they'll go away." Almost
sunrise anyway. They have to go. And they certainly won't hurt you, David.

"I know."

"Don't read my mind if you won't let me read yours," I said.

"Don't be cross. No one will come into this room or disturb you."

"Yes, I can be a danger even in repose ..." I wanted to say more, to warn him further, but
then I realized he was the one mortal who did not require such a warning. Talamasca.
Scholars of the paranormal. He knew.

"Sleep now," he said.

I had to laugh at that. What else can I do when the sun rises? Even if it shines full upon
my face. But he sounded so firm and reassuring.

To think, in the olden times, I always had the coffin, and sometimes I would polish it
slowly until the wood had a great luster to it, and then I'd shine the tiny crucifix on top of
it, smiling at myself, at the care with which I buffed the little twisted body of the
massacred Christ, the Son of God. I'd loved the satin lining of the box. I'd loved the
shape, and the twilight act of rising from the dead. But no more . . .

The sun was truly coming, the cold winter sun of England. I could feel it for certain, and
suddenly I was afraid. I could feel the light stealing over the ground outside and striking
the windows. But the darkness held on this side of the velvet curtains.

I saw the little flame in the oil lamp rise. It scared me, just because I was in such pain and
it was a flame. Her small rounded fingers on the golden key, and that ring, that ring I
gave her with the tiny diamond set in pearls. What about the locket? Should I ask her
about the locket? Claudia, was there ever a gold locket. . . ?

Turning the flame higher and higher. That smell again. Her dimpled hand. All through
the long flat in the Rue Royale, one could catch the scent of the oil. Ah, that old
wallpaper, and the pretty handmade furniture, and Louis writing at his desk, sharp smell
of the black ink, dull scratch of the quill pen . . .

Her little hand was touching my cheek, so deliciously cold, and that vague thrill that
passes through me when one of the others touches me, our skin.

"Why would anyone want me to live?" I asked. At least that was what I started to ask ...
and then I was simply gone.

FOUR

TWILIGHT. The pain was still very great. I didn't want to move. The skin on my chest
and on my legs was tightening and tingling and this only gave variation to the pain.

Even the blood thirst, raging fiercely, and the smell of the blood of the servants in the
house couldn't make me move. I knew David was there, but I didn't speak to him. I
thought if I tried to speak, I would weep on account of the pain.

I slept and I know that I dreamed, but I couldn't remember the dreams when next I
opened my eyes. I would see the oil lamp again, and the light still frightened me. And so
did her voice.

Once I woke talking to her in the darkness. "Why you of all people? Why you in my
dreams? Where's your bloody knife?"

I was grateful when the dawn came. I had sometimes deliberately clamped my mouth
shut not to cry out over the pain.

When I woke the second night, the pain was not very great. My body was sore all over,
perhaps what mortals call raw. But the agony was clearly past. I was lying still on the
tiger, and the room felt just a little uncomfortably cold.

There were logs stacked in the stone fireplace, set way back under the broken arch,
against the blackened bricks. The kindling was all there, with a bit of rumpled
newspaper. All in readiness. Hmmm. Someone had come dangerously close to me in my
sleep. I hoped to heaven I had not reached out, as we sometimes do in our trance, and
pinioned this poor creature.

I closed my eyes and listened. Snow falling on the roof, snow tumbling down into the
chimney. I opened my eyes again and saw the gleaming bits of moisture on the logs.

Then I concentrated, and felt the energy leap out from me like a long thin tongue and
touch the kindling, which burst at once into tiny dancing flames. The thick crusted
surface of the logs began to warm and then blister. The fire was on its way.

I felt a sudden flush of exquisite pain in my cheeks and on my forehead as the light grew
brighter. Interesting. I climbed to my knees and stood up, alone in the room. I looked at
the brass lamp beside David's chair. With a tiny soundless mental twist, I turned it on.

There were clothes on the chair, a pair of new pants of thick soft dark flannel, a white
cotton shirt, and a rather shapeless jacket of old wool. All these clothes were a little too
big. They had been David's clothes. Even the fur-lined slippers were too big. But I
wanted to be dressed. There were some undistinguished cotton undergarments also, of the
kind everyone wears in the twentieth century, and a comb for my hair.

I took my time with everything, noting only a throbbing soreness as I pulled the cloth
over my skin. My scalp hurt when I combed my hair. Finally I simply shook it until all
the sand and dust was out of it, tumbling down into the thick carpet, and disappearing
conveniently enough from view. Putting on the slippers was very nice. But what I wanted
now was a mirror.

I found one in the hallway, an old dark mirror in a heavy gilded frame. Enough light
came from the open library door for me to see myself fairly well.

For a moment, I could not quite believe what I beheld. My skin was smooth all over, as
completely unblemished as it had ever been. But it was an amber color now, the very
color of the frame of the mirror, and gleaming only slightly, no more than that of a mortal
who had spent a long luxurious sojourn in tropical seas.

My eyebrows and eyelashes shone brightly, as is always the case with the blond hair of
such sun-browned individuals, and the few lines of my face, left to me by the Dark Gift,
were a little bit more deeply etched than before. I refer here to two small commas at the
corners of my mouth, the result of smiling so much when I was alive; and to a few very
fine lines at the corners of my eyes, and the trace of a line or two across my forehead.
Very nice to have them back for I had not seen them in a long time.

My hands had suffered more. They were darker than my face, and very human-looking,
with many little creases, which put me in mind at once of how many fine wrinkles mortal
hands do have.

The nails still glistened in a manner that might alarm humans, but it would be a simple
thing to rub a bit of ash over them. My eyes, of course, were another matter. Never had
they seemed so bright and so iridescent. But a pair of smoke-colored glasses was all that I
needed there. The bigger mask of black glasses was no longer necessary to cover up the
shining white skin.

Ye gods, how perfectly wonderful, I thought, staring at my own reflection. You look
almost like a man! Almost like a man! I could feel a dull ache all over in these burnt
tissues, but that felt good to me, as if it were reminding me of the shape of my body, and
its human limits.

I could have shouted. Instead I prayed. May this last, and if it doesn't I'd go through it all
again.

Then it occurred to me, rather crushingly-I was supposed to be destroying myself, not
perfecting my appearance so that I could move around better among men. I was supposed
to be dying. And if the sun over the Gobi Desert hadn't done it... if all the long day of
lying in the sun, and then the second sunrise . . .

Ah, but you coward, I thought, you could have found some way to stay above the surface
for that second day! Or could you?

"Well, thank God you chose to come back."

I turned and saw David coming down the hall. He had only just returned home, his dark
heavy coat was wet from the snow, and he hadn't even removed his boots.

He came to an abrupt halt and inspected me from head to toe, straining to see in the
shadows. "Ah, the clothes will do," he said. "Good Lord, you look like one of those
beachcombers, those surf people, those young men who live eternally in resorts."

I smiled.

He reached out, rather bravely, I thought, and took my hand and led me into the library,
where the fire was quite vigorously burning by now. He studied me once again.

"There's no more pain," he said tentatively.

"There is sensation, but it's not exactly what we call pain. I'm going out for a little while.
Oh, don't worry. I'll be back. I'm thirsting. I have to hunt."

His face went blank, but not so blank that I didn't see the blood in his cheeks, or all the
tiny vessels in his eyes.

"Well, what did you think?" I asked. "That I'd given it up?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, then, care to come and watch?"

He said nothing, but I could see I'd frightened him.

"You must remember what I am," I said. "When you help me, you help the devil." I made
a little gesture to his copy of Faust, still lying on the table. And there was that Lovecraft
story. Hmmm.

"You don't have to take life to do it, do you?" he asked quite seriously.

But what a crude question.

I made a short derisive noise. "I like to take life," I said. I gestured to the tiger. "I'm a
hunter as you were once. I think it's fun."

He looked at me for a long moment, his face full of a sort of troubled wonder and then he
nodded slowly as if accepting this. But he was very far from accepting it.

"Have your supper while I'm gone," I said. "I can tell you're hungry. I can smell meat
cooking somewhere in this house. And you can be certain that I intend to have my supper
before I come back."

"You're quite determined that I'm to know you, aren't you?" he asked. "That there's to be
no sentimentality or mistake."

"Exactly." I drew back my lips and showed him my fangs for a second. They are very
small, actually, nothing compared to the leopard and the tiger, with which he kept
company so obviously by choice. But this grimace always frightens mortals. It does more
than frighten them. It actually shocks them. I think it sends some primal message of
alarm through the organism which has little to do with its conscious courage or
sophistication.

He blanched. He stood quite motionless, looking at me, and then gradually the warmth
and the expression returned to his face.

"Very welt," he said. "I'll be here when you come back. If you don't come back, I'll be
furious! I won't speak to you again, I swear it. You vanish on me tonight, you'll never get
another nod from me. It will be a crime against hospitality. You understand?"

"All right, all right!" I said with a shrug, though I was secretly touched that he wanted me
here. I hadn't really been so sure, and I'd been so rude to him. "I'll come back. Besides, I
want to know."

"What?"

"Why you aren't afraid of dying."

"Well, you aren't afraid of it, are you?"

I didn't answer. I saw the sun again, the great fiery ball becoming earth and sky, and I
shuddered. Then I saw that oil lamp in my dream.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I am afraid of dying," I said with a nod for emphasis. "All my illusions are being
shattered."

"You have illusions?" he asked quite honestly.

"Of course I do. One of my illusions was that no one could really refuse the Dark Gift,
not knowingly ..."

"Lestat, must I remind you that you refused it yourself?"

"David, I was a boy. I was being forced. I fought instinctively. But that had nothing to do
with knowing."

"Don't sell yourself short, I think you would have refused even if you had fully
understood."

"Now we're speaking about your illusions," I said. "I'm hungry. Get out of my way or I'll
kill you."

"I don't believe you. You had better come back."

"I will. This time I'll keep the promise I made in my letter. You can say all you have to
say."

I hunted the back streets of London. I was wandering near Charing Cross Station, looking
for some petty cutthroat that would yield a mouthful even if his narrow little ambitions
did sour my soul. But it didn't quite turn out that way.

There was an old woman walking there, shuffling along in a soiled coat, her feet bound
with rags. Mad and bitter cold she was, and almost certain to die before morning, having
stolen out of the back door of some place where they'd tried to lock her up, or so she
bawled to the world in general, determined never to be caught again.

We made grand lovers! She had a name for me and a great warm cluster of memories,
and there we were dancing in the gutter together, she and I, and I held her a long time in
my arms. She was very well nourished, as so many beggars are in this century where
food is so plentiful in the Western countries, and I drank slowly, oh, so slowly, savoring
it, and feeling a rush all through my burnt skin.

When it was finished, I realized that I was experiencing the cold very keenly and had
been all along. I was feeling all fluctuations of temperature with greater acuity.
Interesting.

The wind was lashing me and I hated it. Maybe something of my flesh had actually been
burnt off. I didn't know. I felt the wet cold in my feet, and my hands hurt so much I had
to bury them in my pockets. I caught those memories again of the French winter of my
last year at home, of the young mortal country lord with a bed of hay, and only the dogs
for companions. All the blood in the world seemed not enough suddenly. Time to feed
again, and again.

They were derelicts, all of them, lured into the icy darkness from their shacks of trash and
cardboard, and doomed, or so I told myself, moaning and feasting amid the stench of
rancid sweat and urine, and phlegm. But the blood was blood.

When the clocks struck ten, I was still thirsting, and victims were still plentiful, but I was
tired of it, and it didn't matter anymore.

I traveled for many blocks, into the fashionable West End, and there entered a dark little
shop, full of smart, finely cut garments for gentlemen-ah, the ready-made wealth of these
years-and outfitted myself to my taste in gray tweed pants and belted coat, with a thick
white wool sweater, and even a pair of very pale green tinted glasses with delicate gold
frames. Then off I wandered, back into the chill night full of swirling snowflakes, singing

to myself and doing a little tap dance under the street lamp just as I used to do for
Claudia and-

Slam! Bang! Up stepped this fierce and beautiful young tough with wine on his breath,
divinely sleazy, who drew a knife on me, all set to murder me for the money I didn't
have, which reminded me that I was a miserable thief for having just stolen a wardrobe of
fine Irish clothes. Hmmm. But I was lost again in the tight hot embrace, crushing the
bastard's ribs, sucking him dry as a dead rat in a summer attic, and he went down in
amazement and ecstasy, one hand clutching painfully, to the very last, at my hair.

He did have some money in his pockets. What luck. I put that in the clothier's for the
garments I'd taken, which seemed more than adequate when I did my arithmetic, at which
I am not so good, preternatural powers or no. Then I wrote a little note of thanks,
unsigned, of course. And I locked up the shop door tight with a few little telepathic
twists, and off I went again.

FIVE

IT WAS striking midnight when I reached Talbot Manor. It was as if I had never seen the
place before. I had time now to roam the maze in the snow, and to study the pattern of
clipped shrubbery, and imagine what the garden would be come spring. Beautiful old
place.

Then there were the close dark little rooms themselves, built to hold out the cold English
winters, and the little lead-mullioned windows, many of which were full of light now,
and most inviting in the snowy dark.

David had finished his supper, obviously, and the servants- an old man and woman-were
at work still in the kitchen belowstairs while the lord changed his clothes in his bedroom
on the second floor.

I watched him as he put on, over his pajamas, a long black dressing gown with black
velvet lapels and sash that made him look very much like a cleric, though it was far too
ornately patterned to be a cassock, especially with the white silk scarf tucked in at the
neck.

Then he made his way down the stairs.

I entered by my favorite door at the end of the passage and came up beside him in the
library as he bent to rake the fire.

"Ah, you did come back," he said, trying to conceal his delight, "Good Lord, but you
come and go so quietly!"

"Yes, it's very annoying, isn't it?" I looked at the Bible on the table, the copy of Faust,
and the little short story by Lovecraft, still stapled, but smoothed out. There was David's
decanter of Scotch also and a pretty thick-bottomed crystal glass.

I stared at the short story, the memory of the anxious young man coming back to me. So
odd the way he moved. A vague tremor passed through me at the thought of his having
spotted me in three distinctly different places. I'd probably never lay eyes on him again.
On the other hand . . . But there was time to deal with this pest of a mortal. David was on
my mind now, and the delicious awareness that we had the night to talk to each other.

"Wherever did you get those handsome clothes?" David asked. His eyes passed over me
slowly, lingeringly, and he seemed not to notice my attention to his books.

"Oh, a little shop somewhere. I never steal the garments of my victims, if that's what you
mean. And besides, I'm too addicted to lowlife and they don't dress well enough for that
sort of thing."

I settled in the chair opposite his, which was my chair now, I supposed. Deep, pliant
leather, creaking springs, but very comfortable, with a high winged back and broad
substantial arms. His own chair did not match it but was just as good, and a little more
creased and worn.

He stood before the flames, still studying me. Then he sat down too. He took the glass
stopper from the crystal decanter, filled his glass, and lifted it in a little salute.

He took a deep swallow and winced slightly as the liquid obviously warmed his throat.

Suddenly, vividly, I remembered that particular sensation. I remembered being in the loft
of the barn on my land in France, and drinking cognac just like that, and even making
that grimace, and my mortal friend and lover, Nicki, snatching the bottle greedily from
my hand.

"I see you are yourself again," David said with sudden warmth, lowering his voice
slightly as he peered at me. He sat back, with the glass resting on the right arm of his
chair. He looked very dignified, though far more at ease than I had ever seen him. His
hair was thick and wavy, and had become a beautiful shade of dark gray.

"Do I seem myself?" I asked.

"You have that mischievous look in your eye," he answered under his breath, still
scanning me intently. "There's a little smile on your lips. Won't leave for more than a
second when you speak. And the skin-it makes a remarkable difference. I pray you're not
in pain. You aren't, are you?"

I made a small dismissive gesture. I could hear his heartbeat. It was ever so slightly
weaker than it had been in Amsterdam. Now and then it was irregular as well.

"How long will your skin stay dark like this?" he asked.

"Years, perhaps, seems one of the ancient ones told me so. Didn't I write about it in The
Queen of the Damned?" I thought of Marius and how angry he was with me in genera!.
How disapproving he would be of what I'd done.

"It was Maharet, your ancient red-haired one," David said. "In your book, she claimed to
have done the very thing merely to darken her skin."

"What courage," I whispered. "And you don't believe in her existence, do you? Though I
am sitting right here with you now."

"Oh, I do believe in her. Of course I do. I believe everything you've written. But I know
you! Tell me-what actually happened in the desert? Did you really believe you would
die?"

"You would ask that question, David, and right off the bat." I sighed. "Well, I can't claim
that I did really believe it. I was probably playing my usual games. I swear to God I don't
tell lies to others. But I lie to myself. I don't think I can die now, at least not in any way
that I myself could contrive."

He let out a long sigh.

"So why aren't you afraid of dying, David? I don't mean to torment you with the old
offer. I honestly can't quite figure it out. You're really, truly not afraid to die, and that I
simply do not understand. Because you can die, of course."

Was he having doubts? He didn't answer immediately. Yet he seemed powerfully
stimulated, I could see that. I could all but hear his brain working, though of course I
couldn't hear his thoughts.

"Why the Faust play, David? Am I Mephistopheles?" I asked. "Are you Faust?"

He shook his head. "I may be Faust," he said finally, taking another drink of the Scotch,
"but you're not the devil, that's perfectly clear." He gave a sigh.

"I have wrecked things for you, though, haven't I? I knew it in Amsterdam. You don't
stay in the Motherhouse unless you have to. I'm not driving you mad, but I've had a very
bad effect, have I not?"

Again, he didn't answer right away. He was looking at me with his large prominent black
eyes, and obviously considering the question from all angles. The deep lines of his face-
the creases in his forehead, the lines at the corners of his eyes and around the edges of his
mouth-reinforced his genial and open expression. There was not a sour note to this being,

but there was unhappiness beneath the surface, and it was tangled with deep
considerations, going back through a long life.

"Would have happened anyway, Lestat," he said finally. "There are reasons why I'm no
longer so good at being the Superior General. Would have happened anyway, I'm
relatively certain of that."

"Explain it to me. I thought you were in the very womb of the order, that it was your
life."

He shook his head. "I was always an unlikely candidate for the Talamasca. I've
mentioned how I spent my youth in India. I could have lived my life that way. I'm no
scholar in the conventional sense, never was. Nevertheless I am like Faust in the play. I'm
old, and I haven't cracked the secrets of the universe. Not at all. I thought I had when I
was young. The first time I saw ... a vision. The first time I knew a witch, the first time I
heard the voice of a spirit, the first time I called up a spirit and made it do my bidding. I
thought I had! But that was nothing. Those are earthbound things. . . earthbound
mysteries. Or mysteries I'll never solve, at any rate."

He paused, as if he wanted to say something more, something in particular. But then he
merely lifted the glass and drank almost absently, and this time without the grimace, for
that obviously had been for the first drink of the night. He stared at the glass, and refilled
it from the decanter.

I hated it that I couldn't read his thoughts, that I caught not the slightest flickering
emanations behind his words.

"You know why I became a member of the Talamasca?" he asked. "It had nothing to do
with scholarship at all. Never dreamed I'd be confined to the Motherhouse, wading
through papers, and typing files into the computer, and sending faxes off all over the
world. Nothing like that at all. It started with another hunting expedition, a new frontier,
so to speak, a trip to far-off Brazil. That's where I discovered the occult, you might say,
in the little crooked streets of old Rio, and it seemed every bit as exciting and dangerous
as my old tiger hunts had ever been. That's what drew me-the danger. And how I came to
be so far from it, I don't know."

I didn't reply, but something came clear to me, that there was obviously a danger in his
knowing me. He must have liked the danger. I had thought he was possessed of a
scholar's naivete about it, but now this didn't seem to be the case.

"Yes," he said at once, his eyes growing wide as he smiled. "Exactly. Although I can't
honestly believe you'd ever harm me."

"Don't deceive yourself," I said suddenly. "And you do, you know. You commit the old
sin. You believe in what you see. I am not what you see."

"How so?"

"Ah, come now. I look like an angel, but I'm not. The old rules of nature encompass
many creatures like me. We're beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped
tiger, yet we're merciless killers. You do let your eyes deceive you. But I don't want to
quarrel with you. Tell me this story. What happened in Rio? I'm eager to know."

A little sadness came over me as I spoke these words. I wanted to say, if I cannot have
you as my vampire companion, then let me know you as a mortal. It thrilled me, softly
and palpably, that we sat there together, as we did.

"All right," he said, "you've made your point and I acknowledge it. Drawing close to you
years ago in the auditorium where you were singing, seeing you the very first tune you
came to me-it did have the dark lure of danger. And that you tempt me with your offer-
that, too, is dangerous, for I am only human, as we both know."

I sat back, a little happier, lifting my leg and digging my heel into the leather seat of the
old chair. "I like people to be a little afraid of me," I said with a shrug. "But what
happened in Rio?"

"I came full in the face of the religion of the spirits;" he said. "Candomble. You know the
word?"

Again I gave a little shrug. "Heard it once or twice," I said. "I'll go there sometime,
maybe soon." I thought in a flash of the big cities of South America, of her rain forests,
and of the Amazon. Yes, I had quite an appetite for such an adventure,

and the despair that had carried me down into the Gobi seemed very far away. I was glad
I was still alive, and quietly I refused to be ashamed.

"Oh, if I could see Rio again," he said softly, more to himself than to me. "Of course, she
isn't what she was in those days. She's a world of skyscrapers now and big luxury hotels.
But I would love to see that curving shoreline again, to see Sugar Loaf Mountain, and the
statue of Christ atop Corcovado. I don't believe there is a more dazzling piece of
geography on earth. Why did I let so many years go by without returning to Rio?"

"Why can't you go anytime that you wish?" I asked. I felt a strong protectiveness for him
suddenly. "Surely that bunch of monks in London can't keep you from going. Besides,
you're the boss."

He laughed in the most gentlemanly manner. "No, they wouldn't stop me," he said. "It's
whether or not I have the stamina, both mental and physical. But that's quite beside the
point here, I wanted to tell you what happened. Or perhaps it is the point, I don't know."

"You have the means to go to Brazil if you want to?"

"Oh, yes, that has never been an issue. My father was a clever man when it came to
money. As a consequence I've never had to give it much thought."

"I'd put the money in your hands if you didn't have it."

He gave me one of his warmest, most tolerant smiles. "I'm old," he said, "I'm lonely, and
something of a fool, as any man must be if he has any wisdom at all. But I'm not poor,
thank heaven."

"So what happened to you in Brazil? How did it begin?"

He started to speak, then fell silent.

"You really mean to remain here? To listen to what I have to say?"

"Yes," I said immediately. "Please." I realized I wanted nothing more in all the world. I
had not a single plan or ambition in my heart, not a thought for anything else but being
here with him. The simplicity of it stunned me somewhat.

Still he seemed reluctant to confide in me. Then a subtle change came over him, a sort of
relaxation, a yielding perhaps.

Finally he began.

"It was after the Second World War," he said. "The India of my boyhood was gone,
simply gone. And besides, I was hungry for new places. I got up a hunting expedition
with my friends for the Amazon jungles. I was obsessed with the prospect of the Amazon
jungles. We were after the great South American jaguar-" He gestured to the spotted skin
of a cat I had not noticed before, mounted upon a stand in a corner of the room. "How I
wanted to track that cat."

"Seems that you did."

"Not immediately," he said with a short ironic laugh. "We decided to preface our
expedition with a nice luxurious holiday in Rio, a couple of weeks to roam Copacabana
Beach, and all the old colonial sites-the monasteries, churches, and so forth. And
understand, the center of the city was different in that time, a warren of little narrow
streets, and wonderful old architecture! I was so eager for it, for the sheer alien quality of
it! That's what sends us Englishmen into the tropics. We have to get away from all this
propriety, this tradition-and immerse ourselves in some seemingly savage culture which
we can never tame or really understand."

His whole manner was changing as he spoke; he was becoming even more vigorous and
energetic, eyes brightening and words flowing more quickly in that crisp British accent,
which I so loved.

"Well, the city itself surpassed all expectations, of course. Yet it was nothing as
entrancing as the people. The people in Brazil are like no people I've ever seen. For one
thing, they're exceptionally beautiful, and though everyone agrees on this point, no one
knows why. No, I'm quite serious," he said, when he saw me smile, "Perhaps it's the
blending of Portuguese and African, and then toss in the Indian blood. I honestly can't
say. The fact is, they are extraordinarily attractive and they have extremely sensuous
voices. Why, you could fall in love with their voices, you could end up kissing their
voices; and the music, the bossa nova, that's their language all right."

"You should have stayed there."

"Oh, no!" he said, taking another quick sip of the Scotch. "Well, to continue. I developed
a passion, shall we say, for this boy, CarJos, the very first week. I was absolutely swept
away; all we did was drink and make love for days and nights on end in my suite in the
Palace Hotel. Quite truly obscene."

"Your friends waited?"

"No, laid down the law. Come with us now, or we leave you. But it was perfectly fine
with them if Carlos came along." He

made a little gesture with his right hand. "Ah, these were all sophisticated gentlemen, of
course."

"Of course."

"But the decision to take Carlos proved to be a dreadful mistake. His mother was a
Candomble priestess, though I hadn't the slightest idea of it, She didn't want her boy
going off into the Amazon jungles. She wanted him going to school. She sent the spirits
after me."

He paused, looking at me, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction.

"That must have been wonderful fun," I said.

"They pummeled me in the darkness. They picked up the bed off the floor and dumped
me out! They turned the taps in the shower so that I was nearly scalded. They filled my
teacups with urine. After a full seven days, I thought I was going out of my mind. I'd
gone from annoyance and incredulity to sheer terror. Dishes flew off the table in front of
me. Bells rang in my ears. Bottles went crashing from the shelves. Wherever I went, I
saw dark-faced individuals watching roe."

"You knew it was this woman?"

"Not at first. But Carlos finally broke down and confessed everything. His mother didn't
intend to remove the curse until I left. Well, I left that very night.

"I came back to London, exhausted and half mad. But it didn't do any good. They came
with me. Same things started to happen right here in Taibot Manor. Doors slamming,
furniture moving, the bells ringing all the time in the servants' pantry belowstairs.
Everyone was going mad. And my mother-my mother had been more or less of a
spiritualist, always running . to various mediums all over London. She brought in the
Talamasca. I told them the whole story, and they started explaining Candomble and
spiritism to me."

"They exorcised the demons?"

"No. But after about a week's intense study in the library of the Motherhouse and
extensive interviews with the few members who had been to Rio, I was able to get the
demons under control myself. Everyone was quite surprised. Then when I decided to go
back to Brazil, I astonished them. They warned me this priestess was plenty powerful
enough to kill me.

" That's exactly it I said to them. 'I want that sort of power myself. I'm going to become
her pupil. She's going to teach me.' They begged me not to go. I told them I'd give them a
written report on my return. You can understand how I felt. I'd seen the work of these
invisible entities. I'd felt them touch me. I'd seen objects hurtling through the air. I
thought the great world of the invisible was opening up to me. I had to go there. Why,
nothing could have discouraged me from it. Nothing at all."

"Yes, I see," I said. "It was as exciting as hunting big game."

"Precisely." He shook his head. "Those were the days. I suppose I thought if the war
hadn't killed me, nothing could kill me." He drifted off suddenly, into his memories,
locking me out.

"You confronted the woman?"

He nodded.

"Confronted her and impressed her, and then bribed her beyond her wildest dreams. I told
her I wanted to become her apprentice. I swore on my knees to her that I wanted to learn,
that I wouldn't leave until I'd penetrated the mystery, and learned all that I could." He
gave a little laugh. "I'm not sure this woman had ever encountered an anthropologist,
even an amateur, and I suppose that is what I might have been called. Whatever, I stayed
a year in Rio. And believe you me, that was the most remarkable year of my life. I only
left Rio finally, because I knew if I didn't, I never would. David Talbot the Englishman
would have been no more."

"You learned how to summon the spirits?"

He nodded. Again, he was remembering, seeing images I couldn't see. He was troubled,
faintly sad. "I wrote it all down," he said finally. "It's in the files at the Motherhouse.
Many, many have read the story over the years."

"Never tempted to publish it?"

"Can't do it. It's part of being in the Talamasca. We never publish outside."

"You're afraid you've wasted your life, aren't you?"

"No. I'm not, really . . . Though what I said earlier is true. I haven't cracked the secrets of
the universe. I've never even passed the point I reached in Brazil. Oh, there were
shocking revelations afterwards. I remember the first night I read the files on the
vampires, how incredulous I was, and then those strange moments when I went down
into the vaults and picked through the evidence. But in the end it was like Candomble. I
only penetrated so far."

"Believe me, I know. David, the world is meant to remain a mystery. If there is any
explanation, we are not meant to hit upon it, of that much I'm sure."

"I think you're right," he said sadly.

"And I think you're more afraid of death than you will admit. You've taken a stubborn
tack with me, a moral one, and I don't blame you. Maybe you're old enough and wise
enough to really know you don't want to be one of us. But don't go talking about death as
if it's going to give you answers. I suspect death is awful. You just stop and there's no
more life, and no more chance to know anything at all."

"No. I can't agree with you there, Lestat," he said. "I simply can't." He was gazing at the
tiger again, and then he said, "Somebody formed the fearful symmetry, Lestat. Somebody
had to. The tiger and the lamb ... it couldn't have happened all by itself."

I shook my head. "More intelligence went into the creation of that old poem, David, than
ever went into the creation of the world. You sound like an Episcopalian. But I know
what you're saying. I've thought it from tune to time myself. Stupidly simple. There has
to be something to all this. There has to be! So many missing pieces. The more you
consider it, the more atheists begin to sound like religious fanatics. But I think it's a
delusion. It is all process and nothing more."

"Missing pieces, Lestat. Of course! Imagine for a moment that I made a robot, a perfect
replica of myself. Imagine I gave him all the encyclopedias of information that I could-
you know, programmed it into his computer brain. Well, it would only be a matter of
time before he'd come to me, and say, ''David, where's the rest of it? The explanation!
How did it all start? Why did you leave out the explanation for why there was ever a big
bang in the first place, or what precisely happened when the minerals and other inert

compounds suddenly evolved into organic cells? What about the great gap in the fossil
record?' "

I laughed delightedly.

"And I'd have to break it to the poor chap," he said, "that there was no explanation. That I
didn't have the missing pieces."

"David, nobody has the missing pieces. Nobody ever will."

"Don't be so sure."

"That's your hope, then? That's why you're reading the Bible? You couldn't crack the
occult secrets of the universe, and now you've gone back to God?"

"God is the occult secret of the universe," David said, thoughtfully, almost as if brooding
upon it, face very relaxed and almost young. He was staring at the glass in his hand,
maybe liking the way the light collected in the crystal. I didn't know. I had to wait for
him to speak.

"I think the answer might be in Genesis," he said finally, "I really do."

"David, you amaze me. Talk about missing pieces. Genesis is a bunch of fragments."

"Yes, but telling fragments remain to us, Lestat. God created man in His own image and
likeness. I suspect that that is the key. Nobody knows what it really means, you know.
The Hebrews didn't think God was a man."

"And how can it be the key?"

"God is a creative force, Lestat. And so are we. He told Adam, 'Increase and multiply.'
That's what the first organic cells did, Lestat, increased and multiplied. Not merely
changed shape but replicated themselves. God is a creative force. He made the whole
universe out of Himself through cell division. That's why the devils are so full of envy-
the bad angels, I mean. They are not creative creatures; they have no bodies, no cells,
they're spirit. And I suspect it wasn't envy so much as a form of suspicion-that God was
making a mistake in making another engine of creativity in Adam, so like Himself. I
mean the angels probably felt the physical universe was bad enough, with all the
replicating cells, but thinking, talking beings who could increase and multiply? They
were probably outraged by the whole experiment. That was their sin."

"So you're saying God isn't pure spirit."

"That's right. God has a body. Always did. The secret of cell-dividing life lies within
God. And all living cells have a tiny part of God's spirit in them, Lestat, that's the missing
piece as to what makes life happen in the first place, what separates it from nonlife. It's

exactly like your vampiric genesis. You told us that the spirit of Amel-one evil entity-
infused the bodies of all the vampires .. . Well, men share in the spirit of God in the same
way."

"Good Lord, David, you're going out of your mind. We're a mutation."

"Ah, yes, but you exist in our universe, and your mutation mirrors the mutation that we
are. Besides, others have struck upon the same theory. God is the fire, and we are all tiny
flames; and when we die, those tiny flames go back into the fire of God. But the
important thing is to realize that God Himself is Body and Soul! Absolutely.

"Western civilization has been founded upon an inversion. But it is my honest belief that
in our daily deeds we know and honor the truth. It is only when we talk religion that we
say God is pure spirit and always was and always will be, and that the flesh is evil. The
truth is in Genesis, it's there. I'll tell you what the big bang was, Lestat. It was when the
cells of God began to divide."

"This really is a lovely theory, David. Was God surprised?"

"No, but the angels were. I'm quite serious. I'll tell you the superstitious part-the religious
belief that God is perfect. He's obviously not."

"What a relief," I said. "It explains so much."

"You're laughing at me now. I don't blame you. But you're absolutely right. It explains
everything. God has made many mistakes. Many, many mistakes. As surely God Himself
knows! And I suspect the angels tried to warn Hun. The Devil became the Devil because
he tried to warn God. God is love. But I'm not sure God is absolutely brilliant."

I was trying to suppress my laughter, but I couldn't do it entirely. "David, if you keep this
up, you'll be struck by lightning."

"Nonsense. God does want us to figure it out."

"No. That I can't accept,"

"You mean you accept the rest?" he said with another little laugh. "No, but I'm quite
serious. Religion is primitive in its illogical conclusions. Imagine a perfect God allowing
for the Devil to come into existence. No, that's simply never made sense.

"The entire flaw in the Bible is the notion that God is perfect. It represents a failure of
imagination on the part of the early scholars. It's responsible for every impossible
theological question as to good and evil with which we've been wrestling through the
centuries. God is good, however, wondrously good. Yes, God is love. But no creative
force is perfect. That's clear."

"And the Devil? Is there any new intelligence about him?"

He regarded me for a moment with just a touch of impatience. "You are such a cynical
being," he whispered.

"No, I'm not," I said. "I honestly want to know. I have a particular interest in the Devil,
obviously. I speak of him much more often than I speak of God. I can't figure out really
why mortals love him so much, I mean, why they love the idea of him. But they do."

"Because they don't believe in him," David said. "Because a perfectly evil Devil makes
even less sense than a perfect God. Imagine, the Devil never learning anything during all
this time, never changing his mind about being the Devil. It's an insult to our intellect,
such an idea."

"So what's your truth behind the lie?"

"He's not purely unredeemable. He's merely part of God's plan. He's a spirit allowed to
tempt and try humans. He disapproves of humans, of the entire experiment. See, that was
the nature of the Devil's Fall, as I see it. The Devil didn't think the idea would work. But
the key, Lestat, is understanding that God is matter! God is physical, God is the Lord of
Cell Division, and the Devil abhors the excess of letting all this cell division run wild."

Again, he went into one of his maddening pauses, eyes widening again with wonder, and
then he said:

"I have another theory about the Devil."

"Tell me."

"There's more than one of them. And nobody appointed much likes the job." This he said
almost in a murmur. He was distracted, as if he wanted to say more, but didn't.

I laughed outright.

"Now that I can understand," I said. "Who would like the job of being the Devil? And to
think that one can't possibly win. And especially considering that the Devil was an angel
at the start of it all, and supposed to be very smart."

"Exactly." He pointed his finger at me. "Your little story about Rembrandt. The Devil, if
he had a brain, should have acknowledged the genius of Rembrandt."

"And the goodness of Faust."

"Ah, yes, you saw me reading Faust in Amsterdam, didn't you? And you purchased your
own copy as a consequence."

"How did you know that?"

"The proprietor of the bookstore told me the next afternoon. A strange blond-haired
young Frenchman came in moments

after I'd left, bought the very same book, and stood in the street reading it for half an hour
without moving. Whitest skin the man had ever seen. Had to be you, of course."

I shook my head and smiled. "I do these clumsy things. It's a wonder some scientist hasn't
scooped me up in a net."

"That's no joke, my friend. You were very careless in Miami several nights ago. Two
victims drained entirely of blood."

This created such instant confusion in me that at first I said nothing, then only that it was
a wonder the news had reached him on this side of the sea. I felt the old despair touch me
with its black wing.

"Bizarre killings make international headlines," he answered. "Besides, the Talamasca
receives reports of all sorts of things. We have people who clip for us in cities
everywhere, sending in items on all aspects of the paranormal for our files. 'Vampire
Killer Strikes Twice in Miami.' Several sources sent it along."

"But they don't really believe it was a vampire, you know they don't."

"No, but you keep it up and they might come to believe it. That's what you wanted to
happen before with your little rock music career. You wanted them to catch on. It's not
inconceivable. And this sport of yours with the serial killers! You're leaving quite a trail
of those."

This truly astonished me. My hunting of the killers had taken me back and forth across
continents. I had never thought anyone would connect these widely scattered deaths,
except Marius, of course.

"How did you come to figure it out?"

"I told you. Such stories always come into our hands. Satanism, vampirism, voodoo,
witchcraft, sightings of werewolves; it all comes across my desk. Most of it goes into the
trash, obviously. But I know the grain of truth when I see it. And your killings are very
easy to spot.

"You've been going after these mass murderers for some time now. You leave their
bodies in the open. You left this last one in a hotel, where he was found only an hour
after his death. As for the old woman, you were equally careless! Her son found her the
following day. No wounds for the coroner to find on either victim. You're a nameless
celebrity hi Miami, quite overshadowing the notoriety of the poor dead man in the hotel."

"I don't give a damn," I said angrily. But I did, of course. I deplored my own
carelessness, yet I did nothing to correct it. Well, this must surely change. Tonight, had I
done any better? It seemed cowardly to plead excuses for such things.

David was watching me carefully. If there was one dominant characteristic to David, it
was his alertness. "It's not inconceivable," he said, "that you could be caught."

I gave a scornful, dismissive laugh.

"They could lock you up in a laboratory, study you in a cage of space-age glass."

"That's impossible. But what an interesting thought."

"I knew it! You want it to happen."

I shrugged. "Might be fun for a little while. Look, it's a sheer impossibility. The night of
my one appearance as a rock singer, all manner of bizarre things happened. The mortal
world merely swept up afterwards and closed its files. As for the old woman in Miami,
that was a terrible mishap. Should never have happened-" I stopped. What about those
who died in London this very night?

"But you enjoy taking life," he said. "You said it was fun."

I felt such pain suddenly I wanted to leave. But I'd promised I wouldn't. I just sat there,
staring into the fire, thinking about the Gobi Desert, and the bones of the big lizards and
the way the light of the sun had filled up the entire world. I thought of Claudia. I smelled
the wick of the lamp.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be cruel to you," he said.

"Well, why the hell not? I can't think of a finer choice for cruelty. Besides, I'm not always
so kind to you."

"What do you really want? What is your overriding passion?"

I thought of Marius, and Louis, who had both asked me that same question many a time.

"What could redeem what I've done?" I asked. "I meant to put an end to the killer. He
was a man-eating tiger, my brother. I lay in wait for him. But the old woman-she was a
child in the forest, nothing more. But what does it matter?" I thought of those wretched
creatures whom I'd taken earlier this evening. Fd left such carnage in the back alleys of
London. "I wish I could remember that it doesn't matter," I said. "I meant to save her. But
what good would one act of mercy be in the face of all Fve done? I'm damned if there is a
God or a Devil. Now why don't you go on with your religious talk? The odd thing is, I

find talk of God and the Devil remarkably soothing. Tell me more about the Devil. He's
changeable, surely. He's smart. He must feel. Why ever would he remain static?"

"Exactly. You know what it says in the Book of Job."

"Remind me."

"Well, Satan is there in heaven, with God. God says, where have you been? And Satan
says, roaming around the earth! It's a regular conversation. And they begin arguing about
Job. Satan believes Job's goodness is founded entirely upon his good fortune. And God
agrees to let Satan torment Job. This is the most nearly true picture of the situation which
we possess. God doesn't know everything. The Devil is a good friend of his. And the
whole thing is an experiment. And this Satan is a far cry from being the Devil as we
know him now, worldwide."

"You're really speaking of these ideas as if they were real beings. . ."

"I think they are real," he said, his voice trailing off slightly as he fell into his thoughts.
Then he roused himself. "I want to tell you something. Actually I should have confessed
it before now. In a way, I'm as superstitious and religious as the next man. Because all
this is based on a vision of sorts-you know, the sort of revelation that affects one's
reason."

"No, I don't know. I have dreams but without revelation," I said. "Explain, please."

He sank back into reverie again, looking at the fire.

"Don't shut me out," I said softly.

"Hmmm. Right. I was thinking how to describe it. Well, you know I am a Candomble
priest still. I mean I can summon invisible forces: the pest spirits, the astral tramps,
whatever one wants to call them ... the poltergeist, the little haunts. That means I must
have always had a latent ability to see spirits."

"Yes. I suppose . . ."

"Well, I did see something once, something inexplicable, before I ever went to Brazil."

"Yes?"

"Before Brazil, I'd pretty much discounted it. In fact, it was so disturbing, so perfectly
unaccountable, that I'd put it out of my mind by the time I went to Rio. Yet now, I think
of it all the time. I can't stop myself from thinking of it. And that's why I've turned to the
Bible, as if I'll find some wisdom there."

"Tell me."

"Happened in Paris right before the war. I was there with my mother. I was in a cafe on
the Left Bank, and I don't even remember now which cafe it was, only that it was a lovely
spring day and a simply grand time to be in Paris, as a!l the songs say. I was drinking a
beer, reading the English papers, and I realized I was overhearing a conversation." He
drifted away again. "I wish I knew what really happened," he murmured under his breath.

He sat forward, gathered up the poker in his right hand, an jabbed at the logs, sending a
plume of fiery sparks up the dark bricks.

I wanted desperately to pull him back, but I waited. At last he went on.

"I was in this cafe, as I said."

"Yes."

"And I realized I was overhearing this strange conversation . . . and it wasn't in English
and it wasn't in French . . . and gradually I came to know that it wasn't in any language
really, and yet it was fully understandable to me. I put down my paper, and began to
concentrate. On and on it went. It was a sort of argument. And suddenly I didn't know
whether or not the voices were audible in any conventional sense. I wasn't sure anyone
else could actually hear this! I looked up and slowly turned around.

"And there they were . . . two beings, seated at the table talking to each other, and just for
a moment, it seemed normal-two men in conversation. I looked back at my paper, and
this swimming feeling came over me. I had to anchor myself to something, to fix on the
paper for a moment and then the tabletop, and make the swimming cease. The noise of
the cafe came back like a full orchestra. And I knew I'd just turned and looked at two
individuals who weren't human beings.

"I turned around again, forcing myself to focus tightly, to be aware of things, keenly
aware. And there they were still, and it was painfully clear they were iflusory. They
simply weren't of the same fabric as everything else. Do you know what I'm saying? I can
break it down into parts. They weren't being illuminated by the same light, for instance,
they existed in some realm where the light was from another source."

"Like the light in Rembrandt."

"Yes, rather like that. Their clothes and their faces were smoother than those of human
beings. Why, the whole vision was of a different texture, and that texture was uniform in
all its details."

"Did they see you?"

"No. I mean to say, they didn't look at me, or acknowledge me. They looked at each
other, they went on talking, and I picked up the thread again instantly. It was God talking

to the Devil and telling the Devil that he must go on doing the job. And the Devil didn't
want to do it. He explained that his term had already been too long. The same thing was
happening to him that had happened to all the others. God said that He understood, but
the Devil ought to know how important he was, he couldn't simply shirk his duties, it
wasn't that simple, God needed him, and needed him to be strong. And all this was very
amicable."

"What did they look like?"

"That's the worst part of it. I don't know. At the time I saw two vague shapes, large,
definitely male, or assuming male form, shall we say, and pleasant-looking-nothing
monstrous, nothing out of the ordinary really. I wasn't aware of any absence of
particulars-you know, hair color, facial features, that sort of thing. The two figures
seemed quite complete. But when I tried to reconstruct the event afterwards, I couldn't
recall any details! I don't think the illusion was that nearly complete. I think I was
satisfied by it, but the sense of completeness sprang from something else."

"From what?"

"The content, the meaning, of course."

"They never saw you, never knew you were there."

"My dear boy, they had to know I was there. They must have known. They must have
been doing it for my benefit! How else could I have been allowed to see it?"

"I don't know, David. Maybe they didn't mean for you to see. Maybe it's that some people
can see, and some people can't. Maybe it was a little rip in the other fabric, the fabric of
everything else in the cafe."

"That could be true. But I fear it wasn't. I fear I was meant to see it and it was meant to
have some effect on me. And that's the horror, Lestat. It didn't have a very great effect."

"You didn't change your life on account of it."

"Oh, no, not at all. Why, two days later I doubted I'd even seen it. And with each telling
to another person, with each little verbal confrontation-'David, you've gone crackers'-it
became ever more uncertain and vague. No, I never did anything about it."

"But what was there to do? What can anybody do on account of any revelation but live a
good life? David, surely you told your brethren in the Talamasca about the vision."

"Yes, yes, I told them. But that was much later, after Brazil,, when I filed my long
memoirs, as a good member should do. I told them the whole story, such as it was, of
course."

"And what did they say?"

"Lestat, the Talamasca never says much of anything, that's what one has to face. 'We
watch and we are always there.' To tell the truth, it wasn't a very popular vision to go
talking about with the other members. Speak of spirits in Brazil and you have an
audience. But the Christian God and His Devil? No, I fear the Talamasca is subject
somewhat to prejudices and even fads, like any other institution. The story raised a few
eyebrows. 1 don't recall much else. But then when you're talking to gentlemen who have
seen werewolves, and been seduced by vampires, and fought witches, and talked to
ghosts, well, what do you expect?"

"But God and the Devil," I said, laughing. "David, that's the big time. Maybe the other
members envied you more than you realized."

"No, they didn't take it seriously," he said, acknowledging my humor with a little laugh
of his own. "I'm surprised that you've taken it seriously, to be quite frank."

He rose suddenly, excitedly, and walked across the room to the window, and pushed back
the drape with his hand. He stood trying to see out into the snow-filled night.

"David, what could these apparitions have meant for you to do?"

"I don't know," he said, in a bitter discouraged voice. "That's my point. I'm seventy-four,
and I don't know. I'll die without knowing. And if there is no illumination, then so be it.
That in itself is an answer, whether I am conscious enough to know it or not."

"Come back and sit down, if you will. I like to see your face when you talk."

He obeyed, almost automatically, seating himself and reaching for the empty glass, eyes
shifting to the fire again.

"What do you think, Lestat, really? Inside of you? Is there a God or a Devil? I mean
truly, what do you believe?"

I thought for a long time before I answered. Then:

"I do think God exists. I don't like to say so. But I do. And probably some form of Devil
exists as well. I admit-it's a matter of the missing pieces, as we've said. And you might
well have seen the Supreme Being and His Adversary in that Paris cafe. But it's part of
their maddening game that we can never figure it out for certain. You want a likely
explanation for their behavior? Why they let you have a little glimpse? They wanted to
get you embroiled in some sort of religious response! They play with us that way. They
throw out visions and miracles and bits and pieces of divine revelation. And we go off
full of zeal and found a church. It's all part of their game, part of their ongoing and
endless talk. And you know? I think your view of them-an imperfect God and a learning
Devil-is just about as good as anyone else's interpretation. I think you've hit on it."

He was staring at me intently, but he didn't reply.

"No," I continued. "We aren't meant to know the answers. We aren't meant to know if our
souls travel from body to body through reincarnation. We aren't meant to know if God
made the world. If He's Allah or Yahweh or Shiva or Christ. He plants the doubts as He
plants the revelations. We're all His fools."

Still he didn't answer.

"Quit the Talamasca, David," I said. "Go to Brazil before you're too old. Go back to
India. See the places you want to see."

"Yes, I think I should do that," he said softly. "And they'll probably take care of it all for
me. The elders have already met to discuss the entire question of David and his recent
absences from the Motherhouse. They'll retire me with a nice pension, of course."

"Do they know that you've seen me?"

"Oh, yes. That's part of the problem. The elders have forbidden contact. Very amusing
really, since they are so desperate to lay eyes upon you themselves. They know when you
come round the Motherhouse, of course."

"I know they do," I said. "What do you mean, they've forbidden contact?"

"Oh, just the standard admonition," he said, eyes still on the burning log. "All very
medieval, really, and based upon an old directive: 'You are not to encourage this being,
not to engage in or prolong conversation; if he persists in his visits, you are to do your
best to lure him to some populated place. It is well known that these creatures are loath to
attack when surrounded by mortals. And never, never are you to attempt to learn secrets
from this being, or to believe for one moment that any emotions evinced by him are
genuine, for these creatures dissemble with remarkable ability, and have been known, for
reasons that cannot be analyzed, to drive mortals mad. This has befallen sophisticated
investigators as well as hapless innocents with whom the vampires come in contact. You
are warned to report any and all meetings, sightings, etc., to the elders without delay.'"

"Do you really know this by heart?"

"I wrote the directive myself," he said, with a little smile. "I've given it to many other
members over the years."

"They know I'm here now?"

"No, of course not. I stopped reporting our meetings to them a long time ago." He fell
into his thoughts again, and then: "Do you search for God?" he asked.

"Certainly not," I answered. "I can't imagine a bigger waste of time, even if one has
centuries to waste. I'm finished with all such quests. I look to the world around me now
for truths, truths mired in the physical and in the aesthetic, truths I can fully embrace. I
care about your vision because you saw it, and you told me, and I love you. But that's
all."

He sat back, gazing off again into the shadows of the room.

"Won't matter, David. In time, you'll die. And probably so shall I."

His smile was warm again as though he could not accept this except as a sort of joke.

There was a long silence, during which he poured a little more Scotch and drank it more
slowly than he had before. He wasn't even close to being intoxicated. I saw that he
planned it that way. When I was mortal I always drank to get drunk. But then I'd been
very young, and very poor, castle or no castle, and most of the brew was bad.

"You search for God," he said, with a little nod.

"The hell I do. You're too full of your own authority. You know perfectly well that I am
not the boy you see here."

"Ah, I must be reminded of that, you're correct. But you could never abide evil. If you've
told the truth half the time in your books, it's plain that you were sick of evil from the
beginning. You'd give anything to discover what God wants of you and to do what He
wants."

"You're in your dotage already. Make your will."

"Oooh, so cruel," he said with his bright smile.

I was going to say something else to him, when I was distracted. There was a little
pulling somewhere in my consciousness. Sounds. A car passing very slowly on the
narrow road through the distant village, in a blinding snow.

I scanned, caught nothing, merely the snow falling, and the car edging its way along.
Poor sad mortal to be driving through the country at this hour. It was four of the clock.

"It's very late," I said. "I have to leave now. I don't want to spend another night here,
though you've been most kind. It's nothing to do with anyone knowing. I simply prefer . .
."

"I understand. When will I see you again?"

"Perhaps sooner than you think," I said. "David, tell me. The other night, when I left here,
hell-bent on burning myself to a crisp in the Gobi, why did you say that I was your only
friend?"

"You are."

We sat there in silence for a moment.

"You are my only friend as well, David," I said.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Back to London, perhaps. I'll tell you when I go back across the Atlantic.
Is that all right?"

"Yes, do tell me. Don't . . . don't ever believe that I don't want to see you, don't ever
abandon me again."

"If I thought I was good for you, if I thought your leaving the order and traveling again
was good for you . . ."

"Oh, but it is. I don't belong anymore in the Talamasca. I'm not even sure I trust it any
longer, or believe hi its aims."

I wanted to say more-to tell him how much I loved him, that I'd sought shelter under his
roof and he'd protected me and that I would never forget this, and that I would do
anything he wished of me, anything at all.

But it seemed pointless to say so. I don't know whether he would have believed it, or
what the value would have been. I was still convinced that it was not good for him to see
me. And there wasn't very much left to him in this life.

"I know all this," he said quietly, gracing me with that smile again.

"David," I said, "the report you made of your adventures in Brazil. Is there a copy here?
Could I read this report?"

He stood up and went to the glass-doored bookshelf nearest his desk- He looked through
the many materials there for a long moment, then removed two large leather folders from
the shelf.

"This is my life in Brazil-what I wrote in the jungles after, on a little rattletrap portable
typewriter at a camp table, before I came home to England. I did go after the jaguar, of
course. Had to do it. But the hunt was nothing compared to my experiences in Rio,
absolutely nothing. That was the turning point, you see. I believe the very writing of this
was some desperate attempt to become an Englishman again, to distance myself from the

Candomble people, from the life I'd been living with them. My report for the Talamasca
was based upon the material here."

I took it from him gratefully.

"And this," he said, holding the other folder, "is a brief summary of my days in India and
Africa."

"I would like to read that too."

"Old hunting stories mostly. I was young when I wrote this. It's all big guns and action! It
was before the war."

I took this second folder as well. I stood up, in slow gentlemanly fashion.

"I've talked the night away," he said suddenly. "That was rude of me. Perhaps you had
things to say."

"No, not at all. It was exactly what I wanted." I offered my hand and he took it. Amazing
the sensation of his touch against the burnt flesh.

"Lestat," he said, "the little short story here... the Lovecraft piece. Do you want it back, or
shall I save it for you?"

"Ah, that, now that's a rather interesting tale-I mean how I came in possession of that."

I took the story from him and shoved it in my coat. Perhaps I'd read it again. My curiosity
returned, and along with it a sort of fearful suspicion. Venice, Hong Kong, Miami. How
had that strange mortal spotted me in all three places, and managed to see that I had
spotted him!

"Do you care to tell me about it?" David asked gently,

"When there's more time," I said, "I shall tell you." Especially if I ever see that guy again,
I thought. How ever did he do it?

I went out in a civilized manner, actually making a little bit of deliberate noise as I closed
the side door of the house.

It was close to dawn when I reached London. And for the first time in many a night, I
was actually glad of my immense powers, and the great feeling of security which they
conveyed. I needed no coffins, no dark hiding places, merely a room completely isolated
from the rays of the sun. A fashionable hotel with heavy curtains would provide both the
peace and the comfort.

And I had a little time to settle in the warm light of a lamp and begin David's Brazilian
adventure, which I looked forward to, with inordinate delight.

I had almost no money with me, thanks to my recklessness and madness, so I used my
considerable powers of persuasion with the clerks of venerable old Claridge's so that they
accepted the number of my credit account, though I had no card to verify it, and upon my
signature-Sebastian Melmoth, one of my favorite aliases-I was shown to a lovely upper
suite crowded with charming Queen Anne furniture and fitted with every convenience I
could wish.

I put out the polite little printed notice that I wasn't to be disturbed, left word with the
desk I must not be bothered until well after sunset, then latched all the doors from the
inside.

There really wasn't time to read. The morning was coming behind the heavy gray sky and
the snow drifting down still in large soft wet flakes. I closed all the draperies, save one,
so that I might look at the sky, and I stood there, at the front of the hotel, waiting for the
spectacle of the light to come, and still a little afraid of its fury, and the pain in my skin
growing a little worse from that fear, more than anything else.

David was much on my mind; I hadn't ceased to think about our conversation for a
second since I'd left him. I kept hearing his voice and trying to imagine his fragmentary
vision of God and the Devil in the cafe. But my position on all this was simple and
predictable. I thought David in possession of the most comforting delusions. And soon
he'd be gone from me. Death would have him. And all I would have would be these
manuscripts of his life. I couldn't force myself to believe he would know anything more
at all when he was dead.

Nevertheless it was all very surprising, really, the turn the conversation had taken, and
his energy, and the peculiar things he'd said.

I was comfortable in these thoughts, watching the leaden sky and the snow piling on the
sidewalks far below, when I suddenly experienced a bout of dizziness-in fact, a complete
moment of disorientation, as though I were falling asleep. It was very pleasurable,
actually, the subtle vibratory sensation, accompanied by a weightlessness, as though I
were indeed floating out of the physical and into my dreams. Then came that pressure
again which I'd felt so fleetingly in Miami-of my limbs constricting, indeed of my whole
form pressing inwards upon me, narrowing me and compressing me, and the sudden
frightening image of myself being forced through the very top of my head!

Why was this happening? I shuddered as I had done on that lonely dark Florida beach
when it happened before. And at once the feeling was dissipated. I was myself again and
vaguely annoyed.

Was something going wrong with my handsome, godlike anatomy? Impossible. I didn't
need the old ones to assure me of such a truth. And I had not made up my mind whether I

should worry about this or forget it, or indeed, try to induce it again myself, when I was
brought out of my preoccupation by a knock at the door.

Most irritating.

"A message for you, sir. The gentleman requested I put it in your hands."

Had to be some mistake. Nevertheless I opened the door The young man gave me an
envelope. Fat, bulky. For on second I could only stare at it. I had a one-pound note still in
my pocket, from the little thief I'd chomped on earliei, and I gave this to the boy, and
locked the door again.

This was exactly the same kind of envelope I'd been given in Miami by that lunatic
mortal who'd come running towards me across the sand. And the sensation! I'd
experienced that bizarre sensation right at the moment my eyes had fallen on that
creature. Oh, but this was not possible ...

I tore open the envelope. My hands were suddenly shaking. It was another little printed
short story, clipped out of a book exactly as the first one had been, and stapled at the
upper-left-hand corner in precisely the same way!

I was dumbfounded! How in the hell had this being tracked me here? No one knew I was
here! David didn't even know I was here! Oh, there were the credit card numbers
involved, but dear God, it would have taken hours for any mortal to locate me that way,
even if such a thing were possible, which it really was not.

And what had the sensation to do with it-the curious vibratory feeling and the pressure
which seemed to be inside my own limbs?

But there was no time to consider any of this. It was almost morning!

The danger in the situation made itself immediately apparent to me. Why the hell hadn't I
seen it before? This being did most definitely have some means of knowing where I was-
even where I chose to conceal myself during daylight! I had to get out of these rooms.
How perfectly outrageous!

Trembling with annoyance, I forced myself to scan this story, which was only a few
pages in length. "Eyes of the Mummy" was the title, author Robert Bloch. A clever little
tale, but what could it possibly mean to me? I thought of the Lovecraft, which had been
much longer and seemed wholly different. What on earth could all this signify? The
seeming idiocy of it further maddened me.

But it was too late to think about it anymore. I gathered up David's manuscripts, and left
the rooms, rushing out of a fire exit and going up to the roof. I scanned the night in all
directions. I couldn't find the little bastard! Lucky for him. I would surely have destroyed

him on sight. When it comes to protecting my daylight lair, I have little patience or
restraint.

I moved upwards, covering the miles with the greatest speed I could attain. At last I
descended in a snow-covered wood far, far north of London and there I dug my own
grave in the frozen earth as I had done so many tunes before.

I was in a fury for having to do so. A positive fury. I'm going to kill this son of a bitch, I
thought, whoever the hell he is. How dare he come stalking me, and shoving these stories
in my face! Yes, I shall do that, kill him as soon as I catch him.

But then the drowsiness came, the numbness, and very soon nothing mattered ...

Once again I was dreaming, and she was there, lighting the oil lamp, and saying, "Ah, the
flame doesn't frighten you anymore . . ."

"You're mocking me," I said, miserably. I'd been weeping.

"Ah, but, Lestat, you do have a way of recovering from these cosmic fits of despair
awfully fast. There you were dancing under the street lamps in London. Really!"

I wanted to protest, but I was crying, and I couldn't talk . . .

In one last jolt of consciousness, I saw that mortal in Venice-under the arches of San
Marco-where I'd first noticed him-saw his brown eyes and smooth youthful mouth.

What do you want? I demanded.

Ah, but it is what you want, he seemed to reply.




Six

I WASN'T so angry with the little fiend when I woke up. Actually, I was powerfully
intrigued. But then the sun had set and I had the upper hand.

I decided upon a little experiment. I went to Paris, making the crossing very quickly and
on my own.

Now let me digress here for a moment, only to explain that in recent years I had avoided
Paris utterly, and indeed, I knew nothing of it as a twentieth-century city at all. The
reasons for this are probably obvious. I had suffered much there in ages past, and I
guarded myself against the visions of modern "buildings rising around Pere-Lachaise
cemetery or electrically lighted Ferns wheels turning in the Tuileries. But I had always
secretly longed to return to Paris, naturally. How could I not?

And this little experiment gave me courage and a perfect excuse. It deflected the
inevitable pain of my observations, for I had a purpose. But within moments of my
arrival, I realized that I was very truly in Paris-that this could be no place else-and I was
overwhelmed with happiness as I walked on the grand boulevards, and inevitably past the
place where the Theatre of the Vampires had once stood.

Indeed a few theatres of that period had survived into modern times, and there they were-
imposing and ornate and still drawing in their audiences, amid the more modern
structures on all sides.

I realized as I wandered the brilliantly lighted Champs Ely-sees-which was jammed with
tiny speeding cars, as well as thousands of pedestrians-that this was no museum city, like
Venice. It was as alive now as it had ever been in the last two centuries. A capital. A
place of innovation still and courageous change.

I marveled at the stark splendour of the Georges Pompidou Center, rising so boldly
within sight of the venerable flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Oh, I was glad I had come.

But I had a task, did I not?

I didn't tell a soul, mortal or immortal, that I was there. I did not call my Paris lawyer,
though it was most inconvenient. Rather I acquired a great deal of money in the old
familiar manner of taking it from a couple of thoroughly unsavory and well-heeled
criminal victims in the dark streets.

Then I headed for the snow-covered Place Vendome, which contained the very same
palaces which it had in my day, and under the alias of Baron Van Kindergarten,
ensconced myself in a lavish suite at the Ritz.

There for two nights, I avoided the city, enveloped in a luxury and style that was truly
worthy of Marie Antoinette's Versailles. Indeed it brought tears to my eyes to see the
excessive Parisian decoration all around me, the gorgeous Louis XVI chairs, and the
lovely embossed paneling of the walls. Ah, Paris. Where else can wood be painted gold
and still look beautiful!

Sprawled on a tapestried directoire daybed, I set at once to reading David's manuscripts,
only now and then breaking off to walk about the silent parlour and bedroom, or to open
a real French window, with its encrusted oval knob, and gaze out at the back garden of
the hotel, so very formal and quiet and proud.

David's writing captivated me. I soon felt closer to him than ever before.

What was plain was that David had been wholly a man of action in his youth, and drawn
into the realm of books only when they spoke of action, and that he'd always found his
greatest pleasure in the hunt. He had taken down his first game when he was only ten

years old. His descriptions of shooting the big Bengal tigers were infused with the
excitement of the pursuit itself and the risks he ultimately endured. Always drawing very
close to the beast before he fired his gun, he had almost been killed more than once.

He had loved Africa as well as India, hunting elephants in the days when no one ever
dreamed the species would be in danger of dying out. Again, he had been charged
innumerable times before he had brought them down. And in hunting of the the big bull
and the lions of the Serengeti Plain he had courted similar risks.

Indeed, he had gone out of his way to hike arduous mountain trails, to swim in dangerous
rivers, to lay his hand upon the tough hide of the crocodile, to overcome his inveterate
revulsion for snakes. He had loved to sleep in the open; to scribble entries in his diary by
the light of oil lanterns or candles; to eat only the meat of the animals he killed, even
when there was very little of it; and to skin his kills without aid.

His power of description was not so very great. He was not patient with written words,
especially not when he was young. Yet one could feel the heat of the tropics in this
memoir; one heard the buzz of the gnats. It seemed inconceivable that such a man had
ever enjoyed the wintry comforts of Talbot Manor, or the luxury of the motherhouses of
the order, to which he was somewhat addicted now.

But many another British gentleman had known such choices and done what he thought
appropriate to his position and his age.

As for the adventure in Brazil, it might as well have been written by a different man.
There was the same sparse and precise vocabulary, and there was the same lust for
danger, naturally, but with the turning to the supernatural, a far more clever and cerebral
individual had come to the fore. Indeed, the vocabulary itself changed, incorporating
many baffling Portuguese and African words for concepts and physical feelings which
David felt plainly at a loss to describe.

But the gist was that the deep telepathic powers of David's brain had been developed
through a series of primitive and terrifying encounters with Brazilian priestesses, and
spirits as well. And the body of David had become a mere instrument for this psychic
power, thereby paving the way for the scholar who had emerged in the years that
followed.

There was much physical description in this Brazilian memoir. It told of small wooden
rooms in the country where the Candomble believers gathered, lighting candles before
their plaster statues of Catholic saints and Candomble gods. It told of the drums and the
dancing; and the inevitable trances as various members of the group became unconscious
hosts to the spirits and took on the attributes of a certain deity for long spells of
unremembered time.

But the emphasis was now entirely upon the invisible-upon the perception of inner
strength and the battle with the forces outside. The adventurous young man who had

sought truth purely in the physical-the smell of the beast, the jungle path, the crack of the
gun, the fall of the prey-was gone.

By the time David had left the city of Rio de Janeiro he was a different being. For though
his narrative had been tightened and polished later, and undoubtedly edited, it
nevertheless included much of his diary written at the very time. There was no doubt that
he had been on the verge of madness in the conventional sense. He no longer saw streets
and buildings and people everywhere he looked; he saw spirits, gods, invisible powers
emanating from others, and various levels of spiritual resistance upon the part of humans,
both conscious and unconscious, to all such things. Indeed, if he had not gone into the
jungles of the Amazon, if he had not forced himself to become the British game hunter
again, he might have been lost forever from his old world.

For months, he had been a gaunt, sunburnt creature in shirtsleeves and soiled pants,
wandering Rio in search of ever greater spiritual experience, having no contact
whatsoever with his countrymen no matter how they badgered him for such contact. And
then he'd outfitted himself in his proper khaki, taken up his big guns, laid up a store of the
best British provisions for a camping trip, and gone off to recover himself as he brought
down the spotted jaguar, and skinned and gutted the carcass of the beast with his own
knife.

Body and soul!

It really wasn't so incredible that in all these years he had never returned to Rio de
Janeiro, for if he had ever made the journey back there, perhaps he could not have left.

Yet obviously, the life of the Candomble adept was not enough for him. Heroes seek
adventure, but the adventure itself does not swallow them whole.

How it sharpened my love for him to know of these experiences, and how it saddened me
to think that he had spent his life hi the Talamasca ever since. It did not seem worthy of
him, or no, it did not seem the best thing to make him happy, no matter how he insisted
that he had wanted it. It seemed the very wrong thing.

And of course, this deepening knowledge of him made me ache for him all the more. I
considered again that in my dark preternatural youth, I had made companions for myself
who could never really be companions-Gabrielle, who had no need of me; Nicolas, who
had gone mad; Louis, who could not forgive me for having seduced him into the realm of
the undead, even though he had wanted it himself.

Only Claudia had been the exception-my intrepid little Claudia, companion hunter and
slayer of random victims- vampire par excellence. And it had been her alluring strength
which caused her ultimately to turn upon her maker. Yes, she had been the only one who
had been like me really-as they say in this day and age. And that might have been the
reason that she was haunting me now.

Surely there was some connection to my love of David! And I had failed to see it before.
How I loved him; and how deep had been the emptiness when Claudia turned against me,
and was my companion no more.

These manuscripts more fully illuminated another point for me as well. David was the
very man to refuse the Dark Gift, and to the bitter end. This man feared nothing really.
He didn't like death, but he didn't fear it. He never had.

But I had not come to Paris merely to read this memoir. I had another purpose in mind. I
left the blessed and timeless isolation of the hotel and began to wander-slowly, visibly-
about.

In the Rue Madeleine, I purchased fine clothes for myself, including a dark blue double-
breasted coat of cashmere wool. Then I spent hours on the Left Bank, visiting its bright
and inviting cafes, and thinking of David's story of God and the Devil, and wondering
what on earth he had really seen. Of course, Paris would be a fine place for God and the
Devil but...

I traveled the underground Metro for some time, studying the other passengers, trying to
determine what was so different about Parisians. Was it their alertness, their energy? The
way they avoided eye contact with others? I could not determine it. But they were very
different from Americans-I had seen it everywhere-and I realized I understood them. I
liked them.

That Paris was such a rich city, so filled with expensive fur coats and jewels and
boutiques beyond counting, left me faintly amazed. It seemed richer even than the cities
of America. It had seemed no less rich perhaps in my tune with its glass coaches and
white-wigged ladies and gentlemen. But the poor had been there too, everywhere, even
dying in the very streets. And now I saw only the rich, and at moments, the entire city
with its millions of motorcars and countless stone town houses, hotels and mansions
seemed almost beyond belief.

Of course I hunted. I fed.

At twilight the next night, I stood on the top floor of the Pompidou under a sky as purely
violet as any in my beloved New Orleans, watching all the lights of the great sprawling
city come to life. I gazed at the distant EirTei Tower, rising so sharply in the divine
gloom.

Ah, Paris, I knew I would come back here, yes, and soon. Some night in the future I
would make a lair for myself on the tie St. Louis, which I had always loved. To hell with
the big houses of the Avenue Foch. I would find the building where once Gabrielle and I
had worked the Dark Magic together, mother leading her son to make her his daughter,
and mortal life had released her as if it were a mere hand I'd grabbed by the wrist.

I would bring Louis back with me-Louis, who had loved this city so much before he lost
Qaudia. Yes, he must be invited to love it again.

Meantime I'd walk slowly over to the Cafe de la Paix in the great hotel where Louts and
Claudia had lodged during that tragic year in the reign of Napoleon III, and I would sit
there with my glass of wine, untouched, forcing myself to think calmly of all that-and
that it was done.

Well, I had been strengthened by my ordeal in the desert, that was plain. And I was ready
for something to happen ...

... And finally in the early hours of the morning, when I had become a bit melancholy and
was grieving a little for the old tumbledown buildings of the 1780s, and when the mists
were hanging over the half-frozen river, and I was leaning on the high stone ledge of the
bank very near the bridge to the lie de la Cite, I saw my man.

First came that sensation, and this time I recognized it right off for what it was. I studied
it as it was happening to me-the faint disorientation which I allowed without ever losing
control; and soft delicious ripples of vibration; and then the deep constriction which
included my entire form-fingers, toes, arms, legs, trunk-as before. Yes, as if my entire
body, while retaining its exact proportions, was growing smaller and smaller, and I was
being forced out of this dwindling shape! At the very moment when it seemed damned
nigh impossible to remain within myself, my head cleared, and the sensations came to a
halt.

This was precisely what had happened both times before. I stood at the bridge,
considering this, and memorizing the details.

Then I beheld a battered little car jerking to a stop on the far side of the river, and out he
climbed-the young brown-haired one-awkwardly as before, and rising to his full height
tentatively and fixing me with his ecstatic and glittering eyes.

He'd left the motor of his little machine running. I smelled his fear as I had before. Of
course he knew that I had seen him, there could be no mistake of that. I'd been here a full
two hours, waiting for him to find me, and I suppose he realized this as well.

Finally he screwed up his courage and came across the bridge through the fog, an
immediately impressive figure in a long greatcoat, with a white scarf about the neck, half
walking, half running, and stopping a few feet away from me, as I stood there with my
elbow on the rail, staring at him coldly. He thrust at me another little envelope. I grabbed
his hand.

"Don't be hasty, Monsieur de Lioncourt!" he whispered desperately. British accent,
upper-class, very like David's, and he'd got the French syllables very close to perfect. He
was near perishing with fear.

"Who the hell are you!" I demanded.

"I have a proposition for you! You'd be a fool if you didn't listen. It's something you'll
want very much. And no one else in this world can offer it to you, be assured!"

I let him go and he sprang back, nearly toppling over, hand flung out to catch the stone
rail. What was it about this man's gestures? He was powerfully built, but he moved as if
he were a thin, tentative creature. I couldn't figure it out.

"Explain this proposition now!" I said, and I could hear his heart come to a stop inside his
broad chest.

"No," he said. "But we shall talk very soon." Such a cultured voice, a polished voice.

Far too refined and careful for the large glazed brown eyes, and the smooth robust young
face. Was he some hothouse plant grown to prodigious proportions in the company of
elderly people, never having seen a person his own age?

"Don't be hasty!" he shouted again, and off he ran, stumbling, then catching himself, and
then forcing his tall, clumsy body into the small car, and driving off through the frozen
snow.

Indeed, he was going so fast as he disappeared into St. Ger-main, I thought he would
have a wreck and kill himself.

I looked down at the envelope. Another damned short story, no doubt. I tore it open
angrily, not sure I should have let him go, and yet somehow enjoying this little game, and
even enjoying my own indignation at his cleverness and capacity for tracking me.

I saw that, indeed, it was a videotape of a recent film. Vice Versa was the title. What on
earth . . . ? I flipped it over, and scanned the advertisement. A comic piece.

I returned to the hotel. There was yet another package waiting for me. Another videotape.
All of Me was the name of it, and once again, the description on the back of the plastic
case gave a fair idea of what it was about.

I went to my rooms. No video player! Not even in the Ritz. I rang David, though it was
now very near dawn.

"Would you come to Paris? I'll have everything arranged for you. See you at dinner, eight
o'clock tomorrow in the dining room downstairs."

Then I did call my mortal agent, rousing him from bed and instructing him to arrange
David's ticket, limousine, suite, and whatever else he should need. There should be cash
waiting for David; there should be flowers; and chilled champagne. Then I went out to
find a safe place to sleep.

But an hour later-as I stood in the dark dank cellar of an old abandoned house-I wondered
if the little mortal bastard couldn't see me even now, if he didn't know where I slept by
day, and couldn't come bring in the sun upon me, like some cheap vampire-hunter in a
bad movie, with no respect for the mysterious at all.

I dug deep beneath the cellar. No mortal alone could have found me there. And even in
my sleep, I might have strangled him if he had, without my ever knowing it.

"So what do you think it all means?" I said to David. The dining room was exquisitely
decorated and half empty. I sat there hi the candlelight, in black dinner jacket and boiled
shirt, with my arms folded before me, enjoying the fact that I needed only the pale-violet
tinted glasses now to hide my eyes. How well I could see the tapestried portieres, and the
dim garden beyond the windows.

David was eating lustily. He'd been utterly delighted to come to Paris, loved his suite
over the Place Vendome, with its velvet carpets and gilded furnishings, and had spent all
afternoon in the Louvre.

"Well, you can see the theme, can't you?" he replied.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I do see common elements, of course, but these little stories are all
different."

"How so?"

"Well, in the Lovecraft piece, Asenath, this diabolical woman, switches bodies with her
husband. She runs about the town using his male body, while he is stuck at home in her
body, miserable and confused. I thought it was a hoot, actually. Just wonderfully clever,
and of course Asenath isn't Asenath, as I recall, but her father, who has switched bodies
with her. And then it ail becomes very Lovecraftian, with slimy half-human demons and
such."

"That may be the irrelevant part. And the Egyptian story?"

"Completely different. The moldering dead, which still possess life, you know . . ."

"Yes, but the plot."

"Well, the soul of the mummy manages to get possession of the body of the
archaeologist, and he, the poor devil, is put hi the rotted body of the mummy-"

"Yes?"

"Good Lord, I see what you're saying. And then the film Vice Versa. It's about the soul of
a boy and the soul of a man who switch bodies! All hell breaks loose until they are able

to switch back. And the film All of Me, it's about body switching as well. You're
absolutely right. All four stories are about the same thing."

"Exactly."

"Christ, David. It's all coming clear. I don't know why I didn't see it. But. . ."

"This man is trying to get you to believe that he knows something about this body
switching. He's trying to entice you with the suggestion that such a thing can be done."

"Good Lord. Of course. That explains it, the way he moves, walks, runs."

"What?"

I sat there stunned, reenvisioning the little beast before I answered, bringing up to mind
every image of him from every conceivable angle which memory would allow. Yes, even
in Venice, he'd had that obvious awkwardness about him.

"David, he can do it."

"Lestat, don't jump to such a mad conclusion! He may think that he can do it. He may
want to try it. He may be living entirely in a world of delusions-"

"No. That's his proposition, David, the proposition he says that I will want to hear! He
can switch bodies with people!"

"Lestat, you can't believe-"

"David, that's what's wrong with him! I've been trying to figure it since I saw him on the
beach in Miami. That isn't his body! That's why he can't use its musculature or its ... its
height. That's why he almost falls when he runs. He can't control those long powerful
legs. Good God, that man is in someone else's body. And the voice, David, I told you
about his voice. It's not the voice of a young man. Oh, that explains it! And you know
what I think? I think he chose that particular body because I'd notice it. And I'll tell you
something else. He's already tried this switching trick with me and it's failed."

I couldn't continue. I was too dazzled by the possibility.

"How do you mean, tried?"

I described the peculiar sensations-the vibration and the constriction, the sense that I was
being forced quite literally out of my physical self.

He didn't reply to what I'd said, but I could see the effect this had upon him. He sat
motionless, his eyes narrow, his right hand half closed and resting idly beside his plate.

"It was an assault upon me, wasn't it? He tried to get me out of my body! Maybe so that
he could get in. And of course he couldn't do it. But why would he risk mortally
offending me with such an attempt?"

"Has he mortally offended you?" David asked.

"No, he's merely made me all the more curious, powerfully curious!"

"There you have your answer. I think he knows you too well."

"What?" I heard what he said but I couldn't reply just now. I drifted into remembering the
sensations. "That feeling was so .Strong. Oh, don't you see what he's doing? He's
suggesting that he can switch with me. He's offering me that handsome young mortal
frame."

"Yes," David said coldly. "I think you're right."

"Why else would he stay in that body?" I said. "He's clearly very uncomfortable in it. He
wants to switch. He's saying that he can switch! That's why he's taken this risk. He must
know it would be easy for me to kill him, squash him like a little bug, I don't even like
him-the manner, I mean. The body is excellent. No, that's it. He can do it, David, he
knows how."

"Snap out of it! You can't put it to the test."

"What? Why not? You're telling me it can't be done? In all those archives you have no
records . . . ? David, I know he's done it. He just can't force me into it. But he's switched
with another mortal, that I know."

"Lestat, when it happens we call it possession. It's a psychic accident! The soul of a dead
person takes over a living body; a spirit possessing a human being; it has to be persuaded
to let go. Living people don't go around doing it deliberately and in concerted agreement.
No, I don't think it is possible. I don't think we do have any such cases! I..." He broke off,
clearly in doubt.

"You know you have such cases," I said. "You must." "Lestat, this is very dangerous, too
dangerous for any sort of trial." "Look, if it can happen by accident, it can happen this
way too. If a dead soul can do it, why not a living soul? I know what it means to travel
outside my body. You know. You learned it in Brazil. You described it in fine detail.
Many, many human beings know. Why, it was part of the ancient religions. It's not
inconceivable that one could return to another body and hold on to it while the other soul
struggles in vain to recapture it."

"What an awful thought."

I explained again about the sensations and how powerful they had been. "David, it's
possible he stole that body!"

"Oh, that's just lovely."

Again, I was remembering the feeling of constriction, the terrific and strangely
pleasurable feeling that I was being squeezed out of myself through the top of my head.
How strong it had been! Why, if he could make me feel that, surely he could make a
mortal man rise out of himself, especially if that mortal man did not have the slightest
idea of what was being done.

"Calm yourself, Lestat," David said a little disgustedly. He laid his heavy fork upon the
half-empty plate. "Now think this through. Perhaps such a switch could be achieved for a
few minutes. But anchoring in the new body, remaining inside it, and functioning day in
and day out? No. This would mean functioning when you are asleep as well as awake.
You're talking about something entirely different and obviously dangerous. You can't
experiment with this. What if it worked?"

"That's the whole point. If it works, then I can get into that body." I paused. I could
scarcely speak it and then I did. I said it. "David, I can be a mortal man."

It took my breath away. A moment of silence passed as we stared at each other. The look
of vague dread in his eyes did nothing to still my excitement.

"I'd know how to use that body," I said, half in a whisper. "I'd know how to use those
muscles and those long legs. Oh, yes, he chose that body because he knew I would
consider it a possibility, a real possibility-"

"Lestat, you can't pursue this! He's speaking of trading here, switching! You can't let this
suspect individual have your body in return! The idea's monstrous. You inside that body
is quite enough!"

I fell into stunned silence.

"Look," he said, trying to bring me back to him. "Forgive me for sounding like the
Superior General of a religious order, but this is something you simply cannot do! First
off, where did he get that body? What if he did, in fact, steal it? Surely no handsome
young man cheerfully gave it over without so much as a qualm! This is a sinister being,
and must be recognized as such. You can't deliver to him a body as powerful as your
own."

I heard all this, I understood it, but I couldn't absorb it. "Think of it, David," I said,
knowing that I sounded mad and only barely coherent. "David, I could be a mortal man."

"Would you kindly wake up and pay attention to me, please! This is not a matter of
comical stories and Lovecraftian pieces of gothic romance." He wiped his mouth with his

napkin, and crossly slugged down a swallow of wine, and then reached across the table
and took hold of my wrist.

I should have let him lift it and clasp it. But I didn't yield and he realized within a second
that he could no more move my wrist away from the table than he could move that of a
statue made of granite.

"That's it, right there!" he declared. "You can't play with this. You can't take the risk that
it will work, and this fiend, whoever he is, will have possession of your strength."

I shook my head. "I know what you're saying, but, David, think of it. I have to talk to
him! I have to find him and find out whether this can be done. He himself is unimportant.
It's the process that's important. Can it be done?"

"Lestat, I'm begging you. Don't explore this any further. You're going to make another
ghastly mistake!"

"What do you mean?" It was so hard to pay attention to what he was saying. Where was
that wily fiend right now? I thought of his eyes, how beautiful they would be if he were
not looking out of them. Yes, it was a fine body for this experiment! Wherever did he get
it? I had to find out.

"David, I'm going to leave you now."

"No, you're not! Stay right where you are, or so help me God I'll send a legion of
hobgoblins after you, every filthy little spirit I trafficked with in Rio de Janeiro! Now
listen to me."

I laughed. "Keep your voice down," I said. "We'll be thrown out of the Ritz."

"Very well, we'll strike a bargain. I'll go back to London and hit the computer. I'll boot up
every case of body switching in our files. Who knows what we'll discover? Lestat, maybe
he's in that body and it's deteriorating around him, and he can't get out or stop the
deterioration. Did you think of that?"

I shook my head. "It's not deteriorating. I would have caught the scent. There's nothing
wrong with that body."

"Except maybe he stole it from its rightful owner and that poor soul is stumbling around
in his body, and what that looks like, we haven't a clue."

"Cairn down, David, please. You go on back to London, and hit the files, as you
described. I'm going to find this little bastard. I'm going to hear what he has to say. Don't
worry! I won't proceed without consulting you. And if I do decide-"

"You won't decide! Not until you talk to me."

"All right."

"This is a pledge?"

"On my honor as a bloodthirsty murderer, yes."

"I want a phone number in New Orleans."

I stared at him hard for a moment. "Ail right. I've never done this before. But here it is." I
gave him the phone number of my French Quarter rooftop rooms. "Aren't you going to
write it down?"

"I've memorized it."

"Then farewell!"

I rose from the table, struggling, in my excitement, to move like a human. Ah, move like
a human. Think of it, to be inside a human body. To see the sun, really see it, a tiny
blazing ball in a blue sky! "Oh, and, David, I almost forgot, everything's covered here.
Call my man. He'll arrange for your flight . . ."

"I don't care about that, Lestat. Listen to me. Set an appointment to speak with me about
this, right now! You dare vanish on me, I'll never-"

I stood there smiling down at him. I could tell I was charming him. Of course he wouldn't
threaten never to speak to me again. How absurd. "Ghastly mistakes," I said, unable to
stop smiling. "Yes, I do make them, don't I?"

"What will they do to you-the others? Your precious Marius, the older ones, if you do
such a thing?"

"They might surprise you, David. Maybe all they want is to be human again. Maybe that's
all any of us want. Another chance." I thought of Louis in his house hi New Orleans.
Dear God, what would Louis think when I told him about all this?

David muttered something under his breath, angry and impatient, yet his face was full of
affection and concern.

I blew him a little kiss and was gone.

Scarcely an hour had passed before I realized I couldn't find the wily fiend. If he was in
Paris, he was cloaked so that I couldn't pick up the faintest shimmer of his presence. And
nowhere did I catch an image of him in anyone else's mind.

This didn't mean he wasn't in Paris. Telepathy is extremely hit or miss; and Paris was a
vast city, teeming with citizens of all the countries of the world.

At last I came back to the hotel, discovered David had already checked out, leaving all
his various phone numbers with me for fax, computer, and regular calls.

"Please contact me tomorrow evening," he'd written. "I shall have some information for
you by then."

I went upstairs to prepare for the journey home. I couldn't wait to see this lunatic mortal
again. And Louis- I had to lay it all before Louis. Of course he wouldn't believe it was
possible, that would be the first thing he'd say. But he would understand the lure. Oh, yes,
he would.

I hadn't been in the room a minute, trying to determine if there was anything here I
needed to take with me-ah, yes, David's manuscripts-when I saw a plain envelope lying
on the table beside the bed. It was propped against a great vase of flowers. "Count van
Kindergarten" was written on it in a firm, rather masculine script.

I knew the minute I saw it that it was a note from him. The message inside was
handwritten, in the same firm, heavily engraved style.

Don't be hasty. And don't listen to your fool friend from the Talamasca either. I shall see
you in New Orleans tomorrow night. Don't disappoint me. Jackson Square. We shall then
make an appointment to work a little alchemy of our own. I think you understand now
what's at stake.

Yours sincerely, Raglan James

"Raglan James." I whispered the name aloud. Raglan James. I didn't like the name. The
name was like him.

I dialed the concierge.

"This fax system which has just been invented," I said in French, "you have it here?
Explain it to me, please."

It was as I suspected, a complete facsimile of this little note could be sent from the hotel
office over a telephone wire to David's London machine. Then David would not only
have this information, he would have the handwriting, for what it was worth.

I arranged to have this done, picked up the manuscripts, stopped by the desk with the
note of Raglan James, had it faxed, took it back, and then went to Notre Dame to say
good-bye to Paris with a little prayer.

I was mad. Absolutely mad. When had I ever known such pure happiness! I stood in the
dark cathedral, which was now locked on account of the hour, and I thought of the first
time I'd ever stepped into it so many, many decades ago. There had been no great square
before the church doors, only the little Place de Greve hemmed in with crooked
buildings; and there had been no great boulevards in Paris such as there are now, only
broad mud streets, which we thought so very grand.

I thought of all those blue skies, and what it had felt like to be hungry, truly hungry for
bread and for meat, and to be drunk on good wine. I thought of Nicolas, my mortal
friend, whom I'd loved so much, and how cold it had been in our little attic room. Nicki
and I arguing the way that David and I had argued! Oh, yes, It seemed my great long
existence had been a nightmare since those days, a sweeping nightmare full of giants and
monsters and horrid ghastly masks covering the faces of beings who menaced me in the
eternal dark. I was trembling. I was weeping. To be human, I thought. To be human
again. I think I said the words aloud.

Then a sudden whispered laugh startled me. It was a child somewhere in the darkness, a
little girl.

I turned around. I was almost certain I could see her-a small gray form darting up the far
aisle towards a side altar, and then out of sight. Her footsteps had been barely aiidible.
But surely this was some mistake. No scent. No real presence. Just illusion.

Nevertheless I cried out: "Claudia!"

And my voice came tumbling back to me in a harsh echo. No one there, of course.

I thought of David: "You're going to make another ghastly mistake!"

Yes, I have made ghastly mistakes. How can I deny it? Terrible, terrible errors. The
atmosphere of my recent dreams came back to me, but it wouldn't deepen, and there
remained only an evanescent sense of being with her. Something about an oil lamp and
her laughing at me.

I thought again of her execution-the brick-walled air well, the approaching sun, how
small she had been; and then the remembered pain of the Gobi Desert mingled with it and
I couldn't bear it any longer. I realized I had folded my arms around my chest, and was
trembling, my body rigid, as though being tormented with an electric shock. Ah, but
surely she hadn't suffered. Surely it had been instantaneous for one so tender and little.
Ashes to ashes . . .

This was pure anguish. It wasn't those times I wanted to remember, no matter how long
I'd lingered in the Cafe de la Paix earlier, or how strong I imagined I had become. It was
my Paris, before the Theatre of the Vampires, when I'd been innocent and alive.

I stayed a while longer in the dark, merely looking at the great branching arches above
me. What a marvelous and majestic church this was-even now with the pop and rattle of
motorcars beyond. It was like a forest made of stone.

I blew a kiss to it, as I had to David. And I went off to undertake the long journey home.

SEVEN

NEW ORLEANS. I arrived quite early in the evening for I had gone backwards in time
against the turning of the world. It was cold and crisp, but not cruelly so, though a bad
norther was on its way. The sky was without a cloud and full of small and very distinct
stars. I went at once to my little rooftop apartment in the French Quarter, which for all its
glamour is not very high at all, being on the top of a four-storey building, erected long
before the Civil War, and having a rather intimate view of the river and its beautiful twin
bridges, and which catches, when the windows are open, the noises of the happily
crowded Cafe du Monde and of the busy shops and streets around Jackson Square.

It was not until tomorrow night that Mr. Raglan James meant to meet me. And impatient
as I was for this meeting, I found the schedule comfortable, as I wanted to find Louis
right away.

But first I indulged in the mortal comfort of a hot shower, and put on a fresh suit of black
velvet, very trim and plain, rather like the clothes I'd worn in Miami, and a pair of new
black boots. And ignoring my general weariness-I would have been asleep in the earth by
now, had I been still in Europe-I went off, walking like a mortal, through the town.

For reasons of which I wasn't too certain, I took a turn past the old address in the Rue
Royale where Claudia and Louis and I had once lived. Actually I did this rather often,
never allowing myself to think about it, until I was halfway there.

Our coven had endured for over fifty years in that lovely upstairs apartment. And surely
this factor ought to be considered when I'm being condemned, either by myself or by
someone else, for my errors. Louis and Claudia had both been made by me, and for me, I
admit that. Nevertheless, ours had been a curiously incandescent and satisfying existence
before Claudia decided I should pay for my creations with my life.

The rooms themselves had been crammed with every conceivable ornament and luxury
which the times could provide. We'd kept a carriage, and a team of horses at the nearby
stables, and servants had lived beyond the courtyard in back. But the old brick buildings
were now somewhat faded, and neglected, the flat unoccupied of late, except for ghosts,
perhaps, who knows, and the shop below was rented to a bookseller who never bothered
to dust the volumes in the window, or those on his shelves. Now and then he procured
books for me-volumes on the nature of evil by the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, or the
marvelous philosophical works of Mir-cea Eiiade, as well as vintage copies of the novels
I loved.

The old man was in there reading, in fact, and I watched him for a few minutes through
the glass. How different were the citizens of New Orleans from all the rest of the
American world. Profit meant nothing to this old gray-haired being at all.

I stood back and looked up at the cast-iron railings above. I thought of those disturbing
dreams-the oil lamp, her voice. Why was she haunting me so much more relentlessly than
ever before?

When I closed my eyes, I could hear her again, talking to me, but the substance of her
words was gone. I found myself thinking back once more on her life and her death.

Gone now without a trace was the little hovel in which I'd first seen her in Louis's arms.
A plague house it had been. Only a vampire would have entered. No thief had dared even
to steal the gold chain from her dead mother's throat. And how ashamed Louis had been
that he had chosen a tiny child as his victim. But I had understood. No trace remained,
either, of the old hospital where they'd taken her afterwards. What narrow mud street had
I passed through with that warm mortal bundle in my arms, and Louis rushing after me,
begging to know what I meant to do.

A gust of cold wind startled me suddenly.

I could hear the dull raucous music from the taverns of the Rue Bourbon only a block
away; and people walking before the cathedral-laughter from a woman nearby. A car
horn blasting in the dark. The tiny electronic throb of a modern phone.

Inside the bookstore, the old man played the radio, twisting the dial from Dixieland to
classical and finally to a mournful voice singing poetry to the music of an English
composer . . .

Why had I come to this old building, which stood forlorn and indifferent as a tombstone
with all its dates and letters worn away?

I wanted no more delay, finally.

I'd been playing with my own mad excitement at what had only just happened in Paris,
and I headed uptown to find Louis and lay it all before him.

Again, I chose to walk. I chose to feel the earth, to measure it with my feet.

In our time-at the end of the eighteenth century-the uptown of the city didn't really exist.
It was country upriver; there were plantations still, and the roads were narrow and hard to
travel, being paved only with dredged shells.

Later in the nineteenth century, after our little coven had been destroyed, and I was
wounded and broken, and gone to Paris to search for Claudia and Louis, the uptown with

all its small towns was merged with the great city, and many fine wooden houses in the
Victorian style were built.

Some of these ornate wooden structures are vast, every bit as grand in their own cluttered
fashion as the great antebellum Greek Revival houses of the Garden District, which
always put me in mind of temples, or the imposing town houses of the French Quarter
itself.

But much of uptown with its small clapboard cottages, as well as big houses, still retains
for me the aspect of the country, what with the enormous oaks and magnolias sprouting
up everywhere to tower over the little roofs, and so many streets without sidewalks, along
which the gutters are no more than ditches, full of wildflowers flourishing in spite of the
winter cold.

Even the little commercial streets-a sudden stretch here and there of attached buildings-
remind one not of the French Quarter with its stone facades and old-world sophistication,
but rather of the quaint "main streets" of rural American towns.

This is a great place for walking in the evening; you can hear the birds sing as you will
never hear them in the Vieux Carre; and the twilight lasts forever over the roofs of the
warehouses along the ever-curving river, shining through the great heavy branches of the
trees. One can happen upon splendid mansions with rambling galleries and gingerbread
decoration, houses with turrets and gables, and widow's walks. There are big wooden
porch swings hanging behind freshly painted wooden railings. There are white picket
fences. Broad avenues of clean well-clipped lawns.

The little cottages display an endless variation; some are neatly painted in deep brilliant
colors according to the current fashion; others, more derelict but no less beautiful, have
the lovely gray tone of driftwood, a condition into which a house can fall easily in this
tropical place.

Here and there one finds a stretch of street so overgrown one can scarce believe one is
still within a city. Wild four-o'clocks and blue plumbago obscure the fences that mark
property; the limbs of the oak bend so low they force the passerby to bow his head. Even
in its coldest winters, New Orleans is always green.

The frost can't kill the camellias, though it does sometimes bruise them. The wild yellow
Carolina jasmine and the purple bougainvillea cover fences and walls.

It is in one such stretch of soft leafy darkness, beyond a great row of huge magnolia trees,
that Louis made his secret home.

The old Victorian mansion behind the rusted gates was unoccupied, its yellow paint
almost all peeled away. Only now and then did Louis roam through it, a candle in his
hand. It was a cottage in back-covered with a great shapeless mountain of tangled pink
Queen's Wreath-which was his true dwelling, full of his books and miscellaneous objects

he'd collected over the years. Its windows were quite hidden from the street. In fact, it's
doubtful anyone knew this house existed. The neighbors could not see it for the high
brick walls, the dense old trees, and oleander growing wild around it. And there was no
real path through the high grass.

When I came upon him, all the windows and doors were open to the few simple rooms.
He was at his desk, reading by the light of a single candle flame.

For a long moment, I spied upon him. I loved to do this. Often I followed him when he
went hunting, simply to watch him feed. The modern world doesn't mean, anything to
Louis. He walks the streets like a phantom, soundlessly, drawn slowly to those who
welcome death, or seem to welcome it. (I'm not sure people really ever welcome death.)
And when he feeds, it is painless and delicate and swift. He must take life when he feeds.
He does not know how to spare the victim. He was never strong enough for the "little
drink" which carries me through so many nights; or did before I became the ravenous
god.

His clothes are old-fashioned always. As so many of us do, he finds garments which
resemble the styles of his time in mortal life. Big loose shirts with gathered sleeves and
long cuffs please him, and tight-fitting pants. When he wears a coat, which is seldom, it
is fitted like the ones I choose-a rider's jacket, very long and full at the hem.

I bring him these garments sometimes as presents, so that he doesn't wear his few
acquisitions right to rags. I had been tempted to straighten up his house, hang the
pictures, fill the place with finery, sweep him up into heady luxury the way I had in the
past.

I think he wanted me-to do this, but he wouldn't admit it. He existed without electricity,
or modern heat, wandering in chaos, pretending to be wholly content.

Some of the windows of this house were without glass, and only now and then did he bolt
the old-fashioned louvered shutters. He did not seem to care if the rain came in on his
possessions because they weren't really possessions. Just junk heaped here and there.

But again, I think he wanted me to do something about it. It's amazing how often he came
to visit me in my overheated and brilliantly illuminated rooms downtown. There he
watched my giant television screen for hours. Sometimes he brought his own films for it
on disk or tape. The Company of Wolves, that was one which he watched over and over.
Beauty and the Beast, a French film by Jean Cocteau, also pleased him mightily. Then
there was The Dead, a film made by John Huston from a story by James Joyce. And
please understand this film has nothing to do with our kind whatsoever; it is about a fairly
ordinary group of mortals in Ireland in the early part of this century who gather for a
convivial supper on Little Christmas night. There were many other films which delighted
him. But these visits could never be commanded by me, and they never lasted very long.
He often deplored the "rank materialism" in which I "wallowed" and turned his back on

my velvet cushions and thickly carpeted floor, and lavish marble bath. He drifted off
again, to his forlorn and vine-covered shack.

Tonight, he sat there in all his dusty glory, an ink smudge on his white cheek, poring over
a large cumbersome biography of Dickens, recently written by an English novelist,
turning the pages slowly, for he is no faster at reading than most mortals. Indeed of all of
us survivors he is the most nearly human. And he remains so by choice.

Many times I've offered him my more powerful blood. Always, he has refused it. The sun
over the Gobi Desert would have burnt him to ashes. His senses are finely tuned and
vampiric, but not like those of a Child of the Millennia. He cannot read anyone's thoughts
with much success. When he puts a mortal into a trance, it's always a mistake.

And of course I cannot read his thoughts because I made him, and the thoughts of the
fledgling and master are always closed to each other, though why, no one of us knows.
My suspicion is that we know a great deal of each other's feelings and longings; only the
amplification is too loud for any distinct image to come clear. Theory. Someday perhaps
they will study us in laboratories. We will beg for live victims through the thick glass
walls of our prisons as they ply us with questions, and extract samples of blood from our
veins. Ah, but how to do that to Lestat who can burn another to cinders with one decisive
thought?

Louis didn't hear me in the high grass outside his little house.

I slipped into the room, a great glancing shadow, and was already seated in my favorite
red velvet bergere-I'd long ago brought it there for myself-opposite him when he looked
up.

"Ah, you!" he said at once, and slammed the book shut.

His face, quite thin and finely drawn by nature, an exquisitely delicate face for all its
obvious strength, was gorgeously flushed. He had hunted early, I'd missed it. I was for
one second completely crushed.

Nevertheless it was tantalizing to see him so enlivened by the low throb of human blood.
I could smell the blood too, which gave a curious dimension to being near him. His
beauty has always maddened me. I think I idealize him in my mind when I'm not with
him; but then when I see him again I'm overcome.

Of course it was his beauty which drew me to him, in my first nights here in Louisiana,
when it was a savage, lawless colony, and he was a reckless, drunken fool, gambling and
picking fights in taverns, and doing what he could to bring about his own death. Well, he
got what he thought he wanted, more or less.

For a moment, I couldn't understand the expression of horror on his face as he stared at
me, or why he suddenly rose and came towards me and bent down and touched my face.
Then I remembered. My sun-darkened skin.

"What have you done?" he whispered. He knelt down and looked up at me, resting his
hand lightly on my shoulder. Lovely intimacy, but I wasn't going to admit it. I remained
composed in the chair.

"It's nothing," I said, "it's finished. I went into a desert place, I wanted to see what would
happen . . ."

"You wanted to see what would happen?" He stood up, took a step back, and glared at
me. "You meant to destroy yourself, didn't you?"

"Not really," I said. "I lay in the light for a full day. The second morning, somehow or
other I must have dug down into the sand."

He stared at me for a long moment, as if he would explode with disapproval, and then he
retreated to his desk, sat down a bit noisily for such a graceful being, composed his hands
over the closed book, and looked wickedly and furiously at me.

"Why did you do it?"

"Louis, I have something more important to tell you," I said. "Forget about all this." I
made a gesture to include my face. "Something very remarkable has happened, and I
have to tell you the whole tale." I stood up, because I couldn't contain myself. I began to
pace, careful not to trip over all the heaps of disgusting trash lying about, and maddened
slightly by the dim candlelight, not because I couldn't see in it, but because it was so
weak and partial and I like light.

I told him everything-how I'd seen this creature, Raglan James, in Venice and in Hong
Kong, and then in Miami, and how he'd sent me the message in London and then
followed me to Paris as I supposed he would. Now we were to meet near the square
tomorrow night. I explained the short stories and their meaning. I explained the
strangeness of the young man himself, that he was not in his body, that I believed he
could effect such a switch.

"You're out of your mind," Louis said.

"Don't be so hasty," I answered.

"You quote this idiot's words to me? Destroy him. Put an end to him. Find him tonight if
you can and do away with him."

"Louis, for the love of heaven . . ."

"Lestat, this creature can find you at will? That means he knows where you lie. You've
led him here now. He knows where I lie. He's the worst conceivable enemy! Mon Dieu,
why do you go looking for adversity? Nothing on earth can destroy you now, not even
the Children of the Millennia have the combined strength to do it, and not even the sun at
midday in the Gobi Desert-so you court the one enemy who has power over you. A
mortal man who can walk in the light of day. A man who can achieve complete dominion
over you when you yourself are without a spark of consciousness or will. No, destroy
him. He's far too dangerous. If I see him, I'll destroy him."

"Louis, this man can give me a human body. Have you listened to anything that I've
said."

"Human body! Lestat, you can't become human by simply taking over a human body!
You weren't human when you were alive! You were bora a monster, and you know it.
How the hell can you delude yourself like this."

"I'm going to weep if you don't stop."

"Weep. I'd like to see you weep. I've read a great deal about your weeping in the pages of
your books but I've never seen you weep with my own eyes."

"Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar," I said furiously. "You described my
weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!"

"Lestat, kill this creature! You're mad if you let him come close enough to you to speak
three words."

I was confounded, utterly confounded. I dropped down in the chair again and stared into
space. The night seemed to breathe with a soft lovely rhythm outside, the fragrance of the
Queen's Wreath just barely touching the moist cool air. A faint incandescence seemed to
come from Louis's face, from his hands folded on the desk. He was veiled in stillness,
waiting for my response, I presumed, though why, I had no idea.

"I never expected this from you," I said, crestfallen. "I expected some long philosophical
diatribe, like the trash you wrote in your memoir, but this?"

He sat there, silent, peering at me steadily, the light sparking for an instant hi his
brooding green eyes. He seemed tormented in some deep way, as if my words had caused
him pain. Certainly it wasn't my insult to his writing. I insulted his writing all the time.
That was a joke. Well, sort of a joke.

I couldn't figure what to say or do. He was working on my nerves. When he spoke his
voice was very soft.

"You don't really want to be human," he said. "You don't believe that, do you?"

"Yes, I believe it!" I answered, humiliated by the feeling in my voice. "How could you
not believe it?" I stood up and commenced my pacing again. I made a circuit of the little
house, and wandered out into the jungle garden, pushing the thick springy vines out of
my way. I was in such a state of confusion I couldn't speak to him anymore.

I was thinking of my mortal life, vainly trying not to myth-ologize it, but I could not
drive away from me those memories-the last wolf hunt, my dogs dying in the snow. Paris.
The boulevard theatre. Unfinished! You don't really want to be htonan. How could he say
such a thing?

It seemed an age I was out in the garden, but finally, for better or worse, I wandered back
inside. I found him still at his desk, looking at me in the most forlorn, almost heartbroken
way.

"Look," I said, "there are only two things which I believe- the first is that no mortal can
refuse the Dark Gift once he really knows what it is. And don't speak to me about David
Talbot refusing me. David is not an ordinary man. The second thing I believe is that all of
us would be human again if we could. Those are my tenets. There's nothing else."

He made a little weary accepting gesture and sat back hi his chair. The wood creaked
softly beneath his weight, and he lifted his right hand languidly, wholly unconscious of
the seductive quality of this simple gesture, and ran his fingers back through his loose
dark hair.

The memory pierced me suddenly of the night I had given him the blood, of how he had
argued with me at the last moment that I must not do it, and then he'd given in. I had
explained it all to him beforehand-while he was still the drunken feverish young planter
in the sickbed with the rosary wound around the bedpost. But how can such a thing be
explained! And he'd been so convinced that he wanted to come with me, so certain that
mortal life held nothing for him-so bitter and burnt out and so young!

What had he known then? Had he ever read a poem by Milton, or listened to a sonata by
Mozart? Would the name Marcus Aurelius have meant anything to him? In all
probability, he would have thought it a fancy name for a black slave. Ah, those savage
and swaggering plantation lords with their rapiers and their pearl-handled pistols! They
did appreciate excess; I shall, in retrospect, give them that.

But he was far from those days now, wasn't he? The author of Interview with the
Vampire, of all preposterous titles! I tried to quiet myself. I loved him too much not to be
patient, not to wait until he spoke again. I'd fashioned him of human flesh and blood to be
my preternatural tormentor, had I not?

"It can't be undone that easily," he said now, rousing me from memory, dragging me back
into this dusty room. His voice was deliberately gentle, almost conciliatory or imploring.
"It can't be that simple. You can't change bodies with a mortal man. To be candid, I don't
even think it's possible, but even if it were-"

I didn't answer. I wanted to say, But what if it can be done! What if I can know again
what it means to be alive.

"And then what about your body," he said, pleading with me, holding his anger and
outrage in check so skillfully. "Surely you can't place all your powers at the disposal of
this creature, this sorcerer or whatever he is. The others have told me that they cannot
even calculate the limits of your power. Ah, no. It's an appalling idea. Tell me, how does
he know how to find you! That's the most significant part."

"That's the least significant part," I replied. "But clearly, if this man can switch bodies,
then he can leave his body. He can navigate as a spirit for long enough to track me and
find me. I must be very visible to him when he's in this state, given what I am. This is no
miracle in itself, you understand."

"I know," he said. "Or so I read and so I hear. I think you've found a truly dangerous
being. This is worse than what we are."

"How so worse?"

"It implies another desperate attempt at immortality, switching bodies! Do you think this
mortal, whoever he is, plans to grow old in this or any other body, and allow himself to
die!"

I had to confess I followed his meaning. Then I told him about the man's voice, the sharp
British accent, the cultured sound of it, and how it didn't seem the voice of a young man.

He shuddered. "He probably comes from the Talamasca," he said. "That's probably where
he found out about you."

"All he had to do was buy a paperback novel to find out about me."

"Ah, but not to believe, Lestat, not to believe it was true."

I told him that I had spoken to David. David would know if this man was from his own
order, but as for myself I didn't believe it. Those scholars would never have done such a
thing. And there was something sinister about this mortal. The members of the Talamasca
were almost tiresome in their whole-someness. Besides, it didn't matter. I would talk to
this man and discover everything for myself.

He grew reflective again and very sad. It almost hurt me to look at him. I wanted to grab
him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious.

"I love you," he said softly.

I was amazed.

"You're always looking for a way to triumph," he continued. "You never give in. But
there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we're in, you and I. All we can be is
thankful that it isn't actually hell."

"No, I don't believe it," I said. "Look, it doesn't matter what you say or what David said.
I'm going to talk to Raglan James. I want to know what this is about! Nothing's going to
prevent that."

"Ah, so David Talbot has also warned you against him."

"Don't choose your allies among my friends!"

"Lestat, if this human comes near me, if I believe that I am in danger from him, I will
destroy him. Understand."

"Of course, I do. He wouldn't approach you. He's picked me, and with reason."

"He's picked you because you are careless and flamboyant and vain. Oh, I don't say this
to hurt you. Truly I don't. You long to be seen and approached and understood and to get
into mischief, to stir everything up and see if it won't boil over and if God won't come
down and grab you by the hair. Well, there is no God. You might as well be God."

"You and David ... the same song, the same admonitions, though he claims to have seen
God and you don't believe He exists."

"David has seen God?" he asked respectfully.

"Not really," I murmured with a scornful gesture. "But you both scold in the same way.
Marius scolds in the same way."

"Well, of course, you pick the voices that scold you. You always have, in the same
manner in which you pick those who will turn on you and stick the knife right into your
heart."

He meant Claudia, but he couldn't bear to speak her name. I knew I could hurt him if I
said it, like flinging a curse in his face. I wanted to say, You had a hand in it! You were
there when I made her, and there when she lifted the knife!

"I don't want to hear any more!" I said. "You'll sing the song of limitations all your long
dreary years on this earth, won't you? Well, I am not God. And I am not the Devil from
hell, though I sometimes pretend to be. I am not the crafty cunning lago. I don't plot
ghastly scenarios of evil. And I can't quash my curiosity or my spirit. Yes, I want to know
if this man can really do it. I want to know what will happen. And I won't give up."

"And you'll sing the song of victory eternally though there is none to be had."

"Ah, but there is. There must be."

"No. The more we learn, the more we know there are no victories. Can't we fall back on
nature, do what we must to endure and nothing more?"

"That is the most paltry definition of nature I have ever heard. Take a hard look at it-not
in poetry but in the world outside. What do you see in nature? What made the spiders that
creep beneath the damp floorboards, what made the moths with then- multicolored wings
that look hike great evil flowers in the dark? The shark in the sea, why does it exist?" I
came towards him, planted my hands on his desk and looked into his face. "I was so sure
you would understand this. And by the way, I wasn't born a monster! I was a born a
mortal child, the same as you. Stronger than you! More will to live than you! That was
cruel of you to say."

"I know. It was wrong. Sometimes you frighten me so badly I hurl sticks and stones at
you. It's foolish. I'm glad to see you, though I dread admitting it. I shiver at the thought
that you might have really brought an end to yourself in the desert! I can't bear the
thought of existence now without you! You infuriate me! Why don't you laugh at me?
You've done it before."

I drew myself up and turned my back on him. I was looking out at the grass blowing
gently in the river wind, and the tendrils of the Queen's Wreath reaching down to veil the
open door.

"I'm not laughing," I said. "But I'm going to pursue this, no sense in lying about that to
you. Lord God, don't you see? If I'm in a mortal body for five minutes only, what I might
learn?"

"All right," he said despairingly. "I hope you discover the man's seduced you with a pack
of lies, that all he wants is the Dark Blood, and that you send him straight to hell. Once
more, let me warn you, if I see him, if he threatens me, I shall kill him. I haven't your
strength. I depend upon my anonymity, that my little memoir, as you always call it, was
so very far removed from the world of this century that no one took it as fact."

"I won't let him harm you, Louis," I said. I turned and threw an evil glance at him. "I
would never ever have let anyone harm you."

And with this I left.

Of course, this was an accusation, and he felt the keen edge of it, I'd seen that to my
satisfaction, before I turned again and went out.

The night Claudia rose up against me, he had stood there, the helpless witness, abhorring
but not thinking to interfere, even as I called his name.

He had taken what he thought to be my lifeless body and dumped it in the swamp. Ah,
naive little fledglings, to think you could so easily get rid of me.

But why think of it now? He had loved me then whether or not he knew it; of my love for
him and for that wretched angry child, I had never the slightest doubt.

He had grieved for me, I'll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He
wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears
become him like jewels.

Well, none of that trash works with me.

I went back to my rooftop quarters, lighted all my fine electric lamps, and lay about
wallowing in rank materialism for a couple of hours, watching an endless parade of video
images on the giant screen, and then slept for a little while on my soft couch before going
out to hunt. I was weary, off my clock from wandering. I was thirsty too.

It was quiet beyond the lights of the Quarter, and the eternally illuminated skyscrapers of
downtown. New Orleans sinks very fast into dimness, either in the pastoral streets I've
already described or amid the more forlorn brick buildings and houses of the central
town.

It was through these deserted commercial areas, with their shut-up factories and
warehouses and bleak little shotgun cottages, that I wandered to a wondrous place near
the river, which perhaps held no significance for any other being than myself.

It was an empty field close to the wharves, stretching beneath the giant pylons of the
freeways which led to the high twin river bridges which I have always called, since the
first moment I beheld them, the Dixie Gates.

I must confess these bridges have been given some other, less charming name by the
official world. But I pay very little attention to the official world. To me these bridges
will always be the Dixie Gates, and I never wait too long after returning home before I go
to walk near them and admire them, with all their thousands of tiny twinkling lights.

Understand they are not fine aesthetic creations such as the Brooklyn Bridge, which
incited the devotion of the poet Hart Crane. They do not have the solemn grandeur of San
Francisco's Golden Gate.

But they are bridges, nevertheless, and all bridges are beautiful and thought-provoking;
and when they are fully illuminated as these bridges are, their many ribs and girders take
on a grand mystique.

Let me add here that the same great miracle of light occurs in the black southern
nighttime countryside with the vast oil refineries and electric power stations, which rise
in startling splendour from the flat invisible land. And these have the added glories of

smoking chimneys and ever-burning gas flames. The Eiffel Tower is now no mere
scaffold of iron but a sculpture of dazzling electric light.

But we are speaking of New Orleans, and I wandered now to this riverfront wasteland,
bounded on one side by dark drab cottages, and on the other by the deserted warehouses,
and at the northern end by the marvelous junkyards of derelict machinery and chain-link
fences overgrown with the inevitable copious and beautiful flowering vines.

Ah, fields of thought and fields of despair. I loved to walk here, on the soft barren earth,
amid the clumps of high weeds, and scattered bits of broken glass, to listen to the low
pulse of the river, though I could not see it, to gaze at the distant rosy glow of downtown.

It seemed the essence of the modern world, this awful horrid forgotten place, this great
gap amid picturesque old buildings, where only now and then did a car creep by, on the
deserted and > supposedly dangerous streets. .

And let me not fail to mention that this area, in spite of the dark paths which led up to it,
was itself never really dark. A deep steady flood of illumination poured down from the
lamps of the freeways, and came forth from the few street lights, creating an even and
seemingly sourceless modern gloom.

Makes you want to rush there, doesn't it? Aren't you just dying to go prowl around there
in the dirt?

Seriously, it is divinely sad to stand there, a tiny figure in the cosmos, shivering at the
muffled noises of the city, of awesome machines groaning in faraway industrial
compounds, or occasional trucks rumbling by overhead.

From there it was a stone's throw to a boarded-up tenement, where in the garbage-strewn
rooms I found a pair of killers, their feverish brains dulled by narcotics, upon whom I fed
slowly and quietly, leaving them both unconscious but alive.

Then I went back* to the lonely empty field, roaming with my hands in my pockets,
kicking the tin cans I found, and circling for a long time beneath the freeways proper,
then leaping up and walking out on the northern arm of the nearer Dixie Gate itself.

How deep and dark my river. The air was always cool above it; and in spite of the dismal
haze hanging over all, I could still see a wealth of cruel and tiny stars.

For a long time I lingered, pondering everything Louis had said to me, everything David
had said to me, and still wild with excitement to meet the strange Raglan James the
following night.

At last I became bored even with the great river. I scanned the city for the crazy mortal
spy, and couldn't find him. I scanned uptown and could not find him. But still I was
unsure.

As the night wore away, I made my way back to Louis's house-which was dark and
deserted now-and I wandered the narrow little streets, more or less stilt searching for the
mortal spy, and standing guard. Surely Louis was safe in his secret sanctuary, safe within
the coffin to which he retreated well before every dawn.

Then I walked back down to the field again, singing to myself, and thought how the
Dixie Gates with all their lights reminded me of the pretty steamboats of the nineteenth
century, which had looked like great wedding cakes decked with candles, gliding by. Is
that a mixed metaphor? I don't care. I heard the music of the steamboats in my head.

I tried to conceive of the next century, and what forms it would bring down upon us, and
how it would shuffle ugliness and beauty with new violence, as each century must. I
studied the pylons of the freeways, graceful soaring arches of steel and concrete, smooth
as sculpture, simple and monstrous, gently bending blades of colorless grass.

And here came the train finally, rattling along the distant track before the warehouses,
with its tedious string of dingy boxcars, disruptive and hideous and striking deep alarms
with its shrieking whistle, within my all too human soul.

The night snapped back with utter emptiness after the last boom and clatter had died
away. No visible cars moved on the bridges, and a heavy mist traveled silently over the
breadth of the river, obscuring the fading stars.

I was weeping again. I was thinking of Louis, and of his warnings. But what could I do? I
knew nothing of resignation, I never would. If that miserable Raglan James did not come
tomorrow night, I'd search the world for him. I didn't want to talk to David anymore,
didn't want to hear his warnings, couldn't listen. I knew I would follow this through.

I kept staring at the Dixie Gates. I couldn't get the beauty of the twinkling lights out of
my head. I wanted to see a church with candles-lots of small flickering candles like the
candles I'd seen in Notre Dame. Fumes rising from their wicks like prayers.

An hour till sunrise. Enough time. I headed slowly downtown.

The St. Louis Cathedral had been locked all night, but these locks were nothing to me.

I stood in the very front of the church, in the dark foyer, staring at the bank of candles
burning beneath the statue of the Virgin. The faithful made their offerings in the brass
coin box before lighting these candles. Vigil lights, they called them.

Often I'd sat in the square in the early evening, listening to these people come and go. I
liked the smell of the wax; I liked the small shadowy church which seemed to have
changed not one whit in over a century. I sucked in my breath and then I reached into my
pockets, drew out a couple of crumpled dollars, and put them through the brass slot.

I lifted the long wax wick, dipped it into an old flame, and carried the fire to a fresh
candle, watched the little tongue grow orange and bright.

What a miracle, I thought. One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny
flame could set afire a whole world. Why, I had, with this simple gesture, actually
increased the sum total of light in the universe, had I not?

Such a miracle, and for this there will never be an explanation, and there are no Devil and
God speaking together in a Paris cafe. Yet David's crazed theories soothed me when I
thought of them in reverie. "Increase and multiply," said the Lord, the great Lord,
Yahweh-from the flesh of the two a multitude of children, like a great fire from only two
little flames. . .

There was a noise suddenly, sharp, distinct, ringing through the church like a deliberate
footfall. I froze, quite astonished that I hadn't known someone was there. Then I
remembered Notre Dame, and the sound of the child's steps on the stone floor. A sudden
fear swept over me. She was there, wasn't she? If I looked around the corner, I would see
her this time, maybe with her bonnet on, and her curls straggling from the wind, and her
hands wrapped in woolen mittens, and she'd be looking up at me with those immense
eyes. Golden hair and beautiful eyes.

There came a sound again. I hated this fear!

Very slowly I turned, and I saw Louis's unmistakable form emerging from the shadows.
Only Louis. The light of the candles slowly revealed his placid and slightly gaunt face.

He had on a dusty sad coat, and his worn shirt was open at the collar, and he looked
faintly cold. He approached me slowly and clasped my shoulder with a firm hand.

"Something dreadful's going to happen to you again," he said, the light of the candles
playing exquisitely in his dark green eyes. "You're going to see to it. I know."

"I'll win out," I said with a little uneasy laugh, a tiny giddy happiness at seeing him. Then
a shrug. "Don't you know that by now? I always do."

But I was amazed that he'd found me here, that he had come so close to dawn. And I was
trembling still from all my mad imaginings, that she had come, come as she had in my
dreams, and I had wanted to know why.

I was worried for him suddenly; he seemed so fragile with his pallid skin and long
delicate hands. And yet I could feel the cool strength emanating from him as I always
had, the strength of the thoughtful one who does nothing on impulse, the one who sees
from all angles, who chooses his words with care. The one who never plays with the
coming sun.

He drifted back away from me, abruptly, and he slipped silently out the door. I went after
him, failing to lock the door behind me, which was unforgivable, I suppose, for the peace
of churches should never be disturbed, and I watched him walk through the cold black
morning, along the sidewalk near the Pontalba Apartments, across from the square.

He was hurrying in his subtle graceful way, with long easy strides. The light was coming,
gray and lethal, giving a dull gleam to the shop windows beneath the overhanging roof. I
could stand it for another half hour, perhaps. He could not.

I realized I didn't know where his coffin was hidden, and how far he had to go to reach it.
I had not the slightest idea.

Before he reached the corner nearest the river, he turned around. He gave a little wave to
me, and in that gesture there was more affection than in anything he had said.

I went back to close up the church.

EIGHT

THE next night, I went at once to Jackson Square. The terrible norther had finally come
down into New Orleans, bringing with it a freezing wind. This sort of thing can happen at
any time during the winter months, though some years it happens not at all. I'd stopped at
my rooftop flat to put on a heavy wool overcoat, delighted as before that I had such
feeling now in my newly bronzed skin.

A few tourists braved the weather to visit the cafes and bakeries still open near the
cathedral; and the evening traffic was noisy and hurried. The greasy old Cafe du Monde
was crowded behind its closed doors. I saw him immediately. What luck.

They had chained the gates of the square, as they always did now at sunset, a dreadful
annoyance, and he was outside, facing the cathedral, looking anxiously about.

I had a moment to study him before he realized I was there. He was a little taller than I
am, six feet two, I figured, and he was extremely well built, as I'd seen before. I'd been
right about the age. The body couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. He
was clad in very expensive clothes-a fur-lined raincoat, very well tailored, and a thick
scarlet cashmere scarf. When he saw me, a spasm passed through him, of pure anxiety
and mad delight. That awful glittering smile came over him and vainly trying to conceal
his panic, he fixed his eyes upon me as I made a slow, humanlike approach.

"Ah, but you do look like an angel, Monsieur de Lioncourt," he whispered breathlessly,
"and how splendid your darkened skin. What a lovely enhancement. Forgive me for not
saying so before."

"So you're here, Mr. James," I said, raising my eyebrows. "What's the proposition? I don't
like you. Talk fast."

"Don't be so rude, Monsieur de Lioncourt," he said. "It would be a dreadful mistake to
offend me, really it would." Yes, a voice exactly like David's voice. Same generation,
most likely. And something of India in it, no doubt.

"You're quite right on that," he said. "I spent many years in India too. And a little time in
Australia and Africa as well."

"Ah, so you can read my thoughts very easily," I said.

"No, not as easily as you might think, and now probably not at all."

"I'm going to kill you," I said, "if you don't tell me how you've managed to follow me and
what you want,"

"You know what I want," he said, laughing mirthlessly and anxiously under his breath,
his eyes fixing on me and then veering away. "I told you through the stories, but I can't
talk here in the freezing cold. This is worse than Georgetown, which is where I live, by
the way. I was hoping to escape this sort of weather. And why ever did you drag me to
London and Paris at this time of year?" More dry anxious spasms of laughter. Obviously
he couldn't stare at me for more than a minute before glancing away as if I were a
blinding light. "It was bitter cold in London. I hate cold. This is the tropics, is it not? Ah,
you with your sentimental dreams of winter snow."

This last remark stunned me before I could conceal it. I was enraged for one silent
instant, and then I regained my control.

"Come, the cafe," I said, pointing to the old French Market at the other side of the square.
I hurried ahead along the pavement. I was too confused and excited to risk another word.

The cafe was extremely noisy but warm. I led the way to a table in the farthest corner
from the door, ordered the famous cafe au lait for both of us, and sat there in rigid
silence, faintly distracted by the stickiness of the little table, and grimly fascinated by
him, as he shivered, unwound his red scarf anxiously, then put it on again, and finally
pulled off his fine leather gloves, and stuffed them in his pockets, and then took them out
again, and put on one of them, and laid the other one on the table and then snatched it up
again, and put it on as well.

There was something positively horrible about him, about the way this alluringly
splendid body was pumped up with his devious, jittery spirit, and cynical fits of laughter.
Yet I couldn't take my eyes off him. In some devilish way I enjoyed watching him. And I
think he knew it.

There was a provocative intelligence lurking behind this flawless, beautiful face. He
made me realize how intolerant I had become of anyone truly young.

Suddenly the coffee was set down before us, and I wrapped my naked hands around the
warm cup. I let the steam rise in my face. He watched this, with his large clear brown
eyes, as if he were the one who was fascinated, and now he tried to hold my gaze steadily
and calmly, which he found very hard. Delicious mouth, pretty eyelashes, perfect teeth.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" I asked.

"You know. You've figured it out. I'm not fond of this body, Monsieur de Lioncourt. A
body thief has his little difficulties, you know."

"Is that what you are?"

"Yes, a body thief of the first rank. But then you knew that when you agreed to see me,
did you not? You must forgive me my occasional clumsiness, I have been for most of my
life a lean if not emaciated man. Never in such good health." He gave a sigh, the youthful
face for a moment sad.

"But those chapters are closed now," he said with sudden discomfort. "Let me come to
the point immediately, out of respect for your enormous preternatural intellect and vast
experience-"

"Don't mock me, you little pissant!" I said under my breath. **You play with me, I'll tear
you apart slowly. I told you I don't like you. Even your little title for yourself I don't
like."

That shut him up. He canned down altogether. Perhaps he lost his temper, or was frozen
with terror. I think it was simply that he stopped being so fearful and became coldly
angry instead.

"All right," he said softly, and soberly, without all the frenzy. "I want to trade bodies with
you. I want yours for a week. I'll see to it that you have this body. It's young, it's in
perfect health. You like the look of it, obviously. I shall show you various certificates of
health if you wish. The body was quite thoroughly tested and examined right before I
took possession of it. Or stole it. It's quite strong; you can see that. Obviously, it's strong,
quite remarkably strong-"

"How can you do it?"

"We do it together, Monsieur de Lioncourt," he said very politely, his tone becoming
more civil and courteous with each sentence he spoke. "There can be no question of body
theft when I'm dealing with a creature such as you."

"But you've tried, haven't you?"

He studied me for a moment, clearly unsure as to how he should answer. "Well, you can't
blame me for that now, can you?" he said imploringly. "Any more than I can blame you

for drinking blood." He smiled as he said the word "blood." "But really I was simply
trying to get your attention, which isn't an easy thing to do." He seemed thoughtful,
utterly sincere. "Besides, cooperation is always involved on some level, no matter how
submerged that level may be."

"Yes," I said, "but what are the actual mechanics, if that isn't too crude a word. How do
we cooperate with each other! Be specific with me. I don't believe this can be done."

"Oh, come now, of course you do," he suggested gently, as if he were a patient teacher. It
seemed almost an impersonation of David, without David's vigor. "How else would I
have managed to take ownership of this body?" He made a little illustrative gesture as he
continued. "We will meet at an appropriate place. Then we will rise out of our bodies,
which you know very well how to do and have so eloquently described in your writing,
and then we will take possession of each other's bodies. There's nothing to it really,
except complete courage and an act of will." He lifted the cup, his hand trembling
violently, and he drank a mouthful of the hot coffee. "For you, the test will be the
courage, nothing more."

"What will keep me anchored in the new body?"

"There'll be no one in there, Monsieur de Lioncourt, to push you out. This is entirely
different from possession, you understand. Oh, possession is a battle. When you enter
into this body, there will be not the slightest resistance from it. You can remain until you
choose to disengage."

"It's too puzzling!" I said, with obvious annoyance. "I know reams have been written on
these questions, but something doesn't quite .. ."

"Let me try to put it in perspective," he said, voice hushed and almost exquisitely
accommodating. "We're dealing here with science, but it is science which has not yet
been fully codified by scientific minds. What we have are the memoirs of poets and
occult adventurers, quite incapable of anatomizing what takes place."

"Exactly. As you pointed out, I've done it myself, traveled out of the body. Yet I don't
know what takes place. Why doesn't the body die when one leaves it? I don't understand."
"The soul has more than one part, as does the brain. Surely you know that a child can be
born without a cerebellum, yet the body can live if it has what is called the brain stem."
"Dreadful thought."

"Happens all the time, I assure you. Victims of accidents in which the brain is damaged
irretrievably can still breathe and . even yawn in their slumber, as the lower brain carries
on." "And you can possess such bodies?" "Oh, no, I need a healthy brain in order to take
full possession, absolutely must have all those cells in good working order and able to
lock into the invading mind Mark my words, Monsieur de Lioncourt. Brain is not mind.
But again, we are not talking of possession, but of something infinitely finer than that.
Allow me to continue, please." "Go ahead."

"As I was saying, the soul has more than one part, in the same manner as the brain. The
larger part of it-identity, personality, consciousness, if you will-this is what springs loose
and travels; but a small residual soul remains. It keeps the vacant body animate, so to
speak, for otherwise vacancy would mean death, of course."

"I see. The residual soul animates the brain stem; that is what you mean."

"Yes. When you rise out of your body, you will leave a residual soul there. And when
you come into this body, you will find the residual soul there as well. It's the very same
residual soul I found when I took possession. And that soul will lock with any higher soul
eagerly and automatically; it wants to embrace that higher soul. Without it, it feels
incomplete." "And when death occurs both souls leave?" "Precisely. Both souls go
together, the residual soul and the larger soul, in a violent evacuation, and then the body
is a mere lifeless shell and begins its decay." He waited, observing me with the same
seemingly sincere patience, and then he said:

The tale of the Body Thief

"Believe me, the force of actual death is much stronger. There's no danger at all in what
we propose to do."

"But if this little residual soul is so damned receptive, why can't I, with all my power, jolt
some little mortal soul right out of its skin, and move in?"

"Because the larger soul would try to reclaim its body, Monsieur de Lioncourt, even if
there were no understanding of the process, it would try again and again. Souls do not
want to be without a body. And even though the residual soul welcomes the invader,
something in it always recognizes the particular soul of which it was once a part. It will
choose that soul if there is a battle. And even a bewildered soul can make a powerful
attempt to reclaim its mortal frame."

I said nothing, but much as I suspected him, indeed reminded myself to be on guard, I
found a continuity in all he said.

"Possession is always a bloody struggle," he reiterated. "Look what happens with evil
spirits, ghosts, that sort of thing. They're always driven out eventually, even if the victor
never knows what took place. When the priest comes with his incense and his holy-water
mumbo jumbo, he is calling on that residual soul to oust the intruder and draw the old
soul back in."

"But with the cooperative switch, both souls have new bodies."

"Precisely. Believe me, if you think you can hop into a human body without my
assistance, well, give it a try, and you'll see what I mean. You'll never really experience
the five senses of a mortal as long as the battle's raging inside."

His manner became even more careful, confidential. "Look at this body again, Monsieur
de Lioncourt," he said with beguiling softness. "It can be yours, absolutely and truly
yours." His pause seemed as precise suddenly as ms words. "It was a year ago you first
saw it in Venice. It's been host to an intruder without interruption for all of that time. It
will play host to you."

"Where did you get it?"

"Stole it, I told you," he said. "The former owner is dead."

"You have to be more specific."

"Oh, must I, really? I do so hate to incriminate myself."

"I'm not a mortal officer of the law, Mr. James. I'm a vampire. Speak in words I can
understand."

He gave a soft, faintly ironic laugh. "The body was carefully chosen," he said. "The
former owner had no mind left. Oh, there was nothing organically wrong with him,
absolutely nothing. As I told you, he'd been quite thoroughly tested. He'd become a great
quiet laboratory animal of sorts. He never moved. Never spoke. His reason had been
hopelessly shattered, no matter how the healthy cells of the brain continued to pop and
crackle along, as they are wont to do. I accomplished the switch in stages. Jolting him out
of his body was simple. It was luring him down into my old body and leaving him there
which took the skill."

"Where is your old body now?"

"Monsieur de Lioncourt, there is simply no way that the old soul will ever come
knocking; that I guarantee."

"I want to see a picture of your old body."

"Whatever for?"

"Because it will tell me things about you, more perhaps than you yourself are telling me.
I demand it. I won't proceed without it."

"You won't?" He retained the polite smile. "What if I get up and leave here?"

"I'll kill your splendid new body as soon as you try. No one in this cafe will even notice.
They'll think you're drunk and that you've tumbled into my arms. I do that sort of thing all
the time."

He fell silent, but I could see that he was calculating fiercely, and then I realized how
much he was savoring all this, that he had been all along. He was like a great actor,
deeply immersed in the most challenging part of his career.

He smiled at me, with startling seductiveness, and then, carefully removing his right
glove, he drew a little item out of his pocket and put it in my hand. An old photograph of
a gaunt man with thick white wavy hair. I judged him to be perhaps fifty. He wore some
sort of white uniform with a little black bow tie.

He was a very nice looking man, actually, much more delicate in appearance than David,
but he had the same sort of British elegance about him, and his smile was not unpleasant.
He was leaning on the railing of what might have been the deck of a ship. Yes, it was a
ship.

"You knew I'd ask for this, didn't you?"

"Sooner or later," he said.

"When was this taken?"

" That's of no importance. Why on earth do you want to know?" He betrayed just a little
annoyance, but then he covered it at once. "It was ten years ago," he said with a slight
sinking of the voice. "Will it do?"

"And so that makes you .. . what? Mid-sixties, perhaps?"

"I'll settle for that," he said with a very broad and intimate smile.

"How did you learn all this? Why haven't others perfected this trick?"

He looked me up and down and a little coldly, and I thought his composure might snap.
Then he retreated into his polite manner again. "Many people have done it," he said, his
voice assuming a tone of special confidence. "Your friend David Talbot could have told
you that. He didn't want to. He lies, like all those wizards in the Talamasca. They're
religious. They think they can control people; they use their knowledge for control."

"How do you know about them?"

"I was a member of their order," he said, his eyes brightening playfully, as he smiled
again. "They kicked me out of it. They accused me of using my powers for gain. What
else is there, Monsieur de Lioncourt? What do you use your powers for, if not for gain?"

So, Louis had been right. I didn't speak. I tried to scan him but it was useless. Instead, I
received a strong sense of his physical presence, of the heat emanating from him, of the
hot fount of his blood. Succulent, that was the word for this body, no matter what one
thought of his soul. I disliked the feeling because it made me want to kill him now.

"I found out about you through the Talamasca," he said, assuming the same confidential
tone as before. "Of course I was familiar with your little fictions. I read all that sort of
thing. That's why I used those short stories to communicate with you. But it was in the
archives of the Talamasca that I discovered that your fictions weren't fictions at all."

I was silently enraged that Louis had figured it right.

"All right," I said. "I understand all this about the divided brain and the divided soul, but
what if you don't want to give my body back to me after we've made this little switch, and
I'm not strong enough to reclaim it; what's to keep you from making off with my body for
good?"

He was quite still for a moment, and then said with slow measured words: "A very large
bribe."

"Ah."

"Ten million dollars in a bank account waiting for me when I repossess this body." He
reached into his coat pocket again and drew out a small plastic card with a thumbnail
picture of his new face on it. There was also a clear fingerprint, and his name, Raglan
James, and a Washington address.

"You can arrange it, surely. A fortune that can only be claimed by the man with this face
and this fingerprint? You don't think I'd forfeit a fortune of that size, do you? Besides, I
don't want your body forever. You don't even want it forever, do you? You've been far
too eloquent on the subject of your agonies, your angst, your extended and noisy descent
into hell, etcetera. No. I only want your body for a little while. There are many bodies out
there, waiting for me to take possession of them, many kinds of adventure." I studied the
little card. "Ten million," I said. "That's quite a price." "It's nothing to you and you know
it. You have billions squirreled away in international banks under all your colorful
aliases. A creature with your formidable powers can acquire all the riches of the world.
It's only the tawdry vampires of second-rate motion pictures who tramp through eternity
living hand to mouth, as we both know."

He blotted his lips fastidiously with a linen handkerchief, then drank a gulp of his coffee.

"I was powerfully intrigued," he said, "by your descriptions of the vampire Armand in
The Queen of the Damned-how he used his precious powers to acquire wealth, and built
his great enterprise, the Night Island, such a lovely name. It rather took my breath away."
He smiled, and then went on, the voice amiable and smooth as before. "It wasn't very
difficult for me to document and annotate your assertions, you realize, though as we both
know, your mysterious comrade has long ago abandoned the Night Island, and has
vanished from the realm of computer records-at least as far as I can ascertain." I didn't
say anything.

"Besides, for what I offer, ten million is a bargain. Who else has made you such an offer?
There isn't anyone else-at the moment, that is-who can or will."

"And suppose / don't want to switch back at the end of the week?" I asked. "Suppose I
want to be human forever." "That's perfectly fine with me," he said graciously. "I can get
rid of your body anytime I want. There are lots of others who'll take it off my hands." He
gave me a respectful and admiring smile.

"What are you going to do with my body?"

"Enjoy it. Enjoy the strength, the power! I've had everything the human body has to
offer-youth, beauty, resilience. I've even been in the body of a woman, you know. And by
the way, I don't recommend that at all. Now I want what you have to offer." He narrowed
his eyes and cocked his head. "If there were any corporeal angels hanging about, well, I
might approach one of them."

"The Talamasca has no record of angels?"

He hesitated, then gave a small contained laugh. "Angels are pure spirit, Monsieur de
Lioncourt," he said. "We are talking bodies, no? I am addicted to the pleasures of the
flesh. And vampires are fleshly monsters, are they not? They thrive on blood." Again, a
light came into his eyes when he said the word "blood."

"What's your game?" I asked. "I mean really. What's your passion? It can't be the money.
What's the money for? What will you buy with it? Experiences you haven't had?"

"Yes, I would say that's it. Experiences I haven't had. I'm obviously a sensualist, for want
of a better word, but if you must know the truth-and I don't see why there should be any
lies between us-I'm a thief in every respect. I don't enjoy something unless I bargain for
it, trick someone out of it, or steal it. It's my way of making something out of nothing,
you might say, which makes me like God!"

He stopped as if he were so impressed with what he had just said that he had to catch his
breath. His eyes were dancing, and then he looked down at the half-empty coffee cup and
gave a long secretive private smile.

"You do follow my drift, don't you?" he asked. "I stole these clothes," he said.
"Everything in my house in Georgetown is stolen-every piece of furniture, every
painting, every little object d'art. Even the house itself is stolen, or shall we say, it was
signed over to me amid a morass of false impressions and false hopes. I believe they call
it swindling? All the same thing." He smiled proudly again, and with such seeming depth
of feeling that I was amazed. "All the money I possess is stolen. So is the car I drive in
Georgetown. So are the airline tickets I used to chase you around the world."

I didn't respond. How strange he was, I thought, intrigued by him and yet still repelled by
him, for all his graciousness and seeming honesty. It was an act, but what a nearly perfect

act. And then the bewitching face, which seemed with every new revelation to be more
mobile and expressive and pliant. I roused myself. There was more I had to know.

"How did you accomplish that, following me about? How did you know where I was?"

"Two ways, to be perfectly frank with you. The first is obvious. I can leave my body for
short periods, and during those periods I can search for you over vast distances. But I
don't like that sort of bodiless travel at all. And of course you are not easy to find. You
cloak yourself for long periods; then you blaze away in careless visibility; and of course
you move about with no discernible pattern. Often by the time I'd located you, and
brought my body to the location, you were gone.

"Then there's another way, almost as magical-computer systems. You use many aliases.
I've been able to discover four of them. I'm often not quick enough to catch up with you
through the computer. But I can study your tracks. And when you double back again, I
know where to close in."

I said nothing, merely marveling again at how much he was enjoying all of this.

"I like your taste in cities," he said. "I like your taste in hotels-the Hassler in Rome, the
Ritz in Paris, the Stanhope in New York. And of course the Park Central in Miami, lovely
little hotel. Oh, don't get so suspicious. There's nothing to chasing people through
computer systems. There's nothing to bribing clerks to show you a credit card receipt, or
bullying bank employees to reveal things they've been told not to reveal. Tricks usually
handle it perfectly well. You don't have to be a preternatural killer to do it. No, not at all."

"You steal through the computer systems?"

"When I can," he said with a little twist to his mouth. "I steal in any fashion. Nothing's
beneath my dignity. But I'm not capable of stealing ten million dollars through any
means. If I were, I wouldn't be here, now, would I? I'm not that clever. I've been caught
twice. I've been in prison. That's where I perfected the means of traveling out of body,
since there wasn't any other way." He made a weary bitter sarcastic smile.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because your friend David Talbot is going to tell you. And because I think we should
understand each other. I'm weary of taking risks. This is the big score, your body-and ten
million dollars when I give it up."

"What is it with you?" I asked. "This all sounds so petty, so mundane."

"Ten million is mundane?"

"Yes. You've swapped an old body for a new one. You're young again! And the next step,
if I consent, will be my body, my powers. But it's the money that matters to you. It's
really just the money and nothing else."

"It's both!" he said sourly and defiantly. "They're very similar." With conscious effort he
regained his composure. "You don't realize it because you acquired your wealth and your
power simultaneously," he said. "Immortality and a great casket full of gold and jewels.
Wasn't that the story? You walked out of Magnus's tower an immortal with a king's
ransom. Or is the story a lie? You're real enough, that's plain. But I don't know about all
those things you wrote. But you ought to understand what I'm saying. You're a thief
yourself."

I felt an immediate flush of anger. Suddenly he was more consummately distasteful than
he'd been in that anxious jittering state when we first sat down.

"I'm not a thief," I said quietly.

"Yes, you are," he answered with amazing sympathy. "You always steal from your
victims. You know you do."

"No, I never do unless... I have to."

"Have it your way. I think you're a thief." He leant forward, eyes glittering again, as the
soothing measured words continued: "You steal the blood you drink, you can't argue with
that."

"What actually happened with you and the Talamasca?" I asked.

"I told you," he said. "The Talamasca threw me out. I was accused of using my gifts to
gain information for personal use. I was accused of deception. And of stealing, of course.
They were very foolish and shortsighted, your friends in the Talamasca. They
underestimated me completely. They should have valued me. They should have studied
me. They should have begged me to teach them the things I know.

"Instead they gave me the boot. Six months' severance. A pittance. And they refused my
last request for first-class passage to America on the Queen Elizabeth 2. It would have
been so simple for them to grant my wish. They owed me that much, after the things I'd
revealed to them. They should have done it." He sighed, and glanced at me, and then at
his coffee. "Little things like that matter in this world. They matter very much."

I didn't reply. I looked down at the picture again, at the figure on the deck of the ship, but
I'm not sure he took notice of it. He was staring off into the noisy glare of the cafe, eyes
dancing over walls and ceiling and occasional tourists and taking note of none.

"I tried to bargain with them," he said, voice soft and measured as before. "If they wanted
a few items returned or a few questions answered-you know. But they wouldn't hear of it,

not them! And money means nothing to them, no more than it means to you. They were
too mean-spirited to even consider it. They gave me a tourist-class plane ticket, and a
check for six months' pay. Six months' pay! Oh, I am so very weary of all the little ups
and downs!"

"What made you think you could outwit them?"

"I did outwit them," he said, eyes flashing with a little smile. "They're not very careful
with their inventories. They have no idea really how many of their little treasures I
managed to appropriate. They'll never guess. Of course you were the real theft-the secret
that you existed. Ah, discovering that little vault full of relics was such a stroke of good
luck. Understand, I didn't take anything of your old possessions-rotted frock coats from
your very closets in New Orleans, parchments with your fancy signature, why, there was
even a locket with a painted miniature of that accursed little child-"

"Watch your tongue," I whispered.

He went quiet. "I'm sorry. I meant no offense, truly."

"What locket?" I asked, Could he hear the sudden racing of my heart? I tried to still it, to
keep the warmth from rising again in my face.

How meek he looked as he answered. "A gold locket on a chain, little oval miniature
inside. Oh, I didn't steal it. I swear to you. I left it there. Ask your friend Talbot. It's still
in the vault."

I waited, commanding my heart to be still, and banishing all images of that locket from
my mind. Then: "The point is, the Talamasca caught you and they put you out."

"You don't have to continue insulting me," he said humbly.

"It's entirely possible for us to make our little bargain without any unpleasantness. I'm
very sorry that I mentioned this locket, I didn't-"

"I want to think over your proposition," I said.

"That might be a mistake."

"Why?"

"Give it a chance! Act quickly. Act now. And remember, please, if you harm me, you'll
throw away this opportunity forever. I'm the only key to this experience; use me or you'll
never know what it's like to be a human being again." He drew close to me, so close I
could feel his breath on my cheek. "You'll never know what it's like to walk in the
sunlight, to enjoy a full meal of real food, to make love to a woman or a man."

"I want you to leave here now. Get out of this city and never come back. I'll come to you
at this address in Georgetown when I'm ready. And it won't be for a week this switch.
Not the first time at any rate. It will be . . ."

"May I suggest two days?"

I didn't answer.

"What if we start with one day?" he asked. "If you like it, then we can arrange for a
longer time?"

"One day," I said, my voice sounding very strange to me. "One period of twenty-four
hours ... for the first time."

"One day and two nights," he said quietly. "Let me suggest this coming Wednesday, as
soon after sunset as you like. We shall make the second switch early on Friday, before
dawn."

I didn't reply.

"You have this evening and tomorrow evening to make your preparations," he said
coaxingly. "After the switch you will have all of Wednesday night and the full day
Thursday. Of course you'll have Thursday night as well up until... shall we say, two hours
before Friday's sunrise? That ought to be comfortable enough."

He studied me keenly, then became more anxious: "Oh, and bring one of your passports
with you. I don't care which one. But I want a passport, and a bit of credit plastic, and
money in my pockets over and above the ten million. You understand?"

I didn't say anything.

"You know this will work."

Again, I didn't answer.

"Believe me, all I've told you is true. Ask Talbot. I wasn't born this handsome individual
you see before you. And this body is waiting right now this very minute for you."

I was quiet.

"Come to me Wednesday," he said. "You'll be very glad that you did." He paused, and
then his manner became even softer. "Look, I... feel that I know you," he said, his voice
dropping to a whisper. "I know what you want! It's dreadful to want something and not to
have it. Ah, but then to know that it's within your grasp."

I looked up slowly into his eyes. The handsome face was tranquil, devoid of any stamp of
expression, and the eyes seemed rather miraculous in their fragility and their precision.
The skin itself seemed supple and as if it would feel like satin to my touch. And then
came the voice again, in a seductive half whisper, the words touched with sadness.

"This is something only you and I can do," he said. "In a way, it is a miracle which only
you and I can understand."

The face appeared monstrous suddenly in its tranquil beauty; even the voice seemed
monstrous in its lovely timbre and eloquence, so expressive of empathy and even
affection, perhaps even love.

I had the urge to grab the creature by the throat; I had the urge to shake it until it lost its
composure and its semblance of deep feeling, but I would not have dreamed of doing so
really. I was mesmerized by the eyes and the voice. I was allowing myself to be
mesmerized, the way I had allowed those earlier physical sensations of assault to sweep
over me. And it occurred to me that I allowed this simply because this being seemed so
very fragile and foolish and I was sure of my own strength.

But that was a He. I wanted to do this thing! I wanted to make this switch.

Only after a long while, he broke away, and let his gaze move over the cafe. Was he
biding his time? What went on inside his clever conniving, and thoroughly concealed
soul! A being who could steal bodies! Who could live inside another's flesh.

Slowly, he took a pen from his pocket, tore loose one of the paper napkins, and wrote
down the name and address of a bank. He gave this to me and I took it and slipped it into
my pocket. I didn't speak.

"Before we switch, I'll give you my passport," he said, studying me with every word.
"The one with the correct face on it, of course. I'll leave you comfortable in my house. I
assume you'll have money in your pockets. You always do. You'll find it quite cozy, my
house. You'll like Georgetown." His words were like soft fingers tapping the back of my
hand, annoying yet vaguely thrilling. "It's quite a civilized place, an old place. Of course
it is snowing there. You realize it. It's very cold. If you really don't want to do it in a cold
climate-"

"I don't mind about the snow," I said under my breath.

"Yes, of course. Well, I'll be sure to leave you quite a few winter garments," he said in
the same conciliatory manner.

"None of those details matter," I said. What a fool he was to think that they did. I could
feel my heart skipping beats.

"Oh, I don't know about that," he said. "When you're human you might find that a lot of
things matter."

To you, perhaps, I thought. All that matters to me is to be in that body, and to be alive. In
my mind's eye, I saw the snow of that last winter in the Auvergne. I saw the sun spilling
down on the mountains... I saw the little priest from the village church, shivering in the
great hall as he complained to me about the wolves coming down into the village at night.
Of course I would hunt down the wolves. It was my duty.

I didn't care whether he'd read these thoughts or not.

"Ah, but don't you want to taste good food? Don't you want to drink good wine? What
about a woman, or a man, for that matter? You'll need money and pleasant
accommodations, of course."

I didn't reply. I saw the sun on the snow. I let my eyes move slowly to his face. I thought
how curiously graceful he seemed in this new mode of persuasiveness, how very like
David, indeed.

He was about to go on with his talk of luxuries when I gestured for silence.

"All right," I said. "I think you'll see me on Wednesday. Shall we say an hour after dark?
Oh, and I must warn you. This fortune often million dollars. It will only be available to
you for two hours on Friday morning. You'll have to appear in person to claim it." And
here I touched his shoulder lightly. "This person, of course."

"Of course. I'm looking forward to it."

"And you'll need a code word to complete the transaction. And you'll only learn the code
word from me when you return my body as agreed."

"No. No code words. The transfer of funds must be complete and irrevocable before the
bank closes on Wednesday afternoon. All I have to do the following Friday is appear
before the representative, allow him to take my fingerprint if you insist upon it, and then
he will sign the money over to me."

I was quiet, thinking it over.

"After all, my handsome friend," he said, "what if you don't like your day as a human
being? What if you don't feel you've gotten your money's worth?" ·

"I'll get my money's worth," I whispered, more to myself than to him.

"No," he said patiently but insistently. "No code words."

I studied him. He smiled at me, and he appeared almost innocent and truly young. Good
Lord, it must have meant something to him, this youthful vigor. How could it not have
dazzled him, at least for a while? In the beginning, perhaps, he must have thought he'd
attained everything that he could ever want.

"Not by a long shot!" he said suddenly, as if he couldn't stop the words from slipping out
of his mouth.

I couldn't help but laugh.

"Let me tell you a little secret about youth," he said with sudden coldness. "Bernard
Shaw said it was wasted on the young, you remember that clever overrated little
remark?"

"Yes."

"Well, it isn't. The young know how difficult and truly dreadful youth can be. Their youth
is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect."

"You're mad," I said. "I don't think you use what you steal very well. How could you not
thrill to the sheer stamina? Glory in the beauty you see reflected in the eyes of those who
look at you everywhere you go?"

He shook his head. "That's for you to enjoy," he said. "The body's young the way you've
always been young. You will thrill to the stamina of it, as you say. You will glory in all
those loving looks." He broke off. He took the final sip of his coffee and stared into the
cup,

"No code words," he said politely.

"Very well."

"Ah, good," he said with a full warm smile of amazing brightness. "Remember I offered
you a week for this sum," he said. "It's your decision to take one full day. Perhaps after
you've had a taste you'll want a much longer time."

"Perhaps so," I said. Again, I was distracted by the sight of him, by the sight of the large
warm hand which he covered now with the glove.

"And another switch will cost you another handsome sum," he said merrily, all smiles
now, as he arranged his scarf within his lapels.

"Yes, of course."

"Money really doesn't mean anything to you, does it?" he asked, thoughtfully.

"Nothing at all." How tragic for you, I thought, that it means so much.

"Well, perhaps I should take my leave now, and allow you to make your preparations. I
shall see you Wednesday as planned."

"Don't try to run out on me," I said in a low voice, leaning forward slightly, and then
lifting my hand and touching his face.

The gesture clearly startled him; he became motionless, like an animal in the wood who
suddenly sensed danger where there had been none before. But his expression remained
calm, and I let my fingers rest against his smoothly shaven skin.

Then I moved them down slowly, feeling the firmness of his jawbone, and then I placed
my hand on his neck. Here, too, the razor had passed, leaving its faint dark shadow; the
skin was firm, surprisingly muscular, and a clean, youthful scent rose from it as I saw the
sweat break out on his forehead, as I saw his lips move in a surprisingly graceful smile.

"Surely you enjoyed being young just a little," I said under my breath.

He smiled, as if he knew just how radiant and seductive the smile could be.

"I dream the dreams of the young," he said. "And they are always dreams of being older,
and richer, and wiser, and stronger, don't you think?"

I gave a little laugh.

"I'll be there Wednesday night," he said with the same silver-tongued sincerity. "You can
be certain of it. Come. It will happen, I promise you." He leant forward and whispered.
"You will be inside this body!" And once again, he smiled in the most charming and
ingratiating fashion. "You'll see."

"I want you to leave New Orleans now."

"Ah, yes, immediately," he said. And without another word, he stood up, moving back
away from me, and then tried to conceal his sudden fear. "I have my ticket already," he
said. "I don't like your filthy little Caribbean backwater." He made a little self-
deprecating laugh, an almost pretty laugh. Then he went on as if he were a wise teacher
scolding a student. "We'll talk more when you come to Georgetown. And don't try to spy
on me in the meantime. I'll know it if you do. I'm too good at picking up that sort of
thing. Even the Talamasca was amazed at my powers. They should have kept me in the
fold! They should have studied me!" He broke off.

"I'll spy on you anyway," I said, echoing his low key and careful tone. "I don't really care
whether or not you know."

He laughed again, in a low, subdued, and slightly smoldering fashion, and then gave me a
little nod and rushed towards the door. He was once again the awkward, ungainly being,
full of crazed excitement. And how tragic it seemed, for surely that body could move like
a panther with another soul inside.

I caught him on the sidewalk, startling him, indeed scaring him half out of his powerful
little psychic mind. We were almost eye-to-eye.

"What do you want to do with my body?" I asked. "I mean, besides flee from the sun
every morning as if you were a nocturnal insect or a giant slug?"

"What do you think?" he said, once again playing the charming English gentleman with
utter sincerity. "I want to drink blood." His eyes grew very wide, and he leaned closer. "I
want to take life when I drink it. That's the point, isn't it? It's not merely the blood you
steal from them, it's their lives. I've never stolen anything that valuable from anyone." He
gave me a knowing smile. "The body, yes, but not the blood and the life."

I let him go, backing away from him as sharply as he'd backed away from me only a
moment before. My heart was pounding, and I could feel a tremor passing through me as
I stared at him, at his handsome and seemingly innocent face.

He continued to smile. "You are a thief par excellence," he said. "Every breath you take
is stolen! Oh, yes, I must have your body. I must experience this. To invade the vampire
files of the Talamasca was a triumph, but to possess your body, and to steal blood whilst
in it! Ah, that is beyond all my finest accomplishments! You are the ultimate thief."

"Get away from me," I whispered.

"Oh, come now, don't be so fastidious," he said. "You hate it when other people do it to
you. You're quite privileged, Lestat de Lioncourt. You've found what Diogenes was
searching for. An honest man!" Another broad smile, and then a low volley of simmering
laughter, as if he couldn't contain it any longer. "I shall see you Wednesday. And you
must come early. I want as much of the night as I can have."

He turned and hurried into the street, waving frantically for a taxi, and then bolting
against the traffic to force his way into a cab which had just come to a stop, quite
obviously, for someone else. A little argument ensued, but he won out immediately,
slamming the door in the other fellow's face as the cab sped off. I saw him wink at me
through the dirty window, and wave. And then he and his taxi were gone.

I was sick with confusion. I stood there unable to move. The night for all its coldness was
busy and full of the mingled voices of the passing tourists, of cars slowing as they passed
the square. Without intent, without words, I tried to see it as it might be in the sunshine; I
tried to imagine the heavens over this spot that shocking vague blue.

Then slowly I turned up the collar of my coat.

I walked for hours. I kept hearing that beautiful cultured voice in my ears.

It's not merely the blood you steal from them, it's their lives. I've never stolen anything
that valuable from anyone. The body, yes, but not the blood and the life.

I couldn't have faced Louis. I couldn't bear the thought of talking to David. And if Marius
learned of this, I was finished before I'd begun. Who knew what Marius would do to me
for even entertaining such an idea? And yet Marius, with all his vast experience, would
know if this was truth or fancy! Ye gods, had Marius never wanted to do it himself?

At last, I went back to my apartment, and turned out the lights and sat sprawled on the
soft velvet sofa, before the darkened glass wall, peering out at the city below.

Remember, please, if you harm me, you'll throw away this opportunity forever... Use me
or you 'II never know what it's like to be a human being again . . . You'll never know
what it's like to walk in the sunlight, to enjoy a full meal of real food, to make love to a
woman or a man.

I thought about the power of rising out of one's material form. I didn't like this power,
and it did not happen to me spontaneously, this astral projection, as it was called, this
spirit traveling. Indeed, I had used it so few times I could have counted them on one
hand.

And in all my suffering in the Gobi, I had not tried to leave my material form, nor had I
been propelled out of it, nor had I even thought of such a possibility.

Indeed, the idea of being disconnected from my body-of floating about, earthbound, and
unable to find a door to heaven or hell-was absolutely terrifying to me. And that such a
traveling, disembodied soul could not pass through the gates of death at will had been
plain to me the very first time I'd ever experimented with this little trick. But to go into
the body of a mortal! To anchor there, to walk, to feel, to see, as a mortal, ah, I could not
contain my excitement. It was becoming pure pain.

After the switch you will have all of Wednesday night and the full day Thursday. The full
day Thursday, the full day ...

Finally, sometime before morning, I called my agent in New York. This man had no
knowledge of my Paris agent at all. He knew me under two names only. And I had not
used either of these in many a moon. It was very unlikely Raglan James had any
knowledge of these identities and their various resources. It seemed the simplest route to
pursue.

"I have some work for you, very complicated work. And it must be done immediately."

"Yes, sir, always, sir."

"All right, this is the name and address of a bank in the District of Columbia. I want you
to write it down . . ."

NINE

THE following evening I completed all the necessary papers for this transfer of ten
million in American dollars, and sent these papers by messenger to the bank in
Washington, along with Mr. Raglan James's photo-identification card, and a full
reiteration of instructions in my own hand, and with the signature of Lestan Gregor,
which for various reasons, was the best name to be used for the entire affair.

My New York agent also knew me by another alias, as I have indicated, and we agreed
that this other name would in no way figure in this transaction, and that should I need to
contact my agent, this other name, and a couple of new code words, would empower him
to make transfers of money on verbal instructions alone.

As for the name Lestan Gregor, it was to disappear utterly from record as soon as this ten
million went into the possession of Mr. James. All the remaining assets of Mr. Gregor
were now transferred to my other name-which by the way was Stanford Wilde, for all
that it matters now.

All of my agents are used to such bizarre instructions-shifts of funds, collapsing of
identities, and the authority to wire funds to me anywhere I might be in the world on the
basis of a telephone call. But I tightened the system. I gave bizarre and difficult-to-
pronounce code words. I did everything I could, in short, to improve security surrounding
my identities, and to fix the terms of the transfer of the ten million as firmly as I could.

As of Wednesday noon, the money would be in a trust account at the Washington bank,
from which it could only be claimed by Mr. Raglan James, and only between the hours of
ten and twelve on the following Friday. Mr. James would verify his identity by physical
conformity to his picture, and by fingerprint, and by signature, before the money would
be placed in his account. At one minute after twelve noon, the entire transaction would be
null and void, and the money would be sent back to New York. Mr. James was to be
presented with all these terms on Wednesday afternoon at the very latest, and with the
assurance that nothing could prevent this transfer if all the instructions were followed as
laid out.

It seemed an ironclad arrangement, as far as I could figure, but then I wasn't a thief,
contrary to what Mr. James believed. And knowing that he was, I examined all aspects of
the deal over and over, rather compulsively, in order to deny him the upper hand.

But why was I still deceiving myself, I wondered, that I would not go through with this
experiment? For surely I intended to do exactly that.

Meantime, the phone in my apartment was ringing over and over again, as David tried
desperately to reach me, and I sat there in the dark, thinking things over, and refusing to
answer, vaguely annoyed by the ringing, and finally unplugging the cord.

This was despicable, what I meant to do. This varmint would use my body, no doubt, for
the most sinister and cruel crimes. And I was going to allow this to happen, merely so
that I could be human? How impossible to justify, in any light whatever, to anyone whom
I knew.

Every time I thought of the others discovering the truth- any of them-I shuddered, and put
the thought completely from my mind. Pray they were busy throughout the vast hostile
world, with their own inevitable pursuits.

How much better to think about the entire proposition with pounding excitement. And
Mr. James was right about the matter of money, of course. Ten million meant absolutely
nothing to me. I had carried through the centuries a great fortune, increasing it by various
offhand means until even I myself did not know its true size.

And much as I understood how very different the world was for a mortal being, I still
could not quite comprehend why the money was so important to James. After all, we
were dealing with questions of potent magic, of vast preternatural power, of potentially
devastating spiritual insights, and demonic, if not heroic, deeds. But the money was
clearly what the little bastard wanted. The little bastard, for all his insults, did not really
see past the money. And perhaps that was just as well.

Think how very dangerous he might be had he truly grand ambitions. But he did not.

And I wanted that human body. And that was the bottom line.

The rest was rationalization at best. And as the hours passed, I did quite a bit of that,

For example, was the surrender of my powerful body really so despicable? The little
creep couldn't even use the human body he had. He'd turned into the perfect gentleman
for half an hour at the cafe table, then blown it with his awkward graceless gestures, as
soon as he'd stood up. He'd never be able to use my physical strength. He wouldn't be
able to direct my telekinetic powers either, no matter how psychic he claimed to be. He
might do all right with the telepathy, but when it came to

entrancing or spellbinding, I suspected he would not even begin to use those gifts. I
doubted he would be able to move very fast. Indeed, he'd be clumsy and slow and
ineffective. Actual flight probably wouldn't be a possibility for him. And he might even
get himself into a terrible scrape.

Yes, it was all well and good that he was such a small-souled miserable little schemer.
Better that than a god on a rampage, certainly. As for me, what did I plan to do?

The house in Georgetown, the car, these things meant nothing! I'd told him the truth. I
wanted to be alive! Of course I would need some money for food and drink. But seeing
the light of day cost nothing. Indeed, the experience need not involve any great material
comfort or luxury. I wanted the spiritual and physical experience of being mortal flesh
again. I saw myself as wholly unlike the miserable Body Thief!

But I had one remaining doubt. What if ten million wasn't enough to bring this man back
with my body? Perhaps I should double the amount. To such a small-minded person, a
fortune of twenty million would truly be an enticement. And in the past, I had always
found it effective to double the sums which people charged for their services, thereby
commanding a loyalty from them of which they had not even conceived.

I called New York again. Double the sum. My agent, naturally enough, thought I was
losing my mind. We used our new code words to confirm the authority of the transaction.
Then I hung up.

It was time now to talk to David or go to Georgetown. I had made a promise to David. I
sat very still, waiting for the phone to ring, and when it did, I picked it up.

"Thank God you're there."

"What is it?" I asked.

"I recognized the name Raglan James immediately, and you're absolutely right. The man
is not inside his own body! The person you're dealing with is sixty-seven years old. He
was born in India, grew up in London, and has been in prison five times. He's a thief
known to every law enforcement agency in Europe, and what they call in America a
confidence man. He's also a powerful psychic, a black magician-one of the most crafty
we've ever known."

"So he told me. He worked his way into the order."

"Yes, he did. And this was one of the worst mistakes we've ever made. But Lestat, this
man could seduce the Blessed Virgin, and steal a pocket watch from the Living Lord. Yet
he was his own undoing within a matter of months. That's the crux of what I'm trying to
tell you. Now, please do listen. This sort of black witch or sorcerer always brings evil
upon himself! With his gifts he should have been able to deceive us forever; instead he
used his skill to fleece the other members, and to steal from the vaults!"

"He told me that. What about this whole question of body switching? Can there be any
doubt?"

"Describe the man as you've seen him."

I did. I emphasized the height and the robust nature of the physical frame. The thick
glossy hair, the uncommonly smooth and satin like skin. The exceptional beauty.

"Ah, I'm looking at a picture of the man right now."

"Explain."

"He was confined briefly in a London hospital for the criminally insane. Mother an
Anglo-Indian, which may explain the exceptionally beautiful complexion you're
describing, and which I can see here plainly enough. Father a London cabbie who died in
jail. The fellow himself worked in a garage in London, specializing in extremely
expensive cars. Dealt in drugs as a sideline so that he could afford the cars himself. One
night he murdered his entire family-wife, two children, brother-in-law and mother-and
then gave himself up to the police. A frightening mix of hallucinogenic drugs was found
in his blood, along with a great deal of alcohol. These were the very same drugs he often
sold to the neighborhood youths."

"Derangement of the senses but nothing wrong with the brain."

"Precisely, the entire murderous tantrum was drug induced as far as the authorities could
see. The man himself never spoke a word after the incident. He remained steadfastly
immune to any stimulus until three weeks after his commitment to hospital, at which time
he mysteriously escaped, leaving the body of a slain orderly in his room. Can you guess
who this slain orderly turned out to be?"

"James."

"Exactly. Positive identification made postmortem through fingerprints, and confirmed
through Interpol and Scotland Yard. James had been working in the hospital under an
assumed name for a month before the incident, no doubt waiting for just such a body to
arrive!"

"And then he cheerfully murdered his own body. Steely little son of a bitch to do that."

"Well, it was a very sick body-dying of cancer to be precise. The autopsy revealed he
wouldn't have survived another six months. Lestat, for all we know, James may have
contributed to the commission of the crimes which placed the young man's body at his
disposal. If he hadn't stolen this body, he would have hit upon another in a similar state.
And once he'd dealt the death blow to his old body, it went into the grave, don't you see,
carrying James's entire criminal record with it."

"Why did he give me his real name, David? Why did he tell me he'd belonged to the
Talamasca?"

"So I could verify his story, Lestat. Everything he does is calculated. You don't
understand how clever this creature is. He wants you to know that he can do what he says
he can do! And that the former owner of that young body is quite unable to interfere."

"But, David, there are still aspects to this which are baffling. The soul of the other man.
Did it die in that old body? Why didn't it... get out!"

"Lestat, the poor being probably never knew such a thing was possible. Undoubtedly
James manipulated the switch. Look, I have a file here of testimony from other members
of the order pertaining to how this character jolted them right out of the physical and took
possession of their bodies for short periods of time.

"All the sensations you experienced-the vibration, the constriction-were reported by these
people as well. But we are speaking here of educated members of the Order of the
Talamasca. This garage mechanic had no training in such things.

"His entire experience with the preternatural had to do with drugs. And God knows what
ideas were mixed up with it. And throughout, James was dealing with a man in a severe
state of shock."

"What if it's all some sort of clever ruse," I said. "Describe James to me, the man you
knew."

"Slender, almost emaciated, very vibrant eyes, and thick white hair. Not a bad-looking
man. Beautiful voice, as I recall."

"That's our man."

"Lestat, the note you faxed to me from Paris-it leaves no doubt. It's James's writing. It's
his signature. Don't you realize that he found out about you through the order, Lestat!
That is the most disturbing aspect of this to me, that he located our files."

"So he said."

"He entered the order to gain access to such secrets. He cracked the computer system.
There's no telling what he might have discovered. Yet he couldn't resist stealing a silver
wrist-watch from one of the members, and a diamond necklace from the vaults. He
played reckless games with the others. He robbed their rooms. You can't entertain any
further communication with this person! It's out of the question."

"You sound like the Superior General, now, David."

"Lestat, we're speaking of switching here! That means putting your body, with all its
gifts, at the disposal of this man."

"I know."

"You cannot do it. And let me make a shocking suggestion. If you do enjoy taking life,
Lestat, as you've told me, why not murder this revolting individual as soon as you can?"

"David, this is wounded pride talking. And I am shocked."

"Don't play with me. There's no time for it here. You realize that this character is plenty
clever enough to be counting upon your volatile nature in this little game? He has picked
you for this switch just as he picked the poor mechanic in London. He has studied the
evidence of your impulsiveness, your curiosity, your general fearlessness. And he can
fairly well assume that you won't listen to a word of warning from me."

"Interesting."

"Speak up; I can't hear you."

"What else can you tell me?"

"What else do you require!"

"I want to understand this."

"Why?"

"David, I see your point about the poor befuddled mechanic; nevertheless, why didn't his
soul pop loose from the cancer-riddled body when James dealt it one fine blow to the
head?"

"Lestat, you said it yourself. The blow was to the head. The soul was already enmeshed
with the new brain. There was no moment of clarity or will in which it could have sprung
free. Even with a clever sorcerer like James, if you damage the tissues of the brain
severely before the soul has a chance to disengage, it cannot do it, and physical death will
follow, taking the entire soul with it out of this world. If you do decide to put an end to
this miserable monster, by all means take him by surprise, and see to it that you smash his
cranium as you might a raw egg."

I laughed. "David, I've never heard you so incensed."

"That's because I know you, and I think you mean to do this switch, and you must not!"

"Answer a few more of my questions. I want to think this through."

"No."

"Near-death experiences, David. You know, those poor souls that suffer a heart attack, go
up through a tunnel, see a light, and then come back to life. What's happening with
them?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"I don't believe you." I reported James's talk of the brain stem and the residual soul, as
best I could. "In these near-death experiences, has a little bit of the soul remained
behind?"

"Perhaps, or maybe these individuals do confront death- they actually do cross over-and
yet the soul, whole and entire, is sent back. I don't know."

"But whatever the case, you can't simply die by going out of your body, can you? If in the
Gobi Desert, I had gone up and out of my body, I couldn't have found the gateway, could
I? It wouldn't have been there. It opens only for the whole soul."

"Yes. As far as I know, yes." He paused. Then: "Why do you ask me this? Do you still
dream of dying? I don't believe it. You're too desperately fond of being alive."

"I've been dead for two centuries, David. What about ghosts? The earthbound spirits?"

"They've failed to find that gateway, even though it opened. Or they refused to go
through. Look, we can talk about all this some night in the future, roaming the alleyways
of Rio, or wherever you like. The important thing is, you must swear to me not to deal
with this sorcerer any longer, if you won't go so far as to follow my suggestion that you
put an end to him as soon as you can."

"Why are you so afraid of him!"

"Lestat, you must understand how destructive and vicious this individual can be. You
can't give your body over to him! And that is just what you mean to do. Look, if you
meant to possess a mortal body for a while, I'd be dead against it, for that is diabolical
and unnatural enough! But to give your body to this madman! Ye gods, will you please
come here to London? Let me talk you out of this. Don't you owe me as much!"

"David, you investigated him before he became a member of the order, did you not?
What sort of man is he... I mean how did he become this wizard of sorts?"

"He deceived us with elaborate fabrications and counterfeit records on a scale you
wouldn't believe. He loves that sort of connivance. And he's something of a computer
genius. Our real investigation took place after he'd gone."

"So? Where did it all start?"

"Family was rich, merchant class. Lost its money before the war. Mother was a famous
medium, apparently quite legitimate and dedicated, and charged a pittance for her
services. Everybody in London knew her. I remember hearing of her, long before I was
ever interested in that sort of thing. The Talamasca pronounced her genuine on more than
one occasion, but she refused to be studied. She was a fragile creature, and very much
loved her only son."

"Raglan," I said.

"Yes, She died of cancer. Terrible pain. Her only daughter became a seamstress, still
works for a bridal shop in London. Simply exquisite work. She's deeply grieved over the
death of her troublesome brother, but relieved he's gone. I talked to her this morning. She
said her brother had been destroyed when he was quite young, by their mother's death."

"Understandable," I said.

"Father worked almost all his life for Cunard shipping, spending his last years as a cabin
steward in first class on the Queen Elizabeth 2. Very proud of his record. Great scandal
and disgrace not so many years ago, when James was also hired, thanks to the influence
of his father, and promptly robbed one of the passengers of four hundred pounds in cash.
Father disowned him, was reinstated by Cunard before he died. Never spoke to his son
again."

"Ah, the photograph on the ship," I said.

"What?"

"And when you expelled him, he had wanted to sail on that very vessel back to America .
. . first class, of course."

"He told you that? It's possible. I didn't really handle the particulars myself."

"Not important, go on. How did he get into the occult?"

"He was highly educated, spent years at Oxford, though at times he had to live like a
pauper. Started dabbling in medium-ship even before his mother died. Didn't come into
his own until the fifties, in Paris, where he soon acquired an enormous following, then
started bilking his clients in the most crude and obvious ways imaginable, and went to
jail.

"Same thing happened later in Oslo, more or less. After a series of odd jobs, including
very menial work, he started some sort of a spiritualist church, swindled a widow out of
her life savings, and was deported. Then Vienna, where he worked as a waiter in a first-
class hotel until he became a psychic counselor to the rich within a matter of weeks. Soon
a hasty departure. He barely escaped arrest. In Milan, he bilked a member of the old
aristocracy out of thousands before he was discovered, and had to leave the city in the
middle of the night. His next stop was Berlin, where he was arrested but talked himself
out of custody, and then back to London, where he went to jail again."

"Ups and downs," I said, remembering his words.

"That's always the pattern. He rises from the lowest employment to living in extravagant
luxury, running up ludicrous accounts for fine clothing, motorcars, jet excursions here

and there, and then it all collapses in the face of his petty crimes, treachery, and betrayal.
He can't break the cycle. It always brings him down."

"So it seems."

"Lestat, there is something positively stupid about this creature. He speaks eight
languages, can invade any computer network, and possess other people's bodies long
enough to loot their wall safes-he is obsessed with wall safes, by the way, hi an almost
erotic fashion!-and yet he plays silly tricks on people and ends up with handcuffs on his
wrists! The objects he took from our vaults were nearly impossible for him to sell. He
ended up dumping them on the black market for a pittance. He's really something of an
arch fool."

I laughed under my breath. "The thefts are symbolic, David. This is a creature of
compulsion and obsession. It's a game. That's why he cannot hang on to what he steals.
It's the process that counts with him, more than anything else."

"But, Lestat, it's an endlessly destructive game."

"I understand, David. Thank you for this information. I'll call you soon."

"Wait just a minute, you can't ring off, I won't allow it, don't you realize-"

"Of course I do, David."

148

THE TALE OF THE BODY THIEF

The Tale of the Body Thief

149

"Lestat, there is a saying in the world of the occult. Like attracts like. Do you know what
it means?"

"What would I know about the occult, David? That's your territory, not mine."

"This is no time for sarcasm."

"I'm sorry. What does it mean?"

"When a sorcerer uses his powers in a petty and selfish fashion, the magic always
rebounds upon him."

"Now you're talking superstition."

"I am talking a principle which is as old as magic itself."

"He isn't a magician, David, he's merely a creature with certain measurable and definable
psychic powers. He can possess other people. In one case of which we know, he effected
an actual switch."

"It's the same thing! Use those powers to try to harm others and the harm comes back to
oneself."

"David, I am the extant proof that such a concept is false. Next you will explain the
concept of karma to me and I will slowly drop off to sleep."

"James is the quintessential evil sorcerer! He's already defeated death once at the expense
of another human being; he must be stopped."

"Why didn't you try to stop me, David, when you had the opportunity? I was at your
mercy at Talbot Manor. You could have found some way."

"Don't push me away with your accusations!"

"I love you, David. I will contact you soon." I was about to put down the phone, when I
thought of something. "David," I said. "There's something else I'd like to know."

"Yes, what?" Such relief that I hadn't hung up.

"You have these relics of ours-old possessions in your vaults."

"Yes." Discomfort. This was an embarrassment to him, it seemed.

"A locket," I said, "a locket with a picture of Claudia, you have seen such a thing?"

"I believe I have," he said. "I verified the inventory of all of those items after you first
came to me. I believe there was a locket. I'm almost certain, in fact. I should have told
you this, shouldn't I, before now?"

"No. Doesn't matter. Was it a locket on a chain, such as women wear?"

"Yes. Do you want me to look for this locket? If I find it, I shall give it to you, of course."

"No, don't look for it now. Perhaps sometime in the future. Good-bye, David. I'll come to
you soon."

I hung up, and removed the small phone plug from the wall. So there had been a locket, a
woman's locket. But for whom had such a thing been made? And why did I see it in my
dreams? Claudia would not have carried her own image with her in a locket. And surely I

would remember it if she had. As I tried to envision it, or remember it, I was filled with a
peculiar combination of sadness and dread. It seemed I was very near a dark place, a
place full of actual death. And as so often happens with my memories, I heard laughter.
Only it wasn't Claudia's laughter this time. It was mine. I had a sense of preternatural
youth and endless possibility. In other words I was remembering the young vampire I'd
been in the old days of the eighteenth century before time had dealt its blows.

Well, what did I care about this damned locket? Maybe I'd picked up the image from
James's brain as he pursued me. It had been for him merely a tool to ensnare me. And the
fact was, I'd never even seen such a locket. He would have done better to pick some other
trinket that had once belonged to me.

No, that last explanation seemed too simple. The image was too vivid. And I'd seen it in
my dreams before James had made his way into my adventures. I grew angry suddenly. I
had other things to consider just now, did I not? Get thee behind me, Claudia. Take your
locket, please, ma cherie, and go.

For a very long time, I sat still in the shadows, conscious that the clock was ticking on the
mantel, and listening to the occasional noise of traffic from the street.

I tried to consider the points David had made to me. I tried. But all I was thinking was ...
so James can do it, really do it. He is the white-haired man in the photograph, and he did
switch with the mechanic in the hospital in London. It can be done!

Now and then I saw the locket in my mind's eye-1 saw the miniature of Claudia painted
so artfully in oils. But no emotion came to me, no sorrow, no anger, no grief.

It was James upon whom my entire heart was fastened. James can do it! James isn't lying.
I can live and breathe in that body! And when the sun rises over Georgetown on that
morning, I shall see it with those eyes.

It was an hour after midnight when I reached Georgetown. A heavy snow had been
falling all evening long, and the streets were filled with deep white drifts of it, clean and
beautiful; and it was banked against the doors of the houses, and etching in white the
fancy black iron railings and the deep window ledges here and there.

The town itself was immaculate and very charming-made up of graceful Federal-style
buildings, mostly of wood, which had the clean lines of the eighteenth century, with its
penchant for order and balance, though many had been built in the early decades of the
nineteenth. I roamed for a long time along deserted M Street, with its many commercial
establishments, and then through the silent campus of the nearby university, and then
through the cheerfully lighted hillside streets.

The town house of Raglan James was a particularly fine structure, made of red brick and
built right on the street. It had a pretty center doorway and a hefty brass knocker, and two

cheerful flickering gas lamps. Old-fashioned solid shutters graced the windows, and there
was a lovely fanlight over the door.

The windows were clean, in spite of the snow on the sills, and I could see into the bright
and orderly rooms. There was a smart look to the interior-trim white leather furnishings
of extreme modern severity and obvious expense. Numerous paintings on the walls-
Picasso, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol-and intermingled with these
multimillion dollar canvases, several large expensively mounted photographs of modern
ships. Indeed there were several replicas of large ocean liners in glass cases in the lower
hall. The floors gleamed with plastic lacquer. Small dark Oriental rugs of geometric
design were everywhere, and the many ornaments gracing glass tables and inlaid teak
cabinets were almost exclusively Chinese.

Meticulous, fashionable, costly, and highly individual-that was the personality of the
place. It looked to me the way the dwellings of mortals always did-like a series of
pristine stage sets. Quite impossible to believe I could be mortal, and belong in such a
house, even for an hour or more.

Indeed, the small rooms were so polished it seemed impossible that anyone actually
inhabited them at all. The kitchen was full of gleaming copper pots, and black glass-
doored appliances, cabinets without visible handles to open them, and bright red ceramic
plates.

In spite of the hour, James himself was nowhere to be found.

I entered the house.

A second storey held the bedroom, with a low modern bed, no more than a wooden frame
with a mattress inside it, and covered with a quilt of bright geometric pattern, and
numerous white pillows-as austere and elegant as all the rest. The closet was crammed
with expensive garments, and so were the drawers of the Chinese bureau and another
small hand-carved chest by the bed.

Other rooms lay empty, but nowhere was there evidence of neglect. I saw no computers
here either. No doubt he kept these someplace else.

In one of these rooms, I concealed a great deal of money for my later use, hiding it inside
the chimney of the unused fireplace.

I also concealed some money in an unused bathroom, behind a mirror on the wall.

These were simple precautions. I really couldn't conceive of what it would be like to be
human. I might feel quite helpless. Just didn't know.

After I made these little arrangements, I went up on the roof. I could see James at the
base of the hill, just turning the comer from M Street, a load of parcels in his arms. He'd

been up to thievery, no doubt, for there was no place to shop in these slow hours before
dawn. I lost sight of him as he started his ascent.

But another strange visitor appeared, without making the slightest sound that a mortal
could hear. It was a great dog, seeming to materialize out of nowhere, which made its
way back the alleyway and to the rear yard.

I'd caught its scent as soon as it approached, but I did not see the animal until I came over
the roof to the back of the house. I'd expected to hear from it before this time, for surely it
would pick up my scent, know instinctively that I wasn't human, and then begin to sound
its natural alarm of growls and barks.

Dogs had done that enough to me over the centuries, though they don't always.
Sometimes I can entrance them and command them. But I feared the instinctive rejection
and it always sent a pain through my heart.

This dog had not barked or given any clue that he knew I was there. He was staring
intently at the rear door of the house and the butter-yellow squares of light falling from
the window of the door onto the deep snow.

I had a good chance to study him in undisturbed silence, and he was, very simply, one of
the most handsome dogs I had ever beheld.

He was covered in deep, plush fur, beautifully golden and gray in places, and overlaid
with a faint saddle of longer black hairs. His overall shape was that of a wolf, but he was
far too big to be a wolf, and there was nothing furtive and sly about him, as is the case
with wolves. On the contrary, he was wholly majestic in the way that he sat staring
motionless at the door.

On closer inspection, I saw that he most truly resembled a giant German shepherd, with
the characteristic black muzzle and alert face.

Indeed, when I drew close to the edge of the roof, and he at last looked up at me, I found
myself vaguely thrilled by the fierce intelligence gleaming in his dark almond-shaped
eyes.

Still he gave no bark, no growl. There seemed a near-human comprehension in him. But
how could that explain his silence? I had done nothing to enthrall him, to lure or befuddle
his dog mind. No. No instinctive aversion at all.

I dropped down into the snow in front of him, and he merely continued to look at me,
with those uncanny and expressive eyes. Indeed, so large was he and so calm and sure of
himself, that I laughed to myself with delight as I looked at him. I couldn't resist reaching
out to touch the soft fur between his ears.

He cocked his head to one side as he continued to look at me, and I found this very
endearing, and then to my further amazement he lifted his immense paw and stroked my
coat. His bones were so big and heavy he put me in mind of my mastiffs of long ago. He
had their slow heavy grace as he moved. I reached out to embrace him, loving his
strength and his heaviness, and he reared back on his hind legs and threw his huge paws
up on my shoulders, and ran his great ham-pink tongue over my face.

This produced in me a wonderful happiness, really near to weeping, and then some giddy
laughter. I nuzzled him, and held him, and stroked him, loving his clean furry smell, and
kissing him all over his black muzzle, and then looking him in the eye.

Ah, this is what Little Red Riding Hood saw, I thought, when she beheld the wolf in her
grandmother's nightcap and gown. It was too funny, really, the extraordinary and keen
expression in his dark face.

"Why don't you know me for what I am?" I asked. And then as he sank back down to a
majestic sitting position, and looked up at me almost obediently, it struck me that this
was an omen, this dog.

No, "omen" is not the proper word. This did not come from anyone, this gift. It was
merely something which put me more in mind of what I meant to do and why I meant to
do it, and how little I really cared about the risks involved.

I stood beside the dog, petting him and stroking him and moments passed. It was a small
garden, and the snow was falling again, deepening around us, and the cold pain in my
skin was growing deeper too. The trees were bare and black in the silent storm. Whatever
flowers or grass there might have been was of course not visible; but a few garden statues
of darkened concrete and a sharp, thick shrubbery-now nothing but bare twigs and snow-
marked a clear rectangular pattern to the whole.

I must have been there with the dog perhaps three minutes before my hand discovered the
round silver disk dangling from his chain-link collar, and finally I gathered this up and
held it to the light.

Mojo. Ah, I knew this word. Mojo. It had to do with voodoo, gris-gris, charms. Mojo was
a good charm, a protective charm. I approved of it as a name for a dog; it was splendid, in
fact, and when I called him Mojo he became faintly excited and once again stroked me
slowly with his big eager paw.

"Mojo, is it?" I said again. "That's very beautiful." I kissed him and felt the leathery black
tip of his nose. There was something else written on the disk, however. It was the address
of this house.

Very suddenly the dog stiffened; it moved slowly and gracefully out of the sitting
position and into an alert stance. James was coming. I heard his crunching steps in the

snow. I heard the sound of his key in the lock of his front door. I sensed him realize
suddenly that I was very near.

The dog gave a deep fierce growl and moved slowly closer to the rear door of the house.
There came the sound of the boards inside creaking under James's heavy feet.

The dog gave a deep angry bark. James opened the door, fixed his fierce crazy eyes on
me, smiled, and then hurled something heavy at the animal which it easily dodged.

"Glad to see you! But you're early," he said.

I didn't answer him. The dog was growling at him in the same menacing fashion and he
gave his attention to the animal again, with great annoyance.

"Get rid of it!" he .said, purely furious. "Kill it!"

"You're talking to me?" I asked coldly. I laid my hand on the animal's head again,
stroking it, and whispering to it to be still. It drew closer to me, rubbing its heavy flank
against me and then seated itself beside me.

James was tense and shivering as he watched all this. Suddenly he pushed up his collar
against the wind, and folded his arms. The snow was blowing all over him, like white
powder, clinging to his brown eyebrows and his hair.

"It belongs to this house, doesn't it?" I said coldly. "This house which you stole."

He regarded me with obvious hatred, and then flashed one of those awful evil smiles. I
truly wished he'd lapse back into being the English gentleman. It was so much easier for
me when he did. It crossed my mind that it was absolutely base to have to deal with him.
I wondered if Saul had found the Witch of Endor so distasteful. But the body, ah, the
body, how splendid it was.

Even in his resentment, with his eyes fixed upon the dog, he could not wholly disfigure
the beauty of the body.

"Well, it seems you've stolen the dog too," I said.

"I'll get rid of it," he whispered, looking at it again with fierce contempt. "And you,
where do things stand with you? I won't give you forever to make up your mind. You've
given me no certain answer. I want an answer now."

"Go to your bank tomorrow morning," I said. "I'll see you after dark. Ah, but there is one
more condition."

"What is it!" he asked between his clenched teeth.

"Feed the animal. Give it some meat."

Then I made my exit so swiftly he couldn't see it, and when I glanced back, I could see
Mojo gazing up at me, through the snowy darkness, and I smiled to think that the dog had
seen my movement, fast as it was. The last sound I heard was James cursing to himself
ungracefully as he slammed the back door.

An hour later, I lay in the dark waiting for the sun above, and thinking again of my youth
in France, of the dogs lying beside me, of riding out on that last hunt with those two huge
mastiffs, picking their way slowly through the deep snow.

And the face of the vampire peering at me from the darkness in Paris, calling me
"Wolfkiller" with such reverence, such crazed reverence, before he sank his fangs into
my neck.

Mojo, an omen.

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling
to it, and tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil,
and we will all go home in the end.

Tomorrow night, I thought, if that bastard has been lying, I shall split open his chest and
tear out his beating heart, and feed it to that big beautiful dog.

Whatever happens, I shall keep this dog.

And I did.

And before this story moves any further, let me say something about this dog. He isn't
going to do anything in this book.

He won't save a drowning baby, or rush into a burning building to rouse the inhabitants
from near-fatal sleep. He isn't possessed by an evil spirit; he isn't a vampire dog. He's in
this narrative simply because I found him in the snow behind that town house in
Georgetown, and I loved him, and from that first moment, he seemed somehow to love
me. It was all too true to the blind and merciless laws I believe in-the laws of nature, as
men say; or the laws of the Savage Garden, as I call them myself. Mojo loved my
strength; I loved his beauty. And nothing else ever really mattered at all.




TEN

I WANT the details," I said, "of how you pushed him out of his body, and how you
managed to force him into yours."

Wednesday at last. Not a half hour had passed since the sun had set. I had startled him
when I appeared on the back steps.

We were sitting now in the immaculate white kitchen, a room curiously devoid of
mystery for such an esoteric meeting. A single bulb in a handsome copper fixture flooded
the table between us with a soft rosy illumination, which lent a deceiving coziness to the
scene.

The snowfall continued, and beneath the house the furnace gave a low continuous roar.
I'd brought the dog in with me, much to the annoyance of the lord of the house, and after
some reassurance, the beast lay quietly now like an Egyptian sphinx, looking up at us,
front legs stretched straight before him on the waxed floor. Now and then James glanced
at him uneasily, and with reason. The dog looked as if he had the devil inside him and the
devil knew the whole tale.

James was far more relaxed now than he had been in New Orleans. He was entirely the
English gentleman, which set off the tall, youthful body to powerful advantage. He wore
a gray sweater, stretched fetchingly tight over his big chest, and a pair of dark pants.

There were silver rings on his fingers. And a cheap watch on his wrist. I hadn't
remembered these items. He was studying me with a little twinkle in his eye, much easier
to endure than those horrid glaring smiles. I couldn't take my eyes off him, off this body
which might soon become mine.

I could smell the blood in the body, of course, and this ignited some low smoldering
passion in me. The more I looked at him, the more I wondered what it would be like to
drink his blood and be done with it here and now. Would he try to escape the body and
leave me holding a mere breathing shell?

I looked at his eyes, and thought, sorcerer, and a rare and unfamiliar excitement
completely obliterated the common hunger. I'm not sure I believed he could do it,
however. I thought that the evening might end in a tasty feast and no more.

I clarified my question for him. "How did you find this body? How did you get the soul
to go into yours?"

"I'd been searching for just such a specimen-a man psychologically shocked out of all
will and capacity for reason, yet sound of limb and brain. Telepathy is quite an aid in
such matters, for only a telepath could have reached the remnants of intelligence still
buried within him. I had to convince him on the deepest unconscious level, so to speak,
that I had come to be of help, that I knew he was a good person, that I was on his side.
And once I'd reached that rudimentary core, it was fairly easy to plunder his memories
and manipulate him into obedience." He gave a little shrug. "The poor chap. His
responses were entirely superstitious. I suspect he thought I was his guardian angel at the
end."

"And you lured him out of his body?"

"Yes, by a series of bizarre and rather ornate suggestions, that's exactly what I did. Again
telepathy is a powerful ally. One has to be psychic, really, to manipulate others in such a
way. The first time he rose perhaps a foot or two, then slam, back into the flesh he went.
More of a reflex than a decision. But I was patient, oh, very patient. And when I finally
lured him out for the space of several seconds, that was sufficient for me to pop inside of
him, and at once focus my intense energy upon shoving him down into what was left of
the old me."

"How nicely you put it."

"Well, we are body and soul, you know," he said with a placid smile. "But why go all
through this now? You know how to rise out of your body. This isn't going to be difficult
for you."

"I might surprise you. What happened to him after he was hi your body? Did he realize
what had taken place?"

"Not at all. You must understand the man was deeply psychologically crippled. And, of
course, he was an ignorant fool."

"And you didn't give him even a moment's time, did you? You killed him."

"Monsieur de Lioncourt, what I did was a mercy to him!

How dreadful to have left him in that body, confused as he was! He wasn't going to
recover, you realize, no matter what body he was inhabiting. He'd murdered his entire
family. Even the baby in the crib."

"Were you part of that?"

"What a low opinion you have of me! Not at all. I was watching the hospitals for such a
specimen. I knew one would come along. But why these last questions? Didn't David
Talbot tell you there are numerous documented cases of switching in the Talamasca
files."

David had not told me this. But then I could scarcely blame him.

"Did they all involve murder?" I asked.

"No. Some involved bargains such as you and I have struck."

"I wonder. We are oddly paired, you and I."

"Yes, but well paired, you must admit. This is a very nice body I have for you," he said of
himself, placing an open hand on his broad chest. "Not as beautiful as yours, of course.
But very nice! And exactly what you ought to require. As for your body, what more can I
say? I hope you didn't listen to David Talbot about me. He's made so many tragic
mistakes."

"What do you mean?"

"He's a slave to that wretched organization," he said sincerely. "They completely control
him. If only I could have spoken to him at the end, he would have seen the significance
of what I had to offer, what I could teach. Did he tell you of his escapades in old Rio?
Yes, an exceptional person, a person I should like to have known. But I can tell you, he's
no one to cross."

"What's to stop you from killing me as soon as we switch bodies? That's just what you
did to this creature you lured into your old body, with one swift blow to the head."

"Ah, so you have talked to Talbot," he said, refusing to be rattled. "Or did you merely do
the research on your own? Twenty million dollars will stop me from killing you. I need
the body to go to the bank, remember? Absolutely marvelous of you to double the sum.
But I would have kept the bargain for ten. Ah, you've liberated me, Monsieur de
Lioncourt. As of this Friday, at the very hour when Christ was nailed to the cross, I shall
never have to steal again."

He took a sip of his warm tea. Whatever his facade, he was becoming increasingly
anxious. And something similar and more enervating was building in me. What if this
does work?

"Oh, but it will work," he said in that grave heartfelt manner. "And there are other
excellent reasons why I wouldn't attempt to harm you. Let's talk them through."

"By all means."

"Well, you could get out of the mortal body if I attacked it. I've already explained you
must cooperate."

"What if you were too fast?"

"It's academic. I wouldn't try to harm you. Your friends would know if I did. As long as
you, Lestat, are here, inside a healthy human body, your companions wouldn't think of
destroying your preternatural body, even if I'm at the controls. They wouldn't do that to
you, now, would they? But if I killed you-you know, smashed your face or whatever
before you could disentangle yourself... and God knows, this is a possibility, I myself am
keenly aware of it, I assure you!-your companions would find me sooner or later for an
impostor, and do away with me very quickly, indeed. Why, they would probably feel
your death when it happened. Don't you think?"

"I don't know. But they would discover everything eventually."

"Of course!"

"It's imperative that you stay away from them while you're in my body, that you don't go
near New Orleans, that you keep clear of any and all blood drinkers, even the very weak.
Your skill at cloaking yourself, you must use it, you realize . . ."

"Yes, certainly. I've considered the entire enterprise, please be assured. If I were to burn
up your beautiful Louis de Pointe du Lac, the others would know immediately, wouldn't
they? And I might be the next torch burning brightly in the dead of night myself."

I didn't answer. I felt anger moving through me as if it were a cold liquid, driving out all
anticipation and courage. But I wanted this! I wanted it, and it was near at hand!

"Don't go troubling yourself about such nonsense," he pleaded. His manner was so like
David Talbot's. Perhaps it was deliberate. Maybe David was the model. But I thought it
more a matter of similar breeding, and some instinct for persuasiveness which even
David did not possess. "I'm not really a murderer, you know," he said with sudden
intensity. "It's acquisition that means everything. I want comfort, beauty around me,
every conceivable luxury, the power to go and live where I please."

"You want any instructions?"

"As to what?"

"What to do when you're inside my body."

"You've already given me my instruction, dear boy. I have read your books." He flashed
me a broad smile, dipping his head slightly and looking up at me as if he were trying to
lure me into his bed. "I've read all the documents in the Talamasca archives as well."

"What sort of documents?"

"Oh, detailed descriptions of vampire anatomy-your obvious limits, that sort of thing.
You ought to read them for yourself. Perhaps you'd laugh. The earliest chapters were
penned in the Dark Ages and are filled with fanciful nonsense that would have made even
Aristotle weep. But the more recent files are quite scientific and precise."

I didn't like this line of discussion. I didn't like anything that was happening. I was
tempted to finish it now. And then quite suddenly, I knew I was going to go through with
this. I knew.

A curious calm descended on me. Yes, we were going to do this in a matter of minutes.
And it was going to work. I felt the color drain from my face-an imperceptible cooling of
the skin, which was still hurting from its terrible ordeal in the sun.

I doubt he noted this change, or any hardening of my expression, for he went right on
talking as before.

"The observations written in the 1970s after the publication of Interview with the
Vampire are most interesting. And then the very recent chapters, inspired by your
fractured and fanciful history of the species-my word! No, I know all about your body. I
know more about it perhaps than you do. Do you know what the Talamasca really wants?
A sample of your tissue, a specimen of your vampiric cells! You'd be wise to see that
they never acquire such a specimen. You've been too free with Talbot, really. Perhaps he
pared your fingernails or cut off a lock of your hair while you slept beneath his roof."

Lock of hair. Wasn't there a lock of blond hair in that locket? It had to be vampire hair!
Claudia's hair. I shuddered, drawing deeper into myself and shutting him away. Centuries
ago there had been a dreadful night when Gabrielle, my mortal mother and newborn
fledgling, had cut off her vampire hair. Through the long hours of the day, as she lay in
the coffin, it had all grown back. I did not want to remember her screams when she
discovered it-those magnificent tresses once again luxuriant and long over her shoulders.
I did not want to think of her and what she might say to me now about what I meant to
do. It had been years since I had laid eyes upon her. It might be centuries before I saw her
again.

I looked again at James, as he sat there radiant with expectation, straining to appear
patient, face glowing hi the warm light.

"Forget the Talamasca," I said under my breath. "Why do you have such a hard time with
this body? You're clumsy. You're only comfortable when you're sitting hi a chair and you
can leave matters entirely to your voice and your face."

"Very perceptive," he said, with unshakable decorum.

"I don't think so. It's rather obvious."

"It's simply too big a body," he said calmly. "It's too muscular, too ... shall we say,
athletic? But it's perfect for you."

He paused, looked at the teacup thoughtfully and then up at me again. The eyes seemed
so wide, so innocent.

"Lestat, come now," he said. "Why are we wasting time with this conversation? I don't
intend to dance with the Royal Ballet once I'm inside you. I simply mean to enjoy the
whole experience, to experiment, to see the world through your eyes." He glanced at his
watch. "Well, I'd offer you a little drink to screw up your courage, but that would be self-

defeating in the long run, wouldn't it? Oh, and by the way, the passport. Were you able to
obtain it? You remember I asked you to provide me with a passport. I do hope you
remembered, and of course I have a passport for you. I fear you won't be going anywhere,
on account of this blizzard-"

I laid my passport on the table before him. He reached up under his sweater, and
withdrew his own from his shirt pocket and put it hi my hand.

I examined it. It was American and a fake. Even the issue date of two years ago was fake.
Raglan James. Age twenty-six. Correct picture. Good picture. This Georgetown address.

He was studying the American passport-also a fake- which I had given him.

"Ah, your tanned skin! You had this prepared specially ... Must have been last night."

I didn't bother to answer.

"How very clever of you," he said, "and what a good picture." He studied it. "Clarence
Oddbody. Wherever did you come up with a name like that?"

"A little private joke. What does it matter? You'll have it only tonight and tomorrow
night." I shrugged.

"True. Very true."

"I'll expect you back here early Friday morning, between the hours of three and four."

"Excellent." He started to put the passport into his pocket and then caught himself with a
sharp laugh. Then his eyes fixed on me and a look of pure delight passed over him. "Are
you ready?"

"Not quite." I took a wallet of money out of my pocket, opened it, and slipped out about
half of the bills inside and gave them to him.

"Ah, yes, the petty cash, how considerate of you to remember," he said. "I'm forgetting
all the important details in my excitement. Inexcusable and you are such a gentleman."

He gathered up the bills and once again caught himself before he could stuff them in his
pockets. He put them back on the table and smiled.

I laid my hand on the wallet. "The rest is for me, once we make the switch. I trust you're
comfortable with the amount I've given you? The little thief in you won't be tempted to
scoop up what's left?"

"I'll do my best to behave myself," he said good-naturedly. "Now, do you want me to
change clothes? I stole these garments especially for you."

"They're fine."

"Should I empty my bladder, perhaps? Or would you like the privilege?"

"I would."

He nodded. "I'm hungry. I thought you'd like it that way. There's an excellent restaurant
down the street. Paolo's. Good spaghetti carbonara. Even in the snow you can walk it."

"Marvelous. I'm not hungry. I thought that would be easier for you. You spoke of a car.
Where is the car?"

"Oh, yes, the car. Outside, to the left of the front steps. Red Porsche roadster, thought
you'd like that. Here are the keys. But be careful. . ."

"Of what?"

"Well, the snow obviously, you might not be able to move it at all."

"Thanks for the warning."

"Don't want you to be hurt. It could cost me twenty million if you're not here Friday as
planned. Nevertheless the driver's license with the correct picture is in the desk in the
living room. What's the matter?"

"Clothes for you," I said. "I forgot to provide them, other than what I have on."

"Oh, I thought of that a long time ago, when I was snooping about in your hotel room in
New York. I have my wardrobe, you needn't worry, and I like that black velvet suit. You
do dress beautifully. Always did, didn't you? But then you come from a time of such
lavish costumes. This age must seem awfully dreary to you. Are those antique buttons?
Ah, well, I'll have time to examine them."

"Where will you be going?"

"Where I want to go, of course. Are you losing your nerve?"

"No."

"Know how to drive the car?"

"Yes. If I didn't, I'd figure it out."

"Think so? Think you'll have your preternatural intelligence when you're in this body? I
wonder. I'm not sure you will. The little synapses in the mortal brain might not fire off so
fast."

"I don't know anything about synapses," I said.

"All right. Let's begin, then," he said.

"Yes, now, I think." My heart turned to a small, tight knot inside me, but his manner
became completely authoritative and commanding at once.

"Listen closely," he said. "I want you to rise out of your body, but not till I'm finished
speaking. You'll move up. You've done it before. When you are close to the ceiling and
looking directly down on both of us at this table, you will make a concentrated effort to
move into this body. You must not think of anything else. You must not let fear interrupt
your concentration. You must not wonder as to how this is being done. You want to
descend into this body, you want to connect completely and instantaneously with every
fiber and cell. Picture it as you do it! Imagine yourself already inside."

"Yes, I follow you."

"As I've told you, there is something invisible in it, something left from the original
occupant, and that something is hungry to be complete again-with your soul."

I nodded. He went on.

"You may be prey to a variety of unpleasant sensations. This body will feel very dense to
you, and constricting as you slide in. Don't waver. Imagine your spirit invading the
fingers of each hand, the toes of each foot. Look through the eyes. That is most
important. Because the eyes are part of the brain. When you look through them, you are
anchoring within the brain. Now you won't shake loose, you can be sure of it. Once
you're in, it will take quite a bit of effort to get out."

"Will I see you in spirit form while we're changing?"

"No, you won't. You could, but that would take a great deal of concentration away from
your immediate goal. You don't want to see anything but this body; you want to get in it
and start moving it and breathing through it, and seeing through it, as I've said."

"Yes."

"Now, one thing which will frighten you is the sight of your own body, lifeless, or
inhabited finally by me. Don't allow this to get the better of you. Here a certain trust and
humility must play a part. Believe me when I say that I shall accomplish the possession
without injury to your body, and then I shall leave immediately, so as to relieve you of
that constant reminder of what we've done. You won't see me again until Friday morning,

as we've agreed. I won't speak to you, because the sound of my voice coming out of your
mouth would upset you, distract you. You understand?"

"How will your voice sound? How will my voice sound?"

Once more he looked at his watch, then back at me. "There'll be differences," he said.
"The size of the voice box is different. This man, for example, gave a slight depth to my
voice which I don't ordinarily possess. But you'll keep your rhythm, your accent, your
patterns of speech, of course. Only the timbre will be different. Yes, that's the word."

I took a long careful look at him.

"Is it important that I believe this can be done?"

"No," he said with a broad smile. "This isn't a seance. You needn't stoke the fire for the
medium with your faith. You'll see in an instant. Now what else is there to say?" He
tensed, coming forward hi the chair.

The dog gave a sudden deep growl.

I quieted him with my outstretched hand.

"Go on!" said James sharply, voice dropping to a whisper. "Go out of your body now!"

I sat back, gesturing again for the dog to be still. Then I willed myself to rise, and felt a
sudden total vibration through my entire frame. Then came the marvelous realization that
I was indeed rising, a spirit form, weightless and free, my manly shape still visible to me
with its arms and legs, stretching out just below the white ceiling, so that I did indeed
look down and see the astounding spectacle of my own body seated still in the chair. Oh,
what a glorious feeling, as if I could go anywhere in an instant! As if I had no need of the
body, and my link to it had been a deception from the moment of birth.

The physical body of James slumped forward ever so slightly, and his fingers began to
move outward on the white tabletop. I mustn't become distracted. The switch was the
thing!

"Down, down into that body!" I said aloud, but there was no voice audible, and then
without words I forced myself to plummet and merge with that new flesh, that physical
form.

A loud rushing filled my ears, and then a sense of constriction, as if my entire self were
being forced through a narrow, slippery tube. Excruciating! I wanted freedom. But I
could feel myself filling the empty arms and legs, the flesh heavy and tingling as it closed
over me, as a mask of similar sensations closed over my face.

I struggled to open my eyes before I even realized what I was doing, that I was flexing
the lids of this mortal body, that indeed, I was blinking, staring through mortal eyes into
the dimly lighted room, staring at my old body exactly opposite, at my old blue eyes
peering back at me through the violet-colored glasses, staring at my old tanned skin.

I felt I would suffocate-I had to escape this!-but it hit me, I was in! I was hi the body!
The switch had been done. Irresistibly I took a deep hoarse heavy breath, moving this
monstrous encasement of flesh as I did so, and then I slapped my hand to my chest,
appalled at its thickness, and heard the heavy wet sloshing of the blood through my heart.

"Dear God, I'm in it," I cried out, struggling to clear away the darkness that surrounded
me, the shadowy veil which stopped me from seeing more clearly the brilliant form
opposite, which now sprang to life.

My old body jerked upward, arms thrown up as if in horror, one hand crashing into the
overhead light and exploding the bulb, as the chair below clattered to the floor. The dog
leapt to his feet and gave out a loud, menacing riff of deep-throated barks.

"No, Mojo, down, boy," I heard myself crying from this thick tight mortal throat, still
straining to see in the darkness, and unable to do it, and realizing that it was my hand
grabbing for the dog's collar and jerking him backwards before he could attack the old
vampire body, which stared down at the dog in utter amazement, blue eyes glittering
fiercely, and very wide and blank.

"Ah, yes, kill it!" came the voice of James, roaring at horrific volume out of my old
preternatural mouth.

My hands shot to my ears to protect me from the sound. The dog rushed forward again,
and once again, I grabbed him by the collar, ringers curling painfully around the chain
links, appalled at his strength and how little there seemed to be in my mortal arms. Ye
gods, I had to make this body work! This was only a dog, and I was a strong mortal man!

"Stop, Mojo!" I pleaded with him as he dragged me right out of the chak and painfully
onto my knees. "And you, get out of here!" I bellowed. The pain in my knees was
dreadful. The voice was puny and opaque. "Get out!" I yelled again.

The creature that had been me danced past me, arms flailing still, and crashed into the
back door, shattering the window-panes, and letting in a cold gust of wind. The dog was
maddened and now almost impossible for me to control.

"Get out!" I screamed again, and watched in consternation as the creature backed straight
through the door now, shattering wood and all remaining glass, and rose off the porch
boards into the snow-filled night.

I saw him for one last instant, suspended in midair above the back steps, a hideous
apparition, the snow swirling about him, his limbs moving now in concert as though he

were a swimmer in an invisible sea. His blue eyes were still wide and senseless, as if he
couldn't work the preternatural flesh around them into an expression, and glittering like
two incandescent gems. His mouth-my old mouth-was spread wide in a meaningless grin.

Then he was gone.

The breath went out of me. The room was freezing as the wind gusted into every corner,
knocking about the copper pots on their fancy rack and pushing against the dining room
door. And suddenly the dog became quiet.

I realized I was sitting on the floor beside him, and that my right arm was locked around
his neck, and my left around his furry chest. Each breath I took hurt me, I was squinting
against the snow, which flew right into my eyes, and I was trapped in this strange body
padded with lead weights and mattress ticking, and the cold air was stinging my face and
my hands.

"Good God, Mojo," I whispered in his soft pink ear. "Good God, it's happened. I'm a
mortal man."




ELEVEN

ALL right," I said stupidly, again amazed at the weak, contained sound of it, low as the
voice was. "It's begun, now get ahold of yourself." And that idea made me laugh.

The cold wind was the worst part. My teeth were chattering. The stinging pain in my skin
was wholly different from the pain I felt as a vampire. Had to repair this door, but I had
no idea whatsoever how to do it.

Was there anything left of the door? I couldn't tell. It was like trying to see through a
cloud of noxious smoke. Slowly I climbed to my feet, at once aware of the increase in
height and feeling very top-heavy and unsteady.

Every bit of warmth had fled the room. Indeed, I could hear the whole house rattling with
the wind that was pouring in. Slowly and carefully, I stepped out on the porch. Ice. My
feet went sliding to the right of me, flinging me back against the doorframe. Panic seized
me, but I managed to grab hold of the moist wood with these large trembling fingers, and
keep myself from going down the steps. Again I strained to see through the darkness, and
couldn't make out anything clearly at all.

"Just calm down," I said to myself, aware that my fingers were sweating and growing
numb at the same time, and that my feet were becoming painfully numb also. "There's no
artificial light here, that's all, and you're looking through mortal eyes. Now do something
intelligent about all this!" And stepping very carefully, and nearly slipping again, I
moved back inside.

I could see the dim outline of Mojo seated there, watching me, panting noisily, and there
was a tiny splinter of light in one of his dark eyes. I spoke to him gently.

"It's me, Mojo Man, okay? It's me!" And I stroked the soft hair between his ears gently. I
reached for the table, and sat down in the chair very awkwardly, astonished again at the
sheer thickness of my new flesh, and the sloshiness of it, and I clamped my hand over my
mouth.

It really has happened, you fool, I thought. There's no doubt of it. It's a lovely miracle,
that's what it is. You are actually free of that preternatural body! You are a human being.
You are a human man. Now be done with this panic. Think like the hero you pride
yourself on being! There are practical matters at hand. The snow's coming in on you.
This mortal body is freezing, for the love of heaven. Now attend to things as you must!

Yet all I did was open my eyes wider, and stare at what seemed to be the snow piling up
in little sparkling crystals on the white surface of the table, expecting every moment that
this vision would become more distinct, when of course it would not.

That was spilt tea, wasn't it? And broken glass. Don't cut yourself on the broken glass,
you won't heal! Mojo moved closer to me, big warm furry flank welcome against my
trembling leg. But why did the feeling seem so distant, as if I were wrapped in layers of
flannel? Why could I not smell his wondrous clean woolly smell? All right, senses are
limited. You should have expected that.

Now, go look in a mirror; see the miracle. Yes, and just close off this entire room.

"Come on, boy," I said to the dog, and we went out of the kitchen into the dining room-
each step I took feeling awkward and slow and lumbering-and with fumbling, very
inexact fingers, I closed the door. The wind banged against it, and seeped around the
edges of it, but the door held.

I turned around, off balance for a second, then righting myself. Shouldn't be so hard to
get the knack of this, for the love of heaven! I settled back on my feet, and then looked
down at them, amazed at how very large they were, and then at my hands, which were
quite big too. But not bad-looking, no, not bad-looking. Don't panic! The watch was
uncomfortable, but I needed it. All right, keep the watch. But the rings? Definitely didn't
want them on my fingers. Itching. Wanted to pull them off. Couldn't! They wouldn't
come. Lord God.

Now, stop. You're going to go mad because you can't pull these rings off your fingers.
That's foolish. Just slow down. There's such a thing as soap, you know. Soap your hands,
these big dark freezing-cold hands, ^nd off the rings will come.

I crossed my arms and eased my hands around my sides, appalled at the feeling of the
slippery human sweat beneath my shirt, nothing like blood sweat, and then I took a slow

deep breath, ignoring the heavy ponderous feeling of my chest, the raw feeling of the
very act of inhaling and exhaling, and I forced myself to look at the room.

This was not the time to scream in terror. Now, just look at the room.

It was very dim. One floor lamp burned, in a far corner, and another tiny lamp on the
mantel, but it was still terribly dim. It seemed I was under water and the water was
murky, maybe even clouded with ink.

This is normal. This is mortal. This is how they see. But how grim it all looked, how
partial, having nothing of the open spatial qualities of the rooms through which a vampire
moved.

How hideously gloomy, the dark gleaming chairs, the table barely visible, the dull gold
light creeping up into the corners, the plaster moldings at the tops of the walls vanishing
into shadow, impenetrable shadow, and how frightening the empty blackness of the hall.

Anything could have been hiding in these shadows-a rat, anything. There might have
been another human being in that hall. I looked down at Mojo and was amazed again at
how very indistinct he looked, how mysterious in a wholly different way. That was it,
things lost their contours in this sort of dimness. Impossible really to gauge their full
texture or size.

Ah, but there was the mirror above the mantel.

I went to it, frustrated by the heaviness of my limbs and by a sudden fear of stumbling,
and a need to look more than once at my feet. I moved the little lamp under the mirror,
and then I looked at my face.

Ah, yes. I was behind it now, and how amazingly different it looked. Gone were the
tightness, and the awful nervous glitter of the eyes. There was a young man staring at me,
and he looked more than a little afraid.

I lifted my hand and felt of the mouth and the eyebrows, of the forehead, which was a
little higher than mine, and then of the soft hair. The face was very pleasing, infinitely
more pleasing than I had realized, being square and without any heavy lines, and very
well proportioned, and with dramatic eyes. But I didn't like the look of fear in the eyes.
No, not at all. I tried to see a different expression, to claim the features from within and
let them express the wonder I felt. But this wasn't easy. And I'm not sure I was feeling
any wonder. Hmmm. I couldn't see anything hi this face that was coming from inside.

Slowly I opened my mouth and spoke. I said in French that I was Lestat de Lioncourt in
this body, and that everything was fine. The experiment had worked! I was hi the very
first hour of it, and the fiend James was gone, and everything had worked! Now
something of my own fierceness showed in the eyes; and when I smiled I saw my own

mischievous nature at least for a few seconds before the smile faded and I looked blank
and amazed.

I turned and looked at the dog, who was right beside me, and gazing up at me, as was his
habit, perfectly content.

"How do you know I'm in here?" I asked. "Instead of James?"

He cocked his head, and one ear gave a tiny movement.

"All right," I said. "Enough of all this weakness and crazi-ness, let's go!" I started
forward towards the dark hallway, and suddenly my right leg went out from under me,
and I slid down heavily, left hand skidding along the floor to break my fall, my head
slamming against the marble fireplace, and my elbow striking the marble hearth with a
sudden violent explosion of pain. With a clatter, the fireplace tools came down upon me,
but that was nothing. I'd struck the nerve in the elbow, and the pain was like a fire
rushing up my arm.

I turned over on my face, and just held still for a moment waiting for the pain to pass.
Only then did I realize my head was throbbing from being slammed against the marble. I
reached up, and felt the wetness of blood in my hair. Blood!

Ah, beautiful. Louis would be so amused by this, I thought. I climbed up, the pain
shifting and moving to the right behind my forehead, as if it were a weight which had
slipped to the front of my head, and I steadied myself as I held the mantel shelf.

One of those many fancy little rugs lay snagged on the floor before me. The culprit. I
kicked it out of the way, and turned and very slowly and carefully walked into the hall.

But where was I going? What did I mean to do? The answer came to me all of a sudden.
My bladder was full, and the discomfort had grown worse when I'd. fallen. I had to take a
piss.

Wasn't there a bathroom down here somewhere? I found the hall light switch and turned
on the overhead chandelier. For a long moment I stared at all the tiny bulbs-and there
must have been twenty of them-realizing that this was quite a bit of light, no matter what
I thought of it, but no one had said I couldn't turn on every lamp in the house.

I set out to do this. I went through the living room, the little library, and the back hall.
Again and again, the light disappointed me, the sense of murkiness would not leave me,
the indistinctness of things left me faintly alarmed and confused.

Finally, I made my way carefully and slowly up the stairs, fearful every moment of losing
my balance, or tripping, and annoyed at the faint ache in my legs. Such long legs.

When I looked back down the stairway, I was stunned. You could fall and kill yourself
here, I said to myself.

I turned and entered the cramped little bathroom, quickly finding the light. I had to piss, I
simply had to, and I had not done this in over two hundred years.

I unzipped these modern pants, and removed my organ, which immediately astonished
me by its limpness and size. The size was fine, of course. Who doesn't want these organs
to be large? And it was circumcised, which was a nice touch. But this limpness, it felt
remarkably repulsive to me, and I didn't want to touch the thing. I had to remind myself,
this organ happens to be mine. Jolly!

And what about the smell coming from it, and the smell rising from the hair around it?
Ah, that's yours too, baby! Now make it work.

I closed my eyes, exerted pressure very inexactly and perhaps too forcefully, and a great
arc of stinking urine shot out from the thing, missing the toilet bowl altogether and
splashing on the white seat.

Revolting. I backed up, correcting the aim, and watched with sickened fascination as the
urine filled the bowl, as bubbles formed on the surface, and as the smell grew stronger
and stronger and more nauseating until I couldn't bear it anymore. At last the bladder was
empty. I shoved this flaccid, disgusting thing back in my pants, zipped them up, and
slammed down the toilet lid. I pulled on the handle. Away went the urine, except for all
the splatters which had struck the toilet seat and floor.

I tried to take a deep breath but the disgusting smell was all around me. I lifted my hands
and realized that it was on my fingers as well. At once, I turned on the water in the
lavatory, snatched up the soap, and went to work. I lathered my hands over and over, but
could reach no assurance that they were actually clean. The skin was far more porous
than my preternatural skin; it felt dirty, I realized; and then I started to pull on the ugly
silver rings.

Even amid all these soapsuds, the rings wouldn't come off. I thought back. Yes, the
bastard had been wearing them in New Orleans. He probably couldn't get them off either,
and now I was stuck with them! Past all patience, but there was nothing to be done until I
could find a jeweler who knew how to remove them with some tiny saw or pliers or some
other instrument. Just thinking about it made me so anxious that all my muscles were
tensing and then releasing with painful spasms. I commanded myself to stop.

I rinsed my hands, over and over, ridiculously, and then I snatched up the towel and dried
them, repulsed again by their absorbent texture, and by bits of dirt around the nails. Good
God, why didn't this fool properly clean his hands?

Then I looked in the mirrored wall at the end of the bathroom and saw reflected in it a
truly disgusting sight. A great patch of moisture on the front of my pants. That stupid
organ hadn't been dry when I shoved it inside!

Well, in the old days, I'd never worried about that, had I? But then I'd been a filthy
country lord who bathed in summer, or when he took it in his head to plunge into a
mountain spring.

This patch of urine on my pants was out of the question! I went out of the bathroom,
passing the patient Mojo with only a little pat on the head, and went into the master
bedroom, tore open the closet and found another pair of pants, a better pair, in fact, of
gray wool, and at once slipped off my shoes, and made the change.

Now, what should I do? Well, go get something to eat, I thought. And then I realized I
was hungry! Yes, that was the precise nature of the discomfort I'd been feeling, along
with the full bladder, and a general overall heaviness, since this little saga commenced.

Eat. But if you eat, you know what will happen? You'll have to go back in that bathroom
again, or some bathroom, and relieve yourself of all the digested food. The thought
almost made me gag.

In fact, I grew so nauseated even picturing human excrement coming from my body that
for a moment I thought I would indeed vomit. I sat still, on the foot of the low modern
bed, and tried to get my emotions under control.

I told myself that these were the simplest aspects of being human; I must not allow them
to obscure the larger questions. And that, further, I was behaving like a perfect coward,
and not the dark hero whom I claimed to be. Now, understand, I don't really believe lama,
hero to the world. But I long ago decided that I must live as if I were a hero-that I must
pass through all the difficulties which confront me, because they are only my inevitable
circles of fire.

All right, this was a small and ignominious circle of fire. And I must stop the cowardice
at once. Eat, taste, feel, see-that was the name of this trial! Oh, but what a trial this was
going to be.

At last I climbed to my feet, taking a slightly longer stride to accommodate these new
legs, and I went back to the closet and found to my amazement that there really weren't
very many clothes here. A couple of pairs of wool pants, two fairly light wool jackets,
both new, and a stack of perhaps three shirts on a shelf.

Hmmm. What had happened to all the rest? I opened the top drawer of the bureau.
Empty. Indeed all of the drawers were empty. And so was the little chest by the bed.

What could this mean? He'd taken these clothes with him, or sent them on to someplace
where he'd gone? But why? They wouldn't fit his new body, and he claimed to have taken

care of all that. I was deeply troubled. Could this mean that he wasn't planning to come
back?

That was absurd. He wouldn't pass up the sum of twenty million. And I could not spend
my precious time as a mortal worrying hour by hour about such a thing!

I proceeded down the perilous staircase, Mojo padding softly beside me. I was
controlling the new body fairly effortlessly now, heavy and uncomfortable though it was.
I opened the hall closet. An old coat remained on a hanger. A pair of galoshes. Nothing
else.

I went to the desk in the living room. He had told me that I might find the driver's license
here. Slowly I opened the top drawer. Empty. Everything was empty. Ah, but there were
some papers in one of the drawers. Seemed to have something to do with this house, and
nowhere did the name Raglan James appear. I struggled to understand what these papers
were. But the official lingo baffled me. I wasn't receiving an immediate impression of
meaning, as I did when I had looked at things with my vampire eyes.

I recalled what James had said about synapses. Yes, my thinking was slower. Yes, it had
been difficult to read each word.

Ah, well, what did it matter? There was no driver's license here. And what I needed was
money. Ah, yes, money. I'd left the money on the table. Good Lord, it might have blown
out into the yard.

At once I went back to the kitchen. It was now freezing cold hi the room, and indeed the
table and the stove and the hanging copper pots were covered with a thin layer of white
frost. The wallet with the money was not on the table. The car keys were not on the table.
And the light, of course, had been smashed.

I got down on my knees in the dark and began to feel about on the floor. I found the
passport. But no wallet. No keys. Only bits of glass from the exploded light bulb, which
stung my hands, and cut through the skin in two places. Tiny specks of blood on my
hands. No fragrance. No real taste. I tried to see without feeling. No wallet. I went out on
the step again, careful not to slip this time. No wallet. I couldn't see in the deep snow of
the yard.

Ah, but it was useless, wasn't it? The wallet and the keys were far too heavy to have
blown away. He'd taken them! Possibly he'd even come back for them! The petty little
monster, and when I realized that he'd been in my body, my splendid powerful
preternatural body, when he did this, I was absolutely paralyzed with rage.

All right, you thought this might happen, didn't you? It was in his nature. And you're
freezing again, you're shivering. Get back into the dining room and close the door.

I did just that, though I had to wait on Mojo, who took his time, as if he were utterly
indifferent to the snowy wind. Now the dining room was cold from my having left the
door open. Indeed, as I hurried back upstairs, I realized that the temperature of the entire
house had been lowered by this little trip to the kitchen. I had to remember to shut doors.

I went into the first of the unused rooms, where I'd hidden the money in the chimney, and
as I reached up, I felt not the envelope which I'd lodged there, but a single sheet of paper.
I removed it, already in a fury, before I even turned on the light so that I could see the
words:

You really are a silly fool to think that a man of my abilities wouldn't find your little
stash. One does not have to be a vampire to detect a bit of telltale moisture on the floor
and on the wall. Have a pleasant adventure. I shall see you Friday. Take care of yourself!
Raglan James.

I was too angry for a moment to move. I was positively fuming. My hands were knotted
into fists. "You petty little miscreant!" I said in this miserable, heavy, opaque, brittle
voice.

I went into the bathroom. Of course the second stash of money wasn't behind the mirror.
There was only another note.

What is human life without difficulty? You must realize I cannot resist such little
discoveries. It's like leaving bottles of wine around for an alcoholic. I shall see you
Friday. Please walk carefully on the icy sidewalks. Wouldn't want you to break a leg.

Before I could stop myself I slammed my fist into the mirror! Ah, well. There was a
blessing for you. Not a great gaping hole in the wall, as it would have been if Lestat le
Vampire had done it; just a lot of broken glass. And bad luck, bad luck for seven years!

I turned around, went downstairs, and back into the kitchen, bolting the door behind me
this tune, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing inside! Nothing!

Ah, this little devil, what I was going to do to him! How could he think he would get
away with this? Did he think I was incapable of giving him twenty million dollars and
then wringing his neck? What in the world was he thinking ...

Hmmm.

Was it as hard to figure out as all that? He wasn't coming back, was he? Of course he
wasn't.

I went back into the dining room. There was no silver or china in the glass-doored
cabinet. But certainly there had been silver and china last night. I went into the hallway.
There were no paintings on the walls. I checked the living room. No Picasso, Jasper
Johns, de Kooning, or Warhol. All gone. Even the photographs of the ships were gone.

The Chinese sculptures were gone. The bookshelves were half empty. And the rugs.
There were precious few of them left- one in the dining room, which had almost caused
me to kill myself! And one at the foot of the steps.

This house had been emptied out of all its true valuables! Why, half the furniture was
missing! The little bastard wasn't going to return! It was never part of his plan.

I sat down in the armchair nearest the door. Mojo, who'd been following me faithfully,
took the opportunity to stretch out at my feet. I dug my hand into his fur and tugged at it,
and smoothed it, and thought what a comfort it was that the dog was there.

Of course James was a fool to pull this. Did he think I couldn't call on the others?

Hmmm. Call on the others for help-what a perfectly gruesome idea. It did not take any
great feat of imagination to guess what Marius would say to me if I told him what I'd
done. In all probability he knew, and was smoldering with disapproval. As for the older
ones, I shuddered to think on it at all. My best hope from any standpoint was that the
body switch would go unnoticed. I'd realized that from the start.

The salient point here was that James didn't know how angry the others would be with
me on account of this experiment. He couldn't know. And James didn't know, either, the
limits of the power he now possessed.

Ah, but all this was premature. The theft of my money, the looting of the house-this was
James's idea of an evil joke, no more, no less. He couldn't leave the clothes and money
here for me. His thieving petty nature wouldn't allow it. He had to cheat a little, that was
all. Of course he planned to come back and claim his twenty million. And he was
counting on the fact that I wouldn't hurt him because I'd want to try this experiment
again, because I would value him as the only being who could successfully pull it off.

Yes, that was his ace in the hole, I figured-that I wouldn't harm the one mortal who could
effect the switch when I wanted to do it again.

Do this again! I had to laugh. I did laugh, and what a strange and alien sound it was. I
shut my eyes tight, and sat there for a moment, hating the sweat clinging to my ribs,
hating the ache in my belly and in my head, hating the heavy padded feeling of my hands
and feet. And when I opened my eyes again all I beheld was this bleary world of
indistinct edges and pallid colors . . .

Do this again? Oooh! Get a grip on yourself, Lestat. You've clenched your teeth so hard
that you've hurt yourself! You've cut your tongue! You are making your own mouth
bleed! And the blood tastes like water and salt, nothing but water and salt, water and salt!
For the love of hell, get a grip on yourself. Stop!

After a quiet few moments, I stood up and went on a systematic search for a phone.

There was none in the entire house.

Beautiful.

How foolish I'd been not to plan sufficiently for this entire experience. I'd been so carried
away with the larger spiritual issues, I'd made no sensible provisions for myself at all! I
should have had a suite at the Willard, and money in the hotel safe! I should have
arranged for a car.

The car. What about the car?

I went to the hall closet, removed the overcoat, noted a rip in the lining-probably the
reason he didn't sell it-put it on, despairing that there were no gloves in the pockets, and
went out the back way, after carefully securing the dining room door. I asked Mojo if he
wanted to join me or stay there. Naturally he wanted to come along.

The snow in the alley was about a foot deep. I had to slosh my way through it and when I
reached the street, I realized it was deeper still.

No red Porsche, of course. Not to the left of the front steps, nor anywhere on this block.
Just to be certain, I made my way to the corner and then turned around and came back.
My feet were freezing and so were my hands, and the skin of my face positively ached.

All right, I must set out on foot, at least until I located a public phone. The snow was
blowing away from me, which was something of a blessing, but then I didn't know where
I was going, did I?

As for Mojo he appeared to love this sort of weather, plowing ahead steadily, the snow
tumbling and glistening in tiny flakes from his long plush gray coat. I should have
switched bodies with the dog, I thought. And then the thought of Mojo inside my
vampiric body started me to laughing. I went into one of my regular fits. I laughed and
laughed and laughed, turning in circles, and then finally stopped because I was truly
freezing to death.

But all this was terribly funny. Here I was a human being, the priceless event I'd dreamed
of since my death, and I hated it to the marrow of these human bones! I felt a hunger
pang in my noisy, churning stomach. And then another, which I could only call a hunger
cramp.

"Paolo's, I have to find Paolo's but how am I going to get any food? I need food too, don't
I? I can't simply go without food. I'll get weak if I don't have food."

When I came to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue, I saw lights and people down the hill.
The street had been cleared of snow, and was definitely open to traffic. I could see the

people moving busily back and forth under the street lamps, but all this was maddeningly
dim, of course.

I hurried on, my feet painfully numb now, which is not a contradiction in terms, as you
well know if you have ever walked in snow, and finally I saw the lighted window of a
cafe. Martini's. All right. Forget Paolo's. Martini's will have to do. A car had stopped out
front; a handsome young couple climbed out of the back and hurried to the door of the
place and went inside. I drew up slowly to the door, and saw a fairly pretty young woman
at the high wooden desk gathering up a pair of menus for the young couple, whom she
then led into the shadows beyond. I glimpsed candles, checkered tablecloths. And I
realized suddenly that the awful, nauseating smell that was filling my nostrils was the
smell of burnt cheese.

I would not have liked this smell as a vampire, no, not in the least; but it wouldn't have
sickened me quite this much. It would have been outside of me. But now it seemed
connected to the hunger in me; it seemed to tug on the muscles inside my throat. In fact,
the smell seemed suddenly to be inside my guts and to be nauseating me with a pressure,
rather than a mere smell.

Curious. Yes, have to note all these things. This is being alive.

The pretty young woman had come back. I saw her pale profile as she looked down at the
paper on her little wooden desk, and lifted her pen to make a mark. She had long wavy
dark hair, and very pale skin. I wished I could see her better. I struggled to pick up her
scent, but I couldn't. I only caught the scent of the burnt cheese.

I opened the door, ignoring the heavy stench that hit me, and moved through it, until I
was standing in front of the young woman, and the blessed warmth of the place was
wrapping itself around me, smells and all. She was painfully young, with rather small
sharp features, and long narrow black eyes. Her mouth was large, exquisitely rouged, and
she had a long beautifully shaped neck. The body was twentieth century-all bones
beneath her black dress.

"Mademoiselle," I said, deliberately thickening my French accent, "I am very hungry,
and it's very cold outside. Is there anything I can do to earn a plate of food? I shall wash
the floors if you wish, scrub the pots and pans, do whatever I must."

She stared at me blankly for a moment. Then she stood back, tossed her long wavy hair,
and rolled her eyes, and looked at me again coldly, and said: "Get out." Her voice
sounded tinny and flat. It wasn't, of course, it was merely my mortal hearing. The
resonance detected by a vampire could not be detected by me.

"May I have a piece of bread?" I asked. "A single piece of bread." The smells of food,
bad as they were, tormented me. I couldn't actually remember what food tasted like. I
couldn't remember texture and nourishment together, but something purely human was
taking over. I was desperate for food.

"I'm going to call the police," she said, her voice quavering slightly, "if you don't get
out."

I tried to scan her. Nothing. I looked around, squinting in the dark. Tried to scan the other
humans. Nothing. Didn't have the power in this body. Oh, but that's not possible. I looked
at her again. Nothing. Not even a glimmer of her thoughts. Not even an instinct really as
to what sort of human she was.

"Ah, very well," I said, giving her the gentlest smile I could manage, with no idea of how
it appeared or what its effect might be. "I hope you burn in hell for your lack of charity.
But God knows, I don't deserve any more than this." I turned and was about to leave
when she touched my sleeve.

"Look," she said, trembling slightly in her anger and discomfort, "you can't come here
and expect people to give you food!" The blood was pulsing in her white cheeks. I
couldn't smell it. But I could smell a sort of musky perfume rising from her, part human,
part commercial scent. And suddenly I saw two tiny nipples sticking against the fabric of
the dress. How amazing. Again, I tried to read her thoughts. I told myself I must be able
to do this, it was an innate power. But it was no good.

"I told you I'd work for the food," I said, trying not to look at her breasts. "I'd do anything
you asked. Look, I'm sorry. I don't want you to burn in hell. What a dreadful thing to say.
It's only that I'm down on my luck now. Bad things have happened to me. Look, that's my
dog there. How am I to feed him?"

"That dog!" She looked through the glass at Mojo, who sat majestically in the snow.
"You must be joking," she said. What a shrill voice she had. Utterly without character. So
many sounds coming at me had that very quality. Metallic and thin.

"No, he is my dog," I said with faint indignation. "I love him very much."

She laughed. "That dog eats here every night at the back kitchen door!"

"Ah, well, marvelous. One of us will eat. I'm so happy to hear it, mademoiselle. Maybe I
should go to the back kitchen door. Perhaps the dog will leave something for me."

She gave a little chilly and false laugh. She was observing me, quite obviously, looking
with interest at my face and my clothes. Whatever did I look like to her? I didn't know.
The black overcoat was not a cheap garment, but neither was it stylish. The brown hair of
this head of mine was full of snow.

She herself had a sort of scrawny, fine-toned sensuality. Very narrow nose, very finely
shaped eyes. Very beautiful bones.

"All right," she said, "sit down up there at the counter. I'll have them bring you
something. What do you want?"

"Anything, I don't care. I thank you for your kindness."

"All right, sit down." She opened the door, and shouted to the dog: "Go around to the
back." She made a quick gesture.

Mojo did nothing but sit there, a patient mountain of fur. I went back out into the freezing
wind, and told him to go to the kitchen door. I gestured to the side alley. He looked at me
for a long moment and then he rose and moved slowly down the alley and disappeared.

I went back inside, grateful for a second time to be out of the cold, though I realized that
my shoes were full of melted snow. I moved into the darkness of the interior of the
restaurant, stumbling on a wooden stool that I didn't see, and nearly falling, and then
seating myself on the stool. A place had already been set on the wooden counter, with a
blue cloth mat and a heavy steel fork and knife. The smell of cheese was stifling. There
were other smells-cooked onions, garlic, burnt grease. All revolting.

I was most uncomfortable sitting on this stool. The round hard edge of the wooden seat
cut into my legs, and once again, I was bothered that I couldn't see in the dark. The
restaurant appeared very deep, indeed to have several more rooms in a long chain. But I
couldn't see all the way back there. I could hear frightful noises, like big pots being
banged on metal, and they hurt my ears just a little, or more truly I resented them.

The young woman reappeared, smiling prettily as she set down a big glass of red wine.
The smell was sour and potentially sickening.

I thanked her. And then I picked up the glass, and took a mouthful of the wine, holding it
and then swallowing. At once I began to choke. I couldn't figure what had happened-
whether I had swallowed in some wrong way, or it was irritating my throat for some
reason, or what. I only knew I was coughing furiously, and I snatched up a cloth napkin
from beside the fork and put it over my mouth. Some of the wine was actually caught hi
the back of my nose. As for the taste, it was weak and acidic. A terrible frustration rose in
me.

I shut my eyes, and leaned my head against my left hand, the hand itself closed around
the napkin in a fist.

"Here, try it again," she said. I opened my eyes and saw her filling the glass once more
from a large carafe.

"All right," I said, "thank you." I was thirsty, powerfully thirsty. In fact, the mere taste of
the wine had greatly increased this thirst. But this time, I reasoned, I wouldn't swallow so
hard. I lifted the glass, took a small mouthful, tried to savor it, though there seemed
almost nothing there to savor, and then I swallowed, slowly, and it went down the correct

way. Thin, so thin, so totally different from a luscious filling swallow of blood. I must get
the hang of this. I drank the rest of the contents of the glass. Then I lifted the carafe and
filled it again, and drank that down too.

For a moment, I felt only frustration. Then gradually I began to feel a little sick. Food
will come, I thought. Ah, there is food-a canister of bread sticks, or so they appear to be.

I lifted one, smelled it carefully, ascertaining that it was bread, and then I nibbled at it
very fast until it was gone. It was like sand to the last tiny bit. Just like the sand of the
Gobi Desert which had gotten into my mouth. Sand.

"How do mortals eat this?" I asked.

"More slowly," said the pretty woman and she let out a little laugh. "You're not mortal?
Which planet are you from?"

"Venus," I answered, smiling at her again. "The planet of love."

She was studying me unreservedly, and a little flush came back to her sharp white little
cheeks. "Well, stick around until I get orf, why don't you? You can walk me home."

"I shall definitely do that," I said. And then the realization of what this could mean settled
over me, with the most curious effect. I could bed this woman, perhaps. Ah, yes, that was
definitely a possibility as far as she was concerned. My eyes drifted down to the two tiny
nipples, protruding so enticingly through the black silk of the dress. Yes, bed her, I
thought, and how smooth was the flesh of her neck.

The organ was stirring between my legs. Well, something is working, I mused. But how
curiously local was this feeling, this hardening and swelling, and the odd way that it
consumed all my thoughts. The need for blood was never local. I stared blankly before
me. I did not look down when a plate of Italian spaghetti and meat sauce was set down at
my place. The hot fragrance went up my nostrils-moldering cheese, burnt meat, and fat.

Go down, I was saying to the organ. This is not the time yet for that.

Finally I lowered my gaze to the plate. The hunger ground in me as if someone had my
intestines in both hands and was wringing them out. Did I remember such a feeling? God
knows I had been hungry enough in my mortal life. Hunger was like life itself. But the
memory seemed so distant, so unimportant. Slowly I picked up the fork, which I had
never used in those times, for we had none-only spoons and knives in our crude world-
and I shoved the tines under the mess of wet spaghetti and lifted a heap of it to my
mouth.

I knew it was too hot before it touched my tongue, but I didn't stop quickly enough. I was
badly burnt and let the fork drop. Now, this is plain stupidity, I thought, and it was

perhaps my fifteenth act of plain stupidity. What must I do to approach things with more
intelligence, and patience and calm?

I sat back on the uncomfortable stool, as well as one can do such a thing without
tumbling to the floor, and I tried to think.

I was trying to run this new body, which was full of uncommon weakness and sensation-
painfully cold feet, for instance, wet feet in a draught running along the floor-and I was
making understandable but stupid mistakes. Should have taken the galoshes. Should have
found a phone before coming in here and called my agent in Paris. Not reasoning,
behaving stubbornly as if I were a vampire when I was not.

Nothing of the temperature of this steaming food would have burnt me in my vampire
skin, obviously. But I wasn't in my vampire skin. That's why I should have taken the
galoshes. Think!

But how far was this experience from what I had expected. Oh, ye gods. Here I was
talking about thinking when I'd thought I would be enjoying! Ah, I'd thought I would be
immersed in sensations, immersed in memories, immersed in discoveries; arid now all I
could do was think how to hold back!

The truth was, I'd envisioned pleasure, a variety of pleasures-eating, drinking, a woman
in my bed, then a man. But none of what I'd experienced was even vaguely pleasurable so
far.

Well, I was to blame for this shameful situation, and I could make it change. I wiped my
mouth now with my napkin, a coarse bit of artificial fiber, no more absorbent than a bit of
oilcloth might have been, and then I picked up the wineglass and emptied it once more. A
wave of sickness passed over me. My throat tightened and then I even felt dizzy. Good
God, three glasses and I was getting drunk?

Once again, I Lifted the fork. The sticky goo was cooler now, and I shoveled a heap of it
into my mouth. Again, I almost choked! My throat locked convulsively, as if to prevent
this mass of slop from smothering me. I had to stop, breathe slowly through my nostrils,
tell myself this wasn't poison, I wasn't a vampire, and then chew the mess carefully so as
not to bite my tongue.

But I'd bit my tongue earlier, and now that patch of sore skin began to hurt. The hurt
filled my mouth, and was far more perceptible than the food. Nevertheless I continued to
chew the spaghetti, and began to reflect on its tastelessness, its sourness, its saltiness, and
its general awful consistency and then I swallowed it, feeling a painful tightening again,
and then a hard knot lower in my chest.

Now, if Louis were going through this-if you were your old smug vampire self, sitting
opposite, watching him, you would condemn him for everything that he was doing and

thinking, you would abhor him for his timidity, and his wasting of this experience, for his
failure to perceive.

Again, I lifted the fork. I chewed another mouthful, swallowed it. Well, there was a sort
of taste. It simply wasn't the pungent delicious taste of blood. It was much tamer, and
grainier, and stickier. Okay, another mouthful. You can get to like this. And besides,
maybe this just isn't very good food. Another mouthful.

"Hey, slow down," said the pretty woman. She was leaning against me but I couldn't feel
her juicy softness through the coat. I turned and looked up into her eyes again, marveling
at her long curving black lashes, and how sweet her mouth looked as she smiled. "You're
bolting your food."

"I know. Very hungry," I said. "Listen to me, I know this sounds dreadfully ungrateful.
But do you have something that is not a great coagulated mass such as this? You know,
something tougher-meat, perhaps?"

She laughed. "You are the strangest man," she said. "Really where are you from?"

"France, the countryside," I said.

"All right, I'll bring you something else."

As soon as she'd gone, I drank another glass of the wine. I was definitely getting dizzy,
but I also felt a warmth that was sort of nice. I also felt like laughing suddenly, and I
knew that I was partially intoxicated, at least.

I decided to study the other humans in the room. It was so weird not being able to pick up
their scents, so weird not being able to hear their thoughts. I couldn't even really hear
their voices, only a lot of racket and noise. And it was so weird to be both cold and hot
here, my head swimming hi the overheated air, and my feet freezing in the draught that
ran along the floor.

The young woman set a plate of meat before me-veal, she called it. I picked up some
small sliver, which seemed to amaze her-I should have used the knife and fork-and bit
into it and found it to be rather tasteless like the spaghetti; but it was better. Cleaner, it
seemed. I chewed it fairly lustily.

"Thank you, you've been kind to me," I said. "You are really lovely, and I regret my
harsh words earlier, I really do."

She seemed fascinated, and of course I was playacting somewhat. I was pretending to be
gentle, which I am not.

She left me so that she might take the payment from a couple who were leaving, and I
returned to my meal-my first meal of sand and glue and bits of leather full of salt. I

laughed to myself. More wine, I thought, it's like drinking nothing, but it's having an
effect.

After she'd cleared the plate, she gave me another carafe. And I sat there, in my wet shoes
and socks, cold and uncomfortable on the wooden stool, straining to see in the dark, and
getting drunker and drunker as an hour passed, and then she was ready to go home.

I was no more comfortable at that point than I'd been when this all began. And as soon as
I stood up off the stool, I realized I could hardly walk. There was no sensation in my legs
at all. I had to look down to be certain they were there.

The pretty woman thought it very funny. I wasn't so sure. She helped me along the snowy
sidewalk, calling to Mojo, whom she addressed simply as "Dog," with great respectful
emphasis, and assured me that she lived only "a few steps up the street." The only good
aspect of all this was that the cold did bother me less.

I was really off balance. My limbs were now totally leaden. Even the most brightly
illuminated objects were out of focus. My head was aching. I thought sure I was going to
fall. Indeed the fear of falling was becoming a panic.

But mercifully we reached her door, and she led me up a narrow carpeted flight of steps-a
climb which left me so exhausted that my heart was pounding and my face was veiled
with sweat. I could see almost nothing! It was madness. I heard her putting her key in the
door.

A new dreadful stench assaulted my nostrils. The grim little apartment appeared to be a
warren of pasteboard and plywood, with undistinguished printed posters covering the
walls. But what could account for this smell? I realized suddenly that it came from the
cats she kept in this place, which were allowed to relieve themselves in a box of earth. I
saw the box of earth, full of cat excrement, sitting on the floor of a small open bathroom,
and I really thought it was all over, I was going to die! I stood still, straining to keep
myself from vomiting. There was a grinding pain in my stomach again, not hunger this
time, and my belt felt painfully tight.

The pain grew sharper. I realized I had to perform a similar duty to that already
performed by the cats. Indeed, I had to do it now or disgrace myself. And I had to go into
that very same chamber. My heart came up in my throat.

"What's wrong?" she said. "Are you sick?"

"May I use this room?" I asked, gesturing to the open door.

"Of course," she said. "Go ahead."

Ten minutes, perhaps more, passed before I emerged. I was so powerfully disgusted by
the simple process of elimination- by the smell of it, and the feel of doing it, and the sight

of it- that I couldn't speak. But it was finished, done. Only the drunkenness remained
now, the graceless experience of reaching for the light switch and missing it, of trying to
turn the knob and having my hand-this big dark hand-miss.

I found the bedroom, very warm, and crowded with mediocre modern furniture of cheap
laminate and no particular de-

The young woman was now entirely naked and sitting on the side of the bed. I tried to see
her clearly in spite of the distortions created by the nearby lamp. But her face was a mass
of ugly shadows, and her skin looked sallow. The stale smell of the bed surrounded her.

All I could conclude about her was that she was foolishly thin, as women tend to be in
these times, and all the bones of her ribs showed through the milky skin, and that her
breasts were almost freakishly small with tiny delicate pink nipples, and her hips weren't
there. She was like a wraith. And yet she sat there smiling, as if this was normal, with all
her pretty wavy hair hanging down her back, and hiding the small shadow of her pubis
beneath one limp hand.

Well, it was perfectly obvious which marvelous human experience was meant to come
now. But I could feel nothing for her. Nothing. I smiled, and I began to take off my
clothes. I peeled off the overcoat, and was immediately cold. Why wasn't she cold? I then
took off the sweater and was immediately horrified by the smell of my own sweat. Lord
God, was it really like this before? And this body of mine had looked so clean.

She didn't seem to notice. I was grateful for that. I then removed my shirt and my shoes
and my socks and my pants. My feet were still cold. Indeed, I was cold and naked, very
naked. I didn't know whether or not I liked this at all. I suddenly saw myself in the mirror
over her dressing table, and I realized that this organ was of course utterly drunk and
asleep.

Again, she didn't seem surprised.

"Come here," she said. "Sit down."

I obeyed. I was shivering all over. Then I began to cough. The first cough was a spasm,
catching me completely by surprise. Then a whole series of coughs followed,
uncontrollably, and the last was so violent that it made a circle of pain around my ribs.

"I'm sorry," I said to her.

"I love your French accent," she whispered. She stroked my hair, and let her nails lightly
scratch my cheek.

Now, this was a pleasant sensation. I bent my head and kissed her throat. Yes, this was
nice also. It was nothing as exciting as closing on a victim, but it was nice. I tried to
remember what it had been like two hundred years ago when I was the terror of the

village girls. Seems some farmer was always at the castle gates, cursing me and swinging
his fist at me and telling me that if his daughter was with child by me, I'd have to do
something about it! It had all seemed such wonderful fun at the time. And the girls, oh
the lovely girls.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said. I kissed her throat again. I could smell sweat on her body too. I didn't
like it. But why? These smells were nothing as sharp, any of them, as they were to me in
my other body. But they connected with something hi this body- that was the ugly part. I
felt no protection against these smells; they seemed not artifacts but something which
could invade me and contaminate me. For instance; the sweat from her neck was now on
my lips. I knew it was, I could taste it and I wanted to be away from her.

Ah, but this is madness. She was a human being, and I was a human being. Thank God
this would be over Friday. But what right had I to thank God!

Her little nipples brushed against my chest, very hot and nubby and the flesh behind them
was squashy and tender. I slipped my arm around her small back.

"You're hot, I think you have a fever," she said in my ear. She kissed my neck the way I'd
been kissing hers.

"No, I'm all right," I said. But I didn't have the slightest idea of whether or not this was
true. This was hard work!

Suddenly her hand touched my organ, startling me, and then bringing about an immediate
excitement. I felt the organ lengthen and grow hard. The sensation was entirely
concentrated, and yet it galvanized me. When I looked at her breasts now, and down at
the small fur triangle between her legs, my organ grew even more hard. Yes, I remember
this all right; my eyes are connected to it, and nothing else matters now, hmmm, all right.
Just get her down on the bed.

"Whoa!" she whispered. "Now that's a piece of equipment!"

"Is it?" I looked down. The monstrous thing had doubled in size. It did seem grossly out
of proportion to everything else. "Yes, I suppose it is. Should have known James would
have checked it out."

"Who's James?"

"No, doesn't matter," I mumbled. I turned her face towards me and kissed her wet little
mouth this time, feeling her teeth through her thin lips. She opened her mouth for my
tongue. This was good, even if her mouth was bad tasting. Didn't matter. But then my
mind raced ahead to blood. Drink her blood.

Where was the pounding intensity of drawing near the victim, of the moment right before
my teeth pierced the skin and the blood spilled all over my tongue?

No, it's not going to be that easy, or that consuming. It's going to be between the legs and
more like a shiver, but this is -some shiver, I'll say that.

Merely thinking of the blood had heightened the passion, and I shoved her roughly down
on the bed. I wanted to finish, nothing else mattered but finishing.

"Wait a minute," she said.

"Wait for what?" I mounted her, and kissed her again, pushing my tongue deeper into
her. No blood. Ah, so pale. No blood. My organ slid between her hot thighs, and I almost
spurted then. But it wasn't enough.

"I said wait!" she screamed, her cheeks coloring. "You can't do it without a condom."

"What the hell are you saying?" I murmured. I knew the meaning of these words, yet they
didn't make much sense. I pushed my hand down, felt the hairy opening, and then the
juicy wet crack, which seemed deliciously small.

She screamed at me to get off of her, and she shoved at me with the heels of her hands.
She looked very flushed and beautiful to me suddenly in her heat and rage, and when she
nudged me with her knee, I slammed down against her, then drew up only long enough to
ram the organ into her, and feel that sweet hot tight envelope of flesh close around me,
making me gasp.

"Don't! Stop it! I said stop it!" she screamed.

But I couldn't wait. What the hell made her think this was the time to discuss such a
thing, I wondered, in some vague crazed fashion. Then, in a moment of blinding
spasmodic excitement I came. Semen came roaring out of the organ!

One moment it was eternal; the next it was finished, as if it had never begun. I lay
exhausted on top of her, drenched with sweat, of course, and faintly annoyed by the
stickiness of the whole event, and her panic-stricken screams.

At last I fell over onto my back. My head was aching, and all the evil smells of the room
thickened-a soiled smell from the bed itself, with its sagging, lumpy mattress; the
nauseating smell of the cats.

She leapt out of the bed. She appeared to have gone mad. She was crying and shivering,
and she snatched up a blanket from the chair and covered herself with it and began
screaming at me to get out, get out, get out.

"Whatever is the matter with you?" I asked.

She let loose with a volley of modern curses. "You bum, you miserable stupid bum, you
idiot, you jerk!" That sort of thing. I could have given her a disease, she said. Indeed she
rattled off the names of several; I could have gotten her pregnant. I was a creep, a prick, a
putz! I was to clear out of here at once. How dare I do this to her? Get out before she
called the police.

A wave of sleepiness passed over me. I tried to focus upon her, in spite of the darkness.
Then came a sudden nausea sharper than I'd ever felt. I struggled to keep it under control,
and only by a severe act of will managed not to vomit then and there.

Finally, I sat up and then climbed to my feet. I looked down at her as she stood there,
crying, and screaming at me, and I saw suddenly that she was wretched, that I had really
hurt her, and indeed there was an ugly bruise on her face.

Very slowly it came clear to me what had happened. She had wanted me to use some
form of prophylactic, and I'd virtually forced her. No pleasure in it for her, only fear. I
saw her again at the moment of my climax, fighting me, and I realized it was utterly
inconceivable to her that I could have enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed her rage and her
protests, enjoyed conquering her. But in a paltry and common way, I think I had.

The whole thing seemed overwhelmingly dismal. It filled me with despair. The pleasure
itself had been nothing! I can't bear this, I thought, not a moment longer. If I could have
reached James, I would have offered him another fortune, just to return at once. Reached
James ... I'd forgotten altogether about finding a phone.

"Listen to me, ma chere," I said. "I'm so sorry. Things simply went wrong. I know. I'm
sorry."

She moved to slap me but I caught her wrist easily and brought her hand down, hurting
her a little.

"Get out," she said again. "Get out or I'll call the police."

"I understand what you're saying to me. It's been forever since I did it. I was clumsy. I
was bad."

"You're worse than bad!" she said in a deep raw voice.

And this time she did slap me. I wasn't quick enough. I was astonished by the force of the
slap, how it stung. I felt of my face where she'd hit me. What an annoying little pain. It
was an insulting pain.

"Go!" she screamed again.

I put on my clothes, but it was like lifting sacks of bricks to do it. A dull shame had come
over me, a feeling of such awkwardness and discomfort in the slightest gesture I made or
smallest word I spoke that I wanted simply to sink into the earth.

Finally, I had everything buttoned and zipped properly, and I had the miserable wet socks
on my feet again, and the thin shoes, and I was ready to go.

She sat on the bed crying, her shoulders very thin, with the tender bones in her back
poking at her pale flesh, and her hair dripping down in thick wavy clumps over the
blanket she held to her breast. How fragile she looked-how sadly unbeautiful and
repulsive.

I tried to see her as if I were really Lestat. But I couldn't do it. She appeared a common
thing, utterly worthless, not even interesting. I was vaguely horrified. Had it been that
way in my boyhood village? I tried to remember those girls, those girls dead and gone for
centuries, but I couldn't see then- faces. What I remembered was happiness, mischief, a
great exuberance that had made me forget for intermittent periods the deprivation and
hopelessness of my life.

What did that mean in this moment? How could this whole experience have been so
unpleasant, so seemingly pointless? Had I been myself I would have found her
fascinating as an bisect is fascinating; even her little rooms would have appeared quaint
to me, hi their worst, most uninspiring details! Ah, the affection I always felt for all sad
little mortal habitats. But why was that so!

And she, the poor being, she would have been beautiful to me simply because she was
alive! I could not have been sullied by her had I fed on her for an hour. As it was, I felt
filthy for having been with her, and filthy for being cruel to her. I understood her fear of
disease! I, too, felt contaminated! But where lay the perspective of truth?

"I am so sorry," I said again. "You must believe me. It wasn't what I wanted. I don't know
what I wanted."

"You're crazy," she whispered bitterly without looking up.

"Some night I'll come to you, soon, and I'll bring you a present, something beautiful that
you really want. I'll give it to you and perhaps you'll forgive me."

She didn't answer.

"Tell me, what is it you really want? Money doesn't matter. What is it you want that you
cannot have?"

She looked up, rather sullenly, her face blotched and red and swollen, and then she wiped
at her nose with the back of her hand.

"You know what I wanted," she said in a harsh, disagreeable voice, which was almost
sexless it was so low.

"No, I don't. Tell me what."

Her face was so disfigured and her voice so strange that she frightened me. I was still
woozy from the wine I'd drunk earlier, yet my mind was unaffected by the intoxication. It
seemed a lovely situation. This body drunk, but not me.

"Who are you?" she asked. She looked very hard now, hard and bitter. "You're
somebody, aren't you... you're not just..." But her voice trailed off.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

She turned her head even more sharply to the side, studying me as if it was all going to
come to her suddenly. She'd have it figured out. I couldn't imagine what was going on in
her mind. I knew only that I felt sorry for her, and I did not like her. I didn't like this dirty
messy room with its low plaster ceiling, and the nasty bed, and the ugly tan carpet and
the dim light and the cat box reeking in the other room.

"I'll remember you," I said miserably yet tenderly. "I'll surprise you. I'll come back and
I'll bring something wonderful for you, something you could never get for yourself. A
gift as if from another world. But right now, I have to leave you."

"Yes," she said, "you'd better go."

I turned to do exactly that. I thought of the cold outside, of Mojo waiting in the hallway,
and of the town house with its back door shattered off the hinges, and no money and no
phone.

Ah, the phone.

She had a phone. I'd spied it on the dresser.

As I turned and went towards it, she screamed at me, and hurled something at me. I think
that it was a shoe. It struck my shoulder, but caused no pain. I picked up the receiver and
punched the zero twice for long distance, and called my New York agent collect.

On and on it rang. No one there. Not even his machine. Most strange, and damned
inconvenient.

I could see her in the mirror, staring at me in, stiff and silent outrage, the blanket pulled
around her like a sleek modern dress. How pathetic was all of this, down to the last jot.

I called Paris. Again it rang and rang, but finally there came the familiar voice-my agent
roused from sleep. Quickly in French I told him I was in Georgetown, that I needed
twenty thousand dollars, no, best send thirty, and I must have it now.

He explained that it was just sunrise in Paris. He would have to wait until the banks
opened, but he would wire the money as soon as he could. It might be noon in
Georgetown before it reached me. I memorized the name of the agency where I was to
collect it, and I implored him to be prompt and see that he did not fail. This was an
emergency, I was penniless. I had obligations. He gave me assurance that all would be
handled at once. I put down the phone.

She was staring at me. I don't think she had understood the phone call. She could not
speak French.

"I'll remember you," I said. "Please, forgive me. I'll go now. I've caused trouble enough."

She didn't answer. I stared at her, trying for the last time to fathom it, why she seemed so
coarse and uninteresting. What had been my vantage point before that all life seemed so
beautiful to me, all creatures but variations on the same magnificent theme? Even James
had had a horrid glittering beauty like a great palmetto bug or a fly.

"Good-bye, ma chere," I said, "I'm very sorry-truly I am."

I found Mojo sitting patiently outside the apartment, and I hurried past him, snapping my
fingers for him to come, which

he did. And down the steps we went and out in the cold night.

In spite of the wind gusting into the kitchen, and creeping around the dining room door,
the other rooms of the town house were still quite warm. A stream of heated air came
from the little brass grilles in the floors. How kind of James not to have turned off the
heat, I thought. But then he plans to leave this place immediately when he has the twenty
million. The bill will never be paid.

I went upstairs and through the master bedroom into the master bath. A pleasant room of
new white tile and clean mirrors and a deep shower stall with doors of shining glass. I
tried the water. Hot and strong. Quite deliriously hot. I peeled off all the damp and smelly
clothes, laying the socks on the furnace grille and neatly folding the sweater for it was the
only one I had, and then I stood in the hot shower for a long time.

With my head back against the tile, I might have actually fallen asleep standing up. But
then I began to weep, and then just as spontaneously, to cough. I felt an intense burning
in my chest, and the same burning deep inside my nose.

Finally I got out, toweled off, and looked again at this body in the mirror. I could not see
a scar or a flaw anywhere in it. The arms were powerful but smoothly muscled, as was

the chest. The legs were well formed. The face was truly beautiful, the dark skin quite
nearly perfect, though there was nothing of the boy left in the structure of it, as there was
in my own face. It was very much the face of a man-rectangular, a little hard, but pretty,
very pretty, perhaps on account of the large eyes. It was also slightly rough. Beard
coming in. Have to shave. Nuisance.

"But really, this ought to be splendid," I said aloud. "You've the body of a twenty-six-
year-old male in perfect condition. But it's been a nightmare. You've made one stupid
error after another. Why can't you meet this challenge? Where is your will and your
strength?"

I felt chilled all over. Mojo had gone to sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed. I shall do
that, sleep, I thought. Sleep like a mortal, and when I wake, the light of day will be
coming into this room. Even if the sky is gray, it will be wondrous. It will be day. You
will see the world of day as you've longed to see it all these years. Forget all this abysmal
struggle and trivia and fear.

But a dreadful suspicion was coming over me. Hadn't my mortal life been nothing but
abysmal struggle and trivia and fear? Wasn't that the way it was for most mortals? Wasn't
that the message of a score of modern writers and poets-that we wasted our lives in
foolish preoccupation? Wasn't this all a miserable cliche?

I was bitterly shaken. I tried to argue with myself once more, the way I'd been doing all
along. But what was the use?

It felt terrible to be in this sluggish human body! It felt terrible not to have my
preternatural powers. And the world, look at it, it was dingy and shabby, frayed at the
edges and full of accidents. Why, I couldn't even see most of it. What world?

Ah, but tomorrow! Oh, Lord, another miserable cliche! I started laughing and another fit
of coughing caught me. This time the pain was in my throat and quite considerable, and
my eyes were watering. Best to sleep, best to rest, better to prepare for my one precious
day.

I snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers of the bed. It was clean, I was thankful
for that. I laid my head on the down pillow, brought up my knees close to my chest, drew
the covers up to my chin, and went to sleep. I was vaguely sensible that if the house
burned, I would die. If gas fumes came up out of the furnace grilles, I would die. Indeed,
someone might come in the open back door to kill me. Indeed, all kinds of disasters were
possible. But Mojo was there, wasn't he? And I was tired, so tired!

Hours later, I woke.

I was coughing violently and bitterly cold. I needed a handkerchief, found a box of paper
tissue that would do well enough, and blew my nose perhaps a hundred times. Then, able

to breathe again, I fell back into a strange feverish exhaustion, and the deceptive feeling
that I was floating as I lay firmly on the bed.

Just a mortal cold, I thought. The result of letting myself become so miserably chilled. It
will mar things, but it is also an experience, an experience I must explore.

The next time I woke up, the dog was standing beside the bed, and he was licking my
face. I put out my hand, felt his furry nose, and laughed at him, then coughed again,
throat burning, and realized I'd been coughing for some time.

The light was awfully bright. Wonderfully bright. Thank God, a bright lamp in this
murky world at last. I sat up. For a moment, I was too dazed to rationally acknowledge
what I saw.

The sky in the tops of the windows was perfectly blue, vibrantly blue, and the sunlight
was pouring in on the polished floor, and all the world appeared glorious in the
brightness- the bare tree branches with their white trimming of snow, and the snow-
covered roof opposite, and the room itself, full of whiteness and lustrous color, light
glancing off the mirror, and the crystal glass on the dresser, off the brass knob of the
bathroom door.

"Mon Dieu, look at it, Mojo," I whispered, throwing back the covers and rushing to the
window and shoving it all the way up. The cold air hit me, but what did it matter? Look
at the deep color of the sky, look at the high white clouds traveling to the west, look at
the rich and beautiful green of the tall pine tree in the neighboring yard.

Suddenly I was weeping uncontrollably, and coughing painfully once more.

"This is the miracle," I whispered. Mojo nudged me, giving a little high-pitched moan.
The mortal aches and pains didn't matter. This was the biblical promise which had gone
unfulfilled for two hundred years.

TWELVE

WITHIN moments of leaving the town house, of stepping out into the glorious daylight, I
knew that this experience would be worth all of the trials and the pain. And no mortal
chill, with all its debilitating symptoms would keep me from frolicking in the morning
sun.

Never mind that my overall physical weakness was driving me mad: that I seemed to be
made of stone as I plodded along with Mojo, that I couldn't jump two feet in the air when
I tried, or that pushing open the door of the butcher shop took a colossal effort; or that my
cold was growing steadily worse.

Once Mojo had devoured his breakfast of scraps, begged from the butcher, we were off
together to revel in the light everywhere, and I felt myself becoming drunk on the vision

of the sunlight falling upon windows and wet pavements, on the gleaming tops of
brightly enameled automobiles, on the glassy puddles where the snow had melted, upon
the plate-glass shop-windows, and upon the people-the thousands and thousands of happy
people, scurrying busily about the business of the day.

How different they were from the people of the night, for obviously, they felt safe in the
daylight, and walked and talked in a wholly unguarded fashion, carrying on the many
transactions of daytime, which are seldom performed with such vigor after dark.

Ah, to see the busy mothers with their radiant little children in tow, piling fruit into their
grocery baskets, to watch the big noisy delivery trucks park in the slushy streets as
powerfully built men lugged great cartons and cases of merchandise through back doors!
To see men shoveling snow and cleaning off windows, to see the cafes filled with
pleasantly distracted creatures consuming great quantities of coffee and odoriferous fried
breakfasts as they pored over the morning newspapers or fretted over the weather or
discussed the day's work. Enchanting to watch gangs of schoolchildren, in crisp
uniforms, braving the icy wind to organize their games in a sun-drenched asphalt yard.

A great optimistic energy bound all these beings together; one could feel it emanating
from the students rushing between buildings on the university campus, or gathered
together in close, warm restaurants to take lunch.

Like flowers to the light, these humans opened themselves, accelerating their pace, and
their speech. And when I felt the heat of the sun itself upon my face and hands, I, too,
opened as if I were a flower. I could feel the chemistry of this mortal body responding,
despite the congestion in my head and the tiresome pain in my freezing hands and feet.

Ignoring the cough, which was growing worse by the hour, and a new blurriness of
vision, which was a real nuisance, I took Mojo with me along noisy M Street into
Washington, the capital of the nation proper, wandering about the marble memorials and
monuments, the vast and impressive official buildings and residences, and up through the
soft sad beauty of Arlington Cemetery with its thousands of tiny identical headstones,
and to the handsome and dusty little mansion of the great Confederate general Robert E.
Lee.

I was delirious by this time. And very possibly all my physical discomfort added to my
happiness-giving me a drowsy, frenzied attitude rather like that of a person drunk or
drugged. I don't know. I only know I was happy, very happy, and the world by light was
not the world by dark.

Many, many tourists braved the cold as I did to see the famous sights. I reveled silently in
their enthusiasm, realizing that all of these beings were affected by the broad open vistas
of the capital city as I was affected by them-that it gladdened them and transformed them
to see the vast blue sky overhead, and the many spectacular stone memorials to the
accomplishments of humankind.

"I'm one of them!" I realized suddenly-not Cain forever seeking the blood of his brother.
I looked about me in a daze. "I'm one of you!"

For a long moment I gazed down upon the city from the heights of Arlington, shivering
with cold, and even crying a little at the astonishing spectacle of it-so orderly, so
representative of the principles of the great Age of Reason-wishing that Louis were with
me, or that David were here, and aching in my heart that they would so surely disapprove
of what I had done.

But, oh, this was the true planet I beheld, the living earth born of sunshine and warmth,
even under its shimmering mantle of winter snow.

I went down the hill finally, Mojo now and then running ahead and then circling back to
accompany me, and I walked along the bank of the frozen Potomac, wondering at the sun
reflected in the ice and melting snow. It was fun even to watch the melting snow.

Sometime in midafternoon I ended up once more in the great marble Jefferson Memorial,
an elegant and spacious Greek pavilion with the most solemn and moving words
engraved on its walls. My heart was bursting as I realized that for these precious hours I
wasn't cut off from the sentiments expressed here. Indeed, for this little while I mingled
with the human crowd, quite indistinguishable from anyone else.

But this was a lie, wasn't it? I carried my guilt within me- in the continuity of my
memory, in my irreducible individual soul: Lestat the killer, Lestat the prowler of the
night. I thought of Louis's warning: "You can't become human by simply taking over a
human body!" I saw the stricken and tragic look on his face.

But Lord God, what if the Vampire Lestat hadn't ever existed, what if he were merely the
literary creation, the pure invention, of the man in whose body I now lived and breathed!
What a beautiful idea!

I remained for a long time on the steps of the memorial, my head bowed, the wind tearing
at my clothes. A kind woman told me I was ill and must button up my coat. I stared into
her eyes, realizing that she saw only a young man there before her. She was neither
dazzled nor afraid. No hunger lurked in me to end her life so that I might better enjoy
mine. Poor lovely creature of pale blue eyes and fading hair! Very suddenly I caught her
small wrinkled hand and kissed it, and I told her in French that I loved her, and I watched
the smile spread over her narrow withered face. How lovely she appeared to me, as
lovely as any human I'd ever gazed upon with my vampire eyes.

All the sordid shabbiness of last night was erased in these daylight hours. I think my
greatest dreams of this adventure had been fulfilled.

But the winter was heavy and hard all around me. Even cheered by the blue sky, people
spoke to one another of a worse storm yet to come. Shops were closing early, streets
would again become impassable, the airport had been shut down. Passersby warned me to

lay in candles, as the city might lose electric power. And an old gentleman, with a thick
wool cap pulled down over his head, scolded me for not wearing a hat. A young woman
told me that I looked sick and should hurry home.

Only a cold, I answered. A good cough tonic or whatever they call it now would be
perfectly fine. Raglan James would know what to do when he reclaimed this body. He
wouldn't be too happy about it, but he could console himself with his twenty million.
Besides I had hours still to dose myself with commercial remedies and rest.

For the time being, I was too relentlessly uncomfortable overall to worry about such a
thing. I'd wasted enough time upon such petty distractions. And of course help for all the
petty annoyances of life-ah, real life-was at hand.

Indeed, I'd forgotten all about the time, hadn't I? My money should be at the agency,
waiting for me. I caught a glimpse of a clock in a store window. Half past two. The big
cheap watch on my wrist said the same thing. Why, I had only about thirteen hours left.

Thirteen hours in this awful body, with a throbbing head and sore limbs! My happiness
vanished in a sudden cold thrill of fear. Oh, but this day was too fine to be ruined by
cowardice! I simply put that out of my mind.

Bits of remembered poetry had come to me... and now and then a very dim memory of
that last mortal winter, of crouching by the hearth in the great hall of my father's house,
and trying desperately to warm my hands by a waning fire. But in general, I had been
locked to the moment in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to my feverish, calculating,
and mischievous little mind. So enchanted had I been by what was going on around me,
that for hours I had experienced no preoccupation or distraction of any kind.

This was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. And in my euphoria, I was certain that I
would carry with me forever the memory of this simple day.

The walk back to Georgetown seemed at times an impossible feat. Even before I'd left the
Jefferson Memorial, the sky had begun to cloud over and was fast becoming the color of
dull tin. The light was drying up as if it were liquid.

Yet I was loving it in its more melancholy manifestations. I was mesmerized by the sight
of anxious mortals locking up storefronts and hurrying against the wind with sacks of
groceries, of lighted headlamps flashing brightly and almost cheerily in the deepening
gloom.

There would be no twilight, I realized that. Ah, very sad indeed. But as a vampire I often
beheld the twilight. So why should I complain? Nevertheless, just for one second I
regretted that I had spent my precious tune in the teeth of the bitter whiter. But for
reasons I could scarce explain to myself, it had been just what I wanted. Winter bitter as
the winters of my childhood. Bitter as that time hi Paris when Magnus had carried me to
his lair. I was satisfied. I was content.

By the tune I reached the agency, even I knew that the fever and chills were getting the
best of me and I must seek shelter and food. I was happy to discover that my money had
arrived. A new credit card had been imprinted for me under one of my Paris aliases,
Lionel Potter, and a wallet of traveler's checks had been prepared. I shoved all these in
my pockets, and as the horrified clerk watched in silence, I shoved the thirty thousand
dollars into my pockets as well.

"Somebody's going to rob you!" he whispered, leaning towards me across the counter. He
said something I could scarce follow about getting to the bank with the money before it
closed. And then I should go to the emergency room, immediately before the blizzard
came in. Lots of people with the flu out there, practically an epidemic every winter it
seemed.

For the sake of simplicity I agreed to everything, but I hadn't the slightest intention of
spending my remaining mortal hours in the clutches of doctors. Besides, such a step
wasn't required. All I needed was hot food, I thought, and some hot beverage, and the
peace of a soft hotel bed. Then I could return this body to James in tolerable condition,
and shoot cleanly back into my own.

But first I must have a change of clothes. It was only three-fifteen, and I had some twelve
hours to go and could not bear for a moment longer these dirty and miserable rags!

I reached the great fancy Georgetown Mall just as it was closing so that people could flee
the blizzard, but I managed to talk my way into a fancy clothier's, where I quickly made a
pile for the impatient clerk of everything I thought I would need. A wave of dizziness
caught me as I gave him the small plastic card. It amused me that he had now lost all
impatience and was trying to sell me random scarves and ties. I could scarce understand
what he was saying to me. Ah, yes, ring it up. We'll give all this to Mr. James at three
a.m. Mr. James likes to get things for nothing. Sure, the other sweater, and why not, the
scarf too.

As I managed to escape with my heavy load of shiny boxes and sacks, another wave of
dizziness hit me. Indeed a blackness was rising all around me; it would have been very
easy to sink to my knees and pass out on the floor. A lovely young woman came to my
rescue. "You look like you're going to faint!" I was sweating profusely now, and even in
the warmth of the mall I was cold.

What I needed was a taxi, I explained to her, but none was to be found. Indeed the
crowds were very thin on M Street, and the snow had begun to fall once more.

I had spied a handsome brick hotel only a few blocks away, with the lovely romantic
name The Four Seasons, and to that point I hurried, waving good-bye to the beautiful and
kind young creature, and bowing my head as I burrowed into the fierce wind. I'd be warm
and safe in The Four Seasons, I thought merrily, loving to speak the meaningful name

aloud. I could dine there, and need not go back to the awful town house until the hour for
the exchange drew near.

When I finally reached the lobby of the place, I found it more than satisfactory, and laid
down a large deposit hi guarantee that Mojo would be as clean and gentlemanly during
our stay as I would be myself. The suite was sumptuous, with large windows over the
Potomac, seemingly endless stretches of pale carpet, bathrooms fit for a Roman emperor,
television sets and refrigerators concealed in handsome wood cabinets, and other little
contraptions galore.

At once I ordered a feast for myself and Mojo, then I opened the small bar, which was
stuffed with candies and other tasty tidbits as well as spirits, and helped myself to the
best Scotch. Absolutely ghastly taste! How the hell could David drink this? The
chocolate bar was better. Damned fantastic! I gobbled all of it, then called back the
restaurant and added every chocolate dessert on the menu to my order of only moments
ago.

David, I must call David, I thought. But it seemed an impossibility to climb out of the
chair and move to the phone on the desk. And there was so much I wanted to consider, to
fix in my mind. Discomforts be damned, this had been a hell of an experience! I was even
getting used to these enormous hands hanging an inch below where they ought to be, and
this porous dark skin. Mustn't fall asleep. What a waste . . .

Then the bell startled me! I had been sleeping. A full half hour of mortal time had passed.
I struggled to my feet, as if I were hefting bricks with every step, and managed somehow
to open the door for the room service attendant, an attractive older female with light
yellow hair, who wheeled a linen-draped table, laden with food, into the living room of
the suite.

I gave the steak to Mojo, having already laid down a bath towel for a dog tablecloth, and
he set about to chewing lustily, lying down as he did so, which only the very large dogs
do, and which made him look all the more monstrous, like a lion lazily gnawing upon a
Christian pinned helplessly between his huge paws.

I at once drank the hot soup, unable to taste anything much in it, but that was to be
expected with such a miserable cold. The wine was marvelous, much better than the vin
ordinaire of the last night, and though it still tasted very thin compared to blood, I
downed two glasses of it, and was about to devour the pasta, as they called it here, when I
looked up and realized that the fretful female attendant was still there.

"You're sick," she said, "you're very, very sick."

"Nonsense, ma chere," I said, "I have a cold, a mortal cold, no more and no less." I fished
in my shirt pocket for my wad of bills, gave her several twenties, and told her to go. She
was very reluctant.

"That's quite a cough," she said. "I think you're really sick. You've been outside a long
time, haven't you?"

I stared at her, absolutely weakened by her concern, and realizing that I was in true
danger of bursting stupidly into tears. I wanted to warn her that I was a monster, that this
body was merely stolen. How tender she was, how obviously habitually kind.

"We're all connected," I said to her, "all humankind. We must care for each other, mustn't
we?" I figured she would be horrified by these sloppy sentiments, issued with such thick
drunken emotion, and that she would now take her leave. But she did not.

"Yes, we are," she said. "Let me call a doctor for you before the storm gets any worse."

"No, dearest, go now," I said.

And with one last worried look at me, she did at last go out.

After I'd consumed the plate of fancy cheese-sauced noodles, another bit of salt and
tastelessness, I began to wonder if she wasn't right. I went into the bathroom and
switched on the lights. The man in the mirror did look dreadful, his eyes bloodshot, his
entire body shivering, and his naturally dark skin rather yellowish if not downright pale.

I felt of my forehead, but what good did that do? Surely I can't die of this, I thought. But
then I wasn't so sure. I remembered the expression on the face of the attendant, and the
concern of the people who'd spoken to me in the street. Another fit of coughing overcame
me.

I must take action, I thought. But what action? What if the doctors gave me some
powerful sedative which so numbed me that I couldn't return to the town house? And
what if their drugs affected my concentration so that the switch could not be made? Good
Lord, I had not even tried to rise up out of this human body, a trick I knew so well in my
other form.

I didn't want to try it either. What if I couldn't get back! No, wait for James for such
experiments, and stay away from doctors with needles!

The bell sounded. It was the tenderhearted female attendant, and this time she had a
sackful of medicines-bottles of bright red and green liquids, and plastic containers of
pills. "You really ought to call a doctor," she said, as she placed all of these on the marble
dresser in a row. "Do you want for us to call a doctor?"

"Absolutely not," I said, pushing more money at her, and guiding her out the door. But
wait, she said. Would I let her take the dog out, please, as he had just eaten?

Ah, yes, that was a marvelous idea. I pushed more bank notes into her hand. I told Mojo
to go with her, and do whatever she said. She seemed fascinated by Mojo. She murmured
something to the effect that his head was larger than her own.

I returned to the bathroom and stared at the little bottles which she had brought. I was
leery of these medicines! But then it wasn't very gentlemanly of me to return a sick body
to James.

Indeed, what if James didn't want it. No, not likely. He'd take the twenty million and the
cough and the chills.

I drank a revolting gulp of the green medicine, fighting a convulsion of nausea, and then
forced myself into the living room, where I collapsed at the desk.

There was hotel stationery there and a ballpoint pen which worked fairly well, in that
slippery skittery fashion of ballpoint pens. I began to write, discovering that it was very
difficult for me with these big fingers, but persevering, describing in hurried detail all
that I had felt and seen.

On and on I wrote, though I could scarce keep my head up, and scarce breathe for the
thickening of the cold. Finally, when there was no more paper and I could not read my
own scrawl any longer, I stuffed these pages into an envelope, licked it and sealed it, and
addressed it to myself care of my apartment in New Orleans, and then stuffed it into my
shirt pocket, secure beneath my sweater, where it would not be lost.

Finally I stretched out on the floor. Sleep must take me now. It must cover many of the
mortal hours remaining to me, for I had no strength for anything more.

But I did not sleep very deeply. I was too feverish, and too full of fear. I remember the
gentle female attendant coming with Mojo, and telling me again that I was ill.

I remember a night maid wandering in, who seemed to fuss about for hours. I remember
Mojo lying down beside me, and how warm he felt, and how I snuggled against him,
loving the smell of him, the good woolly wonderful smell of his coat, even if it was
nothing as strong as it would have been to me in my old body, and I did for one moment
think I was back hi France, in those old days.

But the memory of those old days had been hi some way obliterated by this experience.
Now and then I opened my eyes, saw an aureole about the burning lamp, saw the black
windows reflecting the furnishings, and fancied I could hear the snow outside.

At some point, I climbed to my feet, and made for the bathroom, striking my head hard
upon the doorframe, and falling to my knees. Mon Dieu, these little torments! How do
mortals endure it? How did I ever endure it? What a pain! Like liquid spreading under the
skin.

But there were worse trials ahead. Sheer desperation forced me to use the toilet, as was
required of me, to clean myself carefully afterwards, disgusting! And to wash my hands.
Over and over, shivering with disgust, I washed my hands! When I discovered that the
face of this body was now covered with a really thick shadow of rough beard, I laughed.
What a crust it was over my upper lip and chin and even down into the collar of my shut.
What did I look like? A madman; a derelict. But I couldn't shave all this hair. I didn't
have a razor and I'd surely cut my own throat if I did.

What a soiled shirt. I'd forgotten to put on any of the clothes I'd purchased, but wasn't it
too late now for such a thing? With a dull woozy amazement, I saw by my watch that it
was two o'clock. Good Lord, the hour of transformation was almost at hand.

"Come, Mojo," I said, and we sought the stairs rather than the elevator, which was no
great feat as we were only one floor above the ground, and we slipped out through the
quiet and near-deserted lobby and into the night.

Deep drifts of snow lay everywhere. The streets were clearly impassable to traffic, and
there were tunes when I fell on my knees again, arms going deep into the snow, and Mojo
licked my face as though he were trying to keep me warm. But I continued, struggling
uphill, whatever my state of mind and body, until at last I turned the corner, and saw the
lights of the familiar town house ahead.

The darkened kitchen was now quite filled with deep, soft snow. It seemed a simple
matter to plow through it until I realized that a frozen layer-from the storm of the night
before-lay beneath it, which was quite slick.

Nevertheless I managed to reach the living room safely, and lay down shivering on the
floor. Only then did I realize I'd forgotten my overcoat, and all the money stuffed hi its
pockets. Only a few bills were left in my shirt. But no matter. The Body Thief would
soon be here. I would have my own form back again, all my powers! And then how sweet
it would be to reflect on everything, safe and sound in my digs in New Orleans, when
illness and cold would mean nothing, when aches and pains would exist no more, when I
was the Vampire Lestat again, soaring over the rooftops, reaching with outstretched
hands for the distant stars.

The place seemed chilly compared to the hotel. I turned over once, peering at the little
fireplace, and tried to light the logs with my mind. Then I laughed as I remembered I
wasn't Lestat yet, but that James would soon arrive.

"Mojo, I can't endure this body a moment longer," I whispered. The dog sat before the
front window, panting as he looked out into the night, his breath making steam on the
dim glass.

I tried to stay awake, but I couldn't. The colder I became, the drowsier I became. And
then a most frightening thought took hold of me. What if I couldn't rise out of this body at
the appointed moment? If I couldn't make fire, if I couldn't read minds, if I couldn't. . .

Half wrapped in dreams, I tried the little psychic trick. I let my mind sink almost to the
edge of dreams. I felt the low delicious vibratory warning that often precedes the rise of
the spirit body. But nothing of an unusual nature happened. Again, I tried. "Go up," I
said. I tried to picture the ethereal shape of myself tearing loose and rising unfettered to
the ceiling. No luck. Might as well try to sprout feathered wings. And I was so tired, so
full of pain. Indeed, I lay anchored in these hopeless limbs, fastened to this aching chest,
scarce able to take a breath without a struggle.

But James would soon be here. The sorcerer, the one who knew the trick. Yes, James,
greedy for his twenty million, would surely guide the whole process.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to the light of day.

I sat bolt upright, staring before me. There could be no mistake. The sun was high in the
heavens and spilling in a riot" of light through the front windows and onto the lacquered
floor. I could hear the sounds of traffic outside.

"My God," I whispered in English, for Mon Dieu simply doesn't mean the same thing.
"My God, my God, my God."

I lay back down again, chest heaving, an£ too stunned for the moment to form a coherent
thought or attitude, or to decide whether it was rage I felt or blind fear. Then slowly I
lifted my wrist so that I might read the watch. Eleven forty-seven in the a.m.

Within less than fifteen minutes the fortune of twenty million dollars, held in trust at the
downtown bank, would revert once more to Lestan Gregor, my pseudonymous self, who
had been left here in this body by Raglan James, who had obviously not returned to this
town house before morning to effect the switch which was part of our bargain and now,
having forfeited that immense fortune, was very likely never to come back.

"Oh, God help me," I said aloud, the phlegm at once coming up in my throat, and the
coughs sending deep stabs of pain into my chest. "I knew it," I whispered. "I knew it."
What a fool I'd been, what an extraordinary fool.

You miserable wretch, I thought, you despicable Body Thief, you will not get away with
it, damn you! How dare you do this to me, how dare you! And this body! This body in
which you've left me, which is all I have with which to hunt you down, is truly truly sick.

By the time I staggered out into the street, it was twelve noon on the dot. But what did it
matter? I couldn't remember the name or the location of the bank. I couldn't have given a
good reason for going there anyway. Why should I claim the twenty million which in
forty-five seconds would revert to me anyway? Indeed where was I to take this shivering
mass of flesh?

To the hotel to reclaim my money and my clothing?

To the hospital for the medicine of which I was sorely in need?

Or to New Orleans to Louis, Louis who had to help me, Louis who was perhaps the only
one who really could. And how was I to locate that miserable conniving self-destructive
Body Thief if I did not have the help of Louis! Oh, but what would Louis do when I
approached him? What would his judgment be when he realized what I'd done?

I was falling. I'd lost my balance. I reached for the iron railing too late. A man was
rushing towards me. Pain exploded in the back of my head as it struck the step. I closed
my eyes, clenching my teeth not to cry out. Then opened them again, and I saw above me
the most serene blue sky.

"Call an ambulance," said the man to another beside him. Just dark featureless shapes
against the glaring sky, the bright and wholesome sky.

"No!" I struggled to shout, but it came out a hoarse whisper. "I have to get to New
Orleans!" In a rush of words I tried to explain about the hotel, the money, the clothing,
would someone help me up, would someone call a taxi, I had to leave Georgetown for
New Orleans at once.

Then I was lying very quietly in the snow. And I thought how lovely was the sky
overhead, with the thin white clouds racing across it, and even these dim shadows that
surrounded me, these people who whispered to one another so softly and furtively that I
couldn't hear. And Mojo barking, Mojo barking and barking. I tried, but I couldn't speak,
not even to tell him that everything would be fine, just perfectly fine.

A little girl came up. I could make out her long hair, and her little puff sleeves and a bit
of ribbon blowing in the wind. She was looking down at me like the others, her face all
shadows and the sky behind her gleaming frightfully, dangerously.

"Good Lord, Claudia, the sunlight, get out of it!" I cried.

"Lie still, mister, they're coming for you."

"Just lie quiet, buddy."

Where was she? Where had she gone? I shut my eyes, listening for the click of her heels
on the pavement. Was that laughter I heard?

The ambulance. Oxygen mask. Needle. And I understood.

I was going to die in this body, and it would be so simple! Like a billion other mortals, I
was going to die. Ah, this was the reason for all of it, the reason the Body Thief had come
to me, the Angel of Death to give me the means which I had sought with lies and pride
and self-deception. I was going to die.

And I didn't want to die!

"God, please, not like this, not in this body." I closed my eyes as I whispered. "Not yet,
not now. Oh, please, I don't want to! I don't want to die. Don't let me die." I was crying, I
was broken and terrified and crying. Oh, but it was perfect, wasn't it? Lord God, had a
more perfect pattern ever revealed itself to me - the craven monster who had gone into
the Gobi not to seek the fire from heaven but for pride, for pride, for pride.

My eyes were squeezed shut. I could feel the tears running down my face. "Don't let me
die, please, please, don't let me die. Not now, not like this, not in this body! Help me!"

A small hand touched me, struggling to slip into mine, and then it was done, holding tight
to me, tender and warm. Ah, so soft. So very little. And you know whose hand it is, you
know, but you're too scared to open your eyes.

If she's there, then you are really dying. I can't open my eyes. I'm afraid, oh, so afraid.
Shivering and sobbing, I held her little hand so tight that surely I was crushing it, but I
wouldn't open my eyes.

Louis, she's here. She's come for me. Help me, Louis, please. I can't look at her. I won't. I
can't get my hand loose from her!

And where are you? Asleep in the earth, deep beneath your wild and neglected garden,
with the winter sun pouring down on the flowers, asleep until the night comes again.

"Marius, help me. Pandora, wherever you are, help me. Khayman, come and help me.
Armand, no hatred between us now. I need you! Jesse, don't let this happen to me."

Oh, the low and sorry murmur of a demon's prayer beneath the wailing of the siren. Don't
open your eyes. Don't look at her. If you do, it's finished.

Did you call out for help in the last moments, Claudia? Were you afraid? Did you see the
light like the fire of hell filling the air well, or was it the great and beautiful light filling
the entire world with love?

We stood in the graveyard together, in the warm fragrant evening, full of distant stars and
soft purple light. Yes, all the many colors of darkness. Look at her shining skin, the dark
blood bruise of her lips, and deep color of her eyes. She was holding her bouquet of
yellow and white chrysanthemums. I shall never forget that fragrance.

"Is my mother buried here?"

"I don't know, petite cherie. I never even knew her name." She was all rotted and stinking
when I came upon her, the ants were crawling all over her eyes and into her open mouth.

"You should have found out her name. You should have done that for me. I would like to
know where she is buried."

"That was half a century ago, cherie. Hate me for the larger things. Hate me, if you will,
because you don't lie now at her side. Would she keep you warm if you did? Blood is
warm, cherie. Come with me, and drink blood, as you and I know how to do. We can
drink blood together unto the end of the world."

"Ah, you have an answer for everything." How cold her smile. In these shadows one can
almost see the woman in her, defying the permanent stamp of child sweetness, with the
inevitable enticement to kiss, to hold, to love.

"We are death, ma cherie, death is the final answer." I gathered her up in my arms, felt
her tucked against me, kissed her, kissed her, and kissed her vampire skin. "There are no
questions after that."

Her hand touched my forehead.

The ambulance was speeding, as if the siren were chasing it, as if the siren were the force
driving it on. Her hand touched my eyelids. I won't look at you!

Oh, please, help me ... the dreary prayer of the devil to his cohorts, as he tumbles deeper
and deeper towards hell.

THIRTEEN

YES, I know where we are. You've been trying to bring me back here from the
beginning, to the little hospital." How forlorn it looked now, so crude with its clay walls,
and wooden shuttered windows, and the little beds lashed together out of barely finished
wood. Yet she was there in the bed, wasn't she? I know the nurse, yes, and the old round-
shouldered doctor, and I see you there in the bed-that's you, the little one with the curls
on the top of the blanket, and Louis there . ..

All right, why am I here? I know this is a dream. It's not death. Death has no particular
regard for people.

"Are you sure?" she said. She sat on the straight-back chair, golden hair done up in a blue
ribbon, and there were blue satin slippers on her small feet. So that meant she was there
in the bed, and there on the chair, my little French doll, my beauty, with the high rounded
insteps, and the perfectly shaped little hands.

"And you, you're here with us and you're in a bed in the Washington, D.C., emergency
room. You know you're dying down there, don't you?"

"Severe hypothermia, very possibly pneumonia. But how do we know what infections
we've got? Hit him with antibiotics. There's no way we can get this man on oxygen now.
If we send him to University, he'd end up in the hall there too."

"Don't let me die. Please . . . I'm so afraid."

"We're here with you, we're taking care of you. Can you tell me your name? Is there
some family whom we can notify?"

"Go ahead, tell them who you really are," she said with a little silvery laugh, her voice
always so delicate, so very pretty. I can feel her tender little lips, just to look at them. I
used to like to press my finger against her lower lip, playfully, when I kissed her eyelids,
and her smooth forehead.

"Don't be such a little smarty!" I said between my teeth. "Besides, who am I down
there?"

"Not a human being, if that's what you mean. Nothing could make you human."

"All right, I'll give you five minutes. Why did you bring me here? What do you want me
to say-that I'm sorry about what I did, taking you out of that bed and making you a
vampire? Well, do you want the truth, the rock-bottom deathbed truth? I don't know if I
am. I'm sorry you suffered. I'm sorry anybody has to suffer. But I can't say for certain that
I'm sorry for that little trick."

"Aren't you the least little bit afraid of standing by yourself like this?"

"If the truth can't save me, nothing can." How I hated the smell of sickness around me, of
all those little bodies, feverish and wet beneath their drab coverings, the entire dingy and
hopeless little hospital of so many decades ago.

"My father who art in hell, Lestat be your name."

"And you? After the sun burnt you up in the air well in the Theatre of the Vampires, did
you go to hell?"

Laughter, such high pure laughter, like glittering coins shaken loose from a purse.

"I'll never tell!"

"Now, I know this is a dream. That's all it's been from the beginning. Why would
someone come back from the dead to say such trivial and inane things."

"Happens all the time, Lestat. Don't get so worked up. I want you to pay attention now.
Look at these little beds, look at these children suffering."

"I took you away from it," I said.

"Aye, the way that Magnus took you away from your life, and gave you something
monstrous and evil in return. You made me a slayer of my brothers and my sisters. All
my sins have their origin in that moment, when you reached for me and lifted me from
that bed."

"No, you can't blame it all on me. I won't accept it. Is the father parent to the crimes of
his child? All right, so what if it is true. Who is there to keep count? That's the problem,
don't you see? There is no one."

"So is it right, therefore, that we kill?"

"I gave you life, Claudia. It wasn't for all time, no, but it was life, and even our life is
better than death."

"How you lie, Lestat. 'Even our life,' you say. The truth is, you think our accursed life is
better than life itself. Admit it. Look at you down there in your human body. How you've
hated it."

"It's true. I do admit it. But now, let's hear you speak from your heart, my little beauty,
my little enchantress. Would you really have chosen death in that tiny bed rather than the
life I gave you? Come now, tell me. Or is this like a mortal courtroom, where the judge
can lie and the lawyers can lie, and only those on the stand must tell the truth?"

So thoughtfully she looked at me, one chubby hand playing with the embroidered hem of
her gown. When she lowered her gaze the light shone exquisitely on her cheeks, on her
small dark mouth. Ah, such a creation. The vampire doll.

"What did I know of choices?" she said, staring forward, eyes big and glassy and full of
light. "I hadn't reached the age of reason when you did your filthy work, and by the way,
Father, I've always wanted to know: Did you enjoy letting me suck the blood from your
wrist?"

"That doesn't matter," I whispered. I looked away from her to the dying waif beneath the
blanket. I saw the nurse in a ragged dress, hair pinned to the back of her neck, moving
listlessly from bed to bed. "Mortal children are conceived in pleasure," I said, but I didn't
know anymore if she was listening. I didn't want to look at her. "I can't lie. It doesn't
matter if there is a judge or jury. I..."

"Don't try to talk. I've given you a combination of drugs that will help you. Your fever's
going down already. We're drying up the congestion in your lungs."

"Don't let me die, please don't. It's all unfinished and it's monstrous. I'll go to hell if there
is one, but I don't think there is. If there is, it's a hospital like this one, only it's filled with
sick children, dying children. But I think there's just death."

"A hospital full of children?"

"Ah, look at the way she's smiling at you, the way she puts her hand on your forehead.
Women love you, Lestat. She loves you, even in that body, look at her. Such love."

"Why shouldn't she care about me? She's a nurse, isn't she? And I'm a dying man."

"And such a beautiful dying man. I should have known you wouldn't do this switch
unless someone offered you a beautiful body. What a vain, superficial being you are!
Look at that face. Better looking than your own face."

"I wouldn't go that far!"

She gave me the most sly smile, her face glowing in the dim, dreary room.

"Don't worry, I'm with you. I'll sit right here with you until you're better."

"I've seen so many humans die. I've caused their deaths. It's so simple and treacherous,
the moment when life goes out of the body. They simply slip away."

"You're saying crazy things."

"No, I'm telling you the truth, and you know it. I can't say I'll make amends if Hive. I
don't think it's possible. Yet I'm scared to death of dying. Don't let go my hand."

"Lestat, why are we here?"

Louis?

I looked up. He was standing in the door of the crude little hospital, confused, faintly
disheveled, the way he'd looked from the night I'd made him, not the wrathful blinded
young mortal anymore, but the dark gentleman with the quiet in his eyes, with the infinite
patience of a saint in his soul.

"Help me up," I said, "I have to get her from the little bed."

He put out his hand, but he was so confused. Didn't he share in that sin? No, of course
not, because he was forever blundering and suffering, atoning for it all even as he did it. I
was the devil. I was the only one who could gather her from the little bed.

Time now to lie to the doctor. "The child there, that is my child."

And he'd be oh, so glad to have one less burden.

"Take her, monsieur, and thank you." He looked gratefully at the gold coins as I tossed
them on the bed. Surely I did that. Surely I didn't fail to help them. "Yes, thank you. God
bless you."

I'm sure He will. He always has. I bless Him too.

"Sleep now. As soon as there's a room available, we'll move you into it, you'll be more
comfortable."

"Why are there so many here? Please don't leave me."

"No, I'll stay with you. I'll sit right here."

Eight o'clock. I was lying on the gurney, with the needle in my arm, and the plastic sack
of fluid catching the light so beautifully, and I could see the clock perfectly. Slowly I
turned my head.

A woman was there. She wore her coat now, very black against her white stockings and
her thick soft white shoes. Her hair was in a thick coil on the back of her head, and she
was reading. She had a broad face, of very strong bones and clear skin, and large hazel
eyes. Her eyebrows were dark and perfectly drawn, and when she looked up at me, I
loved her expression. She closed the book soundlessly and smiled.

"You're better," she said. A rich, soft voice. A bit of bluish shadow beneath her eyes.

"Am I?" The noise hurt my ears. So many people. Doors swooshing open and shut.

She stood up and came across the corridor, and took my hand in hers.

"Oh, yes, much better."

"Then I'D live?"

"Yes," she said. But she wasn't sure. Did she mean for me to see that she wasn't sure?

"Don't let me die in this body," I said, moistening my lips with my tongue. They felt so
dry! Lord God, how I hated this body, hated the heave of the chest, hated even the voice
coming from my lips, and the pain behind my eyes was unbearable.

"There you go again," she said, her smile brightening.

"Sit with me."

"I am. I told you I wouldn't leave. I'll stay here with you."

"Help me and you help the devil," I whispered.

"So you told me," she said.

"Want to hear the whole tale?"

"Only if you stay calm as you tell me, if you take your time."

"What a lovely face you have. What is your name?"

"Gretchen."

"You're a nun, aren't you, Gretchen?"

"How did you know that?"

"I could tell. Your hands, for one thing, the little silver wedding band, and something
about your face, a radiance- the radiance of those who believe. And the fact that you
stayed with me, Gretchen, when the others told you to go on. I know nuns when I see
them. I'm the devil and when I behold goodness I know it."

Were those tears hovering in her eyes?

"You're teasing me," she said kindly. "There's a little tag here on my pocket. It says I'm a
nun, doesn't it? Sister Marguerite."

"I didn't see it, Gretchen. I didn't mean to make you cry."

"You're better. Much better. I think you're going to be all right."

"I'm the devil, Gretchen. Oh, not Satan' himself, Son of Morning, ben Sharar. But bad,
very bad. Demon of the first rank, certainly."

"You're dreaming. It's the fever."

"Wouldn't that be splendid? Yesterday I stood in the snow and tried to imagine just such
a thing-that all my life of evil was but the dream of a mortal man. No such luck,
Gretchen. The devil needs you. The devil's crying. He wants you to hold his hand. You're
not afraid of the devil, are you?"

"Not if he requires an act of mercy. Sleep now. They're coming to give you another shot.
I'm not leaving. Here, I'll bring the chair to the side of the bed so you can hold my hand."

"What are you doing, Lestat?"

We were in our hotel suite now, much better place than that stinking hospital-I'll take a
good hotel suite over a stinking hospital anytime-and Louis had drunk her blood, poor
helpless Louis.

"Claudia, Claudia, listen to me. Come round, Claudia . . . You're ill, do you hear me?
You must do as I tell you to get well." I bit through the flesh of my own wrist, and when
the blood began to spill, I put it to her lips. "That's it, dear, more..."

"Try to drink a little of this." She slipped her hand behind my neck. Ah, the pain when I
lifted my head.

"It tastes so thin. It's not like blood at all."

Her lids were heavy and smooth over her downcast eyes. Like a Grecian woman painted
by Picasso, so simple she seemed, large-boned and fine and strong. Had anybody ever
kissed her nun's mouth?

"People are dying here, aren't they? That's why the corridors are crowded. I hear people
crying. It's an epidemic, isn't it?"

"It's a bad time," she said, her virginal lips barely moving. "But you'll be all right. I'm
here."

Louis -was so angry.

"But why, Lestat?"

Because she was beautiful, because she was dying, because I wanted to see if it would
work. Because nobody wanted her and she was there, and I picked her up and held her in
my arms. Because it was something I could accomplish, like the little candle flame in the
church making another flame and still retaining its own light-my way of creating, my
only way, don't you see? One moment there were two of us, and then we were three.

He was so heartbroken, standing there in his long black cloak, yet he could not stop
looking at her, at her polished ivory cheeks, her tiny wrists. Imagine it, a child vampire!
One of us.

"I understand."

Who spoke? I was startled, but it wasn't Louis, it was David, David standing near with
his copy of the Bible. Louis looked up slowly. He didn 't know who David was.

"Are we close to God when we create something out of nothing? When we pretend we
are the tiny flame and we make other flames?"

David shook his head. "A bad mistake."

"And so is the whole world, then. She's our daughter-"

"I'm not your daughter. I'm my mama's daughter."

"No, dear, not anymore." I looked up at David. "Well, answer me."

"Why do you claim such high aims for what you did?" he asked, but he was so
compassionate, so gentle. Louis was still horrified, staring at her, at her small white feet.
Such seductive little feet.

"And then I decided to do it, I didn't care what he did with my body if he could put me
into this human form for twenty-four hours so that I could see the sunlight, feel what
mortals feel, know their weakness and their pain." I pressed her hand as I spoke.

She nodded, wiping my forehead again, feeling my pulse with her firm warm fingers.

"... and I decided to do it, simply do it. Oh, I know it was wrong, wrong to let him go
with all the power, but can you imagine, and now you see, I can't die hi this body. The
others won't even know what's happened to me. If they knew, they'd come. . ."

"The other vampires," she whispered.

"Yes." And then I was telling her all about them, about my search so long ago to find the
others, thinking that if I only

knew the history of things, it would explain the mystery... On and on I talked to her,
explaining us, what we were, all about my trek through the centuries, and then the lure of
the rock music, the perfect theatre for me, and what I'd wanted to do, about David and
God and the Devil in the Paris cafe, and David by the fire with the Bible in his hand,
saying God is not perfect. Sometimes my eyes were closed; sometimes they were open.
She was holding my hand all the while.

People came and went. Doctors argued. A woman was cry-nig. Outside it was light again.
I saw it when the door opened, and that cruel blast of cold air swept through the corridor.
"How are we going to bathe all these patients?" a nurse asked. "That woman should be in
isolation. Call the doctor. Tell him we have a case of meningitis on the floor."

"It's morning again, isn't it? You must be so tired, you've been with me all through the
afternoon and the night. I'm so scared, but I know you have to go."

They were bringing hi more sick people. The doctor came to her and told her they would
have to turn all these gurneys so that their heads were against the wall.

The doctor told her she ought to go home. Several new nurses had just come on duty. She
ought to rest.

Was I crying? The little needle hurt my arm, and how dry my throat was, how dry my
lips.

"We can't even officially admit all these patients."

"Can you hear me, Gretchen?" I asked. "Can you follow what I'm saying?"

"You've asked me that over and over again," she said, "and each time I've told you that I
can hear, that I can understand. I'm listening to you. I won't leave you."

"Sweet Gretchen; Sister Gretchen."

"I want to take you out of here with me."

"What did you say?"

"To my house, with me. You're much better now, your fever's way down. But if you stay
here . . ." Confusion hi her face. She put the cup to my lips again and I drank several
gulps. "I understand. Yes, please take me, please." I tried to sit up. "I'm afraid to stay."

"Not just yet," she said, coaxing me back down on the gurney. Then she pulled the tape
off my arm and extracted that vicious little needle. Lord God, I had to piss! Was there no
end to these revolting physical necessities? What in the hell was mortality? Shitting,
pissing, eating, and then the same cycle all over again! Is this worth the vision of the
sunshine? It wasn't enough to be dying. I had to piss. But I couldn't bear using that bottle
again, even though I could scarce remember it.

"Why aren't you afraid of me?" I asked. "Don't you think I'm insane?"

"You only hurt people when you're a vampire," she said simply, "when you're in your
rightful body. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," I said. "That's true. But you're like Claudia. You're not afraid of anything."

"You are playing her for a fool," said Claudia. "You 're going to hurt her too."

"Nonsense, she doesn't believe it," I said. I sat down on the couch in the parlour of the
little hotel, surveying the small fancy room, feeling very at home with these delicate old
gilded furnishings. The eighteenth century, my century. Century of the rogue and the
rational man. My most perfect time.

Petit-point flowers. Brocade. Gilded swords and the laughter of drunken men in the street
below.

David was standing at the window, looking out over the low roofs of the colonial city.
Had he ever been in this century before?

"No, never!" he said in awe. "Every surface is worked by hand, every measurement is
irregular. How tenuous the hold of created things upon nature, as if it could slide back to
the earth so easily."

"Leave, David," said Louis, "you don't belong here. We have to remain. There's nothing
we can do."

"Now, that's a bit melodramatic," said Claudia. "Really." She wore that soiled little gown
from the hospital. Well, I would soon fix that. I would sack the shops of laces and
ribbons for her. I would buy silks for her, and tiny bracelets of silver, and rings set with
pearls.

I put my arm around her. "Ah, how nice to hear someone speak the truth, "I said. "Such
fine hair, and now it will be fine forever."

I tried to sit up again, but it seemed impossible. They were rushing an emergency case
through the corridor, two nurses on either side, and someone struck the gurney and the
vibration moved through me. Then it was quiet, and the hands on the big clock moved
with a little jerk. The man next to me moaned, and turned his head. There was a huge
white bandage over his eyes. How naked his mouth looked.

"We have to get these people into isolation," said a voice.

"Come on, now, I'm taking you home."

And Mojo, what had become of Mojo? Suppose they'd come to take him away? This was
a century in which they incarcerated dogs, simply for being dogs. I had to explain this to
her. She was lifting me, or trying to do it, slipping her arm around my shoulders. Mojo
barking in the town house. Was he trapped?

Louis was sad. "There's plague out there in the city."

"But that can't hurt you, David," I said.

"You're right," he said. "But there are other things ..."

Claudia laughed. "She's in love with you, you know."

"You would have died of the plague," I said.

"Maybe it was not my time."

"Do you believe that, that we have our time?"

"No, actually I don't," she said. "Maybe it was just easier to blame you for everything. I
never really knew right from wrong, you see."

"You had time to learn," I said.

"So have you, much more time than I ever had."

"Thank God you're taking me," I whispered. I was standing on my feet. "I'm so afraid," I
said. "Just plain ordinary afraid."

"One less burden to the hospital," Claudia said with a ringing laugh, her little feet
bobbing over the edge of the chair. She had on the fancy dress again, with the
embroidery. Now that was an improvement.

"Gretchen the beautiful," I said. "It makes a flame in your cheeks when I say that."

She smiled as she brought my left arm over her shoulder now, and kept her right arm
locked around my waist. "I'll take care of you," she whispered in my ear. "It isn't very
far."

Beside her little car, in the bitter wind, I stood holding that stinking organ, and watching
the yellow arc of piss, steam rising from it as it struck the melting snow. "Lord God," I
said. "That feels almost good! What are human beings that they can take pleasure in such
dreadful things!"

FOURTEEN

AT SOME point I began drifting in and out of sleep, aware that we were in a little car,
and that Mojo was with us, panting heavily by my ear, and that we were driving through
wooded snow-covered hills. I was wrapped in a blanket, and feeling miserably sick from
the motion of the car. I was also shivering. I scarcely remembered our return to the town
house, and the finding of Mojo, waiting there so patiently. I was vaguely sensible that I
could die in this gasoline-driven vehicle if another vehicle collided with it. It seemed
painfully real, real as the pain in my chest. And the Body Thief had tricked me.

Gretchen's eyes were set calmly on the winding road ahead, the dappled sunlight making
a soft lovely aureole about her head of all the fine little hairs which had come loose from
her thick coiled braid of hair, and the smooth pretty waves of hair growing back from her
temples. A nun, a beautiful nun, I thought, my eyes closing and opening as if of their own
volition.

But why is this nun being so good to me? Because she is a nun?

It was quiet all around us. There were houses in the trees, set upon knolls, and in little
valleys, and very close to one another. A rich suburb, perhaps, with those small-scale

wooden mansions rich mortals sometimes prefer to the truly palatial homes of the last
century.

At last we entered a drive beside one of these dwellings, passing through a copse of bare-
limbed trees, and came to a gentle halt beside a small gray-shingled cottage, obviously a
servants' quarters or guesthouse of sorts, at some remove from the main residence.

The rooms were cozy and warm. I wanted to sink down into the clean bed, but I was too
soiled for that, and insisted that I be allowed to bathe this distasteful body. Gretchen
strongly protested. I was sick, she said. I couldn't be bathed now. But I refused to listen. I
found the bathroom and wouldn't leave it.

Then I fell asleep again, leaning against the tile as Gretchen filled the tub. The steam felt
sweet to me. I could see Mojo lying by the bed, the wolflike sphinx, watching me through
the open door. Did she think he looked like the devil?

I felt groggy and impossibly weak and yet I was talking to Gretchen, trying to explain to
her how I had come to be in this predicament, and how I had to reach Louis in New
Orleans so that he could give me the powerful blood.

In a low voice, I told her many things in English, only using French when for some
reason I couldn't find the word I wanted, rambling on about the France of my time, and
the crude little colony of New Orleans where I had existed after, and how wondrous this
age was, and how I'd become a rock star for a brief time, because I thought that as a
symbol of evil I'd do some good.

Was this human to want her understanding, this desperate fear that I would die in her
arms, and no one would ever know who I'd been or what had taken place?

Ah, but the others, they knew, and they had not come to help me.

I told her all about this too. I described the ancients, and their disapproval. What was
there that I did not tell her? But she must understand, exquisite nun that she was, how
much I'd wanted as the rock singer to do good.

"That's the only way the literal Devil can do good," I said. "To play himself in a tableau
to expose evil. Unless one believes that he is doing good when he is doing evil, but that
would make a monster out of God, wouldn't it?-the Devil is simply part of the divine
plan."

She seemed to hear these words with critical attention. But it didn't surprise me when she
answered that the Devil had not been part of God's plan. Her voice was low and full of
humility. She was taking my soiled clothes off me as she spoke, and I don't think she
wanted to speak at all, but she was trying to calm me. The Devil had been the most
powerful of the angels, she said, and he had rejected God out of pride. Evil could not be
part of God's plan.

When I asked her if she knew all the arguments against this, and how illogical it was,
how illogical all of Christianity was, she said calmly that it didn't matter. What mattered
was doing good. That was all. It was simple.

"Ah, yes, then you understand."

"Perfectly," she said to me.

But I knew that she did not.

"You are good to me," I said. I kissed her gently on the cheek, as she helped me into the
warm water.

I lay back in the tub, watching her bathe me and noting that it felt good to me, the warm
water against my chest, the soft strokes of the sponge on my skin, perhaps better than
anything I had endured so far. But how long the human body felt! How strangely long my
arms. An image came back to me from an old film-of Frankenstein's monster lumbering
about, swinging his hands as if they didn't belong at the ends of his arms. I felt as if I
were that monster. In fact, to say that I felt entirely monstrous as a human is to hit the
perfect truth.

Seems I said something about it. She cautioned me to be quiet. She said that my body
was strong and fine, and not unnatural. She looked deeply worried. I felt a little ashamed,
letting her wash my hair, and my face. She explained it was the sort of thing which a
nurse did all the time.

She said she had spent her life in the foreign missions, nursing the sick, in places so
soiled and ill equipped that even the overcrowded Washington hospital seemed tike a
dream compared to them.

I watched her eyes move over my body, and then I saw the flush in her cheeks, and the
way that she looked at me, overcome with shame, and confusion. How curiously innocent
she was.

I smiled to myself, but I feared she would be hurt by her own carnal feelings. What a
cruel joke on us both that she found this body enticing. But there was no doubt that she
did, and it stirred my blood, my human blood, even in my fever and exhaustion. Ah, this
body was always struggling for something.

I could barely stand as she dried me all over with the towel, but I was determined to do it.
I kissed the top of her head, and she looked up at me, in a slow vague way, intrigued and
mystified. I wanted to kiss her again, but I hadn't the strength. She was very careful in
drying my hair, and gentle as she dried my face. No one had touched me in this manner
in a very long time. I told her I loved her for the sheer kindness of it.

"I hate this body so much; it's hell to be in it."

"It's that bad?" she asked. "To be human?"

"You don't have to humor me," I said. "I know you don't believe the things I've told you."

"Ah, but our fantasies are tike our dreams," she said with a serious little frown. "They
have meaning."

Suddenly, I saw my reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet-this tall caramel-
skinned man with thick brown hair, and the large-boned soft-skinned woman beside him.
The shock was so great, my heart stopped.

"Dear God, help me," I whispered. "I want my body back." I felt like weeping.

She urged me to lie down against the pillows of the bed. The warmth of the room felt
good. She began to shave my face, thank God! I hated the feeling of the hair on it. I told
her I'd been clean-shaven, as all men of fashion were, when I died, and once we were
made vampires we remained the same forever. We grew whiter and whiter, that was true,
and stronger and stronger; and our faces became smoother.- But our hair was forever the
same length, and so were our fingernails and whatever beard we had; and I had not had
that much to begin with.

"Was this transformation a painful thing?" she asked.

"It was painful because I fought. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't really know what was
being done to me. It seemed some monster out of the medieval past had captured me, and
dragged me out of the civilized city. You must remember in those years that Paris was a
wonderfully civilized place. Oh, you would think it barbaric beyond description if you
were spirited there now, but to a country lord from a filthy castle, it was so exciting, what
with the theatres, and the opera, and the balls at court. You can't imagine. And then this
tragedy, this demon coming out of the dark and taking me to his tower. But the act itself,
the Dark Trick? It isn't painful, it's ecstasy. And then your eyes are opened, and all
humanity is beautiful to you in a way that you never realized before."

I put on the clean skivvy shirt which she gave to me, and climbed under the covers, and
let her bring the covers up to my chin. I felt as if I were floating. Indeed, this was one of
the most pleasant feelings I'd experienced since I'd become mortal-this feeling tike
drunkenness. She felt my pulse and my forehead. I could see the fear in her, but I didn't
want to believe it.

I told her that the real pain for me as an evil being was that I understood goodness, and I
respected it. I had never been without a conscience. But all my life-even as a mortal boy-
I had always been required to go against my conscience to obtain anything of intensity or
value.

"But how? What do you mean?" she asked.

I told her that I had run off with a band of actors when I was a boy, committing an
obvious sin of disobedience. I had committed the sin of fornication with one of the young
women of the troupe. Yet those days, acting on the village stage and making love, had
seemed of inestimable value! "You see, that's when I was alive, merely alive. The trivial
sins of a boy! After I was dead, every step I took in the world was a commitment to sin,
and yet at every turn I saw the sensual and the beautiful."

How could this be, I asked her. When I'd made Claudia a child vampire, and Gabrielle,
my mother, into a vampire beauty, I'd been reaching again for an intensity! I'd found it
irresistible. And in those moments no concept of sin made sense.

I said more, speaking again of David and his vision of God and the Devil in the cafe, and
of how David thought that God was not perfect, that God was learning all the time, and
that, indeed, the Devil learned so much that he came to despise his job and beg to be let
out of it. But I knew I had told her all these things before in the hospital when she'd been
holding my hand.

There were moments when she stopped her fussing with the pillows, and with pills and
glasses of water, and merely looked at me. How still her face was, how emphatic her
expression, the dark thick lashes surrounding her paler eyes, her large soft mouth so
eloquent of kindness.

"I know you are good," I said. "I love you for it. Yet I would give it to you, the Dark
Blood, to make you immortal-to have you with me in eternity because you are so
mysterious to me and so strong."

There was a layer of silence around me, a dull roaring in my ears, and a veil over my
eyes. I watched motionless as she lifted a syringe, tested it apparently by squirting a tiny
bit of silver liquid into the air, and then put the needle into my flesh. The faint burning
sensation was very far away, very unimportant.

When she gave me a large glass of orange juice I drank this greedily. Hmmm. Now this
was something to taste, thick like blood, but full of sweetness and strangely like
devouring light itself.

"I'd forgotten all about such things," I said. "How good it tastes, better than wine, really. I
should have drunk it before. And to think I would have gone back without knowing it." I
sank down into the pillow and looked up at the bare rafters of the low sloping ceiling.
Nice clean little room, very white. Very simple. Her nun's cell. Snow was falling gently
outside the little window. I counted twelve little panes of glass.

I was slipping in and out of sleep. I vaguely recall her trying to make me drink soup and
that I couldn't do it. I was shaking, and terrified that those dreams would come again. I

didn't want Claudia to come. The light of the little room burnt my eyes. I told her about
Claudia haunting me, and the little hospital.

"Full of children," she said. Hadn't she remarked on this before. How puzzled she looked.
She spoke softly of her work in the missions . . . with children. In the jungles of
Venezuela and in Peru.

"Don't speak anymore," she said.

I knew I was frightening her. I was floating again, in and out of darkness, aware of a cool
cloth on my forehead, and laughing again at this weightless feeling. I told her that in my
regular body I could fly through the air. I told her how I had gone into the light of the sun
above the Gobi Desert.

Now and then, I opened my eyes with a start, shaken to discover myself here. Her small
white room.

In the burnished light, I saw a crucifix on the wall, with a bleeding Christ; and a statue of
the Virgin Mary atop a small bookcase-the old familiar image of the Mediatrix of All
Graces, with her bowed head and outstretched hands. Was that Saint Rita there with the
red wound in her forehead? Ah, alt the old beliefs, and to think they were alive in this
woman's heart.

I squinted, trying to read the larger titles on the books on her shelves: Aquinas, Maritain,
Teilhard de Chardin. The sheer effort of interpreting these various names to mean
Catholic philosophers exhausted me. Yet I read other titles, my mind feverish and unable
to rest. There were books on tropical diseases, childhood diseases, on child psychology. I
could make out a framed picture on the wall near the crucifix, of veiled and uniformed
nuns together, perhaps at a ceremony. If she was one of them, I couldn't tell, not with
these mortal eyes, and hurting the way they were. The nuns wore short blue robes, and
blue and white veils.

She held my hand. I told her again I had to go to New Orleans. I had to live to reach my
friend Louis, who would help me recover my body. I described Louis to her-how he
existed beyond the reach of the modern world in a tiny unlighted house behind his
ramshackle garden. I explained that he was weak, but he could give me the vampiric
blood, and then I'd be a vampire again, and I'd hunt the Body Thief and have my old form
restored to me. I told her how very human Louis was, that he would not give me much
vampiric strength, but I could not find the Body Thief unless I had a preternatural body.

"So this body will die," I said, "when he gives the blood to me. You are saving it for
death." I was weeping. I realized I was speaking French, but it seemed that she
understood, because she told me in French that I must rest, that I was delirious.

"I am with you," she said hi French, very slowly and carefully. "I will protect you." Her
warm gentle hand was over mine. With such care, she brushed the hair back from my
forehead.

Darkness fell around the little house.

There was a fire burning in the little hearth, and Gretchen was lying beside me. She had
put on a long flannel gown, very thick and white; and her hair was loose, and she was
holding me as I shivered. I liked the feel of her hair against my arm. I held on to her,
frightened I'd hurt her. Over and over again, she wiped my face with a cool cloth. She
forced me to drink the orange juice or cold water. The hours of the night were deepening
and so was my panic.

"I won't let you die," she whispered hi my ear. But I heard the fear which she couldn't
disguise. Sleep rolled over me, thinly, so that the room retained its shape, its color, its
light. I called upon the others again, begging Marius to help me. I began to think of
terrible things-that they were all there as so many small white statues with the Virgin and
with Saint Rita, watching me, and refusing to help.

Sometime before dawn, I heard voices. A doctor had come- a tired young man with
sallow skin and red-rimmed eyes. Once again, a needle was put into my arm. I drank
greedily when the ice water was given me. I could not follow the doctor's low
murmuring, nor was I meant to understand it. But the cadences of the voice were calm
and obviously reassuring. I caught the words "epidemic" and "blizzard" and "impossible
conditions."

When the door shut, I begged her to come back. "Next to your beating heart," I whispered
in her ear as she lay down at my side. How sweet this was, her tender heavy limbs, her
large shapeless breasts against my chest, her smooth leg against mine. Was I too sick to
be afraid?

"Sleep now," she said. "Try not to worry." At last a deep sleep was coming to me, deep as
the snow outside, as the darkness.

"Don't you think it's time you made your confession?" asked Claudia. "You know you
really are hanging by the proverbial thread." She was sitting in my lap, staring up at me,
hands on my shoulders, her little upturned face not an inch from mine.

My heart shrank, exploding in pain, but there was no knife, only these little hands
clutching me, and the perfume of crushed roses rising from her shimmering hair.

"No. I can't make my confession," I said to her. How my voice trembled. "Oh, Lord God,
what do you want of me!"

"You're not sorry! You've never been sorry! Say it. Say the truth! You deserved the knife
when I put it through your heart, and you know it, you've always known it!"

"No!"

Something in me broke as I stared down at her, at the exquisite face in its frame of fine-
spun hair. I lifted her, and rose, placing her in the chair before me and I dropped to my
knees at her feet.

"Claudia, listen to me. I didn't begin it. I didn't make the world! It was always there, this
evil. It was in the shadows, and it caught me, and made me part of it, and I did what I felt
I must. Don't laugh at me, please, don't turn your head away. I didn't make evil! I didn't
make myself!"

How perplexed she was, staring at me, watching me, and then her small full mouth
spread beautifully in a smile.

"It wasn't all anguish," I said, my fingers digging into her little shoulders. "It wasn't hell.
Tell me it wasn't. Tell me there was happiness. Can devils be happy? Dear God, I don't
understand."

"You don't understand, but you always do something, don't you?"

"Yes, and I'm not sorry. I'm not. I would roar it from the rooftops right up into the dome
of heaven. Claudia, I would do it again!" A great sigh passed out of me. I repeated the
words, my voice growing louder. "I would do it again!"

Stillness in the room.

Her calm remained unbroken. Was she enraged? Surprised? Impossible to know as I
looked into her expressionless eyes.

"Oh you are evil, my father," she said in a soft voice. "How can you abide it?"

David turned from the window. He stood over her shoulder, looking down at me as I
stayed there on my knees.

"I am the ideal of my kind," I said. "I am the perfect vampire. You are looking at the
Vampire Lestat when you look at me. No one outshines this figure you see before you-no
one!" Slowly I rose to my feet. "I am not time's fool, nor a god hardened by the
millennia; I am not the trickster in the black cape, nor the sorrowful wanderer, I have a
conscience. I know right from wrong. I know what I do, and yes, I do it. i am the
Vampire Lestat. That's your answer. Do with it what you will."

Dawn. Colorless and bright over the snow. Gretchen slept, cradling me.

She didn't wake when I sat up and reached for the glass of water. Tasteless, but cool.

Then her eyes opened, and she sat up with a start, her dark blond hair tumbling down
around her face, dry and clean and full of thin light.

I kissed her warm cheek, and felt her fingers on my neck, and then again across my
forehead.

"You brought me through it," I said, my voice hoarse and shaky. Then I lay back down
on the pillow, and I felt the tears once more on my cheeks, and closing my eyes, I
whispered, "Good-bye, Claudia," hoping that Gretchen wouldn't hear.

When I opened my eyes again, she had a big bowl of broth for me, which I drank, finding
it almost good. There were apples and oranges cut open and glistening upon a plate. I ate
these hungrily, amazed at the crispness of the apples, and the chewy fibrous quality of the
oranges. Then came a hot brew of strong liquor and honey and sour lemon, which I loved
so much that she hurried to make more of it for me. I thought again how like the Grecian
women of Picasso she was, large and fair. Her eyebrows were dark brown and her eyes
light-almost a pale green-which gave her face a look of dedication and innocence. She
was not young, this woman, and that, too, enhanced her beauty very much for me.

There was something selfless and distracted in her expression, in the way that she nodded
and told me I was better when I asked.

She looked perpetually deep in thought. For a long moment, she remained, looking down
at me as if I puzzled her, and then very slowly she bent and pressed her lips to mine. A
raw vibration of excitement passed through me.

Once more I slept.

No dreams came to me.

It was as if I'd always been human, always in this body, and oh, so grateful for this soft
clean bed.

Afternoon. Patches of blue beyond the trees.

In a trance, it seemed, I watched her build up the fire. I watched the glow on her smooth
bare feet. Mojo's gray hair was covered with light powdery snow, as he ate quietly and
steadily from a plate between his paws, now and then looking up at me.

My heavy human body was simmering still in its fever, but cooler, better, its aches less
acute, its shivering gone now entirely. Ah, why has she done all this for me? Why? And
what can I do for her, I thought. I wasn't afraid of dying anymore. But when I thought of
what lay ahead-the Body Thief must be caught-I felt a stab of panic. And for another
night I would be too ill to leave here.

Again, we lay wrapped in each other's arms, dozing, letting the fight grow dim outside,
the only sound that of Mojo's labored breathing. The little fire blazed. The room was
warm and still. All the world seemed warm and still. The snow began to fall; and soon
the soft merciless darkness of the night came down.

A wave of protectiveness passed over me when I looked at her sleeping face, when I
thought of the soft distracted look I had seen in her eyes. Even her voice was tinged with
a deep melancholy. There was something about her which suggested a profound
resignation. Whatever happened, I would not leave her, I thought, until I knew what I
could do to repay her. Also I liked her. I liked the darkness inside her, the concealed
quality of her, and the simplicity of her speech and movements, the candor in her eyes.

When I woke next, the doctor was there again-the same young fellow with the sallow
skin and tired face, though he did look somewhat rested, and his white coat was very
clean and fresh. He had put a tiny bit of cold metal against my chest, and was obviously
listening to my heart or lungs or some other noisy internal organ for a bit of significant
information. His hands were covered with slick ugly plastic gloves. And he was speaking
to Gretchen in a low voice, as if I weren't there, about the continuing troubles at the
hospital.

Gretchen was dressed in a simple blue dress, rather like a nun's dress, I thought, except
that it was short, and beneath it she wore black stockings. Her hair was beautifully
mussed and straight and clean and made me think of the hay which the princess spun into
gold in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

Again came the memory of Gabrielle, my mother, of the eerie and nightmarish time after
I'd made her a vampire, and she had cut her yellow hair, and it had all grown back within
the space of a day while she slept the deathlike sleep in the crypt, and she'd almost gone
mad when she realized it. I remembered her screaming and screaming before she could
be calmed. I didn't know why I thought of it, except that I loved this woman's hair. She
was nothing like Gabrielle. Nothing.

At last the doctor was finished with his poking and prodding and listening, and went
away to confer with her. Curse my mortal hearing. But I knew I was almost cured. And
when he stood over me again, and told me I would now be "fine" and needed only a few
more days' rest, I said quietly that it was Gretchen's nursing which had done it.

To this he gave an emphatic nod and a series of unintelligible murmurs, and then off he
went into the snow, his car making a faint grinding noise outside as he passed through the
driveway.

I felt so clearheaded and good that I wanted to cry. Instead I drank some more of the
delicious orange juice, and I began to think of things . . . remember things.

"I need to leave you for only a little while," Gretchen said. "I have to get some food."

"Yes, and I shall pay for this food," I said. I laid my hand on her wrist. Though my voice
was still weak and hoarse, I told her about the hotel, that my money was there in my coat.
It was enough money for me to pay her for my care as well as for the food, and she must
get it. The key must be in my clothes, I explained.

She had put my clothes on hangers, and now she did find the key in the shirt pocket.

"See?" I said with a little laugh. "I have been telling you the truth about everything."

She smiled, and her face was filled with warmth. She said she would go to the hotel and
get my money for me, if I would agree to lie quiet. It wasn't such a good idea to leave
money lying about, even in a fine hotel.

I wanted to answer, but I was so sleepy. Then, through the little window, I saw her
walking through the snow, towards the little car. I saw her climb inside. What a strong
figure she was, very sturdy of limb, but with fair skin and a softness to her that made her
lovely to behold and most embraceable. I was frightened, however, on account of her
leaving me.

When I opened my eyes again, she was standing there with my overcoat over her arm.
Lots of money, she said. She'd brought it all back. She'd never seen so much money in
packets and wads. What a strange person I was. There was something like twenty-eight
thousand dollars there. She'd closed out my account at the hotel. They'd been worried
about me. They had seen me run off in the snow. They had made her sign a receipt for
everything. This bit of paper she gave to me, as if it was important. She had my other
possessions with her, the clothing I had purchased, which was still in its sacks and boxes.

I wanted to thank her. But where were the words? I would thank her when I came back to
her in my own body.

After she had put away all the clothing, she fixed us a simple supper of broth again and
bread with butter. We ate this together, with a bottle of wine, of which I drank much
more than she thought permissible. I must say that this bread and butter and wine was
about the best human food I'd tasted so far. I told her so. And I wanted more of the wine,
please, because this drunkenness was absolutely sublime.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked her.

She sat down on the side of the bed, looking towards the fire, playing with her hair, not
looking at me. She started to explain again about the overcrowding at the hospital, the
epidemic.

"No, why did you do it? There were others there."

"Because you're not like anyone I've ever known," she said.

"You make me think of a story I once read... about an angel forced to come down to earth
in a human body."

With a flush of pain, I thought of Raglan James telling me that I looked like an angel. I
thought of my other body roaming the world, powerful and under his loathsome charge.

She gave a sigh as she looked at me. She was puzzled.

"When this is finished, I'll come back to you in my real body," I said. "I'll reveal myself
to you. It may mean something to you to know that you were not deceived; and you are
so strong, I suspect the truth won't hurt you."

"The truth?"

I explained that often when we revealed ourselves to mortals we drove them mad-for we
were unnatural beings, and yet we did not know anything about the existence of God or
the Devil. In sum, we were like a religious vision without revelation. A mystic
experience, but without a core of truth.

She was obviously enthralled. A subtle light came into her eyes. She asked me to explain
how I appeared in the other form.

I described to her how I had been made a vampire at the age of twenty. I'd been tall for
those times, blond, with light-colored eyes. I told her again about burning my skin in the
Gobi. I feared the Body Thief intended to keep my body for good, that he was probably
off someplace, hidden from the rest of the tribe, trying to perfect his use of my powers.

She asked me to describe flying to her.

"It's more like floating, simply rising at will-propelling yourself hi this direction or that
by decision. It's a defiance of gravity quite unlike the flight of natural creatures. It's
frightening. It's the most frightening of all our powers; and I think it hurts us more than
any other power; it fills us with despair. It is the final proof that we aren't human. We fear
perhaps we will one night leave the earth and never touch it again."

I thought of the Body Thief using this power. I had seen him use it.

"I don't know how I could have been so foolish as to let him take a body as strong as
mine," I said. "I was blinded by the desire to be human."

She was merely looking at me. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she was
looking at me steadily and calmly with large hazel eyes.

"Do you believe in God?" I asked. I pointed to the crucifix on the wall, "Do you believe
hi these Catholic philosophers whose books are on the shelf?"

She thought for a long moment. "Not in the way you ask," she said.

I smiled. "How then?"

"My life has been one of self-sacrifice ever since I can remember. That is what I believe
in. I believe that I must do everything I can to lessen misery. That is all I can do, and that
is something enormous. It is a great power, like your power of flight."

I was mystified. I realized that I did not think of the work of a nurse as having to do with
power. But I saw her point completely.

"To try to know God," she said, "this can be construed as a sin of pride, or a failure of
imagination. But all of us know misery when we see it. We know sickness; hunger;
deprivation. I try to lessen these things. It's the bulwark of my faith. But to answer you
truly-yes, I do believe hi God and in Christ. So do you."

"No, I don't," I said.

"When you were feverish you did. You spoke of God and the Devil the way I've never
heard anyone else speak of them."

"I spoke of tiresome theological arguments," I said.

"No, you spoke of the irrelevance of them."

"You think so?"

"Yes. You know good when you see it. You said you did. So do 1.1 devote my life to
trying to do it."

I sighed. "Yes, I see," I said. "Would I have died had you left me in the hospital?"

"You might have," she said. "I honestly don't know."

It was very pleasurable merely to look at her. Her face was large with few contours and
nothing of elegant aristocratic beauty. But beauty she had in abundance. And the years
had been gentle with her. She was not worn from care.

I sensed a tender brooding sensuality hi her, a sensuality which she herself did not trust
or nurture.

"Explain this to me again," she said. "You spoke of being a rock singer because you
wanted to do good? You wanted to be good by being a symbol of evil? Talk of this some
more."

I told her yes. I told her how I had done it, gathering the little band, Satan's Night Out,
and making them professionals. I told her that I had failed; there had been a war among
our kind, I myself had been taken away by force, and the entire debacle had happened
without a rupture in the rational fabric of the mortal world. I had been forced back into
invisibility and irrelevance.

"There's no place for us on earth," I said. "Perhaps there was once, I don't know. The fact
that we exist is no justification. Hunters drove wolves from the world. I thought if I
revealed our existence that hunters would drive us from the world too. But it wasn't to be.
My brief career was a string of illusions. No one believes in us. And that's how it's meant
to be. Perhaps we are to die of despair, to vanish from the world very slowly, and without
a sound.

"Only I can't bear it. I can't bear to be quiet and be nothing, and to take life with pleasure,
and to see the creations and accomplishments of mortals all around me, and not to be part
of them, but to be Cain. The lonely Cain. That's the world to me, you see-what mortals do
and have done. It isn't the great natural world at all. If it was the natural world, then
maybe I would have had a better time of it being immortal than I did. It's the
accomplishments of mortals. The paintings of Rembrandt, the memorials of the capital
city in the snow, great cathedrals. And we are cut off eternally from such things, and
rightfully so, and yet we see them with our vampire eyes."

"Why did you change bodies with a mortal man?" she asked.

"To walk in the sun again for one day. To think and feel and breathe like a mortal. Maybe
to test a belief."

"What was the belief?"

"That being mortal again was what we all wanted, that we were sorry that we'd given it
up, that immortality wasn't worth the loss of our human souls. But I know now I was
wrong."

I thought of Claudia suddenly. I thought of my fever dreams. A leaden stillness came
over me. When I spoke again, it was a quiet act of will.

"I'd much rather be a vampire," I said. "I don't like being mortal. I don't like being weak,
or sick, or fragile, or feeling pain. It's perfectly awful. I want my body back as soon as I
can get it from that thief."

She seemed mildly shocked by this. "Even though you kill when you are in your other
body, even though you drink human blood, and you hate it and you hate yourself."

"I don't hate it. And I don't hate myself. Don't you see? That's the contradiction. I've
never hated myself."

"You told me you were evil, you said when I helped you I was helping the devil. You
wouldn't say those things if you didn't hate it."

I didn't answer. Then I said, "My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful
time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorrence for myself is always
there; but I have a good time. I'm strong; I'm a creature of great will and passion. You
see, that's the core of the dilemma for me- how can I enjoy being a vampire so much, how
can I enjoy it if it's evil? Ah, it's an old story. Men work it out when they go to war. They
tell themselves there is a cause. Then they experience the thrill of killing, as if they were
merely beasts. And beasts do know it, they really do. The wolves know it. They know the
sheer thrill of tearing to pieces the prey. I know it."

She seemed lost in her thoughts for a long time. I reached out and touched her hand.

"Come, lie down and sleep," I said. "Lie beside me again. I won't hurt you. I can't. I'm too
sick." I gave a little laugh. "You're very beautiful," I said. "I wouldn't think of hurting
you. I only want to be near you. The late night's coming again, and I wish you would lie
with me here."

"You mean everything you say, don't you?"

"Of course."

"You realize you are like a child, don't you? You have a great simplicity to you. The
simplicity of a saint."

I laughed. "Dearest Gretchen, you're misunderstanding me in a crucial way. But then
again, maybe you aren't. If I believed in God, if I believed in salvation, then I suppose I
would have to be a saint."

She reflected for a long tune, then she told me in a low voice that she had taken a leave of
absence from the foreign missions only a month ago. She had come up from French
Guiana to Georgetown to study at the university, and she worked only as a volunteer at
the hospital. "Do you know the real reason why I took the leave of absence?" she asked
me.

"No; tell me."

"I wanted to know a man. The warmth of being close to a man. Just once, I wanted to
know it. I'm forty years old, and I've never known a man. You spoke of moral
abhorrence. You used those words. I had an abhorrence for my virginity-of the sheer
perfection of my chastity. It seemed, no matter what one believed, to be a cowardly
thing."

"I understand," I said. "Surely to do good in the missions has nothing to do, finally, with
chastity."

"No, they are connected," she said. "But only because hard work is possible when one is
single-minded, and married to no one but Christ."

I confessed I knew what she meant. "But if the self-denial becomes an obstacle to work,"
I said, "then it's better to know the love of a man, isn't it?"

-"That is what I thought," she said. "Yes. Know this experience, and then return to God's
work."

"Exactly."

In a slow dreamy voice, she said: "I've been looking for the man. For the moment."

"That's the answer, then, as to why you brought me here."

"Perhaps," she said. "God knows, I was so frightened of everyone else. I'm not frightened
of you." She looked at me as if her own words had left her surprised.

"Come, lie down and sleep. There's time for me to heal and for you to be certain it's what
you really want. I wouldn't dream of forcing you, of doing anything cruel to you."

"But why, if you're the devil, can you speak with such kindness?"

"I told you, that's the mystery. Or it's the answer, one or the other. Come, come lie beside
me."

I closed my eyes. I felt her climbing beneath the covers, the warm pressure of her body
beside me, her arm slipping across my chest.

"You know," I said, "this is almost good, this aspect of being human."

I was half asleep when I heard her whisper:

"I think there's a reason you took your leave of absence," she said. "You may not know
it."

"Surely you don't believe me," I murmured, the words running together sluggishly. How
delicious it was to slip my arm around her again, to tuck her head against my neck. I was
kissing her hair, loving the soft springiness of it against my lips.

"There is a secret reason you came down to earth," she said, "that you came into the body
of a man. Same reason that Christ did it."

"And that is?"

"Redemption," she said.

"Ah, yes, to be saved. Now wouldn't that be lovely?"

The Tale of the Body Thief 237

I wanted to say more, how perfectly impossible it was to even consider such a thing, but I
was sliding away, into a dream. And I knew that Claudia would not be there.

Maybe it wasn't a dream after all, only a memory. I was with David in the Rijksmuseum
and we were looking at the great painting by Rembrandt.

To be saved. What a thought, what a lovely, extravagant, and impossible thought. . . How
nice to have found the one mortal woman in all the world who would seriously think of
such a thing.

And Claudia wasn't laughing anymore. Because Claudia was dead.

FIFTEEN

EARLY morning, just before the sun comes. The time when in the past I was often in
meditation, tired, and half in love with the changing sky.

I bathed slowly and carefully, the small bathroom full of dim light and steam around me.
My head was clear, and I felt happiness, as if the sheer respite from sickness was a form
of joy. I shaved my face slowly, until it was perfectly smooth, and then, delving into the
little cabinet behind the mirror, I found what I wanted-the little rubber sheaths that would
keep her safe from me, from my planting a child within her, from this body giving her
some other dark seed that might harm her in ways I could not foresee.

Curious little objects, these-gloves for the organ. I would love to have thrown them away,
but I was determined that I would not make the mistakes I had made before.

Silently, I shut the little mirror door. And only then did I see a telegram message taped
above it-a rectangle of yellowed paper with the words in pale indistinct print:

ORKTCHEN, COME BACK, WE NEED YOU. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. WE
ARE WAITING FOR YOU.

The date of the communication was very recent-only a few days before. And the origin
was Caracas, Venezuela.

I approached the bed, careful not to make a sound, and I laid the small safety devices on
the table in readiness, and I lay with her again, and began to kiss her tender sleeping
mouth.

Slowly, I kissed her cheeks, and the flesh beneath her eyes. I wanted to feel her eyelashes
through my lips. I wanted to feel the flesh of her throat. Not for killing, but for kissing;
not for possession, but for this brief physical union that will take nothing from either one
of us; yet bring us together in a pleasure so acute it is like pain.

She waked slowly under my touch.

"Trust in me," I whispered. "I won't hurt you."

"Oh, but I want you to hurt me," she said in my ear.

Gently, I pulled the flannel gown off her. She lay back looking up at me, her breasts as
fair as the rest of her, the areolas of her nipples very small and pink and the nipples
themselves hard. Her belly was smooth, her hips broad. A lovely dark shadow of brown
hair lay between her legs, glistening in the light coming through the windows. I bent
down and kissed this hair. I kissed her thighs, parting her legs with my hand, until the
warm inside flesh was open to me, and my organ was stiff and ready. I looked at the
secret place there, folded and demure and a dark pink in its soft veil of down. A coarse
warm excitement went through me, further hardening the organ. I might have forced her,
so urgent was the feeling.

But no, not this time.

I moved up, beside her, turning her face to me, and accepting her kisses now, slow and
awkward and fumbling. I felt her leg pressed against mine, and her hands moving over
me, seeking the warmth beneath my armpits, and the damp nether hair of this male body,
thick and dark. It was my body, ready for her and waiting. This, my chest, which she
touched, seeming to love its hardness. My arms, which she kissed as if she prized their
strength.

The passion in me ebbed slightly, only to grow hot again instantly, and then to die down
again, waiting, and then to rise once more.

No thoughts came to me of the blood drinking; no thought at all of the thunder of the life
inside her which I might have consumed, a dark draught, at another time. Rather the
moment was perfumed with the soft heat of her living flesh. And it seemed vile that
anything could harm her, anything mar the common mystery of her-of her trust and her
yearning and her deep and common fear.

I let my hand slip down to the little doorway; how sorry and sad that this union would be
so partial, so brief.

Then, as my fingers gently tried the virgin passage, her body caught fire. Her breasts
seemed to swell against me, and I felt her open, petal by petal, as her mouth grew harder
against my mouth.

But what of the dangers: didn't she care about them? In her new passion, she seemed
heedless, and completely under my command. I forced myself to stop, to remove the little
sheath from its packet, and to roll it up and over the organ, as her passive eyes remained
fixed on me, as if she no longer had a will of her own.

It was this surrender that she needed, it was what she required of herself. Once again, I
fell to kissing her. She was moist and ready for me. I could keep it back no longer, and
when I rode her now, it was hard. The little passage was snug and maddeningly heated as
its juices flowed. I saw the blood come up into her face as the rhythm quickened; I bent
my lips to lick at her nipples, to claim her mouth again. When the final moan came out of
her, it was like the moan of pain. And there it was again, the mystery-that something
could be so perfectly finished, and complete, and have lasted such a little while. Such a
precious little while.

Had it been union? Were we one with each other in this clamorous silence?

I don't think that it was union. On the contrary, it seemed the most violent of separations:
two contrary beings flung at each other in heat and clumsiness, in trust and in menace,
the feelings of each unknowable and unfathomable to the other-its sweetness terrible as
its brevity; its loneliness hurtful as its 'undeniable fire.

And never had she looked so frail to me as she did now, her eyes closed, her head turned
into the pillow, her breasts no longer heaving but very still. It seemed an image to
provoke violence-to beckon to the most wanton cruelty in a male heart.

Why was this so?

I didn't want any other mortal to touch her!

I didn't want her own guilt to touch her. I didn't want regret to hurt her, or for any of the
evils of the human mind to come near her.

And only now did I think of the Dark Gift again, and not of Claudia, but of the sweet
throbbing splendour in the making of Gabrielle. Gabrielle had never looked back from
that long-ago moment. Clad in strength and certainty, she had begun her wandering,
never suffering an hour's moral torment as the endless complexities of the great world
drew her on.

But who could say what the Dark Blood would give to any one human soul? And this, a
virtuous woman, a believer in old and merciless deities, drunk on the blood of martyrs
and the heady suffering of a thousand saints. Surely she would never ask for the Dark
Gift or accept it, any more than David would.

But what did such questions matter until she knew the words I spoke were true? And
what if I could never prove their truth to her? What if I never had the Dark Blood again
inside me to give anyone and I remained forever trapped in this mortal flesh? I lay quiet,

watching the sunlight fill the room. I watched it strike the tiny body of the crucified
Christ above her bookshelf; I watched it fall upon the Virgin with her bowed head.

Snuggled against each other, we slept again.

SIXTEEN

NOON. I was dressed in the clean new clothes which I had bought on that last fateful day
of my wandering-soft white pullover shirt with long sleeves, fashionably faded denim
pants. We had made a picnic of sorts before the warm crackling little fire-a white blanket
spread out on the carpet, on which we sat having our late breakfast together, as Mojo
dined sloppily and greedily in his own fashion on the kitchen floor. It was French bread
and butter again, and orange juice, and boiled eggs, and the fruit in big slices. I was
eating hungrily, ignoring her warnings that I was not entirely well. I was plenty well
enough. Even her little digital thermometer said so.

I ought to be off to New Orleans. If the airport was open, I could have been there by
nightfall, perhaps. But I didn't want to leave her just now. I asked for some wine. I
wanted to talk. I wanted to understand her, and I was also afraid to leave her, afraid of
being alone without her. The plane journey struck a cowardly fear in my soul. And
besides, I liked being with her...

She'd been talking easily about her life in the missions, of how she'd loved it from the
very beginning. The first years she'd spent in Peru, then she'd gone on to the Yucatan.
Her most recent assignment had been in the jungles of French Guiana- a place of
primitive Indian tribes. The mission was St. Margaret Mary-six hours' journey up the
Maroni River by motorized canoe from the town of St. Laurent. She and the other sisters
had refurbished the concrete chapel, the little whitewashed schoolhouse, and the hospital.
But often they had to leave the mission itself and go directly to the people in their
villages. She loved this work, she said.

She laid out for me a great sweep of photographs-small rectangular colored pictures of
the crude little mission buildings, and of her and her sisters, and of the priest who came
through to say Mass. None of these sisters wore veils or habits out there; they were
dressed hi khaki or white cotton, and their hair was free-real working sisters, she
explained. And there she was in these pictures-radiantly happy, none of the brooding
melancholy evident in her. In one snapshot she stood surrounded by dark-faced Indians,
before a curious little building with ornate carvings on its walls. In another she was
giving an injection to a wraith of an old man who sat in a brightly painted straight-back
chair.

Life in these jungle villages had been the same for centuries, she said. These people had
existed long before the French or Spanish ever set foot on the soil of South America. It
was difficult to get them to trust the sisters and the doctors and the priests. She herself did
not care whether or not they learnt their prayers. She cared about inoculations, and the

proper cleaning of infected wounds. She cared about setting broken limbs so that these
people would not be crippled forever.

Of course they wanted her to come back. They'd been very patient with her little leave of
absence. They needed her. The work was waiting for her. She showed me the telegram,
which I had already seen, tacked to the wall above the bathroom mirror.

"You miss it, obviously you do," I said.

I was studying her, watching for signs of guilt over what we had done together. But I
didn't see this in her. She did not seem racked with guilt over the telegram either.

"I'm going back, of course," she said simply. "This may sound absurd, but it was a
difficult thing to leave in the first place. But this question of chastity; it had become a
destructive obsession."

Of course I understood. She looked at me with large quiet eyes.

"And now you know," I said, "that it's not really so very important at all whether or not
you sleep with a man. Isn't that what you found out?"

"Perhaps," she said, with a faint simple smile. How strong she seemed, sitting there on
the blanket, her legs demurely folded to one side, her hair loose still, and more like a
nun's veil here in this room than hi any photograph of her.

"How did it begin for you?" I asked.

"Do you think that's important?" she asked. "I don't think you'll approve of my story if I
tell you."

"I want to know," I answered.

She'd grown up, the daughter of a Catholic schoolteacher and an accountant in the
Bridgeport section of Chicago, and very early on exhibited a great talent for playing the
piano. The whole family had sacrificed for her lessons with a famous teacher.

"Self-sacrifice,- you see," she said, smiling faintly again, "even from the beginning. Only
it was music then, not medicine."

But even then, she had been deeply religious, reading the lives of the saints, and
dreaming of being a saint-of working in the foreign missions when she grew up. Saint
Rose de Lima, the mystic, held a special fascination for her. And so did Saint Martin de
Porres, who had worked more in the world. And

The Tale of the Body Thief 243

Saint Rita. She had wanted to work with lepers someday, to find a life of all-consuming
and heroic work. She'd built a little oratory behind her house when she was a girl, and
there she would kneel for hours before the crucifix, hoping that the wounds of Christ
would open in her hands and feet-the stigmata.

"I took these stories very seriously," she said. "Saints are real to me. The possibility of
heroism is real to me."

"Heroism," I said. My word. But how very different was my definition of it. I did not
interrupt her.

"It seemed that the piano playing was at war with my spiritual soul. I wanted to give up
everything for others, and that meant giving up the piano, above all, the piano."

This saddened me. I had the feeling she had not told this story often, and her voice was
very subdued when she spoke.

"But what about the happiness you gave to people when you played?" I asked. "Wasn't
that something of real value?"

"Now, I can say that it was," she said, her voice dropping even lower, and her words
coming with painful slowness. "But then? I wasn't sure of it. I wasn't a likely person for
such a talent. I didn't mind being heard; but I didn't like being seen." She flushed slightly
as she looked at me. "Perhaps if I could have played in a choir loft, or behind a screen it
would have been different."

"I see," I said. "There are many humans who feel this way, of course."

"But you don't, do you?"

I shook my head.

She explained how excruciating it was for her to be dressed in white lace, and made to
play before an audience. She did it to please her parents and her teachers. Entering the
various competitions was an agony. But almost invariably she won. Her career had
become a family enterprise by the tune she was sixteen.

"But what about the music itself. Did you enjoy it?"

She thought for a moment. Then: "It was absolute ecstasy," she answered. "When I
played alone .. . with no one there to watch me, I lost my self hi it completely. It was
almost like being under the influence of a drug. It was ... it was almost erotic. Sometimes
melodies would obsess me. They'd run through my head continuously. I lost track of time
when I played. I still cannot really listen to music without being swept up and carried
away. You don't see any radio here or tape player. I can't have those things near me even
now."

"But why deny yourself this?" I looked around. There was no piano in this room either.

She shook her head dismissively. "The effect is too engulfing, don't you see? I can forget
everything else too easily. And nothing is accomplished when this happens. Life is on
hold, so to speak."

"But, Gretchen, is that true?" I asked. "For some of us such intense feelings are life! We
seek ecstasy. In those moments, we ... we transcend all the pain and the pettiness and the
struggle. That's how it was for me when I was alive. That's how it is for me now."

She considered this, her face very smooth and relaxed. When she spoke, it was with quiet
conviction.

"I want more than that," she said. "I want something more palpably constructive. But to
put it another way, I cannot enjoy such a pleasure when others are hungry or suffering or
sick."

"But the world will always include such misery. And people need music, Gretchen, they
need it as much as they need comfort or food."

"I'm not sure I agree with you. In fact, I'm fairly sure that I don't. .1 have to spend my life
trying to alleviate misery. Believe me, I have been through all these arguments many
times before."

"Ah, but to choose nursing over music," I said. "It's unfathomable to me. Of course
nursing is good." I was too saddened and confused to continue. "How did you make the
actual choice?" I asked. "Didn't the family try to stop you?"

She went on to explain. When she was sixteen, her mother took ill, and for months no
one could determine the cause of her illness. Her mother was anemic; she ran a constant
fever; finally it was obvious she was wasting away. Tests were made, but the doctors
could find no explanation. Everyone felt certain that her mother was going to die. The
atmosphere of the house had been poisoned with grief and even bitterness.

"I asked God for a miracle," she said. "I promised I would never touch the piano keys
again as long as I lived, if God would only save my mother. I promised I would enter the
convent as soon as I was allowed-that I would devote my life to nursing the sick and the
dying."

"And your mother was cured."

"Yes. Within a month she was completely recovered. She's alive now. She's retired, she
tutors children after school-in a storefront in a black section of Chicago. She has never
been sick since, in any way."

"And you kept the promise?"

She nodded. "I went into the Missionary Sisters when I was seventeen and they sent me
to college."

"And you kept this promise never to touch the piano again?"

She nodded. There was not a trace of regret in her, nor was there a great longing or need
for my understanding or approval. In fact, I knew my sadness was obvious to her, and
that, if anything, she felt a little concerned for me.

"Were you happy in the convent?"

"Oh, yes," she said with a little shrug. "Don't you see? An ordinary life is impossible for
someone like me. I have to be doing something hard. I have to be taking risks. I entered
this religious order because their missions were in the most remote and treacherous areas
of South America. I can't tell you how I love those jungles!" Her voice became low and
almost urgent. "They can't be hot enough or dangerous enough for me. There are
moments when we're all overworked and tired, when the hospital's overcrowded and the
sick children are bedded down outside under lean-tos and in hammocks and I feel so
alive! I can't tell you. I stop maybe long enough to wipe the sweat off my face, to wash
my hands, to perhaps drink a glass of water. And I think: I'm alive; I'm here. I'm doing
what matters."

Again she smiled. "It's another kind of intensity," I said, "something wholly unlike the
making of music. I see the crucial difference."

I thought of David's words to me about his early life-how he had sought the thrill in
danger. She was seeking the thrill in utter self-sacrifice. He had sought the danger of the
occult in Brazil. She sought the hard challenge of bringing health to thousands of the
nameless, and the eternally poor. This troubled me deeply.

"There's a vanity in it too, of course," she said. "Vanity is always the enemy. That's what
troubled me the most about my... my chastity," she explained, "the pride I felt in it. But
you see, even coming, back like this to the States was a risk. I was terrified when I got off
the plane, when I realized I was here in Georgetown and nothing could stop me from
being with a man if I wanted it. I think I went to work at the hospital out of fear. God
knows, freedom isn't simple."

"This part I understand," I said. "But your family, how did they respond to this promise
you made, to your giving up the music?"

"They didn't know at the time. I didn't tell them. I announced my vocation. I stuck to my
guns. There was a lot of recrimination. After all, my sisters and brothers had worn
secondhand clothes so I could have piano lessons. But this is often the case. Even in a

good Catholic family, the news that a daughter wants to be a nun is not always greeted
with cheers and accolades."

"They grieved for your talent," I said quietly.

"Yes, they did," she said with a slight lift of her eyebrows. How honest and tranquil she
seemed. None of this was said with coldness or hardness. "But I had a vision of
something vastly more important than a young woman on a concert stage, rising from the
piano bench to collect a bouquet of roses. It was a long time before I told them about the
promise."

"Years later?"

She nodded. "They understood. They saw the miracle. How could they help it? I told
them I'd been more fortunate than anyone I knew who had ever gone into the convent. I'd
had a clear sign from God. He had resolved all conflicts for all of us."

"You believe this."

"Yes. I do," she said. "But in a way, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not. And if
anyone should understand, you should."

"Why is that?"

"Because you speak of religious truths and religious ideas and you know that they matter
even if they are only metaphors. This is what I heard hi you even when you were
delirious."

I sighed. "Don't you ever want to play the piano again? Don't you ever want to find an
empty auditorium, perhaps, with a piano on the stage, and just sit down and . . ."

"Of course I do. But I can't do it, and I won't do it." Her smile now was truly beautiful.

"Gretchen, in a way this is a terrible story," I said. "Why, as a good Catholic girl couldn't
you have seen your musical talent as a gift from God, a gift not to be wasted?"

"It was from God, I knew it was. But don't you see? There was a fork in the road; the
sacrifice of the piano was the opportunity that God gave me to serve Him in a special
way. Lestat, what could the music have meant compared to the act of helping people,
hundreds of people?"

I shook my head. "I think the music can be seen as equally important."

She thought for a long while before she answered. "I couldn't continue with it," she said.
"Perhaps I used the crisis of my mother's illness, I don't know. I had to become a nurse.
There was no other way for me. The simple truth is-I cannot live when I am faced with

the misery in the world. I cannot justify comfort or pleasure when other people are
suffering. I don't know how anyone can."

"Surely you don't think you can change it all, Gretchen."

"No, but I can spend my life affecting many, many individual lives. That's what counts."

This story so upset me that I couldn't remain seated there. I stood up, stretching my stiff
legs, and I went to the window and looked out at the field of snow.

It would have been easy to dismiss it had she been a sorrowful or mentally crippled
person, or a person of dire conflict and instability. But nothing seemed farther from the
truth. I found her almost unfathomable.

She was as alien to me as my mortal friend Nicolas had been so many, many decades
ago, not because she was like him. But because his cynicism and sneering and eternal
rebellion had contained an abnegation of self which I couldn't really understand. My
Nicki-so full of seeming eccentricity and excess, yet deriving satisfaction from what he
did only because it pricked others.

Abnegation of self-that was the heart of it.

I turned around. She was merely watching me. I had the distinct feeling again that it
didn't matter much to her what I said. She didn't require my understanding. In a way, she
was one of the strongest people I'd encountered in all my long life.

It was no wonder she took me out of the hospital; another nurse might not have assumed
such a burden at all.

"Gretchen," I asked, "you're never afraid that your life has been wasted-that sickness and
suffering will simply go on long after you've left the earth, and what you've done will
mean nothing in the larger scheme?"

"Lestat," she said, "it is the larger scheme which means nothing." Her eyes were wide and
clear. "It is the small act which means all. Of course sickness and suffering will continue
after I'm gone. But what's important is that I have done all I can. That's my triumph, and
my vanity. That's my vocation and my sin of pride. That is my brand of heroism."

"But, cherie, it works that way only if someone is keeping score-if some Supreme Being
will ratify your decision, or you'll be rewarded for what you've done, or at least upheld."

"No," she said, choosing her words thoughtfully as she proceeded. "Nothing could be
farther from the truth. Think of what I've said. I'm telling you something that is obviously
new to you. Maybe it's a religious secret."

"How so?"

"There are many nights when I lie awake, fully aware that there may be no personal God,
and that the suffering of the children I see every day in our hospitals will never be
balanced or redeemed. I think of those old arguments-you know, how can God justify the
suffering of a child? Dostoevsky asked that question. So did the French writer Albert
Camus. We ourselves are always asking it. But it doesn't ultimately matter.

"God may or may not exist. But misery is real. It is absolutely real, and utterly
undeniable. And in that reality lies my commitment-the core of my faith. I have to do
something about it!"

"And at the hour of your death, if there is no God . . ."

"So be it. I will know that I did what I could. The hour of my death could be now." She
gave a little shrug. "I wouldn't feel any different."

"This is why you feel no guilt for our being there in the bed together."

She considered. "Guilt? I feel happiness when I think of it. Don't you know what you've
done for me?" She waited, and slowly her eyes filled with tears. "I came here to meet
you, to be with you," she said, her voice thickening. "And I can go back to the mission
now."

She bowed her head, and slowly, silently regained her calm, her eyes clearing. Then she
looked up and spoke again.

"When you spoke of making this child, Claudia... when you spoke of bringing your
mother, Gabrielle, into your world ... you spoke of reaching for something. Would you
call it a transcendence? When I work until I drop hi the mission hospital, I transcend. I
transcend doubt and something . . . something perhaps hopeless and black inside myself.
I don't know."

The Tale of the Body Thief 249

"Hopeless and black, yes, that's the key, isn't it? The music didn't make this go away."

"Yes, it did, but it was false."

"Why false? Why was doing that good-playing the piano- false?"

"Because it didn't do enough for others, that's why."

"Oh, but it did. It gave them pleasure, it had to."

"Pleasure?"

"Forgive me, I'm choosing the wrong tack. You've lost yourself hi your vocation. When
you played the piano, you were yourself-don't you see? You were the unique Gretchen! It
was the very meaning of the word 'virtuoso.' And you wanted to lose yourself."

"I think you're right. The music simply wasn't my way."

"Oh, Gretchen, you frighten me!"

"But I shouldn't frighten you. I'm not saving the other way was wrong. If you did good
with your music-your rock singing, this brief career you described-it was the good you
could do. I do good my way, that's all."

"No, there's some fierce self-denial hi you. You're hungry for love the way I starve night
after night for blood. You punish yourself hi your nursing, denying your carnal desires,
and your love of music, and all the things of the world which are like music. You are a
virtuoso, a virtuoso of your own pain."

"You're wrong, Lestat," she said with another little smile, and a shake of her head. "You
know that's not true. It's what you want to believe about someone like me. Lestat, listen
to me. If all you've told me is true, isn't it obvious in light of that truth that you were
meant to meet me?"

"How so?"

"Come here, sit with me and talk to me."

I don't know why I hesitated, why I was afraid. Finally I came back to the blanket and sat
down opposite, crossing my legs. I leaned back against the side of the bookcase.

"Don't you see?" she asked. "I represent a contrary way, a " way you haven't ever
considered, and one which might bring you the very consolation you seek."

"Gretchen, you don't believe for a moment that I've told the truth about myself. You can't.
I don't expect you to."

"I do believe you! Every word you've said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You seek
something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when they
blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you don't believe in Christ. It's
unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the existence you've
lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way would offer you an
alternative."

"You're speaking of this for me?" I asked.

"Of course I am. Don't you see the pattern? You come down into this body; you fall into
my hands; you give me the moment of love I require. But what have I given you? What is
my meaning for you?"

She raised her hand for quiet.

"No, don't speak of larger schemes again. Don't ask if there is a literal God. Think on all
I've said. I've said it for myself, but also for you. How many lives have you taken in this
otherworldly existence of yours? How many lives have I saved- literally saved-in the
missions?"

I was ready to deny the entire possibility, when suddenly it occurred to me to wait, to be
silent, and merely to consider.

The chilling thought came to me again that I might never recover my preternatural body,
that I might be trapped in this flesh all my life. If I couldn't catch the Body Thief, if I
couldn't get the others to help me, the death I said I wanted would indeed be mine in
time. I had fallen back into time.

And what if there was a scheme to it? What if there was a destiny? And I spent that
mortal life working as Gretchen worked, devoting my entire physical and spiritual being
to others? What if I simply went with her back to her jungle outpost? Oh, not as her
lover, of course. Such things as that were not meant for her, obviously. But what if I went
as her assistant, her helper? What if I sank my mortal life into that very frame of self-
sacrifice?

Again, I forced myself to remain quiet, to see it.

Of course there was an added capability of which she knew nothing-the wealth I could
bestow upon her mission, upon missions like it. And though this wealth was so vast some
men could not have calculated it, I could calculate it. I could see in a large incandescent
vision its limits, its effects. Whole village populations fed and clothed, hospitals stocked
with medicines, schools furnished with books and blackboards and radios and pianos.
Yes, pianos. Oh, this was an old, old tale. This was an old, old dream.

I remained quiet as I considered it. I saw the moments of each day of my mortal life-my
possible mortal life-spent along with every bit of my fortune upon this dream. I saw this
as if it were sand sliding through the narrow center of an hourglass.

Why, at this very minute, as we sat here in this clean little room, people starved in the
great slums of the Eastern world. They starved in Africa. Worldwide, they perished from
disease and from disaster. Floods washed away their dwellings; drought shriveled their
food and their hopes. The misery of even one country was more than the mind could
endure, were it described in even vague detail.

But even if everything I possessed I gave to this endeavor, what would I have
accomplished in the final analysis?

How could I even know that modern medicine in a jungle village was better than the old
way? How could I know that the education given a jungle child spelt happiness for it?
How could I know that any of this was worth the loss of myself? How could I make
myself care whether it was or not! That was the horror.

I didn't care. I could weep for any individual soul who suffered, yes, but about sacrificing
my life to the nameless millions of the world, I couldn't care! In fact, it filled me with
dread, terrible dark dread. It was sad beyond sad. It seemed no life at all. It seemed the
very opposite of transcendence.

I shook my head. In a low stammering voice I explained to her why this vision frightened
me so much.

"Centuries ago, when I first stood on the little boulevard stage in Paris-when I saw the
happy faces, when I heard applause-I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny;
I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last.

"Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have
been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines
with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling
moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the mind of the
beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of
accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will-is utterly whole and triumphant.

"Yes, I could have been a saint, you are right, but I would have had to found a religious
order or lead an army into battle; I would have had to work miracles of such scope that
the whole world would have been brought to its knees. I am one who must dare even if
I'm wrong-completely wrong. Gretchen, God gave me an individual soul and I cannot
bury it."

I was amazed to see that she was still smiling at me, softly and unquestioningly, and that
her face was full of calm wonder.

"Better to reign in hell," she asked carefully, "than to serve in heaven?"

"Oh, no. I would make heaven on earth if I could. But I must raise my voice; I must
shine; and I must reach for the very ecstasy that you've denied-the very intensity from
which you fled! That to me is transcendence! When I made Claudia, blundering error that
it was-yes, it was transcendence. When I made Gabrielle, wicked as it seemed, yes, it was
transcendence. It was a single, powerful, and horrifying act, which wrung from me all my
unique power and daring. They shall not die, I said, yes, perhaps the very words you use
to the village children.

"But it was to bring them into my unnatural world that I uttered these words. The goal
was not merely to save, but to make of them what I was-a unique and terrible being. It
was to confer upon them the very individuality I cherished. We shall live, even in this
state called living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy those who would
judge us and destroy us. That was my transcendence. And self-sacrifice and redemption
had no part in it."

Oh, how frustrating it was that I could not communicate it to her, I could not make her
believe it in literal terms. "Don't you see, I survived all that has happened to me because I
am who I am. My strength, my will, my refusal to give up-those are the only components
of my heart and soul which I can truly identify. This ego, if you wish to call it that, is my
strength. I am the Vampire Lestat, and nothing . .. not even this mortal body ... is going to
defeat me."

I was amazed to see her nod, to see her totally accepting expression.

"And if you came with me," she said gently, "the Vampire Lestat would perish-wouldn't
he?-in his own redemption."

"Yes, he would. He would die slowly and horribly among the small and thankless tasks,
caring for the never-ending hordes of the nameless, the faceless, the eternally needy."

I felt so sad suddenly that I couldn't continue. I was tired in an awful mortal way, the
mind having worked its chemistry upon this body. I thought of my dream and of my
speech to Claudia, and now I had told it again to Gretchen, and I knew myself as never
before.

I drew up my knees and rested my arms on them, and I put my forehead on my arms. "I
can't do it," I said under my breath. "I can't bury myself alive in such a life as you have.
And I don't want to, that's the awful part. I don't want to do it! I don't believe it would
save my soul. I don't believe it would matter."

I felt her hands on my arms. She was stroking my hair again, drawing it back from my
forehead.

"I understand you," she said, "even though you're wrong."

I gave a little laugh as I looked up at her. I took a napkin from our little picnic and I
wiped my nose and my eyes.

"But I haven't shaken your faith, have I?"

"No," she said. And this time her smile was different, more warm and more truly radiant.
"You've confirmed it," she said in a whisper. "How very strange you are, and how
miraculous that you came to me. I can almost believe your way is right for you. Who else
could be you? No one."

I sat back, and drank a little sip of wine. It was now warm from the fire, but still it tasted
good, sending a ripple of pleasure through my sluggish limbs. I drank some more of it. I
set down the glass and looked at her.

"I want to ask you a question," I said. "Answer me from your heart. If I win my battle-if I
regain my body-do you want me to come to you? Do you want me to show you that I've
been telling the truth? Think carefully before you answer.

"I want to do it. I really do. But I'm not sure that it's the best thing for you. Yours is
almost a perfect life. Our little carnal episode couldn't possibly turn you away from it. I
was right- wasn't I?-hi what I said before. You know now that erotic pleasure really isn't
important to you, and you're going to return to your work hi the jungle very soon, if not
immediately."

"That's true," she said. "But there's something else you should know, also. There was a
moment this morning when I thought I could throw away everything-just to be with you."

"No, not you, Gretchen."

"Yes, me. I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you were
to say 'Come with me,' even now, I might go. If this world of yours really existed . . ."
She broke off with another little shrug, tossing her hair a little and then smoothing it back
behind her shoulder. "The meaning of chastity is not to fall in love," she said, her focus
sharpening as she looked at me. "I could fall in love with you. I know I could."

She broke off, and then said in a low, troubled voice, "You could become my god. I know
that's true."

This frightened me, yet I felt at once a shameless pleasure and satisfaction, a sad pride. I
tried not to yield to the feeling of slow physical excitement. After all, she didn't know
what she was saying. She couldn't know. But there was something powerfully convincing
in her voice and in her manner.

"I'm going back," she said in the same voice, full of certitude and humility. "I'll probably
leave within a matter of days. But yes, if you win this battle, if you recover your old
form-for the love of God, come to me. I want to ... I want to know!"

I didn't reply. I was too confused. Then I spoke the confusion.

"You know, in a horrible way, when I do come to you and reveal my true self, you may
be disappointed."

"How could that be?"

"You think me a sublime human being for the spiritual content of all I've said to you. You
see me as some sort of blessed lunatic spilling truth with error the way a mystic might.
But I'm not human. And when you know it, maybe you'll hate it."

"No, I could never hate you. And to know that all you've said is true? That would be ... a
miracle."

"Perhaps, Gretchen. Perhaps. But remember what I said. We are a vision without
revelation. We are a miracle without meaning. Do you really want that cross along with
so many others?"

She didn't answer. She was weighing my words. I could not imagine what they meant to
her. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, folding her fingers gently around mine,
her eyes still constant as she looked at me.

"There is no God, is there, Gretchen?"

"No, there isn't," she whispered.

I wanted to laugh and to weep. I sat back, laughing softly to myself and looking at her, at
the calm, statuesque manner in winch she sat there, the light of the fire caught in her
hazel eyes.

"You don't know what you've done for me," she said. "You don't know how much it has
meant. I am ready-ready to go back now."

I nodded.

"Then it won't matter, will it, my beautiful one, if we get into that bed together again. For
surely we should do it."

"Yes, we should do that, I think," she answered.

It was almost dark when I left her quietly to take the phone by f its long cord into the
little bath and call my New York agent. "| Once again, the number rang and rang. I was
just about to give - up, and turn again to my man in Paris, when a voice came on f* the
line, and slowly let me know in halting awkward terms that % my New York
representative was indeed no longer alive. He had died by violence several nights ago hi
his office high above Madison Avenue. Robbery had now been affirmed as the motive for
the attack; his computer and all his files had been stolen. I was so stunned that I could
make no answer to the helpful voice on the phone. At last I managed to collect myself
sufficiently to put a few questions.

On Wednesday night, about eight o'clock, the crime had occurred. No, no one knew the
extent of damage done by the theft of the files. Yes, unfortunately the poor man had
suffered.

"Awful, awful situation," said the voice. "If you were in New York, you couldn't avoid
knowing about it Every paper in town had the story. They were calling it a vampire
killing. The man's body was entirely drained of blood."

I hung up the phone, and for a long moment sat there in rigid if silence. Then I rang Paris.
My man there answered after only J|: a small delay.

Thank God I had called, said my man. But please, I must identify myself. No, the code
words weren't enough. What about conversations which had taken place between us in
the past? Ah, yes, yes, that was it. Talk, talk, he said. I at once poured out a litany of
secrets known only to me and this man, and I could hear his great relief as he at last
unburdened him-

The strangest things had been happening, he said. He'd been contacted twice by someone
claiming to be me, who obviously wasn't. This individual even knew two of our code
words used hi the past, and gave an elaborate story as to why he did not know the latest
ones. Meantime, several electronic orders had come in for shifts of funds, but in every
case, the codes were wrong. But not entirely wrong. Indeed, there was every indication
that this person was in the process of cracking our system.

"But, Monsieur, let me tell you the simplest part. This man does not speak the same
French that you do! I don't mean to insult you, Monsieur, but your French is rather... how
shall I say, unusual? You speak old-fashioned words. And you put words in unusual
order. I know when it is you."

"I understand exactly," I said. "Now believe me when I say this. You must not talk to this
person anymore. He is capable of reading your mind. He is trying to get the code words
from you telepathically. We are going to set up a system, you and I. You will make one
transfer to me now ... to my bank in New Orleans. But everything must be locked up tight
after that. And when I contact you again, I shall use three old-fashioned words. We won't
agree on them... but they will be words you've heard me use before and you will know
them."

Of course this was risky. But the point was, this man knew me! I went on to tell him that
the thief in question was most dangerous, that he had done violence to my man in New
York, and every conceivable personal protection must be taken. I should pay for all this-
guards of any number, round the clock. He must err on the side of excess. "You'll hear
from me again, very soon. Remember, old-fashioned words. You'll know me when you
speak to me."

I put down the phone. I was trembling with rage, unsupport-able rage! Ah, the little
monster! It is not enough for him to have the body of the god, he must ransack the god's
storehouses. The little fiend, the little imp! And I had been so foolish not to realize that
this would happen!

"Oh, you are human all right," I said to myself. "You are a human idiot!" And oh, to think
of the denunciations Louis would heap upon my head before he consented to help me!

And what if Marius knew! Oh, that was too awful to contemplate. Just reach Louis as fast
as you can.

I had to obtain a valise, and get to the airport. Mojo would undoubtedly have to travel by
crate, and this, too, must be obtained. My farewell to Gretchen would not be the graceful,
slow leave-taking I had envisioned. But surely she would understand.

Much was happening within the complex delusionary world of her mysterious lover. It
was time to part.

SEVENTEEN

THE trip south was a small nightmare. The airport, only just reopened after the repeated
storms, had been jammed to overflowing with anxious mortals waiting for their long-
delayed flights or come to find their arriving loved ones.

Gretchen gave way to tears, and so did I. A terrible fear had seized her that she would
never see me again, and I could not reassure her sufficiently that I would come to her at
the Mission of St. Margaret Mary in the jungles of French Guiana, up the Maroni River
from St. Laurent. The written address was carefully placed in my pocket along with all
numbers relevant to the motherhouse in Caracas, from which the sisters could direct me
should I be unable to find the place on my own. She had already booked a midnight flight
for the first leg of her return.

"One way or another, I must see you again!" she said to me : ia a voice that was breaking
my heart.

"You will, ma chere," I said, "that I promise you. I'll find the mission. I'll find you."

The flight itself was hellish. I did little more than lie there in a stupor, waiting for the
plane to explode and for my mortal body to be blown to pieces. Drinking large amounts
of gin and tonic did not alleviate the fear; and when I did free my mind from it for a few
moments at a time, it was only to become obsessed with difficulties facing me. My
rooftop apartment, for example, was full of clothes which did not fit me. And I was used
to going in through a door on the roof. I had no key now to the street stairway. Indeed,
the key was in my nocturnal resting place beneath the Lafayette Cemetery, a secret
chamber I could not possibly reach with only a mortal's strength, for it was blocked with
doors at several points which not even a gang of mortal men might have opened.

And what if the Body Thief had been to New Orleans before me? What if he had sacked
my rooftop rooms, and stolen all the money hidden there? Not likely. No, but if he had
stolen all the files of my poor unfortunate mortal agent in New York... Ah, better to think

about the plane exploding. And then there was Louis. What if Louis were not there?
What if... And so on it went for the better part of two hours.

At last, we made our rattling, roaring, cumbersome, and terrifying descent, amid a
rainstorm of biblical proportions. I collected Mojo, discarding his crate, and leading him
boldly into the back of the taxi. And off we drove into the unabated storm, with the
mortal driver taking every conceivable risk available to him, as Mojo and I were flung
into each other's arms, more or less, over and over again.

It was near midnight when we finally reached the narrow tree-lined streets of uptown, the
rain falling so heavily and steadily that the houses behind their iron fences were scarcely
visible. When I saw the dismal, abandoned house of Louis's property, crowded by the
dark trees, I paid the driver, snatched up the valise, and led Mojo out of the cab into the
downpour.

It was cold, yes, very cold, but not as bad as the deep, freezing air of Georgetown.
Indeed, even in this icy rain, the dark rich foliage of the giant magnolias and the
evergreen oaks seemed to make the world more cheerful and bearable. On the other hand,
I had never beheld with mortal eyes a dwelling as forlorn as the great massive abandoned
house which stood before Louis's hidden shack.

For one moment as I shaded my eyes from the rain and looked up at those black and
empty windows, I felt a terrible irrational fear that no being dwelt in this place, that I was
mad, and destined to remain in this weak human body forever.

Mojo leapt the small iron fence just as I leapt it. And together we plowed through the
high grass, around the ruins of the old porch, and back into the wet and overgrown
garden. The night was full of the noise of the rain, thundering against my mortal ears, and
I almost wept when I saw the small house, a great gleaming hulk of wet vines, standing
there before me.

In a loud whisper I called Louis's name. I waited. No sound came from within. Indeed the
place seemed on the verge of collapse in its decay. Slowly I approached the door.
"Louis," I said again. "Louis, it is I, Lestat!"

Cautiously I stepped inside amid the heaps and stacks of dusty objects. Quite impossible
to see! Yet I made out the desk, the whiteness of the paper, and the candle standing there,
and a small book of matches beside it.

With trembling wet fingers, I struggled to strike a match, and only after several efforts
succeeded. At last I touched it to the wick, and a thin bright light filled all the room,
shining upon the red velvet chair which was mine, and the other worn and neglected
objects.

A powerful relief coursed through me. I was here! I was almost safe! And I was not mad.
This was my world, this awful cluttered unbearable little place! Louis would come. Louis

would have to come before long; Louis was almost here. I all but collapsed in the chair in
sheer exhaustion. I laid my hands on Mojo, scratching his head, and stroking his ears.

"We've made it, boy," I said. "And soon we'll be after that devil. We'll find a way to deal
with him." I realized I was shivering again, indeed, I was feeling the old telltale
congestion in my chest. "Good Lord, not again," I said. "Louis, come for the love of
heaven, come! Wherever you are, come back here now. I need you."

I was just about to reach into my pocket for one of the many paper handkerchiefs
Gretchen had forced upon me, when I realized that a figure was standing exactly at my
left, only an inch from the arm of the chair, and that a very smooth white hand was
reaching for me. In the same instant, Mojo leapt to his feet, giving forth his worst, most
menacing growls, and then appeared to charge the figure.

I tried to cry out, to identify myself, but before my lips were even open, I'd been hurled
against the floor, deafened by Mojo's barking, and I felt the sole of a leather boot pressed
to my throat, indeed, to the very bones of my neck, crushing them with such force that
surely they were about to be broken.

I couldn't speak, nor could I free myself. A great piercing cry came from the dog, and
then he, too, fell silent, and I heard the muffled sounds of his large body sinking to the
floor. Indeed I felt the weight of him on my legs, and I struggled frantically and
helplessly in pure terror. All reason left me as I clawed at the foot pinning me down, as I
pounded the powerful leg, as I gasped for breath, only hoarse inarticulate growls coming
from me.

Louis, it's Lestat. I'm in the body, the human body.

Harder and harder the foot pressed. I was strangling as the bones were about to be
crushed, yet I couldn't utter one syllable to save myself. And above me in the gloom, I
saw his face-the subtle gleaming whiteness of the flesh that did not seem at all to be
flesh, the exquisitely symmetrical bones, and the deh'cate half-closed hand, which
hovered in the air, in a perfect attitude of indecision, as the deep-set eyes, fired with a
subtle and incandescent green, looked down upon me without the slightest palpable
emotion.

With all my soul I cried the words again, but when had he ever been able to divine the
thoughts of his victims? I could have done that, but not he! Oh, God help me, Gretchen
help me, I was screaming in my soul.

As the foot increased its pressure, perhaps for the final time, all indecision cast aside, I
wrenched my head to the right, sucked in one desperate tiny breath, and forced from my
constricted throat one hoarse word: "Lestat!" all the while desperately pointing to myself
with my right hand and first finger.

It was the last gesture of which I was capable. I was suffocating, and the darkness came
rolling over me. Indeed it was bringing a total strangling nausea with it, and just at the
moment when I ceased to care hi the most lovely light-headed fashion, the pressure
ceased, and I found myself rolling over and rising up on my hands, one frantic cough
tearing loose from me after another.

"For the love of God," I cried, spitting the words in between my hoarse painful choking
breaths, "I'm Lestat. I'm Lestat in this body! Couldn't you have given me a chance to
speak? Do you kill any hapless mortal who blunders into your little house? What of the
ancient laws of hospitality, you bloody fool! Why the hell don't you put iron bars on your
doors!" I struggled to my knees, and suddenly the nausea won out. I vomited a filthy
stream of spoiled food into the dirt and the dust, and then shrank back from it, chilled and
miserable, staring up at him.

"You killed the dog, didn't you? You monster!" I flung myself forward on Mojo's inert
body. But he wasn't dead, merely unconscious, and at once, I felt the slow pumping of his
heart. "Oh, thank God, if you'd done that, I would never, never, never have forgiven
you."

A faint moan came from Mojo, and then his left paw moved, and then slowly his right. I
laid my hand between his ears. Yes, he was coming back. He was unhurt. But oh, what a
wretched experience this had been! Here of all places to come to the very brink of mortal
death! Enraged again, I glared up at Louis.

How still he was as he stood there, how quietly astonished. The pounding of the rain, the
dark lively sounds of the winter night-all seemed to evaporate suddenly as I looked at
him. Never had I seen him with mortal eyes. Never had I beheld this wan, phantom
beauty. How could mortals believe this was a human when their eyes passed over him?
Ah, the hands-like those of plaster saints come to life in shadowy grottoes. And how
utterly devoid of feeling the face, the eyes not windows of the soul at all, but fine jewel-
like snares of illumination.

"Louis," I said. "The worst has happened. The very worst. The Body Thief made the
switch. But he's stolen my body and has no intention of giving it back to me."

Nothing palpable quickened in him as I spoke. Indeed so lifeless and menacing did he
seem, that I suddenly broke into a stream of French, pouring forth every image and detail
which I could recall in the hopes of wringing recognition from him. I spoke of our last
conversation in this very house, and the brief meeting at the foyer of the Cathedral. I
recalled his warning to me that I must not speak to the Body Thief. And I confessed that I
had found the man's offer impossible to resist, and had gone north to meet with him, and
to accept his proposal.

Still, nothing of vitality sparked the merciless face, and suddenly, I fell silent. Mojo was
trying to stand, occasional little moans coming from him, and slowly I wrapped my right
arm around his neck, and leaned against him, struggling to catch my breath, and telling

him in a soothing voice that everything was fine now, we were saved. No more harm
would come to him.

Louis shifted his gaze slowly to the animal, then back to me. Then gradually, the set of
his mouth softened ever so slightly. And then he reached for my hand, and pulled me up-
quite without my cooperation or consent-to a standing position.

"It really is you," he said in a deep, raw whisper.

"You're damned right it's me. And you nearly killed me, you realize that! How many
times will you try that little trick before all the clocks of the earth tick to the finish? I
need your help, damn you! And, once again, you try to kill me! Now, will you please
close whatever shutters still hang on these damned windows, and make a fire of some
sort in that miserable little hearth!"

I flopped down again in my red velvet chair, still laboring for breath, and a strange
lapping sound suddenly distracted me. I looked up. Louis had not moved. Indeed he was
staring at me, as if I were a monster. But Mojo was patiently and steadily devouring all of
the vomit I had spilt upon the floor.

I gave a little delighted laugh, which threatened to become a fit of perfect hysteria.

"Please, Louis, the fire. Make the fire," I said. "I'm freezing in this mortal body! Move!"

"Good God," he whispered. "What have you done now!"

EIGHTEEN

IT WAS two by the watch on my wrist. The rain had slackened beyond the broken
shutters which covered both doors and windows, and I sat huddled in the red velvet chair,
enjoying the little blaze from the brick fireplace, yet badly chilled again, and suffering
the same old racking cough. But the moment was at hand, surely, when such a thing
would no longer be of concern.

I had poured out the whole tale.

In a frenzy of mortal candor, I had described each and every dreadful and bewildering
experience, from my conversations with Raglan James to the very last sad farewell to
Gretchen. I had told even of my dreams, of Claudia and me in the long-ago little hospital,
of our conversation hi the fantasy parlour of the eighteenth-century hotel suite, and of the
sad terrible loneliness I'd felt hi loving Gretchen, for I knew that she believed at heart that
I was mad, and only for that reason had she loved me. She had seen me as some sort of
beatific idiot, and no more.

It was finished and done. I had no idea where to find the Body Thief. But I must find
him. And this search could only begin when I was once again a vampire, when this tall
powerful body was pumped with preternatural blood.

Weak as I would be with only the power Louis could give me, I would nevertheless be
some twenty times stronger than I was now, and capable perhaps of summoning help
from the others, for who knew what manner of fledgling I would become. Once the body
was transformed, surely I'd have some telepathic voice. I could beg Marius for his help;
or call out to Armand, or even Gabrielle-as yes, my beloved Gabrielle-for she would no
longer be my fledgling, and she could hear me, v which hi the ordinary scheme of things-
if such a word can be used-she could not.

He sat at his desk, as he had the entire time, oblivious to the draughts, of course, and the
rain splattering on the slats of the shutters, and listening without a word as I'd spoken,
watching with a pained and amazed expression as I'd climbed to my feet and paced in my
excitement, as I had rambled on and on.

"Judge me not for my stupidity," I implored him. I told him again of my ordeal in the
Gobi, of my strange conversations with David, and David's vision in the Paris cafe. "I
was hi a state of desperation when I did this. You know why I did it. I don't have to tell
you. But now, it must be undone."

I was now coughing almost continuously, and blowing my nose frantically with those
miserable little paper handkerchiefs.

"You cannot imagine how absolutely revolting it is to be hi this body," I said. "Now,
please, do it quickly, do it with your greatest skill. It's been a hundred years since you did
it last. Thank God for that. The power is not dissipated. I'm ready now. There need be no
preparations. When I regain my form, I'll fling him into this one and burn him to a
cinder."

He made no reply.

I stood up, pacing again, this time to keep warm and because a terrible apprehension was
taking hold of me. After all, I was about to die, was I not, and be born again, as it had
happened over two hundred years ago. Ah, but there would be no pain.

No, no pain . . . only those awful discomforts which were nothing compared to the chest
pain I felt now, or the chill knotted hi my fingers, or hi my feet.

"Louis, for the love of God, be quick," I said. I stopped and looked at him. "What is it?
What's the matter with you."

In a very low and uncertain voice he answered:

"I cannot do this."

"What!"

I stared at him, trying to fathom what he meant, what possible doubt he could have, what
possible difficulty we must now dispose of. And I realized what a dreadful change had
come over his narrow face-that all its smoothness had been lost, and that indeed it was a
perfect mask of sorrow. Once again, I realized that I was seeing him as human beings
saw him. A faint red shimmer veiled his green eyes. Indeed, his entire form, so seemingly
solid and powerful, was trembling.

"I cannot do it, Lestat," he said again, and all his soul seemed to come out in the words.
"I can't help you!"

"What in the name of God are you saying to me!" I demanded. "I made you. You exist
tonight because of me! You love me, you spoke those very words to me. Of course you
will help me."

I rushed towards him, slamming my hands down on the desk and looking into his face.

"Louis, answer me! What do you mean, you can't do it!"

"Oh, I don't blame you for what you've done. I don't. But can't you see what's happened?
Lestat, you have done it. You have been reborn a mortal man."

"Louis, this is no time to sentimentalize the transformation. Don't throw my own words
back at me! I was wrong."

"No. You weren't wrong."

"What are you trying to tell me! Louis, we are wasting time. I have to go after that
monster! He has my body."

"Lestat, the others will deal with him. Perhaps they already have."

"Already have! What do you mean, already have!"

"Don't you think they know what's happened?" He was deeply distressed but also angry.
How the human lines of expression appeared and disappeared in his supple flesh as he
spoke. "How could such a thing have taken place without their knowing?" he said, as if
he were pleading with me to understand. "You spoke of this Raglan James as a sorcerer.
But no sorcerer can veil himself entirely from creatures as powerful as Maharet or her
sister, as powerful as Khayman and Marius, or even Armand. And what a clumsy
sorcerer-to murder your mortal agent in such a bloody and cruel way." He shook his
head, his hands suddenly pressed to his lips. "Lestat, they know! They must know. And it
could well be that your body has already been destroyed."

"They wouldn't do that."

"Why wouldn't they? You surrendered an engine of destruction to this demon-"

"But he didn't know how to use it! It was only for thirty-six hours of mortal time! Louis,
whatever the case, you must give ine the blood. Lecture me afterwards. Work the Dark
Trick and I'll find the answers to all these questions. We're wasting precious minutes,
hours."

"No, Lestat. We are not. That's my entire point! The question of this Body Thief and the
body he stole from you isn't what must concern us here. It's what's happening to you-your
soul-hi this body now."

"All right. Have it your way. Now make this body a vampire now."

"I can't. Or more truly, I will not."

I rushed at him. I couldn't prevent myself. And in an instant I had both hands on the
lapels of his miserable dusty black coat. I pulled at the cloth, ready to tear him up and out
of the chair, but he remained absolutely unmovable, looking at me quietly, his face still
stricken and sad. In impotent fury, I let go of him, and stood there, trying to still the
confusion in my heart.

"You can't mean what you're saying!" I pleaded, slamming my fists again on the desk hi
front of him. "How can you deny : me this?"

"Will you let me be one who loves you now?" he asked, his voice once again infused
with emotion, his face still deeply and tragically sad. "I wouldn't do it no matter how
great your misery, no matter how strongly you pleaded, no matter what awful litany of
events you set down before me. I wouldn't do it because I will not make another one of us
for any reason under God. But you have brought me no great misery! You are not faced
by any awful litany of disasters!" He shook his head, overcome as if he couldn't continue,
and then: "You have triumphed in this as only you could."

' "No, no, you're not understanding ..."

"Oh, yes, I am. Do I need to push you hi front of a mirror?"

He rose slowly from behind the desk and faced me eye-to-eye. "Must I sit you down and
make you examine the lessons of the tale I've heard from your own lips? Lestat, you have
fulfilled our dream! Don't you see it. You have done it. You have been reborn a mortal
man. A strong and beautiful mortal man!"

"No," I said. I backed away from him, shaking my head, my hands up to implore him.
"You're mad. You don't know what you're saying. I loathe this body! I loathe being

human. Louis, if you have an ounce of compassion hi you throw aside these delusions
and listen to my words!"

"I've heard you. I've heard it all. Why can't you hear it? Lestat, you've won. You're free
from the nightmare. You're alive again."

"I'm miserable!" I cried at him. "Miserable! Dear God, what must I do to convince you?"

"There is nothing. It is I who must convince you. What have you lived in this body?
Three? Four days? You speak of discomforts as if they were deathly afflictions; you talk
of physical limits as if they were malicious and punitive restraints.

"And yet through all your endless complaining, you yourself have told me that I must
refuse you! You yourself have implored me to turn you away! Lestat, why did you tell
me the story of David Talbot and his obsessions with God and the Devil? Why tell me all
the things that the nun Gretchen said to you? Why describe the little hospital you saw in
your fever dream? Oh, I know it wasn't Claudia who came to you. I don't say God put this
woman Gretchen in your path. But you love this woman. By your own admission, you
love her. She's waiting for you to return. She can be your guide through the pains and
annoyances of this mortal life-"

"No, Louis, you've misunderstood everything. I don't want her to guide me. I don't want
this mortal life!"

"Lestat, can't you see the chance you've been given? Can't you see the path laid out for
you and the light ahead?"

"I'm going to go mad if you don't stop saying these things..."

"Lestat, what can any of us do to redeem ourselves? And who has been more obsessed
with this very question than you?"

"No, no!" I threw my arms up and crossed them, back and forth, repeatedly, as if trying to
head off this dump truck of mad philosophy which was driving right down upon me.
"No! I tell you, this is false. This is the worst of all lies."

He turned away from me, and again I rushed at him, unable to stop myself, and would
have grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him, but with a gesture too quick for my
eye, he hurled me backwards against the chair.

Stunned, one ankle painfully twisted, I fell down on the cushions, and then made my
right hand into a fist and drove it into the palm of my left. "Oh, no, not sermons, not
now." I was almost weeping. "Not platitudes and pious recommendations." "Go back to
her," he said. "You're mad!"

"Imagine it," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, his back turned to me, his eyes fixed
perhaps on the distant window, his Voice almost inaudible, his dark form outlined against
the running silver of the rain. "All the years of inhuman craving, of sinister and
remorseless feeding. And you are reborn. And there-in that little jungle hospital you
could conceivably save a human life for every one you've ever taken. Oh, what guardian
angels look over you. Why are they so merciful? And you come to me and you beg me to
bring you back into this horror, yet with every word you affirm the splendour of all
you've suffered and seen."

"I bare my soul to you and you use it against me!" "Oh, I do not, Lestat. I seek to make
you look into it. You are begging me to drive you back to Gretchen. Am I perhaps the
only guardian angel? Am I the only one who can confirm this fate?" "You miserable
bastard son of a bitch! If you don't give me the blood . . ."

'He turned around, his face like that of a ghost, eyes wide and hideously unnatural in their
beauty. "I will not do it. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Go back to her, Lestat. Live
this mortal life."

"How dare you make this choice for me!" I was on my feet again, and finished with
whining and begging.

"Don't come at me again," he said patiently. "If you do, I shall hurt you. And that I don't
wish to do."

"Ah, you've killed me! That's what you've done. You think I believe all your lies! You've
condemned me to this rotting, Stinking, aching body, that's what you've done! You think
I don't know the depth of hatred in you, the true face of retribution when I see it! For the
love of God, speak the truth."

"It isn't the truth. I love you. But you are blind with impatience now, and overwrought
with simple aches and pains. It is you who will never forgive me if I rob you of this
destiny. Only it will take time for you to see the true meaning of what I've done."

"No, no, please." I came towards him, only this time not in anger. I approached slowly,
until I could lay my hands on his shoulders and smell the faint fragrance of dust and the
grave that clung to his clothes. Lord God, what was our skin that it drew the light to itself
so exquisitely? And our eyes. Ah, to look into his eyes.

"Louis," I said. "I want you to take me. Please, do as I ask you. Leave the interpretations
of all my tales to me. Take me, Louis, look at me." I snatched up his cold, lifeless hand
and laid it on my face. "Feel the blood in me, feel the heat. You want me, Louis, you
know you do. You want me, you want me in your power the way I had you in my power
so long, long ago. I'll be your fledgling, your child, Louis. Please, do this. Don't make me
beg you on my knees."

I could sense the change in him, the sudden predator}' glaze that covered his eyes. But
what was stronger than his thirst? His will.

"No, Lestat," he whispered. "I can't do it. Even if I'm wrong and you are right, and all
your metaphors are meaningless, I can't do it."

I took him in my arms, oh, so cold, so unyielding, this monster which I had made out of
human flesh. I pressed my lips against his cheek, shuddering as I did so, my fingers
sliding around his neck.

He didn't move away from me. He couldn't bring himself to do it. I felt the slow silent
heave of his chest against mine.

"Do it to me, please, beautiful one," I whispered in his ear. "Take this heat into your
veins, and give me back all the power that I once gave to you." I pressed my lips to his
cold, colorless mouth. "Give me the future, Louis. Give me eternity. Take me off this
cross."

In the corner of my eye, I saw his hand rise. Then I felt the satin fingers against my
cheek. I felt him stroke my neck. "I can't do it, Lestat."

"You can, you know you can," I whispered, kissing his ear as I spoke to him, choking
back the tears, my left arm slipping around his waist. "Oh, don't leave me hi this misery,
don't do it."

"Don't beg me anymore," he said sorrowfully. "It's useless. I'm going now. You won't see
me again."

"Louis!" I held fast to him. "You can't refuse me."

"Ah, but I can and I have."

I could feel him stiffening, trying to withdraw without bruising me. I held him ever more
tightly, refusing to back away.

"You won't find me again here. But you know where to find her. She's waiting for you.
Don't you see your own victory? Mortal again, and so very, very young. Mortal again,
and so : very, very beautiful. Mortal again, with all your knowledge and ?i with the same
indomitable will."

Firmly and easily he removed my arms and pushed me back, ^closing his hands over
mine as he held me away from him.

"Good-bye, Lestat," he said. "Perhaps the others will come to you. In time, when they
feel you've paid enough."

I gave one last cry, trying to free my hands, trying to fix upon him, for I knew full well
what he meant to do. ? In a dark flash of movement, he was gone, and I was lying on
the floor.

The candle had fallen over on the desk and had gone out. Only the light of the dying fire
filled the little room. And the shutters of the door stood open, and the rain was falling,
thin and quiet, yet steady. And I knew I was completely alone. I had fallen to one side,
my hands out before me to break the fall. And as I rose now, I cried out to him, praying
that somehow he could hear me, no matter how far away he'd gone. "Louis, help me. I
don't want to be alive. I don't want to be mortal! Louis, don't leave me here! I can't bear
it! I don't want sit! I don't want to save my soul!"

How long I repeated these themes I don't know. Finally, I was too exhausted to continue;
and the sounds of this mortal world and all its desperation were hurtful to my own ears.

I sat on the floor, one leg crooked beneath me, my elbow resting on my knee, my fingers
in my hair. Mojo had come forward, fearfully, and lay now beside me, and I leaned down
ad pressed my forehead into his fur.

The little fire was almost gone out. The rain hissed and sighed and redoubled its strength,
but falling straight from the heavens without a breath of hateful wind.

Finally I looked up at this dark, dismal little place, at its Bumble of books and old statues,
at the dust and filth everywhere, and at the glowing embers heaped hi the little hearth.
How weary I was; how seared from my own anger; how close to despair.

Had I ever in all my misery been this completely without hope?

My eyes moved sluggishly to the doorway, and to the steady downpour, and the
menacing darkness which lay beyond. Yes, go out in it, you and Mojo, who will of
course love it as he loved the snow. You have to go out in it. You have to get out of this
abysmal little house, and find some comfortable shelter where you can rest.

My rooftop apartment, surely there was some way I could break into it. Surely . . . some
way. And then the sun was coming hi a few hours, wasn't it? Ah, this my lovely city,
beneath the warm light of the sun.

For God's sake, don't start weeping again. You need to rest and to think.

But first, before you go, why don't you burn down his house! Let the big Victorian alone.
He doesn't love it. But burn his little shack!

I could feel myself breaking into an irresistible and malicious smile, even as the tears still
hovered in my eyes.

Yes, burn it down! He deserves it. And of course he's taken his writings with him, yes,
indeed he has, but all his books will go up in smoke! And that's exactly what he deserves.

At once I gathered up the paintings-a gorgeous Monet, a couple of small Picassos, and a
ruby-red egg tempera panel of the medieval period, all deteriorating badly, of course-and
I rushed out and into the old empty Victorian mansion, and stashed these hi a darkened
corner which seemed both safe and dry.

Then I went back into the little house, snatched up his candle, and thrust it into the
remains of the fire. At once the soft ashes exploded with tiny orange sparks; and the
sparks fastened themselves upon the wick.

"Oh, you deserve this, you treacherous ungrateful bastard!" I seethed as I put the flame to
the books piled against the wall, carefully ruffling their pages to get them going. And
then to an old coat thrown over a wooden chair, which went up like straw, and then to the
red velvet cushions of the chair that had been mine. Ah, yes, burn it, all of it.

I kicked a pile of moldering magazines beneath his desk and ignited them. I touched the
flame to one book after another, and tossed these like flaming coals into all parts of the
little house.

Mojo edged away from these little bonfires, and finally went out into the rain, where he
stood at a distance, gazing at me through the open door.

Ah, but things were moving too slowly. And Louis has a drawer full of candles; how
could I have forgotten them-curse this mortal brain!-and now I drew them out, some
twenty of them, and started setting the wax to burning fiercely, never mind the wick, and
flinging them into the red velvet chair to make a great heat. I hurled them at the heaps of
debris that remained, and I flung burning books at the wet shutters, and ignited the old
fragments of curtain which here and there hung forgotten and neglected from old rods. I
kicked out holes in the rotted plaster and threw the burning candles in upon the old
lathing, and then I leant down and set afire the worn threadbare rugs, wrinkling them to
let the air move underneath.

Within minutes the place was full of raging blazes, but the red chair and the desk were
the greatest of all. I ran out into the rain, and I saw the fire flickering through the dark
broken slats.

A damp ugly smoke rose as the fire licked at the wet shutters, as it curled up and out of
the windows into the wet mass of the Queen's Wreath! Oh, cursed rain! But then as the
blaze of the desk and chair grew ever brighter, the entire little building exploded with
orange flames! Shutters were blown into the darkness; a great hole burst in the roof.

"Yes, yes, burn!" I shouted, the rain pelting my face, my eyelids. I was practically
jumping up and down with joy. Mojo backed towards the darkened mansion, lowering his
head. "Burn, burn," I declared. "Louis, I wish I could burn you! I'd do it! Oh, if only I

knew where you He by day!" But even in my glee I realized I was weeping. I was wiping
at my mouth with the back of my hand, and crying. "How could you leave me like this!
How could you do it! I curse you." And dissolving into tears, I went down on my knees
again against the rainy earth.

I sank back on my heels, hands folded in front of me, beaten and miserable and staring at
the great fire. Lights were snap-ping on in distant houses. I could hear the thin scream of
a siren coming. I knew I should go.

Yet still I knelt there, and I felt almost stuporous when Mojo suddenly roused me with
one of his deep, most menacing growls. I realized he had come to stand beside me, and
was pressing his wet fur to my very face, and that he was peering off towards the burning
house.

I moved to catch hold of his collar and was about to retreat when I made out the source of
his alarm. It was no helpful mortal. But rather an unearthly and dim white figure standing
still as an apparition near the burning building, luridly illuminated by the blaze.

Even with these weak mortal eyes, I saw it was Marius! And I saw the expression of
wrath stamped on his face. Never have I seen such a perfect reflection of fury, and there
was not the slightest doubt that it was what he meant for me to see.

My lips parted but my voice had died in my throat. All I could do was stretch out my
arms to him, to send from my heart a silent plea for mercy and for help.

Again the dog gave his fierce warning and seemed about to spring.

And as I watched helplessly, and trembling uncontrollably, the figure turned its back
slowly, and giving me one last angry, disdainful look, disappeared.

It was then that I sprang to life, crying his name. "Marius!" I rose to my feet, calling
louder and louder. "Marius, don't leave me here. Help me!" I reached up into the skies.
"Marius," I roared.

But it was useless and I knew it.

The rain soaked through my coat. It soaked into my shoes. My hair was slick and wet
with it, and it didn't matter now whether or not I'd been crying, because the rain had
washed away the teats.

"You think I'm defeated," I whispered. What need was there to shout for him? "You think
you've passed your judgment, and that's the end of it. Oh, you think it is as simple as that.
Well you are wrong. I shall never have vengeance for this moment. But you will see me
again. You will see me again."

I bowed my head.

The night was full of mortal voices, the sounds of running feet. A great noisy engine had
come to a halt on the distant corner. I had to force these miserable mortal limbs to move.

I motioned for Mojo to follow, and off we crept past the ruins of the little house, still
burning merrily, and over a low garden wall and through an overgrown alley and away.

Only later did I think how close we had probably come to capture-the mortal arsonist and
his menacing dog.

But how could such a thing matter? Louis had cast me out, and so had Marius-Marius,
who might find my preternatural body before I did, and destroy it on the spot. Marius,
who might already have destroyed it so that I was left forever within this mortal frame.

Oh, if ever I'd known such misery in my mortal youth, I didn't remember it. And if I had,
it would have been little consolation to me now. As for my fear, it was unspeakable!
Reason couldn't compass it. Round and round I went with my hopes and feeble plans.

"I have to find the Body Thief, I have to find him and you must give me time, Marius, if
you will not help me, you must grant me that much."

Over and over I said it like the Hail Mary of a rosary as I trudged on through the bitter
rain.

Once or twice I even shouted my prayers in the darkness, standing beneath a high
dripping oak tree, and trying to see the approaching light coming down through the wet
sky.

Who in all the world would help me?

David was my only hope, though what he could do to help me, I couldn't even imagine.
David! And what if he, too, turned his back on me?

NINETEEN

I WAS sitting in the Cafe du Monde as the sun came up, thinking, how shall I get into my
rooftop rooms? This little problem was preventing me from losing my mind. Was that the
key to mortal survival? Hmmm. How to breach my luxurious little apartment? I myself
had fitted the entry to the roof garden with an impassable iron gate. I myself secured the
doors of the penthouse itself with numerous and complex locks. Indeed, the windows
were barred against intruding mortals, though how they could have possibly reached the
windows, I never truly considered before.

Ah, well, I shall have to get through the gate. I shall work some verbal magic on the other
tenants of the building-all tenants of the blond Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt, who treats
them very well, I might add. I shall convince them I am a French cousin of the landlord,

sent to take care of the penthouse in his absence, and that I must be allowed in at all
costs. Never mind that I must use a crowbar! Or an ax! Or a buzz saw. Only a
technicality, as they say in this age. I must get in.

And then what will I do? Pick up a kitchen knife-for the place has such things, though
God knows I never had need of a kitchen-and slit my mortal throat?

No. Call David. There is no one else in this world to whom you can turn, and oh, think of
the dreadful things David is going to say!

When I ceased to think of all this, I fell immediately into the crushing despair.

They had cast me out. Marius. Louis. In my worst folly, they had refused me help. Oh, I
had mocked Marius, true. I had refused his wisdom, his company, his rules.

Oh, yes, I had asked for it, as mortals so often declare. And I had done this despicable
thing of letting loose the Body Thief with my powers. True. Guilty again of spectacular
blunders and experiments. But had I ever dreamed of what it would truly mean to be
stripped utterly of my powers and on the outside looking in? The others knew; they must
know. And they had let Marius come to render the judgment, to let me know that for
what I had done, I was cast out!

But Louis, my beautiful Louis, how could he have spurned me! I would have defied
heaven to help Louis! I had so counted upon Louis, I had so counted upon waking this
night with the old blood running powerful and true in my veins.

Oh, Lord God-I was no longer one of them. I was not anything but this mortal man,
sitting here in the smothering warmth of the cafe, drinking this coffee-ah, yes, nice-
tasting coffee, of course-and munching on the sugar doughnuts with no hope of ever
regaining his glorious place in the dark Elohim.

Ah, how I hated them. How I wished to harm them! But who was to blame for all this?
Lestat-now six feet two inches tall, with brown eyes and rather dark skin and a nice mop
of wavy brown hair; Lestat, with muscular arms and strong legs, and another severe
mortal chill sickening and weakening him; Lestat, with his faithful dog, Mojo-Lestat
pondering how in the world he would catch the demon who had run off, not with his soul
as so often happens, but with his body, a body which might have already been-don't think
of it-destroyed!

Reason told me it was a little too early to plot anything. Besides, I have never had a deep
interest in revenge. Revenge is the concern of those who are at some point or other
beaten. I am not beaten, I told myself. No, not beaten. And victory is far more interesting
to contemplate than revenge.

Ah, best to think of little things, things which can be changed. David had to listen to me.
He had at least to give me his advice! But what else could he give? How could two
mortal men go after that despicable creature. Ahhh . . .

And Mojo was hungry. He was looking up at me with his large clever brown eyes. How
people in the cafe stared at him; what a wide berth they gave him, this ominous furry
creature with his dark muzzle, tender pink-lined ears, and enormous paws. Really ought
to feed Mojo. After all, the old cliche was true. This great hunk of dog flesh was my only
friend!

Did Satan have a dog when they hurled him down into hell? Well, the dog would
probably have gone with him, that much I knew.

"How do I do it, Mojo?" I asked. "How does a mere mortal catch the Vampire Lestat? Or
have the old ones burnt my beautiful body to ashes? Was that the meaning of Marius's
visit, to let me know it was done? Oooooh, God. What does the witch say in that ghastly
film? How could you do this to my beautiful wickedness. Aaah, I have a fever again,
Mojo. Things are going to take care of themselves. I'M GOING TO DIE!"

But Lord in heaven, behold the sun crashing down silently on the dirty pavements, look
at my shabby and charming New Orleans waking to the beauteous Caribbean light.

"Let's go, Mojo. Time to break and enter. And then we can be warm and we can rest."

Stopping by the restaurant opposite the old French Market, I bought a mess of bones and
meat for him. Surely it would do. Indeed, the kindly little waitress filled a sack with
scraps from last night's garbage, with the lusty little affirmation that the dog was going to
like that a lot! What about me? Didn't I want some breakfast? Wasn't I hungry on a
beautiful winter morning like this?

"Later, darling." I placed a large bill in her hand. I was still rich, that was one
consolation. Or at least I thought I was. I wouldn't know for certain until I reached my
computer, and tracked the activities of the loathsome swindler for myself.

Mojo consumed his meal in the gutter without a single solitary complaint. That's a dog
for you. Why wasn't I born a dog?

Now, where the hell was my penthouse apartment! I had to stop and to think, and then to
wander two blocks out of my way, and back again before I found it, getting colder by the
minute, though the sky was blue and the sun very bright now, for I almost never entered
the building from the street.

Getting into the building was very easy. Indeed the door on Dumaine Street was very
simple to force and then slam shut. Ah, but that gate, that will be the worst part, I
thought, as I dragged my heavy legs up the stairs, one flight after another, Mojo waiting
kindly at the landings for me to catch up.

At last I saw the bars of the gate, and the lovely sunlight streaming into the stairwell from
the roof garden, and the flutter of the large green elephant ears, which were only a little
bruised at the edges from the cold.

But this lock, how would I ever break this lock? I was in the process of estimating what
tools I would need-how about a small bomb?-when I realized that I was looking at the
door to my apartment some fifty feet away, and that it was not closed.

"Ah, God, the wretch has been here!" I whispered. "Damn him, Mojo, he's sacked my
lair."

Of course that might be construed as a hopeful sign. The wretch still lived; the others
hadn't done away with him. And I could still catch him! But how. I kicked the gate,
sending a riot of pain through my foot and leg.

Then I grabbed hold of it and rattled it mercilessly but it was as secure in its old iron
hinges as I had designed it to be! A weak revenant such as Louis couldn't have broken it,
let alone a mortal man. Undoubtedly the fiend had never even touched it but made his
entry as I did, out of the skies.

All right, stop this. Obtain some tools and do it quickly, and discover the extent of the
damage which the fiend has done.

I turned to go, but just as I did so, Mojo stood at attention and gave his warning growl.
Someone was moving inside the apartment. I saw a bit of shadow dance on the foyer
wall.

Not the Body Thief, that was impossible, thank God. But who?

In an instant the question was answered. David appeared! My beautiful David, dressed in
a dark tweed suit and overcoat and peering at me with his characteristic expression of
curiosity and alertness over the length of the garden path. I don't think I have ever been
so glad to see another mortal being in all my long accursed life.

I called his name at once. And then in French declared that it was I, Lestat. Please open
the gate.

He did not immediately respond. Indeed, never had he seemed so dignified, self-
possessed and so truly the elegant British gentleman as he stood there, staring at me, his
narrow heavily lined face registering nothing but mute shock. He stared at the dog. Then
he stared at me again. And then once more at the dog.

"David, it's Lestat, I swear to you!" I cried in English. "This is the body of the mechanic!
Remember the photograph! James did it, David. I'm trapped in this body. What can I tell
you to make you believe me? David, let me in."

He remained motionless. Then all of a sudden, he came forward with swift determined
steps, his face quite unreadable as he stopped before the gate.

I was near to fainting with happiness. I clung to the bars still, with both hands as if I were
in prison, and then I realized I was staring directly into his eyes-that for the first time we
were the same height.

"David, you don't know how glad I am to see you," I said, lapsing into French again.
"How did you ever get in? David, it's Lestat. It's me. Surely you believe me. You
recognize my voice. David, God and the Devil in the Paris cafe! Who else knows but
me!"

But it was not my voice to which he responded; he was staring into my eyes, and
listening as if to distant sounds. Then quite suddenly his entire manner was altered and I
saw the clear signs of recognition in his face.

"Oh, thank heaven," he said with a small, very polite British sigh.

He reached into his pocket for a small case, quickly removing from it a thin piece of
metal which he inserted into the lock. I knew enough of the world to realize this was a
burglar's tool of some sort. He swung the gate back for me, and then opened his arms.

Our embrace was long and warm and silent, and I fought furiously not to give way to
tears. Only very seldom in all this time had I ever actually touched this being. And the
moment was charged with an emotion which caught me somewhat off guard. The drowsy
warmth of my embraces with Gretchen came back to me. I felt safe. And just for an
instant, perhaps, I did not feel so utterly alone.

But there was no time now to enjoy this solace.

Reluctantly, I drew back, and thought again how splendid David looked. Indeed, so
impressive was he to me that I could almost believe I was as young as the body I now
inhabited. I needed him so.

All the little flaws of age which I naturally saw in him through my vampire eyes were
invisible. The deep lines of his face seemed but part of his great expressive personality,
along with the quiet light in his eyes. He looked entirely vigorous as he stood there in his
very proper attire, the little gold watch chain glittering on his tweed waistcoat-so very
solid and resourceful and grave.

"You know what the bastard's done," I said. "He's tricked me and abandoned me. And the
others have also abandoned me. Louis, Marius. They've turned their backs on me. I'm
marooned in this body, my friend. Come, I have to see if the monster has robbed my
rooms."

I hurried towards the apartment door, scarce hearing the few words he uttered, to the
effect that he thought the place was quite undisturbed.

He was right. The fiend had not rifled the apartment! Everything was exactly as I'd left it,
down to my old velvet coat hanging on the open closet door. There was the yellow pad
on which I'd made notes before my departure. And the computer. Ah, I had to go into the
computer immediately and discover the extent of his thievery. And my Paris agent, the
poor man might still be in danger. I must contact him at once.

But I was distracted by the light pouring through the glass walls, the soft warm splendour
of the sun spilling down upon the dark couches and chairs, and on the lush Persian carpet
with its pale medallion and wreaths of roses, and even upon the few large modern
paintings-furious abstracts all-which I had long ago chosen for these walls. I felt myself
shudder at the sight of it, marveling again that electric illumination could never produce
this particular sense of well-being which filled me now.

I also noted that there was a blazing fire going in the large white-tiled fireplace-David's
doing, no doubt-and the smell of coffee coming from the nearby kitchen, a room I had
scarce entered in the years I had inhabited this place.

At once David stammered an apology. He hadn't even checked into his hotel, so anxious
was he to find me. He'd come here direct from the airport, and only gone out for a few
little provisions so that he might spend a comfortable night keeping watch that I might
come or think to call.

"Wonderful, very glad that you did," I said, a little amused by his British politeness. I
was so glad to see him, and here he was apologizing for making himself at home.

I tore off the wet overcoat and sat down at the computer.

"This will take only a moment," I said, keying in the various commands, "and then I'll tell
you about everything. But what made you come? Did you suspect what happened!"

"Of course I did," he said. "Don't you know of the vampire murder in New York? Only a
monster could have wrecked those offices. Lestat, why didn't you call me? Why didn't
you ask my help?"

"One moment," I said. Already the little letters and figures were coming up on the screen.
My accounts were in order. Had the fiend been into this system, I would have seen
preprogrammed signals of invasion throughout. Of course there was no way to know for
certain that he hadn't attacked my accounts in European banks until I went into their files.
And damn, I couldn't remember the code words, and in fact, I was having a difficult time
managing the simplest commands.

"He was right," I muttered. "He warned me my thinking processes wouldn't be the same."
I switched from the finances program into Wordstar, my means of writing, and

immediately typed out a communication to my Paris agent, sending it through the phone
modem, asking him for an immediate status report, and reminding him to take the utmost
personal care as > to his own safety. Over and out.

I sat back, heaving a deep breath, which immediately j brought on a little fit of coughing,
and realized that David was i staring at me as if the sight were too shocking for him to
absorb. Indeed, it was almost comical the way he was looking at me. Then again, he
looked at Mojo, who was inspecting the place silently and a little sluggishly, eyes turning
to me over and over for some command.

I snapped my fingers for Mojo to come to me and gave him a deep strong hug. David
watched all this as if it were the weirdest thing in the world.

"Good Lord, you are really in that body," he whispered. "Not just hovering inside, but
anchored into the cells."

"You're telling me," I said disgustedly. "It's dreadful, the whole mess. And the others
won't help, David. I'm cast out." I gritted my teeth in rage. "Cast out!" I went into a
seething growl which inadvertently excited Mojo so that he at once licked my face.

"Of course I deserve it," I said, stroking Mojo. "That's the simplest thing about dealing
with me, apparently. I always deserve the worst! The worst disloyalty, the worst betrayal,
the worst abandonment! Lestat the scoundrel. Well, they have left this scoundrel entirely
on his own."

"I've been frantic to reach you," he said, his voice at once controlled and subdued. "Your
agent hi Paris swore he couldn't help me. I was going to try that address in Georgetown."
He pointed to the yellow pad on the table, "Thank God you're here."

"David, my worst fear is that the others have destroyed James and my body with him.
This may be the only body I now possess."

"No, I don't think so," he said with convincing equanimity. "Your little body borrower
has left quite a trail. But come, get out of these wet clothes. You're catching cold."

"What do you mean, trail?"

"You know we keep track of such crimes. Now, please, the clothes."

"More crimes after New York?" I asked excitedly. I let him coax me towards the
fireplace, immediately glad of the warmth. I pulled off the damp sweater and shirt. Of
course there was nothing to fit me in my various closets. And I realized I had forgotten
my valise somewhere on Louis's property last night. "New York was Wednesday night,
was it not?"

"My clothes will fit you," David said, immediately snatching the thought from my mind.
He headed for a mammoth leather suitcase in the corner.

"What's happened? What makes you think it's James?"

"Has to be," he answered, popping open the suitcase and removing several folded
garments, and then a tweed suit very like his own, still on its hanger, which he laid over
the nearest chair. "Here, change into these. You're going to catch your death."

"Oh, David," I said, continuing to undress. "I've almost caught my death repeatedly. In
fact, I've spent my whole brief mortal life nearly dying. The care of this body is a
revolting nuisance; how do living people endure this endless cycle of eating, pissing,
sniveling, defecating, and then eating again! When you mix in fever, headache, attacks of
coughing, and a runny nose, it becomes a penitential sentence. And prophylactics, good
Lord. Removing the ugly little things is worse than having to put them on! Whatever
made me think I wanted to do this! The other crimes-when did they take place! When is
more important than where."

He had fallen into staring at me again, too purely shocked to answer. Mojo was giving
him the eye now, sizing him up more or less, and offering a friendly lick of his pink
tongue to David's hand. David petted him lovingly, but continued to stare blankly at me.

"David," I said, as I took off the wet socks. "Speak to me. The other crimes! You said
that James had left a trail."

"It's so wildly uncanny," he said in a stunned voice. "I have a dozen pictures of this face.
But to see you inside it. Oh, I simply couldn't imagine it. Not at all."

"When did this fiend strike last?"

"Ah . . . The last report was from the Dominican Republic. That was, let me see, two
nights ago."

"Dominican Republic! Why in the world would he go there?"

"Exactly what I would like to know. Before that he struck near Bal Harbour in Florida.
Both times it was a high-rise condominium, and entry was the same as in New York-
through the glass wall. Furniture smashed to pieces at all three crime scenes; wall safes
ripped from their moorings; bonds, gold, jewelry taken. One man dead in New York, a
bloodless corpse, of course. Two women left drained in Florida, and a family killed in
Santo Domingo, with only the father drained in classic vampire style."

"He can't control his strength. He's blundering about like a robot!"

"Exactly what I thought. It was the combination of destruc-tiveness and sheer force
which first alerted me. The creature's unbelievably inept! And the whole operation is so

stupid. But what I can't figure is why he's chosen these locations for his various thefts."
Suddenly he broke off and turned away, almost shyly.

I realized I had stripped off all the garments and was standing there naked, and this had
produced in him a strange reticence, and a near blush to his face.

"Here, dry socks," he said. "Don't you know better than to go about in soaking wet
garments?" He tossed the socks to me without looking up.

"I don't know much of anything," I said. "That's what I've discovered. I see what you
mean about the locations. Why in the world would he journey to the Caribbean when he
might steal to his heart's content in the suburbs of Boston or New York?"

"Yes. Unless the cold is giving him considerable discomfort, but does that make sense?"

"No. He doesn't feel it that keenly. It's just not the same."

It felt good to pull on the dry shirt and pants. And these garments did fit, though they
were loose in a rather old-fashioned way-not the slim tailored clothes more popular with
the young. The shirt was heavy broadcloth, and the tweed pants were pleated, but the
waistcoat felt snug and warm.

"Here, I can't tie this tie with mortal fingers," I declared. "But why am I dressing up like
this, David? Don't you ever go around in anything casual, as the expression goes? Good
Lord, we look like we're going to a funeral. Why must I wear this noose around my
neck?"

"Because you'll look foolish in a tweed suit without it," he answered in a slightly
distracted voice. "Here, let me help you." Once again, he had that shy look about him as
he drew close to me. I realized that he was powerfully drawn to this body. In the old one,
I had amazed him; but this body truly ignited his passion. And as I studied him closely,
as I felt the busy work of his fingers on the knot of the tie-that keen little pressure-I
realized that I was powerfully attracted to him.

I thought of all the times I'd wanted to take him, enfold him in my arms, and sink my
teeth slowly and tenderly into his neck, and drink his blood. Ah, now I might have him in
a sense without having him-in the mere human tangling with his limbs, in whatever
combination of intimate gestures and delectable little embraces he might like. And I
might like.

The idea paralyzed me. It sent a soft chill over the surface of my human skin. I felt
connected to him, connected as I had been to the sad unfortunate young woman whom I'd
raped, to the wandering tourists of the snow-covered capital city, my brothers and sisters-
connected as I had been to my beloved Gretchen.

Indeed so strong was this awareness-of being human and being with a human-that I
feared it suddenly in all its beauty. And I saw that the fear was part of the beauty.

Ah, yes, I was mortal now as he was. I flexed my fingers, and slowly straightened my
back, letting the chill become a deep erotic sensation.

He broke away from me abruptly, alarmed and vaguely determined, picked up the jacket
from the chair, and helped me to put it on.

"You have to tell me all that's happened to you," he said. "And within an hour or so we
may have news from London, that is, if the bastard has struck again."

I reached out and clamped my weak, mortal hand on his shoulder, drew him to me, and
kissed him softly on the side of his face. Once again, he backed away.

"Stop all this nonsense," he said, as if reproving a child. "I want to know everything.
Now, have you had breakfast? You need a handkerchief. Here."

"How will we get this news from London?"

"Fax from the Motherhouse to the hotel. Now come, let's have something to eat together.
We have a day of work ahead to figure this all out."

"If he isn't already dead," I said with a sigh. "Two nights ago in Santo Domingo." I was
again filled with a crashing and black despair. The delicious and frustrating erotic
impulse was threatened.

David removed a long wool scarf from the suitcase. He placed this around my neck.

"Can't you call London again now by phone?" I asked.

"It's a bit early, but I'll give it a try."

He found the phone beside the couch, and was in fast conversation with someone across
the sea for about five minutes. No news yet.

Police in New York, Florida, and Santo Domingo were not in communication with each
other, apparently, as no connections regarding these crimes had yet been made.

At last he hung up. "They'll fax information to the hotel as soon as they receive it. Let's
go there, shall we? I myself am famished. I've been here all night long, waiting. Oh, and
that dog. What will you do with that splendid dog?"

"He's had breakfast. He'll be happy in the roof garden. You're very anxious to be out of
these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand."

"You're serious?"

I shrugged. "Of course." Serious! I was beginning to be obsessed with this simple little
possibility. Making love before anything else happened. Seemed like a perfectly
marvelous idea!

Again, he fell to staring at me in maddening trancelike silence.

"You do realize," he said, "that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean,
you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a ... a most impressive piece
of young male flesh."

"I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to . . ."

"You've been with a woman, haven't you?"

"I wish you wouldn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?"

"A woman you loved."

"I have always loved both men and women."

"That's a slightly different use of the word 'love.' Listen, we simply can't do it now. So
behave yourself. I must hear everything about this creature James. It's going to take us
time to make a plan."

"A plan. You really think we can stop him?"

"Of course I do!" He beckoned for me to come.

"But how?" I asked. We were going out the door.

"We must look at the creature's behavior. We must assess his weaknesses and his
strengths. And remember there are two of us against him. And we have a powerful
advantage."

"But what advantage?"

"Lestat, clear your mortal brain of all these rampant erotic images and come. I can't think
on an empty stomach, and obviously you're not thinking straight at all."

Mojo came padding to the gate to follow us, but I told him to stay.

I kissed him tenderly on the side of his long black nose, and he lay down on the wet
concrete, and merely peered at me in solemn disappointed fashion as we went down the
stairs.

It was only a matter of several blocks to the hotel, and the walk beneath the blue sky was
not intolerable, even with the biting wind. I was too cold, however, to begin my story,
and also the sight of the sunlighted city kept tearing me out of my thoughts.

Once again, I was impressed with the carefree attitudes of the people who roamed by day.
All the world seemed blessed in this light, regardless of the temperature. And a sadness
was growing in me as I beheld it, because I really didn't want to remain in this sunlighted
world no matter how beautiful it was.

No, give me back my preternatural vision, I thought. Give me back the dark beauty of the
world by night. Give me back my unnatural strength and endurance, and I shall
cheerfully sacrifice this spectacle forever. The Vampire Lestat-c'est moi.

Stopping at the hotel desk, David left word that we would be in the coffee shop, and any
fax material which came in must be brought to us at once.

Then we settled at a quiet white-draped table in the corner of the vast old-fashioned room
with its fancy plaster ceiling and white silk draperies, and commenced to devour an
enormous New Orleans breakfast of eggs, biscuits, fried meats, gravy, and thick buttery
grits.

I had to confess that the food situation had improved with the journey south. Also I was
better at eating now, and wasn't choking so much, or scraping my tongue on my own
teeth. The thick syrupy coffee of my home city was past perfection. And the dessert of
broiled bananas and sugar was enough to bring any sensible human being to his knees.

But in spite of these tantalizing delights, and my desperate hope that we would soon have
a report from London, my main concern was that of pouring out for David the entire
woeful tale. Again, and again, he pushed for details, and interrupted me with questions,
so it became in fact a far more thorough account than I had ever given Louis, and one that
wrung from me considerably more pain.

It was agony to relive my naive conversation with James hi the town house, to confess
that I had not cared sufficiently to be suspicious of him, that I'd been too satisfied that a
mere mortal could never trick me.

And then came the shameful rape, the poignant account of my time with Gretchen, the
awful nightmares of Claudia, and the parting from Gretchen to come home to Louis, who
misunderstood all that I laid before him, and insisted upon his own interpretation of my
words as he refused to give me what I sought.

No small part of the pain was that my anger had left me, and I felt only the old crushing
grief. I saw Louis again in my mind's eye, and he was not my tender, embraceable lover
any longer, so much as an unfeeling angel who had barred me from the Dark Court.

"I understand why he refused," I said dully, barely able to speak about it. "Perhaps I
should have known. And very truly, I can't believe he will hold out against me forever.
He's simply carried away with this sublime idea of his that I ought to go save my soul. It's
what he would do, you see. And yet, in a way, he himself would never do it. And he's
never understood me. Never. That's why he described me so vividly yet poorly in his
book over and over again. If I am trapped in this body, if it becomes quite plain to him
that I don't intend to go off into the jungles of French Guiana with Gretchen, I think he
will give in to me eventually. Even though I did burn his house. It might take years, of
course! Years in this miserable-"

"You're getting furious again," said David. "Calm down. And what in the world do you
mean-you burnt his house." "I was angry!" I said in a tense whisper. "My God. Angry.
That isn't even the word."

I thought I had been too unhappy to be angry. I realized this wasn't so. But I was too
unhappy to carry the point further. I took another bracing swallow of the thick black
coffee and as best I could, I went on to describe how I had seen Marius by the light of the
burning shack. Marius had wanted for me to see him. Marius had rendered a judgment,
and I did not know truly what that judgment was.

Now the cold despair did come over me, obliterating the anger quite completely, and I
stared listlessly at the plate before me, at the half-empty restaurant with its shining silver
and napkins folded at so many empty places like little hats. I looked beyond to the muted
lights of the lobby, with that awful gloom closing upon everything, and then I looked at
David, who for all his character, his sympathy, and his charm was not the marvelous
being he would have been to me with my vampire eyes, but only another mortal, frail and
living on the edge of death as I did.

I felt dull and miserable. I could say no more.

"Listen to me," said David. "I don't believe that your Marius has destroyed this creature.
He would not have revealed himself to you if he'd done such a thing. I can't imagine the
thoughts or feelings of such a being. I can't even imagine yours, and I know you as I
know my dearest and oldest friends. But I don't believe he would do it. He came to
display his anger, to refuse assistance, and that was his judgment, yes. But I wager he's
giving you time to recover your body. And you must remember: however you perceived
his expression, you saw it through a human being's eyes."

"I've considered this," I said listlessly. "To tell the truth, what else can I do but believe
that my body is still there to be reclaimed?" I shrugged. "I don't know how to give up."

He smiled at me, a lovely deep warm smile.

"You've had a splendid adventure," he said. "Now before we plot to catch this glorified
purse snatcher, allow me to ask you a question. And don't lose your temper, please. I can

see that you don't know your own strength in this body any more than you did in the
other."

"Strength? What strength! This is a weak, flopping, sloshy, repulsive collection of nerves
and ganglia. Don't even mention the word 'strength.'"

"Nonsense. You're a big strapping healthy young male of some one hundred and ninety
pounds, without an ounce of spare fat on you! You have fifty years of mortal life ahead
of you. For the love of heaven, realize what advantages you possess."

"All right. All right. It's jolly. So happy to be alive!" I whispered, because if I hadn't
whispered, I would have howled. "And I could be smashed by a truck outside in the street
at half past noon today! Good God, David, don't you think I despise myself that I cannot
endure these simple trials? I hate it. I hate being this weak and cowardly creature!"

I sat back in the chair, eyes roving the ceiling, trying not to cough or sneeze or weep or
make a fist out of my right hand which I might drive through the tabletop or perhaps the
nearby wall. "I loathe cowardice!" I whispered.

"I know," he said kindly. He studied me for a few quiet moments, and then blotted his
lips with his napkin, and reached for his coffee. Then he spoke again. "Assuming that
James is still running about in your old body, you are absolutely certain that you want to
make the switch back into it-that you do want to be Lestat in his old body again."

I laughed sadly to myself. "How can I make that any plainer?" I asked wearily. "How in
the hell can I make the switch again! That is the question upon which my sanity
depends."

"Well, first we must locate James. We shall devote our entire energy to finding nun. We
shall not give up until we are convinced that there is no James to be found."

"Again, you're making it sound so simple! How can such a thing be done?"

"Shhh, you're attracting needless attention," he said with quiet authority. "Drink the
orange juice. You need it. I'll order some more."

"I don't need the orange juice and I don't need any more nursing," I said. "Are you
seriously suggesting that we have a chance of catching this fiend?"

"Lestat, as I told you before-think on the most obvious and unchangeable limitation of
your former state. A vampire cannot move about in the day. A vampire is almost entirely
helpless in the day. Granted, there is a reflex to reach out for and harm anyone disturbing
his rest. But otherwise, he is helpless. And for some eight to twelve hours he must remain
in one place. That gives us the traditional advantage, especially since we know so much
about the being in question. And all we require is an opportunity to confront the creature,
and confuse him sufficiently for the switch to be made." "We can force it?"

"Yes, I know that we can. He can be knocked loose from that body long enough for you
to get in."

"David, I must tell you something. In this body I have no psychic power at all. I didn't
have any when I was a mortal boy. I don't think I can . . . rise out of this body. I tried
once in Georgetown. I couldn't budge from the flesh."

"Anyone can do this little trick, Lestat; you were merely afraid. And some of what you
learned in the vampiric body, you now carry with you. Obviously the preternatural cells
gave you an advantage, but the mind itself does not forget. Obviously James took his
mental powers from body to body. You must have taken some part of your knowledge
with you as well."

"Well, I was frightened. I've been afraid to try since-afraid I'd get out and then couldn't
get back in."

"I'll teach you how to rise out of the body. I'll teach you how to make a concerted assault
upon James. And remember, there are two of us, Lestat. You and I together will make the
assault. And I do have considerable psychic power, to use the simplest descriptive words
for it. There are many things which I can do."

"David, I shall be your slave for eternity in exchange for this. Anything you wish I will
get for you. I shall go to the ends of the earth for you. If only this can be done."

He hesitated as if he wanted to make some small jesting comment, but then thought the
better of it. And went right on.

"We will begin with our lessons as soon as we can. But the more I consider it, I think it's
best I jolt him out of the body. I can do it before he even realizes that you are there. Yes,
that must be our game plan. He won't suspect me when he sees me. I can veil my
thoughts from him easily enough. And that's another thing you must learn, to veil your
thoughts."

"But what if he recognizes you. David, he knows who you are. He remembers you. He
spoke of you. What's to stop him from burning you alive the minute he sees you?"

"The place where the meeting occurs. He won't risk a little conflagration too near his
person. And we shall be sure to ensnare him where he would not dare to show his powers
at all. We may have to lure him into position. This requires thinking. And until we know
how to find him, well, that part can wait."

"We approach him in a crowd."

"Or very near to sunrise, when he cannot risk a fire near his lair."

"Exactly."

"Now, let's try to make a fair assessment of his powers from the information we have in
hand."

He paused as the waiter swooped down upon the table with one of those beautiful heavy
silver-plated coffeepots which hotels of quality always possess. They have a patina like
no other silver, and always several tiny little dents. I watched the black brew coming out
of the little spout.

Indeed, I realized I was watching quite a few little things as we sat there, anxious and
miserable though I was. Merely being with David gave me hope.

David took a hasty sip of the fresh cup as the waiter went away, and then reached into the
pocket of his coat. He placed in my hand a little bundle of thin sheets of paper. "These
are newspaper stories of the murders. Read them carefully. Tell me anything that comes
to your mind."

The first story, "Vampire Murder in Midtown," enraged me beyond words. I noted the
wanton destruction which David had described. Had to be clumsiness, to smash the
furniture so stupidly. And the theft-how silly in the extreme. As for my poor agent, his
neck had been broken as he'd been drained of his blood. More clumsiness.

"It's a wonder he can use the power of flight at all," I said angrily. "Yet here, he went
through the wall on the thirtieth floor." "That doesn't mean he can use the power over
really great distances," David replied.

"But how then did he get from New York to Bal Harbour in one night, and more
significantly, why? If he is using commercial aircraft, why go to Bal Harbour instead of
Boston? Or Los Angeles, or Paris, for heaven's sakes. Think of the high stakes for him
were he to rob a great museum, an immense bank? Santo Domingo I don't understand.
Even if he has mastered the power of flight, it can't be easy for him. So why on earth
would he go there? Is he merely trying to scatter the kills so that no one will put together
all the cases?"

"No," said David. "If he really wanted secrecy, he wouldn't operate in this spectacular
style. He's blundering. He's behaving as if he's intoxicated!"

"Yes. And it does feel that way in the beginning, truly it does. You're overcome by the
effect of your heightened senses."

"Is it possible that he is traveling through the air and merely striking wherever the winds
carry him?" David asked. "That there is no pattern at all?"

I was considering the question as I read the other reports slowly, frustrated that I could
not scan them as I would have done with my vampire eyes. Yes, more clumsiness, more

stupidity. Human bodies crushed by "a heavy instrument," which was of course simply
his fist.

"He likes to break glass, doesn't he?" I said. "He likes to surprise his victims. He must
enjoy their fear. He leaves no witnesses. He steals everything of obvious value. And none
of it is very valuable at all. How I hate him. And yet... I have done things as terrible
myself."

I remembered the villain's conversations with me. How I had failed to see through his
gentlemanly manner! But David's early descriptions of him, of his stupidity, and his self-
destructiveness, also came back. And his clumsiness, how could I ever forget that?

"No," I said, finally. "I don't believe he can cover these distances. You have no idea how
terrifying this power of flight can be. It's twenty times more terrifying than out-of-body
travel. All of us loathe it. Even the roar of the wind induces a helplessness, a dangerous
abandon, so to speak."

I paused. We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some
celestial realm beyond this earth before we were ever born. But we can't conceive of it as
earthly creatures, and only I could know how it had damaged and torn my heart and soul.

"Go on, Lestat. I'm listening. I understand."

I gave a little sigh. "I learnt this power only because I was in the grip of one who was
fearless," I said, "for whom it was nothing. There are those of us who never use this
power. No. I can't believe he's mastered it. He's traveling by some other means and then
taking to the air only when the prey is near at hand."

"Yes, that would seem to square with the evidence, if only we knew-"

He was suddenly distracted. An elderly hotel clerk had just appeared in the distant
doorway. He came towards us with maddening slowness, a genial kindly man with a
large envelope in his hand.

At once David brought a bill out of his pocket, and held it in readiness.

"Fax, sir, just in."

"Ah, thank you so much."

He tore open the envelope.

"Ah, here we are. News wire via Miami. A hilltop villa on the island of Curacao.
Probable time early yesterday evening, not discovered till four a.m. Five persons found
dead."

"Curacao! Where the hell is that?"

"This is even more baffling. Curacao is a Dutch island-very far south in the Caribbean.
Now, that really makes no sense at all."

We scanned the story together. Once again robbery was apparently the motive. The thief
had come crashing through a skylight, and had demolished the contents of two rooms.
The entire family had been killed. Indeed, the sheer viciousness of the crime had left the
island in the grip of terror. There had been two bloodless corpses, one that of a small
child. "Surely the devil isn't simply moving south!" "Even in the Caribbean there are far
more interesting places," said David. "Why, he's overlooked the entire coast of Central
America. Come, I want to get a map. Let's have a look at this pattern flat out. I spied a
little travel agent in the lobby. He's bound to have some maps for us. We'll take
everything back to your rooms."

The agent was most obliging, an elderly bald-headed fellow with a soft cultured voice,
who groped about in the clutter of his desk for several maps. Cura9ao? Yes, he had a
brochure or two on the place. Not a very interesting island, as the Caribbean islands go.

"Why do people go there?" I asked. "Well, in the main they don't," he confessed, rubbing
the top of his bald head. "Except for the cruise ships, of course. They've been stopping
there again these last few years. Yes, here." He placed a little folder in my hand for a
small ship called the Crown of the Seas, very pretty in the picture, which meandered all
through the islands, its final stop Curacao before it started home.

"Cruise ships!" I whispered, staring at the picture. My eyes moved to the giant posters of
ships which lined the office walls. "Why, he had pictures of ships all over his house in
Georgetown," I said. "David, that's it. He's on some sort of ship! Don't you remember
what you told me. His father worked for some shipping company. He himself said
something about wanting to sail to America aboard a great ship."

"My God," David said. "You may be right. New York, Bal Harbour ..." He looked at the
agent. "Do cruise ships stop at Bal Harbour?"

"Port Everglades," said the agent. "Right near it. But not very many start from New
York."

"What about Santo Domingo?" I asked. "Do they stop there?"

"Yes, that's a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do
you have in mind?"

Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights upon which the attacks had
happened, without an explanation, of course.

But then he looked crestfallen.

"No," he said, "I can see it's impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly make
the journey from Florida all the way to Curacao in three nights?"

"Well, there is one," said the agent, "and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New York
this last Wednesday night. It's the flagship of the Cunard Line, the Queen Elizabeth 2."

"That's it," I said. "The Queen Elizabeth 2. David, it was the very ship he mentioned to
me. You said his father-"

"But I thought the QE2 makes the transatlantic crossing," said David.

"Not in winter," said the agent, agreeably. "She's in the Caribbean until March. And she's
probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight knots. But
here, we can check the itinerary right now."

He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at
last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with his
right hand.

"Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, sailed
before midnight, then on to Curac.ao, where she arrived yesterday morning at five a.m.
But she didn't stop in the Dominican Republic, I'm afraid, can't help you there."

"Never mind that, she passed it!" David said. "She passed the Dominican Republic the
very next night! Look at the map. That's it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but told
you himself, Lestat, wkh all his mad obsessive chatter! He's on board the QE2, the ship
which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent his life."

We thanked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis out
front.

"Oh, it's so bloody typical of him!" David said as the car carried us towards my
apartment. "Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from the
QE2 amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. It's all
a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself."

"Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn't send him to America on the Queen
Elizabeth 2. He never forgave you for that."

"I hate him," David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the circumstances
in which we were involved.

"But it isn't really so foolish, David," I said. "It's devilishly clever, don't you see? Yes, he
tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can lay that down
to his self-destructiveness, but I don't think he expected me to figure it out. And frankly,

if you hadn't laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, maybe I never would
have thought of it on my own."

"Possibly. I think he wants to be caught."

"No, David. He's hiding. From you, from me, and from the others. Oh, he's very smart.
Here we have this beastly sorcerer, capable of cloaking himself entirely, and where does
he conceal himself-amid a whole teeming little world of mortals in the womb of a fast-
moving ship. Look at this itinerary! Why, every night she's sailing. Only by day does she
remain hi port."

"Have it your way," said David, "but I prefer to think of him as an idiot! And we're going
to catch him! Now you told me you gave him a passport, did you not?"

"Clarence Oddbody was the name. But surely he didn't use it."

"We'll soon find out. My suspicion is that he boarded in New York in the usual way. It
would have been crucial to him to be received with all due pomp and consideration-to
book the finest suite and go parading up to the top deck, with stewards bowing to him.
Those suites on the Signal Deck are enormous. No problem whatsoever for him to have a
large trunk for his daylight hiding place. No cabin steward would trouble such a thing."

We had come around again to my building. He pulled out some bills to pay the driver,
and up the stairs we went.

As soon as we reached the apartment, we sat down with the printed itinerary and the
news stories and worked out a schedule of how the killings had been done.

It was plain the beast had struck my agent in New York only hours before the ship sailed.
He'd had plenty of time to board before eleven p.m. The murder near Bal Harbour had
been committed only hours before the ship docked. Obviously he covered a small
distance by the power of flight, returning to his cabin or other hiding place before the sun
rose.

For the Santo Domingo murder, he had left the ship for perhaps an hour, and then caught
up with her on her journey south. Again, these distances were nothing. He did not even
need preternatural sight to spot the giant Queen Elizabeth 2 steaming across the open sea.
The murders on Curasao had taken place only a little while after the ship sailed. He'd
probably caught up with the ship within less than an hour, laden with his loot.

The ship was now on her way north again. She had docked at La Guaira, on the coast of
Venezuela, only two hours ago. If he struck tonight in Caracas or its environs, we knew
we had him for certain. But we had no intention of waiting for further proof.

"All right, let's think this out," I said. "Dare we board this vessel ourselves?"

"Of course, we must."

"Then we should have fake passports for this. We may leave behind a great deal of
confusion. David Talbot mustn't be implicated. And I can't use the passport he gave me.
Why, I don't know where that passport is. Perhaps still in the town house in Georgetown.
God knows why he used his own name on it, probably to get me in trouble first time I
went through customs."

"Absolutely right. I can take care of the documents before we leave New Orleans. Now,
we can't get to Caracas before the ship leaves at five o'clock. No. We'll have to board her
in Grenada tomorrow. We'll have until five p.m. Very likely there are cabins available.
There are always last-minute cancellations, sometimes even deaths. In fact, on a ship as
expensive as the QE2 there are always deaths. Undoubtedly James knows this. He can
feed anytime he wishes if he takes the proper care."

"But why? Why deaths on the QE2?"

"Elderly passengers," David said. "It's a fact of cruise life. The QE2 has a large hospital
for emergencies. This is a floating world, a ship of this size. But no matter. Our
investigators will clarify everything. I'll get them on it at once. We can easily make
Grenada from New Orleans, and we have time to prepare for what we must do.

"Now, Lestat, let's consider this in detail. Suppose we confront this fiend right before
sunup. And suppose we send him right straight back into this mortal body, and cannot
control him after that. We need a hiding place for you... a third cabin, booked under a
name which is in no way connected with either one of us."

"Yes, something deep in the center of the ship, on one of the lower decks. Not the very
lowest. That would be too obvious. Something in the middle, I should think."

"But how fast can you travel? Can you make it within seconds to a lower deck?"

"Without question. Don't even worry about such a thing. An inside cabin, that's
important, and one large enough to include a trunk. Well, the trunk isn't really essential,
not if I've fitted a lock to the door beforehand, but the trunk would be a fine idea."

"Ah, I see it. I see it all. I see now what we must do. You rest, drink your coffee, take a
shower, do whatever you wish. I'm going in the next room and make the calls I must
make. This is Talamasca, and you must leave me alone."

"You're not serious," I said. "I want to hear what you're-"

"You'll do as I say. Oh, and find someone to care for that beautiful canine. We can't take
him with us! That's patently absurd. And a dog of such character mustn't be neglected."

Off he hurried, closing me out of the bedroom, so that he might make all these exciting
little calls alone.

"And just when I was beginning to enjoy this," I said.

I sped off to find Mojo, who was sleeping in the cold wet roof garden as if it were the
most normal thing in the world. I took him down with me to the old woman on the first
floor. Of all t my tenants she was the most agreeable, and could certainly use a couple
of hundred dollars for boarding a gentle dog.

At the mere suggestion, she was beside herself with joy. Mojo could use the courtyard
behind the building, and she needed the money and the company, and wasn't I a nice
young man? Just as nice as my cousin, Monsieur de Lioncourt, who was like a guardian
angel to her, never bothering to cash the checks she gave him for her rent.

I went back up to the apartment, and discovered that David was still at work, and refusing
to let me listen. I was told to make coffee, which of course I didn't know how to make. I
drank the old coffee and called Paris.

My agent answered the phone. He was just in the process of sending me the status report
I'd requested. All was going well. There had been no further assaults from the mysterious
thief. Indeed the last had occurred on Friday evening. Perhaps the fellow had given up.
An enormous sum of money was waiting for me now at my New Orleans bank.

I repeated all my cautions to the man, and told him that I would call soon again.

Friday evening. That meant James had tried his last assault before the Queen Elizabeth 2
left the States. He had no means while at sea to consider his computer thievery. And
surely he had no intention of hurting my Paris agent. That is, if James was still content
with his little vacation on the Queen Elizabeth 2. There was nothing to stop him from
jumping ship whenever he pleased.

I went into the computer again and tried to access the accounts of Lestan Gregor, the
alias who had wired the twenty million to the Georgetown bank. Just as I suspected.
Lestan Gregor still existed but he was virtually penniless. Bank balance zero. The twenty
million wired to Georgetown for the use of Raglan James had indeed reverted back to
Mr. Gregor at Friday noon, and then been immediately withdrawn from his account. The
transaction assuring this withdrawal had been set up the preceding night. By one p.m. on
Friday, the money was gone on some untraceable path. The whole story was there,
embedded in various numerical codes and general bank gibberish, which any fool could
see.

And surely there was a fool staring at this computer screen right now.

The little beast had warned me that he could steal through computers. No doubt he'd
wheedled information from the people at the Georgetown bank, or raped their
unsuspecting minds with his telepathy, to gain the codes and numbers he required.

Whatever the case he had a fortune at his disposal which had once been my fortune. I
hated him all the more. I hated him for killing my man in New York. I hated him for
smashing all the furniture when he did it, and for stealing everything else in the office. I
hated him for his pettiness and his intellect, his crude-ness and his nerve.

I sat drinking the old coffee, and thinking about what lay ahead.

Of course I understood what James had done, stupid though it seemed. From the very
first I'd known that his stealing had to do with some profound hunger in his soul. And this
Queen Elizabeth 2 had been the world of his father, the world from which he, caught in
an act of thievery, had been cast out.

Oh, yes, cast out, the way the others had cast me out. And how eager he must have been
to return to it with his new power and his new wealth. He'd probably planned it down to
the very hour, as soon as we'd agreed upon a date for the switch. No doubt if I had put
him off, he would have picked up the ship at some later harbour. As it was, he was able
to begin his journey only a short distance from Georgetown, and strike my mortal agent
before the ship sailed.

Ah, the way he'd sat in that grimly lighted little Georgetown kitchen, staring again and
again at his watch. I mean, this watch.

At last David emerged from the bedroom, notebook in hand. Everything had been
arranged.

"There is no Clarence Oddbody on the Queen Elizabeth 2, but a mysterious young
Englishman named Jason Hamilton booked the lavish Queen Victoria Suite only two
days before the ship sailed from New York. For the moment we must assume that this is
our man. We'll have more information about him before we reach Grenada. Our
investigators are already at work.

"We ourselves are booked out of Grenada in two penthouse suites on the same deck as
our mysterious friend. We must board anytime tomorrow before the ship sails at five p.m.

"The first of our connecting flights leaves New Orleans in three hours. We will need at
least one of those hours to obtain a pair of false passports from a gentleman who's been
highly recommended for this sort of transaction and is in fact waiting for us now. I have
the address here." "Excellent. I've plenty of cash on hand." "Very good. Now, one of our
investigators will meet us in Grenada. He's a very cunning individual and I've worked
with him for years. He's already booked the third cabin-inside, deck five. And he will
manage to smuggle a couple of small but sophisticated firearms into that cabin, as well as
the trunk we will need later on."

"Those weapons will mean nothing to a man walking around in my old body. But of
course afterwards..."

"Precisely," said David. "After the switch, I will need a gun to protect myself against this
handsome young body here." He gestured to me. "Now, to continue. My investigator will
slip off the ship after he has officially boarded, leaving the cabin and the guns to us. We
ourselves will go through the regular boarding process with our new identification. Oh,
and I've selected our names already. Afraid I had to do it. I do hope you don't mind.
You're an American named Sheridan Blackwood. And I'm a retired English surgeon
named Alexander Stoker. It's always best to pose as a doctor on these little missions.
You'll see what I mean."

"I'm thankful you didn't pick H. P. Lovecraft," I said with an exaggerated sigh of relief.
"Do we have to leave now?"

"Yes, we do. I've already called the taxi. We must get some tropical clothing before we
go, or we'll look perfectly ridiculous. There isn't a moment to lose. Now, if you will use
those strong young arms of yours to help me with this suitcase, I shall be forever
obliged."

"I'm disappointed."

"In what?" He stopped, stared at me, and then almost blushed as he had earlier that day.
"Lestat, there is no time for that sort of thing."

"David, assuming we succeed, it may be our last chance."

"All right," he said, "there is plenty of time to discuss it at the beachside hotel in Grenada
tonight. Depending of course on how quick you are with your lessons in astral projection.
Now, do please show some youthful vim and vigor of a constructive sort, and help me
with this suitcase. I'm a man of seventy-four."

"Splendid. But I want to know something before we go."

"What?"

"Why are you helping me?"

"Oh, for the love of heaven, you know why."

"No, I don't."

He stared at me soberly for a long moment, then said, "I care for you! I don't care what
body you're in. It's true. But to be perfectly honest, this ghastly Body Thief, as you call
him, frightens me. Yes, frightens me to the marrow of my bones.

"He's a fool, and he always brings about his own ruin, that's true. But this time I think
you're right. He's not at all eager to be apprehended, if in fact he ever was. He's planning
on a long run of success, and he may tire of the QE2 very soon. That's why we must act.
Now pick up this suitcase. I nearly killed myself hauling it up those stairs."

I obeyed.

But I was softened and saddened by his words of feeling, and plunged into a series of
fragmentary images of all the little things we might have done in the large soft bed in the
other room.

And what if the Body Thief had jumped ship already? Or been destroyed this very
morning-after Marius had looked upon me with such disdain?

"Then we'll go on to Rio," said David, leading the way to the gate. "We'll be in time for
the carnival. Nice vacation for us both."

"I'll die if I have to live that long!" I said, taking the lead down the stairs. "Trouble with
you is you've gotten used to being human because you've done it for so damned long."

"I was used to it by the time I was two years old," he said dryly.

"I don't believe you. I've watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries.
They're miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They hate
being human! They know already that it's some sort of dirty trick."

He laughed to himself but didn't answer me. He wouldn't look at me either.

The cab was already waiting for us when we reached the front door.

TWENTY

THE plane ride would have been another absolute nightmare, had I not been so tired that
I slept. A full twenty-four hours had passed since my last dreamy rest in Gretchen's arms,
and indeed I fell so deep into sleep now that when David roused me for the change of
planes in Puerto Rico, I scarce knew where we were or what we were doing, and for an
odd moment, it felt entirely normal to be lugging about this huge heavy body in a state of
confusion and thoughtless obedience to David's commands.

We did not go outside the terminal for this transfer of planes. And when at last we did
land in the small airport in Grenada, I was surprised by the close and delicious Caribbean
warmth and the brilliant twilight sky.

All the world seemed changed by the soft balmy embracing breezes which greeted us. I
was glad we had raided the Canal Street shop in New Orleans, for the heavy tweed

clothes felt all wrong. As the cab bounced along the narrow uneven road, carrying us to
our beachfront hotel, I was transfixed by the lush forest around us, the big red hibiscus
blooming beyond little fences, the graceful coconut palms bending over the tiny
tumbledown hillside houses, and eager to see, not with this dim frustrating mortal night
vision, but in the magical light of the morning sun.

There had been something absolutely penitential about my undergoing the transformation
in the mean cold of Georgetown, no doubt of it at all. Yet when I thought of it-that lovely
white snow, and the warmth of Gretchen's little house, I couldn't truly complain. It was
only that this Caribbean island seemed the true world, the world for real living; and I
marveled, as I always did when in these islands, that they could be so beautiful, so warm,
and so very poor.

Here one saw the poverty everywhere-the haphazard wooden houses on stilts, the
pedestrians on the borders of the road, the old rusted automobiles, and the total absence
of any evidence of affluence, making of course for a quaintness in the eye of the outsider,
but something of a hard existence perhaps for the natives, who had never gathered
together enough dollars to leave this place, even perhaps for a single day.

The evening sky was a deep shining blue, as it is often in this part of the world, as
incandescent as it can be over Miami, and the soft white clouds made the same clean and
dramatic panorama on the far edge of the gleaming sea. Entrancing, and this is but one
tiny part of the great Caribbean. Why do I ever wander in other climes at all?

The hotel was in fact a dusty neglected little guesthouse of white stucco under a myriad
complex of rusted tin roofs. It was known only to a few Britishers, and very quiet, with a
rambling wing of rather old-fashioned rooms looking out over the sands of Grand Anse
Beach. With profuse apologies for the broken air-conditioning machines, and the
crowded quarters-we must share a room with twin beds, I almost burst into laughter, as
David looked to heaven as if to say silently that his persecution would never end!-the
proprietor demonstrated that the creaky overhead fan created quite a breeze. Old white
louvered shutters covered the windows. The furniture was made of white wicker, and the
floor was old tile.

It seemed very charming to me, but mostly on account of the sweet warmth of the air
around me, and the bit of jungle creeping down around the structure, with its inevitable
snaggle of banana leaf and Queen's Wreath vine. Ah, that vine. A nice rule of thumb
might be: Don't ever live in a part of the world which will not support that vine.

At once we set about to changing clothes. I stripped off the tweeds, and put on the thin
cotton pants and shirt I'd bought in New Orleans before we left, along with a pair of
white tennis shoes, and deciding against an all-out physical assault upon David, who was
changing with his back turned to me, I went out under the graceful arching coconut
palms, and made my way down onto the sand.

The night was as tranquil and gentle as any night I've ever known. All my love of the
Caribbean came back to me-along with painful and blessed memories. But I longed to see
this night with my old eyes. I longed to see past the thickening darkness, and the shadows
that shrouded the embracing hills. I longed to turn on my preternatural hearing and catch
the soft songs of the jungles, to wander with vampiric speed up the mountains of the
interior to find the secret little valleys and waterfalls as only the Vampire Lestat could
have done.

I felt a terrible, terrible sadness for all my discoveries. And perhaps it hit me in its
fullness for the first time-that all of my dreams of mortal life had been a lie. It wasn't that
life wasn't magical; it wasn't that creation was not a miracle; it wasn't that the world was
not fundamentally good. It was that I had taken my dark power so for granted that I did
not realize the vantage point it had given me. I had failed to assess my gifts. And I
wanted them back.

Yes, I had failed, hadn't I? Mortal life should have been enough!

I looked up at the heartless little stars, such mean guardians, and I prayed to the dark
gods who don't exist to understand.

I thought of Gretchen. Had she already reached her rain forests, and all the sick ones
waiting for the consolations of her touch? I wished I knew where she was.

Perhaps she was already at work in a jungle dispensary, with gleaming vials of medicine,
or trekking to nearby villages, with miracles in a pack on her back. I thought of her quiet
happiness when she'd described the mission. The warmth of those embraces came back to
me, the drowsy sweetness of it, and the comfort of that small room. I saw the snow
falling once more beyond the windows. I saw her large hazel eyes fixed on me, and heard
the slow rhythm of her speech.

Then again I saw the deep blue evening sky above me; I felt the breeze that was moving
over me as smoothly as if it were water; and I thought of David, David who was here
with me now.

I was weeping when David touched my arm.

For a moment, I couldn't make out the features of his face. The beach was dark, and the
sound of the surf so enormous that nothing in me seemed to function as it ought to do.
Then I realized that of course it was David standing there looking at me, David in a crisp
white cotton shirt and wash pants and sandals, managing somehow to look elegant even
in this attire-David asking me gently to please come back to the room.

"Jake's here," he said, "our man from Mexico City. I think you should come inside."

The ceiling fan was going noisily and cool air moved through the shutters as we came
into the shabby little room. A faint clacking noise came from the coconut palms, a sound
I rather liked, rising and falling with the breeze.

Jake was seated on one of the narrow saggy little beds-a tall lanky individual in khaki
shorts and a white polo shirt, puffing on an odoriferous little brown cigar. All of his skin
was darkly tanned, and he had a shapeless thatch of graying blond hair. His posture was
one of complete relaxation, but beneath this facade, he was entirely alert and suspicious,
his mouth a perfectly straight line.

We shook hands as he disguised only a little the fact that he was looking me up and
down. Quick, secretive eyes, not unlike David's eyes, though smaller. God only knows
what he saw.

"Well, the guns won't be any problem," he said with an obvious Australian accent. "There
are no metal detectors at ports such as this. I'll board at approximately ten a.m., plant
your trunk and your guns for you in your cabin on Five Deck, then meet you hi the Cafe
Centaur in St. George's. I do hope you know what you're doing, David, bringing firearms
aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2."

"Of course I know what I'm doing," said David very politely, with a tiny playful smile.
"Now, what do you have for us on our man?"

"Ah, yes. Jason Hamilton. Six feet tall, dark tan, longish blond hair, piercing blue eyes.
Mysterious fellow. Very British, very polite. Rumors as to his true identity abound. He's
an enormous tipper, and a day sleeper, and apparently doesn't bother to leave the ship
when she's in port. Indeed he gives over small packages to be mailed to his cabin steward
every morning, quite early, before he disappears for the day. Haven't been able to
discover the post box but that's a matter of time. He has yet to appear in the Queens Grill
for a single meal. It's rumored he's seriously ill. But with what, no one knows. He's the
picture of health, which only adds to the mystery. Everyone says so. A powerfully built
and graceful fellow with a dazzling wardrobe, it seems. He gambles heavily at the
roulette wheel, and dances for hours with the ladies. Seems in fact to like the very old
ones. He'd arouse suspicion on that account alone if he weren't so bloody rich himself.
Spends a lot of time simply roaming the ship."

"Excellent. This is just what I wanted to know," said David. "You have our tickets."

The man gestured to a black leather folder on the wicker dressing table. David checked
the contents, then gave him an approving nod.

"Deaths on the QE2 so far?"

"Ah, now that's an interesting point. They have had six since they left New York, which
is a little more than usual. All very elderly women, and all apparent heart failure. This is
the sort of thing you want to know?"

"Certainly is," said David:

The "little drink," I thought.

"Now you ought to have a look at these firearms," said Jake, "and know how to use
them." He reached for a worn little duffel bag on the floor, just the sort of beat-up sack of
canvas in which one would hide expensive weapons, I presumed. Out came the expensive
weapons-one a large Smith & Wesson revolver. The other a small black automatic no
bigger than the palm of my hand.

"Yes, I'm quite familiar with this," David said, taking the big silver gun and making to
aim it at the floor. "No problem." He pulled out the clip, then slipped it back in. "Pray I
don't have to use it, however. It will make a hell of a noise."

He then gave it to me.

"Lestat, get the feel of it," he said. "Of course there's no time to practice. I asked for a
hair trigger."

"And that you have," said Jake, looking at me coldly. "So please watch out."

"Barbarous little thing," I said. It was very heavy. A nugget of destructiveness. I spun the
cylinder. Six bullets. It had a curious smell.

"Both the guns are thirty-eights," said the man, with a slight note of disdain. "Those are
man-stoppers." He showed me a small cardboard box. "You'll have plenty of ammunition
available to you for whatever it is that you are going to do on this boat."

"Don't worry, Jake," said David firmly. "Things will probably go without a hitch. And I
thank you for your usual efficiency. Now, go have a pleasant evening on the island. And I
shall see you at the Centaur Cafe before noon."

The fellow gave me a deep suspicious look, then nodded, gathered up the guns and the
little box of bullets, put them back in his canvas bag, and offered his hand again to me
and then to David, and out he went. I waited until the door had closed.

"I think he dislikes me," I said. "Blames me for involving you in some sort of sordid
crime."

David gave a short little laugh. "I've been in far more compromising situations than this
one," he said. "And if I worried about what our investigators thought of us, I would have
retired a long time ago. What do we know now from this information?"

"Well, he's feeding on the old women. Probably stealing from them also. And he's
mailing home what he steals in packages too small to arouse suspicion. What he does

with the larger loot we'll never know. Probably throws it into the ocean. I suspect there's
more than one post box number. But that's no concern of ours."

"Correct. Now lock the door. It's time for a little concentrated witchcraft. We'll have a
nice supper later on. I have to teach you to veil your thoughts. Jake could read you too
easily. And so can I. The Body Thief will pick up your presence when he's still two
hundred miles out to sea."

"Well, I did it through an act of will when I was Lestat," I said. "I haven't the faintest idea
how to do it now."

"Same way. We're going to practice. Until I can't read a single image or random word
from you. Then we'll get to the out-of-body travel." He looked at his watch, which
reminded me of James suddenly, in that little kitchen. "Slip that bolt. I don't want any
maid blundering in here later on."

I obeyed. Then I sat on the bed opposite David, who had assumed a very relaxed yet
commanding attitude, rolling up the stiff starched cuffs of his shirt, which revealed the
dark fleece of his arms. There was also quite a bit of dark hair on his chest, bubbling up
through the open collar of the shirt. Only a little gray mixed in with it, like the gray that
sparkled here and there in his heavy shaven beard. I found it quite impossible to believe
he was a man of seventy-four.

"Ah, I caught that," he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. "I catch entirely too much.
Now. Listen to what I say. You must fix it in your mind that your thoughts remain within
you, that you are not attempting to communicate with others-not through facial
expression or body language of any sort; that indeed you are impenetrable. Make an
image of your sealed mind if you must. Ah, that's good. You've gone blank behind your
handsome young face. Even your eyes have changed ever so slightly. Perfect. Now I'm
going to try to read you. Keep it up."

By the end of forty-five minutes, I had learned the trick fairly painlessly, but I could pick
up nothing of David's thoughts even when he tried his hardest to project them to me. In
this body, I simply did not have the psychic ability which he possessed. But the veiling
we had achieved, and this was a crucial step. We would continue to work on all this
throughout the night.

"We're ready to begin on the out-of-body travel," he said.

"This is going to be hell," I said. "I don't think I can get out of this body. As you can see,
I just don't have your gifts."

"Nonsense," he said. He loosened his posture slightly, crossing his ankles and sliding
down a bit in the chair. But somehow, no matter what he did, he never lost the attitude of
the teacher, the authority, the priest. It was implicit in his small, direct gestures and above
all in his voice.

"Lie down on that bed, and close your eyes. And listen to every word I say."

I did as I was told. And immediately felt a little sleepy. His voice became even more
directive in its softness, rather like that of a hypnotist, bidding me to relax completely,
and to visualize a spiritual double of this form.

"Must I visualize myself with this body?"

"No. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you-your mind, your soul, your sense of self-
are linked to the form you envision. Now picture it as congruent with your body, and then
imagine that you want to lift it up and out of the body-that you want to go up!"

For some thirty minutes David continued this unhurried instruction, reiterating in his own
fashion the lessons which priests had taught to their initiates for thousands of years. I
knew the old formula. But I also knew complete mortal vulnerability, and a crushing
sense of my limitations, and a stiffening and debilitating fear.

We had been at it perhaps forty-five minutes when I finally sank into the requisite and
lovely vibratory state on the very cusp of sleep. My body seemed in fact to have become
this delicious vibratory feeling, and nothing more! And just when I realized this, and
might have remarked upon it, I suddenly felt myself break loose and begin to rise.

I opened my eyes; or at least I thought I did. I saw I was floating directly above my body;
in fact, I couldn't even see the real flesh-and-blood body at all. "Go up!" I said. And
instantly I traveled to the ceiling with the exquisite lightness and speed of a helium
balloon! It was nothing to turn completely over and look straight down into the room.

Why, I had passed through the blades of the ceiling fan! Indeed, it was in the very middle
of my body, though I could feel nothing. And down there, under me, was the sleeping
mortal form I had inhabited so miserably all of these strange days. Its eyes were closed,
and so was its mouth.

I saw David sitting hi his wicker chair, right ankle on his left knee, hands relaxed on his
thighs, as he looked at the sleeping man. Did he know I had succeeded? I couldn't hear a
word he was speaking. Indeed, I seemed to be in a totally different sphere from these two
solid figures, though I felt utterly complete and entire and real myself.

Oh, how lovely this was! This was so near to my freedom as a vampire that I almost
began to weep again. I felt so sorry for the two solid and lonely beings down there. I
wanted to pass up through the ceiling and into the night.

Slowly I went up, and then out over the roof of the hotel, until I was hovering above the
white sand.

But this was enough, wasn't it? Fear gripped me, the fear I'd known when I did this little
trick before. What hi the name of God was keeping me alive hi this state! I needed my
body! At once I plummeted, blindly, back into the flesh. I woke up, tingling all over, and
staring at David as he sat staring back at me.

"I did it," I said. I was shocked to feel these tubes of skin and bone enclosing me again,
and to see my fingers moving when I told them to do it, to feel my toes come alive hi my
shoes. Lord God, what an experience! And so many, many mortals had sought to describe
it. And so many more, in their ignorance, did not believe that such a thing could be.

"Remember to veil your thoughts," David said suddenly. "No matter how exhilarated you
become. Lock your mind up tight!"

"Yes, sir."

"Now let's do it all again."

By midnight-some two hours later-I had learned to rise at will. Indeed, it was becoming
addictive-the feeling of lightness, the great swooshing ascent! The lovely ease of passing
through walls and ceiling; and then the sudden and shocking return. There was a deep
throbbing pleasure to it, pure and shining, like an eroticism of the mind.

"Why can't a man die in this fashion, David? I mean why can't one simply rise into the
heavens and leave the earth?"

"Did you see an open doorway, Lestat?" he asked.

"No," I said sadly. "I saw this world. It was so clear, so beautiful. But it was this world."

"Come now, you must learn to make the assault."

"But I thought you would do it, David. You'd jolt him and knock nun out of his body and
. . ."

"Yes, and suppose he spots me before I can do it, and makes me into a nice little torch.
What then? No, you must learn the trick as well."

This was far more difficult. Indeed it required the very opposite of the passivity and
relaxation which we had employed and developed before. I had now to focus all my
energy upon David with the avowed purpose of knocking him out of his body-a
phenomenon which I could not hope to see in any real sense- and then go into his body
myself. The concentration demanded of me was excruciating. The timing was critical.
And the repeated efforts produced an intense and exhausting nervousness rather like that
of a right-handed person trying to write perfectly with the left hand.

I was near to tears of rage and frustration more than once. But David was absolutely
adamant that we must continue and that this could be done. No, a stiff drink of Scotch
wouldn't help. No, we couldn't eat until later. No, we couldn't break for a walk on the
beach or a late swim.

The first time I succeeded, I was absolutely aghast. I went speeding towards David, and
felt the impact in the same purely mental fashion in which I felt the freedom of the flight.
Then I was inside David, and for one split second saw myself-slack-jawed and staring
dully-through the dun lenses of David's eyes.

Then I felt a dark shuddering disorientation, and an invisible blow as if someone had
placed a huge hand on my chest. I realized that he had returned and pushed me out. I was
hovering in the air, and then back in my own sweat-drenched body, laughing near
hysterically from mad excitement and sheer fatigue.

"That's all we need," he said. "Now I know we can pull this off. Come, once again! We're
going to do it twenty times if we have to, until we know that we can achieve it without
fail."

On the fifth successful assault, I remained in his body for a full thirty seconds, absolutely
mesmerized by the different feelings attendant to it-the lighter limbs, the poorer vision,
and the peculiar sound of my voice coming out of his throat. I looked down and saw his
hands-thin, corded with blood vessels, and touched on the backs of the fingers with dark
hair-and they were my hands! How hard it was to control them. Why, one of them had a
pronounced tremour which I had never noticed before.

Then came the jolt again, and I was flying upwards, and then the plummet, back into the
twenty-six-year-old body once more.

We must have done it twelve times before the slave driver of a Candomble priest said it
was time for him to really fight my assault.

"Now, you must come at me with much greater determination. Your goal is to claim the
body! And you expect a fight."

For an hour we battled. Finally, when I was able to jolt him out and keep him out for the
space of ten seconds, he declared that this would be enough.

"He told you the truth about your cells. They will know you. They will receive you and
strive to keep you. Any adult human knows how to use his own body much better than
the intruder. And of course you know how to use those preternatural gifts in ways of
which he can't possibly even dream. I think we can do it. In fact, I'm certain now that we
can."

"But tell me something," I said. "Before we stop, don't you want to jolt me out of this
body and go into it? I mean, just to see what it's like?"

"No," he said quietly. "I don't."

"But aren't you curious?" I asked him. "Don't you want to know . . ."

I could see that I was taxing his patience.

"Look, the real truth is, we don't have time for that experience. And maybe I don't want
to know. I can remember my youth well enough. Too well, in fact. We aren't playing
little games here. You can make the assault now. That's what counts." He looked at his
watch. "It's almost three. We'll have some supper and then we'll sleep. We've a full day
ahead, exploring the ship and confirming our plans. We must be rested and in full control
of our faculties. Come, let's see what we can rustle up in the way of food or drink."

We went outside and along the walk until we reached the little kitchen-a funny, damp,
and somewhat cluttered room. The kindly proprietor had left two plates for us in the
rusted, groaning refrigerator, along with a bottle of white wine. We sat down at the table
and commenced to devour every morsel of rice, yams, and spiced meat, not caring at all
that it was very cold.

"Can you read my thoughts?" I asked, after I'd consumed two glasses of wine.

"Nothing, you've got the trick."

"So how do I do it in my sleep? The Queen Elizabeth 2 can't be more than a hundred
miles out now. She's to dock in two hours."

"Same way you do it when you're awake. You shut down. You close up. Because, you
see, no one is ever completely asleep. Not even those in a coma are completely asleep.
Will is always operative. And will is what this is about."

I looked at him as we sat there. He was obviously tired, but he did not look haggard or in
any way debilitated. His thick dark hair obviously added to the impression of vigor; and
his large dark eyes had the same fierce light in them which they always had.

I finished quickly, shoved the dishes into the sink, and went out on the beach without
bothering to say what I meant to do. I knew he would say we had to rest now, and I didn't
want to be deprived of this last night as a human being under the stars.

Going down to the lip of the water, I peeled off the cotton clothes, and went into the
waves. They were cool but inviting, and then I stretched out my arms and began to swim.
It was not easy, of course. But it wasn't hard either, once I resigned myself to the fact that
humans did it this way-stroke by stroke against the force of the water, and letting the
water buoy the cumbersome body, which it was entirely willing to do.

I swam out quite far, and then rolled over on my back and looked at the sky. It was still
full of fleecy white clouds. A moment of peace came over me, in spite of the chill on my
exposed skin, and the dimness all around me, and the strange feeling of vulnerability I
experienced as I floated on this dark treacherous sea. When I thought of being back in my
old body, I could only be happy, and once again, I knew that in my human adventure, I
had failed.

I had not been the hero of my own dreams. I had found human life too hard.

Finally I swam back into the shallows and then walked up onto the beach. I picked up my
clothes, shook off the sand, slung them over my shoulder, and walked back to the little
room.

Only one lamp burned on the dressing table. David was sitting on his bed, closest to the
door, and dressed only in a long white pajama shirt and smoking one of those little cigars.
I liked the scent of it, dark and sweet.

He looked his usual dignified self, arms folded, eyes full of normal curiosity as he
watched me take a towel from the bath and dry off my hair and my skin.

"Just called London," he said.

"What's the news?" I wiped my face with the towel, then slung it over the back of the
chair. The air felt so good on my naked skin, now that it was dry.

"Robbery in the hills above Caracas. Very similar to the crimes in Curacao. A large villa
full of artifacts, jewels, paintings. Much was smashed; only small portables were stolen;
three people dead. We should thank the gods for the poverty of the human imagination-
for the sheer meanness of this man's ambitions-and that our opportunity to stop him has
come so soon. In time, he would have wakened to his monstrous potential. As it is, he is
our predictable fool."

"Does any being use what he possesses?" I asked. "Perhaps a few brave geniuses know
their true limits. What do the rest of us do but complain?"

"I don't know," he said, a sad little smile passing over his face. He shook his head and
looked away. "Some night, when this is all over, tell me again how it was for you. How
you could be in that beautiful young body and hate this world so much." "I'll tell you, but
you'll never understand. You're on the wrong side of the dark glass. Only the dead know
how terrible it is to be alive."

I pulled a loose cotton T-shirt out of my little suitcase, but I didn't put it on. I sat down on
the bed beside him. And then I bent down and kissed his face again gently, as I had in
New Orleans, liking the feel of his roughly shaven beard, just as I liked that sort of thing
when I was really Lestat and I would soon have that strong masculine blood inside.

I moved closer to him, when suddenly he grasped my hand, and I felt him gently push me
away.

"Why, David?" I asked him.

He didn't answer. He lifted his right hand and brushed my hair back out of my eyes.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I can't. I simply can't."

He got up gracefully, and went outside into the night.

I was too furious with pure stymied passion to do anything for a moment. Then I
followed him out. He had gone down on the sand a ways and he stood there alone, as I
had done before.

I came up behind him.

"Tell me, please, why not?"

"I don't know," he said again. "I only know I can't. I want to. Believe me, I do. But I
can't. My past is ... so close to me." He let out a long sigh, and for a while was silent
again. Then he went on. "My memories of those days are so clear. It's as if I'm in India
again, or Rio. Ah, yes, Rio. It's as if I am that young man again."

I knew I was to blame for this. I knew it, and that it was useless to say apologetic words.
I also sensed something else. I was an evil being, and even when I was in this body,
David .could sense that evil. He could sense the powerful vampiric 'greed. It was an old
evil, brooding and terrible. Gretchen hadn't sensed it. I had deceived her with this warm
and smiling body. But when David looked at me, he saw that blond blue-eyed demon
whom he knew very well.

I said nothing. I merely looked out over the sea. Give me back my body. Let me be that
devil, I thought. Take me away from this paltry brand of desire and this weakness. Take
me back into the dark heavens where I belong. And it seemed suddenly that my
loneliness and my misery were as terrible as they had ever been before this experiment,
before this little sojourn into more vulnerable flesh. Yes, let me be outside it again,
please. Let me be a watcher. How could I have been such a fool?

I heard David say something to me, but I didn't really catch the words. I looked up
slowly, pulling myself out of my thoughts, and I saw that he had turned to face me, and I
realized that his hand was resting gently on my neck. I wanted to say something angry-
Take your hand away, don't torment me-but I didn't speak.

"No, you're not evil, that's not it," he whispered. "It's me, don't you understand. It's my
fear! You don't know what this adventure has meant to me! To be here again in this part
of the great world-and with you! I love you. I love you desperately and insanely, I love

the soul inside you, and don't you see, it's not evil. It's not greedy. But it's immense. It
overpowers even this youthful body because it is your soul, fierce and indomitable and
outside time-the soul of the true Lestat. I can't give in to it. I can't... do it. I'll lose myself
forever if I do it, as surely as if. . . as if. . ."

He broke off, too shaken obviously to go on. I'd hated the pain in his voice, the faint
tremour undermining its deep firmness. How could I ever forgive myself? I stood still,
staring past him into the darkness. The lovely pounding of the surf and the faint clacking
of the coconut palms were the only sounds. How vast were the heavens; how lovely and
deep and calm these hours just before dawn. I saw Gretchen's face. I heard her voice.
There was a moment this morning when I thought I could throw up everything-just to be
with you... I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you
were to say "Come with me," even now, I might go... The meaning of chastity is not to
fall in love ... 7 could fall in love with you. I know I could. And then beyond this burning
image, fault yet undeniable, I saw the face of Louis, and I heard words spoken in his
voice that I wanted to forget.

Where was David? Let me wake from these memories. I don't want them. I looked up and
I saw him again, and in him the old familiar dignity, the restraint, the imperturbable
strength. But I saw the pain too.

"Forgive me," he whispered. His voice was still unsteady, as he struggled to preserve the
beautiful and elegant facade. "You drank from the fountain of youth when you drank the
blood of Magnus. Really you did. You'll never know what it means to be the old man that
I am now. God help me, I loathe the word, but it's true. I'm old."

"I understand," I said. "Don't worry." I leant forward and kissed him again. "I'll leave you
alone. Come on, we should sleep. I promise. I'll leave you alone."

TWENTY-ONE

GOOD Lord, look at it, David." I had just stepped out of the taxi onto the crowded quai.
The great blue and white Queen Elizabeth 2 was far too big to come into the little
harbour. She rested at anchor a mile or two out-I could not gauge-so monstrously large
that she seemed the ship out of a nightmare, frozen upon the motionless bay. Only her
row upon row of myriad tiny windows prevented her from seeming the ship of a giant.

The quaint little island with its green hills and curved shore reached out towards her, as if
trying to shrink her and draw her nearer, all in vain.

I felt a spasm of excitement as I looked at her. I had never been aboard a modern vessel.
This part was going to be fun.

A small wooden launch, bearing her name in bold painted letters, and obviously laden
with but one load of her many passengers, made its way to the concrete dock as we
watched.

"There's Jake in the prow of the launch," said David. "Come on, let's go into the cafe."

We walked slowly under the hot sun, comfortable in our short-sleeve shirts and
dungarees-a couple of tourists-past the dark-skinned vendors with their seashells for sale,
and rag dolls, and tiny steel drums, and other souvenirs. How pretty the island appeared.
Its forested hills were dotted with tiny dwellings, and the more solid buildings of the
town of St. George's were massed together on the steep cliff to the far left beyond the
turn of the quai. The whole prospect had almost an Italian hue to it, what with so many
dark and stained reddish walls and the rusted roofs of corrugated tin which in the burning
sun looked deceptively like roofs of baked tile. It seemed a lovely place to go exploring-
at some other time.

The dark cafe was cool inside with only a few brightly painted tables and straight-back
chairs. David ordered bottles of cold beer, and within minutes Jake came sauntering in-
wearing the very same khaki shorts and white polo shirt-and carefully chose a chair from
which he might watch the open door. The world out there seemed made of glittering
water. The beer tasted malty and rather good.

"Well, the deed is done," Jake said in a low voice, his face rather rigid and abstracted as
though he were not with us at all, but deep in thought. He took a gulp from the brown
beer bottle, and then slipped a couple of keys across the table to David. "She's carrying
over one thousand passengers. Nobody will notice that Mr. Eric Sampson doesn't
reboard. The cabin's tiny, inside as you requested, right off the corridor, midship, Five
Deck, as you know."

"Excellent. And you obtained two sets of keys. Very good." "The trunk's open, with half
the contents scattered on the bed. Your guns are inside the two books inside the trunk.
Hollowed them out myself. The locks are there. You ought to be able to fit the big one to
the door easily enough but I don't know if the staff will care much for it when they see it.
Again, I wish you the best of luck. Oh, and you heard the news about the robbery this
morning on the hill? Seems we have a vampire in Grenada. Maybe you should plan to
stay here, David. Sounds like just your sort of thing." "This morning?"

"Three o'clock. Right up there on the cliff. Big house of a rich Austrian woman.
Everyone murdered. Quite a mess. The whole island's talking about it. Well, I'm off." It
was only after Jake had left us that David spoke again. "This is bad, Lestat. We were
standing out on the beach at three this morning. If he sensed even a glimmer of our
presence, he may not be on the ship. Or he may be ready for us when the sun sets."

"He was far too busy this morning, David. Besides, if he'd sensed our presence, he would
have made a bonfire of our little room. Unless he doesn't know how to do it, but that we
simply cannot know. Let's board the bloody ship now. I'm tired of waiting. Look, it's
starting to rain."

We gathered up our luggage, including the monstrous leather suitcase David had brought
from New Orleans, and hurried to the launch. A crowd of frail elderly mortals seemed to
appear from everywhere-out of taxis and nearby sheds and little shop-now that the rain
was really coming down, and it took us some minutes to get inside the unsteady little
wooden boat, and take a seat on the wet plastic bench.

As soon as she turned her prow towards the Queen Elizabeth 2,I felt a giddy excitement-
fun to be riding this warm sea in such a small craft. I loved the movement as we gained
speed.

David was quite tense. He opened his passport, read the information for the twenty-
seventh time, and then put it away. We had gone over our identities this morning after
breakfast, but hoped that we would never need to use the various details.

For what it was worth, Dr. Stoker was retired and on vacation in the Caribbean but very
concerned about his dear friend Jason Hamilton, who was traveling in the Queen Victoria
Suite. He was eager to see Mr. Hamilton, and so he would tell the cabin stewards of the
Signal Deck, though cautioning them not to let Mr. Hamilton know of this concern.

I was merely a friend he'd met at the guesthouse the night before, and with whom he'd
struck up an acquaintance on account of our sailing together on the Queen Elizabeth 2.
There was to be no other connection between us, for James would be in this body once
the switch was done, and David might have to vilify him in some fashion if he could not
be controlled.

There was more to it, in the event we were questioned about any sort of row that might
occur. But in general, we did not think our plan could possibly lead to such a thing.

Finally the launch reached the ship, docking at a broad opening in the very middle of the
immense blue hull. How utterly preposterously enormous the vessel appeared from this
angle! She really did take my breath away.

I scarce noticed as we gave over our tickets to the waiting crew members. Luggage
would be handled for us. We received some vague directions as to how we were to reach
the Signal Deck, and then we were wandering down an endless corridor with a very low
ceiling and door after door on either side of us. Within minutes, we realized we were
quite lost.

On we walked until suddenly we reached a great open place with a sunken floor and, of
all things, a white grand piano, poised on its three legs as if ready for a concert, and this
within the windowless womb of this ship!

"It's the Midships Lobby," said David, pointing to a great colored diagram of the vessel
in a frame upon the wall. "I know where we are now. Follow me."

"How absurd all this is," I said, staring at the brightly colored carpet, and the chrome and
plastic everywhere I looked. "How utterly synthetic and hideous."

"Shhh, the British are very proud of this ship, you're going to offend someone. They can't
use wood anymore-it has to do with fire regulations." He stopped at an elevator and
pushed the button. "This will take us up to the Boat Deck. Didn't the man say we must
find the Queens Grill Lounge there?"

"I have no idea," I said. I was like a zombie wandering into the elevator. "This is
unimaginable!"

"Lestat, there have been giant liners like this one since the turn of the century. You've
been living in the past."

The Boat Deck revealed an entire series of wonders. The ship housed a great theatre, and
also an entire mezzanine of tiny elegant shops. Below the mezzanine was a dance floor,
with a small bandstand, and a sprawling lounge area of small cocktail tables and squat
comfortable leather chairs. The shops were shut up since the vessel was in port, but it was
quite easy to see their various contents through the airy grilles which closed them off.
Expensive clothing, fine jewelry, china, black dinner jackets and boiled shirts, sundries,
and random gifts were all on display in the shallow little bays.

There were passengers wandering everywhere-mostly quite old men and women dressed
in scant beach clothing, many of whom were gathered in the quiet daylighted lounge
below. "Come on, the rooms," said David, pulling me along. It seems the penthouse
suites, to which we were headed, were somewhat cut off from the great body of the ship.
We had to slip into the Queens Grill Lounge, a long narrow pleasantly appointed bar
reserved entirely for the top-deck passengers, and then find a more or less secret elevator
to take us to these rooms. This bar had very large windows, revealing the marvelous blue
water and the clear sky above.

This was all the province of first class on the transatlantic crossing. But here in the
Caribbean it lacked this designation, though the lounge and restaurant locked out the rest
of the little floating world.

At last we emerged on the very top deck of the ship, and into a corridor more fancily
decorated than those below. There was an art deco feel to its plastic lamps, and the
handsome trim on the doors. There was also a more generous and cheerful illumination.
A friendly cabin steward-a gentleman of about sixty- emerged from a small curtained
galley and directed us to our suites near the far end of the hall.

"The Queen Victoria Suite, where is it?" asked David.

The steward answered at once in a very similar British accent, that indeed, the Victoria
Suite was only two cabins away. He pointed to the very door.

I felt the hair rise on my neck as I looked at it. I knew, absolutely knew, that the fiend
was inside. Why would he bother with a more difficult hiding place? No one had to tell
me. We would find a large trunk sitting near the wall in that suite. I was vaguely
conscious of David using all his poise and charm upon the steward, explaining that he
was a physician and how he meant to have a look at his dear friend Jason Hamilton as
soon as he could. But he didn't want to alarm Mr. Hamilton.

Of course not, said the cheerful steward, who volunteered that Mr. Hamilton slept
throughout the day. Indeed, he was asleep in there now. Behold the "Do Not Disturb"
sign hanging on the doorknob. But come, didn't we want to settle into our rooms? Here
was our luggage coming right along.

Our cabins surprised me. I saw both as the doors were opened, and before I retired into
my own.

Once again, I spied only synthetic materials, looking very plastic and lacking altogether
the warmth of wood. But the rooms were quite large, and obviously luxurious, and
opened to each other with a connecting door to make one grand suite. This door was now
closed.

Each room was furnished identically except for small differences of color, and rather like
streamlined hotel rooms, with low king-sized beds, draped in soft pastel bedspreads, and
narrow dressing tables built into the mirrored walls. There was the de rigueur giant
television set, and the cleverly concealed refrigerator, and even a small sitting area with
pale tastefully shaped little couch, coffee table, and upholstered chair.

The real surprise, however, was the verandas. A great glass wall with sliding doors
opened upon these small private porches, which were wide enough to contain a table and
chairs of their own. What a luxury it was to walk outside, and stand at the railing and
look out upon the lovely island and its sparkling bay. And of course this meant the Queen
Victoria Suite would have a veranda, through which the morning sun would very brightly
shine!

I had to laugh to myself remembering our old vessels of the nineteenth century, with their
tiny portholes. And though I much disliked the pale, spiritless colors of the decor, and the
total absence of any vintage surface materials, I was beginning to understand why James
had remained fascinated with this very special little realm.

Meantime I could plainly hear David talking away to the cabin steward, their lilting
British accents seeming to sharpen in response to one another, their speech becoming so
rapid that I couldn't entirely follow what was being said.

Seems it all had to do with poor ailing Mr. Hamilton, and that Dr. Stoker was eager to
slip in and have a look at him as he slept but the steward was terribly afraid to allow such
a thing. In fact, Dr. Stoker wanted to obtain and keep a spare key to the suite, so that he
might keep a very close watch on his patient just in case . . .

Only gradually, as I unpacked my suitcase, did I realize that this little conversation with
all its lyrical politeness was moving towards the question of a bribe. Finally David said in
the most courteous and considerate fashion that he understood the man's discomfort, and
look, he wanted the good fellow to have a supper at his expense first time he went into
port. And if things did go wrong and Mr. Hamilton was upset, well, David would take the
entire blame. He'd say he'd taken the key from the galley. The steward wouldn't be
implicated at all.

It seemed the battle was won. Indeed, David seemed to be using his near-hynotic power
of persuasion. Yet there followed some polite and very convincing nonsense about how
sick Mr. Hamilton was, on how Dr. Stoker had been sent by the family to look after him,
and how important it was for him to have a look at the man's skin. Ah, yes, the skin.
Undoubtedly the steward inferred a life-threatening ailment. And finally, he confessed
that all the other stewards were at lunch, he was alone on the Signal Deck just now, and
yes, he'd turn his back, if Dr. Stoker was absolutely sure . . .

"My dear man, I take responsibility for everything. Now, here, you must take this for all
the trouble I've caused you. Have supper in some nice ... No, no, now don't protest. Now
leave things to me."

Within seconds the narrow bright corridor was deserted.

With a tiny triumphant smile David beckoned for me to come out and join him. He held
up the key to the Queen Victoria Suite. We crossed the passage and he fitted it into the
lock.

The suite was immense, and split between two levels separated by four or perhaps five
carpeted steps. The bed rested upon the lower level, and was quite mussed, with pillows
plumped up beneath the covers to make it appear that indeed someone was there fast
asleep with a hood of covers carelessly drawn over his head.

The upper level contained the sitting area and the doors to the veranda, over which the
thick draperies had been pulled, admitting almost no visible light. We slipped into the
suite, snapped on the overhead lamp, and closed the door.

The pillows piled on the bed made an excellent ruse for anyone peeking in from the
hallway, but on closer inspection did not appear to be a contrivance at all. Merely a
messy bed.

So where was the devil? Where was the trunk?

"Ah, there," I whispered. "On the far side of the bed." I had mistaken it for some sort of
table, as it was almost entirely draped with a decorative cloth. Now I could see that it was
a large black metal locker, trimmed in brass, and very shiny, and easily big enough to
accommodate a man with his knees crooked and lying upon his side. The thick drapery of

decorative fabric was no doubt held in place upon the lid with a bit of glue. In the old
century, I had often used this trick myself.

Everything else was quite immaculate, though the closets veritably bulged with fine
clothes. A quick search of the dresser drawers revealed no documents of importance.
Obviously he carried what few papers he required on his person, and his person was
concealed inside that trunk. There were no jewels or gold hidden in this room as far as we
could determine. But we found the stack of prestamped mailing envelopes which the
fiend was using to get rid of the stolen treasures, and these were quite thick and large.

"Five post boxes," I said, as I went through them. David noted all the numbers in his
small leatherbound book, then slipped it back in his pocket and looked at the trunk.

I warned him in a whisper to be careful. The fiend can sense danger even in his sleep.
Don't think of touching, the lock.

David nodded. He knelt down silently beside the trunk and gently laid his ear against the
lid, and then he drew back rather fast and stared at it with a fierce and excited expression
on his face. "He's in there all right," he said, eyes still fixed on the trunk.

"What did you hear?"

"His heartbeat. Go listen for yourself if you wish. It's your heart." "I want to see him," I
said. "Stand over there, out of the way."

"I don't think you should do this." "Ah, but I want to. Besides, I must assess that lock just
in case." I approached the trunk and realized as soon as I saw it closely that the lock had
not even been turned. He either could not dc it telepathically or had never bothered.
Standing well to one side, I reached down with my right hand and jerked at the brass
edge of the lid. Then I threw it back against the wall.

It struck the paneling with a dull sound, remaining open, and I realized that I was looking
at a mass of soft black fabric, folded loosely and completely hiding the contents below.
Nothing stirred beneath this fabric.

No powerful white hand suddenly reached for my throat! Standing as far back as I could,
I reached out and snatched up the cloth and drew it back in a great black flash of silk. My
mortal heart was pounding miserably, and I almost lost my balance as I put several feet of
space between myself and the trunk. But the body which lay there, quite visibly, with its
knees drawn up just as I'd imagined, and its arms folded around its knees, did not move.

Indeed, the sunburnt face was as still as that of a mannequin, with its eyes closed and its
familiar profile burning against the funereal padding of white silk beneath it. My profile.
My eyes. My body dressed in formal evening black-a vampire's black, if you will-with
stiff white shirtfront and shining black tie at the neck. My hair, loose and full and golden
in the dim light.

My body!

And I, standing there in a trembling mortal frame, with this bolt of loose black silk
hanging like a matador's cape from my trembling hand.

"Hurry!" David whispered.

Even as the syllables left his lips, I saw the crooked arm inside the trunk begin to move.
The elbow tightened. The hand was sliding loose from its grip on the bent knee. At once I
hurled the fabric back over the body, seeing it slip into the same shapeless covering it had
been before. And with a quick swipe of my left fingers, I threw the lid up away from the
wall so that it fell shut with a dull sound.

Thank God the fancy outer cloth did not catch in it, but tumbled down into place,
covering the unsnapped lock. I moved backwards away from the locker, almost sick with
fear and amazement, and felt the reassuring pressure of David's hand on my arm.

Together we stood there silent for a long moment until we were certain that the
preternatural body was at rest again.

Finally, I had collected myself sufficiently to take one more quiet look about. I was still
trembling, but powerfully excited by the tasks that lay ahead.

Even with their thick layer of synthetic materials, these quarters were sumptuous by any
standards. They represented the sort of luxury and privilege which very few mortals can
ever attain. How he must have reveled in it. Ah, and to look at all those fine evening
clothes. Black velvet dinner jackets as well as the more familiar style, and even an opera
cape, he had indulged himself in that as well. There were shiny shoes galore on the floor
of the closet, and a great wealth of expensive liquor exposed upon the bar.

Did he lure the women here for cocktails as he took his little drink?

I looked at the large stretch of glass wall, quite visible on account of the seam of light at
the top and bottom edges of the draperies. Only now did I realize that this room was
facing the southeast.

David squeezed my arm. Wasn't it safe now to go?

We left the Signal Deck immediately without encountering the steward again. David had
the key in his inside pocket.

Down we went now to Five Deck, which was the very last deck of cabins, though not of
the ship itself, and we found the little inside stateroom of Mr. Eric Sampson, who did not
exist, and where another trunk was waiting to be occupied by that body upstairs when it
once again belonged to me.

Nice small, windowless chamber. Of course it had the regular lock, but what of the
others, which Jake had brought aboard at our request?

They were entirely too cumbersome for our purposes. But I saw that the door could be
made quite impassable if I pushed the trunk against it. That would keep out any
troublesome steward, or James if he managed to be prowling about after the switch. He
could not possibly move the door back. Indeed, if I wedged the trunk between the door
and the end of the bunk, no one could move it. Excellent. So that part of the plan was
complete.

Now to plot a route from the Queen Victoria Suite to this deck. As diagrams of the ship
were hung in every small lobby and foyer, this was not difficult at all.

I quickly realized that Stairway A was the best interior route. Indeed it was perhaps the
only stairway which went directly from the deck below ours all the way to Five Deck
without a break. As soon as we reached the foot of this stairway, I knew that it would be
nothing for me to drop from the very top of it, down through the well of turning railings
to this very spot. Now, I must climb it to the Sports Deck, and see how to reach it from
our deck above.

"Ah, you can do that, my dear young fellow," said David. "I'm taking the elevator up
those eight flights."

By the time we met again in the quiet sunlight of the Queens Grill Lounge, I had plotted
every step. We ordered a couple of gin and tonics-a drink that I found fairly tolerable-and
went over the entire scheme in final detail.

We'd wait the night in hiding until James decided to retire for the approaching day. If he
came early, we would wait until the crucial moment before we moved in upon him,
throwing back the lid of his trunk.

David would have the Smith & Wesson leveled upon him as we both attempted to jolt his
spirit out of the body, at which point I would rush in. Timing was crucial. He would be
feeling the danger of the sunlight, and knowing that he could not possibly remain in the
vampiric body; but he must not have sufficient opportunity to harm either of us.

If the first assault failed, and an argument did ensue, we would make plain to him the
vulnerability of his position. If he tried to destroy either of us, our inevitable shouts or
screams would bring help at once. And any dead body would be left lying in James's
stateroom. Where at the eleventh hour was James to go himself? It was very doubtful he
knew how long he could remain conscious as the sun was rising. Indeed, I was sure he
had never pushed it to the limit, as I had done many a time. Surely given his confusion, a
second assault upon him would be successful. And then as David held the large revolver
on the mortal body of James, I would dart with preternatural swiftness down the corridor
of the Signal Deck, down the interior stairway to the deck below, then run the length of

it, passing out of the narrow corridor and into a wider one behind the Queens Grill
Restaurant, where I would find the top of Stairway A, and then drop eight floors to Five
Deck, rush down the corridor, and enter the small inside cabin and bolt the door. The
trunk would then be shoved between bed and door, and I would climb inside it, bringing
down the lid.

Even if I encountered a horde of sluggish mortals in my path it would take me no more
than a few seconds, and almost all of that time I should be safe within the interior of the
ship, insulated from the sun's light.

James-back in this mortal body and no doubt furious- would have no clue as to where I'd
gone. Even if he overpowered David, he could not conceivably locate my cabin without
an exhaustive search which would be quite beyond his ability to undertake. And David
would be rousing security against him, accusing him of all sorts of sordid crimes.

Of course David had no intention of being overpowered. He would keep the powerful
Smith & Wesson trained on James until the ship docked in Barbados, at which time he
would escort the man to the gangway and invite him to go ashore. David would then take
up his watch to see that James did not return. At sunset I would rise from the trunk and
meet David, and we would enjoy the night's voyage to the next port.

David sat back in the pale green armchair, drinking the remainder of his gin and tonic,
and obviously pondering the plan.

"You realize of course that I cannot execute the little devil," he said. "Gun or no gun."

"Well, you can't do it on board, that's for certain," I said. "The shot would be heard."

'^And what if he realizes it? What if he goes for the weapon?"

"Then he finds himself in the same predicament. Surely he's smart enough to know that."

"I'll shoot him if I have to. That's the thought he can read from me with all his psychic
skill. I will do it if I have to. Then I'll make the appropriate accusations. He was trying to
rob your cabin. I was waiting for you when he came in."

"Look, suppose we make this switch soon enough before sunrise for me to hurl him over
the side."

"No good. There are officers and passengers everywhere. He's sure to be seen by
someone and it will be 'Man overboard' and mayhem all around."

"Of course I could crush his skull."

"Then I would have to conceal the body. No, let's hope the little monster realizes his
good luck and cheerfully goes ashore. I don't want to have to ... I don't like the thought
of. . ."

"I know, I know, but you could simply shove him into that trunk. Nobody would find
him."

"Lestat, I don't want to frighten you, but there are excellent reasons why we mustn't try to
kill him! He told you those reasons himself. Don't you recall? Threaten that body and
he'll rise out of it and make another assault. In fact, we'd be giving him no choice. And
we'd be prolonging the psychic battle at the worst possible moment. It isn't inconceivable
that he could follow you on your path to Five Deck, and try to get in again. Of course
he'd be foolish to do it with no hiding place. But suppose he does have an alternative
hiding place. Think on that."

"You're probably right on that."

"And we don't know the extent of his psychic power," he said. "And we must remember
that this is his specialty- switching and possession! No. Don't try to drown him or crush
him. Let him climb back into that mortal body. I'll keep the gun on him until you've had
time to vanish from the scene altogether, and he and I shall have a round of conversation
about what lies ahead."

"I see your point."

"Then if I do have to shoot him, very well. I'll do it. I'll put him into the trunk, and hope
the sound of the shot goes unnoticed. Who knows? It might."

"God, I'm leaving you with this monster, you realize it? David, why don't we move on
him as soon as the sun sets."

"No. Absolutely not. That means an all-out psychic battle! And he can hold the body
sufficiently to take fright and simply leave us on board this ship, which will be at sea for
the entire night. Lestat, I've thought all this through. Every part of the plan is crucial. We
want him at his weakest, just before dawn, with the ship about to dock so that once he is
in his mortal body, he can cheerfully and gratefully disembark. Now, you must trust that
I'll handle this fellow. You don't know how much I despise him! If you did, perhaps you
wouldn't worry at all."

"Be assured I shall kill him when I find him."

"All the more reason for him to willingly go ashore. He'll want a head start, and I shall
advise him to be quick."

"The Big-Game Hunt. I shall love it. I'll find him-even if he hides in another body. What
a lovely game it will be."

David fell quiet for a moment.

"Lestat, there is one other possibility, of course . . ."

"What? I don't understand you."

He looked away as if he were trying to choose just the right words. Then he looked
directly at me. "We could destroy that thing, you know."

"David, are you mad to even . . . ?"

"Lestat, the two of us could do it. There are ways. Before sunset, we could destroy that
thing, and you would be . . ."

"Say no more!" I was angry. But when I saw the sadness in his face, the concern, the
obvious moral confusion, I sighed and sat back and took a softer tone. "David," I said,
"I'm the Vampire Lestat. That's my body. We're going to get it back for me."

For a moment he didn't respond, and then he nodded rather emphatically and said in a
half whisper, "Yes. Correct."

A pause fell between us, during which time I began to go over each and every step of the
plan.

When I looked at him again, he seemed similarly thoughtful, in fact rather deeply
engaged.

"You know I think it will go smoothly," he said. "Especially when I remember your
descriptions of him in that body. Awkward, uncomfortable. And of course we must
remember what sort of human he is-his true age, his old modus operandi, so to speak.
Hmmm. He isn't going to get that gun away from me. Yes, I think it's all going to work as
planned."

"So do I," I said.

"And all things considered," he added, "well, it's the only chance we've got!"

TWENTY-TWO

FOR the next two hours we went exploring the ship. It was imperative that we be able to
hide in it during the nighttime hours when James might be roaming the various decks.
For this, we had to know it, and I must confess that my curiosity about the vessel was
extreme.

We wandered out of the quiet and narrow Queens Grill Lounge, and back into the main
body of the vessel, past many cabin doors before we reached the circular mezzanine with
its village of fancy shops. Then down a large circular stairway we went and across a vast
polished dance floor through the main lounge, and off to other darkened bars and
lounges, each with its own great spread of dizzying carpet and throbbing electronic
music, and then past an indoor pool around which hundreds lunched at large circular
tables, and then outside to yet another pool in the open, where countless passengers
sunned themselves in beach chairs, snoozing or reading their folded papers or little
paperback books.

Eventually we came upon a small library, full of quiet patrons, and a darkened casino, not
to be opened until the ship had left the port. Here stood banks of somber darkened slot
machines, and tables for blackjack and roulette.

At one point, we peeked into the darkened theatre, and found it to be enormous, though
only some four or five people were watching the film upon a giant screen.

Then there was another lounge, and yet another, some with windows, and some utterly
dark, and a fine fancy restaurant for passengers of middle rank, reached by a winding
stairs. Yet a third-also quite handsome-served the patrons of the very lowest decks. Down
we went, past my secret cabin hiding place.

And there we discovered not one but two health spas, with their machines for building
muscles and rooms for cleansing the pores of the skin with jets of steam.

Somewhere we stumbled upon the small hospital, with nurses in white uniforms, and tiny
brightly lighted rooms; at another juncture a large windowless chamber full of computers
at which several persons were working quietly away. There was a beauty salon for
women, and a similar grooming establishment for men. We came upon a travel desk at
one time, and at another what seemed a sort of bank.

And always we were walking in narrow corridors to which we could not quite see the
end. The dull beige walls and ceilings were forever close around us. One hideous color of
carpet gave way to another. Indeed, sometimes the garish modern patterns met with such
violence at various doorways that I all but laughed out loud. I lost count of the many
stairways with their shallow padded steps. I could not distinguish one bank of elevators
from another. Everywhere I looked there were numbered cabin doors. The framed
pictures were bland and indistinguishable one from another. I had again and again to seek
the diagrams to determine where exactly I had been and might be going now, or how to
escape some circular path in which I found myself wandering for the fourth or fifth time.

David thought it powerfully amusing, especially since we encountered other passengers
who were lost at almost every turn. At least six different times, we helped these very old
individuals find their way to a certain place. And then became lost ourselves again.

Finally, by some miracle, we found our way back through the narrow Queens Grill
Lounge and up to the secret Signal Deck and to our cabins. It was only an hour before
sunset, and the giant engines were already roaring.

As soon as I had on my clothes for the evening-a white turtleneck and light seersucker
suit-I headed out on the veranda to see the smoke pouring from the great chimney above.
The entire ship had begun to vibrate with the power of the engines. And the soft
Caribbean light was waning over the distant hills.

A fierce churning apprehension gripped me. It was as if my entrails had been caught by
the vibration of the engine. But it had nothing to do with such things. I was merely
thinking that I should never see this brilliant natural light again. I should see the light of
only moments from now-twilight-but never this splash of the dying sun on the tessellated
water, never this gleam of gold in distant windows, or the blue sky shining so clear in its
last hour, above the rolling clouds.

I wanted to cling to the moment, to savor every soft and subtle change. Then again, I did
not. Centuries ago, there had been no farewell to the daylight hours. As the sun set on
that last fateful day, I had not even dreamed that I would never see it until this time.
Never even dreamed!

Surely I should stand here, feeling the last of its sweet warmth, enjoying these precious
moments of wholesome light.

But I really didn't want to. I really didn't care. I had seen it at moments far more precious
and wondrous. It was over, wasn't it? I would soon be the Vampire Lestat again.

I passed slowly back through the stateroom. I looked at myself in the large mirror. Oh,
this would be the longest night of my existence, I thought-longer even than that awful
night of cold and sickness in Georgetown. And what if we fail!

David was waiting for me in the corridor, looking his very proper self in white linen. We
must get away from here, he said, before the sun went down below the waves. I wasn't so
anxious. I didn't think that slovenly idiot creature would hop right from the trunk into the
burning twilight as I so loved to do. On the contrary, he would probably lie there
fearfully in the dark for some time before he emerged.

Then what would he do? Open the draperies to his veranda and leave the ship by that
means to rob some doomed family on the distant shore? Ah, but he had struck Grenada.
Maybe he meant to rest. We couldn't know.

We slipped off down to the Queens Grill Lounge again and then out onto the windy deck.
Many passengers had come outside to see the ship leave port. The crew was making
ready. Thick gray smoke poured from the chimney into the waning light of the sky.

I leant my arms against the rail and looked out towards the distant curve of land. The
infinitely changing waves caught and held the light with a thousand different shades and
degrees of opacity. But how much more varied and translucent it would appear to my
eyes when tomorrow night came! Yet as I looked at it, I lost all thought of the future. I
lost myself in the sheer majesty of the sea, and the fiery pink light now suffusing and
changing the azure of the endless sky.

All around me, mortals seemed subdued. There was little talk. People were gathered up
on the windy prow to pay homage to this moment. The breeze here was silken and
fragrant. The dark orange sun, visible as a peeping eye on the horizon, suddenly sank
beyond sight. A glorious explosion of yellow light caught the underside of the great
stacks of blowing clouds. A rosy light moved up and up into the limitless and shining
heavens, and through this glorious mist of color came the first twinkling glimmer of the
stars.

The water darkened; the waves struck the hull below with greater violence. I realized the
big ship was moving. And suddenly a deep violent throbbing whistle broke from her, a
cry striking both fear and excitement in my bones. So slow and steady was her movement
that I had to keep my eyes on the far shore to gauge it. We were turning to the west and
into the dying light.

I saw that David's eyes were glazed over. With his right hand, he gripped the railing. He
looked at the horizon, at the rising clouds and the deep pink sky beyond.

I wanted to say something to him-something fine and important, and indicative of the
deep love I felt. My heart seemed to be breaking with it suddenly, and I turned slowly to
him, and laid my left hand upon his right, which held the rail.

"I know," he whispered. "Believe me, I know. But you must be clever now. Keep it
locked inside."

Ah, yes, bring down the veil. Be one among the countless hundreds, shut off and silent
and alone. Be alone. And this my last day as a mortal man, had come to a close.

Once again the great throbbing whistle sounded.

The ship had almost completed her about-face. She was moving towards open sea. The
sky was now darkening swiftly and it was time for us to retreat to the lower decks, and
find some corner of a noisy lounge where we would not be observed.

I took one last look at the sky, realizing that all the light had now fled, utterly and
completely, and my heart grew cold. A dark chill passed over me. But I couldn't regret
the loss of the light. I couldn't. All I wanted with my whole monstrous soul was to have
my vampire powers once more. Yet the earth itself seemed to demand something finer-
that I weep for what was forsworn.

I couldn't do it. I felt sadness, and the crushing failure of my human venture weighed
upon me in the silence as I stood there motionless, feeling the warm tender breeze. I felt
David's hand, tugging gently at my arm. "Yes, let's go on in," I said, and I turned my back
on the soft Caribbean sky. Night had already fallen. And my thoughts were with James
and James alone.

Oh, how I wished I could glimpse the fool when he rose from his silken hiding place. But
it was far too risky. There was no vantage point from which we could watch in safety.
Our only move was to conceal ourselves now. The ship itself changed with the fall of
darkness. The small glittering shops of the mezzanine were doing a busy and noisy trade
as we passed them. Men and women clad in shiny fabrics for evening were already taking
their places in the Theatre Lounge below.

The slot machines had come alive with flashing lights in the casino; there was a crowd
around the roulette table. And the elderly couples were dancing to the soft slow music of
a band in the vast shadowy Queens Room.

Once we had found a likely little corner in the dark Club Lido, and ordered a pair of
drinks to keep us company, David commanded me to stay there as he ventured up to the
Signal Deck alone.

"Why? What do you mean, stay here?" I was instantly furious.

"He'll know you the minute he sees you," he said dismis-sively, as if he were talking to a
child. He fitted a pair of dark glasses over his face. "He's not likely to notice me at all."

"All right, boss," I said disgustedly. I was outraged to have to wait here in silence while
he went adventuring about!

I slumped back in the chair, drank another deep cold antiseptic swallow of my gin and
tonic, and strained to see through the annoying darkness as several young couples moved
out over the flashing lights of the electrically illuminated dance floor. The music was
intolerably loud. But the subtle vibratory movement of the giant ship was delicious. She
was already tearing along. Indeed, when I looked to the far left out of this little pit of
contrived shadows, and through one of the many vast glass windows, I could see the
cloud-filled sky, still luminous with the light of early evening, simply flying by. A
mighty ship, I thought. I must give her that. For all her flashy little lights and ugly carpet,
her oppressively low ceilings and endlessly boring public rooms, she is a mighty ship
indeed.

I was reflecting upon it, trying not to go mad with impatience, and attempting in fact to
see it from the point of view of James, when I was distracted by the distant appearance, in
the far corridor, of a magnificently handsome blond-haired young man. He was dressed
all in evening clothes, except for an incongruous pair of violet-tinted glasses, and I was
drinking up his appearance in characteristic fashion when I suddenly realized with
stultifying horror that I was gazing at myself!

It was James in his black dinner jacket and boiled shirt, scanning the place from behind
those fashionable lenses, and making his way slowly to this lounge.

The tightening hi my chest was unbearable. Every muscle of my frame began to spasm in
my anxiety. Very slowly I lifted my hand to support my forehead and bowed my head
just a little, looking again to the left.

But how could he not see me with those sharp preternatural eyes! This darkness was
nothing to him. Why, surely he could pick up the scent of fear that emanated from me as
the sweat poured down beneath my shirt.

But the fiend did not see me. Indeed, he had settled at the bar with his back to me, and
turned his head to the right. I could make out only the line of his cheek and his jaw. And
as he fell into a state of obvious relaxation, I realized that he was posing as he sat there,
his left elbow leaning on the polished wood, his right knee crooked ever so slightly, his
heel hooked into the brass rail of the stool upon which he sat.

He moved his head gently with the rhythm of the slow, woozy music. And a lovely pride
emanated from him, a sublime contentment in what and where he was.

Slowly I took a deep breath. Far across the spacious room, and well beyond him, I saw
the unmistakable figure of David stop for an instant in the open door. Then the figure
moved on. Thank God, he had seen the monster, who must have looked to all the world
as completely normal now-except for his excessive and flashy beauty-as he did to me.

When the fear crested in me again, I deliberately imagined a job I did not have, in a town
where I had never lived. I thought of a fiancée named Barbara, most beautiful and
maddening, and an argument between us which of course had never taken place. I
cluttered my mind with such images, and thought of a million other random things-
tropical fish I should like to have in a little tank someday, and whether or not I should go
to the Theatre Lounge and see the show.

The creature took no notice of me. Indeed, I soon realized he was taking no notice of
anyone. There was something almost poignant in the way he sat there, face slightly
uplifted, apparently enjoying this dark and fairly ordinary and certainly ugly little place.

He loves it here, I thought. These public rooms with their plastic and tinsel represent
some pinnacle of elegance, and he is silently thrilled merely to be here. He does not even
need to be noticed. He takes no notice of anyone who might notice. He is a little world
unto himself as this snip is such a world, speeding along so very fast through the warm
seas.

Even in my fear, I found it heartbreaking suddenly and tragic. And I wondered had I not
seemed the very same tiresome failure to others when I was in that shape? Had I not
seemed just as sad?

Trembling violently, I picked up the glass and downed the drink as if it were medicine,
receding behind those contrived images again, cloaking my fear with them, and even
humming a little with the music, watching almost absently the play of the soft-colored
lights on that lovely head of golden hair.

Suddenly he slipped off the stool and, turning to the left, walked very slowly through the
dark bar, and past me without seeing me, and into the brighter lights around the enclosed
pool. His chin was lifted; his steps so slow and careful as to seem painful, his head
turning from right to left as he surveyed the space through which he passed. Then with
the same careful manner, indeed a manner more indicative of weakness than strength, he
pushed open the glass door to the outer deck and slipped into the night.

I had to follow him! I shouldn't and I knew it, but I was on my feet before I could stop
myself, my head thick with the same cloud of false identity as I moved after him, and
then stopped inside the door. I could see him very far away at the very end of the deck
itself, arms leaning on the railing, wind blowing hard through his loose hair. He was
looking heavenward as he stood there, and once again he seemed lost in pride and in
contentment, loving the wind and the darkness, perhaps, and swaying just a little, as blind
musicians sway when they play their music, as if he relished every ticking second in that
body, simply swimming in pure happiness as he stood on that spot.

The heartbreaking sense of recognition passed over me again. Did I seem the same
wasteful fool to those who had known me and condemned me? Oh, pitiful, pitiful
creature to have spent his preternatural life in this of all places, so painfully artificial,
with its old and sad passengers, in unremarkable chambers of tawdry finery, insulated
from the great universe of true splendours that lay beyond.

Only after a great while did he bow his head just a little, and run the fingers of his right
hand slowly down his jacket lapel. A cat licking its own fur had never looked more
relaxed or self-indulgent. How lovingly he stroked this bit of unimportant cloth! It was
more eloquent of the whole tragedy than any other single thing he had done.

Then, rolling his head to one side and then the other, and seeing only a couple of
passengers to his far right, who were facing an entirely different direction, he suddenly
rose off the boards and immediately disappeared!

Of course, no such thing had really happened. He had merely taken to the air. And I was
left shuddering inside the glass door, the sweat breaking out all over my face and back as
I looked at the empty place beyond, and felt David's quick whisper in my ear.

"Come, old chap, let's go on to the Queens Grill and have our supper."

I turned and saw the forced expression on his face. Of course James was still within range
to hear both of us! To hear anything out of the ordinary without so much as a deliberate
scan.

"Yes, the Queens Grill," I said, trying not to consciously think of Jake's words of last
night that the fellow had yet to appear for a meal in that room. "I'm not really hungry, but
it's awfully tiresome, isn't it, hanging around here?"

David, too, was trembling. But he was powerfully excited, as well.

"Oh, I must tell you," he said, carrying on the same false manner, as we walked back
through the lounge and towards the nearby stairway. "They're all hi black tie up there, but
they have to serve us, as we've just come aboard."

"I don't care if they're all naked. It's going to be a hell of a night."

The famous first-class dining room was a bit more subdued and civilized than other
rooms through which we'd passed. All done in white upholstery and black lacquer, it was
quite pleasant with its generous blaze of warm light. The decor had a hard brittle quality
to it, but then so did everything aboard the vessel; it wasn't at all ugly, however, and the
carefully prepared food was quite good.

When some twenty-five minutes had passed since the dark bird had flown, I ventured
several quick remarks. "He can't use a tenth of his strength! He's terrified of it."

"Yes, I agree with you. So frightened is he that he actually moves as if he were drunk."

"Ah, that's it, you have it. And he wasn't twenty feet away from me, David. And he had
absolutely no sense that I was there."

"I know, Lestat, believe me, I know. My God, there's so much I haven't taught you. I
stood there watching you, terrified he'd try some telekinetic mischief, and I hadn't given
you the slightest instruction on how to fend him off."

"David, if he really uses his power, nothing can fend him off. But you see, he can't use it.
And if he had taken a stab, I'd draw on instinct, because that's all you've been teaching
me to do." "Yes, that's true. It's all a matter of the same tricks which you knew and
understood in the other form. I had the feeling last night that you achieved the surest
victories when you forgot you were mortal and lapsed into behaving as if you were your
old self."

"Perhaps so," I said. "I honestly don't know. Oh, just the sight of him hi my body!"

"Shhh, eat your last meal, and keep your voice down." "My last meal." I gave a little
chuckle. "I'll make a meal of him when I finally catch him." Then I stopped, realizing
with distaste that I was speaking of my own flesh. I looked down at the long dark-skinned
hand which was holding the silver knife. Did I feel any affection for this body? No. I
wanted my own body, and I could not bear the thought that we had some eight hours to
wait before it would again be mine.

We didn't see him again until well past one o'clock.

I knew enough to avoid the little Club Lido, as it was the best place for dancing, which he
liked to do, and it was also comfortably dark. Instead I hung about in the larger lounge
areas, dark glasses securely in place, and hair plastered back with a thick dollop of grease
which a confused young steward had obligingly given me upon request. I didn't mind
looking so dreadful. I felt more anonymous and safe.

When we spotted him he was again in one of the outer corridors, moving this time into
the casino. It was David who went after him to watch and principally because he couldn't
resist.

I wanted to remind him that we didn't have to follow the monster. All we had to do was
move upon the Queen Victoria Suite at the appropriate time. The ship's little newspaper,
which had already been issued for the following morning, gave the exact time of sunrise
as 6:21 a.m. I laughed when I saw it, but then I couldn't tell such a thing so easily now,
could I? Well, by 6:21 a.m. I would be myself again.

At last David returned to his chair beside me and picked up the newspaper he'd been
doggedly reading by the small table light.

"He's at the roulette wheel and he's winning. The little beast is using his telekinetic power
to win! How stupid he is."

"Yes, you keep saying that," I said. "Shall we talk now about our favorite films? Haven't
seen anything with Rutger Hauer lately. I miss that chap."

David gave a little laugh. "Yes, I'm rather fond of that Dutch ' actor myself."

We were still talking quietly at twenty-five minutes past three when we happened to see
the handsome Mr. Jason Hamilton pass by again. So slow, so dreamy, so doomed. When
David moved to follow, I laid my hand on his.

"No need, old boy. Just three more hours. Tell me the plot of that old film, Body and
Soul, you remember it, the one about the boxer, and isn't there a line in it about the tyger
from Blake?"

At ten past six, the milky light was already filling the sky. This was exactly the moment
when I usually sought my resting place, and I couldn't imagine that he had not already
sought his. We should find him in his shiny black trunk.

We had not seen him since a little past four o'clock when he'd been dancing in his slow
drunken fashion on the little floor of the deserted Club Lido with a smallish gray-haired
woman in a lovely soft red gown. We'd stood some distance away, outside the bar, our

backs to the wall, listening to the brisk flow of his oh, so proper British voice. Then we
had both fled.

Now the moment was at hand. No more running from him. The long night was coming to
its close. It occurred to me several times that I might perish within the next few minutes,
but never in my life had such a thought stopped me from doing anything. If I thought of
David being hurt, I would entirely lose my nerve. David had never been more
determined. He had only just taken the big silver gun from the cabin on Five Deck, and
was carrying it in the pocket of his coat. We had left the trunk open there in readiness for
me; and the door wore its little "Do Not Disturb" sign to keep the stewards out. We had
also determined that I could not carry the black gun with me, for after the switch the
weapon would then be in the hands of James. The little cabin was left unlocked. Indeed
the keys were inside it, for I could not risk carrying these either. If some helpful steward
did lock the door, I should have to move the lock with my mind, which would not be
difficult for the old Lestat at all.

What I did carry on my person now was the bogus Sheridan Blackwood passport in my
coat pocket along with enough money for the fool to get out of Barbados and to whatever
part of the world he wished to flee. The ship was already making its way into the harbour
of Barbados. God willing, it would not take her too long to dock. As we'd hoped, the
broad brightly lighted passage of the Signal Deck was deserted. I suspected that the
steward was behind the galley curtains, catching a little sleep. Quietly we proceeded to
the door of the Queen Victoria Suite, and David slipped the key in the lock. Immediately
we were inside. The trunk lay open and empty. The lamps were burning. The fiend had
not yet come. Without a word, I turned off these lights one by one and went to the
veranda doors and drew back the drapes. The sky was still the shining blue of night but
growing paler by the second.

A gentle and pretty illumination filled the room. It would burn his eyes when he saw it. It
would bring an immediate flush of pain to his exposed skin. No doubt he was on his way
here now, he had to be, unless he did have another hiding place of which we didn't know.
I went back to the door, and stood to the left of it. He would not see me when he entered,
for the door itself would cover me from view when he pushed it back.

David had moved up the steps, to the raised sitting room, and was turned with his back to
the glass wall, and facing the cabin door, the big gun held firmly in both hands.

Suddenly, I heard the rapid steps drawing nearer and nearer. I didn't dare signal to David,
but I could see that he, too, heard the approach. The creature was almost running. His
daring surprised me. Then David lifted the gun and aimed it, as the key ground in the
lock.

The door swung back against me and then slammed as James all but staggered into the
room. His arm was up to shade his eyes from the light coming through the glass wall, and
he uttered a half-strangled curse, clearly damning the stewards for not having closed the
draperies as they'd been told to do.

In the usual awkward fashion, he turned towards the steps, and then came to a halt. He
saw David above, holding the gun on him, and then David cried out:

"Now!"

With my whole being, I made the assault upon him, the invisible part of me flying up and
out of my mortal body and hurtling towards my old form with incalculable force.
Instantly, I was thrown backwards! I went down into my mortal body again with such
speed that the body itself was slammed in defeat against the wall.

"Again!" David shouted, but once more I was repelled with dizzying rapidity, struggling
to regain control of my heavy mortal limbs and scramble to my feet.

I saw my old vampire face looming over me, blue eyes reddened and squinting as the
light grew ever more bright throughout the room. Ah, I knew the pain he suffered! I knew
the confusion. The sun was searing that tender skin, which had never completely healed
from the Gobi! His limbs were probably already growing weak with the inevitable
numbness of the coming day.

"All right, James, the game's over," David said in obvious fury. "Use your clever little
brain!"

The creature turned as if jerked to attention by David's voice, and then shrank back
against the night table, crumpling the heavy plastic material with a loud ugly noise, his
arm thrown up again to shield his eyes. In panic, he saw the destruction he'd wrought,
and then tried to look again at David, who stood with his back to the coming sun.

"Now what do you mean to do?" demanded David. "Where can you go? Where can you
hide? Harm us and the cabin will be searched as soon as the bodies are discovered. It's
over, my friend. Give it up now."

A deep growl came from James. He ducked his head as if he were a blind bull about to
charge. I felt absolutely desperate as I saw his hands curl into fists. "Give it up, James,"
David shouted. And as a volley of oaths came from the being, I made for him once more,
panic driving me as surely as courage and plain mortal will- The first hot ray of the sun
cut across the water! Dear God it was now or never and I couldn't fail. I couldn't. I
collided with him full force, feeling a paralytic electric shock as I passed through him and
then I could see nothing and I was being sucked as if by a giant vacuum down and down
into the darkness, crying, "Yes, into him, into me! Into my body, yes!" Then I was staring
directly into a blaze of golden light.

The pain in my eyes was unbearable. It was the heat of the Gobi It was the great and final
illumination of hell. But I'd done it! I was inside my own body! And that blaze was the
sun rising, and it was scalding my lovely priceless preternatural face and my hands.

"David we've won!" I shouted, and the words leapt out at freakish volume. I sprang up
from the floor where I'd fallen, possessed once more of all my delicious and glorious
quickness and strength. In a blind rush, I made for the door, catching one flickering
glimpse of my old mortal body struggling on hands and knees towards the steps.

The room veritably exploded with heat and light as I gained the passage. I could not
remain there one second longer, even though I heard the powerful gun go off with a
deafening crack. "God help you, David," I whispered. I was instantly at the foot of the
first flight of steps. No sunlight penetrated this inside passage thank heaven, but my
strong familiar limbs were already growing weak. By the time the second shot was fired,
I d vaulted the railing of Stairway A, and plunged all the way down to Five Deck, where I
hit the carpet at a run.

I heard yet another shot before I reached the little cabin. But it was oh so faint. The dark
sunburnt hand which snatched open the door was almost incapable of turning the knob. I
was struggling against a creeping cold again as surely as if I were wandering in the
Georgetown snows. But the door was jerked open, I fell on my knees inside the little
room. Even if I collapsed I was safe from the light.

With one last thrust of sheer will, I slammed the door, and shoved the open trunk into
place and toppled into it. Then it was all I could do to reach up for the lid. I could feel
nothing any longer as I heard it fall into place. I was lying there motionless, a ragged sigh
escaping my lips.

"God help you, David," I whispered. Why had he fired? Why? And why so many shots
from that great powerful gun? How could the world have not heard that big noisy gun!

But no power on earth could enable me to help him now. My eyes were closing. And then
I was floating in the deep velvet darkness I had not known since that fateful meeting in
Georgetown. It was over, it was finished. I was the Vampire Lestat again, and nothing
else mattered. Nothing.

I think my lips formed the word "David" one more time as if it were a prayer.

TWENTY-THREE

AS SOON as I awoke, I sensed that David and James were not on the ship. I'm not
certain how I knew. But I did.

After straightening my clothes somewhat and indulging myself in a few moments of
giddy happiness as I looked in the mirror, and flexed my marvelous fingers and toes, I
went out to make certain that the two men were not on board. James I did not hope to
find. But David. What had happened to David after firing that gun?

Surely three bullets would have killed James! And of course all this had happened in my
cabin-indeed I found my passport with the name of Jason Hamilton securely in my
pocket-and so I proceeded to the Signal Deck with the greatest of care.

The cabin stewards were rushing to and fro, delivering evening cocktails, and
straightening the rooms of those who had already ventured out for the night. I used my
utmost skill to move swiftly along the passage and into the Queen Victoria Suite without
being seen.

The suite had obviously been put in order. The black lacquered locker which James had
used as his coffin was closed, with the cloth smoothed over the lid. The battered and
broken bedside table had been cleared away, leaving a scar upon the wall.

There was no blood on the carpet. Indeed, there was no evidence of any kind that the
horrific struggle had taken place. And I could see through the glass windows to the
veranda that we were moving out of Barbados harbour under a glorious and shining veil
of twilight, towards the open sea.

I stepped outside on the veranda for a moment, just to look up into the limitless night and
feel the joy of my old true vampiric vision once again. On the distant glittering shores I
saw a million tiny details which no mortal could ever see. I was so thrilled to feel the old
physical lightness, the sense of dexterity and grace, that I wanted to start dancing. Indeed,
it would be lovely to do a little tap dance up one side the ship and down the other,
snapping my fingers and singing songs all the while.

But there was no time for all this. I had to find out what had happened to David at once.

Opening the door to the passage, I quickly and silently worked the lock on David's cabin
across the way. Then in a little spurt of preternatural speed I entered it, unseen by those
moving down the hall.

Everything was gone. Indeed, the cabin had been sanitized for a new passenger.
Obviously David had been forced to leave the ship. He might now be in Barbados! And if
he was, I could find him quickly enough.

But what about the other cabin-the one that had belonged to my mortal self? I opened the
connecting door without touching it, and I found that this cabin had also been emptied
and cleaned.

How to proceed. I didn't want to remain on this ship any longer than I had to, for
certainly I would be the center of attention as soon as I was discovered. The debacle had
taken place in my suite.

I heard the easily identifiable tread of the steward who had been of such service to us
earlier, and I opened the door just as he meant to pass by. When he saw me he was
powerfully confused and excited. I beckoned for him to come inside.

"Oh, sir, they are looking for you! They thought you'd left the ship in Barbados! I must
contact security at once."

"Ah, but tell me what happened," I said, peering directly into his eyes, and beyond his
words. I could see the charm working on him as he softened and fell into a complete state
of trust.

There had been a dreadful incident in my cabin at sunrise. An elderly British gentleman-
who had earlier claimed to be my physician, by the way-had fired several shots at a
young assailant who-he claimed-had tried to murder him, but none of these shots had
struck the mark. Indeed, no one had ever been able to locate the young assailant. On the
basis of the elderly gentleman's description, it was determined that the young man had
occupied this very cabin in which we were now standing, and that he had boarded the
ship under an assumed name.

Indeed so had the elderly British gentleman. In fact, the confusion of names was no small
part of the entire affair. The steward really didn't know all that had taken place, except
that the elderly British gentleman had been held in custody until he was finally escorted
ashore.

The steward was puzzled. "I think they were rather relieved to have him off the ship. But
we must call the security officer, sir. They are very concerned about your welfare. It's a
wonder they didn't stop you when you came aboard again in Barbados. They've been
searching for you all day."

I wasn't at all sure that I wanted to endure any close scrutiny on the part of the security
officers, but the matter was quickly decided for me when two men in white uniforms
appeared before the door of the Queen Victoria Suite.

I thanked the steward and approached these two gentlemen, inviting them into the suite,
and moving deeply into the shadows as was my custom during such encounters, and
begging them to forgive me for not turning on the lights. Indeed, the light coming
through the veranda doors was quite enough, I explained, considering the poor condition
of my skin.

Both these men were deeply troubled and suspicious, and once again I did my best to
work the persuasive charm on them as I spoke.

"What has happened to Dr. Alexander Stoker?" I asked. "He is my personal physician,
and I'm deeply concerned."

The younger of the two men, a very red-faced man with an Irish accent, clearly did not
believe what I was saying to him, and he could sense that something was very wrong
with my manner and my speech. My only hope was to sink this individual into confusion
so that he remained quiet.

But the other, the tall and educated Englishman, was much easier to spellbind, and he
began to pour out the whole tale without guile.

Seems Dr. Stoker was not really Dr. Stoker, but a man from England named David
Talbot, though why he had used the assumed name, he refused to say.

"You know, this Mr. Talbot had a gun on board this vessel, sir!" said the tall officer,
while the other continued to stare at me in deep inarticulate distrust. "Of course this
organization in London, this Talamasca, or whatever it is, was most apologetic, and eager
to make things right. It was settled with the captain finally, and some persons at the home
offices of Cunard. No charges were brought against Mr. Talbot when Mr. Talbot agreed
to pack his belongings and allow himself to be escorted ashore and to a plane leaving
immediately for the United States."

"To where in the United States?"

"Miami, sir. In fact, I saw him to the flight myself. He insisted upon giving me a message
for you, sir, that you should meet him in Miami, at your convenience. At the Park Central
Hotel? He gave me this message any number of times."

"I see," I answered. "And the man who attacked him? The man at whom he fired the
gun?"

"We haven't found any such person, sir, though undoubtedly this man was seen on this
ship earlier by any number of persons, and in the company of Mr. Talbot, it seems! As a
matter of fact, that is the young gentleman's cabin over there, and I believe you were in it,
talking to the steward, when we arrived?"

"The whole thing is most puzzling," I said hi my most intimate and confiding manner.
"You think this brown-haired young man is no longer on the ship?"

"We're fairly certain of it, sir. though of course it's quite impossible to engage in an all-
out search of a vessel such as this. The young man's belongings were still in the cabin
when we opened it. We did have to open it, of course, what with Mr. Talbot insisting he'd
been assaulted by the young man, and that the young man was also traveling under an
assumed name! We have his luggage in safekeeping, of course. Sir, if you would come
with me to the captain's office, I think perhaps you could shed some light upon-"

I quickly averred that I knew nothing about all this, really. I hadn't been in the cabin at
the time. Indeed, I'd gone ashore yesterday in Grenada without ever knowing that either
man was boarding the vessel. And I had disembarked this morning in Barbados for a day
of sightseeing without ever knowing this shooting incident had taken place.

But all this calm clever chatter on my part was a cover for the persuasion I continued to
use on both of them-that they must leave me now, so that I might change clothes and
have some rest.

When I shut the door on them, I knew they were on their way to the captain's quarters,
and that I had only minutes before they returned. It didn't really matter. David was safe;
he'd left the ship and gone on to Miami, where I was to meet him. That was all I wanted
to know. Thank God he'd gotten an immediate flight out of Barbados. For God only knew
where James might be at this tune.

As for Mr. Jason Hamilton, whose passport I was carrying in my pocket, he still had a
closet full of clothes in this suite and I intended to avail myself of some of them at once. I
stripped off the rumpled dinner jacket, and other nighttime finery- vampire drag, par
excellence!-and found a cotton shirt, decent linen jacket, and pants. Of course everything
was exquisitely tailored for this body. Even the canvas shoes were a comfortable fit.

I took along the passport with me, and a sizable sum of American dollars which I had
found in the old clothes.

Then I went back out on the veranda and stood still in the sweet caressing breeze, eyes
moving dreamily over the deeply blue and luminous sea.

The Queen Elizabeth 2 was now thundering along at her famed twenty-eight knots, the
bright translucent waves crashing into her mighty bow. The island of Barbados had
completely disappeared from view. I looked up at the great black smokestack, which
seemed hi its immensity to be the very chimney of hell. It was a splendid sight to see the
thick gray smoke gushing from it, and then arching back and down to the very water in
the continuous blast of the wind.

I looked again at the distant horizon. All the world was filled with fine and beauteous
azure light. Beyond a thin haze which mortals could not have detected I saw the tiny
twinkling constellations, and the somber shining planets drifting ever so slowly by. I
stretched my limbs, loving the feel of them, and the sweet ripples of sensation which
moved down my shoulders and back. I shook myself all over, loving the feel of my hair
on the back of my neck, and then I rested my arms upon the rail.

"I'll catch up with you, James," I whispered. "You can be certain of it. But I have other
things I must do now. For the moment plot your little schemes in vain."

Then I went upwards slowly-indeed as slowly as I could manage it-until I was very high
over the vessel, and I gazed down at her, admiring her many decks stacked one atop the
other, and trimmed in so many tiny yellow lights. How festive she looked, and how
removed from all care. Bravely she advanced through the rolling sea, mute and powerful
and carrying her whole little realm with her of dancing and dining and chattering beings,
of busy security officers and rushing stewards, of hundreds upon hundreds of happy
creatures who knew not at all that we had ever been there to trouble them with our little

drama, or that we were gone as swiftly as we had come, leaving only the smallest bit of
confusion in our wake. Peace to the happy Queen Elizabeth 2, I thought, and then again, I
knew why the Body Thief had loved her, and hidden himself within her, sad and tawdry
though she was.

After all, what is our entire world to the stars above? What do they think of our tiny
planet, I wondered, full of mad juxtaposition, happenstance, and endless struggle, and the
deep crazed civilizations sprawled upon the face of it, and held together not by will or
faith or communal ambition but by some dreamy capacity of the world's millions to be
oblivious to life's tragedies and again and again sink into happiness, just as the
passengers of that little ship sank into it-as if happiness were as natural to all beings as
hunger or sleepiness or love of warmth and fear of the cold.

I rose higher and higher until I could no longer see the ship at all. Clouds raced across the
face of the world below me. And above, the stars burned through in all their cold majesty,
and for once I didn't hate them; no, I couldn't hate them; I could hate nothing; I was too
full of joy and dark bitter triumph. I was Lestat, drifting between hell and heaven, and
content to be so-perhaps for the first time.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE rain forest of South America-great deep tangle of woods and jungle that covers
miles upon miles of the continent, blanketing mountain slopes and crowding into deep
valleys, and breaking only for broad glittering rivers and shimmering lakes-soft and
verdant and lush and seemingly harmless when seen through the drifting clouds from
high above.

The darkness is impenetrable when one stands upon the soft, moist ground. The trees are
so high there is no heaven above them. Indeed, creation is nothing but struggle and
menace amid these deep moist shadows. It is the final triumph of the Savage Garden, and
not all the scientists of civilization will ever classify every species of painted butterfly or
speckled cat or flesh-eating fish or giant coiling snake, which thrives in this place.

Birds with feathers the color of the summer sky or the burning sun streak through the wet
branches. Monkeys scream as they reach out with their tiny clever little hands for vines
as thick as hemp rope. Sleek and sinister mammals of a thousand shapes and sizes crawl
in remorseless search of one another over monstrous roots and half-buried tubers, under
giant rustling leaves and up the twisted trunks of saplings dying in the fetid darkness,
even as they suck their last nourishment from the reeking soil.

Mindless and endlessly vigorous is the cycle of hunger and satiation, of violent and
painful death. Reptiles with eyes as hard and shining as opals feast eternally upon the
writhing universe of stiff and crackling insects as they have since the days when no
warm-blooded creature ever walked the earth. And the insects-winged, fanged, pumped
with deadly venom, and dazzling in their hideousness and ghastly beauty, and beyond all
cunning-ultimately feast upon all.

There is no mercy in this forest. No mercy, no justice, no worshipful appreciation of its
beauty, no soft cry of joy at the beauty of the falling rain. Even the sagacious little
monkey is a moral idiot at heart.

That is-there was no such thing until the coming of man.

How many thousands of years ago that was, no one can tell you for certain. The jungle
devours its bones. It quietly swallows up sacred manuscripts as it gnaws on the more
stubborn stones of the temple. Textiles, woven baskets, painted pots, and even ornaments
of hammered gold ultimately dissolve on its tongue.

But the small-bodied, dark-skinned peoples have been there for many centuries, that is
beyond question, forming their friable little villages of palm-frond huts and smoky
cooking fires, and hunting the abundant and lethal game with their crude spears and their
deadly poison-tipped darts. In some places they make their orderly little farms as they
have always done, to grow thick yams, or lush green avocados, red peppers, and corn.
Lots of sweet, tender yellow corn. Little hens peck at the dust outside the small carefully
constructed houses. Fat, glossy pigs snuffle and snuggle in their pens.

Are these humans the best thing in this Savage Garden, warring as they have done so
long upon one another? Or are they simply an undifferentiated part of it, no more
complex ultimately than the crawling centipede or the slinky satin-skinned jaguar or the
silent big-eyed frog so very toxic that one touch of his spotted back brings certain death?

What have the many towers of great Caracas to do with this endless sprawling world that
comes so close to it? Whence came this metropolis of South America, with its smog-
filled skies and its vast teeming hillside slums? Beauty is beauty where you find it. At
night, even these ranchitos as they call them-the thousands upon thousands of shacks that
cover the steep slopes on either side of the roaring freeways-are beautiful, for though
they have no water, and no sewerage, and they are crowded beyond all modern questions
of health or comfort, they are nevertheless strung with bright, shining electric lights.

Sometimes it seems that light can transform anything! That it is an undeniable and
irreducible metaphor for grace. But do the people of the ranchitos know this? Is it for
beauty that they do it? Or do they merely want a comfortable illumination in their little
shacks?

It doesn't matter.

We can't stop ourselves from making beauty. We can't stop the world.

Look down upon the river that flows past the small outpost of St. Laurent, a ribbon of
light glimpsed here and there for an instant from the treetops as it makes its way deeper
and deeper into the forest, coming at last upon the little Mission of St. Margaret Mary-a
gathering of dwellings in a clearing around which the jungle patiently waits. Isn't it

beautiful, this little cluster of tin-roofed buildings, with their whitewashed walls and
crude crosses, with their small lighted windows, and the sound of a single radio playing a
thin song of Indian lyrics and merrily beating drums?

How pretty the deep porches of the little bungalows, with their scattering of painted
wooden swings and benches and chairs. The screens over the windows give the rooms a
soft drowsy prettiness, for they make a tiny tight grid of fine lines over the many colors
and shapes and thereby somehow sharpen them and render them more visible and
vibrant, and make them look more deliberate-like the interiors in an Edward Hopper
painting, or in a child's bright picture book.

Of course there is a way to stop the rampant spread of beauty. It has to do with
regimentation, conformity, assembly-line aesthetics, and the triumph of the functional
over the haphazard.

But you won't find much of that here!

This is Gretchen's destiny, from which all the subtleties of the modern world have been
eliminated-a laboratory for a single repetitive moral experiment-Doing Good.

The night sings its song of chaos and hunger and destruction in vain around this little
encampment. What matters here is the care of a finite number of humans who have come
for vaccination, surgery, antibiotics. As Gretchen herself has said-to think about the
larger picture is a lie.

For hours, I wandered in a great circle through the dense jungle, carefree and strong as I
moved through impassable foliage, as I climbed over the high fantastical roots of the rain
trees, as I stood still here and there to listen to the deep tangled chorus of the savage
night. So tender the wet waxen flowers growing in the higher more verdant branches,
slumbering in the promise of the morning light.

Once again, I was beyond all fear at the wet, crumbling ugliness of process. The stench of
decay in the pocket of swamp. The slithering things couldn't harm me and therefore they
did not disgust me. Oh, let the anaconda come for me, I would love to feel that tight,
swiftly moving embrace. How I savored the deep, shrill cry of the birds, meant surely to
strike terror in a simpler heart. Too bad the little hairy-armed monkeys slept now in the
darkest hours, for I should have loved to catch them long enough to bestow kisses upon
their frowning foreheads or their lipless chattering mouths.

And those poor mortals, slumbering within the many small houses of the clearing, near to
their neatly tilled fields, and to the school, and the hospital, and the chapel, seemed a
divine miracle of creation in every tiny common detail.

Guarding my coffin during daylight hours-an Egyptian-style sentinel, commanded to tear
the throat out of any mortal intruder who ever found his way down the sanctuary stairs.

But I would see him soon enough. The whole world waited beyond these jungles. When I
closed my eyes and made of my body a subtle receiver, I could hear over the miles the
dense noisy traffic of Caracas, I could hear the sharp accents of her amplified voices, I
could hear the thick pounding music of those dark air-conditioned dens where I draw the
killers to me, like the moths to the bright candle, so that I might feed.

Here peace reigned as the hours ticked away in the soft purring tropic silence. A shimmer
of rain fell from the low and cloudy sky, tamping down the dust of the clearing, speckling
the clean-swept steps of the schoolhouse, tapping ever so lightly upon the corrugated tin
roofs.

Lights winked off in the small dormitories, and in the outlying houses. Only a dull red
illumination flickered deep inside the darkened chapel, with its low tower and big shiny
silent bell.

Small yellow bulbs in their rounded metal shades shone upon the clean paths and
whitewashed walls.

Lights went dim in the first of the little hospital buildings, where Gretchen worked alone.

Now and then I saw her profile against the window screens. I caught a glimpse of her just
inside the doorway, seated at a desk long enough to scratch some notes on paper, her
head bent, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck.

Finally I moved silently towards the doorway, and slipped into the small, cluttered office,
with its one glaring lamp, and to the door of the ward itself.

Children's hospital! They were all small beds. Crude, simple, in two rows. Was I seeing
things in this deep semidarkness? Or were the beds made of crude wood, lashed at the
joints, and hung with netting? And on the small colorless table, was that not a stub of
candle on a small plate?

I felt dizzy suddenly; the great clarity of vision left me. Not this hospital! I blinked,
trying to tear loose the timeless elements from those that made sense. Plastic sacks of
intravenous food glistening on their chrome racks at bedside, weightless nylon tubing
shining as it descended to the tiny needles stuck in thin fragile little arms!

This wasn't New Orleans. This wasn't that little hospital! Yet look at the walls! Are they
not stone? I wiped the thin sheen of blood sweat from my forehead, staring at the stain on
the handkerchief. Was that not a blond-haired child lying in that distant little bed? Again,
the dizziness swept over me. I thought I heard a dim, high-pitched laughter, full of gaiety
and easy mockery. But that was a bird surely in the great outer darkness. There was no
old female nurse in homespun skirts to her ankles, and kerchief about her shoulders.
She'd been gone for centuries, along with that little building.

But the child was moaning; the light gleamed on her small rounded head. I saw her
chubby hand against the blanket. Again, I tried to clear my vision. A deep shadow fell
over the floor beside me. Yes, look, the apnea alarm with its tiny glowing digits, and the
glass-doored cabinets of medicines! Not that hospital, but this hospital.

So you've come for me, Father? You said you would do it again.

"No, I won't hurt her! I don't want to hurt her." Was I whispering aloud?

Far, far down at the end of the narrow room, she sat on the small chair, her little feet
kicking back and forth, her hair in fancy curls against her puff sleeves.

Oh, you've come for her. You know you have!

"Shhh, you'll wake the children! Go away. You're not there!"

Everyone knew you would be victorious. They knew you 'd beat the Body Thief. And
here you are . . . come for her.

"No, not to hurt her. But to lay the decision in her hands."

"Monsieur? May I help you?"

I looked up at the old man standing hi front of me, the doctor, with the stained whiskers
and the tiny spectacles. No, not this doctor! Where had he come from? I stared at the
name tag. This is French Guiana. That's why he's speaking French. And there is no child
at the end of the ward, sitting in any chair.

"To see Gretchen," I whispered. "Sister Marguerite." I had thought she was in this
building, that I'd glimpsed her through the windows. I knew she was here.

Dull noises at the far end of the ward. He can't hear them but I can hear them. She's
coming. I caught her scent suddenly, mingled with the scent of the children, of the old
man.

But even with these eyes, I couldn't see in the intolerable gloom. Where was the light in
this place coming from? She had just extinguished the tiny electric lamp at the far door,
and she came now down the length of the ward past bed after bed, her steps quick though
dogged, her head bowed. The doctor made a little weary gesture, and shuffled past me.

Don't stare at the stained whiskers; don't stare at the spectacles, or the rounded hump of
his bent back. Why, you saw the plastic name tag on his pocket. He is no ghost! The
screen door thumped softly behind him, as he shambled away.

In the thin darkness, she stood. How beautiful her wavy hair, pulled back from her
smooth forehead and her large steady eyes. She saw my shoes before she saw me. Sudden

awareness of the stranger, the pale soundless figure-not so much as a breath comes from
me-in the absolute stillness of the night, where he does not belong.

The doctor had vanished. It seemed the shadows had swallowed him, but surely he was
out there somewhere in the dark.

I stood against the light from the office. Her scent was overpowering me-blood and the
clean perfume of a living being. God, to see her with this vision-to see the glistening
beauty of her cheeks. But I was blocking the light, wasn't I, for the door was very small.
Could she see the features of my face clearly enough? Could she see the eerie unnatural
color of my eyes?

"Who are you?" It was a low, wary whisper. She stood far away from me, stranded in the
aisle, looking up at me from beneath her dark knitted brows.

"Gretchen," I answered. "It's Lestat. I've come as I promised I would come."

Nothing stirred in the long narrow ward. The beds appeared frozen behind their veils of
netting. Yet the light moved in the sparkling sacks of fluid, like so many silvery little
lamps glimmering in the dull close dark. I could hear the faint, steady respiration of the
small sleeping bodies. And a dull rhythmic sound like a child playfully thumping the leg
of a chair over and over with the back of her tiny heel.

Slowly, Gretchen raised her right hand and laid her fingers instinctively and protectively
against her chest, at the base of her throat. Her pulse quickened. I saw her fingers close as
if over a locket, and then I saw the light glinting on the thin little thread of gold chain.

"What is that around your neck?"

"Who are you?" she asked again, her whisper scraping bottom, her lips trembling as she
spoke. The dim light from the office behind me caught in her eyes. She stared at my face,
my hands.

"It's me, Gretchen. I won't hurt you. It's the farthest thing from my mind to hurt you. I've
come because I promised I would come."

"I... I don't believe you." She backed away on the wooden floor, her rubber heels making
the softest sound.

"Gretchen, don't be frightened of me. I wanted you to know that what I told you was
true." I spoke so softly. Could she hear me?

I could see her struggling to clear her vision as only seconds ago I had struggled to clear
my own. Her heart beat fiercely inside her, breasts moving beautifully beneath the stiff
white cotton, the rich blood rising suddenly in her face.

"I'm here, Gretchen. I've come to thank you. Here, let me give you this for your mission."

Stupidly, I reached into my pockets; I withdrew the lucre of the Body Thief in thick
handfuls and held it out, my fingers trembling as her fingers trembled, the money looking
soiled and foolish, like so much rubbish.

"Take it, Gretchen. Here. It will help the children." I turned and saw the candle again-that
same candle! Why the candle? I laid the money down beside it, hearing the boards creak
under my weight as I stepped to the little table.

As I turned to look back at her, she came towards me, fearfully, eyes wide.

"Who are you?" she whispered for the third time. How large her eyes, how dark the
pupils, as they danced over me, like ringers drawn to something that would burn them.
"I'm asking you again to tell me the truth!"

"Lestat, whom you nursed in your own house, Gretchen. Gretchen, I've recovered my
true form. I came because I promised you I would come."

I could scarcely bear it, my old anger kindling as the fear intensified in her, as her
shoulders stiffened and her arms came tightly together, and the hand clenching the chain
at her neck began to shake.

"I don't believe you," she said, in the same strangled whisper, her entire body recoiling
though she did not even take a step.

"No, Gretchen. Don't look at me in fear or as if you despise me. What have I done to you
that you should look at me that way? You know my voice. You know what you did for
me. I came to thank you-"

"Liar!"

"No, that's not true. I came because ... because I wanted to see you again."

Lord God, was I weeping? Were my emotions now as volatile as my power? And she
would see the blood in streaks on my face and it would scare her even more. I could not
bear the look in her eyes.

I turned, and stared at the little candle. I struck the wick with my invisible will and saw
the flame leap up, a tiny yellow tongue. Mon Dieu, that same play of shadow on the wall.
She gasped as she stared at it and back at me, as the illumination spread around us and
she saw for the first time very clearly and unmistakably the eyes that were fixed upon
her, the hair that framed the face which looked at her, the gleaming fingernails of my
hands, the white teeth just visible perhaps behind my parted lips. "Gretchen, don't be
afraid of me. In the name of truth, look at me. You made me promise I would come.

Gretchen, I didn't lie to you. You saved me. I am here, and there is no God, Gretchen,
you told me so. From anyone else it wouldn't have mattered, but you said it yourself."

Her hands went to her lips as she drew back, the little chain falling loose so that I saw the
gold cross hi the candle's light. Oh, thank God, a cross not a locket! She stepped back
again. She could not stop the impulsive motion.

Her words came in a low faltering whisper:

"Get away from me, unclean spirit! Get out of this house of God!"

"I won't hurt you!"

"Get away from these little ones!"

"Gretchen. I won't hurt the children."

"In the name of God, get away from me ... go." Her right hand groped again for the cross
and she held it towards me, her face flushed and her lips wet and loose and trembling in
her hysteria, her eyes devoid of reason as she spoke again. I saw it was a crucifix with the
tiny twisted body of the dead Christ.

"Go out of this house. God Himself protects it. He protects the children. Go."

"In the name of truth, Gretchen," I answered, my voice as low as hers, and as full of
feeling. "I lay with you! I am here."

"Liar," she hissed. "Liar!" Her body was shaking so violently, it seemed she would lose
her balance and fall.

"No, it's the truth. If nothing else is true, it's true. Gretchen, I won't hurt the children. I
won't hurt you."

In another instant, surely, she would lose her reason altogether, helpless screams would
break from her, and the whole night would hear her, and every poor soul of the
compound would come outdoors to heed her, to take up perhaps the very same cry.

But she remained there, shaking all over, and only dry sobs came suddenly from her open
mouth.

"Gretchen, I'll go now, I'll leave you if that's what you really want. But I kept my promise
to you! Is there nothing more I can do?"

A little cry came from one of the beds behind her, and then a moan from another, and she
turned her head frantically this way and that.

Then she bolted towards me, and past me through the small office, papers flying off the
desk as she brushed past it, the screen door banging behind her as she ran out into the
night.

I heard her distant sobbing as, in a daze, I turned around.

I saw the rain falling in a thin soundless mist. I saw her far across the clearing .already
and racing towards the chapel doors.

I told you you would hurt her. I turned back and looked down the shadowy length of the
ward.

"You're not there. I'm done with you!" I whispered. The light of the candle showed her
clearly now even though she remained at the far end of the room. She was swinging her
white-stockinged leg still, heel of her black slipper striking the leg of the chair.

"Go away," I said as gently as I could. "It's over." The tears were running down my face,
blood tears. Had Gretchen seen them?

"Go away," I said again. "It's finished and I'm going too." It seemed she smiled, but she
did not smile. Her face became the picture of all innocence, the face of the dream locket.
And in the stillness, as I stood transfixed, looking at her, the entire image remained but
ceased altogether to move. Then it dissolved.

I saw only an empty chair.

Slowly I turned back to the door. I wiped at my tears again, hating them, and put the
handkerchief away.

Flies buzzed against the screen of the door. How clear the rain was, pelting the earth
now. There came that soft swelling sound as the rain came down harder, as if the sky had
slowly opened its mouth and sighed. Something forgotten. What was it? The candle, ah,
blow out the candle, lest a fire start and hurt these tender little ones!

And look at the far end-the little blond child in the oxygen tent, the sheet of crinkled
plastic flashing as if made up of bits and pieces of light. How could you have been so
foolish as to make a flame in this room?

I put out the light with a pinch of my fingers. I emptied all my pockets. I laid down all the
soiled and curling bills, hundreds upon hundreds of dollars, and the few coins I found as
well.

And then I went out, and I walked slowly past the chapel with its open doors. Through
the gentle downpour, I heard her praying, her low rapid whispers, and then through the
open entrance, I saw her kneeling before the altar, the reddened fire of a candle flickering
beyond her, as she held her arms outstretched in the form of a cross.

I wanted to go. It seemed in the depths of my bruised soul I wanted nothing more. But
something again held me. I had smelled the sharp unmistakable scent of fresh blood.

It came from the chapel, and it was not the blood pumping within her, it was blood that
was flowing free from a new wound.

I drew closer, careful not to make the slightest noise, until I stood in the chapel door. The
smell grew stronger. And then I saw the blood dripping from her outstretched hands. I
saw it on the floor, flowing in rivulets from her feet.

"Deliver me from Evil, O Lord, take me to you, Sacred Heart of Jesus, gather me into
your arms . . ."

She did not see or hear me as I drew closer. A soft glow suffused her face, made of the
light of the flickering candle, and of the radiance from inside her, the great consuming
rapture which held her now, and removed her from all around her, including the dark
figure at her side.

I looked at the altar. I saw the giant crucifix high above it, and below, the tiny gleaming
tabernacle, and the burning candle deep in its red glass which meant the Blessed
Sacrament was there. A gust of breeze moved through the open chapel doors. It caught
the bell above and a faint tinny peal broke from it, barely audible above the sound of the
breeze itself.

I looked down at her again, at her upturned face with its blind eyes at half mast, and her
mouth so slack though the words still came from it.

"Christ, my beloved Christ, gather me into your arms."

And through the haze of my tears, I watched the red blood welling and flowing red and
thick and copious from her open palms.

There were hushed voices in the compound. Doors opened and closed. I heard the sound
of people running on the packed earth. When I turned I saw that dark shapes had gathered
at the entrance-a cluster of anxious female figures. I heard a whispered word in French
which meant "stranger." And then the muffled cry:

"Devil!"

Down the aisle I went, right towards them, forcing them perhaps to scatter, though I
never touched them or looked at them, and hurried past them and out into the rain.

Then I turned and looked back. I saw her kneeling still, as they gathered around her, and I
heard their soft reverent cries of "Miracle!" and "Stigmata!" They were making the Sign

of the Cross and dropping to their knees around her, as the prayers continued to fall in
that dull trancelike voice from her lips.

"And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh."

"Good-bye, Gretchen," I whispered.

And then I was gone, free and alone, into the warm embrace of savage night.

TWENTY-FIVE

I SHOULD have gone on to Miami that night. I knew that David might need me. And of
course I had no idea where James might be.

But I had no heart for it-I was far too badly shaken-and I found myself before morning
quite far east of the little country of French Guiana, yet still in the hungry sprawling
jungles, and thirsting, but with no hope of satisfaction on that account.

About an hour before dawn I came upon an ancient temple- a great rectangle of pitted
stone-so overgrown with vines, and other rankled foliage that it was perhaps altogether
invisible even to mortals who might pass a few feet away. But as there was no road or
even a footpath through this part of the jungle, I sensed that no one had passed here in
centuries. It was my secret, this place.

Except for the monkeys, that is, who had waked with the coming light. A veritable tribe
of them had laid siege to the crude building, whooping and screeching and swarming all
over

the long flat roof, and the sloping sides. In a dull listless fashion I watched them, even
smiling, as they went about their antics. Indeed, the whole jungle had gone into a rebirth.
The chorus of the birds was much louder than it had been in the hours of total darkness,
and as the sky paled, I saw myriad shades of green all around me. And with a shock I
realized I wasn't going to see the sun.

My stupidity on this count surprised me somewhat. But what creatures of habit we are.
Ah, but wasn't this early light enough? It was pure joy to be in my old body . . .

. . unless I remembered the look of pure revulsion on Gretchen's face.

A thick mist rose from the floor of the jungle, catching this precious illumination and
diffusing it even to the tiniest nooks and crannies beneath shuddering flowers and leaves.

My sadness deepened as I looked around me; or more truly I felt raw and as if I'd been
skinned alive. "Sadness" is too mild and sweet a word. I thought again and again of
Gretchen, but only in wordless images. And when I thought of Claudia I felt a numbness,
a silent obdurate remembrance of the words I'd spoken to her in my fever dreams.

Like a nightmare the old doctor with the stained whiskers. The doll-child in the chair. No,
not there. Not there. Not there.

And what did it matter if they had been? It didn't matter at all.

Beneath these deep enervating emotions, I was not unhappy; and to be aware of this, to
know it truly, was perhaps a wondrous thing. Ah, yes, just my old self again.

Had to tell David all about this jungle! David must go to Rio before he returned to
England. I would go with him, perhaps.

Perhaps.

I found two doors in the temple. The first was blocked with heavy irregular stones. But
the other lay open, for the stones had long ago fallen away into a shapeless heap.
Climbing over them, I made my way down a deep staircase, and then through several
passages, until I came upon chambers to which no light penetrated at all. It was in one of
these, very cool and utterly removed from the noises of the jungle, that I lay down to
sleep.

Tiny slithering things dwelt there. As I laid my face against the damp cool floor, I felt
these little creatures moving around the tips of my fingers. I heard their rustling. And
then the heavy silken weight of a snake moved across my ankle. All this made me smile.

How my old mortal body would have cringed and shaken. But then my mortal eyes could
have never seen into this deep place.

I began to tremble suddenly, to cry again softly, thinking of Gretchen. I knew there
would never again be a dream of Claudia.

"What did you want of me?" I whispered. "Did you really think I could save my soul?" I
saw her as I had in my delirium, in that old New Orleans hospital when I'd taken her by
the shoulders. Or had we been in the old hotel? "I told you I would do it again. I told
you."

Something had been saved at that moment. The dark damnation of Lestat had been saved,
and was now forever intact.

"Good-bye, darlings," I whispered again.

And then I slept.

TWENTY-SIX

MIAMI-ah, my beautiful southern metropolis, lying under the polished sky of the
Caribbean, no matter what say the various maps! The air seemed sweeter even than in the
islands-sweeping gently over the inevitable crowds of Ocean Drive.

Hurrying through the fancy art deco lobby of the Park Central, and to the rooms I kept
there, I stripped off my jungle-worn clothes, and went into my own closets for a white
turtleneck shirt, belted khaki jacket and pants, and a pair of smooth brown leather boots.
It felt good to be free of clothing purchased by the Body Thief, well fitted or not.

Then I immediately rang the desk and discovered that David Talbot had been in the hotel
since yesterday and was now waiting for me on the porch of Bailey's Restaurant down the
street.

I had no spirit for crowded public places. I'd persuade him to come back to my rooms.
Surely he was still exhausted from the whole ordeal. The table and chairs here before the
front windows would be a much better place for us to talk, as we were surely meant to
do.

Out I went and up the busy sidewalk north until I saw Bailey's with the inevitable sign in
fancy neon script above its handsome white awnings, and all its little tables draped in
pink linen and set with candles, already busy with the first wave of the evening crowd.
There was the familiar figure of David in the farthest corner of the porch, very proper in
the suit of white linen he'd worn on the ship. He was watching for my approach with the
usual quick and curious expression on his face.

In spite of my relief, I deliberately took him by surprise, slipping into the chair opposite
so quickly that he gave a little start.

"Ah, you devil," he whispered. I saw a little stiffening about his mouth for a minute as
though he were really annoyed, but then he smiled. "Thank God you're all right."

"You really think that's appropriate?" I asked.

When the handsome young waiter appeared I told him I wanted a glass of wine, just so
that he would not continue to ask me about such things as the time passed. David had
already been served some loathsome-colored exotic drink.

"What in the hell actually happened?" I asked, leaning in a little closer over the table to
shut out some of the general noise.

"Well, it was mayhem," he said. "He tried to attack me, and I had no choice but to use the
gun. He got away, over the veranda, as a matter of fact, because I couldn't hold the
bloody gun steady. It was simply too big for these old hands." He gave a sigh. He seemed
tired, frayed at the edges. "After that, it was really a matter of calling the Motherhouse,
and having them bail me out. Calls back and forth to Cunard in Liverpool." He made a

dismissive gesture. "I was on a plane for Miami at noon. Of course I didn't want to leave
you unattended aboard the vessel, but there really was no choice."

"I was never in the slightest danger," I said. "I feared for you. I told you not to fear for
me."

" that's what I thought would be the case. I sent them after James, of course, hoping
to drive him from the ship. It became plain they could not even consider undertaking a
cabin-by-cabin search of the vessel. So I thought you'd be left alone. I'm almost certain
James disembarked right after the melee. Otherwise they would have apprehended him. I
gave them a full description of course."

He stopped, took a gingerly little sip of his fancy drink, and then laid it down.

"You don't really like that, do you? Where's your disgusting Scotch?"

"The drink of the islands," he said. "No, I don't like it, but it doesn't matter. How did it go
with you?"

I didn't answer. I was of course seeing him with my old vision, and his skin was more
translucent, and all the little infirmities of his body were plain. Yet he possessed the aura
of the marvelous as do all mortals to a vampire's eyes.

He seemed weary, racked with nervous tension. Indeed, his eyes were red around the
edges, and again I saw that stiffness about his mouth. I also noted a sagging to his
shoulders. Had this awful ordeal aged him further? I couldn't bear to see this in him. But
his face was full of concern now as he looked at me,

"Something bad has happened with you," he said, softening even more and reaching
across the table and laying his fingers on my hand. How warm they felt. "I can see this in
your eyes."

"I don't want to talk here," I said. "Come up to my rooms at the hotel."

"No, let's stay here," he said very gently. "I feel anxious after all that's happened. It was
quite an ordeal, really, for a man my age. I'm exhausted. I hoped you would come last
night."

"I'm sorry I didn't. I should have. I knew this was a terrible trial for you, even though you
enjoyed it so much when it was going on."

"You thought so?" He gave a slow sad smile. "I need another drink. What did you say?
Scotch?"

"What did I say? I thought that was your favorite drink."

"Now and then," he said. He gestured to the waiter. "Sometimes it's a bit too serious." He
asked for a single malt if they had it. They didn't. Chivas Regal would be fine. "Thank
you for indulging me. I like it here. I like the quiet commotion. I like the open air."

Even his voice sounded tired; it lacked some bright spark.

This was hardly the time to suggest a trip to Rio de Janeiro, obviously. And it was all my
fault.

"Anything you wish," I said.

"Now, tell me what happened," he said, solicitously. "I can see it's weighing on your
soul."

And then I realized how much I wanted to tell him about Gretchen, that indeed, this is
why I'd rushed here as much as any concern I felt for him. I was ashamed, and yet I
couldn't prevent myself from telling him. I turned towards the beach, my elbow on the
table, and my eyes sort of misted so that the colors of the evening world became muted
and more luminescent than before. I told him that I'd gone to Gretchen because I'd
promised to do it, though deep within myself, I was hoping and praying to take her into
my world with me. And then I explained about the hospital, the pure strangeness of it-the
similarity of the doctor to the one of centuries ago, and the little ward itself, and that mad,
crazy notion that Claudia was there.

"It was baffling," I whispered. "I never dreamed that Gretchen would turn me away. You
know what I thought? It sounds so foolish now. I thought she would find me irresistible!
I thought it couldn't possibly be any other way. I thought when she looked into my eyes-
my eyes now, not those mortal eyes!-she'd see the true soul which she'd loved! I never
imagined that there would be revulsion, or that it could be so total- both moral and
physical-and that in the very moment of understanding what we are, she would recoil
completely and turn away. I can't understand how I could have been foolish, how I persist
in my illusions! Is it vanity? Or am I simply mad? You've never found me repellent, have
you, David? Or am I deluded on that score as well?"

"You are beautiful," he whispered, the words softened with feeling. "But you are
unnatural, and that is what this woman saw." How deeply distressed he seemed. He had
never sounded more solicitous in all his patient talks with me. Indeed, he looked as if he
felt the pain I felt-acutely and totally. "She was no fit companion for you, don't you see?"
he said kindly.

"Yes, I see. I see." I rested my forehead against my hand. I wished we were in the quiet
of my rooms, but I didn't push the matter. He was being my friend again, as no other
being on earth had ever been, really, and I would do as he wished. "You know you are
the only one," I said suddenly, my own voice sounding ragged and tired. "The only one
who will let me be my defeated self without turning away." "How so?"

"Oh. All the others must damn me for my temper, my impetuosity, my will! They enjoy
it. But when I show the weakness in myself, they shut me out." I thought then of Louis's
rejection, and that I would very soon see him again, and an evil satisfaction rilled me. Ah,
he would be so very surprised. Then a little fear came over me. How would I forgive
him? How would I keep my precious temper from exploding like a great wanton flame?

"We would make our heroes shallow," he answered, the words very slow and almost sad.
"We would make them brittle. It is they who must remind us of the true meaning of
strength." "Is that it?" I asked. I turned, and folded my arms on the table, facing him,
staring at the finely turned glass of pale yellow wine. "Am I truly strong?"

"Oh, yes, strength you've always had. And that's why they envy you and despise you and
become so cross with you. But I needn't tell you these things. Forget about the woman. It
would have been wrong, so very wrong."

"And what about you, David? It wouldn't be wrong with you." I looked up, and to my
surprise, I saw his eyes were moist now, and truly reddened, and again came that
stiffening of his mouth. "What is it, David?" I asked.

"No, it wouldn't be wrong," he said. "I do not think now that it would be wrong at all."
"You're saying . . . ?"

"Bring me into it, Lestat," he whispered, and then he pulled back, the proper English
gentleman, shocked and disapproving of his own emotions, and he looked out over the
milling crowd and towards the distant sea.

"You mean this, David? You're certain?" In truth I didn't want to ask. I didn't want to
speak another word. And yet why? Why had he come to this decision? What had I done
to him with this mad escapade? I wouldn't be the Vampire Lestat now if it weren't for
him. But what a price he must have paid.

I thought of him on the beach in Grenada, and how he had refused the simple act of
making love. He was in pain now as he had been then. And it seemed no mystery at all
suddenly that he had come to this. I had brought him to it with our little adventure
together to defeat the Body Thief.

"Come," I said to him. "It is time to go now, away from all this and to where we can be
alone." I was trembling. How many times had I dreamed of this moment.

And yet it had come so quickly, and there were so many questions I should ask.

A sudden terrible shyness fell over me. I couldn't look at him. I thought of the intimacy
we would soon experience, and I couldn't meet his gaze. My God, I was acting the way
he had in New Orleans when I'd been in that strapping mortal body and pelting him with
my rampant desire.

My heart was hammering with expectation. David, David in my arms. The blood of
David passing into me. And mine into David, and then we would stand on the edge of the
sea together as dark immortal brothers. I could scarce speak or even think.

I got up without looking at him, and I walked across the porch and down the steps. I
knew he was following me. I was like Orpheus. One backward glance and he'd be torn
away from me. Perhaps the glaring lights of a passing car would flash on my hair and
eyes in such a way that he would suddenly be paralyzed with fear.

I led the way back down the pavement, past the sluggish parade of mortals in their beach
finery, past the little sidewalk tables of the cafes. I went directly into the Park Central and
through the lobby again with all its sparkling high-toned glamour and up the stairs to my
rooms.

I heard him close the door behind me.

I stood at the windows, looking out again at that shining evening sky. My heart, be quiet!
Do not hurry it. It is too important that each step be made with care.

Look at the clouds scudding so quickly away from paradise. Stars mere specks of glitter
struggling in the pale flood of evening light.

There were things I must tell him, things I must explain. He would be the same for all
time as he was at this moment; was there any small physical thing he wished to change?
Shave the beard closer; trim the hair.

"None of that matters," he said, in that soft cultured English voice. "What's wrong?" So
kind, as if I were the one who needed reassurance. "Isn't it what you wanted?"

"Oh, yes, truly yes. But you have to be sure you want it," I said, and only now I turned
around.

He stood there in the shadows, so composed in his trim white linen suit, pale silk tie
properly knotted at the neck. The light from the street shone brightly on his eyes, and
flashed for one instant on the tiny gold stud in the tie.

"I can't explain it," I whispered. "It's happened so quickly, so suddenly, when I was sure
it wouldn't. I'm afraid for you. Afraid you're making a terrible mistake."

"I want it," he said, but how strained his voice was, how dark, how without that bright
lyric note. "I want it more than you can know. Do it now, please. Don't prolong my
agony. Come to me. What can I do to invite you? To assure you? Oh, I've had longer than
you know to brood on this decision. Remember how long I've known your secrets, all of
you."

How strange his face looked, how hard his eyes, and how stiff and bitter his mouth.

"David, something is wrong," I said. "I know it is. Listen to me. We must talk it out
together. It is the most crucial conversation perhaps that we will ever have. What's
happened to make you want it? What was it? Our tune on the island together? Spell it out
for me. I must understand." "You waste time, Lestat."

"Oh, but for this, one must take time, David, it's the very last time that time really
matters."

I drew closer to him, deliberately letting his scent fill my nostrils, deliberately letting the
scent of his blood come to me, and awaken the desire in me which cared little who he
was or what I was-the sharp hunger for him that wanted only his death. The thirst twisted
and snapped inside me like a great whip.

He stepped backwards. I saw fear in his eyes.

"No, don't be frightened. You think I would hurt you? How could I have beaten that
stupid little Body Thief if it hadn't been for you?"

His face stiffened all over, eyes becoming smaller, his mouth stretching in what seemed a
grimace. Why, how dreadful and unlike himself he looked. What in God's name was
going on in his mind? Everything was wrong about this moment, this decision! There was
no joy, no intimacy. It was wrong.

"Open to me!" I whispered.

He shook his head, eyes flashing as they narrowed again. "Won't it happen when the
blood flows?" Brittle, his voice!

"Give me an image, Lestat, to hold in mind. An image to hold against fear."

I was confused. I wasn't sure I knew what he meant.

"Shall I think of you and how beautiful you are," he said tenderly, "and that we shall be
together, companions always? Will that bring me through?"

"Think of India," I whispered. "Think of the mangrove forest, and when you were most
happy . .."

I wanted to say more, I wanted to say, no, not that, but I didn't know why! And the
hunger surged in me, and the burning loneliness mingled with it, and once again I saw
Gretchen, saw the pure horror in her face. I moved closer to him. David, David at last...
Do it! and be done with talking, what do the images matter, do it! What's wrong with you
that you fear to do it?

And this time I caught him firmly in my embrace.

There came his fear again, a spasm, but he did not truly struggle against me, and I
savored it for one moment, this lush physical intimacy, the tall regal body hi my arms. I
let my lips move over his dark gray hair, breathing in the familiar fragrance, I let my
fingers cradle his head. And then my teeth broke through the surface of the skin before I
meant to do it and the hot salted blood flowed over my tongue and filled my mouth.

David, David at last.

In a torrent the images came-the great forests of India, and the great gray elephants
thundering past, knees lifted awkwardly, giant heads wagging, tiny ears flapping like
loose leaves. Sunlight striking the forest. Where is the tiger? Oh, dear God, Lestat, you
are the tiger! You've done it to him! That's why you didn't want him to think of this! And
in a flash I saw him staring at me in the sunlit glade, David of years ago in splendid
youth, smiling, and suddenly, for a split second, superimposed upon the image, or
springing from within it like an unfolding flower, there appeared another figure, another
man. It was a thin, emaciated creature with white hair, and cunning eyes. And I knew,
before it vanished once more into the faltering and lifeless image of David, that it had
been James!

This man in my arms was James!

I hurled him backwards, hand up to wipe the spilling blood from my lips.

"James!" I roared.

He fell against the side of the bed, eyes dazed, blood trickling onto his collar, one hand
flung out against me. "Now don't be hasty!" he cried in that old familiar cadence of his
own, chest heaving, sweat gleaming on his face.

"Damn you into hell," I roared again, staring at those frenzied glittering eyes in David's
face.

I lunged at him, hearing a sudden spurt from him of desperate crazed laughter, and more
slurred and hurried words.

"You fool! It's Talbot's body! You don't want to hurt Talbot's-"

But it was too late. I tried to stop myself but my hand had closed around his throat, and
I'd already flung the body at the wall!

In horror, I saw him slam into the plaster. I saw the blood splatter from the back of his
head, and I heard the ugly crunch of the broken wall behind him, and when I reached out
to catch him, he fell directly into my arms. In a wide bovine stare he looked at me, his
mouth working desperately to make the words come out.

"Look what you've done, you fool, you idiot. Look what...

look what. . ."

"Stay in that body, you little monster!" I said between my clenched teeth. "Keep it alive!"

He was gasping. A thin tiny stream of blood poured out of his nose and down into his
mouth. His eyes rolled. I held him up, but his feet were dangling as if he were paralyzed.
"You . . . you fool . . . call Mother, call her ... Mother, Mother, Raglan needs you .. .
Don't call Sarah. Don't tell Sarah. Call Mother-" And then, he lost consciousness, head
flopping forward as I held him and then laid him down on the bed.

I was frantic. What was I to do! Could I heal his wounds with my blood! No, the wound
was inside, in his head, in his brain! Ah, God! The brain. David's brain!

I grabbed up the telephone, stammered the number of the room and that there was an
emergency. A man was badly hurt. A man had fallen. A man had had a stroke! They must
get an ambulance for this man at once.

Then I put down the phone and went back to him. David's face and body lying helplessly
there! His eyelids were fluttering, and his left hand opened, and then closed, and opened
again. "Mother," he whispered. "Get Mother. Tell her Raglan needs her ... Mother."

"She's coming," I said, "you must wait for her!" Gently, I turned his head to the side. But
in truth what did it matter? Let him fly up and out of it if he could! This body wasn't
going to recover! This body could be no fit host to David ever again!

And where the hell was David!

Blood was spreading all over the coverlet of the bed. I bit into my wrist. I let the drops
fall on the puncture wounds in the neck. Maybe a few drops on the lips would help
somehow. But what could I do about the brain! Oh, God, how could I have done it...

"Foolish," he whispered, "so foolish. Mother!"

The left hand began to flop from side to side on the bed. Then I saw that his entire left
arm was jerking, and indeed, the left side of his mouth was pulling to the side over and
over again in the same repetitive pattern, as his eyes stared upwards and pupils ceased to
move. The blood continued to flow from the nose and down into the mouth and over the
white teeth.

"Oh, David, I didn't mean to do it," I whispered. "Oh, Lord God, he's going to die!"

I think he said the word "Mother" once more.

But I could hear the sirens now, screaming towards Ocean Drive. Someone was pounding
on the door. I slipped to the side as it was flung open, and I darted from the room, unseen.
Other mortals were rushing up the stairway. They saw no more than a quick shadow as I
passed. I stopped once in the lobby, and in a daze I watched the clerks scurrying about.
The awful scream of the siren grew louder. I turned and all but stumbled out the doors
and down into the street.

"Oh, Lord God, David, what have I done?"

A car horn startled me, then another blast jogged me loose from my stupor. I was
standing in the very middle of the traffic. I backed away, and up onto the sand.

Suddenly a large stubby white ambulance came rattling to a halt directly before the hotel.
One hulking young man jumped from the front seat and rushed into the lobby, while the
other went to throw open the rear doors. Someone was shouting inside the building. I saw
a figure at the window of my room above.

I backed further away, my legs trembling as if I were mortal, my hands clutching stupidly
at my head as I peered at the horrid little scene through the dim sunglasses, watching the
inevitable crowd gather as people stopped in their meandering, as they rose from the
tables of the nearby restaurants and approached the hotel doors.

Now it was quite impossible to see anything in normal fashion, but the scene materialized
before me as I snatched the images from mortal minds-the heavy gurney being carried
through the lobby, with David's helpless body strapped to it, the attendants forcing people
to the side.

The doors of the ambulance were slammed shut. Again the siren began its frightful peal,
and off the vehicle sped, carrying David's body inside it to God only knows where!

I had to do something! But what could I do? Get into that hospital; work the change upon
the body! What else can save it? And then you have James inside it? Where is David?
Dear God, help me. But why should You?

At last I sprang into action. I hurried up the street, sprinting easily past the mortals who
could scarcely see me, and found a glass-walled phone booth and slipped into it and
slammed the door.

"I have to reach London," I told the operator, spilling out the information: the Talamasca,
collect. Why was it taking so long! I pounded upon the glass with my right fist in my
impatience, the receiver pressed to my ear. At last one of those kindly patient Talamasca
voices accepted the call.

"Listen to me," I said, blurting out my name in full as I began. "This isn't going to make
sense to you, but it's dreadfully important. The body of David Talbot has just been rushed
to a hospital in the city of Miami. I don't even know which hospital! But the body is

badly wounded. The body may die. But you must understand. David is not inside this
body. Are you listening? David is someplace . . ."

I stopped.

A dark shape had appeared in front of me on the other side of the glass. And as my eyes
fell on it, fully prepared to dismiss it-for what did I care if some mortal man were
pressing me to hurry?-I realized it was my old mortal body standing there, my tall young
brown-haired mortal body, in which I had lived long enough to know every small
particular, every weakness and strength. I was staring into the very face I had seen in the
mirror only two days ago! Only it was now two inches taller than 1.1 was looking up into
those familiar brown eyes.

The body wore the same seersucker suit with which I had last clothed it. Indeed, there
was the same white turtleneck shirt that I had pulled over its head. And one of those
familiar hands was lifted now in a calm gesture, calm as the expression on the face,
giving me the unmistakable command to hang up the phone.

I put the receiver back into its hook.

In a quiet fluid movement, the body came around to the front of the booth and opened the
door. The right hand closed on my arm, drawing me out with my full cooperation onto
the sidewalk and into the gentle wind.

"David," I said. "Do you know what I've done?"

"I think so," he said with a little lift to the eyebrows, the familiar English voice issuing
confidently from the young mouth. "I saw the ambulance at the hotel."

"David, it was a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake!"

"Come on, let's get away from here," he said. And this was the voice I remembered, truly
comforting and commanding and soft.

"But, David, you don't understand, your body . . ."

"Come, you can tell me all about it," he said.

"It's dying, David."

"Well, there isn't much we can do about it, then, is there?"

And to my utter amazement, he put his arm around me, and leant forward in his
characteristic authoritative manner, and pressed me to come along with him, down the
pavement to the corner, where he put up his hand to signal a cab.

"I don't know which hospital," I confessed. I was still shaking violently all over. I
couldn't control the tremours in my hands. And the sight of him looking down at me so
serenely was shocking me beyond endurance, especially when the old familiar voice
came again from the taut, tanned face.

"We're not going to the hospital," he said, as if deliberately trying to calm a hysterical
child. He gestured to the taxi. "Please get in."

Sliding onto the leather seat beside me, he gave the driver the address of Grand Bay
Hotel in Coconut Grove.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I WAS still in a pure mortal state of shock as we entered the large marble-tiled lobby. In
a haze, I saw the sumptuous furnishings, the immense vases of flowers, and the smartly
dressed tourists drifting past. Patiently, the tall brown-haired man who had been my
former self guided me to the elevator, and we went up in swooshing silence to a high
floor.

I was unable to tear my eyes off him, yet my heart was throbbing from what had only just
taken place. I could still taste the blood of the wounded body in my mouth!

The suite we entered now was spacious and full of muted colors, and open to the night
through a great wall of floor-length windows which looked out upon the many lighted
towers along the shores of dark serene Biscayne Bay.

"You do understand what I've been trying to tell you," I said, glad to be alone with him at
last, and staring at him as he .. settled opposite me at the small round wooden table. "I
hurt him, David, I hurt him in a rage. I... I flung him at the wall."

"You and your dreadful temper, Lestat," he said, but again it was the voice one uses to
calm an overwrought child.

A great warm smile fired the beautifully molded face with its clear graceful bones, and
broad serene mouth-David's unmistakable smile.

I couldn't respond. Slowly, I lowered my eyes from the radiant face to the powerful
straight shoulders settling against the back of the chair, and the entire relaxed form.

"He led me to believe he was you!" I said, trying to focus again. "He pretended to be you.
Oh, God, I poured out all my woe to him, David. He sat there listening to me, suckering
me on. And then he asked for the Dark Gift. He told me he'd changed his mind. He lured
me up to the rooms to give it to him, David! It was ghastly. It was everything I had
wanted, and yet I knew something wasn'l right! Something about him was so sinister. Oh,
and there were clues, and I didn't see them! What a fool I was."

"Body and soul," said the smooth-skinned, poised young man opposite. He removed the
seersucker jacket, tossing it on the nearby chair, and sat back again, folding his arms
across his chest. The fabric of the turtleneck shirt showed his muscles to great advantage,
and the clean white cotton made his skin seem all the more richly colored, almost a dark
golden brown.

"Yes, I know," he said, the lovely British voice flowing naturally. "It's quite shocking. I
had the very same experience, only a few days ago in New Orleans, when the only friend
I have in the world appeared before me in this body! I sympathize completely. And I do
understand-you needn't ask me again- that my old body is probably dying. It's just I don't
know what either of us can do."

"Well, we can't go near it, that's certain! If you were to come within a few feet of it,
James might sense your presence and focus sufficiently to get out."

"You think James is still in the body?" he asked, the eyebrows lifting again, precisely as
David always lifted them when he spoke, the head tipping forward ever so slightly, and
the mouth on the edge of a smile.

David in that face! The timbre of the voice was almost exactly the same.

"Ah ... what... oh, yes, James. Yes, James is in the body! David, it was a blow to the
head! You remember our discussion. If I was to kill him, it ought to be a swift blow to the
head. He was stammering something about his mother. He wanted her. He kept saying to
tell her that Raglan needed her. He was in that body when I left the room."

"I see. This means the brain is functioning but the brain is severely impaired."

"Exactly! Don't you see? He thought he would stop me from hurting him because it was
your body. He had taken refuge in your body! Oh, he figured wrong! Wrong! And to try
to lure me into the Dark Trick! What vanity! He should have known better. He should
have confessed his little scheme the moment he saw me. Damn him. David, if I haven't
killed your body, I've wounded it beyond repair."

He had drifted into his thoughts precisely the way he always did in the midst of
conversation, the eyes soft and wide and looking off into the distance through the floor-
length windows, and over the dark bay.

"I must go to the hospital, mustn't I?" he whispered.

"For God's sakes, no. Do you want to be plunged into that body as it dies! You can't be
serious."

He climbed to his feet with an easy grace, and moved to the windows. He stood there
staring out into the night, and I saw the characteristic posture in him, I saw the
unmistakable expression of David in troubled reflection in the new face.

What absolute magic it was to see this being with all his poise and wisdom shining from
within this young form. To see the soft intelligence behind the clear young eyes as he
looked down at me again.

"My death's waiting for me, isn't it?" he whispered.

"Let it wait. It was an accident, David. It's not an inevitable death. Of course there is one
alternative. We both know what

"What?" he asked.

"We go there together. We get into the room somehow by bewitching a few medical
persons of various rank. You push him out of the body, and you go into it, and then I give
you the blood. I bring you to me. There is no conceivable injury that the full infusion of
blood won't heal."

"No, my friend. You should know better by now than to suggest it. That I cannot do."

"I knew you'd say it," I said. "Then don't go near the hospital. Don't do anything to rouse
him from his stupor!"

And then we both fell silent, looking at one another. The alarm was fast draining out of
me. I was no longer trembling. And I realized quite suddenly that he had never been
alarmed.

He wasn't alarmed now. He did not even look sad. He was looking at me, as if asking me
silently to understand. Or perhaps he wasn't thinking of me at all.

Seventy-four years old he was! And he had gone out of a body full of predictable aches
and pains and dulling vision and into this hardy and beautiful form.

Why, I could have no idea at all of what he was really feeling! I'd swapped a god's body
for those limbs! He had swapped the body of an aged being, with death ever present at
his shoulder, a man for whom youth was a collection of painful and tormenting
memories, a man so shaken by those memories that his peace of mind was fast crumbling
away entirely, threatening to leave him bitter and discouraged in the few years he had
left.

Now he had been given back his youth! He might live another whole lifetime! And it was
a body that he himself had found enticing, beautiful, even magnificent-a body for which
he himself had felt carnal desire.

And here I'd been crying anxiously about the aged body, battered and losing its life drop
by drop, in a hospital bed.

"Yes," he said, "I'd say that is the situation, exactly. And yet I know that I should go to
that body! I know that it is the proper home of this soul. I know that every moment I wait,
I risk the unimaginable-that it will expire, and I will have to remain in this body. Yet I
brought you here. And here is exactly where I intend to remain."

I shuddered all over, staring at him, blinking as if to wake myself from a dream, and then
shuddering again. Finally I laughed, a crazed ironic laugh. And then I said:

"Sit down, pour yourself some of your bloody miserable Scotch and tell me how this
came about."

He wasn't ready to laugh. He appeared mystified, or merely in a great state of passivity,
peering at me and at the problem and at the whole world from within that marvelous
frame.

He stood a moment longer at the windows, eyes moving over the distant high-rises, so
very white and clean looking with their hundreds of little balconies, and then at the water
stretching on to the bright sky.

Then he went to the small bar in the corner, without the slightest awkwardness, and
picked up the bottle of Scotch, along with a glass, and brought these back to the table. He
poured himself a good thick swallow of the stinking stuff, and drank half of it, making
that lovely little grimace with his tight new facial skin, exactly the way he had with the
older, softer face, and then he flashed his irresistible eyes on me again.

"Well, he was taking refuge," he said. "It was exactly what you said. I should have
known he would do it! But damn, it never occurred to me. We had our hands full, so to
speak, dealing with the switch. And God knows, I never thought he'd try to seduce you
into the Dark Trick. What made him think he could fool you when the blood started to
flow?"

I made a little desperate gesture.

"Tell me what happened," I said. "He knocked you out of your body!"

"Completely. And for a moment I couldn't imagine what had happened! You can't
conceive of his power! Of course he was desperate, as were we all! Of course I tried to
reclaim myself at once, but he repelled me and then he started firing that gun at you!"

"At me? He couldn't have hurt me with it, David!"

"But I didn't know that for certain, Lestat. Suppose one of those bullets had struck you in
the eye! I didn't know but that he might shock your body with one good shot and
somehow manage to get back into it himself! And I can't claim to be an experienced spirit
traveler. Certainly not on a level with him. I was hi a state of plain fear. Then you were

gone, and I still couldn't recapture my own body, and he turned that gun on the other,
lying on the floor.

"I didn't even know if I could take possession of it. I've never done this. I wouldn't even
attempt it when you invited me to do so. Possession of another body. It's as morally
loathsome to me as deliberately taking human life. But he was about to blow the head off
that body-that is, if he could get proper control of the gun. And where was I? And what
was to happen to me? That body was my only chance of reentrance into the physical
world.

"I went into it exactly the way I'd instructed you to enter your own. And I had it up and
on its feet instantly, knocking him backwards, and almost dislodging the gun from his
hand. By that time the passage outside was full of panic-stricken passengers and
stewards! He fired another bullet as I fled over the veranda and dropped down to the
lower deck.

"I don't think I realized what had happened until I hit those boards. The fall would have
broken my ankle in my old body! Probably even my leg. I was prepared for that
inevitable split- f ting pain, and suddenly I realized I wasn't hurt at all, that I'd j
climbed to my feet almost effortlessly, and I ran down the length of the deck and into the
door to the Queens Grill Lounge.

"And of course that was the very wrong way to go. The security officers were on their
way through that room to the Signal Deck stairs. I had no doubt they would apprehend
him. They had to. And he'd been so awkward with that gun, Lestat. It was the way you
described him before. He really doesn't know how to move in these bodies he steals. He
remains too much himself!"

He stopped, took another drink of the Scotch, and then filled the glass again. I was
mesmerized watching him, and listening to him-to the authoritative voice and manner
combined with the glistening and innocent face. Indeed, late adolescence had only just
completed itself in this young male form, though I hadn't thought about it before. It was
in every sense only just finished, like a coin with the first clear impression stamped upon
it and not a single tiny scratch of true wear.

"You don't get as drunk in this body, do you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I don't. Nothing is the same, actually. Nothing. But let me go on. I didn't
mean to leave you on the ship. I was frantic for your safety. But I had to."

"I told you not to worry on my account," I said. "Oh, Lord God, those are almost the
same words I used to him .. . when I thought he was you. But go on. What happened
then?"

"Well, I stepped back out into the hallway behind the Queens Grill Lounge, where I
could still see inside through the little glass window in the door. I figured they had to

bring him down that way. I didn't know of any other way. And I had to know if he had
been caught. Understand, I'd made no decision as to what to do. Within seconds, a whole
contingent of officers appeared, with me-David Talbot-in the very midst of them, and
they ushered him-the old me-hastily and grimly through the Queens Grill itself and
towards the front of the ship. And oh, to see him struggling to preserve his dignity,
talking at them rapidly and almost cheerfully, as if he were a gentleman of great wealth
and influence, caught up in some sordid annoying little affair."

"I can imagine it."

"But what is his game, I thought. I didn't realize of course that he was thinking of the
future, how to take refuge from you. All I could think was, What is he up to now? Then it
occurred to me that he would send them to search for me. He'd blame me for the entire
incident, of course.

"At once, I checked my pockets. I had the passport of Sheridan Blackwood, the money
you'd left to help him get clear of the boat, and the key to your old cabin upstairs. I was
trying to think what I should do. If I went to that cabin they would come to look for me.
He didn't know the name on the passport. But the cabin stewards would put it all
together, of course.

"I was still utterly confused when I heard his name coming over the loudspeakers. A
quiet voice was asking for Mr. Raglan James to report to any available officer of the ship
at once. So he had implicated me, believing me to have that passport which he gave to
you. And it would only be a matter of time before the name Sheridan Blackwood was
connected to it. He was probably giving them a physical description of me now.

"I didn't dare go down to Five Deck to try to see if you'd made your hiding place safely. I
might be leading them there if I tried. There was only one thing I could do, as I saw it,
and that was to hide somewhere until I knew that he was off the ship. "It seemed entirely
logical to me that he'd be taken into custody in Barbados on account of the firearm. And
then he probably didn't know what name was on his passport, and they would have a look
at it before he could pull it out.

"I went down to the Lido Deck, where the great majority of the passengers were having
breakfast, got myself a cup of coffee, and crept into a corner, but within minutes I knew
this wasn't going to work. Two officers appeared and were obviously looking for
someone. I barely escaped notice. I started talking to two kindly women next to me, and
more or less slipped into their little group.

"Within seconds after these officers moved on, but another announcement came over the
public address system. This time they had the name right. Would Mr. Sheridan
Blackwood report to any officer of the ship at once? And another dreadful possibility
occurred to me! I was hi the body of this London mechanic who'd murdered his entire
family and escaped from a madhouse. The fingerprints of this body were probably on file.
James wasn't past making that known to the authorities. And here we were docking now

hi British Barbados! Not even the Talamasca could get this body out of custody if I were
taken. Much as I feared to leave you, I had to try to get off the ship."

"You should have known I'd be all right. But why didn't they stop you at the gangway?"

"Ah, they almost did, but it was sheer confusion. Bridgetown harbour is quite large, and
we were properly docked at the pier. No need for the little launch. And it had taken so
long for the customs officials to clear the ship for disembarkation that there were
hundreds waiting in the aisles of the lower deck to go ashore.

"The officers were checking boarding passes as best they could, but I managed again to
slip in with a little group of English ladies, and I began talking quite loudly to them about
the sights of Barbados and the lovely weather, and I managed to get through.

"I walked right down and onto the concrete wharf and towards the customs building. My
next fear was that they would check my passport in that building before I'd be allowed
through.

"And of course you have to remember, I'd been in this body for less than an hour! Every
step felt completely strange to me. Over and over I looked down and saw these hands,
and there, came the shock-Who am I? I would look into people's faces, as if peering out
of two holes in a blank wall. I couldn't imagine what they saw!"

"I know, believe me."

"Oh, but the strength, Lestat. That you cannot know. It was as if I'd drunk some
overwhelming stimulant which had saturated every fiber! And these young eyes, ah, how
far and how clearly they can see."

I nodded.

"Well, to be perfectly frank," he said, "I was scarcely reasoning at all. The customs
building was very crowded. There were several cruise ships in port, as a matter of fact.
The Wind Song was there, and so was the Rotterdam. And I think the Royal Viking Sun
was also tied up, just across from the Queen Elizabeth 2. Whatever, the place was
swarming with tourists, and I soon realized that passports were being checked only for
those returning to their ships.

"I went into one of the little shops-you know the sort, full of horrible merchandise-and I
bought a big pair of mirrored sunglasses, the kind you used to wear when your skin was
so pale, and a hideous shirt with a parrot on it.

"Then taking off my jacket and turtleneck, I put on that horrible shirt, and the glasses,
and I took up a station from which I could see the length of the wharf through the open
doors. I didn't know what else to do. I was terrified that they would start searching the
cabins! What would they do when they couldn't open that little door on Five Deck, or if

they did find your body in that trunk? Then on the other hand, how could they make such
a search? And what would prompt them to do it? They had the man with the gun."

He paused again to take another swallow of the Scotch. He looked truly innocent in his
distress as he described all this, innocent in the way he never could have looked in the
older flesh.

"I was mad, absolutely mad. I tried to use my old telepathic powers, and it took me some
time to discover them, and the body was more involved with it than I would have
thought."

"No surprise to me," I said.

"And then all I could pick up were various thoughts and pictures from passengers nearest
me. It was no good at all. But fortunately my agony came abruptly to an end.

"They brought James ashore. He had the same enormous contingent of officers with him.
They must have thought him the most dangerous criminal in the Western world. And he
had my luggage with him. And again he was the very image of British propriety and
dignity, chatting away with a gay smile, even though the officers were obviously deeply
suspicious and profoundly uncomfortable as they ushered him to the customs people and
laid his passport in their hands.

"I realized that he was being forced to permanently leave the ship. They even searched
his luggage before the party was allowed to go through.

"All this time I was cleaving to the wall of the building, a young bum, if you will, with
my jacket and shirt over my arm, staring at my old dignified self through those awful
glasses. What is his game, I thought. Why does he want that body! As I told you, it
simply never occurred to me what a clever move it had been.

"I followed the little troop outside, where a police car was waiting, into which they put
his luggage as he stood rattling on and shaking hands now with those officers who were
to stay behind.

"I drew near enough to hear his profuse thanks and apologies, the dreadful euphemisms
and meaningless language, and his enthusiastic statements as to how much he'd enjoyed
his brief voyage. How he seemed to enjoy this masquerade."

"Yes," I said dismally. "That's our man."

"Then the strangest of all moments occurred. He stopped all this chatter as they held the
door of the car open for him, and turned around. He looked directly at me, as if he'd
known I was there all along. Only he disguised this gesture quite cleverly, letting his eyes
drift over the crowds coming and going through the enormous entrances, and then he
looked at me again, very quickly, and he smiled.

"Only when the car drove off did I realize what had occurred. He had willingly driven
away in my old body, leaving me with this twenty-six-year-old hunk of flesh."

He lifted the glass again, took a sip, and stared at me.

"Maybe the switch at such a moment would have been absolutely impossible. I really
don't know. But the fact was, he wanted that body. And I was left standing there, outside
the customs building, and I was ... a young man again!"

He stared fixedly at the glass, obviously not seeing it at all, and then again his eyes
looked into mine.

"It was Faust, Lestat. I'd bought youth. But the strange part was ... I hadn't sold my soul!"

I waited as he sat there in confounded silence, and shook his head a little, and seemed on
the verge of beginning again. Finally he spoke:

"Can you forgive me for leaving then? There was no way I could return to the ship. And
of course James was on his way to jail, or so I believed."

"Of course I forgive you. David, we knew this might happen. We expected you might be
taken into custody just as he was! It's absolutely unimportant. What did you do? Where
did you go?"

"I went into Bridgetown. It wasn't even really a decision. A young very personable black
cabdriver came up to me, thinking I was a cruise passenger, which of course I was. He
offered me a tour of the city at a good price. He'd lived for years in England. Had a nice
voice. I don't even think I answered him. I simply nodded and climbed into the back seat
of the little car. For hours he drove me around the island. He must have thought me a
very strange individual, indeed.

"I remember we drove through the most beautiful sugarcane fields. He said the little road
had been built for the horse and carriage. And I thought that these fields probably looked
the way they did two hundred years ago. Lestat could tell me. Lestat would know. And
then I'd look down at my hands again. I'd move my foot, or tense my arms, or any small
gesture; and I'd feel the sheer health and vigor of this body! And I'd fall back into a state
of wonder, utterly oblivious to the poor man's voice or the sights we passed.

"Finally we came to a botanical garden. The gentlemanly black driver parked the little car
and invited me to go in. What did it matter to me? I bought the admission with some of
the money you'd so kindly left in your pockets for the Body Thief, and then I wandered
into the garden and soon found myself in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen
in all the world.

"Lestat, all this was like a potent dream!

"I must take you to this place, you must see it-you who love the islands so very much. In
fact, all I could think of... was you!

"And I must explain something to you. Never in all this time since you first came to me,
never once have I ever looked into your eyes or heard your voice, or even thought of you,
without feeling pain. It's the pain connected to mortality, to realizing one's age and one's
limits, and what one will never have again. Do you see my meaning?"

"Yes. And as you walked around the botanical garden, you thought of me. And you didn't
feel the pain."

"Yes," he whispered. "I didn't feel the pain." I

I waited. He sat in quiet, drinking the Scotch again in a deep greedy gulp, and then he
pushed the glass away. The tall muscular body was completely controlled by his elegance
of spirit, moving with his polished gestures, and once again there came the measured,
even tones of his voice.

"We must go there," he said. "We must stand on that hill over the sea. You remember the
sound of the coconut palms in Grenada, that clicking sound as they moved in the wind?
You've never heard such music as you will hear in that garden in Barbados, and oh, those
flowers, those mad savage flowers. It's your Savage Garden, and yet so tame and soft and
safe! I saw the giant traveler's palm with its branches seemingly braided as they came out
of the stalk! And the lobster claw, a monstrous and waxen thing; and the ginger lilies, oh,
you must see them. Even in the light of the moon it must all be beautiful, beautiful to
your eyes.

"I think I would have stayed there forever. It was a busload of tourists which shook me
out of my dreams. And do you know, they were from our ship? They were the folks from
the QE2." He gave a bright laugh and the face became too exquisite to describe. The
whole powerful body shook with soft laughter. "Oh, I got out of there then very fast
indeed.

"I went back out, found my driver, and then let him take me down to the west coast of the
island, past the fancy hotels. Lots of British people there on vacation. Luxury, solitude-
golf courses. And then I saw this one particular place-a resort right on the water that was
everything I dream of when I want to get away from London and jet across the world to
some warm and lovely spot.

"I told him to take me up the drive so that I might have a look. It was a rambling place of
pink stucco, with a charming dining room under a bungalow roof and open all along the
white beach. I thought things over as I roamed about, or rather I tried to, and I decided I
would stay for the tune being in this hotel.

"I paid off the driver, and checked into a fine little beachfront room. They took me
through the gardens to reach it, and then admitted me to a small building, and I found
myself inside with the doors open to a small covered porch from which a little path went
right down to the sand. Nothing between me and the blue Caribbean but the coconut
palms and a few great hibiscus shrubs, covered with unearthly red blooms.

"Lestat, I began to wonder if I'd died and all this wasn't the mirage before the curtain
drops at last!"

I nodded in understanding.

"I sank down on the bed, and you know what happened? I went to sleep. I lay there in
this body and I went to sleep."

"It's no wonder," I said, with a little smile.

"Well, it's a wonder to me. It really is. But how you would love that little room! It was
like a silent shell turned to the trade winds. When I woke in the middle of the afternoon
the water was the very first thing I saw.

"Then came the shock of realizing I was still hi this body! I realized I'd feared all along
that James would find me and push me out of it, and that I'd end up roaming around,
invisible and unable to find a physical home. I was sure something like that would
happen. It even occurred to me that I would simply become unanchored on my own.

"But there I was, and it was past three o'clock by this ugly watch of yours. I called
London at once. Of course they had believed James was David Talbot when he'd called
earlier, and only by listening patiently did I piece together what had happened-that our
lawyers had gone at once to Cunard headquarters and straightened out everything for
him, and that he was indeed on the way to the United States. Indeed, the Motherhouse
thought I was calling from the Park Central Hotel in Miami Beach, to say that I had
arrived safely and received their wire of emergency funds."

"We should have known he would think of that."

"Oh, yes, and such a sum! And they'd sent it right on, because David Talbot is still
Superior General. Well, I listened to all this, patiently, as I said, then asked to speak to
my trusted assistant, and told him more or less what was actually going on. I was being
impersonated by a man who looked exactly like me and could imitate my voice with
great skill. Raglan James was the very monster, but if and when he called again they were
not to let on that they were wise to him, but rather pretend to do whatever he asked.

"I don't suppose there is another organization hi the entire world where such a story,
coming even from the Superior General, would be accepted as fact. Indeed, I had to do
some heavy convincing myself. But really it was a lot simpler than one would suppose.
There were so many little things known only to me and my assistant. Identification was

no real problem. And then of course I didn't tell him that I was firmly ensconced in the
body of a twenty-six-year-old man.

"I did tell him I needed to obtain a new passport immediately. I had no intention of trying
to leave Barbados with the name Sheridan Blackwood stamped on my picture. My
assistant was instructed to call good old Jake in Mexico City, who would of course
supply me with the name of a person in Bridgetown who could do the necessary work
that very afternoon. And then I needed some money myself.

"I was about to ring off when my assistant told me the impostor had left a message for
Lestat de Lioncourt-that he was to meet him at the Park Central in Miami as soon as
possible. The impostor had said that Lestat de Lioncourt would surely call for this
message. That it must be given to him without fail."

He broke off again, and this time with a sigh.

"I know I should have gone on to Miami. I should have warned you that the Body Thief
was there. But something occurred in me when I received this information. I knew that I
could reach the Park Central Hotel, and confront the Body Thief, probably before you
could, if I were to move on it right away."

"And you didn't want to do it."

"No. I didn't."

"David, it's all entirely understandable."

"Is it?" He looked at me.

"You're asking a little devil like me?"

He gave a wan smile. And then shook his head again, before going on:

"I spent the night on Barbados, and half of this day. The passport was ready well in time
yesterday for the last flight to Miami. But I didn't go. I stayed in that beautiful seaside
hotel. I dined there, and I wandered in the little city of Bridgetown. I didn't leave until
noon today."

"I told you, I understand."

"Do you? What if the fiend had assaulted you again?"

"Impossible! We both know that. If he could have done it successfully with force, he
would have done it the first time around. Stop tormenting yourself, David. I didn't come
last night myself, though I thought you might need me. I was with Gretchen." I made a
little sad shrug. "Stop worrying about what does not matter. You know what matters. It's

what's happening to your old body right now. It hasn't penetrated to you, my friend. I've
dealt a death blow to that body! No, I can see that you haven't grasped it. You think you
have, but you're still in a daze."

These words must have struck him hard.

It broke my heart to see the pain in his eyes, to see them clouded, and see the sharp lines
of distress in this new and unmarred skin. But once again, the mix of a vintage soul and a
youthful form was so wondrous and beguiling that I could only stare at him, thinking
vaguely of the way he had stared at me in New Orleans and how impatient with it I had
become.

"I have to go there, Lestat. To that hospital. I have to see what's taken place."

"I'll go. You can come with me. But I alone will go into the hospital room itself. Now
where is the phone? I must call the Park Central and find out where they took Mr. Talbot!
And again, they're probably looking for me. The incident happened in my room. Perhaps
I should simply call the hospital."

"No!" He reached out and touched my hand. "Don't. We should go there. We should ...
see ... for ourselves. I should see for myself. I have ... I have a feeling of foreboding."

"So do I," I said. But it was more than foreboding. After all, I had seen that old man with
the iron-gray hair passing into silent convulsions on the bloodstained bed.

TWENTY-EIGHT

IT WAS a vast general hospital to which all emergency cases were taken, and even at this
late hour of the night, the ambulances were busy at its entrances, and white-jacketed
doctors were hard at work as they received the victims of traffic violence, sudden heart
attack, the bloody knife or the common gun.

But David Talbot had been taken quite far away from the glaring lights and the relentless
noise, to the silent precincts on a higher floor known simply as Intensive Care.

"You wait here," I said to David firmly, directing him into a sterile little parlour with
dismal modern furnishings and a scattering of tattered magazines. "Don't move from this
place."

The broad corridor was absolutely silent. I walked towards the doors at the far end.

It was only a moment later that I returned. David sat staring into space, long legs crossed
before him, arms folded once more across his chest.

As if waking from a dream, he finally looked up.

I began to tremble again all over, almost uncontrollably, and the serene quiet of his face
only worsened my dread and the awful agonizing remorse.

"David Talbot's dead," I whispered, struggling to make the words plain. "He died half an
hour ago."

He registered no visible response whatever. It was as if I hadn't spoken at all. And all I
could think was, I made this decision for you! I did it. I brought the Body Thief into your
world, though you warned me against it. And it was I who struck down that other body!
And God knows what you will feel when you realize what's happened. You don't really
know.

Slowly he climbed to his feet.

"Oh, but I do know," he said in a small and reasonable voice. He came towards me and
placed his hands on my shoulders, his entire demeanor so much that of his old self that it
was as if I were looking at two beings who had been fused into one. "It's Faust, my
beloved friend," he said. "And you weren't Mephis-topheles. You were only Lestat,
striking out in anger. And now it's done!"

He took a slow step backwards, and stared off in that dazed fashion again, his face at
once losing its marks of distress. He was immersed in his thoughts, isolated, and cut off
from me, as I stood there trembling, trying to regain control, trying to believe it was what
he wanted.

And then again, I saw it from his perspective. How could he not want it? And I knew
something else as well.

I'd lost him forever. He would never, never consent to come with me now. Any remnant
of a chance had been blown completely away by this miracle. How could that not be so? I
felt it penetrate, deeply and silently. I thought of Gretchen again, and the expression on
her face. And for one flashing moment I was in the room again with the false David, and
he was looking at me with those dark beautiful eyes and saying that he wanted the Dark
Gift.

A shimmer of pain passed through me, and then it grew brighter and stronger, as if my
body were suffering a ghastly and all-consuming inner fire.

I said nothing. I stared at the ugly fluorescent lights embedded in the tiled ceiling; I
stared at the meaningless furniture, with its stains and its torn threads; at a soiled
magazine with a grinning child on its cover. I stared at him. Slowly the pain died away
into a dull ache. I waited. I could not have spoken a word for any reason, not just then.

After a long time of musing in silence, he appeared to wake from a spell. The quiet feline
grace of his movements bewitched me again as it had all along. He said in a murmur that
he must see the body. Surely that could be done.

I nodded.

Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a little British passport-the fake he'd
obtained on Barbados, no doubt- and he looked at it as if he were trying to fathom a small
but very important mystery. Then he held it out to me, though why, I couldn't imagine. I
saw the handsome young face with all its quiet attributes of knowledge; why must I see
the picture? But I looked at it, as he obviously wanted me to do, and I saw there-beneath
the new face-the old name.

David Talbot.

He had used his own name on the false document, as if. ..

"Yes," he said, "as if I knew I would never, never be the old David Talbot again."

The deceased Mr. Talbot had not yet been taken to the morgue, for a dear friend was on
his way from New Orleans-a man named Aaron Lightner, coming by chartered plane,
who should arrive very soon.

The body lay in a small immaculate room. An old man with full dark gray hair, still, as if
sleeping, with his large head on a plain pillow, and his arms at his sides. Already the
cheeks were a little sunken, elongating the face, and the nose in the yellow light of the
lamp appeared slightly sharper than it really was, and hard as if made not of cartilage but
of bone.

They had removed the linen suit from the body, washed it and groomed it and clothed it
in a simple cotton gown. The covers were laid over it, the hem of pale blue sheet
covering the edge of the white blanket and perfectly smooth across the chest. The eyelids
were molded too closely over the eyes, as if the skin were already flattening and even
melting. To a vampire's keen senses, it already gave off the fragrance of death.

But this David would not know, nor catch that scent.

He stood at the bedside looking down at the body, at his own still face with the skin
faintly yellow, and the crust of beard looking somehow soiled and unkempt. With an
uncertain hand he touched his own gray hair, letting his fingers linger on the curling
strands just before the right ear. Then he drew back and stood collected, merely looking,
as though he were at a funeral and paying his respects.

"It's dead," he murmured. "Really and truly dead." He gave a deep sigh and his eyes
moved over the ceiling and the walls of the little chamber, over the window with its
drawn blinds and then over the dull linoleum tile of the floor. "I sense no life in it or near
it," he said, with the same subdued voice.

"No. There's nothing," I answered. "The process of decay has already begun."

"I thought he'd be here!" he whispered. "Like a bit of smoke in this room. I thought
surely I'd feel him near me, struggling to get back in."

"Perhaps he is here," I said. "And he cannot do it. How ghastly even for him."

"No," he said. "There's no one here." Then he stared at his old body as if he could not tear
his eyes away.

Minutes ticked by. I watched the subtle tension in his face, the fine plastic skin infused
with the expression of emotion, and then smoothing itself again. Was he resigned now?
He was as closed to me as he had ever been, and seemed even more deeply lost in this
new body, even though his soul shone through with such fine light.

Again, he sighed, and drew back, and we walked together out of the room.

We stood in the dull beige corridor together, beneath the grim and yellowish fluorescent
lights. Beyond the glass window, with its thin dark screen, Miami flickered and blazed; a
dull roar came from the nearby freeway, its cascade of burning headlamps sliding
perilously close before the road swerved and rose again on its long thin concrete legs and
shot away.

"You realize you've lost Talbot Manor," I said. "It belonged to that man there."

"Yes, I've thought of that," he answered listlessly. "I'm the sort of Englishman who
would. And to think it goes to such a dreary little cousin, who will only want to put it on
the market at once."

"I shall buy it back for you."

"The order may do it. They are in my will for most of the estate."

"Don't be so sure. Even the Talamasca might not be ready for this! And besides, humans
can be perfect beasts when it comes to money. Call my agent in Paris. I'll instruct him to
give you absolutely anything that you wish. I'll see to it your fortune is restored to you, to
the very last pound, and most definitely the house. You can have anything that is mine to
give."

He looked faintly surprised. And then deeply moved.

I couldn't help but wonder, Had I had ever seemed so completely at ease in this tall
limber body? Surely my movements had been more impulsive and even a little violent.
Indeed, the strength had wrung from me a certain carelessness. He seemed on the other
hand to have assimilated a knowledge of every sinew and bone.

I saw him in my mind's eye, old David, striding through the narrow cobblestone streets of
Amsterdam, sidestepping the whizzing bicycles. He'd had the same poise even then.

"Lestat, you are not responsible for me now," he said. "You didn't cause this to happen."

How miserable I was suddenly. But there were words, weren't there, which had to be
said.

"David," I began, trying not to show the soreness. "I couldn't have beaten him if it hadn't
been for you. I told you in New Orleans I would be your slave for eternity if only you
helped me to get my body away from him. And that you did." My voice was quavering. I
hated it. But why not say it all now? Why prolong the pain? "Of course I know I've lost
you forever, David. I know you'll never take the Dark Gift from me now."

"But why say you've lost me, Lestat?" he said in a low fervent voice. "Why must I die to
love you?" He pressed his lips together, trying to suppress his sudden surge of feeling.
"Why that price, especially now when I am alive as never before? Lord God, surely you
grasp the magnitude of what's taken place! I've been reborn."

He placed his hand on my shoulder, fingers trying to close on the hard alien body which
barely felt his touch, or rather felt it in such a wholly different way that he would never
know. "I love you, my friend," he said in the same ardent whisper. "Please, don't leave
me now. All this has brought us so close."

"No, David. It has not. In these last few days, we were close because we were both
mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the
earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have made
love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that's all changed. You have your
youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I still see death
when I look at you, David. I see one who walks in the sun with death right at his
shoulder. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mine. It simply
costs me too much pain."

He bowed his head, silently and valiantly struggling to maintain an inner control. "Don't
leave me yet," he whispered. "Who else in all the world can understand?"

I wanted suddenly to plead with him. Think, David, immortality in this beautiful young
form. I wanted to tell him of all the places we might go, immortals together, and the
wonders we might see. I wanted to describe to him that dark temple I'd discovered in the
very depths of the rain forest, and tell him of what it had been like to roam the jungle,
fearless, and with a vision that could penetrate the darkest corners .. . Oh, all this
threatened to break loose from me in a rush of words, and I made no effort to veil my
thoughts or my feelings. Oh, yes, you are young again, and now you can be young for all
time. It is the finest vehicle for your travel into darkness that anyone could have
fashioned; it is as if the dark spirits had done all this to prepare you! Wisdom and beauty
are both yours. Our gods have worked the charm. Come, come with me now.

But I didn't speak. I didn't plead. As I stood silent in the corridor, I let myself breathe the
blood scent rising from him, the scent that rises from all mortals, and which is different
with each in its own way. How it tormented me to mark this new vitality, this sharper
heat, and the sounder, slower heartbeat which I could hear as if the body itself were
speaking to me in a manner in which it could not speak to him.

In that cafe in New Orleans, I had caught the same sharp scent of life from this physical
being, but it had not been the same. No, not at all the same.

It was a simple thing to shut this off. I did it. I shrank back into the brittle lonely quiet of
an ordinary man. I avoided his eyes. I didn't want to hear any more apologetic and
imperfect words.

"I'll see you soon," I said. "I know you will need me. You'll need your only witness when
the horror and mystery of all this is too much. I'll come. But give me time. And
remember. Call my man in Paris. Don't rely upon the Talamasca. Surely you don't mean
to give them this life too?"

As I turned to go, I heard the distant muffled sound of the elevator doors. His friend had
come-a smallish white-haired man, dressed as David had so often dressed, in a proper
old-fashioned suit, complete with vest. How concerned he looked as he came towards us
with quick sprightly steps, and then I saw his eyes close on me, and he slowed his pace.

I hurried away, ignoring the annoying realization that the man knew me, knew what I was
and who I was. So much the better, I thought, for he will surely believe David when
David begins his strange tale.

The night was waiting for me as always. And my thirst could wait no longer. I stood for a
moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, and mouth open, feeling the thirst, and wanting
to roar like a hungry beast. Yes, blood again when there is nothing else. When the world
seems in all its beauty to be empty and heartless and I myself am utterly lost. Give me my
old friend, death, and the blood that rushes with it. The Vampire Lestat is here, and he
thirsts, and tonight of all nights, he will not be denied.

But I knew as I sought the dingy back streets, in search of the cruel victims I so loved,
that I had lost my beautiful southern city of Miami. At least for a little while.

I kept seeing again in my mind's eye that smart little room in the Park Central, with its
windows open to the sea, and the false David telling me he wanted the Dark Gift from
me! And Gretchen. Would I ever think of those moments that I didn't remember
Gretchen, and pouring out my story of Gretchen to the man I believed to be David before
we climbed those steps to that chamber, as my heart had knocked inside me, and I had
thought: At last! At last!

Bitter, and angry, and empty, I never wanted to see the pretty hotels of South Beach
again.

II

ONCE OUT OF NATURE

The Dolls

by W. B. Yeats

A doll in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and bawls:
"That is an insult to us."
But the oldest of all the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: "Although
There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither, to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing."
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
"My dear, my dear, O dear,
It was an accident."

TWENTY-NINE

IT WAS two nights later that I returned to New Orleans. I'd been wandering in the
Florida Keys, and through quaint little southern cities, and walking for hours on southern
beaches, even wriggling my naked toes in the white sand.

At last I was back, and the cold weather had been blown away by the inevitable winds.
The air was almost balmy again- my New Orleans-and the sky was high and bright above
the racing clouds.

I went immediately to my dear old lady tenant, and called to Mojo, who was in the back
courtyard sleeping, for he found the little apartment too warm. He gave no growl when I
stepped into the courtyard. But it was the sound of my voice which triggered recognition.
As soon as I said his name he was mine again.

At once he came to me, leaping up to throw his soft heavy paws on my shoulders and lick
my face again with his great ham-pink tongue. I nuzzled him and kissed him and buried
my face in his sweet shining gray fur, I saw him again as I had that first night in
Georgetown-his fierce stamina and his great gentleness.

Had ever a beast looked so frightening yet been so full of calm, sweet affection? It
seemed a wondrous combination. I knelt down on the old flags, wrestling with him,
rolling him over on his back, and burying my head in the big collar of fur on his chest. He
gave forth all those little growls and squeaks and high-pitched sounds that dogs give
when they love you. And how I loved him in return.

As for my tenant, the dear old woman, who watched all this from the kitchen doorway,
she was in tears to have him gone.

At once we struck a bargain. She would be his keeper, and I should come for him through
the garden gate whenever I wished. How perfectly divine, for surely it was not fair to him
to expect him to sleep in a crypt with me, and I had no need of such a guardian, did I, no
matter how graceful the image now and then seemed.

I kissed the old woman tenderly and quickly, lest she sense she was in close proximity to
a demon, and then away I went with Mojo, walking the narrow pretty streets of the
French Quarter and laughing to myself at how mortals stared at Mojo, and gave him a
wide berth and seemed indeed to be terrified of him, when guess who was the one to
fear?

My next stop was the building on Rue Royale where Claudia and Louis and I had spent
those splendid, luminous fifty years of earthly existence together in the early half of the
old century-a place partially in ruins, as I have described.

A young man had been told to meet me on the premises, a clever individual with a great
reputation for turning dismal houses into palatial mansions, and I led him now up the
stairs and into the decayed flat.

"I want it all as it was over a hundred years ago," I said to him. "But mind you, nothing
American, nothing English. Nothing Victorian. It must be entirely French." Then I led
him on a merry march through room after room, as he scribbled hastily in his little book,
scarce able to see in the darkness, while I told him what wallpaper I should want here,
and which shade of enamel on this door, and what sort of bergere he might round up for
this corner, and what manner of Indian or Persian carpet he must acquire for this or that
floor.

How keen my memory was.

Again and again, I cautioned him to write down every word I spoke. "You must find a
Greek vase, no, a reproduction will not do, and it must be this high and have upon it

dancing figures." Ah, wasn't it the ode by Keats which had inspired that long-ago
purchase? Where had the urn gone? "And that fireplace, that is not the original mantel.
You must find one of white marble, with scrollwork like so, and arched over the grate.
Oh, and these fireplaces, they must be repaired. They must be able to burn coal.

"I will live here again as soon as you are finished," I said to him. "So you must hurry.
And, another caution. Anything you find in these premises-hidden in the old plaster-you
must give to me."

What a pleasure it was to stand beneath these high ceilings, and what a joy it would be to
see them when the soft crumbling moldings were once more restored. How free and quiet
I felt. The past was here, but it wasn't here. No whispering ghosts anymore, if there had
ever been.

Slowly I described the chandeliers I wanted; when the proper labels eluded me, I drew
pictures in words for him of what had once been there. I would have oil lamps here and
there, also, though of course there must be limitless electricity, and we would conceal the
various television screens in handsome cabinets, not to mar the effect. And there, a
cabinet for my videotapes and laser disks, and again, we should find something suitable-a
painted Oriental press would do the trick. Hide the telephones.

"And a facsimile machine! I must have one of those little marvels! Find someplace to
conceal it as well. Why, you can use that room as an office, only make it gracious and
beautiful. Nothing must be visible which is not made of polished brass, fine wool, or
lustrous wood, or silk or cotton lace. I want a mural in that bedroom. Here, I shall show
you. But look, see the wallpaper? That's the very mural. Bring in a photographer and
record every inch and then begin your restoration. Work diligently but very fast."

Finally we were finished with the dark damp ulterior. It was time to discuss the courtyard
in the back with its broken fountain, and how the old kitchen must be restored. I would
have bougainvillea and the Queen's Wreath, how I love the Queen's Wreath, and the giant
hibiscus, yes, I had just seen this lovely flower in the Caribbean, and the moonflower, of
course. Banana trees, give me those as well. Ah, the old walls are tumbling. Patch them.
Shore them up. And on the back porch above, I want ferns, all manner of delicate ferns.
The weather's warming again, isn't it? They will do well.

Now, upstairs, once more, through the long brown hollow of the house and to the front
porch.

I broke open the French doors and went out on the rotted boards. The fine old iron
railings were not so badly rusted. The roof would have to be remade of course. But I
would soon be sitting out here as I did now and then in the old days, watching the
passersby on the other side of the street.

Of course the faithful and zealous readers of my books would spot me here now and then.
The readers of Louis's memoir, come to find the flat where we had lived, would surely
recognize the house.

No matter. They believed hi it, but that's different from believing it. And what was
another young blond-faced man, smiling at them from a high balcony, his arms resting on
the rail? I should never feed upon those tender, innocent ones- even when they bare their
throats at me and say, "Lestat, right here!" (This has happened, reader, in Jackson Square,
and more than once.)

"You must hurry," I told the young man, who was still scribbling, and taking
measurements, and murmuring about colors and fabrics to himself, and now and then
discovering Mojo beside him, or in front of him, or underfoot, and giving a start. "I want
it finished before summer." He was in quite a dither when I dismissed him. I remained
behind hi the old building with Mojo, alone.

The attic. In the olden times, I'd never gone there. But there was an old staircase hidden
off the rear porch, just beyond the back parlour, the very room where Claudia had once
sliced through my thin fledgling white skin with her great flashing knife. I went there
now and climbed up into the low rooms beneath the sloping roof. Ah, it was high enough
for a man of six feet to walk here, and the dormer windows on the very front let in the
light from the street.

I should make my lair here, I thought, in a hard plain sarcophagus with a lid no mortal
could hope to move. Easy enough to build a small chamber beneath the gable, fitted with
thick bronze doors which I should design myself. And when I rise, I shall go down into
the house and find it as it was in those wondrous decades, save I shall have everywhere
about me the technological marvels I require. The past will not be recovered. The past
will be perfectly eclipsed.

"Won't it, Claudia?" I whispered, standing in the back parlour. Nothing answered me. No
sounds of a harpsichord or the canary singing in its cage. But I should have songbirds
again, yes, many of them, and the house would be full of the rich rampaging music of
Haydn or Mozart.

Oh, my darling, wish you were here!

And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else for
very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did not sail
my little craft steadily over the surface, steadily towards a sun which will never rise.

It was past midnight now; the little city was humming softly around me, with a chorus of
mingled voices, and the soft clickety-clack of a distant train, with the low throb of a
whistle on the river, and the rumble of traffic on the Rue Esplanade.

I went into the old parlour, and stared at the pale luminous patches of light falling
through the panes of the doors. I lay down on the bare wood, and Mojo came to lie down
beside me, and there we slept.

I dreamed no dreams of her. So why was I weeping softly when it came time finally to
seek the safety of my crypt? And where was my Louis, my treacherous and stubborn
Louis? Paul. Ah, and it would get worse, wouldn't it, when I saw him soon enough?

With a start, I realized that Mojo was lapping the blood tears from my cheeks. "No. That
you must never do!" I said, closing my hand over his mouth. "Never, never that blood.
That evil blood." I was badly shaken. And he was at once obedient, backing off just a
little from me in his unhurried and dignified way.

How perfectly demonic his eyes seemed as he gazed at me. What a deception! I kissed
him again, on the tenderest part of his long, furry face, just beneath his eyes.

I thought again of Louis, and the pain hit me as if I'd been dealt a hard blow by one of the
ancients, right in the chest.

Indeed, my emotions were so bitter, and so beyond my control, that I felt frightened and
for a moment thought of nothing and felt nothing but this pain.

In my mind's eye, I saw all the others. I brought up their faces as if I were the Witch of
Endor standing over the cauldron invoking the images of the dead.

Maharet and Mekare, the red-haired twins, I beheld together-the oldest of us, who might
not have even known of my dilemma, so remote were they in their great age and wisdom,
and so deeply wrapped in their own inevitable and timeless concerns; Eric and Mael and
Khayman I pictured, who held scant interest for me even if they had knowingly refused
to come to my aid. They had never been my companions. What did I care for them? Then
I saw Gabrielle, my beloved mother, who surely could not have known of my terrible
jeopardy, who was no doubt wandering some distant continent, a ragged goddess,
communing only with the inanimate, as she had always done. I did not know if she fed
any longer on humans; some dim memory came to me of her describing the embrace of
some dark woodland beast. Was she mad, my mother, wherever she had gone? I did not
think so. That she existed still, I was certain. That I could never find her, I had no doubt.

It was Pandora I pictured next. Pandora, the lover of Marius, might have perished long
ago. Made by Marius in Roman times, she had been on the verge of despair when last I
saw her. Years ago, she had wandered away, without warning, from our last true coven
on the Night Island-one of the first to depart.

As for Santino, the Italian, I knew almost nothing of him. I had expected nothing. He was
young. Perhaps my cries had never reached him. And why should he listen if they had?

Then I envisioned Armand. My old enemy and friend Ar-mand. My old adversary and
companion Armand. Armand, the angelic child who had created the Night Island, our last
home.

Where was Armand? Had Armand deliberately left me to my own devices? And why
not?

Let me turn now to Marius, the great ancient master who had made Armand in love and
tenderness so many centuries ago; Marius, for whom I'd searched so many decades;
Marius, the true child of two millennia, who had led me down into the depths of our
meaningless history, and bid me worship at the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept.

Those Who Must Be Kept. Dead and gone as was Claudia. For kings and queens among
us can perish as surely as tender childlike fledglings.

Yet I go on. I am here. I am strong.

And Marius, like Louis, had known of my suffering! He'd known and he'd refused to
help.

The rage in me grew stronger, ever more dangerous. Was Louis somewhere near in these
very streets? I clenched my fists, struggling against this rage, struggling against its
helpless and inevitable expression.

Marius, you turned your back on me. That came as no surprise, really. You were always
the teacher, the parent, the high priest. I don't despise you for it. But Louis! My Louis, I
could never deny you anything, and you turned me away!

I knew I could not remain here. I did not trust myself to lay eyes on him. Not yet.

An hour before dawn, I took Mojo back to his little garden, kissed him good-bye, and
then I walked fast to the outskirts of the old city, and through the Faubourg Marigny, and
finally into the swamplands, and then I raised my arms towards the stars, swimming so
brilliant beyond the clouds, and I went up, and up, and up until I was lost in the song of
the wind and tumbling on the thinnest currents, and the joy I felt in my gifts filled my
entire soul.

THIRTY

IT MUST have been a full week that I traveled the world. First I'd gone to snowy
Georgetown and found that frail, pathetic young woman whom my mortal self had so
unforgivably raped. Like an exotic bird, she looked to me now, struggling to see me well
in the smelly dark of the quaint little mortal restaurant, not wanting to admit that this
encounter with "my French friend" had ever happened, and then stunned as I placed an
antique rosary made of emeralds and diamonds in her hand. "Sell it, if you like, cherie," I

said. "He wanted you to have it for whatever purpose you wish. But tell me one thing.
Did you conceive a child?"

She shook her head and whispered the word "no." I wanted to kiss her, she was beautiful
again to me. But I dared not risk it. It wasn't only that I would have frightened her, it was
that the desire to kill her was almost overpowering. Some fierce purely male instinct in
me wanted to claim her now simply because I had claimed her in another way before.

I was gone from the New World within hours, and night after night, I wandered, hunting
in the seething slums of Asia-in Bangkok and Hong Kong and Singapore-and then in the
dreary and frozen city of Moscow, and in the charming old cities of Vienna and Prague. I
went to Paris for a short time. I did not go to London. I pushed my speed to the limits; I
rose and plunged in the darkness, sometimes alighting in towns of which I did not know
the name. I fed ceaselessly among the desperate and the vicious and, now and then, the
lost and the mad and the purely innocent who fell under my gaze.

I tried not to kill. I tried not to. Except when the subject was damn near irresistible, an
evildoer of the first rank. And then the death was slow and savage, and I was just as
hungry when it was over, and off to find another before the sun rose.

I had never been so at ease with my powers. I had never risen so high into the clouds, nor
traveled so fast.

I walked for hours among mortals in the narrow old streets of Heidelberg, and of Lisbon,
and of Madrid. I passed through Athens and Cairo and Marrakesh. I walked on the shores
of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea.

What was I doing? What was I thinking? That the old cliche was true-the world was
mine.

And everywhere I went I let my presence be known. I let my thoughts emanate from me
as if they were notes played on a lyre.

The Vampire Lestat is here. The Vampire Lestat is passing. Best give way.

I didn't want to see the others. I didn't really look for them, or open my mind or my ears
to them. I had nothing to say to them. I only wanted them to know that I had been there.

I did pick up the sound of nameless ones in various places, vagabonds unknown to us,
random creatures of the night who had escaped the late massacre of our kind. Sometimes
it was a mere mental glimpse of a powerful being who, at once, veiled his mind. Other
times it was the clear sound of a monster plodding through eternity without guile or
history or purpose. Maybe such things will always be there!

I had eternity now to meet such creatures, if ever the urge came over me. The only name
on my lips was Louis. Louis.

I could not for a moment forget Louis. It was as if someone else were chanting his name
in my ear. What would I do if ever again I laid eyes on him? How could I curb my
temper? Would I even try?

At last I was tired. My clothes were rags. I could stay away no longer. I wanted to be
home.

THIRTY-ONE

I WAS sitting in the darkened cathedral. Hours ago it had been locked, and I had entered
surreptitiously through one of the front doors, quieting the protective alarms. And left it
open for him.

Five nights had passed since my return. Work was progressing wonderfully well on the
flat in the Rue Royale, and of course he had not failed to notice it. I'd seen him standing
under the porch opposite, staring up at the windows, and I'd appeared on the balcony
above for only an instant-not even enough for a mortal eye to see.

I'd been playing cat and mouse with him since.

Tonight, I'd let him see me near the old French Market. And what a start it gave him, to
actually lay eyes upon me, and to see Mojo with me, to realize as I gave him a little wink
that it was truly Lestat whom he saw.

What had he thought in that first instant? That it was Raglan James in my body come to
destroy him? That James was making a home for himself in the Rue Royale? No, he'd
known it was Lestat all along.

Then I had walked slowly towards the church, Mojo coming along smartly at my side.
Mojo, who kept me anchored to the good earth.

I wanted him to follow me. But I wouldn't so much as turn my head to see whether or not
he was coming.

It was warm this night, and it had rained earlier enough to darken the rich, rose-colored
walls of the old French Quarter buildings, to deepen the brown of the bricks, and to leave
the flags and the cobblestones with a fine and lovely sheen. A perfect night for walking
in New Orleans. Wet and fragrant, the flowers blooming over the garden walls.

But to meet with him again, I needed the quiet and silence of the darkened church.

My hands were shaking a little, as they had been off and on since I had come back into
my old form. There was no physical cause for it, only my anger coming and going, and
long spells of contentment, and then a terrifying emptiness which would open around me,
and then the happiness coming again, quite complete, yet fragile, as though it were but a

thin fine veneer. Was it fair to say I didn't know the full state of my soul? I thought of the
unbridled rage with which I'd smashed the head of David Talbot's body, and I shuddered.
Was I still afraid? Hmmm. Look at these dark sunburnt fingers with their gleaming nails.
I felt the tremour as I pressed the tips of my right fingers to my lips.

I sat in the dark pew, several rows back from the railing before the altar, looking at the
dark statues, and the paintings, and all the gilded ornament of this cold and empty place.

It was past midnight. The noise from the Rue Bourbon was as loud as ever. So much
simmering mortal flesh there. I'd fed earlier. I would feed again.

But the sounds of the night were soothing. Throughout the narrow streets of the Quarter,
in her small apartments, and atmospheric little taverns, in her fancy cocktail lounges, and
in her restaurants, happy mortals laughed and talked, and kissed and embraced.

I slumped back comfortably in the pew, and stretched out my arms on the back of it as if
it were a park bench. Mojo had already gone to sleep in the aisle near me, long nose
resting on his paws.

Would that I were you, my friend. Looking like the very devil, and full of big lumbering
goodness. Ah, yes, goodness. It was goodness that I felt when I locked my arms around
him, and buried my face in his fur.

But now he had come into the church.

I sensed his presence though I could pick up no glimmer of thought or feeling from him,
or even hear his step. I had not heard the outer door open or close. Somehow I knew he
was there. Then I saw the shadow moving in the corner of my left eye. He came into the
pew and sat beside me, a little distance away.

We sat there in silence for many long moments, and then he spoke.

"You burnt my little house, didn't you?" he asked in a small, vibrant voice.

"Can you blame me?" I asked with a smile, eyes still on the altar. "Besides, I was a
human when I did that. It was human weakness. Want to come and live with me?"

"This means you've forgiven me?"

"No, it means I'm playing with you. I may even destroy you for what you did to me. I
haven't made up my mind. Aren't you afraid?" "No. If you meant to do away with me, it
would already be done."

"Don't be so certain. I'm not myself, and yet I am, and then I am not again."

Long silence, with only the sounds of Mojo breathing hoarsely and deeply in his sleep.

"I'm glad to see you," he said. "I knew you would win. But I didn't know how."

I didn't answer. But I was suddenly boiling inside. Why were both my virtues and my
faults used against me?

But what was the use of it-to make accusations, to grab him and shake him and demand
answers from him? Maybe it was better not to know.

"Tell me what happened," he said.

"I will not," I replied. "Why in the world do you want to know?"

Our hushed voices echoed softly in the nave of the church. The wavering light of the
candles played upon the gilt on the tops of the columns, on the faces of the distant
statues. Oh, I liked it here in this silence and coolness. And in my heart of hearts I had to
admit I was so very glad that he had come. Sometimes hate and love serve exactly the
same purpose.

I turned and looked at him. He was facing me, one knee drawn up on the pew and his arm
resting on the back of it. He was pale as always, an artful glimmer in the dark.

"You were right about the whole experiment," I said. At least my voice was steady, I
thought.

"How so?" No meanness in his tone, no challenge, only the subtle desire to know. And
what a comfort it was-the sight of his face, and the faint dusty scent of his worn
garments, and the breath of fresh rain still clinging to his dark hair.

"What you told me, my dear old friend and lover," I said. "That I didn't really want to be
human. That it was a dream, and a dream built upon falsehood and fatuous illusion and
pride."

"I can't claim that I understood it," he said. "I don't understand it now."

"Oh, yes, you did. You understand very well. You always have. Maybe you lived long
enough; maybe you have always been the stronger one. But you knew. I didn't want the
weakness; I didn't want the limitations; I didn't want the revolting needs and the endless
vulnerability; I didn't want the drenching sweat or the searing cold. I didn't want the
blinding darkness, or the noises that walled up my hearing, or the quick, frantic
culmination of erotic passion; I didn't want the trivia; I didn't want the ugliness. I didn't
want the isolation; I didn't want the constant fatigue."

"You explained this to me before. There must have been something . . . however small. . .
that was good!"

"What do you think?"

"The light of the sun."

"Precisely. The light of the sun on snow; the light of the sun on water; the light of the
sun... on one's hands and one's face, and opening up all the secret folds of the entire
world as if it were a flower, as if we were all part of one great sighing organism. The
light of the sun ... on snow."

I stopped. I really didn't want to tell him. I felt I had betrayed myself.

"There were other things," I said. "Oh, there were many things. Only a fool would not
have seen them. Some night, perhaps, when we're warm and comfortable together again
as if this never happened, I'll tell you."

"But they were not enough."

"Not for me. Not now."

Silence.

"Maybe that was the best part," I said, "the discovery. And that I no longer entertain a
deception. That I know now I truly love being the little devil that I am."

I turned and gave him my prettiest, most malignant smile.

He was far too wise to fall for it. He gave a long near-silent sigh, his lids lowered for a
moment, and then he looked at me again.

"Only you could have gone there," he said. "And come back."

I wanted to say this wasn't true. But who else would have been fool enough to trust the
Body Thief? Who else would have plunged into the venture with such sheer
recklessness? And as I thought this over, I realized what ought to have been plain to me
already. That I'd known the risk I was taking. I'd seen it as the price. The fiend told me he
was a liar; he told me he was a cheat. But I had done it because there was simply no other
way.

Of course this wasn't really what Louis meant by his words; but in a way it was. It was
the deeper truth.

"Have you suffered in my absence?" I asked, looking back at the altar.

Very soberly he answered, "It was pure hell."

I didn't reply.

"Each risk you take hurts me," he said. "But that is my concern and my fault."

"Why do you love me?" I asked.

"You know, you've always known. I wish I could be you. I wish I could know the joy you
know all the time."

"And the pain, you want that as well?"

"Your pain?" He smiled. "Certainly. I'll take your brand of pain anytime, as they say."

"You smug, cynical lying bastard," I whispered, the anger cresting in me suddenly, the
blood even rushing into my face. "I needed you and you turned me away! Out in the
mortal night you locked me. You refused me. You turned your back!"

The heat in my voice startled him. It startled me. But it was there and I couldn't deny it,
and once again my hands were trembling, these hands that had leapt out and away from
me at the false David, even when all the other lethal power in me was kept in check.

He didn't utter a word. His face registered those small changes which shock produces-the
slight quiver of an eyelid, the mouth lengthening and then softening, a subtle clabbering
look, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. He held my accusing glance all through it, and
then slowly looked away.

"It was David Talbot, your mortal friend, who helped you, wasn't it?" he asked.

I nodded.

But at the mere mention of the name, it was as if all my nerves had been touched by the
tip of a heated bit of wire. There was enough suffering here as it was. I couldn't speak
anymore of David. I wouldn't speak of Gretchen. And I suddenly realized that what I
wanted to do most in the world was to turn to him and put my arms around him and weep
on his shoulder as I'd never done.

How shameful. How predictable! How insipid. And how sweet.

I didn't do it.

We sat there in silence. The soft cacophony of the city rose and fell beyond the stained-
glass windows, which caught the faint glow from the street lamps outside. The rain had
come again, the gentle warm rain of New Orleans, in which one can walk so easily as if it
were nothing but the gentlest mist.

"I want you to forgive me," he said. "I want you to understand that it wasn't cowardice; it
wasn't weakness. What I said to you at the time was the truth. I couldn't do it. I can't

bring someone into this! Not even if that someone is a mortal man with you inside him. I
simply could not."

"I know all that," I said.

I tried to leave it there. But I couldn't. My temper wouldn't cool, my wondrous temper,
the temper which had caused me to smash David Talbot's head into a plaster wall.

He spoke again. "I deserve whatever you have to say."

"Ah, more than that!" I said. "But this is what I want to know." I turned and faced him,
speaking through my clenched teeth. "Would you have refused me forever? If they'd
destroyed my body, the others-Marius, whoever knew of it-if I'd been trapped in that
mortal form, if I'd come to you over and over and over again, begging you and pleading
with you, would you have shut me out forever! Would you have held fast?"

"I don't know."

"Don't answer so quickly. Look for the truth inside yourself. You do know. Use your
filthy imagination. You do know. Would you have turned me away?"

"I don't know the answer!"

"I despise you!" I said in a bitter, harsh whisper. "I ought to destroy you-finish what I
started when I made you. Turn you into ashes and sift them through my hands. You know
that I could do it! Like that! Like the snap of mortal fingers, I could do it. Burn you as I
burnt your little house. And nothing could save you, nothing at all."

I glared at him, at the sharp graceful angles of his imperturbable face, faintly
phosphorescent against the deeper shadows of the church. How beautiful the shape of his
wide-set eyes, with their fine rich black lashes. How perfect the tender indentation of his
upper lip.

The anger was acid inside me, destroying the very veins through which it flowed, and
burning away the preternatural blood.

Yet I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't even conceive of carrying out such awful, cowardly
threats. I could never have brought harm to Claudia. Ah, to make something out of
nothing, yes. To throw up the pieces to see how they will fall, yes. But vengeance. Ah,
arid awful distasteful vengeance. What is it tome?

"Think on it," he whispered. "Could you make another, after all that's passed?" Gently he
pushed it further. "Could you work the Dark Trick again? Ah-you take your time before
answering. Look deep inside you for the truth as you just told me to do. And when you
know it, you needn't tell it to me."

Then he leant forward, closing the distance between us, and pressed his smooth silken
lips against the side of my face. I meant to pull away, but he used all his strength to hold
me still, and I allowed it, this cold, passionless kiss, and he was the one who finally drew
back like a collection of shadows collapsing into one another, with only his hand still on
my shoulder, as I sat with my eyes on the altar still.

Finally I rose slowly, stepping past him, and motioned for Mojo to wake and come.

I moved down the length of the nave to the front doors of the church. I found that
shadowy nook where the vigil candles burn beneath the statue of the Virgin, an alcove
full of wavering and pretty light.

The scent and sound of the rain forest came back to me, the great enclosing darkness of
those powerful trees. And then the vision of the little whitewashed chapel in the clearing
with its doors thrown open, and the eerie muted sound of the bell in the vagrant breeze.
And the scent of blood coming from the wounds in Gretchen's hands.

I lifted the long wick that lay there for the lighting of candles, and I dipped it into an old
flame, and made a new one burst into being, hot and yellow and finally steady, giving off
the sharp perfume of burnt wax.

I was about to say the words "For Gretchen," when I realized that it was not for her at all
that I had lighted the candle. I looked up at the face of the Virgin. I saw the crucifix
above Gretchen's altar. Again, I felt the peace of the rain forest around me, and I saw that
little ward with those small beds. For Claudia, my precious beautiful Claudia? No, not for
her either, much as I loved her . . .

I knew the candle was for me.

It was for the brown-haired man who had loved Gretchen in Georgetown. It was for the
sad lost blue-eyed demon I had been before I became that man. It was for the mortal boy
of centuries ago who went off to Paris with his mother's jewels in his pocket, and only the
clothes on his back. It was for the wicked impulsive creature who had held the dying
Claudia in his arms.

It was for all those beings, and for the devil who stood here now, because he loved
candles, and he loved the making of light from light. Because there was no God in whom
he believed, and no saints, and no Queen of Heaven.

Because he had kept his bitter temper and he had not destroyed his friend.

Because he was alone, no matter how near to him that friend. And because happiness had
returned to nun, as if it were an affliction he'd never fully conquer, the impish smile
already spreading on his lips, the thirst leaping inside him, and the desire in him rising
just to step outside again and wander in the slick and shining city streets.

Yes. For the Vampire Lestat, that little candle, that miraculous tiny candle, increasing by
that small amount all the light in the universe! And burning in an empty church the night
long among those other little flames. It would be burning on the morrow when the
faithful came; when the sun shone through these doors.

Keep your vigil, little candle, in darkness and in sunshine.

Yes, for me.

THIRTY-TWO

If you think the story was finished? That the fourth installment of the Vampire
Chronicles had come to an end.

Well, the book should be ended. It really should have ended when I lit that small candle,
but it didn't. I realized that the following night when I first opened my eyes.

Pray continue to Chapter Thirty-three to discover what happened next. Or you can quit
now, if you like. You may come to wish that you had.

THIRTY-THREE

BARBADOS. He was still there when I caught up with him. In a hotel by the sea.

Weeks had passed, though why I let so much time go by, I don't know. Kindness was no
part of it, nor cowardice either. Nevertheless I had waited. I had watched the splendid
little flat in the Rue Royale being restored, step by step, until there were at least some
exquisitely furnished rooms in which I could spend my time, thinking about all that had
happened, and which might yet take place. Louis had returned to take up residence with
me, and was busy searching for a desk very like the one which had once stood in the
parlour over a hundred years before.

David had left many messages with my man in Paris. He would be leaving soon for the
carnival in Rio. He missed me. He wished I would come join him there.

All had gone well with the settlement of his estate. He was David Talbot, a young cousin
of the older man who had died in Miami, and the new owner of the ancestral home. The
Talamasca had accomplished these things for him, restoring to him the fortune he had left
to them, and settling upon him a generous pension. He was no longer their Superior
General, though he maintained his quarters in the Motherhouse. He would be forever
under their wing.

He had a small gift for me, if I wanted it. It was the locket with the miniature of Claudia.
He'd found it. Exquisite portrait; fine gold chain. He had it with him, and would send it to
me if I liked. Or would I not come to see him, and accept it from his hands myself?

Barbados. He had felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak. The
weather was beautiful. He was reading Faust again, he wrote to me. He had so many
questions he wanted to ask me. When would I come?

He had not seen God or the Devil again, though he had, before leaving Europe, spent a
long time in various Paris cafes. He wasn't going to spend this lifetime searching for God
or the Devil either. "Only you can know the man I am now," he wrote. "I miss you, I
want to talk to you. Can you not remember that I helped you, and forgive me everything
else?"

It was that seaside resort he'd described to me, of handsome pink stucco buildings, and
great sprawling bungalow roofs, and soft fragrant gardens, and endless vistas of the clean
sand and the sparkling translucent sea.

I didn't go there until I'd been in the gardens up the mountain, and had stood on those
very cliffs he had visited, looking out over the forested mountains, and listening to the
wind in the branches of the noisy clacking coconut palms.

Had he told me about the mountains? That you could look immediately down into the
deep soft valleys and that the neighboring slopes seemed so close you thought you could
touch them, though they were far, far away?

I don't think so, but he had described well the flowers-the shrimp plant with its tiny
blossoms, and the orchid tree and the ginger lilies, yes, those fierce red lilies with their
delicate shivering petals, and the ferns nestled in the deep glades, and the waxen bird-of-
paradise and the tall stiff pussy willows, and the tiny yellow-throated blossoms of the
trumpet vine.

We should walk there together, he had said.

Well, that we would do. Soft the crunch of the gravel. And oh, never had the high
swaying coconut palms looked so beautiful as on these bluffs.

I waited until it was past midnight before I made my descent upon the sprawling seaside
hotel. The courtyard was as he had said, full of pink azaleas and large waxen elephant
ears and dark glossy shrubs.

I passed through the empty darkened dining room and its long open porches and went
down on the beach. I went far out in the shallows, so that I might look back from a
distance upon the bungalow rooms with their roofed verandas. I found him at once.

The doors to the little patio were completely pulled back, and the yellow light spilled out
on the small paved enclosure with its painted table and chairs. Inside, as if on a lighted
stage, he sat at a small desk, facing the night and the water, typing away on a small
portable computer, the tight small clicking of the keys carrying in the silence, even over
the whisper of the lazy softly foaming surf.

He was naked except for a pair of white beach shorts. His skin was very darkly golden as
though he spent his days sleeping in the sun. Streaks of yellow shone in his dark brown
hair. There was a glow to his naked shoulders and smooth, hairless chest. Very firm
muscles at his waist. A slight golden sheen came from the down on his thighs and legs
and the very scant bits of hair on the backs of his hands.

I hadn't even noticed that hair when I was alive. Or maybe I hadn't liked it. Didn't really
know. I liked it now well enough. And that he seemed a little more slender than I had
been hi that frame. Yes, all the bones of the body were more visible, conforming I
suppose to some modern style of health which says we must be fashionably underfed. It
suited him; it suited the body; I suppose it suited them both.

The room was very neat behind him and rustic in the style of the islands with its beamed
ceiling and rose-tiled floor. The bed was covered in a gay pastel fabric printed with a
jagged geometric Indian design. The armoire and chests were white and decorated with
brightly painted flowers. The many simple lamps ' gave off a generous light.

I had to smile though that he sat amid all this luxury, typing away-David the scholar, dark
eyes dancing with the ideas inside his head.

Drawing nearer, I noted that he was very clean-shaven. His nails had been trimmed and
buffed, perhaps by a manicurist. His hair was still the same full wavy mop I'd worn so
carelessly when I'd been in this body, but it, too, had been trimmed and had an altogether
more pleasing shape. There lay his copy of Goethe's Faust beside him, open, a pen lying
across it, and many of the pages folded, or marked with small silver paper clips.

I was still taking my time with this inspection-noting the bottle of Scotch beside him, and
the thick-bottomed crystal glass, and the pack of small thin cigars-when he looked up and
saw me there.

I stood on the sand, well outside the little porch with its low cement railing, but quite
visible in the light.

"Lestat," he whispered. His face brightened beautifully. He rose at once and came
towards me with the familiar graceful stride. "Thank God you've come."

"You think so?" I said. I thought of that moment in New Orleans when I'd watched the
Body Thief scurrying out of the Cafe du Monde and thought that body could move like a
panther with someone else inside.

He wanted to take me in his arms, but when I stiffened and moved just a little away, he
stood still, and folded his arms across his chest-a gesture that seemed to belong entirely
to this body, as I couldn't remember ever seeing him do it before we'd met in Miami.
These arms were heavier than his old arms. The chest was broader too.

How naked it looked. How darkly pink the nipples. How fierce and clear his eyes.

"I've missed you," he said.

"Really? Surely you haven't been living as a recluse here?"

"No, I've seen too much of others, I think. Too many little supper parties in Bridgetown.
And my friend Aaron has come and gone several times. Other members have been here."
He paused. "I can't bear to be around them, Lestat. I can't bear to be at Talbot Manor
among the servants, pretending to be a cousin of my old self. There's something really
appalling about · what's happened. Sometimes I can't bear to look in the mirror. But I
don't want to talk about that side of it."

"Why not?"

"This is a temporary period, one of adjustment. These shocks will eventually pass. I have
so much to do. Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I had a feeling you would. I almost left for
Rio this morning, but I had the distinct feeling I'd see you tonight."

"Is that so."

"What's the matter? Why the dark face? Why are you angry?"

"I don't know. I don't really require a reason to be angry these days. And I ought to be
happy. I will be soon. Always happens, and after all-it's an important night."

He stared at me, trying to figure what I meant by these words, or more properly what was
the right thing for him to reply.

"Come inside," he said finally.

"Why not sit here on the porch in the shadows? I like the breeze."

"Certainly, as you say."

He went into the little room to take up the bottle of Scotch, pour himself a drink, and then
he joined me at the wooden table. I had just seated myself in one of the chairs and was
looking directly out over the sea.

"So what have you been doing?" I asked.

"Ah, where do I begin?" he asked. "I've been writing about it continuously-trying to
describe all the little sensations, the new discoveries."

"Is there any doubt that you're securely anchored in the body?"

"None." He took a deep drink of his Scotch. "And there seems to be no deterioration of
any kind. You know, I feared that. I feared it even when you were in this body, but I
didn't want to say it. We had enough to worry about, didn't we?" He turned and looked at
me, and quite suddenly he smiled. In a low stunned voice he said, "You're looking at a
man you know from the inside out."

"No, not really," I said. "Tell me, how do you deal with the perception of strangers ...
those who don't guess. Do women invite you into their bedrooms? What about young
men?"

He looked out to the sea, and there was a little bitterness in his face suddenly. "You know
the answer. I can't make a vocation of those encounters. They mean nothing to me. I don't
say I haven't enjoyed a few safaris into the bedroom. I have more important things to do,
Lestat, far more important things to do. "There are places I want to go-lands and cities I
always dreamt I would visit. Rio is only the beginning. There are mysteries I must solve;
things I must find out."

"Yes, I can imagine."

"You said something very important to me when we were together last. You said, surely
you won't give the Talamasca this life too. Well, I won't give it to them. What's
paramount in my mind is that I must not waste it. That I must do something of absolute
importance with it. Of course the direction won't come to me all at once. There has to be
a period of traveling, of learning, of evaluation, before I make a decision as to direction.
And as I engage in my studies, I write. I write everything down. Sometimes the record
itself seems the goal."

"I know."

"There are many things I want to ask you. I've been plagued with questions."

"Why? What sort of questions?"

"About what you experienced those few days, and whether you have the slightest regret
that we ended the venture so soon."

"What venture? You mean my life as a mortal man?"

"Yes."

"No regret."

He started to speak again, and then broke off. Then again he spoke. "What did you take
back with you?" he asked in a low fervent voice.

I turned and looked at him again. Yes, the face was definitely more angular. Was it
personality which had sharpened it and given it more definition. Perfect, I thought.

"I'm sorry, David, my mind wandered. Ask me this question

again."

"What did you take back with you?" he said, with his old familiar patience. "What
lesson?"

"I don't know that it was a lesson," I said. "And it may take time for me to understand
whatever I learnt."

"Yes, I see, of course."

"I can tell you that I'm aware of a new lust for adventure, for wandering, the very things
you describe. I want to go back to the rain forests. I saw them so briefly when I went to
visit Gretchen. There was a temple there. I want to see it again."

"You never told me what happened."

"Ah, yes, I told you but you were Raglan at the time. The Body Thief witnessed that little
confession. Why on earth would he want to steal such a thing? But I'm drifting off the
point. There are so many places that I, too, want to go."

"Yes."

"It's a lust again for time and for the future, for the mysteries of the natural world. For
being the watcher that I became that long-ago night in Paris, when I was forced into it. I
lost my illusions. I lost my favorite lies. You might say I revisited that moment and was
reborn to darkness of my own free will. And such a will!"

"Ah, yes, I understand."

"Do you? That's good if you do."

"Why do you speak that way?" He lowered his voice and spoke slowly. "Do you need my
understanding as much as I need yours?"

"You've never understood me," I said. "Oh, it's not an accusation. You live with illusions
about me, which make it possible for you to visit with me, to speak with me, even to
shelter me and help me. You couldn't do that if you really knew what I was. I tried to tell
you. When I spoke of my dreams . . ."

"You're wrong. That's your vanity talking," he said. "You love to imagine you're worse
than you are. What dreams? I don't remember your ever speaking to me of dreams."

I smiled. "You don't? Think back, David. My dream of the tiger. I was afraid for you.
And now the menace of the dream will be fulfilled."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to do it to you, David. I'm going to bring you to me."

"What?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "What are you saying to me?" He leant forward,
trying to see clearly the expression on my face. But the light was behind us, and his
mortal vision wasn't sharp enough for that.

"I just told you. I'm going to do it to you, David."

"Why, why are you saying this?"

"Because it's true," I said. I stood up and pushed the chair aside with my leg.

He stared up at me. Only now did his body register the danger. I saw the fine muscles of
his arms tense. His eyes were fixed on mine.

"Why are you saying this? You couldn't do this to me," he said.

"Of course I could. And I shall. Now. All along I've told you I was evil. I've told you I'm
the very devil. The devil in your Faust, the devil of your visions, the tiger in my dream!"

"No, that's not true." He climbed to his feet, knocking the chair over behind him, and
almost losing his balance. He stepped back into the room. "You're not the devil, and you
know that you're not. Don't do this to me! I forbid it!" He clenched his teeth on the last
words. "You are in your own heart as human as I am. And you will not do it."

"The hell I won't," I said. I laughed. I couldn't help it suddenly. "David the Superior
General," I said. "David the Can-domble priest."

He backed across the tiled floor, the light fully illuminating his face, and the tense
powerful muscles of his arms.

"Want to fight me? It's useless. There's no force on earth that can stop me from doing
this."

"I'll die first," he said, in a low strangled voice. His face was darkening, flushed with
blood. Ah, David's blood.

"I won't let you die. Why don't you call on your old Brazilian spirits? You don't
remember how to do it, do you? Your heart's not in it. Well, it wouldn't do you the
slightest good if you did."

"You can't do this," he said. He was struggling for calm. "You can't repay me in this
fashion."

"Oh, but this is how the devil repays his helpers!"

"Lestat, I helped you against Raglan! I helped you recover this body, and what was your
pledge to me of loyalty! What were your words?"

"I lied to you, David. I lie to myself and to others. That's what my little excursion in the
flesh taught me. I lie. You surprise me, David. You're angry, so very angry, but you're not
afraid. You're like me, David-you and Claudia-the only ones who really have my
strength."

"Claudia," he said, with a little nod. "Ah, yes, Claudia. I have something for you, my dear
friend." He moved away, deliberately turning his back on me, letting me see the
fearlessness of this gesture, and he went slowly, refusing to hurry, to the chest beside the
bed. When he turned around again he had a small locket in his hands. "From the
Motherhouse. The locket you described to me."

"Oh, yes, the locket. Give it to me."

Only now did I see how his hands shook as he struggled with the little oval gold case.
And the fingers, he did not know them so very well, did he? At last he had it opened and
he thrust it at me, and I looked down at the painted miniature-her face, her eyes, her
golden curls. A child staring back at me out of the mask of innocence. Or was this a
mask?

And slowly, out of the vast dim vortex of memory, came the moment when I had first
laid eyes upon that trinket and upon its golden chain . . . when in the dark muddy street, I
had happened upon the plague-ridden hovel where her mother lay dead, and the mortal
child herself had become food for the vampire, a tiny white body shivering helplessly in
Louis's arms.

How I'd laughed at him, how I'd pointed my finger, and then snatched up from the
stinking bed the body of the dead woman-Claudia's mother-and danced with it round and
round the room. And there gleaming on her throat had been the golden chain and the
locket, for not even the boldest thief would have entered that hovel to steal the bauble
from the very maw of the plague.

With my left hand I'd caught it, just as I let the poor body drop. The clasp had broken,
and I'd swung the chain over my head as if waving a little trophy of the moment and then
dropped it in my pocket as I stepped over the body of the dying Claudia and ran after
Louis through the street.

It had been months after that I'd found it in that same pocket, and I'd held it to the light.
The living child she'd been when that portrait was painted, but the Dark Blood had given
her the very saccharine perfection of the artist. It was my Claudia, and in a trunk I'd left
it, and how it came to be with the Talamasca, or anywhere, I did not know.

I held it in my hands. I looked up. It was as though I'd just been there, back in that ruined
place, and now I was here, and staring at him. He'd been speaking to me but I hadn't
heard him, and now his voice came clear:

"You would do it to me?" he demanded, the timbre betraying him now as his trembling
hands betrayed him. "Look at her. You would do it to me?"

I looked at her tiny face, and back to him.

"Yes, David," I said. "I told her I would do it again. And I will do it to you."

I pitched the locket out of the room, over the porch, past the sand, and into the sea. The
tiny chain was like a scratch of gold on the fabric of the sky for an instant then it
disappeared as if into the luminous light.

He drew back with a speed that astonished me, cleaving to the wall.

"Don't do this, Lestat."

"Don't fight me, old friend. You waste your effort. You have a long night of discovery
ahead."

"You won't do it!" he cried, voice so low it was a guttural roar. He lunged at me, as if he
thought he could knock me off balance, and both his fists struck my chest, and I did not
move. Back he fell, bruised from his efforts and staring at me with pure outrage in his
watering eyes. Once again the blood had flooded into his cheeks, darkening his entire
visage. And only now, as he saw for himself the sheer hopelessness of defense, did he try
to flee.

I grabbed him by the neck before he reached the porch. I let my fingers massage the flesh
as he struggled wildly, like an animal, to tear my grip away and pull himself loose.
Slowly I lifted him, and cradling the back of his head effortlessly with my left hand, I
drove my teeth through the fine, fragrant young skin of his neck, and caught the first
bubbling jet of blood.

Ah, David, my beloved David. Never had I descended into a soul I knew so well. How
thick and wondrous the images that enveloped me: the soft beautiful sunlight slicing
through the mangrove forest, the crunch of the high grass on the veldt, the boom of the
great gun, and the shiver of the earth beneath the elephant's pounding feet. It was all
there: all the summer rains washing endlessly through the jungles, and the water
swimming up the pilings and over the boards of the porch, and the sky flashing with

lightning-and his heart pounding beneath it with rebellion, with recrimination, you betray
me, you betray me, you take me against my will-and the deep rich salty heat of the blood
itself.

I flung him backwards. That was enough for the first drink. I watched him struggle to his
knees. What had he seen in those seconds? Did he know now how dark and willful was
my soul?

"You love me?" I said. "I am your only friend in this world?"

I watched him crawl across the tiles. He grabbed for the footboard of the bed and raised
himself, then fell back, dizzy, to the floor. Again, he struggled.

"Ah, let me help you!" I said. I spun him around and lifted him and sank my teeth in
those very same tiny wounds.

"For love of God, stop, don't do it. Lestat, I'm begging you, don't do it."

Beg in vain, David. Oh, how scrumptious this young body, these hands shoving at me,
even in the trance, what a will you have, my beautiful friend. And now we are in old
Brazil, are we not, we are in the tiny room, and he is calling the names of the Candomble
spirits, he is calling, and will the spirits come?

I let him go. Again he sank on his knees, then keeled over on his side, eyes staring
forward. That's enough for the second assault.

There was a faint rattling sound in the room. A faint knocking.

"Oh, do we have company? We have little invisible friends? Yes, look, the mirror is
wobbling. It's going to fall!" And then it hit the tiles and exploded like so many pieces of
light coming loose from the frame.

He was trying to get up again.

"You know what they feel like, David? Can you hear me? They are like many silk
banners unfurled around me. That weak."

I watched as he gained his knees again. Once more he was crawling across the floor.
Suddenly he rose, pitching forward. He snatched up the book from beside the computer,
and turning, hurled it at me. It fell at my feet. He was reeling. He could scarce keep
standing, his eyes clouded.

And then he turned and almost fell forward into the little porch, stumbling over the rail
and towards the beach.

I came behind him, following him as he staggered down the slope of white sand. The
thirst rose, knowing only that the blood had come seconds before, and that it must have
more. When he reached the water, he stood there, tottering, only an iron will keeping him
from collapse.

I took him by the shoulder, tenderly, embracing him with my right arm.

"No, damn you, damn you into hell. No," he said. With all his waning strength he struck
at me, shoving at my face with his doubled fist, tearing the flesh of the knuckles as it
struck the unyielding skin.

I twisted him around, watching as he kicked at my legs, as he struck me again and again
with those soft impotent hands; and again I nuzzled in against his neck, licking it,
smelling it, and then sinking my teeth for the third time. Hmmm . . . this is ecstasy. Could
that other body, worn with age, have ever yielded such a feast? I felt the heel of his hand
against my face. Oh, so strong. So very strong. Yes, fight me, fight me as I fought
Magnus. So sweet that you are fighting me. I love it. I do.

And what was it this time as I went into the swoon? The purest of prayers coming from
him, not to gods we didn't believe in, not to a crucified Christ or an old Virgin Queen.
But prayers to me. "Lestat, my friend. Don't take my life. Don't. Let me go."

Hmmm. I slipped my arm ever more tightly around his chest. Then drew back, licking at
the wounds.

"You choose your friends badly, David," I whispered, licking the blood from my lips, and
looking down into his face. He was almost dead. How beautiful these strong even white
teeth of his, and the tender flesh of the lip. Only the whites showed beneath his eyelids.
And how his heart fought-this young, flawless mortal heart. Heart that had sent the blood
pumping through my brain. Heart that had skipped and stopped when I knew fear, when I
saw the approach of death.

I laid my ear against his chest, listening. I heard the ambulance screaming through
Georgetown. "Don't let me die."

I saw him in that dream hotel room of long ago with Louis and with Claudia. Are we all
but random creatures in the devil's dreams?

The heart was slowing. The moment had almost come. One more little drink, my friend.

I lifted him and carried him up the beach and back into the room. I kissed the tiny
wounds, licking at them and sucking them with my lips, and then letting my teeth go in
again. A spasm passed through him, a little cry escaped his lips.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Yes, and I love you," I answered, words smothered against the flesh, as the blood
spurted hot and irresistible once again.

The heartbeat came ever more slowly. He was tumbling through memories, back to the
very cradle, beyond the sharp distinct syllables of language, and moaning to himself as if
to the old melody of a song.

His warm heavy body was pressed against me, arms dangling, head held in my left
fingers, eyes closed. The soft moaning died away, and the heart raced suddenly with tiny,
muffled beats.

I bit into my tongue, until I couldn't stand the pain. Again and again I made the punctures
with my own fang teeth, moving my tongue to the right and to the left, and then I locked
my mouth to his, forcing his lips open, and let the blood flow onto his tongue.

It seemed that time stood still. There came that unmistakable taste of my own blood
leaking into my own mouth, as it leaked into his. Then suddenly his teeth snapped closed
on my tongue. They snapped down upon it menacingly and sharply, with all the mortal
strength in his jaws, and scraped at the preternatural flesh, scraping the blood out of the
gash I'd made, and biting so hard that it seemed they would sever the tongue itself if they
could.

The violent spasm shot through him. His back arched against my arm. And when I drew
back now, my mouth full of pain, my tongue hurting, he drew up, hungering, eyes still
blind. I tore my wrist. Here it comes, my beloved. Here it comes, not in little droplets, but
from the very river of my being. And this time when the mouth clamped down upon me,
it was a pain that reached all the way down to the roots of my being, tangling my heart in
its burning mesh.

For you, David. Drink deep. Be strong.

It could not kill me now, no matter how long it lasted. I knew it, and memories of those
bygone times when I had done it in fear seemed clumsy and foolish, fading even as I
recollected them, and leaving me here alone with him.

I knelt on the floor, holding him, letting the pain spread through every vein and every
artery as I knew it must. And the heat and the pain grew so strong in me that I lay down
slowly with him in my arms, my wrist sealed against his mouth, my hand still beneath his
head. A dizziness came over me. The beating of my own heart grew perilously slow. On
and on he pulled, and against the bright darkness of my closed eyes I saw the thousands
upon thousands of tiny vessels emptied and contracted and sagging like the fine black
filaments of a spider's wind-torn web.

We were in the hotel room again in old New Orleans, and Claudia sat quietly on the
chair. Outside, the little city winked here and there with its dull lamps. How dark and
heavy the sky overhead, with no hint of the great aurora of the cities to come.

"I told you I would do it again," I said to Claudia.

"Why do you bother to explain to me," she asked. "You know perfectly well that I never
asked you any questions about it. I've been dead for years and years."

I opened my eyes.

I lay on the cold tiled floor of the room, and he was standing over me, looking down at
me, and the electric light was shining on his face. And now his eyes were brown no
longer; they were filled with a soft dazzling golden light. An unnatural sheen had already
invaded his sleek dark skin, paling it ever so slightly and rendering it more perfectly
golden, and his hair had already taken on that evil, gorgeous luster, all the illumination
gathered to him and reflected off him and playing around him as if it found him
irresistible-this tall angelic man with the blank and dazed expression on his face.

He didn't speak. And I could not read his expression. Only I knew the wonders that he
beheld. I knew when he looked around him-at the lamp, at the broken fragments of
mirror, at the sky outside-what he saw.

Again he looked at me.

"You're hurt," he whispered.

I heard the blood in his voice!

"Are you? Are you hurt?"

"For the love of God," I answered in a raw, torn voice. "How can you care if I'm hurt?"

He shrank back away from me, eyes widening, as if with each passing second his vision
expanded, and then he turned and it was as if he'd forgotten that I was there. He kept
staring in the same enchanted fashion. And then, doubling over with pain, grimacing with
it, he turned and made his way out over the little porch and to the sea.

I sat up. The entire room shimmered. I had given him every drop of blood that he could
take. The thirst paralyzed me, and I could scarce remain steady. I wrapped my arm
around my knee and tried to sit there without falling down again in sheer weakness on the
floor.

I held my left hand up so that I might see it in the light. The little veins were raised on the
back of it, yet they were smoothing out as I watched.

I could feel my heart pumping lustily. And keen and terrible though the thirst was, I knew
that it could wait. I knew no more than a sick mortal as to why I was healing from what I
had ,done. But some dark engine inside me was working busily and silently upon my

restoration, as if this fine killing machine must be cured of all weakness so that it may
hunt again.

When I finally climbed to my feet, I was myself. I had given him far more blood than
ever I had given the others I'd made. It was finished. I'd done it right. He'd be so very
strong! Lord God, he'd be stronger than the old ones.

But I had to find him. He was dying now. I had to help him, even if he tried to drive me
away.

I found him waist deep in the water. He was shuddering, and in such pain that small
gasps were coming from him, though he tried to keep quiet. He had the locket, and the
gold chain was wrapped round his clenched hand.

I put my arm around him to steady him. I told him it would not last very long at all. And
when it was gone, it would be gone forever. He nodded his head.

After a little while, I could feel his muscles loosening. I urged him to follow me into the
shallow waves, where we could walk more easily, no matter what our strength, and
together we walked down the beach.

"You're going to have to feed," I said. "Do you think you can do that alone?"

He shook his head no.

"All right, I'll take you and show you all you need to know. But first the waterfall up
there. I can hear it. Can you hear it? You can wash yourself clean."

He nodded, and followed me, his head bowed, his arm still locked around his waist, his
body now and then tensing with the last of the violent cramps which death always brings.

When we reached the waterfall, he stepped over the treacherous rocks easily and stripped
away his shorts, and stood naked under the great rushing downpour, and let it pass over
his face and all his body and his wide-open eyes. There was a moment when he shook
himself all over, and spit out the water which had come accidentally into his mouth.

I watched, feeling stronger and stronger as the seconds passed. Then I leapt up, high
above the waterfall, and landed upon the cliff. I could see him down there, a tiny figure,
standing back, with the spray covering him, gazing up at me.

"Can you come to me?" I said softly.

He nodded. Excellent that he had heard it. He stood back and made a great leap,
springing out of the water, and landing on the sloped face of the cliff only several yards
below me, hands easily clutching the wet slippery rocks. Over these he climbed without
once looking down until he stood at my side.

I was quite frankly astonished at his strength. But it was not merely his strength. It was
his utter fearlessness. And he himself seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. He was
merely looking off again, at the rolling clouds, and the soft shimmering sky. He was
looking at the stars, and then inland at the jungle running down over the cliffs above.

"Can you feel the thirst?" I asked. He nodded, looking at me only in passing, and then
looking out to the sea.

"All right, now we go back to your old rooms, and you dress properly to prowl the mortal
world and we go into town."

"That far?" he asked. He pointed to the horizon. "There's a little boat out that way."

I scanned for it, and saw it through the eyes of a man on board. A cruel unsavory
creature. It was a smuggling venture. And he was bitter that he'd been left by drunken
cohorts to do it alone.

"All right," I said. "We'll go together."

"No," he said. "I think I should go ... alone."

He turned without waiting for my answer, and quickly and gracefully descended to the
beach. He moved out like a streak of light through the shallows and dove into the waves
and began to swim with powerful swift strokes.

I walked down the edge of the cliff, found a small rugged path, and followed it listlessly
until I reached the room. I stared at the wreckage-the broken mirror, the table overturned
and *| the computer lying on its side, the book fallen on the floor. The chair lying on its
back on the little porch.

I turned and went out.

I went back up to the gardens. The moon was risen very high, and I walked up the gravel
path to the very edge of the highest point and stood there looking down on the thin ribbon
of white beach and the soft soundless sea.

At last I sat down, against the trunk of a great dark tree with branches spreading over me
in an airy canopy, and I rested my arm on my knee and my head on my arm.

An hour passed.

I heard him coming, walking up the gravel path fast and light, with a footfall no mortal
ever made. When I looked up I saw he was bathed and dressed, and even his hair was
combed, and the scent of the blood he'd drunk was lingering, perhaps coming from his
lips. He was no weak and fleshly creature like Louis, oh, no, he was far stronger than

that. And the process had not finished. The pains of his death had finished, but he was
hardening even as I looked at him, and the soft golden gleam of his skin was enchanting
to behold.

"Why did you do it?" he demanded. What a mask was this face. And then it flashed with
anger as he spoke again. "Why did you do it?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, don't give me that. And don't give me those tears! Why did you do it!"

"I tell you the truth. I don't know. I could give you all the many reasons, but I don't know.
I did it because I wanted to do it, because I wanted to. Because I wanted to see what
would happen if I did it, I wanted to ... and I couldn't not do it. I knew that when I went
back to New Orleans. I... waited and I waited, but I couldn't not do it. And now it's done."

"You miserable, lying bastard. You did it from cruelty and meanness! You did it because
your little experiment with the Body Thief went wrong! And out of it came this miracle
to me, this youth, this rebirth, and it infuriated you that such a thing could happen, that I
should profit when you had suffered so!"

"Maybe that's true!"

"It is true. Admit it. Admit the pettiness of it. Admit the meanness, that you couldn't bear
to let me slip into the future with this body which you hadn't the courage to endure!"

"Perhaps so."

He drew in close and tried to drag me to my feet with a firm, insistent grip on my arm.
Nothing happened, of course. He could not move me an inch.

"You're still not strong enough to play those games," I said. "If you don't stop, I'll hit you
and knock you flat on your back. You won't like it. You're too dignified to like it. So
leave off with the cheap mortal fisticuffs, please."

He turned his back on me, folding his arms, bowing his head.

I could hear the small desperate noises that came from him, and I could almost feel the
anguish. He walked away, and I buried my face again in my arm.

But then I heard him coming back.

"Why? I want something from you. I want an admission of some kind."

"No," I said.

He reached out and snatched at my hair, tangling his fingers in it, and jerking my head up
as the pain shot over the surface of my scalp.

"You're really pushing it, David," I growled at him, pulling myself loose. "One more little
trick like that and I'm going to drop you at the bottom of the cliff."

But when I saw his face, when I saw the suffering in him, I grew quiet.

He went down on his knees before me so that we were almost eye-to-eye.

"Why, Lestat?" he asked, and his voice was torn and sad, and it broke my heart.

Overcome with shame, overcome with misery, I pressed my closed eyes again on my
right arm, and brought up my left to cover my head. And nothing, not all his pleas or
curses or cries against me or his final quiet departure, could make me look up again.

Well before morning I went to search for him. The little room was now straightened, and
his suitcase lay on the bed. The computer had been folded up, and the copy of Faust lay
upon its smooth plastic case.

But he was not there. I searched all about the hotel for him, but I couldn't find him. I
searched the gardens, and then the woodlands in one direction and another, but with no
luck.

At last I found a small cave high on the mountain, and dug down deep into it and slept.

What is the use of describing my misery? Of describing the dull dark pain I felt? What is
the use of saying I knew the full measure of my injustice, my dishonor, and my cruelty? I
knew the magnitude of what I'd done to him.

I knew myself and all my evil to the fullest and I expected nothing back from the world
now except the very same evil in kind.

I woke as soon as the sun had gone into the sea. On a high bluff I watched the twilight
and then went down into the streets of the town to hunt. It wasn't too long before the
usual thief tried to lay hands on me and rob me, and I carried him with me into a little
alleyway and there drained him slowly and very enjoyably, only steps from the tourists
passing by. I concealed his body in the very depths of the alley and went on my way.

And what was my way?

I went back to the hotel. His possessions were still there but he was not. Once again, I
searched, fighting an awful fear that he had already done away with himself, and then
realizing that he was far too strong for that to be a simple thing. Even if he had lain out in
the fury of the sun, which I strongly doubted, he could not have been wholly destroyed.

Yet I was plagued by every conceivable fear: Perhaps, he had been so burnt and crippled
that he could not help himself. He had been discovered by mortals. Or perhaps the others
had come, and stolen him completely away. Or he would reappear and curse me again. I
feared that too.

Finally I made my way back down to Bridgetown, unable to leave the island until I knew
what had become of him.

I was still there an hour before dawn.

And the next night I did not find him. Nor the night after that.

At last, bruised in mind and soul, and telling myself I deserved nothing but misery, I went
home.

The warmth of spring had come to New Orleans, finally, and I found her swarming with
the usual tourists beneath a clear and purple evening sky. I went first to my old house to
take Mojo from the care of the old woman, who was not at all glad to give him up, save
that he had obviously missed me very much.

Then he and I together proceeded to the Rue Royale.

I knew the flat wasn't empty even before I reached the top of the back stairs. I paused for
a moment, looking down on the restored courtyard with its scrubbed flagstones and
romantic little fountain, complete with cherubs and their great cornucopia-style shells
pouring forth a splash of clean water into the basin below.

A bed of dark sweet flowers had been planted against the old brick wall, and a stand of
bananas was already thriving in the corner, long graceful knifelike leaves nodding in the
breeze.

This gladdened my vicious selfish little heart beyond words.

I went inside. The back parlour had finally been finished, and beautifully laid out with
the fine antique chairs I'd selected for it, and the thick pale Persian carpet of faded red.

I looked up and down the length of the hallway, past the fresh wallpaper of gold and
white stripes, and over the yards of dark carpet, and I saw Louis standing in the front
parlour door.

"Don't ask me where I've been or what I've done," I said. I walked towards him, brushed
him aside, and went into the room. Ah, it surpassed all my expectations. There were a
very replica of his old desk between the windows, and the camelback sofa of silver
damask, and the oval table inlaid with mahogany. And the spinet against the far wall.

"I know where you've been," he said, "and I know what you've done."

"Oh? And what's to follow? Some stultifying and endless lecture? Tell me now. So I can
go to sleep."

I turned around to face him, to see what effect this stiff rebuff had had, if any, and there
stood David beside him, dressed very well in black fine-combed velvet, and with his
arms folded across his chest, and leaning against the frame of the door.

They were both looking at me, with their pale, expressionless faces, David presenting the
darker, taller figure, but how amazingly similar they appeared. It only penetrated to me
slowly that Louis had dressed for this little occasion, and for once, in clothes which did
not look as if they'd come from an attic trunk.

It was David who spoke first.

"The carnival starts tomorrow in Rio," he said, the voice even more seductive than it had
ever been in mortal life. "I thought we might go."

I stared at him with obvious suspicion. It seemed a dark light infused his expression.
There was a hard luster to his eyes. But the mouth was so gentle, without a hint of
malevolence, or bitterness. No menace emanated from him at all.

Then Louis roused himself from his reverie and quietly moved away down the hall and
into his old room. How I knew that old pattern of faintly creaking boards and steps!

I was powerfully confused, and a little breathless.

I sat down on the couch, and beckoned for Mojo to come, who seated himself right in
front of me, leaning his heavy weight against my legs.

"You mean this?" I asked. "You want us to go there together?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "And after that, the rain forests. What if we should go there? Deep into
those forests." He unfolded his arms and, bowing his head, began to pace with long slow
steps. "You said something to me, I don't remember when... Maybe it was an image I
caught from you before it all happened, something about a temple which mortals didn't
know of, lost in the depths of the jungle. Ah, think of how many such discoveries there
must be."

Ah, how genuine the feeling, how resonant the voice.

"Why have you forgiven me?" I asked.

He stopped his pacing, and looked at me, and I was so distracted by the evidence of the
blood in him, and how it had changed his skin and hair and eyes, that I couldn't think for

a moment. I held up my hand, begging him not to speak. Why did I never get used to this
magic? I dropped my hand, allowing him, nay, bidding him, to go on.

"You knew I would," he said, assuming his old measured and restrained tone. "You knew
when you did it that I'd go on loving you. That I'd need you. That I would seek you out
and cling to you of all the beings in this world."

"Oh, no. I swear I didn't," I whispered.

"I went off awhile to punish you. You're past all patience, really you are. You are the
damnedest creature, as you've been called by wiser beings than I. But you knew I'd come
back. You knew I'd be here."

"No, I never dreamt it."

"Don't start weeping again."

"I like to weep. I must. Why else would I do it so much?"

"Well, stop!"

"Oh, it's going to be fun, isn't it? You think you are the leader of this little coven, don't
you, and you're going to start bossing me around."

"Come again?"

"You don't even look like the elder of the two of us anymore, and you never were the
elder. You let my beautiful and irresistible visage deceive you in the simplest and most
foolish way. I'm the leader. This is my house. I shall say if we go to Rio."

He began to laugh. Slowly at first, and then more deeply and freely. If there was menace
in him it was only in the great flashing shifts of expression, the dark glint in his eyes. But
I wasn't sure there was any menace at all.

"You are the leader?" he asked scornfully. The old authority.

"Yes, I am. So you ran off... you wanted to show me you could get along without me.
You could hunt for yourself; you could find a hiding place by day. You didn't need me.
But here you are!"

"Are you coming with us to Rio or not?"

"Coming with us! Did you say 'us'?"

"I did."

He walked over to the chair nearest the end of the couch and sat down. It penetrated to
me that obviously he was already in full command of his new powers. And I, of course,
couldn't gauge how strong he truly was merely by looking at him. The dark tone of his
skin concealed too much. He crossed his legs and fell into an easy posture of relaxation,
but with David's dignity intact.

Perhaps it was a matter of the way his back remained straight against the chair behind
him, or the elegant way his hand rested on his ankle, and the other arm molded itself to
the arm of the chair.

Only the thick wavy brown hair betrayed the dignity somewhat, tumbling down on his
forehead so that finally he gave a little unconscious toss to his head.

But quite suddenly his composure melted; his face bore all the sudden lines of serious
confusion, and then pure distress.

I couldn't stand it. But I forced myself to be silent.

"I tried to hate you," he confessed, the eyes widening even as the voice nearly died away.
"I couldn't do it; it's as simple as that." And for one moment there was the menace, the
great preternatural anger, glaring out of him, before the face became perfectly miserable
and then merely sad.

"Why not?"

"Don't play with me."

"I've never played with you! I mean these things when I say them. How can you not hate
me?"

"I'd be making the same mistake you made if I hated you," he said, eyebrows raised.
"Don't you see what you've done? You've given me the gift, but you spared me the
capitulation. You've brought me over with all your skill and all your strength, but you
didn't require of me the moral defeat. You took the decision from me, and gave me what I
could not help but want."

I was speechless. It was all true, but it was the damnedest lie I'd ever heard. "Then rape
and murder are our paths to glory! I don't buy it. They are filthy. We are all damned and
now you are too. And that's what I've done to you."

He bore that as if it were a series of soft slaps, merely flinching just a little and then
fixing his eyes on me again.

"It took you two hundred years to learn that you wanted it," he said. "I knew the moment
I woke out of the stupor and saw you lying there on the floor. You looked like an empty

shell to me. I knew you'd gone too far with it. I was in terror for you. And I was seeing
you with these new eyes."

"Yes."

"Do you know what went through my mind? I thought you'd found a way to die. You'd
given me every drop of blood in you. And now you yourself were perishing before my
very eyes. I knew I loved you. I knew I forgave you. And I knew with every breath I took
and with every new color or shape I saw before me that I wanted what you'd given me-
the new vision and life, which none of us can really describe! Oh, I couldn't admit it. I
had to curse you, fight you for a little while. But that's all it was in the end-a little while."

"You're much smarter than I am," I said softly.

"Well, of course, what did you expect?"

I smiled. I settled back on the couch.

"Ah, this is the Dark Trick," I whispered. "How right they were, the old ones, to give it
that name. I wonder if the trick's on me. For this is a vampire sitting here with me, a
blood drinker of enormous power, my child, and what are old emotions to him now?"

I looked at him, and once more I felt the tears coming. They never let me down.

He was frowning, and his lips were slightly parted, and it seemed now I truly had dealt
him a terrible blow. But he didn't speak to me. He seemed puzzled, and then he gave a
little shake of his head as though he couldn't reply.

I realized that it wasn't vulnerability I saw in him now so much as compassion, and
blatant concern for me.

He left the chair suddenly, dropping to his knees in front of me, and putting his hands on
my shoulders, completely ignoring my faithful Mojo, who stared at him with indifferent
eyes.

Did he realize this was how I'd faced Claudia in my fever dream?

"You're the same," he said. He shook his head. "The very same." . "The same as what?"

"Oh, every time you ever came to me, you touched me; you wrung from me a deep
protectiveness. You made me feel love. And it's the same now. Only you seem all the
more lost and in need of me now. I'm to take you forward, I see it clearly. I'm your link
with the future. It's through me that you'll see the years ahead."

"You're the same too. An absolute innocent. A bloody fool." I tried to brush his hand off
my shoulder, but didn't succeed. "You're headed for great trouble. Just wait and see."

"Oh, how exciting. Now, come, we must go to Rio. We must not miss anything of the
carnival. Though of course we can go again . . . and again . . . and again . . . But come."

I sat very still, looking at him for the longest time, until finally he became concerned
again. His fingers were quite strong as they pressed my shoulders. Yes, I had done well
with him in every step.

"What is it?" he asked timidly. "Are you grieving for me?"

"Perhaps, a little. As you've said, I'm not as clever as you are at knowing what I want.
But I think I'm trying to fix this moment in my mind. I want to remember it always-I
want to remember the way you are now, here with me ... before things start to go wrong."

He stood up, pulling me suddenly to my feet, with scarcely any effort at all. There was a
soft triumphant smile on his face as he noted my amazement.

"Oh, this is going to be really something, this little tussle," I said.

"Well, you can fight with me in Rio, while we are dancing in the streets."

He beckoned for me to follow him. I wasn't sure what we would do next or how we
would make this journey, but I was wondrously excited, and I honestly didn't care about
the small aspects of it at all.

Of course Louis would have to be persuaded to come, but we would gang up on him, and
somehow lure him into it, no matter how reticent he was.

I was about to follow him out of the room, when something caught my eye. It was on
Louis's old desk.

It was the locket of Claudia. The chain was coiled there, catching the light with its tiny
gold links, and the oval case itself was open and propped against the inkwell, and the
little face seemed to be peering directly at me.

I reached down and picked up the locket, and looked very closely at the little picture.
And a sad realization came to me.

She was no longer the real memories. She had become those fever dreams. She was the
image in the jungle hospital, a figure standing against the sun in Georgetown, a ghost
rushing through the shadows of Notre Dame. In life she'd never been my conscience! Not
Claudia, my merciless Claudia. What a dream! A pure dream.

A dark secret smile stole over my lips as I looked at her, bitter and on the edge, once
more, of tears. For nothing had changed in the realization that I had given her the words

of accusation. The very same thing was true. There had been the opportunity for
salvation-and I had said no.

I wanted to say something to her as I held the locket; I wanted to say something to the
being she had been, and to my own weakness, and to the greedy wicked being in me who
had once again triumphed. For I had. I had won.

Yes, I wanted to say something so terribly much! And would that it were full of poetry,
and deep meaning, and would ransom my greed and my evil, and my lusty little heart.
For I was going to Rio, wasn't I, and with David, and with Louis, and a new era was
beginning . . .

Yes, say something-for the love of heaven and the love of Claudia-to darken it and show
it for what it is! Dear God, to lance it and show the horror at the core.

But I could not.

What more is there to say, really?

The tale is told.

Lestat de Lioncourt New Orleans 1991

Prologue

LESTAT here. You know who I am? Then skip the next few
paragraphs. For those whom I have not met before, I want this
to be love at first sight.

Behold: your hero for the duration, a perfect imitation of a blond,
blue-eyed, six-foot Anglo-Saxon male. A vampire, and one of the
strongest you'll ever encounter. My fangs are too small to be noticed
unless I want them to be; but they're very sharp, and I cannot go for
more than a few hours without wanting human blood.

Of course, I don't need it that often. And just how often I do need
it, I don't know, because I've never put it to the test.

I'm monstrously strong. I can take to the air. I can hear people
talking on the other side of the city or even the globe. I can read
minds; I can bind with spells.

I'm immortal. I've been virtually ageless since 1789.

Am I unique? By no means. There are some twenty other vampires
in the world of whom I know. Half of these I know intimately;
one half of those I love.

Add to this twenty a good two hundred vagabonds and strangers
of whom I know nothing but now and then hear something; and for
good measure another thousand secretive immortals, roaming about
in human guise.

Men, women, children--any human being can become a vampire.
All it takes is a vampire willing to bring you into it, to suck out most
of your blood, and then let you take it back, mixed with his or her
own. It's not all that simple; but if you survive, you'll live forever.
While you're young, you'll thirst unbearably, probably have to kill
each night. By the time you're a thousand years old, you'll look and
sound wise, even if you were a kid when you started, and you will
drink and kill because you cannot resist it, whether you need it anymore or not.

If you live longer than that, and some do, who knows? You'll get
tougher, whiter, ever more monstrous. You'll know so much about
suffering that you will go through rapid cycles of cruelty and kindness, insight and maniacal
blindness. You'll probably go mad. Then
you'll be sane again. Then you may forget who you are.

I myself combine the best of vampiric youth and old age. Only
two hundred years old, I have been for various reasons granted the
strength of the ancients. I have a modern sensibility but a dead aristocrat's impeccable taste. I know
exactly who I am. I am rich. I am
beautiful. I can see my reflection in mirrors. And in shopwindows. I

love to sing and to dance.

What do I do? Anything that I please.

Think about it. Is it enough to make you want to read my story?
Have you perhaps read my stories of the vampires before?

Here's the catch: it doesn't matter here that I'm a vampire. It is
not central to the tale. It's just a given, like my innocent smile and
soft, purring French-accented voice and graceful way of sauntering
down the street. It comes with the package. But what happened here
could have happened to a human being; indeed, it surely has happened to humans, and it will
happen to them again.

We have souls, you and I.

We want to know things; we share the
same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We don't either of us
know what it means to die, no matter what we might say
to the contrary. It's a cinch that if we did, I wouldn't be writing and
you wouldn't be reading this book.

What does matter very much, as we go into this story together, is
that I have set for myself the task of being a hero in this world. I
maintain myself as morally complex, spiritually tough, and aesthetically relevant
a being of blazing insight and impact, a guy with
things to say to you.

So if you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking
again, that he is frightened, that he is searching desperately for the
lesson and for the song and for the raison d'etre, that he wants to
understand his own story and he wants you to understand it, and that
it is the very best story he has right now to tell.
If that's not enough, read something else.

If it is, then read on. In chains, to my friend and my scribe, I dictated these words. Come with me.
Just listen to me. Don't leave me
alone.



1



I SAW him when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built, dark brown hair and eyes,
skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I'd made him a vampire. Walking a little too
fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David.

I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say. It was one of those very opulent old
hotels, divinely overdone, full of crimson and
gold, and rather pleasant. My Victim had picked it. I hadn't.
My victim was dining with his daughter. And I'd picked up from my
victim's mind that this was where he always met his daughter in New
York, for the simple reason that St. Patrick's Cathedral was across
the street.

David saw me at once a slouching, blond, long-haired youth,
bronze face and hands, the usual deep violet sunglasses over my eyes,
hair presentably combed for once, body tricked out in a dark-blue,
doubled-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.

I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my vanity,
and he probably knew that in the early nineties of the twentieth century,
Italian fashion had flooded the market with so much shapeless,
hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic and flattering
garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue
Brooks Brothers suit.

Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are always a
potent combination. Who knows that better than I?

I didn't mean to harp on the clothes! To hell with the clothes. It's
just I was so proud of myself for being spiffed up and full of gorgeous
contradictions a picture of long locks, the impeccable tailoring, and
a regal manner of slumping against the railing and sort of blocking
stairs.

He came up to me at once. He smelled like the deep winter out-side
where people were slipping in the frozen streets, and snow had
turned to filth in the gutters. His face had the subtle preternatural
gleam which only I could detect, and love, and properly appreciate,
and eventually kiss.

We walked together onto the carpeted mezzanine.

Momentarily, I hated it that he was two inches taller than me. But
I was so glad to see him, so glad to be near him. And it was warm in
here, and shadowy and vast, one of the places where people do not
stare at others.

"You've come," I said. "I didn't think you would."

"Of course," he scolded, the gracious British accent breaking
softly from the young dark face, giving me the usual shock. This was
an old man in a young man's body, recently made a vampire, and by
me, one of the most powerful of our remaining kind.

"What did you expect?" he said, tete-a-tete. "Armand told me

you were calling me. Maharet told me."

"Ah, that answers my first question." I wanted to kiss him, and
suddenly I did put out my arms, rather tentatively and politely so that
he could get away if he wanted, and when he let me hug him, when he
returned the warmth, I felt a happiness I hadn't experienced in
months.

Perhaps I hadn't experienced it since I had left him, with Louis.
We had been in some nameless jungle place, the three of us, when we
agreed to part, and that had been a year ago.

"Your first question?" he asked, peering at me very closely, sizing
me up perhaps, doing everything a vampire can do to measure the
mood and mind of his maker, because a vampire cannot read his
maker's mind, any more than the maker can read the mind of the
fledgling.

And there we stood divided, laden with preternatural gifts, both
fit and rather full of emotion, and unable to communicate except in
the simplest and best way, perhaps with words.

"My first question," I began to explain, to answer, "was simply
going to be: Where have you been, and have you found the others,
and did they try to hurt you? All that rot, you know how I broke the
rules when I made you, et cetera."

"All that rot," he mocked me, the French accent I still possessed,
now coupled with something definitely American. "What rot."

"Come on," I said. "Let's go into the bar there and talk. Obvi-
ously no one has done anything to you. I didn't think they could or
they would, or that they'd dare. I wouldn't have let you slip off into
the world if I'd thought you were in danger."

He smiled, his brown eyes full of gold light for just an instant.

"Didn't you tell me this twenty-five times, more or less, before we
parted company?"

We found a small table, cleaving to the wall. The place was half
crowded, the perfect proportion exactly. What did we look like? A
couple of young men on the make for mortal men or women? I don't
care.

"No one has harmed me," he said, "and no one has shown the
slightest interest in it."

Someone was playing a piano, very tenderly for a hotel bar, I
thought. And it was something by Erik Satie. What luck.

"The tie," he said, leaning forward, white teeth flashing, fangs
completely hidden, of course. "This, this big mass of silk around
your neck! This is not Brooks Brothers!" He gave a soft teasing
laugh. "Look at you, and the wing-tip shoes! My, my. What's going
on in your mind? And what is this all about?"

The bartender threw a hefty shadow over the small table, and
murmured predictable phrases that were lost to me in my excitement
and in the noise.

"Something hot," David said. It didn't surprise me. "You know,
rum punch or some such, whatever you can heat up."

I nodded and made a little gesture to the indifferent fellow that I
would take the same thing.

Vampires always order hot drinks. They aren't going to drink
them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and
that is so good.

David looked at me again. Or rather this familiar body with David
inside looked at me. Because for me, David would always be the elderly
human I'd known and treasured, as well as this magnificent
burnished shell of stolen flesh that was slowly being shaped by his
expressions and manner and mood.

Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a
vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this story.

"Something's following you again?" he asked. "This is what Armand told me.
So did Jesse."

"Where did you see them?"

"Armand?" he asked. "A complete accident. In Paris. He was just
walking on the street. He was the first one I saw."

"He didn't make any move to hurt you?"

"Why would he? Why were you calling to me? Who's stalking
you? What is all this?"

"And you've been with Maharet."

He sat back. He shook his head. "Lestat, I have pored over
manuscripts such as no living human has seen in centuries; I have laid my
hands on clay tablets that..."

"David, the scholar," I said. "Educated by the Talamasca to be

the perfect vampire, though they never had an inkling that that is
what you'd become."

"Oh, but you must understand. Maharet took me to these places
where she keeps her treasures. You have to know what it means to
hold in your hands a tablet covered in symbols that predate cuneiform.
And Maharet herself, I might have lived how many centuries
without ever glimpsing her."

Maharet was really the only one he had ever had to fear. I suppose
we both knew it. My memories of Maharet held no menace, only the
mystery of a survivor of Millennia, a living being so ancient that each
gesture seemed marble made liquid, and her soft voice had become
the distillation of all human eloquence.

"If she gave you her blessing, nothing else much matters," I said
with a little sigh. I wondered if I myself would ever lay eyes upon her
again. I had not hoped for it nor wanted it.

"I've also seen my beloved Jesse," said David.

"Ah, I should have thought of that, of course."

"I went searching for my beloved Jesse. I went crying out from
place to place, just the way you sent out the wordless cry for me."

Jesse. Pale, bird-boned, red-haired. Twentieth-century born.
Highly educated and psychic as a human. Jesse he had known as a
human; Jesse he knew now as an immortal. Jesse had been his human
pupil in the order called the Talamasca. Now he was the equal of
Jesse in beauty and vampiric power, or very near to it. I really did not
know.

Jesse had been brought over by Maharet of the First Brood, born
as a human before humans had begun to write their history at all or
barely knew that they had one. The Elder now, if there was one, the
Queen of the Damned was Maharet and her mute sister, Mekare, of
whom no one spoke anymore much at all.

I had never seen a fledgling brought over by one as old as Maharet.

Jesse had seemed a transparent vessel of immense strength when
last I saw her. Jesse must have had her own tales to tell now, her own
chronicles and adventures.

I had passed onto David my own vintage blood mixed with a strain
even older than Maharet's. Yes, blood from Akasha, and blood from
the ancient Marius, and of course my own strength was in my blood,
and my own strength, as we all knew, was quite beyond measure.

So he and Jesse must have been grand companions, and what had
it meant to her to see her aged mentor clothed in the fleshly raiment
of a young human male?

I was immediately envious and suddenly full of despair. I'd drawn
David away from those willowy white creatures who had drawn him
into their sanctuary somewhere far across the sea, deep in a land
where their treasures might be hidden from crisis and war for
generations. Exotic names came to mind, but I could not for the moment
think where they had gone, the two red-haired ones, the one ancient,
the one young. And to their hearth, they had admitted David.

A little sound startled me and I looked over my shoulder. I settled
back, embarrassed to have appeared so anxious, and I focused silently
for a moment on my victim.

My Victim was still in the restaurant very near us in this hotel,
sitting with his beautiful daughter. I wouldn't lose him tonight. I was
sure enough of that.

I sighed. Enough of him. I'd been following him for months. He
was interesting, but he had nothing to do with all this. Or did he? I
might kill him tonight, but I doubted it. Having spied the daughter,
and knowing full well how much the Victim loved her, I had decided
to wait until she returned home. I mean, why be so mean to a young
girl like that? And how he loved her. Right now, he was pleading with
her to accept a gift, something newly discovered by him and very
splendid in his eyes. However, I couldn't quite see the image of the
gift in her mind or his.

He was a good victim to follow flashy, greedy, at times good,
and always amusing.

Back to David. And how this strapping immortal opposite me must
have loved the vampire Jesse, and become the pupil of Maharet. Why
didn't I have any respect for the old ones anymore? What did I want,
for the love of heaven? No, that was not the question. The question
to me right now? Was I running from it?

He was politely waiting for me to look at him again. I did. But I
didn't speak. I didn't begin. And so he did what polite people often
do, he talked slowly on as if I were not staring at him through the
violet glasses like one with an ominous secret.

"No one has tried to hurt me," he said again in the lovely calm
British manner, "no one has questioned that you made me, all have
treated me with respect and kindness, though everyone of course
wanted to know all the details firsthand of how you survived the Body
Thief. And I don't think you know quite how you alarmed them, and
how much they love you."

This was a kindly reference to the last adventure which had
brought us together, and driven me to make him one of us. At the
time, he had not sung my praises to Heaven for any part of it.

"They love me, do they?" I said of the others, the remnants of our
revenant species around the world. "I know they didn't try to help
me." I thought of the defeated Body Thief.

Without David's help, I might never have won that battle. I could
not think of something that terrible. But I certainly didn't want to
think of all my brilliant and gifted vampiric cohorts and how they'd
watched from afar and done nothing.

The Body Thief himself was in Hell. And the body in question
was opposite me with David inside it.

"All right, I'm glad to hear I had them a little worried," I said.
"But the point is, I'm being followed again, and this time it's no
scheming mortal who knows the trick of astral projection and how to
take possession of someone else's body. I'm being stalked."

He studied me, not so much incredulous as striving perhaps to
grasp the implications.

"Being stalked," he repeated thoughtfully.

"Absolutely." I nodded. "David, I'm frightened. I'm actually
frightened. If I told you what I think this thing is, this thing that's
stalking me, you'd laugh."

"Would I?"

The waiter had set down the hot drinks, and the steam did feel
glorious. The piano played Satie ever so softly. Life was almost worth
living, even for a son of a bitch of a monster like myself. Something
crossed my mind.

In this very bar, I'd heard my victim say to his daughter two nights
ago, "You know I sold my soul for places just like this."

I'd been yards away, quite beyond mortal hearing, yet hearing
every word that fell from my Victim's lips, and I was enthralled with
the daughter. Dora, that was her name. Dora. She was the one thing
this strange and succulently alluring Victim truly loved, his only
child, his daughter.

I realized David was watching me.

"Just thinking about the victim who brought me here," I said.

"And his daughter. They're not going out tonight. The snow's too
deep and the wind too cruel. He'll take her back up to their suite, and
she'll look down on the towers of St. Patrick's. I want to keep my
victim in my sights, you know."

"Good heavens, have you fallen in love with a couple of mortals?"

"No. Not at all. Just a new way of hunting. The man's unique, a
blaze of individual traits. I adore him. I was going to feed on him the
first time I saw him, but he continues to surprise me. I've been
following him around for half a year."

I flashed back on them. Yes, they were going upstairs, just as I
thought. They had just left their table in the restaurant. The night
was too wretched even for Dora, though she wanted to go to the
church and to pray for her father, and beg him to stay there and pray
too. Some memory played between them, in their thoughts and
fragmentary words. Dora had been a little girl when my Victim had first
brought her to that cathedral.

He didn't believe in anything. She was some sort of religious
leader. Theodora. She preached to television audiences on the
seriousness of values and nourishment of the soul. And her father? Ah,
well, I'd kill him before I learnt too much more, or end up losing this
big trophy buck just for Dora's sake.

I looked back at David, who was watching me eagerly, shoulder
resting against the dark satin-covered wall. In this light, no one could
have known he wasn't human. Even one of us might have missed it.
As for me, I probably looked like a mad rock star who wanted all the
world's attention to crush him slowly to death.

"The victim's got nothing to do with it," I said. "I'll tell you all
that another time. It's just we're in this hotel because I followed him
here. You know my games, my hunts. I don't need blood any more
than Maharet does, but I can't stand the thought of not having it!"

"And so what is this new sort of game?" he said politely in British.

"I don't look so much for simple, evil people, murderers, you
know so much as a more sophisticated kind of criminal, someone
with the mentality of an Iago. This one's a drag dealer. Highly
eccentric. Brilliant. An art collector. He loves to have people shot, loves
to make billions in a week off cocaine through one gateway and
heroin through another. And then he loves his daughter. And she, she
has a televangelist church."

"You're really enthralled with these mortals."

"Look right now, past me, over my shoulder. See the two people

in the lobby moving towards the elevators?" I asked.

"Yes." He stared at them fixedly. Perhaps they'd paused in just
the right spot. I could feel, hear, and smell both of them, but I
couldn't know precisely where they were unless I turned around. But
they were there, the dark smiling man with his pale-faced eager and
innocent little girl, who was a woman-child of twenty-five if I had
reckoned correctly.

"I know that man's face," said David. "He's big time. Interna-
tional. They keep trying to bring him up on some charges. He pulled
off an extraordinary assassination, where was it?"
"The Bahamas."

"My God, how did you happen on him? Did you really see him in
person somewhere, you know, like a shell you found on the beach, or
did you see him in the papers and the magazines?"

"Do you recognize the girl? Nobody knows they're connected."
"No, I don't recognize her, but should I? She's so pretty, and so
sweet. You're not going to feed on her, are you?"

I laughed at his gentlemanly outrage at such a suggestion. I wondered
if David asked permission before sucking the blood of his victims,
or at least insisted that both parties be properly introduced. I
had no idea what his killing habits were, or how often he fed. I'd
made him plenty strong. That meant it didn't have to be every night.
He was blessed in that.

"The girl sings for Jesus on a television station," I said. "Her
church will someday have its headquarters in an old, old convent
building in New Orleans. Right now she lives there alone, and tapes
her programs out of a studio in the French Quarter. I think her show
goes through some ecumenical cable channel out of Alabama."
"You're in love with her."

"Not at all, just very eager to kill her father. Her television appeal
is peculiar. She talks theology with gripping common sense, you
know, the kind of televangelist that just might make it all work.
Don't we all fear that someone like that will come along? She dances
like a nymph or a temple virgin, I suppose I should say, sings like a
seraph, invites the entire studio audience to join with her. Theology
and ecstasy, perfectly blended. And all the requisite good works are
recommended."

"I see," he said. "And this makes it more exciting for you, to feast
on the father? By the way, the father is hardly an unobtrusive
man. Neither seem disguised. Are you sure no one knows they're
connected?"

The elevator door had opened. My Victim and his daughter were
rising floor after floor into the sky.

"He slips in and out of here when he wants. He's got bodyguards
galore. She meets him on her own. I think they set it up by cellular
phone. He's a computer cocaine giant, and she's one of his best-
protected secret operations. His men are all over the lobby. If there'd
been anyone nosing around, she would have left the restaurant alone
first. But he's a wizard at things like that. There'll be warrants out for
him in five states and he'll show up ringside for a heavyweight match
in Atlantic City, right in front of the cameras. They'll never catch
him. I'll catch him, the vampire who's just waiting to kill him. And
isn't he beautiful?"

"Now, let me get this clear," David said. "You're being stalked by
something, and it's got nothing to do with this victim, this, er, drug
dealer, or whatever, or this televangelist girl. But something is
following you, something frightening you, but not enough to make you
stop tracking this dark-skinned man who just got into the elevator?"

I nodded, but then I caught myself in a little doubt. No, there
couldn't be any connection.

Besides, this thing that had me rattled to the bone had started
before I saw the Victim. It had "happened" first in Rio, the stalker,
not long after I'd left Louis and David and gone back to Rio to hunt.
I hadn't picked up this Victim until he'd walked across my path in
own city of New Orleans. He'd come down there on a whim to
Dora for twenty minutes; they'd met in a little French Quarter
and I had been walking past and seen him, sparkling like a fire,
her white face and large compassionate eyes, and wham! It was
hunger.

"No, it's got nothing to do with him," I said. "What's stalking me
started months before. He doesn't know I'm following him. I didn't
catch on right away myself that I was being followed by this thing,
this.. . ."

"This what?"

"Watching him and his daughter, it's like my miniseries, you
know. He's so intricately evil."

"So you said, and what is stalking you? Is this a thing or a person
or ...?"

"I'll get to that. This Victim, he has killed so many people. Drugs.
Such people wallow in numbers. Kilos, kills, coded accounts. And the
girl, the girl of course turned out not to be some dim-witted little
miracle worker telling diabetics she can cure them with the laying on

of hands."

"Lestat, your mind's wandering. What's the matter with you?
Why are you afraid? And why don't you kill this victim and get that
part over?"

"You want to go back to Jesse and Maharet, don't you?" I asked
suddenly, a feeling of hopelessness descending on me. "You want to
study for the next hundred years, among all those tablets and scrolls,
and look into Maharet's aching blue eyes, and hear her voice, I know
you do. Does she still always choose blue eyes?"

Maharet had been blind eyes torn out when she was made a
vampire queen. She took eyes from her victims and wore them -until
they could see no more, no matter how the vampiric blood tried to
preserve them. That was her shocking feature the marble queen
with the bleeding eyes. Why had she never wrung the neck of some
vampire fledgling and stolen his or her eyes? It had never occurred to
me before. Loyalty to our own kind? Maybe it wouldn't work. But she
had her scruples, and they were as hard as she was. A woman that old
remembers when there was no Moses and no Hammurabi's Code.
When only the Pharaoh got to walk through the Valley of Death....
"Lestat," David said. "Pay attention. You must tell me what you
are talking about. I've never heard you admit so readily that you were
afraid. You did say afraid. Forget about me for the moment. Forget
that victim and the girl. What's up, my friend? Who's after you?"
"I want to ask you some more questions first."
"No. Just tell me what's happened. You're in danger, aren't you?
Or you think you are. You sent out the call for me to come to you
here. It was an unabashed plea."

"Are those the words Armand used, 'unabashed plea'? I hate
Armand."

David only smiled and made a quick impatient gesture with both
hands. "You don't hate Armand and you know you don't."
"Wanna bet?"

He looked at me sternly and reprimandingly. English schoolboy
stuff probably.

"All right," I said. "I'll tell you. Now, first, I have to remind you
of something. A conversation we had. It was when you were alive
still, when we last talked together in your place in the Cotswolds,
you know, when you were just a charming old gentleman, dying in
despair--"

"I remember," he said patiently. "Before you went into the
desert."

"No, right after, when we knew I couldn't die as easily I thought I
could, when I'd come back burnt. You cared for me. Then you
started talking about yourself, your life. You said something about an
experience you'd had before the war, you said, in a Paris cafe. You
remember? You know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes. I do. I told you that when I was a young man I thought I'd
seen a vision."

"Yes, something about the fabric of life ripping for a moment so
you glimpsed things you shouldn't have seen."

He smiled. "You're the one who suggested that, that the fabric
had ripped somehow and I'd seen through the rip accidentally. I
thought then and I still think now that it was a vision I was meant to
see. But fifty years have passed since then. And my memory, my
memory is surprisingly dim of the whole affair."

"Well, that's to be expected. As a vampire, you will remember
everything that happens to you from now on vividly, but the details
of mortal life will slip rather fast, especially anything that had to do
with the senses, you'll find yourself chasing after it. What did wine
taste like?"

He motioned for me to be quiet. I was making him unhappy. I
hadn't meant to do this.

I picked up my drink, savored the fragrance. It was some sort of
not Christmas punch. I think they called it wassail in England. I set
down the glass. My hands and face were still dark from that excursion
to the desert, that little attempt to fly into the face of the sun. That
helped me pass for human. What an irony. And it made my hand a
little more sensitive to the warmth.

A ripple of pleasure ran through me. Warmth! Sometimes I think
I get my money out of everything! There's no way to cheat a
sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the
pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.

I became aware again of his watching me.

He seemed to have collected himself somewhat or forgiven me for
the one thousandth time for having put his soul into a vampire's body
without his permission, indeed against his will. He looked at me,
almost lovingly suddenly, as if I needed that reassurance.
I took it. I did.

"In this Paris cafe, you heard two beings talking to each other," I
said, going back to his vision of years before. "You were a young
man. It all happened gradually. But you realized they weren't 'really'

there, the two, in a material sense, and the language they were
speaking was understandable to you even though you didn't know what it
was."

He nodded. "That's correct. And it sounded precisely like God
and the Devil talking to each other."

I nodded. "And when I left you in the jungles last year, you said I
wasn't to worry, that you weren't going off on any religious quest to
find God and the Devil in a Paris cafe. You said you'd spent your
mortal life looking for such things in the Talamasca. And now you
would take a different turn."

"Yes, that's what I said," he admitted agreeably. "The vision's
dimmer now than it was when I told you. But I remember it. I still
remember it, and I still believe I saw and heard something, and I'm as
resigned as ever that I'll never know what it was."

"You're leaving God and the Devil to the Talamasca, then, as you
promised."

"I'm leaving the Devil to the Talamasca," he said. "I don't think
the Talamasca as a psychic order was ever that interested in God."

All this was familiar verbal territory. I acknowledged it. We both
kept our eye on the Talamasca, so to speak. But only one member of
that devout order of scholars had ever known the true fate of David
Talbot, the former Superior General, and now that human being was
dead. His name had been Aaron Lightner. This had been a great
sadness to David, the loss of the one human who knew what he was now,
the human who had been his knowing mortal friend, as David had
been mine.

He wanted to pick up the thread.

"You've seen a vision?" he asked. "That's what's frightening
you?"

I shook my head. "Nothing as clear as that. But the Thing is
stalking me, and now and then it lets me see something in the blink of an
eye. I hear it mostly. I hear it sometimes talking in a normal
conversational voice to another, or I hear its steps behind me on the street,
and I spin around. It's true. I'm terrified of it. And then when it
shows itself, well, I usually end up so disoriented, I'm sprawled in the
gutter like a common drunk. A week will pass. Nothing. Then I'll
catch that fragment of conversation again. ..."
"And what are the words?"

"Can't give the fragments to you in order. I'd been hearing them
before I realized what they were. On some level, I knew I was hearing

a voice from some other locale, so to speak, you knew it wasn't a mere
mortal in the next room. But for all I knew, it could have had a
natural explanation, an electronic explanation."
"I understand."

"But the fragments are things like two people talking, and one
says-the one, that is--says, 'Oh, no, he's perfect, it has nothing to do
with vengeance, how could you think I wanted mere vengeance?' " I
broke off, shrugged. "It's, you know, the middle of a conversation."

"Yes," he said, "and you feel this Thing is letting you hear a little
of it... just the way I thought the vision in the cafe was meant for
me."

"You've got it exactly right. It's tormenting me. Another time,
this was only two days ago, I was in New Orleans; I was sort of spying
on the Victim's daughter, Dora. She lives there in the convent build-
I mentioned. It's an old 1880s convent, unoccupied for years, and
gutted, so that it's like a brick castle, and this little sparrow of a girl,
lovely little woman, lives there fearlessly, completely alone. She
walks about the house as if she were invincible.

Well, anyway, I was down there, and I had come into the courtyard
of this building--it's, you know, a shape as old as architecture,
main building, two long wings, inner courtyard."

"The rather typical late-nineteenth-century brick institution."

"Exactly, and I was watching through the windows, the progress
of that little girl walking by herself through the pitch-black corridor.
She was carrying a flashlight. And she was singing to herself, one of
her hymns. They're all sort of medieval and modern at the same
time."

"I believe the phrase is 'New Age,' " David suggested.

"Yes, it's somewhat like that, but this girl is on an ecumenical religious
network. I told you. Her program is very conventional. Believe
in Jesus, be saved. She's going to sing and dance people into Heaven,
especially the women, apparently, or at least they'll lead the way."

"Go on with the story, you were watching her. . . ."

"Yes, and thinking how brave she was. She finally reached her
own quarters; she lives in one of the four towers of the building; and
I listened as she threw all the locks. And I thought, not many mortals
would like to go prowling about this dark building, and the place
wasn't entirely spiritually clean."

"What do you mean?"

"Little spirits, elementals, whatever, what did you call them in the
Talamasca?"

"Elementals," he said.

"Well, there are some gathered about this building, but they're
no threat to this girl. She's simply too brave and strong."

"But not the Vampire Lestat, who was spying her. He was out in
the courtyard, and he heard the voice right next to his ear, as if Two
Men were talking at his right shoulder and the other one, the one
who is not following me, says quite plainly, 'No, I don't see him in
the same light.' I turned round and round trying to find this Thing,
close in on it mentally and spiritually, confront it, bait it, and then I
realized I was shaking all over, and you know, the elementals, David,
the little pesky spirits . . . the ones I could feel hanging about the
convent... I don't think they even realized this person, or whoever
he was, had been talking in my ear."

"Lestat, you do sound as if you've lost your immortal mind," he
said. "No, no, don't get angry. I believe you. But let's backtrack.
Why were you following the girl?"

"I just wanted to see her. My Victim, he's worried--about who he
is, what's he done, what the officials know about him. He's afraid
he'll blemish her when the final indictment comes and all the newpa-
per stories. But the point is, he'll never be indicted. I'm going to kill
him first."

"You are. And then it actually might save her church, is that not
right? Your killing him speedily, so to speak. Or am I mistaken?"

"I wouldn't hurt her for anything on this earth. Nothing could
persuade me to do that." I sat silent for a moment.

"Are you sure you are not in love? You seem spellbound by her."

I was remembering. I had fallen in love only a short time ago with
a mortal woman, a nun. Gretchen had been her name. And I had
driven her mad. David knew the whole story. I'd written it; written
all about David, too, and he and Gretchen had passed into the world
in fictional form. He knew that.

"I would never reveal myself to Dora as I did with Gretchen," I
said. "No. I won't hurt Dora. I learnt my lesson. My only concern is
to kill her father in such a way that she experiences the least suffering
and the maximum benefit. She knows what her father is, but I'm not
sure she's prepared for all the bad things that could happen on
account of him."

"My, but you are playing games."

"Well, I have to do something to keep my mind off this Thing
that's following me or I'll go mad!"

"Shhhh . . . what's the matter with you? My God, but you're
rattled."

"Of course I am," I whispered.

"Explain more about the Thing. Give me more fragments."

"They're not worth repeating. It's an argument. It's about me, I
tell you. David, it's like God and the Devil are arguing about me."

I caught my breath. My heart was hurting me, it was beating so
fast, no mean feat for a vampiric heart. I rested back against the wall,
let my eyes range over the bar--middle-aged mortals mostly, ladies
in old-style fur coats, balding men just drunk enough to be loud and
careless and almost young.

The pianist had moved on into something popular, from the
Broadway stage, I think. It was sad and sweet, and one of the old
women in the bar was rocking slowly to the music, and mouthing
the words with her rouged lips as she puffed on a cigarette. She was
from that generation that had smoked so much that stopping now
was out of the question. She had skin like a lizard. But she was a
harmless and beautiful being. All of them were harmless and beautiful
beings.

My victim? I could hear him upstairs. He was still talking with his
daughter. Would she not take just one more of his gifts? It was a
picture, a painting perhaps.

He would move mountains for his daughter, this victim, but she
didn't want his gift, and she wasn't going to save his soul.

I found myself wondering how late St. Patrick's stayed open. She
wanted so badly to go there. She was, as always, refusing his money.
It's "unclean," she said to him now. "Roge, I want your soul. I can't
take the money for the church! It comes from crime. It's filthy."

The snow fell outside. The piano music grew more rapid and urgent.

Andrew Lloyd Webber at his best, I thought. Something from
Phantom of the Opera.

There was that noise again out in the lobby, and I turned abruptly
in my chair and looked over my shoulder, and then back at David. I

listened. I thought I heard it again, like a footstep, an echoing
footstep, a deliberately terrifying footstep. I did hear it. I knew I was
trembling. But then it was gone, over. There came no voice in my
ear.

I looked at David.

"Lestat, you're petrified, aren't you?" he asked, very sympathetically.

"David, I think the Devil's come for me. I think I'm going to
Hell."

He was speechless. After all, what could he say? What does a vampire
say to another vampire on such subjects? What would I have said
if Armand, three hundred years older than me, and far more wicked,
had said the Devil was coming for him? I would have laughed at him.
I would have made some cruel joke about his fully deserving it and
how he'd meet so many of our kind down there, subject to a special
sort of vampiric torment, far worse than mere damned mortals ever
experienced. I shuddered.

"Good God," I said under my breath.

"You said you've seen it?"

"Not quite. I was ... somewhere, it's not important. I think New
York again, yes, back here with him--"

"The victim."

"Yes, following him. He had some transaction at an art gallery.
Midtown. He's quite a smuggler. It's all part of his peculiar personality,
that he loves beautiful and ancient objects, the sort of tilings you
love, David. I mean, when I finally do make a meal of him, I might
bring you one of his treasures."

David said nothing, but I could see this was distasteful to him, the
idea of purloining something precious from someone whom I had
not yet killed but was surely to kill.

"Medieval books, crosses, jewelry, relics, that's the sort of thing
he deals in. It's what got him into the dope, ransoming church art
that had been lost during the Second World War in Europe, you
know, priceless statues of angels and saints that had been pillaged.
He's got his most valued treasures stashed in a flat on the Upper East
Side. His big secret. I think the dope money started as a means to an
end. Somebody had something he wanted. I don't know. I read his
mind and then I tire of it. And he's evil, and all those relics have no
magic, and I'm going to Hell."

"Not so fast," he said. "The Stalker. You said you saw something.
What did you see?"

I fell silent. I had dreaded this moment. I had not tried to describe
these experiences even to myself. But I had to continue. I had called
David here for help. I had to explain.

"We were outside, out there on Fifth Avenue; he--the Victim--
was traveling in a car, uptown, and I knew the general direction, the
secret flat where he keeps his treasures.

"I was merely walking, human style. I stopped at a hotel. I went
inside to see the flowers. You know, in these hotels you can always
find flowers. When you think you're losing your mind on account of
winter, you can go into these hotels and find lavish bouquets of the
most overwhelming lilies."

"Yes," he said with a little soft, halfhearted sigh. "I know."

"I was in the lobby. I was looking at this huge bouquet. I wanted
to ... to, ah ... leave some sort of offering, as if it were a church ...
to those who'd made this bouquet, something like that, and I was
thinking to myself, Maybe I should kill the Victim, and then ... I
swear this is the way it was, David--

"--the ground was gone. The hotel was gone. I wasn't anywhere
or anchored to anything, and yet I was surrounded by people, people
howling and chattering and screaming and crying, and laughing, yes,
actually laughing, and all this was happening simultaneously, and the
light, David, the light was blinding. This wasn't darkness, this wasn't
the cliched flames of the inferno, and I reached out. I didn't do this
with my arms. I couldn't find my arms. I reached out with everything,
every limb, every fiber, just trying to touch something, to regain
equilibrium, and then I realized I was standing on terra firma, and
this Being was in front of me, its shadow was falling over me. Look, I
don't have any words for this. It was horrific. It was very certainly the
worst thing I've ever seen! The light was shining behind it, and it
stood between me and this light and it had a face, and the face was
dark, extremely dark, and as I looked at it I lost all control. I must
have roared. Yet I have no idea if in the real world I made a sound.

"When I came to my senses, I was still there, in the lobby. Everything
looked ordinary, and it was as if I'd been in that other place for
years and years, and all sorts of fragments of memory were slipping
away from me, flying away from me, so fast that I couldn't catch any
one thought or finished proposition or suggestion.

"All I could remember with any certainty is what I just told you. I
stood there. I looked at the flowers. Nobody in the lobby noticed me.
I pretended everything was normal. But I kept trying to remember,

kept chasing these fragments, beset by bits and pieces of talk, or
threat or description, and I kept seeing very clearly this truly ugly
dark Being before me, exactly the sort of demon you'd create if you
wanted to drive someone right out of his reason. I kept seeing this
face and...."

"Yes?"

". . . I've seen him twice again."

I realized I was mopping my forehead with the little napkin the
waiter had given me. He'd come again. David placed an order. Then
he leant close to me.

"You think you've seen the Devil."

"There's not much else that could frighten me, David," I said.
"We both know that. There isn't a vampire in existence who could
really frighten me. Not the very oldest, not the wisest, not the cruelist.
Not even Maharet. And what do I know of the supernatural other
than us? The elementals, the poltergeists, the little addlebrained
spirits, we all know and see ... the things you called up with Candomble
witchcraft."

"Yes," he said.

"This was The Man Himself, David."

He smiled, but it was by no means unkind or unsympathetic. "For
you, Lestat," he teased softly, seductively, "for you, it would have to
be the Devil Himself."

We both laughed. Though I think it was what writers call a mirthless
laugh. I went on.

"The second time it was in New Orleans. I was near home, our
flat in the Rue Royale. Just walking. And I started to hear those steps
behind me, like something deliberately following me and letting me
know it. Damn it, I've done this to mortals myself and it's so vicious.
God! Why was I ever created! And then the third time, the Thing
was even closer. Same scenario. Huge, towering over me. Wings,
David. Either it has wings or I in my fear am endowing it with wings.
It is a Winged Being, and it is hideous, and this last time, I kept hold
of the image long enough to run from it, to flee, David, like a coward.
And then I woke up, as I always do, in some familiar place, where I
started actually, and everything's just the way it was. Nobody has a
hair out of place."

"And it doesn't talk to you when it appears like this?"

"No, not at all. It's trying to drive me crazy. It's trying to ... to
make me do something, perhaps. Remember what you said, David,
that you didn't know why God and the Devil had let you see them."

"Hasn't it occurred to you that it is connected with this victim
you're tracking? That perhaps something or someone does not want
you to kill this man?"

"That's absurd, David. Think of the suffering in the world to-
night. Think of those dying in Eastern Europe, think of the wars in
the Holy Land, think of what's happening in this very city. You think
God or the Devil gives a damn about one man? And our kind, our
kind preying for centuries on the weak and the attractive and the
unlucky. When has the Devil ever interfered with Louis, or Armand, or
Marius, or any of us? Oh, would that it were so easy to summon his
august presence and know once and for all!"

"Do you want to know?" he asked earnestly.

I waited, thought about it. Shook my head. "Could be something
explainable. I detest being afraid of it! Maybe this is madness. Maybe
that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get
you just as fast as you can think them up."

"Lestat, it is evil, you are saying that?"

I started to answer and then stopped. Evil.

"You said it was hideous; you described intolerable noise, and a
light. Was it evil? Did you feel evil?"

"Well, actually, no. I didn't. I felt the same thing I feel when I
hear those bits of conversation, some sort of sincerity, I suppose is
the word for it, sincerity and purpose, and I'll tell you something,
David about this Being, this Being who's stalking me--he has a
sleepless mind in his heart and an insatiable personality."

"What?"

"A sleepless mind in his heart," I insisted, "and an insatiable
personality," I had blurted out. But I knew it was a quote. I was quoting
it from something, but what I had no idea, some bit of poetry?

"What do you mean?" he asked patiently.

"I don't know. I don't even know why I said it. I don't even know
why those words came into my mind. But it's true. He does have a
sleepless mind in His heart, and He has an insatiable personality.
He's not mortal. He's not human!"

" 'A sleepless mind in his heart,' " David quoted the words.

"Insatiable personality."

"Yes. That's The Man, all right, the Being, the male Thing. No,
wait, stop, I don't know if it's male; I mean . . . why, I don't know
what gender it is ... it's not distinctly female, let's put it that way, and
not being distinctly female, it seems therefore ... to be male."

"I understand."

"You think I've gone mad, don't you? You hope so, don't you?"

"Of course I don't."

"You ought to," I said. "Because if this being doesn't exist inside
my head, if he exists outside, then he can get you too."

This made him very obviously thoughtful and distant and then he
said strange words to me I didn't expect.

"But he doesn't want me, does he? And he doesn't want the
others, either. He wants you."

I was crestfallen. I am proud, I am an egomaniac of a being; I do
love attention; I want glory; I want to be wanted by God and the
Devil. I want, I want, I want, I want.

"I'm not upbraiding you," he said. "I'm merely suggesting that
this thing has not threatened the others. That in all of these hundreds
of years, none of the others ... none that we know has ever spoken of
such a thing. Indeed, in your writing, in your books, you've been
most explicit that no vampire had ever seen the Devil, have you not?"

I admitted it with a shrug. Louis, my beloved pupil and fledgling,
had once crossed the world to find the "eldest" of the vampires, and
Armand had stepped forward with open arms to tell him that there
was no God or Devil. And I, half a century before that, had made my
own journey for the "eldest" and it had been Marius, made in the
days of Rome, who had said the very same thing to me. No God. No
Devil.

I sat still, conscious of stupid discomforts, that the place was
stuffy, that the perfume was not really perfume, that there were no
lilies in these rooms, that it was going to be very cold outside, and
I couldn't think of rest until dawn forced me to it, and the night
was long, and I was not making sense to David, and I might lose
him ... and that Thing might come, that Thing might come again.

"Will you stay near me?" I hated my own words.

"I'll stand at your side, and I'll try to hold on to you if it tries to
take you."

"You will?"

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

"Don't be foolish," he said. "Look, I don't know what I saw in the
cafe. Never again in my life did I ever see anything like that or hear it.
You know, I told you my story once. I went to Brazil, I learned the
Candomble secrets. The night you . . . you came after me, I tried to
summon the spirits."

"They came. They were too weak to help."

"Right. But. . . what is my point? My point is simply that I love
you, that we're linked in some way that none of the others is linked.
Louis worships you. You're some sort of dark god to him, though he
pretends to hate you for having made him. Armand envies you and
spies on you far more than you might think."

"I hear Armand and I see him and I ignore him," I said.

"Marius, he hasn't forgiven you for not becoming his pupil, I
think you know that, for not becoming his acolyte, for not believing
in history as some sort of redemptive coherence."

"Well put. That is what he believes. Oh, but he's angry with me
for much greater things than that, you weren't one of us when I woke
the Mother and the Father. You weren't there. But that's another
tale."

"I know all of it. You forget your books. I read your work as soon
as you write it, as soon as you let it loose into the mortal world."

I laughed bitterly. "Maybe the Devil's read my books too," I said.
Again, I loathed being afraid. It made me furious.

"But the point is," he said, "I'll stand with you." He looked down
at the table, drifting, the way he so often had when he was mortal,
when I could read his mind yet he could defeat me, consciously
locking me out. Now it was simply a barrier. I would never again know
what his thoughts felt like.

"I'm hungry," I whispered.

"Hunt."

I shook my head. "When I'm ready, I'll take the Victim. As soon
as Dora leaves New York. Soon as she goes back to her old convent.
She knows the bastard's doomed. That's what she will think after I've
done it, that one of his many enemies got him, that his evil came back
on him, very Biblical, when all the time it was just a species of killer
roaming the Savage Garden of the Earth, a vampire, looking for a
juicy mortal, and her father had caught my eye, and it's going to be
over, just like that."

"Are you planning to torture this man?"

"David. You shock me. What an impolite question."

"Will you?" he asked more timidly, more imploringly.

"I don't think so. I just want to...." I smiled. He knew now well
enough. Nobody had to tell him anymore about drinking the blood,
the soul, the memory, the spirit, the heart. I wouldn't know that
wretched mortal creature until I took him, held him against my chest,
opened up the only honest vein in his body, so to speak. Ah, too many
thoughts, too many memories, too much anger.

"I'm going to stay with you," he said. "Do you have rooms here?"

"Nothing proper. Find something for us. Find it close to ... close
to the cathedral."

"Why?"

"Well, David, you should know why. If the Devil starts chasing me
down Fifth Avenue, I'll just run into St. Patrick's and run to the High
Altar and fall on my knees before the Blessed Sacrament and beg God
to forgive me, not to sink me into the river of fire up to my eyes."

"You are on the verge of being truly mad."

"No, not at all. Look at me. I can tie my shoelaces. See? And my
tie. Takes some care, you know, to get it all around your neck and
into your shirt and so forth, and not look like a lunatic with a big scarf
around your neck. I'm together, as mortals so bluntly state it. Can
you find us some rooms?"

He nodded.

"There's a glass tower, right over there somewhere, beside the
cathedral. Monstrous building."

"The Olympic Tower."

"Yes, could you get us some rooms there? Actually I have mortal
agents who can do this sort of thing, I don't know why in the world
I'm whining like a fool in this place, asking you to take care of
humiliating particulars. . . ."

"I'll take care of it. It's probably too late tonight, but I can swing it
tomorrow evening. It will be under the name David Talbot."

"My clothes. There's a stash of them here under the name Isaac
Rummel. Just a suitcase or two, and some coats. It's really winter,
isn't it?" I gave him the key to the room. This was humiliating.
Rather like making a servant of him. Perhaps he'd change his mind
and put our new lodgings under the name of Renfield.

"I'll take care of it all. We'll have a palatial base of operations by
tomorrow. I'll see that keys are left for you at the desk. But what are
you going to be doing?"

I waited, I was listening for the Victim. Still talking to Dora. Dora
was leaving in the morning.

I pointed upwards. "Killing that bastard. I think I'll do it tomorrow
right after sunset if I can zone in on him quickly enough. Dora
will be gone. Oh, I am so hungry. I wish she'd take a midnight plane
out of here. Dora, Dora."

"You really like this little girl, don't you?"

"Yes. Find her on television sometime, you'll see. Her talent's
rather spectacular, and her teaching has that dangerous emotional
grip to it."

"Is she really gifted?"

"With everything. Very white skin, short black hair, bobbed, long
thin yet shapely legs, and she dances with such abandon, arms flung
out, rather makes one think of a whirling dervish or the Sufis in their
perfection, and when she speaks it's not humble precisely, it's full of
wonder and all very, very benign."

"I should think so."

"Well, religion isn't always, you know. I mean she doesn't rant
about the coming Apocalypse or the Devil coming to get you if you
don't send her a check."

He reflected for a moment, then said meaningfully, "I see how it
is."

"No, you don't. I love her, yes, but I'll soon forget her com-

pletely. It's just that. . . well, there's a convincing version of some-
thing there, and delicacy, and she really believes in it; she thinks Jesus
walked on this earth. She thinks it happened."

"And this thing that's following you, it's not connected in any way
with this choice of victim, her father?"

"Well, there is a way to find out," I said.

"How?"

"Kill the son of a bitch tonight. Maybe I'll do it after he leaves
her. My Victim won't stay here with her. He's too scared of bringing
danger to her. He never stays in the same hotel with her. He has
three different apartments here. I'm surprised he's stayed this long."

"I'm staying with you."

"No, go on, I have to finish this one. I need you, I really need you.
I needed to tell you, and to have you with me, the age-old venerable
human needs, but I don't need you at my side. I know you're thirsting.
I don't have to read your mind to feel that much. You starved as
you came here, so that you wouldn't disappoint me. Go prowl the
city." I smiled. "You've never hunted New York, have you?"

He shook his head in the negative gesture. His eyes were changing.

It was the hunger. It was giving him that dull look, like a dog who
had caught the scent of the bitch in heat. We all get that look, the
bestial look, but we are nothing as good as bestial, are we? Any of us.
I stood up. "The rooms in the Olympic Tower," I said. "You'll
get them so that they look down on St. Patrick's, won't you? Not too
high up, low if you can do it, so that the steeples are close."
"You are out of your brilliant preternatural mind."
"No. But I'm going out into the snow now. I hear him up there.
He's planning to leave her, he's kissing her, chaste and loving kisses.
His car is prowling around out front. He'll go way uptown to that
secret place of his where the relics are kept. He thinks his enemies in
crime and government know nothing of it, or believe it's just the junk
shop of a friend. But I know of it. And what all those treasures mean
to him. If he goes up there, I'll follow.... No more time, David."

"I've never been so completely confused," he said. "I wanted to
say God go with you."

I laughed. I leant to give him a quick kiss on the forehead, so swift
others would not make anything of it if they saw it, and then
swallowing the fear, the instantaneous fear, I left him.

In the rooms high above, Dora cried. She sat by the window

watching the snow and crying. She regretted refusing his new present
for her. If only. . . . She pushed her forehead against the cold glass
and prayed for her father.

I crossed the street. The snow felt rather good, but then I'm a
monster.

I stood at the back of St. Patrick's, watching as my handsome
Victim came out, hurriedly through the snow, shoulders hunched, and
plunged into the backseat of his expensive black car. I heard him give
the address very near to that junk-shop flat where he kept his treasures.
All right, he'd be alone up there for a while. Why not do it,
Lestat?

Why not let the Devil take you? Go ahead! Refuse to enter Hell in
fear. Just go for it.


2


I REACHED his house on the Upper East Side before he did.
I'd tracked him here numerous times. I knew the routine. Hirelings
lived on the lower and upper floors, though I don't think
they knew who he was. It wasn't unlike a vampire's usual
arrangement. And between those two flats was his long chain of rooms, the
second story of the town house, barred like a prison, and accessible
by him through a rear entrance.

He never had a car let him out in front of the place. He'd get out
on Madison and cut deep into the block to his back door. Or
sometimes he got out on Fifth. He had two routes, and some of the
surrounding property was his. But nobody--none of his pursuers--
knew of this place.

I wasn't even sure that his daughter, Dora, knew the exact loca-
tion. He'd never brought her there in all the months I'd been watch-
ing him, savoring and licking my lips over his life. And I'd never
caught from Dora's mind any distinct image of it.

But Dora knew of his collection. In the past, she had accepted his
relics. She had some of them scattered about the empty convent
castle in New Orleans. I'd sensed a glimmer or two of these fine things
the night when I'd pursued her there. And now my Victim was still
lamenting that she'd refused the latest gift. Something truly sacred,
or so he thought.

I got into the flat simply enough.

One could hardly call it a flat, though it did include a small lavatory,

dirty in the way barren, unused places become dirty, and then
room after room was crammed with trunks, statues, bronze figures,
heaps of seeming trash that no doubt concealed priceless discoveries.

It felt very strange to be inside, concealed in the small rear room,
because I had never done more than look through the windows. The
place was cold. When he came, he would create heat and light simply
enough.

I sensed he was only halfway up Madison in a crush of traffic, and
I began to explore.

At once, a great marble statue of an angel startled me. I came
round out of the door and almost ran smack into it. It was one of
those angels that used to stand inside church doors, offering holy
water in half shells. I had seen them in Europe and in New Orleans.

It was gigantic, and its cruel profile stared blindly into the shad-
ows. Far down the hall, the light came up from the busy little street
that ran into Fifth. The usual New York songs of traffic were coming
through the walls.

This angel was poised as if he had just landed from the skies to
offer his sacred basin. I slapped his bent knee gently and went around
him. I didn't like him. I could smell parchment, papyrus, various
kinds of metal. The room opposite appeared to be filled with Russian
icons. The walls were veritably covered with them and the light was
playing on the halos of the sad-eyed Virgins or glaring Christs.

I went on to the next room. Crucifixes. I recognized the Spanish
style, and what appeared to be Italian Baroque, and very early work
which surely must have been very rare--the Christ grotesque and
poorly proportioned yet suffering with appropriate horror on the
worm-eaten cross.

Only now did I realize the obvious. It was all religious art. There
was nothing that wasn't religious. But then it's rather easy to say that
about all art from the end of the last century backwards, if you think
about it. I mean, the great majority of art is religious.

The place was utterly devoid of life.

Indeed, it stank of insecticide. Of course, he had saturated it to
save his old wooden statues, he would have had to do that. I could not
hear or smell rats, or detect any living thing at all. The lower flat was
empty of its occupants, though a small radio chattered the news in a
bathroom.

Easy to blot out that little sound. On the floors above, there were
mortals, but they were old, and I caught a vision of a sedentary man,

with earphones on his head, swaying to the rhythm of some esoteric
German music, Wagner, doomed lovers deploring the "hated dawn"
or some heavy, repetitive, and distinctly pagan foolishness. Leitmotiv
be damned. There was another person up there, but she was too
feeble to be of any concern, and I could catch only one image of her and
she appeared to be sewing or knitting.

I didn't care enough about any of this to bring it into loving focus.
I was safe in the flat, and He'd be coming soon, filling all these rooms
with the perfume of his blood, and I'd do my damnedest not to break
his neck before I'd had every drop. Yes, this was the night.

Dora wouldn't find out until she got home tomorrow anyway.
Who would know that I'd left his corpse here?

I went on into the living room. This was tolerably clean; the room
where he relaxed and read and studied and fondled his objects. There
were his comfortable bulky couches, fitted with heaps of pillows, and
halogen lamps of black iron so delicate and light and modern and
easy to maneuver that they looked like insects poised on tables and on
the floor itself, and sometimes on top of cardboard boxes.

The crystal ashtray was full of butts, which confirmed he pre-
ferred safety to cleanliness, and I saw scattered glasses in which the
liquor had long ago dried to a glaze that was now flaked like lacquer.

Thin, rather frowsy drapes hung over the windows, making the
light soiled and tantalizing.

Even this room was jammed with statues of saints--a very lurid
and emotional St. Anthony holding a chubby Child Jesus in the crook
of his arm; a very large and remote Virgin, obviously of Latin
American origin. And some monstrous angelic being of black granite,
which even with my eyes I could not fully examine in the gloom,
something resembling more a Mesopotamian demon than an angel.

For one split second this granite monster sent the shivers through
me. It resembled ... no, I should say its wings made me think of the
creature I'd glimpsed, this Thing that I thought was following me.

But I didn't hear any footsteps here. There was no rip in the fabric
of the world. It was a statue of granite, that's all, a hideous ornament
perhaps from some gruesome church full of images of Hell and
Heaven.

Lots of books lay on the tables. Ah, he did love books. I mean,
there were the fine ones, made of vellum and very old and all that, but
current books, too, titles in philosophy and religion, current affairs,
memoirs of currently popular war correspondents, even a few
volumes of poetry.

Mircea Eliade, history of religions in various volumes, might have
been Dora's gift, and there, a brand-new History of God, by a woman
named Karen Armstrong. Something else on the meaning of life--
Understanding the Present, by Bryan Appleyard. Hefty books. But fun,
my kind, anyway. And the books had been handled. Yes, it was his
scent on these books, heavily his scent, not Dora's.
He had spent more time here than I ever realized.
I scanned the shadows, the objects, I let the air fill my nostrils.
Yes, he'd come here often and with someone else, and that person ...
that person had died here! I hadn't realized any of this before, of
course, and it was just more preparation for the meal. So the murderer
drug dealer had loved a young man in these digs once, and it
hadn't been all clutter. I was getting flashes of it in the worst way,
more emotion than image, and I found myself fairly fragile under the
onslaught. This death hadn't occurred all that long ago.

Had I passed this Victim in those times, when his friend was
dying, I would never have settled on him, just let him go on. But then
he was so flashy!

He was coming up the back steps now, the inner secret stairway,
cautiously taking each step, his hand on the handle of his gun inside
his coat, very Hollywood style, though there wasn't much else about
him that was predictable. Except, of course, that many who deal in
cocaine are eccentric.

He reached the back door, saw that I'd opened it. Rage. I slipped
over into the corner opposite that overbearing granite statue, and I
stood back between two dusty saints. There wasn't enough light for
him to see me right off. He'd have to turn on one of the little halogens,
and they were spots.

Right now, he listened, he sensed. He hated it that someone had
broken open his door; he was murderous and had no intention of not
investigating, alone; a little court case was held in his mind. No, no
one could possibly know about this place, the judge decided. Had to
be a petty thief, goddamn it, and those words were heaped in rage
upon the accidental.

He slipped the gun out, and he started going through his rooms,
through rooms I'd skipped. I heard the light switch, saw the flash in
the hall. He went on to another and another.

How on earth could he tell this place was empty? I mean, anyone
could be hiding in this place. I knew it was empty. But what made
him so sure? But maybe that's how he'd stayed alive all this time, he
had just the right mixture of creativity and carelessness.

At last came the absolutely delicious moment. He was satisfied he

was alone.

He stepped into the living-room door, his back to the long hall,
and slowly scanned the room, failing to see me, of course, and then
he put his large nine-millimeter gun back in his shoulder holster, and
he slipped off his gloves very slowly.

There was enough light for me to note everything I adored about
him.

Soft black hair, the Asian face that you couldn't clearly identify as
Indian or Japanese, or Gypsy; could even have been Italian or Greek;
the cunning black eyes, and the remarkably perfect symmetry of the
bones--one of the very few traits he'd passed on to his daughter,
Dora. She was fair skinned, Dora. Her mother must have been milk
white. He was my favorite shade, caramel.

Suddenly something made him very uneasy. He turned his back to
me, eyes quite obviously locked to some object that had alarmed him.
Nothing to do with me. I had touched nothing. But his alarm had
thrown up a wall between my mind and his. He was on full alert,
which meant he wasn't thinking sequentially.

He was tall, his back very straight, the coat long, his shoes those
Savile Row handmade kind that takes the English shops forever. He
took a step away from me, and I realized immediately from a jumble
of images that it was the black granite statue that had startled
him.

It was perfectly obvious. He didn't know what it was or how it had
gotten here. He approached, very cautious, as though someone
might be hiding in the vicinity of the thing, then pivoted, scanned the
room, and slowly drew out his gun again.

Possibilities were passing through his mind in rather orderly fashion.

He knew one art dealer who was stupid enough to have delivered
the thing and left the door unlocked, but that dealer would have
called him before ever coming.

And this thing? Mesopotamian? Assyrian? Suddenly, impulsively,
he forgot all practical matters and put his hand out and touched the
granite. God, he loved it. He loved it and he was acting stupid.

I mean, there could have been one of his enemies here. But then
why would a gangster or a federal investigator come bearing a gift
such as that?

Whatever the case, he was enthralled by the piece. I still couldn't
see it clearly. I would have slipped off the violet glasses, which would

have helped enormously, but I didn't dare move. I wanted to see this,
this adoration of his for the object that was new. I could feel his
uncompromising desire for this statue, to own it, to have it here ... the
very sort of desire which had first attracted him to me.

He was thinking only about it, the fine carving, that it was recent,
not ancient, for obvious stylistic reasons, seventeenth century
perhaps, a fleshed-out rendering of a fallen angel.

Fallen angel. He did everything but step on tiptoe and kiss the
thing. He put his left hand up and ran it all over the granite face and
the granite hair. Damn, I couldn't see it! How could he put up with
this darkness? But then he was smack up against it, and I was twenty
feet away and stuffed between two saints, without a good perspective.

Finally, he turned and switched on one of the halogen lamps.
Thing looked like a preying mantis. He moved the thin black iron
limb so the beam shone up on the statue's face. Now I could see both
profiles beautifully!

He made little noises of lust. This was unique! The dealer was of
no importance, the back door forgiven, the supposed danger fled. He
slipped the gun in the holster again, almost as if he wasn't even think
ing about it, and he did go up on tiptoe, trying to get eye level with
this appalling graven image. Feathered wings. I could see that now.
Not reptilian, feathered. But the face, classical, robust, the long nose,
the chin .. . yet there was a ferocity in the profile. And why was the
statue black? Maybe it was only St. Michael pushing devils into hell,
angry righteous. No, the hair was too rank and tangled for that.

Armour, breastplate, and then of course I saw the most telling details.
That it had the legs and feet of a goat. Devil.

Again there came a shiver. Like the thing I'd seen. But that was
stupid! And I had no sense of the Stalker being near me now. No disori-
entation. I wasn't even really afraid. It was just a frisson, nothing
more.

I held very still. Now take your time, I thought. Figure this out.
You've got your Victim and this statue is just a coincidental detail
that further enriches the entire scenario. He turned another halogen
beam on the thing. It was almost erotic the way he studied it. I
smiled. Erotic the way I was studying him--this forty-seven-year-old
man with a youth's health and a criminal's poise. Fearlessly he stood
back, having forgotten any threat of any kind, and looked at this new
acquisition. Where had it come from? Whom? He didn't give a damn
about the price. If only Dora. No, Dora wouldn't like this thing.
Dora. Dora, who had cut him to the heart tonight refusing his gift.

His entire posture changed; he didn't want to think about Dora

again, and all the things Dora had said--that he had to renounce
what he did, that she'd never take another cent for the church, that
she couldn't help but love him and suffer if he did go to court, that
she didn't want the veil.

What veil? Just a fake, he'd said, but one of the best he'd found so
far. Veil? I suddenly connected his hot little memory with something
hanging on the far wall, a framed bit of fabric, a painted Christface.
Veil. Veronica's veil.

And just an hour ago he'd said to Dora, "Thirteenth century, and
so beautiful, Dora, for the love of heaven. Take it. If I can't leave
these things to you, Dora...."

So this Christface had been his precious gift?

"I won't take them anymore, Daddy, I told you. I won't."

He had pressed her with the vague scheme that this new gift could
be exhibited for the public. So could all his relics. They could raise
money for the church.

She had started to cry, and all this had been going on back at the
hotel, whilst David and I had been in the bar only yards from them.

"And say these bastards do manage to pick me up, some warrant,
something I haven't covered, you're telling me you won't take these
things? You'll let strangers take them?"

"Stolen, Daddy," she had cried. "They are not clean. They are
tainted."

He really could not understand his daughter. It seemed he'd been
a thief ever since he was a child. New Orleans. The boardinghouse,
the curious mixture of poverty and elegance and his mother drunk
most of the time. The old captain who ran the antique shop. All this
was going through his mind. Old Captain had had the front rooms of
the house, and he, my Victim, had brought the breakfast tray each
morning to Old Captain, before going on to school. Boardinghouse,
service, elegant oldsters, St. Charles Avenue. The time when the men
sat on the galleries in the evening and the old ladies did, too, with
their hats. Daylight times I'd never know again.

Such reverie. No, Dora wouldn't like this. And he wasn't so sure
he did either, suddenly. He had standards which were often difficult
to explain to people. He began some defense as though talking to the
dealer who'd brought this. "It's beautiful, yes, but it's too Baroque! It
lacks that element of distortion that I treasure."

I smiled. I loved this guy's mind. And the smell of the blood, well.

I took a deliberate breath of it, and let it turn me into a total predator.
Go slowly, Lestat. You've waited for months. Don't rush it. And he's
such a monster himself. He'd shot people in the head, killed them
with knives. Once in a small grocery he had shot both his enemy and
the proprietor's wife with utter indifference. Woman in the way. And
he had coolly walked out. Those were early New York days, before
Miami, before South America. But he remembered that murder, and
that's why I knew about it.

He thought a lot about those various deaths. That's why I thought
about them.

He was studying the hoofed feet of this thing, this angel, devil,
demon. I realized its wings reached the ceiling. I could feel that
shiver again if I let myself. But again, I was on firm ground, and there
was nothing from any other realm in this place.

He slipped off his coat now, and stood in shirtsleeves. That was
too much. I could see the flesh of his neck, of course, as he opened his
collar. I could see that particularly beautiful place right below his ear,
that special measure between the back of the neck of a human and the
lobe of his ear, which has so much to do with male beauty.

Hell, I had not invented the significance of necks. Everyone knew
what those proportions meant. He was all over pleasing to me, but it
was the mind, really. To hell with his Asian beauty and all that, even
his vanity which made him glow for fifty feet in all directions. It was
the mind, the mind that was locked onto the statue, and had for one
merciful moment let thoughts of Dora go.

He reached for another one of the little halogen spots and
clamped his hand over the hot metal and directed it hill on the
demon's wing, the wing I could best see, and I too saw the perfection
he was thinking about, the Baroque love of detail; no. He did not
collect this sort of thing. His taste was for the grotesque, and this
thing was only grotesque by accident. God, it was hideous. It had a
ferocious mane of hair, and a scowl on its face that could have been
designed by William Blake, and huge rounded eyes that fixed on him
in seeming hatred.

"Blake, yes!" he said suddenly. He turned around. "Blake. The
damned thing looks like one of those drawings by Blake."

I realized he was staring at me. I had projected the thought,
carelessly, yes, obviously with purpose. I felt a shock of connection. He
saw me. He saw the glasses perhaps, and the light, or maybe my hair.

Very slowly I stepped out, with my arms at my sides. I wanted
nothing so vulgar as his reaching for his gun. But he hadn't reached
for it. He merely looked at me, blinded perhaps by the bright little

lights so near to him. The halogen beam threw the shadow of the
angel's wing on the ceiling. I came closer.

He said absolutely nothing. He was afraid. Or rather, let me say,
he was alarmed. He was more than alarmed. He felt this might very
well be his last confrontation. Someone had gotten by him totally!
And it was too late to be reaching for guns, or doing anything so
literal, and yet he wasn't actually in fear of me.

Damned if he didn't know I wasn't human.

I came swiftly towards him, and took his face in both my hands.
He went into a sweat and tremble, naturally, yet he reached up and
pulled the glasses off my eyes and they fell on the floor.

"Oh, it's gorgeous, finally," I whispered, "to be so very close to
you!"

He couldn't form words. No mortal in my grip like this could
have been expected to utter anything but prayers, and he had no
prayers! He stared right into my eyes, and then very slowly took my
measure, not daring to move, his face still fixed in both my cold, cold
hands, and he knew. Not human.

It was the strangest reaction! Of course I'd confronted
recognition before, in lands the world over; but prayer, madness, some
desperate atavistic response, something always accompanied it. Even in
old Europe where they believed in the nosferatu, they'd scream out a
prayer before I sank my teeth.

But this, what was this, his staring at me, this comical criminal
courage!

"Going to die like you lived?" I whispered.

One thought galvanized him. Dora. He went into a violent struggle,
grabbing at my hands, realizing they felt like stone, and then
convulsing, as he tried to pull himself loose, held mercilessly by the
face. He hissed at me.

Some inexplicable mercy came over me. Don't torture him like
this. He knows too much. Understands too much. God, you've had
months of watching him, you don't have to stretch this out. On the
other hand, when will you find another kill like this one!

Well, hunger overcame judgment. I pressed my forehead against
his neck first, shifting my hand to the back of his head, let him feel
my hair, heard him draw in his breath, and then I drank.

I had him. I had the gush, and him and Old Captain in the front

room, the streetcar crashing past outside, and him saying to Old
Captain, "You ever show it to me again or ask me to touch it and I
won't ever come near you." And Old Captain swearing he never
would. Old Captain taking him to the movies, and to dinner at the
Monteleone, and on the plane to Atlanta, having vowed never to do it
again, "Just let me be around you, son, just let me be near you, I'll
never, I swear." His mother drunk in the doorway, brushing her hair.
"I know your game, you and that old man, I know just what you're
doing. He bought you those clothes? You think I don't know." And
then Terry with the bullet hole in the middle of her face, a blond-
haired girl turning to the side and crumpling to the floor, the fifth
murder and it has to be you, Terry, you. He and Dora were in the
truck. And Dora knew. Dora was only six and she knew. Knew he'd
shot her mother, Terry. And they'd never, never spoken a word about it.
Terry's body in a plastic sack. Ah, God, plastic. And him saying,
"Mommy's gone." Dora hadn't even asked. Six years old, she knew.
Terry screaming, "You think you can take my daughter from me, you
son of a bitch, you think you can take my child, I'm leaving tonight
with Jake and she's going with me." Bang, you're dead, honey. I
couldn't stand you anyway. In a heap on the floor, the very flashy cute
kind of common girl with very oval pale pink nails, and lipstick that
always looks extraordinarily fresh, and hair from a bottle. Pink
shorts, little thighs.

He and Dora driving in the night, and they never had spoken a
word.

What are you doing to me! You are killing me! You are taking my blood,
not my soul, you thief, you . . . what in the name of God?

"You talking to me?" I drew back, blood dripping from my lips,
Good God, he was talking to me! I bit down again, and this time I did
break his neck, but he wouldn't stop.

Yes, you, what are you? Why, why this, the blood? Tell me, damn you
into hell! Damn you!

I had crushed the bones of his arms, twisted his shoulder out of
the socket, the last blood I could get was there on my tongue. I stuck
my tongue into the wound, give me, give me, give me. . . .

But what, what is your name, under God, who are you?

He was dead. I dropped him and stepped back. Talking to me!
Talking to me during the kill? Asking me who I was? Piercing the
swoon?

"Oh, you are so full of surprises," I whispered. I tried to clear my
head. I was warmly full of blood. I let it stay in my mouth. I wanted to
pick him up, tear open his wrist, drink anything that was left, but that

was so ugly, and the truth was, I had no intention of touching him
again! I swallowed and ran my tongue along my teeth, getting the last
taste, he and Dora in the truck, she six years old, Mommy dead, shot
in the head, with Daddy now forever.

"That was the fifth killing!" he'd said aloud to me, I'd heard him.
"Who are you?"

"Talking to me, you bastard!" I looked down at him, ooh, the
blood was just flooding my fingertips finally and moving down my
legs; I closed my eyes, and I thought, Live for this, just for this, for
this taste, this feeling, and his words came back to me, words to Dora
in a fancy bar, "I sold my soul for places like this."

"Oh, for Godsakes, die, damn it!" I said. I wanted the blood to
keep burning, but enough of him, hell, six months was plenty for a
love affair between vampire and human! I looked up.

The black thing wasn't a statue at all. It was alive. And it was
studying me. It was living and breathing and watching me under its
furious shining black scowl, looking down at me.

"No, not true," I said aloud. I tried to fall into the deep calm that
danger often produces in me. Not true.

I nudged his dead body on the floor deliberately just to be sure I
was still there, and not going mad, and in terror of the disorientation,
but it didn't come, and then I screamed.

I screamed like any kid.

And I ran out of there.

I tore out of there, down the hall, out of the back and into the
wide night.

I went up over the rooftops, and then in sheer exhaustion slipped
down in a narrow alley, and lay against the bricks. No, that couldn't
have been true. That was some last image he projected, my Victim;
he threw that image out in death, a sweet vengeance. Making that
statue look alive, that big dark winged thing, that goat-legged. . . .

"Yeah," I said. I wiped my lips. I was lying in dirty snow. There
were other mortals in this alley. Don't bother us. I won't. I wiped my
lips again. "Yeah, vengeance; all his love," I whispered aloud, "for all
the things in that place, and he threw that at me. He knew. He knew
what I was. He knew how...."

And besides, the Thing that stalked me had never been so calm, so
still, so reflective. It had always been swelling and rising like so much

thick, stinking smoke and those voices . . . That had been a mere
statue standing there.

I got up, furious with myself, absolutely furious for having fled,
for having passed up the last little trick involved in the whole kill. I
was furious enough to go back there, and kick his dead body and kick
that statue, which no doubt returned to granite the instant that
conscious life went completely out of the dying brain of its owner.

Broken arms, shoulders. As if from the bloody heap I'd made of
him, he'd called up that thing.

And Dora will hear about this. Broken arms, shoulders. Neck
broken.

I went out onto Fifth Avenue. I walked into the wind.

I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my wool blazer, which was far
too light to look appropriate in this quiet blizzard, and I walked and
walked. "All right, damn it, you knew what I was, and for a moment,
you made that thing look alive."

I stopped dead still, staring over the traffic at the dark snow-
covered woods of Central Park.

"If it is at all connected, come for me." I was talking not to him now,
or the statue, but to the Stalker. I simply refused to be afraid. I was
just completely out of my head.

And where was David? Hunting somewhere? Hunting ... as he
had so loved to do as a mortal man in the Indian jungles, hunting, and
I'd made him the hunter of his brothers forever.

I made a decision.

I was going back at once to the flat. I'd look at the damned statue,
and see for myself that it was utterly inanimate, and then I'd do what
I ought to do for Dora--that is, get rid of her father's corpse.

It took me only moments to get back, to be going up the narrow
pitch-dark back stairs again, and into the flat. I was past all patience
with my fear, simply furious, humiliated and shaken, and at the same
time curiously excited--as I always am by the unknown.

Stench of his freshly dead body. Stench of wasted blood.

I could hear or sense nothing else. I went into a small room which
had once been an active kitchen and still contained the remnants of
housekeeping from the time of that dead mortal whom the Victim
had loved. Yes, just what I wanted under the sink pipes where mortals

always shove it, a box of green plastic garbage sacks, just perfect for
his remains.

It suddenly hit me that he had chucked his murdered wife, Terry,
into such a bag, I'd seen it, smelled it, when I was feasting on him.
Oh, hell with it. So he'd given me the idea.

There were a few pieces of cutlery around, though nothing that
would allow a surgical or artistic job. I took the largest of the knives,
carbon-steel blade, and went into the living room, deliberately with
out hesitation, and turned and looked at the mammoth statue.

The halogens were still shining; bright, deliberate beams in the
shadowy clutter.

Statue; goat-legged angel.

You idiot, Lestat.

I went up to it and stood before it, looking coldly at the details.
Probably not seventeenth-century. Probably contemporary, executed
by hand, yes, but it had the utter perfection of something contempo
rary, and the face did have the William Blake sublime expression--an
evil, scowling, goat-legged being with the eyes of Blake's saints and
sinners, full of innocence as well as wrath.

I wanted it suddenly, would liked to have kept it, gotten it down
some way to my rooms in New Orleans as a keepsake for practically
falling down dead in fear at its feet. Cold and solemn it stood before
me. And then I realized that all these relics might be lost if I didn't do
something with them. As soon as his death was known, all this would
be confiscated, that was his whole point with Dora, that this, his true
wealth, would pass into indifferent hands.

And Dora had turned her narrow little back to him and wept, a
waif consumed with grief and horror and the worst frustration, the
inability to comfort the one she most loved.

I looked down. I was standing over his mangled body. He still
looked fresh, wrecked, murdered by a slob. Black hair very soft and
mussed, eyes half open. His white shirtsleeves were stained an evil
pinkish color from the little blood that oozed out of the wounds I'd
accidentally inflicted, crushing him. His torso was at a hideous angle
in relation to his legs. I'd snapped his neck, and snapped his spine.

Well, I'd get him out of here. I'd get rid of him, and then for a
long time no one would know. No one would know he was dead; and
the investigators couldn't pester Dora, or make her miserable. Then
I'd think about the relics, perhaps spiriting them away for her.

From his pockets I took his identification. All bogus, nothing with
his real name.

His real name had been Roger.

I knew that from the beginning, but only Dora had called him
Roger. In all his dealings with others, he'd had exotic aliases, with
odd medieval sounds. This passport said Frederick Wynken. Now
that amused me. Frederick Wynken.

I gathered all identifying materials and put them in my pockets to
be totally destroyed later.

I went to work with the knife. I cut off both his hands, rather
amazed at their delicacy and how well-manicured were his nails. He
had loved himself so much, and with reason. And his head, I hacked
that off, more through brute strength forcing the knife through ten-
don and bone than any sort of real skill. I didn't bother to close his
eyes. The stare of the dead holds so little fascination, really. It mimics
nothing living. His mouth was soft without emotion, and cheeks
smooth in death. The usual thing. These--the head, and the
hands--I put into two separate green sacks, and then I folded up the
body, more or less, and crammed it into the third sack.

There was blood all over the carpet, which I realized was only one
of many, many carpets layering this floor, junk-shop style, and that
was too bad. But the point was, the body was on its way out. Its decay
wouldn't bring mortals from above or below. And without the body,
no one might ever know what had become of him .. . best for Dora,
surely, than to have seen great glossy photographs of a scene such as I
had made here.

I took one last look at the scowling countenance of the angel,
devil, or whatever he was with his ferocious mane and beautiful lips
and huge polished eyes. Then, hefting the three sacks like Santa
Claus, I went out to get rid of Roger piece by piece.

This was not much of a problem.

It gave me merely an hour to think as I dragged myself along
through the snowy, empty black streets, uptown, searching for bleak
chaotic construction sights, and heaps of garbage, and places where
rot and filth had accumulated and were not likely to be examined
anytime soon, let alone cleared away.

Beneath a freeway overpass, I left his hands buried in a huge pile
of trash. The few mortals hovering there, with blankets and a little
fire going in a tin can, took no notice of what I did at all. I shoved the
plastic-wrapped hands so deep in the rubble no one could conceiv-
ably try to retrieve them. Then I went up to the mortals, who didn't

so much as look up at me, and I dropped a few bills down by the fire.
The wind almost caught the money. Then a hand, a living hand, of
course, the hand of one of these bums, flashed out in the firelight and
caught the bills and drew them back into the breathing darkness.

"Thanks, brother."

I said, "Amen."

The head I deposited in a similar manner much farther away. Back
door dumpster. Wet garbage of a restaurant. Stench. I took no last
look at the head. It embarrassed me. It was no trophy. I would never
save a man's head as a trophy. The idea seemed deplorable. I didn't
like the hard feel of it through the plastic. If the hungry found it,
they'd never report it. Besides, the hungry had been here for their
share of the tomatoes and lettuce and spaghetti and crusts of French
bread. The restaurant had closed hours ago. The garbage was frozen;
it rattled and clattered when I shoved his head deep into the mess.

I went back downtown, still walking, still with this last sack over
my shoulder, his miserable chest and arms and legs. I walked down
Fifth, past the hotel of the sleeping Dora, past St. Patrick's, on and
on, past the fancy stores. Mortals rushed through doorways beneath
awnings; cabbies blew their horns in fury at hulking, slow limousines.

On and on I walked. I kicked at the sludge and I hated myself. I
could smell him and hated this too. But in a way, the feast had been so
divine that it was just to require this aftermath, this cleaning up.

The others--Armand, Marius, all my immortal cohorts, lovers,
friends, enemies--always cursed me for not "disposing of the remains."

All right, this time Lestat was being a good vampire. He was
cleaning up after himself.

I was almost to the Village when I found another perfect place, a
huge warehouse, seemingly abandoned, its upper floors filled with
the pretty sparkle of broken windows. And inside it, refuse of every
description, in a massive heap. I could smell decayed flesh. Someone
had died in there weeks ago. Only the cold kept the smell from reach
ing human nostrils. Or maybe no one cared.

I went farther into the cavernous room--smell of gasoline, metal,
red brick. One mountain of trash stood as big as a mortuary pyramid
in the middle of the room. A truck was there, parked perilously close
to it, the engine still warm. But no living beings were here.

And there was decayed flesh aplenty in the largest pile. I reckoned
by scent at least three dead bodies, scattered through the rubble. Per
haps there were more. The smell was utterly loathsome to me, so I

didn't spend a great deal of time anatomizing the situation.

"Okay, my friend, I give you over to a graveyard," I said. I shoved
the sack deep, deep among the broken bottles, smashed cans, bits of
stinking fruit, heaps and stacks of cardboard and wood and trash. I
almost caused an avalanche. Indeed there was a small trash quake or
two and then the clumsy pyramid re-formed itself quietly. The only
sounds were the sounds of rats. A single beer bottle rolled on the
floor, a few feet free of the monument, gleaming, silent, alone.

For a long moment, I studied the truck; battered, anonymous,
warm engine, smell of recent human occupants. What did I care what
they did here? The fact is they came and went through the big metal
doors, ignoring or occasionally feeding this charnel heap. Most likely
ignoring it. Who would park next to one's own murder victims?

But in all these big dense modern cities, I mean the big-time cities,
the world-class dens of evil--New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong
you can find the strangest configurations of mortal activity.
Criminality had begun to fascinate me in its many facets. That's what
had brought me to him.

Roger. Good-bye, Roger.

I went out again. The snow had stopped falling. It was desolate
here, and sad. A bare mattress lay on the corner of the block, the
snow covering it. The streetlamps were broken. I wasn't certain
precisely where I was.

I walked in the direction of the water, to the very end of the island,
and then I saw one of those very ancient churches, churches that
went back to the Dutch days of Manhattan, with a little fenced
graveyard attached to it with stones that would read awesome statistics
such as 1704, or even 1692.

It was a Gothic treasure of a building, a tiny bit of the glory of St.
Patrick's, and possibly even more intricate and mysterious, a
welcome sight for all its detail and organization and conviction amid the
big-city blandness and wastes.

I sat on the church steps, rather liking the carved surfaces of the
broken arches, rather liking to sink back in the darkness against
sanctified stone.

I realized very carefully that the Stalker was nowhere about, that
tonight's deeds had brought me no visits from another realm, or
horifying footsteps, that the great granite statue had been inanimate,
and that I still had Roger's identification in my pocket, and this
would give Dora weeks, perhaps even months, before her peace of
mind was disturbed by her father's disappearance, and she would now

never know the details.

So much for that. The end of the adventure. I felt better, far better
than when I'd spoken with David. Going back, looking at that
monstrous granite thing, it had been the perfect thing to do.

Only problem was that Roger's stench clung to me. Roger. He'd
been "the Victim" until when? Now I was calling him Roger. Was
that emblematic of love? Dora called him Roger and Daddy and
Roge and Dad. "Darling, this is Roge," he'd say to her from Istanbul.
"Can you meet me in Florida, just for a few days. I have to talk to
you...."

I pulled out the phony identification. The wind was harsh and
cold, but no more snow, and the snow that was on the ground was
hardening. No mortal would have sat here like this, in this shallow
high broken arch of a church door, but I liked it.

I looked at this fake passport. Actually it was a complete set of
false papers, some of which I didn't understand. There was a visa for
Egypt. Smuggling from there, no doubt! And the name Wynken
made me smile again because it is one of those names that makes even
children laugh when they hear it. Wynken, Blinken, and Nod.
Wasn't that the poem?

It was a simple matter to tear all this into tiny fragments, and let it
blow away into the night, over the tiny upright stones of the small
graveyard. What a gust. It went like ashes, as if his identity had been
cremated and the final tribute was being paid.

I felt weary, full of blood, satisfied, and foolish now for having
been so afraid when I talked to David. David no doubt thought I was
a fool. But what had I really ascertained? Only that the Thing
stalking me wasn't particularly protective of Roger, the Victim, or had
nothing to do with Roger. Hadn't I already known this? It didn't
mean the Stalker was gone.

It just meant the Stalker chose his own moments and maybe they
had nothing to do with what I did.

I admired the little church. How priceless and ornate and
incongruous among the other buildings of lower Manhattan, except that
nothing in this strange city is exactly incongruous anymore because
the mix of Gothic and ancient and modern is so very thick. The
nearby street sign said Wall Street.

Was I at the very foot of Wall Street? I rested back against the
stones, closed my eyes. David and I would confer tomorrow night.
And what of Dora? Did Dora sleep like an angel in her bed in the
hotel opposite the cathedral? Would I forgive myself if I took one last

secret, safe, forlorn peek at Dora in her bed before letting go of the
whole adventure? Over.

Best to get the idea of the little girl out of my mind; forget the
figure moving through the huge dark corridors of that empty New
Orleans convent with the electric torch in hand, brave Dora. Not at
all like the last mortal woman I'd loved. No, forget about it. Forget
about it, Lestat, you hear me?

The world was full of potential victims, when you began to think
in terms of an entire life pattern, an ambience to an existence, a
complete personality, so to speak. Maybe I'd go back down to Miami if I
could get David to go with me. Tomorrow night David and I could
talk.

Of course he might be thoroughly annoyed that I'd sent him to
seek refuge in the Olympic Tower and was now ready to move south.
But then maybe we wouldn't move south.

I became acutely aware that if I heard those footsteps now, if I
sensed the Stalker, I'd be trembling tomorrow night in David's arms.
The Stalker didn't care where I went. And the Stalker was real.

Black wings, the sense of something dark accumulating, thick
smoke, and the light. Don't dwell on it. You have done enough
gruesome thinking for one night, haven't you?

When would I spot another mortal like Roger? When would I see
another light shining that bright? And the son of a bitch talking to
me through it all, talking through the swoon! Talking to me! And
managing to make that statue look alive somehow with some feeble
telepathic impulse, damn him. I shook my head. Had I brought that
on? Had I done something different?

By tracking Roger for months had I come to love him so much
that I was talking to him as I killed him, in some soundless sonnet of
devotion? No. I was just drinking and loving him, and taking him
into myself. Roger in me.

A car came slowly through the darkness, stopping beside me.
Mortals who wanted to know if I needed shelter. I gave a wave of my
head, turned, crossed the little graveyard, stepping on grave after
grave as I made my way through the headstones, and was off towards
the Village, moving so fast probably they could not have even seen
me go.

Imagine it. They see this blond young man in a double-breasted
navy-blue blazer, with a flaming scarf around his neck, sitting in the
cold on the steps of the quaint little church. And then the figure
vanishes. I laughed out loud, loving the sound of it as it went up the

brick walls. Now I was near music, people walking arm in arm,
human voices, the smell of cooking. There were young people about,
healthy enough to think that bitter winter could be fun.

The cold had begun to annoy me. To be almost humanly painful.
I wanted to go inside.


3


I WALKED on only a few steps, saw revolving doors, pushed
into the lobby of someplace or other, a restaurant I think, and
found myself sitting at the bar. Just what I wanted, half empty,
very dark, too warm, bottles glittering in the center of the circular
counter. Some comforting noise from the diners beyond the open
doors.

I put my elbows on the bar, my heels hooked on the brass rail. I sat
there on die stool shivering, listening to mortals talk, listening to
nothing, listening to the inevitable sloth and stupidity of a bar, head
down, sunglasses gone--damn, I had lost my violet glasses!--yes,
nice and dark here, very, very dark, a kind of late-night languor lying
over everything, a club of some sort? I didn't know, didn't care.
"Drink, sir?" Lazy, arrogant face.

I named a mineral water. And as soon as he set down the glass, I
dipped my fingers into it and washed them. He was gone already.
Wouldn't have cared if I had started baptizing babies with the water.
Other customers were scattered at tables in the darkness ... a woman
crying in some far-off corner and a man telling her harshly that she
was attracting attention. She wasn't. Nobody gave a damn.
I washed my mouth off with the napkin and water.
"More water," I said. I pushed the polluted glass away from me.
Sluggishly, he acknowledged my request, young blood, bland
personality, ambitionless life, then drifted off.

I heard a little laugh nearby . . . the man to my right, two stools
away, perhaps, who'd been there when I came in, youngish, scentless.
Utterly scentless, which was most strange.
In annoyance I turned and looked at him.
"Going to run again?" he whispered. It was the Victim.
It was Roger, sitting there on the stool.

He wasn't broken or battered or dead. He was complete with his
head and his hands. He wasn't there. He only appeared to be there,
very solid and very quiet, and he smiled at me, thrilled by my terror.
"What's the matter, Lestat?" he asked in that voice I so loved
after six months of listening to it. "No one in all these centuries has
ever come back to haunt you?"

I said nothing. Not there. No, not there. Material, but not the
same material as anything else. David's word. Different fabric. I
stiffened. That's a pathetic understatement. I was rigid with incredulity
and rage.

He got up and moved over onto the stool close to me. He was
getting more distinct and detailed by the second. Now I could catch
something like a sound coming from him, a sound of something alive,
or organized, but certainly no breathing human being.

"And in a few minutes more I'll be strong enough perhaps to ask
for a cigarette or a glass of wine," he said.

He reached into his coat, a favorite coat, not the one in which I'd
killed him, another coat made for him in Paris, that he liked, and he
drew out his flashy little gold lighter and made the flame shoot up,
very blue and dangerous, butane.

He looked at me. I could see that his black curly hair was combed,
his eyes very clear. Handsome Roger. His voice sounded exactly the
way it had when he was alive: international, originless, New Orleans-
born and world-traveled. No British fastidiousness, and no Southern
patience. His precise, quick voice.

"I'm quite serious," he said. "You mean in all these years, not one
single victim has ever come back to haunt you?"

"No," I said.

"You're amazing. You really won't tolerate being afraid for a
moment, will you?"

"No."

Now he appeared completely solid. I had no idea whether anyone
else could see him. No idea, but I suspected they could. He looked
like anyone might look. I could see the buttons on his white cuffs,
and the soft white flash of his collar at the back of the neck, where the
fine hair came down over it. I could see his eyelashes, which had
always been extraordinarily long.

The bartender returned and set down the water glass for me,
without looking at him. I still wasn't sure. The kid was too rude for
that to be proof of anything except that I was in New York.

"How are you doing this?" I asked.

"The same way any other ghost does it," he said. "I'm dead. I've
been dead for over an hour and a half now, and I have to talk to you!

I don't know how long I can stay here, I don't know when I'll start
to ... God knows what, but you have to listen to me."

"Why?" I demanded.

"Don't be so nasty," he whispered, appearing truly hurt. "You
murdered me."

"And you? The people you've killed, Dora's mother? She ever
come back to demand an audience with you?"

"Ooh, I knew it. I knew it!" he said. He was visibly shaken. "You
know about Dora! God in Heaven, take my soul to Hell, but don't let
him hurt Dora."

"Stop being absurd. I wouldn't hurt Dora. It was you I was after.
I've followed you around the world. If it hadn't been for a passing
respect for Dora, I would have killed you long before now."

The bartender had reappeared. This brought the most ecstatic
smile to my companion's lips. He looked right at the kid.

"Yes, my dear boy, let me see, the very last drink unless I'm very
badly mistaken, make it bourbon. I grew up in the South. What do
you have? No, I'll tell you what, son, just make it Southern
Comfort." His laugh was private and convivial and soft.

The bartender moved on, and Roger turned his furious eyes on
me. "You have to listen to me, whatever the Hell you are, vampire,
demon, devil, I don't care, you cannot hurt my daughter."

"I don't intend to hurt her. I would never hurt her. Go on to hell,
you'll feel better. Good night."

"You smug son of a bitch. How many years do you think I had?"
Droplets of sweat were breaking out on his face. His hair was moving
a little in the natural draft through the room.

"I couldn't give less of a damn!" I said. "You were a meal worth
waiting for."

"You've got quite a swagger, don't you?" he said acidly. "But
you're nothing as shallow as you pretend to be."

"Oh, you don't think so? Try me. You may find me 'as sounding
brass or a tinkling cymbal.' "

That gave him pause.

It gave me pause too. Where did those words come from? Why

did they roll off my tongue like that? I was not likely to use that sort
of imagery!

He was absorbing all this, my preoccupation, my obvious self-
doubt. How did it manifest itself, I wonder? Did I sag or fade slightly
as some mortals do, or did I merely look confused?

The bartender gave him the drink. Very tentatively now, he was
trying to put his fingers around it and lift it. He managed and got it to
his lips and took a taste. He was amazed, and thankful, and suddenly
so full of fear that he almost disintegrated. The illusion was almost
completely dispersed.

But he held firm. This was so obviously the person I had just
killed, hacked to pieces and buried all over Manhattan, that I felt
physically sick staring at him. I realized only one thing was saving me
from panic. He was talking to me. What had David said once, when
he was alive, about talking to me? That he wouldn't kill a vampire
because the vampire could talk to him? And this damned ghost was
talking to me.

"I have to talk to you about Dora," he said.

"I told you I will never hurt her, or anyone like her," I said.
"Look, what are you doing here with me! When you appeared, you
didn't even know that I knew about Dora! You wanted to tell me
about Dora?"

"Depth, I've been murdered by a being with depth, how
fortunate, someone who actually keenly appreciated my death, no?" He
drank more of the sweet-smelling Southern Comfort. "This was
Janis Joplin's drink, you know," he said, referring to the dead singer
whom I, too, had loved. "Look, listen to me out of curiosity, I don't
give a damn. But listen. Let me talk to you about Dora and about me.
I want you to know. I want you to really know who I was, not what
you might think. I want you to look out for Dora. And then there's
something back at the flat, something I want you.. .,"

"Veronica's veil in the frame?"

"No! That's trash. I mean, it's four centuries old, of course, but
it's a common version of Veronica's veil, if you have enough money.
You did look around my place, didn't you?"

"Why did you want to give that veil to Dora?" I asked.

This sobered him appropriately. "You heard us talking?"

"Countless times."

He was conjecturing, weighing things. He looked entirely
reasonable, his dark Asian face evincing nothing but sincerity and great
care.

"Did you say 'look out for Dora'?" I asked. "Is that what you
asked me to do? Look out for her? Now that's another proposition
and why the hell do you want to tell me the story of your life! You're
running through your personal afterdeath judgment with the wrong
guy! I don't care how you got the way you were. The things at the
flat, why would a ghost care about such things?"

This was not wholly honest on my part. I was being far too
flippant and we both knew it. Of course he cared about his treasures. But
it was Dora that had made him rise from the dead.

His hair was a deeper black now, and the coat had taken on more
texture. I could see the weave of the silk and the cashmere in it. I
could see his fingernails, professionally manicured, very neat and
buffed. Same hands I threw in the garbage! I don't think all these
details had been visible moments ago.

"Jesus Christ," I whispered.

He laughed. "You're more afraid than I am."

"Where are you?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "I'm sitting next to you.
We're in a Village bar. What do you mean, where am I? As for my
body, you know where you dumped the pieces of it as well as I."

"That's why you're haunting me."

"Absolutely not. Couldn't give less of a damn about that body.
Felt that way the moment I left it. You know all this!"

"No, no, I mean, what realm are you in now, what is it, where are
you, what did you see when you went. .. what.. .."

He shook his head with the saddest smile.

"You know the answer to all that. I don't know where I am.
Something's waiting for me, however. I'm fairly certain of that.
Something's waiting. Perhaps it's merely dissolution. Darkness. But it
seems personal. It's not going to wait forever. But I don't know how I
know.

"And I don't know why I'm being allowed to get through to you,
whether it's sheer will, my will, I mean, of which I have a great deal
by the way, or whether it's some sort of grant of moments, I don't

know! But I went after you-I followed you from the flat and back to it
and then out with the body and I came here and I have to talk to you.
I'm not going to go without a struggle, until I've spoken with you."

"Something's waiting for you," I whispered. This was awe. Plain
and simple. "And then, after we've had our chat, if you don't dissolve,
where exactly are you going to go?"

He shook his head and glared at the bottle on the center rack,
flood of light, color, labels.

"Tiresome," he said crossly. "Shut up."

It had a sting to it. Shut up. Telling me to shut up.

"I can't go looking out for your daughter," I said.

"What do you mean?" He threw an angry glance at me, and took
another sip of his drink, then gestured to the bartender for another.

"Are you going to get drunk?" I asked.

"I don't think I can. You have to look out for her. It's all going to
go public, don't you see? I have enemies who'll kill her, for no other
reason than that she was my child. You don't know how careful I've
been, and you don't know how rash she is, how much she believes in
Divine Providence. And then there's the government, the hounds of
government, and my things, my relics, my books!"

I was fascinated. For about three seconds, I'd utterly forgotten
that he was a ghost. Now my eyes gave me no evidence of it. None.
But he was scentless, and the faint sound of life that emanated from
him still had little to do with real lungs or a real heart.

"All right, let me be blunt," he said. "I'm afraid for her. She has to
get through the notoriety; enough time has to pass that my enemies
forget about her. Most of them don't know about her. But somebody
might. Somebody's bound to know, if you knew."

"Not necessarily. I'm not a human being."

"You have to guard her."

"I can't do such a thing. I won't"

"Lestat, will you listen to me?"

"I don't want to listen. I want you to go."

"I know you do."

"Look, I never meant to kill you, I'm sorry, it was all a mistake, I
should have picked someone. ..." My hands were shaking. Oh, how
fascinating all this would sound later, and right now I begged God, of
all people, please make this stop, all of it, stop.

"You know where I was born, don't you?" he asked. "You know
that block of St. Charles near Jackson?"

I nodded. "The boardinghouse," I said. "Don't tell me the story
of your life. There's no reason. Besides, it's over. You had your
chance to write it down when you were alive, just like anyone else.
What do you expect me to do with it?"

"I want to tell you the things that count. Look at me! Look at me,
please, try to understand me and love me and love Dora for me!
I'm begging you."

I didn't have to see his expression to understand this keen agony,
this protective cry. Is there anything under God that can be done to
us that will make us suffer as badly as seeing our child suffer? Our
loved ones? Those closest to us? Dora, tiny Dora walking in the
empty convent. Dora on a television screen, arms flung out, singing.

I must have gasped. I don't know. Shivered. Something. I couldn't
clear iny head for a moment, but it was nothing supernatural, only
misery, and the realization that he was there, palpable, visible,
expecting something from me, that he had come across, that he had
survived long enough in this ephemeral form to demand a promise
of me.

"You do love me," he whispered. He looked serene and intrigued.

Way beyond flattery, way beyond me.

"Passion," I whispered. "It was your passion."

"Yes, I know. I'm flattered. I wasn't run down by a truck in the
street, or shot by a hit man. You killed me! You, and you must be one
of the best of them."

"Best of what?"

"Whatever you call yourself. You're not human. Yet you are. You
sucked my blood out of my body, took it into your own. You're
thriving on it now. Surely you're not the only one." He looked away.
"Vampires," he said. "I saw ghosts when I was a boy in our house in
New Orleans."

"Everybody in New Orleans sees ghosts."

He laughed in spite of himself, a very short, quiet laugh. "I
know," he said, "but really I did and I have, and I've seen them in
other places. But I never believed in God or the Devil or Angels or
Vampires or Werewolves, or things like that, things that could affect
fate, or change the course of some chaotic-seeming rhythm that
governed the universe."

"You believe in God now?"

"No. I have the sneaking suspicion that I'll hold firm as long as I
can in this form--like all the ghosts I've ever glimpsed--then I'll
start to fade. I'll die out. Rather like a light. That's what's waiting for
me. Oblivion, And it isn't personal. It just feels that way because my
mind, what's left of it, what's clinging to the earth here, can't
comprehend anything else. What do you think?"

"It terrifies me either way or any way." I was not going to tell him
about the Stalker. I was not going to ask him about the statue. I knew
now he had had nothing to do with the statue seeming animate. He
had been dead, going up.

"Terrifies you?" he asked respectfully. "Well, it's not happening
to you. You make it happen to others. Let me explain about Dora."

"She's beautiful. I'll... I'll try to look out for her."

"No, she needs something more from you. She needs a miracle."

"A miracle?"

"Look, you're alive, whatever you are, but you're not human. You
can make a miracle, can't you? You could do this for Dora, it would
be no problem for a creature of your abilities at all!"

"You mean some sort of fake religious miracle?"

"What else? She's never going to save the world without a miracle
and she knows it. You could do it!"

"You're remaining earthbound and haunting me in this place to
make a sleazy proposition like this!" I said. "You're unsalvageable.
You are dead. But you're still a racketeer and a criminal. Listen to
yourself. You want me to fake some spectacle for Dora? You think
Dora would want that?"

He was flabbergasted, clearly. Much too much so to be insulted.

He put the glass down and sat there, composed and calm,
appearing to scan the bar. Looking dignified and about ten years younger

than he had been when I killed him. I don't guess anyone wants to
come back as a ghost except in beautiful form. It was only natural.
And I felt a deepening of my inevitable and fatal fascination, this, my
Victim. Monsieur, your blood is inside me!

He turned.

"You're right," he said in the most torn whisper. "You're absolutely
right. I can't make some deal with you to fake miracles for her.
It's monstrous. She'd hate it."

"Now you're talking like the Grateful Dead," I said.

He gave another litde contemptuous laugh. Then with a low sombre
emotion, he said, "Lestat, you have to take care of her ... for a
while,"

When I didn't answer, he persisted gently:

"Just for a little while, until the reporters have stopped, and the
horror of it is over; until her faith is restored, and she's whole and
Dora after all, and back to her life. She has her life, yet, She can't be
hurt because of me, Lestat, not because of me, it's not fair."

"Fair?"

"Call me by my name," he said. "Look at me."

I looked at him. It was exquisitely painful. He was miserable. I
didn't know whether human beings could express this same intensity
of misery. I actually didn't know.

"My name's Roger," he said. He seemed even younger now, as
though he were traveling backwards in time, in his mind, or merely
becoming innocent, as if the dead, if they are going to stick around,
have a right to remember their innocence.

"I know your name," I said. "I know everything about you, Roger.
Roger, the Ghost. And you never let Old Captain touch you; you just
let him adore you, and educate you, and take you places, and buy you
beautiful things, and you never even had the decency to go to bed
with him."

I said those things, about the images I'd drunk with his blood, but
without malice. I was just talking in wonder of how bad we all are, the
lies we tell.

He said nothing for the moment.

I was overwhelmed. It was grief veritably blinding me, and bitterness

and a deep ugly horror for what I had done to him, and to others,
and that I had ever harmed any living creature. Horror.

What was Dora's message? How were we to be saved? Was it the
same old canticle of adoration?

He watched me. He was young, committed, a magnificent semblance
of life. Roger.

"All right," he said, the voice soft and patient, "I didn't sleep with
Old Captain, you're right, but he never really wanted that of me, you
see, it wasn't like that, he was far too old. You don't know what it was
really like. You might know the guilt I feel. But you don't know later
how much I regretted not having done it. Not having known that
with Old Captain. And that's not what made me go wrong. It wasn't
that. It wasn't the big deception or heist that you imagine it to be. I
loved the things he showed me. He loved me. He lived two, three
more years, probably because of me. Wynken de Wilde, we loved
Wynken de Wilde together. It should have turned out different. I
was with Old Captain when he died, you know. I never left the room.
I'm faithful that way when I am needed by those I loved."

"Yeah, you were with your wife, Terry, too, weren't you?" It was
cruel of me to say this, but I'd spoken without thinking, seeing her
face again as he shot her. "Scratch that, if you will," I said. "I'm
sorry. Who in the name of God is Wynken de Wilde?"

I felt so utterly miserable. "Dear God, you're haunting me," I
said. "And I'm a coward in my soul! A coward. Why did you say that
strange name? I don't want to know. No, don't tell me--This is
enough for me. I'm leaving. You can haunt this bar till doomsday if
you want. Get some righteous individual to talk to you."

"Listen to me," he said. "You love me. You picked me. All I want
to do is fill in the details."

"I'll take care of Dora, somehow or other, I'll figure some way to
help her, I'll do something. And I'll take care of all the relics, I'll get
them out of there and into a safe place and hold on to them for Dora,
until she feels she can accept them."

"Yes!"

"Okay, let me go."

"I'm not holding you," he said.

Yes, I did love him. I did want to look at him. I did want him to tell
me everything, every last little detail! I reached out and touched his
hand. Not alive. Not human flesh. Something with vitality, however.

Something burning and exciting.

He merely smiled.

He reached across with his right hand and clamped his fingers
around my right wrist and drew near. I could feel his hair touching
my forehead, teasing my skin, just a loose wisp of hair. Big dark eyes
looking at me.

"Listen to me," he said again. Scentless breath.

"Yes... ."

He started talking to me in a low, rushed voice. He began to tell
me the tale.

4


THE POINT is, Old Captain was a smuggler, a collector. I
spent years with him. My mother had sent me to Andover,
then brought me home, couldn't live without me; I went to
Jesuit, I didn't belong with anyone or anywhere, and maybe Old
Captain was the perfect person. But Wynken de Wilde, that started
with Old Captain and the antiques he sold through the Quarter,
usually small, portable things.

"And I'll tell you right now, Wynken de Wilde amounts to nothing,
absolutely nothing, except a dream I had once, a very perverse
plan. I mean my lifelong passion--aside from Dora--has been
Wynken de Wilde, but if you don't care about him after this
conversation, no one will. Dora does not."

"What was this Wynken de Wilde all about?"

"Art, of course. Beauty. But I got it mixed up in my head when I
was seventeen that I was going to start a new religion, a cult--free
love, give to the poor, raise one's hand against no one, you know, a
sort of fornicating Amish community. This was of course 1964, the
time of the flower children, marijuana, Bob Dylan seeming to be
singing all the time about ethics and charity, and I wanted a new
Brethren of the Common Life, one in tune with modern sexual
values. Do you know who the Brethren were?"

"Yes, popular mysticism, late Middle Ages, that anyone could
know God."

"Yes! Ah, that you know such a thing."

"You didn't have to be a priest or monk."

"Exactly. And so the monks were jealous, but my concept of this
as a boy was all wound up with Wynken, whom I knew to have been
influenced by German mysticism and all those popular movements,
Meister Eckehart, et cetera, though he worked in a scriptorium and
still did old-fashioned parchment prayer books of devotion by hand.
Wynken's books were completely different from those of others. I
thought if I could find all Wynken's books I'd have it made."

"Why Wynken, what made him different?"

"Let me tell it my way. See, this is how it happened, the boarding-
house was shabby-elegant, you know the kind, my mother didn't get
her own hands dirty, she had three maids and an old colored man
who did everything; the old people, the boarders--they were on
hefty private incomes, limousines garaged around the Garden
District, three meals a day, red carpets. You know the house. Henry
Howard designed it. Late Victorian. My mother had inherited it
from her mother."

"I know it, I've seen it, I've seen you stop in front of it. Who owns
it now?"

"I don't know. I let it slip away. I ruined so many things. But
picture this: drowsy summer afternoon there, I'm fifteen and lonely, and
Old Captain invites me in, and there on the table in the second
parlour--he rents the two front parlours--he lives in a sort of
wonderland of collectibles and brass and such--"

"I see it."

"--and there are these books on the table, medieval books! Tiny
medieval prayer books. Of course, I know a prayer book when I see it;
but a medieval codex, no; I was an altar boy when I was very little,
went to Mass every day for years with my mother, knew liturgical
Latin as was required. The point is, I recognize these books as
devotional and rare, and something that Old Captain is inevitably going
to sell.

" 'You can touch them, Roger, if you're careful,' he tells me. For
two years, he had let me come and listen to his classical records, and
we'd taken walks together. But I was just becoming sexually
interesting to him, though I didn't know it, and it's got nothing to do with
what I have to say until later on.

"He was on the phone talking to somebody about a ship in the
harbour.

"Within a few minutes we were off to the ship. We used to go on
these ships all the time. I never knew what we were doing. It had to

be smuggling. All I remember is Old Captain sitting at a big round
table with all the crew, they were Dutch, I think, and some nice offi-
cer with a heavy accent giving me a tour of the engine room, the map
room, and the radio room. I never tired of it. I loved the ships. The
New Orleans wharves were active then, full of rats and hemp."

"I know."

"Do you remember those long ropes that ran from the ships to
the dock, how they had the round steel rat shields on them--disks of
steel that the rats couldn't climb over?"

"I remember."

"We get home that night and instead of going to bed as I would
have done, I beg him to let me come in and see those books. I have to
see them before he sells them. My mother wasn't in the hallway, so I
supposed she'd gone to bed.

"Let me give you an image of my mother and this boardinghouse.
I told you it was elegant, didn't I? You can imagine the furnishings,
heavy Renaissance revival, machine-made pieces, the kind that
junked up mansions from the 1880s on."

"Yes."

"The house has a glorious staircase, winding, set against a
stained-glass window, and at the foot of the stairs, in the crook of it,
this masterpiece of a stairs of which Henry Howard must have been
profoundly proud--in the stairwell--stood my mother's enormous
dressing table, imagine, and she'd sit there in the main hall, at the
dressing table, brushing her hair! All I have to do is think of that and
my head aches. Or it used to when I was alive. It was such a tragic
image, and I knew it, even though I grew up seeing it every day;
that a dressing table of marble and mirrors and sconces and
filigree, and an old woman with dark hair, does not belong in a formal
hallway...."

"And the boarders just took it in?" I asked.

"Yes, because the house was gobbled up for this one and that one,
Old Mister Bridey, living in what had once been a servants' porch,
and Blind Miss Stanton in the little fainting room upstairs! And four
apartments carved out of the servants' quarters in back. I am keenly
sensitive to disorder; you find around me either perfect order or the
neglected clutter of the place in which you killed me."

"I realize that."

"But if I were to inhabit that place again.... Ah, this is not important.

The point I'm trying to make is that I believe in order and when
I was young I used to dream about it. I wanted to be a saint, well, a
sort of secular saint. Let me return to the books."

"Go on."

"I hit the sacred books on the table. One of them I took from its
own little sack. I was charmed by the tiny illustrations. I examined
each and every book that night, planning to thereafter take my time.
Of course the Latin was unreadable to me in that form."

"Too dense. Too many pen strokes."

"My, you do know things, don't you?"

"Maybe we're surprising each other. Go on."

"I spent the week thoroughly examining all of them. I cut school
all the time. It was so boring. I was way ahead of everybody, and
wanted to do something exciting, you know, like commit a major
crime."

"A saint or a criminal."

"Yes, I suppose that does seem a contradiction. Yet it's a perfect
description."

"I thought it was."

"Old Captain explained things about the books. The book in the
sack was a girdle book. Men carried such books with them. And this
particular one was a prayer book, and another of the illuminated
books, the biggest and thickest, was a Book of the Hours, and then
there was a Bible in Latin, of course. He was casual about all of it."

"I was incredibly drawn to these books, can't tell you why. I have
always been covetous of things that are shining and bright and
seemingly valuable, and here was the most condensed and seemingly
unique version of such I'd ever beheld."

I smiled. "Yes, I know exactly."

"Pages full of gold, and red, and tiny beautiful little figures. I took
out a magnifying glass and started to study the pictures in earnest. I
went to the old library at Lee Circle--remember it?--and I studied
up on the entire question. Medieval books. How the Benedictines
had done them. Do you know Dora owns a convent? It isn't based
on the plan of St. Gall, but it's just about the nineteenth-century
equivalent."

"Yes, I saw it, I saw her there. She's brave and doesn't care about
the darkness or the aloneness."

"She believes in Divine Providence to the point of idiocy and she
can make something of herself only if she isn't destroyed. I want
another drink. I know I'm talking fast. I have to."

I gestured for the drink. "Continue, what happened, who's
Wynkende Wilde?"

"Wynken de Wilde was the author of two of these precious books
that Old Captain had in his possession. I didn't figure that out for
months. I was going over the little illustrations, and gradually I
determined two of the books were done by the same artist, and then in
spite of Old Captain insisting that there would be no signature, I
found his name, in several places in both books. Now you know
Captain sold these types of things. I told you. He dealt in them through a
shop on Royal Street."

I nodded.

"Well, I lived in terror of the day he was going to have to sell
these two books! These books weren't like the other books. First off,
the illustrations were exceedingly detailed. One page might contain
the motif of a flowering vine, with blossoms from which birds drank,
and in these blossoms there were human figures intertwined, as if in a
bower. Also, these were books of psalms. When you first examined
them you thought they were psalms of the Vulgate, you know, the
Bible we accept as canonical."

"Yes...."

"But they weren't. They were psalms that never appeared in any
Bible. I figured that much out, simply by comparing them to other
Latin reprints of the same period that I got out of the library. This
was some sort of original work. Then the illustrations, the illustrations
contained not only tiny animals and trees and fruit but naked
people, and the naked people were doing all sorts of things!"

"Bosch."

"Exactly, like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, that kind of lus-
cious sensuous paradise! Of course, I hadn't seen Bosch's painting yet
in the Pradp. But it was here in miniature in these books. Little figures
frolicking beneath the abundant trees. Old Captain said, 'Garden of
Eden imagery,' that it was very common. But two books full of
it? No. This was different. I had to crack these books, get an
absolutely clear translation of every word.

"And then Old Captain did the kindest thing for me he'd ever

done, the thing that might have made a great religious leader out of
me, and may still make one in Dora, though hers is wholly another
creed."

"He gave you the books."

"Yes! He gave me the books. And let me tell you more. That
summer, he took me all over the country to look at medieval manuscripts!
We went to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and the Newbury
Library in Chicago. We went to New York. He would have taken me
to England, but my mother said no.

"I saw all types of medieval books! And I came to know that
Wynken's were unlike any others. Wynken's were blasphemous and
profane. And nobody, nobody at any of these libraries had a book by
Wynken de Wilde, but the name was known!

"Captain still let me keep the books! And I set to work on translating
them right away. Old Captain died in the front room, the first
week of my senior year. I didn't even start school till after he was
buried. I refused to leave him. I sat there with him. He slipped into a
coma. By the third day of the coma, you could not have told who he
was, his face had so changed. He didn't close his eyes anymore, and
didn't know they were open, and his mouth was just a slack sort of
oval, and his breath came in even gasps. I sat there. I told you."

"I believe you."

"Yes, well, I was seventeen, my mother was very sick, there wasn't
any money for college, which every other senior boy at Jesuit was
talking about, and I was dreaming of flower children in the Haight
Ashbury of California, listening to the songs of Joan Baez, and
thinking that I would go to San Francisco with the message of Wynken de
Wilde, and found a cult.

"This was what I knew then through translation. And in that regard
I had had the help of an old priest at Jesuit for quite some time,
one of those genuinely brilliant Latin scholars who has to spend half
the day making boys behave. He had done the translation for me
gladly, and of course there was a little of the usual promise in it of my
proximity and intimacy, he and I being alone and close for hours."

"So you were selling yourself again, even before Old Captain
died?"

"No. Not really. Not the way you think. Well, sort of. Only this
priest was a genuine celibate, Irish, almost impossible to understand
now, this sort of priest. They never did anything to anyone. I doubt
they even masturbated. It was all being near boys and occasionally
breathing heavily or something. Nowadays religious life doesn't

attract that particular kind of robust and completely repressed
individual. A man like that could no more molest a child than he could get
up on the altar at Mass and start to shout."

"He didn't know he felt an attraction for you, that he was giving
you special favors."

"Precisely, and so he spent hours with me translating Wynken.
He kept me from going crazy. He always stopped in to visit with Old
Captain. If Old Captain had been Catholic, Father Kevin would have
given him the Last Rites, Try to understand this, will you? You can't
judge people like Old Captain and Father Kevin."

"No, and not boys like you."

"Also, my mother had a disastrous new boyfriend that last year, a
sugar-coated mock gentleman, actually, one of those people who
speaks surprisingly well, has overly bright eyes, and is obviously
rotten inside, and from a totally unconvincing background. He had too
many wrinkles in his youngish face; they looked like cracks. He
smoked du Maurier cigarettes. I think he thought he was going to
marry my mother for the house. You follow me?"

"Yes, I do. So after Old Captain died, you had only the priest."

"Right. Now you get it. Father Kevin and I worked a lot at the
boardinghouse, he liked that. He'd drive up, park his car on Philip
Street and come around and we'd go up to my room. Second floor,
front bedroom. I had a great view of the parades on Mardi Gras. I
grew up thinking that was normal, for an entire city to go mad two
weeks out of every year. Anyway, we were up there during one of the
night parades, ignoring it as natives can do, you know, once you've
seen enough papier-mache floats and trinkets and flambeaux--"

"Horrible, lurid flambeaux."

"Yes, you said it." He stopped. The drink had come and he was
gazing at it.

"What is it?" I asked him. I was alarmed because he was alarmed.
"Look at me, Roger. Don't start fading, keep talking. What did the
translation of the books reveal? Were they profane? Roger, talk to
me!"

He broke his frigid meditative stillness. He picked up the drink,
tossed down half of it. "Disgusting and I adore it. Southern Comfort
was the first thing I ever drank when I was a boy."

He looked at me, directly.

"I'm not fading," he assured me. "It's just I saw and smelled the
house again. You know? The smell of old people's rooms, the rooms
in which people die. But it was so lovely. What was I saying? All
right, it was during Proteus, one of the night parades, that Father
Kevin made the incredible breakthrough that both these books had
been dedicated by Wynken de Wilde to Blanche De Wilde, his
patron, and that she was obviously the wife to his good brother,
Damien; it was all embedded in the designs of the first few pages.
And that threw an entirely different light on the psalms. The psalms
were filled with lascivious invitations and suggestions and possibly
even some sort of secret codes for clandestine meetings. Over and
over again there appeared paintings of the same little garden--
understand we're talking miniatures here--"

"I've seen many examples."

"And in these little tiny pictures of the garden there would always
be one naked man and five women dancing around a fountain within
the walls of a medieval castle, or so it seemed. Magnify it five times
and it was just perfect. And Father Kevin began to laugh and laugh.

" 'No wonder there isn't a single saint or biblical scene in any of
this,' Father Kevin said, laughing. 'Your Wynken de Wilde was a
raving heretic! He was a witch or a diabolist. And he was in love with this
woman, Blanche.' He wasn't shocked so much as amused.

" 'You know, Roger,' he said, 'if you did get in touch with one of
the auction houses, very likely these books could put you through
Loyola, or Tulane. Don't think of selling them down here. Think
about New York; Butterfield and Butterfield, or Sotheby's.'

"He had in the last two years copied out by hand about thirty-five
different poems for me in English, the best sort of translation--
straight prose from the Latin--and now we went over them, tracing
repetitions and imagery, and a story began to emerge.

"First thing we realized was that there had been many books
originally, and what we possessed were the first and third. By the third,
the psalms reflected not mere adoration for Blanche, who was again
and again compared to the Virgin Mary in her purity and brightness,
but also answers to some sort of correspondence about what the lady
was suffering at the hands of her spouse.

"It was clever. You have to read it. You have to go back to the flat
where you killed me and get those books."

"Which means you didn't sell them to go to Loyola or Tulane?"

"Of course not. Wynken, having orgies with Blanche and her four
friends! I was fascinated. Wynken was my saint by virtue of his talent,

and sexuality was my religion because it had been Wynken's and in
every philosophical word he wrote he encoded a love of the flesh!
You have to realize I didn't believe any orthodox creed really, I never
had. I thought the Catholic Church was dying. And that
Protestantism was a joke. It was years before I understood that the Protestant
approach is fundamentally mystic, that it is aiming for the very
oneness with God that Meister Eckehart would have praised or that
Wynken wrote about."

"You are being generous to the Protestant approach. And
Wynken did write about oneness with God?"

"Yes, through union with the women! It was cautious but clear;
'In thine arms I have known the Trinity more truly than men can
teach,' like that. Oh, this was the new way, I was sure. But then I
knew Protestantism only as materialism, sterility and Baptist tourists
who got drunk on Bourbon Street because they could not dare do it
in their hometowns."

"When did you change your opinion?" I asked.

"I'm speaking in broad generalities. I mean, I saw no hope for
religions in existence in the West at our time. Dora feels very much
the same, but we'll come to Dora."

"Did you finish the entire translation?"

"Yes; just before Father Kevin was transferred. I never saw him
again. He did write to me later, but by that time I had run away from
home.

"I was in San Francisco. I'd left without my mother's blessing, and
taken the Trailways Bus because it was a few cents cheaper than the
Greyhound. I didn't have seventy-five dollars in my pocket. I'd
squandered everything Captain ever gave me. And when he died, did
those relatives of his from Jackson, Mississippi, ever clean out those
rooms!

"They took everything. I always thought Captain had left some-
thing for me, you know. But I didn't care. The books were his
greatest gift and all those luncheons at the Monteleone Hotel when we
had had gumbo together, and he let me break up all my saltine
crackers in the gumbo till it was porridge. I just loved it."

"What was I saying? I bought the ticket to California and saved a
small balance for pie and coffee at each stop. A funny thing
happened. We came to a point of no return. That is, when we passed
through some town in Texas I realized I didn't have enough money
to go back home, even if I wanted to. It was the middle of the night. I
think it was El Paso! Anyway, then I knew there was no going back."

"But I was headed for San Francisco and the Haight Asbury, and I
was going to found a cult based on the teachings of Wynken in praise
of love and union and claiming that sexual union was godlike union
and I would show his books to my followers. It was my dream, though
to tell you the truth, I had no personal feeling about God at all."

"Within three months, I had discovered that my credo was by no
means unique. The entire city was full of hippies who believed in free
love, and panhandling, and though I gave regular lectures to large
loose circles of friends on Wynken, holding up the books and
reciting the psalms--these are very tame, of course--"

"I can imagine."

"--my principle job was that of business manager and boss of
three rock musicians who wanted to become famous and were too
stoned to remember their bookings, or collect the proceeds at the
door. One of them, Blue, we called him, could really sing well. He
had a high tenor, and quite a range. The band had a sound. Or at least
we thought it did."

"Father Kevin's letter found me when I was living up in the attic
of the Spreckles Mansion on Buena Vista Park, do you know that
house?"

"I do know it. It's a hotel."

"Exactly, and it was a private home in those days, and the top
floor had a ballroom with bath and kitchenette. This was well before
any restoration. Nobody had invented 'bed and breakfast,' and I just
rented the ballroom and the musicians played there and we all used
the filthy bath and kitchen, and in the day, when they were asleep all
over the floor, I'd dream about Wynken and think about Wynken
and wonder how I would ever find out more about this man and what
these love poems were. I had all sorts of fantasies about him."

"That attic, I wonder about it now. It had windows at three points
of the compass, and deep window seats with tattered old velvet
cushions. You could see San Francisco in every direction but east as
I remember, but I don't have a good sense of direction. We loved to sit in
those window alcoves and talk and talk. My friends loved to hear
about Wynken. We were going to write some songs based on
Wynken's poems. Well, that never happened."

"Obsessed."

"Completely. Lestat, you must go back for those books, no matter
what you believe of me when we're finished here. All of them are in
the flat. Every single one that Wynken ever did. It was my life's work

to get those books, I got into dope for those books. Even back in the
Haight."

"I was telling you about Father Kevin. He wrote me a letter, said
that he had looked up Wynken de Wilde in some manuscripts and
found that Wynken had been the executed leader of a heretical cult.
Wynken de Wilde had a religion of strictly female followers, and his
works were officially condemned by the church. Father Kevin said all
that was 'history,' and I ought to sell the books. He'd write more
later. He never did. And two months later I committed multi-murder
completely on the spur of the moment, and it changed the course of
things."

"The dope you were dealing?"

"Sort of, only I wasn't the one who made the slipup. Blue dealt
more than me. Blue carried around grass in suitcases. I was into little
sacks of it, you know, it made just about as much as the band made for
me. But Blue bought by the kilo and lost two kilos. Nobody knew
what happened to them. He actually lost them in a taxi, we figured,
but we never knew.

"There were a lot of stupid kids walking around then. They would
get into dealing never realizing that the supply was originating with
some vicious individual who thought nothing of shooting people in
the head. Blue thought he could talk his way out of it, he'd make
some explanation, he'd been ripped off by friends, that sort of thing.
His connections trusted him, he said, they'd even given him a gun."

"The gun was in the kitchen drawer, and they'd told him they
might need him to use it sometime, but of course he would never do
that. I guess when you are that stoned, you think everybody else is
stoned. These men, he said, they were just heads like us, nothing to
worry about, that had been just talk. We would all be as famous as Big
Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin very soon."

"They came for him during the day. I was the only one home,
except for him."

"He was in the big room, the ballroom, at the front door, giving
these two men the runaround. I was out of sight in the kitchen,
hardly listening. I might have been studying Wynken, I'm not sure.
Anyway, very gradually I realized what they were talking about out
there in the ballroom."

"These two men were going to kill Blue. They kept telling him in
very flat voices that everything was okay, and please come with them,
and come on, they had to go, and no, he had to come now, and no, he
had to come along quickly. And then one of them said in a very low,
vicious voice, 'Come on, man!' And for the first time Blue stopped

jabbering in hippie platitudes, like it will all come around, man, and I
have done no evil, man, and there was this silence, and I knew they
were going to take Blue and shoot him and dump him. This had already
happened to kids! It had been in the papers. I felt the hair stand
up on the back of my neck. I knew Blue didn't have a chance."

"I didn't think about what I was doing. I completely forgot about
the gun in the kitchen drawer. This surge of energy overtook me. I
walked into the big room. Both these men were older, hard-looking
guys, not hippies, nothing hippified about them. They weren't even
Hell's Angels. They were just killers. And both sort of visibly sagged
when they discovered there was an impediment to dragging my
friend out of the room."

"Now, you know me, that I am as tame as you are probably, and
then I was truly convinced of any special nature and destiny, and I
came glistening and flashing towards these two men, you know,
throwing off sparks, making a dance out of the walk. If I had any idea
in my head, it was this: If Blue could die, that would mean I could die.
And I couldn't let something like that be proven to me then, you
know?"

"I can see it."

"I started talking to these characters very fast, chattering in a kind
of intense, pretentious manner, as if I were a psychedelic
philosopher, throwing out four-syllable words and walking right towards
them all the time, lecturing them on violence, and implying that they
had disturbed me and 'all the others' in the kitchen. We were having
a class out there, me and the others."

"And suddenly one of them reached into his coat and pulled out
his gun. I think he thought it would be a slam dunk. I can remember
this so distinctly. He simply pulled out the gun and pointed it at me.
And by the time he had it aimed, I had both hands on it, and I yanked
it away from him, kicked him as hard as I could, and shot and killed
both men."

Roger paused.

I didn't say anything. I was tempted to smile. I liked it. I only
nodded. Of course it had begun that way with him, why hadn't I
realized it? He hadn't instinctively been a killer; he would never have
been so interesting if that had been the case.

"That quick, I was a killer," he said. "That quick. And a smashing
success at it, no less, imagine."

He took another drink and looked off, deep into the memory of it.
He seemed securely anchored in the ghost body now, revved up like

an engine.

"What did you dp then?" I asked.

"Well, that's when the course of my life changed. First I was
going to go to the police, going to call the priest, going to go to hell,
phone my mother, my life was over, call Father Kevin, flush all the
grass down the toilet, life finished, scream for the neighbors, all of
that."

"Then I just closed the door and Blue and I sat down and for
about an hour I talked. Blue said nothing. I talked. I prayed,
meanwhile, that nobody had been in a car outside waiting for those two,
but if there came a knock I was ready because I had their gun now,
and it had lots of bullets, and I was sitting directly opposite the door."

"And as I talked and waited and watched and let the two bodies lie
there, and Blue simply stared into space as if it had been a bad LSD
trip, I talked myself into getting the hell out of there. Why should I
go to jail for the rest of my life for those two? Took about an hour of
expressed logic."

"Right."

"We cleaned out that pad immediately, took everything that had
belonged to us, called the other two musicians, got them to pick up
their stuff at the bus station. Said it was a drug bust coming down.
They never knew what happened. The place was so full of
fingerprints from all our parties and orgies and late-night jam sessions,
nobody would ever find us. None of us had ever been printed. And
besides, I kept the gun.

"And I did something else, too, I took the money off the men.
Blue didn't want any of it, but I needed bucks to get out of there."

"We split up. I never saw Blue again. I never saw Ollie or Ted, the
other two. I think they went to L.A. to make it big. I think Blue
probably became a drug crazy. I'm not sure. I went on. I was totally
different from the instant it happened. I was never the same again."

"What made you different?" I asked. "What was the source of the
change in you, I mean, what in particular? That you'd enjoyed it?"

"No, not at all. It was no fun. It was a success. But it wasn't fun.
I've never found it fun. It's work, killing people, it's messy. It's hard
work. It's fun for you to kill people, but then you're not human. No, it
wasn't that. It was the fact that it had been possible to do it, to just
walk up to that son of a bitch and make the most unexpected gesture,
to just take that gun from him like that, because it was the last thing
he ever expected could happen, and then to kill them both without

hesitation. They must have died with surprise."

"They thought you were kids."

"They thought we were dreamers! And I was a dreamer, and all
the way to New York I kept thinking, I do have a great destiny, I am
going to be great, and this power, this power to simply shoot down
two people had been the epiphany of my strength!"

"From God, this epiphany."

"No, from fate, from destiny. I told you I never really had any
feeling for God. You know they say in the Catholic Church that if
you don't feel a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, well, they fear
for your soul. I never had any devotion to her. I never had any
devotion to any real personal deity or saint. I never felt it. That's why
Dora's development surprised me in that particular, that Dora is so
absolutely sincere. But we'll get to that. By the time I got to New
York, I knew my cult was to be of this world, you know, lots of
followers and power and lavish comforts and the licentiousness of this
world."

"Yes, I see."

"That had been Wynken's vision. Wynken had communicated
this to his women followers, that there was no point in waiting until
the next world. You had to do everything now, every kind of sin ...
this was a common conception of heretics, wasn't it?"

"Yes, of some. Or so their enemies said."

"The next killing I did purely for money. It was a contract. I was
the most ambitious boy in town. I was managing some other band
again, a bunch of no-accounts, we weren't making it, though other
rock stars were making it overnight. I was into dope again, and was
being a hell of a lot smarter about it, and developing a personal
distaste for it. This was the real early days, when people flew the
grass across the border in little planes, and it was almost like cowboy
adventures."

"And the word came down that this particular man was on the shit
list of a local power broker who'd pay anyone thirty thousand dollars
for the killing. The guy himself was particularly vicious. Everybody
was scared of him. He knew they wanted to kill him. He was walking
around in broad daylight and everyone was scared to make a move."

"I guess everybody else figured that somebody else would do it.
How connected these people were to what and to whom I had no
idea. I just knew the guy was game, you know? I made sure."

"I figured a way to do it. I was nineteen by then-I dressed up like
a college boy in a crew-neck sweater, a blazer, flannel slacks, had my
hair cut Princeton style, and carried a few books with me. I found out
where the man lived on Long Island, and walked right up to him in
his back driveway as he got out of his car one evening, and shot him
dead five feet from where his wife and kids were eating dinner
inside."

He paused again, and then said with perfect gravity, "It takes a
special kind of animal to do something so vicious. And not to feel any
remorse."

"You didn't torture him the way I tortured you," I said softly.

"You know everything you've done, don't you? You really understand!

"I didn't get the whole picture when I was following you. I
imagined you were more intimately perverse, wrapped up in your
own romance. An arch self-deceiver."

"Was that torture, what you did to me?" he asked. "I don't remember
pain being involved in it, only fury that I was going to die.
Whatever the case, I killed this man in Long Island for money. It
meant nothing to me. I didn't even feel relief afterwards, only a kind
of strength, you know, of accomplishment, and I wanted to test it
again soon and I did."

"And you were on your way."

"Absolutely. And in my style too. The word was out. If the task
seems impossible, get Roger. I could get into a hospital dressed like a
young doctor, with a name tag on my coat and a clipboard in my
hand, and shoot some marked guy dead in his bed before anyone was
the wiser. I did that, in fact."

"But understand, I didn't make myself rich as a hit man. It was
heroin first, and then cocaine, and with the cocaine it was going back
to some of the very same cowboys I'd known in the beginning, who
flew the cocaine over the border same fashion, same routes, same
planes! You know the history of it. Everyone does today. The early
dope dealers were crude in their methods. It was 'cops and robbers'
with the government guys. The planes would outrun the government
planes, and when the planes landed, sometimes they were so stuffed
with cocaine the driver couldn't wriggle out of the cockpit, and we'd
run out and get the stuff, and load it up and get the hell out of there."

"So I've heard."

"Now there are geniuses in the business, people who know how to
use cellular phones and computers and laundering techniques for

money which no one can trace. But then? I was the genius of the
dopers! Sometimes the whole thing was as cumbersome as moving
furniture, I tell you. And I went in there, organizing, picking my con-
fidants and my mules, you know, for crossing the borders, and even
before cocaine ever hit the streets, so to speak, I was doing beautifully
in New York and L.A. with the rich, you know, the kind of customers
to whom you deliver personally. They never have to even leave their
palatial homes. You get the call. You show up. Your stuff is pure.
They like you. But I had to move out from there. I wasn't going to be
dependent upon that."

"I was too clever. I made some real-estate deals that were pure
brilliance on my part, and having the cash on hand, and you know
those were the days of hellish inflation. I really cleaned up."

"But how did Terry get involved in it, and Dora?"

"Pure fluke. Or destiny. Who knows? Went home to New Or-
leans to see my mother, brushed up against Terry and got her preg-
nant. Damned fool."

"I was twenty-two, my mother was really dying this time. My
mother said, 'Roger, please come home.' That stupid boyfriend with
die cracked face had died. She was all alone. I'd been sending her
plenty of money all along."

''The boardinghouse was now her private home, she had two
maids and a driver to take her around town in a Cadillac whenever
she felt the desire. She'd enjoyed it immensely, never asking any
questions about the money, and of course I'd been collecting
Wynken. I had two more books of Wynken by that time and my
treasure storehouse in New York already, but we can get to that later on.
Just keep Wynken in the back of your mind."

"My mother had never really asked me for anything. She had the
big bedroom upstairs now to herself. She said she talked to all the
others who had gone on ahead, her poor old sweet dead brother
Mickey, and her dead sister, Alice, and her mother, the Irish maid--
the founder of our family, you might say--to whom the house had
been willed by the crazy lady who lived there. My mother was also
talking a lot to Little Richard. That was a brother that died when he
was four. Lockjaw- Little Richard. She said Little Richard was
walking around with her, telling her it was time to come."

"But she wanted me to come home. She wanted me there in that
room. I knew all this. I understood. She had sat with boarders that
were dying. I had sat with others than Old Captain. So I went home."

"Nobody knew where I was headed, or what my real name was, or
where I came from. So it was easy to slip out of New York. I went to

the house on St. Charles Avenue and sat in the sickroom with her,
holding the little vomit cup to her chin, wiping her spittle, and trying
to get her on the bedpan when the agency didn't have a nurse to send.
We had help, yes, but she didn't want the help, you know. She didn't
want the colored girl, as she called her. Or that horrible nurse. And I
made the amazing discovery that these things didn't disgust me
much. I washed so many sheets. Of course there was a machine to put
them in, but I changed them over and over for her. I didn't mind.
Maybe I was never normal. In any event, I simply did what had to be
done. I rinsed out that bedpan a thousand times, wiped it off, sprin-
kled powder on it, and set it by the bed. There is no foul smell which
lasts forever after all."

"Not on this earth at least," I murmured. But he didn't hear me,
thank God.

"This went on for two weeks. She didn't want to go to Mercy
Hospital. I hired nurses round the clock just for backup, you know, so
they could take her vital signs when I got frightened. I played music
for her. All the predictable things, said the rosary out loud with her.
Usual deathbed scene. From two to four in the afternoon she toler-
ated visitors. Old cousins came. 'Where is Roger?' I stayed out of
sight."

"You weren't torn to pieces by her suffering."

"I wasn't crazy about it, I can tell you that. She had cancer all
through her and no amount of money could save her. I wanted her to
hurry, and I couldn't bear watching it, no, but there has always been a
deep ruthless side to me that says ' Do what you have to do'. And I
stayed in that room without sleep day in and day out and all night till
she died."

"She talked a lot to the ghosts, but I didn't see them or hear them.
I just kept saying, 'Little Richard, come get her. Uncle Mickey, if she
can't come back, come get her."

"But before the end came Terry, a practical nurse, as they called
them then, who had to fill in when we could not get the registered
nurse because they were in such demand. Terry, five foot seven,
blonde, the cheapest and most alluring piece of goods I had ever laid
eyes on. Understand. This is a question of everything fitting together
precisely. The girl was a shining perfect piece of trash."

I smiled. "Pink fingernails, and wet pink lipstick." I had seen her
sparkle in his mind.

"Every detail was on target with this kid. The chewing gum, the
gold anklet, the painted toenails, the way she slipped off her shoes
right there in the sickroom to let me see the toenails, the way the

cleavage showed, you know, under her white nylon uniform. And her
stupid, heavy-lidded eyes beautifully painted with Maybelline eye
pencil and mascara. She'd file her nails in there in front of me! But I
tell you, never have I seen something that was so completely realized,
finished, ah, ah, what can I say! She was a masterpiece."

I laughed, and so did he, but he went on talking.

"I found her irresistible. She was a hairless little animal. I started
doing it with her every chance I had. While Mother slept, we did it in
the bathroom standing up. Once or twice we went down the hall to
one of the empty bedrooms; we never took more than twenty
minutes! I timed us! She'd do it with her pink panties around her ankles!
She smelled like Blue Waltz perfume."

I gave a soft laugh.

"Do I ever know what you're saying," I mused. "And to think you
knew it, you fell for her and you knew it."

"Well, I was two thousand miles away from my New York women
and my boys and all, and all that trashy power that goes along with
dealing, you know, the foolishness of bodyguards scurrying to open
doors for you, and girls telling you they love you in the backseat of
the limousine just because they heard you shot somebody the night
before. And so much sex that sometimes right in the middle of it,
the best oral job you've ever had, you can't keep your mind on it
anymore."

"We are more alike than I ever dreamed. I've lived a lie with the
gifts given me."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"There isn't time. You don't need to know about me. What about
Terry? How did Dora happen?"

"I got Terry pregnant. She was supposed to be on the Pill. She
thought I was rich! It didn't matter whether I loved her or she loved
me. I mean this was one of the dumbest and most simpleminded
humans I have ever known, Terry. I wonder if you bother to feed upon
people that ignorant and that dull."

"Dora was the baby."

"Yeah. Terry wanted to get rid of it if I didn't marry her. I made a
bargain. One hundred grand when we marry (I used an alias, it was
never legal except on paper and that was a blessing because Dora and
I are in no way legally connected) and one hundred grand when the
baby was born. After that I'd give her her divorce and all I wanted was

my daughter."

"'Our daughter,' she said."

"'Sure, our daughter,' I said. What a fool I was. What I didn't
figure on, the very obvious and simple thing, what I didn't figure on
was that this woman, this little nail-filing, gum-chewing, mascara-
wearing nurse in her rubber-soled shoes and diamond wedding ring,
would naturally feel for her own child. She was stupid, but she was a
mammal, and she had no intention of letting anybody take her baby.
Like hell. I wound up with visitation rights.

"Six years I flew in and out of New Orleans every chance I had
just to hold Dora in my arms, talk to her, go walking with her in the
evenings. And understand, this child was mine! I mean she was flesh
of my flesh from the start. She started running towards me when she
saw me at the end of the block. She flew into my arms."

"We'd take a taxi to the Quarter and go through the Cabildo; she
adored it; the cathedral, of course. Then we'd go for muffaletas at the
Central Grocery. You know, or maybe you don't, the big sandwiches
full of olives-"

"I know."

"--She'd tell me everything that had happened in the week since
I'd been there. I'd dance with her in the street. Sing to her. Oh, what
a beautiful voice she had from the beginning. I don't have a good
voice. My mother had a good voice, and so did Terry. And this child
got the voice. And the mind she had. We'd ride the ferry together
over the river and back, and sing, as we stood by the rail. I took her
shopping at D. H. Holmes and bought her beautiful clothes. Her
mother never minded that, the beautiful clothes, and of course I was
smart enough to pick up something for Terry, you know, a brassiere
dripping with lace or a kit of cosmetics from Paris or some perfume
selling for one hundred dollars an ounce. Anything but Blue Waltz!
But Dora and I had so much fun. Sometimes I thought, I can stand
anything if I can just see Dora within a few days."

"She was verbal and imaginative, the way you were."

"Absolutely, full of dreams and visions. Dora is no naif, now, you
have to understand. Dora's a theologian. That's the amazing part.
The desire for something spectacular? That I engendered in her, but
the faith in God, the faith in theology? I don't know where that came
from."

Theology. The word gave me pause.

"Meantime, Terry and I began to hate each other. When school-

time came, so did the fights. The fights were hell. I wanted Sacred
Heart Academy for Dora, dancing lessons, music lessons, two weeks
away with me in Europe. Terry hated me. I wasn't going to make her
little girl into a snot. Terry had already moved out of the St. Charles
Avenue house, calling it old and creepy, and settled for a shack of a
ranch-style tract home on some naked street in the soggy suburbs! So
my kid was already snatched from the Garden District and all those
colors, and settled in a place where the nearest architectural curiosity
was the local 7-Eleven."

"I was getting desperate and Dora was getting older, old enough
perhaps to be stolen effectively from her mother, whom she did love
in a very protective and kind way. There was something silent between
those two, you know, talking had nothing to do with it. And
Terry was proud of Dora."

"And then this boyfriend came into the picture."

"Right. If I had come to town a day later, my daughter and my
wife would have been gone. She was skipping out on me! To hell with
my lavish checks. She was going with this bankrupt electrician
boyfriend of hers to Florida!

"Dora knew from nothing and was outside playing down the
block. They were all packed! I shot Terry and the boyfriend, right in
that stupid little tract house in Metairie where Terry had chosen to
bring up my daughter rather than on St. Charles Avenue. Shot them
both. Got blood all over her polyester wall-to-wall carpet, and her
Formica-top kitchen breakfast bar."

"I can imagine it."

"I dumped both of them in the swamps. It had been a long time
since I'd handled something like this directly, but no matter, it was
easy enough. The electrician's truck was in the garage anyway, and I
bagged them up, and I took them out that way, into the back of the
truck. I took them way out somewhere, out Jefferson Highway, I
don't even know where I dumped them. No, maybe it was out Chef
Menteur. Yeah, it was Chef Menteur. Somewhere around one of the
old forts on die Rigules River. They just disappeared in the muck."

"I can see it. I've been dumped in the swamps myself."

He was too excited to hear my mumblings. He continued.

"Then I went back for Dora, who was by then sitting on the steps
with her elbows on her knees wondering why nobody was home, and
the door was locked so she couldn't get in, and she started screaming,
"Daddy! I knew you'd come. I knew you would!" the minute she saw
me. I didn't risk going inside to get her clothes. I didn't want her to

see the blood. I put her with me in the boyfriend's pickup truck and
out of New Orleans we drove, and we left the truck in Seattle,
Washington. That was my cross-country odyssey with Dora."

"All those miles, insanity, just the two of us together talking and
talking. I think I was trying to tell Dora everything that I had learned.
Nothing evil and self-destructive, nothing that would ever bring
the darkness near her, only the good things, what I had learned
about virtue and honesty and what corrupts people, and what was
worthwhile."

"'You can't just simply do nothing in this life, Dora,' I kept saying,
'You can't just leave this world the way you found it.' I even told
her how when I was young I was going to be a religious leader, and
what I did now was collect beautiful things, church art from all over
Europe and the Orient. I dealt in it, to keep the few pieces I wanted.
I led her to believe, of course, that is what had made me rich, and by
then, oddly enough, it was partly true."

"And she knew you'd killed Terry."

"No. You got the wrong idea on that one. All those images were
tumbling in my mind. I felt it when you were taking my blood. That
wasn't it. She knew I'd gotten rid of Terry, or I'd freed her from
Terry, and now she could be with Daddy forever, and fly away with
Daddy when Daddy flew away. That's a different thing from
knowing Daddy murdered Terry. That she does not know. Once when she
was twelve, she called, sobbing, and said, 'Daddy, will you please tell
me where Mother is, where did she and that guy go when they went
to Florida.' I played it off, that I hadn't wanted to tell her that Terry
was dead. Thank God for the phone. I do very well on the phone. I
like it. It's like being on the radio."

"But back to Dora of six years old. Daddy took Dora to New York
and got a suite at the Plaza. After that, Dora had everything Daddy
could buy."

"She cry for Terry even then?"

"Yes. And she was probably the only one who ever did. Before the
wedding, Terry's mother had told me Terry was a slut. They hated
each other. Terry's father had been a policeman. He was an okay guy.
But he didn't like his daughter either. Terry wasn't a nice person.
Terry was mean by nature; Terry wasn't even a good person to bump
into in the street, let alone to know or to need or to hold."

"Her family back there thought she'd run off to Florida and
abandoned Dora to me. That's all they ever knew till the day the old man
and woman died, Terry's parents. There's some cousins. They still
believe that. But they don't know who I am, really, it's all rather

difficult to explain. Of course by now maybe they've seen the articles in
the papers and magazines. I don't know, that's not important. Dora
cried for her mother, yes. But after that big lie I told her when she
was twelve, she never asked about anything again."

"But Terry's devotion to Dora had been as perfect as that of any
mammalian mother! Instinctive; nurselike; antiseptic. She'd feed
Dora from the four food groups. She'd dress Dora up in beautiful
clothes, take her to dancing school, and sit there and gossip with the
other mothers. She was proud of Dora. But she rarely ever spoke to
Dora. I think they could go for days without their eyes meeting. It
was mammalian. And for Terry, probably everything was like that."

"This is rather funny, that you should get mixed up with a person
like this, you know."

"No, not funny. Fate. We made Dora. She gave the voice to Dora,
and the beauty. And there is something in Dora from Terry which is
like hardness, but that's too unkind a word. Dora is a mixture of us,
really, an optimum mixture."

"Well, you gave her your own beauty top."

"Yes, but something far more interesting and marketable hap-
pened when the genes collided. You've seen my daughter. My
daughter is photogenic, and beneath the flash and dash I gave her, there is
the steadiness of Terry. She converts people over the airwaves. 'And
what is the true message of Christ!' she declares, staring right into
the camera. 'That Christ is in every stranger you meet, the poor, the
hungry, the sick, the people next door!' And the audience believes
it."

"I've watched. I've seen her. She could just rise to the top."

He sighed.

"I sent Dora to school. By this time I was making big, big money.
I had to put lots of miles between me and my daughter. I switched
Dora among three schools overall before graduation, which was hard
for her, but she didn't question me about these maneuvers, or the
secrecy surrounding our meetings. I led her to believe I was always
on the verge of having to rush to Florence to save a fresco from being
destroyed by idiots, or to Rome to explore a catacomb that had just
been found."

"When Dora began to take a serious interest in religion, I thought
it was spiritually elegant, you know. I thought my growing collection
of statues and books had inspired her. And when she told me at
eighteen that she had been accepted to Harvard and that she meant to
study comparative religion, I was amused. I made the usual sexist

assumption: study what you want and marry a rich man. And let me
show you my latest icon or statue."

"But Dora's fervor and theological bent were developing far
beyond anything I had ever experienced. Dora went to the Holy
Land when she was nineteen. She went back twice before she
graduated. She spent the next two years studying religions all over the
world. Then she proposed the entire idea of her television program:
she wanted to talk to people. Cable had made possible all these
religion channels. You could tune in to this minister or that Catholic
priest."

"'You serious about this?' I asked. I hadn't known she believed it
all. But she was out to be true to ideals that I had never fully
understood myself yet somehow passed on to her.

"'Dad, you get me one hour on television three times a week, and
the money to use it the way I want,' she said, 'and you'll see what
happens.' She began to talk about all kinds of ethical questions, how
we could save our souls in today's world. She envisioned short lec-
tures or sermons, punctuated by ecstatic singing and dancing. The
abortion issue--she makes impassioned logical speeches that both
sides are right! She explains how each life is sacrosanct yet a woman
must have dominion over her own body."

"I've seen the program."

"You realize seventy-five different cable networks have picked up
this program! You realize what news of my death may do to my
daughter's church?"

He paused, thinking, then resumed as rapid-fire as before.

"You know, I don't think I ever had a religious aspiration, a spiri-
tual goal, so to speak, that wasn't drenched in something materialistic
and glamorous, do you know what I mean?"

"Of course."

"But with Dora, it's different. Dora really doesn't care about ma-
terial things. The relics, the icons, what do they mean to Dora? Dora
believes against impossible psychological and intellectual odds that
God exists." He stopped again, shaking his head with regret.

"You were right in what you said to me earlier. I am a racketeer.
Even for my beloved Wynken I had an angle, what they call now an
agenda. Dora is no racketeer."

I remembered his remark in the barroom, "I think I sold my soul
for places like this." I had known what he was talking about when he

said it. I knew it now.

"Let me get back to the story. Early on, as I told you, I gave up
that idea of a secular religion. By the time Dora started in earnest, I
hadn't thought about those ambitions in years. I had Dora. And I had
Wynken as my obsession. I chased down more of Wynken's books,
and managed through my various connections to purchase five differ-
ent letters of the period which made clear mention of Wynken de
Wilde and Blanche De Wilde and her husband, Darnien, as well. I
had searchers digging for me in Europe and America. Rhineland
mysticism, dig into it."

"My researchers found a capsule version of Wynken's story in a
couple of German texts. Something about women practicing the rites
of Diana, witchcraft. Wynken dragged out of the monastery and pub-
licly accused. The record of the trial, however, was lost."

"It had not survived the Second World War. But in other places
there were other documents, caches of letters. Once you had the code
word Wynken--once you knew what to look for--you were on the
way."

"When I had a free hour I sat down and looked at Wynken's little
naked people, and I memorized his poems of love. I knew his poems
so that I could sing them. When I saw Dora for weekends--and we
met somewhere whenever possible--I would recite them to Dora and
maybe even show her my latest find."

"She tolerated my 'Burnt-put hippie version of free love and mysticism,'
as she called it. 'I love you, Roge,' she'd say. 'But you're so
romantic to think this bad priest was some sort of saint. All he did was
sleep with these women, didn't he? And the books were ways of
communicating among the others . . . when to meet.'"

"'Ah, but Dora,' I would say, 'there was not a vicious or ugly
word in the work of Wynken de Wilde. You see for yourself.' Six
books I had by then. It was all about love. My present translator, a
professor at Columbia, had marveled at the mysticism of the poetry,
how it was a blending of love of God and the flesh. Dora didn't buy it.
But Dora was already obsessed with her own religious questions.
Dora was reading Paul Tillich and William James and Erasmus and
lots of books on the state of the world today. That's Dora's obsession,
the State of the World Today."

"And Dora won't care about those books of Wynken's if I get
them to her."

"No, she won't touch any of my collection, not now!" he said.

"Yet you want me to protect all these things," I said.

"Two years ago," he sighed. "A couple of news articles! No
connection to her, you understand, but with her, my cover was blown
forever. She'd been suspecting. It was inevitable, she said, that she'd
figure out my money wasn't clean."

He shook his head. "Not clean," he said again. He went on. "The
last thing she let me do was buy the convent for her. One million for
the building. And one million to gut it of all the modern desecrations
and leave it the way it had been for the nuns in the 1880s, with chapel
and refectory and dormitory rooms and wide corridors..."

"But even that, she took with reluctance. As for the artwork,
forget it. She may never take from me the money she needs to educate
her followers there, her order or whatever the hell a televangelist
calls it. The cable TV connection is nothing compared to what I
could have made it, fixing up that convent as the base. And the
collection--the statues, icons--imagine it. 'I could make you as big as Billy
Graham or Jerry Falwell, darling,' I said to her. 'You can't turn away
from my money, not for Jesus' sake!'"

He shook his head despairingly. "She meets with me now out of
compassion, and of that my beautiful daughter has an endless supply.
Sometimes she'll take a little gift. Tonight, she would not. Once
when the program almost went under, she accepted just enough to
get it over the hump. But my saints and angels, she won't touch them.
My books, my treasures, she won't look at them."

"Of course, we both knew the threat to her reputation. You've
helped by eliminating me. But there'll be news of my disappearance
soon, has to be. 'Televangist financed by cocaine king.' How long can
her secrecy last? It has to survive my death and she has to survive my
death. At all costs! Lestat, you hear what I'm saying."

"I am listening to you, Roger, to every word you say. They aren't
on to her yet, I can assiire you."

"My enemies are a ruthless lot. And the government . . . who
knows who the hell the government is or what the hell the
government does."

"She's afraid of this scandal?"

"No. Brokenhearted, yes, afraid of scandal, never. She'd take what
would come. What she wanted was for me to give it all up! That
became her attack. She didn't care that the world might find out we
were father and daughter. She wanted me to renounce everything.
She was afraid for me, like a gangster's daughter would be, like a
gangster's wife."

"'Just let me build the church,' I kept pleading. 'Take the
money.' The television show has proved her mettle. But no more. . .
Things are in ruins around her. She's a little one-hour program
three times a week. The ladder to heaven is hers alone to climb. I'm
out of it. She's relying on her audience to bring the millions needed
to her."

"And the female mystics she quotes, you've heard her read from
them, Hildegard of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich. Teresa of Avila.
You've read any of those women?"

"All of them," I said.

"Smart females who want to hear smart females listen to her. But
she's beginning to attract everyone. You cannot make it in this world
if you speak to only one gender. That isn't possible. Even I know
that, the marketeer in me knows that, the Wall Street genius, and I
am that, too, have no doubt. She attracts everyone. Oh, if I only had
those last two years to do over, if only I could have launched the
church before she discovered--"

"You're looking at this all wrong. Stop regretting. If you'd made
the church big, you would have precipitated your exposure and the
scandal."

"No, once the church was big enough, the scandal wouldn't have
mattered. That's just the catch. She stayed small, and when you're
small, a scandal can do you in!" He shook his head again, angrily. He
was becoming too agitated, but the image of him only grew stronger.
"I cannot be allowed to destroy Dora. . . ." His voice drifted off
again. He shuddered. He looked at me:

"What does it come to, Lestat?" he asked.

"Dora herself must survive," I said. "She has to hang on to her
faith after your death is discovered!"

"Yes. I'm her biggest enemy, dead or alive. And her church, you
know, she walks a thin line; she's no puritan, my daughter. She thinks
Wynken's a heretic, but she doesn't know how much her own
modern compassion for the flesh is just what Wynken was talking about."

"I get it. But what about Wynken, am I supposed to save Wynken
too? What do I do with Wynken?"

"She is a genius in her own way, actually," he went on, ignoring
me. "That's what I meant when I called her a theologian. She's done
the near impossible thing of mastering Greek and Latin and Hebrew,
even though she was not bilingual as a small child. You know how
hard it is."

"Yes, it's not that way for us, but. . , ." I stopped. A horrible
thought had occurred to me with full force.

The thought interrupted everything.

It was too late to make Roger immortal. He was dead!

I hadn't even realized that I was assuming all this time, all this
time, as we talked and his story poured out, that I could, if I wanted
to, actually bring him to me, and keep him here, and stop him from
going on. But suddenly I remembered with a ferocious shock that
Roger was a ghost! I was talking to a man who was already dead.

The situation was so hideously painful and frustrating and utterly
abnormal that I was thunderstruck and might have begun to groan, if
I hadn't had to cover it up so that he would go on.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked.

"Nothing. Talk more about Dora to me. Tell me the sort of
things Dora says."

"She talks about the sterility of now, and how people need the
ineffable. She points to rampant crime and goalless youth. She's
going to make a religion where nobody hurts anybody else. It's the
American dream. She knows Scripture inside and out, she's covered
all the Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, the works of Augustine,
Marcion, Moses Maimonides; she's convinced that the prohibition
against sex destroyed Christianity, which is hardly original with her,
of course, and certainly appeals to the women who listen to her, you
know. . . ."

"Yes, I understand all that, but she must have felt some sympathy
for Wynken."

"Wynken's books weren't a series of visions to her as they are to
me."

"I see."

"And by the way, Wynken's books are not merely perfect, they
are unique in a number of ways. Wynken did his work in the last
twenty-five years before the Gutenberg printing press. Yet Wynken
did everything. He was scribe, rubicator, that is, the maker of the
fancy letters, and also the miniaturist who added all the naked people
frolicking in Eden and the ivy and vine crawling over every page. He
had to do every step himself at a time when scriptoria divided up
these functions."

"Let me finish Wynken. You have Dora now in your mind. Let
me go to Wynken. Yeah, you have to get those books."

"Great," I said dismally.

"Let me bring you right up to date. You're going to love those
books, even if Dora never does. I have all twelve of his books, as I
think I told you. He was Rhineland Catholic, forced into the
Benedictines as a young man, and was in love with Blanche de Wilde, his
brother's wife. She ordered the books done in the scriptorium and
that's how it all started, her secret link with her monk lover. I have
letters between Blanche and her friend Eleanor. I have some
incidents decoded from the poems themselves."

"Most sad of all, I have the letters Blanche wrote to Eleanor after
Wynken was put to death. She had the letters smuggled out to
Eleanor, and then Eleanor sent them on to Diane, and there was another
woman in it, but there are very few extant fragments of anything in
her hand."

"This is what went down. They used to meet in the garden of the
De Wilde castle to perform their rites. It wasn't the monastery
garden at all, as I'd once supposed. How Wynken got there I don't
know, but there are a few mentions in some of the letters that
indicate he simply slipped out of the monastery and followed a secret way
into his brother's house."

"And this made sense, of course. They'd wait till Damien de
Wilde was off doing whatever such counts or dukes did, and then
they'd meet, do their dance around the fountain, and make love.
Wynken bedded each of the women in turn; or sometimes they
celebrated various patterns. All this is recorded more or less in the books.
Well, they got caught."

"Damien castrated and stabbed Wynken in front of the women
and put them to rout. He kept the remains! Then, after days of
interrogation, the frightened women were bullied into confessing to their
love for Wynken and how he had communicated through the books;
and the brother took all those books, all twelve of the books
of Wynken de Wilde, everything this artist had ever created, you
understand--"

"His immortality," I whispered.

"Exactly, his progeny! His books! And Damien had them buried
with Wynken's body in the castle garden by the fountain that appears
in all the little pictures in the books! Blanche could look out on it
every day from her window, the place in the ground where Wynken
had been laid to rest. No trial, no heresy, no execution, nothing like
that. He just murdered his brother, it was as simple as that. He

probably paid the monastery huge amounts of money. Who knows if it
was even necessary? Did the monastery love Wynken? The
monastery is a ruin now where tourists come to snap pictures. As for the
castle, it was obliterated in the bombing of the First World War."

"Ah. But what happened after that, how did the books get out of
the coffin? Do you have copies? Are you speaking of...."

"No, I have the originals of every one. I have come across copies,
crude copies, made at the behest of Eleanor, Blanche's cousin and
confidante, but as far as I know they stopped this practice of copies.
There were only twelve books. And I don't know how they surfaced.
I can only guess."

"And what is your guess?"

"I think Blanche went out in the night with the other women, dug
up the body, and took the books out of the coffin, or whatever poor
Wynken's remains had been placed in, and put everything back right
the way it was."

"You think they'd do that?"

"Yes, I think they did it. I can see them doing it, by candlelight in
the garden, see them digging, the five women together. Can't you?"

"Yes."

"I think they did it because they felt the way I do! They loved the
beauty and the perfection of those books. Lestat, they knew they
were treasures, and such is the power of obsession arid such is the
power of love. And who knows, maybe they wanted the bones of
Wynken. It's conceivable. Maybe one woman took a thigh bone and
another the bones of his fingers and, ah, I don't know."

It seemed a ghastly picture suddenly, arid it put me in mind, without
a second's hesitation, of Roger's hands, which I had chopped off
sloppily with a kitchen knife and dumped, wrapped in a plastic sack. I
stared at the image of these hands before me, busy, fretting with the
edge of the glass, tapping the bar in anxiety.

"How far back can you trace the journey of the books?" I asked.

"Not very far at all. But that's often the case in my profession, I
mean antiquities. The books have turned up one, maybe two at a
time. Some from private collections, two from museums bombed
during the wars. Once or twice I've paid almost nothing for them. I
knew what they were the minute I laid eyes on them, but other
people didn't. And understand, everywhere I went I put out the search
for this sort of medieval codex. I am an expert in this field. I know the

language of the medieval artist! You have to save my treasures, Lestat.
You can't let Wynken get lost again. I'm leaving you with my
legacy."

"So it seems. But what can I do with these, and all the other relics,
if Dora will have no part of it?"

"Dora's young. Dora will change. See, I still have this vision--
that maybe somewhere in my collection--forget about Wynken--
that maybe somewhere among all the statues and relics is a central
artifact that can help Dora with her new church. Can you gauge the
value of what you saw in that flat? Ypu have to make Dora touch
those things again, examine them, catch the scent of them! You have
to make her realize the potency of the statues and paintings, that they
are expressions of the human quest for truth, the very quest that
obsesses her. She just doesn't know yet."

"But you said Dora never cared for the paint and the plaster."

"Make her care."

"Me? How! I can conserve all this, yes, but how am I to make
Dora love a work of art? Why would you even suggest such a thing, I
mean--my having contact with your precious daughter?"

"You'll love my daughter," he said in a low murmur.

"Come again?"

"Find something miraculous in my collection for her."

"The Shroud of Turin?"

"Oh, I like you. I really do. Yes, find her something that's
significant, something that will transform her, something that I, her father,
bought and cherished, that will help her."

"You're as insane dead as you were alive, you know it? Are you
still racketeering, trying to buy your way into salvation with a hunk of
marble or a pile of parchment? Or do you really believe in the
sanctity of all you've collected?"

"Of course I believe in the sanctity of it. It's all I believe in! That's
my point, don't you see? It's all you believe in too . . . what glitters
and what is gold."

"Ah, but you do take my breath away."

"That's why you murdered me there, among the treasures. Look,
we have to hurry. We don't know how much time we have. Back

to the mechanics. Now, with my daughter, your trump card is her
ambition."

"She wanted the convent for her own female missionaries, her
own Order, which was to teach love, of course, with the same unique
fire as other missionaries have taught it; she would send her women
into the poor neighborhoods and into the ghettoes and into the
working districts, and they would hold forth on the importance of
starting a movement of love from the core of the people that would
reach eventually to all governments in power, so that injustice would
end."

"What would distinguish these women from other such orders or
missionaries, from Franciscans or any sort of preachers ... ?"

"Well, one that they would be women, and preaching women!
Nuns have been nurses, teachers for little children, servants, or
locked in the cloister to bray at God like so many boring sheep. Her
women would be doctors of the church, you see! Preachers. They
would work up the crowds with personal fervor; they would turn to
the women, the impoverished and the depotentiated women, and
help them to reform the world."

"A feminist vision, but coupled with religion."

"It had a chance. It had as much of a chance as any such
movement. Who knows why one monk in the 1300s became a crazy? And
another one a saint? Dora has ways to show people how to think. I
don't know! You have to figure this all out, you have to!"

"And meanwhile save the church decorations," I said.

"Yes, until she will accept them or until she can turn them to
some good. That's how you get her. Talk about good."

"That's how you get anybody," I said sadly. "That's how you're
getting me."

"Well, you'll do it, won't you? Dora thinks I was misguided. She
said, 'Don't think you can save your soul after all you've done by
passing on these church objects to me.' "

"She loves you," I affirmed. "I saw that every time I saw her with
you."

"I know. I need no such assurances. There's no time now to go
into all the arguments. But Dora's vision is immense, remember that.
She's small-time now, but wants to change the entire world. I mean,
she isn't satisfied to have a cult the way I wanted it, you know, to be a
guru with a retreat full of pliant followers. She really wants to change

the world. She thinks somebody has to change the world."

"Doesn't every religious person believe that?"

"No. They don't dream of being Mohammed or Zoroaster."

"And Dora does."

"Dora knows that that is what's required."

He shook his head, took another little bit of the drink, and looked
off over the half-empty room. Then he made a little frown as if
pondering it still.

"She said, 'Dad, religion doesn't come from relics and texts. They
are the expression of it.' She went on and on. After all her studying of
Scripture, she said it was the inner miracle that counted. She put me
to sleep. Don't make any cruel jokes!"

"Not for the world."

"What's going to happen to my daughter!" he whispered
desperately. He wasn't looking at me. "Look at her heritage. See it in her
father. I'm fervent and extremist and gothic and mad. I can't tell you
how many churches I've taken Dora to, how many priceless crucifixes
I've shown to her, before turning them around for a profit. The
hours Dora and I have spent looking at the ceilings of Baroque
churches in Germany alone! I have given Dora magnificent relics of
the true cross embedded in silver and rubies. I have bought many
veils of Veronica, magnificent works that would take your breath
away. My God."

"Was there ever--with Dora, I mean--a concept of atonement in
all of this, a guilt?"

"You mean, for letting Terry disappear without explanation, for
never asking, until years later? I thought of that. If it was there in the
beginning, Dora's passed it a long time ago. Dora thinks the world
needs a new revelation. A new prophet. But you just don't become a
prophet! She says her transformation must come with seeing and
feeling; but it's no Revival Tent experience."

"Mystics never think it's a Revival Tent experience."

"Of course not."

"Is Dora a mystic? Would you say that?"

"Don't you know? You followed her, you watched her. No, Dora
hasn't seen the face of God or heard His voice and would never lie

about it, if that's what you mean. But Dora's looking for it. She's
looking for the moment, for the miracle, for the revelation!"

"For the angel to come."

"Yes, exactly."

We were both quiet suddenly. He was probably thinking of his
initial proposition; so was I, that I fake a miracle, I, the evil angel that
had once driven a Catholic nun to madness, to bleeding from her
hands and feet in the Stigmata.

Suddenly he made the decision to continue, and I was relieved.

"I made my life rich enough," he said, "that I stopped caring
about changing the world if ever I really thought of it; I made a life,
you see, you know, a world unto itself. But she really has opened her
soul in a sophisticated way to ... to something. My soul's dead."

"Apparently not," I said. The thought that he would vanish, had
to, sooner or later, was becoming intolerable to me, and far more
frightening than his initial presence had ever been.

''Let's get back to the basics. I'm getting anxious. . . ." he said.

"Why?"

"Don't freak on me, just listen. There is money put aside for Dora
that has no connection to me. The government can't touch it, be-
sides, they never got an indictment against me let alone a conviction,
you saw to that. The information's in the flat. Black leather folders.
File cabinet. Mixed right in with sales slips for all sorts of paintings
and statues. And you have to save all that somewhere for Dora. My
life's work, my inheritance. It's in your hands for her. You can do it,
can't you? Look, there's no hurry, you've done away with me in a
rather clever way,"

"I know. And you're asking me now to function as a guardian
angel, to see that Dora receives this inheritance untainted. . . ."

"Yes, my friend, that's precisely what I'm begging you to do. And
you can do it! And don't forget about my Wynken! If she won't take
those books, you keep those books!"

He touched my chest with his hand. I felt it, the little knock upon
the door of the heart.

He continued. "When my name drops put of the papers,
assuming it ever makes it from the FBI files to the wire service, you get the
money to Dora. Money can still create Dora's church. Dora is

magnetic, Dora can do it all by herself, if she has the money! You follow
me? She can do it the way Francis did it or Paul or Jesus. If it wasn't
for her theology, she would have become the charismatic celebrity
long ago. She has all the assets. She thinks too much. Her theology is
what sets her apart."

He took a breath. He was talking very rapidly, and I was
beginning to shiver. I could hear his fear like a low emanation from him.
Fear of what?

"Here," he said. "Let me quote something to you. She told me
this last night. We've been reading a book by Bryan Appleyard, a
columnist for the papers in England, you've heard of him? He wrote
some tome called Understanding the Present. I have the copy she gave
me. And in it he said things that Dora believed ... such as that we are
'spiritually impoverished.' "

"Agreed."

"But it was something else, something about our dilemma, that
you can invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come
from some deeper place inside a person... I know what she called it...
Appleyard's words ... 'a totality of human experience.' " He stopped.
He was distracted.

I was desperate to reassure him that I understood this. "Yes, she's
looking for this, courting it, she's opening herself for it."

I suddenly realized that I was holding on to him as tightly as he
was holding on to me.

He was staring off.

I was filled with a sadness so awful that I couldn't speak. I'd killed
this man! Why had I done it? I mean, I knew he'd been interesting
and evil, but Christ, how could I have . . . but then what if he stayed
with me the way he was! What if he could become my friend exactly
the way he was.

Oh, this was too childish and selfish and avaricious! We were
talking about Dora, about theology. Of course I understood Appleyard's
point. Understanding the Present. I pictured the book. I'd go back for
it. I filed it in my preternatural memory. Read at once.

He hadn't moved or spoken.

"Look, what are you scared of?" I asked. "Don't fade on me!" I
clung to him, very raw, and small, and almost crying, thinking that I
had killed him, taken his life, and now all I wanted to do was hold on
to his spirit.

He gave no response. He looked afraid.

I wasn't the ossified monster I thought I was. I wasn't in danger of
being inured to human suffering. I was a damned jibbering
empath!

"Roger? Look at me. Go on talking."

He only murmured something about maybe Dora would find
what he had never found.

"What?" I demanded.

"Theophany," he whispered.

Oh, that lovely word. David's word. I'd only heard it myself a few
hours ago. And now it slipped from his lips.

"Look, I think they're coming for me," he said suddenly. His eyes
grew wide. He didn't look afraid now so much as puzzled. He was
listening to something. I could hear it too. "Remember my death,"
he said suddenly, as if he'd just thought of it most distinctly. "Tell
her how I died. Convince her my death has cleansed the money! You
understand. That's the angle! I paid with my death. The money is no
longer unclean. The books of Wynken, all of it, it's no longer
unclean. Pretty it up. I ransomed it all with my blood. You know, Le-
stat, use your clever tongue. Tell her!"

Those footsteps.

The distinct rhythm of Something walking, slowly walking...
And the low murmur of the voices, the singing, the talking, I was get-
ting dizzy. I was going to fall. I held on to him and on to the bar.

"Roger!" I shouted aloud. Surely everybody in the bar heard
it. He was looking at me in the most pacific manner, I don't even
know if his face was animate anymore. He seemed puzzled, even
amazed...

I saw the wings rise up over me, over him. I saw the immense
obliterating darkness shoot up as if from a volcanic rip in the very
earth and the light rise behind it. Blinding, beautiful light.

I know I cried out. "Roger!"

The noise was deafening, the voices, the singing, the figure grow-
ing larger and larger.

"Don't take him. It's my fault." I rose up against It in fury; I

would tear It to pieces if I had to, to make It let him go! But I couldn't
see him clearly. I didn't know where I was. And It came rolling, like
smoke again, thick and powerful and absolutely unstoppable, and in
the midst of all this, looming above him as he faded, and towards me,
the face, the face of the granite statue for one second, the only thing
visible, his eyes--

"Let him go!"

There was no bar, no Village, no city, no world. Only all of them!

And perhaps the singing was no more than the sound of a break-
ing glass.

Then blackness. Stillness.

Silence.

Or so it seemed, that I had been unconscious in a quiet place for
some time.

I woke up outside on the street.

The bartender was standing there, shivering, asking me in the
most annoyed and nasal tone of voice, "Are you all right, man?"
There was snow on his shoulders, on the black shoulders of his vest,
and on his white sleeves.

I nodded, and stood up, just so he'd go away. My tie was still in
place. My coat was buttoned. My hands were clean. There was snow
on my coat.

The snow was falling very lightly all around me. The most beauti-
ful snow.

I went back through the revolving door into the tiled hallway and
stood in the door of the bar. I could see the place where we had
talked, see his glass still there. Otherwise the atmosphere was un-
changed. The bartender was talking in a bored way to someone. He
hadn't seen anything, except me bolt, probably, and stumble out into
the street.

Every fiber in me said, Run. But where will you run? Take to the
air? Not a chance, it will get you in an instant. Keep your feet on the
cold earth.

You took Roger! Is that what you followed me for? Who are you!

The bartender looked up over the empty, dusty distance. I must
have said something, done something. No, I was just blubbering. A

man crying in a doorway, stupidly. And when it is this man, so to
speak, that means blood tears. Make your exit quick.

I turned and walked out into the snow again. It was going to be
morning soon, wasn't it? I didn't have to walk in the miserable
punishing cold until the sky brightened, did I? Why not find a grave now,
and go to sleep?

"Roger!" I was crying, wiping my tears on my sleeve. "What are
you, damn it!" I stood and shouted, voice rolling off the buildings.
"Damn it!" It came back tp me suddenly in a flash. I heard all those
mingled voices, and I fought it. The face. It has a face! A sleepless mind
in its heart and an insatiable personality. Don't get dizzy, don't try to
remember. Somebody in one of the buildings opened a window and
shouted at me to move on. "Stop screaming out there." Don't try to
reconstruct. You'll lose consciousness if you do.

I suddenly envisioned Dora and thought I might collapse where I
was, shuddering and helpless and jabbering nonsense to anyone who
came to help me.

This was bad, this was the worst, this was simply cosrnically awful!

And what in God's name had been the meaning of Roger's
expression in that last moment? Was it even an expression? Was it peace or
calm or understanding, or just a ghost losing his vitality, a ghost
giving up the ghost!

Ah! I had been screaming. I realized it. Lots of mortals around
me, high up in the night, were telling me to be quiet.

I walked on and on.

I was alone. I cried quietly. There was no one in die empty street
to hear.

I crept on, bent nearly double, crying out loud. I never noticed
anyone now who saw or heard or stopped or took note. I wanted to
reenact it in my mind, but I was terrified it would knock me flat on
my back if I did it. And Roger, Roger . . . Oh, God, I wanted in my
monstrous selfishness to go to Dora and go down on my knees. I did
this, I killed, I....

Midtown. I suppose. Mink coats in a window. The snow was
touching my eyelids in the tenderest way. I took off the scarf tie,
wiped my face thoroughly so there was no blood from the tears on it.

And then I blundered into a small bright hotel.

I paid for the room in cash, extra tip, don't disturb me for twenty-

four hours, went upstairs, bolted the door, pulled the curtains, shut
off the bothersome stinking heat, and crawled under the bed and
went to sleep,

The last strange thought that passed through my mind before I
went into mortal slumber--it was hours before sunrise, and plenty
of time for dreaming--was that David was going to be angry about
all this somehow, but that Dora, Dora might believe and understand ...

I must have slept a few hours at least. I could hear the night
sounds outside.

When I woke, the sky was lightening. The night was almost up.
Now would come oblivion. I was glad. Too late to think. Go back
into the deep vampire sleep. Dead with all the other Undead
wherever they were, covering themselves against the coming light.

A voice startled me. It spoke to me very distinctly:

"It's not going to be that simple."

I rose up in one motion, overturning the bed, on my feet, staring
in the direction from which the voice had come. The little hotel
room was like a tawdry trap.

A man stood in the corner, a simple man. Not particularly tall, or
small, or beautiful like Roger, or flashy like me, not even very young,
not even very old, just a man. A rather nice-looking man, with arms
folded and one foot crossed over the other.

The sun had just come up over the buildings. The fire hit the
windows. I was blinded. I couldn't see anything.

I went down towards the floor, just a little burnt and hurt, the bed
falling down upon me to protect me.

Nothing else. Whoever or whatever it was, I was powerless once
the sun had come into the sky, no matter how white and thick the veil
of winter morning.


5


"VERY well," said David. "Sit down. Stop pacing. And I want
you to go over every detail again. If you need to feed before
you do this, then we'll go out and--"

"I have told you! I am past that. I don't need to feed. I don't need
blood. I crave it. I love it. And I don't want any now! I feasted on

Roger last night like a gluttonous demon. Stop talking about blood."

"Would you take your place there at the table?"

Across from him, he meant.

I was standing at the glass wall, looking right down on the roof of
St. Patrick's.

He'd gotten us perfect rooms in the Olympic Tower and we were
only just above the spires. An immense apartment far in excess of our
needs but a perfect domicile nevertheless. The intimacy with the
cathedral seemed essential. I could see the cruciform of the roof, the
high piercing towers. They looked as if they could impale you, they
seemed so sharply pointed at heaven. And heaven as it had been the
night before was a soft soundless drift of snow.

I sighed.

"Look, I'm sorry. But I don't want to go all over it again. I can't.
Either you accept it as I told you, or I... I... go out of my mind."

He remained sitting calmly at the table. The place had come
"turnkey," or furnished. It was the snazzy substantial style of the
corporate world--lots of mahogany and leather and shades of beige and
tan and gold that could offend no one, conceivably. And flowers. He
had seen to flowers. We had the perfume of flowers.

The table and chairs were harmoniously Oriental, the fashionable
infusion of Chinese. I think there was a painted urn or two also.

And below we had the Fifty-first Street side of St. Patrick's, and
people down there on Fifth going and coming on the snowy steps,
The quiet vision of the snow.

"We don't have that much time," I said. "We have to get uptown,
and I have to secure that place or move all of those precious objects.
I'm not allowing some accident to happen to Dora's inheritance."

"We can do that, but before we go, try this for me. Describe the
man again . . . not Roger's ghost, or the living statue, or the winged
one, but the man you saw standing in the corner of the hotel room,
when the sun came up."

"Ordinary, I told you, very ordinary."

"Anglo-Saxon?"

"Yes, probably."

"Distinctly Irish or Nordic?"

"No. Just a man. Not a Frenchman, I don't think. No, a routine flavor of American. A man of good
height, my height, but not overwhelmingly tall like you. I couldn't have seen him for more than five
seconds. It was sunrise. He had me trapped there. I couldn't flee, I went blank. The mattress
covered me, and
when I woke, no man. Gone, as if I'd imagined it. But I didn't
imagine it!"

"Thank you. The hair?"

"Ash blond, almost gray. You know how ash blond can fade to
where it's really truly a ... a graying brown color, or colorless almost,
just sort of deep gray."

He gave a little gesture that he understood.

Cautiously I leant on the glass. With my strength it would have
been a simple thing to have accidentally shattered the wall. The last
thing I wanted was a blunder.

Obviously he wanted me to say more, and I was trying. I could
recall the man fairly distinctly. "An agreeable face, very agreeable.
He was the kind of man who doesn't impress one with size or physi-
cality so much as a sort of alertness, a poise and intelligence, I
suppose you'd call it. He looked like an interesting man."

"Clothes."

"Not noticeable. Black I think, maybe even a bit dusty? I think I
would remember jet black, or beautiful black, or fancy black."

"Eyes distinctive?"

"Only for the intelligence. They weren't large or deeply colored.
He looked normal, smart. Dark eyebrows but not terribly heavy or
anything like that. Normal forehead, full hair, nice hair, combed, but
nothing dandified like mine. Or yours."

"And you believe he spoke the words?"

"I'm sure he did. I heard him. I jumped up. I was awake, you
understand, fully awake. I saw the sun. Look at my hand."

I was not as pale as I had been before I went into the Gobi desert,
before I had tempted the sun to kill me in the recent past. But we
could both see the burn where the rays of the sun had struck my
hand. And I could feel the burn on the right side of my face, though it
wasn't visible there because I'd probably turned my head.

"And you woke and you were under the bed, and it was askew, and
had been thrown over and had fallen back down."

"No question of it. A lamp was overturned. I had not dreamed it
any more than I dreamed Roger or anything else. Look, I want you to
come uptown with me. I want you to see this place. Roger's things."

"Oh, I want to," he said. He stood up. "I wouldn't miss this for
the world. It's just I wanted you to take your ease a little longer, to try
to...."

"What? Get calm? After talking to the ghost of one of my victims?
After seeing this man standing in my room! After seeing this thing
take Roger, this thing which has been stalking me all over the world,
this herald of madness, this--"

"But you didn't really see it take Roger, did you?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure Roger's image was animated anymore.
He looked completely calm. He faded. Then the face of the creature
or being or whatever it was--the face was visible for an instant. By
that time, I was completely lost--no sense of balance or locality,
nothing. I don't know whether Roger was just fading as it took him or
whether he accepted it and went along."

"Lestat, you don't know that either thing happened. You only
know Roger's ghost disappeared and this thing appeared. That's all
you know."

"I suppose that's true."

"Think about it this way- Your Stalker chose to make himself
manifest. And he obliterated your ghostly companion."

"No. They were connected. Roger heard him coming! Roger
knew he was coming even before I heard the footsteps. Thank God
for one thing."

"Which is what?"

"That I can't communicate the fear to you. That I can't make you
feel how bad it was. You believe me, which is more than sufficient for
the moment, but if you really knew, you wouldn't be calm and
collected and the perfect British gentleman."

"I might be. Let's go. I want to see this treasure-house. I believe
you're absolutely correct that you can't let all these objects slip out of
the possession of the girl."

"Woman, young woman."

"And we should check on her whereabouts, immediately."

"I did that on the way here."

"In the state you were in?"

"Well, I certainly snapped out of it long enough to go into the
hotel and make certain she'd left. I had to do that much. A limousine
had taken her to La Guardia at nine a.m. this morning. She reached
New Orleans this afternoon. As for the convent, I have no idea how
to reach her there. I don't even know if she has the wiring in it for a
phone. For now, she's as safe as she ever was while Roger was living."

"Agreed. Let's go uptown."

SOMETIMES fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on
your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.

As we entered the flat, I felt that for a couple of seconds. Panic.
Go No Farther.

But I was too proud to show it and David too curious, proceeding
before me into the hallway, and noting, no doubt, as I did, that the
place was without life. The recent death? He could smell it as well as
I could. I wondered if it was less noxious to him since it had not been
his kill.

Roger! The fusion of the mangled corpse and Roger the Ghost in
memory was suddenly like a sharp kick in the chest.

David went all the way to the living room while I lingered, looking
at the big white marble angel with its shell of holy water and
thinking how like the granite statue it was. Blake. William Blake had
known. He had seen angels and devils and he'd gotten their
proportions right. Roger and I could have talked about Blake. ...

But that was over. I was here, in the hallway.

The thought that I had to walk forward, put one foot before the
other, reach the living room, and look at that granite statue was
suddenly a little more than I could accept.

"It's not here," David said. He hadn't read my mind. He was
merely stating the obvious. He was standing in the living room some
fifty feet away, looking at me, the halogens throwing just a little of
their dedicated light on him and he said again, "There is no black
granite statue in this room."

I gave a sigh. "I'm going to hell," I whispered.

I could see David very distinctly, but no mortal could have. His
image was too shadowy. He looked tall and very strong, standing
there, back to the dingy light of the windows, the halogens making
sparkles on his brass buttons.

"The blood?"

"Yes, the blood, and your glasses. Your violet glasses. A nice piece
of evidence."

"Evidence of what!"

It was too stupid of me to stand here at the back door talking to
him over this distance. I walked down the hall as if going cheerfully
to the guillotine, and I came into die room.

There was only an empty space where the statue had stood, and I
wasn't even sure it was big enough. Clutter. Plaster saints. Icons,
some so old and fragile they were under glass. Last night I hadn't
noticed so very many, sparkling all over the walls in the splinters of
light that escaped the directed lamps.

"Incredible!" David whispered.

"I knew you'd love it," I said dismally. I would have loved it, too,
if I were not shaken to the bone.

He was studying the objects, eyes moving back and forth over the
icons and then the saints. "Absolutely magnificent objects. This
is ... is an extraordinary collection. You don't know what any of this
is, do you?"

"Well, more or less," I said. "I'm not an artistic illiterate."

"The series of pictures on the wall," he said. He gestured to a
long row of icons, the most fragile.

"Those? Not really."

"Veronica's veil," he said. "These are early copies of the famous
mandilion--the veil itself--which supposedly vanished from history
centuries ago. Perhaps during the Fourth Crusade. This one's
Russian, flawless. This one? Italian. And look there, on the floor, in
stacks, those are the Stations of the Cross."

"He was obsessed with finding relics for Dora. Besides, he loved
the stuff himself. That one, the Russian Veil of Veronica--he had

just brought that here to New York to Dora. Last night they
quarreled over it, but she wouldn't take it."

It was quite fine. How he had tried to describe it to her. God, I felt
as if I had known him from my youth and we had talked about all of
these objects, and every surface for me was layered with his special
appreciation and complex of thoughts.

The Stations of the Cross. Of course I knew the devotion, what
Catholic child did not? We would follow the fourteen different
stations of Christ's passion and journey to Calvary through the
darkened church, stopping at each on bended knee to say the appropriate
prayers. Or the priest and his altar boys would make the procession,
while the congregation would recite with them the meditation on
Christ's suffering at each point. Hadn't Veronica come up at the sixth
station to wipe the face of Jesus with her veil?

David moved from object to object. "Now, this crucifix, this is
really early, this could make a stir."

"But couldn't you say that about all the others?"

"Oh, yes, but I'm not speaking of Dora and her religion, or
whatever that's about, simply that these are fabulous works of art. No,
you're right, we cannot leave all this to fate, not possible. Here, this
little statue could be ninth century, Celtic, unbelievably valuable.
And this, this probably came from the Kremlin."

He paused, gripped by an icon of a Madonna and Child. Deeply
stylized, of course, as are they all, and this one very familiar, for the
Christ child was losing one of his sandals as He clung to his mother,
and one could see angels tormenting Him with little symbols of his
coming passion, and the Mother's head was tenderly inclined to the
son. Halo overlapped halo. The child Jesus running from the future,
into his Mother's protective arms.

"You understand the fundamental principle of an icon, don't
you?" David asked.

"Inspired by God."

"Not made by hands," said David. "Supposedly directly
imprinted upon the background material by God Himself."

"You mean like Jesus' face was imprinted on Veronica's veil?"

"Exactly. All icons fundamentally were the work of God. A
revelation in material form. And sometimes a new icon could be made from
another simply by pressing a new cloth to the original, and a magic
transfer would occur."

"I see. Nobody was supposed to have painted it."

"Precisely. Look, this is a jewel-framed relic of the True Cross,
and this, this book here ... my God, these can't be the ... No, this is
a famous Book of the Hours that was lost in Berlin in the Second
World War."

"David, we can make our loving inventory later. Okay? The point
is, what do we do now?" I had stopped being so afraid, though I did
keep looking at the empty place where the granite devil had stood.

And he had been the Devil, I knew he was. I'd start trembling if
we did not go into action.

"How do we save all this for Dora, and where?" David said.

"Come on, the cabinets and the notebooks, let's put things in order,
find the Wynken de Wilde books, let's make a decision and a plan."

"Don't think about bringing your old mortal allies into this," I
said suddenly, suspiciously, and unkindly, I have to admit.

"You mean the Talamasca?" he asked. He looked at me. He was
holding the precious Book of the Hours in his hand, its cover as
fragile as piecrust.

"It all belongs to Dora," I said. "We have to save it for her. And
Wynken's mine if she never wants Wynken."

"Of course, I understand that," he said. "Good heavens, Lestat,
do you think I still maintain contact with the Talamasca? They could
be trusted in that regard, but I don't want any contact with my old
mortal allies, as you call them. I never want any contact with them
again. I don't want my file in their archive the way you wanted yours,
remember. 'The Vampire Lestat.' I don't want to be remembered by
them, except as their Superior General who died of old age. Now
come on."

There was a bit of disgust in his voice, and grief, also. I recalled
that the death of Aaron Lightner, his old friend, had been "the final
straw" with him and his Talamasca. Some sort of controversy had
surrounded Lightner's death, but I never knew what it was.

The cabinet was in a room before the parlour, along with several
other boxes of records. Immediately I found the financial papers, and
went through them while David surveyed the rest.

Having vast holdings of my own, I'm no stranger to legal documents
and the tricks of international banks. Yes, Dora had a legacy

from unimpeachable sources, I could see that, which could not be
touched by those seeking retribution for Roger's crimes. It was all
connected to her name, Theodora Flynn, which must have been her
legal name, as the result of Roger's nuptial alias.

There were too many different documents for me to assess the full
value, only that it had been accumulated over time. It seemed Dora
might have started a new Crusade to take back Istanbul from the
Turks had she wanted to. There were some letters ... I could
pinpoint the exact date two years ago when Dora had refused all further
assistance from the two trusts of which she had knowledge. As for the
rest, I wondered if she had any idea of the scope.

Scope is everything when it comes to money. Imagination and
scope. You lack either of these two things and you can't make moral
decisions, or so I've always thought. It sounds contemptible, but
think about it. It's not contemptible. Money is power to feed the
hungry. To clothe the poor. But you have to know that. Dora had
trusts and trusts, and trusts to pay taxes on all the trusts.

I thought in a moment's sorrow of how I had meant to help my
beloved Gretchen--Sister Marguerite--and how the mere sight of
me had ruined everything, and I'd retreated from her life, with all my
gold still in the coffers. Didn't it always turn out Hke that? I was no
saint. I didn't feed the hungry.

But Dora! Quite suddenly it dawned on me--she had become my
daughter! She had become my saint just as she'd been Roger's. Now
she had another rich father. She had me!

"What is it?" David asked with alarm. He was going through a
carton of papers. "You've seen the ghost again?"

For one moment, I almost went into one of my major tremours,
but I got a grip. I didn't say anything, but I saw it ever more clearly.

Watch out for Dora! Of course I would watch out for Dora, and
somehow I'd convince her to accept everything. Maybe Roger hadn't
known the proper arguments. And Roger was now a martyr for all his
treasures. Yes, his last angle had been the right angle. He'd ransomed
his treasures. Maybe with Dora, if properly explained. ...

I was distracted. There they were, the twelve books. Each in a
neat thin film of plastic, lined up on the top shelf of a small desk,
right near the file cabinet. I knew what they were. I knew. And then
there were Roger's labels on them, his fancy scribbling on a small
white sticker, "W de W."

"Look," David said, rising from his knees and wiping the dust
from his pants. "These are all simple legal papers on the purchases,

everything here is clean, apparently, or has been laundered; there are
dozens of receipts, certificates of authentication. I say we take all of
this out of here now."

"Yes, but how, and to where?"

"Think, what's the safest place? Your rooms in New Orleans are
certainly not safe. We can't trust these things to a warehouse in a city
like New York."

"Exactly. I do have rooms here at a little hotel across from the
park but that...."

"Yes, I remember, that's where the Body Thief followed you. You
mean you didn't change that address?"

"Doesn't matter. It wouldn't hold all this."

"But you realize that our sizable quarters in the Olympic Tower
would hold all this," he said.

"You serious?" I asked.

"Of course I am. What could be more secure? Now we've work to
do. We can't have any mortal connections with this. We're going to
do all this toiling ourselves."

"Ah!" I gave a disgusted sigh. "You mean wrap all this and move
it?"

He laughed. "Yes! Hercules had to do such things, and so have
angels. How do you think Michael felt when he had to go from door
to door in Egypt slaying the First Born of every house? Come on.
You don't realize how simple it is to cushion all these items with
modern plastics. I say we move it ourselves. It will be a venture. Why
not go over the roofs."

"Ah, there is nothing more irritating than the energy of a
fledgling vampire," I said wearily. But I knew he was right. And our
strength was incalculably greater than that of any mortal helper. We
could have all this cleared out perhaps within the night.

Some night!

I will say in retrospect that labor is an antidote for angst and
general misery, and the fear that the Devil is going to grab you by the
throat at any moment and bring you down into the fiery pit!

We amassed a huge supply of an insulating material made with
bubbles of air trapped in plastic, which could indeed bind the most

fragile relic in a harmless embrace. I removed the financial papers and
the books of Wynken, carefully examining each to make sure I was
right about what I had, and then we proceeded to the heavy labor.

Sack by sack we transported all the smaller objects, going over the
rooftops as David had suggested, unnoticed by mortals, two stealthy
black figures flying as witches might to the Sabbath.

The larger objects we had to take more lovingly, each of us toting
one at a time in our arms. I deliberately avoided the great white
marble angel. But David loved it, talking to it all the way until we reached
our destination. And all this was slipped into the secure rooms of the
Olympic Tower in a rather proper way through the freight stairways,
with the obligatory mortal pace.

Our little clocks would wind down as we touched the mortal
world, and we would pass into it quickly, gentlemen furnishing their
new digs with appropriately and securely wrapped treasures.

Soon the clean, carpeted rooms above St. Patrick's housed a
wilderness of ghostly plastic packages, some looking all too much like
mummies, or less carefully embalmed dead bodies. The white marble
angel with her seashell holy water basin was perhaps the largest. The
books of Wynken, wrapped and bound, lay on the Oriental dining
table. I hadn't really had a chance to look at them, but now was not
the moment.

I sank down in a chair in the front room, panting from sheer
boredom and fury that I had had to do anything so utterly menial. David
was jubilant.

"The security's perfect here," David said enthusiastically. His
young male body seemed inflamed with his own personal spirit,
When I looked at him, sometimes I saw both merged--the elderly
David, the young strapping Anglo-Indian male form. But most of the
time, he was merely starkly perfect. And surely the strongest
fledgling I had ever produced.

That wasn't due only to the strength of my blood or my own trials
and tribulations before I'd brought him over. I'd given him more
blood than I'd ever given the others when I made him. I'd risked my
own survival. But no matter--

I sat there loving him, loving my own work. I was full of dust.

I realized that everything had been taken care of. We had even
brought the rugs last, in rolls. Even the rug soaked with Roger's
blood. Relic of the martyred Roger. Well, I would spare Dora that
detail.

"I have to hunt," David said in a whisper, waking me from my
calculations.

I didn't reply.

"You coming?"

"You want me to?" I asked.

He stood there regarding me with the strangest expression, dark
youthful face without any palpable condemnation or even disgust.

"Why don't you? Don't you enjoy seeing it, even if you don't
want it?"

I nodded. I'd never dreamed he would let me watch. Louis hated it
when I watched. When we'd been together last year, the three of us,
David had been far too reticent and suspicious to suggest such a
thing.

We went down into the thick snowy darkness of Central Park.
Everywhere one could hear the park's nighttime occupants, snoring,
grumbling, tiny whiffs of conversation, smoke. These are strong
individuals, individuals who know how to live in the wild in the midst
of a city that is itself notoriously fatal to its unlucky ones.

David found what he wanted quickly--a young male with a
skullcap, his bare toes showing through his broken shoes, a walker in the
night, lone and drugged and insensible to the cold and talking aloud
to people of long ago.

I stood back under the trees, wet with snow and uncaring. David
reached out for the young man's shoulder, brought him gently
around and embraced him. Classic. As David bent to drink, the
young man began to laugh and talk simultaneously. And then went
quiet, transfixed, until at last the body was gently laid to rest at the
foot of a leafless tree.

The skyscrapers of New York glowed to the south of us, the
warmer, smaller lights of the East and the West Side hemmed us in.
David stood very still, thinking what, I wondered?

It seemed he'd lost the ability to move. I went towards him. He
was no calm, diligent archivest at the moment. He looked to be
suffering.

"What?" I asked.

"You know what," he whispered. "I won't survive that long."
"You serious? With the gifts I gave you--"

"Shhhh, we're too much in the habit of saying things to each
other which we know are unacceptable to each other. We should
stop."

"And speak only the truth? All right. This is the truth. Now, you
feel as if you can't survive. Now. When his blood is hot and swirling
through you. Of course. But you won't feel that way forever. That's
the key. I don't want to talk anymore about survival. I took a good
crack at ending my life; it didn't work, and besides, I have something
else to think about--this thing that's following me, and how I can
help Dora before it closes in on me."
That shut him up.

We started walking, mortal fashion, through the dark park
together, my feet crunching deep into the snow. We wandered in and
out of the leafless groves, pushing aside the wet black branches, the
looming buildings of midtown never quite out of sight.

I was on edge for the sound of the footsteps. I was on edge and a
dreary thought had come to me--that the monstrous thing that had
been revealed, the Devil himself or whoever it was, had merely been
after Roger. . . .

But then what of the man, the anonymous and perfectly ordinary
man? That is what he had become in my mind, the man I'd glimpsed
before dawn.

We drew near to the lights of Central Park South, the buildings
rising higher, with an arrogance that Babylon could not have thrown
in the face of heaven. But there were the comforting sounds of the
well-heeled, and the committed, coming and going, and the
neverending push and shove of taxis adding to the din.

David was brooding, stricken.

Finally I said, "If you'd seen the thing that I saw, you wouldn't be
so eager to jump to the next stage." I gave a sigh. I wasn't going to
describe the winged thing to either one of us again.

"I'm quite inspired by it," he confessed. "You can't imagine."

"Going to Hell? With a Devil like that?"

"Did you feel it was hellish? Did you sense evil? I asked you that
before. Did you feel evil when the thing took Roger? Did Roger give
any indication of pain?"

Those questions seemed to me a bit hairsplitting.

"Don't get overly optimistic about death," I said. "I'm warning

you. My views are changing. The atheism and nihilism of my earlier
years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky."

He smiled, dismissively, as he used to do when he was mortal and
visibly wore the laurels of venerable age.

"Have you ever read the stories of Hawthorne?" he asked me
softly. We had reached the street, crossed, and were slowly skirting
the fountain before the Plaza.

"Yes," I said. "At some time or other."

"And you remember Ethan Brand's search for the unpardonable
sin?"

"I think so. He went off to search for it and left his fellow man
behind."

"Recall this paragraph," he said gently. We made our way down
Fifth, a street that is never empty, or dark. He quoted the lines to me:

" 'He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was
no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of
our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a
right to share in all its secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on
mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting
man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved
them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.' "

I said nothing. I wanted to protest, but it was not an honest thing
to do. I wanted to say that I would never, never treat humans like
puppets. All I had done was watch Roger, damn it all, and Gretchen
in the jungles, I had pulled no strings. Honesty had undone her and
me together. But then he wasn't speaking of me with these words. He
was talking about himself, the distance he felt now from the human.
He had only begun to be Ethan Brand.

"Let me continue a little farther," he asked respectfully, then
began to quote again. " 'Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He
began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to
keep the pace of improvement with his intellect--' " He broke off.

I didn't reply.

"That's our damnation," he whispered. "Our moral improvement
has reached its finish, and our intellect grows by leaps and bounds."

Still I said nothing. What was I to say? Despair was so familiar to
me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannikin in the
window. It could be dispelled by the spectacle of lights surrounding a

tower. It could be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick's
coming into view. And then despair would come again.

Meaningless, I almost said, aloud, but what came from my lips was
completely different.

"I have Dora to think of," I said.

Dora.

"Yes, and thanks to you," he said, "I have Dora too, now don't I?"

6


HOW AND when and what to tell Dora? That was the
question. The journey we made to New Orleans early the next
night.

There was no sign of Louis at the town house in the Rue Royale,
but this was by no means unusual. Louis took to wandering more and
more often, and he had been seen once by David in the company of
Armand in Paris. The town house was spotless, a dream set out of
time, full of my favorite Louis XV furnishings, luscious wallpaper,
and the finest carpets to be found.

David, of course, was familiar with the place, though he hadn't
seen it in over a year. One of the many picture-perfect bedrooms,
drenched in saffron silks and outrageous Turkish tables and screens,
still held the coffin in which he had slept during his brief and first
stay here as one of the Undead.

Of course, this coffin was heavily disguised. He had insisted that it
be the real thing--as fledglings almost invariably do, unless they are
nomads by nature--but it was cleverly enough concealed within a
heavy bronze chest, which Louis had chosen for it afterwards--a
great hulking rectangular object as defeating as a square piano, with
no perceivable opening in it, though of course, if you knew the right
places to touch, the lid rose at once.

I had made my resting place as I had promised myself, when
restoring this house in which Claudia and Louis and I had once lived.
Not in my old bedroom, which now housed only the de rigueur heavy
four-poster and dressing table, but in the attic, beneath the eave, I
had made a cell of metal and marble.

In sum, we had a comfortable base immediately, and I was frankly
relieved that Louis was not there to tell me he didn't believe me when
I described the things that I'd seen. His rooms were in order; new
books had been added. There was a vivid and arresting new painting

by Matisse. Otherwise, things were the same.

As soon as we had settled in, checked all security, as immortals
always do, with a breezy scan and a deep resistance to having to do
anything mortals have to do, we decided that I should go uptown and
try to catch a glimpse of Dora alone.

I had seen or heard nothing of the Stalker, though not much time
had passed, of course, and I had seen nothing of The Ordinary Man.

We agreed that either might appear at any moment.

Nevertheless, I broke from the company of David, leaving him to
explore the city as he wished.

Before leaving the Quarter for uptown, I called upon Mojo, my
dog. If you are unacquainted with Mojo from The Tale of the Body
Thief, let me tell you only what you need to know--that he is a giant
German shepherd, is kept for me by a gracious mortal woman in a
building of which I retain ownership, and that Mojo loves me, which
I find irresistible. He is a dog, no more, or less, except that he is
immense in size, with an extremely thick coat, and I cannot stay long
away from him.

I spent an hour or two with him, wrestling, rolling around with
him on the ground in the back garden, and talking to him about
everything that happened, then debated as to whether I should take him
with me uptown. His dark, long face, wolflike and seemingly evil, was
full of the usual gentleness and forbearance. God, why didn't you
make us all dogs?

Actually, Mojo created a sense of safety in me. If the Devil came
and I had Mojo. . . . But that was the most absurd idea! I'd fend off
Hell on account of a flesh-and-Wood dog. Well, humans have
believed stranger things, I suppose.

Just before I'd left David, I'd asked, "What do you think is
happening, I mean with this Stalker and this Ordinary Man?" And David
had answered without hesitation, "You're imagining both of them,
you punish yourself relentlessly; it's the only way you know how to
go on having fun."

~~~~~~

I should have been insulted. But I wasn't.

Dora was real.

Finally, I decided I had to take leave of Mojo. I was going to spy
upon Dora. And had to be fleet of foot. I kissed Mojo and left him.

Later we would walk in our favorite wastelands beneath the River
Bridge, amid the grass and the garbage, and be together. That I
would have for as long as nature let me have it. For the moment it
could wait.

Back to Dora.

Of course Dora didn't know Roger was dead. There was no way
that she could know, unless--perhaps--Roger had appeared to her.

But I hadn't gathered from Roger that such was even possible.

Appearing to me had apparently consumed all his energy. Indeed, I
thought he had been far too protective of Dora to have haunted her
in any practical or deliberate way.

But what did I know about ghosts? Except for a few highly

mechanical and indifferent apparitions, I'd never spoken to a ghost until
I'd spoken to Roger.

And now I would carry with me forever the indelible impression
of his love for Dora, and his peculiar mixture of conscience and

supreme self-confidence. In retrospect, even his visit seemed to me to
exhibit extraordinary self-assurance. That he could haunt, that was
not beyond probability since the world is filled with impressive and
credible ghost stories. But that he could detain me in conversation--
that he could make me his confidant--that had indeed involved an
enormous and almost dazzling pride,

I walked uptown in human fashion, breathing the river air, and
glad to be back with my black-barked oaks, and the sprawling, dimly
lighted houses of New Orleans, the intrusions everywhere of grass
and vine and flower; home.

Too soon, I reached the old brick convent building on Napoleon
Avenue where Dora was lodged. Napoleon Avenue itself is a rather
beautiful street even for New Orleans; it has an extraordinarily wide
median where once streetcars used to run. Now there are generous
shade trees planted on it, just as there were all around the convent
that faced it.

It was the leafy depth of Victorian uptown.

I drew close to the building slowly, eager to imprint its details on
my mind. How I'd changed since last I'd spied on Dora.

Second Empire was the style of the convent, due to a mansard
roof which covered the central portion of the building and its long

wings. Old sjates had, here and there, fallen away from the sloping
mansard, which was concave on the central part and quite unusual on
account of that fact. The brickwork itself, die rounded arched

windows, the four corner towers of the building, the two-storey

plantation-house porch on the front of the central building--with its white
columns and black iron railings--all of this was vaguely New Orleans
Italianate, and gracefully proportioned. Old copper gutters clung to
the base of the roofs. There were no shutters, but surely there had
once been.

The windows were numerous, high, rounded at the tops on the
second and third stories, trimmed in faded white.

A great sparse garden covered the front of the building as it
looked out over the avenue, and of course I knew of the immense
courtyard inside. The entire city block was dominated by this little
universe in which nuns and orphans, young girls of all ages, had once
dwelt. Great oaks sprawled over the sidewalks. A row of truly ancient
crape myrtles lined the side street to the south.

Walking round the building, I surveyed the high stained-glass
windows of the two-storey chapel, noted the flickering of a light

inside, as though the Blessed Sacrament were present--a fact that I
doubted--and then coming to the rear I went over the wall.

The building did have some locked doors, but not very many. It
was wrapped in silence, and in the mild but nevertheless real winter
of New Orleans, it was chillier within than without.

I entered the lower corridor cautiously, and at once found myself
loving the proportions of the place, the loftiness and the breadth of
the corridors, the intense smell of the recently bared brick walls, and
the good wood scent of the bare yellow pine floors. It was rough, all
this, the kind of rough which is fashionable among artists in big cities
who live in old warehouses, or call their immense apartments lofts.

But this was no warehouse. This had been a habitation and

something of a hallowed one. I could feel it at once. I walked slowly down
the long corridor towards the northeast stairs. Above to my right
lived Dora in the northeast tower, so to speak, of the building, and
her living quarters did not begin until the third floor.

I sensed no one in the building. No scent nor sound of Dora. I
heard the rats, the insects, something a little larger than a rat,

possibly a raccoon feeding away somewhere up in an attic, and then I felt

for die elementals, as David called them--those things which I prefer
to call spirits, or poltergeists.

I stood still, eyes closed. I listened. It seemed the silence gave back
dim emanations of personalities, but they were far too weak and too
mingled to touch my heart or spark a thought in me. Yes, ghosts
here, and here ... but I sensed no spiritual turbulence, no unresolved
tragedy or hanging injustice. On the contrary, there seemed a spiritual

stillness and firmness.

The building was whole and itself.

I think the building liked having been stripped to its nineteenth-

century essentials; even the naked beamed ceilings, though never
built for exposure, were nevertheless beautiful without plaster, their
wood dark and heavy and level because all the carpentry of those
years had been done with such care.

The stairway was original. I had walked up a thousand such built
in New Orleans. This building had at least five. I knew the gentle
curve to each tread, worn down by the feet of children, the silky feel
of the banister which had been waxed countless times for a century. I
knew die landing which cut directly against an exterior window,

ignoring the shape or existence of the window, and simply bisecting the
light which came from the street outside.

When I reached the second floor, I realized I was at the doorway
of the chapel. It had not seemed such a large space from outside.

It was in fact as large as many a church I'd seen in my years. Some
twenty or so pews were in neat rows on either side of its main aisle.
The plastered ceiling was coved and crowned with fancy molding.
Old medallions still held firmly in the plaster from which, no doubt,
gasoliers had once hung. The stained-glass windows, thoiigh without
human figures, were nevertheless very well executed, as the

streetlamp showed to good advantage. And the names of the patrons were
beautifully lettered on the lower panes of each window. There was no
sanctuary light, only a bank of candles before a plaster Regina Maria,
that is, a Virgin wearing an ornate crown.

The place must have been much as the Sisters had left it when the
building was sold. Even the holy water fount was there, though it had
no giant angel to hold it. It was only a simple marble basin on a stand.

I passed beneath a choir loft as I entered, somewhat amazed at the
purity and symmetry of the entire design. What was it like, living in a

building with your own chapel? Two hundred years ago I had knelt
more than once in my father's chapel. But that had been no more
than a tiny stone room in our castle, and this vast place, with its old
oscillating electric fans for breeze in summer, seemed no less

authentic than my father's little chapel had been.

This was more the chapel of royalty, and the entire convent
seemed suddenly a palazzo--rather than an institutional building. I
imagined myself living here, not as Dora would have approved, but in
splendour, with miles of polished floors before me as I made my way
each night into this great sanctuary to say my prayers.

I liked this place. It flamed into my mind. Buy a convent, make it

your palace, live within its safety and grandeur in some forgotten
spot of a modern city! I felt covetous, or rather, my respect for Dora
deepened.

Countless Europeans still lived in such buildings, multi-storeyed,
wings facing each other over expensive private courts. Paris had its
share of such mansions, surely. But in America, it presented a lovely
picture, the idea of living here in such luxury.

But that had not been Dora's dream. Dora wanted to train her
women here, her female preachers who would declare the Word of
God with the fire of St. Francis or Bonaventure.

Well, if her faith were suddenly swept away by Roger's death, she
could live here in splendour.

And what power had I to affect Dora's dream? Whose wishes
would be fulfilled if I somehow positioned her so that she accepted
her enormous wealth and made herself a princess in this palace? One
happy human being saved from the misery which religion can so

effortlessly generate?

It wasn't an altogether worthless idea. Just typical of me. To think
in terms of Heaven on Earth, freshly painted in pastel hues, floored
in fine stone, and centrally heated.

Awful, Lestat.

Who was I to think such things? Why, we could live here like
Beauty and the Beast, Dora and I. I laughed out loud. A shiver ran
down my back, but I didn't hear the footsteps.

I was suddenly quite alone. I listened. I bristled.

"Don't you dare come near me now," I whispered to the Stalker
who was not there, for all I knew. "I'm in a chapel. I am safe! Safe as
if I were in the cathedral."

I wondered if the Stalker was laughing at me. Lestat, you imagined
it all.

Never mind. Walk up the marble aisle towards the Communion
Rail. Yes, there was still a Communion Rail. Look at what is before
you, and don't think just now.

Roger's urgent voice was at the ear of my memory. But I loved
Dora already, didn't I? I was here. I would do something. I was
merely taking my time!

My footsteps echoed throughout the chapel. I let it happen. The
Stations of the Cross, small, in deep relief in plaster, were still fixed
between the stained-glass windows, making the usual circuit of the

church, and the altar was gone from its deep arched niche--and there
stood instead a giant Crucified Christ.

Crucifixes always fascinate me. There are numerous ways in
which various details can be rendered, and the art of the Crucified
Christ alone fills much of the world's museums, and those cathedrals
and basilicas that have become museums. But this, even for me, was a
rather impressive one. It was huge, old, very realistic in the style of
the late nineteenth century, Christ's scant loincloth coiling in the
wind, his face hollow-cheeked and profoundly sorrowful.

Surely it was one of Roger's finds. It was too big for the altar
niche, for one thing, and of impressive workmanship, whereas the
scattered plaster saints who remained on their pedestals--the

predictable and pretty St. Therese of Lisieux in her Carmelite robes,
with her cross and her bouquet of roses; St. Joseph with his lily; and
even the Maria Regina with her crown at her shrine beside the altar--
were all more or less routine. They were life-size; they were carefully
painted; they were not fine works of art.

The Crucified Christ pushed one to some sort of resolution.

Either "I loathe Christianity in all its bloodiness," or some more

painful feeling, perhaps for a time in youth when one had imagined one's
hands systematically pierced with those particular nails. Lent.

Meditations. The Church. The Priest's voice entoning the words. Our
Lord.

I felt both the loathing and the pain. Hovering near in the

shadows, watching outside lights flicker and flare in the stained glass, I
felt boyhood memories near me, or maybe I tolerated them. Then I
thought of Roger's love for his daughter, and the memories were
nothing, and the love was everything. I went up the steps that had
once led to the altar and tabernacle. I reached up and touched the
foot of the crucified figure. Old wood. Shimmer of hymns, faint and
secretive. I looked up into the race and saw not a countenance twisted
in agony, but wise and still, perhaps in the final seconds before death.

A loud echoing noise sounded somewhere in the building. I
stepped back almost too fast, and lost my footing stupidly and found
myself facing the church. Someone moved in the building, someone
walking at a moderate pace on the lower floor and towards the same
stairway up which I'd come to the chapel door.

I moved swiftly to the entrance of the vestibule. I could hear no
voice and detect no scent! No scent. My heart sank. "I won't take any

more of this!" I whispered. I was already shaking. But some mortal
scents don't come that easily; there is the breeze to consider, or
rather the draughts, which in this place were considerable.

The figure was mounting the stairs.

I leant back behind the chapel door so I might see it turn at the
landing. And if it was Dora I meant to hide at once.

But it wasn't Dora, and it came walking so fast right up the stairs,
lightly and briskly towards me, that I realized who it was as he came
to a stop in front of me.

The Ordinary Man.

I stood stock-still, staring at him. Not quite my height; not quite
my build; regular in every respect as I remembered. Scentless? No,
but the scent was not right. It was mingled with blood and sweat and
salt and I could hear a faint heartbeat... .

"Don't torment yourself," he said, in a very civil and diplomatic
voice. "I'm debating. Should I make my offer now, or before you get
mixed up with Dora? I'm not sure what's best."

He was four feet away at the moment.

I slouched arrogantly against the doorframe of the vestibule and
folded my arms. The whole flickering chapel was behind me. Did I
look frightened? Was I frightened? Was I about to perish of fright?

"Are you going to tell me who you are," I asked, "and what you
want, or am I supposed to ask questions and draw this out of you?"

"You know who I am," he said in the same reticent, simple
manner.

Something struck me suddenly. What was outstanding were the
proportions of his figure and his face. The regularity itself. He was
rather a generic man.

He smiled. "Exactly. It's the form I prefer in every age and place,
because it doesn't attract very much attention." Again the voice was
good-natured. "Going about with black wings and goat's feet, you
know--it overwhelms mortals instantly."

"I want you to get the hell out of here before Dora comes!" I said.
I was suddenly sputtering crazy.

He turned, slapped his thigh, and laughed.

"You are a brat, Lestat," he said in his simple, unimposing voice.
"Your cohorts named you properly. You can't give me orders."

"I don't know why not. What if I throw you out?"

"Would you like to try? Shall I take my other form? Shall I let my

wings...." I heard the chatter of voices, and my vision was clouding.

"No!" I shouted.

"All right."

The transformation came to a halt. The dust settled. I felt my
heart knock against my chest like it wanted to get out.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he said. "I'll let you handle
things with Dora, since you seem obsessed with it. And I won't be
able to distract you from it. And then when you've finished with all
this, this girl and her dreams and such, we can talk together, you
and I."

"About what?"

"Your soul, what else?"

"I'm ready to go to Hell," I said, lying through my teeth. "But I
don't believe you're what you claim to be. You're something,

something like me for which there aren't scientific explanations, but

behind it all, there's a cheap little core of facts that will eventually lay
bare everything, even the texture of each black feather of your
wings."

He frowned slightly, but he wasn't angry.

"We won't continue at this pace," he said. "I assure you. But for
now, I'll let you think about Dora. Dora's on her way home. Her car
has just pulled into the courtyard. I'm going, with regular footsteps,
the way I came. And I give you one piece of advice, for both of us."

"Which is what?" I demanded.

He turned his back on me and started down the stairway, as quick
and spry as he had come up. He didn't turn around till he reached the
landing. I had already caught Dora's scent.

"What advice?" I demanded.

"That you leave Dora alone completely. Turn her affairs over to
worldly lawyers. Get away from this place. We have more important
things to discuss. This is all so distracting."

Then he was gone with a clatter down the lower stairs, and

presumably out a side door. I heard it open and close.

And almost immediately following, I heard Dora come through
the main rear entrance into the center of the building, the way I had
entered, and the way he had entered, and she began her progress
down the hall.

She sang to herself as she came, or hummed, I should say. The
sweet aroma of womb blood came from her. Her menses. Madden-

ingly, it amplified the succulent scent of the whole child moving

towards me.

I slipped back into the shadows of the vestibule. She wouldn't see
me or have any knowledge of me as she went by and on up the next
stairway to her third-floor room.

She was skipping steps when she reached the second floor. She
had a backpack slung over her shoulders and wore a pretty, loose old-
fashioned dress of flowered cotton with long, white lace-trimmed
sleeves.

She swung round to go up when she suddenly stopped. She turned

in my direction. I froze. She could not possibly see me in this light.

Then she came towards me. She reached out. I saw her white

fingers touch something on the wall; it was a light switch. A simple

plastic light switch, and suddenly a flood came from the bulb above.

Picture this: the blond male intruder, eyes hidden by the violet
sunglasses, now nice and clean, with no more of her father's blood,
black wool coat and pants.

I threw up my hands as if to say "I won't hurt you!" I was

speechless.

I disappeared.

That is, I moved past her so swiftly she couldn't see it; I brushed
her about like the air would brush her. That's all. I made the two
flights to an attic, and went through an open door in the dark spaces
above the chapel, where only a few windows in the mansard let in a
tiny light from the street. One of the windows was broken out. A
quick way to make an exit. But I stopped. I sat down very still in the
corner. I shrank up into the corner. I drew up my knees, pushed my
glasses up on my nose, and looked across the width of the attic

towards the door through which I'd come.

I heard no screams. I heard nothing. She had not gone into

hysterics; she was not running madly through the building. She had
sounded no alarms. Fearless, quiet, having seen a male intruder. I
mean, next to a vampire, what in the world is as dangerous to a lone
woman as a young human male?

I realized my teeth were chattering. I put my right hand into a fist
and pushed it into my left palm. Devil, man, who the hell are you,
waiting for me, telling me not to talk to her, what tricks, don't talk to
her, I was never going to talk to her, Roger, what the hell am I to do
now? I never meant for her to see me like this!

I should never, never have come without David. I needed the

anchor of a witness. And the Ordinary Man, would he have dared to
come up if David had been here? I loathed him! I was in a whirlpool.
I wasn't going to survive.

Which meant what? What was going to kill me?

Suddenly I realized that she was coming up the stairs. This time
she walked slowly, and very quietly. A mortal couldn't have heard
her. She had her electric torch with her. I hadn't noticed it before.
But now she had it, and the beam came through the open attic door
and ran along the sloping dark boards of the inner roof.

She stepped into the attic and switched off the torch. She looked
around very cautiously, her eyes filling with the white light coming
through the round windows. It was possible to see things fairly

distinctly here because of those round windows, and because the street-
lamps were so close.

Then she found me with her eyes. She looked right at me in the
corner.

"Why are you frightened?" she asked. Her voice was soothing.

I realized I was jammed into the corner, legs crossed, knees

beneath my chin, arms locked around my legs, looking up at her.

"I... I am sorry...." I said. "I was afraid ... that I had frightened
you. I was ashamed that I had caused you distress. I felt that I'd been
unforgivably clumsy."

She stepped towards me, fearlessly. Her scent filled the attic
slowly, like the vapor from a pinch of burning incense.

She looked tall and lithesome in the flowered dress, with the lace
at her cuffs. Her short black hair covered her head like a little cap
with curls against her cheeks. Her eyes were big and dark, and made
me think of Roger.

Her gaze was nothing short of spectacular. She could have

unnerved a predator with her gaze, the light striking the bones of her
cheeks, her mouth quiet and devoid of all emotion.

"I can leave now if you like," I said tremulously. "I can simply get
up very slowly and leave without hurting you. I swear it. You must
not be alarmed."

"Why you?" she asked.

"I don't understand your question," I said. Was I crying? Was I
just shivering and shaking? "What do you mean, why me?"

She came in closer and looked down at me. I could see her very
distinctly.

Perhaps she saw a mop of blond hair and the glint of light in my
glasses and that I seemed young.

I saw her curling black eyelashes, her small but firm chin, and the
way that her shoulders so abruptly sloped beneath her lace and

flowered dress that she seemed hardly to have shoulders at all--a long
sketch of a girl, a dream lily woman. Her tiny waist beneath the loose
fabric of the waistless dress would be nothing in one's arms.

There was something almost chilling about her presence. She
seemed neither cold nor wicked, but just as frightening as if she were!
Was this sanctity? I wondered if I had ever been in the presence of a
true saint. I had my definitions for the word, didn't I?

"Why did you come to tell me?" she asked tenderly.

"Tell you what, dearest?" I asked.

"About Roger. That he's dead." She raised her eyebrows very
lightly. "That's why you came, wasn't it? I knew it when I saw you. I
knew that Roger was dead. But why did you come?"

She came down on her knees in front of me.

I let out a long groan. So she'd read it from my mind! My big
secret. My big decision. Talk to her? Reason with her? Spy on her?
Fool her? Counsel her? And my mind had slapped her abruptly with
the good news: Hey, honey, Roger's dead!

She came very close to me. Far too close. She shouldn't. In a

moment she'd be screaming. She lifted the dead electric torch.

"Don't turn on your flashlight," I said.

"Why don't you want me to? I won't shine it in your face, I promise.

I just want to see you."

"No."

"Look, you don't frighten me, if that's what you're thinking," she
said simply, without drama, her thoughts stirring wildly beneath her
words, her mind embracing every detail in front of her.

"And why not?"

"Because God wouldn't let something like you hurt me. I know

that. You're a devil or an evil spirit. You're a good spirit. I don't
know. I can't know. If I make the Sign of the Cross you might vanish.
But I don't think so. What I want to know is, why are you so

frightened of me? Surely it's not virtue, is it?"

"Wait just a second, back up. You mean you know that I'm not
human?"

"Yes. I can see it. I can feel it! I've seen beings like you before. I've
seen them in crowds in big cities, just glimpses. I've seen many

things. I'm not going to say I feel sorry for you, because that's very
stupid, but I'm not afraid of you. You're earthbound, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," I said. "And hoping to stay that way indefinitely.
Look, I didn't mean to shock you with the news. I loved your father."

"You did?"

"Yes. And . . . and he loved you very much. There are things he
wanted me to tell you. But above all, he wanted me to look out for
you."

"You don't seem capable of that. You're like a frightened elf.
Look at you."

"You're not the one I'm terrified of, Dora!" I said with sudden
impatience. "I don't know what's happening! I am earthbound, yes,
that's true. And I... and I killed your father. I took his life. I'm the
one who did that to him. And he talked to me afterwards. He said,
'Look out for Dora.' He came to me and told me to look out for
you. Now there it is. I'm not terrified of you. It's more the situation,
never having been in such circumstances, never having faced such
questions!"

"I see!" She was stunned. Her whole white face glistened as if
she'd broken into a sweat. Her heart was racing. She bowed her head.
Her mind was unreadable. Absolutely unreadable to me. But she was
full of sorrow, anyone could see that, and the tears were sliding down
her cheeks now. This was unbearable.

"Oh, God, I might as well be in Hell," I muttered. "I shouldn't
have killed him. I ... I did it for the simplest reasons. He was
just... he crossed my path. It was a hideous mistake. But he came to
me afterwards. Dora, we spent hours talking together, his ghost and
me. He told me all about you and the relics and Wynken."

"Wynken?" She looked at me.

"Yes, Wynken de Wilde, you know, the twelve books. Look,
Dora, if I touch your hand just to try to comfort you, perhaps it will
work. But I don't want you to scream."

"Why did you kill my father?" she asked. It meant more than that.
She was asking, Why did someone who talks the way you do, do such
a thing?

"I wanted his blood. I feed on the blood of others. That's how I
stay youthful and alive. Believe in angels? Then believe in vampires.
Believe in me. There are worse things on earth."

She was appropriately stunned.

"Nosferatu," I said gently. "Verdilak. Vampire. Lamia.

Earthbound." I shrugged, shook my head. I felt utterly helpless. "There
are other species of things. But Roger, Roger came with his soul as a
ghost to talk to me afterwards, about you."

She started to shake and to cry. But this wasn't madness. Her eyes
went small with tears and her face crumpled with sadness.

"Dora, I won't hurt you for anything under God, I swear it. I
won't hurt you...."

"My father's really dead, isn't he?" she asked, and suddenly she
broke down completely, her face in her hands, her little shoulders
trembling with sobs. "My God, God help me!" she whispered.
"Roger," she cried. "Roger!"

And she did make the Sign of the Cross, and she sat there, sobbing
and unafraid.

I waited. Her tears and sorrow fed upon themselves. She was
becoming more and more miserable. She leant forward and collapsed
on the boards. Again, she had no fear of me. It was as if I weren't
there.

Very slowly I slipped out of the corner. It was possible to stand up
easily in this attic, once you were out of the corner. I moved around
her, and then very gently reached to take her by the shoulders.

She gave no resistance; she was sobbing, and her head rolled as if
she were drunk with sorrow; her hands moved but only to rise and
grasp for things that weren't there. "God, God, God," she cried.
"God ... Roger!"

I picked her up. She was as light as I had suspected, but nothing
like that could matter anyway to one as strong as me. I took her out of

the attic. She fell against my chest.

"I knew it, I knew when he kissed me," she said through her

sobbing, "I knew I would never lay eyes on him again. I knew it. . . ."
This was hardly intelligible. She was so crushably small, I had to be
most careful, and when her head fell back, her face was blanched and
so helpless as to make a devil weep.

I went down to the door of her room. She lay against me, still like
a rag doll tossed into my arms, that without resistance. There was
warmth coming from her room. I pushed open the door.

Having once been a classroom perhaps, or even a dormitory, the
room was very large, set in the very corner of the building, with lofty
windows on two sides and full of the brighter light from the street.

The passing traffic illuminated it.

I saw her bed against the far wall, an old iron bed, rather plain,
perhaps once a convent bed, narrow like that, with the high

rectangular frame intact for the mosquito netting, though none hung from it
now. White paint flaked from the thin iron rods. I saw her bookcases
everywhere, stacks of books, books open with markers, propped on
makeshift lecterns, and her own relics, hundreds of them perhaps,
pictures, and statues, and maybe things Roger had given her before
she knew the truth. Words were written in cursive on the wooden
frames of doors and windows in black ink.

I took her to the bed and laid her down on it. She sank gratefully,
it seemed, into the mattress and the pillow. Things here were clean in
the modern way, fresh, and so repeatedly and thoroughly laundered
that they looked almost new.

I handed her my silk handkerchief. She took it, then looked at it
and said, "But it's too good."

"No, use it, please. It's nothing. I have hundreds."

She regarded me in silence, then began to wipe her face. Her
heart was beating more slowly, but the scent of her had been made
even stronger by her emotions.

Her menses. It was being neatly collected by a pad of white cotton
between her legs. I let myself think of it now because the menses was
heavy and the smell was overpoweringly delicious to me. It began to
torture me, the thought of licking this blood. This isn't pure blood,
you understand, but blood is its vehicle and I felt the normal

temptation that vampires do in such circumstances, to lick the blood from
her nethermouth between her legs, a way of feeding on her that
wouldn't harm her.

Except under the circumstances it was a perfectly outrageous and
impossible thought.

There was a long silent interval.

I merely sat there on a wooden straight-backed chair. I knew she
was beside me, sitting up, legs crossed, and that she'd found a box of
tissue which provided a world of comfort to her, and she was blowing
her nose and wiping her eyes. My silk handkerchief was still clutched
in her hand.

She was extremely excited by my presence but still unafraid, and
far too sunk in sorrow to enjoy this confirmation of thousands of

beliefs, a pulsing nonhuman with her, that looked and talked as if it

were human. She couldn't let herself embrace this right now. But she
couldn't quite get over it. Her fearlessness was true courage. She
wasn't stupid. She was someplace so far beyond fear that cowards
could never even grasp it.

Fools might have thought her fatalistic. But it wasn't that. It was
the ability to think ahead, and thereby banish panic utterly. Some
mortals must know this right before they die. When the game's up,
and everyone has said farewell. She looked at everything from that
fatal, tragic, unerring perspective.

I stared at the floor. No, don't fall in love with her.

The yellow pine boards had been sanded, lacquered, and waxed.
The color of amber. Very beautiful. The whole palazzo might have
this look one day. Beauty and the Beast. And as Beasts go, I mean,
really, I'm quite a stunner.

I hated myself for having such a good time in a miserable moment
like this, thinking of dancing with her through the corridors. I
thought of Roger, and that brought me back quick enough, and the
Ordinary Man, ah, that monster waiting for me!

I looked at her desk, two telephones, the computer, more books in
stacks, and somewhere in the corner a little television, merely for
study, apparently, the screen no bigger than four or five inches across
though it was connected to a long coiling and winding black cable,
which I knew connected it to the wide world.

There was lots of other blinking electronic equipment. It was no

nun's cell. The words scrawled on the white framework of the doors
and windows were actually in phrases, such as "Mystery opposes
Theology." And "Commotion Strange." And, of all things, "Darkling,

I listen."

Yes, I thought, mystery does oppose theology, that was something
Roger was trying to say, that she had not caught on as she should
because the mystical and the theological were mixed in her, and it
wasn't working with the proper fire or magic. He had kept saying she
was a theologian. And he thought of his relics as mysterious, of
course. And they were.

Again a dim boyhood memory returned to me, of seeing the crucifix

in our church at home in the Auvergne and being awestruck by the
sight of the painted blood running from the nails. I must have been
very small. I was bedding village girls in the back of that church by
the time I was fifteen--something of a prodigy for the times, but then

the lord's son was supposed to be a perfect billygoat in our village.
Everyone expected it. And my brothers, such a conservative bunch,
they had more or less disappointed the local mythology by always
behaving themselves. It's a wonder that the crops hadn't suffered
from their paltry virtue. I smiled. I had certainly made up for it. But
when I had looked at the crucifix I must have been six or seven at
most. And I had said, What a horrible way to die! I had blurted it out,
and my mother had laughed and laughed. My father had been so
humiliated!

The traffic on Napoleon Avenue made small, predictable, and
slightly comforting noises.

Well, comforting to me.

I heard Dora sigh. And then I felt her hand on my arm, tight and
delicate for only an instant, but fingers pressing through the armour
of my clothing, wanting the texture beneath.

I felt her fingers graze my face.

For some reason, mortals do that when they want to be sure of us,
they fold their fingers inward and they run their knuckles against our
faces. Is that a way of touching someone without seeming to be
touched oneself? I suppose the palm of the hand, the soft pad of the
fingers, is too intimate.

I didn't move. I let her do it as if she were a blind woman and it
was a courtesy. I felt her fingers move to my hair. I knew there was
plenty enough light to make it fiery and pretty the way I counted

upon it to be, shameless vain preening, selfish, confused, and

temporarily disoriented being that I was.

She made the Sign of the Cross again. But she had never been
actually afraid. She was just confirming something, I suppose.
Though precisely what is really open to question, if you think of it.
Silently she prayed.

"I can do that too," I said. I did it. "In the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." I repeated the entire

performance, doing it in Latin.

She regarded me with a still, amazed face, and then she let slip a
tiny, gentle laugh.

I smiled. This bed and chair--where we sat so close to each
other--were in the corner. There was a window over her shoulder,
and one behind me. Windows, windows, it was a palazzo of windows.
The dark wood of the ceiling must have been fifteen feet above us. I

adored the scale of it. It was European, to say the least, and felt

normal. It had not been sacrificed to modern dimensions.

"You know," I said, "the first time I walked into Notre Dame,
after I'd been made into this, a vampire, that is, and it wasn't my idea,
by the way, I was completely human and younger than you are now,
the whole thing was forced, completely, I don't remember specifically

if I prayed when it was happening, but I fought, that I vividly
remember and have preserved in writing. But... as I was saying, the
first time I walked into Notre Dame, I thought, well, why doesn't
God strike me dead?"

"You must have your place in the scheme of things."

"You think? You really believe that?"

"Yes. I never expected to come upon something like you face to
face, but it never seemed impossible or even improbable. I've been
waiting all these years for a sign, for some confirmation. I would have
lived out my life without it, but there was always the feeling... that it
was going to come, the sign."

Her voice was small and typically feminine, that is, the pitch was
without mistake feminine, but she spoke with terrific self-confidence
now, and so her words seemed to have authority, rather like those of
a man.

"And now you come, and you bring the news that you've killed my
father. And you say that he spoke to you. No, I'm not one for simply
dismissing such things out of hand. There's an allure to what you say,
there is an ornate quality. Do you know, when I was a young girl, the
very first reason I believed in the Holy Bible was because it had an
ornate quality! I have perceived other patterns in life. I'll tell you a
secret. One time I wished my mother dead, and do you know on that
very day, within the very hour, she disappeared out of my life forever?

I could tell you other things. What you must understand is I
want to learn from you. You walked into Notre Dame Cathedral and
God didn't strike you dead."

"I'll tell you something that Ifound amusing," I said. "This was
two hundred years ago. Paris before the Revolution. There were
vampires living in Paris then, in Les Innocents, the big cemetery, it's
long gone, but they lived there in the catacombs beneath the tombs,
and they were afraid to go into Notre Dame. When they saw me do
it, they, too, thought God would strike me dead."

She was looking at me rather placidly.

"I destroyed their faith for them," I said. "Their belief in God
and the Devil. And they were vampires. They were earthbound

creatures like me, half demon, half human, stupid, blundering, and they
believed that God would strike them dead."

"And before you, they had really had a faith?"

"Yes, an entire religion, they really did," I said. "They thought
themselves servants of the Devil. They thought it was a distinction.
They lived as vampires, but their existence was miserable and

deliberately penitential. I was, you might say, a prince. I came swaggering
through Paris in a red cloak lined with wolf fur. But that was my
human life, the cloak. Does that impress you, that vampires would be
believers? I changed it all for them. I don't think they've ever

forgiven me, that is, those few who survive. There are not, by the way,
very many of us."

"Stop a minute," she said. "I want to listen to you, but I must ask
you something first."

"Yes?"

"My father, how did it happen, was it quick and. . . ."

"Absolutely painless, I assure you," I said, turning to her, looking
at her. "He told me himself. No pain."

She was owl-like with such a white face and big dark eyes, and she
was actually slightly scary herself. I mean, she might have scared

another mortal in this place, the way she looked, the strength of it.

"It was in a swoon that your father died," I said. "Ecstatic

perhaps, and filled with various images, and then a loss of consciousness.
His spirit had left his body before the heart ceased to beat. Any

physical pain I inflicted he never felt; once the blood is being sucked, once
I've ... no, he didn't suffer."

I turned and looked at her more directly. She'd curled her legs
under her, revealing white knees beneath her hem.

"I talked with Roger for two hours afterwards," I said. "Two
hours. He came back for one reason, to make certain I'd look out for
you. That his enemies didn't get you, and the government didn't get
you, and all these people he's connected with, or was. And that, and
that his death didn't... hurt you more than it had to."

"Why would God do this?" she whispered.

"What has God got to do with it? Listen, darling, I don't know
anything about God. I told you. I walked into Notre Dame and

nothing happened, and nothing ever has...."

Now, that was a lie, wasn't it? What about Him? Coming here in
the guise of the Ordinary Man, letting that door slam, arrogant

bastard, how dare he?

"How can this be God's plan?" she asked.

"You're perfectly serious, aren't you? Look, I could tell you many
stories. I mean, the one about the Paris vampires believing in the
Devil is just the beginning! Look, there . . . there. ..." I broke off.

"What is it?"

That sound. Those slow, measured steps! No sooner had I
thought of him, insultingly and angrily, than the steps had begun.

"I... was going to say. ..." I struggled to ignore him.

I could hear them approaching. They were faint, but it was the
unmistakable walk of the winged being, letting me know, one heavy
footfall after another, as though echoing through a giant chamber in
which I existed quite apart from my existence in this room.

"Dora, I've got to leave you."

"What is it?"

The footsteps were coming closer and closer. "You dare come to
me while I'm with her!" I shouted. I was on my feet.

"What is it?" she cried. She was up on her knees on the bed. I
backed across the room. I reached the door. The footsteps were
growing fainter.

"Damn you to hell!" I whispered.

"Tell me what it is," she said. "Will you come back? Are you

leaving me now forever?"

"No, absolutely not. I'm here to help you. Listen, Dora, if you
need me, call to me." I put my finger to my temple. "Call and call and
call! Like prayer, you understand. It won't be idolatry, Dora, I'm no
evil god. Do it. I have to go."

"What is your name?"

The footsteps came on, distant but loud, without location in the
immense building, only pursuing me.

"Lestat." I pronounced my name carefully for her--Le-'stat--
primary stress on the second syllable, sounding the final "t" distinctly.

"Listen. Nobody knows about your father. They won't for a
while. I did everything he asked of me. I have his relics."

"Wynken's books?"

"All of it, everything he held sacred ... A fortune for you, and all
he possessed that he wanted you to have. I've got to go."

Were the steps fading? I wasn't certain. But I couldn't take the
risk of remaining.

"I'll come again as soon as I can. You believe in God? Hang on to
it, Dora, because you just might be right about God, absolutely
right!"

I was out of there like particles of light, up the stairways, through
the broken attic window, and up above the rooftop, moving fast
enough that I could hear no footfall, and the city below had become a
beguiling swirl of lights.

7

IN MOMENTS, I stood in my own courtyard in the French
Quarter behind the town house in the Rue Royale, looking up at
my own lighted windows, windows that had been mine for so
long, hoping and praying that David was there, and afraid he wasn't.

I hated running from this Thing! I had to stand there a moment
and let my usual rage cool. Why had I run? Not to be humiliated in
front of Dora, who might have seen nothing more than me terrified
by the Thing and thrown backwards onto the floor?

Maybe Dora could have seen it!

Every instinct in me told me I'd done the proper thing, gotten
away, and kept that thing away from Dora. That thing was after me. I
had to protect Dora. I now had a very good reason to fight that thing,
for another's sake, not my own.

Only now did the full goodness of Dora take a contained shape in
my mind, that is, only now did I get a full impression of her, untan-
gled from the blood smell between her legs and her owl-like face
peering at me. Mortals tumble through life, from cradle to grave.
Once in a century or two perhaps, one crosses the path of a being like
Dora. An elegant intelligence and concept of goodness, precisely,
and the other thing Roger had struggled to describe, the magnetism
which had not burst free as yet from the tangle of faith and scripture.

The night was warm and receptive.

My courtyard banana trees had not been touched by a freeze this

winter, and grew thick and drowsing as ever against the brick walls.
The wild impatiens and lantana were glowing in the overgrown beds,
and the fountain, the fountain with its cherub, was making its

crystalline music as the water splashed from the cherub's horn into the
basin.

New Orleans, scents of the Quarter.

I ran up the back steps from the courtyard to the rear door of my
flat.

I went inside, pounding down the hall, a man in a state of visible

and ostentatious confusion. I saw a shadow cross the living room.

"David!"

"He's not here."

I came to a halt in the doorframe.

It was the Ordinary Man.

He stood with his back to Louis's desk between the two front

windows, arms folded loosely, face evincing a patient intellect and a sort
of unbreakable poise.

"Don't run again," he said without rancour. "I'll go after you. I
asked you to please leave that girl out of it. Didn't I? I was only trying
to get you to cut it short."

"I've never run from you!" I said, quite unsure of myself and

determined to make that the truth from this moment on. "Well, not
really! I didn't want you near Dora. What do you want?"

"What do you think?"

"I told you," I said, gathering all my strength, "if you are here to
take me, I am ready to go to Hell."

"You're drenched in blood sweat," he said, "look at you, you're so
afraid. You know, this is what it takes for me to get through to

someone like you." His voice was reasonable, easy to hear. "Now a

mortal?" he asked. "I could have simply appeared once and said what I
had to say. But you, no, that's a different matter, you've already

transcended too many stages, you've got too much to bargain with, that's
why you're worth everything to me just now."

"Bargain? You mean I can get out of this? We are not going to
Hell? We can have a trial of some sort? I can find a modern Daniel
Webster to plead for me?" There was mockery and impatience in all
of this, and yet it was the logical question to which I wanted the logical

answer at once.

"Lestat," he said with characteristic forbearance, loosening his

folded arms and taking a leisurely step towards me. "It goes back to

David and his vision in the cafe. The little story he told you. I am the
Devil. And I need you. I am not here to take you by force to Hell, and
you don't know the slightest thing about Hell anyway. Hell isn't what
you imagine. I am here to ask your help! I'm tired and I need you.
And I'm winning the battle, and it's crucial that I don't lose."

I was dumbstruck.

For a long moment he regarded me and then deliberately began to
change; his form appeared to swell in size, to darken, the wings to rise
once more like smoke curling towards the ceiling, and the din of
voices to begin and fast grow deafening, and the light suddenly rose
behind him. I saw the hairy goat legs move towards me. My feet had
no place to stand, my hands nothing to touch but him as I screamed.
I could see the gleam of the black feathers, the arch of the wings rising

higher and higher! And the din seemed a mixture of almost exquisite

music with the voices!

"No, not this time, no!" I hurled myself right at him. I grabbed
for him and saw my fingers wrap around his jet-black wrist. I stared
right into his immense face, the face of the granite statue, only fully
animate and magnificently expressive, the horrific noise of chant and
song and howl swelling and drowning out my words. I saw his mouth
open, the great eyebrows scowl, the huge innocent almond-shaped
eyes grow immense and fill with light.

I held fast with my left hand clutching at his powerful arm, certain
he was trying to get away from me and he couldn't! Aha! He couldn't!
And then I slammed my right fist into his face. I felt the hardness,
preternatural hardness, as if striking another of my own kind. But
this was no solid vampiric form.

The entire figure blinked even in its density and defensiveness;
the image recoiled and redressed itself and began to grow again; I
gave him one last full shove in the chest with every bit of strength I
had in me, my fingers splayed out against his black armour, the

shimmering ornamented breastplate, my eyes so close in the first instant
that I saw the carvings on it, the writing in the metal, and then the
wings flapped above me as if to terrify me. He was far from me,

suddenly, gigantic, yes, still, but I'd thrown him back, damn him. One
fine blow that had been. I gave a war cry before I could stop myself
and flew at him, though propelling myself from what base and by
what force I couldn't have said.

There came a swirl of black feathers, sleek and shining, and then
I was falling; I wouldn't scream, I didn't give a damn, I wouldn't.

Falling.

Plummeting. As if through a depth that only nightmare can
fathom. An emptiness so perfect we can't conceive of it. And falling
fast.

Only the Light remained. The Light obliterated everything visible

and was so beautiful suddenly that I lost all sense of my own limbs
or parts or organs or whatever I am created of. I had no shape or
weight. Only the momentum of my fall continued to terrify, as
though gravity remained to ensure utter ruin. There was one great
surge of the voices.

"They are singing!" I cried out.

Then I lay still.

Slowly I felt the floor beneath me. The slightly rough surface of
the carpet. Scent of dust, wax, my home. I knew we were in the same
room.

He had taken Louis's chair at the desk, and I lay there on my back,
staring at the ceiling, my chest bursting with pain.

I sat up, crossed my legs, and looked at him defiantly.

He was puzzled. "It makes perfect sense," he said.

"And what's that?"

"You're as strong as one of us."

"No, I don't think so," I said furiously. "I can't grow wings; I
can't make music."

"Yes, you can, you've made images before for mortals. You know
you can. You've wrapped them in spells. You are as strong as we are.
You have achieved a very interesting stage in your development. I
knew I was right about you all along. I'm in awe of you."

"In awe of what? My independence? Look, let me tell you something, Satan, or whoever you are."

"Don't use that name, I hate it."

"That's likely to make me pepper my speeches with it."

"My name is Memnoch," he said calmly, with a small pleading
gesture. "Memnoch the Devil. I want you to remember it that way."

"Memnoch the Devil."

"Aye." He nodded. "That is how I sign my name when I sign it."

"Well, let me tell you, Your Royal Highness of Darkness. I'm not
helping you with anything! I don't serve you!"

"I think I can change your mind," he said calmly. "I think you will
come to understand things very well from my point of view."
I felt a sudden sagging, a complete exhaustion, and a despair.
Typical.

I rolled over on my face and tucked my arm under my head and
started crying like a child. I was perishing from exhaustion. I was
worn and miserable and I loved crying. I couldn't do anything else. I
gave in to it fully. I felt that profound release of the utterly grief-
stricken. I didn't give a damn who saw or heard. I cried and cried.

Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have
to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry,
there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the
trick. It's like whistling or singing.

Whatever the case, I was too miserable to take much consolation
just from feeling good for a moment in a welter of shudders and
salted, bloodstained tears.

I thought of years and years ago, when I had walked into Notre
Dame and those fiendish little vampires had lain in wait for me,

Servants of Satan, I thought of my mortal self, I thought of Dora, I
thought of Armand in those days, the immortal boy leader of Satan's
Elect beneath the cemetery, who had made himself a dark saint,
sending forth his ragged blood drinkers to torment mortals, to bring
death, to spread fear and death like pestilence. I was choking with
sobs.

"It is not true!" I think I said. "There is no God or Devil. It is not
true."

He didn't answer. I rolled over and sat up. I wiped my face on my
sleeve. No handkerchief. Of course, I'd given it to Dora. A faint

perfume of Dora rose from my clothes, my chest against which she'd
lain, blood sweetness. Dora. I should never have left Dora in such
distress. Dear God, I was bound to look out for the sanity of Dora!
Damn.

I looked at him.

He was still sitting there, his arm resting on the back of Louis's
chair, and he was simply watching me.

I sighed. "You're not going to leave me alone, are you?"

He was taken aback. He laughed. His face was marvelously

friendly, rather than neutral.
"No, of course not," he said in a low voice, as if careful not to

unbalance me any further. "Lestat, I've been waiting for someone
like you for centuries. I've been watching you yourself for centuries.
No, I'm afraid I'm not going to leave you alone. But I don't want you
to be miserable. What can I do to calm you? Some small miracle, gift,
anything, so that we can proceed?"

"And how in hell will we proceed?"

"I'll tell you everything," he said with a slight shrug, his hands
open, "and then you'll understand why I have to win."

"The implication . . . it's that I can refuse to cooperate with you,
isn't it?"

"Absolutely. Nobody can really help me who doesn't choose to do
it. And I'm tired. I'm tired of the job. I need help. That part your
friend David heard correctly when he experienced that accidental
epiphany."

"Was David's epiphany accidental? What happened to that other
word? What had it been ... I don't remember. David wasn't meant to
see you or hear you and God talking together?"

"That's almost impossible to explain."

"Did I upset some plan of yours by taking David, making him one
of us?"

"Yes and no. But the point is, David heard that part correctly. My
task is hard and I'm tired! Some of the rest of David's ideas about that
little vision, well--" He shook his head. "The point is, you are the
one I want now and it's terribly important you see everything before
you make up your mind."

"I'm that bad, am I?" I whispered, lips trembling. I was going to
bawl again. "In all the world, with all the things humans have done,
all the unspeakable horrors men have visited on other men, the

unthinkable suffering of women and children worldwide at the hands of
mankind, and I'm that bad! You want me! David was too good, I

suppose. He didn't become as consummately evil as you thought he
would. Is that it?"

"No, of course you're not that bad," he said soothingly. "That's
the very point." He gave a little sigh again.

I was beginning to notice more distinct details of his appearance,
not because they were becoming more vivid as had happened with
the apparition of Roger, but because I was growing more calm. His
hair was a dark ashen blond, and rather soft and curling. And his

eyebrows were the same shade, not distinctly black at all, but very care-

fully drawn to maintain an expression that contained no closed vanity
or arrogance. He didn't look stupid either, of course. The clothes
were generic. I don't believe they were really clothes. They were

material, but the coat was too plain and without buttons, and the white
shirt was too simple.

"You know," he said, "you always have had a conscience! That's
precisely what I'm after, don't you see? Conscience, reason, purpose,
dedication. Good Lord, I couldn't have overlooked you. And I'll tell
you something. It was as though you sent for me."

"Never."

"Come on, think of all the challenges you've flung out to the
Devil."

"That was poetry, or doggerel, depending on one's point of
view."

"Not so. And then think of all the things you did, waking that
ancient one Akasha and almost loosing her on humanity." He gave a
short laugh. "As if we don't have enough monsters created by

evolution. And then your adventure with the Body Thief. Coming into the
flesh again, having that chance, and rejecting it for what you were
before. You know your friend Gretchen is a saint in the jungles, don't
you?"

"Yes. I've seen mentions of it in the papers. I know."
Gretchen, my nun, my love when I'd been so briefly mortal, had
never spoken one word since the night she fled from me into her
missionary chapel and fell on her knees before the crucifix. She

remained in prayer night and day in that jungle village, taking almost
no nourishment, and on Fridays people journeyed miles through the

jungle, and sometimes even came from Caracas and Buenos Aires just
to see her bleed from her hands and her feet. That had been the end
of Gretchen.

Although it suddenly struck me for the very first time, in the

middle of all this: maybe Gretchen really was with Christ!

"No, I don't believe it," I said coldly. "Gretchen lost her mind;
she's fixed in a state of hysteria and it's my fault. So the world has
another mystic who bleeds like Christ. There have been a thousand."

"I didn't place any judgment upon the incident," he said. "If we
can go back to what I was saying. I was saying that you did everything
but ask me to come! You challenged every form of authority, you
sought every experience. You've buried yourself alive twice, and once

tried to rise into the very sun to make yourself a cinder. What was left
for you--but to call on me? It is as if you yourself said it: 'Memnoch,
what more can I do now?' "

"Did you tell God about this?" I asked coldly, refusing to be
drawn in. Refusing to be this curious and this excited.

"Yes, of course," he said.

I was too surprised to say anything.

I could think of nothing clever. Certain little theological brain
twisters flitted through my mind, and sticky little questions, like
"Why didn't God already know?" and so forth. But we were beyond
that point, obviously.

I had to think, to concentrate on what my senses were telling me.

"You and Descartes," he said. "You and Kant."

"Don't lump me with others," I said. "I am the Vampire Lestat,
the one and only."

"You're telling me," he said.

"How many of us are there now, vampires, I mean, in the whole
world? I'm not speaking now of other immortals and monsters and
evil spirits and things, whatever you are, for instance, but vampires?
There aren't a hundred, and none of them is quite like me. Lestat."

"I completely agree. I want you. I want you for my helper."

"Doesn't it gall you that I don't really respect you, believe in you,

or fear you, not even after all this? That we're in my flat and I'm
making fun of you? I don't think Satan would put up with this sort of
thing. I don't usually put up with it; I've compared myself to you, you
know. Lucifer, Son of Morning. I have told my detractors and

inquisitors that I was the Devil or that if I ever happened upon Satan
himself I'd set him to rout."

"Memnoch," he corrected me. "Don't use the name Satan.
Please. Don't use any of the following: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Azazel,
Sammael, Marduk, Mephistopheles, et cetera. My name is

Memnoch. You'll soon find out for yourself that the others represent

various alphabetical or scriptural compromises. Memnoch is for this time
and all time. Appropriate and pleasing. Memnoch the Devil. And
don't go look it up in a book because you'll never find it."

I didn't answer. I was trying to figure this. He could change
shapes, but there had to be an invisible essence. Had I come against
the strength of the invisible essence when I'd smashed his face? I'd
felt no real contour, only strength resisting me. And were I to grab

him now, would this man-form be filled with the invisible essence so
that it could fight me off with strength equal to that of the dark

angel?

"Yes," he said. "Imagine trying to convince a mortal of these
things. But that really isn't why I chose you. I chose you not so much
because it would be easier for you to comprehend everything but

because you're perfect for the job."

"The job of helping the Devil."

"Yes, of being my right-hand instrument, so to speak, being in my
stead when I'm weary. Being my prince."

"How could you be so mistaken? You find the self-inflicted

suffering of my conscience amusing? You think I like evil? That I think
about evil when I look at something beautiful like Dora's face!"

"No, I don't think you like evil," he said. "Any more than do I."

"You don't like evil," I repeated, narrowing my eyes.

"Loathe it. And if you don't help me, if you let God keep doing
things His way, I tell you evil--which is nothing really--just might

destroy the world."

"It's God's will," I asked slowly, "that the world be destroyed?"

"Who knows?" he asked coldly. "But I don't think God would lift
a finger to stop it from happening. I don't will it, that I know. But my
ways are the right ways, and the ways of God are bloody and wasteful
and exceedingly dangerous. You know they are. You have to help me.
I am winning, I told you. But this century has been damn near

unendurable for us all."

"So you are telling me that you're not evil...."

"Exactly. Remember what your friend David asked of you? He
asked you if in my presence you had sensed evil, and you had to

answer that you had not."

"The Devil is a famous liar."

"My enemies are famous detractors. Neither God nor I tell lies
per se. But look, I don't expect for a moment that you should accept
me on faith. I didn't come here to convince you of things through
conversation. I'll take you to Hell and to Heaven, if you like, you can
talk to God for as long as He allows, and you desire. Not God the
Father, precisely, not En Sof, but... well, all of this will become clear
to you. Only there's no point if I cannot count upon your willing
intent to see the truth, your willing desire to turn your life from aim-
lessness and meaninglessness into a crucial battle for the fate of the
world."

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure what I could say. We were leagues
from the point at which we had begun this discussion.

"See Heaven?" I whispered, absorbing all of it slowly. "See
Hell?"

"Yes, of course," he said with level patience.

"I want a full night to think it over."

"What!"

"I said I want a night to think it over."

"You don't believe me. You want a sign."

"No, I am beginning to believe you," I said. "That's why I have to
think. I have to weigh all of this."

"I'm here to answer any question, to show you anything now."

"Then leave me alone for two nights. Tonight and tomorrow
night. That's a simple enough request, isn't it? Leave me alone."

He was obviously disappointed, maybe even a little suspicious.
But I meant every word of it. I couldn't say anything but what I had
said. I knew the truth as I spoke it, so fast were thought and word
wedded in my mind.

"Is it possible to deceive you?" I asked.

"Of course," he asked. "I rely upon my gifts such as they are, just
as you rely on yours. I have my limits. You have yours. You can be
deceived. So can I."

"What about God?"

"Ach!" he said with disgust. "If you only knew how irrelevant that
question is. You cannot imagine how much I need you. I'm tired," he
said with a faint rise of emotion. "God is ... beyond being deceived,
that much I can say with charity. I'll give you tonight and tomorrow
night. I won't bother you, stalk you, as you put it. But may I ask what
you mean to do?"

"Why? Either I have the two nights or I don't!"

"You're known to be unpredictable," he said. He smiled broadly.
It was very pleasant. And something else, quite obvious, struck me
about him. Not only were his proportions perfect, there were no

visible flaws in him anywhere; he was a paragon of the Ordinary Man.

He showed no response to this estimation, whether he could read
it from my mind or not. He merely waited on me, courteously.

"Dora," I said. "I have to go back to Dora."

"Why?"

"I refuse to explain further."

Again, he was surprised by my answer.

"Well, aren't you going to try to help her with all this confusion
regarding her father? Why not explain something as simple as that? I
only meant to ask you how deeply you intended to commit yourself,
how much you planned to reveal to this woman. I'm thinking of the
fabric of things, to use David's phrase. That is, how will it be with

this woman, after you've come with me?"
I said nothing.

He sighed. "All right, I've waited for your like for centuries. What
is another two nights, such as the case may be. We are speaking of
only tomorrow night, really, aren't we? At the sunset of the following
evening, after that I shall come for you."
"Right."

"I'll give you a little gift that will help you believe in me. It's not
so simple to me to fix your level of understanding. You're full of

paradox and conflict. Let me give you something unusual."
"Agreed."

"So this is the gift. Call it a sign. Ask Dora about Uncle Mickey's
eye. Ask her to tell you the truth that Roger never knew."
"This sounds like a Spiritualist parlour game."
"Think so? Ask her."

"All right. The truth about Uncle Mickey's eye. Now let me ask
you one last question. You are the Devil. Yes. But you're not evil?
Why?"

"Absolutely irrelevant question. Or let me put it a little more
mysteriously. It's completely unnecessary for me to be evil. You'll
see. Oh, this is so frustrating for me because you have so much to
see."

"But you're opposed to God!"

"Oh, absolutely, a total adversary! Lestat, when you see

everything that I have to show you, and hear all that I have to say, when
you've spoken with God and better see it from His perspective, and
from my point of view, you will join me as His adversary. I'm sure
you will."

He stood up from the chair. "I'm going now. Should I help you up
off the floor?"

"Irrelevant and unnecessary," I said crossly. "I'm going to miss
you." The words surprised me as they came out.
"I know," he answered.
"I have all of tomorrow night," I said. "Remember."

"Don't you realize," he answered, "that if you come with me now
there is no night and day?"

"Oh, that's very tempting," I said. "But that's what Devils do so

well. Tempt. I need to think about this, and consult others for
advice."

"Consult others?" He seemed genuinely surprised.

"I'm not going off with the Devil without telling anyone," I said.
"You're the Devil! Goddamn it, why should I trust the Devil? That's
absurd! You're playing by rules, somebody's rules. Everybody always
is. And I don't know the rules. Well. You gave me the choice, and this
is my choice. Two full nights, and not before then. Leave me alone
all that time! Give me your oath."

"Why?" he asked politely, as if dealing with an ornery child. "So
you won't have to fear the sound of my footsteps?"

"Possibly."

"What good is an oath on this if you don't accept the truth of all
the rest that I've said?" He shook his head as if I were being foolishly
human.

"Can you swear an oath or not?"

"You have my oath," he said, laying his hand on his heart, or
where his heart should have been. "With complete sincerity, of
course."

"Thank you, I feel much better," I said.

"David won't believe you," he said gently.

"I know," I said.

"On the third night," he said with an emphatic nod, "I shall come
back for you here. Or wherever you happen to be at the time."

And with a final smile, as bright as the earlier one, he disappeared.

It was not the way I tended to do it, by making off with such

swiftness no human could track it.

He actually vanished on the spot.

8

I STOOD up shakily, brushed off my clothes, and noted without
surprise that the room was as perfect as it had been when we
entered it. The battle obviously had been fought in some other
realm. But what was that realm?

Oh, if only I could find David. I had less than three hours before
the winter dawn and set off at once to search.

Now, being unable to read David's mind, or to call to him, I had
but one telepathic tool at my command, and that was to scan the
minds of mortals at random for some image of David as he passed in
some recognizable place.

I hadn't walked three blocks when I realized that not only was I
picking up a strong image of David, but that it was coming to me
from the mind of another vampire.

I closed my eyes, and tried with my entire soul to make some

eloquent contact. Within seconds, the pair acknowledged me, David
through the one who stood beside him, and I saw and recognized the
wooded place where they were.

In my days, the Bayou Road had led through this area into

country, and it had been very near here once that Claudia and Louis,

having attempted my murder, had left my remains in the waters of the
swamp.

Now the area was a great combed park, filled by day, I supposed,
with mothers and children, containing a museum of occasionally very
interesting paintings, and providing in the dark of night a dense
wood.

Some, of the oldest oaks of New Orleans lay within the bounds of
this area, and a lovely lagoon, long, serpentine, seemingly endless,
wound under a picturesque bridge in the heart of it.

I found them there, the two vampires communing with one

another in dense darkness, far from the beaten path. David was as I
expected, his usual properly attired self.

But the sight of the other astonished me.

This was Armand.

He sat on the stone park bench, boylike, casual, with one knee
crooked, looking up at me with the predictable innocence, dusty all
over, naturally, hair a long, tangled mess of auburn curls.

Dressed in heavy denim garments, tight pants, and a zippered
jacket, he surely passed for human, a street vagabond maybe, though

his face was now parchment white, and even smoother than it had
been when last we met.

In a way, he made me think of a child doll, with brilliant faintly
red-brown glass eyes--a doll that had been found in an attic. I
wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him even more
radiant than he was.

"That's what you always want," he said softly. His voice
shocked me. If he had any French or Italian accent left, I couldn't
hear it. His tone was melancholy and had no meanness in it at all.
"When you found me under Les Innocents," he said, "you wanted
to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvet with great

embroidered sleeves."

"Yes," I said, "and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair."
My tone was angry. "You look good to me, you damnable little devil,
good to embrace and good to love."

We eyed each other for a moment. And then he surprised me,
rising and coming towards me just as I moved to take him in my arms.
His gesture wasn't tentative, but it was extremely gentle. I could have
backed away. I didn't. We held each other tight for a moment. The
cold embracing the cold. The hard embracing the hard.

"Cherub child," I said. I did a bold thing, maybe even a defiant
thing. I reached out and mussed his snaggled curls.

He is smaller than me physically, but he didn't seem to mind this
gesture.

In fact, he smiled, shook his head, and reclaimed his hair with a
few casual strokes of his hand. His cheeks went apple-perfect

suddenly, and his mouth softened, and then he lifted his right fist, and
teasingly struck me hard on the chest.

Really hard. Show-off. Now it was my turn to smile and I did.

"I can't remember anything bad between us," I said.

"You will," he responded. "And so will I. But what does it matter
what we remember?"

"Yes," I said, "we're both still here."

He laughed outright, though it was very low, and he shook his
head, flashing a glance on David that implied they knew each other
very well, maybe too well. I didn't like it that they knew each other at

all. David was my David, and Armand was my Armand.

I sat down on the bench.

"So David's told you the whole story," I said, glancing up at

Armand and then over at David.

David gave a negative shake of the head.

"Not without your permission, Brat Prince," David said, a little
disdainfully. "I would never have taken the liberty. But the only thing
that's brought Armand here is worry for you."

"Is that so?" I said. I raised my eyebrows. "Well?"

"You know damned good and well it is," said Armand. His whole
posture was casual; he'd learned, beating about the world, I guess. He
didn't look so much like a church ornament anymore. He had his
hands in his pockets. Little tough guy.

"You're looking for trouble again," he went on, in the same slow
manner, without anger or meanness. "The whole wide world isn't
enough for you and never will be. This time I thought I'd try to speak
to you before the wheel turns."

"Aren't you the most thoughtful of guardian angels?" I said
sarcastically.

"Yes, I am," he said without so much as blinking. "So what are
you doing, want to let me know?

"Come, I want to go deeper into the park," I said, and they both
followed me as we walked at a mortal pace into a thicket of the oldest
oaks, where the grass was high and neglected, and not even the most
desperate homeless heart would seek to rest.

We made our own small clearing, among the volcanic black roots
and rather cool winter earth. The breeze from the nearby lake was
brisk and clean, and for a moment there seemed little scent of New
Orleans, of any city; we three were together, and Armand asked
again: "Will you tell me what you're doing?" He bent close to me,
and suddenly kissed me, in a manner that seemed entirely childlike
and also a bit European. "You're in deep trouble. Come on.

Everyone knows it." The steel buttons of his denim jacket were icy cold, as
though he had come from some far worse winter in a very few

moments of time.

We are never entirely sure about each other's powers. It's all a
game. I would no more have asked him how he got here, or in what
manner, than I would ask a mortal man how precisely he made love to
his wife.

I looked at him a long time, conscious that David had settled
down on the grass, leaning back on his elbow, and was studying us
both.

Finally I spoke: "The Devil has come to me and asked me to go
with him, to see Heaven and Hell."

Armand didn't answer. Then he frowned just a little.

"This is the same Devil," said I, "which I told you I didn't believe
in, when you did believe in him centuries ago. You were right at least
on one point. He exists. I've met him." I looked at David. "He wants
me as his assistant. He's given me tonight and tomorrow night to
seek advice from others. He will take me to Heaven and then to Hell.
He claims he is not evil."

David looked off into the darkness. Armand simply stared at me,
rapt and silent.

I went on. I told them everything then. I repeated the story of
Roger for Armand, and of Roger's ghost, and then I told them both
in detail about my blundering visit to Dora, about my exchanges with
her, and how I'd left her, and then how the Devil had come pursuing
me and annoying me, and we'd had our brawl.

I put down every detail. I opened my mind, without calculation,
letting Armand see whatever he could for himself.

Finally I sat back.

"Don't say things to me that are humiliating," I averred. "Don't
ask me why I fled from Dora, or blurted out to her all this about her
father. I can't get rid of the presence of Roger, the sense of Roger's
friendship for me and love for her. And this Memnoch the Devil, this
is a reasonable and mild-mannered individual, and very convincing.
As for the battle, I don't know what happened, except I gave him
something to think about. In two nights, he's coming back, and if
memory serves me correctly, which it invariably does, he said he'd
come for me wherever I was at the time."

"Yes, that's clear," Armand said sotto voce.

"You aren't enjoying my misery, are you?" I admitted with a little
sigh of defeat.

"No, of course not," Armand said, "only, as usual, you don't

really seem miserable. You're on the verge of an adventure, and just a
little more cautious this time than when you let that mortal run off
with your body and you took his."

"No, not more cautious. Terrified. I think this creature,

Memnoch, is the Devil. If you had seen the visions, you would think he was
the Devil too. I'm not talking about spellbinding. You can do

spellbinding, Armand, you've done it to me. I was battling that thing. It
has some essence which can inhabit actual bodies! It's objective and

bodiless itself, of that I'm sure. The rest? Maybe all that was spells.
He implied he could make spells and so could I."

"You're describing an angel, of course," said David offhandedly,
"and this one claims to be a fallen angel."

"The Devil himself," mused Armand. "What are you asking of us,
Lestat? You are asking our advice? I would not go with this spirit of
my own will, if I were you."

"What makes you say this?" David asked before I could get out a
word.

"Look, we know there are earthbound beings," Armand said,
"that we ourselves can't classify, or locate, or control. We know there
are species of immortals, and types of mammalian creatures which
look human but are not. This creature might be anything. And there
is something highly suspicious in the manner in which he courts
you ... the visions, and then the politeness."

"Either that," said David, "or it simply makes perfect sense. He is
the Devil, he is reasonable, the way you always supposed, Lestat--
not a moral idiot, but a true angel, and he wants your cooperation.
He doesn't want to keep doing things to you by force. He's used force
as his introduction."

"I would not believe him," said Armand. "What does this mean--
he wants you to help him? That you would begin to exist

simultaneously on this earth and in Hell? No, I would shun him for his
imagery, if nothing else, for his vocabulary. For his name. Memnoch.
It sounds evil."

"Oh, all these are things," I admitted, "that I once said, more or
less, to you."

"I've never seen the Prince of Darkness with my own eyes," said
Armand. "I've seen centuries of superstition, and the wonders done
by demonic beings such as ourselves. You've seen a little more than I
have. But you're right. That is what you told me before and I'm

telling it to you now. Don't believe in the Devil, or that you are his child.
And that is what I told Louis, once when he came to me seeking

explanations of God and the universe. I believe in no Devil. So I remind
you. Don't believe him. Turn your back."

"As for Dora," said David quietly, "you've acted unwisely, but it's
possible that that breach of preternatural decorum can somehow be
healed."

"I don't think so."

"Why?" he asked.

"Let me ask you both ... do you believe what I'm telling you?"

"I know you're telling the truth," said Armand, "but I told you, I
don't believe this creature is the Devil himself or that he will take you
to Heaven or Hell. And very frankly, if it is true ... well, that's all the
more reason perhaps that you shouldn't go."

I studied him for a long moment, fighting the darkness I had

deliberately sought, trying to draw from him some impression of his
complete disposition on this, and I realized he was sincere. There was
no envy in him, or old grudge against me; there was no hurt, or

trickery, or anything. He was past all these things, if ever they had

obsessed him. Perhaps they'd been fantasies of mine.

"Perhaps so," he said, answering my thoughts directly. "But you
are correct in that I am speaking to you directly and truly, and I tell
you, I would not trust this creature, or trust the proposition that you
must in some way verbally cooperate."

"A medieval concept of pact," said David.

"Which means what?" I asked. I hadn't meant it to be so rude.

"Making a pact with the Devil," said David, "you know, agreeing
to something with him. That's what Armand is telling you not to do.
Don't make a pact."

"Precisely," said Armand. "It arouses my deepest suspicions that

he makes such a moral issue of your agreement." His young face was
sorely troubled, his pretty eyes very vivid for a second in the shadows.
"Why do you have to agree?"

"I don't know if that's on the mark or not," I said. I was confused.
· "But you're right. I said something to him myself, something about
this being played by rules."

"I want to talk with you about Dora," said David in a low voice.
"You must heal what you've done there very quickly, or at least
promise us that you won't. ..."

"I'm not going to promise you anything about Dora. I can't," I
said.

"Lestat, don't destroy this young mortal woman!" said David
forcefully. "If we are in a new realm, if the spirits of the dead can
plead with us, then maybe they can hurt us, have you ever thought of
that?"

David sat up, disconcerted, angry, the lovely British voice straining

to maintain decency as he spoke: "Don't hurt the mortal girl. Her

father asked you for a species of guardianship, not that you shake her
sanity to the foundations."

"David, don't go on with your speech. I know what you're saying.
But I tell you right now, I am alone in this. I am alone. I am alone
with this being Memnoch, the Devil; and you both have been friends
to me. You've been kindred. But I don't think anyone can advise me
what to do, except for Dora."

"Dora!" David was aghast.

"You mean to tell her this entire tale?" Armand asked timidly.

"Yes. That's exactly what I mean to do. Dora's the only one who
believes in the Devil. Dear God, I need a believer right now, I need a
saint, and I may need a theologian, and to Dora I'm going."

"You are perverse, stubborn, and innately destructive!" said
David. It had the tone of a curse. "You will do what you will!" He was
furious. I could see it. All his reasons for despising me were being
heated from within, and there really was nothing I could say in my
defense.

"Wait," said Armand with gentleness. "Lestat, this is mad. It's
like consulting the Sibyl. You want the girl to act as an oracle for you,
to tell you what she, a mortal, thinks you must do?"

"She's no mere mortal, she's different. She has no fear of me
whatsoever. None. And she has no fear of anything. It's as though
she's a different species, but she's the human species. She's like a
saint, Armand. She's like Joan of Arc must have been when she led
the army. She knows something about God and the Devil that I don't
know."

"You're talking about faith, and it's very alluring," said David,
"just as it was with your nun companion, Gretchen, who is now stark
raving mad."

"Stark mutely mad," I said. "She doesn't say anything but prayers,

or so say the papers. But before I came along, Gretchen didn't
really believe in God, keep that in mind. Belief and madness, for
Gretchen, are one and the same."

"Do you never learn!" said David.

"Learn what?" I asked. "David, I'm going to Dora. She's the only
person I can go to. And besides, I can't leave things with her as I did!
I have to go back, and I am going back. Now from you, Armand, a
promise, the obvious thing. Around this Dora, I've thrown a

protective light. None of us can touch her."

"That goes without saying. I won't hurt your little friend. You
wound me." He looked genuinely put out.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know. But I know what blood is and innocence

and how delicious both can be. I know how much the girl
tempts me."

"Then you must be the one to give in to that temptation," said
Armand crossly. "I never choose my victims anymore, you know this.
I can stand before a house as always, and out of the doors will come
those who want to be in my arms. Of course I won't hurt her. You do
hold old grudges. You think I live in the past. You don't understand
that I actually change with every era, I always have as best I can. But
what in the world can Dora tell you that will help you?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm going directly tomorrow night.
If there were time left, I'd go now. I'm going to her. David, if
something happens to me, if I vanish, if I ... you have all Dora's
inheritance."

He nodded. "You have my word of honor on the girl's best

interests, but you must not go to her!"

"Lestat, if you need me--" Armand said. "If this being tries to
take you by force!"

"Why do you care about me?" I asked. "After all the bad things I
did to you? Why?"

"Oh, don't be such a fool," he begged gently. "You convinced me
long ago that the world was a Savage Garden. Remember your old
poetry? You said the only laws that were true were aesthetic laws,
that was all you could count on."

"Yes, I remember all that. I fear it's true. I've always feared it was
true. I feared it when I was a mortal child. I woke up one morning
and I believed in nothing."

"Well, then, in the Savage Garden," said Armand, "you shine
beautifully, my friend. You walk as if it is your garden to do with as
you please. And in my wanderings, I always return to you. I always
return to see the colors of the garden in your shadow, or reflected in
your eyes, perhaps, or to hear of your latest follies and mad

obsessions. Besides, we are brothers, are we not?"

"Why didn't you help me last time, when I was in all that trouble,
having switched bodies with a human being?"

"You won't forgive me if I tell you," he said.

"Tell me."

"Because I hoped and prayed for you, that you would remain in
that mortal body and save your soul. I thought you had been granted
the greatest gift, that you were human again, my heart ached for your
triumph! I couldn't interfere. I couldn't do it."

"You are a child and a fool, you always were."

He shrugged. "Well, it looks like you're being given another
chance to do something with your soul. You'd best be at your very
strongest and most resourceful, Lestat. I distrust this Memnoch, far
worse than any human foe you faced when you were trapped in the
flesh. This Memnoch sounds very far from Heaven. Why should they
let you in with him?"

"Excellent question."

"Lestat," said David, "don't go to Dora. Will you remember that
my advice last time might have saved you misery!"

Oh, there was too much to comment on there, for his advice
might have prevented him from ever being what he was now, in this
fine form, and I could not, I could not regret that he was here, that he
had won the Body Thief's fleshly trophy. I couldn't. I just couldn't.

"I can believe the Devil wants you," said Armand.

"Why?" I asked.

"Please don't go to Dora," said David seriously.

"I have to, and it's almost morning now. I love you both."

Both of them were staring at me, perplexed, suspicious, uncertain.

I did the only thing I could. I left.



9



THE NEXT night, I rose from my attic hiding place and went
directly out in search of Dora. I didn't want to see or hear any
more of David or Armand. I knew I couldn't be prevented
from what I had to do.

How I meant to do it, that was the question. They had unwittingly
confirmed something for me. I was not totally mad. I was not

imagining everything that was happening around me. Some of it, perhaps, I
was imagining, but not all.

Whatever the case, I decided upon a radical course of action with
Dora, and one which neither David nor Armand could conceivably
have approved.

Knowing more than a little about her habits and her whereabouts,

I caught up with Dora as she was coming out of the television

studio on Chartres Street in the Quarter. She'd spent the
entire afternoon taping an hour-long show, and then visiting with
her audience afterwards. I waited in the doorway of a nearby shop
as she said farewell to the last of her "sisters" or seeming worshippers

. They were young women, though not girls, and very firm believers

in changing the world with Dora, and had about them a
careless, nonconformist air.

They hurried off, and Dora went the other way towards the
square and towards her car. She wore a slender black wool coat and
wool stockings with heels that were very high, her very favorites for
dancing on her program, and with her little cap of black hair she
looked extremely dramatic and fragile, and horribly vulnerable in a
world of mortal males.

I caught her around the waist before she knew what was happening.

We were rising so fast, I knew she could not see or understand
anything, and I said very close to her ear,

"You're with me, and you're safe." Then I wrapped her totally in
my arms, so that no harm at all could come to her from the wind or
the speed we were traveling, and I went up just as high as I dared to
go with her, uncovered and vulnerable and depending upon me,

listening keenly beneath the howl of the wind for the proper functioning

of her heart and her lungs.

I felt her relaxing in my arms, or more truly, she simply remained
trusting. It was as surprising as everything else about her. She had
buried her face in my coat, as though too afraid to try to look around
her, but this was really more a practical matter in the cold than

anything else. At one point, I opened my coat, and covered her with one
side of it, and we went on.

The journey took longer than I had supposed; I simply could not
take a fragile human being up that high into the air. But it was nothing

as tedious or dangerous as it might have been had we taken a
fuming and stinking and highly explosive jet plane.

Within less than an hour, I was standing with her inside the glass
doors of the Olympic Tower. She awoke in my arms as if from a deep

sleep. I realized this had been inevitable. She'd lost consciousness, for
a series of physical and mental reasons, but she came to herself at
once, her heels striking the floor, and looked at me with huge owl
eyes, and then out at the side of St. Patrick's rising in all its obdurate
glory across the street.

"Come on," I said, "I'm taking you to your father's things." We
made for the elevators.

She hurried after me, eagerly, the way that vampires dream mortals

will do it, which never, never happens, as if all this were wondrous

and there was no reason under Heaven to be afraid.

"I don't have much time," I said. We were in the elevator speeding

upwards. "There is something chasing me and I don't know what
it wants of me. But I had to bring you here. And I'll see that you get
home safe."

I explained that I knew of no rooftop entrances to this building;
indeed, the whole place was new to me, or I would have brought her
in that way, and I explained this now, embarrassed that we would
cover a continent in an hour and then take a rattling, sucking, and
shimmering elevator that seemed only slightly less marvelous than
the gift of vampiric flight.

The doors opened onto the correct floor. I put the key in her
hand, and guided her towards the apartment. "You open it,

everything inside is yours."

She looked at me for a moment, a slight frown on her forehead,
then she stroked carelessly at her wind-torn hair, and put the key in
the lock and opened the door.

"Roger's things," she said with the first breath she took.

She knew them by the smell as any antiquarian might have known
them, these icons and relics. Then she saw the marble angel, poised
in the corridor, with the glass wall way beyond it, and I thought she
was going to faint in my arms.

She slumped backwards as if counting upon me to catch her and
support her. I held her with the tips of my fingers, as afraid as ever
that I might accidentally bruise her.

"Dear God," she said under her breath. Her heart was racing, but
it was hearty and very young and capable of tremendous endurance.
"We are here, and you've been telling me true things."

She sprang loose from me before I could answer and walked
briskly past the angel and into the larger front room of the place. The

spires of St. Patrick's were visible just below the level of the window.
And everywhere were these cumbersome packages of plastic through
which one could detect the shape of a crucifix or saint. The books of
Wynken were on the table, of course, but I wasn't going to press her

on that just now.

She turned to me, and I could feel her studying me, assessing me.
I am so sensitive to this sort of appraisal that I actually think my van-
ity is rooted in each of my cells.

She murmured some words in Latin, but I didn't catch them, and
no automatic translation came up in my mind.

"What did you say?"

"Lucifer, Son of Morning," she whispered, staring at me with
frank admiration. Then she plopped down into a large leather chair.
It was one of the many tiresome furnishings of the place, meant for
businessmen but completely comfortable. Her eyes were still locked
on me.

"No, that's not who I am," I said. "I'm only what I told you and
nothing more. But that's who's after me."

"The Devil?"

"Yes. Now listen, I'm going to tell you everything, and then you
must give me your advice. Meantime--" I turned around, yes, there
was the file cabinet. "Your inheritance, everything, money you have
now that you don't know about, clean and taxed and proper, it's all
explained in black folders in those files. Your father died wanting you
to have this for your church. If you turn away from it, don't be so sure
it's God's will. Remember, your father is dead. His blood cleansed
the money."

Did I believe this? Well, it sure as hell was what Roger wanted me
to tell her.

"Roger said to say this," I added, trying to sound extremely sure
of myself.

"I understand you," she said. "You're worrying about something
that doesn't really matter now. Come here, please, let me hold you.
You're shivering."

"I'm shivering!"

"It's warm in here, but you don't seem to feel it. Come."

I knelt down in front of her and suddenly took her in my arms the
way I had Armand. I laid my head against hers. She was cold but
would never even on the day of her burial be as cold as I was, nothing

young. Her mother had been a maid in the Garden District, like

many an Irish maid. And Roger's Uncle Mickey was one of those
easygoing characters who made nothing of himself in anyone's eyes
at all.

"My father never knew about the real life of Uncle Mickey. My
mother's mother told me to show me what airs my father put on, and
what a fool he was, and how humble his origins had been."

"Yes, I see."

"My father had loved Uncle Mickey. Uncle Mickey had died
when my father was a boy. Uncle Mickey had a cleft palate and a glass
eye, and I remember my father showing me his picture and telling me
the story of how Uncle Mickey lost his eye. Uncle Mickey had loved
fireworks, and once he'd been playing with firecrackers and one had
gone off in a tin can, and wham, the can hit him in the eye. That's the
story I always believed about Uncle Mickey. I knew him only from
the picture. My grandmother and my great-uncle were dead before I
was born."

"Right. And then your mother's people told you different."

"My mother's father was a cop. He knew all about Roger's family,
that Roger's grandfather had been a drunk and so had Uncle Mickey,
more or less. Uncle Mickey had also been a tout for a bookie when he
was young. And one time, he held back on a bet. In other words, he
kept the money rather than placing the bet as he should have, and
unfortunately the horse won."

"I follow you."

"Uncle Mickey, very young and very scared I imagine, was in

Corona's Bar in the Irish Channel."

"On Magazine Street," I said. "That bar was there for years and
years. Maybe a century."

"Yes, and the bookie's henchmen came in and dragged Uncle
Mickey to the back of the bar. My mother's father saw it all. He was
there, but he couldn't do anything about it. Nobody could. Nobody
would. Nobody dared. But this is what my grandfather saw. The men
beat and kicked Uncle Mickey. They were the ones who hurt the roof
of his mouth so he talked as if something were wrong with him. And
they kicked out his eye. They kicked it across the floor. And the way
my grandfather said it every time he told it was, 'Dora, they could
have saved that eye, except those guys stepped on it. They

deliberately stepped on it with those pointed shoes.' "

human could be that cold. I had sopped up the winter's worst as
though I were porous marble, which I suppose I was.

"Dora, Dora, Dora," I whispered. "How he loved you, and how
much he wanted everything to be right for you, Dora."

Her scent was strong, but so was I.

"Lestat, explain about the Devil," she said.

I sat down on the carpet so that I could look up at her. She was
perched on the edge of her chair, knees bare, black coat carelessly
open now, and a streak of gold scarf showing, her face pale but very
flushed, in a way that made her radiant and at the same time a little
enchanted, as though she were no more human than me.

"Even your father couldn't really describe your beauty," I said.
"Temple virgin, nymph of the wood."

"My father said that to you?"

"Yes. But the Devil, ah, the Devil told me to ask you a question.
To ask you the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye!" I had just

remembered it. I had not remembered to tell either David or

Armand aboutthis, but what difference could that possibly make?



She was surprised by these words, and very impressed. She sank
back a little into the chair. "The Devil told you these words?"

"He gave it to me as a gift. He wants me to help him. He says he's
not evil. He says that God is his adversary. I'll tell you everything, but
he gave me these words as some sort of little extra gift, what do we
call it in New Orleans, lagniappe? To convince me that he is what he
says he is."

She gave a little gesture of confusion, hand flying to her temple as
she shook her head. "Wait. The truth about Uncle Mickey's eye,
you're sure he said that? My father didn't say anything about Uncle
Mickey?"

"No, and I never caught any such image from your father's heart
or soul, either. The Devil said Roger didn't know the truth. What
does it mean?"

"My father didn't know the truth," she said. "He never knew. His
mother never told him the truth. It was his uncle Mickey, my

grandmother's brother. And it was my mother's people who told me the
real story--Terry's people. It was like this, my father's mother was
rich and had a beautiful house on St. Charles Avenue."

"I know the place, I know all about it. Roger met Terry there."

Yes, exactly, but my grandmother had been poor when she was

She stopped.

"And Roger never knew this."

"Nobody knows it who is alive," she said. "Except for me, of
course. My grandfather's dead. For all I know, everyone who was ever
there is dead. Uncle Mickey died in the early fifties. Roger used to
take me out to the cemetery to visit his grave. Roger had always loved
him. Uncle Mickey with his hollow voice and his glass eye. Everybody
sort of loved him, the way Roger told it. And even my mother's people
said that too. He was a sweetheart. He was a night watchman before he
died. He rented rooms on Magazine Street right over Baer's Bakery.
He died of pneumonia in the hospital before anyone even knew he was
ill. And Roger never knew the truth about Uncle Mickey's eye. We
would have spoken of it if he had, naturally."

I sat there pondering, or rather picturing what she had described.
No images came from her, she was closed tight, but her voice had
been effortlessly generous. I knew Corona's. So did anyone who had
ever walked Magazine Street in those famous blocks of the Irish hey-
day. I knew the criminals with their pointed shoes. Crushing the eye.

"They just stepped on it and squashed it," said Dora, as though
she could read my thoughts. "My grandfather always said, 'They
could have saved it, if they hadn't stepped on it the way they did with
those pointed shoes.'"

A silence fell between us.

"This proves nothing," I said.

"It proves your friend, or enemy, knows secrets, that's what it
proves."

"But it doesn't prove he's the Devil," I said, "and why would he
choose such a story, of all things?"

"Maybe he was there," she said with a bitter smile.

We both gave that a little laugh.

"You said this was the Devil but he wasn't evil," she prompted
me. She looked persuasive and trusting and thoroughly in command.

I had the feeling that I had been absolutely correct in seeking her
advice. She was regarding me steadily.

"Tell me what this Devil has done," she said.

I told her the whole tale. I had to admit how I stalked her father
and I couldn't remember if I had told her that before. I told her about
the Devil stalking me in similar fashion, going through it all, just as I
had for David and Armand, and found myself finishing with those

puzzling words, "And I'll tell you this about him, whatever he is, he
has a sleepless mind in his heart, and an insatiable personality! And
that's true. When I first used those words to describe him, they just
occurred to me as if from nowhere. I don't know what part of my
mind intuited such a thing. But it's true."

"Say again?" she asked.

I did.

She lapsed into total silence. Her eyes became tiny and she sat
with one hand curled under her chin.

"Lestat, I'm going to make an absurd request of you. Send for
some food. Or get me something to eat and drink. I have to ponder
this."

I found myself leaping to my feet. "Anything you wish," I said.

"Doesn't matter at all. Sustenance. I haven't eaten since yester-
day. I don't want my thoughts distorted by an accidental fast. You go,
get something for nourishment and bring it back here. And I want to
be alone here, to pray, to think, and to walk back and forth among
Father's things. Now, there is no chance this demon will take you
sooner than promised?"

"I don't know any more than I told you. I don't think so. Look, I'll
get you good food and drink."

I went on the errand immediately, leaving the building in mortal
fashion and seeking out one of those crowded midtown restaurants
from which to purchase a whole meal for her that could be packed up
and kept hot until I returned. I brought her several bottles of some
pure, brand-name water, since that's what mortals seem to crave in
these times, and then I took my time going back up, the bundle in my
arms.

Only as the elevator opened on our floor did I realize how unusual
my actions had been. I, two hundred years old, ferocious and proud
by nature, had just gone on an errand for a mortal girl because she
asked me very directly to do it.

Of course there were mediating circumstances! I'd kidnapped her
and brought her over hundreds of miles! I needed her. Hell, I loved
her.

But what I'd learnt from this simple incident was this: She did
have a power, which saints often have, to make others obey. Without
question, I'd gone to get the food for her. Cheerfully gone myself, as
though there were grace in it.

It took her less than six and one half minutes to devour the meal.
I've never seen anyone eat so fast. She stacked up everything and took
it into the kitchen. I had to draw her away from the chores, and bring
her back into the room. This gave me a chance both to hold her
warm, fragile hands and to be very close to her.

"What is your advice?"

She sat down and pondered, or drew together her thoughts.

"I think you have little to lose by cooperating with this being. It's
perfectly obvious he could destroy you anytime he wanted. He has
many ways. You slept in your house, even after you knew that he, the
Ordinary Man, as you call him, knew the location. Obviously you
aren't afraid of him on any material level. And in his realm, you were
able to exert sufficient force to push him away from you. What do
you risk by cooperating? Suppose he can take you to Heaven or Hell.
The implication is that you can still refuse to help him, can't you?
You can still say, to use his own fine language, 'I don't see things
from your point of view.' "

"Yes."

"What I'm saying is, if you open yourself to what he wants to
show you, that does not mean you have accepted him, does it? On the
contrary, the obligation lies with him to make you see from his

perspective, or so it seems. Besides, the point is, you break the rules
whatever they are."

"He can't be tricking me into Hell, you mean."

"You serious? You think God would let people be tricked into
Hell?"

"I'm not people, Dora. I'm what I am. I don't mean to draw any

parallels with God in my repetitive epithets. I only mean I'm evil.
Very evil. I know I am. I have been since I started to feed on humans.
I'm Cain, the slayer of his brothers."

"Then God could put you in Hell anytime he wanted. Why
not?"

I shook my head. "I wish I knew. I wish I knew why He hasn't. I
wish I knew. But what you're saying is that there is power involved
here on both sides."

"Clearly."

"And to believe in some sort of trickery is almost superstitious."

"Precisely. If you go to Heaven, if you speak with God. . . ." She
stopped.

"Would you go if he were asking you to help him, if he were tell-

I brought the meal inside the apartment and set it down for her on
the table.

The apartment was now flooded with her mingling aromas,

including that of her menses, that special, perfumed blood collecting
neatly between her legs. The place breathed with her.

I ignored the predictable raging desire to feast on her till she
dropped.

She was sitting crouched over in the chair, hands locked together,
staring before her. I saw that the black leather folders were open all
over the floor. She knew about her inheritance or had some idea of it.

She wasn't looking at that, however, and she seemed absolutely
unsurprised by my return.

She drifted towards the table now, as though she couldn't break
out of her reverie. Meantime, I stirred about in the kitchen drawers
of the apartment for plates and utensils for her, found some mildly
inoffensive stainless-steel forks and knives and a china plate. I set
these down for her, and laid out the cartons of steaming food--meat
and vegetables and such, and some sort of sweet concoction, all of it
as alien to me as it had always been, as if I hadn't recently been in a
mortal body and tasted real food. I didn't want to think about that
experience!

"Thank you," she said absently, without so much as looking at
me. "You are a darling for having done it." She opened a bottle of the

water and drank it all greedily.

I watched her throat as she did this. I didn't let myself think about
her in any way except lovingly, but the scent of her was enough to
drive me out of the place.

That's it, I vowed. If you feel you cannot control this desire, then
you leave!

She ate the food indifferently, almost mechanically, and then
looked up at me.

"Oh, forgive me, do sit down, please. You can't eat, can you? You
can't take this kind of nourishment."

"No," I said. "But I can sit down."

I sat next to her, trying not to watch her or breathe her scent any
more than I had to. I looked directly across the room, out the glass at
the white sky. If snow was falling now, I couldn't tell, but it had to be.
Because I couldn't see anything but the whiteness. Yes, that meant
that either New York had disappeared without a trace, or that it was
snowing outside.

"What could you possibly lose by doing it?" she said.

I didn't answer.

She walked about, thinking, her black hair falling forward in a curl
against her cheek, her long black-clad legs looking painfully thin yet
graceful as she paced. She had let go of the black coat a long time ago,
and I realized now that she wore only a thin black silk dress. I smelled
her blood again, her secret, fragrant, female blood.

I looked away from her.

She said, "I know what I have to lose in such matters. If I believe
in God, and there is no God, then I can lose my life. I can end up on
a deathbed realizing I've wasted the only real experience of the

universe I'll ever be permitted to have."

"Yes, exactly, that's what I thought when I was alive. I wasn't
going to waste my life believing in something that was unprovable
and out of the question. I wanted to know what I was permitted to see
and feel and taste in my life."

"Exactly. But you see, your situation is different. You are a vampire.

You are, theologically speaking, a demon. You are powerful in

your own way, and you cannot die naturally. You have an edge."

I thought about it.

"Do you know what happened today in the world," she said, "just
this one day? We always begin our broadcast with such reports; do
you know how many people died in Bosnia? In Russia? In Africa?
How many skirmishes were fought or murders committed?"

"I know what you're saying."

"What I'm saying is, it's highly unlikely this thing has the power
to trick you into anything. So go with it. Let it show you what it
promises. And if I'm wrong . . . if you're tricked into Hell, then I've
made a horrible mistake."

"No, you haven't. You've avenged your father's death, that's all.
But I agree with you. Trickery is too petty to be involved here. I'm
going by instincts. And I'll tell you something else about Memnoch,
the Devil, something maybe that will surprise you."

"That you like him? I know that. I understood that all along."

"How is that possible? I don't like myself, you know. I love my-
self, of course, I'm committed to myself till my dying day. But I don't
like myself."

"You told me something last night," she said. "You said that if I
needed you I was to call to you with my thoughts, my heart."

ing you he wasn't evil, but that he was the adversary of God, that he

could change your mind on things?"

"I don't know," she said. "I might. I would maintain my free will

throughout the experience, but I very well might."

"That's just it. Free will. Am I losing my will and my mind?"
"You seem to be in full possession of both and an enormous

amount of supernatural strength."
"Do you sense the evil in me?"
"No, you're too beautiful for that, you know it."
"But there must be something rotten and vicious inside me that

you can feel and see."

"You're asking for consolation and I can't give that to you," she
said. "No, I don't sense it. I believe the things you've told me."

"Why?"

She thought for a long time. Then she stood up and went to the
glass wall.

"I have put a question to the supernatural," she said, looking
down, perhaps at the roof of the cathedral. I could not see it from
where I stood. "I have asked it to give me a vision."

"And you think I might be the answer."

"Possibly," she said, turning and looking at me again. "That is
not to say that all of this is happening because of Dora and what Dora
wants. It is, after all, happening to you. But I have asked for a vision,
and I've been given a series of miraculous incidents, and yes, I believe
you, as surely as I believe in the existence of and the goodness of
God."

She came towards me, stepping carefully through the scattered
folders.

"You know, none of us can say why God allows evil."
"Yes."

"Or whence it came into the world. But the world over, there are
millions of us--People of the Book--Moslem, Jew, Catholic,

Protestant--descendants of Abraham--and over and over we keep being
drawn into tales and schemes in which evil is present, in which there
is a Devil, in which there is some element that God allows, some

adversary, to use your friend's word."

"Yes. Adversary. That's exactly what he said."

"I trust in God," she said.

"And you're saying I should do that too?"

"res.

''You do the same. If you go with this creature, and you need me,
call to me. Let me say it this way: If you cannot pull away of your own
volition and you need my intercession, then send out your call! I'll
hear you. And I'll cry out to the heavens for you. Not for justice but
for mercy. Will you make me that promise?"

"Of course."

"What will you do now?" she asked.

"Spend the remaining hours with you, taking care of your affairs.
Making sure, through my numerous mortal alliances, that nothing
can hurt you in terms of all these possessions."

"My father's done it," she said. "Believe me. He's covered it very
cleverly."

"Are you sure?"

"He did it with his usual brilliance. He left more money to fall
into the hands of his enemies than the fortune he left to me. They
have no need to go looking for anyone. Once they realize he is dead,
they will begin to snatch his available assets right and left."

"You are certain of all this."

"Without question. Put your affairs in order tonight. You don't
need to worry about mine. Take care of yourself, that you are ready
to embark on this."

I watched her for a long time. I was still seated at the table. She
stood with her back to the glass. It struck me that she had been drawn
against it in black ink except for her white face.

"Is there a God, Dora?" I whispered. I had spoken these same
words so many times! I had asked this question of Gretchen when I
was flesh and blood in her arms.

"Yes, there is a God, Lestat," Dora answered. "Be assured of it.
Maybe you've been praying to Him so loud and so long that finally
He has paid attention. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't the

disposition of God, not to hear us when we cry, to deliberately shut His
ears!"

"Shall I leave you here or take you home?"

"Leave me. I don't ever want to make a journey like that again. I
will spend a good part of the rest of my life trying to remember it
precisely and failing to do so. I want to stay here in New York with
my father's things. With regard to the money? Your mission has been
accomplished."

"And you accept the relics, the fortune."

"Yes, of course, I accept them. I'll keep Roger's precious books
until such time as they can be properly offered for others to see--his
beloved heretical Wynken de Wilde."

"Do you require anything further of me?" I asked.

"Do you think ... do you think you love God?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why do you say that?"

"How could I?" I asked. "How could anyone love Him? What did
you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody
hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's
that everybody hates Him! At least I think so. Maybe that's what
Memnoch is trying to say."

She was amazed. She frowned with disappointment and yearning.
She wanted to say something. She gestured, as though trying to take
invisible flowers from the air to show me their beauty, who knows?

"No, I hate Him," I said.

She made the Sign of the Cross and put her hands together.

"Are you praying for me?"

"Yes," she said. "If I never lay eyes on you again after tonight, if I
never come across a single shred of evidence that you really exist or
were here with me, or that any of these things were said, I'll still be
transformed by you as I am now. You are my miracle of sorts. You're
greater proof than millions of mortals have ever been given. You're
proof not only of the supernatural and the mysterious and the

wondrous, you're proof of exactly what I believel"

"I see." I smiled. It was all so logical and symmetrical. And true. I
smiled, truly smiled, and shook my head. "I hate to leave you," I said.

"Go," she said, and then she clenched her fists. "Ask God what
He wants of us!" she said furiously. "You're right. We hate Him!"
The anger blazed in her eyes, and then subsided, and she stared at
me, her eyes looking larger and brighter because they were wet now
with salt and tears.

"Good-bye, my darling," I said. This was so extraordinary and
painful.

I went out into the heavy, drifting snow.

The doors of the great cathedral of St. Patrick's were closed and
bolted, and I stood at the foot of the stone steps looking up at the
high Olympic Tower, wondering if Dora could see me as I stood

here, freezing in the cold, and letting the snow strike my face, softly,
persistently, harmfully, and with beauty.

"All right, Memnoch," I said aloud. "No need to wait any longer.
Come now, please, if you will."

Immediately I heard the footsteps!

It was as though they were echoing in the monstrous hollow of
Fifth Avenue, among the hideous Towers of Babel, and I had cast my
lot with the whirlwind.

I turned round and round. There was not a mortal in sight!

"Memnoch the Devil!" I shouted. "I'm ready!"

I was perishing with fear.

"Prove your point to me, Memnoch. You have to do that!" I
called*.

The steps were getting louder. Oh, he was up to his finest tricks.

"Remember, you have to make me see it from your point of view!
That's what you promised!"

A wind was collecting, but from where I couldn't tell. All of the
great metropolis seemed empty, frozen, my tomb. The snow swirled
and thickened before the cathedral. The towers faded.

I heard his voice right beside me, bodiless and intimate. "All right,
my beloved one," he said. "We'll begin now."

1O

WE WERE in the whirlwind and the whirlwind was a tunnel, but

between us there fell a silence in which I could hear my own breath.

Memnoch was so close to me, his arm locked around me, that I

could see his dark face in profile, and feel the mane of his hair against

the side of my own face.

He was not the Ordinary Man now, but indeed the granite angel,

the wings rising out of my focus, and folded around us, against the

force of the wind.

As we rose, steadily, without the slightest reference to any sort of
gravity, two things became apparent to me at once. The first was that
we were surrounded by thousands upon thousands of "'individual

souls. I say souls! What did I see? I saw shapes in the whirlwind, some
completely anthropomorphic, others merely faces, but surrounding
me, everywhere, were distinct spiritual entities or individuals, and
very faintly I heard their voices--whispers, cries, and howls--

mingling with the wind.

The sound couldn't hurt me now, as it had in the prior apparitions,

nevertheless I heard this throng as we shot upwards, turning as
if on an axis, the tunnel narrowing suddenly so that the souls seemed
to touch us, and then widening, only to narrow again.

The second thing which I instantly realized was that the darkness
was fading or being drained utterly from Memnoch's form. His

profile was bright and even translucent; so were his shapeless

unimportant garments. And the goat legs of the dark Devil were now the legs
of a large man. In sum, the entire turbid and smokelike presence had
been replaced by something crystalline and reflective, but which felt
pliant and warm and alive.

Words came back to me, snatches of scripture, of visions and

prophetic claims and poetry; but there was no time to evaluate, to

analyze, to seal into memory.

Memnoch spoke to me in a voice that may not have been

technically audible, though I heard the familiar accentless speech of the

Ordinary Man.

"Now, it is difficult to go to Heaven without the slightest preparation,

and you will be stunned and confused by what you see. But if
you don't see this first, you'll hunger for it throughout our dialogue,
and so I'm taking you to the very gates. Be prepared that the laughter
you hear is not laughter. It is joy. It will come through to you as
laughter because that is the only way such ecstatic sound can be
physically received or perceived."

No sooner had he finished the last syllable than we found ourselves

standing in a garden, on a bridge across a stream! For one moment,

the light so flooded my eyes that I shut them, thinking the sun
of our solar system had found me and was about to burn me the way I
should have been burnt: a vampire turned into a torch and then

forever extinguished.

But this sourceless light was utterly penetrating and utterly benign.

I opened my eyes, and realized that we were once again amid
hundreds of other individuals, and on the banks of the stream and in
all directions I saw beings greeting each other, embracing, convers-

ing, weeping, and crying out. As before, the shapes were in all degrees

of distinctness. One man was as solid as if I'd run into him in
die street of the city; another individual seemed no more than a giant
facial expression; while others seemed whirling bits and pieces of

material and light. Others were utterly diaphanous. Some seemed

invisible, except that I knew they were there! The number was impossible
to determine.

The place was limitless. The waters of the stream itself were brilliant

with the reflected light; the grass so vividly green that it seemed
in the very act of becoming grass, of being born, as if in a painting or
an animated film!

I clung to Memnoch and turned to look at him in this new light
form. He was the direct opposite now of the accumulating dark
angel, yet the face had the very same strong features of the granite
statue, and the eyes had the same tender scowl. Behold the angels and
devils of William Blake and you've seen it. It's beyond innocence.
"Now we're going in," he said.
I realized I was clinging to him with both hands.
"You mean this isn't Heaven!" I cried, and my voice came out as
direct speech, intimate, just between us.

"No," he said, smiling and guiding me across this bridge. "When
we get inside, you must be strong. You must realize you are in your
earthbound body, unusual as it is, and your senses will be

overwhelmed! You will not be able to endure what you see as you would if
you were dead or an angel or my lieutenant, which is what I want you
to become."

There was no time to argue. We had passed swiftly across the
bridge; giant gates were opening before us. I couldn't see the summit
of the walls.

The sound swelled and enveloped us, and indeed it was like laughter,

waves upon waves of shimmering and lucid laughter, only it was
canorous, as though all those who laughed also sang canticles in full
voice at the same time.

What I saw, however, overwhelmed me as much as the sound.

This was very simply the densest, the most intense, the busiest,
and the most profoundly magnificent place I'd ever beheld. Our

language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what
the tongue cannot possibly describe.

Once again, people were everywhere, people filled with light, and

of distinct anthropomorphic shape; they had arms, legs, beaming
faces, hair, garments of all different kinds, yet no costume of any
seemingly great importance, and the people were moving, traveling
paths in groups or alone, or coming together in patterns, embracing,
clasping, reaching out, and holding hands.

I turned to the right and to the left, and then all around me, and in
every direction saw these multitudes of beings, wrapped in

conversation or dialogue or some sort of interchange, some of them

embracing and kissing, and others dancing, and the clusters and groups of
them continuing to shift and grow or shrink and spread out.

Indeed, the combination of seeming disorder and order was the
mystery. This was not chaos. This was not confusion. This was not a
din. It seemed the hilarity of a great and final gathering, and by final
I mean it seemed a perpetually unfolding resolution of something, a
marvel of sustained revelation, a gathering and growing understanding

shared by all who participated in it, as they hurried or moved
languidly (or even in some cases sat about doing very little), amongst
hills and valleys, and along pathways, and through wooded areas and
into buildings which seemed to grow one out of another like no
structure on earth I'd ever seen.

Nowhere did I see anything specifically domestic such as a house,
or even a palace. On the contrary, the structures were infinitely
larger, filled with as bright a light as the garden, with corridors and

staircases branching here and there with perfect fluidity. Yet

ornament covered everything. Indeed, the surfaces and textures were so
varied that any one of them might have absorbed me forever.

I cannot convey the sense of simultaneous observation that I felt. I
have to speak now in sequence. I have to take various parts of this
limitless and brilliant environment, in order to shed my own fallible
light on the whole.

There were archways, towers, halls, galleries, gardens, great
fields, forests, streams. One area flowed into another, and through
them all I was traveling, with Memnoch beside me, securely holding
me in a solid grip. Again and again, my eyes were drawn to some
spectacularly beautiful sculpture or cascade of flowers or a giant tree
reaching out into the cloudless blue, only to have my body turned
back around by him as if I were being kept to a tightrope from which
I might fatally fall.

I laughed; I wept; I did both, and my body was convulsing with the

emotions. I clung to hum and tried to see over his shoulder and
around him, and spun in his grip like an infant, turning to lock eyes
with this or that person who happened to glance at me, or to look for
a steady moment as the groups and the parliaments and

congregations shifted and moved.

We were in a vast hall suddenly. "God, if David could see this!" I
cried; the books and scrolls were endless, and there seemed nothing
illogical or confusing in the manner in which all these documents lay
open and ready to be examined.

"Don't look, because you won't remember it," Memnoch said.
He snatched at my hand as if I were a toddler. I had tried to catch
hold of a scroll that was filled with an absolutely astonishing

explanation of something to do with atoms and photons and neutrinos. But
he was right. The knowledge was gone immediately, and the unfolding

garden surrounded us as I lost my balance and fell against him.

I looked down at the ground and saw flowers of complete perfection;

flowers that were the flowers that our flowers of the world
might become! I don't know any other way to describe how well

realized were the petals and the centers and the colors. The colors

themselves were so distinct and so finely delineated that I was unsure

suddenly that our spectrum was even involved.

I mean, I don't think our spectrum of color was the limit! I think
there was some other set of rules. Or it was merely an expansion, a
gift of being able to see combinations of color which are not visible
chemically on earth.

The waves of laughter, of singing, of conversation, became so
loud as to overwhelm my other senses; I felt blinded by sound

suddenly; and yet the light was laying bare every precious detail.

"Sapphirine!" I cried out suddenly, trying to identify the greenish
blue of the great leaves surrounding us and gently waving to and fro,
and Memnoch smiled and nodded as if in approval, reaching again to
stop me from touching Heaven, from trying to grab some of the
magnificence I saw.

"But I can't hurt it if I touch, can I?" It seemed unthinkable suddenly

that anyone could bruise anything here, from the walls of
quartz and crystal with their ever-rising spires and belfries, to the
sweet, soft vines twining upwards in the branches of trees dripping
with magnificent fruits and flowers. "No, no, I wouldn't want to hurt
it!" I said.

My own voice was distinct to me, though the voices of all those
around me seemed to overpower it.

"Look!" said Memnoch. "Look at them. Look!" And he turned
my head as if to force me not to cower against his chest but to stare
right into the multitudes. And I perceived that these were alliances I
was witnessing, clans that were gathering, families, groups of kindred,

or true friends, beings whose knowledge of each other was
profound, creatures who shared similar physical and material

manifestations! And for one brave moment, one brave instant, I saw that
all these beings from one end of this limitless place to the other were
connected, by hand or fingertip or arm or the touch of a foot. That,
indeed, clan slipped within the womb of clan, and tribe spread out to
intersperse amongst countless families, and families joined to form
nations, and that the entire congregation was in fact a palpable and
visible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinged upon
everyone else. Everyone drew, in his or her separateness, upon the
separateness of everyone else!

I blinked, dizzy, near to collapsing. Memnoch held me.
"Look again!" he whispered, holding me up.
But I covered my eyes; because I knew that if I saw the

interconnections again, I would collapse! I would perish inside my own sense
of separateness! Yet each and every being I saw was separate.

"They are all themselves!" I cried. My hands were clapped on my
eyes. I could hear the raging and soaring songs more intensely; the
long riffs and cascades of voices. And beneath all there came such a
sequence of flowing rhythms, lapping one over the other, that I
began to sing.

I sang with everyone! I stood still, free of Memnoch for a moment,

opened my eyes, and heard my voice come out of me and rise
as if into the universe itself.

I sang and I sang; but my song was full of longing and immense
curiosity and frustration as well as celebration. And it came home to
me, thudded into me, that nowhere around me was there anyone who
was unsafe or unsatisfied, was there anything approximating stasis or
boredom; yet the word "frenzy" was in no way applicable to the

constant movement and shifting of faces and forms that I saw.

My song was the only sad note in Heaven, and yet the sadness was
transfigured immediately into harmony, into a form of psalm or

canticle, into a hymn of praise and wonder and gratitude.

I cried out. I think I cried the single word "God." This was not a
prayer or an admission, or a plea, but simply a great exclamation.

We stood in a doorway. Beyond appeared vista upon vista, and I
was vaguely sensible suddenly that over the nearby balustrade there
lay below the world.

The world as I had never seen it in all its ages, with all its secrets
of the past revealed. I had only to rush to the railing and I could peer
down into the time of Eden or Ancient Mesopotamia, or a moment
when Roman legions had marched through the woods of my earthly
home. I would see the great eruption of Vesuvius spill its horrid
, deadly ash down upon the ancient living city of Pompeii.

Everything there to be known and finally comprehended, all
questions settled, the smell of another time, the taste of it--

I ran towards the balustrade, which seemed to be farther and

farther away. Faster and faster I headed towards it. Yet still the distance
was impossible, and suddenly I became intensely aware that this

vision of Earth would be mingled with smoke and fire and suffering,
and that it might utterly demolish in me the overflowing sense of joy.
I had to see, however. I was not dead. I was not here to stay.

Memnoch reached out for me. But I ran faster than he could.

An immense light rose suddenly, a direct source infinitely hotter
and more illuminating than the splendid light that already fell

without prejudice on everything I could see. This great gathering

magnetic light grew larger and larger until the world down below, the
great dim landscape of smoke and horror and suffering, was turned
white by this light, and rendered like an abstraction of itself, on the
verge of combusting.

Memnoch pulled me back, throwing up his arms to cover my eyes.
I did the same. I realized he had bowed his head and was hiding his
own eyes behind me.

I heard him sigh, or was it a moan? I couldn't tell. For one second
the sound filled the universe; all the cries and laughter and singing;
and something mournful from the depths of Earth--all this sound-
was caught in Memnoch's sigh.

Suddenly I felt his strong arms relaxed and releasing me.

I looked up, and in the midst of the flood of light I saw again the
balustrade, and against it stood a single form.

It was a tall figure who stood with his hands on the railing, looking
over it and down. This appeared to be a man. He turned around and
looked at me and reached out to receive me.

His hair and eyes were dark, brownish, his face perfectly symmetrical

and flawless, his gaze intense; and the grasp of his fingers very
tight.

I drew in my breath. I felt my body in all its solidity and fragility as
his fingers clung to me. I was on the verge of death. I might have
ceased to breathe at that moment, or ceased to move with the

commitment to life and might have died!

The being drew me towards himself, a light flooding from him
that mingled with the light behind him and all around him, so his face
grew brighter yet more distinct and more detailed. I saw the pores of
his darkening golden skin, I saw the cracks in his lips, the shadow of
the hair that had been shaved from his face.

And then he spoke loudly, pleadingly to me, in a heartbroken
voice, a voice strong and masculine and perhaps even young.

"You would never be my adversary, would you? You wouldn't,
would you? Not you, Lestat, no, not you!"

My God.

In utter agony, I was torn out of His grip, out of His midst, and
out of His milieu.

The whirlwind once again surrounded us. I sobbed and beat on
Memnoch's chest. Heaven was gone!

"Memnoch, let go of me! God, it was God!"

Memnoch tightened his grip, straining with all his force to carry
me downwards, to make me submit, to force me to begin the descent.

We plummeted, that awful falling, which struck such fear in me
that I couldn't protest or cling to Memnoch or do anything except
watch the swift currents of souls all around us ascending, watching,
descending, the darkness coming again, everything growing dark,
until suddenly we traveled through moist air, full of familiar and

natural scents, and then came to a soft and soundless pause.

It was a garden again. It was still and beautiful. But it was Earth. I
knew it. My earth; and it was no disappointment in its intricacy or
scents or substance. On the contrary, I fell on the grass and let my
fingers dig into the earth itself. I felt it soft and gritted under my
fingernails. I sobbed. I could taste the mud.

The sun was shining down on us, both of us. Memnoch sat looking

at me, his wings immense and then slowly fading, until we became

two manlike figures; one prone and crying like a child, and the
other a great Angel, musing and waiting, his hair a mane of gradually
settling light.

"You heard what He said to me!" I cried. I sat up. My voice
should have been deafening. But it seemed only loud enough to be
perfectly understood. "He said, 'You wouldn't ever be my adversary!'
You heard Him! He called me by name."

Memnoch was completely calm, and of course infinitely more

seductive and enchanting in this pale angelic shape than ever he could

have been as the Ordinary Man.

"Of course he called you by name," he said, his eyes widening
with emphasis. "He doesn't want you to help me. I told you. I'm
winning."

"But what were we doing there! How could we get into Heaven
and yet be his adversaries!"

"Come with me, Lestat, and be my lieutenant, and you can come
and go there whenever you like."

I stared at him in astonished silence.

"You mean this? Come and go there?"

"Yes. Anytime. As I told you. Don't you know the Scriptures? I'm
not claiming an authenticity for the fragments that remain, or even
the original poetry, but of course you can come and go. You won't be
of that place until you are redeemed and in it. But you can certainly
get in and out, once you're on my side."

I tried to realize what he was saying. I tried to picture again the
galleries, the libraries, the long, long rows of books, and realized

suddenly it had become insubstantial; the details were disappearing. I
was retaining a tenth of what I'd beheld; perhaps even less. What I
have described here in this book is what I could remember then and
now. And there had been so much more!

"How is that possible, that He would let us into Heaven!" I said. I
tried to concentrate on the Scriptures, something David had said
once a long time ago, about the Book of Job, something about Satan
flying around and God saying, almost casually, Where have you
been? Some explanation of the bene ha elohim or the court of
heaven--

"We are his children," said Memnoch. "Do you want to hear how
it all started, the entire true story of Creation and the Fall, or do you
want to go back and just throw yourself into His arms?"

"What more is there!" I asked. But I knew. There was understanding

of what Memnoch was saying. And there was also something

required to get in there! I couldn't just go, and Memnoch knew

it. I had choices, yes, and they were these, either to go with

Memnoch or return to the earth. But admission to Heaven was

hardly automatic. The remark had been sarcastic. I couldn't go back and throw
myself in His arms.

"You're right," he said. "And you're also very wrong."

"I don't want to see Hell!" I said suddenly. I drew myself up. I
recoiled. I looked around us. This was a wild garden, this was my
Savage Garden, of thorny vines and hunkering trees, of wild grass,
and orchids clinging to the mossy knuckles of branches, of birds
streaking high above through webs of leaves. "I don't want to see
Hell!" I cried. "I don't want to, I don't! .. ."

Memnoch didn't answer. He seemed to be considering things.
And then he said, "Do you want to know the why of all of it, or not?
I was so sure you would want to know, you of all creatures. I thought
you would want every little bit of information!"

"I do!" I cried. "Of course I want to know," I said. "But I ... I
don't think I can."

"I can tell you as much as I know," he said gently, with a little
shrug of his powerful shoulders.

His hair was smoother and stronger than human hair, the strands
were perhaps thicker, and certainly more incandescent. I could see
the roots of his hair at the top of his smooth forehead. His hair was
tumbling soundlessly into some sort of order, or just becoming less
disheveled. The flesh of his face was equally smooth and apparently
pliant all over, the long, well-formed nose, the full and broad mouth,
the firm line of the jaw.

I realized his wings were still there, but they had become almost
impossible to see. The pattern of the feathers, layer after layer of
feathers, was visible, but only if I squinted my eyes and tried to make
out the details against something dark behind him, like the bark of
the tree.

"I can't think," I said. "I see what you think of me, you think
you've chosen a coward! You think you've made a terrible mistake.
But I tell you, I can't reason. I... I saw Him. He said, 'You wouldn't
be my adversary!' You're asking me to do it! You took me to Him and
away from Him."

"As He Himself has allowed!" Memnoch said with a little rise to
his eyebrows.

"Is that so?"

"Of course!" he answered.

"Then why did He plead with me! Why did He look that way!"

"Because He was God Incarnate, and God Incarnate suffers and
feels things with His human form, and so He gave you that much of
Himself, that's all! Suffering! Ah, suffering!"

He looked to heaven and shook his head. He frowned a little,
thoughtfully. His face in this form could not appear wrathful or
twisted with any ugly emotion. Blake had seen into Heaven.

"But it was God," I said.

He nodded, with his head to the side. "Ah, yes," he said wearily,
"the Living Lord."

He looked off into the trees. He didn't seem angry or impatient or
even weary. Again, I didn't know if he could. I realized he was

listening to sounds in the soft garden, and I could hear them too.

I could smell things--animals, insects, the heady perfume of

jungle flowers, those overheated, mutated blooms that a rain forest can
nourish either in the depths or in its leafy heights. I caught the scent
of humans suddenly!

There were people in this forest. We were in an actual place.

"There are others here," I said.

"Yes," he said. And now he smiled at me very tenderly. "You are
not a coward. Shall I tell you everything, or simply let you go? You
know now more than millions ever glimpse in their lifetimes. You
don't know what to do with that knowledge, or how to go on existing,
or being what you are . . . but you have had your glimpse of Heaven.
Shall I let you go? Or don't you want to know why I need you so
badly?"

"Yes, I do want to know," I said. "But above all, more than anything

else, I want to know how you and I can stand there side by side,
adversaries, and how you can look as you look and be the Devil, and
how . . . and how ..." I laughed. ". . . and how I can look like I look
and be the Devil I've been! That's what I want to know. I have never
in my whole existence seen the aesthetic laws of the world broken.
Beauty, rhythm, symmetry, those are the only laws I've ever

witnessed that seemed natural.

"And I've always called them the Savage Garden! Because they
seemed ruthless and indifferent to suffering--to the beauty of the
butterfly snared in the spiderweb! To the wildebeast lying on the
veldt with its heart still beating as the lions come to lap at the wound
in its throat."

"Yes, how well I understand and respect your philosophy," he
said. "Your words are my words."

"But I saw something more up there!" I said. "I saw Heaven. I saw
the perfected Garden that was no longer Savage. I saw it!" I began to
weep again.

"I know, I know," he said, consoling me.

"All right." I drew myself up again, ashamed. I searched in my
pockets, found a linen handkerchief, pulled it out and wiped my face.
The linen smelled like my house in New Orleans, where jacket and
handkerchief both had been kept until sunset this night, when I'd
taken them out of the closet and gone to kidnap Dora from the
streets.

Or was it the same night?

I had no idea.

I pressed the handkerchief to my mouth. I could smell the scent of
New Orleans dust and mold and warmth.

I wiped my mouth.

"All right!" I declared breathlessly. "If you haven't become

completely disgusted with me--"

"Hardly!" he said, as politely as David might have said.

"Then tell me the Story of Creation. Tell me everything. Just go
on! Tell me! I...."

"Yes ... ?"

"I/we to know!"

He rose to his feet, shook the grass from his loose robe, and said:

"That's what I've been waiting for. Now, we can truly begin."

11

LET'S move through the forest as we talk," he said. "If you
don't mind the walking."
"No, not at all," I said.

He brushed a little more of the grass from his garment, a fine spun
robe that seemed neutral and simple, a garment that might have been
worn either yesterday or a million years ago. His entire form was
slightly bigger all over than mine, and bigger perhaps than that of

most humans; he fulfilled every mythic promise of an angel, except
that the white wings remained diaphanous, retaining their shape
under some sort of cloak of invisibility, more it seemed for

convenience than anything else.

"We're not in Time," he said. "Don't worry about the men and
the women in the forest. They can't see us. No one here can see us,
and for that reason I can keep my present form. I don't have to resort
to the dark devilish body which He thinks is appropriate for earthly
maneuvers, or to the Ordinary Man, which is my own unobtrusive
choice."

"You mean you couldn't have appeared to me on Earth in your
angelic form?"

"Not without a lot of argument and pleading, and frankly I didn't
want to do it," he said. "It's too overwhelming. It would have
weighted everything too much in my favor. In this form, I look too
inherently good. I can't enter Heaven without this form; He doesn't
want to see the other form, and I don't blame Him. And frankly, on
Earth, it's easiest to go about as the Ordinary Man."

I stood up shakily, accepting his hand, which was firm and warm.
In fact, his body seemed as solid as Roger's body had seemed near the
very end of Roger's visitation. My body felt complete and entire and
my own.

It didn't surprise me to discover my hair was badly tangled. I ran a
comb through it hastily for comfort, and brushed off my own
clothes--the dark suit I had put on in New Orleans, which was full of
tiny specks of dust, and some grass from the garden, but otherwise
unharmed. My shirt was torn at the collar, as if I myself had ripped it
open hastily in an effort to breathe. Otherwise, I was the usual dandy,
standing amid a thick and verdant forest garden, which was not like
anything I'd ever seen.

Even a casual inspection indicated that this was no rain forest, but
something considerably less dense, yet as primitive.

"Not in Time," I said.

"Well, moving through it as we please," he said, "we are only a
few thousand years before your time, if you must know it. But again,
the men and women roaming here won't see us. So don't worry. And
the animals can't harm us. We are watchers here but we affect noth-
ing. Come, I know this terrain by heart, and if you follow me, you'll
see we have an easy path through this wilderness. I have much to tell
you. Things around us will begin to change."

"And this body of yours? It's not an illusion? It's complete."

"Angels are invisible, by nature," he said. "That is, we are

immaterial in terms of earth material, or the material of the physical

universe, or however you would like to describe matter for yourself. But
you were right in your early speculation that we have an essential
body; and we can gather to ourselves sufficient matter from a whole
variety of sources to create for ourselves a complete and functioning
body, which we can later shatter and disperse as we see fit."

We walked slowly and easily through the grass. My boots, heavy
enough for the New York winter, found the uneven ground no

problem at all.

"What I'm saying," Memnoch continued, looking down at me--
he was perhaps three inches taller--with his huge almond-shaped
eyes--"is that this isn't a borrowed body, nor is it strictly speaking a
contrived body. It's my body when surrounded and permeated with
matter. In other words, it's the logical result of my essence drawing
to it all the various materials it needs."

"You mean you look this way because you look this way."

"Precisely. The Devilish body is a penance. The Ordinary Man is
a subterfuge. But this is what I look like. There were angels like me
throughout Heaven. Your focus was mainly on human souls in
Heaven. But the angels were there."

I tried to remembjr. Had there been taller beings, winged beings?
I thought so, and yet I wasn't certain. The beatific thunder of Heaven
beat in my ears suddenly. I felt the joy, the safety, and above all the
satisfaction of all those thriving in it. But angels, no, I had not
noticed.

"I take my accurate form," Memnoch continued, "when I am in
Heaven, or outside of Time. When I am on my own, so to speak, and
not bound to the earth. Other angels, Michael, Gabriel, any of those
can appear in their glorified form on earth if they want to. Again, it

would be natural. Matter being drawn to them by their magnetic
force shapes them to look their most beautiful, the way God created
them. But most of the time they don't let this happen. They go about
as Ordinary Men or Ordinary Women, because it's simply much
easier to do so. Continuously overwhelming human beings do not
serve our purposes--neither our Lord's nor mine."

"And that is the question. What is the purpose? What are you
doing, if you're not evil?"

"Let me start with the Creation. And let me tell you right now

that I know nothing of where God came from, or why, or how. No
one knows this. The mystic writers, the prophets of Earth, Hindu,
Zoroastrian, Hebrew, Egyptian--all recognized the impossibility of
understanding the origin of God. That's not really the question for
me and never has been, though I suspect that at the end of Time we
will know."

"You mean God hasn't promised that we will know where He
came from."

"You know what?" he said, smiling. "I don't think God knows. I
think that's the whole purpose of the physical universe. He thinks
through watching the universe evolve, He's going to find out. What
He has set in motion, you see, is a giant Savage Garden, a giant

experiment, to see if the end result produces beings like Himself. We are
made in His image, all of us--He is anthropomorphic, without

question, but again He is not material."

"And when the light came, when you covered your eyes in
Heaven, that was God."

He nodded. "God, the Father, God, the Essence, Brahma, the
Aten, the Good God, En Sof, Yahweh, God!"

"Then how can He be anthropomorphic?"

"His essence has a shape, just as does mine. We, His first

creations, were made in His image. He told us so. He has two legs, two
arms, a head. He made us invisible images of the same. And then set
the universe into motion to explore the development of that shape
through matter, do you see?"

"Not quite."

"I believe God worked backwards from the blueprint of Himself.

He created a physical universe whose laws would result in the

evolution of creatures who resembled Him. They would be made of

matter. Except for one striking and important difference. Oh, but then
there were so many surprises. You know my opinion already. Your
friend David hit upon it when he was a man. I think God's plan went
horribly wrong."

"Yes, David did say that, that he thought angels felt God's plan
for Creation was all wrong."

"Yes. I think He did it originally to find out what it would have
been like had He been Matter. And I think He was looking for a clue
as to how He got where He is. And why He is shaped like He is,
which is shaped like me or you. In watching man evolve, He hopes to

understand His own evolution, if such a thing in fact occurred. And
whether this has worked or not to His satisfaction, well, only you can
judge that for yourself."

"Wait a minute," I said. "But if He is spiritual and made of light,
or made of nothing--then what gave Him the idea for matter in the
first place?"

"Ah, now that is the cosmic mystery. In my opinion, His

imagination created Matter, or foresaw it, or longed for it. And I think the
longing for it was a most important aspect of His mind. You see,

Lestat, if He Himself did originate in Matter . . . then all this is an

experiment to see when Matter can evolve into God again.

"If He didn't originate Matter, if He proceeded and it is something

He imagined and desired and longed for, well, the effects upon
Him are basically the same. He wanted Matter. He wasn't satisfied
without it. Or He wouldn't have made it. It was no accident, I can
assure it.

"But let me caution you, not all the angels agree on this interpretation,

some feel the need for no interpretation, and some have completely

different theories. This is my theory, and since I am the Devil,
and have been for centuries, since I am the Adversary, the Prince of
Darkness, the Ruler of the World of Men and of Hell, I think my
opinion is worth stating. I think it's worth believing in. So you have
my article of faith.

"The design of the universe is immense, to use a feeble word, but
the whole process of evolution was His calculated experiment, and
we, the angels, were created long before it began."

"What was it like before Matter began?"

"I can't tell you. I know, but I don't, strictly speaking, remember.
The reason for this is simple: When Matter was created, so was
Time. All angels began to exist not only in heavenly perfection with
God but to witness and be drawn into Time.

"Now we can step out of it, and I can to some extent recall when
there was no lure of Matter or Time; but I can't really tell you what
that early stage was like anymore. Matter and Time changed

everything totally. They obliterated not only the pure state that preceded
them, they upstaged it; they overshadowed it; they, how shall I
say... ?"

"Eclipsed it."

"Exactly. Matter and Time eclipsed the Time before Time."

"But can you remember being happy?"

"Interesting question. Dare I say this?" he asked himself as he
continued to speculate. "Dare I say, I remember the longing, the

incompleteness, more than I remember complete happiness? Dare I say
there was less to understand?

"You cannot underestimate the effect upon us of the creation of
the physical universe. Think for one moment, if you can, what Time
means, and how miserable you might be without it. No, that's not
right. What I mean is, without Time you could not be conscious of
yourself, either in terms of failure or achievement, or in terms of any
motion backwards or forwards, or any effect."

"I see it. Rather like the old people who've lost so much intelligence

that they have no memory moment to moment. They're
vegetative, wide-eyed, but they are no longer human with the rest of
the race because they have no sense of anything . . . themselves or
anyone else."

"A perfect analogy. Though let me assure you such aged and
wounded individuals still have souls, which will at some point cease
to be dependent upon their crippled brains."

"Souls!" I said.

We walked slowly but steadily, and I tried not to be distracted by
the greenery, and the flowers; but I have always been seduced by
flowers; and here I saw flowers of a size which our world would surely
find impractical and impossible to support. Yet these were species of
trees I knew. This was the world as it had once been.

"Yes, you're correct on that. Can you feel the warmth around
you? This is a time of lovely evolutionary development on the planet.
When men speak of Eden or Paradise, they 'remember' this time."

"The Ice Age is yet to come."

"The second Ice Age is coming. Definitely. And then the world
will renew itself, and Eden will come again. All through the Ice Age,
men and women will develop. But realize of course that even by this
point, life as we know it had existed for millions of years!"

I stopped. I put my hands to my face. I tried to think it through
again. (If you want to do this, just reread the last two pages.)

"But He knew what Matter was!" I said.

"No, I'm not sure He did," said Memnoch. "He took that seed,
that egg, that essence and He cast it in a form which became Matter!
But I don't know how truly He foresaw what that would mean. You
see, that's our big dispute. I don't think He sees the consequences of

His actions! I don't think He pays attention! That's what the big
fight is about!"

"So He created Matter perhaps by discovering what it was as He
did it."

"Yes, Matter and energy, which are interchangeable as you know,
yes, He created them, and I suspect that the key to Him lies within
the word 'energy,' that if human anatomy ever reaches the point
where angels and God can be satisfactorily explained in human

language, energy will be the key."

"So He was energy," I said, "and in making the universe, He
caused some of that energy to be changed into Matter."

"Yes, and to create a circular interchange independent of himself.
But of course nobody said all this to us at the beginning. He didn't
say it. I don't think He knew it. We certainly didn't know it. All we
knew was that we were dazzled by His creations. We were absolutely
astonished by the feel and taste and heat and solidity and gravitational

pull of Matter in its battle with energy. We knew only what we
saw."

"Ah, and you saw the universe unfolding. You saw the Big Bang."

"Use that term with skepticism. Yes, we saw the universe come
into existence; we saw everything set into motion, as it were. And we
were overawed! That's why almost every early religion on earth

celebrates the majesty, the grandeur, the greatness and genius of the

Creator; why the earliest anthems ever put into words on Earth sing the
glories of God. We were impressed, just as humans later would come
to be impressed, and in our angelic minds, God was Almighty and
Wondrous and Beyond Comprehension before man came into being.

"But let me remind you, especially as we walk through this magnificent

garden, that we witnessed millions of explosions and chemical

transformations, upheavals, all of which involved nonorganic
molecules before 'life' as we call it ever came to exist."

"The mountain ranges were here."

"Yes."

"And the rains?"

"Torrents upon torrents of rain."

"Volcanos erupted."

"Continuously. You can't conceive of how enthralled we were.
We watched the atmosphere thicken and develop, watching it change
in composition.

"And then, and then, came what I will call for you the Thirteen

jR.eveiauons or rnysical Evolution. And by revelation, I mean what
was revealed in the process to the angels, to those of us who
Watched, to us.

"I could tell you in greater detail, take you inside every basic species

of organism that ever thrived in this world. But you wouldn't
remember it. I'm going to tell you what you can remember so that
you can make your decision while you're still alive."

"Am I alive?"

"Of course. Your soul has never suffered physical death; it's never
left the earth, except with me by special dispensation for this journey.
You know you are alive. You're Lestat de Lioncourt, even though
your body has been mutated by the invasion of an alien and alchemic
spirit, whose history and woes you have recorded yourself."

"To come with you ... to decide to follow you ... I have to die
then, don't I?"

"Of course," he said.

I found myself stopped still again, hands locked to the side of my
head. I stared down at the grass underneath my boots. I sensed the
swarm of insectile light gathered in the sun falling on us. I looked at
the reflection of radiance and verdant forest in Memnoch's eyes.

He lifted his hand very slowly, as if giving me full opportunity to
move away from him, and then he laid his hand on my shoulder. I
loved this sort of gesture, the respectful gesture. I tried so often to
make this sort of gesture myself.

"You have the choice, remember? You can return to being exactly
what you are now."

I couldn't answer. I knew what I was thinking. Immortal, material,
eartbbound, vampire. But I didn't speak the words. How could anyone
return from this? And again, I saw His face and heard His words. You
would never be my adversary, would you?

"You are responding very well to what I tell you," he said warmly.
"I knew you would, for several reasons."

"Why?" I asked. "Tell me why. I need a little reassurance. I'm too
shattered by all my past weeping and stammering, though I have to
confess, I'm not too interested in talking about myself."

"What you are is part of what we are doing," he said. We had
come to an enormous spiderweb, suspended over our broad path by
thick, shimmering threads. Respectfully, he ducked beneath it rather
than destroy it, drawing his wings downward around him, and

I followed his lead.

"You're curious, that's your virtue," he said. "You want to know.
This is what your ancient Marius said to you, that he, having survived
thousands of years, or well, nearly... would answer your questions as
a young vampiric creature, because your questions were truly being
asked! You wanted to know. And this is what drew me to you also.

"Through all your insolence, you wanted to know! You have been
horribly insulting to me and to God continuously, but then so is

everyone in your time. That's nothing unusual, except with you there
was tremendous genuine curiosity and wonder behind it. You saw the
Savage Garden, rather than simply assuming a role there. So this has
to do with why I have picked you."

"All right," I said with a sigh. It made sense. Of course I remembered

Marius revealing himself to me. I remembered him saying the
very things to which Memnoch referred. And I knew, too, that my
intense love of David, and of Dora, revolved around very similar
traits in both beings: an inquisitiveness which was fearless and willing
to take the consequence of the answers!

"God, my Dora, is she all right?"

"Ah, it's that sort of thing which surprises me, the ease with which
you can be distracted. Just when I think I've really astonished you and
I have you locked in, you step back and demand to be answered on
your own terms. It's not a violation of your curiosity, but it is a means
of controlling the inquiry, so to speak."

"Are you telling me that I must, for the moment, forget about
Dora?"

"I'll go you one better. There is nothing for you to worry about.
Your friends, Armand and David, have found Dora, and are looking
out for her, without revealing themselves to her."

He smiled reassuringly, and gave a little doubtful, maybe scolding,

shake of the head.

"And," he said, "you must remember your precious Dora has

tremendous physical and mental resources of her own. You may well
have fulfilled what Roger asked of you. Her belief in God set her
apart from others years ago; now what you've shown her has only
intensified her commitment to all that she believes. I don't want to
talk anymore about Dora. I want to go on describing Creation."

"Yes, please."

"Now, where were we? There was God; and we were with Him.
We had anthropomorphic shapes but we didn't call them that

because we had never seen our shapes in material form. We knew our

limbs, our heads, our faces, our forms, and a species of movement
which is purely celestial, but which organizes all parts of us in

concert, fluidly. But we knew nothing of Matter or material form. Then
God created the Universe and Time.

"Well, we were astonished, and we were also enthralled! Absolutely

enthralled.

"God said to us, 'Watch this, because this will be beautiful and
will exceed your conceptions and expectations, as it will Mine.' "

"God said this."

"Yes, to me and the other angels. Watch. And if you go back to
scripture in various forms, you will find that one of the earliest terms
used for us, the angels, is the Watchers."

"Oh, yes, in Enoch and in many Hebrew texts."

"Right. And look to the other religions of the world, whose

symbols and language are less familiar to you, and you will see a

cosmology of similar beings, an early race of godlike creatures who
looked over or preceded human beings. It's all garbled, but in a
way--it's all there. We were the witnesses of God's Creation. We
preceded it, and therefore did not witness our own. But we were
there when He made the stars!"

"Are you saying that these other religions, that they contain the
same validity as the religion to which we are obviously referring? We
are speaking of God and Our Lord as though we were European
Catholics--"

"It's all garbled, in countless texts throughout the world. There
are texts which are irretrievable now which contained amazingly

accurate information about cosmology; and there are texts that men
know; and there are texts that have been forgotten but which can be
rediscovered in time."

"Ah, in time."

"It's all essentially the same story. But listen to my point of view
on it and you will have no difficulty reconciling it with your own
points of reference, and the symbology which speaks more clearly to
you."

"But the validity of other religions! You're saying that the being I
saw in Heaven wasn't Christ."

"I didn't say that. As a matter of fact, I said that He was God

Incarnate. Wait till we get to that point!"

We had come out of the forest and stood now on what seemed the

edge of a veldt. For the first time I caught sight of the humans whose
scent had been distracting me--a very distant band of scantily
clothed nomads moving steadily through the grass. There must have
been thirty of them, perhaps less.

"And the Ice Age is yet to come," I repeated. I turned round and
round, trying to absorb and memorize the details of the enormous
trees. But even as I did so, I realized the forest had changed.

"But look carefully at the human beings," he said. "Look." He
pointed. "What do you see?"

I narrowed my eyes and called upon my vampiric powers to

observe more closely. "Men and women, who look very similar to those
of today. Yes, I would say this is Homo sapiens sapiens. I would say,
they are our species."

"Exactly. What do you notice about their faces?"

"That they have distinct expressions that seem entirely modern,
at least readable to a modern mind. Some are frowning; some are
talking; one or two seem deep in thought. The shaggy-haired man
lagging behind, he seems unhappy. And the woman, the woman with
the huge breasts--are you sure she can't see us?"

"She can't. She's merely looking in this direction. What differentiates

her from the men?"

"Well, her breasts, clearly, and the fact that she is beardless. The
men have beards. Her hair is longer of course, and well, she's pretty;
she's delicate of bone; she's feminine. She isn't carrying an infant, but
the others are. She must be the youngest, or one who hasn't given
birth."

He nodded.

It did seem that she could see us. She was narrowing her gaze as I
did mine. Her face was longish, oval, what an archaeologist would

call Cro-Magnon; there was nothing apelike about her, or about her
kin. She wasn't fair, however, her skin was dark golden, rather like
that of the Semitic or Arab peoples, like His skin in Heaven Above.
Her dark hair lifted exquisitely in the wind as she turned and moved
forward.

"These people are all naked."

Memnoch gave a short laugh.

We moved back into the forest; the veldt vanished. The air was
thick and moist and fragrant around us.

Towering over us were immense conifers and ferns. Never had I

seen ferns of this size, their monstrous fronds bigger by far than the
blades of banana trees, and as for the conifers, I could only compare
them to the great, barbaric redwoods of the western California

forests trees which have always made me feel alone and afraid.

He continued to lead us, oblivious to this swarming tropical jungle

through which we made our way. Things slithered past us; there
were muted roars in the distance. The earth itself was layered over
with green growth, velvety, ruckled, and sometimes seemingly with
living rocks!

I was aware of a rather cool breeze suddenly, and glanced over my
shoulder. The veldt and the humans were long gone. The shadowy
ferns rose so thickly behind us that it took me a moment to realize
that rain was falling from the sky, high above, striking the topmost
greenery and only touching us with its soft, soothing sound.

There had been no humans in this forest ever, that was certain,
but what manner of monsters were there, which might step from the
shadows?

"Now," Memnoch said, easily moving aside the dense foliage
with his right arm as we continued to walk. "Let me get to the

specifics, or what I have organized into the Thirteen Revelations

of Evolution as the angels perceived them and discussed them with God.
Understand, throughout we will speak of this world only--planets,
stars, other galaxies, these have nothing to do with our discussion."

"You mean, we are the only life in the entire universe."

"I mean my world and my heaven and my God are all that I

know."

"I see."

"As I told you, we witnessed complex geological processes; we saw
the mountains rise, we saw the seas created, we saw the continents
shift. Our anthems of praise and wonder were endless. You cannot
imagine the singing in Heaven; you heard a mere taste of it in a
Heaven filled with human souls. Then we were only the celestial
choirs, and each new development prompted its psalms and canticles.
The sound was different. Not better, no, but not the same.

"Meantime, we were very busy, descending into the atmosphere
of earth, oblivious to its composition, and losing ourselves in

contemplation of various details. The minutiae of life involved a demand
on our focus which did not exist in the celestial realm."

"You mean everything there was large and clear."

"Precisely and fully illuminated, the Love of God was in no way
enhanced or enlarged or complicated by any question of tiny details."

We had come now to a waterfall, thin, fierce, and descending into
a bubbling pool. I stood for a moment, refreshed by the mist of water
on my face and hands. Memnoch seemed to enjoy the same.

For the first time I realized his feet were bare. He let his foot slip
into the water itself, and watched the water swirl around his toes.
The nails of his toes were ivory, perfectly trimmed.

As he looked down into the churning, bubbling water, his wings
became visible, rising straight up suddenly to great peaks above him,
and I could see the moisture glittering as it coated the feathers.
There was a commotion; the wings appeared to close, exactly like
those of a bird, and to fold back behind him, and then to disappear.

"Imagine now," he said, "the legions of angels, the multitudes of
all ranks--and there are ranks--coming down to this earth to fall in
love with something as simple as the bubbling water we see before us
or the changing color of sunlight as it pierces the gases surrounding
the planet itself."

"Was it more interesting than Heaven?"

"Yes. One has to say yes. Of course, on reentry, one feels complete

satisfaction in Heaven, especially if God is pleased; but the
longing returns, the innate curiosity, thoughts seemed to collect inside

our minds. We became aware of having a mind in this fashion,
but let me move on to the Thirteen Revelations.

"The First Revelation was the change of inorganic molecules to
organic molecules .. . from rock to tiny living molecule, so to speak.
Forget this forest. It didn't exist then. But look to the pool. It was in
pools such as this, caught in the hands of the mountain, warm, and
busy, and full of gases from the furnaces of the earth, that such things
started--the first organic molecules appeared.

"A clamour rose to Heaven. 'Lord, look what Matter has done.'
And the Almighty gave His usual beaming smile of approval. 'Wait
and Watch,' He said again, and as we watched, there came the

Second Revelation: Molecules commenced to organize themselves into
three forms of Material: cells, enzymes, and genes. Indeed, no sooner
had the one-celled form of such things appeared than the

multicellular forms began to appear; and what we had divined with the first
organic molecules was now fully apparent; some spark of life

animated these things; they had a crude form of purpose, and it was as if

we could see that spark of life and recognize it as a tiny, tiny evidence
of the essence of life which we in abundance possessed!

"In sum, the world was full of commotion of a new kind altogether;

and as we watched these tiny multicelled beings drift through
water, collecting to form the most primitive algae, or fungi, we saw
these green living things then take hold upon the land itself! Out of
the water climbed the slime which had clung for millions of years to
its shores. And from these creeping green things sprang the ferns and
the conifers which you see around us, rising finally until they attained
massive size.

"Now angels have size. We could walk beneath these things on
the green-covered world. Again, listen, if you will, in your

imagination, to the anthems of praise that rose to heaven; listen if you will to
the joy of God, perceiving all this through His own Intellect and
through the choruses and tales and prayers of his angels!

"Angels began to spread out all over the earth; they began to

delight in certain places; some preferred the mountains; others the deep
valleys, some the waters, some the forest of green shadow and
shade."

"So they became like the water spirits," I said, "or the spirits of

the woods--all the spirits that men later came to worship."

"Precisely. But you jump way ahead!

"My response to these very first Two Revelations was like that of
many of my legions; as quickly as we sensed a spark of life emanating
from these multicelled plant organisms, we also began to sense the
death of that spark, as one organism devoured another, or overran it
and took its food from it; indeed we saw multiplicity and destruction!

"What had been mere change before--exchange of energy and
matter--now took on a new dimension. We began to see the

beginning of the Third Revelation. Only it did not come home to us until
the first animal organisms distinguished themselves from plants.

"As we watched their sharp, determined movement, with their
seemingly greater variety of choices, we sensed that the spark of life
they evinced was indeed very similar to the life inside ourselves. And
what was happening to these creatures? To these tiny animals and to
plants?

'They died, that's what was happening. They were born, lived
and died, and began to decay. And that was the Third Revelation of
Evolution: Death and Decay."

Memnoch's face became the darkest I'd ever seen it. It retained
the innocence, and the wonder, but it was clouded with something
terrible that seemed a mixture of fear and disappointment; maybe it
was only the naive wonder that perceives a horrible conclusion.

"The Third Revelation was Death and Decay," I said. "And you
found yourself repelled by it."

"Not repelled! I just assumed it had to be a mistake! I went

soaring to heaven! 'Look,' I said to God, 'these tiny things can cease to
live, the spark can go out--as it could never go out of You or us, and
then what is left behind them in matter rots.' I wasn't the only angel
who went flying into the face of God with this great cry.

"But I think my anthems of wonder were more colored by suspicion

 and fear. Fear had been born in my heart. I didn't know it, but it
had come to me with the perception of decay and death; and the

perception felt punitive to my mind."

He looked at me. "Remember, we are angels. Until this time,
there had been nothing punitive to our minds; nothing that made

suffering in our thoughts! You grasp? And I suffered; and fear was a
tiny component of it."

"And what did God say?"

"What do you think He said?"

"That it was all part of the plan."

"Exactly. 'Watch. Watch, and look, and you will see that essentially

nothing new is happening; there is the same interchange of energy

and matter.'"

"But what about the spark?" I cried.

" 'You are living creatures,' said God. 'It is a credit to your fine
intellect that you perceive such a thing. Now watch. More is to
come.'"

"But suffering, the punitive quality. ..."

"It was all resolved in a Great Discussion. Discussion with God
involves not only coherent words but immense love of God, the light
you saw, surrounding and permeating us all. What God gave us was
reassurance, and perhaps the reassurance that this inkling of suffering
in me required--that there was Nothing To Fear."

"I see."

"Now comes the Fourth Revelation, and remember my organization

of these revelations is arbitrary. I cannot take you through the
minutiae, as I've said. The Fourth Revelation I call the Revelation of

Color, and it began with flowering plants. The creation of flowers;
the introduction of an entirely more extravagant and visibly beautiful
means of mating between organisms. Now understand mating had
always taken place. Even in the one-celled animals there had been a
mating.

"But flowers! Flowers introduced in profusion colors which had
never been before in nature, except in the rainbow! Colors we had
known in Heaven and thought to be purely celestial and now we saw
they were not purely celestial but could develop in this great laboratory

called earth for natural reasons.

"Let me say at this time that spectacular colors were also developing

in sea creatures, in fishes in warm waters. But the flowers struck
me in particular as exquisitely beautiful, and when it became obvious
that the species would be numberless, that the patterns of petals
should be endless, our anthems again rose to Heaven in such music
that everything before seemed lesser, or not so deep.

"This music had of course already been tinged with something
dark... dare I say it--the hesitation or the shadow produced in us by
the Revelation of Death and Decay. And now with the flowers, this
dark element grew even stronger in our songs and exclamations of
wonder and gratitude, for when the flowers died, when they lost their
petals, when they fell to the earth, it seemed a terrible loss.

"The spark of life had emanated most powerfully from these

flowers, and from the larger trees and plants that were growing

everywhere in profusion; and so the song took on its sombre notes.

"But we were more than ever enthralled with the earth. In fact, I
would say at this time that the character of Heaven had been changed
utterly. All of Heaven, God, the angels in all ranks, were now focused
on the Earth. It was impossible to be in Heaven merely singing to
God as before. The song would have to have something in it about
Matter and process and beauty. And of course those angels who make
the most complex songs did wind together these elements--death,
decay, beauty--into more coherent anthems than those which came
from me.

"I was troubled. I had a sleepless mind in my soul, I think. I had
something in me which had already become insatiable. ..."

"Those words, I spoke those words to David when I spoke of you,
when you first stalked me," I said.

"They come from an old poem that was sung of me, written in

Hebrew and now rarely found in translation anywhere in the world.
Those were the words of the Sibylline Oracle when she described the
Watchers . . . we angels whom God had sent to observe. She was
right. I liked her poetry, so I remember it. I adopted it in my definition

of myself. God only knows why other angels are more nearly
content."

Memnoch's whole manner had become sombre. I wondered if the
music of Heaven which / had heard included this sombre quality he
was describing to me, or whether its pure joy had been restored.

"No, you hear now the music of human souls in heaven as well as
angels. The sounds are completely different. But let me go on quickly
through the Revelations, because I know that they aren't easy to
grasp except as a whole.

"The Fifth Revelation was that of Encephalization. Animals had
differentiated themselves in the water from plants some time ago,
and now these gelatinous creatures were beginning to form nervous
systems and skeletons and with this formation came the process of
encephalization. Creatures began to develop heads!

"And it did not escape our notice for one divine instant that we, as
angels, had heads! The thinking processes of these evolving organisms

were centered in the head. So it was with us, obviously! No one
had to tell us. Our angelic intelligence knew how we were organized.
The eyes were the giveway. We had eyes, and these eyes were part of
our brains and sight led us in our movements, and in our responses,
and in our search for knowledge more than any other sense.

"There was a tumult in heaven. 'Lord,' I said, 'what is happening?
These creatures are developing shapes ... limbs ... heads.' And once
again the anthems rose, but this time mingled with confusion as well
as ecstasy, fear of God that such things could happen, that from

Matter things could spring which had heads.

"Then even before the reptiles began to crawl out of the sea into
the land, even before that happened, there came the Sixth Revelation,

which struck nothing short of horror in me. These creatures,
with their heads and their limbs, no matter how bizarre, or various in
their structures, these things had faces! Faces like ours. I mean the
simplest anthropoid had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. This is a face,
such as I have! First the head, now the face, the expression of

intelligence within the mind!

"I was aghast! I raised the worst arguments. 'Is this something you

want to happen? Where will this end? What are these creatures? The
spark of life from them grows stronger, flares hotter, and dies hard!
Are you paying attention!' Some of my fellow angels were horrified.
"They said, 'Memnoch, you are pushing God too far! Obviously
there is a kinship between us, magnificent as we are, the Sons of God,
the inhabitants of the bene ha elohim, and these creatures. The head,
the face, yes, it's evident. But how dare you challenge the plan of
God?'

"I couldn't be comforted. I was too full of suspicion, and so were

those who agreed with me. We were puzzled, and back down to
Earth we went, persuaded by the earth to wander, to walk. I could
now measure myself in size by the scale of things as I earlier

mentioned, and I could lie amongst soft bowers of plants, listening to
them grow and thinking about them, and letting their colors fill my
eyes.

"Yet, still the promise of disaster haunted me. Then an exceptional

thing happened. God came to me.

"God doesn't leave Heaven when He does this. He merely extends

Himself, so to speak; His light came down and took me in
where I was, rolled me up into it and against Him, and He began to
talk to me.

"Of course this was immediately comforting. I had denied myself
the bliss of Heaven for long periods, and now to have this bliss come
down and enfold me in perfect love and quiet, I was satisfied. All my
arguments and doubts left me. Pain left me. The punitive effect upon
my mind of death and decay was eased.

"God spoke. I was of course fused with Him and had no sense of
my form in this moment; we had been so close many a time in the
past, and we were this close when I had been made, and came forth
out of God. But nevertheless it was a profound, merciful gift for it to
happen now.

" 'You see more than other angels,' He said. 'You think in terms
of the future, a concept which they are just beginning to learn. They
are as mirrors reflecting the magnificence of each step; whereas you
have your suspicions. You do not trust in me.'

"These words filled me with sorrow. 'You do not trust in me.' I
had not thought of it as distrust, my fears. And no sooner had I

realized this than that realization was sufficient for God, and He called
me back to Heaven and said that now I should watch more often from

that vantage point and not go so deep into the foliage of the world."

I could only stare at Memnoch as he explained all these things.
We stood on the bank of the stream still. He didn't seem comforted
now as he told me about this comfort. Only eager to go on with his
tale.

"I did go back to Heaven, but as I told you, the entire composition
of Heaven was now changed. Heaven was focused on Earth. Earth

was the Heavenly Discourse. And never was I so aware of it as on this
return. I went to God, I knelt in adoration, I poured out my heart, my
doubts, above all my gratitude that He had come to me as He had. I
asked if I was free again to return to the World below.

"He gave one of His sublime noncommittal answers, meaning,
'You are not forbidden. You are a Watcher and your duty is to
Watch.' So I went down--"

"Wait," I said. "I want to ask you a question."

"Yes," he answered patiently. "But come, let's continue on our
journey. You can step on the rocks as you cross the stream."

I followed him this way easily enough, and within minutes we had
left the sound of the water behind us, and we were in an even denser
forest alive, I think, with creatures, though I couldn't tell.

"My question," I pressed, "was this. Was Heaven boring compared

 to Earth?"

"Oh, never, it's just that the Earth was the focus. One could not
be in Heaven and forget about Earth because everybody in Heaven
was watching Earth and singing about it. That's all. No, Heaven was
as fascinating and blissful as ever; in fact, the sombre note which had
been introduced, the solemn acknowledgment of decay and death
had added to the infinite variation of things which might be said and
sung and dwelt upon in Heaven."

"I see. Heaven expanded with these revelations."

"Always! And remember the music, never, never think that that is
a cliche of religion. The music was reaching new heights all the time
in its celebration of wonder. It would be millennia before physical
instruments would reach a level where they could make even a pale
imitation of the sounds of the music of the angels--their voices,

 mingling with the beat of their wings, and some interplay with the winds
that rose from Earth."

I nodded.

"What is it?" he asked. "What do you want to say?"

"I can't put it in words! Only that our understanding of Heaven
fails again and again because we are not taught this, that Heaven is
focused upon the earth. Why, all my life, I've heard nothing but the
contrary, the denigration of matter, and that it is a prison for the
soul."

"Well, you saw Heaven for yourself," he said. "But let me continue:

"The Seventh Revelation was that the animals came out of the
sea. That they came into the forests which now covered the land and
they found ways to live in it. The Reptiles were born. They became
great lizards, monsters, things of such size that even the strength of
angels couldn't have stopped them. And these things had heads and
faces, and now they not only swam with their legs--legs like ours--
but they walked upon them, and some walked on two legs instead of
four, holding against their chests two tiny legs like our arms.

"I watched this happen as someone watches a fire grow. From the
tiny blaze, giving warmth, I now saw a conflagration!

"Insects in all forms developed. Some took to the air with a form
of flight very different and monstrous compared to our own. The
world swarmed with all these new species of the living and mobile
and the hungry, for creature fed upon creature just as it had always
been, but now with the animals, the feasting and killing was far more
obvious and happened not merely in minuscule but with giant

skirmishes amongst lizards who tore each other to pieces, and great

reptilian birds who could glide down upon the lesser crawling things and
carry them away to their nests.

"The form of propagation began to change. Things were born in
eggs. Then some spawn came live from the mother.

"For millions of years I studied these things, talking to God about
them, more or less absently, singing when I was overwhelmed with
beauty, going up to the heavens, and generally finding my questions
disturbing to everyone as before. Great debates happened. Should we
question nothing? Look, the spark of life flares monstrous and hot
from the giant lizard as he dies! And again and again into the womb
of God I was taken, just when I thought my agitation would give me
no peace.

" 'Look at the scheme more closely. You are deliberately seeing
only parts of it,' He said to me. He pointed out as He had from the
beginning that waste was unheard of in the universe, that decay be-

came food for others, that the means of interchange was now Kill and
Devour, Digest and Excrete.

" 'When I'm with you,' I told Him, 'I see the beauty of it. But
when I go down there, when I roll in the high grass, I see differently.'

" 'You are my angel and my Watcher. Overcome that contradiction,'

He said.

"I went back down to the Earth. And then came the Eighth

Revelation of Evolution: the appearance of warm-blooded birds with
feathered wings!"

I smiled. It was partly the expression on his face, the knowing,
patient expression, and the emphasis with which he had described the
wings.

"Feathered wings!" he said. "First we see our faces on the heads
of insects, of lizards and monsters! And now behold, there is a

warm-blooded creature, a creature completely more fragile and pulsing
with precarious life and it has feathered wings! It flies as we fly. It
rises, it spreads its wings, it soars.

"Well, for once mine was not the only outcry in heaven. Angels
by the thousands were astonished to discover that little beings of
matter had wings so like our own. Feathers, such as the feathers that
covered ours, made them soft and made them move through the
wind ... all this now had its corollary in the material world!

"Heaven was stormy with songs, exclamations, outcries. Angels
took flight after birds, surrounding them in the air, and then

following them and imitating them and following them to their nests and
watching as chicks were born from these eggs and grew to full size.

"Now, you know we had seen this entire question of birth,
growth, maturity in other creatures, but in nothing that so resembled
ourselves."

"God was silent?" I asked.

"No. But this time He called us all together and He asked us why
we had not learnt enough by now that we were not insulated from
such horror and pride. Pride, he said, is what we suffered; we were
outraged that such puny, tiny-headed things, things that had really
very limited faces, actually, had feathered wings. He gave us a stern
lesson and warning: 'Once again, I tell you, this process will continue
and you will see things that will astonish you, and you are my angels
and you belong to me, and your trust is mine!'

"The Ninth Revelation of Evolution was painful for all angels. It

was filled with horror for some, and fear for others; indeed it was as if
the Ninth Revelation mirrored for us the very emotions it produced

in our hearts. This was the coming of mammals upon the earth,
mammals whose hideous cries of pain rose higher to Heaven than any
noise of suffering and death that any other animal had ever made!
Ooooh, the promise of fear that we had seen in death and decay was
now hideously fulfilled.

"The music rising from Earth was transformed; and all we could
do in our fear and suffering was sing in even greater amazement, and
the song darkened, and became more complex. The countenance of
God, the light of God, remained undisturbed.

"At last the Tenth Revelation of Evolution. The apes walked upright!

Was not God Himself mocked! There it was, in hairy, brutal
form, the two-legged, two-armed upright creature in whose image
we had been made! It lacked our wings, for the love of Heaven;

indeed the winged creatures never even came close to it in

development. But there it lumbered upon the earth, club in hand, brutal,
savage, tearing the flesh of enemies with its teeth, beating, biting,
stabbing to death all that resisted it--the image of God and the proud
Sons of God, his angels--in hairy material form and wielding tools!
"Thunderstruck, we examined its hands. Had it thumbs? Almost.
Thunderstruck, we surrounded its gatherings. Was speech coming
from its mouth, the audible eloquent expression of thoughts? Al-
most! What could be God's plan? Why had He done this? Would
this not rouse His anger?

"But the light of God flowed eternal and unceasingly, as if the
scream of the dying ape could not reach it, as if the monkey torn to
pieces by its larger assailants had no witness to the great flaring spark
that sputtered before it died.

" 'No, no, this is unthinkable, this is unimaginable,' I said. I flew
in the face of Heaven again, and God said, very simply, and without
consolation, 'Memnoch, if I am not mocked by this being, if it is my
creation, how can you be mocked? Be satisfied, Memnoch, and enjoy
amazement in your satisfaction, and trouble me no more! Anthems
rise all around you which tell me of every detail my Creation has

accomplished. You come with questions that are accusations, Memnoch!
No more!'

"I was humbled. The word 'accusations' frightened or caused a
long pause in my thoughts. Do you know that Satan means in

Hebrew 'the accuser'?"

"Yes," I said.

"Let me continue. To me this was a wholly new concept and yet I
realized that I had been flinging accusations at God all along. I had
insisted that this evolutionary process could not be what He wanted
or intended.

"Now He told me plainly to stop, and to examine further. And He
also gave me to know again, in wide perspective, the immensity and
diversity of the developments I witnessed. In sum, He visited upon
me a flash of His perspective, which mine could never be.

"As I said, I was humbled. 'May I join with you, Lord?' I asked.
And He said, 'But of course.' We were reconciled, and slumbering in
the divine light, yet I kept waking as an animal might wake, ever on
alert for its lurking enemy, waking and fearing, But what is happening
now down there!

"Lo and behold! Are those the words I should use, or shall I speak
like J, the author of the book of Genesis, and say 'Look!' with all its
fierce power. The hairy upright ones had begun a strange ritual. The
hairy upright ones had begun all kinds of different patterns of

complex behavior. Allow me for the moment to skip over to the most
significant. The hairy upright ones had begun to bury their dead."

I narrowed my eyes, looking at Memnoch, puzzled. He was so
deeply invested in this tale that he looked for the first time convincingly

unhappy, and yet his face retained its beauty. You couldn't say
unhappiness distorted him. Nothing could.

"Was this then the Eleventh Revelation of Evolution?" I asked.
"That they should bury their dead?"

He studied me a long time, and I sensed his frustration, that he
couldn't begin to get across to me all that he wanted me to know.

"What did it mean?" I pressed, impatient and eager to know.
"What did it mean, they buried their dead?"

"Many things," he whispered, shaking his finger emphatically,
"for this ritual of burying came along with a kinship we had seldom if
ever.witnessed in any other species for more than a moment--the
caring for the weak by the strong, the helping and the nourishing of
the crippled by the whole, and finally the burial with flowers. Lestat,
flowers\ Flowers were laid from one end to the other of the body
softly deposited in the earth, so that the Eleventh Revelation of

Evolution was that Modern Man had commenced to exist. Shaggy,
stooped, awkward, covered with apelike hair, but with faces more

than ever like our faces, modern man walked on the earth! And mod-

ern man knew affection such as only angels had known in the universe,

angels and God who made them, and modern man showered
that affection upon his kindred, and modern man loved flowers as we
had, and grieved as--with flowers--he buried his dead."

I was silent for a long time, considering it, and considering above
all Memnoch's starting point--that he and God and the angels

represented the ideal towards which this human form was evolving before
their very eyes. I had not considered it from such a perspective. And
again came the image of Him, turning from the balustrade, and the
voice asking me with such conviction, You would never be my

adversary, would you?

Memnoch watched me. I looked away. I felt the strongest loyalty
to him already, rising out of the tale he was telling me and the
emotions invested in it, and I was confused by the words of God
Incarnate.

"And well you should be," said Memnoch. "For the question you
must ask yourself is this: Knowing you, Lestat, as surely He must,
why He does not already consider you His adversary? Can you
guess?"

Stunned.
Quiet.

He waited until I was ready for him to continue, and there were
moments there when I thought that point might never come. Drawn
to him as I was, totally enthralled as I was, I felt a sheer mortal desire
to flee from something overwhelming, something that threatened
the structure of my reasoning mind.

"When I was with God," Memnoch continued, "I saw as God
sees--I saw the humans with their families; I saw the humans gathered

to witness and assist the birth; I saw the humans cover the graves
with ceremonial stones. I saw as God sees, and I saw as if Forever and
in All Directions, and the sheer complexity of every aspect of creation,

every molecule of moisture, and every syllable of sound issuing
from the mouths of birds or humans, all seemed to be nothing more
than the product of the utter Greatness of God. Songs came from my
heart which I have never equaled.

"And God told me again, 'Memnoch, stay close to me in Heaven.

Watch now from afar.'

" 'Must I, Lord?' I asked. 'I want so badly to watch them and over
them. I want with my invisible hands to feel their softening skin.'

" 'You are my angel, Memnoch. Go then and watch, and

remember that all you see is made and willed by me.'

"I looked down once before leaving Heaven, and I do speak now
in metaphor, we both know this, I looked down and I saw the

Creation teeming with Watcher angels, I saw them everywhere engaged
in their various fascinations as I have described, from forest to valley
to sea.

"But there seemed something in the atmosphere of Earth that had
changed it; call it a new element; a thin swirl of tiny particles? No,
that suggests something greater than what it was. But it was there.

"I went to Earth, and immediately the other angels confirmed for
me that they, too, had sensed this new element in the atmosphere of
Earth, though it was not dependent upon the air as was every other
living thing.

" 'How can this be?' I asked.

" 'Listen,' said the Angel Michael. 'Just listen. You can hear it.'

"And Raphael said, 'This is something invisible but living! And
what is there under Heaven that is invisible and lives but us!'

"Hundreds of other angels gathered to discuss this thing, to speak
of their own experience of this new element, this new presence of
invisibility which seemed to swarm about us, unaware of our presence
yet making some vibration, or that is, inaudible sound, which we
struggled to hear.

" 'You've done it!' said one of the angels to me, and let him remain

nameless. 'You've disappointed God with all your accusing and
all your rages, and He has made something else other than us that is
invisible and has our powers! Memnoch, you have to go to Him and
find out if He means to do away with us, and let this new invisible
thing rule.'

" 'How can that be so?' asked Michael. Michael is, of all the angels,
one of the most calm and reasonable. Legend tells you this; so does
Angelology, folklore, the whole kit and caboodle. It's true. He is

reasonable. And he pointed out now to the distressed angels that these
tiny invisible presences of which we were aware could not conceivably
equal our power. They could scarcely make themselves known to us,
and we were angels, from whom nothing on earth could possibly hide!

" 'We have to find out what this is,' I said. 'This is bound to the
earth and part of it. This is not celestial. It is here, dwelling close to
the forests and hills.'

"Everyone agreed. We were beings from whom the composition
of nothing was secret. You might take thousands of years to

understand cynobacteria, or nitrogen, but we understood them! But we
didn't understand this. Or let me say, we could not recognize this for
what it was."

"Yes, I understand."

"We listened; we reached out our arms. We perceived that it was
bodiless and invisible, yes, but that it had to it a continuity, an

individuality, indeed, what we perceived were a multitude of

individualities. And they were weeping, and very gradually, that sound
was heard within our own realm of invisibility, and by our own

spiritual ears."

He paused again.

"You see the distinction I make?" he asked.
"They were spiritual individuals," I said.

"And as we pondered, as we opened our arms and sang and tried
to comfort them, while stepping invisibly and artfully through the
material of Earth, something momentous made itself known to us,
shocking us out of our explorations. Before our very eyes, the
Twelfth Revelation of Physical Evolution was upon us! It struck us
like the light from Heaven; it distracted us from the cries of the

covert invisible! It shattered our reason. It caused our songs to become
laughter and wails.

"The Twelfth Revelation of Evolution was that the female of the
human species had begun to look more distinctly different from the
male of the human species by a margin so great that no other

anthropoid could compare! The female grew pretty in our eyes, and

seductive; the hair left her face, and her limbs grew graceful; her manner

transcended the necessities of survival; and she became beautiful as
flowers are beautiful, as the wings of birds are beautiful! Out of the
couplings of the hairy ape had risen a female tender-skinned and

radiant of face. And though we had no breasts and she had no wings,
she looked like US!!!!"

We stood facing each other in the stillness.
Not for one second did I fail to grasp.

Not for one second did I seek to understand. I knew. I looked at
him, at his large beautiful face and streaming hair, at his smooth
limbs, and his tender expression, and I knew that he was right, of
course. One need not have been a student of evolution to realize that

such a moment had surely come to pass with the refinement of the
species, and he did embody the empowered feminine if ever a

creature could. He was as marble angels, as the statues of Michelangelo;
the absolute preciseness and harmony of the feminine was in his
physique.

He was agitated. He was on the verge it seemed of wringing his
hands. He looked at me intently, as if he would look into me and
through me.

"And in short order," he said, "the Thirteenth Revelation of

Evolution made itself known. Males mated with the loveliest of the
females, and those who were most lithe, and smooth to touch, and
tender of voice. And from those matings came males themselves who
were as beautiful as the females. There came humans of different
complexions; there came red hair and yellow hair as well as black hair
and locks of brown and startling white; there came eyes of infinite
variety--gray, brown, green, or blue. Gone was the man's brooding
brow and hairy face and apish gait, and he, too, shone with the beauty
of an angel just as did his female mate."

I was silent.

He turned away from me, but it seemed impersonal. It seemed he
required of himself a pause, and a renewal of his own strength. I
found myself staring at the high arched wings, drawn close together,
their lower tips just above the ground where we stood, each feather
still faintly iridescent. He turned around to face me, and unfolding
out of the angelic shape, his face was a graceful shock.

"There they stood, male and female, He created them, and except
for that, Lestat, except for--that one was male and one was female,
they were made in the Image of God and of His Angels! It had come

to this! To this! God split in Two! Angels split in Two!

"I don't know how long the other angels held me but finally they
could no longer, and I went up to Heaven, ablaze with thoughts and
doubts and speculations. I knew wrath. The cries of suffering mammals

had taught me wrath. The screams and roars of wars amongst
apelike beings had taught me wrath. Decay and death had taught me
fear. Indeed all of God's Creation had taught all I needed to speed
before him and say, " 'Is this what you wanted! Your own image

divided into male and female! The spark of life now blazing huge when
either dies, male or female! This grotesquerie; this impossible division;

this monster! Was this the plan?'

"I was outraged. 1 considered it a disaster! I was in a fury. I flung
out my arms, calling on God to reason with me, to forgive me, and
save me with reassurance and wisdom, but nothing came from God.
Nothing. Not light. Not words. Not punishment. Not judgment.

"I realized I stood in Heaven surrounded by angels. All of them
were watching and waiting.

"Nothing came from Almighty God but the most tranquil light. I
was weeping. 'Look, tears such as their tears,' I said to the others,
though of course my tears were nonmaterial. And as I wept, and as
they watched me, I realized I wasn't weeping alone.

"Who was with me? I turned round and round looking at them: I
saw all the choruses of angels, the Watchers, the Cherubim, the

Seraphim, the Ophanim, all. Their faces were rapt and mysterious, and
yet I heard a weeping!

" 'Where is the weeping coming from!' I cried.
"And then I knew. And they knew. We came together, wings
folded, heads bowed, and we listened, and rising from the earth we
heard the voices of those invisible spirits, those invisible

individualities; it was they--the immaterial ones--who wept! And their crying
reached to Heaven as the Light of God Shone on Eternal, without
change upon us all.

" 'Come now and witness,' said Raphael. 'Come watch as we have
been directed.'

" 'Yes, I have to see what this is!' I said, and down I went into the
earth's air, and so did all of us, driving in a whirlwind these tiny

wailing, weeping things that we could not even see!

"Then human cries distracted us! Human cries mingled with the
cries of the invisible!

"Together, we drew in, condensed and still a multitude, invisibly
surrounding a small camp of smooth and beautiful human beings.

"In their midst one young man lay dying, twisting in his last pain
on the bed they'd made for him of grass and flowers. It was the bite of
some deadly insect which had made his fever, all part of the cycle, as
God would have told us had we asked.

"But the wailing of the invisible ones hovered over this dying victim.

And the lamentations of the human beings rose more terrible
than I could endure.

"Again I wept.

" 'Be still, listen,' said Michael, the patient one.

"He directed us to look beyond the tiny camp, and the thrashing
body of the feverish man, and to see in thin air the spirit voices

gathering and crying!

"And with our eyes we saw these spirits for the first time! We saw
them clustering and dispersing, wandering, rolling in and falling
back, each retaining the vague shape in essence of a human being.
Feeble, fuddled, lost, unsure of themselves, they swam in the very
atmosphere, opening their arms now to the man who lay on the bier
about to die. And die that man did."

Hush. Stillness.

Memnoch looked at me as if I must finish it.

"And a spirit rose from the dying man," I said. "The spark of life
flared and did not go out, but became an invisible spirit with all the
rest. The spirit of the man rose in the shape of the man and joined
those spirits who had come to take it away."

"Yes!"

He gave a deep sigh and then threw out his arms. He sucked in his
breath as if he meant to roar. He looked heavenward through the
giant trees.

I stood paralyzed.

The forest sighed in its fullness around us. I could feel his

trembling, I could feel the cry that hovered just inside him and might
burst forth in some terrible clarion. But it only died away as he bowed
his head.

The forest had changed again. The forest was our forest. These
were oaks and the dark trees of our times; and the wildflowers, and
the moss I knew, and the birds and tiny rodents who darted through
the shadows.

I waited.

"The air was thick with these spirits," he said, "for once having
seen them, once having detected their faint outline and their

ceaseless voices, we could never again not see them, and like a wreath they
surrounded the earth! The spirits of the dead, Lestat! The spirits of
the human dead."

"Souls, Memnoch?"

"Souls."

"Souls had evolved from matter?"

"Yes. In His image. Souls, essences, invisible individualities,
souls!"

I waited again in silence.
He gathered himself together.

"Come with me," he said. He wiped his face with the back of his
hand. As he reached for mine, I felt his wing, distinctly for the first
time, brush the length of my body, and it sent a shiver through me
akin to fear, but not fear at all.

"Souls had come out of these human beings," he said. "They were
whole and living, and hovered about the material bodies of the

humans from whose tribe they had come.

"They could not see us; they could not see Heaven. Whom could
they see but those who had buried them, those who had loved them
in life, and were their progeny, and those who sprinkled the red
ochre over their bodies before laying them carefully, to face the east,
in graves lined with ornaments that had been their own!"

"And those humans who believed in them," I said, "those who

worshipped the ancestors, did they feel their presence? Did they
sense it? Did they suspect the ancestors were still there in spirit
form?"

"Yes," he answered me.
I was too absorbed to say anything else.

It seemed my consciousness was flooded with the smell of the
wood and all its dark colors, the endlessly rich variations of brown
and gold and deep red that surrounded us. I peered up at the sky, at
the shining light fractured and gray and sullen yet grand.

Yet all I could think and consider was the whirlwind, and the souls
who had surrounded us in the whirlwind as though the air from the
earth to Heaven were filled with human souls. Souls drifting forever
and ever. Where does one go in such darkness? What does one seek?
What can one know?

Was Memnoch laughing? It sounded small and mournful, private
and full of pain. He was perhaps singing softly, as if the melody were
a natural emanation of his thoughts. It came from his thinking as
scent rises from flowers; song, the sound of angels.

"Memnoch," I said. I knew he was suffering but I couldn't stand it
any longer. "Did God know it?" I asked. "Did God know that men
and women had evolved spiritual essences? Did he know, Memnoch,
about their souls?"
He didn't answer.
Again I heard the faint sound, his song. He, too, was looking up at

the sky, and he was singing more clearly now, a sombre and humbling
canticle, it seemed, alien to our own more measured and organized
music, yet full of eloquence and pain.

He watched the clouds moving above us, as heavy and white as any
clouds I'd ever beheld.

Did this beauty of the forest rival what I had seen in Heaven?

Impossible to answer. But what I knew with perfect truth is that heaven
bad not made this beauty dim by comparison! And that was the

wonder. This Savage Garden, this possible Eden, this ancient place was
miraculous in its own right and in its own splendid limitations. I

suddenly couldn't bear to look on it, to see the small leaves flutter

downwards, to fall into loving it, without the answer to my question.
Nothing in the whole of my life seemed as essential.

"Did God know about the souls, Memnoch!" I said. "Did He
know!"

He turned to me.

"How could He not have known, Lestat!" he answered. "How
could He not have known! And who do you think flew to the very
heights of Heaven to tell Him? And had He ever been surprised, or
caught unawares, or increased or decreased, or enlightened, or

darkened, by anything I had ever brought to His Eternal and Omniscient
attention?"

He sighed again, and seemed on the verge of a tremendous outburst,

one that would make all his others look small. But then he was
calm again and musing.

We walked on. The forest shifted, mammoth trees giving way to
slender, more gracefully branching species, and here and there were
patches of high, waving grass.

The breeze had the smell of water in it. I saw it lift his blond hair,
heavy as this hair was, and smooth it back from the side of his face. I
felt it cool my head and my hands, but not my heart.

We peered into an open place, a deep, wild valley. I could see

distant mountains, and green slopes, a ragged and rambling wood
breaking here and there for spaces of blowing wheat or some other
form of wild grain. The woods crept up into the hills and into the
mountains, sending its roots deep into the rock; and as we grew
closer to the valley, through the branches I would see the glitter and
twinkling light of a river or sea.

We emerged from the older forest. This was a marvelous and fer-

tile land. Flowers of yellow and blue grew in profusion, caught this
way and that in dancing gusts of color. The trees were olive trees and
fruit trees, and had the low, twisted branches of trees from which
food has been gathered for many generations. The sunlight poured
down upon all.

We walked through tall grasses--the wild wheat perhaps--to the
edge of the water, where it lapped very gently without a tide, I think,
and it was clear and shimmering as it shrank back, exposing the

extraordinary array of pebbles and stones.

I could see no end to this water either to the right or to the left,

but I could see the far bank and the rocky hills growing down towards
it as if they were as alive as the roots of the straggling green trees.

I turned around. The landscape behind us now was the same. The
rocky hills, rising eventually to mountains, with miles upon miles of
scalable slopes, copses of fruit trees, black, open mouths of caves.

Memnoch said nothing.

He was stricken and sad and staring down at the waters, and to the
far horizon where the mountains came as if to close in the waters,
only to be forced to let the waters flow out and beyond our sight.

"Where are we?" I asked gently.

He took his time to answer. Then he said, "The Revelations of
Evolution are, for the time being, finished. I've told you what I saw--
the thin outline of all you'll know once you die.

"Now what is left is the heart of my story, and I should like to tell
it here. Here in this beautiful place, though the rivers themselves are
long gone from the earth and so are the men and women who roamed
at this time. And to answer your question, 'Where are we?' Let me
say: Here is where He finally flung me down from Heaven. Here is
where I Fell."

12

G3D SAID: 'Wait!' So I found myself stopped at the gates of
Heaven, along with all my companions, the angels who generally

 went and did what I did, and Michael and Gabriel and
Uriel, though not among my companions, were there too.

" 'Memnoch, my accuser,' said God, and the words were spoken
with the characteristic gentleness and a great effulgence of light.
'Before you come into Heaven, and you begin your diatribe, go back
down to the Earth and study all you have seen thoroughly and with
respect--by this I mean humankind--so that when you come to me,
you have given yourself every chance to understand and to behold all
I have done. I tell you now that Humankind is part of Nature, and
subject to the Laws of Nature which you have seen unfold all along.
No one should understand better than you, save I.

" 'But go, see again for yourself. Then, and only then, will I call
together a convocation in Heaven, of all angels, of all ranks and all
endowments, and I will listen to what you have to say. Take with you
those who seek the same answers you seek and leave me those angels
who have never cared, nor taken notice, nor thought of anything but
to live in My Light.' "

Memnoch paused.

We walked slowly along the bank of the narrow sea until we came
to a place where several boulders made a natural place to sit and to
rest. I wasn't feeling weariness in any real physical sense, but the
change of posture seemed to sharpen all my fears, and concentration,
and eagerness to hear what he said. He sat beside me, turned to me
slightly on his left, and his wings once again faded. But first they rose,
and stretched out, the left far above my head and the whole wingspan
startling me. But then they disappeared. There simply wasn't room
for them when Memnoch was seated, at least not for them to be
folded behind him, so they were gone.

He continued: "Immediately following these words," he said,
"there was a great commotion in Heaven over who wanted to go
down and examine the Creation with me and who did not. Now

understand, angels were all over Creation as it was, as I've told you, and
many had already been years on Earth, and fallen in love with creeks,

ana valleys, and even the deserts which had begun to appear. But this
was a special message the Lord had given me--Go and Learn All You
Can About Mankind--and there was some question as to who was as
interested or as passionate about the mysteries of the human race as
was I."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "If you forgive me. How many
angels are there? You quoted God as saying 'all ranks,' and 'all

endowments.' "

"Surely you've heard some of the truth," he answered, "from the
lore. God created us first--the archangels--Memnoch, Michael,

Gabriel, Uriel, and many others whose names have never been

discovered--either inadvertently or deliberately--so I would rather not
say. The whole number of archangels? Fifty. And we were the First
Made as I said, though who exactly came before whom has become a
hysterical subject of argument in Heaven, and one in which I lost
interest a long time ago. Besides, I'm convinced I am the first

anyway. But it doesn't matter.

"We are those who communicate in the most direct way with
God, and also with Earth. That's why we have been labeled Guardian
Angels, as well as Archangels, and sometimes in the religious literature

we are given a low rank. We don't have a low rank. What we

have is the greatest personality and the greatest flexibility, between
God and man."

"I see. And Raziel? And Metatron? And Remiel?"
He smiled. "I knew these names would be familiar to you," he
said. "They all have their place among the Archangels, but I cannot
possibly explain all of this to you now. You'll know when you're dead.
And also it's almost too much for a human mind, even a vampiric
mind, such as your own, to comprehend."

"Very well," I said. "But what you're saying is the names refer to
actual entities. Sariel is an entity."
"Yes."
"Zagzagel."

"Yes, an entity. Now let me continue. Let me stick with the
schemes. We, as I told you, are God's Messengers, and Most

Powerful Angels, and I was fast becoming God's Accuser, as you can see!"
"And Satan means accuser," I said. "And all those other dreadful
names you don't like are in some way connected with that idea.
Accuser."

"Exactly," he replied. "And the early religious writers, knowing
only bits and pieces of the truth, thought it was man whom I accused,
not God; but there are reasons for this, as you'll soon see. You might
say I have become the Great Accuser of everybody." He seemed
mildly exasperated, but then his voice resumed, very calm and

measured. "But my name is Memnoch," he reminded me, "and there is
no angel more powerful or clever than I am and there never was."

"I see," I said, meaning this to be polite. And also because I actually

didn't question this statement at all. Why should I?

"The Nine Choirs?" I asked.

"All there," he said. "The Nine Choirs, of course, making up the
bene ha elohim. And very well described by Hebrew and Christian
scholars, thanks to times of revelation and perhaps disaster, though
one would be hard put to determine the nature of each event. The
First Triad is made of Three Choirs, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and
Thrones or Ophanim, as I prefer to call them. And this First Triad is
in general locked to the glory of God. They are in His thrall, thrive in
the light which can blind or dazzle others, and almost never get very
far from the light at all.

"At times when I am angry and making speeches to all of Heaven,
I accuse them ... if you'll pardon the expression again--of being held

to God as if by a magnet and not having a free will or personality such
as we possess. But they have these things, they do, even the Ophanim,
who are in general the least articulate or eloquent--in fact, Ophanim
are likely to say nothing for eons--and any of these First Triad can be
sent by God to do this and that, and have appeared on Earth, and
some of the Seraphim have made rather spectacular appearances to
men and women as well. To their credit, they adore God utterly, they
experience without reserve the ecstasy of His presence, and He fills
them completely so that they do not ask questions of Him and they
are more docile, or more truly aware of God, depending on one's
point of view.

"The Second Triad has Three Choirs which have been given the
names by men of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers. But to tell the
truth, there is very little difference between these angels and the First
Triad. The Second Triad is a little farther from the Light of God and
perhaps as close as it can come, given its endowments, and perhaps it
is not so clever when it comes to logic or questions. Who knows?
Certainly the Second is more docile altogether; but then there is

more coming and going from the Second Triad, from Earth to
Heaven, than from the devoted and magnetized and sometimes

arrogant Seraphim. You can see how this could lead to much discussion."

"I think I understand it."

"Both triads sing continuously when they are in Heaven, and
most of the time when they are on Earth; their songs rise to Heaven
spontaneously and continuously; they don't erupt with the deliberate
jubilation of my song or the songs of those like me. Nor do they fall
silent for long periods as my kind--Archangels--are apt to do.

"When you're dead you'll be able to hear the song of all these
triads. It would destroy you now if you did. I've let you hear part of
the Din of Heaven, but that's all it can be to you, a din--the sound of
song and mingled laughter, and seemingly erratic eruptions of

beautiful sound."

I nodded. It had been both painful and gorgeous to hear it.

"The Lowest Triad is supposed to include Principalities, Archangels,

and Angels," he continued, "but this is misleading, as I said. For
we, the Archangels, are in fact the most powerful and the most

important, have the most personality, and are the most questioning and
concerned.

"The other angels think we are flawed on that account. It does not
occur to the average Seraph to plead for mercy for mankind.

"But here you have the rough scheme of things. The angels are
innumerable. And there is mobility among angels, some drifting
closer to God than others, and then away when the majesty is too
great for them, and they choose to slip back and sing a softer song.
It's continuous.

"Now, the important thing is that the Guardian Angels of Earth,
the Watchers, those who became intent upon the Creation, came
from all these ranks! Even from the very Seraphim there have come
Guardians who have spent millions of years on Earth and then gone
Home. Going and coming is common. The disposition I describe is
innate but not fixed.

"Angels aren't perfect. You can see that already. They are Created
Beings. They don't know everything God knows, that's obvious to
you and everyone else. But they know a great deal; they know all that
can be known in Time if they wish to know it; and that is where angels
differ, you see. Some wish to know everything in Time, and some
care only for God and God's reflection in those of His most devoted
souls."

"I see, then. What you're saying is everybody's right about it, and
everybody's sort of wrong."

"More right than wrong. Angels are individuals, that is the key.
We Who Fell are no single species, unless being the brightest, the
most clever, and the most comprehending makes us a species, which I
don't think it does."

"Go on."

He laughed. "You think I'm going to stop now?"

"I don't know," I said. "Where do I fit in? I don't mean me, Le-
stat de Lioncourt, I mean what I am . .. the vampire I am."

"You're an earthbound phenomenon, just like a ghost. We'll get
to that in a moment. When God sent us down to Earth to Watch,
specifically to observe all Mankind, we were as curious about the
dead as the living--this wreath of souls we could see and hear,

gathered about the world, and which we called Sheol immediately

because it seemed to us that the realm of these weeping souls was the
realm of pure gloom. 'Sheol' means gloom."

"And the spirit that made the vampires--"

"Wait. It's very simple. Let me present it, however, as it came to
me. If I don't do that, how can you understand my position? What I
ask of you--to be my lieutenant--is so personal and so total that you
can't fully grasp it unless you listen."

"Please go on."

"All right. A gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw
as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves
our entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to
do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels.
There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some
of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but

nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what
was making me so angry with God.

"I can't give you the number of how many we were. But when we
reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and
came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.

"What united us was our interest in the statement of God that
Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn't see how this was
true. We went exploring.

"Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large
groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for
themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that

the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed
in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the
ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of
Earth, disembodied and confused?

"Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshipped
other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild
Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this
aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and
rather easy to please or displease.

"Now, I can't say all this was a big surprise to me. I'd seen the
early signs of it. After all, I telescoped millions of years for you in my
Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the
specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see
the care and deliberation of the sacrifice--the slaying of a ram or a
deer--I was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans
come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.

"They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They

knew. They didn't know what He was like but they knew. And this
instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did
their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.

"Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's own death--this
had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans, and this

individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it
was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let
such a thing have no meaning in the world.

"And it was this very same tenacity--the tenacity of this

individuality--that made the human soul stay alive after it left the

body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together, so to speak,
clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according

to the only world it knew."

I didn't speak. I was wound up in the story and only wanted for
him to continue. But naturally I thought of Roger. I thought very
distinctly of Roger because Roger was the only ghost I'd ever known.
And what Memnoch had just described was a highly organized and
very willful version of Roger.

"Oh, yes, precisely," said Memnoch, "which is probably why it is
just as well that he came to you, though at the time I regarded it as
one of the greatest annoyances in the world."
"You didn't want Roger to come to me?"

"I watched. I listened. I was amazed, as you were, but I have been
amazed by other ghosts before him. It wasn't that extraordinary, but
no, it certainly wasn't something orchestrated by me, if that's what
you mean."

"But it happened so close to your coming! It seems connected."

"Does it? What's the connection? Look for it inside yourself.
Don't you think the dead have tried to speak before? Don't you think
the ghosts of your victims have come howling after you? Admittedly,
the ghosts of your victims usually pass in total bliss and confusion,
unaware of you as the instrument of their death. But that's not always
the case. Maybe what has changed is you! And as we know, you loved
this mortal man, Roger, you admired him, you understood his vanity
and love of the sacred and the mysterious and the costly, because you
have these traits within yourself."

"Yes, all of that's true, without doubt," I said. "I still think you
had something to do with his coming."

He was shocked. He looked at me for a long moment as if he were
going to become angry, and then he laughed.

"Why?" he asked. "Why would I bother with such an apparition?
You know what I'm asking of you! You know what it means! You're
no stranger to the mystical or the theological revelation. You knew
when you were a living man--the boy back in France who realized he
might die without knowing the meaning of the universe and ran to
the village priest to demand of the poor fellow, 'Do you believe in
God?'"

"Yes, but it just all happened at the same time. And when you
claim there's no connection, I just... I don't believe it," I said.

"You are the damnedest creature! You really are!" he said. His
exasperation was mild and patient but still there. "Lestat, don't you
see that what impelled you towards the complexity of Roger and his
daughter, Dora, was the same thing that compelled me to come to
you? You had come to a point where you were reaching out for the
supernatural. You were crying to Heaven to be laid waste! Your

taking David, that was perhaps your first real step towards utter moral
peril! You could forgive yourself for having made the child vampire
Claudia, because you were young and stupid.

"But to bring David over, against his will! To take the soul of
David and make it vampiric? That was a crime of crimes. That was a
crime that cries to Heaven, for the love of God. David, whom we had

_., _ ,,,.*,,« uiu we icei an interest in him
and whatever path he might take."

"Ah, so the appearance to David was deliberate."

"I thought I said so."

"But Roger and Dora, they were simply in the way."

"Yes. Of course, you chose the brightest and most alluring victim!
You chose a man who was as good at what he did--his criminality, his
racketeering, his thieving--as you are good at what you are. It was a
bolder step. Your hunger is growing. It becomes ever more dangerous

to you and those around you. You don't take the downfallen and
the bereft and the cutthroats any longer. When you reached for
Roger, you reached for the power and the glory, but so what?"
"I'm torn," I whispered.
"Why?"

"Because I feel love for you," I said, "and that's something I

always pay attention to, as we both know. I feel drawn into you. I want
to know what else you have to tell me! And yet I think you're lying
about Roger. And about Dora. I think it is all connected. And when I
think of God Incarnate--" I broke off, unable to continue.

I was flooded by the sensations of Heaven, or what I could still
remember, what I could still feel, and the breath did leave me in a
sorrow that was far greater than any I ever expressed in tears.

I must have closed my eyes. Because when I opened them, I

realized Memnoch was holding both my hands in his. His hands felt
warm and very strong and uncommonly smooth. How cold my own
must have felt to him. His hands were larger; flawless. My hands
were . . . my strange white, slender, glittering hands. My fingernails

flashed like ice in the sun as they always do.

He drew away, and it was excruciating. My hands remained rigid,
clasped, and utterly alone.

He was standing yards away from me, his back to me, looking out
over the narrow sea. His wings were apparent, huge, and moving

uneasily, as if an inner tension caused him to work the invisible

muscular apparatus to which they were attached. He looked perfect,
irresistible, and desperate.

"Maybe God is right!" he said with rage in his low voice, staring
not at me but at the sea.

"Right about what?" I stood up.
He wouldn't look at me.

"Memnoch," I said, "please go on. There are moments when I
feel I'll collapse beneath the things being made known to me. But go
on. Please, please go on."

"That's your way of apologizing, isn't it?" he asked gently. He
turned around, towards me. The wings vanished. He walked slowly
up to me, and past me, and sat down again on my right. His robe was
hemmed in dust from the ground. I absorbed the detail before I

actually thought about it. There was a tiny bit of leaf, green leaf, caught
in the long flowing tangles of his hair.

"No, not really," I said. "It wasn't an apology. I usually say exactly

what I mean."

I studied his face--the sculpted profile, the utter absence of hair
on otherwise magnificently human-looking skin. Indescribable. If
you turn and look at a statue in a Renaissance church, and you see it is
bigger all over than you are, that it is perfect, you don't get frightened

because it's stone. But this was alive.

He turned as if he'd just noticed I was looking at him. He stared
down into my eyes. Then he bent forwards, his eyes very clear, and
filled with myriad colors, and I felt his lips, smooth, evenly and

modestly moist, touch my cheek. I felt a burn of life through the hard
coldness of my self. I felt a raging flame that caught every particle of
me, as only blood can do it, living blood. I felt a pain in my heart. I
might have laid my finger on my chest in the very place.

"What do you feel!" I asked, refusing to be ravaged.

"I feel the blood of hundreds," he whispered. "I feel a soul who
has known a thousand souls."

"Known? Or merely destroyed?"

"Will you send me away out of hatred for yourself?" he asked.
"Or shall I continue with my story?"

"Please, please go on."

"Man had invented or discovered God," he said. His voice was
calm now and back to the same polite and almost humble instructive
manner. "And in some instances, tribes worshipped more than one
such deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of the
world. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; and
they did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. They
brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls.
They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the birthing of a child,
in all things.

rum aa we angeis peered into Sheoi, as we passed into it,

invisible, our essence causing no disturbance in a realm that was purely
souls at that point . . . souls and nothing but souls ... we realized
these souls were strengthened in their survival by the attentions of
those living on earth, by the love being sent to them by humans, by
the thoughts of them in human minds. It was a process.

"And just as with angels, these souls were individuals with varying
degrees of intellect, interest, or curiosity. They were hosts as well to

all human emotions, though in many, mercifully, all emotion was on
the wane.

"Some souls, for example, knew they were dead, and sought to
respond to the prayers of their children, and actively attempted to
advise, speaking with all the power they could muster in a spiritual
voice. They struggled to appear to their children. Sometimes they
broke through for fleeting seconds, gathering to themselves swirling
particles of matter by the sheer force of their invisible essence. Other
times they made themselves visible in dreams, when the soul of the
sleeping human was opened to other souls. They told their children
of the bitterness and darkness of death, and that they must be brave
and strong in life. They gave their children advice.

"And they seemed, in some instances at least, to know that the
belief and attention of their sons and daughters strengthened them.
They requested offerings and prayers, they reminded the children of
their duty. These souls were to some extent the least confused, except
for one thing. They thought they had seen all there was to be seen."
"No hint of Heaven?" I asked.

"No, and no light from Heaven penetrated Sheol, nor any music.
From Sheol one saw the darkness and the stars, and the people of
Earth."

"Unbearable."

"Not if you think you are a god to your children and can still

derive strength from the mere sight of the libations they pour on your
grave. Not if you feel pleasure in those who hearken to your advice
and anger at those who don't, and not if you can communicate

occasionally, sometimes with spectacular results."

"I see, of course. And gods they seemed to their children."

"Ancestral gods of a certain kind. Not the Creator of All. Human
beings had distinct ideas on both questions, as I've said.

"I became greatly absorbed with this whole question of Sheol. I

traveled the length and breadth of Sheol. Some of these souls didn't
know they were dead. They knew only they were lost and blind and
miserable and they cried all the time like infant humans. They were
so weak I don't even think they felt the presence of other souls.

"Other souls were clearly deluded. They thought they were still
alive! They chased after their kindred, trying vainly to get the

oblivious son or daughter to listen, when of course the kindred could not
hear or see them; and these, these who thought they were still living,
well, these had no presence of mind to gather matter to make

themselves appear or to come to the living in a dream, because they didn't
know they were dead."

"Yes."

"To continue, some souls knew they were ghosts when they came
to mortals. Others thought they were alive and the whole world had
turned against them. Others simply drifted, seeing and hearing the
sounds of other living beings but remote from this as if in a stupor or
dream. And some souls died.

"Before my very eyes, some died. And soon I realized many were
dying. The dying soul would last a week, perhaps a month in human
time, after its separation from the human body, retaining its shape,
and then begin to fade. The essence would gradually disperse, just as
did the essence inside an animal upon its death. Gone into the air,
returned perhaps to the energy and essence of God."

"That's what happened?" I asked desperately. "Their energy
went back into the Creator; the light of a candle returned to the

eternal fire?"

"I don't know. And that I didn't see, little flames wafted to
Heaven, drawn aloft by a mighty and loving blaze. No, I saw nothing
of the kind.

"From Sheol the Light of God was not visible. For Sheol, the
consolation of God did not exist. Yet these were spiritual beings,
made in our image and His image, and clinging to that image and
hungering for a life beyond death. That was the agony. The hunger
for the life beyond death."

"If that was absent at the time of the death, would the soul simply
be extinguished?" I asked.

"No, not at all. The hunger seemed innate. The hunger had to die
out in Sheol before the soul would disintegrate. Indeed, souls went
through many, many experiences in Sheol, and those who had

become the strongest were those who perceived themselves as gods,
or humans passed into the realm of the good God, and attentive to
humans; and these souls gained power even to sway the others and
strengthen them sometimes and keep them from fading away."
He paused as if not sure how to proceed. Then, he went on:
"There were some souls who understood things in a different

way. They knew they weren't gods. They knew they were dead

humans. They knew they didn't really have the right to change the

destiny of those who prayed to them; they knew that the libations
essentially were symbolic. These souls understood the meaning of
the concept symbolic. They knew. And they knew they were dead
and they perceived themselves to be lost. They would have reentered
the flesh if they could have. For there in the flesh was all the light and
warmth and comfort that they had ever known and could still see.
And sometimes these souls managed to do exactly that!

"I witnessed it in various different fashions. I saw these souls

deliberately descend and take possession of a stupefied mortal, take
over his limbs and brain and live in him until the man gained the
strength to throw the soul off. You know these things. All men do--
what is involved in possession. You have possessed a body that wasn't
yours, and your body has been possessed by another soul."
"Yes."

"But this was the dawn of such invention. And to watch these
clever souls learn the rules of it, to see them grow ever more

powerful, was something to behold.

"And what I could not fail to be frightened by, being the Accuser
as I am, and horrified by Nature, as God calls it, what I could not
ignore was that these souls did have an effect on living women and
men! There were those living humans already who had become ora-
cles. They would smoke or drink some potion to render their own
minds passive, so that a dead soul might speak with their voice!

"And because these powerful spirits--for I should call them spir-
its now--because these powerful spirits knew only what Earth and
Sheol could teach them, they might urge human beings on to terrible
mistakes. I saw them order men into battle; I saw them order

executions. I saw them demand blood sacrifice of human beings."

"You saw the Creation of Religion out of Man," I said.

"Yes, insofar as Man can Create anything. Let us not forget Who
Created us all."

"The other angels, how did they fare with these revelations?"

"We gathered, exchanged stories in amazement, then went off
again on our own explorations; we were more entangled with the
earth than we had ever been. But essentially, the reactions of angels

varied. Some, the Seraphim mainly, thought the whole process was
downright marvelous; that God deserved a thousand anthems in
praise that his Creation should lead to a being who could evolve an
invisible deity from itself who would then command it to ever greater
efforts at survival or war.

"Then there were those who thought, 'This is an error, this is an
abomination! These are the souls of humans pretending to be Gods!
This is unspeakable and must be stopped immediately.'

"And then there was my passionate reaction: 'This is really
ghastly and it is headed for worse and worse disasters! This is the
beginning of an entirely new stage of human life, bodiless, yet

purposeful and ignorant, which is gaining momentum every second, and
filling the atmosphere of the world with potent interfering entities as
ignorant as the humans round whom they swirled.' "

"Surely some of the other angels agreed with you."

"Yes, some were as vehement, but as Michael said, 'Trust in God,
Memnoch, Who has done this. God knows the Divine Scheme.'

"Michael and I had the most extensive dialogues. Raphael and
Gabriel and Uriel had not come down, by the way, as part of this
mission. And the reason for that is fairly simple. Almost never do all
of those four go the same way. It's a law with them, a custom, a ... a
vocation, that two are always on hand in heaven for the call of God;
and never do all four leave at once. In this instance, Michael was the
only one who wanted to come.

"Does this Archangel Michael still exist now?"

"Of course he exists! You'll meet him. You could meet him now if
you wish, but no, he wouldn't come now. He wouldn't. He's on the
side of God. But you'll be no stranger to him if you join with me. In
fact, you might be surprised by how sympathetic Michael can be to
my endeavors. But my endeavors are not unreconcilable to heaven,
surely, or I would not be allowed to do what I do."

He looked sharply at me.

"All those of the bene ha elohim whom I describe to you are alive
now. They are immortal. How could you think it would be any other
way? Now, there were souls in Sheol at that time who no longer exist,

not in any form I know of, but perhaps they do in some form known

to God."

"I understand. It was a stupid-sounding question," I admitted.

"As you watched all this, as it filled you with fear, how did you relate

it to God's statement about nature? That you would see humankind

were part of nature."

"I couldn't except in terms of the endless exchange of energy and
Matter. The souls were energy; yet they retained a knowledge from
Matter. Beyond that, I could not reconcile it. But for Michael, there
was another view. We were on a stairway, were we not? The lowest
molecules of inorganic matter constituted the lowest steps. These
disembodied souls occupied the step above man yet below angels. It
was all one flowing procession to Michael, but then again, Michael
trusted that God was doing all this deliberately and wanted it this
way.

"I could not believe this! Because the suffering of the souls

horrified me. It hurt Michael too. He covered his ears. And the death of
the souls horrified me. If souls could live, then why not let all know!
And were they doomed forever to exist in this gloom? What else in
nature remained so static? Had they become as sentient asteroids

forever orbiting the planet, moons that could scream and cry and weep?
"I asked Michael, 'What will happen? Tribes pray to different
souls. These souls become their gods. Some are stronger than others.
Look at the war everywhere, the battle.'

" 'But Memnoch,' he said, 'primates did this before they had
souls. Everything in Nature eats and is eaten. This is what God has
been trying to tell you since you first began to cry out in protest at
the sound of suffering from the Earth. These soul-god-spirits are

expressions of humans, and part of humankind, born of humans and
sustained by humans, and even if these spirits grow in strength to
where they can manipulate living people exquisitely, they are

nevertheless born out of Matter and part of Nature as God said.'

" 'So nature is this unspeakable unfolding horror,' I said. 'It is not
enough that a shark swallows whole the infant dolphin and that the
butterfly is crushed in the teeth of the wolf who chews it up, oblivious
to its beauty. It's not enough. Nature must go further, and spin from
matter these spirits in torment. Nature comes this close to Heaven,
but is so far short of it that only Sheol will do for the name of this
place.'

"This speech was too much for Michael. One cannot speak this

way to the Archangel Michael. Just doesn't work. So at once he
turned away from me, not angrily, not in cowardice that God's thun-
derbolt might miss me by a fraction and shatter his left wing. But he
turned away in silence, as if to say, Memnoch you are impatient and
unwise. Then he turned and mercifully said, 'Memnoch, you do not
look deep enough. These souls have only begun their evolution.
Who knows how strong they may become? Man has stepped into the
invisible. What if he is meant to become as we are?'

" 'But how is that to happen, Michael?' I demanded. 'How are these
souls to know what are angels and what is Heaven? Do you think if
we made ourselves visible to them and told them that they . . . ' I
stopped. Even I knew this was unthinkable. I wouldn't have dared.
Not in millions of years would I have dared.

"But no sooner had this thought occurred to us, had we begun
brooding over it, than other angels gathered with us, and said, 'Look,
living people know that we are here.'

" 'How so?' I demanded. As sorry as I felt for humanity, I didn't
consider mortal men and women very smart. But these angels

explained immediately.

" 'Some have sensed our presence. They sense it as they sense the
presence of a dead soul. It is the same part of the brain which

perceives other things invisible; I tell you we have been glimpsed and we
shall now be imagined by these people. You will see.'

" 'This can't be God's wish,' said Michael. 'I say we return to
Heaven at once.'

"The majority agreed with him instantly, the way angels agree,
without a sound. I stood alone looking at the entire multitude.

" 'Well?' I said. 'God has given me my mission. I cannot go back
until I understand,' I insisted. 'And I don't understand.'

"There ensued a huge argument. But finally Michael kissed me as
angels always kiss, tenderly on the lips and cheeks, and went up to
Heaven, and the whole league ascended with him.

"And I remained, standing on the earth alone. I did not pray to
God; I did not look to men; I looked into myself and I thought, What
shall I do? I do not wish to be seen as an angel. I do not wish to be
worshipped like these surviving souls. I do not wish to anger God;
but I have to fulfill His commandment to me. I have to understand.
Now, I am invisible. But what if I can do what these clever souls do--

that is, gather matter to me to make for myself a body--gather

sufficient tiny particles from all the world--and who knows better than I
do what a man is made of, having seen him evolve from his earliest
stages, who knows better the makeup of tissue and cell and bone and
fiber and brain matter than I know? Except God?

"So I did it. I focused my entire will and strength upon constructing

for myself a living sheath of human flesh, complete in all parts,
and I chose--without even thinking about it--to be male. Does this
require an explanation?"

"Not really," I said. "I would imagine you had seen enough of
rape, childbirth, and helpless struggle to make the wiser choice. I
know I have."

"Correct. But sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if things
would have been entirely different if I had chosen to be female. I
could have. The females resemble us more, truly. But if we are both,
then surely we are more male than female. It is not in equal parts."
"From what you've shown me of yourself, I tend to agree."
"So. I became sheathed in flesh. It took a little longer than one
might suppose. I had to consciously evoke every bit of knowledge in
my angelic memory; I had to construct the body, and then insert my
essence in it exactly in the manner in which the natural life essence
would have been inside it; and I had to surrender, that is, encase

myself within this body, really go into it, and fill out its limits and not
panic. Then I had to look through its eyes."

I nodded quietly with a trace of a smile. Having given up my

vampire body for a human one, I could perhaps imagine a small particle
of what Memnoch had experienced. I wasn't about to boast that I
understood.

"The process involved no pain," he said. "Only submission. And
for no good reason, really, or I should say from simple Nature, to use
God's favorite word, I sheathed my own self, my own essence in
flesh. Only the wings-did I leave out of the scheme altogether, and so
I stood as tall as an angel, and as I walked to the water of a clear pool
near me and looked down in it, I saw Memnoch for the first time in
material form. I saw exactly myself, my fair hair, my eyes, my skin, all
the gifts God had given me in invisible form made manifest in flesh.
"I realized immediately that this was too much! I was too large all
over; I was blazing with the essence inside me! This would not work.
And so instantly I began to reshape and scale down the entire body
until it resembled more myself the size of a man.

"You'll know how to do all this once you're with me," he said, "if
you choose to come, and die, and be my lieutenant. But let me say for
now that this is neither impossible nor terribly simple. It is not like
pressing the keys of a complex computer program and sitting back
and watching the machine execute the commands one by one. On the
other hand, it is not cumbersome and overly conscious. It merely
takes angelic knowledge, angelic patience, and angelic will.

"Now a man stood beside the pool, naked, blond of hair and light
of eye, very similar to many of those who inhabited the region,
though perhaps more nearly perfect, and endowed with physical

organs of reasonable but not splendid size.

"Now as my essence went into these organs, into the scrotum and
the penis, to be specific, I felt something which had been utterly

unknown to me as an angel. Utterly unknown. It was compounded of
many realizations. I knew gender, I knew maleness; I knew a certain
human vulnerability firsthand now rather than from watching and
sensing; and I was very surprised at how powerful I felt.

"I had expected to be quaking with humility in this form! To be
shivering with indignity at the mere smallness of myself, and my

immobility and a host of other things--things you felt when you
swapped your vampire body for that of a man."
"I remember vividly."

"But I didn't feel this. I had never been material. I had never,
never thought about doing it. I had never, never even thought of
wanting to see what I might look like in an earthly mirror. I knew my
image from its reflection in the eyes of other angels. I knew my parts
because I could see them with my angelic eyes.

"But now I was a man. I felt the brain inside my skull. I felt its wet,
intricate, and near-chaotic mechanics; its layers and layers of tissue,
involving as it does the earliest stages of evolution, and wedding them
to a wealth of higher cells in the cortex in a manner that seemed

utterly illogical and yet totally natural--natural if you knew what I, as
an angel, knew."

"Such as what?" I asked, making it as polite as I could.
"Such as that emotions stirred in the limbic part of my brain could
take hold of me without having first made themselves known to my
consciousness," he said. "That can't happen with an angel. Our

emotions cannot slip by our conscious minds. We cannot feel irrational
terror. At least I don't think so. And whatever the case, I certainly

didn't think so then when I stood on the earth, in the flesh of a man."

"Could you have been wounded, or killed, in this form?" I asked.

"No. I'll get to that in a minute, as a matter of fact. But as I was in
a wild, wooded area, as I was in this very valley which is Palestine, if
you would know it, before it was ever called Palestine, as I was here, I
was aware that this body was food for wild animals, and so I did create
around myself, of angelic essence, an extremely strong shield. It
behaved electrically. That is, when an animal approached me, which
happened almost immediately, it was repulsed by this shield.

"And thus shielded, I decided to start walking all through the
nearby settlements of men and to look at things, knowing full well no
one could hurt me or push me or attack me or anything else. Yet I
would not appear miraculous. On the contrary, I would seem to
dodge the blows if any were dealt, and I would seek to behave in such
a matter that nobody noticed me at all.

"I waited for nightfall, and went to the nearest encampment,
which was the largest in the area and had grown so in strength that it
now exacted tribute from other encampments nearby. This was a
huge circular walled gathering place, full of individual huts in which
men and women lived. Fires burnt in each hut. There was a central
place where everyone gathered. There were gates to be locked at
night.

"I slipped inside, slumped down beside a hut, and watched for
hours what the people of this encampment did in the twilight and
then by dark. I crept from place to place. I peered inside the little
doorways. I watched many things.

"The next day, I watched from the forest. I tracked a band of
hunters, so that they did not see me, but I could see them. When I
was glimpsed, I ran, which seemed the acceptable and predictable

behavior. Nobody chased me.

"I hung around the thriving life of these humans for three days
and three nights, and during this time, I knew their limits, I knew
their bodily needs and aches, and I had gradually come to know their
lust, because all of a sudden, I discovered it flaming inside of me.

"This is how it happened. Twilight. The third day. I had come to
an entire score of conclusions as to why these people were not part of
Nature. I had an entire case to make to God. I was almost about to
leave.

"But one thing which has always fascinated angels, and which I
had not experienced in the flesh, was sexual union. Now as an invisi-

ble angel one can come quite close to those coupled, and see into
their half-shut eyes, and hear their cries, and touch the flushed flesh
of the woman's breast and feel her heart race.

"Countless times I'd done this. And I realized now that passionate
union--a true experience of it--could be crucial to my case. I knew
thirst, I knew hunger, I knew pain, I knew weariness, I knew about
how these people lived and felt and thought and talked to each other.
But I really didn't know what happened in sexual union.

"And at twilight on the third day, as I stood by this very sea, here,
far, far from the encampment, looking towards it miles to our right,
there came towards me as if out of nowhere a beautiful woman--a
daughter of man.

"Now, I had seen scores of beautiful women! As I told you, when
I first beheld the beauty of women ... before men had become quite
so smooth and hairless ... it had been one of the shocks of Physical
Evolution for me. And of course during these three days, I had from
afar studied many beautiful women. But, in my subterfuge, I hadn't
dared to go very close. After all, I was in the flesh and trying to go
unnoticed.

"But three days, mark me, I had had this body. And the organs of
this body, being perfectly made, responded at once to the sight of this
woman, who came walking boldly along the banks of the sea, a rebel
woman, without a guardian male or other females, a young, bold,
slightly angry, longhaired and beautiful girl.

"Her garment was no more than a coarse animal skin, with a
chewed leather belt around it, and she was barefoot and her legs were
naked from the knee down. Her hair was long and dark, and her eyes
blue--a beguiling combination. And her face very youthful yet full of
the character imparted to a face by anger and rebellion--a girl filled
with pain and recklessness and some desire to do herself harm.
"She saw me.

"She stopped, realizing her vulnerability. And I, never having
bothered with garments, stood naked, looking at her. And the organ
in me wanted her, wanted her immediately and violently; and I felt
the first promise of what that union might be like. That is, the first
stirring of real desire. For three days, I had lived by the mind as an
angel. Now the body spoke and I listened with an angel's ears.

"She meantime did not run from me, but took several steps closer;
and in her reckless heart made a resolution, based upon what experi-

ence I couldn't know, but she made it; that she would open her arms
to me if I wanted her. And with the smoothest, most graceful

movement of her hips, and with a gesture of her right hand, lifting her hair
and then dropping it, she let me know.

"I went to her and she took my hand and led me up those rocks,
there, to where the cave is, you can see it, just over your left shoulder
and up the slope. She took me there, and by the time we reached the
entrance, I realized that she was flaming for me as I was flaming for
her.

"She was no virgin, this girl. Whatever her story, she was not ignorant

of passion. She knew what it was, and she wanted it, and the
lunge of her hips towards me was deliberate, and when she kissed me
and put her tongue into my mouth, she knew what she sought.

"I was overcome. For one instant I held her back, merely to look
at her, in her mysterious material beauty, a thing of flesh and decay
that nevertheless rivaled any angel I'd ever seen, and then I gave her
back her kisses, brutally, making her laugh and push her breasts
against me.

"Within seconds, we had fallen down together on the mossy floor
of the cave as I had seen mortals do a thousand times. And when my
organ went inside of her, when I felt the passion, I knew then what no
angel could possibly know! It had nothing to do with reason, or

observation, or sympathy, or listening, or learning, or trying to grasp. I
was in her flesh and consumed with lust, and so was she, and the

tender muscles of her hairy little vaginal mouth clamped down upon me
as if she meant to devour me, and as I thrust inside of her, again and
again, she went blood red in her consummation, and her eyes rolled
back into her head and her heart stood still.

"I came at the same moment. I felt the ejaculate shoot from my
body into her. I felt it fill the warm, tight cavity. My body continued
to writhe with the same rhythm, and then the feeling, the indescribable

and wholly new feeling, slowly ebbed and went away.

"I lay exhausted beside her, my arm over her, and my mouth
sought the side of her face and kissed her, and I said in her language,
in a rush of words, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, sweet and

beautiful creature, I love you!'

"And to this she gave a yielding and respectful smile, and snuggled

close to me, and then seemed about to weep. Her carelessness

had led her to a tenderness! Her soul suffered inside her, and I felt it
through the palms of her hands!

"But in me there was a tumult of knowledge! I had felt the orgasm!

I had felt the highly developed physical sensations that come to
fulfillment when humans sexually mate! I stared at the ceiling of the
cave, unable to move, unable to speak.

"Then very gradually, I realized something had startled her. She
clung to me, then she rose on her knees, and she ran away.

"I sat up. The light had come down from Heaven! It was coming
down from Heaven and it was God's light and it was looking for me!
I rushed to my knees and to my feet and ran out into the light.

" 'Here I am, Lord!' I cried. 'Lord, I am full of joy! Lord, God,
what I have felt, Lord!' And I let out a great anthem, and as I did so
the material particles of my body dissolved about me, shorn off by
me, almost as if by the power of my angel voice, and I rose to my full
height and spread my wings and sang in thanks to Heaven, for what I
had known in this woman's arms.

"The voice of God came quiet yet full of wrath.

" 'Memnoch!' He said. 'You are an Angel! What is an Angel, a
Son of God, doing with a Daughter of Men!'

"Before I could answer, the light had withdrawn and left me
with the whirlwind, and turning, my wings caught in it, I saw the
mortal woman was only there, at the bank of the sea, and that she
had seen and heard something inexplicable to her, and now in terror
she fled.

"She ran and I was carried upwards to the very gates of Heaven,
and then those gates for the first time took on height and shape for
me as they had for you, and they were slammed shut against me, and
the Light struck me and down I went, forced down, plummeting as
you plummeted in my arms, only I was alone, alone as I was slammed
again, invisible, but bruised and broken and crying, against the wet
earth.

" 'You, my Watcher, what have you done!' said the voice of God,
small and certain by my ear.

"I started to weep, uncontrollably. 'Lord, God, this is a terrible
misunderstanding. Let me ... let me lay my case before you . . .'

" 'Stay with the mortals you love so much!' He said. 'Let them
minister to you, for I will not listen until my anger is cooled. Embrace

the flesh you crave, and with which you are polluted. You won't
come into my sight again until I send for you, and that shall be by my
choice.'

"The wind rose again, swirling, and as I turned over on my back, I

realized I was wingless, and in the flesh once more and the size of
a man.

"I was in the body I had created for myself, generously reassembled

for me by the Almighty, down to the last cell, and I lay hurting
and aching and weak on the ground, moaning, and sad.

"I had never heard myself cry before with a human voice. I was
not loud. I was not full of challenge or desperation. I was too sure of
myself still as an Angel. I was too sure God loved me. I knew He was
angry, yes, but He'd been angry with me many, many times before.

"What I felt was the agony of separation from Him! I could not at
will ascend to Heaven! I could not leave this flesh. And as I sat up and
lifted my arms, I realized I was trying to do this with my whole being,
and I couldn't do it, and then sadness came over me, so great, so
lonely, and so total that I could only bow my head.

"The night had begun. The stars filled the firmament and were as
distant from me as if I had never known Heaven at all. I closed my
eyes, and I heard the souls of Sheol wailing. I heard them pressing
near me, asking me what I was, what had they witnessed, whence had
I been thrown to the earth? Before I had gone unnoticed, my

transformation having been quiet and secret, but when God had thrust me
downwards, I had fallen spectacularly as an angel and immediately
into the shape of a man.

"All Sheol was crying in curiosity and foment.

" 'Lord, what do I say to them? Help me!' I prayed.

"And then came the perfume of the woman near me. I turned and
I saw her creeping towards me cautiously, and, when she saw my face,
when she saw my tears and my distress, she came boldly towards me,
slipping her warm breasts against my chest again, and clasping in her
trembling hands my head."



13

SHE TOOK me back to the encampment. She brought me inside

the gates. Men and women rose from the campfires and
children ran towards me. I knew that I possessed angelic
beauty, and their admiring glances didn't surprise me. But I did

wonder what in the name of Heaven they meant to do.

"I was seated, and given food and drink. This I needed. For three
days I'd drunk nothing but water, and eaten only a few berries

gathered here and there in the woods.

"I sat down cross-legged with them and ate the cooked meat they
gave me, and she, my woman, my Daughter of Men, crushed up
against me, as if daring anyone to challenge the pair of us, and then
she spoke.

"She stood up, threw up her arms, and in a loud voice told them
what she had seen. Her language was simple. But she had plenty
enough words to describe it--how she had come upon me on the
banks of the sea and seen that I was naked and she had given herself to
me in sanctity and worship, knowing I could not be a man of the earth.

"No sooner had my seed come into her than a magnificent light
from above had filled the cave. She had rushed in fear from it, but I
had walked out into it, fearless, knowing it, and before her eyes
I changed so that she could see through me, yet still she saw me.
And I was grown tall, with immense white feathered wings! This
vision--this creature through whom she could see as if through
water--she saw only for an instant. Then I vanished. I was gone as
surely as I sit here now. She had hovered, shivering, watching,

praying to the ancestors, to the Creator, to the Demons of the Desert,
to all powers for protection, when suddenly she had seen me again--
transparent, to summarize her simple words, but visible, falling--
winged and enormous--smashing towards earth in a fall that would
have killed a man, though that is what I became--a man, solid as

everyone could see, sitting in the dust.

" 'God,' I prayed. 'What do I do? What this woman has said is
true! But I am no God. You are God. What do I do?'

"No answer came from Heaven, not to my ears, not to my heart,
not to my cumbersome and elaborate brain.

"As for the crowd of listeners, whom I judged to be about thirty-

five, exclusive of all the children, no one spoke. Everyone was

considering this. No one was quick to accept it. No one was going to jump
forward and challenge it either. Something in my manner and posture

held them aloof.

"No surprise. I certainly didn't cower or shiver or evince what I
was suffering. I had not learnt to express angelic suffering through
flesh. I merely sat there, aware that by their measure I was young,
comely, and a mystery; and they were not brave enough to try to hurt
me as they so often hurt others, to stab, or pierce, or burn me as I
had seen them do enough times to their enemies, and to their own
despised.

"Suddenly the whole group burst into murmuring. A very old
man rose to his feet. His words were even simpler than hers. I would
say he had perhaps half of her working vocabulary. But this was
enough to express himself and he asked of me simply: 'What do you
have to say for yourself?'

"The others reacted as if this question were an expression of sheer
genius. Maybe it was. The woman pulled very close to me at that
moment. She sat down beside me and with an imploring look, she
embraced me.

"I realized something--that her fate was connected to mine. She
was slightly afraid of all these people, her kindred. And she wasn't
afraid of me! Interesting. That is what tenderness and love can do,
and marvels also, I thought. And God says these people are part of
Nature!

"I hung my head, but not for long. Finally, I rose to my feet,
bringing her up with me, my mate, as it were, and, using all the words
known in her language, some even that the children had been adding
already in this generation that the adults didn't yet know, I said:

" 'I mean you no harm. I came from Heaven. I came to learn
about you and to love you. And I wish you only all good things under
God!'

"There was a great clamour, a happy clamour, with people clapping

their hands, and rising to their feet, and the little ones jumping
up and down. It seemed a consensus emerged that Lilia, the woman I
had been with, could now return to the group. She had been cast out
to die when she had come upon me. But she was now surely upheld.
And she had returned with a god, a deity, a sky being . .. they aimed
for it with many syllables and combinations of syllables.

" 'No!' I declared. 'I am not a god. I did not make the world. I
worship, just as you do, the God who did.'

"This, too, was accepted in jubilation. Indeed, the frenzy began to
alarm me. I felt the limits of my body keenly with all these others
dancing and screaming and shouting and kicking at the wood in the
fire, and this lovely Lilia clinging to me.

" 'I must sleep now!' I said suddenly. And this was no more or less
than the perfect truth. I had scarce slept an hour or more at any one
time in my three days in the flesh and was bone weary and bruised
and cast out of Heaven. I wanted to turn to this woman, and bury my
sorrow in her arms.

"Everyone gave their approval. A hut was prepared for us. People
ran hither and thither gathering the finest skins and furs for us, and
the softest chewed leather, and we were ushered into this place in
silence, and I lay back down on the fur beneath me, the skin of a
mountain goat, long and soft.

" 'God, what do you want me to do!' I asked aloud. There came
no answer. There was only the silence and the darkness in the hut,
and then the arms of a Daughter of Men around me, luscious and
loving and full of tenderness and passion, that mystery, that

combination, that purely living miracle, tenderness and lust rolling and
rolling into one."

Memnoch stopped. He seemed exhausted suddenly. He rose and
again walked to the bank of the sea. He stood in the soft sand and
pebbles. I saw the outline of his wings flash for a moment, perhaps
exactly the way the woman had seen it, and then he was merely the
large figure, with his shoulders hunched as he stood with his back to
me, his face apparently buried in his hands.

"Memnoch, what happened!" I said. "Surely God didn't leave you
there! What did you do? What happened the next morning when you
woke up?"

He gave a sigh and turned around finally. He walked slowly back
to the boulder, and sat down again.

"By morning, I had known her a half dozen times and lay half
dead, and that in itself was another lesson. But I had no thought
whatsoever on what I might do. While she'd slept, I had prayed to
God, I had prayed to Michael and to the other angels. I had prayed
and prayed, asking what I should do.

"Can you guess who answered me?" he asked.

"The souls in Sheol," I said.

"Yes, precisely! Those are the spirits who answered. How could
you know? Those are the spirits--the strongest souls of Sheol who
heard my prayers to the Creator and heard the impetus and essence
of my cries and my excuses and my pleas for mercy and forgiveness
and understanding--heard all of it, absorbed it, drank it up, as they
did the spiritual yearnings of their human and living children. And by
the time the sun rose, by the time all the men of the group had started
to gather, I knew one thing only:

"Whatever happened to me, whatever was the will of God, the
souls of Sheol would never be the same! They had learnt too much
from the voice of this Angel fallen into Matter who had thoughtlessly
cried to Heaven and to God.

"Of course the full impact didn't hit me. I didn't sit there reasoning

it out. The strongest souls had had their first glimpse of Paradise.
They knew now of a Light which made an Angel weep and beg in
desperation, because he was afraid he would never see that Light
again. I didn't think of it. No.

"God had left me here. That is what I thought. God had left me. I
went out into the crowd. The encampment was overflowing. In fact,
men and women were coming from all the nearby encampments to
see me.

"And we had to leave the enclosure and go out into the open, into
one of the fields. Look down to the right, where the land slopes? You
see down there where the field spreads out and the water turns...."

"Yes."

"That's where we gathered. And it was soon clear that all of these
men and women were expecting something of me, that I speak, that I
work marvels, that I sprout wings, something, but what I didn't
know. As for Lilia, she clung to me as ever, enticing and beautiful,
and filled with vague wonder.

"Together we climbed onto that rock ... you see there, the boulders

left there by the glaciers millions of years ago. There. We
climbed up and she sat down and I stood before these people, and
then I looked to Heaven and I opened my arms.

"With all my heart, I begged God to forgive me, to take me back,
to climax this intrusion with my merciful disappearance, that is, to let
me take my angelic shape, invisible, and rise. I willed it, I pictured it,
I tried in every conceivable way to assume my former nature. No

luck.

"In the heavens above I saw what men saw. I saw the blue of the

sky, and the willowy white clouds blowing eastward, and I saw the
faint daytime moon. The sun hurt my shoulders. It hurt the top of my
head. And something became known to me then in all its horror: that
I was probably going to die in this body! That I had forfeited my
immortality! God had made me mortal and turned his back.

"I thought this over a long time. I'd suspected it from the first
moment, but now with the haste of a man I became convinced of it.
And in me a deep anger rose. I looked at all these men and women. I
thought of God's words to me, to go with those I had chosen, with
the flesh I preferred to Heaven. And a decision came into my head.

"If this was to be my finish, if I was to die in this mortal body as all
men die, if some days or weeks or even years were left to

me--whatever this body could hope to survive amid the perils of

life--then Imust do with it the very finest thing that I knew. I must

offer to Godmy finest. I must go out like an Angel, if going out is

what I had to do!" 'I love you, my Lord,' I said aloud. And I racked

my brain for the greatest acts I could perform.

"What came to me was immediate and logical, and perhaps obvious.

I would teach these people everything I knew! I wouldn't just tell
them about Heaven and God and Angels, because what good would
that do? Though of course I would tell them, and tell them to look
for a peaceful death and peace in Sheol, for that they could attain.

"But that would be the least of what I would do. For that was
nothing! What was better was this--I'd teach them everything about
their world that I could perceive logically but which had not yet
become known to them.

"Immediately I started speaking to them. I led them to the mountains

and took them into the caves and showed them the veins of ore,
and told them that when this metal was hot it bubbled forth from the
earth in liquid, and that if they could heat it again they could make it
soft and make things out of it.

"Returning to the sea, I picked up the soft earth and shaped it into
little people to show them how simple this was to do! Picking up a

stick, I drew a circle in the sand, and spoke to them of symbols. How
we might make a symbol for Lilia that resembled the flower for
which she was named which they called the lily. And how we might
make a symbol for what I was ... a man with wings. I drew pictures
everywhere, showing them how easy it was to do it, to connect an
image with a concept or a concrete thing.

"By evening, I had gathered around me all the women, and was

showing them ways to tie their thongs of chewed leather, which had
never occurred to them, elaborate ways of plaiting it, and making it
into big pieces of one fabric. All logical. All simply what I inferred
from what I knew as an Angel about the whole world.

"Now, these people already knew the seasons of the moon, but
they didn't know the calendar of the sun. I told them all this. How
many days to a year there should be according to how the sun and the
planets moved, and I told them how they could write all this down
with symbols. And soon we took the clay from the banks of the sea
and we made flat plates of it, and on these plates with sticks I made
little pictures of stars and heaven and Angels. And these plates or

tablets were then allowed to dry in the sun.

"For days and nights, I remained with my people. I began to teach
them more and more and more. When one group was tired and could
take no more lessons, I turned to another, and examined what they
were doing, and tried to improve their ways.

"Many things they would figure out for themselves, I knew.
Weaving was very soon to occur to them, and then they would make
better garments. That was all well and good. I showed them pigments
similar to the red ochre they already used. I took things out of the
raw earth that would make different colors for them. Every thought
that occurred to me, every advance of which I could conceive, I

imparted to them, greatly expanding their language in the process,

obviously teaching them writing, and then I also taught them music of a
wholly new kind. I taught them songs. And the women came to me,
over and over again, the women--and Lilia stepped back--that the
seed of the Angel might go into many, many women, 'the comely
Daughters of Men.' "

He paused again. His heart seemed broken, remembering. His
eyes were distant and totally reflecting the pale blue of the sea.

I spoke up very softly, cautiously, and from memory and ready at
any sign from him to break off. I quoted from the Book of Enoch:

" 'And Azazel... made known to them the metals, and the art of
working them, and bracelets and ornaments, and the use of anti-
mony, and the beautifying of eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones,
and all colored tinctures.' "

He turned to look at me. He seemed almost unable to speak. His
voice came softly, almost as softly as mine had as he spoke the next
lines of the book of Enoch, " 'And there arose much godlessness, and

they committed fornication, and they were led astray....' " Again he
paused and then resumed, " 'And as men perished, they cried, and
their cry went up to heaven.' " He stopped again, smiling slowly and
bitterly. "And what is the rest of it, Lestat, and what lies in between
the lines you've spoken and the lines I've spoken! Lies! I taught them
civilization. I taught them knowledge of Heaven and Angels! That's
all I taught them. There was no blood, no lawlessness, no monstrous
giants in the earth. It's lies and lies, fragments and fragments buried
in lies!"

I nodded, fearlessly, and rather certain of it, and seeing it perfectly,

and seeing it from the point of view of the Hebrews who later
believed so firmly in the purification and law, and had seen it as

uncleanness and evil . . . and told again and again of these Watchers,
these teachers, these Angels who had fallen in love with the

Daughters of Men.

"There was no magic," Memnoch said quietly. "There were no
enchantments. I didn't teach them to make swords! I didn't teach
them war. If there was knowledge amongst another people on Earth,
and I knew of that, I told them. That in the valley of another river,
men knew how to gather wheat with scythes! That there were
Ophanim in Heaven, Angels who were round, Angels who were
wheels, and that if this shape was imitated in matter, if a simple piece
of wood connected two rounded pieces, one could make an object
which would roll upon these wheels!"

He gave a sigh. "I was sleepless, I was crazed. As the knowledge
poured forth from me, as they were worn down by it, and struggled
under the burden of it, I went to the caves and carved my symbols on
the walls. I carved pictures of Heaven and Earth and angels. I carved
the light of God. I worked tirelessly until every mortal muscle in me
ached.

"And then, unable to endure their company anymore, satiated
with beautiful women, and clinging to Lilia for comfort, I went off
into the forest, claiming I needed to talk to my God in silence, and
there I collapsed.

"I lay in perfect stillness, comforted by the silent presence of
Lilia, and I thought of all that had taken place. I thought of the case I
had meant to lay before God, and how what I had learnt since had
only fitted neatly into the case I had meant to make! Nothing I had
seen in men could incline me to think differently. That I had of-

fended God, that I had lost Him forever, that I had Sheol to look
forward to, for all eternity, these things were real and I knew them,
and they beat on my soul and heart. But I couldn't change my mind!

"The case I had meant to lay before the Almighty was that these
people were above Nature and beyond Nature and demanded more
of Him, and all that I had seen only upheld me in what I believed.
How they had taken to celestial secrets. How they suffered, and
sought for some meaning to justify that suffering! If only there were a
Maker and the Maker had his reasons ... Oh, it was agony. And at the
heart of it blazed the secret of lust.

"In the orgasm, as my seed had gone into the woman, I had felt an
ecstasy that was like the joy of Heaven, I had felt it and felt it only in
connection with the body that lay beneath me, and for one split s

econd or less than that I had known, known, known that men were not
part of Nature, no, they were better, they belonged with God and
with us!

"When they came to me with their few confused beliefs--were
there not invisible monsters everywhere?--I told them no. Only God
and the Heavenly Court which ordained everything, and the souls of
their own in Sheol.

"When they asked if bad men and women--who did not obey
their laws--were not thrown at death into fire forever--an idea very
current amongst them and others--I was horrified, and told them
that God would never allow such a thing. A wee newborn soul to be
punished in fire forever? Atrocity, I told them. Once again, I said to
them that they should venerate the souls of the Dead to ease their
own pain and the pain of those Souls, and that when death came they
should not be afraid but go easily in the gloom and keep their eyes on
the brilliant light of Life on Earth.

"I said most of these things because I simply didn't know what to
say.

"Oh, blasphemy. I had done it, I had really done it. And now what
would be my fate? I would grow old and die, a venerated teacher, and
before I did--or before some pestilence or wild beast cut off my life
sooner--I would engrave into stone and clay everything I could. And
then into Sheol I would go, and I would begin to draw the souls to

me, and I would say: 'Cry, cry to Heaven!' I would teach them to look
upwards. I would say the Light is there!"

He took a breath, as if each word burnt him with pain.

I spoke again softly from the Book of Enoch. " 'And now, behold
the souls of those who have died are crying and making suit to the
gates of heaven.' "

"Yes, you know your scriptures like a good Devil," he said bitterly,

but his face was so stricken with sadness and compassion, and
this mockery was said with such feeling, that it had no sting. "And
who knew what might happen?" he asked. "Who knew! Yes, yes, I
would strengthen Sheol until those cries battered Heaven's gates and
brought them down. If you have souls and your souls can grow, then
you can be as angels! That was the only hope I had, to rule amongst
the forgotten of God."

"But God didn't let this happen, did he? He didn't let you die in
that body."

"No. And he didn't send the Flood either. And all that I had
taught was not washed in a Deluge. What remained, what worked its
way into myth and scripture was that I had been there, and that those
things had been taught, and it was within the compass of a man to
have done it; it was within logic, and not magic, and even the secrets
of Heaven were what the souls would on their own perhaps have
come to see. Sooner or later, the souls would have seen."

"But how did you get out of it? What happened to Lilia?"

"Lilia? Ah, Lilia. She died venerated, the wife of a god. Lilia." His
whole face brightened and he laughed. "Lilia," he said again,

memory lifting her out of the story and bringing her close, obviously. "My
Lilia. Cast out, and casting her lot with a god."

"God had taken you by that time?" I asked. "He had put a stop to
what you were doing?"

We gazed at each other for a moment. "Not quite so simple. I'd
been there three months perhaps when I woke up and discovered

Michael and Raphael had come for me, and said very distinctly: 'God
wants you now.'

"And I being Memnoch, the unredeemable, said, 'Oh? Why then
doesn't He pick me up and take me out of here, or do what He
wishes?'

"At this point, Michael looked miserable on my behalf and he
said, 'Memnoch, for the love of God, go willingly back into your
proper form. Feel your body grow in stature; let your wings carry you
to Heaven. He wants you only if you want to come! Now, Memnoch,
think before you.. ..'

" 'No, you don't have to caution me, beloved,' I said to Michael.
'I'm coming, with tears in my eyes, I come.' I knelt down and kissed
the sleeping Lilia. She looked up at me. 'This is farewell, my mate,
my teacher,' I said. I kissed her, and then, turning, became the Angel,
visible to her, letting the matter define me so that she, sitting up on
her elbows and crying, would see this last vision and hold it to her
heart perhaps when she needed it.

"And then, invisible, I joined Michael and Raphael and went
Home.

"In the first moments I could scarce believe it; when I passed
through Sheol, the souls screamed in agony and I threw my hands out
in consolation. 'I will not forget you! I swear it. I take your suit to
Heaven,' and then on and up I went, the light coming down to meet
me and envelop me, and the warm love .of God--whether prelude to
judgment or punishment or forgiveness, I did not know--surrounded
me and upheld me. The cries of joy in Heaven were deafening even
to my ears.

"All the angels of the bene ha ehhim were gathered. The Light of
God pulsed from the center.

" 'Am I to be punished?' And all I could feel was thanks that I had
seen this light, if only for moments, once again.

"I couldn't look into the light. I had to put my hands up. And as
always happens at a meeting of all of Heaven, the Seraphim and the
Cherubim closed around God so that the light came in rays from

behind them, glorious, and a brightness that we could bear.

"The voice of God was immediate and total.

" 'I have a word for you, my brave one, my arrogant one,' He said.
'I have a concept for you to ponder in your angelic wisdom. It is the
concept of Gehenna, of hell.' This word unfolded to me in all its

implications. 'Fire and torment eternal,' said God, 'the inverse of
Heaven. Tell me, Memnoch, from your heart. Would that be the

appropriate punishment for you--the very opposite of the glory you
forsook for the Daughters of Men? Would it be the appropriate

sentence--suffering everlasting or until Time is no more?' "



14



IT DIDN'T take a second to answer," Memnoch said. He raised
his eyebrows slightly as he looked at me. "I said, 'No, Lord, you
wouldn't do that to anyone. We are all your creatures. That is a
horror too terrible for anyone or anything that has been deliberately
made. No, Lord. When the men and the women of earth told me
they had dreamed of such torments for those who had been bad and
caused them pain and misery, I assured them no such place existed or
ever would.'

"Laughter rang out in heaven. Laughter from one end of the skies
to the other. Every single angel was laughing, and of course the
laughing was melodic and filled with delight and wonder as always,
but laughter it was, and not song.

"Only one being wasn't laughing. Memnoch. 1.1 stood there,

having spoken with perfect seriousness and utter amazement that they
were laughing at what I had said.

"But the strangest phenomenon had occurred. God, too, had
laughed, and was laughing, softly, with them, in unison, or in a leading

rhythm, and only as His laughter slowly died away, so did theirs.
" 'So you told them that, Memnoch. That there would never be a
Hell of Eternal Punishment of the Bad; never; that such a place
would never exist.'

" 'Yes, Lord, I did,' I said. 'I couldn't imagine why they had
thought of it. Except they get so angry sometimes with their

enemies. ...'

"The laughter began again, but God silenced it.
"God said, 'Memnoch, have you left all your mortal cells on
earth? You are in possession of all your angelic faculties? You are not
still acting the simpleton out of habit?'

"I spoke loud over the continuing laughter. 'No, Lord. I dreamt
of this moment. Separation from you was agony. I did what I did out
of love, isn't it so? Surely you know better than I.'

" 'I fear you did,' He answered. 'It was love, yes, that much is
true.'

" 'Lord, I dreamt you would let me come before you and explain
the entire thing, make the case I had meant to make when I first saw a
Daughter of Men and went to her. Is this to be granted?'

"Silence.

"I could hear nothing from the Divine Presence, but I realized
suddenly that some among the bene ha elohim had drawn close to me.
At first I thought no, they are merely shifting and spreading their
wings in the light, but I realized now that close behind me stood a
small legion or group of angels, and that they had been at the edges of
the crowd all the time and were now being pushed towards me.

"These angels I knew of course, some much more intimately
through debate and argument than others, and they came from all
ranks. I looked at them in confusion and then towards the Divine
Presence.

" 'Memnoch,' said the Lord suddenly. 'These behind you, your
cohorts, are also asking that you be granted your wish, to make your
case, in the hopes that you can make it for them too.'

" 'I don't understand, Lord.' But in a twinkling I did. I saw now
the sorrow on their faces, and the way they cleaved to me as if I were
their protector. I knew in an instant what had happened, that ranging
over the whole earth, these angels had done as I had done.

" 'Not with such a flourish or with such invention,' said the Lord
God. 'But they, too, saw the heat and mystery between the coupled
man and woman; and they, too, found the Daughters of Men to be
fair, and took them as wives.'

"There came again a great uproar. Some were laughing still in
that light gay manner as if all of this was splendid and novel

entertainment and others were amazed, and those Watchers who clung to
me, who seemed in comparison to the bene ha elohim a small number,
looked to me desperately, and some even accusingly, and there came
a whisper from their midst.

" 'Memnoch, we saw you do it.'

"Was God laughing? I couldn't hear it. The light poured out in its
immense rays beyond the heads and shoulders and shaded forms of
the Seraphim and Cherubim, and the wealth of love seemed eternal
and constant as it had always been.

" 'In tribes throughout the world, my Sons of Heaven have gone
down to know the flesh as you would know it, Memnoch, though as I
have already said, with far less flair and desire to stir the thick

atmosphere of Nature and so deliberately disturb my Divine Plan.'

" 'Lord, God, forgive me,' I whispered. And from the legion with
me came the same hushed and respectful chorus.

" 'But tell me, you who stand behind Memnoch, what do you have

to say for yourselves as to why you did this and what you discovered,
and what case would you put before the Heavenly Court?'

"The answer was silence. These angels fell prostrate before the
Lord, asking only forgiveness with such total abandon that no

eloquence was required. I alone stood there.

" 'Ah,' I said, 'it seems, Lord, that I stand alone.'

" 'Haven't you always? My Son of Heaven, my angel who does
not trust the Lord.'

" 'Lord, God, I do trust you!" I said at once, angry suddenly. 'I do!
But I don't understand these things, and I cannot still my mind or my
personality, it's impossible for me. No, not impossible, but it does
not... it does not seem right to be silent. It seems right to make the
case. It seems that the greatest thing I can do is to make the case, and
the greatest thing I can do is to please God.'

"There seemed great divisions amongst the others--not the
Watchers, who didn't dare to climb to their invisible feet, and had
their wings folded over them as if they were birds afraid in the nest--
but among the entire Court. There were murmurings, and little
songs, and riffs of melody and laughter, and deep, soft questions, and
many faces turned on me with eyes full of curiosity and even tinged
with anger so that their eyebrows made a scowl.

" 'Make your case!' said the Lord. 'But before you begin,

remind yourself, for my sake and the sake of everyone present, that I
know all things. I know humankind as you can never know it. I
have seen its bloody altars, and its rain dances, and its reeking

sacrifices, and I have heard the cries of the wounded, the afflicted, the
slowly annihilated. I see Nature in Humankind as I see it in the
savagery of the seas or the forests. Don't waste my Time, Memnoch.

Or to put it more clearly so that you will understand it, don't

waste the Time you have with me.'

"So the moment had come. I stood quietly preparing myself.
Never in all my existence had I felt the importance or significance of
an event as I felt the meaning of this one now. It is what you would
call excitement, perhaps, or exhilaration. I had my audience. And I
did not know how to doubt myself! But I was already furious with all
the legion behind me lying on their faces and saying nothing! And
suddenly in my fury I realized that as long as they lay there, leaving
me alone in the open before God and his court, I wasn't going to
speak a word. I folded my arms and stood there.

"God started to laugh, a slow, gentle rising laugh, and then all of

Heaven joined in it irresistibly. And God said to the Fallen ones, the
Watchers, 'Stand up, my sons, or we will all be here until the End of

Time.'

" 'Mockery, Lord, I deserve it,' I said. 'But I thank you.'

"In a great shuffling of wings and gowns, I heard them rising behind

me to stand at least as tall and as straight as brave humans could
stand on the earth below.

" 'Lord, my case is simple,' I said, 'but surely you cannot ignore it.
And I shall state it as simply and as finely as I can.

" 'Up until a point in his development, the primate below was part
of Nature, and bound by all its laws. And with his larger brain, he
grew ever more cunning, and his battles with other animals became
as fierce and bloody as the Heavenly Court has ever seen. This is all
true. And with this intelligence there came also an increase in the
ways and means that Humankind could inflict upon its own great
pain.

" 'But never in all that I have Watched in war, and execution, and
even the laying waste of whole settlements and villages have I seen
anything to surpass the sheer violence of the insect Kingdom or the
Kingdom of the Reptiles, or of the Lower Mammals, who blindly and
senselessly struggle to do only two things--survive and make more of
their own kind.'

"I stopped, out of courtesy and also for effect. The Lord said
nothing. I went on.

" 'Then there came a point, however, when these primates, who
had, by then, come to strongly resemble Your Own Image as we

perceive it in Ourselves, diverged from the rest of Nature, in a marked
way. And it was no mere moment of Self Awareness, Lord, when the
logic of Life and Death became apparent to them. It was nothing as
simple as that. On the contrary, the Self Awareness grew from a new
and totally unnatural capacity to love.

" 'And it was then that humankind broke itself into tight families
and clans and tribes, bound together by intimate knowledge of the
individuality of each other, rather than sheer recognition of species,
and were held together, through suffering and happiness, by the
bond of love.

" 'Lord, the human family is beyond Nature. If you were to go
down and--'

" 'Memnoch, take care!' God whispered.

" 'Yes, Lord,' I said, nodding, and clasped my hands behind me so
as not to make ferocious gestures. 'What I should have said was that
when I went down and I looked into the family, here and there and all
over the World which you have Created, which you have allowed to
unfold magnificently, I saw the family as a new and unprecedented
flower, Lord, a blossom of emotion and intellect that in its tenderness

was cut loose from the stems of Nature from which it had taken
its nourishment, and was now at the mercy of the wind. Love, Lord, I
saw it, I felt Love of Men and Women for one another and for their
Children, and the willingness to sacrifice for one another, and to
grieve for those who were dead, and to seek for their souls in the
hereafter, and to think, Lord, of a hereafter where they might be
reconciled with those souls again.

" 'It was out of this love and the family, it was out of this rare and
unprecedented bloom--so Creative, Lord, that it seemed in your
Image of your Creations--that the souls of these beings remained
alive after death! What else in Nature can do this, Lord? All gives
back to the Earth what it has taken. Your Wisdom is Manifest
throughout; and all those that suffer and die beneath the canopy of
your heavens are mercifully bathed in brutal ignorance of the scheme
which ultimately involved their own deaths.

" 'Man, not so! Woman, not so! And in their hearts, loving one
another as they do, mate with mate, and family with family, they have
imagined Heaven, Lord. They have imagined it; the time of the

reunion of souls when their kin will be restored to them and to each
other, and all will sing in bliss! They have imagined eternity because
their love demands it, Lord. They have conceived of these ideas as
they conceive of fleshly children! This I, the Watcher, have seen.'

"Another silence. All of heaven was so still that the only sounds
came from the earth below, the purring of the wind, and the dim
stirring of the seas, and the cries, the pale faraway cries of souls on
earth as well as souls in Sheol.

" 'Lord,' I said, 'they long for Heaven. And imagining eternity, or
immortality, I know not which, they suffer injustice, separation,

disease, and death, as no other animal could possibly suffer it. And their
souls are great. And in Sheol they reach out beyond the love of self
and the service of self in the name of Love. Love goes back and forth
between Earth and Sheol eternally. Lord, they have made a lower tier
of the invisible court! Lord, they seek to propitiate your wrath, be-

cause they know You are Here! And Lord, they want to know

everything about You. And about themselves. They know and they want to
know!'

"This was the heart of my case, and I knew it. But again, there
came from God no response or interruption.

" 'I couldn't see this,' I said, 'as anything less than Your greatest
accomplishment, the self-aware human, conceiving of Time, with a
brain vast enough already for learning that is coming so fast we
Watchers could scarce keep track of all of it. But the suffering, the
torment, the curiosity--it was a lamentation seemingly made for the
ears of Angels, and of God, if I may dare to say.

" 'The case I came to make was, Lord, can these souls, either in
the flesh, or in Sheol, not be given some part of our light? Can they
not be given Light as animals are given water when they thirst? And
will not these souls, once taken into Divine Confidence, be worthy
perhaps to take some small place in this Court which is without End?'

"The quiet seemed dreamy and eternal, like the Time before
Time.

" 'Could it be tried, Lord? For if it is not tried, what is to be the
fate of these invisible surviving souls except to grow stronger and
more entangled with the flesh in ways that give rise not to revelations
of the true Nature of things, but corrupted ideas based on

fragmentary evidence and instinctive fear?'

"This time, I gave up on the idea of a polite pause and immediately

forged ahead.

" 'Lord, when I went into the flesh; when I went with the woman,

it was because she was fair, yes, and resembled us, and offered a

species of pleasure in the flesh which to us is unknown. Granted, Lord,
that pleasure is immeasurably small compared to your magnificence,
but Lord, I tell you, in the moment when I lay with her, and she with
me, and we knew that pleasure together, that small flame did roar
with a sound very like the songs of the Most High!

" 'Our hearts stopped together, Lord. We knew in the flesh eternity,

the man in me knew that the woman knew it. We knew something

that rises above all earthly expectations, something that is
purely Divine.'

"I fell silent. What more could I say? I would be embroidering my
case with examples, for Someone Who knew all things. I folded my
arms and looked down, respectfully, musing and listening to the souls

in Sheol, and for one second their faint faraway cries distracted me,
drew me right out of the heavenly presence for an instant of realization

that they were calling on me and reminding me of my promise
and hoping for my return.

" 'Lord God, forgive me,' I said. 'Your wonders have snared me.
And I am wrong if that was not your plan.'

"Once again the silence was thunderous and soft and utterly
empty. It was an emptiness of which those on Earth cannot conceive.
I stood my ground because I could do nothing but what I had done,
and I felt in my heart that every word I'd spoken had been true and
untainted by fear. It occurred to me very clearly that if the Lord
threw me out of Heaven, that whatever He did, really, I would

deserve it. I was His Created Angel, and His to Command. And His to
destroy if He wished it. And once again, I heard the cries of Sheol in
my memory, and I wondered, as a human might, if He would send me
there soon or do something far more fearful, for in Nature there were
countless examples of excruciating destruction and catastrophe, and I
as an Angel could be made by God to suffer whatever He wanted me
to suffer, I knew.

" 'I trust in you, Lord,' I said suddenly, thinking and speaking
simultaneously. 'Or else I would have fallen on my face as have the
other Watchers. And that is not to say that they do not trust. But only
to say that I believe you want me to understand Goodness, that your
essence is Goodness, and you will not suffer these souls to cry in
gloom and ignorance. You will not suffer the ingenious Humankind
to continue without any inkling of the Divine.'

"For the first time, he spoke very softly and offhandedly.

" 'Memnoch, you've given them more than an inkling.'

" 'Yes, Lord, it is so. But Lord, the souls of the dead have given
them much inspiration, and encouragement, and those souls are out
of Nature, as we have beheld it, and growing stronger by the day. If
there is a species of energy, Lord, natural and complicated beyond
my understanding, then I am totally taken by surprise. For it seems
they are made of what we are made of, Lord, the invisible, and each is
individual and has its own will.'

"Silence again. Then the Lord spoke:

" 'Very well. I have heard your case. Now I have for you a question.

For all that you gave Humankind, Memnoch, what precisely did
they give you?'

"I was startled by the question.

" 'And don't speak to me of love now, Memnoch,' He added. 'Of
their capacity to love one another. On this the Heavenly Court is well
informed and totally agreed. But what did they give you, Memnoch?
What did you get in return for the risks you took by entering into
their realm?'

" 'Confirmation, Lord,' I said hastily, reaching for the deepest
truth without distortion. 'They knew an Angel when they saw one.
Just as I supposed they would.'

" 'Ah!' A great roar of laughter came from the Heavenly Throne
and once again it swept up Heaven, so loud I'm sure that it must have
reached the weak and struggling ears of Sheol. The Whole Heavens
were rocking with laughing and singing.

"At first I didn't dare to speak or do anything, and then suddenly,
angrily perhaps, or should I say, willfully, I raised my hand. 'But I
mean this in all seriousness, Lord! I was not some being beyond their
dreams! Lord, did you plant the seed for this when you Created the
Universe, that these beings would raise their voices to you? Will you
tell me? One way or the other, can I know?'

"The angels quieted down in little groups and pockets at first and
then the laughter tapered off altogether, and something else replaced
it, a soft singing of tribute to God in his patience, a soft

acknowledgment of his patience with me.

"I didn't join in this song. I looked to the great outer stretches of
the rays of Light that came from God, and the mystery of my own
stubbornness and my own anger and my own curiosity subdued me
somewhat, but did not throw me for one second into despair.

" 'I trust in you, Lord. You know what you're doing. You have to.
Otherwise we are .. . lost.'

"I broke off, stunned at what I had just said. It far exceeded any
challenge I'd thrown at God so far, it far exceeded any suggestion
that I had made. And in horror, I looked at the Light, and thought,
What if He doesn't know what He's doing and never has!

"My hands went to my face to stop my lips from saying something
rash and thereby tell my brain to stop with its rash and blasphemous
thoughts. I knew God! God was There. And I stood before Him.
How dare I think such a thing, and yet He had said, 'You do not trust
me,' and that was exactly what He had meant.

"It seemed the Light of God grew infinitely brighter; it expanded;

the shapes of the Seraphim and Cherubim grew small and utterly
transparent, and the light filled me and filled the recesses of all angels,

and I felt in communion with them that all of us were so totally
loved by God that we could never long for or imagine anything more.

"Then the Lord spoke, the words wholly different now, for they
competed with this effulgence of Love which overpowered the

thinking mind. Nevertheless, I heard them and they penetrated to my
heart.

"And everyone else heard them too.

" 'Memnoch, go into Sheol,' He said, 'and find there but ten souls
who are worthy, of all those millions, to join us in Heaven. Say what
you will to them as you examine them; but find Ten whom you

believe are worthy to live with us. Then bring those souls back to me,
and we will continue from there on.'

"I was ecstatic. 'Lord, I can do it, I know I can!' I cried out.

"And suddenly I saw the faces of Michael and Raphael and Uriel,
who had been almost obscured by the light of God, which was now
receding within more endurable bounds. Michael looked frightened
for me and Raphael was weeping. Uriel seemed merely to watch,
without emotion, neither on my side or for me, or for the souls, or for
anyone. It was the face that Angels used to have before Time began.

" 'I can go now?' I said. 'And when must I return?'

" 'When you will,' said the Lord, 'and when you can.'

"Ah, I understood it. If I didn't find those ten souls I wasn't coming

back.

"I nodded, lovely logic. I understood it. I accepted it.

" 'Years pass on Earth as we speak, Memnoch. Your settlement
and those visited by others have grown into cities; the world spins in
the Light of Heaven. What can I say to you, my beloved one, except
that you should go now to Sheol and return with those Ten Souls as
soon as you possibly can.'

"I was about to speak, to ask, What of the Watchers, this little
legion of meek, flesh-educated angels behind me, when the Lord
answered.

" 'They will wait in the proper place in Heaven for your return.
They will not know my decision, nor their fate, until you bring these
souls to me, Memnoch, souls that I shall find worthy to be in my
Heavenly Home.'

" 'I understand, Lord, I'm leaving with your permission!'

"And asking nothing further, broaching no questions as to

restrictions or limitations, I, Memnoch, the Archangel and the Accuser of
God, left Heaven immediately and descended into the great airy
mists of Sheol."



15



BUT, MEMNOCH," I interrupted. "He gave you no criteria! How

were you to evaluate these souls? How could you
know?"

Memnoch smiled. "Yes, Lestat, that's exactly what He did and
how He did it, and believe me, I knew, and no sooner had I entered
Sheol than the question of the Criteria for Entrance into Heaven

became my full focus and desperate obsession. It is exactly the way He

does things, no?"

"I would have asked," I said.

"No, no. I had no intention of it. I got out of there and started to
work! As I said, this was His way and I knew that my only hope was to
come up with a Criterion of my own and make a case for it, don't you
see?"

"I think I do."

"You know you do," he said. "All right. Picture this. The population

of the world has swelled to millions, and cities have risen though
not in very many places, and mostly in that very valley where I had
descended and left my marks on the walls of caves. Humankind had
wandered north and south as far as it could on the planet; settlements
and towns and forts existed in various stages of development. The
land of the cities is called Mesopotamia now, I think, or is it Sumer,
or will it be Ur? Your scholars uncover more with every passing day.

"Man's wild imaginings of immortality and reunion with the dead
had everywhere given rise to religion. In the Nile Valley, a civilization

of astonishing stability had developed, while war was waged all
the time in the land we call the Holy Land.

"So I come to Sheol, which I have only observed from outside
before, and which is now enormous, containing still some of the first

souls that ever sputtered with enduring life, and now millions ot souls
whose creeds and yearnings for the eternal have brought them to this
place with great ferocity. Mad expectations have pitched countless
ones into confusion. Others have grown so strong they exert a sort of
rulership amongst the others. And some have learnt the trick of going
down to Earth, escaping from the pull of other invisible souls

altogether, and for wandering close to the flesh they would possess again,
or influence, or harm, or love as the case might be.

"The world is populated by spirits! And some, having no memory
anymore at all of being human, have become what men and women
will for eternity call demons, prowling about, eager to possess, wreak
havoc, or make mischief, as their developments allow."

"And one of those," I said, "passed into the vampiric mother and
father of our kind."

"Yes, precisely. Amel created that mutation. But it was not the
only one. There are other monsters on earth, existing twixt the

visible and the invisible; but the great thrust of the world was and always
has been the fate of its millions of Humankind."

"The mutations have never influenced history."

"Well, yes, and no. Is a mad soul screaming from the mouth of a
flesh-and-blood prophet an influence, if this prophet's words are

recorded in five different languages and for sale today on the shelves of
stores in New York? Let's say that the process which I had seen and
described to God had continued; some souls died; some grew strong;
some managed to actually return in new bodies, though by what
knack I did not at that time know."

"Do you know now?"

"Reincarnation isn't by any stretch common. Don't think of it.
And it gains very little for the souls involved. You can imagine the
situations that make it possible. Whether it always involves the

extinction of an infant soul when it happens--that is, whether it always
involves a replacement in the new body--this varies with individual
cases. Those who persistently reincarnate are certainly something
that cannot be ignored. But that, like the evolution of vampires and
other earthbound immortals, falls into a small realm. Once again, we
are talking now about the fate of Humankind as a whole. We are
talking about the Whole Human World."

"Yes, I really do understand, perhaps better than you know."

"All right. I have no criteria, but I go into Sheol and I find there a

great sprawling replica of earth! Souls have imagined and projected
into their invisible existence all manner of jumbled buildings and
creatures and monsters; it is a riot of imagination without Heavenly
guidance, and as I suspected, there is still an enormous majority of
souls who don't know that they are dead.

"Now, I plunge into the very middle of this, trying to make myself
as invisible as I possibly can; to conceive of myself as utterly without
any discernible form; but this is hard. For this is a realm of the

invisible; everything here is invisible. And so there I begin to wander on
the dreary roads in semidarkness, among the malformed, the half-
formed, the unformed, the moaning and dying, and I am in my angelic

form.

"Nevertheless, these confused souls don't take very much notice

of me! It's as if many can't see clearly at all. Now, you know this state
has been described by human shamans, by saints, by those who have
come close to death, passed through it, and then been revived and
continued to live."

"Yes."

"Well, what human souls see of this is a fragment. I saw the
whole. I roamed extensively and fearlessly and regardless of Time, or
out of it, though Time always continues to pass, of course, and I went
where I chose."

"A madhouse of souls."

"Very nearly, but within this great madhouse were many, many
mansions, to use the Scriptural words. Souls believing in like faiths
had come together in desperation and sought to reinforce each
other's beliefs and still each other's fears. But the light of Earth was
too dim to warm anyone here! And the Light of Heaven simply did
not penetrate at all.

"So yes, you are right, a madhouse of sorts, the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, the terrible river of monsters over which souls
dread to cross to Paradise. And of course, none had ever crossed up to
that point.

"The first thing I did was listen: I listened to the song of any soul
who would sing to me, that is, speak, in my language; I caught up any
coherent declaration or question or supposition that struck my ears.
What did these souls know? What had become of them?

"And in short order I discovered that there were tiers to this
awful, gloom-filled place, tiers created out of the will of souls to seek

others like themselves. The place had become stratified, rather
loosely and grimly, but there was an order born out of the degree of
of each soul's awareness, acceptance, confusion, or wrath.

"Closest to earth lay the damnedest, those who kept struggling to
eat or drink or possess others, or could not accept what had happened
or did not understand.

"Just beyond them came a layer of souls who did nothing but fight
each other, scream, yell, push, shove, strive to harm or overcome or
invade or escape in hopeless confusion. These souls never even saw
me. But again, your humans have seen this and described it in many,
many manuscripts over the centuries. Nothing I say surely is a
surprise.

"And farther from this struggle, nearest to the calm of Heaven--

though I don't speak really of literal directions here--were those who
had come to understand that they had passed out of Nature, and were
somewhere else. And these souls, some of them having been there
since the Beginning, had grown patient in their attitudes, and patient
in their watching of Earth, and patient with others around them,
whom they sought to help in Love to accept their death."

"You found the souls who loved."

"Oh, they all love," Memnoch said. "All of them. There is no
such thing as a soul who loves nothing. He or she loves something,
even if it exists only in memory or as an ideal. But yes, I found those
most peacefully and serenely expressing love in immense amounts to
one another, and to the living below. Some I found who had turned
their eyes entirely to earth, and sought nothing but to answer the
prayers that rose from the desperate, the needy, and the sick.

"And Earth by this time, as you know, had seen wars unspeakable,
and whole civilizations dissolved by volcanic disaster. The variety
and possibilities of suffering increased all the time. It wasn't only in
proportion to learning, either, or cultural development. It had
become a scheme beyond an angel's comprehension. When I looked
at Earth, I didn't even try to figure out what ruled the passions of
those in one jungle as opposed to the groups in another, or why one
population spent generations piling stones upon stones. I knew, of
course, more or less everything, but I was not now on an earthly
mission.

"The dead had become my realm.

"I drew near to these souls who looked down with mercy and

compassion, who sought by thought to influence others for the good.
Ten, twenty, thirty, I saw thousands. Thousands, I tell you, in whom
all hope of rebirth or great reward was gone; souls in which existed
total acceptance; that this was death; this was eternity; souls

enamored with the flesh and blood they could see just as we Angels had
been enamored and still were.

"I sat amongst these souls and started to talk with them, here and
there, where I could get their attention, and it soon became obvious
that they were rather indifferent to my form, because they assumed
that I had chosen it as they had chosen theirs, and some of them

resembled men and women, and some didn't bother. So I suspect they
actually thought me rather new to Sheol in that I had to make such
ferocious displays with arms and legs and wings. But they could be
distracted from earth, if approached very politely, and I began to
question them, remembering to strike for the truth only, but not to

be rude.

"I must have talked to millions. I roamed Sheol, talking to souls.
And the hardest thing in each instance was to get the attention of the
individual either off the earth, or off some phantasm of lost existence,
or out of a state of airy contemplation in which concentration was
now so alien and required such an effort that it couldn't be induced.

"The wisest, the most loving souls did not want to bother with my
questions. And only gradually would they realize that I was not a
mortal man but something of much different substance, and that
there was a point to my questions that had to do with a place of

reference beyond Earth. You see, this was the dilemma. They had been in
Sheol so long that they no longer speculated about the reason for
Life or Creation; they no longer cursed a God they didn't know, or
sought a God who hid from them. And when I began to ask my

questions, they thought I was way down there with the new souls,

dreaming of punishments and rewards which were never to come.

"These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrath-
less reverie, and sought to answer prayers from below as I have said.
They watched over their kindred, their clansmen, their own nations;
they watched over those who attracted their attention with

accomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watched

with sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help and

tried to help by thought when they could.

"Almost none of these very strong and patient souls sought the
flesh again. But some of them had in the past. They had gone down

and been reborn and discovered in the final analysis that they could
not remember from one fleshly life to another, so there was no real
reason to keep being born! Better to linger here, in the eternity that
was known to them, and to watch the Beauty of Creation, and it did
seem very beautiful to them, as it had seemed to us.

"Well, it was out of these questions, these endless and thoughtful
conversations with the dead, that my criteria evolved.

"First, to be worthy of Heaven--to have a ghost of a chance with
God, I could say--the Soul had to understand life and death in the
simplest sense. I found many souls who did. Next there had to be in
this understanding an appreciation of the Beauty of God's work, the
harmony of Creation from God's point of view, a vision of Nature

wrapped in endless and overlapping cycles of survival and

reproduction and evolution and growth.

"Many souls had come to understand this. Many had. But many
who thought life was beautiful, felt that death was sad and endless
and terrible and they would have chosen never to have been born,
had they been given the choice!

"I didn't know what to do in the face of that conviction, but it was
very widespread. Why did He make us, Whoever He is, if we are to
be here like this forever, out of it and never part of it again, unless we
wish to dip down and suffer all that torment all over again, for a few
moments of glory, which we won't appreciate any more next time
than last time, because we can't take our knowledge with us if we are
reborn!

"Indeed, it was at this point which many souls had ceased to develop

or change. They felt great concern and mercy for those who
were alive, but they knew sorrow, and joy was not something that
they could even imagine anymore. They moved towards peace; and
peace indeed seemed about the finest state which they could achieve.
Peace, broken by the struggle to answer prayers, was particularly

difficult, but to me, as an angel, very attractive. And I stayed in the

company of these souls for a long, long time.

"Now, if I could only tell them, I thought, if I could begin to instruct

them, maybe I could bring them around, prepare them, make
them ready for Heaven, but in this state they are not ready, and I
don't know if they will believe what I say. And what if they do believe
and are filled suddenly with the hunger for Heaven and then God
doesn't let them in.

"No, I had to be very careful. I could not proclaim knowledge

from atop boulders as I had done in my short time on earth. If I was
to intrude on the progress of one of these dead ones, there had to be
a very good chance that that soul would follow me to God's Throne.

"Understanding of life and death? That wasn't enough. Acceptance

of death? That wasn't enough. Indifference to life and death,
that wasn't good enough surely. Quiet confusion and drifting. No.
That sort of soul had lost its character. It was as far from an Angel as
was the rain that fell on Earth.

"At last I came into a region smaller than the others, and peopled
with only a few souls. Now I speak comparatively. Remember, I'm
the Devil. I spend a lot of time in Heaven and Hell. So when I say a
few, that is to make a picture that is manageable to your mind. For
the sake of exposition, let's say a few thousand or more. But I speak of
great numbers. Don't doubt."

"I follow you."

"And these souls absolutely astonished me by their radiance, their
tranquility, and the degrees of knowledge which they had attained
and retained. First of all, almost every one of them had a full human
shape. That is, they had realized their original forms or perhaps ideal
forms in the invisible. They looked like angels! They were invisible
men, women, and children, and they had about them accoutrements
that had been dear in life. Some of them were brand new and had
come from death thoughtful and seeking and ready for the mysterious.

Others had learned all in Sheol over centuries of watching and
fearing to lose their individuality, no matter how terrible things did
appear. But all were intensely visible! And anthropomorphic, though
of course they were diaphanous, as all spirits are; and some were paler
than others; but all essentially could be seen clearly by others and
themselves.

"I went amongst them, expecting to be snubbed, but I realized
immediately that these souls saw me differently than the others.
They saw everything differently. They were more attuned to the

subtleties of the invisible because they had accepted its conditions

totally. If I wished to be what I was, let me be it, they thought, and they
judged me very seriously on how well I succeeded in being this tall
creature, winged and longhaired and dressed in flowing robes.
Within moments of my arrival, I felt happiness around me. I felt

acceptance. I felt a total lack of resistance and a daring curiosity. They
knew I was not a human soul. They knew because they had reached a
point where they could see this! They could see a lot about every

other soul they looked at. And they could see a great deal of the world
below.

"One of these souls was in the shape of a woman, and it was not
my Lilia at all, by the way, for I never did see her in any form again.
But it was a woman who had died I think in midlife having had nu-
merous children, some of whom were with her now, and some of
whom were still below. This soul existed in a serenity that was almost
becoming bright. That is, its evolution was so high on the invisible
level that it was beginning to generate something like the Light of

God!

" 'What makes you so different?' I asked this woman. 'What
makes all of you here, clustered together in this place, so very

different?'

"With an acuity that astonished me, this woman asked me who I
was. Dead souls just usually don't ask that question. They plunge
right into their helpless preoccupations and obsessions. But she said,
'Who are you and what are you? I have never seen one like you before
here. Only when I was alive.'

" 'I don't want to tell you yet,' I said. 'But I want to learn from
you. Will you tell me why you seem happy? You are happy, aren't
you?'

" 'Yes,' she said, 'I'm with those I love, and look below, look at all
of it.'

" 'Then you harbour no questions about all of it?' I pushed. 'You
don't long to know why you were born or why you suffered or what
happened to you when you died or why you're here?'

"To my further amazement, she laughed. Laughter I had never
heard in Sheol. It was soft, soothing, merry laughter, sweet laughter,
laughter like the laughter of angels, and I think I sang to her softly in
response, rather naturally, and at this her soul exploded like a

blossom, the way fleshly souls had exploded below when they had learnt
to love each other! She warmed to me and opened. 'You are

beautiful,' she whispered respectfully.

" 'But why, why are all these others in this place so unhappy, and
why are you few here filled with peace and joy? Yes, I know, I have
looked below. And you are with those you love. But so are all these
others.'

" 'We don't resent God anymore,' she said. 'Any of us here. We
don't hate Him.'

" 'The others do?'

" 'It's not that they hate Him,' she said gently, being very careful
with me, as if I were easy to bruise. 'It's that they can't forgive Him
for all this ... for the world, for what's happened, and for this state of
Sheol in which we languish. But we can. We have forgiven Him. And
all of us have done it for various reasons, but forgiveness of God, that

we have attained. We accept that our lives have been wondrous

experiences, and worth the pain and the suffering, and we cherish now the
joy we knew, and the moments of harmony, and we have forgiven
Him for not ever explaining it all to us, for not justifying it, not

punishing the bad or rewarding the good, or whatever else it is that all
these souls, living and dead, expect of Him. We forgive Him. We
don't know, but we suspect that maybe He knows a great secret about
how all this pain could come to pass and still be good. And if He
doesn't want to tell, well, He is God. But whatever, we forgive Him
and we Love Him in our forgiveness, even though we know He may
never care about any of us, any more than He cares for the pebbles on
a beach below.'

"I was speechless. I sat very still, letting these souls of their own
volition gather around me. Then one very young soul, the soul of a
child, said:

" 'It seemed a terrible thing at first that God would bring us into
the world to be murdered as we were, all of us--for you see, we three
here died in war--but we have forgiven Him, because we know that if
He could make something as beautiful as Life and Death, then he
must Understand.'

" 'You see,' said another soul to me, 'it comes to this. We would
suffer it all again, if we had to. And we would try to be better to each
other and more loving. But it was worth it.'

" 'Yes,' said another. 'It took me all my life on Earth to Forgive
God for the world, but I did it before I died, and came to dwell here
with these others. And look, if you try hard, you'll see that we have
made this something of a garden. It's hard for us. We work only with
our minds and wills and memories, and imaginations, but we are
making a place where we can remember what was good. And we

forgive Him and we love Him that He gave us this much.'

" 'Yes,' said another, 'that He gave us anything at all. We are
grateful and full of love for Him. For surely out there in the darkness
is a great Nothing, and we have seen so many below who were

obsessed with Nothing and with Misery, and they never knew the joys
that we knew or know now.'

" 'This isn't easy,' said another soul. 'It's been a great struggle.
But to make love was good, and to drink was good, and to dance and
sing was beautiful, and to run drunk through the rain was joyous; and
beyond there lies a chaos, an absence, and I am grateful that my eyes
opened upon the world below and that I can remember it and see it

from here.'

"I thought for a long time without answering any of them, and
they continued to talk to me, drawn to me, as if the light in me, if
there was any visible light, was attracting them. In fact, the more I
responded to their questions, the more they opened and seemed to
understand their own answers more meaningfully, the denser and
more intense the declarations became.

"I soon saw these people had come from all nations and all walks
of life. And though kinship bound many of them tightly together,
that was not true with them all. In fact, many had lost sight of their
dead kin entirely in other realms of Sheol. Others had never even laid
eyes on them. While some had been greeted at the moment of death
by their lost ones! And these were people of the world and all its

beliefs gathered here in this place where light was beginning to shine
forth.

" 'Your lives on earth, was there one common thread?' I asked
finally. They couldn't answer. They really didn't know. They had not
questioned each other about their lives, and as I asked them quick,
random questions, it became clear that there had been no thread!
Some of these people had been very rich, others poor, some had

suffered unspeakably, some had suffered nothing but had known a
golden prosperity and leisure in which they had grown to love Creation

before they were even dead. But I began to sense that if I
wanted to, I could start to count these responses and evaluate them in
some way. In other words, all these souls had learnt to forgive God in
various ways. But very possibly one way was better for this than

another, infinitely more efficient. Perhaps. I couldn't be sure. And for
now I couldn't know.

"I wrapped my arms around these souls. I drew them to me. 'I
want you to come on a journey with me,' I said to them, having spoken

now to each and every one and being completely certain of where
we stood. 'I want you to come to Heaven and stand before God. Now
it may be brief, and you may see Him for no more than an instant,
and possibly He will not allow Himself to be seen by you at all. You
may find yourselves returned here, having learnt nothing, but also

having suffered nothing. The truth is, I can't guarantee what will
happen! No one knows God.

" 'We know,' they aliswered.

" 'But I invite you to come to God and tell Him what you've told
me. And now I'll answer your question to me: I am his Archangel
Memnoch, of the very mold of other Angels of whom you heard
when you were alive! Will you come?'

"Several were astonished and hesitated. But the majority said in
one voice, a mingling of answers that was this answer: 'We will come.
One glimpse of God, the chance of it even, is worth anything. If
that's not so then I don't remember the smell of the sweet olive tree,
or how the fresh grass felt beneath me when I laid on it. I never tasted
wine, and I never bedded the ones I loved. We will come.'

"Several refused. It took a few moments before we all realized it
but several had totally withdrawn. They saw me now for what I was,
an Angel, and they understood what had been withheld from them,
and they had lost their peace and lost their power to forgive in that
instant. They stared at me in horror or anger or both. The other
souls hastened to change their minds, but they wouldn't be changed.
No, they did not want to see this God who had deserted His Creation
and left it to rear up gods on altars all over the planet and pray in vain
for intervention or final judgment! No, no, no!

" 'Come,' I said to the others, 'Let's try to enter Heaven. Let's
give it all our strength! How many are we? A thousand times ten? A
million? What does it matter? God said ten but not ten only. God
meant at least ten. Come, let's go!"



16



IN A FLASH, I shall have my answer, I thought. He will either
admit us or cast us back down with His Might the way He once
threw me to Earth. He might even dissolve the lot of us, for
surely He can make His judgment on my success or failure before I
ever reach the gates of Heaven. What had He said in His Infinite
Wisdom? He had said, 'Come back as soon as you can.'

"I drew these souls to me, tight as I drew you when I took you
upwards, and out of Sheol we rose, into the full blasting light of
Heaven as it came pouring over the walls and the gates. And once
again, those gates, which I had never seen in my early eons, were
thrown open, and we found ourselves, one Archangel and a few

million human souls, standing once more in the very midst of Heaven
before amazed and laughing and pointing and startled and

flabbergasted angels who gathered around us in a great circle, crying to get

the attention of everyone until Heaven finally fell quiet.

"Well, I thought, so far so good. We're inside. And the human
souls! The human souls could see the angels and the human souls
were overjoyed. Oh, I can't even remember this moment without
dancing. I can't remember it without singing. The souls were jubilant,

and when the angels began their great potentially cacophonous
singing of questions and exclamations, the human souls began to
sing!

"Indeed, Heaven was never going to be the same. I knew it. I
knew it instantly. Because this is what took place. These souls
brought with them the same powers of projection which they had
learnt in Sheol, that is to create around them out of the invisible
something of an environment that they wanted, longed for, and to
which they were able to give their full wills.

"And the geography of Heaven was changed dramatically and

instantly and in an infinite capacity. There rose the towers and castles
and mansions which you saw when I took you there, the domed

palaces and libraries, and the gardens, oh, the breathtaking projections
of flowers in all directions, things that angels simply never thought to
bring to Heaven . . . well, it was all there. Trees rose in their mature
fullness; rain came in whispering gusts, full of fragrance. The sky
warmed and colors everywhere expanded or deepened. These souls
took the invisible fabric of Heaven, whatever it is--energy, essence,
the light of God, the Creative Power of God--and in a twinkling
surrounded us all with wondrous constructions representing their
curiosity, their concepts of beauty and their desires!

"All that they had learnt on Earth they had brought into Heaven,
creating it irresistibly in its most cherished form!

"The commotion was beyond anything I had ever witnessed since
the Creation of the Universe itself.

"And nobody appeared more astonished than the Archangel Mi-

chael, who was staring at me as if to say, 'Memnoch, you've brought
them into Heaven!'

"But before he could get those words out, and as the souls still
stood together, only beginning to realize that they could shift and
touch the angels and touch the things they envisioned, there came
the light of God Himself--En Sof-- rising and spreading out from
behind the figures of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and very gently
and considerately falling down upon these human souls, filling each

and laying all secrets of each totally open, as angels are open.

"The human souls cried with joy. Anthems rose from the Angels.
I began to sing with my arms outstretched, 'Lord, Lord, I have your
souls, worthy of Heaven, and look what they have brought to
Heaven, Lord, look on your Creation, look on the Souls of those you
evolved from the tiniest cells through flesh and blood and Sheol to
your very Throne. Lord, we are here! Lord, it's done, it's done. It's
happened. I have come back and you have allowed it.'

"And having said more than enough, I fell down on my knees.

"The songs had reached a frenzy, a sound no flesh-and-blood
human could endure. Anthems rose from all quarters. The human
souls were growing denser, more visible, until they appeared as
clearly to us as we did to them and to each other. Some of them were
locking hands and jumping up and down like little children. Others
were merely crying and screaming and the tears were flooding down
their faces.

"And then the light swelled. We knew God was about to speak.
We fell silent, en masse. We were all the bene ha elobim. And God
said:

" 'My Children. My beloved Children. Memnoch stands with his
Millions, and they are worthy of Heaven.'

"And the voice of God ceased, and the light grew stronger and
warmer, and all of Heaven became pure acceptance and pure love.

"I lay down upon the floor of Heaven in weariness, staring upwards

into the great firmament of beautiful blue sky and ever-
twinkling stars. I heard the souls of the humans rushing hither and
thither. I heard the welcoming hymns and incantations of the angels.
I heard everything, and then, in imitation of a mortal, I closed my
eyes.

"Did God ever sleep? I don't know. I closed my eyes, and I lay still
in the Light of God, and after all those years and years in Sheol I was
safe again, and I was warm.

"Finally, I realized that the Seraphim had come to me, three or
four of them, I didn't really notice, and they were standing over me,
and looking down on me, their faces almost unendurably bright with
reflected light.

" 'Memnoch, God wants to speak to you alone,' they said.

" 'Yes, at once!' I sprang to my feet.

"And far from the jubilant throngs, I found myself standing in
silence, in quiet, without companions, my arm up over my eyes, my
eyes down, and near as I could possibly be to the presence of the
Lord."



17



UNCOVER your eyes and look at me,' said the Lord. "Instantly,

aware that this might mean my total obliteration, that all might have

been folly and misunderstanding, I obeyed.

"The radiance had become uniform, glorious yet tolerable, and in
the very midst of it, broadcast in it, I saw distinctly a countenance
such as my own. I cannot say that it was a human face. Countenance,
person, expression--this is what I beheld, and this Highly Personal
Countenance was regarding me directly and fully.

"It was so beautiful that I couldn't imagine moving or ever turning

away from it, but then it began to brighten, it began to force me
to blink and to struggle not to cover my eyes rather than imperil my
vision forever.

"The light then became muted; it contracted; it became bearable
and engulfing, but not blinding to me. And I stood, trembling, very
glad I had not reached to cover my face.

" 'Memnoch,' God said. 'You have done well. You have brought
souls from Sheol who are worthy of Heaven; you have increased the
joy and the bliss of Heaven; you have done well.'

"I uttered a thanks which was in fact an anthem of adoration,

repeating the obvious, that God had made all these souls and that in
His mercy He had allowed them to come to Him.

" 'This makes you very happy, does it not?' He asked.

" 'Only if it makes you happy, Lord,' I said, which was a bit of
a lie.

" 'Rejoin the angels, Memnoch,' He said. 'You are forgiven for
becoming flesh and blood without my permission, and forgiven for

having slept with the Daughters of Men. You are upheld in your
hopes for the souls of Sheol. Leave me now and do whatever it is you
wish, but interfere no more with Nature, or with humankind, since
you insist they are not part of Nature, and on which point you are
wrong.'

" 'Lord--' I started timidly.

" 'Yes???'

" 'Lord, these souls I brought from Sheol, why, they are less than
one one-hundredth of the souls in Sheol; they probably are less than
one one-hundredth of souls who have disintegrated or vanished since
the beginning of the world. Lord, Sheol is filled with confusion and
misunderstanding. These were but the elect.'

" 'I am supposed to be surprised by this information? How could I
not know it?' He asked.

" 'Surely, Lord, you'll let me go back to Sheol and to try to advance

 those souls who haven't reached the level of Heaven. Surely
you'll let me try to purge them of whatever keeps them unworthy of
heavenly bliss.'

" 'Why?'

" 'Lord, there are millions lost to you for every million saved.'

" 'You know that I know this, do you not?'

" 'Lord, have mercy on them! Have mercy on the humans of the
Earth who seek through countless rituals to reach you, know you, and
appease you.'

" 'Why?'

"I didn't answer. I was dumbstruck. I thought. And then I said,
'Lord, do you not care for these souls who are drifting in confusion?
Who suffer so in darkness?'

"'Why should I?'He asked.

"Again, I took my time. It was imperative that this answer count.
But in the interval he spoke:

" 'Memnoch, can you count for me all of the stars? Do you know
their names, their orbits, their destinies in Nature? Can you give me
a rough calculation, Memnoch, of the number of grains of sand in the
sea?'

" 'No, Lord, I can't.'

" 'Throughout my Creation, there are creatures whose spawn
numbers in the thousands, of which only a tiny portion survive--
fishes of the sea, turtles of the sea, winged insects of the air. A

hundred, a million even, of one species may be born under the arc of one
day's sun, with only a handful to survive and reproduce. Don't you
know this?'

" 'Yes, Lord, I know. I knew in ages past. I knew when the animals
were evolved. I knew.'

" 'So what is it to me that only a handful of souls come to the
Gates of Heaven? Maybe I will send you to Sheol again, in Time. I
will not say.'

" 'Lord, humankind is sentient and suffering!'

" 'Must we argue again about Nature? Humankind is my creation,
Memnoch, and its development whether you know it or not follows
my Laws.'

" 'But, Lord, everything under the sun dies eventually, and these
souls have the potential to live forever! They are outside the cycle! They
are made of invisible will and knowledge. Lord, surely they were
meant within the Laws to come to Heaven, how could it not be? I am
asking you, Lord, I am asking you to tell me, because as much as I
love you, I don't understand.'

" 'Memnoch, the invisible and the willful are embodied in my angels

and they obey my laws.'

" 'Yes, Lord, but they don't die. And you talk to us, and you reveal
yourself to us, and you love us, and you let us see things.'

" 'You don't think the beauty of Creation reveals my light to
Humankind? You don't think these souls, which you yourself have
brought here, have not developed out of a perception of the glory of
all that has been made?'

" 'Many more could come, Lord, with just a little help. The number

here now is so small. Lord, the lower animals, what can they

conceive of that they cannot have? I mean, the lion conceives of the meat
of the gazelle and he gets it, does he not? Human souls have conceived

 of Almighty God and are longing for Him.'

" 'You've proved that to me already,' he said. 'You've proved it to
all of Heaven.'

" 'But these were a few! Lord, if you were only flesh and blood, if
you had only gone down as I did--'

, iviemnocn.

" 'No, Lord, forgive me, but I can't deny you my finest efforts,
and my finest efforts at logic tell me that if you went down and became

 flesh and blood as I did, you would better know these Creatures
whom you think you know but you don't!'
"No answer.

" 'Lord, your light doesn't penetrate human flesh. It mistakes it
for animal flesh and always has! Lord, you may know all but you
don't know every tiny thing! You can't, or you couldn't leave these
souls languishing in Sheol in agony. And you could not allow the

suffering of men and women on Earth to go without context. I don't
believe it! I don't believe you would do it! I don't believe it.'

" 'Memnoch, for me it is only necessary to say something once.'
"I didn't answer.

" 'I'm being gentle with you,' He said.

" 'Yes, you are, but you are wrong, and in that, too, you are
wrong, for you would hear your anthems of praise sung over and over
without end and forever, and Lord! These souls could come to you
and sing those anthems.'

" 'I don't need the anthems, Memnoch,' He said.
" 'Then why do we sing?'

" 'You of all my angels are the only one who accuses me! Who
does not trust in me. Why, these souls you brought from Sheol trust
in me as you do not! That was your standard for selecting them! That
they trusted in the Wisdom of God.'
"I couldn't be silenced:

" 'I knew something when I was flesh and blood, Lord, which
upheld all that I had suspected before, and which confirms all I have
seen since. What can I do, Lord, tell you lies? Speak things with my
tongue that are flat-out falsehoods? Lord, in humankind you have
made something that even you do not fully comprehend! There can
be no other explanation, for if there is, then there is no Nature and

there are no Laws.'

" 'Get out of my sight, Memnoch. Go down to Earth and get away
from me and interfere with Nothing, do you hear?'

" 'Put it to the test, Lord. Become flesh and blood as I did. You
who can do anything, sheath yourself in flesh--'
" 'Silence, Memnoch.'
" 'Or if you do not dare to do that, if it is unworthy of the Creator

to understand in every cell his Creation, then silence all the anthems
of Angels and Men! Silence them, since you say you do not need
them, and observe then what your Creation means to you!'

" 'I cast you out, Memnoch!' He declared, and in an instant all of
Heaven had reappeared around me, the entire bene ha elohim and with
it the millions of souls of the saved, and Michael and Raphael were
standing before me, watching in horror as I was forced backwards
right out of the gates and into the whirlwind.

" 'You are merciless to your Creations, my Lord!' I roared as loud
as I could over the din of distressful singing. 'Those men and women
made in your own image are right to despise you, for nine-tenths of
them would be better off if they had never been born!' "

Memnoch stopped.

He made a little frown, just a tiny very perfectly symmetrical
scowl for a moment, and then lowered his head as if listening to
something. Then slowly he turned to me.

I held his gaze. "It's just what you would have done, isn't it?" he
asked.

"God help me," I said, "I really don't know."

The landscape was changing. As we looked at each other, the
world around us was filled with new sounds. I realized there were
humans in the vicinity, men with flocks of goats and sheep, and far off
in the distance I could see the walls of a town, and above on a hill, yet
another small settlement. Indeed, we were in a populated world now,
ancient, but not that far from our own.

I knew these people couldn't see us, or hear us. I didn't have to be
told.

Memnoch continued to stare at me, as if asking me something,
and I didn't know what it was. The sun was beating down full on both
of us. I realized my hands were moist with blood sweat and I reached
up and wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked at the blood on

my hand. He was covered with a faint shimmer, but nothing more
than that. He continued to stare at me.

"What happened!" I asked. "Why don't you tell me! What happened?

Why don't you go on?"

"You know damned good and well what happened," he said.
"Look down at your clothes now. They're robes, and better suited
for the desert. I want you to come there, just over those hills ... with me."

He stood up, and I at once followed him. We were in the Holy
Land, there was no question. We passed dozens upon dozens of small
groups of people, fishermen near a small town on the edge of the sea,
others tending sheep or goats, or driving small flocks towards nearby
settlements or walled enclosures.

Everything looked distinctly familiar. Disturbingly familiar, quite
beyond deja vu or intimations of having lived here before. Familiar as
if hardwired into my brain. And I refer to everything now--even a
naked man with crooked legs, hollering and raving, as he passed us,
not seeing us, one hand bent on a stick of a cane.

Beneath the layers of grit that covered all, I was surrounded by
forms and styles and manners of behavior I knew intimately--from
Scripture, from engraving, from embellished illustration, and from
film enactment. This was--in all its stripped-down, burning-hot
glory--a sacred as well as familiar terrain.

We could see people standing before caves in which they lived
high on the hills. Here and there little groups sat in the shade

beneath a copse, dozing, talking. A distant pulse came from the walled
cities. The air was filled with sand. Sand blew into my nostrils and
clung to my lips and my hair.

Memnoch had no wings. His robes were soiled and so were mine.
I think we wore linen; it was light and the air passed through it.
Our robes were long and unimportant. Our skin, our forms, were
unchanged.

The sky was vividly blue, and the sun glared down upon me as it
might on any being. The sweat felt alternately good and unbearable.
And I thought, fleetingly, how at any other time I might wonder at
the sun alone, the marvel of the sun denied to the Children of
Night--but all this time I had not even thought of it, not once,

because having seen the Light of God, the Sun had ceased to be that
Light for me.

We walked up into the rocky hills, climbing steep paths, and
crossing over outcroppings of rock and ragged tree, and finally there
appeared below and before us a great patch of unwatered sand,

burning and shifting slowly in comfortless wind.

Memnoch came to a halt at the very threshold of this desert, so to
speak, the place where we would leave the firm ground, rocky and
uncomfortable as it was, and pass into the soft drudgery of the sand.

I caught up with him, having fallen a little behind. He put his left

arm around me, and his fingers spread out firm and large against my
shoulder. I was very glad he did, because I was feeling a predictable
apprehension; in fact, a dread was building in me, a premonition as
bad as any I'd ever known.

"After He cast me out," Memnoch said, "I wandered." His eyes
were on the desert and what seemed the barren, blazing rocky cliffs in
the distance, hostile as the desert itself.

"I roamed the way you have often roamed, Lestat. Wingless, and
brokenhearted, I drifted along through the cities and nations of the
earth, over continents and wastes. Sometime or other I can tell you
all of it, if you wish. It's of no consequence now.

"Let me say only what is of consequence, that I did not dare to
make myself visible or known to Humankind but rather hid amongst
them, invisible, not daring to assume flesh for fear of angering God
again; and not daring to join the human struggle under any disguise,
for fear of God, and fear of what evil I might bring on humans. On
account of the same fears ... I didn't return to Sheol. I wanted in no
way to increase the sufferings of Sheol. God alone could free those
souls. What hope could I give them?

"But I could see Sheol, I could see its immensity, and I felt the
pain of the souls there, and wondered at the new and intricate and
ever-changing patterns of confusion created by mortals as they

departed one faith or sect or creed after another for that miserable

margin of gloom.

"Once a proud thought did come to me--that if I did penetrate
Sheol, I might instruct the souls there so thoroughly that they

themselves might transform it, create in it forms invented by hope rather
than hopelessness, and some garden might be made of it in time.
Certainly the elect, the millions I had taken to Heaven, they had
transformed their portion of the place. But then what if I failed at

this, and only added to the chaos? I didn't dare. I didn't dare, out of
fear of God and fear of my own inability to accomplish such a dream.

"I formulated many theories in my wanderings but I did not
change my mind on anything which I believed or felt or had spoken
to God. In fact, I prayed to Him often, though He was utterly silent,
telling Him how much I continued to believe that He had deserted
His finest creation. And sometimes out of weariness I only sung His
praises. Sometimes I was silent. Looking, hearing ... watching....

"Memnoch, the Watcher, the Fallen Angel.

"Little did I know my argument with Almighty God was only
begun. But at a certain time, I found myself wandering back to the
very valleys which I had first visited, and where the first cities of men
had been built.

"This land for me was the land of beginnings, for though great
peoples had sprung up in many nations, it was here that I had lain
with the Daughters of Men. And here that I had learnt something in
the flesh which I still held that God did not Himself know.

"Now, as I came to this place, I came into Jerusalem, which by the
way is only six or seven miles west of here, where we now stand.

"And the times were immediately known to me, that the Romans
governed the land, that the Hebrews had suffered a long and terrible
captivity, and that those tribes going back to the very first

settlements here--who had believed in the One God--were now under
the foot of the polytheists who did not take their legends with any
seriousness.

"And the Tribes of Monotheists, themselves, were divided on
many issues, with some Hebrews being strict Pharisees, and others
Sadducees, and still others having sought to make pure communities
in caves in those hills beyond.

"If there was one feature which made the times remarkable to
me--that is, truly different from any other--it was the might of the
Roman Empire, which stretched farther than any empire of the West
which I had ever witnessed, and remained somehow in ignorance of
the Great Empire of China, as if that were not of the same world.

"Something drew me to this spot, however, and I knew it. I sensed
a presence here that was not as strong as a summons; but it was as if
someone were crying out to me to come here, and yet would not use
the full power of his voice. I must search, I must wander. Maybe this
thing stalked and seduced me as I did you. I don't know.

"But I came here, and wandered Jerusalem, listening to what the
tongues of men had to say.

"They spoke of the prophets and holy men of the wilderness, of
arguments over the law and purification and the will of God. They
spoke of Holy Books and Holy Traditions. They spoke of men going
out to be 'baptized' in water so as to be 'saved' in the eyes of God.

"And they spoke of a man who had only lately gone into the

wilderness after his baptism, because at the moment that he had stepped
into the River Jordan and the water had been poured over him, the
skies had opened above this man, and Light had been seen from God.

"Of course one could hear stories like this all over the world. It
was not unusual, except that it drew me. That this was my country;
and I found myself as if directed, wandering out of Jerusalem to the
east, into the wasteland, my keen angelic senses telling me that I was
near to the presence of something mysterious, something that partook

of the sacred in a way that an angel would know upon seeing,
and a man might not. My reason rejected it, yet I walked on and on,
in the heat of the day, wingless and invisible into the very wastes."

Memnoch drew me with him and we walked into the sand, which
was not as deep as I had imagined, but was hot and full of little stones.
We moved on into canyons and up slopes and finally came to a little
clearing of sorts where rocks had been gathered, as if others were
wont to come here from time to time. It was as natural as the other
place we had chosen to remain for so long.

A landmark in the desert, so to speak, a monument to something,
perhaps.

I waited on tenterhooks for Memnoch to begin again. My uneasi-
ness was growing. He slowed his pace until we stood well over a
stone's throw from this little gathering of rocks.

"Closer and closer I came," he said, "to those markers there that
you see, and with my angelic eyes, powerful as are yours, I spied from
a long way off a single human man. But my eyes told me this was no
human, that on the contrary this man was filled with the fire of God.

"I didn't believe it, and yet I walked on, closer and closer, unable
to stop myself, and then stopped where we are now, staring at the
figure who sat on that rock before me, looking up at me here.

"It was God! There was no question. He was sheathed in flesh,
dark-skinned from the sun, dark-haired, and had the dark eyes of the
desert people, but it was God! My God!

"And there he sat in this fleshly body, looking at me with human
eyes, and the eyes of God, and I could see the Light totally filling
Him and contained within Him and concealed from the outside
world by His flesh as if it were the strongest membrane betwixt
Heaven and Earth.

"If there was anything more terrible than this revelation, it was
that He was looking at me and that He knew me and had been

waiting for me, and that all I felt for Him, as I looked at Him, was love.

"We sing over and over again the songs of love. Is that the one
song intended for all Creation?

"I looked at Him in terror for His mortal parts, His sunburnt

flesh, His thirst, the emptiness of His stomach and the suffering of
His eyes in the heat, for the presence of Almighty God inside Him,
and I felt overwhelming love.

" 'So, Memnoch,' He said in a man's tongue and with a man's
voice. 'I have come.'

"I fell on my face before Him. This was instinctive. I just lay
there, reaching out and touching the very tip of the latchet of His
sandal. I sighed and my body shook with the relief of loneliness, the
attraction to God and the satisfaction of it, and I began a giddy

weeping just to be'near Him and see Him and I marveled at what this must
mean.

" 'Stand up, come sit near me,' He said. 'I am a man now and I am
God, but I am afraid.' His voice was indescribably moving to me,
human yet filled with the wisdom of the divine. He spoke with the
language and accents of Jerusalem.

" 'Oh, Lord, what can I do to ease your pain?' I said, for the pain
was obvious. I stood up. 'What have you done and why?'

" 'I have done exactly what you tempted me to do, Memnoch,' He
answered, and His face wore the most dreamlike and engaging smile.
'I have come into the flesh. Only I have done you one better. I was
born of a mortal woman, planting the seed myself in her, and for
thirty years, I have lived on this Earth as a child and as a man, and for
long periods doubting--no, even forgetting and ceasing to believe
altogether--that I was really God!'

" 'I see you, I know you. You are the Lord my God,' I said. I was
so struck by His face; by the recognition of Him in the mask of skin

that covered the bones of His skull. In a shivering instant I recovered
the exact feeling of when I'd glimpsed His countenance in the light,
and I saw now the same expression in this human face. I went down
on my knees. 'You are my God,' I said.

" 'I know that now, Memnoch, but you understand that I allowed
myself to be submerged in the flesh utterly, to forget it, so that I
could know what it means, as you said, to be human, and what

humans suffer, and what they fear and what they long for, and what they
are capable of learning either here or above. I did what you told me to
do, and I did it better than you ever did it, Memnoch, I did it as God
must do it, to the very extremity!'

" 'Lord, I can scarcely bear the sight of you suffering,' I said
quickly, unable to rip my eyes off Him and yet dreaming of water and

food for Him. 'Let me wipe the sweat from you. Let me get you
water. Let me take you to it in an angelic instant. Let me comfort you
and wash you and clothe you in a finery fit for God on Earth.'

" 'No,' He said. 'In those days when I thought myself mad, when I
could scarce remember that I was God, when I knew I had yielded my
omniscience deliberately in order to suffer and to know limitations,
you might have persuaded me that that was the path. I might have
seized upon your offer. Yes, make me a King. Let that be my way of
revealing myself to them. But not now. I know Who I am and What I
am, and I know What Will Happen. And you are right, Memnoch,
there are souls in Sheol ready for Heaven and I myself will take them
there. I have learnt what you tempted me to learn.'

" 'Lord, you're starving. You're suffering from terrible thirst.
Here, turn these stones into bread by your power, that you can eat.
Or let me get you food.'

" 'For once will you listen to me!' He said, smiling. 'Stop talking
of food and drink. Who is human here? I am! You impossible

adversary, you argumentative devil! Hush for now and listen. I am in the
flesh. Have pity at least and let me speak my piece.' He laughed at
me, His face full of kindness and sympathy.

" 'Here, come into the flesh, too, with me,' He said. 'Be my
brother and sit beside me, Son of God and Son of God, and let us
talk.'

"I did as He said at once, creating a body thoughtlessly that
matched what you see now, as that was as natural to me as thinking
was natural, and I gave myself a similar robe, and I realized that I was
sitting on that rock there by His side. I was bigger than He was, and

had not thought to reduce the scale of my limbs, and now I did it
hastily until we were men of equal proportion, more or less. I was
fully angelic in my form, and not hungry or thirsty or tired.

" 'How long have you been in this wilderness?' I asked. 'The people

 in Jerusalem say almost forty days.'

"He nodded. That's about the right number,' He answered me.
'And it's time now for me to begin my ministry, which will last three
years. I will teach the great lessons that must be learnt for admission
to Heaven--awareness of Creation and the Understanding of its

deliberate unfolding; an appreciation of its beauty and laws which
makes possible an acceptance of suffering and seeming injustice and
all forms of pain; I will promise a final glory to those who can attain

understanding; to those who can surrender their souls to the

understanding of God and what He has done. I will give that to Men and
Women, which is precisely, I think, what you wanted me to do.'

"I didn't dare to answer him.

" 'Love, Memnoch, I have learnt to love them as you told me I
would. I have learnt to love and cherish as men and women do, and I
have lain with women and I have known that ecstasy, that spark of
jubilation of which you spoke so eloquently when I could not

conceive of wanting such a tiny thing.'

" 'I will talk more of love than any other subject. I will say things
that men and women can twist and misunderstand. But love, that
shall be the message. You convinced me and I have convinced myself
that that is what elevates Human above animal, though animal is
what Humankind is.'

" 'Do you mean to leave them with specific guidance as to how
to love? As to how to stop war and come together in one form of
worship--'

" 'No, not at all. That would be an absurd intervention and would
undo the entire grand scheme which I have put into motion. It would
stop the dynamics of the unfolding of the universe.

" 'Memnoch, to me we human beings are all still part of Nature,
as I said, only Humans are better than animals. It's a matter of

 degrees. Yes, humans cry out against suffering and they are conscious of
it when they suffer, but in a sense they behave exactly like the lower

animals, in that suffering improves them and drives them towards
evolutionary advance. They are quick-witted enough to see its value,
where the animals only learn to avoid suffering by instinct. Humans
can actually be improved within one lifetime by suffering. But they
are part of Nature still. The world will unfold as it always has, full of
surprises. Some of those surprises will be horrid, and others

wondrous, and some beautiful. But what is known for certain is that the
world will continue to grow and Creation will continue to unfold.'

" 'Yes, Lord,' I said, 'but surely suffering is an evil thing.'

" 'What did I teach you, Memnoch, when you first came to me
saying that decay was wrong, that death was wrong? Don't you

understand the magnificence in human suffering?'

" 'No,' I said. 'I see the ruin of hope and love and family; the

destruction of peace of mind; I see pain beyond endurance; I see man
buckle under this, and fall into bitterness and hate.'

" 'You haven't looked deep enough, Memnoch. You are only an
angel. You refuse to understand Nature, and that has been your way
since the start.

" 'I will bring my light into Nature, through the flesh for three
years. I will teach the wisest things I can know and say in this flesh-
and-blood body and brain; and then I will die.'

" 'Die? Why do that? I mean, what do you mean, die? Your soul
will leave--' I broke off, uncertain.

"He smiled.

" 'You do have a soul, don't you, Lord? I mean, you are my God
inside this Son of Man, and the light fills every particle of you, but
you ... you don't have a soul, do you? You don't have a human soul!'

" 'Memnoch, these distinctions don't matter. I am God Incarnate.
How could I have a human soul? What is important is that I will
remain in this body as it is tortured and slain; and my death will be
evidence of my Love for those whom I have created and allowed to
suffer so much. I will share their pain and know their pain.'

" 'Please, Lord, forgive me, but there seems to be something
wrong with this whole idea.'

"Again, he seemed amused. His dark eyes were filled with a

sympathetic and silent laughter. 'Wrong? What is wrong, Memnoch,
that I shall take the form of the Dying God of the Wood, whom men
and women have imagined and dreamed of and sung of since time
immemorial, a dying god who symbolizes the very cycle of nature
itself in which all that is born must die.

" 'I shall die, and I shall rise from the Dead, as that god has risen
in every myth of the eternal return of the spring after winter in

nations all over the world. I shall be the god destroyed and the god
uplifted, only here it will happen literally in Jerusalem, not in ceremony,

or with human substitutes. The Son of God himself shall fulfill the

myths. I have chosen to sanctify those legends with my literal
death.

" 'I shall walk out of the Tomb. My resurrection will confirm the
eternal return of the spring after winter. It will confirm that in Nature

all things that have evolved have their place.

" 'But Memnoch, it will be for my death that I am remembered.
My death. It's going to be terrible. It won't be for my resurrection
they'll remember me, you can be sure of it, for that is something
many simply will never see or believe. But my death, my death will

spring full blown into a confirmation of mythology, underscored by
all the myths which have preceded it, and my death will be a sacrifice
by God to know His own Creation. Just what you told me to do.'

" 'No, no, wait, Lord, there's something wrong with this!'

" 'You always forget yourself and to whom you are speaking,' He
said kindly, the mixture of human and divine continuing to obsess me
as I looked at Him, falling into His beauty and staggered by His

divinity, and overcome again and again by my own sure belief that this
was all wrong.

" 'Memnoch, I've just told you what no one knows but Me,' He
said. 'Don't speak to me as if I can be wrong. Don't waste these

moments with the Son of God! Can't you learn from me in the flesh as
you learn from humans in flesh? Have I nothing to teach you, my
beloved Archangel? Why do you sit here questioning me? What
could possibly be the meaning of your word, wrong?'

" 'I don't know, Lord, I don't know how to answer. I can't find all
the words. I just know this is not going to work. First of all, who will

do this torturing and killing?'

" 'The people of Jerusalem,' He said. 'I will succeed in offending
everyone, the traditional Hebrews, the callous Romans, everyone
will be offended by the blinding message of pure love and what love
demands of humans. I will show contempt for the ways of others, for
their rituals and their laws. And into the machinery of their justice I
will fall.

" 'I will be condemned on charges of treason when I speak of my
Divinity, that I am the Son of God, God Incarnate . . . and for my
very message I will be tortured with such embellishment that it will
never be forgotten; my death, by crucifixion, is going to be the same.'

" 'By crucifixion? Lord, have you see men die in this way? Do you
know how they suffer? They are nailed to the wood and they suffocate,

hanging as they do, weakening, unable to lift their own weight
on their nailed feet, and finally strangling in blood and in pain?'

" 'Of course I've seen it. It's a common form of execution. It's
filthy and it's very human.'

" 'Oh, no, no,' I cried out. 'This can't be. You don't mean to

climax your teachings with such spectacular failure and execution, with
such cruelty and death itself!'

" 'This is not failure,' he said. 'Memnoch, I shall be a martyr to
what I teach! Blood offerings of the innocent lamb to the good God



have been made since Humans began! They instinctively render to
God what is of great value to them to show their love. Who knows
better than you who spied on their altars and listened to their prayers
and insisted that I listen! Sacrifice and love are connected in them.'

" 'Lord, they sacrifice out of fear! It has nothing to do with love of
God, does it? All the sacrifices? The children sacrificed to Baal, and a
hundred other hideous rituals the world over. They do it out of fear!
Why would love demand sacrifice?'

"I had clamped my hands over my mouth. I couldn't reason

further. I was horrified. I could not sort out the thread of my horror
from the overall stifling weave. Then I spoke, thinking aloud:

" 'It's all wrong, Lord. That God should be so degraded in human
form, that in itself is unspeakable; but that men should be allowed

to do this to God . . . But will they know what they're doing, that
you are God? I mean, they couldn't . . . Lord, it will have to be
done in confusion and misunderstanding. That spells chaos, Lord!
Darkness!'

" 'Naturally,' He said. 'Who in his right mind would crucify the
Son of God?'

" 'Then what does it mean?'

" 'Memnoch, it means I subjected myself to the human for the
love of those whom I have made. I am in the flesh, Memnoch. I have
been in it for thirty years. Would you explain yourself to me?'

" 'To die like that, it's wrong, Lord. It's a filthy killing, Lord, it's
a bloody horrible exemplum to lay before the human race! And you
say yourself they will remember you for this? More than for your
rising from the death, from the light of God exploding out of your
human body and making this suffering fall away?'

" 'The Light won't burst out of this body,' He said. 'This body
shall die. I shall know death. I shall pass into Sheol and there for
three days remain with those who are dead, and then I shall return to
this body and raise it from the Dead. And yes, it will be my Death
they will remember, for how can I Rise if I do not Die?'

" 'Just don't do either one,' I pleaded. 'Really, I'm begging you.
Don't make yourself this sacrifice. Don't dip down into their most
misguided blood rituals. Lord, have you ever drawn near to the
stench of their sacrificial altars? Yes, I used to say to you, listen to
their prayers, but I never meant that you would dip down from your
great height to smell the stink of the blood and the dead animal, or to

see the dumb fear in its eyes as its throat is slit! Have you seen the
babies heaved into the fiery God Baal?'

" 'Memnoch, this is the way to God which man himself has
evolved. All over the world the myths sing the same song.'

" 'Yes, but that's because you never interfered to stop it, you let it
happen, you let this humankind evolve and they looked back in

horror on their animal ancestors, they beheld their mortality, and they
seek to propitiate a god who has abandoned them to all this. Lord,
they look for meaning, but they find none in this. None.'

"He looked at me as if I were mad, truly. He stared at me in silence.

'You disappoint me,' He said softly and gently. 'You wound
me, Memnoch, you wound my human heart.' He reached out and put

His roughened hands against my face, hands of a man who had
worked in this world, labored as I had never labored in my brief visit.

"I shut my eyes. I didn't speak. But something had come to me! A
revelation, an insight, a sudden grasping of everything here that was
in error, but could I reason it out? Could I speak?

"I opened my eyes again, letting him hold me, feeling the callouses

on his fingers, looking into his gaunt face. How he had starved
himself; how he had suffered in this desert, and how he had labored
these thirty years! Oh, no, this was wrong!

" 'What, my Archangel, what is wrong!' He demanded of me with
infinite patience and human consternation.

" 'Lord, they chose these rituals which involve suffering because
they cannot avoid suffering in the Natural World. The natural world
is what must be overcome! Why must anyone suffer what humans
suffer? Lord, their souls come to Sheol distorted, twisted by pain,
black as cinders from the heat of loss and misery and violence which
they have witnessed. Suffering is evil in this world. Suffering is decay
and death. It's terrible. Lord, You can't believe that to suffer like this
would do any good to anyone. This suffering, this unspeakable

capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what
has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God!'

"He didn't answer. He lowered his hands.

" 'My angel,' He said, 'you draw from me even more affection
now that I have a human heart. How simple you are! How alien you
are to the vast Material Creation.'

" 'But it was I who urged you to come down! How am I alien? I
am the Watcher! I see what other angels don't dare to look at for fear
they'll weep, and it will make you angry with them.'

" 'Memnoch, you simply don't know the flesh. The concept is too
complex for you. What do you think taught your souls in Sheol their
perfection? Was it not suffering? Yes, they enter perhaps twisted and
burnt if they have failed to see beyond suffering on Earth, and some
may despair and disappear. But in Sheol, over the centuries of

suffering and longing, others are purged and purified.

" 'Memnoch, Life and Death are part of the cycle, and suffering is
its by-product. And the human capacity to know it exempts no one!
Memnoch, that the illuminated souls you brought from Sheol knew
it, that they had learnt to accept its beauty, is what made them worthy

to come through the heavenly gates!'

" 'No, Lord, that's not true!' I said. 'You've gotten it wrong. Utterly.

Oh, I see what's happened.'

" 'You do? What are you trying to say to me? That I the Lord
God, having spent thirty years in this human body, have not struck
the truth?'

" 'But that's just it! You've known all along you were God. You
mentioned times when you thought you were mad or almost forgot,
but those were brief! Too brief! And now as you plot your death, you
know Who you are and You won't forget it, will you?'

" 'No, I won't. I must be the Son of God Incarnate to fulfill my
ministry, to work my miracles, of course. That's the whole point.'

" 'Then, Lord, you don't know what it means to be flesh!'

" 'How dare you assume that you do, Memnoch.'

" 'When you left me in that fleshly body, when you cast me down
for the Daughters of Men to heal and care for, in the early centuries
of this very land, I had no promise you would take me back to
Heaven. Lord, you're not playing fair in this experiment. You've
known all along you're going back, you're going back to be God!'

" 'And who better than I can understand what this flesh feels!' He
demanded.

" 'Somebody who doesn't fully rest assured that He is the immortal

Creator of the Universe,' I said. 'Any mortal man hanging on a
cross now on Golgotha outside Jerusalem would know better than
you!'

"His eyes grew wide as He stared at me. But He didn't challenge
me. His silence unnerved me. And once, again, the power of His

expression, the radiance of God in man dazzled me, and drew upon the
angel in me to simply shut up and fall at His feet. But I wouldn't do it!

" 'Lord, even when I went to Sheol,' I said, 'I didn't know whether

or not I'd ever come back to Heaven. Don't you see? I don't claim to
have your understanding of anything. We wouldn't be talking here if
I did. But I didn't have any promise I would be allowed back into
Heaven, don't you see? So the suffering and the darkness spoke to me
and taught me, because I took the risk that I might never overcome it.

Don't you see?'

"He considered this a long time and then He shook His head
sadly. 'Memnoch, you are the one who has failed to understand.
When is Humankind closest to God than when they suffer for the
love of another, when they die so that another might live, when they
plunge towards certain death for the protection of those they leave
behind or those truths about Life which Creation has taught them?'
" 'But the world doesn't need all that, Lord! No, no, no. It doesn't
need the blood, the suffering, the war. That wasn't what taught

Humans to love! Animals already did all that bloody, horrible

catastrophe to one another. What taught Humans was the warmth and
affection of another, the love for a child, the love in a mate's arms,
the capacity to understand another's suffering and want to protect
that other, to rise above savagery into the formation of family and
clan and tribe that would mean peace and security for all!'

"There came a long silence. And then very tenderly He laughed.
'Memnoch, my angel. What you learnt of life you learnt in bed.'

"I didn't answer for a moment. The comment was charged with
contempt and humour, of course. Then I spoke:

" 'That's true, Lord. And suffering is so terrible for humans,

 injustice is so terrible for the balance of their minds that it can destroy
those lessons learnt in bed, magnificent as they are!'

" 'Oh, but when love is reached through suffering, Memnoch, it
has a power it can never gain through innocence.'

" 'Why do you say that? I don't believe it! I don't think you grasp
it. Lord, listen to me. There's one chance for this to be proven my
way. One chance.'

" 'If you think for one moment you will interfere with my ministry

 and my sacrifice, if you think you can turn the tide of the vast
forces already moving towards this event, then you are no more an
angel, but a demon!' He said.

" 'I don't ask that,' I said. 'Go through with it. Minister, outrage
them; be arrested, tried, and executed on the cross, yes, do all of it.
But do it as a man!'

" 'I intend to.'

" 'No, you'll know the whole time you're God. I'm saying Forget

that you are God! Bury your divinity in the flesh the way it's been
buried intermittently. Bury it, Lord, leaving yourself only your faith
and your belief in Heaven, as if it had come to you through

Revelation immense and undeniable.

" 'But bury in this desert the true certainty that you are God.
Then, you'll suffer it all as a man suffers it. Then you'll know what
this suffering is at its heart. Then will all the glory be stripped from
agony! And you will see what men see when flesh is ripped, and torn,
and blood flows, and it is your own. It's filth!'

" 'Memnoch, men die on Golgotha every day. What is important
is that the Son of God knowingly dies on Golgotha in the body of a
man.'

" 'Oh, no, no!' I cried out. 'This is disaster.'

"He seemed so sad suddenly that I thought he might weep for me.
His lips were parched and cracked from the desert. His hands were so
thin I could see the veins. He was not even a great specimen of a man,
only an ordinary one, worn down by years of toil.

" 'Look at you,' I said, 'starving, thirsting, suffering, tired, lost in
all the darknesses of life, the true spontaneous evils of nature, and
dreaming of glory when you exit this body! What kind of lesson can
such suffering be? And who will you leave with the guilt for your
murder? What will become of all those mere mortals who denied
you? No, please, Lord, listen to me. If you won't leave your Divinity,
then don't do it. Change this plan.

" 'Don't die. Above all, don't be murdered! Don't hang from a
tree like the God of the Wood in the Greek stories. Come with me
into Jerusalem; and know women and wine and singing and dancing
and the birth of little ones, and all the joy the human heart can

contain and express!

" 'Lord, there are times when the hardest men hold infants in
their arms, their own children, and the happiness and satisfaction of
those moments is so sublime that there is no horror on earth that can
destroy the peace they feel! That is the human capacity for love and
understanding! When one can achieve harmony in spite of everything,

and men and women do this, Lord. They do. Come, dance
with your people. Sing with them. Feast with them. Throw your arms
around the women and the men and know them in the flesh!'

" 'I feel pity for you, Memnoch,' He said. 'I pity you as I pity the
mortals who will kill me, and those who will inevitably

misunderstand my laws. But I dream of those who will be touched to the core
by my suffering, and who will never forget it, and will know what love
I felt for mortals that I would let myself die among them before
opening the gates of Sheol. I pity you. Feeling as you do, your guilt
will become too terrible to bear.'

" 'My guilt? What guilt?'

" 'You're the cause of all this, Memnoch. You're the one who said
I should come down in the flesh. You're the one who urged me on to
do it, who challenged me, and now you fail to see the miracle of my
sacrifice.

" 'And when you do see it, when you do see souls perfected by
suffering ascending to Heaven, what will you think then of your

paltry little discoveries made in the arms of the Daughters of Men?
What will you think? Don't you see? I will redeem suffering,

Memnoch! I will give it its greatest and fullest potential within the cycle! I
will bring it to fruition. I will allow it to sing its own magnificent
song!'

" 'No, no, no!' I stood up and railed at Him. 'Lord, just do as I ask.
Go through with it, yes, if you must, found this miracle upon a murder,

do it that way, if that is your will, but bury your certainty of
Divinity, so that you really, really do die, Lord, so that when they
drive the nails through your hands and feet you know what a man
feels and no more, and when you enter the gloom of Sheol yours is a
human soul! Please, Lord, please, I'm begging you. For all humanity,
I'm begging you. I can't see the future but I have never been more
frightened of it than I am now.' "

Memnoch broke off.

We stood alone in the sands, Memnoch looking into the distance
and me beside him, shaken.

"He didn't do it, did he?" I asked. "Memnoch, God died knowing
He was God. He died and rose knowing the whole time. The world
argues over it and debates and wonders, but He knew. When they
drove the nails, He knew He was God."

"Yes," said Memnoch. "He was man, but that man was never
without the power of God."

Suddenly I was distracted.

Memnoch seemed too shaken to say any more just yet.

Something changed in the landscape. I looked towards the circle

of stones, and realized a figure was sitting there, the figure of a dark-
skinned, dark-eyed man, emaciated and covered with the sand of the
desert, and he was looking at us. And without one fiber of his flesh
being other than human, He was obviously God.

I was petrified.

I had lost the map. I didn't know the way back or the way forward,
or what lay to left or to right.

I was petrified, yet I wasn't frightened, and this man, this dark-
eyed one, was merely looking at us with the softest sympathy in his
face, and the same unbounded acceptance of us that I had seen in
Him in Heaven when He'd turned and taken me by the arms.

The Son of God.

"Come here, Lestat," he called now softly, over the desert wind,
in a human voice. "Come closer."

I looked at Memnoch. Memnoch was looking at him, too, now
and he gave a bitter smile. "Lestat, it is always a good idea, no matter
how He is behaving, to do exactly what He says."

Blasphemy. I turned, shivering.

I went directly towards the figure, conscious of each shuffling step
through the boiling sand, the dark thin form coming ever more clear
to me, a tired and suffering man. I sank down on my knees in front of
Him, looking up into His face.

"The Living Lord," I whispered.

"I want you to come into Jerusalem," He said. He reached out
and brushed back my hair, and the hand was as Memnoch described
it, dry, calloused, darkened from the sun as his brow was darkened.
But the voice hovered somewhere between natural and sublime, it
struck a timbre beyond the angelic. It was the voice that had spoken
to me in Heaven, only confined to human sounds.

I couldn't answer. I couldn't do anything. I knew that I would do
nothing until I was told. Memnoch stood off, arms folded, watching.
And I knelt, looking into the eyes of God Incarnate and I knelt before
Him completely alone.

"Come into Jerusalem," He said. "It won't take you long, no

more perhaps than a few moments, but come into Jerusalem with
Memnoch, on the day of my death, and glimpse my Passion--see me
crowned with thorns and carrying my cross. Do this for Me before
you make your decision whether or not to serve Memnoch or the
Lord God."

Every part of me knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand it! I

couldn't watch it. I couldn't. I was paralyzed. Disobedience,

blasphemy, those weren't the issues. I couldn't endure the thought of it! I
stared at Him, at His sunburnt face, at His soft and loving eyes, at the
sand clinging to the edge of His cheek. His dark hair was neglected,
wind-torn, swept back from His face.

No! I can't do it! I can't bear it!

"Oh, yes, you can," He said reassuringly. "Lestat, my brave
bringer of death to so many. Would you really return to Earth

without this glimpse of what I offer? Would you really give up this chance
to glimpse me crowned with thorns? When have you ever passed up a
challenge, and think what I am offering to you now. No, you
wouldn't back off from it, even if Memnoch urged you to do it."

I knew He was right. Yet, I knew I couldn't stand it. I could not go
into Jerusalem and see the actual Christ carrying His Cross. I
couldn't. I couldn't. I didn't have the strength, I would-- I was silent.
A riot of thought within me condemned me to utter confusion and
continued paralysis. "Can I look at this?" I said. I closed my eyes!
Then I opened them and looked at Him again and at Memnoch, who
had come near and looked down with a near, cold expression at me,
cold as his face could be, which wasn't cold at all so much as serene.

"Memnoch," said God Incarnate. "Bring him, show him the way,
let him but glimpse it. You be his guide, and then go on with your
examination and your appeal."

He looked at me. He smiled. How frail a vessel He seemed for His
own magnificence. A man with lines around his eyes from the hot
sun, with worn teeth, a man.

"Remember, Lestat," God said to me. "This is only the world.
And you know the world. Sheol awaits. You have seen the World and
Heaven but you have not seen Hell."



18

WE WERE in the city, a city of deep brown and faded
yellow stones and clay. Three years had passed. It had to

be so. All I knew was that we were in a huge crowd of
people, robed and veiled and ragged--that I could smell the human
sweat, and the heat of stagnant breath, and stench of human waste
and camel dung overpoweringly, and that though no one took notice
of us, I could feel the press around us, I could feel unwashed men
shoving against me, and brushing in front of me, and the sand salted
the air here within the walls of the city, within these narrow streets,
just as it had salted the air of the desert.

People clustered in small rounded doorways, peeped from windows

above. Soot mingled with the everlasting sand. Women drawing

their veils around their faces cleaved to one another, pushing past
us. Up ahead I could hear screams and shouting. Suddenly, I realized
that the crowd was pressed so tight around us, I couldn't move.

Desperately I looked for Memnoch.

He was right beside me, watching all calmly, neither of us shining
with any preternatural gleam among these drab and soiled humans,
these everyday creatures of this early and harsh time.

"I don't want to do it!" I said, digging in my heels, shoved along
by the crowd, yet resisting. "I don't think I can do it! I can't look,
Memnoch, no, this is not required of me. No ... I don't want to go
any farther. Memnoch, let me go!"

"Quiet," he said dourly. "We are almost to the place where He
will pass."

With his left arm around me, clutching me protectively, he divided

the crowd in front of us, effortlessly it seemed, until we
emerged in the front line of those who waited at a broader

thoroughfare as the procession advanced. The shouts were deafening. Roman
soldiers moved past us, the garments soiled with grit, faces tired,
bored even, dreary. Across the way, on the other side of the

procession, a beautiful woman, her hair covered by a long white veil, threw
up her hands and screamed.

She was looking at the Son of God. He had come into view. I saw
the big crossbar of the crucifix first, on his shoulders sticking out on

either side of Him, and then His hands, bound to the beam, dangling
from the ropes, already dripping with blood. His head was bowed;
the brown hair was matted and dirty and covered over with the crude
black crown of spiking thorns; spectators were pressed to walls on
either side of Him, some taunting Him, others silent.

There was barely room for Him to walk with his burden, His
robes torn, His knees bruised and bleeding, but walk He did. The
stench of urine was overpowering from the nearby walls.

He trudged towards us, face hidden, then fell, one knee going
down into the stones of the street. Behind Him I saw others carrying
the long post of the cross which would be planted in the ground.

At once the soldiers beside Him pulled Him up. They steadied the
crossbar on his shoulders. His face was visible, not three feet from
where we stood, and He looked at us both. Sunburnt, cheeks hollow,
mouth open and shuddering, dark eyes wide and fixed on us, He
looked, without expression, without appeal. The blood poured down
from the black thorns sticking into His forehead; it ran in tiny
streams into His eyelids and down His cheeks. His chest was naked
under the open rag of robe which He wore, and it was covered with
the ripe, red stripes of the lash!

"My God!" Again I had lost all volition; Memnoch held me

upright as we both stared into God's face. And the crowd, the crowd
went on screaming and cursing, and shouting and pushing; little

children peeped through; women wailed. Others laughed; a great horrid
stinking multitude beneath the relentless sun that sent its rays
amongst the close urine-stained walls!

Closer He came! Did He know us? He shuddered in His agony,
the blood ran down his face into his shivering lips. He gave a gasp as
if He would strangle, and I saw that the robe over His shoulders,
beneath the rough wood of the beam, was soaked with blood from the
scourging. He could not endure another instant, and yet they pushed
Him, and He stood directly before us, eyes down, face wet with sweat
and the blood swimming in it, and then slowly He turned and looked
at me.

I was weeping uncontrollably. What did I witness? A brutality

unspeakable in any time and place, but the legends and prayers of my
childhood fired with grotesque vitality; I could smell the blood. I
could smell it. The vampire in me smelled it. I could hear my sobs, I
threw out my arms. "My God!"

Silence fell over the whole world. People shouted and pushed, but
not in the realm in which we stood. He stood there staring at me and
at Memnoch, stepped out of time and holding the moment in its

fullness, in its agony, as He looked at us both.

"Lestat," He said, His voice so feeble and torn I could scarce hear
it. "You want to taste it, don't you?"

"Lord, what are you saying?" I cried, my words so full of tears I
could scarce control them.

"The blood. Taste it. Taste the Blood of Christ." And a terrible
smile of resignation came over him, almost a grimace, his body

convulsing beneath the immense beam, and the blood trickling freshly as
if with each breath He took the thorns tore deeper into his face and
the stripes on His chest began to swell into seams through which the
blood leaked.

"No, my God!" I cried out, and I reached for Him and felt His
fragile arms, bound to the huge crossbar, His aching, thin arms

beneath the torn sleeves, and the blood blazed in front of me.

"The Blood of God, Lestat," He whispered. "Think of all the
human blood that has flowed into your lips. Is my blood not worthy?
Are you afraid?"

Sobbing, I cupped His neck with both hands, my knuckles against
the crossbar, and I kissed His throat, and then my mouth opened
without will or struggle and my teeth pierced the flesh. I heard Him
moan, a long echoing moan that seemed to rise up and fill the world
with its sound, and the blood flooded into my mouth.

The cross, the nails driven through His wrists, not His hands, His
body twisting and turning as if in the last moments, He would escape,
and His head bashed down on the crossbar, so that the thorns went
into His scalp, and then the nails through His feet, and His eyes

rolling, the pound and the pound of the hammer, and then the Light, the
immense Light rising as it had risen over the balustrade of Heaven,
and filling the world, and obliterating even this warm, solid, luscious
glut of blood that sank into me. The Light, the light itself and the
being within it, In His Image! The light receded, swift, soundless, and
leaving behind a long tunnel or path, and I knew the path was straight
from Earth to the Light.

Pain! The Light was disappearing. The separation was unspeakable!

A swift blow struck my entire body with full force.

I was flung back into the crowd. Sand stung my eyes. The screams

rose all around me. The blood was on my tongue. It flowed from my
lips. Time pressed in with suffocating heat. And He was before us,
staring at us, and tears spilled down out of His eyes, through the
blood that already covered Him.

"My God, my God, my God!" I cried, swallowing the last of the
blood; I sobbed.

The woman across the way blazed into visibility. Suddenly her
voice rose above the babble and the cursing, the horrid cacophony of
coarse and feelingless humans everywhere struggling to witness.

"My God!" she screamed, and her voice was like a trumpet. She
stepped into his path.

She stood before Him and drew the fine white veil from her hair,
and put it up with both hands before His face.

"Lord, God, this is Veronica," she cried. "Remember Veronica.
Twelve years I suffered a flow of blood, and when I touched the hem
of your garment, I was healed."

"Unclean, filth!" came the cries.

"Lawbreaker, blasphemer!"

"Son of God, you dare!"

"Unclean, unclean, unclean!"

The cries grew frantic. People reached out for her, yet seemed
loath to touch her. Pebbles and stones rained in the air towards her.
The soldiers were undecided, baffled, and belligerent.

But God Incarnate, shoulders bent under the beam, only looked
at her, and then He said, "Yes, Veronica, gently, your veil, my

beloved, your veil."

The white cloth, virgin and fine, she spread over His face, to blot
the blood, the sweat, to soothe, to comfort, His profile clear beneath
its whiteness for an instant, and then, as she meant to wipe gently, the
soldiers drew her back and she stood, holding up the veil for all to see
in both hands.

His Face was on it!

"Memnoch, look!" I cried. "Look at the veil of Veronica!"

The face had been transferred, flawlessly and perfectly, sealed
into the cloth as no painter could have rendered it, as if the veil had
taken the perfect print of Christ's countenance like a modern camera,
only even more vivid, as if a thin layer of flesh had made the flesh in
the picture, and blood had made the blood, and the eyes had blazed
into the cloth their duplicates, and the lips had left their incarnate
imprint as well.

Everyone nearest it saw the likeness. People shoved and pushed
against us to see it. Screams rose.

The hand of Christ slipped loose from the rope that bound it to
the crossbar, and reached out and took the veil from her, and she fell
on her knees crying, her hands to her face. The soldiers were

stupefied, confused, shoving at the crowd with their elbows, snarling at
those who pressed in.

Christ turned and handed the veil to me.

"Take it, keep it! Hide it, take it with you!" He whispered.

I grasped the cloth, terrified that I might damage or smear the
image. Hands reached for it. I closed it tight against my chest.

"He's got the veil," someone shouted. I was shoved backwards.

"Get the veil!" An arm struggled to snatch it from me.

Those who lunged towards us were blocked suddenly by those
who came from behind to see the spectacle and shoved us

thoughtlessly out of their path. We were pushed backwards by the sheer
swell, tumbling through the filthy ragged bodies, through the din
and the shouts and the curses.

All sight of the procession was gone; the cries of "the veil" were
hopelessly distant.

I folded it, tight, and turned and ran.

I didn't know where Memnoch was; I didn't know where I was
going. I ran down the narrow street and through another and

another and another, people streaming by me, indifferent to me, on
the way to the crucifixion, or simply trudging their accustomed
path.

My chest burnt from my running, my feet were bruised and torn, I
tasted His blood again and saw the Light in a blinding flash. Unable
to see, I clutched the cloth. I lifted it and shoved it inside my robe and
clutched it tight there. No one would get it. No one.

A terrible wailing came from my lips. I looked upwards. The sky
shifted; the blue sky over Jerusalem, the sand-filled air shifted; the
whirlwind had mercifully surrounded me, and the Blood of Christ
sank into my chest and my heart, circling my heart, the Light filling
my eyes, both my hands pressed tight to the folded veil.

The whirlwind carried me in silence and stillness. With all my will
I forced myself to look down, to reach inside my robe, which was not
my robe now, but my coat and my shirt--the suit I'd worn in the
snows of New York, and under the cloth of my vest, next to my shirt,
I felt the folded veil! It seemed the wind would tear off my clothes! It

would rip the hair from my head. But I clutched tight to the folded
cloth that lay safe against my heart.

Smoke rose from the earth. Cries and screams again. Were they
more terrible than the cries surrounding Christ on the road to
Calvary?

With a hard, shattering blow, I struck a wall and a floor. Horses
went by, the hooves barely missing my head, sparks flying from the
stones. A woman lay bleeding and dying before me, her neck

obviously broken, blood pouring out of her nose and ears. People fled in
all directions. Again the smell of excrement mixed with blood.

It was a city at war, the soldiers looting and dragging the innocents

from out of archways, screams echoing as if off endless ceilings,
the flames coming so close they singed my hair.

"The veil, the veil!" I said, and felt it with my hand, secure, still
tucked between my vest and shirt. A soldier's foot came up and
kicked the side of my face hard. And I went sprawling on the stones.

I looked up. I wasn't in a street at all. I was in a huge domed
church, with gallery upon gallery of Roman arches and columns. All
around me, against the glitter of gold mosaics, men and women were
being cut down. Horses were trampling them. The body of a child
struck the wall above me, the skull crushed and the tiny limbs

dropping like debris at my feet. Horsemen slashed at those fleeing, with
broadswords hacking through shoulders and arms. A violent explosion

of flames made it as light as midday. Through the portals men
and women fled. But the soldiers went after them. Blood soaked the
ground. Blood soaked the world.

All around and high above, the golden mosaics blazed with faces
which seemed now transfixed in horror as they beheld this slaughter.
Saints and saints and saints. Flames rose and danced. Piles of books
were burning! Icons were smashed into pieces, and statuary lay in
heaps, smoldering and blackened, the gold gleaming as it was eaten
by the flames.

"Where are we!" I cried out.

Memnoch's voice was right beside me. He was sitting, collected,
against the stone wall.

"Hagia Sophia, my friend," he said. "It's nothing, really. It's only
the Fourth Crusade."

I reached out with my left hand for him, unwilling to let go of the
veil with my right.

"What you see is the Roman Christians slaughtering the Greek
Christians. That's all there is to it. Egypt and the Holy Land have for
the moment been forgotten. The Venetians have been given three
days to loot the city. It was a political decision. Of course they were
all here to win back the Holy Land, where you and I have lately been,
but the battle wasn't in the cards, and so the authorities have let the
troops loose on the town. Christian slaughters Christian. Roman
against Greek. Do you want to walk outside? Would you like to see
more of it? Books by the millions are being lost now forever.

Manuscripts in Greek and Syriac and Ethiopian and Latin. Books of God
and books of men. Do you want to walk among the convents where
the nuns are being dragged out of their cells by fellow Christians and
raped? Constantinople is being looted. It's nothing, believe me,
nothing at all."

I lay against the ground, crying, trying to close my eyes and not
see, but unable not to see--flinching at the clang of the horses'
hooves so perilously close, choking on the reek of the blood of the
dead baby who lay against my leg heavy and limp like something wet
from the sea. I cried and cried. Near me lay the body of a man with
his head half severed from his neck, the blood pooling on the stones.
Another figure tumbled over him, knee twisted, bloody hand grasping

for anything that would give him purchase, and finding only the
naked pink child's body which he threw aside. Its little head was now
nearly broken off.

"The veil," I whispered.

"Oh, yes, the precious veil," he said. "Would you like a change of
scenery? We can move on. We can go to Madrid and treat ourselves
to an auto-da-fe, do you know what that is, when they torture and
burn alive the Jews who won't convert to Christ? Perhaps we should
go back to France and see the Cathars being slaughtered in the

Languedoc? You must have heard those legends when you were growing
up. The heresy was wiped out, you know, the whole heresy. Very
successful mission on the part of the Dominican Fathers, who will
then start on the witches, naturally. There are so many choices.
Suppose we go to Germany and see the martyrdom of the

Anabaptists. Or to England to watch Queen Mary burn those who had
turned against the Pope during the reign of her father, Henry. I'll tell
you an extraordinary scene that I have often revisited. Strasbourg,
1349. Two thousand Jews will be burned there in February of that

year, blamed for the Black Death. Things like that will happen all
over Europe.. .."

"I know the history," I cried, trying to catch my breath. "I know!"

"Yes, but seeing it is a little different, isn't it? As I said, this is
small potatoes. All this will do is divide Greek and Roman Catholics
forever.

"And as Constantinople weakens, then the new People of the
Book, the Moslems, will pour past the weakened defenses into
Europe. Do you want to see one of those battles? We can go directly
to the twentieth century if you like. We can go to Bosnia or

Herzegovina, where Moslems and Christians are fighting now. Those
countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, are names on the lips of people
today in the streets of New York.

"And while we are considering all the People of the Book--

Moslems, Jews, Christians--why not go to southern Iraq and listen to the
cry of the starving Kurds whose marshes have been drained and
whose people are being exterminated? If you want, we could just

concentrate on the sack of holy places--mosques, cathedrals, churches.
We could use that method to travel right up to the present time.

"Mind you, not one suggestion I've made has involved people
who don't believe in God or Christ. People of the Book, that's what
we're talking about, the Book which starts with the One God and
keeps changing and growing.

"And today and tonight, documents of inestimable value go up in
flames. It is the unfolding of Creation; it is Evolution; it is sanctified
suffering on somebody's part surely, because all these people you see
here worship the same God."

I made no answer.

Mercifully his voice stopped, but the battle didn't. There was an
explosion. The flames roared so high that I could see the saints on
the very dome. In one flash the entire magnificent scope of the

basilica blazed around me--its great oval, its rows upon rows of columns,
the great half-arches supporting the dome above. The light dimmed,
exploded again, as cries rang out with renewed vigor.

Then I closed my eyes and lay still, ignoring the kicks and the feet
that even ran over me, crushing down on my back for a moment as
they moved on. I had the veil and I was lying there, still.

"Can hell be worse than this?" I asked. My voice was small and I
didn't think he could hear me over the noise of battle.

"I actually don't know," he said, in the same intimate tone as if
whatever bound us together carried our messages between each other
effortlessly.

"Is it Sheol?" I asked. "Can souls get out?"

He didn't answer.

"Do you think I would wage this battle with Him on any terms if
souls couldn't?" he asked, as if the very idea of an eternal hell

offended him.

"Get me out of here, please," I whispered. My cheek was resting
on the stone floor. The stench of the manure of the horses was

mingled with urine and blood. But the cries were the worst. The cries
and the incessant clatter of metal!

"Memnoch, get me out of here! Tell me what this battle is about
between you and Him! Tell me the rules!"

I struggled to sit up, drawing my legs in, wiping at my eyes with
my left hand, the right still clutching the veil. I began to choke on the
smoke. My eyes burned.

"Tell me, what did you mean when you said you needed me, that

you were winning the battle? What is the battle between you and
Him! What do you want me to do? How are you his adversary! What
in the name of God am I supposed to do!"

I looked up. He sat relaxed, one knee up, arms folded, face clear
one moment in a flash of flame and pale the next. He was soiled all
over, and seemed rather limp and in a strange misery of ease. His
expression was neither bitter nor sarcastic, only thoughtful--fixed
with an enduring expression just as the faces on the mosaics were
fixed as they bore lifeless witness to the same events.

"So we pass so many wars? We leave behind so many massacres?
We have passed over so much martyrdom," he said. "But then you do
not lack imagination, Lestat."

"Let me rest, Memnoch. Answer my questions. I am not an angel,
only a monster. Please let's go."

"All right," he said. "We'll go now. You've been brave, actually,
just as I thought you would be. Your tears are plentiful and they come
from the heart."

I didn't answer. My chest was heaving. I held on to the veil. I put
my left hand over my ear. How could I move? Did I expect him to
take us in the whirlwind? Had I limbs any longer that would obey
commands?

"We'll go, Lestat," he said again. I heard the wind rising. It was
the whirlwind, and the walls had already flown backwards. I pressed
my hand against the veil. I heard his voice in my ear:

"Rest now."

The souls whirled around us in the dimness. I felt my head against
his shoulder, the wind ripping at my hair. I closed my eyes and I saw
the Son of God enter a great vast dark and gloomy place. The rays of
Light emanated from his small distinct figure in all directions,

illuminating hundreds of struggling human forms, soul forms, ghost
forms.

"Sheol," I struggled to say. But we were in the whirlwind, and this
was an image against the blackness of my closed eyes only. Again the
Light grew brighter, the rays merging in one great blaze as if I were
in its very presence, and songs rose, louder and clearer, drowning out
the wailing souls around us, until the mingling of wail and song

became the nature of the vision and the nature of the whirlwind. And
they were one.

19



I WAS lying still somewhere, in an open place, on the rocky
ground. I had the veil. I could feel the bulk of it, but I didn't
dare to reach inside and draw it out or examine it.
I saw Memnoch standing some distance away, in full glorified
form, his wings high and stiffly drawn down behind him, and I saw
God Incarnate, risen, the wounds still red on His ankles and on His
wrists, but He had been bathed and cleaned, and His body was on the
same scale as that of Memnoch, that is, greater than human. His
robes were white and fresh and His dark hair still richly colored with
dried blood, but beautifully combed. It seemed more light seeped
through the epidermal cells of His body than it had before His

crucifixion, and He gave off a powerful radiance, which rendered the

radiance of Memnoch slightly dim by comparison. But the two did not
fight each other, and were basically the same kind of light.

I lay there, looking up, and listening to them argue. And only out

of the corner of my eye--before their voices became distinct to me--
did I see this was a battlefield littered with the dead. It wasn't the
same time as the Fourth Crusade. No one had to tell me. This was an
earlier epic, and the bodies wore the armour and the clothes that I
might connect, if asked, to the third century perhaps, though I could
not be certain. These were early, early times.

The dead stank. The air was filled with feasting insects, and even
some lowering, awkward vultures, which had come to tear at the
swollen hideous flesh of the soldiers, and far off, I heard the nasty
argument, in growls and barking--of contending wolves.

"Yes, I see!" declared Memnoch angrily. He was speaking in a
tongue that wasn't English or French, but I understood him

perfectly. "The gateway is open to Heaven for all those who die with
Understanding and Acceptance of the Harmony of Creation and the
Goodness of God! But what about the others! What about the

millions of others!"

"And once again, I ask you," said the Son of God, "why I should
care about the others! Those who die without understanding and

acceptance and knowledge of God. Why? What are they to me?"

"Your Created children, that's what they are! With the capacity
for Heaven if only they could find the way! And the number of the
lost exceeds by billions those few who have the wisdom, the guidance,
the experience, the insight, the gift. And you know it! How can you
let so many vanish into the shadows of Sheol once more, or

disintegrate, or hug the earth becoming evil spirits? Didn't you come to save
them all?"

"I came to save those who would be saved!" He said. "Again, I tell
you it is a cycle, it is Natural, and for each soul that goes now
unimpeded into the Light of Heaven, thousands of others must fail.
Of what value is it to Understand, to Accept, to Know, to See the
Beauty? What would you have me do?"

"Help the souls who are lost! Help them. Don't leave them in the
whirlwind, don't leave them in Sheol struggling for millennia to gain
understanding by what they can still see on Earth! You've made
things worse, that's what you've done!"

"How dare you!"

"You've made it worse! Look at this battlefield, and Your Cross
appeared in the sky before this battle, and now Your Cross becomes
the emblem of the empire! Since the death of the witnesses who saw

your Kisen Body, only a trickle of the dead has gone into the Light
from Earth, and multitudes have been lost in argument, and battle,
and misunderstanding, languishing in darkness!"
"My Light is for those who would receive it."
"That's not good enough!"

God Incarnate struck Memnoch hard across the face. Memnoch
staggered back, wings unfolding, as if reflexively so that he could take
flight. But they settled once again, a few graceful white feathers
swirling in the air, and Memnoch raised his hand to the imprint of
God's hand which blazed on the side of his face. I could see the

imprint of the hand distinctly, blood-red as the wounds in the ankles
and in the hands of Christ.

"Very well," said God Incarnate. "Since you care more for those
lost souls than for your God, let your lot be to collect them! Let
Sheol be your Kingdom! Gather them there by the millions and tutor
them for the Light. I say none shall dissolve or disintegrate beyond
your power to draw them back into being; I say none shall be lost, but
all shall be your responsibility, your students, your followers, your
servants.

"And until such a day as Sheol is empty! Until such a day as all
souls go directly to the Heavenly Gates, you are my Adversary, you
are my Devil, you are Damned to spend no less than one third of your
existence on Earth which you love so much, and no less than one
third in Sheol or Hell, whichever you choose to call it, your

Kingdom. And only now and then by my grace may you come into
Heaven, and see to it that when you do you have your angelic form!
"On the Earth, let them see you as the demon! The Beast God--
the God of the dance and the drink and the feast and the flesh and all
the things you love enough to challenge Me. Let them see you as that,
if you would have power, and your wings shall be the color of soot
and ashes, and your legs shall be as a goat's legs, as if you were Pan
himself! Or as a man only, yes, I give you that mercy, that you may be
a man among them, since you think it is such a worthy enterprise to
be human. But an Angel among them, no! Never!

"You will not use your Angelic form to confuse and mislead them,
to dazzle them or humble them. You and your Watchers did that
enough. But see that when you come through my gates, you are

attired properly for me, that your wings are like snow, and so are your
robes. Remember to be yourself in my realm!"

"I can do it!" Memnoch said. "I can teach them; I can guide them.
You let me run Hell as I choose to run it and I can reclaim them for
Heaven; I can undo all that your Natural Cycle has done to them on

Earth."

"Fine, then, I should like to see you do it!" said the Son of God.
"Send me more souls then, through your purgation. Go ahead.

Increase my Glory. Increase the bene ha elohim. Heaven is endless and
welcomes your efforts.

"But you don't come home forever until the task is finished, until
the passage from Earth to Heaven includes all those who die, or until
the world itself is destroyed--until evolution has unfolded to the
point where Sheol, for one reason or another, is empty, and mark my
words, Memnoch, that time may never come! I have promised no
ending to the unfolding of the universe! So you have a long tenure
among the Damned."

"And on earth? What are my powers? Goat God or Man, what
can I do?"

"What you should do! Warn humans. Warn them so that they
come to me and not to Sheol."

"And I can do that my way? By telling them what a merciless God
you are, and that to kill in your name is wicked, and that suffering
warps and twists and damns its victims more often than redeems
them? I can tell them the truth? That if they would go to you, they
would abandon your religions and your holy wars and your

magnificent martyrdom? They would seek to understand what the mystery
of the flesh tells them, the ecstasy of love tells them? You give me
permission? You give me permission to tell them the truth?"

"Tell them what you will! And in each case that you draw them
away from my churches, my revelations, misunderstood and garbled
though they may be--in every case that you turn them away, you risk
another pupil in your hellish school, another soul which you must
reform. Your hell will be crammed to overflowing!"

"Not through my doings, Lord," Memnoch said. "It will be full
to overflowing, but that will be thanks to you!"

"You dare!"

"Let it unfold, My Lord, as you have said it always should. Only
now I am part of it, and Hell is part of it. And will you give to me
those angels who believe as I do and will work for me, and endure the
same darkness with me?"

"No! I will not give you one angelic spirit! Recruit your helpers
from the earthbound souls themselves. Make those your demons!
The Watchers who fell with you are contrite. I will not give you

anyone. You are an Angel. Stand alone."

"Very well, I stand alone. Hobble me in my earthly form if you
will, but still I will triumph. I will bring more souls through Sheol to
Heaven than you will bring by your direct Gate. I will bring more
reformed souls singing of Paradise than you will ever gather through
your narrow tunnel. It is I who will fill Heaven and magnify your
glory. You will see."

They fell silent, Memnoch in a fury, and God Incarnate in a fury
or so it seemed, the two figures facing each other, both of equal size,
except that Memnoch's wings spread back and out in the semblance
of a form of power, and from God Incarnate came the more powerful,

heartrendingly beautiful Light.

Suddenly, God Incarnate smiled.

"Either way I triumph, don't I?" God asked.

"I curse you!" said Memnoch.

"No, you don't," said God sadly and gently. He reached out and
He touched Memnoch's face and the imprint of His angry hand

vanished off the angelic skin. God Incarnate leant forward and kissed
Memnoch on the mouth.

"I love you, my brave adversary!" He said. "It is good that I made
you, as good as all else I've made. Bring souls to me. You are only
part of the cycle, part of Nature, as wondrous as a bolt of lightning or
the eruption of a great volcano, as a star exploding suddenly, miles
and miles out in the galaxies so that thousands of years pass before
those on earth see its light."

"You're a merciless God," Memnoch said, refusing to give an
inch. "I shall teach them to forgive you what you are--Majestic,

Infinitely Creative, and Imperfect."

God Incarnate laughed softly and kissed Memnoch again on the
forehead.

"I am a wise God and a patient God," He said. "I am the One who
made you."

The images vanished. They did not even fade. They simply

disappeared.

I lay on the battlefield alone.

The stench was a layer of gases hanging over me, poisoning every
breath I drew.

For as far as I could see were dead men.

A noise startled me. The thin, panting figure of a wolf drew near
to me, bearing down on me with its lowered head. I stiffened. I saw its
narrow uptilted eyes as it pushed its snout arrogantly at me. I smelt
its hot, rank breath. I turned my face away. I heard it sniff at my ear,
my hair. I heard a deep growl come out of it. I just shut my eyes and
with my right hand in my coat, I felt the veil.

Its teeth grazed my neck. Instantly, I turned, rose and knocked the
wolf backwards, and sent it tumbling and yelping and finally scuttling
away from me. Off it ran over the bodies of the dead.

I took a deep breath. I realized the sky overhead was the daytime
sky of Earth and I looked at the white clouds, the simple white clouds

and the dim faraway horizon beneath them, and I listened to the
storm of the insects--the gnats and the flies rising and swirling here
and there over the bodies--and the big humpish ugly vultures,
tiptoeing through the feast.

From far away came the sound of human weeping.

But the sky was magnificently clear. The clouds moved so that
they released the sun in all its power, and down came the warmth on
my hands and face, on the gaseous and exploding bodies around me.

I think I must have lost consciousness. I wanted to. I wanted to fall
backwards again on the earth and roll over and lie with my forehead
against it, and slip my hand into my coat and feel that the veil was
there.



2O



THE GARDEN of Waiting. The tranquil and radiant place
before the Heavenly Gates. A place from which souls return
from time to time, when death brings them into it, and they
are then told that it is not the moment, and they can go home again.
In the distance, beneath the shining cobalt sky, I saw the Newly
Dead greet the Older Dead. Gathering after gathering. I saw the

embraces, heard the exclamations. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw
the dizzyingly high walls of Heaven, and Heaven's gates. This time I
saw the angels, less solid than all the rest, chorus after chorus, rnov-

ing through the skies, unbound and dipping down at will into the
little crowds of mortals crossing the bridge. Shifting between

visibility and invisibility, the angels moved, watched, drifted upwards to
fade into the inexhaustible blue of the sky.

The sounds of Heaven were faint and achingly seductive as they
came from beyond the walls. I could close my eyes and almost see the
sapphirine colors! All songs sang the same refrain: "Come in, come
here, come inside, be with us. Chaos is no more. This is Heaven."

But I was far from all this, in a little valley. I sat amid wildflowers,
tiny white and yellow wildflowers, on the grass bank of the stream
which all souls cross to get into Heaven, only here it seemed no more
than any magnificent rushing stream. Or rather, it sang a song that
said--after smoke and war, after soot and blood, after stench and
pain--All streams are as magnificent as this stream.

Water sings in multiple voices as it slides over rocks and down
through tiny gullies and rushes abruptly over rises in the earth so that
it may again tumble in a mingling of fugue and canon. While the
grass bends its head to watch.

I rested against the trunk of a tree, what the peach tree might be if
she bloomed forever, both blossoms and fruit, so that she was never
bare of either, and her limbs hung down not in submission, but with
this richness, this fragrance, this offering, this fusion of two cycles
into one eternal abundance. Above, amid fluttering petals, the supply
of which seemed inexhaustible and never alarming, I saw the fleeting
movement of tiny birds. And beyond that, angels, and angels, and
angels, as if they were made of air, the light luminous glittering

spirits so faint as to vanish at times in one brilliant breath of the sky.

The Paradise of murals; the Paradise of mosaics. Only no form of
art can touch this. Question those who have come and gone. Those
whose hearts have stopped on an operating table, so that their souls
flew to this garden, and then were brought back down into articulate
flesh. Nothing can touch it.

The cool, sweet air surrounded me, slowly removing, layer by
layer, the soot and filth that clung to my coat and my shirt.

Suddenly, as if waking to life again from nightmare, I reached inside

my shirt and drew out the veil. I unfolded it and held it by its two
edges.

The face burned in it, the dark eyes staring at me, the blood as
brilliantly red as before, the skin the perfect hue, the depth almost

holographic, though the whole expression moved very faintly as the
veil moved on the breeze. Nothing had been smeared, torn, or lost.

I felt myself gasp, and my heart speeded dangerously. The heat
flooded to my own face.

The brown eyes were steady in their gaze as they had been at that
moment, not closing for the soft finely woven fabric. I drew the
whole veil close to me, then folded it up again, almost in a panic, and
shoved it tight against my skin this time, inside my shirt. I struggled
to restore all the buttons to their proper holes. My shirt was all right.
My coat was filthy though intact, but all its buttons were gone, even
the buttons that had graced the sleeves and had been no longer of any
use and were merely decorative. I looked down at my shoes; they
were broken and tattered and barely held together anymore. How
strange they looked, how unlike anything I had seen of late, made as

they were of such fancy leather.

Petals fell in my hair. I reached up and brushed loose a small
shower of them, pink and white, as they fell on my pants and shoes.

"Memnoch!" I said suddenly. I looked around me. Where was
he? Was I here alone? Far, far away moved the procession of happy
souls across the bridge. Did the gates open and close or was that an
illusion?

I looked to the left, to a copse of olive trees, and saw standing
beneath it first a figure I didn't recognize, and then realized it was
Memnoch as the Ordinary Man. He stood collected, looking at me,
face grim and set; then the image began to grow and spread, to sprout
its huge black wings, and twisted goat legs, and cloven feet, and the
angel face gleamed as if in living black granite. Memnoch, my

Memnoch, the Memnoch I knew once again clothed as the demon.

I made no resistance. I didn't cover my face. I studied the details
of his robed torso, the way the cloth came down over the hideous
fur-covered legs. The cloven feet dug into the ground beneath him,
but his hands and arms were his own beautiful hands and arms. His
hair was the flowing mane, only jet black. And in all the Garden he
was the only pure absence of color, opaque, or at least visible to me,
seemingly solid.

"The argument is simple," he said. "Do you have any trouble now
understanding it?"

His black wings came in close, hugging the body, lower tips
curved forward, near his feet, so that they did not scrape the ground.

He walked towards me, a horrid animalian advance carrying the
overwhelmingly perfect torso and head, a hobbled being, thrust into
a human conception of evil.

"Right you are," he said, and slowly, almost painfully, seated himself,

the wings once more fading because they could never have allowed

it; and there he sat, the goat god glaring at me, hair tangled,
but face as serene as always, no harsher, no sweeter, no wiser or more
cruel, because it was graven out of blackness instead of the shimmering

image of flesh.
He began to talk:

"You see, what He actually did was this. He said over and over to
me, 'Memnoch, everything in the universe is used ... made use of...

you understand?' And He came down, suffered, died, and rose from
the Dead to consecrate human suffering, to enshrine it as a means to
an end; the end was illumination, superiority of the soul.

"But the myth of the suffering and Dying God--whether we
speak of Tammuz of Sumer or Dionysus of Greece, or any other
deity the world over, whose death and dismemberment preceded
Creation--this was a Human idea! An idea conceived by Humans
who could not imagine a Creation from nothing, one which did not
involve a sacrifice. The Dying God who gives birth to Man was a
young idea in the minds of those too primitive to conceive of

anything absolute and perfect. So He grafted himself--God Incarnate--
upon human myths that try to explain things as if they had meaning,
when perhaps they don't."
"Yes."

"Where was His sacrifice in making the world?" Memnoch asked.
"He was not Tiamat slain by Marduk. He is not Osiris chopped into
pieces! What did He, Almighty God, give up to make the material
universe? I do not remember seeing anything taken from Him. That
it came out of Him, this is true, but I do not remember Him being
lessened, or decimated, or maimed, or decreased by the act of

Physical Creation! He was after the Creation of the planets and the stars,
the same God! If anything He was increased, or seemed to be in the
eyes of His angels, as they sang of new and varying aspects of His
Creation. His very nature as Creator grew and expanded in our

perceptions, as evolution took His path.

"But when He came as God Incarnate, He imitated myths that
men had made to try to sanctify all suffering, to try to say that history
is not horror, but has meaning. He plunged down into man-made

religion and brought His Divine Grace to those images, and He

sanctified suffering by His death, whereas it had not been sanctified in His
Creation, you understand?"

"It was a bloodless Creation and without sacrifice," I said. My
voice was dull but my mind had never been more alert. "That is what
you're saying. But He does believe suffering is sacrosanct or can be.
Nothing is wasted. All things are used."

"Yes. But my position is that He took the awful flaw in His cosmos

s--human pain, misery, the capacity to suffer unspeakable

injustice--and He found a place for it, using the worst superstitious

beliefs of Men."

"But when people die--what happens? Do His believers find the
tunnel and the Light and Loved ones?"

"In the places where they have lived in peace and prosperity,

generally, yes. They rise without hate or resentment directly into
Heaven. And so do some who have no belief in Him whatsoever or
His teachings.

"Because they too are Illuminated."

"Yes. And this gratifies Him and expands His Heaven, and
Heaven is ever enhanced and enriched by these new souls from all
quarters of the world."

"But Hell is also full of souls."

"Hell so far exceeds the size of Heaven as to be laughable. Where
on the planet has He ruled where there has not been self-sacrifice,
injustice, persecution, torment, war! Every day my confused and

embittered pupils are increased in number. There are times of such

privation and horror that few souls ascend to Him in peace at all."

"And He does not care."

"Precisely. He says that suffering of sentient beings is like decay;
it fertilizes the growth of their souls! He looks from His lofty height
upon a massacre and He sees magnificence. He sees men and women
never loving so much as when they lose their loved ones, never loving
so much as when they sacrifice for others for some abstract notion of
Him, never loving so much as when the conquering army comes
down to lay waste the hearth, divide the flock, and catch up the

bodies of infants on their spears.

"His justification? It's in Nature. It's what He created. And if battered

and embittered souls must fall into my hands first and suffer my
tutelage in Hell, so much the greater will they become!"

"And your job grows heavier all the time."

"Yes and no. I am winning. But I have to win on His terms. Hell is
a place of suffering. But let's go over it carefully. Look at it; what He
did:

"When He threw open the gates of Sheol, when He went down
into the gloom of Sheol, like the god Tammuz into the Sumerian
hell, the souls flocked to Him and saw His redemption and saw the
wounds in His Hands and Feet, and that He should die for them gave
a focus to their confusion, and of course they flooded with Him into
the Gates of Heaven--for everything they had suffered seemed

suddenly to have a meaning.

"But did it have a meaning? Can you give a sacred meaning to the
cycle of Nature simply by immersing your Divine Self in it? Is that
enough?

"What about the souls who shrink in bitterness, who never flower
as the heels of warriors walk over them, what about the souls warped
and twisted by unspeakable injustice, who go into eternity cursing,
what about a whole modern world which is personally angry with
God, angry enough to curse Jesus Christ and God Himself as Luther
did, as Dora did, as you have done, as all have done.

"People in your modern world of the late twentieth century have
never stopped believing in Him. It's that they hate Him; they resent
Him; they are furious with Him. They feel. . . they feel. . . ."

"Superior to Him," I said quietly, keenly aware that he was saying
now some of the very words I myself had said to Dora. We hate God.
We hate Him.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, you feel superior to Him."

' 'And you feel superior.''

"Yes. I can't show them His wounds in Hell. That isn't going to
win them over, these victims, these grieving, furious sufferers of pain
beyond His imagining. I can just tell them that it was the Dominican
Fathers in His Name who burnt their bodies alive, thinking them
witches. Or that when their families and clans and villages were

annihilated by Spanish soldiers, it was all right because His bleeding
Hands and Feet were on the banner which the men carried to the
New World. You think that would get somebody out of Hell, finding
out that He let it happen? And lets other souls ascend without suffering

 one drop of pain?

"If I were to begin their education with that image--Christ has
Died for You--how long do you think the Hellish education of a soul
would take?"

"You haven't told me what Hell is or how you do teach there."

"I run it my way, of that I can assure you.

"I have put my throne above His throne--as the poets and the
redactors of Scripture say it--because I know that for souls to attain
Heaven, suffering was never necessary, that full understanding and
receptivity to God never required a fast, a scourging, a crucifixion, a
death. I know that the human soul transcended Nature, and needed
no more than an eye for beauty to do this! Job was Job before he
suffered! Just as after! What did the suffering teach Job that he didn't
know before?"

"But how do you make up for it in Hell?"

"I don't begin by telling them that for Him, the human eye expresses

the perfection of creation when it looks with horror upon a
maimed body, just as it expresses the perfection of Creation when it
looks in peace upon a garden.

"And He persists that it's all there. Your Savage Garden, Lestat, is
His version of Perfection. It all evolved from the same seed, and I,
Memnoch, the Devil, fail to see it. I have an angel's simple mind."

"How do you fight Him in Hell and still win Heaven for the
damned, then? How?"

"What do you think Hell is?" he asked. "You must have a surmise
by now."

"First of all, it is what we call purgatory," I said. "No one is
beyond redemption. I understood from your argument on the

battlefield. So what must the souls of Hell suffer to be fully qualified for
Heaven?"

"What do you think they should suffer?"

"I don't know. I'm frightened. We're about to go there, aren't
we?"

"Yes, but I'd like to know what you expect."

"I don't know what to expect. I know that creatures who have
robbed others of life--as I have--should suffer for it."

"Suffer or pay for it?"

"What would be the difference?"

"Well, suppose you had a chance to forgive Magnus, the vampire
who brought you into this, suppose he stood before you and said,
'Lestat, forgive me for taking you out of your mortal life and putting
you outside Nature, and making you drink blood to live. Do with me
what you will so that you can forgive me.' What would you do?"

"You chose a bad example," I said. "I don't know that I haven't

forgiven him. I don't think he knew what he was doing. I don't care
about him. He was mad. He was an Old World monster. He started
me on the Devil's Road on some warped, impersonal impulse. I don't
even think about him. I don't care about him. If he has to seek

 forgiveness from someone, then let it be from the mortals he killed
when he was in existence.

"In his tower was a dungeon filled with slain mortal men--young
men who resembled me, men he'd brought there to test, apparently,
and then killed rather than initiated. I remember them still. But it's
just one form of massacre--heaps of bodies of young men, all with
blond hair and blue eyes. Young beings robbed of potential and of
life itself. His forgiveness would have to come from all those whom
he robbed of life in any fashion--he would have to gain the

 forgiveness of each one."

I was beginning to tremble again. My anger was so familiar to me.
And how angry I had become many a time when others had accused
me of my various flamboyant attacks upon mortal men and women.
And children. Helpless children.

"And you?" he said to me. "For you to get into Heaven, what do
you think would be necessary?"

"Well, apparently working for you will do it," I said defiantly. "At
least I think it would from what you've said to me. But you haven't
really told me precisely what you do! You've told me the story of
Creation and the Passion, of Your Way and His Way, you've

described how you oppose Him on Earth, and I can imagine the

ramifications of that opposition--we are both sensualists, we are both
believers in the wisdom of the flesh."
"Amen to that."

"But you have not gotten to a full explanation of what you do in
Hell. And how can you be winning? Are you sending them speedily to
His arms?"

"Speedily and with powerful acceptance," he said. "But I am not

speaking to you now about my offer to you, or my Earthly opposition
to Him; I'm asking you this: Given all that you have seen--What do
you think Hell should be!"

"I'm afraid to answer. Because I belong there."

"You're never really that afraid of anything. Go on. Make a statement.

 What do you think Hell ought to be, what should a soul have
to endure to be worthy of Heaven? Is it enough to say 'I believe in
God'; Jesus, 'I believe in Your Suffering'? Is it enough to say, 'I'm

sorry for all my sins because they offend thee, my God?' Or to say,
'I'm sorry because when I was on Earth, I really didn't believe in You
and now I know it's true, and wham, bang, one look at this infernal
place, and I'm ready! I wouldn't do anything the same way, and
please let me into Heaven quick.' "

I didn't answer.

"Should everyone just go to Heaven?" he asked. "I mean, should

everyone go?"

"No. That can't be," I said. "Not creatures like me, not creatures
who have tortured and killed other creatures, not people who have
deliberately duplicated through their actions punishments as severe
as disease, or fire, or earthquake--that is, not people who have done
wrongs that hurt others just as much or worse than natural disasters.
It can't be right for them to go to Heaven, not if they don't know, not
if they don't understand, not if they haven't begun to comprehend
what they've done! Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel,
selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven. I don't want to meet the

unreformed monsters of Earth in Heaven! If it's that easy, then the

 suffering of this world is damned near.. .."
"Damn near what?
"Unforgivable," I whispered.

"What would be forgivable--from the point of view of a soul who
died in pain and confusion? A soul who knew that God didn't care?"
"I don't know," I said. "When you described the elect of Sheol,
the first million souls you took through the Heavenly Gates, you
didn't speak of reformed monsters; you spoke of people who had

 forgiven God for an unjust world, didn't you?"

"That's right, I did. That's what I found. That's what I took with
me with certainty to Heaven's Gates, yes."

"But you spoke entirely as if these people had been victims of
God's injustice. You didn't touch upon the souls of the guilty? Those
like me--the transgressors, those who were the doers of injustice?"
"Don't you think they have their story?"

"Some may have their excuses, engrained in their stupidity and
their simplicity and their fear of authority. I don't know. But many,
many evildoers must be just like me. They know how bad they are.
They don't care. They do what they do because ... because they love
it. I love making vampires. I love drinking blood. I love taking life. I
always have."

"Is that really why you drink blood? Just because you love it? Or

isn't it because you were made into a perfect preternatural

mechanism for craving blood eternally, and thriving only on blood--
snatched out of life and made a gleaming Child of the Night by an
unjust world that cared no more for you and your destiny than it
cared for any infant who starved that night in Paris?"

"I don't justify what I do or what I am. If you think I do, if that's
why you want me to run Hell with you, or accuse God . . . then you
picked the wrong person. I deserve to pay for what I've taken from
people. Where are their souls, those I've slain? Were they ready for
Heaven? Have they gone to Hell? Did those souls loosen in their
identity and are they still in the whirlwind between Hell and Heaven?
Souls are there, I know, I saw them, souls who have yet to find either
place."

"Yes, true."

"I could have sent souls into the whirlwind. I am the embodiment
of greed and cruelty. I devoured the mortals I've killed like so much
food and drink. I cannot justify it."

"Do you think I want you to justify it?" Memnoch asked. "What
violence have I justified so far? What makes you think I would like
you if you justified or defended your actions? Have I ever defended
anyone who made anyone else suffer?"
"No, you haven't."
"Well, then?"

"What is Hell, and how can you run it? You don't want people to
suffer. You don't even seem to want me to suffer. You can't point to
God and say He makes it all Good and Meaningful! You can't. You're
His opposition. So what is Hell?"

"What do you think it is?" he asked me again. "What would you

morally settle for ... before rejecting me out of hand! Before fleeing
from me. What sort of Hell could you believe in and would you--if
you were in my place--create?"

"A place where people realize what they've done to others; where
they face every detail of it, and realize every particle of it, so that they
would never, never do the same thing again; a place where souls are
reformed, literally, by knowledge of what they'd done wrong and
how they could have avoided it, and what they should have done.
When they understand, as you said of the Elect of Sheol, when they
can forgive not only God for this big mess, but themselves for their
own failures, their own horrible angry reactions, their own spite and

meanness, when they love everyone totally in complete forgiveness,
then they would be worthy of Heaven. Hell would have to be where they
see the consequences of their actions, but with a full merciful comprehension
of how little they themselves knew."

"Precisely. To know what has hurt others, to realize that you
didn't know, that nobody gave you the knowledge, yet still you had
the power! And to forgive that, and forgive your victims, and forgive
God and forgive yourself."

"Yes. That would be it. That would terminate my anger, my

outrage. I couldn't shake my fist anymore, if only I could forgive God
and others and myself."

He didn't say anything. He sat with his arms folded, eyes wide, his
dark smooth brow barely touched with the moisture of the air.

"That's what it is, isn't it?" I asked fearfully. "It's . . . it's a place
where you learn to understand what you've done to another being...
where you come to realize the suffering you've inflicted on others!"

"Yes, and it is terrible. I created it and I run it to make whole
again the souls of the just and the unjust, those who had suffered and
those who had done cruelty. And the only lesson of that Hell is
Love."

I was frightened, as frightened as I had been when we went into
Jerusalem.

"He loves my souls when they come to Him," said Memnoch.
"And He sees each one as a justification of His Way!"

I smiled bitterly.

"War is magnificent to Him, and disease is like the color purple in
His eyes, and self-sacrifice seems to Him a personal magnification of

His Glory! As if He's ever done it! He tries to overwhelm me with
numbers. In the name of the cross, more injustice has been

perpetrated than for any other single cause or emblem or philosophy or
creed on Earth.

"And I empty Hell so fast, soul by soul, by speaking truth about
what humans suffer and humans know and what humans can do that
my souls go flooding through His gates.

"And who do you think comes into Hell feeling most cheated?
Most angry and unforgiving? The child who died in a gas chamber in
an extermination camp? Or a warrior with blood up to his elbows
who was told that if he exterminated the enemies of the state he
would find his place in Valhalla, Paradise, or Heaven?"

I didn't answer. I was quiet, listening to him, watching him.

He sat forward, commanding my attention even more deliberately,

and as he did he changed, changed before my eyes from the
Devil, goat-legged, cloven-hoofed beast-man, to the angel,

Memnoch, Memnoch in his loose and unimportant robe, his fair eyes
beaming at me beneath his golden scowling brows.

"Hell is where I straighten things out that He has made wrong,"
he said. "Hell is where I reintroduce a frame of mind that might have
existed had suffering never destroyed it! Hell is where I teach men
and women that they can be better than He is.

"But that's my punishment, Hell--for arguing with Him, that I
must go there and help the souls to fulfill their cycle as He sees it,
that I must live there with them! And that if I don't help them, if I
don't school them, they may be there forever!

"But Hell is not my battlefield.

"The earth is my battlefield. Lestat, I fight Him not in Hell but
on Earth. I roam the world seeking to tear down every edifice He has
erected to sanctify self-sacrifice and suffering, to sanctify aggression
and cruelty and destruction. I lead men and women from churches
and temples to dance, to sing, to drink, to embrace one another with
license and love. I do everything I can to show up the lie at the heart
of His religions! I try to destroy the lies He's allowed to grow as the
Universe Unfolds Itself.

"He is the only one who can enjoy suffering with impunity! And
that's because He's God and He doesn't know what it means and He
never has known. He's created beings more conscientious and loving

than Himself. And the final victory over all human evil will come
only when He is dethroned, once and for all, demystified, ignored,
repudiated, thrown aside, and men and women seek for the good and
the just and the ethical and the loving in each other and for all."

"They're trying to do that, Memnoch! They are!" I said. "That's
what they mean when they say they hate Him. That's what Dora
meant when she said 'Ask Him why He allows all this!' When she
made her hands into fists!"

"I know. Now, do you want to help me fight Him and his Cross or
not?

"Will you go with me from Earth to Heaven to that filthy Hell of
painful recognition, filthy with its obsession with His suffering! You
will not serve me in one place or the other or the other. But in all
three. And like me, you may soon come to find Heaven just about as

unbearable in its pitch as Hell. Its bliss will make you eager to heal
the evil He has done, you will seek Hell to work on those tortured
confused souls, to help them up from the morass and into the Light.
When you're in the Light you can't forget them! That's what it
means to serve me."

He paused, then he asked:

"Do you have the courage to see it?"

"I want to see it."

"I warn you, it's Hell."

"I am just beginning to imagine. ..."

"It won't exist forever. The day will come when either the world
itself is blown to pieces by His human worshippers or when all who
die are Illuminated and surrender to Him, and go straight into His
arms.

"A perfect world, or a world destroyed, one or the other--

someday will come the end of Hell. And then I shall go back to Heaven,
content to stay there for the first moment of my existence, since the
beginning of Time."

"Take me with you into Hell, please. I want to see it now."

He reached out and stroked my hair, put his two hands on the
sides of my face. They felt evenly warm and caressing. A sense of
tranquility came over me.

"So many times in the past," he said, "I almost had your soul! I
saw it almost spring loose from your body, and then the strong

preternatural flesh, the preternatural brain, the hero's courage, would
hold together the entire monster and the soul would flicker and blaze
inside, beyond my grasp. And now, now I risk plunging you into it
before you need to go, plunging you into it when you can choose to
go or come, in the hope that you can endure what you see and hear
and return and be with me and help me."

"Was there ever a time when my soul would have soared to
Heaven, past you, past the whirlwind?"

"What do you think?"

"I remember . . . once, when I was alive. ..."

"Yes?"

"A golden moment, when I was drinking and talking with my
good friend, Nicolas, and we were in an inn together in my village in
France. And there came this golden moment when everything
seemed tolerable and independently beautiful of any horror that
could be or ever had been done. Just a moment, a drunken moment. I

described it once in writing; I tried to reinvoke it. It was a moment in
which I could have forgiven anything, and given anything, and

perhaps when I didn't even exist: when all I saw was beyond me, outside
me. I don't know. Maybe if death had come at that very moment--"

"But fear came, fear when you realized that even if you died you
might not understand anything, that there might be nothing. ..."

". . . yes. And now I fear something worse. That there is something,

certainly, and it may be worse than nothing at all."

"You're right to think so. It doesn't take much of a thumbscrew or
the nails or the fire to make men and women wish for oblivion. Not
much at all. Imagine, to wish that you had never lived."

"I know the concept. I fear knowing the feeling again."

"You're wise to fear, but you've never been more ready for what I
have to reveal."

21



THE WIND swept the rocky field, the great centrifugal force
dissolving and releasing those souls who struggled to be free
of it at last as they assumed distinct human shape and
pounded on the Gates of Hell, or wandered along the impossibly
high walls, amid the flicker of fires within, reaching out for and

imploring each other.

All voices were lost in the sound of the wind. Souls in human
shape fought and struggled, others roamed as if in search of

something small and lost and then lifted their arms and let the whirlwind
once again take hold of them.

The shape of a woman, thin and pale, reached out to gather a
wandering, weeping flock of baby souls, some not old enough yet to
walk on two legs. The spirits of children wandered, crying piteously.

We drew near the gates, near narrow broken arches rising as black
and fine as onyx worked by medieval craftsmen. The air was filled
with soft and bleating cries. Everywhere spirit hands reached to take
hold of us; whispers covered us like the gnats and flies of the

battlefield. Ghosts tore at my hair and coat.

Help us, let us in, damn you, curse you, cursed, take me back, free me, I

curse you forever, damn you, help me, help ... a rising roar of

opprobrium.

I struggled to clear the way for my eyes. Tender faces drifted
before me, mouths issuing hot and mournful gasps against my skin.

The gates weren't solid gates at all but gateways.

And beyond stood the Helpful Dead, seemingly more solid, only
more vividly colored and distinct, but diaphanous still, beckoning to
the lost souls, calling to them by name, howling over the fierce wind
that they must find the way inside, that this was not Perdition.

Torches were held high; lamps burnt atop the walls. The sky was
torn with streaks of lightning, and the great mystic shower of sparks
that comes from cannons both modern and ancient. The smell of
gunpowder and blood filled the air. Again and again the lights flared
as if in some magical display to enchant a Chinese court of old, and

then the blackness rolled back, thin and substanceless and cold all
around us.

"Come inside," sang the Helpful Dead, the well-formed, well-
proportioned ghosts--ghosts as determined as Roger had been, in
garbs of all times and all nations, men and women, children, old ones,
no body opaque, yet none weak, all reaching past us into the valley
beyond, trying to assist the struggling, the cursing, the foundering.
The Helpful Dead of India in their silk saris, of Egypt in cotton
robes, of kingdoms long gone bequeathing jeweled and magnificent
courtly garments; costumes of all the world, the feathered confections

we call savage, the dark robes of priests, self-conceptions of all
the world, from the crudest to the most magnificent.

I clung to Memnoch. Was this beautiful, or was it not hideous,
this throng of all nations and times? The naked, the black, the white,
the Asian, those of all races, reaching out, moving with confidence
through the lost and confused souls!

The ground itself hurt my feet; blackened, rocky marl strewn with
shells. Why this? Why?

In all directions slopes rose or gently fell away, to run into sheer
cliffs rising beyond or opening into chasms so deep and filled with
smoky dissolving gloom they seemed the abyss itself.

Doorways flickered and flashed with light; stairways wound
precipitously up and down the stark, steep walls, leading out of sight,
to vales I could only glimpse, or to gushing streams golden and
steaming and red with blood.

"Memnoch, help me!" I whispered. I dared not let go of the veil.

1 couldn't cover both ears. The howls were picking at my soul as if
they were axes that could tear away pieces of it. "Memnoch, this is
unbearable!"

"We will all help you," cried the Helpful Ghosts, a cluster of
them closing in on all sides to kiss and to embrace me, their eyes wide
with concern. "Lestat has come. Lestat is here. Memnoch's brought
him back. Come into Hell."

Voices rose and fell and overlapped, as if a multitude said the

Rosary, each from a different starting point, voices having become
chant.

"We love you."

"Don't be afraid. We need you."

"Stay with us."

"Shorten our time."

I felt their soft sweet soothing touch even as the lurid light terrified

me, and the explosions blazed across the sky and the smell of
smoke rose in my nostrils.

"Memnoch!" I clung to his blackened hand as he pulled me along,
his profile remote, his eyes seeming to sternly survey his kingdom.

And there below us, as the mountain was cleft, lay the plains without

end, covered with wandering and arguing dead, with the weeping
and lost, and seeking, and afraid, with those being led and gathered
and comforted by the Helpful Ghosts, and others running headlong
as if they could escape, only to find themselves tumbling through the
spirit multitudes, in hopeless circles.

From where did this hellish light come, this magnificent and relentless

illumination? Showers of sparks, sudden bursts of burning
red, flames, comets arching over the peaks.

Howls rose, echoing off the cliffs. Souls wailed and sang. The
Helpful Dead rushed to aid the fallen to their feet, to usher those
who would at last come to this or that stairs or gate or cave mouth or
pathway.

"I curse Him, I curse Him, I curse Him!" It echoed off the mountains

and through the valleys.

"No justice, not after what was done!"

"You cannot tell me...."

"... someone has to make right...."

"Come, I have your hand," Memnoch said, and on he walked, the
same stern look on his face as he led me quickly down an echoing
stairs, steep, dangerously narrow, and winding about the cliff.

"I can't bear this!" I cried out. But my voice was snatched away.
My right hand plunged into my coat again to feel the bulk of the veil,
and then I reached out for the pitted and crumbling wall. Were these
carvings in the rocks? Were these places where other hands had

clawed or tried to climb? The screaming and the wails blotted out my
reason. We had come again to yet another valley.

Or was it a world, as vast and complex in its own right as Heaven?
For here were myriad palaces and towers and arches as before, in

colors of sombre brown, and burnt sienna, and ochre, and burnished if
not blackened gold, and rooms filled with spirits of all ages and nations

again, engaged in argument, discourse, struggle, or even song,
some holding each other like newfound friends in the midst of woe,
uniformed soldiers of ancient wars and modern wars, women in the
shapeless draped black of the Holy Land, the souls of the modern
world in their store-made finery now covered with dust and soot, so
that all that blazed was muted in the blaze, as if no color could shine
forth itself in its more baleful glory. They wept and patted each
other's faces, and others nodded as they screamed their wrath, fists

clenched.

Souls in ragged monks' habits of coarse brown, nuns with the stiff
white wimples intact, princes in puffed sleeves of velvet, naked men
who walked as though they had never known clothes, dresses of

gingham and old lace, of modern glittering silks and chemical fabrics
sheer and thick, soldiers' olive green coats, or armour of gleaming
bronze, peasants' tunics of crude cloth, or fine tailored wool suits of
modern fashion, gowns of silver; hair of all colors tangled and

mingled in the wind; faces of all colors; the old knelt with hands clasped,
bald heads pink and tenderly wrinkled at the neck, and the thin white
soulbodies of those who had starved in life drank out of the streams as
dogs might do it, with their mouths, and others lay back, eyes half
shut against the rocks and gnarled trees, singing and dreaming, and

praying.

My eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom with every second.
More details leapt into my vision, more comprehension clarified each
square inch or foot of what I beheld! For around each true soul, a
dozen figures that danced or sang or wailed were no more than

images projected from that soul and to that soul for it to commune with.

The horrid figure of a woman consumed in flames was no more
than a chimera for the howling souls who plunged into the fire, seeking

to free her from the stake, to stamp out the flames that ate her

r, 10 rescue ner rrom ner unspeakable agony! It was the Witches

Place. They were all burning! Save them! Oh, God, her hair is on
fire!

Indeed the soldiers stoking the cannon and covering their ears
now as they made the shot were but an illusion for those true legions
weeping on their knees, and a hulk of a giant wielding an ax was but a
phantom for those who stared at him in recognition and stupification,

seeing in him themselves.
"I cannot... I cannot look!"

Monstrous images of murder, torture, flashed before me so hot
they burnt my face. Phantoms were dragged to their deaths in pots of
boiling pitch, solders sank on their knees, eyes wide, a prince of some
lost Persian kingdom screamed and leapt into the air, his arms out,
his black eyes full of reflected fire.

The wails, the whispers, took on the urgency of protest, and question,

and discovery. All around were particular voices if only one had
the courage to hear, to pick the themes fine as steel thread from the
raging dirge.

"Yes, yes, and I thought, and I knew . . ."
"... my darlings, my little ones ..."
"... into your arms, because you didn't, you never . .."
"... and I all the time I thought and you .. ."
"Love you, love you, love you, yes, and always . . . and no, you
didn't know. You didn't know, you didn't know."

". . . and always thought that it was what I should, but I knew, I
felt..."

"... the courage to turn and say that it wasn't. .."

"We didn't know! We didn't know."

It was blended finally into that one incessant cry.

We Did Not Know!

Before me the wall of a mosque rose, crowded with those screaming

and covering their heads as the plaster came down upon them,
the roar of the artillery deafening. Phantoms all.

We didn't know, we didn't know, the voices of the souls wailed.
The Helpful Dead gathered on their knees, tears streaming down
their faces ... "Yes, we understand, you understand."

"And that year, just to go home then and be with ..."

"Yes.. ."

I fell forward, my foot striking a rock, and pitching me into the

middle of a swarm of soldiers on their hands and knees, weeping as
they clutched at one another and the wraithlike phantoms of the

conquered, the slain, the starved, all rocking and crying together in one

voice.

There came a chain of explosions, each more violent than the one
before, such as only the modern world can make. The sky was light as
day if day could be colorless and merciless and then dissolve into
flickering darkness.
Darkness Visible.

"Help, help me out of this," I cried, but they didn't seem to hear
or notice my screams, and when I looked for Memnoch, I saw only a
pair of elevator doors slide open suddenly, and before me loomed a
great modern room full of elaborate chandeliers and buffed floors
and carpets without end. The hard polished glitter of our machine-
made world. Roger came running towards me.

Roger, in all his dandified finery of purple silk jacket and tightly
tailored pants, of perfumed hair, and manicured hands.

"Lestat," he cried. "Terry is here, they are here. Lestat." He
clung to my coat, the very eyes I'd seen in the ghost and in the human
in my arms, staring at me, breath on my face, the room dissolving
into smoke, the dim spirit of Terry with her bright bottle-blond hair,
throwing her arms about his neck, her face open with amazement,
her pink lips speechless, Memnoch's wing touching down, shutting
me off from them, the floor cracking open.

"I wanted to tell him about the veil. ..." I insisted. I struggled.
Memnoch held me.

"This way!"

The heavens opened with another fiery shower of sparks and the
clouds burst above, clashing together, the lightning touching down
over our heads, and on came a thunderous deluge of cold and chilling

rain.

"Oh God, oh, God, oh God!" I cried. "This cannot be your

school! God! I say no!"

"Look, lookl"

He pointed to the figure of Roger on his hands and knees, turning
like a dog, amongst those he'd slain, men imploring him with

outstretched arms, women tearing open the cloth of their dresses to
show the wounds, the chatter of voices rising perilously as if the
sound of Hell itself would suddenly explode, and Terry--the very

same Terry-with her her arms still around his neck. Roger lay on the
ground, his shirt torn open, his feet naked, the jungle rising around
him. Shots rang out in the dark. Crack of automatic guns spitting
their numberless fatal bullets in unstinted fury. The lights of a house
flickered among vines, amid monstrous trees. Roger turned to me,
trying to rise, sinking back on his leg, crying, the tears streaming
down his face.

"... and each and every act, in its own way, Lestat, and I didn't
know ... I didn't know...."

Distinct and ghastly and demanding, he rose before me only to
recede into the countless others.

In all directions I saw them. The others.

Scenario lapping into scenario, ashen colors brightening, or dying
in a murky haze, and rising here and there from the horrid furious
turbulent fields of Hell, the Purified Souls. There came the beat of
drums, there came the piercing shrieks of some unendurable torture;
a mass of men in crude white robes shoved into the blazing logs, their
arms appealing to the souls who shrank and howled and screamed in
remorse, in awful recognition.

"My God, my God, we are both forgiven!"
What was this sudden whirl of the filthy, stinking wind?
Upward souls went with arms out, garments suddenly stripped or
faded away into the indistinguishable robes of the Saved, the Tunnel
opening.

I saw the Light, saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel
towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round, and widening
as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the
songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not
made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal
songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty

piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place.

"I didn't know, I didn't know!" The voices rose. The Tunnel
closed.

I stumbled, turning this way and that. Here soldiers tortured a
young woman with their spears, while others wept and sought to
throw themselves between her writhing form and her tormentors.
Here babies ran on chubby legs with little hands outstretched to be
gathered in the arms of weeping fathers, mothers, murderers.

And pinned to the ground, his body covered in armour, his beard

long and red, his mouth open in a howl, lay one cursing God cursing
the Devil and cursing all Fate. "7 will not, I will not, I will not!"

"And who stands behind those doors," said a sombre Helpful
Ghost, her beautiful hair shimmering around her in ethereal

whiteness, her soft hand on my face. "See there--" The double doors
about to open, the walls lined with books. "Your dead, my beloved,
your dead, all those you've killed!"

I stared at the soldier on his back, roaring from his red-bearded
mouth, "Never, never will I say it was right, never, never...."

"Not my dead," I cried. I turned and ran. I stumbled and fell
again on my face in the soft press of bodies. Beyond, the ruins of a
city withered in fire; walls crumbled on all sides, the cannon exploded
again, and once more, a noxious gas filled the air, people fell coughing

and choking for breath, the chorus of i DID NOT KNOW blended all
in one instant of order that was worse than none!

"HELP ME!" I cried and cried. I never knew such release in
screaming, such pure and abandoned cowardice, to shout to High
Heaven in this Godforsaken place where cries were the very air itself,
and no one heard, no one but the smiling Helpful Dead.

"Learn, my dearest."

"Learn." Whispers like kisses. A wraith, an Indian man, turbaned
head, darkened face. "Learn, my young one."

"Look up, see the blossoms, see the sky. ..." A Helpful Ghost
danced in circles, her white dress passing in and out of the clouds and
spurts of soot and filth, her feet sinking into the marl but turning still
with certainty.

"Don't fool me, there is no garden here!" I shouted. I was on my
knees. My clothes were torn, but in my shirt I had the veil! I bad it.

"Take my hands...."

"No, let me go!" I slipped my hand in my coat to cover the veil.
Staggering towards me a dim figure rose, hand outstretched, "You,
you cursed boy, you filthy boy, you in the Paris streets, like Lucifer
Himself full of golden light, you! Think what you did to me!"

The tavern took form, the boy falling backwards from the blow of
my mortal fist, the barrels going over and the growl of the disheveled
and drunken men who closed in on me.

"No, stop it," I roared. "Get him away from me. I don't remember

him. I never killed him. I don't remember, I tell you, I can't. . ..

"Claudia, where are you? Where are you, the one I wronged!
Claudia! Nicolas, help me!"

But were they here, lost in this torrent, or gone, long gone
through the Tunnel to the blazing glory above, to the blessed songs
that wove the silence into their very chords and melodies? Pray gone,
pray there, above.

My own cries had lost all dignity and yet how defiant they
sounded in my own ears. "Help me, someone! Help!"

"Must you die first to serve me?" Memnoch asked. He rose before
me, the granite angel of darkness, wings outstretched. Oh yes, blot
out the horrors of Hell, please, even in this most monstrous of forms!
"You scream in Hell as you sang in Heaven. This is my kingdom, this
is our work. Remember the Light!"

I fell back on my shoulder, hurting my left arm, but refusing to
pull my right hand free of the veil. I saw the blue sky above in a flash
and the peach blossoms blowing from the green leaves of the tree
even as the luscious fruit itself clung to the branches.

Smoke stung my eyes. A woman on her knees said to me:

"I know now that no one can forgive me but myself, but how
could I have done those things to her, and she so small, how could
I...."

"I thought it was the other things," whispered a young girl who
had hold of my neck, her nose touching mine as she spoke, "but you
know that kindness, that just holding his hand and he...."

"Forgive!" Memnoch said, and parted the way, gently pushing the
souls aside. But the crowd crushed in; pale figures raced over me as if
towards a respite I couldn't see, or some source of alarm.

"Forgive!" Memnoch whispered.

He snatched up the monk covered with blood, his brown robes
shredded, his feet blistered and burnt from deliberate fire. "In your
heart, the power!" said Memnoch, "Be better than Him, better than
Him, set Him an example."

"I love... even Him...." came the whisper from the soul's lips as
it suddenly dissolved. "Yes, He couldn't have meant for us to suffer
so... He couldn't."

"Did he pass the test!" I demanded. "Did that soul pass muster in
this hellish place, what he just said? Was that enough! Ignorance of
God, was that enough! Or is he here scrambling somewhere else in
all this filth, or did the Tunnel take him up! Memnoch! Help me."

Everywhere, I looked for the monk with the burnt feet. I looked
and looked.

An explosion ripped the towers of the city and they tumbled. Was
that the tolling of a bell! The huge mosque had collapsed. A man with
a gun fired on those who fled. Veiled women cried out as they fell to
the ground.

Louder and louder pealed the bell.

"Good God, Memnoch, a bell tolling, listen, more than one bell."

"The bells of Hell, Lestat, and they are not tolling for anyone!
They are ringing for us, Lestat!"

He clutched my collar as if he'd lift me off my feet.

"Remember, your own words, Lestat, Hell's Bells, you hear the
call of Hell's Bells!"

"No, let me go. I didn't know what I was saying. It was poetry. It
was stupidity. Let me go. I can't stand it!"

Around the table under the lamp a dozen people argued over the
map, some embracing each other as they pointed to various areas
marked in dull colors. A head was turned. A man? A face. "You!"

"Let me go." I turned and was thrown against a wall of

bookshelves, spines gleaming in the light, books tumbling, striking me on
the shoulders, dear God, my limbs couldn't take any more. My fist
went through the glittering globe of the world, mounted on its fancy
arc of wood. A child with bent knees sat staring up at me with empty
eye sockets.

I saw the doorway and ran.

"No, let me go. I cannot. I will not. I will not."

"Will not?" Memnoch caught me by my right arm, dark scowl
looming over me, the wings flexing and rising, blotting out the light
again as they closed to enfold me as though I were his own. "Will you
not help me to empty this place, to send these souls to Heaven?"

"I can't do it!" I cried. "I won't do it!" Suddenly my fury rose. I
felt it obliterate all fear and trembling and doubt; I felt it rush
through my veins like molten metal. The old anger, the resolve of
Lestat. "/ will not be pan of this, not for you, not for Him, not for them,
not for anyone!"

I staggered backwards, glaring at him. "No, not this. Not for a
God as blind as He, and not for one who demands what you demand
of me. You're mad, the two of you! I won't help you. I won't. I
refuse."

"You would do this to me, you would abandon me?" he cried,

stricken, dark face convulsed with pain, tears shimmering on his
shining black cheeks. "You would leave me with this, and not lift
your hands to help me after all that you have done, Cain, slayer of
Brothers, slayer of the Innocents, you cannot help me--?"

"Stop it, stop it. I won't. I can't support this. I can't help this to
happen! I cannot create this! I cannot endure it! I cannot teach in this
school!"

My throat was hoarse and burning, and the din seemed to swallow
my words but he heard them.

"No, no, I will not, not this fabric, not these rules, not this design,
never, never, never!"

"Coward," he roared, the almond-shaped eyes immense, the fire
flickering on the hard black forehead and cheeks. "I have your soul in
my hands, I hand you your salvation at a price that those who have
suffered here for millennia would beg for!"

"Not me. I won't be part of this pain, no, not now, not ever... Go
to Him, change the rules, make it make sense, make it better, but not
this, this is beyond human endurance, this is unfair, unfair, unfair,
this is unconscionable."

"This is Hell, you fool! What did you expect? That you'd serve
the Lord of Hell while suffering nothing?"

"I won't do it to them!" I screamed. "To hell with you and with
me." My teeth were clenched. I seethed and stormed with my own
conviction. "I will not participate in this with them! Don't you see? I
cannot accept this! I cannot commit to it. I cannot abide it. I'm

leaving you now, you gave me the choice, I'm going home! Release me!"
I turned.

He grabbed my arm again and this time the fury in me knew no
bounds. I hurled him backwards over the dissolving and tumbling
souls. The Helpful Dead turned here and there to witness and cry
out, their pale oval faces full of alarm and distress.

"You go now," Memnoch swore, even as he lay still on the ground
where I had thrown him. "And as God is my witness you come back
my pupil and my student on your knees at death, and never again this
offer to make you my prince, my helper!"

I froze, staring over my shoulder at him, at his fallen figure, his
elbow digging into the soft black underdown of his wing as he rose to

his cloven feet and came at me again, in that hobbled monstrous
walk.

"Do you hear me!"

"I cannot serve you!" I roared at the top of my lungs. "I cannot
do it."

Then I turned for the last time, knowing I would not look back,
with only one thought in my mind, Escape! I ran and ran, sliding
down the loose marl and the slippery bank, and stomping through
the shallow streams and through the clumps of astonished Helpful
Dead, and over wailing souls.

"Where is the stairs? Where are the gates? You can't deny it to
me. You have no right. Death has not taken me!" I shouted but I
never looked back and I never stopped running.

"Dora! David, help me!" I called.

And there came Memnoch's voice almost at my ear. "Lestat, don't
do this thing, don't go. Don't return. Lestat, don't do it, it's folly,
don't you see, please, for the love of God, if you can love Him at all
and love them, help me!"

"NO!" I turned and gave him a great shove, seeing him stumble
backwards down the steep stairs, the dazed figure amid the huge

fluttering wings awkward and grotesque. I pivoted, turning my back on
him. Ahead, I could see the light at the very top, the open door. ·

I ran for it.

"Stop him!" Memnoch cried. "Don't let him out. Don't let him
take the veil with him."

"He has Veronica's veil!" cried one of the Helpful Dead lunging
at me through the gloom.

My foot nearly slipped, yet on I ran, step after step, bounding, legs
aching. I could feel them closing in, the Helpful Dead.

"Stop him."

"Don't let him go!"

"Stop him!"

"Get the veil from him," Memnoch cried, "inside his shirt, the
veil, the veil must not go with him!"

I waved my left hand, driving the Helpful Dead in a soft shapeless
clatter against the cliff. High above loomed the door. I could see the
light. I could see the light and I knew it was the light of Earth,

brilliant and natural.

Memnoch's hands clamped on my shoulders and he spun me
around.

"No, you don't!" I snarled. "God forgive me. You forgive me, but
you're not taking me or the veil!" I roared.

I raised my left arm to stave off his reaching, clawing hands, and
shoved him again, but against me he flew as if his wings now came to
his aid, and he almost pressed me back against the steps. I felt his
fingers plunge into my left eye! I felt them drive open the lids,

smashing my eye back into my head in an explosion of pain, and then the
gelatinous mass slipped down my cheek, through my trembling
fingers.

I heard Memnoch gasp.

"Oh no. ..." he wailed, his fingers to his lips, staring in horror at
the same object at which I stared.

My eye, my round blue eye, shivering and gleaming on the stair.

All the Helpful Dead stared at the eye.

"Step on it, crush it," cried one of the Helpful Dead and rushed
forward. "Yes, crush it, step on it, smear it!" cried another, swooping
down upon the sight.

"No, don't do that, don't! Stop, all of you!" Memnoch wailed.
"Not in my kingdom, you will not!"

"Step on the eye!"

That was my moment, that was my chance.

I flew upwards, feet scarcely touching the steps, I felt my head and
shoulders plunge through the light and the silence and into the snow.

And I was free.




I WAS on earth. My feet struck the frozen ground, the slippery sludge
of snow.

I was running, one-eyed and bleeding, with the veil in my shirt,
running through the driving storm, through the drifts of snow, my
cries echoing up the buildings I knew, the dark, obdurate skyscrapers
of the city I knew. Home, Earth.

The sun had only just set behind the dark gray veil of the descending

storm, the winter twilight eaten up in darkness by the whiteness
of the snow.

"Dora, Dora, Dora!"

On and on I ran.

Shadowy mortals slouched through the storm; shadowy humans
hurried through small slippery paths, automobiles crawled through
the blizzard, beams searching the rising, collecting whiteness. The
snow was in such thick drifts that I fell and then scrambled to my
knees; yet on I went.

The arches and the spires of St. Patrick's rose before me.

St. Patrick's.

And beyond, the wall of the Olympic Tower driving upwards, its
glass like polished stone, seemingly invincible, its height monstrous
as if like the Tower of Babel it was trying to reach directly to Heaven.

I stopped, my heart about to burst.

"Dora! Dora!"

I reached the doors of the lobby, the dizzying lights, the slick
floors, the press of mortals, solid mortals everywhere, turning to see
what moved too swiftly to be seen. Woozy music and lulling lights,
the gush of artificial warmth!

I found the stairwell and rose like a cinder going up a chimney in
my flight, and crashed through the wooden door of the apartment,
staggering into the room.

Dora.

I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs
again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side
of her like goblins out of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand
and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark
wonder.

I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then
turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly
with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp
tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye
had been.

Oh, the horror on Armand's face. In his old finery, he stood,
heavy shopwindow velvet coat, modern lace, boots spiffed like glass.
His face, the Botticelli angel still, torn with pain as he looked at me.

And David, the pity, the sympathy. Both figures transfixed in one,
the elder Englishman and the young fine body into which he'd been
locked, smothered in the tweed and cashmere garments of winter.

Monsters clothed as men but earthbound, real!

And the shining gamine figure of my Dora, my slender, yearning
Dora with her huge black eyes.

"Darling, darling," Dora cried, "I am here!" Her small warm
arms went round my aching shoulders, oblivious to the snow falling
from my hair, from my clothes. I went down on my knees, my face

buried in her skirts, near to the blood between her legs, the blood of
the living womb, the blood of Earth, the blood of Dora that the body
could give, and then I fell backwards onto the floor.

I could neither speak nor move. I felt her lips touch mine.

"You're safe now, Lestat," she said.

Or was it David's voice?

"You're with us," she said.

Or was it Armand?

"We're here."

"Look, look at his feet. He's got only one shoe left."

".. . at his coat, torn . . . the buttons are gone."

"Darling, darling." She kissed me.

I rolled her over gently, careful not to press her with my weight,
and I pulled up her skirt, and I lay my face against her hot naked
thighs. The smell of the blood flooded my brain.

"Forgive me, forgive me," I whispered, and my tongue broke
through the thin cotton of her panties, tearing the cloth back from
the soft down of pubic hair, pushing aside the bloodstained pad she
wore, and I lapped at the blood just inside her young pink vaginal
lips, just coming from the mouth of her womb, not pure blood, but
blood from her, blood from her strong, young body, blood all over
the tight hot cells of her vaginal flesh, blood that brought no pain, no
sacrifice, only her gentle forbearance with me, with my unspeakable
act, my tongue going deep into her, drawing out the blood that was
yet to come, gently, gently, lapping the blood from the soft hair on
her pubic lips, sucking each tiny droplet of it.

Unclean, unclean. They cried on the road to Golgotha, when
Veronica had said: "Lord, I touched the hem of your garment and my
hemorrhage was healed." Unclean, unclean.

"Unclean, thank God, unclean," I whispered, my tongue licking
at the secret bloodstained place, taste and smell of blood, her sweet
blood, a place where blood flows free and no wound is made or ever
needs to be made, the entrance to her blood open to me in her
forgiveness.

Snow beat against the glass. I could hear it, smell it, the blinding
white snow of a terrible blizzard for New York, a deep white winter,

freezing all beneath its mantle.

"My darling, my angel," she whispered.

I lay panting against her. The blood was all gone inside me now. I
had drawn all of it from her womb that was meant to come. I had
licked away even what had collected on the pad that had lain against
her skin.

She sat up, modestly covering me with her crossed arms, bending
forward as if to shield me from their eyes--David's, Armand's--
never once having pushed at me, or cried out, or recoiled, and she
held my head now as I cried.

"You're safe," she said again. They said we were safe. They all
said Safe, as if it had a magic charm. Safe, safe, safe.

"Oh, no," I cried. I wept. "No, none of us are safe. And we will
never be, never, ever again, ever. ..."



22



I WOULDN'T let them touch me. I mean, I wouldn't give up
anything just yet, not my torn shoe, nothing. Keep away your
combs, your towels, your comfort. I clung to the secret inside
my coat.

A shroud, that's what I asked for, some heavy thing to wrap about
myself. They found it, a blanket, soft, woolen, didn't matter.

The place was almost empty.

They had been steadily moving Roger's treasures south. They
told me. Mortal agents had been entrusted with this task, and most of
the statues and the icons were gone down to the orphanage in New
Orleans, and housed there in the empty chapel I had seen, where only
the Crucified Christ had been. Some omen!

They had not quite finished these tasks. A few precious things remained,

a trunk or two, boxes of papers. Files.

I'd been gone the space of three days. The news was filled with
tales of Roger's death. Though they would not tell me how it had
been discovered. The scramble for power in the world of the dark,
criminal drug cartels was well under way. The reporters had stopped

calling the TV station about Dora. No one knew about this place. No
one knew she was here.

Few knew about the big orphanage to which she planned to return,

when all Roger's relics had been moved.

The cable network had canceled her show. The gangster's daughter

preached no more. She had not seen or spoken to her followers.

In newspaper columns and in bites on television, she learnt that the
scandal had made her vaguely mysterious. But in the main, she was
considered a dead end, a small-time television evangelist with no
knowledge of her father's doings.

But in the company of David and Armand, she had lost all contact
with her former world, living here in New York, as the worst winter
in fifty years came down, a snow from Heaven--living here among
the relics and listening to them, their soft comfort, their wondrous
tales, uncertain of what she meant to do, believing still in God. . . .

All that was the latest news.

I took the blanket from them and walked, one shoe gone, through
the flat.

I went into the small room. I wrapped the blanket around me. The
window here was covered. No sun would come.

"Don't come near me," I said. "I need to sleep a mortal's sleep. I
need to sleep the night through and the day and then I'll tell you
everything. Don't touch me, don't come near me."

"May I sleep in your arms?" Dora asked, a white and vibrant
blood-filled thing standing in the doorway, her vampiric angels

behind her.

The room was dark. Only a chest was left with some relics in it.
But there were statues still in the hall.

"No. Once the sun rises, my body will do whatever it will to

protect itself from any mortal intrusion. You can't come with me into
that sleep. It's not possible."

"Then let me lie with you now."

The other two stared over her shoulders at my empty left eyelids

fluttering painfully against each other. There must have been blood.
But our blood is staunched fast. The eye had been torn out by the
root. What was its root? I could still smell the soft delicious blood I
had from her. It laid on my lips, her blood.

"Let me sleep," I said.

I locked the door and lay on the floor, knees drawn up, warm and
safe in the thick folds of the blanket, smelling the pine needles and the
soil that clung to my clothes, and the smoke, and the bits and pieces
of dried excrement, and the blood, of course, the human blood, blood
from battlefields, and blood from Hagia Sophia when the dead infant
had fallen on me, and the smell of the horse manure, and the smell of
the marl of Hell.

All of it was wrapped up with me in this blanket, my hand on the
bulk of the unfolded veil against my bare chest.

"Don't come near me!" I whispered one more time for the ears of
the immortals outside, who were so confounded and confused.

Then I slept.

Sweet rest. Sweet darkness.

Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and
sleep and sleep forever.



23



I REMAINED unconscious the full twenty-four hours, waking
only as the sun died behind the winter sky the next evening.
There was a fine outlay of my own good clothes for me displayed

on the wooden chest, and a pair of my own shoes.

I tried to imagine who had made this selection from amongst all
that David had earlier sent here for me from the nearby hotel. Surely
he was the logical choice. And I smiled, thinking of how often in our
lives David and I had been utterly entangled in the adventure of

clothes.

But you see, if a vampire leaves out details like clothes, the story
doesn't make sense. Even the most grandiose mythic characters--
if they are flesh and blood--do have to worry about the latchets on

sandals.

It struck me with full force that I was back from the realm where
clothes changed shape through the will of the clothed. That I was
covered in dirt and did have only one shoe.

I stood up, fully alert, removed the veil carefully without unfolding

it or chancing to look at it, though I thought I could see the dark
image through the cloth. I removed all my garments with care, and
then stacked them together on the blanket, so that not one pine

needle would be lost that didn't have to be lost. And then I went into the
nearby bathroom--the customary chamber of tile and ferocious
steam--and bathed like a man being baptized in the Jordan. David
had laid out for me all the requisite toys--combs, brushes, scissors.
Vampires need almost nothing else, really.

All the while I had the door of the bathroom open. Had anyone
dared to step into the bedroom I would have leapt from the steamy
downpour and ordered that person out.

At last I myself emerged, wet and clean, combed my hair, dried
carefully, and put on all of my own fresh garments from the inside
out, that is from silk shorts and undershirt and black socks, to the
clean wool pants, shirt, vest, and double-breasted blazer of a blue
suit.

Then I bent down and picked up the folded veil. I held it, not
daring to open it.

But I could see the darkness on the other side of the fabric. This
time I was sure. I put the veil inside my vest, buttoning the vest tight.

I looked in the mirror. It was a madman in a Brooks Brothers suit,
a demon with wild, frenzied blond locks, his collar open, staring with
one horrible eye at himself in the mirror.

The eye, good God, the eye!

My fingers moved up to examine the empty socket, the slightly
wrinkled lids that tried to close it off. What to do, what to do. If only
I had a black patch, a gentleman's patch. But I didn't.

My face was desecrated by the missing eye. I realized I was shaking

violently. David had left for me one of my broad, scarflike ties, of
violet silk, and this I wrapped around my collar, making it stand up
like a collar of old, very stiff, the scarf surrounding it with layer after

layer as one might see in some portrait of Beethoven.

I tucked the tails of the scarf down into the vest. In the mirror, my
eye burnt violet with the violet of the scarf. I saw the blackness on the
left side, made myself look at it, rather than simply compensate for it.

I slipped on my shoes, stared back at the ruined clothes, picked up
a few bits of dust and dried leaf, and laid all that carefully on the
blanket, so that as little as possible would be lost, and then I went
outside into the hallway.

The flat was sweetly warm, and full of a popular but not

overpowering incense--something that made me think of Catholic churches
of old, when the altar boy swung the silver censer at the end of his
chain.

As I came into the living room, I saw the three of them very distinctly,

ranged about the cheerfully lighted space, the even illumination

making a mirror of the nightwalls beyond which the snow
continued to descend upon New York. I wanted to see the snow. I

walked past them and put my eye up against tne glass. The whole roof
of St. Patrick's was white with fresh snow, the steep spires shaking off
as much as they could, though every speck of ornament was decorated

in white. The street was an impassable valley of white. Had they
ceased to plow it?

People of New York moved below. Were these only the living? I
stared with my right eye. I could see only what seemed to be the living.

I scanned the roof of the church in a near panic, suddenly, expecting

to see a gargoyle wound into the artwork and discover that
the gargoyle was alive and watching me.

But I had no feeling of anyone except those in the room, whom I
loved, who were patiently waiting upon me and my melodramatic
and self-indulgent silence.

I turned around. Armand had once again decked himself out in
high-fashion velvet and embroidered lace, the kind of "romantic new
look" one could find at any of the shops in the deep crevasse below
us. His auburn hair was free and uncut and hung down in the way it
used to do in ages long past, when as Satan's saint of the vampires of
Paris, he would not have allowed himself the vanity to cut one lock of
it. Only it was clean, shining clean, auburn in the light, and against

the dark blood-red of his coat. And there were his sad and always
youthful eyes looking at me, the smooth boyish cheeks, the angel's
mouth. He sat at the table, reserved, filled with love and curiosity,
and even a vague kind of humility which seemed to say:

Put aside all our disputes. I am here for you.

"Yes," I said aloud. "Thank you."

David sat there, the robust brown-haired young Anglo-Indian,
juicy and succulent to behold as he had been since the night I made
him one of us. He wore his English tweed, with leather-patched

elbows, and a vest as tightly buttoned as my own, and a cashmere scarf
protecting his neck from the cold to which perhaps, for all his
strength, he wasn't yet really accustomed.

It's strange how we feel cold. You can ignore it. And then very
suddenly, you can take it personally.

My radiant Dora sat next, opposite Armand, and David sat facing
me between them. This left me the chair with its back to the glass and
the sky if I wanted it. I stared at it. Such a simple object, a black

lacquered chair, Oriental design, vaguely Chinese, mostly functional,
obviously expensive.

Dora rose, her legs seeming to unfold beneath her. She wore a
thin, long gown of burgundy silk, just a simple dress, the artificial
warmth surrounding her obviously and keeping her safe. Her arms
were bare and white. Her face was filled with worry, her cap of shiny
black hair making two points on either side of her face, mid-cheek,
the fashionable bob of eighty years ago and of today. Her eyes were
the owl eyes, and full of love.

"What happened, Lestat?" she said. "Oh, please, please tell us."

"Where is the other eye?" asked Armand. It was just the sort of
question he would ask. He had not risen to his feet. David, the

Englishman, had risen, simply because Dora had risen, but Armand sat
there looking up at me, asking the direct question. "What happened
to it? Do you still have it?"

I looked at Dora. "They could have saved that eye," I said, quoting

her story of Uncle Mickey and the gangsters and the eye, "if only
those gangsters hadn't stepped on it!"

"What are you saying?" she said.

"I don't know if they stepped on my eye," I said, irritated by the
tremour in my voice. The drama of my voice. "They weren't

gangsters, they were ghosts, and I fled, and I left my eye. It was my only
chance. I left it on the step. Maybe they smashed it flat, or smeared it
like a blob of grease, I don't know. Was Uncle Mickey buried with
his glass eye?"

"Yes, I think so," Dora said in a daze. "No one ever told me."

I could sense the other two scanning her, Armand scanning me,
their picking up the images of Uncle Mickey, kicked half to death in
Corona's Bar on Magazine Street, and the gangster with the pointed
shoe squashing Uncle Mickey's eye.

Dora gasped.

"What happened to you?"

"You've moved Roger's things?" I asked. "Almost all of them?"

"Yes, they're in the chapel at St. Elizabeth's, safe," Dora said. "St.
Elizabeth's." That was the name of the orphanage in its lifetime. I
had never heard her say it before. "No one will even think to look for
them there. The press doesn't care about me anymore. His enemies
circle his corporate connections like vultures; they zero in on his
bank accounts and floating bank drafts, and safe-deposit boxes,

murdering for this or that key. Among his intimates, his daughter has
been declared incidental, unimportant, ruined. No matter."

"Thank God for that," I said. "Did you tell them he was dead?
Will it all end soon, his story, and what part you have to play in it?"
"They found his head," said Armand quietly.
In a muted voice he explained. Dogs had dragged the head from a
heap of garbage, and were fighting over it beneath a bridge. For an
hour, an old man watched, warming himself by a fire, and then

gradually he realized it was a human head that the dogs were fighting over
and gnawing at, and they brought the head to the proper authorities,
and through the genetic testing of his hair and skin discovered that it
was Roger. Dental plates didn't help. Roger's teeth had been perfect.
All that remained was for Dora to identify it.
"He must have wanted it found," I said.

"What makes you say that?" asked David. "Where have you
been?"

"I saw your mother," I said to Dora. "I saw her bottle-blond hair

and her blue eyes. It won't be long before they're in Heaven."

"What on earth are you saying, my darling?" she asked. "My
angel? What are you telling me?"

"Sit down, all of you. I'll tell you the whole tale. Listen to everything

I say without interrupting. No, I don't want to sit, not with my
back to the sky and the whirlwind and the snow and the church. No,
I'll walk back and forth, listen to what I have to tell you.

"Remember this. Every word of this happened to me! I could have
been tricked. I could have been deceived. But this is what I saw with
my eyes, and heard with my ears!"

I told them everything, from the very, very beginning, some
things each of them had already heard, but which all of them together
had never heard--from my first fatal glimpse of Roger and my love
for his brazen white-toothed smile and guilty, gleaming black eyes--
all the way to the moment I had pitched myself through the door of
the flat last night.

I told them everything. Every word spoken byMemnoch and God
Incarnate. Everything I had seen in Heaven and in Hell and on
Earth. I told them about the smell and the colors of Jerusalem. I told
them and told them and told them....

The story devoured the night. It ate the hours, as I paced, raving,
repeating those parts I wanted to get exactly right, the stages of

Evolution which had shocked the angels, and the vast libraries of Heaven,
and the peach tree with both bloom and fruit, and God, and the sol-

dier lying on his back in Hell, refusing to give in. I described to them
the details of the interior of Hagia Sophia. I talked about the naked
men on the battlefield. Over and over I described Hell. I described
Heaven. I repeated my final speech, that I couldn't help Memnoch, I
couldn't teach in this school!

They stared at me in utter silence.

"Do you have the veil?" Dora asked, her lip quivering. "Do you
still have it?"

So tender was the tilt of her head, as if she'd forgive me in an
instant if I said, No, I lost it in the street, I gave it to a beggar!

"The veil proves nothing," I said. "Whatever is on the veil means
nothing! Anyone who can make illusions like that can make a veil!
It proves neither truth nor lies, neither trickery nor witchery nor

theophany."

"When you were in Hell," she asked, so kindly, so gently, her
white face shining in the warmth of the lamp, "did you tell Roger you
had the veil?"

"No, Memnoch wouldn't let me. And I only saw him for a minute,
you see, one second it was one way, and then it was another. But he's
going up, I know he is, he's going because he's clever and he's figured
it out, and Terry will go with him! They will be in the arms of God
unless God is a cheap magician and all of this was a lie, but a lie for
what? For what purpose?"

"You don't believe what Memnoch asked of you?" asked Armand.

Only at this moment did I realize how shaken he was, how like the
boy he must have been when made a vampire, how young and full of
earthly grace. He wanted it to be true!

"Oh, yes, I do!" I said. "I believed him, but it could all be a lie,
don't you see?"

"Didn't you feel it was true," asked Armand, "that he needed
you?"

"What?" I demanded. "Are we back to that, arguing whether or
not when we serve Satan we serve God? You and Louis arguing about
that in the Theater of the Vampires, if we are children of Satan, are
we children of God?"

"Yes!" said Armand. "Did you believe him?"

"Yes. No. I don't know," I said. "I don't know!" I shouted it. "I
hate God as much as I ever did. I resent them both, damn them!"

"And Christ?" Dora asked, her eyes filled with tears. "Was He
sorry for us?"

"Yes, in His own way. Yes. Perhaps. Maybe. Who knows! But He
didn't go through the Passion as a man alone, as Memnoch had
begged Him to do, He carried His cross as God Incarnate. I tell you
their rules are not our rules! We have conceived of better rules! We
are in the hands of mad things!"

She broke into soft, sorrowful cries.

"Why are we never, never to know?" she cried.

"I don't know!" I declared. "I know they were there, that they
appeared to me, that they let me see them. And still I don't know!"

David was scowling, scowling rather like Memnoch could scowl,
deep in thought. Then he asked:

"And if it was all a series of images and tricks, things drawn from
your heart and your mind, what was the purpose? If it was not a
straight proposition that you become his lieutenant or prince, then
what could have been the motive?"

"What do you think?" I asked. "They have my eye! I tell you not
a word of it is a lie from me. They've got my bloody eye, damn it. I
don't know what it was all about, unless it was true, absolutely true to
the last syllable."

"We know you believe it's true," said Armand. "Yes, you believe
it completely. You bore witness. I believe it's true. All of my long
wandering through the valley of death, I've believed it was true!"

"Don't be a common fool," I said bitterly.

But I could see the flame in Armand's face; I could see the ecstasy
and the sorrow in his eyes. I could see the entire galvanization of his
form with belief, with conversion.

"The clothes," said David thoughtfully, calmly, "in the other
room. You've gathered them all up, and the evidence will tell some
scientific tale."

"Stop thinking like a scholar. These are Beings who play at a
game only they can understand. What is it to them to make pine

needles and dirt cling to my clothes, but yes, I saved those relics, yes, I've
saved everything but my goddamned eye, which I left on the steps of
Hell so I could get out. I, too, want to analyze the evidence on those
clothes. I, too, want to know what forest it was where I walked and
listened to him!"

"They let you get out," said David.

"If you could have seen his face when he saw that eye on the step,"
I said.

"What was it in his face?" Dora asked.

"Horror, horror that such a thing had happened. You see, when
he reached for me, I think that his two fingers, like this, went into the
eye socket, overshooting the mark. He had merely meant to grab me
by the hair. But when his fingers plunged into the socket, he tried in
horror to draw them out, and out came the eye, spilling down my
face, and he was horror-stricken!"

"You love him," said Armand in a hushed voice.

"I love him. Yes, I think he's right about everything. But I don't
believe in anything!"

"Why didn't you accept?" asked Armand. "Why didn't you give
him your soul?"

Oh, how innocent he sounded, how it came from his heart, ancient

and childlike, a heart so preternaturally strong that it had taken
hundreds of years to render it safe to beat in the company of mortal
hearts.

Little Devil, Armand!

"Why didn't you accept!" he implored.

"They let you escape, and they had a purpose," said David. "It
was like the vision I saw in the cafe."

"Yes, and they had a purpose," I said. "But did I defeat their

purpose?" I looked to him for the answer, he the wise one, the old one in
human years. "David, did I defeat them when I took you out of life?
Did I defeat them somehow some other way? Oh, if only I could

remember, their voices in the beginning. Vengeance. Someone said
that it wasn't simple vengeance. But it was those fragments. I can't
remember now. What's happened! Will they come back for me?"

I fell to crying again. Stupid. I fell to describing Memnoch again,
in all his forms, even the Ordinary Man, who had been so

extraordinary in his proportions, the haunting footsteps, the wings, the smoke,
the glory of Heaven, the singing of angels ... "Sapphiric ..." I whispered.

"Those surfaces, all the things the prophets saw and sprinkled
throughout their books with words like topaz and beryl and fire and
gold and ice and snow, and it was all there ... and He said, 'Drink my
Blood!' I did it!"

They drew close to me. I'd scared them. I'd been too loud, too
crazed, too possessed. They stood around me, their arms against me,
her fiery white human arms, the warmest, the sweetest of all, and
David's dark brow pushed against my face.

"If you let me," said Armand, his fingers slipping up to my collar,
"if you let me drink, then I'll know. . . ."

"No, all you'll know is that I believe what 1 saw, that's all Ii said..
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'll know the blood of Christ if I

taste it."

I shook my head. "Back away from me. I don't even know what
the veil will look like. Will it look like something with which I wiped
my blood sweat in my sleep as I dreamt? Back away."

They obeyed. They were a loose triangle. I had my back to the
inner wall so that I could see the snow on my left side, though I had
to turn my head to the left now to do it. I looked at them. My right
hand fumbled inside my vest, it drew out the thick wad, and I felt
something, something tiny and strange which I could not explain to
them, or put into words even for myself, I felt the weave, that weave
of cloth, that ancient weave!

I drew out the veil, not looking myself, and held it up as if I were
Veronica showing it to the crowd.

A silence gripped the room. A motionlessness.

Then I saw Armand go down on his knees. And Dora let out her
long, keening cry.

"Dear God," said David.

Shivering, I lowered the veil, still held wide open with both
hands, and turned it so I could see the reflection of the veil in the
dark glass against the snow, as if it was the Gorgon and was going

to kill me.

His Face! His Face blasted into the veil. I looked down. God

Incarnate staring at me from the most minute detail, burnt into the
cloth, not painted or stained, or sewn or drawn, but blasted into the
very fibers, His Face, the Face of God in that instant, dripping with
blood from His Crown of Thorns.

"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, yes." I fell on my knees. "Oh, yes, so
very complete, down to the last detail."

I felt her take the veil. I would have snatched it back if either of
them had tried. But into her small hand, I entrusted it, and she held it
up now turning round and round, so that all of us could see His dark
eyes shining from the cloth!

"It's God!" she screamed. "It's Veronica's Veil!" Her cry grew

triumphant and then filled with joy. "Father, you've done it! You
have given me the Veil!"

And she began to laugh, as one who had seen all the visions one
can endure to see, dancing round and round, with the veil held high,
singing one syllable over and over again.

Armana was snattered, broken, on his knees, the blood tears

running straight down his cheeks, horrid streaks on the white flesh.

Humbled and confounded, David merely watched. Keenly, he
studied the veil as it moved through the air, her hands still stretching
it wide. Keenly, he studied my face. He studied the slumped, broken,
sobbing figure of Armand, the lost child in his exquisite velvet and
lace now stained with his tears.

"Lestat," Dora cried, tears gushing, "you have brought me the
Face of my God! You have brought it to all of us. Don't you see?
Memnoch lost! Memnoch was defeated. God won! God used

Memnoch for his own ends, he led Memnoch into the labyrinth of

Memnoch's own design. God has triumphed!"

"No, Dora, no! You can't believe that," I shouted. "What if it
isn't the truth? What if it was all a pack of tricks. Dora!"

She shot past me down the corridor and out the door. We three
stood stunned. We could hear the elevator descending. She had the
veil!

"David, what is she going to do? David, help me."
"Who can help us now?" asked David, but it was without

conviction or bitterness, only that pondering, that endless pondering.

"Armand, take hold of yourself. You cannot surrender to this," he said.
His voice was sad.

But Armand was lost.

"Why?" Armand asked. He was just a child now on his knees.
"Why?"

This is how he must have looked centuries ago when Marius had
come to free him from his Venetian captors, a boy kept for lust, a boy
brought into the palace of the Undead.

"Why can't I believe it? Oh, my God, I do believe it. It is the face

of Christ!"

He climbed to his feet, drunkenly, and then he moved slowly,
doggedly, step by step, after her.

By the time we reached the street, she stood screaming before the
doors of the cathedral.

"Open the doors! Open the church. I have the veil." She kicked
the bronze doors with her right foot. All around her gathered mortals,

murmuring.

"The Veil, the Veil!" They stared at it, as she stopped to turn and
show it once more. Then all pounded on the doors.

The sky above grew light with the coming sun, far, far off in the
maw of the winter, but nevertheless rising in its inevitable path, to
bring its fatal white light down on us if we didn't seek shelter.

"Open the doors!" she screamed.

From all directions, humans came, gasping, falling on their knees
when they saw the Veil.

"Go," said Armand, "seek shelter now, before it's too late. David,
take him, go."

"And you, what will you do?" I demanded.

"I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched,"
he cried, "and when the sun rises, my death shall confirm the
miracle."

The mighty doors were being opened at last. The dark-clad

figures drew back in astonishment. The first gleam of silver light

illuminated the Veil, and then came the warmer, yellow electric lights
from within, the lights of candles, the rush of the heated air.

"The Face of Christ!" she screamed.

The priest fell down on his knees. The older man in black,
brother, priest, whatever he was, stood openmouthed looking up
at it.

"Dear God, dear God," he said, making the Sign of the Cross,
"That in my lifetime, God . .. it's the Veronica!"

Humans rushed past us, stumbling and jostling to follow her into
the church. I heard their steps echoing up the giant nave.

"We have no time," David said in my ear. He had lifted me off my
feet, strong as Memnoch, only there was no whirlwind, only the risen
winter dawn, and the falling snow, and more and more shouts and
howls and cries as men and women flooded towards the church, and
the bells above in the steeples began to ring.

"Hurry, Lestat, with me!"

We ran together, already blinded by the light, and behind me I
heard Armand's voice ring out over the crowd.

"Bear witness, this sinner dies for Him!" The scent of fire came in
a fierce explosion! I saw it blaze against the glass walls of the towers
as we fled. I heard the screams.

"Armand!" I cried out. David pulled me along, down metal steps,
echoing and chiming like the bells pealing from the cathedral above.

I went dizzy; I surrendered to him. I gave up my will to him. In my
grief, crying, "Armand, Armand."



Slowly I made out David's figure in the dark. We were in a damp
icy place, a cellar beneath a cellar, beneath the high shrieking hollow
of an empty wind-torn building. He was digging through the broken
earth.

"Help me," he cried, "I'm losing all feeling, the light's coming,
the sun is risen, they'll find us."

"No, they won't."

I kicked and dug out the grave, carrying him with me deeper and
deeper, and closing the soft clods of earth behind us. Not even the
sounds of the city above could penetrate this darkness. Not even the
bells of the church.

Had the Tunnel opened for Armand? Had his soul gone up? Or
was he wandering through the Gates of Hell?

"Armand," I whispered. And as I closed my eyes, I saw Mem-
noch's stricken face: Lestat, help me!

With my last bit of feeling, I reached to make sure the Veil was
there. But no, the Veil was gone. I'd given Dora the Veil. Dora had
the Veil and Dora had taken it into the church.

You would never be my adversary!



24



We SAT together on the low wall, Fifth Avenue, edge of Central Park.

Three nights had passed like this. We had watched.



For as far as we could see uptown the line formed, five and six
deep, men and women and children, singing, stamping their feet to
keep warm, nuns and priests hurrying back and forth offering hot
chocolate and tea to those who were freezing. Fires burned in large
drums at intervals of so many feet. As far as the eye could see.

And downtown, on and on it went, past the glittering displays of
Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel, the furriers, the jewelers, the
bookstores of midtown, until it wound its way into the cathedral.

David stood with folded arms, barely leaning on the wall, his ankles

crossed. I was the one who sat like a kid, with my knee up, my

ravaged one-eyed face upturned, my chin on my knuckled fist,

resting my elbow on my knee, just listening to them.

Far ahead one could hear screams and shouts. Someone else had
no doubt touched a clean napkin to the Veil, and once again the
image had been transferred! And so it would be again sometime

tomorrow night, and maybe once the night after and how many times
nobody knew, except that the icon made the vera-icon out of the
cloth touched to it, and the face blazed from cloth to cloth, like flame
touched from wick to wick.

"Come on," David said. "We're getting cold here. Come, let's

walk."

We walked.

"Why?" I asked. "Up there, to see the same thing we saw last
night, and the night before? So that I can struggle to get to her again,

knowing that any show of force, any preternatural gift only confirms
the entire miracle! She won't listen to me ever again. You know she
won't. And who is gathered on the steps now, who will immolate
himself at dawn to confirm the miracle?"
"Mael is there."

"Ah, yes, the Druid priest, once a priest, always a priest. And so
this will be his morning to fall like Lucifer in a blaze."

Last night it had been some ragged vagabond blood drinker, come
from God knows where, unknown to us, but becoming a preternatural

torch at dawn for the banks of video cameras and newspaper

photographers. The papers were filled with the pictures of the blaze.
Filled with the pictures of the Veil itself.

"Here, wait," I said. We had come to Central Park South. The
crowd here was all singing in concert that old solemn, militant hymn:

Holy God, we praise thy Name
Lord of All, we bow before thee!

I stood staring at them, dazed. The pain in my left eye socket
seemed worse but what could be changing there, except that with
each passing hour I felt the depth.

"You're fools, all of you!" I shouted. "Christianity is the bloodiest
religion that ever existed in the world. I can bear witness!"

"Hush now, and do as I tell you," David said, pulling me along, so
that we vanished amongst the ever-shifting people on the icy side-

walks before anyone could have turned to look. Over and over he had
restrained me this way. He was weary of it. I didn't blame him.

Once, policemen had laid hands on me.

They had caught me and tried to pull me out of the cathedral as I
was trying to talk to her, and then when they had me outside, slowly
they had all backed away. They had sensed I wasn't alive, the way
mortals do. They had sensed, and they had muttered about the Veil
and the miraculous, and there it had been, my impotence.

Policemen were all over. Policemen everywhere stood on guard to
help, to give out the warm tea, to put their pale shivering hands out
over the flames in the drums.

Nobody noticed us. Why should they? We were just two men,
drab, part of the crowd, our gleaming skin was nothing much in this

blinding whiteness of snow amid these ecstatic pilgrims, wandering
from valley to valley of song.

The bookstore windows were piled with Bibles, books on

Christology. There was a huge pyramid of a lavender-covered book called
Veronica and Her Cloth by Ewa Kuryluk, and another stack of Holy
Faces, Secret Places by lan Wilson.

People sold pamphlets on the street, or even gave them away. I
could hear accents from all parts of the country--from Texas, and
Florida and Georgia and California.

Bibles, Bibles, Bibles, being sold and given away.

A group of nuns gave out holy pictures of St. Veronica. But the
hottest items were the color photographs of the Veil itself, snapped
in the church by photographers and then reprinted by the thousands.



"Amazing grace, amazing grace. . . ." sang one group in unison,
rocking back and forth as they held their places in line.

"Gloria, in excelsus deum!" burst from a long-bearded man with
his arms outstretched.

As we drew nearer the church, we could see little clusters and
crowds engaged in seminars everywhere. In the midst of one, a young
man spoke, rapid, sincere:

"In the fourteenth century, she was officially recognized as a
saint, Veronica, and it was believed that the Veil was lost during the
Fourth Crusade when the Venetians stormed Hagia Sophia." He
stopped to push his glasses back on his nose. "Of course the Vatican
will take its time to rule on this, as it always does, but seventy-three

icons have already been derived from the original icon, and this
before the eyes of countless witnesses who are prepared to testify

before the Holy See."

In another place, there were several dark-clad men, priests perhaps,

I couldn't tell, and around them rings of those listening, eyes
squinting against the snow.

"I'm not saying the Jesuits cannot come," said one of the men. "I
just said that they aren't coming in here and taking over. Dora has
asked that the Franciscans be the custodians of the Veil, if and when

it leaves the cathedral."

And behind us, two women rapidly concurred that tests had already

been done, the age of the cloth was beyond dispute.

"They don't even grow that kind of flax anymore in the world;
you couldn't find a new piece of such fabric, the fabric itself in its
newness and cleanness is a miracle."

"... all bodily fluids, every part of the image, derived from fluids
of a human body. They have not had to hurt the Veil to discover this!

This is ... this...."

". . . enzyme action. But you know how these things get distorted."



"No, not The New York Times. The New York Times isn't going to

say that three archaeologists have ruled it authentic."

"Not authentic, my friend, just beyond present scientific explanation."

"God and the Devil are idiots!" I said.

A group of women turned to stare at me. "Accept Jesus as your
Savior, son," said one of the women. "Go look for yourself at the
Veil. He died for our sins."

David pulled me away. No one paid us any mind. The little
schools continued far and wide, the clumps of philosophers and

witnesses, and those waiting for the spellbound to stumble down the
steps from the church, with tears running down their faces.
"I saw it, I saw it, it was the Face of Christ."
And back against the arch, cleaved to it, like a tall spidery shadow,
the figure of the vampire Mael, almost invisible to them perhaps,
waiting to step into the light of dawn with his arms outstretched in
the form of a cross.

Once again, he looked at us with sly eyes.

"You too!" he said, under his breath to us, sending his preternatu-

ral voice secretly to our ears. "Come, face the sun, with your arms
outstretched! Lestat, God chose you as his Messenger."

"Come," David said. "We've seen enough for this night and
many nights hereafter."

"And where do we go?" I asked. "Stop, stop pulling my arm.
David? Did you hear me?"

"I've stopped," he said politely, lowering his voice as if to instruct
me to lower mine. The snow fell so softly now. Fire crackled in the
nearby black iron drum.

"The books, what happened to them?" How in God's name could
I have forgotten.

"What books?" he asked. And he pulled me out of the way of the
passersby, against a shopwindow, behind which a little crowd stood,
enjoying the private warmth inside, looking towards the church.

"The books of Wynken de Wilde. Roger's twelve books! What
happened to them?"

"They're there," he said. "Up there in the tower. She left them
for you. Lestat, I've explained this to you. Last night, she spoke to
you."

"In the presence of all those others, it was impossible to speak the
truth."

"She told you the relics were yours now."

"We have to get the books!" I said. Oh, what a fool I was to forget
those beautiful books.

"Be calm, Lestat, be quiet. Stop making them stare at you. The
flat is the same, I told you. She hasn't told anyone about it. She has
surrendered it to us. She will not tell them that we were ever there.
She has promised me. She has given the deed to the Orphanage to
you, Lestat, don't you see? She has cut all ties with her former life.
Her old religion is dead, abolished. She is reborn, the custodian of
the Veil."

"But we don't know!" I roared. "We'll never know. How can she
accept it when we don't know and we can't know!" (He pushed me
against the wall.) "I want to go back and get the books," I said.

"Of course, we will do this if you wish." How tired I was.

On the pavements the people sang: " 'And He walks with me, and
He talks with me, and lets me call Him by name.' "

The apartment was undisturbed.

As far as I could tell, she had never returned. None of us had.

David had come to check, and David had been telling the truth. All
was as it had been.

Except, in the tiny room where I had slept there stood only the
chest. My clothes and the blanket on which they'd lain, covered with
the same dirt and pine needles from an ancient forest floor, were all

gone.

"Did you take them?"

"No," he said. "I believe she did. They are the tattered relics of
the angelic messenger. The Vatican officials have them, as far as I
know."

I laughed. "And they'll analyze all that material, the bits of organic

matter from the forest floor."

"The clothes of the Messenger of God, it was already in the

papers," he said. "Lestat, you must come to your senses. You cannot
blunder through the mortal world like this. You are a risk to yourself,
to others. You are a risk to everything out there. You must contain
your power."

"Risk? After this, what I've done, creating a miracle, like this, a
new infusion of blood into the very religion that Memnoch loathed.
Oh God!"

"Ssssshhhh. Quiet," he said. "The chest, there. The books are in

the chest."

Ah, so the books had been in this little room, where I had slept. I
was consoled, so consoled. I sat there, my legs crossed, rocking back
and forth, crying. Oh, this is so weird to cry with one eye! God, are
tears coming out of the left eye? I don't think so. I think he ripped
away the ducts, what do you think?

David stood in the hallway. The light from the distant glass wall
made his profile icy and calm.

I reached over and opened the lid of the chest. It was made of
wood, a Chinese chest, carved deep with many figures. And there
were the twelve books, each wrapped as we had wrapped them so
carefully, and all padded and safe and dry. I didn't have to open them

to know.

"I want us to leave now," David said. "If you begin crying out
again, if you begin trying to tell people again. . . ."

"Oh, I know how tired you are, my friend," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm
so sorry." From riot after riot, he'd torn me and dragged me out of
the sight of mortal eyes.

I thought about those policemen again. I hadn't even been resisting

them. I thought about the way they backed off one by one, as if
from something so inherently unwholesome that their molecules told
them to do it. Back off.

And she spoke of a Messenger from God. She was so certain.

"We have to leave it now," he said. "It's done. Others are coming.
I don't want to see the others. Do you? Do you want to answer the
questions of Santino or Pandora or Jesse or whoever might come!
What more can we do? I want to leave now."

"You believe I was his fool, don't you?" I asked, looking up at
him.

"Whose fool? God's or the Devil's?"

"That's just it," I said. "I don't know. You tell me what you
believe."

"I want to go," he said, "because if I do not go now, I will join
them this morning on the church steps--Mael and whoever else is
there. And there are others coming. I know them. I see them."

"No, you can't do that! What if every particle of it was a lie! What
if Memnoch wasn't the Devil, and God wasn't God, and the whole
thing was some hideous hoax worked on us by monsters who are no
better than we are! You can't ever think of joining them on the
church steps! The earth is what we have! Cling to it! You don't know.
You don't know about the whirlwind and Hell. You don't know.
Only He knows the rules. Only He is supposed to speak the truth!
And Memnoch over and over described Him as if He were Mad, a
Moral Idiot."

He turned slowly, the light playing with the shadows of his face.
Softly he asked, "His blood, Lestat, could it truly be inside you?"

"Don't start believing it!" I said. "Not you! No. Don't believe. I
refuse to play. I refuse to take either side! I brought the Veil back so
you and she would believe what I said, that's all I did, and this, this

madness has happened!"

I swooned.

I saw the Light of Heaven for an instant, or it seemed I did. I saw
Him standing at the balustrade. I smelled that fierce horrid smell that
had arisen so often from the earth, from battlefields, from the floors
of Hell.

David knelt beside me, holding me by my arms.

"Look at me, don't fade out on me now!" he said. "I want us to

leave here, we're to go away. You understand? We'll go back home.
And then I want you to tell me the whole story again, dictate it to me,
word for word."

"For what?"

"In the words we'll find the truth, in the details and in the plot
we'll discover who did what for whom. Whether God used you, or
Memnoch did! Whether Memnoch was lying the whole time!

Whether God...."

"Ah, it makes your head ache, doesn't it? I don't want you to write
it down. There will only be a version if you write it down, a version,
and there are already so many versions, what has she told them of her
night visitors who brought her the Veil, her benign demons who
brought her the Veil? And they took my clothes! What if there is
tissue from my skin on those clothes?"

"Come now, take the books, here, I'll help you, here, there are
three sacks here but we need only two, you put this bundle in yours,
and I'll take the other."

robeyed his orders. We had the books in the two sacks. We could

go now.

"Why did you leave them here when you sent all the other things

back?"

"She wanted you to have them," he said. "I told you. She wanted
me to see that they were put in your hands. And she's given you all
the rest. All ties are cut for her. This is a movement drawing

fundamentalist and fanatic, cosmic Christians and Christians from East

and West."

"I have to try to get near her again."

"No. Impossible. Come. Here. I have a heavy coat. You must put

this on."

"Are you going to care for me forever?" I asked.

"Perhaps."

"Why don't I go to her now in the church and burn up the Veil! I
could do it. I could do it with the power of my mind, make the Veil

explode."

"Then why don't you?"

I shuddered. "I... I...."

"Go ahead. You don't even have to go in the church. Your powers
go before you. You could burn it up, maybe. It would be interesting if
it didn't burn, wouldn't it? But suppose it did, suppose it just went

black and burnt up like the wood in a grate when you light it with the
telekinetic power of your mind. What then?"

I broke into weeping. I couldn't do such a thing. I couldn't do it. I
didn't know for sure! I just didn't. And if I had been the dupe of God,
was that God's will for all of us?

"Lestat!" He glared at me, or rather I should say, he fixed me with
his authoritative gaze. "I'm telling you now, listen to what I say.
Don't get that close to them again! Don't make any more miracles
for them. There is nothing more that you can do. Let her tell the tale
her way with her angel messenger. It's passed into history already."

"I want to talk one more time to the reporters!"

"No!"

"This time I'll be soft-voiced, I promise, I won't frighten anyone,

I swear I won't, David.. .."

"In time, Lestat, if you still want... in time... ." He bent down
and smoothed my hair. "Now come with me. We're going."

25



THE ORPHANAGE was cold. Its thick brick walls, bare of all
insulation, held the cold, and made it colder within than the
winter outside. Seems I remembered that from before. Why
had she given it to me? Why? She had given over the deed to me, and
all his relics. What did it mean? Only that she was gone like a comet

across the sky.

Was there a country on earth where the news networks had not
carried her face, her voice, her Veil, her story?

But we were home, this was our city, New Orleans, our little land,
and there was no snow falling here, only the soft scent of the sweet
olive trees, and the tulip magnolias in the old neglected convent

garden throwing off their pink petals. Look at that, pink petals on the

ground.

So quiet here. No one knew of this place. So now the Beast could
have his palace and remember Beauty and ponder forever whether
Memnoch was weeping in Hell, or whether both of them--the Sons
of God--were laughing in Heaven!

I walked into the chapel.

I had thought to find drapery and heaps and cartons and crates.
Rather, it was a completed sanctuary. Everything was placed
properly as it should be, unwrapped, and dusted, and standing there
in the gloom. Statues of St. Anthony, St. Lucy with her eyes on a
plate, the Infant Jesus of Prague in his Spanish finery, and the icons
hanging on the walls, between the windows, look, all neatly hung.
"But who has done this?"

David was gone. Where? He'd be back. It didn't matter. I had the
twelve books. I needed a warm place to sit, perhaps on the altar steps,
and I needed light. With this one eye, I needed just a little more than
the night's light leaking in through the tall stained-glass windows.

A figure stood in the vestibule. Scentless. Vampire. My fledgling.
Has to be. Young. Louis. Inevitable.

"Did you do all of this?" I asked. "Arrange things here in the

church so beautifully?"

"It seemed the right thing to do," he said. He walked towards me.
I saw him clearly, though I had to turn my head to focus the one eye
on him, and stop trying to open a left eye which wasn't there.

Tall, pale, starved a bit. Black hair short. Green eyes very soft.
Graceful walk of one who does not like to make noise, or make a fuss,
or be seen. Plain black clothes, clothes like the Jews in New York
who had gathered outside the cathedral, watching the whole spectacle,

and like the Amish who had come by train, plain and simple,
like the expression on his face.

"Come home with me," he said. Such a human voice. So kind.
"There's time to come here and reflect. Wouldn't you rather be
home, in the Quarter, amongst our things?"

If anything in the world could have truly comforted me, he would
have been the thing--with just the beguiling tilt of his narrow head
or the way that he kept looking at me, protecting me obviously with a
confidential calm from what he must have feared for me, and for him,

and perhaps for all of us.

My old familiar gentleman friend, my tender enduring pupil, educated

as truly by Victorian ways of courtesy as ever by me in the ways
of being a monster. What if Memnoch had called upon him? Why

didn't Memnoch do that!

"What have I done?" I asked. "Was it the will of God?"

"I don't know," he said. He laid his soft hand on mine. His slow

voice was a balm to my nerves. "Come home. I've listened for hours,
to the radio, to the television, to the story of the angel of the night
who brought the Veil. The Angel's tattered clothes have been given
over to the hands of priests and scientists. Dora is laying on hands.
The Veil has made cures. People are pouring into New York from all
over the world. I'm glad you're back. I want you here."
"Did I serve God? Is that possible? A God I still hate?"
"I haven't heard your tale," he said. "Will you tell me?" Just that
direct, without emotion. "Or is it too much of an agony to say it all

again?"

"Let David write it down,".I said. "From memory." I tapped my
temple. "We have such good memories. I think some of the others
can remember things that never actually happened."

I looked around. "Where are we? Oh, my God, I forgot. We're in
the chapel. There's the angel with the basin in its hands, and that
Crucifix, that was there already."

How stiff and lifeless it looked, how unlike the shining Veil.

"Do they show the Veil on the evening news?"

"Over and over." He smiled. No mockery. Only love.

"What did you think, Louis, when you saw the Veil?"

"That it was the Christ I once believed in. That it was the Son of
God I knew when I was a boy and this was swampland." His voice was
patient. "Come home. Let's go. There are ... things in this place."

"Are there?"

"Spirits? Ghosts?" He didn't seem afraid. "They're small, but I
feel them, and you know, Lestat, I don't have your powers." Again
came his smile. "So you must know. Don't you feel them?"

I shut my eyes. Or, rather, my eye. I heard a strange sound like
many, many children walking in ranks. "I think they're singing the
times tables."

"And what are those?" Louis asked. He squeezed my arm,

bending close. "Lestat, what are the times tables?"

"Oh, you know, the way they used to teach them multiplication in
those days, they must have sung it in the classrooms, two times two
makes four, two times three makes six, two times four makes eight...
isn't that how it goes . . . They're singing it."

I stopped. Someone was there, in the vestibule, right outside the
chapel, between the doors to the hall and the doors to the chapel, in
the very shadows where I had hidden from Dora.

It was one of our kind. It had to be. And it was old, very old. I
could feel the power. Someone was there who was so ancient that
only Memnoch and God Incarnate would have understood, or. ...
Louis, maybe, Louis, if he believed his memories, his brief glimpses,
his brief shattering experiences with the very ancient, perhaps. . . .

Still, he wasn't afraid. He was watching me, on guard, but basically

fearless.

"Come on, I'm not standing in dread of it!" I said. And I walked
towards it. I had the two sacks of books slung over my right shoulder,
the fabric tight in my left hand. That allowed my right hand to be
free. And my right eye. I still had that. Who was this visitor?

"That's David there," said Louis in a simple placating voice, as if
to say, See? You have nothing to worry about.

"No, next to him. Look, look more deeply into the blackness. See,
the figure of a woman, so white, so hard, she might as well be a statue

in this place?

"Maharet!" I said.

"I am here, Lestat," she said.

I laughed.

"And wasn't that the answer of Isaiah when the Lord called? 'I am

here, Lord'?"

"Yes," she said. Her voice was barely audible, but clear and
cleaned by time, all the thickness of the flesh long gone from it.

I drew closer, moving out of the chapel proper and into the little
vestibule. David stood beside her, like her anointed Second in

Command, as if he would have done her will in an instant, and she the
eldest, well, almost the eldest, the Eve of Us, the Mother of Us All, or
the only Mother who remained, and now as I looked at her, I

remembered the awful truth again, about her eyes, that when she was
human, they had blinded her, and the eyes through which she looked
now were always borrowed, human.

Bleeding in her head, human eyes, lifted from someone dead or
alive, I couldn't know, and put into her sockets to thrive on her vam-
piric blood as long as they could. But how weary they seemed in her
beautiful face. What had Jesse said? She is made of alabaster. And
alabaster is a stone through which light can pass.

"I won't take a human eye," I said under my breath.
She said nothing. She had not come to judge, to recommend.
Why had she come? What did she want?

"You want to hear the tale too?"

"Your gentle English friend says that it happened as you described

it. He says the songs they sing on the televisions are true; that
you are the Angel of the Night, and you brought her the Veil, and
that he was there, and he heard you tell."

"I am no angel! I never meant to give her the Veil! I took the Veil
as proof. I took the Veil because...."

My voice had broken.

"Because why?" she asked.

"Because Christ gave it to me!" I whispered. "He said, 'Take it,'
and I did."

I wept. And she waited. Patient, solemn. Louis waited. David
waited.

Finally I stopped.

"Write down every word, David, if you write it, every ambiguous
word, you hear me? I won't write it myself. I won't. Well, maybe ...
if I don't think you're getting it exactly right, I'll write it, I'll write it
one time through. What do you want? Why have you come? No, I
won't write it. Why are you here, Maharet, why have you shown
yourself to me? Why have you come to the Beast's new castle, for
what? Answer me."

She said nothing. Her long, pale-red hair went down to her waist.
She wore some simple fashion that could pass unnoticed in many
lands, a long, loose coat, belted around her tiny waist, a skirt that
covered the tops of her small boots. The blood scent of the human
eyes in her head was strong. And blazing in her head, these dead eyes
looked ghastly to me, unsupportable.

"I won't take a human eye!" I said. But I had said that before. Was
I being arrogant or insolent? She was so powerful. "I won't take a
human life," I said. That had been what I meant. "I will never, never,
never as long as I live and endure and starve and suffer, take a human
life, nor raise my hand against a fellow creature, be he human or one
of us, I do not care, I won't ... I am ... I will . . . with my last
strength, I won't. . . ."

"I'm going to keep you here," she said. "As a prisoner. For a
while. Until you're quieter."

"You're mad. You're not keeping me anywhere."

"I have chains waiting for you. David, Louis--you will help me."

"What is this? You two, you dare? Chains, we are talking about

349

chains? What am I, Azazel cast into the pit? Memnoch would get a
good laugh at this, if he hadn't turned his back on me forever!"

But none of them had moved. They stood motionless, her immense

reservoir of power totally disguised by her slender white form.
And they were suffering. Oh, I could smell the suffering.

"I have this for you," she said. She extended her hand. "And when
you read it you will scream and you will weep, and we'll keep you
here, safe and quiet, until such time as you stop. That's all. Under my
protection. In this place. You will be my prisoner."

"What! What is it?" I demanded.

It was a crumpled piece of parchment.

"What the hell is this!" I said. "Who gave you this?" I didn't want

to touch it.

She took my left hand with her absolutely irresistible strength,
forcing me to drop the books in their sacks, and she placed the little
crumpled bundle of parchment in my palm.

"It was given to me for you," she said.

"By whom?" I demanded.

"The person whose writing you will find inside. Read it."

"What the hell!" I swore. With my right fingers I tore open the

crumpled vellum.

My eye. My eye shone there against the writing. This little package

contained my eye, my eye wrapped in a letter. My blue eye, whole

and alive.

Gasping, I picked it up and pushed it into my face, into the sore
aching socket, feeling its tendrils reach back into the brain, tangling
with the brain. The world flared into full vision.

She stood staring at me.

"Scream, will I?" I cried. "Scream, why? What do you think I see?
I see only what I saw before!" I cried. I looked from right to left, the
appalling patch of darkness gone, the world complete, the stained
glass, the still trio watching me. "Oh, thank you, God!" I whispered.
But what did this mean? Was it a prayer of thanks, or merely an

exclamation!

"Read," she said, "what is written on the vellum."
An archaic hand, what was this? An illusion! Words in a language

that was no language at all, yet clearly articulated so that I
could pick them out of the swarming design, written in blood and
ink and soot:




To My Prince,

My Thanks to you for a job
perfectly done.

with Love,

Memnoch
the Devil

I started to roar. "Lies, lies, lies!" I heard the chains. "What metal
is it you think can bind me, cast me down! Damn you. Lies! You
didn't see him. He didn't give you this!"

David, Louis, her strength, her inconceivable strength, strength,
since the time immemorial, before the first tablets had been engraved
at Jericho--it surrounded me, enclosed me. It was she more than
they; I was her child, thrashing and cursing at her.

They dragged me through the darkness, my howls echoing off the
walls, into the room they had chosen for me with its bricked-up

windows, lightless, a dungeon, the chains going round and round as I
thrashed.

"It's lies, it's lies, it's lies! I don't believe it! If I was tricked it was
by God!" I roared and roared. "He did it to me. It's not real unless
He did it, God Incarnate. Not Memnoch. No, never, never. Lies!"

Finally I lay there, helpless. I didn't care. There was a comfort in

being chained, in being unable to batter the walls with my fists till
they were pulp, or smash my head against the bricks, or worse. . . .

"Lies, lies, it's all a great big panorama of lies! That's all I saw!
One more circus maximus of lies!"

"It's not all lies," she said. "Not all of it. That's the age-old
dilemma."

I fell silent. I could feel my left eye growing deeper and stronger
into my brain. I had that. I had my eye. And to think of his face, his
horror-stricken face when he looked at my eye, and the story of
Uncle Mickey's eye. I couldn't grasp it. I'd start howling again.

Dimly I thought I heard Louis's gentle voice, protesting, pleading,

arguing. I heard locks thrown, I heard nails going through wood.
I heard Louis begging.

"For a while, just a little while. .. ." she said. "He is too powerful
for us to do anything else. It is either that, or we do away with him."

"No," Louis cried.

I heard David protest, no, that she couldn't.

"I will not," she said calmly. "But he will stay here until I say that
he can leave."

And they were gone.

"Sing," I whispered. I was talking to the ghosts of the children.
"Sing. ..."

But the convent was empty. All the little ghosts had fled. The con-
vent was mine. Memnoch's servant; Memnoch's prince. I was alone
in my prison.



26



TWO NIGHTS, three nights. Outside in the city of the modern

world the traffic ran along the broad avenue. Couples
passed, whispering in the evening shadows. A dog howled.

Four nights, five nights?

David sat by me reading me the manuscript of my story word for
word, all I had said, as he remembered this, stopping over and over
again, to ask if this was correct, if these were the very words I'd used,
if this was the image. And she would answer.

From her place in the corner, she would say, "Yes, that is what he
saw, that is what he told you. That is what I see in his mind. Those
are his words. That is what he felt."

Finally, it must have been after a week, she stood over me and
asked if I thirsted for blood. I said, "I will never drink it again. I will
dry up like something hard made of limestone. They will throw me
into a kiln."

One night Louis came, with the quiet ease of a chaplain into a jail,
immune to the rules yet presenting no threat to them.

Slowly, he sat down beside me and folded his legs, and looked off
as though it was not polite to stare at me, the prisoner, wrapped in
chains and rage.

He laid his fingers on my shoulder. His hair had a reasonable and
fashionable look to it--that is, it was clipped and combed and not full
of dust. His clothes were clean and new, too, as if he had perhaps
dressed for me.

I smiled to myself at that, his dressing for me. But from time to
time he did, and when I saw that the shirt had antique buttons of gold
and pearl, I knew that he had, and I accepted that the way a sick man
accepts a cool cloth on his forehead.

His fingers pressed me just a little harder, and I liked this too. But
I didn't have the slightest interest in saying so.

"I've been reading Wynken's books," he said. "You know, I
picked them up. I went back for them. We'd left them in the chapel."
And now, he did glance at me very respectfully and simply.

"Oh, thank you for that," I said. "I dropped the books in the dark.
I dropped them when I reached for the eye, or did she take my hand?
Whatever, I let the sacks fall with the books. I can't budge these
chains. I can't move."

"I've taken the books home to our place in the Rue Royale.
They're there, like so many jewels strewn out for us to gaze at."

"Yes. Have you looked at the tiny pictures, I mean, really
looked?" I asked. "I've never really looked. I just ... it was all
happening so quickly, and I didn't really open the books. But if you

could have seen his ghost in the bar and heard the way he described
them."

"They are glorious. They are magnificent. You will love them.
You have years of pleasure ahead with them and the light at your
side. I've only begun to look at them and to read. With a magnifying

glass. But you won't need the glass. Your eyes are stronger than
mine."

"We can read them perhaps . .. you and I... together."

"Yes ... all his twelve books," he said. He talked softly of many
miraculous little images, of tiny humans, and beasts and flowers, and
the lion lying down with the lamb.

I closed my eyes. I was grateful. I was content. He knew I didn't
want to talk anymore.

"I'll be down there, in our rooms," he said, "waiting for you.
They can't keep you here much longer."

What is longer?

It seemed the weather grew warm.

David might have come.

Sometimes I shut my eyes and my ears and I refused to listen to
any sound that was deliberately directed to me. I heard the cicadas
singing when the sky was red still from the sun, and other vampires

were asleep. I heard the birds swooping down on the limbs or
oaks on Napoleon Avenue. I heard the children!

The children did come. Singing. And sometimes some one or two
speaking in a rapid whisper, as if exchanging confidences beneath a
tent made from a sheet. And feet on the stairs.

And then from beyond the walls, the blaring, amplified noise of

the electric night.

One evening I opened my eyes and the chains were gone.

I was alone and the door was open.

My clothes were in tatters, but I didn't care. I stood up, creakily,
achingly, and for the first time in a fortnight, perhaps, I put my hand
to my eye and felt it secure there, though of course I'd always seen

through it. And I'd stopped thinking about it long ago.

I walked out of the orphanage, through the old courtyard. For one
moment I thought I saw a set of iron swings, the kind they made for
children on old playgrounds. I saw the A-frames at each end, the
crossbar, and the swings themselves, and the children swinging, little
girls with blowing hair, and I could hear them laughing. I looked up,
dazed, at the stained-glass windows of the chapel.

The children were gone. The courtyard was empty. My palace
now. She'd cut all ties. She was long gone to her great, great

victory.

I walked a long time down St. Charles Avenue.

I walked under oaks I knew, on old pavements and stretches of
brick, past houses new and old, and on across Jackson Avenue into
the curious mix of taverns and neon signs, of boarded-up buildings
and ruined houses and fancy shops, the garish waste that stretches to

downtown.

I came to an empty store that had once sold expensive automobiles.

For fifty years, they'd sold those fancy cars in this place, and
now it was a big, hollow room with glass walls. I could see my

reflection perfectly in the glass. My preternatural vision was mine again,
flawless, with both blue eyes.

And I saw myself.

I want you to see me now. I want you to look at me, as I present
myself, and as I swear to this tale, as I swear on every word of it, from

my heart.

I am the Vampire Lestat. This is what I saw. This is what I heard.

This is what I know! This is all I know.



Believe in me, in my words, in what I have said and what has been
written down.

I am here, still, the hero of my own dreams, and let me please keep
my place in yours.

I am the Vampire Lestat.

Let me pass now from fiction into legend.

THE END

9:43 February 28, 1994

Adieu, mm amour

THE VAMPIRE ARMAND
THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES
ANNE RICE



Jesus, speaking to Mary Magdalene:

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my
Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my
Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 20:17



PART 1

BODY and BLOOD



THEY SAID a child had died in the attic. Her clothes had been discovered
in the wall. I wanted to go up there, and to lie down near the wall, and
be alone.

   They'd seen her ghost now and then, the child. But none of these
vampires could see spirits, really, at least not the way that I could
see them. No matter. It wasn't the company of the child I wanted. It was
to be in that place.

   Nothing more could be gained from lingering near Lestat. I'd come.
I'd fulfilled my purpose. I couldn't help him.

  The sight of his sharply focused and unchanging eyes unnerved me, and
I was quiet inside and full of love for those nearest me-my human
children, my dark-haired little Benji and my tender willowy Sybelle- but
I was not strong enough just yet to take them away.

I left the chapel.

   I didn't even take note of who was there. The whole convent was now
the dwelling place of vampires. It was not an unruly place, or a
neglected place, but I didn't notice who remained in the chapel when I
left.

   Lestat lay as he had all along, on the marble floor of the chapel in
front of the huge crucifix, on his side, his hands slack, the left hand
just below the right hand, its fingers touching the marble lightly, as
if with a purpose, when there was no purpose at all. The fingers of his
right hand curled, making a little hollow in the palm where the light
fell, and that too seemed to have a meaning, but there was no meaning.

  This was simply the preternatural body lying there without will or
animation, no more purposeful than the face, its expression almost
defiantly intelligent, given that months had passed in which Lestat had
not moved.

   The high stained-glass windows were dutifully draped for him before
sunrise. At night, they shone with all the wondrous candles scattered

about the fine statues and relics which filled this once sanctified and
holy place. Little mortal children had heard Mass under this high coved
roof; a priest had sung out the Latin words from an altar.

   It was ours now. It belonged to him-Lestat, the man who lay
motionless on the marble floor.

   Man. Vampire. Immortal. Child of Darkness. Any and all are excellent
words for him.

Looking over my shoulder at him, I never felt so much like a child.

   That's what I am. I fill out the definition, as if it were encoded in
me perfectly, and there had never been any other genetic design.

   I was perhaps seventeen years old when Marius made me into a vampire.
I had stopped growing by that time. For a year, I'd been five feet six
inches. My hands are as delicate as those of a young woman, and I was
beardless, as we used to say in that time, the years of the sixteenth
century. Not a eunuch, no, not that, most certainly, but a boy.

   It was fashionable then for boys to be as beautiful as girls. Only
now does it seem something worthwhile, and that's because I love the
others-my own: Sybelle with her woman's breasts and long girlish limbs,
and Benji with his round intense little Arab face.

   I stood at the foot of the stairs. No mirrors here, only the high
brick walls stripped of their plaster, walls that were old only for
America, darkened by the damp even inside the convent, all textures and
elements here softened by the simmering summers of New Orleans and her
clammy crawling winters, green winters I call them because the trees
here are almost never bare.

   I was born in a place of eternal winter when one compares it to this
place. No wonder in sunny Italy I forgot the beginnings altogether, and
fashioned my life out of the present of my years with Marius. "I don't
remember." It was a condition of loving so much vice, of being so
addicted to Italian wine and sumptuous meals, and even the feel of the
warm marble under my bare feet when the rooms of the palazzo were
sinfully, wickedly heated by Marius's exorbitant fires.

   His mortal friends ... human beings like me at that time ... scolded
constantly about these expenditures: firewood, oil, candles. And for
Marius only the finest candles of beeswax were acceptable. Every
fragrance was significant.



   Stop these thoughts. Memories can't hurt you now. You came here for a
reason and now you have finished, and you must find those you love, your
young mortals, Benji and Sybelle, and you must go on.

   Life was no longer a theatrical stage where Banquo's ghost came again
and again to seat himself at the grim table.

My soul hurt.

   Up the stairs. Lie for a little while in this brick convent where the
child's clothes were found. Lie with the child, murdered here in this
convent, so say the rumormongers, the vampires who haunt these halls

now, who have come to see the great Vampire Lestat in his Endymion-like
sleep.

I felt no murder here, only the tender voices of nuns.

   I went up the staircase, letting my body find its human weight and
human tread.

   After five hundred years, I know such tricks. I could frighten all
the young ones-the hangers-on and the gawkers-just as surely as the
other ancient ones did it, even the most modest, uttering words to
evince their telepathy, or vanishing when they chose to leave, or now
and then even making the building tremble with their power-an
interesting accomplishment even with these walls eighteen inches thick
with cypress sills that will never rot.

   He must like the fragrances here, I thought. Marius, where is he?
Before I had visited Lestat, I had not wanted to talk very much to
Marius, and had spoken only a few civil words when I left my treasures
in his charge.

   After all, I had brought my children into a menagerie of the Undead.
Who better to safeguard them than my beloved Marius, so powerful that
none here dared question his smallest request.

   There is no telepathic link between us naturally-Marius made me, I am
forever his fledgling-but as soon as this occurred to me, I realized
without the aid of this telepathic link that I could not feel the
presence of Marius in the building. I didn't know what had happened in
that brief interval when I knelt down to look at Lestat. I didn't know
where Marius was. I couldn't catch the familiar human scents of Benji or
Sybelle. A little stab of panic paralyzed me.

   I stood on the second story of the building. I leaned against the
wall, my eyes settling with determined calm on the deeply varnished
heart pine floor. The light made pools of yellow on the boards.

  Where were they, Benji and Sybelle? What had I done in bringing them
here, two ripe and glorious humans? Benji was a spirited boy of twelve,
Sybelle, a womanling of twenty-five. What if Marius, so generous in his
own soul, had carelessly let them out of his sight?

"I'm here, young one." The voice was abrupt, soft, welcome.

   My Maker stood on the landing just below me, having come up the steps
behind me, or more truly, with his powers, having placed himself there,
covering the preceding distance with silent and invisible speed.

   "Master," I said with a little trace of a smile. "I was afraid for
them for a moment." It was an apology. "This place makes me sad."

   He nodded. "I have them, Armand," he said. "The city seethes with
mortals. There's food enough for all the vagabonds wandering here. No
one will hurt them. Even if I weren't here to say so, no one would
dare."

   It was I who nodded now. I wasn't so sure, really. Vampires are by
their very nature perverse and do wicked and terrible things simply for
the sport of it. To kill another's mortal pet would be a worthy
entertainment for some grim and alien creature, skirting the fringes

here, drawn by remarkable events.

   "You're a wonder, young one," he said to me smiling. Young one! Who
else would call me this but Marius, my Maker, and what is five hundred
years to him? "You went into the sun, child," he continued with the same
legible concern written on his kind face. "And you lived to tell the
tale."

   "Into the sun, Master?" I questioned his words. But I myself did not
want to reveal any more. I did not want to talk yet, to tell of what had
happened, the legend of Veronica's Veil and the Face of Our Lord
emblazoned upon it, and the morning when I had given up my soul with
such perfect happiness. What a fable it was.

   He came up the steps to be near me, but kept a polite distance. He
has always been the gentleman, even before there was such a word. In
ancient Rome, they must have had a term for such a person, infallibly
good mannered, and considerate as a point of honor, and wholly
successful at common courtesy to rich and poor alike. This was Marius,
and it had always been Marius, insofar as I could know.

   He let his snow-white hand rest on the dull satiny banister. He wore
a long shapeless cloak of gray velvet, once perfectly extravagant, now
downplayed with wear and rain, and his yellow hair was long like
Lestat's hair, full of random light and unruly in the damp, and even
studded with drops of dew from outside, the same dew clinging to his
golden eyebrows and darkening his long curling eyelashes around his
large cobalt-blue eyes.

   There was something altogether more Nordic and icy about him than
there was about Lestat, whose hair tended more to golden, for all its
luminous highlights, and whose eyes were forever prismatic, drinking up
the colors around him, becoming even a gorgeous violet with the
slightest provocation from the worshipful outside world.

   In Marius, I saw the sunny skies of the northern wilderness, eyes of
steady radiance which rejected any outside color, perfect portals to his
own most constant soul.

"Armand," he said. "I want you to come with me."

   "Where is that, Master, come where?" I asked. I too wanted to be
civil. He had always, even after a struggle of wits, brought such finer
instincts out of me.

   "To my house, Armand, where they are now, Sybelle and Benji. Oh,
don't fear for them for a second. Pandora's with them. They are rather
astonishing mortals, brilliant, remarkably different, yet alike. They
love you, and they know so much and have come with you rather a long
way."

   I flushed with blood and color; the warmth was stinging and
unpleasant, and then as the blood danced back away from the surface of
my face, I felt cooler and strangely enervated that I felt any
sensations at all.

It was a shock being here and I wanted it to be over.

   "Master, I don't know who I am in this new life," I said gratefully.
"Reborn? Confused?" I hesitated, but there was no use stopping it.

"Don't ask me to stay here just now. Maybe some time when Lestat is
himself again, maybe when enough time has passed-. I don't know for
certain, only that I can't accept your kind invitation now."

   He gave me a brief accepting nod. With his hand he made a little
acquiescent gesture. His old gray cloak had slipped off one shoulder. He
seemed not to care about it. His thin black wool clothes were neglected,
lapels and pockets trimmed in a careless gray dust. That was not right
for him.

   He had a big shock of white silk at his throat that made his pale
face seem more colored and human than it otherwise would. But the silk
was torn as if by brambles. In sum, he haunted the world in these
clothes, rather than was dressed in them. They were for a stumbler, not
my old Master.

   I think he knew I was at a loss. I was looking up at the gloom above
me. I wanted to reach the attic of this place, the half-concealed
clothing of the dead child. I wondered at this story of the dead child.
I had the impertinence to let my mind drift, though he was waiting.

He brought me back with his gentle words:

   "Sybelle and Benji will be with me when you want them," he said. "You
can find us. We aren't far. You'll hear the Appassionato when you want
to hear it." He smiled.

   "You've given her a piano," I said. I spoke of golden Sybelle. I had
shut out the world from my preternatural hearing, and I didn't want just
yet to unstop my ears even for the lovely sound of her playing, which I
already missed overly much.

   As soon as we'd entered the convent, Sybelle had seen a piano and
asked in a whisper at my ear if she could play it. It was not in the
chapel where Lestat lay, but off in another long empty room. I had told
her it wasn't quite proper, that it might disturb Lestat as he lay
there, and we couldn't know what he thought, or what he felt, or if he
was anguished and trapped in his own dreams.

   "Perhaps when you come, you'll stay for a while," Marius said.
"You'll like the sound of her playing my piano, and maybe then we'll
talk together, and you can rest with us, and we can share the house for
as long as you like."

I didn't answer.

   "It's palatial in a New World sort of way," he said with a little
mockery in his smile. "It's not far at all. I have the most spacious
gardens and old oaks, oaks far older than those even out there on the
Avenue, and all the windows are doors. You know how I like it that way.
It's the Roman style. The house is open to the spring rain, and the
spring rain here is like a dream."

   "Yes, I know," I whispered. "I think it's falling now, isn't it?" I
smiled.

   "Well, I'm rather spattered with it, yes," he said almost gaily. "You
come when you want to. If not tonight, then tomorrow ..."

   "Oh, I'll be there tonight," I said. I didn't want to offend him, not

in the slightest, but Benji and Sybelle had seen enough of white-faced
monsters with velvet voices. It was time to be off.

   I looked at him rather boldly, enjoying it for a moment, overcoming a
shyness that had been our curse in this modern world. In Venice of old,
he had gloried in his clothes as men did then, always so sharp and
splendidly embellished, the glass of fashion, to use the old graceful
phrase. When he crossed the Piazza San Marco in the soft purple of
evening, all turned to watch him pass. Red had been his badge of pride,
red velvet-a flowing cape, and magnificently embroidered doublet, and
beneath it a tunic of gold silk tissue, so very popular in those times.

   He'd had the hair of a young Lorenzo de' Medici, right from the
painted wall.

   "Master, I love you, but now I must be alone," I said. "You don't
need me now, do you, Sir? How can you? You never really did." Instantly
I regretted it. The words, not the tone, were impudent. And our minds
being so divided by intimate blood, I was afraid he'd misunderstand.

   "Cherub, I want you," he said forgivingly. "But I can wait. Seems not
long ago I spoke these same words when we were together, and so I say
them again."

   I couldn't bring myself to tell him it was my season for mortal
company, how I longed just to be talking away the night with little
Benji, who was such a sage, or listening to my beloved Sybelle play her
sonata over and over again. It seemed beside the point to explain any
further. And the sadness came over me again, heavily and undeniably, of
having come to this forlorn and empty convent where Lestat lay, unable
or unwilling to move or speak, none of us knew.

   "Nothing will come of my company just now, Master," I said. "But you
will grant me some key to finding you, surely, so that when this time
passes ..." I let my words die.

"I fear for you!" he whispered suddenly, with great warmth.

"Any more than ever before, Sir?" I asked.

   He thought for a moment. Then he said, "Yes. You love two mortal
children. They are your moon and stars. Come stay with me if only for a
little while. Tell me what you think of our Lestat and what's happened.
Tell me perhaps, if I promise to remain very quiet and not to press you,
tell me your opinion of all you've so recently seen."

   "You touch on it delicately, Sir, I admire you. You mean why did I
believe Lestat when he said he had been to Heaven and Hell, you mean
what did I see when I looked at the relic he brought back with him,
Veronica's Veil."

   "If you want to tell me. But more truly, I wish you would come and
rest."

   I put my hand on top of his, marveling that in spite of all I'd
endured, my skin was almost as white as his.

   "You will be patient with my children till I come, won't you?" I
asked. "They imagine themselves so intrepidly wicked, coming here to be
with me, whistling nonchalantly in the crucible of the Undead, so to

speak."

   "Undead," he said, smiling reprovingly. "Such language, and in my
presence. You know I hate it."

   He planted a kiss quickly on my cheek. It startled me, and then I
realized that he was gone.

   "Old tricks!" I said aloud, wondering if he were still near enough to
hear me, or whether he had shut up his ears to me as fiercely as I shut
mine to the outside world.

   I looked off, wanting the quiet, dreaming of bowers suddenly, not in
words but in images, the way my old mind would do it, wanting to lie
down in garden beds among growing flowers, wanting to press my face to
earth and sing softly to myself.

   The spring outside, the warmth, the hovering mist that would be rain.
All this I wanted. I wanted the swampy forests beyond, but I wanted
Sybelle and Benji, too, and to be gone, and to have some will to carry
on.

   Ah, Armand, you always lack this very thing, the will. Don't let the
old story repeat itself now. Arm yourself with all that's happened.

Another was nearby.

   It seemed so awful to me suddenly, that some immortal whom I didn't
know should intrude here on my random private thoughts, perhaps to make
a selfish approximation of what I felt.

It was only David Talbot.

   He came from the chapel wing, through the bridge rooms of the convent
that connect it to the main building where I stood at the top of the
staircase to the second floor.

   I saw him come into the hallway. Behind him was the glass of the door
that led to the gallery, and beyond that the soft mingled gold and white
light of the courtyard below.

   "It's quiet now," he said. "And the attic's empty and you know that
you can go there, of course."

   "Go away," I said. I felt no anger, only the honest wish to have my
thoughts unread and my emotions left alone.

With remarkable self-possession he ignored me, then said:

"Yes, I am afraid of you, a little, but then terribly curious too."

"Oh, I see, so that excuses it, that you followed me here?"

"I didn't follow you, Armand," he said. "I live here."

   "Ah, I'm sorry then," I admitted. "I hadn't known. I suppose I'm glad
of it. You guard him. He's never alone." I meant Lestat of course.

   "Everyone's afraid of you," he said calmly. He had taken up a
position only a few feet away, casually folding his arms. "You know^,

it's quite a study, the lore and habits of the vampires."

"Not to me, "I said.

   "Yes, I realize that," he said. "I was only musing, and I hope you'll
forgive me. It was about the child in the attic, the child they said was
murdered. It's a tall story, about a very small little person. Maybe if
your luck is better than that of everyone else, you'll see the ghost of
the child whose clothes were shut up in the wall."

   "Do you mind if I look at you?" I said. "I mean if you're going to
dip your beak into my mind with such abandon? We met some time ago
before all this happened-Lestat, the Heavenly Journey, this place. I
never really took stock of you. I was indifferent, or too polite, I
don't know which."

   I was surprised to hear such heat in my voice. I was volatile, and it
wasn't David Talbot's fault.

   "I'm thinking of the conventional knowledge about you," I said. "That
you weren't born in this body, that you were an elderly man when Lestat
knew you, that this body you inhabit now belonged to a clever soul who
could hop from living being to living being, and there set up shop with
his own trespassing soul."

He gave me a rather disarming smile.

   "So Lestat said," he answered. "So Lestat wrote. It's true, of
course. You know it is. You've known since you saw me before."

   "Three nights we spent together," I said. "And I never really
questioned you. I mean I never really even looked directly into your
eyes."

"We were thinking of Lestat then."

"Aren't we now?"

"I don't know," he said.

 "David Talbot," I said, measuring him coldly with my eyes, "David
Talbot, Superior General of the Order of Psychic Detectives known as the
Talamasca, had been catapulted into the body in which he now walks." I
didn't know whether I paraphrased or made it up as I went along. "He'd
been entrenched or chained inside it, made a prisoner by so many ropey
veins, and then tricked into a vampire as a fiery unstanchable blood
invaded his lucky anatomy, sealing his soul up in it as it transformed
him into an immortal-a man of dark bronzed skin and dry, lustrous and
thick black hair."

"I think you have it right," he said with indulgent politeness.

   "A handsome gent," I went on, "the color of caramel, moving with such
catlike ease and gilded glances that he makes me think of all things
once delectable, and now a potpourri of scent: cinnamon, clove, mild
peppers and other spices golden, brown or red, whose fragrances can
spike my brain and plunge me into erotic yearnings that live now, more
than ever, to play themselves out. His skin must smell like cashew nuts
and thick almond creams. It does."

He laughed. "I get your point."

   I had shocked myself. I was wretched for a moment. "I'm not sure I
get myself," I said apologetically.

"I think it's plain," he said. "You want me to leave you alone."

I saw the preposterous contradictions in all this at once.

   "Look," I whispered quickly. "I'm deranged," I whispered. "My senses
cross, like so many threads to make a knot: taste, see, smell, feel. I'm
rampant."

   I wondered idly and viciously if I could attack him, take him, bring
him down under my greater craft and cunning and taste his blood without
his consent.

   "I'm much too far along the road for that," he said, "and why would
you chance such a thing?"

   What self-possession. The older man in him did indeed command the
sturdier younger flesh, the wise mortal with an iron authority over all
things eternal and supernaturally powerful. What a blend of energies!
Nice to drink his blood, to take him against his will. There is no such
fun on Earth like the raping of an equal.

   "I don't know," I said, ashamed. Rape is unmanly. "I don't know why I
insult you. You know, I wanted to leave quickly. I mean I wanted to
visit the attic, and then be out of here. I wanted to avoid this sort of
infatuation. You are a wonder, and you think me a wonder, and it's
rich."

   I let my eyes pass over him. I'd been blind to him when we met last,
that was most true.

   He dressed to kill. With the cleverness of olden times, when men
could preen like peacocks, he'd chosen golden sepia and umber colors for
his clothes. He was smart and clean and fretted all over with careful
bits of pure gold, in a wristband timepiece and buttons and a slender
pin for his modern tie, that tailored spill of color men wear in this
age, as if to let us grab them all the more easily by its noose. Stupid
ornament. Even his shirt of polished cotton was tawny and full of
something of the sun and the warmed earth. Even his shoes were brown,
glossy as beetles' backs.

He came towards me.

   "You know what I'm going to ask," he said. "Don't wrestle with these
unarticulated thoughts, these new experiences, all this overwhelming
understanding. Make a book out of it for me."

   I couldn't have predicted that this would be his question. I was
surprised, sweetly so, but nevertheless taken off guard.

"Make a book? I? Armand?"

   I went towards him, turned sharply and fled up the steps to the
attic, skirting the third floor and then entering the fourth.

   The air was thick and warm here. It was a place daily baked by the

sun. All was dry and sweet, the wood like incense and the floors
splintery.

"Little girl, where are you?" I asked.

"Child, you mean," he said.

He had come up behind me, taking a bit of time for courtesy's sake.

He added, "She was never here."

"How do you know?"

"If she were a ghost, I could call her," he said.

   I looked over my shoulder. "You have that power? Or is this just what
you want to say to me right now? Before you venture further, let me warn
you that we almost never have the power to see spirits."

   "I'm altogether new," David said. "I'm unlike any others. I've come
into the Dark World with different faculties. Dare I say, we, our
species, vampires, have evolved?"

   "The conventional word is stupid," I said. I moved further into the
attic. I spied a small chamber with plaster and peeling roses, big
floppy prettily drawn Victorian roses with pale fuzzy green leaves. I
went into the chamber. Light came from a high window out of which a
child could not have seen. Merciless, I thought.

   "Who said that a child died here?" I said. All was clean beneath the
soil of years. There was no presence. It seemed perfect and just, no
ghost to comfort me. Why should a ghost come from some savory rest for
my sake?

So I could cuddle up perhaps to the memory of her, her tender legend.
How are children murdered in orphanages where only nuns attend? I never
thought of women as so cruel. Dried up, without imagination perhaps, but
not aggressive as we are, to kill.

   I turned round and round. Wooden lockers lined one wall, and one
locker stood open, and there the tumbled shoes were, little brown
Oxfords, as they called them, with black strings, and now I beheld,
where it had been behind me, the broken and frayed hole from which
they'd ripped her clothes. All fallen there, moldy and wrinkled they
lay, her clothes.

  A stillness settled on me as if the dust of this place were a fine
ice, coming down from the high peaks of haughty and monstrously selfish
mountains to freeze all living things, this ice, to close up and stop
forever all that breathed or felt or dreamed or lived.

He spoke in poetry:

   " Tear no more the heat of the sun,' " he whispered. "Nor the furious
winter's rages. Fear no more ...' "

I winced with pleasure. I knew the verses. I loved them.

   I genuflected, as if before the Sacrament, and touched her clothes.
"And she was little, no more than five, and she didn't die here at all.

No one killed her. Nothing so special for her."

"How your words belie your thoughts," he said.

   "Not so, I think of two things simultaneously. There's a distinction
in being murdered. I was murdered. Oh, not by Marius, as you might
think, but by others."

   I knew I spoke soft and in an assuming way, because this wasn't meant
for pure drama.

   "I'm trimmed in memories as if in old furs. I lift my arm and the
sleeve of memory covers it. I look around and see other times. But you
know what frightens me the most-it is that this state, like so many
others with me, will prove the verge of nothing but extend itself over
centuries."

   "What do you really fear? What did you want from Lestat when you came
here?"

   "David, I came to see him. I came to find out how it was with him,
and why he lies there, unmoving. I came-." I wasn't going to say any
more.

   His glossy nails made his hands look ornamental and special, cares-
sive, comely and lovely with which to be touched. He picked up a small
dress, torn, gray, spotted with bits of mean lace. Everything dressed in
flesh can yield a dizzying beauty if you concentrate on it long enough,
and his beauty leapt out without apology.

  "Just clothes." Flowered cotton, a bit of velvet with a puffed sleeve
no bigger than an apple for the century of bare arms by day and night.
"No violence at all surrounding her," he said as if it were a pity.
"Just a poor child, don't you think, and sad by nature as well as
circumstance."

   "And why were they walled up, tell me that! What sin did these little
dresses commit?" I sighed. "Good God, David Talbot, why don't we let the
little girl have her romance, her fame? You make me angry. You say you
can see ghosts. You find them pleasant? You like to talk with them. I
could tell you about a ghost-."

   "When will you tell me? Look, don't you see the trick of a book?" He
stood up, and dusted off his knee with his right hand. In his left was
her gathered dress. Something about the whole configuration bothered me,
a tall creature holding a little girl's crumpled dress.

   "You know, when you think of it," I said, turning away, so I wouldn't
see the dress in his hand, "there's no good reason under God for little
girls and little boys. Think of it, the other tender issue of mammals.
Among puppies or kitten or colts, does one find gender? It's never an
issue. The half-grown fragile thing is sexless. There is no
determination. There is nothing as splendid to look at as a little boy
or girl. My head is so full of notions. I rather think I'll explode if I
don't do something, and you say make a book for you. You think it's
possible, you think..."

   "What I think is that when you make a book, you tell the tale as you
would like to know it!"

"I see no great wisdom in that."

   "Well, then think, for most speech is a mere issue of our feelings, a
mere explosion. Listen, note the way that you make these outbursts."

"I don't want to."

   "But you do, but they are not the words you want to read. When you
write, something different happens. You make a tale, no matter how
fragmented or experimental or how disregarding of all conventional and
helpful forms. Try this for me. No, no, I have a better idea."

"What?"

   "Come down with me into my rooms. I live here now, I told you.
Through my windows you can see the trees. I don't live like our friend
Louis, wandering from dusty corner to dusty corner, and then back to his
flat in the Rue Royale when he's convinced himself once more and for the
thousandth time that no one can harm Lestat. I have warm rooms. I use
candles for old light. Come down and let me write it, your story. Talk
to me. Pace, and rant if you will, or rail, yes, rail, and let me write
it, and even so, the very fact that I write, this in itself will make
you make a form out of it. You'll begin to ..."

"What?"

"To tell me what happened. How you died and how you lived."

   "Expect no miracles, perplexing scholar. I didn't die in New York
that morning. I almost died."

   He had me faintly curious, but I could never do what he wanted.
Nevertheless he was honest, amazingly so, as far as I could measure, and
therefore sincere.

   "Ah, so, I didn't mean literally I meant that you should tell me what
it was like to climb so high into the sun, and suffer so much, and, as
you said, to discover in your pain all these memories, these connecting
links. Tell me! Tell me."

   "Not if you mean to make it coherent," I said crossly. I gauged his
reaction. I wasn't bothering him. He wanted to talk more.

   "Make it coherent? Armand, I'll simply write down what you say." He
made his words simple yet curiously passionate.

"Promise?"

I flashed on him a playful look. Me! To do that.

   He smiled. He wadded up the little dress and then dropped it
carefully so it might fall in the middle of the pile of her old clothes.

   "I'll not alter one syllable," he said. "Come be with me, and talk to
me, and be my love." Again, he smiled.

   Suddenly he came towards me, much in the aggressive manner in which
I'd thought earlier to approach him. He slipped his hands under my hair,
and felt of my face, and then he gathered up the hair and he put his
face down into my curls, and he laughed. He kissed my cheek.

   "Your hair's like something spun from amber, as if the amber would
melt and could be drawn from candle flames in long fine airy threads and
let to dry that way to make all these shining tresses. You're sweet,
boylike and pretty as a girl. I wish I had one glimpse of you in antique
velvet the way you were for him, for Marius. I wish I could see for one
moment how it was when you dressed in stockings and wore a belted
doublet sewn with rubies. Look at you, the frosty child. My love doesn't
even touch you."

This wasn't true.

   His lips were hot, and I could feel the fangs under them, feel the
urgency suddenly in his fingers pressing against my scalp. It sent the
shivers through me, and my body tensed and then shuddered, and it was
sweet beyond prediction. I resented this lonely intimacy, resented it
enough to transform it, or rid myself of it utterly. I'd rather die or
be away, in the dark, simple and lonely with common tears.

   From the look in his eyes, I thought he could love without giving
anything. Not a connoisseur, just a blood drinker.

   "You make me hungry," I whispered. "Not for you but for one who is
doomed and yet alive. I want to hunt. Stop it. Why do you touch me? Why
be so gentle?"

"Everyone wants you," he said.

   "Oh, I know. Everyone would ravage a guilty cunning child! Everyone
would have a laughing boy who knows his way around the block. Kids make
better food than women, and girls are all too much like women, but young
boys? They're not like men, are they?"

   "Don't mock me. I meant I wanted only to touch you, to feel how soft
you are, how eternally young."

   "Oh, that's me, eternally young," I said. "You speak nonsense words
for one so pretty yourself. I'm going out. I have to feed. And when I've
finished with that, when I'm fiill and hot, then I'll come and I'll talk
to you and tell you anything you want." I stepped back just a little
from him, feeling the quivers through me as his fingers released my
hair. I looked at the empty white window, peering too high for the
trees.

   "They could see nothing green here, and it's spring outside, southern
spring. I can smell it through the walls. I want to look just for a
moment on flowers. To kill, to drink blood and to have flowers."

   "Not good enough. Want to make the book," he said. "Want to make it
now and want you to come with me. I won't hang around forever."

   "Oh, nonsense, of course you will. You think I'm a doll, don't you?
You think I'm cute and made of poured wax, and you'll stay as long as I
stay."

   "You're a bit mean, Armand. You look like an angel, and talk like a
common thug."

"Such arrogance! I thought you wanted me."

"Only on certain terms."

"You lie, David Talbot," I said.

  I headed past him for the stairs. Cicadas sang in the night as they
often do, to no clock, in New Orleans.

   Through the nine-pane windows of the stairwell, I glimpsed the
flowering trees of spring, a bit of vine curling on a porch top.

   He followed. Down and down we went, walking like regular men, down to
the first floor, and out the sparkling glass doors and into the broad
lighted space of Napoleon Avenue with its damp, sweet park of green down
the middle, a park thick with carefully planted flowers and old gnarled
and humble, bending trees.

   The whole picture moved with the subtle river winds, and wet mist
swirled but would not fall into rain itself, and tiny green leaves
drifted down like wilting ashes to the ground. Soft soft southern
spring. Even the sky seemed pregnant with the season, lowering yet
blushing with reflected light, giving birth to the mist from all its
pores.

   Strident perfume rose from the gardens right and left, from purple
Four O'Clocks, as mortals call them here, a rampant flower like unto
weed, but infinitely sweet, and the wild irises stabbing upwards like
blades out of the black mud, throaty petals monstrously big, battering
themselves on old walls and concrete steps, and then as always there
were roses, roses of old women and roses of the young, roses too whole
for the tropical night, roses coated with poison.

   There had been streetcars here once on this center strip of grass. I
knew it, that the tracks had run along this wide deep green space where
I walked ahead of him, slumward, riverward, deathward, Woodward. He came
after me. I could close my eyes as I walked, never losing a step, and
see the streetcars.

   "Come on, follow me," I said, describing what he did, not inviting
him.

   Blocks and blocks within seconds. He kept up. Very strong. The blood
of an entire Royal Vampire court was inside him, no doubt of it. Count
on Lestat to make the most lethal of monsters, that is, after his
initial seductive blunders-Nicolas, Louis, Claudia-not a single one of
the three able to take care of themselves alone, and two perished, and
one lingering and perhaps the weakest vampire yet walking in the great
world.

   I looked back. His tight, polished brown face startled me. He looked
lacquered all over, waxed, buffed, and once again I thought of spicy
things, of the meat of candied nuts, and delicious aromas, of chocolates
sweet with sugar and dark rich butterscotch, and it seemed a good thing
suddenly to maybe grab ahold of him.

   But this was no substitute for one rotten, cheap, ripe and
odoriferous mortal. And guess what? I pointed. "Over there."

   He looked as I directed him. He saw the sagging line of old
buildings. Mortals everywhere lurked, slept, sat, dined, wandered, amid
tiny narrow stairs, behind peeling walls and under cracked ceilings.

   I had found one, most perfect in his wickedness, a great flurry of
hateful embers, of malice and greed and contempt smoldering as he waited
for me.

 We'd come to Magazine Street and passed it, but we were not at the
river, only almost, and this was a street I had no recollection of, or
knowledge of, in my wanderings of this city-their city, Louis's and
Lestat's-just a narrow street with these houses the color of driftwood
under the moon and windows hung with makeshift coverings, and inside
there was this one slouching, arrogant, vicious mortal fixed to a
television set and guzzling malt from a brown bottle, ignoring the
roaches and the pulsing heat that pressed in from the open window, this
ugly, sweating, filthy and irresistible thing, this flesh and blood for
me.

 The house was so alive with vermin and tiny despicable things that it
seemed no more than a shell surrounding him, crackling and friable and
the same color in all its shadows as a forest. No antiseptic modern
standards here. Even the furniture rotted in the trashy clutter and
damp. Mildew covered the grinding white refrigerator.

   Only the reeky personal bed and rags gave off the clue to reigning
domesticity.

   It was a proper nest in which to find this fowl, this ugly bird,
thick rich pluckable, devourable sack of bones and blood and shabby
plumage.

   I pushed the door to one side, the human stench rising like a swirl
of gnats, and thereby put it off its hinges, but not with much sound.

   I walked on newspapers strewn on painted wood. Orange peels turned to
brownish leather. Roaches running. He didn't even look up. His swollen
drunken face was blue and eerie, black eyebrows thick and unkempt, and
yet he looked quite possibly a bit angelic, due to the light from the
tube.

   He flicked the magic plastic twanger in his hand to make the channels
change, and the light flared and flickered soundlessly, and then he let
the song rise, a band playing, a travesty, people clapping.

 Trashy noises, trashy images, like the trash all around him. All
right, I want you. No one else does.

   He looked up at me, a boy invader, David too far off for him to see,
waiting.

   I pushed the television set to the side. It teetered, then fell onto
the floor, its parts breaking, like so many jars of energy were inside,
and now splinters of glass.

   A momentary fury overcame him, charging his face with sluggish
recognition.

He rose up, arms out, and came at me.

   Before I sank my teeth, I noticed that he had long tangled black
hair. Dirty but rich. He wore it back by means of a knotted bit of rag
at the base of his neck and then straggling down his checkered shirt in

a thick tail.

   Meantime, he had enough syrupy and beer-besotted blood in him for two
vampires, delicious, ugly, and a raging fighting heart, and so much bulk
it was like riding a bull to be on him.

   In the midst of the feed, all odors rise to sweetness, even the most
rancid. I thought I would quietly die of joy, as always.

   I sucked hard enough to fill my mouth, letting the blood roll over my
tongue, and then to fill my stomach, if I have one, but above all just
to stanch this greedy dirty thirst, but not hard enough to slow him
down.

   He swooned and fought, and did the stupid thing of tearing at my
fingers, and then the most dangerous and clumsy thing of trying to find
my eyes. I shut them tight and let him press with his greasy thumbs. It
did him no good. I am an impregnable little boy. You can not blind the
blind. I was too fall of blood to care. Besides it felt good. Those weak
things that would scratch you do only stroke you.

   His life went by as if everyone he ever loved were riding a roller
coaster under snazzy stars. Worse than a Van Gogh painting. You never
know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest
colors.

   Soon enough he sank down. I went with him. I had my left arm all the
way around him now, and I lay childlike against his big muscular belly,
and I drew the blood out now in the blindest gushes, pressing everything
he thought and saw and felt down into only color, just give me color,
pure orange, and just for a second, as he died-as the death passed me
by, like a big rolling ball of black strength which turns out to be
nothing actually, nothing but smoke or something even less than that-as
this death came into me and went out again like the wind, I thought, Do
I by crushing everything that he is deprive him of a final knowing?

   Nonsense, Armand. You know what the spirits know, what the angels
know. The bastard is going home! To Heaven. To Heaven that would not
have you, and might never.

In death, he looked most excellent.

   I sat beside him. I wiped my mouth, not that there was a drop to
wipe. Vampires slobber blood only in motion pictures. Even the most
mundane immortal is far too skilled to spill a drop. I wiped my mouth
because his sweat was on my lips and on my face, and I wanted it to go
away.

   I admired him, however, that he was big and wondrously hard for all
his seeming roundness. I admired the black hair clinging to his wet
chest where the shirt had been so inevitably torn away.

   His black hair was something to behold. I ripped the knotted cloth
that tied it. It was as full and thick as a woman's hair.

   Making sure he was dead, I wrapped its length around my left hand and
purposed to pull the whole mass from his scalp.

David gasped. "Must you do this?" he asked me.

   "No," I said. Even then a few thousand strands had ripped loose from
the scalp, each with only its tiny blooded root winking in the air like
a tiny firefly. I held the mop for a moment and then let it slip out of
my fingers and fall down behind his turned head.

   Those unanchored hairs fell sloppily over his coarse cheek. His eyes
were wet and wakeful-seeming, dying jelly.

   David turned and went out into the little street. Cars roared and
clattered by. A ship on the river sang with a steam calliope.

   I came up behind him. I wiped the dust off me. One blow and I could
have set the whole house to falling down, just caving in on the putrid
filth within, dying softly amid other houses so no one indoors here
would even know, all this moist wood merely caving.

I could not get the taste and smell of this sweat gone.

   "Why did you so object to my pulling out his hair?" I asked. "I only
wanted to have it, and he's dead and beyond caring and no one else will
miss his black hair."

He turned with a sly smile and took my measure.

   "You frighten me, the way you look," I said. "Have I so carelessly
revealed myself to be a monster? You know, my blessed mortal Sybelle,
when she is not playing the Sonata by Beethoven called the Appassio-
nata, watches me feed all the time. Do you want me to tell my story
now?"

   I glanced back at the dead man on his side, his shoulder sagging. On
the windowsill beyond and above him stood a blue glass bottle and in it
was an orange flower. Isn't that the damnedest thing?

   "Yes, I do want your story," David said. "Come, let's go back
together. I only asked you not to take his hair for one reason."

   "Yes?" I asked. I looked at him. Rather genuine curiosity. "What was
the reason then? I was only going to pull out all his hair and throw it
away."

   "Like pulling off the wings of a fly," he offered seemingly without
judgment.

   "A dead fly," I said. I deliberately smiled. "Come now, why the
fass?"

   "I wanted to see if you'd listen to me," he said. "That's all.
Because if you did then it might be all right between us. And you
stopped. And it is." He turned around and took my arm.

"I don't like you! "I said.

   "Oh, yes, you do, Armand," he answered. "Let me write it. Pace and
rail and rant. You're very high and mighty right now because you have
those two splendid little mortals hanging on your every gesture, and
they're like acolytes to a god. But you want to tell me the story, you
know you do. Come on!"

   I couldn't stop myself from laughing. "Have these tactics worked for

you in the past?"

   Now it was his turn to laugh and he did, good-naturedly. "No, I
suppose not," he said. "But let me put it to you this way, write it for
them."

"For whom?"

"For Benji and Sybelle." He shrugged. "No?"

I didn't answer.

  Write the story for Benji and Sybelle. My mind raced forwards, to some
cheerful and wholesome room, where we three would be gathered years
hence-I, Armand, unchanged, boy teacher-and Benji and Sybelle in their
mortal prime, Benji grown into a sleek tall gentleman with an Arab's
ink-eyed allure and his favorite cheroot in his hand, a man of great
expectation and opportunity, and my Sybelle, a curvaceous and full
regal-bodied woman by then, and an even greater concert pianist than she
could be now, her golden hair framing a woman's oval face and fuller
womanish lips and eyes full of entsagang and secret radiance.

   Could I dictate the story in this room and give them the book? This
book dictated to David Talbot? Could I, as I set them free from my
alchemical world, give them this book? Go forth my children, with all
the wealth and guidance I could bestow, and now this book I wrote so
long ago for you with David.

  Yes, said my soul. Yet I turned, and ripped the black scalp of hair
from my victim and stomped on it with a Rumpelstiltskin foot.

David didn't flinch. Englishmen are so polite.

"Very well," I said. "I'll tell you my story."

  His rooms were on the second floor, not far from where I'd paused at
the top of the staircase. What a change from the barren and unheated
hallways! He'd made a library for himself and with tables and chairs. A
brass bed was there, dry and clean.

"These are her rooms," he said. "Don't you remember?"

   "Dora," I said. I breathed her scent suddenly. Why, it was all around
me. But all her personal things were gone.

  These were his books, they had to be. They were new spiritual
explorers-Dannion Brinkley, Hilarion, Melvin Morse, Brian Weiss, Matthew
Fox, the Urantia book. Add to this old texts-Cassiodorus, St. Teresa of
Avila, Gregory of Tours, the Veda, Talmud, Torah, Kama Sutra-all in
original tongues. He had a few obscure novels, plays, poetry.

   "Yes." He sat down at the table. "I don't need the light. Do you want
it?"

"I don't know what to tell you."

  "Ah," he said. He took out his mechanical pen. He opened a notebook
with startlingly white paper scored with fine green lines. "You will
know what to tell me." He looked up at me.

  I stood hugging myself, as it were, letting my head fall as if it
could drop right off me and I would die. My hair fell long about me.

  I thought of Sybelle and Benjamin, my quiet girl and exuberant boy.

"Did you like them, David, my children?" I asked.

  "Yes, the first moment I saw them, when you brought them in. Everyone
did. Everyone looked lovingly and respectfully at them. Such poise, such
charm. I think we all dream of such confidants, faithful mortal
companions of compelling grace, who aren't screaming mad. They love you,
yet they are neither terrified nor entranced."

I didn't move. I didn't speak. I shut my eyes. I heard in my heart the
swift, bold march of the Appassionata, those rumbling, incandescent
waves of music, full of throbbing and brittle metal, Appassionata. Only
it was in my head. No golden long-limbed Sybelle.

   "Light the candles that you have," I said timidly. "Will you do that
for me? It would be sweet to have many candles, and look, Dora's lace is
hanging still on the windows, fresh and clean. I am a lover of lace,
that is Brussels point de gaze, or very like it, yes, I'm rather mad for
it."

"Of course, I'll light the candles," he said.

   I had my back to him. I heard the sharp delicious crack of a small
wooden match. I smelt it burn, and then came the liquid fragrance of the
nodding wick, the curling wick, and the light rose upwards, finding the
cypress boards of the stripped wooden ceiling above us. Another crack,
another series of tiny sweet soft crackling sounds, and the light
swelled and came down over me and fell just short of brightness along
the shadowy wall.

   "Why did you do it, Armand?" he said. "Oh, the Veil has Christ on it,
in some form, no doubt of it, it did seem to be the Holy Veil of
Veronica, and God knows, thousands of others believed it, yes, but why
in your case, why? It was blazingly beautiful, yes, I grant you that,
Christ with His thorns and His blood, and His eyes gazing right at us,
both of us, but why did you believe it so completely, Armand, after so
long? Why did you go to Him? That's what you tried to do, didn't you?"

I shook my head. I made my words soft and pleading.

   "Back up, scholar," I said, turning around slowly. "Mind your page.
This is for you, and for Sybelle. Oh, it's for my little Benji too. But
in a way, it's my symphony for Sybelle. The story begins a long time
ago. Maybe I've never truly realized how long ago, until this very
moment. You listen and write. Let me be the one to cry and to rant and
to rail."

LOOK AT MY HANDS. I think of the phrase "not made by human hands." I
know what this means, even though every time I ever heard the phrase
said with emotion it had to do with what had come from my hands.

  I'd like to paint now, to pick up a brush and try it the way I did it
then, in a trance, furiously, once and for only, every line and mass of
color, each blending, each decision final.

Ah, I'm so disorganized, so browbeaten by what I remember.

Let me choose a place to begin.

  Constantinople-newly under the Turks, by that I mean a Moslem City for
less than a century when I was brought there, a slave boy, captured in
the wild lands of his country for which he barely knew the proper name:
the Golden Horde.

  Memory had already been choked out of me, along with language, or any
capacity to reason in a consistent way. I remember the squalid rooms
that must have been Constantinople because other people talked, and for
the first time in forever, since I'd been ripped out of what I couldn't
remember, I could understand what people said.

  They spoke Greek, of course, these traders who dealt in slaves for
brothels in Europe. They knew no religious allegiance, which was all I
knew, pitifully devoid of detail.

  I was thrown down on a thick Turkey carpet, the fancified rich floor
covering one saw in a palace, a display rug for high-priced goods.

  My hair was wet and long; someone had brushed it enough to hurt me.
All those personal things that were mine had been stripped from me and
from my memory. I was naked beneath an old frayed tunic of gold cloth.
It was hot and damp in the room. I was hungry, but having no hope of
food, I knew this to be a pain that would spike and then, of its own,
die away. The tunic must have given me a castoff glory, the shimmer of a
fallen angel. It had long bell sleeves and came to my knees.

   When I got to my feet, which were bare of course, I saw these men and
knew what they wanted, that this was vice, and despicable, and the price
of it was Hell. Curses of vanished elders echoed down on me: too pretty,
too soft, too pale, eyes far too full of the Devil, ah, the devilish
smile.

   How intent these men were on their argument, their bargaining. How
they looked at me without ever looking into my eyes.

   Suddenly I laughed. Things here were being done so hastily. Those who
had delivered me had left me. Those who had scrubbed me had never left
the tubs. I was a bundle thrown down on the carpet.

   For one moment, I had an awareness of myself as having been sharp-
tongued once and cynical, and keenly aware of the nature of men in
general. I laughed because these merchants thought I was a girl.

I waited, listening, catching these bits and pieces of talk.

   We were in a broad room, with a low canopied ceiling, the silk of it
sewn with tiny mirrors and the curlicues so loved by the Turks, and the
lamps, though smoky, were scented and filled the air with a dusky hazy
soot that burned my eyes.

   The men in their turbans and caftans weren't unfamiliar to me any
more than the language. But I only caught dashes of what they said. My
eyes looked for an escape. There was none. There were heavy, brooding
men slouching near the entrances. A man far off at a desk used an abacus
for counting. He had piles and piles of gold coins.

   One of the men, a tall lean one, all cheekbones and jaw, with rotted-

out teeth, came towards me and felt of my shoulders and my neck. Then he
lifted up the tunic. I stood stock-still, not enraged or consciously
fearful, merely paralyzed. This was the land of the Turks, and I knew
what they did to boys. Only I had never seen a picture, nor heard a real
story of it, or known anyone who had ever really lived in it, penetrated
it and come back home.

   Home. Surely I must have wanted to forget who I was. I must have.
Shame must have made it mandatory. But at that moment, in the tent-like
room with its flowered carpet, among the merchants and slave traders, I
strained to remember as if, discovering a map in myself, I could follow
it out of here and back to where I belonged.

   I did recollect the grasslands, the wild lands, lands where you don't
go, except for-. But that was a blank. I'd been in the grasslands,
defying fate, stupidly but not unwillingly. I'd been carrying something
of the utmost importance. I got off my horse, ripped this big bundle
loose from the leather harness and ran with the bundle clutched against
my chest.

"The trees!" he shouted, but who was he?

   I knew what he had meant, however, that I had to reach the copse and
put this treasure there, this splendid and magical thing that was inside
the bundle, "not made by human hands."

   I never got that far. When they grabbed hold of me, I dropped the
bundle and they didn't even go after it, at least not as I saw. I
thought, as I was hoisted into the air: It isn't supposed to be found
like that, wrapped in cloth like that. It has to be placed in the trees.

 They must have raped me on the boat because I don't remember coming to
Constantinople. I don't remember being hungry, cold, outraged or afraid.

 Now here for the first time, I knew the particulars of rape, the
stinking grease, the squabbling, the curses over the ruin of the lamb. I
felt a hideous unsupportable powerlessness.

Loathsome men, men against God and against nature.

   I made a roar like an animal at the turbaned merchant, and he struck
me hard on the ear so that I fell to the ground. I lay still looking up
at him with all the contempt I could bring into my gaze. I didn't get
up, even when he kicked me. I wouldn't speak.

 Thrown over his shoulder I was carried out, taken through a crowded
courtyard, past wondrous stinking camels and donkeys and heaps of filth,
out by the harbor where the ships waited, over the gangplank and into
the ship's hold.

 It was filth again, the smell of hemp, the rustling of the rats on
board. I was thrown on a pallet of rough cloth. Once again, I looked for
the escape and saw only the ladder by which we'd descended and above
heard the voices of too many men.

 It was still dark when the ship began to move. Within an hour I was so
sick, I wanted simply to die. I curled up on the floor and lay as still
as possible, hiding myself entirely under the soft clinging fabric of
the old tunic. I slept for the longest time.

  When I awoke an old man was there. He wore a different style of dress,
less frightening to me than that of the turbaned Turks, and his eyes
were kindly. He bent near me. He spoke a new language which was
uncommonly soft and sweet, but I couldn't understand him.

   A voice speaking Greek told him that I was a mute, had no wits and
growled like a beast.

Time to laugh again, but I was too sick.

   The same Greek told the old man I hadn't been torn or wounded. I was
marked at a high price.

   The old man made some dismissing gestures as he shook his head and
talked a song in the new speech. He laid his hands on me and gently
coaxed me to my feet.

   He took me through a doorway into a small chamber, draped all in red
silk.

I spent the rest of the voyage in this chamber, except for one night.

   On that one night-and I can't place it in terms of the journey-I
awoke, and finding him asleep beside me, this old man who never touched
me except to pat or console me, I went out, up the ladder, and stood for
a long time looking up at the stars.

   We were at anchor in a port, and a city of dark blue-black buildings
with domed roofs and bell towers tumbled down the cliffs to the harbor
where the torches turned beneath the ornamented arches of an arcade.

   All this, the civilized shore, looked probable to me, appealing, but
I had no thought that I could jump ship and get free. Men wandered
beneath the archways. Beneath the arch nearest to me, a strangely garbed
man in a shiny helmet, with a big broad sword dangling on his hip, stood
guard against the branching fretted column, carved so mar-velously to
look like a tree as it supported the cloister, like the remnant of a
palace into which this channel for ships had been rudely dug.

   I didn't look at the shore much after this first long and memorable
glimpse. I looked up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed
forever in the all powerful and inscrutable stars. Ink black was the
night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old poetry came back to
me, the sound even of hymns sung only by men.

   As I recall it, hours passed before I was caught, beaten fiercely
with a leather thong and dragged back down in the hold. I knew the
beating would stop when the old man saw me. He was furious and
trembling. He gathered me to him, and we bedded down again. He was too
old to ask anything of me.

I didn't love him. It was clear to the witless mute that this man
regarded him as something quite valuable, to be preserved for sale. But
I needed him and he wiped my tears. I slept as much as I could. I was
sick every time the waves were rough. Sometimes the heat alone sickened
me. I didn't know real heat. The man fed me so well that sometimes I
thought I was a being kept by him like a fatted calf to be sold for
food.

   When we reached Venice, it was late in the day. I had no hint of the

beauty of Italy. I'd been locked away from it, down in this grime pit
with the old keeper, and being taken up into the city I soon saw that my
suspicions about the old keeper were perfectly right.

   In a dark room, he and another man fell into bitter argument. Nothing
could make me speak. Nothing could make me indicate that I understood
anything that was happening to me. I did, however, understand. Money
changed hands. The old man left without looking back.

  They tried to teach me things. The soft caressing new language was all
around me. Boys came, sat beside me, tried to coax me with soft kisses
and embraces. They pinched the nipples on my chest and tried to touch
the private parts which I'd been taught not even to look at on account
of the bitter occasion of sin.

   Several times I resolved to pray. But I discovered I couldn't
remember the words. Even the images were indistinct. Lights had gone out
forever which had guided me through all my years. Every time I drifted
deep into thought, someone struck me or yanked at my hair.

  They always came with ointments after they hit me. They were careful
to treat the abraded skin. Once, when a man struck me on the side of the
face, another shouted and grabbed his upraised hand before he could land
the second blow.

  I refused food and drink. They couldn't make me take it. I couldn't
take it. I didn't choose to starve. I simply couldn't do anything to
keep myself alive. I knew I was going home. I was going home. I would
die and go home. It would be an awful painful passage. I would have
cried if I'd been alone. But I was never alone. I'd have to die in front
of people. I hadn't seen real daylight in forever. Even the lamps hurt
my eyes because I was so much in unbroken darkness. But people were
always there.

  The lamp would brighten. They sat in a ring around me with grimy
little faces and quick pawlike hands that wiped my hair out of my face
or shook me by the shoulder. I turned my face to the wall.

A sound kept me company. This was to be the end of my life. The sound
was the sound of water outside. I could hear it against the wall. I
could tell when a boat passed and I could hear the wood pylons creaking,
and I lay my head against the stone and felt the house sway in the water
as if we were not beside it but planted in it, which of course we were.

   Once I dreamed of home, but I don't remember what it was like. I
woke, I cried, and there came a volley of little greetings from the
shadows, wheedling, sentimental voices.

   I thought I wanted to be alone. I didn't. When they locked me up for
days and nights in a black room without bread or water, I began to
scream and pound on the walls. No one came.

   After a while, I fell into a stupor. It was a violent jolt when the
door was opened. I sat up, covering my eyes. The lamp was a menace. My
head throbbed.

   But there came a soft insinuating perfume, a mixture of the smell of
sweet burning wood in snowing winter and that of crushed flowers and
pungent oil.

   I was touched by something hard, something made of wood or brass,
only this thing moved as if it were organic. At last I opened my eyes
and saw that a man held me, and these inhuman things, these things that
felt so like stone or brass, were his white fingers, and he looked at me
with eager, gentle blue eyes.

"Amadeo," he said.

   He was dressed all in red velvet and splendidly tall. His blond hair
was parted in the middle in a saintly fashion and combed richly down to
his shoulders where it broke over his cloak in lustrous curls. He had a
smooth forehead without a line to it, and high straight golden eyebrows
dark enough to give his face a clear, determined look. His lashes curled
like dark golden threads from his eyelids. And when he smiled, his lips
were flushed suddenly with a pale immediate color that made their full
careful shape all the more visible.

   I knew him. I spoke to him. I could have never seen such miracles in
the face of anyone else.

   He smiled so kindly at me. His upper lip and chin were all clean
shaven. I couldn't even see the scantest hair on him, and his nose was
narrow and delicate though large enough to be in proportion to the other
magnetic features of his face.

   "Not the Christ, my child," he said. "But one who comes with his own
salvation. Come into my arms."

   "I'm dying, Master." What was my language? I can't say even now what
it was. But he understood me.

   "No, little one, you're not dying. You're coming now into my
protection, and perhaps if the stars are with us, if they are kind to
us, you'll never die at all."

"But you are the Christ. I know you!"

  He shook his head, and in the most common human way he lowered his
eyes as he did, and he smiled. His generous lips parted, and I saw only
a human's white teeth. He put his hands beneath my arms, lifted me and
kissed my throat, and the shivers paralyzed me. I closed my eyes and
felt his fingers on top of them, and heard him say into my ear, "Sleep
as I take you home."

  When I awoke, we were in a huge bath. No Venetian ever had such a bath
as this, I can tell you that now from all the things I saw later, but
what did I know of the conventions of this place? This was a palace
truly; I had seen palaces.

  I climbed up and out of the swaddling of velvet in which I lay-his red
cloak if I'm not mistaken-and I saw a great curtained bed to my right
and, beyond, the deep oval basin of the bath itself. Water poured from a
shell held by angels into the basin, and steam rose from the broad
surface, and in the steam my Master stood. His white chest was naked and
the nipples faintly pink, and his hair, pushed back from his smooth
straight forehead, looked even thicker and more beautifully blond than
it had before.

He beckoned to me.

I was afraid of the water. I knelt at the edge and put my hand into it.

  With amazing speed and grace, he reached for me and brought me down
into the warm pool, pushing me until the water covered my shoulders and
then tilting back my head.

  Again I looked up at him. Beyond him the bright-blue ceiling was
covered in startlingly vivid angels with giant white feathery wings. I
had never seen such brilliant and curly angels, leaping as they did, out
of all restraint and style, to flaunt their human beauty in muscled
limbs and swirling garments, in flying locks. It seemed a bit of madness
this, these robust and romping figures, this riot of celestial play
above me to which the steam ascended, evaporating in a golden light.

   I looked at my Master. His face was right before me. Kiss me again,
yes, do it, that shiver, kiss-. But he was of the same ilk as those
painted beings, one of them, and this some form of heathen Heaven, a
pagan place of Soldiers' gods where all is wine, and fruit, and flesh. I
had come to the wrong place.

   He threw back his head. He gave way to ringing laughter. He lifted a
handful of water again and let it spill down my chest. He opened his
mouth and for a moment I saw the flash of something very wrong and
dangerous, teeth such as a wolf might have. But these were gone, and
only his lips sucked at my throat, then at my shoulder. Only his lips
sucked at the nipple as I sought too late to cover it.

   I groaned for all this. I sank against him in the warm water, and his
lips went down my chest to my belly. He sucked tenderly at the skin as
if he were sucking up the salt and the heat from it, and even his
forehead nudging my shoulder filled me with warm thrilling sensations. I
put my arm around him, and when he found the sin itself, I felt it go
off as if an arrow had been shot from it, and it were a crossbow; I felt
it go, this arrow, this thrust, and I cried out.

   He let me lie for a while against him. He bathed me slowly. He had a
soft gathered cloth with which he wiped my face. He dipped me back to
wash my hair.

   And then when he thought I had rested enough, we began the kisses
again.

   Before dawn, I woke against his pillow. I sat up and saw him as he
put on his big cloak and covered his head. The room was full of boys
again, but these were not the sad, emaciated tutors of the brothel.
These boys were handsome, well fed, smiling and sweet, as they gathered
around the bed.

   They wore brightly colored tunics of effervescent colors, with
fabrics carefully pleated and tight belts that gave them a girlish
grace. All wore long luxuriant hair.

   My Master looked at me and in a tongue I knew, I knew perfectly, he
said that I was his only child, and he would come again that night, and
by such time as that I would have seen a new world.

   "A new world!" I cried out. "No, don't leave me, Master. I don't want
the whole world. I want you!"

   "Amadeo," he said in this private tongue of confidence, leaning over

the bed, his hair dry now and beautifully brushed, his hands softened
with powder. "You have me forever. Let the boys feed you, dress you."
You belong to me, to Marius Romanus, now.

   He turned to them and gave them their commands in the soft singing
language.

   And you would have thought from their happy faces that he had given
them sweets and gold.

   "Amadeo, Amadeo," they sang as they gathered around me. They held me
so that I couldn't follow him. They spoke Greek to me, fast and easily,
and Greek for me was not so easy. But I understood.

   Come with us, you are one of us, we are to be good to you, we are to
be especially good to you. They dressed me up hastily in castoffs,
arguing with one another about my tunic, was it good enough, and these
faded stockings, well, it was only for now! Put on the slippers; here, a
jacket that was too small for Riccardo. These seemed the garments of
kings.

   "We love you," said Albinus, the second in command to Riccardo, and a
dramatic contrast to the black-haired Riccardo, for his blond hair and
pale green eyes. The other boys, I couldn't quite distinguish, but these
two were easy to watch.

   "Yes, we love you," said Riccardo, pushing back his black hair and
winking at me, his skin so smooth and dark compared to the others. His
eyes were fiercely black. He clutched my hand and I saw his long thin
fingers. Here everyone had thin fingers, fine fingers. They had fingers
like mine, and mine had been unusual among my brethren. But I couldn't
think of this.

 And eerie possibility suggested itself to me, that I, the pale one,
the one who made all the trouble, the one with the fine fingers, had
been spirited away to the good land where I belonged. But that was
altogether too fabulous to believe. My head ached. I saw wordless
flashes of the stubby horsemen who had captured me, of the stinking hold
of the ship in which I'd been brought to Constantinople, flashes of
gaunt, busy men, men fussing as they had handled me there.

   Dear God, why did anyone love me? What for? Marius Romanus, why do
you love me?

 The Master smiled as he waved from the door. The hood was up around
his head, a crimson frame for his fine cheekbones and his curling lips.

My eyes filled with tears.

 A white mist swirled around the Master as the door closed behind him.
The night was going. But the candles still burned.

 We came into a large room, and I saw that it was full of paints and
pots of color and brushes standing in earthen jars ready to be used.
Great white squares of cloth-canvas-waited for the paint.

These boys didn't make their colors with the yoke of an egg in the time-
honored manner. They mixed the bright fine ground pigments directly with
the amber-colored oils. Great glossy gobs of color awaited me in little
pots. I took the brush when they gave it to me. I looked at the

stretched white cloth on which I was to paint.

   "Not from human hands," I said. But what did these words mean? I
lifted the brush and I began to paint him, this blond-haired man who had
rescued me from darkness and squalor. I threw out the hand with the
brush, dipping the bristles into the jars of cream and pink and white
and slapping these colors onto the curiously resilient canvas. But I
couldn't make a picture. No picture came!

   "Not by human hands!" I whispered. I dropped the brush. I put my
hands over my face.

   I searched for the words in Greek. When I said them, several of the
boys nodded, but they didn't grasp the meaning. How could I explain to
them the catastrophe? I looked at my fingers. What had become of-. There
all recollection burnt up and I was left suddenly with Amadeo.

   "I can't do it." I stared at the canvas, at the mess of colors.
"Maybe if it was wood, not cloth, I could do it."

What had it been that I could do? They didn't understand.

   He was not the Living Lord, my Master, the blond one, the blond one
with the icy blue eyes.

   But he was my Lord. And I could not do this thing that was meant to
be done.

   To comfort me, to distract me, the boys took up their brushes and
quickly astonished me with pictures that ran like a stream out of their
quick applications of the brush.

   A boy's face, cheeks, lips, eyes, yes, and reddish-golden hair in
profusion. Good Lord, it was I... it was not a canvas but a mirror. It
was this Amadeo. Riccardo took over to refine the expression, to deepen
the eyes and work a sorcery on the tongue so I seemed about to speak.
What was this rampant magic that made a boy appear out of nothing, most
natural, at a casual angle, with knitted brows and streaks of unkempt
hair over his ear?

   It seemed both blasphemous and beautiful, this fluid, abandoned
fleshly figure.

   Riccardo spelled the letters out in Greek as he wrote them. Then he
threw the brush down. He cried:

   "A very different picture is what our Master has in mind." He
snatched up the drawings.

 They pulled me through the house, the "palazzo" as they called it,
teaching me the word with relish.

 The entire place was filled with such paintings-on its walls, its
ceilings, on panels and canvases stacked against each other-towering
pictures full of ruined buildings, broken columns, rampant greenery,
distant mountains and an endless stream of busy people with flushed
faces, their luxuriant hair and gorgeous clothing always rumpled and
curling in a wind.

   It was like the big platters of fruit and meats that they brought out

and set before me. A mad disorder, an abundance for the sake of itself,
a great drench of colors and shapes. It was like the wine, too sweet and
light.

IT WAS LIKE the city below when they threw open the windows, and I saw
the small black boats-gondolas, even then-in brilliant sunlight coursing
through the greenish waters, when I saw the men in their sumptuous
scarlet or gold cloaks hurrying along the quays.

   Into our gondolas we piled, a troop of us, and suddenly we traveled
in graceful darting silence among the facades, each huge house as
magnificent as a Cathedral, with its narrow pointed arches, its lotus
windows, its covering of gleaming white stone.

   Even the older, sorrier dwellings, not too ornate but nevertheless
monstrous in size, were plastered in colors, a rose so deep it seemed to
come from crushed petals, a green so thick it seemed to have been mixed
from the opaque water itself.

   Out into the Piazza San Marco we came, amid the long fantastically
regular arcades on both sides.

  It seemed the very gathering place of Heaven as I stared at the
hundreds milling before the distant golden domes of the church.

Golden domes. Golden domes.

   Some old tale had been told to me of golden domes, and I had seen
them in a darkling picture, had I not? Sacred domes, lost domes, domes
in flames, a church violated, as I had been violated. Ah, ruin, ruin was
gone, laid waste by the sudden eruption all around me of what was vital
and whole! How had all this been born out of wintry ashes? How had I
died among snows and smoking fires and come to rise here beneath this
caressing sun?

  Its warm sweet light bathed beggars and tradesmen; it shone on princes
passing with pages to carry their ornate velvet trains behind them, on
the booksellers who spread their books beneath scarlet canopies, lute
players who vied for small coins.

   The wares of the wide diabolical world were displayed in the shops
and market stalls-glassware such as I have never beheld, including
goblets of all possible colors, not to mention little figurines of glass
including animals and human beings and other filmy shining trinkets.
There were marvelously bright and beautifully turned beads for rosaries;
magnificent laces in grand and graceful patterns, including even snowy
white pictures of actual church towers and little houses with windows
and doors; great feathery plumes from birds I couldn't name; other
exotic species flapping and screeching in gilt cages; and the finest and
most magnificently worked multicolored carpets only too reminiscent of
the powerful Turks and their capital from which I'd come. Nevertheless,
who resists such carpets? Forbidden by law to render human beings,
Moslems rendered flowers, arabesques, labyrinthian curlicues and other
such designs with bold dyes and awe-inspiring exactitude. There were
oils for lamps, tapers, candles, incense, and great displays of
glistering jewels of indescribable beauty and the most delicate work of
the goldsmiths and silversmiths, in plate and ornamental items both
newly made and old. There were shops that sold only spices. There were
shops that sold medicines and cures. There were bronze statues, lion
heads, lanterns and weapons. There were cloth merchants with the silks

of the East, the finest woven wools dyed in miraculous tints, cotton and
linen and fine specimens of embroidery, and ribbons galore.

   Men and women here appeared immensely wealthy, feasting casually on
fresh meat tarts in the cookshops, drinking clear red wine and eating
sweet cakes full of cream.

   There were booksellers offering the new printed books, of which the
other apprentices told me eagerly, explaining the marvelous invention of
the printing press, which had only lately made it possible for men far
and wide to acquire not only books of letters and words but books of
drawn pictures as well.

   Venice already had dozens of small print shops and publishers where
the presses were hard at work producing books in Greek as well as Latin,
and in the vernacular tongue-the soft singing tongue- which the
apprentices spoke amongst themselves.

   They let me stop to glut my eyes on these wonders, these machines
that made pages for books.

But they did have their chores, Riccardo and the others-they were to
scoop up the prints and engravings of the German painters for our
Master, pictures made by the new printing presses of old wonders by
Memling, Van Eyck, or Hieronymus Bosch. Our Master was always in the
market for them. Such drawings brought the north to the south. Our
Master was a champion of such wonders. Our Master was pleased that over
one hundred printing presses filled our city, that he could throw away
his coarse inaccurate copies of Livy and Virgil and have now corrected
printed texts.

Oh, it was such a load of information.

   And no less important than the literature or paintings of the
universe was the matter of my clothes. We had to get the tailors to stop
everything to dress me properly according to small chalk drawings which
the Master had made.

   Handwritten letters of credit had to be taken to the banks. I was to
have money. Everyone was to have money. I had never touched such a thing
as money.

 Money was pretty-Florentine gold or silver, German florins, Bohemian
groschens, fancy old coins minted under the rulers of Venice who were
called the Doges, exotic coins from the Constantinople of old. I was
given a little sack of my own clinking clanking money. We tied our
"purses" to our belts.

   One of the boys bought me a small wonder because I stared at it. It
was a ticking watch. I couldn't grasp the theory of it, this tiny
ticking thing, all encrusted with jewels, and not all the hands pointed
at the sky would teach me. At last with a shock I realized: It was,
beneath its filigree and paint, its strange glass and bejeweled frame, a
tiny clock!

   I closed my hand on it and felt dizzy. I had never known clocks to be
anything but great venerable things in bell towers or on walls.

"I carry time now," I whispered in Greek, looking to my friends.

"Amadeo," said Riccardo. "Count the hours for me."

 I wanted to say that this prodigious discovery meant something,
something personal. It was a message to me from some other too hastily
and perilously forgotten world. Time was not time anymore and never
would be. The day was not the day, nor the night the night. I couldn't
articulate it, not in Greek, nor any tongue, nor even in my feverish
thoughts. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. I squinted into the
brilliant sun of Italy. My eyes clapped upon the birds who flew in great
flocks across the sky, like tiny pen strokes made to flap in unison. I
think I whispered foolishly, "We are in the world."

"We are in the center of it, the greatest city of it!" Riccardo cried,
urging me on into the crowds. "We shall see it before we get locked up
in the tailor's, that's for damned sure."

   But first it was time for the sweetshop, for the miracle of chocolate
with sugar, for syrupy concoctions of unnameable but bright red and
yellow sweets.

   One of the boys showed to me his little book of the most frightening
printed pictures, men and women embraced in carnality. It was the
stories of Boccaccio. Riccardo said he would read them to me, that it
was in fact an excellent book to teach me Italian. And that he would
teach me Dante too.

   Boccaccio and Dante were Florentines, said one of the other boys, but
all in all the two weren't so bad.

   Our Master loved all kinds of books, I was told, you couldn't go
wrong spending your money on them, he was always pleased with that. I'd
come to see that the teachers who came to the house would drive me crazy
with their lessons. It was the studia humanitatis that we must all
learn, and it included history, grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and
ancient authors ... all of this so much dazzling words that only
revealed its meaning to me as it was often repeated and demonstrated in
the days to come.

   We could not look too good for our Master either, that was another
lesson I must learn. Gold and silver chains, necklaces with medallions
and other such trinkets were bought for me and laid over my neck. I
needed rings, jeweled rings. We had to bargain fiercely with the
jewelers for these, and I came out of it wearing a real emerald from the
new world, and two ruby rings carved with silver inscriptions which I
couldn't read.

   I couldn't get over the sight of my hand with a ring. To this very
night of my life, some five hundred years after, you see, I have a
weakness for jeweled rings. Only during those centuries in Paris when I
was a penitent, one of Satan's discalced Children of the Night, during
that long slumber only, did I give up my rings. But we'll come to that
nightmare soon enough.

   For now, this was Venice, I was Marius's child and romped with his
other children in a manner that would be repeated for years ahead.

On to the tailor.

   As I was measured and pinned and dressed, the boys told me stories of
all those rich Venetians who came to our Master seeking to have even the

smallest piece of his work. As for our Master, he, claiming that he was
too wretched, sold almost nothing but occasionally did a portrait of a
woman or man who struck his eye. These portraits almost always worked
the person into a mythological subject-gods, goddesses, angels, saints.
Names I knew and names I'd never heard of tripped off the boys' tongues.
It seemed here all echoes of sacred things were swept up in a new tide.

  Memory would jolt me only to release me. Saints and gods, they were
one and the same? Wasn't there a code to which I should remain faithful
that somehow dictated these were but artful lies? I couldn't get it
clear in my head, and all around me was such happiness, yes, happiness.
It seemed impossible that these simple shining faces could mask
wickedness. I didn't believe it. Yet all pleasure to me was suspect. I
was dazzled when I could not give in, and overcome when I did surrender,
and as the days followed I surrendered with ever greater ease all the
time.

  This day of initiation was only one of hundreds, nay, thousands that
were to follow, and I don't know when I started to understand with any
preciseness what my boy companions said. That time came, however, and
rather quickly. I do not remember being the naive one very long.

   On this first excursion, it was magic. And high above the sky was the
perfect blue of cobalt, and the breeze from the sea was fresh and moist
and cool. There above were massed the scudding clouds I had seen so
wondrously rendered in the paintings of the palazzo, and there came my
first hint that the paintings of my Master were no lie.

  Indeed when we entered, by special permission, the Doges' chapel, San
Marco, I was caught by the throat by its splendor-its walls of gleaming
tessellated gold. But another shock followed hard upon my finding myself
virtually entombed in light and in riches. Here were stark, somber
figures, figures of saints I knew.

  These were no mystery to me, the almond-eyed tenants of these hammered
walls, severe in their straight careful drapery, their hands infallibly
folded in prayer. I knew their halos, I knew the tiny holes made in the
gold to make it glitter ever more magically. I knew the judgment of
these bearded patriarchs who gazed impassively on me as I stopped, dead
in my tracks, unable to go on.

I slumped to the stone floor. I was sick.

  I had to be taken from the church. The noise of the piazza rose over
me as if I were descending to some awful denouement. I wanted to tell my
friends it was inevitable, not their fault.

   The boys were in a fluster. I couldn't explain it. Stunned, sweating
all over and lying limp at the base of a column, I listened dully as
they explained to me in Greek that this church was only part of all I
had seen. Why should it frighten me so? Yes, it was old, yes, it was
Byzantine, as so much in Venice was. "Our ships have traded with
Byzantium for centuries. We are a maritime empire." I tried to grasp it.

   What came clear in my pain was only that this place had not been a
special judgment upon me. I had been taken from it as easily as I had
been brought into it. The sweet-voiced boys with the gentle hands who
surrounded me, who offered me cool wine to drink and fruit to eat that I
might recover, they did not hold this place in any terrible dread.

   Turning to the left of me, I glimpsed the quays, the harbor. I ran
towards it, thunderstruck by the sight of the wooden ships. They stood
at anchor four and five deep, but beyond them was enacted the greatest
miracle: great galleons of deep ballooning wood, their sails collecting
the breeze, their graceful oars chopping the water as they moved out to
sea.

   Back and forth the traffic moved, the huge wooden barks dangerously
close to one another, slipping in and out of the mouth of Venice, while
others no less graceful and impossible at anchor disgorged abundant
goods.

   Leading me stumbling to the Arsenale, my companions comforted me with
the sight of the ships being built by ordinary men. In days to come I
would hang about at the Arsenale for hours, watching the ingenious
process by which human beings made such immense barks that to my mind
should rightly sink.

   Now and then in snatches I saw images of icy rivers, of barges and
flatboats, of coarse men reeking of animal fat and rancid leather. But
these last ragged tidbits of the winter world from which I'd come faded.

   Perhaps had this not been Venice, it would have been a different
tale.

   In all my years in Venice, I never tired of the Arsenale, of watching
the ships being built. I had no problem gaining access by means of a few
kind words and coins, and it was ever my delight to watch these
fantastical structures being constructed of bowed ribs, bent wood and
piercing masts. Of this first day, we were rushed through this yard of
miracles. It was enough.

Yes, well, it was Venice, this place that must erase from my mind, at
least for a while, the clotted torment of some earlier existence, some
congestion of all truths I would not face.

My Master would never have been there, had it not been Venice.

   Not a month later he would tell me matter-of-factly what each of the
cities of Italy had to offer him, how he loved to watch Michelangelo,
the great sculptor, hard at work in Florence, how he went to listen to
the fine teachers in Rome.

   "But Venice has an art of a thousand years," he said as he himself
lifted his brush to paint the huge panel before him. "Venice is in
itself a work of art, a metropolis of impossible domestic temples built
side by side like waxen honeycombs and maintained in ever flowing nectar
by a population as busy as bees. Behold our palaces, they alone are
worthy of the eye."

  As time passed he would school me in the history of Venice, as did the
others, dwelling on the nature of the Republic, which, though despotic
in its decisions and fiercely hostile to the outsider, was nevertheless
a city of "equal" men. Florence, Milan, Rome-these cities were falling
under the power of small elites or powerful families and individuals,
while Venice, for all her faults, remained governed by her Senators, her
powerful merchants and her Council of Ten.

   On that first day, an everlasting love for Venice was born in me. It
seemed singularly devoid of horrors, a warm home even for its well-

dressed and clever beggars, a hive of prosperity and vehement passion as
well as staggering wealth.

   And in the tailor shop, was I not being made up into a prince like my
new friends?

Look, had I not seen Riccardo's sword? They were all noblemen.

   "Forget all that has gone before," said Riccardo. "Our Master is our
Lord, and we are his princes, we are his royal court. You are rich now
and nothing can hurt you."

   "We are not mere apprentices in the ordinary sense," said Albinus.
"We are to be sent to the University of Padua. You'll see. We are
tutored in music and dance and manners as regularly as in science and
literature. You will have time to see the boys who come back to visit,
all gentlemen of means. Why, Giuliano was a prosperous lawyer, and one
of the other boys was a physician in Torcello, an island city nearby.

   "But all have independent means when they leave the Master,"
explained Albinus. "It's only that the Master, like all Venetians,
deplores idleness. We are as well off as lazy lords from abroad who do
nothing but sample our world as though it were a dish of food."

   By the end of this first sunlighted adventure, this welcome into the
bosom of my Master's school and his splendid city, I was combed, trimmed
and dressed in the colors he would forever choose for me, sky blue for
the stockings, a darker midnight blue velvet for a short belted jacket,
and a tunic of an even fairer shade of azure embroidered with tiny
French fleur-de-lis in thick gold thread. A bit of burgundy there might
be for trimming and fur; for when the sea breezes grew strong in winter,
this paradise would be what these Italians called cold.

   By nightfall, I pranced on the marble tile with the others, dancing
for a while to the lutes played by the younger boys, accompanied by the
fragile music of the Virginal, the first keyboard instrument I had ever
seen.

   When the last of twilight had died beautifully into the canal outside
the narrow pointed arched windows of the palazzo, I roamed about,
catching random glances of myself in the many dark mirrors that rose up
from the marble tile to the very ceiling of the corridor, the salon, the
alcove, or whatever beautifully appointed room I should find.

   I sang new words in unison with Riccardo. The great state of Venice
was called the Serenissima. The black boats of the canals were gondolas.
The winds that would come soon to make us all crazy were called the
Sirocco. The most high ruler of this magical city was the Doge, our book
tonight with the teacher was Cicero, the musical instrument which
Riccardo gathered up and played with his plucking fingers was the lute.
The great canopy of the Master's regal bed was a baldaquin trimmed each
fortnight with new gold fringe.

I was ecstatic.

I had not merely a sword but a dagger.

   Such trust. Of course I was lamblike to these others, and pretty much
a lamb to myself. But never had anyone entrusted to me such bronze and
steel weapons. Again, memory played its tricks. I knew how to throw a

wooden spear, how to ... Alas, it became a wisp of smoke, and there lay
in the air around it that I'd been committed not to weapons, but to
something else, something immense which exacted all I could give it.
Weapons were forbidden for me.

   Well, no more. No more, no more, no more. Death had swallowed me
whole and thrown me forth here. In the palazzo of my Master, in a salon
of brilliantly painted battle scenes, with maps upon the ceiling, with
windows of thick molded glass, I drew my sword with a great singing
sound and pointed it at the future. With my dagger, after examining the
emeralds and rubies of its handle, I sliced an apple in two with a gasp.

The other boys laughed at me. But it was all friendly, kind.

   Soon the Master would come. Look. From room to room the youngest
fellows among us, little boys who had not come out with us, now moved
quickly, lifting their tapers to torches and candelabra. I stood in the
door, looking to yet another and another and another. Light burst forth
soundlessly in each of these rooms.

  A tall man, very shadowy and plain, came in with a tattered book in
his hand. His long thin hair and plain wool robe were black. His small
eyes were cheerful, but his thin mouth was colorless and belligerently
set.

The boys all groaned.

High narrow windows were closed against the cooler night air.

   In the canal below, men sang as they drove their long narrow
gondolas, voices seeming to ring, to splash up the walls, delicate,
sparkling, then dying away.

   I ate the apple to the last juicy speck of it. I had eaten more in
this day of fruit, meat, bread, sweets and candy than a human being
could possibly eat. I wasn't human. I was a hungry boy.

  The teacher snapped his fingers, then took from his belt a long switch
and cracked it against his own leg. "Come now," he said to the boys.

I looked up as the Master appeared.

  All the boys, big and tall, babyfied and manly, ran to him and
embraced him and clung to his arms as he made his inspection of the
painting they had done by the long day.

The teacher waited in silence, giving the Master a humble bow.

  Through the galleries we walked, the entire company, the teacher
trailing behind.

  The Master held out his hands, and it was a privilege to feel the
touch of his cold white fingers, a privilege to catch a part of his long
thick trailing red sleeves.

"Come, Amadeo, come with us."

I wanted one thing only, and it came soon enough.

  They were sent off with the man who was to read Cicero. The Master's

firm hands with their flashing fingernails turned me and directed me to
his private rooms.

It was private here, the painted wooden doors at once bolted, the
burning braziers scented with incense, perfumed smoke rising from the
brass lamps. It was the soft pillows of the bed, a flower garden of
stenciled and embroidered silk, floral satin, rich chenille, intricately
patterned brocade. He pulled the scarlet bed curtains. The light made
them transparent. Red and red and red. It was his color, he told me, as
blue was to be mine.

In a universal tongue he wooed me, feeding me the images:

   "Your brown eyes are amber when the fire catches them," he whispered.
"Oh, but they are lustrous and dark, two glossy mirrors in which I see
myself even as they keep their secrets, these dark portals of a rich
soul."

   I was too lost in the frigid blue of his own eyes, and the smooth
gleaming coral of his lips.

   He lay with me, kissed me, pushing his fingers carefully and smoothly
through my hair, never pulling a curl of it, and brought the shivers
from my scalp and from between my legs. His thumbs, so hard and cold,
stroked my cheeks, my lips, my jaw so as to make the flesh quicken.
Turning my head from right to left, he pressed his half-formed kisses
with a dainty hunger to the inner shells of my ears.

I was too young for a wet pleasure.

   I wonder if it was more what women feel. I thought it couldn't end.
It became an agony of rapture, being caught in his hands, unable to
escape, convulsing and twisting and feeling this ecstasy again and again
and again.

   He taught me words in the new language afterwards, the word for the
cold hard tile on the floor which was Carrara marble, the word for the
curtains which was spun silk, the names of the "fishes" and "turtles"
and the "elephants" embroidered onto the pillows, the word for the lion
sewn in tapestry on the heavy coverlet itself.

   As I listened, rapt, to all details both large and small, he told me
the provenance of the pearls sewn into my tunic, of how they had come
from the oysters of the sea. Boys had dived into the depths to bring
these precious round white treasures up to the surface, carrying them in
their very mouths. Emeralds came from mines within the earth. Men killed
for them. And diamonds, ah, look at these diamonds. He took a ring from
his finger and put it on mine, his fingertips stroking my finger gently
as he made sure of the fit. Diamonds are the white light of God, he
said. Diamonds are pure.

   God. What is God! The shock went through my body. It seemed the scene
about me would wither.

   He watched me as he spoke, and it seemed now and then I heard him
clearly, though he had not moved his lips or made a sound.

I grew agitated. God, don't let me think of God. Be my God.

   "Give me your mouth, give me your arms," I whispered. My hunger

startled and delighted him.

 He laughed softly as he answered me with more fragrant and harmless
kisses. His warm breath came in a soft whistling flood against my groin.

"Amadeo, Amadeo, Amadeo," he said.

 "What does this name mean, Master?" I asked. "Why do you give it to
me?" I think I heard an old self in my voice, but maybe it was only this
newborn princeling gilded and wrapped in fine goods that had chosen this
soft respectful but nevertheless bold voice.

"Beloved of God," he said.

   Oh, I couldn't bear to hear this. God, the inescapable God. I was
troubled, panic-stricken.

 He took my outstretched hand and bent my finger to point to a tiny
winged infant etched in glittering beads on a worn square cushion that
lay beside us. "Amadeo," he said, "beloved of the God of love."

 He found the ticking watch in the heap of my clothes at bedside. He
picked it up and smiled as he looked at it. He had not seen many of
these at all. Most marvelous. They were expensive enough for Kings and
Queens.

"You shall have everything you want," he said.

"Why?"

Again came his laughter in answer.

 "For reddish locks such as these," he said caressing my hair, "for
eyes of the deepest and most sympathetic brown. For skin like the fresh
cream of the milk in the morning; for lips indistinguishable from the
petals of a rose."

 In the small hours, he told me tales of Eros and Aphrodite; he lulled
me with the fantastic sorrow of Psyche, beloved by Eros and never
allowed to see him by the day's light.

 I walked beside him through chilly corridors, his fingers clasping my
shoulders, as he showed me the fine white marble statues of his gods and
goddesses, all lovers-Daphne, her graceful limbs turned into the
branches of the laurel as the god Apollo desperately sought her; Leda
helpless within the grip of the mighty swan.

 He guided my hands over the marble curves, the sharply chiseled and
highly polished faces, the taut calves of nubile legs, the ice-cold
clefts of half-opened mouths. And then to his own face he lifted my
fingers. He did seem the very living and breathing statue, more mar-
velously made than any other, and even as he lifted me with powerful
hands, a great heat came out of him, a heat of sweet breath in sighs and
murmured words.

   By the end of the week, I couldn't even remember one word of my
Mother Tongue.

   In a storm of proffered adjectives I stood in the piazza and watched
spellbound as the Great Council of Venice marched along the Molo, as the

High Mass was sung from the altar of San Marco, as the ships moved out
on the glassy waves of the Adriatic, as the brushes dipped to gather up
their colors and mix them in the earthen pots-rose madder, vermilion,
carmine, cerise, cerulean, turquoise, viridian, yellow ocher, burnt
umber, quinacridone, citrine, sepia, Caput Mortuum Violet- oh, too
lovely-and of a thick lacquer, the name Dragon's blood.

   At dancing and fencing, I excelled. My favorite partner was Ric-
cardo, and I fast realized I was close to this elder in all skills, even
surpassing Albinus, who had held that place until I came, though now he
showed me no ill will.

These boys were like my brothers to me.

   They took me to the home of the slender and beautiful courtesan,
Bianca Solderini, a lithesome and incomparable charmer, with Botticelli-
style wavy locks and almond-shaped gray eyes and a generous and kindly
wit. I was the fashion in her house whenever I wanted to be, among the
young women and men there who spent hours reading poetry, talking of the
foreign wars, which seemed endless, and of the latest painters and who
would get what commission next.

   Bianca had a small, childlike voice which matched her girlish face
and tiny nose. Her mouth was a mere budding rose. But she was clever,
and indomitable. She turned away possessive lovers coldly; she preferred
that her house be full of people at all hours. Anyone in proper dress,
or carrying a sword, was admitted automatically. Almost no one but those
who wanted to own her were ever turned away.

   Visitors from France and Germany were common at the home of Bianca,
and all there, both from afar and from home, were curious about our
Master, Marius, a man of mystery, though we had been schooled never to
answer idle questions about him, and could only smile when asked if he
intended to marry, if he would paint this or that portrait, if he would
be home on such and such a date for this person or that to call.

   Sometimes I fell asleep on the pillows of the couch at Bianca's or
even on one of the beds, listening to the hushed voices of the noblemen
who came there, dreaming to the music which was always of the most
lulling and soothing kind.

 Now and then, on the most rare occasions, the Master himself appeared
there to collect me and Riccardo, always causing a minor sensation in
the portego, or main salon. He would never take a chair. He stood always
with his hooded cloak over his head and shoulders. But he smiled
graciously to all the entreaties put to him, and did sometimes offer a
tiny portrait that he had done of Bianca.

   I see these now, these many tiny portraits that he gave her over the
years, each encrusted with jewels.

   "You capture my likeness so keenly from memory," she said as she went
to kiss him. I saw the reserve with which he held her aloof from his
cold hard chest and face, planting kisses on her cheeks that conveyed
the spell of softness and sweetness which the real touch of him would
have destroyed.

 I read for hours with the aid of the teacher Leonardo of Padua, my
voice perfectly in time with his as I grasped the scheme of Latin, then
Italian, then back to Greek. I liked Aristotle as much as Plato or

Plutarch or Livy or Virgil. The truth was, I didn't much comprehend any
of them. I was doing as the Master directed, letting the knowledge
accumulate in my mind.

   I saw no reason to talk endlessly, as Aristotle did, about things
that were made. The lives of the ancients that Plutarch told with such
spirit made excellent stories. I wanted to know people of the now,
however. I preferred to doze on Bianca's couch rather than argue about
the merits of this or that painter. Besides, I knew my Master was the
best.

 This world was one of spacious rooms, decorated walls, generous
fragrant light and a regular parade of high fashion, to which I grew
accustomed completely, never seeing much of the pain and misery of the
poor of the city at all. Even the books I read reflected this new realm
in which I had been so securely fixed that nothing could take me back to
the world of confusion and suffering that had gone before.

   I learned to play little songs on the Virginal. I learned to strum
the lute and to sing in a soft voice, though I would only sing sad
songs. My Master loved these songs.

 We made a choir now and then, all the boys together, and presented the
Master with our own compositions and sometimes our own dances as well.

   In the hot afternoon, we played cards when we were supposed to be
napping. Riccardo and I slipped out to gamble in taverns. We drank too
much once or twice. The Master knew it and put a stop to it at once. He
was particularly horrified that I'd fallen drunk into the Grand Canal,
necessitating a clumsy and hysterical rescue. I could have sworn he went
pale at the account, that I saw the color dance back from his whitening
cheeks.

   He whipped Riccardo for it. I was full of shame. Riccardo took it
like a soldier without cries or comment, standing still at a large
fireplace in the library, his back turned to receive the blows on his
legs. Afterwards, he knelt and kissed the Master's ring. I vowed I'd
never get drunk again.

   I got drunk the next day, but I had the sense to stagger into
Bianca's house and climb under her bed, where I could fall asleep
without risk. Before midnight the Master pulled me out. I thought, Now
I'll get it. But he only put me to bed, where I fell asleep before I
could apologize. When I woke once it was to see him at his writing desk,
writing as swiftly as he could paint, in some great book which he always
managed to hide before he left the house.

   When others did sleep, including Riccardo, during the worst
afternoons of summer, I ventured out and hired a gondola. I lay on my
back in it staring skyward, as we floated down the canal and to the more
turbulent breast of the gulf. I closed my eyes as we made our way back
so that I might hear the smallest cries from the quiet siesta-time
buildings, the lap of the rank waters on rotting foundations, the cry of
seagulls overhead. I didn't mind the gnats or the smell of the canals.

   One afternoon I didn't go home for work or lessons. I wandered into a
tavern to listen to musicians and singers, and another time happened
upon an open drama on a trestle stage in a square before a church. No
one was angry with me for my comings and goings. Nothing was reported.
There were no tests of my learning or anyone else's.

  Sometimes I slept all day, or until I was curious. It was an extreme
pleasure to wake up and find the Master at work, either in the studio,
walking up and down the scaffolding as he painted his larger canvas, or
just near me, at his table in the bedroom, writing away.

  There was always food everywhere, glistening bunches of grapes, and
ripe melons cut open for us, and delicious fine-grained bread with the
freshest oil. I ate black olives, slices of pale soft cheese and fresh
leeks from the roof garden. The milk came up cool in the silver
pitchers.

  The Master ate nothing. All knew this. The Master was always gone by
day. The Master was never spoken of without reverence. The Master could
read a boy's soul. The Master knew good from evil, and he knew deceit.
The boys were good boys. There was some hushed mention now and then of
bad boys who had been banished from the house almost at once. But no one
ever spoke even in a trivial way about the Master. No one spoke about
the fact that I slept in the Master's bed.

 At noon each day, we dined together formally on roasted fowl, tender
lamb, thick juicy slabs of beef.

  Three and four teachers came at any one time to instruct the various
small groups of apprentices. Some worked while others studied.

  I could wander from the Latin class to the Greek class. I could leaf
through the erotic sonnets and read what I could until Riccardo came to
the rescue and drew a circle of laughter around his reading, for which
the teachers had to wait.

  In this leniency I prospered. I learnt quickly, and could answer all
the Master's casual questions, offering thoughtful questions of my own.

  The Master painted four out of the seven nights a week, and usually
from after midnight until his disappearance at dawn. Nothing interrupted
him on these nights.

  He climbed the scaffold with amazing ease, rather like a great white
monkey, and, letting his scarlet cloak drop carelessly, he snatched up
the brush from the boy who held it for him and painted in such a fury
that the paint splattered on all of us as we watched aghast. Under his
genius whole landscapes came to life within hours; gatherings of people
were drawn with the greatest detail.

  He hummed aloud as he worked; he announced the names of the great
writers or heroes as he painted their portraits from his memory or his
imagination. He drew our attention to his colors, the lines he chose,
the tricks with perspective that plunged his groupings of palpable and
enthusiastic subjects into real gardens, rooms, palaces, halls.

  Only the fill-in work was left to the boys to do by morning-the
coloring of drapery, the tinting of wings, the broad spaces of flesh to
which the Master would come again to add the modeling while the oily
paint was still mobile, the shining flooring of sometime palaces which
after his final touches looked like real marble receding beneath the
flushed chubby feet of his philosophers and saints.

  The work drew us naturally, spontaneously. There were dozens of
unfinished canvases and walls within the palazzo, all so lifelike they

seemed portals to another world.

   Gaetano, one of the youngest of us, was the most gifted. But any of
the boys, except me, could match the apprentice painters of any man's
workshop, even the boys of Bellini.

   Sometimes there was a receiving day. Bianca was then jubilant as she
would receive for the Master, and came with her servants to be lady of
the house. Men and women from the finest houses in Venice came to view
the Master's paintings. People were astonished at his powers. Only from
listening to them on these days did I realize my Master sold almost
nothing, but filled his palazzo with his own work, and that he had his
own versions of most famous subjects, from the school of Aristotle to
the Crucifixion of Christ. Christ. This was the curly-haired, ruddy,
muscular and human-looking Christ, their Christ. The Christ who was like
Cupid or Zeus.

   I didn't mind that I couldn't paint as well as Riccardo and the
others, that I was half the time content to hold the pots for them, to
wash the brushes, to wipe clean the mistakes that had to be corrected. I
did not want to paint. I did not want to. I could feel my hands cramp at
the thought of it, and there would come a sickness in my belly when I
thought of it.

   I preferred the conversation, the jokes, the speculation as to why
our fabulous Master took no commissions, though letters came to him
daily inviting him to compete for this or that mural to be painted in
the Ducal Palace or in one or another of the thousand churches of the
isle.

   I watched the color spreading out by the hour. I breathed in the
fragrance of varnishes, the pigments, the oils.

   Now and then a stuporous anger overcame me, but not at my lack of
skill.

   Something else tormented me, something to do with the humid,
tempestuous postures of the painted figures, with their glistening pink
cheeks and the boiling sweep of cloudy sky behind them, or the fleecy
branches of the dark trees.

   It seemed madness, this, this unbridled depiction of nature. My head
hurting, I walked alone and briskly along the quays until I found an old
church, and a gilded altar with stiff, narrow-eyed saints, dark and
drawn and rigid: the legacy of Byzantium, as I had seen it in San Marco
on my first day. My soul hurt and hurt and hurt as I gazed wor-shipfully
at these old proprieties. I cursed when my new friends found me. I
knelt, stubborn, refusing to show that I knew they were there. I covered
my ears to shut out the laughter of my new friends. How could they laugh
in the hollow of the church where the tortured Christ bled tears like
black beetles leaping from His fading hands and feet?

   Now and then I fell asleep before antique altars. I had escaped my
companions. I was solitary and happy on the damp cold stones. I fan-cied
I could hear the water beneath the floor.

   I took a gondola to Torcello and there sought out the great old
Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, famous for its mosaics which some said
were as splendid in the antique way as the mosaics of San Marco. I crept
about under the low arches, looking at the ancient gold Iconosta-sis and

the mosaics of the apse. High above, in the back curve of the apse there
stood the great Virgin, the Theotokos, the bearer of God. Her face was
austere, almost sour. A tear glistened on her left cheek. In her hands
she held the infant Jesus, but also a napkin, the token of the Mater
Dolorosa.

   I understood these images, even as they froze my soul. My head swam
and the heat of the island and the quiet Cathedral made me sick in my
stomach. But I stayed there. I drifted about the Iconostasis and prayed.

   I thought sure no one could find me here. Towards dusk, I became
truly sick. I knew I had a fever, but I sought a corner of the church
and took comfort in only the cold of the stone floor against my face and
my outstretched hands. Before me, if I raised my head I could see
terrifying scenes of the Last Judgment, of souls condemned to Hell. I
deserve this pain, I thought.

  The Master came for me. I don't remember the journey back to the
palazzo. It seemed that somehow in a matter of moments he had put me in
bed. The boys bathed my forehead with cool cloths. I was made to drink
water. Someone said that I had "the fever" and someone else said, "Be
quiet."

  The Master kept watch with me. I had bad dreams which I couldn't bring
with me into my waking state. Before dawn, the Master kissed me and held
me close to him. I had never loved so much the chill hardness of his
body as I did in this fever, wrapping my arms around him, pushing my
cheek against his.

   He gave me something hot and spiced to drink from a warm cup. And
then he kissed me, and again came the cup. My body was filled with a
healing fire.

   But by the time he returned that night my fever was bad again. I did
not dream so much as I wandered, half asleep, half awake, through
terrible dark corridors unable to find a place that was either warm or
clean. There was dirt beneath my fingernails. At one point, I saw a
shovel moving, and saw the dirt, and feared the dirt would cover me, and
I started to cry.

   Riccardo kept watch, holding my hand, telling me it would soon be
nightfall, and that the Master would surely come.

   "Amadeo," the Master said. He hoisted me up as if I were truly still
a small child.

  Too many questions formed in my mind. Would I die? Where was the
Master taking me now? I was wrapped in velvet and furs and he carried
me, but how?

  We were in a church in Venice, amid new paintings of our time. The
requisite candles burned. Men prayed. He turned me in his arms and told
me to look up at the giant altarpiece before me.

   Squinting, my eyes hurting, I obeyed him and saw the Virgin on high
being crowned by her beloved Son, Christ the King.

   "Look at the sweetness of her face, the natural expression to her,"
the Master whispered. "She sits there as one might sit here in the
church. And the angels, look at them, the happy boys clustered around

the columns beneath her. Look at the serenity and the gentleness of
their smiles. This is Heaven, Amadeo. This is goodness."

 My sleepy eyes moved over the high painting. "See the Apostle who
whispers so naturally to the one beside him, as men might at such a
ceremony. See above, God the Father, gazing down so contentedly on all."

   I tried to form questions, to say it was not possible, this
combination of the fleshly and the beatific, but I couldn't find
eloquent words. The nakedness of the boy angels was enchanting and
innocent, but I could not believe it. It was a lie of Venice, a lie of
the West, a lie of the Devil himself.

   "Amadeo," he continued, "there is no good that is founded in
suffering and cruelty; there is no good that must root itself in the
privation of little children. Amadeo, out of the love of God grows
beauty everywhere. Look at these colors; these are the colors created by
God."

   Secure in his arms, my feet dangling, my arms about his neck, I let
the details of the immense altarpiece sink into my consciousness. I went
back and forth, back and forth, over those small touches I loved.

   I raised my finger to point. The lion there, just sitting so calmly
at the feet of St. Mark, and look, the pages of St. Mark's book, the
pages are actually in motion as he turns them. And the lion is tame and
gentle as a friendly fireside dog.

   "This is Heaven, Amadeo," he said to me. "Whatever the past has
hammered into your soul, let it go."

   I smiled, and slowly, gazing up at the saints, the rows and rows of
saints, I began to laugh softly and confidentially in the Master's ear.

   "They're all talking, murmuring, talking amongst themselves as if
they were the Venetian Senators."

   I heard his low, subdued laughter in answer. "Oh, I think the
Senators are more decorous, Amadeo. I've never seen them in such
informality, but this is Heaven, as I said."

   "Ah, Master, look there. A saint holds an ikon, a beautiful ikon.
Master, I have to tell you-." I broke off. The fever rose and the sweat
broke out on me. My eyes felt hot, and I couldn't see. "Master," I said.
"I am in the wild lands. I'm running. I have to put it in the trees."
How could he know what I meant, that I spoke of that long-ago desperate
flight out of coherent recollection and through the wild grasses with
the sacred bundle in my keep, the bundle that had to be unwrapped and
placed in the trees. "Look, the ikon."

   Honey filled me. It was thick and sweet. It came from a cold fount,
but it didn't matter. I knew this fount. My body was like a goblet
stirred so that all that was bitter dissolved in the fluids of it,
dissolved in a vortex to leave only honey and a dreamy warmth.

 When I opened my eyes, I was in our bed. I was cool all over. The
fever was gone. I turned over and pulled myself up.

 My Master sat at his desk. He was reading over what he had apparently
just written. He had tied back his blond hair with a bit of cord. His

face was very beautiful, unveiled as it were, with its chiseled
cheekbones and smooth narrow nose. He looked at me, and his mouth worked
the miracle of the ordinary smile.

   "Don't chase these memories," he said. He said it as if we'd been
talking all the while that I slept. "Don't go to the church of Torcello
to find them. Don't go to the mosaics of San Marco. In time all these
harmful things will come back."

"I'm afraid to remember," I said.

"I know," he answered.

   "How can you know?" I asked him. "I have it in my heart. It's mine
alone, this pain." I was sorry for sounding so bold, but whatever my
guilt, the boldness came more and more often.

"Do you really doubt me?" he asked.

   "Your endowments are beyond measure. We all know it, and we never
speak of it, and you and I never speak of it."

   "So why then don't you put your faith in me instead of things you
only half recall?"

He got up from the desk and came to the bed.

"Come," he said. "Your fever's broken. Come with me."

   He took me into one of the many libraries of the palazzo, messy rooms
in which the manuscripts lay helter-skelter, and the books in stacks.
Seldom if ever did he work in these rooms. He threw his purchases there
to be cataloged by the boys, taking what he needed back to the writing
desk in our room.

   He moved among the shelves now until he found a portfolio, a big
flopping thing of old yellowed leather, frayed at the edges. His white
fingers smoothed a large page of vellum. He laid it down on the oak
study table for me to see.

A painting, antique.

   I saw there drawn a great church of gilded domes, so beautiful, so
majestic. Letters were blazoned there. I knew these letters. But I
couldn't make the words come to my mind or my tongue.

"Kiev Rus," he said. Kiev Rus.

   An unsupportable horror came over me. Before I could stop myself, I
said, "It's ruined, burnt. There is no such place. It's not alive like
Venice. It's ruined, and all is cold, and filthy and desperate. Yes,
that's the very word." I was dizzy. I felt I saw an escape from
desolation, only it was cold and dark, this escape, and it led by twists
and turns into a world of eternal darkness where the raw earth gave the
only smell to one's hands, one's skin, one's clothes.

I pulled back and ran from the Master.

I ran the full length of the palazzo.

   I ran down the stairs, and through the dark lower rooms that opened
on the canal. When I came back, I found him alone in the bedroom. He was
reading as always. He had his favorite book of late, The Consolation of
Philosophy by Boethius, and he looked up from it patiently when I came
in.

I stood thinking of my painful memories.

   I couldn't catch them. So be it. They scurried into the nothingness
rather like the leaves in the alleyways, the leaves that sometimes
tumble down and down the stained green walls from the little gardens
whipped in the wind up there on the rooftops.

"I don't want to," I said again.

There was but one Living Lord. My Master.

   "Some day it will all come clear to you, when you have the strength
to use it," he said. He shut his book. "For now, let me comfort you."

Ah, yes, I was all too ready for this.

HOW LONG the days could be without him. By nightfall, I clenched my
fists as the candles were lighted. There came nights when he didn't
appear at all. The boys said he had gone on most important errands. The
house must run as if he were there.

   I slept in his empty bed, and no one questioned me. I searched the
house for any personal trace of him. Questions plagued me. I feared he
would never come back.

But he always came back.

   When he came up the stairs, I flew into his embrace. He caught me,
held me, kissed me and only then let me fall gently against his hard
chest. My weight was nothing to him, though I seemed to grow taller and
heavier every day.

   I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now,
but how could a man so slight as he heft me with such ease? I am not a
waif and never have been. I am a strong child.

   I liked it best-if I had to share with the others-when he read to us
aloud.

   Surrounding himself with candelabra, he spoke in a hushed and
sympathetic voice. He read The Divine Comedy by Dante, the Decameron by
Boccaccio, or in French The Romance of the Rose or the poems of Francois
Villon. He spoke of the new languages we must understand as well as we
understood Greek and Latin. He warned us that literature would no longer
be confined to the classic works.

   We sat in silence around him, on pillows, or on the naked tile. Some
of us stood near him. Others rested back on their heels.

Sometimes Riccardo played the lute for us and sang those melodies he'd
learned from his teacher, or even the wilder ribald tunes he'd picked up
in the streets. He sang mournfully of love and made us weep over it. The
Master watched him with loving eyes.

I had no jealousy. I alone shared the Master's bed.

   Sometimes, he even had Riccardo sit outside the bedroom door and play
for us. Obedient Riccardo never asked to come inside.

  My heart raced as the curtains closed around us. The Master pulled
open my tunic, sometimes even ripping it playfully, as if it were no
more than a castoff thing.

   I sank into the satin quilted down beneath him; I opened my legs and
let my knees caress him, numbed and vibrating from the graze of his
knuckles against my lips.

   Once I lay half asleep. The air was rosy and golden. The place was
warm. I felt his lips on mine, and his cold tongue move serpentlike into
my mouth. A liquid filled my mouth, a rich and burning nectar, a potion
so exquisite that I felt it roll through my body to the very tips of my
outstretched fingers. I felt it descend through my torso and into the
most private part of me. I burned. I burned.

   "Master," I whispered. "What is this trick now which is sweeter than
kissing?"

He laid his head down on the pillow. He turned away.

"Give it to me again, Master," I said.

   He did, but only when he chose, in droplets, and with red tears he
now and then let me lick from his eyes.

  I think a whole year passed before I came home one evening, flushed
from the winter air, dressed in my very finest dark blue for him, with
sky blue stockings and the most expensive gold enameled slippers that I
could find in all the world, a year before I came in that night and
threw my book into the corner of the bedroom with a great world-weary
gesture, putting my hands on my hips and glaring at him as he sat in his
high thick arch-back chair looking at the coals in the brazier, putting
his hands over them, watching the flames.

  "Well, now," I said cockily and with my head back, a very man of the
world, a sophisticated Venetian, a prince in the Marketplace with an
entire court of merchants to wait on him, a scholar who had read too
much.

  "Well, now," I said. "There's a great mystery here and you know it.
It's time you told me."

"What?" he asked obligingly enough.

   "Why do you never . . . Why do you never feel anything! Why do you
handle me as if I were a poppet? Why do you never ... ?"

   For the first time ever I saw his face redden; I saw his eyes gloss
and narrow and then widen with reddish tears.

"Master, you frighten me," I whispered.

"What is it you want me to feel, Amadeo?" he said.

   "You're like an angel, a statue," I said, only now I was chastened

and trembling. "Master, you play with me and I'm the toy that feels all
things." I drew nearer. I touched his shirt, sought to unlace it. "Let
me-."

   He took my hand. He took my fingers and put them to his lips, and
drew my fingers inside his mouth, caressing them with his tongue. His
eyes moved so that he was looking up at me.

Quite enough, said his eyes. I feel quite enough.

   "I'd give you anything," I said imploringly. I put my hand between
his legs. Oh, he was wonderfully hard. That was not uncommon, but he
must let me take him further; he must trust me.

"Amadeo," he said.

   With his unaccountable strength he drew me back with him to the bed.
You could hardly say he'd risen from the chair. It seemed we were there
one moment and now fallen amongst our familiar pillows. I blinked. It
seemed the curtains closed around us without his touching them, some
trick of the breeze from the open windows. Yes, listen to the voices
from the canal below. How voices sing out and up the walls in Venice,
the city of palaces.

   "Amadeo," he said, his lips on my throat as they'd come a thousand
times, only this time there came a sting, sharp, swift and gone. A
thread stitched into my heart was jerked all of a sudden. I had become
the thing between my legs, and was nothing but that. His mouth nestled
against me, and again that thread snapped and again.

   I dreamed. I think I saw another place. I think I saw the revelations
of my sleeping hours which never stayed for me when I awoke. I think I
trod a road into those bursting fantasies I knew in sleep and sleep
alone.

This is what I want of you.

   "And you must have it," I said, words propelled to the near forgotten
present as I floated against him, feeling him tremble, feeling him
thrill to it, feeling him shudder, feeling him whip these threads from
inside me, quickening my heart and making me nearly cry out, feeling him
love it, and stiffen his back and let his fingers tremble and dance as
he writhed against me. Drink it, drink it, drink it.

He broke loose and lay to the side.

   I smiled as I lay with closed eyes. I felt my lips. I felt the barest
bit of that nectar still gathered on my lower lip, and my tongue took it
up and I dreamed.

   His breathing was heavy and he was somber. He shivered still, and
when his hand found me it was unsteady.

"Ah," I said smiling still, and kissing his shoulder.

"I hurt you!" he said.

   "No, no, not at all, sweet Master," I answered. "But I hurt you! I
have you, now!"

"Amadeo, you play the devil."

   "Don't you want me to, Master? Didn't you like it? You took my blood
and it made you my slave!"

He laughed. "So that's the twist you put on it, isn't it?"

"Hmmm. Love me. What does it matter?" I asked.

   "Never tell the others," he said. There was no fear or weakness or
shame in it.

   I turned over and drew up on my elbows and looked at him, at his
quiet profile turned away from me.

"What would they do?"

   "Nothing," he answered. "It's what they would think and feel that
matters. And I have no time or place for it." He looked at me. "Be
merciful and wise, Amadeo."

   For a long time I said nothing. I merely looked at him. Only
gradually did I realize I was frightened. For one moment it seemed that
fear would obliterate the warmth of the moment, the soft glory of the
radiant light swelling in the curtains, of the polished planes of his
ivory face, the sweetness of his smile. Then some higher graver concern
overruled the fear.

"You're not my slave at all, are you?" I whispered.

"Yes," he said, almost laughing again. "I am, if you must know."

"What happened, what did you do, what was it that-."

He laid his finger on my lips.

"Do you think me like other men?" he asked.

   "No," I said, but the fear rose in the word and strangled out the
wound. I tried to stop myself, but before I could I embraced him and
tried to push my face into his neck. He was too hard for such things,
though he cradled my head and kissed the top of it, though he gathered
back my hair, and let his thumb sink into my cheek.

   "Some day I want you to leave here," he said. "I want you to go.
You'll take wealth with you and all the learning I've been able to give
you. You'll take your grace with you, and all the many arts you've
mastered, that you can paint, that you can play any music I ask of you-
that you can do already-that you can so exquisitely dance. You'll take
these accomplishments and you'll go out in search of those precious
things that you want-."

"I want nothing but you."

   "-and when you think back on this time, when in half-sleep at night
you remember me as your eyes close on your pillow, these moments of ours
will seem corrupt and most strange. They'll seem like sorcery and the
antics of the mad, and this warm place might become the lost chamber of
dark secrets and this might bring you pain."

"I won't go."

   "Remember then that it was love," he said. "That this indeed was the
school of love in which you healed your wounds, in which you learnt to
speak again, aye, even to sing, and in which you were born out of the
broken child as if he were no more than an eggshell, and you the angel,
ascending out of him with widening, strengthening wings."

   "And what if I never go of my own free will? Will you pitch me from
some window so that I must fly or fall? Will you bolt all shutters after
me? You had better, because I'll knock and knock and knock until I fall
down dead. I'll have no wings that take me away from you."

   He made a study of me for the longest time. I never had such an
unbroken feast on his eyes myself, and had never been let to touch his
mouth with my prying fingers for such a spell.

   Finally he rose up next to me and pressed me gently down. His lips,
always softly pink like the inner petals of blushing white roses, turned
slowly red as I watched. It was a gleaming seam of red that ran between
his lips and then flowed through all the fine lines of which his lips
were made, perfectly coloring them, as wine might do, only it was so
brilliant, this fluid, that his lips shimmered, and when he parted them,
the red burst as if it were a curled tongue.

My head was lifted. I caught it with my own mouth.

   The world moved out from under me. I listed and drifted, and my eyes
opened and saw nothing as he shut his mouth over mine.

   "Master, I die from this!" I whispered. I tossed under him, seeking
to find some firm place in this dreamy intoxicating void. My body
churned and rolled with pleasure, my limbs tightening then floating, my
whole body issuing from him, from his lips, through my lips, my body his
very breath and his sigh.

   There came the sting, there came the blade, tiny and sharp beyond
measure, puncturing my soul. I twisted on it as if I'd been skewered.
Oh, this could teach the gods of love what love was. This was my
deliverance if I could but survive.

   Blind and shaking I was wed to him. I felt his hand cover my mouth,
and only then heard my cries as they were muffled away.

   I wrapped my hand around his neck, pressing him against my throat all
the harder, "Do it, do it, do it, do it!"

When I awoke, it was day.

   He was long gone, as was his infallible custom. I lay alone. The boys
had not yet come.

   I climbed out of bed and went to the high narrow window, the kind of
window which is everywhere in Venice, locking out the fierce heat of
summer and sealing off the cold Adriatic winds when they inevitably
come.

   I unbolted the thick glass panels and looked out on the walls across
from my safe place as I had often done.

  A common serving woman shook her cloth mop from a far balcony above.
Across the canal, I watched her. Her face seemed livid and crawling, as
if some tiny species of life covered her, some rampage of ants. She
didn't know! I laid my hands on the sill and looked ever more keenly. It
was only the life inside her, the workings of the flesh in her that made
the mask of her face seem to move.

   But horrid her hands seemed, knuckled and swollen, and the dust from
her broom engraving every line.

I shook my head. She was too far from me for these observations.

   In a faraway room, the boys talked. Time for work. Time to get up,
even in the palazzo of the night Lord who never checks or prods by day.
Too far away for me to hear them.

  And this velvet now, this curtain made of the Master's favorite
fabric, this was like fur to my touch, not velvet, I could see each tiny
fiber! I dropped it. I went for the looking glass.

  The house had dozens of them, great ornate mirrors, all with fanci-
fied frames and most replete with tiny cherubs. I found the tall mirror
in the anteroom, the alcove behind warped yet beautifully painted doors
where I kept my clothes.

The light of the window followed me. I saw myself. But I was not a
seething corrupt mass, such as this woman had seemed. My face was baby
smooth and starkly white.

"I want it!" I whispered. I knew.

"No," he told me.

   This is when he came that night. I ranted and paced and cried out to
him.

   He didn't give me long explanations, no sorcery or science, either of
which would have been so easy for him. He told me only I was a child
still, and there were things to be savored which would be lost forever.

   I cried. I didn't want to work or paint or study or do anything in
the world.

   "It's lost its savor for a little while," he said patiently. "But
you'd be surprised."

"At what?"

   "At how much you'll lament it when it's gone utterly, when you are
perfect and unchangeable like me, and all those human mistakes can be
triumphantly supplanted by a new and more stunning series of failures.
Don't ask for this, not again."

   I would have died then, curled up, black and furious and too bitter
for words.

But he wasn't finished.

   "Amadeo," he said, his voice thick with sorrow. "Say nothing. You
don't have to. I'll give it to you quickly enough when I think the time

has come."

   At that I went to him, running, childlike, flinging myself at his
neck, kissing his icy cheek a thousand times despite his mock-disdainful
smile.

   At last his hands became like iron. There was to be no blood play
this night. I must study. I must make up the lessons I had scorned by
day.

   He had to see to his apprentices, to his tasks, to the giant canvas
on which he'd been working, and I did as he said.

   But well before morning, I saw him change. The others had long gone
to bed. I was turning the pages of the book obediently when I saw him
staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him
and banished all his civilized faculties and left him thus, hungry, with
glazed eyes and reddening mouth, the glittering blood finding its myriad
little paths over the silky margin of his lips.

   He rose, a drugged thing, and came towards me with a rhythm of
movements that was alien and struck the coldest terror in my heart.

His fingers flashed, closed, beckoned.

   I ran to him. He lifted me in both hands, clutching my arms ever so
gendy, and tucked his face against my neck. From the soles of my feet up
my back through my arms and my neck and scalp, I felt it.

   Where he flung me I didn't know. Was it our bed or some hasty
cushions he found in another closer salon? "Give it to me," I said
sleepily, and when it came into my mouth, I was gone.

HE SAID that I must go to the brothels, learn what it meant to couple
properly-not merely in play, as we did among the boys.

   Venice had many such places, very well run and devoted to pleasure in
the most luxurious environment. It was firmly held that such pleasures
were little more than a venial sin in the eyes of the Christ, and the
young men of fashion frequented these establishments without hiding it.

   I knew of a house of particularly exquisite and skilled women, where
there were tall, buxom, very pale-eyed beauties from the North of
Europe, some whose blond hair was' almost white, deemed to be somewhat
different from the shorter Italian women's which we saw every day. I
don't know that difference was such a high priority with me, as I'd been
somewhat dazzled by the beauty of Italian boys and women since I had
come. Swan-necked Venetian girls in their fancy cushion-head dresses
with abundant translucent veils were very nearly irresistible to me. But
then the brothel had all kinds of women, and the name of the game was to
mount as many as I could.

   My Master took me to this place, paid for me, a fortune in ducats,
and told the buxom enchanting mistress that he would collect me in a
matter of days.

Days!

   I was pale with jealousy and on fire with curiosity, as I watched him
take his leave-the usual regal figure in his familiar crimson robes,

climbing into the gondola and giving me his clever wink as the boat took
him away.

I spent three days, as it turned out, in the house of the most
voluptuous available maidens in Venice, sleeping late in the morning,
comparing olive skin to blond skin and indulging myself in leisurely
examinations of the nether hair of all beauties, distinguishing the more
silken from the wiry and more tightly curled.

   I learned little niceties of pleasure, such as how sweet it was to
have one's nipples bitten (lightly, and these weren't vampires) and to
have the hair under one's arms, of which I had just a little, tugged
affectionately at the appropriate moments. Golden honey was painted on
my nether parts only to be licked away by giggling angels.

   There were other more intimate tricks, of course, including bestial
acts which were strictly speaking crimes but which were in this house
merely various extra accouterments to overall wholesome and tantalizing
feasts. All was done with grace, the steamy hot perfumed baths came
frequently in large deep wooden tubs, flowers floating on the surface of
the rose-tinted water, and I lay back sometimes at the mercy of a bevy
of soft-voiced women who cooed over me like birds in the eaves as they
licked me like so many kittens and combed my hair around their fingers
to make curls.

   I was the little Ganymede of Zeus, an angel tumbled out of
Botticelli's more ribald paintings (many of which by the way were in
this brothel, having been rescued from the Bonfires of the Vanities
erected in Florence by the adamant reformer Savonarola, who had urged
the great Botticelli to just. . . burn up his beautiful work!), a little
cherub fallen off the ceiling of a Cathedral, a Venetian prince (of
which there were none in the Republic technically) delivered into their
hands by his enemies to be rendered helpless with desire.

   I grew hotter in desire. If one had to be human for the rest of one's
life, this was great fun, tumbling among Turkish cushions with nymphs
such as most men only glimpse through magical forests in their dreams.
Each soft and downy cleft was a new and exotic envelope for my romping
spirit.

   The wine was delicious and the food quite marvelous, including
sugared and spiced dishes from the Arabs, and being altogether more
extravagant and more exotic than the fare served by my Master at home.

(When I told him, he hired four new chefs.)

   I wasn't awake, apparently, when my Master arrived to collect me, and
I was spirited home by him, in his mysterious and infallible manner, and
found myself again in my bed.

   I knew I wanted only him when my eyes opened. And it seemed the
fleshy repasts of the last few days had only made me more hungry, more
inflamed and more eager to see if his enchanted white body would respond
to the more tender tricks I'd learned. I threw myself on him when he
finally came in behind the curtains, and I unloosed his shirt and sucked
his nipples, discovering that for all their disturbing whiteness and
coldness they were soft and obviously intimately connected in a
seemingly natural way to the root of his desires.

   He lay there, graceful and quiet, letting me play with him as my

women teachers had played with me. When he finally gave me the blood
kisses, all memories of human contact were obliterated, and I lay
helpless as always in his arms. It seemed our world then was not merely
one of the flesh, but of a mutual spell to which all natural laws gave
way.

   Towards morning on the second night, I sought him out where he was
painting by himself in the studio, the scattered apprentices fallen
asleep like the unfaithful Apostles in Gethsemane.

   He wouldn't stop for my questions. I stood behind him and locked my
arms around him and, climbing on tiptoe, I whispered my questions in his
ear.

   "Tell me, Master, you must, how did you gain this magic blood inside
you?" I bit his earlobes and ran my hands through his hair. He wouldn't
stop painting. "Were you born into this state, am I so wrong about this
as to suppose that you were transformed ..."

   "Stop it, Amadeo," he whispered, and continued to paint. He worked
furiously on the face of Aristotle, the bearded, balding elder of his
great painting, The Academy.

   "Is there ever a loneliness in you, Master, that pushes you to tell
someone, anyone, to have a friend of your own mettle, to confide your
heart to one who can comprehend?"

He turned, startled for once by my questions.

   "And you, spoiled little angel," he said, lowering his voice to
maintain its gentleness, "you think you can be that friend? You're an
innocent! You'll be an innocent all of your days. You have the heart of
an innocent. You refuse to accept truth that doesn't correspond with
some deep raging faith in you which makes you ever the little monk, the
acolyte-."

   I stepped backwards, as angry as I'd ever been with him. "No, I won't
be such!" I declared. "I'm a man already in the guise of a boy, and you
know it. Who else dreams of what you are, and the alchemy of your
powers? I wish I could drain a cupful of your blood from you and study
it as the doctors might and determine what is its makeup and how it
differs from the fluid that runs through my veins! I am your pupil, yes,
your student, yes, but to be that, I must be a man. When would you
tolerate innocence? When we bed together, you call that innocence? I am
a man."

   He burst into the most amazed laughter. It was a treat to see him so
surprised.

   "Tell me your secret, Sir," I said. I put my arms around his neck and
laid my head on his shoulder. "Was there a Mother as white and strong as
you were who brought you forth, the God-Bearer, from her celestial
womb?"

   He took my arms and moved me back away from him, so that he could
kiss me, and his mouth was insistent and frightening to me for a moment.
Then it moved over my throat, sucking at my flesh and causing me to
become weak and, with all my heart, willing to be anything he wished.

   "Of the moon and the stars, yes, I'm made, of that sovereign

whiteness which is the substance of clouds and innocence alike," he
said. "But no Mother gave birth to me, you know that's so; I was a man
once, a man moving on in his years. Look-." He lifted my face with both
hands and made me study his face. "You see here remnants of the lines of
age which once marked me, here at the corners of my eyes."

   "Merely nothing, Sir," I whispered, thinking to console him if this
imperfection troubled him. He shone in his brilliance, his polished
smoothness. The simplest expressions flashed in his face in luminescent
heat.

  Imagine a figure of ice, as perfectly made as Pygmalion's Galatea,
thrown into the fire, and sizzling, and melting, and yet the features
all wondrously intact still... well, such was my Master when human
emotions infected him, as they did now.

He crushed my arms deliciously and kissed me again.

  "Little man, manikin, elf," he whispered. "Would you be so for
eternity? Haven't you lain with me often enough to know what I can and
cannot enjoy?"

I won him over, captive to me, for the last hour before he was off.

  But the next night he dispatched me to a more clandestine and even
more luxurious house of pleasure, a house which kept for the passions of
others only young boys.

It was got up in Eastern style, and I think it blended the luxuries of
Egypt with those of Babylon, its small cells made up of golden
latticework, and colonnettes of brass studded with lapis lazuli holding
up the salmon-colored drapery of the ceilings over tasseled couches of
gilt wood and damask-covered down. Incense made the air heavy, and the
lights were soothingly low.

   The naked boys, well fed, nubile, smooth and rounded of limb, were
eager, strong, tenacious, and brought to the games their own rampant
male desires.

   It seemed my soul was a pendulum that swung between the hearty
pleasure of conquest and the swooning surrender to stronger limbs, and
stronger wills, and stronger hands that tossed me tenderly about.

   Captive between two skilled and willful lovers, I was pierced and
suckled, pummeled and emptied until I slept as soundly as ever I had
without the Master's magic at home.

It was only the beginning.

   Sometime in my drunken sleep, I woke to find myself surrounded by
beings that seemed neither male nor female. Only two of them were
eunuchs, cut with such skill they could raise their trusty weapons as
well as any boy. The others merely shared the taste of their companions
for paint. All had eyes lined in black and shaded in purple, with lashes
curled and glazed to give their expressions an eerie fathomless
aloofness. Their rouged lips seemed tougher than those of women and more
demanding, pushing at me in their kisses as if the male element which
had given them muscles and hard organs had given them as well a virility
to their very mouths. They had the smiles of angels. Gold rings
decorated their nipples. Their nether hair was powdered with gold.

   I made no protest when they overcame me. I feared no extreme, and
even let them bind my wrists and ankles to the bed, so they could better
work their craft. It was impossible to fear them. I was crucified with
pleasure. Their insistent fingers would not even allow me to close my
eyes. They stroked my lids, they forced me to look. They brought soft
thick brushes down over my limbs. They rubbed oils into all my skin.
They sucked from me, as if it were nectar, the fiery sap I gave forth,
over and over, until I cried out vainly that I could give no more. A
count was kept of my "little deaths" with which to taunt me playfully,
and I was turned over and cuffed and pinioned as I tumbled down into
rapturous sleep.

When I awoke I knew no time or worry. The thick smoke of a pipe rose
into my nostrils. I took it and sucked on it, savoring the dark familiar
smell of hemp.

I stayed there for four nights.

Again, I was delivered.

   This time I found myself, groggy and in dishabille, barely covered by
a thin torn cream-colored silk shirt. I lay on a couch brought from the
very brothel, but this was my Master's studio, and there he sat, not far
away, painting my picture obviously, at a small easel from which he took
his eyes only to dart glances at me.

I asked the time of day and what night it was. He didn't answer.

"And so you're angry that I enjoyed it?" I asked.

"I told you to lie still," he said.

   I lay back, cold all over, and hurt suddenly, lonely perhaps, and
wanting like a child to hide in his arms.

  Morning came and he left me, having said nothing else. The painting
was a gleaming masterpiece of the obscene. I was in my sleeping posture
cast down on a riverbank, a fawn of sorts, over which a tall shepherd,
the Master himself, in priestly robes stood watch. The woods around us
were thick and richly realized with the peeling tree trunks and their
clustered dusty leaves. The water of the stream seemed wet to the touch,
so clever was the realism of it, and my own figure appeared guileless
and lost in sleep, my mouth half-open in a natural way, my brow
obviously troubled by uneasy dreams.

I threw it on the floor, in a rage, meaning to smear it.

  Why had he said nothing? Why did he force me to these lessons which
drove us apart? Why his anger at me for merely doing what he had told
me? I wondered if the brothels had been a test of my innocence, and his
admonitions to me to enjoy all of it had been lies.

I sat at his desk, picked up his pen and scribbled a message to him.

You are the Master. You should know all things. It's unsupport-able to
be Mastered by one who cannot do it. Make clear the way, shepherd, or
lay down your staff.

  The fact was, I was wrung out from the pleasure, from the drink, from

the distortion of my senses, and lonely just to be with him and for his
guidance and his kindness and his reassurance that I was his.

But he was gone.

I went out roaming. I spent all day in the taverns, drinking, playing
cards, deliberately enticing the pretty girls who were fair game, to
keep them at my side as I played the various games of chance.

   Then when night came, I let myself be seduced, ho-hum, by a drunken
Englishman, a fair freckle-skinned noble of the oldest French and
English titles, of which this one was the Earl of Harlech, who was
traveling in Italy to see the great wonders and utterly intoxicated with
its many delights, including buggery in a strange land.

   Naturally, he found me a beautiful boy. Didn't everyone? He was not
at all ugly himself. Even his pale freckles had a kind of prettiness to
them, especially given his outrageous copper hair.

   Taking me back to his rooms in an overstaffed and beautiful palazzo,
he made love to me. It was not all bad. I liked his innocence and his
clumsiness. His light round blue eyes were a marvel; he had wondrously
thick and muscular arms and a pampered but deliciously rough-pointed
orange beard.

   He wrote poems to me in Latin and in French, and recited them to me
with great charm. After an hour or two of playing the vanquishing brute,
he had let on that he wanted to be covered by me. And this I had very
much enjoyed. We played it that way after that, my being the conquering
soldier and he the victim on the battlefield, and sometimes I whipped
him lightly with a doubled-up leather belt before I took him, which sent
us both into a tidy froth.

   From time to time, he implored me to confess who I really was and
where he might afterwards find me, which of course I wouldn't.

   I stayed there for three nights with him, talking about the
mysterious islands of England with him, and reading Italian poetry aloud
to him, and even sometimes playing the mandolin for him and singing any
number of the soft love songs I knew.

   He taught me a great deal of rank gutter-tramp English, and wanted to
take me home. He had to regain his wits, he said; he had to return to
his duties, his estates, his hateful wicked adulterous Scottish wife
whose father was an assassin, and his innocent little child whose
paternity he was most certain of, due to its orange curly hair so like
his own.

   He would keep me in London in a splendid house he had there, a
present from His Majesty King Henry VII. He could not now live without
me, the Harlechs to a man had to have what they must have, and there was
nothing for me to do but yield to him. If I was the son of a formidable
nobleman I should confess it, and this obstacle would be dealt with. Did
I hate my Father, perchance? His was a scoundrel. All the Harlechs were
scoundrels and had been since the days of Edward the Confessor. We would
sneak out of Venice this very night.

   "You don't know Venice, and you don't know her noblemen," I said
kindly. "Think on all this. You'll be cut to pieces for giving it a
try."

   I now perceived that he was fairly young. Since all older men seemed
old to me, I had not thought about it before. He couldn't have been more
than twenty-five. He was also mad.

   He leapt on the bed, his bushy copper hair flying, and pulled his
dagger, a formidable Italian stiletto, and stared down into my upturned
face.

   "I'll kill for you," he said confidentially and proudly, in the
Venetian dialect. Then he drove the dagger into the pillow and the
feathers flew out of it. "I'll kill you if I have to." The feathers went
up into his face.

"And then you'll have what?" I asked.

   There was a creaking behind him. I felt certain someone was at the
window, beyond the bolted wooden shutters, even though we were three
stories above the Grand Canal. I told him so. He believed me.

   "I come from a family of murderous beasts," I lied. "They'll follow
you to the ends of the Earth if you think of taking me out of here;
they'll dismantle your castles stone by stone, chop you in half and cut
out your tongue and your private parts, wrap them in velvet and send
them to your King. Now calm down."

   "Oh, you bright, saucy little demon," he said, "you look like an
angel and hold forth like a tavern knave in that sweet crooning mannish
voice."

"That's me," I said gaily.

   I got up, dressed hastily, warning him not to kill me just yet, as I
would return as soon as I possibly could, longing to be nowhere but with
him, and kissing him hastily, I made for the door.

   He hovered in the bed, his dagger still tightly clutched in his hand,
the feathers having settled on his carrot-colored head and on his
shoulders and on his beard. He looked truly dangerous.

I'd lost count of the nights of my absence.

I could find no churches open. I wanted no company.

   It was dark and cold. The curfew had come down. Of course the
Venetian winter seemed mild to me after the snowy lands of the north,
where I'd been born, but it was nevertheless an oppressive and damp
winter, and though cleansing breezes purified the city, it was
inhospitable and unnaturally quiet. The illimitable sky vanished in
thick mists. The very stones gave forth the chill as if they were blocks
of ice.

   On a water stairs, I sat, not caring that it was brutally wet, and I
burst into tears. What had I learned from all this?

   I felt very sophisticated on account of this education. But I had no
warmth from it, no lasting warmth, and it seemed my loneliness was worse
than guilt, worse than the feeling of being damned.

   Indeed it seemed to replace that old feeling. I feared it, being

utterly alone. As I sat there looking up at the tiny margin of black
Heaven, at the few stars that drifted over the roofs of the houses, I
sensed how utterly terrible it would be to lose both my Master and my
guilt simultaneously, to be cast out where nothing bothered to love me
or damn me, to be lost and tumbling through the world with only those
humans for companions, those boys and those girls, the English lord with
his dagger, even my beloved Bianca.

   It was to her house that I went. I climbed under her bed, as I'd done
in the past, and wouldn't come out.

   She was entertaining a whole flock of Englishmen, but not,
fortunately, my copper-haired lover, who was no doubt still stumbling
around in the feathers, and I thought, Well, if my charming Lord Harlech
shows up, he won't risk shame before his countrymen in making a fool out
of himself. She came in, looking most lovely in her violet silk gown
with a fortune of radiant pearls around her neck. She knelt down and put
her head near mine.

"Amadeo, what's the matter with you?"

   I had never asked for her favors. To my knowledge no one did such a
thing. But in my particular adolescent frenzy, nothing seemed more
appropriate than that I should ravage her.

   I scrambled out from under the bed and went to the doors and shut
them, so the noise of her guests would leave us alone.

   When I turned around she knelt on the floor, looking at me, her
golden eyebrows knotted and her peach-soft lips open in a vague
wondering expression that I found enchanting. I wanted to smash her with
my passion, but not all that hard, of course, assuming all the while
that she'd come back together again afterwards as if a beautiful vase,
broken into pieces, could pull itself together again from all the
tiniest shards and particles and be restored to its glory with an even
finer glaze.

   I pulled her up by the arms and threw her down on her bed. It was
quite an affair, this marvelous coffered thing in which she slept alone,
as far as all men knew. It had great gilded swans at its head, and
columns rising to a framed canopy of painted dancing nymphs. Its
curtains were spun gold and transparent. It had no winter aspect to it,
like my Master's red velvet bed.

   I bent down and kissed her, maddened by her sharp, pretty eyes which
stared coolly at me as I did it. I held her wrists and then, swinging
her left wrist over with her right, entrapped both her hands in one so
that I was free to rip open her fine dress. I ripped it carefully so
that all the little pearl buttons flew off the side of it, and her
girdle was opened and underneath was her fine whalebone and lace. This I
broke open as if it were a tight shell.

   Her breasts were small and sweet, far too delicate and youngish for
the brothel where voluptuousness had been the order of the day. I meant
to pillage them nevertheless. I crooned against her, humming a bit of a
song to her, and then I heard her sigh. I swooped down, still clutching
her wrists firmly, and I sucked hard at her nipples in quick order and
then drew back. I slapped her breasts playfully, from left to right
until they turned pink.

   Her face was flushed and she had her little golden frown still, the
wrinkles almost incongruous in her smooth white forehead.

   Her eyes were like two opals, and though she blinked slowly, near
sleepily, she didn't flinch.

   I finished my work on her fragile clothes. I ripped open the ties of
her skirt and pushed it down away from her and found her splendidly and
daintily naked as I had supposed she would be. I really had no idea what
was beneath the skirts of a respectable woman in the way of obstacles.
There was nothing except the small golden nest of her pubic hair, all
feathery beneath her very slightly rounded little belly, and a dampness
gleaming on her inner thighs.

   I knew at once she favored me. She was hardly helpless. And the sight
of the glittering down on her legs drove me mad. I plunged into her,
amazed at her smallness and the way that she cringed, for she was not
very well used, and it hurt her just a little.

   I worked her hard, delighting to see her blush. My own weight I held
up above her with my right arm, because I wouldn't let go of her wrists.
She tossed and turned, and her blond tresses worked themselves out of
her pearl and ribbon coif, and she became moist all over and pink and
gleaming, like the inner curve of a great shell.

At last I couldn't contain myself any longer, and it seemed when I would
give up the timing, she gave herself up to the final sigh. I spent with
it, and we rocked together, as she closed her eyes, turned blood red as
if she were dying and tossed her head in a final frenzy before going
limp.

   I rolled over and covered my face with both my arms, as if I were
about to be slapped.

   I heard her little laughter, and she did slap me suddenly, hard on my
arms. It was nothing. I made as if I were weeping with shame.

   "Look what you've done to my beautiful gown, you dreadful little
satyr, you secret conquistador! You vile precocious child!"

   I felt her weight leave the bed. I heard her dressing. She sang to
herself.

"What's your Master going to think of this, Amadeo?" she asked.

   I removed my arms and looked to find her voice. She dressed behind
her painted paneled screen, a gift from Paris, if I recalled, given her
by one of her favorite French poets. She appeared quickly, clothed as
splendidly as before in a dress of pale spring green, embroidered with
the flowers of the field. She seemed a very garden of delight with these
tiny yellow and pink blooms so carefully made in rich thread over her
new bodice and her long taffeta skirts.

   "Well, tell me, what is the great Master going to say when he finds
out his little lover is a veritable god of the wood?"

"Lover?" I was astonished.

   She was very gentle in her manner. She sat down and began to comb out
her tousled hair. She wore no paint and her face was unmarred by our

games, and her hair came down around in a glorious hood of rippling
gold. Her forehead was smooth and high.

   "Botticelli made you," I whispered. I often said this to her, because
she was so like his beauties. Indeed everyone thought so, and they would
bring her small copies of this famous Florentine's paintings from time
to time.

   I thought on it, I thought on Venice and this world in which I lived.
I thought on her, a courtesan, receiving those chaste yet lascivious
paintings as if she were a saint.

   Some echo came to me of old words that I had been told long ago, when
I knelt in the presence of old and burnished beauty, and thought myself
at the pinnacle, that I must take up my brush and I must paint only
"what represented the world of God."

There was no tumult in me, only a great mixing of currents, as I watched
her braid her hair again, stringing the fine ropes of pearls in with it,
and the pale green ribbons, the ribbons themselves sewn with the same
pretty little flowers that decorated her gown. Her breasts were
blushing, half-covered beneath the press of her bodice. I wanted to rip
it open again.

"Pretty Bianca, what makes you say this, that I'm his lover?"

   "Everyone knows it," she whispered. "You are his favorite. Do you
think you've made him angry?"

   "Oh, if only I could," I said. I sat up. "You don't know my Master.
Nothing makes him lift his hand to me. Nothing makes him even raise his
voice. He sent me forth to learn all things, to know what men can know."

She smiled and nodded. "So you came and hid under the bed."

"I was sad."

   "I'm sure," she said. "Well, sleep now, and when I come back, if
you're still here, I'll keep you warm. But need I tell you, my
rambunctious one, that you will never utter one careless word of what
happened here? Are you so young that I have to tell you this?" She bent
down to kiss me.

"No, my pearl, my beauty, you needn't tell me. I won't even tell him."

   She stood and gathered up her broken pearls and wrinkled ribbons, the
remnants of the rape. She smoothed the bed. She looked as lovely as a
human swan, a match for the gilded swans of her boatlike bed.

"Your Master will know," she said. "He's a great magician."

   "Are you afraid of him? I mean in general, Bianca, I don't mean on
account of me?"

   "No," she said. "Why should I fear him? Everyone knows not to anger
him or offend him or break his solitude or question him, but it's not
fear. Why do you cry, Amadeo, what's wrong?"

"I don't know, Bianca."

   "I'll tell you then," she said. "He has become the world to you as
only such a great being can. And you are out of it now arid longing to
return to it. A man such as that becomes all things to you, and his wise
voice becomes the law by which everything is measured. All that lies
beyond has no value because he doesn't see it, and he doesn't declare
that it is valuable. And so you have no choice but to leave the wastes
that lie outside his light and return to it. You must go home."

She went out, closing the doors. I slept, refusing to go home.

   The next morning, I breakfasted with her, and spent all day with her.
Our intimacy had given me a radiant sense of her. No matter how much she
talked of my Master, I had eyes only for her just now, in these quarters
of hers which were perfumed with her and full of all her private and
special things.

I will never forget Bianca. Never.

   I told her, as one can do with a courtesan, all about the brothels to
which I'd been. Perhaps I remember them in such detail because I told
her. I told her with delicate words, of course. But I told her. I told
her how my Master wanted me to learn everything and had taken me to
these splendid academies himself.

   "Well, that's fine, but you can't linger here, Amadeo. He's taken you
to places where you'll have the pleasure of much company. He may not
want you to remain in the company of one."

   I didn't want to go. But when nightfall came, and the house filled
with her English and French poets, and the music started, and the
dancing, I didn't want to share her with all the admiring world.

   For a while I watched her, confusingly conscious that I had had her
in her secret chamber as none of these, her admirers, had or might have,
but it gave me no solace.

   I wanted something from my Master, something final and conclusive and
obliterating, and maddened by this desire, suddenly fully aware of it, I
got drunk in a tavern, drunk enough to be nervy and nasty, and I went
blundering home.

   I felt bold and defiant and very independent for having stayed away
from my Master and all his mysteries for so long.

   He was painting furiously when I returned. He was high on the
scaffold, and I figured he was attending to the faces of his Greek
philosophers, working the alchemy by which vivid countenances came out
of his brush, as though uncovered rather than applied.

   He wore a bedraggled gray tunic that hung down to his feet. He didn't
turn to look at me when I came in. Every brazier in the house it seemed
had been crammed into the room to give him the light he wanted.

   The boys were frightened at the speed with which he covered the
canvas.

   I soon realized, as I staggered into the studio, that he wasn't
painting on his Greek Academy.

   He was painting a picture of me. I knelt in this picture, a boy of

our time, with my familiar long locks and a quiet suit of clothing as if
I had taken leave of the high-toned world, and seemingly innocent, my
hands clasped in prayer. Around me were gathered angels, gentle-faced
and glorious as they always appeared, only these had been graced with
black wings.

   Black wings. Great black feathery wings. Hideous they seemed, the
more I looked upon this canvas. Hideous, and he had almost completed it.
The auburn-haired boy seemed real as he looked unchalleng-ingly to
Heaven, and the angels appeared avid yet sad.

   But nothing therein was as monstrous as the spectacle of my Master
painting this, of his hand and brush whipping across the picture,
realizing sky, clouds, broken pediment, angel wing, sunlight.

   The boys clung to one another, certain of his madness or his sorcery.
Which was it? Why did he so carelessly reveal himself to those whose
minds had been at peace?

   Why did he flaunt our secret, that he was no more a man than the
winged creatures he painted! Why had he the Lord lost his patience in
such a manner as this?

   Suddenly in a rage, he threw a pot of paint at the far corner of the
room. A splatter of dark green disfigured the wall. He cursed and cried
in a language none of us knew.

   He hurled the pots down, and the paint spilt in great shiny splashes
from the wooden scaffold. He sent the brushes flying like arrows.

   "Get out of here, go to your beds, I don't want to see you,
innocents. Go. Go."

   The apprentices ran from him. Riccardo reached out to gather to him
the smaller boys. All hurried out the door.

   High up on the scaffold, he sat down, his legs dangling, and merely
looked at me as I stood beneath him, as if he didn't know who I was.

"Come down, Master," I said.

   His hair was disheveled and matted here and there with paint. He
showed no surprise that I was there, no start at the sound of my voice.
He had known I was there. He knew all such things. He could hear words
spoken in other rooms. He knew the thoughts of those around him. He was
pumped full of magic, and when I drank from that magic, I reeled.

   "Let me comb your hair out for you," I said. I was insolent, I knew
it.

   His tunic was stained and filthy. He'd wiped his brush on it over and
over again.

One of his sandals fell with a clatter to the marble. I picked it up.

   "Master, come down. Whatever I said to worry you, I won't say it
again."

He wouldn't answer me.

   Suddenly all my rage came up in me, my loneliness to have been
separated from him for days on end, obeying his injunctions, and now to
come home and find him staring at me wild and unconfiding. I would not
tolerate his staring off, ignoring me as if I weren't there. He must
admit that I was the cause of his anger. He must speak.

I wanted suddenly to cry.

   His face became anguished. I couldn't watch this; I couldn't think
that he felt pain as I did, as the other boys did. I was in wild revolt.

"You frighten everyone selfishly, Lord and Master!" I declared.

   Without regarding me, he vanished in a great flurry, and I heard his
footsteps rushing through the empty rooms.

   I knew he had moved with a speed men couldn't master. I hurried after
him, only to hear the bedroom doors slammed shut against me, to hear the
lock slid closed before I reached out to grab the latch.

   "Master, let me in," I cried. "I went only because you told me to." I
turned around and around. It was quite impossible to break these doors.
I pounded on them with my fists and kicked them. "Master, you sent me to
the brothels. You sent me on damnable errands."

   After a long time, I sat down at the foot of the door, my back
against it, and wept and wailed. I made a riotous amount of noise. He
waited until I stopped.

   "Go to sleep, Amadeo," he said. "My rages have nothing to do with
you."

   Impossible. A lie! I was infuriated and insulted, and hurt and cold!
This whole house was damnably cold.

   "Then let your peace and calm have to do with me, Sir!" I said. "Open
the damned door."

   "Go to bed with the others," he said quietly. "You belong with the
others, Amadeo. They are your loved ones. They are your kind. Don't seek
the company of monsters."

   "Ah, is that what you are, Sir?" I asked contemptuously and crossly.
"You that can paint like Bellini or Mantegna, who can read all words and
speak all tongues, who has love without end and patience to match it, a
monster! Is that it? A monster spreads the roof over our head and feeds
us our daily supper from the kitchens of the gods! Oh, indeed, a
monster."

He didn't answer.

   I was further enraged. I went down to the lower floor. I took a great
battle-ax from the wall. It was one of many weapons on display in the
house which I'd scarcely ever noticed. Well, it was time for it, I
thought. I've had enough of this coldness. I can't stand it. I can't
stand it.

   I went upstairs and heaved the battle-ax at the door. Of course it
went through the brittle wood, shattering the painted panel, cracking
through the old lacquer and the pretty yellow and red roses. I pulled it

back and smashed it into the door again.

   This time the lock was broken. I kicked the shattered frame with my
foot and it fell back.

   In utter amazement he sat in his large dark oak chair looking at me,
his hands clutching the two lion's head arms. Behind him loomed the
massive bed with its rich red baldaquin trimmed in gold.

"How dare you!" he said.

   He stood before me in an instant, took the ax and hurled it with ease
so that it crashed into the stone wall opposite. Then he picked me up
and threw me towards the bed. The entire bed shivered, baldaquin and
draperies as well. No man could have made me span that distance. But he
had done it. With arms and legs flying, I landed on the pillows.

   "Despicable monster!" I said. I turned over, steadied myself and drew
up on my left side, glaring at him, one knee crooked.

   He stood with his back to me. He had been about to close the inner
doors of the apartment, which had been open before and therefore were
not broken. But he stopped. He turned. A playful expression came over
him.

   "Oh, what a vile temper we have for such an angelic countenance," he
said mildly.

   "If I'm an angel," I said, drawing back from the edge of the bed,
"paint me with black wings."

   "You dare knock down my door." He folded his arms. "Need I tell you
why I will not tolerate such from you, or from anyone?"

He stood gazing at me with raised eyebrows.

"You torture me," I said.

"Oh, indeed, how and since when?"

I wanted to bawl. I wanted to say, "I love only you."

Instead I said, "I detest you."

   He couldn't help but laugh. He lowered his head, his fingers curled
under his chin, as he stared at me.

Then he extended his hand and snapped his fingers.

   I heard a rustling from the rooms beyond. I sat up petrified with
amazement.

   I saw the long switch of the teacher come slithering along the floor
as if a wind had sent it hither, and then it twisted and turned and rose
and dropped into his waiting hand.

   Behind him, the inner doors slammed shut and the bolt slipped into
place with a loud metallic clatter.

I drew back in the bed.

   "It's going to be a pleasure to whip you," he said, smiling sweetly,
his eyes almost innocent. "You may chalk it up as another human
experience, rather like cavorting with your English lord."

"Do it. I hate you," I said. "I'm a man and you deny it."

He looked superior and gentle but not amused.

   He came towards me, and grabbed at my head, and threw me face down on
the bed.

"Demon! "I said.

"Master," he replied calmly.

   I felt the nudge of his knee in the small of my back and then down
came the switch across my thighs. Of course I wasn't wearing anything
but the thin stockings that fashion decreed, so I might as well have
been naked.

   I cried out in pain and then shut my mouth tight. When the next few
blows came, walloping my legs, I swallowed all noise, furious to hear
myself make a careless impossible groan.

  Again and again, he brought the switch down, whipping my thighs and
then my lower legs as well. Enraged, I struggled to get up, pushing
vainly on the covers with the heels of my hands. I couldn't move. I was
pinioned by his knee, and he whacked away without the slightest
deterrent.

   Suddenly as rebellious as I'd ever been, I decided to play games with
this. I'd be damned if I'd lie there crying, and the tears were coming
up in my eyes. I closed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth and decided that
each blow was the divine color red and that I liked, and that the hot
crashing pain I felt was red, and that the warmth swelling up in my leg
after was golden and sweet.

"Oh, that's lovely! "I said.

"You make a fool's bargain, little boy!" he said.

   He whipped me harder and faster. I couldn't keep my pretty visions.
It hurt, it bloody hurt.

"I'm not a boy!" I cried.

I felt a wetness on my leg. I knew I was bleeding.

"Master, you mean to disfigure me?"

"There's nothing worse than for a fallen saint to be a horrid devil!"

   More blows. I knew I was bleeding from more than one place. I would
surely be bruised all over. I wouldn't be able to walk.

"I don't know what you mean! Stop!"

  To my astonishment, he did. I curled my arm up under my face and I
sobbed. I sobbed for a long moment, and my legs burned as if the switch

were still hitting them. It seemed the blows were being laid on over and
over, but they weren't. I kept hoping, Let this pain die away to
something warm again, something tingling and nice, the way it felt the
first couple of times. That would be all right, but this is terrible. I
hate it!

   Suddenly I felt him cover me. I felt the sweet tickling of his hair
on my legs. I felt his fingers as he grabbed the torn cloth of the
stockings and ripped it, tearing it off both my legs very quickly,
leaving them bare. He reached up under my tunic and tore loose the
remnants of the hose.

  The pain throbbed, grew worse, then a little better. The air was cool
on my bruises. When his fingers touched them, I felt such terrible
pleasure that all I could do was moan.

"You going to break down my door again?"

"Never," I whispered.

"You going to defy me in any way in particular?"

"Never in any way ever."

"Further words?"

"I love you."

"I'm sure."

"But I do," I said sniffling.

  The stroking of his fingers on my hurt flesh was insupportably
delicious. I didn't dare raise my head. I pressed my cheek against the
scratchy embroidered coverlet, against the great picture of the lion
stitched into it, and I sucked in my breath and let my tears flow. I
felt calm all over; this pleasure robbed me of any control of my limbs.

I closed my eyes, and there came his lips on my leg. He kissed one of
the bruises. I thought I would die. I would go to Heaven, that is, some
other higher more delicious Heaven even than this Venetian Heaven.
Beneath me, my groin was alive with thankful and desperate and isolated
strength.

   The burning blood flowed over the bruise. The slightly rough stroke
of his tongue touched it, lapped at it, pressed it, and the inevitable
tingling made a fire in my closed eyes, a blazing fire across a mythical
horizon in the darkness of my blind mind.

   To the next bruise he went, and there came the trickles of the blood
and the lap of his tongue, and the hideous pain departed and there was
nothing but a throbbing sweetness. And as he went to the next, I
thought, I cannot bear this, I will simply die.

   He moved fast, from bruise to bruise, depositing his magical kiss and
the stroke of his tongue, and I quivered all over and moaned.

"Some punishment!" I suddenly said with a gasp.

   It was a dreadful thing to say! Instantly, I regretted it, the

sassiness of it.

   But his hand had already come down with a fierce slap on my backside.

   "I didn't mean it," I said. "I mean, I didn't mean it to sound so
ungrateful. I mean, I'm sorry I said it!" But there was another slap as
hot as the first.

"Master, have pity on me. I'm mixed up!" I cried.

   His hand lay on me, on the warm surface that he had slapped, and I
thought, Oh, now he's going to beat me till I'm unconscious.

   But his fingers only gently clasped the skin, which was not broken,
only warm as the first welts from the switch had been.

   I felt his lips again on the calf of my left leg, and the blood, and
his tongue. The pleasure moved all through me, and helpless, I let the
air escape my lips in a rosary of sighs.

"Master, Master, Master, I love you."

   "Yes, well, that's not so unusual," he whispered. He didn't stop his
kissing. He lapped at the blood. I writhed under the weight of his hand
on my backside. "But the question is, Amadeo, why do I love you? Why?
Why did I have to go into that stinking brothel and look upon you? I am
strong by nature ... whatever my nature ..."

   He greedily kissed a large bruise on my thigh. I could feel his
sucking at it, and then the tongue lapping it, eating the blood, and
then his blood coming down into it. The pleasure sent shock after shock
through me. I saw nothing, though I thought that my eyes were now open.
I struggled to make certain that my eyes were open, but nothing came
visible, only a golden haze.

   "I love you, I do love you," he said. "And why? Quick-witted, yes,
beautiful, yes, and inside you, the burnt-up relics of a saint!"

   "Master, I don't know what you're saying to me. I was never a saint,
never, I don't claim to be a saint. I'm a wretched disrespectful and
ungrateful being. Oh, I adore you. It's so delicious to be helpless and
at your mercy."

"Stop mocking me."

   "But I don't," I said. "I want to speak, the truth, I want to be a
fool for the truth, a fool for-. I want to be a fool for you."

   "No, I don't guess you do mean to mock me. You mean it. You don't
realize the absurdity of it."

   He had finished his progress. My legs had lost any shape they
possessed in my mist-filled mind. I could only lie there, my whole body
vibrating from his kisses. He laid his head on my hips, against the warm
place that he had smacked with his hand, and I felt his fingers come up
under me and touch the most private part of me.

   My organ hardened in his fingers, hardened with the infusion of his
searing blood, but all the more with the young male in me who had so
often mingled pleasure with pain at his will.

   Harder and harder I grew, and bucked and pumped beneath his head and
shoulders as he lay on my backside, as he held tight to the organ, and
then into his slippery fingers I gave forth in violent unsurpassed
spasms a great gush.

   I rose on my elbow and looked back at him. He was sitting up, staring
at the pearly white semen that clung to his fingers.

   "Good God, is that what you wanted?" I asked. "To see the viscous
whiteness in your hand?

He looked at me with anguish. Oh, such anguish.

"Doesn't it mean?" I asked, "that the time has come?"

 The misery in his eyes was too much for me to question him anymore.

   Drowsy and blind, I felt him turn me over and rip off my tunic and
jacket. I felt him lift me and then came the sting of his assault into
my neck. A fierce pain gathered itself around my heart, slackening just
when I feared it, and then I sank down beside him into the perfumed
cleft of the bed; and against his chest, warm under covers that he
pulled up over us, I slept.

It was still thick and heavy night when I opened my eyes. I had learnt
with him to feel the coming of morning. And morning was not yet really
near.

   I looked around for him. I saw him at the foot of the bed. He was
dressed in his finest red velvet. He wore a jacket with slashed sleeves
and a heavy tunic with a high collar. This cloak of red velvet was
trimmed in ermine.

   His hair was thoroughly brushed and very slightly oiled so that it
gave off its most civilized and artful shimmer, swept back from his
clean straight hairline and turning in mannered curls on his shoulders.
He looked sad.

"Master, what is it?"

   "I have to go for a few nights. No, it's not out of anger at you,
Amadeo. It's one of those journeys I have to make. I'm long overdue for
it."

   "No, Master, not now, please. I'm sorry, I beg you, not now! What
I-."

   "Child. I go to see Those Who Must Be Kept. I have no choice in
this."

   For a moment I said nothing. I tried to understand the denotation of
the words he'd spoken. His voice had dropped, and he had said the words
halfheartedly.

"What is that, Master?" I asked.

   "Some night perhaps I'll take you with me. I'll ask permission . .
." His voice trailed off.

   "For what, Master? When have you ever needed anyone's permission for
anything?"

   I had meant this to be simple and candid, but I knew now it had an
impertinent sound.

   "It's all right, Amadeo," he said. "I ask permission now and then
from my Elders, that's all. Who else?" He looked weary. He sat beside me
and leaned down next to me and kissed my lips.

   "Elders, Sir? You mean Those Who Must Be Kept-these are creatures
like you?"

   "You be kind to Riccardo and the others. They worship you," he said.
"They wept for you the whole time you were away. They didn't quite
believe me when I told them you were coming home. Then Riccardo spied
you with your English lord and was terrified I'd break you in little
pieces, yet afraid the Englishman would kill you. He has quite the
reputation, your English lord, slamming down his knife on the board in
any tavern he chooses. Do you have to consort with common murderers? You
have a nonpareil here when it comes to those who take life. When you
went to Bianca, they didn't dare to tell me, but made fancy pictures in
their minds so I couldn't read their thoughts. How docile they are with
my powers."

   "They love you, my Lord," I said. "Thank God that you forgive me for
the places I went. I'll do whatever you wish."

"Good night then." He rose to go.

"Master, how many nights?"

   "Three at most," he said over his shoulder. He made for the door, a
tall gallant figure in his cloak.

"Master."

"Yes."

   "I'll be very good, a saint," I said. "But if I'm not will you whip
me again, please?"

   The moment I saw the anger in his face I regretted this. What made me
say such things!

   "Don't tell me you didn't mean it!" he said, reading my mind and
hearing the words before I could get them out.

   "No. It's just I hate it when you go. I thought maybe if I taunted
you, you wouldn't."

   "Well, I will. And don't taunt me. As a matter of policy, don't taunt
me."

   He was out the door before he changed his mind and returned. He came
towards the bed. I expected the worst. He was going to slap me and then
not be around to kiss the bruise.

But he didn't.

"Amadeo, while I'm gone, think on it" he said.

   I was sobered, looking at him. His very manner made me reflect before
I uttered a word.

"On everything, Sir?" I asked.

   "Yes," he said. Then he came again to kiss me. "Will you be this
forever?" he asked. "This man, this young man, that you are now?"

  "Yes, Master! Forever, and with you!" I wanted to tell him that there
was nothing I couldn't do that a man could do, but this seemed most
unwise, and also it would not seem true to him.

He laid his hand fondly on my head, pushing my hair back.

   "For two years, I've watched you grow," he said. "You've reached your
full height, but you're small, and your face is a baby's face, and for
all your good health, you're slight and not the robust man yet that you
are surely meant to be."

I was too enthralled to interrupt him. When he paused, I waited.

He sighed. He looked off as if he couldn't find words.

   "When you were gone, your English lord drew his dagger on you, but
you weren't afraid. Do you remember? It wasn't two days ago."

"Yes, Sir, it was stupid."

   "You could easily have died then," he said with a raise of his
eyebrow. "Easily."

   "Sir, please open up these mysteries to me," I said. "Tell me how you
came to your powers. Entrust these secrets to me. Lord, make it so that
I can be with you forever. I don't care anything for my own judgment of
such things. I yield to yours."

"Ah, yes, you yield if I fulfill your request."

   "Well, Sir, that is a form of yielding, to give myself up to you,
your will and your power, and yes, I would have it and be like you. Is
that what you promise, Master, is that what you hint at, that you can
make me like you? You can fill me with this blood of yours that makes a
slave out of me, and it will be accomplished? It seems at times I know
this, Master, that you can do it, and yet I wonder if I know it only
because you know it, and you are lonely to do it to me."

   "Ah!" He put his hands to his face, as though I had displeased him
totally.

I was at a loss.

   "Master, if I offended, hit me, beat me, do anything to me but don't
turn away. Don't cover your eyes that would look on me, Master, because
I can't live without your gaze. Explain it to me. Master, take away what
divides us; if it be only ignorance then take away that."

   "Oh, I will, I will," he said. "You are so clever and deceiving,
Amadeo. You would be the fool for God all right, as you were told a long

time ago that a saint should be."

   "You lose me, Sir. I am no saint, and a fool, yes, because I
conjecture it's a form of wisdom and I want it because you prize
wisdom."

   "I mean that you appear simple, and out of your simplicity comes a
clever grasp. I am lonely. Oh, yes, I am lonely, and lonely to tell my
woes if nothing else. But who would burden one so young as you with my
woes? Amadeo, what age do you think I am? Gauge my age with your
simplicity."

"You have none, Sir. You neither eat nor drink, nor change with time.
You need no water to wash you clean. You are smooth and resistant to all
things of nature. Master, we all know this. You are a clean and fine and
whole thing."

   He shook his head. I was distressing him when I wanted just the
opposite.

"I have done it already," he whispered.

"What, my Lord, what have you done?"

   "Oh, brought you to me, Amadeo, for now-." He stopped. He frowned,
and his face was so soft and wondering that it made me ache. "Ah, but
these are just self-serving delusions. I could take you, with a heap of
gold, and plant you down in a distant city where-."

   "Master, kill me. Kill me before you do this, or make sure your city
is beyond the compass of the known world, because I will journey back! I
will spend the last ducat of your heap of gold to journey here and beat
on your doors."

   He looked wretched, more a man than I'd ever seen him, in pain and
trembling as he looked off, deep into the endless dark divide that
separated us.

   I clung to his shoulder and kissed him. There was a stronger, more
virile intimacy due to my crude act of hours ago.

   "No, no time for such comforts," he said. "I have to be gone. Duty
calls me. Ancient things call to me, things which have been my burden
for so very long. I am so weary!"

   "Don't go tonight. When the morning comes, take me with you, Master,
take me to where you conceal yourself from the sun. It is from the sun
that you must hide, isn't it, Master, you who paint blue skies and the
light of Phoebus more brilliantly than those who see it, you never see
it-."

   "Stop," he begged me, pressing his fingers about my hand. "Stop your
kisses and your reason, and do as I say."

   He took a deep breath, and for the first time in all my life with
him, I saw him take a handkerchief from his coat and pat the moisture on
his own forehead and his lips. The cloth was faintly red. He looked at
it.

   "I want to show you something before I go," he said. "Dress yourself,

quickly. Here, I'll help you."

 I was fully dressed for the cold winter night in less than a few
minutes. He put a black cape over my shoulders, and gave me gloves
trimmed in miniver, and put a black velvet cap on my head. The shoes he
chose were black leather boots, which he never wanted me to wear before.
To him the ankles of the boys were beautiful, and he did not favor
boots, though he did not mind if we wore them by day when he could not
see.

   He was so troubled, so distressed, and all his face, despite its
blanched cleanliness, was so infused with it, that I couldn't keep from
embracing him and kissing him, just to make his lips part, just to feel
his mouth locking onto mine.

   I closed my eyes. I felt his hand cover up my face and cover my
eyelids.

   There was a great noise around me, as of the flapping of the wooden
doors, and the flying about of the broken fragments of that door I'd
shattered, and of draperies billowed and snapped.

   The cold air of outside surrounded me. He set me down, blind, and I
knew my feet were on the quay. I could hear the water of the canal near
me, lapping, lapping, as the winter wind stirred it and drove the sea
into the city, and I could hear a wooden boat knocking persistently
against a dock.

He let slip his fingers, and I opened my eyes.

   We were far from the palazzo. I was abashed to see us at such a
distance, though I was not really surprised. He could do wonders, and so
he let me know this now. We were in back alleyways. We stood on a small
landing by a narrow canal. I had never ventured into this mean district
where workmen lived.

   I saw only the back porches of houses, and their ironclad windows,
and a general squalor and blindness, and a rankness as refuse floated on
the water of the dipping, splashing winter-blown canal.

   He turned and drew me with him away from the water's edge, and for a
moment I couldn't see. His white hand flashed out. I beheld one finger
pointed and then I beheld a man sleeping in a long rotted gondola that
had been drawn up out of the water and set on workmen's blocks. The man
stirred and threw back his covering. I saw his hulking fussing shape as
he grumbled and cursed at us that we dared to disturb his sleep.

   I reached for my dagger. I saw the flash of his blade. The white hand
of the Master, glowing like quartz, seemed only to touch the man's wrist
and send the weapon flying and rolling on the stones. Befuddled and
enraged, the man charged my Master in a great clumsy bid to knock my
Master off his feet.

   My Master caught him easily, as if he were no more than a great
swaddling of evil-smelling wool. I saw my Master's face. His mouth
opened. There came two tiny sharp teeth, like daggers unto themselves,
as he bit down into the man's throat. I heard the man cry out, but only
for an instant, and then his stinking body went still.

   Astonished and enthralled, I watched as my Master closed his smooth

eyes, his golden eyelashes seeming silvery in the dimness, and I heard a
low wet sound, barely audible but horribly suggestive of the flow of
something, and that something had to be the man's blood. My Master
pressed himself ever more closely to his victim, his plainly visible
white fingers coaxing the life fluid from the dying body, as he gave off
a long sweet savoring sigh. He drank. He drank, and there was no
mistaking it. He even twisted his head a little as if to bring the last
draught all the more quickly, and at this the man's form, now seemingly
frail and plastic, shuddered all over, as if the man had gone into a
final convulsion, and then was still.

   The Master drew himself up and ran his tongue over his lips. There
was not a drop of blood to be seen. But the blood was visible. It was
visible inside my Master. His face took on a florid gleam. He turned and
looked at me, and I could make out the vivid flush of his cheeks, the
ruddy glister of his lips.

   "This is where it comes from, Amadeo," he said. He shoved the corpse
towards me, the filthy clothes brushed all against me, and as the heavy
head fell back in death, he pushed it even closer so that I had to look
down at the doomed man's coarse and lifeless face. He was young, he was
bearded, he was not beautiful, and he was pale and he was dead.

   A seam of white showed beneath each limp and expressionless eyelid. A
greasy spittle hung from his decaying yellowed teeth, his breathless and
colorless mouth.

   I was speechless. Fear, loathing, these things had no part in it. I
was simply amazed. If I thought, I thought it was wondrous.

   In a sudden fit of seeming anger, my Master hurled the man's body to
his left and out into the water where it fell with a dull splashing and
bubbling sound.

   He snatched me up, and I saw the windows falling past me. I almost
screamed as we rose above the roofs. His hands clamped over my mouth. He
moved so swiftly it was as if something propelled him or thrust him
upwards.

  We spun round or so it must have been, and when I opened my eyes we
stood in a familiar room. Long golden curtains settled around us. It was
warm here. In the shadows I saw the glinting outline of a golden swan.

It was Bianca's room, her private sanctuary, her very own room.

   "Master!" I said in fear and revulsion, that we should come like
this, into her chamber, without so much as a word.

   From the closed doors a tiny seam of light laid itself out upon her
parqueted floor and its thick Persian carpet. It laid itself upon the
deep-carved feathers of her swan bed.

   Then came her footsteps hastily, emerging from an airy cloud of
voices, so that she might investigate alone the noise she heard.

   The cold wind swept into the room from the open window as she opened
her doors. Against the draught she slammed them shut, such a fearless
creature, and she reached out with unerring accuracy and raised the wick
of her nearby lamp. The flame rose and I saw her staring at my Master,
though she had seen me as well, for sure.

   She was herself, as I had left her a world of hours ago, in gold
velvet and silk tissue, her braid coiled about the back of her head to
weigh down her voluminous tresses which fell in their rippled splendor
over her shoulders and down her back.

Her small face was quick with questioning and alarm.

   "Marius," she said. "How now, my Lord, do you come here like this,
into my private room? How now, you come by the window, and with Amadeo?
What is this, jealousy of me?"

   "No, only I would have a confession," my Master said. His very voice
trembled. He held me tight by my hand as if I were a mere child as he
approached her, his long finger flying out to accuse her . . . "Tell
him, my darling angel, tell him what lies behind your fabulous face."

   "I don't know what you mean, Marius. But you anger me. And I order
you out of my house. Amadeo, what do you say to this abuse?"

   "I don't know, Bianca," I murmured. I was totally in fear. Never had
I heard my Master's voice tremble, and never had I heard anyone address
him so familiarly by name.

   "Get out of my house, Marius. Go now. I speak to the honorable man in
you."

   "Ah, and how then did your friend Marcellus go, the Florentine, the
one you were told to lure here with your clever words, the one whose
drink you laced with enough poison to kill twenty men?"

   My damsel's face grew brittle but never really hard. She seemed a
porcelain princess as she appraised my angry, trembling Master.

   "What is this to you, my Lord?" she asked. "Have you become the Grand
Council or the Council of Ten? Take me up before the courts on charges,
if you will, you stealthy sorcerer! Prove your words."

  There was a great high-strung dignity to her. She craned her neck and
raised her chin.

   "Murderess," my Master said. "I see it now within the solitary cell
of your mind, a dozen confessions, a dozen cruel and importunate acts, a
dozen crimes-."

   "No, you cannot judge me! A magician you might be, but you are no
angel, Marius. Not you with your boys."

   He dragged her forward, and once again I saw his mouth open. I saw
his deadly teeth.

   "No, Master, no!" I ripped loose of his slack neglected hand and flew
at him with my fists, crashing my body between hers and his and pounding
on him with all my might. "You can't do it, Master. I don't care what
she's done. You seek these reasons for what. Call her importunate? Her!
And what is it with you?"

   She fell backwards against her bed and struggled up onto it, her legs
bent. She drew back into the shadows.

   "You are the Fiend from Hell himself," she whispered. "You are a
monster, and I have seen it. Amadeo, he'll never let me live."

   "Let her live, my Lord, or I die with her!" I said. "She's no more
than a lesson here, and I will not see her die."

 My Master was wretched. He was dazed. He pushed me away from him,
steadying me so that I didn't fall. He moved towards the bed, but not in
pursuit of her. He sat down beside her. She recoiled ever deeper against
the headboard, her hand reaching out vainly for the sheer gold drapery
as if it could save her.

   She was wan and small, and her fierce blue eyes remained fixed and
wide.

   "We are killers together, Bianca," he whispered to her. He reached
out.

   I rushed forward, but only to be stopped casually by his right hand,
and with his left he smoothed her few tiny loose curls back from her
forehead. He rested his hand on her as if he were a priest giving a
blessing.

   "Of rude necessity, Sir, all of it," she said. "What choice after all
did I have?" How brave she was, how strong like fine silver suffused
with steel. "Once given the commissions, what am I to do, for I know
what is to be done and for whom? How clever they were. It was a brew
which took days to kill its victim far from my warm rooms."

   "Call your oppressor here, child, and poison him, instead of those he
points out."

   "Yes, that ought to do it," I said hastily. "Kill the man who put you
up to it."

   She seemed in truth to think on this and then to smile. "And what of
his guards, his kinsmen? They would strangle me for the grand betrayal."

   "I'll kill him for you, sweet," said Marius. "And for that, you'll
owe me no high crimes, only your gentle forgetfulness of the appetite
you have seen tonight in me."

   For the first time, her courage seemed to waver. Her eyes filled with
clear pretty tears. A tiny weariness showed itself in her. She hung her
head for a moment. "You know who he is, you know where he lodges, you
know that he is in Venice now."

"He's a dead man, my beautiful lady," my Master said.

   I slipped my arm around his neck. I kissed his forehead. He kept his
eyes on her.

   "Come, then, cherub," he said to me while he still looked at her.
"We'll go to rid the world of this Florentine, this banker, who uses
Bianca to dispatch those who have given him accounts in secret."

   This intelligence amazed Bianca, but once again she made a soft,
knowing smile. How graceful she was, how devoid of pride and bitterness.
How these horrors were cast aside.

   My Master held me fast to him with his right arm. He reached inside
his jacket with his left and took out of it a large beautiful pear-
shaped pearl. It seemed a priceless thing. He gave it to Bianca, who
took it only with hesitation, watching it drop into her lazy, open hand.

"Let me kiss you, darling princess," he said.

   To my astonishment, she allowed it, and he covered her now with
feathery kisses, and I watched her pretty golden eyebrows pucker, and I
saw her eyes become dazzled, and her body go limp. She lay back on her
pillows and then fell into a fast sleep.

   We withdrew. I thought I heard the shutters close behind us. The
night was wet and dark. My head was pressed to my Master's shoulder. I
couldn't have looked up or moved if I wanted to.

   "Thank you, my beloved Lord, that you didn't kill her," I whispered.

   "She is more than a practical woman," he said. "She is unbroken
still. She has the innocence and cunning of a duchess or a queen."

"But where do we go now?"

   "We are there, Amadeo. We are on the roof. Look about you. Do you
hear the din below?"

It was tambourines and drums and flutes playing.

   "Ah, so, they will die at their banquet," my Master said
thoughtfully. He stood at the edge of the roof, holding to the stone
railing. The wind blew his cloak back, and he turned his eyes up to the
stars.

"I want to see it all," I said.

He shut his eyes as if I'd struck him a blow.

   "Don't think me cold, Sir," I said. "Don't think me tired and used to
things brutal and cruel. I am only the fool, Sir, the fool for God. We
don't question, if memory serves me right. We laugh and we accept and we
turn all life into joy."

   "Come down with me, then. There are a crowd of them, these crafty
Florentines. Oh, but I am so hungry. I have starved myself for a night
such as this."

PERHAPS mortals feel this way when they hunt the big beasts of the
forest and of the jungle. For me, as we went down the stairs from the
ceiling into the banquet room of this new and highly decorated palazzo,
I felt a rabid excitement. Men were going to die. Men would be murdered.
Men who were bad, men who had wronged the beautiful Bianca, were going
to be killed without risk to my all-powerful Master, and without risk to
anyone whom I knew or loved.

  An army of mercenaries could not have felt less compassion for these
individuals. The Venetians in attacking the Turks perhaps had more
feeling for their enemy than I.

   I was spellbound; the scent of blood was already in me insofar as it
was symbolic. I wanted to see blood flow. I didn't like Florentines

anyway, and I certainly didn't understand bankers, and I most definitely
wanted swift vengeance, not only for those who had bent Bianca to their
will but on those who had put her in the path of my Master's thirst.

So be it.

   We entered a spacious and impressive banquet hall where a party of
some seven men was gorging itself on a splendid supper of roast pork.
Flemish tapestries, all very new and with splendid hunting scenes of
lords and ladies with their horses and hounds, were hung from great iron
rods all through the room, covering even the windows and falling heavily
to the very floor.

   The floor itself was a fine inlay of multicolored marble, fashioned
in pictures of peacocks, complete with jewels in their great fanlike
tails.

 The table was very broad, and three men sat behind the table all on
one side, virtually slobbering over heaps of gold plates littered with
the sticky bones offish and fowl, and the roasted pig himself, poor
swollen creature, whose head remained, ignominiously grasping the
inevitable apple as though it were the ultimate expression of his final
wish.

   The other three men-all young and somewhat pretty and most athletic,
by the look of their beautifully muscled legs-were busy dancing in an
artful circle, hands meeting in the center, as a small gathering of boys
played the instruments whose pounding march we had heard on the roof.

 All appeared somewhat greasy and stained from the feast. But not a
member of the company lacked long thick fashionable hair, and ornate,
heavily worked silk tunics and hose. There was no fire for heat, and
indeed none of these men needed any such, and all were tricked out in
velvet jackets with trimmings of powdered ermine or miniver or silver
fox.

 The wine was being slopped from the pitcher into the goblets by one
who seemed quite unable to manage such a gesture. And the three who
danced, though they had a courtly design to enact, were also
roughhousing and shoving one another in some sort of deliberate mockery
of the dance steps that all knew.

   I saw at once that the servants had been dismissed. Several goblets
had spilled. Tiny gnats, despite the winter, had congregated over the
shiny half-eaten carcasses and the heaps of moist fruit.

 A golden haze hung over the room which was the smoke from the tobacco
of the men which they smoked in a variety of different pipes. The
background of the tapestries was invariably a dark blue, and this gave
the whole scene a warmth against which the rich varicolored clothes of
the boy musicians and the dinner guests shone brilliantly.

   Indeed, as we entered the smoky warmth of the room, I felt
intoxicated by the atmosphere, and when my Master bid me sit down at one
end of the table, I did so out of weakness, though I shrank from
touching even the top of the table, let alone the edge of the various
plates.

 The red-faced, bawling merrymakers took no notice of us. The thumping
din of the musicians was sufficient to render us invisible, because it

overpowered the senses. But the men were far too drunk to have seen us
in perfect silence. Indeed, my Master, after planting a kiss on my
cheek, went to the very center of the table, to a space left there,
presumably by one of those cavorting to the music, and he stepped over
the padded bench and sat down.

Only then did the two men on either side of him, who had been shouting
at one another adamantly about some point or other, take notice of this
resplendent scarlet-clad guest.

   My Master had let the hood of his cape fall, and his hair was won-
drously shaped in its prodigious length. He looked the Christ again at
the Last Supper with his lean nose and mild full mouth, and the blond
hair parted so cleanly in the middle, and the whole mass of it alive
from the damp of the night.

   He looked from one to the other of these guests, and to my
astonishment as I looked down the table at him, he plunged into their
conversation, discussing with them the atrocities visited upon those
Venetians left in Constantinople when the twenty-one-year-old Turk,
Sultan Mehmet II, had conquered the city.

   It seemed there was some argument as to how the Turks actually
breached the sacred capital, and one man was saying that had not the
Venetian ships sailed away from Constantinople, deserting her before the
final days, the city might have been saved.

   No chance at all, said the other, a robust red-haired man with
seemingly golden eyes. What a beauty! If this was the rogue who misled
Bianca, I could see why. Between red beard and mustache, his lips were a
lush Cupid's bow, and his jaw had the strength of Michelangelo's
superhuman marble figure.

   "For forty-eight days, the cannons of the Turk had bombarded the
walls of the city," he declared to his consort, "and eventually they
broke through. What could be expected? Have you ever seen such guns?"

   The other man, a very pretty dark-haired olive-skinned fellow with
rounded cheeks very close to his small nose and large velvet black eyes,
became furious and said that the Venetians had acted like cowards, and
that their supported fleet could have stopped even the cannons if they
had ever come. With his fist he rattled the plate in front of him.
"Constantinople was abandoned!" he declared. "Venice and Genoa did not
help her. The greatest empire on Earth was allowed on that horrible day
to collapse."

   "Not so," said my Master somewhat quietly, raising his eyebrows and
tilting his head slightly to one side. His eyes swept slowly from one
man to the other. "There were in fact many brave Venetians who came to
the rescue of Constantinople. I think, and with reason, that even if the
entire Venetian fleet had come, the Turks would have continued. It was
the dream of the young Sultan Mehmet II to have Constantinople and he
would never have stopped."

Oh, this was most interesting. I was ready for such a lesson in history.
I had to hear and see this more clearly, so I jumped up and went round
the table, pulling up a light cross-legged chair with a comfortable red
leather sling seat, so that I might have a good vantage point on all of
them. I put it at an angle so that I might better see the dancers, who
even in their clumsiness made quite a picture, if only because of their

long ornate sleeves flapping about and the slap of their jeweled
slippers on the tile floor.

   The red-haired one at table, tossing back his long richly curling
mane, was most encouraged by my Master, and gave him a wild adoring
look.

   "Yes, yes, here is a man who knows what happened, and you lie, you
fool," he said to the other man. "And you know the Genoese fought
bravely, right to the end. Three ships were sent by the Pope; they broke
through the blockade of the harbor, slipping right by the Sultan's evil
castle of Rumeli Hisar. It was Giovanni Longo, and can you imagine the
bravery?"

   "Frankly, no!" said the black-haired one, leaning forward in front of
my Master as if my Master were a statue.

   "It was brave," said my Master casually. "Why do you say nonsense you
don't believe? You know what had happened to the Venetian ships caught
by the Sultan, come now."

   "Yes, speak up on that. Would you have gone into that harbor?"
demanded the red-haired Florentine. "You know what they did to the
Venetian ships they caught six months before? They beheaded every man on
board."

   "Except the man in charge!" cried out a dancer who had turned to join
the conversation, but went on so as not to lose his step. "They impaled
him on a stake. This was Antonio Rizzo, one of the finest men there ever
was." He went on dancing with an offhand contemptuous gesture over his
shoulder. Then he slipped as he pivoted and almost fell. His dancing
companions caught him.

The black-haired man at the table shook his head.

   "If it had been a full Venetian fleet-," cried the black-haired man.
"But you Florentines and you Venetians are all the same, treacherous,
hedging your bets."

My Master laughed as he watched the man.

   "Don't you laugh at me," declared the black-haired man. "You're a
Venetian; I've seen you a thousand times, "you and that boy!"

   He gestured to me. I looked at my Master. My Master only smiled. Then
I heard him whisper distinctly to me, so that it struck my ear as if he
were next to me rather than so many feet away. "Testimony of the dead,
Amadeo."

  The black-haired man picked up his goblet, slopped some wine down his
throat and spilt as much down his pointed beard. "A whole city of
conniving bastards!" he declared. "Good for one thing, and that's
borrowing money at high interest when they spend everything they've got
on fancy clothes."

   "You should talk," said the red-haired one. "You look like a
goddamned peacock. I ought to cut off your tail. Let's get back to
Constantinople since you're so damned sure it could have been saved!"

"You are a damned Venetian yourself now."

   "I'm a banker; I'm a man of responsibility," said the redhead. "I
admire those who do well by me." He picked up his own goblet, but
instead of drinking the wine, he threw it in the face of the black-
haired man.

   My Master did not bother to lean back, so undoubtedly some of the
wine spilled on him. He looked from one to the other of the ruddy
sweating faces on either side of him.

   "Giovanni Longo, one of the bravest Genoese ever to captain a ship,
stayed in that city during the entire siege," cried the red-haired man.
"That's courage. I'll put money on a man like that."

   "I don't know why," cried the dancer again, the same one as before.
He broke from the circle long enough to declare, "He lost the battle,
and besides, your Father had plenty enough sense not to bank on any of
them."

   "Don't you dare!" said the red-haired man. "Here's to Giovanni Longo
and the Genoese who fought with him." He grabbed the pitcher, all but
knocking it over, showered wine on his goblet and the table, then took a
deep gulp. "And here's to my Father. May God have mercy on his immortal
soul. Father, I have slain your enemies, and I'll slay those who make of
ignorance a pastime."

   He turned, jammed his elbow into my Master's clothes and said, "That
boy of yours is a beauty. Don't be hasty. Think this over. How much?"

 My Master burst out laughing more sweetly and naturally than I'd ever
heard him laugh.

   "Offer me something, something I might want," said my Master as he
looked at me, with a secretive, glittering shift of his eyes.

It seemed every man in the room was taking my measure, and understand,
these were not lovers of boys; these were merely Italians of their time,
who, fathering children as was required of them and debauching women any
chance they got, nevertheless appreciated a plump and juicy young man,
the way that men now might appreciate a slice of golden toast heaped
with sour cream and the finest blackest caviar.

   I couldn't help but smile. Kill them, I thought, slaughter them. I
felt fetching and even beautiful. Come on, somebody, tell me I make you
think of Mercury chasing away the clouds in Botticelli's Primavera, but
the red-haired man, fixing me with an impish playful glance, said:

   "Ah, he is Verrocchio's David, the very model for the bronze statue.
Don't try to tell me he is not. And immortal, ah, yes, I can see it,
immortal. He shall never die." Again he lifted his goblet. Then he felt
of the breast of his tunic, and pulled up out of the powdered ermine
trim of his jacket a rich gold medallion with a table diamond of immense
size. He ripped the chain right off his neck and extended this proudly
to my Master, who watched it spin on the dangle in front of him as if it
were an orb with which he was to be spellbound.

   "For all of us," said the black-haired man, turning and looking hard
at me. There was laughter from the others. The dancers cried, "Yes, and
for me," "Unless I go second with him, nothing" and "Here, to go first,
even before you."

   This last was said to the red-haired man, but the jewel the dancer
tossed at my Master, a carbuncle ring of some glittering purple stone, I
didn't know.

   "A sapphire," said my Master in a whisper, with a teasing looking to
me. "Amadeo, you approve?"

   The third dancer, a blond-haired man, somewhat shorter than anyone
present and with a small hump on his left shoulder, broke free of the
circle and came towards me. He took off all his rings, as if shearing
himself of gloves, and tossed them all clattering at my feet.

   "Smile sweetly on me, young god," he said, though he panted from the
dance and the velvet collar was drenched. He wobbled on his feet and
almost turned over but managed to make fan of it, twirling heavily back
into his dance.

   The music thumped on and on, as if the dancers thought it meet to
drown out the very drunkenness of their Masters.

   "Does anybody care about the siege of Constantinople?" asked my
Master.

   "Tell me what became of Giovanni Longo," I asked in a small voice.
All eyes were on me.

   "It's the siege of... Amadeo, was it? ... Yes, Amadeo, that I have in
mind!" cried the blond-haired dancer.

"By and by, Sir," I said. "But teach me some history."

   "You little imp," said the black-haired man. "You don't even pick up
his rings."

"My fingers are covered with rings," I said politely, which was true.

   The red-haired man immediately went back into the battle. "Giovanni
Longo stayed for forty days of bombardment. He fought all night when the
Turk breached the walls. Nothing frightened him. He was carried to
safety only because he was shot."

"And the guns, Sir?" I asked. "Were they so very big?"

   "And I suppose you were there!" cried the black-haired man to the
redhead, before the redhead could answer me.

   "My Father was there!" said the redhead man. "And lived to tell it.
He was with the last ship that slipped out of the harbor with the
Venetians, and before you speak, Sir, mind you, you don't speak ill of
my Father or those Venetians. They carried the citizenry to safety, Sir,
the battle was lost..."

"They deserted, you mean," said the black-haired man.

   "I mean slipped out carrying the helpless refugees after the Turks
had won. You call my Father a coward? You know no more about manners
than you know about war. You're too stupid to fight with, and too
drunk."

"Amen," said my Master.

   "Tell him," said the red-haired man to my Master. "You, Marius De
Romanus, you tell him." He took another slobbering gulp. "Tell him about
the massacre, what happened. Tell him how Giovanni Longo fought on the
walls until he was hit in the chest. Listen, you crackbrained fool!" he
shouted at his friend. "Nobody knows more about all of it than Marius De
Romanus. Sorcerers are clever, so says my whore, and here is to Bianca
Solderini." He drained his glass.

   "Your whore, Sir?" I demanded. "You say that of such a woman and here
in the presence of drunken disrespectful men?"

   They paid no mind to me, not the red-haired man, who was again
draining his goblet, or the others.

   The blond-haired dancer staggered over to me. "They're too drunk to
remember you, beautiful boy," he said. "But not I."

   "Sir, you stumble at your dance," I said. "Don't stumble in your
rounds with me."

   "You miserable little whelp," said the man, and fell towards me,
losing his balance. I darted out of the chair to the right. He slipped
over the chair and fell to the floor.

   There was uproarious laughter from the others. The two remaining
dancers gave up their patterned steps.

   "Giovanni Longo was brave," my Master said calmly, surveying
everything and then returning his cool glance to the red-haired man.
"They were all brave. But nothing could save Byzantium. Her hour had
come. Time had run out for the Emperors and chimney sweeps. And in the
holocaust that followed, so much was irretrievably lost. Libraries by
the hundreds were burnt. So many sacred texts with all their
imponderable mysteries went up in smoke."

I backed away from the drunk attacker, who rolled over on the floor.

   "You lousy little lapdog!" the sprawling man shouted at me. "Give me
your hand, I tell you."

"Ah, but Sir," I said, "I think you want more than that."

   "And I'll have it!" he said, but he only skidded and fell back down
again with a miserable groan.

  One of the other men at table-handsome but older, with long thick wavy
gray hair and a beautifully lined face, a man who had been gorging
himself in silence on a greasy joint of mutton-looked up at me over the
joint and at the fallen, twisting man who struggled to get to his feet.

  "Hmmm. So Goliath falls, little David," he said, smiling up at me.
"Mind your tongue, little David, we are not all stupid giants, and your
stones are not for throwing just yet."

  I smiled back at him. "Your jest is as clumsy as your friend, Sir. As
for my stones, as you put it, they'll stay right where they are in their
pouch and wait for you to stumble in the way of your friend."

  "Did you say the books, Sir," asked the red-haired man of Marius,
completely oblivious to this little exchange. "The books were burnt in
the fall of the greatest city in the world?"

  "Yes, he cares about books, this fellow," said the black-haired man.
"Sir, you better look to your little boy. He's a goner, the dance has
changed. Tell him not to mock his elders."

  The two dancers came towards me, both as drunk as the man who had
fallen. They made to caress me, simultaneously becoming with great
odoriferous and heavy breathing a beast with four arms.

   "You smile at our friend rolling around on the ground?" one of them
asked, sticking his knee between my legs.

   I backed up, barely escaping the rude blow. "Seemed the kindest thing
I could do," I answered. "Being that my worship was the cause of his
fall. Don't plunge into such devotions, yourself, Sirs. I haven't the
slightest inclination to answer your prayers."

My Master had risen.

   "I tire of this," he said in a cold, clear voice that echoed through
the tapestries off the walls. It had a chilling sound to it.

All looked at him, even the struggling man on the floor.

   "Indeed!" said the black-haired man, looking up. "Marius De Romanus,
is it? I've heard of you. I don't fear you."

   "How merciful for you," said my Master in a whisper with a smile. He
placed his hand on the man's head and the man whipped himself back and
away, almost falling off the bench, but now he was most definitely
afraid.

   The dancers took their measure of my Master, no doubt trying to gauge
whether he would be easy to overwhelm.

One of them turned on me again. "Prayers, Hell!" he said.

   "Sir, mind my Master. You weary him, and in weariness he is a perfect
crank." I snatched back my arm as he meant to take it.

   I backed away even further, into the very midst of the boy musicians
so that the music rose about me like a protective cloud.

   I could see panic in their faces, yet they played all the faster,
ignoring the sweat on their brows.

   "Sweet, sweet, gentlemen," I said. "I like it. But play a requiem, if
you will."

   They gave me desperate glances but no other regard. The drum beat on
and the pipe made its snaky melody and the room throbbed with the
strumming of the lutes.

   The blond-haired man on the floor screamed for help, as he absolutely
couldn't get up, and the two dancers went to his aid, though one shot
his watchful darts at me.

   My Master looked down at the black-haired challenger and then pulled
him straight up from the bench with one hand and went to kiss his neck.
The man hung in my Master's grip. He froze like a small tender mammal in
the teeth of a great beast, and I almost heard the great draught of
blood run out of him as my Master's hair shivered and fell down to cover
the fatal repast.

Quickly, he let the man drop. Only the red-haired fellow observed all
this. And he seemed in his intoxication not to know what to make of it.
Indeed he raised one eye, wondering, and drank again from his filthy
sloppy cup. He licked the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as if
he were a cat, as my Master dropped his black-haired companion facedown
on the table, indeed, right into a plate of fruit.

   "Drunken idiot," said the red-haired man. "No one fights for valor,
or honor, or decency."

"Not many in any event," said my Master looking down at him.

   "They broke the world in half, those Turks," said the red-haired man,
still staring at the dead one, who surely stared stupidly at him from
the smashed plate. I couldn't see the dead man's face, but it excited me
tremendously that he was dead.

   "Come now, gentlemen," said my Master, "and you, Sir, come here, you
who gave my child so many rings."

   "Is he your son, Sir?" cried the blond humpback, who was finally on
his feet. He pushed his friends away from him. He turned and went to the
summons. "I'll father him better than you ever did."

 My Master appeared suddenly and without a sound on our side of the
table. His garments settled at once, as if he had only taken a step. The
red-haired man did not even seem to see it.

   "Skanderbeg, the great Skanderbeg, I raise a toast to him," said the
red-haired man, to himself apparently. "He's been dead too long, and
give me but five Skanderbegs and I'd raise a new Crusade to take back
our city from the Turks."

   "Indeed, who wouldn't with five Skanderbegs," said the elderly man
further down the table, the one nibbling and tearing at the joint. He
wiped his mouth with his naked wrist. "But there is no general like unto
Skanderbeg, and there never was, save the man himself. What's the matter
with Ludovico? You fool!" He stood up.

 My Master had put his arm around the blond one, who pushed at him,
quite dismayed that my Master was immovable. Now as the two dancers
offered my Master pushes and shoves to free their companion, my Master
again planted his fatal kiss. He lifted the chin of the blond one and
went right for the big artery in the neck. He swung the man around and
appeared to draw up the blood from him in one great draught. In a flash,
he closed the man's eyes with two white fingers and let the body slip to
the floor.

   "It is your time to die, good Sirs," he said to the dancers who now
backed away from him.

One of them pulled his sword.

  "Don't be so stupid!" shouted his companion. "You're drunk. You'll
never-. "

  "No, you won't, " said my Master with a little sigh. His lips were
more pink than I had ever seen them, and the blood he'd drunk paraded in
his cheeks. Even his eyes had a greater gloss, and a greater gleam.

  He closed his very hand over the man's sword and with the press of
his thumb snapped the metal, so that the man held only a fragment in his
hand.

"How dare you!" cried the man.

  "How did you is more to the point!" sang out the red-haired man at
the table. "Cracked in half, is it? What kind of steel is that?"

  The joint nibbler laughed very loud and threw back his head. He tore
more meat from the bone.

  My Master reached out and plucked from time and space the wielder of
the broken sword, and now to bare the vein, broke the man's neck with a
loud snap.

  It seemed the other three had heard it-the one who ate the joint, the
wary dancer and the man with the red hair.

  It was the last of the dancers whom my Master embraced next. He
caught the man's face in his hands as if it were love, and drank again,
gasping the man's throat so that I saw the blood just for an instant, a
veritable deluge of it, which my Master then covered with his mouth and
his bent head.

  I could see the blood pump into my Master's hand. I couldn't wait for
him to raise his head, and this he did very soon, sooner even than he
had left his last victim, and he looked at me dreamily and his
countenance was all afire. He looked as human as any man in the room,
even crazed with his special drink, as they were with their common wine.

  His vagrant blond curls were plastered to his forehead by the sweat
that rose in him, and I saw it was a fine sheen of blood.

The music abruptly stopped.

  It was not the mayhem but the sight of my Master which had stopped
it, as he let this last victim slip, a loose sack of bones, to the
floor.

  "Requiem, " I said again. "Their ghosts will thank you, kind
Gentlemen. "

  "Either that, " said Marius to the musicians as he drew close, "or
fly the room. "

  "I say fly the room," whispered the lute player. At once they all
turned and made for the doors. They pulled and pulled upon the latch in
their haste, cursing and shouting.

 My Master backed up and gathered the jeweled rings from around the
chair where I'd been seated before.

"My boys, you go without payment," he said.

   In their helpless whining fear, they turned and beheld the rings
being tossed to them, and stupidly and eagerly and fall of shame, they
each caught a single treasure as my Master aimed it.

Then the doors flew open and cracked against the walls.

   Out they went, all but scraping the doorframe, and the doors then
shut.

   "That's clever!" remarked the man with the joint which he laid aside
at last, as all the meat was gone. "How you'd do it, Marius De Romanus?
I hear tell you're a powerful magician. Don't know why the Great Council
doesn't call you up on charges of witchcraft. Must be all the money you
have, no?"

   I stared at my Master. Never had I seen him so lovely as now when he
was flushed with this new blood. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to go
into his arms. His eyes were drunken and soft as he looked at me.

   But he broke off his seductive stare and went back to the table, and
around it properly, and stood beside the man who had feasted on the
joint.

  The gray-haired man looked up at him and then glanced at his red-
haired companion. "Don't be a fool, Martino," he said to the redhead.
"It's probably perfectly legal to be a witch in the Veneto as long as a
man pays his tax. Put your money in Martino's bank, Marius De Romanus."

   "Ah, but I do," said Marius De Romanus, my Master, "and it earns me
quite a good return."

   He sat down again between the dead man and the red-haired man, who
seemed quite delighted and exhilarated to have him return.

   "Martino," said my Master. "Let's talk some more of the fall of
Empires. Your Father, why was he with the Genoese?"

  The red-haired man, now quite aflame with the whole discussion,
declared with pride that his Father had been the representative of the
family bank in Constantinople, and that he had died afterwards due to
the wounds he'd suffered on that last and awful day.

"He saw it," said the red-haired man, "he saw the women and children
slaughtered. He saw the priests torn from the altars of Santa Sofia. He
knows the secret."

   "The secret!" scoffed the elderly man. He moved down the table and,
with a big swipe of his left arm, shoved the dead man off over the bench
so that he fell back on the floor.

   "Good God, you heartless bastard," said the red-haired man. "Did you
hear his skull crack? Don't treat my guest in that manner, not if you
want to live."

I came closer to the table.

   "Yes, do come on, pretty one," said the redhead. "Sit down." He
turned on me his blazing golden eyes. "Sit here, opposite me. Good God,

look at Francisco there. I swear I heard his skull crack."

   "He's dead," said Marius softly. "It's all right for the moment,
don't worry on it." His face was all the more bright from the blood he'd
drunk. Indeed the color was even now, and radiant overall, and his hair
seemed all the fairer against his blushing skin. A tiny spider's web of
veins lived within each of his eyes, not detracting one jot from their
awesome lustrous beauty.

   "Oh, all right, fine, they're dead," said the redhead, with a shrug.
"Yes, I was telling you, and you damned well better mark my words
because I know. The priests, the priests picked up the sacred chalice
and the Sacred Host and they went into a hiding place in Santa Sofia. My
Father saw this with his own eyes. I know the secret."

   "Eyes, eyes, eyes," said the elderly man. "Your Father must have been
a peacock to have had so many eyes!"

   "Shut up or I'll slit your throat," said the red-haired man. "Look
what you did to Francisco, knocking him over like that. Good God!" He
made the Sign of the Cross rather lazily. "There's blood coming from the
back of his head."

   My Master turned and, leaning down, swept up five fingerfuls of this
blood. He turned to me slowly and then to the redhead. He sucked the
blood off one finger. "Dead," he said with a little smile. "But it's
plenty warm and thick." He smiled slowly.

The red-haired man was as fascinated as a child at a puppet show.

   My Master extended his bloody fingers, palm up, and made a smile as
if to say, "You want to taste it?"

   The red-haired man grabbed Marius's wrist and licked the blood off
his forefinger and thumb. "Hmmm, very good," he said. "All my companions
are of the best blood."

   "You're telling me," said my Master. I couldn't rip my eyes off him,
off his changing face. It seemed now his cheeks did darken, or maybe it
was only their curve as he smiled. His lips were rosy.

"And I'm not finished, Amadeo," he whispered. "I've only begun."

   "He's not bad hurt!" insisted the elderly man. He studied the victim
on the floor. He was worried. Had he killed him? "It's just a mere cut
on the back of his head, that's all. Isn't it?"

   "Yes, a tiny cut," said Marius. "What's this secret, my dear
friend?" He had his back to the gray-haired man, speaking to the redhead
with much more interest as he had been all along.

   "Yes, please," I said. "What's the secret, Sir?" I asked. "Is that
the secret, that the priests ran?"

   "No, child, don't be dense!" said the red-haired man looking across
the table at me. He was powerfully beautiful. Had Bianca loved him? She
never said.

   "The secret, the secret," he said. "If you don't believe in this
secret, then you'll believe nothing, nothing sacred or otherwise."

   He lifted his goblet. It was empty. I picked up the pitcher and
filled it with the dark lovely-smelling red wine. I considered taking a
taste of it, then a revulsion filled me.

   "Nonsense," whispered my Master. "Drink to their passing. Go ahead.
There's a clean goblet."

   "Oh, yes, forgive me," said the redhead. "I haven't even offered you
a cup. Good God, to think I threw a mere table diamond on the board for
you, when I would have your love." He picked up the goblet, a rich fancy
thing of inlaid silver with tiny stones. I saw now that all the goblets
were a set, all carved with tiny delicate figures and set with these
same bright little stones. He set down this goblet for me with a clonk.
He took the pitcher from me and filled the goblet and then thrust it at
me.

   I thought I would become so sick I'd vomit on the floor. I looked up
at him, at his near sweet face and his pretty blazing red hair. He gave
a boyish smile, showing small but perfect white teeth, very pearly, and
he seemed to dote on me and to drift, not uttering a word.

   "Take it, drink," said my Master. "Yours is a dangerous road, Amadeo,
drink for knowledge and drink for strength."

   "You don't mock me now, Sir, do you?" I asked, staring at the red-
haired man though I spoke to Marius.

"I love you, Sir, as I always have," said my Master, "but you do see
something in what I say, for I'm coarsened by human blood. It's always
the fact. Only in starvation do I find an ethereal purity."

   "Ah, and you turn me from penance at every juncture," I said,
"towards the senses, towards pleasure."

   The red-haired man and I had locked eyes. Yet I heard Marius answer
me.

   "It's a penance to kill, Amadeo, that's the rub. It's a penance to
slay for nothing, nothing, not 'honor, not valor, not decency,' as our
friend says here."

   "Yes!" said "our friend," who turned to Marius and then back to me.
"Drink!" He thrust the goblet at me.

   "And when it's all done, Amadeo, gather up these goblets for me and
bring them home so I might have a trophy of my failure and my defeat,
for they will be one and the same, and a lesson for you as well. Seldom
is it all so rich and clear as it is to me now."

   The red-haired man leaned forward, deep into the flirt, and put the
goblet right against my lip. "Little David, you'll grow up to be the
King, remember? Oh, I would worship you now, tender-cheeked little man
that you are, and beg for one psalm from your harp, just one, were it
given with your own will."

My Master whispered low, "Can you grant a man's dying request?"

   "I think he is dead!" said the gray-haired man with obnoxious loud-
ness. "Look, Martino, I think I did kill him; his head's bleeding like a

damned tomato. Look!"

   "Oh, shut up about him!" said Martino, the redhead, without taking
his eyes off mine. "Do grant a dying man's request, little David," he
went on. "We are all dying, and I for you, and that you die with me,
just a little, Sir, in my arms? Let us make a little game of it. It will
amuse you, Marius De Romanus. You'll see I ride him and stroke him with
one artful rhythm, and you'll behold a sculpture of flesh that becomes a
fountain, as what I pump into him comes forth from him in my hand."

   He cupped his hand as if he had my organ already in it. He kept his
eyes on me. Then in a low whisper, he said, "I'm too soft to make my
sculpture. Let me drink it from you. Have mercy on the parched."

   I snatched the goblet out of his wavering hand and drank down the
wine. My body tightened. I thought the wine would come back up and spew.
I made it go down. I looked at my Master.

"This is ugly, I hate it."

   "Oh, nonsense," he said, barely moving his lips. "There's beauty all
around!"

   "Damned if he isn't dead," said the gray-haired man. He kicked the
body of Francisco on the floor. "Martino, I'm out of here."

   "Stay, Sir," said Marius. "I would kiss you good night." He clapped
his hand over the gray-haired man's wrist and lunged at his throat, but
what did it look like to the red-haired one, who gave it only a bleary
glance before he continued his worship? He filled my goblet again.

A moan came from the gray-haired man, or was it from Marius?

   I was petrified. When he turned from his victim, I would see even
more blood teeming in him, and I would have given all the world to see
him white again, my marble god, my graven Father in our private bed.

   The red-haired man rose before me as he leant over the table and put
his wet lips on mine. "I die for you, boy!" he said.

"No, you die for nothing," said Marius.

"Master, not him, please!" I cried.

   I fell back, nearly losing my balance on the bench. My Master's arm
had come between us, and his hand covered the red-haired man's shoulder.

   "What's the secret, Sir?" I cried frantically, "the secret of Santa
Sofia, the one we must believe?"

   The red-haired man was utterly befuddled. He knew he was drunk. He
knew things around him didn't make sense. But he thought it was because
he was drunk. He looked at Marius's arm across his chest, and he even
turned and looked at the fingers clutching his shoulder. Then he looked
at Marius and so did I.

   Marius was human, utterly human. There was no trace of the
impermeable and indestructible god left. His eyes and his face simmered
in the blood. He was flushed as a man from running, and his lips were
bloody, and when he licked them now, his tongue was ruby red. He smiled

at Martino, the last of them, the only one left alive.

   Martino pulled his gaze away from Marius and looked at me. At once he
softened and lost his alarm. He spoke with reverence.

   "In the midst of the siege, as the Turks stormed the church, some of
the priests left the altar of Santa Sofia," he said. "They took with
them the chalice and the Blessed Sacrament, our Lord's Body and Blood.
They are hidden this very day in the secret chambers of Santa Sofia, and
on the very moment that we take back the city, on the very moment when
we take back the great church of Santa Sofia, when we drive the Turks
out of our capital, those priests, those very priests will return.
They'll come out of their hiding place and go up the steps of the altar,
and they will resume the Mass at the very point where they were forced
to stop."

   "Ah," I said, sighing and marveling at it. "Master," I said softly.
"That's a good enough secret to save a man's life, isn't it?"

   "No," said Marius. "I know the story, and he made our Bianca a
whore."

   The red-haired man strained to follow our words, to fathom the depth
of our exchange.

   "A whore? Bianca? A murderer ten times over, Sir, but not a whore.
Nothing so simple as a whore." He studied Marius as though he thought
this heated passionately florid man was beautiful, indeed. And well he
was.

   "Ah, but you taught her the art of murder," said Marius almost
tenderly, his fingers massaging the man's shoulder, while with his left
arm he reached around Martino's back, until his left hand might lock on
the man's shoulder with his right. He bent his forehead to touch
Martino's temple.

   "Hmmm," Martino shook himself all over. "I've drunk too much. I never
taught her any such thing."

"Ah, but you did, you taught her, and to kill for such paltry sums."

"Master, what is it to us?"

   "My son forgets himself," said Marius, still looking at Martino. "He
forgets that I am bound to kill you on behalf of our sweet lady, whom
you so finagled into your dark, sticky plots."

"She rendered me a service," said Martino. "Let me have the boy!"

"Beg pardon?"

   "You mean to kill me, so do it. But let me have the boy. A kiss, Sir,
that's all I ask. A kiss, that is the world. I'm too drunk for anything
else!"

"Please, Master, I can't endure this," I said.

   "Then, how will you endure eternity, my child? Don't you know that's
what I mean to give you? What power under God is there that can break
me?" He threw a fierce angry glance at me, but it seemed more artifice

than true emotion.

"I've learnt my lessons," I said. "I only hate to see him die."

   "Ah, yes, then you have learnt. Martino, kiss my child if he'll allow
it, and mark you, be gentle when you do."

It was I who leant across the table now and planted my kiss on the man's
cheek. He turned and caught my mouth with his, hungry, sour with wine,
but enticingly, electrically hot.

   The tears sprang to my eyes. I opened my mouth to him and let his
tongue come into me. And with my eyes shut, I felt it quiver, and his
lips become tight, as if they had been turned to hard metal clamped to
me and unable to close.

   My Master had him, had his throat, and the kiss was frozen, and I,
weeping, put out my hand blindly to find the very place in his neck
where my Master's evil teeth had driven in. I felt my Master's silky
lips, I felt the hard teeth beneath them, I felt the tender neck.

   I opened my eyes and pulled myself away. My doomed Martino sighed and
moaned and closed his lips, and sat back in my Master's grip with his
eyes half-mast.

   He turned his head slowly towards my Master. In a small raw drunken
voice, he spoke. "For Bianca ..."

"For Bianca," I said. I sobbed, muffling it with my hand.

   My Master drew up. With his left hand, he smoothed back Mar-tino's
damp and tangled hair. "For Bianca," he said into his ear.

   "Never . . . never should have let her live," came the last sighing
words from Martino. His head fell forward over my Master's right arm.

   My Master kissed the back of his head, and let him slip down onto the
table.

   "Charming to the last," said he. "Just a real poet to the bottom of
your soul."

   I stood up, pushing the bench away behind me, and I moved out into
the center of the room. I cried and cried, and couldn't muffle it with
my hand. I dug into my jacket for a handkerchief, and just as I went to
wipe my tears, I stumbled backwards over the dead humpbacked man and
almost fell. I cried out, a terrible weak and ignominious cry.

   I moved back away from him and away from the bodies of his companions
until I felt behind me the heavy, scratchy tapestry, and smelled its
dust and threads.

   "Ah, so this was what you wanted of me," I sobbed. I veritably
sobbed. "That I should hate it, that I should weep for them, fight for
them, beg for them."

   He sat at the table still, Christ of the Last Supper, with his neatly
parted hair, his shining face, his ruddy hands folded one on top of the
other, looking with his hot and swimming eyes at me.

   "Weep for one of them, at least one!" he said. His voice grew
wrathful. "Is that too much to ask? That one death be regretted among so
many?" He rose from the table. He seemed to quake with his rage.

I pushed the handkerchief over my face, sobbing into it.

   "For a nameless beggar in a makeshift boat for a bed we have no
tears, do we, and would not our pretty Bianca suffer because we've
played the young Adonis in her bed! And of some of those, we weep for
none but that one, the very most evil without question, because he
flatters us, is it not so?"

   "I knew him," I whispered. "I mean, in this short time I knew him,
and . . ."

   "And you would have them run from you, anonymous as foxes in the
brush!" He pointed to the tapestries blazoned with the Courtly Hunt.
"Behold with a man's eyes what I show you."

   There was a sudden darkening of the room, a flutter of all the many
candles. I gasped, but it was only he, come to stand right in front of
me and look down at me, a feverish, blushing being whose very heat I
could feel as if every pore of him gave forth warm breath.

   "Master," I cried, swallowing my sobs. "Are you happy with what
you've taught me or not? Are you happy with what I've learnt or not!
Don't you play with me over this! I'm not your puppet, Sir, no, never
that! What would you have me be, then? Why this anger?" I shuddered all
over, the tears veritably flooding from my eyes. "I would be strong for
you, but I... I knew him."

   "Why? Because he kissed you?" He leant down and picked up my hair in
his left hand. He yanked me towards him.

"Marius, for the love of God!"

   He kissed me. He kissed me as Martino had, and his mouth was as human
and as hot. He slipped his tongue into mine, and I felt not blood but
manly passion. His finger burnt against my cheek.

   I broke away. He let me break away. "Oh, come back to me, my cold
white one, my god," I whispered. I lay my face on his chest. I could
hear his heart. I could hear it beating. I had never before heard it,
never heard a pulse within the stone chapel of his body. "Come back to
me, most dispassionate teacher. I don't know what you want."

   "Oh, my darling," he sighed. "Oh, my love." And there came the old
demon shower of his kisses, not the mock of a passionate man, but his
affection, petal soft, so many tributes laid upon my face and hair. "Oh,
my beautiful Amadeo, oh, my child," he said.

   "Love me, love me, love me," I whispered. "Love me and take me into
it with you. I am yours."

In stillness, he held me. I drowsed on his shoulders.

  A little breeze came, but it did not move the heavy tapestries in
which the French lords and ladies drifted in their eternal and leafy
green forest among hounds that would forever bay and birds that would
always sing.

Finally, he released me and he stepped back.

He walked away from me, his shoulders hunched, his head down.

   Then with a lazy gesture he beckoned for me to come, and yet he moved
out of the room too fast.

   I ran after him, down the stone stairs to the street. The doors were
open when I got there. The cold wind washed away my tears. It washed
away the evil heat of the room. I ran and ran along the stone quays,
over the bridges, and after him towards the square.

   I didn't catch him until I reached the Molo, and there he was
walking, a tall man in a red hood and cape, past San Marco and towards
the harbor. I ran after him. The wind from the sea was icy and very
strong. It blasted me, and I felt doubly cleansed.

   "Don't leave me, Master," I called out. My words were swallowed up,
but he heard.

   He came to a stop, as if it really were my doing. He turned and
waited for me to catch up with him, and then he picked up my
outstretched hand.

   "Master, hear my lesson," I said. "Judge my work." I caught my breath
in haste and went on. "I saw you drink from those who were evil,
convicted in your heart of some gross crime. I saw you feast as it is
your nature; I saw you take the blood with which you must live. And all
about you lies this evil world, this wilderness of men no better than
beasts who will yield up a blood as sweet and rich for you as innocent
blood. I see it. That's what you meant for me to see, and it's done."

   His face was impassive. He merely studied me. It seemed the burning
fever in him was already dying away. The distant torches along the
arcades shone on his face, and it was whitening and as ever hard. The
ships creaked in the harbor. There came distant murmurs and cries from
those, perhaps, who cannot or never sleep.

   I glanced up at the sky, fearful I would see the fatal light. He'd be
gone.

   "If I drink such as that, Master, the blood of the wicked and those
whom I overpower, will I become like you?"

   He shook his head. "Many a man has drunk another's blood, Amadeo," he
said in a low but calm voice. His reason had come back to him, his
manners, his seeming soul. "Would you be with me, and be my pupil and my
love?"

   "Yes, Master, always and forever, or for so long as nature gives to
you and me."

   "Oh, it isn't fanciful the words I spoke. We are immortal. And only
one enemy can destroy us-it's the fire that burns in that torch there,
or in the rising sun. Sweet to think on it, that when we are at last
weary of all this world there is the rising sun."

   "I am yours, Master." I hugged him close and tried to vanquish him
with kisses. He endured them, and even smiled, but he didn't move.

   But when I broke off, and made a fist of my right hand as if to hit
him, which I could never have done, to my amazement he began to yield.

He turned and took me in his powerful and ever careful embrace.

   "Amadeo, I can't go on without you," he said. His voice was desperate
and small. "I meant to show you evil, not sport. I meant to show you the
wicked price of my immortality. And that I did. But in so doing, I saw
it myself, and my eyes are dazzled and I am hurt and tired."

He laid his head against my head, and he held tight to me.

   "Do what you will to me, Sir," I said. "Make me suffer and long for
it, if that's what you want. I am your fool. I am yours."

He released me and kissed me formally.

   "Four nights, my child," he said. He moved away. He kissed his
fingers and planted that last kiss on my lips, and then he was gone. "I
go now to an ancient duty. Four nights. Till then."

   I stood alone in the earliest chill of the morning. I stood alone
beneath a paling sky. I knew better than to look for him.

   In the greatest dejection, I walked back through the alleys, cutting
across little bridges to wander into the depth of the waking city, for
what I didn't know.

   I was half-surprised when I realized I had returned to the house of
the murdered men. I was surprised when I saw their doorway still open,
as if a servant would at any moment appear.

No one appeared.

   Slowly the sky above ripened to a pale white and then to a faint
blue. Mist crawled along the top of the canal. I went over the small
bridge to the doorway, and again went up the stairs.

A powdery light came in from the loosely slatted windows. I found the
banquet room where the candles still burnt. The smell of tobacco and wax
and of pungent food was close and hanging in the air.

   I walked inside, and I inspected the dead men, who lay as we had left
them, disheveled, and now slightly yellowed and waxen and a prey to the
gnats and the flies.

There was no sound but the humming of the flies.

   The spilt wine had dried on the table in pools. The corpses were
clean of all the rampant marks of death.

   I was sick again, sick to trembling, and I took a deep breath that I
shouldn't retch. Then I realized why I had come.

   Men in those days wore short cloaks on their jackets, sometimes
affixed, as you probably know. I needed one of these, and took it,
ripping it loose from the humpback man, who lay almost on his face. It
was a flaring coat of canary yellow with white fox for its border and a
lining of heavy silk. I tied knots in it and made a thick deep sack of

it, and then I went up and down the table, gathering up the goblets,
dashing out the contents first, and then putting them in my sack.

  Soon my sack was red with drops of wine and grease from where I'd
rested it on the board.

  I stood when finished, making certain that no goblet had escaped. I
had them all. I studied the dead men-my sleeping red-haired Mar-tino,
his face on the bare marble in a puddle of the slopped wine, and
Francisco, from whose head did leak a small bit of darkened blood.

  The flies buzzed and droned over this blood as they did over the
grease pooled around the remnants of the roasted pig. A battalion of
little black beetles had come, most common in Venice, for they are
carried by the water, and it made its way over the table, towards
Martino's face.

  A quiet warming light came in through the open doorway. The morning
had come.

  With one sweeping glance that imprinted on my mind the details of
this scene for all time, I went out and home.

  The boys were awake and busy when I arrived. An old carpenter was
already there, fixing the door which I had shattered with the ax.

  I gave to the maid my bulky sack of clanking cups, and she, sleepy
and having just arrived, took it without a remark.

  I felt a tightening inside me, a sickening, a sudden feeling that I
would burst. My body seemed too small, too imperfect an enclosure for
all I knew and felt. My head throbbed. I wanted to lie down, but before
that I had to see Riccardo. I had to find him and the older boys.

I had to.

  I went walking through the house until I came to them, all gathered
for a lesson with the young lawyer who came from Padua only once or
twice a month to begin our instructions in the law. Riccardo saw me in
the door and motioned for me to be quiet. The teacher was speaking.

  I had nothing to say. I only leant against the door and looked at my
friends. I loved them. Yes, I did love them. I would die for them! I
knew it, and with a terrible relief I began to cry.

Riccardo saw me turn away, and slipping out, he came to me.

"What is it, Amadeo?" he asked.

  I was too delirious with my own torment. I saw again the slaughtered
dinner party. I turned to Riccardo and wound him in my arms, so
comforted by his warmth and his human softness compared to the Master,
and then I told him that I would die for him, die for any of them, die
for the Master too.

"But why, what is this, why vow this to me now?" he asked.

  I couldn't tell him about the slaughter. I couldn't tell him of the
coldness in me that had watched the men die.

   I went off into my Master's bedchamber, and I lay down and tried to
sleep.

   In late afternoon, when I woke to find the doors had been closed, I
climbed out of the bed and went to the Master's desk. To my astonishment
I saw his book was there, the book that was always hidden when out of
his sight.

   Of course I could not turn a page of it, but it was open, and there
lay a page covered in writing, in Latin, and though it seemed a strange
Latin, and hard for me, there was no mistaking the final words:

How can so much beauty hide such a bruised and steely heart, and why
must I love him, why must I lean in my weariness upon his irresistible
yet indomitable strength? Is he not the wizened funereal spirit of a
dead man in a child's clothes?

I felt a strange prickling over my scalp and over my arms.

   Is this what I was? A bruised and steely heart! The wizened funereal
spirit of a dead man in a child's clothes? Oh, but I couldn't deny it; I
couldn't say it wasn't true. And yet how hurtful, how positively cruel
it seemed. No, not cruel, merely merciless and accurate, and what right
had I to expect anything else?

I started to cry.

   I lay down in our bed, as was my custom, and plumped the softest
pillows to make a nest for my crooked left arm and my head.

   Four nights. How should I endure it? What did he want of me? That I
go forth to all the things I knew and loved and take my leave of them as
a mortal boy. That is what he would instruct. And that I should do.

Only a few hours were allowed to me by fate.

I was awakened by Riccardo, who shoved a sealed note in my face.

   "Who's sent this?" I asked sleepily. I sat up, and I pushed my thumb
beneath the folded paper and broke the wax seal.

   "Read it and you tell me. Four men came to deliver it, a company of
four. Must be some damned important thing."

"Yes," I said unfolding it, "and to make you look so fearful too."

He stood there with his arms folded.

I read:

Dearest darling one,

   Stay indoors. Do not on any account leave the house and bar any who
seek to enter. Your wicked English lord, the Earl of Harlech, has
discovered your identity through the most unscrupulous nosing about, and
in his madness vows to take you back with him to England or leave you in
fragments at your Master's door. Confess all to your Master. Only his
strength can save you. And do send me something in writing, lest I too
lose my wits over you, and over the tales of horror which are cried out
this morning in every canal and piazza for every ear.

Your devoted Bianca

   "Well, damn it," I said folding up the letter. "Four nights Marius
will be gone, and now this. Am I to hide for these crucial four nights
under this roof?"

"You had better," said Riccardo.

"Then you know the story."

   "Bianca told me. The Englishman, having traced you there and heard
tell of you being there all the time, would have torn her lodgings to
pieces if her guests had not stopped him en masse."

"And why didn't they kill him, for the love of God," I said disgustedly.

He looked most worried and sympathetic.

   "I think they count on our Master to do it," he said, "as it is you
that the man wants. How can you be certain the Master means to stay away
for four nights? When has he ever said such things? He comes, he goes,
he warns no one."

   "Hmmm, don't argue with me," I answered patiently. "Riccardo, he
isn't coming home for four nights, and I will not stay cooped up in this
house, and not while Lord Harlech stirs up dirt."

   "You'd better stay here!" Riccardo answered. "Amadeo, this Englishman
is famous with his sword. He practices with a fencing master. He's the
terror of the taverns. You knew that when you picked up with him,
Amadeo. Think on what you do! He's famous for everything bad and nothing
good."

   "So then come with me. You need only distract him and I'll take him."

   "No, you're good with your sword, true enough, but you can't take a
man who's been practicing with the blade since before you were born."

 I lay back down on the pillow. What should I do? I was on fire to go
out into the world, on fire to gaze at things with my great sense of the
drama and significance of my last days among the living, and now this!
And the man who had been worth a few nights' riotous roughhouse pleasure
was no doubt advertising far and wide his discontent.

 It was bitter, but it seemed I had to stay at home. There was nothing
to do. I wanted very much to kill this man, kill him with my own dagger
and sword, and even thought I had a good chance of it, but what was this
petty adventure to what lay before me when my Master returned?

 The fact was, I had already left the world of regular things, the
world of regular scores to be settled, and could not be drawn now into a
foolish blunder that might be my forfeit of the strange destiny towards
which I moved.

"All right, and Bianca is safe from this man?" I asked Riccardo.

   "Quite safe. She has more admirers than can fit in the door of her
house, and she's marshaled all against this man and for you. Now write
her something of gratitude and common sense, and swear to me as well

that you'll remain indoors."

I got up and went to the Master's writing desk. I picked up the pen.

I was stopped by an awful clatter, and then a series of piercing
irritating cries. They echoed through the stone rooms of the house. I
heard people running. Riccardo leapt to attention and put his hand on
the hilt of his sword.

   I gathered up my own weapons, unsheathing my light rapier and my
dagger, both.

"Good Lord Jesus, the man can't be in the house."

A horrid scream drowned out the others.

  The smallest of us all, Giuseppe, appeared in the door, his face a
luminous white, and his eyes big and round.

   "What the hell's the matter," Riccardo demanded, catching hold of
him.

"He's been stabbed. Look, he's bleeding!" I said.

   "Amadeo, Amadeo!" It rang loudly from the stone stairwell. It was the
Englishman's voice.

  The boy doubled over in his pain. The wound was in the pit of his
stomach, utterly cruel.

Riccardo was beside himself.

"Shut the doors!" he shouted.

   "How can I," I cried, "when the other boys may blunder right into his
path?"

   I ran out and into the big salon and into the portego, the great room
of the house.

  Another boy, Jacope, lay crumpled on the floor, pushing at it with his
knees. I saw the blood running on the stones.

   "Oh, this is beyond all fairness; this is a slaughter of innocents!"
I shouted. "Lord Harlech, show yourself. You're about to die."

  I heard Riccardo cry out behind me. The little boy was obviously dead.

  I ran towards the stairs. "Lord Harlech, I'm here!" I called out.
"Come out, you brutish coward, you slayer of children! I have a
millstone ready for your neck!"

   Riccardo spun me around. "There, Amadeo," he whispered. "I'm with
you." His blade sang out as he drew it. He was much better than me with
the sword, but this battle was mine.

  The man was at the far end of the portego. I had hoped he would be
staggering drunk, but no such luck. I saw in a moment that any dream he
might have had of taking me away by force was now gone; he had slain two
boys, and he knew his lust had led him to a final stand. This was hardly

an enemy crippled by love.

"Jesus in Heaven, help us!" whispered Riccardo.

   "Lord Harlech," I cried. "You dare make a shambles of my Master's
house!" I stepped aside from Riccardo to give us both room, as I
motioned Riccardo to come forward, away from the head of the steps. I
felt the weight of the rapier. Not heavy enough. I wished to God I had
practiced with it more.

   The Englishman came towards me, a taller man than I had ever noted,
with a great reach to his arm that would be a powerful advantage, his
cape flapping, his feet sheathed in heavy boots, his rapier raised and
his long Italian dagger ready in the other hand. At least he didn't have
a true and heavy sword.

   Dwarfed by the great room, he was nevertheless big of stature and had
a head of roaring British copper hair. His blue eyes were stewed in
blood, but he was steady in his walk and in his murderous gaze. His face
was wet with bitter tears.

   "Amadeo," he called out over the vast room as he came on. "You cut my
heart out of my chest while I lived and breathed, and you took it with
you! We shall be together this night in Hell."

THE HIGH LONG PORT EGO of our house, the entrance hall, was a perfectly
wonderful place to die. There was nothing in it to mar its gorgeous
mosaic floors with their circles of colored marble stones, and their
festive pattern of winding flowers and tiny wild birds.

   We had the entire field upon which to fight, with not a chair in the
way to stop us from killing each other.

   I advanced on the Englishman before I had time to really admit that I
wasn't very good with the sword yet, had never shown an instinct for it,
and I had no inkling of just what my Master would have me do just now,
that is, what he would advise if he were here.

   I made several bold thrusts at Lord Harlech, which he parried so
easily that I should have lost heart. But just when I thought I'd catch
my breath and maybe even run, he swept in with his dagger and slashed my
left arm. The cut stung me and infuriated me.

   I went after him again, this time managing with considerable luck to
get him across the throat. It was just a scratch, but it bled furiously
down his tunic, and he was as angry as I was to be cut.

   "You horrid damnable little devil," he said. "You made me adore you
so you could draw and quarter me at your pleasure. You promised me you'd
come back!"

   In fact, he kept up this sort of verbal barrage the entire time we
fought. He seemed to need it, rather like a goading battle drum and
fife.

   "Come on, you despicable little angel, I'll tear your wings off!" he
said.

He drove me back with a fast volley of thrusts. I stumbled, lost my
balance and fell but managed to scramble up again, using the low

position to stab dangerously close to his scrotum as I did so, which
gave him a start. I ran at him, knowing now there was nothing to be
gained by drawing this out.

   He dodged my blade, laughed at me and caught me with the dagger, this
time on the face.

   "Pig!" I growled before I could stop myself. I hadn't known I was so
completely vain. My face, no less. He'd cut it. My face. I felt the
blood gushing as it does from face wounds, and I rushed at him again,
this time forgetting all the rules of the encounter and thrashing the
air with my sword in a fierce crazy series of circles. Then as he
parried frantically left and right, I ducked and caught him with the
dagger in the belly and ripped upward, stopped by the thick gold-
encrusted leather of his belt.

   I backed up as he sought to slaughter me with both his weapons, and
then he dropped them and grabbed, as men do, for the belching wound.

He fell down on his knees.

   "Finish him!" shouted Riccardo. He stood back, a man of honor
already. "Finish him now, Amadeo, or I do it. Think what he's done under
this roof."

I lifted my sword.

   The man suddenly grabbed up his own with his bloody hand and flashed
it at me, even as he groaned and winced with his pain. He rose up and
ran at me in one gesture. I jumped back. He fell to his knees. He was
sick and shivering. He dropped the sword, feeling again for his wounded
belly. He didn't die, but he couldn't fight on.

   "Oh, God," said Riccardo. He clutched his dagger. But he obviously
couldn't bring himself to hack away at the unarmed man.

   The Englishman went over on his side. He drew his knees up. He
grimaced and he laid his head down on the stone, his face formal as he
took a deep breath. He fought terrible pain and the certainty that he
would die.

   Riccardo stepped forward and laid the tip of his sword on Lord
Harlech's cheek.

"He's dying, let him die," I said. But the man continued to breathe.

   I wanted to kill him, I really wanted to, but it was impossible to
kill someone who lay there so placid and so brave.

   His eyes took on a wise, poetical expression. "And so it ends here,"
he said in a small voice that perhaps Riccardo didn't even hear.

"Yes, it ends," I said. "End it nobly."

"Amadeo, he slew the two children!" said Riccardo.

   "Pick up your dagger, Lord Harlech!" I said. I kicked the weapon at
him. I pushed it right at his hand. "Pick it up, Lord Harlech," I said.
The blood was running down my face and down my neck, tickling and
sticky. I couldn't stand it. I wanted more to wipe my own wounds than to

bother with him.

   He turned over on his back. The blood came out of his mouth and out
of his gut. His face was wet and shiny, and his breathing became very
labored. He seemed young again, young as he had when he threatened me,
an overgrown boy with a big mop of flaming curls.

   "Think about me when you begin to sweat, Amadeo," he said, his voice
still small, and now hoarse. "Think about me when you realize that your
life, too, is finished."

   "Run him through," said Riccardo in a whisper. "He could take two
days to die with that wound."

   "And you won't have two days," said Lord Harlech from the floor,
panting, "with the poisoned cuts I gave you. Feel it in your eyes? Your
eyes burn, don't they Amadeo? The poison goes into the blood, and it
strikes the eyes first. Are you dizzy?"

   "You bastard," said Riccardo. He stabbed the man with his rapier
right through his tunic, once, twice, then three times. Lord Harlech
grimaced. His eyelids fluttered, and out of his mouth came a final gout
of blood. He was dead.

   "Poison?" I whispered. "Poison on the blade?" Instinctively, I felt
my arm where he had cut me. My face, however, bore the deeper wound.
"Don't touch his sword or dagger. Poison!"

   "He was lying, come, let me wash you," said Riccardo. "There's no
time to waste."

He tried to pull me from the room.

   "What are we going to do with him, Riccardo! What can we do! We're
here alone without the Master. There are three dead in this house, maybe
more."

 As I spoke I heard steps at both ends of the great room. The little
boys were coming out of their hiding places, and I saw one of the
teachers with them, who had apparently been keeping them out of the way.

   I had mixed feelings on this score. But these were all children, and
the teacher an unarmed man, a helpless scholar. The older boys had all
gone out, as was the custom in the morning. Or so I thought.

"Come on, we have to get them all to a decent place," I said. "Don't
touch the weapons." I signaled for the little ones to come. "We'll carry
him to the best bedchamber, come on. And the boys as well."

As the little ones struggled to obey, some of them began to cry.

   "You, give us a hand!" I said to the teacher. "Watch out for the
poisoned weapons." He stared at me wildly. "I mean it. It's poison."

   "Amadeo, you're bleeding all over!" he cried shrilly in a panic.
"What poisoned weapons? Dear God save us all!"

   "Oh, stop it!" I said. But I could stand this situation no longer,
and as Riccardo took charge of the moving of the bodies, I rushed into
my Master's bedroom to attend to my wounds.

   I dumped the whole pitcherful of water into the basin in my haste,
and grabbed up a napkin with which to catch the blood that was flowing
down my neck and into my shirt. Sticky, sticky mess, I cursed. My head
swam, and I almost fell. Grabbing the edge of the table, I told myself
not to be Lord Harlech's fool. Riccardo had been right. Lord Harlech had
made up that lie about the poison! Poison the blade, indeed!

   But as I told myself this story, I looked down and saw for the first
time a scratch, apparently made by his rapier on the back of my right
hand. My hand was swelling as if this were an insect's venomous work.

   I felt my arm and my face. The wounds there were swelling, great
welts forming behind the cuts. Again, there came the dizziness. The
sweat dripped off me right into the basin, which was now full of red
water that looked like wine.

   "Oh, my God, the Devil's done this to me," I said. I turned and the
entire room began to tilt and then to float. I rocked on my feet.

   Someone caught me. I didn't even see who it was. I tried to say Ric-
cardo's name, but my tongue was thick in my mouth.

   Sounds and colors mingled in a hot, pulsing blur. Then with
astonishing clarity I saw the embroidered baldaquin of the Master's bed,
over my head. Riccardo stood over me.

   He spoke to me rapidly and somewhat desperately, but I couldn't make
out what he said. Indeed, it seemed he spoke a foreign tongue, a pretty
one, very melodious and sweet, but I couldn't understand a word of it.

   "I'm hot," I said. "I'm burning, I'm so hot that I can't bear it. I
have to have water. Put me in the Master's bath."

He didn't seem to have heard me at all. On and on he went with his
obvious pleading. I felt his hand on my forehead and it burned me,
positively burned me. I begged him not to touch me, but this he didn't
hear, and neither did I! I wasn't even speaking. I wanted to speak, but
my tongue was too heavy and too big. You'll get the poison, I wanted to
cry. I could not.

   I closed my eyes. Mercifully I drifted. I saw a great sparkling sea,
the waters off the island of the Lido, crenelated and beautiful beneath
the noonday sun. I floated on this sea, perhaps in a small bark, or
maybe just on my back. I couldn't feel the water itself, but there
seemed nothing between me and its gentle tossing waves that were big and
slow and easy and carried me up and then down. Far off, a great city
gleamed on the shore. At first I thought it was Torcello, or even
Venice, and that I had been turned around somehow and was floating
towards the land. Then I saw it was much bigger than Venice, with great
piercing reflective towers, as if it had been made entirely of brilliant
glass. Oh, it was so lovely.

"Am I going there?" I asked.

 The waves seemed then to fold over me, not with a suffocating wetness,
but merely a quiet blanket of heavy light. I opened my eyes. I saw the
red of the taffeta baldaquin above. I saw the golden fringe sewn on the
velvet bed curtains, and then I saw Bianca Solderini there above me. She
had a cloth in her hand.

   "There wasn't enough poison on those blades to kill you," she said.
"It's merely made you sick. Now, listen to me, Amadeo, you must take
each breath with quiet force and resolve to fight this sickness and to
get well. You must ask the very air itself to make you strong, and be
confident of it, that's it, you must breathe deeply and slowly, yes,
exactly, and you must realize that this poison is being sweated out of
you, and you must not believe in this poison, and you must not fear."

 "The Master will know," said Riccardo. He looked drawn and miserable,
and his lips quivered. His eyes were flooded with his tears. Oh, ominous
sign, certainly. "The Master will know somehow. He knows all things. The
Master will break his journey and come home."

   "Wash his face," said Bianca calmly. "Wash his face and be quiet."
How brave she was.

 I moved my tongue but I couldn't form words. I wanted to say that they
must tell me when the sun sank, for then and only then might the Master
come. There was surely a chance. Then and only then. He might appear.

   I turned my head to the side, away from them. The cloth was burning
me.

   "Softly, quietly," said Bianca. "Take in the air, yes, and do not be
afraid."

   A long time passed as I lay there, hovering just below perfect
consciousness, and thankful that their voices were not sharp, and their
touch was not so terrible, but the sweating was awful, and I despaired
utterly of being cool.

   I tossed and tried to get up once, only to feel terribly sick, sick
unto vomiting. With a great relief I realized they had laid me back
down.

   "Hold on to my hands," said Bianca, and I felt her fingers grasping
mine, so small and too hot, hot like everything else, hot like Hell, I
thought, but I was too sick to think of Hell, too sick to think of
anything but vomiting up my insides into a basin, and getting to
somewhere cool. Oh, just open the windows, open them on the winter; I
don't care, open them!

   It seemed quite a nuisance that I might die, and nothing more.
Feeling better was of far greater importance, and nothing troubled me as
to my soul or any world to come.

Then abruptly all things changed.

   I felt myself rise upwards, as if someone had yanked me by my head
out of the bed and sought to pull me up through the red cloth baldaquin
and through the ceiling of the room. Indeed, I looked down, and to my
utter amazement I saw myself lying on the bed. I saw myself as if there
were no baldaquin above my body to block the view.

   I looked far more beautiful than I ever imagined myself to be.
Understand, it was utterly dispassionate. I did not feel an exultation
in my own beauty. I only thought, What a beautiful young boy. How gifted
he has been by God. Look at his long delicate hands, how they lie beside
him, and look at the deep russet of his hair. And that was me all the

time, and I didn't know it or think of it, or think what effect it had
on those who saw me as I moved through life. I didn't believe their
blandishments. I had only scorn for their passion. Indeed, even the
Master had seemed before to be a weak and deluded being for ever
desiring me. But I understood now why people had somewhat taken leave of
their senses. The boy there, dying on the bed, the boy who was the cause
of weeping all around in this large chamber, the boy seemed the very
embodiment of purity and the very embodiment of youth on the verge of
life.

What did not make sense to me was the commotion in the room.

Why did everyone weep? I saw a priest in the doorway, a priest I knew
from the nearby church, and I could see that the boys argued with him
and feared to let him near me as I lay on the bed, lest I be afraid. It
all seemed a pointless imbroglio. Riccardo should not wring his hands.
Bianca should not work so hard, with her damp cloth and her soft but
obviously desperate words.

   Oh, poor child, I thought. You might have had a little more
compassion for everyone if you had known how beautiful you were, and you
might have thought yourself a little bit stronger and more able to gain
something for yourself. As it was, you played sly games on those around
you, because you did not have faith in your own self or even know what
you were.

   It seemed very clear, the error in all this. But I was leaving this
place! The same draught that had pulled me up out of the pretty young
body that lay on the bed was pulling me upwards into a tunnel of fierce,
noisy wind.

   The wind swirled around me, enclosing me completely and tightly in
this tunnel, yet I could see in it other beings who looked on even as
they were caught in it and moved by the incessant fury of this wind. I
saw eyes looking on me; I saw mouths open as if in distress. I was
pulled higher and higher through this tunnel. I didn't feel fear, but I
felt a fatality. I could not help myself.

   That was your error when you were that boy down there, I found myself
thinking. But this is indeed hopeless. And just as I concluded, so I
came to the end of this tunnel; it dissolved. I stood on the shore of
that lovely sparkling sea.

   I wasn't wet from the waves, but I knew them, and I said out loud,
"Oh, I'm here, I've come to the shore! Look, there are the towers of
glass."

   As I looked up, I saw that the city was far away, over a series of
deep green hills, and that a path led to it, and that flowers bloomed
richly and gorgeously on either side of the path. I had never seen such
flowers, never seen such shapes and petal formations, and never never
beheld such colors in all my life. There were no names in the artistic
canon for these colors. I couldn't call them by the few weak inadequate
labels which I knew.

   Oh, would the painters of Venice ever be astonished at these colors,
I thought, and to think how they would transform our work, how they
would set ablaze our paintings if only they could be discovered in some
source that might be ground into pigment and blended with our oils. But
what a pointless thing to do. No more painting was needed. All the glory

that could be accomplished by color was here in this world revealed. I
saw it in the flowers; I saw it in the variegated grass. I saw it in the
boundless sky that rose up and over me and behind the distant blinding
city, and it too flashed and glowed with this great harmony of colors,
blending and twinkling and shimmering as if the towers of this city were
made of a miraculous thriving energy rather than a dead or earthly
matter or mass.

   A great gratitude flowed out of me; my whole being gave itself up to
this gratitude. "Lord, I see now," I said aloud. "I see and I
understand." It did at that moment seem very clear to me, the
implications of this varied and ever increasing beauty, this pulsing,
radiant world. It was so very pregnant with meaning that all things were
answered, all things were utterly resolved. I whispered the word "Yes"
over and over. I nodded, I think, and then it seemed quite absurd to
bother to say anything in words at all.

   A great force emanated from the beauty. It surrounded me as if it
were air or breeze or water, but it was none of these. It was far more
rarefied and pervasive, and though it held me with a formidable strength
it was nevertheless invisible and without pressure or palpable form. The
force was love. Oh, yes, I thought, it is love, it is complete love, and
in its completeness it makes all that I have ever known meaningful, for
every disappointment, every hurt, every misstep, every embrace, every
kiss was but a foreshadowing of this sublime acceptance and goodness,
for the bad steps had told me what I lacked, and the good things, the
embraces, had shown me a glimpse of what love could be.

   All my life this love made meaningful, sparing nothing, and as I
marveled at this, accepting it completely and without urgency or
questioning, a miraculous process began. All my life came to me in the
form of all those I had ever known.

   I saw my life from the very first moments and up until the moment
that had brought me here. It was not a terribly remarkable life; it
contained no great secret or twist or pregnant matter that changed my
heart. On the contrary, it was but a natural and common string of myriad
tiny events, and these events involved all the other souls whom I had
ever touched; I saw now the hurts I'd inflicted, and the words of mine
which had brought solace, and I saw the result of the most casual and
unimportant things I had done. I saw the banquet hall of the
Florentines, and again in the midst of them, I saw the blundering
loneliness with which they stumbled into death. I saw the isolation and
the sadness of their souls as they had fought to stay alive.

   What I could not see was my Master's face. I could not see who he
was. I could not see into his soul. I could not see what my love meant
to him, or what his love meant for me. But this was of no importance. In
fact, I only realized it afterwards when I tried to recount the entire
event. What mattered now was only that I understood what it meant to
cherish others and to cherish life itself. I realized what it had meant
when I painted pictures, not the ruby-red bleeding and vibrant pictures
of Venice, but old pictures in the antique Byzantine style, which had
once flowed so artlessly and perfectly from my brush. I knew then I had
painted wondrous things, and I saw the effects of what I had painted ...
and it seemed then a great crowd of information inundated me. Indeed,
there was such a wealth of it, and it was so easy to comprehend, that I
felt a great light joy.

   The knowledge was like the love and like the beauty; indeed, I

realized with a great triumphant happiness that they were all-the
knowledge, the love, and the beauty-they were all one.

"Oh, yes, how could one not see it. It's so simple!" I thought.

   If I had had a body with eyes, I would have wept, but it would have
been a sweet weeping. As it was, my soul was victorious over all small
and enervating things. I stood still, and the knowledge, the facts, as
it were, the hundreds upon hundreds of small details which were like
transparent droplets of magical fluid passing through me and into me,
filling me and vanishing to make way for more of this great shower of
truth-all this seemed suddenly to fade.

   There beyond stood the glass city, and beyond it a blue sky, blue as
a sky at midday, only one which was now filled with every known star.

   I started out for the city. Indeed, I started with such impetuosity
and such conviction that it took three people to hold me back.

   I stopped. I was quite amazed. But I knew these men. These were
priests, old priests of my homeland, who had died long before I had even
come to my calling, all of which was quite clear to me, and I knew their
names and how they had died. They were in fact the saints of my city,
and of the great house of catacombs where I had lived.

   "Why do you hold me?" I asked. "Where's my Father? He's here now, is
he not?" No sooner had I asked this than I saw my Father. He looked
exactly as he had always looked. He was a big, shaggy man, dressed in
leather for hunting, with a full grizzled beard and thick long auburn
hair the same color as my own. His cheeks were rosy from the cold wind,
and his lower lip, visible between his thick mustache and his gray-
streaked beard, was moist and pink as I remembered. His eyes were the
same bright china blue. He waved at me. He gave his usual, casual,
hearty wave, and he smiled. He looked just like he was going off into
the grasslands, in spite of everyone's advice, and everyone's caution to
hunt, with no fear at all of the Mongols or the Tatars swooping down on
him. After all, he had his great bow with him, the bow only he could
string, as if he were a mythical hero of the great grassy fields, and he
had his own sharpened arrows, and his big broadsword with which he could
hack off a man's head with one blow.

"Father, why are they holding me?" I asked.

   He looked blank. His smile simply faded and his face lost all
expression, and then to my sadness, to my terrible shocking sadness, he
faded in his entirety and he wasn't there.

   The priests beside me, the men with their long gray beards and their
black robes, spoke to me in soft sympathetic whispers and they said,
"Andrei, it's not time for you to come."

   I was deeply distressed, deeply. Indeed, I was so sad that I could
form no words of protest. Indeed, I understood that no protest I might
make mattered, and then one of the priests took my hand.

"No, this is always the way with you," he said. "Ask."

   He didn't move his lips when he spoke, but it wasn't necessary. I
heard him very clearly, and I knew that he meant no personal malice to
me. He was incapable of such a thing.

   "Why, then," I asked, "can't I stay? Why can't you let me stay when I
want to, and when I've come this far."

"Think on all you've seen. You know the answer."

   And I had to admit that in an instant I did know the answer. It was
complex and yet profoundly simple, and it had to do with all the
knowledge I had gained.

   "You can't take this back with you," said the priest. "You'll forget
all the particular things you learned here. But remember the overall
lesson, that your love for others, and their love for you, that the
increase of love in life itself around you, is what matters."

   It seemed a marvelous and comprehensive thing! It seemed no simple
small cliche. It seemed so immense, so subtle, yet so total that all
mortal difficulties would collapse in the face of its truth.

   I was at once returned to my body. I was at once the auburn-haired
boy dying in the bed. I felt a tingling in my hands and feet. I twisted,
and a wretched pain flamed down my back. I was all afire, sweating and
writhing as before, only now my lips were badly cracked and my tongue
was cut and blistered against my teeth.

"Water," I said, "please, water."

   A soft sobbing came from those around me. It was mingled with
laughter and expressions of awe.

   I was alive, and they had thought me dead. I opened my eyes, and I
looked at Bianca.

"I won't die now," I said.

   "What is it, Amadeo?" she asked. She bent down and put her ear to my
lips.

"It isn't time," I said.

   They brought me cool white wine. It was mixed with honey and lemon. I
sat up and I drank gulp after gulp of it. "It's not enough," I said
softly, weakly, but I was falling asleep.

   I went down into the pillows, and I felt Bianca's cloth wipe my
forehead and my eyes. What a sweet mercy it was, and how very grand to
give that small comfort, which was all the world to me. All the world.
All the world.

   I had forgotten what I had seen on the other side! My eyes snapped
open. Recover it, I thought desperately. But I remembered the priest,
vividly as though I had just talked to him in another room. He had said
I couldn't remember. And there was so much more to it, infinitely more,
such things as only my Master might understand.

  I closed my eyes. I slept. Dreams couldn't come to me. I was too ill,
too feverish, but in my own way, stretched thin upon a consciousness of
the moist hot bed and the sluggish air beneath the baldaquin, upon the
blurred words of the boys and Bianca's sweet insistence, I did sleep.
The hours ticked. I knew them, and gradually some comfort came to me in

that I got used to the sweat that smothered my skin, and the thirst that
hurt my throat, and I lay without protest, drifting, waiting for my
Master to come.

   I have so many things to tell you, I thought. You will know about the
glass city! I must explain that I was once . . . but I couldn't quite
remember. A painter, yes, but what sort of painter, and how, and my
name? Andrei? When had I been so called?

SLOWLY over my consciousness of the sickbed and the humid room there
dropped the dark veil of Heaven. Spread out in all directions were the
sentinel stars, splendid as they shone above the glinting towers of the
glass city, and in this half-sleep, now aided by the most tranquil and
blissful of illusions, the stars sang to me.

   Each from its fixed position in constellation and in void gave forth
a precious glimmering sound, as if great chords were struck inside each
flaming orb and by means of its brilliant gyrations broadcast through
all the universal world.

   Such sounds I had never heard with my earthly ears. But no disclaimer
can approximate this airy and translucent music, this harmony and
symphony of celebration.

Oh, Lord, if Thou wert music, this then would be Thy voice, and no
discord could ever prevail against Thee. Thou wouldst cleanse the
ordinary world of every troubling noise with this, the fullest
expression of Thy most intricate and wondrous design, and all triviality
would fade away, overwhelmed by this resounding perfection.

   This was my prayer, my heartfelt prayer, coming in an ancient tongue,
most intimate and effortless as I lay slumbering.

   Stay with me, beauteous stars, I begged, and let me never seek to
fathom this fusion of light and sound, but only give myself to it
utterly and unquestionably.

   The stars grew large and infinite in their cold majestic light, and
slowly all the night was gone and there remained one great glorious and
sourceless illumination.

   I smiled. I felt my smile with blind fingers on my lips, and as the
light grew brighter still and ever closer, as though it were an ocean of
itself, I felt a great saving coolness over all my limbs.

   "Don't fade, don't go away, don't leave me." My own whisper was a
woeful small thing. I pressed my throbbing head into the pillow.

   But it had spent its time, this grand and overriding light, and now
must fade and let the common blink of candles move against my half-
closed eyes, and I must see the burnished gloom around my bed, and
simple things, such as a rosary laid across my right hand with ruby
beads and golden cross, and there a prayer book open to my left, its
pages gently folding in a small stir of breeze that moved as well the
smooth taffeta in ripples overhead in its wood frame.

   How lovely it all did seem, these plain and ordinary things that made
up this silent and elastic moment. Where had they gone, my lovely swan-
necked nurse and my weeping comrades? Had night worn them down to where
they slept, so that I might cherish these quiet moments of unobserved

wakefulness? My mind was gently crowded with a thousand lively
recollections.

   I opened my eyes. All were gone, save one who sat beside me on the
bed, looking down at me with eyes both dreamy and remote and coldly
blue, far paler than a summer sky and filled with a near faceted light
as they fixed so idly and indifferently upon me.

  My Master here, with hands folded in his lap, a seeming stranger
viewing all as if it could not touch his chiseled grandeur. The
smileless expression set upon his face seemed made there forever.

"Merciless!" I whispered.

   "No, oh, no," he said. His lips did not move. "But tell me once again
the whole tale. Describe this glassy city."

   "Ah, yes, we've talked of it, have we not, of those priests who said
I must come back, and those old paintings, so antique, which I thought
so very beautiful. Not made by human hands, you see, but by the power
invested in me, which passed through me, and I had only to take up the
brush and there the Virgin and the Saints were mine to discover."

   "Don't cast those old forms away," he said, and once again his lips
showed no sign of the voice I heard so distinctly, a voice that pierced
my very ears as any human voice might do, with his tone, his very
timbre. "For forms change, and reason now is but tomorrow's
superstition, and in that old restraint there lay a great sublime
intent, an indefatigable purity. But tell me once again about the glassy
city."

   I sighed. "You've seen the molten glass, as I have," I said, "when
taken from the furnace, a glowing blob of horrifying heat upon a spear
of iron, a thing that melts and drips so that the artist's wand may pull
and stretch it, or fill it full of breath to form the perfect rounded
vessel. Well, it was as if that glass came up out of the moist Mother
Earth herself, a molten torrent spewing to the clouds, and out of these
great liquid jets were born the crowded towers of the glassy city-not
imitating any form built by men, but perfect as the heated force of
Earth had naturally ordained, in colors unimaginable. Who lived in such
a place? How far away it seemed, yet utterly attainable. But one short
walk over hills sweet with willowing green grass and leafy fluttering
flowers of the same fantastical hues and tints, a quiet thunderous and
impossible apparition."

I looked at him, because I had been looking off and back into my vision.

   Tell me what these things mean," I asked. "Where is this place, and
why was I allowed to see it?"

   He gave a sad sigh and looked away himself and now back at me, his
face as aloof and unbending as before, only now I saw the thick blood in
it, that once again, as it had been the night before, was pumped full of
human heat from human veins, which had no doubt been his late repast
this same evening.

   "Won't you even smile now as you say farewell?" I asked. "If this
bitter coldness now is all you feel, and you would let me die of this
rampant fever? I'm sick unto death, you know it. You know the nausea
that I feel, you know the hurt inside my head, you know the ache in all

my joints and how these cuts burn in my skin with their indisputable
poison. Why are you so very far away, yet here, come home, to sit beside
me and feel nothing?"

   "I feel the love I've always felt when I look at you," he said, "my
child, my son, my sweet enduring one. I feel it. It's walled up inside
where it should stay, perhaps, and let you die, for yes, you will, and
then perhaps your priests will take you, for how can they not when there
is no returning?"

   "Ah, but what if there are many lands? What if on the second fall, I
find myself on yet another shore, and sulfur rises from the boiling
earth and not the beauty first revealed to me? I hurt. These tears are
scalding. So much is lost. I can't remember. It seems I say those same
words so much. I can't remember!"

I reached out. He didn't move. My hand grew heavy and dropped on the
forgotten prayer book. I felt the stiff vellum pages beneath my fingers.

   "What's killed your love? Was it the things I did? That I brought the
man here who slew my brothers? Or that I died and saw such wonders?
Answer me."

   "I love you still. I will all my nights and all my slumbering days,
forever. Your face is as a jewel given me, which I can never forget,
though I may foolishly lose it. Its glister will torture me forever.
Amadeo, think on these things again, open your mind as if it were a
shell, and let me see the pearl of all they taught you."

   "Can you, Master? Can you understand how love and love alone could
mean so very much, and all the world be made of it? The very blades of
grass, the leaves of trees, the fingers of this hand that reaches for
you? Love, Master. Love. And who will believe such simple and immense
things when there are dexterous and labyrinthian creeds and philosophies
of manmade and ever seductive complexity? Love. I heard the sound of it.
I saw it. Were these the delusions of a feverish mind, a mind afraid of
death?"

   "Perhaps," he said, his face still feelingless and motionless. His
eyes were narrow, prisoners of their own shrinking from what they saw.
"Ah, yes," he said. "You die and I let you, and I think there might be
for you but one shore, and there you'll find again your priests, your
city."

   "It's not my time," I said. "I know it. And such a statement cannot
be undone by a mere handful of hours. Smash the ticking clock. They
meant, by a soul's incarnate life, it wasn't time. Some destiny carved
in my infant hand will not be so soon fulfilled or easily defeated."

   "I can tip the odds, my child," he said. This time his lips moved.
The pale sweet coral brightened in his face, and his eyes grew wide and
unguarded, the old self I knew and cherished. "I can so easily take the
last strength left in you." He leant over me. I saw the tiny
variegations in the pupils of his eyes, the bright deep-pointed stars
behind the darkening irises. His lips, so wondrously decorated with all
the tiny lines of human lips, were rosy as if a human kiss resided
there. "I can so easily take one last fatal drink of your child's blood,
one last quaff of all the freshness I so love, and in my arms I'll hold
a corpse so rich in beauty that all who see it will weep, and that
corpse will tell me nothing. You are gone, that much I'll know, and no

more."

   "Do you say these things to torture me? Master, if I cannot go there,
I want to be with you!"

His lip worked in plain desperation. He seemed a man, and only that, the
red blood of fatigue and sadness hovering on the borders of his eyes.
His hand, out now to touch my hair, was trembling.

I caught it as if it were the high waving branch of a tree above me. I
fathered his fingers to my lips like so many leaves and kissed them.

Turning my head I laid them on my wounded cheek. I felt the throb of the
venomous cut beneath them. But more keenly still, I felt a strong tremor
within them.

   I blinked my eyes. "How many died tonight to feed you?" I whispered.
"And how can this be, and love be the very thing the world is made of?
You are too beautiful to be overlooked. I'm lost. I cannot understand
it. But could I, if I were to live from this moment on, a simple mortal
boy, could I forget it?"

   "You cannot live, Amadeo," he said sadly. "You cannot live!" His
voice broke. "The poison's traveled in you too deep, too far and wide,
and little draughts of my blood cannot overtake it." His face was filled
with anguish. "Child, I can't save you. Close your eyes. Take my
farewell kiss. There is no friendship between me and those on the far
shore, but they must take what dies so naturally."

   "Master, no! Master, I cannot try it alone. Master, they sent me
back, and you are here, and were bound to be, and how could they not
have known it?"

   "Amadeo, they didn't care. The guardians of the dead are powerfully
indifferent. They speak of love, but not of centuries of blundering
ignorance. What stars are these that sing so beautifully when all the
world is languishing in dissonance? I would you would force their hand,
Amadeo." His voice all but broke in his pain. "Amadeo, what right have
they to charge me with your fortune?"

I laughed a weak sad little laugh.

   My fever shook me. A great wave of sickness overcame me. If I moved
or spoke I would suffer a dread dry nausea that would shake me to no
advantage. I'd rather die than feel this.

   "Master, I knew you would give it some powerful analysis," I said. I
tried not to make a bitter or sarcastic smile, but to seek the simple
truth. My breath was now so hard for me. It seemed I could leave off
breathing with no hardship at all. All Bianca's stern encouragements
came back to me. "Master," I said, "there is no horror in this world
that is without final redemption."

   "Yes, but for some," he pressed, "what is the price of such
salvation? Amadeo, how dare they requisition me to their obscure
designs! I pray they were illusions. Don't speak anymore about their
marvelous light. Don't think on it."

   "No, Sir? And for whose comfort do I sweep my mind so clean? Who is
dying here!"

He shook his head.

   "Go ahead, wring the blood tears from your eyes," I said. "And for
what death do you hope yourself, Sir, for you told me that it wasn't
impossible for even you to die? Explain to me, that is, if there's time
left before all the light I shall ever know winks out on me, and the
Earth devours the incarnate jewel that you found wanting!"

"Never wanting," he whispered.

   "Come now, where will you go, Sir? More comfort, please. How many
minutes do I have?"

   "I don't know," he whispered. He turned away from me and bowed his
head. I had never seen him so forlorn.

   "Let me see your hand," I said weakly. "There are closeted witches
who in the shadows of the taverns of Venice have taught me how to read
the lines in it. I'll tell you when you are like to die. Give it to
me." I could scarcely see. A haze had come down over all things. But I
meant my words.

   "You come too late," he replied. "There are no lines left." He held
up his palm for me to see. "Time has erased what men call fate. I have
none."

   "I am sorry that you come at all," I said. I turned away from him. I
turned away against the clean cool linen of the pillow. "Would you leave
me now, my beloved teacher? I would rather the company of a priest, and
my old nurse if you haven't sent her home. I have loved you with my
whole heart, but I don't want to die in your superior company."

 Through a haze I saw the shape of him as he grew nearer to me. I felt
his hands cup my face and turn it towards him. I saw the glimmer of his
blue eyes, wintry flames, indistinct yet burning fiercely.

   "Very well, beautiful one. This is the moment. Would you come with
me, and be like me?" His voice was rich and soothing, though it was full
of pain.

"Yes, always and forever yours."

   "Forever to thrive in secret on the blood of the evildoer, as I
thrive, and to abide with these secrets until the end of the world, if
need be."

"I shall. I want it."

"To learn from me all the lessons I can give."

"Yes, all of them."

   He picked me up from the bed. I tumbled against him, my head spinning
and the pain in it so sharp, I cried out softly.

   "Only a little while, my love, my young and tender love," he said in
my ear.

   I was lowered into the warm water of the bath, my clothes softly

stripped away, my head laid back against the tiled edge ever so
carefully. I let my arms float in the water. I felt it lap around my
shoulders.

   He broke up handfuls of water to bathe me. He bathed first my face
and then all of me. His hard satiny fingertips moved over my face.

   "Not a vagrant hair yet of your beard, and yet you have the nether
endowments of a man, and must now rise above the pleasures you have so
loved."

   "I do, I will," I whispered. A terrible burning lashed my cheek. The
cut was spread wide. I struggled to touch it. But he held my hand. It
was only his blood fallen into the festering wound. And as the flesh
tingled and burnt I felt it closing. He did the same with the scratch on
my arm, and then with the small scratch on the back of my hand. With my
eyes closed, I surrendered to the eerie paralyzing pleasure of it.

   His hand touched me again, running smoothly down my chest, past my
private parts, examining first one leg and then the other, searching out
the smallest break or flaw in the skin, perhaps. Again the rich
throbbing chills of pleasure overcame me.

   I felt myself lifted from the water, warmly wrapped, and then there
came that shock of moving air that meant he carried me, that he moved
more swiftly than any spying eye could see. I felt the marble floor
before my bare feet, and in my fever, this jolting cold was very good to
me.

   We stood in the studio. We had our backs to the painting on which
he'd worked only nights ago, and faced another masterly canvas of
immense size, on which beneath a brilliant sun and cobalt sky a great
copse of trees surrounded two rushing windblown figures.

   The woman was Daphne, her upstretched arms changing into the branches
of the laurel, already thick with leaves, her feet grown into roots that
sought the deep brown earth beneath her. And behind her, the desperate
and beautiful god Apollo, a champion of golden hair and finely muscled
limbs, come too late to stop her frantic magical escape from his
threatening arms, her fatal metamorphosis.

   "See the indifferent clouds above," my Master whispered in my ear. He
pointed to the great streaks of sun he had painted with more skill than
the men who daily beheld them.

   He spoke words I confided to Lestat so long ago when I told him my
story, words that he salvaged so mercifully from the few images of these
times which I was able to give him.

   I hear Marius's voice when I repeat these words, the last I was ever
to hear as a mortal child:

   "This is the only sun that you will ever see again. But a millennium
of nights will be yours to see light as no mortal has ever seen it, to
snatch from the distant stars, as if you were Prometheus, an endless
illumination by which to understand all things."

   And I, who had beheld a far more wondrous celestial light in that
realm from which I'd been turned away, longed only for him to eclipse it
now forever.

8

THE MASTER'S PRIVATE SALONS: a string of rooms in which he had covered
the walls with flawless copies of the works of those mortal painters he
so admired-Giotto, Fra Angelico, Bellini.

   We stood in the room of Benozzo Gozzoli's great work, from the Medici
Chapel in Florence: The Procession of the Magi.

   In the middle of the century, Gozzoli had created this vision,
wrapping it around three walls of that small sacred chamber.

   But my Master, with his supernatural memory and skill, had spread out
the great work, rendering the whole flat from end to end on one great
side of this immense and broad gallery.

   Perfect as Gozzoli's original it loomed, with its hordes of
beautifully dressed young Florentines, each pale face a study in
thoughtful innocence, astride a cavalry of gorgeous horses following the
exquisite figure of the young Lorenzo de' Medici himself, a youth with
soft curling brownish-blond hair to his shoulders, and a carnal blush in
his white cheeks. With a tranquil expression he appeared to gaze
indifferently at the viewer of the painting as he sat, regal in his fur-
trimmed gold jacket with its long slashed sleeves, on a beautifully
caparisoned white horse. No detail of the painting was unworthy of
another. Even the horse's bridle and fittings were of beautifully worked
gold and velvet, a match for the tight sleeves of Lorenzo's tunic and
his red velvet knee-high boots.

   But the enchantment of the painting arose most powerfully from the
faces of the youths, as well as the few old men who made up the immense
crowded procession, all with small quiet mouths and eyes drifting to the
sides as if a forward glance would have broken the spell.

On and on they came past castles and mountains, winding their way to
Bethlehem.

   To illuminate this masterpiece, dozens of silver branching candelabra
had been lighted up and down both sides of the room. The thick white
candles of the purest beeswax gave off a luxurious illumination. High
above a glorious wilderness of painted clouds surrounded an oval of
floating saints who touched each other's outstretched hands as they
looked down benevolently and contentedly upon us.

   No furniture covered the rosy Carrara marble tiles of the highly
polished floor. A wandering border pattern of green leafy vine marked
off in great squares these tiles, but the floor was otherwise plain and
deeply lustrous, and silken smooth to bare feet.

   I found myself staring with the fascination of a feverish brain into
this hall of glorious surfaces. The Procession of the Magi, rising as it
did to fill the entire wall to the right of me, seemed to give off a
soft plethora of real sounds ... the muted crunch of the hoofs of the
horses, the shuffling steps of those who walked beside them, the
rustling of the red-flowered shrubbery beyond them and even the distant
cries of the hunters who, with their lean hounds, streaked along the
mountain paths beyond.

  My Master stood in the very center of the hall. He had taken off his
familiar red velvet. He wore only an open robe of gold tissue, with long
bell sleeves down to his wrists, his hem just skirting his bare white
feet.

   His hair seemed to make for him a halo of yellow brilliance, hanging
softly to his shoulders.

I wore a gown of the same sheerness and simplicity.

"Come, Amadeo," he said.

   I was weak, thirsting for water, barely able to stand. He knew this
however, and no excuse seemed appropriate. I took my faltering steps one
after another until I reached his outstretched arms.

His hands slid about the back of my head.

   He bent his lips. A sense of dreadful awesome finality swept over me.

   "You will die now to be with me in life eternal," he whispered in my
ear. "Never for a moment must you really fear. I will hold your heart
safe in my hands."

   His teeth cut into me, deeply, cruelly with the precision of twin
daggers, and I heard my heart thud in my ears. My very bowels
contracted, and my stomach was knotted in pain. Yet a savage pleasure
swept through all my veins, a pleasure which coursed towards the wounds
in my neck. I could feel my blood rush towards my Master, towards his
thirst and my inevitable death.

   Even my hands were transfixed with vibrant sensation. Indeed, I
seemed suddenly to be but a puppet map of circuitry, all of it aglow, as
with a low, obvious and deliberate sound, my Master drank my life's
blood. The sound of his heart, slow, steady, a deep reverberating
pounding, filled my ears.

   The pain in my intestines was alchemized to a soft sheer rapture; my
body lost all weight, all knowledge of itself in space. The throb of his
heart was within me. My hands felt the long satin locks of his hair, but
I did not hold to them. I floated, supported only by the insistent
heartbeat and thrilling current of all my swiftly flowing blood.

"I die now," I whispered. This ecstasy could not endure.

Abruptly the world died.

I stood alone on the desolate and windy shore of the sea.

   It was the land to which I'd journeyed before, but how different it
was now, devoid of its shining sun and abundant flowers. The priests
were there, but their robes were dusty and dark and reeked of the earth.
I knew these priests, I knew them well. I knew their names. I knew their
narrow bearded faces, their thin greasy hair and the black felt hats
that they wore. I knew the dirt in their fingernails, and I knew the
hungry hollow of their sunken gleaming eyes.

They beckoned for me to come.

   Ah, yes, back to where I belonged. We climbed higher and higher until

we stood on the bluff of the glass city, and it lay to the far left of
us, and how forlorn and empty it was.

   All the molten energy which had lighted its multitudinous and
translucent towers was now dead and gone, turned off at the source.
Nothing remained of the blazing colors except a deep dull residue of
tints beneath the featureless span of hopeless gray sky. Oh, sad, sad,
to see the glass city without its magic fire.

   A chorus of sounds rose from it, a tinkling, as of glass dully
striking glass. There was no music in it. There was only a bleary
luminous despair.

   "Walk on, Andrei," said one of the priests to me. His soiled hand
with its thin bits of caked mud touched me and pulled at me, hurting my
fingers. I looked down to see that my fingers were thin and luridly
white. My knuckles shone as though the flesh had already been stripped
away, but it had not.

All my skin merely cleaved to me, hungry and loose as their skin.

   Before us came the water of the river, filled with ice sloughs and
great tangles of blackened driftwood, covering the flatlands with a
murky lake. We had to walk through it, and its coldness hurt us. Yet on
we went, the four of us, the three priest guides and me. Above loomed
the once golden domes of Kiev. It was our Santa Sofia, standing still
after the horrid massacres and conflagrations of the Mongols who had
laid waste our city and all her riches and all her wicked and worldly
women and men.

"Come, Andrei."

   I knew this doorway. It was to the Monastery of the Caves. Only
candles illuminated these catacombs, and the smell of the earth
overpowered all, even the stench of dried sweat on soiled and diseased
flesh.

   In my hands, I held the rough wooden handle of a small shovel. I dug
into the heap of earth. I opened up the soft wall of rubble, until my
eyes fell on a man not dead but dreaming as the dirt covered his face.

   "Still alive, Brother?" I whispered, to this soul buried up to his
neck.

   "Still alive, Brother Andrei, give me only what will sustain me,"
said the cracked lips. The white eyelids were never lifted. "Give me
only that much, so that our Lord and Savior, Christ Himself, will choose
the time that I am to come home."

   "Oh, Brother, how courageous you are," I said. I put a jug of water
to his lips. The mud streaked them as he drank. His head rested back in
soft rubble.

   "And you, child," he said with labored breaths, turning ever so
slightly from the proffered jug, "when will you have the strength to
choose your earthen cell among us, your grave, and wait for Christ to
come?"

   "Soon, I pray, Brother," I answered. I stepped back. I lifted the
shovel.

   I dug into the next cell, and soon a dreadful unmistakable stench
assailed me. The priest beside me stayed my hand.

   "Our Good Brother Joseph is finally with the Lord," he said. "That's
it, uncover his face so that we may see for ourselves that he died at
peace."

  The stench grew thicker. Only dead human beings reek this strongly.
It's the smell of desolate graves and carts coming from those districts
where the plague is at its worst. I feared I would be sick. But I
continued to dig, until at last we uncovered the dead man's head. Bald,
a skull encased in shrunken skin.

Prayers rose from the brothers behind me. "Close it up, Andrei."

   "When will you have the courage, Brother? Only God can tell you
when-."

   "The courage to what!" I know this booming voice, this big-shouldered
man who barrels his way down the catacomb. No mistaking his auburn hair
and beard, his leather jerkin and his weapons hung on his leather belt.

"This is what you do with my son, the ikon painter!"

   He grabbed me by the shoulder, as he'd done a thousand times, with
the same huge paw of a hand that had beaten me senseless.

   "Let go of me, please, you impossible and ignorant ox," I whispered.
"We're in the house of God."

   He dragged me so that I fell on my knees. My robe was tearing, black
cloth ripping.

"Father, stop it and go away," I said.

   "Deep in these pits to bury a boy who can paint with the skill of the
angels!"

   "Brother Ivan, stop your shouting. It's for God to decide what each
of us will do."

   The priests ran behind me. I was dragged into the workroom. Ikons in
rows hung from the ceiling, covering all of the far wall. My Father
flung me down in the chair at the large heavy table. He lifted the iron
candlestick with its fluttering, protesting candle to light all the
tapers around.

   The illumination made a fire on his huge beard. Long gray hairs
sprung from his thick eyebrows, combed upwards, diabolical.

   "You behave like the village idiot, Father," I whispered. "It's a
wonder I'm not a slobbering idiot beggar myself."

   "Shut up, Andrei. Nobody's taught you any manners here, that's clear
enough. You need me to beat you."

He slammed his fist into the side of my head. My ear went numb.

   "I thought I'd beaten you enough before I brought you here, but not

so," he said. He smacked me again.

   "Desecration!" cried the priest, looming above me. "The boy's
consecrated to God."

   "Consecrated to a pack of lunatics," said my Father. He took a packet
out of his coat. "Your eggs, Brothers!" he said with contempt.

He lay back the soft leather and removed an egg. "Paint, Andrei. Paint
to remind these lunatics that you have the gift from God Himself."

   "And God Himself it is who paints the picture," cried the priest, the
eldest of them, whose sticky gray hair was so soiled in time with oil
that it was near black. He pushed his way between my chair and my
Father.

 My Father set down all but one egg. Leaning over a small earthen bowl
on the table, he broke the shell of the egg, carefully gathering the
yoke in one side, and letting all the rest spill into his leather cloth.
"There, there, pure yoke, Andrei." He sighed, and then threw the broken
shell on the floor.

He picked up the small pitcher and poured the water into the yoke.

"You mix it, mix your colors and work. Remind these-."

   "He works when God calls him to work," declared the Elder, "and when
God calls him to bury himself within the Earth, to live the life of the
reclusive, the hermit, then will he do that."

   "Like Hell," said my Father. "Prince Michael himself has asked for an
Ikon of the Virgin. Andrei, paint! Paint three for me that I may give
the Prince the Ikon for which he asks, and take the others to the
distant castle of his cousin, Prince Feodor, as he has asked."

   "That castle's destroyed, Father," I said contemptuously. "Feodor and
all his men were massacred by the wild tribes. You'll find nothing out
there in the wild lands, nothing but stones. Father, you know this as
well as I do. We've ridden plenty far enough to see for ourselves."

   "We'll go if the Prince wants us to go," said my Father, "and we'll
leave the ikon in the branches of the nearest tree to where his brother
died."

   "Vanity and madness," said the Elder. Other priests came into the
room. There was much shouting.

   "Speak clearly to me and stop the poetry!" cried my Father. "Let my
boy paint. Andrei, mix your colors. Say your prayers, but begin."

   "Father, you humiliate me. I despise you. I'm ashamed that I'm your
son. I'm not your son. I won't be your son. Shut your filthy mouth or
I'll paint nothing."

   "Ah, that's my sweet boy, with the honey rolling off his tongue, and
the bees that left it there left their sting too."

 Again, he struck me. This time I became dizzy, but I refused to lift
my hands to my head. My ear throbbed.

   "Proud of yourself, Ivan the Idiot!" I said. "How can I paint when I
can't see or even sit in the chair?"

The priests shouted. They argued amongst one another.

   I tried to focus on the small row of earthen jars ready for the yoke
and the water. Finally I began to mix the yoke and the water. Best to
work and shut them all out. I could hear my Father laugh with
satisfaction.

   "Now, show them, show them what they mean to wall up alive in a lot
of mud."

"For the love of God," said the Elder.

   "For the love of stupid idiots," said my Father. "It isn't enough to
have a great painter. You have to have a saint."

   "You do not know what your son is. It was God who guided you to bring
him here."

"It was money," said my Father. Gasps rose from the priests.

   "Don't lie to them," I said under my breath. "You know damned good
and well it was pride."

   "Yes, pride," said my Father, "that my son could paint the Face of
Christ or His Blessed Mother like a Master! And you, to whom I commit
this genius, are too ignorant to see it."

   I began to grind the pigments I needed, the soft brownish-red powder,
and then to mix it over and over with the yoke and water until every
tiny fragment of pigment was broken up and the paint was smooth and
perfectly thin and clear. On to the yellow, and then to the red.

 They fought over me. My Father lifted his fist to the Elder, but I
didn't bother to look up. He wouldn't dare. He kicked my leg in his
desperation, sending a cramp through my muscle, but I said nothing. I
went on mixing the paint.

   One of the priests had come round to my left, and he slipped a clean
whitewashed panel of wood in front of me, primed and ready for the holy
image.

   At last I was ready. I bowed my head. I made the Sign of the Cross in
our way, touching my right shoulder first, not my left.

   "Dear God, give me the power, give me the vision, give my hands the
tutelage which only your love can give!" At once I had the brush with no
consciousness of having picked it up, and the brush began to race,
tracing out the oval of the Virgin's face, and then the sloping lines of
her shoulders and then the outline of her folded hands.

   Now when their gasps came, they were tributes to the painting. My
Father laughed in gloating satisfaction.

   "Ah, my Andrei, my sharp-tongued, sarcastic, nasty ungrateful little
genius of God."

   "Thank you, Father," I whispered bitingly, right from the middle of

my trancelike concentration, as I myself watched the work of the brush
in awe. There her hair, cleaving close to the scalp and parted in the
middle. I needed no instrument to make the outline of her halo perfectly
round.

   The priests held the clean brushes for me. One held a clean rag in
his hands. I snatched up a brush for the red color which I then mixed
with white paste, until it was the appropriate color of flesh.

"Isn't that a miracle!"

   "That's just the point," said the Elder between clenched teeth. "It's
a miracle, Brother Ivan, and he will do what God wills."

   "He won't wall himself up in here, damn you, not as long as I'm
alive. He's coming with me into the wild lands."

   I burst out laughing. "Father," I said sneering at him. "My place is
here."

   "He's the best shot in the family, and he's coming with me into the
wild lands," said my Father to the others, who had flown into a flurry
of protests and negations all around.

   "Why do you give Our Blessed Mother that tear in her eye, Brother
Andrei?"

"It's God who gives her the tear," said one of the others.

   "It is the Mother of All Sorrows. Ah, see the beautiful folds of her
cloak."

  "Ah, look, the Christ child!" said my Father, and even his face was
reverent. "Ah, poor little baby God, soon to be crucified and die!" His
voice was for once subdued and almost tender. "Ah, Andrei, what a gift.
Oh, but look, look at the child's eyes and his little hand, at the flesh
of his thumb, his little hand."

   "Even you are touched with the light of Christ," said the Elder.
"Even such a stupid violent man as you, Brother Ivan."

  The priests pressed in close around me in a circle. My Father held out
a palmful of small twinkling jewels. "For the halos, Andrei. Work fast,
Prince Michael has ordained that we go."

   "Madness, I tell you!" All voices were set to babbling at once. My
Father turned and raised his fist.

   I looked up, reached for a fresh, clean panel of wood. My forehead
was wet with sweat. I worked on and on.

I had done three ikons.

   I felt such happiness, such pure happiness. It was sweet to be so
warm in it, so aware of it, and I knew, though I said nothing, that my
Father had made it possible, my Father, so cheerful and ruddy-cheeked
and overpowering with his big shoulders and his glistening face, this
man I was supposed to hate.

   The Sorrowful Mother with her Child, and the napkin for her tears,

and the Christ Himself. Weary, bleary-eyed, I sat back. The place was
intolerably cold. Oh, if there were only a little fire. And my hand, my
left hand was cramped from the cold. Only my right hand was all right
because of the pace at which I had done my work. I wanted to suck the
fingers of my left hand, but this would not do, not here at this moment,
when all gathered to coo over the ikons.

"Masterly. The Work of God."

   An awful sense of time came over me, that I had traveled far from
this moment, far from this the Monastery of the Caves to which I had
vowed my life, far from the priests who were my brethren, far from my
cursing, stupid Father, who was in spite of his ignorance so very proud.

   Tears flowed from his eyes. "My son," he said. He clutched my
shoulder proudly. He was beautiful in his own way, such a fine strong
man, afraid of nothing, a prince himself when among his horses and his
dogs and his followers, of which I, his son, had been one.

   "Let me alone, you thick-skulled oaf," I said. I smiled up at him to
farther outrage him. He laughed. He was too happy, too proud, to be
provoked.

   "Look what my son has done." His voice had a telltale thickness to
it. He was going to cry. And he wasn't even drunk.

"Not by human hands," said the priest.

   "No, naturally not!" boomed my Father's scornful voice. "Just by my
son Andrei's hands, that's all."

   A silken voice said in my ear, "Would you place the jewels into the
halos yourself, Brother Andrei, or shall I perform this task?"

   Behold, it was done, the paste applied, the stones set, five in the
Ikon of Christ. The brush was in my hand again to stroke the brown hair
of the Lord God, which was parted in the middle and brought back behind
His ears, with only part of it to show on either side of His neck. The
stylus appeared in my hand to thicken and darken the black letters on
the open book which Christ held in His left hand. The Lord God stared,
serious and severe, from the panel, His mouth red and straight beneath
the horns of His brown mustache.

"Come now, the Prince is here, the Prince has come."

   Outside the entrance of the Monastery, the snow fell in cruel gusts.
The priests helped me with my leather vest, my jacket of shearling. They
buckled my belt. It was good to smell this leather again, to breathe the
fresh cold air. My Father had my sword. It was heavy, old, taken from
his long-ago fighting against the Teutonic Knights in lands far to the
east, the jewels long ago chipped out of its handle, but a fine, fine
battle sword.

   Through the snowy mist a figure appeared, on horseback. It was Prince
Michael himself, in his fur hat and fur-lined cape and gloves, the great
Lord who ruled Kiev for our Roman Catholic conquerors, whose faith we
would not accept but who let us keep to our own. He was decked out in
foreign velvet and gold, a fancy figure fit for royal Lithuanian courts,
of which we heard fantastical tales. How did he endure Kiev, the ruined
city?

   The horse reared up on its hind legs. My Father ran to catch the
reins, and threaten the animal as he threatened me.

   The Ikon for Prince Feodor was wrapped thickly in wool for me to
carry.

I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword.

   "Ah, you will not take him on this Godless mission," cried the Elder.
"Prince Michael, Your Excellency, our mighty ruler, tell this Godless
man that he can not take our Andrei."

   I saw the face of the Prince through the snow, square and strong,
with gray eyebrows and beard and huge hard blue eyes. "Let him go,
Father," he cried out to the priest. "The boy has hunted with Ivan since
he was four years old. Never has anyone provided such bounty for my
table, and for yours, Father. Let him go."

   The horse danced backwards. My Father pulled down on the reins.
Prince Michael blew the snow from off his lips.

   Our horses were led to the fore, my Father's powerful stallion with
the gracefully curved neck and the shorter gelding which had been mine
before I had come to the Monastery of the Caves.

   "I'll be back, Father," I said to the Elder. "Give me your blessing.
What can I do against my gentle, sweet-tempered and infinitely pious
Father when Prince Michael himself commands?"

   "Oh, shut your lousy little mouth," said my Father. "You think I want
to listen to this all the way to the Castle of Prince Feodor?"

   "You'll hear it all the way to Hell!" declared the Elder. "You take
my finest novice to his death."

   "Novice, novice to a hole in the dirt! You take the hands that have
painted these marvels-."

   "God painted them," I said in a biting whisper, "and you know it,
Father. Will you please stop making a display of your Godlessness and
belligerence."

   I was on the back of my horse. The Ikon was strapped in wool to my
chest.

   "I don't believe my brother Feodor is dead!" the Prince said, trying
to control his mount, to bring it in line with that of my Father.
"Perhaps these travelers saw some other ruin, some old-."

   "Nothing survives in the grasslands now," pleaded the Elder. "Prince,
don't take Andrei. Don't take him."

   The priest ran alongside of my horse. "Andrei, you will find nothing;
you will find only the wild blowing grass and the trees. Put the Ikon in
the branches of a tree. Place it for the will of God, so that when it is
found by the Tatars they will know His Divine power. Place it there for
the pagans. And come home."

The snow came down so fierce and thick I couldn't see his face.

   I looked up at the stripped and barren domes of our Cathedral, that
remnant of Byzantine glory left to us by Mongol invaders, who now
exacted their greedy tribute through our Catholic Prince. How bleak and
desolate was this, my homeland. I closed my eyes and longed for the mud
cubicle of the cave, for the smell of the earth close around me, for the
dreams of God and His Goodness which would come to me, once I was half-
entombed.

Come back to me, Amadeo. Come back. Do not let your heart stop!

   I spun around. "Who calls to me?" The thick white veil of the snow
broke to reveal the distant glass city, black and glimmering as if
heated by hellish fires. Smoke rose to feed the ominous clouds of the
darkening sky. I rode towards the glass city.

"Andrei!" This was my Father's voice behind me.

Come back to me, Amadeo. Don V let your heart stop!

   The Ikon fell from my left arm as I struggled to bridle my mount. The
wool had come undone. On and on we rode. The Ikon fell downhill beside
us, turning over and over, corner bouncing upon corner, as it tumbled,
the swaddling of wool falling loose. I saw the shimmering face of
Christ.

   Strong arms caught me, pulled me upwards as if from a whirlwind. "Let
me go!" I protested. I looked back. Against the frozen earth lay the
Ikon, and the staring, questioning eyes of the Christ.

   Firm fingers pressed my face on either side. I blinked and opened my
eyes. The room was filled with warmth and light. There loomed the
familiar face of my Master right above me, his blue eyes shot with
blood. "Drink, Amadeo," he said. "Drink from me."

  My head fell forward against his throat. The blood fount had started;
it bubbled out of his vein, flowing thickly down onto the neck of his
golden tissue robe. I closed my mouth over it. I lapped at it.

I let out a cry as the blood inflamed me.

"Draw it from me, Amadeo. Draw it hard!"

  My mouth filled with blood. My lips closed against his silky white
flesh so that not a drop would be lost. Deeply I swallowed. In a dim
flash I saw my Father riding through the grasslands, a powerful leather-
clad figure, his sword tied firmly to his belt, his leg crooked, his
cracked and worn brown boot firmly in the stirrup. He turned to the
left, rising and falling gracefully and perfectly with the huge strides
of his white horse.

   "All right, leave me, you coward, you impudent and miserable boy!
Leave me!" He looked before him. "I prayed for it, Andrei, I prayed they
wouldn't get you for their filthy catacombs, their dark earthen cells.
Well, so my prayer is answered! Go with God, Andrei. Go with God. Go
with God!"

   My Master's face was rapt and beautiful, a white flame against the
wavering golden light of countless candles. He stood over me.

   I lay on the floor. My body sang with the blood. I climbed to my
feet, my head swimming. "Master."

   At the far end of the room he stood, his bare feet composed on the
glowing rose-colored floor, his arms outstretched. "Come to me, Amadeo,
walk towards me, come to me, to take the rest."

   I struggled to obey him. The room raged with colors around me. I saw
the Procession of the searching Magi. "Oh, that it's so vivid, so
utterly alive!"

"Come to me, Amadeo."

"I'm too weak, Master, I'm fainting, I'm dying in this glorious light."

I took one step after another, though it seemed impossible. I placed one
foot before the other, drawing ever closer to him. I stumbled. "On your
hands and knees, then, come. Come to me." I clung to his robe. I had to
climb this great height if I wanted it. I reached up and took hold of
the crook of his right arm. I lifted myself, feeling the gold cloth
against me. I straightened my legs until I stood. Once again, I embraced
him; once again I found the fount. I drank, and drank, and drank.

   In a gilded gush the blood went down into my bowels. It went through
my legs and my arms. I was a Titan. I crushed him under me. "Give it to
me," I whispered. "Give it to me." The blood hovered on my lips and then
flooded down my throat.

   It was as if his cold marble hands had seized my heart. I could hear
it struggling, beating, the valves opening and closing, the wet sound of
his blood invading it, the swoosh and flap of the valves as they
welcomed it, utilizing it, my heart growing ever larger and more
powerful, my veins becoming like so many invincible metallic conduits of
this most potent fluid.

   I lay on the floor. He stood above me, and his hands were open to me.
"Get up, Amadeo. Come, come up, into my arms. Take it."

   I cried. I sobbed. My tears were red, and my hand was stained with
red. "Help me, Master."

"I do help you. Come, seek it out for yourself."

   I was on my feet with this new strength, as if all human limitations
had been loosened, as if they were bonds of rope or chain and had fallen
away. I sprang at him, pulling back his robe, the better to find the
wound.

"Make a new wound, Amadeo."

   I bit into the flesh, puncturing it, and the blood squirted over my
lips. I clapped my mouth against it. "Flow into me."

  My eyes closed. I saw the wild lands, the grass blowing, the sky blue.
My Father rode on and on with the small band behind him. Was I one of
them?

   "I prayed you'd escape!" he called out to me, laughing, "and so you
have. Damn you, Andrei. Damn you and your sharp tongue and your magical
painter's hands. Damn you, you foul-mouthed whelp, damn you." He laughed

and laughed, and rode on, the grass bending and falling for him.

   "Father, look!" I struggled to shout. I wanted him to see the stony
ruins of the castle. But my mouth was full of blood. They had been
right. Prince Feodor's fortress was destroyed, and he himself long gone.
My Father's horse reared up suddenly as it came to the first heap of
vine-covered stones.

   With a shock, I felt the marble floor beneath me, so wondrously warm.
I lay with both hands against it. I lifted myself. The swarming rosy
pattern was so dense, so deep, so wondrous, it was like water frozen to
make the finest stone. I could have looked into its depths forever.

"Rise up, Amadeo, once more."

   Oh, it was easy to make this climb, to reach for his arm and then his
shoulder. I broke the flesh of his neck. I drank. The blood washed
through me, once again revealing my entire form with a shock against the
blackness of my mind. I saw the boy's body that was mine, of arms and
legs, as with this form I breathed in the warmth and light around me, as
if all of me had become one great multipored organ for seeing, for
hearing, for breathing. I breathed with millions of minute and strong
tiny mouths.

The blood filled me so that I could take no more.

   I stood before my Master. In his face I saw but the hint of
weariness, but the smallest pain in his eyes. I saw for the first time
the true lines of his old humanity in his face, the soft inevitable
crinkles at the corners of his serenely folded eyes.

   The drapery of his robe glistened, the light traveling on it as the
cloth moved with his small gesture. He pointed. He pointed to the
painting of The Procession of the Magi.

   "Your soul and your physical body are now locked together forever,"
he said. "And through your vampiric senses, the sense of sight, and of
touch, and of smell, and of taste, you'll know all the world. Not from
turning away from it to the dark cells of the Earth, but through opening
your arms to endless glory will you perceive the absolute splendor of
God's creation and the miracles wrought, in His Divine Indulgence, by
the hands of men."

  The silk-clad multitudes of The Procession of the Magi appeared to
move. Once more I heard the horses' hooves on the soft earth, and the
shuffle of booted feet. Once more I thought I saw the distant hounds
leap on the mountainside. I saw the masses of flowered shrubbery wobble
with the press of the gilded procession against them; I saw petals fly
from the flowers. Marvelous animals frolicked in the thick wood. I saw
the proud Prince Lorenzo, astride his mount, turn his youthful head,
just as my Father had done, and look at me. On and on went the world
beyond him, the world with its white rocky cliffs, its hunters on their
brown steeds and its leaping prancing dogs.

   "It's gone forever, Master," I said, and how rounded and resonant was
my voice, responding to all that I beheld.

"What is that, my child?"

   "Russia, the world of the wild lands, the world of those dark

terrible cells within the moist Mother Earth."

   I turned around and around. Smoke rose from the wilderness of burning
candles. Wax crawled and dripped over the chased silver that held them,
dripping even to the spotless and shimmering floor. The floor was as the
sea, so transparent suddenly, so silken, and high above the painted
clouds in illimitable sweetest blue. It seemed a mist emanated from
these clouds, a warm summer mist made up of mingling land and sea.

   Once again, I looked at the painting. I moved towards it and threw
out my hands against it, and stared upwards at the white castles atop
the hills, at the delicate groomed trees, at the fierce sublime
wilderness that waited so patiently for the sluggish journey of my
crystal-clear gaze.

   "So much!" I whispered. No words could describe the deep colors of
brown and gold in the beard of the exotic magus, or the shadows at play
in the painted head of the white horse, or in the face of the balding
man who led him, or the grace of the arch-necked camels or the crush of
rich flowers beneath soundless feet.

   "I see it with all of me," I sighed. I closed my eyes and lay against
it, recalling perfectly all aspects as the dome of my mind became this
room itself, and the wall was there colored and painted by me. "I see it
without any omission. I see it," I whispered.

   I felt my Master's arms around my chest. I felt his kiss on my hair.

"Can you see again the glassy city?" he asked.

   "I can make it!" I cried. I let my head roll back against his chest.
I opened my eyes, and drew out of the riot of painting before me the
very colors I wanted, and made this metropolis of bubbling, leaping
glass rise in my imagination, until its towers pierced the sky. "It's
there, do you see it?"

   In a torrent of tumbling, laughing words I described it, the
glittering green and yellow and blue spires that sparkled and wavered in
the Heavenly light. "Do you see it?" I cried out.

"No. But you do," said my Master. "And that is more than enough."

In the dim chamber, we dressed in the black morn.

   Nothing was difficult, nothing had its old weight and resistance. It
seemed I only needed to run my fingers up the doublet to have it
buttoned.

  We hurried down the steps, which seemed to disappear beneath my feet,
and out into the night.

  To climb the slimy walls of a palazzo was nothing, to anchor my feet
over and over in the chinks of the stone, to poise on a tuft of fern and
vine as I reached for the bars of a window and finally pulled open the
grate, it was nothing, and how easily I let the heavy metal grid drop
into the glistening green water below. How sweet to see it sink, to see
the water splash around the descending weight, to see the glimmer of the
torches in the water.

"I fall into it."

"Come."

  Inside the chamber, the man rose from his desk. Against the cold, he
had wrapped his neck in wool. His dark blue robe was banded in pearly
gold. Rich man, banker. Friend of the Florentine, not mourning his loss
over these many pages of vellum, smelling of black ink but calculating
the inevitable gains, all partners murdered by the blade and by poison,
it seemed, in a private banquet room.

  Did he guess now that we had done it, the red-cloaked man and the
auburn-haired boy who came through his high fourth-story window in this
frozen winter night?

  I caught him as if he were the love of my young life, and unwound the
wool from around the artery where I would feed.

   He begged me to stop, to name my price. How still my Master looked,
watching only me, as the man begged and I ignored him, merely feeling
for this large pulsing, irresistible vein.

   "Your life, Sir, I must have it," I whispered. "The blood of thieves
is strong, isn't it, Sir?"

   "Oh, child," he cried, all resolve shattering, "does God send His
justice in such an unlikely form?"

  It was sharp, pungent and strangely rank this human blood, spiked with
the wine he'd drunk and the herbs of the foods he'd eaten, and almost
purple in the light of his lamps as it flowed over my fingers before I
could lap them with my tongue.

At the first draught I felt his heart stop.

"Ease up, Amadeo," whispered my Master.

I let go and the heart recovered.

   "That's it, feed on it slowly, slowly, letting the heart pump the
blood to you, yes, yes, and gently with your fingers that he not suffer
unduly, for he suffers the worst fate he can know and that is to know
that he dies."

   We walked along the narrow quay together. No need anymore to keep my
balance, though my gaze was lost in the depths of the singing, lapping
water, gaining its movement through its many stonewalled connections
from the faraway sea. I wanted to feel the wet green moss on the stones.

   We stood in a small piazza, deserted, before the angled doors of a
high stone church. They were bolted now. All windows were blinded, all
doors locked. Curfew. Quiet.

   "Once more, lovely one, for the strength it will give you," said my
Master, and his lethal fangs pierced me, as his hands held me captive.

   "Would you trick me? Would you kill me?" I whispered, as I felt
myself again helpless, no preternatural effort that I could summon
strong enough to escape his grasp.

   The blood was pulled out of me in a tidal wave that left my arms

dangling and shaking, my feet dancing as if I were a hanged man. I
struggled to remain conscious. I pushed against him. But the flow
continued, out of me, out of all my fibers and into him.

"Now, once again, Amadeo, take it back from me."

   He dealt one fine blow to my chest. I almost toppled off my feet. I
was so weak, I fell forward, only at the last grasping for his cloak. I
pulled myself up and locked my left arm around his neck. He stepped
back, straightening, making it hard for me. But I was too determined,
too challenged and too determined to make a mockery of his lessons.

   "Very well, sweet Master," I said as I tore at his skin once again.
"I have you, and will have every drop of you, Sir, unless you are quick,
most quick." Only then did I realize! I too had tiny fangs!

   He started to laugh softly, and it heightened my pleasure, that this
which I fed upon should laugh beneath these new fangs.

   With all my might I sought to tug his heart out of his chest. I heard
him cry out and then laugh in amazement. I drew and drew on his blood,
swallowing with a hoarse disgraceful sound.

   "Come on, let me hear you cry out again!" I whispered, sucking the
blood greedily, widening the gash with my teeth, my sharpened,
lengthened teeth, these fang teeth that were now mine and made for this
slaughter. "Come on, beg for mercy, Sir!"

His laughter was sweet.

   I took his blood swallow after swallow, glad and proud at his
helpless laughing, at the fact that he had fallen down on his knees in
the square and that I had him still, and he must now raise his arm to
push me away.

"I can't drink anymore!" I declared. I lay back on the stones.

 The frozen sky was black and studded with the white blazing stars. I
stared at it, deliciously aware of the stone beneath me, of the hardness
under my back and my head. No care now about the soil, the damp, the
threat of disease. No care now whether the crawling things of the night
came near. No care now what men might think who peeped from their
windows. No care now for the lateness of the hour. Look at me, stars.
Look at me, as I look at you.

Silent and glistering, these tiny eyes of Heaven.

   I began to die. A withering pain commenced in my stomach, then moved
to my bowels.

   "Now, all that's left of a mortal boy will leave you," my Master
said. "Don't be afraid."

   "No more music?" I whispered. I rolled over and put my arms around my
Master, who lay beside me, his head resting on his elbow. He gathered me
to him.

"Shall I sing to you a lullaby?" he said softly.

 I moved away from him. Foul fluid had begun to flow from me. I felt an

instinctive shame, but this quite slowly vanished. He picked me up,
easily as always, and pushed my face into his neck. The wind rushed
around us.

 Then I felt the cold water of the Adriatic, and I found myself
tumbling on the unmistakable swell of the sea. The sea was salty and
delicious and held no menace. I turned over and over, and finding myself
alone, tried to get my bearings. I was far out, near to the island of
the Lido. I looked back to the main island, and I could see through the
great congregation of ships at anchor the blazing torches of the Palazzo
Ducale, with a vision that was awesomely clear.

 The mingled voices of the dark port rose, as if I were secretly
swimming amongst the ships, though I was not.

 What a remarkable power, to hear these voices, to be able to hone in
on one particular voice and hear its early-morning mumblings, and then
to pitch my hearing to yet another and let other words sink in.

 I floated under the sky for a while, until all the pain was gone from
me. I felt cleansed, and I didn't want to be alone. I turned over and
effortlessly swam towards the harbor, moving under the surface of the
water when I neared the ships.

 What astonished me now was that I could see beneath the water! There
was enough life for my vampiric eyes to see the huge anchors lodged in
the mushy bottom of the lagoon, and to see the curved bottoms of the
galleys. It was an entire underwater universe. I wanted to explore it
further, but I heard my Master's voice-not a telepathic voice, as we
would call it now, but his audible voice-calling me very softly to
return to the piazza where he waited for me.

   I peeled off my rank clothes and climbed out of the water naked,
hurrying to him in the cold darkness, delighted that the chill itself
meant little. When I saw him I spread out my arms and smiled.

   He held a fur cloak in his arms, which he opened now to receive me,
rubbing my hair dry with it and winding it around me.

   "You feel your new freedom. Your bare feet are not hurt by the deep
cold of the stones. If you're cut, your resilient skin will heal
instantly, and no small crawling creature of the dark will produce
revulsion in you. They can't hurt you. Disease can't hurt you." He
covered me with kisses. "The most pestilential blood will only feed you,
as your preternatural body cleanses it and absorbs it. You are a
powerful creature, and deep in here? In your chest, which I touch now
with my hand, there is your heart, your human heart."

   "Is it really so, Master?" I asked. I was exhilarated, I was playful.
"Why so human still?"

   "Amadeo, have you found me inhuman? Have you found me cruel?"

   My hair had shaken off the water, drying almost instantly. We walked
now, arm in arm, the heavy fur cloak covering me, out of the square.

   When I didn't answer, he stopped and embraced me again and began his
hungry kisses.

"You love me," I said, "as I am now, even more than before."

   "Oh, yes," he said. He hugged me roughly and kissed my throat all
over, and my shoulders, and began to kiss my chest. "I can't hurt you
now, I can't snuff out your life with an accidental embrace. You're
mine, of my flesh and of my blood."

   He stopped. He was crying. He didn't want me to see. He turned away
when I tried to catch his face with my impertinent hands.

"Master, I love you," I said.

   "Pay attention," he said brushing me off, obviously impatient with
his tears. He pointed to the sky. "You'll always know when morning's
coming, if you pay attention. Do you feel it? Do you hear the birds?
There are in all parts of the world those birds who sing right before
dawn."

 A thought came to me, dark and horrid, that one of the things I had
missed in the deep Monastery of the Caves under Kiev was the sound of
birds. Out in the wild grasses, hunting with my Father, riding from
copse to copse of trees, I had loved the song of the birds. We had never
been too long in the miserable riverside hovels of Kiev without those
forbidden journeys into the wild lands from which so many didn't return.

 But that was gone. I had all of sweet Italy around me, the sweet
Serenissima. I had my Master, and the great voluptuous magic of this
transformation.

   "For this I rode into the wild lands," I whispered. "For this he took
me out of the Monastery on that last day."

 My Master looked at me sadly. "I hope so," he said. "What I know of
your past, I learnt from your mind when it was open to me, but it's
closed now, closed because I've made you a vampire, the same as I am,
and we can never know each other's minds. We're too close, the blood we
share makes a deafening roar in our ears when we try to talk in silence
to one another, and so I let go forever of those awful images of that
underground Monastery which flashed so brilliantly in your thoughts, but
always with agony, always with near despair."

   "Yes, despair, and all that is gone like the pages of a book torn
loose and thrown into the wind. Just like that, gone."

   He hurried me along. We were not going home. It was another way
through the back alleys.

   "We go now to our cradle," he said, "which is our crypt, our bed
which is our grave."

 We entered an old dilapidated palazzo, tenanted only with a few
sleeping poor. I didn't like it. I had been brought up by him on luxury.
But we soon entered a cellar, a seeming impossibility in rank and watery
Venice, but a cellar it was, indeed. We made our way down stone stairs,
past thick bronze doors, which men alone could not open, until in the
inky blackness we had found the final room.

   "Here's a trick," my Master whispered, "which some night you yourself
will be strong enough to work."

   I heard a riot of crackling and a small blast, and a great flaring

torch blazed in his hand. He had lighted it with no more than his mind.

   "With each decade you'll grow stronger, and then with each century,
and you will discover many times in your long life that your powers have
made a magical leap. Test them carefully, and protect what you discover.
Use cleverly all that you discover. Never shun any power, for that's as
foolish as a man shunning his strength."

   I nodded, staring spellbound at the flames. I had never seen such
colors in simple fire before, and I felt no aversion to it, though I
knew that it was the one thing that could destroy me. He had said so,
had he not?

He made a gesture. I should regard the room.

   What a splendid chamber it was. It was paved in gold! Even its
ceiling was of gold. Two stone sarcophagi stood in the middle of it,
each graced with a carved figure in the old style, that is, severe and
more solemn than natural; and as I drew closer, I saw that these figures
were helmeted knights, in long tunics, with heavy broadswords carved
close to their flanks, their gloved hands clasped in prayer, their eyes
closed in eternal sleep. Each had been gilded, and plated with silver,
and set with countless tiny gems. The belts of the knights were set with
amethyst. Sapphires adorned the necks of their tunics. Topaz gleamed in
the scabbards of their swords.

   "Is this not a fortune to tempt a thief?" I asked. "Lying as it does
here beneath this ruined house?"

He laughed outright.

   "You're teaching me to be cautious already?" he asked, smiling. "What
back talk! No thief can gain access here. You didn't measure your own
strength when you opened the doors. Look at the bolt I've closed behind
us, since you are so concerned. Now see if you can lift the lid of that
coffin. Go ahead. See if your strength meets your nerve."

   "I didn't mean it to be back talk," I protested. "Thank God you're
smiling." I lifted the lid and then moved the lower part of it to one
side. It was nothing to me, yet I knew this was heavy stone. "Ah, I
see," I said meekly. I gave him a radiant and innocent smile. The inside
was cushioned in damask of royal purple.

   "Get into this crib, my child," he said. "Don't be afraid as you wait
for the rise of the sun. When it comes you'll sleep soundly enough."

"Can I not sleep with you?"

   "No, here in this bed which I have long ago prepared for you, this is
where you belong. I have my own narrow place there next to you, which is
not big enough for two. But you are mine now, mine, Ama-deo. Vouchsafe
me one last bevy of kisses, ah, sweet, yes, sweet-."

"Master, don't let me ever make you angry. Don't let me ever-."

"No, Amadeo, be my challenger, be my questioner, be my bold and
ungrateful pupil." He looked faintly sad. He pushed me gently. He
gestured to the coffin. The purple satin damask shimmered.

"And so I lie in it," I whispered, "so young."

   I saw the shadow of pain in his face after I'd said this. I regretted
it. I wanted to say something to undo it, but he gestured that I must go
on.

   Oh, how cold this was, cushions be damned, and how hard. I moved the
lid into place above me and lay still, listening, listening to the sound
of the torch snuffed, and to the grinding of stone on stone as he opened
his own grave.

I heard his voice:

"Good night, my young love, my child love, my son," he said.

   I let my body go limp. How delicious was this simple relaxation. How
new were all things.

   Far away in the land of my birth, the monks chanted in the Monastery
of the Caves.

   Sleepily, I reflected on all I'd remembered. I had gone home to Kiev.
I had made of my memories a tableau to teach me all that I might know.
And in the last moments of nighttime consciousness, I said farewell to
them forever, farewell to their beliefs and their restraints.

   I envisaged The Procession of the Magi splendidly glowing on the
Master's wall, the procession which would be mine to study when the sun
set again. It seemed to me in my wild and passionate soul, in my newborn
vampiric heart, that the Magi had come not only for Christ's birth but
for my rebirth as well.

IF I HAD THOUGHT my transformation into a vampire meant the end of my
tutelage or apprenticeship to Marius, I was quite wrong. I wasn't
immediately set free to wallow in the joys of my new powers.

   The night after my metamorphosis, my education began in earnest. I
was to be prepared now not for a temporal life but for eternity.

   My Master gave me to know that he had been created a vampire almost
fifteen hundred years ago, and that there were members of our kind all
over the world. Secretive, suspicious and often miserably lonely, the
wanderers of the night, as my Master called them, were often ill
prepared for immortality and made nothing of their existence but a
string of dreary disasters until despair consumed them and they
immolated themselves through some ghastly bonfire, or by going into the
light of the sun.

   As for the very old, those who like my Master had managed to
withstand the passage of empires and epochs, they were for the most part
misanthropes, seeking for themselves cities in which they could reign
supreme among mortals, driving off fledglings who attempted to share
their territory, even if it meant destroying creatures of their own
kind.

   Venice was the undisputed territory of my Master, his hunting
preserve, and his own private arena in which he could preside over the
games which he had chosen as significant for him in this time of life.

   "There is nothing that will not pass," he said, "except you yourself.
You must listen to what I say because my lessons are first and foremost

lessons in survival; the garnishes will come later on."

   The primary lesson was that we slay only "the evildoer." This had
once been, in the foggiest centuries of ancient time, a solemn
commission to blood drinkers, and indeed there had been a dim religion
surrounding us in antique pagan days in which the vampires had been
worshiped as bringers of justice to those who had done wrong.

   "We shall never again let such superstition surround us and the
mystery of our powers. We are not infallible. We have no commission from
God. We wander the Earth like the giant felines of the great jungles,
and have no more claim upon those we kill than any creature that seeks
to live.

   "But it is an infallible principle that the slaying of the innocent
will drive you mad. Believe me when I tell you that for your peace of
mind you must feed on the evil, you must learn to love them in all their
filth and degeneracy, and you must thrive on the visions of their evil
that will inevitably fill your heart and soul during the kill.

   "Kill the innocent and you will sooner or later come to guilt, and
with it you will come to impotence and finally despair. You may think
you are too ruthless and too cold for such. You may feel superior to
human beings and excuse your predatory excesses on the ground that you
do but seek the necessary blood for your own life. But it won't work in
the long run.

   "In the long run, you will come to know that you are more human than
monster, all that is noble in you derives from your humanity, and your
enhanced nature can only lead you to value humans all the more. You'll
come to pity those you slay, even the most unredeemable, and you will
come to love humans so desperately that there will be nights when hunger
will seem far preferable to you than the blood repast."

   I accepted this wholeheartedly, and quickly plunged with my Master
into the dark underbelly of Venice, the wild world of taverns and vice
which I had never, as the mysterious velvet-clad "apprentice" of Marius
De Romanus, really seen before. Of course I knew drinking places, I knew
fashionable courtesans such as our beloved Bianca, but I really didn't
know the thieves and murderers of Venice, and it was on these that I
fed.

  Very soon, I understood what my Master meant when he said that I must
develop a taste for evil and maintain it. The visions from my victims
became stronger for me with every kill. I began to see brilliant colors
when I killed. In fact, I could sometimes see these colors dancing
around my victims before I ever even closed in. Some men seem to walk in
red-tinged shadows, and others to emanate a fiery orange light. The
anger of my meanest and most tenacious victims was often a brilliant
yellow which blinded me, searing me, as it were, both when I first
attacked and while I drank the victim dry of all blood.

   I was at the onset a dreadfully violent and impulsive killer. Having
been set down by Marius in a nest of assassins, I went to work with a
clumsy fury, drawing out my prey from the tavern or the flophouse,
cornering him on the quay and then tearing open his throat as if I were
a wild dog. I drank greedily often rupturing the victim's heart. Once
the heart is gone, once the man is dead, there is nothing to pump the
blood into you. And so it is not so good.

   But my Master, for all his lofty speeches on the virtues of humans,
and his adamant insistence on our own responsibilities, nevertheless
taught me to kill with finesse.

   "Take it slowly," he said. We walked along the narrow banks of the
canals where such existed. We traveled by gondola listening with our
preternatural ears for conversation that seemed meant for us. "And half
the time, you needn't enter a house in order to draw out a victim. Stand
outside of it, read the man's thoughts, throw him some silent bait. If
you read his thoughts, it is almost a certainty that he can receive your
message. You can lure without words. You can exert an irresistible pull.
When he comes out to you, then take him.

   "And there is never any need for him to suffer, or for blood actually
to be spilt. Embrace your victim, love him if you will. Fondle him
slowly and sink your teeth with caution. Then feast as slowly as you
can. This way his heart will see you through.

   "As for the visions, and these colors you speak of, seek to learn
from them. Let the victim in his dying tell you what he can about life
itself. If images of his long life trip before you, observe them, or
rather savor them. Yes, savor them. Devour them slowly as you do his
blood. As for the colors, let them pervade you. Let the entire
experience inundate you. That is, be both active and utterly passive.
Make love to your victim. And listen always for the actual moment when
the heart ceases to beat. You will feel an undeniably orgiastic
sensation at this moment, but it can be overlooked.

   "Dispose of the body after, or make certain that you have licked away
all sign of the puncture wounds in the victim's throat. Just a little
bit of your blood on the tip of your tongue will accomplish this. In
Venice dead bodies are common. You need not take such pains. But when we
hunt in the outlying villages, then often you may have to bury the
remains."

I was eager for all these lessons. That we hunted together was a
magnificent pleasure. I came to realize quickly enough that Marius had
been clumsy in the murders he had committed for me to witness before I'd
been transformed. I knew then, as perhaps I've made plain in this story,
that he wanted me to feel pity for these victims; he wanted me to
experience horror. He wanted me to see death as an abomination. But due
to my youth, my devotion to him and the violence done me in my short
mortal life, I had not responded as he hoped.

   Whatever the case, he was now a much more skilled killer. We often
took the same victim, together, I drinking from the throat of our
captive, while he fed from the man's wrist. Sometimes he delighted in
holding the victim tightly for me while I drank all of the blood.

   Being new, I was thirsty every night. I could have lived for three or
more without killing, yes, and sometimes I did, but by the fifth night
of denying myself-this was put to the test-I was too weak to rise from
the sarcophagus. So what this meant was that, when and if I were ever on
my own, I must kill at least every fourth night.

  My first few months were an orgy. Each kill seemed more thrilling,
more paralyzingly delicious than the one which had gone before. The mere
sight of a bared throat could bring about in me such a state of arousal
that I became like an animal, incapable of language or restraint. When I
opened my eyes in the cold stony darkness, I envisioned human flesh. I

could feel it in my naked hands and I wanted it, and the night could
have no other events for me until I had laid my powerful hands on that
one which would be the sacrifice to my need.

   For long moments after the kill, sweet throbbing sensations passed
through me as the warm fragrant blood found all the corners of my body,
as it pumped its magnificent heat into my face.

   This, and this alone, was enough to absorb me utterly, young as I
was.

   But Marius had no intention of letting me wallow in blood, the hasty
young predator, with no other thought but to glut himself night after
night.

   "You must really begin to learn history and philosophy and the law in
earnest," he told me. "You are not destined for the University of Padua
now. You are destined to endure."

   So after our stealthy missions were completed, and we returned to the
warmth of the palazzo, he forced me to my books. He wanted some distance
between me and Riccardo and the others anyway, lest they become
suspicious of the change that had occurred.

In fact, he told me they "knew" about the change whether they realized
it or not. Their bodies knew that I was no longer human, though it might
take their minds some time to accept the fact.

   "Show them only courtesy and love, only complete indulgence, but keep
your distance," Marius told me. "By the time they realize the
unthinkable is the fact, you will have assured them that you are no
enemy to them, that you are indeed Amadeo still, whom they love, and
that though you have been changed, you yourself have not changed towards
them."

   I understood this. At once I felt a greater love for Riccardo. I felt
it for all of the boys.

   "But Master," I asked, "don't you ever become impatient with them,
that they think more slowly, that they are so clumsy? I love them, yes,
but surely you see them in a more pejorative light even than I do."

   "Amadeo," he said softly, "they are all going to die." His face was
charged with grief.

   I felt it immediately and totally, which was always the way with
feelings now. They came on in a torrent and taught their lessons at
once.

They are all going to die. Yes, and I am immortal.

   After that, I could only be patient with them, and indeed, I indulged
myself in the manner in which I looked at them and studied them, never
letting them know it, but glorying in all the details of them as if they
were exotic because ... they were going to die.

   There is too much to describe, too much. I can't find a way to put
down all that became clear to me in the first few months alone. And
there was nothing made known to me in that time which was not deepened
afterwards.

   I saw process everywhere I looked; I smelled corruption, but I also
beheld the mystery of growth, the magic of things blossoming and
ripening, and in fact all process, whether towards maturity or towards
the grave, delighted and enthralled me, except, that is, the
disintegration of the human mind.

   My study of government and law was more of a challenge. Though
reading was accomplished with infinitely greater speed and near
instantaneous comprehension of syntax, I had to force myself to be
interested in such things as the history of Roman Law from ancient
times, and the great code of the Emperor Justinian, called the Corpus
Juris Civilis, which my Master thought to be one of the finest codes of
law ever written.

   "The world is only getting better," Marius instructed me. "With each
century, civilization becomes more enamored of justice, ordinary men
make greater strides towards sharing the wealth which was once the booty
of the powerful, and art benefits by every increase in freedom, becoming
ever more imaginative, ever more inventive and ever more beautiful."

   I could understand this only theoretically. I had no faith or
interest in law. In fact, I had a total contempt in the abstract for my
Master's ideas. What I mean is, I didn't have contempt for him, but I
had an underlying contempt for law and for legal institutions and
governmental institutions that was so total that I did not even
understand it myself.

My Master said that he understood it.

   "You were born in a dark savage land," he said. "I wish I could take
you back two hundred years in time to the years before Batu, the son of
Genghis Khan, sacked the magnificent city of Kiev Rus, to the time when
indeed the domes of its Santa Sofia were golden, and its people full of
ingenuity and hope."

   "I heard ad nauseam of that old glory," I said quietly, not wanting
to anger him. "I was stuffed with tales of the olden times when I was a
boy. In the miserable wooden house in which we lived, only yards from
the frozen river, I listened to that rot as I shivered by the fire. Rats
lived in our house. There was nothing beautiful in it but the ikons, and
my Father's songs. There was nothing but depravity there, and we speak
now, as you know, of an immense land. You cannot know how big Russia is
unless you have been there, unless you have traveled as I did with my
Father into the bitter-cold northern forests to Moscow, or to Novgorod,
or east to Cracow." I broke off. "I don't want to think of those times
or that place," I said. "In Italy one cannot dream of enduring such a
place."

   "Amadeo, the evolution of law, of government, is different in each
land and with each people. I chose Venice, as I told you long ago,
because it is a great Republic, and because its people are firmly
connected to the Mother Earth by the simple fact that they are all
merchants and engaged in trade. I love the city of Florence because its
great family, the Medici, are bankers, not idle titled aristocrats who
scorn all effort in the name of what they believe has been given them by
God. The great cities of Italy are made by men who work, men who create,
men who do, and on account of this, there is a greater compassion to all
systems, and infinitely greater opportunity for men and women in all
walks of life."

I was discouraged by all this talk. What did it matter?

   "Amadeo, the world now is yours," my Master said. "You must look at
the larger movements of history. The state of the world will begin in
time to oppress you, and you will find, as all immortals do, that you
cannot simply shut your heart on it, especially not you."

   "Why so?" I asked a little crossly. "I think I can shut my eyes. What
do I care if a man is a banker or a merchant? What do I care whether I
live in a city which builds its own merchant fleet? I can look forever
on the paintings in this palazzo, Master. I have not yet begun to see
all the details in The Procession of the Magi, and there are so many
others. And what of all the paintings in this city?"

   He shook his head. "The study of painting will lead you to the study
of man, and the study of man will lead you to lament or celebrate the
state of the world of men."

   I didn't believe it, but I was not allowed to change the curriculum.
I studied as I was told.

   Now, my Master had many gifts which I did not possess, but which he
told me I would develop in time. He could make fire with his mind, but
only if conditions were optimum-that is, he could ignite a torch already
prepared with pitch. He could scale a building effortlessly with only a
few quick handholds on its windowsills, propelling himself upwards with
graceful darting motions, and he could swim to any depth of the sea.

   Of course his vampiric vision and his hearing were far more acute and
powerful than my own, and while voices intruded upon me, he knew how to
emphatically shut them out. I had to learn this, and indeed I worked at
it desperately, for there were times when all Venice seemed nothing but
a cacophony of voices and prayers.

   But the one great power he possessed which I did not possess was that
he could take to the air and cover immense distances with great speed.
This had been demonstrated to me many times, but almost always, when he
had lifted me and carried me, he had made me cover my face, or he had
forced my head down so that I couldn't see where we went and how.

   Why he was so reticent about it, I couldn't understand. Finally, one
night when he refused to transport us as if by magic to the Island of
the Lido so that we could watch one of the nighttime ceremonies of
fireworks and torch-lit ships on the water, I pressed the question.

   "It's a frightening power," he said coolly. "It's frightening to be
unanchored from the Earth. In the early stages, it is not without its
blunders and disasters. As one acquires skill, rising smoothly into the
highest atmosphere, it becomes chilling not only to the body but to the
soul. It seems not preternatural, but supernatural." I could see he
suffered over this. He shook his head. "It is the one talent which seems
genuinely inhuman. I cannot learn from humans how best to use it. With
every other talent, humans are my teacher. The human heart is my school.
Not so with this. I become the magician; I become the witch or the
warlock. It's seductive, and one could become its slave."

"But how so?" I asked him.

  He was at a loss. He didn't even want to talk about it. Finally he

became just a little impatient.

  "Sometimes, Amadeo, you grill me with your questions. You ask if I owe
you this tutelage. Believe me, I do not."

   "Master you made me, and you insist on my obedience. Why would I read
Abelard's History of My Calamities and the writings of Duns Sco-tus of
Oxford University if you didn't make me do it?" I stopped. I remembered
my Father and how I never stopped throwing acidic words at him, fast
answers and slurs.

I became discouraged. "Master," I said. "Just explain it to me."

He made a gesture as if to say "Oh, so simple, eh?"

  "All right," he went on. "It's this way. I can go very high in the
air, and I can move very fast. I cannot often penetrate the clouds.
They're frequently above me. But I can travel so fast that the world
itself becomes a blur. I find myself in strange lands when I descend.
And I tell you, for all its magic, this is a deeply jarring and
disturbing thing. I am lost sometimes, dizzy, unsure of my goals or my
will to live, after I make use of this power. Transitions come too
quickly; that's it, perhaps. I never spoke of this to anyone, and now I
speak to you, and you're a boy, and you can't begin to understand."

I didn't.

  But within a very short time, it was his wish that we undertake a
longer journey than any we'd made before. It was only a matter of hours,
but to my utter astonishment, we traveled between sundown and early
evening to the far city of Florence itself.

  There, set down in a wholly different world than that of the Veneto,
walking quietly amongst an entirely different breed of Italian, into
churches and palaces of a different style, I understood for the first
time what he meant.

   Understand, I'd seen Florence before, traveling as Marius's mortal
apprentice, with a group of the others. But my brief glimpse was nothing
to what I saw as a vampire. I had the measuring instruments now of a
minor god.

   But it was night. The city lay under the usual curfew. And the stones
of Florence seemed darker, more drab, suggestive of a fortress, the
streets narrow and gloomy, as they were not brightened by luminescent
ribbons of water as were our own. The palaces of Florence lacked the
extravagant Moorish ornament of Venice's showplaces, the high-gloss
fantastical stone facades. They enclosed their splendor, as is more
common to Italian cities. Yet the city was rich, dense and full of
delights for the eye.

   It was after all Florence-the capital of the man called Lorenzo the
Magnificent, the compelling figure who dominated Marius's copy of the
great mural which I had seen on the night of my dark rebirth, a man who
had died only a few years before.

   We found the city unlawfully busy, though it was quite dark, with
groups of men and women lingering about in the hard paved streets, and a
sinister quality of restlessness hung about the Piazza della Signo-ria,
which was one of the most important of all the many squares of the town.

   An execution had taken place that day, hardly an uncommon occurrence
in Florence, or Venice for that matter. It had been a burning. I smelled
wood and charred flesh though all the evidence had been cleared before
night.

   I had a natural distaste for such things, which not everyone has, by
the way, and I edged towards the scene cautiously, not wishing with
these heightened senses to be jarred by some horrible remnant of
cruelty.

   Marius had always cautioned us as boys not to "enjoy" these
spectacles, but to place ourselves mentally in the position of the
victim if we were to learn the maximum from what we saw.

   As you know from history, the crowds at executions were often
merciless and unruly, taunting the victim sometimes, I think, out of
fear. We, the boys of Marius, had always found it terribly difficult to
cast our mental lot with the man being hanged or burnt. In sum, he'd
taken all the fun out of it for us.

   Of course, as these rituals happened almost always by day, Marius
himself had never been present.

  Now, as we moved into the great Piazza della Signoria, I could see
that he was displeased by the thin ash that still hung in the air, and
the vile smells.

   I also noticed that we slipped past others easily, two dark-draped
swiftly moving figures. Our feet scarce made a sound. It was the vam-
piric gift that we could move so stealthily, shifting quickly out of
sudden and occasional mortal observation with an instinctive grace.

   "It's as though we're invisible," I said to Marius, "as if nothing
can hurt us, because we don't really belong here and will soon take our
leave." I looked up at the grim battlements that fronted on the Square.

"Yes, but we are not invisible, remember it," he whispered.

   "But who died here today? People are full of torment and fear.
Listen. There is satisfaction, and there is weeping."

He didn't answer.

I grew uneasy.

   "What is it? It can't be any common thing," I said. "The city is too
vigilant and unquiet."

   "It's their great reformer, Savonarola," Marius said. "He died on
this day, hanged, and then burnt here. Thank God, he was already dead
before the flames rose."

   "You wish mercy for Savonarola?" I asked. I was puzzled. This man, a
great reformer in the eyes of some perhaps, had always been damned by
all I knew. He had condemned all pleasures of the senses, denying any
validity to the very school in which my Master thought all things were
to be learnt.

   "I wish mercy for any man," said Marius. He beckoned for me to

follow, and we moved towards the nearby street.

We headed away from the grisly place.

   "Even this one, who persuaded Botticelli to heap his own paintings on
the Bonfires of the Vanities?" I asked. "How many times have you pointed
to the details of your own copies of Botticelli's work to show me some
graceful beauty you wanted me to never forget?"

   "Are you going to argue with me until the end of the world!" said
Marius. "I'm pleased that my blood has given you new strength in every
aspect, but must you question every word that falls from my lips?" He
threw me a furious glance, letting the light of nearby torches fully
illuminate his half-mocking smile. "There are some students who believe
in this method, and that greater truths rise out of the continued strife
between teacher and pupil. But not me! I believe you need to let my
lessons settle in quiet at least for the space of five minutes in your
mind before you begin your counterattack."

"You try to be angry with me but you can't."

   "Oh, what a muddle!" he said as if he were cursing. He walked fast
ahead of me.

   The small Florentine street was dreary, like a passageway in a great
house rather than a city street. I longed for the breezes of Venice, or
rather, my body did, out of habit. I was quite fascinated to be here.

   "Don't be so provoked," I said. "Why did they turn on Savonarola?"

   "Give men enough time and they'll turn on anyone. He claimed to have
been a prophet, divinely inspired by God, and that these were the Last
Days, and this is the oldest most tiresome Christian complaint in the
world, believe you me. The Last Days! Christianity is a religion based
on the notion that we are living in the Last Days! It's a religion
fueled by the ability of men to forget all the blunders of the past, and
get dressed once more for the Last Days."

   I smiled, but bitterly. I wanted to articulate a strong presentiment,
that we were always in the Last Days, and it was inscribed in our
hearts, because we were mortals, when quite suddenly and totally I
realized that I was no longer mortal, except insofar as the world itself
was mortal.

   And it seemed I understood more viscerally than ever the atmosphere
of purposeful gloom which had overhung my childhood in far-off Kiev. I
saw again the muddy catacombs, and the half-buried monks who had cheered
me on to become one of them.

   I shook it off, and now how bright Florence seemed as we came into
the broad torch-lighted Piazza del Duomo-before the great Cathedral of
Santa Maria del Fiore.

   "Ah, my pupil does listen now and then," Marius was saying to me in
an ironic voice. "Yes, I am more than glad that Savonarola is no more.
But to rejoice at the end of something is not to approve the endless
parade of cruelty that is human history. I wish it were otherwise.
Public sacrifice becomes grotesque in every respect. It dulls the senses
of the populace. In this city, above all others, it's a spectacle. The
Florentines enjoy it, as we do our Regattas and Processions. So

Savonarola is dead. Well, if any mortal man asked for it, it was
Savonarola, predicting as he did the end of the world, damning princes
from his pulpit, leading great painters to immolate their works. The
hell with him."

   "Master, look, the Baptistery, let's go, let's look at the doors. The
piazza's almost empty. Come on. It's our chance to look at the
bronzes." I tugged on his sleeve.

   He followed me, and he stopped his muttering, but he was not himself.

   What I wanted so to see is work that you can see in Florence now, and
in fact, almost every treasure of this city and of Venice which I've
described here you can see now. You have only to go there. The panels in
the door which were done by Lorenzo Ghiberti were my delight, but there
was also older work done by Andrea Pisano, portraying the life of St.
John the Baptist, and this, I didn't intend to overlook.

   So keen was the vampiric vision that as I studied these various
detailed bronze pictures, I could hardly keep from sighing with
pleasure.

 This moment is so clear. I think that I believed, then, that nothing
ever could hurt me or make me sad again, that I had discovered the balm
of salvation in the vampiric blood, and the strange thing is, that as I
dictate this story now, I think the same thing once more.

 Though unhappy now, and possibly forever, I believe again in the
paramount importance of the flesh. My mind wanders to the words of D. H.
Lawrence, the twentieth-century writer, who in his writings on Italy,
recalled Blake's image of the "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright / In the
forests of the night." Lawrence's words are:

   This is the supremacy of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes
transfigured into a magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.

   This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the
transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh.

   But I have done a risky thing here for a storyteller. I have left my
plot, as I'm sure The Vampire Lestat (who is more skilled perhaps than I
am, and so in love with the image of William Blake's tiger in the night,
and who has, whether he cares to admit it or not, used the tiger in his
work in the very same way) would point out to me, and I must speedily
return to this moment in the Piazza del Duomo, where I left myself of
long ago standing, side by side with Marius, looking at the burnished
genius of Ghiberti, as he sings in bronze of Sybils and saints.

We took our time with these things. Marius said softly that next to
Venice, Florence was the city of his choice, for here so much had
magnificently flowered.

   "But I can't be without the sea, not even here," he confided. "And as
you see all around you, this city hugs her treasures close with shadowy
vigilance, whereas in Venice, the very facades of our palaces are
offered up in gleaming stone beneath the moon to Almighty God."

   "Master, do we serve Him?" I pressed. "I know you condemn the monks
who brought me up, you condemn the ravings of Savonarola, but do you
mean to guide me by another route back to the Very Same God?"

   "That's just it, Amadeo, I do," said Marius, "and I don't mean as the
pagan I am to admit it so easily, lest its complexity be misunderstood.
But I do. I find God in the blood. I find God in the flesh. I find it no
accident that the mysterious Christ should reside forever for His
followers in the Flesh and Blood within the Bread of the
Transubtantiation."

   I was so moved by these words! It seemed the very sun I had forever
forsworn had come again to brighten the night.

   We slipped into the side door of the darkened Cathedral called the
Duomo. I stood gazing over the long vista of its stone floor, towards
the altar.

   Was it possible that I could have the Christ in a new way? Perhaps I
had not after all renounced Him forever. I tried to speak these troubled
thoughts to my Master. Christ... in a new way I couldn't explain it, and
said finally:

"I stumble with my words."

   "Amadeo, we all stumble, and so do all those who enter history. The
concept of a Great Being stumbles down the centuries; His words and
those principles attributed to Him do tumble after Him; and so the
Christ is snatched up in His wandering by the preaching puritan on one
side, the muddy starving hermit on the other, the gilded Lorenzo de'
Medici here who would celebrate his Lord in gold and paint and mosaic
stone."

"But is Christ the Living Lord?" I whispered.

No answer.

   My soul hit a pitch of agony. Marius took my hand, and said that we
go now, stealthily to the Monastery of San Marco.

   "This is the sacred house that gave up Savonarola," he said. "We'll
slip into it unbeknownst to its pious inhabitants."

   We again traveled as if by magic. I felt only the Master's strong
arms, and did not even see the frame of the doors as we exited and made
our way to this other place.

   I knew he meant to show me the work of the artist called Fra
Angelico, long dead, who had labored all his life in this very
Monastery, a painter monk, as I perhaps had been destined to be, far
away in the lightless Monastery of the Caves.

   Within seconds, we set down soundlessly on the moist grass of the
square cloister of San Marco, the serene garden enclosed by Miche-
lozzo's loggias, secure within its walls.

   At once I heard many prayers reach my inner vampiric hearing,
desperate agitated prayers of the brothers who had been loyal or
sympathetic to Savonarola. I put my hands to my head as if this foolish
human gesture could signal to the Divine that I had had more than I
could bear.

   My Master broke the current of thought reception with his soothing

voice.

   "Come," he said, grasping my hand. "We'll slip into the cells one by
one. There is enough light for you to see the works of this monk."

   "You mean that Fra Angelico painted the very cells where monks go to
sleep?" I had thought his works would be in the chapel, and in the other
public or communal rooms.

   "That's why I want you to see this," said my Master. He led me up a
stairs and into a wide stone corridor. He made the first door spring
open, and gently we moved inside, fleet and silent, not disturbing the
monk who lay curled on his hard bed, his head sweating against the
pillow.

   "Don't look at his face," said my Master gently. "If you do you'll
see the troubled dreams he suffers. I want you to look at the wall. What
do you see, now, look!"

   I understood at once. This art of Fra Giovanni, called Angelico in
honor of his sublime talent, was a strange mixture of the sensuous art
of our time with the pious and forswearing art of the past.

   I gazed on the bright, elegant rendering of the arrest of Christ in
the Garden of Gethsemane. The slender flattened figures resembled very
much the elongated and elastic images of the Russian ikon, and yet the
faces were softened and plastic with genuine and touching emotion. It
seemed a kindness infused all beings here, not merely Our Lord Himself,
condemned to be betrayed by one of His own, but the Apostles, who looked
on, and even the unfortunate soldier, in his tunic of mail, who reached
out to take the Lord away, and the soldiers watched.

   I was transfixed by this unmistakable kindness, this seeming
innocence that infected everyone, this sublime compassion on the part of
the artist for all players in this tragic drama which had prefaced the
salvation of the world.

   Into another cell I was taken immediately. Once again the door gave
way at Marius's command, and the sleeping occupant of the cell never
knew that we were there.

   This painting showed again the Garden of Agony, and Christ, before
the arrest, alone among His sleeping Apostles, left to beg His Heavenly
Father for strength. Once again I saw the comparison to the old styles
in which I, as a Russian boy, had felt so sure. The folds in the cloth,
the use of arches, the halo for each head, the discipline of the whole-
all was connected to the past, and yet there shone again the new Italian
warmth, the undeniable Italian love of the humanity of all included,
even Our Lord Himself.

   We went from cell to cell. Backwards and forwards through the Life of
Christ we traveled, visiting the scene of the First Holy Communion, in
which, so touchingly, Christ gave out the bread containing His Body and
Blood as if it were the Host at Mass, and then the Sermon on the Mount,
in which the smooth pleated rocks around Our Lord and His listeners
seemed made of cloth as surely as his graceful gown.

 When we came to the Crucifixion, in which Our Lord gave over to St.
John His Blessed Mother, I was heart-struck by the anguish in the Lord's
face. How thoughtful in her distress was the face of the Virgin, and how

resigned was the saint beside her, with his soft fair Florentine face,
so like that of a thousand other painted figures in this city, barely
fringed with a light brown beard.

  Just when I thought I understood my Master's lessons perfectly, we
happened upon another painting, and I would feel yet a stronger
connection with the long-ago treasures of my boyhood and the quiet
incandescent splendor of the Dominican monk who had graced these walls.
Finally we left this clean, lovely place of tears and whispered prayers.

   We went out into the night and back to Venice, traveling in cold and
noisy darkness, and arriving at home in time to sit a while in the warm
light of the sumptuous bedchamber and talk.

   "Do you see?" Marius pressed me. He was at his desk with his pen in
hand. He dipped it and wrote even as he talked, turning back the large
vellum page of his diary. "In far off Kiev, the cells were the earth
itself, moist and pure, but dark and omnivorous, the mouth that eats all
life finally, that would bring to ruin all art."

I shivered. I sat rubbing the backs of my arms, looking at him.

   "But there in Florence, what did this subtle teacher Fra Angelico
bequeath to his brothers? Magnificent pictures to put them in mind of
the Suffering of Our Lord?"

He wrote several lines before he resumed.

   "Fra Angelico never scorned to delight your eye, to fill your vision
with all the colors God has given you the power to see, for you were
given by him two eyes, Amadeo, and not to be ... not to be shut up in
the dark earth."

   I reflected for a long time. To know these things theoretically had
been one thing. To have passed through the hushed and sleeping rooms of
the Monastery, to have seen my Master's principles there emblazoned by a
monk himself-this was something else.

   "It is a glorious time, this," Marius said softly. "That which was
good among the ancients is now rediscovered, and given a new form. You
ask me, is Christ the Lord? I say, Amadeo, that He can be, for He never
taught anything Himself but love, or so His Apostles, whether they know
it or not, have led us to believe ..."

  I waited on him, as I knew he wasn't finished. The room was so sweetly
warm and clean and bright. I have near my heart forever a picture of him
at this moment, the tall fair-haired Marius, his red cloak thrown back
to free his arm for the pen he held, his face smooth and reflecting, his
blue eyes looking, beyond that time and any other in which he had lived,
for the truth. The heavy book was propped on a low portable lectern for
him, to give it a comfortable angle. The little ink pot was set inside a
richly embellished silver holder. And the heavy candelabra behind him,
with its eight thick melting candles, was made up of numberless engraved
cherubs half-embedded in the deeply worked silver, with wings
struggling, perhaps, to fly loose, and tiny round-cheeked faces turned
this way and that with large contented eyes beneath loose serpentine
curls.

   It seemed an audience of little angels to watch and listen as Marius
spoke, so many, many tiny faces peering indifferently forth from the

silver, quite immune to the falling rivulets of pure, melted wax.

   "I cannot live without this beauty," I said suddenly, though I had
meant to wait. "I cannot endure without it. Oh, God, you have shown me
Hell and it lies behind me, surely in the land where I was born."

He heard my little prayer, my little confession, my desperate plea.

   "If Christ is the Lord," he said, returning to his point, returning
us both to the lesson, "if Christ is the Lord, then what a beautiful
miracle it is, this Christian mystery-." His eyes filmed with tears.
"That the Lord Himself should come to Earth and clothe Himself in flesh
the better to know us and to comprehend us. Oh, what God, ever made in
the image of Man by His fancy, was ever better than one who would become
Flesh? Yes, I would say to you, yes, your Christ, their Christ, the
Christ even of the Monks of Kiev, He is the Lord! Only mark forever the
lies they tell in His Name, and the deeds they do. For Savonarola called
on His Name when he praised a foreign enemy bearing down on Florence,
and those who burnt Savonarola as a false prophet, they too, as they lit
the faggots beneath his dangling body, they too called on Christ the
Lord."

I was overcome with tears.

   He sat in silence, respecting me perhaps, or only collecting his
thoughts. Then he dipped his pen again and wrote for a long time, much
faster than men do, but deftly and gracefully, and never marking out a
word.

At last, he set down the pen. He looked at me and he smiled.

   "I set out to show you things, and it's never as I plan. I wanted you
tonight to see the dangers in this power of flight, that we can too
easily transport ourselves to other places, and that this feeling of
slipping in and out so easily is a deception of which we must beware.
But look, how differently it has all gone."

I didn't answer him.

"I wanted you," he said, "to be a little afraid."

   "Master," I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, "count on
me to be properly frightened when the time comes. I'll have this power,
I know it. I can feel it now. And for now, I think it's splendid, and
because of it, this power, one dark thought falls over my heart."

   "What is that?" he asked in the kindest way. "You know, I think your
angelic face is no more fit for sad things than those faces painted by
Fra Angelico. What's this shadow I see? What is this dark thought?"

   "Take me back there, Master," I said. I trembled, yet I said it. "Let
us use your power to cover miles and miles of Europe. Let us go north.

Take me back to see that cruel land that has become a Purgatorio in my
imagination. Take me back to Kiev."

He was slow in giving his answer.

  The morning was coming. He gathered up his cloak and robe, rose from
the chair and took me with him up the stairs to the roof.

  We could see the distant already paling waters of the Adriatic,
twinkling under the moon and stars, beyond the familiar forest of the
masts of the ships. Tiny lights flickered on the distant islands. The
wind was mild and full of salt and sea freshness, and a particular
deliciousness that comes only when one has lost all fear of the sea.

   "Yours is a brave request, Amadeo. If you really wish it, tomorrow
night we'll begin the journey."

"Have you ever traveled so far before?"

   "In miles, in space, yes, many times," he said. "But in another's
quest for understanding? No, never so very far."

   He embraced me and took me to the palazzo where our tomb lay hidden.
I was cold all over by the time we reached the soiled stone stairway,
where so many of the poor slept. We picked our way among them, until we
reached the entrance to the cellar.

   "Light the torch for me, Sir," I said. "I am shivering. I want to see
the gold around us, if I may."

   "There, you have it," he said. We stood in our crypt with the two
ornate sarcophagi before us. I lay my hand on the lid of the one which
was mine, and quite suddenly there came over me another presentiment,
that all I loved would endure for a very brief time.

  Marius must have seen this hesitation. He passed his right hand
through the very fire of the torch, and touched his warmed fingers to my
cheek. Then he kissed me where this warmth hovered, and his kiss was
warm.


10

IT TOOK us four nights to reach Kiev. Only in the early hours before
dawn did we hunt. We made our graves in actual burial places, the
dungeon vaults of old neglected castles and in the sepulchers beneath
forlorn and ruined churches where the profane were wont now to stash
their livestock and their hay.

   There are tales I could tell of this journey, of those brave
fortresses we roamed near morning, of those wild mountain villages where
we found the evildoer in his rude den.

   Naturally, Marius saw lessons in all this, teaching me how easy it
was to find hiding places and approving the speed with which I moved
through the dense forest, and had no fear of the scattered primitive
settlements which we visited on account of my thirst. He praised me that
I didn't shrink from the dark dusty nests of bones in which we lay down
by day, reminding me that these burial places, having already been
pillaged, were the least likely for men to trouble even in the light of
the sun.

   Our fancy Venetian clothes were soon streaked with dirt, but we were
provided with thick fur-lined cloaks for the journey, and these covered
all. Even in this Marius saw a lesson, that we must remember what
fragile and meaningless protection our garments provide. Mortal men
forget how to wear their garments lightly and that they are a mere

covering for the body and no more. Vampires must never forget it, for we
are far less dependent upon our raiment than men.

   By the last morning before our arrival in Kiev, I knew the rocky
northern woods only too well. The dread winter of the north was all
around us. We had come upon one of the most intriguing of all my
memories: the presence of snow.

   "It no longer hurts me to hold it," I said, gathering the soft
delicious cold snow in my hands and pressing it to my face. "It no
longer chills me to see it, and indeed how beautiful it is, covering the
poorest of towns and hovels with its blanket. Master, look, look how it
throws back the light even of the weakest stars."

   We were on the edge of the land that men call the Golden Horde- the
southern steppes of Russia, which for two hundred years, since the
conquest of Genghis Khan, had been too dangerous for the farmer, and
often the death of the army or the knight.

   Kiev Rus had once included this fertile and beautiful prairie,
stretching far to the East, almost to Europe, as well as south of the
city of Kiev, where I had been born.

   "The final stretch will be nothing," my Master told me. "We make it
tomorrow night so that you will be rested and fresh when you catch the
first sight of home."

 As we stood on a rocky crag looking out at the wild grass, flowing in
the winter wind beneath us, for the first time in the nights since I'd
become a vampire, I felt a terrible longing for the sun. I wanted to see
this land by the light of the sun. I didn't dare confess it to my
Master. After all, how many blessings can a being want?

   On the final night, I awoke just after sunset. We had found a hiding
place beneath the floor of a church in a village where no one lived now
at all. The horrid Mongol hordes, which had destroyed my homeland over
and over again, had long ago burnt this town to nothing, or so Marius
had told me, and this church did not even possess a roof. There had been
no one left here to pull the stones of the floor away for profit or
building, and so we had gone down a forgotten stairway to lie with monks
buried here some thousand years ago.

   Rising from the grave, I saw high above a rectangle of sky where my
Master had removed a marble paving block, an inscribed tombstone no
doubt, for me to make my ascent. I propelled myself upwards. That is, I
bent my knees and, using all my strength, shot upwards, as if I could
fly, and passed through this opening to land on my feet.

 Marius, who invariably rose before me, was sitting nearby. He
immediately gave out the expected appreciative laugh.

"Have you been saving that little trick for such a moment?" he said.

 I was dazed by the snow, as I looked around me. How afraid I was,
merely looking at the frozen pines that had everywhere sprung up on the
ruins of the village. I could scarce speak.

"No," I managed to say. "I didn't know I could do it. I don't know how
high I can leap, or how much strength I have. You're pleased, however?"

   "Yes, why shouldn't I be? I want you to be so strong that no one can
ever hurt you."

   "And who would, Master? We travel the world, but who even knows when
we go and when we come?"

   "There are others, Amadeo. And there are others here. I can hear them
if I want to, but there is a good reason for not hearing them."

   I understood. "You open your mind to hear them, and they know you are
there?"

"Yes, clever one. Are you ready now to go home?"

   I closed my eyes. I made the Sign of the Cross in our old way,
touching the right shoulder before the left. I thought of my Father. We
were in the wild fields and he stood high in his stirrups with his giant
bow, the bow only he could bend, like unto the mythical Ulysses,
shooting arrow after arrow at the raiders who thundered down on us,
riding as if he were one of the Turks or Tatars himself, so great was
his skill. Arrow after arrow, drawn out with a swift snap from the pouch
on his back, went into the bow and was shot across the high blowing
grass even as his horse galloped at full speed. His red beard was
blowing in the fierce wind, and the sky was so blue, so richly blue
that-.

   I broke off this prayer and almost lost my balance. My Master held
me.

"Pray, you'll be finished with all this very quickly," he said.

   "Give me your kisses," I said, "give me your love, give me your arms
as you always have, I need them. Give me your guidance. But give me your
arms, yes. Let me rest my head against you. I need you, yes. Yes, I want
it to be quick and done, and all its lessons in here, in my mind, to be
taken back home."

   He smiled. "Home is Venice now? You've made the decision so soon?"

   "Yes, I know it even at this moment. What lies beyond is the birth
land, and that's not always home. Shall we go?"

   Gathering me in his arms, he took to the air. I shut my eyes, even
forfeiting my last glimpse of the motionless stars. I seemed to sleep
against him, dreamlessly and fearlessly.

Then he set me down on my feet.

   At once I knew this great dark hill, and the leafless oak forest with
its frozen black trunks and skeletal branches. I could see the gleaming
strip of the Dnieper River far below. My heart scudded inside me. I
looked about for the bleak towers of the high city, the city we called
Vladimir's City, which was old Kiev.

   Piles of rubble which had once been city walls were only yards from
where I stood.

 I led the way, easily climbing over them and wandering among the
ruined churches, churches which had been of legendary splendor when Batu
Khan had burnt the city in the year 1240.

 I had grown up among this jungle of ancient churches and broken
monasteries, often hurrying to hear Mass in our Cathedral of Santa
Sofia, one of the few monuments which the Mongols had spared. In its
day, it had been a spectacle of golden domes, dominating all those of
the other churches, and was rumored to be more grand than its namesake
in faraway Constantinople, being larger and packed with treasures.

What I had known was a stately remnant, a wounded shell.

 I didn't want to enter the church now. It was enough to see it from
the outside, because I knew now, from my happy years in Venice, just
what the glory of this church had once been. I understood from the
splendid Byzantine mosaics and paintings of San Marco, and from the old
Byzantine church on the Venetian island of Torcello what glory had once
been here for all to see. When I thought of the lively crowds of Venice,
her students, scholars, lawyers, merchants, I could paint a dense
vitality on this bleak and wasted scene.

 The snow was deep and thick, and few Russians were out in it this
frigid early evening. So we had it to ourselves, walking through it with
ease, not having to pick our way as mortals would.

 We came to a long stretch of ruined battlement, a shapeless guardrail
now beneath the snow, and standing there, I looked down on the lower
city, the city we called Podil, the only real city of Kiev that
remained, the city where in a rough timber and clay house only a few
yards from the river, I had grown up. I looked down on deep-pitched
roofs, their thatch covered in cleansing snow, their chimneys smoking,
and on narrow crooked snow-filled streets. A great grid of such houses
and other buildings had long ago formed against the river and managed to
survive fire after fire and even the worst Tatar raids.

 It was a town made up of traders and merchants and craftsmen, all
bound to the river and the treasures she brought from the Orient, and
the money some would pay for the goods she took south into the European
world.

My Father, the indomitable hunter, had traded bear skins which he
himself had brought back singlehanded from the interior of the great
forest which spread towards the north. Fox, martin, beaver, sheep, all
these skins he had dealt in, so great was his strength and luck, that no
man or woman of our household ever sold their handiwork or wanted for
food. If we starved, and we had starved, it was because the winter ate
the food, and the meat was gone, and there was nothing for my Father's
gold to buy.

   I caught the stench of Podil as I stood on the battlements of
Vladimir's City. I caught the stench of rotting fish, and livestock, of
soiled flesh, and river mud.

   I pulled my fur cloak around me, blowing the snow off the fur when it
came up to my lips, and I looked back up at the dark domes of the
Cathedral against the sky.

   "Let's walk on, let's go past the castle of the Voievoda," I said.
"You see that wooden building, you would never call it a palace or a
castle in fair Italy. That is a castle here."

   Marius nodded. He made a little soothing gesture. I owed him no

explanation of this alien place from which I'd come.

   The Voievoda was our ruler, and in my time it had been Prince Michael
of Lithuania. I didn't know who it would be now.

   I surprised myself that I used the proper word for him. In my deathly
dream vision, I had no consciousness of language, and the strange word
for ruler, "voievoda," had never passed my lips. But I had seen him
clearly then in his round black far hat, his dark thick velvet tunic and
his felt boots.

I led the way.

   We approached the squat building, which seemed more a fortress than
anything else, built as it was out of such enormous logs. Its walls had
a graceful slope as they ascended; its many towers had four-tiered
roofs. I could see its central roof, a great five-sided wooden dome of
sorts, in stark outline against the starry sky. Torches blazed at its
huge doorways and along the outer walls of its enclosures. All its
windows were sealed against the winter and the night.

   Time was when I thought it was the grandest building yet standing in
Christendom.

   It was no task at all to dazzle the guards with a few swift soft
words and darting movements, to pass them and to enter the castle
itself.

   We found our way in by means of a rear storage room, and quietly made
our way to a vantage point where we could spy upon the small crowd of
fur-trimmed nobles or lords who clustered in the Great Room, beneath the
bare beams of a wooden ceiling around the roaring fire.

   On a great sprawling mass of brilliant Turkey rugs they sat, in huge
Russian chairs whose geometrical carvings were no mystery to my eye.
They drank from gold goblets, the wine being provided by two leather-
clad serving boys, and their long belted robes were the colors of blue
and red and gold as bright as the many designs in the rugs.

   European tapestries covered the rudely stuccoed walls. Same old
scenes of the hunt in the never-ending woodlands of France or England or
Tuscany. On a long board set with blazing candles sat a simple meal of
joints and fowl.

So cold was the room that these lords wore their Russian far hats.

   How exotic it had looked to me in boyhood when I'd been brought with
my Father to stand before Prince Michael, who was eternally grateful for
my Father's feats of bravery in bringing down delicious game in the wild
fields, or delivering bundles of valuables to the allies of Prince
Michael in the Lithuanian forts to the west.

But these were Europeans. I had never respected them.

  My Father had taught me too well that they were but lackeys of the
Khan, paying for the right to rule us.

   "No one goes up against those thieves," my Father had said. "So let
them sing their songs of honor and valor. It means nothing. You listen
to the songs that I sing."

And my Father could sing some songs.

  For all his stamina in the saddle, for all his dexterity with the bow
and arrow, and his blunt brute force with the broadsword, he had the
ability with his long fingers to pluck out music on the strings of an
old harp and sing with cleverness the narrative songs of the ancient
times when Kiev had been a great capital, her churches rivaling those of
Byzantium, her riches the wonder of all the world.

  Within a moment, I was ready to go. I took one last memorial glance at
these men, huddled as they were over their golden wine cups, their big
fur-trimmed boots resting on fancy Turkish foot rests, their shoulders
hunkered, their shadows crowding the walls. And then, without their ever
having known we were there, we slipped away.

   It was time now to go to the other hilltop city, the Pechersk, under
which lay the many catacombs of the Monastery of the Caves.

I trembled at the mere thought of it. It seemed the mouth of the
Monastery would swallow me and I should burrow through the moist Mother
Earth, forever seeking the light of the stars, never to find my way out.

   But I went there, trudging through the mud and snow, and again with a
vampire's silky ease, I gained access, this time leading the way,
snapping the locks silently with my superior strength and lifting the
doors as I opened them so no weight would fall upon their creaky hinges,
and dashing swiftly across rooms so that mortal eyes perceived no more
than cold shadows, if they perceived anything at all.

   The air was warm and motionless here, a blessing, but memory told me
it had not been so terribly warm for a mortal boy. In the Scriptorium,
by the smoky light of cheap oil, several brothers were bent over their
slanted desks, working on their copying, as if the printing press were
of no concern to them, and surely it was not.

   I could see the texts on which they worked and I knew them-the
Paterikon of the Kievan Caves Monastery, with its marvelous tales of the
Monastery's founders and its many colorful saints.

   In this room, laboring over that text, I had learned fully to read
and write. I crept now along the wall until my eyes could fall on the
page which one monk copied, his left hand steadying the crumbling model
from which he worked.

   I knew this part of the Paterikon by heart. It was the Tale of Isaac.
Demons had fooled Isaac; they had come to him as beautiful angels, and
even pretending to be Christ Himself. When Isaac had fallen for their
tricks, they had danced with glee and taunted him. But after much
meditation and penance, Isaac stood up to these demons.

   The monk had just dipped his pen and he wrote now the words with
which Isaac spoke:

When you deceived me in the form of Jesus Christ and the angels, you
were unworthy of that rank. But now you appear in your true colors-

   I looked away. I didn't read the rest. Cleaving there so well to the
wall I might have gone on unseen forever. Slowly I looked at the other
pages which the monk had copied, which were being let to dry. I found an

earlier passage which I'd never forgotten, describing Isaac as he lay,
withdrawn from all the world, motionless, and without food for two
years:

For Isaac was weakened in mind and body and could not turn over on his
side, stand up, or sit down; he just lay there on one side, and often
worms collected under his thighs from his excrement and urine.

  The demons had driven Isaac to this, with their deception. Such
temptations, such visions, such confusion and such penance I myself had
hoped to experience for the rest of my life when I entered here as a
child.

   I listened to the pen scratch on the paper. I withdrew, unseen, as if
I'd never come.

I looked back at my scholarly brethren.

  All were emaciated, dressed in cheap black wool, reeking of old sweat
and dirt, and their heads were all but shaved. Their long beards were
thin and uncombed.

   I thought I knew one of them, had loved him somewhat even, but this
seemed remote and not worth considering anymore.

  To Marius, who stood beside me as faithfully as a shadow, I confided
that I could not have endured it, but we both knew this was a lie. In
all likelihood I would have endured it, and I would have died without
ever knowing any other world.

   I moved into the first of the long tunnels where the monks were
buried, and, closing my eyes and cleaving to the mud wall, I listened
for the dreams and prayers of those who lay entombed alive for the love
of God.

  It was nothing but what I could imagine, and exactly as I recalled. I
heard the familiar, no longer mysterious words whispered in the Church
Slavonic. I saw the prescribed images. I felt the sputtering flame of
true devotion and true mysticism, kindled from the weak fire of lives of
utter denial.

  I stood with my head bowed. I let my temple rest against the mud. I
wished to find the boy, so pure of soul, who had opened these cells to
bring the hermits just enough food and drink to keep them alive. But I
couldn't find the boy. I couldn't. And I felt only a raging pity for him
that he had ever suffered here, thin and miserable, and desperate, and
ignorant, oh, so terribly ignorant, having but one sensuous joy in life
and that was to see the colors of the ikon catch fire.

I gasped. I turned my head and fell stupidly into Marius's arms.

"Don't cry, Amadeo," he said tenderly in my ear.

   He brushed my hair from my eyes, and with his soft thumb he even
wiped away my tears.

"Tell it all farewell now, son," he said.

I nodded.

   In a twinkling we stood outside. I didn't speak to him. He followed
me. I headed down the slope towards the waterfront city.

   The smell of the river grew stronger, the stench of humans grew
stronger, and finally I came to the house that I knew had been my own.
What madness this seemed suddenly! What was I seeking? To measure all
this by new standards? To confirm for myself that as a mortal child I
had never had the slightest chance?

   Dear God, there was no justification for what I was, an impious blood
drinker, feeding off the luxurious stews of the wicked Venetian world, I
knew it. Was this all a vain exercise in self-justification? No,
something else pulled me towards the long rectangular house, like so
many others, its thick clay walls divided by rough timbers, its four-
tiered roof dripping with icicles, this large and crude house that was
my home.

   As soon as we reached it, I crept around the sides. The slush of the
snow had here turned to water, and indeed, the water of the river leaked
down the street and into everywhere as it had when I was a child. The
water leaked into my fine-stitched Venetian boots. But it could not
paralyze my feet as it had once done, because I drew my strength now
from gods unknown here, and creatures for whom these filthy peasants, of
which I had been one, had no name.

   I lay my head against the rough wall, just as I had done in the
Monastery, cleaving to the mortar as if the solidity would protect me
and transmit to me all that I wanted to know. I could see through a tiny
hole in the broken clumps of clay that were forever crumbling, and I
beheld in the familiar blaze of candles, and the brighter light of
lamps, a family gathered around the warmth of the large brick stove.

   I knew them all, these people, though some of their names were gone
from my mind. I knew that they were kindred, and I knew the atmosphere
that they shared.

   But I had to see beyond this little gathering. I had to know if these
people were well. I had to know if after that fateful day, when I'd been
kidnapped, and my Father no doubt murdered in the wild lands, they had
managed to go on with their usual vigor. I had to know, perhaps, what
they prayed when they thought of Andrei, the boy with the gift to make
ikons so perfectly, ikons not made by human hands.

   I heard the harp inside, I heard singing. The voice was that of one
of my uncles, one so young he might have been my brother. His name was
Borys, and he had since early childhood been good with singing,
memorizing easily the old dumys, or sagas, of the knights and heroes,
and it was one of them, very rhythmical and tragic, which he was singing
now. The harp was small and old, my Father's harp, and Borys strummed
the strings in time with his phrases as he all but spoke the story of a
lusty and fatal battle for ancient and great Kiev.

   I heard the familiar cadences that had been passed down by our people
from singer to singer for hundreds of years. I put my fingers up and
broke loose a bit of mortar. I saw through the tiny opening the Ikon
corner-directly opposite the family gathering around the shimmering fire
in the open stove.

 Ah, what a spectacle! Amid dozens of little candle stubs and earthen
lamps full of burning fat, there stood propped some twenty or more

ikons, some very old and darkened in their gold frames, and some
radiant, as though only yesterday they'd come alive through the power of
God. There were painted eggs stuffed amongst the pictures, eggs
beautifully decorated and colored with patterns I could well recall,
though even with my vampire eyes I was too far away to see them now.
Many times I had watched the women decorating these sacred eggs for
Easter, applying the hot melting wax to them with their wooden pens to
mark the ribbons or the stars or the crosses or the lines which meant
the ram's horns, or the symbol which meant the butterfly or the stork.
Once the wax had been applied, the egg would be dipped in cold dye of
amazingly deep color. It had seemed there was an endless variety, and
endless possibility for meaning, in these simple patterns and signs.

   These fragile and beautiful eggs were kept for curing the sick, or
for protection against the storm. I had hidden such eggs in an orchard
for good luck with the coming harvest. I had placed one once over the
door of the house in which my sister went to live as a young bride.

   There was a beautiful story about these decorated eggs, that as long
as the custom was followed, as long as such eggs existed, then the world
would be safe from the monster of Evil who wanted always to come and
devour all that was.

   It was sweet to see these eggs placed there in the proud corner of
the Ikons, as always, among the Holy Faces. That I had forgotten this
custom seemed a shame and a warning of tragedy to come.

   But the Holy Faces caught me suddenly and I forgot all else. I saw
the Face of Christ blazing in the firelight, my brilliant scowling
Christ, as I had so often painted Him. I had done so many of these
pictures, and yet how like the one lost that day in the high grasses of
the wild lands was this very one!

   But that was impossible. How could anyone have recovered the ikon I
had dropped when the raiders took me prisoner? No, it must surely be
another, for as I said, I had done so many before my parents had ever
gotten up the courage to take me to the monks. Why, all through this
town were my ikons. My Father had even brought them to Prince Michael as
proud gifts, and it was the Prince who had said that the monks must see
my skill.

   How stern Our Lord looked now compared to the recollection of the
tender musing Christs of Fra Angelico or the noble sorrowful Lord of
Bellini. And yet He was warm with my love! He was the Christ in our
style, the old style, loving in severe lines, loving in somber color,
loving in the manner of my land. And He was warm with the love that I
believed He gave to me!

   A sickness rose up in me. I felt my Master's hands on my shoulders.
He didn't pull me back as I feared. He merely held me and put his cheek
against my hair.

   I was about to go. It was enough, was it now? But the music broke
off. A woman there, my Mother, was she? No, younger, my sister Anya,
grown into a woman, talked wearily of how my Father could sing again if
somehow they could hide all the liquor from him and make him come back
to himself.

   My Uncle Borys sneered. Ivan was hopeless, said Borys. Ivan would
never see another sober night or day, and would soon die. Ivan was

poisoned with liquor, both with the fine spirits he got from the traders
by selling off what he stole from this very house, and from the peasant
brew he got from those he battered and bullied, still being the terror
of the town.

   I bristled all over. Ivan, my Father, alive? Ivan, alive to die again
in such dishonor? Ivan not slain in the wild fields?

   But in their thick skulls, the thoughts of him and the words of him
stopped together. My uncle sang another song, a dancing song. No one
would dance in this house, where all were tired from their labor, and
the women half-blind as they continued to mend the clothes that lay
piled in their laps. But the music cheered them and one of them, a boy
younger than I had been when I died, yes, my little brother, whispered a
soft prayer for my Father, that my Father would not freeze to death
tonight, as he had almost done so many times, falling down drunk as he
did in the snow.

"Please bring him home," came the little boy's whisper.

  Then behind me, I heard Marius say, seeking to put it in order and to
calm me:

"Yes, it seems it is true, beyond doubt. Your Father is alive."

   Before he could caution me, I went around and opened the door. It was
a fierce thing to do, a reckless thing to do, and I ought to have asked
Marius's permission, but I was, as I've told you, an unruly pupil. I had
to do this.

  The wind gusted through the house. The huddled figures shivered and
pushed their thick furs up around their shoulders. The fire deep in the
mouth of the brick stove flared beautifully.

   I knew that I should remove my hat, which in this case was my hood,
and that I should face the Ikon corner and cross myself, but I couldn't
do this.

  In fact, to conceal myself, I pulled my hood up over my head as I shut
the door. I stood alone against it. I held the fur cloak up against my
mouth, so that nothing was visible of my face except my eyes, and
perhaps a shock of reddish hair.

   "Why has the drink gotten Ivan?" I whispered, the old Russian tongue
coming back to me. "Ivan was the strongest man in this city. Where is he
now?"

  They were wary and angry at my intrusion. The fire in the stove
crackled and danced from its feast of fresh air. The Ikon corner seemed
a group of perfect radiant flames unto itself, with its brilliant images
and random candles, another fire of a different and eternal sort. The
Face of Christ was clear to me in the fluttering light, the eyes seeming
to fix me as I stood against the door.

  My uncle rose and shoved the harp into the arms of a younger boy I
didn't know. I saw in the shadows the children sitting up in their
heavily draped beds. I saw their shining eyes looking at me in the dark.
The others in the firelight clumped together and faced me.

  I saw my Mother, wizened and sad as if centuries had passed since I

left her, a veritable crone in the corner, clinging to the rug that
covered her lap. I studied her, trying to fathom the cause of her decay.
Toothless, decrepit, her knuckles big and chafed and shiny from work,
perhaps she was merely a woman being worked too rapidly towards her
grave.

  A great collection of thoughts and words struck me, as if I were being
pelted with blows. Angel, devil, night visitor, terror from the dark,
what are you? I saw hands raised, hastily making the Sign of the Cross.
But the thoughts came clear in answer to my query.

  Who does not know that Ivan the Hunter had become Ivan the Penitent,
Ivan the Drunkard, Ivan the Mad, on account of the day in the wild lands
when he couldn't stop the Tatars from kidnapping his beloved son,
Andrei?

  I shut my eyes. It was worse than death what had happened to him! And
I had never so much as wondered, never so much as dared to think of him
alive, or cared enough to hope that he was, or thought what his fate
might be had he lived? All over Venice were the shops in which I might
have penned a letter to him, a letter that the great Venetian traders
could have carried to some port where it might have been delivered over
the famous post roads of the Khan.

  I knew all this. Selfish little Andrei knew all this, the details
that might have sealed the past for him neatly so that he could have
forgotten it. I might have written:

Family, I live and am happy, though I can never come home. Take this
money I send to you for my brothers and sisters and my Mother-.

  But then I hadn't really ever known. The past had been misery and
chaos.

  Whenever the most trivial picture had become vivid, then torment had
reigned.

  My uncle stood before me. He was as big as my Father, and was well
dressed in a belted leather tunic and felt boots. He looked down at me
calmly but severely.

  "Who are you that comes into our house in this manner?" he asked.
"What is this Prince that stands before us? You carry a message for us?
Then speak, and we will forgive you that you broke the lock on our
door."

  I drew in my breath. I had no more questions. I knew that I could
find Ivan the Drunkard. That he was in the tavern with the fishermen and
the fur traders, for that was the only enclosed place he'd ever loved
other than his home.

With my left hand, I reached over and found the purse that I always
carried, tied, as it should be, to my belt. I ripped it loose, and I
handed it to this man. He merely looked at it. Then he drew himself up,
offended, and he stepped back.

  He seemed then to become part of a deliberate picture with the house.
I saw the house. I saw the hand-carved furniture, the pride of the
family which had done it, the hand-carved wooden crosses and
candlesticks which held the many candles. I saw the painted symbols

decorating the wood frames of the windows, and the shelves on which fine
homemade pots, kettles and bowls were displayed.

   I saw them all in their pride, then, the entire family, the women
with the embroidery, as well as those with mending, and I remembered
with a lulling comfort the stability and the warmth of their daily life.

Yet it was sad, oh, woefully sad, compared to the world I knew!

   I stepped forward and I held out the purse again to him, and I said
in a muffled voice, still veiling my face:

   "I beg you to take this as a kindness to me and that I might save my
soul. It's from your nephew, Andrei. He is far, far away in the land to
which the slave traders took him, and he will never come home. But he is
well and must share some of what he has with his family. He bids me to
tell him which of you lives and which of you is dead. If I do not give
you this money, and if you don't take it, I will be damned to Hell."

 There came no response from them verbally. But I had what I wanted
from their minds. I had all of it. Yes, Ivan was alive, and now I, this
strange man, was saying that Andrei lived too. Ivan mourned for a son
who not only lived but prospered. Life is a tragedy, one way or another.
What is certain is that you die.

"I beg you," I said.

 My uncle took the proffered purse but with misgivings. It was full of
gold ducats, which would buy anywhere.

 I let my cloak drop and I pulled off my left glove, and then the rings
that covered every finger of my left hand. Opal, onyx, amethyst, topaz,
turquoise. I moved past the man and the boys, to the far side of the
fire, and laid these respectfully in the lap of the old woman who had
been my Mother as she looked up.

 I could see that, in a moment, she would know who I was. I covered my
face again, but with my left hand, I took my dagger from my belt. It was
only a short Misericorde, that little dagger which a warrior takes into
battle to dispatch his victims if they are too far gone for salvation
and yet not dead. It was a decorative thing, an ornament more than a
weapon, and its gold-plated scabbard was thickly lined with perfect
pearls.

   "For you," I said. "For Andrei's Mother, who always loved her
necklace of river pearls. Take this for Andrei's soul." I laid the
dagger at my Mother's feet.

   And then I made a deep, deep bow with my head almost touching the
floor, and I went out, without looking back, closing the door behind me,
and hovering near, to hear them as they jumped up and crowded about to
see the rings and the dagger, and some to see to the lock.

   For a moment, I was weak with emotion. But nothing was going to stop
me from what I meant to do. I didn't turn to Marius, because it would
have been craven to ask his support in this, or assent to it. I went on
down the muddy snowy street, through the sludge, towards the tavern
nearest to the river, where I thought my Father might be.

   I had rarely entered this place as a child, and then only to summon

my Father home. I had no real memory of it, except as a place where
foreign people drank and cursed.

   It was a long building, made of the same rude unfinished logs as my
house, with the same mud for mortar, and the same inevitable seams and
cracks to let in the dreadful cold. Its roof was very high, with some
six tiers to shed the weight of the snow, and its eaves too dripped with
icicles, as had those of my house.

   It marveled me that men could live like this, that the cold itself
did not push them to make something more permanent and more sheltering,
but it had always been the way of this place, it seemed to me, of the
poor and the sick and overburdened and the hungry, that the brutal
winter took too much from them, and that the short spring and summer
gave them too little, and that resignation became their greatest virtue
in the end.

   But I might have been wrong then about all of it, and I might be
wrong now. What is important is this-it was a place of hopelessness, and
though it was not ugly, for wood and mud and snow and sadness are not
ugly, it was a place without beauty except for the ikons, and perhaps
for the distant outline of the graceful domes of Santa Sofia, high on
the hill, against the star-studded sky. And that was not enough.

   When I entered the tavern, I counted some twenty men at a glance, all
of them drinking and talking to one another with a conviviality that
surprised me, given the Spartan nature of this place, which was no more
than a shelter against the night which kept them safely ranged round the
big fire. There were no ikons here to comfort them. But some of them
were singing, and there was the inevitable harp player strumming his
little stringed instrument, and another blowing on a small pipe.

   There were many tables, some covered with linen, and others bare at
which these fellows gathered, and some of the men were foreigners, as I
had recalled. Three were Italian, I heard this instantly, and figured
them to be Genoese. There were more foreigners indeed than I had
expected. But these were men drawn by the trade of the river, and
perhaps Kiev did not do so poorly just now.

   There were plenty of kegs of beer and wine behind the counter, where
the bartender sold his stock by the cup. I saw too many bottles of
Italian wine, quite expensive no doubt, and crates of Spanish sack.

   Lest I attract notice, I moved forward and far off to the left, into
the depth of the shadows, where perhaps a European traveler clad in rich
fur might not be noticed, for, after all, fine fur was one thing they
did indeed seem to have.

   These people were much too drunk to care who I was. The bartender
tried to get excited about the idea of a new customer, but then went
back to snoozing on the palm of his upturned hand. The music continued,
another one of the dumy, and this one much less cheerful than the one my
uncle had been singing at home, because I think the musician was very
tired.

I saw my Father.

   He lay on his back, full length, on a broad crude greasy bench,
dressed in his leather jerkin and with his biggest heaviest fur cloak
folded neatly over him, as though the others had done the honors with it

after he had passed out. This was bearskin, his cloak, which marked him
as a pretty rich man.

   He snored in his drunken sleep, and the fumes of the drink rose from
him, and he didn't stir when I knelt right beside him and looked down
into his face.

   His cheeks though thinner were still rosy, but there were hollows
beneath the bones, and there were streaks of gray, most prominent in his
mustache and long beard. It seemed to me that some of the hair of his
temples was gone, and that his fine smooth brow was steeper, but this
may have been an illusion. The flesh all around his eyes was tender-
looking and dark. His hands, clutched together beneath the cloak, were
not visible to me, but I could see that he was still strong, of powerful
build, and his love of drink had not destroyed him yet.

   I had a disturbing sense of his vitality suddenly; I could smell the
blood of him and the life of him, as though of a possible victim
stumbling across my path. I put all this away from my mind and stared at
him, loving him and thinking only that I was so glad that he was alive!
He had come out of the wild grasses. He had escaped that party of
raiders, who had seemed then the very heralds of death itself.

   I pulled up a stool so that I might sit quietly beside my Father,
studying his face.

I had not put on my left glove.

   I laid my cold hand now on his forehead, lightly, not wanting to take
liberties, and slowly he opened his eyes. They were murky yet still
beautifully bright, despite the broken blood vessels and the wetness,
and he looked at me softly and wordlessly for a while, as if he had no
cause to move, as if I were a vision near to his dreams.

   I felt the hood fall back from my head and I did nothing to stop it.
I couldn't see what he saw, but I knew what it was-his son, with a
cleanshaven face, such as his son had had when this man knew him, and
long loose auburn hair in snow-dusted waves.

   Beyond, their bodies mere bulky outlines against the huge blaze of
the fire, the others sang or talked. And the wine flowed.

   Nothing came between me and this moment, between me and this man who
had tried hard to bring down the Tatars, who had sent one arrow after
another sailing at his enemies, even as their arrows rained down upon
him in vain.

   "They never wounded you," I whispered. "I love you and only now do I
know how strong you were." Was my voice even audible?

   He blinked as he looked at me, and then I saw his tongue roll out
along his lips. His lips were bright, like coral, shining through the
heavy red fringe of mustache and beard.

   "They wounded me," he said in a low voice, small but not weak. "They
got me, twice they got me, in the shoulder and in the arm. But they
didn't kill me, and they didn't let go of Andrei. I fell off my horse. I
got up. They never got me in the legs. I ran after them. I ran and ran
and I kept shooting. I had a cursed arrow sticking right out of my right
shoulder here."

   His hand appeared from beneath the fur and he placed it up on the
dark curve of his right shoulder.

   "I kept shooting. I didn't even feel it. I saw them ride away. They
took him. I don't even know if he was alive. I don't know. Would they
have bothered to take him if they had shot him? There were arrows
everywhere. The sky rained arrows! There must have been fifty of them.
They killed every other man! I told the others, You have to keep
shooting, don't stop even for an instant, don't cower, shoot and shoot
and shoot, and when you have no more arrows, bring up your sword and go
for them, ride straight into them, get down, get down close to your
horse's head and ride into them. Well, maybe they did. I don't know."

   He lowered his lids. He glanced around. He wanted to get up, and then
he looked at me.

   "Give me something to drink. Buy me something decent. The man has
Spanish sack. Get me some of that, a bottle of sack. Hell, in the old
days, I laid in wait for the traders out there in the river, and I never
had to buy anything from any man. Get me a bottle of sack. I can see
you're rich."

"Do you know who I am?" I asked.

   He looked at me in plain confusion. This hadn't even occurred to him,
this question.

   "You come from the castle. You speak with the accent of the
Lithuanians. I don't care who you are. Buy me some wine."

   "With the accent of the Lithuanians?" I asked softly. "What a
dreadful thing. I think it's the accent of a Venetian, and I'm ashamed."

   "Venetian? Well, don't be. God knows they tried to save
Constantinople, they tried. Everything's gone to Hell. The world will
end in flame. Get me some sack before it ends, all right?"

   I stood up. Did I have some more money? I was puzzling over it when
the dark silent figure of my Master loomed over me and he handed me the
bottle of Spanish sack, uncorked and ready for my Father to drink.

   I sighed. The smell of it meant nothing to me now, but I knew that it
was fine good stuff, and besides it was what he wanted.

   He had meantime sat up on the bench, staring straight at the bottle
as it hung from my hand. He reached out for it, and took it and drank it
as thirstily as I drink blood.

"Take a good look at me," I said.

   "It's too dark in here, idiot," he said. "How can I take a good look
at anything? Hmmm, but this is good. Thank you."

Suddenly, he paused with the bottle just beneath his lips. It was a
strange thing the way in which he paused. It was as if he were in the
forest, and he'd just sensed a bear coming up on him, or some other
lethal beast. He froze, as it were, with the bottle in hand, and only
his eyes moved as he looked up at me.

"Andrei," he whispered.

   "I'm alive, Father," I said gently. "They didn't kill me. They took
me for booty and sold me for profit. And I was taken by ship south and
north again and up to the city of Venice, and that is where I live now."

   His eyes were calm. Indeed, a beautiful serenity settled over him. He
was far too drunk for his reason to revolt or for cheap surprise to
delight him. On the contrary, the truth stole in and over him in a wave,
subduing him, and he understood all of its ramifications, that I had not
suffered, that I was rich, I was well.

   "I was lost, Sir," I said in the same gentle whisper, which surely
was only audible to him. "I was lost, yes, but found by another, a
kindly man, and was restored, and have never suffered since. I've
journeyed a long time to tell you this, Father. I never knew you were
alive. I never dreamed. I mean, I thought you'd died that day when all
the world died for me. And now I'm come here to tell you that you must
never, never grieve for me."

   "Andrei," he whispered, but there was no change in his face. There
was only the sedate wonder. He sat still, both hands on the bottle which
he had lowered to his lap, his huge shoulders very straight, and his
flowing red and gray hair as long as I'd ever seen it, melting into the
far of his cloak.

   He was a beautiful, beautiful man. I needed a monster's eyes to know
it. I needed a demon's vision to see the strength in his eyes coupled
with the power in his giant frame. Only the bloodshot eyes gave him away
in his weakness.

   "Forget me now, Father," I said. "Forget me, as if the monks had sent
me away. But remember this, on account of you, I shall never be buried
in the muddy graves of the Monastery. No, other things may befall me.
But that, I won't suffer. Because of you, that you wouldn't have it,
that you came that day and demanded I ride out with you, that I be your
son."

   I turned to go. He shot forward, clasping the bottle by the neck in
his left hand and clamping his powerful right hand over my wrist. He
pulled me down to him, as if I were a mere mortal, with his old strength
and he pressed his lips against my bowed head.

   Oh, God, don't let him know! Don't let him sense any change in me! I
was desperate. I closed my eyes.

   But I was young, and not so hard and cold as my Master, no, not even
by half or a half of that half. And he felt only the softness of my
hair, and perhaps a cold icy softness, redolent of winter, to my skin.

"Andrei, my angel child, my gifted and golden son!"

   I turned around and clasped him firmly with my left arm. I kissed him
all over his head in a way I would never, never have done as a child. I
held him to my heart.

   "Father, don't drink anymore," I said in his ear. "Get up and be the
hunter again. Be what you are, Father."

"Andrei, no one will ever believe me."

   "And who are they to say that to you if you are yourself again, man?
"I asked.

   We looked into each other's eyes. I kept my lips sealed that he
should never, never see the sharp teeth in my mouth that the vampiric
blood had given me, the tiny evil vampire's teeth as a man as keen as
himself, the natural hunter, might very definitely see.

   But he was looking for no such disqualification here. He wanted only
love, and love we gave one another.

   "I have to go, I have no choice," I said. "I stole this time to come
to you. Father, tell my Mother that it was I who came to the house
earlier, and that it was I who gave her the rings and gave your brother
the purse."

   I drew back. I sat down on the bench beside him, for he had placed
his feet on the floor. I pulled off my right glove and I looked at the
seven or eight rings I wore, all of them made of gold or silver and rich
with jewels, and then I slipped them off one by one, over his loud groan
of protest, and I deposited the handful of them into his hand. How soft
and hot was his hand, how flushed and alive.

   "You take them because I have a world of them. And I will write to
you and send you more, more so that you will never need to do anything
but what you want to do-ride and hunt, and tell the tales of old times
by the fire. Buy a fine harp with this, buy books if you will for the
little ones, buy what you will."

"I don't want this; I want you, my son."

   "Yes, and I want you, my Father, but this little power is all we may
have."

I took his head in both my hands, displaying my strength, perhaps
unwisely, but making him stay still while I gave him my kisses, and then
with one long warm embrace, I rose to go.

   I was out of the room so fast, he couldn't have seen anything but the
door swinging shut.

   The snow was coming down. I saw my Master several yards away, and I
went to meet him and together we started up the hill. I didn't want for
my Father to come out. I wanted to get away as fast as I could.

   I was about to ask that we take to vampire speed and get clear of
Kiev when I saw that a figure was hurrying towards us. It was a small
woman, her long heavy furs trailing in the wet snow. She had something
bright in her arms.

   I stood fixed, my Master waiting on me. It was my Mother who had come
to see me. It was my Alother who was making her way to the tavern, and
in her arms, facing me, was an ikon of the scowling Christ, the one I
looked at so long through the chink in the wall of the house.

   I drew in my breath. She lifted the ikon by either side and she
presented it to me.

"Andrei," she whispered.

   "Mother," I said. "Keep it for the little ones, please." I embraced
her and kissed her. How much older, how miserably older she seemed. But
childbearing had done that to her, pulling the strength out of her, if
only for babies to be buried in small plots in the ground. I thought of
how many babies she had lost during my youth, and how many were still
counted before I was born. She had called them her angels, her little
babies, not big enough to live.

"Keep it," I said to her. "Keep it for the family here."

   "All right, Andrei," she said. She looked at me with pale, suffering
eyes. I could see that she was dying. I understood suddenly that it
wasn't mere age that worked on her, nor the hardship of children. She
was diseased from within, and would soon truly die. I felt such a
terror, looking at her, such a terror for the whole mortal world. It was
just a tiresome, common and inevitable disease.

"Goodbye, darling angel," I said.

   "And goodbye to you, my darling angel," she answered. "My heart and
soul are happy that you are a proud Prince. But show me, do you make the
Sign of the Cross in the right way?"

   How desperate she sounded. She meant these words. She meant simply,
Had I gotten all this apparent wealth by converting to the church of the
West? That is what she meant.

   "Mother, you put a simple test to me." I made the Sign of the Cross
for her, in our way, the Eastern Way, from right shoulder to left, and I
smiled.

   She nodded. Then she took something carefully from inside her heavy
wool shift coat and she gave it to me, only releasing it when I had made
a cradle for it with my hand. It was a dark ruby-red painted Easter egg.

   Such a perfect and exquisitely decorated egg. It was banded with long
lengthwise ribbons of yellow, and in a center created by them was
painted a perfect rose or eight-pointed star.

I looked down at it and then I nodded to her.

   I took out a handkerchief of fine Flemish linen and wrapped the egg
in this, padding it over and over, and I slipped the little burden
faithfully into the folds of my tunic beneath my jacket and cloak.

   I bent over and kissed her again on her soft dry cheek. "Mother," I
said, "the Joy of All Sorrows, that is what you are to me!"

"My sweet Andrei," she answered. "Go with God if you must go."

   She looked at the ikon. She wanted me to see it. She turned the ikon
around so that I could look at the gleaming golden Face of God, as waxen
and fine as the day I'd painted it for her. Only I hadn't painted it for
her. No, it was the very ikon which I had taken that day on our march
into the wild lands.

   Oh, what a marvel, that my Father had brought it back with him, all
the way from the scene of such loss. And yet why not? Why not would such
a man as he have done such a thing?

  The snow fell onto the painted ikon. It fell on the stern Face of Our
Savior, which had come ablaze under my racing brush as if by magic, a
face which with its stern and smooth lips and slightly furrowed brow
meant love. Christ, my Lord, could look even more stern peering out from
the mosaics of San Marco. Christ, my Lord, could look as stern in many
an old painting. But Christ, my Lord, in any manner and in any style,
was full of unstinting love.

   The snow came in flurries and seemed to melt when it touched His
Face.

   I feared for it, this fragile panel of wood, and this glistering
lacquered image, meant to shine for all time. But she thought of this
too, and she quickly shielded the ikon from the wetness of the melting
snow with her cloak.

I never saw it again.

   But is there anyone who needs now to ask me what an ikon means to me?
Is there anyone who needs now to know why, when I saw the Face of Christ
before me on the Veil of Veronica, when Dora held it high, this Veil,
brought back from Jerusalem and the hour of Christ's passion, by Lestat
himself, through Hell and into the world, that I fell down on my knees,
and cried, "It is the Lord"?


11


THE JOURNEY from Kiev seemed a journey forwards in time, towards the
place where I truly belonged. All of Venice, upon my return, seemed to
share the shimmer of the gold-plated chamber in which I made my grave.
In a daze, I spent my nights roaming, with or without Marius, drinking
up the fresh air of the Adriatic and perusing the splendid houses and
government palaces to which I'd grown accustomed over the last few
years.

   Evening church services drew me like honey draws flies. I drank up
the music of the choirs, the chanting of the priests and above all the
joyous sensual attitude of the worshipers, as if all this would be a
healing balm to those parts of me that were skinned and raw from my
return to the Monastery of the Caves.

   But in my heart of hearts I reserved a tenacious and heated flame of
reverence for the Russian monks of the Monastery of the Caves. Having
glimpsed a few words of the sainted Brother Isaac, I walked in the
living memory of his teachings-Brother Isaac, who had been a Fool for
God, and a hermit, and a seer of spirits, the victim of the Devil and
then his Conqueror in the name of Christ.

   I had a religious soul, there was no doubt of it, and I had been
given two great modes of religious thought, and now in surrendering to a
war between these modes, I made war on myself, for though I had no
intention of giving up the luxuries and glories of Venice, the ever
shining beauty of Fra Angelico's lessons and the stunning and gilded
accomplishments of all those who followed him, making Beauty for Christ,
I secretly beatified the loser in my battle, the blessed Isaac, whom I
imagined, in my childish mind, to have taken the true path to the Lord.

   Marius knew of my struggle, he knew of the hold which Kiev had upon
me, and he knew of the crucial importance of all this to me. He
understood better than anyone I've ever known that each being wars with
his own angels and devils, each being succumbs to an essential set of
values, a theme, as it were, which is inseparable from living a proper
life.

   For us, life was the vampiric life. But it was in every sense life,
and sensuous life, and fleshly life. I could not escape into it from the
compulsions and obsessions I'd felt as a mortal boy. On the contrary,
they were now magnified.

   Within the month after my return, I knew I had set the tone for my
approach to the world around me. I should wallow in the luscious beauty
of Italian painting and music and architecture, yes, but I would do it
with the fervor of a Russian saint. I would turn all sensuous
experiences to goodness and purity. I would learn, I would increase
understanding, I would increase in compassion for the mortals around me,
and I would never cease to put a pressure upon my soul to be that which
I believed was good.

   Good was above all kind; it was to be gentle. It was to waste
nothing. It was to paint, to read, to study, to listen, even to pray,
though to whom I prayed I wasn't sure, and it was to take every
opportunity to be generous to those mortals whom I did not kill.

   As for those I killed, they were to be dispatched mercifully, and I
was to become the absolute master of mercy, never causing pain and
confusion, indeed snaring my victims as much as I could by spells
induced by my soft voice or the depths of my eyes offered for soulful
looks, or by some other power I seemed to possess and seemed able to
develop, a power to thrust my mind into that of the poor helpless mortal
and to assist him in the manufacture of his own comforting images so
that the death became the flicker of a flame in a rapture, and then
silence most sweet.

   I also concentrated on enjoying the blood, on moving deeper, beneath
the turbulent necessity of my own thirst, to taste this vital fluid of
which I robbed my victim, and to feel most fully that which it carried
with it to ultimate doom, the destiny of a mortal soul.

   My lessons with Marius were broken off for a while. But at last he
came to me gently and told me it was time to study again in earnest,
that there were things that we must do.

"I make my own study," I said. "You know it well enough. You know I
haven't been idle in my wanderings, and you know my mind is as hungry as
my body. You know it. So leave me alone."

   "That's all well and good, little Master," he said to me kindly, "but
you must come back into the school I keep for you. I have things which
you must know."

   For five nights I put him off. Then, as I was dozing on his bed
sometime after midnight, having spent the earlier evening in the Piazza
San Marco at a great festival, listening to musicians and watching the
jugglers, I was startled to feel his switch come crashing down on the
back of my legs.

"Wake up, child," he said.

   I turned over and looked up. I was startled. He stood, holding the
long switch, with his arms folded. He wore a long belted tunic of purple
velvet and his hair was tied back at the base of his neck.

   I turned away from him. I figured he was being dramatic and that he
would go away. The switch came crashing down again and this time there
followed a volley of blows.

   I felt the blows in a way I'd never felt them when mortal. I was
stronger, more resistant to them, but for a split second each blow broke
through my preternatural guard and caused a tiny exquisite explosion of
pain.

   I was furious. I tried to climb up off the bed, and probably would
have struck him, so angry was I to be treated in this manner. But he
placed his knee on my back and whipped me over and over with the switch,
until I cried out.

   Then he stood up and dragged me up by the collar. I was shaking with
rage and with confusion.

"Want some more?" he asked.

   "I don't know," I said, throwing off his arm, which he allowed with a
little smile. "Perhaps so! One minute my heart is of the greatest
concern to you, and the next I'm a schoolboy. Is that it?"

   "You've had enough time to grieve and to weep," he said, "and to
reevaluate all you've been given. Now it's back to work. Go to the desk
and prepare to write. Or I'll whip you some more."

   I flew into a tirade. "I'm not going to be treated this way; there's
absolutely no necessity for this. What should I write? I've written
volumes in my soul. You think you can force me into the dreary little
mold of an obedient pupil, you think this is appropriate to the
cataclysmic thoughts that I have to ponder, you think-."

   He smacked me across the face. I was dizzy. As my eyes cleared, I
looked into his.

   "I want your attention again. I want you to come out of your
meditation. Go to the desk and write for me a summary of what your
journey to Russia meant to you, and what you see now here that you could
not see before. Make it concise, use your finest similes and metaphors
and write it cleanly and quickly for me."

   "Such crude tactics," I muttered. But my body was throbbing from the
blows. It was altogether different from the pain of a mortal body, but
it was bad, and I hated it.

   I sat down at the desk. I was going to write something really
churlish such as "I've learned that I'm the slave of a tyrant." But when
I looked up and saw him standing there with the switch in his hand, I
changed my mind.

   He knew it was the perfect moment to come to me and kiss me. And he
did this, and I realized I had lifted my face for his kiss before he
bent his head. This didn't stop him.

   I felt the overwhelming happiness of giving in to him. I put my arm
up and around his shoulders.

   He let me go after a long sweet moment, and then I did write out many
sentences, pretty much describing what I've explained above. I wrote
about the battle in me between the fleshly and the ascetic; I wrote of
my Russian soul as seeking after the highest level of exaltation. In the
painting of the ikon I had found it, but the ikon had satisfied the need
for the sensual because the ikon was beautiful. And as I wrote, I
realized for the first time that the old Russian style, the antique
Byzantine style, embodied a struggle in itself between the sensual and
the ascetic, the figures suppressed, flattened, disciplined, in the very
midst of rich color, the whole giving forth pure delight to the eyes
while representing denial.

   While I wrote, my Master went away. I was aware of it, but it didn't
matter. I was deep into my writing, and gradually I slipped out of my
analysis of things, and began to tell an old tale.

In the old days, when the Russians didn't know Jesus Christ, the great
Prince Vladimir of Kiev-and in those days Kiev was a magnificent city-
sent his emissaries to study the three religions of the Lord: the Moslem
religion, which these men found to be frantic and foul-smelling; the
religion of Papal Rome, in which these men did not find any glory; and
finally the Christianity of Byzantium. In the city of Constantinople,
the Russians were led to see the magnificent churches in which the Greek
Catholics worshiped their God, and they found these buildings so
beautiful that they didn't know whether they were in Heaven or still on
Earth. Never had the Russians seen anything so splendid; they were
certain then that God dwelt among men in the religion of Constantinople,
and so it was this Christianity which Russia embraced. It was beauty
therefore that gave birth to our Russian Church.

   In Kiev once men could find what Vladimir sought to recreate, but now
that Kiev is a ruin and the Turks have taken Santa Sofia of
Constantinople, one must come to Venice to see the great Theotokos, the
Virgin who is the God-Bearer, and her Son when He becomes the
Pantokrator, the Divine Creator of All. In Venice, I have found in
sparkling gold mosaics and in the muscular images of a new age the very
miracle which brought the Light of Christ Our Lord to the land where I
was born, the Light of Christ Our Lord which burns still in the lamps of
the Monastery of the Caves.

   I put down the pen. I pushed the page aside, and I laid my head down
on my arms and cried softly to myself in the quiet of the shadowy
bedroom. I didn't care if I was beaten, kicked or ignored.

   Finally, Marius came for me to take me to our crypt, and I realize
now, centuries later, as I look back, that his forcing me to write on
this night caused me to remember always the lessons of those times.

   The next night, after he'd read what I had written, he was contrite
about having hit me, and he said that it was difficult for him to treat
me as anything but a child, but that I was not a child. Rather I was
some spirit like unto a child-naive and maniacal in my pursuit of
certain themes. He had never expected to love me so much.

   I wanted to be aloof and distant, on account of the whipping, but I
couldn't be. I marveled that his touch, his kisses, his embraces meant
more to me than they had when I was human.

I WISH I could slip away now from the happy picture of Marius and me in
Venice and take up this tale in New York City, in modern times. I want
to go to the moment in the room in New York City when Dora held up
Veronica's Veil, the relic brought back by Lestat from his journey into
the Inferno, for then I would have a tale told in two perfect halves-of
the child I had been and of the worshiper I became, and of the creature
I am now.

   But I cannot fool myself so easily. I know that what happened to
Marius and to me in the months that followed my journey to Russia is
part and parcel of my life.

   There is nothing to do but cross The Bridge of Sighs in my life, the
long dark bridge spanning centuries of my tortured existence which
connects me to modern times. That my time in this passage has been
described so well already by Lestat doesn't mean that I can escape
without adding my own words, and above all my own acknowledgment of the
Fool for God that I was to be for three hundred years.

   I wish I had escaped this fate. I wish that Marius had escaped what
happened to us. It is plain now that he survived our separation with far
greater insight and strength than I survived it. But then he was already
centuries old and a wise being, and I was still a child.

   Our last months in Venice were unmarred by any premonition of what
was to come. Vigorously, he taught me the essential lessons.

   One of the most important of these was how to pass for human in the
midst of human beings. In all the time since my transformation, I had
not kept good company with the other apprentices, and I had avoided
altogether my beloved Bianca, to whom I owed a vast debt of gratitude
not merely for past friendship but for nursing me when I was so ill.

  Now, I had to face Bianca, or so Marius decreed. I was the one who had
to write a polite letter to her explaining that on account of my illness
I had not been able to come to her before.

  Then, one evening early, after a brief hunt in which I drank the blood
of two victims, we set out to visit her, laden with gifts for her, and
found her surrounded by her English and Italian friends.

  Marius had dressed for the occasion in smart dark blue velvet, with a
cloak of the same color for once, which was unusual for him, and he had
urged me to dress in sky blue, his favorite color for me. I carried the
wine figs and sweet tarts in a basket for her.

  We found her door open as always, and we entered unobtrusively, but
she saw us at once.

  The moment I saw her I felt a heartbreaking desire for a certain kind
of intimacy, that is, I wanted to tell her everything that had happened!
Of course this was forbidden, and that I could love her without
confiding in her-this was something that Marius insisted I learn.

   She got up and came to me, and put her arms around me, accepting the
usual ardent kisses. I realized at once why Marius had insisted on two
victims for this evening. I was warm and flushed with blood.

  Bianca felt nothing that frightened her. She slipped her silken arms

around my neck. She was radiant in a dress of yellow silk tissue and
dark-green velvet, the underdress of yellow, powdered with embroidered
roses, and her white breasts were barely covered as only a courtesan
would have them.

  When I began to kiss her, careful to conceal my tiny fanged teeth from
her, I felt no hunger because the blood of my victims had been more than
enough. I kissed her with love and love only, my mind quickly plunging
into heated erotic memories, my body surely demonstrating the urgency
that it had had with her in the past. I wanted to touch her all over, as
a blind man might touch a sculpture, the better to see each curve of her
with his hands.

  "Oh, you're not only well, you're splendid," Bianca said. "You and
Marius, come in, come, let's go into the next room." She made a careless
gesture to her guests, who were all busy anyway, talking, arguing,
playing cards in small groups. She drew us with her into her more
intimate parlor adjacent to the bedroom, a room cluttered with
frightfully expensive damask chairs and couches, and told me to sit
down.

  I remembered the candles, that I must never get too close to them, but
must use the shadows so no mortal would have an optimum opportunity to
study my changed and more perfect skin.

   This wasn't so hard as, in spite of her love of light and her
penchant for luxury, she had the candelabra scattered for the mood.

   The lack of light would also make the sparkle of my eyes less
noticeable; I knew this too. And the more I spoke, the more animated I
became, the more human I would appear.

   Stillness was dangerous for us when we were among mortals, Marius had
taught me, for in stillness we appear flawless and unearthly and finally
even faintly horrible to mortals, who sense that we are not what we
seem.

   I followed all these rules. But I was overcome with anxiety that I
could never tell her what had been done to me. I started to talk. I
explained that the illness had abated entirely, but that Marius, wiser
by far than any physician, had ordered solitude and rest. When I had not
been in bed, I had been alone, struggling to regain my strength.

   "Make it as near to the truth as you can, the better to make it a
lie," Marius had taught. Now I followed these words.

   "Oh, but I thought I'd lost you," she said. "When you sent word,
Marius, that he was recovering, I didn't at first believe you. I thought
you meant to soften the inevitable truth."

   How lovely she was, a perfect flower. Her blond hair was parted in
the middle, and a thick lock on either side was wound with pearls and
bound back with a clasp encrusted with them. The rest of her hair fell
down a la Botticelli, in rivulets of shining yellow over her shoulders.

   "You had cured him as completely as any human being could," Marius
told her. "My task was to give him some old remedies of which only I
know. And then to let the remedies do their work." He spoke simply, but
to me he seemed sad.

   A terrible sadness gripped me. I couldn't tell her what I was, or how
different she seemed now, how richly opaque with human blood she seemed
compared to us, and how her voice had taken on for me a new timbre that
was purely human, and which gently nudged my senses if she but said one
word.

   "Well, you are both here, and you must both come often," she said.
"Don't ever let such a separation occur again. Marius, I would have come
to you, but Riccardo told me you wanted peace and quiet. I would have
nursed Amadeo in any state."

   "I know you would have, my darling," Marius said. "But as I said, it
was solitude he needed, and your beauty is an intoxicant, and your words
a stimulus more intense perhaps than you realize." It had no tone of
flattery but sounded like a sincere confession.

   She shook her head a little sadly. "I've discovered that Venice is
not my home unless you're here." She looked cautiously towards the front
parlor, and then she lapsed into a low voice. "Marius, you freed me from
those who had a hold on me."

   "That was simple enough," he said. "It was a pleasure, in fact. How
rank those men were, cousins of yours, if I'm not mistaken, and eager to
use you and your great reputation for beauty in their twisted financial
affairs."

   She blushed, and I lifted my hand to beg him to go easy with what he
said. I knew now that during the slaughter of the Florentine banquet
chamber, he had read from the victims' minds all kinds of things which
were unknown to me.

   "Cousins? Perhaps," she said. "I have conveniently forgotten that.
That they were a terror to those whom they lured into expensive loans
and dangerous opportunities, that I can say without a doubt. Marius, the
strangest things have happened, things upon which I never counted."

  I loved the look of seriousness on her delicate features. She seemed
too beautiful to have a brain.

   "I find myself richer," she said, "as I can keep the larger portion
of my own income, and others-this is the strange part-others, in
gratitude that our banker and our extortionist is gone, have lavished on
me countless gifts of gold and jewels, yes, even this necklace, look,
and you know these are all sea pearls and matched in size, and this is a
veritable rope of them, see, and all this is given me, though I have
averred a hundred times that I never had the deed done."

   "But what of blame?" I asked. "What of the danger of a public
accusation?"

  "They have no defenders or mourners," she said quickly. She planted
another little bouquet of kisses on my cheek. "And earlier today, my
friends among the Great Council were here as always, to read a few new
poems to me and settle in quiet where they could know peace from clients
and the endless demands of their families. No, I don't think anyone is
going to accuse me of anything, and as everyone knows, on the night of
the murders, I was here in company with that awful Englishman, Amadeo,
the very one who tried to kill you, who has of course..."

"Yes, what?" I asked.

  Marius narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. He made a light gesture
of tapping the side of his head with his gloved finger. Read her mind,
he meant. But I couldn't think of such a thing. Her face was too pretty.

   "The Englishman, " she said, "who has disappeared. I suspect he's
drowned somewhere, that, staggering drunk about the town, he fell into
one of the canals or, worse yet, into the lagoon. "

   Of course my Master had told me that he had taken care of all our
difficulties on account of the Englishman, but I had never asked in what
particular way.

   "So they think you hired killers to dispatch the Florentines?" Marius
asked her.

   "Seems so," she said. "And there are even those who think that I had
the Englishman dispatched as well. I've become a rather powerful woman,
Marius."

   Both of them laughed, his laugh the deep but metallic laugh of a
preternatural being, and her laugh higher yet thicker with the sound of
her human blood.

   I wanted to go into her mind. I tried but cast away the idea at once.
I was inhibited, just as I was with Riccardo and the boys closest to me.
In fact, it seemed such a terrible invasion of the privacy of the person
that I used this power only in hunting to find those who were evil and
whom I might kill.

   "Amadeo, you blush, what is it?" Bianca asked. "Your cheeks are
scarlet. Let me kiss them. Oh, you are hot as if the fever has come
back."

"Look into his eyes, angel," said Marius. "They are clear."

   "You're right," she said, peering into my eyes with such a sweet
frank curiosity that she became irresistible to me.

   I pushed back the yellow cloth of her underdress and the heavy velvet
of her dark-green sleeveless overgarment and kissed her bare shoulder.

"Yes, you're well," she cooed into my ear, her lips moist against it.

I was blushing still as I drew back.

   I looked at her, and I went into her mind; it seemed I had loosened
the gold clasp beneath her breasts and parted her voluminous dark-green
velvet skirts. I stared at the well between her half-exposed breasts.
Blood or no blood, I could remember hot passion for her, and I felt it
now in a strange overall manner, not localized in the forgotten organ as
it had been before. I wanted to take her breasts in my hands and suckle
them slowly, arousing her, making her moist and fragrant for me and
making her head fall back. Yes, I blushed. A dim sweet swoon came over
me.

   I want you, I want you now, you and Marius both in my bed, together,
a man and a boy, a god and a cherub. This is what her mind was saying to
me, and she was remembering me. I saw myself as if in a smoky mirror, a
boy naked except for a full-sleeved open shirt, seated on the pillows

beside her, displaying the half-erect organ, ever ready to be completely
aroused by her tender lips or her long graceful white hands.

 I banished all this. I focused my gaze only on her beautiful tapering
eyes. She studied me, not suspiciously but in fascination. Her lips were
not rouged in any vulgar manner but deeply pink by nature, and her long
lashes, darkened and curled only with a clear pomade, looked like the
points of stars around her radiant eyes.

 I want you, I want you now. These were her thoughts. They struck my
ears. I bowed my head and put my hands up.

 "Angel darling," she said. "Both of you!" she whispered to Marius. She
took my hands. "Come in with me."

 I was certain he would put a stop to it. He had cautioned me to avoid
close scrutiny. But he only rose from his chair and moved towards her
bedchamber, pushing back the two painted doors.

   From the distant parlors came the steady sound of conversation and
laughter. Singing had been added. Someone played the Virginal. All this
went on.

 We slipped into her bed. I was shaking all over. I saw that my Master
had adorned himself in a thick tunic and beautiful dark blue doublet
which I'd hardly noticed before. He wore soft sleek dark blue gloves
over his hands, gloves which perfectly cleaved to his fingers, and his
legs were covered by thick soft cashmere stockings all the way to his
beautiful pointed shoes. He has covered all the hardness, I thought.

 Having settled against the headboard of the bed, he had no compunction
about helping Bianca to sit directly next to him. I looked across from
him as I took my place beside her. As she turned to me, putting her
hands on my face and kissing me eagerly again, I saw him perform a small
act which I hadn't seen before.

 Lifting her hair, he appeared to kiss her on the back of the neck.
This she neither felt nor acknowledged. When he drew back, however, his
lips were bloody. And lifting the finger of his gloved hand, he smoothed
this blood, her blood, but a few droplets of it from a shallow scratch,
undoubtedly, all over his face. It appeared to me as a living sheen, and
to her it would look very different.

   It quickened the pores in his skin, which had become all but
invisible, and it deepened a few lines around his eyes and his mouth
which otherwise were lost. It gave him a more human look, overall, and
served as a barrier to her gaze, which was now so close.

"I have my two, as I always dreamed," she said softly.

   Marius came round in front of her, tucking his arm behind her and
began to kiss her as greedily as I had ever done. I was astonished for a
moment, and jealous, but then her free hand found me and pulled me down
close to her, and she turned from Marius, dazed with desire, and kissed
me as well.

   Marius reached over and brought me close to her, so that I was
against her soft curves, feeling all the warmth rising from her
voluptuous thighs.

   He lay on top of her, but lightly, not letting his weight hurt her,
and with his right hand he drew up her skirt and moved his fingers
between her legs.

   It was so bold. I lay against her shoulder, looking at the swell of
her breasts, and beyond that the tiny, down-covered mound of her sex
which he clasped in his entire hand.

   She was past all decorum. He laid kisses on her neck and on her
breasts as he embraced her lower down with his fingers, and she began to
writhe with undisguised longing, her mouth open, her eyelids fluttering,
her body suddenly moist all over and fragrant with this new heat.

   That was the miracle, I realized, that a human could be brought to
this higher temperature, and thereby give forth all of her sweet scents
and even a strong invisible shimmer of emotions; it was rather like
stoking a fire until it became a blaze.

   The blood of my victims teemed in my face as I kissed her. It seemed
to become living blood again, heated by my passion, and yet my passion
had no demonic focus. I pressed my open mouth to the skin of her throat,
covering the place where the artery showed like a blue river moving down
from her head. But I didn't want to hurt her. I felt no need to hurt
her. Indeed, I felt only pleasure as I embraced her, as I slipped my arm
between her and Marius, so that I could cradle her tightly as he
continued to toy with her, his fingers lifting and falling on the tender
little mound of her sex.

   "You tease me, Marius," she whispered, her head tossing. The pillow
was damp beneath her and drenched with the perfume of her hair. I kissed
her lips. They locked to my mouth. To keep her tongue from discovering
my vampiric teeth, I drove my tongue into her. Her nether mouth couldn't
have been sweeter, tighter, more moist.

   "Ah, then this, my sweet," said Marius tenderly, his fingers sliding
inside her.

   She lifted her hips, as though the fingers were lifting her as she
would have them do.

   "Oh, Heaven help me," she whispered, and then came the fullness of
her passion, her face darkening with blood, and the rosy fire spreading
down her breasts. I pushed back the cloth and saw the redness consume
her bosom, her nipples standing rigid in tiny raisinlike points.

   I closed my eyes and lay beside her. I let myself feel the passion
rock her, and then the heat was lessened in her, and she seemed to
become sleepy. She turned her head away. Her face was still. Her eyelids
were beautifully molded over her closed eyes. She sighed and her pretty
lips parted in a natural way.

   Marius brushed her hair back from her face, smoothing the tiny unruly
ringlets that were caught in the moisture, and then he kissed her
forehead.

   "Sleep now, knowing you're safe," he said to her. "I'll take care of
you forever. You saved Amadeo," he whispered. "You kept him alive until
I could come."

Dreamily she turned to look up at him, her eyes glossy and slow.

   "Am I not beautiful enough for you to love me for that alone?" she
asked.

   I realized suddenly that what she said was bitter, and that she was
bestowing a confidence on him. I could feel her thoughts!

   "I love you whether or not you dress in gold or wear pearls, whether
or not you speak wittily and quickly, whether or not you make a well-
lighted and elegant place in which I can rest, I love you for the heart
here inside you, which came to Amadeo when you knew there was danger
that those who knew or loved the Englishman might hurt you, I love you
for courage and for what you know of being alone."

   Her eyes widened for a moment. "For what I know of being alone? Oh, I
know very well what it means to be utterly alone."

   "Yes, brave one, and now you know I love you," he whispered. "You
always knew that Amadeo loved you."

"Yes, I do love you," I whispered, lying next to her, holding her.

"Well, now you know I love you as well."

   She studied him as best she could in her languor. "There are so many
questions on the tip of my tongue," she said.

   "They don't matter," Marius said. He kissed her and I think he let
his teeth touch her tongue. "I take all your questions and I cast them
away. Sleep now, virginal heart," he said. "Love whom you will, quite
safe in the love we feel for you."

It was the signal to withdraw.

   As I stood at the foot of the bed, he placed the embroidered covers
over her, careful to fold the fine Flemish linen sheet over the edge of
the rougher white wool blanket, and then he kissed her again, but she
was like a little girl, soft and safe, and fast asleep.

   Outside, as we stood on the edge of the canal, he lifted his gloved
hand to his nostrils, and he savored the fragrance of her on it.

   "You've learnt much today, haven't you? You cannot tell her anything
of who you are. But do you see now how close you might come?"

"Yes," I said. "But only if I want nothing in return."

   "Nothing?" he asked. He looked at me reprovingly. "She gave you
loyalty, affection, intimacy; what more could you want in return?"

   "Nothing now," I said. "You've taught me well. But what I had before
was her understanding, that she was a mirror in which I could study my
reflection and thereby judge my own growth. She can't be that mirror
now, can she?"

   "Yes, in many ways she can. Show her by gestures and simple words
what you are. You needn't tell her tales of blood drinkers that would
only drive her mad. She can comfort you marvelously well without ever
knowing what hurts you. And you, you must remember that to tell her
everything would be to destroy her. Imagine it."

I was silent for a long moment.

   "Something's occurred to you," he said. "You have that solemn look.
Speak."

"Can she be made into what we-."

"Amadeo, you bring me to another lesson. The answer is no."

"But she'll grow old and die, and-."

   "Of course she will, as she is meant to do. Amadeo, how many of us
can there be? And on what grounds would we bring her over to us? And
would we want her as our companion forever? Would we want her as our
pupil? Would we want to hear her cries if the magic blood were to drive
her mad? It is not for any soul, this blood, Amadeo. It demands a great
strength and a great preparation, all of which I found in you. But I do
not see it in her."

   I nodded. I knew what he meant. I didn't have to think over all that
had befallen me, or even think back to the rude cradle of Russia where
I'd been nursed. He was right.

   "You will want to share this power with them all," he said. "Learn
that you cannot. Learn that with each one you make there comes a
terrible obligation, and a terrible danger. Children rise against their
parents, and with each blood drinker made by you you make a child that
will live forever in love for you or hate. Yes, hate."

"You needn't say any more," I whispered. "I know. I understand."

   We went home together, to the brightly lighted rooms of the palazzo.

   I knew then what he wanted of me, that I mingle with my old friends
among the boys, that I show kindness in particular to Riccardo, who
blamed himself, I soon realized, for the death of those few undefended
ones whom the Englishman had murdered on that fateful day.

   "Pretend, and grow strong with each pretense," he whispered in my
ear. "Rather, draw close and be loving and love, without the luxury of
complete honesty. For love can bridge all."

IN THE FOLLOWING MONTHS, I learned more than I can ever recount here. I
studied vigorously, and paid attention even to the government of the
city, which I thought basically as tiresome as any government, and read
voraciously the great Christian scholars, completing my time with
Abelard, Duns Scotus and other thinkers whom Marius prized.

   Marius also found for me a heap of Russian literature so that for the
first time I could study in writing what I had only known from the songs
of my uncles and my Father in the past. At first I deemed this too
painful for a serious inquiry, but Marius laid down the law and wisely.
The inherent value of the subject matter soon absorbed my painful
recollections and a greater knowledge and understanding was the result.

   All of these documents were in Church Slavonic, the written language
of my childhood, and I soon fell into reading this with extraordinary
ease. The Lay oflgor's Campaigns delighted me, but I also loved the
writings, translated from the Greek, of St. John Chrysostom. I also

reveled in the fantastical tales of King Solomon and of the Descent of
the Virgin into Hell, works which were not part of the approved New
Testament but which were very evocative of the Russian soul. I read also
our great chronicle, The Tale of-Bygone Years. I read also Orison on the
Downfall of Russia and the Tale of the Destruction ofRiasan.

   This exercise, the reading of my native stories, helped me to put
them in perspective alongside the other learning which I acquired. In
sum, it lifted them from the realm of personal dreams.

   Gradually, I saw the wisdom of this. I made my reports to Marius with
more enthusiasm. I asked for more of the manuscripts in Church Slavonic,
and I soon had for reading the Narrative of the Pious Prince Dovmont and
His Courage and The Heroic Deeds ofMercurius of Smolensk. Finally, I
came to regard the works in Church Slavonic to be a pure pleasure, and I
kept them for the hours after official study when I might pour over the
old tales and even make up from them my own mournful songs.

   I sang these sometimes to the other apprentices when they went to
sleep. They thought the language very exotic, and sometimes the pure
music and my sad inflection could make them cry.

   Riccardo and I, meantime, became close friends again. He never asked
why I was now a creature of night like the Master. I never sounded the
depths of his mind. Of course I would do it if I had to for my safety
and for Marius's safety, but I used my vampiric wits to gloss him in
another way, and I always found him devoted, unquestioning and loyal.

Once I asked Marius what Riccardo thought of us.

   "Riccardo owes me too great a debt to question anything I do," Marius
answered, but without any haughtiness or pride.

   "Then he is far better bred than I am, isn't he? For I owe you the
same debt and I question everything you say."

   "You're a smart, devil-tongued little imp, yes," Marius conceded with
a small smile. "Riccardo was won in a card game from his drunken Father
by a beastly merchant who worked him night and day. Riccardo detested
his Father, which you never have. Riccardo was eight years old when I
bought him for the price of a gold necklace. He'd seen the worst of men
whom children don't move to natural pity. You saw what men will do with
the flesh of children for pleasure. It's not as bad. Riccardo, unable to
believe that a tender little one could move anyone to compassion,
believed in nothing until I wrapped him in safety and filled him with
learning, and told him in terms on which he could count that he was my
prince.

   "But to answer you more in the way you ask the question, Riccardo
thinks that I am a magician, and that with you I've chosen to share my
spells. He knows that you were on death's door when I bestowed on you my
secrets, and that I do not tease him or the others with this honor, but
regard it rather as something of dire consequence. He doesn't seek after
our knowledge. And will defend us with his life."

   I accepted this. I didn't have the need in me to confide in Riccardo
as I had with Bianca.

   "I feel the need to protect him," I said to my Master. "Pray he
should never have to protect me."

   "So I feel also," said Marius. "I feel this for them all. God granted
your Englishman a great mercy that he was not alive when I came home to
find my little ones slain by him. I don't know what I would have done.
That he had injured you was bad enough. That he had laid out two child
sacrifices at my door to his pride and bitterness, this was even more
despicable. You had made love to him, and you could fight him. But they
were innocents who stood in his path."

I nodded. "What did happen to his remains?" I asked.

   "Such a simple thing," he said with a shrug. "Why do you want to
know? I can be superstitious too. I broke him into fragments and
scattered those fragments to the wind. If the old tales are true that
his shade will pine for the restoration of his body, then his soul
wanders the winds."

   "Master, what will become of our shades if our bodies are destroyed?"

   "God only knows, Amadeo. I despair of knowing. I have lived too long
to think of destroying myself. My fate is perhaps the same fate of the
whole physical world. That we could have come from nothing and return to
nothing, this is entirely possible. But let us enjoy our illusions of
immortality, as mortals enjoy theirs."

Good enough.

   My Master was absent from the palazzo twice, when he went on those
mysterious journeys which he wouldn't explain to me any more now than he
had before.

   I hated these absences, but I knew that they were tests of my new
powers. I had to rule within the house gently and unobtrusively, and I
had to hunt on my own and make some account, upon Marius's return, of
what I had done with my leisure time.

   After the second journey, he came home weary and uncommonly sad. He
said, as he had said once before, that "Those Who Must Be Kept" seemed
to be at peace.

"I hate it what these creatures are!" I said.

   "No, never say such a thing to me, Amadeo!" he burst out. In a flash
I'd seen him more angry and uncomposed than ever in our lives. I'm not
sure I'd ever seen him really angry in our lives.

   He approached me and I shrank back, actually afraid. But by the time
he struck me, hard across the face, he'd recovered himself, and it was
just the usual brain-jarring blow.

  I accepted it, and then threw him one exasperated searing glance. "You
act like a child," I said, "a child playing Master, and so I must master
my feelings and put up with this."

   Of course it took all my reserves to say this, especially when my
head was swimming, and I made my face such an obdurate mask of contempt
that suddenly he burst out laughing.

I started to laugh too.

   "But really, Marius," I said, feeling very cheeky, "what are these
creatures you speak of?" I made my wisdom nice and reverent. My question
was, after all, sincere. "You come home miserable, Sir. You know you do.
So what are they, and why must they be kept?"

   "Amadeo, don't ask me anymore. Sometimes just before morning, when my
fears are at their worst, I imagine that we have enemies among the blood
drinkers, and they're close."

"Others? As strong as you?"

   "No, those who have come in past years are never as strong as me, and
that is why they're gone."

   I was enthralled. He had hinted at this before, that he kept our
territory clean of others, but he wouldn't elaborate, and now he seemed
softened up with unhappiness and willing to talk.

   "But I imagine that there are others, and that they'll come to
disturb our peace. They won't have a good reason. They never do. They'll
want to hunt the Veneto, or they will have formed some willful little
battalion, and they'll try to destroy us out of sheer sport. I imagine
... but the point is, my child-and you are my child, smart one!-I don't
tell you any more about the ancient mysteries than you need to know.
That way, no one can pick your apprentice mind for its deepest secrets,
either with your cooperation or without your knowledge, or against your
will."

   "If we have a history worth knowing, Sir, then you should tell me.
What ancient mysteries? You wall me up with books on human history.
You've made me learn Greek, and even this miserable Egyptian script
which no one else knows, and you question me all the time on the fate of
ancient Rome and ancient Athens, and the battles of every Crusade ever
sent from our shores to the Holy Land. But what of us?"

   "Always here," he said, "I told you. Ancient as mankind itself.
Always here, and always a few, and always warring and best when alone
and needing the love only of one other or two at most. That's the
history, plain and simple. I will expect you to write it out for me in
all five languages you now know."

   He sat down on the bed, disgruntled, letting his muddy boot dig into
the satin. He fell back on the pillows. He was really raw and strange
and seemingly young.

   "Marius, come on now," I coaxed. I was at the desk. "What ancient
mysteries? What are Those Who Must Be Kept?"

   "Go dig into our dungeons, child," he said, lacing his voice with
sarcasm. "Find the statues there I have from so-called pagan days.
You'll find things as useful as Those Who Must Be Kept. Leave me alone.
I'll tell you some night, but for now, I give you what counts. In my
absence you were supposed to study. Tell me now what you learnt."

   He had in fact demanded that I learn all of Aristotle, not from the
manuscripts which were common currency in the piazza, but from an old
text of his own which he said was purer Greek. I'd read it all.

   "Aristotle," I said. "And St. Thomas Aquinas. Ah, well, great systems
give comfort, and when we feel ourselves slipping into despair, we

should devise great schemes of the nothing around us, and then we will
not slip but hang on a scaffold of our making, as meaningless as
nothing, but too detailed to be so easily dismissed."

   "Well done," he said with an eloquent sigh. "Maybe some night in the
far distant future, you'll take a more hopeful approach, but as you seem
as animated and fall of happiness as you can be, why should I complain?"

"We must come from somewhere," I said, pushing the other point.

He was too crestfallen to answer.

   Finally, he rallied, climbing up off the pillows and coming towards
me. "Let's go out. Let's find Bianca, and dress her up as a man for a
while. Bring your finest. She needs to be freed of those rooms for a
spell."

   "Sir, this may come as a rude shock to you, but Bianca, like many
women, already has that habit. In the guise of a boy, she slips out all
the time to make the rounds of the city."

   "Yes, but not in our company," he said. "We shall show her the worst
places!" He made a dramatic comical face. "Come on."

I was excited.

As soon as we told the little plan to her, she was excited too.

   We came bursting in with an armful of fine clothes, and she
immediately slipped away with us to get dressed.

   "What have you brought me? Oh, I'm to be Amadeo tonight, splendid,"
she said. She shut the doors on her company, who as usual carried on
without her, several men singing around the Virginal and others arguing
heatedly over their dice.

   She stripped off her clothes and stepped out of them, naked as Venus
from the sea. We both dressed her in blue leggings and tunic and
doublet. I pulled her belt tight, and Marius caught her hair up in a
soft velvet hat.

   "You're the prettiest boy in the Veneto," he said stepping back.
"Something tells me I'll have to protect you with our life."

   "Are you really going to take me to the worst haunts? I want to see
dangerous places!" She threw up her arms. "Give me my stiletto. You
don't expect me to go unarmed."

   "I have all the proper weapons for you," Marius said. He had brought
a sword with a beautiful diamond-studded diagonal belt which he clasped
at her hip. "Try to draw this. It's no dancing rapier. It's a war sword.
Come on."

   She took the handle with both hands and brought it forth in a wide
sure sweep. "I wish I had an enemy," she cried out, "who was ready to
die."

I looked at Marius. He looked at me. No, she couldn't be one of us.

"That would be too selfish," he whispered in my ear.

   I couldn't help but wonder, if I had not been dying after my fight
with the Englishman, if the sweating sickness had not taken me over,
would he have ever made me a vampire?

   The three of us hurried down the stone steps to the quay. There was
our canopied gondola waiting. Marius gave the address.

   "Are you sure you want to go there, Master?" asked the gondolier,
shocked because he knew the district where the worst of the foreign
seamen congregated and drank and fought.

"Most sure of it," he said.

 As we moved off in the black waters, I put my arm around tender
Bianca. Leaning back on the cushions, I felt invulnerable, immortal,
certain that nothing would ever defeat me or Marius, and in our care
Bianca would always be safe.

How very wrong I was.

 Nine months perhaps we had together after our trip to Kiev. Nine or
maybe ten, I cannot mark the climax by any exterior event. Let me say
only, before I proceed to bloody disaster, that Bianca was always with
us in those last months. When we were not spying upon the carousers, we
were in our house, where Marius painted her portraits, devising her as
this or that goddess, as the Biblical Judith with the head of the
Florentine for her Holofernes, or as the Virgin Mary staring rapt at a
tiny Christ child, as perfectly rendered by Marius as any image he ever
made.

Those pictures-perhaps some of them endure to this very day.

   One night, when all slept except for the three of us, Bianca, about
to give up on a couch as Marius painted, sighed and said, "I like your
company too much. I don't ever want to go home."

   Would that she had loved us less. Would that she had not been there
on the fatal evening in 1499, just before the turn of the century, when
the High Renaissance was in its glory, ever to be celebrated by artists
and historians, would that she had been safe when our world went up in
flames.

IF YOU'VE READ The Vampire Lestat you know what happened, for I showed
it all to Lestat in visions two hundred years ago. Lestat set down in
writing the images I made known to him, the pain I shared with him. And
though I now propose to relive these horrors, to flesh out the tale in
my own words, there are points where I cannot improve on his words, and
may from time to time freely call them up.

 It began suddenly. I awoke to find that Marius had lifted back the
gilded cover of the sarcophagus. A torch blazed behind him on the wall.

"Hurry, Amadeo, they're here. They mean to burn our house."

"Who, Master? And why?"

   He snatched me from the shining coffin box, and I rushed after him up
the decaying stairs to the first floor of the ruined dwelling.

   He wore his red cape and hood, and he moved so fast it took all my
power to keep up with him.

   "Is it Those Who Must Be Kept?" I asked. He slung his arm around me,
and off we went to the rooftop of our own palazzo.

   "No, child, it's a pack of foolish blood drinkers, bent on destroying
all the work I've done. Bianca is there, at their mercy, and the boys
too."

 We entered by the roof doors and went down the marble steps. Smoke
rose from the lower floors.

"Master, the boys, they're screaming!" I shouted.

Bianca came running to the foot of the stairs far below.

   "Marius! Marius, they are demons. Use your magic!" she cried out, her
hair streaming from the couch, her garments undone. "Marius!" Her wail
echoed up the three floors of the palazzo.

   "Dear God, the rooms are everywhere on fire!" I cried out. "We must
have water to put this out. Master, the paintings!"

   Marius dropped down over the railing and appeared, suddenly below, at
her side. As I ran to join him, I saw a crowd of black-robed figures
close in on him, and to my horror, try to set his clothes afire with the
torches they brandished, as they gave forth horrid shrieks and hissed
curses from beneath their hoods.

   From everywhere these demons came. The cries of the mortal
apprentices were terrible.

 Marius knocked his assailants away, turning his arm in a great arc,
the torches rolling on the marble floor. He closed his cloak about
Bianca.

   "They mean to kill us!" she screamed. "They mean to burn us, Marius,
they've slaughtered the boys, and others they've taken prisoner!"

   Suddenly more of the black figures came running before the first
attackers could climb to their feet. I saw what they were. All had the
same white faces and hands as we had; all possessed the magic blood.

They were creatures such as we!

   Again, Marius was attacked, only to fling off all of them. The
tapestries of the great hall were ignited. Dark odoriferous smoke
belched forth from the adjacent rooms. Smoke filled the stairwell above.
An infernal flickering light suddenly made the place as bright as day.

   I pitched myself into battle with the demons, finding them amazingly
weak. And picking up one of their torches I rushed at them, driving them
back, away from me, just as the Master did.

   "Blasphemer, heretic!" came a hiss from one. "Demon idolater,
pagan!" cursed another. They came on, and I fought them again, setting
their robes afire so that they screamed and fled to the safety of the
waters of the canal.

   But there were too many of them. More poured into the hall even as we
fought.

   Suddenly, to my horror, Marius shoved Bianca away from him towards
the open front doors of the palazzo.

"Run, darling, run. Get clear of the house."

   Savagely he fought those who would follow her, running after her, to
bring them down one by one as they tried to stop her, until I saw her
vanish through the open doors.

   There was no time to make certain she had reached safety. More of
them had closed in on me. The flaming tapestries fell from their rods.
Statues were overturned and smashed on the marble. I was nearly dragged
down by two of the little demons who clutched at my left arm, until I
drove my torch into the face of one, and set the other completely
alight.

"To the roof, Amadeo, come!" Marius shouted.

"Master, the paintings, the paintings in the storage rooms!" I cried.

   "Forget the paintings. It's too late. Boys, run from here, get out
now, save yourselves from the fire."

   Knocking the attackers back, he shot up the stairwell and called down
to me from the uppermost railing. "Come, Amadeo, fight them off, believe
in your strength, child, fight."

   Reaching the second floor, I was everywhere surrounded, and no sooner
did I set one ablaze than another was on me, and not seeking to burn me
they grabbed my arms and my legs. All my limbs were caught by them,
until finally the torch was wrenched from my hand.

   "Master, leave me, get away!" I called. I turned, kicking and
writhing, and looked up to see him high above, and again surrounded, and
this time a hundred torches were plunged into his ballooning red cloak,
a hundred fiery brands were beating against his golden hair and his
furious white face. It was as a swarm of blazing insects, and so by such
numbers and such tactics the swarm rendered him first motionless; and
then, with a great loud gust, his entire body went up in flames.

   "Marius!" I screamed and screamed, unable to take my eyes off him,
warring still with my captors, jerking loose my legs only to have them
caught again by cold, hurting fingers, shoving with my arms, only to be
pinioned once more. "Marius!" This cry came out of me with all my worst
anguish and terror.

   It seemed that nothing I had ever feared could be so unspeakable, so
unendurable as the sight of him, high above, at the stone banister,
completely engulfed in flame. His long slender form became a black
outline but for one second, and it seemed I saw his profile, head thrown
back, as his hair exploded and his fingers were like black spiders
clawing up out of the fire for air.

   "Marius!" I cried. All comfort, all goodness, all hope was burning in
this black figure which my eyes would not let go, even as it dwindled,
and lost all perceptible form.

Marius! My will died.

  What remained was a remnant of it, and the remnant, as if commanded by
a secondary soul made up of magic blood and power, fought mindlessly on.

   A net was thrown over me, a net of steel mesh so heavy and so fine
that I could see nothing suddenly, only feel myself bound up in it,
rolled over and over in it, by enemy hands. I was being carried out of
the house. I could hear screams all around me. I could hear the running
feet of those who carried me, and when the wind howled past us, I knew
we had come to the shore.

   Down into the bowels of a ship I was carried, my ears still full of
mortal wails. The apprentices had been taken prisoner with me. I was
thrown down among them, their soft frantic bodies heaped on me and
beside me, and I, tightly bound in the net, could not even speak to
utter words of comfort, and had no words to give them besides.

   I felt the oars rise and fall, heard the inevitable splash in the
water, and the great wooden galley shivered and moved out towards the
open sea. It gained speed as if there were no night to fight its
passage, and on and on plowed the oarsmen with a force and strength that
mortal men could not have commanded, driving the ship south.

"Blasphemer," came a whisper near my ear.

The boys sobbed and prayed.

   "Stop your impious prayers," said a cold preternatural voice, "you
servants of the pagan Marius. You will die for your Master's sins, all
of you."

   I heard a sinister laughter, rumbling like low thunder over the moist
soft sounds of their anguish and suffering. I heard a long, dry cruel
laugh.

   I closed my eyes, I went deep deep inside myself. I lay in the dirt
of the Monastery of the Caves, a wraith of myself, tumbled back into
safest and most terrible memories.

   "Dear God," I whispered without moving my lips, "save them, and I
swear to You I shall bury myself alive among the monks forever, I shall
give up all pleasures, I shall do nothing hour by hour but praise Your
Holy Name. Lord, God, deliver me. Lord, God-." But as the madness of
panic took over, as I lost all sense of time and place, I called out for
Marius. "Marius, for the love of God, Marius!"

   Someone struck me. A leather-clad foot struck my head. Another struck
my ribs, and yet another crushed my hand. All around me were these
wicked feet, kicking me and bruising me. I went soft. I saw the shocks
of the blows as so many colors, and I thought to myself bitterly, ah,
what beautiful colors, yes, colors. Then came the increased wails of my
brothers. They too must suffer this, and what mental refuge did they
have, these fragile young students, each so well loved and so well
taught and groomed for the great world, to find themselves now at the
mercy of these demons whose purpose was unknown to me, whose purpose lay
beyond anything of which I could conceive.

"Why do this to us?" I whispered.

   "To punish you!" came a gentle whisper. "To punish you for all your
vain and blasphemous deeds, for the worldly and Godless life you've
lived. What is Hell to this, young one?"

   Ah, so the executioners of the mortal world said a thousand times
when they led heretics to the stake. "What are the fires of Hell to this
brief suffering?" Oh, such self-serving and arrogant lies.

   "Do you think so?" came the whisper. "Lay a caution on your thoughts,
young one, for there are those who can pick your mind barren of all its
thoughts. There may be no Hell for you, child, but there will be
suffering eternal. Your nights of luxury and lasciviousness are over.
The truth awaits you now."

   Once again, I retreated into my deepest mental hiding place. I had no
body anymore. I lay in the Monastery, in the earth, unfeeling of my
body. I put my mind at work on the tone of the voices near me, such
sweet and pitiable voices. I picked out the boys by name and slowly made
a count of them. Over half our little company, our splendid cherubic
company, was in this abominable prison.

   I did not hear Riccardo. But then, when our captors had finished
their abuse for a while, I did hear Riccardo.

   He intoned a litany in Latin, in a raw and desperate whisper.
"Blessed be God." The others were quick to answer. "Blessed be His Holy
Name." And so on it went, the prayers, the voice gradually becoming weak
in the silence until Riccardo alone prayed.

I did not give the responses.

  Yet on he went, now that his charges mercifully slept, praying to
comfort himself, or perhaps merely for the glory of God. He moved from
the litany into the Pater Noster, and from then into the comforting age-
old words of the Ave which he said over and over, as if making a rosary,
all alone, as he lay imprisoned in the bottom of the ship.

   I spoke no words to him. I did not even let him know that I was
there. I couldn't save him. I couldn't comfort him. I couldn't even
explain this terrible fate which had befallen us. I couldn't above all
reveal what I had seen: the Master perishing, the great one gone into
the simple and eternal agony of fire.

   I had slipped into a shock near to despair. I let my mind recover the
sight of Marius burning, Marius a living torch, turning and twisting in
the fire, his fine fingers reaching heavenward like spiders in the
orange flame. Marius was dead; Marius was burned. There had been too
many of them for Marius. I knew what he would have said if he had come
to me a comforting specter. "There were simply too many of them, Amadeo,
too many. I couldn't stop them, though I tried."

   I slipped into tormented dreams. The ship bore on through the night,
carrying me away from Venice, away from the ruin of all that I believed
in, all that I held dear.

   I awoke to the sounds of singing and to the smell of the earth, but
it was not Russian earth.

We were no longer at sea. We were imprisoned on land.

   Still bound in the net, I listened to hollow preternatural voices
chanting with a villainous gusto the awful hymn, Dies Irae, or Day of
Wrath.

   A low drum carried on the zesty rhythm as if it were a song for
dancing rather than a terrible lament of the Final Days. On and on went
the Latin words speaking of the day when all the world would be turned
to ashes, when the great trumpets of the Lord would blast to signal the
opening of all graves. Death itself and nature would both shudder. All
souls would be brought together, no soul able anymore to hide anything
from the Lord. Out of His book, every sin would be read aloud. Vengeance
would fall upon everyone. Who was there to defend us, but the Judge
Himself, Our Majestic Lord? Our only hope was the pity of Our God, the
God who had suffered the Cross for us, who would not let His sacrifice
be in vain.

   Yes, beautiful old words, but they issued from an evil mouth, the
mouth of one who did not even know their meaning, who tapped at his
eager drum as if ready for a feast.

  A night had passed. We were entombed and now being released from our
prison, as the dreaded little voice sang on to its spirited little drum.

   I heard the whispers of the older boys, seeking to give the young
ones comfort, and the steady voice of Riccardo assuring all of them that
surely they would soon discover what these creatures wanted, and perhaps
be allowed to go free.

   Only I heard the rustling, impish laughter everywhere. Only I knew
how many preternatural monsters lurked about us, as we were brought into
a light of a monstrous fire.

   The net was torn from me. I rolled over, clutching at the grass. I
looked up and saw that we were in a great clearing beneath high and
indifferent bright stars. It was the summery air, and great towering
green trees surrounded us. But the blast of the raging bonfire distorted
everything. The boys, chained together, their clothes torn, their faces
scratched and streaked with blood, cried out frantically when they saw
me, yet I was snatched away from them and held, a bevy of little hooded
demons fastened to both my hands.

   "I can't help you!" I cried. It was selfish and terrible. It came
from my pride. It made only panic among them.

   I saw Riccardo, as badly beaten as the rest, turn from right to left,
trying to quiet them, his hands bound before him, his doublet almost
torn off his back.

   He turned his glance to me, and then together we looked around us at
the great wreath of dark-dressed figures that enclosed us. Could he see
the whiteness of their faces and hands? Did he, on an instinctive level,
know what they were?

   "Be quick if you mean to kill us!" he called out. "We've done
nothing. We don't know who you are or why you've taken us. We are
innocent, to a one."

   I was touched by his bravery, and I pulled my thoughts together. I
must stop shrinking in horror from my last memory of the Master, but
imagine him living, and think what he would tell me to do.

   We were outnumbered, that was obvious, and I could now detect smiles
on the faces of the hooded figures, who though they draped their eyes in
shadow, revealed their long twisted mouths.

   "Where is the leader here?" I demanded, raising my voice above the
level of human power. "Surely you see these boys are nothing but
mortals! Your argument must be with me!"

  The long string of surrounding black-robed figures caved in to
whispering and murmuring amongst themselves at this. Those clustered
about the band of enchained boys tightened their ranks. And as others
whom I could scarce see threw more and more wood and pitch onto the
great fire, it seemed the enemy prepared for action.

   Two couples placed themselves before the apprentices who seemed not
in their wailing and crying to realize what this meant.

I realized it at once.

   "No, you must speak with me, reason with me!" I shouted, straining
against those who held me. To my horror, they only laughed.

   Suddenly drums began again, some one-hundredfold louder than before,
as if an entire circle of drummers surrounded us and the hissing,
spitting fire.

They took up that steady beat of the Dies Irae hymn, and suddenly the
wreath of figures all to a one straightened and locked hands. They began
to sing the words in Latin of the terrible day of woe. Each figure began
to rock playfully, lifting knees in playful march as a hundred voices
spit out the words to the obvious rhythm of a dance. It made an ugly
mockery of the piteous words.

   The drums were joined by the shrill squeal of pipes, and the repeated
slam of tambourines, and suddenly the entire wreath of dancers, still
hand in hand, was moving, bodies swaying side to side from the waist up,
heads bobbing, mouths grinning. "Dee-eees- - -a- - -ray, dee-ees- -eee-
- -raw!" they sang.

I panicked. But I couldn't shake loose of my captors. I screamed.

  The first pair of robed beings before the boys had broken out the
first of them who was to suffer and tossed his struggling body high in
the air. The second pair of figures caught it, and, with great
preternatural thrusts, hurled the helpless child in an arc into the
great fire.

   With piteous shrieks, the boy fell into the flames and vanished, and
the other apprentices, now certain of their fate, went wild with crying
and sobbing and screaming, but to no avail.

   One after another, boys were disentangled from the others and hurled
into the flames.

   I thrashed back and forth, kicking at the ground and at my opponents.
Once I broke one arm loose only to have it imprisoned by three other
figures with hard pinching fingers. I sobbed:

"Don't do this, they're innocent. Don't kill them. Don't."

   No matter how loud I cried out I could hear the dying cries of the
boys who burned, Amadeo, save us, whether there were words to the final
terror or no. Finally all the living took up this chant. "Amadeo, save
us!" but their band was not halved and soon only a fourth remained,
squirming and struggling, as they were finally heaved up to the
unspeakable death.

 The drums played on, with the mocking chink, chink, chink of the
tambourines and the whining melody of the horns. The voices made a
fearful chorus, each syllable sharpened with venom as the hymn was sung
out.

   "So much for your cohorts!" hissed the figure nearest me. "So you sob
for them, do you? When you should have made a meal of them each and
every one for the love of God!"

   "The love of God!" I cried. "How dare you speak of the love of God!
You slaughter children!" I managed to turn and kick at him, wounding him
far worse than he expected, but as ever, three more guards took his
place.

 Finally in the lurid blast of the fire, only three white-faced
children were left, the very youngest of our household, and none of them
made a sound. It was eerie their silence, their little faces wet and
quivering, as they were given up, their eyes dull and unbelieving, into
the flames.

   I called their names. At the top of my lungs, I called out: "In
Heaven, my brothers, in Heaven, you go into the arms of God!"

   But how could their mortal ears hear over the deafening song of the
chanters.

   Suddenly, I realized Riccardo had not been among them. Riccardo had
either escaped or been spared, or been saved for something worse. I
knotted my brows in a tight frown to help me lock these thoughts in my
mind, lest these preternatural beasts remember Riccardo.

But I was yanked from my thoughts and dragged towards the pyre.

   "Now you, brave one, little Ganymede of the blasphemers, you, you
willful, brazen cherub."

   "No!" I dug in my heels. It was unthinkable. I couldn't die like
this; I couldn't go into the flames. Frantically I reasoned with myself,
"But you have just seen your brothers die, why not you?" and yet I
couldn't accept this as possible, no, not me, I was immortal, no!

   "Yes, you, and fire will make a roast of you as it has of them. Do
you smell their flesh roasting? Do you smell their burnt bones?"

   I was thrown high in the air, high enough by their powerful hands to
feel the very breeze catch hold of my hair, and then to peer down into
the fire, as its annihilating blast struck my face, my chest, my
outstretched arms.

   Down, down, down into the heat I went, sprawled out, in the thunder
of crackling wood and dancing orange flames. So I die! I thought if I
thought anything, but I think that all I knew was panic, and surrender,

surrender to what would be unspeakable pain.

   Hands clutched me, burning wood tumbled and roared beneath me. I was
being dragged off the fire. I was being dragged across the ground. Feet
stomped on my burning clothes. My burning tunic was ripped off me. I
gasped for air. I felt pain all over my body, the dread pain of burnt
flesh, and I deliberately rolled my eyes up into my head to seek
oblivion. Come, Master, come if there is a paradise for us, come to me.
I pictured him, burnt, a black skeleton, but he put out his arms to
receive me.

   A figure stood over me. I lay on the moist Mother Earth, thank God,
the smoke still rising from my scorched hands and face and my hair. The
figure was big-shouldered, tall, black-haired.

   He lifted two strong thick-knuckled white hands and drew his hood
back off his head, revealing a huge mass of shining black hair. His eyes
were large with pearly whites and pupils of jet, and his eyebrows,
though very thick, were beautifully arched and curved over his eyes. He
was a vampire, as were the others, but he was one of unique beauty and
immense presence, looking down at me as though he were more interested
in me than himself, though he expected to be the center of all eyes.

   A tiny shiver of thanks passed through me, that he seemed by virtue
of these eyes and his smooth Cupid's bow mouth to be possessed of the
semblance of human reason.

   "Will you serve God?" he asked. His voice was cultured and gentle,
and his eyes held no mockery. "Answer me, Will you serve God, for if you
will not, you will be thrown back into the fire."

   I felt pain in all my frame. No thought came to me except that the
words he spoke were impossible, they made no sense, and I could
therefore make no response.

   At once, his vicious helpers lifted me again, laughing, and chanting
in time with the loud singing of the hymn which had never ceased, "Into
the fire, into the fire!"

   "No!" the leader cried out. "I see in him the pure love of our
Savior." He lifted his hand. The others released their grip, though they
held me suspended, my legs and arms spread out, in the air.

   "You are good?" I whispered desperately to the figure. "How can this
be?"Iwept.

   He drew nearer. He leant over me. What beauty he possessed! His thick
mouth was the perfect Cupid's bow, as I have said, but only now did I
see its rich dark color, natural to it, and the even shadow of beard,
shaven away for the last time in mortal life no doubt, that covered all
his lower face, giving it the strong mask of a man. His high broad
forehead seemed made of pure white bone only by comparison, with full
rounded temples and a peaked hairline, from which his dark curls fell
back gracefully to make a striking frame for his face.

   But it was the eyes, yes, as always with me, the eyes that held me,
the large oval and shimmering eyes.

   "Child," he whispered. "Would I suffer such horrors if it were not
for God?"

I wept all the more.

   I was no longer afraid. I didn't care that I was in pain. The pain
was red and golden as the flames had been and ran through me as if it
were fluid, but though I felt it, it didn't hurt me, and I didn't care.

   Without protest, I was carried, my eyes closed, into a passage, where
the shuffling feet of those who carried me made a soft, crumbling echo
against low ceiling and walls.

  Let loose to roll over on the ground, I turned my face to it, sad that
I lay on a nest of old rags because I couldn't feel the moist Mother
Earth when I needed her, and then this too was of no import whatsoever,
and I laid my cheek on the soiled linen and drifted, as if I had put
there to sleep.

  My scalded skin was a part from me, and not a part of me. And I let a
long sigh come out of me, knowing, though I didn't form words in my
mind, that all my poor boys were safely dead. The fire could not have
tortured them for long, no. Its heat was too great, and surely their
souls had fled Heavenward like nightingales that had drifted into the
smoky blast.

  My boys were of the Earth no more and no one could do them harm. All
the fine things which Marius had done for them, the teachers, the skills
they'd been taught, the lessons they'd learned, their dancing, their
laughter, their singing, the works they had painted-all of this was
gone, and the souls went Heavenward on soft white wings.

  Would I have followed? Would God have received the soul of a blood
drinker into his golden cloudy Heaven? Would I have left the awful sound
of these demons chanting Latin for the realm of angels' song?

  Why did those near me allow these thoughts in me, for surely they read
them from my mind. I could feel the presence of the leader, the black-
eyed one, the powerful one. Perhaps I was here with him alone. If he
could make sense of this, if he could lend it meaning and thereby
contain its monstrousness, then he would be some saint of God. I saw
soiled and starving monks in caves.

   I rolled over on my back, luxuriating in the splashy red and yellow
pain that bathed me, and I opened my eyes.

A MELLOW and comforting voice spoke to me, directly to me: "Your
Master's vain works are all burnt; nothing but ashes remain now of his
paintings. God forgive him, that he used his sublime powers not in the
service of God but in the service of the World, the Flesh and the Devil,
yes, I say the Devil, though the Devil is our standard bearer, for the
Evil One is proud of us and satisfied with our pain; but Marius served
the Devil with no regard to the wishes of God, and the mercies granted
us by God, that rather than burn in the flames of Hell, we rule in the
shadows of the Earth."

"Ah," I whispered. "I see your twisted philosophy."

There came no admonition.

   Gradually, though I had rather hear only the voice, my eyes began to
focus. There were human skulls, bleached and covered with dust, pressed

in the domed earth over my head. Skulls pressed into the earth with
mortar so that they formed the entire ceiling, like clean white shells
from the sea. Shells for the brain, I thought, for what is left of them,
as they protrude from the mortared soil behind them, but the dome that
covers the brain and the round black holes where once the jellied eyes
were poised, acute as dancers, ever vigilant to report the splendors of
the world to the carapaced mind.

   All skulls, a dome of skulls, and where the dome came down, to meet
the walls, a lacing of thigh bones all around it, and below that the
random bones of the mortal form, making no pattern, any more than random
stones do when they are similarly pressed in mortar to make a wall.

   All bones, this place, and lighted with candles. Yes, I smelled the
candles, purest beeswax, as for the rich.

   "No," said the voice, thoughtfully, "rather for the church, for this
is God's church, though the Devil is our Superior General, the founding
saint of our Order, so why not beeswax? Leave it to you, a vain and a
worldly Venetian, to think it luxury, to confuse it with the wealth in
which you wallowed rather like the pig in his slops."

   I laughed softly. "Give me more of your generous and idiotic logic,"
I said. "Be the Aquinas of the Devil. Speak on."

   "Don't mock me," he said imploringly and sincerely. "I saved you from
the fire."

"I would be dead now if you had not."

"You want to burn?"

   "No, not to suffer so, no, I can't bear the thought of it, that I or
anyone should suffer so. But to die, yes."

   "And what do you think will be your destination if you do die? Are
the fires of Hell not fifty times as hot as the fires we lighted for you
and your friends? You are Hell's child; you were from the first moment
that the blasphemer Marius infused you with our blood. No one can
reverse this judgment. You are kept alive by blood that is cursed and
unnatural and pleasing to Satan, and pleasing to God only because He
must have Satan to show forth His goodness, and to give mankind a choice
to be good or bad."

   I laughed again, but as respectfully as I could. "There are so many
of you," I said. I turned my head. The numerous candles blinded me, but
it wasn't unpleasant. It was as if a different species of flame danced
on the wicks, than the species that had consumed my brothers.

   "Were they your brothers, these spoilt and pampered mortals?" he
asked. His voice was unwavering.

   "Do you believe all the rot you're talking to me?" I asked, imitating
his tone.

   He laughed now, and it was a decently, churchly laugh as though we
were whispering together about the absurdity of a sermon. But the
Blessed Sacrament was not here as it would be in a consecrated church,
so why whisper?

   "Dear one," he said. "It would be so simple to torture you, to turn
your arrogant little mind inside out, and make you nothing but an
instrument for raucous screams. It would be nothing to wall you up so
that your screams would not be too loud for us, but merely a pleasing
accompaniment to our nightly meditation. But I have no taste for such
things. That is why I serve the Devil so well; I have never come to like
cruelty or evil. I despise them, and would that I could look upon a
Crucifix, I would do so and weep as I did when I was a mortal man."

   I let my eyes close, forsaking all the dancing flames that
besprinkled the gloom. I sent my strongest most stealthy power into his
mind, but came upon a locked door.

   "Yes, that is my image for shutting you out. Painfully literal for
such an educated infidel. But then your dedication to Christ the Lord
was nourished among the literal and the naive, was it not? But here,
someone comes with a gift for you which will greatly hasten our
agreement."

"Agreement, Sir, and what agreement will that be?" I asked.

   I too heard the other. A strong and terrible odor penetrated my
nostrils. I did not move or open my eyes. I heard the other one laughing
in that low rumbling fashion so perfected by the others who had sung the
Dies Irae with such lewd polish. The smell was noxious, the smell was
that of human flesh burnt or something thereof. I hated it. I began to
turn my head and tried to stop myself. Sound and pain I could endure,
but not this terrible, terrible odor.

"A gift for you, Amadeo," said the other.

   I looked up. I stared into the eyes of a vampire formed like a young
man with whitish-blond hair and the long lean frame of a Norseman. He
held up a great urn with both hands. And then he turned it.

   "Ah, no, stop!" I threw up my hands. I knew what it was. But it was
too late.

   The ashes came down in a torrent on me. I choked and cried, and
turned over. I couldn't get them out of my eyes and my mouth.

   "The ashes of your brothers, Amadeo," said the Norse vampire. He gave
way to a wild peal of laughter.

   Helpless, lying on my face, my hands up to the sides of my face, I
shook myself all over, feeling the hot weight of the ashes. At last I
turned over and over, and then sprang up to my knees, and to my feet. I
backed into the wall. A great iron rack of candles went over, the little
flames arcing in my blurred vision, the tapers themselves thudding in
the mud. I heard the clatter of bones. I flung my arms up in front of my
face.

   "What's happened to our pretty composure?" asked the Norse vampire.
"We are a weeping cherub, aren't we? That is what your Master called
you, cherub, no? Here!" He pulled at my arm, and with the other hand
tried to smear the ashes on me.

   "You damnable fiend!" I cried. I went mad with fury and indignation.
I grabbed his head with both my hands, and using all my strength turned
it around on his neck, snapping all the bones, and then I kicked him

hard with my right foot. He sank down on his knees, moaning, living
still with his broken neck, but not in one piece would he live, I vowed,
and kicking at him with the full weight of my right foot, I tore his
head from him, the skin ripping and snapping, and the blood pouring out
of the gaping trunk, I yanked the head free.

   "Ah, look at you now, Sir!" I said, staring down into his frantic
eyes. The pupils still danced. "Oh, die, will you, for your own sake." I
buried my left fingers tight in his hair, and turning this way and that,
I found a candle with my right hand, ripped it from the iron nail that
held it and jammed it into his eye sockets one after the other, until he
saw no more.

   "Ah, then it can be done this way as well," I said looking up and
blinking in the dazzle of the candles.

   Slowly, I made out his figure. His thick curly black hair was free
and tangled, and he sat at an angle, black robes flowing down around his
stool, facing slightly away from me, but regarding me so that I could
trace the lineaments of his face easily in the light. A noble and
beautiful face, with the curling lips as strong as the huge eyes.

   "I never liked him," he said softly, raising his eyebrows, "though I
must say, you do impress me, and I did not expect to see him gone so
soon."

   I shuddered. A horrible coldness seized me, a soulless ugly anger,
routing sorrow, routing madness, routing hope.

   I hated the head I held and wanted to drop it, but the thing still
lived. The bleeding sockets quivered, and the tongue darted from side to
side out of the mouth. "Oh, this is a revolting thing!" I cried.

   "He always said such unusual things," said the black-haired one. "He
was a pagan, you see. That you never were. I mean he believed in the
gods of the north forest, and in Thor ever circling the world with his
hammer..."

  "Are you going to talk forever?" I asked. "I must burn this thing even
after this, mustn't I?" I asked.

He threw me the most charming innocent smile.

  "You are a fool to be in this place," I whispered. My hands shook
uncontrollably.

Not waiting for a response, I turned and snatched up another candle,
having so thoroughly snuffed the other, and set fire to the dead being's
hair. The stench sickened me. I made a sound like a boy crying.

   I dropped the flaming head into the robed and headless body. I threw
the candle down into the flames, so that the wax might feed it.
Gathering up the other candles I had knocked down, I fed them to the
fire and stepped back as a great heat rose from the dead one.

   The head appeared to roll about in the flames, more than was likely,
so I grabbed up the iron candelabra I had knocked over, and using this
like a rake, I plunged it into the burning mass to flatten and crush
what lay beneath the fire.

   At the very last his outstretched hands curled, fingers digging into
the palms. Ah, to have life in this state, I thought wearily, and with
the rake I knocked the arms against the torso. The fire reeked of rags
and human blood, blood he'd drunk no doubt, but there was no other human
scent to it, and with despair I saw that I had made a fire of him right
in the middle of the ashes of my friends.

   Well, it seemed appropriate. "You are revenged in one of them," I
said with a defeated sigh. I threw down the crude candleholder rake. I
left him there. The room was large. I walked dejectedly, my feet bare
from the fire having burned off my felt slippers, to another broad place
among iron candelabra, where the moist good earth was black and
seemingly clean, and there I lay down again, as I had before, not caring
that the black-haired one had a very good view of me there, as I was
more in front of him than even before.

   "Do you know that Northern worship?" he asked, as if nothing dreadful
had happened. "Oh, that Thor is forever circling with his hammer, and
the circle grows smaller and smaller, and beyond lies chaos, and we are
here, doomed within the dwindling circle of warmth. Have you ever heard
it? He was a pagan, made by renegade magicians who used him to murder
their enemies. I am glad to be rid of him, but why do you cry?"

   I didn't answer. This was beyond all hope, this horrid domed chamber
of skulls, the myriad candles illuminating only remnants of death, and
this being, this beautiful powerfully built black-haired being ruling
amid all this horror and feeling nothing on the death of one who had
served him. who was now a pile of smoldering stinking bones.

   I imagined I was home. I was safe within my Master's bedchamber. We
sat together. He read from a Latin text. It did not matter what the
words were. All around us were the accouterments of civilization, sweet
and pretty things, and the fabrics of the room had all been worked by
human hands.

  "Vain things," said the black-haired one. "Vain and foolish, but
you'll come to see it. You are stronger than I reckoned. But then he was
centuries old, your Maker, nobody even tells of a time when there wasn't
Marius, the lone wolf, who abides no one in his territory, Marius, the
destroyer of the young."

   "I never knew him to destroy any but those who were evil," I said in
a whisper.

   "We are evil, aren't we? All of us are evil. So he destroyed us
without compunction. He thought he was safe from us. He turned his back
on us! He considered us not worthy of his attentions, and look, how he
has lavished all his strength on a boy. But I must say you are a most
beautiful boy."

There was a noise, an evil rustling, not unfamiliar. I smelled rats.

   "Oh, yes, my children, the rats," he said. "They come to me. Do you
want to see? Turn over and look up at me, if you will? Think no more on
St. Francis, with his birds and squirrels and the wolf at his side.
Think on Santino, with his rats."

  I did look. I drew in my breath. I sat up in the dirt and stared at
him. A great gray rat sat on his shoulder, its tiny whiskered snout just
kissing his ear, its tail curling behind his head. Another rat had come

to sit sedately, as if spellbound, in his lap. There were others
gathered at his feet.

   Seeming loath to move lest they startle, he carefully dipped his
right hand into a bowl of dried bread crumbs. I caught the scent only
now, mingled with that of the rats. He offered a handful of crumbs to
the rat on his shoulder, who ate from it gratefully and with strange
delicacy, and then he dropped some of the bread in his lap, where three
rats came to feast at once.

   "Do you think I love such things?" he said. He looked intently at me,
his eyes widening with the emphasis on his words. His black hair was a
dense tangled veil on his shoulders, his forehead very smooth and
shining white in the candlelight.

 "Do you think I love to live here in the bowels of the world," he
asked sadly, "under the great city of Rome, where the earth seeps waste
from the foul throng above, and have these, the vermin, as my familiars?
Do you think I was never flesh and blood, or that, having undergone this
change for the sake of Almighty God and His Divine Plan, I don't long
for the life you lived with your greedy Master? Have I not eyes to see
the brilliant colors which your Master spread over his canvases? Do I
not like the sounds of ungodly music?" He gave a soft agonizing sigh.

   "What has God made or ever suffered to be made that is distasteful in
itself?" he continued. "Sin is not repulsive in itself; how absurd to
think so. No one comes to love pain. We can only hope to endure it."

   "Why all this?" I asked. I was sick unto vomiting, but I held it
back. I breathed as deeply as I could to let all the smells of this
horror chamber flood my lungs and cease to torment me.

   I sat back, crossing my legs so that I could study him. I wiped the
ashes out of my eye. "Why? Your themes are entirely familiar, but what
is this realm of vampires in black monkly robes?"

"We are the Defenders of Truth," he said sincerely.

   "Oh, who is not the defender of truth, for the love of Heaven," I
said bitterly. "Look, the blood of your brother in Christ is stuck all
over my hands! And you sit, the freakish blood-stuffed replicant of a
human being staring on all this as if it were so much chitchat among the
candles!"

   "Ah, but you have a fiery tongue for one with such a sweet face," he
said in cool wonder. "So pliant you seem with your soft brown eyes and
dark autumnal red hair, but you are clever."

   "Clever? You burnt my Master! You destroyed him. You burnt up his
children! I am your prisoner here, am I not? What for? And you talk of
the Lord Jesus Christ to me? You? You? Answer me, what is this morass of
filth and fancy, molded out of clay and blessed candles!"

   He laughed. His eyes crinkled at the edges, and his face was cheerful
and sweet. His hair, for all its filth and tangles, kept its
preternatural luster. How fine he would have been if freed from the
dictates of this nightmare.

   "Amadeo," he said. "We are the Children of Darkness," he explained
patiently. "We vampires are made to be the scourge of man, as is

pestilence. We are part of the trials and tribulations of this world; we
drink blood, and we kill for the glory of God who would test his human
creatures."

"Don't speak horrors." I put my hands over my ears. I cringed.

   "Oh, but you know it's true," he insisted without raising his voice.
"You know it as you see me in my robes and you look about my chamber. I
am restrained for The Living Lord as were the monks of old before they
learned to paint their walls with erotic paintings."

  "You talk madness, and I don't know why you do it." I would not
remember the Monastery of the Caves!

  "I do it because I have found my purpose here and the purpose of God,
and there is nothing Higher. Would you be damned and alone, and selfish
and without purpose? Would you turn your back on a design so magnificent
that not one tiny child is forgotten! Did you think you could live
forever without the splendor of that great scheme, struggling to deny
the handiwork of God in every beautiful thing which you coveted and made
your own?"

  I fell silent. Don't think on the old Russian saints. Wisely, he did
not press. On the contrary, very softly, without the devilish lilt, he
began to sing the Latin hymn ...

Dies irae, dies ilia Solvet saeclum infavilla Teste David cum Sibylla
Quantus tremor estfuturus...

That day of wrath, that day will turn the earth to ashes. As both David
and Sybelle have foretold How great a tremor there will be . . .

  "And on that Day, that Final Day, we shall have duties for Him, we His
Dark Angels shall take the Evil souls down into the inferno as is His
Divine Will."

  I looked up at him again. "And then the final plea of this hymn, that
He have mercy on us, was His Passion not for us?"

I sang it softly in Latin:

Recordare, Jesu pie,

Quod sum causa tuae viae ...

Remember, merciful Jesus,

That I was the cause of your way ...

  I pressed on, scarcely having the spirit for it, to fully acknowledge
the horror. "What monk was there in the Monastery of my childhood who
didn't hope one day to be with God? What do you say to me now, that we,
the Children of Darkness, serve Him with no hope of ever being with
Him?"

He looked broken suddenly.

   "Pray there is some secret that we don't know," he whispered. He
looked off as if he were in fact praying. "How can He not love Satan
when Satan has done so well? How can He not love us? I don't understand,

but I am what I am, which is this, and you are the same." He looked at
me, eyebrows rising gently again to underscore his wonder. "And we must
serve Him. Otherwise we are lost."

   He slipped from the stool and came down towards me, settling on the
floor opposite me, cross-legged, and putting his long arm out to place
his hand on my shoulder.

   "Splendid being," I said, "and to think God made you as he made the
boys you destroyed tonight, the perfect bodies you rendered to the
fire."

   He was in deep distress. "Amadeo, take another name and come with us,
be with us. We need you. And what will you do alone?"

"Tell me why you killed my Master."

   He let go of me and let his hand fall in the lap made by his black
robe stretched across his knees.

   "It's forbidden to us to use our talents to dazzle mortals. It is
forbidden us to trick them with our skills. It is forbidden us to seek
the solace of their company. It is forbidden us to walk in the places of
light."

Nothing in this surprised me.

   "We are monks as pure at heart as those of Cluny," he said. "We make
our Monasteries strict and holy, and we hunt and we kill to perfect the
Garden of Our Lord as a Vale of Tears." He paused, and then making his
voice all the more soft and wondering, he continued. "We are as the bees
that sting, and the rats that steal the grain; we are as the Black Death
come to take young or old, beautiful or ugly, that men and women shall
tremble at the power of God."

He looked at me, imploring me for understanding.

   "Cathedrals rise from dust," he said, "to show man wonder. And in the
stones men carve the Danse Macabre to show that life is brief. We carry
scythes in the army of the robed skeleton who is carved on a thousand
doorways, a thousand walls. We are the followers of Death, whose cruel
visage is drawn in a million tiny prayer books which the rich and the
poor alike hold in their hands." His eyes were huge and dreamy. He
looked about us at the grim domed cell in which we sat. I could see the
candles in the black pupils of his eyes. His eyes closed for a moment,
and then opened, clearer, more bright.

   "Your Master knew these things," he said regretfully. "He knew. But
he was of a pagan time, obdurate and angry, and refusing ever the grace
of God. In you, he saw God's grace, because your soul is pure. You are
young and tender and open like the moonflower to take the light of the
night. You hate us now, but you will come to see."

   "I don't know that I will ever see anything again," I said. "I'm cold
and small and have no understanding now of feeling, of longing, even of
hate. I don't hate you, when I should. I'm empty. I want to die."

   "But it's God will when you die, Amadeo," he said. "Not your own." He
stared hard at me, and I knew I couldn't hide from him any longer my
recollection-the monks of Kiev, starving slowly in their earthen cells,

saying they must take sustenance for it was God's will when they should
die.

   I tried to hide these things, I drew these tiny pictures to myself
and locked them up. I thought of nothing. One word came to my tongue:
horror. And then the thought that before this time I had been a fool.

  Another came into the room. It was a female vampire. She entered
through a wooden door, letting it close carefully behind her as a good
nun might do, in order that no unnecessary noise be made. She came up to
him and stood behind him.

   Her full gray hair was tangled and filthy, as was his, and it too had
formed a shapely veil of beauteous weight and density behind her
shoulders. Her clothes were antique rags. She wore the low hip belt of
women of olden times adorning a shapely dress that revealed her small
waist and gently flaring hips, the courtly costume one sees graven on
the stone figures of rich sarcophagi. Her eyes, like his, were huge as
if to summon every precious particle of light in gloom. Her mouth was
strong and fall, and the fine bones of her cheeks and jaw shone well for
the thin layer of silvery dust that covered her. Her neck and bosom were
almost bare.

   "Will he be one of us?" she asked. Her voice was so lovely, so
comforting, that I felt I'd been touched by it. "I have prayed for him.
I have heard him weeping inside though he makes no sound."

   I looked away from her, bound to be disgusted by her, my enemy, who
had slain those I loved.

   "Yes," said Santino, the dark-haired one. "He'll be one of us, and he
can be a leader. He has such strength. He slew Alfredo there, you see?
Oh, it was wonderful to behold how he did it, with such rage and with
such a baby's scowl on his face."

   She looked beyond me, at the ruin of what that vampire had been, and
I didn't know myself what was left. I didn't turn to look at it.

   A deep bitter sorrow softened her expression. How beautiful she must
have been in life; how beautiful still if the dust were taken away from
her.

Her eyes shot to me suddenly, accusingly, and then became mild.

   "Vain thoughts, my child," she said. "I don't live for looking
glasses, as your Master did. I need no velvet or silks to serve my Lord.
Ah, San-tino, such a newborn thing he is, look at him." She spoke of me.
"In centuries gone by I might have penned verses in honor of such
beauty, that it should come to us to grace God's sooted fold, a lily in
the dark he is, a fairy's child planted by moonlight in a milkmaid's
cradle to thrall the world with his girlish gaze and manly whisper."

   Her flattery enraged me, but I could not bear in this Hell to lose
the sheer beauty of her voice, its deep sweetness. I didn't care what
she said. And as I looked at her white face in which many a vein had
become a ridge in stone, I knew she was far too old for my impetuous
violence. Yet kill, yes, yank head from body, yes, and stab with
candles, yes. I thought of these things with clenched teeth, and him,
how I would dispatch him for he was not so old, not nearly by half with
his olive skin, but these compulsions died like weeds sprung from my

mind stung by a northern wind, the deep frozen wind of my will dying
inside of me.

Ah, but they were beautiful.

   "You will not renounce all beauty," she said kindly, having drunk up
my thoughts perhaps, despite all my devices for concealing them. "You
will see another variant of beauty-a harsh and variegated beauty- when
you take life and see that marvelous corporeal design become a blazing
web as you do suck it dry, and dying thoughts do fall on you like
wailing veils to dim your eyes and make you but the school of those poor
souls you hasten to glory or perdition-yes, beauty. You will see beauty
in the stars that can forever be your comfort. And in the earth, yes,
the earth itself, you will find a thousand shades of darkness. This will
be your beauty. You do but forswear the brash colors of mankind and the
defiant light of the rich and the vain."

"I forswear nothing," I said.

   She smiled, her face filling with a warm and irresistible warmth, her
huge long mat of white hair curling here and there in the ardent flicker
of the candles.

   She looked to Santino. "How well he understands the things we say,"
she said. "And yet he seems the naughty boy who mocks all things in
ignorance."

   "He knows, he knows," the other answered with surprising bitterness.
He fed his rats. He looked at her and me. He seemed to muse and even to
hum the old Gregorian chant again.

   I heard others in the dark. And far away the drums still beat, but
that was unendurable. I looked to the ceiling of this place, the blinded
mouthless skulls that looked on all with limitless patience.

 I looked at them, the seated figure of Santino brooding or lost in
thought, and behind him and above him, her statuesque form in its ragged
raiment, her gray hair parted in the middle, her face ornamented by the
dust.

   "Those Who Must Be Kept, child, who were they?" she asked suddenly.

Santino raised his right hand and made a weary gesture.

   "Allesandra, of that he does not know. Be sure of it. Marius was too
clever to tell him. And what of it, this old legend we've chased for
countless years? Those Who Must Be Kept. If They are such that They must
be kept, then They are no more, for Marius is no more to keep Them."

 A tremor ran through me, a terror that I would break into
uncontrollable weeping, that I should let them see this, no, an
abomination. Marius no more ...

Santino hastened to go on, as if in fear for me.

 "God willed it. God has willed that all edifices should crumble, all
texts be stolen or burnt, all eyewitnesses to mystery be destroyed.
Think on it, Allesandra. Think. Time has plowed under all those words
written in the hand of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and Paul. Where is
there one parchment scroll left which bears the signature of Aristotle?

And Plato, would that we had one scrap he threw into the fire when
feverishly working-?"

  "What are those things to us, Santino?" she asked reprovingly, but her
hand touched his head as she looked down. She smoothed his hair as
though she were his Mother.

  "I meant to say that it is the way of God," Santino said, "the way of
His creation. Even what is writ in stone is washed away by time, and
cities lie beneath the fire and ash of roaring mountains. I meant to say
the Earth eats all, and now it's taken him, this legend, this Marius,
this one so much older than any we ever knew by name, and with him go
his precious secrets. So be it."

I locked my hands together to stop their trembling. I said nothing.

   "There was a town in which I lived," he went on, murmuring. He held a
fat black rat now in his arms, stroking its fur as if it were the
prettiest of cats, and it with its tiny eye seemed unable to move, its
tail a great curved scythe turned downward. "A lovely town it was, with
high thick walls, and such a Fair each year; words can't describe where
all the merchants showed their wares and all the villages both far and
near sent young and old to buy, to sell, to dance, to feast... it seemed
a perfect place! And yet the plague took it. The plague came, respecting
no gate or wall or tower, invisible to the Lord's men, and to the Father
in the field and the Mother in her kitchen garden. The plague took all,
all it seemed except the most wicked. In my house they walled me up,
with bloating corpses of my brothers and sisters. It was a vampire found
me out, for foraging there he found no other blood to drink but mine.
And there had been so many!"

   "Do we not give up our mortal history for the love of God?" Alle-
sandra asked but most carefully. Her hand worked on his hair and brushed
it back from his forehead.

   His eyes were huge with thought and memory, yet as he spoke again he
looked at me, perhaps not even seeing me.

   "There are no walls there now. It's gone to trees and blowing grass
and piles of rubble. And in castles far away one finds the stones which
once made up our lord's keep, our finest hard-paved street, our proudest
houses. It is the very nature of this world that all things are devoured
and time is a mouth as bloody as any other."

   A silence fell. I could not stop my shivering. My body quaked. A moan
broke from my lips. I looked from right to left and bowed my head, my
hands tight to my neck to stop from screaming.

When I looked up again, I spoke.

   "I won't serve you!" I whispered. "I see your game. I know your
scriptures, your piety, your love of resignation! You're spiders with
your dark and intricate webs, no more than that, and breed for blood is
all you know, all you know round which to weave your tiresome snares, as
wretched as the birds that make their nests in filth on marble
casements. So spin your lies. I hate you. I will not serve you!"

How lovingly they both looked at me.

   "Oh, poor child," Allesandra said with a sigh. "You have only just

begun to suffer. Why must it be for pride's sake and not for God?"

"I curse you!"

   Santino snapped his fingers. It was such a small gesture. But out of
the shadows, through doorways like secretive dumb mouths in the mud
walls, there came his servants, hooded, robed, as before. They gathered
me up, securing my limbs, but I didn't struggle.

  They dragged me to a cell of iron bars and earthen walls. And when I
sought to dig my way out of it, my clawing fingers came upon iron-bound
stone, and I could dig no more.

  I lay down. I wept. I wept for my Master. I didn't care if anyone
heard or mocked. I didn't care. I knew only loss and in that loss the
very size of my love, and in knowing the size of love could somehow feel
its splendor. I cried and cried. I turned and groveled in the earth. I
clutched at it, and tore at it, and then lay still with only silent
tears flowing.

  Allesandra stood with her hands on the bars. "Poor child," she
whispered. "I will be with you, always with you. You have only to call
my name."

   "And why is that? Why?" I called out, my voice echoing off the stony
walls. "Answer me."

   "In the very depths of Hell," she said, "do not demons love one
another?"

An hour passed. The night was old.

I thirsted.

  I burned with it. She knew it. I curled up on the floor, my head
bowed, sitting back on my heels. I would die before I would drink blood
again. But it was all that I could see, all that I could think of, all
that I could want. Blood.

After the first night, I thought I would die of this thirst.

After the second, I thought I would perish screaming.

  After the third, I only dreamed of it in weeping and in desperation,
licking at my own blood tears on my fingertips.

  After six nights of this when I could bear the thirst no longer, they
brought a struggling victim to me.

   Down the long black passage I smelled the blood. I smelled it before
I saw their torchlight.

  A great stinking muscular youth who was dragged towards my cell, who
kicked at them and cursed them, growling and drooling like a madman,
screaming at the very sight of the torch with which they bullied him,
forcing him towards me.

I climbed to my feet, too weak almost for this effort, and I fell on
him, fell on his succulent hot flesh and tore open his throat, laughing
and weeping as I did it, as my mouth was choked with blood.

   Roaring and stammering, he fell beneath me. The blood bubbled up out
of the artery over lips and my thin fingers. How like bones they looked,
my fingers. I drank and drank and drank until I could contain no more,
and all the pain was gone from me, and all the despair was gone in the
pure satisfaction of hunger, the pure greedy hateful selfish devouring
of the blessed blood.

To this gluttonous, mindless, mannerless feast they left me.

   Then falling aside, I felt my vision clear again in the dark. The
walls around me sparkled once more with tiny bits of ore like a starry
firmament. I looked and saw that the victim I had taken was Riccardo, my
beloved Riccardo, my brilliant and goodhearted Riccardo-naked,
wretchedly soiled, a fattened prisoner, kept all this while in some
stinking earthen cell just for this.

I screamed.

   I beat at the bars and bashed my head against them. My white-faced
warders rushed to the bars and then backed away in fear and peered at me
across the dark corridor. I fell down on my knees crying.

   I grabbed up the corpse. "Riccardo, drink!" I bit into my tongue and
spit the blood on his greasy staring face. "Riccardo!" But he was dead
and empty, and they had gone, leaving him there to rot in this place
with me, to rot beside me.

I began to sing "Dies irae, dies ilia" and to laugh as I sang it.

   Three nights later, screaming and cursing, I tore the reeking corpse
of Riccardo limb from limb so I could hurl the pieces out of the cell. I
could not endure it! I flung the bloated trunk at the bars again and
again and fell down, sobbing, unable to drive my fist or foot into it to
break its bulk. I crawled into the farthest corner to get away from it.

   Allesandra came. "Child, what can I say to comfort you?" A bodiless
whisper in the darkness.

   But there was another figure there, Santino. Turning I saw by some
errant light which only a vampire's eyes could gather that he put his
finger to his lip and he shook his head, gently correcting her. "He must
be alone now," Santino said.

   "Blood!" I screamed. I flew at the bars, my arm stretched out so that
both were affrighted and rushed away from me.

   At the end of seven more nights, when I was starved to the point
where even the scent of the blood didn't rouse me, they laid the victim-
a small boy child of the streets crying for pity-directly in my arms.

   "Oh, don't be afraid, don't," I whispered, sinking my teeth quickly
into his neck. "Hmmmmm, trust in me," I whispered, savoring the blood,
drinking it slowly, trying not to laugh with delight, my blood tears of
relief falling down on his little face. "Oh, dream, dream sweet and
pretty things. There are saints who will come; do you see them?"

  Afterwards I lay back, satiated, and picking from the muddy ceiling
over my head those infinitesimal stars of hard bright stone or flinty
iron that lay embedded in the earth. I let my head roll to the side,

away from the corpse of the poor child which I had arranged carefully,
as for the shroud, against the wall behind me.

   I saw a figure in my cell, a small figure. I saw its gauzy outline
against the wall as it stood gazing at me. Another child? I rose up,
aghast. No scent came from it. I turned and stared at the corpse. It lay
as before. Yet there, against the far wall, was the very boy himself,
small and wan and lost, looking at me.

"How is this?" I whispered.

   But the wretched little thing couldn't speak. It could only stare. It
was clothed in the very same white shift that its corpse wore, and its
eyes were large and colorless and soft with musing.

  A distant sound came into my hearing. It was of a shuffling step in
the long catacomb that led to my little prison. This was no vampire's
step. I drew up, my nostrils flaring ever so slightly as I tried to
catch the scent of this being. Nothing changed in the damp musty air.
Only the scent of death was the aroma of my cell, of the poor broken
little body.

I fixed my eyes on the tenacious little spirit.

  "Why do you linger here?" I asked it desperately in a whisper. "Why
can I see you?"

  It moved its little mouth as if it meant to speak, but it only shook
its head ever so slightly, piteously eloquent of its confusion.

  The steps came on. And once again I struggled to catch the scent. But
there was nothing, not even the dusty reek of a vampire's robes, only
this, the approach of this shuffling sound. And finally there came to
the bars the tall shadowy figure of a haggard woman.

  I knew that she was dead. I knew. I knew she was as dead as the little
one who hovered by the wall.

   "Speak to me, please, oh, please, I beg you, I pray you, speak to me!
"I cried out.

   But neither phantom could look away from the other. The child with a
quick soft tread hurried into the woman's arms, and she, turning, with
her babe restored, began to fade even as her feet once again made the
dry scraping sound on the hard mud floor which had first announced her.

"Look at me!" I begged in a low voice. "Just one glance."

   She paused. There was almost nothing left of her. But she turned her
head and the dim light of her eye fixed on me. Then soundlessly,
totally, she vanished.

   I lay back, and flung out my arm in careless despair and felt the
child's corpse, still faintly warm beside me.

I did not always see their ghosts.

I did not seek to master the means of doing so.

   They were no friends to me-it was a new curse-these spirits that

would now and then collect about the scene of my bloody destruction. I
saw no hope in their faces when they did pass through those moments of
my wretchedness when the blood was warmest in me. No bright light of
hope surrounded them. Was it starvation that had brought about this
power?

   I told no one about them. In that damned cell, that cursed place
where my soul was broken week after week without so much as the comfort
of an enclosing coffin, I feared them and then grew to hate them.

   Only the great future would reveal to me that other vampires, in the
main, never see them. Was it a mercy? I didn't know. But I get ahead of
myself.

Let me return to that intolerable time, that crucible.

Some twenty weeks were passed in this misery.

   I didn't even believe anymore that the bright and fantastical world
of Venice had ever existed. And I knew my Master was dead. I knew it. I
knew that all I loved was dead.

   I was dead. Sometimes I dreamt I was home in Kiev in the Monastery of
the Caves, a saint. Then I awoke to anguish.

   When Santino and the gray-haired Allesandra came to me, they were
gentle as ever, and Santino shed tears to see me as I was, and said:

   "Come to me, come now, come study with me in earnest, come. Not even
those as wretched as we should suffer as you suffer. Come to me."

  I entrusted myself to his arms, I opened my lips to his, I bowed my
head to press my face to his chest, and as I listened to his beating
heart, I breathed deep, as if the very air had been denied me until that
moment.

Allesandra laid her cool, soft hands so gently on me.

   "Poor orphan child," she said. "Wandering child, oh, such a long road
you've traveled to come to us."

  And what a wonder it was that all they had done to me should seem but
a thing we shared, a common and inevitable catastrophe.

SANTINO'S CELL.

  I lay on the floor in the arms of Allesandra, who rocked me and
stroked my hair.

   "I want you to hunt with us tonight," said Santino. "You come with
us, with Allesandra and with me. We won't let the others torment you.
You are hungry. You are so very hungry, are you not?"

And so my tenure with the Children of Darkness began.

  Night after night I did hunt in silence with my new companions, my new
loved ones, my new Master and my new Mistress, and then I was ready to
begin my new apprenticeship in earnest, and Santino, my teacher, with
Allesandra to help him now and then, made me his own pupil, a great
honor in the coven, or so the others were quick to tell me when they had

the chance.

   I learnt what Lestat has already written from what I revealed to him,
the great laws.

   One, that we were formed in Covens throughout the world, and each
Coven would have its leader, and I was destined to be such a one, like
unto the Superior of a convent, and that all matters of authority would
be in my hands. I and I alone should determine when a new vampire should
be made to join us; I and I alone would see to it that the
transformation was made in the proper way.

 Two, the Dark Gift, for that is what we called it,, must never be
given to those who were not beautiful, for the enslaving of the
beautiful with the Dark Blood was more pleasing to a Just God.

 Three, that never should an ancient vampire make the new fledgling,
for our powers increase with time and the power of the old ones is too
great for the young. Witness the tragedy of myself, made by the last of
the known Children of the Millennia, the great and terrible Marius. I
had the strength of a demon in the body of a child.

   Four, that no one among us can destroy another among us, save the
coven leader, who must at any time be prepared to destroy the
disobedient of his flock. That all vagabond vampires, belonging to no
coven, must be destroyed by that leader on sight.

   Five, no vampire must ever reveal his identity or his magical
strengths to a mortal and thereafter be let to live. No vampire must
ever write any words that reveal these secrets. Indeed no vampire's name
was ever to be known in the mortal world, and any evidence of our
existence which ever escaped into that realm must at all costs be
eradicated, along with those who allowed such a terrible violation of
God's will.

   There were other things. There were rituals, there were incantations,
there was a folklore of sorts.

   "We do not enter churches, for God should strike us dead if we do,"
declared Santino. "We do not look upon the crucifix, and its mere
presence on a chain about the neck of a victim is sufficient to save
that mortal's life. We turn our eyes and fingers from the medals of the
Virgin. We cower before the images of the saints.

   "But we strike with a holy fire those who go unprotected. We feast
when and where we will and with cruelty, and upon the innocent and upon
those most blessed with beauty and riches. But we make no boast to the
world of what we do, nor boast to one another.

   "The great castles and courtrooms of the world are shut to us, for we
must never, never, meddle in the destiny which Christ Our Lord had
ordained for those made in His Image, any more than do the vermin, or
the blazing fire, or the Black Death.

"We are a curse of the shadows; we are a secret. We are eternal.

   "And when our work is done for Him, we gather without the comfort of
riches or luxuries, in those places blessed by us underground for our
slumber, and there with only fire and candles for light, we come
together to say the prayers and sing the songs and dance, yes, dance

about the fire, thereby to strengthen our will, thereby to share with
our sisters and brothers our strength."

   Six long months passed during which I studied these things, during
which I ventured forth into the back alleys of Rome to hunt with the
others, to gorge myself upon the abandoned of fate who fell so easily
into my hands.

   No more did I search the mind for a crime that justified my predatory
feasting. No more did I practice the fine art of drinking without pain
to the victim, no more did I shield the wretched mortal from the horror
of my face, my desperate hands, my fangs.

   One night, I awoke to find myself surrounded by my brothers. The
gray-haired woman helped me from my coffin of lead and told me that I
should come with them.

   Out under the stars we went together. The bonfire had been built
high, as it had been on the night my mortal brothers had died.

 The air was cool and full of the scent of spring flowers. I could hear
the nightingale singing. And far off the whisperings and murmurings of
the great crowded city of Rome. I turned my eyes towards the city. I saw
her seven hills covered over with soft flickering lights. I saw the
clouds above, tinged with gold, as they bore down on these scattered and
beautiful beacons, as if the darkness of the sky were full with child.

   I saw the circle had formed around the fire. Two and three deep were
the Children of Darkness. Santino, in a costly new robe of black velvet,
ah, such a violation of our strict rubrics, came forward to kiss me on
either cheek.

   "We are sending you far away, to the north of Europe," he said, "to
the city of Paris, where the Coven leader has gone, as we all go sooner
or later, into the fire. His children wait for you. They have heard
tales of you, of your gentleness and your piety and your beauty. You
will be their leader and their saint."

 My brothers one by one came to kiss me. My sisters, who were few in
number, planted their kisses on my cheeks as well.

   I said nothing. I stood quiet, listening still for the song of the
birds in the nearby pines, my eyes drifting now and then to the lowering
Heavens and wondering if the rain would come, the rain which I could
smell, so clean and pure, the only cleansing water allowed to me now,
the sweet Roman rain, gentle and warm.

   "Do you take the solemn vow to lead the Coven in the Ways of Darkness
as Satan would have it and his Lord and Creator, God, would have it?"

"I do."

   "Do you vow to obey all orders sent to you from the Roman Coven?"

"I do ..."

Words and words and words.

 Wood was heaped on the fire. The drums had begun. The solemn tones.

I began to cry.

   Then came the soft arms of Allesandra, the soft mass of her gray hair
against my neck.

"I will go with you north, my child," she said.

   I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I threw my arms around her, I held
her hard cold body close to me, and I shook with sobs.

   "Yes, dear, dear little one," she said. "I will stay with you. I am
old and I will stay with you until it is time for me to go to God's
Justice, as we all must."

   "Then we dance in jubilation!" cried Santino. "Satan and Christ,
brothers in the House of the Lord, we give you this perfected soul!"

He threw up his arms.

   Allesandra stepped back from me, her eyes bright with tears. I could
think of nothing but only my gratitude that she would be with me, that I
would not make this awful terrible journey alone. With me, Allesandra,
with me. Oh, Fool for Satan and the God Who made him!

   She stood beside Santino, tall as he was, majestic as she too threw
up her arms and swung her hair from side to side.

"Let the dancing begin!" she cried.

   The drums became a thunder, the horns wailed, and the thump of the
tambourines filled my ears.

   A long low cry rose from the huge thick circle of vampires, and all
at once, locking hands, they began to dance.

   I was pulled back into the chain they made about the raging bonfire.
I was jerked from left to right as the figures turned this way, then
that, then broke free and leapt spinning into the air.

   I felt the wind on the back of my neck as I turned, as I leapt. I
reached out with perfect accuracy to receive the hands on either side of
me, then to sway to the right and to the left again.

   Above, the silent clouds thickened, curled and sailed across the
darkling sky. The rain came, its soft roar lost in the cries of the mad
dancing figures, in the crackle of fire and the torrent of drums.

   I heard it. I turned and leapt high into the air and received it, the
silvery rain floating down to me like the blessing of the dark Heavens,
the baptismal waters of the damned.

   The music surged. A barbarous rhythm broke loose everywhere, the
orderly chain of dancers forgotten. In rain and in the unquenchable
blaze of the giant fire, the vampires threw out their arms, howling,
writhing, their limbs constricting so that they stomped with backs bent,
heels pounded into the earth, and then sprang free, arms outstretched,
mouths open, hips churning as they whirled and leapt, and caught in
raucous open-throated volume the hymn came again, Dies irae, dies ilia.
Oh, yes, oh, yes, day of woe, oh, day of fire!

 Afterwards, when the rain came down solemnly and steadily, when the
bonfire was no more but a black wreckage, when they all had gone off to
hunt, when only a few milled the dark ground of the Sabbat, chanting
their prayers in anguished delirium, I lay still, the rain washing me,
as I put my face against the ground.

 It seemed the monks were there from the old Monastery in Kiev. They
laughed at me, but gently. They said, "Andrei, what made you think you
could escape? Didn't you know that God had called you?"

   "Get away from me, you are not here, and I am nowhere; I am lost in
the dark wastes of a winter without end."

 I tried to picture Him, His Holy Face. But there was only Allesan-dra,
come to help me to my feet. Allesandra, who promised to tell me of dark
times, long before Santino was made, when she had been given the Dark
Gift in the forests of France to which we now would be going together.

   "Oh Lord, Lord hear my prayer," I whispered. If I could but see the
Holy Face.

 But we were forbidden such things. We could never, never look upon His
Image! Until the end of the world, we would work without that comfort.
Hell is the absence of God.

What can I say in defense of myself now?

What can I say?

 Others have told the tale, how for centuries I was the stalwart leader
of the Paris Coven, how I lived out those years in ignorance and shadow,
obeying old laws until there was no more any Santino or Roman Coven to
send them to me, how in rags and quiet despair, I clung to the Old Faith
and the Old Ways as others went into the fire to destroy themselves, or
simply wandered away.

 What can I say in defense of the convert and the saint that I became?

 For three hundred years I was the vagabond angel child of Satan, I was
his baby-faced killer, his lieutenant, his fool. Allesandra was always
with me. When others perished or deserted, there was Allesandra who kept
the faith. But it was my sin, it was my journey, it was my terrible
folly, and I alone must carry the burden of it for as long as I exist.

THAT LAST MORNING in Rome, before I was to leave for the north, it was
decided that my name must be changed.

 Amadeo, containing the very word for God, was most unseemly for a
Child of Darkness, especially one meant to lead the Paris Coven.

   From various choices given me, Allesandra chose the name Armand.

So I became Armand.



PART   II

The BRIDGE of SIGHS

I REFUSE to discuss the past another moment. I don't like it. I don't
care about it. How can I tell you about something that doesn't interest
me? Is it supposed to interest you?

  The problem is that too much has been written about my past already.
But what if you haven't read those books? What if you haven't wallowed
in The Vampire Lestat's florid descriptions of me and my alleged
delusions and errors?

  All right, all right. A little bit more, but only to bring me to New
York, to the moment when I saw Veronica's Veil, so that you don't have
to go back and read his books, so that my book will be enough.

All right. We must continue to cross this Bridge of Sighs.

  For three hundred years, I was faithful to the Old Ways of Santino,
even after Santino himself had disappeared. Understand, this vampire was
by no means dead. He turned up in the modern era, quite healthy, strong,
silent and without apology for the credos he had stuffed down my throat
in the year 1500 before I was sent north to Paris.

  I was mad during those times. Lead the Coven I did, and of its
ceremonies, his fanciful dark litanies and bloody baptisms, I became the
architect and the master. My physical strength increased with each year,
as is the case with all vampires, and drinking greedily from my victims,
for it was the only pleasure of which I could dream, I fed my vampiric
powers.

  Spells I could make around those I killed, and choosing the beautiful,
the promising, the most audacious and splendid for my feast, I
nevertheless conveyed upon them fantastical visions to blunt their fear
or suffering.

I was mad. Denied the places of light, the comfort of entering the
smallest church, bent on perfection in the Dark Ways, I wandered as a
dusty wraith through the blackest alleyways of Paris, turning her
noblest poetry and music into a din by the wax of piety and bigotry by
which I stopped my ears, blind to the soaring majesty of her cathedrals
or palaces.

   The Coven took all my love, with chatter in the dark of how we might
best be Satan's saints, or whether a beautiful and bold poisoner should
be offered our demonic pact and made one of us.

   But sometimes I went from an acceptable madness to a state of which I
alone knew the dangers. In my earthen cell in the secret catacombs
beneath the great Paris Cemetery of Les Innocents where we made our
lair, I dreamt night after night of one strange and meaningless thing:
What had become of that fine little treasure my mortal Mother had given
me? What had become of that strange artifact of Podil which she'd taken
from the Ikon corner and put in my hands, that painted egg, that crimson
painted egg with the star so beautifully painted on it? Now, where could
it be? What had become of it? Had I not left it, wrapped thickly in fur
in a golden coffin in which I'd once lodged, ah, had all that really
ever taken place, that life I thought I recalled from a city of
brilliant white-tiled palaces and glittering canals and a great sweet
gray sea fall of swift and graceful ships, plying their long oars in
perfect unison as if they were living things, those ships, those

beautifully painted ships, so often decked with flowers, and with the
whitest sails, oh, that could not have been real, and to think, a golden
chamber with a golden coffin in it, and this special treasure, this
fragile and lovely thing, this painted egg, this brittle and perfect
egg, whose painted covering locked inside to utter perfection a moist,
mysterious concoction of living fluids-oh, what strange imaginings. But
what had happened to it! Who had found it!

Somebody had.

   Either that or it was still there, hidden far below a palazzo in that
floating city, hidden in a waterproof dungeon built deep into the oozing
earth beneath the waters of the lagoon. No, never. Not so, not there.
Don't think of it. Don't think of profane hands getting that thing. And
you know, you lying treacherous little soul, you never, never went back
to any such place as the low city with the icy water in its streets,
where your Father, a thing of myth and nonsense to be sure, drank wine
from your hands and forgave you that you had gone to become a dark and
strong winged bird, a bird of the night soaring higher even than the
domes of Vladimir's City, as if someone had broken that egg, that
meticulously and wondrously painted egg which your Mother so cherished
as she gave it you, broken that egg with a vicious thumb, cracked right
into it, and out of that rotten fluid, that stinking fluid, you had been
born, the night bird, flying high over the smoking chimneys of Podil,
over the domes of Vladimir's Town, higher and farther and farther away
over the wild lands and over the world and into this dark wood, this
deep and dark and endless forest from which you will never escape, this
cold and comfortless wilderness of the hungry wolf and the chomping rat
and the crawling worm and the screaming victim.

   Allesandra would come. "Wake, Armand. Wake. You dream the sad dreams,
the dreams that precede madness, you cannot leave me, my child, you
cannot, I fear death more than I fear this and will not be alone, you
cannot go into the fire, you cannot go and leave me here."

   No. I couldn't. I did not have the passion for such a step. I did not
have the hope for anything, even though no word of the Roman Coven had
come in decades.

But there came an end to my long centuries of Satan's service.

   Clad in red velvet it came, the very covering my old Master had so
loved, the dream king, Marius. It came swaggering and camping through
the lighted streets of Paris as though God had made it.

   But it was a vampire child, the same as I, son of the seventeen
hundreds, as they reckoned the time to be then, a blazing, brash,
bumbling, laughing and teasing blood drinker in the guise of a young
man, come to stomp out whatever sacred fire yet burnt in the cleft scar
tissue of my soul and scatter the ashes.

   It was The Vampire Lestat. It wasn't his fault. Had one of us been
able to strike him down one night, break him apart with his own fancy
sword and set him ablaze, we might have had a few more decades of our
wretched delusions.

But nobody could. He was too damned strong for us.

   Created by a powerful and ancient renegade, a legendary vampire by
the name of Magnus, this Lestat, aged twenty in mortal years, an errant

and penniless country aristocrat from the wild lands of Auvergne, who
had thrown over custom and respectability and any hope of court
ambitions, of which he had none anyway since he couldn't even read or
write, and was too insulting to wait on any King or Queen, who became a
wild blond-haired celebrity of the boulevard gutter theatricals, a lover
of men and women, a laughing happy-go-lucky blindly ambitious self-
loving genius of sorts, this Lestat, this blue-eyed and infinitely
confident Lestat, was orphaned on the very night of his creation by the
ancient monster who made him, bequeathed to him a fortune in a secret
room in a crumbling medieval tower, and then went into the eternal
comfort of the ever devouring flames.

 This Lestat, knowing nothing of Old Covens and Old Ways, of soot
covered gangsters who thrived under cemeteries and believed they had a
right to brand him a heretic, a maverick and a bastard of the Dark
Blood, went strutting about fashionable Paris, isolated and tormented by
his supernatural endowments yet glorying in his new powers, dancing at
the Tuileries with the most magnificently clad women, reveling in the
joys of the ballet and the high court theater and roaming not only in
the Places of Light, as we called them, but meandering mournfully in
Notre Dame de Paris itself, right before the High Altar, without the
lightning of God striking him where he stood.

He destroyed us. He destroyed me.

 Allesandra, mad by then as most of the old ones were in those times,
had one merry argument with him after I dutifully arrested him and
dragged him to our underground Court to stand trial, and then she too
went into the flames, leaving me with the obvious absurdity: that Our
Ways were finished, our superstitions obviously laughable, our dusty
black robes ludicrous, our penance and self-denial pointless, our
beliefs that we served God and the Devil self-serving, naive and stupid,
our organization as preposterous in the gay atheistic Parisian world of
the Age of Reason as it might have seemed to my beloved Venetian Marius
centuries before.

 Lestat was the smasher, the laughing one, the pirate who, worshiping
nothing and no one, soon left Europe to find his own safe and agreeable
territory in the colony of New Orleans in the New World.

 He had no comforting philosophy for me, the baby-faced deacon who had
come forth out of the darkest prison, shorn of all belief, to put on the
fashionable clothes of the age and walk once again on its high streets
as I had done over three hundred years ago in Venice.

   And my followers, those few whom I could not overpower and bitterly
consign to the flames, how helplessly they blundered in their new
freedom-free to pick the gold from the pockets of their victims and don
their silks and their white-powdered wigs, and sit in marvelous
astonishment before the glories of the painted stage, the lustrous
harmony of a hundred violins, the antics of versifying actors.

 What was to be our fate, as with dazzled eyes we made our way through
crowded early evening boulevards, fancy mansions and grandly decorated
ballrooms?

   In satin-lined boudoirs we fed, and against the damask cushions of
gilded carriages. We bought fine coffins for ourselves, full of fancy
carvings and padded velvet, and were closeted for the night in gilded
mahogany-paneled cellars.

  What would have become of us, scattered, my children fearful of me,
and I uncertain of when the fopperies and frenzy of the French City of
Light might drive them to rash or hideously destructive antics?

   It was Lestat who gave me the key, Lestat who gave me the place where
I could lodge my crazed and pounding heart, where I could bring my
followers together for some semblance of newfangled sanity.

   Before leaving me stranded in the waste of my old ways, he bequeathed
to me the very boulevard theater in which he had once been the young
swain of the Commedia delPArte. All its human players were gone. Nothing
remained but the elegant and inviting husk, with its stage of gaily
painted backdrops and gilded proscenium arch, its velvet curtains and
empty benches just waiting for a clamoring audience again. In it we
found our safest refuge, so eager to hide behind the mask of greasepaint
and glamour that flawlessly disguised our polished white skin and
fantastical grace and dexterity.

  Actors we became, a regular company of immortals bound together to
perform cheerfully decadent pantomimes for mortal audiences who never
suspected that we white-faced mummers were more monstrous than any
monster we ever presented in our little farces or tragedies.

The Theatre des Vampires was born.

  And worthless shell that I was, dressed up like a human with less
claim to that title than ever in all my years of failure, I became its
mentor.

   It was the least I could do for my orphans of the Old Faith, giddy
and happy as they were in a gaudy and Godless world on the verge of
political revolution.

  Why I governed this palladian theater so long, why I remained year
after long year with this Coven of sorts, I know not except that I
needed it, needed it as surely as I'd ever needed Marius and our
household in Venice, or Allesandra and the Coven beneath the Paris
Cemetery of Les Innocents. I needed a place to turn my steps before
sunrise where I knew others of my kind were safely at rest.

And I can say truthfully that my vampire followers needed me.

   They needed to believe in my leadership, and when worst came to worst
I did not fail them, exercising some restraint upon those careless
immortals who now and then endangered us by public displays of
supernatural power or extreme cruelty, and by managing with the
arithmetical skill of an idiot savant our business affairs with the
world.

   Taxes, tickets, handbills, heating fuel, foot lamps, the fostering of
ferocious fabulists, I managed it all.

And now and then, I took exquisite pride and pleasure in it.

   With the seasons we grew, as did our audiences, crude benches giving
way to velvet seats, and penny pantomimes to more poetical productions.

   Many a night as I took my place alone in my velvet-curtained box, a
gentleman of obvious means in the narrow trousers of the age, with

fitted waistcoat of printed silk and close-cut coat of bright wool, my
hair combed back beneath a black ribbon or finally trimmed above my high
stiff white collar, I thought upon those lost centuries of rancid ritual
and demonic dreams as one might think back on a long painful illness in
a lightless room amid bitter medicines and pointless incantations. It
could not have been real, all that, the ragged plague of predatory
paupers that we were, singing of Satan in the rimy gloom.

   And all the lives I'd lived, and worlds I'd known, seemed even less
substantial.

   What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning
eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which
gave its silvery glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I
remembered no one who had ever lived and breathed within my quietly
moving form. A crucifix with painted blood, a saccharine Virgin on a
prayer book page or made of pastel-painted bisque, what were these
things but vulgar remnants of a coarse, unfathomable time when powers
now dismissed had hovered in the chalice of gold, or blazed most
fearfully inside a face above a glowing altar.

   I knew nothing of such things. The crosses snatched from virgin necks
were melted down to make my golden rings. And rosaries cast aside with
other paste as thieving fingers, mine, tore off a victim's diamond
buttons.

   I developed in those eight decades of the Theatre des Vampires- we
weathered the Revolution with amazing resiliency, the public clamoring
to our seemingly frivolous and morbid entertainments-and maintained,
long after the theatre was gone, into the late twentieth century a
silent, concealed nature, letting my childlike face deceive my
adversaries, my would-be enemies (I rarely took them seriously) and my
vampire slaves.

  I was the worst of leaders, that is, the indifferent cold leader who
strikes fear in the hearts of everyone but bothers to love no one, and I
maintained the Theatre des Vampires, as we called it well into the
iSyos, when Lestat's child Louis came wandering into it, seeking the
answers which his cocky insolent maker had never given him to the age-
old questions: Where do we vampires come from? Who made us and for what?

  Ah, but before I discourse on the coming of the famous and
irresistible vampire Louis, and his small exquisite paramour, the
vampire Claudia, let me relate one tiny incident that happened to me in
the earlier years of the nineteenth century.

   It may mean nothing; or perhaps it is the betrayal of another's
secret existence. I don't know. I relate it only because it touches
fancifully, if not certainly, upon one who has played a dramatic role in
my tale.

   I cannot mark the year of this little event. Let me say only that
Chopin's lovely, dreamy piano music was well revered in Paris, that the
novels of George Sand were the rage, and that women had already given up
the slender lascivious gowns of the Empire to wear the huge heavy-
skirted, small-waisted taffeta dresses in which they appear so often in
old shining daguerreotypes.

  The theatre was booming as one would say in modern parlance, and I,
the manager, having grown tired of its performances, was wandering alone

one night in the wooded land just beyond the glow of Paris, not far from
a country house full of merry voices and blazing chandeliers.

It was there that I came upon another vampire.

   I knew her immediately by her silence, lack of scent and the near
divine grace with which she made her way through the wild brush,
managing a fall flowing cape and abundant skirt with small pale hands,
her goal the nearby brilliantly lighted and beckoning windows.

   She realized my presence almost as quickly as I sensed hers; quite
alarming to me at my age and with my powers. She froze without turning
her head.

Though the vicious vampire players of the theatre maintained their right
to do away with mavericks or intruders among the Undead, I, the leader,
after my years as deluded saint, did not give a damn for such things.

   I meant the creature no harm, and, carelessly, I tossed out in a soft
casual voice, speaking in French, a warning.

   "Ravaged territory, my dear. No game unbespoken here. Make for a
safer city before sunup."

No human ear could have heard this.

   The creature made no reply, her taffeta hood drooping as she had
obviously bowed her head. Then, turning, she revealed herself to me in
the long shafts of golden light falling from the multipaned glass
windows beyond her.

I knew this creature. I knew her face. I knew it.

   And in a dreadful second-a fateful second-I perceived that she might
not know me, not with my hair nightly clipped short for these times, not
in these sombre trousers and dull coat, not in this tragic moment when I
posed as a man, so utterly transformed from the lushly adorned child
she'd known, she couldn't.

Why didn't I cry out? Bianca!

   But I couldn't grasp it, couldn't believe in it, couldn't rouse my
dulled heart to triumph in what my eyes told me to be true, that the
exquisite oval face surrounded by its golden hair and taffeta hood was
hers, most definitely, framed exactly as it might have been in those
days, and it was she, she whose face had been etched into my fevered
soul before and after any Dark Gift had ever been given me.

Bianca.

   She was gone! For less than a second I saw her wide wary eyes, full
of vampiric alarm, more urgent and menacing than any human could ever
evince, and then the figure was vanished, disappeared from the wood,
gone from the environs, gone from all the large rambling gardens that I
searched, sluggishly, shaking my head, mumbling to myself, saying, No,
couldn't be, no, of course, not. No.

I never saw her again.

   I do not know at this very moment whether or not this creature was

Bianca. But I believe in my soul now, now as I dictate this tale, I
believe in a soul that is healed and no stranger to hope, that it was
Bianca! I can picture her too perfectly as she turned on me in the
wooded garden, and in that picture lies one last detail which confirms
it for me- because on that night outside of Paris, she had in her blond
hair pearls interwoven. Oh, how Bianca had loved pearls, and how she had
loved to weave them in her hair. And I had seen them in the light of the
country house, beneath the shadow of her hood, ropes of tiny pearls
wound in her blond hair, and within that frame was the Florentine beauty
I could never forget-as delicate in vampiric whiteness as it had been
when filled with Fra Filippo Lippi's colors.

  It did not hurt me then. It did not shake me. I was too pale of soul,
too numbed, too used to seeing all things as figments in a series of
unconnected dreams. Very likely, I could not allow myself to believe
such a thing.

  Only now do I pray it was she, my Bianca, and that someone, and you
can guess very well who that might be, someone might tell me whether or
not it was my darling courtesan.

  Did some member of the hateful murderous Roman Coven, chasing her out
into the Venetian night, fall under her spell so that he deserted his
Dark Ways, and made her his lover forever? Or did my Master, surviving
the horrid fire, as we know he did, seek her out for sustaining blood
and bring her over into immortality to assist him in his recovery?

  I cannot bring myself to ask Marius this question. Perhaps you will.
And perhaps I prefer to hope that it was she, and not to hear denials
that render it less likely.

I had to tell you this. I had to tell you. I think it was Bianca.

  Let me return now to the Paris of the 18705-some decades after- to the
moment when the young New World vampire, Louis, came through my door,
seeking so sadly the answers to the terrible questions of why we are
here, and for what purpose.

  How sad for Louis that he should put those questions to me. How sad
for me.

  Who could have scoffed more coldly than I at the whole idea of a
redemptive framework for the creatures of the night who, once having
been human, could never be absolved of fratricide, their feasting on
human blood? I had known the dazzling, clever humanism of the
Renaissance, the dark recrudescence of asceticism in the Roman Coven and
the bleak cynicism of the Romantic era.

  What did I have to tell this sweet-faced vampire, Louis, this all too
human creation of the stronger and brasher Lestat, except that in the
world Louis would find enough beauty to sustain him, and that in his
soul he must find the courage to exist, if indeed it was his choice to
go on living, without looking to images of God or the Devil to give him
an artificial or short-lived peace.

   I never imparted to Louis my own bitter history; I confessed to him
the awful anguishing secret, however, that as of the year 1870, having
existed for some four hundred years among the Undead, I knew of no blood
drinker older than myself.

   The very avowal brought me a crushing sense of loneliness, and when I
looked into Louis's tortured face, when I followed his slim, delicate
figure as it picked its way through the clutter and nineteenth-century
Paris, I knew that this black-clad dark-haired gentleman, so lean, so
finely sculpted, so sensitive in all his lineaments, was the alluring
embodiment of the misery I felt.

   He mourned the loss of grace of one human lifetime. I mourned the
loss of the grace of centuries. Amenable to the styles of the age which
had shaped him-given him his flaring black frock coat, and fine
waistcoat of white silk, his high priestly-looking collar and frills of
immaculate linen-I fell in love with him hopelessly, and leaving the
Theatre des Vampires in ruins (he burnt it to the ground in a rage for a
very good reason), I wandered the world with him until very late in this
modern age.

   Time eventually destroyed our love for one another. Time withered our
gentle intimacy. Time devoured whatever conversation or pleasures we
once agreeably shared.

   One other horrible inescapable and unforgettable ingredient went into
our destruction. Ah, I don't want to speak of it, but who among us is
going to let me be silent on the matter of Claudia, the child vampire
whom I am accused for all time by all of having destroyed?

   Claudia. Who among us today for whom I dictate this narrative, who
among the modern audience who reads these tales as palatable fiction
does not have in mind a vibrant picture of her, the golden-curled child
vampire made by Louis and Lestat one wicked and foolish night in New
Orleans, the child vampire whose mind and soul became as immense as that
of an immortal woman while her body remained that of a precious all too
perfect painted bisque French bebe doll?

   For the record, she was slain by my Coven of mad demon actors and
actresses, for, when she surfaced at the Theatre des Vampires with Louis
as her mournful, guilt-ridden protector and lover, it became all too
clear to too many that she had tried to murder her principal Maker, The
Vampire Lestat. It was a crime punishable by death, the murdering of
one's creator or the attempt at it, but she herself stood among the
condemned the moment she became known to the Paris Coven, for she was a
forbidden thing, a child immortal, too small, too fragile for all her
charm and cunning to survive on her own. Ah, poor blasphemous and
beauteous creature. Her soft monotone voice, issuing from diminutive and
ever kissable lips, will haunt me forever.

  But I did not bring about her execution. She died more horribly than
anyone has ever imagined, and I have not the strength now to tell the
tale. Let me say only that before she was shoved out into a brick-lined
air well to await the death sentence of the god Phoebus, I tried to
grant her fondest wish, that she should have the body of a woman, a fit
shape for the tragic dimension of her soul.

  Well, in my clumsy alchemy, slicing heads from bodies and stumbling to
transplant one to another, I failed. Some night when I am drunk on the
blood of many victims, and more accustomed than I am now to confession,
I will recount it, my crude and sinister operations, conducted with a
sorcerer's willfulness and a boy's blundering, and describe in grim and
grotesque detail the writhing jerking catastrophe that rose from beneath
my scalpel and my surgical needle and thread.

  Let me say here, she was herself again, hideously wounded, a botched
reassemblage of the angelic child she'd been before my attempts, when
she was locked out in the brutal morning to meet her death with a clear
mind. The fire of Heaven destroyed the awful unhealed evidence of my
Satanic surgery as it turned her to a monument in ash. No evidence
remained of her last hours within the torture chamber of my makeshift
laboratory. No one need ever have known what I say now.

  For many a year, she haunted me. I could not strike from my mind the
faltering image of her girlish head and tumbling curls fixed awkwardly
with gross black stitching to the flailing, faltering and falling body
of a female vampire whose discarded head I'd thrown into the fire.

  Ah, what a grand disaster was that, the child-headed monster woman
unable to speak, dancing in a frenetic circle, the blood gurgling from
her shuddering mouth, her eyes rolling, arms flapping like the broken
bones of invisible wings.

  It was a truth I vowed to conceal forever from Louis de Pointe du Lac
and all whoever questioned me. Better let them think that I had
condemned her without trying to effect her escape, both from the
vampires of the theatre and from the wretched dilemma of her small,
enticing, flat-chested and silken-skinned angelic form.

   She was not fit for deliverance after the failure of my butchery; she
was as a prisoner subjected to the cruelty of the rack who can only
smile bitterly and dreamily as she is led, torn and miserable, to the
final horror of the stake. She was as a hopeless patient, in the reeking
antiseptic death cubicle of a modern hospital, freed at last from the
hands of youthful and overzealous doctors, to give up the ghost on a
white pillow alone.

Enough. I won't relive it.

I will not.

I never loved her. I didn't know how.

   I carried out my schemes in chilling detachment and with fiendish
pragmatism. Being condemned and therefore being nothing and no one, she
was a perfect specimen for my whim. That was the horror of it, the
secret horror which eclipsed any faith I might have pleaded later in the
high-blown courage of my experiments. And so the secret remained with
me, with Armand, who had witnessed centuries of unspeakable and refined
cruelties, a story unfit for the tender ears of a desperate Louis, who
could never have borne such descriptions of her degradation or
suffering, and who did not truly, in his soul, survive her death, cruel
as it was.

   As for the others, my stupid cynical flock, who listened so
lasciviously at my door to the screaming, who maybe guessed the extent
of my failed wizardry, those vampires died by Louis's hand.

   Indeed the entire theatre paid for his grief and his rage, and justly
so perhaps.

I can make no judgment.

   I did not love those decadent and cynical French mummers. Those I had
loved, and those who I could love, were, save for Louis de Pointe du

Lac, utterly beyond my grasp.

   I must have Louis, that was my injunction. I knew no other. So I did
not interfere when Louis incinerated the Coven and the infamous theatre,
striking, at the risk of his own life, with flame and scythe at the very
hour of dawn.

Why did he come away with me afterwards?

   Why did he not abhor the one whom he blamed for Claudia's death? "You
were their leader; you could have stopped them." He did say those words
to me.

 Why did we wander for so many years together, drifting like elegant
phantoms in our lace and velvet cerements into the garish electric
lights and electronic noise of the modern age?

 He remained with me because he had to do it. It was the only way that
he could go on existing, and for death he has never had the courage, and
never will.

 And so he endured after the loss of Claudia, just as I had endured
through the dungeon centuries, and through the years of tawdry boulevard
spectacle, but in time he did learn to be alone.

 Louis, my companion, dried up of his own free will, rather like a
beautiful rose skillfully dehydrated in sand so that it retains its
proportions, nay, even its fragrance and even its tint. For all the
blood he drank, he himself became dry, heartless, a stranger to himself
and tome.

 Understanding all too well the limits of my warped spirit, he forgot
me long before he dismissed me, but I too had learnt from him.

 For a short time, in awe of the world and confused by it, I too went
on alone-perhaps for the first time really and truly alone.

 But how long can any of us endure without another? For me at my
darkest hours there had been the ancient nun of the Old Ways, Alle-
sandra, or at least the babble of those who thought I was a little
saint.

 Why in this final decade of the twentieth century do we seek each
other out if only for occasional words and exchanges of concern? Why are
we here gathered in this old and dusty convent of so many brick-walled
empty rooms to weep for The Vampire Lestat? Why have the very ancient
among us come here to witness the evidence of his most recent and
terrifying defeat?

 We can't stand it, to be alone. We cannot bear it, any more than the
monks of old could bear it, men who though they had renounced all else
for Christ's sake, nevertheless came together in congregations to be
with one another, even as they enforced upon themselves the harsh rules
of single solitary cells and unbroken silence. They couldn't bear to be
alone.

 We are too much men and women; we are yet formed in the image of the
Creator, and what can we say of Him with any certainty except that He,
whoever He may be-Christ, Yahweh, Allah-He made us, did He not, because
even He in His Infinite Perfection could not bear to be alone.

  In time I conceived another love naturally, a love for a mortal boy
Daniel, to whom Louis had poured out his story, published under the
absurd title Interview with the Vampire, whom I later made into a
vampire for the same reasons that Marius had made me so long ago: the
boy, who had been my faithful mortal companion, and only sometimes an
intolerable nuisance, was about to die.

   That is no mystery unto itself, the making of Daniel. Loneliness will
always inevitably press us to such things. But I was a firm believer
that those we make ourselves will always despise us for it. I cannot
claim that I have never despised Marius, both for making me and never
returning to me to assure me that he had survived the horrible fire
created by the Roman Coven. I had sought Louis rather than create
others. And having created Daniel I saw at last my fear realized within
a short time.

   Daniel, though alive and wandering, though civil and gentle, can no
more stand my company than I can stand his. Equipped with my powerful
blood, he can contend with any who should be foolish enough to interrupt
his plans for an evening, a month or a year, but he cannot contend with
my continuous company, and I cannot contend with his.

   I turned Daniel from a morbid romantic into a true killer; I made
real in his natural blood cells the horror that he so fancied he
understood in mine. I pushed his face into the flesh of the first young
innocent he had to slaughter for his inevitable thirst, and thereby fell
off the pedestal on which he'd placed me in his demented, overimagina-
tive, feverishly poetical and ever exuberant mortal mind.

   But I had others around me when I lost Daniel, or rather when gaining
Daniel as a fledgling, I lost him as a mortal lover and gradually began
to let him go.

   I had others because I had again, for reasons that I cannot explain
to myself or anyone, made yet another Coven-another successor to the
Paris Coven of Les Innocents, and the Theatre des Vampires, and this was
a swank, modern hiding place for the most ancient, the most learned, the
most enduring of our kind. It was a honeycomb of luxurious chambers
hidden in that most concealing of edifices-a modern resort hotel and
shopping palace on an island off the coast of Miami, Florida, an island
on which the lights never went out and the music never ceased to play,
an island where men and women came by the thousands in small boats from
the mainland to browse the expensive boutiques, or to make love in
opulent, decadent, magnificent and always fashionable hotel suites and
rooms.

  "The Night Island," that was my creation, with its own copter pad and
marina, its secret illegal gambling casinos, its mirror-lined gymnasiums
and overheated swimming pools, its crystal fountains, its silver
escalators, its emporium of dazzling consumables, its bars, taverns,
lounges and theaters where I myself, decked out in smart velvet jackets,
tight denim pants and heavy black glasses, hair clipped each night (for
it grows back to its Renaissance length each day), could roam in peace
and anonymity, swimming in the soft caressing murmurs of the mortals
around me, searching out when thirst prompted it that one individual who
truly wanted me, that one individual who for reasons of health or
poverty or sanity or insanity wanted to be taken into the tentative and
never overpowering arms of death and sucked free of all blood and all
life.

 I didn't go hungry. I dropped my victims in the deep warm clean waters
of the Caribbean. I opened my doors to any of the Undead who would wipe
their boots before entering. It was like the old days of Venice, with
Bianca's palazzo open to all ladies and gentlemen, indeed, to all
artists, poets, dreamers and schemers who dared to present themselves,
had come again.

Well, they had not come again.

 It took no bunch of black-robed tramps to disperse the Coven of The
Night Island. Indeed those who were couched there for a short while
simply wandered off on their own. Vampires do not really want the
company of other vampires. They want the love of other immortals, yes,
always, and they need it, and they need the deep bonds of loyalty which
inevitably grow amongst those who refuse to become enemies. But they
don't want the company.

 And my splendid glass-walled drawing rooms on The Night Island were
soon empty, and I myself had long before that started to wander for
weeks, even months on my own.

 It is there still, The Night Island. It is there, and now and then I
do go back, and I find there some lone immortal who has checked in, as
we say in the modern age, to see how it goes with the rest of us, or
with some other who might be visiting as well. The great enterprise I
sold for a mortal fortune-but I maintain my ownership of the four-story
villa (a private club: name, II Villagio), with its deep secret
underground crypts to which all of our kind are welcome to come.

All of our kind.

There are not so many. But let me tell you now who they were. Let me
tell you now who has survived the centuries, who has resurfaced after
hundreds of years of mysterious absence, who has come forward to be
counted in the unwritten census of the modern Living Dead.

   There is Lestat, first and foremost, the author of four books of his
life and his adventures comprising everything you could ever possibly
want to know about him and some of us. Lestat, ever the maverick and the
laughing trickster. Six feet tall, a young man of twenty when made, with
huge warm blue eyes and thick flashy blond hair, square of jaw, with a
generous beautifully shaped mouth and skin darkened by a sojourn in the
sun which would have killed a weaker vampire, a ladies' man, an Oscar
Wildean fantasy, the glass of fashion, the most bold and disregarding
dusty vagabond on occasion, loner, wanderer, heart-breaker and wise guy,
dubbed the "Brat Prince" by my old Master- yes, imagine it, my Marius,
yes, my Marius, who did indeed survive the torches of the Roman Coven-
dubbed by Marius the "Brat Prince," though in whose Court and by whose
Divine Right and whose Royal Blood I should like to know. Lestat,
stuffed with the blood of the most ancient of our kind, indeed the very
blood of the Eve of our species, some five to seven thousand years the
survivor of her Eden, a perfect horror who, emerging from the deceptive
poetical title of Queen Akasha of Those Who Must Be Kept, almost
destroyed the world.

   Lestat, not a bad friend to have, and one for whom I would lay down
my immortal life, one for whose love and companionship I have ofttimes
begged, one whom I find maddening and fascinating and intolerably
annoying, one without whom I cannot exist.

So much for him.

   Louis de Pointe du Lac, already described above but always fan to
envisage: slender, slightly less tall than Lestat, his maker, black of
hair, gaunt and white of skin, with amazingly long and delicate fingers,
and feet that do not make a sound. Louis, whose green eyes are soulful,
the very mirror of patient misery, soft-voiced, very human, weak, having
lived only two hundred years, unable to read minds, or to levitate, or
to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an
immortal with whom mortals fall in love. Louis, an indiscriminate
killer, because he cannot satisfy his thirst without killing, though he
is too weak to risk the death of the victim in his arms, and because he
has no pride or vanity which would lead him to a hierarchy of intended
victims, and therefore takes those who cross his path, regardless of
age, physical endowments, or blessings bestowed by nature or fate.
Louis, a deadly and romantic vampire, the kind of night creature who
hovers in the deep shadows at the Opera House to listen to Mozart's
Queen of the Night give forth her piercing and irresistible song.

 Louis, who has never vanished, who has always been known to others,
who is easy to track and easy to abandon, Louis who will not make others
after his tragic blunders with vampiric children, Louis who is past
questing for God, for the Devil, for Truth or even for love.

   Sweet, dusty Louis, reading Keats by the light of one candle. Louis
standing in the rain on a slick deserted downtown street watching
through the store window the brilliant young actor Leonardo DiCap-rio as
Shakespeare's Romeo kissing his tender and lovely Juliet (Claire Danes)
on a television screen.

   Gabrielle. She's around now. She was around on The Night Island.
Everyone hates her. She is Lestat's Mother, and abandons him for
centuries, and somehow doesn't manage to heed Lestat's periodic and
inevitable frantic cries for help, which though she could not receive
them, being his fledgling, could certainly learn of them from other
vampiric minds which are on fire with the news round the world when
Lestat is in trouble. Gabrielle, she looks just like him, except she's a
woman, totally a woman, that is, sharper of feature, small-waisted, big-
breasted, sweet-eyed in the most unnerving and dishonest fashion,
gorgeous in a black ball gown with her hair free, more often dusty,
genderless, sheathed in supple leather or belted khaki, a steady walker,
and a vampire so cunning and cold that she has forgotten what it ever
meant to be human or in pain. Indeed, I think she forgot overnight, if
she ever knew it. She was in mortal life one of those creatures who
always wondered what the others were carrying on about. Gabrielle, low-
voiced, unintentionally vicious, glacial, forbidding, ungiving, a
wanderer through snowy forests of the far north, a slayer of giant white
bears and white tigers, an indifferent legend to untamed tribes,
something more akin to a prehistoric reptile than a human. Beautiful,
naturally, blond hair in a braid down her back, almost regal in a
chocolate-colored leather safari jacket and a small droopy brimmed rain
hat, a stalker, a quick killer, a pitiless and seemingly thoughtful but
eternally secretive thing. Gabrielle, virtually useless to anyone but
herself. Some night she'll say something to someone, I suppose.

 Pandora, child of two millennia, consort to my own beloved Marius a
thousand years before I was ever born. A goddess, made of bleeding
marble, a powerful beauty out of the deepest and most ancient soul of
Roman Italy, fierce with the moral fiber of the old Senatorial class of

the greatest Empire the Western world has ever known. I don't know her.
Her oval face shimmers beneath a mantle of rippling brown hair. She
seems too beautiful to hurt anyone. She is tender-voiced, with innocent,
imploring eyes, her flawless face instantly vulnerable and warm with
empathy, a mystery. I don't know how Marius could ever have left her. In
a short shift of filmy silk, with a snake bracelet on her bare arm, she
is too ravishing for mortal males and the envy of females. In her longer
concealing gowns, she moves as a wraith through the rooms around her as
if they are not real to her, and she, the ghost of a dancer, seeks for
some perfect setting that she alone can find. Her powers certainly rival
those of Marius. She has drunk from the Eden fount, that is, the blood
of Queen Akasha. She can kindle crisp dry objects into fire with the
power of her mind, levitate and vanish in the dark sky, slay the young
blood drinkers if they menace her, and yet she seems harmless, forever
feminine though indifferent to gender, a wan and plaintive woman whom I
want to close in my arms.

   Santino, the old saint of Rome. He has wandered into the disasters of
the modern era with all his beauty unblemished, still the big-
shouldered, strong-chested one, olive skin paler now with the workings
of the fierce magical blood, huge head of black curling hair often
clipped each night at sunset for the sake of anonymity perhaps, unvain,
perfectly dressed in black. He says nothing to anyone. He looks at me
silently as if we never talked together of theology and mysticism, as if
he never broke my happiness, burnt my youth to cinders, drove my Maker
into century-long convalescence, divided me from all comfort. Perhaps he
fancies us as fellow victims of a powerful intellectual morality, an
infatuation with the concept of purpose, two lost ones, veterans of the
same war.

   At times he looks shrewd and even hateful. He knows plenty. He
doesn't underestimate the powers of the ancient ones, who, eschewing the
social invisibility of centuries past, now walk among us with perfect
ease. When he looks at me, his black eyes are unflinching and passive.
The shadow of his beard, fixed forever into the tiny cut-off dark hairs
embedded in his skin, is beautiful as it always was. He is all in all
conventionally virile, crisp white shirt open at the throat to show the
portion of the thick curly black hair that covers his chest, a similar
enticing black fleece covering the visible flesh of his arms at the
wrists. He favors sleek but sturdy black coats lapeled in leather or
fur, low-slung black cars that move at two hundred miles an hour, a
golden cigarette lighter reeking of combustible fluid, which he lights
over and over again just to peer into the flame. Where he actually
lives, and when he will surface, nobody knows.

   Santino. I know no more about him than that. We keep a gentlemanly
distance from one another. I suspect his own suffering has been
terrible; I do not seek to break the shiny black fashionable carapace of
his demeanor to discover some raw bloody tragedy beneath it. To know
Santino, there is always time.

  Now let me describe for the most virginal of readers my Master,
Marius, as he is now. So much time and experience divide us now that it
is like a glacier between us, and we stare at each other across the
glowing whiteness of that impassable waste, able only to speak in lulled
and polite voices, so mannerly, the young creature I appear to be, too
sweet-faced for casual belief, and he, ever the worldly sophisticate,
the scholar of the moment, the philosopher of the century, ethicist of
the millennium, historian for all time.

 He walks tall as he always did, imperial still in his subdued
twentieth-century fashion, carving his coats out of old velvet that they
may give some faint clue of the magnificence that was once his nightly
dress. On occasions now he clips the long flowing yellow hair which he
wore so proudly in old Venice. He is ever quick of wit and tongue and
eager for reasonable solutions, possessed of infinite patience and
unquenchable curiosity and a refusal to give up on the fate of himself,
or of us, or of this world. No knowledge can defeat him; tempered by
fire and time, he is too strong for the horrors of technology or the
spells of science. Neither microscopes nor computers shake his faith in
the infinite, though his once solemn charges-Those Who Must Be Kept, who
held such promise of redemptive meaning-have long been toppled from
their archaic thrones.

 I fear him. I don't know why. Perhaps I fear him because I could love
him again, and loving him, I would come to need him, and needing him, I
would come to learn from him, and learning from him, I would be again
his faithful pupil in all things, only to discover that his patience for
me is no substitute for the passion which long ago blazed in his eyes.

 I need that passion! I need it. But enough of him. Two thousand years
he had survived, slipping in and out of the very mainstream of human
life without compunction, a great practitioner of the art of being
human, carrying with him forever the grace and quiet dignity of the
Augustan Age of seemingly invincible Rome, in which he was born.

   There are others who are not here now with me, though they have been
on The Night Island, and I will see them again. There are the ancient
twins, Mekare and Maharet, custodians of the primal blood fount from
which our life flows, the roots of the vine, so to speak, upon which we
so stubbornly and beautifully bloom. They are our Queens of the Damned.

 Then there is Jesse Reeves, a twentieth-century fledgling made by
Maharet, the very eldest and therefore a dazzling monster, unknown to
me, but greatly admired. Bringing with her into the world of the Undead
an incomparable education in history, the paranormal, philosophy and
languages, she is the unknown. Will the fire consume her, as it has so
many others who, weary of life, cannot accept immortality? Or will her
twentieth-century wit give her some radical and indestructible armor for
the inconceivable changes that we now know must lie ahead?

   Ah, there are others. There are wanderers. I can hear their voices
from time to time in the night. There are those far away who know
nothing of our traditions and have styled us, in hostility to our
writings and in amusement at our antics, "The Coven of the Articulate,"
strange "unregistered" beings of various ages, strengths, attitudes, who
sometimes seeing on a paperback rack a copy of The Vampire Lestat tear
it loose and grind the small book to powder within their powerful and
scornful hands.

   They may lend their wisdom or their wit to our unfolding chronicle in
some unpredictable future. Who knows?

   For now, there is but one more player who must be described before my
tale can be advanced.

 That one is you, David Talbot, whom I scarcely know, you, who write
with furious speed all the words that come slowly tumbling from me as I
watch you, mesmerized on some level by the mere fact that these
sentiments so long allowed to burn inside of me are now recorded on the

seemingly eternal page.

  What are you, David Talbot-over seven decades old in mortal education,
a scholar, a deep and loving soul? How can one tell? That which you were
in life, wise in years, strengthened by routine calamity and deepened by
the full four seasons of a man's span upon the Earth, was transported
with all memory and learning intact into the splendid body of a younger
man. And then that body, a precious chalice for the Grail of your very
self, who knew so well the value of both elements, was then assaulted by
your closest of friends, the loving monster, the vampire who would have
you as his fellow traveler in eternity whether or not you gave him
leave, our beloved Lestat.

  I cannot imagine such a rape. I stand too far from all humanity, never
having been a fall man. In your face I see the vigor and beauty of the
dark golden-skinned Anglo-Hindi whose body you enjoy, and in your eyes
the calm and dangerously well-tempered soul of the old man.

  Your hair is black and soft and handily trimmed below your ears. You
dress with high vanity submitted to a staunch British sense of style.
You look at me as though your curiosity will put me off guard, when
nothing of the sort is true.

  Hurt me and I'll destroy you. I don't care how strong you are, or what
blood Lestat gave you. I know more than you do. Because I show you my
pain, I do not of necessity love you. I do this for myself and for
others, for the very idea of others, for any who would know, and for my
mortals, those two I've gathered to me so recently, those two precious
ones who have become the ticking clock of my capacity to go on.

  Symphony for Sybelle. That might as well be the name of this
confession. And having done my best for Sybelle, I do my best for you as
well.

  Is this not enough of the past? Is this not enough prologue to the
moment in New York when I saw Christ's Face in the Veil? There begins
the final chapter of my life of late. There is nothing more to it. You
have all the rest, and what must needs come now is but the brief
harrowing account of what has brought me here.

  Be my friend, David. I didn't mean to say such terrible things to you.
My heart aches. I need you just to tell me that I may rush on. Help me
with your experience. Isn't this enough? May I go on? I want to hear
Sybelle's music. I want to talk of beloved rescuers. I can't measure the
proportions of this story. I only know I am ready... I have reached the
far side of The Bridge of Sighs.

Ah, but it's my decision, yes, and you wait to write what I will say.

Well, let me go now to the Veil.

   Let me go now to the Face of Christ, as if I were walking uphill in
the long-ago snowy winter in Podil, beneath the broken towers of
Vladimir's City, to seek within the Monastery of the Caves the paint and
the wood on which to see it take form before me: His Face. Christ, yes,
the Redeemer, the Living Lord once more.



PART   III

APPASSIONATA



I DID N'T WANT to go to him. It was winter, and I was contented in
London, haunting the theatres to see the plays of Shakespeare, and
reading the plays and the sonnets the whole night long. I had no other
thoughts just now but Shakespeare. Lestat had given him to me. And when
I'd had a bellyful of despair, I'd opened the books and begun to read.

But Lestat was calling. Lestat was, or so he claimed, afraid.

  I had to go. The last time he'd been in trouble, I hadn't been free to
rush to his rescue. There is a story to that, but nothing as important
as this one which I tell now.

  Now I knew that my hard-won peace of mind might be shattered by the
mere contact with him, but he wanted me to come, so I went.

  I found him first in New York, though he didn't know it and he
couldn't have led me into a worse snowstorm if he'd tried. He slew a
mortal that night, a victim with whom he'd fallen in love, as was his
custom of late-to pick these celebrities of high crimes and horrid
murders-and to stalk them before the night of the feast.

  So what did he want of me, I wondered. You were there, David. You
could help him. Or so it seemed. Being his fledgling you hadn't heard
his call directly, but he'd reached you somehow, and the two of you,
such proper gentlemen, came together to discuss in low, sophisticated
whispers Lestat's latest fears.

  When next I caught up with him he was in New Orleans. And he put it to
me plain and simple. You were there. The Devil had come to him in the
guise of a man. The Devil could change shapes, being at one moment
horrific and ghastly with webbed wings and hoofed feet; and then next,
the Devil could be an ordinary man. Lestat was wild with these stories.
The Devil had offered him a dreadful proposition, that he, Lestat,
become the Devil's helper in the service of God.

   Do you remember how calmly I responded to his story, his questions,
his pleading for our advice? Oh, I told him firmly it was madness to
follow this spirit, to believe that any discarnate thing was bound to
tell him the truth.

   But only now do you know the wounds he opened with this strange and
marvelous fable. So the Devil would make him a hellish helper and
thereby a servant of God? I might have laughed outright, or wept,
throwing it in his face that I had once believed myself a saint of evil,
shivering in rags as I stalked my victims in the Parisian winter, all
for the honor and glory of God.

   But he knew all this. There was no need to wound him farther, to
shift from him the limelight of his own tale, which Lestat, being the
bright star, must always have.

   Under moss-hung oaks we talked in civilized voices. You and I begged
him to be cautious. Naturally, he ignored all we said.

   It was all mixed up with the entrancing mortal Dora, who was living

then in this very building, this old brick convent, the daughter of the
man Lestat had stalked and slain.

   When he bound us to look out for her, I was angry, but only mildly
so. I have fallen in love with mortals. I have those tales to tell. I am
in love now with Sybelle and Benjamin, whom I call my children, and I
had been a secret troubadour to other mortals in the dim past.

   All right, he was in love with Dora, he'd laid his head on a mortal
breast, he wanted the womb blood of her that would be no loss to her, he
was smitten, crazed, goaded by the ghost of her Father and courted by
the Prince of Evil Himself.

   And she, what shall I say of her? That she possessed the power of a
Rasputin behind the face of a nunnery postulant, when in fact she is a
practiced theologian and not a mystic, a ranting raving leader, not a
visionary, whose ecclesiastical ambitions would have dwarfed those of
Saints Peter and Paul put together, and that of course, she is like any
flower Lestat ever gathered from the Savage Garden of this world: a most
fine and fetching little creature, a glorious specimen of God's
Creation-with raven hair, a pouty mouth, cheeks of porcelain and the
dashing limbs of a nymph.

   Of course I knew the very moment that he left this world. I felt it.
I was in New York already, very near to him and aware that you were
there as well. Neither of us meant to let him out of our sight if at all
possible. Then came the moment when he vanished in the blizzard, when he
was sucked out of the earthly atmosphere as if he'd never been there.

   Being his fledgling you couldn't hear the perfect silence that
descended when he vanished. You couldn't know how completely he'd been
withdrawn from all things minuscule yet material which had once echoed
with the beating of his heart.

  I knew, and I think it was to distract us both that I proposed we go
to the wounded mortal who must have been shattered by her Father's death
at the hands of a blond-haired handsome blood-swilling monster who'd
made her his confidant and a friend.

  It was not difficult to help her in the short event-filled nights that
followed, when horror was heaped upon horror, her Father's murder
discovered, his sordid life at once made by media magic the madcap
conversation of the wide world.

  It seems a century ago, not merely so short a time, that we moved
south to these rooms, her father's legacy of crucifixes and statues, of
ikons which I handled so coolly as if I'd never loved such treasures at
all.

  It seems a century ago that I dressed decently for her, finding in
some fashionable Fifth Avenue shop a shapely coat of old red velvet, a
poet's shirt, as they call it now, of starched cotton and ample flopping
lace, and to set this off, pegged-leg trousers of black wool and shiny
boots that buckled at the ankle, all this the better to accompany her to
identify her Father's severed head under the leeching fluorescent lights
of some immense and overcrowded morgue.

   One good thing about this final decade of the twentieth century is
that a man of any age can wear his hair at any length.

  It seems a century ago that I combed out mine, full and curly and
clean for once, just for her.

  It seems a century ago we stood so staunchly beside her, indeed even
held her, this long-necked, short-haired, spellbinding witchlet, in our
very arms as she wept over the death of her Father and pelted us with
feverish and maniacally intelligent and dispassionate questions about
our sinister nature, as if a great crash course in the anatomy of the
vampire could somehow close the cycle of horror threatening her
wholesomeness and her sanity and somehow bring her wicked conscienceless
Father back.

   No, it wasn't the return of Roger, actually, that she prayed for; she
believed too totally in the omniscience and mercy of God. Besides,
seeing a man's severed head is a bit of a shock, even if the head is
frozen, and a dog had chomped on Roger a bit before he'd been
discovered, and what with the strict "no touch" rules of modern
forensics, he was-for me even-quite a sight. (I remember the coroner's
assistant saying soulfully to me that I was awfully young to have to see
such a thing. She thought I was Dora's little brother. What a sweet
woman she was. Perhaps it's worth it to make a foray into the official
mortal world once in a while in order to be called "a real trouper"
instead of a Botticelli angel, which has become my tag line among the
Undead.)

   It was the return of Lestat Dora dreamed of. What else would ever
allow her to break free of our enchantment but some final blessing from
the crowned prince himself?

   I stood at the dark glass windows of the high-rise apartment, looking
out over the deep snows of Fifth Avenue, waiting and praying with her,
wishing the great Earth were not so empty of my old enemy and thinking
in my foolish heart that in time this mystery of his disappearance would
be resolved, as were all miracles, with sadness and small losses, with
no more than little revelations that would leave me as I had always been
left since that long-ago night in Venice when my Master and I were
divided forever, simply a little more clever at pretending that I was
still alive.

   I didn't fear for Lestat, not really. I had no hopes for his
adventure, except that he would appear sooner or later and tell us some
fantastical yarn. It would be regular Lestat talk, for nobody
aggrandizes as he does his preposterous adventures. This is not to say
that he hasn't switched bodies with a human. I know that he has. This is
not to say that he didn't wake our fearsome goddess Mother, Akasha; I
know that he did. This is not to say that he didn't smash my old
superstitious Coven to bits and pieces in the garish years before the
French Revolution. I've already told you so.

   But it's the way he describes things that happen to him that maddens
me, the way that he connects one incident to another as though all these
random and grisly occurrences were in fact links in some significant
chain. They are not. They are capers. And he knows it. But he must make
a gutter theatrical out of stubbing his toe.

   The James Bond of the Vampires, the Sam Spade of his own pages! A
rock singer wailing on a mortal stage for all of two hours and, on the
strength of that, retiring with a slew of recordings that feed him
filthy lucre still from human agencies to this very night.

   He has a knack for making tragedy of tribulation, and forgiving
himself for anything and everything in every confessional paragraph he
pens.

   I can't fault him, really. I cannot help but hate it that he lies now
in a coma on the floor of his chapel here, staring into a self-contained
silence, despite the fledglings that circle him-for precisely the same
reason as I did, to see for themselves if the blood of Christ has
transformed him somehow and he does not represent some magnificent
manifestation of the miracle of the Transubstantiation. But I'll come to
that soon enough.

   I've ranted myself into a little corner. I know why I resent him so,
and find it so soothing to hammer at his reputation, to beat upon his
immensity with both my fists.

 He has taught me too much. He has brought me to this very moment,
here, where I stand dictating to you my past with a coherence and calm
that would have been impossible before I came to his assistance with his
precious Memnoch the Devil and his vulnerable little Dora.

 Two hundred years ago he stripped me of illusions, lies, excuses, and
thrust me on the Paris pavements naked to find my way back to a glory in
the starlight that I had once known and too painfully lost.

 But as we waited finally in the handsome high-rise apartment above St.
Patrick's Cathedral, I had no idea how much more he could strip from me,
and I hate him only because I cannot imagine my soul without him now,
and, owing him all that I am and know, I can do nothing to make him wake
from his frigid sleep.

   But let me take things one at a time. What good is it to go back down
now to the chapel here and lay my hands on him again and beg him to
listen to me, when he lies as though all sense has truly left him and
will never return.

   I can't accept this. I won't. I've lost all patience; I've lost the
numbness that was my consolation. I find this moment intolerable-.

But I have to tell you things.

 I have to tell you what happened when I saw the Veil, and when the sun
struck me and, more wretchedly for me, what I saw when finally I reached
Lestat and drew so close to him that I could drink his blood.

Yes, stay on course. I know now why he makes the chain. It isn't pride,
is it? It's the necessity. The tale can't be told without one link being
connected to the other, and we poor orphans of ticking time know no
other means of measure but those of sequence. Dropped into the snowy
blackness, into a world worse than a void, I reached for a chain, did I
not? Oh, God, what I would have given in that awful descent to grasp the
firmness of a metal chain!

He came back so suddenly-to you and Dora and me.

   It was the third morning, and not long enough before dawn. I heard
the doors slam far below us in the glass tower, and then that sound,
that sound which gains in eerie volume each year, the beating of his
heart.

 Who was first to rise from the table? I was still with fear. He came
too fast, and there were those wild fragrances whirling about him, of
woodland and raw earth. He crashed through all barriers as if he were
pursued by those who'd stolen him away, and yet there was no one behind
him. He came alone into the apartment, slamming the door in his wake and
then standing before us, more horrible than I could ever have imagined,
more ruined than I had ever seen him in any of his former little
defeats.

   With absolute love Dora ran to him, and in a desperate need that was
all too human he clutched at her so fiercely that I thought he would
destroy her.

   "You're safe now, darling," she cried, struggling so as to make him
understand.

   But we had only to look at him to know it wasn't finished, though we
murmured the same hollow words in the face of what we beheld.


8


HE HAD COME from the maelstrom. One shoe was left to him, the other foot
bare, his coat torn, his hair wild and snagged with thorns and dried
leaves and bits of errant flowers.

   In his arms, to his chest he clutched a flat bundle of folded cloth
as if it carried the whole fate of the world embroidered on it.

   But the worst, the very worst horror of all, was that one eye had
been torn from his beautiful face, and the socket of vampiric lids
puckered and shuddered, seeking to close, refusing to acknowledge this
horrid disfigurement to the body rendered perfect for all time when he'd
been made immortal.

   I wanted to take him in my arms. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him
wherever he'd gone and whatever had taken place, he was now safe again
with us, but nothing could quiet him.

 A deep exhaustion saved us all from the inevitable tale. We had to
seek our dark corners away from the prying sun, we had to wait until the
following night when he would come out to us and tell us what had
happened.

   Still clutching the bundle, refusing all help, he closeted himself up
with his wound. I had no choice but to leave him.

 As I sank down that morning into my own resting place, secure in clean
modern darkness, I cried and cried like a child on account of the sight
of him. Oh, why had I come to his aid? Why must I see him brought low
like this when it had taken so many painful decades to cement my love
for him forever?

   Once before, a hundred years ago, he'd come stumbling into the
Theatre des Vampires on the trail of his renegade fledglings, sweet
gentle Louis and the doomed child, and I hadn't pitied him then, his
skin scored with scars from Claudia's foolish and clumsy attempt to kill
him.

   Loved him then, yes, I had, but this had been a bodily disaster which
his evil blood would heal, and I knew from our old lore that in the
healing he would gain even greater strength than serene time itself
would have given him.

   But what I'd seen now was a devastation of the soul in his anguished
face, and the vision of the one blue eye, shining so vividly in his
streaked and wretched face, had been unbearable.

   I don't remember that we spoke, David. I remember only that the
morning hastened us away, and if you cried too, I never heard you, I
never thought to listen. As for the bundle he had carried in his arms,
what could it have possibly been? I do not even think I thought of it.

The next night:

   He came quietly into the parlor of the apartment as the darkness
clambered down, starry for a few precious moments before the dreary
descent of snow. He was washed and dressed, his torn and bleeding foot
no doubt healed. He wore new shoes.

   But nothing could lessen the grotesque picture of his torn face where
the cuts of a claw or fingernails surrounded the gaping, puckering lids.
Quietly he sat down.

   He looked at me, and a faint charming smile brightened his face.
"Don't fear for me, little devil Armand," he said. "Fear for all of us.
I am nothing now. I am nothing."

   In a low voice I whispered to him my plan. "Let me go down into the
streets, let me steal from some mortal, some evil being who has wasted
every physical gift that God ever gave, an eye for you! Let me put it
here in the empty socket. Your blood will rush into it and make it see.
You know. You saw this miracle once with the ancient one, Maharet,
indeed, with a pair of mortal eyes swimming in her special blood, eyes
that could see! I'll do it. It won't take me but a moment, and then I'll
have the eye in my hand and be the doctor myself and place it here.
Please."

He only shook his head. He kissed me quickly on the cheek.

   "Why do you love me after all I've done to you?" he asked. There was
no denying the beauty of his smooth poreless sun-darkened skin, and even
as the dark slit of the empty socket seemed to peer at me with some
secret power to relay its vision to his heart. He was handsome and
radiant, a darkish ruddy glow coming from his face as though he'd seen
some powerful mystery.

   "Yes, but I have," he said, and now began to cry. "I have, and I must
tell you everything. Believe me, as you believe what you saw last night,
the wildflowers clinging still to my hair, the cuts-look, my hands, they
heal but not fast enough-believe me."

  You intervened then, David. "Tell us, Lestat. We would have waited
here forever for you. Tell us. Where did this demon Memnoch take you?"
How comforting and reasonable your voice sounded, just as it does now. I
think you were made for this, for reasoning, and given to us, if I may
speculate, to force us to see our catastrophes in the new light of
modern conscience. But we can talk of those things for many nights
hereafter.

 Let me return to the scene, the three of us gathered in the black-
lacquered Chinese chairs around the thick glass table, and Dora coming
in, at once struck by the presence of him, of which her mortal senses
hadn't given her a clue, a pretty picture with her short gleaming
knavish black hair, cut high to show the fragile nape of her swanlike
neck, her long supple body clad in a loose ungirdled gown of purple red
tissue that folded itself about her small breasts and slender thighs
exquisitely. Ah, what an angel of the Lord, this, I thought musing, this
heiress of the druglord Father's severed head. She teaches doctrines
with every step that would make the pagan gods of lust canonize her with
glee.

 About her pale sweet throat she wore a crucifix so tiny it seemed a
gilded gnat suspended from a weightless chain of minuscule links woven
by fairies. What are such holy objects now, tumbling on milky bosoms
with such ease, but trinkets of the marketplace? My thoughts were
merciless, but I was but an indifferent cataloger of her beauty. Her
swelling breasts, their shadowy cleft quite visible against the simple
stitching of her dark low-cut dress, told more of God and Divinity.

 But her greatest adornment in these moments was the tearful and eager
love for him, her lack of fear of his mutilated face, the grace of her
white arms as she enclosed him again, so sure of herself and so grateful
for the gentle yielding of his body in towards her. I was so thankful
that she loved him.

 "So the Prince of Lies had a tale to tell, did he?" she asked. She
could not kill the quaver in her voice. "So he's taken you to his Hell
and sent you back?" She took Lestat's face in her hands and turned it
towards her. "Then tell us what it was, this Hell, tell us why we must
be afraid. Tell us why you are afraid, but I think it's something far
worse than fear that I see now in you."

   He nodded his head to say that it was. He pushed back the Chinese
chair, and wringing his hands he began to pace, the inevitable prelude
to his tale telling.

   "Listen to all I say, before you judge," he declared, fixing us now,
the three who crowded about the table, an anxious little audience
willing to do whatever he asked of us. His eyes lingered on you, David,
you, the English scholar in your manly tweed, who in spite of love
abundantly clear beheld him with a critical eye, ready to evaluate his
words with a wisdom natural to you.

   He began to talk. Hour by hour he talked. Hour by hour the words
streamed out of him, heated and rushing and sometimes tumbling over one
another so that he had to stop and catch his breath, but he never really
paused, as he poured it out over the long night, this tale of his
adventure.

   Yes, Memnoch the Devil had taken him to Hell, but it was a Hell of
Memnoch's devising, a Purgatorial place in which the souls of all who
had ever lived were welcome to come of their own accord from the
whirlwind of death which had inherited them. And in that Purgatorial
Hell, confronted with all the deeds they'd ever done, they learnt the
most hideous lesson of all, the endless consequences of every action
ever committed by them. Murderer and Mother alike, vagrant children
slaughtered in seeming innocence and soldiers bathed in blood from
battlefields, all were admitted to this awful place of smoke and

sulfurous fire, but only to see the gaping wounds in others made by
their wrathful or unwitting hands, to plumb the depths of other souls
and hearts which they had injured!

   All horror was an illusion in this place, but the worst horror of all
was the person of God Incarnate, who had allowed this Final School for
those who would be worthy to enter His Paradise. And, this too Lestat
had seen, the Heaven glimpsed a million times by saints and deathbed
victims, of ever blooming trees and flowers eternally sweet and endless
crystal towers of happy, happy beings, shorn of all flesh and one at
last with countless choirs of singing angels.

   It was an old tale. It was too old. It had been told too many times,
this tale-of Heaven with her open gates, and God Our Maker sending forth
His endless light to those who climbed the mythic stairs to join the
celestial court forever.

   How many mortals waking from a near death sleep have struggled to
describe these same wonders!

   How many saints have claimed to have glimpsed this indescribable and
eternal Eden?

 And how cleverly this Devil Memnoch had laid out his case to plead for
mortal compassion for his sin, that he and he alone had opposed a
merciless and indifferent God, to beg that Deity to look down with
compassionate eyes on a fleshly race of beings who had by means of their
own selfless love managed to engender souls worthy of His interest?

   This, then, was the fall of Lucifer like the Star of Morning from the
sky-an angel begging for the Sons and Daughters of Men that they had now
the countenances and hearts of angels.

   "Give them Paradise, Lord, give it to them when they have learnt in
my school how to love all that you have created."

   Oh, a book has been filled with this adventure. Memnoch the Devil
cannot be condensed here in these few unjust paragraphs.

   But this was the sum of what fell on my ears as I sat in this chilly
New York room, gazing now and then past Lestat's frantic, pacing figure
at the white sky of ever falling snow, shutting out beneath his roaring
narrative the rumble of the city far below, and struggling with the
awful fear in myself that I must at the climax of his tale disappoint
him. That I must remind him that he had done no more than shape the
mystic journey of a thousand saints in a new and palatable fashion.

   So it is a school that replaces those rings of eternal fire which the
poet Dante described in such degree as to sicken the reader, and even
the tender Fra Angelico felt compelled to paint, where naked mortals
bathed in flame were meant to suffer for eternity.

   A school, a place of hope, a promise of redemption great enough
perhaps to welcome even us, the Children of the Night, who counted
murders among their sins as numerous as those of ancient Huns or
Mongols.

   Oh, this was very sweet, this picture of the life hereafter, the
horrors of the natural world laid off upon a wise but distant God, and
the Devil's folly rendered with such keen intelligence.

   Would that it were true, would that all the poems and paintings of
the world were but a mirror of such hopeful splendor.

   It might have saddened me; it might have broken me down to where I
hung my head and couldn't look at him.

   But a single incident from his tale, one which to him had been a
passing encounter, loomed large for me beyond all the rest and locked
itself to my thoughts, so that as he went on and on, I couldn't banish
this from my mind: that he, Lestat, had drunk the very blood of Christ
on the road to Calvary. That he, Lestat, had spoken to this God
Incarnate, who by His own will had walked towards this horrible Death on
Golgotha. That he, Lestat, a fearful and trembling witness had been made
to stand in the narrow dusty streets of ancient Jerusalem to see Our
Lord pass, and that this Lord, Our Living Lord, had, with the crossbeam
of the crucifix strapped to His shoulders, offered His throat to Lestat,
the chosen pupil.

  Ah, such fancy, this madness, such fancy. I had not expected to be so
hurt by anything in this tale. I had not expected this to make a burning
in my chest, a tightness in my throat from which no words could escape.
I had not wanted this. The only salvation of my wounded heart was to
think how quaint and foolish it was that such a tableau- Jerusalem, the
dusty street, the angry crowds, the bleeding God, now scourged and
limping beneath His wooden weight-should include a legend old and sweet
of a woman with a Veil outstretched to wipe the bloody Face of Christ in
comfort, and thereby to receive for all time His Image.

   It does not take a scholar, David, to know such saints were made by
other saints in centuries to come as actors and actresses chosen for a
Passion Play in a country village. Veronica! Veronica, whose very name
means True Ikon.

  And our hero, our Lestat, our Prometheus, with that Veil given him by
the very hand of God, had fled this great and ghastly realm of Heaven
and Hell and the Stations of the Cross, crying No! and I will not! and
come back, breathless, running like a madman through the snows of New
York, seeking only to be with us, turning his back on all of it.

   My head swam. There was a war inside of me. I couldn't look at him.

   On and on he went, going over it, talking again of the sapphiric
Heavens and the angels' song, arguing with himself and with you and with
Dora, and the conversation seemed like so much shattered glass. I
couldn't bear it.

  The Blood of Christ inside him? The Blood of Christ passing his lips,
his unclean lips, his Undead lips, the Blood of Christ making of him a
monstrous Ciborium? The Blood of Christ?

  "Let me drink!" I cried out suddenly. "Lestat, let me drink, from you,
let me drink your blood that has His blood inside it!" I couldn't
believe my own earnestness, my own wild desperation. "Lestat, let me
drink. Let me look for the blood with my tongue and my heart. Let me
drink, please; you can't deny me that one moment of intimacy. And if it
was Christ... if it was ..." I couldn't finish it.

  "Oh, mad and foolish child," he said. "All you'll know if you sink
your teeth into me is what we learn from the visions we see with all our

victims. You'll learn what I think I saw. You'll learn what I think was
made known to me. You'll learn that my blood runs in my veins, which you
know now. You'll learn that I believe it was Christ, but no more than
that."

He shook his head in disappointment as he glared at me.

 "No, I'll know," I said. I rose from the table, my hands quivering.
"Lestat, give me this one embrace and I'll never ask another thing of
you for all eternity. Let me put my lips to your throat, Lestat, let me
test the tale, let me do it!"

 "You break my heart, you little fool," he said with tears welling.
"You always did."

"Don't judge me!" I cried.

 He went on, speaking to me alone, from his mind as much as with his
voice. I couldn't tell if anyone else there could even hear him. But I
heard him. I would not forget a single word.

 "And what if it was the Blood of God, Armand," he asked, "and not part
and parcel of some titanic lie, what would you find in me? Go out to the
early morning Mass and snatch your victims from those just come from the
Communion Rail! What a pretty game that would be, Armand, to feed
forever only on Holy Communicants! You can have your Blood of Christ
from any one of them. I tell you, I do not believe these spirits, God,
Memnoch, these liars; I tell you, I refuse! I wouldn't stay, I fled
their damned school, I lost my eye as I battled them, they snatched it
from me, wicked angels clawing at me when I ran away from them! You want
the Blood of Christ, then go down now in the dark church to the
fisherman's Mass and knock the sleepy priest aside from the Altar, if
you will, and grab the Chalice from his consecrated hands. Go ahead, do
it!

   "Blood of Christ!" he continued, his face one great eye fixing me in
its merciless beam. "If it was ever in me, this sacred blood, then my
body has dissolved it and burnt it up like candle wax devours the wick.
You know this. What's left of Christ in the belly of His faithful when
they leave the church?"

   "No," I said. "No, but we are not humans!" I whispered, seeking
somehow in softness to drown out his angry vehemence. "Lestat, I'll
know! It was His blood, not transubstantiated bread and wine! His blood,
Lestat, and I'll know if it's inside of you. Oh, let me drink, I beg
you. Let me drink so I can forget every damned thing you've told us, let
me drink!"

   I could scarcely keep myself from laying hands on him, from forcing
him to my will, never mind his legendary strength, his gruesome temper.
I'd lay hold of him and make him submit. I'd take the blood-.

   But these thoughts were foolish and vain. His whole tale was foolish
and vain, and yet I turned around, and in a fury I spit the words at
him:

   "Why didn't you accept? Why didn't you go with Memnoch if he could
have taken you from this awful living Hell we share, why didn't you?"

   "They let you escape," you said to him, David. You broke in, quieting

me with a small pleading gesture of your left hand.

   But I had no patience for analysis or inevitable interpretation. I
couldn't get the image out of my mind, Our Bloody Lord, Our Lord with
the crossbeam bound to His shoulders, and she, Veronica, this sweet
figment with the Veil in her hands. Oh, how is it such a fantasy could
get its hook so deep?

   "Back away from me, all of you," he cried. "I have the Veil. I told
you. Christ gave it to me. Veronica gave it to me. I took it with me out
of Memnoch's Hell, when all his imps tried to take it from me."

   I scarcely heard. Veil, the actual Veil, what trick is this? My head
ached. The fisherman's Mass. If there was such a thing in St. Patrick's
below, I wanted to go there. I was weary of this glass-walled tower
room, cut off from the taste of the wind and the wild refreshing wetness
of the snow.

   Why did Lestat back up against the wall? What did he take out of his
coat? The Veil! Some gaudy trick to seal this whole masterpiece of
mayhem?

I looked up, my eyes roaming over the snowy night beyond the glass and
only slowly finding their mark: the opened cloth which he held up in his
hands, his own head bowed, the cloth revealed as reverently as it might
have been by Veronica.

   "My Lord!" I whispered. All the world was gone in curls of weightless
sound and light. I saw Him there. "My Lord." I saw His Face, not
painted, printed or otherwise daintily tricked into the tiny fibers of
the fine white cloth, but blazing with a flame that would not consume
the vehicle that bore the heat of it. My Lord, my Lord the Man, my Lord,
my Christ, the Man with black and sharpened crown of thorns, and long
twisted brown hair so fearfully clotted with blood, and great wondering
dark eyes that stared straight at me, the sweet and vivid portals of the
Soul of God, so radiant their immeasurable love that all poetry dies
before it, and a soft and silken mouth of unquestioning and unjudging
simplicity, open to take a silent and agonizing breath at the very
moment the Veil had come to soothe this hideous suffering.

   I wept. I clamped my hand to my mouth, but I couldn't stop my words.

   "Oh, Christ, my tragic Christ!" I whispered. "Not made by human
hands!" I cried out. "Not made by human hands!" How wretched my words,
how feeble, how filled with sorrow. "This Man's Face, this Face of God
and Man. He bleeds. For the love of Almighty God, look at it!"

   But not a sound had come from me. I couldn't move. I couldn't
breathe. I'd fallen down on my knees in my shock and in my helplessness.
I never wanted to take my eyes from it. I never wanted anything anymore
again ever. I wanted only to look at it. I wanted only to look at Him,
and I saw Him, and I saw back, back over the centuries, back to His Face
in the light of the earthen lamp burning in the house in Podil, His Face
gazing at me from the panel between my quivering fingers amid the
candles of the Scriptorium of the Monastery of the Caves, His Face as I
had never seen it on those glorious walls of Venice or Florence where I
had for so long and so desperately sought it.

  His Face, His manly Face infused with the Divine, my tragic Lord
gazing at me from my Mother's arms in the frozen sludge of the long-ago

street of Podil, my loving Lord in bloody Majesty.

I didn't care what Dora said.

  I didn't care that she screamed His Holy Name. I didn't care. I knew.

   And as she declared her faith, as she snatched the Veil from Lestat's
very hands and ran with it out of this apartment, I followed, moving
after her and after the Veil-though in the sanctuary of my heart I never
moved.

I never stirred.

   A great stillness had overtaken my mind, and my limbs no longer
mattered.

   It did not matter that Lestat fought with her, and cautioned her that
she must not believe this thing, and that the three of us stood on the
steps of the Cathedral and that the snow fell like some splendid
blessing from the invisible and fathomless Heavens.

   It did not matter that the sun was soon to rise, a fiery silver ball
beyond the canopy of melting clouds.

I could die now.

   I had seen Him, and all the rest-the words of Memnoch and his
fanciful God, the pleas of Lestat that we come away, that we hide
ourselves before the morning devoured us all-it did not matter.

I could die now.

"Not made by human hands," I whispered.

   A crowd gathered around us at the doors. The warm air came out of the
church in a deep delicious gust. It didn't matter.

"The Veil, the Veil," they cried. They saw! They saw His Face.

Lestat's desperate imploring cries were dying away.

   The morning came down in its thunderous white-hot light, rolling over
roofs and curdling the night in a thousand glassy walls and slowly
unleashing its monstrous glory.

   "Bear witness," I said. I held up my open arms to the blinding light,
this molten silvery death. "This sinner dies for Him! This sinner goes
to Him."

   Cast me into Hell, Oh Lord, if that is Your will. You have given me
Heaven. You have shown me Your Face.

And Your Face was human.

I SHOT UPWARDS. The pain I felt was total, scalding away all will or
power to choose momentum. An explosion inside me sent me skyward, right
into the pearly snowy light which had come in a sudden flood, as it
always does, from a threatening eye one moment, sending its endless rays
over the cityscape, to a tidal wave of weightless molten illumination,
rolling over all things great and small.

 Higher and higher I went, spinning as if the force of the interior
explosion would not stop its intensity, and in my horror I saw that my
clothes had been burnt away, and a smoke veered off my limbs into the
whirling wind.

 I caught one full glimpse of my limbs, my naked outstretched arms and
splayed legs, silhouetted against the obliterating light. My flesh was
burnt black already, shiny, sealed to the sinews of my body, collapsed
to the intricate tangle of muscles which encased my bones.

 The pain reached the zenith of what I could bear, but how can I
explain that it didn't matter to me; I was on the way to my own death,
and this seemingly endless torture was nothing, nothing. I could endure
all things, even the burning in the eyes, the knowledge that they would
soon melt or explode in this furnace of sunlight, and that all that I
was would pass out of flesh.

 Abruptly the scene changed. The roar of the wind was gone, my eyes
were quiet and focused, and all around there arose a great familiar
chorus of hymns. I stood at an altar, and as I looked up I beheld a
church before me thronged with people, its painted columns rising like
so many ornate tree trunks out of the wilderness of singing mouths and
wondering eyes. Everywhere, to right and to left, I saw this immense and
endless congregation. The church had no walls to bind it, and even the
rising domes, decorated in the purest and most glittering gold with the
hammered saints and angels, gave way to the great ever thinning and
never ending blue sky.

   Incense filled my nostrils. Around me, the tiny golden bells rang in
unison, and with one riff of delicate melody tumbling fast upon another.
The smoke burnt my eyes but so sweetly, as the fragrance of the incense
filled my nostrils and made my eyes water, and my vision become one with
all I tasted and touched and heard.

   I threw out my arms, and I saw long golden-trimmed white sleeves
covering them, falling back from wrists which were covered with the soft
fleecy down of a man's natural hair. These were my hands, yes, but my
hands years past the mortal point where life had been fixed in me. They
were the hands of a man.

   Out of my mouth there came a song, echoing loudly and singly over the
congregation, and then their voices rose in answer, and once again I
intoned my conviction, the conviction that had overcome me to the marrow
of my bones:

   "Christ is come. The Incarnation is begun in all things and in all
men and women, and will go on forever!" It seemed a song of such
perfection that the tears flowed from me, and as I bowed my head and
clasped my hands I looked down to see the bread and the wine in front of
me, the rounded loaf waiting to be blessed and broken and the wine in
the golden chalice there to be transformed.

   "This is the Body of Christ, and this is Blood shed for us now and
before and forever, and in every moment of which we are alive!" I sang
out. I laid my hands on the loaf and lifted it, and a great stream of
light poured forth out of it, and the congregation gave forth their
sweetest loudest hymn of praise.

   In my hands I held the chalice. I held it high as the bells pealed

from the towers, towers and towers that crowded near the towers of this
grand church, stretching for miles in all directions, the whole world
having becoming this great and glorious wilderness of churches, and here
beside me the little golden bells chimed.

   Once again came the gusts of incense. Setting down the chalice I
looked at the sea of faces stretching before me. I turned my head from
left to right, and then I looked Heavenward at the disappearing mosaics
which became one with the rising, roiling white clouds.

I saw gold domes beneath Heaven.

I saw the endless rooftops of Podil.

I knew it was Vladimir's City in all its glory, and that I stood in the
great sanctuary of Santa Sofia, all screens having been taken away that
would have divided me from the people, and all those other churches
which had been but ruins in my long-ago dim childhood were now restored
to magnificence, and the golden domes of Kiev drank the light of the sun
and gave it back with the power of a million planets basking eternal in
the fire of a million stars.

  "My Lord, my God!" I cried out. I looked down at the embroidered
splendor of my vestments, the green satin and its threads of pure
metallic gold.

  On either side of me stood my brothers in Christ, bearded, eyes
glowing as they assisted me, as they sang the hymns which I sang, as our
voices mingled, pressing on from anthem to anthem in notes that I could
almost see rising before me to the airy firmament above.

  "Give it to them! Give it to them because they are hungry," I cried. I
broke the loaf of bread in my hands. I broke it into halves, and then
into quarters, and tore these hastily into small morsels which crowded
the shining golden plate.

  En masse, the congregation mounted the steps, tender pink little hands
reaching for the morsels, which I gave out as fast as I could, morsel
after morsel, not a crumb spilling, the bread divided among dozens, and
then scores, and then hundreds, as they pressed forward, the newcomers
barely allowing those who had been fed to make their way back.

  On and on they came. But the hymns did not cease. Voices, muted at the
altar, silenced as the bread was devoured, soon burst forth loud and
jubilant again.

The bread was eternal.

  I tore its soft thick crust again and again and put it into the
outstretched palms, the gracefully cupped fingers.

"Take it, take the Body of Christ!" I said.

  Dark wavering shadowy forms rose around me, rising up out of the
gleaming gold and silver floor. They were trunks of trees, and their
limbs arched upward and then down towards me, and leaves and berries
fell from these branches, down onto the altar, onto the golden plate and
onto the sacred bread now in a great mass of fragments.

  "Gather them up!" I cried. I picked up the soft green leaves and the

fragrant acorns and I gave these too to the eager hands. I looked down
and I saw grain pouring through my fingers, grain which I offered to
opened lips, grain which I poured into open mouths.

   The air was thick with the soundless falling of the green leaves, so
much so that the soft brilliant shade of green tinted all around it,
broken suddenly everywhere by the flight of tiny birds. A million
sparrows flushed Heavenward. A million finches soared, the brilliant sun
flitting on their tiny outstretched wings.

   "Forever, ongoing, always in every cell and every atom," I prayed.
"The Incarnation," I said. "And the Lord has dwelt among us." My words
rang out again as if a roof covered us, a roof that could echo my song,
though our roof was now the roofless sky alone.

   The crowd pressed in. They surrounded the altar. My brothers had
slipped away, thousands of hands tugging gently at their vestments,
pulling them back from the table of God. All around me there pressed
these hungry ones who took the bread as I gave it, who took the grain,
who took the acorns by the handful, who took even the tender green
leaves.

   There stood my Mother beside me, my beautiful and sad-faced Mother, a
fine embroidered headdress gracing her thick gray hair, with her
wrinkled little eyes fastened on me, and in her trembling hands, her
dried and fearful fingers, she held the most splendid of offerings, the
painted eggs! Red and blue, and yellow and golden, and decorated with
bands of diamonds and chains of the flowers of the field, the eggs
shimmered in their lacquered splendor as if they were giant polished
jewels.

   And there in the very center of her offering, this offering which she
held up with shivering wrinkled arms, there lay the very egg which she
had once so long ago entrusted to me, the light, raw egg so gorgeously
decorated in brilliant ruby red with the star of gold in the very center
of the framed oval, this precious egg which had surely been her finest
creation, the finest achievement of her hours with the burning wax and
boiling dye.

   It wasn't lost. It had never been lost. It was there. But something
was happening. I could hear it. Even under the great swelling song of
the multitudes I could hear it, the tiny sound inside the egg, the tiny
fluttering sound, the tiny cry.

   "Mother," I said. I took it. I held it in both hands and brought my
thumbs down against the brittle shell.

"No, my son!" she cried. She wailed. "No, no, my son, no!"

   But it was too late. The lacquered shell was smashed beneath my
thumbs and out of its fragments had risen a bird, a beautiful and full-
grown bird, a bird of snow-white wings and tiny yellow beak and
brilliant black eyes like bits of jet.

A long fall sigh came out of me.

  Out of the egg, it rose, unfolding its perfectly feathered white
wings, its tiny beak open in a sudden shrill cry. Up it flew, this bird,
freed of the broken red shell, up and up, over the heads of the
congregation, and up through the soft swirling rain of the green leaves

and fluttering sparrows, up through the glorious clamour of the pealing
bells, it flew.

  The bells of the towers rang out so loud that they shook the swirling
leaves in the atmosphere, so loud that the soaring columns quivered,
that the crowd rocked and sang all the more heartily as if to be in
perfect unison with the great resounding golden-throated peals.

The bird was gone. The bird was free.

  "Christ is born," I whispered. "Christ is risen. Christ is in Heaven
and on Earth. Christ is with us."

  But no one could hear my voice, my private voice, and what did it
matter, for all the world sung the same song?

  A hand clutched me. Rudely, meanly, it tore at my white sleeve. I
turned. I drew in my breath to scream and froze in terror.

  A man, come out of nowhere, stood beside me, so close that our faces
almost touched. He glared down at me. I knew his red hair and beard, his
fierce and impious blue eyes. I knew he was my Father, but he was not my
Father but some horrific and powerful presence infused into my Father's
visage, and there, planted beside me, a colossus beside me, glaring down
at me, mocking me by his power and his height.

  He reached out and slammed the back of his hand against the golden
chalice. It wobbled and fell, the consecrated wine staining the morsels
of bread, staining the altar cloth of woven gold.

  "But you can't!" I cried. "Look what you've done!" Could nobody hear
me over the singing? Could no one hear me above the peal of the bells?

I was alone.

  I stood in a modern room. I stood beneath a white plaster ceiling. I
stood in a domestic room.

  I was myself, a smallish man figure with my old tousled shoulder-
length curls and the purple-red coat of velvet and the ruff of layered
white lace. I leant against the wall. Stunned and still, I leant there,
knowing only that every particle of this place, every particle of me,
was as solid and real as it had been a split second before.

  The carpet beneath my feet was as real as the leaves which had fallen
like snowflakes throughout the immense Cathedral of Santa Sofia, and my
hands, my hairless boyish hands, were as real as the hands of the priest
I'd been a moment before, who had broken the bread.

   A terrible sob rose in my throat, a terrible cry that I myself could
not bear to hear. My breath would stop if I didn't release it, and this
body, damned or sacred, mortal or immortal, pure or corrupt, would
surely burst.

   But a music comforted me. A music slowly articulated itself, clean
and fine, and wholly unlike the great seamless and magnificent chorus
which I had only just heard.

   Out of the silence there leapt these perfectly formed and discrete
notes, this multitude of cascading sounds that seemed to speak with

crispness and directness, as if in beautiful defiance of the inundation
of sound which I had so loved.

   Oh, to think that ten fingers alone could draw these sounds from a
wooden instrument in which the hammers, with a dogged rigid motion,
would strike upon a bronze harp of tautly stretched strings.

   I knew it, I knew this song, I knew the piano Sonata, and had loved
it in passing, and now its fury paralyzed me. Appassionata. Up and down
the notes rang in gorgeous throbbing arpeggios, thundering downward to
rumble in a staccato drumming, only to rise and race again. On and on
went the sprightly melody, eloquent, celebratory and utterly human,
demanding to be felt as well as heard, demanding to be followed in every
intricate twist and turn.

Appassionata.

   In the furious torrent of notes, I heard the resounding echo of the
wood of the piano; I heard the vibration of its giant taut bronze harp.
I heard the sizzling throb of its multitudinous strings. Oh, yes, on,
and on, and on, and on, and on, louder, harder, ever pure and ever
perfect, ringing out and wrung back as if a note could be a whip. How
can human hands make this enchantment, how can they pound out of these
ivory keys this deluge, this thrashing, thundering beauty?

   It stopped. So great was my agony I could only shut my eyes and moan,
moan for the loss of those racing crystalline notes, moan for the loss
of this pristine sharpness, this wordless sound that had nevertheless
spoken to me, begged me to bear witness, begged me to share and
understand another's intense and utterly demanding furor.

  A scream jolted me. I opened my eyes. The room around me was large and
jammed with rich and random contents, framed paintings to the ceiling,
flowered carpets running rampant beneath the curly legs of modern chairs
and tables, and there the piano, the great piano out of which had come
this sound, shining in the very middle of this mayhem, with its long
strip of grinning white keys, such a triumph of the heart, the soul, the
mind.

  Before me on the floor a boy knelt praying, an Arab boy of glossy
close-cropped curls and a small perfectly fitted djellaba, that is, a
cotton desert robe. His eyes were shut, his round little face pointed
upwards, though he didn't see me, his black eyebrows knit and his lips
moving frantically, the words tumbling in Arabic:

  "Oh, come some demon, some angel and stop him, oh, come something out
of the darkness I care not what, something of power and vengeance, I
care not what, come, come out of the light and out of the will of the
gods who won't stand to see the oppression of the wicked. Stop him
before he kills my Sybelle. Stop him, this is Benjamin, son of Abdulla,
who calls upon you, take my soul in forfeit, take my life, but come,
come, that which is stronger than me and save my Sybelle."

   "Silence!" I shouted. I was out of breath. My face was wet. My lips
were shuddering uncontrollably. "What do you want, tell me?"

   He looked at me. He saw me. His round little Byzantine face might
have come wonder-struck from the church wall, but he was here and real
and he saw me and I was what he wanted to see.

  "Look, you angel!" he shouted, his youthful voice sharpened with its
Arab accent. "Can't you see with your big beautiful eyes!"

I saw.

  The whole reality of it came down at once. She, the young woman,
Sybelle, was fighting to cling to the piano, not to be snatched off the
bench, her hands out struggling to reach the keys, her mouth shut, and a
terrible groan pushing up against her sealed lips, her yellow hair
flying about her shoulders. And the man who shook her, who pulled at
her, who screamed at her, suddenly dealing her one fine blow with his
fist that sent her over backwards, falling off the piano bench so that a
scream escaped from her and she fell over herself, an ungainly tangle of
limbs on the carpeted floor.

"Appassionata, Appasstonata," he growled at her, a bear of a creature in
his megalomaniacal temper. "I won't listen to it, I will not, I will
not, you will not do this to me, to my life. It's my life!" He roared
like a bull. "I won't let you go on!"

  The boy leapt up and grabbed me. He clutched at my wrists and when I
shook him off, staring at him in bafflement, he clutched my velvet
cuffs.

  "Stop him, angel. Stop him, devil! He cannot beat her anymore. He
will kill her. Stop him, devil, stop him, she is good!"

  She crawled to her knees, her hair a shredded veil concealing her
face. A great smear of dried blood covered the side of her narrow waist,
a stain sunk deep into the flowered fabric.

  Incensed, I watched as the man withdrew. Tall, his head shaven, his
eyes bulging, he put his hands to his ears, and he cursed her: "Mad
stupid bitch, mad mad selfish bitch. Do I have no life? Do I have no
justice? Do I have no dreams?"

  But she had flung her hands on the keys again. She was racing right
into the Second Movement of the Appassionata as though she had never
been interrupted. Her hands beat on the keys. One furious volley of
notes after another rose, as if written for no other purpose than to
answer him, to defy him, as if to cry out, I will not stop, I will not
stop-.

  I saw what was to happen. He turned around and glared at her, but it
was only to let the rage rise to its fall power, his eyes wide, his
mouth twisted in anguish. A lethal smile formed on his lips.

  Back and forth she rocked on the piano bench, her hair flying, her
face lifted, her mind having no need to see the keys she struck, to plot
the course of her hands that raced from right to left, that never lost
control of the torrent.

  Out of her sealed lips there came a low humming, a grinding humming
right in tune with the melodies that gushed from the keys. She arched
her back and lowered her head, her hair falling down on the backs of her
racing hands. On she went, on into thunder, on into certainty, on into
refusal, on into defiance, on into affirmation, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

The man made his move for her.

   The frantic boy, leaving me in desperation, darted to come between
them, and the man slammed him aside with such fury that the boy was
knocked flat and sprawling on the floor.

But before the man's hands could reach her shoulders, before he could so
much as touch her-and she went now into the First Movement again, ah, ah
aaaah! the Appassionata all over again in all its power-I had hold of
him, and spun him round to face me.

"Kill her, will you?" I whispered. "Well, we shall see."

  "Yes!" he cried out, face sweating, protuberant eyes glistening. "Kill
her! She's vexed me to utter madness, that's what she's done, and she'll
die!" Too incensed even to question my presence, he tried to push me
aside, his sights fixed already once again on her. "Damn you, Sybelle,
stop that music, stop it!"

  Her melody and chords were in the mode of thunder again. Flinging her
hair from side to side, she charged onward.

  I forced him backwards, my left hand catching his shoulder, my right
pushing his chin up out of my way as I nuzzled in against his throat,
tore it open and let the blood come into my mouth. It was scalding and
rich and full of his hatred, full of bitterness, fall of his blasted
dreams and vengeful fancies.

  Oh, the heat of it. I took it in in deep draughts, seeing it all, how
he had loved her, nourished her, she his talented sister, he the clever,
vicious-tongued and tone-deaf brother, guiding her towards the pinnacle
of his precious and refined universe, until a common tragedy had broken
her ascent and left her mad, turning from him, from memory, from
ambition, locked forever in mourning for the victims of that tragedy,
their loving and applauding parents, struck down on a winding road
through a dark and distant valley in the very nights before her greatest
triumph, her debut as full-fledged genius of the piano for all the wide
world.

  I saw their car rattling and plummeting through the darkness. I heard
the brother in the back seat chattering, his sister beside him fast
asleep. I saw the car strike the other car. I saw the stars above in
cruel and silent witness. I saw the bruised and lifeless bodies. I saw
her stunned face as she stood unharmed, her clothes torn, by the side of
the road. I heard him cry out in horror. I heard him curse in disbelief.
I saw the broken glass. Broken glass everywhere glittering beautifully
in the light of headlamps. I saw her eyes, her pale blue eyes. I saw her
heart close.

My victim was dead. He slipped out of my grasp.

He was as lifeless as his parents had been in that hot desert place.

  He was dead and crumpled and could never hurt her again, could never
pull her long yellow hair, or beat her, or stop her as she played.

   The room was sweetly still except for her playing. She had come again
to the Third Movement, and she swayed gently with its quieter beginning,
its polite and measured steps.

   The boy danced for joy. In his fine little djellaba, his feet bare,
his round head covered with thick black curls, he was the Arab angel

leaping into the air, dancing, crying out, "He's dead, he's dead, he's
dead." He clapped his hands, he rubbed them together, he clapped them
again, he flung them up. "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he'll never
hurt her, he'll never vex her, he's double-vexed forever, he's dead,
he's dead."

   But she didn't hear him. On she played, making her way through these
slumberish low notes, humming softly and then parting her lips to make a
monosyllabic song.

   I was fall with his blood. I felt it washing through me. I loved it,
I loved every drop of it. I regained my breath from the effort of having
so quickly consumed it, and then I walked slowly, quietly as I could, as
if she could hear when she could not, and stood at the end of the piano
looking at her.

   What a small tender face she had, so girlish with deep-set, huge and
pale blue eyes. But look at the bruises on her face. Look at the blood-
red scratches on her cheek. Look at the field of tiny red bleeding
pinpoint wounds on her temple where a shock of her hair had been ripped
right out by the roots.

   She didn't care. The greenish-black bruises on her bare arms meant
nothing to her. She played on.

   How delicate her neck was, even with the blackish swelling imprint of
his fingers, and how graceful her small bony shoulders, barely holding
up the sleeves of her thin flowered cotton dress. Her strong ashen
eyebrows came together in the sweetest frown of concentration as she
gazed before her at nothing but her lilting, peaking music, her long
clean fingers alone envincing her titanic and indomitable strength.

   She let her gaze drift to me, and she smiled as if she had seen
something that momentarily pleased her; she bowed her head once, twice,
three times in rapid time with the music, but as though she were nodding
to me.

   "Sybelle," I whispered. I put my fingers to my lips and kissed them
and blew the kiss to her, as her fingers marched on.

   But then her vision misted, and she was off again, the Movement
demanding speed from her, her head jerked back with the effort of her
assault on the keys. And the Sonata sprang once again into its most
triumphant life.

   Something more powerful than the light of the sun engulfed me. It was
a power so total that it utterly surrounded me and sucked me up out of
the room, out of the world, out of the sound of her playing, out of my
senses.

  "Noooo, don't take me now!" I screamed. But an immense and empty
blackness swallowed the sound.

  I was flying, weightless, with my burnt black limbs outstretched, and
in a Hell of excrutiating pain. This cannot be my body, I sobbed, seeing
the black flesh sealed to my muscles like leather, seeing every tendon
of my arms, my fingernails bent and blackened like bits of burnt horn.
No, not my body, I cried, Oh, Mother help me, help me! Benjamin, help
me...

  I began to fall. Oh, there was no one who could help me now but one
Being.

  "God, give me the courage," I cried. "God if it's begun, give me the
courage, God, I can't give up my reason, God, let me know where I am,
God, let me understand what is happening, God, where is the church, God,
where is the bread and the wine, God, where is she, God help me, help
me."

  Down and down I fell, past spires of glass, past grids of blind
windows. Past rooftops and pointed towers. I fell through the harsh and
wild wailing of the wind. I fell through the stinging torrent of snow. I
fell and I fell. I fell past the window where the unmistakable figure of
Benjamin stood with his tiny hand on the drape, his black eyes fixed on
me for one split second, his mouth open, tiny Arab angel. I fell down
and down, the skin shriveling and tightening on my legs so that I
couldn't bend them, tightening on my face so that I couldn't open my
mouth, and with an agonizing explosion of raw pain, I struck hard-packed
snow.

My eyes were open and fire flooded them.

The sun had fully risen.

  "I shall die now. I shall die!" I whispered. "And in this last moment
of burning paralysis, when all the world is gone and there is nothing
left, I hear her music! I hear her playing the final notes of the Appas-
sionatal I hear her. I hear her tumultuous song."

I DIDN'T DIE. Not by any means. I awoke to hear her playing, but she and
her piano were very far away. In the first few hours after twilight,
when the pain was at its worst, I used the sound of her music, used the
search for it, to keep myself from screaming in madness because nothing
could make the pain stop.

   Deeply encased in snow, I couldn't move and couldn't see, save what
my mind could see if I chose to use it, and wishing to die, I used
nothing. I only listened to her playing the Appassionata, and sometimes
I sang along with her in my dreams.

   All the first night and the second, I listened to her, that is, when
she was disposed to play. She would stop for hours, to sleep perhaps. I
couldn't know. Then she would begin again and I'd begin with her.

   I followed her Three Movements until I knew them, as she must know
them, by heart. I knew the variations she worked into her music; I knew
how no two musical phrases she played were ever the same.

   I listened to Benjamin calling for me, I heard his crisp little
voice, speaking very rapidly and very much in New York style, saying,
"Angel, you've not done with us, what are we to do with him? Angel, come
back. Angel, I'll give you cigarettes. Angel, I have plenty of good
cigarettes. Come back. Angel, that's just a joke. I know you can get;
your own cigarettes. But this is really vexing, you leaving this dead
body, Angel. Come back."

   There were hours when I heard nothing of either of them. My mind
hadn't the strength to reach out telepathically to them, just to see
them, one through the eyes of the other. No. That kind of strength was
gone.

I lay in mute stillness, burnt as much by all that I'd seen and felt as
by any sunlight, hurt and empty inside, and dead of mind and heart, save
for my love for them. It was easy enough, wasn't it, in blackest misery
to love two pretty strangers, a mad girl and a mischievous streetwise
boy who cared for her? There was no history to it, my killing her
brother. Bravo, and finished. There was five hundred years of history to
the pain of everything else.

  There were hours when only the city talked to me, the great
clattering, rolling, rustling city of New York, with its traffic forever
clanking, even in the thickest snow, with its layers upon layers of
voices and lives rising up to the plateau on which I lay, and then
beyond it, vastly beyond it in towers such as the world before this time
has never beheld.

  I knew things but I didn't know what to make of them. I knew that the
snow covering me was growing ever deeper, and ever harder, and I didn't
understand how such a thing as ice could keep away from me the rays of
the sun.

   Surely, I must die, I thought. If not this coming day, then the next.
I thought of Lestat holding up the Veil. I thought of His Face. But the
zeal had left me. All hope had left me.

I will die, I thought. Morning by morning, I will die.

But I didn't.

  In the city far below, I heard others of my kind. I didn't really try
to hear them, and so it was not their thoughts that came to me, but now
and then their words. Lestat and David were there, Lestat and David
thought that I was dead. Lestat and David mourned for me. But far worse
horrors plagued Lestat because Dora and the world had taken the Veil,
and the city was now crowded with believers. The Cathedral could scarce
control the multitudes.

  Other immortals came, the young, the feeble and sometimes, most
horribly, the very ancient, wanting to view this miracle, slipping into
the nighttime Church among the mortal worshipers and looking with crazed
eyes on the veil.

   Sometimes they spoke of poor Armand or brave Armand or St. Armand,
who in his devotion to the Crucified Christ had immolated himself at
this very Church door!

  Sometimes they did the same. And just before the sun was to rise
again, I'd have to hear them, hear their last desperate prayers as they
waited for the lethal light. Did they fare better than I? Did they find
their refuge in the arms of God? Or were they screaming in agony, agony
such as I felt, unendurably burnt and unable to break away from it, or
were they lost as I was, remnants in alleyways or on distant roofs? No,
they came and they went, whatever their fate.

   How pale it all was, how far away. I felt so sad for Lestat that he
had bothered to weep for me, but I was to die here. I was to die sooner
or later. Whatever I had seen in that moment when I'd risen into the sun
didn't matter. I was to die. That was all there was.

   Piercing the snowy night, electronic voices spoke of the miracle,

that Christ's Face upon a Veil of linen had cured the sick and left its
imprint on other cloths pressed to it. Then came an argument of
clergymen and skeptics, a perfect din.

   I followed the sense of nothing. I suffered. I burned. I couldn't
open my eyes, and when I tried, my eyelashes scratched my eyes and the
agony was too much to bear. In darkness, I waited for her.

   Sooner or later, without fail, there came her magnificent music, with
all its new and wondrous variations, and nothing mattered to me then,
not the mystery of where I was, or what I might have seen, or what it
was that Lestat and David meant to do.

   It was not until the seventh night perhaps that my senses were fully
restored to me, and the fall horror of my state was understood.

   Lestat was gone. So was David. The Church had been shut up. From the
murmurings of mortals I soon realized that the Veil had been taken away.

   I could hear the minds of all the city, a din that was unsupportable.
I shut myself off from it, fearing the vagrant immortal who'd home in on
me if he caught but one spark from my telepathic mind. I couldn't endure
the thought of some attempted rescue by immortal strangers. I couldn't
endure the thought of their faces, their questions, their possible
concern or merciless indifference. I hid myself from them, coiled up in
my cracked and tightened flesh. Yet I heard them, as I heard the mortal
voices around them, speaking of miracles and redemption and the love of
Christ.

   Besides, I had enough to think about to figure my present predicament
and how it had come to be.

   I was lying on a roof. That is where my fall had left me, but not
under the open sky, as I might have hoped or supposed. On the contrary,
my body had tumbled down a slope of metal sheeting, to lodge beneath a
torn and rusted overhang, where it had been repeatedly buried in the
wind-stirred snow.

How had I gotten here? I could only suppose.

   By my own will, and with the first explosion of my blood in the light
of the morning sun, I had been driven upwards, as high perhaps as I
could go. For centuries I'd known how to climb to airy heights and how
to move there, but I'd never pushed it to a conceivable limit, but with
my zeal for death, I had strained with all my available strength to move
Heavenward. My fall had been from the greatest height.

   The building beneath me was empty, abandoned, dangerous, without heat
or light.

   Not a sound issued from its hollow metal stairwells or its battered,
crumbling rooms. Indeed the wind played the structure now and then as if
it were a great pipe organ, and when Sybelle was not at her piano it was
to this music I listened, shutting out the rich cacophony of the city
above, beyond and below.

   Now and then mortals crept inside the lower floors of the building. I
felt a sudden wrenching hope. Would one be fool enough to wander to this
rooftop where I might lay hands on him and drink the blood I needed
merely to crawl free of the overhang which protected me and thereby give

myself unsheltered to the sun? As I lay now, the sun could scarce reach
me. Only a dull white light scorched me through the snowy shroud in
which I was wound, and with the lengthening of each night this newly
inflicted pain would mellow into the rest.

But nobody ever came up here.

   Death would be slow, very slow. It might have to wait until the warm
weather came and the snow melted.

   And so each morning, as I longed for death, I came to accept that I
would wake, more burnt perhaps then ever, but all the more concealed by
the winter blizzard, as I had been concealed all along, from the
hundreds of lighted windows that looked down upon this roof from above.

   When it was deadly quiet, when Sybelle slept and Benji had ceased
praying to me and talking to me at the window, the worst happened. I
thought, in a cold listless broken way, of those strange things that had
befallen me when I'd been tumbling through space, because I could think
of nothing else.

   How utterly real it had been, the altar of Santa Sofia and the bread
I'd broken in my hands. I'd known things, so many things, things which I
couldn't recall any longer or put into words, things which I could not
articulate here in this narrative even as I sought to relive the tale.

Real. Tangible. I had felt the altar cloth and seen the wine spill, and
before that the bird rise out of the egg. I could hear the sound of the
cracking of the shell. I could hear my Mother's voice. And all the rest.

   But my mind didn't want these things anymore. It didn't want them.
The zeal had proved fragile. It was gone, gone like the nights with my
Master in Venice, gone like the years of wandering with Louis, gone like
the festive months on The Night Island, gone like those long shameful
centuries with the Children of Darkness when I had been a fool, such a
pure fool.

   I could think of the Veil, I could think of Heaven, I could think of
my standing at the Altar and working the miracle with the Body of Christ
in my hands. Yes, I could think of all of it. But the totality had been
too terrible, and I was not dead, and there was no Memnoch pleading with
me to become his helper, and no Christ with arms outstretched against
the backdrop of God's unending light.

   It was sweeter by far to think of Sybelle, to remember that her room
of rich red and blue Turkey carpets and darkly varnished overblown
paintings had been every bit as real as Santa Sofia of Kiev, to think of
her oval white face when she'd turned to glance at me, to think of the
sudden brightness of her moist, quick eyes.

   One evening, as my eyes actually opened, as the lids truly drew back
over the orbs of my eyes so that I could see through the white cake of
ice above me, I realized I was healing.

   I tried to flex my arms. I could raise them ever so slightly, and the
encasing ice shattered; what an extraordinary electric sound.

   The sun simply couldn't reach me here, or not enough to work against
the preternatural fury of the powerful blood my body contained. Ah, God,
to think of it, five hundred years of growing ever stronger and

stronger, and born from the blood of Marius in the first place, a
monster from the start who never knew his own strength.

   It seemed for a moment that my rage and despair could grow no
greater. It seemed the fiery pain in all my body could be no worse.

   Then Sybelle started to play. She began to play the Appassionata, and
nothing else mattered.

   It wouldn't matter again until her music had stopped. The night was
warmer than usual; the snow had melted slightly. There seemed no
immortals anywhere near. I knew that the Veil had been spirited away to
the Vatican in Rome. No cause now, was there, for immortals to come
here?

Poor Dora. The nightly news said that her prize had been taken from her.
Rome must examine this Veil. Her tales of strange blond-haired angels
were the stuff of tabloids, and she herself was no longer here.

 In a moment of daring, I fastened my heart upon Sybelle's music, and
with an aching straining head, sent out my telepathic vision as if it
were a fleshly part of me, a tongue requiring stamina, to see through
Benjamin's eyes, the room where they were both lodged.

 In a lovely golden haze, I saw it, saw the walls covered with the
heavy framed paintings, saw my beautiful one herself, in a fleecy white
gown with worn slippers, her fingers hard at work. How grand the sweep
of the music. And Benjamin, the little worrier, frowning, puffing on a
black cigarette, with hands folded behind his back, pacing in his bare
feet and shaking his head as he mumbled to himself.

"Angel, I have told you to come back!"

 I smiled. The creases in my cheeks hurt as if someone had made them
with the point of a sharp knife. I shut my telepathic eye. I let myself
slumber in the rushing crescendos of the piano. Besides, Benjamin had
sensed something; his mind, unwarped by Western sophistication, had
picked up some glimmer of my prying. Enough.

 Then another vision came to me, very sharp, very special and unusual,
something that would not be ignored. I turned my head again and made the
ice crackle. I held my eyes open. I could see a blur of lighted towers
high above.

 Some immortal down there in the city was thinking of me, someone far
away, many blocks from the closed-up Cathedral. In fact, I sensed in an
instant the distant presence of two powerful vampires, vampires I knew,
and vampires who knew of my death and lamented it bitterly as they went
about some important task.

 Now there was a risk to this. Try to see them and they might catch
much more than the glimmer of me which Benjamin had been so quick to
catch. But the city was empty of blood drinkers save for them, for all I
could figure, and I had to know what it was that caused them to move
with such deliberation and such stealth.

 An hour passed perhaps. Sybelle was silent. They, the powerful
vampires, were still at their work. I decided to chance it.

 I drew in close with my disincarnate vision, and quickly realized that

I could see one through the eyes of the other, but that it did not work
for me the other way around.

The reason was plain. I sharpened my sight. I was looking through the
eyes of Santino, my old Roman Coven Master, Santino, and the other whom
I saw was Marius, my Maker, whose mind was locked to me for all time.

   It was a vast official building in which they made their careful
progress, both dressed as gentlemen of the moment in trim dark blue
clothes, even to starched white collars and thin silk ties. Both had
trimmed their hair in deference to corporate fashion. But this was no
corporation in which they prowled, clearly putting into harmless thrall
any mortal who tried to disturb them. It was a medical building. And I
soon guessed what their errand must be.

   It was the forensics laboratory of the city through which they
wandered. And though they had taken their time in gathering up documents
for their heavy briefcases, they were quick now with agitation as they
pulled from refrigerated compartments the remains of those vampires who,
following my example, had turned themselves over to the mercy of the
sun.

   Of course, they were confiscating what the world now had on us. They
were scooping up the remains. Into simple glistening plastic sacks they
put the residue, out of coffinlike drawers and off shining steel trays.
Whole bones, ashes, teeth, ah, yes, even teeth, they swept into their
little sacks. And now from a series of filing cabinets they withdrew the
plastic-wrapped samples of clothing that remained.

   My heart quickened. I stirred in the ice and the ice spoke back to me
again. Oh, heart be still. Let me see. It was my lace, my very lace, the
thick Venetian Rose Point, burnt at the edges, and with it a few
shredded rags of purple-red velvet! Yes, my pitiful clothes which they
took from the labeled compartment of the filing drawer and slipped into
their bags.

   Marius stopped. I turned my head and my mind elsewhere. Do not see
me. See me and come here, and I swear to God I will ... I will what? I
have no strength even to move. I have no strength to escape. Oh,
Sybelle, please, play for me, I have to escape this.

   But then, remembering that he was my Master, remembering that he
could trace me only through the weaker more muddled mind of his
companion, Santino, I felt my heart go quiet.

   From the bank of recent memory, I took her music, I framed it with
numbers and figures and dates, all the little detritus I had brought
with me over the centuries to her: that Beethoven had written her sweet
masterpiece, that it was Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Opus 57. Think on
that. Think on Beethoven. Think on a make-believe night in cold Vienna,
make-believe for I knew nothing really about it, think on him writing
music with a noisy scratchy quill, which he himself perhaps could not
hear. Think on him being paid in pittances. And think with a smile, yes,
a painful cutting smile that makes your face bleed, of how they brought
him piano after piano, so powerful was he, so demanding, so fiercely did
he bang away.

  And she, pretty Sybelle, what a fine daughter to him she was, her
powerful fingers striking the keys with terrifying power that would
surely have delighted him had he ever seen in the distant future, amid

all his frenzied students and worshipers, just this particular maniacal
girl.

 It was warmer tonight. The ice was melting. There was no denying it. I
pressed my lips together and again lifted my right hand. A cavity
existed now in which I could move my right fingers.

   But I couldn't forget about them, the unlikely pair, the one who'd
made me and the one who'd tried to destroy him, Marius and Santino. I
had to check back. Cautiously I sent out my weak and tentative beam of
probing thought. And in an instant, I'd fixed them.

 They stood before an incinerator in the bowels of the building and
heaved into a fiery mouth all the evidence which they had brought
together, sack after sack curling and crackling in the flames.

 How odd. Didn't they themselves want to look at these fragments under
microscopes? But then surely others of our kind had done this, and why
look at the bones and teeth of those who have been baked in Hell when
you can carve pale white tissue from your own hand, and place this on
the glass slide while your hand heals itself miraculously, as I was
healing even now?

 I lingered on the vision. I saw the hazy basement round about them. I
saw the low beams above their heads. Gathering all my power into my
projected gaze, I saw Santino's face, so troubled, soft, the very one
who had shattered the only youth I might have ever had. I saw my old
Master gazing almost wistfully at the flames. "We're finished," Marius
said in his quiet, commanding voice, speaking Italian perfectly to the
other. "I cannot think of another thing that we should do."

 "Break apart the Vatican, and steal the veil from them," answered
Santino. "What right have they to claim such a thing?"

 I could only see Marius's reaction, his sudden shock and then his
polite and poised smile. "Why?" he asked, as if he held no secrets.

"What's the Veil to us, my friend? You think it will bring him back to
his senses? Forgive me, Santino, but you are so very young."

   His senses, bring him back to his senses. This had to mean Lestat.
There was no other possible meaning. I pushed my luck. I scanned
Santino's mind for all he knew, and found myself recoiling in horror,
but holding fast to what I saw.

   Lestat, my Lestat-for he was never theirs, was he?-my Lestat was
crazed and railing as the result of his awful saga, and held prisoner by
the very oldest of our kind on the final decree that if he did not cease
to disturb the peace, which meant of course our secrecy, he would be
destroyed, as only the oldest could accomplish, and no one could plead
for him on any account.

   No, that could not happen! I writhed and twisted. The pain sent its
shocks through me, red and violet and pulsing with orange light. I
hadn't seen such colors since I'd fallen. My mind was coming back, and
coming back for what? Lestat to be destroyed! Lestat imprisoned, as I
had once been centuries ago under Rome in Santino's catacombs. Oh, God,
this is worse than the sun's fire, this is worse than seeing that
bastard brother strike the little plum-cheeked face of Sybelle and knock
her away from her piano, this is murderous rage I feel.

   But the smaller damage was done. "Come, we have to get out of here,"
said Santino. "There's something wrong, something I sense that I can't
explain. It's as if someone is right near us yet not near us; it's as if
someone as powerful as myself has heard my footfall over miles and
miles."

   Marius looked kindly, curious, unalarmed. "New York is ours
tonight," he said simply. And then with faint fear he looked into the
mouth of the furnace one last time. "Unless something of spirit, so
tenacious of life, clung still to his lace and to the velvet he wore."

   I closed my eyes. Oh, God, let me close my mind. Let me shut it up
tight.

   His voice went on, piercing the little shell of my consciousness
where I had so softened it.

   "But I have never believed such things," he said. "We're like the
Eucharist itself, in some measure, don't you think? Being Body and Blood
of a mysterious god only so long as we hold to the chosen form. What's
strands of reddish hair and scorched and tattered lace? He's gone."

   "I don't understand you," Santino confessed gently. "But if you think
I never loved him, you are very very wrong."

   "Let's go then," Marius said. "Our work's done. Every trace of every
one is now obliterated. But promise me in your old Roman Catholic soul,
you won't go seeking the Veil. A million pairs of eyes have looked on
it, Santino, and nothing's changed. The world is the world, and children
die in every quadrant under Heaven, hungry and alone."

I could risk no more.

  I veered away, searching the night like a high beam, casting about for
the mortals who might see them leave the building in which they'd done
their all-important work, but their retreat was too secret, too swift
for that.

   I felt them go. I felt the sudden absence of their breath, their
pulse, and knew the winds had taken them away.

  At last when another hour had ticked, I let my eye roam the same old
rooms where they had wandered.

  All was quiet with those poor muddled technicians and guards whom
white-faced specters from another realm had gently spellbound as they
went about their gruesome task.

   By morning, the theft and all the missing work would be discovered,
and Dora's miracle would suffer yet another dreary insult, receding ever
more swiftly out of current time.

   I was sore; I wept a dry, hoarse weeping, unable even to muster
tears.

  I think that once in the glimmering ice I saw my hand, a grotesque
claw, more like a thing flayed than burnt, and shiny black as I had
remembered it or seen it.

  Then a mystery began to prey upon me. How could I have killed the evil
brother of my poor love? How could it have been anything but an
illusion, that swift horrible justice, when I had been rising and
falling beneath the weight of the morning sun?

  And if that had not happened, if I had not sucked dry that awful
vengeful brother, then they too were a dream, my Sybelle and my little
Bedouin. Oh, please, was that the final horror?

  The night struck its worst hour. Dim clocks chimed in painted
plastered rooms. Wheels churned the crunching snow. Again, I raised my
hand. There came the inevitable crack and snap. Tumbling all around me
was the broken ice like so much shattered glass!

  I looked above on pure and sparkling stars. How lovely this, these
guardian glassy spires with all their fast and golden squares of light
cut in ranks run straight across and sharply down to score the airy
blackness of the winter night, and here now comes the tyrant wind,
whistling through crystalline canyons down across this small neglected
bed where one forgotten demon lies, gazing with the larcenous vision of
a great soul at the city's emboldened lights on clouds above. Oh, little
stars, how much I've hated you, and envied you that in the ghastly void
you can with such determination plot your dogged course.

   But I hated nothing now. My pain was as a purgative for all unworthy
things. I watched the sky cloud over, glisten, become a diamond for a
still and gorgeous moment, and then again the white soft limitless haze
took up the golden glow of city lamps and sent in answer the softest
lightest fall of snow.

   It touched my face. It touched my outstretched hand. It touched me
all over as it melted in its tiny magical flakes.

   "And now the sun will come," I whispered, as if some guardian angel
held me close, "and even here beneath this twisted little awning of tin,
it will find me through this broken canopy and take my soul to further
depths of pain."

   A voice cried out in protest. A voice begged that it not be so. My
own, I thought, of course, why not this self-deception? I am mad to
think that I can bear the burning that I've suffered and that I could
willingly endure it once again.

   But it wasn't my voice. It was Benjamin, Benjamin at his prayers.
Flinging out my disembodied eyes, I saw him. He knelt in the room as she
lay sleeping like a ripe and succulent peach amid her soft tangled
bedcovers. "Oh, angel, Dybbuk, help us. Dybbuk, you came once. So come
again. You vex me that you don't come!"

   How many hours is it till sunrise', little man? I whispered this to
his little seashell ear, as if I didn't know.

   "Dybbuk," he cried out. "It's you, you speak to me. Sybelle, wake up,
Sybelle."

  Ah, but think before you wake her. It's a horrid errand. Tm not the
resplendent being you saw who sucked your enemy dry of blood and doted
on her beauty and your joy. It's a monster you come to collect if you
mean to pay your debt to me, an insult to your innocent eyes. But be
assured, little man, that Pll be yours forever if you do me this

kindness, if you come to me, if you succor me, if you help me, because
my will is leaving me, and Tm alone, and I would he restored now and
cannot help myself, and my years mean nothing now, and Tm afraid.

He scrambled to his feet. He stood staring at the distant window, the
window through which I had seen him in a dream glimpse me with his
mortal eyes, but through which he could not possibly see me now, as I
lay on a roof far far below the fine apartment which he shared with my
angel. He squared his little shoulders, and now with black eyebrows in
their perfect serious frown he was the very image off the Byzantine
wall, a cherub smaller than myself.

   "Name it, Dybbuk, I come for you!" he declared, and made his mighty
little right hand into a fist. "Where are you, Dybbuk, what do you fear
that we cannot conquer together! Sybelle, wake up, Sybelle! Our Divine
Dybbuk has come back and he needs us!"

THEY WERE COMING for me. It was the building beside their own, a
derelict heap. Benjamin knew it. In a few faint telepathic whispers I'd
begged him to bring a hammer and a pick to break up the ice such as
remained and to have big soft blankets with which to wrap me.

   I knew I weighed nothing. Painfully twisting my arms, I broke up more
of the transparent covering. I felt with my clawlike hand that my hair
had come back, thick and red-brown as ever. I held up a lock to the
light, and then my arm could stand the scalding pain no more and I let
it drop, unable to close or move my dried and twisted fingers.

   I had to throw a spell, at least when they first came. They could not
see the thing that I was, this black leathery monster. No mortal could
bear the sight of this, no matter what words came from my lips. I had to
shield myself somehow.

   And having no mirror, how could I know how I looked or what I must do
precisely? I had to dream, dream of the old Venetian days when I had
been a beauty well known to myself from the tailor's glass, and project
that vision right into their minds even if it took all the strength I
possessed; yes, that, and I must give them some instructions.

   I lay still, gazing up into the soft warm snowfall of tiny flakes, so
unlike the terrible blizzards that had come earlier. I didn't dare to
use my wits to track their progress.

   Suddenly I heard the loud crash of breaking glass. A door slammed far
below. I heard their uneven steps rushing up the metal stairs,
clambering over the landings.

   My heart beat hard, and with each little convulsion, the pain was
pumped through me, as if my blood itself were scalding me.

   Suddenly, the steel door on the roof was flung back. I heard them
rushing towards me. In the faint dreamy light of the high towers all
around, I saw their two small figures, she the fairy woman, and he the
child of no more than twelve years perhaps, hurrying towards me.

   Sybelle! Oh, she came out on the roof without a coat, hair streaming,
the terrible pity of it, and Benjamin no better in his thin linen
djellaba. But they had a big velvet comforter to cover me, and I had to
make a vision.

   Give me the boy I was, give the finest green satin and ruff upon ruff
of fancy lace, give me stockings and braided boots, and let my hair be
clean and shining.

   Slowly I opened my eyes, looking from one to the other of their small
pale and rapt faces. Like two vagrants of the night they stood in the
drifting snow.

   "Oh, but Dybbuk, you had us so very worried," said Benjamin, in his
wildly excited voice, "and look at you, you are beautiful."

   "No, don't think it's what you see, Benjamin," I said. "Hurry with
your tools, chop at the ice, and lay the cover over me."

   It was Sybelle who took up the wooden-handled iron hammer and with
both hands slammed it down, fracturing the soft top layer of ice
immediately. Benjamin chopped at it all with the pick as if he had
become a small machine, thrusting to left and to right over and over,
sending the shards flying.

   The wind caught Sybelle's hair and whipped around into her eyes. The
snow clung to her eyelids.

   I held the image, a helpless satin-clad child, with soft pinkish
hands upturned and unable to help them.

   "Don't cry, Dybbuk," declared Benjamin, grabbing a giant thin slab of
ice with both hands. "We'll get you out, don't cry, you're ours now. We
have you."

   He threw aside the shining jagged broken sheets, and then he himself
appeared to freeze, more solid than any ice, staring at me, his mouth a
perfect O of amazement.

   "Dybbuk, you are changing colors!" he cried. He reached to touch my
illusory face.

"Don't do it, Benji," said Sybelle.

   It was the first time I'd heard her voice, and now I saw the
deliberate brave calm of her blanched face, the wind making her eyes
tear, though she herself remained staunch. She picked the ice from my
hair.

   A terrible chill came over me, quelling the heat, yes, but sending
the tears down my face. Were they blood? "Don't look at me," I said.
"Benji, Sybelle, look away. Just put the cover into my hands."

   Her tender eyes squinted as she stared, disobediently, steadily, one
hand up to close the collar of her flimsy cotton bed gown against the
wind, the other poised above me.

   "What's happened to you since you came to us?" she asked in the
kindest voice. "Who's done this to you?"

   I swallowed hard, and made the vision come again. I pushed it up from
all my pores, as if my body were one agency of breath.

   "No, don't do it anymore," said Sybelle. "It weakens you and you
suffer terribly."

   "I can heal, my sweet," I said, "I promise I can. I won't be like
this always, not even soon. Only take me off this roof. Take me out of
this cold, and take me where the sun can't get to me again. It's the sun
that did this. Only the sun. Take me, please. I can't walk. I can't
crawl. I'm a night thing. Hide me in the darkness."

"Enough, don't say any more," cried Benji.

   I opened my eyes to see a huge wave of brilliant blue settle over me
as though a summer sky had come down to be my wrapping. I felt the soft
pile of the velvet, and even this was pain, pain on the blazing skin,
but it was pain that could be borne because their ministering hands were
on me, and for this, for their touch, for their love, I would have
endured anything.

   I felt myself lifted. I knew that I was light, and yet how dreadful
it was to be so helpless, as they wrapped me.

   "Am I not light enough to carry?" I asked. My head had fallen back,
and I could see the snow again, and I fancied that when I sharpened my
gaze I could see the stars too, high above, biding their time beyond the
haze of one tiny planet.

"Don't be afraid," whispered Sybelle, her lips close to the covers.

The smell of their blood was suddenly rich and thick as honey.

   Both of them had me, hoisted in their arms, and they ran together
over the roof. I was free of the hurtful snow and ice, almost free
forever. I couldn't let myself think about their blood. I couldn't let
this ravenous burnt body have its way. That was unthinkable.

   Down through the metal stairwell we went, making turn after turn,
their feet strumming the brittle steel treads, my body shocked and
throbbing with agony. I could see the ceiling above, and then the smell
of their blood, mingling together, overpowered me, and I shut my eyes
and clenched my burnt fingers, hearing the leathery flesh crack as I did
so. I dug my nails into my palms.

  I heard Sybelle at my ear. "We have you, we're holding you tight, we
won't let you go. It isn't far. Oh, God, but look at you, look what the
sun's done to you."

   "Don't look!" said Benji crossly. "Just hurry! Do you think such a
powerful Dybbuk doesn't know what you think? Be wise, hurry up."

  They had come to the lower floor and to the broken window. I felt the
arms of Sybelle lift me beneath my head and beneath my crooked knees,
and I heard Benji's voice from beyond, no longer echoing on enclosing
walls.

  "That's it, now give him to me, I can hold him!" How furious and
excited he sounded, but she had come through the window with me, I could
tell this much, though my clever Dybbuk's mind was utterly spent, and I
knew nothing, nothing but pain and the blood and the pain again and the
blood and that they were running through a long dark alleyway from which
I could see nothing of Heaven.

   But how sweet it was. The rocking motion, the swinging of my burnt

legs and the soft touch of her soothing fingers through the blanket, all
this was wickedly wondrous. It wasn't pain anymore, it was merely
sensation. The cover fell over my face.

   On they hurried, feet crunching in the snow, Benji sliding once with
a loud cry, and Sybelle grabbing hold of him. He caught his breath.

What labor it was for them in this cold. They must get out of it.

  We entered the hotel in which they lived. The pungent warm air rushed
out to take hold of us even as the doors were pulled open and before
they fell shut, the hallway echoing with the sharp steps of Sybelle's
little shoes and the quick shuffle of Benji's sandals.

  With a sudden burst of agony through my legs and back, I felt myself
doubled, knees brought up and head tipped towards them, as we crowded
into the elevator. I bit down on the scream in my throat. Nothing could
matter less. The elevator, smelling of old motors and tried and true
oil, began its swaying jerking progress upwards.

  "We're home, Dybbuk," whispered Benji with his hot breath on my cheek,
his little hand grasping for me through the cover and pushing painfully
against my scalp. "We are safe now, we have captured you and we have
you."

   Click of locks, feet on hardwood floors, the scent of incense and
candles, of a woman's rich perfume, of rich polish for fine things, of
old canvases with cracked oil paint, of fresh and overpoweringly sweet
white lilies.

  My body was laid down gently into the bed of down, the blanket
loosened so that I sank into layers of silk and velvet, the pillows
seeming to melt beneath me.

  It was the very disheveled nest in which I'd glimpsed her with my
mind's eye, golden and sleeping in her white gown, and she had given it
over to such a horror.

   "Don't pull away the cover," I said. I knew that my little friend
wanted so to do it.

   Undaunted, he gently pulled it away. I struggled with my one
recovering hand to catch it, to bring it back, but I couldn't do any
more than flex my burnt fingers.

  They stood beside the bed, gazing down at me. The light swirled around
them, mingled with warmth, these two fragile figures, the gaunt
porcelain girl, the bruises gone from her milk-white skin, and the
little Arab boy, the Bedouin boy, for I realized now that that is what
he truly was. Fearlessly they stared at what must be unspeakable to
behold for human eyes.

"You are so shiny!" said Benji. "Does it hurt you?"

   "What can we do!" said Sybelle, so muted, as if her very voice might
injure me. Her hands covered her lips. The unruly wisps of her full
straight pale hair moved in the light, and her arms were blue from the
cold outside, and she could not help but shiver. Poor spare being, so
delicate. Her nightdress was crumpled, thin white cotton, stitched with
flowerets and trimmed with thin sturdy lace, a thing for a virgin. Her

eyes brimmed with sympathy.

   "Know my soul, my angel," I said. "I'm an evil thing. God wouldn't
take me. And the Devil wouldn't either. I went into the sun so they
could have my soul. It was a loving thing, without fear of Hellfire or
pain. But this Earth, this very Earth has been my purgatorial prison. I
don't know how I came to you before. I don't know what power it was that
gave me those brief seconds to stand here in your room and come between
you and death that was looming like a shadow over you."

   "Oh, no," she whispered fearfully, her eyes glistering in the dim
lights of the room. "He would never have killed me."

   "Oh, yes, he would!" I said, and Benjamin said the very same exact
words in concert with me.

   "He was drunk and he didn't care what he did," said Benji in instant
rage, "and his hands were big and clumsy and mean, and he didn't care
what he did, and after the last time he hit you, you lay still like the
dead in this very bed for two hours without moving! Do you think a
Dybbuk kills your own brother for nothing?"

   "I think he's telling you the truth, my pretty girl," I said. It was
so hard to talk. With each word I had to lift my chest. In crazy
desperation, suddenly I wanted a mirror. I tossed and turned on the bed,
and went rigid with pain.

The two were thrown into a panic.

 "Don't move, Dybbuk, don't!" Benji pleaded. "Sybelle, the silk, all
the silk scarves, get them out, wind them around him."

 "No!" I whispered. "Put the cover up over me. If you must see my face,
then leave it bare, but cover the rest of me. Or ..."

"Or what, Dybbuk, tell me?"

 "Lift me so that I can see myself and how I look. Stand me before a
long mirror."

 They fell silent in perplexity. Sybelle's long yellow hair lay flaxen
and flat down over her large breasts. Benji chewed at his little lip.

 All the room swam with colors. Behold the blue silk sealed to the
plaster of the walls, the heaps of richly embellished pillows all around
me, look at the golden fringe, and there beyond, the wobbling baubles of
the chandelier, filled with the glistering colors of the spectrum. I
fancied I heard the tinkling song of the glass as these baubles touched.
It seemed in my feeble deranged mind that I had never seen such simple
splendor, that I had forgotten in all my years just how shining and
exquisite the world was.

 I closed my eyes, taking with me to my heart an image of the room. I
breathed in, fighting the scent of their blood, the sweet clean
fragrance of the lilies. "Would you let me see those flowers?" I
whispered. Were my lips charred? Could they see my fang teeth, and were
they yellowed from the fire? I floated on the silks beneath me. I
floated and it seemed that I could dream now, safe, truly safe. The
lilies were close. I reached up again. I felt the petals against my
hand, and the tears came down my face. Were they pure blood? Pray not,

but I heard Benji's frank little gasp, and Sybelle making her soft sound
to hush him.

  "I was a boy of seventeen, I think, when it happened," I said. "It was
hundreds of years ago. I was too young, really. My Master, he was a
loving one; he didn't believe we were evil things. He thought we could
feed off the badlings. If I hadn't been dying, it wouldn't have been
done so soon. He wanted me to know things, to be ready."

  I opened my eyes. They were spellbound! They saw again the boy I'd
been. I had done it without intention.

"Oh, so handsome," said Benji. "So fine, Dybbuk."

   "Little man," I said with a sigh, feeling the fragile illusion about
me crumble to air, "call me by my name from now on; it's not Dybbuk. I
think you picked up that one from the Hebrews of Palestine."

He laughed. He didn't flinch as I faded back into my horrid self.

"Then tell me your name," he said.

I did.

   "Armand," said Sybelle. "Tell us, what can we do? If not silk
scarves, ointments then, aloe, yes, aloe will heal your burns."

I laughed but only in a small soft way, meant to be purely kindly.

   "My aloe is blood, child. I need an evil man, a man who deserves to
die. Now, how will I find him?"

   "What will this blood do?" asked Benji. He sat right down beside me,
leaning over me as though I were the most fascinating specimen. "You
know, Armand, you are black as pitch, you are made out of black leather,
you are like those people they fish from the bogs in Europe, all shiny
with all of you sealed inside. I could take a lesson in muscles from
looking at you."

   "Benji, stop," said Sybelle, struggling with her disapproval and her
alarm. "We have to think how to get an evil man."

   "You serious?" he said, looking up and across the bed at her. She
stood with her hands clasped as if in prayer. "Sybelle, that's nothing.
It's how to get rid of him afterwards that's so hard." He looked at me.
"Do you know what we did with her brother?"

   She put her hands over her ears and bowed her head. How many times
had I done that very thing myself when it seemed a stream of words and
images would utterly destroy me.

   "You are so glossy, Armand," said Benji. "But I can get you an evil
man, like that, it's nothing. You want an evil man? Let's make a plan."
He bent down over me, as though trying to peer into my brain. I realized
suddenly that he was looking at my fangs.

"Benji," I said, "don't come any closer. Sybelle, take him away."

"But what did I do?"

   "Nothing," she said. She dropped her voice, and said desperately,
"He's hungry."

   "Lift the covers off again, will you do that?" I asked. "Lift them
off and look at me and let me look into your eyes, and let that be my
mirror. I want to see how very bad it is."

   "Hmmm, Armand," said Benji. "I think you are crazy mad or something."

   Sybelle bent down and with her two careful hands peeled the cover
back and down, exposing the length of my body.

I went into her mind.

It was worse than I had ever imagined.

  The glossy horror of a bog corpse, as Benji had said, was perfectly
true, save for the horror of the fall head of red-brown hair and huge,
lidless bright brown eyes, and the white teeth arrayed perfectly below
and above lips that had shriveled to nothing. Down the tightly drawn
wrinkled black leather of the face were heavy red streaks of blood that
had been my tears.

   I whipped my head to the side and deep into the downy pillow. I felt
the covers come up over me.

   "This cannot go on for you, even if it could go on for me," I said.
"It's not what I would have you see another moment, for the longer you
live with this, the more like you are to live with anything. No. It
cannot continue."

   "Anything," Sybelle said. She crouched down beside me. "Is my hand
cool if I lay it on your forehead? Is it gentle if I touch your hair?"

I looked at her from one narrow-slitted eye.

   Her long thin neck was part of her shivering and emaciated
loveliness. Her breasts were voluptuous and high. Beyond her in the
lovely warm glow of the room, I saw the piano. I thought of these long
gentle fingers touching the keys. I could hear in my head the throb of
the Appassionato.

  There came a loud flick, a crackle, a snap, and then the rich
fragrance of fine tobacco.

   Benji strode back and forth beyond her, with his black cigarette on
his lip.

   "I have a plan," he declared, effortlessly holding forth with the
cigarette firmly grasped between his half-open lips. "I go down to the
streets. I meet a bad, bad guy in no time. I tell him I'm alone here in
this apartment, up here in the hotel, with a man who is drunk and
drooling and crazy and we have all this cocaine to sell and I don't know
what to do and I need help with it."

I started to laugh in spite of the pain.

   The little Bedouin shrugged his shoulders and held up his palms,
puffing away on the black cigarette, the smoke curling about him like a
magical cloud.

   "What you think? It will work. Look, I'm a good judge of character.
Now, you, Sybelle, you get out of the way, and let me lead this
miserable sack of filth, this bad guy whom I lure into my trap, right to
the very bed, and pitch him down on his face, like this, I trip him with
my foot, like this, and he falls, boink, right into your arms, Armand,
what do you think of it?"

"And if it goes wrong?" I asked.

   "Then my beautiful Sybelle cracks him over the head with her hammer."

   "I have a better thought," I said, "though God knows that what you've
just devised is unsurpassingly brilliant. You tell him of course that
the cocaine is under the coverlet in neat little plastic sacks all
stretched out, but if he doesn't take this bait and come here to see for
himself, then let our beautiful Sybelle simply throw back the cover, and
when he sees what truly lies in this bed, he'll be out of here with no
thought to harm anyone!"

   "That's it!" Sybelle cried. She clapped her hands together. Her pale
luminous eyes were wide.

"That's perfect," Benji agreed.

   "But mark, don't carry a copper penny into the streets with you. If
only we had but a little bit of the evil white powder with which to bait
the beast."

   "But we do," said Sybelle. "We have just that, a little bit which we
took from my brother's pockets." She looked down at me thoughtfully, not
seeing me but running the plan through the tight coils of her soft and
yielding mind. "We took everything out so that when we left him to be
found, they'd find nothing with him. There are so many who are left that
way in New York. Of course it was an unspeakable chore to drag him."

   "But we have that evil white powder, yes!" said Benji, clasping her
shoulder suddenly and then bolting out of my sight to return within the
instant with a small flat white cigarette case.

   "Put it here, where I can smell what's inside," I said. I could see
that neither of them knew for certain.

   Benji snapped open the lid of the thin silver box. There, nestled in
a small plastic bag, folded with impeccable neatness, was the powder
with the very exact smell that I wanted it to have. I needn't put it to
my tongue, on which sugar would have tasted just as alien.

   "That's fine. Only empty out half of that at once down a drain, so
that there's just a little left, and leave the silver case here, lest
you run into some fool who'll kill you for it."

Sybelle shivered with obvious fear. "Benji, I'll go with you."

   "No, that would be most unwise," I said. "He can get away from anyone
much faster without you."

   "Oh, so right you are!" said Benji, taking the last drag from his
cigarette and then crushing it out in a big glass ashtray beside the
bed, where a dozen other little white butts were curled waiting for it.

"And how many times do I tell her that when I go out for cigarettes in
the middle of the night? Does she listen?"

   He was off without waiting for an answer. I heard the rush of water
from the tap. He was washing away half the cocaine. I let my eyes roam
the room, veering away from the soft blood-filled guardian angel.

   "There are people innately good," I said, "who want to help others.
You are one of them, Sybelle. I won't rest as long as you live. I'll be
at your side. I'll be there always to guard you and to repay you."

She smiled.

I was astonished.

  Her lean face, with its well-shaped pale lips, broke into the freshest
and most robust smile, as if neglect and pain had never gnawed at her.

"You'll be a guardian angel to me, Armand?" she asked.

"Always."

   "I'm off," Benji declared. With a crackle and snap, he lit another
cigarette. His lungs must have been charcoal sacks. "I'm going out into
the night. But what if this son of a bitch is sick or dirty or-."

   "Means nothing to me. Blood's blood. Just bring him here. Don't try
this fancy tripping with your foot. Wait till you have him right here
beside the bed, and as he reaches to lift the cover, you, Sybelle, pull
it back, and you, Benji, push on him with all your might, so the side of
the bed trips his shins, and he'll fall into my arms. And after that,
I'll have him."

He headed for the door.

   "Wait," I whispered. What was I thinking of in my greed? I looked up
at her mute smiling face, and then at him, the little engine puffing
away on the black cigarette, with nothing on for the fierce winter
outside but the damned djellaba.

"No, it has to be done," said Sybelle with wide eyes. "And Benji will
choose a very bad man, won't you, Benji? An evil man who wants to rob
and kill you."

   "I know where to go," said Benji with a little twisted smile. "Just
play your cards when I come back, both of you. Cover him up, Sybelle.
Don't look at the clock. Don't worry about me!"

   Off he went with the slam of the door, the big heavy lock slipping
shut behind him automatically.

   So it was coming. Blood, thick red blood. It was coming. It was
coming, and it would be hot and delicious, and there would a manful of
it, and it was coming, it was coming within seconds.

   I closed my eyes, and opening them, I let the room take shape again
with its sky-blue draperies on every window, hanging down in rich folds
to the floor, and the carpet a great writhing oval of cabbage roses. And
she, this stalk of a girl staring at me and smiling her simple sweet
smile, as if the crime of the night would be nothing to her.

   She came down on her knees next to me, perilously close, and again
she touched my hair with delicate hand. Her soft unfettered breasts
touched my arm. I read her thoughts as if I read her palm, pushing back
through layer after layer of her conscious, seeing the dark winding road
again whipping and turning through the Jordan Valley, and the parents
driving too fast for the pitch dark and the hairpin curves and the Arab
drivers who came on plunging at even greater speed so that each meeting
of headlamps became a grueling contest.

   "To eat the fish from the Sea of Galilee," she said, her eyes
drifting away from me. "I wanted it. It was my idea we go there. We had
one more day in the Holy Land, and they said it's a long drive from
Jerusalem to Nazareth, and I said, 'But He walked on the water.' It was
to me always the strangest tale. You know it?"

"I do," I said.

   "That He was walking right on the water, as if He'd forgotten the
Apostles were there or that anyone might see Him, and they from the
boat, said, 'Lord!' and He was startled. Such a strange miracle, as if
it was all ... accidental. I was the one who wanted to go. I was the one
who wanted to eat the fresh fish right out of the sea, the same water
that Peter and the others had fished. It was my doing. Oh, I don't say
it was my fault that they died. It was my doing. And we were all headed
home for my big night at Carnegie Hall, and the record company was set
up to record it, live. I'd made a recording before, you know. It had
done much better than anyone ever expected. But that night . . . this
night that never happened, that is, I was going to play the
Appassionata.

It was all that mattered to me. The other sonatas I love, the Moonlight,
the Pathetique, but really for me ... it was the Appassionata. My Father
and Mother were so proud. But my brother, he was the one who always
fought, always got me the time, the space, the good piano, the teachers
I needed. He was the one who made them see, but then of course, he
didn't have any life at all, and all of us saw what was coming. We'd
talk about it round the table at night, that he had to get a life of his
own, it was no good his working for me, but then he'd say that I would
need him for years to come, I couldn't even imagine. He'd manage the
recordings and the performances and the repertoire, and the fees we
asked. The agents couldn't be trusted. I had no idea, he said, of how
high I'd rise."

   She paused, cocking her head to one side, her face earnest yet still
simple.

   "It wasn't a decision I made, you understand," she said. "I just
wouldn't do anything else. They were dead. I just wouldn't go out. I
just wouldn't answer the phone. I just wouldn't play anything else. I
just wouldn't listen to what he said. I just wouldn't plan. I just
wouldn't eat. I just wouldn't change my clothes. I just played the
Appassionata."

"I understand," I said softly.

   "He brought Benji back with us to take care of me. I always wondered
how. I think Benji was bought, you know, bought with cold cash?"

"I know."

   "I think that's what happened. He couldn't leave me alone, he said,
not even at the King David, that was the hotel-."

"Yes."

   "-because he said I'd stand in the window without my clothes, or I
wouldn't let the maid come in, and I'd play the piano in the middle of
the night and he couldn't sleep. So he got Benji. I love Benji."

"I know."

   "I'd always do what Benji said. He never dared to hit Benji. Only
towards the end he started to really hurt me. Before that it was slaps,
you know, and kicks. Or he'd pull my hair. He'd grab me by the hair, all
my hair in one hand, and he'd throw me down on the floor. He did that
often. But he didn't dare to hit Benji. He knew if he hit Benji I'd
scream and scream. But then sometimes, when Benji would try to make him
stop-. But I'm not so sure about that because I would be so dizzy. My
head would ache."

"I understand," I said. Of course, he had hit Benji.

   She mused, quietly, her eyes large still, and so bright without tears
or puckering.

   "We're alike, you and I," she whispered, looking down at me. Her hand
lay close to my cheek, and she very lightly pressed the soft upper part
of her forefinger against me.

"Alike?" I asked. "What in the world can you be thinking of?"

"Monsters," she said. "Children."

I smiled. But she didn't smile. She looked dreamy.

   "I was so glad when you came," she said. "I knew he was dead. I knew
when you stood at the end of the piano and you looked at me. I knew when
you stood there listening to me. I was so happy that there was someone
who could kill him."

"Do this for me," I said.

"What?" she asked. "Armand, I'll do anything."

"Go to the piano now. Play it for me. Play the Appassionata"

   "But the plan," she asked in a small wondering voice. "The evil man,
he's coming."

   "Leave this to Benji and me. Don't turn around to look. Just play the
Appassionata."

"No, please," she asked gently.

   "But why not?" I said. "Why must you put yourself through such an
ordeal?"

   "You don't understand," she said with the widest eyes. "I want to see
it!"

22


BENJI HAD JUST RETURNED below. The distant sound of his voice, quite
inaudible to Sybelle, instantly drove back the pain from all the
surfaces of my limbs.

   "That's what I mean, you see," he was talking away, "it's all
underneath the dead body, and we don't wanna lift it, the dead body, and
you being a cop, you know, you being Drug Enforcement, they said you
would know how to take care of it..."

   I started to laugh. He had really done himself proud. I looked again
at Sybelle, who was staring at me with a quiet resolute expression, one
of profound intelligence and reflection.

   "Push this cover up over my face," I said, "and move away, far away.
He's bringing us a regular prince of rogues. Hurry."

   She snapped into action. I could smell the blood of this victim
already, though he was still in the ascending elevator, talking to Benji
in low guarded terms.

   "And all this you just happen to have in this apartment, you and she,
and there's nobody else in on this?"

Oh, he was a beauty. I heard the murderer in his voice.

   "I told you everything," Benji said in the most natural of little
voices. "You just help with this, you know, I can't have the police
coming in here!" Whisper. "This is a fine hotel. How did I know this guy
was going to die here! We don't use this stuff, you take the stuff, just
get the body out of here. Now let me tell you-."

The elevator opened to our floor.

   "-this body is pretty messed up, so don't go all slobbering on me
when you see it."

   "Slobbering on you," growled the victim under his breath. Their shoes
made soft hastening sounds on the carpet.

Benji fumbled with his keys, pretending to be mixed up.

"Sybelle," he called out in warning. "Sybelle, open the door."

"Don't do it," I said in a low voice.

"Of course not," came her velvety answer.

The barrels of the big lock turned.

   "And this guy just happens to come up here and die on you with all
this stuff."

   "Well, not exactly," said Benji, "but you made a bargain with me, no,
I expect you to stick to it."

"Look, you little guttersnipe, I didn't make any bargain with you."

   "Okay, then maybe I call the regular police then. I know you.
Everybody in the bar knows you, who you are, you're always around. What
are you going to do, big shot? Kill me?"

   The door closed behind them. The smell of the man's blood flooded the
apartment. He was besotted with brandy and had the poison cocaine in his
veins as well, but none of this would make a particle of difference to
my cleansing thirst. I could scarce contain myself. I felt my limbs
tighten and try to flex beneath the coverlet.

   "Well, isn't she the perfect princess," he said, his eyes obviously
having fallen on Sybelle. Sybelle made no answer.

   "Never mind her, you look there, under the covers. Sybelle, you come
here by me. Come on, Sybelle."

   "Under there? You're telling me the body's under there, and the
cocaine is under the body?"

   "How many times I have to tell you?" asked Benji, no doubt with his
characteristic shrug. "Look, what part don't you understand, I'd like to
know. You don't want this cocaine? I give it away. I'll be very popular
in your favorite bar. Come on, Sybelle, this man says he will help, then
he won't help, talk, talk, talk, typical government sleaze."

   "Who are you calling a sleaze, kid?" demanded the man with mock
gentleness, the fragrance of the brandy thickening. "That's some big
vocabulary you have for such a little body. How old are you, kid? How
the Hell did you get into this country? You go around in that nightgown
all the time?"

   "Yeah, sure, just call me Lawrence of Arabia," said Benji. "Sybelle,
come over here."

   I didn't want her to come. I wanted her as far away from this as
possible. She didn't move, and I was very glad of it.

"I like my clothes," Benji chattered on. Puff of sweet cigarette smoke.
"I should dress like kids in this place, I suppose, in blue jeans? As
if. My people dressed like this when Mohammed was in the desert."

"Nothing like progress," said the man with a deep throaty laugh.

 He approached the bed with quick crisp steps. The scent of blood was
so rich I could feel the pores of my burnt skin opening for it.

 I used the tiniest part of my strength to form a telepathic picture of
him through their eyes-a tall brown-eyed man, sallow white skin, gaunt
cheeks, receding brown hair, in a handmade Italian suit of shining black
silk with flashing diamond cufflinks on his rich linen. He was antsy,
fingers working at his sides, almost unable to stand still, his brain a
riot of dizzy humor, cynicism and crazed curiosity. His eyes were greedy
and playful. The ruthlessness underscored all, and there seemed in him a
strong streak of genuine drug-nourished insanity. He wore his murders as
proudly as he wore his princely suit and the shiny brown boots on his
feet.

 Sybelle came near the bed, the sharp sweet scent of her pure flesh

mingling with the heavier richer scent of the man. But it was his blood
I savored, his blood that brought the juices up into my parched mouth. I
could barely keep from making a sigh beneath the covers. I felt my limbs
about to dance right out of their painful paralysis.

  The villain was sizing up the place, glancing left and right through
open doors, listening for other voices, debating whether he should
search this fancy overstuffed and rambling hotel apartment before he did
anything else. His fingers would not be still. In a flash of wordless
thought, I caught the quick realization that he'd snorted the cocaine
Benji had brought, and he wanted more immediately.

"My, but you are a beautiful young lady," he said to Sybelle.

"Do you want me to lift the cover?" she asked.

  I could smell the small handgun that was jammed in his high black
leather boot, and the other gun, very fancy and modern, a distinctly
different collection of metallic scents, in the holster under his arm. I
could smell cash on him too, that unmistakable stale smell of filthy
paper money.

  "Come on, you chicken, buster?" asked Benji. "You want me to pull back
the cover? Say when. You're gonna be real surprised, believe me!"

  "There's no body under there," he said with a sneer. "Why don't we sit
down and have a little talk? This isn't really your place, is it? I
think you children need a little paternal guidance."

"The body's all burnt up," said Benji. "Don't get sick now."

"Burnt up!" said the man.

   It was Sybelle's long hand that suddenly whipped the coverlet back.
The cool air skidded across my skin. I stared up at the man who drew
back, a half-strangled growl caught in his throat.

"For the love of God!"

   My body sprang up, drawn by the plump fountain of blood like a
hideous puppet on a score of whipping strings. I flailed against him,
then anchored my burnt fingernails hard into his neck and wrapped the
other arm around him in an agonizing embrace, my tongue flashing at the
blood that spilled from the claw marks as I drew in and, ignoring the
blazing pain in my face, opened my mouth wide and sank my fangs.

Now I had him.

   His height, his strength, his powerful shoulders, his huge hands
clamping to my hurt flesh, none of this could help him. I had him. I
drew up the first thick swallow of blood and thought I would swoon. But
my body wasn't about to allow it. My body had locked to him as if I were
a thing of voracious tentacles.

   At once, his crazed and luminous thoughts drew me down into a glitzy
swirl of New York images, of careless cruelty and grotesque horror, of
rampant drug-driven energy and sinister hilarity. I let the images flood
me. I couldn't go for the quick death. I had to have every drop of blood
inside him, and for that the heart must pump and pump; the heart must
not give up.

   If I had ever tasted blood this strong, this sweet and salty, I had
no memory of it; there was no way in which memory could record such
deliciousness, the absolute rapture of thirst slaked, of hunger cured,
of loneliness dissolved in this hot and intimate embrace, in which the
sound of my own seething, straining breath would have horrified me if I
had cared about it.

   Such a noise I made, such a dreadful feasting noise. My fingers
massaged his thick muscles, my nostrils were pressed into his pampered
soap-scented skin.

   "Hmmm, love you, wouldn't hurt you for the world, you feel it, it's
sweet, isn't it?" I whispered to him over the shallows of gorgeous
blood. "Hmmm, yes, so sweet, better than the finest brandy, hmmm..."

   In his shock and disbelief, he suddenly let go utterly, surrendering
to the delirium that I stoked with each word. I ripped at his neck,
widening the wound, rupturing the artery more fully. The blood gushed
anew.

 An exquisite shiver ran down my back; it ran down the backs of my
arms, and down my buttocks and legs. It was pain and pleasure commingled
as the hot and lively blood forced itself into the microfibers of my
shriveled flesh, as it plumped the muscles beneath the roasted skin, as
it sank into the very marrow of my bones. More, I had to have more.

   "Stay alive, you don't want to die, no, stay alive," I crooned,
rubbing my fingers up through his hair, feeling that they were fingers
now, not the pterodactyl digits they'd been moments before. Oh, they
were hot; it was the fire all over again, it was the fire blazing in my
scorched limbs, this time death had to come, I couldn't bear this any
longer, but a pinnacle had been reached, and now it was past and a great
soothing ache rushed through me.

 My face was pumped and teeming, my mouth fall again and again, and my
throat now swallowing without effort.

   "Ah, yes, alive, you're so strong, so wonderfully strong ..." I
whispered. "Hmmm, no, don't go ... not yet, it's not time."

   His knees buckled. He sank slowly to the carpet, and I with him,
pulling him gently over with me against the side of the bed, and then
letting him fall beside me, so that we lay like lovers entangled. There
was more, much more, more than ever I could have drunk in my regular
state, more than ever I could have wanted.

   Even on those rare occasions when I was a fledgling and greedy and
new, and had taken two or three victims a night, I had never drunk so
deeply from any one of them. I was now into the dark tasty dregs,
pulling out the very vessels themselves in sweet clots that dissolved on
my tongue.

"Oh, you are so precious, yes, yes."

   But his heart could take no more. It was slowing to a lethal
irretrievable pace. I closed my teeth on the skin of his face and ripped
it open over his forehead, lapping at the rich tangle of bleeding
vessels that covered his skull. There was so much blood here, so much
blood behind the tissues of the face. I sucked up the fibers, and then

spit them out bloodless and white, watching them drop to the floor like
so much slop.

   I wanted the heart and the brain. I had seen the ancients take it. I
knew how. I'd seen the Roman Pandora once reach right into the chest.

   I went for it. Astonished to see my hand fully formed though dark
brown in color, I made my fingers rigid like a deadly spade and drove it
into him, tearing linen and cracking breastbone, and then reaching his
soft entrails until I had the heart and held it as I'd seen Pandora hold
it. I drank from it. Oh, it had plenty of blood. This was magnificent. I
sucked it to pulp and then let it fall.

   I lay as still as he, at his side, my right hand on the back of his
neck, my head bowed against his chest, my breath coming in heavy sighs.
The blood danced in me. I felt my arms and legs jerking. Spasms ran
through me, so that the sight of his white dead carcass blinkered in my
gaze. The room flashed on and off.

   "Oh, what a sweet brother," I whispered. "Sweet, sweet brother." I
rolled on my back. I could hear the roar of his blood in my very ears,
feel it moving over my scalp, feel it tingling in my cheeks and in the
palms of my hands. Oh, good, too good, too lusciously good.

   "Bad guy, hmmm?" It was Benji's voice, far away in the world of the
living.

   Far away in another realm where pianos ought to be played, and little
boys should dance, they stood, the two like painted cutout figures
against the swimming light of the room, merely gazing at me, he the
little desert rogue with his fancy black cigarette, puffing away and
smacking his lips and raising his eyebrows, and she merely floating it
seemed, resolute and thoughtful as before, unshocked, untouched perhaps.

   I sat up and pulled up my knees. I rose to my feet, with only a quick
handhold on the side of the bed to steady myself. I stood naked looking
at her.

   Her eyes were filled with a deep rich gray light, and she smiled as
she looked at me.

"Oh, magnificent," she whispered.

   "Magnificent?" I said. I lifted my hands and pushed my hair back off
my face. "Show me to the glass. Hurry. I'm thirsting. I'm thirsting
again already."

   It had begun, this was no lie. In a stupor of shock I stared into the
mirror. I had seen such ruined specimens as this before, but each of us
is ruined in our own way, and I, for alchemical reasons I couldn't
proclaim, was a dark brown creature, the very perfect color of
chocolate, with remarkably white opal eyes set with reddish-brown
pupils. The nipples of my chest were black as raisins. My cheeks were
painfully gaunt, my ribs perfectly defined beneath my shiny skin, and
the veins, the veins that were so full of sizzling action, stood like
ropes along my arms and the calves of my legs. My hair, of course, had
never seemed so lustrous, so full, so much a thing of youth and natural
beneficence.

   I opened my mouth. I ached with thirst. All the awakened flesh sang

with thirst or cursed me with it. It was as if a thousand crushed and
muted cells were now chanting for blood.

   "I have to have more. I have to. Stay away from me." I hurried past
Benji, who all but danced at my side.

"What do you want, what can I do? I'll get another one."

   "No, I'll get him for myself." I fell on the victim and slipped loose
his silk tie. I quickly undid the buttons of his shirt.

   Benji fell at once to unbuckling his belt. Sybelle, on her knees,
tugged at his boots.

   "The gun, beware of the gun," I said in alarm. "Sybelle, back away
from him."

   "I see the gun," she said reprovingly. She laid it aside carefully,
as if it were a freshly caught fish and might flop from her hands. She
peeled off his socks. "Armand, these clothes," she said, "they're too
big."

"Benji, you have shoes?" I asked. "My feet are small."

   I stood up and hastily put on the shirt, fastening the buttons with a
speed that dazzled them.

   "Don't watch me, get the shoes," I said. I pulled on the trousers,
zipped them up, and with Sybelle's quick fingers to help, buckled the
flapping leather belt. I pulled it as tight as I could. This would do.

   She crouched before me, her dress a huge flowered circle of pretti-
ness around her, as she rolled the pant legs over my brown bare feet.

   I had slipped my hands through his fancy linked shirt cuffs without
ever disturbing them.

   Benji threw down the black dress shoes, fine Bally pumps, never even
worn by him, divine little wretch. Sybelle held one sock for my foot.
Benji gathered up the other.

 When I put on the coat it was done. The sweet tingling in my veins had
stopped. It was pain again, it was beginning to roar, as if I were
threaded with fire, and the witch with the needle pulled on the thread,
hard, to make me quiver.

   "A towel, my dears, something old, common. No, don't, not in this day
and age, don't think of it."

Full of loathing I gazed down at his livid flesh. He lay staring dully
at the ceiling, the soft tiny hair in his nostrils very black against
his drained and awful skin, his teeth yellow above his colorless lip.
The hair on his chest was a matted swarm in the sweat of his death, and
against the giant gaping slit lay the pulp that had been his heart, ah,
this was the evil evidence which must be shut from the eyes of the world
on general principles.

   I reached down and slipped the ruins of his heart back into the
cavity of his chest. I spit upon the wound and rubbed it with my
fingers.

Benji gasped. "Look at it heal, Sybelle," he cried.

   "Just barely," I said. "He's too cold, too empty." I looked about.
There lay the man's wallet, papers, a bag in leather, lots of green
bills in a fancy silver clip. I gathered all this up. I stuffed the
folded money in one pocket, and all else in the other. What else did he
have? Cigarette, a deadly switchblade knife, and the guns, ah, yes, the
guns.

Into my coat pockets I put these items.

   Swallowing my nausea, I reached down and scooped him up, horrid
flaccid white man in his pitiable silk shorts and fancy gold wristwatch.
My old strength was indeed coming back. He was heavy, but I could easily
heave him over my shoulder.

   "What will you do, where will you go?" Sybelle cried. "Armand, you
can't leave us."

   "You'll come back!" said Benji. "Here, gimme that watch, don't throw
away that man's watch."

   "Sshhh, Benji," Sybelle whispered. "You know damned good and well
I've bought you the finest watches. Don't touch him. Armand, what can we
do now to help you?" She drew close to me. "Look!" she said pointing to
the dangling arm of the corpse which hung just below my right elbow. "He
has manicured nails. How amazing."

   "Oh, yeah, he always took very good care of himself," said Benji.
"You know the watch is worth five thousand dollars."

   "Hush up about the watch," she said. "We don't want his things." She
looked at me again. "Armand, even now you're still changing. Your face,
it's getting fuller."

   "Yes, and it hurts," I said. "Wait for me. Prepare a dark room for
me. I'll come back as soon as I've fed. I have to feed now, feed and
feed to heal the scars that are left. Open the door for me."

   "Let me see if there's anyone out there," said Benji with a quick
dutiful rush to the door.

   I went out into the hallway, easily carrying the poor corpse, its
white arms hanging down, swinging and banging against me just a little.

   What a sight I was in these big clothes. I must have looked like a
mad poetical schoolboy who had raided the thrift stores for the finest
threads and was off now in fancy new shoes to search out the rock bands.

   "There isn't anyone out here, my little friend," I said. "It's three
of the clock and the hotel's asleep. And if reason serves me right,
that's the door of the fire stairs there, at the very end of the hall,
correct? There isn't anyone in the fire stairs either."

   "Oh, clever Armand, you delight me!" he said. He narrowed his little
black eyes. He jumped up and down soundlessly on the hallway carpet.
"Give me the watch!" he whispered.

   "No," I said. "She's right. She's rich, and so am I, and so are you.

Don't be a beggar."

   "Armand, we'll wait for you," said Sybelle in the doorframe. "Benji,
come inside immediately."

   "Oh, listen to her now, how she wakes up! How she talks! 'Benji, come
inside,' she says. Hey, sweetheart, don't you have something to do just
now, like perhaps play the piano?"

   She gave a tiny burst of laughter in spite of herself. I smiled. What
a strange pair they were. They did not believe their own eyes. But that
was typical enough in this century. I wondered when they would start to
see, and having seen, start screaming.

"Goodbye, sweet loves," I said. "Be ready for me."

   "Armand, you will come back." Her eyes were fall of tears. "You
promise me."

   I was stunned. "Sybelle," I said. "What is it that women want so
often to hear and wait so long to hear it? I love you."

   I left them, racing down the stairs, hefting him to the other
shoulder when the weight on the one side became too hurtful. The pain
passed over me in waves. The shock of the outside cold air was scalding.

   "Feed," I whispered. And what was I to do with him? He was far too
naked to carry down Fifth Avenue.

   I slipped off his watch because it was the only identification on him
left, and almost vomiting with revulsion from my closeness to these
fetid remains, I dragged him by one hand after me very fast through the
back alley, and then across a small street, and down another sidewalk.

  I ran into the face of the icy wind, not stopping to observe those few
hulking shapes that hobbled by in the wet darkness, or to take stock of
the one car that crept along on the shining wet asphalt.

  Within seconds I had covered two blocks, and finding a likely
alleyway, with a high gate to keep out the beggars of the night, I
quickly mounted the bars and flung his carcass to the very far end of
it. Down into the melting snow he fell. I was rid of him.

  Now I had to have blood. There was no time for the old game, the game
of drawing out those who wanted to die, those who truly craved my
embrace, those in love already with the far country of death of which
they knew nothing.

  I had to shuffle and stumble along, the mark, in my floppy silk jacket
and rolled pants, long hair veiling my face, poor dazzled kid, perfect
for your knife, your gun, your fist.

It didn't take long.

  The first was a drunken, sauntering wretch who plied me with questions
before he revealed the flashing blade and went to sink it into me. I
pushed him up against the side of the building, and fed like a glutton.

  The next was a common desperate youth, fall of festering sores, who
had killed twice before for the heroin he needed as badly as I needed

the doomed blood inside him.

I drank more slowly.

  The thickest worst scars of my body yielded with much defense,
itching, throbbing and only slowly melting away. But the thirst, the
thirst would not stop. My bowels churned as if devouring themselves. My
eyes pulsed with pain.

  But the cold wet city, so full of rankling hollow noise, grew ever
brighter before me. I could hear voices many blocks away, and small
electronic speakers in high buildings. I could see beyond the breaking
clouds the true and numberless stars.

I was almost myself again.

   So who will come to me now, I thought, in this barren desolate hour
before dawn, when the snow is melting in the warmer air, and neon lights
have all died out, and the wet newspaper blows like leaves through a
stripped and frozen forest?

I took all the precious articles which had belonged to my first victim,
and dropped them here and there into deep hollow public trash cans.

   One last killer, yes, please, fate, do give me this, while there's
time, and indeed he came, blasted fool, out of a car as behind him the
driver waited, the motor idling.

"What's taking you so damn long?" said the driver at last.

   "Nothing," I said, dropping his friend. I leaned in to look at him.
He was as vicious and stupid as his companion. He threw up his hand, but
helplessly and too late. I pushed him over on the leather seat and drank
now for rank pleasure, pure sweet crazed pleasure.

   I walked slowly through the night, my arms out, my eyes directed
Heavenward.

   From the scattered black grates of the gleaming street there gushed
the pure white steam of heated places below. Trash in shiny plastic
sacks made a fantastical modern and glittering display on the curbs of
the slate-gray sidewalks.

   Tiny tender trees, with little year-round leaves like short pen
strokes of bright green in the night, bent their stemlike trunks with
the whining wind. Everywhere the high clean glass doors of granite-faced
buildings contained the radiant splendor of rich lobbies. Shop windows
displayed their sparkling diamonds, lustrous furs and smartly cut coats
and gowns on grandly coiffed and faceless pewter mannequins.

   The Cathedral was a lightless, soundless place of frost-rimmed
turrets and ancient pointed arches, the pavement clean where I had stood
on the morning when the sun caught me.

   Lingering there, I closed my eyes, trying perhaps to recall the
wonder and the zeal, the courage and the glorious expectation.

   There came instead, clear and shining through the dark air, the
pristine notes of the Appassionata. Roiling, rumbling, racing on, the
crashing music came to call me home. I followed it.

   The clock in the hotel foyer was striking six. The winter dark would
break up in moments like the very ice that had once imprisoned me. The
long polished desk was deserted in the muted lights.

   In a wall mirror of dim glass framed in rococo gold, I saw myself,
paled and waxen, and unblemished. Oh, what fun the sun and ice had had
with me in turns, the fury of the one quick-frozen by the merciless grip
of the other. Not a scar remained of where the skin had burnt to muscle.
A sealed and solid thing with seamless agony within, I was, all of a
piece, restored, with sparkling clear white fingernails, and curling
lashes round my clear brown eyes, and clothes a wretched heap of
stained, misfitted finery on the old familiar rugged cherub.

   Never before had I been thankful to see my own too youthful face, too
hairless chin, too soft and delicate hands. But I could have thanked the
gods of old for wings at this moment.

  Above, the music carried on, so grand, so legible of tragedy and lust
and dauntless spirit. I loved it so. Who in the whole wide world could
ever play that same Sonata as she did, each phrase as fresh as songs
sung all their livelong life by birds who know but one such set of
patterns.

   I looked about. It was a fine, expensive place, of old wainscoting
and a few deep chairs, and door keys ranged up a wall in tiny dark-
stained wooden boxes.

   A great vase of flowers, the infallible trademark of the vintage New
York hotel, stood boldly and magnificently in the middle of the space,
atop a round black marble table. I skirted the bouquet, snapping off one
big pink lily with a deep red throat and petals curling to yellow at the
outside, and then I went silently up the fire stairs to find my
children.

She did not stop her playing when Benji let me in.

"You're looking really good, Angel," he said.

   On and on she went, her head moving unaffectedly and perfectly with
the rhythm of the Sonata.

   He led me through a chain of finely decorated plastered chambers.
Mine was too sumptuous by far, I whispered, seeing the tapestry spread
and pillows of old gracious threadbare gold. I needed only perfect
darkness.

"But this is the least we have," he said with a little shrug.

   He had changed to a fresh white linen robe lined with a fine blue
stripe, a kind I'd often seen in Arab lands. He wore white socks with
his brown sandals. He puffed his little Turkish cigarette, and squinted
up at me through the smoke.

   "You brought me back the watch, didn't you!" He nodded his head, all
sarcasm and amusement.

   "No," I said. I reached into my pocket. "But you may have the money.
Tell me, since your little mind is such a locket and I have no key, did
anyone see you bring that badge-carrying, gun-toting villain up here?"

"I see him all the time," he said with a little weary wave of his hand.

"We left the bar separately. I killed two birds with one stone. I'm very
smart."

"How so?" I asked. I put the lily in his little hand.

  "Sybelle's brother bought from him. That cop was the only guy ever
missed him." He gave a little laugh. He tucked the lily in the thick
curls above his left ear, then pulled it down and twirled its tiny cibo-
rium in his fingers. "Clever, no? Now nobody asks where he is."

  "Oh, indeed, two birds with one stone, you're quite right," I said.
"Though I'm sure there's a great deal more to it."

"But you'll help us now, won't you?"

  "I will indeed. I'm very rich, I told you. I'll patch things up. I
have an instinct for it. I owned a great playhouse in a faraway city,
and after that an island of fancy shops, and other such things. I am a
monster in many realms, it seems. You'll never, ever have to fear
again."

  "You're truly beauty fall, you know," he said raising one eyebrow and
then giving me a quick wink. He drew on his tasty-looking little
cigarette and then offered it to me. His left hand kept the lily safe.

  "Can't. Only drink blood," I said. "A regular vampire out of the book
in the main. Need deep darkness in the light of day, which is coming
very soon. You mustn't touch this door."

  "Ha!" he laughed with impish delight. "That's what I told her!" He
rolled his eyes and glanced in the direction of the living room. "I said
we had to steal a coffin for you right away, but she said, no, you'd
think of that."

  "How right she was. The room will do, but I like coffins well enough.
I really do."

"And can you make us vampires too?"

  "Oh, never. Absolutely not. You're pure of heart and too alive, and I
don't have such a power. It's never done. It can't be."

Again, he shrugged. "Then who made you?" he asked.

"I was born out of a black egg," I said. "We all are."

He gave a scoffing laugh.

  "Well, you've seen all the rest," I said. "Why not believe the best
part of it?"

  He only smiled and puffed his smoke, and looked at me most knavishly.

  The piano sang on in crashing cascades, the rapid notes melting as
fast as they were born, so like the last thin snowflakes of the winter,
vanishing before they strike the pavements.

"May I kiss her before I go to sleep?" I asked.

   He cocked his head, and shrugged. "If she doesn't like it, she'll
never stop playing long enough to say so."

   I went back into the parlor. How clear it all was, the grand design
of sumptuous French landscapes with their golden clouds and cobalt
skies, the Chinese vases on their stands, the massed velvet tumbling
from the high bronze rods of the narrow old windows. I saw it all of a
piece, including the bed where I had lain, now heaped with fresh down-
filled coverlets and pillowed with embroidered antique faces.

   And she, the center diamond of it all, in long white flannel,
flounced at wrists and hem with rich old Irish lace, playing her long
lacquered grand with agile unerring fingers, her hair a broad smooth
yellow glow about her shoulders.

   I kissed her scented locks, and then her tender throat, and caught
her girlish smile and gleaming glance as she played on, her head tilting
back to brush my coat front.

   Down around her neck, I slipped my arms. She leant her gentle weight
against me. With crossed arms, I clasped her waist. I felt her shoulders
moving against my snug embrace with her darting fingers.

   I dared in whisper-soft tones with sealed lips to hum the song, and
she hummed with me.

   "Appassionato,," I whispered in her ear. I was crying. I didn't want
to touch her with blood. She was too clean, too pretty. I turned my
head.

She pitched forward. Her hands pounded into the stormy finish.

A silence fell, abrupt, and crystalline as the music before it.

   She turned and threw her arms around me, and held me tight and said
the words I'd never heard a mortal speak in all my long immortal life:

"Armand, I love you."

NEED I SAY they are the perfect companions? Neither of them cared about
the murders. I could not for the life of me understand it. They cared
about other things, such as world peace, the poor suffering homeless in
the waning winter cold of New York, the price of medicines for the sick,
and how dreadful it was that Israel and Palestine were forever in battle
with each other. But they did not care one whit about the horrors they'd
beheld with their own eyes. They did not care that I killed every night
for blood, that I lived off it and nothing else, and that I was a
creature wed by my very nature to human destruction.

   They did not care one whit about the dead brother (his name was Fox,
by the way, and the last name of my beautiful child is best left
unmentioned).

   In fact if this text ever sees the light of the real world, you're
bound to change both her first name and that of Benjamin.

   However, that's not my concern now. I can't think of the fate of
these pages, except that they are very much for her, as I mentioned to

you before, and if I'm allowed to title them I think it will be Symphony
for Sybelle.

 Not, please understand, that I love Benji no less. It's only that I
haven't the same overwhelming protective feeling for him. I know that
Benji will live out a great and adventurous life, no matter what should
befall me or Sybelle, or even the times. It's in his flexible and
enduring Bedouin nature. He is a true child of the tents and the blowing
sands, though in his case, the house was a dismal cinder block hovel on
the outskirts of Jerusalem where he induced tourists to pose for
overpriced pictures with him and a filthy snarling camel.

  He'd been flat out kidnapped by Fox under the felonious terms of a
long-term lease of bondage for which Fox paid Benji's father five
thousand dollars. A fabricated emigration passport was thrown into the
bargain. He'd been the genius of the tribe, without doubt, had mixed
feelings about going home and had learnt in the New York streets to
steal, smoke and curse, in that order. Though he swore up and down he
couldn't read, it turned out that he could, and began to do so
obsessively just as soon as I started throwing books at him.

  In fact, he could read English, Hebrew and Arabic, having read all
three in the newspapers of his homeland since before he could remember.

  He loved taking care of Sybelle. He saw to it that she ate, drank
milk, bathed and changed her clothes when none of these routine tasks
interested her. He prided himself on the fact that he could by his wits
obtain for her whatever she needed, no matter what happened to her.

  He was the front man for her with the hotel, tipping the maids,
making normal talk at the front desk, which included remarkably finespun
lies about the whereabouts of the dead Fox, who had become in Benji's
never ending saga a fabulous world traveler and amateur photographer; he
handled the piano tuner, who was called as often as once a week because
the piano stood by the window, exposed to sun and cold, and also because
Sybelle did indeed pound it with the fury that would indeed have
impressed the great Beethoven. He spoke on the phone to the bank, all of
whose personnel thought he was his older brother, David, pronounced
Dahveed, and then made the requisite calls at the teller's window for
cash as little Benjamin.

  I was convinced within nights of talking with him that I could give
him as fine an education as Marius had ever given me, and that he would
end up having his choice of universities, professions or amateur
pursuits of mind-engaging substance. I didn't overplay my hand. But
before the week was out I was dreaming of boarding schools for him from
which he might emerge a gold-buttoned blue blazer-wearing American East
Coast social conquistador.

  I love him enough to tear limb from limb anyone who so much as lays a
finger on him.

  But between me and Sybelle there lies a sympathy which sometimes
eludes mortals and immortals for the space of their entire lives. I know
Sybelle. I know her. I knew her when I first heard her play, and I know
her now, and I wouldn't be here with you if she were not under the
protection of Marius. I will during the space of Sybelle's life never be
parted from her, and there is nothing she can ever ask of me that I
shall not give.

 I will endure unspeakable anguish when Sybelle inevitably dies. But
that has to be borne. I have no choice now in the matter. I am not the
creature I was when I laid eyes on Veronica's Veil, when I stepped into
the sun.

 I am someone else, and that someone else has fallen deeply and
completely in love with Sybelle and Benjamin and I cannot go back on it.

 Of course I am keenly conscious that I thrive in this love; being
happier than I have ever been in my entire immortal existence, I have
gained great strength from having these two as my companions. The
situation is too nearly perfect to be anything but utterly accidental.

   Sybelle is not insane. She is nowhere near it, and I fancy that I
understand her perfectly. Sybelle is obsessed with one thing, and that
is playing the piano. From the first time she laid her hands on the keys
she has wanted nothing else. And her "career," as so generously planned
for her by her proud parents and by the burningly ambitious Fox, never
meant much of anything to her.

 Had she been poor and struggling perhaps recognition would have been
indispensable to her love affair with the piano, as it would have given
her the requisite escape from life's dreary domestic traps and routines.
But she was never poor. And she is truly, in the very root of her soul,
indifferent as to whether people hear her play her music or not.

 She needs only to hear it herself, and to know that she is not
disturbing other people.

 In the old hotel, mostly full of rooms rented by the day, with only a
handful of tenants rich enough to be lodged there year by year, as was
Sybelle's family, she can play forever without disturbing anyone.

 And after her parents' tragic death, after she lost the only two
witnesses who had been intimate to her development,, she simply could
not cooperate with Fox's plans for her career any further.

 Well, all this I understood, almost from the beginning. I understood
it in her incessant repetition of the Sonata No. 23, and I think if you
were to hear it, you would understand it too. I want you to hear it.

 Understand, it will not at all faze Sybelle if other people do gather
to listen to her. It won't bother her one whit if she's recorded. If
other people enjoy her playing and tell her so, she's delighted. But
it's a simple thing with her. "Ah, so you too love it," she thinks.
"Isn't it beautiful?" This is what she said to me with her eyes and her
smiles the very first time I ever approached her.

   And I suppose before I go any further-and I do have more to put down
about my children-I should address this question: How did I approach
her? How did I come to be in her apartment on that fateful morning, when
Dora stood in the Cathedral crying to the crowds about the miraculous
Veil, and I, the blood in my veins having combusted, was in fact
rocketing skyward?

   I don't know. I have rather tiresome supernatural explanations that
read like tomes by members of the Society for the Study of Psychic
Phenomena, or the scripts for Mulder and Scully on the television show
called The X-Files. Or like a secret file on the case in the archives of
the order of psychic detectives called the Talamasca.

   Bluntly, I see it this way. I have most-powerful abilities to cast
spells, to dislocate my vision, and to transmit my image over distances,
and to affect matter both at close range and matter which is out of
sight. I must somehow, in this morning journey towards the clouds, have
used this power. It might have been drawn from me in a moment of
harrowing pain when I was for all purposes deranged and completely
unaware of what was happening to me. It might have been a last desperate
hysterical refusal to accept the possibility of death, or of the
horrible predicament, so close to death, in which I found myself.

   That is, having fallen on the roof, burnt and in unspeakable torment,
I might have sought a desperate mental escape, projecting my image and
my strength into Sybelle's apartment long enough to kill her brother. It
certainly is possible for spirits to exert enough pressure on matter to
change it. So perhaps that is exactly what I did-project myself in
spirit form and lay hands upon the substance that was Fox, and kill him.

But I don't really believe all this. I'll tell you why.

   First off, though Sybelle and Benjamin are no experts, for all their
savvy and seeming detachment, on the subject of death and its subsequent
forensic analysis, they both insisted that Fox's body was bloodless when
they got rid of it. The puncture wounds were apparent on his neck. In
sum, they believe to this very hour that I was there, in substantial
form, and that I did indeed drink Fox's blood.

Now that a projected image cannot do, at least not insofar as I know it.
No, it cannot devour the blood of an entire circulatory system and then
dissolve itself, returning to the cicatricula of the mind from which it
came. No, that is not possible.

  Of course, Sybelle and Benji could be wrong. What do they know about
blood and bodies? But the fact is, they let Fox lie there, quite dead
for some two days, or so they said, while they waited for the return of
the Dybbuk or Angel whom they were sure would help them. Now in that
time, the blood of a human body sinks down to the very lowest part of
the carcass, and such a change would have been visible to these
children. They noted no such thing.

  Ah, it makes my brain ache! The fact is, I don't know how I got to
their apartment, or why. I don't know how it happened. And I do know, as
I have already said, that as regards the entire experience- everything I
saw and felt in the great restored Cathedral at Kiev, an impossible
place-was as real as what I knew in Sybelle's apartment.

  There is one other small point, and though it is small it is crucial.
After I had slain Fox, Benji did see my burnt body falling from the sky.
He did see me, just as I saw him, from the window.

  There is one very terrible possibility. It is this. I was going to die
that morning. It was going to happen. My ascent was driven by immense
will and an immense love of God of which I have no doubt as I dictate
these words now.

   But perhaps at the crucial moment, my courage failed me. My body
failed me. And seeking some refuge from the sun, some way to thwart my
martyrdom, I struck upon the predicament of Sybelle and her brother, and
feeling her great need of me, I commenced to fall towards the shelter of
the roof on which the snow and ice quickly covered me. My visit to

Sybelle could have been, according to this interpretation, only a
passing illusion, a powerful projection of self, as I've said, a wish
fulfillment of the need of this random and vulnerable girl about to be
fatally beaten by her brother.

  As for Fox, I killed him, without doubt. But he died from fear, from
failure of the heart, perhaps, from the pressure of my illusory hands on
his fragile throat, from the power of telekinesis or suggestion.

But as I stated before, I don't believe this.

  I was there in the Cathedral in Kiev. I broke the egg with my thumbs.
I saw the bird fly free.

   I know my Mother stood at my side, and I know that my Father knocked
over the chalice. I know because I know there is no part of me that
could have imagined such a thing. And I know too because the colors I
saw then and the music I heard were not made up of anything I had ever
experienced.

   Now, there is simply no other dream I have ever had about which I can
say this. When I said the Mass in Vladimir's City, I was in a realm made
up of ingredients which my imagination simply does not have at its
disposal.

   I don't want to say any more about it. It's too hurtful and awful to
try to analyze it. I didn't will it, not with my conscious heart, and I
had no conscious power over it. It simply happened.

   I would, if I could, forget it entirely. I am so extraordinarily
happy with Sybelle and Benji that surely I want to forget it all for the
space of their lifetimes. I want only to be with them, as I have been
since the night I described to you.

   As you realize, I took my time in coming here. Having returned to the
ranks of the dangerous Undead, it was very easy for me to discern from
the roaming minds of other vampires that Lestat was safe in his prison
here, and indeed was dictating to you the entire story of what had
happened to him with God Incarnate and with Memnoch the Devil.

   It was very easy for me to discern, without revealing my own
presence, that an entire world of vampires mourned for me with greater
anguish and tears than I could ever have predicted.

   So, being confident of Lestat's safety, being baffled yet relieved by
the mysterious fact that his stolen eye had been returned to him, I was
at leisure to stay with Sybelle and Benji and I did so.

   With Benji and Sybelle I rejoined the world in a way which I had not
done since my fledgling, my one and only fledgling, Daniel Mol-loy, had
left me. My love for Daniel had never been entirely honest, and always
viciously possessive, and quite entangled with my own hatred of the
world at large, and my confusion in the face of the baffling modern
times which had begun to open up to me when I emerged in the late years
of the Eighteenth Century from the catacombs beneath Paris.

   Daniel himself had no use for the world, and had come to me hungering
for our Dark Blood, his brain swimming with macabre, grotesque tales
which Louis de Pointe du Lac had told him. Heaping every luxury upon
him, I only sickened him with mortal sweets so that finally he turned

away from the riches I offered, becoming a vagabond. Mad, roaming the
streets in rags, he shut out the world almost to the point of death, and
I, weak, muddled, tormented by his beauty, and lusting for the living
man and not the vampire he might become, only brought him over to us
through the working of the Dark Trick because he would have died
otherwise.

  I was no Marius to him afterwards. It was too exactly as I supposed:
he loathed me in his heart for having initiated him into Living Death,
for having made him in one night both an immortal and a regular killer.

  As a mortal man, he had no real idea of the price we pay for what we
are, and he did not want to learn the truth; he fled from it, in
reckless dreams and spiteful wandering.

  And so it was as I feared. Making him to be my mate, I made a minion
who saw me all the more clearly as a monster.

  There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime.
There was never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens
in which we wandered. Our souls were out of tune, our desires crossed
and our resentments too common and too well watered for the final
flowering.

It's different now.

   For two months I remained in New York with Sybelle and Benji, living
as I've never lived before, not since those long-ago nights with Marius
in Venice.

   Sybelle is rich, as I think I've told you, but only in a tedious
struggling sort of way, with an income that pays for her exorbitant
apartment and daily room service meals, with a margin for fine clothes,
tickets to the symphony and an occasional spending spree.

   I am fabulously rich. So the first thing I did, with pleasure, was
lavish upon Sybelle and Benjamin all the riches I had once lavished upon
Daniel Molloy to much greater effect.

They loved it.

   Sybelle, when she was not playing the piano, had no objections
whatsoever to wandering to the picture shows with Benji and me, or to
the symphony and the opera. She loved the ballet, and loved to take
Benjamin to the finest restaurants, where he became a regular marvel to
the waiters with his crisp enthusiastic little voice and his lilting way
of rattling off the names of dishes, French or Italian, and ordering
vintage wines which they poured for him, unquestioningly, despite all
the good-intentioned laws that prohibit the serving of such strong
spirits to children.

I loved all this too, of course, and was delighted to discover that
Sybelle also took a sporadic and playful interest in dressing me, in
choosing jackets, shirts and such from racks with a quick point of her
finger, and in picking out for me from velvet trays all kinds of jeweled
rings, cufflinks, neck chains and tiny crucifixes of rubies and gold,
solid-gold clips for money and that sort of thing.

   It was I who had played this masterly game with Daniel Molloy.
Sybelle plays it with me in her own dreamy way, as I take care of the

tiresome cash register details.

   I in turn have the supreme pleasure of carrying Benji about like a
doll and getting him to wear all the Western finery I purchase, at least
now and then, for an hour or two.

   We make a striking trio, the three of us dining at Lutece or Sparks
(of course I don't dine)-Benji in his immaculate little desert robe, or
got up in a finely fitted little suit with narrow lapels, white button-
down shirt and flash of tie; me in my highly acceptable antique velvet
and chokers of old crumbling lace; and Sybelle in the lovely dresses
that spill endlessly out of her closet, confections her Mother and Fox
once bought for her, close cut around her large breasts and small waist
and always flaring magically about her long legs, hem high enough to
reveal the splendid curve of her calf and its tautness when she slips
her dark-stockinged feet into dagger-heeled slippers. Benji's close-
cropped cap of curls is always the Byzantine halo for his dark enigmatic
little face, her flowing waves are free, and my hair is the Renaissance
mop again of long unruly curls that used to be my secret vanity.

   My deepest pleasure with Benji is education. Right off, we started
having powerful conversations about history and the world, and found
ourselves stretched out on the carpet of the apartment, poring over
maps, as we discussed the entire progress of East and West and the
inevitable influences upon human history of climate, culture and
geography. Benji gabbles away all during television broadcasts of the
news, calling each anchorperson intimately by his or her first name,
slamming his fist in anger at the actions of world leaders and wailing
loudly over the deaths of great princesses and humanitarians. Benji can
watch the news, talk steadily, eat popcorn, smoke a cigarette and sing
intermittently with Sybelle's playing, always on key-all more or less
simultaneously.

   If I fall to staring at the rain as if I've seen a ghost, it's Benji
who beats on my arm and cries, "What shall we do, Armand? We have three
splendid movies to see tonight. I'm vexed, I tell you, vexed, because if
we go to any of these, we'll miss Pavarotti at the Met and I'll go
pasty-white with sickness."

   Many times the two of us dress Sybelle, who looks at us as if she
doesn't know what we're doing. We always sit talking with her when she
bathes, because if we don't she's likely to go to sleep in the bathtub,
or simply stay in there for hours, sponging the water over her beautiful
breasts.

   Sometimes the only words she says all night are things like, "Benji,
tie your shoes," or "Armand, he's stolen the silverware. Make him put it
back," or with sudden astonishment, "It's warm, isn't it?"

   I have never told anyone my life story as I've told it to you here
and now, but in conversation with Benji I have caught myself telling him
many things which Marius told me-about human nature, and the history of
the law, about painting and even about music.

   It was in these conversations, more than in anything else, that I
came to realize in the last two months that I was a changed being.

   Some stifling dark terror is gone from me. I do not see history as a
panorama of disasters, as once I think I did; and often I find myself
remembering Marius's generous and beautifully optimistic predictions-

that the world is ever improving; that war, for all the strife we see
around us, has nevertheless gone out of fashion with those in power, and
will soon pass from the arenas of the Third World as it has passed from
the arenas of the West; and we will truly feed the hungry and shelter
the homeless and take care of those who need love.

   With Sybelle, education and discussion are not the substance of our
love. With Sybelle it is intimacy. I don't care if she never says
anything. I don't go inside her mind. She doesn't want anybody to do
that.

   As completely as she accepts me and my nature, I accept her and her
obsession with the Appassionata. Hour after hour, night after night, I
listen to Sybelle play, and with each fresh start I hear the minute
changes of intensity and expression which pour forth in her playing.
Gradually, on account of this, I have become the only listener of whom
Sybelle has ever been conscious.

   Gradually, I have become part of Sybelle's music. I am there with her
and the phrases and movements of the Appassionata. I am there and I am
one who has never asked anything of Sybelle except that she do what she
wants to do, and what she can do so perfectly.

That's all Sybelle ever has to do for me-is what she will.

If or when she wants to rise in "fortune and men's eyes," I'll clear the
way for her. If or when she wants to be alone, she will not see or hear
me. If or when she wants anything, I will get it for her.

   And if or when she loves a mortal man or mortal woman, I'll do what
she wants me to do. I can live in the shadows. Doting on her, I can live
forever in gloom because there is no gloom when I am near her.

   Sybelle often goes with me when I hunt. Sybelle likes to see me feed
and kill. I don't think I have ever allowed a mortal to do that. She
tries to help me dispose of the remains or confuse the evidence of the
cause of death, but I'm very strong and swift and capable at this, so
she is mostly the witness.

   I try to avoid taking Benji on these escapades because he becomes
wildly and childishly excited, and it does him no good. To Sybelle it
simply does nothing.

   There are other things I could tell you-how we handled the details of
her brother's disappearance, how I transferred immense sums of money
into her name and set up the appropriate and unbreakable trust funds for
Benji, how I bought for her a substantial interest in the hotel in which
she lives, and have put into her apartment, which is very huge for a
hotel apartment, several other fine pianos which she enjoys, and how I
have set aside for myself a safe distance from the apartment a lair with
a coffin which is unfindable, unbreachable and indestructible, and to
which I go on occasion, though I am more accustomed to sleeping in the
little chamber they first gave to me, in which velvet curtains have been
fitted tightly over the one window to the airwell.

But the hell with all that.

You know what I want you to know.

   What remains for us but to bring it to the moment, to sunset on this

night when I came here, entering the very den of the vampires with my
brother and with my sister, one on either side to see Lestat at last.

THIS is ALL a little too simple, isn't it? I mean by that, my
transformation from the zealous child who stood on the porch of the
Cathedral to the happy monster making up his mind one spring night in
New York City that it was time to journey south and look in on his old
friend.

You know why I came here.

   Let me begin at the start of this evening. You were there in the
chapel when I arrived.

   You greeted me with undisguised good will, so pleased to see I was
alive and unharmed. Louis almost wept.

 Those others, those raggedy young ones who were clustered about, two
boys, I believe, and a girl, I don't know who they were, and still
don't, only that later they drifted off.

   I was horrified to see him undefended, lying on the floor, and his
mother, Gabrielle, far off in the corner merely staring at him, coldly,
the way she stares at everything and everyone as though she never knew a
human feeling for what it was.

   I was horrified that the young tramps were about, and felt instantly
protective of Sybelle and Benji. I had no fear of their seeing the
classics among us, the legends, the warriors-you, beloved Louis, even
Gabrielle, and certainly not Pandora or Marius, who were all there.

   But I hadn't wanted my children to look on common trash infused with
our blood, and I wondered, arrogantly and vainly perhaps, as I always do
at such moments, how these roguish sophomoric slob vampires ever came to
be. Who made them and why and when?

 At such times, the fierce old Child of Darkness wakes in me, the Coven
Master beneath the Paris Cemetery who decreed when and how the Dark
Blood should be given and, above all, to whom. But that old habit of
authority is fraudulent and just a nuisance at best.

   I hated these hangers-on because they were there looking at Lestat as
though he were a Carnival Curiosity, and I wouldn't have it. I felt a
sudden temper, an urge to destroy.

   But there are no rules among us now that authorize such rash actions.
And who was I to make a mutiny here under your roof? I didn't know you
lived here then, no, but you certainly had custody of the Master of the
Place, and you allowed it, the ruffians, and the three or four more of
them that came shortly after and dared to circle him, none of them, I
noticed, getting any too close.

   Of course everyone was most curious about Sybelle and Benjamin. I
told them quietly to stay directly beside me and not to stray. Sybelle
couldn't get it out of her mind that the piano was so near at hand, and
it would have a whole new sound for her Sonata. As for Benji, he was
striding along like a little Samurai, checking out monsters all around,
with his eyes like saucers though his mouth was very puckered up and
stern and proud.

   The chapel struck me as beautiful. How could it not? The plaster
walls are white and pure, and the ceiling is gently coved, as in the
oldest churches, and there is a deep coved shell where once the altar
stood, which makes a well for sound, so that one footfall there echoes
softly throughout the entire place.

   The stained glass I'd seen brilliantly lighted from the street.
Unfig-ured, it was nevertheless lovely with its vivid colors of blue and
red and yellow, and its simple serpentine designs. I liked the old black
lettering of the mortals long gone in whose memory each window had been
erected. I liked the old plaster statues scattered about, which I had
helped you to clear from the New York apartment and send south.

   I had not looked at them much; I had shielded myself from their glass
eyes as if they were basilisks. But I certainly looked at them now.

   There was sweet suffering St. Rita in her black habit and white
wimple, with the fearful awful sore in her forehead like a third eye.
There was lovely, smiling Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus
with His Crucifix and the bouquet of pink roses in her arms.

   There was St. Teresa of Avila, carved out of wood and finely painted,
with her eyes turned upwards, the mystic, and the feather quill in her
hand that marked her as a Doctor of the Church.

There was St. Louis of France with his royal crown; St. Francis, of
course, in humble brown monk's robes, with his gathering of tamed
animals; and some others whose names I'm ashamed to say I didn't know.

   What struck me more perhaps even than these scattered statues,
standing like so many guardians of an old and sacred history, were the
pictures on the wall that marked Christ's road to Calvary: the Stations
of the Cross. Someone had put them all in the proper order, maybe even
before our coming into the world of this place.

   I divined that they were painted in oil on copper, and they had a
Renaissance style to them, imitative certainly, but one which I find
normal and which I love.

   Immediately, the fear that had been hovering inside me during all my
happy weeks in New York came to the fore. No, it was not fear so much as
it was dread.

 My Lord, I whispered. I turned and looked up at the Face of Christ on
the high Crucifix above Lestat's head.

   This was an excruciating moment. I think the image on Veronica's Veil
overlaid what I saw there in the carved wood. I know it did. I was back
in New York, and Dora was holding up the cloth for us to see.

   I saw His dark beautifully shadowed eyes perfectly fixed on the
cloth, as though part of it but not in any way absorbed by it, and the
dark streaks of His eyebrows and, above His steady unchallenging gaze,
the tricklets of blood from His thorns. I saw His lips partway open as
if He had volumes to speak.

   With a shock, I realized that from far off by the altar steps
Gabrielle had fixed her glacial gray eyes on me, and I locked up my mind
and digested the key. I wouldn't have her touch me or my thoughts. And I
felt a bristling hostility for all those gathered in the room.

   Louis came then. He was so happy that I had not perished. Louis had
something to say. He knew I was concerned and he was anxious about the
presence of the others. He looked his usual ascetic self, got up in
tired black clothes of beautiful cut but impossible dustiness and a
shirt so thin and worn that it seemed an elfin web of threads rather
than true lace and cloth.

   "We let them in because if we don't, they circle like jackals, and
wolves, and won't go away. As it is, they come, they see and they leave
here. You know what they want."

   I nodded. I didn't have the courage to admit to him that I wanted
exactly the same thing. I had never stopped thinking about it, not
really, not for one moment, beneath the grand rhythm of all that had
befallen me since I'd spoken to him on that last night of my old life.

I wanted his blood. I wanted to drink it. Calmly, I let Louis know.

   "He'll destroy you," Louis whispered. He was flushed suddenly with
terror. He looked questioningly at gentle silent Sybelle, who held fast
to my hand, and Benjamin, who was studying him with enthusiastic bright
eyes. "Armand, you can't chance it. One of them got too close. He
smashed the creature. The motion was quick, automatic. But it has an arm
like living stone and he blasted the creature to fragments there on the
floor. Don't go near him, don't try it."

"And the elders, the strong ones, have they never tried?"

   Pandora spoke then. She had been watching us all the while, playing
in the shadows. I'd forgotten how very beautiful she was in a downplayed
and very basic way.

   Her long rich brown hair was combed back, a shadow behind her slender
neck, and she looked glossy and pretty because she had smoothed into her
face a fine dark oil to make herself more passably human. Her eyes were
bold and flaming. She put her hand on me with a woman's liberty. She too
was happy to see me alive.

   "You know what Lestat is," she said pleadingly. "Armand, he's a
furnace of power and no one knows what he might do."

   "But have you never thought of it, Pandora? Has it never even entered
your mind, to drink the blood from his throat and search for the vision
of Christ when you drank it? What if inside him there is the infallible
proof that he drank the blood of God?"

"But Armand," she said. "Christ was never my god."

It was so simple, so shocking, so final.

   She sighed, but only out of concern for me. She smiled. "I wouldn't
know your Christ if He were inside Lestat," she said gently.

   "You don't understand," I said. "Something happened, something
happened to him when we went with this spirit called Memnoch, and he
came back with that Veil. I saw it. I saw the ... power in it."

"You saw the illusion," said Louis kindly.

   "No, I saw the power," I answered. Then in a moment I totally doubted
myself. The long corridors of history wound back and away from me, and I
saw myself plunged into darkness, carrying a single candle, searching
for the ikons I had painted. And the pity of it, the triviality, the
sheer hopelessness of it crushed my soul.

   I realized I had frightened Sybelle and Benji. They had their eyes
fastened on me. They had never seen me as I was now.

   I closed my arms around them both and pulled them towards me. I had
hunted before I'd come to them tonight, to be at my strongest, and I
knew my skin was pleasingly warm. I kissed Sybelle on her pale pink
lips, and then kissed Benji's head.

   "Armand, you vex me, truly you do," said Benji. "You never told me
that you believed in this Veil."

   "And you, little man," I said in a hushed voice, not wishing to make
a spectacle of us to the others. "Did you ever go into the Cathedral and
look at it when it was on display there?"

   "Yes, and I say to you what this great lady said." He shrugged, of
course. "He was never my god."

   "Look at them, prowling," said Louis softly. He was emaciated and
shivering a little. He had neglected his own hunger to be here on guard.
"I should throw them out now, Pandora," he said in a voice that couldn't
have threatened the most timid soul.

   "Let them see what they came for," she said coolly under her breath.
"They may not have so long to enjoy their satisfaction. They make the
world harder for us, and disgrace us, and do nothing for anything living
or dead."

   I thought it a lovely threat. I hoped she would clean out the lot of
them, but I knew of course that many a Child of the Millennia thought
the very same thing about those such as me. And what an impertinent
creature I was to bring, without anyone's permission, my children to see
my friend who lay on the floor.

   "These two are safe with us," Pandora said, obviously reading my
fretting mind. "You realize they are glad to see you, young and old,"
she said making a small gesture to include the entire room. "There are
some who don't want to step out from the shadows, but they know of you.
They didn't want for you to be gone."

   "No, no one wanted it," said Louis rather emotionally. "And like a
dream, you've come back. We all had inklings of it, wild whispers that
you'd been seen in New York, as handsome and vigorous as you ever were.
But I had to lay eyes on you to believe it."

   I nodded in thanks for these kind words. But I was thinking of the
Veil. I looked up at the wooden Christ on the tree again, and then down
at the slumbering figure of Lestat.

   It was then that Marius came. He was trembling. "Unburnt, whole," he
whispered. "My son."

   He had that wretched neglected old gray cloak over his shoulders, but
I didn't notice then. He embraced me at once, which forced my girl and

my boy to step away. They didn't go far, however. I think they were
reassured when they saw me put my arms around him and kiss him several
times on the face and mouth, as we had always done so many years ago. He
was so splendid, so softly full of love.

   "I'll keep these mortals safe if you're determined to try," he said.
He had read the whole script from my heart. He knew I was bound to do
it. "What can I say to prevent you?" he asked.

 I only shook my head. Haste and anticipation wouldn't let me do
anything else. I gave Benji and Sybelle to his care.

 I went over to Lestat and I walked up in front of him, that is, on the
left side of him as he lay there to my right. I knelt down quickly,
surprised at how cold the marble was, forgetting, I suppose, how very
damp it is here in New Orleans and how stealthy the chills can be.

 I knelt with my hands before me on the floor and I looked at him. He
was placid, still, both blue eyes equally clear as if one had never been
torn from his face. He stared through me, as we say, and on and on, and
out of a mind that seemed as empty as a dead chrysalis.

 His hair was mussed and fall of dust. Not even his cold, hateful
Mother had combed it, I supposed, and it infuriated me, but then in a
frosty flash of emotion, she said hissingly:

   "He will not let anyone touch him, Armand." Her distant voice echoed
deeply in the hollow of the chapel. "If you try it, you will soon find
out for yourself."

 I looked up at her. She had her knees drawn up in a careless clasp of
her arms, and her back against the wall. She wore her usual thick and
frayed khaki, the narrow pants and the British safari coat for which she
was more or less famous, stained from the wild outdoors, her blond hair
as yellow and bright as his, braided and lying down her back.

   She got up suddenly, angrily, and she came towards me letting her
plain leather boots echo sharply and disrespectfully on the floor.

   "What makes you think the spirits he saw were gods?" she demanded.
"What makes you think the pranks of any of those lofty beings who play
with us are any more than capers, and we no more than beasts, from the
lowest to the very highest that walk the Earth?" She stood a few feet
from him. She folded her arms. "He tempted something or something. That
entity could not resist him. And what was the sum of it? Tell me. You
ought to know."

"I don't," I said in a soft voice. "I wish you would leave me alone."

   "Oh, do you, well, let me tell you what was the sum of it. A young
woman, Dora by name, a leader of souls as they call it, who preached for
the good that comes of tending to the weak who need it, was thrown off
course! That was the sum of it-her preachings, grounded in charity and
sung to a new tune so that people could hear them, were obliterated by
the bloody face of a bloody god."

 My eyes filled with tears. I hated that she saw it so clearly, but I
couldn't answer her and I couldn't shut her up. I rose to my feet.

   "Back to the cathedrals they flocked," she said scornfully, "the lot

of them, and back to an archaic and ludicrous and utterly useless
theology which it seems that you have plainly forgot."

   "I know it well enough," I said softly. "You make me miserable. What
do I do to you? I kneel beside him, that's all."

"Oh, but you mean to do more, and your tears offend me," she said.

   I heard someone behind me speak out to her. I thought perhaps it was
Pandora, but I was unsure. In a sudden evanescent flash I was aware of
all those who made a recreation of my misery, but then I didn't care.

   "What do you expect, Armand?" she asked me cunningly and mercilessly.
Her narrow oval face was so like his and yet so not. He had never been
so divorced from feeling, never so abstract in his anger as she was now.
"You think you'll see what he saw, or that the Blood of Christ will
still be there for you to savor on your tongue? Shall I quote the
catechism for you?"

   "No need, Gabrielle," I said again in a meek voice. My tears were
blinding me.

   "The bread and wine are the Body and Blood as long as they remain
that species, Armand; but when it's bread and wine no more then no more
is it Body and Blood. So what do you think of the Blood of Christ in
him, that it has somehow retained its magical power, despite the engine
of his heart that devours the blood of mortals as if it were mere air
that he breathed ?"

 I didn't answer. I thought quietly in my soul. It was not the bread
and the wine; it was His Blood, His Sacred Blood and He gave it on the
road to Calvary, and to this being who lies here.

   I swallowed hard on my grief and my fury that she had made me commit
myself in these terms. I wanted to look back for my poor Sybelle and
Benji, for I knew by their scent they were still in the room.

Why didn't Marius take them away! Oh, but it was plain enough. Marius
wanted to see what I meant to do.

   "Don't tell me," Gabrielle said slurringly, "that it's a matter of
faith." She sneered and shook her head. "You come like doubting Thomas
to thrust your bloody fangs in the very wound."

   "Oh, stop, please, I beg you," I whispered. I put up my hands. "Let
me try, and let him hurt me, and then be satisfied, and turn away."

   I only meant it as I said it, and I felt no power in it, only
meekness and unutterable sadness.

   But it struck her hard, and for the first time her face became
absolutely and totally sorrowful, and she too had moist and reddening
eyes, and her lips even pressed together as she looked at me.

   "Poor lost child, Armand," she said. "I am so sorry for you. I was so
glad that you had survived the sun."

   "Then that means I can forgive you, Gabrielle," I said, "for all the
cruel things you've said to me."

   She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully, and then slowly nodded in
silent assent. Then putting up her hands, she backed away without a
sound and took up her old station, sitting on the altar step, her head
leaning back against the Communion rail. She brought up her knees as
before, and she merely looked at me, her face in shadow.

   I waited. She was still and quiet, and not a sound came from the
occupants scattered about the chapel. I could hear the steady beat of
Sybelle's heart and the anxious breath of Benji, but they were many
yards away.

   I looked down on Lestat, who was unchanged, his hair fallen as
before, a little over his left eye. His right arm was out, and his
fingers curling upwards, and there came from him not the slightest
movement, not even a breath from his lungs or a sigh from his pores.

   I knelt down beside him again. I reached out, and without flinching
or hesitating, I brushed his hair back from his face.

   I could feel the shock in the room. I heard the sighs, the gasps from
the others. But Lestat himself didn't stir.

   Slowly, I brushed his hair more tenderly, and I saw to my own mute
shock one of my tears fall right onto his face.

   It was red yet watery and transparent and it appeared to vanish as it
moved down the curve of his cheekbone and into the natural hollow below.

I slipped down closer, turning on my side, facing him, my hand still on
his hair. I stretched my legs out behind me, and alongside of him, and I
lay there, letting my face rest right on his outstretched arm.

   Again there came the shocked gasps and sighs, and I tried to keep my
heart absolutely pure of pride and pure of anything but love.

   It was not differentiated or defined, this love, but only love, the
love I could feel perhaps for one I killed or one I succored, or one
whom I passed in the street, or for one whom I knew and valued as much
as him.

   All the burden of his sorrows seemed unimaginable to me, and in my
mind a notion of it expanded to include the tragedy of all of us, those
who kill to live, and thrive on death even as the very Earth decrees it,
and are cursed with consciousness to know it, and know by what inches
all things that feed us slowly anguish and at last are no more. Sorrow.
Sorrow so much greater than guilt, and so much more ready for
accounting, sorrow too great for the wide world.

   I climbed up. I rested my weight on my elbow, and I sent my right
fingers slipping gently across his neck. Slowly I pressed my lips to his
whitened silky skin and breathed in the old unmistakable taste and scent
of him, something sweet and undefinable and utterly personal, something
made up of all his physical gifts and those given him afterwards, and I
pressed my sharp eyeteeth through his skin to taste his blood.

   There was no chapel then for me, or outraged sighs or reverential
cries. I heard nothing, and yet knew what was all around. I knew it as
if the substantial place was but a phantasm, for what was real was his
blood.

   It was as thick as honey, deep and strong of taste, a syrup for the
very angels.

   I groaned aloud drinking it, feeling the searing heat of it, so
unlike to any human blood. With each slow beat of his powerful heart
there came another small surge of it, until my mouth was filled and my
throat swallowed without my bidding, and the sound of his heart grew
louder, ever louder, and a reddish shimmer filled my vision, and I saw
through this shimmer a great swirling dust.

   A wretched dreary din rose slowly out of nothingness, commingled with
an acid sand that stung my eyes. It was a desert place, all right, and
old and full of rank and common things, of sweat and filth and death.
The din was voices crying out, and echoing up the close and grimy walls.
Voices crowded upon voices, taunts and jeers and cries of horror, and
gruff riffs of foul indifferent gossip rushing over the most poignant
and terrible cries of outrage and alarm.

 Against sweating bodies I was pressed, struggling, the slanting sun
burning on my outstretched arm. I understood the babble all around me,
the ancient tongue hollered and wailed in my ears as I fought to get
ever closer to the source of all the wet and ugly commotion that swamped
me and tried to hold me back.

 It seemed they'd crush the very life out of me, these ragged, rough-
skinned men and veiled women in their coarse homespun, thrusting elbows
at me and stepping on my feet. I couldn't see what lay before me. I
flung my arms out, deafened by the cries and the wicked boiling
laughter, and suddenly, as if by decree, the crowd parted, and I beheld
the lurid masterpiece itself.

 He stood in His torn and bloody white robe, this very Figure whose
Face Fd seen imprinted into the fibers of the Veil. Arms bound up with
thick uneven iron chains to the heavy and monstrous crossbeam of His
crucifix, He hunched beneath it, hair pouring down on either side of His
bruised and lacerated face. The blood from the thorns flowed into His
open and unflinching eyes.

 He looked at me, quite startled, even faintly amazed. He stared with
wide and open gaze as if the multitude didn't surround Him, and a whip
did not crack over His very back and then His bowed head. He stared past
the tangle of his clotted hair and from beneath His raw and bleeding
lids.

"Lord!" I cried.

 I must have reached out for Him, for those were my hands, my smallish
and white hands that I saw! I saw them struggling to reach His Face.

"Lord!" I cried again.

 And back He stared at me, unmoving, eyes meeting my eyes, hands
dangling from the iron chains and mouth dripping with blood.

   Suddenly a fierce and terrible blow struck me. It pitched me forward.
His Face filled all my sight. Before my eyes it was the very measure of
all that I could possibly see-His soiled and broken skin, the wetted,
darkened tangle of His eyelashes, the great bright orbs of His dark-
pupiled eyes.

   Closer and closer it came, the blood flowing down and into His thick
eyebrows, and dripping down His gaunt cheeks. His mouth opened. A sound
came out of Him. It was a sigh at first and then a dull rising breath
that grew louder and louder as His Face became even larger, losing its
very lineaments, and became the sum of all its swimming colors, the
sound now a positive and deafening roar.

  In terror, I cried out. I was thrust back. Yet even as I saw His
familiar Figure and the ancient frame of His Face with its Thorny Crown,
the Face grew ever larger and larger and utterly indistinct and seemed
again to bear down on me, and then suddenly to suffocate all my face
with its immense and total weight.

I screamed. I was helpless, weightless, unable to draw breath.

   I screamed as IVe never in all my miserable years screamed, the
scream so loud that it shut out the roar that filled my ears, but the
vision pressed on, a great driving inescapable mass that had been His
Face.

   "Oh, Lord!" I screamed with all the power of my burning lungs. The
very wind rushed in my ears.

   Something struck the back of my head so hard that it cracked my
skull. I heard the crack. I felt the wet splash of blood.

   I opened my eyes. I was staring forward. I was far across the chapel,
sprawled against the plaster wall, my legs out in front of me, my arms
dangling, my head on fire with the pain of the great concussion where I
had struck the wall.

Lestat had never moved. I knew he hadn't.

No one had to tell me. It was not he who threw me back.

  I tumbled over onto my face, pulling my arm up under my head. I knew
there were feet gathered all around me, that Louis was near, and that
even Gabrielle had come, and I knew too that Marius was taking Sybelle
and Benjamin away.

   I could hear in the ringing silence only Benjamin's small sharp
mortal voice. "But what happened to him. What happened? The blond one
didn't hit him. I saw it. It didn't happen. He didn't-."

  My face hidden, my face soaked with tears, I covered my head with my
trembling hands, my bitter smile unseen, though my sobs were heard.

   I cried and cried for a long time, and then gradually, as I knew it
would, my scalp began to heal. The evil blood mounted to the surface of
my skin and, tingling there, did its evil ministrations, sewing up the
flesh like a little laser beam from Hell.

   Someone gave me a napkin. It had the faint scent of Louis on it, but
I couldn't be sure. It was a long long time, perhaps even so long as an
hour before I finally clasped it and wiped all the blood off my face.

It was another hour, an hour of quiet and of people respectfully
slipping away, before I turned over and rose and sat back against the
wall. My head no longer hurt, the wound was gone, the blood that had
dried there would soon flake away.

I stared at him for a long and quiet time.

   I was cold and solitary and raw. Nothing anyone murmured penetrated
my hearing. I did not note the gestures or the movements around me.

   In the sanctum of my mind I went over, mostly slowly, exactly, what I
had seen, what I had heard-all that I've told you here.

I rose finally. I went back to him and I looked down at him.

   Gabrielle said something to me. It was harsh and mean. I didn't
actually hear it. I heard only the sound of it, the cadence, that is, as
if her old French, so familiar to me, was a language I didn't know.

I knelt down and I kissed his hair.

   He didn't move. He didn't change. I wasn't the slightest bit afraid
that he would, or hopeful that he would either. I kissed him one more
time on the side of his face, and then I got up, and I wiped my hands on
the napkin which I still had, and I went out.

   I think I stood in a torpor for a long while, and then something came
back to me, something Dora had said a long long time ago, about a child
having died in the attic, about a little ghost and about old clothes.

   Grasping that, clutching it tight, I managed to propel myself towards
the stairs.

   It was there that I met you a short time afterwards. Now you know,
for better or worse, what I did or didn't see.

   And so my symphony is finished. Let me write my name to it. When
you're finished with your copying, I will give my transcript to Sybelle.
And Benji too perhaps. And you may do with the rest what you will.

THIS is NO EPILOGUE. It is the last chapter to a tale I thought was
finished. I write it in my own hand. It will be brief, for I have no
drama left me and must manipulate with the utmost care the bare bones of
the tale.

   Perhaps in some later time the proper words will come to me to deepen
my depiction of what happened, but for now to record is all that I can
do.

   I did not leave the convent after I inscribed my name to the copy
which David had so faithfully written out. It was too late.

   The night had spent itself in language, and I had to retire to one of
the secret brick chambers of the place which David showed me, a place
where Lestat had once been imprisoned, and there sprawled on the floor
in perfect darkness, overexcited by all that I'd told David, and, more
completely exhausted than I'd ever been, I went into immediate sleep
with the rise of the sun.

   At twilight, I rose, straightened out my clothes and returned to the
chapel. I knelt down and gave Lestat a kiss of unreserved affection,
just as I had the night before. I took no notice of anyone and did not
even know who was there.

   Taking Marius at his word, I walked away from the convent, in a wash
of early evening violet light, my eyes drifting trustingly over the
flowers, and I listened for the chords of Sybelle's Sonata to lead me to
the proper house.

   Within seconds I heard the music, the distant but rapid phrases of
the Allegro assai, or the First Movement, of Sybelle's familiar song.

   It was played with an unusual ringing preciseness, indeed, a new
languid cadence which gave it a powerful and ruby-red authority which I
immediately loved.

   So I hadn't scared my little girl out of her mind. She was well and
prospering and perhaps falling in love with the drowsy humid loveliness
of New Orleans as so many of us have.

   I sped at once to the location, and found myself standing, only a
little mussed by the wind, in front of a huge three-story redbrick house
in Metairie, a countrified suburb of New Orleans which is actually very
close to the city, with a feel that can be miraculously remote.

   The giant oaks which Marius described were all around this new
American mansion, and, as he had promised, all his French doors of
shining clean panes were open to the early breeze.

   The grass was long and soft beneath my shoes, and a splendid light,
so very precious to Marius, poured forth from every window as did the
music of the Appassionata now, which was just moving with exceptional
grace into the Second Movement, Andante con motto, which promises to be
a tame segment of the work but quickly works itself into the same
madness as all the rest.

   I stopped in my tracks to listen to it. I had never heard the notes
quite as limpid and translucent, quite as flashing and exquisitely
distinct. I tried for sheer pleasure to divine the differences between
this performance and so many I'd heard in the past. They were all
different, magical and profoundly affecting, but this was passing
spectacular, helped in slight measure by the immense body of what I knew
to be a concert grand.

   For a moment, a misery swept over me, a terrible, gripping memory of
what I'd seen when I drank Lestat's blood the night before. I let myself
relive it, as we say so innocently, and then with a positive blush of
pleasant shock, I realized that I didn't have to tell anyone about it,
that it was all dictated to David and that when he gave me my copies, I
could entrust them to whomever I loved, who would ever want to know what
I'd seen.

   As for myself, I wouldn't try to figure it out. I couldn't. The
feeling was too strong that whom I had seen on the road to Calvary,
whether He was real or a figment of my own guilty heart, had not wanted
me to see Him and had monstrously turned me away. Indeed the feeling of
rejection was so total that I could scarce believe that I had managed to
describe it to David.

   I had to get the thoughts out of my mind. I banished all
reverberations of this experience and let myself fall into Sybelle's
music again, merely standing under the oaks, with the eternal river
breeze, which can reach you anywhere in this place, cooling me and
soothing me and making me feel that the Earth itself was filled with

irrepressible beauty, even for someone such as I.

   The music of the Third Movement built to its most brilliant climax,
and I thought my heart would break.

   It was only then, as the final bars were played out, that I realized
something which should have been obvious to me from the start.

   It wasn't Sybelle playing this music. It couldn't be. I knew every
nuance of Sybelle's interpretations. I knew her modes of expression; I
knew the tonal qualities that her particular touch invariably produced.
Though her interpretations were infinitely spontaneous, nevertheless I
knew her music, as one knows the writing of another or the style of a
painter's work. This wasn't Sybelle.

   And then the real truth dawned on me. It was Sybelle, but Sybelle was
no longer Sybelle.

For a second I couldn't believe it. My heart stopped in my chest.

   Then I walked into the house, a steady furious walk that would have
stopped for nothing but to find the truth of what I believed.

   In an instant I saw it with my own eyes. In a splendid room, they
were gathered together, the beautiful lithe figure of Pandora in a gown
of brown silk, girdled at the waist in the old Grecian style, Marius in
a light velvet smoking jacket over silk trousers, and my children, my
beautiful children, radiant Benji in his white gown, dancing barefoot
and wildly around the room with his fingers flung out as if to grasp the
air in them, and Sybelle, my gorgeous Sybelle, with her arms bare too in
a dress of deep rose silk, at the piano, her long hair swept back over
her shoulders, just striding into the First Movement again.

All of them vampires, every one.

   I clenched my teeth hard, and covered my mouth lest my roars wake the
world. I roared and roared into my collapsed hands.

   I cried out the single defiant syllable No, No, No, over and over
again. I could say nothing else, scream nothing else, do nothing else.

I cried and cried.

   I bit down so hard with my teeth that my jaw ached, and my hands
shuddered like wings of a bird that wouldn't let me shut up my mouth
tight enough, and once again the tears streamed out of my eyes as
thickly as they had when I kissed Lestat.

No, No, No, No!

Then suddenly I flung out my hands, coiling them into fists, and the
roar would have got loose, it would have burst from me like a raging
stream, but Marius took hold of me with great force and flung me against
his chest and buried my face against himself.

   I struggled to get free. I kicked at him with all of my strength, and
I beat at him with my fists.

"How could you do it!" I roared.

   His hands enclosed my head in a hopeless trap, and his lips kept
covering me with kisses I hated and detested and fought off with
desperate flinging gestures.

"How could you? How dare you? How could you?"

   At last I gained enough leverage to smash his face with blow after
blow.

   But what good did it do me? How weak and meaningless were my fists
against his strength. How helpless and foolish and small were my
gestures, and he stood there, bearing it all, his face unspeakably sad,
and his own eyes dry yet full of caring.

   "How could you do it, how could you do it!" I demanded. I would not
cease.

   But suddenly Sybelle rose from the piano, and with her arms out ran
to me. And Benji, who had been watching all the while, rushed to me
also, and they imprisoned me gently in their tender arms.

   "Oh, Armand, don't be angry, don't be, don't be sad," Sybelle cried
softly against my ear. "Oh, my magnificent Armand, don't be sad, don't
be. Don't be cross. We're with you forever."

   "Armand, we are with you! He did the magic," cried Benji. "We didn't
have to be born from black eggs, you Dybbuk, to tell us such a tale!
Armand, we will never die now, we will never be sick, and never hurt and
never afraid again." He jumped up and down with glee and spun in another
mirthful circle, astonished and laughing at his new vigor, that he could
leap so high and with such grace. "Armand, we are so happy."

   "Oh, yes, please," cried Sybelle softly in her deeper gentler voice.
"I love you so much, Armand, I love you so very very much. We had to do
it. We had to. We had to do it, to always and forever be with you."

   My fingers hovered about her, wanting to comfort her, and then, as
she ground her forehead desperately into my neck, hugging me tight
around the chest, I couldn't not touch her, couldn't not embrace her,
couldn't not assure her.

   "Armand, I love you, I adore you, Armand, I live only for you, and
now with you always," she said.

   I nodded, I tried to speak. She kissed my tears. She began to kiss
them rapidly and desperately. "Stop it, stop crying, don't cry," she
kept saying in her urgent low whisper. "Armand, we love you."

   "Armand, we are so happy!" cried Benji. "Look, Armand, look! We can
dance together now to her music. We can do everything together. Armand,
we have hunted already." He dashed up to me and bent his knees, poised
to spring with excitement as if to emphasize his point. Then he sighed
and flung out his arms to me again, "Ah, poor Armand, you are all wrong,
all filled with wrong dreams. Armand, don't you see?"

   "I love you," I whispered in a tiny voice into Sybelle's ear. I
whispered it again, and then my resistance broke completely, and I
crushed her gently to me and with rampant fingers felt her silky white
skin and the zinging fineness of her shining hair.

   Still holding her to me, I whispered, "Don't tremble, I love you, I
love you."

   I clasped Benji to me with my left hand. "And you, scamp, you can
tell me all of it in time. Just let me hold you now. Let me hold you."

   I was shivering. I was the one shivering. They enclosed me again with
all their tenderness, seeking to keep me warm.

   Finally, patting them both, taking my leave of them with kisses, I
shrank away and fell down exhausted into a large old velvet chair.

   My head throbbed and I felt my tears coming again, but with all my
force I swallowed my tears for their sake. I had no choice.

   Sybelle had gone back to the piano, and striking the keys she began
the Sonata again. This time she sang out the notes in a beautiful low
monosyllabic soprano, and Benji began dancing again, whirling, and
prancing, and stomping with his bare feet, in lovely keeping with
Sybelle's time.

   I sat forward with my head in my hands. I wanted my hair to come down
and hide me from all eyes, but for all its thickness it was only a head
of hair.

   I felt a hand on my shoulder and I stiffened, but I could not say a
word, lest I'd start crying again and cursing with all my might. I was
silent.

"I don't expect you to understand," he said under his breath.

   I sat up. He was beside me, seated on the arm of the chair. He looked
down at me.

   I made my face pleasant, all smiles even, and my voice so velvet and
placid that no one could have thought I was talking to him of anything
but love.

   "How could you do it? Why did you do it? Do you hate me so much?
Don't lie to me. Don't tell me stupid things that you know I will never,
never believe. Don't lie to me for Pandora's sake or their sake. I'll
care for them and love them forever. But don't lie. You did it for
vengeance, didn't you, Master, you did it for hate?"

   "How could I?" he asked in the same voice, expressive of pure love,
and it seemed the very genuine voice of love talking to me from his
sincere and pleading face. "If ever I did anything for love, I have done
this for it. I did it for love and for you. I did it for all the wrongs
done you, and the loneliness you've suffered, and the horrors that the
world put upon you when you were too young and too untried to know how
to fight them and then too vanquished to wage a battle with a full
heart. I did it for you."

   "Oh, you lie, you lie in your heart," I said, "if not with your
tongue. You did it for spite, and you have just revealed it all too
plainly to me. You did it for spite because I wasn't the fledgling you
wanted to make of me. I wasn't the clever rebel who could stand up to
Santino and his band of monsters, and I was the one, after all those
centuries, that disappointed you yet again and horribly because I went
into the sun after I saw the Veil. That's why you did it. You did it for

vengeance and you did it for bitterness and you did it for
disappointment, and the crowning horror is you don't know it yourself.
You couldn't bear it that my heart swelled to burst when I saw His Face
on the Veil. You couldn't bear it that this child you plucked from the
Venetian brothel, and nursed with your own blood, this child you taught
from your own books and with your hands, cried out to Him when he saw
His Face on the Veil."

   "No, that is so very very far from the truth it breaks my heart." He
shook his head. And tearless and white as he was, his face was a perfect
picture of sorrow as though it was a painting he had done with his own
hands. "I did it because they love you as no one has ever loved you, and
they are free and have within their generous hearts a deep cunning which
doesn't shrink from you and all that you are. I did it because they were
forged in the same furnace as myself, the two of them, keen to reason
and strong to endure. I did it because madness had not defeated her, and
poverty and ignorance had not defeated him. I did it because they were
your chosen ones, utterly perfect, and I knew that you would not do it,
and they would come to hate you for this, hate you, as you once hated me
for withholding it, and you would lose them to alienation and death
before you would give in.

   "They are yours now. Nothing separates you. And it's my blood,
ancient and powerful, that's filled them to the brim with power so that
they can be your worthy companions and not the pale shadow of your soul
which Louis always was.

   "There is no barrier of Master and Fledgling between you, and you can
learn the secrets of their hearts as they learn the secrets of yours."

I wanted to believe it.

   I wanted to believe it so badly that I got up and left him, and
making the gentlest smile at my Benjamin and kissing her silkily in
passing, I withdrew to the garden and stood alone beneath and between a
pair of massive oaks.

   Their thunderous roots rose up out of the ground, forming hillocks of
hard dark blistering wood. I rested my feet in this rocky place and my
head against the nearer of the two trees.

   The branches came down and made a veil for me, as I had wanted the
hair of my own head to do. I felt shielded and safe in the shadows. I
was quiet in my heart, but my heart was broken and my mind was
shattered, and I had only to look through the open doorway into the
brilliant glory of the light at my two white vampire angels for me to
start crying again.

   Marius stood for a long time in a distant door. He didn't look at me.
And when I looked to Pandora, I saw her coiled up as if to defend
herself from some terrible pain-possibly only our quarrel-in another
large old velvet chair.

   Finally Marius drew himself up and came towards me, and I think it
took a force of will for him to do it. He seemed suddenly just a little
angry and even proud.

I didn't give a damn.

   He stood before me but he said nothing, and it seemed he was there to

face whatever I had yet to say.

   "Why didn't you let them have their lives!" I said. "You, of all
people, whatever you felt for me and my follies, why didn't you let them
have what nature gave them? Why did you interfere?"

   He didn't answer, but I didn't allow for it. Softening my tone so as
not to alarm them, I went on.

   "In my darkest times," I said, "it was always your words that upheld
me. Oh, I don't mean during those centuries when I was in bondage to a
warped creed and morbid delusion. I mean long afterwards, after I had
come out of the cellar, at Lestat's challenge, and I read what Lestat
wrote of you, and then heard you for myself. It was you, Master, who let
me see what little I could of the marvelous bright world unfolding
around me in ways I couldn't have imagined in the land or time in which
I was born."

   I couldn't contain myself. I stopped for breath and to listen to her
music, and realizing how lovely it was, how plaintive and expressive and
newly mysterious, I almost cried again. But I couldn't allow such to
happen. I had a great deal more to say, or so I thought.

   "Master, it was you who said we were moving in a world where the old
religions of superstition and violence were dying away. It was you who
said we lived in a time when evil no longer aspired to any necessary
place. Remember it, Master, you told Lestat that there was no creed or
code that could justify our existence, for men knew now what was real
evil, and real evil was hunger, and want, and ignorance and war, and
cold. You said those things, Master, far more elegantly and fully than I
could ever say them, but it was on this great rational basis that you
argued, you, with the worst of us, for the sanctity and the precious
glory of this natural and human world. It was you who championed the
human soul, saying it had grown in depth and feeling, that men no longer
lived for the glamour of war but knew the finer things which had once
been the forte only of the richest, and could now be had by all. It was
you who said that a new illumination, one of reason and ethics and
genuine compassion, had come again, after dark centuries of bloody
religion, to give forth not only its light but its warmth."

   "Stop, Armand, don't say any more," he said. He was gentle but very
stern. "I remember those words. I remember all of them. But I don't
believe those things anymore."

   I was stunned. I was stunned by the awesome simplicity of this
disavowal. It was sweeping beyond my imagination, and yet I knew him
well enough to know that he meant every word. He looked at me steadily.

   "I believed it once, yes. But you see, it was not a belief based on
reason and on observation of mankind as I told myself it was. It was
never that, and I came to realize it and when I did, when I saw it for
what it was-a blind desperate irrational prejudice-I felt it suddenly
and completely collapse.

   "Armand, I said those things because I had to hold them to be true.
They were their own creed, the creed of the rational, the creed of the
atheistic, the creed of the logical, the creed of the sophisticated
Roman Senator who must turn a blind eye to the nauseating realities of
the world around him, because if he were to admit what he saw in the
wretchedness of his brothers and sisters, he would go mad."

   He drew in his breath and continued, turning his back to the bright
room as if to shield the fledglings from the heat of his words, as
surely as I wanted him to do it.

   "I know history, I read it as others read their Bibles, and I will
not be satisfied until I have unearthed all stories that are written and
know-able, and cracked the codes of all cultures that have left me any
tantalizing evidence that I might pry loose from earth or stone or
papyrus or clay.

   "But I was wrong in my optimism, I was ignorant, as ignorant as I
accused others of being, and refusing to see the very horrors that
surrounded me, all the worse in this century, this reasonable century,
than ever before in the world.

   "Look back, child, if you care to, if you would argue the point. Look
back to golden Kiev, which you knew only in songs after the raging
Mongols had burnt its Cathedrals and slaughtered its population like so
much cattle, as they did all through the Kiev Rus for two hundred years.
Look back to the chronicles of all Europe and see the wars waged
everywhere, in the Holy Land, in the forests of France or Germany, up
and down the fertile soil of England, yes, blessed England, and in every
Asian corner of the globe.

   Oh, why did I deceive myself for so long? Did I not see those Russian
grasslands, those burnt cities. Why, all of Europe might have fallen to
Ghenghis Khan. Think of the great English Cathedrals torn down to rubble
by the arrogant King Henry.

   Think of the books of the Mayas heaved into the flames by Spanish
priests. Incas, Aztecs, Olmec-peoples of all nations ground to
oblivion-.

   "It's horrors, horrors upon horrors, and it always was, and I can
pretend no longer. When I see millions gassed to death for the whims of
an Austrian madman, when I see whole African tribes massacred till the
rivers are stuffed with their bloated bodies, when I see rank starvation
claim whole countries in an age of gluttonous plenty, I can believe all
these platitudes no more.

   "I don't know what single event it was that destroyed my self-
deception. I don't know what horror it was that ripped the mask from my
lies. Was it the millions who starved in the Ukraine, imprisoned in it
by their own dictator, or the thousands after who died from the nuclear
poisoning spewing into the skies over the grasslands, unprotected by the
same governing powers who had starved them before? Was it the
monasteries of noble Nepal, citadels of meditation and grace that had
stood for thousands of years, older even than myself and all my
philosophy, destroyed by an army of greedy grasping militarists who
waged war without quarter upon monks in their saffron robes, and
priceless books which they heaved into the fire, and ancient bells which
they melted down no more to call the gentle to prayer? And this, this
within two decades of this very hour, while the nations of the West
danced in their discos and swilled their liquor, lamenting in casual
tones for the poor sad fate of the distant Dalai Lama, and turning the
television dial.

   "I don't know what it was. Perhaps it was all the millions-Chinese,
Japanese, Cambodian, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Kurdish, oh,

God, the litany goes on without end. I have no faith, I have no
optimism, I have no firm conviction in the ways of reason or ethics. I
have no reproof for you as you stand on the Cathedral steps with your
arms out to your all-knowing and all-perfect God.

   "I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly
enough and never will. But this you taught me as much as any other I've
ever known, that love is necessary, as much as rain to the flowers and
the trees, and food to the hungry child, and blood to the starving
thirsting predators and scavengers that we are. Love we need, and love
can make us forget and forgive all savagery, as perhaps nothing else
can.

   "And so I took them out of their fabulous promising modern world with
its diseased and desperate masses. I took them out and gave them the
only might I possess, and I did it for you. I gave them time, time
perhaps to find an answer which those mortals living now may never know.

   "That was it, all of it. And I knew you would cry, and I knew you
would suffer, but I knew you would have them and love them when it was
finished, and I knew that you needed them desperately. So there you are
... joined now with the serpent and the lion and the wolf, and far
superior to the worst of men who have proved themselves in this time to
be colossal monsters, and free to feed with care upon a world of evil
that can swallow every bit of pruning they care to do."

A silence fell between us.

I thought for a long while, rather than plunge into my words.

   Sybelle had stopped her playing, and I knew that she was concerned
for me and needed me, I could feel it, feel the strong thrust of her
vampire soul. I would have to go to her and soon.

But I took my time to say a few more words:

   "You should have trusted them, Master, you should have let them have
their chance. Whatever you thought of the world, you should have let
them have their time with it. It was their world and their time."

   He shook his head as though he was disappointed in me, and a little
weary, and as he had resolved all these matters long ago in his mind,
perhaps before I had even appeared last night, he seemed willing to let
it all go.

   "Armand, you are my child forever," he said with great dignity. "All
that is magical and divine in me is bounded by the human and always
was."

   "You should have let them have their hour. No love of me should have
written their death warrant, or their admission to our strange and
inexplicable world. We may be no worse than humans in your estimation,
but you could have kept your counsel. You could have let them alone."

It was enough.

   Besides, David had appeared. He had a copy already of the transcript
we'd labored on, but this was not his concern. He approached us slowly,
announcing his presence obviously to give us the chance to become
silent, which we did.

   I turned to him, unable to restrain myself. "Did you know this was to
happen? Did you know when it did?"

"No, I did not," he said solemnly.

"Thank you," I said.

   "They need you, your young ones," David said. "Marius may be the
Maker but they are utterly yours."

"I know," I said. "I'm going. I'll do what I'm bound to do."

 Marius put his hand out and touched my shoulder. I realized suddenly
that he was truly on the verge of losing his self-control.

When he spoke his voice was tremulous and lustrous with feeling.

He hated the storm inside himself and he was overcome by my sorrow. I
knew this plainly enough. It gave me no satisfaction at all.

   "You despise me now, and perhaps you're right. I knew you would weep,
but in a very profound way, I misjudged you. I didn't realize something
about you. Perhaps I never have."

"What's that, Master," I said with acidic drama.

   "You loved them selflessly," he whispered. "For all their strange
faults, and wild evil, they were not compromised for you. You loved them
perhaps more respectfully than I... than I ever loved you."

He seemed so amazed.

   I could only nod. I wasn't so sure he was right. My need for them had
never been tested, but I didn't want to tell him so.

   "Armand," he said. "You know you can stay here as long as you like."

   "Good, because I just might," I said. "They love it, and I'm weary.
So thank you very much for that."

   "But one thing more," he went on, "and I mean this with all my
heart."

"What is it, Master?" I said.

   David stood by, and I was happy for that, for it seemed to act as a
certain curb upon my tears.

   "I honestly don't know the answer to this, and I ask you in
humility," Marius said. "When you saw the Veil, what was it you really
saw? Oh, I don't mean was it Christ, or was it God, or was it a miracle.
What I mean is this. There was the face of a being, drenched in blood,
who had given birth to a religion guilty of more wars and more cruelty
than any creed the world has ever known. Don't be angry with me, please,
just explain to me. What was it you saw? Was it only a magnificent
reminder of the ikons you once painted? Or was it truly something
drenched in love and not in blood? Tell me. If it was love and not
blood, I would honestly like to know."

   "You ask an old and simple question," I said, "and from where I stand
you don't really know a thing. You wonder how He could have been my
Lord, given this world as you describe it, and knowing what you know of
the Gospels and the Testaments printed in His name. You wonder how I
could have believed all that because you don't believe it, isn't that
so?"

   He nodded. "Yes, I do wonder. Because I know you. And I know that
faith is something which you simply do not have."

I was startled. But instantly I knew he was right.

I smiled. I felt a sort of tragic thrilling happiness suddenly.

  "Well, I see what you mean," I said. "And I'll tell you my answer. I
saw Christ. A kind of bloody light. A personality, a human, a presence
that I felt I knew. And He wasn't the Lord God Father Almighty and He
wasn't the maker of the universe and the whole world. And He wasn't the
Savior or the Redeemer for sins inscribed on my soul before I was born.
He wasn't the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and He wasn't the
Theologian expounding from the Holy Mount. He wasn't those things for
me. Maybe for others, but not forme."

  "But who was He, then, Armand?" David asked. "I have your story, full
of marvels and suffering, yet I don't know. What was the concept of the
Lord when you spoke the word?"

   "Lord," I repeated it. "It doesn't mean what you think. It's spoken
with too much intimacy and too much warmth. It's like a secret and
sacred name. Lord." I paused, and then continued:

  "He is the Lord, yes, but only because He is the symbol of something
infinitely more accessible, something infinitely more meaningful than a
ruler or king or lord can ever be."

  Again, I hesitated, wanting to find the right words since they were so
sincere.

  "He was . . . my brother" I said. "Yes. That is what He was, my
brother, and the symbol of all brothers, and that is why He was the
Lord, and that is why His core is simply love. You scorn it. You look
askance at what I say. But you don't grasp the complexity of what He
was. It's easy to feel, perhaps, but not so easy to really see. He was
another man like me. And maybe for many of us, millions upon millions,
that's all He's ever been! We're all somebody's sons and daughters and
He was somebody's son. He was human, whether He was God or not, and He
was suffering and He was doing it for things He thought were purely and
universally good. And that meant that His blood might as well have been
my blood too. Why, it had to be. And maybe that is the very source of
His magnificance for thinkers such as me. You said I had no faith. I
don't. Not in titles or in legends or in hierarchies made by other
beings like ourselves. He didn't make a hierarchy, not really. He was
the very thing. I saw in Him magnificence for simple reasons. There was
flesh and blood to what He was! And it could be bread and wine to feed
the whole Earth. You don't get it. You can't. Too many lies about Him
swim in your ken. I saw Him before I heard so much about Him. I saw Him
when I looked at the ikons in my house, and when I painted Him long
before I even knew all His names. I can't get Him out of my head. I
never have. I never will."

I had no more to say.

   They were very amazed but not particularly respecting, pondering the
words in all the wrong ways, perhaps, I couldn't absolutely know. It
didn't matter what they felt anyway. It wasn't really so good that they
had asked me or that I had tried so hard to tell them my truth. I saw
the old ikon in my mind, the one my Mother had brought to me in the
snow. Incarnation. Impossible to explain in their philosophy. I
wondered. Perhaps the horror of my own life was that, no matter what I
did or where I went, I always understood. Incarnation. A kind of bloody
light.

I wanted to be left alone by them now.

   Sybelle was waiting, which was of far greater importance, and I went
to take her in my arms.

   For many hours we talked together, Sybelle and Benji and me, and
finally Pandora, who was very distraught but would say nothing of it,
came to talk casually and gaily with us too. Marius joined us and also
David.

   We were gathered in a circle on the grass under the stars. For the
young ones, I put on the bravest of faces and we spoke of beautiful
things, and places we would wander, and wonders which Marius and Pandora
had seen, and we argued now and then amiably about trivial things.

   About two hours before dawn, we had broken up, with Sybelle sitting
by herself deep in the garden, looking at one flower after another with
great care. Benji had discovered that he could read at preternatural
speed and was tearing through the library, which was very impressive
indeed.

   David, seated at Marius's desk, corrected his misspellings and
abbreviations in the typescript, painstakingly correcting the copy he
had made for me in haste.

   Marius and I sat very close together against the same oak tree, my
shoulder against his. We didn't talk. We were watching things, and
listening perhaps to the same songs of the night.

I wanted Sybelle to play again. I had never known her to go so long
without playing, and I wanted badly to hear her play the Sonata again.

   It was Marius who first heard an unusual sound, and stiffened with
alarm, only to give it up and rest back beside me again.

"What was it?" I asked.

   "Only a little noise. I couldn't ... I couldn't read it," he said. He
rested his shoulder against me as he had before.

   Almost immediately I saw David look up from his work. And then
Pandora appeared, walking slowly but warily towards one of the lighted
doors.

   Now I heard the sound. And so did Sybelle, for she too looked in the
direction of the garden gate. Even Benji had finally deigned to notice
it, and he dropped his book in mid-sentence and came marching with a
very stern little scowl to the door to take stock of this new situation

and get it firmly under control.

   At first I thought my eyes had deceived me, but very quickly I
realized the identity of the figure who appeared as the gate opened and
closed quietly behind his stiff and ungainly arm.

   He limped as he approached, or seemed rather the victim of a
weariness and a loss of practice at the simple act of walking as he came
into the light that fell on the grass before our feet.

I was astonished. No one knew his intentions. No one moved.

   It was Lestat, and he was tattered and dusty as he had been on the
chapel floor. No thoughts emanated from his mind as far as I could
figure, and his eyes looked vague and full of exhausting wonder. He
stood before us, merely staring, and then as I rose to my feet,
scrambled in fact, to embrace him; he came near to me, and whispered in
my ear.

   His voice was faltering and weak from lack of use, and he spoke very
softly, his breath just touching my flesh.

"Sybelle," he said.

   "Yes, Lestat, what is it, what about her, tell me," I said. I held
his hands as firmly and lovingly as I could.

   "Sybelle," he said again. "Do you think she would play the Sonata for
me if you asked her? The Appassionato?"

I drew back and looked into his vague drifting blue eyes.

   "Oh, yes," I said, near breathless with excitement, with overflowing
feeling. "Lestat, I'm sure she would. Sybelle!"

   She had already turned. She watched him in amazement as he made his
way slowly across the lawn and into the house. Pandora stepped back for
him, and we all watched in respectful silence as he sat down near the
piano, his back to the front right leg of it, and his knees brought up
and his head resting wearily on his folded arms. He closed his eyes.

   "Sybelle," I asked, "would you play it for him? The Appassionata,
again, if you would."

And of course, she did.

THE END

8:12 a.m. January 6, 1998 Little Christmas

New Tales of the Vampires
By Anne Rice

JULIAN OF NORWICH
Revelations of Divine Love



I

Not twenty minutes has passed since you left me here in the cafe, since I said
No to your request, that I would never write out for you the story of my mortal
life, how I became a vampire ­ how I came upon Marius only years after he had
lost his human life.
Now here I am with your notebook open, using one of the sharp pointed eternal
ink pens you left me, delighted at the sensuous press of the black ink into the
expensive and flawless white paper.
Naturally, David, you would leave me something elegant, an inviting page. This
notebook bound in dark varnished leather, is it not, tooled with a design of
rich roses, thornless, yet leafy, a design that means only Design in the final
analysis but bespeaks an authority. What is written beneath this heavy and
handsome book cover will count, sayeth this cover.
The thick pages are ruled in light blue ­ you are practical, so thoughtful, and
you probably know I almost never put pen to paper to write anything at all.
Even the sound of the pen has its allure, the sharp
scratch rather like the finest quills in ancient Rome when I would put them to
parchment to write my letters to my Father, when I would write in a diary my own
laments... ah, that sound. The only thing missing here is the smell of ink, but
we have the fine plastic pen which will not run out for volumes, making as fine
and deep a black mark as I choose to make.
I am thinking about your request in writing. You see you will get something from
me. I find myself yielding to it, almost as one of our human victims yields to
us, discovering perhaps as the rain continues to fall outside, as the cafe
continues with its noisy chatter, to think that this might not be the agony I
presumed ­ reaching back over the two thousand years ­ but almost a pleasure,
like the act of drinking blood itself.
I reach now for a victim who is not easy for me to overcome: my own past.
Perhaps this victim will flee from me with a speed that equals my own. Whatever,
I seek now a victim that I have never faced. And there is the thrill of the hunt
in it, what the modern world calls investigation.
Why else would I see those times so vividly now? You had no magic potion to give
me to loosen my thoughts. There is but one potion for us and it is blood.
You said at one point as we walked towards the cafe, "You will remember
everything."
You, who are so young amongst us yet were so old as a mortal, and such a scholar
as a mortal. Perhaps it
is natural that you so boldly attempt to collect our stories.
But why seek to explain here such curiosity as yours, such bravery in face of
blood-drenched truth?
How could you have kindled in me this longing to go back, two thousand years,
almost exactly ­ to tell of my mortal days on Earth in Rome, and how I joined
Marius, and what little chance he had against Fate.
How could origins so deeply buried and so long denied suddenly beckon to me. A
door snaps open. A light shines. Come in.
I sit back now in the cafe.
I write, but I pause and look around me at the people of this Paris cafe. I see
the drab unisex fabrics of this age, the fresh American girl in her olive green
military clothes, all of her possessions slung over her shoulder in a backpack;

I see the old Frenchman who has come here for decades merely to look at the bare
legs and arms of the young, to feed on the gestures as if he were a vampire, to
wait for some exotic jewel of a moment when a woman sits back laughing,
cigarette in hand, and the doth of her synthetic blouse becomes tight over her
breasts and there the nipples are visible.
Ah, old man. He is gray-haired and wears an expensive coat. He is no menace to
anyone. He lives entirely in vision. Tonight he will go back to a modest but
elegant apartment which he has maintained since the last Great World War, and he
will watch films of the young beauty Brigitte Bardot. He lives in his eyes. He
has not touched a woman in ten years.
I don't drift, David. I drop anchor here. For I will not have my story pour
forth as from a drunken oracle.
I see these mortals in a more attentive light. They are so fresh, so exotic and
yet so luscious to me, these mortals; they look like tropical birds must have
looked when I was a child; so full of fluttering, rebellious life, I wanted to
clutch them to have it, to make their wings flap in my hands, to capture flight
and own it and partake of it. Ah, that terrible moment in childhood when one
accidentally crushes the life from a bright-red bird.
Yet they are sinister in their darker vestments, some of these mortals: the
inevitable cocaine dealer ­ and they are everywhere, our finest prey ­ who waits
for his contact in the far corner, his long leather coat styled by a noted
Italian designer, his hair shaved dose on the side and left bushy on the top to
make him look distinctive, which it does, though there is no need when one
considers his huge black eyes, and the hardness of what nature intended to be a
generous mouth. He makes those quick impatient gestures with his cigarette
lighter on the small marble table, the mark of the addicted; he twists, he
turns, he cannot be comfortable. He doesn't know that he will never be
comfortable in life again. He wants to leave to snort the cocaine for which he
burns and yet he must wait for the contact. His shoes are too shiny, and his
long thin hands will never grow old.
I think he will die tonight, this man. I feel a slow gathering desire to kill
him myself. He has fed so much poison to so many. Tracking him, wrapping him in
my arms, I would not even have to wreathe him with visions. I would let him know
that death has come in the form of a woman too white to be human, too smoothed
by the centuries to be anything but a statue come to life. But those for whom he
waits plot to kill him. And why should I intervene?
What do I look like to these people? A woman with long wavy dean brown hair that
covers me much like a nun's mantle, a face so white it appears cosmetically
created, and eyes, abnormally brilliant, even from behind golden glasses.
Ah, we have a lot to be grateful for in the many styles of eyeglasses in this
age ­ for if I were to take these off, I should have to keep my head bowed, not
to startle people with the mere play of yellow and brown and gold in my eyes,
that have grown ever more jewel-like over the centuries, so that I seem a blind
woman set with topaz for her pupils, or rather carefully formed orbs of topaz,
sapphire, even aquamarine.
Look, I have filled so many pages, and all I am saying is Yes, I will tell you
how it began for me.
Yes, I will tell you the story of my mortal life in ancient Rome, how I came to
love Marius and how we came to be together and then to part.
What a transformation in me, this resolution.
How powerful I feel as I hold this pen, and how eager to put us in sharp and
dear perspective before I begin fulfilling your request.
This is Paris, in a time of peace. There is rain. High regal gray buildings with
their double windows and iron balconies line this boulevard. Loud, tiny,
dangerous automobiles race in the streets. Cafes, such as this, are overflowing
with international tourists. Ancient churches are crowded here by tenements,
palaces turned to museums, in whose rooms I linger for hours gazing at objects

from Egypt or Sumer which are even older than me. Roman architecture is
everywhere, absolute replicas of Temples of my time now serve as banks. The
words of my native Latin suffuse the English language. Ovid, my beloved Ovid,
the poet who predicted his poetry would outlast the Roman Empire, has been
proved true.
Walk into any bookstore and you find him in neat, small paperbacks, designed to
appeal to students.
Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern
forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.
It is easy here ­ as always ­ to find an embraceable evil, a despair worth
tender fulfillment.
And with me there must always be some love of the victim, some mercy, some
self-delusion that the death I bring does not mar the great shroud of
inevitability, woven of trees and earth and stars, and human events, which
hovers forever around us ready to close on all that is created, all that we
know.
Last night, when you found me, how did it seem to you? I was alone on the bridge
over the Seine, walking in the last dangerous darkness before dawn.
You saw me before I knew you were there. My hood was down and I let my eyes in
the dim light of the bridge have their little moment of glory. My victim stood
at the railing, no more than a child, but bruised and robbed by a hundred men.
She wanted to die in the water. I don't know if the Seine is deep enough for one
to drown there. So near the Ile St.Louis. So near Notre Dame. Perhaps it is, if
one can resist a last struggle for life.
But I felt this victim's soul like ashes, as though her spirit had been cremated
and only the body remained, a worn, disease-ridden shell. I put my arm around
her, and when I saw the fear in her small black eyes, when I saw the question
coming, I wreathed her with images. The soot that covered my skin was not enough
to keep me from looking like the Virgin Mary, and she sank into hymns and
devotion, she even saw my veils in the colors she had known in churches of
childhood, as she yielded to me, and I ­ knowing that I needn't drink, but
thirsting for her, thirsting for the anguish she could give forth in her final
moment, thirsting for the tasty red blood that would fill my mouth and make me
feel human for one instant in my very monstrosity ­ I gave in to her visions,
bent her neck, ran my fingers over her sore tender skin, and then it was, when I
sank my teeth into her, when I drank from her ­ it was then that I knew you were
there. You watched.
I knew it, and I felt it, and I saw the image of us in your eye, distractingly,
as the pleasure nevertheless flushed through me, making me believe I was alive,
somehow connected to fields of clover or trees with roots deeper in the earth
than the branches they raise to the welkin above.
At first I hated you. You saw me as I feasted. You saw me as I gave in. You knew
nothing of my months of starvation, restraint, wandering. You saw only the
sudden release of my unclean desire to suck her very soul from her, to make her
heart rise in the flesh inside her, to drag from her veins every precious
particle of her that still wanted to survive.
And she did want to survive. Wrapped in saints, and dreaming suddenly of the
breasts that nursed her, her young body fought, pumping and pumping against me,
she so soft, and my own form hard as a statue, my milkless nipples enshrined in
marble, no comfort. Let her see her mother, dead, gone and now waiting. Let me
glimpse through her dying eyes the light through which she sped towards this
certain salvation.
Then I forgot about you. I would not be robbed. I slowed the drinking, I let her
sigh, I let her lungs fill with the cold river air, her mother drawing closer
and closer so that death now was as safe for her as the womb. I took every drop
from her that she could give.
She hung dead against me, as one I'd rescued, one I would help from the bridge,

some weakened, sickened, drunken girl. I slid my hand into her body, breaking
the flesh so easily even with these delicate fingers, and I dosed my fingers
around her heart and brought it to my lips and sucked it, my head tucked down by
her face, sucked the heart like fruit, until no blood was left in any fiber or
chamber, and then slowly ­ perhaps for your benefit ­ I lifted her and let her
fall down into the water she had so desired.
Now there would be no struggle as her lungs filled with the river. Now there
would be no last desperate thrashing. I fed from the heart one last time, to
take even the color of blood out of it, and then sent it after her ­ crushed
grapes ­ poor child, child of a hundred men.
Then I faced you, let you know that I knew you watched from the quay. I think I
tried to frighten you. In rage I let you know how weak you were, that all the
blood given to you by Lestat would make you no match should I choose to
dismember you, pitch a fatal heat into you and immolate you, or only punish you
with penetrating scar ­ simply for having spied upon me.
Actually I have never done such a thing to a younger one. I feel sorry for them
when they see us, the ancient ones, and quake in terror. But I should, by all
the knowledge of myself I possess, have retreated so quickly that you could riot
follow me in the night.
Something in your demeanor charmed me, the manner in which you approached me on
the bridge, your young Anglo-Indian brown-skinned body gifted by your true
mortal age with such seductive grace. Your very posture seemed to ask of me,
without humiliation:
"Pandora, may we speak?"
My mind wandered. Perhaps you knew it. I don't remember whether I shut you out
of my thoughts, and I know that your telepathic abilities are not really very
strong. My mind wandered suddenly, perhaps of itself, perhaps at your prodding.
I thought of all the things I could tell you, which were so different from the
tales of Lestat, and those of Marius through Lestat, and I wanted to warn you,
warn you of the ancient vampires of the Far East who would kill you if you went
into their territory, simply because you were there.
I wanted to make certain you understood what we all had to accept ­ the Fount of
our immortal vampiric hunger did reside in two beings ­ Mekare and Maharet ­ so
ancient they are now both horrible to look upon, more than beautiful. And if
they destroy themselves we will all die with them.
I wanted to tell you of others who have never known us as a tribe or known our
history, who survived the terrible fire brought down on her children by our
Mother Akasha. I wanted to tell you that there were things walking the Earth
that look like us but are not of our breed any more than they are human. And I
wanted suddenly to take you under my wing.
It must have been your prodding. You stood there, the English gentleman, wearing
your decorum more lightly and naturally than any man I'd ever seen. I marveled
at your fine clothes that you'd indulged yourself in a light black cloak of
worsted wool,
that you had even given yourself the luxury of a gleaming red silk scarf ­ so
unlike you when you
were newly made.
Understand, I was not aware the night that Lestat transformed you into a
vampire. I didn't feel that moment.
All the preternatural world shimmered weeks earlier, however, with the knowledge
that a mortal
had jumped into the body of another mortal; we know these things, as if the
stars tell us. One preter
natural mind picks up the ripples of this sharp cut in the fabric of the
ordinary, then another mind re-
ceives the image, and on and on it goes.
David Talbot, the name we all knew from the venerable order of psychic

detectives, the Talamasca, had managed to move his entire soul and etheric body
­ into that of another man. That body itself was in the possession of a body
thief whom you forced from it. And once anchored in the young - body, you, with
all your scruples and values, all your knowledge of seventy-four years, remained
an chored in the young cells.
And so it was David the Reborn, David with the high-gloss India beauty, and raw
well-nourished strength of British lineage, that Lestat had made into a vampire,
bringing over both body and soul, compounding miracle with the Dark Trick,
achieving once more a sin that should stun his contemporaries and his elders.
And this, this was done to you by your best friend!
Welcome to the darkness, David. Welcome to the domain of Shakespeare's
"inconstant moon."
Bravely you came up the bridge towards me.
"Forgive me, Pandora," you said so quietly. Flawless British upper-class accent,
and the usual beguiling British rhythm that is so seductive it seems to say that
"we will all save the world."
You kept a polite distance between us, as if I were a virgin girl of the last
century, and you didn't want to alarm me and my tender sensibilities. I smiled.
I indulged myself then. I took your full measure, this fledgling that Lestat ­
against Marius's injunction ­ had dared to make. I saw the components of you as
a man: an immense human soul, fearless, yet half in love with despair, and a
body which Lestat had almost injured himself to render powerful. He had given
you more blood than he could easily give in your transformation. He had tried to
give you his courage, his cleverness, his cunning; he had tried to transport an
armory for you through the blood.
He had done well. Your strength was complex and obvious. Our Queen Mother
Akasha's blood was mixed with that of Lestat. Marius, my ancient lover, had
given him blood as well. Lestat, ah, now what do they say, they say that he may
even have drunk the blood of the Christ.
It was this first issue I took up with you, my curiosity overwhelming me, for to
scan the world for knowledge is often to rake in such tragedy that I abhor it.
"Tell me the truth of it," I said. "This story Memnoch the Devil. Lestat claimed
he went to Heaven and to Hell. He brought back a veil from St. Veronica. The
face of Christ was on it! It converted thousands to Christianity, it cured
alienation and succored bitterness. It drove other Children of Darkness to
:throw up their arms to the deadly morning light, as if the sun were in fact the
fire of God."
"Yes, it's all happened, as I described it," you said, lowering your head with a
polite but unexaggerated modesty. "And you know a few... of us perished in this
fervor, whilst newspapers and scientists collected our ashes for examination."
I marveled at your calm attitude. A Twentieth-Century sensibility. A mind
dominated by an incalculable wealth of information, and quick of tongue with an
intellect devoted to swiftness, synthesis, probabilities, and all this against
the backdrop of horrid experiences, wars, massacres, the worst perhaps the world
has ever seen.
"It all happened," you said. "And I did meet with Mekare and Maharet, the
ancient ones, and you needn't fear for me that I don't know how fragile is the
root. It was kind of you to think so protectively of me."
I was quietly charmed.
"What did you think of this Holy Veil yourself?" I asked.
"Our Lady of Fatima," you said softly. "The Shroud of Turin, a cripple rising
from the Miraculous Waters of Lourdes! What a consolation it must be to accept
such a thing so easily."
"And you did not?"
You shook your head. "And neither did Lestat, really. It was the mortal girl,
Dora, snatching the Veil from him, who took it out into the world. But it was a
most singular and meticulously made thing, I'll tell you that, more worthy of

the word 'relic' perhaps than any other I've ever seen."
You sounded dejected suddenly.
"Some immense intent went into its making," you said.
"And the vampire Armand, the delicate boylike Armand, he believed it?" I asked.
"Armand looked at it and saw the face of Christ," I said, seeking your
confirmation.
"Enough to die for it," you said solemnly. "Enough to open his arms to the
morning sun."
You looked away, and you closed your eyes. This was a simple unadorned plea to
me not to make you speak of Armand and how he had gone into the morning fire.
I gave a sigh ­ surprised and gently fascinated to find you so articulate,
skeptical, yet so sharply and frankly connected to the others.
You said in a shaken voice, "Armand." And still looking away from me. "What a
Requiem. And does he know now if Memnoch was real, if God Incarnate who tempted
Lestat was in fact the Son of the God Almighty? Does anyone'?"
I was taken with your earnestness, your passion. You were not jaded or cynical.
There was an immediacy to your feelings for these happenings, these creatures,
these questions you posed,
"They locked up the Veil, you know," you said. "It's in the Vatican. There were
two weeks of frenzy on Fifth Avenue in St. Patrick's Cathedral in which people
came to look into the eyes of The Lord, and then they had it, gone, taken to
their vaults. I doubt there is a nation on the Earth with the power to gain even
a glimpse of it now."
"And Lestat," I said. "Where is he now?"
"Paralyzed, silent," you said. "Lestat lies on the floor of a chapel in New
Orleans. He doesn't move. He says nothing. His Mother has come to him. You knew
her, Gabrielle, he made a vampire of her."
"Yes, I remember her."
"Even she draws no response from him. Whatever he saw, in his journey to Heaven
and Hell, he doesn't know the truth of it one way or the other ­ he tried to
tell this to Dora! And eventually, after I'd written down the whole story for
him, he passed within a few nights into this state.
"His eyes are fixed and his body pliant. They made a curious Pietá, he and
Gabrielle, in this abandoned convent and its chapel. His mind is dosed, or worse
­ it's empty."
I found I liked very much your manner of speaking. In fact, I was taken off
guard.
"I left Lestat because he was beyond my help and my reach," you said. "And I
must know if there are old ones who want to put an end to me; I must make my
pilgrimages and my progresses to know the dangers of this world to which I've
been admitted."
"You're so forthright. You have no cunning."
"On the contrary, I conceal my keenest assets from you." You gave me a slow,
polite smile. "Your beauty rather confuses me. Are you used to this?"
"Quite," I said. "And weary of it. Come beyond it. Let me just warn, there are
old ones, ones no one knows or can explain. It's rumored you've been with
Maharet and Mekare, who are now the E1dest and the Fount from which we all
spring. Obviously they've drawn back from us, from all the world, into some
secret place, and have no taste for authority."
"You're so very correct," you said, "and my audience with them was beautiful but
brief. They don't want to rule over anyone, nor will Maharet, as long as the
history of the world and her own physical descendants are in it ­ her own
thousands of human descendants from a time so ancient there is no date for it ­
Maharet will never destroy herself and her sister, thereby destroying all of
us."
"Yes," I said, "in that she believes, the Great Family, the generations she has
traced for thousands of years. I saw her when we all gathered. She doesn't see

us as evil ­ you, or me, or Lestat ­ she thinks that we're natural, rather like
volcanoes or fires that rage through forests, or bolts of lightning that strike
a man dead."
"Precisely," you said. "There is no Queen of the Damned now. I fear only one
other immortal, and that's your lover, Marius. Because it was Marius who laid
down the strict rule before he left the others that no more blood drinkers could
be made. I'm baseborn in the mind of Marius. That is, were he an Englishman,
those would be his words."
I shook my head. "I can't believe he would harm you. Hasn't he come to Lestat'?
Did he not come to see the Veil with his own eyes?"
You said No to both questions.
"Heed this advice: whenever you sense his presence, talk to him. Talk to him as
you have to me. Begin a conversation which he won't have the confidence to bring
to a dose."
You smiled again. "That's such a clever way of putting it," you said.
"But I don't think you have to fear him. If he wanted you gone off the Earth,
you'd be gone. What we have to fear is the same things humans fear ­ that there
are others of our same species, of varying power and belief, and we are never
entirely sure where they are or what they do. That's my advice to you."
"You are so kind to take your time with me," you said.
I could have wept. "On the contrary. You don't know the silence and solitude in
which I wander, and pray you never know it, and here you've given me heat
without death, you've given me nourishment without blood. I'm glad you've come."
I saw you look up at the sky, the habit of the young ones.
"I know, we have to part now."
You turned to me suddenly. "Meet me tomorrow night," you said imploringly. "Let
this exchange continue! I'll come to you in the cafe where you sit every night
musing. I'll find you. Let us talk to each other."
"So you've seen me there."
"Oh, often," you said. "Yes." You looked away again. I saw it was to conceal
feeling. Then your dark eyes turned back to me.
"Pandora, we have the world, don't we'?" you whispered.
"I don't know, David. But I'll meet you tomorrow night. Why haven't you come to
me there? Where it was warm and lighted?"
"It seemed a far more outrageous intrusion, to move in on you in the sanctified
privacy of a crowded cafe. People go to such places to be alone, don't they?
This seemed somehow more proper. And I did not mean to be the voyeur. Like many
fledglings, I have to feed every night. It was an accident that we saw each
other at that moment."
"That is charming, David," I said. "It is a long time since anyone has charmed
me. I'll meet you there... tomorrow night."
And then a wickedness possessed me. I came towards you and embraced you, knowing
that the hardness and coldness of my ancient body would strike the deepest chord
of terror in you, newborn as you were, passing so easily for mortal.
But you didn't draw back. And when I kissed your cheek, you kissed mine.
I wonder now, as I sit here in the cafe, writing... trying to give you more with
these words perhaps than you ask for... what I would have done had you not
kissed me, had you shrunk back with the fear that is so common in the young.
David, you are indeed a puzzle.
You see that I have begun to chronicle not my life here, but what has passed
these two nights between you and me.
Allow this, David. Allow that I speak of you and me, and then perhaps I can
retrieve my lost life.
When you came into the cafe tonight, I thought nothing much about the notebooks.
You had two. They were thick.
The leather of the notebooks smelled good and old, and when you set them down on
the table, only then did I detect a glimmer from your disciplined and restrained

mind that they had to do with me.
I had chosen this table in the crowded center of the room, as though I wanted to
be in the middle of the whirlpool of mortal scent and activity. You seemed
pleased, unafraid, utterly at home.
You wore another stunning suit of modern cut with a full cape of worsted wool,
very tasteful, yet Old World, and with your golden skin and radiant eyes, you
turned the head of every woman in the place and you turned the heads of some of
the men.
You smiled. I must have seemed a snail to you beneath my cloak and hood, gold
glasses covering well over half my face, and a trace of commercial lipstick on
my lips, a soft purple pink that had made me think of bruises. It had seemed
very enticing in the mirror at the store, and I liked that my mouth was
something I didn't have to hide, My lips are now almost colorless. With this
lipstick I could smile.
I wore these gloves of mine, black lace, with their sheared-off tips so that my
fingers can feel, and I had sooted my nails so they would not sparkle like
crystal in the cafe. And I reached out my hand to you and you kissed it.
There was your same boldness and decorum. And then the warmest smile from you, a
smile in which l think your former physiology must have dominated because you
looked far too wise for one so young and strong of build. I marveled at the
perfect picture you had made of yourself.
"You don't know what a joy it is to me," you said, "that you've come, that
you've let me join you here at this table."
"You have made me want this," I said, raising my hands, and seeing that your
eyes were dazzled by my crystalline fingernails, in spite of the soot.
I reached towards you, expecting you to pull back, but you entrusted to my cold
white fingers your warm dark hand.
"You find in me a living being?" I asked you.
"Oh, yes, most definitely, most radiantly and perfectly a living being."
We ordered our coffee, as mortals expect us to do, deriving more pleasure from
the heat and aroma than they could ever imagine, even stirring our little cups
with our spoons. I had before me a red dessert. The dessert is still here of
course. I ordered it simply because it was red ­ strawberries covered in syrup ­
with a strong sweet smell that bees would like.
I smiled at your blandishments. I liked them.
Playfully, I mocked them. I let my hood slip down and I shook out my hair so
that its fullness and dark brown color could shimmer in the light.
Of course it's no signal to mortals, as is Marius's blond hair or that of
Lestat. But I love my own hair, I love the veil of it when it is down over my
shoulders, and I loved what I saw in your eyes.
"Somewhere deep inside me there is a woman," I said.
To write it now ­ in this notebook as I sit here alone ­ it gives architecture
to a trivial moment, and seems so dire a confession.
David, the more I write, the more the concept of narrative excites me, the more
I believe in the weight of a coherence which is possible on the page though not
in life.
But again, I didn't know I meant to pick up this pen of yours at all. We were
talking:
"Pandora, if anyone does not know you're a woman, then he is a fool," you said.
"How angry Marius would be with me for being pleased by that," I said. "Oh, no.
Rather he would seize it as a strong point in favor of his position. I left him,
left him without a word, the last time we were together ­ that was before Lestat
went on his little escapade of running around in a human body, and long before
he encountered Memnoch the Devil ­ I left Marius, and suddenly I wish I could
reach him! I wish I could talk with him as you and I are talking now."
You looked so troubled for me, and with reason. On some level, you must have
known that I had not evinced this much enthusiasm over anything in many a dreary

year.
"Would you write your story for me, Pandora'?" you asked suddenly.
I was totally surprised.
"Write it in these notebooks?" you pressed. "Write about the time when you were
alive, the time when you and Marius came together, write what you will of
Marius. But it's your story that I most want."
I was stunned.
"Why in the world would you want this of me?"
You didn't answer.
"David, surely you've not returned to that order of human beings, the Talamasca,
they know too much ­"
You put up your hand.
"No, and I will never; and if there was ever any doubt of it, I learnt it once
and for all in the archives kept by Maharet."
"She allowed you to see her archives, the books she's saved over the course of
time"
"Yes, it was remarkable, you know... a storehouse of tablets, scrolls,
parchments ­ books and poems from cultures of which the world knows nothing, I
think, Books lost from time. Of course she forbade me to reveal anything I found
or speak in detail of our meeting. She said it was too rash tampering with
things, and she confirmed your fear that I might go to the Talamasca ­ my old
mortal psychic friends. I have not. I will not. But it is a very easy vow to
keep."
"Why so?"
"Pandora, when I saw all those old writings ­ I knew I was no longer human. I
knew that the history lying there to be collected was no longer mine! I am not
one of these!" Your eyes swept the room. "Of course you must have heard this a
thousand times from fledgling vampires! But you see, I had a fervent faith that
philosophy and reason would make a bridge for me by which I could go and come in
both worlds. Well, there is no bridge. It's gone."
Your sadness shimmered about you, flashing in your young eyes and in the
softness of your new flesh.
"So you know that," I said. I didn't plan the words. But out they came. "You
know." I gave a soft bitter laugh.
"Indeed I do. I knew when I held documents from your time, so many from your
time, Imperial Rome, and other crumbling bits of inscribed rock I couldn't even
hope to place. I knew. I didn't care about them, Pandora! I care about what we
are, what we are now."
"How remarkable," I said. "You don't know how much I admire you, or how
attractive is your disposition to me."
"I am happy to hear this," you said. Then you leaned forward towards me: "I
don't say we do not carry our human souls with us, our history; of course we do.
"I remember once a long time ago, Armand told me that he asked Lestat, `How will
I ever understand the human race?' Lestat said, `Read or see all the plays of
Shakespeare and you will know all you ever need to know about the human race.'
Armand did it. He devoured the poems, he sat through the plays, he watched the
brilliant new films with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh and Leonardo
DiCaprio. And when Armand and I last spoke together, this is what he said of his
education:
" 'Lestat was right. He gave me not books but a passage into understanding. This
man Shakespeare writes,' ­ and I quote both Armand and Shakespeare now as Armand
spoke it, as I will to you ­ as if it came from my heart:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

" `This man writes this,' said Armand to me, `and we all know that it is
absolutely the truth and every revelation has sooner or later fallen before it,
and yet we want to love the way he has said it, we want to hear it again! We
want to remember it! We want to never forget a single word.' "
We were both silent for a moment. You looked down, you rested your chin on your
knuckles. I knew the whole weight of Armand's going into the sun was on you, and
I had so loved your recitation of the words, and the words themselves.
Finally, I said, "And this gives me pleasure. Think of it, pleasure. That you
recite these words to me now."
You smiled.
"I want to know now what we can learn," you said. "I want to know what we can
see! So I come to you, a Child of the Millennia, a vampire who drank from the
Queen Akasha herself, one who has survived two thousand years. And I ask you,
Pandora, please will you write for me, write your story, write what you will."
For a long moment I gave you no answer.
Then I said sharply that I could not. But something had stirred in me. I saw and
heard arguments and tirades of centuries ago, I saw the poet's lifted light
shine on eras I had known intimately out of love. Other eras I had never known,
wandering, ignorant, a wraith.
Yes, there was a tale to be written. There was. But at the moment I could not
admit it.
You were in misery, having thought of Armand, having remembered his walking into
the morning sun. You mourned for Armand.
"Was there any bond between you?" you asked. "Forgive me my boldness, but I mean
was there any bond between you and Armand when you met, because Marius had given
you both the Dark Gift? I know no jealousy exists, that I can feel, I wouldn't
bring up the very name Armand if I detected a hurt in you, but all else is an
absence, a silence. Was there no bond'?"
"The bond is only grief. He went into the sun. And grief is absolutely the
easiest and safest of bonds."
You laughed under your breath.
"What can I do to make you consider my request? Have pity on me, Gracious Lady,
entrust to me your song."
I smiled indulgently, but it was impossible, I thought.
"It's far too dissonant, my dear," I said. "It's far  too ­
I shut my eyes.
I had wanted to say that my song was far too painful to sing.
Suddenly your eyes moved upwards. Your expression changed. It was almost as if
you were deliberately trying to appear to enter a trance. Slowly you turned your
head. You pointed, with your hand close to the table, then let your hand go lax
"What is it, David?" I said. "What are you seeing?"
"Spirits, Pandora, ghosts."
You shuddered as if to dear your head.
"But that's unheard of," I said. Yet I knew that he was telling the truth. "The
Dark Gift takes away that power. Even the ancient witches, Maharet and Mekare,
told us this, that once Akasha's blood entered them, and they became vampires,
they never heard or saw the spirits again. You've recently been with them. Did
you tell them of this power?"
He nodded. Obviously some loyalty bound him
not to say that they did not have it. But I knew they

did not. I saw it in his mind, and I had known it
myself when I had encountered the ancient twins, the twins who had struck down
the Queen of the Damned.
"I can see spirits, Pandora," you said with the most troubled expression. "I can
see them anywhere if I try, and in some very specific places when they choose.
Lestat saw the ghost of Roger, his victim in Memnoch the Devil."
"But that was an exception, a surge of love in ­ the man's soul that somehow
defied death, or delayed the soul's termination ­ something we can't
understand."
"I see spirits, but I haven't come to burden you with this or frighten you."
"You must tell me more about this," I said. "What did you see right now?"
"A weak spirit. It couldn't harm anyone. It's one of those sad humans who does
not know he's dead. They are an atmosphere around the planet. The 'earthbound'
is the name for them. But Pandora, I have more than that in myself to explore."
You continued:
"Apparently each century yields a new kind of vampire, or let us say that our
course of growth was not set in the beginning any more than the course of human
beings, Some night perhaps I will tell you everything I see ­ these spirits who
were never clear to me when I was mortal ­ I'll tell you about something Armand
confided to me, about the colors he saw when he took life, how the soul left
body in waves of radiating color!"
"I've never heard of such a thing!"
"I too see this," you said.
I could see it hurt you almost too much to speak of Armand.
"But whatever possessed Armand to believe in the Veil'?" I asked, suddenly
amazed at my own passion. "Why did he go into the sun? How could such a thing
kill Lestat's reason and will? Veronica. Did they know the very name means Vera
Ikon, that there was never any such person, that she could not be found by one
drawn back to ancient Jerusalem on the day Christ carried his cross; she was a
concoction of Priests. Didn't they know?"
I think I had taken the two notebooks in hand, for I looked down and I saw that
I did indeed hold them. In fact, I clutched both of them to my breast and
examined one of the pens.
"Reason," I whispered. "Oh, precious reason! And consciousness within a void." I
shook my head, smiling kindly at you, "And vampires who speak now with spirits!
Humans who can travel from body to body."
I went on with a wholly unfamiliar energy.
"A lively fashionable modern cult of angels, devotion thriving everywhere. And
people rising from operating tables to speak of life after death, a tunnel, an
embracing love! Oh, you have been created perhaps in an auspicious time! I don't
know what to make of it."
You were obviously quite impressed by these words, or rather the way that my
perspective had been drawn from me. So was I.
"I've only started," you said, "and will keep company alike with brilliant
Children of the Millennia and street-corner fortune tellers who deal out the
cards of the Tarot. I'm eager to gaze into crystal balls and darkened mirrors.
I'll search now among those whom others dismiss as mad, or among us ­ among
those like you, who have looked on something that they do not believe they
should share! That's it, isn't it? But I ask you to share it. I'm finished with
the ordinary human soul. I am finished with science and psychology, with
microscopes and perhaps even with the telescopes aimed at the stars."
I was quite enthralled. How strongly you meant it. I could feel my face so warm
with feeling for you as I looked at you. I think my mouth was slack with wonder.
"I am a miracle unto myself," you said. "I am immortal, and I want to learn
about us! You have a tale to tell, you are ancient, and deeply broken. I feel
love for you and cherish that it is what it is and nothing more."
"What a strange thing to say!"

"Love." You shrugged your shoulders. You looked up and then back at me for
emphasis. "And it rained and it rained for millions of years, and the volcanoes
boiled and the oceans cooled, and then there was love?" You shrugged to make a
mock of the absurdity.
I couldn't help but laugh at your little gest. Too perfect, I thought. But I was
suddenly so torn.
"This is very unexpected," I said. "Because if I do have a story, a very small
story ­"
"Yes?"
"Well, my story ­ if I have one ­ is very much to the point. It's linked to the
very points you've made."
Suddenly something came over me. I laughed again softly.
"I understand you." I said. "Oh, not that you can see spirits, for that is a
great subject unto itself.
"But I see now the source of your strength. You have lived an entire human life.
Unlike Marius, unlike me, you weren't taken in your prime. You were taken near
the moment of your natural death, and you will not settle for the adventures and
faults of the earthbound! You are determined to forge ahead with the courage of
one who has died of old age and then finds himself risen from the grave. You've
kicked aside the funeral wreaths. You are ready for Mount Olympus, aren't you?"
"Or for Osiris in the depths of the darkness," you said. "Or for the shades in
Hades. Certainly I am ready for the spirits, for the vampires, for those who see
the future and claim to know past lives, for you who have a stunning intellect
encased beautifully, to endure for so many years, an intellect which has perhaps
all but destroyed your heart."
I gasped.
"Forgive me. That was not proper of me," you said.
"No, explain your meaning."
"You always take the hearts from the victims, isn't it so? You want the heart."
"Perhaps. Don't expect wisdom from me as it might come from Marius, or the
ancient twins."
"You draw me to you," you said.
"Why ?"
"Because you do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be
written ­ behind your silence and your suffering."
"You are too romantic, friend," I said.
You waited patiently. I think you could feel the tumult in me, the shivering of
my soul in the face of so much new emotion.
"It's such a small story," I said. I saw images, memories, moments, the stuff
that can incite souls to action and creation. I saw the very faintest
possibility of faith.
I think you already knew the answer.
You knew what I would do when I did not.
You smiled discreetly, but you were eager and waiting.
I looked at you and thought of trying to write it, write it all out...
"You want me to leave now, don't you'?" you said. You rose, collected your
rain-spattered coat and bent over gracefully to kiss my hand.
My hands were clutching the notebooks.
"No," I said, "I can't do it."
You made no immediate judgment.
"Come back in two nights," I said. "I promise you will have your two notebooks
for you, even if they are completely empty or only contain a better explanation
of why I can't retrieve my lost life. I won't disappoint you. But expect
nothing, except that I will come and I will put these books in your hands."
"Two nights," you said, "and we meet here again."
In silence I watched you leave the cafe.
And now you see it has begun, David.

And now you see, David, l have made our meeting the introduction to the story
you asked me to tell.



2

PANDORA'S STORY

I was born in Rome, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, in the year that you
now reckon to have been 15 B.C., or fifteen years "before Christ."
All the Roman history and Roman names I give here are accurate; I have not
falsified them or made up stories or created false political events. Everything
bears upon my ultimate fate and the fate of Marius. Nothing is included for love
of the past. I have omitted my family name. I did this because my family has a
history, and I cannot bring myself to connect their ancient reputations, deeds,
epitaphs to this tale. Also Marius, when he confided in Lestat, did not give the
full name of his Roman family. And I respect this and that also is not revealed.
Augustus had been Emperor for over ten years, and it was a marvelous time to be
an educated woman in Rome, women had immense freedom, and I had a rich Senator
for a father, five prosperous brothers, and grew up Motherless but cherished by
teams of Greek tutors and nurses who gave me everything I wanted.
Now, if I really wanted to make this difficult for you, David, I'd write it in
classical Latin. But I won't. And I must tell you that, unlike you, I came by my
education in English haphazardly, and certainly I never learnt it from
Shakespeare's plays.
Indeed I have passed through many stages of the English language in my
wanderings and in my reading, but the great majority of my true acquaintance
with it has been in this century, and I am writing for you in colloquial
English.
There's another reason For this, which I'm sure you'll understand if you've read
the modern translation of Petronius's Satyricon or Juvenal's satires. Very
modern English is a really true equivalent to the Latin of my time.
The formal letters of Imperial Rome won't tell you this. But the graffiti
scratched on the walls of Pompeii will make it obvious. We had a sophisticated
tongue, countless clever verbal shortcuts and common expressions.
I'm going to write, therefore, in the English which feels equivalent and natural
to me.
Let me say here quickly ­ while the action is at a halt ­ that I was never, as
Marius said, a Greek Courtesan. I was living with such a pretense when Marius
gave me the Dark Gift, and perhaps out of consideration for old mortal secrets
he so described me. Or maybe it was contemptuous of him to style me this way. I
don't know.
But Marius knew all about my Roman family, that it was a Senatorial family, as
purely aristocratic and privileged as his own mortal family, and that my people
dated back to the time of Romulus and Remus, the same as Marius's mortal line.
Marius did not succumb to me because I had "beautiful arms," as he indicated to
Lestat. This trivialization was perhaps provocative.
I don't hold anything against either of them, Marius or Lestat. I don't know who
got what wrong.
My feeling for my Father is so great to this very night, as I sit in the cafe,
writing for you, David, that I am astonished at the power of writing ­ of
putting words to paper and bringing back so vividly to myself my Father's loving
face.
My Father was to meet a terrible end. He did not deserve what happened to him.
But some of our kinsmen survived and re-established our family in later times.
My Father was rich, one of the true millionaires of that age, and his capital
was invested widely. He was a soldier more often than required of him, a

Senator, a thoughtful and quiet man by disposition. And after the terrors of the
Civil War, he was a great supporter of Caesar Augustus and very much in the
Emperor's good graces.
Of course he dreamed that the Roman Republic would come back; we all did. But
Augustus had brought unity and peace to the Empire.
I met Augustus many times in my youth, and it was always at some crowded social
function and of no consequence. He looked like his portraits; a lean man with a
long thin nose, short hair, average face; he was rather rational and pragmatic
by nature and not invested with any abnormal cruelty. He had no personal vanity.
The poor man was really blessed that he couldn't see into the future ­ that he
had no inkling of all the horrors and madness that would begin with Tiberius,
his successor, and go on for so long under other members of his family.
Only in later times did I understand the full singularity and accomplishment of
Augustus's long reign. Was it forty-four years of peace throughout the cities of
the Empire?
Alas, to be born during this time was to be born during a time of creativity and
prosperity, when Rome was caput mundi, or capital of the world. And when I look
back on it, I realize what a powerful combination it was to have both tradition
and vast sums of money; to have old values and new power.
Our family life was conservative, strict, even a little dusty. And yet we had
every luxury. My Father grew more quiet and conservative over the years. He
enjoyed his grandchildren, who were born while he was still vigorous and active.
Though he had fought principally in the Northern campaigns along the Rhine, he
had been stationed in Syria for a while. He had studied in Athens. He had served
so much and so well that he was being allowed an early retirement in the years
during which I grew up, an early withdrawal from the social life that whirled
around the Imperial Palace, though I did not realize this at the time.
My five brothers came before me. So there was no "ritual Roman mourning" when I
was born, as you hear tell of in Roman families when a girl comes into the
world. Far from it.
Five times my Father had stood in the atrium ­ the main enclosed courtyard, or
peristyle, of our house with its pillars and stairs and grand marble-work ­ five
times he had stood there before the assembled family and held in his hands a
newborn son, inspected it and then pronounced it perfect and fit to be reared as
his own, as was his prerogative. Now, you know he had the power of life and
death over his sons from that moment on.
If my Father hadn't wanted these boys for any reason, he would have "exposed"
them to die of starvation. It was against the law to steal such a child and make
it a slave.
Having five boys already, my Father was expected by some to get rid of me
immediately. Who needs a girl? But my Father never exposed or rejected any of my
Mother's children.
And by the time I arrived, I'm told, he cried for joy.
"Thank the gods! A little darling.", I heard the story ad nauseam from my
brothers, who, every time I acted up ­ did something unseemly, frisky and wild ­
said sneeringly, "Thank the gods, a little darling!" It became a charming goad.
My Mother died when I was two, and all I recall of her are gentleness and
sweetness. She'd lost as many children as she had birthed, and early death was
typical enough. Her Epitaph was beautifully written by my Father, and her memory
honored throughout my life. My Father never took another woman into the house.
He slept with a few of the female slaves, but this was nothing unusual. My
brothers did the same thing. This was common in a Roman household. My Father
brought no new woman from another family to rule over me.
There is no grief in me for my Mother because I was simply too young for it, and
if I cried when my Mother did not come back, I don't remember it.
What I remember is having the run of a big old rectangular palatial Roman house,
with many rectangular rooms built onto the main rectangle, one off another, the

whole nestled in a huge garden high on the Palatine Hill. It was a house of
marble floors and richly painted walls, the garden meandering and surrounding
every room of it.
I was the true jewel of my Father's eye, and I remember having a marvelous time
watching my brothers practice outside with their short broadswords, or listening
as their tutors instructed them, and then having fine teachers of my own who
taught me how to read the entire Aeneid of Virgil before I was five years old.
I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I
have fallen into the joy of writing them. I couldn't have told you that nights
ago, David. You've brought back something to me and I must make the admission.
And I must not write too fast in this mortal cafe, lest human beings notice!
Ah, so we continue.
My Father thought it was hysterical that I could recite verses from Virgil at so
young an age and he liked nothing better than to show me off at banquets at
which he entertained his conservative and somewhat old-fashioned Senatorial
friends, and sometimes Caesar Augustus himself. Caesar Augustus was an agreeable
man. I don't think my Father ever really wanted him at our house, however. But
now and then, I suppose, the Emperor had to be wined and dined.
I'd rush in with my nurse, give a rousing recital and then be whisked away to
where I could not see the proud Senators of Rome glutting themselves on peacock
brains and garum ­ surely you know what garum is. It's the horrible sauce the
Romans put on everything, rather like today's ketchup. Definitely it defeated
the purpose of having eels and squids on your plate, or ostrich brains or unborn
lamb or whatever other absurd delicacies were being brought by the platterful.
The point is, as you know, the Romans seemed to have a special place in their
hearts for genuine gluttony, and the banquets inevitably became a disgrace. The
guests would go off to the vomitorium of the house to heave up the first five
courses of the meal so that they could then swallow the others. And I would lie
upstairs, giggling in my bed, listening to all this laughter and vomiting. Then
the rape of the entire catering staff of slaves would follow, whether they were
boys or girls or a mixture of both.
Family meals were an entirely different affair. Then we were old Romans.
Everyone sat at the table; my Father was undisputed Master of his house, and
would tolerate no criticism of Caesar Augustus, who, as you know, was Julius
Caesar's nephew, and did not really rule as Emperor by law.
"When the time is right, he will step down," said my Father. "He knows he can't
do it now. He is more weary and wise than ever he was ambitious. Who wants
another Civil War?"
The times were actually too prosperous for men of stature to make a revolt.
Augustus kept the peace. He had profound respect for the Roman Senate. He
rebuilt old Temples because he thought people needed the piety they had known
under the Republic.
He gave free corn from Egypt to the poor. Nobody starved in Rome. He maintained
a dizzying amount of old festivals, games and spectacles ­ enough to sicken one
actually. But often as patriotic Romans we had to be there.
Of course there was great cruelty in the arena. There were cruel executions.
There was the ever present cruelty of slavery.
But what is not understood by those today is that there coexisted with all this
a sense of individual freedom on the part of even the poorest man.
The courts took time over their decisions. They consulted the past laws. They
followed logic and code. People could speak their minds fairly openly.
I note this because it is key to this story: that Marius and I both were born in
a time when Roman law was, as Marius would say, based on reason, as opposed to
divine revelation.
We are totally unlike those blood drinkers brought to Darkness in lands of Magic
and Mystery.
Not only did we trust Augustus when we were alive, we also believed in the

tangible power of the Roman Senate. We believed in public virtue and character;
we held to a way of life which did not involve rituals, prayers, magic, except
superficially. Virtue was embedded in character. That was the inheritance of the
Roman Republic, which Marius and I shared.
Of course, our house was overcrowded with slaves. There were brilliant Greeks
and grunting laborers and a fleet of women to rush about polishing busts and
vases, and the city itself was choked with manumitted slaves ­ freedmen ­ some
of whom were very rich.
They were all our people, our slaves.
My Father and I sat up all night when my old Greek teacher was dying. We held
his hands until the body was cold. Nobody was flogged on our estate in Rome
unless my Father himself gave the order. Our country slaves loafed under the
fruit trees. Our stewards were rich, and showed off their wealth in their
clothes.
I remember a time when there were so many old Greek slaves in the garden that I
could sit day after day and listen to them argue. They had nothing else to do. I
learned much from this.
I grew up more than happy. If you think I exaggerate the extent of my education,
consult the letters of Pliny or other actual memoirs and correspondence of the
times. Highborn young girls were well educated; modern Roman women went about
unhampered for the most part by male interference. We partook of life as did
men.
For example, I was scarcely eight years old when I was first taken to the arena
with several of my brothers' wives, to have the dubious pleasure of seeing
exotic creatures, such as giraffes, tear madly around before being shot to death
with arrows, this display then followed by a small group of gladiators who would
hack other gladiators to death, and then after that came the flock of criminals
to be fed to the hungry lions.
David, I can hear the sound of those lions as if it were now. There's nothing
between me and the moment that I sat in the wooden benches, perhaps two rows up
­ the premium seats ­ and I watched these beasts devour living beings, as I was
supposed to do, with a pleasure meant to demonstrate a strength of heart, a
fearlessness in the face of death, rather than simple and utter monstrousness.
The audience screamed and laughed as men and women ran from the beasts. Some
victims would give the crowd no such satisfaction. They merely stood there as
the hungry lion attacked; those who were being devoured alive almost invariably
lay in a stupor as though their souls had already taken flight, though the lion
had not reached the throat.
I remember the smell of it. But more than anything, I remember the noise of the
crowd.
I passed the test of character, I could look at all of it. I could watch the
champion gladiator finally meet his end, lying there bloody in the sand, as the
sword went through his chest.
But I can certainly remember my Father declaring under his breath that the whole
affair was disgusting. In fact, everybody I knew thought it was all disgusting.
My Father believed, as did others, that the common man needed all this blood.
We, the highborn, had to preside over it for the common man. It had a religious
quality to it, all this spectacular viciousness.
The making of these appalling spectacles was considered something of a social
responsibility.
Also Roman life was a life of being outdoors, involved in things, attending
ceremonies and spectacles, being seen, taking an interest, coming together with
others.
You came together with all the other highborn and lowborn of the city and you
joined in one mass to witness a triumphant procession, a great offering at the
altar of Augustus, an ancient ceremony, a game, a chariot race.
Now in the Twentieth Century, when I watch the endless intrigue and slaughter in

motion pictures and on television throughout our Western world, I wonder if
people do not need it, do not need to see murder, slaughter, death in all forms.
Television at times seems an unbroken series of gladiatorial fights or
massacres. And look at the traffic now in video recordings of actual war.
Records of war have become art and entertainment.
The narrator speaks softly as the camera passes over the heap of bodies, or the
skeletal children sobbing with their starving mothers. But it is gripping. One
can wallow, shaking one's head, in all this death. Nights of television are
devoted to old footage of men dying with guns in their hands.
I think we look because we are afraid. But in Rome, you had to look so that you
would be hard, and that applied to women as well as men.
But the overall point is ­ I was not closeted away as a Greek woman might have
been in some old Hellenistic household. I did not suer under the earlier customs
of the Roman Republic.
I vividly remember the absolute beauty of that time, and my Father's heartfelt
avowal that Augustus was a god, and that Rome had never been more pleasing to
her deities.
Now I want to give you one very important recollection. Let me set the scene.
First, let's take up the question of Virgil, and the poem he wrote, the Aeneid,
greatly amplifying and glorifying the adventures of the hero Aeneas, a Trojan
fleeing the horrors of defeat by the Greeks who came out of the famous Trojan
horse to massacre Helen's city of Troy.
It's a charming story. I always loved it, Aeneas leaves dying Troy, valiantly
journeys all the way to beautiful Italy and there founds our nation.
But the point is that Augustus loved and supported Virgil all of Virgil's life,
and Virgil was a respected poet, a poet fine and decent to quote, an approved
and patriotic poet. It was perfectly fine to like Virgil.
Virgil died before I was born. But by ten I'd read everything he'd written, and
had read Horace as well, and Lucretius, much of Cicero, and all the Greek
manuscripts we possessed, and there were plenty.
My Father didn't erect his library for show. It was a place where members of the
family spent hours. It was also where he sat to write his letters ­ which he
seemed endlessly to be doing ­ letters on behalf of the Senate, the Emperor, the
courts, his friends, etc.
Back to Virgil. I had also read another Roman poet, who was alive still, and
deeply and dangerously out of favor with Augustus, the god. This was the poet
Ovid, the author of the Metamorphoses, and dozens of other earthy, hilarious and
bawdy works.
Now, when I was too young to remember, Augustus turned on Ovid, whom Augustus
had also loved, and Augustus banished Ovid to some horrible place on the Black
Sea. Maybe it wasn't so horrible. But it was the sort of place cultured city
Romans expect to be horrible ­ very far away from the capital and full of
barbarians.
Ovid lived there a long time, and his books were banned all over Rome. You
couldn't find them in the bookshops or the public libraries. Or at the book
stands all over the marketplace.
You know this was a hot time for popular reading; books were everywhere ­ both
in scroll form and in codex, that is, with bound pages ­ and many booksellers
had teams of Greek slaves spending all day copying books for public consumption.
To continue, Ovid had fallen out of favor with Augustus, and he had been banned,
but men like my Father were not about to burn their copies of the Metamorphoses,
or any other of Ovid's work, and the only reason they didn't plead for Ovid's
pardon was fear.
The whole scandal had something to do with Augustus's daughter, Julia, who was a
notorious slut by anyone's standards. How Ovid became involved in Julia's love
affairs I don't know. Perhaps his sensuous early poetry, the Amores, was
considered to be a bad influence. There was also a lot of "reform" in the air

during the reign of Augustus, a lot of talk of old values.
I don't think anyone knows what really happened between Caesar Augustus and
Ovid, but Ovid was banished for the rest of his life from Imperial Rome.
But I had read the Amores and the Metamorphoses in well-worn copies by the time
of this incident which I want to recount. And many of my Father's friends were
always worried about Ovid.
Now to the specific recollection. I was ten years old, I came in from playing,
covered with dust from head to foot, my hair loose, my dress torn, and breezed
into my Father's large receiving room ­ and I plopped down at the foot of his
couch to listen to what was being said, as he lounged there with all appropriate
Roman dignity, chatting with several other lounging men who had come to visit.
I knew all of the men but one, and this one was fair-haired and blue-eyed, and
very tall, and he turned, during the conversation ­ which was all whispers and
nods ­ and winked at me.
This was Marius, with skin slightly tanned from his travels and a flashing
beauty in his eyes. He had three names like everyone else. But again, I will not
disclose the name of his family. But I knew it. I knew he was sort of the "bad
boy" in an intellectual way, the "poet" and the "loafer." What nobody had told
me was that he was beautiful.
Now, on this day, this was Marius when he was alive, about fifteen years before
he was to be made a vampire. I can calculate that he was only twenty-five. But
I'm not certain.
To continue, the men paid no attention to me, and it became plain to my ever
curious little mind that they were giving my Father news of Ovid, that the tall
blond one with the remarkable blue eyes, the one called Marius, had just
returned from the Baltic Coast, and he had given my Father several presents,
which were in fact good copies of Ovid's work, both past and current.
The men assured my Father that it was still far too dangerous to go crying to
Caesar Augustus over Ovid, and my Father accepted this. But if I'm not mistaken,
he entrusted some money for Ovid to Marius, the blond one.
When the gentlemen were all leaving, I saw Marius in the atrium, got a measure
of his full height, which was quite unusual for a Roman, and let out a girlish
gasp and then a streak of laughter. He winked at me again.
Marius had his hair short then, dipped military-Roman-style with a few modest
curls on his forehead; his hair was long when he was later made a vampire, and
he wears it long now, but then it was the typical boring Roman military cut. But
it was blond and full of sunlight in the atrium, and he seemed the brightest and
most impressive man I'd ever laid eyes upon. He was full of kindness when he
looked at me.
"Why are you so tall?" I asked him. My Father thought this was amusing, of
course, and he did not care what anyone else thought of his dusty little
daughter, hanging onto his arms and speaking to his honored company.
"My precious one," Marius said, "I'm tall because I'm a barbarian!" He laughed
and was flirtatious when he laughed, with a deference to me as a little lady,
which was rather rare.
Suddenly he made his hands into claws and ran at me like a bear.
I loved him instantly!
"No, truly." I said. "You can't be a barbarian. I know your Father and all your
sisters; they live just down the hill. The family is always talking about you at
the table, saying only nice things, of course."
"Of that I'm sure," he said, breaking into laughter.
I knew my Father was getting anxious.
What I didn't know was that a ten-year-old girl could be betrothed.
Marius drew himself up and said in his gentle very fine voice, trained for
public rhetoric as well as words of love, "I am descended through my mother from
the Keltoi, little beauty, little muse. I come from the tall blond people of the
North, the people of Gaul. My mother was a princess there, or so I am told. Do

you know who they are?"
I said of course I knew and began to recite verbatim from Julius Caesar's
account of conquering Gaul, or the land of the Keltoi: "All Gaul is made up of
three parts..."
Marius was quite genuinely impressed. So was everybody So I went on and on, "The
Keltoi are separated from the Aquitani by the river Garonne, and the tribe of
the Belgae by the rivers Marne and Seine ­"
My Father, being slightly embarrassed by this time, with his daughter glorying
in attention, spoke up to gently assure everyone that I was his precious joy,
and I was let to run wild, and please make nothing of it.
And I said, being bold, and a born troublemaker, "Give my love to the great
Ovid! Because I too wish he would come home to Rome."
I then rattled off several steamy lines of the Amores:

She laughed and gave her best, whole hearted kisses, They'd shake the three
pronged bolt from Jove's hand. Torture to think that fellow got such good ones!
I wish they hadn't been of the same brand!

All laughed, except my Father, and Marius went wild with delight, clapping his
hands. That was all the encouragement I needed to rush at him now like a bear,
as he had rushed at me, and to continue singing out Ovid's hot words:

What's more these kisses were better than I'd taught her,
She seemed possessed of knowledge that was new.
They pleased too well ­ bad sign! Her tongue was in them,
And my tongue was kissing too.

My Father grabbed me by the small of my upper arm, and said, "That's it, Lydia,
wrap it up." And the men laughed all the harder, commiserating with him, and
embracing him, and then laughing again.
But I had to have one final victory over this team of adults.
"Pray, Father," I said, "let me finish with some wise and patriotic words which
Ovid said:
" 'I congratulate myself on not having arrived into the world until the present
time. This age suits my taste.' "
This seemed to astonish Marius more than to amuse him. But my Father gathered me
close and said very dearly:
"Lydia, Ovid wouldn't say that now, and now you, for being such a... a scholar
and philosopher in one, should assure your Father's dearest friends that you
know full well Ovid was banished from Rome by Augustus for good reason and that
he can never return home."
In other words, he was saying "Shut up about Ovid."
But Marius, undeterred, dropped on his knees before me, lean and handsome with
mesmeric blue eyes, and he took my hand and kissed it and said, "I will give
Ovid your love, little Lydia. But your Father is right. We must all agree with
the Emperor's censure. After all, we are Romans." He then did the very strange
thing of speaking to me purely as if I were an adult. "Augustus Caesar has given
far more to Rome, I think, than anyone ever hoped. And he too is a poet. He
wrote a poem called `Ajax' and burnt it up himself because he said it wasn't
good."
I was having the time of my life. I would have run off with Marius then and
there!
But all I could do was dance around him as he went out of the vestibule and out
the gate.
I waved to him.
He lingered. "Goodbye, little Lydia," he said. He then spoke under his breath to
my Father, and I heard my Father say:

"You are out of your mind!"
My Father turned his back on Marius, who gave me a sad smile and disappeared.
"What did he mean? What happened?" I asked my Father. "What's the matter?"
"Listen, Lydia," said my Father. "Have you in all your readings come across the
word `betrothed'?"
"Yes, Father, of course."
"Well, that sort of wanderer and dreamer likes nothing better than to betroth
himself to a young girl of ten because it means she is not old enough to marry
and he has years of freedom, without the censure of the Emperor. They do it all
the time."
"No, no, Father," I said. "I shall never forget him."
I think I forgot him the next day.
I didn't see Marius again for five years.
I remember because I was fifteen, and should have been married and didn't want
to be married at all. I had wriggled out of it year after year, feigning
illness, madness, total uncontrollable fits. But time was running out on me. In
fact I'd been eligible for marriage since I was twelve.
At this time, we were all standing together at the foot of the Palatine Hill,
watching a most sacrosanct ceremony ­ the Lupercalia ­ just one of so many
festivals that were integral in Roman life.
Now the Lupercalia was very important to us, though there's no way to relate its
significance to a Christian's concept of religion. It was pious to enjoy such a
festival, to participate as a citizen and as a virtuous Roman.
And besides it was a great pleasure.
So I was there, not so far from the cave of the Lupercal, watching with other
young women, as the two chosen men of that year were smeared with blood from a
sacrifice of goats and then draped in the bleeding skins of the sacrificed
animals. I couldn't see all of this very well, but I had seen it many times, and
when years before two of my brothers had run in this festival, I had pushed to
the front to get a good look at it.
On this occasion, I did have a fairly good view when each of the two young men
took his own company and began his run around the base of the Palatine Hill. I
moved forward because I was supposed to do it. The young men were hitting
lightly on the arm of every young woman with a strip of goatskin, which was
supposed to purify us. Render us fertile.
I stepped forward and received the ceremonial blow, and then stepped back again,
wishing I was a man and could run around the hill with the other men, not an
unusual thought for me at any time in my mortal life.
I had some sarcastic inner thoughts about "being purified," but by this age I
behaved in public and would not on any account have humiliated my Father or my
brothers.
These strips of goatskin, as you know, David, are called Februa, and February
comes from that word. So much for language and all the magic it unwittingly
carries with it. Surely the Lupercalia had something to do with Romulus and
Remus; perhaps it even echoed some ancient human sacrifice. After all, the young
men's heads were smeared with goat blood. It gives me shivers, because in
Etruscan times, long before I was born, this might have been a far more cruel
ceremony.
Perhaps this was the occasion that Marius saw my arms. Because I was exposing
them to this ceremonial lash, and was already, as you can see, much of a
show-off in general, laughing with the others as the company of men continued
their run.
In the crowd, I saw Marius. He looked at me, then back to his book. So strange.
I saw him standing against a tree trunk and writing. No one did this ­ stand
against a tree, hold a book in one hand and write with the other. The slave
stood beside him with a bottle of ink.
Marius's hair was long and most beautiful. Quite wild.

I said to my Father, "Look, there's our barbarian friend Marius, the tall one,
and he's writing."
My Father smiled and said, "Marius is always writing. Marius is good for
writing, if for nothing else. Turn around, Lydia. Be still."
"But he looked at me, Father. I want to talk to him."
"You will not, Lydia! You will not grace him with one small smile!"
On the way home, I asked my Father, "If you're going to marry me to someone ­ if
there's no way short of suicide that I can avoid this disgusting development ­
why don't you marry me to Marius? I don't understand it. I'm rich. He's rich. I
know his Mother was a wild Keltoi princess, but his Father has adopted him."
My Father said witheringly, "Where have you learned all this?" He stopped in his
tracks, always an ominous sign. The crowd broke and streamed around.
"I don't know; it's common knowledge." I turned. There was Marius hovering
about, glancing at me. "Father," I said, "please let me speak to him."
My Father knelt down. Most of the crowd had gone on. "Lydia, I know this is
dreadful for you. I have caved to every objection you have raised to your
suitors. But believe you me, the Emperor himself would not approve of you
marrying such a mad wandering historian as Marius! He has never served in the
military, he cannot enter the Senate, it is quite impossible. When you marry,
you will marry well."
As we walked away, I turned again, thinking only to pick Marius out from the
others, but to my surprise he was stark still, looking at me. With his flowing
hair, he much resembled the Vampire Lestat. He is taller than Lestat, but he has
the same lithe build, the same very blue eyes and a muscular strength to him,
and a squareness of face which is almost pretty.
I pulled away from my Father and ran up to him.
"Well, I wanted to marry you," I said, "but my Father has said no."
I'll never forget the expression on his face. But before he could speak, my
Father had gathered me up and gone into obliterating respectable conversation:
"How now, Marius, how goes it with your brother in the Army. And how is it with
your history. I hear you have written thirteen volumes."
My Father backed up, virtually carrying me away.
Marius did not move or answer. Soon we were with others hurrying up the hill.
All the course of our lives was changed at that moment. But there was no
conceivable way Marius or I could have known it.
Twenty years would pass before we would meet again.
I was thirty-five, then. I can say that we met in a realm of darkness in more
respects than one.
For now, let me fill up the gap.
I was married twice, due to pressure from the Imperial House. Augustus wanted us
all to have children. I had none. My husbands seeded plenty, however, with slave
girls. So I was legally divorced and freed twice over, and determined then to
retire from social life, just so the Emperor Tiberius, who had come to the
Imperial throne at the age of fifty, would not meddle with me, for he was more a
public puritan and domestic dictator than Augustus. If I kept to the house, if I
didn't go abroad to banquets and parties and hang around with the Empress Livia,
Augustus's wife and mother of Tiberius, perhaps I wouldn't be pushed into
becoming a stepmother! I'd stay home. I had to care for my Father. He deserved
it. Even though he was perfectly healthy, he was still old!
With all due respect for the husbands I have mentioned, whose names are more
than footnotes in common Roman histories, I was a wretched wife.
I had plenty of my own money from my Father, I listened to nothing, and yielded
to the act of love only on my own terms, which I always obtained; being gifted
with enough beauty to make men really suffer.
I became a member of the Cult of Isis just to spite these husbands and get away
from them, so that I could hang around at the Temple of Isis, where I spent an
enormous amount of time with other interesting women, some far more adventurous

and unconventional than I dared to be. I was attracted to whores. I saw the
brilliant, loose women as having conquered a barrier which I, the loving
daughter of my Father, would never conquer.
I became a regular at the Temple. I was initiated at last in a secret ceremony,
and I walked in every procession of Isis in Rome.
My husbands loathed this. Maybe that's why after I came home to my Father I gave
up the worship. Whatever, it was a good thing perhaps that I had. But fortune
could not be so easily shaped by any decision of mine.
Now Isis was an imported goddess, from Egypt, of course, and the old Romans were
as suspicious of her as they were of the terrible Cybele, the Great other from
the Far East, who led her male devotees to castrate themselves. The whole city
was filled with these "Eastern cults," and the conservative population thought
them dreadful.
These cults weren't rational; they were ecstatic or euphoric. They offered a
complete rebirth through understanding.
The typical conservative Roman was far too practical for that. If you didn't
know by age five that the gods were made-up creatures and the myths invented
stories, then you were a fool.
But Isis had a curious distinction ­ something that set her far apart from the
cruel Cybele. Isis was a loving mother and goddess. Isis forgave her worshipers
anything. Isis had come before all Creation. Isis was patient and wise.
That's why the most degraded woman could pray at the Temple. That's why none
were ever turned away.
Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is so well known today throughout the East and
West, the Queen Isis had conceived her divine child by divine means. From the
dead and castrated Osiris, she had drawn the living seed by her own power. And
many a time she was pictured or sculpted holding her divine son, Horus, on her
knee. Her breast was bare in all innocence to feed the young god.
And Osiris ruled in the land of the dead, his phallus lost forever in the waters
of the Nile, where an endless semen flowed from it, fertilizing the remarkable
fields of Egypt every year when the River overflowed its banks.
The music of our Temple was divine. We used the sistrum, a small rigid metal
lyre of sorts, and flutes and timbrels. We danced, and we sang together. The
poetry of Isis's litanies was fine and rapturous.
Isis was the Queen of Navigation, much like the Blessed Virgin Mary would be
called later, "Our Lady Star of the Sea."
When her statue was carried to the shore each year, the procession was so
splendid that all Rome turned out to see the Egyptian gods with their animal
heads, the huge abundance of flowers and the statue of the Queen Mother herself.
The air rang with hymns. Her Priests and Priestesses walked in white linen
robes. She herself, made of marble, and carried high, holding her sacred
sistrum, dressed regally in a Grecian gown with Grecian hair.
That was my Isis. I fell away from her after my last divorce. My Father didn't
like the worship, and I myself had enjoyed it long enough. As a free woman, I
wasn't infatuated with prostitutes. I had it infinitely better. I kept my
Father's house and he was just old enough, in spite of his black hair and his
remarkably sharp vision, that the Emperor left me alone.
I can't say I remembered or thought of Marius. No one had mentioned Marius for
years. He had disappeared out of my mind after the Lupercalia. There was no
force on Earth that could come between me and my Father.
My brothers all had good luck. They married well, had children and came home
from the hard wars in which they fought, keeping the boundaries of the Empire.
My youngest brother, Lucius, I did not like much, but he was always a little
anxious and given to drinking and apparently also to gambling, which very much
annoyed his wife.
She I loved, as I did all my sisters-in-law and my nieces and nephews. I loved
it when they descended upon the house, these flocks of children, squealing and

running rampant with "Aunt Lydia's blessing," as they were never allowed to do
at home.
The eldest of my brothers, Antony, was in potential a great man. Fate robbed him
of greatness. But he had been most ready for it, well schooled, trained and most
wise.
The only foolish thing I ever knew Antony to do was say to me very distinctly
once that Livia, Augustus's wife, had poisoned him so that her son, Tiberius,
would rise. My Father, the only other occupant of the room, told him sternly:
"Antony, never speak of that again! Not here, not anywhere!" My Father stood up,
and without planning it, put in perspective the style of life which he and I
lived, "Stay away from the Imperial Palace, stay away from the Imperial
families, be in the front ranks of the games and always in the Senate, but don't
get into their quarrels and their intrigues!"
Antony was very angry, but the anger had nothing to do with my Father. "I said
it only to those two to whom I can say it, you and Lydia. I detest eating dinner
with a woman who poisoned her husband! Augustus should have re-established the
Republic. He knew when death was coming."
"Yes, and he knew that he could not restore the Republic. It was simply
impossible. The Empire had grown to Britannia in the North, beyond Parthia in
the East; it covers Northern Africa. If you want to be a good Roman, Antony,
then stand up and speak your conscience in the Senate. Tiberius invites this."
"Oh, Father, you are much deceived," said Antony.
My Father put an end to this argument.
But he and I did live exactly the life he had described.
Tiberius was immediately unpopular with the noisy Roman crowds. He was too old,
too dry, too humorless, too puritanical and tyrannical at the same time.
But he had one saving grace. Other than his extensive love and knowledge of
philosophy, he had been a very good soldier. And that was the most important
characteristic the Emperor had to possess.
The troops honored him.
He strengthened the Praetorian Guard around the Palace, hired a man named
Sejanus to run things for him. But he didn't bring legions into Rome, and he
spoke a damned good line about personal rights and freedom, that is, if you
could stay awake to listen. I thought him a brooder.
The Senate went mad with impatience when he refused to make decisions. They
didn't want to make the decisions! But all this seemed relatively safe.
Then a horrible incident occurred which made me positively detest the Emperor
wholeheartedly and lose all my faith in the man and his ability to govern.
This incident involved the Temple of Isis. Some clever evil man, claiming to be
the Egyptian god Anubis, had enticed a highborn devotee of Isis to the Temple
and gone to bed with her, fooling her completely, though how on Earth he did it
I can't imagine.
I remember her to this day as the stupidest woman in Rome. But there's probably
more to it.
Anyway, it had all happened at the Temple.
And then this man, this fake Anubis, went before the highborn virtuous woman and
told her in the plainest terms that he had had her! She went screaming to her
husband. It was a scandal of extraordinary flair.
It had been years since I had been at the Temple, and I was glad of it.
But what followed from the Emperor was more dreadful than I ever dreamed.
The entire Temple was razed to the very ground. All the worshipers were banished
from Rome, and some of them executed. And our Priests and Priestesses were
crucified, their bodies hung on the tree, as the old Roman expression goes, to
die slowly, and to rot, for all to see.
My Father came into my bedroom. He went to the small shrine of Isis. He took the
statue and smashed it on the marble floor. Then he picked up the larger pieces
and smashed each of them. He made dust of her.

I nodded.
I expected him to condemn me for my old habits. I was overcome with sadness and
shock at what had happened. Other Eastern cults were being persecuted. The
Emperor was moving to take away the right of Sanctuary from various Temples
throughout the Empire.
"The man doesn't want to be Emperor of Rome," said my Father. "He's been bent by
cruelty and losses. He's stiff, boring and completely in terror for his life! A
man who would not be Emperor cannot be Emperor. Not now."
"Maybe he'll step down," I said sadly. "He has adopted the young General
Germanicus Julius Caesar. This means Germanicus is to be his heir, does it
not'?"
"What good did it do to the earlier heirs of Augustus when they were adopted?"
my Father asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Use your head," said my Father. "We cannot continue pretending we are a
Republic. We must define the office of this Emperor and the limits of his power!
We must outline a form of succession other than murder!"
I tried to calm him.
"Father, let's leave Rome. Let's go to our house in Tuscany. It's always
beautiful there, Father."
"That's just it, we can't, Lydia," he said. "I have to remain here. I have to be
loyal to my Emperor. I must do so for all my family. I must stand in the
Senate."
Within months, Tiberius sent off his young and handsome nephew Germanicus Julius
Caesar to the East, just to get him away from the adulation of the Roman public.
As I said, people spoke their minds.
Germanicus was supposed to be Tiberius's heir! But Tiberius was too jealous to
listen to the crowds screaming praise of Germanicus for his victories in battle.
He wanted the man far from Rome.
And so this rather charming and seductive young general went to the East, to
Syria; he vanished from the loving eyes of the Roman people, from the core of
the Empire where a city crowd could determine the fate of the world.
Sooner or later there would be another campaign in the North, we all figured.
Germanicus had hit hard at the German tribes in his last campaign.
My brothers vividly described it to me over the dinner table,
They told how they had gone back to avenge the hideous massacre of General Varus
and his troops in the Teutoburg Forest. They could finish the job, if called up
again, and my brothers would go. They were exactly the kind of old-fashioned
patricians who would go!
Meantime there were rumors that the Delatores, the notorious spies of the
Praetorian Guard, pocketed one-third of the estate of those against whom they
informed. I found it horrible. My Father shook his head, and said, "That started
under Augustus."
"Yes, Father," I said, "but then treason was considered a matter of what one
did, not what one said."
"Which is all the more reason to say nothing." He sat back wearily. "Lydia, sing
to me. Get your lyre. Make up one of your comic epics. It's been a long time."
"I'm too old for that," I said, thinking of the silly, bawdy satires on Homer
which I used to make up so quickly and freely that everyone marveled. But I
jumped at that idea. I remember that night so palpably that I cannot tear myself
loose now from the writing of this story, even though I know what pain I must
confess and explore.
What does it mean to write? David, you'll see this question repeated, because
with each page I understand more and more ­ I see the patterns that have before
eluded me, and driven me to dream rather than live.
That night I did make a very funny epic. My Father laughed. He fell asleep on
his couch. And then, as if from a trance state, he spoke, "Lydia, don't live out

your life alone on account of me. Marry for love! You must not give up!"
By the time I turned around, he was breathing deeply again,
Two weeks later, or maybe it was a month, our life came abruptly to an end.
I came home one day, found the house completely empty except for two terrified
old slave men ­ men who actually belonged to the household of my brother Antony
­ who let me in and bolted the door ferociously.
I walked through the huge vestibule and then into the peristyle and into the
dining room. I beheld an amazing sight.
My Father was in full battle dress, armed with sword and dagger, lacking only
his shield. He even wore his red cloak. His breastplate was polished and
gleaming.
He stared at the floor and with reason. It had been dug up. The old Hearth from
generations ago had been dug up. This had been the first room of this house in
the very ancient days of Rome, and it was around this Hearth that the family
gathered, worshiped, dined.
I had never even seen it, We had our household Shrines, but this, this giant
circle of burnt stones! There were actually ashes there, uncovered. How ominous
and sacred it appeared.
"What in the name of the gods is going on?" I asked. "Where is everybody?"
"They are gone," he said. "I have freed the slaves, sent them packing. I've been
waiting for you. You have to leave here now!"
"Not without you!"
"You will not disobey me, Lydia!" I had never seen such an imploring yet
dignified expression in his face. "There's a wagon out back, ready to take you
to the coast, and a Jewish merchant who is my most trusted friend who will take
you by ship out of Italy! I want you to go! Your money's been loaded on board
the ship. Your clothing. Everything. These are men I trust. Nevertheless take
this dagger."
He picked up a dagger from the nearby table and gave it to me. "You've watched
your brothers enough to know how to use it," he said, "and this." He reached for
a sack. "This is gold, the currency that all the world accepts. Take it and go."
I always carried a dagger, and it was in the sling on my forearm but I could not
shock him with this just now, so I put the dagger in my girdle and took the
purse.
"Father, I'm not afraid to stand by you! Who's turned on us? Father, you are
Senator of Rome. Accused of any crime, you are entitled to a trial before the
Senate."
"Oh, my precious quick-witted daughter! You think that evil Sejanus and his
Delatores bring charges out in the open? His Speculatores have already surprised
your brothers and their wives and children. These are Antony's slaves. He sent
them to warn me as he fought, as he died. He saw his son dashed against the
wall. Lydia, go."
Of course I knew this was a Roman custom ­ to murder the entire family, to wipe
out the spouse and offspring of the condemned. It was even the law. And in
matters such as this, when word got out that the Emperor had turned his back on
a man, any of his enemies could precede the assassins.
"You come with me," I said. "Why do you stay here?"
"I will die a Roman in my house," he said. "Now go if you love me, my poet, my
singer, my thinker. My Lydia. Go! I will not be disobeyed. I have spent the last
hour of my life arranging for your salvation! Kiss me and obey me."
I ran to him, kissed him on the lips and at once the slaves led me through the
garden.
I knew my Father. I could not revolt against him in this final wish. I knew
that, in old-fashioned Roman style, he would probably take his life before the
Speculatores broke down the front door.
When I reached the gate, when I saw the Hebrew merchants and their wagon, I
couldn't go.

This is what I saw.
My Father had cut both his wrists and was walking around the household hearth in
a circle, letting the blood flow right down onto the floor. He had really given
his wrists the slash. He was turning white as he walked. In his eyes there was
an expression I would only come to understand later.
There came a loud crash. The front door was being bashed in. My Father stopped
quite still. And two of the Praetorian Guard came at him, one making sneering
remarks, "Why don't you finish yourself off, Maximus, and save us the trouble.
Go on."
"Are you proud of yourselves!" my Father said. "Cowards. You like killing whole
families? How much money do you get? Did you ever fight in a true battle. Come
on, die with me!"
Turning his back on them, he whipped around with sword and dagger, and brought
down both of them, as they came at him, with unanticipated thrusts. He stabbed
them repeatedly.
My Father wobbled as if he would faint. He was white. The blood flowed and
flowed from his wrists. His eyes rolled up into his head.
Mad schemes came to me. We must get him into the wagon. But a Roman like my
Father would never have cooperated.
Suddenly the Hebrews, one young and one elderly, had me by the arms and were
carrying me out of the house.
"I vowed I would save you," said the old man. "And you will not make a liar of
me to my old friend."
"Let go of me!" I whispered. "I will see him through it!"
Throwing them off in their polite timidity I turned and saw from a great
distance my Father's body by the hearth. He had finished himself with his own
dagger.
I was thrown into the wagon, my eyes dosed, my hands over my mouth. I fell among
soft pillows, bolts of fabric, tumbling as the wagon began to roll very slowly
down the winding road of the Palatine Hill.
Soldiers shouted at us to get the hell out of the way.
The elderly Hebrew said, "I am nearly deaf, sir, what did you say?"
It worked perfectly. They rode past us.
The Hebrew knew exactly what he was doing. As crowds rushed past us he kept to
his slow pace.
The one young one came into the back of the wagon. "My name is Jacob," he said.
"Here, put on all these white mantles. You look now like an Eastern woman. If
questioned at the gate, hold up your veil and pretend you do not understand."
We went through the Gates of Rome with amazing ease. It was "Hail David and
Jacob, has it been a good trip?"
I was helped aboard a large merchant vessel, with galley slaves and sails,
nothing unusual at all, and then into a small barren wooden room.
"This is all we have for you," said Jacob. "But we are sailing now." He had long
wavy brown hair and a beard. He wore striped robes to the ground.
"In the dark?" I asked. "Sailing in the dark?"
This was not usual.
But as we moved out, as the oars began to dip, and the ship found its proper
distance and began to move South, I saw what we were doing.
All the beautiful Southwestern coast of Italy was well lighted by her hundreds
and hundreds of palatial villas. Lighthouses stood on the rocks.
"We will never see the Republic again," said Jacob wearily, as though he were a
Roman citizen, which I think in fact he was. "But your Father`s last wish is
fulfilled. We are safe now."
The old man stepped up to me. He told me that his name was David.
The old man apologized profusely that there were no female attendants for me. I
was the only woman on board.
"Oh, please, banish any such thoughts from your mind! Why have you taken these

risks?"
"For years we have done business with your Father," said David. "Years ago, when
pirates sank our ships, your Father carried the debt. He trusted us again, and
we repaid him fivefold. He has laid up riches for you. They are all stowed,
among cargo we carried, as if they were nothing."
I went into the cabin and collapsed on the small bed. The old man, averting his
eyes, brought a cover for me.
Slowly I realized something. I had fully expected them to betray me.
I had no words. I had no gestures or sentiments inside me. I turned my head to
the wall. "Sleep, lady," he said.
A nightmare came to me, a dream such as I have never had in my life. I was near
a river. I wanted to drink blood. I waited in high grass to catch one of the
villagers, and when I had this poor man, I took him by his shoulders, and I sank
two fang teeth into his neck. My mouth filled with delicious blood. It was too
sweet and too potent to be described, and even in the dream I knew it. But I had
to move on. The man was nearly dead. I let him fall. Others who were more
dangerous were after me. And there was another terrible threat to my life.
I came to the ruins of a Temple, far from the marsh. Here it was desert ­ just
with the snap of the fingers, from wetland to sand. I was afraid. Morning was
coming. I had to hide. Besides, I was also being hunted. I digested this
delicious blood, and I entered the Temple. No place to hide! I lay my whole body
on the cold walls! They were graven with pictures. But there was no small room,
no hiding place for me.
I had to make it to the hills before sunrise, but that wasn't possible. I was
moving right towards the sun!
Suddenly, there came above the hills a great fatal light. My eyes hurt
unbearably. They were on fire. "My eyes," I cried and reached to cover them.
Fire covered me. I screamed. "Amon Ra, I curse you!" I cried another name. I
knew it meant Isis, but it was not that name, it was another title for her that
flew from my lips.
I woke up. I sat bolt upright, shivering.
The dream had been as sharply defined as a vision. It had a deep resonance in me
of memory. Had I lived before?
I went out on the deck of the ship. All was well enough. We could see the
coastline dearly still, and the lighthouses, and the ship moved on. I stared at
the sea, and I wanted blood.
"This is not possible. This is some evil omen, some twisted grief," I said. I
felt the fire. I could not shut out the taste of the blood, how natural it had
seemed, how good, how perfect for my thirst. I saw the twisted body of the
villager again in the marshes.
This was a horror; it was no escape from what I had just witnessed. I was
incensed, and feverish.
Jacob, the tall young one, came to me. He had with him a young Roman. The young
man had shaved his first beard, but otherwise he seemed a flushed and glistening
child.
I wondered wearily if I were so old at thirty-five that everyone young looked
beautiful to me.
He cried, "My family, too, has been betrayed. My Mother made me leave!"
"To whom do we owe this shared catastrophe'?" I asked. I put my hands on his wet
cheeks. He had a baby's mouth, but the shaven beard was rough. He had broad
strong shoulders, and wore only a light, simple tunic. Why wasn't he cold out
here on the water? Perhaps he was.
He shook his head. He was pretty still and would be handsome later. He had a
nice curl to his dark hair. He didn't fear his tears, or apologize for them.
"My Mother stayed alive to tell me. She lay gasping until I came. When the
Delatores had told my Father that he plotted against the Emperor, my Father had
laughed. He had actually laughed. They had accused him of plotting with

Germanicus! My Mother wouldn't die until she'd told me. She said that all my
Father was accused of doing was talking with other men about how he would serve
under Germanicus again if they were sent North."
I nodded wearily. "I see. My brothers probably said the same thing. And
Germanicus is the Emperor's heir and Imperium Maius of the East. Yet this is
treason, to speak of serving Rome under a pretty general."
I turned to go. To understand gave no consolation.
"We are taking you to different cities," said Jacob, "to different friends.
Better that we not say."
"Don't leave me," said the boy. "Not tonight."
"All right," I said. I took him into the cabin and closed the door, with a
polite nod to Jacob, who was watching all with a guardian's conscience.
"What do you want?" I asked.
The boy stared at me. He shook his head. He flung his hands out. He turned and
drew dose to me and kissed me. We went into a rampage of kisses.
I took off my shift and sank into the bed with him. He was a man all right,
tender face or no.
And when I came to the moment of ecstasy, which was quite easy, given his
phenomenal stamina, I tasted blood. I was the blood drinker in the dream. I went
limp, but it didn't matter. He had all he needed to finish the rites to his
satisfaction.
He rose up. "You're a goddess," he said.
"No," I whispered. The dream was rising. I heard the wind on the sand. I smelled
the river. "I am a god... a god who drinks blood."
We did the rites of love until we could do them no more.
"Be circumspect and very proper with our Hebrew hosts," I said. "They will never
understand this sort of thing."
He nodded. "I adore you."
"Not necessary. What is your name'?"
"Marcellus."
"Fine, Marcellus, go to sleep."
Marcellus and I made a night of every night after that until we finally saw the
famous lighthouse of Pharos and knew we had come to Egypt.
It was perfectly obvious that Marcellus was being left in Alexandria. He
explained to me that his maternal grandmother was still alive, a Greek, and
indeed her whole dan.
"Don't tell me so much, just go," I said. "And be wise and safe."
He begged me to come with him. He said he had fallen in love with me. He would
marry me. He didn't care if I bore no children. He didn't care that I was
thirty-five. I laughed softly, mercifully.
Jacob noted all this with lowered eyes. And David looked away.
Quite a few trunks followed Marcellus into Alexandria.
"Now," I said to Jacob, "will you tell me where I'm being taken? I might have
some thoughts on the matter, though I doubt I could improve on my Father's
plan."
I still wondered. Would they deal honestly with me? What about now that they had
seen me play the whore with the boy? They were such religious men.
"You're headed to a great city," Jacob said. "It couldn't be a better place.
Your Father has Greek friends there!"
"How could it be better than Alexandria?" I said.
"Oh, it is far and away better," Jacob said. "Let me talk to my Father before I
talk to you further."
We had put out to sea. The land was going away. Egypt. It was growing dark.
"Don't be afraid," Jacob said. "You look as though you are terrified."
"I'm not afraid," I said. "It's only that I have to lie in my bed and think and
remember and dream." I looked at him, as he shyly looked away. "I held the boy
like a Mother, against me, night after night."

This was about the biggest lie I've told in my life.
"He was a child in my arms." Some child! "And now I fear nightmares. You must
tell me ­ what is our destination? What is our fate?"



3

Antioch," said Jacob, "Antioch on the Orontes. Greek friends of your Father
await you. And they are friends with Germanicus. Perhaps in time ... but they
will be loyal to you. You are to be married to a Greek of breeding and means."
Married! To a Greek, a provincial Greek? A Greek in Asia! I stifled my laughter
and my tears. That was not going to happen to me. Poor man! If he really was a
provincial Greek, he was going to have to experience the conquest of Rome all
over again.
We sailed on, from port to port. I mulled all this over.
It was nauseating trivia like this which of course protected me from my full and
inevitable grief and shock over what happened. Worry about whether your dress is
properly girdled. Don't see your Father lying dead with his own dagger in his
chest.
As for Antioch, I had been far too embroiled in the life of Rome to know or hear
much about this city. If Tiberius had stationed his "heir," Germanicus, there to
get him away from Roman popularity, then I thought: Antioch must be the end of
the civilized world.
Why in the name of the gods had I not run away in Alexandria, I thought?
Alexandria was the greatest city in the Empire, next to Rome. It was a young
city, built by Alexander, for whom it was named, but it was a marvelous port. No
one would ever dare raze the Temple of Isis in Alexandria. Isis was an Egyptian
goddess, wife of the powerful Osiris.
But what had that to do with things? I must have been plotting in the back of my
mind already, but I didn't allow any conscious plot to surface and blemish my
highborn Roman moral character.
I quietly thanked my Hebrew guardians for this intelligence, for keeping it even
from the young Roman Marcellus, the other man they had rescued from the
Emperor's assassins, and I asked for frank answers to my questions regarding my
brothers.
"All taken by surprise," said Jacob. "The Delatores, those spies of the
Praetorian Guard, are so swift. And your Father had so many sons. It was your
eldest brother's slaves who jumped the wall at their Master's command and ran to
warn your Father."
Antony. I hope you shed their blood. I know you fought with your last breath.
And my niece, my little niece Flora, had she run screaming from them, or did
they do it with mercy'? The Praetorian Guard doing anything with mercy! Stupid
to even think so.
I didn't say anything aloud. Just sighed.
After all, when they looked at me, these two Jewish merchants beheld the body
and face of a woman; naturally my protectors should think a woman was inside of
me. The disparity between outward appearances and inner disposition had
disturbed me all my life. Why disturb Jacob and David? On to Antioch.
But I had no intention of living in any oldfashioned Greek family, if such still
existed in the Greek city of Antioch, a family in which women lived apart from
the men, and wove wool all day, never going out, having no part in the life of
the world whatsoever.
I'd been taught all the virtuous female arts by my nurses and I could indeed do
anything with yarn or thread or loom that any other woman could do, but I knew
well what the "Old Greek Ways" had been, and I remembered vaguely my Father's
Mother, who had died when I was very young ­ a virtuous Roman matron who was
always making wool. So they had said of her in her Epitaph, and in fact, they

had said in my Mother's Epitaph: "She kept the House. She made wool."
And so they had said of my Mother! The very same tiresome words.
Well, no one was going to say that on mine. (How humorous to reflect on the fact
now, thousands of years later, that I have no Epitaph!)
What I failed to realize in my overall dejection was that the Roman world was
enormous, and the Eastern portion of it differed dramatically from the Northern
barbarian lands, where my brothers had fought.
The entire of Asia Minor, towards which we sailed, had been conquered by
Alexander of Macedon hundreds of years before. As you know, Alexander had been
the pupil of Aristotle. Alexander had wanted to spread Greek culture everywhere.
And in Asia Minor Greek ideas and styles found not mere country towns or
farmers, but ancient cultures, like the Empire of Syria, willing to receive the
new ideas, the grace and beauty of the Greek enlightenment, and willing to bring
in tune with it their own centuries-old literature, religion, styles of life and
dress.
Antioch had been built by a general of Alexander the Great who sought to rival
the beauty of other Hellenistic cities, with splendid Temples, administrative
buildings and libraries of books in the Greek language, its schools where Greek
philosophy was taught. A Hellenistic government was established ­ quite
enlightened compared to ancient Eastern despotism, and yet there lay beneath all
this the knowledge and customs and possibly the wisdom of the mysterious East.
The Romans had conquered Antioch early on because it was a huge trade center. It
was unique in this way, as Jacob showed to me, drawing a crude map with his wet
finger on the wooden table. Antioch was a port of the great Mediterranean
because she was only twenty miles up the Orontes River.
Yet on the Eastern side she was open to the desert: all the old caravan routes
came to Antioch, the camel merchants who brought fantastic wares from fabled
lands ­ lands we know now to have been India and China ­ silk, carpet and jewels
which never reached the markets of Rome.
Countless other traders came and went to Antioch. Fine roads connected it in the
East with the Euphrates River and the Parthian Empire beyond, and to the South
you could go to Damascus and Judea, and to the North, of course, lay all the
cities made by Alexander, which had flowered under Roman rule.
Roman soldiers loved it there. It was an easy and interesting life. And Antioch
loved the Romans because the Romans protected the trade routes, and the
caravans, and kept peace in the port.
"You will find open places, arcades, Temples, all that you seek and such markets
you would not believe. There are Romans everywhere. I hope to One Most High that
you are not recognized by someone from your own background! That is one danger
of which your Father had no time to plan."
I waved it away.
"Does it have teachers now, and markets of books?"
"From everywhere. You will find books which no one can read. And Greek is spoken
by everyone. You have to go out in the country to find some poor farmer who does
not understand Greek. Latin has now become common.
"The philosophers never stop; they speak of Plato and Pythagoras, names that
don't mean much to me; they talk about Chaldean magic from Babylon. Of course
there are Temples to every imaginable god."
He went on, reflecting as he spoke:
"The Hebrews? I think personally they are too worldly ­ they want to hang around
in short tunics with the Greeks and go to the public baths. They are too
interested in the Greek philosophy. It invades everything, all this thinking
that Greeks did. Not good. But a Greek city is an inviting world."
He glanced up. His Father was watching over us, and we were too dose together,
at this table on the deck.
He hastily filled me in on other facts:
Germanicus Julius Caesar, heir to the Imperial throne, the official adopted son

of Tiberius, had been granted the Imperium Maius in Antioch. That is, he
controlled all of this territory. And Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso was the governor of
Syria.
I assured him that they would know nothing of me or my old-fashioned family or
our quiet, old house on the Palatine Hill, squeezed between so many other
extravagant new mansions.
"It's all Roman-style," Jacob protested. "You'll see. And you come with money!
And forgive me, but you are still beautiful at your age; you have fresh skin and
you move your limbs like a girl."
I sighed and gave Jacob thanks. Time for him to break away unless we wanted his
Father coming down upon us.
I watched the ever rolling blue waves.
I was thankful in secret that our family had withdrawn from the parties and
banquets at the Imperial Palace, but then I blamed myself for such thankfulness,
knowing that our reclusiveness must have paved the way for our downfall.
I'd seen Germanicus on his triumphal procession through Rome, a gorgeous young
man, much as Alexander had been, and I knew from my Father and my brothers that
Tiberius, fearing the popularity of his appointed heir, had sent him off to the
East to get him away from the Roman crowds.
The Governor Piso? I had never laid eyes on him. The gossip was that he was sent
East to devil Germanicus. Oh, such a waste of talent and thought.
Jacob returned to me.
"Well, you go nameless and unknown into this vast city," said Jacob. "And you
have protectors of high character who are beloved of Germanicus. He's young and
sets a tone of vitality and gaiety in the city."
"And Piso?" I asked.
"Everyone hates him. Especially the soldiers, and you know what that means in a
Roman province."
You can look at the crashing, undulating sea from the railing of a deck forever,
or just for so long.
That night I had my second blood dream. It was keenly similar to the first. I
was thirsty for blood. And enemies were after me, enemies that knew I was a
demon and must be destroyed. I was running. My own kind had forsaken me, thrust
me out unprotected to the superstitions of the people. Then I saw the desert and
knew I would die; I awoke, sitting up and crying out, but covering my mouth
quickly so no one heard it.
What disturbed me so terribly was the thirst for blood. I could not imagine such
a thing when I was awake, but in these dreams I was the monster that Romans
called the Lamia. Or so it seemed. Blood was sweet, blood was all. Was the old
Greek Pythagoras right? Souls do migrate from body to body? But my soul in this
past life had been that of a monster.
During the day, I dosed my eyes now and then and found myself dangerously on the
edge of the dream, as if it were a trap in my mind, waiting to engulf my
consciousness. But at night, that is when they came most strongly. You have
served me before! What could this mean? Come to me.
Blood thirst. I closed my eyes, curled up in bed and prayed, "Mother Isis,
Cleanse my Mind of this Blood madness."
Then I resorted to plain old ordinary eroticism. Get Jacob into bed! No such
luck. Little did I know that Hebrews had been, and would be forever, the most
difficult of men to seduce!
It was all made dear with great grace and tact.
I considered all the slaves. Out of the question. First off were the galley
slaves, among whom no great "Ben Hur" was chained, waiting for me to rescue him.
They were just the dregs of the criminal poor, fastened Roman-style, so they
would drown if the ship went down, and they were dying, as all galley slaves do
from the monotony and the whip. It wasn't a pleasant sight to go down into the
hold of a galley ship and see those men bending their backs.

But my eyes were as cold as those of an American watching color television
pictures of the starving babies of Africa, little black skeletons with big heads
screaming for water. News Break, Commercial Break, Sound Bite, CNN now switches
to Palestine: rock throwing, rubber bullets. Television blood.
The rest on board were boring sailors, and two old pious merchant Hebrews who
stared at me as if I were a whore, or worse, and turned their heads whenever I
came out on deck in my long tunic with my long hair swinging free.
Such a disgrace I must have seemed! But what a fool I was then, really, living
in numbness, and how pleasant that voyage ­ all because true grief and rage had
not yet taken hold of me. Things had happened too fast.
I gloated over my last glimpse of my Father dispatching those soldiers of
Tiberius, those cheap assassins sent by a cowardly, indecisive Emperor. And the
rest ­ I banished it from my mind, affecting the attitude of the hardened Roman
man or woman.
A modern Irish poet, Yeats, best characterizes the official Roman attitude
towards failure and tragedy.

Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

There was never a Roman born who would not have agreed with that.
That was my stance ­ sole survivor of a great house, commanded by her Father to
"live." I didn't dare to dwell on the fate of my brothers, their lovely wives,
their little children. I couldn't envision the slaughter of the children ­
little boys being run through by broadswords, or babies bashed against the wall.
Oh, Rome, you and your bloody old wisdom. Be sure to kill the offspring. Kill
the whole family!
Lying alone at night, I found myself amid more horrid blood dreams. They seemed
fragments of a lost life, a lost land. Deep echoing vibrant tones of music
dominated the dreams, as though someone were striking a gong, and others beside
him beat solemnly on deep drums with soft coverings. I saw in a haze a world of
stiff and flat alien paintings on the walls. Painted eyes around me. I drank
blood! I drank it from a small shuddering human being, who knelt before me as if
I were Mother Isis.
I woke to take the big jug of water by my bed and drink all of it down. I drank
water to defy and satisfy this dream thirst. I was almost sick from drinking
water.
I racked my mind. Had I ever had such dreams as a child?
No. And now these dreams had the heat of recollection! Of initiation into the
doomed Temple of Isis, when it had been still the fashion. I had been
intoxicated, and drenched in the blood of a bull, and dancing wildly in circles.
My head was filled with the litanies of Isis. We were promised rebirth! "Never
tell, never tell, never tell..." How could an initiate tell anything of the
rites, when you were so drunk you could hardly remember them?
Isis brought me memories now of lovely music of lyres, flutes, timbrels, of the
high magical sound of the metal strings of the sistrum, which the Mother Herself
held in her hand. There were only fleeting recollections of that naked blood
dance, that night of rising into the stars, of seeing the scope of life in its
cycles, of accepting perfectly just for a little while that the moon would
always be changing, and the sun would set as it always rose. Embraces of other
women. Soft cheeks and kissing and bodies rocking in unison. "Life, death,
rebirth, it's no series of miracles," said the Priestess. "To understand it and
accept it, that is the miracle. Make the miracle within your own breast."
Surely we had not drunk blood! And the bull ­ it was a sacrifice only for the
initiation. We did not bring helpless animals to her flower-laden altars, no,
our Blessed Mother did not ask that of us.
Now, at sea, alone, I lay awake to avoid these blood dreams.
When exhaustion won out, a dream came with sleep as if it had been waiting for

my eyes to close.
I lay in a gold chamber. I was drinking blood, blood from the throat of a god,
or so it seemed, and choruses were singing or chanting ­ it was a dull,
repetitive sound not quite worthy of being called music, and when I had had my
fill of blood, this god or whoever this was, this silken-skinned proud thing,
lifted me and placed me on an altar.
Vividly, I could feel the cold marble beneath me. I realized I wore no clothes.
I felt no modesty.
Somewhere far off echoing through these great halls, came the weeping of a
woman. I was full of blood. Those who chanted approached with little clay oil
lamps. Faces around me were dark, dark enough to be from far faraway Ethiopia or
India. Or Egypt. Look. Painted eyes! I looked at my hands and arms. They were
dark. But I was this person who lay on the altar, and I say person now because
it had come clear to me with no disturbance during the dream itself that I was a
man lying there. Pain tore at me. The god said, "This is merely the passage. You
will now drink from each of us, only a little blood."
Only when I woke did the brief transition in the masculine gender leave me as
puzzled as everything else. I was drenched with a sense of Egyptian art,
Egyptian mystery ­ as I'd seen it in golden statues for sale in the marketplace,
or when the Egyptian dancers performed at a banquet, like walking sculptures
with their black-lined eyes, and black plaited wigs, whispering in that
mysterious tongue. What had they thought of our Isis in Roman dress?
A mystery taunted me; something attacked my reason. The very thing the Roman
Emperors had so feared in Egyptian cults and Oriental cults swept over me:
mystery and emotion which claim a superiority to reason and law.
My Isis had been a Roman goddess, really, a universal goddess, the Mother of us
all, her worship spreading out in a Greek and Roman world long before it had
come into Rome itself. Our Priests were Greeks and Roman, poor men. We the
congregation were all Greeks and Romans.
Something scratched at the back of my mind. It said, "Remember." It was a tiny
desperate voice within my own brain that urged me to "remember" for my own sake.
But remembering only led to confused and jumbled thoughts. Suddenly a veil would
fall between the reality of my cabin on the ship, and the tumbling of the sea ­
between that and some dim and frightening world, of Temples covered in words
that made magic! Long narrow beautifully bronzed faces. A voice whispered,
"Beware the Priests of Ra; they lie!"
I shivered. I closed my eyes. The Queen Mother was bound and chained to her
throne! She wept! It had been her crying. Unspeakable. "But you see, she has
forgotten how to rule. Do as we say."
I shook myself awake. I wanted to know and I did not want to know. The Queen
wept beneath her monstrous fetters. I couldn't see her clearly. It was all in
progress. It was busy. "The King is with Osiris, you see. You see how he stares;
each one whose blood you drink, you give to Osiris; each one becomes Osiris."
"But why did the Queen scream?" '
No, this was madness. I couldn't let this confusion overcome me. I couldn't
deliberately slip from reason into these fantasies or recollections supposing
they had a true root.
They had to be nonsense, twisted images of grief and guilt, guilt that I had not
rushed to the hearth and driven the dagger into my breast.
I tried to remember the calming voice of my Father, explaining once how the
blood of the gladiators satisfied the thirst of the dead, the Manes,
"Now, some say that the Dead drink blood," spoke my Father from some long ago
dinner talk. "That's why we are so fearful on all these unlucky days, when the
Dead are supposed to be able to walk the Earth. I personally think this is
nonsense. We should revere our ancestors..."
"Where are the Dead, Father?" my brother Lucius asked.
Who had piped up from the other side of the table, to quote Lucretius in a sad

little female voice that nevertheless commanded silence of all these men'?
Lydia:

Of earth return to earth, but any part
Sent down from heaven, must ascend again
Recalled to the high temples of the sky
And death does not destroy the elements
Of matter, only breaks the combinations.

"No," my Father had replied to me quite gently. "Rather quote Ovid: `The ghosts
ask for but little; they value piety more than a costly gift.' " He drank his
wine. "The ghosts are in the Underworld where they can't harm us."
My eldest brother Antony had said, "The Dead are nowhere and are nothing."
My Father had raised his cup. "To Rome," he said, and it was he this time who
had quoted Lucretius: " `Too many times, religion mothers crimes and
wickedness.' "
Shrugs and sighs all around. The Roman attitude. Even the Priests and
Priestesses of Isis would have joined Lucretius when he wrote:

Our terrors and our darknesses of mind
Mast be dispelled, then, not by sunshine's rays,
Not by those shining arrows of Light,
But by insight into nature, and a scheme
Of systematic contemplation.

Drunk? Drugged? Bull's blood? Systematic? Well, it all came down to the same
thing. Know! Twist the poetry as you will. And the phallus of Osiris lives
forever in the Nile, and the water of the Nile inseminates the Mother Egypt
eternally, death giving birth to life with the blessing of Mother Isis. Merely a
particular scheme and a sort of systematic form of contemplation.
The ship sailed on.
I languished some eight more days in this torment, often lying awake in the
dark, and sleeping only in the day to avoid the dreams.
Suddenly, in the early morning, Jacob pounded my door.
We were midway up the Orontes to the city.
Twenty miles now from Antioch. I did up my hair as best I could (I'd never done
it without a slave) into a chignon on the back of my head, then covered my Roman
gowns with a great black cloak and prepared to disembark ­ an Eastern woman, her
face draped, protected by Hebrews.
When the city came into view ­ when the immense harbor greeted us and then
embraced us with all its masts and racket and odors and cries, I ran to the deck
of the ship and looked out at this city. It was splendid.
"You see," Jacob said.
Taken from the ship by litter I found myself carried rapidly through vast
waterfront markets, and then into a great open square, crowded with people. I
saw everywhere the Temples, porticoes, booksellers, even the high walls of an
amphitheater ­ all that I could have expected in Rome. No, this was no town.
The young men were crowded about the barbershops ready to have their obligatory
shave and the inevitable fancy curls on their foreheads, which Tiberius with his
own hairstyle had made fashionable. There were wine shops all over. The slave
markets were jammed. I glimpsed the entrances to the streets devoted to crafts ­
the street of the tentmakers, the street of the silversmiths.
And there in all its glory, in the very center of Antioch, stood the Temple of
Isis!
My goddess, Isis, with her worshipers coming and going, undisturbed, and in huge
numbers. A few very proper-looking linen-clad Priests stood at the doors! The
Temple was aswarm.

I thought, I can run away from any husband in this place!
Gradually I realized a great commotion had come upon the Forum, the center of
the city. I heard Jacob ordering the men to hurry out of the broad market street
and into the back streets. My bearers were running. The curtains were brought
shut by Jacob's hand so I couldn't see out.
News was being shouted out in Latin, in Greek, in Chaldean: Murder, Murder,
Poison, Treachery.
I peeped out of the curtain.
People were weeping and cursing the Roman Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, cursing him
and his wife, Placina. Why? I didn't much like either one of them, but what was
all this?
Jacob shouted again at my bearer to hurry.
We were rushed through the gates and into the vestibule of a sizable house no
different in design or color than my own in Rome, only much smaller. I could see
the same refinements, the distant peristyle, clusters of weeping slaves.
The litter was promptly set down and I stepped out, deeply concerned that they
had not stopped me at the doors to wash my feet, as was proper. And my hair, it
had all fallen down in waves.
But no one noticed me. I turned round and round, amazed at the Oriental curtains
and tassels that hung over the doorways, the caged birds everywhere singing in
their little prisons. The woven carpets lying all over the floor, one heaped
upon another.
Two obvious ladies of the house came towards me.
"What's the matter!" I asked.
They were as fashionable as any rich woman in Rome, drenched in bracelets and
wearing goldtrimmed gowns.
"I implore you," said one of the women, "for your own sake, go! Get back into
the litter!"
They tried to push me inside the curtained cell of the litter. I wouldn't go. I
became furious.
"I don't know where I am," I said. "And I don't know who you are! Now, stop
pushing me!"
The Master of the House, or someone who certainly appeared to be such, came
dashing towards me, with tears streaming down his cheeks and his short tousled
gray hair a mess ­ torn as if in mourning. He'd ripped his long tunic. He'd
smeared dirt on his face! He was old with a bent back and a massive head, loaded
with skin and wrinkles.
"Your Father was my young colleague," he said to me in Latin. He grabbed me by
the arms. "I dined in your house when you were a baby. I saw you when you
crawled on all fours."
"Tender," I said quickly.
"Your Father and I studied in Athens, slept under the same roof."
The women stood panic-stricken with their hands over their mouths.
"Your Father and I fought with Tiberius on his first campaign. We fought those
lurid barbarians."
"Very brave," I said.
My black outer cloak fell down, revealing my unkempt wild long hair and plain
dress. Nobody cared.
"Germanicus dined in this house because your Father spoke of me!"
"Oh dear, I see," I said.
One of the women motioned for me to get in the litter. Where was Jacob? The old
man wouldn't let me go.
"I stood with your Father and with Augustus when news came to us of the massacre
of our troops in the Teutoburg Forest, that General Varus and all his men were
slain. My sons fought with your brothers in the legions of Germanicus when he
punished those Northern tribes! Oh, God!"
"Yes, very marvelous, indeed," I said gravely.

"Get back in the litter and get out," said one of the women.
The old man clutched me.
"We fought the madman, King Arminius!" said the old man. "We could have won!
Your brother Antony wasn't for giving up and coming back, was he?"
"I... no..."
"Get her out of here!" screamed a young patrician man, who had also been
weeping. He came forward and shoved me towards the litter.
"Stand back, you imbecile!" I said to him. I slapped his face.
All this while, Jacob had been talking to the slaves, getting the scoop.
Jacob appeared beside me, as the gray-haired Greek sobbed and kissed my cheeks.
Jacob took over, guiding me into the litter.
,­ "Germanicus has just been murdered," Jacob said in my ear. "Everybody loyal
to him is convinced that the Emperor Tiberius put the Roman Governor Piso up to
the murder. It was done with poison. Word is spreading through the city like
fire,"
"Tiberius, you idiot!" I whispered, rolling my eyes. "One cowardly step after
another!"
I sank back into the darkness. The litter was being lifted.
Jacob went right on: "Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso has allies here, naturally.
Everybody's fighting everybody else. Settling scores. Mayhem. This Greek family
traveled with Germanicus to Egypt. There are riots already. We go!"
"Farewell, friend," I cried to the old Greek, as I was carried from the house.
But I don't think he heard me. He had gone down on his knees. He cursed
Tiberius. He screamed of suicide and begged for the dagger.
We were outside once more, hurrying through the street.
I lay askew in the litter, thinking dully in the darkness. Germanicus dead.
Poisoned by Tiberius!
I knew that this recent trip of Germanicus to Egypt had made Tiberius very
angry. Egypt was like no other Roman province. Rome was so dependent upon it for
grain that Senators could not go there. But Germanicus had gone, "just to see
the ancient relics," his friends had said in the streets of Rome.
"A mere excuse!" I thought in desperation. "Where was the trial? The sentence?
Poison!"
My bearers were running. People were screaming and sobbing around us.
"Germanicus, Germanicus! Give us back our beautiful Germanicus!"
Antioch had gone mad.
At last, we were obviously in a small narrow street that was little more than an
alleyway ­ you know the kind, for a grid of them was uncovered in the ruins of
Pompeii in Italy. You could smell the male urine collected in the jugs on the
corner. You could smell food cooking from high chimneys. My bearers were running
and stumbling over rough cobblestones.
Once we were all thrown to the side as a chariot came crashing through the
narrow place, its wheels no doubt finding the ruts in the stone intended for it.
My head had hit the wall. I was furious and frightened. But Jacob said, "Lydia,
we are with you."
I covered up all over with the cloak, so that only one eye allowed me to see the
seams of light between the curtains on either side of me. I had my hand on my
dagger.
The litter was set down. It was a cool indoor place. I heard Jacob's father,
David, arguing. I knew no Hebrew And I wasn't even sure that he was speaking in
Hebrew. Finally, Jacob took over in Greek, and I realized that they were
purchasing outright a proper house for me which came with all fine appointments,
including much fine furniture, left recently by a rich widow who had lived there
alone, but alas, the slaves had been sold off; No slaves. This was a quick cash
deal.
Finally, I heard Jacob say in Greek:
"You damn well better be telling me the truth."

As the litter was lifted I beckoned to him. "I owe you my life twice over now.
That Greek family who was to shelter me? They are truly in danger?"
"Of course," he said. "When a riot starts, who cares? They went with Germanicus
to Egypt! Piso's men know that! Anybody with the slightest excuse will attack,
murder and plunder someone else. Look, fire." He told the men to hurry.
"All right," I said. "Never say my real name again. From now on say this name:
My name is Pandora. I am a Greek from Rome. I paid you to bring me here."
"You have it, my dear Pandora," he replied. "You are some strong woman. The Deed
to your new house is made up in a fake name with less charm. But the Deed
verifies you are widowed, emancipated and a Roman Citizen. We'll get the Deed
when we pay up the gold, which we won't do until we are in the house. And if the
man does not give me that Deed with everything written out in full to protect
you, I'll strangle him!"
"You're very clever, Jacob," I said wearily.
On and on went this dark bouncing journey in the litter until at last it came to
a halt. I could hear the metal key turning in the lock of the gate, and then we
were brought into the large vestibule of the house itself.
I should have waited out of consideration for my guardians, but frantically I
limbed out of this miserable little black veiled prison, throwing off the cloak
and taking a deep breath.
We were in the broad vestibule of a fine house, with great charm to it and much
ingenuity in its decoration.
Even now, my thoughts scattered, I saw the lionhead fountain right near the gate
through which we'd just come, and I washed my feet in the cool of the water.
The receiving room, or atrium, was huge, and beyond it I saw the rich couches of
the dining room on the far side of a rather large enclosed garden ­ the
peristyle.
It was not my massive ancient opulent old home on the Palatine Hill, which had
grown new corridors and rooms over many generations, penetrating its broad
gardens.
It was a bit too glossy. But it was grand. All the walls were freshly painted
with a more Oriental bent, I think ­ more swirls and serpentine lines. How could
I judge? I could have fainted from relief. Would people really leave me alone
here?
There sat the desk in the atrium, and near it books! Along the porticoes
flanking the garden, I saw the many doors; I looked up and saw the second-story
windows dosed on the porches. Splendor. Safety.
The mosaic floors were old; I knew the style, the festive figures of the
Saturnalia on parade. They had to have been brought here from Italy.'
Little real marble, plastered columns, but so many well-executed murals full of
the requisite happy nymphs.
I went out into the soft wet grass of the peristyle and looked up at the blue
sky.
I wanted only to breathe, but now came the moment of truth regarding my
belongings. I was too dazed to ask about what was mine. And as it turned out, no
such thing was necessary.
Jacob and David first did an entire inventory of the household furnishings they
were purchasing for me, as I stood there staring at them in near disbelief at
their patience with detail.
And when they'd found every room quite fine, and a bedchamber down the hall to
the right, and a small open garden somewhere to the left, beyond the kitchen,
they went upstairs, found things proper and then unloaded my possessions. Trunk
followed trunk.
Then to my utter shock, Jacob's father, David, drew out a scroll and actually
started taking a full inventory of everything that belonged to me, from hairpins
to ink and gold.
Jacob was meantime sent on an errand!

I could see the hasty writing of my Father on this inventory that David read
under his breath.
"Personal toilet articles," David said in final summation of one portion of this
examination. "Clothes, one, two, three trunks ­ to the largest bedroom, go!
Household plate to the kitchen. Books here?"
"Yes, please." I was too shocked at his honesty and meticulousness to speak
"Ah, so many books!"
"Fine, don't count them." I said.
"I cannot, you see, these Fragile..."
"Yes, I know. Carry on."
"You want your ivory and ebony shelves assembled here in the front room?"
"Magnificent."
I slumped down on the floor, only to be lifted at once by two helpful Asian
slaves and settled in an amazingly soft cross-legged Roman chair. I was given a
cup of fresh dean-smelling water. I drank it down, thought of blood. Closed my
eyes.
"Ink, writing materials on the desk?" asked the old man.
"If you will," I sighed.
"Now, everybody out," said the old man, dispensing coins quickly and generously
to these Asian slaves, who bowed from the waist and backed out of the room,
nearly stumbling over each other.
I was about to try to form some sensible words of gratitude when a fresh brace
of slaves rushed in ­ nearly colliding with the departing crew ­ carrying
baskets of everything edible that a marketplace could yield, including at least
nine kinds of bread, jugs of oil, melons, green vegetables and much smoked food
that would last for days ­ fish, beef and exotic sea creatures dried out to look
like parchment.
At once to the kitchen, save for a plate of olives and cheese and bread at once
for the lady on that table to her left. Fetch the lady's wine, which her Father
has sent.
Oh, how incredible. My Father's wine.
Then everyone was ordered out again with lots of coins freely given and the old
man at once returned to his inventory.
"Jacob, come here, count for me this gold as I read off the list to you! Plate,
coin, more coin, jewels of exceptional value? Coin, bars of gold. Yes..."
On and on they went, rushing at it.
Where had my Father hidden all this gold? I couldn't imagine it.
What was I going to do with it? Were they really going to let me keep this? They
were honest men but this was such a fortune.
"You must wait until everyone is gone," said David, "and then hide this gold
yourself in various places about the house. You will find such places. We cannot
do that for you, for then we would know where it was. Your jewels'? Some I leave
here to be hidden for they are much too valuable to be flashed abroad among the
populace in your first days." He opened a casket of gems. "See this ruby? It is
superb. Look at the size of it. This can feed you for the rest of your life if
sold to an honest man for half of its worth. Every jewel in this box is
exceptional. I know jewels. These are hand-picked from the finest. See these
pearls? Perfection." He returned the ruby and the pearls to the casket and shut
the lid.
"Yes," I said weakly.
"Pearls, more gold, silver, plate..." he muttered. "It's all here! We should
take more care but..."
"Oh, no, you have done wonders," I declared.
I stared at the bread and the wine in the cup. My Father's wine bottle. My
Father's amphorae around the room.
"Pandora," said Jacob, addressing me most seriously. "Here in my hand is the
Deed to this house. And another paper which describes your official entry into

the port under your new made-up name, Julia, La, La, La and so forth. Pandora,
we have to leave you."
The old man shook his head and bit his lip.
"We have to sail for Ephesus, child," he said. "I am ashamed that I must leave
you, but the harbor will soon be blocked!"
"There are ships on fire already in the harbor," said Jacob under his breath.
"They've pulled down the statue of Tiberius in the Forum."
"The transaction is closed," said the old man to me. "The man who sold the house
has never laid eyes on you and does not know your real name, and there is no
evidence of it remaining here. Those were not his slaves who brought you here."
"You've done miracles for me," I said.
"You are on your own, my beautiful Roman princess," Jacob said. "It hurts my
soul to leave you like this."
"We must," said the old man.
"Don't go out for three days," said Jacob, coming near to me, about as near as
he could, as if he even meant to break all the rules and kiss my cheek. "There
are enough legions here to quell this riot, but they will let it burn itself
out, rather than slaughter Roman citizens. And forget those Greek friends. Their
house is already an inferno."
They turned to leave!
"Were you well paid for all this?" I asked. "If not, take from my gold now,
freely. I insist!"
"Don't even think of such things," said the old man. "But for your peace of
mind, know this: your Father staked me twice after my ships were captured by
pirates in the Adriatic. Your Father put his money in with mine and I made
profits for both of us. The Greek owed your Father money. Worry about those
matters no more. But we must go!"
"God be with you, Pandora," said Jacob.
Jewels. Where were the jewels? I leapt up and opened the casket. There were
hundreds of them, flawless, dazzlingly clear and exquisitely polished. I saw
their value, their clarity and the care of the polishing. I took the big
egg-shaped ruby David had shown to me and then another just like it and thrust
them at the two men.
They put up their hands to say No.
"Oh, but you must," I said, "Give me this respect. Confirm for me that I am a
free Roman woman and that I shall live as my Father told me to do! It will give
me courage! Take this from me."
David shook his head sternly, but Jacob took the ruby.
"Pandora, here, the keys. Follow us and lock the gate at the street and then the
doors to the vestibule. Don't fear. There are lamps everywhere. Plenty of oil ­"
"Go!" I said as they passed over the threshold. I locked the gate and held to
the bars, staring at them.
If you can't get out, if you need me, come back
here," I said.
"We have our own people here," Jacob said soothingly. "Thank you from my heart
for the beautiful ruby, Pandora. You will survive. Go back in, bolt the doors."
I made it to the chair but I did not sit in it. Rather I collapsed and prayed,
"Lares familiares... spirits of the house, I should find your altar. Welcome me,
please, I bring no ill will to anyone. I will heap your altar with flowers and
light your fire. Give me patience. Let me... rest."
Yet I did nothing but sit in shock on the floor, my hands limp, for hours as the
daylight waned. As the strange little house grew dark
A blood dream began, but I wouldn't have it. Not that alien Temple. Not the
altar, no! Not the blood. I banished it and imagined I was home.
I was a little girl. Dream of that, I told myself, of listening to my eldest
brother, Antony, talk of war in the North, driving the mad Germans back to the
sea! He had so loved Germanicus. So had my other brothers. Lucius, the young

one, he was so weak by nature. It broke my heart to think of him crying out for
mercy as soldiers cut him down.
The Empire was the world. All that lay beyond was chaos and misery and struggle
and strife. I was a soldier. I could fight. I dreamt I was putting on my armor.
My brother said, "I am so relieved to discover you are a man, I always thought
so."
I didn't waken till the following morning.
And then it was that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before.
Note this. Because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more
truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this,
brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to
come, and then to pass.
The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of
it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the
world.
I was alone. I went from room to room of this small house, banging upon the
walls with my fists and crying with my teeth clenched, and whirling. There was
no Mother Isis.
There were no gods. Philosophers were fools! Poets sang lies.
I sobbed and tore at my hair; I tore at my dress as naturally as if it had been
a newborn custom. I knocked over chairs and tables,
At times I felt a huge exhilaration, a freedom from all falsehoods and
conventions, all means by which a soul or body can be held hostage!
And then the awesome nature of this freedom spread itself out around me as if
the house did not exist, as if the darkness knew no walls.
Three nights and days I spent in this agony.
I forgot to eat food. I forgot to drink water.
I never lighted a lamp. The moon nearing her fullness gave enough light to this
meaningless labyrinth of little painted chambers.
Sleep was gone from me forever.
My heart beat fast. My limbs clenched, then slackened, only to clench again.
At times, I lay on the moist good Earth of the courtyard, for my Father, because
no one had laid his body on the moist good Earth, as it should have been done,
right after his death and before any funeral.
I knew suddenly why this disgrace was so important, his body rent with wounds
and not placed on the Earth. I knew the gravity of this omission as few have
ever known the meaning of anything. It was of the utmost importance because it
did not matter at all!
Live, Lydia.
I looked at the small leafy trees of the garden. I felt a strange gratitude that
I had opened human eyes in this darkness on Earth long enough to see such
things.
I quoted Lucretius:
"That which comes from Heaven ascends to Heaven"?
Madness!
Alas, as I said, I wandered, crawled, wept and cried for three nights and days.



4

Finally, one morning, when the sun came spilling down through the open roof, I
looked at the objects in the room and I realized I didn't know what they were,
or what they'd been made for. I didn't know their common names. I was removed
from their definitions. I didn't even know this place.
I sat up and realized I was looking at the Lararium, the shrine of the household
gods.
This was the dining room of course, and those were the couches, and there the

glorious conjugal bed!
The Lararium was a high three-sided shrine, a little temple with three
pediments, and inside stood figures of old household gods. No one in this
profane city had even taken them away with the dead woman.
The flowers were dead. The fire had simply gone out. No one had quenched it with
wine, as should have been done.
On hands and knees I crawled in my torn dress around the garden of the
peristyle, gathering flowers for these gods. I found the wood and made their
sacred fire.
I stared at them. I stared for hours. It seemed I would never move again.
Night fell. "Don't sleep," I whispered. "Keep watch with the night! They wait
for you by dark, those Egyptians! The moon, look, it's almost full, only a night
or so from being full."
But the worst of my agony had passed and I was exhausted, and sleep rose to
embrace me. Sleep rose as if to say, "Care no more."
The dream came.
I saw men in gilded robes. "You will be taken now in the sanctum." But what's
there? I didn't want to see. "Our Mother, our beloved Mother of Sorrows," said
the Priest. The paintings on the walls were rows upon rows of Egyptians in
profile, and words made of pictures. Myrrh burned in this place.
"Come," said those who held me. "All the impurities have gone from you now, and
you will partake of the sacred Fount."
I could hear a woman crying and moaning. I peeped into the great room before I
entered it. There they were, the King and the Queen on their thrones, the King
still and staring as in the last dream, and the Queen struggling against her
golden fetters. She wore the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. And pleated linen.
Her hair was not a wig but real plaits. She cried and her white cheeks were
stained in red. Red stained her necklace and her breasts. She looked soiled and
ignominious.
"My Mother, my goddess," I said. "But this is an abomination."
I forced myself to wake.
I sat up and I laid my hand on the Lararium, and looked at the spiderwebs in the
trees of the garden, made visible by the climbing sun.
I thought I heard people whispering in the ancient Egyptian tongue.
I was not going to allow this! I would not go mad.
Enough! The only man I had ever loved, my Father, said, "Live."
It was time for action. To get up and get going. I was suddenly all strength and
purpose.
My long nights of mourning and weeping had been equivalent to the initiation in
the Temple; death had been the intoxicant; comprehension had been the
transformation.
It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be
explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.
The facts of my predicament warranted action.
I poured out a cup of wine, and took it with me to the front gate.
The city seemed quiet. People weed to and fro, casting their eyes away from a
half-dressed, ragged woman in her vestibule.
At last a workman trudging under his burden of bricks.
I thrust forth the wine. "I have been ill for three days," I said. "What of the
death of Germanicus? How goes it in the city?"
The man was so grateful for the wine. Labor had made him old. His arms were
thin. His hands shook
"Madam, thank you," he said. He drained the cup, as if he could not stop
himself. "Our Germanicus was laid out in the public square for all to see. How
beautiful he was. Some compared him to the great Alexander. People could not
determine. Had he been poisoned or not? Some said Yes, some said No.
"His soldiers loved him. Governor Piso, thank the gods, is not here and dares

not come back. Germanicus's wife, the gracious Agrippina, has the ashes of
Germanicus in an urn she carries next to her breast. She sails for Rome, seeking
justice for Tiberius."
He handed me the cup. "I humbly thank you."
"The city is as usual again."
"Oh, yes, what could stop this glorified marketplace?" he declared. "Business
goes on as always. The loyal soldiers of Germanicus keep the peace, waiting for
justice. They will not let the murderous Piso return, and Sentius gathers to
himself here all who served under Germanicus. The city is happy. The flame burns
for Germanicus. If there is war, it won't be here. Don't worry."
"Thank you, you have helped me marvelously much."
I took the cup, locked the gate, shut the door and went into action.
Nibbling on enough bread to give me strength, and murmuring aloud the common
sense of Luretius, I surveyed the house. It had a large luxurious bath on the
right side of the courtyard. Full of light. Water flowed steadily from the
seashells of the nymphs into the plastered basin, and the water was fine. There
was no need to light a fire for it.
In the bedchamber were my clothes.
Roman dresses were simple, as you know, just long shifts or tunics, and we wore
two or three of them, plus an outdoor coverup tunic, the stola, and finally the
palla, or mantle, which hung to the ankles and belted below the breasts.
I chose the finest tunics, composing three layers of gossamer silk, and then a
brilliant red palla that covered me from head to toe.
In all my life, I had never had to put on my own sandals. This was hysterically
funny and annoying!
All my toilet articles had been laid out on tables which held burnished mirrors.
What a mess!
I sat down in one of the many gilded chairs, pushed the burnished metal mirror
dose, and tried to work with the paints as my slaves had always done.
I managed to darken my eyebrows, but my horror of the painted Egyptian eyes
stopped me. I rouged my lips, put some white powder on my face, but that was it.
I couldn't attempt powdering my arms, as would have been done for me in Rome.
I don't know what I looked like. Now I had to braid this damned hair, and I
managed it, and fixed the braids in a big coil on the back of my head. I used
enough pins for twenty women. Dragging down the loose curls around my face, on
my forehead and cheeks, I saw in the mirror a Roman woman, modest and
acceptable, I thought, her brown hair parted in the middle, her eyebrows black
and her lips rosy red.
Gathering up all this drapery was the biggest nuisance. I attempted to match
length with length. I tried to get the silk stola straight and then belt it
tightly beneath my breasts. I mean, all this folding, all this drapery and
fastening. I'd always had slave girls around me. Finally with two undertunics
and a long, fine red stola, I snatched up a silk palla, a very large one,
fringed and decorated all over with gold.
I put on rings, bracelets. But I intended to hide under this mantle as much as
possible. I could remember my Father cursing every day of his life that he had
to wear the toga, the official outer garment of the highborn Roman male. Well,
only prostitutes wore togas. At least I didn't have to cope with that.
I headed straight for the slave markets.
Jacob was right about the population here. The city was filled with men and
women of all nations. Many women walked in pairs, arm in arm.
Loose Greek cloaks were entirely acceptable here, and so were long exotic
Phoenician or Babylonian gowns, both for men and women. Long hair among the men
was common, as were heavy beards. Some women went about in tunics no longer than
a man's. Others were completely veiled, revealing only the eyes, as they walked,
accompanied by guards and servants.
The streets were cleaner than they might have been in Rome, the sewage flowing

to wider gutters in the center and more swiftly to its destination.
Long before I reached the Forum, or the central plaza, I had passed three
different doors in which rich courtesans stood arguing sarcastically over price
with wealthy young Greeks and Romans.
One said, as I passed, to a handsome young man, "You want me in bed'? You're
dreaming. Any of the girls you can have, as I told you. If you want me, go home
and sell everything you own!"
Rich Romans in their full togas stood at the corner wine shops, and respected my
quick glance away with a simple nod as I passed.
Pray none of them would recognize me! It was not a likely thing, by any means,
and we were so far from Rome, and I had lived so long in my Father's house,
happily reprieved by him from banquets and suppers, and even ceremonial
gatherings.
The Forum was far larger than I had remembered from my brief glimpse. When I
came to the edge of it and beheld the huge square flooded with sun, flanked on
all sides with porticoes or Temples or Imperial buildings, I was amazed.
In the canopied markets, everything was for sale, silversmiths grouped together,
the weavers in their own place, the silk merchants in a row, and I could see
down the side street that came in to my right that it was dedicated to the sale
of slaves ­ the better slaves, who might never have to go to an auction block.
Far away I saw the high masts of the ships. I could smell the river. There stood
the Temple of Augustus, its fires burning, its uniformed Legionnaires in lazy
readiness.
I was hot and anxious, because my mantle kept slipping, in fact, all this silk
seemed to slip and to slide, and there were many open wine gardens where women
gathered in groups, chatting. I could have found a place near enough to someone
to have a drink.
But I had to have a household. I had to have loyal slaves.
Now, in Rome, of course I had never gone to a slave market. I would never have
had to do such a thing. Besides, we had so many families of slaves on our land
in Tuscany and in Rome that we seldom if ever bought a new slave. On the
contrary, my Father had a habit of inheriting the decrepit and wise from his
friends, and we had often teased my Father about the Academy, which did nothing
in the slaves' garden but argue about history.
But now I had to act the shrewd woman of the world. I inspected every quality
household slave on display, quickly settled upon a pair of sisters, very young
and very frightened that they were going to be auctioned at noon and go to a
brothel. I sent for stools and we sat together.
We talked.
They came from a small fine family household in Tyre; they'd been born slaves.
They knew Greek and Latin well. They spoke Aramaic. They were angelic in their
sweetness.
They had immaculate hands. They demonstrated every skill I required. They knew
how to dress hair, paint a face, cook food. They rattled off recipes for Eastern
dishes of which I'd never heard; they named different pomades, rouges. One of
them flushed with fear, and then said, "Madam, I can paint your face for you,
and very quickly and perfectly!"
I knew this meant I had made a mess of the job.
I also knew that, coming from a small household, they were far more versatile
than our slaves at home.
I bought them both, the answer to their prayers; I demanded clean tunics of
modest length for both of them, got the tunics, made of blue linen, though they
weren't very fine, then found a roaming merchant with an armful of pallae. I
brought. each sister a blue mantle. They were in such happiness. They were
reticent and wanted their heads covered.
I had no doubt of them. They would have died for me.
It didn't occur to me that they were starving until, while searching for other

slaves, I heard a nasty slave dealer remind an impudent educated Greek that he
would get no food until he was sold.
"Horrors," I said. "You girls, you're probably hungry. Go to the cookshop in the
Forum. Look down the street. See there, the scattering of benches and tables."
`Mone?" they said in dismay.
"Listen, girls. I have no time to feed you like birds from my hand. Don't look
any man in the eye; eat and drink what you want." I gave them a seemingly
shocking amount of money. "And don't leave the cookshop till I come for you. If
a man comes to you, pretend to be in terror, bow your heads and protest as best
you can that you don't speak his language. If worst comes to worst, go to the
Temple of Isis."
They ran together down the narrow street towards the distant banquet, their
mantles such a beautiful blue as they ballooned in the breeze that I can see it
even now, the color of the sky streaking through the tight sweaty crowds beneath
the jumble of canopies. Mia and Lia. Not hard to remember, but I could not tell
them apart.
A low derisive laughter surprised me. It was the Greek slave who had just been
threatened with starvation by his Master.
He said to his Master:
'M right, starve me. And then what will you have to sell'? A sickened and dying
man, instead of an unusual and great scholar."
Unusual and great scholar!
I turned and looked at the man. He sat on a stool and did not rise for me. He
wore nothing but a filthy loincloth, which was plain stupidity on the part of
the merchant, but this neglect certainly revealed that this slave was one very
handsome man, beautiful in face, with soft brown hair and long almond-shaped
green eyes, and a sarcastic expression to his pretty mouth. He was maybe thirty
years old, perhaps a little younger. He was fit for his age, as Greeks like to
be, having a sound musculature.
His brown hair was filthy, had been hacked off and around his neck by a rope was
the most wretched small board I ever beheld, crowded with tiny cramped letters
in Latin.
Pulling up the mantle again, I stepped up very close to his gorgeous naked
chest, a little amused by his audacious stare, and tried to read all this.
It seemed he could have taught all philosophy, all languages, all mathematics,
could sing everything, knew every poet, could prepare whole banquets, was
patient with children, had known military service with his Roman Master in the
Balkans, could perform as an armed guard, was obedient and virtuous and had
lived all his life in Athens in one house.
I read this a bit scornfully. He glared at me impertinently when he saw this
scorn. Impudently, he folded his arms just below this little plaque. He leaned
back against the wall.
Suddenly I saw why the merchant, hovering near, had not made the Greek rise. The
Greek had only one good leg. The left leg below the knee was made of well-carved
ivory, complete with carefully engraved foot and sandal. Perfect toes. Of course
it had been pieced together, this fine ivory leg and foot, but in three
proportionate sections, each girded with decorative work, and separate parts for
the feet, nails defined and sandal straps exquisitely carved.
I had never seen such a false limb, such a surrender to artifice rather than a
meager attempt to imitate nature.
"How did you lose your leg?" I asked him in Greek. No answer. I pointed to the
leg. No answer.
I asked again in Latin. Still no answer.
The slave trader was rising on his toes in his anxiety and wringing his hands.
"Mistress, he can keep records, run any business; he writes in perfect hand,
keeps honest numbers."
Hmmm. So no mention of tutoring children? I did not look like a wife and mother.

Not good.
The Greek sneered and looked away. He said softly under his breath in piercing
Latin that if I did spend money for him, I was spending it for a dead man. His
voice was soft and beautiful, though weary and full of contempt, his enunciation
unaffected and refined.
I threw off all patience. I spoke quickly in Greek.
"Learn from me, you arrogant Athenian idiot!" I said, red in the face, and
furious to be so misjudged both by a slave and a slave dealer. "If you can write
Greek and Latin at all, if you have in fact studied Aristotle and Euclid, whose
name you misspelled, by the way, if you have been schooled in Athens and have
seen battle in the Balkans, if even half of this great epic is true, why
wouldn't you want to belong to one of the most keenly intelligent women you'll
ever meet, who'll treat you with dignity and respect in exchange for your
loyalty? What do you know of Aristotle and Plato that I don't? I've never struck
a slave in my life. You pass up the one mistress to whom your loyalty might earn
you any reward of which you could dream. That tablet is a pack of lies, isn't
it?"
The slave was stunned, but not angered. He sat forward, trying to appraise me
further, without being obvious. The merchant gestured furiously for the slave to
rise to his feet, which the slave did, giving him an admirable height over me.
His legs were sound and strong up to the ivory limb.
"What about telling me the real truth as to what you can do?" I said, switching
to Latin.
I turned to the slave dealer. "Get me a pen to correct this, the spelling of
these names. If this man has any chance of becoming a teacher, these
misspellings destroy it. He looks like a fool for writing such."
"I didn't have space enough to write!" declared the slave suddenly, whispering
in perfect Latin fury. He bent towards me, as if I should understand.
"Look at this little tablet, if you're so keenly intelligent! Do you realize the
ignorance of this dealer here. He has not sense enough to know he has an
emerald, and thinks it a piece of green glass! This is wretched. I crammed here
what generalities I could."
I laughed. I was seduced and thrilled. I couldn't stop laughing. This was too
funny! The slave merchant was confused. Chastise the slave and lower his value?
Or let the two of us work this out?
"What was I to do," he demanded in the same confidential whisper, only this time
in Greek, "shout to every man passing, `Here sits a great teacher, here sits a
philosopher!'?" He grew a little calm, having thus released this rage. "The
names of my grandfathers are carved on the Acropolis at Athens," he said.
The merchant was mystified.
But I was so obviously delighted and interested.
My mantle slipped again and I gave it a hard jerk. These clothes. Had no one
ever told me silk slides on silk?
"And what about Ovid?" I said, taking a deep breath. I almost laughed myself
into tears. "You wrote Ovid's name here. Ovid. Is Ovid popular here? Nobody
would dare write that on your card in Rome, I can tell you. You know, I don't
even know if Ovid is still alive, and it's a shame. Ovid taught me to kiss when
I was ten years old, when I read the Amores. You ever read the Amores?"
His entire demeanor altered. He softened and l could see he was just on the
verge of hope, hope that I might be a good mistress for him. But he couldn't let
himself believe it.
The merchant was waiting for the slightest signal as to what he might do.
Clearly he could follow our exchanges.
"Look, you insolent one-legged slave," I said. "If I thought you could even read
Ovid to me in the evenings, I'd buy you in a moment. But this tablet here makes
you a glorified Socrates and Alexander the Great smashed in one. In what war in
the Balkans did you carry arms? Why are you dumped in the hands of this lowly

merchant rather than taken at once to some fine house? How could anyone believe
all this? If blind Homer had sung such a preposterous tale, people would have
gotten up and left the tavern."
He grew angry, frustrated.
The merchant put out his hand in warning, as if to control the man.
"What the hell happened to your leg?" I asked. "How did you lose it? Who made
you this glorious replacement?"
Lowering his voice to an angry yet eloquent whisper, the slave declared slowly
and patiently:
"I lost it in a boar hunt, with my Roman Master. He saved my life. We hunted
often. It was on Pentelikon, the mountain..."
"I know where Pentelikon is, thank you," I said.
His facial expressions were elegant. He was utterly confused. He licked his
parched lips and said:
"Just make this merchant fetch the parchment and the ink." He spoke his Latin
with such beauty, the beauty of an actor or rhetorician, yet with no effort.
"I'll write the Amores of Ovid from memory for ­ you," he said, gently pleading
through clenched teeth, which is no mean feat. `And then I'll copy out all of
Xenophon's history of the Persians for you, if you have the time, in Greek, of
course! My Master ' treated me like a son; I fought with him, studied with him,
learned with him. I wrote his letters for him. His education I made my education
because he wanted it so."
"Ah," I said in proud relief.
He looked the full gentleman now, angered, caught in impossible circumstance yet
dignified, and reasoning with just enough spirit to strengthen his own soul.
"And in bed? Can you do it in bed'?" I asked. I can't say what rage or
desperation prompted this question.
He was genuinely shocked. Good sign. His eyes really widened. He furrowed his
brow.
Meantime the slave trader emerged with the table, stool, parchment, ink, and set
it all down on the hot cobblestones.
"Here, write," he said to the slave. "Make letters for this woman. Add sums. Or
I'll kill you and sell your leg."
I broke again into helpless laughing. I looked at the slave, who still stood
dazed. He broke away from my gaze to cast a disdainful look on the merchant.
"Are you safe around the slave girls?" I said patronizingly. "Are you a lover of
boys?"
".I am completely trustworthy!" the slave said. "I am not capable of crimes for
any Master."
"And what if I desire you in my bed? I'm the Mistress of the house, twice
widowed and on my own, and I am Roman."
His face darkened. I couldn't name the emotions that seemed to pass over his
expression, the sadness, indecision, confusion and ultimate perplexity that
transformed him.
"Well'?" I asked.
"Let's put it this way, Madam. You would be much more pleased with my recitation
of Ovid than with any attempted enactment of his verses by me."
"You like boys," I said with a nod.
"I was a born a slave, Madam. I made do with boys. I know nothing else. And I
need neither." His face was crimson now, and he had lowered his eyes.
Lovely Athenian modesty.
I gestured for him to sit down.
This he did with amazing simplicity and grace, considering the circumstances:
the heat, the dirt, crowds, the fragile stool and the wobbling table.
He picked up the pen and quickly wrote in flawless Greek, "Have I foolishly
offended this great lady of learning and exceptional patience? Have I brought
about, through rashness, my own doom?" He wrote on in Latin, "Does Lucretius

tell us the truth when he says that death is nothing to fear?" He thought for a
moment, and then he wrote in Greek again, "Are Virgil and Horace really equal to
our great poets'? Do the Romans truly believe this, or only hope it is true,
knowing their achievements shine in other arts?"
I read this all very thoughtfully, smiling most agreeably. I had fallen in love
with him. I looked at his thin nose, his cleft chin, and I looked into the green
eyes that looked up at me.
"How did you come to this?" I asked. "A slave shop in Antioch? You're
Athenian-bred, just as you say,'
He tried to stand to answer. I pushed him to sit down.
"I can tell you nothing of that," he said. "Only that I was much beloved by my
Master, that my Master died in his bed with his family around him. And that here
I am."
"Why didn't he set you free in his will'?"
"He did, Madam, and with means."
"What happened?"
"I can tell you no more."
"Why not? Who sold you, why'?"
"Madam," he said, "please place a value upon my loyalty to a house in which I
served all my life. I cannot speak more, If I become your servant, you will have
the same loyalty from me. Your house will become my house, and sacred to me.
What happens within your walls will remain within your walls. I speak of virtue
and kindness in my Master because this is proper to say. Let me say no more."
Sublime old-Greek morality.
"Write more, hurry!" said the slave merchant.
"Be quiet," I told him. "He's written quite enough."
The handsome brown-haired slave, this enticingly beautiful one-legged man, had
fallen into some deep pit of woe and looked towards the distant Forum, flash of
figures back and forth over the mouth of the street.
"What would I do as a free man?" he said to me, looking up at me from a position
of utter careless loneliness. "Copy all day for a pittance at the booksellers?
Write letters for coins? My Master risked his own life to save me from that
boar. In battle I served under Tiberius in Illyricum, where with some fifteen
legions he put down all revolts. I chopped the head off a man to save my Master.
What am I now?"
I was filled with pain.
"What am I now'?" he repeated the question.
"If I were free, I would live hand to mouth, and when I slept in some filthy
tenement, my ivory leg would be severed and stolen!"
I gasped and put my hand to my lips.
His eyes filled with tears as he looked at me, and his voice became all the more
softer, yet sharply articulate:
"Oh, I could teach philosophy beneath the arches out there, you know, prattle on
about Diogenes, and pretend that I liked wearing rags, as do his followers these
days. What a circus out there, have you seen it? I have never seen so many
philosophers in my life as in this city! Take a look when you go back. You know
what it takes to teach philosophy here? You have to lie. You have to fling
meaningless words as fast as you can at young people, and brood when you can't
answer, and make up nonsense and ascribe it to the old Stoics."
He broke off, and tried to gain command of himself.
I was almost in tears as I looked down at him.
"But you see, I have no skill at lying," he said. "That has been my undoing with
you, Great Lady."
I was shattered inside, my wounds silently opened. The nerve which had carried
me out of confinement was ebbing away. But surely he saw my tears.
He looked towards the Forum again.
"I dream of an honorable Master or Mistress, a house with honor. Can a slave

through the contemplation of honor thereby have honor? The law says not. So any
slave called to testify in a court trial must be tortured, for he has no honor!
But reason says otherwise. I have learned and I can teach both bravery and
honor. And yes, all of this tablet is true. I didn't have time or opportunity to
temper its boastful style."
He bowed his head and looked again towards the Forum, as though towards the lost
world. He drew himself up in the chair, for bravery's sake. Again, he tried to
stand.
"No, sit," I said.
"Madam," he said, "if you seek my services for a house of ill repute, let me
tell you now... if it is to torture and force young girls such as those you just
purchased, if you order me to advertise their charms abroad, I won't do it. It
is as dishonorable to me as to steal or to lie. Why do you want me?"
The tears were halted, merely resting between him and his vision of the world
around him. His face was serene.
"Do I look as if I am a whore?" I asked him with shock. "Yea gods, I wore all my
best clothes. I'm doing my best to look revoltingly respectable in all these
fancy silks! Do you see cruelty in my eyes? Can't you believe that it is perhaps
the tempered soul that survives grief? One need not fight on a battlefield to
have courage."
"No, Madam, no!" he said. He was so very sorry.
"Then why fling these insults at me now?" I said, full of hurt. "And no, I agree
with you, what you've written there, our Roman poets are not the equals of the
Greeks. I don't know our destiny as an Empire and this weighs as heavily on me
as it ever did on my Father and his Father! Why'? I don't know!" I turned as if
to go, but I had really no intention of going! His insults had simply gone too
far.
He bent towards me over the writing table.
"Madam," he said whispering even lower and with greater solicitude. "Forgive me
my rash words. You are absolutely a paradox. Your face is eccentrically painted,
and I think the lip rouge is not properly set. You have rouge on your teeth. You
have no powder on your arms. You wear three dresses of silk and I can see
through all of them! Your hair is in two barbarian-style braids lying on your
shoulders, and you are raining little silver and gold pins galore. Look at these
little pins falling. Madam, you will be hurt by these pins. Your mantle, more
appropriate for evening, has fallen on the ground. Your hems drag in the dirt."
Not missing a beat of his speech, he reached down deftly and picked up the
palla, standing at once to offer it to me, coming round the table with a heavy
shift of his leg, to lay the palla on my shoulders.
"You speak with miraculous speed, and stunning gibes," he went on, "yet you
carry a huge dagger in your girdle. It should be hidden on your forearm under
your mantle. And your purse. You take gold out of it to pay the girls. It's
huge, carelessly visible. And your hands, your hands are beautiful, fine as your
Latin and your Greek, but they are deeply creased with dirt as though you have
been digging in the Earth itself."
I smiled. I had stopped my tears.
"You are very observant," I said cheerfully. I was charmed. "Why did I have to
cut you so deeply to find your soul? Why can't we simply reveal ourselves to one
another? I need a strong steward, a guardian who can bear arms, run my house and
protect it because I am alone. Can you really see through all this silk?"
He nodded. "Well, now that the mantle is over your shoulders and hiding the...
the dagger and the girdle ­ "He blushed. Then as I smiled at him, trying to
regain my calm, trying to fight back the engulfing darkness that would take away
all confidence from me, all faith in any task, he spoke on.
"Madam, we learn to hide our souls because we are betrayed by others. But I
would entrust to you my soul! I know it, if you would reconsider your judgment!
I can protect you, I can run your house. I will not molest your little girls.

But mark, for all my time fighting in Illyricum I have one leg. I came home from
three years of bloody constant battle to lose it to a boar because a spear,
poorly tempered and made, broke as I thrust it into the boar."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Flavius," he answered. This was a Roman name.
"Flavius," I said.
"Madam, the palla is slipping again from your head. And these little pins, they
are sharp, they are everywhere, they'll hurt you."
"Never mind that," I said, though I let him drape me again properly as if he
were Pygmalion, and I his Galatea. He used the tips of his fingers. But the
mantle was already soiled.
"Those girls," I said, "whom you glimpsed. They are my household, as of the past
half-hour. You have to be their loving master. But if you lie in any woman's bed
under my roof, the bed had better be mine. I am flesh and blood!"
He nodded, at a total loss for words.
I pulled open my purse and took out what I thought to pay, a reasonable price in
Rome, I thought, where slaves were always bragging about how much they had cost.
I laid down the gold, oblivious to the imprint of the coin, only gauging the
value.
The slave stared at me with ever increasing fascination, then his eyes whipped
the merchant.
The slimy, merciless, weasling slave trader puffed up like a toad and told me
this priceless Greek scholar was to be auctioned for a high price. Several rich
men had expressed interest. An entire school class was to question him within
the hour. Roman officers had sent their stewards to inspect him.
"I have no more stamina for it," I said, and reached in my purse again.
At once, my new slave Flavius put his hand out gents to prevent me.
He glared at the merchant with great authority and fearless contempt.
"For a man with one leg!" said Flavius between his teeth. "You thief! You charge
my Mistress that, here in Antioch, where slaves are so plentiful the ships take
them on to Rome, for it's the only way to cut their losses!"
I was quite impressed. All had gone so well. The darkness flowed back away from
me, and there seemed for the moment a divine meaning in the warmth of the sun.
"You cheat my Mistress and you know it! You're the scum of the Earth!" he went
on. "Madam, do we ever purchase from this scoundrel again? I advise never!"
The slave trader broke into an inane smile, a hideous grimace of cowardice and
stupidity, bowed and gave me back a third of what I'd given him.
I could hardly keep from another burst of laughing. I had to fetch the mantle
from the ground again. Flavius did it. This time, I knotted it properly in
front.
I looked at the gold which had been returned, scooped it up, entrusted it to
Flavius and off we went.
When we had plunged into the thick crowd in the center of the Forum I did laugh
and laugh at the whole affair.
"Well, Flavius, you're protecting me already, saving me money, giving me
excellent advice. If there were more men like you in Rome, the world might be
better for it."
He was choked up. He couldn't talk. It was an effort to whisper:
"Lady, you have on trust my body and soul forever."
I went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. I realized that his nakedness, the
filth of the loincloth, all this was a disgrace he bore without a sign of
protest.
"Here," I said, giving him some money. "Take the girls home, put them to work,
then you go to the baths. Get clean. Get Roman clean. Have a boy if you want.
Have two. Then buy fine clothes for yourself, not slave clothes, mind you, but
clothes that you would buy for a rich young Roman Master!"
"Madam, please hide that purse!" he said as he took the coins. "And what is my

Mistress's name'? To whom shall I say I belong, if asked."
"To Pandora of Athens," I said. "Though you shall have to fill me in on the
current state of my birthplace, because I have never actually been there. But a
Greek name serves me well. Now, go. See, the girls watch!"
Lots of people were watching. Oh, this red silk! And Flavius was such a splendid
figure of a male.
I kissed him again, and whispered in his ear, calculatingly, devil that I am, "I
need you, Flavius."
He looked down at me, awestruck. "I am yours forever, Madam," he whispered.
"Are you sure you can't do with me in bed!"
"Oh, believe me, I have tried!" he confessed, flushing again.
I made my hand into a fist and punched his muscular arm.
"Very well," I said.
The damsels had already risen, at my gesture. They knew I sent him to them.
I gave him my key, the directions to my house, described the particularities of
its gate, and the old bronze lion fountain right inside the gate.
"And you, Madam?" he asked. "You're going in the crowd unaccompanied? Madam, the
purse is huge! It's full of gold."
"Wait till you see the gold in the house," I said. "Appoint yourself the only
one who can open chests, and then hide them in obvious places. Replace all the
furniture I've smashed in my... my solitude. There are many pieces stored in
rooms above."
"Gold in the house!" He was alarmed. "Chests of gold!"
"Now, don't worry about me," I said. "I know where to seek help now. And if you
betray me, if you steal my legacy and I find my house ruined when I return, I
suppose I shall have deserved it. Cover up the chests of gold with carpets. The
place has heaps of little Persian carpets. Look upstairs. And tend to the
Shrine!"
"I shall do everything you ask and more."
"So I thought. A man who cannot lie cannot steal. Now the sun is intolerable
here. Go to the girls. They wait."
I turned.
He caught me by coming round in, front of me.
"Madam, there is something I must tell you."
"What!" I said with an ominous face. "Not that you're a eunuch," I said.
"Eunuchs don't grow muscles in their arms and legs like that."
"No," he said. Then he took on a sudden gravity. "Ovid, you spoke of Ovid. Ovid
is dead. Ovid died two years ago in the wretched town of Tomis on the upper rim
of the Black Sea. It was a miserable choice of exile, a barbarian outpost."
"No one told me this. What a revolting silence." I threw up my hands over my
face. The mantle fell. He retrieved it. I scarce noticed. "I had so prayed that
Tiberius would let Ovid come back to Rome!" I told myself I had no time to stop
for this. "Ovid. No time to weep for him now..."
"His books are no doubt plentiful here," Flavius said. "They are very easily
found in Athens."
"Good, perhaps you will have time to find some for me. Now, I'm off; pins or
tumbled braids or sliding mantle, I do not care. And don't look so worried. When
you leave the house, just lock up the girls and the gold."
When I finally turned around he was making his way rather gracefully towards the
girls. The sun rippled prettily on his well-muscled back. His hair was curly and
brown, rather like my own. He stopped for one moment when a vendor attacked him
with an armful of cheaply made tunics, cloaks and whatnot, more than likely
stolen goods, full of dye that would run in the first rain, but who knows? He
bought a tunic hastily and slipped it over his head, and purchasing a red sash,
tied it around his waist.
Such a transformation. The tunic went halfway to his knees. That must have been
a great relief to him, to have on something clean. I should have thought of this

before I left him. Stupid.
I admired him. Naked or clothed, you can't carry such beauty and dignity unless
you have been cherished. He wore the raiment of the affection bestowed on him
and inscribed in the art of his ivory leg.
In our brief encounter, a bond had been forged forever.
He greeted the girls. With his arms around them, he guided them out of the
crowd.
I went straight to the Temple of Isis, and thereby, unwittingly, took the first
firm step towards a larcenous immortality, an inglorious and unearned
supernature, a never ending and utterly useless doom.



5

As soon as I entered the Temple Compound I was received by several rich Roman
women, who welcomed me generously. They were all properly painted with white on
their arms and their faces, well-drawn eyebrows, lip color ­ all the details of
which I'd made a hash that morning.
I explained that though I had means, I was on my own. They were for helping me
in every way. When
they heard I had been actually initiated in Rome, they were in awe.
"Thank Mother Isis they didn't discover you and execute you," said one of the
Roman women.
"Go in and see the Priestess," they said. Many of them had not yet undergone the
secret ceremonies
and were waiting to be called by the goddess for this momentous event. There
were many other women here, some Egyptian, some Babylonian perhaps. I could only
guess. Jewels and silks were the order of the day. Fancy painted gold borders
lined their mantles; some wore simple dresses.
But it seemed to me that all of them spoke Greek.
I couldn't bring myself to enter the Temple. I looked up and saw in my mind our
crucified Priests in Rome.
"Thank God you were not identified," said one.
"Quite a few people fled to Alexandria," said another.
"I raised no protest," I said dismally.
There came a chorus of sympathy. "How could you, under Tiberius? Believe me,
every one who could escaped."
"Don't be laden with misery," said a young blue-eyed Greek woman, very properly
dressed.
"I'd fallen away from the worship," I said.
Again came a comforting round of soft voices.
"Go in now," said one woman, "and ask to pray in the very sanctuary of Our
Mother. You are an initiate. Most of us here are not."
I nodded.
I went up the steps of the Temple and entered inside it.
I paused to shake from my mantle the mundane, that is, all the trivia I had
discussed. My mind was focused upon the goddess, and desperate to believe in
her. I loathed my hypocrisy, that I used this Temple and this worship, but then
it didn't seem significant. My despair of the three nights had penetrated too
deep.
What a shock awaited me as I found myself inside.
The Temple was far more ancient than our Temple in Rome, and Egyptian paintings
covered its walls. A shiver at once went through me. The columns were in the
Egyptian style, not fluted but smoothly round, and brightly painted in orange,
and rising to giant lotus leaves at the capitals. The smell of the incense was
overpowering and I could hear music emanating from the Sanctuary. I could hear
the thin notes of the lyre, and of the wires of the sistrum being plucked, and I

could hear a litany being chanted.
But this was a thoroughly Egyptian place, which enveloped me as firmly as my
blood dreams. I almost fainted.
The dreams came back ­ the deep paralytic sense of being in some secret
Sanctuary in Egypt, my soul swallowed within another body!
The Priestess came to me. This too was a shock.
In Rome, her dress would have been purely Roman, and she might have worn a small
exotic headdress, a little cap to her shoulders, perhaps.
But this woman wore Egyptian clothes of pleated linen, in the old style, and she
wore a magnificent Egyptian headdress and wig, the broad mass of long black
braids falling down stiffly over her shoulders. She looked as extravagant
perhaps as Cleopatra had ever looked, for all I knew.
I had only heard stories of Julius Caesar's love of Cleopatra, then her affair
with Mark Antony and Cleopatra's death. All that was before my birth.
But I knew that Cleopatra's fabulous entrance into Rome had much affrighted the
old Roman sense of morality. I had always known the old Roman families feared
Egyptian magic, In the recent punitive Roman massacre, which I've described,
there was a lot of shouting about license and lust; but beneath it, there had
been an unspoken fear of the mystery and the power hidden behind the Temple
doors.
And now as I gazed at this Priestess, at her painted eyes, I felt in my soul
this fear. I knew it. Of course this woman seemed to have stepped from the
dreams, but it was not that which struck me so much, for after all, what are
dreams? This was an Egyptian woman ­ wholly alien and inscrutable to me.
My Isis had been Greco-Roman. Even her statue in the Roman Sanctuary had been
clothed in a gorgeously draped Greek dress and her hair had been done softy in
the old Greek style, with waves around her face. She had held her sistrum and an
urn. She had been a Romanized goddess.
Perhaps the same had happened with the goddess Cybele in Rome. Rome swallowed
things and made them Roman.
In a very few centuries, though I had no thought of it then ­ how could I ­ Rome
would swallow and shape the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and make of his
Christians the Roman Catholic church.
I suppose you are familiar with the modern expression, "When in Rome, do as the
Romans do."
But here, in this reddish gloom, among flickering lights and a deeper muskier
incense than I had ever smelled, I resented my timidity in silence. Then the
dreams did descend, like so many veils lowered one by one to enclose me. In a
flash I saw the beautiful Queen weeping. No. She screamed. Cried for help.
"Get away from me," I whispered to the air around me. "Fly from me, all things
that are impure and evil. Get away from me as I enter the house of my Blessed
Mother."
The Priestess took me in hand. I heard voices from my dream in violent argument.
I strained to dear my vision, to see the worshipers coming and going towards the
Sanctuary to meditate or to make sacrifice, to ask for some favor. I tried to
realize it was a big busy crowd, very little different from Rome.
But the touch of the Priestess enfeebled me. Her painted eyes struck terror. Her
broad necklace caused me to blink my eyes. Row upon row of flat stones.
I was taken into a private apartment of the Temple by her, offered a sumptuous
couch. I lay back exhausted. "Fly from me, all things evil," I whispered.
"Including dreams."
The Priestess sat beside me and enfolded me in her silken arms. I looked up into
a mask!
"Talk to me, suffering one," she said in Latin with a thick accent. "Speak all
that must come forth."
Suddenly ­ uncontrollably ­ I poured out my whole family story, the annihilation
of my family, my guilt, my travails.

"What if I was the cause of my family's downfall ­ my worship at the Temple of
Isis? What if Tiberius had remembered it? What have I done? The Priests were
crucified and I did nothing. What does Mother Isis want of me? I want to die."
"That she does not want of you," said the Priestess, staring at me. Her eyes
were huge, or was it the paint? No, I could see the whites of her eyes, so
glistening and pure. Her painted mouth let loose words like a tiny breeze in a
monotone.
I was fast becoming delirious and totally unreasonable. I murmured what I could
about my initiation, what details I could tell a Priestess, for all these things
were highly secret, you know, but I confirmed for her that I had been reborn in
the rites.
All the stored-up weakness in me was cut loose in a flood.
Then I lay down my guilt. I confessed that I had, early on, left the Cult of
Isis, that in recent years, I had walked only in the public processions to the
sea, when the goddess was carried to the shore to bless the ships. Isis, the
goddess of Navigation. I had not lived a life of devotion.
I had done nothing when the Priests of Isis were crucified, except speak out
with many others behind the Emperor's back. There had been a solidarity between
me and those Romans who thought Tiberius was a monster, but we had not raised
our voices in defense of Isis. My Father had told me to remain silent. So I had.
This was the same Father who had told me to live.
I turned over and slipped down off this couch and I lay on the tiled floor. I
don't know why. I pressed my cheek to the cold tile. I liked the coldness
against my face. I was in a state of madness, but not an uncontrollable state. I
lay staring.
I knew one thing. I wanted to get out of this Temple! I didn't like it. No, this
had been a very bad idea.
I hated myself suddenly for having become so vulnerable to this woman, whatever
sort she was, and the atmosphere of the blood dreams beckoned to me.
I opened my eyes. The Priestess bent over me. I saw the weeping Queen of my
nightmares. I turned away and shut my eyes.
"Be at peace," she said in her calculated and perfected voice. "You did nothing
wrong," said the Priestess.
It seemed preposterous that such a voice should issue from such a painted face
and form, but the voice was definite.
"First," the Priestess said, "you must understand that Mother Isis forgives
anything. She is the Mother of Mercy." Then she said, "You have been more fully
initiated by your description than most here or anywhere. You made a long fast.
You bathed in the sacred blood of the bull. You must have drunk the potion. You
dreamed and saw yourself reborn."
"Yes," I said, trying to revive the old ecstasy, the priceless gift of belief in
something. "Yes. I saw the stars and great fields of flowers, such fields..."
It was no good. I was scared of this woman and I wanted to get out of there. I'd
go home and confess all this to Flavius and make him let me weep on his
shoulder.
"I am not pious by nature," I confessed. "I was young. I loved the free women
who went there, the women who slept with whom they chose, the whores of Rome,
the keepers of the houses of pleasure, I liked women who thought for themselves,
and followed the goings-on of the Empire."
"You can enjoy such company here as well," said the Priestess, without batting
an eye. "And don't fear that your old ties to the Temple caused your downfall in
Rome. We have plenty of news to confirm that the highborn were not persecuted by
Tiberius when he destroyed the Temple. It is always the poor who suffer: the
street whore and the simple weaver, the hairdresser, the bricklayer. No noble
family was persecuted in the name of Isis. You know that. Some women fled to
Alexandria because they would not give up the worship, but they were never in
danger,"

The dreams approached. "Oh, Mother of God," I whispered.
The Priestess went on talking.
"You, like Mother Isis, have been the victim of tragedy. And you, like Mother
Isis, must take strength and walk alone, as Isis did when her husband, Osiris,
was slain. Who helped her when she searched all over Egypt for the body of her
murdered husband, Osiris? She walked alone. She is the greatest of the
goddesses. When she recovered the body of her husband, Osiris, and could find no
organ of generation for him with which she might be impregnated, she drew the
semen right from his spirit. Thus, the god Horus was born of a woman and a god.
It was the power of Isis who drew the spirit from the dead man. It is Isis who
tricked the god Ra into revealing his name."
That was the old tale all right.
I looked away from the Priestess. I was unable to look at her decorated face!
Surely she felt my revulsion. I must not hurt her. She meant well. It wasn't her
fault that she looked to me like a monster. Why in hell had I come here!
I lay dazed. The room had a soft golden light coming mainly through its three
doors, and they were cut Egyptian-style, these doors, wider at the base than at
the top, and I let this light make a blur of my vision. I asked the light to do
this.
I felt the Priestess's hand. Such silken warmth. So lovely, her touch, her
sweetness.
"Do you believe all of it!" I suddenly whispered.
She completely ignored this question. Her painted mask gave forth the creed.
"You must be like Mother Isis. Depend on no one. You don't have the burden of
recovering a lost husband or father. You are free. Receive into your house men
with love as you choose. You belong to no one but Mother Isis. Remember, Isis is
the goddess who loves, the goddess who forgives, the goddess of infinite
understanding because she herself has suffered!"
"Suffered!" I gasped. I moaned, a very uncommon sound for me, most of my life.
But I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares, bound to her throne,
"Listen to this," I said, "the dreams I will now recount, and then tell me why
it is happening." I knew my voice sounded angry. I was sorry for it. "These
dreams don't come from wine or potions, or after long periods of wakefulness
that twist the mind."
Then I launched into another totally unplanned confession.
I told this woman of the blood dreams, the dreams of ancient Egypt in which I
had drunk blood ­ the altar, the Temple, the desert, the sun rising.
"Amon Ra!" I said. This was the Egyptian name for the sun god, but I had never
spoken it to my knowledge. I said it now. "Yes, Isis tricked him into revealing
his name, but he killed me and I was her blood drinker, do you hear me, a
thirsty god!"
"No!" said the Priestess. She sat motionless.
She thought for a long while. I had scared her and now this scared me all the
more.
"Can you read the ancient picture writing of Egypt?" she asked.
"No," I said.
Then she said, in a more relaxed and vulnerable tone:
"You speak of very old legends, legends buried in the history of our worship of
Isis and Osiris; that they once did indeed take the blood of their victims as
sacrifice. There are scrolls here that tell of this. But nobody can really
decipher them, except for one..."
Her voice trailed off.
"Who is the one?" I asked. I sat up on my elbows. I realized the plaits of my
hair had come undone. Good. It felt good because it was free now and clean. I
raked my hair with both hands.
What did it feel like to be entombed in paint and wig like this Priestess?
"Tell me," I said, "who is the one who can read these legends. Tell me!"

"These are evil tales," she said, "that Isis herself and Osiris live on,
somewhere, in material form, taking blood even now." She made an expression of
denial and disgust. "But this is not our worship! We sacrifice no humans here!
Egypt was old and wise before Rome was born!"
Who was she trying to convince? MD
"I've never had such dreams, in a string like this, with the same theme."
She became very worked up with her declarations.
"Our Mother Isis has no taste for blood. She has conquered death and set her
husband Osiris as King of the Dead, but for us, she is life itself. She didn't
send you these dreams."
"Probably not! I agree with you. But then who did? Where do they come from? Why
did they pursue me at sea'? Who is this one who can read the old writing?"
She was shaken. She had let go of me and she stared off, her eyes taking on a
deceptive ferocity due to the black lining.
"Perhaps somewhere in childhood you heard an old tale, maybe an old Egyptian
Priest told it to you. You forgot it, and now it flames in your tortured mind.
It feeds on fires to which it has no right ­ your Father's death."
"Yes, well, I certainly hope so, but I've never known an old Egyptian. At the
Temple, the Priests were Roman. Besides, if we take the dreams and lay them out,
what is the pattern there? Why is the Queen weeping? Why does the sun kill me?
The Queen is in fetters. The Queen is a prisoner. The Queen is in agony!"
"Stop." The Priestess shuddered. Then she put her arms around me, as if it was
she who needed me. I felt her stiff linen and the thick hair of her wig, and
beneath it the hurried pounding of her heart. "No," she said. "You're possessed
of a demon, and we can drive this demon out of you! Maybe the way was opened for
this wretched demon when your Father was attacked at his own Hearth."
"You really believe it's possible?" I asked.
"Listen," she said as casually now as one of the women outside. "I want you to
be bathed, to have fresh garments. This money, what portion can you give me? If
none, we will provide all for you. We are rich here."
"Here's plenty. I don't care." I pulled the purse loose from my girdle.
"I will have everything done for you. Fresh clothes. This silk is too fragile."
"You are telling me!" I said.
"This mantle is torn. Your hair is uncombed."
I spilled out a dozen or so gold coins, more than I had paid for Flavius.
It shocked her, but she covered up the shock very quickly. Suddenly she stared
at me, and her painted mask managed to make a flexible expression, a frown. I
thought it might crack.
I thought she might weep. I was becoming a regular expert in making people weep.
Mia and Lia had wept. Flavius had wept. Now she was going to cry. The Queen in
the dream was crying!
I laughed in madness, throwing back my head, but then I saw the Queen! I saw her
in distant wavery recollection, and I felt such sorrow that I too could have
cried. My mockery was blasphemy. It was a lie unto myself.
"Take the gold for the Temple," I said. "Take it for new clothes, for all I
need. But my offering to the goddess, I want it to be flowers, and bread, warm
from the oven, a small loaf."
"Very good," she said with an eager nod. "That is what Isis wants. She wants no
blood. No! No blood!"
She started to help me up.
I paused. "In the dream, you understand that she weeps. She is not happy with
these blood drinkers, she protests, she objects. She herself is not the one who
drinks blood."
The Priestess was confounded, and then she nodded. "Yes, that is obvious, is it
not?"
"I too protest and suer," I said.
"Yes, come," she said leading me through a thick tall door. She left me in the

hands of the Temple slaves. I was relieved. I was weary.
I was taken into the ceremonial bath, cleansed by Temple maidens and re-dressed
carefully by Temple maidens.
What a pleasure to have it all done right.
For a little while I wondered helplessly if they would frame me in white pleats
and black plaits but they used the Roman style.
My hair was properly done by these girls in a correct circlet that would hold,
leaving a generous frame of ringlets around the face.
The clothes given me were new and made of fine linen. Flowers had been stitched
along the borders. This finery, so precise, so minute, seemed more valuable than
gold.
It certainly gave more joy to me than gold.
I felt so tired! I was so grateful.
The girls then made up my face more artfully than I could have done it, and more
in the Egyptian style, and I flinched when I saw myself in the mirror. ­
Flinched. It wasn't the full paint of the Priestess, but my eyes were rimmed
with black.
"How dare I complain?" I whispered.
I put down the mirror. One doesn't have to see oneself, fortunately.
I emerged into the great hall of the Temple, a proper Roman woman, with the
extravagant face paint of the East. A common sight in Antioch.
I found the Priestess with two others, as formally dressed as she, and a Priest
who wore the same oldfashioned Egyptian headdress, only he wore no wig, just a
striped hood. His tunic was short, pleated. He turned and glared at me as I came
forward.
Fear. Crushing fear. Flee this place! Forget about the offering, or have them
make it for you. Go home. Flavius is waiting. Get out!
I was struck dumb. I let the Priest draw me aside.
"Pay attention," he said to me gently. "I will take you now into the holy place.
I will let you talk to the Mother. But when you come out, you must come to me!
Don't leave without coming to me. You must promise me, you will return each day,
and if you have more of these dreams, you will lay them before us. There is one
to whom they should be told, that is, unless the goddess drives them from your
mind."
"Of course I will tell anyone who can help," I said. "I hate these dreams. But
why are you so anxious? Are you afraid of me?"
He shook his head. "I don't fear you, but there is something I must confide to
you. I must talk to you either today or tomorrow, I must speak with you. Go now
to the Mother, then come to me."
The others led me to the chamber of the Sanctuary; there were white linen
curtains before the shrine. I saw my sacrifice lying there, a great garland of
sweet-smelling white flowers, and the warm loaf of bread. I knelt. The curtains
were pulled back by unseen hands and I found myself alone in the chamber
kneeling before the Regina Caeli, the Queen of Heaven.
Another shock.
This was an ancient Egyptian statue of our Isis, carved from dark basalt. Her
headdress was long, narrow, pushed behind her ears. On her head she wore a great
disk between horns. Her breasts were bare. On her lap sat the adult Pharaoh, her
son Horus. She held her left breast to offer him her milk.
I was struck with despair! This image meant nothing to me! I groped for the
essence of Isis in this image.
"Did you send me the dreams, Mother!" I whispered.
I laid out the flowers. I broke the bread.
I heard nothing in the silence from the serene and ancient statue.
I prostrated myself on the floor, stretching out my arms. And from the depths of
my soul, I struggled to say, I accept, I believe, I am yours, I need you, I need
you!

But I wept. All was lost to me. Not merely Rome and my family, but even my Isis.
This goddess was the embodiment of the faith of another nation, another people.
Very slowly a calm settled over me.
Is it so, I thought. The Cult of my Mother is in all places, North and South and
East and West. It is the spirit of this Cult which gives it power. I need not
literally kiss the feet of this effigy. That is not the point.
I raised my head slowly, then sat back on my heels. A real revelation came upon
me. I cannot fully record it. I knew it, fully, in an instant.
I knew that all things were symbols of other things! I knew that all rituals
were enactments of other happenings! I knew that out of our practical human
minds we devised these things with an immensity of soul that would not allow the
world to be devoid of meaning.
And this statue represented love. Love above cruelty. Love above injustice. Love
above loneliness and condemnation.
That was what mattered, that single thing. I stared up at the face of the
goddess and I knew her! I stared at the little Pharaoh, the proffered breast.
"I am yours!" I said coldly.
Her stark primitive Egyptian features were no obstade to my heart; I looked at
the right hand which held her breast.
Love. This requires strength from us; this requires endurance; this requires an
acceptance of all that is unknown.
"Take the dreams away from me, Heavenly Mother," I said. "Or reveal their
purpose. And the path I must follow. Please."
Then in Latin I said an old litany:

You are she who has separated the Heavens and the Earth.
You are she who rises in the Dog Star.
You are she who makes strong the right.
You. are she who makes the children to love their parents.
You are she who decreed mercy for all who ask for it.

I believed these words, but in a wholly profane way. I believed them because I
saw her worship as having collected together from the minds of men and women the
best ideas of which men and women were capable. That was the function for which
a goddess existed; that was the spirit from which she drew her vitality.
The lost phallus of Osiris exists in the Nile. And the Nile inseminates the
fields. Oh, it was so lovely.
The trick was not to reject it, as Lucretius might have suggested, but to
realize what her image meant. To extract from that image the best in my own
soul.
And when I looked down at the beautiful white flowers, I thought, "It is your
wisdom, Mother, that these bloom." And I meant by that only that the world
itself was filled with so much to be cherished, preserved, honored, that
pleasure itself was resplendent ­ and she, Isis, embodied these concepts that
were too deep to be called ideas.
I loved her ­ this expression of goodness which was Isis.
The longer I looked at her stone face, the more it seemed she saw me. An old
trick. The more I knelt there, the more it seemed she spoke to me. I allowed
this to happen, fully aware that it meant nothing. The dreams were remote. They
seemed a puzzle which would find its idiot resolution.
Then with true fervor, I crawled towards her and kissed her feet.
My worship was over.
I went out refreshed, jubilant.
I wasn't going to have those dreams anymore. There was still daylight. I was
happy.
I found many friends in the courtyard of the Temple, and sitting down with them
under the olive trees, I drew out of them all the information I needed for

practical life, how to get caterers, hairdressers, all that. Where to buy this
thing and the other.
In other words, I was armed by my rich friends with full equipment to run a fine
house without actually cluttering it up with slaves I didn't want. I could stick
with Flavius and the two girls. Excellent. Anything else could be hired or
bought.
Finally, very tired, with my head full of names to remember and directions to
recall, and very amused with the jokes and stories of these women, delighted by
their ease in speaking Greek ­ which I had always loved ­ I sat back and
thought, I can go home now.
I can begin.
The Temple was still very busy. I looked at the doors. Where was the Priest'?
Well, I would come back tomorrow. I didn't want to revive those dreams now, that
was certain. Many people were coming and going with flowers and bread and some
with birds to be set free for the goddess, birds that would take wing out of the
high window of her Sanctuary.
How warm it was here. What a blaze of flowers covered the wall! I had never
thought there could be a place as beautiful as Tuscany, but maybe this place was
beautiful too.
I went out of the courtyard, before the steps, and into the Forum.
I approached a man under the arches who was teaching a group of young boys all
of what Diogenes has espoused, that we give up the flesh and all its pleasures,
that we live pure lives in denial of the senses.
It was so much as Flavius had described it. But the man meant his words, and was
well versed. He spoke of a liberating resignation. He caught my fancy. For this
is what I thought had come to me in the Temple, a liberating resignation.
The boys who listened were too young to know this. But I knew it. I liked him.
He had gray hair and wore a simple long tunic. He was not ostentatiously in
rags.
I at once interrupted. With a humble smile I offered the counsel of Epicurus,
that the senses wouldn't have been given us were they not good. Wasn't this so'?
"Must we deny ourselves? Look, back at the courtyard of the Temple of Isis, look
at the flowers covering the top of the wall! Is this not something to savor?
Look at the roaring red of those flowers! Those flowers are in themselves enough
to lift a person out of sorrow. WE is to say that eyes are wiser than hands or
lips?"
The young men turned to me. I fell into discussions with several of them. How
fresh and pretty they were. There were long-haired men from Babylon and even
highborn Hebrews here, all with very hairy arms and chests, and many colonial
Romans who were dazzled by the points I made, that in the flesh and in the wine,
we find the truth of life.
"The flowers, the stars, the wine, the kisses of one's lover, all is part of
Nature, surely," I said. I was of course on fire, having just come from the
Temple, having just unburdened all fears and having resolved all doubts. I was
for the moment invincible. The world was new.
The Teacher, whose name was Marcellus, came from under the arch to greet me.
"Ah, Gracious Lady, you amaze me," he said. "But from whom did you really learn
what you believe? Was it from Lucretius? Or was it from experience? You realize
that we must not ever encourage people to abandon themselves to the senses!"
"Have I said anything about abandon?" I asked. "To yield is not to abandon. It
is to honor. I speak of a prudent life; I speak of listening to the wisdom of
our bodies. I speak of the ultimate intelligence of kindness, and enjoyment. And
if you will know, Lucretius didn't teach me as much as one might think. He was
always too dry for me, you know. I learned to embrace the glory of life from
poets like Ovid."
The crowd of boys cheered.
"I learnt from Ovid," came shout after shout.

"Well, that's fine, but remember your manners as well as your lessons," I said
firmly.
More cheering. Then the young men began tossing out verses from Ovid's
Metamorphoses.
"That's splendid," I declared. "How many here? Fifteen. Why don't you come to my
house for a supper Y' I asked. "Five nights from now, all of you. I need the
time to prepare. I have many books I want to show you. I promise you, I will
show you what a delicious feast can do for the soul!"
My invitation was accepted with amusement and laughter. I disclosed the location
of my house.
"I am a widow. My name is Pandora. I invite you with all propriety, and the
feast awaits you. Don't expect dancing boys and girls, for you will not find
them under my roof. Expect delicious food. Expect poetry. Which of you can sing
the verses of Homer'? Truly sing them? Which of you sings them now from memory
for pleasure!"
Laughter, conviviality. Victory. It seemed everybody could do this, and welcomed
the opportunity. Someone made a soft mention of another Roman woman who would be
most jealous when she discovered she had competition in Antioch.
"Nonsense," said another, "her table is overcrowded. Lady, may I kiss your
hand?"
"You must tell me who she is," I said. "I'll welcome her. I want to know her,
and what I can learn from her."
The Teacher was smiling. I slipped him some money.
It was getting dusk. I sighed. Look. The rising stars of the tinted evening that
precedes blackness.
I received the boys' chaste kisses and confirmed our feast.
But something had changed. It was as quick as the opening of one's eyes. Ah,
painted eyes, no.
Perhaps it was only the awful pall of twilight.
I felt a shudder. It is I who summoned you. Who spoke those words? Beware, for
you would be stolen from me now and I will not have it.
I was dumbstruck. I held the teacher's hand warmly. He talked about moderation
in living. "Look at my plain tunic," he said. "These boys have so much money,
they can destroy themselves."
The boys protested.
But this was dim to me. I tried to listen. My eyes roved. Whence came that
voice! Who spoke those words! Who summoned me and who would attempt the theft?
Then to my silent astonishment I saw a man, his head covered by his toga,
watching me. I knew him immediately, by his forehead and his eyes. I recognized
his walk now as he moved steadily away.
This was my brother, the youngest, Lucius, the one I despised. It had to be him.
And behold the sly manner in which he fled from notice into the shadows.
I knew the whole person. Lucius. He waited at the end of the long portico.
I couldn't move, and it was getting dark. All the merchants who are open only in
the day were gone. The taverns were putting out their lanterns or torches. One
bookseller remained open, with great displays of books under the lamps above.
Lucius ­ my much detested youngest brother ­ not coming to welcome me with tears
but gliding in the shadows of the portico. Why'?
I feared I knew.
Meantime, the boys were begging me to go to the nearby wine garden with them, a
lovely place. They were fighting over who would pay for my supper there.
Think, Pandora. This sweet little invitation is some keen test of the degree of
my daring and freedom. And I should not go to a common tavern with the boys! But
within moments I would be alone.
The Forum grew quiet. The fires blazed before the Temples. But there were great
spaces of darkness. The man in the toga waited.
"No, I must be off now," I said. Desperately I thought, what I shall I do for a

torchbearer? Dare I ask these youths to see me home'? I could see their slaves
waiting about, some already lighting their torches or lanterns.
Singing came from the Temple of Isis.
It was I who summoned you. Beware... for me and my purpose!
"This is madness," I muttered, waving goodnight to those who left in pairs or
trios. I forced smiles and kind words.
I glared at the distant figure of Lucius, who now slouched at the end of the
portico in front of doors closed for the night. His very posture was furtive and
cowardly.
Quite suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I brushed it off immediately,
wishing to lay down limits to such familiarity, and then I realized a man was
whispering in my ear:
"The Priest at the Temple begs for you to come back, Madam. He needs to talk
with you. He did not mean for you to leave without talking."
I turned to see a Priest there beside me, in full Egyptian headdress and
impeccable white linen and wearing a medallion of the goddess around his neck.
Oh, thank Heaven.
But before I could recover myself or answer, another man had stepped up boldly,
heaving forward his ivory leg and foot. Two torchbearers accompanied him. We
were embraced by a warm light.
"Does my Mistress wish to talk to this Priest?" he asked.
It was Flavius. He had followed my commands. He was wonderfully dressed as a
Roman gentleman in the long tunic and a loose cloak. As a slave, he couldn't
wear a toga. His hair was neat and trimmed and looked as impressive as any free
man's. He was shining dean and appeared completely confident.
Marcellus, the Philosopher-Teacher, lingered. "Lady Pandora, you are most
gracious, and let me assure you that the tavern these boys frequent may give
rise to another Aristotle or Plato but it is not a fit place for you."
"I know that," I said. "Don't worry."
The Teacher looked warily at the Priest and at the handsome Flavius. I slipped
my arm about Flavius's waist. "This is my steward, who will welcome you the
night you come to me. Thank you for letting me disrupt your teaching. You're a
kind man."
The Teacher's face stiffened. Then he leaned doser. "There's a man under the
portico; don't look at him now, but you need more slaves to protect you. This
city is divided, dangerous."
"Yes, so you see him too," I said. "And his glorious toga, the mark of his
genteel birth!"
"It's getting dark," Flavius said. "I'll hire more torchbearers now and a
litter. Right over there."
He thanked the Teacher, who reluctantly slipped away.
The Priest. He was still waiting. Flavius gestured for two more torchbearers and
they came trotting to join us. We now had a plenitude of light.
I turned to the Priest. "I will come to the Temple directly, but I must first
talk with that man over there! The man in the shadows?" I pointed quite visibly.
I stood in a flood of light. I might as well have been on a stage.
I saw the distant figure cringe and try to fade into the wall.
"Why?" Flavius asked with about as much humility as a Roman Senator. "Something
is very wrong about that man. He's hovering. The Teacher was right."
"I know," I answered. I heard the dim, echoing laughter of a woman! Yea gods, I
had to stay sane long enough to get home! I looked at Flavius. He had not heard
the laughter.
There was one sure way to do this. "You torchbearers, all of you, come with me,"
I said to the four of them. "Flavius, you stand here with the Priest and watch
as I greet this man. I know him. Come only if I call."
"Oh, I don't like it," said Flavius.
"Neither do I," said the Priest. "They want you in the Temple, Madam, and we

have many guards to escort you home."
"I won't disappoint you," I said, but I walked straight towards the toga-clad
figure, crossing yard after yard of paved squares, the torches flaring around
me.
The toga-clad man gave a violent start, with his whole body, and then he took a
few steps away from the wall.
I stopped, still out in the square.
He had to come closer. I wasn't going to move. The four torches gasped and blew
in the breeze. Anybody anywhere near could see us. We were the brightest thing
in the Forum.
The man approached. He walked slow, then fast. The light struck his face. He was
consumed with rage.
"Lucius," I whispered. "I see you, but I can't believe what I see."
"Nor can I," he said. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said to me.
"What?" I was too baffled to answer.
"Our family is in disgrace in Rome and you're making a spectacle of yourself in
the middle of Antioch! Look at you! Painted and perfumed and your hair full of
ointment! You are a whore."
"Lucius!" I cried. "What in the name of the gods are you thinking'? Our Father
is dead! Your own brothers may be dead. How did you escape? Why aren't you glad
to see me? Why don't you take me to your house?"
"Glad to see you!" he hissed. "We are in hiding here, you bitch!"
"How many of you? Who'? What about Antony? What happened to Flora?"
He sneered with exasperation.
"They are murdered, Lydia, and if you do not get yourself to some safe corner
where no roaming citizen of Rome can find you, you are dead too. Oh, that you
would turn up here, spouting philosophy! Everybody in the taverns was talking
about you! And that slave with the leg made of ivory! I saw you at noon, you
wretched and infernal nuisance. Damn you, Lydia!"
This was pure unadulterated hate.
Again, came that distinct echoing laughter. Of course he did not hear it. Only I
could hear it.
"Your wife, where is she. I want to see her! You will take me in!"
"I will not."
"Lucius, I am your sister. I want to see your wife. You're right. I've been
foolish. I didn't think things through very well. There are so many miles of sea
between here and Rome. It never occurred to me ­"
"That's just it, Lydia, you never really think of anything sensible or
practical. You never did. You're an uncompromising dreamer, and stupid on top of
it."
"Lucius, what can I do?"
He turned from right to left, sizing up the torchbearers.
He narrowed his eyes. I could feel his hatred. Oh, Father, do not see this from
Heaven or the Underworld. My brother wants me dead!
"Yes," I said, "four torchbearers and we are in the middle of the Forum. And
don't forget about the man with the ivory leg over there and the Priest," I said
softly. "And do regard the soldiers outside the Emperor's Temple. Take note. How
goes it with your wife? I must see her. I'll come in secret. She'll be happy
that I am alive, surely, for I love her like a sister. I will never connect
myself with you in public. I've made a grievous error."
"Oh, knock it off," he said. "Sisters! She's dead!" He looked from right to left
again. "They were all massacred. Don't you understand? Get away from me." He
took a few steps back but I moved forward, drawing the light around him again.
"But who is with you, then? Who escaped with you? Who else is alive?"
"Priscilla," he said, "and we were damned lucky to get away when we did."
"What? Your mistress? You came here with your mistress? The children, they are
all dead?"

"Yes, of course, they must be. How could they have escaped'? Look, Lydia, I give
you one night to get out of this city and away from me. I am lodged here
comfortably and will not tolerate you. Get out of Antioch. Go by sea or land, I
don't care, but go!"
"You left your wife and children to die'? And came here with Priscilla?"
"How the hell did you get away, you stinking bitch in heat, answer me that! Of
course you had no children, the great famous barren womb of our family!" He
looked at the torchbearers. "Get away from here!" he shouted.
"Stay right where you are."
I put my hand on my dagger. I moved the mantle so that he could see the flash of
the metal.
He looked genuinely surprised and then gave a ghastly false smile. Oh,
revolting!
"Lydia, I wouldn't hurt you for the world!" he said as if insulted. "I am only
worried for us all. Word came from the house. Everyone had been killed. What was
I to do, go back and die for nothing?"
"You're lying. And don't you call me a bitch in heat again unless you want to
become a gelding. I know you lie. Somebody tipped you off, and you got out! Or
it was you who betrayed us all."
Ah, how sad for him that he was not more clever, more quick. He did not take
umbrage at these loathsome charges as he should have. He just tilted his head
and said:
"No, that's not true. Look, come with me now. Send these men away, get rid of
that slave, and I will help you. Priscilla adores you."
"She's a liar and slut! And how calm you have become in the face of my
suspicions. Nothing as steamed as when you saw me! I just accused you of
betraying our family to the Delatores. I accused you of abandoning your wife and
children to the Praetorian Guard. Can you hear these words?"
"It's utter stupidity, I would never do such a thing."
"You reek of guilt. Look at you. I should kill you now!"
He backed up. "Get out of Antioch!" he said. "I don't care how you judge me or
what I had to do to save myself and Priscilla. Get out of Antioch!"
There were no words for my judgment. It was harsher than my soul could hold.
He backed away, and then walked fast into the darkness, disappearing before he
reached the portico. I listened to his steps as they echoed down the street.
"Dear Heaven!" I whispered. I was about to cry. My hand was still on the dagger,
however.
I turned around. The Priest and Flavius stood much closer than ordered. I was
frankly utterly baffled, stopped.
I didn't know what to do.
"Come to the Temple at once," said the Priest.
"All right," I said. "Flavius, you come with me, stand watch with the four
torchmen, I want you right by the Temple guards, and keep an eye out for that
man."
"Who is he, Madam," Flavius whispered as I strode towards the Temple, leading
them both.
How regal he looked. He had the presence of a free man. And his tunic was
beautiful thin wool, striped in gold, belted in gold, well fitted across his
chest. Even his ivory leg had been polished. I was more than pleased. But was he
armed'?
Beneath his quiet demeanor, he was deeply protective of me.
In my misery, I couldn't form words to answer him.
Several litters were now crisscrossing the square, carried on the shoulders of
hurrying slaves, and other slaves carried the torches beside them. A kind of
soft glow rose from the commotion. People were on their way to dinners or
private ceremonies. Something was happening in the Temple.
I turned to the Priest. "You will guard my slave and my torchbearers?"

"Yes, Madam," he said.
It was full night. The breeze was sweet. A few lanterns had been lighted under
the long porticoes. We drew near to the braziers of the goddess.
"Now I must leave you," I said. "You have my permission to protect my property,
as you so eloquently put it earlier, unto death. Don't move from these doors. I
won't leave here without you. I won't stay long. I don't want to. But have you a
knife'?"
"Yes, Madam, but it's untried. It was among your possessions, and when you did
not come home and it grew dark..."
"Don't recount the history of the world," I said. "You did the right thing. You
probably will always do the right thing."
I turned my back to the square and said, "Let me see it. I'll know if it's
decorative or sharp."
When he drew it from the forearm sling, I touched it with my finger and blood
came from the cut. I returned it. This had belonged to my Father. So my Father
had filled my trunk with his weapons as well as his wealth, so that I might
live!
Flavius and I exchanged one last slow glance.
The Priest grew very anxious. "Madam, please come inside," he said.
I found myself ushered right through the tall doors into the Temple, and with
the Priestesses and the Priest of earlier that afternoon.
"You want something of me?" I asked. I was out of breath. I was faint. "I have
much on my mind, things that must be done. Can this wait?"
"No, Lady, it cannot!" said the Priest.
I felt a shudder in my limbs as if I were being watched by someone. The tall
shadows of the Temples were too concealing.
"All right," I said. "It's about those awful dreams, isn't it?"
"Yes," said the Priest. "And more than that."



6

We were taken into another chamber, and this one had only one dim light.
I couldn't see well in the flickering of the flame and I realized I could not
make out the faces of the other Priest and Priestess. An Oriental screen, a
screen of worked ebony, partitioned off the end of this room, and I felt certain
someone was behind it.
But I felt nothing but gentleness emanating from all of these gathered here. I
looked around. I was so miserable over my brother, and so impatient that I
couldn't find polite words.
"Please, you must forgive me," I said. "A dire matter requires me to hurry." I
was becoming afraid for Flavius's safety. "Do send guards to flank my slave
outside, now."
"Done, Lady," said the Priest, the one I knew. "I beg you to stay and recount
your story again."
"Who is there!" I pointed. "Behind that screen. Why is this person concealed?"
This was very rude and irreverent, but I was in a full state of alarm.
"That is one of our most devoted supporters," said the Priest who had escorted
me to the shrine of Isis earlier. "This one often comes by night to pray at the
shrine and has given much money to the Temple. He only wants to hear what we
have to say."
"Well, I'm not so sure of that. Tell him to come out!" I said. "Besides, what is
it we're supposed to say?"
I was infuriated suddenly that they might have betrayed my corifidences. I
hadn't told them my true Roman name, only of my tragedy, but the Temple was
sacred.
They became all flustered in their gentleness.

The figure, draped in the toga, much taller than my brother, in fact, remarkably
tall, stepped out from behind the screen. The toga was dark, but nevertheless
the classical garment. His face was hidden by the toga. I could only see his
lips.
He whispered:
"Don't be afraid. You told the Priest and Priestesses this afternoon of blood
dreams."
"This was in confidence!" I said indignantly. I was completely suspicious, for I
had told a good deal more than blood dreams to these people.
I tried better to see the figure. There was something distinctly familiar about
the figure ­ the voice, even in a whisper... something else.
"Lady Pandora," said the Priestess who had so consoled me earlier. "You talked
to me of an old legendary worship, worship which we oppose and condemn. A
worship of our Beloved Mother which once involved human sacrifice. I told you
that we abhor such things. And we do."
"However," said the Priest, "there is someone afoot in the city of Antioch who
does drink blood from humans, draining them until they are dead. Then he flings
the bodies before dawn on our steps. The very steps of our Temple." He sighed.
"Lady Pandora, I am entrusting you with a powerful confidence."
All thought of my evil brother left me. The hound of the dreams bore down upon
me with its evil breath. I tried to gather my wits. I thought again of the voice
I'd heard in my head: It is E who summoned you. The feminine laughter.
"No, it was a woman's laughter," I murmured.
"Lady Pandora?"
"You tell me there is someone afoot in Antioch who drinks blood."
"By night. He cannot walk in the day," said the Priest.
I saw the dream, the rising sun, knowing I the blood drinker would die in the
rays of the sun.
"You're telling me that these blood drinkers I saw in my dream exist?" I asked.
"That one of them is here."
"Someone wants us to believe this," said the Priest, "that the old legends have
truth, but we don't know who it is. And we are leery of the Roman authorities.
You know what happened in Rome. You came speaking of dreams in which the sun
killed you, in which you were a blood drinker. Lady, I'm not betraying your
confidences here. This one ­"
He gestured to the tall man. "This is the one who reads the ancient writing.
He's read the legends. Your dreams echo the legends."
"I am sick," I said. "I need a chair. I have enemies to worry about."
"I'll protect you from your enemies," said the mysterious tall man in the toga.
"How can you? You don't even know who they are. "
There came a silent voice from the tall man in the toga:
Your brother Lucius betrayed the entire family. He did it out of jealousy of
your brother Antony. He sold out everybody to the Delatores for a guaranteed
one-third of the family's wealth and left before the killing began. He had the
cooperation of Sejanus of the Praetorian Guard. He wants to kill you.
I was shocked but also not about to let this person overwhelm me.
You speak just like the woman, I said silently. You speak right to my thoughts.
You speak like the woman who said to me in my head, "It is I who summoned you."
I could feel his shock at this. But I too slumped as if dealt a mortal blow. So
this creature knew all about my brothers, and Lucius had betrayed us. And this
creature knew.
What are you? I fired off to the mind speaker, the tall one. Are you a magicians
No answer.
The Priest and Priestess, unable to hear this silent exchange, pursued their
course.
"This blood drinker, Lady Pandora, he leaves human victims on the steps of the
Temple before dawn. He writes an old name in Egyptian on his victims with their

blood. Should the government discover this, our Temple might be held
accountable. This is not our worship.
"Will you recount again for us ­ for our friend here ­ your dreams? We must
protect the worship of Isis. We did not believe in these old legends... until
this creature appeared and began his killing, then comes out of the sea a
beautiful Roman woman who speaks of similar beings who are in her dreams."
"What name does he write on his victims?" I asked. "This blood drinker. Is it
Isis?"
"It's meaningless, it's forbidden, it's old Egyptian. It is one of the names by
which Isis was once called, but never by us."
"What is it?"
None of them, including the silent one, answered me.
In the silence, I thought of Lucius and I almost wept. Then hatred came over me,
deep hatred, as it had in the Forum when I spoke with him, saw his cowardly
rage. Betrayed the entire family. To be weak is a dangerous thing. Antony and my
Father had been such strong men.
"Lady Pandora," said the Priest. "Tell us what you might know of this creature
in Antioch. Have you dreamed of him?"
I thought of the dreams. I tried to respond in depth to what these people in
this Temple were telling me.
The tall distant Roman spoke:
"Lady Pandora knows nothing about this blood drinker. She is telling you the
truth. She knows only the dreams and there have been no names spoken in her
dreams. In her dreams she sees an earlier time of Egypt."
"Well, thank you, Gracious Lord!" I said furiously. "And just how have you
arrived at that conclusion?"
"By reading your thoughts!" the Roman said, quite unruffled. "The same as I have
regarding those who would put you in danger here. I'll protect you from your
brother."
"Indeed. You had better leave that to me. It is I who will settle that score
with him. Now, let us leave the question of my personal misfortune. And you
explain to me, most clever one, why I am having these dreams! Fork up some
useful magic from your mind reading. You know, a man with your gifts should post
yourself at the courthouse, and determine cases for the judges if you can read
minds. Why don't you go to Rome and become the advisor to the Emperor Tiberius?"
I could feel, positively feel, the little tumult in the heart of the distant
concealed Roman. Again, there came that sense of something familiar about this
creature. Of course I was no stranger to necromancers, astrologists or oracles.
But this man had mentioned specific names ­ Antony, Lucius. He was an astounder.
"Tell me, oh, mysterious one," I said. "How dose do my dreams come to what
you've read in the old writing? And this blood drinker, the one that's roaming
Antioch, is he a mortal man?"
Silence.
I strained to see the Roman more dearly but couldn't. He had in fact receded
somewhat into the darkness. My nerves were on the breaking point. I wanted to
kill Lucius; in fact, I had no choice.
The Roman said softly, "She knows nothing of this blood drinker in Antioch. Tell
her what you know of him ­ for it may be he, this blood drinker, who is sending
her the dreams."
I was confused. The woman's voice had been so clear in my head earlier, Et is I
who summoned you.
This was causing confusion in the Roman; I could feel it like a little
turbulence in the air.
"We've seen him," said the Priest. "Indeed, we watch, in order to collect these
poor drained corpses before anyone finds them and blames the deed on us. He is
burned, burned all over his body, blackened. He cannot be a man. He is an old
god, burnt black as if in an inferno."

"Amon Ra," I said. "But why didn't he die? In the dreams, I die."
"Oh, it is a horror to behold," said the Priestess suddenly, as if she could
contain herself no longer. "This thing cannot be human. Its bones show through
its blackened skin. But it is weak and its victims are weak. It barely staggers,
yet it can drain the blood from the poor maimed souls upon whom it feeds. It
crawls away in the morning as if it hasn't the strength to walk."
The Priest seemed impatient.
"But he's alive," said the Priest. "Alive, god or demon or man, he lives. And
each time he drinks blood from one of these weaklings, he grows a little
stronger. And he is straight from the old legends, and you have dreamed of them.
He wears his hair long in the old Egyptian style. He is in agony from his burns.
He spits curses at the Temple."
"What kind of curses'?"
The Priestess interjected at once. "He seems to think that Queen Isis has
betrayed him. He speaks in old Egyptian. We barely understand him. Our Roman
friend here, our benefactor, has translated the words for us."
"Stop!" I demanded. "My head is reeling. Don't say anymore. The man over there
has told the truth. I know nothing of this bloody burnt creature. I don't know
why I have the dreams. l think a woman is sending the dreams to me. It may be
the Queen I described to you, the Queen on the throne, in fetters, who weeps, I
don't know why!"
"You have never seen this man?" asked the Priest.
The Roman answered for me. "She,has not."
"Oh, your marvelous talents as spokesman again!" I said to the Roman. "I am so
delighted! Why are you hiding behind your toga? Why do you stand over there, so
far away that I can't see you? Have you seen this blood drinker?"
"Be patient with me," he said. It was spoken with such charm that I couldn't
bring myself to say more to him. I turned on the Priest and the Priestess.
"Why don't you lie in wait for this black burnt thing," I said, "this weakling?
I am hearing voices in my head. But it's the words of a woman that come to me,
warning me of danger. It's a woman laughing. I want to leave now. I want to go
home. I have something that must be done, and must be done cleverly. I need to
go."
"I will protect you from your enemy," said the Roman.
"That's charming," I answered. "If you can protect me, if you know who my enemy
is, then why can't you lie in wait for this blood drinker? Catch him in a
gladiator's net, Sink five tridents into him. Five of ­ you can hold him. All
you have to do is hold him till the sun rises, the rays of Amon Ra will kill
him. It may take two days, even three, but they'll kill him. He'll burn like I
did in the dream. And you, mind reader, why don't you help?"
I broke off, shocked and disoriented. Why was I so certain of this. Why was I
using the name Amon Ra so casually, as if I believed in the god'? I scarcely
knew his fables.
"The creature knows when we are lying in wait," said the Priest and Priestess.
"He knows when the ­ tall friend is here, and does not come. We are vigilant, we
are patient, we think we will see no more of him, and then he comes. And now you
have come with the dreams."
A vivid garish flash of the dream returned. I was a man. I argued and cursed. I
refused to do something which I had been ordered to do. A woman was weeping. I
fought off those who tried to stop
me. But I had not foreseen that I would, as I ran away, come to a desert place
where I could find no
shelter.
If the others spoke, I took no note of it. I heard the woman of the dream
crying, the fettered Queen,
and the woman was a blood drinker too. "You must drink from the Fount," said the
man in my dream.

And he wasn't a man. I wasn't a man. We were gods. We were blood drinkers.
That's why the sun destroyed me. It was the force of a more powerful god. Layers
upon layers of the dream lay below this polished bit of remembrance.
I came to my senses, or back to an awareness of the others, when someone placed
a cup of wine in
my hands. I drank it. It was excellent wine, from Italy, and I felt refreshed,
though at once tired. It
would make the walk home much too tiring if I drank any more. I needed my
strength. "Take this away," I said. I looked at the Priestess. "In the dream, I
told you, I was one of them. They wanted me to drink from the Queen. They called
her 'the Fount.' They said she did not know how to rule. I told you." The
Priestess burst into tears and turned her back, hunching up her narrow
shoulders.
"I was one of the blood drinkers," I said. "I was thirsty for blood. Listen, I
am no lover of blood sacrifice. What do you know here? Does Queen Isis exist
somewhere, within this Temple, bound in fetters ­"
"No!" cried the Priest. The Priestess turned around, echoing the same horrified
denial.
"All right, then, but you said there were legends that she did exist somewhere
in material form. Now, what do you think is happening? She has summoned me here
to assist this one, this burnt-up weakling? Why me'? How can I do it? I'm a
mortal woman. Remembering dreams of a past life does not enhance my power.
Listen! It was a woman's voice, I told you, which spoke in my head to me, not an
hour ago out there in the Forum, and she said `It is I who summoned you,' I
heard this, and she swore she would not have me stolen from her. Then up comes
this mortal man who's more of a threat to me than anything in my head. The voice
in my head had warned me of him! I don't want any of your mysterious Egyptian
religion. I refuse to go mad. It is you, all of you ­ especially the talented
mind reader ­ who must find this thing before he makes any more trouble. Allow
me to go on."
I stood up and began to walk out of the chamber.
The Roman spoke behind me, most gently, "Are you really going out into the night
alone, knowing full well what awaits you ­ that you have an enemy who wants to
kill you, and that you have in your dreams knowledge that may draw this blood
drinker to you?"
This was such a change of pace for the lofty mind reader, such a slip into
semisarcastic vernacular, that
I almost laughed.
"I'm going home now!" I said firmly.
They all pleaded, in diferent modes and tones. "Stay in the Temple."
"Absolutely not," I said. "If the dreams return I'll write them down for you."
"How can you be so foolish!" said the Roman with genteel impatience. You would
have thought he
was my brother!
"That is an unforgivable impertinence," I said. "Are not magicians and mind
readers bound by manners?" I looked to the Priest and Priestess. "Who is this
man?"
I went out and they followed me. I hurried to the door.
In the light I saw the Priestess's face. "We know only that he's our friend.
Please listen to his advice. He has never done anything but good for the Temple,
He comes to read the Egyptian books we have
here. He buys them up from the shops as soon as the sea brings them to us. He is
wise. He can read minds, as you see."
"You promised an escort of guards," I said.
And I will be with you. The voice came from the Roman, though I did not know
where he was now at
all. He was not in the great hall.

"Come, live within the Temple of Isis, and nothing can harm you," said the
Priest.
"I'm not quite the woman for living in the Temple Compound," I said, trying to
sound as humble and grateful as I could. "I'd drive you mad in a week. Please
open the door."
I slipped out. I felt I had escaped from a dark corridor of spiderwebs, back
into the Roman night, among Roman columns and Roman temples.
I discovered Flavius pressed against the column beside me, staring down into the
stairs. Our four torchbearers were gathered next to us, very much alarmed.
There were men who were obviously Temple guards, but they stood cleaving to the
doors, as did Flavius.
"Madam, go back in!" whispered Flavius.
At the foot of the stairs stood a group of helmeted Roman soldiers in full
military dress with polished muscled breastplates and short red cloaks and
tunics. They carried their deadly swords as if they were in battle. Their bronze
helmets shone in the light of the Temple braziers.
Battle dress within the city. Everything but shields. And who was the leader?
Lucius, my brother, stood beside the leader. Lucius wore his battle tunic of
red, but no breastplate or sword. His toga was doubled and redoubled over his
left arm. He was clean, with shining hair, exuding money. A jeweled dagger was
on his forearm; another dagger was in his belt.
Trembling, he pointed at me.
"There she is," said Lucius. "Of the entire family, she escaped the order of
Sejanus. It was a plot to kill Tiberius and somehow she bribed her way out of
Rome!"
I quickly sized up the soldiers. There were two young Asiatics but the others
were old and Roman; six in number. Yea gods, they must have thought I was Circe!
"Go back in," said my beloved and loyal Flavius, "seek sanctuary."
"Be still," I said. "There's always time for that."
The leader, he was the key, and I saw that he was an older man, older than my
brother Antony, yet not as old as my Father. He had thick gray eyebrows and was
impeccably dean shaven.
He wore battle scars proudly, one on his cheek, another on his thigh. He was
exhausted. His eyes were red and he shook his head as if to clear his vision.
This man's arms were very tanned, yet he was well muscled. This meant war ­ lots
and lots of war.
Lucius declared, "The entire family stands condemned. She should be executed on
the spot!"
I decided my strategy as if I were Caesar himself. I spoke up at once,
proceeding two steps down:
"You are the Legate, are you not? How tired you must be!" I took his hand in
both of mine. "Were you under the command of Germanicus?"
He nodded.
First blow struck!
"My brothers fought with Germanicus in the North," I said. "And Antony, the
eldest, after the Triumphal March in Rome, lived long enough to tell us of the
bones found in the Teutoburg Forest."
"Ah, Madam, to see that field of bones, an entire army ambushed and the bodies
left to rot!"
"Two of my brothers died in the battle. It was in a storm, in the North Sea."
"Madam, you never saw such a disaster, but do you think the Barbarian God, Thor,
could frighten our Germanicus?"
"Never. And you came here with the General?"
"Went everywhere with him, from the banks of the Elbe in the North to the South
end of the River Nile."
"How marvelous, and you are so tired, Tribune, look at you, you need sleep.
Where is the famous Governor Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso? Why did it take him so long

to quiet the city?"
"Because he's not here, Madam, and he doesn't dare to come back. Some say he
makes a mutiny in Greece, others that he flees for his life."
"Stop listening to her!" shouted Lucius.
"He was never much loved in Rome, either," I said. "It was Germanicus whom my
brothers loved and my Father praised."
"Indeed, and if we had been given one more year ­ one more year, Madam ­ we
could have extinguished the fire of that bloody upstart King Arminius forever!
We didn't even need that long! You spoke of the North Sea. We fought on all
terrain."
"Oh, yes, in the thick of the forest, and tell me this, were you there, Sir,
when they found the lost standard of General Varus's legions? Is the story
true!"
"Ah, Madam, when that golden eagle was raised, you never heard such cries as
from the soldiers."
"This woman is a liar and a traitor," shouted Lucius.
I turned on him. "Don't push me too far! You're past all patience now. Do you
even know the numbers of the Legions of General Varus who were ambushed in the
Teutoburg Forest? I thought not! They were the Seventh, the Eighth and the
Ninth."
"Right, correct," said the Legate. "And we could have wiped out those tribes
completely. The Empire would reach to the Elbe! But for some reason, and mine is
not the place to question, our Emperor Tiberius called us back."
"Hmmm, and then condemns your beloved leader for going to Egypt."
"Madam, it was no trip to seize power, Germanicus's trip to Egypt. It was
because of a famine."
"Yes, and Germanicus had been declared Imperium Maius of all the Eastern
provinces," I said.
"And there was so much trouble!" said the Legate. "You can not imagine the
morale, the habits of the soldiers here, but our General never slept! He went
directly when he heard of the famine."
"And you with him?"
"All of us, his cohorts. In Egypt he delighted in seeing the old monuments. So
did I."
"Ah, how marvelous for him. You must tell me about Egypt! You know that I, as a
Senator's daughter, cannot go to Egypt any more than can a Senator. I would so
love ­"
"Why is that, Madam?" asked the Legate.
"She's lying to you!" roared Lucius. "Her whole family was murdered."
'Very simple reason, Tribune," I said to the Legate. "It's no state secret. Rome
is so dependent upon Egypt for corn that the Emperor wants to prevent the
country from ever falling under the control of a powerful traitor. Surely you
grew up as I did in dread of another Civil War."
"I put my faith in our Generals," said the Legate.
"You are right to do so. And you saw nothing from Germanicus but loyalty, is
that not so?"
"It is absolutely so. Ah, Egypt. We saw such Temples and statues!"
"The singing statues," I asked, "did you see them, the colossal man and woman
who wail in the rising of the sun."
"Yes, I heard it, Madam," he said, nodding furiously. "I heard the sound! It is
magical. Egypt is full of magic!"
"Hmmm." A tremor ran through me. I banished it. In a flash I saw two images
mixed: that of the tall Roman in his toga, and that of a burnt and cunning
creature! Think straight, Pandora!
"And in the Temple of Ramses the Great," said the Legate, "one of the Priests
read the writing on the walls. All about victory'? All about battle? We laughed
because nothing really changes, Madam."

"And Governor Piso, do you believe these rumors'? Can we not speak safely of
them, of rumors as if rumors were not things?"
"Everyone here despises him!" said the Legate. "He was a bad soldier, plain and
simple! And Agrippina the Elder, Germanicus's beloved wife, is on her way to
Rome now with the General's ashes. She will officially accuse the Governor
before the Senate!"
"Yes, how courageous of her, and that is how it should be done. If families are
judged without trial, then we have fallen into tyranny, haven't we'? Here, our
friendly lunatic, don't you agree to that?"
Lucius was speechless. He turned red.
"And in the Teutoburg Forest," I said tenderly, "that gloomy arena for our doom,
did you see all the bones of our lost legions, scattered about?"
"Buried them, Madam, with these hands!" The Legate held up his weathered
callused palms. "For who could tell what bones were ours and what bones were
theirs? And Madam, the platform of that cowardly, sneaking King was still
standing, from which the loathsome long-haired slob had ordered the sacrifice to
his pagan gods of our men."
Nods and noble mumbles came from the other soldiers.
"I was but a small child," I said, "when word came of the ambush of General
Varus. But I remember our Divine Emperor Augustus ­ how he let his hair grow
long in mourning and how he would pound his head on the walls, crying, Varus,
bring me back my legions.' "
"You actually saw him this way?"
"Oh, many a time, and was present one night when he discussed his often
mentioned thoughts ­ that the Empire must not try to push further. Rather it
should police the states which it now contains."
"Then Caesar Augustus did say this!" said the Legate in fascination.
"He cared about you," I said to the Legate. "How many years have you been in the
field'? Do you have a wife?"
"Oh, how I long to go home," said the Legate. "And now that my General has
fallen. My wife is gray-haired as I am. I see her when we go to Rome for
parades."
"Yes, and compulsory service was only six years under the Republic, but now, you
must fight for what? Twelve? Twenty? But who am I to criticize Augustus, whom I
loved as I loved my Father and all my dead brothers'?"
Lucius could see what was happening. He sputtered when he spoke:
"Tribune, read my Safe Conduct! Read it!"
The Legate looked truly annoyed.
My brother marshaled what he could of his rhetoric, which wasn't much. "She
lies. She is condemned. Her family is dead. I was compelled to bear witness to
Sejanus because they sought to kill Tiberius himself!"
"You turned on your own family?" asked the soldier.
"Oh, don't wear yourself out with this," I said. "The man has harried me all
day. He has discovered
that I am a woman alone, an heiress, and thinks that this is some uncivilized
outpost of the Empire where
he can bring a charge against a Senator's daughter with no proof. Dear lunatic,
do pay attention. Julius
Caesar gave Antioch its municipal standing less than one hundred years ago.
There are legions stationed
here, are there not'?"
I looked at the Legate.
The Legate turned and glowered at my trembling brother.
"What is this Safe Conduct?" I asked. "This bears the name Tiberius."
The Legate snatched it from Lucius before Lucius could respond and handed the
scroll to me. I had to
take my hand off my dagger to unroll the paper.

"Ah, Sejanus of the Praetorian Guard! I knew it. And the Emperor probably knows
nothing of it.
Tribune, do you know those palace guards make one and one half times what a
Legionnaire makes? And
now they have these Delatores, given incentive to charge others with crimes for
one-third of the condemned man's property!"
The Legate was now sizing up my brother and every flaw in Lucius shone in the
light; his cowardly
posture, his trembling hands, his shifty eyes, his growing desperation in the
pursing of his lips.
I turned to Lucius.
"Do you realize, you madman, whoever you are, what you are asking of this
seasoned and wise Roman officer'? What if he should believe your insane lies?
What will become of him when the letter arrives from Rome inquiring into my
whereabouts and the disposition of my fortune!"
"Sir, this woman is a traitor." shouted Lucius. "On my honor I swear ­"
"What honor is that?" asked the soldier under his breath. His eyes fixed on
Lucius.
"If Rome were such," I said, "that families as old as mine could be so easily
dispatched as this man asks you now to do with me, then why would the widow of
Germanicus dare to go before the Senate for a trial'?"
"They are all executed," said my brother, who was at his worst and most solemn,
and seemed to have lost all touch with the effect of his words, "every one of
them, because they were in a plot to kill Tiberius and I was given Safe Conduct
and passage out for reporting them, as was my duty, to the Delatores, and to
Sejanus, with whom I spoke myself!"
The possibilities were making themselves known slowly to the Legate.
"Sir," I said to Lucius, "have you anything else on your person that identifies
you'?"
"I don't need anything else!" said Lucius. "Your fate is death."
"Same as it was for your Father?" asked the Legate, "and your wife? Had you
children?"
"Throw her into prison tonight, and write to Rome!" declared Lucius. "You'll see
that I speak the
truth!"
"And where will you be, whoever you are, while I am in prison? Looting my
house?"
"You slut!" shouted Lucius. "Don't you see this is all feminine wiles and lurid
distraction!"
There was shock among the soldiers, revulsion in the face of the Legate. Flavius
moved next to me.
"Officer," asked Flavius with tempered dignity, "what am I allowed to do on
behalf of my Mistress
against this madman?"
"You use such words again, Sir," I said firmly to Lucius, "and I'll lose my
patience."
The Legate took Lucius's arm. Lucius's right hand went to his dagger.
"Just who are you?" the Legate demanded. "Are you one of the Delatores? You tell
me you turned on
your whole family'?"
"Tribune," I said, laying the gentlest touch yet on his arm. "My Father's roots
went back to the time of
Romulus and Remus. We know no origins other than those in Rome. It was the same
with my
Mother, who was herself the daughter of a Senator. This man is saying rather...
horrible things."
"So it seems," said the Legate, narrowing his gaze, as he inspected Lucius.

"Where are your friends
here, your companions; where do you live?"
"You can't do anything to me!" said Lucius.
The Legate glared at Lucius's hand on the dagger.
"You prepare to draw that against me!" asked the Legate.
Lucius dearly was at a loss.
"Why did you come to Antioch?" I demanded of Lucius. "Were you the bearer of the
poison that killed Germanicus?"
"Arrest her!" shouted Lucius.
"No, I don't believe my own accusation. Not even Sejanus would put such
treachery in the hands of a petty scoundrel like you! Come now, what else do you
have on your person to connect you with this family, this Safe Conduct which you
say came from the pen of Sejanus?"
Lucius was utterly baffled.
"I certainly have nothing belonging to me to connect me to your wild and bloody
sagas and tales," I said.
The Legate interrupted me. "Nothing to connect you to this name?" He took the
Safe Conduct from my hand.
"Absolutely nothing," I said, "nothing but this madman here who is spouting
horrors, and would lead the world to believe that our Emperor has lost his wits.
Only he connects me with his bloody plot without witness or verification, and
hurls insults at me."
The Legate rolled up the Safe Conduct. "And your purpose here, Madam?" he asked
in a whisper.
"To live in peace and quiet," I said softly. "To live in safety and under the
true shelter of Roman rule."
Now I knew the battle had been won. But something else was required to seal the
victory. I took another gamble.
Slowly I reached for my dagger and slowly I brought it out of its sling.
Lucius leapt back at once. He drew his dagger and lunged at me. He was
immediately stabbed by the Legate and at least two of the soldiers.
He hung there bleeding on their weapons, staring from right to left, and then he
spoke, but his mouth was too full of blood. His eyes widened; it seemed again he
would speak. Then, as the soldiers withdrew their daggers, his body folded up on
the cobblestones at the foot of the stairs.
My brother Lucius was quite mercifully dead.
I looked at him and shook my head.
The Legate looked at me. This was a significant moment, and I knew it.
"What is it, Tribune," I asked, "that separates us from the long-haired
barbarians of the North? Is it not law'? Written law? Traditional law? Is it not
justice? That men and women are called to account for what they do?"
"Yes, Madam," he said.
"You know," l went on in a reverent voice, staring at this heap of blood and
clothes and flesh that lay on the stones, "I saw our great Emperor Caesar
Augustus on the day of his death."
"You saw him? You did?"
I nodded. "When they were certain he was to die, we were rushed to him with a
few other close friends. It was his hope to put down rumors in the capital that
might lead to unrest. He had sent for a mirror and combed his hair. He was
primly propped up. And he asked us as we entered the room: Didn't we think he'd
played his part well in the comedy of life?
"I thought, what courage! And then he made some further joke, the old theatrical
line they say after plays:
If I have made you happy, kindly let me know your appreciation with a warm
goodbye.
"I could tell you more, but ­"
"Oh, please do," said the Legate.

"Well, why not?" I asked. "It was told to me that the Emperor said of Tiberius,
his chosen successor, `Poor Rome, to be chewed slowly by those sluggish jaws!' "
The Legate smiled. "But there wasn't anyone else," he said under his breath.
"Thank you, Tribune, for all your assistance. Would you allow me to take from my
purse sufficient funds to treat you and your soldiers to a fine dinner ­"
"No, Madam, I wouldn't have it be said I or any man here was bribed. Now this
dead man. Do you know anything more of him?"
"Only this, Officer, that his body probably belongs in the river."
The soldiers all laughed among themselves.
"Good night, Gracious Lady," said the soldier.
And off I went, striding across the blackness of the Forum, with my beloved
one-legged Flavius at my side and the torchbearers round us.
Only now did I shake all over. Only now did the sweat cover my whole body.
When we had plunged deeply into the unbroken darkness of a small alleyway, I
said, "Flavius, let these torchbearers go. There is no reason for them to know
where we are headed."
"Madam, I don't have any lantern."
"The night's full of stars and has a near full moon. Look! Besides, there are
others from the Temple who are following us."
"There are?" he asked. He paid off the torchbearers and they ran back towards
the mouth of the street.
"Yes. There is one watching. And besides, we can see well enough by the lighted
windows and Heaven's light, don't you think? I am tired, so tired."
I walked on, reminding myself again and again that Flavius could not keep up. I
began to weep.
"Tell me something with your great philosophical knowledge," I said as I walked
on, determined to make the tears stop. "Tell me why evil people are so stupid'?
Why are so many of them just plain stupid?"
"Madam, I think there are quite a few evil people who are quite clever," he
said. "But never have I seen such skilled rhetoric on the part of anyone, either
bad or good, as your talents revealed just now."
"I'm delighted that you know that that is all it was," I said. "Rhetoric. And to
think he had the same teachers as I, the same library, the same Father ­" My
voice broke.
He put his arm gingerly about my shoulder and this time I didn't tell him to
move away. I let him steady me. We walked faster as a pair.
"No," I said, "Flavius, the majority of the evil are just plain dumb, I've seen
it all my life. The true crafty evil person is rare. It's bumbling that causes
most of the misery of the world, utter stupid bumbling. It's underestimation of
one's fellow man! You watch what happens with Tiberius. Tiberius Caesar and the
Guard. Watch what happens to that damned Sejanus. You can sow the seeds of
distrust everywhere, and lose yourself in an overgrown field."
"We are home, Madam," he said.
"Oh, thank God, you know it. I could never have told you this was the house."
Within moments, he stopped and turned the key in a lock. The smell of urine was
everywhere overpowering, as it always was in the back streets of ancient cities.
A lantern threw a dim light on our wooden door. The light danced in the jet of
water which fell from the lion's mouth in the fountain.
Flavius gave a series of knocks. It sounded to me as if the women answering the
inner door were crying.
"Oh, Lord, now what." I said. "I am too sleepy. Whatever it is, tend to it."
I went inside.
"Madam," squealed one of the girls. I couldn't remember her name. "I didn't let
him in. I swear I never unbolted the door. I have no key to the gate. We had
this house, all this, ready for you!" She sobbed.
"What on Earth are you talking about?" I asked.
But I knew. I'd seen in the corner of my eye. I knew. I turned and saw a very

tall Roman sitting in my newly refurbished living room. He sat relaxed with
ankle on knee in a gilded wooden chair.
"It's all right, Flavius," I said. "I know him."
And I did. Because it was Marius. Marius the tall Keltoi. Marius, who had
charmed me in childhood. Marius, whom I had almost identified in the shadows of
the Temple.
He rose at once.
He came towards me, where I stood in the darkness on the edges of the atrium,
and he whispered, "My beautiful Pandora!"



7

He stopped just short of touching me.
"Oh, do, please," I said. I moved to kiss him, but he moved away. The room had
scattered lamps. He played the shadows.
"Marius, of course, Marius! And you look not one day older than when I saw you
in my girlhood. Your
face is radiant, and your eyes, how beautiful are your eyes. I would sing these
praises to the accompaniment of a lyre if I could." Flavius had slowly
withdrawn, taking the distressed girls with him. He made not a sound.
"Pandora," Marius said, "I wish I could take you in my arms, but there are
reasons why I cannot, and
you mustn't touch me, not because I want it so much, but because I'm not what
you think. You
don't see the evidence of youth in me; it is something so far afield of the
promises of youth that I've only just begun to understand its agonies."
Suddenly he looked off. He raised his hand for my silence and patience.
"That thing is abroad," I said. "The burnt blood drinker."
"Don't think on your dreams just now," he said to me directly. "Think on our
youth. I loved you when you were a girl of ten. When you were fifteen I begged
your Father for your hand."
"You did? He never told me this."
He looked away again. Then he shook his head.
"The burnt one," I said.
"I feared this," he cursed himself. "He followed you from the Temple! Oh,
Marius! You are a fool. You have played into his hands. But he is not as clever
as he thinks."
"Marius, was it you who sent me the dreams!"
"No, never! I would do anything in my power to protect you from myself."
"And from the old legends?"
"Don't be quick of wit, Pandora. I know your immense cleverness served you well
back there with your loathsome brother Lucius and the gentleman Legate. But
don't think too much about... dreams. Dreams are nothing, and dreams will pass."
"Then the dreams came from him, this hideous burnt killer?"
"I can't figure it!" he said. "But don't think on the images. Don't feed him now
with your mind."
"He reads minds," I said, "just as you do."
"Yes. But you can cloak your thoughts. It's a mental trick. You can learn it.
You can walk with your soul locked up in a little metal box in your head."
I realized he was in much pain. An immense sadness came from him. "This cannot
be allowed to happen!" he insisted.
"What is that, Marius? You speak about the woman's voice, you ­"
"No, be quiet."
"I will not! I will get to the bottom of this!"
"You must take my instructions!" He stepped forward and again he reached to
touch me, to take me by the arms, as my Father might have done, but then he did

not.
"No, it is you who must tell me everything," I said.
I was amazed at the whiteness of his skin, its utter blemishless perfection. And
once again the radiance of his eyes seemed almost impossible. Inhuman.
Only now did I see the full glory of his long hair. He did look like the Keltoi,
who had been his ancestors. His hair touched his shoulders. It was a gleaming
gold, overly bright, yellow as corn and full of soft curls.
"Look at you!" I whispered. "You're not alive!"
"No, take your last look, for you are leaving here!"
"What?" I said. "Last look?" I repeated his words. "What are you talking about!
I've only arrived, laid my plans, rid myself of my brother! I am not leaving
here. Do you mean to say you are leaving me'?"
There was a terrible anguish in his face, a courageous appeal that I had never
seen in any man, not even in my Father, who had worked swiftly in those last
fatal moments at home, as if he were merely intent on sending me on an important
appointment.
Marius's eyes were filmed with blood. He was crying, and his eyes were sore with
the tears! No! These were tears like the tears of the magnificent Queen in the
dream, who, bound to her throne, wept and stained her cheeks and her throat and
her linen.
He wanted to deny it. He shook his head, but he knew I was quite convinced.
"Pandora, when I saw it was you," he said, "when you came into the Temple and I
saw it was you who had had these blood dreams, I was beside myself. I must get
you far from this, far from all danger."
I separated myself from his spell, from the aura of his beauty. I beheld him
with a cold eye, and I listened as he went on, noting all about him, from the
glitter of his eyes to the way that he gestured.
"You have to leave Antioch at once," he said. "I will stay here the night with
you. Then in the day, you pick up your faithful Flavius and your two girls, they
are honest, and you take them with you. You put miles between you and this place
by day, and this thing can't follow you! Don't tell me now where you mean to go.
You can discuss all this at the docks in the morning. You have plenty of money."
"You are the one who is dreaming now, Marius; I am not going. Who is it
precisely that you want me to flee? The weeping Queen on her throne? Or the
prowling, burnt one? The former reaches me over miles and miles of sea with her
summons. She warns me against my evil brother. The other I can easily dispatch.
I have no fear of him. I know what he is from the dreams, and I know how the sun
has hurt him, and I will myself pin him to the wall in the sun."
He was silent, biting his lip.
"I will do that for her, for the Queen in the dreams, to avenge her."
"Pandora, I am begging you."
"In vain," I said. "Do you think I have come so far only to run again? And the
woman's voice ­"
"How do you know it was this Queen of whom you dreamt? There could be other
blood drinkers in this city. Men, women. They all want the same thing."
"And you fear them?"
"Loathe them! And I must keep clear of them, not give them what they want! Never
give them what they want."
"Ah, I see it all," I said.
"You do not!" he said, scowling down at me. So fierce, so perfect.
"You are one of them, Marius. You are whole. You are unburnt. They want your
blood to heal themselves."
"How could you think of such a thing?"
"In my dreams, they called the Queen 'the Fount.' "
I flew at him and imprisoned him in my arms! He
was powerfully strong, solid as a tree! I never felt
such hardness of muscle in a man. I lay my head on his shoulder, and his cheek

against the top of my head was cold!
But he enfolded me gently with both arms, stroking my hair, pulling it down out
of all the pins and letting it flow down my back. I felt a rich tingling all
over the surface of my skin.
Hard, so hard, yet with no pulse of life. No warmth of human blood in his
gentle, sweet gestures.
"My darling," he said, "I don't know the source of your dreams, but I know this.
You will be protected from me and from them. You will never become part of this
old tale that goes on verse by verse no matter how the world changes! I won't
allow it."
"Explain these things to me. I will not cooperate with you until you explain
everything. Do you know the anguish of the Queen of the dream? Her tears are
like yours. Look Blood. You stain your tunic! Is she here, this Queen; has she
summoned me'?"
"And what if she has and she wants to punish you for this former life you dreamt
in which the evil gods kept her fettered. What if that is so!"
"No," I said. "That is not her intention. Besides, I wouldn't do what the dark
gods of the dream said. I wouldn't drink from 'the Fount.' I ran and that's why
I died in the desert."
"Ah!" He threw up his hands! And walked away. He stared out into the dark
peristyle. Only the stars lighted the trees there. I saw a faint glow coming
from the far dining room on the other side of the house.
I looked at him, at his great height and the straightness of his back, and the
way his feet were so
firmly fixed on the mosaic floor. The lamps made his blond hair glorious.
I heard him, though he whispered with his back to me.
"How could this stupid thing have happened!"
"What stupid thing!" I demanded. I came to his side. "You mean that I am here,
in Antioch. I'll tell
you how. My Father arranged my escape, that's how..."
"No, no, I don't mean that. I want you to be safe, alive, out of all danger,
protected, so that you flower
as you are meant to do. Your petals aren't even bruised at the edges, look at
you, and your boldness
heats your beauty! Your brother had no chance against your learning or your
rhetoric. And yet you
charmed the soldiers and made slaves of them with your superiority, never once
rousing their resentment. You have years of life in you! But I must think of
some way to make you safe. Look. This is the
heart of it. You have to leave Antioch during the day."
" `Friend of the Temple,' that's what the Priest and Priestess called you. They
said you could read
the old script. They said you bought up all the Egyptian books when they came
into the port. Why?
If you seek her, the Queen, then seek her through me, because it is she who said
that she had summoned me."
"She didn't speak in the dreams! You don't know who spoke the words! What if the
dreams do have their root in your migrant soul? What if you have lived before?
And now you come to the Temple and there is one of these loathed ancient gods on
the prowl and you are in danger. You must get away, from here, from me, from
this wounded hunter, whom I will find."
"You're not telling me all you know! What happened to you, Marius! What
happened! Who did this to you, this miracle of your radiance. This is no cloak;
the light comes from within!"
"Damn it, Pandora, do you think I wanted my life foreshortened and my destiny
extended forever!" He was suffering. He looked at me, unwilling to speak, and I
felt such pain coming from him, such loneliness, that for a moment it was

unbearable.
I felt a wave of my own anguish of the long night before, when the utter vacuity
of all religions and creeds had struck me hard and the sheer effort of a good
life seemed a fool's trap, and nothing more.
He suddenly dosed his arms around me, surprising me, holding me firmly and
rubbing his cheek gently against my hair, and kissing my head. Silken, polished,
gentle beyond words. "Pandora, Pandora, Pandora," he said. "The beautiful little
girl grown into the marvelous woman."
I held this hard effigy of the most spectacular and singular man I had ever
known or seen: I held it and this time heard the beating of his heart, the
distinct rhythm of it. I laid my ear on his chest.
"Oh, Marius, if only I could lay my head to rest next to yours. If I could only
yield to your protection. But you are driving me away! You don't promise
guardianship, you ordain flight for me, wandering and more nightmares, and
mystery, and despair. No. I can't."
I turned away from his caresses. I could feel his kisses on my hair.
"Don't tell me that I'll never see you again. Don't think I can bear that along
with everything else that's happened. I have no one here, and then who comes but
one who left such a stamp on my girlish heart that the details are as deep as
the finest coin. And you Say you will never see me again, that I must go."
I turned around.
It was lust shining in his eyes. Yet he checked it. In a soft voice, he
confessed with a little smile:
"Oh, how I admired your work with the Legate. I thought the two of you would
plan out the whole conquest of the Germanic tribes on your own." He sighed. "You
must find a good life, a rich life, a life where your soul and body are fed."
The color flared in his face, He looked at me, at my breasts, at my hips and
then at my face. Ashamed and trying to conceal it. Lust.
"Are you a man still?" I asked.
He didn't answer me. But his expression grew chilly.
"You will never know the full extent of what I am!" he said.
"Ah, but not a man." I said. "Am I right? Not a man."
"Pandora, you are deliberately taunting me. Why? Why do this?"
"This transformation, this induction into the blood drinkers; it's added no
inches to your height. Did it add any inches anywhere else?"
"Please stop this," he said.
"Want me, Marius. Say that you do. I see it. Confirm it in words. What does that
cost you?"
"You are infuriating!" he said. His face colored deeply with his rage, and
pressed his lips together so hard that they went white. "Thank the gods that I
don't want you! Not enough to betray love for brief and bloody ecstasy."
"The Temple people, they don't really know what you are, do they?"
"No!" he said.
"And you will not lay open your heart to me."
"Never. You will forget me and these dreams will fade. I wager I can make them
fade, myself, through prayer for you. I will do it."
"That's a pious tack," I said. "What grants you such favor with the ancient
Isis, who drank blood and was the Fount'?"
"Don't say those words; it's all lies, all of it. You do not know that this
Queen you saw was Isis. What did you learn in these nightmares? Think. You
learned that this Queen was the prisoner of those who drank blood and she
condemned them! They were evil. Think. Go back into the dream. Think. You
thought them evil, evil then, and you think them evil now. In the Temple, you
caught the scent of evil. I know you did. I watched you."
"Yes. But you're not evil, Marius, you can't convince me of this! You have a
body like marble, you're a blood drinker, but like a god, but not evil!"
He was about to protest when he stopped again. He looked out of the corner of

his eye. And then slowly turned his head and let his gaze drift up through the
roof of the peristyle.
"Is it the dawn coming," I asked, "the rays of Amon Ra?"
"You are the most maddening human being I've ever known!" he said. "If I had
married you, you would have put me in an early grave. I would have been spared
all of this!"
"All of what'?"
He called out for Flavius, who had been dose all the while, listening to
everything.
"Flavius, I'm leaving now," he said. "I must. But guard her. When night falls,
I'll be here again, as quickly as I can. Should anything precede me, any badly
scarred and frightening assailant, go for its head with your sword. The head,
remember? And of course your Mistress here will no doubt be quite able to lend a
hand in defending herself."
"Yes, sir. Must we leave Antioch?"
"Watch your words, my faithful Greek," I said. "I am Mistress here. We are not
leaving Antioch."
"Try to persuade her to prepare," said Marius.
He looked at me.
A long silence fell between us. I knew he read my thoughts. Then a shudder of
the blood dreams passed over me. I saw his eyes brighten. Something quickened in
his expression. I shook off the dream, filled with terror. I am no hostess to
terror.
"It's all interwound," I murmured, "the dreams, the Temple, you being there,
their calling on you for help. What are you, some white god put on Earth to hunt
the dark blood drinkers'? Does the Queen live?"
"Oh, I wish I were such a god." he said. "I would be if I could be! That no more
blood drinkers will ever be made, of that I am certain. Let them lay flowers on
an altar before a statue of basalt!"
I felt such love for him and rushed to him suddenly. "Take me with you now,
wherever you are
going.
"I can't!" he said. He blinked as though something hurt his eyes. He couldn't
fully lift his head.
"It's the coming light, isn't it? You are one of them."
"Pandora, when I come to you, be ready to leave this place!" he said.
And he vanished.
Like that, he vanished. Like that, he was gone from my arms and from my living
room and from
my house.
I turned away and walked slowly about the shadowy living room. I looked at the
murals on the
 walls; the happy dancing figures with their laurels and their crowns of leaves
­ Bacchus and his nymphs, so modestly covered for such a riotous crew!
Flavius spoke. "Madam, a sword which I found among your possessions, may I have
it in readiness?"
"Yes, and daggers galore, and fire, do not forget fire. It will run from fire."
I sighed. How did I know
this? I did. So much for it. "But Flavius." I turned around. "It won't come
until dark. There is only a
small margin of the night left. We can both sleep as soon as we see the sky turn
purple." I lifted my hand
to my forehead. "I am trying to remember..."
"What, Madam?" Flavius said. He looked no less splendid after the spectacle of
Marius, simply a man
of different proportion but equally fine, and with warm human skin. "Whether the
dreams ever came by day. Was it always night Oh, I am sleepy and they summon me.

Flavius, put a light in my bath. But I'm going to bed. I am drowsy. Can you
watch'?"
"Yes, Madam."
"Look, the stars have all but faded. What is it like to be one of them, Flavius,
to be admired only in the
darkness, when men and women live with candles and lamps. To be known and
described, only in the
heaviness of night, when all the business of day has ended!"
"You are truly the most resourceful woman I've ever known," he said. "How you
brought justice to
the man who accused you." He took my arm, and we moved towards the bedchamber
where I had
dressed that morning.
I loved him. An entire lifetime of crises could not have made it stronger.
"You will not sleep in the great bed of the house, in the dining room?"
"No," I said. "That is for the display of marriage, and I will never know
marriage again. I want to bathe, but I'm so sleepy."
"I can wake the girls."
"No, to the bed. You have a chamber proper?"
"Yes," he led the way. It was still quite dark. I thought I heard a rustling
noise. Realized it was nothing.
And there lay the bed with its small lamp, and on the bed so many pillows in the
Oriental style, a soft soft nest into which I fell, like a Persian.
At once, the dream:
We blood drinkers stood in a vast Temple. It was meant to be dark. We could see
this dark, as certain animals must see in the dark. We were all bronze-skinned,
or tanned, or golden. We were all men.
On the floor lay the Queen screaming. Her skin was white. Pure white. Her long
hair was black. Her crown bore the horns and the sun! The crown of Isis. She was
the goddess! It took five blood drinkers on either side to hold her down. She
thrashed her head from side to side, her eyes seeming to crackle with Divine
Light.
"I am your Queen! You cannot do this to me!" How purely white she was, and her
screams grew ever more desperate and imploring. "Great Osiris, save me from
this! Save me from these blasphemers! Save me from the profane!"
The Priest beside me sneered at her.
The King sat motionless on the throne. But it was not to this King that she
prayed. She prayed to an Osiris beyond.
"Hold her more tightly."
Two more came to secure her ankles.
"Drink!" said the Priest to me. "Kneel down and drink from her blood. Her blood
is more powerful than any blood that exists in the world. Drink."
She cried softly.
"Monsters, demon children!" she sobbed.
"I won't do it," I said.
"Do it! You must have her blood!"
"No, not against her will. Not like this! She's our Mother Isis!"
"She is our Fount and our prisoner."
"No," I said.
The Priest shoved me forward. I knocked him down to the floor. I looked at her.
She looked at me as indiscriminately as she looked at the others. Her face was
delicate and exquisitely painted. Her rage did not distort her features. Her
voice was low and full of hatred.
"I will destroy you all," she said. "Some morning, I will escape and walk into
the sun's light and all of you will burn! All of you will burn! As I burn!
Because I am the Fount! And the evil in me will be burnt and extinguished in all
of you forever. Come, you miserable fledgling," she said to me. "Do as they say.

Drink, and wait my vengeance.
"The god Amon Ra will rise in the East and I will walk towards him, and his
deadly rays will kill me. I shall be a sacrifice of fire to destroy every one of
you who has been born of me, transformed by my blood! You greedy wanton gods who
would use the power we possess for gain!"
Then a hideous transformation befell the entire dream. She rose to her feet. She
was pristine and freshly adorned. Torches burst into flame around her, one and
two and three and then many and more, flaring as if they'd just been ignited,
till she was surrounded by flame. The gods were gone. She smiled and beckoned to
me. She lowered her head; the white beneath her eyes shone as she looked up at
me. She smiled. She was cunning.
I woke up screaming.
I was in my bed. Antioch. The lamp burned. Flavius held me. I saw the light
shine on his ivory leg as it was stretched out. I saw the light shine on the
carved toes.
"Hold onto me, hold me!" I said. "Mother Isis! Hold me.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Only moments," he said.
"No."
"The sun has just risen. Do you want to go out, lie in the warm sun perhaps?"
"No!" I screamed.
He tightened his warm, desperate comforting grip. "It was only a bad dream, my
beautiful lady," he said. "Close your eyes. I'll sleep by your side, with my
dagger here."
"Oh, yes, please, please, Flavius. Don't let me go. Hold me," I cried.
.I lay down and he snuggled next to me, his knees behind mine, his arm over me.
My eyes opened. I heard Marius's voice again;
"Thank the gods that I don't want you! Not enough to betray love for brief and
bloody ecstasy."
"Oh, Flavius," I said. "My skin! Is my skin burning!" I started to rise. "Put
out the light. Put out the sun!"
"No, Madam, your skin is as beautiful as it always was. Lie down. Let me sing to
you."
"Yes, sing..." I said.
I followed his song, it was Homer, it was Achilles and Hector, and I loved the
way he sang it, the pauses he made, I pictured those heroes, and the high walls
of doomed Troy, and my eyes grew heavy. I drifted. I rested.
He placed his hand over my head, as if to keep the dreams out, as if to be a
human dream catcher. And I sighed as he smoothed my hair.
I pictured Marius, the sheen of his skin. It had been so like that of the Queen,
and the dazzle of his eyes, so truly like that of the Queen, and I heard him
say, "Damn it, Pandora, do you think I wanted my life foreshortened and my
destiny extended forever!"
And there followed, before unconsciousness, the utter despair, the sense of
worthlessness of all striving. Better that we be no more than beasts, like the
lions in the arena.



8

I awoke. I could hear the birds. I wasn't sure. I calculated that it was still
morning, midmorning.
I walked barefoot into the next room, and through it into the peristyle. I
walked on the tiled edge of the Earth and looked up at the blue sky. The sun had
not yet risen high enough to be seen directly above.
I unbolted the door and went barefoot to the gate. To the first man I saw, a man
of the desert, wearing a long head veil, I said:

"What rime is it? Noon'?"
"Oh, no, Madam," he said. "Not by half. Have you overslept? How lucky for you."
He nodded and went on.
A lamp burned in the living room. I walked into the living room and saw that the
lamp stood on the desk which my servants had prepared for me.
The ink was there and so were the pens, and so were sheets of clean parchment.
I sat down and I wrote down everything that I could remember of the dreams, my
eyes straining to
see by the miserable little lamp in the shadows, too far from the light that
filled the fresh green garden of
the peristyle.
My arm hurt finally from the speed with which I scratched at the parchment. In
detail I described the
last dream, the torches, the Queen's smile, her beckoning to me.
It was done. All the while, I had set aside the pages to dry all about me on the
floor. There was no breeze
or wind to threaten them. I gathered them up.
I went to the edge of the garden deliberately to look at the blue sky, this
sheaf of papers dose to my
breast. Blue and clear.
"And you cover this world," I said. "And you are changeless, save for one light
that rises and sets," I
said to the sky. "Then comes the night with deceptive and seductive patterns!"
"Madam!" It was Flavius behind me, and very sleepy, "You've scarcely slept at
all. You need rest. Go
back to bed."
"Go get my sandals now, hurry," I said.
And as he disappeared, so did I ­ out the front gate of the house, walking as
fast as I could. I was halfway to the Temple of Isis when I realized the
discomfort of confronting this filthy street in bare feet. I realized I wore the
rumpled linen dresses in which I'd slept. My hair streamed. I didn't slow my
pace.
I was elated. I was not helpless as when I had fled my Father's house, I was not
edgy and in deep danger as when Lucius had pointed me out to the Roman soldiers
last night.
I was not gripped in fear as I had been when the Queen smiled to me in the
dream. Nor shivering as I had been upon waking.
I walked on and on. I was in the grip of an immense drama. I would see it
through to the last act.
People passed ­ laborers of the morning, an old man with a crooked stick. I
barely saw these people.
I took a cold small delight in the fact that they noticed my loose, free hair
and my wrinkled gowns. I wondered what it must be like to separate oneself from
all civilization and never worry again about the position of a fastening or a
pin, to sleep on grass, to fear nothing!
Fear nothing! Ah, that was so beautiful to me.
I came to the Forum. The markets were busy; the beggars were out in full force.
Curtained litters were being carried every which way. The philosophers were
teaching under the porticoes. I could hear those huge strange noises that always
come from a harbor ­ of the cargo being dropped, perhaps, I didn't know. I
smelled the Orontes. I hoped Lucius's body was floating in it.
I went up the steps and right into the Temple of Isis.
"The High Priest and Priestess," I said. "I must see them." I walked past a
confused and distinctly virginal-looking young woman and went into the side
chamber where they had first spoken to me. No table. Only the couch. I went into
another apartment of the Temple. A table. Scrolls.
I heard feet rushing. The Priestess came to me. She was already painted for the

day and her wig and ornaments were in place. I felt no shock as I looked at her.
"Look," I said. "I had another dream." I pointed to the sheets which I had piled
neatly on the table. "I've written down everything for you."
The Priest arrived. He approached the table and stared at the sheets.
"Read it all, every word. Read it now. Bear witness lest something happens to
me!"
The Priest and Priestess stood on opposite sides of me, the Priest carefully
lifting the pages to study each one, while not actually turning over the stack.
"I am a migrant soul," I said. "She wants some reckoning or favor of me, I don't
know which, but she lives! She is no mere statue."
They stared at me.
"Well? Speak up? Everyone comes to you for guidance."
"But Madam," said the Priest, "we can't read any of this."
"What?"
"It's written in the most ancient and ornate form of the old picture writing."
"What!"
I stared down at the pages. I saw only my own words as they had flowed in a
cadence from my mind, through my hand, through my pen. I couldn't make my eyes
fix upon the form of the letters.
I lifted the last page and read aloud, "Her smile was cunning. It filled me with
fear." I held out the page.
They shook their heads in firm denial.
Suddenly there was a little ruckus and Flavius, much out of breath and red in
the face, was admitted to the room. He had my sandals. He took one look at me
and rested back against the wall in great and obvious relief.
"Come here," I said.
He obeyed.
"Now look at these pages, read them, are they not in Latin?"
Two slaves came timidly, hastily washing my feet and fastening on my sandals,
Above me Flavius looked at the pages.
"This is ancient Egyptian writing," Flavius said. "The oldest form I've ever
seen. This would fetch a fortune in Athens!"
"I just wrote it!" I said. I looked at the Priest, then the Priestess. "Summon
your tall blond-haired friend," I said. "Get him here. The mind reader, the one
who can read the old script."
"We can't, Madam." The Priest looked helplessly at the Priestess.
"Why not? Where is he? He only comes after dark, doesn't he?" I asked.
They both nodded.
"And when he shops for books, all the books on Egypt, he does this by the light
of lamps too?" I asked. I already knew the answer.
They looked at one another helplessly.
"Where does he live?"
"Madam, we do not know. Please don't try to find him. He will be here as soon as
the light fades. He cautioned us last night that you were most precious to him."
"You don't know where he lives."
I stood up.
"All right," I said, I picked up the sheaf of my pages, my spectacular ancient
writing.
"Your burnt one," I said, as I walked out of the room, "your murdering blood
drinker. Did he come last night? Did he leave you an offering?"
"Yes," said the Priest. He looked humiliated. "Lady Pandora, rest and take some
food."
"Yes," said my loyal Flavius, "you must."
"Not a chance," I said. Clutching the pages, I walked across the great hall to
the front doors. They pleaded with me. I ignored them.
I went out into the heat of the day. Flavius followed. The Priest and Priestess
pleaded with us to remain.

I scanned the enormous marketplace. The good booksellers were all grouped at the
far left end of the Forum. I walked across the square.
Flavius struggled to keep up. "Madam, please, what are you going to do? You've
lost your mind."
"I have not and you know it," I said. "You saw him last night!"
"Madam, wait for him at the Temple, as he asked," Flavius said.
"Why? Why should I do that?" I asked.
The bookshops were numerous, containing manuscripts in all languages. "Egypt,
Egypt!" I cried out, both in Latin and Greek. There was lots of noise, many
buyers and sellers. Plato was everywhere, and Aristotle. There was a whole stack
of the book of his life by Caesar Augustus, which he had completed in the years
before his death.
"Egypt!" I cried out. Merchants pointed to old scrolls. Fragments.
The canopies flapped in the breeze. I looked into one room after another, at
rows of slaves busily copying, slaves dipping their pens, who did not dare to
look up from their work.
There were slaves outside, in the shade, writing letters dictated by humble men
and women. It was all very busy.
Trunks were being brought into one shop. The owner, an elderly man, came
forward.
"Marius," I said. "I come from Marius, the tall blond one who comes to your shop
only by night."
The man said nothing.
I went into the next shop. Everything was Egyptian, not merely the scrolls
rolled out for display but the fragments of painting on the walls, the chunks of
plaster holding still the profile of a King or Queen, rows of little jars,
figures from some long-defiled tomb. How the Egyptians loved to make those tiny
wooden figures.
And there I beheld just the sort of man I sought, the true antiquarian. Only
reluctantly did he look up from his book, a gray-haired man, the book a codex in
modern Egyptian.
"Nothing that would interest Marius?" I asked, walking into the shop. Trunks and
boxes blocked me at each turn. "You know, the tall Roman, Marius, who studies
the ancient manuscripts, buys the most prized of them? You know the man I mean.
Very blue eyes. Blond hair. He comes by night; you stay open for him."
The man nodded. He glanced at Flavius and said with a lift of his eyebrows,
"Quite an ivory leg there." Cultured Greek. Excellent. "Grecian, Oriental and
perfectly pale."
"I come on Marius's behalf," I said.
"I save everything for him, as he asks," said the man with a little shrug. "I
sell nothing that isn't offered first to Marius."
"I'm sure you do. I come on his behalf." I looked around. "May I sit down?"
"Oh, please do, forgive me," said the man. He gestured to a sturdy trunk.
Flavius stood perplexed. The man sat back down at his cluttered table.
"I wish I had a proper table. Where is my slave? I know I have some wine around
here. I just... I was reading in this text the most amazing story!"
"Really," I said. "Well, take a look at this." I thrust the pages into his hand.
"My God, but this is beautiful copying," he said, "and so fresh!" He whispered
under his breath. He could make out many of the words. "Marius will be very
interested in this. This is about the legends of Isis, this is what Marius
studies."
I drew back the papers gently. "I've written this for him!"
"You wrote it?"
"Yes, but you see, I want to surprise him with something, a gift! Something
newly arrived, something he hasn't seen yet."
"Well, there's quite a lot."
"Flavius, money."

"Madam, I don't have any."
"That's not true, Flavius; you wouldn't leave the house without the keys and
some money. Hand it over."
"Oh, I'll take it on credit if it's for Marius," said the old man. "Hmmm, you
know, several things came onto the market this very week. It's because of the
famine in Egypt. People were forced to sell, I suppose. You never know where an
Egyptian manuscript comes from. But here ­" He reached up and took a fragile
papyrus from its niche in the dusty crisscross of wooden shelves.
He laid it down reverently and most cautiously opened it. The papyrus had been
well preserved, but it was flaking at the edges. The thing would disintegrate if
not handled with care.
I stood to look at it over his shoulder. A dizziness overcame me. I saw the
desert and a town of huts with roofs of palm branches. I strained to open my
eyes.
"This is," said the old man, "positively the oldest manuscript in Egyptian which
I have ever seen! Here, steady yourself, my dear. Lean upon my shoulder. Let me
give you my stool."
"No, not necessary," I said gazing at the letters. I read aloud, "To my Lord,
Narmer, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, who are these enemies of me that say I do
not walk in righteousness' When has Your Majesty ever known me not to be
righteous? Indeed I seek to do always more than what is asked of me or expected.
When have I not heard every word of the accused so that he may be judged in
fairness, as would Your Majesty?..."
I broke off. My head swam. Some brief recollection. I was a child and we were
all going up into the mountains over the desert to ask the god Osiris, the blood
god, to look into the heart of the evildoer. "Look," said those around me. The
god was a man of perfection, bronze of skin and under the moon; he took the
condemned and slowly drew out his blood. Beside me a woman whispered that the
god had made his judgment and rendered punishment and the evil blood would go
back now to be cleansed and reborn in another in which it would do no harm.
I tried to banish this vision, this sense of enclosing remembrance. Flavius was
greatly concerned and held me by the shoulders.
I stood suspended in two worlds. I gazed out at the bright sun striking the
stones of the Forum, and I lived somewhere else, a young man running up a
mountain, declaring my innocence. "Summon the old blood god! He will look into
my husband's heart and see that the man lies. I never lay with another." Oh,
sweet darkness, come, I needed it to shroud the mountains because the blood god
slept by day, hidden, lest Ra, the sun god, find him and destroy him out of
jealousy.
"Because she had conquered them all," I whispered. I meant Queen Isis. "Flavius,
hold me."
"I have you, Madam."
"There," said the old man, who had risen and pushed me down on his stool.
The night over Egypt filled with stars. I saw it as distinctly as I saw this
shop around me in Antioch at midday. I saw the stars and knew I had won. The god
would rule. "Oh, come forth, please, from this mountain, our beloved Osiris, and
look into my husband's heart and my heart, and if you find me in the wrong, then
my blood is yours, I pledge it." He was coming! There he was, as I had seen him
in childhood before the Priests of Ra had forbidden the old worship.
"Righteousness, righteousness, righteousness!" the crowd chanted. The man who
was my husband cowered as the god pointed his finger in judgment at him. "Give
me this evil blood and I shall devour it," said the god. "Then bring back my
offerings. Do not be cowards in the face of a rich priesthood. You stand before
a god." He pointed at each of the villagers and pronounced his or her name. He
knew trades. He could read their minds! He drew back his lips and showed his
fangs. The vision dissolved. I stared at common objects as though they had life
and venom.

"Oh, yea gods," I said in genuine distress. "I must reach Marius. I must reach
him now!" When he heard these things, Marius would draw me into the truth with
him. He had to do it.
"Hire a litter for your Mistress," said the old bookseller to Flavius. "She is
overtired, and it's too long a walk up that hill!"
"Hill?" I perked up. This man knew where Marius lived! I quickly went faint
again, bowing my head, and with a weary gesture said, "Please, old gentleman,
tell my steward precisely how to reach the house."
"Of course. I know two short cuts, one slightly more difficult than another. We
deliver books to
Marius all the time."
Flavius was staring aghast.
I tried to suppress my smile. This was going much better than I had ever hoped.
But I was torn and bruised from the visions of Egypt. I hated the look of the
desert, the mountains, the thought of blood gods.
I rose to go.
"It's a pink villa on the very edge of the city," said the old man. "It's just
within the walls, overlooking the river, the last house. Once it was a country
house outside the walls. It is on a mountain of stones. But no one will answer
Marius's gate by day. All know how he wants to sleep all day and study all
night, as is his custom. We leave our books with the boys."
"He'll welcome me," I said.
"If you wrote that, most likely he will," said the old man.
Then we were off. The sun had fully risen. The square was filled with shoppers.
Women carried baskets on their heads. The Temples were thriving. It was a game,
darting through the crowd, one way and then another.
"Come on, Flavius," I said.
It was a torture keeping to Flavius's slow pace as we mounted the hill, turn by
turn, drawing ever doser.
"You know this is madness!" said Flavius. "He can't be awake during the light of
day; you've proven this to me and to yourself! I, the incredulous Athenian, and
you the cynical Roman. What are we doing?"
Up and up we climbed, passing one sumptuous house after another. Locked gates.
The bark of guard dogs.
"Hurry up. Must I listen to this lecture forever'? Ah, there, look, my beloved
Flavius. The pink house, the last house. Marius lives in style, Look at the
walls and the gates."
At last I had my hands on the iron bars. Flavius collapsed on the grass across
the small road. He was spent.
I pulled on the bell rope.
Trees laid down heavy limbs over the top of the walls. Through the mesh of leaf,
I could make out a figure that came out on the high porch of the second floor.
"No admittance!" he cried out.
"I have to see Marius," I said. "He's expecting me!" I cupped my hands and
shouted. "He wants me to come. He told me to come."
Flavius said a quick prayer under his breath. "Oh, Mistress, I hope you know
this man better than you knew your own brother."
I laughed. "There is no comparison," I said. "Stop complaining."
The figure had disappeared. I heard running feet.
Finally two darkheaded young boys appeared before me, little more than children,
beardless, with long black curls, and beautifully dressed in gold-trimmed
tunics. They looked Chaldean.
"Open the gate, hurry!" I said.
"Madam, I can't admit you," said the speaker of the two. "I cannot admit anyone
to this house until Marius himself comes. Those are his orders."
"Comes from where?" I asked.
"Madam, he appears when he wishes, then he receives who he will. Madam, please,

tell me your name and I will tell him that you have called."
"You either open the gate or I will climb over the wall," I said.
The boys were horrified. "No, Madam, you can't do that!"
"Well? Aren't you going to shout for help?" I asked.
The two slaves stared amazed. They were so pretty. One was slightly taller than
the other. Both wore exquisite bracelets,
"Just as I thought," I said. "There's no one else here but you." I turned and
tested the thick snaggle of vine
that rose over the plastered brick. I leapt up and planted my right foot as high
as I could in the thick
mesh and rose in one leap to throw my arms over the top of the wall.
Flavius had risen from the grass and rushed to me.
"Madam, I beg you not to do this," said Flavius. "Madam, this is bad, bad, bad!
You can't just limb this man's wall."
The servants within were chattering frantically with one another. I think it was
in Chaldean.
"Madam, I fear for you." cried Flavius. "How can I protect you from such a man
as this Marius? Madam,
the man will be angry with you!"
I lay on the top of the wall, on my stomach, catching my breath. The garden
inside was vast and
lovely. Ah, what marble fountains. The two slaves had backed up and were staring
at me as if I were a powerful monster.
"Please, please!" both boys pleaded with me at once. "He'll exact a terrible
vengeance! You don't
know him. Please, Madam, wait!"
"Hand me the sheets of paper, Flavius, hurry. I have no time for disobedience!"
Flavius complied. "Oh, this is wrong, wrong, wrong!" he said. "Nothing can come
of this but the
most fearful misunderstandings."
Then I slid down the inside of the wall, tickled all over by the thick overlay
of bristling and brilliant
leaves, and I lay my head in the matted tendrils and blossoms. I didn't fear the
bees. I never have. I rested. I held tight to my written pages. Then moved to
the gate so I could see Flavius.
"You let me handle Marius," I said. "Now, you didn't come out without your
dagger."
"No, I did not," he said, lifting his cloak to reveal it, "and with your
permission I would like to plunge it through my heart now so that I will be most
assuredly stone-cold dead before the Master of this house arrives home to find
you running rampant in his garden!"
"Permission denied," I said. "Don't you dare. Haven't you heard all that has
been said? You are on guard not against Marius but against a shriveled limping
demon of burnt flesh. He'll come at dark! What if he reaches here before
Marius?"
"Oh, yea gods, help me!" His hands flew to his face.
"Flavius, straighten up. You are a man! Do I have to remind you of this
perpetually? You are watching for this dreaded burnt bag of bones, and he is
weak Remember what Marius said. Go for his head. Stab him in the eyes, just cut
him and cut him and shout for me, and I will come. Now go to sleep until dark.
He can't come till then, if he even knows to come here! Besides, I think Marius
will arrive first."
I turned and walked towards the open doors of the villa. The beautiful
long-haired boys were in tears.
For a moment the tranquillity and moist cool air of the garden lulled all fear
in me, and I seemed safe, among patterns I understood, far far from dark
Temples, safe in Tuscany, in our own family gardens there, which had been so

rich like this.
"Let me beg you one last time to come back out of this man's garden!" Flavius
shouted.
I ignored him.
All the doors of this lovely plastered villa stood open to the porches above or
the outdoors below. Listen to the trickling of the fountains. There were lemon
trees, and many a marble statue of a lazy, sensuous god or goddess, round which
flowers grew in rich purple or blue. Diana, the huntress, rose from a
bed of orange blossoms, the marble old and pitted.
And there; a lazy Ganymede, half-covered in green moss, marked some path that
had been overgrown.
Far off, I could see the naked bending Venus at her bath on the edge of a pool.
Water flowed into the
pool I glimpsed fountains all around me.
The small common white lilies had gone wild, and there stood old olive trees
with marvelously twisted
trunks, so wondrous to climb in childhood.
A pastoral sweetness hung over all, yet nature had been kept at bay. The stucco
of the walls was
freshly painted, and so were the wooden shutters, opened wide.
The two boys were crying. "Madam, he'll be so angry. '
"Well, not with you," I said, as I entered the house. I had come across the
grass and left scarcely any footprint on the marble floor.
"Boys, do stop sobbing! You don't even have to plead with him to believe you.
Isn't that true? He'll
read the truth in your thoughts?"
This startled each in his own way. They looked at me warily.
I stopped just past the threshold. Something emanated from the house, not loud
enough to be called a sound, but very like the rhythmic precursor of a sound. I
had heard this very soundless rhythm before. When was it? In the Temple? When
first I entered the room where Marius had hidden behind the screen?
I walked on marble floors from room to room. Breezes everywhere played with the
hanging lamps. There were many lamps. And the candles. How many candles. And
lamps on stands. Why, when this place was lighted up, it must have been bright
as day!
And gradually I realized the entire lower floor was a library, except for the
inevitable sumptuous Roman bath, and an enormous wardrobe of clothes.
Every other room was filled with books. Nothing but books. Of course there were
couches for lying and reading, and desks for writing, but every wall had its
prodigious stack of scrolls or shelves of bound books.
Also there were strange doors. They appeared to open onto concealed stairwells.
But they had no locks and seemed to be made of polished granite. I found at
least two of these! And one chamber of the first floor was totally enclosed in
stone and locked in the same way, by impenetrable doors.
As the slaves trembled and sobbed I went outside and up the stairs to the second
floor. Empty. Every room simply empty, except the room that obviously belonged
to the boys! There were their beds, and their little Persian altars and gods,
and rich rugs and tasseled pillows and the usual Oriental swirl of design.
I came down.
The boys sat at the main door, as if positioned like marble statues, each with
his knees up, head down,
weeping softly, perhaps getting a bit worn out. "Where are the bedrooms of this
house'? Where Marius's bedroom'? Where is the kitchen'? Where is the household
shrine?"
One of them let out a soft choking cry. "There are no bedrooms."
"Of course not," I said.
"Our food is brought to us," wailed the other. Cooked and most delicious. But I

fear that, unwittingly, we have enjoyed our last meal."
"Oh, do take it easy. How can he blame you for what I've done? You're merely
children and he's a
gentle being, is he not? Here, put these pages on his desk, and weight them down
so that they don't Ay
away."
"Yes, he is most gentle," said the boy. "But most set in his ways."
I dosed my eyes. I sensed the sound again, the emanating encroaching sound. Did
it want to be heard? I couldn't tell. It seemed impersonal, like the beat of a
sleeping heart or the flow of the water in the
fountains.
I walked over to a large beautiful couch, draped in fine silk with Persian
designs. It was very wide and
seemed to bear, despite much straightening, the imprint of a man's form. There
was the pillow there, all fluffed and fresh, yet still I could see the
indentation of the head, where the man had lain.
"Does he lie here?"
The boys leapt to their feet, curls flying.
"Yes, Madam, that is his couch," said the speaker of the two. "Please, please,
don't touch it. He lies there for hours and reads. Madam, please! He is most
particular that we do not lie on it playfully in his absence, though he gives us
free rein in every other regard."
"He'll know if you even touch it!" said the other boy, speaking up for the first
time.
"I'm going to sleep on it," I said. I lay down and dosed my eyes. I rolled over
and brought up my knees. "I am tired. I want only sleep. I feel safe for the
first time in so long."
"You do?" asked one of the boys.
"Oh, come here and lie by me. Bring pillows for your heads, so that he will see
me before he sees you. He knows me well The pages I have brought, where are
they, yes, on the desk, well, they will make it dear why I have come in. It's
all changed now. Something is wanted from me. I have no choice. There is no road
home. Marius will understand. I've come as dose to him as possible for my
protection."
I lay back right in the hollow of the pillow where he lay. I took a long deep
breath. "The breeze is like music here," I whispered, "do you hear it'?"
I slept the deep exhausted sleep which I had held off now for so many hours of
boch night and day.
Hours must have passed.
I woke with a start. The sky was purple. The slaves were curled up next to the
couch, just beneath me, like terrified little animals. I heard the noise again,
the sound, distinct, a pulse. I thought oddly of something I used to like to do
as a child. It was this: I would put my ear to my Father's chest. And when I
heard his heart, then I would kiss it. It had always made him happy.
I rose, realizing that I was not fully awake but certain this was no dream. I
was in the beautiful villa of Marius in Antioch. The marble rooms opened one
upon another.
I went to the last room, the room enclosed in stone. The doors were impossibly
heavy. But suddenly, silently, they opened as if pushed from within.
I entered a massive chamber. Another pair of doors ahead of me. They too were
made of stone. They
had to lead to a stairwell, for the house ended just beyond.
These doors too suddenly opened, as if released by a spring. Light from below.
A stairway went down from the threshold of the door. It was white marble, and
newly made, with no wear of feet on it. So smooth, each slab, so clean.
A soft series of flames burned below, sending their antic shadows up the
stairwell.

The sound now seemed louder. I closed my eyes. Oh, that all the world were these
polished chambers and all that exists could be explained within.
Suddenly, I heard a loud cry.
"Lady Pandora!"
I spun around.
"Pandora, he is over the wall!"
The boys came screaming through the house, echoing Flavius's cry, "Lady
Pandora!"
A great darkness gathered itself right before my eyes and then descended on me,
throwing the helpless, beseeching boys to the side. I was almost pitched down
the stairwell.
Then I realized I was in the grasp of the burnt thing. I looked down to see the
black wrinkled arm, like old leather, that held me. Strong spices filled my
nostrils. Fresh clothing covered the hideously thin leg I saw, the dried-up
foot.
"Boys, get the lamps, set it on fire!" I shouted. I fought desperately, driving
us both back from the stairwell, but I couldn't get loose from the creature.
"Boys, the lamps downstairs!"
The boys dung to one another.
"I have you!" this creature said tenderly in my ear.
"No, you don't." I said, and gave him one fine blow with my right elbow. It
drove him off balance. He nearly toppled. But he didn't let me go. The whiteness
of his tunic glowed in the shadows as he once more enclosed my arms, and
rendered me almost helpless.
"Boys, downstairs, lamps full of oil!" I said. "Flavius!"
The creature hugged me as if he were a giant snake. I could scarce breathe.
"We can't go downstairs!" one of the boys cried. "We're not allowed," said the
other.
The creature laughed in my ear, a rich deep laugh. Not everyone is so bound to
rebellion as you are,
beautiful woman, outwitting your brother at the foot of the Temple steps."
It was shocking to hear this dear articulate voice coming from a body which
seemed burnt beyond all hope of life. I watched the blackened fingers moving
over my own. I felt the touch of something cold on my neck. Then I felt the
punctures. His fangs.
"No!" I cried. I thrashed back and forth in his grip, then threw all of my
weight against him so that he almost toppled again but didn't fall.
"Stop it, bitch, or I'll kill you now."
"Why don't you?" I demanded.
I twisted to see his face. It was like that of a long-dead corpse dried in the
desert, burnt black with a spine of a nose, and arched lips that seemed quite
unable to dose over white teeth and the two fangs he bared now as he looked at
me.
His eyes were full of blood, as Marius's eyes had been. His hair was a fine
black mop, very thick, fresh and dean, as though it had sprung from his body,
renewing itself like magic. "Yes," he said confidently. "That is just what
happened. And very soon I will have the blood I need to renew all of me! I won't
be this hideous monster you see. I'll be what I was before those Egyptian fools
put her in the sun!"
"Hmmm, so she kept her promise," I said. "She walked into the rays of Amon Ra so
you would all
burn up."
"What do you know of it? She hasn't moved or spoken in a thousand years. I was
that old when they removed the stones that enclosed her. She couldn't have
walked into the sun. She is a great sacred vial of blood, an enthroned source of
power, that's all, and I will have that blood, which your Marius has stolen out
of Egypt."

I pondered, searching desperately for a means to free myself.
"You came to me as a gift," said the burnt one. "You were all I needed to take
on Marius! He wears his affections and weakness for you like bright silk
garments for me to see!"
"I see," I said.
"No, you don't." he said. My head was pulled back by my hair. I screamed in
annoyance.
His sharp teeth went into my neck. A series of heated wires threaded me through
and through.
I swooned. An ecstasy rendered me motionless. I tried to resist, but I saw
visions. I saw him in his glory, a golden man of an Eastern land, in a Temple of
skulls. He was dressed in bright green silk breeches with an ornamented band
around his forehead. Face delicate of nose and mouth. Then I saw him, without
explanation, burst into flames that sent his slaves screaming. He twisted and
turned in these flames, not dying but suffering exquisitely.
My head was swimming, and I was weakening. My blood flowed from all parts of my
body into his wretched form. I thought of my Father, of my Father saying, "Live,
Lydia!" I wrenched my neck away from him and turned, poking him hard with my
shoulder, and then pushed him with two hands so that he slid backwards on the
floor. I brought my knee up against him. Nothing could get him off me!
I tried to reach for my dagger, but I was too dizzy, and besides, I didn't have
my dagger. My only chance lay with the burning oil in the lamps at the foot of
the stairs. I turned, reeling, and the monster caught me again with both hands
by my long hair. He yanked me bad«
"You demon!" I said. His strength had worn me out. He tightened his grip slowly.
I knew that soon my arms would break.
"Ah," he said, twisting free of me, and holding tight as ever. "My purpose is
served."
A brighter light suddenly filled up the stairway.
A torch was placed at the foot of the steps. Then Marius stepped into view. He
appeared utterly calm and he appeared to be looking past me into the eyes of my
captor.
"And what will you do now, Akbar?" Marius asked. "Hurt her, violate her but one
more time, and I shall
kill you. Kill her, and you will die in agony. Let her go and you can run."
He mounted the steps one by one.
"You underestimate me," said the burnt thing, "you arrogant Roman bumbler, you
think I don't know you
keep the Queen and the King, that you stole them out of Egypt? It is known. The
word is spread through
the world, through the Northern woods, through the wild lands, through the lands
of which you know
nothing. You killed the Elder who guarded the King and the Queen and stole them!
The King and Queen have not moved or spoken in a thousand years. You took our
Queen from Egypt. You think you are a Roman Emperor? You think she is a Queen
you can take captive, like Cleopatra! Cleopatra was a Greek whore. This is our
Isis, our Akasha! You blaspheming fool. Now let me into Akasha's presence. Stand
against me, and this woman, the only mortal whom you truly love, dies."
Marius came up step by step towards us.
"Akbar, did your informants tell you that it was the Elder in Egypt, her long
keeper himself, who left the Royal Pair to stand in the sun'?" asked Marius. He
took another step upward. "Did they tell you that it was the Elder that caused
the sun to strike them, the fire which destroyed hundreds of us, and spared the
oldest only so they could live in agony as you do?"
Marius made a quick gesture. I felt the fangs deep in my neck. I couldn't get
away. Again, I saw this creature in his former splendor, taunting me with his
beauty, his jeweled feet as he danced, surrounded by painted women.

I heard Marius right beside me, but I couldn't make out the words.
The folly of it all went through my mind. I had led this creature to Marius, but
was that what the Mother wanted? Akasha, that was the ancient name written on
the bodies dumped on the steps of the Temple. I knew her name. I knew it in the
dreams. I was losing consciousness; "Marius," I called out with all my strength.
My head fell forward, free of the fangs. I fought this total captivating
weakness. I deliberately pictured the Emperor Augustus receiving us on his
deathbed. "I shall not see the end of this comedy," I whispered.
"Oh, yes, you shall." It was Marius's calm voice right near us. I opened my
eyes. "Akbar, don't risk it again, you've shown your determination."
"Don't reach for me again, Marius," said the burnt creature. "My teeth caress
her neck. But one more drop and her heart is silent."
The rich dark of night brightened the torch below. That was all I could see. The
torch. "Akasha," I whispered.
The burnt thing took a deep breath, his chest heaving against me. "Her blood is
beautiful," he said. He kissed my cheek with the parched burnt lips. I closed my
eyes. It was becoming harder and harder for me to breathe. I couldn't open my
eyes.
He went on talking.
"You see, I have no fear to take her into death with me, Marius, for if I must
die by your hand, why not with her as my consort?"
These words were distant, echoing.
"Pick her up in your arms," said Marius. He was very dose to us. "And carry her
gently, as if she were your only beloved child, and come down with me into the
Shrine. Come and see the Mother. Kneel before Akasha and see what she will
allow!"
I swooned again, but I heard the creature laugh. He did lift me now, under the
knees, and my head fell back We went down the steps.
"Marius," I said, "he's weak You can kill him." My face fell against the chest
of the burnt one as we descended. I could feel the bones of his chest. "Really,
very weak," I said, scarcely able to remain conscious. Akasha, yes, her true
name.
"Carefully, my friend," said Marius. "She dies and I destroy you. You've almost
overplayed your hand. She narrows your chances with every labored breath.
Pandora, be silent, please. Akbar is a great blood drinker, a great god."
I felt a cold firm hand clasp mine.
We had reached the lower floor. I tried to lift my head. I saw rows of lamps,
splendid wall paintings hammered with gold, a ceiling veiled in gold.
Two great stone doors were opened. A chapel lay within, a chapel full of dense
fluttering devotional light and the overpowering scent of lilies.
The blood drinker who held me let out a cry. "Mother Isis," he said piteously.
"Oh, Akasha."
He released me, setting me down on my feet, as Marius at once took hold of me,
and the blistered and damaged one rushed towards the altar.
I stared, amazed. But I was dying. I couldn't breathe. I was falling to the
floor. I tried to swallow air but I could not. I could not stand without Marius.
But oh, to leave the Earth and all its miseries with such a vision:
There they sat, The Great Goddess Isis and the King Osiris, or so it seemed,
bronzed in skin, not white like the poor captive Queen in my dreams, but
perfectly arrayed in garments of spun gold pleated and sewn in the fixed
Egyptian style. Their black hair was long, plaited, real. The paint on their
faces was fresh, the dark eyelining and mascara, the reddened lips.
She wore no crown of the horns and sun disk Her collar of gold and jewels was
superb, shimmering and alive in my eyes.
"I must get the crown, restore the crown!" I said aloud, hearing this voice come
from me as if it had been born elsewhere to instruct me. My eyes dosed.
The black thing knelt before the Queen.

I couldn't see dearly. I felt Marius's arms, and then a gush of hot blood come
into my mouth. "No, Marius, protect her!" I tried to speak. My words were washed
away in this infusion of blood. "Protect the Mother!" Again it came filling my
mouth so that I had to swallow. Immediately I felt the strength, the power of
this blood, infinitely stronger than the pull of Akbar. The blood rushed like so
many rivers to the sea, through my body. It would not be stopped. Another gush
followed, as if a giant storm had driven the river even faster into its delta,
its broken and random streams seeking every morsel of flesh.
A wide and wondrous world opened and would have welcomed me, sunlight in the
deep forest, but I wouldn't see it. I broke free. "The Queen, save her from
him!" I whispered. Did the blood drip from my lips? No, it was gone inside me.
Marius wouldn't listen to me. Again a bloody wound was pressed to my mouth, and
the blood was driven ever faster. I felt the air fill my lungs. I could feel the
length of my own body, sturdy, standing on its own. The blood brightened inside
me like light, as though it had enflamed my heart. I opened my eyes. I was a
pillar. I saw Marius's face, his golden eyelashes, his deep blue eyes. His long
hair parted in the middle fell to his shoulders. He was ageless, a god.
"Protect her!" I cried. I turned and pointed.
A veil was lifted that had all my life hung between me and all things; now in
their true color and shape, they gave forth their deliberate purpose: the Queen
stared forward, immobile as the King. Life could not have imitated such
serenity, such utter paralysis. I heard water dropping from the flowers. Tiny
drops striking the marble floor, the fall of a single leaf. I turned and saw it,
curled and rocking on the stones, this tiny leaf. I heard the breeze move under
the golden canopied ceiling. And the lamps had tongues of flame to sing.
The world was a woven song, a tapestry of song. The multicolored Mosiacs
gleamed, then lost all form, then even pattern. The walls dissolved into clouds
of colored mist which welcomed us, through which we could roam forever.
And there she sat, The Queen of Heaven, reigning over all in supreme and
unperturbed stillness.
All the yearning of my childish heart was fulfilled. "She lives, she is real,
she reigns over Earth and Heaven."
The King and the Queen. They didn't stir. Their eyes beheld nothing. They did
not look at us. They did not look at the burnt thing as he drew doser and doser
to their throne.
The arms of the Royal Pair were covered in many inscribed and intricate
bracelets. Their hands rested on their thighs. It was the manner of many an
Egyptian statue. But there never has been a statue to equal either of them.
"The crown, she would have her crown," I said. With astonishing vigor I walked
forward towards her.
Marius took my hand. Keenly, he watched the progress of the burnt one.
"She was before all such crowns," Marius said, "they do not mean anything to
her."
The thought itself burst with the sweetness of a grape on my tongue. Of course
she was there before. In my dreams, she had had no crown. She was safe. Marius
kept her safe.
"My Queen," said Marius from behind me. "You have a supplicant. It is Akbar from
the East. He would drink the royal blood. What is your will, Mother?"
His voice was so tranquil! He had no fears.
"Mother Isis, let me drink!" cried this burnt creature. He stood up, threw up
his arms and created another dancing vision of his former self. He wore human
skulls hanging from his belt. He wore a necklace of blackened human fingers!
Another of blackened human ears! It was grisly and revolting, yet he seemed to
think it seductive and overpowering. At once the image left him. The god from
the faraway land was on his knees.
"I am your servant and always was! I slew only the evildoer, as you commanded. I
never abandoned your true worship."

How fragile and insignificant seemed this pleading one, so revolting, so easy to
clear away now from her presence. I looked at the King Osiris, as remote and
indifferent as the Queen.
"Marius," I said, "the corn for Osiris; doesn't he want the corn? He's the god
of the corn." I was filled with visions of our processions in Rome, of people
singing and bearing the offerings.
"No, he doesn't want the corn," said Marius. He laid his hand on my shoulder.
"They are true, they are real." I cried out. "It is all real. Everything is
changed. Everything is redeemed."
The burnt thing turned and glared at me. But I was quite beyond all reason. He
turned back to the Queen and reached out for her foot.
How her toenails flashed in the light with the golden flesh beneath them. But
she was stone-still, as was the crownless King, without seeming judgment or
power.
The creature suddenly sprang up and tried to seize the Queen by the neck!
I screamed.
"Shameless, despicable."
Swiftly the frozen right arm of the Queen rose, her hand surrounding the burnt
thing`s skull and crushing it, the blood gushing down her as the monster gave
his last fractured cry for mercy. She caught his body as it dropped over her
waist. She hurled it in the air, and all its limbs broke loose from it, crashing
to the floor like so much timber.
A gusting wind caught each remnant and gathered them all in one as a lamp fell
from its three-legged stand to spill its burning oil on the remains.
"The heart, look," I said. "I can see its heart. The heartbeats."
But the fire quickly consumed the heart, consumed the flexing fingers and the
writhing toes. There was a great stirring, a dance in the fire of bones, bones
whirling in the flames, and then the bones blackened, thinned, snapped to
pieces, became fragments; all of this thing was reduced at last to smoking
cinders, crisping and skittering on the floor.
Then came the breeze again, full of the breath of the garden, lifting these
cinders and carrying them away, like so many fragile tiny black insects, into
the shadows of the antechamber.
I was spellbound.
The Queen was as before, her hand in its old place. She and the King stared at
nothing, as if nothing had taken place. Only the wretched stain on her gown bore
witness.
Their eyes took no heed of Marius or of me.
Then there was only quiet in the chapel. Only sweet perfumed quiet. Golden
light. I breathed deeply. I could hear the oil in the lamps turned to flame. The
Mosiacs were peopled with finely made worshipers. I could see the slow minute
beginnings of decay of the various flowers, and it seemed but another strain of
the same song that expressed their growth, their browning edges but another
color in no contradiction to their brilliant colors.
"Forgive me, Akasha," Marius said softly, "that I let him come so dose, I was
not wise."
I cried. Great gushing tears came from me.
"You summoned me," I said to the Queen through my tears. "You called me here! I
will do all you want of me."
Slowly her right arm rose; it rose from her thigh and extended itself and her
hand very gently curved in the beckoning gesture of the dream, but there was no
smile, no change in her frozen face.
I felt something invisible and irresistible wrap itself around me. It came from
her outstretching welcoming arm. It was sweet and soft and caressing. It made a
flush of pleasure through all my limbs and my face.
I moved forward, wound up in its will.
"I beg you, Akasha." Marius said softly. "I beg you under the name of Inanna,

under the name of Isis, under the name of all goddesses, don't hurt her!"
Marius simply didn't understand! Marius had never known her worship! I knew. I
knew that her blood drinker children had meant to be judges of the evildoer, and
drink only from the condemned, according to her laws. I saw the god of the dark
cave, whom I'd seen in my vision. I understood all.
I wanted to tell Marius. But I couldn't. Not now. The world was reborn, all
systems built upon skepticism or selfishness were as fragile as spiderwebs and
meant to be swept away. My own moments of despair had been nothing more than
detours into an unholy and self-centered blackness.
"The Queen of Heaven," I whispered. I knew I was speaking in the ancient tongue.
A prayer came to my lips.
"And Amon Ra, the Sun God, for all his power, shall never conquer the King of
the Dead or his bride, for she is the ruler of the starry heavens, of the moon,
of those who would bring the sacrifice of the evildoer. Cursed be those who
misuse this magic. Cursed be those who seek to steal it!"
I felt myself, a human, held together by the intricate threads of blood which
Marius had given me. I felt the design of its support. It had no weight, my
body.
I was lifted towards her. Her arm came around me and pulled my hair back from my
face. I put out my arms to embrace her neck because I could do nothing else. We
were too dose for any other possible sign of love.
I felt the soft silk of her real plaited hair, and the coldness and firmness of
her shoulders, her arm. Yet she did not look at me. She was a petrified thing.
Could she look at me? Did she choose to remain silent, staring forward? Did some
evil spell hold her helpless, a spell from which a thousand hymns might waken
her?
In my delirium I saw the words engraved in gold pieces among the jewels of her
collar: "Bring to me the evildoer and I shall drink his blood."
It seemed I was in the desert and the necklace was tumbling over and over in the
sand, in the wind, rather like the body of the burnt one had tumbled. Fallen,
lost, to be remade.
I felt my head drawn to her neck She had opened her fingers over my hair. She
directed it, that my lips should feel this skin.
"It's what you want, isn't it?" I asked. But my words seemed remote from me, a
pathetic expression of the fullness of my soul. "That I am to be your daughter!"
She tipped her head slightly, away from me, so that I saw her neck I saw the
vein displayed, the vein from which she wanted me to drink
Her finger rose gently through my hair, never pulling it or hurting it, merely
embracing my head, sending rampant ecstasy through me, and urging my head gently
down so that my lips could no longer avoid her shimmering skin.
"Oh, my adored Queen," I whispered. I had never known such certainty, such
ecstasy without limits or mundane cause. I had never known such bursting,
triumphant faith as my faith in her.
I opened my mouth. Nothing human could bite through this hard flesh! Yet it
gave, as though it were thin, and the blood pumped into me, "the Fount." I heard
her heart driving it, a deafening force that vibrated in the drums of my ears.
This was not blood. This was nectar. This was all that any created being could
ever desire.



9

With the nectar flowing into me, there came another realm. Her ringing laughter
filled the corridor; she ran ahead of me, girlish, feline, unencumbered by
grandeur. She beckoned for me to follow. Out under the stars, Marius sat alone
in his soft shapeless garden. She pointed to him. I saw Marius rise and take me
in

his arms. His long hair was such a fine adornment. I saw what she wanted. It was
Marius I kissed in this
vision as I drank from her; it was Marius with whom I danced.
A shower of flower petals descended upon us as upon a bridal couple in Rome, and
Marius held my arm as though we had just been wed, and all around us people
sang. There was a flawless happiness, a happiness so keen that perhaps there are
those born who never even have the capacity for it.
She stood atop a broad black altar of diorite.
It was night. This was an enclosed place, filled with people, but it was dark
and cool with the sandy wind off the valley floor, and she looked down at the
one they offered up to her. He was a man, his eyes closed, his hands were bound.
He didn't struggle.
She showed her teeth; a gasp rose from the worshipers who filled the place, and
then she took the man by the throat and drank his blood. When she had finished,
she let him fall and she held up her arms.
"All things are cleansed in me!" she cried out. Once again the petals fell,
petals of all colors, and peacock feathers waved about us, and branches of palm,
and there was singing in great lusty bursts, and the sound of a riotous drum,
and she smiled looking down from where she stood, her face remarkably flushed
and mobile and human, her black-painted eyes sweeping over her worshipers.
All began to dance, save she, who watched, and then her eyes rose slowly and she
looked over their heads, out the high rectangular windows of this place, at the
twinkling firmament. Pipes played. The dance had become a frenzy.
A weary and secretive darkness crept into her face, a distraction, as though her
soul had traveled out of doors towards Heaven, and then she looked sadly down.
She looked lost. Anger overcame her.
Then she cried out in a deafening voice, "The rogue blood drinker!" The crowd
fell silent. "Bring him to me."
The crowd parted to let this struggling furious god be forced to her altar.
"You dare judge me!" he cried. He was Babylonian, with full long curly locks and
beard and mustache. It took ten mortals to hold him.
"Into the burning place, in the mountains, in the sun, in the strongest
fetters!" she cried. He was dragged away.
Once again she looked up. The stars grew big and age-old patterns were dear. We
floated under the stars.
A boy in a delicate gilded chair argued with those around him. The men were old,
half-invisible in the darkness. The lamp shone on the boy's face. We stood in
the door. The boy was &ail, his little limbs like sticks.
"And you say," said the incredulous boy, "that these blood drinkers are
worshiped in the hills!"
I knew he was the Pharaoh by the sacred lock of hair that grew from his bald
head, by the manner in which the others waited upon him. He looked up in horror
as she approached. His guardians fled.
`Yes," she said, "and you will do nothing to stop it."
She lifted him, this small fragile boy, and tore at his throat as an animal
might do it, letting the blood flood from the fatal wound. "Little King," she
said. "Little Kingdom."
The vision ended,
Her cold white skin was dosed beneath my lips. I kissed her now. I no longer
drank.
I felt my own form, felt myself fall back over her arm, felt myself slipping out
of her embrace.
In the dim radiance, her profile remained as it had before, silent and without
feeling. Stark, a face without a blemish or a line. I sank back into Marius's
arms. Her arm and hand returned to their former rigid position.
Everything was brilliantly clear, the motionless King and Queen, the artful
figures fixed in lapis lazuli in the gold mosaics.

I felt a sharp pain in me, in the heart, in the womb, as if someone had stabbed
me. "Marius!" I cried out.
He picked me up and carried me from the chamber,
"No, I want to kneel at her feet," I said. The pain took the breath out of me. I
tried not to scream from this pain. Oh, the world had just been reborn. And now
this agony.
He set me down on the high grass, letting it be crushed under me. A flood of
sour human fluid came out of my womb, even out of my mouth. I saw flowers right
near me. I saw the friendly Heavens, vivid as in my vision. The pain was
unspeakable.
I knew now why he had removed me from the Shrine.
I wiped at my cheek. I couldn't bear this filth. The pain devoured me. I
struggled to see again what she had revealed to me, remember what she said, but
there was too much obstruction in this pain.
"Marius!" I cried.
He covered me and kissed my cheek. "Drink from me," he said, "drink until the
pain goes away. It's only the body dying, drink Pandora, you are immortal."
"Fill me, take me," I said. I reached down between his legs.
"It doesn't matter now."
But it was hard, this organ I sought, the organ forever lost to the god Osiris.
I guided it, hard and cold as it was, into my body. Then I drank and drank, and
when I felt his teeth again on my neck, when he began to draw from me the new
mixture that filled my veins, it was sweet suckling, and I knew him and loved
him and knew all his secrets in one flash which meant nothing.
He was right. The lower organs meant nothing. He fed on me. I fed on him. This
was our marriage. All around us, the grass was waving softly in the breeze, a
majestic conjugal bed, and the smell of the green flooded me.
The pain was gone. I flung out my arm and felt the softness of flowers.
He tore off' my fouled dress and lifted me. He carried me into the pool where
the marble Venus stood forever with back bent, and one foot raised above the
cool water.
"Pandora!" he whispered.
The boys stood at his side, offering him pitchers.
He dipped a pitcher and poured the water over me. I felt beneath my feet the
tile at the bottom of the pool as the water ran down my skin. I had never known
such sensation! Another pitcherful washed over me, deliciously. I feared for one
instant the pain would return, but no, it was gone.
"I love you with all my heart," I said. `M my love belongs to them and to you,
Marius. Marius, I can see in the darkness, I can see in the deep dark beneath
the trees."
Marius held me. The boys slowly bathed us both, dipping their pitchers and
pouring the silvery water over us.
"Oh, to have you with me," Marius said, "to have you here; not to be alone, but
to be with you, my beauty, you of all souls! You." He stood back, and I gloried
in him, drenched as I was, reached to touch his long wild foreign hair. He
sparkled all over with droplets.
"Yes," I said. "It was exactly what she wanted.'*
His face stiffened. He scowled. He stared at me. Something had changed
altogether, and for the worse. I could feel it.
"What?" he asked.
"It is what she wanted. She made it plain to me in the visions. She wanted me to
be with you, so you wouldn't be alone."
He stood back. Was this anger'?
"Marius, what is the matter with you? Can't you see what she's done?"
He stepped back again, away from me.
"You didn't realize that's what was happening?" I asked.
The boys thrust forth towels. Marius took one and wiped his face and his hair.

I did the same.
He was furious. He shook with anger.
This was a moment of mingled and inexplicable beauty and horror' ­ his white
body there, the shimmering pool, the lights falling gracefully from the open
doors of the house, and above, the stars, her stars. And Marius angry and
bristling, his eyes full of outrage.
I looked at him.
"I am her Priestess now," I said. "I'm to restore her worship. That's what she
wants. But she brought me also for you, because you were alone," I said.
"Marius, I saw all this. I saw our own wedding in Rome, as if it were the old
days and our families were with us. I saw her worshipers."
He was plainly horrified.
I didn't want to see this. Surely I was misunderstanding him.
I stepped up on the grass. I let the boys dry my body. I looked up at the stars.
The house with all its warm lamps seemed crude and fragile, a bumbled attempt to
make an order of things, which could not compare to the making of one complete
flower.
"Oh, how spectacular is the simple night," I said. "It seems an insult to the
night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming
full of blessed design and tranquillity. All things follow their course."
I stood back and spun around, letting the water fly from me. I was so strong. No
dizziness overcame when I stopped. I had a sense of infinite power.
One of the boys held out a tunic for me. It was a man's, but as I've said so
often here, Roman clothes are very simple. It was just a short tunic. I put it
on and let him tie the sash around my waist. I smiled at him. He trembled and
stepped back from me.
"Dry my hair," I told him. Ah, such sensations.
Slowly I looked up. Marius too was dried and dressed. He was still looking at me
with violent protest, and downright indignation.
"Someone has to go in," I said, "to change her golden gown. That blasphemer, he
left her bloody."
"I will do that!" Marius said in plain anger.
"Oh, so it comes to this," I said. I looked around me, seduced by beauty to
forget his altogether, to come back to him at some later hour after I had roamed
beneath the olive trees and consorted with the constellations.
But his anger hurt me. The hurt was strange, and deep, without the various
stages mortal flesh and mind command of pain.
"Oh, isn't it splendid." I said. "I learn that the goddess reigns, that she is
real, that she has made all things! That the world is not just a giant
graveyard! But I learn this as I find myself in an arranged marriage! And behold
the groom! How he nurses his own temper."
He sighed and bowed his head. Was I to see him cry again, this flawless familiar
and beloved god among crushed flowers?
He looked up. "Pandora," he said. "She's not a goddess. She didn't make the
world."
"How dare you say this!"
"I have to say it! I would have died for the truth when I was alive and will die
for it now. But she will not let this happen. She needs me and she needs you to
make me happy!"
"So very well!" I threw my hands. "I am happy to do it. And we will restore her
worship."
"We will not!" he said. "How can you even think of such a thing."
"Marius, I want to sing it from the tops of mountains; I want to tell the world
that this miracle exists. I want to run through the streets singing. We are to
restore her to her throne in a great Temple in the very middle of Antioch!"
"You're talking madness!" he shouted.
The boys had run away.

"Marius, have you stopped up your ears to her commands? We are to hunt down and
kill her renegade gods and see that new gods are born from her, gods who look
into souls, gods who seek justice, not lies, gods who are not fantastical,
lustful idiots or the drunken whimsical creatures of the Northern sky who hurl
thunderbolts. Her worship is founded in the good, in the pure!"
"No, no, no," he said. He stepped back as if that would make it all the more
emphatic. "You're talking rot!" he said. "Stupidity, rank superstition!"
"I don't believe you said those words!" I cried. "You are a monster!" I said.
"She deserves her throne! So does the King, who sits beside her. They deserve
their worshipers bringing flowers to them. Did you think you had the power to
read minds for no good reason!" I came forward. "Do you remember when I first
mocked you in the Temple? When I said you ought to station yourself at the
courts and look into the minds of the accused? I had hit the mark in my
ridicule!"
"No." he roared. "This is absolutely not true," he said.
He turned his back on me, rushing into the house.
I followed him.
He rushed down the stairway and into her sanctum, stopping short before her. She
and her King sat as before. Not an eyelash moved. Only the flowers clung to life
in the perfumed air.
I looked down at my hands, so white! Could I die now? Would I live centuries
like the burnt one?
I studied their seemingly divine faces. They did not smile. They did not dream.
They looked, and nothing more.
I fell down on my knees.
"Akasha," I whispered. "May I call you this name? Tell me what you want."
There was no change in her. None whatsoever.
"Well, speak, Mother!" declared Marius, his voice thick with sadness. "Speak! Is
it what you've always wanted?"
Suddenly he dashed forward, mounted the two steps of her dais and pounded on her
breasts with his fists.
I was horrified.
She didn't move, she didn't blink. His fist struck a hardness he could not
budge. Only her hair, struck by his arm, gave a little sway.
I ran to him and tried to pull him away.
"Stop it, Marius, she'll destroy you!"
I was amazed at my strength. Surely it equalled his. But he allowed me to pull
him back, his face flooded with tears.
"Oh, what have I done!" he said staring at her. "Oh, Pandora, Pandora! What have
I done! I've made another blood drinker when I swore that there would never,
never be another made, not so long as I survived!"
"Come upstairs," I said calmly. I glanced at the King and Queen. No sign of
response or recognition. "It isn't proper, Marius, that we argue here in the
Shrine. Come upstairs."
He nodded.
He let me lead him slowly out of the room. His head was bowed.
"Your long barbarian hair is most becoming," I said. "And I have eyes now to see
you as never before. Our blood is intertwined as it might be in a child born to
us."
He wiped at his nose, and didn't look at me.
We walked into the large library.
"Marius, is there nothing in me that fills your eye, nothing you find
beautiful?"
"Oh, yes, my dear, there is everything!" he said. "But for the love of Heaven,
bring your wits with you into this! Don't you see! Your life's been stolen not
for a sacred truth but for a degraded mystery! Reading minds doesn't make me any
wiser than the next man! I kill to live! As she once did, thousands and

thousands of years ago. Oh, and she knew she had to do this. She knew the time
had come."
"What time? What did she know?"
I stared at him. I was gradually realizing that I could no longer read his
thoughts, and surely he couldn't read mine. But the hovering boys, they were
just open books in their fear, thinking themselves the servants of kindhearted
but very loud-voiced demons.
Marius sighed. "She did it because I had almost gained the courage to do what I
had to do! To place them both and myself in the sun and finish forever what the
Egyptian Elder had sought to do ­ rid the world of the King and Queen and all
the fanged men and women who glut themselves on death! Oh, she is too clever."
"You really planned to do that?" I asked. "To immolate them and yourself?"
He made a small sarcastic sound. "Yes, of course, I planned it. Next week, next
month, next year, next decade, after another hundred years, maybe in two
hundred, maybe after I'd read all the books in the world and seen all the
places, maybe in five hundred years, maybe... maybe soon in my loneliness."
I was at first too stunned to speak.
He smiled at me wisely and sadly. "Oh, but I cry like a child," he said softly.
"Where comes the confidence," I asked, "to put an end so swiftly to such bold
and complex evidence of divine magic!"
"Magic!" he cursed.
"I'd rather if you did not do this," I said. "I don't mean the crying, I mean
burning up the Mother and Father and..."
"I'm sure you would!" he answered. "And do you think I could bear to do it
against your will, subject you to the fire? You innocent desperate idiot of a
woman! Restore her altars! Oh! Restore her worship! Oh! You are out of your
mind!"
"Idiot! You dare sling your insults at me! You think you've brought a slave into
your household? You haven't even brought a wife."
Yes. Our minds were locked now to each other, and later I would find out that it
was because of our heavy exchange of blood. But all I knew then was that we had
to content ourselves with words like mortal men and women.
"I did not mean to use petty insults!" he said. He was stung.
"Well, then sharpen your great male reason and your lofty elegant patrician mode
of expression!" I said.
We glowered at one another.
"Yes." he said. "Reason," he said. He held up his finger. "You are the most
clever woman I've ever known. And you listen to reason. I will explain and you
will see. That is what must be done."
"Yes, and you are hotheaded and sentimental and give way to tears again and
again ­ and you pound upon the Queen herself like a child throwing a tantrum!"
His face went red with immediate anger. It sealed his lips against his words.
He turned and went away.
"Do you cast me out?" I said. "Do you want me gone!" I shouted. "This is your
house. Tell me now if you want me gone. I'll go now!"
He stopped. "No," he said.
He turned around and looked at me, shaken, and caught off guard. In a raw voice,
he said, "Don't go, Pandora!" He blinked as if to dear his vision. "Don't go.
Please, don't." And then he let fall a final whisper. "We have each other."
"And where do you go now, to get away from me?"
"Only to change her dress," he said with a sad bitter smile. "To clean and
recostume `such bold evidence of complex and divine magic.' "
He disappeared.
I turned to the violet outdoors. To the clouds stirred in a cauldron by the
moon, to defy the darkness. To the big old trees that said, Mount our limbs, we
will embrace you! To the scattered flowers everywhere that said, We are your
bed. Lie down with us.

And so the two-hundred-year brawl began.
And it never really ended.



10

With my eyes still closed, I heard voices of the city, voices from nearby
houses; I heard men talking as they passed on the road outside. I heard music
coming from somewhere, and the laughter of women and children. When I
concentrated I could understand what they said. I chose not to do this, and
their voices melded with the breeze.
Suddenly, the state seemed unbearable. There seemed nothing to do but rush back
to the chapel and kneel there and worship! These senses I had been given seemed
fit for nothing else. If this was my destiny, then what was to become of me?
Through it all, I heard a soul weeping in agony; it was an echo of my own, a
soul broken from a course of great hope, who could scarce believe that such fine
beginnings should end in terror!
It was Flavius.
I leapt into the old gnarled olive tree. It was as simple as taking a step. I
stood among the branches, and then leapt to the next, and then to the top of the
wall, encrusted with vine. I walked along the wall towards the gate.
There he stood, his forehead pressed to the bars, both hands clutching at the
iron. He bled from several slash marks on his cheek. He gnashed his teeth.
"Flavius!" I said.
He looked up with a start. "Lady Pandora!"
Surely by the light of the moon, he saw the miracle wrought in me, whatever its
cause. For I saw the mortality in him, the deep wrinkles of his skin, the
painful flutter of his gaze, a thin layer of soil clinging to him all over in
the natural moisture of his mortal skin.
"You must go home," I said, climbing to sit on the wall, with legs on the
outside. I bent down so he could hear me. He didn't back away but his eyes were
huge with fascination. "Go see to the girls, and sleep, and get those marks
attended to. The demon's dead, you needn't worry anymore about him. Come back
here tomorrow night at sundown."
He shook his head. He tried to speak but he couldn't. He tried to gesture but he
couldn't. His heart thundered in his chest. He glanced back down the road to the
small far-flung lights of Antioch. He looked at me. I heard his heart galloping.
I felt his shock, and his fear, and it was fear for me, not him. Fear that some
awful fate had befallen me. He reached for the gate and clung to the bars, right
arm hooked around and left hand clasping it as if he wouldn't be moved.
I saw myself as he saw me in his mind ­ in a boy's sashed tunic, my hair wildly
free, sitting atop the wall, as if my body were young and pliant. All lines of
age had gone from me. He saw a face on me no one could have ever painted.
But the point was this. The man had reached his limit. He could go no further.
And I knew most fully how I loved him.
"All right," I said. I stood up and leaned over with both my hands. "Come on,
I'll lift you over the wall if I can."
He raised his arms, doubtful, eyes still drinking up every detail of my
transformation.
He weighed nothing. I lifted him up and deposited him on his feet within the
gate. I dropped down on the grass beside him and put my arm around him. How hot
was his alarm. How strong his courage.
"Still your heart," I said. I led him towards the house, as he looked down at
me, his chest heaving as though he were out of breath, but it was mere shock.
"I'll take care of you."
"I had the thing," he said, "I had it by its arm." How opaque his voice sounded,
how filled with living fluid and effort. "I sank my dagger into it over and

over, but it just slashed at my face and it was gone over the wall like a swarm
of gnats, just darkness, immaterial darkness!"
"Flavius, it's dead, burnt to cinders."
"Had I not heard your voice, oh, I was going mad! I heard the boys crying. I
couldn't climb the wall with this damned leg. Then I heard your voice, and I
knew, knew you were alive!" He was filled with happiness. "You were with your
Marius." The ease with which I could feel his love was sweet, and awe
inspiring.
A sudden sense of the Shrine came back to me, of the Queen's nectar and the
shower of flower petals. But I had to maintain my equilibrium in this new state.
Flavius was also profoundly baffled.
I kissed him on the lips, warm, mortal lips, and then quickly like an artful cat
I licked all the blood from the slash marks on his cheeks, feeling a shiver run
through me.
I took him into the library, which in this house was the main room. The boys
hovered somewhere about. They had been lighting lamps everywhere, and now they
cowered. I could smell their blood and their young human flesh,
"You'll stay with me, Flavius. Boys, can you make a bedroom for my steward on
this floor? You have fruit and bread, don't you? I can smell it. Have you enough
furniture to make him a comfortable place to the far right, where he is out of
the way?"
They came rushing out of their respective hiding places, and they too struck me
as vividly human. I was distracted. The smallest natural things about them
seemed precious, their thick black eyebrows, their round little mouths, their
smooth cheeks.
"Yes, Madam, yes!" they said almost in one voice. They hurried forward.
"This is Flavius, my steward. He will stay with us. For now, take him to the
bath, heat the water and attend to him. Get him some wine."
They took Flavius in hand at once. But he paused.
"Don't abandon me, Madam," he said suddenly with the most serious and thoughtful
expression. "I am loyal in all respects."
"I know," I said. "Oh, how clearly I understand. You cannot imagine."
Then it was off to the bath with the Babylonian boys, who seemed delighted to
have something to do.
I found Marius's huge closets. He had enough clothes for the Kings of Parthia,
Armenia, the Emperor's Mother, Livia, the dead Cleopatra, and an ostentatious
patrician who paid no attention to Tiberius's stupid sumptuary laws.
I put on a much finer, long tunic, woven of silk and linen, and I chose a gold
girdle. And with Marius's combs and brushes, I made a clean free mantle of my
hair, free of all tangles, rippled and soft as it had been when I was a girl.
He had many mirrors, which, as you know, in those days were only polished metal.
And I was rendered somber and mystified by the single fact that I was young
again; my nipples were pink, as I had said; the lines of age no longer
interrupted the intended endowments of my face or arms. Perhaps it is most
accurate to say that I was timeless. Timeless in adulthood. And every solid
object seemed there to serve in me my new strength.
I looked down at the blocks of marble tile which made up the floor and saw in
them a depth, a proof of process wondrous and barely understood.
I wanted to go out again, speak to the flowers, pick them up in handfuls. I
wanted to talk urgently with the stars. I dared not seek the Shrine for fear of
Marius, but if he had not been around I would have gone there and knelt at the
Mother and merely looked at her, looked at her in silent contemplation,
listening for the slightest articulation, though I knew, quite certainly after
watching Marius's behavior, that there would be none.
She had moved her right arm without the seeming knowledge of the rest of her
body. She had moved it to kill, and then to invite.
I went into the library, sat down at the desk, where lay all my pages, and I

waited.
Finally, when Marius came, he too was freshly dressed, his hair parted in the
middle and combed to his shoulders. He took a chair near me. It was ebony and
curved and inlaid with gold, and I looked at him, realizing how very like the
chair he was ­ a great preserved extension of all the raw materials which had
gone into it. Nature did the carving and inlay, and then the whole had been
lacquered.
I wanted to cry in his arms, but I swallowed my loneliness. The night would
never desert me, and it was faithful in every open door with its intruding
grass, and the veined olive branches rising to catch the light of the moon.
"Blessed is she who is made a blood drinker," I said, "when the moon is full,
and the clouds are rising like mountains in the transparent night."
"Probably so," he said.
He moved the lamp that stood on the desk between us, so that it didn't flicker
in my eyes.
"I made my steward at home here," I said. "I offered him bath, bed and clothes.
Do you forgive me? I love him and will not lose him. It's too late now for him
to go back into the world."
"He's an extraordinary man," Marius said, "and most welcome here. Tomorrow
perhaps he can bring your girls. Then the boys will have company and there will
be some discipline by day. Flavius knows books, among other things."
"You're most gracious. I was afraid you would be angry. Why do you suffer st I
cannot read your mind; I did not obtain that gift." No, this wasn't correct. I
could read Flavius's mind. I knew the boys at this very moment were very
relieved by Flavius's presence as they helped him dress for bed.
"We are too closely linked by blood," he said. "I can never read your thoughts
again either. We are thrown back on words like mortals, only our senses are
infinitely keener, and the detachment we know at some times will be as cold as
the ice in the North; and at other times feelings will enflame us, carry us on
waves of burning sea."
"Hmmm," I said.
"You despise me," he said softly, contritely, "because I quenched your ecstasy,
I took from you your joy, your convictions." He looked quite genuinely
miserable. "I did this to you right at the happiest moment of your conversion."
"Don't be so sure you quenched it. I might still make her Temples, preach her
worship. I'm an initiate. I have only begun."
"You will not revive her worship!" he said. "Of that I assure you! You will tell
no one about her or what she is or where she is kept, and you will never make
another blood drinker."
"My, if only Tiberius had such authority when he addressed the Senate!" I said.
"All Tiberius ever wanted was to study at the gymnasium at Rhodes, to go every
day in a Greek soak and sandals and talk philosophy. And so the propensity for
action flowers in men of lesser mettle, who use him in his loveless loneliness."
"Is this a lecture for my improvement? Do you think I don't know this? What you
don't know is that the Senate won't help Tiberius govern. Rome wants an Emperor
now, to worship and to like. It was your generation, under Augustus, which
accustomed us to forty years of autocratic rule. Don't talk to me of politics as
though I were a fool."
"I should have realized that you understood it all," he said. "I remember you in
your girlhood. Nobody could match your brilliance. Your fidelity to Ovid and his
erotic writings was a rare sophistication, an understanding of satire and irony.
A well-nourished Roman frame of mind."
I looked at him. His face too had been wiped dean of discernible age. I had time
now to relish it, the squareness of his shoulders, the straightness and firmness
of his neck, the distinct expression of his eyes and well-placed eyebrows. We
had been made over into portraits of ourselves in marble by a master sculptor.
"You know," I said, "even under this crushing and annoying barrage of definition

and declaration which you make to me, as if I were weeping for your
ratification, I feel love for you, and know full well that we are alone in this,
and married to one another, and I am not unhappy."
He appeared surprised, but said nothing.
"I am exalted, bruised in the heart," I said, "a hardened pilgrim. But I do wish
you would not speak to me as if my full indoctrination and education were your
primary concern!"
"I have to speak this way!" he said gently. His voice was all kindness in its
heat. "It is my primary concern," he said. "If you can understand what happened
with the end of the Roman Republic, if you can understand Lucretius and the
Stoics, whole, then you can understand what we are. You have to do this!"
"I'll let that insult pass," I answered. "I'm not in the mood for listing for
you every philosopher or poet I have read. Nor for recounting the level of talk
around our nighttime table."
"Pandora, I don't mean any offense! But Akasha is not a goddess! Remember your
dreams. She is a vial of precious strength. Your dreams told you she could be
used, that any unscrupulous blood drinker could pass on the blood to another,
that she is a form of demon, host to the power we share."
"She can hear you!" I whispered, outraged.
"Of course, she can. For fifteen years I've been her guardian. I've fought off
those renegades from the East. And other connivers from the African hinterlands.
She knows what she is."
No one could have guessed his age, save from the seriousness of his expression.
A man in perfect form, that was what he seemed. I tried not to be dazzled by
him, by the pulsing night behind him, and yet I wanted so to drift. "Some
wedding feast," I said. "I have things to say to the trees."
"They will be there tomorrow night," he said.
The last image I had of her passed before my eyes, colored in ecstasy; she took
the young Pharaoh from his chair and broke him into sticks. I saw her before
that revelation, at the beginning of the swoon, running down the corridor
laughing.
A slow fear crept over me.
"What is it'?" Marius asked. "Confide in me."
"When I drank from her, I saw her like a girl, laughing." I recounted then the
marriage, the flood of rose petals, and then her strange Egyptian Temple full of
frenzied worshipers. At last I told him how she had entered the chamber of the
little King, whose advisors warned him of her gods.
"She broke him up as if he were a boy of wood. She said, `Little King, little
Kingdom,' "
I picked up my pages, which earlier I had placed on this desk. I described the
last dream I had had of her, when she threatened, screaming, to walk into the
sun and destroy her disobedient children. I described all the things I had seen
­ the many migrations of my soul.
My heart hurt so much. Even as I explained, I saw her vulnerability, the danger
that was embodied in her. I explained finally how I had written all this in
Egyptian.
I was weary and wished truly that I had never opened eyes on this life! I felt
the keen and total despair again of those nights of weeping in my little house
in Antioch when I had pounded on walls, and driven my dagger into the dirt. If
she had not run, laughing down that corridor! What did the image mean? And the
little boy King, broken so helplessly?
I made a sum of it easily enough. I waited for Marius's belittling remarks. I
hadn't much patience for him now.
"How do you interpret it?" he asked gently. He tried to take my hand but I
withdrew it.
"It's bits and pieces of her recollection," I said. I was heartbroken. "It's
what she remembers. There is but one suggestion of a future in it all," I said.

"There is only one comprehensible image of a wish: our wedding, that we be
together.", My voice was full of sadness, yet I asked him.
"Why do you weep again, Marius?" I asked. "She must gather recollections like
flowers picked at random from the garden of the world, like leaves falling into
her hands, and from these recollections she fastened for me a garland! A wedding
garland! A trap. I have no migrant soul. I think not. If I did have a migrant
soul, then why would she alone, one so archaic, helpless, irrelevant to the
world itself, so out of fashion and out of power, be the one to know this? To
make it known to me? The only one to know?"
I looked at him. He was engaged yet crying. He showed no shame in it, and would
obviously render no apology.
"What was it you said before?" I asked. " `That I can read minds makes me no
wiser than the next man'?" I smiled. "That is the key. How she laughed as she
led me to you. How she wanted me to behold you in your loneliness."
He only nodded.
"I wonder how she knew to cast her net so far," I said, "to find me across the
rolling sea."
"Lucius, that's how she knew. She hears voices from many lands. She sees what
she wants to see. One night here I badly startled a Roman, who appeared to
recognize me and then slunk away as if I were a danger to him. I went after him,
thinking vaguely that there was something to this, his excessive fear.
"I soon realized a great weight distorted his conscience and twisted his every
thought and movement. He was terrified to be recognized by someone from the
capital. He wanted to leave.
"He went to the house of a Greek merchant, pounding on the door late, by
torchlight, and demanded the payment of a debt owed to your Father. The Greek
told him what he had told him before, that the money would be repaid only to
your Father himself.
"The next night I sought Lucius out again. This time the Greek had a surprise
for him. A letter had just come from your Father by military ship. This was
perhaps four days before your own arrival. The letter plainly stated that a
favor was being asked of the Greek by your Father in the name of Hospitality and
Honor. If the favor was granted, all debts were canceled. Everything would be
explained by a letter accompanying a cargo destined for Antioch. The cargo would
take some time, as the ship had many stops to make. The favor was of crucial
importance.
"When your brother saw the date of this letter, he was stricken. The Greek, who
was thoroughly sick of Lucius by this time, slammed the door in his face.
"I accosted Lucius only steps away. Of course he remembered me, the eccentric
Marius of long ago. I pretended surprise to see him here and asked after you. He
was in a panic and made up some story about your being married and living in
Tuscany, and said that he was on his way out of town. He hurried off. But the
moment's contact had been enough to see the testimony he'd given the Praetorian
Guard against his family ­ all lies ­ and to imagine the deeds that had resulted
from it.
"The next time, on waking, I couldn't find him. I kept watch on the house of the
Greeks. I weighed in my mind a visit to the old man, the Greek merchant, some
way to lay down a friendship with him. I thought of you. I pictured you. I
remembered you. I made up poems in my head about you. I didn't hear or see
anything of your brother. I presumed he'd left Antioch.
"Then one night I awoke and came upstairs and looked out to see the city full of
random fires.
"Germanicus had died, never retracting his accusations that Piso had poisoned
him.
"When I reached the house of the Greek merchant, it was nothing but burnt
timbers. I caught no sight or sound of your brother anywhere. For all I knew
they were all dead, your brother, and the Greek merchant family.

"All through the nights after, I searched for sight or sound of Lucius. I had no
idea you were here, only an obsessive longing for you. I tried to remind myself
that if I mourned for every mortal tie I had had when alive, I would go mad long
before I had learnt anything about my gifts from our King and Queen.
"Then, I was in the bookseller's and it was early evening and the Priest slipped
up to me. He pointed to you. There you stood in the Forum, and the philosopher
and students were bidding you farewell. I was so dose!
"I was so overcome with love I didn't even listen to the Priest until I realized
he was speaking of strange dreams as he pointed to you. He was saying that only
I could put it all together. It had to do with the blood drinker who had
recently been in Antioch, not an uncommon occurrence. I have slain other blood
drinkers before. I've vowed to catch this one.
"Then I saw Lucius. I saw you come together. His anger and guilt were nearly
blinding to me with this blood drinker's vision. I heard your words effortlessly
from a great distance, but would not move until you were safely away from him.
"I wanted to kill him then, but the wiser course seemed to stay right with you,
to enter the Temple and stay by your side. I was not certain of my right to kill
your brother for you, that it was what you wanted. I didn't know that until I'd
told you of his guilt. Then I knew how much you wanted it done.
"Of course I had no idea how clever you had become, that all the talent for
reason and words I'd loved in you when you were a girl was still there. Suddenly
you were in the Temple, thinking three times faster than the other mortals
present, weighing every aspect of what faced you, outwitting everyone. And then
came the spectacular confrontation with your brother in which you caught him in
the most clever net of truths, and thereby dispatched him, without ever touching
him, but instead drawing three military witnesses into complicity with his
death."
He broke off, then said, "In Rome, years ago, I followed you. You were sixteen.
I remember your first marriage. Your Father took me aside, he was so gentle.
`Marius, you're destined to be a roaming historian,' he said. I didn't dare tell
him my true estimation of your husband.
"And now you come to Antioch, and I think, in my self-centered manner, as you
will promptly note ­ if ever a woman was created for me, it is this woman. And I
know as soon as I leave you in the morning, that I must somehow get the Mother
and Father out of Antioch, get them away, but then this blood drinker has to be
destroyed, and then and only then can you be safely left."
"Safely abandoned," I said.
"Do you blame me?" he asked.
The question caught me off guard. I looked at him for a seemingly endless
moment, allowing his beauty to fill my eyes, and sensing with intolerable
keenness his sadness and desperation. Oh, how he needed me! How desperately he
needed not just any mortal soul in which to confide, but me.
"You really did want to protect me, didn't you?" I asked. "And your explanation
of all points is so completely rational; it has the elegance of mathematics.
There is no need for reincarnation, or destiny, or any miraculous allowance for
any part of what's happened."
"It's what I believe," he said sharply. His face grew blank, then stern. "I
would never give you anything short of truth. Are you a woman who wants to be
humored?"
"Don't be fanatical in your dedication to reason," I said.
These words both shocked and offended him.
"Don't cling to reason so desperately in a world of so many horrid
contradictions!"
He was silenced.
"If you so cling to reason," I said, "then in the passage of time reason may
fail you, and when it does you may find yourself taking refuge in madness."
"What on Earth do you mean?"

"You've made of reason and logic religion. It's obviously the only way you can
endure what's happened to you, that you're a blood drinker and custodian,
apparently, of these displaced and forgotten deities."
"They aren't deities!" He grew angry. "Thousands of years ago, they were made,
through some mingling of spirit and flesh that rendered them immortal. They find
their refuge obviously in oblivion. In your kindness you characterize it as a
garden from which the Mother gathered flowers and leaves to make a garland for
you, a trap, as you said. But this is your sweet girlish poetry. We do not know
that they string very many words together."
"I am no sweet girl," I said. "Poetry belongs to everyone. Speak to me!" I said.
"And put aside these words, `girl' and `woman.' Don't be so frightened of me."
"I am not," he said angrily.
"You are! Even as this new blood races through me still, eats at me and
transforms me, I cling to neither reason nor superstition for my safety. I can
walk through a myth and out of it! You fear me, because you don't know what I
am. I look like a woman, I sound like a man, and your reason tells you the sum
total is impossible!"
He rose from the table. His face took on a sheen like sweat but far more
radiant.
"Let me tell you what happened to me!" he said resolutely.
"Good, do tell me," I said. "In straightforward manner."
He let this go by. I spoke against my heart. I wanted only to love him. I knew
his cautions. But for all his wisdom, he displayed an enormous will, a man's
will, and I had to know the source of it. I concealed my love.
"How did they lure you?"
"They didn't," he said calmly. "I was captured by the Keltoi in Gaul, in the
city of Massilia. I was brought North, my hair allowed to grow long, then shut
up amid barbarians in a great hollow tree in Gaul. A burnt blood drinker made me
into a 'new god' and told me to escape the local Priests, go South to Egypt and
find out why all the blood drinkers had been burnt, the young ones dying, the
old one suffering. I went for my own reasons! I wanted to know what I was!"
"I can well understand," I said.
"But not before I saw blood worship at its most grisly and unspeakable ­ I was
the god, mind you, Marius, who followed you adoringly all over Rome ­ and it was
to me that these men were offered."
"I've read it in Caesar's history."
"You've read it but you haven't seen it. How dare you throw at me such a trivial
boast!"
"Forgive me, I forgot your childish temper."
He sighed. "Forgive me, I forgot your practical and naturally impatient
intellect."
"I'm sorry. I regret my words. I had to 'witness executions of Rome. It was my
duty. And that was in the name of law. Who suffers more or less'? Victims of
sacrifice or the law?"
'Very well. I escaped these Keltoi and went to Egypt, and there I found the
Elder, who was the keeper of the Mother and the Father, the Queen and the King,
the first blood drinkers of all time, from which this enhancement of our blood
flows. This Elder told me stories that were vague but compelling. The Royal Pair
had once been human, no more. A spirit or demon had possessed one or both,
lodging itself so firmly that no exorcism could oust it. The Royal Pair could
transform others by giving the blood. They sought to make a religion. It was
overthrown. Again and again it was overthrown. Anyone who possesses the blood
can make another! Of course this Elder claimed ignorance of why so many had been
burnt. But it was he who had dragged his sacred and royal charges into the sun
after centuries of meaningless guardianship! Egypt was dead, he said to me. `The
granary of Rome,' he called it. He said the Royal Pair had not moved in a
millennium."

This filled me with the most remarkable and poetic sense of horror.
"Well, one day's hot light was not enough anymore to destroy the ancient
parents, but all over the world the children swered. And this cowardly Elder,
given only pain for his reward, a burned skin, lost the courage required to
continue the exposure of the Royal Pair. He had no cause, one or another.
"Akasha spoke to me. She spoke as best she could. In images, pictures of what
had happened since the beginning, how this tribe of gods and goddesses had
sprung from her, and rebellions had occurred, and how much history was lost, and
purpose was lost, and when it came to the forming of words, Akasha could make
but only a few silent sentences: `Marius, take us out of Egypt! ' " He paused. "
`Take us out of Egypt, Marius. The Elder means to destroy us. Guard us or we
perish here.' '*
He took a breath; he was calmer now, not so angry, but very much shattered, and
in my ever increasing vampiric vision, I knew more about him, how very
courageous he was, how very determined to hold to principles in which he
believed, in spite of the magic that had swallowed him whole before he had had
time even to question it. His was an attempt at a noble life, in spite of all.
"My fate," he said, "was directly connected to hers, to them! If I left them,
the Elder would sooner or later put them in the sun again, and I, lacking the
blood of centuries, would burn up like wax! My life, already altered, would have
been ended. But the Elder did not ask me to install a new priesthood. Akasha did
not ask me to install a new religion! She did not speak of altars or worship.
Only the old burntout god in the Northern grove among the barbarians had asked
me to do such a thing when he sent me to the South, to Egypt, the motherland of
all mysteries."
"How long have you kept them?"
"Over fifteen years. I lose count. They never move or speak. The wounded ones,
those burnt so badly that time will take centuries to heal them, they learn that
I am here. They come. I try to extinguish them before their minds can give forth
a flash of a confirming image to other distant minds. She doesn't guide these
burnt children to where she is, as she once guided me! If I am tricked or
overwhelmed, she moves only as you saw, to crush the blood drinker. But she has
called you, Pandora, reached out for you. And we know now to what exact purpose.
And I've been cruel to you. Clumsy."
He turned to me. His voice grew tender. "Tell me, Pandora," he asked. "In the
vision you saw, when we were married, were we young or old'? Were you the girl
of fifteen I sought too early perhaps, or the mature full blossom of a creature
you are now? Are the families happy? Are we comely?"
I was hotly embraced by the sincerity of his words. The anguish and the pleading
that lay behind them.
"We were as we are now," I said, cautiously answering his smile with my own.
"You were a man fixed in the prime of life forever, and I? As I am at this
hour."
"Believe me," he said with sweetness in his voice,
"I would not have spoken so harshly on this of all nights, but you have now so
many other nights to come. Nothing can kill you now, but the sun or fire.
Nothing in you will deteriorate. You have a thousand experiences to discover."
"And what of the ecstasy when I drank from her?" I asked. "What of her own
beginnings and her suffering? Does she in no way connect herself to the sacred?"
"What is sacred?" he asked, shrugging his shoulder. "Tell me. What is sacred?
Was it sanctity you saw in her dreams?"
I bowed my head. I couldn't answer.
"Certainly not the Roman Empire," he said, "Certainly not the temples of
Augustus Caesar. Certainly not the worship of Cybele! Certainly not the cult of
those who worship fire in Persia. Is the name Isis sacred anymore, or was it
ever? The Elder in Egypt, my first and only instructor in all this, said that
Akasha invented the stories of Isis and Osiris to suit her purposes, to give a

poetry to her worship. I think rather she grafted herself upon old stories. The
demon in those two grows with each new blood drinker made. It must."
"But to no purpose?"
"That it may know more?" he said. "That it may see more, feel more, through each
of us which carries its blood? Perhaps it is such a creature as that and each of
us is but a tiny part of it, carrying all its senses and capacities and
returning our experiences to it. It reaches out through us to know the world!"
"I can tell you this," he said. He paused and put his hands on the desk. "What
burns in me does not care if the victim is innocent or guilty of any crime. It
thirsts. Not every night, but often! It says nothing! It does not talk of altars
to me in my heart! It drives me as though I were the battle steed and it the
mounted General! It is Marius who weeds the good from the bad, according to the
old custom, for reasons you can well understand, but not this ravening thirst;
this thirst knows nature but no morality."
"I love you, Marius," I said. "You and my Father are the only men I've ever
really loved. But I must go out alone now."
"What did you say!" He was amazed. "It's just past midnight."
"You've been very patient, but I have to walk alone now."
"I'll come with you."
"You will not," I said.
"But you can't simply roam around Antioch on your own, alone."
"Why not? I can hear mortal thoughts now if I want to. A litter just passed. The
slaves are so drunk it's a wonder they don't drop the thing and heave the Master
into the road, and he himself is fast asleep. I want to walk alone, out there,
in the city in the dark places and the dangerous places and the evil places and
the places where even ... where even a god would not go."
"This is your vengeance on me," he said. I walked towards the gate and he
followed. "Pandora, not alone."
"Marius, my love," I said, turning, taking his hand. "It is not vengeance. The
words you spoke earlier, `girl' and `woman,' they have always circumscribed my
life. I want only now to walk fearlessly with my arms bare and my hair down my
hack, into any cavern of danger I choose. I am drunk still from her blood, from
yours! Things shimmer and flicker that should shine. I must be alone to ponder
all you've said."
"But you have to be back before dawn, well before. You have to be with me in the
crypt below. You can't merely lie in some room somewhere. The deadly light will
penetrate ­"
He was so protective, so lustrous, so infuriated.
"I will be back," I said, "and well before dawn, and for now, my heart will
break if we are not, as of this moment, bound together."
"We are bound," he said. "Pandora, you could drive me mad."
He stopped at the bars of the gate.
"Don't come any farther," I said as I left.
I walked down towards Antioch. My legs had such strength and spring, and the
dust and pebbles of the road were nothing to my feet, and my eyes penetrated the
night to see the full conspiracy of owls and little rodents that hovered in the
trees, eyeing me, then fleeing as if their natural senses warned them against
me.
Soon I came into the city proper. I think the resolution with which I moved from
little street to little street was enough to frighten anyone who would have
contemplated molesting me. I heard only cowardice and erotic curses from the
dark, those tangled ugly curses men heap on women they desire ­ half threat,
half dismissal.
I could sense the people in their houses fast asleep, and hear the guards on
watch, talking in their barracks behind the Forum.
I did all the things the new blood drinkers always do. I touched the surfaces of
walls and stared, enchanted at a common torch and the moths that gave themselves

up to it. I felt against my naked arms and fragile tunic the dreams of all
Antioch surrounding me.
Rats fled up and down the gutters and the streets. The river gave off its own
sound, and there came a hollow echoing from the ships at anchor, even from the
faintest stirring of the water.
The Forum, resplendent with its ever burning lights, caught the moon as if it
were a great human trap for it, the very reverse of an earthly crater, a
man-made design that could be seen and blessed by the intransigent heavens.
When I came to my own house,, I found I could climb to the very top easily, and
there I sat on the tiled roof, so relaxed and secure and free, looking down into
the courtyard, into the peristyle, where I had really learned ­ alone on those
three nights ­ the truths that had prepared me for Akasha's blood.
In calmness and without pain, I thought it through again ­ as if I owed this
reconsideration to the woman I had been, the initiate, the woman who had sought
refuge in the Temple. Marius was right. The Queen and King were possessed of
some demon which spread through the blood, feeding upon it and growing, as I
could feel it doing in me now.
The King and Queen did not invent justice! The Queen, who broke the little
Pharaoh into sticks, did not invent law or righteousness!
And the Roman courts, bumbling awkwardly towards each decision, weighing all
sides, refusing any magical or religious device, they did even in these terrible
times strive for justice. It was a system based not upon the revelation of the
gods, but upon reason.
But I could not regret the moment of intoxication when I'd drunk her blood and
believed in her, and seen the flowers come down upon us. I could not regret that
any mind could conceive of such perfect transcendence.
She had been my Mother, my Queen, my goddess, my all. I had known it as we were
meant to know it when we drink the potions in the Temple, when we sing, when we
are rocking in delirious song. And in her arms I had known it. In Marius's arms
I'd known it as well, and in a safer measure, and I wanted only to be with him
now.
How ghastly her worship seemed. Flawed and ignorant, being elevated to such
power! And how revealing suddenly that at the core of mysteries there should lie
such degrading explanations. Blood spilt on her golden gown!
All images and meaningful glimpses do but teach you deeper things, I thought
again, as I had in the Temple, when I had settled for the consolation of a
basalt statue.
It is I, and I alone, who must make of my new life a heroic tale.
I was very happy for Marius that he had such comfort in reason. But reason was
only a created thing, imposed with faith upon the world, and the stars promise
nothing to no one.
I had seen something deeper in those dark nights of hiding in this house in
Antioch, in mourning for my Father. I had seen that at the very heart of
Creation there very well might lie something as uncontrollable and
incomprehensible as a raging volcano.
Its lava would destroy trees and poets alike.
So take this gift, Pandora, I told myself. Go home, thankful that you are again
wed, for you have never made a better match or seen a more tantalizing future.
When I returned, and my return was very rapid, full of new lessons in how I
might pass quickly over rooftops, scarce touching them, and over walls ­ when I
returned, I found him as I had left him, only much sadder. He sat in the garden,
just as he had in the vision shown to me by Akasha.
It must have been a place he loved, behind the villa with its many doors, a
bench facing a thicket and a natural stream bubbling up and over the rocks and
spilling down into a current through high grass.
He rose at once.
I took him in my arms.

"Marius, forgive me," I said.
"Don't say such a thing, I'm to blame for it all. And I didn't protect you from
it."
We were in each other's arms. I wanted to press my teeth into him, drink his
blood, and then I did, and felt him taking the blood from me. This was a union
more powerful than any I had ever known in a marriage bed, and I yielded to it
as I never yielded in life to anyone.
I felt an exhaustion sweep me suddenly. I withdrew my kiss with its teeth.
"Come on, now," he said. "Your slave is asleep. And during the day, while we
must sleep, he will bring all your possessions here, and those girls of yours,
should you want to keep them."
We walked down the stairs, we entered another room. It took all Marius's
strength to pull back the door, which meant simply that no mortal man could do
it.
There lay a sarcophagus, plain, of granite.
"Can you lift the lid of the sarcophagus?" Marius asked.
"I am feeling weald"
"It's the sun rising, try to 1ift the lid. Slide it to one side."
I did, and inside I found a bed of crushed lilies and rose petals, of silken
pillows, and bits of dried flower kept for scent.
I stepped in, turned around, sat and stretched out in this stone prison. At once
he took his place in the tomb beside me, and pushed the lid back to its place,
and all the world's light in any form was shut out, as if the dead would have it
so.
"I'm drowsy. I can hardly form words."
"What a blessing," he said.
"There is no need for such an insult," I murmured. "But I forgive you."
"Pandora, I love you!" he said helplessly.
"Put it inside me," I said, reaching between his legs. "Fill me and hold me."
"This is stupid and superstitious!"
"It is neither," I said. "It is symbolic and comforting."
He obeyed. Our bodies were one, connected by this sterile organ which was no
more to him now than his arm, but how I loved the arm he threw over me and the
lips he pressed to my forehead.
"I love you, Marius, my strange, tall and beautiful Marius."
"I don't believe you," he said, his voice barely a whisper.
"What do you mean?"
"You'll despise me soon enough for what I've done to you."
"Not so, oh, rational one. I am not as eager to grow old, wither and die, as you
might think. I should like a chance to know more, to see more..."
I felt his lips against my forehead.
"Did you really try to marry me when I was fifteen?"
"Oh, agonizing memories! Your Father's insults still sting my ears! He had me
all but thrown out of your house!"
"I love you with my whole heart," I whispered. "And you have won. You have me
now as your wife."
"I have you as something, but I do not think that `wife' is the word for it. I
wonder that you've already forgotten your earlier strenuous objection to the
term.
"Together," I said, scarce able to talk on account of his kisses. I was drowsy,
and loved the feel of his lips, their sudden eagerness for pure auction. "We'll
think of another word more exalted than `wife.' "
Suddenly I moved back. I could not see him in the dark.
`Are you kissing me so that I will not talk'?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I was doing," he said.
I turned away from him.
"Turn back, please," he said.

"No," I said.
I lay still, realizing dimly that his body felt quite normal to me now, because
mine was as hard as his was, as strong perhaps. What a sublime advantage. Oh,
but I loved him. I loved him! So let him kiss the back of the neck! He could not
force me to turn towards him!
The sun must have risen.
For a silence fell on me which was as if the universe with all its volcanoes and
raging tides ­ and all its Emperors, Kings, judges, Senators, philosophers and
Priests ­ had been erased from existence.



II

Well, David, there you have it.
I could continue the Plautus-Terence style comedy for pages. I could vie with
Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
But that is the basic story. That is what lies behind the flippant capsule
version in The Vampire Lestat,
fashioned into its final trivial form by Marius or Lestat, who knows.
Let me lead you through those points which are sacred and burn still in my
heart, no matter how easily they have been dismissed by another.
And the tale of our parting is not mere dissonance but may contain some lesson.
Marius taught me to hunt, to catch the evildoer only, and to kill without pain,
enwrapping the soul of my victim in sweet visions or allowing the soul to
illuminate its own death with a cascade of fantasies which I must not judge, but
merely devour, like the blood. All that does not require detailed documentation.
We were matched in strength. When some burnt and ruthlessly ambitious blood
drinker did find his way to Antioch, which happened only a few times and then
not at all, we executed the supplicant together. These were monstrous
mentalities, forged in ages we could hardly understand, and they sought the
Queen like jackals seek the bodies of the human dead.
There was no argument between us over any of them.
We often read aloud to each other, and we laughed together at Petronius's
Satyricon, and we shared both tears and laughter later as we read the bitter
satires of Juvenal. There was no end of new satire and history coming from Rome
and from Alexandria.
But something forever divided Marius from me.
Love grew but so did constant argument, and argument became more and more the
dangerous cement of the bond.
Over the years, Marius guarded his delicate rationality as a Vestal Virgin
guards a sacred flame. If ever any ecstatic emotion took hold of me, he was
there to grab me by the shoulders and tell me in no uncertain terms that it was
irrational. Irrational, irrational, irrational!
When the terrible earthquake of, the second century struck Antioch, and we were
unharmed, I dared speak of it as a Divine Blessing. This set Marius into a rage,
and he was quick to point that the same Divine Intervention had also protected
the Roman Emperor Trajan, who was in the city at the time. What was I to make of
that?
For the record, Antioch quickly rebuilt itself, the markets flourished, more
slaves poured in, nothing stopped the caravans headed for the ships, and the
ships headed for the caravans.
But long before that earthquake we had all but come to blows night after night.
If I lingered for hours in the room of the Mother and the Father, Marius
invariably came to collect me and bring me back to my senses. He could not read
in peace with me in such a state, he declared. He could not think because he
knew I was downstairs deliberately inviting madness.
Why, I demanded, must his domination extend to every corner of our entire house

and garden? And how was it that I was his match in strength when an old burnt
blood drinker found his way to Antioch and we picked up the word of his killing
and had to do away with him?
"We are not matched in minds?" I demanded.
"Only you could ask that question!" came his reply.
Of course the Mother and Father never moved or spoke again. No blood dreams, no
divine directive ever reached me. Only now and then did Marius remind me of
this. And after a long while, he allowed me to tend the Shrine with him, to see
full well the extent of their silent and seemingly mindless compliance. They
appeared utterly beyond reach; their cooperation was sluggish and frightening to
witness.
When Flavius fell ill in his fortieth year, Marius and I had the first of our
truly terrible battles. This came early on, well before the earthquake.
It was, by the way, a wondrous time because the wicked old Tiberius was filling
Antioch with new and wonderful buildings. She was the rival of Rome. But Flavius
was ill.
Marius could scarce bear it. He had become more than fond of Flavius ­ they
talked about Aristotle all the time, and Flavius proved one of those men who can
do anything for you, from managing a household to copying the most esoteric and
crumbling text with complete accuracy.
Flavius had never put a single question to us as to what we were. In his mind, I
found, devotion and acceptance far superseded curiosity or fear.
We hoped Flavius had only a minor illness. But finally, as Flavius's fever grew
worse, Flavius turned his head away from Marius whenever Marius came to him. But
he held on to my hand always when I offered it. Frequently I lay beside him for
hours, as he had once lain beside me.
Then one night Marius took me to the gate and said, "He'll be dead by the time I
come back. Can you bear this alone?"
"Do you run from it?" I asked.
"No," he said. "But he doesn't want me to see him die; he doesn't want me to see
him groan in pain."
I nodded.
Marius left.
Marius had long ago laid down the rule that no other blood drinker was ever to
be made. I didn't bother to question him on this.
As soon as he was gone, I made Flavius into a vampire. I did it just the way the
burnt one, Marius and Akasha had done it to me, for Marius and I had long
discussed the methods ­ withdraw as much blood as you can, then give it back
until you are near to fainting.
I did faint and wake to see this splendid Greek standing over me, smiling
faintly, all disease gone from him. He reached down to take my hand and help me
to my feet.
Marius walked in, stared at the reborn Flavius in amazement and said, "Get out,
out of this house, out of this city, out of this province, out of this Empire."
Flavius's last words to me were:
"Thank you for this Dark Gift." That is the first I ever heard that particular
phrase, which appears so often in Lestat's writings. How well this learned
Athenian understood it.
For hours I avoided Marius. I would never be forgiven! Then I went out into the
garden. I discovered Marius was grieving, and when he looked up, I realized that
he had been utterly convinced that I meant to go off with Flavius. When I saw
this, I took him in my arms. He was full of quiet relief and love; he forgave me
at once for my "absolute rashness."
"Don't you see," I said, taking him in hand, "that I adore you? But you cannot
rule over me! Can you not consider in your reasonable fashion that the greatest
part of our gift eludes you ­ it's the freedom from the confines of male,
female!"

"You can't convince me," he said, "for one moment that you don't feel, reason
and act in the manner of a woman. We both loved Flavius. But why another blood
drinker?"
"I don't know except that Flavius wanted it, Flavius knew all about our secrets,
there was a... an understanding between me and Flavius! He had been loyal in the
darkest hours of my mortal life. Oh, I can't explain it."
"A woman s sentiments, exactly. And you have launched this creature into
eternity."
"He joins our search," I replied.
About the middle of the century, when the city was very rich and the Empire was
about as peaceful as it was ever going to be for the next two hundred years, the
Christian Paul came to Antioch.
I went to hear him speak one night and came home, saying casually that the man
could convert the very stones to this faith, such was his personal power.
"How can you spend your time on such things!" Marius demanded. "Christians. They
aren't even a cult! Some worship John, some worship Jesus. They fight amongst
one another! Don't you see what this man Paul has done?"
"No, what?" I said. "I didn't say I was going to join the sect. I only said I
stopped to hear him. Who is hurt by that?"
"You, your mind, your equilibrium, your common sense. It's compromised by the
foolish things in which you take an interest, and frankly the principle of truth
is hurt!" He had only just begun.
"Let me tell you about this man Paul," Marius said. "He never knew either the
Baptizer John or the Galilean Jesus, The Hebrews have thrown him out of the
group. Jesus and John were both Hebrews! And so Paul has now turned to everyone.
Jew and Christian alike, and Roman and Greek, and said, `You needn't follow the
Hebrew observance. Forget the Feasts in Jerusalem. Forget Circumcision. Become a
Christian.' "
"Yes, that is true," I said with a sigh.
"It's a very easy religion to take up," he said. "It's nothing. You have to
believe that this man rose from the Dead. And by the way, I've combed the
available texts which are floating all over the marketplaces. Have you?"
"No. I'm surprised you've found this search worthy of your time."
"I don't see anywhere in the writings of those who knew John and Jesus where
these two are quoted as saying either one of them will rise from the Dead, or
that all who believe in them will have life after death. Paul added all that.
What an enticing promise! And you should hear your friend, Paul, on the subject
of Hell! What a cruel vision ­ that flawed mortals could sin in this life so
grievously that they would burn for all eternity."
"He's not my friend. You make so much of my passing remarks. Why do you feel so
strongly?"
"I told you, I care about what is true, what is reasonable!"
"Well, there's something you're missing about this group of Christians, some way
in which when they come together they share a euphoric love and they believe in
great generosity ­"
"Oh, not again! And are you to tell me this is good'?"
I didn't answer.
He was returning to his work when I spoke.
"You fear me," I said to him. "You fear that I'll be swept off my feet by
somebody of belief and abandon you. No. No, that's not right. You fear that you
will be swept up. That the world will somehow entice you back into it, so that
you won't live here with me, the superior Roman observer recluse, anymore, but
go back, seeking mortal comforts of companionship and proximity to others,
friendship with mortals, their recognition of you as one of them when you are
not one of them!"
"Pandora, you talk gibberish."
"Keep your proud secrets," I said. "But I do fear for you, that I will admit."

"Fear for me? And why?" he demanded.
"Because you don't realize everything perishes, everything is artifice! That
even logic and mathematics and justice have no ultimate meaning!"
"That's not true," he said.
"Oh, yes it is. Some night will come when you will see what I saw, when I first
came to Antioch, before you'd found me, before this transformation which should
have swept away everything in its path.
"You will see a darkness," I went on, "a darkness so total that Nature never
knows it anywhere on Earth at any time, in any place! Only the human soul can
know it. And it goes on forever. And I pray that when you finally can no longer
escape from it, when you realize it is all around you, that your logic and your
reason give you some strength against it."
He gave me the most respectful look. But he didn't speak. I continued:
"Resignation will do you no good," I said, "when such a time comes. Resignation
requires will, and will requires decision, and decision requires belief, and
belief requires that there is something to believe in! And all action or
acceptance requires a concept of a witness! Well, there is nothing, and there
are no witnesses! You don't know that yet, but I do. I hope, when you find it
out, someone can comfort you as you dress and groom those monstrous relics below
the stairs! As you bring their flowers!" I was so angry. I went on:
"Look back on me when this moment comes ­ if not for forgiveness, look back on
me as a model. For I have seen this, and I have survived. And it matters not
that I stopped to listen to Paul preach of Christ, or that I weave flowers into
crowns for the Queen, or that I dance like a fool under the moon in the garden
before dawn, or that I... that I love you. It matters not. Because there is
nothing. And no one to see. No one!" I sighed. It was time to finish.
"Go back to your history, this stack of lies that tries to link event to event
with cause and effect, this preposterous faith that postulates that one thing
follows from another. I tell you, it's not so. But it is very Roman of you to
think so."
He sat silent looking up at me. I couldn't tell what his thoughts were or what
his heart felt. Then he asked:
"What would you have me do?" He had never looked more innocent.
Bitterly, I laughed. Did we not speak the same language? He heard not one word I
had uttered. Yet he presented me not with a reply, but only with this simple
question.
"All right," I said. "I'll tell you what I want. Love me, Marius, love me, but
leave me alone!" I cried out. I had not even thought. The words just came.
"Leave me alone, so that I may seek my own comforts, my own means to remain
alive, no matter how foolish or pointless these comforts appear to you. Leave me
alone!"
He was wounded, so uncomprehending, looking so innocent still.
We had many similar arguments as the decades passed.
Sometimes he would come to me after; he would fall into long thoughtful talks
about what he felt was happening with the Empire, how the Emperors were going
mad and the Senate had no power, how the very progress of man was unique in
Nature and something to be watched. How he would crave life, he thought, until
there was no more life.
"Even if there is nothing left but desert waste," he said, "I should want to be
there, to see dune folding upon dune," he went on. "If there was but one lamp
left in all the world, I'd want to watch its flame. And so would you."
But the terms of the battle, and its heat, never really changed.
At heart he thought I hated him for having been so unkind on the night I was
given the Dark Blood. I told him this was childish. I could not convince him
that my soul and my intelligence were infinitely too large for such a simple
grudge, and that I owed him no explanation for my thoughts, words and deeds.
For two hundred years, we lived and loved together. He became ever more

beautiful to me.
As more and more barbarians from the North and from the East poured into the
city, he felt no necessity to dress like a Roman anymore, and frequently wore
the jeweled clothes of the Easterners. His hair seemed to be growing finer,
lighter. He seldom cut it, which of course he would have had to do every night
had he wanted it short. It was a splendor on his shoulders.
As his face grew ever more smooth, away went the few lines that could so easily
design anger in his expression. As I've told you before, he greatly resembles
Lestat. Only he is more compact of build, and jaw and chin had hardened just a
little more with age before the Dark Gift. But the unwanted folds were receding
from his eyes.
Sometimes for nights on end, in fear of a fight, we didn't speak. There was
between us always a continuous physical affection ­ embraces, kisses, sometimes
the mere silent lock of our hands.
But we knew we had now lived far beyond a normal human life span.
You need from me no detailed history of that remarkable time. It is too well
known. Only let me place here a few reminders. Only let me describe for you my
perspective on the changes happening all over the Empire.
Antioch as a thriving city proved indestructible. The Emperors began to favor it
and visit it. More Temples went up to the Eastern cults. And then Christians of
all kinds poured into Antioch.
Indeed, the Christians of Antioch comprised at last an immense and fascinating
bunch of people arguing with each other.
Rome went to war on the Jews, crushing Jerusalem completely and destroying the
sacred Hebrew Temple. Many brilliant Jewish thinkers came to Antioch as well as
Alexandria.
Twice or perhaps even three times, Roman legions pushed past us, North of us,
into Parthia; once we even had a little rebellion of our own, but Rome always
resecured the city of Antioch. So the market closed for a day! On went the
trade, the great lust of the caravans for the ships, and of the ships for the
caravans, and Antioch was the bed in which they must wed each other.
There was little new poetry. Satire. Satire seemed the only safe or honest
expression of the Roman mind now, and so we had the riotously funny story The
Golden Ass, by Apuleius, which seemed to make fun of every religion. But there
was a bitterness to the poet Martial. And those letters of Pliny which reached
me were full of dire judgments on the moral chaos of Rome.
I began as a vampire to feed exclusively on soldiers. I liked them, their look,
their strength. I fed so much so on them, that in my carelessness, I became a
legend amongst them, "The Greek Lady Death," this on account of my clothes which
to them appeared archaic. I struck at random in the dark streets. There wasn't a
chance of their ever surrounding me or stopping me, so great was my skill, my
strength and my thirst.
But I saw things in their rebellious deaths, the blaze of a pitched battle in a
march, a hand-to-hand struggle on a steep mountain. I took them down gently into
the finish, filling myself to the brim with their blood, and sometimes, through
a veil it seemed, I saw the souls of those whom they themselves had slain.
When I told Marius this, he said it was just the kind of mystical nonsense he
would expect of me.
I didn't press the point.
He watched with keen interest the developments of Rome. To me they seemed merely
surprising.
He pored over the histories of Dio Cassius and Plutarch and Tacitus, and pounded
his fist when he heard of the endless skirmishes on the Rhine River, and the
push Northward into Britannia and the building of Hadrian's wall to forever keep
away the Scots, who like the Germans would yield to no one.
"They are not patrolling, preserving, containing an Empire any longer," he said.
"Conserving a way of life! It's just war, and trade!"

I couldn't disagree.
It was really even worse than he knew. If he had gone as often as I did to
listen to the philosophers he would have been appalled.
Magicians were appearing everywhere, claiming to be able to fly, to see visions,
to heal with the laying on of hands! They got into battles with the Christians
and the Jews. I don't think the Roman army paid them any attention.
Medicine as I had known it in my mortal life had been flooded with a river of
Eastern secret formulae, amulets, rituals, and little statues to clutch.
Well over half the Senate was no longer Italian by birth. This meant that our
Rome was no longer our Rome. And the title of Emperor had become a joke. There
were so many assassinations, plots, squabbles, false emperors and palace coups
that it soon became perfectly clear that the Army ruled. The Army chose the
Emperor. The Army sustained him.
The Christians were divided into warring sects. It was positively astonishing.
The religion didn't burn itself out in dispute. It gained strength in division.
Occasional furious persecutions ­ in which people were executed for not
worshiping at Roman altars ­ only seemed to deepen the sympathy of the populace
with this new cult.
And the new cult was rampant with debate on every principle with regard to the
Jews, God and Jesus.
The most amazing thing had happened to this religion. Spreading wildly on fast
ships, good roads and well-maintained trade routes, it suddenly found itself in
a peculiar position. The world had not come to an end, as Jesus and Paul had
predicted.
And everybody who had ever known or seen Jesus was dead. Finally everyone who
had ever known Paul was dead.
Christian philosophers arose, picking and choosing from old Greek ideas and old
Hebrew traditions.
Justin of Athens wrote that Christ was the Logos; you could be an atheist and
still be saved in Christ if you upheld reason.
I had to tell this to Marius.
I thought sure it would set him off, and the night was dull, but he merely
countered with more out-landish talk of the Gnostics.
"A man named Saturninus popped up in the Forum today," he said. "Perhaps you
heard talk of him. He preaches a wild variant of this Christian creed you find
so amusing, in which the God of the Hebrews is actually the Devil and Jesus the
new God. This was not the man's first appearance. He and his followers, thanks
to the local Christian Bishop Ignatius, are headed for Alexandria."
"There are books with those ideas already here," I said, "having come from
Alexandria. They are impenetrable to me. Perhaps not to you. They speak of
Sophia, a female principle of Wisdom, which preceded the Creation. Jews and
Christians alike want somehow to include this concept of Sophia in their faith.
It so reminds me of our beloved Isis."
"Your beloved Isis!" he said.
"It seems that there are minds who would weave it all together, every myth, or
its essence, to make a glorious tapestry."
"Pandora, you are making me ill again," he warned. "Let me tell you what your
Christians are doing. They are tightly organizing. This Bishop Ignatius will be
followed by another, and the Bishops want to lay down now that the age of
private revelation had ended; they want to weed through all the mad scrolls on
the market and make a canon which all Christians believe."
"I never thought such could happen," I said. "I agreed with you more than you
knew when you condemned them."
"They are succeeding because they are moving away from emotional morality," he
said. "They are organizing like Romans. This Bishop Ignatius is very strict. He
delegates power. He pronounced on the accuracy of manuscripts. Notice the
prophets are getting thrown out of Antioch."

"Yes, you're right," I said. "What do you thinks Is it good or bad'?"
"I want the world to be better," he said. "Better for men and women. Better.
Only one thing is dear: the old blood drinkers have by now died out, and there
is nothing you or I, or the Queen and the King can do to interfere in the flow
of human events. I believe men and women must try harder. I try to understand
evil ever more deeply with any victim I take.
"Any religion that makes fanatical claims and demands on the basis of a god's
will frightens me."
"You are a true Augustan," I said. "I agree with you, but it is fun to read
these mad Gnostics. This Marcion and this Valentinus."
"Fun for you perhaps. I see danger everywhere. This new Christianity, it isn't
merely spreading, it's changing in each place as it spreads; it's like an animal
which devours the local flora and fauna and then takes on some specific power
from the food."
I didn't argue with him.
By the end of the second century, Antioch was a heavily Christian city. And it
seemed to me as I read the works of new Bishops and philosophers that worse
things than Christianity could come upon us.
Realize, however, David, that Antioch did not lie under a cloud of decay; there
was no sense in the air of the end of the Empire. If anything there was bustling
energy everywhere. Commerce gives one this feel, that false sense that there is
growth and creativity, perhaps, when there is none. Things are exchanged, not
necessarily improved.
Then came the dark time for us. Two forces came together which bore down on
Marius, straining all his courage. Antioch was more interesting than it had ever
been.
The Mother and the Father had never stirred since the first night of my coming!
Let me describe the first disaster, because for me it was not so hard to bear,
and I had only sympathy for Marius.
As I've told you, the question of who was Emperor had become a joke. But it
really became a howl with the events of the early 200s.
The Emperor of the moment was Caracalla, a regular murderer. On a pilgrimage to
Alexandria to see the remains of Alexander the Great, he had ­ for reasons no
one knows even now ­ rounded up thousands of young Alexandrians and slaughtered
them. Alexandria had never seen such a massacre.
Marius was distraught. All the world was distraught.
Marius spoke of leaving Antioch,. of getting far far away from the ruin of the
Empire. I began to agree with him.
Then this revolting Emperor Caracalla marched in our direction, intending to
make a war on the Parthians North of us and to the East of us. Nothing out of
the ordinary for Antioch!
His Mother ­ and you need not remember these names ­ Julia Domna, took up
residence in Antioch. She was dying from cancer of her breast. And let me add
here that this woman had, with her son Caracalla, helped murder her other son,
Geta, because the two brothers had been sharing Imperial power and threatening
to make a Civil War.
Let me continue, and again you need not remember the names.
Troops were massed for this Eastern war against two Kings to the East, Vologases
the Fifth and Artabanus the Fifth. Caracalla did make war, achieve victory and
return in triumph. Then, only miles from Antioch, he was assassinated by his own
soldiers while trying to relieve himself!
All this cast Marius in a hopeless frame of mind. For hours he sat in the Shrine
staring at the Mother and the Father. I felt I knew what he was thinking, that
we should immolate ourselves and them, but I couldn't bear the thought of it. I
didn't want to die. I didn't want to lose life. I didn't want to lose Marius.
I did not care so much about the fate of Rome. Life still stretched before me,
extending the promise of wonders.

Back to the Comedy. The Army promptly made an Emperor out of a man from the
Provinces named Macrinus, who was a Moor and wore an earring in his ear.
He at once had a fight with the dead Emperor's Mother, Julia Domna, because he
wouldn't allow her to leave Antioch to die elsewhere. She starved herself to
death.
This was all too dose to home! These lunatics were in our city, not far away in
a capital which we mourned.
Then war broke out again, because the Eastern Kings, who were caught off guard
before by Caracalla, were now ready, and Macrinus had to lead the Legions into
battle.
As I told you, the Legions now controlled everything. Somebody should have told
Macrinus. Instead of fighting he bought off the enemy. The troops were hardly
proud of this. And then he cracked down on them, taking away some of their
benefits.
He didn't seem to grasp that he had to maintain their approval to survive.
Though of course what good had this done for Caracalla, whom they loved?
Whatever, the sister of Julia Domna, named Julia Maesa, who was a Syrian and of
a family dedicated to the Syrian sun god, seized this dreary moment in the life
of the lusty legions to put her grandson, born of Julia Soemis, in power as
Emperor! It was an outrageous plan actually, for any number of reasons. First
and foremost, all three Julias were Syrian. The boy himself was fourteen years
old, and also he was a hereditary Priest of the Syrian sun god.
But somehow or other Julia Maesa and her daughter's lover, Gannys, managed to
convince a bunch of soldiers in a tent that this fourteen-year-old Syrian boy
should become the Emperor of Rome.
The Army deserted the Imperial Macrinus, and he and his son were hunted down and
murdered.
So, high on the shoulders of proud soldiers rode this fourteen-year-old boy! But
he didn't want to be called by his Roman name. He wanted to be called by the
name of the god he worshiped in Syria, Elagabalus. The very presence of him in
Antioch shook the nerves of all citizens. At last, he and three remaining Julias
­ his aunt, his Mother and his grandmother, all of them Syrian Priestesses ­
left Antioch.
In Nicomedia, which was very near to us, Elagabalus murdered his Mother's lover.
So who was left? He also picked up an enormous sacred black stone and brought it
back to Rome, saying that this stone was sacred to the Syrian sun god, whom all
must now worship.
He was gone, across the sea, but it took sometimes no more than eleven days for
a letter to reach Antioch from Rome, and soon there were rampant rumors. Who
will ever know the truth about him?
Elagabalus. He built a Temple for the stone on the Palatine Hill. He made Romans
stand around in Phoenician gowns while he slaughtered cattle and sheep in
sacrifice.
He begged the physicians to try to transform him into a woman by creating a
proper opening between his legs. Romans were horrified by this. At night he
dressed as a woman, complete with a wig, and went prowling taverns.
All over the Empire the soldiers started to riot.
Even the three Julias, grandmother Julia Maesa, his aunt Julia Domna, and his
own Mother, Julia Soemis, started to get sick of him. After four years, four
years, mind you, of this maniac's rule, the soldiers killed him and threw his
body in the Tiber.
It did not seem to Marius that there was anything left of the world we had once
called Rome. And he was thoroughly sick of all the Christians in Antioch, their
fights over doctrine. He found all mystery religions dangerous now. He served up
this lunatic Emperor as a perfect example of the fanaticism gaining ground in
the times.
And he was right. He was right.

It was all I could do to keep him from despair. In truth he had not yet
confronted that terrible darkness I had once spoken of; he was far too agitated,
far too irritated and quarrelsome. But I was very frightened for him, and hurt
for him, and didn't want him to see more darkly, as I did, to be more aloof,
expecting nothing and almost smiling at the collapse of our Empire.
Then the very worst thing happened, something we had both feared in one form or
another. But it came upon us in the worst possible form.
One night there appeared at our eternally open doors five blood drinkers.
Neither of us had caught the sound of their approach. Lounging about with our
books, we looked up to see these five, three women and a man and a boy, and to
realize that all wore black garments. They were dressed like Christian hermits
and ascetics who deny the flesh and starve themselves. Antioch had a whole
passel of these men in the desert roundabouts.
But these were blood drinkers.
Dark of hair and eye, and dark of skin, they stood before us, their arms folded.
Dark of skin, I thought quickly. They are young. They were made after the great
burning. So what if there are five?
They had in general rather attractive faces, wellshaped features and groomed
eyebrows, and deep dark eyes, and all over them I saw the marks of their living
bodies ­ tiny wrinkles next to their eyes, wrinkled around their knuckles.
They seemed as shocked to see us as we were to see them. They stared at the
brightly lighted library; they stared at our finery, which was in such contrast
to their ascetic robes.
"Well," said Marius, "who are you."
Cloaking my thoughts, I tried to probe theirs. Their minds were locked. They
were dedicated to something. It had the very scent of fanaticism. I felt a
horrid foreboding.
They started timidly to enter the open door.
"No, stop, please," said Marius in Greek "This is my house. Tell me who you are,
and then I perhaps shall invite you over my threshold."
"You're Christians, aren't you?" I said. "You have the zeal."
"We are!" said one in Greek. It was the man. "We are the scourge of humanity in
the name of God and his son, Christ. We are the Children of Darkness."
"Who made you?" asked Marius.
"We were made in a sacred cave and in our Temple," said another, a woman,
speaking in Greek also. "We know the truth of the Serpent, and his fangs are our
fangs."
I limbed to my feet and moved towards Marius.
"We thought you would be in Rome," said the young man. He had short black hair,
and very round innocent eyes. "Because the Christian Bishop of Rome is now
supreme among Christians and the theology of Antioch is no longer of great
matter."
"Why would we be in Rome'?" asked Marius. "What is the Roman Bishop to us?"
The woman took the fore. Her hair was severely parted in the middle but her face
was very regal and regular. She had in particular beautifully defined lips.
"Why do you hide from us? We have heard of you for years! We know that you know
things ­ about us and where the Dark Gift came from, that you know how God put
it into the world, and that you saved our kind from extinction."
Marius was plainly horrified, but gave little sign of it.
"I have nothing to tell you," he said, perhaps too hastily. "Except I do not
believe in your God or your Christ and I do not believe God put the Dark Gift,
as you call it, into the world. You have made a terrible mistake."
They were highly skeptical and utterly dedicated.
"You have almost reached salvation," said another, the boy at the far end of the
line, whose hair was unshorn and hung to his shoulders. He had a manly voice,
but his limbs were small. "You have almost reached the point where you are so
strong and white and pure that you need not drink!"

"Would that that were true, it's not," said Marius.
"Why don't you welcome us?" asked the boy. "Why don't you guide us and teach us
that we may better spread the Dark Blood, and punish mortals for their sins! We
are pure of heart. We were chosen. Each of us went into the cave bravely and
there the dying devil, a crushed creature of blood and bone, cast out of Heaven
in a blaze of fire, passed on to us his teachings."
"Which were what?" asked Marius.
"Make them suffer," the woman said. "Bring death. Eschew all things of the
world, as do the Stoics and the hermits of Egypt, but bring death. Punish them."
The woman had become hostile. "This man won't help us," she said under her
breath. "This man is profane. This man is a heretic."
"But you must receive us," said the young man who had spoken first. "We have
searched so long and so far, and we come to you in humility. If you wish to live
in a palace, then perhaps that is your right, you have earned it, but we have
not. We live in darkness, we enjoy no pleasure but the blood, we feast on the
weak and the diseased and the innocent alike. We do the will of Christ as the
Serpent did the will of God in Eden when he tempted Eve."
"Come to our Temple," said one of the others, "and see the tree of life with the
sacred Serpent wound around it. We have his fangs. We have his power. God made
him, just as God made Judas Iscariot, or Cain, or the evil Emperors of Rome."
"Ah," I said, "I see. Before you happened on the god in the cave, you were
worshipers of the snake. You're Ophites, Sethians, Nassenians."
"That was our first calling," said the boy. "But now we are of the Children of
Darkness, committed to sacrifice and killing, dedicated to inflicting
suffering."
"Oh, Marcion and Valentinus," Marius whispered. "You don't know the names, do
you? They're the poetic Gnostics who invented the morass of your philosophy a
hundred years ago. Duality ­ that, in a Christian world, evil could be as
powerful as good."
"Yes, we know this." Several spoke at once. "We don't know those profane names.
But we know the Serpent and what God wants of us."
"Moses lifted the Serpent in the desert, up over his head," said the boy. "Even
the Queen of Egypt knew the Serpent and wore him in her crown."
"The story of the great Leviathan has been eradicated in Rome," said the woman.
"They took it out of the sacred books. But we know it!"
"So you learned all this from Armenian Christians," said Marius. "Or was it
Syrians."
A man, short of stature, with gray eyes, had not spoken all this while, but he
stepped forward now and addressed Marius with considerable authority.
"You hold ancient truths," he said, "and you use them profanely. All know of
you. The blond Children of Darkness in the Northern woods know of you, and that
you stole some important secret out of Egypt before the Birth of Christ. Many
have come here, glimpsed you and the woman, and gone away in fear."
"Very wise," said Marius.
"What did you find in Egypt'?" asked the woman. "Christian monks live now in
those old rooms that once belonged to a race of blood drinkers. The monks don't
know about us, but we know all about them and you. There was writing there,
there were secrets, there was something that by Divine Will belongs now in our
hands."
"No, there was nothing," said Marius.
The woman spoke up again, "When the Hebrews left Egypt, when Moses parted the
Red Sea, did the Hebrews leave something behind? Why did Moses raise the snake
in the desert? Do you know how many we are? Nearly a hundred. We travel to the
far North, to the South, and even to the East to lands you would not believe."
I could see Marius was distraught.
"Very well," I said, "we understand what you want and why you have been led to
believe that we can satisfy you. I ask you, please, to go out in the Garden and

let us speak. Respect our house. Don't harm our slaves."
"We wouldn't dream of it."
"And we'll be back shortly."
I snatched Marius's hand and pulled him down the stairs.
"Where are you going?" he whispered. "Block all images from your mind! They must
glimpse nothing."
"They won't glimpse," I said, "and from where I will stand as I talk to you,
they won't hear either."
He seemed to catch my meaning. I led him into the sanctuary of the unchanged
Mother and Father, closing the stone doors behind me.
I drew Marius behind the seated King and Queen.
"They can probably hear the hearts of the Pair," I whispered in the softest
manner audible. "But maybe they won't hear us over that sound. Now, we have to
kill them, destroy them completely."
Marius was amazed.
"Look, you know we have to do this!" I said. "You have to kill them and anybody
like them who ever comes near us. Why are you so shocked'? Get ready. The
simplest way is cut them to pieces first, and then burn them."
"Oh, Pandora," he sighed.
"Marius, why do you cringe?"
"I don't cringe, Pandora," he said. "I see myself irrevocably changed by such an
act. To kill when I thirst, to keep to myself and keep these here who must be
kept by somebody, that I have done for so long. But to become an executioner? To
become like the Emperors burning Christians! To commence a war against this
race, this order, this cult, whatever it is, to take such a stand."
"No choice, come on. There are many decorative swords in the room where we
sleep. We should take the big curved swords. And the torch. We should go to them
and tell them how sorry we are for what we must impart to them, then do it!"
He didn't answer.
"Marius, are you going to let them go so that others will come after us? The
only security lies in destroying every blood drinker who ever discovers us and
the King and Queen."
He walked away from me and stood before the Mother. He looked into her eyes. I
knew that he was silently talking to her. And I knew that she was not answering.
"There is one other possibility," I said, "and it's quite real." I beckoned for
him to come back, behind them, where I felt safest to plot.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Give the King and the Queen over to them. And you and I are free. They will
care for the King and Queen with religious fervor! Maybe the King and Queen will
even allow them to drink ­"
"That's unspeakable!" he said.
"Exactly my feelings. We shall never know if we are safe. And they shall run
rampant through the world like supernatural rodents. So do you have a third
plan?"
"No, but I'm ready. We use the fire and the swords together. Can you tell the
lies that will charm them as we approach, armed and carrying torches?"
"Oh, yes, of course," I said.
We went into the chamber and took up the big curved swords that were keenly
sharp and came from the desert world of the Arabs. We lighted another torch from
that at the foot of the stairs and we went up together.
"Come to me, Children," I said as I entered the room, loudly, "come, for what I
have to reveal requires the light of this torch, and you will soon know the
sacred purpose of this sword. How devout you are."
We stood before them.
"How young you are!" I said.
Suddenly, the panic swept them together. They made it so simple for us by
clustering in this manner that we had the task done in moments, lighting their

garments, hacking their limbs, ignoring their piteous cries.
Never had I used my full strength and speed, never my full will, as I did
against them. It was exhilarating to slash them, to force the torch upon them,
to slash them until they fell, until they lost all life. Also, I did not want
them to suffer.
Because they were so young, so very young as blood drinkers, it took quite some
time to burn the bones, to see that all was ashes.
But it was finally done, and we stood together ­ Marius and I ­ in the garden,
our garments smeared with soot, staring down at blowing grass, making certain
with our eyes that the ashes were blown in all directions.
Marius turned suddenly and walked fast away from me, and down the stairs and
into the Mother's Sanctuary.
I rushed after him in panic. He stood holding the torch and the bloody sword ­
oh, how they had bled ­ and he looked into Akasha's eyes.
"Oh, loveless Mother!" he whispered. His face was soiled with blood and grime.
He looked at the flaming torch and looked up at the Queen.
Akasha and Enkil showed no sign of any knowledge of the massacre above. They
showed neither approval, nor gratitude, nor any form of consciousness, They
showed no awareness of the torch in his hand, or his thoughts, whatever they
might be.
It was a finish for Marius, a finish to the Marius I had known and loved at that
time,
He chose not to leave Antioch. I was for getting away and taking them away, for
wild adventures, and seeing the wonders of the world.
But he said no. He had but one obligation. And that was to lay in wait for
others until he had killed every one of them.
For weeks he wouldn't speak or move, unless I shook him and then he pleaded with
me to leave him alone. He rose from the grave only to sit with the sword and the
torch waiting.
It became unbearable to me. Months passed. I said, "You are going mad. We should
take them away!"
Then one night, very angry and alone, I cried out foolishly, "I would I were
free of them and you!" And leaving the house, I did not return for three nights.
I slept in dark safe places I made for myself with ease. Every time I thought of
him, I thought of his sitting motionless there, so very like them, and I was
afraid.
If only he did know true despair; if only he had confronted what we now call
"the absurd." If only he had faced the nothingness! Then this massacre would not
have demoralized him.
Finally one morning just before sunrise, when I was safely hidden, a strange
silence fell over Antioch. A rhythm I had heard there all my days was gone. I
was trying to think, What could this mean? But there was time to find out.
I had made a fatal miscalculation. The villa was empty. He had arranged for the
transport by day. I had no due as to where he had gone! Everything belonging to
him had been taken, and all that I possessed scrupulously left behind.
I had failed him when he most needed me. I walked in circles around the empty
Shrine. I screamed and let the cry echo off the walls.
He never returned to Antioch. No letter ever came.
After six months or more, I gave up and left.
Of course you know the dedicated, religious Christian vampires never died out,
not until Lestat came dressed in red velvet and fur to dazzle them and make a
mockery of their belief. That was in the Age of Reason, That is when Marius
received Lestat. Who knows what other vampire cults exist'?
As for me, I had lost Marius again by then.
I had seen him for only a single precious night one hundred years earlier, and
of course thousands of years after the collapse of what we call "the ancient
world."

I saw him! It was in the fancy fragile times of Louis XIV, the Sun King. We were
at a court ball in Dresden. Music played ­ the tentative blend of clavichord,
lute, violin ­ making the artful dances which seemed no more than bows and
circles.
Across a room, I suddenly saw Marius!
He had been looking at me for a great while, and gave me now the most tragic and
loving smile. He wore a big full-bottomed curly wig, dyed to the very color of
his true hair, and a flared velvet coat, and layers of lace, so favored by the
French, His skin was golden. That meant fire. I knew suddenly he had suffered
something terrible. A jubilant love filled his blue eyes, and without forsaking
his casual posture ­ he was leaning his elbow on the edge of the clavichord ­ he
blew a kiss to me with his fingers.
I truly could not trust my eyes. Was he really there'? Was I, myself, sitting
here, in boned and low-necked bodice, and these huge skirts, one pulled back in
artful folds to reveal the other? My skin in this age seemed an artificial
contrivance. My hair had been professionally gathered and lifted into an ornate
shape.
I had paid no mind to the mortal hands which had so bound me. During this age I
let myself be led through the world by a fierce Asian vampire, about whom I
cared nothing. I had fallen into an ever existing trap for a woman: I had become
the noncommittal and ostentatious ornament of a male personality who for all his
tiresome verbal cruelty possessed sufficient force to carry us both through
time.
The Asian was off' slowly taking his carefully chosen victim in a bedroom above.
Marius came towards me and kissed me and took me in his arms. I shut my eyes.
"This is Marius!" I whispered. "Truly Marius."
"Pandora!" he said, drawing back to look at me. "My Pandora!"
His skin had been burned. Faint scars. But it was almost healed.
He led me out on the dance floor! He was the perfect impersonation of a human
being. He guided me in the steps of the dance. I could scarce breathe. Following
his lead, shocked at each new artful turn by the rapture of his face, I could
not measure centuries or even millennia. I wanted suddenly to know everything ­
where he had been, what had befallen him. Pride and shame in me held no sway.
Could he see that I was no more than a ghost of the woman he'd known? "You are
the hope of my soul!" I whispered.
Quickly he took me away. We went in a carriage to his palace. He deluged me with
kisses. I dung to him.
"You," he said, "my dream, a treasure so foolishly thrown away, you are here,
you have persevered."
"Because you see me, I am here," I said bitterly. "Because you lift the candle,
I can almost see my strength in the looking glass."
Suddenly I heard a sound, an ancient and terrible sound. It was the heartbeat of
Akasha, the heartbeat of Enkil.
The carriage had come to a halt. Iron gates. Servants.
The palace was spacious, fancy, the ostentatious residence of a rich noble.
"They are in there, the Mother and the Father" I asked.
"Oh, yes, unchanged. Utterly reliable in their eternal silence." His voice
seemed to defy the horror of it.
I couldn't bear it. I had to escape the sound of her heart. An image of the
petrified King and Queen rose before my eyes.
"No! Get me away from here. I can't go in. Marius, I cannot look on them!"
"Pandora, they are hidden below the palace. There is no need to look on them.
They won't know. Pandora, they are the same."
Ah! The same! My mind sped back, over perilous terrain, to my very first nights,
alone and mortal, in Antioch, to the later victories and defeats of that time.
Ah! Akasha was the same! I feared I would begin to scream and be unable to
control it.

`Very well," said Marius, "we'll go where you want."
I gave the coachman the location of my hiding place.
I couldn't look at Marius. Valiantly, he kept the pretense of happy reunion. He
talked of science and literature, Shakespeare, Dryden, the New World full of
jungles and rivers. But behind his voice I heard the joy drained from him.
I buried my face against him. When the carriage stopped I leapt out and fled to
the door of my little house. I looked back. He stood in the street.
He was sad and weary, and slowly he nodded and made a gesture of acceptance.
"May I wait it out?" he asked. "Is there hope you'll change your mind? I'll wait
here forever!"
"It's not my mind!" I said. "I leave this city tonight. Forget me. Forget you
ever saw me!"
"My love," he said softly. "My only love."
I ran inside, shutting the door. I heard the carriage pull away. I went wild, as
I had not since mortal life, beating the was with my fists, trying to restrain
my immense strength and trying not to let loose the howls and cries that wanted
to break from me.
Finally I looked at the dock. Three hours left until dawn.
I sat down at the desk and wrote to him:

Marius,
At dawn we will be taken to Moscow. The very coffin in which I rest is to carry
me many miles the first day. Marius, I am dazed. I can't seek shelter in your
house, beneath the same roof as the ancient ones. Please, Marius, come to
Moscow. Help me to free myself of this predicament. Later you can judge me and
condemn me. I need you. Marius, I shall haunt the vicinity of the Czar's palace
and the Great Cathedral until you come. Marius, I know I ask of you that you
make a great journey, but please come. I am a slave to this blood drinker's
will.

I love you,
Pandora

Running back out in the street, I hurried in the direction of his house, trying
to retrace the path which I had so stupidly ignored.
But what about the heartbeat'? I would hear it, that ghastly sound! I had to run
past it, run through it, long enough to give Marius this letter, perhaps to let
him grasp me by the wrist and force me to some safe place, and drive away before
dawn the Asian vampire who kept me.
Then the very carriage appeared, carrying in it my fellow blood drinker from the
ball.
He stopped for me at once.
I took the driver aside. "The man who brought me home," I said. "We went to his
house, a huge palace."
"Yes, Count Marius," said the driver. "I just took him back to his own home."
"You must take this letter to him. Hurry! You must go to his house and put it in
his hands! Tell him I had no money to give you, that he must pay you, I demand
that you tell him. He will pay you. Tell him the letter is from Pandora. You
must find him!"
"Who are you speaking of''' demanded my Asian companion.
I motioned to the driver to leave! "Go!" Of course my consort was outraged. But
the carriage was already on its way.
Two hundred years passed before I learned the very simple truth: Marius never
received that letter!
He had gone back to his house, packed up his belongings and, the following
night, left Dresden in sorrow, only finding the letter long after, as he related
it to the Vampire Lestat, "a fragile piece of writing," as he called it, "that

had fallen to the bottom of a cluttered traveling case."
When did I see him again'?
In this modern world. When the ancient Queen rose from her throne and
demonstrated the limits of her wisdom, her will and her power.
Two thousand years after, in our Twentieth Century still full of Roman columns
and statues and pediments and peristyles, buzzing with computers and
warmth-giving television, with Cicero and Ovid in every public library, our
Queen, Akasha, was wakened by the image of Lestat on a television screen, in the
most modern and secure of shrines, and sought to reign as a goddess, not only
over us, but over humankind.
In the most dangerous hour, when she threatened to destroy us all if we did not
follow her lead ­ and she had already slaughtered many ­ it was Marius with his
reasoning, his optimism, his philosophy who talked to her, tried to calm her and
divert her, who stalled her destructive intent until an ancient enemy came to
fulfill an ancient curse, and struck her down with ancient simplicity.
David, what have you done to me in prodding me to write this narrative?
You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that
no darkness has been ever deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of
love, love from mortals who brought me into the world, love for goddesses of
stone, love for Marius,
Above all, I cannot deny the resurgence of this love for Marius.
And all around me in this world I see evidence of love, Behind the image of the
Blessed Virgin and her Infant Jesus, behind the image of the Crucified Christ,
behind the remembered basalt image of Isis. I see love. I see it in the human
struggle. I see its undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished
in their poetry, their painting, their music, their love of one another and
refusal to accept suffering as their lot.
Above all, however, I see it in the very fashioning of the world which outshines
all art, and cannot by sheer randomness have accumulated such beauty.
Love. But whence comes this love? Why is it so secretive about its source, this
love that makes ram and trees and has scattered the stars over us as the gods
and goddesses once claimed to do?
So Lestat, the brat Prince, woke the Queen; and we survived her destruction. So
Lestat, the brat Prince, had gone to Heaven and Hell and brought back disbelief,
horror and the Veil of Veronica! Veronica, an invented Christian name which
means vera ikon, or true icon. He found himself plunged into Palestine during
the very years that I lived, and there saw something that has shattered the
faculties in humans which we cherish so much: faith, reason.
I have to go to Lestat, look into his eyes. I have to see what he saw!
Let the young sing songs of death. They are stupid.
The finest thing under the sun and the moon is the human soul. I marvel at the
small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of
conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or
despair. I marvel at human endurance.
I have one more story to tell you. I don't know why I want to record it here.
But I do. Perhaps it's because I feel you ­ a vampire who sees spirits ­ will
understand this, and understand perhaps why I remained so unmoved by it.
Once in the Sixth Century ­ that is, five hundred years after the birth of
Christ and three hundred years since I had left Marius ­ I went wandering in
barbarian Italy. The Ostrogoths had long ago overrun the peninsula.
Then other tribes swept down on them, looting, burning, carrying off stones from
old Temples.
It was like walking on burning coals for me to go there.
But Rome did struggle with some conception of itself, its principles, trying to
blend the pagan with the Christian, and find some respite from the barbarian
raids.
The Roman Senate still existed. Of all institutions it had survived

And a scholar, sprung from the same stock as myself, Boethius, a very learned
man who studied the ancients and the saints, had recently been put to death, but
not before he had given us a great book. You can find it in any library today.
It is, of course, The Consolation of Philosophy.
I had to see the ruined Forum for myself, the burnt and barren hills of Rome,
the pigs and goats roaming where once Cicero had spoken to the crowds. I had to
see the forsaken poor living desperately along the banks of the Tiber.
I had to see the fallen classical world. I had to see the Christian churches and
shrines.
I had to see one scholar in particular. Like Boethius he had come from old Roman
stock, and like Boethius he had read the classics and the saints. He was a man
who wrote letters that went all over the world, even as far as to the scholar
Bede in England.
And he had built a monastery there, some great flare of creativity and optimism,
in spite of ruin and war.
This man was of course the scholar Cassiodorus, and his monastery lay at the
very tip of the boot of Italy, in the paradisal land of green Calabria.
I came upon it in early evening, as I planned, when it looked like a great and
splendid lighted little city.
Its monks were copying away ferociously in the Scriptorium.
And there in his cell, wide open to the night, sat Cassiodorus himself, at his
writing, a man past ninety years of age.
He had survived the barbarian politics that doomed his friend Boethius, having
served the Aryan Ostrogoth Emperor Theodoric, having lived to retire from Civil
Service ­ he had survived to build this monastery, his dream, and to write to
monks all over the world, to share what he knew with them of the ancients, to
conserve the wisdom of the Greeks and the Romans.
Was he truly the last man of the ancient world, as some have said? The last man
who could read both Latin and Greek? The last man who could treasure both
Aristotle and the dogma of the Roman Pope'? Plato and Saint Paul?
I didn't know then that he would be so well remembered, And I didn't know how
soon he'd be forgotten!
Vivarium, on its mountain slopes, was an architectural triumph. It had its
sparkling ponds to catch and hold fish ­ the characteristic which gave it its
name. It had its Christian church with the inevitable cross, its dormitories,
its rooms for the weary guest traveler. Its library was rich in the classics of
my time, as well as gospels which have now been lost. The monastery was rich in
all the fruits of the field, all crops needed for food, trees laden with fruit,
fields of wheat.
The monks cared for all of this, and they dedicated themselves to copying books
day and night in their long Scriptorium.
There were beehives there, on this gentle moon-lighted coast, hundreds of
beehives from which the monks harvested honey to eat, and wax for sacred
candles, and royal jelly for an ointment. The bee-hives covered a hill as big as
the orchard or the farmland of Vivarium.
I spied on Cassiodorus. I walked among the bee-hives, and marveled as I always
do at the inexplicable organization of bees, for the mysteries of the bees and
their dance and their hunting for pollen and their breeding was all known to my
eye long before it was understood by the human world.
As I left the hives, as I moved array towards the distant beacon of
Cassiodorus's lamp, I looked back. I beheld something.
Something collected itself from the hives, something immense and invisible and
forceful that I could both feel and hear. I was not gripped by fear, merely
sparked by a temporary hope that some New Thing had come into the world. For I
am not a seer of ghosts and never was.
This force rose out of the very bees themselves, out of their intricate
knowledge and their countless sublime patterns, as though they had somehow

accidentally evolved it, or empowered it with consciousness through the means of
their endless creativity, meticulousness and endurance.
It was like an old Roman woodland spirit of the forest.
I saw this force fly loosely over the fields. I saw it enter the body of a straw
man who stood in the fields, a scarecrow which the monks had made with a fine
round wooden head, painted eyes, crude nose and smiling mouth ­ a creature whole
and entire who could be moved from time to time, intact in his monk's hood and
robe.
I saw this scarecrow, this man of straw and wood hurry whirling and dancing
through the fields and the vineyards until he had reached Cassiodorus's cell.
I followed!
Then I heard a silent wail rise from the being. I heard it and I saw the
scarecrow in a bending, bowing dance of sorrow, its bundled straw hands over
ears it didn't have. It writhed with grief.
Cassiodorus was dead. He had died quietly within his lamp-lighted cell, his door
open, at his writing table. He lay, gray-haired, ancient, quiet against his
manuscript. He had lived over ninety years. And he was dead.
This creature, this scarecrow, was wild with suffering and grief, rocking and
moaning, though it was a sound no human could have heard.
I who have never seen spirits stared at it in wonder. Then it perceived that I
was there. It turned. He ­ for so it seemed in this ragged attire and body of
straw ­ reached out to me. He flung out his straw arms. The straw fell from his
sleeves. His wooden head wobbled on the pole that was his spine. He ­ It ­
implored me: he begged me for the answer to the greatest questions humans and
immortal have ever posed. He looked to me for answers!
Then glancing back again at the dead Cassiodorus, he ran to me, across the
sloping grass, and the need came out of him, poured from him, his arms out as it
beheld me. Could I not explain? Could I not contain in some Divine Design the
mystery of the loss of Cassiodorus! Cassiodorus who had with his Vivarium
rivaled the hive of bees in elegance and glory! It was Vivarium which had drawn
this consciousness together from the hives! Could I not ease this creature's
pain!
"There are horrors in this world," I whispered. "It is made up of mystery and
dependent upon mystery. If you would have peace, go back to the hives; lose your
human shape, and descend again, fragmented into the mindless life of the
contented bees from which you rose."
He was fixed, and he listened to me.
"If you would have fleshly life, human life, hard life which can move through
time and space, then fight for it. If you would have human philosophy then
struggle and make yourself wise, so that nothing can hurt you ever. Wisdom is
strength. Collect yourself, whatever you are, into something with a purpose.
"But know this. All is speculation under the sky. All myth, all religion, all
philosophy, all history ­ is lies."
The thing, whether it be male or female, drew up its bundled straw hands, as if
to cover its mouth. I turned my back on it.
I walked away silently through the vineyards. In a little while the monks would
discover that their Father Superior, their genius, their saint, had died at his
work.
I looked back in amazement to discover that the figure of straw remained,
organized, assuming the posture of an upright being, watching me.
"I will not believe in you!" I shouted back to this man of straw. "I will not
search with you for any answer! But know this: if you would become an organized
being as you see in me, love all mankind and womankind and all their children.
Do not take your strength from blood! Do not feed on suffering. Do not rise like
a god above crowds chanting in adoration. Do not lie!"
It listened. It heard. It remained still.
I ran. I ran and ran up the rocky slopes and through the forests of Calabria

until I was far far away from it. Under the moon, I saw the sprawling majesty of
Vivarium with its cloisters and sloped roofs as it surrounded the shores of its
shimmering inlet from the sea.
I never saw the straw creature again. I don't know what it was. I don't want you
to ask me any question about it.
You tell me spirits and ghosts walk. We know such beings exist. But that was the
last I saw of that being.
And when next I drifted through Italy, Vivarium had been long destroyed. The
earthquakes had shaken loose the last of its walls. Had it been sacked first by
the next wave of ignorant tall men of Northern Europe, the Vandals? Was it an
earthquake that brought about its ruin?
No one knows. What survives of it are the letters that Cassiodorus sent to
others.
Soon the classics were declared profane. Pope Gregory wrote tales of magic and
miracles, because it was the only way to convert thousands of superstitious
uncatechized Northern tribes to Christianity in great en masse baptisms.
He conquered the warriors Rome could never conquer.
The history of Italy for one hundred years falls into absolute darkness after
Cassiodorus. How do the books put it? For a century, nothing is heard from
Italy.
Ah, what a silence!
Now David, as you come to these final pages, I must confess, I have left you.
The smiles with which I gave you these notebooks were deceptive. Feminine wiles,
Marius would call them. My promise to meet with you tomorrow night here in Paris
was a lie. I will have left Paris by the time you come to these lines. I go to
New Orleans.
It's your doing, David. You have transformed me. You have given me a desperate
faith that in narrative there is a shadow of meaning. I now know a new strident
energy. You have trained me through your demand upon my language and my memory
to live again, to believe again that some good exists in this world.
I want to find Marius. Thoughts of other immortals fill the air. Cries, pleas,
strange messages...
One who was believed gone from us is now apparently known to have survived.
I have strong reason to believe that Marius has gone to New Orleans, and I must
be reunited with him. I must seek out Lestat, to see this fallen brat Prince
lying on the chapel floor unable to speak or move.
Come join me, David. Don't fear Marius! I know he will come to help Lestat. I do
the same.
Come back to New Orleans.
Even if Marius is not there, I want to see Lestat. I want to see the others
again. What have you done, David? I now contain ­ with this new curiosity, with
this flaming capacity to care once more, with reborn capacity to sing ­ I now
contain the awful capacity to want and to love.
For that, if for nothing else, and there is indeed much more, I shall always
thank you. No matter what suffering is to come, you have quickened me. And
nothing you do or say will ever cause the death of my love for you.

THE END


                      Vittorio, The Vampire

                                    1

                          WHO I AM, WHY I WRITE,
                             WHAT IS TO COME


WHEN I was a small boy I had a terrible dream. I dreamt I held in my
arms the severed heads of my younger brother I and sister. They were
quick still, and mute, with big fluttering eyes, and reddened cheeks,
and so horrified was I that I could make no more of a sound than they
could.
The dream came true.
   But no one will weep for me or for them. They have been buried,
nameless, beneath five centuries of time.
I am a vampire.
   My name is Vittorio, and I write this now in the tallest tower of
the ruined mountaintop castle in which I was born, in the northernmost
part of Tuscany, that most beautiful of lands in the very center of
Italy.
   By anyone's standards, I am a remarkable vampire, most powerful,
having lived five hundred years from the great days of Cosimo de'
Medici, and even the angels will attest to my powers, if you can get
them to speak to you. Be cautious on that point.
   I have, however, nothing whatsoever to do with the "Coven of the
Articulate, " that band of strange romantic vampires in and from the
Southern New World city of New Orleans who have regaled you already
with so many chronicles and tales.
   I know nothing of those heroes of macabre fact masquerading as
fiction. I know nothing of their enticing paradise in the swamplands of
Louisiana. You will find no new knowledge of them in these pages, not
even, hereafter, a mention.
   I have been challenged by them, nevertheless, to write the story of
my own beginnings--the fable of my making--and to cast this fragment of
my life in book form into the wide world, so to speak, where it may
come into some random or destined contact with their well-published
volumes.
   I have spent my centuries of vampiric existence in clever, observant
roaming and study, never provoking the slightest danger from my own
kind, and never arousing their knowledge or suspicions.
   But this is not to be the unfolding of my adventures.
   It is, as I have said, to be the tale of my beginnings. For I
believe I have revelations within me which will be wholly original to
you. Perhaps when my book is finished and gone from my hands, I may
take steps to become somehow a character in that grand roman-fleuve
begun by other vampires in San Francisco or New Orleans. For now, I
cannot know or care about it.
      As I spend my tranquil nights, here, among the overgrown stones
of the place where I was so happy as a child, our walls now broken and
misshapen among the thorny blackberry vines and fragrant smothering
forests of oak and chestnut trees, I am compelled to record what befell

me, for it seems that I may have suffered a fate very unlike that of
any other vampire.
I do not always hang about this place.
   On the contrary, I spend most of my time in that city which for me
is the queen of all cities-- Florence--which I loved from the very first
moment I saw it with a child's eyes in the years when Cosimo the Elder
ran his powerful Medici bank with his own hand, even though he was the
richest man in Europe.
   In the house of Cosimo de' Medici lived the great sculptor Donatello
making sculptures of marble and bronze, as well as painters and poets
galore, writers on magic and makers of music. The great Brunelleschi,
who had made the very dome of Florence's greatest church, was building
yet another Cathedral for Cosimo in those days, and Michelozzo was
rebuilding not only the monastery of San Marco but commencing the
palazzo for Cosimo which would one day be known to all the world as the
Palazzo Vecchio. For Cosimo, men went all over Europe seeking in dusty
libraries long forgotten the classics of Greek and Rome, which Cosimo's
scholars would translate into our native Italian, the language which
Dante had boldly chosen many years before for his Divine Comedy.
   And it was under Cosimo's roof that I saw, as a mortal boy of
destiny and promise--yes, I myself saw--the great guests of the Council
of Trent who had come from far Byzantium to heal the breach between the
Eastern and Western church: Pope Eugenius IV of Rome, the Patriarch of
Constantinople and the Emperor of the East himself, John VIII
Paleologus. These great men I saw enter the city in a terrible storm of
bitter rain, but nevertheless with indescribable glory, and these men I
saw eat from Cosimo's table.
   Enough, you might say. I agree with you. This is no history of the
Medici. But let me only say that anyone who tells you that they were
scoundrels, these great men, is a perfect idiot. It was the descendants
of Cosimo who took care of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and artists
without count. And it was all because a banker, a moneylender if you
will, thought it splendid and good to give beauty and magnificence to
the city of Florence.
   I'll come back to Cosimo at the right point, and only for a few
brief words, though I must confess I am having trouble being brief here
on any score, but for now let me say that Cosimo belongs to the living.
I have been in bed with the dead since 1450.
   Now to tell how it began, but allow me one more preface.
   Don't look here, please, for antique language. You will not find a
rigid fabricated English meant to conjure castle walls by stilted
diction and constricted vocabulary.
   I shall tell my tale naturally and effectively, wallowing in words,
for I love them. And, being an immortal, I have devoured over four
centuries of English, from the plays of Christopher Marlowe and Ben
Jonson to the abrupt and harshly evocative words of a Sylvester
Stallone movie.
   You'll find me flexible, daring, and now and then a shock. But what
can I do but draw upon the fullest descriptive power I can command, and
mark that English now is no more the language of one land, or even two
or three or four, but has become the language of all the modern world
from the backwoods of Tennessee to the most remote Celtic isles and
down under to the teeming cities of Australia and New Zealand.
   I am Renaissance-born. Therefore I delve in all, and blend without
prejudice, and that some higher good pertains to what I do, I cannot
doubt.
   As for my native Italian, hear it softly when you say my name,

Vittorio, and breathe it like perfume from the other names which are
sprinkled throughout this text. It is, beneath all, a language so sweet
as to make of the English word "stone" three syllables: pi-ea-tra.
There has never been a gentler language on earth. I speak all other
tongues with the Italian accent you'll hear in the streets of Florence
today.
   And that my English-speaking victims find my blandishments so
pretty, accented as they are, and yield to my soft lustrous Italian
pronunciations, is a constant source of bliss for me.
But I am not happy.
Don't think so.I wouldn't write a book to tell you that a vampire was
happy.
   I have a brain as well as a heart, and there hovers about me an
etheric visage of myself, created most definitely by some Higher Power,
and entangled completely within the intangible weave of that etheric
visage is what men call a soul. I have such. No amount of blood can
drown away its life and leave me but a thriving revenant.
   Okay. No problem. Yes, yes. Thank you!--as everybody in the entire
world can say in English. We're ready to begin.
   Except I want to give you a quote from an obscure but wonderful
writer, Sheridan Le Fanu, a paragraph spoken in extreme angst by a
haunted character in one of his many exquisitely written ghost stories.
This author, a native of Dublin, died in 1873, but mark how fresh is
this language, and how horrifying the expression of the character
Captain Barton in the story called "The Familiar":
Whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we are
taught to call revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly
convinced, that there does exist beyond this a spiritual world--a system
whose workings are generally in mercy hidden from us--a system which may
be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I am sure--
I know . . . that there is a God--a dreadful God--and that retribution
follows guilt, in ways the most mys-terious and stupendous--by agencies
the most inexplicable and terrific;--there is a spiritual system--great
God, how I have been convinced!--a system malignant, and implacable, and
omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, suffering the
torments of the damned!
What do you think of that?
   I am myself rather mortally struck by it. I don't think I am
prepared to speak of our God as "dreadful" or our system as
"malignant," but there seems an eerie inescapable ring of truth to
these words, written in fiction but obviously with much emotion.
   It matters to me because I suffer under a terrible curse, quite
unique to me, I think, as a vampire. That is, the others don't share
it. But I think we all--human, vampire, all of us who are sentient and
can weep--we all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than
we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do
about the force and the lure of this knowledge.
   At the end, we can take this up again. See what you make of my
story.
   It's early evening here. The brave remnant of my father's highest
tower still rises boldly enough against the sweetly star-filled heavens
for me to see from the window the moonlighted hills and valleys of
Tuscany, aye, even as far as the twinkling sea below the mines of
Carrara. I smell the flowering green of the steep undiscovered country
round where the irises of Tuscany still break out in violent red or
white in sunny beds, to be found by me in the silky night.
   And so embraced and protected, I write, ready for the moment when

the full yet ever obscure moon leaves me for the hideaway of clouds, to
light the candles that stand ready, some six, ensconced within the
thick ruggedly worked silver of the candelabra which once stood on my
father's desk, in those days when he was the old-style feudal lord of
this mountain and all its villages, and the firm ally in peace and war
of the great city of Florence and its unofficial ruler, when we were
rich, fearless, curious and wondrously contented.
Let me speak now of what has vanished.




                                   2

                         MY SMALL MORTAL LIFE,
                        THE BEAUTY OF FLORENCE,
                            THE GLORY OF OUR
                               SMALL COURT--
                            WHAT IS VANISHED


I WAS sixteen years old when I died. I have good height, thick brown
hair down to the shoulders, hazel eyes that I are far too vulnerable to
behold, giving me the appearance of an androgyne in a way, and a
desirable narrow nose with unremarkable nostrils, and a medium-sized
mouth which is neither voluptuous nor stingy. A beautiful boy for the
time. I wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't been.
   That's the case with most vampires, no matter who says otherwise.
Beauty carries us to our doom. Or, to put it more accurately, we are
made immortal by those who cannot sever themselves from our charms.
   I don't have a childish face, but I have an almost angelic one. My
eyebrows are strong, dark, high enough over my eyes to allow them
entirely too much luster. My forehead would be a little too high if it
wasn't so straight, and if I didn't have so much thick brown hair,
making as it does a curly, wavy frame for the whole picture. My chin is
slightly too strong, too squared off for the rest. I have a dimple in
it.
   My body is overmuscular, strong, broad-chested, my arms powerful,
giving an impression of manly power. This rather rescues my obdurate-
looking jaw and allows to me to pass for a full-fledged man, at least
from a distance.
   This well-developed physique I owe to tremendous practice with a
heavy battle sword in the last years of my life, and ferocious hunting
with my falcons in the mountains, up and down which I ran often on
foot, though I had already four horses of my own by that age, including
one of that special majestic breed made to support my weight when I
wore my full suit of armor.
   My armor is still buried beneath this tower. I never used it in
battle. Italy was seething with war in my time, but all of the battles
of the Florentines were being fought by mercenaries.
   All my father had to do was declare his absolute loyalty to Cosimo,
and let no one representing the Holy Roman Empire, the Duke of Milan or
the Pope in Rome move troops through our mountain passes or stop in our

villages.
   We were out of the way. It was no problem. Enterprising ancestors
had built our castle three hundred years before. We went back to the
time of the Lombards, or those barbarians who had come down from the
North into Italy, and I think we had their blood in us. But who knows?
Since the Fall of ancient Rome, so many tribes had invaded Italy.
   We had interesting pagan relics lying about; alien tombstones most
ancient were sometimes found in the fields, and funny little stone
goddesses which the peasants still cherished if we didn't confiscate
them. Beneath our towers were vaults that some said went back to the
days even before the Birth of Christ, and I know now that is true.
These places belonged to the people known to history as the Etruscans.
   Our household, being of the old feudal style, scorning trade and
requiring of its men that they be bold and brave, was full of treasure
acquired through wars without count or record--that is, old silver and
gold candelabra and sconces, heavy chests of wood with Byzantine
designs encrusted on them, the usual Flemish tapestries, and tons of
lace, and bed hangings hand-trimmed with gilt and gems, and all of the
most desirable finery.
   My father, admiring the Medici as he did, bought up all kinds of
luxury items on his trips to Florence. There was little bare stone in
any important room, because flowered wool carpets covered all, and
every hallway or alcove had its own towering armoire filled with
rattling, rusting battle dress of heroes whose names nobody even
remembered.
   We were incalculably rich: this I had more or less overheard as a
child, and there was some hint that it had to do as much with valor in
war as with secret pagan treasure.
There had been centuries of course when our family had warred with
other hill towns and forts, when castle besieged castle and walls were
ripped down as soon as they were built, and out of the city of Florence
had gone the ever quarreling and murderous Guelfs and Ghibellines.
   The old Commune of Florence had sent armies to tear down castles
like ours and reduce any threatening Lord to nothingness.
But that time was long over.
   We had survived due to cleverness and good choices, and also because
we were much off to ourselves, in high craggy uninviting country,
crowning a true mountain, as this is where the Alps come down into
Tuscany, and those castles most near to us were abandoned ruins.
   Our nearest neighbor did rule his own mountain enclave of villages
in loyalty to the Duke of Milan.
   But he didn't bother with us or we him. It was a remote political
matter.
   Our walls were thirty feet high, immensely thick, older than the
castle and keeps, old indeed beyond anyone's most romantic tales and
constantly being thickened and repaired, and inside the compound there
existed three little villages busy with good vineyards that yielded
marvelous red wine; prosperous beehives; blackberries; and wheat and
the like; with plenty of chickens and cows; and enormous stables for
our horses.
   I never knew how many people labored in our little world. The house
was full of clerks who took care of such things, and very seldom did my
father sit in judgment on any sort of case himself or was there cause
to go to the courts of Florence.
   Our church was the designated church for all the country round, so
that those few who lived in less protected little hamlets down the
mountain-- and there were plenty--came to us for their baptisms, and

marriages, and such, and we had for long periods of time within our
walls a Dominican priest who said Mass for us every morning.
   In olden times, the forest had been severely cut down on our
mountain so that no invading enemy could make his way up the slopes,
but by my time no such protection was necessary.
   The woods had grown back full and sweet in some gullies and over old
paths, even as wild as it is now, and almost up to the walls. One could
make out clearly from our towers a dozen or so small towns descending
to the valleys, with their little quilts of tilled fields, orchards of
olive trees and vineyards. They were all under our governance and loyal
to us. If there had been any war they would have come running to our
gates as their ancestors had done, and rightly so.
   There were market days, village festivals, saints' days, and a
little alchemy now and then, and occasionally even a local miracle. It
was a good land, ours.
   Visiting clerics always stayed a long time. It wasn't uncommon to
have two or three priests in various towers of the castle or in the
lower, newer, more modern stone buildings.
I had been taken to Florence to be educated when I was very small,
living in deluxe and invigorating style in the palazzo of my mother's
uncle, who died before I was thirteen, and it was then-- when the house
was closed--that I was brought home, with two elderly aunts, and after
that only visited Florence on occasion.
   My father was still at heart an old-fashioned man, instinctively an
indomitable Lord, though he was content to keep his distance from the
power struggles of the capital, to have huge accounts in the Medici
banks and to live an old-style courtly life in his own domain, visiting
Cosimo de' Medici himself when he did journey into Florence on
business.
   But when it came to his son, my father wanted that I should be
reared as a prince, a padrone, a knight, and I had to learn all the
skills and values of a knight, and at thirteen, I could ride in full
battle dress, my helmeted head bowed, at full speed with my spear
thrust towards the straw-filled target. I had no difficulty with it. It
was as much fun as hunting, or swimming in mountain streams, or having
horse races with the village boys. I took to it without rebellion.
   I was, however, a divided being. The mental part of me had been
nourished in Florence by excellent teachers of Latin, Greek, philosophy
and theology, and I had been deep into the boys' pageants and plays of
the city, often taking the leading parts in the dramas presented by my
own Confraternity in my uncle's house, and I knew how to solemnly
portray the Biblical Isaac about to be sacrificed by the obedient
Abraham, as well as the charming Angel Gabriel discovered by a
suspicious St. Joseph with his Virgin Mary.
   I pined for all that now and then, the books, the lectures in the
Cathedrals to which I'd listened with precocious interest, and the
lovely nights in my uncle's Florentine house when I'd fallen asleep to
the sounds of spectacular opera extravaganzas, my mind brim full of the
dazzle of miraculous figures swooping down on wires, lutes and drums
playing wildly, dancers frolicking almost like acrobats and voices
soaring beautifully in unison.
   It had been an easy childhood. And in the boys' Confraternity to
which I belonged, I'd met the poorer children of Florence, the sons of
the merchants, orphans and boys from the monasteries and schools,
because that is the way it was in my time for a landed Lord. You had to
mix with the people.
   I think I crept out of the house a lot as a small child, easily as

much as I slipped out of the castle later. I remember too much of the
festivals and saints' days and processions of Florence for a
disciplined child to have seen. I was too often slipping in and out of
the crowd, looking at the spectacularly decorated floats in honor of
the saints, and marveling at the solemnity of those in silent ranks who
carried candles and walked very slowly as if they were in a trance of
devotion.
   Yes, I must have been a scamp. I know I was. I went out by the
kitchen. I bribed the servants. I had too many friends who were out-
and-out routies or beasties. I got into mayhem and then ran home. We
played ball games and had battles in the piazzas, and the priests ran
us off with switches and threats. I was good and bad, but not ever
really wicked.
   When I died to this world, at the age of sixteen, I never looked on
a daylighted street again, not in Florence or anywhere. Well, I saw the
best of it, that I can say. I can envisage with no difficulty the
spectacle of the Feast of St. John, when every single solitary shop in
Florence had to put out front all of its costly wares, and monks and
friars sang the sweetest hymns on their way to the Cathedral to give
thanks to God for the blessed prosperity of the city.
   I could go on. There is no end to the praise one can heap upon the
Florence of those times, for she was a city of men who worked at trades
and business yet made the greatest art, of sharp politicians and true
raving saints, of deep-souled poets and the most audacious scoundrels.
I think Florence knew many things by that time that would only much
later be learnt in France and England, and which are not known in some
countries to this day. Two things were true. Cosimo was the most
powerful man in all the world. And the people, and only the people,
ruled Florence then and forever.
   But back to the castle. I kept up my reading and studies at home,
switching from knight to scholar in a twinkling. If there was any
shadow on my life, it was that at sixteen I was old enough to go to a
real university, and I knew it, and I sort of wanted to do it, but then
again, I was raising new hawks, training them myself and hunting with
them, and the country round was irresistible.
   By this age of sixteen, I was considered bookish by the clan of
elder kinsmen who gathered at the table every night, my parents' uncles
mostly, and all very much of a former time when "bankers had not run
the world," who had marvelous tales to tell of the Crusades, to which
they had gone when they were young, and of what they had seen at the
fierce battle of Acre, or fighting on the island of Cyprus or Rhodes,
and what life had been like at sea, and in many exotic ports where they
had been the terror of the taverns and the women.
   My mother was spirited and beautiful, with brown hair and very green
eyes, and she adored country life, but she'd never known Florence
except from the inside of a convent. She thought there was something
seriously wrong with me that I wanted to read Dante's poetry and write
so much of my own.
   She lived for nothing but receiving guests in gracious style, seeing
to it that the floors were strewn with lavender and sweet-smelling
herbs, and that the wine was properly spiced, and she led the dance
herself with a great-uncle who was very good at it, because my father
would have nothing to do with dancing.
   All this to me, after Florence, was rather tame and slow. Bring on
the war stories.
   She must have been very young when she was married off to my father,
because she was with child on the night she died. And the child died

with her. I'll come to that quickly. Well, as quickly as I can. I'm not
so good at being quick.
   My brother, Matteo, was four years younger than me, and an excellent
student, though he had not been sent off anywhere as yet (would that he
had), and my sister, Bartola, was born less than a year after me, so
close in fact that I think my father was rather ashamed of it.
   I thought them both--Matteo and Bartola-- the most lovely and
interesting people in the world. We had country fun and country
freedom, running in the woods, picking blackberries, sitting at the
feet of gypsy storytellers before they got caught and sent away. We
loved one another. Matteo worshipped me too much because I could
outtalk our father. He didn't see our father's quiet strength, or well-
fashioned old manners. I was Matteo's real teacher in all things, I
suppose. As for Bartola, she was far too wild for my mother, who was in
an eternal state of shock over the state of Bartola's long hair, the
hair being all full of twigs and petals and leaves and dirt from the
woods where we'd been running.
   Bartola was forced into plenty of embroidering, however; she knew
her songs, her poetry and prayers. She was too exquisite and too rich
to be rushed into anything she didn't want. My father adored her, and
more than once in very few words assured himself that I kept constant
watch over her in all our woodland wanderings. I did. I would have
killed anyone who touched her!
   Ah. This is too much for me! I didn't know how hard this was going
to be! Bartola. Kill anyone who touched her! And now nightmares
descend, as if they were winged spirits themselves, and threaten to
shut out the tiny silent and ever drifting lights of Heaven.
Let me return to my train of thought.
   My mother I never really understood, and probably misjudged, because
everything seemed a matter of style and manners with her, and my father
I found to be hysterically self-satirical and always funny.
   He was, beneath all his jokes and snide stories, actually rather
cynical, but at the same time kind; he saw through the pomp of others,
and even his own pretensions. He looked upon the human situation as
hopeless. War was comic to him, devoid of heroes and full of buffoons,
and he would burst out laughing in the middle of his uncles' harangues,
or even in the middle of my poems when I went on too long, and I don't
think he ever deliberately spoke a civil word to my mother.
   He was a big man, clean shaven and longhaired, and he had beautiful
long tapering fingers, very unusual for his size, because all his
elders had thicker hands. I have the same hands myself. All the
beautiful rings he wore had belonged to his mother.
   He dressed more sumptuously than he would have dared to do in
Florence, in regal velvet stitched with pearls, and wore massive cloaks
lined in ermine. His gloves were true gauntlets trimmed in fox, and he
had large grave eyes, more deep-set than mine, and full of mockery,
disbelief and sarcasm.
He was never mean, however, to anyone.
   His only modern affectation was that he liked to drink from fine
goblets of glass, rather than old cups of hardwood or gold or silver.
And we had plenty of sparkling glass always on our long supper table.
   My mother always smiled when she said such things to him as "My
Lord, please get your feet off the table," or "I'll thank you not to
touch me until you've washed your greasy hands," or "Are you really
coming into the house like that?" But beneath her charming exterior, I
think she hated him.
   The one time I ever heard her raise her voice in anger, it was to

declare in no uncertain terms that half the children in our villages
round had been sired by him, and that she herself had buried some eight
tiny infants who had never lived to see the light, because he couldn't
restrain himself any better than a rampant stallion.
   He was so amazed at this outburst--it was behind closed doors--that he
emerged from the bedchamber looking pale and shocked, and said to me,
"You know, Vittorio, your mother is nothing as stupid as I always
thought. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, she's just boring."
   He would never under normal circumstances have said anything so
unkind about her. He was trembling.
   As for her, when I tried to go in to her, she threw a silver pitcher
at me. I said, "But Mother, it's Vittorio!" and she threw herself into
my arms. She cried bitterly for fifteen minutes.
   We said nothing during this time. We sat together in her small stone
bedroom, rather high up in the oldest tower of our house, with many
pieces of gilded furniture, both ancient and new, and then she wiped
her eyes and said, "He takes care of everyone, you know. He takes care
of my aunts and my uncles, you know. And where would they be if it
weren't for him? And he's never denied me anything."
   She went rambling on in her smooth convent-modulated voice. "Look at
this house. It's filled with elders whose wisdom has been so good for
you children, and all this on account of your father, who is rich
enough to have gone anywhere, I suppose, but he is too kind. Only,
Vittorio! Vittorio, don't... I mean ... with the girls in the village."
   I almost said, in a spasm of desire to comfort her, that I had only
fathered one bastard to my knowledge, and he was just fine, when I
realized this would have been a perfect disaster. I said nothing.
   That might have been the only conversation I ever had with my
mother. But it's not really a conversation because I didn't say
anything.
   She was right, however. Three of her aunts and two of her uncles
lived with us in our great high-walled compound, and these old people
lived well, always sumptuously dressed in the latest fabrics from the
city, and enjoying the purest courtly life imaginable. I couldn't help
but benefit from listening to them all the time, which I did, and they
knew plenty of all the world.
   It was the same with my father's uncles, but of course it was their
land, this, their family's, and so they felt more entitled, I assume,
as they had done most of the heroic fighting in the Holy Land, or so it
seemed, and they quarreled with my father over anything and everything,
from the taste of the meat tarts served at supper to the distractingly
modern style of the painters he hired from Florence to decorate our
little chapel.
   That was another sort of modern thing he did, the matter of the
painters, maybe the only modern thing other than liking things made of
glass.
   Our little chapel had for centuries been bare. It was, like the four
towers of our castle and all the walls around, built of a blond stone
which is common in Northern Tuscany. This is not the dark stone you see
so much in Florence, which is gray and looks perpetually unclean. This
northern stone is almost the color of the palest pink roses.
   But my father had brought pupils up from Florence when I was very
young, good painters who had studied with Piero della Francesca and
other such, to cover these chapel walls with murals taken from the
lovely stories of saints and Biblical giants in the books known as The
Golden Legend.
   Not being himself a terribly imaginative man, my father followed

what he had seen in the churches of Florence in his design and
instructed these men to tell the tales of John the Baptist, patron
saint of the city and cousin of Our Lord, and so it was that during the
last years of my life on earth, our chapel was enfolded with
representations of St. Elizabeth, St. John, St. Anne, the Blessed
Mother, Zachary and angels galore, all dressed--as was the way of the
time--in their Florentine finest.
   It was to this "modern" painting, so unlike the stiffer work of
Giotto or Cimabue, that my elderly uncles and aunts objected. As for
the villagers, I don't think they exactly understood it all either,
except they were so overawed in the main by the chapel at a wedding or
baptism that it didn't matter.
   I myself of course was terrifically happy to see these paintings
made, and to spend time with the artists, who were all gone by the time
that my life was brought to a halt by demonic slaughter.
   I'd seen plenty of the greatest painting in Florence and had a
weakness for drifting about, looking at splendid visions of angels and
saints in the rich dedicated chapels of the Cathedrals, and had even--on
one of my trips to Florence with my father--in Cosimo's house, glimpsed
the tempestuous painter Filippo Lippi, who was at that time actually
under lock and key there to make him finish a painting.
   I was much taken with the plain yet compelling man, the way that he
argued and schemed and did everything but throw a tantrum to get
permission to leave the palazzo while lean, solemn and low-voiced
Cosimo just smiled and talked him down more or less out of his
hysteria, telling him to get back to work and that he would be happy
when he was finished.
   Filippo Lippi was a monk, but he was mad for women and everybody
knew it. You could say that he was a favorite bad guy. It was for women
that he wanted out of the palazzo, and it was even suggested later at
the supper table of our hosts in Florence on that visit that Cosimo
ought to lock a few women in the room with Filippo, and that maybe that
would keep Filippo happy. I don't think Cosimo did any such thing. If
he had, his enemies would have made it the grand news of Florence.
   Let me make note, for it is very important. I never forgot that
glimpse of the genius Filippo, for that is what he was--and is--to me.
   "So what did you so like about him?" my father asked me.
   "He's bad and good," I said, "not just one or the other. I see a war
going on inside of him! And I saw some of his work once, work he did
with Fra Giovanni"--this was the man later called Fra Angelico by all
the world--"and I tell you, I think he is brilliant. Why else would
Cosimo put up with such a scene? Did you hear him!"
"And Fra Giovanni is a saint?" asked my father.
   "Hmmmmm, yes. And that's fine, you know, but did you see the torment
in Fra Filippo? Hmmm, I liked it."
My father raised his eyebrows.
   On our next and very last trip to Florence, he took me to see all of
Filippo's paintings. I was amazed that he had remembered my interest in
this man. We went from house to house to look at the loveliest works,
and then to Filippo's workshop.
   There an altarpiece commissioned by Fran-cesco Maringhi for a
Florentine church--The Coronation of the Virgin--was well under way, and
when I saw this work, I nearly fainted dead from shock and love of it.
I couldn't leave it alone. I sighed and wept.
   I had never seen anything as beautiful as this painting, with its
immense crowd of still attentive faces, its splendid collection of
angels and saints, its lithe and graceful feline women and willowy

celestial men. I went crazy for it.
   My father took me to see two more of his works, which were both
paintings of the Annunciation.
   Now, I have mentioned that as a child, I had played the Angel
Gabriel coming to the Virgin to announce the Conception of Christ in
her womb, and the way we played, he was supposed to be a pretty
beguiling and virile angel, and Joseph would come in and, lo, find this
overwhelming male with his pure ward, the Blessed Mary.
   We were a worldly bunch, but you know, we gave the play a little
spice. I mean we cooked it up a bit. I don't think it says anything in
scripture about St. Joseph happening on a tryst.
   But that had been my favorite role, and I had particularly enjoyed
paintings of the Annunciation.
   Well, this last one I saw before I left Florence, done by Filippo
sometime in the 14408, was beyond anything I had beheld before.
   The angel was truly unearthly yet physically perfect. Its wings were
made of peacock feathers.
I was sick with devotion and covetousness. I wished we could buy this
thing and take it back home. That wasn't possible. No works of Filippo
were on the market then. So my father finally dragged me away from this
painting, and off we went home the next day or so.
   Only later did I realize how quietly he listened to what I said as I
ranted on and on about Fra Filippo:
   "It's delicate, it's original, and yet it is commendable according
to everybody's rules, that's the genius of it, to change, but not so
much, to be inimitable, yet not beyond the common grasp, and that's
what he's done, Father, I tell you."
I was unstoppable.
   "This is what I think about that man," I said. "The carnality in
him, the passion for women, the near beastly refusal to keep his vows
is at war always with the priest, for look, he wears his robes, he is
Fra Filippo. And out of that war, there comes into the faces he paints
a look of utter surrender."
My father listened.
   "That's it," I said. "Those characters reflect his own continued
compromise with the forces he cannot reconcile, and they are sad, and
wise, and never innocent, and always soft, reflective of mute torment."
   On the way back home, as we were riding together through the forest,
up a rather steep road, very casually my father asked me if the
painters who had done our chapel were good.
   "Father, you're joking," I said. "They were excellent."
   He smiled. "I didn't know, you know/' he said. "I just hired the
best." He shrugged.
I smiled.
   Then he laughed with good nature. I never asked him when and if I
could leave home again to study. I think I figured I could make both of
us happy.
   We must have made twenty-five stops on that last journey home from
Florence. We were wined and dined at one castle after another, and
wandered in and out of the new villas, lavish and full of light, and
given over to their abundant gardens. I clung to nothing in particular
because I thought it was my life, all those arbors covered with purple
wisteria, and the vineyards on the green slopes, and the sweet-cheeked
girls beckoning to me in the loggias.
   Florence was actually at war the year we made this journey. She had
sided with the great and famous Francesco Sforza, to take over the city
of Milan. The cities of Naples and Venice were on the side of Milan. It

was a terrible war. But it didn't touch us.
   It was fought in other places and by hired men, and the rancor
caused by it was heard in city streets, not on our mountain.
   What I recall from it were two remarkable characters involved in the
fray. The first of these was the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti,
a man who had been our enemy whether we liked it or not because he was
the enemy of Florence.
But listen to what this man was like: he was hideously fat, it was
said, and very dirty by nature, and sometimes would take off all his
clothes and roll around naked in the dirt of his garden! He was
terrified of the sight of a sword and would scream if he saw it
unsheathed, and he was terrified too to have his portrait painted
because he thought he was so ugly, which he was. But that was not all.
This man's weak little legs wouldn't carry him, so his pages had to
heft him about. Yet he had a sense of humor. To scare people, he would
suddenly draw a snake out of his sleeve! Lovely, don't you think?
   Yet he ruled the Duchy of Milan for thirty-five years somehow, this
man, and it was against Milan that his own mercenary, Francesco Sforza,
turned in this war.
   And that man I want to describe only briefly because he was colorful
in an entirely different way, being the handsome strong brave son of a
peasant--a peasant who, kidnapped as a child, had managed to become the
commander of his band of kidnappers--and this Francesco became commander
of the troop only when the peasant hero drowned in a stream trying to
save a page boy. Such valor. Such purity! Such gifts.
   I never laid eyes on Francesco Sforza until I was already dead to
the world and a prowling vampire, but he was true to his descriptions,
a man of heroic proportions and style, and believe it or not, it was to
this bastard of a peasant and natural soldier that the weak-legged
crazy Duke of Milan gave his own daughter in marriage, and this
daughter, by the
   way, was not by the Duke's wife, poor thing, for she was locked up,
but by his mistress.
   It was this marriage which led eventually to the war. First
Francesco was fighting bravely for Duke Filippo Maria, and then when
the weird unpredictable little Duke finally croaked, naturally his son-
in-law, handsome Francesco, who had charmed everybody in Italy from the
Pope to Cosimo, wanted to become the Duke of Milan!
   It's all true. Don't you think it's interesting? Look it up. I left
out that the Duke Filippo Maria was also so scared of thunder that he
was supposed to have built a soundproof room in his palace.
   And there is more to it than that. Sforza more or less had to save
Milan from other people who wanted to take it over, and Cosimo had to
back him, or France would have come down on us, or worse.
   It was all rather amusing, and as I have said, I was well prepared
already at a young age to go into war or to court if it was ever
required of me, but these wars and these two characters existed for me
in dinner table talk, and every time someone railed about the crazy
Duke Filippo Maria, and one of his insane tricks with a snake out of
his sleeve, my father would wink at me and whisper in my ear, "Nothing
like pure lordly blood, my son." And then laugh.
   As for the romantic and brave Francesco Sforza, my father had wisely
nothing to say as long as the man was fighting for our enemy, the Duke,
but once we had all turned together against Milan, then my father
commended the bold self-made Francesco and his courageous peasant
father.
   There had been another great lunatic running around Italy during

earlier times, a freebooter and ruffian named Sir John Hawkwood, who
would lead his mercenaries against anybody, including the Florentines.
   But he had ended up loyal to Florence, even became a citizen, and
when he departed this earth, they gave him a splendid monument in the
Cathedral! Ah, such an age!
   I think it was a really good time to be a soldier, you know, to sort
of pick and choose where you would fight, and get as carried away with
it all as you wanted to.
   But it was also a very good time for reading poetry, and for looking
at paintings and for living in utter comfort and security behind
ancestral walls, or wandering the thriving streets of prosperous
cities. If you had any education at all, you could choose what you
wanted to do.
   And it was also a time to be very careful. Lords such as my father
did go down to destruction in these wars. Mountainous regions that had
been free and pretty much left alone could be invaded and destroyed. It
happened now and then that someone who had pretty much stayed out of
things got himself worked up against Florence and in came the
clattering and clanking mercenaries to level everything.
   By the way, Sforza won the war with Milan, and part of the reason
was that Cosimo lent him the required money. What happened after that
was absolute mayhem.
   Well, I could go on describing this wonderland of Tuscany forever.
   It is chilling and saddening for me to try to imagine what might
have become of my family had evil not befallen us. I cannot see my
father old, or imagine myself struggling as an elderly man, or envision
my sister married, as I hoped, to a city aristocrat rather than a
country baron.
   It is a horror and a joy to me that there are villages and hamlets
in these very mountains which have from that time never died out--
never--surviving through the worst of even modern war, to thrive still
with tiny cobbled market streets and pots of red geraniums in their
windows. There are castles which survive everywhere, enlivened by
generation after generation.
Here there is darkness.
Here is Vittorio writing by the light of the stars.
   Brambles and wild scratching things inhabit the chapel below, where
the paintings are still visible to no one and the sacred relics of the
consecrated altar stone are beneath heaps of dust.
   Ah, but those thorns protect what remains of my home. I have let
them grow. I have allowed the roads to vanish in the forest or broken
them myself. I must have something of what there was! I must.
   But I accuse myself again of going on and on, and I do, there is no
doubt.
This chapter ought to be over.
  But it's very like the little plays we used to do in my uncle's
house, or those I saw before the Duomo in Cosimo's Florence. There must
be painted backdrops, props of fine detail, wires rigged for flight and
costumes cut out and sewn before I can put my players on the boards and
tell the fable of my making.
   I can't help it. Let me close my essay on the glories of the 14008
by saying what the great alchemist Ficino would say of it some years
later on: It was "an age of gold."
I go now to the tragic moment.

                                   3

                         IN WHICH THE HORROR
                           DESCENDS UPON US


THE beginning of the end came the following spring. I had passed my
sixteenth birthday, which had fallen that I year on the very Tuesday
before Lent, when we and all the villages were celebrating Carnival. It
had come rather early that year, so it was a bit cold, but it was a gay
time.
   It was on that night before Ash Wednesday that I had the terrible
dream in which I saw myself holding the severed heads of my brother and
my sister. I woke up in a sweat, horrified by this dream. I wrote it
down in my book of dreams. And then actually I forgot about it. That
was common with me, only it had been truly the most horrid nightmare Td
ever had. But when I mentioned my occasional nightmares to my mother or
father or anyone else, they always said:
   "Vittorio, it's your own fault for reading the books you read. You
bring it on yourself."
To repeat, the dream was forgotten.
The country was by Easter in great flower, and the first warnings of
horror to come, though I knew them not to be, were that the lower
hamlets on our mountain were quite suddenly abandoned.
   My father and I and two of the huntsmen and a gamekeeper and a
soldier rode down to see for ourselves that the peasants in those parts
had departed, some time before in fact, and taken the livestock with
them.
   It was eerie to see those deserted towns, small as they were and as
insignificant.
   We rode back up the mountain as a warm embracing darkness surrounded
us, yet we found all the other villages we passed battened down with
hardly a seam of light showing through the chinks of a shutter, or a
tiny stem of reddened smoke rising from a chimney.
   Of course my father's old clerk went into a rant that the vassals
should be found, beaten, made to work the land.
   My father, benevolent as always and completely calm, sat at his desk
in the candlelight, leaning on his elbow, and said that these had all
been free men; they were not bound to him, if they did not choose to
live on his mountain. This was the way of the modern world, only he
wished he knew what was afoot in our land.
   Quite suddenly, he took notice of me standing and observing him, as
if he hadn't seen me before, and he broke off the conference,
dismissing the whole affair.
I thought nothing much about it.
But in the days that followed, some of the vil-lagers from the lower
slopes came up to live within the walls. There were conferences in my
father's chambers. I heard arguments behind closed doors, and one
night, at supper, all sat entirely too somber for our family, and
finally my father rose from his massive chair, the Lord in the center
of the table as always, and declared, as if he'd been silently accused:
   "I will not persecute some old women because they have stuck pins in
wax dolls and burnt incense and read foolish incantations that mean
nothing. These old witches have been on our mountain forever."

   My mother looked truly alarmed, and then gathering us all up--I was
most unwilling--she took us away, Bartola, Matteo and me, and told us to
go to bed early.
"Don't stay up reading, Vittorio" she said.
"But what did Father mean?" asked Bartola.
   "Oh, it's the old village witches," I said. I used the Italian word
strega. "Every now and then, one goes too far, there's a fight, but
mostly it's just charms to cure a fever and such."
   I thought my mother would hush me up, but she stood in the narrow
stone stairs of the tower looking up at me with marked relief on her
face, and she said:
   "Yes, yes, Vittorio, you are so right. In Florence, people laugh at
those old women. You know Gattena yourself; she never really did more
then sell love potions to the girls."
   "Surely we're not to drag her before a court!" I said, very happy
that she was paying attention.
Bartola and Matteo were rapt.
   "No, no, not Gattena, certainly not. Gattena's vanished. Run off."
   "Gattena?" I asked, and then as my mother turned away, refusing, it
seemed, to say another word, gesturing for me to escort my sister and
brother safely to bed, I realized the gravity of this.
   Gattena was the most feared and comical of the old witches, and if
she had run off, if she was afraid of something, well, that was news,
because she thought herself the one to be feared.
   The following days were fresh and lovely and undisturbed by anything
for me and my Bartola and Matteo, but when I looked back later, I
recalled there was much going on.
   One afternoon, I went up to the highest lookout window of the old
tower where one guardsman, Tori, we called him, was falling asleep, and
I looked down over all our land for as far as I could see.
"Well, you won't find it," he said.
"What's that?" I remarked.
   "Smoke from a single hearth. There is no more." He yawned and leaned
against the wall, heavily weighed down by his old boiled-leather
jerkin, and sword. "All's well," he said, and yawned again. "So they
like city life, or to fight for Francesco Sforza over the Duchy of
Milan, so let them go. They didn't know how good they had it."
   I turned away from him and looked over the woods again, and down
into the valleys that I could see, and beyond to the slightly misty
blue sky. It was true, the little hamlets seemed frozen in time down
there, but how could one be so sure? It was not such a clear day. And
besides, everything was fine within the household.
   My father drew olive oil, vegetables, milk, butter and many such
goods from these villages, but he didn't need them. If it was time for
them to pass away, so be it.
   Two nights later, however, it was undeniably obvious to me that
everyone at supper was perpetually under a strain of sorts, which went
entirely unvoiced, and that an agitation had gripped my mother, so that
she was no longer engaging in her endless courtly chatter. Conversation
was not impossible, but it had changed.
   But for all the elders who seemed deeply and secretly conflicted,
there were others who seemed relatively oblivious to such things, and
the pages went about serving gaily, and a little group of musicians,
who'd come up the preceding day, gave us a lovely series of songs with
the viol and the lute.
   My mother couldn't be persuaded to do her old slow dances, however.
   It must have been very late when an unexpected visitor was

announced. No one had left the main hall, except Bartola and Matteo,
who had been taken off to bed by me earlier and left in the care of our
old nurse, Simonetta.
   The Captain of my father's Guard came into the hall, clicked his
heels and bowed to my father and said:
   "My Lord, it seems there is a man of great rank come to the house,
and he will not be received in the light, or so he says, and demands
that you come out to him."
 Everyone at the table was at once alert, and my mother went white
with anger and umbrage.
   No one ever used the word "demand" to my father.
   Also it was plain to me that our Captain of the Guard, a rather
prepossessing old soldier who'd seen many battles with the wandering
mercenaries, was himself overvigilant and a little shaken.
   My father rose to his feet. He did not speak or move, however.
   "Would you do that, my Lord, or should I send this Signore away?"
the Captain asked.
   "Tell him that he is most welcome to come into my house as my
guest," said my father, "that we extend to him in the name of Christ
Our Lord our full hospitality."
   His very voice seemed to have a calming effect on the whole table,
except perhaps for my mother, who seemed not to know what to do.
   The Captain looked almost slyly at my father, as if to convey the
secret message that this would never do, but he went off to deliver the
invitation.
   My father did not sit down. He stood staring off, and then he cocked
his head, as though listening. He turned and snapped his fingers,
drawing to attention the two guards slumbering at the ends of the hall.
   "Go through the house, see to everything," he said in a soft voice.
"I think I hear birds which have entered the house. It's the warm air,
and there are many open windows."
   These two went off, and immediately two other soldiers appeared to
take their place. That in itself was not usual, for it meant that there
were many men on duty.
   The Captain came back alone, and once more bowed.
   "My Lord, he will not come into the light, he says, but that you
must come out to him, and he has little time to wait on you."
   This was the first time I had ever seen my father really angry. Even
when he whipped me or a peasant boy, he was rather lazy about it. Now
the fine lineaments of his face, so given to reassurance by their very
proportions, became absolutely wrathful.
"How dare he?" he whispered.
   Yet he strode around the table, came in front of it and marched off
with the Captain of the Guard hastening behind him.
   I was out of my chair at once and after him. I heard my mother cry
out softly, "Vittorio, come back."
   But I stole down the stairs after my father, and into the courtyard,
and only when he himself turned around and pressed my chest hard with
his hand did I halt.
   "Stay there, my son," he said with his old kindly warmth. "I shall
see to it."
   I had a good vantage point, right at the door of the tower, and
there across the courtyard, at the gates in the full light of the
torches, I saw this strange Signore who would not come into the light
of the hall, for he did not seem to mind this outdoor illumination.
The huge gates of the arched entrance were locked and bolted for the
night. Only the small man-sized gate was opened, and it was there that

he stood, with the blazing crackling fire on either side of him,
glorying in it, it seemed to me, in his splendid raiment of dark, wine-
red velvet.
   From head to toe he was dressed in this rich color, hardly the
current style, but every detail of him, from his bejeweled doublet and
blown-up sleeves of satin and velvet stripes, was this same hue, as
though carefully dyed in the best fullers in Florence.
   Even the gems sewn into his collar and hanging about his neck on a
heavy golden chain were wine red--most likely rubies or even sapphires.
   His hair was thick and black, hanging sleekly onto his shoulders,
but I couldn't see his face, no, not at all, for the velvet hat he wore
overshadowed it, and I caught but a glimpse of very white skin, the
line of his jaw and a bit of his neck, for nothing else was visible. He
wore a broadsword of immense size, with an antique scabbard, and
casually over one shoulder was a cloak of the same wine-dark velvet
trimmed in what seemed to my distant eyes to be ornate gilt symbols.
   I strained, trying to make them out, this border of signs, and I
thought I could see a star and crescent moon worked into his fancy
adornments, but I was really too far away.
The man's height was impressive.
   My father stopped quite far short of him, yet when he spoke his
voice was soft and I couldn't hear it, and out of the mysterious man,
who still revealed nothing now of his face but his smiling mouth and
white teeth, there came a silky utterance that seemed both surly and
charming.
   "Get away from my house in the name of God and Our Holy Redeemer!"
my father cried out suddenly. And with a quick gesture, he stepped
forward and powerfully thrust this splendid figure right out of the
gate.
I was amazed.
   But from the hollow mouth of darkness beyond the opening there came
only a low satin laughter, a mocking laughter, and this it seemed was
echoed by others, and I heard a powerful thundering of hooves, as
though several horsemen had commenced at once to ride off.
   My father himself slammed the gate. And turned and made the Sign of
the Cross, and pressed his hands together in prayer.
   "Dear Lord God, how dare they!" he said, looking up.
   It was only now, as he stormed back towards me and towards the tower
itself, that I realized the Captain of the Guard was paralyzed with
seeming terror.
   My father's eye caught mine as soon as he came into the light from
the stairs, and I gestured to the Captain. My father spun round.
   "Batten down my house," my father called out. "Search it from top to
bottom and batten it down and call out the soldiery and fill the night
with torches, do you hear? I will have men in every tower and on the
walls. Do it at once. It will give peace and calm to my people!"
We had not yet reached the supper room when an old priest living with
us then, a learned Dominican named Fra Diamonte, came down with his
white hair all mussed, and his cassock half unbuttoned, and his prayer
book in his hand.
   "What is it, my Lord?" he asked. "What in the name of God has
happened?"
   "Father, trust in God and come and pray with me in the chapel," said
my father to him. He then pointed to another guard who was fast
approaching. "Light up the chapel, all its candles, for I want to pray.
Do it now, and have the boys come down and play for me some sacred
music."

   He then took my hand and that of the priest. "It's nothing, really,
you must both of you know that. It's all superstitious foolishness, but
any excuse which makes a worldly man like me turn to his God is a good
one. Come on, Vittorio, you and Fra Diamonte and I will pray, but for
your mother put on a good face."
   I was much calmer, but the prospect of being up all night in the
lighted chapel was both welcome and alarming.
   I went off to get my prayer books, my Mass books and books of other
devotions, fine vellum books from Florence, with gilt print and
beautifully edged illustrations.
   I was just coming out of my room when I saw my father there with my
mother, saying to her, "And do not leave the children alone for a
moment, and you, you in this state, I will not tolerate this distress."
She touched her belly.
   I realized she was with child again. And I realized, too, that my
father was really alarmed about something. What could it mean, "Do not
leave the children alone for a moment"? What could this mean?
   The chapel was comfortable enough. My father had long ago provided
some decent wooden and velvet-padded prie-dieux, though on feast days
everyone stood. Pews didn't exist in those times.
   But he also spent some of the night showing me the vault beneath the
church, which opened by means of a ring handle on a trapdoor, faced in
stone, the ring itself fitted down flat beneath what appeared to be
only one of many marble inlaid ornaments in the floor tiles.
   I knew of these crypts but had been whipped for sneaking into them
when I was a child, and my father had told me back then how
disappointed in me he'd been that I couldn't keep a family secret.
   That admonition had hurt far more than the whipping. And I'd never
asked to go with him into the crypts, which I knew he had done over the
years now and then. I thought treasure was down there, and secrets of
the pagans.
   Well, I saw now there was a cavernous room, carved high and deep out
of the earth, and faced with stone, and that it was full of varied
treasure. There were old chests and even old books in heaps. And two
bolted doorways.
   "Those lead to old burial places that you don't need to go to," he
said, "but you need to know of this place now. And remember it."
   When we came back up into the chapel, he put the trapdoor right,
laid down the ring, relaid the marble tile, and the whole was quite
invisible.
   Fra Diamonte pretended not to have seen. My mother was asleep and so
were the children.
We all fell asleep before dawn in the chapel.
   My father walked out in the courtyard at sunup, when the cocks were
crowing all over the villages inside the walls, and he stretched and
looked up at the sky and then shrugged his shoulders.
   Two of my uncles ran at him, demanding to know what Signore from
where dared to propose a siege against us and when we were supposed to
have this battle.
   "No, no, no, you've got it all wrong," my father said. "We're not
going to war. You go back to bed."
   But he had no sooner spoken these words than a ripping scream
brought us all around, and through the opening courtyard gates there
came one of the village girls, one of our near and dear girls,
shrieking the terrible words:
"He's gone, the baby's gone, they've taken him."
   The rest of the day was a relentless search for this missing child.

But no one could find him. And it was soon discovered that one other
child had also vanished without a trace. He had been a half-wit, rather
beloved because he caused no harm, but so addle-brained he couldn't
even much walk. And everyone was ashamed to say that they did not even
know how long that half-wit had been missing.
By dusk, I thought I would go mad if I didn't get to see my father
alone, if I couldn't push my way into the locked chambers where he sat
with his uncles and the priests arguing and fighting. Finally, I
hammered so loudly on the door and kicked so much that he let me in.
   The meeting was about to break up and he drew me down by himself,
and he said with wild eyes:
   "Do you see what they've done? They took the very tribute they
demanded of me. They took it! I refused it and they took it."
"But what tribute? You mean the children?"
   He was wild-eyed. He rubbed his unshaven face, and he crashed his
fist down on his desk, and then he pushed over all his writing things.
   "Who do they think they are that they come to me by night and demand
that I tender to them those infants unwanted by anyone?"
"Father, what is this? You must tell me."
   "Vittorio, you will tomorrow be off to Florence, at the first light,
and with the letters I mean to write tonight. I need more than country
priests to fight this. Now get ready for the journey."
   He looked up quite suddenly. He appeared to listen, and then to look
about. I could see the light was gone from the windows. We ourselves
were just dim figures, and he had thrown the candelabra down. I picked
it up.
   I watched him sidelong as I took one of the candles and lighted it
by the torch at the door and brought it back, and then lighted the
other candles.
He listened, still and alert, and then without making a sound he rose
to his feet, his fists on the desk, seemingly uncaring of the light
that the candles threw on his shocked and wary face.
   "What do you hear, my Lord?" I said, using the formal address for
him without so much as realizing it.
   "Evil," he whispered. "Malignant things such as God only suffers to
live because of our sins. Arm yourself well. Bring your mother, your
brother and your sister to the chapel, and hurry. The soldiers have
their orders."
   "Shall I have some supper brought there as well, just bread and
beer, perhaps?" I asked.
   He nodded as though that were scarcely a concern.
   Within less than an hour we were all gathered inside the chapel, the
entire family, which included then five uncles and four aunts, and with
us were two nurses and Fra Diamonte.
   The little altar was decked out as if for Mass, with the finest
embroidered altar cloth and the thickest golden candlesticks with
blazing candles. The Image of Our Crucified Christ shone in the light,
an ancient colorless and thin wooden carving that had hung on the wall
there since the time of St. Francis, when the great saint was supposed
to have stopped at our castle two centuries ago.
   It was a naked Christ, common in those times, and a figure of
tortured sacrifice, nothing as robust and sensual as those crucifixes
made these days, and it stood out powerfully in contrast to the parade
of freshly painted saints on the walls in their brilliant scarlet and
gold finery.
   We sat on plain brown benches brought in for us, nobody speaking a
word, for Fra Diamonte had that morning said Mass and bestowed into the

Tabernacle the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the form of the Sacred
Host, and the chapel was now, as it were, put to its full purpose as
the House of God.
   We did eat the bread, and drink a little bit of the beer near the
front doors, but we kept quiet.
   Only my father repeatedly went out, walking boldly into the torch-
lighted courtyard and calling up to his soldiers in the towers and on
the walls, and even sometimes being gone to climb up and see for
himself that all was well under his protection.
   My uncles were all armed. My aunts said their rosaries fervently.
Fra Diamonte was confused, and my mother seemed pale to death and sick,
perhaps from the baby in her womb, and she clung to my sister and
brother, who were by this time pretty frankly frightened.
   It seemed we would pass the night without incident.
   It couldn't have been two hours before dawn when I was awakened from
a shallow slumber by a horrid scream.
   At once my father was on his feet, and so were my uncles, drawing
out their swords as best they could with their knotted old fingers.
   Screams rose all around in the night, and there came the alarms from
the soldiers and the loud riotous clanging of old bells from every
tower.
   My father grabbed me by the arm. "Vittorio, come/' he said, and at
once, pulling up the handle of the trapdoor, he threw it back and
thrust into my hand a great candle from the altar.
   "Take your mother, your aunts, your sister and your brother down,
now, and do not come out, no matter what you hear! Do not come out.
Lock the trapdoor above you and stay there! Do as I tell you!"
   At once I obeyed, snatching up Matteo and Bartola and forcing them
down the stone steps in front of me.
   My uncles had rushed through the doors into the courtyard, shouting
their ancient war cries, and my aunts stumbled and fainted and clutched
to the altar and would not be moved, and my mother clung to my father.
   My father was in a very paroxysm. I reached out for my eldest aunt,
but she was in a dead faint before the altar, and my father thundered
back to me, forced me into the crypt and shut the door.
   I had no choice but to latch the trapdoor as he had shown me how to
do, and to turn with the flickering candle in my hand and face the
terrified Bartola and Matteo.
"Go down all the way," I cried, "all the way."
   They nearly fell, trying to move backward down the steep narrow
steps that were by no means easy to descend, their faces turned towards
me.
   "What is it, Vittorio, why do they want to hurt us?" Bartola asked.
   "I want to fight them," Matteo said, "Vittorio, give me your dagger.
You have a sword. It's not fair."
   "Shhh, be quiet, do as our father said. Do you think it pleases me
that I can't be out there with the men? Quiet!"
   I choked back my tears. My mother was up there! My aunts!
   The air was cold and damp, but it felt good. I broke out in a sweat,
and my arm ached from holding the big golden candlestick. Finally we
sank down in a huddle, the three of us at the far end of the chamber,
and it felt soothing to me to touch the cold stone.
   But in the interval of our collective silence I could hear through
the heavy floor howls from above, terrible cries of fear and panic, and
rushing feet, and even the high chilling whinnies of the horses. It
sounded as if horses had come crashing into the chapel itself over our
heads, which was not at all impossible.

   I rose to my feet and rushed to the two other doors of the crypt,
those which led to the burial chambers or whatever they were, I didn't
care! I moved the latch on one, and could see nothing but a low
passage, not even tall enough for me, and barely wide enough for my
shoulders.
   I turned back, holding the only light, and saw the children rigid
with fear, gazing up at the ceiling as the murderous cries continued.
   "I smell fire," Bartola whispered suddenly, her face wet at once
with tears. "Do you smell it, Vittorio? I hear it."
I did hear it and I did smell it.
"Both of you make the Sign of the Cross; pray now," I said, "and trust
in me. We will get out of here."
   But the clamor of the battle went on, the cries did not die out, and
then suddenly, so suddenly it was as wondrous and frightful as the
noise itself, there fell a silence.
   A silence fell over all, and it was too complete to spell victory.
Bartola and Matteo clung to me, on either side.
   Above, there was a clatter. The chapel doors were being thrown back,
and then quite suddenly the trapdoor was yanked up and open, and in the
glimmer of firelight beyond I saw a dark slender long-haired figure.
In the gust my candle went out.
   Except for the infernal flicker above and beyond, we were committed
unmercifully to total darkness.
   Once again distinctly, I saw the outline of this figure, a tall,
stately female with great long locks and a waist small enough for both
my hands as she appeared to fly down the stairs soundlessly towards me.
   How in the name of Heaven could this be, this woman?
   Before I could think to pull my sword on a female assailant or make
sense of anything at all, I felt her tender breasts brushed against my
chest, and the cool of her skin as she seemed to be throwing her arms
about me.
   There was a moment of inexplicable and strangely sensuous confusion
when the perfume of her tresses and her gown rose in my nostrils, and I
fancied I saw the glistening whites of her eyes as she looked at me.
I heard Bartola scream, and then Matteo also.
I was knocked to the floor.
The fire blazed bright above.
   The figure had them both, both struggling screaming children in one
seemingly fragile arm, and stopping, apparently to look at me, a raised
sword in her other hand, she raced up the stairway into the firelight.
   I pulled my sword with both hands, rushed after her, up and out into
the chapel, and saw that she had somehow by the most evil power all but
reached the door, an impossible feat, her charges wailing and crying
out for me, "Vittorio, Vittorio!"
   All the upper windows of the chapels were full of fire, and so was
the rose window above the crucifix.
   I could not believe what I beheld, this young woman, who was
stealing from me my sister and brother.
   "Stop in the name of God!" I shouted at her. "Coward, thief in the
night."
   I ran after her, but to my utter astonishment she did stop, still,
and turned to look at me again, and this time I saw her full in all her
refined beauty. Her face was a perfect oval with great benign gray
eyes, her skin like the finest Chinese white enamel. She had red lips,
too perfect even for a painter to make by choice, and her long ashen
blond hair was gray like her eyes in the light of the fire, sweeping
down her back in a pampered swaying mass. Her gown, though stained dark

with what must have been blood, was the same wine-red color I had seen
in the apparel of the evil visitor of the night before.
   With the most curious and then poignant face, she merely stared at
me. Her right hand held her sword upraised, but she didn't move, and
then she released from the powerful grip of her left arm my struggling
brother and sister.
Both tumbled sobbing to the floor.
   "Demon. Strega!" I roared. I leapt over them and advanced on her,
swinging the sword.
   But she dodged so swiftly that I didn't even see it. I couldn't
believe that she was so far from me, standing now with the sword down,
staring at me still and at the sobbing children.
   Suddenly her head turned. There was a whistling cry, and then
another and another. Through the door of the chapel, seeming to leap
from the fires of Hell itself, there came another red-clad figure,
hooded in velvet and wearing gold-trimmed boots, and as I swung my
sword at him, he threw me aside and, in one instant, cut off the head
of Bartola and then severed the head of the screaming Matteo.
   I went mad. I howled. He turned on me. But from the female there
came a sudden firm negation.
   "Leave him alone," she cried in a voice that was both sweet and
clear, and then off he went, this murderer, this hooded fiend in his
gold-trimmed boots, calling back to her.
   "Come on, now, have you lost your wits? Look at the sky. Come,
Ursula."
She didn't move. She stared at me as before.
   I sobbed and cursed and, grabbing my sword, ran at her again, and
this time saw my blade descend to cut off her right arm, right below
the elbow. The white limb, small and seemingly fragile like all of her
parts, fell to the paved floor with her heavy sword. Blood spurted from
her.
   She did no more than look at it. And then at me with the same
poignant, disconsolate and near heartbroken face.
   I lifted my sword again. "Strega!" I cried, clenching my teeth,
trying to see through my tears. "Strega!"
   But in another feat of evil, she had moved back, far away from me,
as if pulled by an invisible force, and in her left hand she now held
her right, which still clutched her sword as if it were not severed.
She replaced the limb I had cut off. I watched her. I watched her put
the limb in place and turn it and adjust it until it was as it should
be, and then before my astonished eyes, I saw the wound I had made
utterly seal up in her white skin.
   Then the loose bell sleeve of her rich velvet gown fell down again
around her wrist.
   In a twinkling she was outside the chapel, only a silhouette now
against the distant fires burning in the tower windows. I heard her
whisper:
"Vittorio."
Then she vanished.
I knew it was vain to go after her! Yet still I ran out and swung my
sword around in a great circle, crying out in rage and bitterness and
mad menace at all the world, my eyes now blinded with tears, and my
throat full to choking.
   Everything was still. Everyone was dead. Dead. I knew it. The
courtyard was strewn with bodies.
   I ran back into the chapel. I grabbed up the head of Bartola and the
head of Matteo into my arms. I sat down and held them in my lap, and I

sobbed.
   They seemed still alive, these severed heads, their eyes flashing,
and their lips even moving with hopeless attempts to speak. Oh, God! It
was beyond all human endurance. I sobbed.
I cursed.
   I laid them side by side, these two heads in my lap, and I stroked
their hair and stroked their cheeks and whispered comforting words to
them, that God was close, God was with us, God would take care of us
forever, that we were in Heaven. Oh, please, I beg you, God, I prayed
in my soul, don't let them have the feeling and the consciousness which
they still seem to possess. Oh, no, not such. I can't bear it. I
cannot. No. Please.
   At dawn, finally, when the sun poured arrogantly through the door of
the chapel, when the fires had died away, when the birds sang as if
nothing had happened, the innocent little heads of Bar-tola and Matteo
were lifeless and still, and very obviously dead, and their immortal
souls were gone from them, if they had not flown at the moment when the
sword had severed these heads from the bodies.
   I found my mother murdered in the courtyard. My father, covered with
wounds on his hands and arms, as if he had grabbed at the very swords
that struck him, lay dead on the stairs of the tower.
   The work all around had been swift. Throats cut, and only here and
there the evidence, as with my father, of a great struggle.
   Nothing was stolen. My aunts, two dead in the far corner of the
chapel, and two others in the yard, wore still all their rings and
necklets and circlets about their hair.
Not a jeweled button had been ripped away.
   It was the same throughout the entire compound.
   The horses were gone, the cattle had roamed into the woods, the fowl
flown. I opened the little house full of my hunting falcons, took off
their hoods and let them all go into the trees.
There was no one to help me bury the dead.
   By noon, I had dragged my family, one by one, to the crypt and
tumbled them unceremoniously down the steps, and then laid them all
out, side by side in the room, as best I could.
   It had been a backbreaking task. I was near to fainting as I
composed the limbs of each person, and last of all my father.
   I knew that I could not do it for everyone else here in our
compound. It was simply impossible. Besides, whatever had come might
well come again, as I had been left alive, and there was a hooded demon
man who had witnessed it, a vicious hooded assassin who had slaughtered
two children piteously
   And whatever was the nature of this angel of death, this exquisite
Ursula, with her barely tinted white cheeks and her long neck and
sloping shoulders, I didn't know. She herself might come back to avenge
the insult I had done her.
I had to leave the mountain.
   That these creatures were not anywhere around now I felt
instinctively, both in my heart and from the wholesomeness of the warm
and loving sun, but also because I had witnessed their flight, heard
their whistles to one another and heard the ominous words of the demon
man to the woman, Ursula, that she must hurry.
No, these were things of the night.
   So I had time to climb the highest tower and look at the country
round.
   I did. I confirmed that there was no one who could have seen the
smoke of our few burning wooden floors and torched furniture. The

nearest castle was a ruin, as I have said. The lower hamlets were long
abandoned.
   The nearest village of any size was a full day's walk, and I had to
be off if I meant to get to any kind of hiding place by nightfall.
   A thousand thoughts tormented me. I knew too many things. I was a
boy; I could not even pass for a man! I had wealth in the Florentine
banks but it was a week's ride from where I was! These were demons. Yet
they had come into a church. Fra Diamonte had been struck dead.
Only one thought finally was possible for me.
Vendetta. I was going to get them. I was going to find them and get
them. And if they couldn't come out by the light of day, then it would
be by that means that I would get them! I would do it. For Bartola, for
Matteo, for my father and mother, for the humblest child who had been
taken from my mountain.
   And they had taken the children. Yes, that they had done. I
confirmed it before I left, for it was slow to dawn on me with all my
concerns, but they had. There was not a corpse of a child on the place,
only those boys of my age had been killed, but anything younger had
been stolen away.
   For what! For what horrors! I was beside myself.
   I might have stood in the tower window, with clenched fist, consumed
with anger and the vow for vendetta, if a welcome sight hadn't
distracted me. Down in the closest valley, I saw three of my horses
wandering about, aimlessly, as though wanting to be called home.
   At least I should have one of my finest to ride, but I had to get
moving. With a horse I might just reach a town by nightfall. I didn't
know the land to the north. It was mountain country, but I had heard of
a fair-sized town not too far away. I had to get there, for refuge, to
think and to consult with a priest who had a brain in his head and knew
demons.
   My last task was ignominious and revolting to me, but I did it. I
gathered up all the wealth I could carry.
This meant that I retired first to my own room, as if this were an
ordinary day, dressed myself in my best dark hunter's green silk and
velvet, put on my high boots and took up my gloves, and then taking the
leather bags which I could affix to my horse's saddle, I went down into
the crypt and took from my parents and my aunts and uncles their very
most treasured rings, necklaces and brooches, the buckles of gold and
silver which had come from the Holy Land. God help me.
   Then I filled my purse with all the gold ducats and florins I could
find in my father's coffers, as if I were a thief, a very thief of the
dead it seemed to me, and hefting these heavy leather bags, I went to
get my mount, saddle him and bridle him and start off, a man of rank,
with his weaponry, and his mink-edged cape, and a Florentine cap of
green velvet, off into the forest.




                                   4

                    IN WHICH I COME UPON FURTHER

                     MYSTERIES, SUFFER SEDUCTION
                       AND CONDEMN MY SOUL TO
                             BITTER VALOR


  NOW, I was too full of rancor to be thinking straight, as IVe already
described, and surely you will under-I stand this. But it wasn't smart
of me to go riding through the woods of Tuscany dressed so richly, and
by myself, because any woods in Italy was bound to have its bandits.
   On the other hand, playing the poor scholar wouldn't have been the
best choice either, it seemed to me.
   I can't claim to have made a real decision. The desire for vengeance
upon the demons that had destroyed us was the only central passion I
could abide.
   So there I was, riding steadily by mid-afternoon, trying to keep to
the valley roads as I lost sight of our towers, trying not to cry
anymore like a child, but being drawn off into the mountainous land
over and over again.
   My head was swimming. And the landscape gave me little time to
think.
Nothing could have been more forlorn.
   I came within sight of two huge ruined castles very soon after my
departure, copings and ramparts lost in the greedy forest, which made
me mindful that these had been the holdings of old Lords who had been
fool enough to resist the power of Milan or Florence. It was enough to
make me doubt my sanity, enough to make me think that we had not been
annihilated by demons but that common enemies had made the assault.
   It was utterly grim to see their broken battlements looming against
the otherwise cheerful and brilliant sky, and to come upon the
overgrown fragments of villages with their tumbledown hovels and
forgotten crossroads shrines in which stone Virgins or saints had sunk
into spiderwebs and shadows.
   When I did spy a high distant well-fortified town, I knew well it
was Milanese and had no intention of going up there. I was lost!
   As for the bandits, I only ran into one little ragged band, which I
took on immediately with a deluge of chatter.
. If anything, the little pack of idiots gave me some distraction. My
blood ran as fast as my tongue:
   "I'm riding in advance of a hundred men," I declared. "We search for
a band of outlaws claiming to be fighting for Sforza when they're
nothing but rapists and thieves; you seen any of them? I have a florin
for each of you if you can tell me anything. We mean to cut them down
on sight. I'm tired. I'm sick of this."
I tossed them some coins.
They were off immediately.
   But not before they let slip in talk of the country round that the
nearest Florentine town was Santa Maddalana, which was two hours up
ahead, and that it would close its gates at night, and nobody could
talk his way into it.
   I pretended to know all about that and to be on the way to a famous
monastery that I knew lay farther north, which I couldn't possibly have
reached, and then threw more money over my shoulder as I raced off,
hollering out that they ought to ride on to meet the band coming behind
who would pay them for their service.
   I know they were debating all the time whether to kill me and take
everything I had or not. It was a matter of stares and bluffs and fast

talking and standing one's ground, and they were just utter ruffians,
and somehow I got out of it.
   I rode off as quickly as I could, left the main road and cut towards
the slopes from which I could see in the far distance the vague outline
of Santa Maddalana. A big town. I could see four massive towers all
gathered near the obvious front gates, and several distinct church
steeples.
   I had hoped for something before this Santa Maddalana, something
small, less fortified. But I couldn't remember names or was too lost
now to go looking further.
   The afternoon sunshine was brilliant but now at a slant. I had to
make for Santa Maddalana.
   When I reached the mountain proper on which this town was built, I
went up sharply on the small paths used by the shepherds.
   The light was fading fast. The forest was too thick to be safe so
near a walled town. I cursed them that they didn't keep the mountain
cleared, but then I had the safety of cover.
   There were moments amid the deepening darkness when it seemed
virtually impossible to reach the summit; the stars now lighted a
glowing sapphirine sky, but that only made the venerable town in all
its majesty seem ever more unattainable.
   Finally the heedless night did plunge down amongst the thick trunks
of the trees, and I was picking my way, counting on the instincts of my
horse more than my own failing vision. The pale half-moon seemed in
love with the clouds. The sky itself was nothing but bits and pieces
thanks to the canopy of foliage above me.
   I found myself praying to my father, as if he were safely with my
guardian angels about me, and I think I believed in him and his
presence more surely than I had ever believed in angels, saying,
"Please, Father, help me get there. Help me get to safety, lest those
demons render my vengeance impossible."
   I gripped my sword hard. I reminded myself of the daggers I wore in
my boots, in my sleeve, in my jacket and in my belt. I strained to see
by the lightof the sky, and had to trust my horse to pick his way
through the thick tree trunks.
   At moments I stopped very still. I heard no unusual sound. Who else
would be fool enough to be out in the night of this forest? At some
point very near the end of the journey, I found the main road, the
forest thinned and then gave way to smooth fields and meadows, and I
took the twists and turns at a gallop.
   At last the town rose right up in front of us, as it happens when
you reach the gates by a final turn, you seem to have been thrown up on
the ground at the foot of a magic fortress--and I took a deep breath of
thanks, no matter that the giant gates were firmly shut as if a hostile
army were camped beneath it.
This had to be my haven.
   Of course the Watch, a sleepy soldier hollering down from above,
wanted to know who I was.
   Once again the effort of making up something good distracted me from
wayward, near uncontrollable, images of the fiend Ursula and her
severed arm, and the decapitated bodies of my brother and sister fallen
on the chapel floor in mid-gesture.
   I cried out, in a humble tone but with pretentious vocabulary, that
I was a scholar in the employ of Cosimo de' Medici come on a search for
books in Santa Maddalana, in particular old prayer books pertaining to
the saints and appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary in this district.
What nonsense.

   I had come, I declared, to visit the churches and schools and
whatever old teachers the town might shelter, and to take back what I
could purchase with good gold Florentine coin to my master in Florence.
   "Yes, but your name, your name!" the soldier insisted as he opened
the small lower gate only a crack, his lantern held high to inspect me.
I knew I made a good picture on my horse.
   "De' Bardi," I declared. "Antonio De' Bardi, kinsman of Cosimo," I
said with fierce nerve, naming the family of Cosimo's wife because it
was the only name that came into my head. "Look, kindly man, take this
payment for me, have a good supper with your wife as my guests, here, I
know it's late, I'm so tired!"
   The gate was opened. I had to dismount to lead my horse with lowered
head through it and into the echoing stone piazza right inside.
   "What in the name of God," asked the Watchman, "were you doing in
these woods after dark alone? Do you know the dangers? And so young?
What is the Bardi these days that they let their secretaries go riding
all over unescorted?" He pocketed the money. "Look at you, a mere
child! Somebody could murder you for your buttons. What's the matter
with you?"
   This was an immense piazza, and I could see more than one street
leading off. Good luck. But what if the demons were here too? I had no
clue as to where such things might roost or hide! But I went on
talking.
   "It's all my fault. I got lost. Tell on me and you'll get me in
trouble," I said. "Show me to the Albergo. I'm so tired. Here, take
this, no, you must." I gave him more money "I got lost. I didn't
listen. I'm about to faint. I need wine and supper and a bed. Here,
good man, no, no, no, take more, I insist. The Bardi would not have it
otherwise."
   He ran out of pockets for the money, but managed somehow to stuff it
in his shirt and then led me by torchlight to the Inn, banging on the
door, and a sweet-faced old woman came down, grateful for the coins I
thrust into her hand at once, to show me to a room.
   "High up and looking out over the valley," I said, "if you please,
and some supper, it can be stone cold, I don't care."
   "You're not going to find any books in this town," said the
Watchman, standing about as I beat it up the stairs after the woman.
'All the young people go off; it's a peaceable place, just happy little
shopkeepers. Young men today run off to universities. But this is a
beautiful place to live, simply beautiful."
   "How many churches do you have?" I asked the old woman when we'd
reached the room. I told her that I must keep the lighted candle for
the night.
   "Two Dominican, one Carmelite," said the Watchman, slouching in the
little door, "and the beautiful old Franciscan church, which is where I
go. Nothing bad ever happens here."
   The old woman shook her head and told him to be quiet. She set the
candle down and gestured that it could stay.
   The Watchman went on chattering as I sat on the bed, staring at
nothing, until she'd brought a plate of cold mutton and bread, and a
pitcher of wine.
"Our schools are strict," the man went on.
Again the old woman told him to hush up.
   "Nobody dares to make trouble in this place/' he said, and then both
of them were gone.
   I fell on my plate like an animal. All I wanted was strength. In my
grief I couldn't even think of pleasure. I looked out on a tiny bit of

high star-sprinkled sky for a little while, praying desperately to
every saint and angel whose name I knew for help, and then I locked up
the window tight.
I bolted the door.
   And making sure that the candle was well sheltered in the corner,
and plenty big enough to last until dawn, I fell into the lumpy little
bed, too exhausted to remove boots or sword or daggers or anything
else. I thought I'd fall into a deep sleep, but I lay rigid, full of
hatred, and hurt, and swollen broken soul, staring into the dark, my
mouth full of death as if I'd eaten it.
   I could hear distantly the sounds of my horse being tended to
downstairs, and some lonely steps on the deserted stone street. I was
safe, at least that much was so.
   Finally sleep came. It came totally and completely and sweetly; the
net of nerves which had held me suspended and maddened simply
dissolved, and I sank down into a dreamless darkness.
   I was conscious of that sweet point where nothing for the moment
matters except to sleep, to replenish and to fear yet no dreams, and
then nothing.
   A noise brought me around. I was immediately awake. The candle had
gone out. I had my hand on my sword before my eyes opened. I lay on the
narrow bed, back to the wall, facing the room and in a seemingly
sourceless light. I could just make out the bolted door, but I couldn't
see the window above me unless I turned my head to look up, and I knew,
positively knew, that this window, heavily barred, had been broken
open. The little light which fell on the wall came from the sky
outside. It was a fragile, weak light, slipping down against the wall
of the town and giving my little chamber the attitude of a prison cell.
   I felt the cool fresh air come down around my neck and felt it on my
cheek. I clutched the sword tight, listening, waiting. There were small
creaking sounds. The bed had moved ever so slightly, as if from a
pressure.
   I couldn't focus my eyes. Darkness suddenly obscured everything, and
out of this darkness there rose a shape before me, a figure bending
over me, a woman looking right into my face as her hair fell down on
me.
It was Ursula.
   Her face was not an inch from mine. Her hand, very cool and smooth,
closed over my own, on the hilt of my sword, with a deadly force, and
she let her eyelashes stroke my cheek and then kissed my forehead.
   I was enveloped in sweetness, no matter how hot my rebellion. A
sordid flood of sensation penetrated to my very entrails.
"Strega!" I cursed her.
   "I didn't kill them, Vittorio." Her voice was imploring but with
dignity and a curious sonorous strength, though it was only a small
voice, very young in tone and feminine in timbre.
   "You were taking them/' I said to her. I tried in a violent spasm to
free myself. But her hand held me powerfully fast, and when I tried to
free my left arm from under me, she caught my wrist and held me there
too, and then she kissed me.
   There came that magnificent perfume from her which I had breathed in
before, and the stroking of her hair on my face and neck sent shameless
chills through me.
   I tried to turn my head, and she let her lips touch my cheek gently,
almost respectfully.
   I felt the length of her body against me, the definite swell of her
breasts beneath costly fabric, and the smooth length of her thigh

beside me in the bed, and her tongue touched my lips. She licked at my
lips.
   I was immobilized by the chills that went through me, humiliating me
and kindling the passion inside me.
"Get away, strega," I whispered.
   Filled with rage, I couldn't stop the slow smolder that had caught
hold in my loins; I couldn't stop the rapturous sensations that were
passing over my shoulders and down my back, and even through my legs.
   Her eyes glowed above me, the flicker of her lids more a sensation
than a spectacle I could see with my own eyes, and again her lips
closed over mine, sucking at my mouth, teasing it, and then she drew
back and pressed her cheek against me.
   Her skin, which had looked so like porcelain, felt softer than a
down feather against me, ah, all of her seemed a soft doll, made of
luscious and magical materials far more yielding than flesh and blood
yet utterly on fire with both, for a heat came out of her in a rhythmic
throb, emanating right from the coolness of her fingers stroking my
wrists as they held them, and then the heat of her tongue shot into my
lips, against my will, with a wet, delicious and vehement force against
which I could do nothing.
   There formed in my crazed mind some realization that she had used my
own hot desire to render me helpless, that carnal madness had made of
me a body constructed about metal wires that could not help but conduct
the fire she poured into my mouth.
   She drew her tongue back and sucked with her lips again. My entire
face was tingling. All my limbs were struggling both against her and to
touch her, yes, embrace her yet fight her.
   She lay against the very evidence of my desire. I couldn't have
hidden it. I hated her.
"Why? What for!" I said, tearing my mouth loose. Her hair descended on
both sides as she lifted her head. I could scarcely breathe for the
unearthly pleasure.
   "Get off me/' I said, "and go back into Hell. What is this mercy to
me! Why do this to me?"
   "I don't know," she answered in her clever, tremulous voice. "Maybe
it's only that I don't want you to die," she said, breathing against my
chest. Her words were rapid, like her heated pulse. "Maybe more," she
said, "I want you to go away, go south to Florence, go away and forget
all that's happened, as if it were nightmares or witches' spells, as if
none of it took place; leave this town, go, you must."
   "Stop your foul lies," I said before I could stop myself. "You think
I'll do that? You murdered my family, you, you and yours, whatever you
are!"
   Her head dipped, her hair ensnaring me. I fought vainly to get
loose. It was out of the question. I couldn't budge her grip.
   All was blackness, and indescribable softness. I felt a sudden tiny
pain in my throat, no more than the prick of pins, and my mind was
suddenly flooded with the most tranquil happiness.
   It seemed I'd stumbled into a blowing meadow of flowers, quite far
away from this place and from all woes, and she lay with me, fallen
against silently crushed stems and uncomplaining irises, Ursula, with
her undone ashen hair, and she smiled with the most engaging and
demanding eyes, fervent, perhaps even brilliant, as if ours were a
sudden and total infatuation of mind as well as body. On my chest she
climbed, and though she rode me, looking down at me with exquisite
smiling lips, she parted her legs gently for me to enter her.
   It seemed a delirious blending of elements, the wet contracting

secretive pocket between her legs and this great abundance of silent
eloquence pouring from her gaze as she looked lovingly down at me.
   Abruptly it stopped. I was dizzy. Her lips were against my neck.
I tried with all my might to throw her off.
   "I will destroy you," I said. "I will. I vow it. If I have to chase
you into the mouth of Hell," I whispered. I strained against her grasp
so hard that my own flesh burned against hers. But she wouldn't relent.
I tried to clear my mind. No, no dreams of sweetness, no.
"Get away from me, witch."
   "Hush, be quiet," she said sorrowfully. "You are so young and so
stubborn, and so brave. I was young like you. Oh, yes, and so
determined and such a fearless paragon."
"Don't talk your filth to me," I said.
   "Hush," she said again. "You'll wake the house. What good will that
do?" How painful, earnest and enticing she sounded. Her voice itself
could have seduced me from behind a curtain. "I cannot make you safe
forever," she said, "or even for very long. Vittorio, go."
   She drew back so that I could see her sincere and large yielding
eyes all the better. She was a masterpiece. And such beauty, the
perfect simulacrum of the fiend I'd seen in the firelight of my chapel,
needed no potions or spells to advance her cause. She was flawless and
intimately magnificent.
   "Oh, yes," she confessed, her half-visible eyes searching my face,
"and I do find such beauty in you it pulls on my heart/' she said.
"Unfairly, unjustly How am I to suffer this as well as all else?"
   I struggled. I wouldn't answer. I wouldn't feed this enigmatic and
infernal blaze.
   "Vittorio, get out of here," she said, lowering her voice ever more
delicately and ominously. "You have a few nights, maybe not even that.
If I come to you again, I may lead them to you. Vittorio--. Don't tell
anyone in Florence. They'll laugh at you."
She was gone.
   The bed creaked and rocked. I was on my back, and my wrists ached
from the pressure of her hands, and above me the window gaped on the
gray featureless light, the wall beside the Inn rising up towards a sky
I couldn't quite see from this helpless vantage point.
I was alone in the room. She was nowhere.
   All of a sudden, I willed my limbs to action, but before I could so
much as move, she appeared again, above in the window, visible from the
waist to the top of her bowed head, peering down at me, and with her
hands she tore loose the low embroidered border of her gown and bared
her naked white breasts before me--tiny, rounded, very close together
and with piquant nipples visible only in their darkness. With her right
hand she scratched her left breast, just above the little nipple, made
it bleed.
"Witch!"
   I rose up to grab hold of her, to kill her, and instead felt her
hand grasp my head, and there came the pressure of her left breast into
my very mouth, irresistibly frail yet firm. Once again, all that was
real melted and was swept away like so much idle smoke rising from a
fire, and we were together in the meadow which belonged only to us,
only to our diligent and indissoluble embraces. I sucked the milk from
her, as if she was maiden and mother, virgin and queen, all the while I
broke with my thrusts whatever flower remained inside of her to be torn
open.
   I was let go. I fell. Helpless, unable even to raise a hand to keep
her from flying, I fell down, weak and stupid onto the bed, my face wet

and my limbs trembling.
   I couldn't sit up. I could do nothing. I saw in flashes our field of
tender white irises and red irises, the loveliest flowers of Tuscany,
the wild irises of our land, blowing in the greenest grass, and I saw
her running away from me. Yet all this was transparent, half-tinted,
and could not mask the tiny cell of a room as it had done before, only
linger, like a veil drawn across my face, to torment me with its
tickling weightless silkiness.
   "Spells!" I whispered. "My God, if you have ever committed me to
guardian angels, will you spur them on now to cover me with their
wings!" I sighed. "I need them."
   Finally, shakily and with dim vision, I sat up. I rubbed at my neck.
Chills ran up and down my spine, and the backs of my arms. My body was
still full of desire.
   I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to think of her yet wanting
anything, any source of stimulation, that would soothe this awful need.
   I lay back again, and was very still until this carnal madness had
left me.
   I was a man again then, for not having been, at random, a man.
   I got up, ready for tears, and I took my candle down to the main
room of the Inn, trying not to make a sound on the crooked winding
stone stairs, and I got a light from a candle there on a hook on the
wall, at the mouth of the passage, and I went back up, clinging to this
comforting little light, shielding the shuddering flame with my cupped
hand and praying still, and then I set down the candle.
   I climbed up and tried to see what I could from the window.
   Nothing, nothing but an impossible drop beneath me, a sloping wall
up which a flesh-and-blood maiden could never have climbed, and higher,
the mute, passive sky, in which the few stars had been covered by
fleecy clouds as if not to acknowledge my prayers or my predicament.
It seemed absolutely certain I was going to die.
   I was going to fall victim to these demons. She was right. How could
I possibly exact the revenge they deserved? How in Hell could I do it!
Yet I believed in my purpose utterly. I believed in my revenge as
completely as I believed in her, this witch whom I had touched with my
very own fingers, who had dared to kindle a wanton conflict in my soul,
who had come with her comrades of the night to slaughter my family
   I couldn't overmaster the images of the night before, of her
standing bewildered in the chapel door. I couldn't get the taste of her
off my lips. All I had to do was think of her breasts, and my body
would weaken as if she were feeding my desire from her nipple.
   Make this subside, I prayed. You cannot run. You cannot go off to
Florence, you cannot live forever with nothing but the memory of the
slaughter you saw, that is impossible, unthinkable. You cannot.
   I wept when I realized that I wouldn't be alive now if it had not
been for her.
   It was she, the ashen-haired one I was cursing with every breath,
who had stopped her hooded companion from killing me. It would have
been a complete victory!
   A calm came over me. Well, if I was going to die, there was no
choice, really. I would get them first. I would somehow do it.
   As soon as the sun was up, so was I, and walking around the town, my
saddlebags over my shoulder casually, as if they didn't contain a
fortune, I sized up quite a portion of Santa Maddalana, with its
treeless, narrow-stoned streets, built centuries before, perhaps some
of its buildings with their wild patternless mortared stones going back
even to Roman times.

   It was a marvelously peaceful and prosperous town.
   The forges were already at work, and so were the cabinetmakers and
also the saddlemakers; there were several shoemakers dealing in some
fine slippers as well as the workaday boots, and quite a cluster of
jewelers and men who worked in a great variety of precious metals, as
well as the usual swordmakers, men who made keys and the like and those
who dealt in hides and furs.
   I passed more fancy shops than I could count. One could buy fancy
fabrics here, right from Florence, I supposed, and lace from north and
south it seemed, and Oriental spices. The butchers were having a time
of it with the abundance of fresh meat. And there were many wine shops,
and I passed at least a couple of busy notaries, letter writers and the
like, and several doctors or, rather, apothecaries.
   Carts were rolling through the front gates, and there was even a
little crush in the streets now and then before the sun was even high
enough to come fiercely down over the close-tiled roofs and hit the
bare stones on which I plodded uphill.
   The churches rang their bells for Mass, and I saw plenty of
schoolchildren rushing past me, all rather clean and neatly dressed,
and then two little crews being paraded by monks into the churches,
both of which were quite antique and had no ornament on the front at
all, save for statues deep in niches--saints who scarcely had any
features left to them at all--the heavily patched stones of the facades
obviously having weathered the frequent earthquakes of this region.
   There were two rather ordinary bookshops that had almost nothing
much, except the prayer books one would expect to find, and these at
very high prices. Two merchants sold really fine wares from the East.
And there was a cluster of carpet sellers, too, who dealt in an
impressive variety of country-made goods and intricate carpets from
Byzantium.
   Lots of money was changing hands. There were well-dressed people
showing off their fine clothes. It seemed a self-sufficient place,
though there were travelers coming uphill with the clop of horses'
hooves echoing on the barren walls. And I think I spied one neglected
and very much fortified convent.
   I passed at least two more inns, and as I crisscrossed through the
barely passable alleyways here and there, I ascertained that there were
actually three basic streets to the town, all running parallel up and
down the hill.
   At the far deep end were the gates by which I had entered, and the
huge farmers' markets opened now in the piazza.
   At the high end was the ruined fortress or castle where once the
Lord had lived--a great cumbersome mass of old stones, of which only a
part was visible from the street, and in the lower floors of this
complex there were the town's governing offices.
There were several small grottoes or piazzas, and old fountains almost
crumbled away but still giving forth their gurgling water. Old women
were busy, shuffling along with their market baskets and their shawls
in spite of the warmth; and I saw beautiful young girls about giving me
the eye, all of them very young.
I didn't want any part of them.
   As soon as Mass was over and school had begun, I went to the
Dominican church--the largest and most impressive of the three I could
readily see--and asked at the rectory for a priest. I had to go to
Confession.
   There came out a young priest, very handsome with well-formed limbs
and a healthy look to his complexion and a truly devout manner to him,

his black and white robes very clean-looking. He looked at my attire,
and my sword, indeed he took me in very respectfully but quite
comprehensively, and obviously presuming me to be a person of
importance, invited me into a small room for the Confession.
   He was gracious more than servile. He had no more than a crown of
golden hair clipped very short around the top of his bald head, and
large almost shy eyes.
   He sat down, and I knelt close to him on the bare floor, and then
out of me came the whole lurid tale.
   With bowed head, I went on and on with it, rushing from one thing to
another, from the first hideous happenings that had so stirred my
curiosity and alarm, to my father's fragmented and mysterious words and
at last to the raid itself and the dreadful assassination of everyone
in our compound. By the time I came to the death of my brother and
sister, I was gesticulating madly, and all but shaping my brother's
head with my hands in the empty air, and gasping and unable to catch my
breath.
   Only when I was utterly finished with every last word did I look up
and realize that the young priest was staring down at me in perfect
distress and horror.
   I didn't know what to make of his expression. You could have seen
the very same face on a man startled by an insect or an approaching
battalion of bloody murderers.
What had I expected, for the love of God?
   "Look, Father," I said. 'All you have to do is send someone up that
mountain and see for yourself!" I shrugged, and implored him with my
open hands. "That's all! Send someone to look. Nothing's stolen,
Father, nothing's taken, but what I took! Go look! I'll wager nothing
has been disturbed except by ravens and buzzards if such are like to go
up there."
   He said nothing. The blood was palpitating in his young face, and
his mouth was open and his eyes had a dazed, miserable look.
   Oh, this was too marvelous. A silky boy of a priest, probably fresh
out of the seminary used to hearing nuns tell of evil thoughts, and men
once a year muttering resentfully about vices of the flesh because
their wives had dragged them to their duty
I became incensed.
   "You are under the Seal of the Confessional," I said, trying to be
patient with him, and not to play the Lord too much, because I could do
that with priests if I wasn't careful; they made me so mad when they
were stupid. "But I will give you permission, under the Seal, to send a
messenger up that mountain to see with your own eyes ..."
   "But son, don't you see," he said, speaking with surprising resolve
and firmness in his low voice. "The Medici themselves may have sent
this band of assassins."
   "No, no, no, Father," I pleaded, shaking my head. "I saw her hand
fall. I cut off the creature's hand, I tell you. I saw her put it back.
They were demons. Listen to me. These are witches, these are from Hell,
these beings, and there's too many of them for me to fight alone. I
need help. There's no time for disbelief. There's no time for rational
reservations. I need the Dominicans!"
He shook his head. He didn't even hesitate.
   "You are losing your mind, son," he said. "Something dreadful has
happened to you, there's no doubt of that, and you believe all this,
but it didn't happen. You are imagining things. Look, there are old
women around who claim they make charms..."
   "I know all that," I said. "I know an ordinary alchemist or witch

when I see one. This was no side-street magic, Father, no country bunch
of curses. I'm telling you, these demons slaughtered everyone in the
castle, in the villages. Don't you see?"
   I went into the lurid particulars again. I told how she had come
into the window of my room, but then when I was halfway through it, I
realized how utterly worse I was making it by going on about Ursula.
   Why, this man thought I'd woken in a hot dream, imagining a damned
succubus. This was futile, this entire enterprise.
   My heart was hurting me in my chest. I was sweating all over. This
was a waste of time.
"Give me absolution, then/' I said.
   "I want to ask something of you," he said. He touched my hand. He
was trembling. He looked more dazed and perplexed than even before, and
very concerned, for my state of mind, I assumed.
   "What is that?" I said coldly. I wanted to get away. I had to find a
monastery! Or a damned alchemist. There were alchemists in this town. I
could find someone, someone who had read the old works, the works of
Hermes Trismegistus or Lactantius or St. Augustine, somebody who knew
about demons.
   "Have you read St. Thomas Aquinas?" I asked, choosing the most
obvious demonologist of whom I could think. "Father, he talks all about
demons. Look, you think I would have believed all this myself last year
at this time? I thought all sorcery was for backdoor swindlers. These
were demons!" I could not be deterred. I went at him.
   "Father, in the Summa Theologica, the first book, St. Thomas talks
of the fallen angels, that some of them are allowed to be here on
earth, so that all of these fallen angels don't just fall out of the
natural scheme of things. They are here, allowed to be useful, to tempt
men, and Father, they carry the fire of Hell about with them! It's in
St. Thomas. They are here. They have . . . have . . . bodies we can't
understand. The Summa says so. It says that angels have bodies which
are beyond our understanding! That's what this woman possesses." I
struggled to remember the actual argument. I struggled in Latin. "This
is what she does, this being! It's a form, it's a limited form, but one
that I can't understand, but she was there, and I know it on account of
her actions."
He put up his hand for my patience.
   "Son, please," he said. 'Allow me to confide what you have confessed
to me to the Pastor," he asked me. "You understand, if I do this, he
too will be bound by the same Seal of Confession as I am bound. But let
me ask him to come in and let me tell him what you have said, and let
me ask that he speak to you. You understand, I cannot do any of this
without your solemn permission."
   "Yes, I know all that," I said. "What good will this do? Let me see
this Pastor."
   Now I was being too haughty entirely, too impertinent. I was
exhausted. I was doing the old Signore trick of treating a country
priest like he was a servant. This was a man of God, and I had to get a
grip on myself. Maybe the Pastor had read more, understood more. Oh,
but who would understand who had not seen?
There came back to me a fleeting yet vivid and searing memory of my
father's anxious face on the night before the demons had struck. The
pain was inexpressible.
   "I'm sorry, Father," I said to the priest. I winced, trying to
contain this memory, this awful drench of misery and hopelessness. I
wondered why any of us were alive, ever, for any reason!
   And then the words of my exquisite tormentor came back, her own

tortured voice of the last night saying that she had been young too,
and such a paragon. What had she meant, speaking of herself with such
sorrow?
   My study of Aquinas came back to haunt me. Were not demons supposed
to remain absolutely confirmed in their hatred of us? In the pride
which had made them sin?
   That was not the sinuous luscious creature who had come to me. But
this was folly. I was feeling for her, which is what she had wanted me
to do. I had only so many hours of daylight to plan her destruction and
must be on with it.
   "Please, yes, Father, as you wish," I said. "But bless me first."
   This drew him out of his troubled ruminations. He looked at me as if
I'd startled him.
At once he gave his blessing and his absolution.
   "You can do what you wish with the Pastor," I said. "Yes, please,
ask the Pastor if he will see me. And here, for the church." I gave him
several ducats.
   He stared at the money. But he didn't touch it. He stared at this
gold as if it were hot coals.
   "Father, take it. This is a tidy little fortune. Take it."
   "No, you wait here--or I tell you what, you come out into the
garden."
   The garden was lovely, a little old grotto, from which you could see
the town sneaking up on the right all the way to the castle, and then
you could see over the walls far out over the mountains. There was an
antique statue of St. Dominic there, a fountain and a bench, and some
old words carved into the stone about a miracle.
   1 sat down on the bench. I looked up at the healthy blue sky and the
virgin white clouds, and I tried to catch my breath inside of myself.
Could I be mad? I wondered. That was ridiculous.
   The Pastor startled me. He came plunging out of the low arched
doorway of the rectory, an elderly man with almost no hair at all, and
a small bulging nose and ferocious large eyes. The younger priest was
running to keep up with him.
   "Get out of here," the Pastor said to me in a whisper. "Get out of
our town. Get clear away from it, and don't tell your stories to
anybody in it, you hear me?"
"What?" I asked. "What sort of solace is this!"
He was steaming. "I'm warning you."
   "Warning me of what?" I demanded. I didn't bother to get up from the
bench. He glowered over me. "You're under the Seal of Confession. What
are you going to do if I don't leave?" I asked.
   "I don't have to do anything, that's just it!" he said. "Go away and
take your misery with you." He stopped, clearly at a loss, embarrassed
perhaps, as if he'd said something he regretted. He ground his teeth
and looked off and then back at me.
   "For your own sake, leave/' he said in a whisper. He looked at the
other priest. "You go," he said, "and let me talk to him."
   The young priest was in a total fright. He left immediately.
I looked up at the Pastor.
   "Leave," he said to me in his low, mean voice, his lower lip drawing
back to reveal his lower teeth. "Get out of our town. Get out of Santa
Maddalana."
   I looked at him with cold contempt. "You know about them, don't
you?" I said in a low voice.
   "You're mad. Mad!" he said. "If you speak of demons to people here
you'll end up burnt at the stake yourself for a sorcerer. You think it

can't happen?"
It was hatred in his eyes, shameless hatred.
   "Oh, poor damned priest," I said, "you're in league with the Devil."
"Get out!" he growled.
   I got up and looked down into his swelling eyes, his pouting,
overworked mouth.
   "Don't you dare break the Seal of my Confession, Father," I said.
"If you do, I'll kill you."
He stood stock-still, staring at me.
   I smiled very coldly and went to pass on through the rectory and
away.
   He ran after me, whispering like a steaming kettle. "You
misunderstand everything. You're crazy, you're imagining things. I'm
trying to save you from persecution and villainization."
   I turned around at the door to the church and glared him into utter
silence.
   "You've tipped your hand," I said. "You're too merciless. Remember
what I said. Break the Seal and I'll kill you/'
   He was as frightened now as the young priest had been.
   I stood looking at the altar for a long while, ignoring him,
forgetting him utterly, my mind pretending to have thoughts in it, to
be construing and planning when all I could do was endure. Then I made
the Sign of the Cross and I left the church.
I was in utter despair.
   For a while I walked around. Once again, it was only the most
pleasant town I had ever seen, with everyone happily at work, with
best-swept cobbled streets, and pretty flower boxes under all the
windows, and prettily dressed people going about their affairs.
   It was the cleanest place I'd ever seen in my life, and the most
contented. And the people, they were all eager to sell me their wares,
but they didn't press it terribly much. But it was an awfully dull town
in a way. There were no people my age, none at all that I saw. In fact,
there weren't all that many children.
   What should I do? Where should I go? What was I looking for?
   I didn't quite know how to answer my own questions, but I was
certainly on my guard for the slightest evidence that this town somehow
harbored the demons, that Ursula had not found me here, but that I had
found her.
   The mere thought of her overcame me with a cool, inviting shock of
desire. I saw her breasts, felt the taste of her, saw in a blurred
flash the flowered meadow. No!
   Think. Make some plan. As for this town, no matter what the priest
knew, these people were too wholesome for harboring demons.




                                   5

                     THE PRICE OF PEACE AND THE
                          PRICE OF VENGEANCE

AS the heat of the day started to really rise, I went into the arbor of
the Inn for the heavy noon meal and sat down I by myself under the
wisteria, which was blooming magnificently over the latticework. This
place was on the same side of the town as the Dominican church, and it
too had a lovely view of the town to the left and a view out over the
mountains.
   I closed my eyes, and putting my elbows on the table, I clasped my
hands and I prayed. "God, tell me what to do. Show me what is to be
done." And then I was quiet in my heart, waiting, thinking.
What were my choices?
   Take this tale to Florence? Who would believe it? Go to Cosimo
himself and tell him this story? Much as I admired and trusted the
Medici, I had to realize something. Nobody of my family was living but
me. I alone could lay claim to our fortunes in the Medici bank. I
didn't think Cosimo would deny my signature or my face. He'd give over
to me what was mine, whether I had kinsmen or not, but a story of
demons? I'd wind up locked up somewhere in Florence!
   And talk of the stake, of being burnt for a sorcerer, that was
entirely possible. Not likely. But possible. It could happen very
suddenly and spontaneously in a town like this, a mob gathering,
denunciations by a local priest, people shouting and running to see
what was up. This did now and then happen to people.
   About this time, my meal was set out for me, a good meal with plenty
of fresh fruit and well-cooked mutton and gravy, and as I started to
dip my bread and eat, up came two men who asked to sit down with me and
buy a cup of wine for me.
   I realized one of them was a Franciscan, a very kindly-looking
priest, poorer it seemed than the Dominicans, which was logical I
suppose, and the other an elderly man with little twinkling eyes and
long stiff white eyebrows, sticking up as if with glue, as if he were
costumed as a cheerful elf to delight children.
   "We saw you go in to the Dominicans," said the Franciscan quietly
and politely and smiling at me. "You didn't look so happy when you came
out." He winked. "Why don't you try us?" Then he laughed. It was no
more than a good-natured joke and I knew it, about the rivalry of the
two orders. "You're a fine-looking young man; you come from Florence?"
he asked.
   "Yes, Father, traveling," I said, "though where exactly, I don't
know. I'm stopped here for a while, I think." I was talking with my
mouth full, but I was too hungry to stop. "Sit down, please." I started
to rise, but they sat down.
   I bought another pitcher of red wine for the table.
   "Well, you couldn't have found a finer place," said the little old
man, who seemed to have his wits about him, "that is why I am so happy
that God sent my own son, back here, to serve in our church, so that he
could live out his days by his family."
   "Ah, so you are father and son," I said.
   "Yes, and I never thought I'd live so long," said the father, "to
see such prosperity come to this town as has come. It's miraculous."
   "It is, it is the blessing of God," said the priest innocently and
sincerely. "It's a true wonder."
   "Oh, really, instruct me in this, how so?" I asked. I pushed the
plate of fruit to them. But they said they had eaten.
   "Well, in my time," said the father, "you know we had more than our
share of woes, or that's how it seemed to me. But now? It's utter
bliss, this place. Nothing bad ever happens."

   "It's true," said the priest. "You know, I remember the lepers we
had in the old days, who lived outside the walls. They are all gone
now. And then there were always a few really bad youths, young men
causing trouble, you know, the really bad sort. You had them in every
town. But now? You couldn't find one bad man in all of Santa Maddalana
or in any of the villages around. It's as if people have returned to
God with their whole hearts."
   "Yes," said the old elfin man, shaking his head, "and God has been
merciful in so many other ways."
   I felt chills on my back again, as I had with Ursula, but it was not
from pleasure.
"In what way is that, in particular?" I asked.
   "Well, look around," said the old man. "Have you seen any cripples
in our streets? Do you see any half-wits? When I was a child, why, when
you, my son, were a child"--he said to the priest-- "there were always a
few unfortunate souls, born ill formed, or without good brains, you
know, and one had to look out for them. I can remember a time when
there were always beggars at the gates. We have no beggars, haven't had
any for years."
'Amazing," I said.
   "Yes, true," said the priest thoughtfully. "Everyone here is in good
health. That's why the nuns left so long ago. Did you see the old
hospital shut up? And the convent out of town, long abandoned. I think
there are sheep in there now. The farmers use its old rooms."
"No one ever takes sick?" I asked.
   "Well, they do," said the priest, taking a slow drink of his wine,
as though he were a moderate man in this respect, "but they don't
suffer, you know. It's not like the old days. It seems if a person is
like to go, then he goes quickly."
"Yes, true, thanks be to God," said the elder.
'And the women," said the priest, "they are lucky here in birth. They
are not burdened with so many children. Oh, we have many whom God calls
home to himself in the first few weeks--you know, it's the curse of a
mother--but in general, our families are blessedly small." He looked to
his father. "My poor mother," he said, "she had twenty babies all told.
Well, that never happens now, does it?"
   The little old man stuck out his chest and smiled proudly. 'Aye,
twenty children I reared myself; well, many have gone their way, and I
don't even know what became of ... but never mind. No, families are
small here now."
   The priest looked slightly troubled. "My brothers, maybe someday God
will grant me some knowledge of what became of them."
"Oh, forget about them," said the old man.
   "Were they a spirited bunch, might I ask?" I said under my breath,
peering at both of them and trying to make it seem quite natural.
   "Bad," muttered the priest, shaking his head. "But that's our
blessing, see, bad people leave us."
"Is that so?" I asked.
   The little old man scratched his pink scalp. His white hair was thin
and long, sticking in all directions, rather like the hair of his
eyebrows.
   "You know, I was trying to remember," he said, "what did happen to
those poor cripple boys, you remember, the ones born with such
miserable legs, they were brothers ..."
"Oh, Tomasso and Felix," said the priest.
"Yes."
"They were taken off to Bologna to be cured. Same as Bettina's boy, the

one born without his hands, remember, poor little child."
"Yes, yes, of course. We have several doctors."
   "Do you?" I said. "I wonder what they do," I murmured. "What about
the town council, the gonfalonier?" I asked. Gonfalonier was the name
for the governor in Florence, the man who nominally, at least, ran
things.
   "We have a borsellino" said the priest, "and we pick a new six or
eight names out of it now and then, but nothing much ever happens here.
There's no quarreling. The merchants take care of the taxes. Everything
runs smoothly."
   The little elfin man went into laughter. "Oh, we have no taxes!" he
declared.
   His son, the priest, looked at the old fellow as though this was not
something that ought to be said, but then he himself merely looked
puzzled. "Well, no, Papa," he said, "it's only that the taxes are ...
small." He seemed perplexed.
   "Well, then you are really blessed," I said agreeably, trying on the
surface to make light of this utterly implausible picture of things.
   'And that terrible Oviso, remember him?" the priest suddenly said to
his father and then to me. "Now that was a diseased fellow. He nearly
killed his son. He was out of his mind, roared like a bull. There was a
traveling doctor who came through, said they would cure him at Padua.
Or was it Assisi?"
   "I'm glad he never came back," said the old man. "He used to drive
the town crazy."
I studied them both. Were they serious? Were they talking double-talk
to me? I could see nothing cunning in either one of them, but a
melancholy was coming over the priest.
   "God does work in the strangest ways/' he said. "Oh, I know that's
not quite the proverb."
   "Don't tempt the Almighty!" said his father, downing the dregs of
his cup.
I quickly poured out the wine for both of them.
"The little mute fellow," said a voice.
   I looked up. It was the innkeeper, with his hands on his hips, his
apron stretching over his potbelly, a tray in his hand. "The nuns took
him with them, didn't they?"
   "Came back for him, I think," said the priest. He was now fully
preoccupied. Troubled, I would say.
The innkeeper took up my empty plate.
   "The worst scare was the plague," he whispered in my ear. "Oh, it's
gone now, believe you me, or I wouldn't utter the word. There's no word
that will empty a town any faster."
   "No, all those families, gone, just like that," said the old man,
"thanks to our doctors, and the visiting monks. All taken to the
hospital in Florence."
   "Plague victims? Taken to Florence?" I asked, in obvious disbelief.
"I wonder who was minding the city gates, and which gate it was by
which they were admitted."
   The Franciscan stared at me fixedly for a moment, as if something
had disturbed him violently and deeply.
The innkeeper gave the priest's shoulder a squeeze. "These are happy
times," he said. "I miss the processions to the monastery--it's gone
too, of course--but we have never been better."
   I let my eyes shift quite deliberately from the innkeeper to the
priest and found that the priest was gazing directly at me. There
seemed a tremor to the edge of his mouth. He was sloppily shaven and

had a loose jaw, and his deeply creased face looked sad suddenly.
  The very old man chimed in that there had been a whole family down
with the plague out in the country not very long ago, but they had been
taken to Lucca.
  "It was the generosity of ... who was it, my son, I don't..."
  "Oh, what does it matter?" said the innkeeper. "Signore," he said to
me, "some more wine."
  "For my guests," I gestured. "I have to be off. Restless limbs," I
said. "I must see what books are for sale."
  "This is a fine place for you to stay," said the priest with sudden
conviction, his voice soft as he continued to gaze at me, his eyebrows
knitted. 'A fine place indeed, and we could use another scholar. But--."
  "Well, I'm rather young myself," I said. I made ready to rise,
putting one leg over the bench. "There are no young men here of my
age?"
  "Well, they go off, you see," said the elfin one. "There are a few,
but they are busy at the trades of their fathers. No, the rapscallions
don't hang around here. No, young man, they do not!"
  The priest studied me as if he didn't hear his father's voice.
  "Yes, and you're a learned young man," said the priest, but he was
clearly troubled. "I can see that, and hear it in your voice, and all
about you is thoughtful and clever--." He broke off. "Well, I guess
you'll be on your way very soon, won't you?"
  "You think I should?" I asked. "Or stay, which is it?" I made my
manner mild, not unkind.
  He gave me a half-smile. "I don't know," he said. Then he looked
dour again and almost tragic. "God be with you," he whispered.
  I leant towards him. The innkeeper, seeing this confidential manner,
turned away and busied himself somewhere else. The old elfin one was
talking to his cup.
  "What is it, Father?" I asked in a whisper. "Is the town too well-
off, is that it?"
  "Go on your way, son," he said almost wistfully. "I wish I could.
But I'm bound by my vow of obedience and by the fact that this is my
home, and here sits my father, and all the others have vanished into
the wide world." He became suddenly hard. "Or so it seems," he said.
And then, "If I were you, I wouldn't stay here."
I nodded.
  "You look strange, son," he said to me in the same whisper. Our
heads were right together. "You stand out too much. You're pretty and
encased in velvet, and it's your age; you're not really a child, you
know."
"Yes, I see, not very many young men in the town at all, not the sort
who question things. Just the old and the complacent and those who
accept and who don't see the tapestry for the one small monkey
embroidered in the corner."
  He didn't answer this overzealous streak of rhetoric, and I was
sorry I'd said it. In that little lapse perhaps my anger and my pain
had flashed through. Disgusting! I was angry with myself.
  He bit his lip, anxious for me, or for himself, or for both of us.
  "Why did you come here?" he asked sincerely, almost protectively.
"By which way did you come? They said you came in the night. Don't
leave by night." His voice had become such a whisper I could scarcely
hear him.
  "You don't need to worry about me, Father," I said. "Pray for me," I
said. "That's all."
  I saw in him a species of fear as real as that which I had seen in

the young priest, but it was even more innocent, for all his age, and
all his wrinkles, and the wetness of his lips with the wine. He looked
fatigued by that which he couldn't comprehend.
   I stepped free of the bench and was on my way when he grasped my
hand. I bent my ear to his lips.
   "My boy," he said, "there's something... something ..."
"I know, Father," I said. I patted his hand.
   "No, you don't. Listen. When you leave, take the main road south,
even if it's out of your way. Don't go north; don't take the narrow
road north."
"Why not?" I demanded.
    Doubting, silent, utterly stricken, he let go of me.
   "Why not?" I said in his ear.
   He was no longer facing me. "Bandits," he said. "Toll bandits who
control the road; they'll make you pay to go through. Go south." He
turned sharply away from me and began to speak to his father in a soft
gentle scolding manner as if I was already on my way.
Heft.
   I was stunned as I set foot in the hollow street. "Toll bandits?"
   Many shops were shut now, as was definitely the custom after the
heavy meal, but others were not.
   My sword weighed a ton on my hip, and I felt feverish from the wine
and dizzy from all these people had revealed to me.
   So, I thought, my face burning, we have a town here with no young
men, no cripples, no half-wits, no diseased people and no unwanted
children! And on the road north we have dangerous bandits.
   I moved downhill, walking faster and faster, and went out the wide-
open gates and into the open country. The breeze was at once
magnificent and welcome.
   All around me lay rich, well-tended fields, vineyards, patches of
orchard and farmhouses--lush and fertile vistas which I couldn't see
when I had come in by darkness. As for the road north, I could see
nothing of it due to the immense size of the town, whose uppermost
fortifications were northward.
I could see, below on a ridge, what must have been the ruins of the
convent and, way down the mountain and far off to the west, what might
have been the monastery.
   I made my way to two farms within the hour, having a cup of cool
water with both farmers.
   It was all the same, talk of a paradise here, free of miscreants and
the horror of executions, absolutely the most peaceful place in the
world, and only well-formed children everywhere.
   It had been years since any bandits had dared to linger in the
woods. Of course you never knew who might pass through, but the town
was strong and kept the peace.
"Oh, not even on the north road?" I asked.
   Neither farmer knew anything about any north road.
   When I asked what became of the unhealthy, the lame, the injured, it
was the same. Some doctor or other, or priest, or order of friars or
nuns, had taken them off to a university or city. The farmers sincerely
couldn't remember.
   I came back into the town well before twilight. I went poking
around, in and out of every shop, in a near systematic manner, eyeing
everyone as closely as I might without attracting undue attention.
   Of course I couldn't hope to cover even one street of the place, but
I was determined to discover what I could.
   In the booksellers, I went through the old Ars Grammatica and Ars

Minor, and the big beautiful Bibles that were for sale, which I could
only see by asking that they be taken out of the cabinets.
"How do I go north from here?" I asked the bored man who leaned on his
elbow and looked at me sleepily.
   "North, nobody goes north/' he said, and yawned in my face. He wore
fine clothes without a sign of mending, and good new shoes of well-
worked leather. "Look, I have much finer books than that," he said.
   I pretended interest, then explained politely that all were more or
less what I had and did not need, but thank you.
   I went into a tavern where men were busy at dice and shouting over
the game, lustily, as though they had nothing better to do. And then
through the bakers' district, where the bread smelled wondrously
delicious, even to me.
   I had never felt so utterly alone in my life, as I walked among
these people listening to their pleasant talk and hearing the same tale
of safety and blessings over and over again.
   It froze my blood to think of nightfall. And what was this mystery
of the road north? Nobody, nobody but the priest, even raised an
eyebrow at the mention of that point of the compass.
   About an hour before dark, I happened into one shop where the
proprietor, a dealer in silks and lace from Venice and Florence, was
not so patient with my idle presence, as others had been, in spite of
the fact that I obviously had money.
   "Why are you asking so many questions?" she said to me. She seemed
tired and worn out. "You think it's easy to take care of a sick child?
Look in there."
   I stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. But then it dawned on me,
clear and cold. I knew exactly what she meant. I poked my head through
a curtained doorway and saw a child, feverish and sick, slumbering in a
dirty narrow bed.
   "You think it's easy? Year after year she doesn't get better," said
the woman.
"I'm sorry," I said. "But what's to be done?"
   The woman tore out her stitches and put down her needle. She seemed
past all patience. "What's to be done? You mean to tell me you don't
know!" she whispered. "You, a clever man like you!" She bit into her
lip. "But my husband says, No, not yet, and so we go on with it."
   She went back to her work, muttering to herself, and I, horrified
and struggling to keep a straight face, made my way on. I went into a
couple more shops. Nothing special happened. Then in the third on my
way, I found an old man very out of his wits and his two daughters both
trying to keep him from tearing his clothes off.
"Here, let me help you," I said at once.
   We got him down in the chair, got his shirt over his head, and
finally he stopped making incoherent noises. He was very wizened and
drooling.
   "Oh, thank God, this won't go on long," said one of the daughters,
wiping her brow. "It's a mercy."
"Why won't it go on long?" I asked.
   She glanced up at me, and away, and then back again. "Oh, you're a
stranger here, Signore, forgive me, you are so young. I only saw a boy
when I looked at you. I mean God will be merciful. He's very old/'
"Hmmm, I see," I said.
   She looked at me with cold cunning eyes, as if they were made of
metal.
   I bowed and went out. The old man had started to take off his shirt
again, and the other sister, who had been silent all the time, slapped

him.
   I winced at it, and kept walking. I meant to see as much as I could
right now.
   Passing through rather peaceful little tailors' shops I came at last
to the district of the porcelain dealers, where two men were having an
argument about a fancy birthing tray.
   Now, birthing trays, once used in practicality to receive the infant
as it came from the womb, had become by my time fancy gifts given after
the child was born. They were large platters painted with lovely
domestic designs, and this shop had an impressive display of them.
I heard the argument before I was seen.
   One man said to buy the damned tray, while the other said the infant
wouldn't even live and the gift was premature, and a third man said the
woman would welcome the beautiful gorgeously painted birthing tray
anyway.
   They stopped when I entered the shop proper to look at all the
imported wares, but then when I turned my back, one of the men uttered
under his breath, "If she has a brain in her head, she'll do it."
I was struck by the words, so struck that I turned at once to snatch a
handsome plate from the shelf and pretend to be much impressed with it.
"So lovely/' I said, as if I hadn't heard them.
   The merchant got up and started to extoll the contents on display.
The others melted into the gathering evening outside. I stared at the
man.
   "Is the child sick?" I asked in the smallest most childish voice
that I myself could muster.
   "Oh, no, well, I don't think so, but you know how it is," said the
man. "The child's smallish."
"Weak," I volunteered.
   In a very clumsy way, he said, "Yes, weak." His smile was
artificial, but he thought himself quite successful.
   Then both of us turned to fussing over the wares. I bought a tiny
porcelain cup, very beautifully painted, which he claimed to have
bought from a Venetian.
   I knew damned good and well I should leave without a word, but I
couldn't stop myself from asking him as I paid, "Do you think the poor
smallish weak child will live?"
   He laughed a rather deep coarse laugh as he took my money. "No," he
said, and then he glanced at me as though he'd been in his thoughts.
"Don't worry about it, Signore," he said with a little smile. "Have you
come to live here?"
   "No, Sir, only passing through, going north," I said.
   "North?" he asked, a little startled but sarcastic. He shut up the
cashbox and turned the key. Then shaking his head as he put the box
into the cabinet and closed the doors, he said, "North, eh? Well, good
luck to you, my boy/' He gave a sour chuckle. "That's an ancient road.
You better ride as fast as you can from sunup."
"Thank you, Sir/' I said.
Night was coming on.
   I hurried into an alleyway and stood there, against the wall,
catching my breath as though someone were chasing me. I let the little
cup fall and it shattered loudly, the noise echoing up the towering
buildings.
I was half out of my wits.
   But instantly and fully aware of my situation, and convinced of the
horrors I had discovered, I made an inflexible decision.
   I wasn't safe in the Inn, so what did this matter? I was going to do

it my way and see for myself.
This is what I did.
   Without going back to the Inn, without ever officially leaving my
room in the Inn, I turned uphill when the shadows were thick enough to
cover me, and I climbed the narrowing street towards the old ruined
castle.
   Now all day I had been looking at this imposing collection of rock
and decay, and could see that it was indeed utterly ruined and empty of
all save the birds of the air, except, as I have said, for the lower
floors, which supposedly held offices.
   But the castle had two standing towers remaining to it, one that
faced over the town, and another, much fallen away, beyond and remote
on the edge of a cliff, as I had seen from the lower farmland.
   Well, I made for the tower that overlooked the town.
   The government offices were shut up of course already, and the
curfew soldiers would soon be out, and there was noise from only a
couple of taverns that obviously stayed open no matter what the law
was.
   The piazza before the castle was empty, and because the three
streets of the town took many a curve in their way downhill, I could
see almost nothing now but a few dim torches.
   The sky, however, was wondrously bright, clear of all but the most
rounded and discreetly shaped clouds, very visible against the deeper
blue of the night, and the stars seemed exquisitely numerous.
   I found old winding stairs, too narrow almost for a human being,
that curved around the useful part of the old citadel and led up to the
first platform of stone, before an entrance to the tower.
   Of course this architecture was no stranger to me whatsoever. The
stones were of a rougher texture than those of my old home, and
somewhat darker, but the tower was broad and square and timelessly
solid.
   I knew that the place was ancient enough that I would find stone
stairways leading quite high, and I did, and soon came to the end of my
trek in a high room which gave me a view of the entire town stretched
out before me.
   There were higher chambers, but they had been accessible in
centuries past by wooden ladders that could be pulled up, to defeat an
enemy and isolate him below, and I couldn't get to them. I could hear
the birds up there, disturbed by my presence. And I could hear the
breeze moving faintly.
However, this was fine, this height.
   I had a view all around from the four narrow windows of this place,
looking in all directions.
   And most especially, and important to me, I could see the town
itself, directly below me, shaped like a great eye--an oval with tapered
ends--with random torches burning here and there, and an occasional
dimly lighted window, and I could see a lantern moving slowly as
someone walked in a leisurely pace down one of the thoroughfares.
   No sooner had I seen this moving lantern than it went out. It seemed
the streets were utterly deserted.
   Then the windows too went dark, and very shortly there were not four
torches that I could see anywhere.
   This darkness had a calming effect on me. The open country sank into
a deep dark tinge of blue beneath the pearly heavens, and I could see
the forests encroaching on the tilled land, creeping higher here and
there, as the hills folded over one another or sank steeply into
valleys of pure blackness.

I could hear the total emptiness of the tower.
   Nothing stirred now, not even the birds. I was quite alone. I could
have heard the slightest footfall on the stairs down below. No one knew
I was here. All slept.
I was safe here. And I could keep a vigil.
   I was too full of misery to be frightened, and frankly I was
prepared to take my stand against Ursula in this spot, preferred it, in
fact, to the confines of the Inn, and I feared nothing as I said my
prayers and laid my hand on my sword as usual.
   What did I expect to see in this sleeping town? Anything that
happened in it.
   Now, what did I think that was to be? I couldn't have told anyone.
But as I circled the room, as I glanced again and again down at the few
scattered lights below and the hulk of the descending ramparts beneath
the glowing summer sky, the place seemed loathsome, full of deceit,
full of witchcraft, full of payment to the Devil.
   "You think I don't know where your unwanted babies are taken?" I
muttered in a rage. "You think that people who are down with the plague
are welcomed right through the open gates of your neighboring cities?"
   I was startled by the echoes of my own mur-murings off the cold
walls.
   "But what do you do with them, Ursula? What would you have done with
my brother and sister?"
   My ruminations were madness perhaps, or might have seemed so to
some. But I learnt this. Revenge takes one's mind from the pain.
Revenge is a lure, a mighty molten lure, even if it is hopeless.
   One blow from this sword and I can strike off her head, I thought,
and heave it out that window, and then what will she be but a demon
stripped of all worldly power?
Now and then I half-drew my sword, then put it back. I took out my
longest dagger and slapped the palm of my left hand with its blade. I
never stopped walking.
   Suddenly, as I made one of my boring circumlocutions, I happened to
spy far away, on a distant mountain, in which direction I really didn't
know-- but not the direction by which I had come--a great quantity of
light playing behind the mesh of the sylvan darkness.
   At first I thought this might be a fire, there was so much light,
but as I narrowed my eyes and focused my mind, I saw that this was out
of the question.
   There was no riotous glare on the few visible clouds above, and the
illumination, for all the breadth of it, was contained as if it
emanated from a vast congregation gathered together with a fantastical
quantity of candles. How steady yet pulsing was this orgy of fierce
light!
   I felt a chill in my bones as I looked at it. It was a dwelling! I
leant over the window edge. I could see its complex and sprawling
outline! It stood out from all the land, this one luxuriantly lighted
castle, all by itself, and obviously visible from one entire side of
this town, this spectacle of forest-shrouded house in which some
celebration appeared to require that every torch and taper be lighted,
that every window, battlement and coping be hung with lanterns.
   North, yes, north, for the town dropped straight off behind me, and
this castle lay north, and it was that direction of which I'd been
warned, and who in this town could not have known of this place, yet
there had not been one single solitary mention save for the whisper of
the terrified Franciscan in the Inn at my table.
   But what was I looking at? What could I see? Thick woods, yes; it

was very high but surrounded by close and concealing woods, through
which its light again and again palpitated like a great menace, but
what was that coming from it, what was that wild, half-visible movement
in the darkness, over the slopes that fell away from the mysterious
promontory?
   Were there things moving in the night? Moving from that very distant
castle right towards this village? Amorphous black things, as if they
were great soft shapeless birds following the alignment of the land but
free of its gravity. Were they coming towards me? Had I been charmed?
No, I saw this. Or did I?
There were dozens of them!
They were coming closer and closer.
   They were tiny shapes, not large at all, the largeness having been a
delusion caused by the fact that they traveled in packs, these things,
and now, as they came near to the town, the packs broke apart and I saw
them springing up to the very walls beyond me on either side like so
many giant moths.
I turned around and ran to the window.
   They had descended in a swarm upon the town! I could see them dip
down and vanish in the blackness. Below me on the piazza, there
appeared two black shapes, men in streaming capes, who ran or rather
leapt into the mouths of the streets, issuing from their lips an
audible and audacious laughter.
I heard crying in the night, I heard sobs.
I heard a thin wail, and a muffled groan.
No lights appeared in the town.
   Then out of the darkness, these evil things appeared again, on the
tops of the walls, running right on the edge and then leaping free.
"God, I see you! Curse you!" I whispered.
   There was a sudden loud noise in my ears, a great brush of soft
cloth against me, and then the figure of a man reared up before my
face.
   "Do you see us, my boy?" It was a young man's voice, hearty, full of
merriment. "My very curious little boy?"
   He was too close for my sword. I could see nothing but rising
garments.
   With my elbow and shoulder and all my strength, I went for his
groin.
His laughter filled the tower.
   'Ah, but that does not hurt me, child, and if you're so curious,
well then, we'll take you too with us to come and see what you long to
see."
   He caught me in a suffocating swaddle of fabric. And suddenly I felt
myself lifted off the floor, encased in a sack, and I knew we had left
the tower!
   I was head down, sick to nausea. It seemed he flew, carrying me on
his back, and his laughter was now half blown away by the wind, and I
could not free my arms. I could feel my sword, but couldn't reach the
handle.
   Desperately I felt for my dagger, not the one which I must have
dropped when I had been caught by him, but the other in my boot, and
then having that, I twisted and turned towards the rough back on which
I rode, bouncing and growling, and plunged the dagger through the cloth
over and over again.
He gave a wild scream. I stabbed him again.
   My whole body, inside the sack, was whipped up into the air, away
from him.

   "You little monster," he cried. "You wretched impudent child."
   We descended sharply, and then I felt myself hit the ground, the
rocky grassy ground, and I rolled over, tearing at the fabric of the
blinding sack with my knife.
"You little bastard," he cursed.
   'Are you bleeding, you filthy devil?" I called out. "Are you?" I
ripped at the sack, lost in it, rolling over and over, then feeling the
wet grass with my naked hand.
I saw the stars.
   Then the cloth was torn free of my struggling limbs.
I lay at his feet, but only for a moment.




                                   6

                     THE COURT OF THE RUBY GRAIL


NOTHING could have wrenched the dagger from my hand. I cut deep into
his legs, bringing forth another riot of I screams from him. He picked
me up, indeed hurled me high in the air, and I fell, stunned, onto the
dewy ground.
   This gave me my first blurred but imperative glimpse of him. A great
rush of red light illuminated him, a hooded and cloaked figure dressed
as a knight, in long old-fashioned tunic and sleeves of shining mail.
He twisted his torso, his golden hair tangling over his face, obviously
in pain from the wounds inflicted on his back, and now stomped his
wounded leg.
   I rolled over twice, holding tight to the dagger, as I freed my
sword sufficiently to draw it out of the scabbard. I was on my feet
before he even so much as moved, and swung the sword with one hand,
clumsily, but with all my force, hearing it smash into his side with a
sickening moist slosh of a sound. The gush of blood in the bright light
was horrific and monstrous.
   There came his worst cry. He fell to his knees.
   "Help me, you imbeciles; he's a devil!" he screamed. His hood fell
back.
   I scanned the immense fortifications rising to my right, the high
crenelated towers with their fluttering flags in the unsteady glow of
countless lights, just as I'd glimpsed from the distance of the town.
It was a fantastical castle of pointed roofs, sharply broken arched
windows, and high battlements crowded with dark figures moving in
silhouette as they looked down on our struggle.
   There came rushing down the wet grass the figure of Ursula in a red
gown, cloakless, her hair in long braids with red ribbon, rushing
towards me.
   "Don't hurt him, I charge you," she screamed. "Don't touch him."
   A group of male figures, all got up in the same old-fashioned
knightly tunics, down to their knees, with somber pointed steel
helmets, followed her. They had bearded faces all, and ghastly white
skin.

  My adversary pitched forward on the grass, sprouting blood as if he
were a hideous fountain.
"Look what he's done to me, look!" he shouted.
  I stuck my dagger in my belt, grabbed the sword with two hands and
went at his neck, letting a roar escape my teeth as I did, and saw the
head roll over and over and down the hill. "Ah, now you're dead, you're
bloody dead!" I cried out. "You murderous fiend, you're dead. Go get
your head. Put that back on!"
Ursula flung her arms around me, her breasts sealed against my back.
Her hand imprisoned mine once more and forced me to bow the tip of the
sword to the ground.
  "Don't touch him," she screamed again, with a threat in her voice.
"Don't come near, I charge you."
  One of the others had recovered the shaggy blond head of my foe and
held it up as the others watched the body twitch and writhe.
"Oh, no, it's too late," said one of the men.
  "No, put it back, put it on his neck," cried another.
  "Let me go, Ursula," I said. "Let me die with honor, will you do me
that courtesy!" I struggled. "Let me free, to die in my own way, will
you do that much?"
"No," she said hotly into my ear. "I will not."
  I was absolutely powerless against her strength, no matter how soft
the cushion of her breasts or how cool and soft her fingers. She had
complete mastery of me.
"Go to Godric," cried one of the men.
  The other two had picked up the writhing, kicking, headless man.
"Take him to Godric," said the one who carried the head. "Only Godric
can pronounce on this."
  Ursula let out a loud wail. "Godric!" It was like the howl of the
wind or a beast, it was so shrill, so immense, echoing off the walls.
  High up, against the wide gaping arched doorway of the citadel, his
back to the light, there stood a slender elderly figure, limbs bent
with age.
  "Bring them both," he called out. "Ursula, quiet yourself, lest you
frighten everyone."
  I made a swift bid for freedom. She tightened her grip. There came
the pinprick of her teeth in my neck. "Oh, no, Ursula, let me see
what's to happen!" I whispered. But I could feel the murky clouds
rising about me, as though the air itself had thickened and was
enfolding me with scent and sound and the sensuous force.
  Oh, love you, want you, yes, I did and can't deny it. I felt myself
holding her in the high moist grasses of the field, and she lay beneath
me, but these were dreams and there were no wild red flowers, and I was
being taken somewhere, and she had but weakened me, pulled on my heart
with the force of her own.
  I tried to curse her. All around us lay the flowers and the grasses,
and she said, "Run," but this was quite impossible because it was not
made of truth, but of fantasy and the sucking of her mouth on me and
her limbs entwining me as if she were a serpent.
  A French castle. It was as though I had been transported to the
north.
I had opened my eyes.
All the accoutrements of a French court.
  Even the dim sedate music which I could hear made me think of old-
fashioned French songs sung at suppers in long-ago childhood.
  I awoke, sitting cross-legged on a carpet, slumped over, and came to
myself rubbing my neck and feeling about desperately for weapons which

had all been taken from me. I nearly lost my balance and fell backward.
   The music was repetitive and dull and pounding as it rose up from
some faraway place below, with too many muffled drums and the thin
nasal whine of horns. It had no melody.
   I looked up. French, yes, the high narrow pointed archway that led
to a long balcony outside, below which some great celebration was in
noisy progress. Fancy French, the tapestries of the ladies with their
tall cone-shaped hats, and their snow-white unicorns.
   Quaint antique, like the illustrations in prayer books of courts in
which poets sat reading aloud the boring and tedious Roman de la Rose,
or the fables of Reynard the Fox.
   The window was draped in blue satin covered in the fleurs-de-lys.
There was old filigree crumbling about the high doorway and what I
could see of the window frame. And cabinets were gilded and painted in
the French style, decayed and stiff.
I turned around.
   There stood the two men, their long tunics streaked with blood, and
their mail sleeves coarse and thick. They had taken off their pointed
helmets, and they stared at me with icy pale eyes, each a solemn
bearded figure. The light positively glinted on their hard white skin.
   And there stood Ursula, a silver-framed jewel upon the shadows,
gazing down at me, her gown high-waisted and soft-falling and old-
fashioned as their clothes, as though she too had come from some long-
ago kingdom of the French, her snow-white breasts bare almost to her
nipples, beneath a rich full little bodice of flowered red-and-gold
velvet.
   At a desk, on an X-shaped chair, there sat the Elderly one, his age
quite true to the posture I had glimpsed silhouetted against the castle
light, and he was pale as they, of the same deadly white complexion,
both beautiful yet awful and monstrous.
   Turkish lamps hung on chains about the room, flames glittering deep
inside them, giving off a hurtful light against my dazed eyes, and also
a fragrance as of roses and summer fields, something alien to heat and
burnt things.
   The Elderly one had a bald head, as ugly as the unearthed bulb of an
iris, upended and shaved of all root, and implanted with two gleaming
gray eyes, and a long narrow solemn uncomplaining and unjudging mouth.
   'Ah, so," he said to me in a soft voice, lifting one eyebrow, which
was scarcely visible except for the sharp arching wrinkle of his
perfect white flesh. He had thick slanting lines for cheeks. "You
realize you've killed one of us, don't you?"
   "I hope so," I said. I climbed to my feet. I nearly lost my balance.
Ursula reached out, then stepped back, as though she had caught herself
in a breach of decorum.
   I righted myself, glaring at her quite ferociously and then at the
bald Elderly one, who looked up at me with unbroken calm.
   "Do you care to see what you've done?" he asked of me.
"Why should I?" I asked. But I did see.
   On a great trestle-board table to my left lay the dead blond thief
who had hefted me body and soul into his big cloth sack. Ah, the debt
was paid in full.
   He lay still, shrunken horridly, as if his limbs had collapsed upon
themselves, and his bloodless white head, lids open on dark clotted
eyes, lay against his roughly torn neck. What a delight. I stared at
one skeletal hand of the being, which hung over the edge of the table,
white and like some shriveling creature of the sea beneath a merciless
sun on sand by the oceanside.

   'Ah, excellent," I said. "This man who dared to abduct me and bring
me here by force, quite dead, thank you for the sight of it." I looked
at the Elderly one. "Honor demands nothing less. We don't even have to
talk of common sense, do we? And what others did you take from the
village? The wild old man who tore at his shirt? The infant born small?
The weak, the infirm, the sick, whatever they'd give you, and what do
you give them in exchange?"
   "Oh, do be quiet, young one," said the Elderly solemn male. "You are
courageous beyond honor or common sense, that's plain enough."
   "No, it isn't. Your sins against me demand I fight you with my last
breath, you, all of you." I pivoted and stared at the open door. The
plodding music in itself sickened me and threatened to make me dizzy
from all the blows and falls I'd suffered. "Such noise from below. What
are you, a bloody court?"
All three men broke into laughter.
   "Well, you've very nearly got it right," said one of the bearded
soldiers in a deep bass of a voice. "We are the Court of the Ruby
Grail, that's our very name, only we prefer that you say it properly in
Latin or in French, as we say it."
   "The Court of the Ruby Grail!" I said. "Leeches, parasites, blood
drinkers, that's what you all are. What is the Ruby Grail? Blood?"
   I struggled to remember the prick of her teeth against my throat
without the spell which had always come with them, but there it was,
threatening to swallow me, the drifting, fragrant memory of meadows and
her tender breasts. I shook myself all over. "Blood drinkers. Ruby
Grail! Is that what you do with all of them, the ones you take? Drink
their blood?"
   The Elderly one looked pointedly at Ursula. "What is it you're
asking of me, Ursula?" he put the question to her. "How can I make such
a choice?"
   "Oh, but Godric, he's brave and fine and strong," said Ursula.
"Godric, if you but say yes, no one will go against it. No one will
question it. Please, I beg you, Godric. When have I ever asked--."
   'Asked for what?" I demanded, looking from her solicitous and
heartbroken face to the Elderly man. "For my life? Is that what you
ask? You'd better kill me."
   The old man knew that. I didn't have to tell him. There was no way I
could be given mercy at this juncture. I would merely fling myself
against them again, seeking to bring down another or another.
   Suddenly, as if quite angry and impatient, the Elderly figure rose
with surprising agility and grabbed me by the collar as he swept past
me in a great graceful rustle of red robes, and dragged me with him, as
if I weighed nothing, out through the archway and to the edge of the
stone railing.
"Look down on the Court/' he said.
   The hall was immense. The overhang on which we stood ran all around,
and below there was scarcely a foot of bare stone, so rich were the
hangings of gold and burgundy. The long table below hosted a string of
Lords and Ladies, all in the requisite burgundy-red cloth, the color of
blood, not wine, as I had believed, and before them glared the bare
wood, with not a plate of food nor a cup of wine, but all were content
and watching with cheerful eyes, as they chattered, the dancers who
covered the great floor, dancing deftly on thick carpets as though they
liked this padding beneath their slippered feet.
   There were so many interlocking circles of figures moving to the
throb and beat of the music that they made a series of arabesques. The
costumes embraced a great nationality of styles, from the very French

to the modern Florentine, and everywhere there were gay circles of red-
dyed silk or the red field covered with flowers or some other design
which looked very like stars or crescent moons, I could not quite see
it.
It was a somber yet tantalizing picture, all of them in this same rich
color which held sway somewhere between the putrid ghastliness of blood
and the stunning splendor of scarlet.
   I noted the sconces, candlesticks, torches galore. How easy it would
be to set their tapestries afire. I wondered if they could burn, they
themselves, like other witches and heretics.
   I heard Ursula let out a little gasp. "Vittorio, be wise," she
whispered.
   At her whisper, the man at the center of the table below--he who held
that very high-backed chair of honor, which my father would have held
at home--looked up at me. He was blond-haired, blond as the shaggy one
I'd slain, but his long locks were pampered and silky on his broad
shoulders. His face was youthful, far more so than my father's yet
plenty older than my own, and as inhumanly pale as all the rest, his
searing blue eyes fixing upon me. He returned at once to his study of
the dance.
   The whole spectacle seemed to shiver with the hot smoking quaver of
the flames, and as my eyes watered, I realized with a start that the
figures worked into the tapestry were not the quiet ladies and unicorns
of the small studious chamber from which we'd come, but devils dancing
in Hell. Indeed, there were quite hideous gargoyles in the most violent
and cruel style, carved beneath the porch all around, on which we
stood, and I could see at the capitals of the branching columns that
held up the ceiling above us more of the demonic and winged creatures
carved into the stone.
Grimaces of evil were emblazoned on the walls behind me, across from
me. In one tapestry below, the circles of Dante's Hell climbed one upon
another ever higher and higher.
   I stared at the shining bare table. I was dizzy. I was going to be
sick, lose consciousness.
   "Make you a member of the Court, that is what she asks," said the
Elder, pushing me hard against the rail, not letting me free, not
letting me turn away His voice was unhurried and low and without the
slightest opinion on the matter. "She wants us to bring you into our
Court as a reward for the fact that you slew one of us, that is her
logic."
   His glance to me was thoughtful, cool. His hand on my collar was
neither cruel nor rough, merely simple.
   I was a tempest of half-uttered words and curses, when suddenly I
realized I was falling.
   In the Elderly one's grasp, I had fallen over the rail, and in a
second descended to the thick layers of carpet below, where I was
yanked to my feet, as the dancers made way for us on either side.
   We stood before the Lord in the high-backed chair, and I saw that
the wood figures of his regal throne were, of course, animalian, feline
and diabolical.
   All was black wood, polished so that one could smell the oil, and it
mingled sweetly with the perfume of all the lamps, and there came a
soft crackling from the torches.
   The musicians had stopped. I couldn't even see them. And then when I
did, saw the little band quite high up in their own little balcony or
loft, I perceived that they too had the porcelain-white skin and the
lethal cats' eyes, as they gazed down at me, all of them slender males,

modestly clothed, and seemingly apprehensive.
   I stared at the Lord. He had not moved or spoken. He was a fine,
imperial figure of a man, his thick bulky blondish hair combed back
from his face and falling, as I had seen before, in carefully combed
locks on his shoulders.
   His clothes too were of the old fashion, a great loose tunic of
velvet, not a soldier's tunic, but almost a robe unto itself, trimmed
in darkly dyed fur to match its lurid color, and beneath it he wore big
beautiful full sleeves ballooning out loosely over his elbows and then
tapering around his long narrow forearms and wrists. A huge chain of
medallions hung about his neck, each heavily worked circle of gold set
with a cabochon stone, a ruby, red as his clothing.
   He held one slender naked hand curled on the table, simply. The
other I could not see. He gazed at me with blue eyes. There was
something puritanical and scholarly about his bare hand, and the
refinement and cleanliness of it.
   Across the thick overlapping carpets, Ursula came with a quick step,
holding her skirts in two dainty hands. "Florian," she said, making a
deep bow to the Lord behind the table. "Florian, I am begging you for
this one, on account of character and strength, that you bring him into
the Court for my sake, for my heart. It's as simple as that."
Her voice was tremulous but reasoning.
   "Into the Court? Into this Court?" I demanded. I felt the heat rise
in my face. I looked from right to left. I stared at their white
cheeks, their dark mouths, which were all too often the color of fresh
wounds. I stared at the blanched and colorless expressions with which
they regarded me. Were their eyes full of demonic fire, or was it only
that every other bit of humanity had been taken from their
countenances?
   I saw my own hands as I looked down, my own clenching fists, very
ruddy and human, and quite suddenly, as if I were meant to smell it, I
caught my own scent, the scent of my sweat and the dust from the road
clinging to me and mingling with whatever in me was simply human.
   "Yes, you are quite the morsel to us/' said the Lord himself,
speaking from the table. "You are indeed, and the hall is filled with
your scent. And it is too early for us to feast. We feast when the bell
rings twelve times, that is our infallible custom/'
   It was a beautiful voice, a voice of ringing clarity and charm,
tinged with the accent of the French, which can in itself be so
beguiling. It was with a French restraint and regality that he
expressed himself.
   He smiled at me, and his smile was gentle, as was Ursula's smile,
but not pitying, and not at all cruel or sarcastic.
   I had no eyes now for the other faces to the left and the right of
him. I knew only that there were many, and some were men and some
women, and the women wore the stately French headdresses of olden
times, and somewhere in the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a man got
up like a jester.
   "Ursula, such a thing as this," the Lord said, "requires long
consideration/'
   "Does it!" I cried out. "You mean to make me one of your Court? That
takes no consideration."
   "Oh, come now, my boy," the Lord said in his soft, calming voice.
"We are not subject to death or decay or disease here. You squirm on
the end of a hook, you're a doomed catch from the sea, and you do not
even know that you are no longer in the life-sustaining water."
   "My Lord, I do not wish to be part of your Court," I said. "Spare

yourself your kindnesses and your advice." I looked about. "Don't talk
to me of your Feast."
   These creatures had adopted an abominable stillness, a frozen regard
which was in itself utterly unnatural and menacing. A wave of revulsion
came over me. Or was it panic, panic which I would not allow to form
inside of me, no matter how completely and hopelessly I was surrounded
by them, and how alone I stood.
   The figures at the table might have been made of china, so fixed
they were. Indeed it seemed that the very act of posing to perfection
was inherently part of their attentiveness.
   "Oh, if I had but a crucifix," I said in a soft voice, not even
thinking about what I was saying.
   "That would mean nothing to us," said the Lord matter-of-factly.
"Oh, how well I know; your lady here came into my very chapel to take
my brother and sister prisoner! No, crosses mean nothing to you. But it
would mean something to me just now Tell me, do I have angels about me
that protect me? Are you always visible? Or do you, now and then, melt
with the night and vanish? And when that is so, can you see the angels
that defend me?"
The Lord smiled.
   The Elderly one, who had let go of my collar, for which I was very
thankful, laughed softly under his breath. But there came no easy mirth
from anyone else.
   I glanced at Ursula. How loving and desperate she looked, how bold
and steadfast as she glanced from me to this Lord, whom she had called
Florian. But she was no more human than any of them; she was the
deathly semblance of a young woman, past all description in gifts and
graces but long out of life, as they were. Some grail was this Ruby
Grail.
   "Hear his words, Sir, in spite of what he actually says/' she
begged. "It's been so very long since there was a new voice within
these walls, one that would remain with us, be one of us."
   "Yes, and he almost believes in his angels, and you think him
wondrously clever," said the Lord understandingly. "Young Vittorio, let
me assure you, there are no guardian angels that I can see about you.
And we are always visible, as you know, for you have seen us at our
best and at our worst. No, not really truly at our best, not at our
finest."
"Oh," I said, "and for that I can't wait, my Lord, for I am so in love
with you all, and your style of slaughtering, and there is of course
the matter of what your corruption has done to the town below and how
you've stolen the souls of the very priests themselves."
   "Hush, you work yourself into a mortal fever," he said. "Your scent
fills my nostrils as if the pot is boiling over. I might devour you,
child, cut you up and give your pulsing parts up and down the table to
be suckled while the blood is still very hot, and your eyes blink--."
   On those words I thought I would go mad. I thought of my dead sister
and brother. I thought of the hideous and hopeless tender expressions
of their severed heads. I couldn't bear this. I shut my eyes tight. I
sought for any image to banish these horrors. I raised from memory the
spectacle of Fra Filippo Lippi's Angel Gabriel on his knees before the
Virgin, yes, angels, angels, fold your wings about me, now, oh, God,
send me your angels!
   "I curse your damned Court, you sweet-tongued devil!" I cried out.
"How did you get your foot into this land! How did it happen?" I opened
my eyes, but I saw only Fra Filippo's angels in a great tumbling,
falling spectacle of remembered works, radiant beings filled with the

warm carnal breath of earth mingled with Heaven. "Did he go to Hell?" I
cried out louder. "The one who's head I cut off? Is he burning?"
   If silence can swell and fall back upon itself, then so did the
silence of this great hall or solar, and I heard nothing but my own
anxious breath.
But still the Lord remained unperturbed.
"Ursula," he said. "This can be considered/'
   "No!" I cried out. "Never! Join you? Become one of you?"
   The Elder's hand held me powerless with clamped fingers on my neck.
I would only make myself foolish if I struggled. Were he to tighten his
grip, I would be dead. And maybe that was best. Only I had more to say:
   "I will never, I won't. What? How dare you think my soul so cheap
you can have it for the asking!"
   "Your soul?" asked the Lord. "What is your soul that it does not
want to travel centuries under the inscrutable stars, rather than a few
short years? What is your soul that it will not seek for truth forever,
rather than for one paltry common lifetime?"
   Very slowly, with the muted rustle of garments, he rose to his feet,
displaying for the first time a long full mantle of red which fell
down, making a great patch of blood-colored shadow behind him. He bent
his head ever so slightly, and lamps gave his hair a rich gilded look,
and his blue eyes softened.
   "We were here before you and your kindred," he said. His voice never
broke decorum. He remained civil, elegant. "We were here centuries
before you came to your mountain. We were here when all these mountains
round were ours. It is you who are the invader." He paused and drew
himself up. "It is your species that draws ever closer with farm and
village and fortress and castle, and encroaches upon us, upon the
forests which are ours, so that we must be cunning where we would be
swift, and visible where we would be as the Gospel 'thief in the night/
"
   "Why did you kill my father and my family!" I demanded. I could keep
silent no longer, I didn't care how beguiling his eloquence, his soft
purring words, his charmed face.
   "Your father and his father," he said, "and the Lord before him--they
cut down the trees that crowded your castle. And so I must keep back
the forest of humans from mine. And now and then I must range wide with
my ax, and so I have, and so it was done. Your father could have given
tribute and remained as he was. Your father could have sworn a secret
oath that required all but nothing of him."
   "You can't believe he would have surrendered to you our babes, for
what, do you drink their blood or sacrifice them to Satan on some
altar?"
   "You shall see by and by," he said, "for I think you must be
sacrificed."
"No, Florian," Ursula gasped. "I beg you."
   "Let me put a question to you, gracious Lord," I said, "since
justice and history weigh so heavily with you. If this is a Court, a
true Court, why have I no benefit of human defense? Or human peers? Or
any humans to defend me?"
   He seemed troubled by the question. Then he spoke.
   "We are the Court, my son," he said. "You are nothing, and you know
it. We would have let your father live, as we let the stag live in the
forest so that it may breed with the doe. It's no more than that."
'Are there any humans here?"
"None that can help you," he said simply
"No human guards by day?" I asked.

   "No guards by day," he said, and for the first time he smiled a
little proudly. "You think we require them? You think our small pigeon
coop is not content by day? You think we need human guards here?"
   "I certainly do. And you're a fool if you think Td ever join your
Court! No human guards, when right below is an entire village which
knows what you are and who you are and that you come by night and
cannot by day?"
   He smiled patiently. "They are vermin," he said quietly "You waste
my time with those who are beneath contempt."
   "Hmm, you do yourself wrong with such a harsh judgment. I think you
have more love of them, in some way or another, my Lord, than that!"
   The Elder laughed. "Of their blood perhaps," he said under his
breath.
   There was a bit of uneasy laughter from somewhere else in the hall,
but it fell away, like a fragment of something broken.
The Lord spoke again:
"Ursula, I will consider but I do not--."
   "No, for I will not!" I said. "Even if I were damned, I wouldn't
join you."
"Hold your tongue," cautioned the Lord calmly.
   "You are fools if you do not think the townspeople below will rise
up and take this citadel by the light of the day and open your hiding
places!"
   There was a rustling and noise throughout the great hall, but no
words, none at least that I could hear, but it was as if these pale-
faced monsters were communing with each other by thought or merely
exchanging glances which made their ponderous and beautiful garments
shift and move.
   "You are numb with stupidity!" I declared. "You make yourselves
known to the whole daylight world, and you think this Court of the Ruby
Grail can endure forever?"
   "You insult me," said the Lord. A bit of rosy color came divinely
and beautifully into his cheeks. "I ask you with courtesy to be quiet."
   "Do I insult you? My Lord, allow me to advise you. You are helpless
by day; I know you are. You strike by night and only by night. All
signs and words point to it. I remember your hordes fleeing my father's
house. I remember the warning, 'Look at the sky/ My Lord, you have
lived too long in your country forest. You should have followed my
father's example and sent off a few pupils to the philosophers and
priests of the city of Florence."
   "Don't mock me anymore," he said imploringly with the same well-bred
restraint. "You are causing anger in me, Vittorio, and I have no room
for it."
   "Your time is short, old Demon," I said. "So make merry in your
antiquated castle while you can."
   Ursula cried out under her breath, but I wouldn't be stopped.
   "You may have bought off the old generation of idiots who run the
town right now," I said, "but if you don't think the worlds of Florence
and Venice and Milan are not moving in on you more fiercely than you
can ever prevent, you are dreaming. It's not men such as my father who
are a threat to you, my Lord. It's the scholar with his books; it's the
university astrologers and alchemists who'll move in on you; it's the
modern age of which you know nothing, and they will hunt you down, like
some old beast of legend, and drag you out of this lair in the heat of
the sun and cut off your heads, all of you--."
   "Kill him!" There came a female voice from those who watched.
"Destroy him now," said a man.

"He isn't fit for the coop!" screamed another.
   "He's unworthy to be kept in the coop for a moment, or even to be
sacrificed."
   Then a whole chorus let loose with demands for my death.
   "No," cried Ursula, throwing out her arms to the Lord. "Florian, I
beg you!"
   "Torture, torture, torture," they began to chant, first two and
three and then four.
   "My Lord," said the Elder, but I could scarce hear his voice, "he's
only a boy. Let us put him in the coop with the rest of the flock. In a
night or two he won't remember his name. He'll be as tame and plump as
the others."
   "Kill him now/' screamed one voice over all. And: "Be done with
him," cried others, their demands rising ever louder in volume.
There came a piercing shout seconded at once: "Tear him limb from limb.
Now. Do it." "Yes, yes, yes!" It was like the beat of battle drums.




                                   7

                               THE COOP


GODRIC, the Elder, shouted loudly for silence, right at the moment that
numerous rather glacial hands had I tightened on my arms.
   Now, once in Florence I had seen a man torn apart by a mob. I'd been
far too close for my own desire to the spectacle, and had been nearly
trampled in the efforts of those who, like me, wanted to get away.
   So it was no fantasy to me that such could happen. I was as resigned
to it as I was to any other form of death, believing, I think, as
powerfully in my anger and my rectitude as I did in death.
   But Godric ordered the blood drinkers back, and the entire pallid-
faced company withdrew with a courtly grace that bordered upon the coy
and the cloying, heads bowed or turned to one side, as if a moment
before they had not been party to a rabble.
   I kept my eyes fixed on the Lord, whose face now showed such a heat
that it appeared near human, the blood pulsating in his thin cheeks,
and his mouth as dark as a dried blood scar, for all its pleasing
shape. His dark golden hair seemed almost brown, and his blue eyes were
filled with pondering and concern.
   "I say that he be put in with the others," said Godric, the bald
Elder.
   At once, Ursula's sobs broke forth, as though she could not restrain
herself any longer. I looked over to see her, her head bowed, her hands
struggling to completely shield her face, and, through the creases of
her long fingers, droplets of blood falling as though her tears were
made of it.
   "Don't cry," I said, not even thinking about the wisdom of it.

"Ursula, you have done all you can. I am impossible."
   Godric turned and looked at me with one thickly creased raised
eyebrow. This time I was close enough to see that his bald white head
did have such hairs to it, scant eyebrows of gray as thick and ugly as
old splinters.
   Ursula brought up a rose-colored napkin from the fold of her long
high-waisted French gown, a pale pink tissue of a thing stitched on the
edges with green leaves and pink flowers, and on this she wiped her
lovely red tears and looked at me, as if she were crushed with longing.
   "My predicament is impossible," I said to her. "You've done all you
can to save me. If I could, I would put my arms around you to protect
you from this pain. But this beast here is holding me hostage."
There were outraged gasps and murmurs from the still dark-garbed
company, and in a blur I allowed myself to see the thin, gaunt, bone-
white faces that lined the long board on either side of the Lord, to
glance at some of the Ladies who were so Frenchified in their old
headdresses and wimples of rose red that they had not a single hair
visible. There seemed both a Prankish absurdity and delicacy to them,
and of course they were all demons.
The bald Elder, Godric, only chuckled.
"Demons," I said, "such a collection."
   "The coop, my Lord," said Godric, the bald one. "With the others,
and then I may make my suggestions to you in private, and with Ursula
we shall talk. She grieves unduly."
   "I do!" she cried. "Please, Florian, if only because I have never
asked anything of this sort, and you know it."
   "Yes, Ursula," said the Lord, in the softest voice which had issued
from his lips yet. "I know that, my loveliest flower. But this boy is
recalcitrant, and his family, when from time to time they had the
advantage over those of us who wandered from here to hunt, destroyed
those unfortunate members of our tribe. It happened more than once."
   "Marvelous!" I cried out. "How brave, how wondrous, what a gift you
give me."
The Lord was astonished and annoyed.
   But Ursula hurried forward, in a flurry of dark shadowy velvet
skirts, and leaned over the polished table to be close to him. I could
see only her hair in its long thick braids, twined exquisitely with red
velvet ribbons, and the shape of her gorgeous arms, so perfectly narrow
and plump at the same time, enchanted me against my own will.
   "To the coop, please, my Lord," she begged, "and let me have him at
least for so many nights as I need to reconcile my heart to this. Let
him be admitted tonight for the Midnight Mass, and let him wonder."
   I made no answer to this. I merely memorized it.
   Two of the company, clean-shaven men in court dress, suddenly
appeared at my side, to assist Godric, it seemed, in having me taken
off.
   Before I knew what was to befall me, a soft binding of cloth was put
over my eyes. I was sightless.
"No, let me see!" I cried out.
   "The coop then, it is, very well," came the Lord's voice, and I felt
myself being taken away from the room, fast, as if the feet of those
who escorted me scarcely needed to touch the floor.
   The music rose again, in an eerie throb, but I was mercifully being
escorted away from it. Only Ursula's voice accompanied me as I was
carried up staircases, my feet now and then bruised coarsely on the
steps, and the fingers that held me carelessly hurting me.
   "Be quiet, please, Vittorio, don't struggle, be my brave one now in

silence."
   'And why, my love?" I asked. "Why set your heart on me? Can you kiss
me without your stinging teeth?"
"Yes, and yes, and yes," she said in my ear.
   I was being dragged along a passage. I could hear a loud mingled
chorus of voices, common ordinary speech, and the wind of the outdoors
and a wholly different kind of music.
"What is this? Where do we go?" I asked.
   Behind me, I heard doors shut, and then the blindfold was ripped
from my eyes.
   "This is the coop, Vittorio," she said, pressing her arm against
mine and trying to whisper in my ear. "This is where victims are kept
until needed/'
   We stood on a high barren stone landing, the stairs leading down and
at a curve into the huge courtyard, which contained so much activity
and of such bizarre sorts that I could not possibly comprehend all of
it immediately.
   We were high within the walls of the castle, that I knew. And the
courtyard itself was enclosed on all four sides, and I could see as I
looked up that the walls were faced in white marble and there were
everywhere the narrow pointed twin-arched windows of the French style.
And above, the heavens had a bright pulsing glow, fed no doubt by
countless fluttering torches on the roofs and abutments of the castle.
   This was all nothing much to my eyes, except that it meant escape
was impossible, for the nearest windows were far too high, and the
marble too smooth to be scaled in any physical way.
   There were many tiny balconies overhanging above, and they too were
impossibly high. I saw the pale red-clothed demons on those balconies
looking down at me, as though my introduction were a spectacle. There
were some very large porches, and these too had their idle gloating and
merciless occupants.
Damn them all, I thought.
   What stunned me and fascinated me was the great jumble of human
beings and dwellings which I saw crowding the courtyard before me.
   First of all, it was far more fiercely illuminated than the ghastly
Court, where I had just stood trial, if it could be called such, and it
was an entire world unto itself--a rectangular court planted with dozens
of olive trees and other flowering trees, orange trees, lemon trees,
and all of these strung with lanterns.
   It was an entire little world full of what seemed to be drunken and
confused persons. Bodies, some half-naked, others fully and even richly
clothed, shuffled, stumbled or lay about with no purpose. Everyone was
filthy, disheveled, degraded.
   There were hovels all over, like old-fashioned peasant huts of mere
straw, and open wooden shacks, and little stone enclaves, and trellised
gardens and countless circuitous pathways.
   It was a drunken labyrinth of a garden gone wild under the naked
night.
   The fruit trees grew thick in clusters and then broke open to reveal
grassy places where people merely lay staring at the stars, as if they
were dozing, though their eyes were open.
   Myriad flowering vines covered wire enclosures that seemed to have
no purpose but to create some alcove of privacy, and there were giant
cages full of fat birds, aye, birds, and cooking fires scattered about--
and big kettles simmering on beds of coals, from which a deeply spiced
fragrance arose.
Kettles! Yes, full of broth.

   I saw that a foursome of demons roamed about--there may have been
more--scrawny-limbed and bleached as their Lords, and forced to the same
blood-red dress, only they were in shapeless garments no better than
rags--peasant garb.
   Two tended a pot of the simmering broth or soup or whatever it was,
whilst another swept with a big old broom, and yet another carried on
his hip indifferently a small mewling human toddler, whose head rolled
painfully on his weak neck.
   It was more grotesque and disturbing than the hideous Court below,
with its stately cadaverous mock aristocrats.
   "It's stinging my eyes/' I said. "I can feel the smoke rising from
the kettles." It was a pungent delicious mingling of fragrances. I
could identify many of the rich cooking spices, and the smell of mutton
and beef, but there were other more exotic flavors intermingled with
it.
   Everywhere human beings were in this hopeless daze. Children, old
women, the famed cripples who never appeared in the town below,
hunchbacks, and little twisted bodies which had never grown to full
size, and big hulking men as well, bearded and swart, and boys my age
or older-- all of them shuffling about or lying about, but dazed, and
crazy, and looking up at us, and blinking and pausing as though our
presence should mean something though they could not make out what.
   I swayed on the landing, and Ursula held my arm. I felt ravenous as
the heavy fumes filled my nostrils. Hunger, hunger such as I'd never
known. No, it was a pure thirst for the soup, as though there were no
food that was not liquid.
   Suddenly the two gaunt and aloof men who had not left us--they who
had blindfolded me and dragged me here--turned and went down the steps,
letting their heels make a sharp marching sound on the stones.
   A few eager cries came up from the great mottled and scattered
assemblage. Heads turned. Sluggish bodies tried to rouse themselves
from the vaporous torpor.
   The two Lords, with their long trailing sleeves and stiff backs,
marched together as if they were kinsmen as they approached the first
of the visible cauldrons.
   I watched as drunken mortals gathered themselves up and stumbled
towards the red-clad Lords. As for the red-clad Lords, they seemed to
glory in mystifying all.
   "What are they doing? What will they do?" I was sick. I was going to
fall. Yet how sweet this soup smelled, and how much I wanted it.
"Ursula," I said. But I didn't know what words to make to follow this
prayer of her name.
   "I'm holding you, my love, this is the coop. Look, do you see?"
Through a haze, I saw the Lords pass beneath the jagged thorny branches
of the blooming orange trees, where fruit hung still, as though none of
these swollen, lethargic souls needed such a fresh and bright thing as
an orange.
   The Lords took up a stance on either side of this first kettle, and
each, extending a right hand, slashed his right wrist with a knife
which he held in his left hand, and let the blood flow copiously into
the brew.
   A weak happy cry rose from those humans gathering meekly around
them.
   "Oh, damnable, it's the blood, of course," I whispered. I would have
fallen if Ursula had not taken hold of me. "The brew is spiced with
blood."
   One of the Lords turned away, as though the smoke and the fumes

disgusted him, yet he allowed himself to bleed into the mix. Then
turning swiftly, almost crossly, he reached out to snatch by the arm
one of the thin, weak-looking white demons in peasant garb.
   He caught the poor fellow and dragged him to the kettle. The thin
paltry demon begged and whined to be allowed to be free, but his wrists
were both slashed, and now, though he turned his bony face away, he was
bled furiously into the soup.
   'Ah, you are better than Dante with your circles of Hell, aren't
you?" I said. But it hurt me that I had taken such a tone with her.
She supported me utterly.
   "They are peasants, yes, they dream of being Lords, and if they
obey, they might."
I recalled now that the demon soldiers who had brought me back to the
castle had been rude huntsmen. How well it was all thought out, but
this, my narrow-shouldered love, with her soft yielding arms and her
shining tear-stained face, was a pure Lady, was she not?
"Vittorio, I want so badly for you not to die."
   "Do you, dearest?" I said. I had my arms around her. I could no
longer stand without this support.
My vision was fading.
   Yet with my head against her shoulder, my eyes directed to the crowd
below, I could see the human beings surrounding the kettles and dipping
their cups into the brew, dipping their cups right where the blood had
fallen, and then blowing on the hot liquid to cool it before they
drank.
   A soft, horrid laughter echoed up the walls. I think it came from
those spectators above on the balconies.
   There was a sudden swirl of red color, as if a giant unfurling flag
had fallen.
   But it was a Lady dropping down from the remote heights above, to
land amid the worshipful hordes of the coop.
   They bowed and saluted her, and backed away from her, and gave forth
loud gasps of awe as she too approached the kettle and, with a loud
rebellious laugh, cut her wrist and fed her blood into it.
   "Yes, my darlings, my little chicks," she declared. She looked up at
us.
   "Come down, Ursula, have pity on our hungry little world; be
generous tonight. So it is not your night to give; give in honor of our
new acquisition."
   Ursula seemed shamed by all of this, and held me gently with her
long fingers. I looked into her eyes.
"I'm drunk, drunk merely from the fragrance."
"My blood is only for you now," she whispered.
   "Give it to me then, I hunger for it, I'm weak to dying," I said.
"Oh, God, you've brought me to this. No, no, I did it myself."
"Sshhh, my lover, my sweet," she said.
   Her arm coiled about my waist, and there came just under my ear her
tender lips sucking on the flesh, as if she meant to make a pucker
there on my neck, warm it with her tongue, and then the prick of her
teeth.
   I felt ravaged, and with both hands in a fantasy I reached out for
her figure as we ran together through the meadow which belonged only to
us and to which these others could never be admitted.
   "Oh, innocent love," she said even as she drank from me, "oh,
innocent innocent love."
   Then a sudden icy hot fire entered the wound in my neck, and I felt
it as if it were a delicate parasite of long tendrils that once inside

my body could find the most remote reaches of me.
   The meadow spread out around us, vast and cool, and utterly given
over to the blowing lilies. Was she with me? Beside me? It seemed in
one radiant instant I stood alone and heard her cry out as if she were
behind me.
I meant, within this ecstatic dream, this flutter-ing cooling dream of
blue skies and tender breaking stems, to turn and go to her. But out of
the corner of my eyes, I beheld something of such splendor and
magnificence that my soul leapt.
"Look, yes, you see!"
   My head fell back. The dream was gone. The high white marble walls
of the prison castle rose above my hurting gaze. She held me and stared
down at me, bewildered, her lips bloody.
   She hoisted me in her arms. I was as helpless as a child. She
carried me down the stairs, and there was nothing I could do to rouse
my limbs.
   It seemed all the world above was tiny figures ranging on balconies
and battlements and laughing and pointing with their tiny outstretched
hands, so dark against the torches all around them.
Blood red, smell it.
   "But what was it; did you see it in the field?" I asked her.
"No!" she cried. She looked so frightened.
   I lay on a heap of hay, a makeshift bed, and the poor underfed demon
peasant boys stared stupidly down at me with bloodshot eyes, and she,
she wept, her hands again to her face.
"I cannot leave him here," she said.
   She was far, far away. I heard people crying. Was there a revolt
among the drugged and the damned? I heard people weeping.
   "But you will, and come to the kettle first and give your blood."
Who spoke those words?
I didn't know.
"... time for the Mass."
"You won't take him tonight."
   "Why are they crying?" I asked. "Listen, Ursula, they've all started
crying."
   One of the scrawny boys stared right into my eyes. He had a hand on
the back of my neck and a warm cup of brew to my mouth. I didn't want
it to slop down my chin. I drank and drank. It filled my mouth.
   "Not tonight," came Ursula's voice. Kisses on my forehead, on my
neck. Someone snatched her away. I felt her hand hold tight to mine,
then I felt her pulled away.
"Come now, Ursula, leave him."
   "Sleep, my darling," she cried in my ear. I felt her skirts brushing
me. "Vittorio, sleep."
   The cup was thrown aside. Stupidly, in utter intoxication I watched
the contents spill and sink darkly into the mounded hay. She knelt
before me, her mouth open and tender and luscious and red.
   She took rny face in her cool hands. The blood poured out of her
mouth and into mine.
   "Oh, love," I said. I wanted to see the field. It didn't come. "Let
me see the field! Let me see it!"
   But there was no meadow, only the shocking sight of her face again,
and then a dimming light, a gathering embrace of darkness and sound. I
could no longer fight. I could no longer speak. I could no longer
remember . . . But someone had said that very thing.
   And the crying. It was so sad. Such crying, such doleful, helpless
weeping.

   When next I opened my eyes, it was morning. The sun hurt me, and my
head ached unbearably.
   A man was on top of me, trying to get my clothes off me. Drunken
fool. I turned over, dizzy and sick, sick to vomiting, and threw him
off, and with a sound blow knocked him senseless.
   I tried to get up but I couldn't. The nausea was intolerable. All
around me others slept. The sun hurt my eyes. It scalded my skin. I
snuggled into the hay. The heat beat down on my head, and when I ran my
own fingers through my hair, my hair felt hot. The pain in my head
throbbed in my ears.
   "Come into the shelter," a voice said. It was an old crone, and she
beckoned to me from beneath a thatched roof. "Come in, where it's
cool."
"Curse you all," I said. I slept. I drifted.
   Sometime during the late afternoon I came to my senses.
   I found myself on my knees near one of the kettles. I was drinking
in a slovenly wretched manner from a bowl of brew. The old woman had
given it to me.
   "The demons," I said. "They are asleep. We can . . . we can ..." but
then the futility of it overcame me. I wanted to throw away the cup,
but I drank the hot brew.
   "It's not just blood, it's wine, it's good wine," said the old
woman. "Drink it, my boy, and feel no pain. They'll kill you soon
enough. It's not so terrible."
When it was dark again, I knew it.
I rolled over.
   I could fully open my eyes, and they did not hurt as they had in the
day
   I knew that I had lost the whole arc of the sun in this drugged and
stupid and disastrous languor. I had fallen into their plans. I had
been helpless when I should have been trying to rouse these useless
ones around me to mutiny. Good God, how could I have let it happen! Oh,
the sadness, the dim distant sadness ... And the sweetness of slumber.
"Wake, boy/'
A demon voice.
"They want you tonight."
   "Oh, and who wants me for what?" I asked. I looked up. The torches
were alight. All was twinkling and glowing, and there came the soft
rustle of green leaves overhead--the sharp sweet smell of the orange
trees. The world was woven of dancing flames above and the entrancing
patterns of the black leaves. The world was hunger and thirst.
   The brew simmered, and that scent blotted out all else. I opened my
mouth for it, though there was none of it near me.
   "I'll give it to you," said the demon voice. "But sit up. I must
clean you up. You must look good for tonight."
"For what?" I said. "All of them are dead."
"Who?"
"My family."
   "There is no family here. This is the Court of the Ruby Grail. You
are the property of the Lord of the Court. Now, come, I have to prepare
you."
"For what do you prepare me?"
   "For the Mass, you're to go, get up," said the demon, who stood
wearily over me, leaning on his broom, his shining hair an elfin mess
around his face. "Get up, boy. They'll want you. It's almost midnight."
   "No, no, not almost midnight, no!" I cried out. "No!"
   "Don't be afraid," he said, coldly, wearily. "It's useless."

   "But you don't understand, it's the loss of time, the loss of
reason, the loss of hours during which my heart beat and my brain
slept! I'm not afraid, you miserable demon!"
He held me flat to the hay. He washed my face.
   "There, there, you are a handsome fine one. They always sacrifice
those such as you right away. You're too strong, too fine of limb and
face. Look at you, and the Lady Ursula dreaming of you and weeping for
you. They took her away."
   'Ah, but I was dreaming too ..." I said. Was I talking to this
monstrous attendant as though he and I were friends? Where was the
great magnificent web of my dreams, the immense and luminous majesty?
   "You can talk to me, why not?" he said. "You will die in rapture, my
pretty young Lord," he said. 'And you'll see the church all alight, and
the Mass; you'll be the sacrifice."
   "No, I dreamed of the meadow," I said. "I saw something in the
meadow. No, it wasn't Ursula." I was talking to myself, to my own sick
bedeviled mind, talking to my wits to make them listen. "I saw someone
in the meadow, someone so ... I can't..."
   "You make things so painful for yourself," said the demon
soothingly. "Here, I have all your buttons and buckles right. What a
fine Lord you must have been."
   Must have been, must have been, must have been...
"You hear that?" he asked.
"I hear nothing."
   "It's the clock, striking the third quarter of the hour. It's almost
time for the Mass. Don't pay attention to the noise. It's the others
who'll be sacrificed. Don't let it unnerve you. Just so much common
weeping."




                                   8

                         REQUIEM, OR THE HOLY
                     SACRIFICE OF THE MASS AS I
                          HAD NEVER SEEN IT


HAD ever a chapel been more beautiful? Had ever white marble been used
to such an advantage, and from which I fount of eternal gold had come
these glorious curlicues and serpentine adornments, these high-pointed
windows, illuminated from without by fierce fires that brought into the
perfection of jewels their tiny thick facets of tinted glass to form
their solemn narrow and seemingly sacred pictures?
But they were not sacred pictures.
   I stood in the choir loft, high above the vestibule, looking down
over the great nave and at the altar at the far end. Once again I was
flanked by ominous and regal Lords, who seemed now to be absolutely
fervent in their duty as they held me firm and standing by the arms.
   My mind had cleared, but only somewhat. The wet cloth was once again
pressed to my eyes and forehead. The water was as if from a mountain

stream of flowing melted snow.
In my sickness, in my fever, I saw everything.
   I saw the demons fashioned in the glittering windows, as artfully
put together of red and gold and blue glass as any angels or saints. I
saw their leering faces as they peered down, these monsters with their
webbed wings and clawlike hands, upon the congregation.
   Below, allowing a broad central aisle, was gathered in its ruby dark
finery the great Court on either side, standing to face the long
heavily carved and broad Communion Rail and the high altar behind it.
   Paintings covered the cove behind the altar. Demons dancing in Hell,
graceful among the flames as though they bathed in a welcome radiance,
and strung above them on loose and unfurling banners the golden letters
from St. Augustine's words, so familiar to my study, that these flames
were not the flames of real fire but only the absence from God, but the
word "absence" had been replaced by the Latin word for "freedom."
   "Freedom" was the word in Latin worked into the high white marble
walls, in a frieze that ran beneath the balconies on either side of the
church, on the same level as this, my place, in which more of the Court
beheld the spectacle.
   Light rose to flood the high-groined arches of the roof.
And what was this spectacle?
   The high altar was draped in crimson trimmed in gilt fringe, its
abundant cloths short enough to reveal the tableau in white carving of
figures prancing in Hell, though from this great distance my eyes might
have deceived me as to their levity.
   What I did see with perfection were the thick candlesticks before
not a crucifix but a huge carved stone replica of Lucifer, the fallen
angel, long locks aflame, and garments too a torrent of rising fire,
frozen in marble, and in his upraised hands the symbols of death--in the
right the scythe of the grim reaper--and in the other the sword of the
executioner.
   I gasped when I beheld the image! Monstrous, it was positioned
precisely where I wanted so to see my Crucified Christ, and yet in a
moment of delirium and agitation, I felt my lips curl in a smile, and I
heard my own mind tell me cunningly that there was nothing less
grotesque about the Crucified God if He Himself had been there.
My guards held me firm. Had I tottered?
   From the assemblage around me and behind me, from those whom I had
not even regarded, there came suddenly the muted roll of drums, ominous
and slow, mournful and beautiful in their own muffled simplicity.
   At once there followed a deep-throated chorus of horns, in lovely
weaving song and effortless sweet intermingling, playing not the
repetitious chord music of the night before, but a strong plaintive and
imploring polyphony of melodies so sad that they flooded my heart with
sadness, stroked my heart and made the tears nearly spring to my eyes.
Oh, what is this? What is this blended and rich music, surrounding me
and pouring forth into the nave to echo off the satiny marble and
rebound gently and with perfect modulation to the place where I stood,
staring, rapt at the distant figure of Lucifer?
   At his feet, all flowers laid out in vessels of silver and gold were
red, the red of roses and carnations, the red of the iris, the red of
wildflowers I could not name, an altar alive and decked and crawling
with all those things which were high color, his glorious tint, the one
color left to him that might rise from his inevitable and unredeemable
darkness.
   I heard the dusty, sonorous songs of the reed shawm, the small oboe
and the reed dulcian, and other small reed organs played by mouth, and

then the more ringing tone of the brass sackbut horn, and perhaps even
the light singing of the hammers striking the taut strings of the
dulcimer.
   This music alone might have engaged me, filled my soul, its threads
of melody interweaving, overlapping, harmonizing and then drifting
apart. It left me no breath to speak or eyes for other things. Yet I
beheld the statues of the demons who ran from right to left--so like the
Lords and Ladies of the Courtly table of last night--from the imposing
figure of their Devil.
   Were they blood drinkers all, these terrible gaunt saints of Hell,
carved from hardwood with its own reddish mahogany glint, in their
stark stylized garments, cleaving to thin bodies, their eyes half-
lidded, their mouths open, and against each lower lip two white fangs,
as if made from tiny bits of snow-white ivory to mark the purpose of
each individual monster.
   Oh, Cathedral of horrors. I tried to turn my head, to close my eyes,
and yet the monstrosity of it enthralled me. Pathetic unformed thoughts
never reached my lips.
   The horns died around me, and the reedy woodland instruments died
away. Oh, don't go, sweet music. Don't leave me here.
   But what came was a chorus of the sweetest softest tenor voices;
they called out the Latin words that I could not follow, an anthem for
the dead, an anthem on the mutability of all things, and at once came a
full lustrous harmonizing chorus of sopranos male and female, of basses
and baritones, singing heartily in splendid polyphony in answer to
these lone tenors:
   "I go now to the Lord, for He has allowed these Creatures of
Darkness to answer my supplications..."
What nightmarish words were these?
   Once again there came the rich thick chorus of many voices to
underscore the tenors:
   "The instruments of death await me in their warm and devout kiss,
and into their bodies, by the will of God, they shall take my life's
blood, my rapture, my soul's ascent through their own, so as better to
know both Heaven and Hell in their Dark Service."
The reed organ played its solemn song.
Into the Sanctuary of the church, there pro-ceeded now, to the fullest
most lustrous strength of the polyphony yet, a stream of priestly
figures.
   I saw the Lord Florian in a rich red chasuble as if he were the
bishop of Florence himself, only this garment bore the Cross of Christ
impudently upside down in honor of the Damned One, and on his
untonsured head of dark blond hair he wore a gilded jeweled crown as if
he were both Prankish monarch and servant of the Dark Lord.
   The strong piercing notes of the horns dominated the song. A march
had begun. The drums rumbled beneath, hushed and steady
   Florian had taken his place before the altar with his face to the
congregation, and on one side of him stood the fragile Ursula, her hair
full and loose and down on her shoulders, though shrouded like a Mary
Magdalene in a scarlet veil which hung to the very edge of the hem of
her tapering gown.
   Her upturned face was directed to me, and I could see even from this
great airy span that her hands, shaped as a steeple, with fingers
pressed together, trembled.
   On the other side of this high priest Florian stood his bald Elder,
in his own chasuble and thick embroidered lace sleeves, another
priestly assistant.

   Acolytes came from either side, tallish young demons with faces of
the usual chiseled ivory, and the simple surplices of those who attend
the Mass. They took their positions ranked down the long marble
Communion Rail.
   Once again, there rose the magnificent chorus of voices around me,
falsettos mingling with true sopranos and the throbbing basses of the
males, as redolent of the woodlands as the wooden horns, and beneath it
all the heavy driving brass declaration.
   What did they mean to do? What was this hymn which now the tenors
sang, and what was the answer that came from all the voices so close to
me, the words in Latin unstrung and only incoherently enveloping me:
   "Lord, I am come into the Valley of Death; Lord, I am come to the
end of my Sorrow; Lord, in thy deliverance I give life to those who
would be idle in Hell were it not for thy divine plan."
   My soul rebelled. I loathed it, and yet I could not look away from
the spectacle below. My eyes swept the church. I saw for the first time
the gaunt, demonic fanged demons on their pedestals rising between the
narrow windows, and everywhere the glint of racks upon racks of tiny
candles.
   The music broke again for the solemn declaration of the tenors:
   "Let the fount be brought forward, that those who are our sacrifices
should be washed clean."
And it was done.
   Ranks of young demons in their guise as Altar Boys came forward,
carrying with them in their preternaturally strong hands a magnificent
baptismal fount of deep-pink Carrara marble. This they set some ten
feet before the Communion Rail.
   "Oh, abominations, to make it so beautiful," I whispered.
"Quiet now, my young one," said the regal guard beside me. "Watch, for
what you see here you will never see between Heaven and Earth again,
and as you will go unconfessed to God, you will burn in darkness
forever."
He sounded as if he believed it.
   "You have no power to damn my soul," I whispered, trying in vain to
clear my eyes, not to so love the weakness that still caused me to
depend upon their clamping hands.
   "Ursula, farewell," I whispered, making of my lips a kiss.
   But in this miraculous and private little moment, seemingly
unnoticed by the whole congregation, I saw her head shake in a small
secretive negation.
   No one saw because all eyes were now on another spectacle, far more
tragic than any of the controlled and modulated ritual we had beheld.
   Up the aisle, driven by acolyte demons in tunics of red and lace
sleeves trimmed in red and gold, there came a poor wretched sampling of
the lost ones of the coop, shuffling old women, drunken men and little
boys, mere children, clinging to the very demons who escorted them to
their deaths, like piteous victims of some horrid old trial where the
offspring of the condemned are led to execution with their parents.
Horror.
   "I curse you all. I damn you. God, bring down your justice on this,"
I whispered. "God, bring down your tears. Weep for us, Christ, that
this is happening."
My eyes turned up in my head. It seemed I dreamed, and once again came
the bright green limitless meadow to my eyes, and once again, as Ursula
ran from me, as her spirited young form rushed across the high breaking
field of grass and lilies, there rose another figure, another familiar
figure--.

   "Yes, I see you!" I cried out to this vision in my half-rescued
dream.
   But no sooner had I recognized it, locked to it, than it vanished;
it was gone, and with it was gone all comprehension of it, all memory
of its exquisite face and form and its meaning, its pure and powerful
meaning. Words fled from me.
   From below I saw the Lord Florian look up, angered, silent. The
hands beside me dug into my flesh.
   "Silence," said the guards next to me, their commands overlapping
one another.
   The lovely music rose higher and higher, as though the climbing
soprano voices and the throbbing, winding horns would hush me now and
pay tribute only to the unholy baptism.
   The baptism had begun. The first victim, an ancient woman of bent
and bony back, had been stripped of her poor garments and washed with
handfuls of water in the fount, and now was led to the Communion Rail,
oh, so frail, so unprotected by her kith and kin and her guardian
angels!
   Oh, and now to see the children stripped, to see their tiny little
legs and buttocks bare, to see their bony shoulders, those tiny parts
where it seemed the winglets of baby angels once sprouted from their
backs, to see them washed and then delivered to stand trembling along
the stretch of marble balustrade.
It happened very fast.
   "Cursed animals, for that is what you are, not airy demons, no!" I
muttered, struggling in the grasp of the two loathsome minions. "Yes,
cowardly minions, both of you, to be a party to this evil."
   The music drowned out my prayers. "Dear God, send my angels to me,"
I said to my heart, my secret heart, "send my wrathful angels, send
them with your fiery sword. God, this cannot be borne."
   The Communion Rail now had its full complement of victims, naked and
trembling all, and blazing with carnal human color against the luminous
marble and the colorless priests.
   The candles flickered on the giant Lucifer, with its great webbed
wings, who presided over all.
   The Lord Florian now stepped down to take the first Communicant in
his hands, and lowered his lips to drink.
   The drums beat fierce and sweet, and the voices twined and reached
to Heaven. But there was no Heaven here beneath these branching white
columns, these groined arches. There was nothing but death.
   All the Court had begun to make two streams along the sides of the
chapel marching silently up to come behind the Communion Rail, where
each might take a victim from those who stood helpless and ready, and
now Lord and Lady chose which they wanted, and some shared, and one
victim was passed from one to another, and so on it went, this mockery,
this lurid, predatory Communion.
Only Ursula did not move.
   The Communicants were dying. Some were already dead. None struck the
floor. Their pliant dried-up limbs were captured silently and deftly by
the attendant demons, and bodies were whisked away.
   More victims were still being bathed. Others were taken to the Rail.
On it went.
   The Lord Florian drank again and again, one child after another put
before him, his slender fingers capturing the small neck and holding it
as he bent his lips.
I wonder what Latin words he dared to speak.
   Slowly the members of the Court slipped out of the Sanctuary, moving

down the side aisles again to pivot and take their old stance. They had
had their fill.
   All through the room the color of blood infused once pallid faces,
and it seemed to my misted vision, to my head so full of the loveliness
of song, that they all were human now, human for this little while.
   "Yes," said Florian, his voice arching out soft and sure to my ears
over the length of the nave. "Human now for this one instant, with the
blood of the living, incarnated again, we are, young prince. You have
understood it."
   'Ah, but Lord," I said, in my exhausted whisper, "I do not forgive
it."
   An interval of silence fell. Then the tenors declared:
   "It is time, and the midnight hour is not finished."
   The sure and tight hands in which I was held focused me now to the
side. I was spirited out of the choir loft and down the winding screw
stairs of white marble.
   As I came to myself, still supported, staring up the center aisle, I
saw that only the baptistry fount remained. All victims were gone.
   But a great cross had been brought into the hall. It had been
positioned upside down, to one side of the altar, and forward, at the
Communion Rail.
   The Lord Florian held up for me to see five huge iron nails in his
hand, and beckoned for me to come.
   The cross was anchored into place, as though it had often been
brought to this spot. It was made of rich hardwood, thick, heavy and
polished smooth, though it bore the marks of other nails, and no doubt
the stains of other blood.
   The very bottom of it fitted right at the Railing itself against the
marble banister, so that he who was to be crucified would be three feet
above the floor and visible to all the worshippers.
   "The worshippers, you filthy lot!" I laughed. Thank God and all his
angels that the eyes of my father and mother were filled with celestial
light and could see nothing of this crude degradation.
   The Elder revealed to me in his outstretched hands two golden
goblets.
   I knew the meaning. With these, to catch my blood as it gushed from
the wounds made by the nails.
He bowed his head.
   I was forced up the aisle. The statue of Lucifer grew immense behind
the glittering pontifical figure of Florian. My feet did not touch the
marble. All around me the members of the Court turned to attend my
progress, but never so much that their eyes were not upon their Lord.
   Before the baptismal fount my face was washed.
   I tossed my head, twisting my neck, throwing the water impudently on
those who tried to bathe me. The acolytes were in fear of me. They
approached and reached hesitantly for my buckles.
   "Strip him," said the Lord, and once again he held up the nails for
me to see.
   "I see well enough, my cowardly Lord," I said. "It is nothing to
crucify a boy such as me. Save your soul, Lord, do that! And all your
Court will wonder."
   The music swelled from the loft above. The chorus came again,
answering and underscoring the anthem of the tenors.
   There were no words for me now; there was only candlelight and the
knowledge that my clothes were about to be taken from me, and that this
horror would take place, this evil inverted crucifixion, never
sanctified by St. Peter himself, for the inverted cross not now to be a

symbol of the Evil One.
   Suddenly the trembling hands of the acolytes withdrew.
   Above, the horns played their most beautiful poignant melody.
   The tenors hurled out their question, in flawless voices, from the
loft above:
   "Can this one not be saved? Can this one not be delivered?"
The chorus rose, in unison:
   "Can this one not be released from the power of Satan?"
   Ursula stepped forward and drew from her head the immense long red
veil that hung to her feet, and threw it out so that it descended like
a cloud of red around her. Beside her, an acolyte appeared with my very
sword in his hand, and my daggers.
Once again the tenor voices implored:
   "One soul released to go forth into the world, mad, and bearing
witness only to the most patient ears to the power of Satan."
   The chorus sang, a riot of melody erupting from them, and it seemed
a swift affirmation had overtaken their song.
   "What, not to die!" I said. I strained to see the face of the Lord
in whose hands all of this rested. But he was blocked from my view.
   Godric the Elder had come between. Opening the gate of the marble
Communion Rail with his knee, he moved down the aisle towards me. He
thrust one of his golden cups to my lips.
   "Drink and forget, Vittorio, else we lose her heart and her soul."
"Oh, but then you must lose it!"
   "No!" she screamed. "No." Over his shoulder, I could see her snatch
three of the nails from Florian's left hand and fling them out on the
marble. The singing rose high and rich under the arches. I couldn't
hear the nails strike the stone.
   The sound of the choir was jubilant, celebratory. The mournful tones
of requiem were gone.
   "No, God, if you would save her soul, then take me to the cross,
take me!"
   But the golden cup was forced to my lips. My jaws were opened by
Ursula's hand, and the liquid poured down my throat. I saw my sword
lifted before my closing eyes as if it were a cross, the long hilt, the
handles.
   Soft mocking laughter rose and blended with the magical and
indescribable beauty of the choir.
   Her red veil swirled about me. I saw the red fabric rise up in front
of me. I felt it come down around me like a spellbinding shower, full
of her perfume, soft with her tenderness.
"Ursula, come with me ..." I whispered.
Those were my last words.
   "Cast out," cried the swelling voices above. "Cast out. . ." cried
the huge choir, and it seemed the Court sang with the chorus, "Cast
out," and my eyes closed as the red fabric covered my face, as it came
down like a witch's web over my struggling fingers and sealed itself
over my open mouth.
   The horns blared forth the truth. "Forgiven! Cast out!" sang the
voices.
"Cast out to madness," whispered Godric in my ear. "To madness all of
your days, and you, you might have been one of us."
   "Yes, one of us," came Florian's smooth unperturbed whisper.
   "Fool that you were," said Godric. "You might have been immortal."
   "One of us forever, immortal, imperishable, to reign here in glory,"
said Florian.
   "Immortality or death," said Godric, "and these were choices royal,

but you shall wander witless and scorned through the world."
  "Yes, witless and scorned," came a childish voice at my ear. And
then another, "Witless and scorned."
"Witless and scorned," said Florian.
  But the choir sang on, obliterating all sting from their words, its
delirious hymn growing ever more tremendous in my half-slumber.
     (A fool to wander the world in contempt," said Godric.
  Blinded, sealed in the softness of the veil, intoxicated by the
drink, I could not answer them. I think I smiled. Their words were too
senselessly mingled with the sumptuous soothing voices of the choir.
And fools that they were, they had never known that what they said
simply had not mattered.
  'And you could have been our young prince." Was it Florian at my
side? Cool, dauntless Florian. "We could have loved you as she loves
you."
  "A young prince," said Godric, "to rule here with us forever."
  "Become the jester of alchemists and old wives," said Florian sadly,
solemnly.
"Yes," said a childish voice, "fool to leave us."
  How wondrous were the anthems that made their words mere sweet and
contrapuntal syllables.
  I think I felt her kiss through the silk. I think I felt it. I
think. It seemed in the tiniest of feminine whispers, she said simply,
without ceremony:
  "My love." It had her triumph and her farewell within it.
  Down, down, down into the richest, kindest sleep that God can give,
I sank. The music gave a shape to my limbs, gave air to my lungs, when
all other senses had been abandoned.




                                   9

                    ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH


IT was pouring down rain. No, the rain had stopped. They still couldn't
I understand me.
             I was surrounded by these men. We were right near Fra
Filippo's workshop. I knew this street. I'd just been here with my
father a year ago.
   "Speak more slowly. Corrr . . . blub, it doesn't make sense!"
   "Look," said the other one. "We want to help you. Tell me your
father's name. Speak it slowly."
   They shook their heads. I thought I was making perfect sense, I
could hear it, Lorenzo di Raniari, why couldn't they hear it, and I was
his son, Vittorio di Raniari. But I could feel my lips, how swollen
they were. I knew I was filthy from the rain.
   "Look, take me to Fra Filippo's shop. I know them there," I said. My
great painter, my passionate and tormented painter, his apprentices
would know me. He would not, but the helpers who had seen me weep that

day at his work. And then, then, these men would take me to the house
of Cosimo in the Via del Largo.
   "Fee, fee?" they said. They repeated my clumsy attempts at speech. I
had failed again.
   I started towards the workshop. I staggered and almost fell. These
were honest men. I had the heavy bags over my right shoulder, and my
sword was clanking against me, practically throwing me off balance. The
high walls of Florence were closing in on me. I almost hit the stones.
"Cosimo!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
   "We can't take you to Cosimo like this! Cosimo won't see you."
"Ah, you understand; you heard me."
   But the man now cocked his ear. An honest merchant, drenched to the
skin in his somber green robes, and all because of me no doubt. I
wouldn't come in out of the rain. No sense. They'd found me lying in
the rain right in the middle of the Piazza della Signoria.
"It's coming back, it's coming clear."
   I saw the entrance to Fra Filippo's workshop up ahead. The shutters
were being taken down. They were opening it up now that the thunderous
storm had ceased, and the water was drying up on the stone streets.
People were coming out.
"Those men in there," I shouted.
"What, what are you saying?"
   Shrugs all around, but they aided me. An old man held my elbow.
   "We should take him to San Marco, let the monks care for him."
   "No, no, no, I need to talk to Cosimo!" I shouted.
Again, they shrugged and shook their heads.
   Suddenly I stopped. I rocked and steadied myself by rudely grabbing
hold of the younger man's shoulder.
I stared at the distant workshop.
   The street was no more than an alleyway here, barely sufficient for
horses to pass and for the pedestrians not to be injured, and the stone
facades all but closed out the slate-gray sky above. Windows were
opened, and it seemed that a woman could reach across upstairs and
touch the house opposite her.
But look what was there, right before the shop.
   I saw them. I saw the two of them! "Look/' I said again. "Do you see
them?"
   The men couldn't see. Lord, the two figures before the shop were
bright as if illuminated from within their flushed skin and loosely
girdled robes.
   I held the shoulder bags over my left shoulder and put my hand on my
sword. I could stand, but my eyes must have been wide as plates staring
blindly at what I beheld.
   The two angels were arguing. The two angels, with their wings moving
ever so slightly in time with their words and their gestures, were
arguing with each other where they stood, right before the shop.
   They stood oblivious to all humans who passed them and couldn't see
them, and they argued one with another, both angels blond, both angels
I knew, I knew these angels, I knew them from the paintings of Fra
Filippo, and I could hear their voices.
   I knew the rolled curls of the one, whose head was crowned with a
wreath of small perfectly matched flowerlets, his loose mantle crimson,
his undergarment a bright clear sky blue trimmed in gold.
   And the other, I knew him as well, knew his bare head and soft
shorter hair, and his golden collar, and the insignia on his mantle,
and the thick bands of ornament on his wrists.
   But above all I knew their faces, their innocent pink-tinged faces,

their serene full yet narrow eyes.
   The light melted down, somber and stormy still, though the sun was
burning up there behind the gray sky. My eyes began to water.
"Look at their wings," I whispered.
The men couldn't see.
   "I know the wings. I know them both, look, the angel with the blond
hair, the ringlets in rows coming down his head, it's from the
Annunciation, and the wings, his wings are made like the peacock,
brilliantly blue, and the other, his feathers are tipped in the purest
dust of gold."
   The angel with the crown of flowers gestured excitedly to the other;
from a mortal man, the gestures, the posture, would have evinced anger,
but it was nothing so heated as that. The angel was only seeking to be
understood.
   I moved slowly, pulling loose of my helpful companions, who couldn't
see what I saw!
   What did they think I stared at? The gaping shop, the apprentices in
the deep shadows within, the meager half-tinted flashes of canvases and
panels, the yawning mouth beyond which the work was carried out.
   The other angel shook his head somberly. "I don't go along with it,"
he said in the most serene and lilting voice. "We can't go that far. Do
you think this doesn't make me weep?"
"What?" I cried out. "What makes you weep?"
   Both angels turned. They stared at me. In unison, they collected
their dark, multicolored and spectacled wings close to themselves, as
though they meant to shrink thereby into invisibility, but they were no
less visible to me, shining, both so fair, so recognizable. Their eyes
were full of wonder as they gazed at me. Wonder at the sight of me?
   "Gabriel!" I cried out. I pointed, "I know you, I know you from the
Annunciation. You are both Gabriel, I know the paintings, I have seen
you, Gabriel and Gabriel, how can it be?"
   "He can see us," said the angel who had been gesturing so pointedly
His voice was subdued but seemed to reach my ears effortlessly and
gently. "He can hear us," he said, and the wonder in his face
increased, and he looked above all innocent and patient, and ever so
gently concerned.
   "What in the name of God are you saying, boy?" asked the old man
beside me. "Now, collect your wits. You're carrying a fortune in your
bags. Your hands are covered in rings. Now speak sensibly. I'll take
you to your family, if you'll only tell me who they are."
   I smiled. I nodded, but I kept my eyes fixed on the two startled and
amazed angels. Their clothes appeared light, near translucent, as
though the fabric were not of a natural weave any more than their
incandescent skin was natural. All of their makeup was more rarefied,
and fine-woven with light.
   Beings of air, of purpose, made up of presence and of what they do--
were these the words of Aquinas coming back to me, the Summa Theologica
on which I had learnt my Latin?
   Oh, how miraculously beautiful they were, and so safely apart from
all around them, standing transfixed in the street in their quiet wide-
eyed simplicity, pondering as they gazed with compassion and interest
at me.
   One of them, the one crowned with flowers, the one who wore the sky-
blue sleeves, the one who had so caught my heart when I had seen him in
the Annunciation with my father, the one with whom I had fallen in
love, moved towards me.
   He became larger as he drew closer, taller, slightly larger all over

than an ordinary being, and so full of love in the soundless shuffle of
his loose and gracefully spilling clothes that he seemed more
immaterial and monumentally solid, more perhaps the very expression of
God's creation, than anything of flesh and blood might be.
   He shook his head and smiled. "No, for you are yourself the very
finest of God's creation," he said in a low voice that stole its way
through the chatter that surrounded me.
   He walked as if he were a mortal being, with clean naked feet over
the wet dirty stones of the Florentine street, oblivious to the men who
could not see him as he stood now so close to me, letting his wings
spread out and then folding them again tight, so that I only saw the
high feathered bones of them above his shoulders, which were sloped
like those of a young boy
   His face was brilliantly clean and flushed with all the radiant
color Fra Filippo had painted. When he smiled, I felt my entire body
tremble violently with unadulterated joy
   "Is this my madness, Archangel?" I asked. "Is this their curse come
true, that I shall see this as I gibber and incur the scorn of learned
men?" I laughed out loud.
   I startled the gentlemen who had been trying so much to help me.
They were thoroughly flustered. "What? Speak again?"
   But in a shimmering instant, a memory descended upon me,
illuminating my heart and soul and mind all in one stroke, as though
the sun itself had flooded a dark and hopeless cell.
   "It was you I saw in the meadow, you I saw when she drank my blood."
   Into my eyes he looked, this cool collected angel, with the rows and
rows of immaculate blond curls and the smooth placid cheeks.
   "Gabriel, the Archangel," I said in reverence. The tears flooded to
my eyes, and it felt like singing to cry.
   "My boy, my poor wretched boy," said the old merchant. "There is no
angel standing in front of you. Pay attention, now, please."
   "They can't see us," said the angel to me simply. Again came his
smooth easy smile. His eyes caught the light falling from the
brightening sky as he peered into me, as if he would see deeper with
every moment of his study
"I know/' I answered. "They don't know!"
   "But I am not Gabriel, you must not call me that," he said very
courteously and soothingly. "My young one, I am very far from being the
Archangel Gabriel. I am Setheus, and I'm a guardian angel only." He was
so patient with me, so patient with my crying and with the collection
of blind and concerned mortals around us.
   He stood close enough for me to touch, but I didn't dare.
"My guardian angel?" I asked. "Is it true?"
   "No," said the angel. "I am not your guardian angel. Those you must
somehow find for yourself. You've seen the guardian angels of another,
though why and how I don't know."
   "Don't pray now," said the old man crankily. "Tell us who you are,
boy. You said a name before, your father, tell us."
   The other angel, who stood as if too shocked to move, suddenly broke
his reserve and he too came forward in the same silent barefooted
style, as though the roughened stones and the wet and dirt could not
mar him or harm him.
   "Can this be good, Setheus?" he asked. But his pale iridescent eyes
were focused on me with the same loving attention, the same rapt and
forgiving interest.
   'And you, you are in the other painting, I know you too, I love you
with my whole heart," I said.

   "Son, to whom are you speaking?" demanded the younger man. "Whom do
you love with your whole heart?"
   "Ah, you can hear me?" I turned to the man. "You can understand me."
"Yes, now tell me your name."
   "Vittorio di Raniari," I said, "friend and ally of the Medici, son
of Lorenzo di Raniari, Castello Raniari in the north of Tuscany, and my
father is dead, and all my kinsmen. But--."
   The two angels stood right before me, together, one head inclined
towards the other as they regarded me, and it seemed that the mortals,
for all their blindness, could not block the path of the angels' vision
or come between me and them. If only I had the courage. I so wanted to
touch them.
   The wings of the one who'd spoken first were rising, and it seemed a
soft shimmer of gold dust fell from the awakening feathers, the
quivering, sparkling feathers, but nothing rivaled the angel's
meditative and wondering face.
   "Let them take you to San Marco," said this angel, the one named
Setheus, "let them take you. These men mean well, and you will be put
in a cell and cared for by the monks. You cannot be in a finer place,
for this is a house under Cosimo's patronage, and you know that Fra
Giovanni has decorated the very cell in which you'll stay."
   "Setheus, he knows these things," said the other angel.
"Yes, but I am reassuring him," said the first angel with the simplest
shrug, looking wonder-ingly at his companion. Nothing characterized
their faces so much as subdued wonder.
   "But you," I said, "Setheus, may I call you by name, you'll let them
take me away from you? You can't. Please don't leave me. I beg you.
Don't leave me."
   "We have to leave you," said the other angel. "We are not your
guardians. Why can't you see your own angels?"
"Wait, I know your name. I can hear it."
   "No," said this more disapproving angel, waving his finger at me as
if correcting a child.
   But I would not be stopped. "I know your name. I heard it when you
were arguing, and I hear it now when I look at your face. Ramiel,
that's your name. And both of you are Fra Filippo's guardians."
   "This is a disaster," whispered Ramiel, with the most touching look
of distress. "How did this occur?"
   Setheus merely shook his head, and smiled again generously. "It has
to be for the good, it must be. We have to go with him. Of course we
do."
   "Now? Leave now?" demanded Ramiel, and again, for all the urgency,
there was no anger. It was as though the thoughts were purified of all
lower emotions, and of course it was so, it was perfectly so.
   Setheus leaned close to the old man, who couldn't of course either
see him or hear him, and he said in the old man's ear:
"Take the boy to San Marco; have him put in a goodly cell, for which he
has plenty of money, and have him nursed to health."
Then he looked at me. "We'll go with you."
   "We can't do that," said Ramiel. "We can't leave our charge; how can
we do such a thing without permission?"
   "It's meant to be. This is permission. I know that it is," said
Setheus. "Don't you see what's happened? He's seen us and he's heard us
and he's caught your name, and he would have caught mine if I hadn't
revealed it. Poor Vittorio, we are with you."
   I nodded, almost ready to weep at the sound of myself addressed. The
whole street had gone drab and hushed and indistinct around their

large, quiet and flushed figures, the finespun light of their garments
stirring about them as if the celestial fabric were subject to the
invisible currents of the air which men cannot feel.
   "Those are not our real names!" said Ramiel scoldingly to me, but
gently, as one would scold an infant.
   Setheus smiled. "They are good enough names by which to call us,
Vittorio," he said.
   "Yes, take him to San Marco," said the man beside me. "Let's go. Let
the monks handle all this."
   The men rushed me towards the mouth of the street.
   "You'll be very well cared for at San Marco," said Ramiel, as though
he were bidding me farewell, but the two angels were moving beside us,
and only falling a little behind.
   "Don't you leave me, either of you, you can't!" I said to the
angels.
   They seemed perplexed, their lovely folded gossamer robes unstained
by rain, the hems clean and shining as if they had not touched the
street, and their bare feet looking so exquisitely tender as they
followed at our pace.
   'All right/' said Setheus. "Don't worry so, Vitto-rio. We're
coming."
   "We can't simply leave our charge like this for another man, we
can't do it," Ramiel continued to protest.
"It's God's will; how can it be otherwise?"
   'And Mastema? We don't have to ask Mastema?" asked Ramiel.
   "Why should we ask Mastema? Why bring care to Mastema? Mastema must
know."
   And there they were, arguing again, behind us, as I was hurried
through the street.
   The steel sky gleamed, then grew pale and gave way above to blue as
we came to an open piazza. The sun shocked me, and made me sicken, yet
how I wanted it, how I longed for it, and yet it rebuked me and seemed
to scourge me as if it were a whip.
   We were only a little ways from San Marco. My legs would soon give
out. I kept looking over my shoulder.
   The two lustrous, gilded figures came on, silently, with Setheus
gesturing for me to go along.
"We're here, we're with you," said Setheus.
   "I don't know about this, I don't know!" said Ramiel. "Filippo has
never been in such trouble, he has never been subjected to such
temptation, such indignity--."
   "Which is why we have been drawn off now, so that we do not
interfere with what must take place with Filippo. We know we were on
the very verge of getting into trouble on account of Filippo and what
Filippo has done now. Oh, Filippo, I see this, I see the grand design."
   "What are they talking about?" I demanded of the men. "They're
saying something about Fra Filippo."
   'And who would that be, who is talking, may I ask?" said the old
man, shaking his head as he escorted me along, the young madman in his
charge with the clanking sword.
   "My boy, be quiet now," said the other man, who took the larger
burden of supporting me. "We can understand you only too well now, and
you are making less sense than ever, talking to people that no one can
see and hear."
   "Fra Filippo, the painter, what's happening with him?" I demanded.
"There's some trouble."
   "Oh, it is unbearable," said the angel Ramiel behind me. "It is

unthinkable that this should happen. And if you ask me, which no one
has and no one will, I believe that if Florence were not at war with
Venice, Cosimo de' Medici would protect his painter from this."
   "But protect him from what?" I demanded. I looked into the eyes of
the old man.
   "Son, obey me," said the old man. "Walk straight, and stop banging
me with that sword. You are a great Signore, I can see this, and the
name of the Raniari rings loud in my ears from the distant mountains of
Tuscany, and the gold on your right hand alone weighs more than the
dowry of both of my daughters put together, not to mention the gems,
but don't shout in my face."
   I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. It's only, the angels won't say
precisely."
   The other man who led me so kindly, who helped me honestly with the
saddlebags in which was my fortune, and did not even seek to steal
anything from me, began to speak:
   "If you're asking about Fra Filippo, he's deep into trouble again.
He's being put to the torture. He's on the rack."
   "No, that can't happen, not to Filippo Lippi!" I stopped dead and
shouted. "Who would do such a thing to the great painter?"
   I turned, and the two angels suddenly covered their faces, as
tenderly as ever Ursula had covered hers, and they started weeping.
Only their tears were marvelously crystalline and clear. They merely
looked at me. Oh, Ursula, I thought with excruciating pain suddenly,
how beautiful are these creatures, and in what grave do you sleep
beneath the Court of the Ruby Grail that you cannot see them, cannot
see their silent secret progress through the city streets?
   "It's true," said Ramiel. "It's all too terribly true. What have we
been, what sort of guardians, that Filippo has gotten himself into this
trouble, that he is so contentious and deceiving, and why have we been
so helpless?"
"We are only angels," said Setheus. "Ramiel, we do not have to accuse
Filippo. We are not accusers, we are guardians, and for the sake of the
boy who loves him, don't say such things."
   "They can't torture Fra Filippo Lippi," I cried out. "Who did he
deceive?"
   "He did it to himself," said the old man. "He's into fraud this
time. He sold off a commission, and everybody knows that one of his
apprentices painted too much of the work. He's been put on the rack,
but he didn't really get hurt."
   "Didn't really hurt him! He's only magnificent!" I said. "You tell
me they tortured him. Why was he tortured, how can anyone justify such
a stupidity, such an insult, it's an insult to the Medici."
   "Silence, child; he confessed," said the younger of the two mortal
men. "It's almost over. Some monk if you ask me, Fra Filippo Lippi; if
he isn't chasing women, he's in a brawl."
   We had come to San Marco. We stood in the Piazza San Marco right
before the doors of the monastery, which were flush with the street, as
was the case with all such buildings in Florence, as if the Arno never
overflowed its banks, which it did. And I was glad, oh, so glad to see
this haven.
   But my mind was rampant. All memories of demons and horrid murder
had been swept clean from me in an instant by the horror that the
artist whom I cherished most in all the world had been put on the rack
like a common criminal.
   "He sometimes ... well," said Ramiel, "behaves like a common ...
criminal."

"He'll get out of it, he'll pay a fine," said the old man. He rang the
bell for the monks. He patted me with a long, tired, dry hand. "Now
stop crying, child, stop. Filippo is a nuisance, everybody knows it. If
only there were a little of the saintliness of Fra Giovanni in him,
only a little!"
   Fra Giovanni. Of course, by this man, Fra Giovanni, they meant the
great Fra Angelico, the painter who in centuries to come would bring
the awestruck to all but kneel before his paintings, and it was in this
monastery that Fra Giovanni worked and lived, it was here that, for
Cosimo, he painted the very cells of the monks.
   What could I say? "Yes, yes, Fra Giovanni, but I don't ... I don't .
. . love him." Of course I loved him; I honored him and his wondrous
work, but it was not like my love for Filippo, the painter I had
glimpsed only once--. How explain these strange things?
   A surge of nausea caused me to bend double. I backed away from my
kindly helpers. I heaved up the contents of my stomach into the street,
a bloody stream of filth from the demons who had fed me. I saw it drip
and flow into the street. I smelled the putrid stench of it, and I saw
it spill from me into the cracks between the cobblestones, this mess of
half-digested wine and blood.
   The whole horror of the Court of the Ruby Grail seemed manifest in
this moment. Hopelessness seized me, and I heard the whisper of demons
in my ear, witless and scorned, and I doubted all that Td seen, all
that I was, all that had transpired only moments before. In a dreamy
woodland, my father and I rode together and we talked of Filippo's
paintings, and I was a student and a young lord and had all the world
before me, and the strong good smell of the horses filled my nostrils
with the smell of the woods.
   Witless and scorned. Mad when you might have been immortal.
   As I rose up again, I leant back against the wall of the monastery.
The light of the blue sky was bright enough to shut my eyes, but I
bathed in its warmth. Slowly, as my stomach settled, I tried to gaze
steadily before me, to fight the pain of the light and love it and
trust in it.
   My vision was filled with the face of the angel Setheus right in
front of me, only a foot from me, peering at me with the deepest
concern.
"Dear God, you are here," I whispered.
"Yes," he said. "I promised you."
"You aren't leaving me, are you?" I asked.
"No," he said.
   Over his shoulder, Ramiel peered at me closely, as if studying me at
leisure and with commitment for the first time. His shorter looser hair
made him seem younger, though such distinctions made no difference.
   "No, none at all," he whispered, and for the first time, he too
smiled.
   "Do as these gentle people tell you," said Ramiel. "Let them take
you inside, and then you must sleep a natural sleep, and when you wake
we'll be with you."
   "Oh, but it's a horror, a story of horrors," I whispered. "Filippo
never painted such horrors."
   "We are not painted things," said Setheus. "What God has in store
for us we will discover together, you and Ramiel and I. Now you must go
inside. The monks are here. Into their care we give you, and when you
wake we will be at your side/'
"Like the prayer," I whispered.
   "Oh, yes, truly," Ramiel said. He raised his hand. I saw the shadow

of his five fingers and then felt the silken touch of his fingers as he
closed my eyes.




                                   10

                      IN WHICH I CONVERSE WITH
                      THE INNOCENT AND POWERFUL
                              SONS OF GOD


WOULD sleep and deeply, yes, but not until much later. What came was a
hazy, dreamlike wonderland of protective images. I was carried by a
burly monk and his assistants into the monastery of San Marco.
   There could be no place better for me in all of Florence--other than
Cosimo's own house perhaps--than the Dominican Monastery of San Marco.
   Now, in all of Florence, I know of many exquisite buildings and so
much magnificence that even then, as a boy, I could not catalogue in my
mind all the riches that lay before me.
   But nowhere is there any cloister more serene, I think, than that of
San Marco, which had only recently been renovated by the most humble
and decent Michelozzo at the behest of Cosimo the Elder. It had a long
and venerable history in Florence, but only in recent times had it been
given over to the Dominicans, and it was endowed in
certain sublime ways in which no other monastery was.
   As all Florence knew, Cosimo had lavished a fortune on San Marco,
maybe to make up for all the money he made by usury, for as a banker he
was a taker of interest and therefore a usurer, but then so were we who
had put money in his bank.
   Whatever the case, Cosimo, our capo, our true leader, had loved this
place and given to it many many treasures, but most of all perhaps its
marvelously proportioned new buildings.
   His detractors, the whiners, the ones who do nothing great, and
suspect all that isn't in a state of perpetual disintegration, they
said of him, "He even puts his coat of arms in the privies of the
monks/'
   His coat of arms, by the way, is a shield with five protuberant
balls on it, the meaning of which has been variously explained, but
what these enemies actually said was: Cosimo had hung his balls over
the monks' privies. Eh! That his enemies would be so lucky to have such
privies, or such balls.
   How much more clever it might have been for those men to point out
that Cosimo often spent days at this monastery himself in meditation
and prayer, and that the former Prior here, who was Cosimo's great
friend and advisor, Fra Antonino, was now the Archbishop of Florence.
   Ah, so much for the ignorant, who still to the day five hundred
years from then tell lies about Cosimo.
As I passed under the door, I thought, What in the name of God shall I

say to these people in this House of God?
   No sooner had that thought popped out of my sleepy head and, I fear,
my drugged and sleepy mouth, than I heard Ramiel's laugh in my ear.
   I tried to see if he was at my side. But I was blubbering and sick
again, and dizzy, and could make out only that we had entered the most
tranquil and pleasing cloister.
   The sun so burnt my eyes that I couldn't thank God yet for the
beauty of the square green garden in the center of this place, but I
could see very starkly and sweetly the low rounded arches created by
Michelozzo, arches which created gentle colorless and humble vaults
over my head.
   And the tranquillity achieved by the pure columns, with their small
rolled Ionic capitals, all of this added to my sense of safety and
peace. Proportions were always the gift of Michelozzo. He opened up
things when he built them. And these wide spacious loggias were his
stamp.
   Nothing would erase the memory for me of the soaring dagger-tipped
Gothic arches of the French castle in the North, of the filigreed stone
peaks everywhere there that seemed to point in animosity at the
Almighty. And though I knew I misjudged this architecture and its
intent--for surely, before Florian and his Court of the Ruby Grail had
taken hold of it, it had been born from the devotions of the French and
the Germans--I still could not get the hated vision of it out of my
head.
   Trying desperately not to heave up my guts again, I relaxed all my
limbs as I saw this Florentine enclosure.
   Down around the cloister, down around the burning hot garden, the
large monk, a bear of a man, beaming down at me in habitual and
inveterate kindness, carried me in his burly arms, while there came
others in their flowing black and white robes, with thin radiant faces
seeming to encircle us even in our rapid progress. I couldn't see my
angels.
   But these men were the nearest to angels that the world provides.
   I soon realized--due to my former visits to this great place--that I
was not being taken to the hospice, where drugs were dispensed to the
sick of Florence, or to the pilgrims' refuge, which was always swarming
with those who come to offer and pray, but up the stairs into the very
hall of the monks' cells.
   In a glaze of sickness in which beauty brought a catch in my throat,
I saw at the head of the stairway, spread out on the wall, the fresco
of Fra Giovanni's Annunciation.
   My painting, the Annunciation! My chosen favorite, the painting
which meant more to me than any other religious motif.
   And no, it wasn't the genius of my turbulent Filippo Lippi, no, but
it was my painting, and surely this was an omen that no demon can damn
a soul through the poison of forced blood.
Was Ursula's blood forced on you too? Horrid thought. Try not to
remember her soft fingers being pulled loose from you, you fool, you
drunken fool, try not to remember her lips and the long thick kisslet
of blood slipping into your own open mouth.
   "Look at it!" I cried out. I pointed one flopping arm towards the
painting.
   "Yes, yes, we have so many/' said the big smiling bear of a monk.
   Fra Giovanni was of course the painter. Who could have not seen it
in one glance? Besides, I knew it. And Fra Giovanni--let me remind you
one more time that this is Fra Angelico of the ages-- had made a severe,
soothing, tender but utterly simple Angel and Virgin, steeped in

humility and devoid of embellishments, the visitation itself taking
place between low rounded arches such as made up the very cloister from
which we had just come.
   As the big monk swung me around to take me down the broad corridor--
and broad it was, and so polished and austere and beautiful to me--I
tried to form words as I carried the image of the angel in my mind.
   I wanted to tell Ramiel and Setheus, if they were still with me,
that look, Gabriel's wings had only simple stripes of color, and look,
how his gown fell in symmetrical and disciplined folds. All of this I
understood, as I understood the rampant grandeur of Ramiel and Setheus,
but I was blubbering nonsense again.
   "The halos," I said. "You two, where are you? Your halos hover over
your heads. I saw them. I saw them in the street and in the paintings.
But you see in the painting by Fra Giovanni, the halo is flat and
surrounds the painted face, a disk hard and golden right on the field
of the painting
   The monks laughed. "To whom are you speaking, young Signore Vittorio
di Raniari?" one of them asked me.
   "Be quiet, child," said the big monk, his booming bass voice pushing
against me through his barrel of a chest. "You're in our tender care.
And you must hush now, see, there, that's the library, you see our
monks at work?"
   They were proud of it, weren't they? Even in our progress when I
might have vomited all over the immaculate floor, the monk turned to
let me see through the open door the long room crowded with books and
monks at work, but what I saw too was Michelozzo's vaulted ceiling,
again, not soaring to leave us, but bending gently over the heads of
the monks and letting a volume of light and air rise above them.
   It seemed I saw visions. I saw multiple and triple figures where
there should only be one, and even in a flash a misty confusion of
angelic wings, and oval faces turned, peering at me through the veil of
supernatural secrecy.
   "Do you see?" was all I could say. I had to get to that library, I
had to find texts in it that defined the demons. Yes, I had not given
up! Oh, no, I was no babbling idiot. I had God's very own angels at my
assistance. I'd take Ramiel and Setheus in there and show them the
texts.
   We know, Vittorio, wipe the pictures from your mind, for we see
them.
"Where are you?" I cried out.
"Quiet," said the monks.
   "But will you help me go back there and kill them?"
"You're babbling," said the monks.
   Cosimo was the guardian patron of that library. When old Niccolo de'
Niccoli died, a marvelous collector of books with whom I had many times
spoken at Vaspasiano's bookshop, all of his religious books, and maybe
more, had been donated by Cosimo to this monastery.
   I would find them in there, in that library, and find proof in St.
Augustine or Aquinas of the devils with which I'd fought.
   No. I was not mad. I had not given up. I was no gibbering idiot. If
only the sun coming in the high little windows of this airy place would
stop baking my eyeballs and burning my hands.
   "Quiet, quiet," said the big monk, smiling still. "You are making
noises like an infant. Hhhhh. Burgle, gurgle. Hear? Now, look, the
library's busy. It's open to the public today. Everybody is busy
today."
   He turned only a few steps past the library to take me into a cell.

"Down there . . ." he went on, as if cajoling an unruly baby. "Only a
few steps away is the Prior's cell, and guess who is there this very
minute? It's the Archbishop."
"Antonino," I whispered.
   "Yes, yes, you said it right. Once our own Antonino. Well, he's
here, and guess why?"
   I was too groggy to respond. The other monks surrounded me. They
wiped me with cool cloths. They smoothed back my hair.
   This was a clean large cell. Oh, if the sun would only stop. What
had those demons done to me, made me into a half-demon? Dare I ask for
a mirror?
   Set down on a thick soft bed, in this warm, clean place, I lost all
control of my limbs. I was sick again.
   The monks attended me with a silver basin. The sunlight pierced
brilliantly upon a fresco, but I couldn't bear to look at the gleaming
figures, not in this hurtful illumination. It seemed the cell was
filled with other figures. Were they angels? I saw transparent beings,
drifting, stirring, but I could catch hold of no clear outline. Only
the fresco burned into the wall in its colors seemed solid, valid,
true.
   "Have they done this to my eyes forever?" I asked. I thought I
caught a glimpse of an angelic form in the doorway of the cell, but it
was not the figure of either Setheus or Ramiel. Did it have webbed
wings? Demon wings? I started in terror.
But it was gone. Rustling, whispering. We know.
   "Where are my angels?" I asked. I cried. I told out the names of my
father and his father, and of all the di Raniari whom I could remember.
   "Shhhhh," said the young monk. "Cosimo has been told that you are
here. But this is a terrible day. We remember your father. Now let us
remove these filthy clothes."
My head swam. The room was gone.
   Sodden sleep, a glimpse of her, my savior Ursula. She ran through
the blowing meadow. Who was this pursuing her, driving her out of the
nodding, weaving flowers? Purple irises surrounded her, were crushed
under her feet. She turned. Don't, Ursula! Don't turn. Don't you see
the flaming sword?
   I woke in a warm bath. Was it the cursed baptismal fount? No. I saw
the fresco, the holy figures, dimly, and more immediately the real live
monks who surrounded me on their knees on the stone, their big sleeves
rolled back as they washed me in the warm, sweet-scented water.
   "Ah, that Francesco Sforza . . ." they spoke in Latin to one
another. "To charge into Milan and take possession of the Dukedom! As
if Cosimo did not have enough trouble, without Sforza having done such
a thing/'
"He did it? He has taken Milan?" I asked.
   "What did you say? Yes, son, he has. He broke the peace. And your
family, all your poor family murdered by the freebooters; don't think
they'll go unpunished, rampaging through that country, those damned
Venetians ..."
   "No, you mustn't, you must tell Cosimo. It was not an act of war,
what happened to my family, not by human beings ..."
"Hush, child."
   Chaste hands sponged the water over my shoulders. I sat slumped
against the warm metal back of the tub.
   ". . . di Raniari, always loyal," said one of them to me. 'And your
brother was to come to study with us, your sweet brother, Matteo ..."
   I let out a terrible cry A soft hand sealed my lips.

   "Sforza himself will punish them. He'll clean out that country."
   I cried and cried. No one could understand me. They wouldn't listen
to me.
   The monks lifted me to my feet. I was dressed in a long comfortable
soft linen robe. It came to me that I was being dressed for execution,
but the hour of such danger had passed.
"I am not mad!" I said clearly
"No, not at all, only grief-stricken."
"You understand me!"
"You are tired."
   "The bed is soft for you, brought specially for you, hush, don't
rave anymore."
   "Demons did it," I whispered. "They weren't soldiers."
   "I know, son, I know. War is terrible. War is the Devil's work."
No, but it wasn't war. Will you listen to me?
   Hush, this is Ramiel at your ear; didn't I tell you to sleep? Will
you listen to us? We have heard your thoughts as well as your words!
   I lay down on the bed flat on my chest. The monks brushed and dried
my hair. My hair was so long now. Unkempt, country Lord hair. But this
was an immense comfort to be bathed and gentlemanly clean.
   "Those are candles?" I asked. "The sun has gone down?"
   "Yes," said the monk beside me. "You have slept."
"May I have more candles?"
"Yes, I'll bring them to you."
   I lay in the darkness. I blinked and tried to shape the words of the
Ave.
   Many lights appeared in the door, some six or seven in a cluster,
each a sweet small perfectly shaped flame. Then they fluttered as the
monk's feet came softly towards me. I saw him clearly as he knelt to
place the candelabra beside my bed.
   He was thin and tall, a sapling in hollow willowy robes. His hands
were so clean. "You are in a special cell. Cosimo has sent men to bury
your dead."
"Thanks be to God," I said.
"Yes."
So now I could speak!
   "They are still talking down there, and it's late," said the monk.
"Cosimo is troubled. He'll stay the night here. The whole city is
filled with Venetian agitators stirring up the populace against
Cosimo."
   "Now hush," said another monk who appeared suddenly. He bent down
and lifted my head to place another thick pillow beneath it.
   What bliss this was. I thought of the damned ones imprisoned in the
coop. "Oh, horrors! It's night, and they're waiting for the horrible
Communion."
"Who, child? What Communion?"
   Once again, I glimpsed figures moving, drifting, as it were, in the
shadows. But they were too soon gone.
   I had to vomit. I needed the basin. They held my hair for me. Did
they see the blood in the candlelight? The pure streak of blood? It
smelled so rotten.
   "How can one survive such poison?" one monk whispered to the other
in Latin. "Do we dare purge him?"
"You'll frighten him. Be quiet. He has no fever."
   "Well, you're damned wrong if you think you took my wits," I
declared suddenly. I shouted it to Florian and to Godric and to all of
them.

   The monks looked at me in urgent astonishment.
   I laughed. "I only was talking to those who tried to hurt me," I
said, again letting each word have a clear distinct shape.
   The thin monk with the remarkably scrubbed hands knelt by me. He
smoothed my forehead. 'And the beautiful sister, the sister who was to
be married, is she too ... ?"
   "Bartola! She was to be married? I didn't know. Well, he can have
her head for a maidenhead." I wept. "The worms are at work in the dark.
And the demons dance on the hill, and the town does nothing."
"What town?"
   "You're raving again," said a monk who stood beyond the candles. How
distinct he looked, though he was beyond the light, a round-shouldered
individual with a hooked nose and thick somber heavy eyelids. "Don't
rave anymore, poor child."
   I wanted to protest, but I saw suddenly a giant soft wing, each
feather tinged with gold, come down over me, enfolding me. I was
tickled all over by the softness of the feathers. Ramiel said:
   What must we do to make you shut up? Filippo needs us now; will you
give us some peace and quiet for Filippo, whom God sent us to guard?
Don't answer me. Obey me.
The wing crushed out all vision, all woe.
   Shadowy pale darkness. Even and complete. The candles were behind
me, set up high.
   I woke. I rose up on my elbows. My head was clear. A lovely even
illumination gave just the smallest tremble as it filled the cell. From
the high window came the moon. The shaft of the moon struck the fresco
on the wall, the fresco obviously painted by Fra Giovanni.
   My eyes could see it with amazing clarity. Was this my demonic
blood?
   A strange thought came to me. It rung in my consciousness with the
clarity of a golden bell. I myself possessed no guardian angels! My
angels had left me; they had departed, because my soul was damned.
   I had no angels. I had seen Filippo's because of the power the
demons had given me, and because of something else. Filippo's angels
argued so much with each other! That's how I had seen them. Some words
came to me.
   They came back to me from Aquinas, or was it Augustine? I'd read so
much of both to learn my Latin, and their endless excursuses had so
delighted me. The demons are full of passion. But angels are not.
   But those two angels had such spirit. That's why they'd cut through
the veil.
   I pushed back the covers and set my bare feet on the stone floor. It
was cool, and pleasing, because the room, having received the sun all
day, was still warm.
   No drafts swept the polished and immaculate floor.
   I stood before the wall painting. I wasn't dizzy or sick, or like to
fall. I was myself again.
   What an innocent and untroubled soul Fra Giovanni must have been.
All his figures were devoid of malice. I could see the figure of Christ
seated before a mountain, round gold halo decorated with the red arms
and top of a cross. Beside him stood ministering angels. One held bread
for him, and the other, whose figure was cut off by the door that was
cut into the wall, this other angel, whose wingtips were barely
visible, carried wine and meat.
   Above, on the mountain, I saw Christ also. It was a painting of
different incidents, in sequence, and above, Christ was standing in His
same smooth and multiwrinkled pink robes, but here He was agitated, as

agitated as Fra Giovanni could make Him, and Christ had lifted His left
hand, as if in wrath.
The figure who fled from Him was the Devil! It was a horrid creature
with the webbed wings I thought Td glimpsed earlier, and it had hideous
webbed feet. It had dewclaws on its webbed feet. Sour-faced and in a
dirty gray robe, it fled from Christ, who stood firm in the Desert,
refusing to be tempted, and, only after this confrontation, then had
the ministering angels come, and had Christ taken His place with His
hands clasped.
   I sucked in my breath in terror as I beheld this image of the demon.
But a great rush of comfort passed through me, causing my hair to
tingle at its roots, causing my feet to tingle against the polished
floor. I had routed the demons, I had refused their gift of
immortality. I had refused it. Even faced with the cross!
   I retched. The pain caught me as if I'd been kicked in the stomach.
I turned. The basin was there, clean and polished, sitting on the
floor. I dropped to my knees and heaved up more of their syrupy filth.
Was there no water?
   I looked around. There stood the pitcher and the cup. The cup was
full and I spilt some of it as I put it to my lips, but it tasted thin
and rancid and awful. I threw down the cup.
   "You've poisoned me for natural things, you monsters. You will not
win!"
   My hands trembling, I picked up the cup, filled it once more and
tried again to drink. But it tasted unnatural. To what can I compare
it? It was not foul like urine; it was like water that is full of
minerals and metal and will leave a chalk on you and choke you. It was
bad!
   I put it aside. Very well then. Time to study. Time to take up the
candles, which I now did.
   I went out of the cell. The hall was empty and glowing in the pale
light that came from tiny windows over the low-ceilinged cells.
   I turned to my right and approached the doors of the library. They
were unlocked.
   I entered with my candelabra. Once again, the tranquillity of
Michelozzo's design brought a warmth to me, a faith in all things, a
trust. Two rows of arches and Ionic columns moved down the center of
the room to make a broad aisle to the far distant door, and on either
side were the study tables, and all along the far walls were racks and
racks of codices and scrolls.
   Across the herringbone stones of the floor I walked barefoot,
lifting the candle higher so that the light would fill up the vaulted
ceiling, so happy to be here alone.
   Windows on either side let in shafts of pale illumination through
the overwhelming clutter of shelves, but how divine and restful were
the high ceilings. How boldly he had done it, made a basilica of a
library.
   How could I have known, child that I was then, that this style would
be imitated all over my beloved Italy? Oh, there were so many wondrous
things then for the living and for all time.
   And I? What am I? Do I live? Or am I walking always in death,
forever in love with time?
   I stood still with my candles. How my eyes loved the moonlighted
splendor. How I craved to stand here forever, dreaming, near to things
of the mind, and things of the soul, and far away in memory from the
wretched enchained town on its cursed mountain and the castle nearby,
which at this very moment probably gave forth its ghastly, ugly light.

   Could I discern the order of this wealth of books?
   The very cataloger of this library, the very monk who had done the
work here, the very scholar, was now the Pope of all Christendom,
Nicholas V
   I moved along the shelves to my right, holding high my candles.
Would it be alphabetical? I thought of Aquinas, for I knew him more
freely, but it was St. Augustine whom I found. And I had always loved
Augustine, loved his colorful style and his eccentricities, and the
dramatic manner in which he wrote.
   "Oh, you wrote more about demons, you are better!" I said.
   The City of God! I saw it, copy after copy. There were a score of
codices of this very masterpiece, not to mention all of the other work
of this great saint, his Confessions, which had gripped me as much as a
Roman drama, and so much more. Some of these books were ancient, made
of big sloppy parchment, others were extravagantly bound, some almost
simple and very new.
   In charity and consideration, I must take the most sturdy of these,
even though there might be errors, and God only knew how hard monks
worked to avoid errors. I knew which volume I wanted. I knew the volume
on demons, because I had thought it so very fascinating and funny and
so much poppycock. Oh, what a fool Td been.
   I took down the hefty fat volume, number nine of the text, slipping
it into the crook of my arm, moved to the first desk and then carefully
placed the candelabra in front of me, where it would light me but throw
no shadows under my fingers, and I opened the book.
   "It's all here!" I whispered. "Tell me, St. Augustine, what were
they so that I may convince Ramiel and Setheus that they must help me,
or give me the means to convince these modern Florentines, who care
about nothing right now but making war with paid soldiers on the Serene
Republic of Venice up north. Help me, Saint. I'm telling you."
   Ah, Chapter Ten, of Volume Nine, I knew this . ..
   Augustine was quoting Plotinus, or explaining him:
... that the very fact of man's corporal mortality is due to the
compassion of God, who would not have us kept for ever in the misery of
this life. The wickedness of demons was not judged worthy of this
compassion, and in the misery of their condition, with a soul subject
to passions, they have not been granted the mortal body, which man had
received, but an eternal body.
   'Ah, yes!" I said. 'And this is what Florian offered me, bragging
that they did not age or decay and were not subject to disease, that I
could have lived there with them forever. Evil, evil. Well, this is
proof, and I have it here, and I can show it to the monks!"
   I read on, skimming to find the kernels that would make my case
grow. Down to Chapter Eleven:
Apuleius says also that the souls of men are demons. On leaving human
bodies they become lares if they have shown themselves good, if evil,
lemures or larvae.
   "Yes, lemures. I know this word. Lemures or larvae, and Ursula, she
said to me that she had been young, young as me; they were all human
and now they are lemures/'
According to Apuleius, larvae are malignant demons created out of men.
   I was overcome with excitement. I needed parchment and pens. I had
to note the place. I had to mark down what I had discovered and go on.
For the next point was obviously to convince Ramiel and Setheus that
they had gotten into the biggest--.
My thoughts were brought to an abrupt halt.
   Behind me, a personage had come into the library. I heard a heavy

footfall, but there was a muffled quality to it, and a great darkening
occurred behind me, as though all the slim, sly beams of the moon that
fell through the passage beyond had been cut off.
I turned slowly and looked over my shoulder.
   'And why do you choose the left?" asked this personage.
   He rose up before me, immense and winged, peering down at me, his
face luminous in the flicker of the candles, his eyebrows gently raised
but straight so that there was no arch to them to make them anything
but severe. He had the riotous golden hair of Fra Filippo's brush,
curling beneath a huge red battle helmet, and behind him his wings were
heavily sheathed in gold.
   He wore a suit of armor, with the breastplates decorated and the
shoulders covered with immense buckles, and around his waist was a blue
sash of silk. His sword was sheathed, and on one lax arm he wore his
shield, with its red cross.
I had never seen his like.
   "I need you!" I declared. I stood up, knocking the bench back. I
reached out so that it would not clatter to the floor. I faced him.
   "You need me!" he said in muted outrage. "You do! You who would lead
off Ramiel and Setheus from Fra Filippo Lippi. You need me? Do you know
who I am?"
   It was a gorgeous voice, rich, silken, violent and piercing though
deep.
"You have a sword," I said.
"Oh, and for what?"
   "Killing them, all of them!" I said. "Going there with me by day to
their castle. Do you know what I am speaking of?"
   He nodded. "I know what you dreamt and what you babbled and what
Ramiel and Setheus have gleaned from your feverish mind. Of course I
know. You need me, you say, and Fra Filippo Lippi lies in bed with a
whore who licks his aching joints, and one in particular that aches for
her!"
"Such talk from an angel," I said.
   "Don't mock me, I'll slap you," he said. His wings rose and fell as
if he were sighing with them, or gasping rather, at me in umbrage.
   "So do it!" I said. My eyes were feasting fiendishly on his
glistering beauty, on the red silk cloak that was clasped just below
the bit of tunic that showed above his armor, at the solemn smoothness
of his cheeks. "But come with me to the mountains and kill them," I
implored him.
"Why don't you go yourself and do it?"
"Do you think I can?" I demanded.
   His face went serene. His lower lip gave the smallest most
thoughtful pout. His jaw and neck were powerful, more powerful by far
than the anatomy of Ramiel or Setheus, who seemed more youths, and this
their splendid elder brother.
"You are not the Fallen One, are you?" I asked.
   "How dare you!" he whispered, waking from his slumber. A terrible
frown broke over him.
   "Mastema, then, that's who you are. They said your name. Mastema."
   He nodded and sneered. "They would, of course, say my name."
   "Which means what, great angel? That I can call on you, that I have
the power to command you?" I turned and reached for the book of St.
Augustine.
   "Put down that book!" he said impatiently yet coolly. "There is an
angel standing before you, boy; look at me when I speak to you!"
     (Ah, you speak like Florian, the demon in that far castle. You

have the same control, the same modulation. What do you want of me,
angel? Why did you come?"
   He was silent, as if he couldn't produce an answer. Then, quietly,
he put a question to me. "Why do you think?"
"Because I prayed?"
   "Yes," he said coldly. "Yes! And because they have come to me on
your account."
   My eyes widened. I felt light fill them up. But the light didn't
hurt them. A soft cluster of sweet noises filled my ears.
   On either side of him there appeared Ramiel and Setheus, their
milder, gentler faces focused on me.
   Mastema raised his eyebrows again as he looked down at me.
   "Fra Filippo Lippi is drunk," he said. "When he wakes up, he'll get
drunk again until the pain stops."
   "Fools to rack a great painter," I said, "but then you know my
thoughts on that."
   'Ah, and the thoughts of all the women in Florence," said Mastema.
'And the thoughts of the great ones who pay for his paintings, if their
minds were not on war."
   "Yes," said Ramiel, glancing imploringly to Mastema. They were of
the same height, but Mastema didn't turn, and Ramiel came forward some,
as if to catch his eye. "If they weren't all so carried away with war."
   "War is the world," said Mastema. "I asked you before, Vittorio di
Raniari, do you know who I am?"
   I was shaken, not by the question, but that the three had now come
together, and that I stood before them, the only mortal being, and all
the mortal world around us seemed to sleep.
   Why had no monk come down the passage to see who whispered in the
library? Why had no Watchman of the night come to see why the candles
floated along the passage? Why the boy murmured and raved?
Was I mad?
   It seemed to me quite suddenly and ludicrously that if I answered
Mastema correctly, I would not be mad.
   This thought brought from him a small laugh, neither harsh nor
sweet.
   Setheus stared at me with his obvious sympathy. Ramiel said nothing
but looked again to Mastema.
   "You are the angel," I said, "whom the Lord gives permission to
wield that sword." There came no response from him. I went on. "You are
the angel who slew the firstborn of Egypt," I said. No response. "You
are the angel, the angel who can avenge."
   He nodded, but only really with his eyes. They closed and then
opened.
Setheus drew close to him, lips to his ears.
   "Help him, Mastema, let us all go help him. Filippo cannot use our
counsel now/'
   'And why?" demanded Mastema of the angel beside him. He looked at
me.
   "God has given me no leave to punish these demons of yours. Never
has God said to me, 'Mastema, slay the vampires, the lemures, the
larvae, the blood drinkers/ Never has God spoken to me and said, 'Lift
your mighty sword to cleanse the world of these/ "
   "I beg you," I said. "I, a mortal boy, beg you. Kill these, wipe out
this nest with your sword."
"I can't do it."
"Mastema, you can!" declared Setheus.
   Ramiel spoke up. "If he says he cannot, he cannot! Why do you never

listen to him?"
   "Because I know that he can be moved," said Setheus without
hesitation to his compatriot. "I know that he can, as God can be
moved."
Setheus stepped boldly in front of Mastema.
   "Pick up the book, Vittorio," he said. He stepped forward. At once
the large vellum pages, heavy as they were, began to flutter. He put it
in my hand, and marked the place with his pale finger, barely touching
the thick black crowded writing.
I read aloud:
And therefore God who made the visible marvels of Heaven and Earth does
not disdain to work visible miracles in Heaven and Earth, by which He
arouses the soul, hitherto preoccupied, with visible things, to the
worship of Himself.
   His finger moved, and my eyes moved with it. I read of God:
To Him, there is no difference between seeing us about to pray and
listening to our prayers, for even when His angels listen, it is He
Himself who listens in them.
   I stopped, my eyes full of tears. He took the book from me to guard
it from my tears.
   A noise had penetrated our small circle. Monks had come. I heard
them whispering in the corridor, and then the door swung open. Into the
library they came.
   I cried, and when I looked up I saw them staring at me, two monks
whom I didn't know or didn't remember, had never known.
   "What is it, young man? Why are you here alone crying?" the first
spoke.
   "Here, let us take you back to bed. We'll bring you something to
eat/'
"No, I can't eat it," I said.
   "No, he can't eat it," said the first monk to the other. "It still
makes him sick. But he can rest." He looked at me.
   I turned. The three radiant angels stood silently staring at the
monks who could not see them, who had no clue that the angels were
there!
"Dear God in Heaven, please tell me," I said.
"Have I gone mad? Have the demons won out, have they so polluted me
with their blood and their potions that I see things which are
delusions, or am I come like Mary to the tomb to see an angel there?"
"Come to bed," said the monks.
   "No," said Mastema, quietly addressing the monk who didn't even see
him or hear him. "Let him stay. Let him read to quiet his mind. He is a
boy of education."
   "No, no," said the monk, shaking his head. He glanced to the other.
"We should let him stay. He's a boy of education. He can read quietly.
Cosimo said that he must have anything he desired."
"Go on, leave him now," said Setheus softly.
"Hush," said Ramiel. "Let Mastema tell them."
   I was too flooded with sorrow and happiness to respond. I covered my
face, and when I did so I thought of my poor Ursula, forever with her
demon Court, and how she had wept for me. "How could that be?" I
whispered into my own fingers.
   "Because she was human once, and has a human heart," said Mastema to
me in the silence.
   The two monks were hurrying out. For one moment the collection of
angels was as sheer as light, and I saw through them to the two
retreating figures of the monks who closed up the doors as they left.

   Mastema looked at me with his still, powerful gaze.
   "One could read anything into your face," I said.
   "So it is with almost all angels all of the time," he answered.
   "I beg you," I said. "Come with me. Help me. Guide me. Do what you
just did with those monks! That you can do, can't you?"
He nodded.
   "But we can't do more than that, you see," said Setheus.
"Let Mastema say," said Ramiel.
"Go back to Heaven!" said Setheus.
   "Please, the both of you, be quiet," said Mastema. "Vittorio, I
cannot slay them. I have no leave. That you can do, and with your own
sword."
"But you'll come."
   "I'll take you," he said. "When the sun rises, when they sleep under
their stones. But you must slay them, you must open them to the light,
and you must set free those awful wretched prisoners, and you must
stand before the townsmen, or let loose that crippled flock and flee."
"I understand."
   "We can move the stones away from their sleeping places, can't we?"
asked Setheus. He put up his hand to hush Ramiel before Ramiel could
protest. "We'll have to do it."
   "We can do that," said Mastema. "As we can stop a beam from falling
on Filippo's head. We can do that. But we cannot slay them. And you,
Vittorio, we cannot make you go through with it, either, if your nerve
or your will fails."
   "You don't think the miracle of my having seen you will uphold me?"
"Will it?" Mastema asked.
"You speak of her, don't you?"
"Do I?" he asked.
   "I will go through with it, but you must tell me . .."
"What must I tell you?" Mastema asked.
"Her soul, will it go to Hell?"
"That I cannot tell you," said Mastema.
"You have to."
   "No, I have to do nothing but what the Lord God has created me to
do, and that I do, but to solve the mysteries over which Augustine
pondered for a lifetime, no, that is not what I have to do or should do
or will do."
Mastema picked up the book.
   Once again the pages moved with his will. I felt the breeze rising
from them.
He read:
There is something to be gained from the inspired discourses of
Scripture.
   "Don't read those words to me; they don't help me!" I said. "Can she
be saved? Can she save her soul? Does she possess it still? Is she as
powerful as you are? Can you Fall? Can the Devil come back to God?"
   He put down the book with a swift, airy movement that I could
scarcely follow.
'Are you ready for this battle?" he asked.
   "They'll lie helpless in the light of day," said Setheus to me.
"Including her. She too will lie helpless. You must open the stones
that cover them, and you know what you must do."
   Mastema shook his head. He turned and gestured for them to get out
of his way.
   "No, please, I beg you!" said Ramiel. "Do it for him. Do it, please.
Filippo is beyond our help for days."

"You know no such thing," said Mastema.
   "Can my angels go to him?" I asked. "Have I none that can be sent?"
   I had no sooner spoken these words than I realized that two more
entities had taken form directly beside me, one on either side, and
when I looked from left to right I saw them, only they were pale and
remote from me, and they hadn't the flame of Filippo's guardians, only
a quiet and quasi-visible and undeniable presence and will.
   I looked at one for a long time and then the other, and could draw
no descriptive words from my mind from them. Their faces seemed blank
and patient and quiet. They were winged beings, tall, yes, I can say
that much, but what more could I say, because I couldn't endow them
with color or splendor or individuality, and they had no garments or
motion to them or anything that I could love.
   "What is it? Why won't they speak to me? Why do they look at me that
way?"
"They know you," said Ramiel.
   "You're full of vengeance, and desire," said Setheus. "They know it;
they have been at your side. They have measured your pain and your
anger."
   "Good God, these demons killed my family!" I declared. "Do you know
the future of my soul, any of you?"
   "Of course not," said Mastema. "Why would we be here if we did? Why
would any of us be here if it were ordained?"
   "Don't they know that I faced death rather than take the demon
blood? Would not a vendetta have required of me that I drink it and
then destroy my enemies when I had powers such as theirs?"
My angels drew closer to me.
   "Oh, where were you when I was about to die!" I declared.
   "Don't taunt them. You have never really believed in them." It was
Ramiel's voice. "You loved us when you saw our images, and when the
demon blood was full inside you, you saw what you could love. That is
the danger now. Can you kill what you love?"
   "I will destroy all of them," I said. "One way or another, I swear
it on my soul." I looked at my pale unyielding yet unjudging guardians,
and then to the others who burnt so brightly against the shadows of the
vast library, against the dark colors of the shelves and the crowded
books.
   "I will destroy them all," I vowed. I closed my eyes. I imagined
her, lying helpless by day, and I saw myself bend and kiss her cold
white forehead. My sobs were muffled and my body shook. I nodded again
and again that I would do it, yes, I would do it, I would do it.
   'At dawn," said Mastema, "the monks will have fresh clothes laid out
for you, a suit of red velvet, and your weapons freshly polished, and
your boots cleaned. All will be finished by then. Don't try to eat.
It's too soon, and the demon blood is still churning in you. Prepare
yourself, and we will take you north to do what has to be done in the
light of day."




                                     11

  And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

               --THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 1.5


MONASTERIES wake early, if they ever I sleep at all.
   My eyes opened quite suddenly, I and only then, as I saw the morning
light cover the fresco, as if the veil of darkness had been drawn from
it, only then did I know how deeply I had slept.
   Monks moved in my cell. They had brought in the red velvet tunic,
the clothes as Mastema described, and were just laying them out. I had
fine red wool hose to wear with them, and a shirt of gold silk, and to
go over that, another of white silk, and then a thick new belt for the
tunic. My weapons were polished, as I had been told they would be--my
heavy jeweled sword gleaming as though my father himself had been
toying with it all of a peaceful evening long by the fire. My daggers
were ready.
   I climbed out of the bed and dropped down to my knees in prayer. I
made the Sign of the Cross.
   "God, give me the strength to send in your hands those who feed on
death."
It was a whisper in Latin.
   One of the monks touched me on the shoulder and smiled. Had the
Great Silence not yet ended? I had no idea. He pointed to a table where
there was food laid out for me--bread and milk. The milk had foam on the
top of it.
   I nodded and smiled at him, and then he and his companion made me a
little bow and went out.
I turned around and around.
   'All of you are here, I know it," I said, but I gave no more time to
it. If they didn't come, then I had recovered my wits, but no such
thing was true, any more than it was true that my father was alive.
   On the table, not far from the food, and held in place beneath the
weight of the candelabra, was a series of documents, freshly written
and signed in ornate script.
I read them hastily.
   They were receipts for all my money and jewels, those things which
had been with me in my saddlebags when I came in. All these documents
bore the seal of the Medici.
   There was a purse of money there, to be tied to my belt. All my
rings were there, cleaned and polished, so that the cabochon rubies
were brilliant and the emeralds had a flawless depth. The gold gleamed
as it had not in months perhaps, for my own negligence.
I brushed out my hair, annoyed at its thickness and length, but having
no time to ask for a barber to cut it shorter than my shoulders. At
least it was long enough, and had been for a while, to stay back over
my shoulders and off my forehead. It was luxurious to have it so clean.
   I dressed quickly. My boots were a little snug because they had been
dried by a fire after the rain. But they felt good over the thin hose.
I made right all my fastenings and positioned my sword.
   The red velvet tunic was plaited along the edges with gold and
silver thread, and the front of it was richly decorated with the silver
fleurs-de-lys, which is the most ancient symbol of Florence. Once my
belt was tightly fastened, the tunic didn't come to halfway down my
thigh. That was for handsome legs.
   The whole raiment was more than fancy for battle, but what battle
was this? It was a massacre. I put on the short flaring cloak they had
given me, fastening its gold buckles, though it would be warm for the
city. It was lined in soft thin dark-brown squirrel fur.

   I ignored the hat. I tied on the purse. I put on my rings one by one
until my hands were weapons on account of their weight. I put on the
soft fur-lined gloves. I found a dark-amber-beaded rosary that I had
not noticed before. It had a gold crucifix, which I kissed, and this I
put in my pocket under my tunic.
   I realized that I was staring at the floor, and that I was
surrounded by pairs of bare feet. Slowly I lifted my gaze.
   My angels stood before me, my very own guardians, in long flowing
robes of dark blue, which appeared to be made of something lighter yet
more opaque than silk. Their faces were ivory white and shimmering
faintly, and their eyes were large and like opals. They had dark hair,
or hair that seemed to shift as if it were made of shadows.
   They stood facing me, their heads together, so that their heads
touched. It was as though they were communing silently with one
another.
   They overwhelmed me. It seemed a terrifying intimacy that I should
see them so vividly and so close to me, and know them as the two who
had been with me always, or so I was to believe. They were slightly
larger than human beings, as were the other angels I had seen, and they
were not tempered by the sweet faces I had seen on the others, but had
altogether smoother and broader countenances and larger though
exquisitely shaped mouths.
   'And you don't believe in us now?" one of them asked in a whisper.
"Will you tell me your names?" I asked.
   Both shook their heads in a simple negation at once.
"Do you love me?" I asked.
   "Where is it written that we should?" answered the one who had not
yet spoken. His voice was as toneless and soft as a whisper, but more
distinct. It might have been the same voice as the other angel.
"Do you love us?" asked the other.
"Why do you guard me?" I asked.
   "Because we are sent to do it, and will be with you until you die."
"Lovelessly?" I asked.
They shook their heads again in negation.
   Gradually the light brightened in the room. I turned sharply to look
up at the window. I thought it was the sun. The sun couldn't hurt me, I
thought.
   But it wasn't. It was Mastema, who had risen up behind me as if he
were a cloud of gold, and on either side of him were my arguers, my
advancers of the cause, my champions, Ramiel and Setheus.
   The room shimmered and seemed to vibrate without a sound. My angels
appeared to glisten, and to grow brilliantly white and deep blue in
their robes.
All looked to the helmeted figure of Mastema.
   An immense and musical rustling filled the air, a singing sound, as
if a great flock of tiny golden-throated birds had awakened and rushed
upwards from the branches of their sun-filled trees.
   I must have closed my eyes. I lost my balance, and the air became
cooler, and it seemed my vision was clouded with dust.
I shook my head. I looked around me.
We stood within the castle itself.
   The place was damp and very dark. Light crept in around the seams of
the immense drawbridge, which was of course pulled up and locked into
place. On either side were rustic stone walls, hung here and there with
great rusted hooks and chains that had not been used in many a year.
   I turned and entered a dim courtyard, my breath suddenly taken from
me by the height of the walls that surrounded me, climbing to the

distinct cube of the bright blue sky.
   Surely this was only one courtyard, the one at the entrance, for
before us there loomed another immense pair of gates, quite large
enough to admit the greatest haywagons imaginable or some newfangled
engine of war.
   The ground was soiled. High above on all sides were windows, rows
upon rows of the double-arched windows, and all were covered over with
bars.
   "I need you now, Mastema," I said. I made the Sign of the Cross
again. I took out the rosary and kissed the crucifix, looking down for
a moment at the tiny twisted body of Our Tortured Christ.
   The huge doors before me broke open. There was a loud creaking
sound, then the crumpling of metal bolts, and the gates groaned back on
their hinges, revealing a distant and sun-filled inner court of far
greater size.
   The walls through which we walked were some thirty to forty feet in
depth. There were doors on either side of us, heavily arched in worked
stone and showing the first signs of care that I had glimpsed since we
entered.
   "These creatures do not go and come as others do," I said. I hurried
my pace so as to reach the full sun of the courtyard. The mountain air
was too cool and too damp in the foul thickness of the passage.
   Here, as I stood up, I saw windows such as I remembered, hung with
rich banners and strung with lanterns that would be lighted by night.
Here I saw tapestries carelessly thrown over window ledges as if rain
were nothing. And very high up I saw the jagged battlements and finer
white marble copings.
   But even this was not the great courtyard that lay beyond. These
walls too were rustic. The stones were soiled and untrodden in many a
year. Water was pooled here and there. Rank weeds sprang from crevices,
but, ah, there were sweet wildflowers, and I looked at them tenderly
and reached out to touch them, and marveled at them, existing here.
   More gates awaited us, these two--huge, wooden, banded in iron and
severely pointed at the top in their deep marble archway--gave way and
sprang back to let us pass through yet another wall.
Oh, such a garden greeted us!
   As we made our way through another forty feet of darkness, I saw the
great groves of orange trees ahead of us, and heard the cry of the
birds. I wondered if they were not caught down here, prisoners, or
could they soar all the way up to the top and escape?
   Yes, they could. It was a great enough space. And here was the fine
white marble facing I remembered, all the way to the summit, so high
above.
   As I made my way into the garden, as I walked on the first marble
path that traversed the beds of violets and roses, I saw the birds
coming and going, circling broadly in this wide place, so that they
could clear the towers that rose so distantly and majestically against
the sky.
   Everywhere the scent of flowers overcame me. Lilies and irises were
mingled in patches, and the oranges were ripe and almost red as they
hung from the trees. The lemons were hard still and touched with green.
Shrubbery and vines hugged the walls.
   The angels gathered around me. I realized that all along it was I
who had led the way, I who had initiated any movement, and it was I who
held us all still now, within the garden, and that they waited as I
bowed my head.
   "I am listening for the prisoners," I said. "But I can't hear them/'

   I looked up at more of the luxuriously decorated balconies and
windows, the twin arches, and here and there a long loggia, but made of
their style of filigree, not ours.
   I saw flags fluttering, and all were in that dark blood-red color,
stained with death. I looked down for the first time at my own
brilliant crimson clothes.
"Like fresh blood?" I whispered.
   "Tend to what you must do first," Mastema said. "Twilight can cover
you when you go to the prisoners, but you must take your quarry now."
"Where are they? Will you tell me?"
   "In deliberate sacrilege, and in old-fashioned rigor, they lie
beneath the stones of the church."
   There was a loud, searing noise. He had pulled out his sword. He
pointed with it, his head turned, his red helmet on fire with the glint
of the sun reflected off the marble-faced walls.
   "The door there, and the stairs beyond it. The church lies on the
third floor, up to our left/'
   I made for the door without further delay. I rushed up the steps,
taking turn after turn, my boots clattering on the stone, not even
looking to see if they followed me, not wondering how they did it,
knowing only that they were with me, feeling their presence as if I
could feel their breath on me when no breath came.
   At last we entered the corridor, broad and open on our right to the
courtyard below. There was an endless strip of rich carpet before us,
full of Persian flowers deeply embedded within a field of midnight
blue. Unfaded, untrammeled. On and on it went until it turned, ahead of
us. And at the end of the corridor was the perfectly framed sky and the
jagged speck of green mountain beyond.
"Why have you stopped?" Mastema asked.
   They had materialized around me, in their settling garments and
their never-still wings.
   "This is the door to the church here, you know it."
   "Only looking at the sky, Mastema," I said. "Only looking at the
blue sky."
   'And thinking of what?" asked one of my guardians in his toneless,
clear whisper. He clung to me suddenly, and I saw his parchment-colored
fingers, weightless, settled on my shoulder. "Think-ing of a meadow
that never existed and a young woman who is dead?"
   'Are you merciless?" I asked him. I pressed close to him, so my
forehead touched him, and I marveled to feel it against me and see his
opalescent eyes so distinct.
   "No, not merciless. Only one who reminds, and reminds, and reminds."
   I turned to the doors of the chapel. I pulled on both giant hooks
until I heard the clasp give, and then I opened wide one side and then
the other, though why I made such a vast and broad escape for myself I
do not know. Maybe it was a passage for my mighty band of helpers.
   The great empty nave lay before me, which last night no doubt had
been crowded with the gaudy blood-drenched Court, and above my head was
their choir loft from which the most ethereal dirge had come.
Sun violently pierced the demonic windows.
   I gasped in shock to see the webbed spirits emblazoned so immensely
in the fractured and welded fragments of glittering glass. How thick
was this glass, how heavily faceted, and how ominous the expressions of
those webbed-winged monsters who leered at us as if they would come
alive in the blazing light of day and stop our progress.
   There was nothing to be done but to rip my eyes off them, to look
down and away and along the great sprawling marble floor. I saw the

hook, I saw it as it had been in the floor of my father's chapel, lying
flat in a circle cut in the stone, a hook of gold, polished and
smoothed so it did not rise above the floor and would not catch a toe
or a heel. It had no cover.
   It merely marked decisively the position of the one long main
entrance to the crypt. One narrow marble rectangle cut into the center
of the church floor.
   I strode forward, heels echoing throughout the whole empty church,
and went to pull the hook.
   What stopped me? I saw the altar. At that very instant the sun had
struck the figure of Lucifer, the giant red angel above his masses and
masses of red flowers, which were fresh as they had been the night when
I had been brought to this place.
   I saw him and saw his fierce burning yellow eyes, fine gems set into
the red marble, and saw the white ivory fangs that hung from his
snarling upper lip. I saw all the fanged demons who lined the walls to
the right and the left of him, and all their jeweled eyes seemed greedy
and glorying in the light.
"The crypt," said Mastema.
   I pulled with all my might. I couldn't budge the marble slab. No
human could have done it. It would have taken teams of horses to do it.
I locked both hands more tightly around the hook, yanking it harder,
and still I couldn't budge it. It was like trying to move the walls
themselves.
"Do it for him!" Ramiel pleaded. "Let us do it."
   "It's nothing, Mastema; it's only like opening the gates."
Mastema reached out and pushed me gently aside, so that I was caught on
my own feet for a moment and then righted myself. The long narrow
trapdoor of marble was raised slowly
   I was astonished at its weight. It was more than two feet in
thickness. Only its facing was marble, the rest being a heavier darker,
denser stone. No, no human could have lifted it.
   And now, from the mouth below, there came a spear as if from a
hidden spring.
   I leapt back, though I had never been near enough to be in danger.
   Mastema let the trapdoor fall on its back. The hinges were broken at
once by its own weight. The light filled the space below. More spears
awaited me, glinting in the sun, pointed at an angle, as if affixed in
parallel to the angle of the stairs.
Mastema moved to the top of the stairs.
"Try to move them, Vittorio," he said.
   "He can't. And if he trips and falls, he falls down into a pit of
them," said Ramiel. "Mastema, move them."
"Let me move them," said Setheus.
   I drew my sword. I hacked at the first of the spears and knocked off
its metal point, but the jagged wooden shaft remained.
   I stepped down into the crypt, at once feeling a coldness rise and
touch my legs. I hacked again at the wood, and broke off more of it.
Then I stepped beside it, only to find with my left hand that I felt a
pair of spears awaiting me in the uneven light. Again I lifted my
sword, the weight of it making my arm ache.
   But I broke these two with swift blows until their metal heads had
gone clattering from their wooden stems as well.
   I stepped down, holding tight with my right hand so as not to slip
on the steps, and suddenly, with a loud cry, I swung out and off the
edge of nothing, for the stairway broke there and was no more.
   With my right hand I grabbed at the shaft of the broken spear, which

I already held in my left. My sword went clattering down below me.
   "Enough, Mastema," said Setheus. "No human can do it."
   I was hanging, both hands locked around this splintery wood, staring
up at them as they rimmed the mouth of the crypt. If I fell, I would no
doubt die, for the fall was that far. If I did not die, I would never
get out to live.
   I waited, and I said nothing, though my arms ached excruciatingly.
   Suddenly, they descended, as soundlessly as they did all things, in
a rush of silk and wings, slipping into the crypt at once, all of them,
and surrounding me, embracing me and carrying me down in a soft plummet
to the floor of the chamber.
   I was at once let go. And I scrambled around in the dimness until I
found my sword. I had it now.
   I stood up, panting, holding it firmly, and then I looked up at the
sharp distinct rectangle of brightness above. I shut my eyes, and bowed
my head, and opened my eyes slowly so as to become accustomed to this
deep damp dusk.
   Here the castle had no doubt let the mountain rise up under it, for
the chamber, though vast, seemed made of only the earth. At least this
is what I saw before me, in the rude wall, and then turning around I
saw my quarry, as Mastema had called them.
   The vampires, the larvae--they lay sleeping, coffinless, cryptless,
open in long rows, each exquisitely dressed body covered in a thin
shroud of spun gold. They ringed three walls of the crypt. At the far
end hung the broken stairs over nothingness.
   I blinked and narrowed my eyes, and the light seemed to filter more
fully upon them. I drew near to the first figure until I could see the
dark-burgundy slippers, and the deep-russet hose and all of this
beneath the webbing as if each night fine silkworms wove this shroud
for the being, so thick and perfect and fine was it. Alas, it was no
such magic; it was only the finest of what God's creatures can make.
And it had been spun of the looms of men and women, and it had a fine-
stitched hem.
I ripped off the veil.
   I drew near the creature's folded arms, and then saw to my sudden
horror that his sleeping face was quickened. His eyes opened, and one
arm moved violently towards me.
   I was yanked back out of the clutch of his fingers only just in
time. I turned to see Ramiel holding me, and then he closed his eyes
and bowed his forehead into my shoulder.
"Now you know their tricks. Watch it. You see.
It folds its arm back now. It thinks it's safe. It closes its eyes."
"What do I do! Ah, I'll kill it!" I said.
   Snatching up the veil in my left hand, I raised my sword in my
right. I advanced on the sleeping monster, and this time, when the hand
rose, I snared it with the veil, swirling the fabric around it, while,
with my sword, I came down like the executioner on the block.
   At once the head rolled off onto the floor. A wretched sound came,
more from the neck perhaps than from the throat. The arm flopped. By
light of day, it could not struggle as it might have in the dark of
night in my early battle, when I had decapitated my first assailant.
Ah, I had won.
   I snatched up the head, watching the blood spill out of the mouth.
The eyes, if they had ever opened, were now shut. I hurled the head
into the middle of the floor beneath the light. At once the light began
to burn the flesh.
   "Look at it, the head's burning!" I said. But I myself didn't stop.

   I went to the next, snatching the transparent silken shroud from a
woman with great long braids, taken to this eerie death in the prime of
her life, and snaring her rising arm, severed her head with the same
fury and caught it up by one braid and hurled it to land by its mate.
   The other head was shriveling and turning black in the light that
poured down from the high opening above.
"Lucifer, you see that?" I called out. The echo came back to taunt me,
"See that? See that? See that?"
   I rushed to the next. "Florian!" I cried out, as I grabbed the veil.
Terrible error.
   When he heard his name, his eyes snapped open even before I had
drawn abreast of him, and like a puppet yanked on a chain he would have
risen if I had not struck him hard with my sword and gashed open his
chest. Expressionless, he fell back. I brought the sword down on his
tender gentlemanly neck. His blond hair was caked with blood, and his
eyes went half-mast and empty and died before my sight.
   I snatched him up by his long hair, this bodiless one, this leader
of them all, this silver-tongued fiend, and I hurled his head into the
smoking, stinking pile.
   On and on I went, down the line to the left, why to the left I do
not know, except it was my path, and each time I pulled back the veil,
I leapt forward with ferocious speed, snaring the arm if it should
rise, but sometimes gaining such momentum on it that it had no time to
rise, and chopping off the head so fast that I became sloppy and my
blows ugly, and I smashed the jawbones of my foes, and even their
shoulder bones, but I killed them.
I killed them.
   I ripped off their heads and fed them to the mountain, which had
gained such smoke now that it seemed a simmering fire of autumn leaves.
Ashes rose from it, tiny thin ashes, but in the main, the
heads languished, greasy and blackening, and the mass thickened and the
ashes were only a few.
   Did they suffer? Did they know? Where had their souls fled on
invisible feet in this harsh and terrible moment when their Court was
dissolved, when I roared in my work and stomped my feet and threw back
my head and cried and cried until I couldn't see through my tears.
   I had done with some twenty of them, twenty, and my sword was so
thick with blood and gore that I had to wipe it clean. On their bodies,
making my way back to go down the other side of the crypt, I wiped it,
on one doublet after another, marveling at how their white hands had
shriveled and dried up on their chests, at how the black blood flowed
so sluggishly by day from their torn necks.
   "Dead, you are all dead, and yet where did you go, where did the
living soul in you go!"
   The light was dimming. I stood breathing heavily. I looked up at
Mastema.
   "The sun is high overhead," he said gently. He was untouched, though
he stood so near to them, the charred and reeking heads.
   It seemed the smoke issued more truly from their eyes than anywhere
else, as if the jelly melted into smoke more surely.
   "The church is dim now, but it is only midday. Be quick. You have
twenty more this side, and you know it. Work."
   The other angels stood stock-still, clustered together, the
magnificent Ramiel and Setheus in their rich robes, and the two
simpler, plainer, more somber souls--all of them looking at me in utter
suspense. I saw Setheus look at the pile of smoldering heads, and then
again at me.

   "Go on, poor Vittorio," he whispered. "Hurry on."
"Could you do it?" I asked.
"I cannot."
   "No, I know that you are not permitted," I said, my chest aching
from the exertion and now the talk I forced from myself. "I mean could
you do it? Could you bring yourself to do it!"
   "I am not a creature of flesh and blood, Vittorio," Setheus answered
helplessly. "But I could do what God told me to do."
   I went on past them. I looked back at them in their glorious
radiance, the cluster of them, and the masterly one, Mastema, his armor
gleaming in the falling light, and his sword so brilliant against his
flank.
He said nothing.
I turned. I ripped off the first veil. It was Ursula.
"No." I stood back.
   I let the veil drop. I was far enough away from her that she didn't
appear to wake; she didn't move. Her lovely arms lay folded still in
the same pose of graceful death which all of them had borne, only with
her it was sweet, as if in her most innocent girlhood a gentle bane had
taken her, not mussing so much as a single hair of long rippling
unbraided locks. They made a nest of gold for her head and her
shoulders, her swan neck.
   I could hear my heaving breaths. I let the edge of my sword drag,
singing on the stones. I licked at my parched lips. I didn't dare to
look at them, though I knew they were collected only a few yards from
me, staring at me. And in the thick stillness, I heard the crisping and
sizzling of the burning heads of the damned.
   I thrust my hand inside my pocket, and I drew out the rosary of
amber beads. My hand shook shamefully as I held it, and then I lifted
it, letting the crucifix dangle, and I hurled it at her, so that it
struck her, just above her small hands, right on the white swell of her
half-bared breasts. It lay there, the crucifix nestled in the curve of
her pale skin, and she didn't so much as stir.
   The light clung to her eyelashes as if it were dust.
   Without excuse or explanation, I turned to the next one, ripping off
the veil and assaulting him or her, I knew not which, with a loud
raucous cry. I grabbed up the severed head by its thick brown locks and
threw it crashing past the angels into the mass of slop that lay at
their feet.
   Then to the next. Godric. Oh, God, this will be sweet.
   I saw his bald head before I ever touched the veil, and now, tearing
the veil loose, hearing it rip on account of my carelessness, I waited
for him to open his eyes, waited for him to rise up halfway from the
slab and glare at me.
   "Know me, monster? Know me?" I roared. The sword sliced through his
neck. The white head hit the floor, and with my sword I speared it
through its dripping stump of a neck. "Know me, monster?" I cried again
to the fluttering eyes, the gaping, drooling red mouth. "Know me?"
   I walked with him to the pile of the other heads and laid him like a
trophy on top of it. "Know me?" I wailed again.
And then in a fury I went back to my work.
   Two more, then three, then five, then seven and then nine, and then
some six more, and the Court was finished, and all its dancers and
Lords and Ladies were dead.
   And then, reeling to the other side, I made swift work of those poor
peasant servants, who had no veils to cover their simple bodies, and
whose feeble half-starved white limbs could scarce rise in defense.

"The huntsmen, where are they?"
  "At the far end. It is almost dark in here. Take great care."
  "I see them," I said. I drew myself up and caught my breath. They
lay in a row of six, heads to the wall like all the others, but they
were perilously close together. It would be a hard approach.
  I laughed suddenly at the simplicity of it. I laughed. I snatched
off the first veil and chopped at the feet. The corpse rose and then my
blade could easily see the place to strike, while the blood had already
begun to gush.
  The second, I cut to stumps at once and then sliced across the
middle, and only descended on the head before his hand had caught my
blade. I ripped back my sword and chopped the hand off him. "Die,
bastard, you who stole me with your fellow; I remember you."
  And at last I came to the final one and had his bearded head hanging
from my hand.
  Slowly I walked back with this one, kicking others before me, others
I had not had the strength to hurl very far, and I kicked them like so
much refuse until the light fell on all of them.
  It was bright now. The afternoon sun was coming in the west side of
the church. And the opening above gave forth a terrific and fatal heat.
  Slowly I wiped my face with the back of my left hand. I laid down my
sword, and I felt for the napkins the monks had put in my pockets, and
I took these and cleaned my face and cleaned my hands.
  Then I picked up my sword, and I went to the foot of her bier again.
She lay as before. The light was nowhere near her. It could not have
touched any of them where they lay.
  She was safe on her bed of stone, her hands as still as before,
fingers beautifully folded, the right hand over the left, and on her
mound of white breast there rested the Crucified Christ in gold. Her
hair was stirring in a faint draft that seemed to come from the narrow
opening above. But this was a mere halo of tendrils about her otherwise
lifeless face.
  Her hair, in its loose ripples, without its ribbons or pearls, had
fallen a little over the edges of the bier, so narrow was it, and so
had the folds of her long gold-embroidered dress. It was not the same
that she'd worn when I'd seen her. Only the deep rich blood red was the
same, but all the rest was splendid and ornate and new, as if she were
a regal princess, always prepared for the kiss of her prince.
  "Could Hell receive this?" I whispered. I drew as close as I dared.
I could not bear the thought of her arm rising in that mechanical
fashion, the sudden clutch of her fingers on the empty air or her eyes
opening. I couldn't bear it.
  The points of her slippers were small beneath her hem. How daintily
she must have lain down to her rest at sunrise. Who had pulled closed
the trapdoor, whose chains had fallen? Who had set the trap of the
spears, whose engines I had never inspected or compassed with my
thoughts?
  For the first time in the dimness, I saw a tiny golden circlet on
her head, lying just around the crown and fixed by the tiniest pins
into the waves so that its single pearl rested on her forehead. Such a
small thing.
  Was her soul so small? Would Hell take it, like the fire would take
any tender part of her anatomy, like the sun would burn to horror her
immaculate face?
  In some mother's womb she had once slept and dreamt, and into some
father's arms been placed.
  What had been her tragedy to bring her to this foul and reeking

grave, where the heads of her slain companions lay burning slowly in
the sun's ever patient, ever indifferent light?
   I turned on them. I held my sword down at my side.
"One, let one only live. One!" I declared.
   Ramiel covered his face and turned his back on me. Setheus continued
to stare but shook his head. My guardians only gazed at me with their
level coldness, as they always had. Mastema stared at me, soundlessly,
concealing whatever thought he possessed behind his serene mask of a
face.
   "No, Vittorio," he said. "Do you think a bevy of God's angels has
helped you past these barriers to leave one such as these to live?"
   "Mastema, she loved me. And I love her. Mastema, she gave me my
life. Mastema, I ask in the name of love. I beg in the name of love.
All else here has been justice. But what can I say to God if I slay
this one, who has loved and whom I love?"
   Nothing in his countenance changed. He only regarded me with his
eternal calm. I heard a terrible sound. It was the weeping of Ramiel
and Setheus. My guardians turned to look at them, as though surprised,
but only mildly so, and then their dreamy soft eyes fixed again,
unchanging, on me.
   "Merciless angels," I said. "Oh, but such is not fair, and I know
it. I lie. I lie. Forgive me."
   "We forgive you," said Mastema. "But you must do what you have
promised me you would do."
   "Mastema, can she be saved? If she herself renounces ... can she ...
is her soul still human?"
No answer came from him. No answer.
   "Mastema, please, tell me. Don't you see? If she can be saved, I can
stay here with her, I can wring it out of her, I know I can because her
heart is good.
It's young and good. Mastema, tell me. Can such a creature as she is be
saved?"
   No answer. Ramiel had lain his head against Setheus's shoulder.
   "Oh, please, Setheus," I said. "Tell me. Can she be saved? Must she
die by my hand? What if I stay here with her, and wring it out of her,
her confession, her final disavowal of all that she has ever done? Is
there no priest who can give her absolution? Oh, God ..."
   "Vittorio," came the whisper from Ramiel. 'Are your ears stopped
with wax? Can you hear those prisoners starving, crying? You have not
even set them free yet. Will you do it by night?"
   "I can do it. I can yet do it. But can I not stay here with her, and
when she finds she is all alone, that all the others have perished,
that all the promises of Godric and Florian were tyranny, is there no
way that she can render her soul to God?"
   Mastema, without ever a change in his soft cold eyes, slowly turned
his back.
   "No! Don't do it, don't turn away!" I shouted. I caught hold of his
powerful silk-clad arm. I felt his unsurmountable strength beneath the
fabric, the strange, unnatural fabric. He gazed down at me.
"Why can't you tell me!"
   "For the love of God, Vittorio!" he roared suddenly, his voice
filling the entire crypt. "Don't you realize? We don't know!"
   He shook me loose, the better to glare down at me, his brows
furrowed, his hand closing on the hilt of his sword.
   "We don't come from a species that has ever known forgiveness!" he
shouted. "We are not flesh and blood, and in our realm things are Light
or they are the Darkness, and that is all we know!"

   In a fury, he turned and marched towards her. I rushed after him,
pulling at him, but unable to deter him a fraction from his purpose.
   He plunged his hand down, past her groping hands, and clutched her
tiny neck. Her eyes stared up at him in that terrible, terrible
blindness.
   "She has a human soul in her," he said in a whisper. And then he
drew back as if he did not want to touch her, couldn't bear to touch
her, and he backed away from her, shoving me away, forcing me back as
he did.
   I broke into weeping. The sun shifted, and the shadows began to
thicken in the crypt. I turned finally. The patch of light above was
now pale. It was a rich radiant gold, but it was pale.
   My angels stood there, all gathered, watching me and waiting.
   "I'm staying with her here," I said. "She'll wake soon. And I'll put
it to her, that she pray for God's grace."
   I knew it only as I said it. I understood it only as I made it
plain.
   "I'll stay with her. If she renounces all her sins for the love of
God, then she can remain with me, and death will come, and we will not
lift a hand to hasten it, and God will accept us both."
   "You think you have the strength to do that?" Mastema asked. 'And
you think it of her?"
   "I owe her this," I said. "I am bound. I never lied to you, not to
any of you. I never lied to myself. She slew my brother and sister. I
saw her. No doubt she killed many of them, my own. But she saved me.
She saved me twice. And to kill is simple, but to save is not!"
   "Ah," said Mastema as though I'd struck him. "That's true."
   "So I'll stay. I expect nothing from you now. I know I cannot get
out of here. Perhaps even she cannot."
"Of course she can," said Mastema.
   "Don't leave him," said Setheus. "Take him against his will."
   "None of us can do that, and you know it," said Mastema.
   "Only out of the crypt," pleaded Ramiel, "as if from a canyon into
which he's fallen."
"But it is not such a thing, and I cannot."
"Then let us stay with him," said Ramiel.
   "Yes, let us stay," said my two guardians, more or less at the same
time and in similar muted expressions.
"Let her see us."
   "How do we know that she can?" asked Mastema. "How do we know that
she will? How many times does it happen that a human being can see us?"
   For the first time I saw anger in him. He looked at me.
   "God has played such a game with you, Vitto-rio!" he said. "Given
you such enemies and such allies!"
   "Yes, I know this, and I will beg Him with all my strength and the
weight of all my suffering for her soul."
I didn't mean to close my eyes.
I know that I did not.
   But the entire scene was altered utterly. The pile of heads lay as
before, and some at random, shriveling, drying up, the acrid smoke
still rising from them, and the light above had darkened, yet it was
still golden, golden beyond the broken stair, and the jagged broken
spears, golden with the last burnt dregs of the late afternoon.
And my angels had gone.

                                  12

                   DELIVER ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION


FOR all my youth, my body could take no more. Yet how could I remain in
this crypt, waiting for her to awake, I without attempting some form of
exit?
   I gave no thought to the dismissal by my angels. I deserved it, but
I was convinced of the rectitude of the chance I meant to give her,
that she throw herself on the mercy of God, and that we leave this
crypt and, if necessary, find the priest who could absolve her human
soul of all her sins. For if she could not make a perfect confession
for the love of God alone, well, then, the absolution would surely save
her.
   I poked around the crypt, stepping among the drying-up corpses. What
light there was gleamed on dried founts of blood that ran down the
sides of the stone biers.
   At last I found what I had hoped to find, a great ladder that could
be lifted and thrown up to the ceiling above. Only, how could I wield
such a thing?
   I dragged it towards the center of the crypt, kicking out of my path
the heads which were now damaged beyond reprieve, and I laid down the
ladder, and stepped at midpoint, between two of the rungs, and tried
from there to lift it.
   Impossible. I simply did not possess the leverage. It weighed too
much, slight as it was, because it was so long. Three or four strong
men might have hoisted it sufficiently to make its topmost rungs catch
on the broken spears, but I alone could not do it.
   Alas, there was another possibility. A chain, or a rope, that could
be tossed to the spears above. In the gloam, I made a search for such
but found none.
No chains anywhere here? No coil of rope?
   Had even the young larvae been able to leap the gap between the
floor and the broken stairway?
   At last I moved along the walls, searching for any bump or hook or
excrescence which might indicate a storeroom or, God forbid, another
crypt of these fiends.
But I could find nothing.
   Finally, I staggered towards the center of the room again. I
gathered all the heads, even the loathsome bald head of Godric, which
was now black like leather with its yellowed slits of eyes, and I piled
these heads where the light could not fail to continue its work on
them.
   Then, stumbling over the ladder, I fell on my knees at the foot of
Ursula's bier.
   I sank down. I would sleep this little while. No, not sleep, rest.
   Not willing it, indeed, fearing it and regretting it, I felt my
limbs go limp and I lay on the stone floor, and my eyes closed in a
blessed restorative sleep.
How curious it was.
   I had thought her scream would awaken me, that like a frightened
child she would have risen up in the darkness on the bier, finding
herself alone with so many dead ones.

   I had thought the sight of the heads in the pile would have
terrified her.
But no such had happened.
   Twilight filled the space above, violet-colored, like the flowers of
the meadow, and she stood over me. She had put the rosary around her
neck, which is not common, and she wore it as a beautiful ornament with
the gold crucifix turning and twisting in the light, a glinting speck
of gold that matched the specks of light in her eyes.
She was smiling.
   "My brave one, my hero, come, let's escape this place of death.
You've done it, you have avenged them."
"Did you move your lips?"
"Need I do that with you?"
   I felt a thrill pass through me as she lifted me to my feet. She
stood looking up into my face, her hands firmly on my shoulders.
   "Blessed Vittorio," she said. Then clasping me about the waist, she
rose upwards and we passed the broken spears, without so much as
touching their splintered tips, and found ourselves in the chapel in
the dusk, the windows darkened and the shadows playing gracefully but
mercifully around the distant altar.
   "Oh, my darling, my darling/' I said. "Do you know what the angels
did? Do you know what they said?"
   "Come, let's free the prisoners as you wish," she told me.
   I felt so refreshed, so full of vigor. It was as if I'd suffered no
exhausting labor at all, as if war hadn't worn down my limbs and broken
me, as though battle and struggle hadn't been my portion for days.
   I rushed with her through the castle. We threw open the doors, one
pair after another, on the miserable occupants of the coop. It was she
who scurried on her light, feline feet through the pathways beneath the
orange trees and the bird aviaries, overturning the kettles of soup,
crying out to the poor and the lame and the hopeless that they were
free, that no one imprisoned them now.
   In a twinkling we stood on a high balcony. I saw far below their
miserable procession in the half-light, the long winding line of them
progressing down the mountain under the purple sky and the rising
evening star. The weak helped the strong; the old carried the young.
   "Where will they go, back to that evil town? Back to the monsters
who gave them up in sacrifice?" I was in a fury suddenly. "Punished,
that's what they must be."
"In time, Vittorio; there is time. Your poor sad victims are free now.
This is our time, yours and mine, come."
   Her skirts went out in a great dark circle as down we flew, down and
down, down past the windows, and down past the walls, until my feet
were allowed to touch the soft ground.
   "Oh, Lord God, it's the meadow, look, the meadow," I said. "I can
see it as clearly under the rising moon as ever I saw it in my dreams."
   A sudden softness filled me completely. I twined her in my arms, my
fingers digging deep into her rippling hair. All the world seemed to
sway about me, and yet I was anchored in dance with her, and the soft
airy movement of the trees sang to us as we were bound together.
   "Nothing can ever part us, Vittorio," she said. She tore loose. She
ran ahead of me.
   "No, wait, Ursula, wait!" I cried. I ran after her, but the grass
and the irises were tall and thick. It wasn't so like the dream, but
then again it was, because these things were alive and full of the
verdant smell of the wild, and the sylvan woods were gently heaving
their limbs on the scented wind.

   I fell down exhausted and let the flowers climb up on either side of
me. I let the red irises peer down upon my upturned face.
   She knelt above me. "He will forgive me, Vittorio," she said. "He
will forgive all in his infinite mercy."
   "Oh, yes, my love, my blessed, beautiful love, my savior, He will."
   The tiny crucifix dangled down against my neck.
   "But you must do this for me, you who let me live below, you who
spared me and fell asleep in my trust at the feet of my grave, you must
do this..."
   "What, blessed one?" I asked. "Tell me and I'll do it."
   "Pray first for strength, and then into your human body, into your
wholesome and baptized body, you must take all the demon blood out of
me which you can, you must draw it from me, and thereby free my soul
from its spell; it will be vomited forth out of you like the potions we
gave you, which cannot hurt you. Will you do it for me? Will you take
the poison out of me?"
   I thought of the sickness, of the vomit that had streamed from my
mouth in the monastery. I thought of it all, the terrible gibbering and
madness.
"Do this for me," she said.
   She lay against me and I felt her heart trapped in her chest, and I
felt my own, and it seemed I had never known such dreamy languor. I
could feel my fingers curl. For an instant it seemed they rested on
hard rocks in this meadow, as if the backs of my hands had found harsh
pebbles, but once again I felt the broken stems, the bed of purple and
red and white irises.
She raised her head.
   "In the Name of God," I said, "for your salvation, I will take
whatever poison I must from you; I will draw off the blood as if from a
cankerous wound, as if it were the corruption of a leper. Give it to
me, give me the blood."
   Her face was motionless above mine, so small, so dainty, so white.
   "Be brave, my love, be brave, for I must make room for it first."
   She nestled in against my neck, and into my flesh there came her
teeth. "Be brave, only a little more to make room."
   'A little more?" I whispered. 'A little more. Ah, Ursula, look up,
look up at Heaven and Hell in the sky, for the stars are balls of fire
suspended there by the angels."
   But the language was stretched and meaningless and became an echo in
my ears. A darkness shrouded me, and when I lifted my hand it seemed a
golden net covered it and I could see far, far away, my fingers
shrouded in the net.
   The meadow was suddenly flooded with sunlight. I wanted to break
away, to sit up, to tell her, Look, the sun has come, and you're not
hurt, my precious girl. But on and on there came these waves of divine
and luscious pleasure passing through me, pulled from me, pulled up
from my loins, this coaxing and magnificent pleasure.
   When her teeth slipped from my flesh, it was as if she had tightened
the grip of her soul on my organs, on all parts of me that were man and
babe once, and human now.
   "Oh, my love, my darling, don't stop." The sun made a bewildering
dance in the branches of the chestnut trees.
   She opened her mouth, and from her came the stream of blood, the
deep dark kiss of blood. "Take it from me, Vittorio."
   'All your sins into me, my divine child," I said. "Oh, God help me.
God have mercy on me. Mastema--."
   But the word was broken. My mouth was filled with the blood, and it

was no rank potion mixed of parts, but that searing thrilling sweetness
that she had first given me in her most secretive and perplexing
kisses. Only this time it came in an overwhelming gush.
   Her arms were tucked beneath me. They lifted me. The blood seemed to
know no veins within but to fill my limbs themselves, to fill my
shoulders and my chest, to drown and invigorate my very heart. I stared
up at the twinkling playing sun, I felt her blinding and soft hair
across my eyes but peered through its golden strands. My breath came in
gasps.
   The blood flowed down into my legs and filled them to my very toes.
My body surged with strength. My organ pumped against her, and once
more I felt her subtle feline weight, her sinuous limbs hugging me,
holding me, binding me, her arms crossed beneath me, her lips sealed to
mine.
   My eyes struggled, grew wide. The sunlight filled them, and then
contracted. It contracted, and my sighs seemed to grow immense, and the
beating of my heart to echo, as though we were not in a wild meadow,
and the sounds that came from my empowered body, my transformed body,
my body so full of her blood, echoed off stone walls!
   The meadow was gone or never was. The twilight was a rectangle high
above. I lay in the crypt.
   I rose up, throwing her off, back away from me as she screamed in
pain. I sprang to my feet and stared at my white hands outstretched
before me.
   A horrid hunger reared up in me, a fierce strength, a howl!
   I stared up at the dark-purple light above and screamed.
   "You've done it to me! You've made me one of you!"
   She sobbed. I turned on her. She backed up, bent over, her hand over
her mouth, crying and fleeing from me. I ran after her. Like a rat she
ran, round and round the crypt, screaming.
   "Vittorio, no, Vittorio, no, Vittorio, no, don't hurt me. Vittorio,
I did this for us; Vittorio, we are free. Ah, God help me!"
   And then upwards she flew, just missing my outstretched arms. She
had fled to the chapel above.
   "Witchlet, monster, larva, you tricked me with your illusions, with
your visions, you made me one of you, you did it to me!" My roars
echoed one upon the other as I scrambled about in the dark till I found
my sword, and then dancing back to gain my momentum, I too made the
leap and cleared the spears and found myself high up on the floor of
the church, and she hovering with glittering tears before the altar.
   She backed up into the bank of red flowers that barely showed in the
starlight that passed through the darkened windows.
   "No, Vittorio, don't kill me, don't do it. Don't," she sobbed and
wailed. "I am a child, like you, please, don't."
   I tore at her, and she scrambled to the end of the sanctuary. In a
rage, I swung at the statue of Lucifer with my sword. It tottered and
then crashed down, breaking on the marble floor of the cursed
sanctuary.
   She hovered at the far end. She dropped down on her knees and threw
out her hands. She shook her head, her hair flying wildly from side to
side.
   "Don't kill me, don't kill me, don't kill me. You send me to Hell if
you do; don't do it."
   "Wretch!" I moaned. "Wretch!" My tears fell as freely as hers. "I
thirst, you wretch. I thirst, and I can smell them, the slaves in the
coop. I can smell them, their blood, damn you!"
   I too had gone down on my knees. I lay down on the marble, and

kicked aside the broken fragments of the hideous statue. With my sword
I snagged the lace of the altar cloth and brought it down with all its
many red flowers tumbling on me, so that I could roll over into them
and crush my face into their softness.
   A silence fell, a terrible silence full of my own wailing. I could
feel my strength, feel it even in the timbre of my voice, and the arm
that held the sword without exhaustion or restraint, and feel it in the
painless calm with which I lay on what should have been cold and was
not cold, or only goodly cold.
Oh, she had made me mighty.
   A scent overcame me. I looked up. She stood just above me, tender,
loving thing that she was, with her eyes so full of the starlight now,
so glinting and quiet and unjudging. In her arms she held a young
human, a feeble-minded one, who did not know his danger.
   How pink and succulent he was, how like the roasted pig ready for my
lips, how full of naturally cooking and bubbling mortal blood and ready
for me. She set him down before me.
   He was naked, thin buttocks on his heels, his trembling chest very
pink and his hair black and long and soft around his guileless face. He
appeared to be dreaming or searching the darkness, perhaps for angels?
   "Drink, my darling, drink from him," she said, "and then you'll have
the strength to take us both to the Good Father for Confession."
   I smiled. The desire for the feeble-minded boy before me was almost
more than I could endure. But it was a whole new book now, was it not,
what I might endure, and I took my time, rising up on my elbow as I
looked at her.
   "To the Good Father? You think that's where we'll go? Right away,
just like that, the two of us?"
   She began to cry again. "Not right away, no, not right away," she
cried. She shook her head. Beaten.
   I took him. I broke his neck when I drained him dry. He made not a
sound. There was no time for fear or pain or crying.
Do we ever forget the first kill? Do we ever?
   Through the coop I went all that night, devouring, feasting, gorging
on their throats, taking what I wanted from each, sending each to God
or to Hell, how could I ever know, bound now to this earth with her,
and she feasting with me in her dainty way, ever watching for my howls
and wails, and ever catching hold of me to kiss me and ply me with her
sobs when I shook with rage.
"Come out of here," I said.
   It was just before sunrise. I told her I would spend no day beneath
these pointed towers, in this house of horrors, in this place of evil
and filthy birth.
   "I know of a cave/' she said. "Far down the mountains, past the
farmlands/'
   "Yes, somewhere on the edge of a true meadow?"
   "There are meadows in this fair land without count, my love," she
said. 'And under the moon their flowers shine as prettily for our
magical eyes as ever they do for humans by the light of God's sun.
Remember His moon is ours.
   'And tomorrow night . . . before you think of the priest . . . you
must take your time to think of the priest--."
   "Don't make me laugh again. Show me how to fly. Wrap your arm around
my waist and show me how to drop from the high walls to safety in a
descent that would shatter a man's limbs. Don't talk of priests
anymore. Don't mock me!"
   ". . . before you think of the priest, of Confession," she went on,

undeterred in her dainty sweet small voice, her eyes brimming with
tears of love, "we'll go back to the town of Santa Maddalana while it's
fast asleep, and we'll burn it all down around them."




                                   13

                              CHILD BRIDE


WE didn't put the torch to Santa Maddalana. It was too much of a
pleasure I to hunt the town.
   By the third night, I had stopped weeping at sunrise, when we
retired together, locked in each other's arms inside our concealed and
unreachable cave.
   And by the third night, the townspeople knew what had befallen them--
how their clever bargain with the Devil had rebounded upon them-- and
they were in a panic, and it was a great game to outsmart them, to hide
in the multitude of shadows that made up their twisted streets, and to
tear open their most extravagant and clever locks.
   In the early hours, when no one dared to stir, and the good
Franciscan priest knelt awake in his cell, saying his rosary, and
begging God for understanding of what was happening--this priest, you
remember, who had befriended me at the inn, who had dined with me and
warned me, not in anger like his Dominican brother, but in kindness--
while this priest prayed, I crept into the Franciscan church and I too
prayed.
   But each night I told myself what a man says to himself under his
breath when he couches with his adulterous whore: "One more night, God,
and then I'll go to Confession. One more night of bliss, Lord, and then
I'll go home to my wife."
The townspeople had no chance against us.
   What skills I did not acquire naturally and through experimentation,
my beloved Ursula taught to me with patience and grace. I could scan a
mind, find a sin and eat it with a flick of my tongue as I sucked the
blood from a lazy, lying merchant who had put out his own tender
children once for the mysterious Lord Florian, who had kept the peace.
   One night we found that the townsmen had been by day to the
abandoned castle. There was evidence of hasty entry, with little stolen
or disturbed. How it must have frightened them, the horrid saints still
flanking the pedestal of the Fallen Lucifer in the church. They had not
taken the golden candlesticks or the old tabernacle in which I
discovered, with my groping hand, a shriveled human heart.
   On our last visit to the Court of the Ruby Grail, I took the burned
leathery heads of the vampires from the deep cellar and I hurled them
like so many stones through the stained-glass windows. The last of the
brilliant art of the castle was gone.
   Together, Ursula and I roamed the bedchambers of the castle, which I
had never glimpsed or even imagined, and she showed me those rooms in
which the members of the Court had gathered for dice or chess or to
listen to small ensembles of music. Here and there we saw evidence of
something stolen--a coverlet ripped from a bed and a pillow fallen to
the floor.

   But obviously the townspeople were more afraid than greedy. They
took little from the castle.
   And as we continued to prey upon them, artfully defeating them, they
began to desert Santa Maddalana. Shops lay open when we came into the
empty streets at midnight; windows were unbolted, cradles empty. The
Dominican church had been deconsecrated and abandoned, its altar stone
removed. The cowardly priests, whom I had not granted the mercy of a
quick death, had abandoned their flock.
   The game became ever more invigorating to me. For now, those who
remained were quarrelsome and avaricious and refusing to give up
without a fight. It was simple to sort the innocent, who believed in
the faith of the vigil light or the saints to protect them, from those
who had played with the Devil and now kept an uneasy watch in the dark
with sword in hand.
   I liked to talk to them, spar with them verbally, as I killed them.
"Did you think your game would go on forever? Did you think the thing
you fed would never feed on you?"
   As for my Ursula, she had no stomach for such sport. She could not
endure the spectacle of suffering. The old Communion of Blood in the
castle had for her been tolerable only because of the music, the
incense and the supreme authority of Florian and Godric, who had led
her in it with every step.
   Night after night, as the town was slowly emptied, as the farms were
deserted, as Santa Maddalana, my school town, became ever more ruined,
Ursula took to playing with orphaned children. She sat sometimes on the
church steps cradling a human infant and cooing to 'it, and telling it
stories in French.
   She sang old songs in Latin from the courts of her time, which had
been two hundred years ago, she told me, and she talked of battles in
France and in Germany whose names meant nothing to me.
   "Don't play with the children," I said. "They'll remember it.
They'll remember us."
   A fortnight went by before the community was irreparably destroyed.
Only the orphans remained and a few of the very old, and the Franciscan
father, and his father, the elfin little man who sat in his lighted
room at night, playing a game of cards with himself, as if he did not
even now guess what was going on.
   On the fifteenth night, it must have been, when we arrived in the
town, we knew at once that only two persons were left. We could hear
the little old man singing to himself in the empty Inn with the doors
open. He was very drunk, and his wet pink head gleamed in the light of
the candle. He slapped the cards down on the table in a circle, playing
a game of solitaire called "clock."
The Franciscan priest sat beside him. He looked up at us, fearlessly
and calmly, as we came into the Inn.
   I was overcome with hunger, ravening hunger, for the blood in them
both.
"I never told you my name, did I?" he asked me.
"No, you never did, Father," I said.
   "Joshua," he said. "That's my name, Fra Joshua. All the rest of the
community has gone back to Assisi, and they took with them the last of
the children. It*s a long journey south."
   "I know, Father," I said. "I've been to Assisi, I've prayed at the
shrine of St. Francis. Tell me, Father, when you look at me, do you see
angels around me?"
   "Why would I see angels?" he asked quietly. He looked from me to
Ursula. "I see beauty, I see youth fixed in polished ivory. But I don't

see angels. I never have."
"I saw them once," I said. "May I sit down?"
   "Do as you like," he said to me. He watched us, drawing himself up
in his hard simple wooden chair, as I seated myself opposite him, much
as I had been on that day in the village, only now we were not in the
fragrant arbor under the sun but inside, in the Inn itself, where the
candlelight gave more volume and more warmth.
   Ursula looked at me in confusion. She didn't know what was in my
mind. I had never witnessed her speaking to any human being except for
me myself and for the children with whom she'd played--in other words,
only with those for whom her heart had quickened and whom she did not
mean to destroy.
   What she thought of the little man and his son, the Franciscan
priest, I couldn't guess.
   The old man was winning the card game. "There, you see, I told you.
Our luck!" he said. He gathered up his greasy loose cards to shuffle
them and to play again.
   The priest looked at him with glazed eyes, as though he could not
gather his own wits even to fool or reassure his old father, and then
he looked at me.
   "I saw these angels in Florence," I said, "and I disappointed them,
broke my vow to them, lost my soul."
He turned from his father to me sharply.
"Why do you prolong this?" he asked.
   "I will not hurt you. Neither will my companion," I said. I sighed.
It would have been that moment in a conversation when I would have
reached for the cup or the tankard and taken a drink. My hunger hurt
me. I wondered if the thirst hurt Ursula. I stared at the priest's
wine, which was nothing to me now, nothing, and I looked at his face,
sweating in the light of the candle, and I went on:
   "I want you to know that I saw them, that I talked to them, these
angels. They tried to help me to destroy those monsters who held sway
over this town, and over the souls of those here. I want you to know,
Father."
"Why, son, why tell me?"
   "Because they were beautiful, and they were as real as we are, and
you have seen us. You have seen hellish things; you have seen sloth and
treachery, cowardice and deceit. You see devils now, vampires. Well, I
want you to know that with my own eyes I saw angels, true angels,
magnificent angels, and that they were more glorious than I can ever
tell you in words/'
   He regarded me thoughtfully for a long time, and then he looked at
Ursula, who sat troubled and looking up at me, rather afraid that I
would unduly suffer, and then he said:
   "Why did you fail them? Why did they come with you in the first
place, and if you had the aid of angels, why did you fail?"
I shrugged my shoulders. I smiled. "For love."
He didn't answer.
   Ursula leaned her head against my arm. I felt her free hair brushing
my back as she let me feel her weight.
"For love!" the priest repeated.
"Yes, and for honor as well."
"Honor."
   "No one will ever understand it. God will not accept it, but it's
true, and now, what is there, Father, that divides us, you and I, and
the woman who sits with me? What is between us--the two parties--the
honest priest and the two demons?"

   The little man chuckled suddenly. He had slapped down a marvelous
run of cards. "Look at that!" he said. He looked up at me with his
clever little eyes. "Oh, your question, forgive me. I know the answer."
   "You do?" asked the priest, turning to the little old man. "You know
the answer?"
"Of course, I do," said his father. He dealt out another card. "What
separates them now from a good Confession is weakness and the fear of
Hell if they must give up their lives."
The priest stared at his father in amazement.
So did I.
   Ursula said nothing. Then she kissed me on the cheek. "Let's leave
them now," she whispered. "There is no more Santa Maddalana. Let's go."
   I looked up, around the darkened room of the Inn. I looked at the
old barrels. I looked in haunted perplexity and appalling sorrow at all
things that humans used and touched. I looked at the heavy hands of the
priest, folded on the table before me. I looked at the hair on his
hands, and then up at his thick lips and his large watering and
sorrowful eyes.
   "Will you accept this from me?" I whispered. "This secret, of
angels? That I saw them! I! And you, you see what I am, and you know
therefore that I know whereof I speak. I saw their wings, I saw their
halos, I saw their white faces, and I saw the sword of Mastema the
powerful, and it was they who helped me sack the castle and lay waste
to all the demons save for this one, this child bride, who is mine."
   "Child bride," she whispered. It filled her with delight. She looked
at me, musingly, and hummed a soft, old-fashioned air, one of those
threads of songs from her times.
   She spoke to me in an urgent persuasive whisper, squeezing my arm as
she did:
   "Come, Vittorio, leave these men in peace, and come with me, and
I'll tell you how indeed I was a child bride." She looked at the priest
with renewed animation. "I was, you know. They came to my father's
castle and purchased me as such, they said that I must be a virgin, and
the midwives came and brought their basin of warm water, and they
examined me and they said I was a virgin, and only then did Florian
take me. I was his bride."
   The priest stared fixedly at her, as if he could not move if he
wanted to move, and the old man merely glanced up again and again,
cheerfully, nodding as he listened to her, and went on playing with his
cards.
   "Can you imagine my horror?" she asked them. She looked at me,
tossing her hair back over her shoulder. It was in its ripples again
from the plaits in which she'd had it bound earlier. "Can you imagine
when I climbed onto the couch and I saw who was my bridegroom, this
white thing, this dead thing, such as we look to you?"
   The priest made no answer. His eyes filled slowly with tears. Tears!
   It seemed a lovely human spectacle, bloodless, crystalline, and such
an adornment for his old soft face, with its jowls and fleshy mouth.
   'And then to be taken to a ruined chapel," she said, "a ruined
place, full of spiders and vermin, and there before a desecrated altar,
to be stripped and laid down and taken by him and made his bride."
   She let go of my arm, her arms forming a loose embracing gesture.
"Oh, I had a veil, a great long beautiful veil, and a dress of such
fine flowered
silk, and all this he tore from me, and took me first with his
lifeless, seedless stone-hard organ and then with his fang teeth, like
these very teeth which I have now. Oh, such a wedding, and my father

had given me over for this."
The tears coursed down the priest's cheeks.
   I stared at her, transfixed with sorrow and rage, rage against a
demon I had already slaughtered, a rage that I hoped could reach down
through the smoldering coals of Hell and find him with fingers like hot
tongs. I said nothing.
She raised her eyebrow; she cocked her head.
   "He tired of me/' she said. "But he never stopped loving me. He was
new to the Court of the Ruby Grail, a young Lord and seeking at every
turn to increase his might and his romance! And later, when I asked for
Vittorio's life, he couldn't refuse me on account of our vows exchanged
on that stone altar so long ago. After he let Vittorio leave us, after
he had him cast down in Florence, certain of Vittorio's madness and
ruin, Florian sang songs to me, songs for a bride. He sang the old
poems as though our love could be revived."
   I covered my brow with my right hand. I couldn't bear to weep the
blood tears that flow from us. I couldn't bear to see before me, as if
painted by Fra Filippo, the very romance she described.
It was the priest who spoke.
   "You are children," he said. His lip trembled. "Mere children."
   "Yes," she said in her exquisite voice, with certainty and a small
accepting smile. She clasped my left hand in hers and rubbed it hard
and tenderly. "Children forever. But he was only a young man, Florian,
just a young man himself."
   "I saw him once," said the priest, his voice thick with his crying
but soft. "Only once."
'And you knew?" I asked.
   "I knew I was powerless and my faith was desperate, and that around
me were bonds that I could not loose or break."
   "Let's go now, Vittorio, don't make him cry anymore," said Ursula.
"Come on, Vittorio. Let's leave here. We need no blood tonight and
cannot think of harming them, cannot even ..."
   "No, beloved, never," I said to her. "But take my gift, Father,
please, the only clean thing which I can give, my testimony that I saw
the angels, and that they upheld me when I was weak."
   "And won't you take absolution from me, Vittorio!" he said. His
voice rose, and his chest seemed to increase in size. "Vittorio and
Ursula, take my absolution."
   "No, Father," I said. "We cannot take it. We don't want it."
"But why?"
   "Because, Father," said Ursula kindly, "we plan to sin again as soon
as we possibly can."




                                  14

                       THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY


SHE didn't lie.
   We journeyed that night to my I father's house. It was nothing for
us to I make that journey, but it was many miles for a mortal, and word

had not reached that forlorn farmland that the threat of the night
demons, the vampires of Florian, was gone. Indeed, it is most likely
that my farms were still deserted because ghastly tales were given out
by those who had fled Santa Maddalana, traveling over hill and valley,
mouth to mouth.
It didn't take me long to realize, however, that the great castle of my
family was occupied. A horde of soldiers and clerks had been hard at
work. As we crept over the giant wall after midnight, we found that all
the dead of my family had been properly buried, or placed in their
proper stone coffins beneath the chapel, and that the goods of the
household, all of its abundant wealth, had been taken away. Only a few
wagons remained of those which must have already started their progress
south.
The few who slept in the offices of my father's steward were keepers of
the accounts of the Medici bank, and on tiptoe, in the dim light of a
star-studded sky, I inspected the few papers they had left out to dry.
   All of the inheritance of Vittorio di Raniari had been collected and
catalogued, and was being taken on to Florence for him, to be placed in
safety with Cosimo until such time as Vittorio di Raniari was twenty-
four years of age and could thereby assume responsibility for himself
as a man.
   Only a few soldiers slept in the barracks. Only a few horses were
quartered in the stables. Only a few squires and attendants slept in
proximity to their Lords.
   Obviously the great castle, being of no strategic use to Milanese or
German or French or Papal authority, or to Florence, was not being
restored or repaired, merely shut down.
   Well before dawn, we left my home, but before going, I took leave of
my father's grave.
   I knew that I would come back. I knew that soon the trees would
climb the mountain to the walls. I knew that the grass would grow high
through the crevices and cracks of the cobblestones. I knew that things
human would lose all love of this place, as they had lost their love of
so many ruins in the country round.
I would return then. I would come back.
   That night, Ursula and I hunted the vicinity for the few brigands we
could find in the woods, laughing gaily when we caught them and dragged
them from their horses. It was a riotous old feast.
'And where now, my Lord?" my bride asked me towards morning. We had
again found a cave for shelter, a deep and hidden place, full of thorny
vines that barely scratched our resilient skin, behind a veil of wild
blueberries that would hide us from all eyes, including that of the
great rising sun.
   "To Florence, my love. I have to go there. And in its streets, we'll
never suffer hunger, or discovery, and there are things which I must
see with my own eyes/'
   "But what are those things, Vittorio?" she asked.
   "Paintings, my love, paintings. I have to see the angels in the
paintings. I have to ... face them, as it were."
   She was content. She had never seen the great city of Florence. She
had, all her wretched eternity of ritual and courtly discipline, been
contained in the mountains, and she lay down beside me to dream of
freedom, of brilliant colors of blue and green and gold, so contrary to
the dark red that she still wore. She lay down beside me, trusting me,
and, as for me, I trusted nothing.
   I only licked the human blood on my lips and wondered how long I
might have on this earth before someone struck off my head with a swift

and certain sword.


                                    15

                       THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION


THE city of Florence was in an uproar. "Why?" I asked.
   It was well past curfew, to which I no one was paying much
attention, and there was a huge crowd of students congregated in Santa
Maria Maggiori--the Duomo-- listening to a lecture by a humanist who
pleaded that Fra Filippo Lippi was not such a pig.
   No one took much note of us. We had fed early, in the countryside,
and wore heavy mantles, and what could they see of us but a little pale
flesh?
   I went into the church. The crowd came out almost to the doors.
   "What's the matter? What's happened to the great painter?"
   "Oh, he's done it now," said the man who answered me, not even
bothering to look at me or at the slender figure of Ursula clinging to
me.
   The man was too intent on looking at the lecturer, who stood up
ahead, his voice echoing sharply in the overwhelming large nave.
"Done what?"
   Getting no answer, I pushed my way a little deeper into the thick,
odiferous human crowd, pulling Ursula with me. She was still shy of
such an immense city, and she had not seen a Cathedral on this scale in
the more than two hundred years of her life.
   Once again I put my question to two young students, who turned at
once to answer me, fashionable boys both, about eighteen, or what they
called then in Florence giovani, being the most difficult of youths,
too old to be a child, such as I was, and too young to be a man.
   "Well, he asked for the fairest of the nuns to pose for the
altarpiece that he was painting of the blessed Virgin, that's what he
did," said the first student, black-haired and deep-eyed, staring at me
with a cunning smile. "He asked for her as a model, asked that the
convent choose her for him, so that the Virgin he painted would be most
perfect, and then..."
The other student took it up.
   ".. . he ran off with her! Stole the nun right out of the convent,
ran off with her and her sister, mind you, her blood-kindred sister,
and has set up his household right over his shop, he and his nun and
her sister, the three of them, the monk and the two nuns . . . and
lives in sin with her, Lucrezia Buti, and paints the Virgin on the
altarpiece and does not give a damn what anyone thinks."
   There was jostling and pushing in the crowd about us. Men told us to
be quiet. The students were choking on their laughter.
   "If he didn't have Cosimo," said the first student, lowering his
voice in an obedient but mischievous whisper, "they'd string him up, I
mean her family, the Buti, would at least, if not the priests of the
Carmelite Order, if not the whole damned town."
   The other student shook his head and covered his mouth not to laugh
out loud.
   The speaker, far ahead, advised all to remain calm and let this
scandal and outrage be handled by the proper authorities, for everyone
knew that nowhere in all of Florence was there a painter any greater

than Fra Filippo, and that Cosimo would tend to this in his own time.
   "He's always been tormented," said the student beside me.
   "Tormented," I whispered. "Tormented." His face came back to me, the
monk glimpsed years ago in Cosimo's house in the Via Larga, the man
arguing so fiercely to be free, only to be with a woman for a little
while. I felt the strangest conflict within, the strangest darkest
fear. "Oh, that they don't hurt him again."
   "One might wonder," came a soft voice in my ear. I turned, but I saw
no one who could have spoken to me. Ursula looked about.
"What is it, Vittorio?"
   But I knew the whisper, and it came again, bodiless and intimate,
"One might wonder, where were his guardian angels on the day that Fra
Filippo did such a mad thing?"
I turned in a mad frantic circle, searching for the origin of the
voice. Men backed away from me and made little gestures of annoyance. I
snatched up Ursula's hand and made for the doors.
   Only when I was outside in the piazza did my heart stop pounding. I
had not known that with this new blood I could feel such anxiety and
misery and fear.
   "Oh, run off with a nun to paint the Virgin!" I cried out under my
breath.
"Don't cry, Vittorio," she said.
   "Don't speak to me as if I were your little brother!" I said to her,
and then was full of shame. She was stricken by my words, as if I'd
slapped her. I took her fingers and kissed them. "I'm sorry, Ursula, I
am sorry."
I pulled her along beside me.
"But where are we going?"
   "To the house of Fra Filippo, to his workshop. Don't question me
now."
   Within moments we had found our way, echoing and clattering down the
narrow street, and we stood before the doors that were shut up and I
could see no light, save in the third-story windows, as though he had
had to flee to that height with his bride.
No mob was gathered here.
   But out of the darkness there came suddenly a handful of filth
heaved at the bolted doors, and then another and then a volley of
stones. I stepped back, shielding Ursula, and watched as one passerby
after another slunk forward and hurled his insults at the shop.
Finally, I lay against the wall opposite, staring dully in the
darkness, and I heard the deep-throated bell of the church ring the
hour of eleven, which meant surely that all men must vacate the
streets.
   Ursula only waited on me and said nothing, and she noted it quietly
when I looked up and saw the last of Fra Filippo's lights go out.
   "It's my doing," I said. "I took his angels from him, and he fell
into this folly, and for what did I do it, for what, that I might
possess you as surely now as he possesses his nun?"
   "I don't know your meaning, Vittorio," she said. "What are nuns and
priests to me? I have never said a word to wound you, never, but I say
such words now. Don't stand here weeping over these mortals you loved.
We are wedded now, and no convent vow or priestly anointment divides
us. Let's go away from here, and when by light of lamps you want to
show me the wonders of this painter, then bring me, bring me to see the
angels of which you spoke rendered in pigment and oil."
   I was chastened by her firmness. I kissed her hand again. I told her
I was sorry. I held her to my heart.

   How long I might have stood with her there, I don't know. Moments
passed. I heard the sound of running water and distant footsteps, but
nothing of consequence, nothing which mattered in the thick night of
crowded Florence, with its four- and five-story palaces, with its old
half-broken towers, and its churches, and its thousands upon thousands
of sleeping souls.
A light startled me. It fell down upon me in bright yellow seams. I saw
the first, a thin line of brilliance. It cut across her figure, and
then there came another, illuminating the alley-like street beyond us,
and I realized that the lamps had been lighted within Fra Filippo's
shop.
   I turned just as the bolts inside were made to slide back with a
low, grating noise. The noise echoed up the dark walls. No light shone
above, behind the barred windows.
   Suddenly the doors were opened and slapped back softly, soundlessly
almost, against the wall, and I saw the deep rectangle of the interior,
a wide shallow room filled with brilliant canvases all blazing above
candles enough to light a Bishop's Mass.
   My breath left me. I clutched her tightly, my hand on the back of
her head as I pointed.
   "There they are, both of them, the Annuncia-tions!" I whispered. "Do
you see the angels, the angels who kneel, there, and there, the angels
who kneel before the Virgins!''
   "I see them," she said reverently. 'Ah, they are more lovely even
than I supposed." She shook my arm. "Don't cry, Vittorio, unless it's
for beauty's sake, only for that."
   "Is that a command, Ursula?" I asked. My eyes were so clouded I
could scarce see the poised flat kneeling figures of Ramiel and
Setheus.
   But as I tried to clear my vision, as I tried to gather my wits and
swallow the ache in my throat, the miracle I feared more than anything
in this world, yet craved, yet hungered for--that miracle commenced.
Out of the very fabric of the canvas, they appeared simultaneously, my
silk-clad blond-haired angels, my haloed angels, to unravel from the
tight weave itself. They turned, gazing at me first and then moving so
that they were no longer flat profiles but full robust figures, and
then they stepped out and onto the stones of the shop.
   I knew by Ursula's gasp that she had seen the same vivid series of
miraculous gestures. Her hand went to her lips.
   Their faces bore no wrath, no sadness. They merely looked at me, and
in their sweet soft looks was all the condemnation I have ever
understood.
   "Punish me," I whispered. "Punish me by taking away my eyes that I
can never see your beauty again."
   Very slowly, Ramiel shook his head to answer no. And Setheus
followed with the same negation. They stood side by side in their bare
feet, as always, their abundant garments too light for movement on the
heavy air, as they merely continued to gaze.
   "What then?" I said. "What do I deserve from you? How is it that I
can see you and see your glory even still?" I was a wreck of childish
tears again, no matter how Ursula stared at me, no matter how she tried
with her silent reproach to make the man of me.
I couldn't stop myself.
"What then? How can I see you still?"
   "You'll always see us," Ramiel said softly, tonelessly.
   "Every time you ever look at one of his paintings, you will see us,"
said Setheus, "or you will see our like."

   There was no judgment in it. There was merely the same lovely
serenity and kindness that they had always bestowed on me.
   But it was not finished. I saw behind them, taking dark shape, my
own guardians, that solemn ivory pair, draped in their robes of shadowy
blue.
   How hard were their eyes, how knowing, how disdainful yet without
the edge which men lend to such passions. How glacial and remote.
   My lips parted. A cry was there. A terrible cry. But I dared not
rouse the night around me, the infinite night that moved out over the
thousands of slanted red-tile rooftops, out over the hills and the
country, out under the numberless stars.
   Suddenly the entire building began to move. It trembled, and the
canvases, brilliant and shimmering in their bath of burning light, were
glittering as if shaken by a tremor of the very earth itself.
   Mastema appeared suddenly before me, and the room was swept
backward, broadened, deepened, and all those lesser angels were swept
back from him as if by a soundless wind that cannot be defied.
   The flood of light ignited his immense gold wings as they spread
out, crowding the very corners of the vastness and pushing it even to
greater breadth, and the red of his helmet glared as if it were molten,
and out of his sheath, he drew his sword.
   I backed up. I forced Ursula behind me. I pushed her back against
the damp cold wall and imprisoned her there, behind me, as safe as I
could make her on the face of the earth, with my arms stretched back to
hold her so that she could not, must not, be taken away.
   "Ah," said Mastema, nodding, smiling. The sword was uplifted. "So
even now you would go into Hell rather than see her die!"
"I would!" I cried. "I have no choice."
"Oh, yes, you have a choice."
   "No, not her, don't kill her. Kill me, and send me there, yes, but
give her one more chance ..."
   Ursula cried against my shoulders, her hands clinging to my hair,
catching hold of it, as if by means of it she'd be safe.
   "Send me now," I said. "Go ahead, strike off my head and send me to
my judgment before the Lord that I may beg for her! Please, Mastema, do
it, but do not strike her. She does not know how to ask to be forgiven.
Not yet!"
   Holding the sword aloft, he reached out and grabbed my collar and
jerked me towards him. I felt her fly against me. He held me beneath
his face, and glowered down at me with his beaming eyes.
"And when will she learn, and when will you?"
What could I say? What could I do?
   "I will teach you, Vittorio," said Mastema in a low, seething
whisper. "I will teach you so that you know how to beg forgiveness
every night of your life. I will teach you."
   I felt myself lifted, I felt my garments blown by the wind, I felt
her tiny hands clinging to me, and the weight of her head on my back.
   Through the streets we were being dragged, and suddenly there
appeared before us a great crowd of idle mortals issuing from a wine
shop, drunken and laughing, a great jumble of swollen, natural faces
and dark breeze-tossed clothes.
   "Do you see them, Vittorio? Do you see those upon whom you feed?"
Mastema demanded.
   "I see them, Mastema!" I said. I groped for her hand, trying to find
her, hold her, shield her. "I do see them, I do."
   "In each and every one of them, Vittorio, there is what I see in
you, and in her--a human soul. Do you know what that is, Vittorio? Can

you imagine?"
I didn't dare to answer.
   The crowd spread out over the moonlighted piazza, and drew closer to
us, even as it loosened.
   "A spark of the power that made all of us is within each of them,"
cried Mastema, "a spark of the invisible, of the subtle, of the sacred,
of the mystery--a spark of that which created all things."
   'Ah, God!" I cried out. "Look at them, Ursula, look!"
   For each and every one of them, man, woman, it did not matter old or
young, had taken on a powerful hazy golden glow. A light emanated from
and surrounded and embraced each figure, a subtle body of light shaped
to the very form of the human being who walked in it, unheeding of it,
and the entire square was full of such golden light.
   I looked down at my own hands, and they too were surrounded by this
subtle, etheric body, this lovely gleaming and numinous presence, this
precious and unquenchable fire.
   I pivoted, my garments snagging around me, and I saw this flame
envelop Ursula. I saw her living and breathing within it, and, turning
back to the crowd, I saw again that each and every one of them lived
and breathed in it, and I knew suddenly, understood perfectly--I would
always see it. I would never see living human beings, be they monstrous
or righteous, without this expanding, blinding, fire of the soul.
   "Yes," Mastema whispered in my ear. "Yes. Forever, and every time
you feed, every time you raise one of their tender throats to your
cursed fangs, every time you drink from them the lurid blood you would
have, like the worst of God's beasts, you will see that light flicker
and struggle, and when the heart stops at the will of your hunger, you
will see that light go out!"
I broke away from him. He let me go.
   With her hand only, I ran. I ran and ran towards the Arno, towards
the bridge, towards the taverns that might still be open, but long
before I saw the blazing flames of the souls there, I saw the glow of
the souls from hundreds of windows, I saw the glow of souls from
beneath the bottoms of bolted doors.
   I saw it, and I knew that he spoke the truth. I would always see it.
I would see the spark of the Creator in every human life I ever
encountered, and in every human life I took.
Reaching the river, I leant over the stone railing.

I cried out and cried out and let my cries echo over the water and up
the walls on either side. I was mad with grief, and then through the
darkness there came a toddling child towards me, a beggar, already
versed in words to speak for bread or coins or any bit of charity that
any man would vouchsafe him, and he glowed and sputtered and glittered
and danced with brilliant and priceless light.




                                   16

                   AND THE DARKNESS GRASPED IT NOT

OVER the years, every time I saw one of Fra Filippo's magnificent
creations, the angels came alive for me. It was I only for an instant,
only enough to prick the heart and draw the blood, as if with a needle,
to the core.
   Mastema himself did not appear in Fra Filippo's work until some
years later, when Fra Filippo, struggling and arguing as always, was
working for Piero, the son of Cosimo, who had gone to his grave.
   Fra Filippo never did give up his precious nun, Lucrezia Buti, and
it was said of Filippo that every Virgin he ever painted--and there were
many-- bore Lucrezia's beautiful face. Lucrezia gave Fra Filippo a son,
and that painter took the name Filippino, and his work too was rich in
magnificence and rich in angels, and those angels too have always for
one instant met my eyes when I came to worship before those canvases,
sad and brokenhearted and full of love and afraid.
   In 1469, Filippo died in the town of Spoleto, and there ended the
life of one of the greatest painters the world has ever known. This was
the man who was put on the rack for fraud, and who had debauched a
convent; this was a man who painted Mary as the frightened Virgin, as
the Madonna of Christmas Night, as the Queen of Heaven, as the Queen of
All Saints.
   And I, five hundred years after, have never strayed too far from
that city which gave birth to Filippo and to that time we call the Age
of Gold.
Gold. That is what I see when I look at you.
   That is what I see when I look at any man, woman, child.
   I see the flaming celestial gold that Mastema revealed to me. I see
it surrounding you, and holding you, encasing you and dancing with you,
though you yourself may not behold it, or even care.
   From this tower tonight in Tuscany I look out over the land, and far
away, deep in the valleys, I see the gold of human beings, I see the
glowing vitality of beating souls.
So you have my story.
What do you think?
   Do you not see a strange conflict here? Do you see a dilemma?
Let me put it to you this way.
   Think back to when I told you about how my father and I rode through
the woods together and we spoke of Fra Filippo, and my father asked me
what it was that drew me to this monk. I said that it was struggle and
a divided nature in Filippo which so attracted me to him, and that from
this divided nature, this conflict, there came a torment to the faces
which Filippo rendered in paint.
Filippo was a storm unto himself. So am I.
   My father, a man of calm spirits and simpler thoughts, smiled at
this.
   But what does it mean in relationship to this tale?
   Yes, I am a vampire, as I told you; I am a thing that feeds on
mortal life. I exist quietly, contentedly in my homeland, in the dark
shadows of my home castle, and Ursula is with me as always, and five
hundred years is not so long for a love as strong as ours.
   We are demons. We are damned. But have we not seen and understood
things, have I not written things here that are of value to you? Have I
not rendered a conflict so full of torment that something looms here
which is full of brilliance and color, not unlike Filippo's work? Have
I not embroidered, interwoven and gilded, have I not bled?
   Look at my story and tell me that it gives you nothing. I don't
believe you if you say that.
   And when I think back on Filippo, and his rape of Lucrezia, and all

his other tempestuous sins, how can I separate them from the
magnificence of his paintings? How can I separate the violation of his
vows, and his deceits and his quarrels, from the splendor which Filippo
gave to the world?
   I am not saying I am a great painter. I am not such a fool. But I
say that out of my pain, out of my folly, out of my passion there comes
a vision-- a vision which I carry with me eternally and which I offer to
you.
   It is a vision of every human being, bursting with fire and with
mystery, a vision I cannot deny, nor blot out, nor ever turn away from,
nor ever belittle nor ever escape.
Others write of doubt and darkness.
Others write of meaninglessness and quiet.
   I write of indefinable and celestial gold that will forever burn
bright.
   I write of blood thirst that is never satisfied. I write of
knowledge and its price.
   Behold, I tell you, the light is there in you. I see it. I see it in
each and every one of us, and will always. I see it when I hunger, when
I struggle, when I slaughter. I see it sputter and die in my arms when
I drink.
   Can you imagine what it would be like for me to kill you?
   Pray it never takes a slaughter or a rape for you to see this light
in those around you. God forbid it that it should demand such a price.
Let me pay the price for you instead.


                              THE END

SELECTED AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I went to Florence to receive this manuscript directly from Vittorio di
Raniari. It was my fourth visit to the city, and it was with Vittorio
that I decided to list here a few books for those of you who might want
to know more about the Age of Gold in Florence and about Florence
itself.
   Let me recommend first and foremost, and above all others, the
brilliant Public Life in Renaissance Florence by Richard C. Trexler,
published today by Cornell University Press.
   Professor Trexler has also written other wonderful books on Italy,
but this book is a particularly rich and inspiring one, especially for
me, because Professor Trexler's analyses and insights regarding
Florence have helped me to understand my own city of New Orleans,
Louisiana, better than anything directly written by anyone about New
Orleans itself.
   New Orleans, like Florence, is a city of public spectacles, rituals
and feast days, of demonstrations of communal celebration and belief.
It is almost impossible to realistically explain New Orleans, and its
Mardi Gras, its St. Patrick's Day and its annual Jazz Fest, to those
who have not been here. Professor Trexler's brilliant scholarship gave
me tools to gather thoughts about and observations pertaining to those
things I most love.
Other works by Professor Trexler include his Journey of the Magi:
Meanings in History of a Christian Story, a work only recently
discovered by me. Readers familiar with my previous novels might
remember the intense and blasphemously fervent relationship between my
character the vampire Armand and the Florentine painting The Procession

of the Magi, created for Piero de' Medici by Benozzo Gozzoli, which can
be seen in all its glory in Florence today.
   On the subject of the great painter Fra Filippo Lippi, let me first
recommend his biography by the painter Vasari for its rich though
unauthenticated details.
   Also, there is the bright and shiny book Filippo Lippi, published by
Scala, text by Gloria Fossi, which is for sale in numerous translations
in Florence and other places in Italy as well. The only other book of
which I know that is exclusively devoted to Filippo is the immense Fra
Filippo Lippi by Jeffrey Ruda, subtitled Life and Work, with a Complete
Catalogue. It is published by Phaidon Press in England and distributed
in America by Harry N. Abrams.
   The most enjoyable books for the general reader that I have read on
Florence and on the Medici have been by Christopher Hibbert, including
his Florence: The Biography of a City, published by Norton, and The
House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall, published by Morrow.
   There is also The Medici of Florence: A Family Portrait, by Emma
Micheletti, published by Becocci Editore. The Medici by James Cleugh,
published originally in 1975, is available now through Barnes & Noble.
   Popular books on Florence and Tuscany--travelers' observations,
loving memoirs and tributes--abound. Primary sources in translation--that
is, letters and diaries and histories written during the Renaissance in
Florence--are everywhere on library and bookstore shelves.
   In trying to render correctly Vittorio's quotations from Aquinas, I
used the translation of the Summa Theologica by Fathers of the English
Dominican Province. In dealing with St. Augustine, I have used Henry
Bettenson's translation of The City of God, published by Penguin Books.
   I caution readers to avoid abridged versions of Augustine's works.
Augustine lived in a pagan world where the most theologically
scrupulous Christians still believed in the demonic existence of fallen
pagan gods. To understand Florence and her fifteenth-century romance
with the joys and freedoms of a classical heritage, one must read
Augustine and Aquinas in their full context.
   For those who would read more about the marvelous museum of San
Marco, there are countless works on Fra Angelico, the monastery's most
famous painter, which include descriptions and details regarding the
building, and there are many books available on the architecture of
Florence entire. I owe a debt of gratitude not only to the museum of
San Marco for having so beautifully preserved the architectural work of
Michelozzo, so praised in this novel, but for the publications readily
available in the shop there on monastery's architecture and art.
   In closing, let me add this: if Vittorio were asked to name a
recording of Renaissance music which best captures the mood of the High
Mass and Communion which he witnessed at the Court of the Ruby Grail,
it would inevitably be the All Souls' Vespers, requiem music from
Cordoba Cathedral, performed by the Orchestra of the Renaissance led by
Richard Cheetham--though I must confess, this music is described as
circa 1570--some years after Vittorio's fearful ordeal. The recording is
available on the Veritas label, through Virgin Classics London and New
York.
   In closing these notes, allow me one final quote from St.
Augustine's The City of God.
For God would never have created a man, let alone an angel, in the
foreknowledge of his future evil state, if he had not known at the same
time how he would put such creatures to good use, and thus enrich the
course of the world history by the kind of antithesis which gives
beauty to a poem.

   I personally do not know whether or not Augustine is right.
   But I do believe this: it is worthwhile to try to make a painting,
or a novel... or a poem.
Anne Rice


                                                        U.K. Cover




                                CONVERTED TO "PDF" BY ->MKM<-
Merrick
By Anne Rice


FOR
Stan Rice
And
Christopher Rice
And
Nancy Rice Diamond



                                                  THE TALAMASCA

                                             Investigators of the Paranormal
                                                        We watch
                                                And we are almays here.

                                          LONDON AMSTERDAM                 ROME




                                                 MERRICK


                                                       Proem
  MY NAME is David Talbot.
  Do any of you remember me as the Superior General of the Talamasca, the Order of psychic detectives whose motto
was "We watch and we are always here"?
  It has a charm, doesn't it, that motto?
  The Talamasca has existed for over a thousand years.

  I don't know how the Order began. I don't really know all the secrets of the Order. I do know however that I served it
most of my mortal life.
  It was in the Talamasca Motherhouse in England that the Vampire Lestat first made himself known to me. He came into
my study one winter night and caught me quite unawares.
  I learnt very quickly that it was one thing to read and write about the supernatural and quite another to see it with your
own eyes.
  But that was a long time ago.
  I'm in another physical body now.
  And that physical body has been transformed by Lestat's powerful vampiric blood.
  I'm among the most dangerous of the vampires, and one of the most trusted. Even the wary vampire Armand revealed to
me the story of his life. Perhaps you've read the biography of Armand which I released into the world.
  When that story ended, Lestat had wakened from a long sleep in New Orleans to listen to some very beautiful and
seductive music.
  It was music that lulled him back again into unbroken silence as he retreated once more to a convent building to lie upon
a dusty marble floor.
  There were many vampires then in the city of New Orleans--vagabonds, rogues, foolish young ones who had come to
catch a glimpse of Lestat in his seeming helplessness. They menaced the mortal population. They annoyed the elders
among us who wanted invisibility and the right to hunt in peace.
  All those invaders are gone now.
  Some were destroyed, others merely frightened. And the elders who had come to offer some solace to the sleeping
Lestat have gone their separate ways.
  As this story begins, only three of us remain in New Orleans. And we three are the sleeping Lestat, and his two faithful
fledglings--Louis de Pointe du Lac, and I, David Talbot, the author of this tale.




                                                                1


  "WHY DO You ask me to do this thing?"
  She sat across the marble table from me, her back to the open doors of the café.
  I struck her as a wonder. But my requests had distracted her. She no longer stared at me, so much as she looked into my
eyes.
  She was tall, and had kept her dark-brown hair loose and long all her life, save for a leather barrette such as she wore
now, which held only her forelocks behind her head to flow down her back. She wore gold hoops dangling from her small
earlobes, and her soft white summer clothes had a gypsy flare to them, perhaps because of the red scarf tied around the
waist of her full cotton skirt.
  "And to do such a thing for such a being?" she asked warmly, not angry with me, no, but so moved that she could not
conceal it, even with her smooth compelling voice. "To bring up a spirit that may be filled with anger and a desire for
vengeance, to do this, you ask me,for Louis de Pointe du Lac, one who is already beyond life himself?"
  "Who else can I ask, Merrick?" I answered. "Who else can do such a thing?" I pronounced her name simply, in the
American style, though years ago when we'd first met, she had spelled it Merrique and pronounced it with the slight touch
of her old French.
  There was a rough sound from the kitchen door, the creak of neglected hinges. A wraith of a waiter in a soiled apron
appeared at our side, his feet scratching against the dusty flagstones of the floor.
  "Rum," she said. "St. James. Bring a bottle of it."
  He murmured something which even with my vampiric hearing I did not bother to catch. And away he shuffled, leaving
us alone again in the dimly lighted room, with all its long doors thrown open to the Rue St. Anne.
  It was vintage New Orleans, the little establishment. Overhead fans churned lazily, and the floor had not been cleaned in
a hundred years.

  The twilight was softly fading, the air filled with the fragrances of the Quarter and the sweetness of spring. What a kind
miracle it was that she had chosen such a place, and that it was so strangely deserted on such a divine evening as this.
  Her gaze was steady but never anything but soft.
  "Louis de Pointe du Lac would see a ghost now," she said, musing, "as if his suffering isn't enough."
  Not only were her words sympathetic, but also her low and confidential tone. She felt pity for him.
  "Oh, yes," she said without allowing me to speak. "I pity him, and I know how badly he wants to see the face of this
dead child vampire whom he loved so much." She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. "You come with names which are all
but legend. You come out of secrecy, you come out of a miracle, and you come close, and with a request."
  "Do it, then, Merrick, if it doesn't harm you," I said. "I'm not here to bring harm to you. God in Heaven help me. Surely
you know as much."
  "And what of harm coming to your Louis?" she asked, her words spoken slowly as she pondered. "A ghost can speak
dreadful things to those who call it, and this is the ghost of a monster child who died by violence. You ask a potent and
terrible thing."
  I nodded. All she said was true.
  "Louis is a being obsessed," I said. "It's taken years for his obsession to obliterate all reason. Now he thinks of nothing
else."
  "And what if I do bring her up out of the dead? You think there will be a resolution to the pain of either one?"
  "I don't hope for that. I don't know. But anything is preferable to the pain Louis suffers now. Of course I have no right to
ask this of you, no right to come to you at all.
  "Yet we're all entangled--the Talamasca and Louis and I. And the Vampire Lestat as well. It was from the very bosom
of the Talamasca that Louis de Pointe du Lac heard a story of the ghost of Claudia. It was to one of our own, a woman
named Jesse Reeves--you'll find her in the archives-that this ghost of Claudia supposedly first appeared."
  "Yes, I know the story," said Merrick. "It happened in the Rue Royale. You sent Jesse Reeves to investigate the
vampires. And Jesse Reeves came back with a handful of treasures that were proof enough that a child named Claudia, an
immortal child, had once lived in the flat."
  "Quite right," I answered. "I was wrong to send Jesse. Jesse was too young. Jesse was never--." It was difficult for me
to finish. "Jesse was never quite as clever as you."
  "People read it among Lestat's published tales and think it's fancy," she said, musing, thinking, "all that about a diary, a
rosary, wasn't it, and an old doll. And we have those things, don't we? They're in the vault in England. We didn't have a
Louisiana Motherhouse in those days. You put them in the vault yourself "
  "Can you do it?" I asked. "Will you do it? That's more to the point. I have no doubt that you can."
  She wasn't ready to answer. But we had made a great beginning here, she and I.
  Oh, how I had missed her! This was more tantalizing than I'd ever expected, to be locked once more in conversation
with her. And with pleasure I doted upon the changes in her: that her French accent was completely gone now and that she
sounded almost British, and that from her long years of study overseas. She'd spent some of those years in England with
me.
  "You know that Louis saw you," I said gently. "You know that he sent me to ask you. You know that he knew of your
powers from the warning he caught from your eyes?"
  She didn't respond.
  "'I've seen a true witch,'" he said when he came to me. 'She wasn't afraid of me. She said she'd call up the dead to defend
herself if I didn't leave her alone.'"
  She nodded, regarding me with great seriousness.
  "Yes, all that's the truth," she answered under her breath. "He crossed my path, you might say." She was mulling it over.
"But I've seen Louis de Pointe du Lac many a time. I was a child when I first saw him, and now you and I speak of this for
the first time."
  I was quite amazed. I should have known she would surprise me at once.
  I admired her immensely. I couldn't disguise it. I loved the simplicity of her appearance, her white cotton scoop neck
blouse with its simple short sleeves and the necklace of black beads around her neck.
  Looking into her green eyes, I was suddenly overcome with shame for what I'd done, revealing myself to her. Louis had
not forced me to approach her. I had done this of my own accord. But I don't intend to begin this narrative by dwelling on
that shame.
  Let me say only that we'd been more than simple companions in the Talamasca together. We'd been mentor and pupil, I
and she, and almost lovers, once, for a brief while. Such a brief while.

  She'd come as a girl to us, a vagrant descendant of the clan of the Mayfairs, out of an African American branch of that
family, coming down from white witches she scarcely knew, an octoroon of exceptional beauty, a barefoot child when she
wandered into the Motherhouse in Louisiana, when she said, "I've heard of you people, I need you. I can see things. I can
speak with the dead."
  That had been over twenty years ago, it seemed to me now.
  I'd been the Superior General of the Order, settled into the life of a gentlemanly administrator, with all the comforts and
drawbacks of routine. A telephone call had wakened me in the night. It had been from my friend and fellow scholar,
Aaron Lightner.
  "David," he'd said, "you have to come. This is the genuine article. This is a witch of such power I've no words to
describe it. David, you must come...."
  There was no one in those days whom I respected any more deeply than Aaron Lightner. I've loved three beings in all
my years, both as human and vampire. Aaron Lightner was one of them. Another was, and is, the Vampire Lestat. The
Vampire Lestat brought me miracles with his love, and broke my mortal life forever. The Vampire Lestat made me
immortal and uncommonly strong for it, a nonpareil among the vampires.
  As for the third, it was Merrick Mayfair, though Merrick I had tried my damndest to forget.
  But we are speaking of Aaron, my old friend Aaron with his wavy white hair, quick gray eyes, and his penchant for
southern blue-and-white-striped seersucker suits. We are speaking of her, of the long ago child Merrick, who seemed as
exotic as the lush tropical flora and fauna of her home.
  "All right, old fellow, I'm coming, but couldn't this have waited till morning?" I remembered my stodginess and Aaron's
good-natured laughter.
  "David, what's happened to you, old man?" he'd responded. "Don't tell me what you're doing now, David. Let me tell
you. You fell asleep while reading some nineteenth-century book on ghosts, something evocative and comforting. Let me
guess. The author's Sabine BaringGould. You haven't been out of the Motherhouse in six months, have you? Not even for
a luncheon in town. Don't deny it, David, you live as if your life's finished."
  I had laughed. Aaron spoke with such a gentle voice. It wasn't Sabine Baring-Gould I'd been reading, but it might have
been. I think it had been a supernatural tale by Algernon Blackwood. And Aaron had been right about the length of time
since I'd stepped outside of our sanctified walls.
  "Where's your passion, David? Where's your commitment?" Aaron had pressed. "David, the child's a witch. Do you
think I use such words lightly? Forget the family name for a moment and all we know about them. This is something that
would astound even our Mayfairs, though she'll never be known to them if I have my say in matters. David, this child can
summon spirits. Open your Bible and turn to the Book of Samuel. This is the Witch of Endor. And you're being as cranky
as the spirit of Samuel when the witch raised him from his sleep. Get out of bed and cross the Atlantic. I need you here
now."
  The Witch of Endor. I didn't need to consult my Bible. Every member of the Talamasca knew that story only too well.
  King Saul, in fear of the might of the Philistines, goes, before the dreaded battle, to "a woman with a familiar spirit" and
asks that she raise Samuel the Prophet from the dead. "Why has thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" demands the ghostly
prophet, and in short order he predicts that King Saul and both his sons will join him in death on the following day.
  The Witch of Endor. And so I had always thought of Merrick, no matter how close to her I'd become later on. She was
Merrick Mayfair, the Witch of Endor. At times I'd addressed her as such in semi-official memos and often in brief notes.
  In the beginning, she'd been a tender marvel. I had heeded Aaron's summons, packing, flying to Louisiana, and setting
foot for the first time in Oak Haven, the splendid plantation home which had become our refuge outside of New Orleans,
on the old River Road.
  What a dreamy event it had been. On the plane I had read my Old Testament: King Saul's sons had been slain in battle.
Saul had fallen on his sword. Was I superstitious after all? My life I'd given to the Talamasca, but even before I'd begun
my apprenticeship I'd seen and commanded spirits on my own. They weren't ghosts, you understand. They were nameless,
never corporeal, and wound up for me with the names and rituals of Brazilian Candomble magic, in which I'd plunged so
recklessly in my youth.
  But I'd let that power grow cold inside me as scholarship and devotion to others claimed me. I had abandoned the
mysteries of Brazil for the equally wondrous world of archives, relics, libraries, organization, and tutelage, lulling others
into dusty reverence for our methods and our careful ways. The Talamasca was so vast, so old, so loving in its embrace.
Even Aaron had no clue as to my old powers, not in those days, though many a mind was open to his psychic sensibility. I
would know the girl for what she was.

  It had been raining when we reached the Motherhouse, our car plunging into the long avenue of giant oaks that led from
the levee road to the immense double doors. How green had been this world even in darkness, with twisted oak branches
dipping into the high grass. I think the long gray streaks of Spanish moss touched the roof of the car.
  The electric power had gone out that night with the storm, they told me.
  "Rather charming," Aaron had said as he greeted me. He'd been white-haired already by then, the consummate older
gentleman, eternally good-natured, almost sweet. "Lets you see things as they were in the old days, don't you think?"
  Only oil lamps and candles illuminated the large square rooms. I had seen the flicker in the fanlight above the
entranceway as we approached. Lanterns swayed in the wind in the deep galleries that wrapped the great square house
about on its first and second floors.
  Before entering, I had taken my time, rain or no rain, to inspect this marvelous tropical mansion, impressed with its
simple pillars. Once there had been sugarcane for miles all around it; out back beyond the flower beds, still vaguely
colored in the downpour, were weathered outbuildings where once slaves had lived.
  She came down barefoot to meet me, in a lavender dress covered with pink flowers, scarcely the witch at all.
  Her eyes couldn't have been more mysterious had she worn the kohl of a Hindu princess to set off the color. One saw
the green of the iris, and the dark circle around it, as well as the black pupil within. A marvelous eye, all the more vivid
due to her light-tan creamy skin. Her hair had been brushed back from her forehead, and her slender hands merely hung at
her sides. How at ease she'd seemed in the first moments.
  "David Talbot," she had said to me almost formally. I'd been enchanted by the confidence in her soft voice.
  They couldn't break her of the barefoot habit. It had been dreadfully enticing, those bare feet on the wool carpet. She'd
grown up in the country, I thought, but no, they said, it was merely in an old tumbledown part of New Orleans where there
were no sidewalks anymore and the weather-beaten houses were neglected and the blossoming and poisonous oleander
grew as big as trees.
  She had lived there with her godmother, Great Nananne, the witch who'd taught her all the things that she knew. Her
mother, a powerful seer, known to me then only by the mysterious name of Cold Sandra, had been in love with an
explorer. There was no father of memory. She'd never gone to a real school.
  "Merrick Mayfair," I'd said warmly. I took her in my arms.
  She had been tall for her fourteen years, with beautifully shaped breasts quite natural under her simple cotton shift, and
her soft dry hair had been loose down her back. She might have been a Spanish beauty to anyone outside of this bizarre
part of the Southland, where the history of the slaves and their free descendants was so full of complex alliances and
erotic romance. But any New Orleanean could see African blood in her by the lovely café au lait of her skin.
  Sure enough, when I poured the cream into the thick chicory coffee that they gave me, I understood those words.
  "All my people are colored," she said, with the French in her voice then. "Those that pass for white leave and go north.
That's been happening forever. They don't want Great Nananne to visit. They don't want anyone to know. I could pass for
white. But what about the family? What about all that's been handed down? I would never leave Great Nananne. I came
here 'cause she told me to come."
  She had a temptress's poise as she sat there, small in the great winged chair of oxblood leather, a tiny tantalizing gold
chain around her ankle, another with a small diamond-studded cross around her neck.
  "See these pictures?" she said invitingly. She had them in a shoe box which rested in her lap. "There's no witchcraft in
them. You can look as you please."
  She laid them out on the table for me, daguerreotypes--stark clear photographs on glass, each one fitted into a
crumbling little case of gutter perche, heavily embossed with rings of flowers or grapevines, many of which could be
closed and clasped shut like little books.
  "They come from the 1840s," she said, "and they're all our people. One of our own took these pictures. He was known
for taking portraits. They loved him. He left some stories--I know where they are. They're all written with beautiful
handwriting. They're in a box in the attic of Great Nananne's house."
  She had moved to the edge of the chair, her knees poking out from under her skimpy hem. Her hair made a big mass of
shadows behind her. Her hairline was clean and her forehead smooth and beautiful. Though the night had been only cool,
there was a fire in the fireplace, and the room, with its shelves of books and its random Grecian sculptures, had been
fragrant and comfortable, conducive to a spell.
  Aaron had been watching her proudly, yet full of concern.
  "See, these are all my people from the old days." She might have been laying out a deck of cards. The flash of the
shadows was lovely on her oval face and the distinct bones of her cheeks. "You see, they kept together. But as I said, the
ones that could pass are long gone. Look what they gave up, just think of it, so much history. See this?"
  I studied the small picture, glinting in the light of the oil lamp.

  "This is Lucy Nancy Marie Mayfair, she was the daughter of a white man, but we never knew much about him. All
along there would be white men. Always white men. What these women did for white men. My mother went to South
America with a white man. I went with them. I remember the jungles." Had she hesitated, picking up something from my
thoughts, perhaps, or merely my doting face?
  I would never forget my own early years of exploration in the Amazon. I suppose I didn't want to forget, though nothing
had made me more painfully conscious of my old age than to think of those adventures with gun and camera, lived on the
bottom side of the world. I never dreamt then that I would return to uncharted jungles with her.
  I had stared again at the old glass daguerreotypes. Not a one among any of these individuals looked anything but rich--
top hats and full taffeta skirts against studio backdrops of drapery and lavish plants. Here was a young woman beautiful as
Merrick was now, sitting so prim and upright, in a high-backed Gothic chair. How to explain the remarkably clear
evidence of African blood in so many of them? It seemed no more in some than an uncommon brightness of the eye
against a darkened Caucasian face, yet it was there.
  "Here, this is the oldest," she said, "this is Angelique Marybelle Mayfair." A stately woman, dark hair parted in the
middle, ornate shawl covering her shoulders and full sleeves. In her fingers she clasped a barely visible pair of spectacles
and a folded fan.
  "She's the oldest and finest picture that I have. She was a secret witch, that's what they told me. There's secret witches
and witches people come to. She was the secret kind, but she was smart. They say she was lovers with a white Mayfair
who lived in the Garden District, and he was by blood her own nephew. I come down from her and from him. Oncle
Julien, that was his name. He let his colored cousins call him Oncle Julien, instead of Monsieur Julien, the way the other
white men might have done."
  Aaron had tensed but sought to hide it. Perhaps he could hide it from her, but not from me.
  So he's told her nothing of that dangerous Mayfair family. They haven't spoken of it--the dreadful Garden District
Mayfairs, a tribe with supernatural powers, whom he had investigated for years. Our files on the Mayfairs went back for
centuries. Members of our Order had died at the hands of the Mayfair Witches, as we were wont to call them. But this
child mustn't know about them through us, I had realized quite suddenly, at least not until Aaron had made up his mind
that such an intervention would serve the good of both parties, and do no harm.
  As it was, such a time never came to pass. Merrick's life was complete and separate from that of the white Mayfairs.
There is nothing of their story in these pages that I now write.
  But on that long ago evening, Aaron and I had sought rather desperately to make our minds blank for the little witch
who sat before us.
  I don't remember whether or not Merrick had glanced at us before she went on.
  "There are Mayfairs living in that Garden District house even now," she had said matter-of-factly, "--white people, who
never had much to do with us, except through their lawyers." How worldly her little laugh had sounded--the way people
laugh when they speak of lawyers.
  "The lawyers would come back of town with the money," she said with a shake of her head. "And some of those
lawyers were Mayfairs; too. The lawyers sent Angelique Marybelle Mayfair north to a fine school, but she came home
again to live and die right here. I would never go to those white people." The remark had been almost offhanded. She went
on.
  "But Great Nananne talks about Oncle Julien just as if he was living now, and they all said it when I was growing up,
that Oncle Julien was a kind man. Seems he knew all his colored relations, and they said that man could kill his enemies
or yours with the look in his eye. He was a houn'gan if there ever was one. I have more to say about him by and by."
  She had glanced quite suddenly at Aaron and I'd seen him glance away from her almost shyly. I wonder if she had seen
the future--that the Talamasca File on the Mayfair Witches would swallow Aaron's life, as surely as the Vampire Lestat
had swallowed mine.
  I wondered what she thought about Aaron's death even now, as we sat at the cafe table, as I spoke softly to the
handsome and welldefended woman whom that little girl had become.
  The feeble old waiter brought her the fifth of rum she had requested, the St. James from Martinique, dark. I caught the
powerful scent of it as he filled her small, heavy octagonal glass. Memories flooded my mind. Not the beginning with her,
but other times.
  She drank it just the way I knew she would, in the manner I remembered, as if it were nothing but water. The waiter
shuffled back to his hiding place. She lifted the bottle before I could do it for her, and she filled the glass again.
  I watched her tongue move along the inside of her lip. I watched her large searching eyes look up again into my face.
  "Remember drinking rum with me?" she asked, almost smiling, but not quite. She was far too tense, too alert for that
just yet. "You remember," she said. "I'm talking about those brief nights in the jungle. Oh, you are so right when you say

that the vampire is a human monster. You're still so very human. I can see it in your expression. I can see it in your
gestures. As for your body, it's totally human. There isn't a clue. . ."
  "There are clues," I said, contradicting her. "And as time passes you'll see them. You'll become uneasy, and then fearful
and, finally, accustomed. Believe me, I know."
  She raised her eyebrows, then accepted this. She took another sip and I imagined how delicious it was for her. I knew
that she did not drink every day of her life, and when she did drink she enjoyed it very much.
  "So many memories, beautiful Merrick," I whispered. It seemed paramount that I not give in to them, that I concentrate
on those memories which most certainly enshrined her innocence and reminded me of a sacred trust.
  To the end of Aaron's life, he had been devoted to her, though he seldom spoke of it to me. What had she learnt of the
tragic hit-and-run accident that had caught Aaron unawares? I had been already gone out of the Talamasca, out of Aaron's
care, and out of life.
  And to think we had lived such long mortal lives as scholars, Aaron and I. We should have been past all mishap. Who
would have dreamt that our research would ensnare us and turn our destiny so dramatically from the dedication of those
long loyal years? But hadn't the same thing happened to another loyal member of the Talamasca, my beloved student
Jesse Reeves?
  Back then, when Merrick had been the sultry child and I the amazed Superior General, I had not thought my few
remaining years held any great surprise.
  Why had I not learnt from the story of Jesse? Jesse Reeves had been my student even more surely than Merrick ever
became, and the vampires had swallowed Jesse whole and complete.
  With great devotion Jesse had sent me one last letter, thick with euphemisms, and of no real value to anyone else, letting
me know that she would never see me again. I had not taken Jesse's fate as a caution. I had thought only that for the
intense study of the vampire, Jesse Reeves had been too young.
  It was all past. Nothing remained of that heartbreak. Nothing remained of those mistakes. My mortal life had been
shattered, my soul soaring and then fallen, my vampire life erasing all the small accomplishments and consolations of the
man I'd once been. Jesse was among us and I knew her secrets, and that she'd always be quite faraway from me.
  What mattered now was the ghost that Jesse had only glimpsed during her investigations, and the ghost story that
haunted Louis, and the bizarre request which I now made to my be] oved Merrick that she call the ghost of Claudia with
all her uncommon skill.




                                                                2


  IN THE STILL CAFÉ, I watched Merrick take another deep drink of the rum. I treasured the interval in which she let
her eyes pass slowly over the dusty room.
  I let my mind return to that long ago night at Oak Haven, as the rain struck the windowpanes. The air had been warm
and heavy with the scent of the oil lamps and the busy fire on the hearth. Spring was upon us but the storm had cooled the
air. She'd been speaking of the white family named Mayfair of whom she knew so little, she said.
  "None of us with any sense would do that," she continued, "go to those white cousins, expecting anything from any of
them on account of a name." She had brushed it all aside. "I'm not going to white people and try to tell them that I'm their
own."
  Aaron had looked at me, his quick gray eyes concealing even his tenderest emotions, but I knew that he wanted me to
respond.
  "There's no need, child," I had said. "You are ours now, if you choose to be. We are your own. Why, it's already
understood. This is your home forever. Only you can change things, if you wish."
  A chill had come over me, of something momentous and meaningful, when I'd spoken those words to her. I had
indulged the pleasure. "We'll always take care of you." I had underscored it, and I might have kissed her had she not been
so ripe and pretty, with her bare feet on the flowered carpet and her breasts naked beneath her shift.
  She had not replied.

  "All gentlemen and ladies, it seems," Aaron had said, perusing the daguerreotypes. "And in such excellent condition,
these little portraits." He had sighed. "Ah, what a wonder it must have been in the 1840s when they learnt to take these
pictures."
  "Oh, yes, my great-great uncle wrote all about it," she had said. "I don't know if anyone can read those pages anymore.
They were crumbling to bits when Great Nananne first showed them to me. But as I was saying, these are all his pictures.
Here, the tintypes, he did those too." She had a woman's weariness in her sigh, as though she'd lived it all. "He died very
old, they say, with a house full of pictures, before his white nephews came and actually broke them up--but I'll come to
that."
  I had been shocked and bruised by such a revelation, unable to excuse it. Broken daguerreotypes. Faces lost forever. She
had gone on, lifting the small rectangles of tin, many unframed yet clear, from her cardboard treasure chest.
  "I open boxes sometimes from Great Nananne's rooms, and the paper is all little bits and pieces. I think the rats come
and they eat the paper. Great Nananne says rats will eat your money and that's why you have to keep it in an iron box.
Iron's magical, you know that. The sisters--I mean the nuns--they don't know that. That's why in the Bible you couldn't
build with an iron shovel, because iron was mighty and you couldn't put the iron shovel above the bricks of the Lord's
temple, not then, and not now."
  It seemed a bizarre intelligence, though she had been most technically correct.
  She'd let her words wander. "Iron and shovels. It goes way back. The King of Babylon held a shovel in his hand with
which he laid the bricks of the temple. And the Masons, now they keep that idea in their Order, and on the one-dollar bill
you see that broken pyramid of bricks."
  It had amazed me, the case with which she touched on these complex concepts. What had she known in her life, I
wondered. What sort of woman would she prove to be?
  I remember that she'd been looking at me, as she'd said those words, gauging my reaction, perhaps, and it had only then
become clear to me how much she needed to talk of the things she'd been taught, of the things she thought, of the things
she'd heard.
  "But why are you so good?" she had asked, searching my face rather politely. "I know with priests and nuns why they're
good to us. They come and bring food and clothes to us. But you, why are you good? Why did you let me in and give me
a room here? Why do you let me do what I want? All day Saturday I looked at magazines and listened to the radio. Why
do you feed me and try to get me to wear shoes?"
  "Child," Aaron had interjected. "We're almost as old as the Church of Rome. We're as old as the orders of the sisters and
the priests who've visited you. Yes, older, I would say, than almost all."
  Still she had looked to me for an explanation.
  "We have our beliefs and our traditions," I had said. "It's common to be bad, to be greedy, to be corrupt and
self-seeking. It's a rare thing to love. We love."
  Again, I had enjoyed our sense of purpose, our commitment--that we were the inviolate Talamasca, that we cared for
the outcast, that we harbored the sorcerer and the seer, that we had saved witches from the stake and reached out even to
the wandering spirits, yes, even to the shades whom others fear. We had done it for well over a thousand years.
  "But these little treasures--your family, your heritage," I'd hastened to explain. "They matter to us because they matter
to you. And they will always be yours."
  She'd nodded. I had got it right.
  "Witchcraft's my calling card, Mr. Talbot," she'd said shrewdly, "but all this comes with me too."
  I had enjoyed the. fleeting enthusiasm which had illuminated her face.
  And now, some twenty years after, what had I done, seeking her out, finding her old house in New Orleans deserted,
and spying upon her at Oak Haven, walking the broad upstairs galleries of Oak Haven like an old Penny Dreadful
Vampire, looking into her very bedroom until she sat up and spoke my name in the darkness.
  I had done her evil, I knew it, and it was exciting, and I needed her, and I was selfish, and I missed her, and it was as
plain as that.
  It had been only a week ago that I wrote to her.
  Alone in the town house in the Rue Royale, I'd written by hand in a style that hadn't changed with my fortunes:

  Dear Merrick,
    Yes, it was I whom you saw on the porch outside your room.
    It was not my intention to frighten you but merely to solace myself by looking at you, playing the guardian angel, I
  must confess, if you will forgive me, as I hovered outside the window for the better part of the night.

    I have a request for you, which I make from my soul to yours. I cannot tell you what it is in this letter. I ask that you
  meet me in some place that is public, where you will feel safe from me, a place that you yourself choose. Answer at this
  post box, and I'll be prompt in replying. Merrick, forgive me. If you advise the Elders or the Superior General of this
  contact, they will in all likelihood forbid you to meet with me. Please give me this little while to speak with you before
  you take such a step.
    Yours in the Talamasca forever,
                                                               David Talbot.

  What audacity and egoism to have written such a note and delivered it into the iron mailbox at the end of the drive in the
hours before dawn.
  She'd written back, a note rather tantalizing in its details, full of undeserved affection.

    I cannot wait to talk with you. Be assured, whatever shocks this meeting will hold in store for me, I seek you inside
  the mystery--David, whom I have always loved. You were my Father when I needed you, and my friend ever after. And
  I have glimpsed you since your metamorphosis, perhaps more often than you know.
    I know what happened to you. I know of those with whom you live. The Café of the Lion. Rue St. Anne. Do you
  remember it? Years ago, before we ever went to Central America, we ate a quick lunch there. You were so wary of us
  setting out for those jungles. Do you remember how you argued? I think I used a witch's charms to persuade you. I
  always thought you knew. I'll come early each evening for several nights in hopes that you'll be there.

  She had signed the note exactly as I had signed my own:
  "Yours in the Talamasca forever."
  I had put myself before my love of her, and my duty to her. I was relieved that the deed was done.
  Back then, when she'd been the orphan in the storm, such a thing had been unthinkable. She was my duty, this little
wanderer who had come so surprisingly, on her own, one evening to knock on our door.
  "Our motives are the same as your motives," Aaron had said to her most directly on that long ago night at Oak Haven.
He'd reached out and lifted her soft brown hair back from her shoulder, as if he were her elder brother. "We want to
preserve knowledge. We want to save history. We want to study and we hope to understand."
  He had made another soft sigh, so unlike him.
  "Ah, those white cousins, the Garden District Mayfairs, as you called them, and most correctly, yes, we know of them,"
he had admitted, surprising me, "but we keep our secrets unless prompted by duty to reveal them. What is their long
history to you just now? Their lives are interconnected like thorny vines forever circling and recircling the same tree.
Your life might have nothing to do with that bitter struggle. What concerns us here now is what we can do for you. I don't
speak idle words when I tell you that you may rely upon us forever. You are, as David has said, our own."
  She had reflected. It had not been simple for her to accept all of this, she was too used to being alone with Great
Nananne--yet something strong had impelled her to trust us before she'd ever come.
  "Great Nananne trusts you," she had said, as if I'd asked her. "Great Nananne said that I was to come to you. Great
Nananne had one of her many dreams and woke up before daylight and rang her bell for me to come. I was sleeping on
the screen porch and I came in and found her standing up in her white flannel gown. She's cold all the time, you know; she
always wears flannel, even on the hottest night. She said for me to come sit down and listen to what she had dreamed."
  "Tell me about it, child," Aaron had asked. Had they not spoken of this completely before I'd come?
  "She dreamed of Mr. Lightner, of you," she'd said, looking to Aaron, "and in the dream you came to her with Oncle
Julien, white Oncle Julien from the clan uptown. And the two of you sat by her bed.
  "Oncle Julien told her jokes and stories and said he was happy to be in her dream. She said that. Oncle Julien said that I
was to go to you, you here, Mr. Lightner, and that Mr. Talbot would come. Oncle Julien spoke French and you yourself
were sitting in the cane-backed chair and smiling and nodding to her, and you brought her in a cup of coffee and cream
the way she likes it, with half a cup of sugar and one of her favorite silver spoons. In and out of her dreams, Great
Nananne has a thousand silver spoons." The dream continued:
  "You sat on her bed, finally, on her best quilt beside her, and you took her hand, and she had all her best rings on her
hand, which she doesn't wear anymore, you know, and you said in the dream, 'You send me little Merrick,' and you said
you'd take care of me, and you told her that she was going to die."
  Aaron had not heard this strange recounting, and he'd seemed quite taken, amazed. Lovingly, he'd answered:
  "It must have been Oncle Julien who said such a thing in the dream. How could I have known such a secret?"

  I'd never forgotten his protest, because it had been very unlike him to commit himself even to ignorance, and to press so
hard upon such a point.
  "No, no, you told her," the fairy child had said. "You told her the day of the week and the hour of the clock, and it's yet
to come." She had looked thoughtfully once more at her pictures. "Don't worry about it. I know when it's going to
happen." Her face had been suddenly full of sadness. "I can't keep her forever. Les mystères will not wait."
  Les mystères. Did she mean the ancestors, the Voodoo gods, or merely the secrets of fate? I'd been unable to penetrate
her thoughts to any degree whatsoever.
  "St. Peter will be waiting," she'd murmured as the visible sadness had slowly receded behind her veil of calm.
  Quite suddenly, she'd flashed her glance on me and murmured something in French. Papa Legba, god of the crossroads
in Voodoo, for whom a statue of St. Peter with his keys to Heaven might do quite well.
  I had noted that Aaron could not bring himself to question her further on the matter of his role in the dream, the date of
Great Nananne's imminent death. He had nodded, however, and once again, with both hands he'd lifted her hair back from
her damp neck where a few errant tendrils had clung to her soft creamy skin.
  Aaron had regarded her with honest wonder as she had gone on with her tale.
  "First thing I knew after that dream, there was an old colored man and a truck ready to take me, and he said, 'You don't
need your bag, you just come as you are,' and I climbed up into the truck with him, and he drove me all the way out here,
not even talking to me, just listening to some old Blues radio station and smoking cigarettes the whole way. Great
Nananne knew it was Oak Haven because Mr. Lightner told her in the dream....
  "Great Nananne knew of Oak Haven of the old days, when it was a different kind of house with a different name. Oncle
Julien told her lots of other things, but she didn't tell me what they were. She said, 'Go to them, The Talamasca; they'll
take care of you, and it will be the way for you and all the things that you can do.' "
  It had chilled: all the things that you can do. I remember Aaron's sad expression. He had only given a little shake of
his head. Don't worry her now, I'd thought a bit crossly, but the child had not been perturbed.
  Oncle Julien of Mayfair fame was no stranger to my memory; I had read many chapters on the career of this powerful
witch and seer, the one male in his bizarre family to go against the goad of a male spirit and his female witches over many
hundreds of years. Oncle Julien--mentor, madman, cocksman, legend, father of witches--and the child had said that she
had come down from him.
  It had to be powerful magic, but Oncle Julien had been Aaron's field, not mine.
  She had watched me carefully as she spoke.
  "I'm not used to people believing me," she'd said, "but I am used to making people afraid."
  "How so, child?" I had asked. But she had frightened me quite enough with her remarkable poise and the penetration of
her gaze. What could she do? Would I ever know? It had been worth pondering on that first evening, for it was not our
way to encourage our orphans to give full vent to their dangerous powers; we had been devoutly passive in all such
respects.
  I had banished my unseemly curiosity and set to memorizing her appearance, as was my custom in those days, by
looking very carefully at every aspect of her visage and form.
  Her limbs had been beautifully molded; her breasts were already too fetching, and the features of her face were large, all
of them--with no unique hint of the African-large her well-shaped mouth, and large her almond eyes and long nose; her
neck had been long and uncommonly graceful, and there had been a harmony to her face, even when she had fallen into
the deepest thought.
  "Keep your secrets of those white Mayfairs," she had said. "Maybe someday we can swap secrets, you and me. They
don't even know in these times that we are here. Great Nananne said that Oncle Julien died before she was born. In the
dream, he didn't say a word about those white Mayfairs. He said for me to come here." She had gestured to the old glass
photographs. "These are my people. If I'd been meant to go to those white Mayfairs, Great Nananne would have seen it
long before now." She'd paused, thoughtfully. "Let's us just talk of those old times."
  She'd spaced the daguerreotypes lovingly on the mahogany table. She made a neat row, wiping away the crumbly
fragments with her hand. And at some moment, I'd noted that all the little figures were upside down from her point of
view, and right side up for Aaron and for me.
  "There've been white people kin to me that have come down here and tried to destroy records," she said, "You know,
tear the page right out of the church register that says their great-grandmother was colored. Femme de couleur fibre, that's
what some old records say in French.
  "Imagine tearing up that much history, the page right out of the church register with all those births and deaths and
marriages, and not wanting to know. Imagine going into my great-great oncle's house and breaking up those pictures,
pictures that ought to be someplace safe for lots of people to see."

  She had sighed, rather like a weary woman, gazing down into the worn shoe box and its trophies.
  "Now I have these pictures. I have everything, and I'm with you, and they can't find me, and they can't throw all these
things away."
  She had dipped her hand into the shoe box again and taken out the cartes de visite--old photographs on cardboard from
the last decades of the old century. I could see the high slanted letters in faded purple on the backs of these latest pictures
as she turned them this way and that.
  "See, this here is Oncle Vervain," she said. I had looked at the thin, handsome black-haired young man with the dark
skin and light eyes like her own. It was rather a romantic portrait. In a finely tailored three-piece suit, he stood with his
arm on a Greek column before a painted sky. The picture was in rich sepia. The African blood was plainly present in the
man's handsome nose and mouth.
  "Now, this is dated 1920." She turned it over once, then back again, and laid it down for us to see. "Oncle Vervain was a
Voodoo Doctor," she said, "and I knew him well before he died. I was little, but I'll never forget him. He could dance and
spit the rum from between his teeth at the altar, and he had everybody scared, I can tell you."
  She took her time, then found what she wanted. Next picture.
  "And you see here, this one?" She had laid down another old photograph, this time of an elderly gray-haired man of
color in a stately wooden chair. "The Old Man is what they always called him. I don't even know him by any other name.
He went back to Haiti to study the magic, and he taught Oncle Vervain all he knew. Sometimes I feel Oncle Vervain is
talking to me. Sometimes I feel he's outside our house watching over Great Nananne. I saw the Old Man once in a dream."
  I had wanted so badly to ask questions, but this had not been the time.
  "See here, this is Pretty Justine," she had said, laying down perhaps the most impressive portrait of all--a studio picture
on thick cardboard inside a sepia cardboard frame. "Pretty Justine had everybody afraid of her." The young woman was
indeed pretty, her breasts flat in the style of the 1920s her hair in a bob, her dark skin quite beautiful, her eyes and mouth
slightly expressionless, or perhaps evincing a certain pain.
  Now came the modern snapshots, thin and curling, the work of common enough hand-held cameras of the present time.
  "They were the worst--his sons," she had said as she pointed to the curling black-and-white picture. "They were Pretty
Justine's grandchildren, all white and living in New York. They wanted to get their hands on anything that said they were
colored and tear it up. Great Nananne knew what they wanted. She didn't fall for their soft manners and the way they took
me downtown and bought me pretty clothes. I still have those clothes. Little dresses nobody ever wore and little shoes
with clean soles. They didn't leave us an address when they left. See, look at them in the picture. Look how anxious they
are. But I did bad things to them."
  Aaron had shaken his head, studying the strange tense faces. As the pictures had disquieted me, I had kept my eyes on
the womanish child.
  "What did you do, Merrick?" I had asked without biting my tongue wisely.
  "Oh, you know, read their secrets in their palms and told them bad things they'd always tried to cover up. It wasn't kind
to do that, but I did it, just to make them go away. I told them our house was full of spirits. I made the spirits come. No, I
didn't make them come. I called them and they came as I asked. Great Nananne thought it was funny. They said, 'Make
her stop,' and Great Nananne said, 'What makes you think I can do that?' as if I was some wild creature that she couldn't
control."
  Again there had come that little sigh.
  "Great Nananne's really dying," she said looking up at me, her green eyes never wavering. "She says there is no one
now, and I have to keep these things--her books, her clippings. See, look here, at these clippings. The old newspaper is so
brittle it's falling apart. Mr. Lightner's going to help me save these things." She glanced at Aaron. "Why are you so afraid
for me, Mr. Talbot? Aren't you strong enough? You don't think it's so bad to be colored, do you? You're not from here,
you're from away."
  Afraid. Was I really feeling it so strongly? She'd spoken with authority, and I'd searched for the truth in it, but come
quick to my own defense and perhaps to hers as well.
  "Read my heart, child," I said. "I think nothing of the sort about being colored, though maybe there were times when
I've thought that it might have been bad luck in a particular case." She'd raised her eyebrows slightly, thoughtfully. I'd
continued, anxious, perhaps, but not afraid. "I'm sad because you say you have no one, and I'm glad because I know that
you have us."
  "That's what Great Nananne says, more or less," she answered. And for the first time, her long full mouth made a true
smile.

  My mind had drifted, remembering the incomparable dark-skinned women I'd seen in India, though she was a marvel of
different tones, the rich mahogany hair and the pale eyes so visible and so meaningful. I'd thought again that to many she
must have looked exotic, this barefoot girl in the flowered shift.
  Then had come a moment of pure feeling, which had made its indelible and irrational impression. I'd perused the many
faces laid out upon the table, and it had seemed they were all gazing at me. It was a marked impression. The little pictures
had been alive all along.
  It must be the firelight and the oil lamps, I'd thought dreamily, but I'd been unable to shake the feeling; the little people
had been laid out to look at Aaron and to look at me. Even their placement seemed deliberate and sly, or wondrously
meaningful, I'd conjectured, as I went smoothly from suspicion to a lulled and tranquil feeling that I was in an audience
with a host of the dead.
  "They do seem to be looking," Aaron had murmured, I remember, though I'm sure I hadn't spoken. The clock had
stopped ticking and I'd turned to look at it, uncertain where it was. On the mantle, yes, and its hands had been frozen, and
the window-panes had given that muffled rattle that they do when the wind nudges them, and the house had wrapped me
securely in its own atmosphere of warmth and secrets, of safety and sanctity, of dreaminess and communal might.
  It seemed a long interval had transpired in which none of us had spoken, and Merrick had stared at me, and then at
Aaron, her hands idle, her face glistening in the light.
  I'd awakened sharply to realize nothing had changed in the room. Had I fallen asleep? Unforgivable rudeness. Aaron
had been beside me as before. And the pictures had become once more inert and sorrowful, ceremonial testimony to
mortality as surely as if she'd laid out a skull for my perusal from a graveyard fallen to ruin. But the uneasiness I'd
experienced then stayed with me long after we'd all gone up to our respective rooms.
  Now--after twenty years and many other strange moments--she sat across from me at this cafe table in the Rue St.
Anne, a beauty gazing at a vampire, and we talked over the flickering candle, and the light was too much like the light of
that long ago evening at Oak Haven, though tonight the late spring evening was only moist, not wet with a coming storm.
  She sipped the rum, rolling it around a bit before she swallowed it. But she didn't fool me. She'd soon start drinking it
fast again. She set the glass aside and let her fingers spread wide apart on the soiled marble. Rings. Those were Great
Nananne's many rings, beautiful gold filigree with various wondrous stones. She'd worn them even in the jungles, when
I'd thought it so unwise. She'd never been prone to fear of any sort.
  I thought of her in those hot tropical nights. I thought of her during those steamy hours under the high canopy of green. I
thought of the trek through the darkness of the ancient temple. I thought of her climbing ahead of me, in the steam and
roar of the waterfall up the gentle slope.
  I'd been far too old for it, our great and secret adventure. I thought of precious objects made of jade as green as her eyes.
  Her voice brought me out of my selfish reverie:
  "Why are you asking me to do this magic?" She put the question to me again. "I sit here and I took at you, David, and
with every passing second, I become more aware of what you are and what's happened to you. I put all kinds of pieces
together from your open mind--and your mind's as open as it ever was, David, you know that, don't you?"
  How resolute was her voice. Yes, the French was utterly gone. Ten years ago it had been gone. But now there was a
clipped quality to her words, no matter how soft and low they came.
  Her large eyes widened easily with her expressive verbal rhythms.
  "You couldn't even be quiet of mind on the porch the other night," she scolded. "You woke me. I heard you, just as if
you'd been tapping on the panes. You said, 'Merrick, can you do it? Can you bring up the dead for Louis de Pointe du
Lac?' And do you know what I heard underneath it? I heard 'Merrick, I need you. I need to talk to you. Merrick, my
destiny is shattered. Merrick, I reach for understanding. Don't turn me aside.'"
  I felt an acute pain in my heart.
  "It's true what you're saying," I confessed.
  She drank another big swallow of the rum, and the heat danced in her cheeks.
  "But you want this thing for Louis," she said. "You want it enough to overcome your own scruples and come to my
window. Why? You, I understand. Of him, I know other people's stories and just the little I've seen with my own eyes.
He's a dashing young man, that one, isn't he?"
  I was too confused to answer, too confused to will courtesy to build a temporary bridge of polite lies.
  "David, give me your hand, please," she asked suddenly. "I have to touch you. I have to feel this strange skin."
  "Oh, darling, if only you could forego that," I murmured.
  Her large golden earrings moved against the nest of her black hair and the long line of her beautiful neck. All the
promise of the child had been fulfilled in her. Men admired her enormously. I had known that a long time ago.
  She reached out to me gracefully. Boldly, hopelessly, I gave her my hand.

  I wanted the contact. I wanted the intimacy. I was powerfully stimulated. And treasuring the sensation, I let her fingers
linger as she looked into my palm.
  "Why read this palm, Merrick?" I asked. "What can it tell you? This body belonged to another man. Do you want to
read the map of his broken fate? Can you see there that he was murdered and the body stolen? Can you see there my own
selfish invasion of a body that ought to have died?"
  "I know the story, David," she answered. "I found it all in Aaron's papers. Body switching. Highly theoretical as regards
the official position of the Order. But you were a grand success."
  Her fingers sent the thrills up my spine and through the roots of my hair.
  "After Aaron's death, I read the whole thing," she said, as she moved her fingertips across the pattern of deeply etched
lines. She recited it:
  "'David Talbot is no longer in his body. During an ill-fated experiment with astral projection he was ousted from his
own form by a practiced Body Thief and forced to claim the youthful trophy of his opponent, a body stolen from a
shattered soul which has, as far as we can know, moved on.'"
  I winced at the old familiar Talamasca style.
  "I wasn't meant to find those papers," she continued, her eyes still fixed on my palm. "But Aaron died here, in New
Orleans, and I had them in my hands before anyone else. They're still in my possession, David; they have never been filed
with the Elders and maybe they never will be filed. I don't know."
  I was amazed at her audacity, to have held back such secrets from the Order to which she still devoted her life. When
had I ever had such independence, except perhaps at the very end?
  Her eyes moved quickly back and forth as she examined my palm. She pressed her thumb softly against my flesh. The
chills were unbearably enticing. I wanted to take her in my arms, not feed from her, no, not harm her, only kiss her, only
sink my fangs a very little, only taste her blood and her secrets, but this was dreadful and I wouldn't let it go on.
  I withdrew my outstretched hand.
  "What did you see, Merrick?" I asked quickly, swallowing the hunger of body and mind.
  "Disasters large and small, my friend, a life line that goes on as long as any, stars of strength, and a brood of offspring."
  "Stop it, I don't accept it. The hand's not mine."
  "You have no other body now," she countered. "Don't you think the body will conform to its new soul? The palm of a
hand changes over time. But I don't want to make you angry. I didn't come here to study you. I didn't come here to stare in
cold fascination at a vampire. I've glimpsed vampires. I've even been close to them, in these very streets. I came because
you asked me and because I wanted ... to be with you."
  I nodded, overcome and unable for the moment to speak. With quick gestures I pleaded for her silence.
  She waited.
  Then at last:
  "Did you ask permission of the Elders for this meeting?"
  She laughed but it wasn't cruel. "Of course I did not."
  "Then know this," I said. "It started the same way with me and the Vampire Lestat. I didn't tell the Elders. I didn't let
them know how often I saw him, that I brought him into my house, that I conversed with him, traveled with him, taught
him how to reclaim his preternatural body when the Body Thief tricked him out of it."
  She tried to interrupt me but I would have none of it.
  "And do you realize what's happened to me?" I demanded. "I thought I was too clever for Lestat ever to seduce me. I
thought I was too wise in old age for the seduction of immortality. I thought I was morally superior, Merrick, and now you
see what I am."
  "Aren't you going to swear to me that you'll never hurt me?" she asked, her face beautifully flushed. "Aren't you going
to assure me that Louis de Pointe du Lac would never bring me harm?"
  "Of course I am. But there's a bit of decency left in me, and that decency compels me to remind you that I'm a creature
of supernatural appetite."
  Again she tried to interject, but I wouldn't allow it.
  "My very presence, with all its signals of power, can erode your own tolerance for living, Merrick; it can eat away your
faith in a moral order, it can hurt your willingness to die an ordinary death."
  "Ah, David," she said, chiding me for my official tone. "Speak plainly. What's in your heart? " She sat up straight in the
chair, her eyes looking me up and down. "You look boyish and wise in this young body. Your skin's darkened like mine!
Even your features have the stamp of Asia. But you're more David than you ever were!"
  I said nothing.

  I watched through dazed eyes as she drank more of the rum. The sky darkened behind her, but bright, warm electric
lights filled up the outside night. Only the café itself was veiled in dreary shadow, what with its few dusty bulbs behind
the bar.
  Her cool confidence chilled me. It chilled me that she had so fearlessly touched me, that nothing in my vampire nature
repelled her, but then I could well remember how Lestat in all his subdued glory had attracted me. Was she attracted? Had
the fatal fascination begun?
  She kept her thoughts half concealed as she always had.
  I thought of Louis. I thought of his request. He wanted desperately for her to work her magic. But she was right. I
needed her. I needed her witness and her understanding.
  When I spoke, my words were full of heartbreak and wonder, even to myself.
  "It's been magnificent," I said. "And unendurable. I am most truly out of life and can't escape from it. I have no one to
whom I can give what I learn."
  She didn't argue with me or question me. Her eyes seemed suddenly to be full of sympathy, her mask of composure to
be gone. I'd seen such sharp changes in her many times. She concealed her emotions except for such silent and eloquent
moments.
  "Do you think," she asked, "that if you hadn't taken up life in the young body, that Lestat would have forced you as he
did? If you'd still been old--our David, our blessed David, aged seventy-four, wasn't it?--do you think if you'd still been
our honorable Superior General that Lestat would have brought you over?"
  "I don't know," I said shortly, but not without feeling. "I've often asked myself the same question. I honestly don't know.
These vampires ... ah, I mean, we ... we vampires, we love beauty, we feed on it. Our definition of beauty expands
enormously, you can't quite imagine how much. I don't care how loving your soul, you can't know how much we find
beautiful that mortals don't find beautiful, but we do propagate by beauty, and this body has beauty which I've used to evil
advantage countless times."
  She lifted her glass in a small salute. She drank deeply.
  "If you'd come up to me with no preamble," she said, "whispering in a crowd as you touched me--I would have known
you, known who you were." A shadow fell over her face for a moment, and then her expression became serene. "I love
you, old friend," she said.
  "You think so, my darling?" I asked. "I have done many things to feed this body; not so very lovely to think about that
at all."
  She finished the glass, set it down, and, before I could do it for her, she reached for the bottle again.
  "Do you want Aaron's papers?" she asked.
  I was completely taken aback.
  "You mean you're willing to give them to me?"
  "David, I'm loyal to the Talamasca. What would I be if it weren't for the Order?" She hesitated, then: "But I'm also
deeply loyal to you." For a few seconds she was musing. "You were the Order for me, David. Can you imagine what I felt
when they told me you were dead?"
  I sighed. What could I say in answer?
  "Did Aaron tell you how we grieved for you, all those of us who weren't entrusted with a speck of the truth?"
  "From my soul, I'm sorry, Merrick. We felt we kept a dangerous secret. What more can I say?"
  "You died here in the States, in Miami Beach, that was the story. And they'd flown the remains back to England before
they even called to tell me you were gone. You know what I did, David? I made them hold the casket for me. It was
sealed shut when I got to London but I made them open it. I made them do it. I screamed and carried on until they gave in
to me. Then I sent them out of the room and I stayed alone with that body, David, that body all powdered and prettied up
and nestled in its satin. I stayed there for an hour perhaps. They were knocking on the door. Then finally I told them to
proceed."
  There was no anger in her face, only a faint wondering expression.
  "I couldn't let Aaron tell you," I said, "not just then, not when I didn't know whether I'd survive in the new body, not
when I didn't understand what life held for me. I couldn't. And then, then it was too late."
  She raised her eyebrows and made a little doubting gesture with her head. She sipped the rum.
  "I understand," she said.
  "Thank God," I answered. "In time, Aaron would have told you about the body switching," I insisted. "I know he would
have. The story of my death was never meant for you."
  She nodded, holding back the first response that came to her tongue.

  "I think you have to file those papers of Aaron's," I said. "You have to file them directly with the Elders and no one else.
Forget the Superior General of the moment."
  "Stop it, David," she responded. "You know it is much easier to argue with you now that you are in the body of a very
young man."
  "You never had difficulty arguing with me, Merrick," I retorted. "Don't you think Aaron would have filed the papers,
had he lived?"
  "Maybe," she said, "and maybe not. Maybe Aaron would have wanted more that you be left to your destiny. Maybe
Aaron wanted more that whatever you had become, you'd be left alone."
  I wasn't sure what she was saying. The Talamasca was so passive, so reticent, so downright unwilling in interfere in
anyone's destiny, I couldn't figure what she meant.
  She shrugged, took another sip of ram, and rolled the rim of the glass against her lower lip.
  "Maybe it doesn't matter," she said. "I only know that Aaron never filed the pages himself." She went on speaking:
  "The night after he was killed I went down to his house on Esplanade Avenue. You know he married a white Mayfair,
not a witch by the way, but a resilient and generous woman--Beatrice Mayfair is her name, she's still living--and at her
invitation I took the papers marked 'Talamasca.' She didn't even know what they contained.
  "She told me Aaron had once given her my name. If anything happened, she was to call me, and so she'd done her duty.
Besides, she couldn't read the documents. They were all in Latin, you know, Talamasca old style.
  "There were several files, and my name and number were written on the front of each, in Aaron's hand. One file was
entirely devoted to you, though only the initial, D, was used throughout. The papers on you, I translated into English. No
one's ever seen them. No one," she said with emphasis. "But I know them almost word for word."
  It seemed a comfort suddenly to hear her speaking of these things, these secret Talamasca things, which had once been
our stock in trade. Yes, a comfort, as if the warm presence of Aaron were actually with us again.
  She stopped for another sip of the rum.
  "I feel you ought to know these things," she said. "We never kept anything from each other, you and I. Not that I knew
of, but then of course my work was in the study of magic, and I did roam far and wide."
  "How much did Aaron know?" I asked. I thought my eyes were tearing. I was humiliated. But I wanted her to go on. "I
never saw Aaron after the vampiric metamorphosis," I confessed dully. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. Can you guess
why?" I felt a sharp increase in mental pain and confusion. My grief for Aaron would never go away, and I'd endured it
for years without a word to either of my vampire companions, Louis or Lestat.
  "No," she said. "I can't guess why. I can tell you. . . , " and here she hesitated politely so that I might stop her, but I did
not. "I can tell you that he was disappointed and forgiving to the end."
  I bowed my head. I pressed my forehead into my cold hand.
  "By his own account he prayed each day that you would come to him," she explained slowly, "that he'd have a chance
for one last conversation with you--about all you'd endured together and what had finally occurred to drive you apart."
  I must have winced. I deserved the misery, however, deserved it more than she could know. It had been indecent not to
have written to him! Lord God, even Jesse, when she'd vanished out of the Talamasca, had written to me!
  Merrick went on speaking. If she read my mind at all, she gave no clue.
  "Of course Aaron wrote all about your Faustian Body Switching, as he called it. He described you in the young body
and made many references to some investigation of the body, something you'd engaged in together, asserting that the soul
had certainly gone on. You experimented, didn't you, you and Aaron, with trying to reach the rightful soul, even at the risk
of your own death?"
  I nodded, unable to speak, feeling desperate and ashamed.
  "As for the wretched Body Thief, the little devil Raglan James who'd started the whole supernatural spectacle, Aaron
was convinced his soul was gone into eternity, as he put it, quite utterly beyond reach."
  "That's true," I concurred. "The file on him is closed, I'm quite convinced of it, whether it's incomplete or not."
  A darkness crept into her sad respectful expression. Some raw feeling had come to the surface, and for the moment she
broke off.
  "What else did Aaron write?" I asked her.
  "He referred to the Talamasca having unofficially helped 'the new David' reclaim his substantial investments and
property," she answered. "He felt strongly that no File on David's Second Youth must ever be created or committed to the
archives in London or in Rome."
  "Why didn't he want the switch to be studied?" I asked. "We had done everything we could for the other souls."
  "Aaron wrote that the whole question of switching was too dangerous, too enticing; he was afraid the material would
fall into the wrong hands."

  "Of course," I answered, "though in the old days we never had such doubts."
  "But the file was unfinished," she continued. "Aaron felt certain he would see you again. He thought that at times he
could sense your presence in New Orleans. He found himself searching crowds for your new face."
  "God forgive me," I whispered. I almost turned away. I bowed my head and shielded my eyes for a long moment. My
old friend, my beloved old friend. How could I have abandoned him so coldly? Why does shame and self-loathing become
cruelty to the innocent? How is that so often the case?
  "Go on, please," I said, recovering. "I want you to tell me all these things."
  "Do you want to read them for yourself?"
  "Soon," I answered.
  She continued, her tongue somewhat loosened by the ram, and her voice more melodic, with just a little of the old New
Orleans French accent coming back.
  "Aaron had seen the Vampire Lestat in your company once. He described the experience as harrowing, a word that
Aaron rather loved but seldom used. He said it was the night he came to identify the old body of David Talbot and to see
that it was properly buried. There you were, the young man, and the vampire stood beside you. He'd known you were on
intimate terms with one another, you and this creature. He had been afraid for you as much then as ever in his life."
  "What more?" I asked.
  "Later on," she said, her voice low and respectful, "when you disappeared quite completely, Aaron was certain that
you'd been forcibly changed by Lestat. Nothing short of that could explain your sudden break in communication, coupled
with the clear intelligence from your banks and agents that you were most definitely still alive. Aaron missed you
desperately. His life had been consumed with the problems of the white Mayfairs, the Mayfair Witches. He needed your
advice. He wrote many times in many ways that he was certain you never asked for the vampiric blood."
  For a long time I couldn't speak to answer her. I didn't weep because I don't. I looked off, eyes roaming the empty cafe
until they saw nothing, except perhaps the blur of the tourists as they crowded the street outside on their way to Jackson
Square. I knew perfectly well how to be alone in the midst of a terrible moment, no matter where it actually occurred. I
was alone now.
  Then I let my mind drift back to him, my friend Aaron, my colleague, my companion. I seized on memories far larger
than any one incident. I envisioned him, his genial face and clever gray eyes. I saw him strolling along the brightly lit
Ocean Avenue in Miami Beach, looking wonderfully out of place and richly like a splendid ornament to the bizarre
scenery, in his three-piece cotton pinstripe suit.
  I let the pain have me. Murdered for the secrets of the Mayfair Witches. Murdered by renegade beings in the Talamasca.
Of course he had not given up to the Order his report on me. It had been a time of troubles, hadn't it, and he had ultimately
been betrayed by the Order; and so my story would, within the fabled archives, remain forever incomplete.
  "Was there more?" I asked Merrick finally.
  "No. Only the same song with different rhythms. That was all." She took another drink. "He was terribly happy at the
end, you know."
  "Tell me."
  "Beatrice Mayfair, he loved her. He never expected to be happily married, but it had happened. She was a beautiful
highly social woman, rather like three or four people rolled into one. He told me he'd never had so much fun in his life as
he had with Beatrice, and she wasn't a witch, of course."
  "I'm so very glad to hear it," I said, my voice tremulous. "So Aaron became one of them, you might say."
  "Yes," she answered. "In all respects."
  She shrugged, the empty glass in her hand. Why she waited to take more, I wasn't certain; perhaps to impress me that
she wasn't the famous drunk that I knew her to be.
  "But I don't know anything about those white Mayfairs," she said finally. "Aaron always kept me away from them. My
work for the last few years had been in Voodoo. I've made trips to Haiti. I've written pages. You know I'm one of the few
members of the Order who is studying her own psychic power, with a license from the Elders to use the damnable magic,
as the Superior General calls it now."
  I hadn't known this. It had never even occurred to me that she'd returned to Voodoo, which had cast its generous shadow
over her youth. We had never in my time encouraged a witch to practice magic. Only the vampire in me could tolerate
such a thought.
  "Look," she said, "it doesn't matter that you didn't write to Aaron."
  "Oh, doesn't it?" I asked in a sharp whisper. But then I explained: "I simply couldn't write to him. I simply couldn't
speak on the phone. As for seeing him, or letting him see me, it was out of the question!" I whispered.
  "And it took five years," she said, "for you to finally come to me."

   "Oh, right to the point!" I responded. "Five years or more to do it. And had Aaron lived on, who knows what I would
have done? But the crucial factor was this: Aaron was old, Merrick. He was old and he might have asked me for the
blood. When you're old and you're afraid, when you're weary and you're sick, when you've begun to suspect that your life
means nothing ... Well, that's when you dream of vampiric bargains. That's when you think that somehow the vampiric
curse can't be so very dreadful, no, not in exchange for immortality; that's when you think that if only you had the chance,
you could become some premier witness to the evolution of the world around you. You cloak your selfish desires in the
grandiose."
   "And you think I never will think such thoughts?" She raised her eyebrows, her green eyes large and full of light.
   "You're young and beautiful," I said, "you were born and bred on courage. Your organs and limbs are as sound as your
mind. You've never been defeated, not by anything, and you're in perfect health."
   I was trembling all over. I couldn't endure much more of this. I'd dreamt of solace and intimacy, and this was intimacy,
but at a terrible price.
   How much easier it was to spend hours in the company of Lestat, who never spoke anymore, who lay still in a half
sleep, listening to music, having been waked by it and now lulled by it, a vampire who craved nothing more?
   How much easier to roam the city in the company of Louis, my weaker and ever charming companion, seeking out
victims and perfecting the "little drink" so that we left our prey dazzled and unharmed? How much easier to remain within
the sanctuary of the French Quarter town house, reading with a vampire's speed all the volumes of history or art history
over which I'd labored so slowly when a mortal man?
   Merrick merely looked at me with obvious sympathy, and then she reached out for my hand.
   I avoided her touch because I wanted it so much.
   "Don't back away from me, old friend," she said.
   I was too confused to speak.
   "What you want me to know," she said, "is that neither you nor Louis de Pointe du Lac will ever give me the blood, not
even if I beg you for it; that it can't be part of any bargain between us."
   "Bargain. It would be no bargain!" I whispered.
   She took another drink. "And you'll never take my life," she said. "That's what makes it a bargain, I suppose. You won't
ever hurt me as you might some other mortal woman who crossed your path."
   The question of those who crossed my path was too troubling to me for any good response. For the first time since we
had come together, I truly tried to divine her thoughts, but I could read nothing. As a vampire, I had great power in this
respect. Louis had almost none. Lestat was the master.
   I watched her drink the rum mote slowly, and I saw her eyes become glazed with the pleasure of it, and her face soften
wonderfully as the rum worked in her veins. Her cheeks were reddening slightly. Her complexion looked perfect.
   Chills ran through me again, through my arms and shoulders and up the side of my face.
   I had fed before I'd come here, or else the fragrance of her blood would have clouded my judgment even more than the
excitement of this intimacy clouded it. I had not taken life, no, it was too simple to feed without doing it, attractive though
it was. I prided myself on that. I felt clean for her, though it was becoming increasingly simple for me to "seek the
evildoer," as Lestat had once instructed-to find some unwholesome and cruel individual whom I could fancy to be worse
than myself.
   "Oh, I wept so many tears for you," she said, her voice more heated.
   "And then for Aaron, for all of your generation, leaving us suddenly and too soon, one after another." She suddenly
hunched her shoulders and leant forward as though she were in pain.
   "The young ones in the Talamasca don't know me, David," she said quickly. "And you don't come to me just because
Louis de Pointe du Lac asked you to do it. You don't come to me just to raise the child vampire's ghost. You want me,
David, you want my witness, David, and I want yours."
   "You're right on all counts, Merrick," I confessed. The words spilled from me. "I love you, Merrick, I love you the way
I loved Aaron, and the way I love Louis and Lestat."
   I saw the flash of acute suffering in her face, as though it were the flash of a light from within.
   "Don't be sorry you came to me," she said as I reached out to take hold of her. She caught my hands and held them in
her own, her clasp moist and warm. "Don't be sorry. I'm not. Only promise me you won't lose heart and leave me without
explanation. Don't break away from me hurriedly. Don't give in to some skewed sense of honor. If you did, my sanity
might actually break."
   "You mean I mustn't leave you the way I left Aaron," I said thickly. "No, I promise you, my precious darling. I won't do
it. It's already much too late for such a thing."

  "Then, I love you," she announced in a whisper. "I love you as I always have. No, more than that, I think, because you
bring this miracle with you. But what of the spirit that lives within?"
  "What spirit?" I asked her.
  But she'd already gone deep into her own thoughts. She drank another swallow directly from the bottle.
  I couldn't bear the table between us. I stood slowly, lifting her hands until she stood beside me, and then I took her
warmly into my arms. I kissed her lips, her old familiar perfume rising to my nostrils, and I kissed her forehead, and then I
held her head tightly against my beating heart.
  "You hear it?" I whispered. "What spirit could there be except my spirit? My body is changed, and no more."
  I was overcome with desire for her, the desire to know her utterly through the blood. Her perfume maddened me. But
there wasn't the slightest chance that I'd give in to my desire.
  But I kissed her again. And it wasn't chaste.
  For several long moments we remained locked together, and I think I covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her
perfume crucifying me with memories. I wanted to endow her with protection against all things as sordid as myself.
  She backed away from me, finally, as if she had to do it, and she was a little unsteady on her feet.
  "Never in all those years did you ever touch me in this way," she said under her breath. "And I wanted you so badly. Do
you remember? Do you remember that night in the jungle when I finally got my wish? Do you remember how drunk you
were, and how splendid? Oh, it was over way too soon."
  "I was a fool, but all such things are past remembering," I whispered. "Now, don't let's spoil what's happened. Come,
I've gotten a hotel room for you, and I'll see that you're safely there for the night."
  "Why on earth? Oak Haven is exactly where it's always been," she said dreamily. She shook her head to clear her vision.
"I'm going home."
  "No, you're not. You drank even more rum than I predicted. Look, you drank over half the bottle. And I know you'll
drink the rest of the bottle as soon as you get in the car."
  She laughed a small scornful laugh. "Still the consummate gentleman," she said. "And the Superior General. You can
escort me to my old house here in town. You know perfectly well where it is."
  "That neighborhood, even at this hour? Absolutely not. Besides, your friendly old caretaker there is an incompetent
idiot. My precious darling, I'm taking you to the hotel."
  "Foolish," she said as she half stumbled. "I don't need a caretaker. I'd rather go to my house. You're being a nuisance.
You always were."
  "You're a witch and a drunk," I said politely. "Here, we'll just cap this bottle." I did it. "And we'll put it in this canvas
purse of yours and I'll walk with you to the hotel. Take my arm."
  For a small second she looked playful and defiant, but then she made a languid shrug, smiling faintly, and gave up her
purse to my insistence and wrapped her arm around mine.




                                                                 3


  WE HAD NO SOONER begun our walk than we gave in to rather frequent and fervent embraces. Merrick's old favorite
Chanel perfume enchanted me, carrying me back years again; but the blood scent from her living veins was the strongest
goad of all.
  My desires were commingled in a torment. By the time we reached the Rue Decateur, scarcely a block and a half from
the café, I knew we needed a taxi. And once inside of the car, I gave myself up to kissing Merrick all over her face and her
throat, luxuriating in the fragrance of the blood inside her and the heat coming from her breasts.
  She herself was rather past the point of return, and pressed me in confidential whispers as to whether or not I could still
make love in the manner of an ordinary man. I told her it wouldn't do for me, that she had to remember, drunk or sober,
that I was, by nature, a predator and nothing more.
  "Nothing more?" she said, stopping this glorified love play to take another deep drink from her bottle of rum. "And what
happened in the jungles of Guatemala? Answer me. You haven't forgotten. The tent, the village, you remember. Don't lie
to me, David. I know what's inside you. I want to know what you've become."

  "Hush, Merrick," I said, but I couldn't restrain myself. I let my teeth touch her flesh with each kiss. "What happened in
the jungles of Guatemala," I struggled to say, "was a mortal sin."
  I covered her mouth, kissing her and devouring her tongue but not letting my evil teeth harm her. I felt her wipe my
brow with a soft cloth, possibly her scarf or a handkerchief, but I pushed it away.
  "Don't do that," I told her. I feared that a few beads of blood sweat might have appeared. She went back to kissing me
and whispering her words of Come Hither against my skin.
  I was miserable. I wanted her. I knew that even the smallest drink of her blood would prove too risky for me utterly; I'd
feel I possessed her after that, and she, in spite of all her seeming innocence on the matter, might well find herself my
slave.
  Elder vampires had warned me on just about every aspect of what could happen to me. And Armand and Lestat had
both been adamant that the "little drink" must not be conceived of as harmless. I was furious suddenly.
  I reached to the back of her head and ripped the leather barrette out of her thick brown hair, letting the barrette and its
cross-pin fall carelessly, and I ran my fingers deep against her scalp and kissed her lips again. Her eyes were closed.
  I was immensely relieved when we reached the spacious entrance of the Windsor Court Hotel. She took another drink of
her rum before the doorman helped her out of the cab, and in the manner of most experienced drinkers seemed sober on
her feet when in fact she was not sober at all.
  Having obtained the suite for her earlier, I took her directly to it, unlocked the door, and set her down on the bed.
  The suite was quite fine, perhaps the finest in town, with its tasteful traditional furnishings and muted lights. And I had
ordered bountiful vases of flowers for her.
  It was nothing, however, that a member of the Talamasca wouldn't expect. We were never known for economy with our
traveling members. And all my many memories of her encircled me like vapor, and wouldn't let me loose.
  She appeared to notice nothing. She drank the rest of the rum without ceremony and settled back against the pillows, her
bright green eyes closing almost at once.
  For a long time I merely looked at her. She appeared to have been tossed on the thick velvet counterpane and its nest of
cushions, her white cotton clothes thin and friable, her long slender ankles and leather-sandaled feet rather Biblical, her
face with its high cheekbones and soft jawline exquisite in sleep.
  I could not be sorry that I had made this friendship. I could not. But I reiterated my vow: David Talbot, you will not
harm this creature. Somehow Merrick will be better for all this; somehow knowledge will enhance Merrick; somehow
Merrick's soul will triumph no matter how badly Louis and I fail.
  Then, seeing further to the suite--that the flowers ordered had indeed been properly set out on the coffee table before
the parlor sofa, on the desk, on her dressing table; that the bath held abundant cosmetics for her comfort; that a great thick
terry cloth robe and slippers were in their proper place in the closet; and that a full bar of small bottles awaited her, along
with a fifth of her rum which I had provided--I kissed her, left a set of keys on the night table, and went out.
  A brief stop at the concierge's desk, with the requisite offering, assured she'd be undisturbed for as long as she wished to
stay at the hotel and that she might have anything that she liked.
  I then made up my mind to walk to our flat in the Rue Royale.
  However, before I left the beautifully lighted and somewhat busy lobby of the hotel a faint dizziness surprised me and I
was assaulted by the peculiar sensation that everyone in the place was taking notice of me, and that their notice was not
kind.
  I stopped immediately, fishing in my pocket as though I were a man about to step aside for a cigarette, and glanced
about.
  There was nothing unusual about the lobby or about the crowd. Nevertheless, as I went outside the sensation overcame
me again--that those in the driveway were looking at me, that they had penetrated my mortal disguise, which was by no
means easy, and that they knew what I was and what evil things I might be about.
  Again, I checked. Nothing of the sort was happening. Indeed, the bell boys gave me rather cordial smiles when our eyes
met.
  On I went towards the Rue Royale.
  Once more, the sensation occurred. In fact, it seemed to me that not only were people everywhere taking notice of me,
but that they had come to the doors and windows of the shops and restaurants especially for the purpose; and the dizziness
which I seldom, if ever, felt as a vampire increased.
  I was most uncomfortable. I wondered if this was the result of intimacy with a mortal being, because I'd never felt so
exposed before. In fact, due to my bronze skin I could move about the mortal world with total impunity. All my
supernatural attributes were veiled by the dark complexion, and my eyes, though too bright, were black.
  Nevertheless, it seemed people stared at me surreptitiously all along the route which I took towards home.

  Finally, when I was about three blocks from the flat I shared with Louis and Lestat, I stopped and leant against a black
iron lamppost, much as I had seen Lestat do in the old nights when he still moved about. Scanning the passersby I was
reassured again.
  But then something startled me so that I began to tremble violently in spite of myself. There stood Merrick in a shop
door with her arms folded. She looked quite steadily and reprovingly at me, and then disappeared.
  Of course it wasn't really Merrick at all, but the solidity of the apparition was horrifying.
  A shadow moved behind me. I turned awkwardly. There again went Merrick, clothed in white, casting her long dark
glance at me, and the figure appeared to melt into the shadows of a shop door.
  I was dumbfounded. It was witchcraft obviously, but how could it assault the senses of a vampire? And I was not only a
vampire, I was David Talbot who had been a Candomble priest in his youth. Now, as a vampire, I have seen ghosts and
spirits and I knew the spirits and the tricks they could play, and I knew a great deal about Merrick, but never had I
witnessed or experienced a spell just like this.
  In a cab which crossed the Rue Royale, there was Merrick once again, looking up at me from the open window, her hair
loosened as I had left it. And when I turned around, quite certain she was behind me, I saw her unmistakable figure on a
balcony above.
  The posture of the figure was sinister. I was trembling. I disliked this. I felt a fool.
  I kept my eyes on the figure. In fact nothing could have moved me. The figure faded and was gone. All around me the
Quarter suddenly seemed quite desolate, though in fact there were tourists everywhere in great numbers, and I could hear
the music from the Rue Bourbon. Never had I seen so many flowerpots spilling their blooms over the iron lace railings.
Never had so many pretty vines climbed the weathered facades and the old stuccoed walls.
  Intrigued and slightly angry, I went into the Rue Ste. Anne to see the café in which we'd met, and as I suspected it was
full to overflowing with diners and drinkers, and the wraith of a waiter seemed overwhelmed.
  There sat Merrick in the very middle of it, full white skirt flaring, stiff, as though she'd been cut from cardboard; then of
course the apparition melted, as the others had done.
  But the point was the café was now crowded, as it should have been when we'd been there! How had she kept people
away during our meeting? And what was she doing now?
  I turned around. The sky above was blue, as the southern sky is so often in the evening, sprinkled with faint stars. There
was gay conversation and happy laughter all about. This was the reality of things, a mellow spring night in New Orleans,
when the flagstone sidewalks seem soft to the step of your foot, and the sounds sweet to your ears.
  Yet there again came the sensation that everyone nearby was watching me. The couple crossing at the corner made a
point of it. And then I saw Merrick quite some distance down the street, and this time the expression on her face was
distinctly unpleasant, as though she were enjoying my discomfort.
  I drew in my breath as the apparition melted away.
  "How could she be doing this, that's the question!" I muttered aloud. "And why is she doing it?"
  I walked fast, heading for the town house, not certain as to whether I would go into it, with this manner of curse all
around me, but as I approached our carriageway--a large arched gate fitted into a frame of brickwork--I then saw the
most frightening image of all.
  Behind the bars of the gate stood the child Merrick of many years ago, in her same skimpy lavender shift, her head
slightly to the side as she nodded to confidences whispered in her ear by an elderly woman whom I knew for a certainty to
be her long-dead grandmother Great Nananne.
  Great Nananne's thin mouth was smiling faintly and she nodded as she spoke.
  At once the presence of Great Nananne deluged me with memories and remembered sensations. I was terrified, then
angry. I was all but disoriented, and had to pull myself up.
  "Don't you vanish, don't you go!" I cried out, darting towards the gate, but the figures melted as if my eyes had lost
focus, as if my vision had been flawed.
  I was past all patience. There were lights in our home above, and there came the enchanting sound of harpsichord
music, Mozart, if I was not mistaken, no doubt from Lestat's small disc player beside his four-poster bed. This meant he
had graced us with a visit this evening, though all he would do would be to lie on his bed and listen to recordings till
shortly before dawn.
  I wanted desperately to go up, to be in our home, to let the music soothe my nerves, to see Lestat and see to him, and to
find Louis and tell him all that had occurred.
  Nothing would do, however, except that I go back to the hotel at once. I could not enter our flat while under this "spell,"
and must stop it at the source.

  I hurried to the Rue Decateur, found a cab, and vowed to look at nothing and no one until I had faced Merrick herself I
was becoming more and more cross.
  Deep in my thoughts, I found myself mumbling protective charms, calling upon the spirits to protect. me rather than to
injure me, but I had little faith in these old formulae. What I did believe in were the powers of Merrick, which I'd long ago
witnessed and would never forget.
  Hurrying up the stairs to Merrick's suite, I put my key into the lock of her door.
  As soon as I stepped into the parlor, I saw the flicker of candlelight and smelled another very pleasant smell which I had
connected with Merrick in years past. It was the scent of Florida water, redolent of fresh cut oranges--a scent loved by the
Voodoo goddess Ezili, and by the Candomble goddess of a similar name.
  As for the candle, I saw it atop a handsome bombe chest just opposite the door.
  It was a votive light, sunk deep and safe inside a water glass, and behind it, looking down upon it, was a fine plaster
statue of St. Peter with his golden keys to Heaven, a figure about a foot and a half in height. The complexion of the statue
was dark, and it had pale amber glass eyes.
  It was clothed in a soft green tunic etched with gold, and a cloak of purple on which the gold was fancier still. He held
not only the proverbial keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, but also, in the right hand, a large book.
  I was shocked all over. The hair came up on the back of my neck.
  Of course I knew it was not only St. Peter, this statue, it was Papa Legba in Voodoo, the god of the crossroads, the god
who must unlock the spiritual realms if you are to obtain anything with your magic.
  Before you begin a spell, a prayer, or a sacrifice you honor Papa Legba first. And whoever had made this statue realized
these things.
  How else explain the deliberately darkened complexion of the saint who appeared now to be a man of color, or the
mysterious book?
  He had his complement in Candomble, whom I had so often saluted. This was the orisha, or god, by the name of Exu.
And any Candomble temple would have begun its ceremonies by first saluting him.
  As I stared at the statue and the candle, the very scents of those Brazilian temples with their hard-packed dirt floors
came back to me. I heard the drums. I smelled the cooked foods laid out in offerings. Indeed, I let the sensations come.
  There came back other memories, memories of Merrick, as well.
  "Papa Legba," I whispered aloud. I'm certain that I bowed my head ever so slightly and felt a rush of blood to my face.
"Exu," I whispered. "Don't be offended by anything that I do here."
  I uttered a small prayer, more formulaic in the Portuguese that I had long ago learnt, asking that whatever realm he had
just opened, he not deny me entrance, as my respect was as strong as that of Merrick.
  The statue of course remained motionless, its pale glass eyes staring quite directly into mine, but I had seldom beheld
something which seemed so animate in a sly and unexplainable way.
  "I'm going slightly mad," I thought. But then I had come to Merrick to work magic, had I not? And I knew Merrick,
didn't I? But then, I had never expected these tricks!
  I beheld in my mind the temple in Brazil once more, where I had trained for months learning the proper leaves for
offering, learning the myths of the gods, learning finally, after months and months of struggle, to dance clockwise with the
others, saluting each deity with our gestures and dance steps, until a frenzy was reached, until I myself felt the deity enter
into me, possess me ... and then there was the waking after, remembering nothing, being told I had been mightily
possessed, the sublime exhaustion.
  Of course ... What had I thought we were doing here if not inviting those old powers? And Merrick knew my old
strengths and weaknesses if anybody did. I could scarcely tear my gaze off the face of the statue of St. Peter. But I finally
managed it.
  I backed away as anyone might do when leaving a shrine, and darted silently into the bedroom.
  Again, I breathed in the bright citrus fragrance of the Florida water, and also the scent of rum.
  Where was her favorite perfume, the Chanel No. 22? Had she ceased to wear it? The Florida water was very strong.
  Merrick lay asleep on the bed.
  She looked as if she'd never moved. It struck me now and only now how much her white blouse and skirt resembled the
classic dress of the Candomble women. All she needed was a turban for her head to make the image complete.
  The new bottle of rum was open on the table beside her, and about a third of it consumed. Nothing else had changed that
I could ascertain. The scent was powerful, which meant she might have sprayed it through her teeth into the air, an
offering to the god.
  In sleep she looked perfect, as people often do when they relax utterly; she seemed the girl of herself. And it struck me
that were she to be made a vampire, she would have this flawless countenance.

  I was filled with fear and abhorrence. I was filled also--for the first time in these many years--with the full realization
that I, and I without the help of anyone else, could grant this magic, the transformation into a vampire, to her, or to any
human. For the first time, I understood its monstrous temptation.
  Of course nothing of this sort would befall Merrick. Merrick was my child. Merrick was my ... daughter.
  "Merrick, wake up!" I said sharply. I touched her shoulder. "You're going to explain these visions to me. Wake up!"
  No response. She appeared to be dead drunk.
  "Merrick, wake up!" I said again, very crossly. And this time I lifted her shoulders with both hands, but her head
tumbled back. The scent of the Chanel perfume rose from her. Ali, that was precisely what I so loved.
  I became painfully conscious of her breasts, quite visible in the scoop neck of her cotton blouse. Down into the pillows I
let her fall.
  "Why did you do these things?" I demanded of the inert body of the beautiful woman lying on the bed. "What did you
mean with all this? Do you think I'm to be frightened away?"
  But it was useless. She wasn't pretending. She was out cold. I could divine no dreams or subterranean thoughts in her.
And quickly examining the little hotel wet bar, I saw that she'd drunk a couple of little bottles of gin.
  "Typical Merrick," I said with faint anger.
  It had always been her way to drink to excess at specific times. She'd work very hard at her studies or in the field for
months on end, and then announce that she was "going to the Moon," as she called it, at which time she would lay in
liquor and drink for several nights and days. Her favorite drinks were those with sweetness and flavor--sugercane rum,
apricot brandy, Grand Marnier, ad infinitum.
  She was introspective when drunk, did a lot of singing and writing and dancing about during such periods, and
demanded to be left alone. If no one crossed her, she was all right. But an argument could produce hysterics, nausea,
disorientation, an attempt to regain sobriety desperately, and finally, guilt. But this rarely happened. Usually, she just
drank for a week, unmolested. Then she'd wake one morning, order breakfast with strong coffee, and within a matter of
hours return to work, not to repeat her little vacation for perhaps another six to nine months.
  But even on social occasions if she drank, she drank to get drunk. She'd swill her rum or sweet liquor in fancy mixed
drinks. She had no desire for drink in moderation. If we had a great dinner at the Motherhouse, and we did have many, she
either abstained or continued drinking on her own until she passed out. Wine made her impatient.
  Well, she was passed out now. And even if I did succeed in waking her, there might be a pitched battle.
  I went again to look at St. Peter, or Papa Legba, in the makeshift Voodoo shrine. I had to eliminate my fear of this little
entity or graven image or whatever I perceived to be there.
  Ah, I was stunned as I considered the statue for a second time. My pocket handkerchief was spread out beneath the
statue and the candle, and beside it lay my own old-fashioned fountain pen! I hadn't even seen them before.
  "Merrick!" I swore furiously.
  And hadn't she wiped my forehead in the car? I glared at the handkerchief. Sure enough there were tiny smears of
blood--the sweat from my forehead! And she had it for her spell.
  "Ali, not merely satisfied with an article of my clothing, my handkerchief, but you had to take the fluids from my skin."
  Marching back into the bedroom, I made another very ungentlemanly attempt to rouse her from her torpor, ready for a
brawl, but it was no good. I laid her back down tenderly, brushing her hair with my fingers, and observed, in spite of my
anger, how truly pretty she was.
  Her creamy tan skin was beautifully molded over her cheekbones and her eyelashes were so long that they made distinct
tiny shadows on her face. Her lips were dark, without rouge. I took off her plain leather sandals and laid them beside the
bed, but this was just another excuse to touch her, not something generous.
  Then, backing away from the bed, with a glance through the door to the shrine in the parlor, I looked about for her
purse, her large canvas bag.
  It had been flung on a chair and it gaped open, revealing, as I had hoped, a bulging envelope with Aaron's unmistakable
writing on the outside.
  Well, she'd stolen my handkerchief and my pen, hadn't she? She'd retrieved my blood, my very blood, which must never
fall into the hands of the Talamasca, hadn't she? Oh, it wasn't for the Order, no. She stole it for herself and her charms, but
she stole it, didn't she? And I'd been kissing her all the while like a schoolboy.
  So I had every right to inspect this envelope in her purse. Besides, she had asked me if I wanted these papers. So I
would take them. It was her intention to give them to me, was it not?
  At once I snatched up the envelope, opened it, confirmed that it was all Aaron's papers concerning me and my
adventures, and resolved to take it with me. As for the rest of the contents of Merrick's bag, it contained her own journal,
which I had no right to read, and which would most likely be written in impossible French code, a handgun with a pearl

handle, a wallet full of money, an expensive cigar labeled Montecristo, and a thin small bottle of the Florida water
cologne.
   The cigar gave me pause. Certainly it was not for her. It was for that little Papa Legba, that cigar. She had brought with
her the statue, the Florida water, and the cigar. She had come prepared for some sort of conjuring. Ah, it infuriated me, but
what right had I to preach against it?
   I went back into the parlor, and, avoiding the eyes of the statue and its seeming expression, snatched up my fountain pen
from the makeshift altar. I located the hotel stationery in the middle drawer of a fancy French desk, sat down, and wrote a
note:

   All right, my dear, I'm impressed. You've learnt even more tricks
   since last we met. But you must explain the reasons for this spell.
   I've taken the pages written by Aaron. I've retrieved my hand-
   kerchief and fountain pen as well. Stay in the hotel as long as
   you like.
     David.

   It was short, but I did not feel particularly effusive after this little misadventure. Also, I had the unpleasant sensation
that Papa Legba was glaring at me from the violated shrine. In a fit of pique, I added a postscript.
   "It was Aaron who gave me this pen!" Enough said.
   Now, with considerable apprehension, I went back to the altar.
   I spoke rapidly in Portuguese first, and then in Latin, once again greeting the spirit in the statue, the opener of the
spiritual realm. Open my understanding, I prayed, and take no offense at what I do, for I want only knowledge, and mean
no disrespect. Be assured of my understanding of your power. Be assured that I am a sincere soul.
   I dug deep into my memory now for sensation as well as fact. I told the spirit in the statue that I was dedicated to the
orisha, or god, called Oxalá, lord of creation. I explained that I had been faithful in my own way always to that deity,
though I had not done all the little things that others had prescribed to be done. Nevertheless, I loved this god, I loved his
stories, and his personality, I loved all I could know of him.
   A bad feeling crept over me. How could a blood drinker be faithful to the lord of creation? Was not every act of blood
drinking a sin against Oxalá? I pondered this. But I didn't retreat. My emotions belonged to Oxalá, just as they had many
many decades ago in Rio de Janeiro. Oxalá was mine, and I was his.
   "Protect us in what we mean to do," I whispered.
   Then, before I could lose heart, I snuffed out the candle, lifted the statue, and, retrieving the handkerchief, set the statue
back with care. I said, "Goodbye Papa Legba" to the statue and prepared to leave the suite.
   I found myself quite motionless, my back to the altar, facing the door to the corridor outside. I couldn't move. Or rather
it seemed I shouldn't move.
   Very slowly, my mind became rather empty. Focused upon my physical senses, if anything, I turned and looked towards
the bedroom doorway through which I'd only just come.
   It was the old woman, of course, the wizened little Great Nananne, with her fingers on the doorjamb, staring at me, and
her thin lipless mouth working as if she were whispering to herself or to someone unseen, her head tilted just a little to one
side.
   I sucked in my breath and stared at her. She showed no signs of weakening, this wee apparition, this tiny old woman
who regarded me rather directly in spite of moving lips. She was clothed in a faintly flowered nightgown of flannel that
was stained all over with coffee, perhaps, or long-faded blood. Indeed, I became intensely conscious that her image was
becoming all the more solid and detailed.
   Her feet were bare and her toenails the color of yellowed bone. Her gray hair was now quite visible and distinct, as if a
light were being brightened upon her, and I saw the veins moving up the sides of her head, and the veins on the back of
the one hand which dangled at her side. Only very old people looked as she looked. And of course this woman looked
exactly as she had when I'd seen her ghost in the carriageway earlier this evening, and exactly as she had on the day of her
death. Indeed, I remembered the nightgown. I remembered the stains upon it. I remembered that on her dying body it had
been stained but fresh and clean.
   I broke into a true sweat as I stared at her, and I could not move a muscle, except to speak.
   "You think I'll harm her?" I whispered.
   The figure did not change. The little mouth continued to work, but I could hear only a faint dry rustling noise, as from
an old woman telling her rosary in church.

  "You think I mean to do something wrong?" I said.
  The figure was gone. It was gone past tense. I was talking to no one.
  I turned on my heel and glared at the statue of the saint. It seemed to be material and nothing more. I seriously
considered smashing it, but my mind was full of confusion as to my intentions and their implications, when quite suddenly
there came a deafening knock on the hallway door.
  Well, it seemed to be deafening. I suspect it was ordinary. I was violently startled. Regardless I opened the door and
said crossly:
  "What in hell do you want?"
  To my astonishment and his astonishment also, I was addressing one of the ordinary and innocent attendants who
worked in the hotel.
  "Nothing, Sir, excuse me," he said in his slow southern manner, "just this for the lady." He lifted a small plain white
envelope and I took it out of his hand.
  "Oh, wait, please," I said, as I fumbled to retrieve a ten-dollar bill from my pocket. I had put several in my suit just for
this purpose and gave one over to him, with which he seemed pleased.
  I shut the door. The envelope contained the two-piece leather hair barrette which I had taken off Merrick so carelessly in
the cab. There was an oval of leather, and then a long pin covered with leather with which she gathered and fixed her hair
in place.
  I was trembling all over. This was too dreadful.
  How in the hell had this come to be here? It seemed quite impossible that the cabby had retrieved it. But then how was I
to know? At the time, I'd been aware that I ought to pick it up and pocket it, but I'd fancied myself to be under duress.
  I went to the altar, laid the barrette in front of Papa Legba, avoiding his eyes as I did so, and I went straight out of the
suite, down the stairs and out of the lobby, and out of the hotel.
  This time, I vowed to observe nothing, to look for nothing, and I went directly to our home.
  If there were spirits along the way, I did not see them, keeping my eyes on the ground, moving as swiftly as I could
safely move without causing a stir among mortals, and going directly through the carriageway, back to the courtyard, and
then up the iron steps into the flat.




                                                                 4


  THE  FLAT WAS DARK,which I hadn't expected, and I did not find Louis in either the front parlor or the back, or in his room.
  As for Lestat, the door of his room was closed, and the harpsichord music, very rapid and very beautiful, seemed to
emanate from the very walls, as is so often the case with modern compact disc recordings.
  I lighted all the lamps in the front parlor and settled on the couch, with Aaron's pages in hand. I told myself I had
important business.
  It was no good thinking about Merrick and her charms and her spirits, and no good at all dwelling upon the old woman
with her unintelligible whispers and her small wrinkled face.
  As for my thoughts on my orisha, Oxalá they were grim. The long ago years I had spent in Rio were ones of severe
dedication. I had believed in Candomble insofar as I, David Talbot, could believe in anything. I had given myself over to
the religion insofar as I could be abandoned to anything. And I had become Oxalá's follower and worshiper. I had been
possessed by him many a time with little or no memory of the trance, and I had scrupulously followed his rules.
  But all that had been a detour in my life, an intermezzo. I was, after all, a British scholar, before and after. And once I
had entered the Talamasca, the power of Oxalá or any orisha over me had been broken forever. Nevertheless, I felt
confusion and guilt now. I had come to Merrick to discuss magic, imagining that I could control what happened! And the
very first night had been chastening, indeed.
  However, I had to get my mind clear. Indeed, I owed it to Aaron, my old friend, to pull myself together at once and look
at his papers. Everything else could wait, I told myself.
  However, I couldn't get the old woman out of my head. I longed for Louis to come. I wanted to discuss these matters. It
was important that Louis understand things about Merrick, but where Louis might be at this hour, I had no idea.

  The harpsichord music was something of a comfort, as Mozart always is, with his merriment, no matter what the
composition, but nevertheless, I felt restless and unsafe in these warm rooms where I was accustomed to spend many
hours in comfort alone or with Louis or Louis and Lestat.
  I determined to shrug it off.
  Indeed, it was absolutely the best time to read Aaron's pages.
  I took off my jacket, seated myself at the large writing desk which faced into the room quite conveniently (as none of us
liked to work with our back to the room), and opened the envelope and drew out the pages that I meant to read.
  There wasn't very much at all, and a quick perusal indicated that Merrick had given me a complete picture of Aaron's
thoughts at the end. Nevertheless, I owed it to Aaron to read these writings, word by word.
  It took me only a few moments to forget everything about me, as I found myself hearing Aaron's familiar voice in
English in spite of the fact that all he'd written was in Latin. It was as if he were there, reviewing it all with me, or reading
me his report so that I might comment before he sent it on to the Elders.
  Aaron described how he had come to meet me in Florida, where he had found the aged body of his friend David Talbot
dead and in need of proper burial, while the soul of David was firmly ensconced in the body of an anonymous young man.
  The young man was Anglo-Indian in background, six feet four in height, had wavy dark-brown hair, bronze skin, and
extremely large sympathetic dark-brown eyes. The young man was in excellent health and physical condition. The young
man had very acute hearing and a good sense of balance. The young man seemed devoid of any spirit whatsoever save
that of David Talbot.
  Aaron went on to describe our days together in Miami, during which time I had frequently projected my spirit out of the
host body, only to recapture the body perfectly with no unseen resistance from any known or unknown realm.
  Finally, after a month or so of such experiments, I'd been convinced that I could remain in the youthful body and I had
set about gathering what information I could about the soul which had previously reigned within it.
  Those particulars I will not relate here insofar as they have to do with persons in no way connected with this narrative. It
is sufficient to say that Aaron and I were satisfied that the soul which had once governed my new body was gone beyond
reprieve. Hospital records pertaining to the last months of that soul's life on earth made it more than clear that "the mind"
of the individual had been destroyed by psychological disasters and the bizarre chemistry of certain drugs which the man
had ingested, though there had been no damage to the cells of the brain.
  I, David Talbot, in full possession of the body, sensed no damage to the brain.
  Aaron had been very full in his descriptions of things, explaining how clumsy I'd been with my new height for the first
few days, and how he had watched this "strange body" gradually "become" his old friend David, as I took to sitting in
chairs with my legs crossed, or to folding my arms across my chest, or to hunching over my writing or reading materials
in familiar fashion.
  Aaron remarked that the improved vision of the new eyes had been a great blessing to David Talbot, as David had
suffered poor vision in his last years. Ah, that was so true, and I hadn't even thought of it. And now of course, I saw as a
vampire and could not even remember those key gradations of mortal vision in my brief Faustian youth.
  Aaron then laid down his feelings that the full report on this incident must not be placed in the Files of the Talamasca,
which were open to all.
  "It is plain to see from David's transformation," he wrote in so many words, "that body switching is entirely possible
when one is dealing with skilled individuals, and what arouses my horror is not David's present occupation of this
splendid young body, but the manner in which the body was stolen from its original owner by that one whom we shall call
the Body Thief, for sinister purposes of the thief's own."
  Aaron went on to explain that he would endeavor to put these pages directly into the hands of the Elders of the
Talamasca.
  But for tragic reasons, obviously, this had never been done.
  There came a final series of paragraphs comprising about three pages, handwritten a little more formally than what had
gone before.
  David's Disappearance was written at the top. Lestat was referred to merely as TVL. And this time, Aaron's phrasing
reflected considerably more caution and some sadness.
  He described how I had vanished on the island of Barbados, without leaving any message for anyone, abandoning my
suitcases, typewriter, books, and pages, which he, Aaron, had gone to retrieve.
  How dreadful that must have been for Aaron, picking up the trash of my life, with no word of apology from me.
  "Were I not so busy with the matters of the Mayfair Witches," he wrote, "perhaps this disappearance would never have
occurred. I might have been more attentive to D. during his time of transition. I might have held him more firmly in my

affections and thereby earned more surely his complete trust. As it is, I can only surmise what has become of him, and I
fear that he has met with spiritual catastrophe quite against his will.
  "Undoubtedly he will contact me. I know him too well to think otherwise. He will come to me. He will--whatever his
state of mind, and I cannot possibly imagine it--come to me to give me some solace, if nothing else."
  It hurt me so deeply to read this that I stopped and put the pages aside. For a moment, I was aware only of my own
failing, my own terrible failing, my own cruel failing.
  But there were two more pages, and I had to read them. Finally I picked them up and read Aaron's last notes.

     I wish that I could appeal to the Elders directly for help. I wish that after my many years in the Talamasca I had
  complete faith in our Order, and complete faith that the authority of the Elders is for the best. However, our Order,
  insofar as I know, is made up of fallible mortal men and women. And I cannot appeal to anyone without placing in his
  or her hands knowledge which I do not want to share.
     The Talamasca in recent months has had its internal troubles aplenty. And until the whole question of the identity of
  the Elders, and the certainty of communication with them, has been resolved, this report must remain in my hands.
     Meanwhile nothing can shake my faith in D., or my belief in his basic goodness. Whatever corruption we might have
  suffered in the Talamasca never tainted David's ethics, or those of many like him, and though I cannot yet confide in
  them, I do take comfort from the fact that David may appear to them if not to me.
     Indeed, my faith in David is so great that sometimes my mind plays tricks on me, and I think I see him though I soon
  realize I am wrong. I search crowds for him in the evening. I have gone back to Miami to look for him. I have sent out
  my call to him telepathically. And I have no doubt that one night very soon, David will respond, if only to say farewell.

  The pain I felt was crushing. Moments passed in which I did nothing but allow myself to feel the immensity of the
injustice done to Aaron.
  At last, I forced myself to move my limbs.
  I folded up the pages properly, put them back into the envelope, and sat quiet again for a long time, my elbows on the
desk, my head bowed.
  The harpsichord music had stopped some time ago, and much as I'd loved it, it did interfere with my thoughts
somewhat, so I treasured the quiet.
  I was as bitterly sad as I have ever been. I was as without hope as I have ever been. The mortality of Aaron seemed as
real to me as his life had ever seemed. And indeed both seemed miraculous in the extreme.
  As for the Talamasca, I knew it would heal its wounds by itself. I had no real fear for it, though Aaron had been right to
be suspicious of things with the Elders until questions of their identity and authority had been resolved.
  When I had left the Order, the question of the identity of the Elders had been hotly debated. And incidents pertaining to
secrets had caused corruption and betrayal. Aaron's murder had become part of it. The famous Body Thief who seduced
Lestat had been one of our own.
  Who were the Elders? Were they themselves corrupt? I hardly thought so. The Talamasca was ancient, and
authoritarian, and it moved slowly on eternal matters, rather on a Vatican clock. But it was all quite closed to me now.
Human beings had to go on cleansing and reforming the Talamasca, as they had already begun to do. I could do nothing to
help in such an endeavor.
  But to the best of my knowledge, internal difficulties had been solved. How precisely, and by whom, I did not know and
really didn't want to know.
  I knew only that those I loved, including Merrick, seemed at peace within the Order, though it did seem to me that
Merrick, and those upon whom I'd spied now and then in other places, had a more "realistic" view of the Order and its
problems than I had ever had.
  And of course, what I'd done in speaking to Merrick, that had to remain secret between Merrick and me.
  But how was I to have a secret with a witch who'd cast a spell on me with such promptness, effectiveness, and abandon?
It made me cross again to think of it. I wish I'd taken the statue of St. Peter with me. That would have served her right.
  But what had been Merrick's purpose in the whole affair--to warn me of her power, to impress upon me the realization
that Louis and I, as earthbound creatures, were hardly immune to her, or that our plan was indeed a dangerous plan?
  I felt sleepy suddenly. As I've already mentioned, I'd fed before I ever met with Merrick, and I had no need of blood.
But I had a great desire for it, kindled by the physical touch of Merrick, and very much caught up with wordless fantasies
of her, and now I felt drowsy from the struggle, drowsy from my grief for Aaron, who had gone to the grave with no
words of comfort at all from me.

  I was about to lie down on the couch, when I heard a very pleasant sound which I at once recognized, though I hadn't
heard it at close range for years. It was the sound of a canary, singing, and making a little bit of a metallic ruckus in a
cage. I heard the motion of the wings, the creak of the little trapeze or swing or whatever you call it, the creak of the cage
on its hinge.
  And there came the harpsichord music again, very rapid, indeed far more rapid than any human could possibly desire. It
was rippling and mad, and full of magic, this music, as though a preternatural being had set upon the keys.
  I realized at once that Lestat was not in the flat, and had never been, and these sounds--this music and the gentle
commotion of the birds--were not coming from his closed room.
  Nevertheless, I had to make a check.
  Lestat, being as powerful as he is, can mask his presence almost completely, and I, being his fledgling, can pick up
nothing from his mind.
  I rose to my feet, heavily, sleepily, amazed at my exhaustion, and made my way down the passage to his room. I
knocked respectfully, waited a decent interval, and then opened his door.
  All was as it should be. There stood the giant plantation-style fourposter of tropical mahogany with its dusty canopy of
rose garlands and the drapery of dark-red velvet, the color which Lestat prefers above all else. Dust overlay the bedside
table and the nearby desk and the books in the bookshelf. And there was no machine for making music in sight.
  I turned, meaning to go back to the parlor, to write down all of this in my diary, if I could find it, but I felt so heavy and
so drowsy and it seemed a better idea to sleep. Then there was the matter of the music and the birds. Something about the
birds struck me. What was it? Something Jesse Reeves had written in her report of being haunted decades ago in the ruin
of this very house. Little birds.
  "Then it's begun?" I whispered. I felt so weak, so deliciously weak, actually. I wondered if Lestat would mind so very
terribly if I were to lie down for a little while on his bed? He might yet come this evening. We never knew, did we? It
wasn't very proper to do such a thing. And drowsy as I was, I was moving my right hand rapidly with the music. I knew
this sonata by Mozart, it was lovely, it was the first one that the boy genius had ever written, and how excellent it was. No
wonder the birds were so happy, it must have been a kindred sound to them, but it was important that this music not speed
on so precipitously, no matter how clever the performer, no matter how clever the child.
  I made my way out of the room as if I were moving through water, and went in search of my own room where I had my
own bed, quite comfortable, and then it seemed imperative that I seek my coffin, my hiding place, because I could not
remain conscious until dawn.
  "Ah, yes, it's vital that I go," I said aloud, but I couldn't hear my words on account of the thunder of the tripping music,
and I realized, with great distress, that I had entered the back parlor of the flat, the one which looked out upon the
courtyard, and I had settled there on the couch.
  Louis was with me. Louis was helping me to a seat on the couch, as a matter of fact. Louis was asking me what was
wrong.
  I looked up, and it seemed to me that he was a vision of male perfection, dressed in a snow white silk shirt and a finely
cut black velvet jacket, his curly black hair very properly and beautifully combed back over his ears and curling above his
collar in the most lively and fetching style. I loved looking at him, rather as I loved looking at Merrick.
  It struck me how different were his green eyes from hers. His eyes were darker. There was no distinct circle of
blackness around the irises and, indeed, the pupils did not stand out so clearly. Nevertheless, they were beautiful eyes.
  The flat went absolutely quiet.
  For a moment I could say or do nothing.
  Then I looked at him as he seated himself in a rose-colored velvet chair near to me, and his eyes were filled with the
light from the nearby electric lamp. Whereas Merrick had something of a mild challenge in even her most casual
expression, his eyes were patient, restful, like the eyes in a painting, fixed and reliable.
  "Did you hear it?" I asked.
  "What, precisely?" he asked.
  "Oh, my God, it's started," I said softly. "You remember. Think back, man. You remember, what Jesse Reeves told you.
Think."
  Then it came out of me in a bit of a gush--the harpsichord music and the sound of the birds. Decades ago it had come
upon Jesse, on the night she'd found Claudia's diary in a secret place in a broken wall. It had come upon her with a vision
of oil lamps and moving figures. And in terror she had fled the flat, taking with her a doll, a rosary, and the diary, and
never coming back.
  The ghost of Claudia had pursued her to a darkened hotel room. And from there Jesse had been taken ill, sedated,
hospitalized, and finally taken home to England, never to return to this place, insofar as I knew.

  Jesse Reeves had become a vampire due to her destiny, not through the mistakes or failings of the Talamasca. And Jesse
Reeves herself had told Louis this tale.
  It was all quite familiar to both of us, but I had no recollection of Jesse ever identifying the piece of music which she'd
heard in the shadows.
  It was up to Louis to state now in a soft voice that, yes, his beloved Claudia had loved the early sonatas of Mozart, that
she had loved them because he composed them while he'd still been a child.
  Suddenly an uncontrollable emotion seized Louis and he stood up and turned his back to me, looking out, apparently,
through the lace curtains, to whatever sky lay beyond the rooftops and the tall banana trees that grew against the courtyard
walls.
  I watched him in polite silence. I could feel my energy returning. I could feel the usual preternatural strength upon
which I'd always counted since the first night that I'd been filled with the blood.
  "Oh, I know it must be tantalizing," I said, finally. "It's so easy to conclude that we're coming close."
  "No," he said, turning to me politely. "Don't you see, David? You heard the music. I haven't heard it. Jesse heard the
music. I've never heard it. Never. And I've been years waiting to hear it, asking to hear it, wanting to hear it, but I never
do."
  His French accent was sharp and precise, as always happened when he was emotional, and I loved the richness it gave
to his speech. I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongue.
  I rather loved him, loved his lean graceful movements, and the way in which he responded wholeheartedly to things, or
not at all. He had been gracious to me since the first moment we met, sharing this, his house, with me, and his loyalty to
Lestat was without a doubt.
  "If it's any consolation to you," I hastened to add, "I've seen Merrick Mayfair. I've put the request to her, and I don't
think she means to turn us down."
  His surprise amazed me. I forget how completely human he is, being the very weakest of us, and that he cannot read
minds at all. I had assumed also that he'd been watching me of late, keeping his distance, but spying as only a vampire or
an angel can, to see when this meeting would take place.
  He came back around and sat down again.
  "You must tell me about the whole thing," he said. His face flushed for an instant. It lost the preternatural whiteness and
he seemed a young man of twenty-four--with sharply defined and beautiful features, and gaunt well-modeled cheeks. He
might have been made by God to be painted by Andrea del Sarto, so deliberately perfect did he seem.
  "David, please let me know everything," he pressed, due to my silence.
  "Oh, yes, I mean to. But let me have a few moments more. Something is going on, you see, and I don't know if it's her
general wickedness."
  "Wickedness?" he asked in utter innocence.
  "I don't mean it so seriously. You see, she's such a strong woman and so strange in her ways. Let me tell you everything,
yes."
  But before I began I took stock of him once more, and made myself note that no one among us, that is, no one of the
vampires or immortal blood drinkers whom I had encountered, was anything like him.
  In the years since I'd been with him, we'd witnessed wonders together. We had seen the very ancient of the species and
been thoroughly humbled by these visitations, which had made a weary mockery of Louis's long nineteenth-century quest
for answers which did not exist.
  During our recent convocations, many of the old ones had offered Louis the power of their ancient blood. Indeed, the
very ancient Maharet, who was now perceived to be the twin of the absolute Mother of us all, had pressed Louis in the
extreme to drink from her veins. I had watched this with considerable apprehension. Maharet seemed offended by one so
weak.
  Louis had refused her offer. Louis had turned her away. I shall never forget the conversation.
  "I don't treasure my weaknesses," he'd explained to her. "Your blood conveys power, I don't question that. Only a fool
would. But I know from what I've learnt from all of you that the ability to die is key. If I drink your blood I'll become too
strong for a simple act of suicide just as you are now. And I cannot allow that. Let me remain the human one among you.
Let me acquire my strength slowly, as you once did, from time and from human blood. I wouldn't become what Lestat has
become through his drinking from the ancients. I would not be that strong and that distant from an easy demise."
  I had been amazed at Maharet's obvious displeasure. Nothing about Maharet is simple precisely because everything is.
By that I mean that she is so ancient as to be divorced utterly from the common expression of tender emotions, except
perhaps by deliberate merciful design.

  She had lost all interest in Louis when he'd refused her, and to the best of my knowledge she never looked at him, or
mentioned him, ever again. Of course she didn't harm him, and she had plenty of opportunity. But he was no longer a
living being for her, no longer one of us, for her. Or so I had divined.
  But then who was I to judge such a creature as Maharet? That I had seen her, that I'd heard her voice, that I'd visited
with her for a time in her own sanctuary--all that was reason for thanks.
  I myself had felt a great respect for Louis's disinclination to drink the absolute elixir of the dark gods. Louis had been
made a vampire by Lestat when Lestat had been very young, indeed. And Louis was considerably stronger than humans,
well able to spell-bind them, and could outmaneuver the most clever mortal opponent with ease. Though he was still
bound by the laws of gravity to a far greater extent than I was, he could move about the world very rapidly, attaining a
brand of invisibility which he very much enjoyed. He was no mind reader, and no spy.
  However, Louis would very likely die if exposed to sunlight, though he was well past the point where sunlight would
reduce him to pure ash, as it had done Claudia only seventy years or so after her birth. Louis still had to have blood every
night. Louis could very probably seek oblivion in the flames of a pyre.
  I shuddered now, as I reminded myself of this creature's deliberate limitations, and of the wisdom he seemed to possess.
  My own blood was quite remarkably strong because it came from Lestat who had drunk not only from the elder Marius,
but from the Queen of the Damned, the progenital vampire herself. I didn't know precisely what I might have to do to
terminate my existence, but I knew it would not be an easy thing. As for Lestat, when I thought of his adventures and his
powers, it seemed impossible by any means for him to exit this world.
  These thoughts so disturbed me that I reached out and clasped Louis's hand.
  "This woman is very powerful," I said, as I made to begin. "She's been playing a few tricks on me this evening, and I'm
not sure why or how."
  "It has you exhausted," he said considerately. "Are you sure you don't want to rest?"
  "No, I need to talk to you," I said. And so I began by describing our meeting in the cafe and all that had passed between
us, including my memories of the child Merrick from years ago.




                                                                 5


  INDEED I TOLD HIM everything which I have told you so far.
  I described even my scant memories of my first meeting with the girl Merrick, and my repressed fear when I was quite
certain that the ancestors in the daguerreotypes had been passing approval on Aaron and me.
  He was very startled when I laid down this part of the story, but wouldn't have me pause just yet but encouraged me to
go on.
  I told him briefly of how the meeting had triggered other, more erotic memories of Merrick, but that Merrick had not
refused his request.
  Merrick had seen him, I explained to him, and she knew who he was and what he was long before any intelligence on
the vampires had been given to her by the Talamasca. In fact, to the best of my knowledge no information on the vampires
had ever been given to Merrick.
  "I remember more than one encounter with her," he said. "I should have told you, but by now you must know my
manner."
  "How do you mean?"
  "I tell only what's necessary," he said with a little sigh. "I want to believe in what I say, but it's hard. Well, in truth I did
have an encounter with Merrick. That's true. And yes, she did fling a curse at me. It was more than sufficient for me to
turn away from her. However, I wasn't afraid. I'd misunderstood something about her altogether. If I could read minds as
you can read them, the misunderstanding would never have occurred."
  "But you must explain this to me," I said.
  "It was in a back street, rather dangerous," he said. "I thought she wanted to die. She was walking alone in utter
darkness, and when she heard my deliberate footfall behind her, she didn't even bother to glance over her shoulder or
speed her pace. It was very reckless behavior and unusual for any woman of any sort at all. I thought she was weary of
life."

  "I understand you."
  "But then, when I drew close to her," he said, "her eyes flashed on me violently, and she sent out a warning that I heard
as distinctly as a spoken voice: 'Touch me and I'll shatter you.' That's about the best translation of it from the French that I
can make. She uttered other curses, names, I'm not sure what they meant. I didn't withdraw from her in fear. I simply
didn't challenge her. I had been drawn to her in my thirst because I thought she wanted death."
  "I see," I said. "It checks with what she told me. Other times, I believe she's seen you from afar."
  He pondered this for a moment. "There was an old woman, a very powerful old woman."
  "Then you knew of her."
  "David, when I came to you to ask you to speak with Merrick, I knew something of her, yes. But that was a while ago
that the old woman was alive, and the old woman did sometimes see me, most definitely, and the old woman knew what I
was." He paused for a moment, then resumed. "Way back before the turn of the last century, there were Voodooiennes
about who always knew us. But we were quite safe because no one believed what they said."
  "Of course," I responded.
  "But you see, I never much believed in those women. When I encountered Merrick, well, I sensed something immensely
powerful and alien to my understanding. Now, please, do go on. Tell me what happened tonight."
  I recounted how I'd taken Merrick back to the Windsor Court Hotel, and how the spell had then descended upon me
with numerous apparitions, the most unwholesome and frightening of which was most definitely that of the dead
grandmother, Great Nananne.
  "If you could have seen the two figures speaking to one another in the carriageway, if you could have seen their
absorbed and somewhat secretive manner, and the casual fearless way in which they regarded me, it would have given
you chills."
  "No doubt of it," he said. "And you do mean you actually saw them, as though they were truly there. It wasn't simply an
idea."
  "No, my dear fellow, I saw them. They looked real. Of course they didn't look entirely like other people, you must
understand. But they were there!"
  I went on to explain my return to the hotel, the altar, Papa Legba, and then my coming home, and, once again, I
described the music of the harpsichord and the singing of the caged birds.
  Louis grew visibly sad at this, but again, he did not interrupt.
  "As I told you before," I said, "I recognized the music. It was Mozart's first sonata. And the playing was unrealistic and
full of--."
  "Tell me."
  "But you must have heard it. It was haunting. I mean a long, long time ago you must have heard such music, when it
was first played here, for hauntings only repeat what occurred once upon a time."
  "It was full of anger," he said softly, as though the very word "anger" made him hush his tone.
  "Yes, that was it, anger. It was Claudia playing, was it not?"
  He didn't respond. He seemed stricken by his memories and considerations. Then finally he spoke.
  "But you don't know that Claudia made you hear these sounds," he said. "It might have been Merrick and her spell."
  "You're right on that score, but you see, we don't know that Merrick caused all the other things, either. The altar, the
candle, even my blood upon the handkerchief--these things don't prove that Merrick sent the spirits after me. We have to
think about the ghost of Great Nananne."
  "You mean this ghost might have interfered with us, entirely on her own?"
  I nodded. "What if this ghost wants to protect Merrick? What if this ghost does not want her granddaughter to conjure
the soul of a vampire? How can we know?"
  He seemed on the edge of total despair. He remained poised and somewhat collected, but his face was badly stricken,
and then he seemed to pull himself together, and he looked to me to speak, as if no words could express what he felt.
  "Louis, listen to me. I have only a tenuous understanding of what I'm about to say, but it's most important."
  "Yes, what is it?" He seemed at once animated and humble, sitting upright in the chair, urging me to go on.
  "We're creatures of this earth, you and I. We are vampires. But we're material. Indeed, we are richly entangled with
Homo sapiens in that we thrive on the blood of that species alone. Whatever spirit inhabits our bodies, governs our cells,
enables us to live--whatever spirit that does all those things is mindless and might as well be nameless, insofar as we
know. You do agree on these points..."
  "I do," he said, obviously eager for me to go on.
  "What Merrick does is magic, Louis. It is from another realm."
  He made no response.

  "It's magic that we're asking her to do for us. Voodoo is magic, so is Candomble. So is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."
  He was taken aback, but fascinated.
  "God is magic," I continued, "and so are the saints. Angels are magic. And ghosts, if they be truly the apparitions of
souls who once lived on earth, are magic as well."
  He absorbed these words respectfully and remained silent.
  "You understand," I continued, "I don't say that all these magical elements are equal. What I am saying is that what they
have in common is that they are divorced from materiality, divorced from the earth, and from the flesh. Of course they
interact with matter. They interact with the flesh. But they partake of the realm of pure spirituality where other laws--
laws unlike our physical earthly laws--might exist."
  "I see your meaning," he said. "You're warning me that this woman can do things that will baffle us as easily as they
might baffle mortal men."
  "Yes, that is my intent here, partly," I answered. "However, Merrick may do more than simply baffle us, you understand
me. We must approach Merrick and what she will do with the utmost respect."
  "I do understand you," he said. "But if human beings have souls that survive death, souls that can manifest as spirits to
the living, then human beings have magical components as well."
  "Yes, a magical component, and you and I still possess this magical component, along with some additional vampiric
component, but when a soul truly leaves its physical body? Then it is in the realm of God."
  "You believe in God," he murmured, quite amazed.
  "Yes, I think so," I answered. "Indeed, I know so. What's the point of hiding it as if it were an unsophisticated or foolish
frame of mind?"
  "Then you do indeed have great respect for Merrick and her magic," he said. "And you believe that Great Nananne, as
you call her, might be a very powerful spirit indeed."
  "Precisely," I said.
  He settled back in the chair, and his eyes moved back and forth a little too rapidly. He was quite excited by all I'd told
him, but his general disposition was one of profound sorrow, and nothing made him look happy or glad.
  "Great Nananne might be dangerous, that's what you're saying," he murmured. "Great Nananne might want to protect
Merrick from ... you and me."
  He looked rather splendid in his sorrow. Again he made me think of the paintings of Andrea del Sarto. There was
something lush in his beauty, for all the sharp and clear well-drawn lines of his eyes and mouth.
  "I don't expect my faith to make a particle of difference to you," I said. "But I want to emphasize these feelings, because
this Voodoo, this matter of spirits, is indeed a dangerous thing."
  He was perturbed but hardly frightened, perhaps not even cautious. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him of my
experiences in Brazil, but it wasn't the time or place.
  "But David, on the matter of ghosts," he said finally, again maintaining a respectful tone, "surely there are all kinds of
ghosts."
  "Yes, I think I know what you mean," I responded.
  "Well, this Great Nananne, if indeed she appeared of her own volition, from where precisely did she come?"
  "We can't expect to know that, Louis, about any ghost."
  "Well surely some ghosts are manifestations of earthbound spirits, don't students of the occult maintain this truth?"
  "They do."
  "If these ghosts are the spirits of the dead who are earthbound, how can we say they are purely magical? Aren't they still
within the atmosphere? Aren't they struggling to reach the living? Aren't they divorced from God? How else can one
interpret Claudia's haunting of Jesse? If it was Claudia, then Claudia has not gone on into a purely spiritual realm. Claudia
is not a partaker of the laws beyond us. Claudia is not at peace."
  "Ah, I see," I answered. "So that is why you want to attempt the ritual." I felt foolish for not having seen it all along.
"You believe that Claudia's suffering."
  "I think it's entirely possible," he said, "if Claudia did appear to Jesse as Jesse seemed to think." He looked miserable.
"And frankly, I hope that we can't rouse Claudia's spirit. I hope that Merrick's power doesn't work. I hope that if Claudia
had an immortal soul, that soul has gone to God. I hope for things in which I can't believe."
  "So this is why the story of Claudia's ghost has so tormented you. You don't want to speak to her. You want to know
that she's at peace."
  "Yes, I want to do this thing because she may be a restless and tormented spirit. I can't know from the stories of others. I
myself have never been haunted, David. As I've told you, I have never heard this harpsichord music, nor the singing of

caged birds here. I have never witnessed anything to indicate that Claudia exists anywhere in any form any longer at all. I
want to try to reach Claudia so that I will know."
  This confession had cost him dearly, and he sat back again and looked away, perhaps into some private corner of his
soul.
  Finally, his eyes still fixed on some invisible spot in the shadows, he spoke:
  "If only I had seen her, I could make some assessment, no matter how poor that assessment might be. I tell myself no
vagrant spirit could ever fool me into believing it was Claudia, but I've never seen a vagrant spirit, either. I have never
seen anything like it. I have only Jesse's story of what happened, which Jesse herself sought to soften on account of my
feelings, and of course Lestat's ramblings, that he was sure Claudia came to him, that past experiences quite literally
engulfed him when he was suffering his adventures with the Body Thief."
  "Yes, I've heard him talk of it."
  "But with Lestat, one never knows . . ." he said. "Lestat may have been characterizing his conscience in those stories. I
don't know. What I do know is that I want desperately for Merrick Mayfair to try to raise Claudia's spirit, and I'm prepared
for whatever might come."
  "You think you're prepared," I said hastily, perhaps unfairly.
  "Oh, I know. The spell tonight has shaken you."
  "You can't imagine," I said.
  "Very well, I admit it. I can't imagine. But tell me this. You speak of a realm beyond the earth and that Merrick is
magical when she reaches for it. But why does it involve blood? Surely her spells will involve blood." He went on, a little
angrily. "Voodoo almost always involves blood," he averred. "You speak of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as magical,
and I understand you, because if the Bread and Wine are transformed into the Holy Sacrifice of the Crucifixion, it is
magical, but why does it involve blood? We are earthly beings, yes, but a small component of us is magical, and why does
that component demand blood?"
  He became quite heated as he finished, his eyes fixing on me severely almost, though I knew his emotions had little to
do with me.
  "What I'm saying is, we might compare rituals the world over in all religions and all systems of magic, forever, but they
always involve blood. Why? Of course I know that human beings can not live without blood; I know that 'the blood is the
life,' saith Dracula; I know that humankind speaks in cries and whispers of blood-drenched altars, of bloodshed and blood
kin, and blood will have blood, and those of the finest blood. But why? What is the quintessential connection that binds all
such wisdom or superstition? And above all, why does God want blood?"
  I was taken aback. Surely I wasn't going to hazard a hasty answer. And I didn't have one, besides. His question went too
deep. Blood was essential to Candomble. It was essential to real Voodoo as well.
  He went on:
  "I don't speak of your God in particular," he said kindly, "but the God of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has demanded
blood, and indeed the Crucifixion has come down to us as one of the most renowned blood sacrifices of all time. But what
of all the other gods, the gods of old Rome for whom blood had to be shed in the arena as well as on the altar, or the gods
of the Aztecs who were still demanding bloody murder as the price of running the universe when the Spanish arrived on
their shores?"
  "Maybe we're asking the wrong question," I said finally. "Maybe blood does not matter to the gods. Maybe blood
matters to us. Maybe we've made it the vehicle of Divine transmission. Maybe that's something which the world can move
beyond."
  "Hmmm, it's not a mere anachronism," he said. "It's a genuine mystery. Why should the natives of ancient South
America have but one word in their language for both flowers and blood?"
  He rose from the chair again, looking altogether restless, and went to the window once more and looked out through the
lace.
  "I have my dreams," he said in a whisper. "I dream she will come, and she will tell me that she is at peace and she will
show me the courage to do what I must do."
  These words saddened and disturbed me.
  "The Everlasting has not fixed his canon against my self-slaughter," he said, paraphrasing Shakespeare, "because all I
need do to accomplish it is not seek shelter at the rising of the sun. I dream she may warn me of hellfires and of the need
for repentance. But then, this is a little miracle play, isn't it? If she comes, she may be groping in darkness. She may be
lost among the wandering dead souls whom Lestat saw when he traveled out of this world."
  "Absolutely anything is possible," I answered.

  A long interval occurred during which I went quietly up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder, to let him know in my
way that I respected his pain. He didn't acknowledge this tiny intimacy. I made my way back to the sofa and I waited. I
had no intention of leaving him with such thoughts in his mind.
  At last he turned around.
  "Wait here," he said quietly, and then he went out of the room and down the passage. I heard him open a door. Within a
brief moment he was back again with what appeared to be a small antique photograph in his hand.
  I was immensely excited. Could it be what I thought?
  I recognized the small black gutter perche case into which it was fitted, so like the ones that framed the daguerreotypes
belonging to Merrick. It appeared intricate and well preserved.
  He opened the case and looked at the image, and then he spoke:
  "You mentioned those family photographs of our dearly beloved witch," he said reverently. "You asked if they were not
vehicles for guardian souls."
  "Yes, I did. As I told you, I could have sworn those little pictures were looking at Aaron and at me."
  "And you mentioned that you could not imagine what it had meant to us to see daguerreotypes--or whatever they might
be called--for the first time so many years ago."
  I was filled with a sort of amazement as I listened to him. He had been there. He had been alive and a witness. He had
moved from the world of painted portraits to that of photographic images. He had drifted through those decades and was
alive now in our time.
  "Think of mirrors," he said, "to which everyone is accustomed. Think of the reflection suddenly frozen forever. That is
how it was. Except the color was gone from it, utterly gone, and there lay the horror, if there was one; but you see, no one
thought it was so remarkable, not while it was happening, and then it was so common. We didn't really appreciate such a
miracle. It went popular too very fast. And of course when it first started, when they first set up their studios, it was not
for us."
  "For us?"
  "David, it had to be done in daylight, don't you see? The first photographs belonged to mortals alone."
  "Of course, I didn't even think of it."
  "She hated it," he said. He looked again at the image. "And one night, unbeknownst to me, she broke the lock of one of
the new studios--and there were many of them--and she stole all the pictures she could find. She broke them, smashed
them in a fury. She said it was ghastly that we couldn't have our pictures made. 'Yes, we see ourselves in mirrors, and old
tales would have it not,' she screamed at me. 'But what about this mirror? Is this not some threat of judgment?' I told her
absolutely it was not.
  "I remember Lestat laughed at her. He said she was greedy and foolish and ought to be happy with what she had. She
was past all tolerance of him, and didn't even answer him. That's when he had the miniature painted of her for his locket,
the locket you found for him in a Talamasca vault."
  "I see," I answered. "Lestat never told me such a story."
  "Lestat forgets many things," he said thoughtfully and without judgment. "He had other portraits of her painted after
that. There was a large one here, very beautiful. We took it with us to Europe. We took trunks of our belongings, but that
time I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember how she tried to hurt Lestat."
  I was silent out of respect.
  "But the photographs, the daguerreotypes, that's what she wanted, the real image of herself on glass. She was furious, as
I told you. But then years later, when we reached Paris, in those lovely nights before we ever happened upon the Théâtre
des Vampires and the monsters who would destroy her, she found that the magic pictures could be taken at night, with
artificial light!"
  He seemed to be reliving the experience painfully, I remained quiet.
  "You can't imagine her excitement. She had seen an exhibit by the famous photographer Nadar of pictures from the
Paris catacombs. Pictures of cartloads of human bones. Nadar was quite the man, as I'm sure you know. She was thrilled
by the pictures. She went to his studio, by special appointment, in the evening, and there this picture was made."
  He came towards me.
  "It's a dim picture. It took an age for all the mirrors and the artificial lamps to do their work. And Claudia stood still for
so long, well, only a vampire child might have worked such a trick. But she was very pleased with it. She kept it on her
dressing table in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, the last place that we ever called our home. We had such lovely rooms there. It
was near to the Opera. I don't think she ever unpacked the painted portraits. It was this that mattered to her. I'd actually
thought she would come to be happy in Paris. Maybe she would have been ... But there wasn't time. This little picture, she
felt it was only the beginning, and planned to return to Nadar with an even lovelier dress."

  He looked at me.
  I stood up to receive the picture, and he placed it in my hands most carefully, as though it were about to shatter of its
own accord.
  I was dumbfounded. How small and innocent she seemed, this irretrievable child of fair locks and chubby cheeks, of
darkened Cupid's bow lips and white lace. Her eyes veritably blazed from the shadowy glass as I looked at her. And there
came back that very suspicion of years ago, that I'd suffered so strongly with Merrick's pictures, that the image was gazing
at me.
  I must have made some small sound. I don't know. I shut the little case. I even worked the tiny gold clasp into the lock.
  "Wasn't she beautiful?" he asked. "Tell me. It's past a matter of opinion, isn't it? She was beautiful. One cannot deny
that simple fact."
  I looked at him, and I wanted to say that she was, indeed she was, she was lovely, but no sound would come out of my
mouth.
  "We have this," he said, "for Merrick's magic. Not her blood, nor an article of clothing, nor a lock of hair. But we have
this. After her death, I went back to the hotel rooms where we'd been happy and I retrieved it, and all the rest I left."
  He opened his coat and slipped the picture into his breast pocket. He looked a little shocked, his eyes purposefully
blank, and then he gave a little shake of the head.
  "Don't you think it will be powerful for the magic?" he asked.
  "Yes," I said. There were so many comforting words tumbling through my mind, but all seemed poor and stiff.
  We stood looking at one another, and I was surprised at the feeling in his expression. He seemed altogether human and
passionate. I could scarce believe the despair with which he endured.
  "I don't really want to see her, David," he said. "You must believe me on that score. I don't want to raise her ghost, and
frankly, I don't think we can."
  "I believe you, Louis," I said.
  "But if she does come, and she is in torment. . ."
  "Then Merrick will know how to guide her," I said quickly. "I'll know how to guide her. All mediums in the Talamasca
know how to guide such spirits. All mediums know to urge such spirits to seek the light."
  He nodded. "I was counting on it," he said. "But you see, I don't think Claudia would ever be lost, only wanting to
remain. And then, it might take a powerful witch like Merrick to do the convincing that beyond this pale there lies an end
to pain."
  "Precisely," I said.
  "Well, I've troubled you enough for one evening," he said. "I have to go out now. I know that Lestat is uptown in the old
orphanage. He's listening to his music there. I want to make certain that no intruders have come in."
  I knew this was fanciful. Lestat, regardless of his frame of mind, could defend himself against almost anything, but I
tried to accept the words as a gentleman should.
  "I'm thirsting," he added, glancing at me, with just the trace of a smile. "You're right on that account. I'm not really
going to see to Lestat. I've already been to St. Elizabeth's. Lestat is alone with his music as he chooses to be. I'm thirsting
very much. I'm going to feed. And I have to go about it alone."
  "No," I said softly. "Let me go with you. After Merrick's spell, I don't want you to go alone."
  This was most decidedly not Louis's way of doing things; however, he agreed.




                                                                6


  WE WENT OUT TOGETHER, walking quite rapidly until we were well away from the lighted blocks of the Rue
Bourbon and the Rue Royale.
  New Orleans soon opened up her underbelly to us, and we went deep into a ruined neighborhood, not unlike the
neighborhood in which I'd long ago met Merrick's Great Nananne. But if there were any great witches about, I found no
hint of them on this night.
  Now, let me say here a few words about New Orleans and what it was to us.

  First and foremost it is not a monstrous city like Los Angeles or New York. And even though it has a sizable underclass
of dangerous individuals, it is, nevertheless, a small place.
  It cannot really support the thirst of three vampires. And when great numbers of blood drinkers are drawn to it, the
random blood lust creates an unwanted stir.
  Such had recently happened, due to Lestat publishing his memoirs of Memnoch the Devil, during which time many of
the very ancient came to New Orleans, as well as rogue vampires--creatures of powerful appetite and little regard for the
species and the subterranean paths which it must follow to survive in the modern world.
  During that time of coming together, I had managed to persuade Armand to dictate his life story to me; and I had
circulated, with her permission, the pages which the vampire Pandora had given me sometime before.
  These stories attracted even more of the maverick blood drinkers--those creatures who, being masterless and giving out
lies as to their beginnings, often taunt their mortal prey and seek to bully them in a way that can only lead to trouble for all
of us.
  The uneasy convocation did not last long.
  But though Marius, a child of two millennia, and his consort, the lovely Pandora, disapproved of the young blood
drinkers, they would not lift a hand against them to put them to death or to flight. It was not in their nature to respond to
such a catastrophe, though they were outraged by the conduct of these baseborn fiends.
  As for Lestat's mother, Gabrielle, one of the coldest and most fascinating individuals whom I have ever encountered, it
was of absolutely no concern to her at all, as long as no one harmed her son.
  Well, it was quite impossible for anyone to harm her son. He is unharmable, as far as we all know. Or rather, to speak
more plainly, let me say that his own adventures have harmed Lestat far more than any vampire might. His trip to Heaven
and Hell with Memnoch, be it delusion or supernatural journey, has left him stunned spiritually to such a point that he is
not ready to resume his antics and become the Brat Prince whom we once adored.
  However, with vicious and sordid blood drinkers breaking down the very doors of St. Elizabeth's and coming up the
iron stairs of our very own town house in the Rue Royale, it was Armand who was able to rouse Lestat and goad him into
taking the situation in hand.
  Lestat, having already waked to listen to the piano music of a fledgling vampire, blamed himself for the tawdry
invasion. It was he who had created the "Coven of the Articulate," as we had come to be called. And so, he declared to us
in a hushed voice, with little or no enthusiasm for the battle, that he would put things right.
  Armand--given in the past to leading covens, and to destroying them--assisted Lestat in a massacre of the unwelcome
rogue vampires before the social fabric was fatally breached.
  Having the gift of fire, as the others called it--that is, the means to kindle a blaze telekinetically--Lestat destroyed with
flames the brash invaders of his own lair, and all those who had violated the privacy of the more retiring Marius and
Pandora, Santino, and Louis and myself. Armand dismembered and obliterated those who died at his hand.
  Those few preternatural beings who weren't killed fled the city, and indeed many were overtaken by Armand, who
showed no mercy whatsoever to the misbegotten, the heartlessly careless, and the deliberately cruel.
  After that, when it was plain to one and all that Lestat had returned to his semi-sleep, absorbed utterly in recordings of
the finest music provided for him by me and by Louis, the elders--Marius, Pandora, Santino, and Armand, with two
younger companions--gradually went their way.
  It was an inevitable thing, that parting, because none of us could really endure the company of so many fellow blood
drinkers for very long.
  As it is with God and Satan, humankind is our subject matter. And so it is that, deep within the mortal world and its
many complexities, we choose to spend our time.
  Of course, we will all come together at various times in the future. We know well how to reach one another. We are not
above writing letters. Or other means of communication. The eldest know telepathically when things have gone terribly
wrong with the young ones, and vice versa. But for now, only Louis and Lestat and I hunt the streets of New Orleans, and
so it will be for some time.
  That means, strictly speaking, that only Louis and I hunt, for Lestat simply does not feed at all. Having the body of a
god, he has subsumed the lust which still plagues the most powerful, and lies in his torpor as the music plays on.
  And so New Orleans, in all her drowsy beauty, is host to only two of the Undead. Nevertheless, we must be very clever.
We must cover up the deeds that we do. To feed upon the evildoer, as Marius has always called it, is our vow; however,
the blood thirst is a terrible thing.
  But before I return to my tale--of how Louis and I went out on this particular evening, allow me a few more words
about Lestat.

  I personally do not think that things are as simple with him as the others tend to believe. Above, I have given you pretty
much "the party line," as the expression goes, as to his coma-like slumber and his music. But there are very troubling
aspects to his presence which I cannot deny or resolve.
  Unable to read his mind, because he made me a vampire and I am therefore his fledgling and far too close to him for
such communication, I, nevertheless, perceive certain things about him as he lies by the hour listening to the brilliant and
stormy music of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Chopin, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky, and the other composers he loves.
  I've confessed these "doubts" about his well-being to Marius and to Pandora and to Armand. But no one of them could
penetrate the veil of preternatural silence which he has drawn about his entire being, body and soul.
  "He's weary," say the others. "He'll be himself soon." And "He'll come around."
  I don't doubt these things. Not at all. But to put it plainly, something is more wrong with him than anyone has guessed.
There are times when he is not there in his body.
  Now this may mean that he is projecting his soul up and out of his body in order to roam about, in pure spirit form, at
will. Certainly Lestat knows how to do this. He learnt it from the most ancient of the vampires; and he proved that he
could do it, when with the evil Body Thief he worked a switch.
  But Lestat does not like that power. And no one who has had his body stolen is likely to use it for more than a very short
interval in any one night.
  I feel something far more grave is wrong there, that Lestat is not always in control of either body or soul, and we must
wait to discover the terms and outcome of a battle which might still be going on.
  As for Lestat's appearance, he lies on the Chapel floor, or on the four-poster bed in the town house, with his eyes open,
though they appear to see nothing. And for a while after the great cleansing battle, he did periodically change his clothes,
favoring the red velvet jackets of old, and his lace-trimmed shirts of heavy linen, along with slim pants and plain black
boots.
  Others have seen this attention to wardrobe as a good sign. I believe Lestat did these things so that we would leave him
alone.
  Alas, I have no more to say on the subject in this narrative. At least I don't think so. I can't protect Lestat from what is
happening, and no one really has ever succeeded in protecting him or stopping him, no matter what the circumstances of
his distress.
  Now, let me return to my record of events.
  Louis and I had made our way deep into a forlorn and dreadful part of the city where many houses stood abandoned,
and those few which still showed evidence of habitation were locked up tight with iron bars upon their windows and
doors.
  As always happens with any neighborhood in New Orleans, we came within a few blocks to a market street, and there
we found many desolate shops which had long ago been shut up with nails and boards. Only a "pleasure club," as it was
called, showed signs of habitation and those inside were drunk and gambling the night away at card games and dice.
  However, as we continued on our journey, I following Louis, as this was Louis's hunt, we soon came to a small dwelling
nestled between the old storefronts, the ruins of a simple shotgun house, whose front steps were lost in the high weeds.
  There were mortals inside, I sensed it immediately, and they were of varying dispositions.
  The first mind which made itself known to me was that of an aged woman, keeping watch over a cheap little bassinet
with a baby inside of it, a woman who was actively praying that God deliver her from her circumstances, those
circumstances pertaining to two young people in a front room of the house who were entirely given over to drink and
drugs.
  In a quiet and efficient manner, Louis led the way back to the overgrown alley to the rear of this crooked little shack,
and without a sound he peered through the small window, above a humming air conditioner, at the distraught woman, who
wiped the face of the infant, who did not cry.
  Again and again I heard this woman murmur aloud that she didn't know what she would do with those young people in
the front room, that they had destroyed her house and home and left her this miserable little infant who would starve to
death or die of other neglect if the young mother, drunk and dissolute, was forced to care for the child alone.
  Louis seemed an angel of death come to this window.
  On closer inspection over Louis's shoulder, I gained a better perspective on the old one, and discovered that she was not
only caring for the infant, but ironing clothes on a low board which allowed her to sit as she did it, and reach again and
again to comfort the baby in its wicker crib.
  The smell of the freshly ironed clothes was somewhat delicious, a burnt smell but a good one, of heat against cotton and
linen.
  And I saw now that the room was full of these garments, and conjectured that this woman did this work for hire.

  "God help me," she muttered in a little singsong voice, shaking her head as she ironed, "I wish you would take that girl
from me, take her and her friends. God help me, I wish you would deliver me from this Valley, 0 Lord, where I have been
for so long."
  The room itself had comfortable furnishings and touches of domestic care, such as lace doilies on the backs of its chairs
and a clean linoleum floor which shone as though it had been recently waxed.
  The woman herself was heavy of build and wore her hair in a knot on the back of her head.
  As Louis passed on to view the back rooms of the house, the old woman was quite unaware of it, and her singsong
prayers for deliverance went on.
  The kitchen, also immaculate, revealed the same shining linoleum and all its dishes washed and set out to drain beside
the sink.
  The front rooms of the house were another story. Here the young people reigned in positive squalor, one stretched out
on a bed without a sheet to cover its dirty mattress, and the other pitiful creature, alone, in the living room, so full of
narcotics as to be in a swoon.
  Both these hopeless beings were women, though one could not tell this at first glance. On the contrary, their brutally
clipped hair, their emaciated bodies, and their denim-clad limbs gave them a desolate sexless appearance. And the piles of
clothing strewn everywhere about them gave no clue of a predilection for either feminine or masculine attire.
  I found this spectacle unendurable.
  Of course, Marius had cautioned us in no uncertain terms before he departed New Orleans that if we did not hunt the
evildoer almost exclusively, we would very soon go mad. To feed upon the innocent is sublime, but leads inevitably to
such a love of human life that the vampire who does it cannot endure for very long.
  I am not sure I agree with Marius on this score, and I do think that other blood drinkers have survived very well by
feeding on the innocent. But the idea of hunting the evildoer is one which I personally embraced for my own peace of
mind. The intimacy with evil is something which I must bear.
  Louis made his way into the house by means of a side door, one which is quite typical in shotgun houses of this kind
which have no hallway but merely a chain of rooms.
  I remained in the fresher air of the weedy garden, glancing at the stars now and then for comfort, and overcome
suddenly by the unwelcome reek of vomit and feces which came from the house's small bathroom, another miracle of
order and cleanliness except for the recent filth deposited on the floor.
  Indeed, the two young women were in need of immediate intervention, it seemed, were they to be saved from
themselves, but Louis had not come to provide such, but as a vampire, so hungry that even I could feel it, and he made his
way into the bedroom first, and seated himself beside the wraith of a being on the stripped mattress, and very quickly,
ignoring her giggles at the sight of him, embraced her with his right arm, and sank his teeth for the fatal drink.
  On and on, the old woman prayed in the back room.
  I had thought Louis would be finished with the place, but no such luck.
  As soon as the scrawny body of the woman had been allowed to fall to one side and against the mattress, he rose and
stood for a moment in the light of the room's few scattered lamps.
  He looked splendid with the light glinting on his black curly hair and flaring in his dark-green eyes. The blood inside
him had colored his face naturally and brilliantly. In the buff-colored velvet coat with its gold buttons, he appeared an
apparition among the soiled tints and roughened textures of the place.
  It took my breath away to see him focus his eyes slowly and then walk into the front room.
  The remaining woman gave a whooping cry of dazed merriment when she saw him, and for a long moment he stood
merely regarding her as she slumped in an overstuffed chair, with her legs wide apart and her naked arms, covered in
sores, dangling at her sides.
  It seemed he was quite undecided as to what to do. But then I saw his seemingly thoughtful face grow blank with
hunger. I watched him approach, losing all the grace of a contemplative human, appearing to be driven only by hunger,
and lift up this ghastly young creature, and close his lips against her neck. No glimpse of teeth, no moment of cruelty.
Merely the final kiss.
  There followed the swoon, which I could more fully appreciate while peering through the front window. It lasted only a
few moments; then the woman was dead. He laid her down again on her soiled chair, positioning her limbs with some
care. I watched as he used his blood to seal up the puncture wounds in her throat. No doubt he had done the same for the
victim in the other room.
  I felt a wave of sorrow come over me. Life seemed simply unendurable. I had the feeling I would never know safety or
happiness again. I had no right to either. But for what it was worth, Louis was feeling what the blood could give a
monster, and he had chosen his victims well.

  He stepped out of the front door of the house, which was unlatched and unattended in any way, and came round to meet
me in the side yard. The transformation of his face was now complete. He appeared the handsomest of men, his eyes
utterly unclouded and almost fierce, and his cheeks beautifully flushed.
  It would all seem routine to the authorities, the deaths of these two unfortunates, that they had died by the drugs they
were ingesting. As for the old woman in the back room, she continued with her prayers, though she was making them now
into a song for the baby, who had begun to utter small cries.
  "Leave her something for the funerals," I said in a hushed voice to Louis. This seemed to confuse him.
  I quickly went around to the front door, slipped inside, and left a substantial offering of money on the top of a broken
table which was littered with overflowing ashtrays and glasses half filled with stale wine. I put some more money atop an
old bureau as well.
  Louis and I made our way home. The night was warm and damp, yet felt clean and lovely, and the smell of ligustrum
filled my lungs.
  We were soon walking back towards the lighted streets we loved.
  His step was brisk and his manner entirely human. He stopped to pick the flowers that grew over the fences or out of the
little gardens. He sang to himself something soft and unobtrusive. Now and then he looked up at the stars.
  All of this was pleasant to me, though I wondered how in the name of Heaven I would have the courage to feed upon
the evildoer only, or to answer a prayer as Louis had just done. I saw the fallacy in all of it. Another wave of desolation
passed over me, and I felt a terrible need to explain my various points of view, but this did not seem the time.
  It struck me very heavily that I had lived to an old age as a mortal man, and so had ties with the human race that many
another blood drinker simply did not possess. Louis had been twenty-four when he had struck his bargain with Lestat for
the Dark Blood. How much can a man learn in that time, and how much can he later forget?
  I might have continued to think in this vein and indeed to start some conversation with Louis, however I was once again
bothered by something outside of myself, and that is that a black cat, a very huge black cat, shot out of the shrubbery
ahead of us and stopped in our path.
  I stopped in my tracks. So did Louis, only because I had.
  A passing car then sent its beams into the eyes of the cat, and for a moment they were purely golden; then the animal,
truly one of the largest domestic cats I've ever beheld, and a most unwholesome specimen, shot away into the shadows as
swiftly as it had come.
  "Surely you don't take that as a bad omen," said Louis, smiling at me, almost teasing me. "David, you're not
superstitious, as mortals would say."
  I loved the bit of levity in his voice. I loved seeing him so full of the warm blood that he might have been human. But I
couldn't respond to the words.
  I didn't like the cat at all. I was furious at Merrick. I could have blamed the rain on Merrick had it started to pour. I felt
challenged by Merrick. I was working myself up to a little fit of pique. I didn't say a word.
  "When will you let me meet Merrick?" he asked.
  "First her story," I said, "or that part of it which I know. Tomorrow, feed early, and when I come to the flat I'll tell you
the things you need to know."
  "And then we speak of a meeting?"
  "Then you can make up your mind."




                                                                  7


  THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, I rose to find the sky uncommonly clear and full of visible stars. A good omen to all those
in a state of grace. This is not the normal thing for New Orleans, as the air is very filled with moisture, and frequently the
sky has a veiled appearance and little spectacle of cloud and light.
  Having no need to feed, I went directly to the Windsor Court Hotel, once again entering its very lovely modern lobby, a
space which has all the usual elegance of an older establishment, and went up to Merrick's suite.
  She had only just left, I was informed, and a maid was engaged in preparing the rooms for a next guest.

  Ah, she had stayed longer than I had expected, but not as long as I'd hoped. However, imagining her to be safely on her
way back to Oak Haven, I checked with the desk to see if she had left any message for me. She had.
  I waited until I was alone outside to read the short note:
  "Have gone to London to retrieve from the vault those few items which we know are connected with the child."
  So things had progressed so far!
  Of course, she was referring to a rosary and a diary which our fieldworker Jesse Reeves had found in the flat in the Rue
Royale over ten years before. And if memory served me correctly, there were a few other things which had been collected
a century earlier from an abandoned hotel room in Paris where rumor had led us to believe that vampires had lodged.
  I was alarmed.
  But what had I expected? That Merrick would resist my request?
  Nevertheless, I'd never anticipated that she would act so quickly. Of course I knew that she could obtain the items in
question. She was quite powerful within the Talamasca. She had unlimited access to the vaults.
  It occurred to me to try to call her at Oak Haven, to tell her that we must discuss the matter a little further. But I couldn't
risk it.
  The members of the Talamasca there were only a small number, but each was gifted psychically and in a different way.
The phone can be a powerful connecter between souls, and I simply could not have someone there sensing something
"strange" about the voice on the other end of the line.
  There I left the matter, and I set out for our flat in the Rue Royale.
  As I entered the carriageway, something soft moved past my leg. I stopped and searched the darkness until I made out
the shape of another giant black cat. Surely it had to be another. I couldn't imagine the creature I had seen the night before
having followed us home with no incentive of food or milk.
  The cat vanished in the rear courtyard garden and was gone when I reached the back iron stairs. But I didn't like this. I
didn't like this cat. No, not at all. I took my time in the garden. I walked about the fountain, which had recently been
cleaned and stocked with large goldfish, and I spent more than a few moments gazing at the faces of the stone cherubs,
with their conches held high, now quite overrun with lichen, and then looking about at the overgrown flower patches
along the brick walls.
  The yard was kept, yet out of hand, its flagstones swept, but its plants gone wild. Lestat probably wanted it that way,
insofar as he cared. And Louis loved it.
  Suddenly, when I had just about resolved to go upstairs, I saw the cat again, a huge black monster of a thing in my book,
but then I don't like cats, creeping on the high wall.
  A multitude of thoughts crowded my mind. I felt an ever increasing excitement about this project with Merrick and a
certain foreboding which seemed a necessary price. It frightened me suddenly that she had left so abruptly for London,
that I had worked such a distraction upon her that she had abandoned whatever projects in which she might have been
engaged.
  Should I tell Louis what she had set out to do? It would certainly bring about a finality to our plans.
  Entering the flat, I turned on all the electric lights in every room, a detail which was our custom by this time, and one
upon which I depended heavily for some sense of normality, no matter that it was a mere illusion, but then, perhaps
normality is always an illusion. Who am I to say?
  Louis arrived almost immediately after, coming up the rear stairs with his usual silken step. It was the heartbeat I heard
in my alert state, not the footfall at all.
  Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its
windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell
myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from
the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the
rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof.
  I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans.
  Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and to surrender to their fragrance, as
though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man.
  Louis was carefully and thoughtfully dressed, as he had been the night before. He wore a black linen suit of exquisite
cut around the waist and the hips, an unusual thing with linen, and another pristine white shirt and dark silk tie. His hair
was the usual mass of waves and curls, and his green eyes were uncommonly bright.
  He had fed already this evening, it was plain. And his pale skin was once more suffused with the carnal color of blood.
  I wondered at all this seductive attention to detail, but I liked it. It seemed to betoken some sort of inner peace, this
fastidious dressing, or at least the cessation of inner despair.

   "Sit down there on the couch, if you will," I said.
   I took the chair which had been his last night.
   The little parlor surrounded us with its antique glass lamps, the vivid red of its Kirman carpet, and the glinting polish of
its floor. I was vaguely aware of its fine French paintings. It seemed the smallest details were a solace.
   It struck me that this was the very room in which Claudia had tried to murder Lestat well over a century ago. But Lestat
himself had recently reclaimed this space, and for several years we were wont to gather here, and so it did not seem to
matter so very much.
   Quite suddenly I realized that I had to tell Louis that Merrick had gone to England. I had to tell him that which made me
most uncomfortable, that the Talamasca, in the 18oos, had gathered his possessions from the Hotel Saint-Gabriel in Paris,
which he himself had abandoned, as he'd described last night.
   "You knew of our presence in Paris?" he asked. I saw the blood flash in his cheeks.
   I reflected for a long moment before answering.
   "We didn't really know," I said. "Oh, we knew of the Théâeatre des Vampires, yes, and we knew that the players weren't
human. As for you and Claudia, it was more or less the supposition of a lone investigator that you were connected. And
when you abandoned everything in your hotel, when you were seen leaving Paris one evening in the company of another
vampire, we moved in cautiously to purchase all that you'd left behind."
   He accepted this quietly. Then he spoke up.
   "Why did you never try to harm or expose the vampires of the theater?" he asked.
   "We would have been laughed at if we'd tried to expose them," I said. "Besides, that is simply not what we do. Louis,
we've never really talked of the Talamasca. For me, it's like speaking of a country to which I've become a traitor. But
surely you must understand, the Talamasca watches, truly watches, and counts its own survival over the centuries as its
primary goal."
   There was a brief pause. His face was composed and appeared only a little sad.
   "So Claudia's clothing, well, Merrick will have it when she returns."
   "Insofar as we took ownership of it, yes. I myself am not certain what's in the vault." I stopped. I had once brought
Lestat a present from the vault. But I'd been a man then. I could not conceive of trying to rob the Talamasca of anything
just now.
   "I've often wondered about those archives," Louis said. Then again in the most tender voice: "I've never wanted to ask.
It's Claudia I want to see, not those things which we left behind."
   "I understand your meaning."
   "But it counts for magic, doesn't it?" he asked.
   "Yes. You'll understand that better perhaps when I tell you about Merrick."
   "What do you want me to know about Merrick?" he asked earnestly. "I'm eager to hear it. You told me last night about
your first meeting. You told me how she'd showed you the daguerreotypes--."
   "Yes, that was the very first encounter. But there is much, much more. Remember what I said last night. Merrick is a
magician of sorts, a witch, a veritable Medea, and we can be as overwhelmed by magic as any earthly creature can."
   "My desires are singular and pure," Louis said. "I only want to see Claudia's ghost."
   I couldn't help but smile. I think I wounded him. I was immediately sorry.
   "Surely you must recognize some danger is opening the way to the supernatural," I insisted. "But let me tell you what I
know of Merrick, what I feel I can tell."
   I began to recount to him my recollections in order.
   Only a few days after Merrick had come to Oak Haven, some twenty years ago, Aaron and I had set out with Merrick to
drive to New Orleans and to visit Merrick's Great Nananne.
   My memories were vivid.
   The last cool days of spring had passed and we were plunged into a hot and damp weather, which, loving the tropics as I
did, and do, had been very pleasing to me. I had no regrets about having left London at all.
   Merrick still had not revealed to us the day of Great Nananne's death as it had been confided to her by the old woman.
And Aaron, though he'd been the personage in the dream who gave the fatal date to Great Nananne, had no knowledge
whatever of this dream.
   Though Aaron had prepared me for the old section of New Orleans to which we were going, I had nevertheless been
astonished to see the neighborhood of tumbledown houses of all different sizes and styles, steeped in its overgrown
oleander, which bloomed profusely in the moist heat, and most surprised of all to come upon the old raised cottage of a
house which belonged to Great Nananne.

  The day, as I've said, was close and warm, with violent and sudden showers of rain, and though I have been a vampire
now for five years, I can vividly remember the sunshine coming through the rain to strike the narrow broken pavements,
and everywhere the weeds rising out of gutters which were in fact no more than open ditches, and the snarls of oak and
rain tree, and cottonwood, which sprang up all around us as we made our way to the residence which Merrick was now to
leave behind.
  At last we came to a high iron picket fence, and a house much larger than those around it, and of much earlier date.
  It was one of those Louisiana houses which stands upon brick foundation post pillars of about five feet in height, with a
central wooden stair rising to its front porch. A row of simple square pillars held up its Greek Revival porch roof, and the
central door was not unlike the grander doors of Oak Haven in that it had a small fanlight intact above.
  Long windows went from floor to ceiling on the front of the house, but these were all pasted over with newspaper,
which made the house look derelict and uninhabited. The yew trees, stretching their scrawny limbs to Heaven on either
side of the front porch, added a note of grimness, and the front hall into which we entered was empty and shadowy,
though it went clear through to an open door at the back. There were no stairs to the attic, and an attic there must have
been, I conjectured, for the main body of the house had a deeply pitched roof. Beyond that rear open door all was tangled
and green.
  The house was three rooms in depth from front to back, giving it six rooms in all on the main floor, and in the first of
these, to the left of the hallway, we found Great Nananne, under a layer of handsewn quilts in an old plantation
four-poster, without a canopy, of simple mahogany design. I say plantation bed when I refer to this species of furniture
because the pieces are so huge, and so often crammed into small city rooms that one immediately envisions more space in
the country for which this kind of furnishing must have been designed. Also, the mahogany posts, though artfully tapered,
were otherwise plain.
  As I looked at the little woman, dried-up upon the heavily stained pillow, her frame completely invisible beneath the
worn quilts, I thought for a moment she was dead.
  In fact, I could have sworn by all I knew of spirits and humans that the dried little body in the bed was empty of its soul.
Maybe she'd been dreaming of death and wanted it so badly she'd left her mortal coil for but a few moments.
  But when little Merrick stood in the doorway, Great Nananne came back, opening her small crinkled and yellow eyes.
Her ancient skin had a beautiful gold color to it, faded though she must have been. Her nose was small and flat, and her
mouth fixed in a smile. Her hair was wisps of gray.
  Electric lamps, quite shabby and makeshift, were the only illumination save for a wealth of candles on an immense
nearby shrine. I could not quite make out the shrine, as it seemed shrouded in dimness, being against the papered shut
windows of the front of the house. And the people drew my attention at first.
  Aaron brought up an old cane-backed chair, to sit beside the woman in the bed.
  The bed reeked of sickness and urine.
  I saw that newspapers and large brilliantly colored Holy Pictures papered all of the decaying walls. Not a bit of plaster
was left bare save for the ceiling, which was full of cracks and chipped paint and seemed a threat to us all. Only the side
windows had their curtains, but much glass was broken out and here and there newspaper patches had been applied.
Beyond loomed the eternal foliage.
  "We'll bring nurses for you, Great Nananne," said Aaron, in a kindly and sincere voice. "Forgive me that it took me so
long to come." He leant forward. "You must trust in me implicitly. We'll send for the nurses as soon as we leave you this
afternoon."
  "Come?" asked the old woman sunk down into the feather pillow. "Did I ever ask you--either of you--to come?" She
had no French accent. Her voice was shockingly ageless, low in pitch and strong. "Merrick, sit by me here for a little
while, chérie," she said. "Be still, Mr. Lightner. Nobody asked you to come."
  Her arm rose and fell like a branch on the breeze, so lifeless in shape and color, fingers curled as they scratched at
Merrick's dress.
  "See what Mr. Lightner bought for me, Great Nananne?" said Merrick beside her, gesturing with open arms as she
looked down on her new clothes.
  I had not noticed before that she was in Sunday Best, with a dress of white pique and black patent leather shoes. The
little white socks looked incongruous on such a developed young woman, but then Aaron saw her completely as an
innocent child.
  Merrick leant over and kissed the old woman's small head. "Don't you be afraid of anything on my account any longer,"
she said. "I'm home now with them, Great Nananne."

  At that point, a priest came into the room, a tall sagging man as old as Nananne was, it seemed to me, slow moving and
scrawny in his long black cassock, the thick leather belt drooping over shrunken bones, rosary beads knocking softly
against his thigh.
  He seemed blind to our presence, only nodding at the old woman, and he slipped away without a word. As to what his
feelings might have been about the shrine to the left of us, against the front wall of the house, I couldn't guess.
  I felt an instinctive wariness, and an apprehension that he might try to prevent us--with good reason--from taking the
child Merrick away.
  One never knew which priest might have heard of the Talamasca, which priest might have feared it or despised it, under
the guidance of Rome. To those within the hierarchy of the Church, we were alien and mysterious. We were maverick and
controversial. Claiming to be secular, yet ancient, we could never hope for the cooperation or the understanding of the
Church of Rome.
  It was after this man disappeared, and as Aaron continued his polite and subdued conversation with the old woman, that
I had a chance to view the shrine in full.
  It was built up of bricks, from the floor, in stair steps to a high wide altar where perhaps special offerings were placed.
Huge plaster saints crowded the top of it in long rows to the left and right.
  At once I saw St. Peter, the Papa Legba of Haitian Voodoo, and a saint on a horse who appeared to be St. Barbara,
standing in for Chango of Xango in Candomble, for whom we had always used St. George. The Virgin Mary was there in
the form of Our Lady of Carmel, standing in for Ezilie, a goddess of Voodoo, with heaps of flowers at her feet and
perhaps the most candles before her, all of them aflicker in their deep glasses as a breeze stirred the room.
  There stood St. Martin de Porres, the black saint of South America, with his broom in hand, and beside him, St. Patrick
stood gazing down, his feet surrounded by fleeing snakes. All had their place in the underground religions which the
slaves of the Americas had nourished for so long.
  There were all kinds of obscure little mementos on the altar before these statues, and the steps below were covered with
various objects, along with plates of birdseed, grain, and old cooked food which had begun to rot and to smell.
  The more I studied the entire spectacle, the more I saw things, such as the awesome figure of the Black Madonna with
the white Infant Jesus in her arms. There were many little sacks tied shut and kept there, and several expensive-looking
cigars still in their wrapping, perhaps held for some future offering, I couldn't know for sure. At one end of the altar stood
several bottles of rum.
  It was certainly one of the largest such altars I'd ever seen, and it did not surprise me that the ants had overrun some of
the old food. It was a frightening and disturbing sight, infinitely more than Merrick's recent little makeshift offering in the
hotel. Even my Candomble experiences in Brazil did not make me immune to the solemn and savage spectacle of it. On
the contrary, I think these experiences in every regard make me more afraid.
  Perhaps without realizing I was doing it, I came deeper into the room, close to the altar, so that the woman and her
sickbed were out of my sight, behind my back.
  Suddenly the voice of the woman in the bed startled me out of my studies.
  I turned to see that she had sat up, which seemed almost impossible due to her frailty, and that Merrick had adjusted her
pillows so that she might rest in this position as she spoke.
  "Candomble priest," she said to me, "sacred to Oxalá." There it was, the very mention of my god.
  I was too astonished to respond.
  "I didn't see you in my dream, English man," she went on. "You've been in the jungles, you've hunted treasure."
  "Treasure, Madam?" I responded, thinking only as quickly as I spoke. "Indeed not treasure in the conventional sense.
No, never that at all."
  "I follow my dreams," said the old woman, her eyes fixed on me in a manner that suggested menace, "and so I give you
this child. But beware of her blood. She comes down from many magicians far stronger than you."
  Once again I was amazed. I stood opposite her. Aaron had forsaken his chair to get out of the way.
  "Call up The Lonely Spirit, have you?" she asked me. "Did you frighten yourself in the jungles of Brazil?"
  It was quite impossible that this woman could have had this intelligence of me. Not even Aaron knew all of my story. I
had always passed over my Candomble experiences as though they were slight.
  As for "The Lonely Spirit," of course I knew her meaning. When one calls The Lonely Spirit, one is calling some
tortured soul, a soul in Purgatory, or earthbound in misery, to ask that soul for its help in reaching gods or spirits who are
further on. It was an old legend. It was as old as magic under other names and in other lands.
  "Oh, yes, you are some scholar," said the old woman, smiling at me so that I could see her perfect false teeth, yellow as
she was, her eyes seemingly more animate than before. "What is the state of your own soul?"

  "We are not here to deal with such a matter," I fired back, quite shaken. "You know I want to protect your godchild.
Surely you see that in my heart."
  "Yes, Candomble priest," she said again, "and you saw your ancestors when you looked into the chalice, didn't you?"
She smiled at me. The low pitch of her voice was ominous. "And they told you to go home to England or you would lose
your English soul."
  All this was true and untrue. Suddenly I blurted out as much.
  "You know something but not everything," I declared. "One has to have a noble use for magic. Have you taught Merrick
as much?" There was anger in my voice, which this old woman did not deserve. Was I jealous of her power suddenly? I
couldn't control my tongue. "How has your magic brought you to this disaster!" I said, gesturing to the room about me. "Is
this the place for a beautiful child?"
  At once Aaron begged me to be silent.
  Even the priest came forward and peered into my eyes. As if minding a child, he shook his head, frowning most sadly,
and wagged his finger in my eye.
  The old woman laughed a short dry little laugh.
  "You find her beautiful, don't you English man," she said. "You English like children."
  "Nothing could be further from the truth with me!" I declared, offended by her suggestion. "You don't believe what
you're saying. You speak to dazzle others. You sent this girl unaccompanied to Aaron." At once I regretted it. The priest
would certainly come to object when it was time to take Merrick away.
  But I saw now he was too shocked by my audacity to protest it further.
  Poor Aaron was mortified. I was behaving like a beast.
  I had lost all my self-possession and was angry with an old woman who was dying before my eyes.
  But when I looked at Merrick I saw nothing but a rather clever amusement in her expression, possibly even a little pride
or triumph, and then she locked eyes with the old woman and there was some silent message exchanged there for which
all assembled would have to wait.
  "You'll take care of my godchild, I know it," said the old woman. Her wrinkled lids came down over her eyes. I saw her
chest heave beneath the white flannel nightgown, and her hand trembled loosely on the quilt. "You won't be afraid of what
she can do."
  "No, never will I be afraid," I said reverently, eager to make the peace. I drew closer to the bed. "She's safe from
everyone with us, Madam," I said. "Why do you try to frighten me?"
  It didn't seem she could open her eyes. Finally she did and once again she looked directly at me.
  "I'm in peace here, David Talbot," she said. I could not recall anyone having given her my name. "I'm as I want to be,
and as for this child, she was always happy here. There are many rooms to this house."
  "I'm sorry for what I said to you," I answered quickly. "I had no right." I meant it from my heart.
  She gave a rattling sigh as she looked at the ceiling.
  "I'm in pain now," she said. "I want to die. I'm in pain all the time. You'd think I could stop it, that I had charms that
could stop it. I have charms for others, but for me, who can work the magic? Besides, the time has come, and it's come in
its own fashion. I've lived a hundred years."
  "I don't doubt you," I said, violently disturbed by her mention of her pain and her obvious veracity. "Please be assured
you can leave Merrick with me."
  "We'll bring you nurses," said Aaron. It was Aaron's way to pursue the practical, to deal with what could be done.
"We'll see to it that a doctor comes this very afternoon. You mustn't be in pain, it isn't necessary. Let me go now to make
the proper calls. I won't be long."
  "No, no strangers in my house," she said as she looked at him and then up at me. "Take my godchild, both of you. Take
her and take all that I have in this house. Tell them, Merrick, everything that I told you. Tell them all your uncles taught,
and your aunts, and your greatgrandmothers. This one, this tall one with the dark hair--," she looked at me, "--he knows
about the treasures you have from Cold Sandra, you trust in him. Tell him about Honey in the Sunshine. Sometimes I feel
bad spirits around you, Merrick. . . . " She looked at me. "You keep the bad spirits from her, English man. You know the
magic. I see now the meaning of my dream."
  "Honey in the Sunshine, what does it mean?" I asked her.
  She shut her eyes bitterly and tightened her lips. It was extraordinarily expressive of pain. Merrick appeared to shudder,
and for the first time to be about to cry.
  "Don't you worry, Merrick," said the old woman finally. She pointed with her finger, but then dropped her hand again as
if she was too weak to go on.

   I tried suddenly with all of my might and main to penetrate the old woman's thoughts. But nothing came of it, except
perhaps that I startled her when she should have been in peace.
   Quickly I tried to make up for my little blunder.
   "Have faith in us, Madam," I said again adamantly. "You sent Merrick on the right path."
   The old woman shook her head.
   "You think magic is simple," the old woman whispered. Once more our eyes met. "You think it's something you can
leave behind when you cross an ocean. You think les mystères aren't real."
   "No, I don't."
   Once again she laughed, a low and mocking laugh.
   "You never saw their full power, English man," she said. "You made things shake and shiver, but that was all. You were
a stranger in a strange land with your Candomble. You forgot Oxalá, but he never forgot you."
   I was fast losing all composure.
   She closed her eyes and her fingers curled around Merrick's smallboned wrist. I heard the rattle of the priest's rosary,
and then came the fragrance of fresh-brewed coffee mingled with the sweetness of newly falling rain.
   It was an overwhelming and soothing moment--the close moist air of the New Orleans springtime, the sweetness of the
rain coming down all around us, and the soft murmur of thunder far off to the right. I could smell the candle wax and the
flowers of the shrine, and then again there came the human scents of the bed. It seemed a perfect harmony suddenly, even
those fragrances which we condemn as sour and bad.
   The old woman had indeed come to her final hour and it was only natural, this bouquet of fragrances. We must
penetrate it and see her and love her. That was what had to be done.
   "Ah, you hear it, that thunder?" asked Great Nananne. Once again her little eyes flashed to me. She said, "I'm going
home."
   Now, Merrick was truly frightened. Her eyes were wild and I could see her hand shaking. In fact, as she searched the
old woman's face she appeared terrified.
   The old woman's eyes rolled and she appeared to arch her back against the pillow, but the quilts seemed far too heavy
for her to gain the space she craved.
   What were we to do? A person can take an age to die, or die in one second. I was afraid too.
   The priest came in and moved ahead of us so that he could look down at her face. His hand was easily as withered as her
own.
   "Talamasca," the old woman whispered. "Talamasca, take my child. Talamasca, keep my child."
   I thought I myself would give way to tears. I had been at many a deathbed. It is never easy but there is something crazily
exciting about it, some way in which the total fear of death kindles excitement, as if a battle were beginning, when indeed,
it is coming to an end.
   "Talamasca," she said again.
   Surely, the priest heard her. But the priest paid no attention at all. His mind was not difficult to penetrate. He was only
here to give the rites to a woman he knew and respected. The shrine was no shock to him.
   "God's waiting on you, Great Nananne," said the priest softly, in a strong local accent, rather rural sounding. "God's
waiting and maybe Honey in the Sunshine and Cold Sandra are there too."
   "Cold Sandra," said the old woman with a long sigh and then an unintentional hiss. "Cold Sandra," she repeated as
though praying, "Honey in the Sunshine ... in God's hands."
   This was violently disturbing to Merrick. It was plain from her face. Merrick began to cry. This girl, who had seemed so
strong throughout, now appeared quite fragile, as if her heart would be crushed.
   The old woman wasn't finished.
   "Don't you spend your time looking for Cold Sandra," she said, "or Honey in the Sunshine, either." She gripped
Merrick's wrist all the harder. "You leave those two to me. That's a woman who left her baby for a man, Cold Sandra.
Don't you cry for Cold Sandra. You keep your candles burning for the others. You cry for me."
   Merrick was distraught. She was crying without a sound. She bent down and laid her head on the pillow beside that of
the old woman, and the old woman wrapped her withered arm around the child's shoulders, which appeared to droop.
   "That's my baby," she said, "my baby girl. Don't you cry over Cold Sandra. Cold Sandra took Honey in the Sunshine
with her on the road to Hell."
   The priest moved away from the bed. He had begun to pray in a soft voice, the Hail Mary in English, and when he came
to the words "Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, " he timidly and gently raised his voice.
   "I'll tell you if I find those two," said Great Nananne in a murmur. "St. Peter, let me through the gates. St. Peter, let me
through."

  I knew she was calling on Papa Legba. Possibly they were one and the same for her, Papa Legba and St. Peter. The
priest probably knew all about it too.
  The priest drew near again. Aaron stood back out of respect. Merrick remained with her head down on the pillow, her
face buried in it, her right hand against the old woman's cheek.
  The priest raised his hands to give the blessing in Latin, In Nomine Patris, et filie, et spiritu sanctum, Amen.
  I felt I should leave, out of decency, but Aaron gave me no signal. What right had I to remain?
  I looked again at the gruesome altar, and at the huge statue of St. Peter with his Heavenly keys, very like the one I was
to see years later--only a night ago--in Merrick's hotel suite.
  I stepped back and into the hallway. I looked out the back door, though why, I was uncertain, perhaps to see the foliage
darkening as the rain fell. My heart was pounding. The big noisy wet drops came in the back door and in the front, and left
their mark on the soiled old wooden floor.
  I heard Merrick crying aloud. Time stood still, as it can on a warm afternoon in New Orleans. Suddenly, Merrick cried
all the more miserably, and Aaron had put his arm around her.
  It had been an awakening, to realize that the old woman in the bed had died.
  I was stunned. Having known her for less than an hour, having heard her revelations, I was stunned. I could make no
sense of her powers, except that too much of my Talamasca experience had been academic, and, faced with true magic, I
was as easily shaken as anyone else.
  We remained near the door of the bedroom for three quarters of an hour. It seemed that the neighbors wanted to come
in.
  Merrick was at first against it, leaning against Aaron and crying that she'd never find Cold Sandra, and Cold Sandra
ought to have come home.
  The child's palpable misery was dreadful to us all, and the priest again and again came to Merrick and kissed her and
patted her.
  At last, two young women of color, both very fair and with obvious signs of African blood, came in to attend to the
body in the bed. One woman took Merrick in hand and told her to close her godmother's eyes. I marveled at these women.
It wasn't only their gorgeous colored skin or their pale eyes. It was their old-fashioned formal manner, the way they were
dressed in shirtwaist dresses of silk, with jewelry, as if to come calling, and the importance of this little ceremony in their
minds.
  Merrick went to the bed and did her duty with two fingers of her right hand. Aaron came to stand beside me in the hall.
  Merrick came out, asked Aaron through her sobs if he would wait while the women cleaned up Great Nananne and
changed the bed, and of course Aaron told her that we would do as she wished.
  We went into a rather formal parlor on the other side of the hall. The old woman's proud statements came back to me.
This parlor opened by means of an arch into a large dining room, and both rooms contained many fine and costly things.
  There were huge mirrors over the fireplaces, and these had their heavily carved white marble mantels; and the furniture,
of rich mahogany, would fetch a good price.
  Darkened paintings of saints hung here and there. The huge china cabinet was crowded with old patterned bone china;
and there were a few huge lamps with dim bulbs beneath dusty shades.
  It would have been rather comfortable except it was suffocatingly hot, and though there were broken windowpanes,
only the dampness seemed to penetrate the dusty shadows where we sat down.
  At once, a young woman, another rather exotically colored creature, lovely and as primly dressed as the others, came in
to cover the mirrors. She had a great deal of folded black cloth with her, and a small ladder. Aaron and I did what we
could to assist.
  After that she closed the keyboard of an old upright piano which I had not even noticed. Then she went to a large
casement clock in the comer, opened the glass, and stopped the hands. I heard the ticking for the first time only when it
actually ceased.
  A large crowd of people, black, white, and of different racial blending, gathered before the house.
  At last the mourners were allowed to come in and there was a very long procession, during which time Aaron and I
retired to the sidewalk, as it was perfectly plain that Merrick who had taken up a position at the head of the bed, was no
longer so badly shaken, only merely terribly sad.
  People stepped into the room, as far as the foot of the bed, and then went out the back door of the house, reappearing
again along the side as they opened a small secondary gate to the street.
  I remember being very impressed by the sobriety and silence that reigned, and being somewhat surprised as cars began
to arrive and smartly dressed people--again, of both races, and of obvious mixture--went up the steps.

  My clothes became uncomfortably limp and sticky from the drowsy heat, and several times I went inside the house to
assure myself that Merrick was all right. Several window air conditioning units in the bedroom, living room, and dining
room had been pressed into service, and the rooms were growing cool.
  It was on my third visit that I realized a collection was being taken for the funeral of Great Nananne. Indeed a china
bowl on the altar was overflowing with twenty-dollar bills.
  As for Merrick, her face showed little or no emotion as she gave a little nod to each person who came to call. Yet she
was obviously numb and miserable.
  Hour followed hour. Still people came, drifting in and out in the same respectful silence, only giving in to conversation
when they were well away from the house.
  I could hear the more formally dressed women of color speaking to one another with the most genteel southern accents,
very far from the African which I have heard.
  Aaron assured me in a whisper that this was hardly typical of funeral affairs in New Orleans. The crowd was altogether
different. It was too quiet.
  I could sense the problem with no difficulty. People had been afraid of Great Nananne. People were afraid of Merrick.
People made sure that Merrick saw them. People left lots of twenty-dollar bills. There wasn't to be a funeral mass, and
people didn't know what to make of it. People thought there ought to be a mass, but Merrick said Great Nananne herself
had said no.
  At last, as we stood in the alleyway once more, enjoying our cigarettes, I saw a look of concern on Aaron's face. He
made a very subtle gesture, that I was to look at an expensive car which had just come to the curb.
  Several obviously white persons got out of the car--a rather handsome young man, and an austere woman with a pair of
wire-rimmed glasses on her nose. They went directly up the steps, deliberately avoiding the gaze of those who hung
about.
  "Those are white Mayfairs," said Aaron under his breath. "I can't be noticed here." Together we moved deeper into the
alleyway and towards the back of the house. Finally, when the way became impassable due to the magnificent wisteria,
we stopped.
  "But what does it mean?" I asked. "The white Mayfairs. Why have they come?"
  "Obviously, they feel some obligation," said Aaron in a whisper. "Truly, David, you must be quiet. There isn't a member
of the family who doesn't have some psychic power. You know I've tried in vain to make contact. I don't want us to be
seen here."
  "But who are they?" I pressed. I knew a voluminous file existed on the Mayfair Witches. I knew Aaron had been
assigned to it for years. Yes, I knew, but for me as Superior General it was one story among thousands.
  And the exotic climate, the strange old house, the clairvoyance of the old woman, the rising weeds, and the sunshiney
rainfall had all gone to my head. I was as stimulated as if we were seeing ghosts.
  "The family lawyers," he said in a hushed voice, trying to hide his annoyance with me. "Lauren Mayfair and young
Ryan Mayfair. They don't know anything, not about Voodoo or witches, here or uptown, but clearly they know the woman
is related to them. They don't shirk a family responsibility, the Mayfairs, but I never expected to see them here."
  At this juncture, as he cautioned me again to be quiet and stay out of the way, I heard Merrick speaking within. I drew
close to the broken windows of the formal parlor. I couldn't make out what was being said.
  Aaron, too, was listening. Very shortly the white Mayfairs emerged from the house and went away in their new car.
  Only then did Aaron go up to the steps. The last of the mourners was just leaving. Those out on the pavement had
already paid their respects. I followed Aaron into Great Nananne's room.
  "Those uptown Mayfairs," said Merrick in a low voice, "You saw them? They wanted to pay for everything. I told them
we had plenty. Look there, we have thousands of dollars, and the undertaker is already coming. We'll wake the body
tonight and tomorrow it will be buried. I'm hungry. I need something to eat."
  Indeed the elderly undertaker was also a man of color, quite tall and completely bald. He arrived along with his
rectangular basket in which he would place the body of Great Nananne.
  As for the house, it was now left to the undertaker's father, a very elderly colored man, much the same hue as Merrick,
except that he had tight curly white hair. Both of the aforementioned old men had a distinguished air, and wore rather
formal clothes, when one considered the monstrous heat.
  They also believed that there should be a Roman Catholic mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, but Merrick again
explained that they didn't need that for Great Nananne.
  It was amazing how well this settled the whole affair.
  Now Merrick went to the bureau in Great Nananne's room and removed from the top drawer a bundle wrapped in white
sheeting, and gestured for us to leave the house.

  Off we went to a restaurant, where Merrick, saying nothing, and keeping the bundle on her lap, devoured an enormous
fried shrimp sandwich and two diet Cokes. She had obviously grown tired of crying, and had the weary sad-eyed look of
those who are deeply and irreparably hurt.
  The little restaurant struck me as exotic, having a filthy floor and obviously dirty tables, but the happiest waiters and
waitresses as well as clientele.
  I was hypnotized by New Orleans, hypnotized by Merrick, though she was saying nothing; but little did I know that
stranger things were yet to come.
  In a dream, we went back to Oak Haven, to bathe and to change for the wake. There was a young woman there, a good
member of the Talamasca whom I shall not name for obvious reasons, who assisted Merrick and saw to it that she was
turned out beautifully in a new navy blue dress and broad-brimmed straw hat. Aaron himself gave a quick buffing to her
patent leather shoes. Merrick had a rosary with her and a Catholic prayer book with a pearl cover.
  But before she would have us return to New Orleans, she wanted to show us the contents of the bundle she had taken
from the old woman's room.
  We were in the library, where I first met Merrick only a short time before. The Motherhouse was at supper, so we had
the room entirely to ourselves, with no special request.
  When she unwrapped the sheeting, I was astonished to see an ancient book or codex, with brilliant illustrations on its
wooden cover, a thing in tatters, which Merrick handled as carefully as she could.
  "This is my book from Great Nananne," she said, looking at the thick volume with obvious respect. She let Aaron lift
the book in its swaddling to the table under the light.
  Now vellum or parchment is the strongest material ever invented for books, and this one was clearly so old that it would
never have survived had it been written on anything else. Indeed, the wooden cover was all but in pieces. Merrick herself
took the initiative to move it to the side so that the title page of the book could be read.
  It was in Latin, and I translated it as instantly as any member of the Talamasca could do.

                                                  HEREIN LIE ALL SECRETS
                                                    OF THE MAGICAL ARTS
                                                     AS TAUGHT TO HAM,
                                                           SON OF NOAH,
                                                       BY THE WATCHERS
                                           AND PASSED DOWN TO HIS ONLY SON,

                                                               Mesran

  Carefully lifting this page, which was bound as all the others were by three different ties of leather thong, Merrick
revealed the first of many pages of magic spells, written in faded but clearly visible and very crowded Latin script.
  It was as old a book of magic as I have ever beheld, and of course its claim--the claim of its title page--was to the very
earliest of all black magic ever known since the time of The Flood.
  Indeed, I was more than familiar with the legends surrounding Noah, and his son, Ham, and the even earlier tale, that
the Watcher Angels had taught magic to the Daughters of Men when they lay with them, as Genesis so states.
  Even the angel Memnoch, the seducer of Lestat, had revealed a version of this tale in his own fashion, that is, of being
seduced during his earthly wanderings by a Daughter of Man. But of course I knew nothing of Memnoch back then.
  I wanted to be alone with this book! I wanted to read every syllable of it. I wanted to have our experts test its paper, its
ink, as well as peruse its style.
  It will come as no surprise to most readers of my narrative that people exist who can tell the age of such a book at a
glance. I was not one such person, but I believed firmly that what I held had been copied out in some monastery
somewhere in Christendom, somewhere before William the Conqueror had ever come to the English shores.
  To put it more simply, the book was probably eighth or ninth century. And as I leant over to read the opening page I saw
that it claimed to be a "faithful copy" of a much earlier text that had come down, of course, from Noah's son, Ham,
himself.
  There were so many rich legends surrounding these names. But the marvelous thing was that this text belonged to
Merrick and that she was revealing it to us.
  "This is my book," she said again. "And I know how to work the charms and spells in it. I know them all."
  "But who taught you to read it?" I asked, unable to conceal my enthusiasm.

  "Matthew," she answered, "the man who took me and Cold Sandra to South America. He was so excited when he saw
this book, and the others. Of course I could already read it a little, and Great Nananne could read every word. Matthew
was the best of the men my mother ever brought home. Things were safe and cheerful when Matthew was with us. But we
can't talk about these matters now. You have to let me keep my book."
  "Amen, you shall," said Aaron quickly. I think he was afraid that I meant to spirit away the text but nothing of the sort
was true. I wanted time with it, yes, but only when the child would permit.
  As for Merrick's mention of her mother, I had been more than curious. In fact, I felt we should question her on that point
immediately, but Aaron shook his head sternly when I started to inquire.
  "Come on, let's us go back now," said Merrick. "The body will be laid out."
  Leaving the precious book in Merrick's upstairs bedroom, back we went to the city of dreams once more.
  The body had been brought back in a dove-gray casket lined in satin, and set upon a portable bier in the grim front
parlor which I described before. By the light of numerous candles--the overhead chandelier was naked and harsh and
therefore turned off--the room was almost beautiful, and Great Nananne was now dressed in a fine gown of white silk
with tiny pink roses stitched to the collar, a favorite from her own chifforobe.
  A beautiful rosary of crystal beads was wound around her clasped fingers, and above her head, against the satin of the
lid of the coffin, there hung a gold crucifix. A prie-dieu of red velvet, furnished no doubt by the undertaker, stood beside
the coffin, and many came up to kneel there, to make the Sign of the Cross, and to pray.
  Once again there came hordes of people, and indeed they did tend to break into groups according to race, just as if
someone had commanded them to do so, the light of skin clumping together, as well as whites clumped with whites, and
blacks with blacks.
  Since this time I have seen many situations in the city of New Orleans in which people self-segregate according to color
in a most marked way. But then, I didn't know the city. I knew only that the monstrous injustice of Legal Segregation no
longer existed, and I marveled at the way color seemed to dominate the separation in this group.
  On tenterhooks, Aaron and I waited to be questioned about Merrick, and what was to happen to her, but no one spoke a
single word. Indeed, people merely embraced Merrick, kissed her and whispered to her, and then went their way. Once
more there was a bowl, and money was put in it, but for what I did not know. Probably for Merrick, because surely people
knew she had no mother or father there.
  Only as we prepared to go to sleep on cots in a rear room (the body would remain exposed all night), which was totally
unfurnished otherwise, did Merrick bring in the priest to speak to us, saying to him in very good and rapid French that we
were her uncles and she would live with us.
  "So that is the story," I thought. We were uncles of Merrick. Merrick was definitely going away to school.
  "It's exactly what I meant to recommend to her," said Aaron. "I wonder how she knew it. I thought she would quarrel
with me about such a change."
  I didn't know what I thought. This sober, serious, and beautiful child disturbed me and attracted me. The whole
spectacle made me doubt my mind.
  That night, we slept only fitfully. The cots were uncomfortable, the empty room was hot, and people were going and
coming and forever whispering in the hall.
  Many times I went into the parlor to find Merrick dozing quietly in her chair. The old priest himself went to sleep
sometime near morning. I could see out the back door into a yard shrouded in shadow where distant candles or lamps
flickered wildly. It was disturbing. I fell asleep while there were still a few stars in the sky.
  At last, there came the morning, and it was time for the funeral service to begin.
  The priest appeared in the proper vestments, and with his altar boy, and intoned the prayers which the entire crowd
seemed to know. The English language service, for that is what it was, was no less awe inspiring than the old Latin Rite,
which had been cast aside. The coffin was closed.
  Merrick began to shake all over and then to sob. It was a dreadful thing to behold. She had pushed away her straw hat,
and her head was bare. She began to sob louder and louder. Several well-dressed women of color gathered around her and
escorted her down the front steps. They rubbed her arms vigorously and wiped her forehead. Her sobs came like hiccups.
The women cooed to her and kissed her. At one point Merrick let out a scream.
  To see this composed little girl now near hysterics wrenched my heart.
  They all but carried her to the funeral service limousine. The coffin came behind her, accompanied by solemn
pallbearers to the hearse, and then off to the cemetery we rode, Aaron and I in the Talamasca car, uncomfortably separated
from Merrick but resigned that it was for the best.

  The sorrowful theatricality was not diminished as the rain came steadily down upon us, and the body of Great Nananne
was carried through the wildly overgrown path of St. Louis No. 1 amid high marble tombs with pointed roofs, to be
placed in an oven-like vault of a three-story grave.
  The mosquitoes were almost unbearable. The weeds seemed alive with invisible insects, and Merrick, at the sight of the
coffin being put in its place, screamed again.
  Once more the genteel women rubbed her arms and wiped her head, and kissed her cheeks.
  Then Merrick let out a terrible cry in French.
  "Where are you, Cold Sandra, where are you, Honey in the Sunshine? Why didn't you come home!"
  There were rosary beads aplenty, and people praying aloud, as Merrick leant against the grave, with her right hand on
the exposed coffin.
  Finally, having spent herself for the moment, she grew quiet and turned and moved decisively, with the help of the
women, towards Aaron and me. As the women patted her, she threw her arms around Aaron and buried her head in his
neck.
  I could see nothing of the young woman in her now. I felt utter compassion for her. I felt the Talamasca must embrace
her with every conceivable element of fantasy that she should ever desire.
  The priest meanwhile insisted the cemetery attendants bolt the stone into place NOW, which caused some argument, but
eventually this did happen, the stone thereby sealing up the little grave slot and the coffin now officially removed from
touch or view.
  I remember taking out my handkerchief and wiping my eyes.
  Aaron stroked Merrick's long brown hair and told her in French that Great Nananne had lived a marvelous and long life,
and that her one deathbed wish--that Merrick be safe--had been fulfilled.
  Merrick lifted her head and uttered only one sentence. "Cold Sandra should have come." I remember it because when
she said it several of the onlookers shook their heads and exchanged condemnatory glances with one another.
  I felt rather helpless. I studied the faces of the men and women around me. I saw some of the blackest people of African
blood I have ever beheld in America, and some of the lightest as well. I saw people of extraordinary beauty and others
who were merely simple. Almost no one was ordinary, as we understand that word. It seemed quite impossible to guess
the lineage or racial history of anyone I saw.
  But none of these people were close to Merrick. Except for Aaron and for me, she was basically alone. The well-dressed
genteel women had done their duty, but they really did not know her. That was plain. And they were happy for her that
she had two rich uncles who were there to take her away.
  As for the "white Mayfairs" whom Aaron had spotted yesterday, none had appeared. This was "great luck," according to
Aaron. If they had known a Mayfair child was friendless in the wide world, they would have insisted upon filling the
need. Indeed, I realize now, they had not been at the wake, either. They had done their duty, Merrick had told them
something satisfactory, and they had gone their way.
  Now it was back towards the old house.
  A truck from Oak Haven was already waiting for the transport of Merrick's possessions. Merrick had no intention of
leaving her aunt's dwelling without everything that was hers.
  Sometime or other before we reached the house, Merrick stopped crying, and a somber expression settled over her
features which I have seen many times.
  "Cold Sandra doesn't know," she said suddenly without preamble. The car moved sluggishly through the soft rain. "If
she knew, she would have come."
  "She is your mother?" Aaron asked reverently.
  Merrick nodded. "That whats she always said," she answered, and she broke into a fairly playful smile. She shook her
head and looked out the car window. "Oh, don't you worry about it, Mr. Lightner," she said. "Cold Sandra didn't really
leave me. She went off and just didn't come back."
  That seemed to make perfect sense at the moment, perhaps only because I wanted it to make sense, so that Merrick
would not be deeply hurt by some more commanding truth.
  "When was the last time you saw her?" Aaron ventured.
  "When I was ten years old and we came back from South America. When Matthew was still alive. You have to
understand Cold Sandra. She was the only one of twelve children who didn't pass."
  "Didn't pass?" asked Aaron.
  "For white," I said before I could stop myself.
  Once again, Merrick smiled.
  "Ah, I see," said Aaron.

  "She's beautiful," said Merrick, "no one could ever say she wasn't, and she could fix any man she wanted. They never
got away."
  "Fix?" asked Aaron.
  "To fix with a spell," I said under my breath.
  Again, Merrick smiled at me.
  "Ah, I see," said Aaron again.
  "My grandfather, when he saw how tan my mother was, he said that wasn't his child, and my grandmother, she came
and dumped Cold Sandra on Great Nananne's doorstep. Her sisters and brothers, they all married white people. 'Course
my grandfather was a white man too. Chicago is where they are all are. That man who was Cold Sandra's father, he owned
a jazz club up in Chicago. When people like Chicago and New York, they don't want to stay down here anymore. Myself,
I didn't like either one."
  "You mean you've traveled there?" I asked.
  "Oh, yes, I went with Cold Sandra," she said. " 'Course we didn't see those white people. But we did look them up in the
book. Cold Sandra wanted to set eyes on her mother, she said, but not to talk to her. And who knows, maybe she did her
bad magic. She might have done that to all of them. Cold Sandra was so afraid of flying to Chicago, but she was more
afraid of driving up there too. And drowning? She had nightmares about drowning. She wouldn't drive across the
Causeway for anything in this world. Afraid of the lake like it was going to get her. She was so afraid of so many things."
She broke off. Her face went blank. Then, with a small touch of a frown, she went on:
  "I don't remember liking Chicago very much. New York had no trees that I ever saw. I couldn't wait to come back
home. Cold Sandra, she loved New Orleans too. She always came back, until the last time."
  "Was she a smart woman, your mother?" I asked. "Was she bright the way you are?"
  This gave her pause for thought.
  "She's got no education," said Merrick. "She doesn't read books. I myself, I like to read. When you read you can learn
things, you know. I read old magazines that people left lying around. One time I got stacks and stacks of Time magazine
from some old house they were tearing down. I read everything I could in those magazines, I mean every one of them; I
read about art and science and books and music and politics and every single thing till those magazines were falling apart.
I read books from the library, from the grocery store racks; I read the newspaper. I read old prayer books. I've read books
of magic. I have many books of magic that I haven't even showed you yet."
  She gave a little shrug with her shoulders, looking small and weary but still the child in her puzzlement of all that had
happened.
  "Cold Sandra wouldn't read anything," she said. "You'd never see Cold Sandra watching the six o'clock news. Great
Nananne sent her to the nuns, she always said, but Cold Sandra misbehaved and they were always sending her home.
Besides, Cold Sandra was plenty light enough to not like dark people herself, you know. You'd think she knew better,
with her own father dumping her, but she did not. Fact is she was the color of an almond, if you see the picture. But she
had those light yellow eyes, and that's a dead giveaway, those yellow eyes. She hated it when they started calling her Cold
Sandra too."
  "How did the nickname come about?" I asked. "Did the children start it?''
  We had almost reached our destination. I remember there was so much more I wanted to know about this strange
society, so alien to what I knew. At that moment, I felt that my opportunities in Brazil had been largely wasted. The old
woman's words had stung me to the heart.
  "No, it started right in our house," said Merrick. "That's the worst kind of nickname, I figure. When the neighbors and
the children heard it, they said 'Your own Nananne calls you Cold Sandra.' But it stuck on account of the things she did.
She used all the magic to fix people, like I said. She put the Evil Eye on people. I saw her skin a black cat once and I
never want to see that again."
  I must have flinched because a tiny smile settled on her lips for a moment. Then she went on.
  "By the time I was six years old, she started calling herself Cold Sandra. She'd say to me, 'Merrick, you come here to
Cold Sandra.' I'd jump in her lap."
  There was a slight break in her voice as she continued.
  "She was nothing like Great Nananne," Merrick said. "And she smoked all the time and she drank, and she was always
restless, and when she drank she was mean. When Cold Sandra came home after being gone for a long time, Great
Nananne would say, 'What's in your cold heart this time, Cold Sandra? What lies are you going to tell?'
  "Great Nananne used to say there was no time for black magic in this world. You could do all you had to do with good
magic. Then Matthew came, and Cold Sandra was the happiest she'd ever been."
  "Matthew," I said coaxingly, "the man who gave you the parchment book."

  "He didn't give me that book, Mr. Talbot, he taught me to read it," she answered. "That book we already had. That book
came from Great-Oncle Vervain, who was a terrible Voodoo Man. They called him Dr. Vervain from one end of the city
to the other. Everybody wanted his spells. That old man gave me lots of things before he passed on. He was Great
Nananne's older brother. He was the first person I ever saw just up and die. He was sitting at the dining room table with
the newspaper in his hand."
  I had more questions on the tip of my tongue.
  In all of this long unfolding tale there had been no mention of that other name which Great Nananne had uttered: Honey
in the Sunshine.
  But we had arrived at the old house. The afternoon sun was quite strong but the rain had thinned away.




                                                                 8


  I WAS SURPRISED to see so many people standing about. Indeed they were everywhere, and a very subdued but
attentive lot. I observed at once that not one, but two small paneled trucks had come from the Motherhouse, and that there
stood guard a small group of Talamasca acolytes, ready to pack up the house.
  I greeted these youngsters of the Order, thanking them in advance for their care and discretion, and told them to wait
quietly until they were given the signal to begin their work.
  As we went up the stairs and walked through the house, I saw, where the windows permitted me to see anything, that
people were loitering in the alleyways, and as we came into the backyard, I noticed many persons gathered far off to the
right and to the left beyond the heavy growth of the low-limbed oaks. I could see no fences anywhere. And I do not
believe there were any at that time.
  All was dimness beneath a canopy of luxuriant leaf, and we were surrounded by the sound of softly dripping water.
Wild red hyacinth grew where the sun could penetrate the precious gloom. I saw thin yew trees, the species so sacred to
the dead and to the magician. And I saw many lilies lost in the choking grass. It could not have been more lulling and
dreamy had it been a purposeful Japanese garden.
  As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I realized that we were standing on a flagstone patio of sorts, punctuated by
several twisted yet flowering trees, and much cracked and overwhelmed by slippery shining moss. Before us stood a huge
open shed with a central pillar holding its corrugated tin roof.
  The pillar was brightly painted red to the midpoint and green to the top, and it rose from a huge altar stone quite
appropriately heavily stained. Beyond in the darkness stood the inevitable altar, with saints even more numerous and
magnificent than those in Great Nananne's bedroom.
  There were banks upon banks of lighted candles.
  It was, I knew from my studies, a common Voodoo configurationthe central pillar and the stone. One could find it all
over the island of Haiti. And this weedy flagstone spot was what a Haitian Voodoo doctor might have called his peristyle.
  Cast to the side, among the close and straggling yew trees, I saw two iron tables, small and rectangular in shape, and a
large pot or cauldron, as I suppose it is properly called, resting upon a brazier with tripod legs. The cauldron and the deep
brazier disturbed me somewhat, possibly more than anything else. The cauldron seemed an evil thing.
  A humming sound distracted me somewhat, because I was afraid that it came from bees. I have a very great fear of bees,
and like many members of the Talamasca, I fear some secret regarding bees which has to do with our origins, but there is
not room enough to explain here.
  Allow me to continue by saying only that I quickly realized that the sound came from hummingbirds in this vast
overgrown place, and when I stood quite still beside Merrick, I fancied I saw them hovering as they do, near the fiercely
sprawling flower-covered vines of the shed roof.
  "Oncle Vervain loved them," said Merrick to me in a hushed voice. "He put out the feeders for them. He knew them by
their colors and he called them beautiful names."
  "I love them, too, child," I said. "In Brazil they had a beautiful name in Portuguese, 'the kisser of flowers,' " I said.
  "Yes, Oncle Vervain knew those things," she told me. "Oncle Vervain had been all over South America. Oncle Vervain
could see the ghosts in the middle air all around him all the time."

  She left off with these words. But I had the distinct feeling that it was going to be very difficult for her to say farewell to
this, her home. As for her use of the phrase "ghosts in the middle air," I was suitably impressed, as I had been by so much
else. Of course we would keep this house for her, of that I'd make certain. We'd have the place entirely restored if she so
wished.
  She looked about herself, her eyes lingering on the iron pot on its tripod.
  "Oncle Vervain could boll the cauldron," she said softly. "He put coals under it. I can still remember the smell of the
smoke. Great Nananne would sit on the back steps to watch him. Everybody else was afraid."
  She went forward now and into the shed, and stood before the saints, staring at the many offerings and glittering
candles. She made the Sign of the Cross quickly and laid her right two fingers on the naked foot of the tall and beautiful
Virgin.
  What were we to do?
  Aaron and I stood a little behind her, and at her shoulders, like two rather confused guardian angels. There was fresh
food in the dishes on the altar. I smelled sweet perfume and rum. Obviously some of those people crowded about in the
shrubbery had brought these mysterious offerings. But I shrank back when I realized that one of the curious objects
heaped there in seeming disarray was in fact a human hand.
  It was cut right before the wrist bone, and it had dried into a dreadful clench of sorts, but that was not the full horror. It
was overrun with ants, who had made a little massacre of the entire feast.
  When I realized that the loathsome insects were everywhere, I felt a peculiar horror that only ants can bring.
  Merrick, much to my amazement, picked up this hand rather daintily in her thumb and forefinger, and shook off the
hoodlum ants with several small fierce gestures.
  I heard nothing from the audience in the crowd beyond, but it seemed to me that they pressed closer. The humming of
the birds was becoming hypnotic, and again there came a low hiss of rain.
  Nothing penetrated the canopy. Nothing struck the tin of the roof.
  "What do you want us to do with these things?" asked Aaron gently. "You don't want anything left, as I understand it."
  "We're going to take it down," said Merrick, "if it's all right with you. It's past its time. This house should be closed up
now, if you will keep your promises to me. I want to go with you."
  "Yes, we'll have everything dismantled."
  She suddenly looked at the shriveled hand which she held in her own. The ants were crawling onto her skin.
  "Put it down, child," I said suddenly, startling myself.
  She gave it a wring or two again and then did what I said. "It must come with us, everything must," she said. "Some
day, I'll take out all these things and I'll see what they are." She brushed off the unwelcome ants.
  Her dismissive tone filled me with relief, I must confess it.
  "Absolutely," said Aaron. He turned and gave a signal to the Talamasca acolytes who had come as far as the edge of the
patio behind us. "They will begin packing everything," he told Merrick.
  "There's one thing in this backyard that I have to take myself," she said, glancing at me and then at Aaron. She seemed
not purposefully or playfully mysterious as much as troubled.
  She backed away from us and moved slowly towards one of the gnarled fruit trees that sprang up in the very middle of
the patio flagstones. She dipped her head as she moved under the low green branches, and lifted her arms almost as if she
was trying to embrace the tree.
  In a moment, I saw her purpose. I should have guessed it. A huge snake had descended, coiling itself about her arms and
her shoulders. It was a constrictor.
  I felt a helpless shudder and a total revulsion. Not even my years in the Amazon had made me a patient liker of snakes.
Quite to the contrary. But I knew what they felt like; I knew that eerie silky weight, and the strange current of feeling they
sent through one's skin as they moved very rapidly to encoil one's arms.
  I could feel these things as I watched her.
  Meanwhile, out of the overgrown tangle of green there came low whispers from those who watched her as well. This is
what they had gathered to see. This was the moment. The snake was a Voodoo god, of course. I knew it. But I was still
amazed.
  "It's definitely harmless," Aaron said to me hastily. As if he knew! "We'll have to feed it a rat or two, I suppose, but to
us, it's quite--."
  "Never mind," I said with a smile, letting him off the hook. I could see he was quite uncomfortable. And then to tease
him a little, and to fend off the deep melancholy of the place, I said, "You know of course the rodents must be alive."
  He was appropriately horrified and gave me a reproving glance, as if to say, you needn't have told me that! But he was
far too polite to say a word.

  Merrick was talking to the snake in a low voice in French.
  She made her way back to the altar, and there found a black iron box with barred windows on all sides--I know no
other words for it--which she opened with one hand, the hinges of its lid creaking loudly; and into this box she let the
serpent slowly and gracefully settle itself, which fortunately for all of us, it did.
  "Well, we'll see what stalwart gentlemen want to carry the snake," Aaron said to the closest of the assistants who stood
speechless, watching.
  Meanwhile, the crowd had begun to break up and slip away. There was much rustling in the trees. Leaves fell all around
us. Somewhere, unseen in the lush garden, the birds continued to hover, beating the air with their tiny busy wings.
  Merrick stood for a long moment looking up, as though she'd found a chink in the rooftop of foliage.
  "I'll never be coming back here, I don't think," she said softly to both of us or to no one.
  "Why do you say that, child?" I asked. "You can do as you like, you can come every day if you wish. There are so many
things we must talk over together."
  "It's ruined, this whole place," she said, "and besides, if Cold Sandra ever comes back, I don't want her to find me." She
looked at me in a level manner. "You see, she is my mother and she could take me away, and I don't want that ever to
happen.."
  "It won't happen," I responded, though no one on earth could give the child such a guarantee against a mother's love,
and Merrick knew it. I could only do my best to see that we did what Merrick wanted.
  "Now, come," she said, "there are some things up in the attic that only I want to move."
  The attic was in fact the second story of the house, a very deep sloped roof affair, as I have described, with four dormer
windows, one for each point of the compass, assuming the house was correctly oriented. I had no idea whether it was or
not.
  We made our way up by a narrow back stairs that doubled once upon itself and then entered a place of such delicious
woody fragrances that I was caught off guard. It had a snugness and a cleanness about it, despite the dust.
  Merrick turned on a grim electric bulb and we soon found ourselves amid suitcases, ancient trunks, and leather-bound
packing cases. It was vintage luggage. An antiques dealer would have loved it. And I, having seen one book of magic, was
very much ready for more.
  Merrick had but one suitcase that mattered above all else, she explained, and she set this down on the dusty rafters
beneath the dangling light.
  It was a canvas bag with leathered patched corners. She opened it with ease, as it wasn't locked, and stared down at a
series of loosely wrapped cloth bundles. Once again, white sheeting had been used for these items, or perhaps to put it
more simply, cotton pillowcases past their time.
  It was obvious that the contents of this case were of very special importance, but how special I could not have guessed.
  I was astonished now as Merrick, whispering a little prayer, an Ave, if I'm correct, lifted one bundle and moved back the
cloth to reveal a startling object--a long green axe blade, heavily incised with figures on both sides.
  It was easily two feet in length and quite heavy, though Merrick held it easily. And Aaron and I both could see the
likeness of a face in profile carved deeply into the stone.
  "Pure jade," said Aaron reverently.
  It had been highly polished, this object, and the face in profile wore an elaborate and beautifully realized headdress,
which if I'm not mistaken, involved both plumage and ears of corn.
  The carved portrait or ritual image, whichever it might be, was as large as a human face.
  As Merrick turned the object, I saw that a full figure was etched into the other side. There was a small hole near the
narrow tapering end of the object, perhaps to allow suspension from a belt.
  "My God," said Aaron under his breath. "It's Olmec, isn't it? It must be priceless."
  "Olmec, if I have any guess," I answered. "Never have I seen such a large and exquisitely decorated object outside of a
museum."
  Merrick showed no surprise.
  "Don't say things you don't mean, Mr. Talbot," she said gently. "You have some like this in your own vault." She locked
her eyes on me for a long dreamy moment.
  I could scarcely breathe. How could she know such a thing? But then I told myself she might have learnt such
information from Aaron. Only, a glance at him let me know I was quite wrong.
  "Not as beautiful, Merrick," I answered her quite truthfully. "And ours are fragments, as well."
  When she gave me no reply, when she merely stood there holding the gleaming axe blade with both hands out before
her, as if she liked to look at the light on it, I went on.
  "It's worth a fortune, child," I said, "and I never expected to see such a thing in this place."

  She thought for a long second, and then gave me a solemn forgiving nod.
  "In my opinion," I went on, struggling to redeem myself, "it comes from the oldest known civilization in Central
America. And I can feel my heart thumping as I look at it."
  "Maybe even older than Olmec," she said, looking up at me again. Her wide gaze swept lazily over Aaron. The gold
light of the bulb spilled down upon her and the elaborately dressed figure. "That's what Matthew said after we took it from
the cave beyond the waterfall. That's what Oncle Vervain said when he told me where to look."
  I looked down again on the splendid face of shining green stone with its blank eyes and flattened nose.
  "You don't need me to tell you," I said, "that it's all very likely so. The Olmec come from nowhere, or so the textbooks
tell us."
  She nodded.
  "Oncle Vervain was born from one of those Indians who knew the deepest magic. Colored man and red woman made
Oncle Vervain and Great Nananne, and Cold Sandra's mother was Great Nananne's grandchild, so it's inside of me."
  I couldn't speak. There weren't any words to express my trust or my wonder.
  Merrick set the axe blade to one side, on top of the many bundles, and reached for another with equal care. This was a
smaller, longer bundle, and when she unwrapped it, I was again too breathless for words.
  It was a tall figure, richly carved, and obviously a god or king, I could not say which. As with the axe blade, the size
alone was impressive, not to mention the gloss of the stone.
  "Nobody knows," the child said, speaking to my thoughts very directly. "Only, you see this scepter, it's magic. If he's a
king, he's a priest and god too."
  Humbled, I studied the detailed carving. The long narrow figure wore a handsome headdress which came low over his
fierce, wide eyes, and down to his shoulders all around. On his naked chest was a disc suspended from the radial collar
about his shoulders and neck.
  As for the scepter, he seemed about to be striking the open palm of his left hand with it, as though preparing to do
violence with it when his enemy or victim approached. It was chilling in its menace and beautiful in its sincerity and
intricacy. It was polished and seemed to glow, as did the mask.
  "Shall I stand him up or lay him down?" Merrick asked, looking at me. "I don't play with these creatures. No, I would
never do such a thing. I can feel the magic in them. I've conjured with them. I don't play. Let me cover him once more so
he can be quiet."
  Having rewrapped the idol, she reached for yet a third bundle. I could not calculate the number that remained in the
closely packed case.
  I could see that Aaron was speechless. One did not have to be an expert in Mesoamerican antiquities to realize what
these artifacts were.
  As for Merrick, she began to talk as she unwrapped this third wonder...
  "We went down there, and followed the map that Oncle Vervain had given us. And Cold Sandra kept praying to Oncle
Vervain to tell us where to go. It was Matthew and Cold Sandra and me. Cold Sandra kept saying, 'Aren't you happy now,
you never went to school? You're always complaining. Well, you're getting to go on a great adventure.' And to tell the
truth, that's what it was."
  The cloth fell away from the long sharp pointed pick in her hands. It was all of a piece of green jade, and its handle bore
the distinct feathers of the hummingbird and two small deeply carved eyes. I had seen its type before in museums, but
never such a fine example. And now I understood Oncle Vervain's love of the birds in the yard beyond.
  "Yes, sir," said Merrick. "He said those birds were magic. He was the one to put the feeders out. I told you. Who's going
to fill the feeders when I leave this place behind?"
  "We'll care for the place," said Aaron in his comforting fashion. But I could see he was greatly concerned about
Merrick. She went on talking.
  "The Aztecs believed in hummingbirds. They hover in the air like magic. They turn this way and that and make another
color. There's a legend that Aztec warriors became hummingbirds when they died. Oncle Vervain said magicians need to
know everything. Oncle Vervain said our kind were all magicians, that we came four thousand years before the Aztecs.
He told me about the paintings on the cave wall."
  "And you know where this cave is?" Aaron asked her. He was quick to clarify his meaning. "Darling, you must tell no
one. Men lose common sense over secrets such as these."
  "I have Oncle Vervain's pages," Merrick answered in the same dreamy voice. She laid the sharp blade of this knife back
down on the bed of cotton parcels. Offhandedly, she laid bare a fourth object, a small squat idol as beautifully carved as
the one already revealed. Her hand went back to the perforator with its round, hummingbird handle. "They used this to

draw blood in their magic. That's what Oncle Vervain told me I would find, a thing for drawing blood; that's what
Matthew said this was."
  "This suitcase is filled with such objects, isn't it?" I asked. "These are by no means the most significant of the lot?" I
glanced about. "What else is hidden in this attic?"
  She shrugged. For the first time she looked hot and uncomfortable under the low roof.
  "Come on," she said politely, "let's us pack up the suitcase and go down to the kitchen. Tell your people not to open all
those boxes, just to move them to where they will be safe. I'll make you some good coffee. I make the best coffee. I make
better coffee than Cold Sandra or Great Nananne. Mr. Talbot, you're about to faint from the heat, and Mr. Lightner, you're
too worried. No one's going to break into this house any time ever, and your house has guards all over night and day."
  She rewrapped the axe blade, the idol, and the perforator carefully, then closed the suitcase and snapped its two rusted
locks. Now, and only now, did I see the withered old cardboard tag on it listing an airport in Mexico, and the stamps that
indicated the suitcase had traveled many miles beyond that.
  I held my questions until we had come down into the cooler air of the kitchen. I realized that what she'd said about my
failing in the heat above had been perfectly true. I was almost ill.
  She set the suitcase down, took off her white pantyhose and her shoes, and turned on a rusted round fan above the
refrigerator, which oscillated drowsily, and set to work to make the coffee, as she had said.
  Aaron rummaged for sugar, and in the old "ice box," as she called it, found the pitcher of cream still fresh and quite
cold. That didn't much matter to Merrick, however, because it was milk she wanted for coffee and she heated it to just
below a boil.
  "This is the way to do it," she told us both.
  At last we were settled at a round oak table, whose white painted surface had been wiped quite clean.
  The café au lait was strong and delicious. Five years among the Undead can't kill the memory. Nothing ever will. I piled
the sugar into it, just as she did, and I drank it in deep gulps, believing thoroughly that it was a restorative, and then I sat
back in the creaky wooden chair.
  All around me, the kitchen was in good order, though a relic of former times. Even the refrigerator was some sort of
antique with a humming motor on top of it, beneath the creaking fan. The shelves over the stove and along the walls were
covered by glass doors, and I could see all the accouterments of a place where people regularly take their meals. The floor
was old linoleum and very clean.
  Suddenly, I remembered the suitcase. I jumped and looked about. It was right beside Merrick on the empty chair.
  When I looked at Merrick I saw tears in her eyes.
  "What is it, darling?" I asked. "Tell me and I'll do my level best to make it right."
  "It's just the house and everything that ever happened, Mr. Talbot," she answered. "Matthew died in this house."
  This was the answer to a rather momentous question, and one which I had not dared to voice. I can't say I was relieved
to hear it, but I couldn't help but wonder who might lay claim to the treasures which Merrick regarded as her own.
  "Don't you worry about Cold Sandra," said Merrick, directly to me. "If she was going to come back for these things, she
would have come back a long time ago. There was never enough money in the world for Cold Sandra. Matthew really
loved her, but he had plenty of money, and that made all the difference in the world."
  "How did he die, darling?" I asked.
  "Of a fever from those jungle places. And he'd made us all get all our shots too. I don't like needles. We got shots for
every disease you can imagine. Yet still he came back sick. Some time afterwards, when Cold Sandra was screaming and
hollering and throwing things, she said that the Indians down there in the jungles had put a curse on him, that he never
should have gone up the waterfall to the cave. But Great Nananne said it was too strong a fever. He died over there, in the
back room."
  She pointed to the hallway that separated us from the room in which Aaron and I had spent our uncomfortable night.
  "After he was gone and she went away, I took out the furniture. It's in the front bedroom next to Great Nananne's. That's
where I've slept ever since."
  "I can imagine why," said Aaron comfortingly. "It must have been dreadful for you to lose them both."
  "Now Matthew was always good to us all," she continued, "I wish he had been my father, lot of good it would do me
now. He was in the hospital and out of it, and then the doctors stopped coming because he was drunk all the time and
shouted at them, and then he just choked out his last."
  "And had Cold Sandra already gone?" Aaron asked gently. He had laid his hand on the table beside her own.
  "She was out all the time at the barroom down on the corner, and after they threw her out of that one, she went to the
one on the big street. The night he started to go, I ran down two blocks and over there to get her, and banged on the back
screen door for her to come out. She was too drunk to walk.

  "She was sitting there with this handsome white man, and he was just in love with her, you know, adoring her. I could
see it. And she was so drunk she couldn't stand up. And then it hit me. She didn't want to see Matthew go. She was afraid
to be at his side when it happened. She wasn't being hard-hearted. She was just really scared. So I came running back.
  "Great Nananne was washing his face and giving him his Scotch, that's what he drank all the time, he wouldn't have any
other kind of drink, and he was choking and choking, and we just sat by him till sometime about dawn, the choking
stopped, and his breathing got very steady, so steady you could have set a clock by it, just up and down, up and down.
  "It was a real relief that he wasn't choking. But Great Nananne shook her head to mean no good. Then his breathing got
so low you couldn't see or hear it. His chest stopped moving. And Great Nananne told me he was dead."
  She paused long enough to drink the rest of her coffee, then she stood up, pushing the chair back carelessly, and took
the pot from the stove and gave us all some more of the heavy brew to drink.
  She sat down again and ran her tongue along her lip, a habit with her. She seemed a child in all these gestures, perhaps
because of the convent-school way in which she sat up straight in her chair and folded her arms.
  "You know, it's nice having you listen to this," she said looking from me to Aaron. "I never told anyone all about it. Just
the little things. He left Cold Sandra plenty of money.
  "She came home around noon the next day and demanded to know where they'd taken him, and started screaming and
throwing things and saying we never should have called for the morgue to take him away.
  "'And what did you think we were going to do with him?' Great Nananne asked. 'You don't think they have a law in this
town about dead bodies? You think we can just take him out and bury him in the backyard?' Turned out his people in
Boston came and got him, and soon as Cold Sandra saw that check, you know, the money he'd left her, she was out of this
house and gone.
  "Of course I didn't know it was going to be the last time I ever saw her. All I knew was that she had packed up some of
her clothes in a new red leather suitcase, and she was dressed like a model from a magazine, in a white silk suit. Her hair
was pulled back to a bun on the back of her head. She was so beautiful she didn't need any makeup, but she had put some
dark-violet eye shadow above her eyelashes and a dark color, like violet, too, I think, on her lips. I knew that dark violet
meant trouble. She looked so beautiful.
  "She kissed me and she gave me a bottle of Chanel No.      22perfume. She said that was for me. She told me she'd be
coming back for me. She told me she was going out to buy a car, she was driving out of here. She said, 'If I can just get
across that spillway without drowning, I can get out of this town.' "
  Merrick broke off for a moment, her eyebrows knitted, her mouth slightly open. Then she began again.
  "'The hell you'll come back for her.' That's what Great Nananne told her. 'You've never done anything except run wild
and let that child run wild, well, she's staying here with me, and you go to Hell.'"
  Once again, she stopped. Her girlish face grew quiet. I was afraid she was going to cry. I think that she swallowed the
tears very deliberately. Then she spoke again, clearing her throat a little. I could hardly make out the words.
  "Think she went to Chicago," she said.
  Aaron waited respectfully while the silence filled the old kitchen. I picked up my coffee and drank deeply again,
savoring the taste of it, as much out of respect for her as for the pleasure.
  "You're ours, darling," I said.
  "Oh, I know, Mr. Talbot," she answered in a small voice, and, without moving the focus of her eyes from some distant
point, she lifted her right hand and laid it on mine. I never forgot the gesture. It was as if she was comforting me.
  Then she spoke. "Well, Great Nananne knows now. She knows whether my mother is alive or dead."
  "Yes, she knows," I answered, avowing my belief before I could think the better of it. "And whatever she knows, she's
at peace."
  There was a quiet interval in which I became painfully conscious of Merrick's suffering, and of the noises of the
Talamasca acolytes who were moving every object in the place. I heard the grinding noise of the large statues being
dragged or pushed. I heard the sound of packing tape being stretched and torn.
  "I loved that man, Matthew," said Merrick softly. "I really loved him. He taught me how to read the Book of Magic. He
taught me how to read all the books that Oncle Vervain had left. He liked to look at the pictures I showed you. He was an
interesting man."
  There was another long pause. Something in the atmosphere of the house disturbed me. I was confused by what I was
feeling. It had nothing to do with normal noises or activity. And it seemed imperative suddenly that I conceal this
disturbance from Merrick, that such a thing, whatever it was, not trouble her at this time.
  It was as if someone altogether new and different had entered the house, and one could hear that person's stealthy
movements. It was the sense of a coherent presence. I wiped it from my mind, never for a moment fearing it, and keeping
my eyes on Merrick, when, in a daze of sorts, she began to speak rather rapidly and tonelessly again.

  "Up in Boston, Matthew had studied history and science. He knew all about Mexico and the jungles. He told me the
story of the Olmec. When we were in Mexico City he took me to the museum. He was going to see to it that I went to
school. He wasn't afraid in those jungles. He thought those shots protected us. He wouldn't let us drink the water, you
know, all of that. And he was rich, like I told you, and he would have never tried to steal these things from Cold Sandra or
me."
  Her eyes remained steady.
  I could still feel this distinct entity within the house, and I realized that she did not feel it. Aaron did not know it was
there, either. But it was there. And it was not far from where we sat. With all my soul I listened to Merrick.
  "Oncle Vervain left lots of things. I'll show you. Oncle Vervain said we had our roots in the jungle land down there, and
in Haiti before our people ever came up here. He said we weren't like American black people, though he never said the
word 'black,' he always said colored. He thought it was polite to say colored. Cold Sandra used to laugh at him. Oncle
Vervain was a powerful magician, and before him there had been his grandfather, and Oncle Vervain told tales of what
the Old Man could do."
  I realized her soft speech was becoming more rapid. The history was pouring out from her.
  "The Old Man, that's all I ever called him. He was a Voodoo man in the Civil War. He went back to Haiti to learn things
and when he came back to this town they said he took it by storm. Of course, they talk about Marie Laveau, but they talk
of the Old Man too. Sometimes I can feel them near me, Oncle Vervain and the Old Man, as well as Lucy Nancy Marie
Mayfair, who's in the photograph, and another one, a Voodoo queen whom they called Pretty Justine. They said
everybody was afraid of Pretty Justine."
  "What do you want for yourself, Merrick," I asked her suddenly, desperate to stop the ever increasing speed of her
words.
  She looked at me sharply, and then she smiled. "I want to be educated, Mr. Talbot. I want to go to school."
  "Ah, how marvelous," I whispered.
  "I told Mr. Lightner," she continued, "and he said you could do it. I want to be in a high-quality school where they teach
me Greek and Latin and which fork to use for my salad or my fish. I want to know all about magic, the way Matthew did,
telling me things out of the Bible, and reading over those old books and saying what was tried and true. Matthew never
had to make a living. I expect I will have to make a living. But I want to be educated, and I think you know what I mean."
  She fixed her gaze on me. Her eyes were dry and clear, and it was then perhaps more than at any other time that I
noticed their beautiful coloration of which I've spoken before. She went on talking, her voice a little slower now, and
calmer and almost sweet.
  "Mr. Lightner says all your members are educated people. That's what he told me right before you came. I can see those
manners in the people at the Motherhouse and I hear the way they talk. Mr. Lightner says it's the tradition of the
Talamasca. You educate your members, because it's a lifelong thing to be a member, and you all live under the same
roof."
  I smiled. It was true. Very true. "Yes," I said, "we do this with all who come to us, insofar as they are willing and able to
absorb it, and we'll give it to you."
  Merrick leant forward and kissed me on the cheek.
  I was quite startled by this affection, and at a loss as to the proper thing to do. I spoke from the heart.
  "Darling, we'll give you everything. We have so much to share, it would be our duty if it weren't ... if it weren't such a
pleasure for us to do."
  Something invisible was suddenly gone from the house. I felt it as if a being had snapped its fingers and simply
disappeared. Merrick showed no consciousness of this.
  "And what will I do for you in exchange?" she asked in a calm sure voice. "You can't give me everything for nothing,
Mr. Talbot. Tell me what you want from me."
  "Teach us what you know about magic," I answered, "and grow up to be happy, to be strong, and never to be afraid."




                                                                   9


  IT WAS GROWING DARK when we left the house.

  Before leaving New Orleans, we dined together at Galatoire's, a venerable old New Orleans restaurant where I found the
food to be delicious, but Merrick was by this time so exhausted that she turned quite pale and fell sound asleep in her
chair.
  The transformation in her was remarkable. She murmured that Aaron and I must care for the Olmec treasures. "Look at
them but be careful," she said, as a matter of fact. And then came the sudden slumber which left her pliant but
unconscious, as far as I could see.
  Aaron and I all but carried her to the car--she could walk in her sleep if propelled--and much as I wanted to talk with
Aaron I didn't dare risk it, though Merrick slept between us, quite soundly, during the entire ride home.
  When we reached the Motherhouse, that good female member of the Order whom I've mentioned before, and will now
for the sake of this account call Mary, helped us to carry Merrick up to her room and lay her on the bed.
  Now, I remarked a little while ago that I wanted the Talamasca to envelop her in fantasy, to give her everything that she
should desire.
  Let me explain that we had already begun this process by creating an upstairs corner bedroom for her, which we
believed to be a young woman's dream. The fruit-wood bed, its posts and canopy decorated with carved flowers and
trimmed in fancy lace, the dressing table with its little satin bench and huge round mirror, its small fancy twin lamps and
myriad bottles, all of this was part of the fantasy, along with a pair of frilly boudoir dolls, as they are called, which had to
be moved aside to lay down the poor darling on her pillow for the night.
  And lest you believe we were misogynist imbeciles, allow me to explain that one wall of the room, the wall that was not
punctuated by floor-length windows to the porch, was filled with a fine general assortment of books. There was also a
corner table and chairs for reading, many other pretty lamps here and there, and a bathroom filled with perfumed soaps,
varicolored shampoos, and countless bottles of scented cologne and oil. In fact, Merrick herself had bought any number of
products scented with Chanel No. 22, a particularly wonderful scent.
  By now, as we left her fast asleep and in the gentle care of Mary, I believe that Aaron and I both had fallen in love with
her, completely in a parental sense, and I meant to allow nothing in the Talamasca to distract me from her case.
  Of course Aaron, not being the Superior General of the Order, would have the luxury of remaining here with her long
after I had been forced back to my desk in London. And I envied him that he would have the pleasure of watching this
child meet her first tutors and pick out her own school.
  As for the Olmec treasures, we took them now to the small Louisiana vault for safekeeping, and once inside, after some
debate, opened the suitcase and examined what was there.
  The cache was quite remarkable. There were close to forty idols, at least twelve of the perforator knives, numerous axe
blades, and many smaller blade-shaped objects which we commonly call celts. Every single item was exquisite in its own
right. There was also a handwritten inventory, apparently the work of the mysterious and doomed Matthew, listing each
item and its size. The note was appended:

    There are many more treasures within this tunnel, but they must wait for later excavation. I am already sick and must
  return home as soon as possible. Honey and Sandra are highly argumentative on this point. They want to take
  everything out of the cave. But I am getting weaker even as I write. As for Merrick, my illness is scaring her. I need to
  take her home. It is worth noting while I have the strength in my right hand that nothing else scares any of my ladies,
  not the jungles, not the villages, not the Indians. I have to go back.

  It was more than poignant, these words of the dead man, and my curiosity about "Honey" was all the more strong.
  We were in the process of wrapping everything and restoring it to its old order, when there came a knock on the outside
door of the room in which the vault is situated.
  "Come quickly," Mary said through the door. "She's become hysterical. I don't know what to do."
  Up the stairs we headed, and before we'd reached the second floor we could hear her desperate sobs.
  She sat on the bed, still in her navy blue dress from the funeral, her feet bare again, and her hair in tangles, sobbing over
and over again that Great Nananne was dead.
  It was all entirely understandable, but Aaron had a near magical effect upon people in such states, and he soon quieted
her with his words, while Mary assisted when she could.
  Merrick then asked through her tears if she could please have a glass of rum.
  Of course no one was in favor of this remedy, but on the other hand, as Aaron judiciously pointed out, the liquor would
quiet her, and she would go to sleep.
  Several bottles were found in the bar downstairs, and Merrick was given a glass of the rum, but asked for more.

  "This is a sip," she said through her tears, "I need a glassful." She looked so perfectly unhappy and distraught that we
couldn't deny her. At last, after imbibing, her sobs became softer.
  "What am I going to do, where will I go?" she asked piteously, and once again we made our assurances, though her
grief was something which I felt she had to express with tears.
  As for doubts about her future, that was a different matter. I sent Mary out of the room. I sat down on the bed beside
Merrick.
  "My dear, listen to me," I said to her. "You're rich in your own right. Those books of Oncle Vervain's. They're worth
enormous amounts of money. Universities and museums would bid on them at auction. As for the Olmec treasures, I
cannot calculate their worth. Of course you don't want to part with these things, and we don't want you to do it, but rest
assured you are secure, even without us."
  This seemed to quiet her somewhat.
  Finally, after she had cried softly against my chest for the better part of an hour, she put her arms around Aaron, laid her
head on his shoulder, and said that if she knew we were in the house, that we would not leave it, then she could go to
sleep.
  "We'll be waiting for you downstairs in the morning," I told her. "We want you to make that coffee for us. We've been
fools, drinking the wrong coffee. We refuse to have breakfast without you. Now you must sleep."
  She gave me a grateful and kindly smile, even though the tears were still spilling onto her cheeks. Then, asking no one's
permission, she went to the frilly dressing table, where the bottle of rum stood quite incongruously among the other fancy
little bottles, and took a good slug of the drink.
  As we rose to go, Mary answered my call with a nightgown ready for Merrick, and I took the bottle of rum, nodded to
Merrick to make certain that she had seen me do it, so there would be some civil pretense of her permission, and Aaron
and I retired to the library below.
  I don't remember how long we talked.
  Possibly it was an hour. We discussed tutors, schools, programs of education, what Merrick should do.
  "Of course there can be no question of asking her to display her psychic powers to us," Aaron said firmly, as though I
was going to overrule him. "But they're considerable. I've sensed it all day and yesterday as well."
  "Ah, but there's another matter," I said, and I was about to broach the subject of the weird "disturbance" which I had felt
in Great Nananne's house while we had sat in the kitchen. But something stopped me from speaking.
  I realized that I sensed the same presence now, under our Motherhouse roof.
  "What's the matter, man?" asked Aaron, who knew my every facial expression and who could probably read my mind if
he really chose to do it.
  "Nothing," I said, and then, instinctively, and perhaps selfishly, with some desire to be heroic, I added, "I want you to
stay where you are."
  I rose and went through the open doors of the library out into the hallway.
  From above, from the upstairs rear of the house, there came a sardonic and ringing laugh. It was a woman's laugh, there
was no doubt about it, only I could not attach it to Mary or to the female members of the Order who were then living in
the house. Indeed Mary was the only one in the main building. The others had gone to sleep some time ago in the "slave
quarters" and cottages which made up part of the outbuildings some distance from the rear doors of the house.
  Once again, I heard the laugh. It seemed an answer to my very query.
  Aaron appeared at my shoulder. "That's Merrick," he said warily.
  This time, I didn't tell him to remain behind. He followed me as I went up the stairs.
  The door to Merrick's room was open, and the lights were on, causing a brilliant glow to spill into the long broad center
hallway.
  "Well, come on in," said a womanish voice as I hesitated, and when I did, I was quite alarmed by what I saw.
  In a haze of cigarette smoke, there was a young woman sitting in a highly seductive posture at the dressing table, her
youthful and fastripening body clothed only in a scant white cotton petticoat, its thin cloth hardly disguising her full
breasts and pink nipples, or the dark shadow between her legs.
  Of course it was Merrick, but then it wasn't Merrick at all.
  With her right hand she put the cigarette to her lips and drew on it, deeply, with the casual air of an accustomed smoker,
and let her breath out with ease.
  Her eyebrows were raised as she looked at me, and her lips were drawn back in a beautiful sneer. Indeed, the expression
was so alien to the Merrick I had come to know that it was very simply terrifying all to itself. One couldn't imagine a
skilled actress so successfully altering her features. As for the voice which came out of the body, it was sultry and low.

  "Good cigarettes, Mr. Talbot. Rothmans, aren't they?" The right hand toyed with the little box which she had taken from
my room. The woman's voice continued, cold, utterly without feeling, and with a faint tone of mockery. "Matthew used to
smoke Rothmans, Mr. Talbot. He went to the French Quarter to buy them. You don't find them at the comer store.
Smoked them right up until he died."
  "Who are you?" I asked.
  Aaron said nothing. He relinquished command to me at this moment completely, but he stood his ground.
  "Don't be so hasty, Mr. Talbot," came the hard-toned answer. "Ask me a few questions." She gave more of her weight to
the left elbow on the dressing table, and the petticoat gaped to reveal more of her full breasts.
  Her eyes positively sparkled in the light of the dressing table lamps. It seemed her lids and eyebrows were governed
exclusively by a new personality. She was not even Merrick's twin.
  "Cold Sandra?" I asked.
  A burst of laughter came out of her that was ominous and shocking. She tossed her black hair and drew on the cigarette
again.
  "She never told you one word about me, did she?" she asked, and once again came that sneer, beautiful yet full of
venom. "She was always jealous. I hated her from the day she was born."
  "Honey in the Sunshine," I said calmly.
  She nodded, grinning at me, letting go of the smoke.
  "That's a name that's always been good enough for me. And there she goes, leaving me out of the story. Well, don't you
think I'll settle for so little, Mr. Talbot. Or should I call you David? I think you look like a David, you know, righteous and
clean living and all of that." She crushed out the cigarette right into the tabletop. And with one hand now, she took
another, and lighted it with the gold lighter which I had also left in my room.
  She turned the lighter over now, the cigarette dangling from her lip, and through the little coil of smoke she read the
inscription. "To David, my Savior, from Joshua." Her eyes flashed on my face, and she smiled.
  The words she'd read cut deep into me, but I would have none of it. I merely stared at her. This would take a little time.
  "You're damned right," she said, "it's going to take time. Don't you think I want some of what she's getting. But let's talk
about this here, Joshua, he was your lover, wasn't he? You were lovers with him and he died."
  The pain I felt was exquisite, and for all my claim to enlightenment and self-knowledge, I was mortified that these
words were spoken in Aaron's presence. Joshua had been young, and one of us.
  She laughed a low, carnal laugh. "Course you can do women, too, if they're young enough, can't you?" she asked
viciously.
  "Where do you come from, Honey in the Sunshine?" I demanded.
  "Don't call her by name," Aaron whispered.
  "Oh, that's good advice, but it don't matter. I'm staying right where I am. Now let's talk about you and that boy, Joshua.
Seems he was mighty young when you--."
  "Stop it," I said sharply.
  "Don't talk to it, David," said Aaron under his breath. "Don't address it. Every time you talk to it, you give it strength."
  A high pealing laughter erupted from the little woman at the dressing table. She shook her head and turned her body to
face us completely, the hem of the slip riding up on her naked thighs.
  "I'd say he was eighteen maybe," she said, looking at me with blazing eyes as she took the cigarette off her lip. "But you
didn't know for sure, did you, David? You just knew you had to have him."
  "Get out of Merrick," I said. "You don't belong in Merrick."
  "Merrick's my sister!" she flashed. "I'll do what I want with her. She drove me crazy from the cradle, always reading my
mind, telling me what I thought, telling me I made my own trouble, always blaming everything on me!"
  She scowled at me and leant forward. I could see her nipples.
  "You give yourself away for what you are," I said. "Or is it what you were?"
  Suddenly she rose from the dressing table, and the left hand, free of the cigarette, swept all the bottles and the lamp off
the right side of the table, with one fine blow.
  There was a roar of shattered glass. The lamp went out with a loud spark. Two or more of the bottles were broken. The
carpet was littered with sharp fragments. The room was filled with a powerful perfume.
  She stood before us, her hand on her hip, the cigarette held high. She looked down at the bottles.
  "Yeah, she likes those things!" she said.
  Her posture became ever more suggestive, mocking. "And you do like what you see, don't you, David? She's just young
enough for you. She's got some of the little boy left in her, don't she? Great Nananne knew you and what you wanted. And
I know you too."

   Her face was full of anger and very beautiful.
   "You killed Joshua, didn't you?" she said in a low voice, eyes suddenly narrow, as if she was peering into my soul. "You
let him go on that climb in the Himalayas--." She pronounced the word as I would have said it. "And you knew it was
dangerous but you loved him so much, you couldn't say no."
   I could say nothing. The pain in me was too intense. I tried to banish all thoughts of Joshua. I tried not to think of the
day when they had brought his body back to London. I tried to focus on the girl before me.
   "Merrick," I said with all the strength I could muster, "Merrick, drive her out."
   "You want me, and so do you, Aaron," she continued, the grin making her checks supple, her face flushing. "Either one
of you'd tack me to that mattress if you thought you could."
   I said nothing.
   "Merrick," said Aaron loudly. "Cast her out. She means you no good, darling, cast her out!"
   "You know what Joshua was thinking about you when he fell off that cliff?" she said.
   "Stop it!" I cried.
   "He was hating you for sending him, hating you for saying yes, he could go!"
   "Liar!" I said. "Get out of Merrick."
   "Don't you shout at me, Mister," she blazed back. She glanced down at the broken glass and tapped her ashes into it.
"Now let's just see about fixing her good."
   She took a step forward, right into the mess of broken glass and overturned bottles that lay between us.
   I advanced on the figure.
   "Stay back."
   I seized her by the shoulders and forced her backwards. But it took all of my strength. Her skin was moist with sweat,
and she squirmed out of my grasp.
   "You don't think I can walk on glass in bare feet? " she said right in my face as she struggled to resist me. "You stupid
old man," she went on, "now why would I want to cut Merrick's foot?"
   I took hold of her, crushing the glass under my shoes.
   "You're dead, aren't you, Honey in the Sunshine? You're dead, and you know it, and this is all the life you can get!"
   For one moment the beautiful face went blank. The girl appeared to be Merrick. Then the eyebrows were raised again.
The lids assumed their languid expression, making the eyes glitter.
   "I'm here and I'm staying here."
   "You're in the grave, Honey in the Sunshine," I answered. "That is, the body you want is in the grave, and all you've got
is a vagrant spirit, now isn't that so!"
   A look of fear flittered across her expression, and then the face hardened once more, as she freed herself from my hands.
   "You know nothing about me, Mister," she said. She was baffled, as spirits often are. She couldn't keep the cocky
expression on Merrick's face. Indeed, the whole body shuddered suddenly. The true Merrick was struggling.
   "Come back, Merrick, throw her off, Merrick," I said. I stepped forward once again.
   She moved back and towards the foot of the high bed. She turned the cigarette in her hand. She meant to jab me with it.
   "You bet your life I do," she said, reading my thoughts. "I wish I had something I could really hurt you with. But I guess
I'll have to settle for hurting her!"
   She glanced about the room.
   It was all I needed. I advanced on her and caught her by the shoulders, desperate to keep hold of her in spite of the sweat
that covered her and her writhing to escape.
   She shrieked. "You stop that, lemme go!" And she managed to grind the cigarette into the side of my face.
   I reached for her hand, grabbed it and twisted it until she dropped the cigarette. She slapped me hard, so that for one
moment I felt faint. Nevertheless, I held on to her slippery shoulders.
   "That's it," she cried. "Hurt her, break her bones, why don't you just do that? Think it will make Joshua come back?
Think he'll be any older for you, David, think it will make everything right?"
   "Get out of Merrick!" I shouted. I could still hear the broken glass under my shoes. She was perilously close to it. I
shook her hard, her head flopping from side to side.
   She convulsed, wrenching free, and again there came a slap of awesome strength that all but knocked me off balance.
For one split second I couldn't see.
   I lunged at her and lifted her under the arms and threw her back on the bed. I knelt on the bed over her, gripping her
still. She was struggling to reach my face.
   "Let her go, David," Aaron cried out behind me. And I heard the voice of Mary, suddenly, that other loyal member,
begging me not to twist her wrist so hard.

  Her fingers struggled to reach my eyes.
  "You're dead, you know you are, you've got no right here," I roared at her. "Say it, you're dead, you're dead, and you've
got to let Merrick go."
  I felt her knee against my chest.
  "Great Nananne, get her out!" I said.
  "How dare you!" she screamed. "You think you can use my godmother against me." She caught my hair with her left
hand and yanked at it.
  Still I shook her.
  And then I drew back, I let her go, and I called upon my own spirit, my own soul to make itself into a powerful
instrument, and it was with that invisible instrument that I plunged towards her, striking her at the heart so that she lost her
breath.
  Get out, get out, get out! I commanded her with all the strength of my soul. I felt myself against her. I felt her collective
power, as though there were no body to house it. I felt her resist. I had lost all contact with my own body. Get out of
Merrick. Go!
  A sob broke loose from her.
  "There's no grave for us, you bastard, you devil," she cried. "There's no grave for me or my mother! You can't make me
leave here!"
  I looked down into her face, though where my own body had fallen--onto the floor or onto the bed--I didn't know.
  Call on God under any name and go towards him! I told her. Leave those bodies wherever they lie, do you hear me,
leave them and go on. Now! It's your chance!
  Suddenly the strength that was resisting me contracted, and I felt its intense pressure dissolve. For one moment I
thought I saw it, an amorphous shape rising above me. Then I realized I was lying on the floor.
  I was staring up at the ceiling. And I could hear Merrick, our Merrick crying once more.
  "They're dead, Mr. Talbot, they're dead, Cold Sandra's dead and so is Honey in the Sunshine, my sister, Mr. Talbot,
they're both dead, they've been dead since they left New Orleans, Mr. Talbot, all those four years of waiting, and they
were dead the first night in Lafayette, Mr. Talbot, they're dead, dead, dead."
  Slowly I climbed to my feet. There were cuts from the broken glass on my hands. I was physically sick.
  The child on the bed had shut her eyes. Her lips weren't sneering, they were stretched back as she continued her
plaintive wails.
  Mary was quick to lay a thick robe over her. Aaron was at her side. She rolled on her back and made a face suddenly.
  "I'm sick, Mr. Talbot," she said hoarsely.
  "This way," I turned her over, away from the perilous glass, and lifted her and carried her into the bathroom in my arms.
She leant over the sink, and the vomit poured out of her.
  I was shuddering all over. My clothes were drenched.
  Mary urged me to step aside. It seemed quite outrageous to me for a moment, and then I realized how it must have
seemed to Mary.
  And so I withdrew.
  When I glanced at Aaron I was amazed at the expression on his face. He had seen many cases of possession. They are
all terrible, each in its own way.
  We waited in the hallway until Mary told us we might come in.
  Merrick was dressed in a white cotton gown to receive us, her hair brushed to a marvelous brown luster, and her eyes
rimmed in red, but otherwise quite clear. She was in the armchair in the corner, under the light of the tall lamp.
  Her feet were safely protected with white satin slippers. But all the glass was gone. Indeed the dressing table looked
quite fine with only one lamp and all of its intact bottles.
  Merrick was still trembling, however, and when I approached her, she reached out and clasped my hand.
  "Your shoulders will hurt for a little while," I said apologetically.
  "Here's how they died," she said, looking at me and then at Aaron. "They went with all that money to buy a new car.
The man who sold it to them picked them up, you know, and he went with them to Lafayette, and there he killed them for
the cash they had. He knocked them both hard over the head."
  I shook my head.
  "Four years ago, it happened," she said, going on intently, her mind on her story and nothing else. "It happened the very
next day after they left. He beat them in a motel room in Lafayette and put their bodies in that car and drove it into the
swamps. That car just filled up with water. If they woke up, they drowned. There's nothing left of either one of them
now."

  "Dear God," I whispered.
  "And all this time," she said, "I was so guilty for being jealous, jealous that Cold Sandra had taken Honey in the
Sunshine and left me behind. I was guilty and jealous, guilty and jealous. Honey in the Sunshine was my older sister.
Honey in the Sunshine was sixteen and she was 'no trouble,' that's what Cold Sandra told me. I was too little and she'd
come back for me soon."
  She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
  "Where is she now?" I asked. Aaron let me know he had not been prepared for that. But I had to put the question to her.
  For a very long time she made no response. She lay staring, her body shivering violently, and then finally, she said:
  "She's gone."
  "How did she come through?" I demanded.
  Mary and Aaron shook their heads. "David, leave her for the moment," said Aaron as politely as he could. I had no
intention of dropping the matter. I had to know.
  Again, there was no immediate answer. And then Merrick heaved a sigh and turned to one side.
  "How did she come through?" I asked again.
  Merrick's face crumpled. She began very softly to cry.
  "Please, Sir," said Mary, "let her alone just now."
  "Merrick, how did Honey in the Sunshine come through?" I demanded. "Did you know she wanted to come through?"
  Mary took a stand to Merrick's left and glared at me.
  I kept my eyes on the shivering girl.
  "Did you ask her to come through?" I demanded softly.
  "No, Mr. Talbot," she said softly, her eyes drifting up to me again. "I prayed to Great Nananne. I prayed to her spirit
while it was still near earth to hear me." Her tired voice could barely carry the words. "Great Nananne sent her to tell me.
Great Nananne will take care of them both."
  "Ah, I see."
  "You know what I did," she continued. "I called on a spirit that had only just died. I called on a soul that was still close
enough to help me, and I got Honey, I got more than I ever wanted to get. But that's how it works sometimes, Mr. Talbot.
When you call on les mystères you don't always know what you're going to get."
  "Yes," I responded. "I know. Do you remember all that happened?"
  "Yes," she said, "and no. I remember your shaking me and I remember knowing what had happened, but I don't really
remember all the time that ticked by while she was in me."
  "I see," I said gratefully. "What do you feel now, Merrick?"
  "Afraid of myself a little," she answered. "And I'm sorry she hurt you."
  "Oh, darling, for the love of Heaven, don't think about me," I answered. "I'm only concerned with you."
  "I know that, Mr. Talbot, but if it's any consolation to you, Joshua went into the Light when he died. He didn't hate you
when he was falling down the mountain. Honey just made that up."
  I was stunned. I could feel Mary's sudden embarrassment. I could see that Aaron was amazed.
  "I'm sure of it," Merrick said. "Joshua's in Heaven. Honey just read all those things from your mind."
  I couldn't answer her. At the risk of more suspicion and condemnation from the vigilant Mary, I leant over and kissed
Merrick on the cheek.
  "The nightmare's over," she said. "I'm free of them all. I'm free to begin."
  And so our long journey with Merrick began.




                                                               10


  IT HAD NOT BEEN EASY for me to tell this story to Louis, and it was not finished. I had much more to say.
  But as I paused, it was as if I had wakened to the parlor around me, and to Louis's attentive presence, and I felt both
immediate comfort and crushing guilt. For a moment I stretched my limbs and I felt my vampiric strength in my veins.
  We sat like two wholesome beings together, in the comfort of the glass-shaded lamps.

   For the first time since I'd begun the story, I stared up at the paintings along the walls of the room. These were all
wonderfully colored Impressionist treasures which Louis had long ago collected and once kept in a small uptown house,
where he lived until Lestat burnt that house, and, in reconciliation, begged Louis to come and join him here.
   I looked at a painting by Monet--one I'd come to neglect of late due to familiarity--a painting full of sunshine and
greenery, of a woman at work on her needlepoint by a window under the limbs of delicate indoor trees. Like so many
Impressionist paintings it was both highly intellectual, with its obvious brush strokes, and flagrantly domestic. And I let its
stalwart sanctification of the ordinary soothe my suffering heart.
   I wanted to feel our domesticity here in the Rue Royale. I wanted to feel morally safe, which of course I would never
feel again.
   It had exhausted my soul to revisit those times when I was a living mortal being, when I had taken the wet daytime heat
of New Orleans for granted, when I'd been a trusted friend to Merrick, for that is what I had been, regardless of what
Honey in the Sunshine had condemned me for being--with a boy named Joshua who had lived many, many years before.
   As for that matter, Aaron and Mary never questioned me about it. But I knew that neither of them would ever look at me
in the same way again. Joshua had been too young and I had been too old for the relationship. And I had only confessed
my transgressions--a precious few nights of love--to the Elders long after Joshua was dead. They had condemned me for
it and charged me never to let such a thing occur again.
   When I'd been appointed Superior General, the Elders had exacted a confirmation that I was well beyond such breaches
of morality, and I had given it, humiliated that it had been mentioned again.
   As for Joshua's death, I did blame myself for what happened to him. He had begged me to go on the climb, which itself
was not terribly dangerous, to visit a shrine in the Himalayas which had been part of his study in Tibetan lore. Other
members of the Order were with him and they came home safe. The fall had been the result of a small but sudden
avalanche, as I understood it, and Joshua's body had not been recovered for several months.
   Now as I reviewed these things for Louis, now as I pondered that I had approached the woman Merrick in my dark and
eternal guise as a vampire, I felt the sharpest and most profound guilt. It wasn't something for which I could ever seek
absolution. And it wasn't something that could prevent me from seeing Merrick again.
   It had been done. I had asked Merrick to raise Claudia's ghost for us. And I had much more to tell Louis before the two
could come together, and more within myself that had to be resolved.
   All this while, Louis had listened without saying a word. With his finger curled under his lip, his elbow on the arm of
the couch, he had merely studied me as I recounted the memories, and now he was eager for the tale to go on.
   "I knew this woman was powerful," he said gently. "What I didn't know was how much you loved her."
   I marveled at his customary manner of speaking, the melting quality of his voice and the way his words seemed barely
to disturb the air.
   "Ah, well, neither did I," I replied. "There were so many of us, bound together by love, in the Talamasca, and each one
is a special case."
   "But this woman, you truly love her," he pressed gently. "And I've asked you to go against your heart."
   "Oh, no, you haven't," I confessed. I faltered. "It was inevitable that I contact the Talamasca," I insisted. "But it should
have been contact with the Elders, in writing, and not this."
   "Don't condemn yourself so much for contacting her," he said with an uncommon self-confidence. He seemed earnest
and, as always, forever young.
   "Why not?" I asked. "I had thought you were a specialist in guilt?"
   He laughed politely at this, and then again made a silent chuckle. He shook his head.
   "We have hearts, don't we?" he replied. He shifted a little against the pillows of the couch. "You tell me you believe in
God. That's more than the others have ever said to me. Quite truly it is. What do you think God has planned for us?"
   "I don't know that God plans anything," I said a little bitterly. "I know only that He's there."
   I thought of how much I loved Louis, and had ever since I had become Lestat's fledgling. I thought of how deeply I
depended upon him, and what I would do for him. It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and
enslaved Armand. Louis need have no consciousness of his own beauty, of his own obvious and natural charm.
   "David, you have to forgive me," he said suddenly. "I want so desperately to meet this woman myself that I urge you on
for selfish reasons, but I mean it when I say that we do have hearts in every sense of the word."
   "Of course, you do," I replied. "I wonder if angels have hearts," I whispered. "Ah, but it doesn't matter, does it? We are
what we are."
   He didn't answer me, but I saw his face darken for a moment and then he fell into reverie, with his habitual expression
of curiosity and quiet grace.

   "But when it comes to Merrick," I said, "I have to face that I've contacted her because I need her desperately. I could not
have gone on for long without contacting her. Every night that I spend in New Orleans, I think of Merrick. Merrick haunts
me as though she was a ghost herself."
   "Tell me the rest of your story," Louis prodded. "And, if when you're finished you wish to conclude the matter with
Merrick--end the contact, so to speak--then I shall accept it without another word."




                                                               11


   I WENT ON with my tale, flashing back once more some twenty years, to the summer of Merrick's fourteenth year.
   It wasn't hard for the Talamasca to enfold such a friendless orphan as one could easily see.
   In the days following Great Nananne's funeral, we discovered that Merrick had no legal identity of any kind, save for a
valid passport obtained through the testimony of Cold Sandra that Merrick was her daughter. The last name was an
assumed name.
   Where and how Merrick's birth might have been recorded eluded our most diligent efforts. No baptism of Merrick
Mayfair was recorded in any parish church in New Orleans for the year of Merrick's birth. Few pictures of her existed in
the boxes which she had brought with us.
   And indeed, no record of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine existed other than passports which were both under
assumed names. Though we calculated a year of death for the two unfortunates, we could find nothing in the newspapers
of Lafayette, Louisiana, or anywhere near it to indicate that murdered bodies had been found.
   In sum, the Talamasca began with a blank slate for Merrick Mayfair, and using its immense resources it soon created for
her the documentation of birth and age which the modem world requires. As for the matter of Catholic baptism, Merrick
was adamant that she had indeed been given the sacrament as an infant--Great Nananne had "carried her to church"--and
as late as only a few years before I left the Order, Merrick still combed church records, in vain, for proof of this herself.
   I never fully understood the significance of this baptism to Merrick, but then there were many things about Merrick
which I never came to understand. One thing I can say for certain, however. Magic and Roman Catholicism were
completely intermingled for Merrick and this remained so all her life.
   As for the gifted and kindhearted man named Matthew, he was not difficult to trace at all.
   Matthew had been, in fact, an Olmec archaeologist, and when polite inquiries were made among his survivors in
Boston, it was quickly ascertained that a woman named Sandra Mayfair had lured him to New Orleans by means of a
letter some five years before regarding some Olmec treasure for which the woman claimed to have directions and a rough
hand-drawn map. Cold Sandra claimed to have been given an article about Matthew's amateur adventures by her daughter
Merrick, who came upon it in Time magazine.
   Though Matthew's mother was seriously ill at the time, Matthew had made the journey south with her blessing, and had
set out on a private expedition beginning in Mexico. He was never seen by anyone in the family alive again.
   As for the expedition, Matthew had kept a journal by means of long impassioned letters addressed to his mother, which
he had mailed all in a batch upon his return to the States.
   After Matthew's death, in spite of the woman's determined efforts, no scholars in the field of Olmec studies could be
interested in what Matthew claimed to have seen or found.
   The mother had died, leaving all these papers to her sister, who did not know what to make of "the responsibility" and
quickly decided to sell Matthew's papers to us for a liberal sum. Those papers included a small box of vivid color
photographs sent to the mother, many of which included Cold Sandra and Honey in the Sunshine, both extraordinarily
beautiful women, as well as the ten-year-old child, Merrick, who did not resemble the other two.
   As Merrick had risen from a week of torpor and was deep in her studies, and fascinated with her education in etiquette,
it was no great pleasure for me to give her these photographs and letters for her private store.
   She showed no emotion, however, when confronted with the snapshots of her mother and her sister. And preserving her
usual silence on the question of Honey in the Sunshine, who appeared to be about sixteen in the pictures, she put all of this
aside.
   As for me, I spent some time with the pictures.
   Cold Sandra was tall and tawny with very black hair and light eyes.

  As for Honey in the Sunshine, she appeared to fulfill all the expectations engendered by that name. Her skin in the
photographs did appear to be the color of honey, her eyes were yellow as were her mother's, and her hair, light blond and
tightly curly, fell down around her shoulders like foam. Her facial features appeared entirely Anglo-Saxon. The same was
true of Cold Sandra.
  As for Merrick in the photographs, she appeared very much as she did when she came to our door. She was already the
budding woman at the age of ten, and appeared somehow to be of a quieter nature, the other two often hanging upon
Matthew and smiling as they embraced him for the eager lens. Merrick was frequently captured with a solemn face, and
most often alone.
  Of course these pictures revealed much of the rain forest into which they'd penetrated, and there were even poor-quality
flash shots of bizarre cave paintings which appeared neither Olmec nor Maya, though my opinion might very well have
been wrong. As for the exact location, Matthew refused to reveal it, using terms such as "Village One" and "Village Two."
  Given Matthew's lack of specificity, and the bad condition of the photographs, it wasn't difficult to see why
archaeologists had not been interested in his claims.
  With Merrick's consent, and in secrecy, we enlarged every photograph of any value, but the quality of the originals
defeated us. And we lacked concrete information as to how the journey could be made again. But of one thing I was fairly
sure. The initial flight might have been to Mexico City, but the cave was not in Mexico at all.
  There was a map, yes, drawn with an unsteady hand in black ink on common modern parchment paper, but it gave no
place names, only a diagram involving "The City" and the aforementioned Village One and Village Two. We had it
copied for preservation's sake, as the parchment paper was badly damaged and torn at the edges. But it was hardly a
significant clue.
  It was tragic to read the enthusiastic letters which Michael had sent home.
  I shall never forget the first letter he wrote to his mother after the discovery. The woman was very ill, and had only just
learnt that her case was terminal, news which had reached Matthew somewhere along the route, though we had no
indication of where precisely, and Matthew had begged her please to wait for him to come home. Indeed, it was on that
account that he had cut the journey short, taking only some of the treasure, a great deal of which remained.
  "If only you'd been with me," he wrote, or words to that effect.

    And can you imagine me, your gangly and awkward son, plunging into the pure darkness of a ruined temple and
  finding these strange murals which defy classification? Not Maya, certainly not Olmec. But by and for whom? And in
  the very midst of this, my flashlight slips out of my hands as if someone snatched it from me. And darkness shrouds the
  most splendid and unusual paintings I've ever seen.
    But no sooner had we left the temple, than we must climb the rocks beside the waterfall, with Cold Sandra and Honey
  leading the way. It was in back of the waterfall that we found the cave, though I suspect it might have been a tunnel, and
  there was no mistaking it because the mammoth volcanic boulders around it had been carved into a giant face with an
  open mouth.
    Of course we had no light with us--Cold Sandra's flashlight was drenched--and we were near to fainting from the
  heat when we got inside. Cold Sandra and Honey were fearful of spirits and claimed to be "feeling" them. Merrick has
  even spoken up on this subject, blaming the spirits for a bad fall she took on the rocks.
    Yet tomorrow, we'll be making the entire trek again. For now, let me say again what I saw by the sunshine that made
  its way into temple and cave. Unique paintings, I tell you, in both places, which must be studied at once. But in the cave
  there were also hundreds of glistening jade objects, just waiting for a scoop of the hand.
    How in the world such treasures have survived the usual thievery in these parts, I can't guess. Of course the local
  Maya deny all knowledge of such a place, and I'm not eager to enlighten them. They are kind to us, offering us food and
  drink and hospitality. But the shaman appears angry with us, but will not tell us the reason. I live and breathe only to go
  back.

  Matthew never did go back. During the night he had grown feverish and his very next letter recorded the regret with
which he set out for civilization, thinking his illness was something that could easily be cured.
  How awful it was that this curious and generous man had fallen ill.
  A mysterious insect bite had been the culprit, but that was not discovered until he'd reached "The City," as he called it,
careful to use no key description or name. His last batch of letters was written from the hospital in New Orleans, and
mailed by the nurses at his request.
  "Mother, there is nothing that can be done. No one is even certain of the nature of the parasite, except that it has made
its way throughout my internal organs, and has proved itself refractory to every medicine known to man. I wonder

sometimes if the local Maya might have helped me with this ailment. They were so very kind. But then the natives have
probably long been immune."
  His very last letter was completed on the day he prepared to return to Great Nananne's house. The script had
degenerated, as Matthew was suffering one violent chill after another, but obviously determined to write. His news was
marked by the same strange mixture of resignation and denial which so often afflicts the dying:
  "You cannot believe the sweetness of Sandra and Honey and Great Nananne. Of course, I've done everything I can to
lighten their burden. All of those artifacts which we discovered on the expedition are by right the property of Sandra, and I
will attempt a revised catalog once I reach the house. Perhaps Great Nananne's nursing will work some miracle. I'll write
to you when I have good news."
  The only remaining letter in the collection was from Great Nananne. It was in beautiful convent script, written with a
fountain pen, and stated that Matthew had died "With the Sacraments," and that his suffering had not been very great at
the end. She signed herself Irene Flaurent Mayfair.
  Tragic. I can find no better word.
  Indeed, there seemed a ring of tragedy surrounding Merrick, what with the murders of Cold Sandra and Honey, and I
could well understand why Matthew's collected papers did not tear her away from her studies, or away from her frequent
lunches and shopping trips in town.
  She was also indifferent to the renovation of Great Nananne's old house, which did indeed belong to Great Nananne
with proper title, and was passed on to Merrick by means of a handwritten will, which was handled for us by a skilled
local lawyer with no questions asked.
  The renovation was historically accurate and quite extensive, involving two expert contractors in the field. Merrick did
not want to visit the house at all. The house, to my knowledge, does belong to Merrick officially, right now.
  By the end of that long ago summer, Merrick had an immense wardrobe, though she was growing taller with every
passing day. She favored expensive well-made dresses with lots of stitching, and visibly worked fabrics such as the white
pique which I already described. When she began to appear at supper in graceful high heeled shoes, I was personally and
secretly distraught.
  I am not a man who loves women of any age, but the sight of her foot, its arch so delicately stretched by the height of
the heel, and of her leg, so taut from the pressure, was quite enough to send the most unwelcome and erotic thoughts
through my brain.
  As for her Chanel No. 22, she had begun to wear it daily. Even those who claimed to be annoyed by perfume rather
liked it and came to associate it with her ever genial presence, her questions and steady conversation, her hunger for
knowledge about all things.
  She had a wondrous grasp of the fundamentals of grammar, which greatly assisted her in learning to read and write
French, after which learning Latin was something of a snap. As for mathematics, she detested it, and suspected it
somewhat--the theory was simply beyond her--but she was clever enough to absorb the fundamentals. Her enthusiasm
for literature was as great as that of anyone I've ever known. She ripped through Dickens and Dostoyevsky, talking about
the characters with easy familiarity and endless fascination as though they lived down the street from her house. As for
magazines, she was enthralled by the art and archaeology periodicals to which we subscribed routinely, and went on to
devour the standards of pop culture, as well as the news magazines she'd always loved.
  Indeed, Merrick remained convinced all her young years, as I knew her, that reading was the key to all things. She
claimed to understand England simply because she read the London Times every day. As for the history of Mesoamerica,
she fell in love with it, though she never asked to see the suitcase of her own treasures at all.
  With her own writing she made wondrous progress, soon developing something of an old-fashioned band. It was her
aim to shape her letters as Great Nananne had shaped hers. And Merrick succeeded, being able to keep copious diaries
with ease.
  Understand, she was not a genius of a child, but merely one of considerable intelligence and talent, who after years of
frustration and boredom had seized her opportunity at last. There was no impediment in her to knowledge. She resented
no one's seeming superiority. Indeed, she absorbed every influence that she could.
  Oak Haven, having no other child in its midst, delighted in her. The giant boa constrictor became a favorite pet.
  Aaron and Mary took Merrick into the city frequently to the local municipal museum, and often made the short flight to
Houston to expose her to the splendid museums and galleries of that southern capital as well.
  As for me, I had to go back to England several times during that fateful summer. I much resented it. I had come to love
the New Orleans Motherhouse, and I did seek every excuse to remain. I wrote long reports to the Elders of the Talamasca,
admitting to this weakness, but explaining, well, pleading perhaps, that I needed to become better acquainted with this
strange part of America which didn't seem American at all.

  The Elders were indulgent. I had plenty of time to spend with Merrick. However, one letter from them cautioned me not
to become overly fond of this "little girl." This stung me because I misinterpreted it. I made an avowal of my purity. The
Elders wrote back: "David, we don't doubt your purity; children can be fickle; we were thinking of your heart."
  Aaron, meantime, cataloged all Merrick's possessions and eventually established a full room in one of the outbuildings
to contain the statues which had been taken from her shrines.
  Not one but several medieval codices made up the legacy of Oncle Vervain. There was no explanation as to how he had
acquired these books. But there was evidence that he had used them, and in some we found his notes in pencil along with
certain dates.
  In one carton from Great Nananne's attic were a whole cache of printed books on magic, all published in the 18oos,
when the "paranormal" had been such the rage in London and on the Continent, what with mediums and séances and such.
These had their pencil markings as well.
  We found also a great disintegrating scrapbook crammed with brittle yellowed newspaper clippings, all from New
Orleans, which told tales of Voodoo attributed to "the local Doctor of much renown, Jerome Mayfair," whom Merrick
identified for us as Oncle Vervain's grandfather, The Old Man. Indeed, all of New Orleans had known about him and there
were many quaint little stories of Voodoo meetings broken up by the local police at which many "white ladies" were
arrested, as well as women of color, and blacks.
  The most tragic of all discoveries, however, and the one which was of the least use to us as an Order of Psychic
Detectives--if that is what we are--was the diary of the colored daguerreotypist who was too far back in the lineage for a
direct connection in Merrick's account. It was a quiet, friendly document, created by one Laurence Mayfair, mentioning,
among other things, the daily weather in the city, the number of customers at the studio, and other small local events.
  It recorded a happy life, I felt certain, and we took the time to copy it very carefully and send that copy to the local
university, where such a document by a man of color before the Civil War would be given its just due.
  In time, many similar documents, as well as copies of photographs, were sent on to various Southern universities, but
such steps were always taken--for Merrick's sake--with great care.
  Merrick was absent from the accompanying letters. She really did not want the material traced to her personally because
she did not want to explain her family to those outside the Order, and I think she feared, and perhaps rightly, that her
presence with us might be questioned as well.
  "They need to know about our people," she'd say at table, "but they don't need to know about me."
  She was greatly relieved that we did what we did, but she was launched now into another world. She would never be
that tragic child again who had showed the daguerreotypes to me the first evening.
  She was Merrick the student who pored over her books for hours, Merrick the passionate arguer of politics, before,
during, and after the television news. She was Merrick who owned seventeen pairs of shoes, and changed them three
times a day. She was Merrick, the Catholic, who insisted on going to Mass every Sunday even if a Biblical inundation
were falling upon the plantation and the nearby church.
  Of course I was pleased to see these things, though I knew many recollections lay dormant inside her and must someday
be resolved.
  Finally, it was late fall, and I had no choice but to return to London for good. Merrick had another six months of study
planned before she'd be sent to Switzerland, and our parting was tearful to say the least.
  I was no longer Mr. Talbot, but David, as I was to many other members, and, as we waved goodbye to each other at the
doorway of the plane, I saw Merrick cry again for the first time since that awful night when she'd cast off the ghost of
Honey in the Sunshine and broken into sobs.
  It was dreadful. I couldn't wait for the plane to land so that I could write her a letter.
  And for months her frequent letters were the most interesting aspect of my life.
  By February of the following year, Merrick was on a plane with me for Geneva. Though the weather made her
hopelessly forlorn, she studied diligently at school, dreaming of summers spent in Louisiana, or of the many vacation trips
which took her to the tropics which she loved.
  One year she went back to Mexico, during the worst of all seasons, to see the Maya ruins, and it was that summer that
she confided to me that we had to make the return trip to the cave.
  "I'm not ready to retrace my steps," she said, "but the moment will come. I know that you've saved everything that
Matthew wrote on the subject, and understand that I may be guided on that journey by others besides Matthew. But do not
worry. It's too soon for us to go."
  The next year she visited Peru, then after that Rio de Janeiro, and always back to school when fall came. She did not
make friends easily in Switzerland, and we did all we could to convey upon her a sense of normality, but the very nature

of the Talamasca is unique and secretive and I'm not sure we were always successful at making her feel at ease with others
at school.
  At age eighteen, Merrick informed me by official letter that she was more than positive that she wished to spend her life
in the Talamasca, even though we assured her that we would educate her no matter what her choice. She was admitted as
a postulant, which is for us a very young member, and she went to Oxford to begin her university years.
  I was thrilled to have her in England. I met her plane and was astonished by the tall graceful young woman who flew
into my arms.
  She lodged at the Motherhouse every weekend. Once again the chilly weather oppressed her dreadfully, but she wanted
to remain.
  On weekends we would take side trips to Canterbury Cathedral or Stonehenge or Glastonbury, whatever her fancy. It
was interesting talk all the way. Her New Orleans accent--I call it that for want of a better term--had left her completely,
she had surpassed me utterly in her knowledge of the Classics, her Greek was perfect, and she could speak Latin with
other members of the Order, a rare talent in one of her time.
  She became a specialist in Coptic, translating volumes of Coptic magical texts which the Talamasca had owned for
centuries. She was deep into the history of magic, assuring me of the obvious, that magic all over the world and in every
era is pretty much the same.
  She often fell asleep in the Motherhouse library, her face on her book on the table. She'd lost her interest in clothes
except for a few very pretty and ultrafeminine garments, and, intermittently, she bought and wore those fatal very high
heeled shoes.
  As for her liking for Chanel No.22, nothing ever inhibited her from wearing a great deal of the scent in her hair and on
her skin and her clothing. Most of us found it very delicious, and no matter where I was in the Motherhouse, I knew, by
the rise of this delightful scent, when Merrick had come through the front door.
  On her twenty-first birthday, my personal gift to Merrick was a triple string of natural and perfectly matched white
pearls. Of course it cost a fortune, but I didn't care. I had a fortune. She was deeply touched by it, and to all important
functions within the Order she always wore the necklace, whether attired in a black silk shirtwaist dress of magnificent
angles and fullness--her favorite for such evenings--or a more casual dark wool suit.
  Merrick was by this time a famous beauty, and the young members were always falling in love with her and
complaining bitterly that she repelled their advances and even their praise. Merrick never spoke of love, or of men who
were interested in her. And I had come to suspect that she was enough of a mind reader to feel very much isolated and
alienated, even within our hallowed halls.
  I was hardly immune to her appeal. At times, I found it downright difficult to be in her presence, so fresh and lovely and
inviting did she seem. She had a way of looking luscious in austere garments, her breasts large and high, her legs rounded
and tapered exquisitely beneath her modest hem.
  There was one trip to Rome on which I became miserable in my desire for her. I cursed the fact that age had not yet
delivered me from such torment, and did all that I could so that she might never guess. I think she knew it, however, and
in her own way, she was merciless.
  She once let slip, after a sumptuous dinner at the Hassler Hotel, that she found me the only truly interesting man in her
life.
  "Bad luck, wouldn't you say, David?" she had asked me pointedly. The return to the table of two other Talamasca
comrades had cut the conversation short. I was flattered but deeply disturbed. I couldn't have her, it was quite out of the
question, and that I wanted her so much came as a terrible surprise.
  At some point, after that Roman trip, Merrick devoted some time in Louisiana to recording the entire history of her
family--that is, what she knew of her people, quite apart from their occult powers, and, together with quality copies of all
of her daguerreotypes and photographs, she made this available to several universities for whatever use they might desire.
Indeed, the family history--without Merrick's name, and indeed minus several key names--is now part of several
important collections concerning the "gens de couleur libres, " or the history of black families in the south.
  Aaron told me that the project exhausted Merrick emotionally, but she had said les mystères were haunting her, and it
had to be done. Lucy Nancy Marie Mayfair demanded it; indeed so did Great Nananne. So did white Oncle Julien Mayfair
from uptown. But when Aaron prodded as to whether she was really being haunted, or merely respectful, Merrick said
nothing except that it was time to go back to work overseas.
  As for her own Afro-American blood, Merrick was always quite frank about it and sometimes surprised others by
discussing it. But almost without exception, in every situation, she passed for white.
  For two years, Merrick studied in Egypt. Nothing could lure her away from Cairo, until she began an impassioned
investigation of Egypian and Coptic documents throughout the museums and libraries of the globe. I remember going

through the dim and grimy Cairo Museum with her, loving her inevitable infatuation with Egyptian mystery, and that trip
ended with her getting completely drunk and passing out after supper in my arms. Fortunately I was almost as drunk as
she was. I think we woke up together, each properly dressed, lying side by side on her bed.
  In fact, Merrick had already become something of a famous though occasional drunk. And more than once she had
wrapped her arms around me and kissed me in a way that thoroughly invigorated me and left me in despair.
  I refused her seeming invitations. I told myself, and probably rightly so, that I was partly imagining her desire. Besides,
I was old then obviously, and for a young person to think that she wants you when you're old is one thing; to actually
follow through with it is quite another affair. What had I to offer her but a host of minor inevitable physical debilities? I
did not dream then of Body Thieves who would bequeath to me the form of a young man.
  And I must confess that, years later, when I did find myself in possession of this young man's corpus, I did think of
Merrick. Oh, indeed, I did think of Merrick. But by then I was in love with a supernatural being, our inimitable Lestat, and
he blinded me even to memories of Merrick's charms.
  Enough said on that damned subject! Yes, I desired her, but my task is to return to the story of the woman I know today.
Yes, Merrick, the brave and brilliant member of the Talamasca, that is the story I have to tell:
  Long before computers were so very common, she had mastered them for her own writing and was soon heard to be
tapping away at fantastical speed on her keyboard late into the night. She published hundreds of translations and articles
for our members, and many, under a pseudonym, in the outside world.
  Of course we are very careful in sharing all such learning. It is not our purpose to be noticed; but there are things which
we do not feel we can keep to ourselves. We would never have insisted on a pseudonym, however; but Merrick was as
secretive about her own identity as ever she was as a child.
  Meanwhile, as regards the "uptown Mayfairs" of New Orleans, she showed little interest in them personally, hardly
bothering with the few records we recommended that she read. They were never her people, really, no matter what she
might have thought of "Oncle Julien" appearing in Great Nananne's dream. Also, no matter what one might observe about
the "powers" of those Mayfairs, they have in this century almost no interest at all in "ritual magic," and that was Merrick's
chosen field.
  Of course nothing of Merrick's possessions had ever been sold. There was no reason to sell anything. It would have
been absurd.
  The Talamasca is so very rich that the expenses of one person, such as Merrick, mean virtually nothing, and Merrick,
even when she was very young, was devoted to the projects of the Order and worked of her own free will in the archives
to update records, make translations, and identify and label articles very similar to those Olmec treasures which belonged
to her.
  If ever a member of the Talamasca earned her own way, it was Merrick, almost to a degree which put us to shame.
Therefore, if Merrick wanted a shopping spree in New York or Paris, no one was likely to deny it. And when she chose a
black Rolls Royce sedan as her personal car, soon establishing a small worldwide collection of them, no one thought it a
bad idea at all.
  Merrick was some twenty-four years old before she approached Aaron about taking stock of the occult collection she
had brought to the Order ten years before.
  I remember it because I remember Aaron's letter.
  "Never has she shown the slightest interest," he wrote:

    and you know how this has worried me. Even when she made her family history and sent it off to various scholars,
  she did not touch upon the occult heritage at all. But this afternoon she confided to me that she has had several
  "important" dreams about her childhood, and that she must return to Great Nananne's house. Together with our driver
  we made the trip back to the old neighborhood, a sad journey indeed.
    The district has sunk considerably lower, I think, than she could have imagined, and I believe the shattered ruin of the
  "corner bar" and the "corner store" took her quite by surprise. As for the house, it has been splendidly maintained by the
  man who lives on the premises, and Merrick spent almost an hour, alone by choice, in the rear yard.
    There the caretaker had made a patio, and the shed is virtually empty. Nothing remains of the temple, naturally,
  except the brightly painted center post.
    She said nothing to me afterwards, absolutely refusing to discuss these dreams of hers in any detail.
    She expressed extreme gratitude to me that we'd kept the house for her, during her period of "negligence," and I hoped
  this might be the end of it.
    But at supper, I was quite astonished to hear that she planned to move back into the house and spend part of her time
  there from now on. She wanted all the old furniture, she told me. She'd supervise the arrangements herself.

    "What about the neighborhood?" I found myself asking weakly, to which she replied with a smile, "I was never afraid
  of the neighbors. You'll soon discover, Aaron, that the neighbors will become afraid of me." Not to be outdone, I
  quipped, "And suppose some stranger should try to murder you, Merrick," to which she fired back, "Heaven help the
  man or woman who would attempt such a thing."

  Merrick was as good as her word, and did move back to the "old neighborhood," but not before building a caretaker's
quarters above the old shed.
  The two miserably rundown houses which flanked the house were purchased and demolished, and brick walls went up
around three sides of the enormous lot and along the front, coming to meet the high iron picket fence directly before the
facade. There was always to be a man on the property; some sort of alarm system was installed; flowers were planted.
Feeders were put out for the hummingbirds once more. It all sounded quite wholesome, and natural, but having once seen
that house, I was still chilled by frequent stories of how Merrick came and went.
  The Motherhouse remained her true home, but many afternoons, according to Aaron, she disappeared into New Orleans
and did not return for several days.
  "The house is now quietly spectacular," Aaron wrote to me. "All the furniture was of course repaired and refinished, and
Merrick has claimed Great Nananne's mammoth four-poster for her own. The floors of heart pine have been beautifully
redone, giving the house a rather amber glow. Nevertheless, it worries me dreadfully that Merrick secludes herself there
for days on end."
  Naturally, I myself wrote to Merrick, broaching the subject of the dreams that had motivated her return to the house.
  "I want to tell you about these things but it is too soon," Merrick replied immediately.

    Let me say only that in these dreams it is Great-Oncle Vervain who talks with me. Sometimes I'm a child again as I
  was on the day he died. Other times we are adults together. And it seems, though I cannot with uniform success
  remember everything, in one dream we were both young.
    For now, you mustn't worry. You must realize that it was inevitable that I should return to my childhood home. I am
  of an age when people become curious about the past, especially when it has been sealed off so successfully and
  abruptly as was mine.
    Understand, I do not feel guilt for having abandoned the house where I grew up. It is only that my dreams are telling
  me that I must return. They tell me other things as well.

  These letters worried me, but Merrick gave only brief responses to my queries.
  Aaron had also become concerned. Merrick was spending less and less time at Oak Haven. Often he made the drive into
New Orleans to call upon her at the old house, that is, until Merrick asked to be left alone.
  Of course, such a manner of living is not uncommon among Talamasca members. Frequently they divide their time
between the Motherhouse and a private family home. I had and still do have a home in the Cotswolds in England. But it is
not a good sign when a Member absents herself from the Order for long periods of time. In Merrick's case it was
particularly disturbing due to her frequent and cryptic mentions of her dreams.
  During the fall of that fateful year, her twenty-fifth, Merrick wrote to me about a journey to the cave.
  Let me continue with my reconstruction here of her words:
  "David, I no longer sleep through the night without a dream of my Great-Oncle Vervain. Yet less and less am I able to
recall the substance of these dreams. I know only that he wants me to return to the cave I visited in Central America when
I was a child. David, I must do this. Nothing can prevent it. The dreams have become a form of obsession, and I ask that
you not bombard me with logical objections to what you know I must do."
  She went on to talk about her treasure.

    I have been through all of the so-called Olmec treasures, and I know now they are not Olmec at all. In fact, I can't
  identify them, though I have every published book or catalog on antiquities in that part of the world. As for the
  destination itself, I have what I remember, and some writings by my Oncle Vervain, and the papers of Matthew Kemp,
  my beloved stepfather of years ago.
    I want you to make this journey with me, though certainly we cannot attempt it without others. Please answer me as
  quickly as you can as to whether you are willing. If not, I will organize a party on my own.

   Now, I was almost seventy years of age when I received this letter, and her words presented quite a challenge to me, and
one which I didn't welcome at all. Though I longed for the jungles, longed for the experience, I was quite concerned that it
was beyond my ability to make such a trip.
   Merrick went on to explain that she had spent many hours going through the artifacts retrieved on her girlhood journey.
   "They are indeed older," she wrote, "than those objects which archaeologists call Olmec, though they undoubtedly share
many common traits with that civilization and would be called Olmec-oid due to their style. Elements we might call Asian
or Chinese proliferate in these artifacts, and then there is the matter of the alien cave-paintings which Matthew managed
to photograph as best he could. I must investigate these things personally. I must try to arrive at some conclusion
regarding the involvement of my Oncle Vervain in this part of the world."
   I called her that night from London.
   "Look, I'm entirely too old to go off into that jungle," I said, "if it's even still there. You know they're cutting down the
rain forests. It might be farmland by now. Besides, I'd slow you down no matter what the terrain."
   "I want you to come with me," she said softly, coaxingly. "David, please do this. We can move at your pace, and when
it comes time to make the climb in the waterfall, I can do that part alone.
   "David, you were in the jungles of the Amazon years ago. You know this sort of experience. Imagine us now with every
microchip convenience. Cameras, flashlights, camping equipment; we'll have every luxury. David, come with me. You
can remain in the village if you like. I'll go on to the waterfall alone. With a modem four-wheel drive vehicle, it will be
nothing at all."
   Well it wasn't nothing at all.
   A week later I arrived in New Orleans, determined to argue her out of the excursion. I was driven directly to the
Motherhouse, a little disturbed that neither Aaron nor Merrick had come to meet my plane.




                                                                 12


   AARON GREETED ME at the door.
   "Merrick's at her house in New Orleans. The caretaker says she's been drinking. She will not talk to him. I've called
every hour since morning. The phone simply rings and rings."
   "Why didn't you tell me this was happening?" I demanded. I was deeply concerned.
   "Why? So you'd worry about it all the way across the Atlantic? I knew you were coming. I know you're the only one
who can reason with her when she's in this state."
   "Whatever in the world makes you think so?" I argued. But it was true. Sometimes I could talk Merrick into ending her
binges. But not always.
   Whatever the case, I bathed, changed clothes, as the early winter weather was unseasonably warm, and set out in a
drowsy evening shower, with the car and driver, for Merrick's house.
   It was dark when I got there, but even so, I could see that the neighborhood had deteriorated beyond my wildest
speculation. It seemed as if a war had been lost in the district, and the survivors had no choice but to live among hopeless
wooden ruins tumbling down into the eternal giant weeds. Here and there was a well-kept shotgun house with a bright
coat of paint and some gingerbread trim beneath its roof. But dim lights shone through heavily barred windows.
Abandoned cottages were being dismantled by the rampant greenery. The area was derelict and obviously dangerous as
well.
   It seemed to me that I could sense people prowling about in the darkness. I detested the feeling of fear which had been
so uncommon in me in my youth. Old age had taught me to respect danger. As I said, I hated it. I remember hating the
thought that I wouldn't ever be able to accompany Merrick on this insane journey to the Central American jungles, and I'd
be humiliated as the result.
   At last the car stopped at Merrick's house.
   The lovely old raised cottage, painted a fresh shade of tropical pink with white trim, appeared rather wonderful behind
the high iron picket fence. The new brick walls were thick and very high as they embraced the property on either side. A
bank of densely flowering oleander behind the iron pickets shielded the house somewhat from the squalor of the street.

  IAs the caretaker greeted me, and brought me up the front steps, I saw that Merrick's long windows were well barred
also, in spite of their white lace curtains and shades, and that lights were on throughout the house.
  The porch was clean; the old square pillars were solid; the leaded glass sparkled within the twin windows of the
polished double doors. A wave of remembrance passed over me, nevertheless.
  "She won't answer the bell, Sir," said the caretaker, a man I scarcely noticed in my haste. "But the door's unlocked for
you. I took her some supper at five o'clock."
  "She asked for her supper?" I inquired.
  "No, Sir, she never said anything. But she ate the food. I picked up the dishes at six."
  I opened the door and found myself in the comfortable air-cooled front hall. I saw at once that the old parlor and dining
room to my right had been splendidly refurnished with rather bright Chinese carpets. A modem sheen covered the old
furniture. The old mirrors above the white marble mantels were as dark as they had ever been.
  To my left lay the front bedroom; Great Nananne's bed was dressed with an ivory white canopy and a counterpane of
heavy crocheted lace.
  In a polished wooden rocking chair before the bed, facing the front windows, sat Merrick, a wobbling light easily
illuminating her thoughtful face.
  There was a bottle of Flor de Caña rum on the little candlestand table beside her.
  She lifted the glass to her lips, drank from it, and then sat back, continuing to stare off as if she didn't know that I was
there.
  I stopped at the threshold.
  "Darling," I said, "aren't you going to offer me a drink?"
  Without so much as turning her head, she smiled.
  "You never liked straight rum, David," she said softly. "You're a Scotch man like my old stepfather, Matthew. It's in the
dining room. How about some Highland Macallan? Twenty-five years old. That good enough for my beloved Superior
General?"
  "I should say so, gracious lady," 1 replied. "But never mind that just now. May I step into your boudoir?"
  She uttered a small pretty laugh. "Sure, David," she said, "come on in."
  I was startled as soon as I looked to my left. A large marble altar had been erected between the two front windows, and I
saw there the old multitude of sizable plaster saints. The Virgin Mary wore her crown and the vestments of Mount
Carmel, holding the radiant Baby Jesus beneath her innocent smile.
  Some elements had been added. I realized they were the Three Magi of Christian scripture and lore. The altar was no
Christmas crèche, you understand. The Magi or Wise Men had merely been included in a large panoply of sacred figures,
more or less on their own terms.
  I spied several of the mysterious jade idols among the saints, including one very mean little idol which held its scepter
quite ready for duty or attack.
  Two other rather vicious little characters flanked the large statue of St. Peter. And there before them lay the green jade
hummingbird perforator, or knife, one of the most beautiful artifacts in Merrick's large cache.
  The gorgeous axe of obsidian which I had seen years ago was given a place of prominence between the Virgin Mary
and the Arc Angel Michael. It had a lovely luster in the dim light.
  But perhaps the most surprising contents of the altar were the daguerreotypes and old photographs of Merrick's people,
ranged thickly as any display upon a parlor piano, the multitude of faces lost in the gloom.
  A double row of candles burned before the entire array, and there were fresh flowers aplenty, in numerous vases.
Everything appeared dusted and quite clean. That is, until I realized that the shriveled hand had its place among the
offerings. It stood out against the white marble, curled and hideous, very much as it had seemed when I first saw it long
ago.
  "For old times' sake?" I asked, gesturing to the altar.
  "Don't be absurd," she said under her breath. She lifted a cigarette to her lips. I saw by the box on the little table that it
was Rothmans, Matthew's old brand. My old brand as well. I knew her to be a smoker now and then, rather like I was
myself.
  Nevertheless, I found myself looking hard at her. Was she really my beloved Merrick? My skin had begun to crawl, as
they say, a feeling I detest.
  "Merrick?" I asked.
  When she looked up at me, I knew it was she and no one else inside her handsome young body, and I knew that she
wasn't very drunk at all.
  "Sit down, David, my dear," she said sincerely, almost sadly. "The armchair's comfortable. I'm really glad you came."

  I was much relieved by the familiarity of her tone. I crossed the room, in front of her, and settled in the armchair from
which I could easily see her face. The altar loomed over my right shoulder, with all those tiny photographic faces staring
at me, as they had long ago. I found that I did not like it, did not like the many indifferent saints and the subdued Wise
Men, though I had to admit that the spectacle was dazzling to my eyes.
  "Why must we go off to these jungles, Merrick?" I asked. "Whatever made you decide to drop everything for such an
idea?"
  She didn't answer immediately. She took a drink of rum from her glass, her eyes focused on the altar.
  This gave me time to note that a huge portrait of Oncle Vervain hung on the far wall beside the door through which I'd
entered the room.
  I knew it at once to be an expensive enlargement of the likeness Merrick had revealed to us years ago. The processing
had been true to the sepia tones of the portrait, and Oncle Vervain, a young man in his prime, resting his elbow
comfortably on the Greek column, appeared to be staring directly at me with bold brilliant light eyes.
  Even in the shuddering gloom, I could see his handsome broad nose and beautifully shaped full lips. As for the light
eyes, they gave the face a certain frightening aspect, though I wasn't certain whether or not I ought to have felt such a
thing.
  "I see you came to continue the argument," Merrick said. "There can be no argument for me, David. I have to go and
now."
  "You haven't convinced me. You know very well I won't let you journey into that part of the world without the support
of the Talamasca, but I want to understand--."
  "Oncle Vervain is not going to leave me alone," she said quietly, her eyes large and vivid, her face somewhat dark
against the low light of the distant hall. "It's the dreams, David. Truth is, I've had them for years, but never the way they
come now. Maybe I didn't want to pay attention. Maybe I played, even in the dreams themselves, as if I didn't
understand."
  It seemed to me that she was three times as fetching as I had remembered. Her simple dress of violet cotton was belted
tightly at the waist, and the hem barely covered her knees. Her legs were lean and exquisitely shaped. Her feet, the
toenails painted a bright shiny violet to match the dress, were bare.
  "When precisely did the onslaught of dreams begin?"
  "Spring," she replied a little wearily. "Oh, right after Christmas. I'm not even sure. Winter was bad here. Maybe Aaron
told you. We had a hard freeze. All the beautiful banana trees died. Of course they came right back up as soon as the
spring warmth arrived. Did you see them outside?"
  "I didn't notice, darling. Forgive me," I replied.
  She resumed as if I hadn't answered.
  "And that's when he came to me the most clearly," she said. "There was no past or future in the dream, then, only Oncle
Vervain and me. We were in this house together, he and I, and he was sitting at the dining room table--." She gestured to
the open door and the spaces beyond it, "--and I was with him. And he said to me, 'Girl, didn't I tell you to go back there
and get those things?' He went into a long story. It was about spirits, awful spirits that had knocked him down a slope so
that he cut his head. I woke up in the night and wrote down everything I remembered, but some of it was lost and maybe
that was meant to be."
  "Tell me what else you remember now."
  "He said it was his mother's great-grandfather who knew of that cave," she responded. "He said that the old man took
him there, though he himself was scared of the jungle. Do you know how many years back that would be? He said he
never got to go back there. He came to New Orleans and got rich off Voodoo, rich as anybody can get off Voodoo. He
said you give up your dreams the longer you live, until you've got nothing."
  I think I winced at those choice and truthful words.
  "I was seven years old," she said, "when Oncle Vervain died under this roof His mother's great-grandfather was a brujo
among the Maya. You know, that's a witch doctor, a priest of sorts. I can still remember Oncle Vervain using that word."
  "Why does he want you to go back?" I asked her.
  She had not removed her eyes from the altar. I glanced in that direction and realized that a picture of Oncle Vervain was
there too. It was small, frameless, merely propped at the Virgin's feet.
  "To get the treasure," she said in her low, troubled voice. "To bring it here. He says there's something there that will
change my destiny. But I don't know what he means." She gave one of those characteristic sighs of hers. "He seems to
think I'll need it, this object, this thing. But what do spirits know?"
  "What do they know, Merrick?" I asked.

  "I can't tell you, David," she replied raggedly. "I can only tell you that he haunts me. He wants me to go there and bring
back those things."
  "You don't want to do this," I said. "I can tell by your entire manner. You're being haunted."
  "It's a strong ghost, David," she said, her eyes moving over the distant statues. "They're strong dreams." She shook her
head. "They're so full of his presence. God, how I miss him." She let her eyes drift. "You know," she said, "when he was
very old, his legs were bad. The priest came; he said Oncle Vervain didn't have to go to Sunday Mass anymore. It was too
hard. Yet every Sunday, Oncle Vervain got dressed in his best three-piece suit, and always with his pocket watch, you
know, the little gold chain in front and the watch in the little pocket--and he sat in the dining room over there listening to
the broadcast of Mass on the radio and whispering his prayers. He was such a gentleman. And the priest would come and
bring him Holy Communion in the afternoon.
  "No matter how bad his legs were, Oncle Vervain knelt down for Holy Communion. I stood in the front door until the
priest was gone and the altar boy. Oncle Vervain said that our church was a magic church because Christ's Body and
Blood was in Holy Communion. Oncle Vervain said I was baptized: Merrick Marie Louise Mayfair--consecrated to the
Blessed Mother. They spelled it the French way, you know: M-e-r-r-i-q-u-e. I know I was baptized. I know."
  She paused. I couldn't bear the suffering in her voice or in her expression. If only we had located that baptismal
certificate, I thought desperately, we might have prevented this obsession.
  "No, David," she said aloud, sharply correcting me. "I dream of him, I tell you. I see him holding that gold watch." She
settled back into her reverie, though it gave her no consolation. "How I loved that watch, that gold watch. I was the one
who wanted it, but he left it to Cold Sandra. I used to beg him to let me look at it, to let me turn its hands to correct it, to
let me snap it open, but no, he said, 'Merrick, it doesn't tick for you, chérie, it ticks for others.' And Cold Sandra got it.
Cold Sandra took it with her when she left."
  "Merrick, these are family ghosts. Don't we all have family ghosts?"
  "Yes, David, but it's my family, and my family was never very much like anyone else's family, was it, David? He comes
in the dreams and tells me about the cave."
  "I can't bear to see you hurt, my darling," I said. "In London, behind my desk, I isolate myself emotionally from the
Members all over the world. But from you? Never."
  She nodded. "I don't want to cause you pain, either, boss," she said, "but I need you."
  "You won't give up on this, will you?" I replied as tenderly as I could.
  She said nothing. Then:
  "We have a problem, David," she said, her eyes fixed on the altar, perhaps deliberately avoiding me.
  "And what is that, darling?" I asked.
  "We don't know exactly where to go."
  "I'm hardly surprised," I responded, trying to remember what I could of Matthew's vague letters. I tried not to sound
cross or pompous. "All Matthew's letters were mailed from Mexico City in a batch as I understand it, when you were
making your way home."
  She nodded.
  "But what of the map that Oncle Vervain gave you? I know it has no names, but when you touched it, what happened?"
  "Nothing happened when I touched it," she said. She smiled bitterly. She was silent for a long time. Then she gestured
to the altar.
  It was then that I saw the small rolled parchment, tied in black ribbon, sitting beside the small picture of Oncle Vervain.
  "Matthew had help getting there," she said in a strange, almost hollow voice. "He didn't figure it out from that map, or
on his own in any fashion."
  "You're referring to sorcery," I said.
  "You sound like a Grand Inquisitor," she replied, her eyes still very distant from me, her face devoid of feeling, her tone
flat. "He had Cold Sandra to help him. Cold Sandra knew things from Oncle Vervain that I don't know. Cold Sandra knew
the whole lay of the land. So did Honey in the Sunshine. She was six years older than me."
  She paused. She was obviously deeply troubled. I don't think I had ever seen her so troubled in all her adult years.
  "Oncle Vervain's mother's people had the secrets," she said. "I see so many faces in my dreams." She shook her head as
if trying to clear her mind. On her voice went in a near whisper. "Oncle Vervain used to talk to Cold Sandra all the time. If
he hadn't died when he did, maybe Cold Sandra would have been better, but then he was so old, it was his time."
  "And in the dreams, Oncle Vervain doesn't tell you where the cave is located?"
  "He tries," she answered sadly. "I see images, fragments. I see the Maya brujo, the priest, going up to a rock by the
waterfall. I see a big stone carved with facial features. I see incense and candles, feathers from the wild birds, beautifully
colored feathers and offerings of food."

  "I understand," I responded.
  She rocked a little in the chair, her eyes moving slowly from side to side. Then she took another drink of the rum in her
glass. "Of course I remember things from the journey," she said in a slow voice.
  "You were only ten years old," I said sympathetically. "And you mustn't think that because of these dreams you should
go back now."
  She ignored me. She drank her rum and she stared at the altar.
  "There are so many ruins, so many highland basins," she said. "So many waterfalls, so many cloud forests. I need one
more piece of information. Two pieces, really. The city to which we flew from Mexico City, and the name of the village
where we camped. We took two planes to reach that city. I can't remember those names, if I ever knew them. I don't think
I was paying attention. I was playing in the jungles. I was off by myself. I scarcely knew why we were there."
  "Darling, listen to me--," I started.
  "Don't. Forget it. I have to go back," she said sharply.
  "Well, I assume you've combed all your books on the jungle terrain. You've made lists of towns and villages?" I broke
off. I had to remember I didn't want this dangerous trip to take place.
  She didn't immediately respond to me, and then she stared at me very deliberately and her eyes appeared uncommonly
hard and cold. The candlelight and the light of the lamps made them gorgeously green. I noticed that her fingernails were
painted the same shade of shiny violet as her toes. Once again she seemed the incarnation of all I'd ever desired.
  "Of course I've done that," she said to me gently. "But now I have to find the name of that village, the last real outpost,
and the name of the city to which we flew on the plane. If I had that, I could go." She sighed. "Especially that village with
the brujo, that's been there for centuries, inaccessible and waiting for us--if I had that, I'd know the way."
  "How, precisely?" I asked her.
  "Honey knows it," she answered. "Honey in the Sunshine was sixteen when we made that journey. Honey will
remember. Honey will tell it to me."
  "Merrick, you can't try to call up Honey!" I said. "You know that's far too dangerous, that's utterly reckless, you can't..."
  "David, you're here."
  "I can't protect you if you call up this spirit, good God."
  "But you must protect me. You must protect me because Honey will be as dreadful as she ever was. She'll try to destroy
me when she comes through."
  "Then don't do it."
  "I have to do it. I have to do it and I have to go back to that cave. I promised Matthew Kemp when be was dying I'd
report those discoveries. He didn't know he was talking to me. He thought he was talking to Cold Sandra, or maybe even
Honey, or maybe his mother, I couldn't tell. But I promised. I promised I would tell the world about that cave."
  "The world does not care about one more Olmec ruin!" I said. "There are universities aplenty working all through the
rain forests and jungles. There're ancient cities all over Central America! What does it matter now?"
  "I promised Oncle Vervain," she said earnestly. "I promised him I'd get all the treasure. I promised I'd bring it back.
'When you grow up,' he said to me, and I promised."
  "Sounds to me as if Cold Sandra promised," I said sharply. "And perhaps Honey in the Sunshine promised. You were
what, seven years old when the old man died?"
  "I have to do it," she said solemnly.
  "Listen," I insisted, "we're going to stop this entire plan. It's too dangerous politically to go to those Central American
jungles anyway," I declared. "I won't approve the trip. I'm the Superior General. You can't go over my head."
  "I don't intend to," she said, her tone softening. "I need you with me. I need you now."
  She stopped, and, leaning to one side, crushed out her cigarette, and refilled her glass from the bottle. She took a deep
drink and settled back again in the chair.
  "I have to call Honey," she whispered.
  "Why not call Cold Sandra!" I demanded desperately.
  "You don't understand," she said. "I've kept it locked in my soul all these years, but I have to call Honey. And Honey's
near me. Honey's always near me! I've felt her near me. I've fended her off with my power. I've used my charms and my
strength to protect myself. But she never really goes away." She took a deep drink of the rum. "David," she said, "Oncle
Vervain loved Honey in the Sunshine. Honey's in these dreams too."
  "I think it's your gruesome imagination!" I declared.
  She gave a high sparkling laugh at this, fall of true amusement. It startled me. "Listen to you, David, next you'll tell me
there are no ghosts or vampires. And that the Talamasca is just a legend, such an Order doesn't exist."
  "Why do you have to call Honey?"

   She shook her head. She rested back in the chair, and her eyes filled with visible tears. I could see them in the flicker of
the candles. I was becoming genuinely frantic.
   I stood up, marched into the dining room, found the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch and the lead crystal
glasses on the sideboard, and poured myself a good drink. I returned to her. Then I went back and got the bottle. I brought
it with me, settled in the chair, and put it on the nightstand to my left.
   The Scotch tasted wonderful. I didn't drink on the plane at all, wanting to be alert for my reunion, and it took the edge
off my nerves beautifully.
   She was still crying.
   "All right, you're going to call up Honey, and you think for some reason Honey knows the name of the town or the
village."
   "Honey liked those places," she said, unperturbed by my urgent voice. "Honey liked the name of the village from which
we hiked to the cave." She turned to me. "Don't you see, these names are like jewels embedded in her conscious; she's
there with all she ever knew! She doesn't have to remember like a living being. The knowledge is in her and I have to
make her give it to me."
   "All right, I see, I understand everything. I maintain that it's too dangerous, and besides, why hasn't the spirit of Honey
gone on?"
   "She can't until I tell her what she wants to know."
   This baffled me completely. What could Honey want to know?
   Suddenly Merrick rose from the chair, rather like a slumbering cat instantly propelled into predatory action, and she
closed the door to the hall. I heard her turn the key.
   I was on my feet. But I stood back, uncertain of what she meant to do. Certainly she wasn't drunk enough to be
interfered with in any dramatic authoritarian fashion, and I wasn't surprised when she abandoned her glass for the bottle of
rum and took it with her into the center of the room.
   Only then did I realize there was no carpet. Her naked feet were soundless on the polished floor, and, with the bottle
clutched in her right hand to her breast, she began to turn in a circle, humming and throwing back her head.
   I pressed myself against the wall.
   Round and round she spun, the violet cotton skirt flaring and the bottle sloshing rum into the air. She paid no attention
to the spilt liquor, and, slowing her turns only for a moment, she took another deep drink and then turned so fast that her
garments slapped against her legs.
   Stopping dead as she faced the altar, she spit the rum between her teeth into a fine spray at the waiting saints.
   A high-pitched wail came out of her clenched teeth as she continued to issue the rum from her mouth.
   Once again she began to dance, almost deliberately slapping her feet and murmuring. I couldn't catch the language or
the words. Her hair was tangled over her face. Again a swallow, again the rum flying, the candles sputtering and dancing
as they caught the tiny droplets and ignited them.
   Suddenly she hurled a stream of rum from the bottle all over the candles, and the flames went up before the saints in a
dangerous flare. Mercifully the fire went out.
   Head back, she screamed between her teeth in French:
   "Honey, I did it! Honey, I did it. Honey, I did it!"
   The room seemed to shake as she bent her knees and circled, pounding her feet in a loud dance.
   "Honey, I put the curse on you and Cold Sandra!" she screamed. "Honey, I did it."
   Suddenly she lunged at the altar, never letting go of her bottle, and, grabbing the green jade perforator in her left hand,
she slashed a long cut into her right arm.
   I gasped. What could I do to stop her, I thought, what could I do that wouldn't enrage her?
   The blood streamed down her arm and she bowed her head, licked at it, drank the rum, and sprayed the offering on the
patient saints once again.
   I could see the blood flowing down her hand, over her knuckles. Her wound was superficial but the amount of blood
was awful.
   Again she lifted the knife.
   "Honey, I did it to you and Cold Sandra. I killed you, I put the curse on you!" she screamed.
   I resolved to grab hold of her as she went to cut herself again. But I couldn't move.
   As God is my witness, I couldn't move. I was rooted to the spot. I tried with all my resources to overcome the paralysis,
but it was useless. All I could do was cry to her,
   "Stop it, Merrick!"
   She slashed at her arm across the first cut, and again the blood flowed.

  "Honey, come to me, Honey, give me your rage, give me your hatred, Honey, I killed you, Honey, I made the dolls of
you and Cold Sandra, Honey, I drowned them in the ditch the night you left. Honey, I killed you. Honey, I sent you to the
swamp water, Honey, I did it," she was screaming.
  "For the love of Heaven, Merrick, let go!" I cried. Then suddenly, unable to watch her slash her arm again, I began to
pray frantically to Oxalá:
  "Give me the power to stop her, give me the power to divert her before she harms herself, give me the power, I beg you,
Oxalá, I'm your loyal David, give me the power." I shut my eyes. The floor was trembling beneath me.
  Suddenly the noise of her screams and her bare feet stopped.
  I felt her against me. I opened my eyes. She stood in my embrace, both of us facing the doorway, which was
indisputably open, and the shadowy figure who stood with her back to the light of the hall.
  It was a graceful young girl with long tightly curling blond hair lathered all over her shoulders, her face veiled in
shadow, her yellow eyes piercing in the candle glow.
  "I did it!" Merrick whispered. "I killed you."
  I felt Merrick's whole pliant body against me. I wrapped my arms tightly around her. Again, but silently, I prayed to
Oxalá.
  Protect us from this spirit if evil is the intent of this Spirit. Oxalá, you who made the world, you who rule in high places,
you who are among the clouds, protect us, do not look at my faults as I call on you, but give me your mercy, protect us if
this spirit would do us harm.
  Merrick wasn't trembling, she was quaking, her body covered in sweat, as it had been during the possession so many
years before.
  "I put the dolls in the ditch, I drowned them in the ditch, I did it. I drowned them. I did it. I prayed, 'Let them die!' I
knew from Cold Sandra that she was going to buy that car, I said, 'Let it go off a bridge, let them drown.' I said, 'When
they drive across the lake, let them die.' Cold Sandra was so afraid of that lake, I said, 'Let them die.' "
  The figure in the doorway appeared as solid as anything I'd ever beheld. The shadowy face showed no expression, but
the yellow eyes remained fixed.
  Then a voice issued from it, low, and full of hatred.
  "Fool, you never caused it!" said the voice. "Fool, you think you caused that to happen to us? You never caused
anything. Fool, you couldn't make a curse to save your soul!"
  I thought Merrick would lose consciousness, but somehow she remained standing, though my arms were ready to hold
her should she fail.
  She nodded. "Forgive me that I wanted it," she said in a hoarse whisper that seemed entirely her own. "Forgive me,
Honey, that I wanted it. I wanted to go with you, forgive me."
  "Go to God to get your forgiveness," came the low voice from the darkened countenance. "Don't come to me."
  Again Merrick nodded. I could feel the stickiness of her spilt blood coming down over my right fingers. Again I prayed
to Oxalá! But my words were coming automatically. I was riveted heart and soul to the being in the doorway, who neither
moved nor dissolved.
  "Get down on your knees," said the voice. "Write in blood what I tell you."
  "Don't do it!" I whispered.
  Merrick sprang forward, falling on her knees on the floor that was wet and slippery with blood and spilt rum.
  Once again, I tried to move, but I couldn't. It was as if my feet had been nailed to the boards.
  Merrick's back was to me, but I knew she was pressing her left fingers to the wounds to make them bleed ever more
deeply, and then I heard the creature in the doorway give two names.
  I heard the first distinctly, "Guatemala City, there's where you land," said the spirit, "and Santa Cruz del Flores is as
close as you can get to the cave."
  Merrick sat back on her heels, her body heaving, her breaths coming rapid and hoarse as she squeezed the blood onto
the floor and began to write with her right first finger the names now repeated from her own lips.
  On and on I prayed for strength against the figure, but I cannot claim that it was my prayers which made the being begin
to fade.
  A horrid scream broke from Merrick:
  "Honey, don't leave me!" she cried. "Honey, don't go. Honey, come back, please, please, come back," she sobbed.
"Honey in the Sunshine, I love you. Don't leave me here alone."
  But the spirit was gone.

                                                                13


  MERRICK'S CUTS were not deep, though the flood of blood had been quite terrifying. I was able to bandage her up
fairly decently, and then take her to the nearest hospital, where she was given the proper treatment for the wounds.
  I don't remember what nonsense we told the attending physician, except that we convinced him that though the wounds
had been selfinflicted, Merrick was in her right mind. Then I insisted we return to the Motherhouse, and Merrick, who
was at that time in some sort of daze, agreed. I went back for the Scotch, I'm ashamed to say, but then one tends to
remember the flavor of a twenty-five-year-old single-malt Highland Scotch like Macallan.
  Besides, I'm not sure I was in my right mind. I remember drinking in the car, which I never do, and Merrick falling
asleep against my shoulder, her right hand clamped to my wrist.
  You can well imagine my state of mind.
  The visible spirit of Honey in the Sunshine had been one of the more ominous ghosts I'd ever beheld. I was used to
shadows, interior voices, and even possession; but to see the seemingly solid form of Honey in the Sunshine standing in
the doorway was utterly shattering. The voice alone had been terrifying, but the shape, its apparent solidity and duration,
the manner in which the light had played upon it, the eyes being so very reflective--all of this was a little more than I
could easily bear.
  Then there was the question of my own paralysis during this experience. How had Merrick accomplished this thing? In
sum, I was badly shaken but very deeply impressed.
  Of course Merrick was not going to say how she had done any part of it. In fact, Merrick didn't want to speak of it at all.
At the mere mention of Honey's name, she began to cry. As a man, I found that maddening and unfair. But there was
nothing I could do about it. Merrick would wipe her tears, and at once turned the subject to our jungle venture.
  As for my opinion of the ritual she had used to summon Honey, I had found it simple, its chief component Merrick's
own personal power, and the sudden dreadful connection with a spirit who apparently was not at rest.
  Whatever, that night and on the following day, all Merrick wanted to talk about was the jungle trip. She had become a
mono-maniac of sorts. She'd bought her khaki garments. She'd even ordered mine! We must go to Central America
directly. We must have the finest camera equipment and all the support which the Talamasca could provide.
  She wanted to return to the cave because there were other items there, and she wanted to see the land which had been
important to her ancient Oncle Vervain. Oncle Vervain would not be haunting her if there were not substantial treasure
there which he wanted for her to possess. Oncle Vervain was not going to let her alone.
  For two days afterwards, while imbibing ridiculous quantities of the delicious full-bodied Macallan Scotch, of which
she had laid in several bottles, I tried to control Merrick, to prevent the journey from taking place. But it was quite useless.
I was getting drunk over and over again, and Merrick was determined. If I did not give Talamasca authority and support,
she would take off on her own.
  But the fact was, though I advised against everything, I felt young again on account of these experiences. I felt the
curious excitement of one who has seen a ghost firsthand. And I also did not want to go to my grave without ever seeing a
tropical jungle again. Even the arguments with Merrick had a wildly stimulating effect. That this beautiful and strong
young woman wanted me to go with her, this went to my head.
  "We're going," said Merrick, who was poring over a map in the Talamasca library. "Look, I know the way now. Honey's
given me the only keys I required. I remember the landmarks and I know that part of the jungle's still unexplored. I've
been through all the recent books on the territory."
  "But you haven't found Santa Cruz del Flores in your books, have you?" I protested.
  "Never mind. It's there. It's simply too small to be on the maps we purchase here. They'll know it when we reach
northern Guatemala. Leave it to me. There simply isn't enough money for every ruin to be studied, and there are a nest of
ruins in that part of the jungle, possibly a temple complex or even a city. You said this to me yourself.
  "I remember seeing a spectacular temple. Don't you want to see it with your own eyes?" She was as cross and
unpretentious as a child. "David, please do spring into life as Superior General, or whatever, and arrange everything for us
both at once."
  "But why do you think Honey in the Sunshine gave you the answers to your questions so easily?" I asked. "Has that not
aroused your suspicion?"

  "David, that's simple," said Merrick. "Honey wanted to say something of value, because Honey wants me to call her
again."
  The obvious truth of that statement shocked me somewhat.
  "God knows, Merrick, you're strengthening this spirit. Certainly it should be encouraged to move towards the Light."
  "Of course I urge her to go," Merrick answered, "but Honey's not leaving me. I told you that evening, I told you I've
been feeling Honey's presence for years. All this time I've been pretending there was no Honey, there was no jungle, I
didn't have to go back to these painful memories, I could bury myself in academic studies. You know that.
  "But I've completed the basic academic portion of my life. And now I must go back. Now, stop mentioning Honey; for
the love of Heaven, you think I want to think about what I did?" Then back she went to the maps again, sending for
another bottle of Macallan for me, and telling me that we would need tent equipment on this trip, and I should be starting
the arrangements now.
  At last I pleaded that it was the rainy season in those jungles and we should wait until Christmas when the rains had
stopped. She was ready for that objection; the rains were over; she had checked the reports daily. We could go now.
  There was nothing to be done except to proceed with the journey. If I had condemned the plan as Superior General,
Merrick would have taken off for Central America alone. As a full-fledged member of the Order, she had drawn a large
allowance for several years and she had banked every penny of it. She could go off on her own and she told me as much.
  "Look," she said, "it will break my heart to go against your wishes, but I will if I must."
  And so it was that we arranged to have four Talamasca field assistants accompany us, both to handle all camp
equipment and to carry firearms in case we encountered bandits where we meant to go.
  Now let me explain briefly about these field assistants for anyone reading this story who might be curious on their
account. The Talamasca has many such field assistants throughout the world. They are not full-fledged members of the
Order, they have no access to the archives and certainly no access to or knowledge of the Talamasca's vaults. They do not
take vows as do true members of the Order. They do not need or have psychic ability. They are not committed for any
number of years or for life.
  Indeed, they are employees of the Talamasca under its various corporate names, and their prime purpose is to
accompany members on archaeological or exploratory expeditions, to assist us in foreign cities and countries, and in
general to do what they are asked to do. They are expert in obtaining passports, visas, and the right to carry arms in other
countries. Many have a background in law, as well as the armed services of different nations. They are reliable to a
remarkable degree.
  Were we to find this cave and its treasure, it was the field assistants who would arrange for the artifacts to be legally and
securely transported out of the country with all appropriate permissions obtained and fees paid. Now, whether this latter
type of activity would involve anything that wasn't legal, I honestly didn't know. It was the field assistants' department, so
to speak.
  These people do have some vague knowledge that the Talamasca is a tightly organized Order of psychic investigators,
but in general they like what they do, enjoying enormous salaries, and they never seek to penetrate or fathom the Order at
all. Many of them are seasoned soldiers of fortune. Their work for us almost never involves deliberate violence. And they
cherish the opportunity to receive good pay from a relatively benign source.
  At last the day came for us to leave. Aaron was past all patience with both of us, and, having never been a jungle
traveler, he was greatly agitated, but he accompanied us agreeably to the plane.
  We flew south, to Guatemala City, where we confirmed the existence and the location of the Maya village of Santa Cruz
del Flores to the northeast. Merrick was wonderfully excited.
  A small plane took us to a lovely northern city closer to our destination. And from there we set out with the field
assistants in two wellstocked jeeps.
  I loved the warmth, the sound of the soft rain, the lilt of Spanish and the native Amerindian voices; and the sight of so
many Amerindians in their beautiful white clothes and with their gentle faces made me feel wonderfully drenched in the
cultural riches of a foreign and still unspoiled place.
  Actually there is plenty of trouble in that part of the world, but we were able to stay well away from it. And my eyes
were for the pleasant detail.
  No matter. I found myself extraordinarily happy. It was as if I were young again, and the sight of Merrick in her khaki
safari jacket and short culottes was as marvelously stimulating as her air of command was soothing to my nerves.
  Merrick drove our jeep rather like a maniac, but as long as the second car in our little caravan kept up with us, I didn't
complain. I chose not to think about the gallons of petrol we were carrying, and how it might explode were we to crash
into a chicle tree. I merely trusted that any woman who could evoke a ghost could drive a jeep on a dangerous road.

   The jungle was breathtaking. Banana and citrus trees all but blocked our way on both sides of the winding uphill drive;
here and there were giant mahogany trees soaring to a hundred and fifty feet; and out of the high canopy above came the
frightening but unmistakable roar of the howler monkeys and the cry of countless species of exotic bird.
   Our little world was drenched in green, but again and again we found ourselves on a high promontory from which we
could view the canopy of the jungle as it spread out on the volcanic slopes below.
   Very soon it became apparent that we had entered a cloud forest, and again and again we experienced that marvelous
sensation when the clouds truly enveloped us and the sweet dampness penetrated the coverless windows of the jeep and
settled on our skin.
   Merrick knew I was loving it.
   "I promise you," she said, "the last part won't be hard."
   At last we reached Santa Cruz del Flores, a jungle village, so small and so out of the way that the recent political strife
in the country had not touched it at all.
   Merrick announced that it was very much as she remembered it--a small grouping of brightly painted thatched-roof
buildings, and a small but remarkably beautiful old stone Spanish church. There were pigs, chickens, and turkeys roaming
about everywhere. And I spied some cornfields cut from the jungle, but not very much. The town plaza was beaten dirt.
   When our two jeeps pulled in, the gentle local inhabitants came out to greet us quite sympathetically, enforcing my
opinion that the native Maya Indians are some of the most enchanting people in the world. They were for the most part
women, dressed in pretty white garments with remarkable embroidery on them. I saw faces about me which reminded me
immediately of the ancient countenances of Central America preserved in Maya, and possibly Olmec, art.
   Most of the men of the village had gone off to work on the distant sugarcane plantations, or at the nearest chicle ranch, I
was told. I wondered if it were forced labor, and decided it was best not to ask. As for the women, they often walked
many miles in a day to offer their skillfully woven baskets and embroidered linens for sale at a big native market. They
were thankful for a chance to display their wares at home.
   There was no hotel of any sort whatsoever, indeed no post office, no phone, and no telegraph--but there were several
old women who would eagerly give us lodgings in their houses. Our dollars were welcome. There were lovely local crafts
for sale and we purchased freely. There was plenty of food to be had.
   I at once wanted to see the church, and was informed by one of the locals in Spanish that I must not enter by the front
door without first asking permission of the deity who governed that entrance. Of course, I could go in by the side, if I
wished.
   Not wishing to offend anyone, I took the side entrance and found myself in a simple white-walled building amid ancient
Spanish wooden statues and the usual flickering candles, a very comforting place indeed.
   I think I prayed the way I had in the old days, in Brazil. I prayed to all those benevolent deities unseen to be with us and
protect us from any form of harm.
   Merrick joined me a few moments later--making the Sign of the Cross and kneeling at the Communion Rail for long
moments of prayer. Eventually I went outside to wait.
   There I spied a somewhat wrinkled old man, short of stature, and with shoulder-length black hair. He was dressed
simply in a machine-made shirt and pants. I knew at once that he was the local shaman. I gave him a respectful bow, and
though his eyes lingered on me with no hint of menace, I went my way.
   I was hot but I was supremely happy. The village was fringed with coconut palms and there were even some pine trees
due to the elevation, and for the first time in my life, as I walked about the bordering jungles I saw many exquisite
butterflies in the dappled gloom.
   There were moments when I was so purely happy that I could have given way to tears. I was secretly grateful to Merrick
for this journey. And I concluded in my heart of hearts that no matter what happened from here on out, the experience had
been well worth it for me.
   When it came to our lodging, we chose a compromise.
   Merrick sent the four field assistants to live in the village homes, after they had pitched and stocked a tent for us just
behind the most far-flung village house. All of this seemed perfectly reasonable to me until I realized we were an
unmarried man and woman residing in this tent, and it wasn't very proper at all.
   Never mind. Merrick was powerfully stimulated by our adventure, as was I, and I was eager for her company alone. The
Talamasca assistants outfitted the tent with cots, lanterns, camp desks, and chairs; made certain Merrick had ample
batteries for her laptop computer; and, after a wonderful supper--tortillas, beans, and delicious wild turkey meat--we
were left alone as night fell, in marvelous privacy, to discuss what we meant to do the following day.
   "I don't intend taking the others with us," Merrick averred. "We're way beyond the danger of bandits, and, as I told you,
it isn't far. I remember one small settlement along the way. It's tiny compared to this one. The people will leave us alone."

  She was more excited than I'd ever known her to be.
  "Of course we can cover some of the road with the jeep before we start walking, and you'll see Maya ruins around us
just as soon as we set out. We're going to drive through those, and walk where the trails gives out."
  She settled back on her cot, resting on one elbow, and drank her dark Flor de Caña rum, which she'd bought in the city
before we set out.
  "Wooh! This is good," she told me, and of course this struck predictable terror in me that she meant to go on a bender
here in the jungle.
  "Don't worry about it, David," she said. "Fact is, you ought to take a drink of this yourself."
  I suspected her motives, but nevertheless succumbed. I was really in Heaven, I have to confess.
  What I remember of that evening still produces in me a certain amount of guilt. I did drink far too much of the delicious
aromatic rum. At some point, I remember lying back on my bed and looking up into the face of Merrick, who had come to
sit beside me. Then Merrick leant down to kiss me and I pulled her very close, responding a little more rashly perhaps
than she had expected. But she was not displeased.
  Now, I was a person for whom sexuality had pretty much lost its appeal. When I had been occasionally aroused, during
those last twenty years of my mortal life, it was almost always by a young man.
  But the attraction of Merrick seemed somehow to have nothing to do with gender. I found myself overly excited and
eager to consummate what had so haphazardly begun. Only as I shifted to let her lie beneath me, where I wanted her to be,
did I gain some control over myself, and rise from the cot.
  "David," she whispered. I heard my name echo: David, David. I couldn't move.
  I saw her shadowy form there waiting for me. And for the first time I realized that the lanterns had been put out. A little
light came from the nearest house, barely penetrating the fabric of the tent, and of course it was quite sufficient for me to
see that she had taken off her clothes.
  "Damn it, I can't do this," I said. But in truth I was afraid that I couldn't finish it. I was afraid that I was too old.
  She rose with that same suddenness which had startled me when she began to summon Honey in her little seance, and
she wrapped her naked arms around me and began to kiss me in earnest, her skilled hand going directly to the root of my
desire.
  I do believe I hesitated, but that I don't recall. What is vivid still is that we lay together and that, though I failed myself
morally, I did not fail her at all. I did not fail the two of us as a man and a woman, and there was afterwards both a
drowsiness and a sense of exultation that left no room for shame.
  It seemed, as I drifted off to sleep with my arms around her, that this had been building all of the years during which I'd
known her. I belonged to her now, quite completely. I was drenched with the scent of her perfume and her rum, of her
skin and her hair. I wanted nothing but to be with her and to sleep beside her, and that the warmth of her would penetrate
my inevitable dreams.
  When I awoke in the morning, right at dawn, I was too shocked by everything that had taken place to know quite what
to do. She was sleeping soundly, in a marvelously disheveled state, and I, humiliated that I had so dreadfully betrayed my
position as Superior General, ripped my eyes off her, bathed, dressed, reached for my journal, and went out and into the
little Spanish church so that I could write about my sins.
  Once again I spied the shaman, who was standing to one side of the church building and watching me as though he
knew everything that had taken place. His presence made me extremely uncomfortable. I no longer thought him to be
innocent or quaint. And of course I despised myself utterly, but I had to admit I was invigorated, as is always the case
with this kind of encounter, and, naturally, oh yes, naturally, I felt very young.
  In the quiet and cool of the little church with its sloped roof and its uncritical saints, I wrote for perhaps an hour.
  Then Merrick came in, said her prayers, and came to sit beside me, as if nothing at all had happened, and then
whispered to me excitedly that we should go.
  "I've betrayed your trust, young woman," I whispered immediately.
  "Don't be so foolish," she fired back. "You did exactly what I wanted you to do. Do you think I wanted to be
humiliated? Of course not!"
  "You're putting the wrong meaning on everything," I argued.
  She reached for the back of my neck, held my head as firmly as she could, and kissed me.
  "Let's go," she said, as if speaking to a child. "We're wasting time. Come on."

                                                                  14


   IN THE JEEP, we managed an hour before the road gave out. Then, hefting our machetes, we proceeded to follow the
trail on foot.
   There was very little conversation between us, all of our energy being given over to the difficult and steady assent. But
again that sense of bliss descended upon me, and the sight of Merrick's forceful slim body up ahead of me was a constant
guilty delight.
   The jungle now seemed impenetrable, regardless of the altitude, and again there came the clouds with their wondrous
sweetness and damp.
   I had my eye out all the time for ruins of any sort, and indeed we saw them, on both sides of us, but whether they were
temples or pyramids or whatever, I was not meant to know. Merrick dismissed them out of hand, and insisted that we
press doggedly on.
   The heat ate through my clothing. My right arm ached from the weight of the machete. The insects became an
unendurable nuisance, but I would not have been in any other place just then for anything in the world.
   Quite suddenly Merrick stopped, and motioned for me to come to her side.
   We had come upon a clearing of sorts, or the remains of one, I should say, and I saw decayed plaster hovels where there
had once been houses, and one or two shelters which still maintained their old thatched roofs.
   "The little village is gone," Merrick said as she surveyed the disaster.
   I remembered Matthew Kemp's mention of Village One and Village Two on his map and in his letters of years ago.
   She stood for a long moment staring into the remnants of the place and then she spoke in a secretive voice. "Do you feel
anything?"
   I had not felt anything until she asked me, but no sooner did I hear the question than I was aware of something
spiritually turbulent in the air. I resolved to apply all my senses to it. It was quite strong. I cannot say I felt personalities or
an attitude. I felt a commotion. For one moment I felt menace, and then nothing at all.
   "What do you make of it?" I asked her.
   Her very stillness made me uneasy.
   "It's not the spirits of this village," she answered. "And I'll bet you anything that whatever we're feeling is precisely what
caused the villagers to move on." She started off again, and I had no choice but to follow her. I was almost as obsessed as
she.
   Once we had circled the entangled village ruin, the trail appeared again.
   However, the jungle soon became denser; we had to hack our way all the more fiercely, and at times I felt a dreadful
pain in my chest.
   Quite suddenly, as if it had appeared by magic, I saw the huge bulk of a pale stone pyramid looming before us, its steps
covered by scrub growth and dense vine.
   Someone at some time had cleared it, and much of its strange carving was visible, as well as its flight of steep steps. No,
it wasn't Maya, at least not insofar as I could see.
   "Ah, let me savor this," I said to Merrick.
   She didn't answer me. She seemed to be listening for an important sound. I too listened and there came again that
awareness that we were not alone. Something moved in the atmosphere, something pushed against us, something sought
with great determination to move against gravity and affect my body as I stood there, machete in hand.
   Merrick suddenly veered to the left, and began hacking her way around the side of the pyramid and onward in the same
direction that we'd taken before.
   There was no trail now. There was nothing but the jungle, and I soon realized that another pyramid loomed to our left,
and that it was much higher than the building to our right. We were in a small alley-way before the two immense
monuments, and we had to make our way through cumbersome rubble, as someone had done digging here at some time
before.
   "Thieves," she said, as if reading my thoughts. "They've plundered the pyramids many times."
   That was hardly uncommon with regard to Maya ruins. So why should it not happen to these strange alien buildings as
well?
   "Ah, but look," I said, "at what they've left behind. I want to climb one of these. Let's tackle the smaller one. I want to
see if I can make it to the platform on top."
   She knew as well as I did that that is where a thatched-roof temple might have stood in ancient times.

  As for the age of these monuments, I had no indication. They might have been built before the Birth of Christ or a
thousand years after. Whatever, they seemed marvelous to me and they maddened my already boyish sense of adventure. I
wanted to get out my camera.
  Meantime, the spiritual tumult continued. It was wondrously intriguing. It was as if the air were whipped by the spirits.
The sense of menace was strong.
  "Good Lord, Merrick, how they're trying to stop us," I whispered. The jungle gave forth its chorus of cries, as if
answering me. Something moved in the brush.
  But Merrick, after stopping for only a few moments, pressed on.
  "I have to find the cave," she said in a dull flat voice. "They didn't stop us last time and they're not going to stop you and
me now." On she went, the jungle closing all too readily behind her.
  "Yes," I cried out. "It's not one soul, it's many. They don't want us near these pyramids."
  "It's not the pyramids," she insisted, chopping at the vines and pushing through the undergrowth. "It's the cave, they
know we are going to the cave."
  I did my best to keep up with her, and to aid her, but she was definitely the one clearing our path.
  We had gone some yards when it seemed the jungle grew impossibly thick and that the light was suddenly altered, and I
realized we had come to the blackened doorway of an immense edifice, which spread its sloping walls to our right and our
left. It was a temple, surely, and I could see the impressive carvings on either side of the entrance, and also above as the
wall rose to a great apron of stone with intricate carvings visible in the scarce high rays of the desperate sun.
  "Lord, Merrick, wait," I called out. "Let me photograph this." I struggled to reach my small camera, but I would have to
remove my backpack and my arms were simply too tired.
  The airy turbulence grew extremely intense. I felt something similar to the light tap of fingers against my eyelids and
my cheeks. It was altogether different from the constant barrage of the insect world. I felt something touch the back of my
hands, and it seemed that I almost lost my grip on the machete, but I quickly recovered.
  As for Merrick, she stood staring into the darkness of the hallway or passage in front of her.
  "My God," she whispered. "They're much stronger than they were before. They don't want us to go inside."
  "And why would we do that?" I asked quickly. "We're searching for a cave."
  "They know that's what we're doing," she said. "The cave is on the other side of the temple. The simplest way is straight
through."
  "God in Heaven," I said. "This is the way you went before?"
  "Yes," she answered. "The villagers wouldn't go with us. Some never made it as far. We went on, through there."
  "And what if the ceiling of this passage collapses on us?" I asked.
  "I'm going through it," she answered. "The temple's built of solid limestone. Nothing's changed, and nothing will."
  She removed her small flashlight from her belt and sent the beam into the opening. I could see the stone floor in spite of
the few pallid plants which had struggled to cover it. I could make out lavish paintings on the walls!
  Her flashlight hit great rich figures of dark skin and golden clothes proceeding against a backdrop of vivid blue. Above,
as the walls rose to a vaulted ceiling, I saw another procession against the deep shade of Roman red.
  The entire chamber seemed some fifty feet in length and her feeble light struck a bit of greenery at the other end.
  Again, there came those spirits, swarming around me, silent yet nevertheless intensely active, trying once more to strike
my eyelids and my cheeks.
  I saw Merrick flinch. "Get away from me!" she whispered. "You have no power over me!"
  There was an immense response. The jungle around us appeared to tremble, as if an errant breeze had worked its way
down to us, and a shower of leaves fell at our feet. Once again I heard the unearthly roar of the howler monkeys high in
the trees. It seemed to give voice to the spirits.
  "Come on, David," Merrick said; but as she meant to go forward something invisible appeared to stop her, because she
stepped back off-balance and raised her left hand as if to shield herself. Another volley of leaves descended upon us.
  "Not good enough!" she said aloud and plunged into the vaulted chamber, her light growing brighter and fuller so that
we found ourselves surrounded by some of the most vivid murals which I've ever seen.
  Everywhere around us there rose splendid processional figures, tall and thin, complete with ornate kilts, earrings, and
lavish headdresses. I could not mark the style as Maya or Egyptian. It was like nothing I'd ever studied or seen. Matthew's
old photographs had failed to capture one tenth of the vibrancy or detail. A lovely detailed black-and-white border ran
along the floor on either sides.
  On and on we went, our every footfall echoing off the walls as we proceeded, but the air had grown intolerably hot.
Dust rose in my nostrils. I felt the touch of fingers all over me. Indeed there came the grip of hands on my upper arm, and
a muffled blow against my face.

  I reached out for Merrick's shoulder, both to hurry her and to stay with her.
  We were in the very middle of the passage when she came to a standstill and flinched as if receiving a shock.
  "Get away from me, you won't stop me!" she whispered. And then in a long stream of French she called on Honey in the
Sunshine to make the way.
  We hurried on. I wasn't at all sure that Honey would do anything of the sort. It seemed far more likely that Honey would
bring the temple down on our heads.
  At last we came out in the jungle once more, and I coughed to clear my throat. I looked back at the edifice. Less was
visible on this side than on the front. I felt the spirits all around us. I felt threats without language. I felt myself pushed and
shoved by weak creatures desperate to stop my advance.
  I needed my handkerchief for the millionth time, to wipe the insects off my face.
  Merrick immediately moved on.
  The path went steeply upwards. And I beheld the sparkle of the waterfall before I heard its music. There came a narrow
place where the water ran deep, and Merrick crossed over to the right bank as I followed, my machete working as hard as
hers.
  The climb up the waterfall was not difficult at all. But the activity of the spirits became increasingly stronger. Again and
again Merrick cursed under her breath. I called on Oxalá to show the way.
  "Honey, get me there," Merrick said.
  Quite abruptly I perceived, just beneath an overhang, where the waterfall jetted forward, a monstrous open-mouthed
face carved deep into the volcanic rock that surrounded an obvious cave. It was precisely as the doomed Matthew had
described it. His camera had been ruined by moisture before he could photograph it, however, and its size was something
of a shock.
  Now, you can well imagine my satisfaction that we had reached this mythic place. For years I had heard tell of it, it was
inextricably bound up in my mind with Merrick, and now we were there. Though the spirits kept up their assault, the
gentle mist from the waterfall was cooling my hands and face.
  I made my way up to stand beside Merrick, when suddenly the spirits exerted immense pressure against my body, and I
felt my left foot go out from under me.
  Though I never cried out, but merely reached for purchase, Merrick turned and grabbed hold of me by the loose
shoulder of my jacket. That was all I needed to recover my footing and climb the remaining few feet to be at the flattened
entrance of the cave.
  "Look at the offerings," Merrick said, putting her left hand on my right.
  The spirits redoubled their efforts, but I held firm and so did Merrick, though twice she swiped at something near to her
face.
  As for "the offerings," what I beheld was a giant basalt head. It struck me as similar to the Olmec, but that was all I
could say. Did it resemble the murals in the temple? Impossible to judge. Whatever it was, I loved it. It was helmeted and
tilted upwards so that the face with its open eyes and unique smiling mouth received the rain that inevitably fell here, and
at its uneven base, amid piles of blackened stones, stood an amazing array of candles, feathers, and wilted flowers, as well
as pottery. I could smell the incense where I stood.
  The blackened rocks testified to many years of candles, but the last of these offerings could not have been more than
two or three days old.
  I felt something change in the air around us. But Merrick seemed as distressed by the spirits as before. She made
another involuntary gesture, as though to drive something unseen away.
  "So nothing stopped them from coming," I said quickly, looking at the offering. "Let me try something." I reached into
my jacket pocket and took out a pack of Rothmans, which I was keeping for the inevitability that I would smoke.
  I opened them hastily, lighted one with my butane lighter, in spite of the incessant spray of the waterfall, drew in the
smoke, and then put the cigarette before the immense head. I put the entire pack with it. Silently I said the prayers to the
spirits, asking them to allow us access to this place.
  I felt no change in the assault of the spirits. I felt them pushing on me with renewed energy in a way that was beginning
to unnerve me, certain though I might be that they would never gain very much strength.
  "They know our motives," said Merrick, gazing at the giant upturned head and its withered flowers. "Let's go into the
cave."
  We used our large flashlights, and at once the silence from the waterfall descended upon us, along with the smell of dry
earth and ash.
  Immediately, I saw the paintings, or what I perceived to be paintings. They were well inside, and we walked upright and
swiftly towards them, ignoring the spirits which had now produced a whistling sound near my ears.

  To my utter shock, I saw that these splendidly colored wall coverings were in fact mosaics made with millions of tiny
chips of semiprecious stones! The figures were far simpler than those of temple murals, which argued perhaps for a more
ancient date.
  The spirits had gone quiet.
  "This is marvelous," I whispered, because I had to say something. And again I tried to reach for my camera, but the pain
in my arm was simply too sharp. "Merrick, we must take photographs," I told her. "Look, darling, there's writing. We
must photograph it. I'm sure those are glyphs."
  She didn't answer. She stared at the walls as I did. She seemed entranced.
  I could not quite make out a procession, or indeed attribute any activity to the tall slender figures, except to say that they
appeared to be in profile, to wear long garments, and to be carrying important objects in their hands. I did not see bloody
victims struggling. I did not see clear figures of priests.
  But as I struggled to make out the intermittent and glittering splendor, my foot struck something hollow. I looked down
at a wealth of richly colored pottery gleaming before us as far as we could see.
  "This isn't a cave at all, is it?" Merrick said. "I remember Matthew saying it was a tunnel. It is a tunnel. It's been carved
out entirely by man."
  The stillness was shocking.
  Stepping as carefully as she could, she went on, and I behind her, though I had to reach down several times to move
some of the small vessels out of my way.
  "This is a burial place, that's what it is, and all these are offerings," I said.
  At that I felt a sharp blow to the back of my head. I spun around and shone my flashlight on nothing. The light from the
cave entrance hurt my eyes.
  Something pushed my left side and then my right shoulder. It was the spirits coming at me again. I saw that Merrick was
jerking and moving to the side, as if something were striking her also.
  I uttered a prayer to Oxalá again, and heard Merrick issuing her own refusals to back down.
  "This is as far as we got last time," said Merrick, turning to look at me, her face dark above her flashlight, which she
politely directed to the ground. "We took everything we found here. Now I'm going on."
  I was right with her, but the assault of the spirits grew stronger. I saw her pushed to one side. But quickly she steadied
herself. I heard the crunch of pottery beneath her feet.
  "You've made us angry," I said to the spirits. "Maybe we don't have any right here. And maybe we do!"
  At this I received a heavy silent blow to the stomach, but it was not sufficient to cause pain. I felt a sharp increase in my
exhilaration suddenly.
  "Go on, do your damndest," I said. "Oxalá, who is buried here? Would he or she have it remain secret forever? Why did
Oncle Vervain send us to this place?"
  Merrick, who was several yards ahead of me, let out a gasp.
  I caught up with her at once. The tunnel had opened into a great hollow round chamber where the mosaics ascended the
low dome. Much had fallen away from age or dampness, I knew not which, but it was a glorious room nevertheless.
Round both walls the figures proceeded, until there stood one individual whose facial features had long ago been broken
away.
  On the floor of the room, in its very center, surrounded by clear circles of pottery offerings and fine jade statues, lay a
beautiful arrangement of ornaments in a nest of dust.
  "Look, the mask, the mask in which he was buried," Merrick said, her light falling upon the most glorious polished
green jade image, which lay as it had been placed perhaps thousands of years before, the body of the wearer having long
since melted away.
  Neither of us dared take a step. The precious articles surrounding the burial were too beautifully arranged. We could see
the ear ornaments now, glinting, as the soft moldering earth nearly swallowed them, and across the would-be chest of the
being we saw a long richly carved scepter, which perhaps he had held in his hand.
  "Look at all the debris," she said. "No doubt he was wrapped in fabric full of precious amulets and sacrifices. Now the
fabric's gone and only the stone objects remain."
  There was a loud noise behind us. I could hear pottery smashing. Merrick gave a short cry, as though something had
struck her.
  Then willfully, indeed, as if driven, she plunged forward, dropped to her knees, and picked up the brilliant green mask.
She darted back with it, away from the remains of the corpse.
  A flying stone struck me on the forehead. Something shoved at my back.

  "Come on, let's leave the rest for the archaeologists," she said. "I have what I came for. It's what Oncle Vervain told me
to get."
  "The mask? You mean you knew all the time there was a mask in this tunnel, and that's what you wanted?"
  She was already on her way to the outside air.
  Scarcely had I caught up with her when she was pushed backwards.
  "I'm taking it, I have to have it," she declared.
  As we both tried to continue, something unseen blocked our path. I reached out. I could touch it. It was like a soft silent
wall of energy.
  Merrick suddenly gave over her flashlight to me and in both hands she held the mask.
  At any other time of my life, I would have been admiring it, for it had an immense amount of expression and detail.
Though there were holes for eyes and a gash for the mouth, all features were deeply contoured and the gloss of the thing
was beautiful in itself.
  As it was, I moved with all my strength against this force that sought to block me, lifting both flashlights as if they were
clubs.
  Merrick again startled me with a gasp. She held the mask to her face, and as she turned to took at me it appeared
brilliant and faintly ghastly in the light. It seemed suspended in the darkness, for I could scarce make out her hands or her
body at all.
  She turned it away from me, still holding it to her face. And again there came a gasp from her.
  The air in the cave fell silent and still.
  All I could hear was her breathing and then my own. It seemed she began to whisper something in a foreign tongue,
though I didn't know what tongue it was.
  "Merrick?" I asked gently. In the abrupt and welcome stillness, the air of the cave felt moist and sweetly cool.
"Merrick," I said again, but I could not rouse her. She stood with the mask over her face, peering ahead of us, and then,
with a surprising gesture, she ripped the thing away and gave it over to me.
  "Take it, look through it," she whispered.
  I shoved my flashlight through my belt loop, gave hers back to her, and took the mask in both hands. I remember those
little gestures because they were so ordinary, and I didn't know yet what I thought about the stillness around us or the
dimness in which we stood.
  Far, far away was the greenery of the jungle, and everywhere above us and around us the coarse but beautiful mosaics
glittered with their tiny bits of stone.
  I lifted the mask as she had directed me. A swimming sensation overcame me. I took several steps backwards, but
whatever else I did, I don't know. The mask remained in place and my hands remained on it, and all else had subtly
changed.
  The cave was full of flaring torches, there was the sound of someone chanting in a low and repetitive manner, and
before me in the dimness there stood a figure, wavering as if he were not entirely solid, but rather made of silk, and left to
the mercy of the scant draught from the entrance of the cave.
  I could see his expression clearly, though not define it entirely or say what feature conspired in his young male face to
evince what emotion or how. He was begging me in dumb eloquence to get out of the cave and to leave the mask behind.
  "We can't take it," I said. Or rather I heard myself say this. The chanting grew louder. More shapes closed in around the
one wavering but determined figure. It seemed he stretched out his arms to beseech me.
  "We can't take it," I said again. His arms were a golden brown and covered with gorgeous stone bracelets. His face was
oval and his eyes dark and quick. I saw tears on his cheeks.
  "We can't take it," I said, and then I felt myself failing. "We must leave it. We must bring back the things that were
taken before!"
  An overwhelming sadness and grief swallowed me; I wanted to lie on the ground; so great was this emotion and so right
was it that I felt it and expressed it with my entire form.
  Yet no sooner had I hit the ground--at least I think I did--than I was jerked upright, and the mask was ripped away.
One moment I felt it in my fingers and against my face, and the next I felt nothing and saw nothing but the distant light
flickering in the green leaves.
  The figure was gone, the chanting had stopped, the grief was broken. Merrick was pulling me with all her strength:
  "David, come on!" she said. "Come on!" She would not be denied.
  And I myself felt an overwhelming desire to get out of the cave with her, and to take the mask; to steal this magic, this
indescribable magic which had enabled me to see the spirits of the place with my own eyes. Boldly, wretchedly, without

any excuse whatsoever, I reached down, without losing a pace, and caught up a handful of brilliant glinting stone artifacts
from the thick moldering floor, stuffing them into my pockets as I went on.
  We were in the open jungle in a matter of moments. We ignored the unseen hands that assailed us, the volleys of leaves,
and the urgent cries of the howler monkeys, as though they'd joined in the assault. A slender banana tree crashed down
into our path, and we moved over it, hacking the others that seemed to be bowing to strike us in the face.
  We made remarkable time, moving through the hallway of the temple. We were almost running when we found the
remnants of the trail. The spirits sent more of the banana trees flapping towards us. There was a rain of coconuts, which
did not strike us. From time to time small pebbles came in a little gale.
  But as we continued, the assault gradually fell away. At last there was nothing but a soundless howling. I was crazed. I
was a perfect devil. I didn't care. She had the mask. She had the mask which enabled a person to see spirits. She had it.
Oncle Vervain hadn't been strong enough to get it, I knew it. And neither had been Cold Sandra nor Honey nor Matthew.
The spirits had driven them out.
  Silently, Merrick clutched the mask to her chest and kept going. Neither of us stopped, no matter how bad the ground
under us, no matter how bad the heat, until we reached the jeep.
  Only then did she open her backpack and put the mask inside of it. She threw the jeep into reverse, backed up into the
jungles, turned the car around, and headed for Santa Cruz del Flores at a boisterous and furious speed.
  I remained silent until we were alone together in our tent.




                                                                15


  MERRICK FLOPPED DOWN on her cot and for a moment did and said nothing. Then she reached for the bottle of
Flor de Caña rum and drank a deep gulp.
  I preferred water for the moment, and though we'd been driving for a considerable time, my heart was still pounding,
and I felt my age miserably as I sat there trying to catch my breath.
  Finally, when I started to say something about what we'd done and how we'd done it, when I raised my voice in an
attempt to put things in some sort of perspective, Merrick gestured for me to be quiet.
  Her face was flushed. She sat as if her heart too were giving her the worst, though I knew better, and then she took
another sizable drink of her rum.
  Her cheeks were blazing as she looked across at me as I sat on my cot facing her. Her face was wet with sweat.
  "What did you see?" she asked, "when you looked through it?"
  "I saw them!" I said. "I saw a weeping man, a priest, perhaps, perhaps a king, perhaps a nobody, except that he was
beautifully dressed. He wore fine bracelets. He wore long robes. He pleaded with me. He was grieving and miserable. He
let me know it was a dreadful thing. He let me know the dead of the place weren't gone!"
  She sat back, resting on both her arms, her breasts thrust forward, her eyes fixed on the top of the tent.
  "And you?" I asked. "What did you see?"
  She wanted to answer, but she seemed unable. She sat forward again and reached for her backpack, her eyes moving
from side to side, her expression what is aptly called wild.
  "Did you see the same thing?" I asked her.
  She nodded. Then she opened the backpack and removed the mask so carefully one would have thought it was made of
glass. It was now, in the dim daylight of the tent and the gold light of the one lantern, that I perceived how carefully and
deeply the features were carved. The lips were thick and long and spread back as if in a scream. The eye ridges gave no
surprise to the expression, only a sense of calm.
  "Look," she said, putting her fingers through an opening at the top of the forehead, and then pointing out an opening
over each ear. "It was strapped to his face with leather, most likely. It wasn't merely laid over his bones."
  "And what do you think it means?"
  "That it was his, for looking at spirits. That it was his, and he knew the magic wasn't intended for just anyone; that he
knew it was magic that could give harm."

   She turned over the mask and lifted it. She wanted clearly to put it over her face again but something stopped her. At
last she stood up and went to the door of the tent. There was an open seam there through which she could peer out and
along the mud street to the little plaza, and she seemed to be doing this, holding the mask below her face.
   "Go on, do it," I said, "or give it to me and I will."
   Hesitantly she pursued her course. She lifted the mask and held it firm over her face for a long moment, and then jerked
it roughly away. She sat down exhausted on the cot, as though the entire little enterprise of only a few precious moments
had tapped her strength at the core. Once again, her pupils danced wildly. Then she looked at me, and she grew a little
calm.
   "What did you see?" I asked. "Spirits of the village?"
   "No," she answered. "I saw Honey in the Sunshine. I saw her watching me. I saw Honey. Oh, dear God, I saw Honey.
Don't you see what's she done?"
   I didn't immediately respond, but of course I saw. I let her speak the words.
   "She's led me here, led me to a mask through which I can see her; she's brought me to a means by which she can come
through!"
   "Listen to me, darling," I said, and I reached out and took her wrist. "Fight this spirit. It has no claim on you any more
than any other spirit. Life belongs to those who are alive, Merrick, and life is to be honored over death! You didn't drown
Honey in the Sunshine, you have that from her own lips."
   She didn't answer me. She put her elbow on her knee and rested her forehead in her right hand. The mask she held with
her left. I think she was staring at it but I couldn't be sure. She began to tremble.
   Gently, I took the mask from her. I laid it carefully on my cot. Then I remembered the objects I'd collected before
leaving the cave. I reached inside my pocket to retrieve them. They were four perfectly carved little Olmecoid figures, two
of bald, somewhat fat, creatures, the other two of lean scowling gods. A shiver passed through me as I looked at these
small faces. I could have sworn I heard a chorus of voices for an instant, as though someone had turned up the dial on a
piece of amplified music. Then the silence rushed at me as if it were palpable. I broke out in a sweat.
   These little creatures, these little gods, had the same luster as the mask.
   "We're taking this all back with us," I declared. "And as far as I'm concerned, I want to revisit the cave as soon as I've
regained my strength."
   She looked up at me.
   "You can't be serious," she said. "You would challenge those spirits?"
   "Yes, I'd challenge them. I don't say we take the mask back to the cave to look through. Dear God, I wouldn't dream of
such a thing. But I can't leave behind such an unexplored mystery. I have to go back. What I want to do is examine what's
there as carefully as I can. Then I think we must contact one of the universities active here and let them know of just what
we found. I don't mean to speak of the mask, you understand. At least not until we've made certain that it's ours to keep
beyond any dispute. "
   It was a tangled question, this matter of universities and digs and claims to antiquities, and I was in no mood for it just
then. I felt hot all over. My stomach was heaving, which almost never happens to me. "I've got to see that cave again. God
help me, I know why you came back here. I understand everything. I want to go back at least once, maybe twice, how do I
know--." I broke off. The wave of sickness passed.
   She was staring at me as if she were in grave and secret distress. She looked as sick as I felt. With both her hands, she
clawed at her thick hair and drew it back from her lovely forehead. Her green eyes appeared hot.
   "Now, you know," I said, "that we have four men with us that can get this mask out of the country and back to New
Orleans with no difficulty. Shall I give it to them now?"
   "No, don't do anything with it just yet," she said. She stood up. "I'm going to the church."
   "What for?" I asked her.
   "To pray, David!" she said impatiently, glowering down at me. "Don't you believe in anything really?" she demanded.
"I'm going into the church to pray." And on her way she went.
   She'd been gone for about twenty minutes when I finally poured myself a glass of the rum. I was so thirsty. It was
strange to be thirsty and sick at the same time. Except for the sound of a few chickens or turkeys, I didn't honestly know
which, the village was quiet, and no one came to disturb my solitude in the tent.
   I stared at the mask, and I realized that my head was aching terribly, that indeed a throbbing had commenced behind my
eyes. I didn't think too much about it, as headaches have never been a torment to me, until I realized that the mask was
becoming a blur in my sight.
   I tried to refocus. I couldn't. Indeed, I felt hot all over, and every tiny insect bite which I'd suffered began to make itself
known.

  "This is nonsense," I said aloud, "I've had every damned injection known to modern medicine, including several that
weren't known when Matthew got his fever." Then I realized I was talking to myself I poured another good shot of the
rum and drank it down straight. It seemed to me, rather vaguely, that I would feel much better if the tent weren't so
crowded, and I wished that all the people would leave.
  Then I realized that there couldn't be people in the tent with me. No one had come in. I tried to regain a consistent
memory of the last few moments, but something had been lost. I turned and looked at the mask again and then I drank
some of the rum, which by now tasted marvelous, and I put down the glass and picked up the mask.
  It seemed as light as it was precious, and I held it up so that the light shone through it, and it seemed for a moment to be
quite definitely alive. A voice was whispering to me rather feverishly as to all manner of small things which I had to
worry about, and someone said:
  "Others will come when thousands of years have passed." Only the words I heard were not in a language which I
understood. "But I do understand you," I said aloud, and then the whispering voice said something that seemed a curse
and an ominous prediction. It had to do with the fact that certain things were best left unexplored.
  The tent seemed to be moving. Rather, the place where I was seemed to be moving. I put the mask against my skin and I
felt steadier. But the entire world had changed. I had changed.
  I was standing on a high pavilion and I could see the beautiful mountains all around me, the lower portions of the slopes
covered in deep green forest, and the sky itself was brightly blue.
  I looked down and I saw a crowd of thousands surrounding the pavilion. Over on the tops of other pyramids there stood
huge masses of people. The people were whispering and shouting and chanting. And there was a small group on my
pavilion, all of them faithfully at my side.
  "You will call down the rain," said the voice in my ear, "and it will come. But one day, the snow will come instead of
the rain, and on that day, you will die."
  "No, that will never happen!" I said. I realized I was growing dizzy. I was going to fall from the pavilion. I turned
around and reached out for the hands of my fellows. "Are you priests, tell me, what you are." I asked. "I'm David and I
demand that you tell me, I'm not the person you believe me to be!"
  I realized that I was in the cave. I had all but fallen to the thick soft floor. Merrick was shouting at me to get up. Before
me stood the weeping spirit.
  "The Lonely Spirit, how many times have you called me?" said the tall being sadly. "How many times have you, the
magician, reached out for the lonely soul? You have no right to call those between life and death. Leave the mask behind
you. The mask is wrong, don't you understand what I'm telling you!"
  Merrick cried my name. I felt the mask ripped from my face. I looked up. I was lying down on my cot, and she was
standing over me.
  "Good God, I'm sick," I told her. "I'm very sick. Get me the shaman. No, there's no time for the shaman. We must set
out for the airport now."
  "Quiet, be quiet, lie still," said Merrick. But her face was dark with fear. I heard her thoughts clearly. It's happening all
over again, Just as it happened to Matthew. It's happening to David. I myself have some deep immunity, but it's happening
to David.
  I grew very quiet within myself. I'll fight it, I resolved, and I let my head roll to one side on the pillow, hoping that the
pillow would be cool against my cheek. Though I heard Merrick crying out for the men to come to the tent immediately, I
saw another person sitting on her cot.
  It was a tall lean man with brown skin and a narrow face, and arms covered with jade bracelets. He had a high forehead
and shoulderlength black hair. He was looking at me in a quiet manner. I saw the dark red of his long gown, and the gleam
of his toenail in the light.
  "It's you again," I said. "You think you're going to kill me. You think you can reach out from your ancient grave to take
my life?"
  "I don't want to kill you," he whispered, with little or no change in his placid expression. "Give back the mask for your
own sake and for hers."
  "No," I said. "You must realize I can't do it. I can't leave such a mystery. I can't simply turn my back. You had your time
and now is my time, and I'm taking the mask back with me. She's taking it with her, really. But even if she surrendered, I
would do it on my own."
  I went on pleading with him, in a low reasonable voice, that he should understand. I said, "Life belongs to those who are
alive." But by then the tent was truly crowded with the men who had come with us. Someone had asked me to keep a
thermometer under my tongue. And Merrick was saying, "I can't get a pulse."
  Of the journey to Guatemala City, I remember nothing.

  As for the hospital, it might have been a medical facility anywhere in the world.
  Repeatedly I turned my head and I found myself alone with the bronze-skinned man with the oval face and the jade
bracelets, though more often than not he did not speak. When I tried to speak, others answered, and the man simply
melted as another world seemed to supplant that which I'd left behind.
  When I was fully conscious, which wasn't often, I seemed convinced that people in Guatemala would know more of the
tropical illness from which I suffered. I wasn't afraid. I knew from the expression of my bronze-skinned visitor that I
wasn't dying. And I do not remember being transferred to a hospital in New Orleans at all.
  The visitor never appeared after the return to New Orleans.
  By that time I was on the mend, and when days did begin to connect with one another, I was running only a low grade
temperature, and the "toxin" was completely gone. Soon I no longer required intravenous nourishment. My strength was
coming back.
  My case was nothing exceptional. It had to do with a species of amphibian which I must have encountered in the brush.
Even touching this creature can be fatal. My contact must have been indirect.
  Merrick and the others were not afflicted, that was soon made clear to me, and I was much relieved, though in my state
of confusion, I had to confess I had not thought of them as I should.
  Merrick spent a great deal of time with me, but Aaron was almost always there as well. As soon as I would start to
address an important question to Merrick, a nurse or a doctor came into the room. At other times I was confused as to the
order of events and didn't want to reveal that confusion. And occasionally, very occasionally, I would wake in the night,
convinced I'd been back in the jungles in my dreams.
  At last, though I was still technically sick, I was brought by ambulance to Oak Haven and moved into the upstairs left
front room.
  This is one of the more gracious and lovely bedrooms in the house, and, in my robe and slippers, I was walking out on
the front porch by the evening of that day. It was winter, but wondrously green all around me, and the breeze off the river
was welcome.
  At last, after two days of "small talk," which was threatening to drive me out of my mind, Merrick came to my room
alone. She wore a nightgown and robe and she appeared exhausted. Her rich brown hair was held back from her temples
by two amber combs. I could see the relief in her face as she looked at me.
  I was in bed, with pillows propped and a book on the Maya people open in my lap.
  "I thought you were going to die," she said plainly. "I prayed for you in a way I've never prayed before."
  "Do you think God heard your prayers?" I asked. Then I realized she hadn't mentioned praying to God at all. "Tell me,"
I asked, "was I ever in real danger?"
  She seemed shocked by the question. Then she fell quiet, as though debating what she might say. I already had part of
my answer, purely from her reaction to the question, so I waited patiently until she meant to speak.
  "There were times in Guatemala," she said, "when they told me you were not likely to make it much longer. I sent them
away, insofar as they'd listen, and I put the mask over my face. I could see your spirit just above your body; I could see it
struggling to rise and free itself from your body. I could see it stretched over you, the double of you, rising, and I put
out my hand and I pressed on it, and made it go back into its place."
  I felt a dreadful overwhelming love for her.
  "Thank God you did it," I said.
  She repeated my words from the jungle village.
  "Life belongs to those who are alive."
  "You remember me saying it?" I asked her, or rather I expressed to her my gratitude.
  "You said it often," she replied. "You thought you were talking to someone, the someone we'd both seen in the mouth of
the cave before we'd made our escape. You thought you were engaged in a debate with him. And then one morning, very
early, when I woke up in the chair and found you conscious, you told me you'd won."
  "What are we going to do with the mask?" I asked. "I see myself becoming enthralled with it. I see myself testing it on
others, but in secret. I see myself becoming its unwholesome slave."
  "We won't let that happen," she said. "Besides, others aren't affected in the same way."
  "How do you know?" I asked.
  "The men in the tent, when you were getting sicker and sicker, they picked it up, they thought it was a curio, of course.
One of them thought we'd bought it from the village people. He was the first to look through it. He saw nothing. Then
another one of the men did the same thing. So forth and so on."
  "What about here in New Orleans?"

  "Aaron saw nothing through it," she said. And then in something of a sad voice she added: "I didn't tell him all that
happened. That's for you to do, if you wish."
  "And you?" I pressed. "What do you see when you look through the mask now?"
  She shook her head. She looked off a bit, desperately biting into her lip, and then she looked at me.
  "I see Honey when I look through it. Almost always. I see Honey in the Sunshine, and that's all. I see her in the oaks
outside of the Motherhouse. I see her in the garden. I see her whenever I look through the mask. The world is as it is
around her. But she's always there." There was a passage of time and then she confessed:
  "I believe it was all Honey's doing. Honey goaded me with nightmares. Oncle Vervain was never really there. It was
always Honey in the Sunshine, greedy for life, and how can I blame her? She sent us back there to get the mask so that she
could come through. I've vowed I won't let her do it. I mean, I won't let her grow stronger and stronger through me. I
won't be used and destroyed by her. It's like you said. Life belongs to those who are alive."
  "Would it do no good to speak to her? Would it do no good to tell her that she's dead?"
  "She knows," said Merrick sadly. "She's a powerful and crafty spirit. If you tell me as Superior General that you want to
attempt an exorcism, and that you want me to communicate with her, I'll do it--but on my own, never, never will I give in
to her. She's too clever. She's too strong."
  "I'll never ask you to do such a thing," I said quickly. "Come, sit beside me here. Let me hold you. I'm too weak to do
you any harm."
  Now that I look back on these things, I'm not sure why I didn't tell Merrick all about the spirit with the oval face and
how he had continued to appear to me throughout my illness, and especially when I was close to death. Perhaps we had
exchanged confidences about my visions when I was feverish. I only know that we did not discuss them in detail when we
took stock of the whole event.
  As for my personal reaction to the spirit, I was afraid of him. I had robbed a place that was precious to him. I had done it
fiercely and selfishly, and though the illness had burnt away much of my desire to explore the mystery of the cave, I
feared the spirit's return.
  As a matter of fact, I did see this spirit again.
  It was many years later. It was on the night in Barbados when Lestat came to see me, and decided to make me a vampire
against my will.
  As you well know, I was no longer the elder David. It was after our dreadful ordeal with the Body Thief. I felt
invincible in my new young body and I had no thought to ask Lestat for eternal life. When it was clear that he meant to
force me, I fought him with all I had.
  At some point in this vain attempt to save myself from the vampiric blood, I called on God, the angels, anyone who
might help me. I called on my orisha, Oxalá, in the old Portuguese Candomble tongue.
  I don't know if my prayers were heard by my orisha, but the room was suddenly assailed by small spirits, none of whom
could frighten or hinder Lestat in any way. And as he drained my blood to the very point of death, it was the
bronze-skinned spirit of the cave whom I glimpsed as my eyes closed.
  It seemed to me, as I was losing the battle to live, let alone the battle to be mortal, that I saw the cave spirit standing
near me with his arms out, and I saw pain in his face.
  The figure was wavering, yet fully realized. I saw the bracelets on his arms. I saw his long red robe. I saw the tears on
his cheeks.
  It was only an instant. The world of solid things and spiritual things flickered and went out.
  I fell into a stupor. I remember nothing until the moment when Lestat's supernatural blood flooded my mouth. By then, I
saw only Lestat and I knew my soul was entering on yet another adventure, one which would carry me forward beyond
my most appalling dreams.
  I never saw the cave spirit again.
  But let me finish my tale of Merrick. There is not a great deal more to be said.
  After a week of convalescence in the New Orleans Motherhouse, I dressed in my usual tweed suit and came downstairs
for breakfast, with the other members assembled there.
  Later, Merrick and I walked in the garden, which was filled with lush beautiful dark-leafed camillias, which thrive in the
winter, even through light frost. I saw blossoms of pink and red and white which I never forgot. Giant green elephant ear
and purple flowering orchid plants were growing everywhere. How beautiful Louisiana can be in winter. How verdant and
vigorous and remote.
  "I've put the mask into the vault, in a sealed box, under my name," Merrick told me. "I suggest we leave it there."
  "Absolutely," I said. "But you must promise me, that if you ever change your mind about the mask, you'll call me before
you take even the simplest steps."

   "I don't want to see Honey anymore!" she said under her breath. "I told you. She wants to use me, and that I won't allow.
I was ten years old when she was murdered. I'm tired, oh so tired of grieving for Honey. You'll never have to worry. I
won't touch the mask again if I can help it, believe me."
   Insofar as I ever knew, Merrick was faithful to her vow.
   After we completed a detailed letter regarding our expedition, for a university of our choice, we sealed the records and
the mask permanently, along with the idols, the perforator that Merrick had used in her magic, all of Michael's original
papers, and the remnants of Oncle Vervain's map. All was kept in storage at Oak Haven, with access only allowed to
Merrick or to me.
   In the spring, I got a call from America, from Aaron, telling me that investigators in the area of Lafayette, Louisiana,
had found the wreck of Cold Sandra's car.
   Apparently Merrick had led them to a portion of the swamp where the vehicle had been submerged years before.
Enough remained of the corpses to ascertain that two women had been in the vehicle at the time that it sank. The skull
bones of both showed severe and potentially life-threatening fractures. But no one could determine whether or not either
victim had survived the blows long enough to be drowned.
   Cold Sandra was identified by the remnants of a plastic purse and the random objects inside of it, most particularly a
gold pocket watch in a small leather pouch. Merrick had recognized the pocket watch immediately, and the inscription
had born her out.
   "To my beloved son, Vervain, from 'your Father, Alexias Andre Mayfair, 1910."
   As for Honey in the Sunshine, the remaining bones supported the identification of a sixteen-year-old girl. No more
could be known.
   Immediately I packed a bag. On the telephone, I told Merrick I was on my way.
   "Don't come, David," she said calmly. "It's all over. They've both been buried in the family grave in the St. Louis
Cemetery. There's no more to be done. I'm going back to Cairo to work, just as soon as you give me leave."
   "My darling, you can go immediately. But surely you must stop in London."
   "Wouldn't think of going on without seeing you," she said. She was about to ring off when I stopped her.
   "Merrick, the gold pocket watch is yours now. Clean it. Repair it. Keep it. No one can deny it to you now."
   There was a disturbing silence on the other end.
   "I told you, David, Oncle Vervain always said I didn't need it," she replied. "He said it ticked for Cold Sandra and
Honey. Not for me."
   I found those words a little frightening.
   "Honor their memories, Merrick, and honor your wishes," I insisted. "But life, and its treasures, belong to those who are
alive."
   A week later, we had lunch together. She looked as fresh and inviting as ever, her brown hair drawn back in the leather
barrette that I'd come to love.
   "I didn't use the mask to find those bodies," she explained at once. "I want you to know that." She continued on. "I went
out to Lafayette and I went on instinct and prayers. We dredged in several areas before we got lucky. Or you might say
Great Nananne helped me find the bodies. Great Nananne knew how much I wanted to find them. As for Honey, I can still
feel her near me. Sometimes I feel so sad for her, sometimes I get weak--."
   "No, you're talking about a spirit," I interjected, "and a spirit is not necessarily the person you knew or loved."
   After that, she spoke of nothing but her work in Egypt. She was happy to be headed back there. There had been some
new discoveries in the desert, due to aerial photography, and she had a meeting scheduled which might lead to her seeing
a new, previously undocumented tomb.
   It was marvelous to see her in such fine form. As I paid the check, she brought out Oncle Vervain's gold pocket watch.
   "I almost forgot about this," she said. It was quite well polished and it opened at the touch of her finger with an audible
snap. "It can't really be repaired, of course," she explained as she held it lovingly. "But I like having it. See? Its hands are
fixed at ten minutes before eight."
   "Do you think it has some connection," I asked gingerly, "I mean, to the time that they met their deaths?"
   "I don't think so," she said with a light shrug. "I don't think Cold Sandra ever remembered to wind it. I think she carried
it in her purse for sentimental reasons. It's a wonder she didn't pawn it. She pawned other things." She put it back into her
purse and gave me a reassuring smile.
   I took the long drive with her out to the airport and walked her to the plane.
   Everything was calm until the final moments. We were two civilized human beings, saying goodbye, who meant to see
each other soon again.
   Then something broke inside me. It was sweet and terrible and too immense for me. I took her in my arms.

   "My darling, my love," I said to her, feeling the fool dreadfully, and wanting her youth and her devotion with my whole
soul. She was utterly unresisting, giving way to kisses that broke my heart.
   "There never will be anyone else," she whispered in my ear.
   I remember pushing her aside and holding her by her shoulders, and then I turned, without so much as a backwards
glance, and I walked swiftly away.
   What was I doing to this young woman? I had just passed my seventieth birthday. And she had not yet reached her
twenty-fifth.
   But on the long drive back to the Motherhouse, I realized that, try as I might I could not plunge myself into the requisite
state of guilt.
   I had loved Merrick the way I had once loved Joshua, the young boy who had thought me the most marvelous lover in
the world. I had loved her through temptation and through giving in to that temptation, and nothing would ever make me
deny that love to myself, to her, or to God.
   For all the remaining years that I knew her, Merrick remained in Egypt, going home via London to New Orleans
perhaps twice a year.
   Once I dared to ask her boldly why she was not interested in Maya lore.
   I think the question irritated her. She didn't like to think of those jungles, let alone speak of them. She thought I ought to
know that, but she answered me in a civil manner nevertheless.
   She explained clearly that she met with too many obstacles in studying Mesoamerica, in particular the question of the
dialects, of which she knew nothing, and of archaeological experience in the field, of which she had none. Her learning
had led her to Egypt, where she knew the writing, knew the story, knew the history. It was where she meant to stay.
   "Magic is the same everywhere," she said more than often. But that didn't deter her from making it her life's work.
   There is one more piece to the puzzle of Merrick which I possess.
   While Merrick was working in Egypt that year after our trip to the jungles, Aaron wrote me a strange missive which I'll
never forget.
   He told me that the license plates of the car found in the swamp had led the authorities to the used-car salesman who
had murdered his young customers Cold Sandra and Honey. Indeed, the man was a drifter with a long criminal record, and
it had not been difficult to trace him at all. Belligerent and somewhat cruel by nature, the miscreant had gone back several
times over the years to work at the very car lot where he'd met his victims, and his identity was well known to any number
of people who could connect him to the car found in the swamps.
   A confession to the crimes was not long in coming, though the man was judged to be insane.
   "The authorities have advised me that the fellow is terrified," wrote Aaron. "He insists that he is being hounded by a
spirit, and that he would do anything to expiate his guilt. He begs for drugs to render him unconscious. I do believe he will
be placed in a mental hospital, in spite of the clear viciousness of the crimes."
   Naturally, Merrick was advised of the whole affair. Aaron sent her a pack of newspaper clippings, as well as what court
records he could obtain.
   But much to my great relief, Merrick did not wish to go back to Louisiana at that time.
   "There is no need for me to confront this person," she wrote to me. "I'm sure, from all that Aaron's told me, that justice
has been done."
   Less than two weeks later, Aaron advised me by letter that the murderer of Cold Sandra and Honey had died by his own
hand.
   I called Aaron at once:
   "Have you told Merrick?" I asked.
   After a long pause, Aaron said, quite calmly:
   "I suspect that Merrick knows."
   "Why on earth do you say that?" I asked immediately. I was always too impatient with Aaron's reticence. However, this
time he was not to keep me in the dark.
   "The spirit who haunted this fellow," said Aaron, "was a tall woman with brown hair and green eyes. Now that does not
square with our pictures of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine, does it?"
   I answered no, that it did not.
   "Well, he's dead now, poor fool," said Aaron. "And maybe Merrick can continue her work in peace."
   That is exactly what Merrick did: continue her work in peace.
   And now:
   Now, after all these years, I have come back to her, asking her to raise the soul of the Dead Child Claudia for Louis, and
for me.

  I have asked her in so many words to use her magic, which might surely mean using the mask, which I know to be in
her possession at Oak Haven, as it had always been, the mask which could let her see spirits between life and death.
  I have done that, I who know what she has suffered, and what a good and happy person she could be, and is.




                                                                  16


  IT WAS AN HOUR before dawn when I finished the story.
  Louis had listened all of this time in silence, never bringing a question, never making a distraction, but merely absorbing
my words.
  Out of respect for me, he remained silent, but I could see a flood of emotion in his face. His dark-green eyes made me
think of Merrick's, and for one moment I felt such a desire for her, such a horror of what I'd done, that I couldn't speak.
  Finally Louis explained the very perceptions and sensations that were overwhelming me as I thought about all I'd said.
  "I never realized how much you loved this woman," he said. "I never realized how very different you are from me."
  "I love her, yes, and perhaps I myself didn't realize how much until I told you the history. I made myself see it. I made
myself remember. I made myself experience my union with her again. But when you speak of you and me being different,
you must tell me what you mean."
  "You're wise," he said, "Wise in ways that only an elderly human being can be. You experienced old age in a way that
none of the rest of us has ever known. Not even the great mother, Maharet, knew infirmity before she was made a vampire
centuries ago. Certainly, Lestat has never grasped it, in spite of all his injuries. And I? I've been too young for too long."
  "Don't condemn yourself for it. Do you think human beings are meant to know the bitterness and loneliness I knew in
my last mortal years? I don't think so. Like all creatures, we're made to live until our prime. All the rest is spiritual and
physical disaster. Of that I'm convinced."
  "I can't agree with you," he said modestly. "What tribe on earth has not had elders? How much of our art and our
knowledge comes from those who've lived into old age? You sound like Lestat when you say such things, speaking of his
Savage Garden. The world has never seemed a hopelessly savage place to me."
  I smiled.
  "You believe so many things," I said. "One has only to press you to discover them, yet you deny the value of everything
you've learned, in your constant melancholy. You do, you know."
  He nodded. "I can't make sense of things, David," he said.
  "Maybe we're not meant to, any of us, whether we're old or very young."
  "Possibly so," he said. "But what's very important now is that we both make a solemn vow. We will not injure this vital
and unique woman. Her strength won't blind us. We will feed her curiosity and be just to her, and protective of her, but we
will not bring her any harm."
  I nodded. I knew his meaning quite plainly. Oh, how I knew it.
  "Would that I could say," he whispered, "that we would withdraw our request. Would that I could endure without
Merrick's magic. Would that I could leave this world without ever seeing Claudia's ghost."
  "Don't talk of ending it, please, I can't listen to it," I hastened to say.
  "Oh, but I must talk of it. It's all I think about."
  "Then think of those words I spoke to the spirit in the cave. Life belongs to those who are alive. You are alive."
  "At such a price," he said.
  "Louis, we are both of us desperate to live," I said. "We look to Merrick's magic for consolation. We dream of looking
through the mask ourselves, don't we? We want to see something that does make it all come together, is that not so?"
  "I don't know that I'm so deliberate, David," he responded. His face was dark with worry, heavy with fine lines at the
corners of his eyes and mouth, lines that vanished whenever his face was still. "I don't know what I want," he confessed.
"Oh, but to see spirits as Merrick has seen them, as you've seen them. Oh, if only I could hear the ghostly harpsichord that
others hear in this place. Oh, if I could talk to a spirit with the strength of Honey in the Sunshine, what that would mean to
me."
  "Louis, what can make you want to continue?" I asked. "What could make you see that we are privileged witnesses of
what the world has to offer on all sides?"

  He laughed, a short polite but contemptuous laugh.
  "A clear conscience, David," he replied. "What else?"
  "Then take the blood I have to give," I said to him. "Take the blood Lestat has offered you more than once. Take the
blood that you've refused so many times, and be strong enough to live by the 'little drink' and push death out of your way."
  I was a bit surprised at the vehemence with which I recommended this, because before this conversation--before this
long night of storytelling--I had thought his decision to refuse the powerful blood to be very wise.
  As I've stated in this narrative, he was weak enough that the sun might easily destroy him, and in that lay an immense
consolation which Lestat and I did not share.
  Now, he studied me with a look of interest. I saw no condemnation in his eyes.
  I rose and walked slowly about the room. Once again, I looked at the bright and confident painting by Monet. All my
life seemed close to me suddenly; all my determination was to live.
  "No, I can't die by my own will," I murmured, "not even if it's as simple as going into the sunlight. That I cannot do. I
want to know what happens! I want to know when and if Lestat wakes from his dreamy sleep. I want to know what will
become of Merrick! I want to know what will become of Armand. That I can live forever? Oh, how I cherish it! I cannot
pretend to be the mortal who once refused Lestat. I cannot reach back and claim that being's unimaginative heart."
  I turned and it seemed the room was pulsing violently around me, all its color coalescing, as though Monet's spirit had
infected the very fabric of the solid matter and the air. All the objects of the room seemed arbitrary and symbolic. And
beyond lay the savage night--Lestat's Savage Garden--and random unanswerable stars.
  As for Louis, he was captivated as only he can become, yielding as men almost never yield, no matter in what shape or
form the male spirit may be clothed.
  "You're all so very strong," he said in a low, reverent, and sad voice. "All so very strong."
  "But we'll make that vow, old friend," I said, "with regard to Merrick. There will come a time when Merrick will want
this magic and reproach us with our selfishness, that we have begged for hers while refusing her our own."
  Louis seemed almost on the edge of tears.
  "Don't underestimate her, David," he said in a raw voice. "Perhaps she's quite as invincible as you were, in her own
way. Perhaps she has shocks in store for us, of which we're unaware."
  "Have I lead you to believe so?" I asked. "With all I've said?"
  "You've given me her picture in deep and enduring detail," he answered. "Don't you think she knows my misery? Don't
you think she will feel it when we meet?" He hesitated, then continued, "She won't want to share our existence. Why
should she when she can make herself appear to others, when she can look through a jade mask and see her sister's ghost.
From all you've said, I've drawn the conclusion that she won't be at all eager to give up forever the sight of the Egyptian
sand in the noonday sun."
  I smiled. I couldn't stop myself. I thought he was completely wrong.
  "I don't know, old friend," I said, straining for courtesy. "I simply don't know. I know only I'm committed to our
wretched purpose. And all that I've deliberately recalled has not taught me to be wary or kind."
  He rose from his chair slowly, silently, and walked to the door of the room. I realized it was time for him to go now and
find his coffin, and that shortly I should do the same thing.
  I followed him, and we went out of the town house together, down the back iron steps and through the wet garden and
to the front gate.
  I did see the black cat for one instant on the top of the rear wall, but I made no mention of it, determined that cats were
simply common in New Orleans and I was being just a bit of a fool.
  At last it came time for us to part.
  "I'll spend the next few evenings with Lestat," Louis said quietly. "I want to read to him. He doesn't respond but he
doesn't stop me. You'll know where to find me when Merrick returns."
  "Does he never say anything to you?" I asked, regarding Lestat.
  "Sometimes he speaks, just a little. He'll ask for Mozart perhaps, or that I read him some old poetry. But in the main,
he's as you see him yourself, unchanged." He paused, then looked directly at the sky. "I want to be alone with him for a
few nights, I suppose, before Merrick comes back."
  His tone had a finality to it, and a sadness that touched me to the quick. He was saying farewell to Lestat, that's what he
was doing, and I knew that Lestat's slumber was so deep and so troubled, that even such a dreadful message from Louis
might not rouse him at all.
  I watched Louis walk away as the sky grew ever more lighter. I could hear the morning birds singing. I thought of
Merrick, and I wanted her. I wanted her purely as a man might want her. And as a vampire I wanted to drain her soul and

have her eternally there for my visits, always safe. I was alone with her again for one precious instant in the tent in Santa
Cruz del Flores, and I felt that mercurial pleasure connect my orgasmic body and brain.
  It was a curse to bring too many mortal memories into vampiric existence. To have been old did mean sublime
experience and knowledge. And the curse had richness to it, and a splendor I could not deny.
  And it occurred to me, if Louis does end his life, if he does bring his supernatural journey to a conclusion, how will I
ever answer for it to Lestat or Armand, or myself?

  IT WAS A WEEK before I received a handwritten letter from Merrick. She was back in Louisiana.

  Beloved David,
    Come to my old house tomorrow evening as soon as you can. The caretaker will be safely off the property. And I will
  be alone in the front room.
    It's my desire to meet Louis and hear from his own lips what he wants for me to do.
    As to those items which once belonged to Claudia, I have the rosary, the diary, and the doll.
    All the rest can be arranged.

  I could scarce contain my exhilaration. Waiting till tomorrow would be a torment. I went at once to St. Elizabeth's, the
building where Lestat spent his lonely hours sleeping on the old chapel floor.
  Louis was there, seated on the marble beside Lestat, reading in a hushed voice from an old book of English poetry when
I came in.
  I read the letter to Louis.
  There was no change whatsoever in Lestat's demeanor.
  "I know where the house is," said Louis. He was extremely excited, though I think he struggled to conceal it. "I'll be
there. I suppose I should have asked your permission. But I went to find it last night."
  "Perfect," I responded. "I'll meet you there tomorrow evening. But listen, you must--."
  "Go on, say it," he coaxed me gently.
  "You must remember, she's a powerful woman. We've vowed to protect her, but don't for a moment think of her as
weak."
  "And so we go back and forth about her," he said patiently. "I understand you. I know your meaning. When I vowed to
take this path, I braced myself for disaster. And tomorrow night, I shall brace myself as completely as I can."
  Lestat showed not the slightest sign of having heard our discourse. He lay as before, his red velvet coat creased and
dusty, his yellow hair a tangled mass.
  I knelt down and laid a reverent kiss on Lestat's cheek. He continued to gaze into the gloom before him. Once again, I
had the distinct impression that his soul was not in his body, not in the way that we believed it to be. I wanted so to tell
him of our enterprise, but then again, I wasn't sure that I wanted him to know.
  It struck me quite completely that if he knew what we meant to do he would stop us. How far from us his thoughts must
have been.
  As I left, I heard Louis continue to read in a low, melodious, and faintly passionate voice.




                                                              17


  ON THE EVENING of the appointed meeting, the sky was very clear except for a few distinct and brightly white
clouds. The stars were small but I could see them, faint comfort that they were. The air itself was not so terribly humid,
yet it was delightfully warm.
  Louis came to meet me at the carriageway gate in the Rue Royale, and in my excitement, I noticed very little about his
appearance except that he was uncommonly well dressed.
  As I've mentioned before, his clothes are not usually very well chosen, but he had of late been enjoying a certain
improvement, and on this evening he had clearly gone out of his way.

  To repeat, I was too interested in our meeting with Merrick to pay it much attention. Having observed that he was not
thirsting, indeed that he seemed quite flushed and human--a confirmation that he had already fed--I set out with him at
once for Merrick's house.
  As we made our way through the desolate and godforsaken old neighborhood, neither of us spoke a word.
  Many thoughts tumbled through my mind. My telling of the tale of Merrick had brought me much closer to her than I
had been on the night of our meeting in the café in the Rue St. Anne, and my desire to see Merrick again, under any and
all circumstances, was more powerful than I cared to admit.
  But the subject of Merrick's recent spell tormented me. Why had she sent visions of herself to dazzle me? I wanted to
ask her directly, and felt that it must be settled before we could go on.
  When we reached the restored house, with its high black picket fence, I insisted that Louis wait patiently for a moment
until I walked around the place.
  At once I surmised that the little houses on either side of Merrick's large property were in utter ruin. And the property
itself, as I've mentioned, was bounded on three sides and in part of the front by very high brick walls.
  I could see a thick forest of trees in Merrick's yard, of which two were immense oaks and another a high sprawling
pecan tree, trying to free itself of the rampant yew trees which crowded against the walls. There was a shuddering light
emanating upwards against the foliage and its entanglement of branches. I could smell incense and the wax of candles.
Indeed, I caught many scents but not the scent of an intruder, and that is what mattered just now.
  As for the rear upstairs apartment of the caretaker, it was empty and locked up. This pleased me mightily, as I did not
want to deal with this mortal at all.
  With regard to Merrick, I could easily sense her presence, walls or no walls, so I quickly made my way back to Louis,
who stood before the iron gate which separated the front garden from the street.
  Merrick's oleanders were not in bloom yet, but they created a mighty evergreen shrubbery, and many other flowers were
growing wild, especially the bright-red African hibiscus and the purple Althea with its stiff branches, and thick rampant
white calla lilies with waxy spear-shaped leaves.
  The magnolia trees which I scarcely remembered had grown hugely in the past decade, and they now composed a group
of impressive sentinels for the front porch.
  Louis stood patiently, staring at the leaded glass of the front doors as though he was madly excited. The house was
entirely dark except for the front parlor, the room in which Great Nananne's coffin had been set so long ago. I could detect
the flicker of candles in the front bedroom, but I doubt a mortal eye could have seen it through the drawn drapes.
  Quickly we went in the gate, rattling the ominous shrubbery, and up the steps and rang the bell. I heard Merrick's soft
voice from the interior:
  "David, come in."
  We found ourselves in the shadowy front hall. A great shiny Chinese rug covered the polished floor in flashy modern
splendor, and the large new crystal chandelier above was dark, and looked as if it were made of so much intricate ice.
  I escorted Louis into the parlor, and there sat Merrick clothed in a shirtwaist dress of white silk, quite relaxed, in one of
Great Nananne's old mahogany chairs.
  The dim light of a stand-up lamp fell wonderfully upon her. At once we locked eyes, and I felt a rush of love for her. I
wanted her to know somehow that I'd revisited all our memories, that I'd chosen the prerogative of confiding them in one
whom I trusted completely, and that I loved her as much as I did.
  I also wanted her to know that I disliked intensely the visions she'd so recently sent after me, and if she had had any
doings with the pesty black cat, that I was not amused!
  I think she knew it. I saw her smile faintly at me as we moved further into the room.
  I was about to take up the subject of her evil magic. But something stopped me.
  It was, very simply, the expression on her face when her eyes fell upon Louis as he stepped into the light.
  Though she was as poised and clever as always, there came about a complete change in her face.
  She rose to her feet to meet him, which surprised me, and her countenance was smooth and open with utter shock.
  It was then that I realized how skillfully Louis had attired himself in a finely tailored suit of thin black wool. He wore a
shirt of a creamcolored silk with a small gold pin beneath his rose-colored tie. Even his shoes were deliberately perfect,
buffed to a high luster, and his rich black curly hair was combed neatly and entirely. But the glory of his appearance was,
of course, his keen features and his lustrous eyes.
  I need not repeat that they are a dark-green color, because it was not the color of his eyes which mattered so much.
Rather, it was the expression with which he gazed at Merrick, the seeming awe that setfled over him, and the way that his
well-shaped mouth slowly relaxed.
  He had seen her before, yes, but he was not prepared to find her so very interesting and comely at the same time.

  And she, with her long hair brushed straight back to the leather barrette, looked utterly inviting in her sharp-shouldered
white silk dress, with its small fabric belt and its loose shimmering skirt.
  Around her neck, over the fabric of the dress, she wore pearls, in fact, the triple strand of pearls that I myself had long
ago given her, and in her ears were pearls, and on the ring finger of her right hand she wore a stunning pearl as well.
  I recite these details because I sought to find some sanity in them, but what I was experiencing, what humbled me and
made me livid was that the two of them were so impressed with each other, that, for the moment, I was not there.
  It was undeniable, the fascination with which she stared at Louis. And there was not the slightest question about the
overwhelming awe in which he held her.
  "Merrick, my darling," I said softly, "let me present Louis." But I might as well have been babbling. She never heard a
single syllable I uttered. She was silently transported, and I could see in her face a provocative expression which up until
this time I had never beheld in her except when she was looking at me.
  Quickly, obviously struggling to disguise her immense response, she reached out for his hand.
  With a vampire's reluctance, he met her gesture, and then, to my complete consternation, he bent down and kissed her--
not on the hand which he gripped so tenaciously--but on both her lovely cheeks.
  Why in the world hadn't I foreseen this? Why had I thought that she would not see him except as an unapproachable
wonder? Why hadn't I realized that I was bringing into her presence one of the most alluring beings I've ever known?
  I felt the fool for having not foreseen it, and I also felt the fool for caring so very much.
  As he settled in the chair closest to hers, as she sat down and turned her attention to him, I found a place on the sofa
across the room. Her eyes never left him, not for a second, and then I heard his voice come low and rich, with his French
accent as well as the feeling with which he always spoke.
  "You know why I've come to you, Merrick," he said as tenderly as if he was telling her that he loved her. "I live in
torment thinking of one creature, one creature I once betrayed and then nurtured, and then lost. I come because I believe
you can bring that creature's spirit to speak with me. I come to you because I believe I can determine through you whether
that spirit is at rest."
  Immediately she answered.
  "But what is unrest for spirits, Louis," she said familiarly. "Do you believe in a purgatory, or is it merely a darkness in
which spirits languish, unable to seek a light that would lead them on?"
  "I'm not convinced of anything," Louis said in answer. His face was full of vehement eloquence. "If ever a creature was
earthbound, it's the vampire. We're wed, soul and body, hopelessly. Only the most painful death by fire can rip that bond.
Claudia was my child. Claudia was my love. Claudia died by fire, the fire of the sun. But Claudia has appeared to others.
Claudia may come if you call her. That's what I want. That's my extravagant dream."
  Merrick was lost to him, utterly lost to him. I knew it. Her mind, insofar as I could read it, was ravaged. She was deeply
affected by his seeming pain. Nothing of her sympathies was reserved.
  "Spirits exist, Louis," she said, her voice slightly tremulous, "they exist, but they tell lies. One spirit can come in the
guise of another. Spirits are sometimes greedy and depraved."
  It was quite exquisite, the way that he frowned and put the back of his finger to his lip before he answered. As for her,
well, I was furious with her, and saw not the slightest physical or mental fault in her. She was the woman to whom I'd
surrendered passion, pride, and honor a long time before.
  "I'll know her, Merrick," said Louis. "I can't be deceived. If you can call her, and if she comes, I'll know her. I have no
doubt."
  "But what if I doubt, Louis?" she responded. "What if I tell you that we've failed? Will you at least try to believe what I
say?"
  "It's all settled, isn't it?" I blurted out. "We mean to do it, then, don't we?"
  "Yes, oh, yes," Louis answered, looking across the room at me considerately enough, though his large inquisitive eyes
shot right back to Merrick. "Let me beg your forgiveness, Merrick, that we've troubled you for your power. I tell myself in
my most awful moments that you'll take away from us some valuable knowledge and experience, that perhaps we'll
confirm your faith--in God. I tell myself these things because I can't believe we've merely ruptured your life with our
very presence. I hope it's so. I beg you to understand."
  He was using the very words that had come to my mind in my many feverish ruminations. I was furious with him as
well as her, suddenly. Detestable that he should say these things, and the hell he couldn't read minds. I had to get myself in
hand.
  She smiled, suddenly, one of the most magnificent smiles I'd ever seen. Her creamy cheeks, her dramatic green eyes,
her long hair--all her charms conspired to make her irresistible, and I could see the effect of her smile upon Louis, as if
she'd rushed into his arms.

   "I have no doubts or regrets, Louis," she told me. "Mine is a great and unusual power. You've given me a reason to use
it. You speak of a soul that may be in torment; indeed, you speak of long, long suffering, and you suggest that we might
somehow bring that soul's torment to a close."
   At this point, his cheeks colored deeply and he leant over and clasped her hand again tightly.
   "Merrick, what can I give you in exchange for what you mean to do?"
   This alarmed me. He should not have said it! It led too directly to the most powerful and unique gift that we had to give.
No, he shouldn't have said it, but I remained silent, watching these two creatures become ever more enthralled with each
other, watching them quite definitely fall in love.
   "Wait until it's done, and let us talk then of such things," she said, "if we ever talk of them at all. I need nothing in
return, really. As I've said, you are giving me a way to use my power and that in itself is quite enough. But again, you
must assure me, you will listen to my estimation of what happens. If I think we have raised something which is not from
God I will say so, and you must at least try to believe what I say."
   She rose and went directly past me, with only a faint smile for me as she did so, into the open dining room behind me to
fetch something, it seemed, from the sideboard along the distant wall.
   Of course, Louis, the consummate gentleman, was on his feet. Again I noticed the splendid clothing, and how lean and
feline were his simplest gestures, and how stunningly beautiful his immaculate hands.
   She reentered the light before me as if reentering a stage.
   "Here, this is what I have from your darling," she said. She held a small bundle, wrapped in velvet. "Sit down, Louis,
please," she resumed. "And let me put these items into your hands." She took her chair again, beneath the lamp facing
him, the precious goods in her lap.
   He obeyed her with the open radiance of a schoolboy before a miraculous and brilliant teacher. He sat back as though he
would yield to her slightest command.
   I watched her in profile and nothing filled my mind so much as pure, utter, base jealousy! But loving her as I did, I was
wise enough to acknowledge some genuine concern as well.
   As for him, there was little doubt that he was completely as interested in her as he was in the things which had belonged
to Claudia.
   "This rosary, why did she have it?" asked Merrick, extracting the sparkling beads from her little bundle. "Surely she
didn't pray."
   "No, she liked it for the look of it," he said, his eyes full of a dignified plea that Merrick should understand. "I think I
bought it for her. I don't think I ever even told her what it was. Learning with her was strange, you see. We thought of her
as a child, when we should have realized, and then the outward form of a person has such a mysterious connection with
the disposition."
   "How so?" Merrick asked.
   "Oh, you understand," he said shyly, almost modestly. "The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her
diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware." He hesitated. It seemed he was painfully shy.
"We fussed over her; we gloried in her. She looked no more than six or seven at most." The light in his face went out for a
moment, as if an interior switch had shut it off.
   Merrick reached forward again and took his hand. He let her have it. He bowed his head just a little, and he lifted the
hand she held, as if saying, Give me a moment. Then he resumed.
   "She liked the rosary," he said. "Maybe I did tell her the prayers. I don't remember. She liked sometimes to go with me
to the Cathedral. She liked to hear the music of the evening ceremonies. She liked all things that were sensual and which
involved beauty. She was girlish in her enthusiasms for a long time."
   Merrick let his hand go but very reluctantly.
   "And this?" she asked. She lifted the small white leather-bound diary. "A long time ago, this was found in the flat in the
Rue Royale, in a hiding place. You never knew that she kept it."
   "No," he said. "I gave it to her as a gift, that I well recall. But I never saw her write in it. That she kept it came as
something of a surprise. She was quite the reader of books, that I can tell you. She knew so much poetry. She was always
quoting this or that verse in an offhanded manner. I try to remember the things she quoted, the poets she loved."
   He gazed at the diary now as if he were reticent to open it, or even to touch it. As if it still belonged to her.
   Merrick withdrew it, and lifted the doll.
   "No," Louis said adamantly, "she never liked them. They were always a mistake. No, that doesn't matter, that doll.
Although if recollection serves me right, it was found with the diary and the rosary. I don't know why she saved it. I don't
know why she put it away. Maybe she wanted someone in the far distant future to find it and mourn for her, to know that

she herself had been locked in a doll's body; wanted some one lone individual to shed tears for her. Yes, I think that's how
it must have been."
   "Rosary, doll, diary," said Merrick delicately. "And the diary entries, do you know what they say?"
   "Only one, the one Jesse Reeves read and related to me. Lestat had given her the doll on her birthday and she'd hated it.
She'd tried to wound him; she'd mocked him; and he'd answered her with those lines from an old play which I can't
forget."
   He bowed his head, but he wouldn't give in to his sadness, not entirely. His eyes were dry for all the pain in them as he
recited the words:
                                                          Cover her face;
                                                          mine eyes dazzle;
                                                           she died young.

   I winced at the recollection. Lestat had been condemning himself when he'd spoken those words to her, he'd been
offering himself up to her rage. She'd known it. That's why she'd recorded the entire incident--his unwelcome gift, her
weariness of playthings, her anger at her limitations, and then his carefully chosen verse.
   Merrick allowed for a small interval, and then, letting the doll rest in her lap, she offered Louis the diary once more.
   "There are several entries," she said. "Two are of no importance, and for one of these I'll ask you to work my magic. But
there is another telling one, and that you must read before we go on."
   Still Louis did not reach for the diary. He looked at her respectfully, as before, but he didn't reach for the little white
book.
   "Why must I read it?" he asked Merrick.
   "Louis, think of what you've asked me to do. And yet you can't read the words she herself wrote here?"
   "That was long ago, Merrick," he said. "It was years before she died that she concealed that diary. Isn't what we do of
much greater importance? Yes, take a page if you need it. Take any page of the diary, it doesn't matter, use it as you will,
only don't ask that I read a word."
   "No, you must read it," Merrick said with exquisite gentleness. "Read it to me and to David. I know what is written
there, and you must know, and David is here to help both of us. Please, the last entry: read it aloud."
   He stared hard at her, and now there came the faint film of red tears to his eyes, but he gave a tiny, near imperceptible,
shake of his head, and then he took the diary from her outstretched hand.
   He opened it, gazing down at it, having no need as a mortal might to move the page into the light.
   "Yes," said Merrick coaxingly. "See, that one is unimportant. She says only that you went to the theater together. She
says that she saw Macbeth, was Lestat's favorite play."
   He nodded, turning the small pages.
   "And that one, that one is not significant," she went on, as though leading him through the fire with her words. "She
says that she loves white chrysanthemums, she says she purchased some from an old woman, she says they are the flowers
for the dead."
   Again he seemed on the very brink of losing his composure utterly, but he kept his tears to himself. Again he turned the
pages.
   "There, that one. You must read it," said Merrick, and she laid her hand on his knee. I could see her fingers stretched out
and embracing him in that age-old gesture. "Please, Louis, read it to me."
   He looked at her for a long moment, and then down at the page. His voice came tenderly in a whisper, but I knew that
she could hear it as well as I.

   "September 21, 1859
     It has been so many decades since Louis presented me with this little book in which I might record my private
   thoughts. I have not been successful, having made only a few entries, and whether these have been written for my
   benefit I am unsure.
     Tonight, I confide with pen and paper because I know which direction my hatred will take me. And I fear for those
   who have aroused my wrath.
     By those I mean, of course, my evil parents, my splendid fathers, those who have led me from a long forgotten
   mortality into this questionable state of timeless 'bliss.'
     To do away with Louis would be foolish, as he is without question the more malleable of the pair."

   Louis paused as though he couldn't continue.

  I saw Merrick's fingers tighten on his knee.
  "Read it, please, I beg you," she said gently. "You must go on."
  Louis began again, his voice soft as before, and quite deliberately smooth.

    "Louis will do as I wish, even unto the very destruction of Lestat, which I plan in every detail. Whereas Lestat would
  never cooperate with my designs upon Louis. So there my loyalty lies, under the guise of love even in my own heart.
    "What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that
  emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not. I look at Louis and I despise him totally for the making of
  me, and yet I do love him. But then I love Lestat every bit as well.
    "Perhaps in the court of my heart, I hold Louis far more accountable for my present state than ever I could blame my
  impulsive and simple Lestat. The fact is, one must die for this or the pain in me will never be scaled off, and immortality
  is but a monstrous measurement of what I shall suffer till the world revolves to its ultimate end. One must die so that the
  other will become ever more dependent upon me, ever more completely my slave. I would travel the world afterwards; I
  would have my way; I cannot endure either one of them unless that one becomes my servant in thought, word, and deed.
    "Such a fate is simply unthinkable with Lestat's ungovernable and irascible character. Such a fate seems made for my
  melancholy Louis, though the destroying of Lestat will open new passages for Louis into the labyrinthian Hell in which
  I already wander with every new thought that comes in my mind.
    "When I shall strike and how, I know not, only that it gives me supreme delight to watch Lestat in his unguarded
  gaiety, knowing that I shall humiliate him utterly in destroying him, and in so doing bring down the lofty useless
  conscience of my Louis, so that his soul, if not his body, is the same size at last as my own."

  It was finished.
  I could tell this merely by the blank expression of pain on his face, the way that his eyebrows quivered for one moment,
and then the way he drew back in the chair, and closed the little book, and held it idly as if he'd forgotten it altogether, in
his left hand. He looked neither to me nor to Merrick.
  "Do you still want to communicate with this spirit?" Merrick asked reverently. She reached for the small diary, and he
gave it over without objection.
  "Oh, yes," he said in a long sigh. "I want it above anything else."
  I wanted so to comfort him, but there were no words to touch such a private pain.
  "I can't blame her for what she expressed," he resumed in a frail voice. "It always goes so tragically wrong with us." His
eyes moved feverishly to Merrick. "The Dark Gift, imagine calling it that, when it goes so very wrong in the end." He
drew back as if struggling against his emotions.
  "Merrick," he said, "where do they come from, the spirits? I know the conventional wisdom and how foolish it can be.
Tell me your thoughts."
  "I know less now than I ever did," answered Merrick. "I think when I was a girl I was very sure of such things. We
prayed to the untimely dead because we believed they hovered close to earth, vengeful or confused, and thereby could be
reached. From time immemorial, witches have frequented cemeteries looking for those angry, muddled spirits, calling
upon them to find the way to greater powers whose secrets might be revealed. I believed in those lonely souls, those
suffering lost ones. Perhaps in my own way, I believe in them still.
  "As David can tell you, they seem to hunger for the warmth and the light of life; they seem to hunger even for blood.
But who knows the true intentions of any spirit? From what depth did the prophet Samuel rise in the Bible? Are we to
believe Scripture, that the magic of the Witch of Endor was strong?"
  Louis was fastened to her every word.
  He reached out suddenly and took her hand again, letting her curl her fingers around his thumb.
  "And what do you see, Merrick, when you look at David and at me? Do you see the spirit that inhabits us, the hungry
spirit that makes us vampires?"
  "Yes, I see it, but it's mute and mindless, utterly subordinate to your brains and hearts. It knows nothing now, if it ever
did, except that it wants the blood. And for the blood it slowly works its spell on your tissues, it slowly commands your
every cell to obey. The longer you live, the more it thrives, and it is angry now, angry insofar as it can choose any
emotion, because you blood drinkers are so few."
  Louis appeared mystified, but surely it wasn't so difficult to understand.
  "The massacres, Louis, the last here in New Orleans. They clear away the rogues and baseborn. And the spirit shrinks
back into those who remain."

   "Yes," said Merrick, with a passing glance at me. "That's precisely why your thirst now is doubly terrible, and why you
are so far from being satisfied with the 'little drink.' You asked a moment ago: what do I want from you? Let me say what
I want of you. Let me be so bold as to answer you now."
   He said nothing. He merely gazed at her as if he could refuse her nothing. She went on.
   "Take the strong blood David can give you," she said. "Take it so you can exist without killing, take it so you can cease
your heated search for the evildoer. Yes, I know, I use your language, perhaps too freely and too proudly. Pride is always
a sin with those of us who persevere in the Talamasca. We believe we have seen miracles; we believe we have worked
miracles. We forget that we know nothing; we forget that there may be nothing to find out."
   "No, there is something, there's more than something," he insisted, gently moving her hand with his emphasis. "You and
David have convinced me, even though it was never your intention, either of you. There are things to know. Tell me,
when can we move to speak to Claudia's spirit? What more do you require of me before you'll make the spell?"
   "Make the spell?" she asked gently. "Yes, it will be a spell. Here, take this diary," she gave it over to him, "rip a page
from it, whatever page you feel is strongest or whatever part you are most willing to give up."
   He took it with his left hand, unwilling to let her go.
   "What page do you want me to tear out?" he insisted.
   "You make the choice. I'll bum it when I'm ready. You'll never see those particular words again."
   She released him, and urged him on with a small gesture. He opened the book with both hands. He sighed again, as if he
couldn't endure this, but then he commenced to read in a low unhurried voice:
   " 'And tonight, as I passed the cemetery, a lost child wandering dangerously alone for all the world to pity me, I bought
these chrysanthemums, and lingered for some time within the scent of the fresh graves and their decaying dead,
wondering what death life would have had for me had I been let to live it. Wondering if I could have hated as a mere
human as much as I hate now? Wondering if I could have loved as much as I love now?' "
   Carefully, pressing the book to his leg with his left hand, he tore the page with his right hand, held it under the light for
a moment, then gave it over to Merrick, his eyes following it as though he were committing a terrible theft.
   She received it respectfully and placed it carefully beside the doll in her lap.
   "Think well now," she said, "before you answer. Did you ever know the name of her mother?"
   "No," he said at once, and then hesitated, but then shook his head and said softly that he did not.
   "She never spoke the name?"
   "She spoke of Mother; she was a little girl."
   "Think again," she said. "Go back, go back to those earliest nights with her; go back to when she babbled as children
babble, before her womanly voice replaced those memories in your heart. Go back. What is the name of her mother? I
need it."
   "I don't know it," he confessed. "I don't think she ever--. But I didn't listen, you see, the woman was dead. That's how I
found her, alive, clinging to the corpse of her mother." I could see that he was defeated. Rather helplessly he looked at
Merrick.
   Merrick nodded. She looked down and then she looked to him again, and her voice was especially kind as she spoke.
   "There is something else," she said. "You're holding something back."
   Again, he seemed exceedingly distressed.
   "How so?" he asked abjectly. "What can you mean?"
   "I have her written page," said Merrick. "I have the doll she kept when she might have destroyed it. But you hold on to
something else."
   "Oh, but I can't," he said, his dark brows knotting. He reached into his coat and brought out the small daguerreotype in
its gutter perche case. "I can't give it over to be destroyed, I can't," he whispered.
   "You think you'll cherish it afterwards?" asked Merrick in a consoling voice. "Or you think our magic fire will fail?"
   "I don't know," he confessed. "I know only that I want it." He moved the tiny clasp and opened the small case and
looked down until he seemed unable to bear what he saw, and then he closed his eyes.
   "Give it to me for my altar," said Merrick. "I promise it will not be destroyed."
   He didn't move or answer. He simply allowed her to take the picture from his hands. I watched her. She was amazed by
it, the ancient image of a vampire, captured forever so dimly in the fragile silver and glass.
   "Ah, but she was lovely, wasn't she?" asked Louis.
   "She was many things," said Merrick. She shut the little gutter perche case, but she did not move the small gold clasp.
She laid the daguerreotype in her lap with the doll and the page from the diary, and with both hands reached for Louis's
right hand again.
   She opened his palm beneath the lamplight.

  She drew up as if she was shocked.
  "Never have I seen a life line such as this," she whispered. "It's deeply graven, look at it, there is no end to it really," she
turned his hand this way and that, "and all the small lines have long ago melted away."
  "I can die," he answered with a polite defiance. "I know I can," he said sadly. "I shall when I've got the courage. My
eyes will close forever, like those of every mortal of my time who ever lived."
  She didn't answer. She looked down into his open palm again. She felt of the hand, and I could see her loving its silky
skin.
  "I see three great loves," she whispered, as if she needed his permission to say it aloud. "Three deep loves in all this
time. Lestat? Yes. Claudia. Most assuredly. And who is the other? Can you tell me that?"
  He was in a state of complete confusion as he looked at her, but he hadn't the strength to answer. The color flared in his
cheeks and his eyes seemed to flash as if a light inside them had increased its incandescence.
  She let his hand go, and she blushed.
  Quite suddenly, he looked to me, exactly as if he'd suddenly remembered me again and he needed me desperately. I had
never seen him so agitated or seemingly vital. No one entering the room would have known him to be anything but a
compelling young man.
  "Are you for it, old friend?" he asked. "Are you ready for it to begin?"
  She looked up, her own eyes watering faintly, and she seemed to pick me out of the shadows and then to give the
smallest, most trusting smile.
  "What's your counsel, Superior General?" she asked in a muted voice, filled with conviction.
  "Don't mock me," I said, because it made me feel good to say it. I was not surprised to see the quick flash of pain in her
eyes.
  "I don't mock you, David. I ask if you're ready."
  "I'm ready, Merrick," I said, "as ready as I ever was in all my life to call a spirit in whom I scarcely believe, in whom I
have no trust."
  She held the page in both hands and studied it, perhaps reading the words herself, for her lips moved.
  Then she looked at me again, and then at Louis.
  "One hour. Come back to me. I'll be ready by that time. We'll meet in the rear of the house. The old altar's been restored
for our purpose. The candles are already lighted. The coals will soon be ready. It's there that we will execute this plan."
  I started to rise.
  "But you must go now," she said, "and bring a sacrifice, because we cannot proceed without that."
  "A sacrifice?" I asked. "Good Lord, what manner of sacrifice?" I was on my feet.
  "A human sacrifice," she answered, her eyes sharpening as she glanced up at me, and then back to Louis, who remained
in his chair. "This spirit won't come for anything less than human blood."
  "You don't mean it, Merrick," I said furiously, my voice rising. "Good Lord, woman, would you make yourself a party
to murder?"
  "Am I not that already?" she answered, her eyes full of honesty and fierce will. "David, how many human beings have
you killed since Lestat brought you over? And you, Louis, they're beyond count. I sit with you and plot with you to
attempt this thing. I'm a party to your crimes, am I not? And for this spell, I tell you I need blood. I need to brew a far
greater magic than anything I've ever attempted before. I need a burnt offering; I need the smoke to rise from heated
blood."
  "I won't do it," I said. "I won't bring some mortal here to be slaughtered. You're being foolish and naive if you think you
could tolerate such a spectacle. You'll be changed forever. What, do you think because we're pretty to look at that this
murder will be fancy and clean?"
  "David, do as I say," she replied, "or I won't do this thing."
  "I will not," I responded. "You've overreached yourself. A murder there will not be."
  "Let me be the sacrifice," said Louis suddenly. He rose to his feet and looked down upon her. "I don't mean that I shall
die to do it," he said compassionately. "I mean, let the blood that flows be mine." He took her hand again, locking his
fingers around her wrist. He bent and kissed her hand, then stood erect, his eyes lovingly fastened to her own.
  "Years ago," he said, "you used your own blood, did you not, in this very house, to call your sister, Honey in the
Sunshine. Let us use my blood to call Claudia tonight. I have blood enough for a burnt offering; I have blood enough for a
cauldron or a fire."
  Her face was quite tranquil again as she looked at him.

  "A cauldron it shall be," she said. "One hour. The rear yard is filled with its old saints, as I've told you. The stones on
which my ancestors danced are swept clean for our purpose. The old pot sits on the coals. The trees have witnessed many
such a spectacle. There's only a little more that I need do to prepare now. Go and return to me, as I've said."




                                                                 18


  I WAS BESIDE MYSELF with anxiety. As soon as we reached the pavement, I grabbed Louis by the shoulders and
spun him round to face me.
  "We're not going on with this," I said. "I'm going back there to tell her it will not happen."
  "No, David, it will happen," he said without raising his voice. "You will not stop it!"
  I realized that for the first time since I'd ever set eyes on him, he was passionate and angry, though the anger was not
purely for me.
  "It will happen," he repeated, clenching his teeth, his face hardening in his quiet fury. "And we will leave her unharmed
as we promised! But this will go on."
  "Louis, don't you understand what she's feeling?" I asked. "She's falling in love with you! She'll never be the same after
this. I can't let this deepen. I can't let it become any worse than it already is."
  "She's not in love with me, that's wrong," he declared in an emphatic whisper. "She thinks what mortals always think.
We're beautiful to them. We're exotic. We have such exquisite sensitivity! I've seen it before. All I need do is to take a
victim in her presence to cure her romantic dreams. And it won't come to that, I promise you. Now, David, listen, this
hour of waiting will be the longest of the night. I'm thirsting. I mean to hunt. Let go of me, David. Get out of my way."
  Of course I didn't leave him.
  "And what about your emotions, Louis?" I walked beside him, determined he wouldn't leave me behind. "Can you tell
me you're not completely taken by her?"
  "And what if I am, David?" he responded, never slacking in his pace. "David, you didn't describe her truly. You told me
how strong she was, how wily, and how clever. But you didn't do justice to her." He gave me a shy passing glance. "You
never talked about her simplicity or her sweetness. You didn't tell me she was so inherently kind."
  "That's how you see her?"
  "That's how she is, my friend." Now he wouldn't look at me. "Some school, the Talamasca, that it produced both of you.
She has a patient soul and a knowing heart."
  "I want this broken off now," I insisted. "I don't trust either of you. Louis, listen to me."
  "David, do you really believe I would hurt her?" he asked sharply. He continued walking. "Do I seek out for my victims
those whom I believe to be gentle by nature, humans I believe to be both good and uncommonly strong? She'll be safe
with me forever, David, don't you understand that? Only once in my wretched life did I make a fledging and that was over
a century ago. Merrick couldn't be safer from any of us than she is from me. Bind me to protect her till the day she dies
and I'll probably do it! I'll slip away from her after this is done, I promise you." On he walked. He continued to speak: "I'll
find a way to thank her, to satisfy her, to leave her at peace. We'll do that together, David, you and I. Don't harry me now
in this matter. I can't be stopped. It's gone too far."
  I believed him. I believed him completely. "What am I to do?" I asked dejectedly. "I don't even know my own heart in
the matter. I'm afraid for hers."
  "You're to do nothing," he said, his voice a little more calm than before. "Let it happen as planned."
  We walked on through the ruined neighborhood together.
  At last the bent red neon sign of a barroom appeared, blinkering under the rangy branches of an ancient and dying tree.
There were hand-painted words of advertisement all over the boarded-up facade, and the light inside was so feeble that
scarcely anything could be seen through the dirty glass of the door.
  Louis went inside and I followed him, quite amazed at the large crowd of Anglo-Saxon males that chattered and drank
at the long mahogany bar, and the myriad dirty little tables. Here and there were denim-clad women, young and old, as
were their gentlemen companions. A garish red light shone from covered bulbs near the ceiling.
  Everywhere I saw naked arms and dirty sleeveless shirts, secretive faces, and cynicism beneath a veil of smiles and
flashing teeth.

   Louis made his way to the corner of the room, and took the wooden chair beside a large unshaven and bushy-haired man
who sat at a table alone and morosely over his stagnant bottle of beer.
   I followed, my nostrils assailed by the stench of sweat and the thick cigarette smoke. The volume of the voices was
harsh, and the beat of music beneath it ugly, ugly in words and rhythm, ugly in its hostile chant.
   I sat down opposite the same poor degenerate mortal who cast his pale failing eyes on Louis and then on me, as though
he were about to have some sport.
   "So what do you want, gentlemen," he said in a deep voice. His huge chest heaved under the worn shirt that covered it.
He lifted his brown bottle and let the golden beer slide down his throat.
   "Come on, gentlemen, tell me," he said thickly, drunkenly. "When men dressed like you come downtown, you want
something. Now what is it? Am I saying that you came to the wrong place? Hell no, gentlemen. Somebody else might say
so. Somebody else might say you've made a bad mistake. But I'm not saying it, gentlemen. I understand everything. I'm all
ears for the both of you. Is it broads you want, or is it a little ticket to fly?" He smiled at both of us. "I've got all kinds of
goodies, gentlemen. Let's pretend it's Christmas. Just tell me what's your hearts' desire."
   He laughed at himself proudly, then drank from his greasy brown bottle. His lips were pink, and his chin covered in a
grizzled beard.
   Louis stared at him without answering. I watched in fascination. Louis's face gradually lost all expression, all semblance
of feeling. It might have belonged to a dead man as he sat there, as he stared at the victim, as he marked the victim, as he
let the victim lose his poor desperate humanity, as the kill passed from possible to probable and finally, to a foregone
conclusion.
   "I want to kill you," Louis said softly. He leant forward and peered very close into the man's pale and red-rimmed gray
eyes.
   "To kill me?" said the man, raising one eyebrow. "You think you can do that?" he asked.
   "I can do it," said Louis gently. "Just like this." He bent and sank his teeth into the man's thick unshaven neck. I saw the
man's eyes brighten for one instant as he stared over Louis's shoulder, then the eyes became fixed, and very gradually they
went dull.
   The man's cumbersome and bulky body rested against Louis, his thick-fingered right hand quivering before it went limp
beside the bottle of beer.
   After a long moment, Louis drew back and helped the man to lay his head and shoulders down on the table. Lovingly,
he touched the man's thick grayish hair.
   On the street, Louis breathed deep of the fresh night air. His face was full of the blood of his victim, and richly colored
with the tints of a human. He smiled a sad, bitter smile as he looked up, his eyes seeking the faintest stars.
   "Agatha," he said softly, as if it were a prayer.
   "Agatha?" I repeated. How I feared for him.
   "Claudia's mother," he replied, looking at me. "She said the name once in those first few nights, exactly as Merrick put
it. She recited both their names, father and mother, in the manner in which she'd been taught to tell strangers. Agatha was
her mother's name."
   "I see," I replied. "Merrick will be very pleased with that. It's the style of the old charms, you understand, when calling a
spirit, to include its mother's name."
   "Pity about that man drinking only beer," he said as we commenced our walk back to Merrick. "I could have used just a
little heat in the blood, you know, but then perhaps it's better. Better to have a strong clear mind for what happens. I
believe Merrick can do what I want."




                                                                  19


   AS WE MADE OUR WAY along the side of the house, I saw the candles burning, and when we emerged into the rear
yard, I saw the great altar under the shed, with all its tall blessed saints and virgins, and indeed, the Three Magi, and the
angels Michael and Gabriel with their spectacular white wings and in their colorful garb.
   The scent of incense was strong and delicious to my nostrils. And the trees hung low over the broad clean flagstone
terrace with its uneven purple stones.

  Far back from the shed, indeed, very near the closest edge of the terrace, there stood the old iron pot atop the brazier
tripod, the coals beneath it already glowing. And on either side were long iron tables, rectangular in shape, on which many
different objects had been laid out with obvious care.
  The complexity of the whole display amazed me faintly, but then I saw, standing on the back steps of the house, only a
couple of yards from the tables and the cauldron, the figure of Merrick, her face covered in the green jade mask.
  A shock went through my system. The eye holes and mouth opening of the mask appeared empty; only the brilliant
green jade was filled with reflected light. Merrick's shadowy hair and body were scarcely visible, though I saw her hand
when she lifted it and beckoned for us to come close.
  "Here," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask as she spoke, "you will stand with me behind the cauldron and
the tables. You on my right, Louis, and you on my left, David, and you must promise me now before we commence that
you will make no interruption, that you will try no interference in what I mean to do."
  She reached out for my arm and guided me into position.
  Even at this closeness, the mask was inherently frightening and appeared to float before her lost countenance, perhaps
her lost soul. With an anxious and meddlesome hand I confirmed that the mask was firmly affixed to her head by strong
leather thongs.
  Louis had stepped behind her, and now stood over the iron table to the right of the cauldron, at her right hand, peering
ahead at the glowing altar with its banks of glass-contained candles, and at the eerie but lovely faces of the saints.
  I took my place by her left.
  "What do you mean, we're not to interrupt?" I asked, though it seemed a terrible irreverence, in the midst of this
spectacle which had taken on a high beauty, what with the plaster saints, and tall dark yew trees crowding in upon us, and
the low twisted black limbs of the oaks shutting out the stars above.
  "Just what I told you," she said in a low voice. "You're not to stop me, whatever happens. You're to stay behind this
table, both of you; you're never to move in front of it, no matter what you see or think you may see."
  "I understand you," said Louis. "The name you wanted. Claudia's mother. It's Agatha. Of that I'm almost certain."
  "Thank you," Merrick replied. She gestured before her. "There, on the stones," she said, "the spirits will come if they're
meant to come, but you must not go to them, you must not engage in any struggle with them, you must do only as I say."
  "I understand you," Louis repeated.
  "David, do I have your word?" she asked calmly.
  "Very well, Merrick," I said crossly.
  "David, stop your interference!" she declared.
  "What can I say, Merrick?" I demanded. "How can I give my inner feelings to this thing? Isn't it enough that I stand
here? Isn't it enough that I do as you say?"
  "David, trust in me," she said. "You came to me with the request for this magic. Now I give you what you asked for.
Trust that it will be for the good of Louis. Trust that I can control what I do."
  "To speak of magic," I said softly, "to read of it, and study it--all that is one matter, but to participate, to be in the
presence of one who believes in it and knows it--that is quite another thing."
  "Govern your heart, please, David," said Louis. "I want this more than anything I have ever wanted. Merrick, please,
proceed."
  "Give me your word with honesty, David," said Merrick. "You will not try to interfere with the things I will say and the
things I will do."
  "Very well, Merrick," I said, defeated.
  Only then did I have the freedom to inspect the objects covering the two tables. There lay the poor pitiful old doll which
had belonged to Claudia, limp as a tiny dead body. And the page of the diary, weighted down by the doll's round porcelain
head. There was the rosary heaped beside it, and the small daguerreotype in its dark case. There was an iron knife.
  I also saw a gold chalice, beautifully ornamented and rimmed with inset jewels. There was a tall crystal bottle filled
with what appeared to be clear yellow oil. I saw the jade perforator, a wicked and awful thing in my sight, sharp and
dangerous, lying close to the cauldron. And then quite suddenly I saw what appeared to be a human skull.
  I was furious at this last discovery. Quickly, I considered the contents of the other table, the one before Louis, and saw
there a rib bone covered with markings, and that loathsome old shriveled black hand. There were three bottles of rum.
There were other items--a fine golden pitcher of honey, which I could smell in its sweetness, another silver pitcher of
pure white milk, and a bronze bowl of shining salt.
  As for the incense, I realized it had all been distributed and was already burning before the distant unsuspecting saints.
  Indeed, a great deal more of the incense, very black and only faintly aglow as its smoke rose in the darkness, had been
poured out to make a great circle on the purple flagstone before us, a circle which my eyes only now observed.

  I wanted to demand: where did the skull come from? Had Merrick robbed some anonymous grave? A dreadful thought
occurred to me and I tried to banish it. I looked at the skull again and saw it was covered with incised writing. It was lurid
and awful, and the beauty embracing all of this was seductive, potent, and obscene.
  Instead I spoke only of the circle.
  "They will appear in it," I murmured, "and you think the incense will contain them."
  "If I must, I will tell them that the incense contains them," she said coldly. "Now, you must govern your tongue if you
can't govern your heart. Offer no prayers as you watch this. I am ready for this to begin."
  "What if there isn't enough incense!" I demanded in a whisper.
  "There is plenty of it to burn for hours. Look at the small cones with your clever vampire eyes, and don't ask me such a
foolish question again."
  I resigned myself. I couldn't stop this. And only now did I feel in my resignation a certain attraction to the entire process
as she made to begin.
  From beneath the table, she lifted a small bundle of twigs and fed these quickly to the coals in the brazier beneath the
iron pot.
  "Make this fire hot for our purposes," she whispered. "May all the saints and angels witness, may the glorious Virgin
Mary witness, make this fire burn for us."
  "Such names, such words," I murmured before I could stop myself "Merrick, you play with the strongest powers known
to us."
  But on she went, poking at the fire until its flames licked the sides of the cauldron. Then she lifted the first bottle of
rum, uncapped it, and emptied its acrid contents into the pot. Quickly, she took up the crystal bottle and poured out the
pure, fragrant oil.
  "Papa Legba!" she called out as the smoke rose before her. "I can begin nothing without your intercession. Look here at
your servant Merrick, listen to her voice as she calls you, unlock the doors to the world of the mysteries, that Merrick may
have what she desires."
  The dark perfume of the heated concoction overcame me as it rose from the iron pot. I felt as if I ought to be drunk,
when I wasn't, and it seemed my balance had been affected, though why I couldn't know.
  "Papa Legba," she cried. "Open the way."
  My eyes shot to the distant statue of St. Peter, and only then did I realize he stood in the center of the altar, a fine effigy
of wood, his glass eyes glaring back at her, his dark hand wrapped about its golden keys.
  It seemed to me that the air changed suddenly about us, but I told myself it was only my raw nerves. Vampire or human,
I was susceptible to the tiniest suggestion. Yet the yews began ever so slightly to sway on the outskirts of the garden, and
there came through the trees above a soft wind that sent the leaves down all around us, tiny and light, without a sound.
  "Open the gates, Papa Legba," she called out, as her deft hands emptied the second bottle of rum into the cauldron. "Let
the saints in Heaven hear me, let the Virgin Mary hear me, let the angels be unable to turn away their ears."
  Her voice was low yet full of certainty.
  "Hear me, St. Peter," she declared, "or I shall pray to Him who gave His Only Divine Son for our Salvation that He
turns His back on you in Heaven. I am Merrick. I cannot be denied!"
  I heard Louis give out a faint gasp.
  "Now, you angels, Michael and Gabriel," she said, her voice rising with increasing authority, "I command you, open the
way to the eternal darkness, to the very souls whom you yourself may have driven out of Heaven; put your flaming
swords to my purpose. I am Merrick. I command you. I cannot be denied. I will call upon all the Celestial hosts to turn
their backs on you should you hesitate. I will call upon God The Father to condemn you, I will condemn you, I will loathe
you, should you not listen; I am Merrick, I cannot be denied."
  There was a low rumbling from the statues in the shed, a sound very like the earth makes when it's shifting--a sound
which no one can imitate, but which anyone can hear.
  Again came the sound of the rum pouring, from the third bottle.
  "Drink from my cauldron, all you angels and saints," said Merrick, "and allow that my words and my sacrifice rise to
Heaven. Hear my voice."
  I strained in my focus upon the statues. Was I losing my mind? They appeared animate and the smoke rising from the
incense and candles seemed thicker. Indeed the whole spectacle intensified, colors becoming richer, and the distance
between the saints and us smaller, though we had not moved.
  Merrick lifted the perforator with her left hand. Instantly, she cut the inside of her right arm. The blood poured down
into the cauldron. Her voice rose above it:

  "You Watcher Angels, the first to teach mankind magic, I call upon you now for my purpose, or those spirits that
answer to your name.
  "Ham, you son of Noah and pupil of the Watchers, I call upon you now for my purpose, or that powerful spirit which
answers to your name.
  "Mestran, son of Ham, who passed on the secrets of magic to his children and others, I call upon you now for my
purpose, or that powerful spirit which answers to your name."
  Again she slashed herself with the knife, the blood sliding down her bare arm and into the cauldron. Again there came
that sound, as if from the earth beneath us, a low rumbling that mortal ears perhaps would disregard. I looked helplessly to
my feet and to the statues. I saw the faint shiver of the entire altar.
  "I give you my own blood as I call you," Merrick said. "Listen to my words, I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra, I
cannot be denied.
  "Nebrod, son of Mestran, and powerful teacher of magic to those who came after him, bearer of the wisdom of the
Watchers, I call upon you for my purpose, or upon that powerful spirit which answers to your name.
  "Zoroaster, great teacher and magician, who passed on the mighty secrets of the Watchers, who brought down to
himself from the very stars the fire which destroyed his earthly body, I call on you, or that spirit which answers to your
name.
  "Listen to me, all you who have gone before me, I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra, I cannot be denied.
  "I shall cause the Host of Heaven to declare you anathema should you attempt to resist my powers. I shall withdraw my
faith and withdraw my blandishments should you not grant the wish that comes from my tongue. I am Merrick, daughter
of Cold Sandra; you will bring to me those spirits whom I call."
  Again the perforator was lifted. She cut her own flesh. A long gleaming seam of blood flowed into the aromatic brew.
The scent of it inflamed me. The smoke from the mixture stung my eyes.
  "Yes, I command you," she said, "all of you, most powerful and illustrious ones, I command you that I may achieve
what I say, that I may bring forth out of the whirlwind those lost souls who will find Claudia, daughter of Agatha, Yield
up to me those Purgatorial souls who will, in exchange for my prayers, bring forth the spirit of Claudia. Do as I
command!"
  The iron altar before me was shivering. I could see the skull moving with the altar. I could not discount what I saw. I
could not challenge what I heard, the low rumbling of the ground beneath me. Tiny leaves came down in a swirl, like
ashes before us. The giant yew trees had begun to sway as if in the early breezes of an approaching storm.
  I tried to see Louis, but Merrick stood between us. Her voice came unceasingly:
  "All you powerful ones, command Honey in the Sunshine, restless spirit of my sister, daughter of Cold Sandra, that she
bring Claudia, daughter of Agatha, out of the whirlwind. Honey in the Sunshine, I command you. I will turn all Heaven
against you if you do not obey me. I will heap infamy upon your name. I am Merrick. I will not be denied."
  Even as the blood flowed down over her right hand, she reached with it for the skull beside the smoking cauldron and
lifted it up.
  "Honey in the Sunshine, I have here your very skull from the grave in which you were buried, and all your names are
written upon it in my hand. Honey Isabella, daughter of Cold Sandra, you cannot deny me. I call you and command you to
bring Claudia, daughter of Agatha, here now, to answer to me."
  It was exactly as I'd suspected. She had done the awful deed of violating Honey's poor pathetic remains. How vicious
and how dreadful, and for how long had she kept this secret, that she possessed the skull of her own sister, her own blood
kin.
  I was revolted yet magnetized. The smoke from the candles grew dense before the statues. It seemed their faces were
full of movement, their eyes sweeping the scene before them. Even their drapery appeared alive. The incense burnt bright
in the circle on the flagstones, fanned by the breeze that steadily increased.
  Merrick laid aside the cursed skull and the perforator.
  From the table she lifted the gold pitcher of honey, and poured it into the jeweled chalice. This she lifted with her
bloody right hand as she went on:
  "Ah, yes, all you lonely spirits, and you, Honey, and you, Claudia, smell this sweet offering--Honey, the very substance
after which you in your beauty were named." Into the cauldron she poured the thick sparkling liquid.
  Then she lifted the pitcher of milk. Into the chalice it went, and then she lifted the chalice, gathering up the deadly
perforator again in her left hand.
  "And this, too, I offer you, so delicious to your desperate senses, come here and breathe this sacrifice, drink of this milk
and honey, drink it from the smoke that rises from my cauldron. Here, it comes to you through this chalice which once

contained The Blood of Our Lord. Here, partake of it. Do not refuse me. I am Merrick, daughter of Cold Sandra. Come,
Honey, I command you, and bring Claudia to me. I will not be denied."
  A loud breath came from Louis.
  In the circle before the statues, something amorphous and dark had taken shape. I felt my heart skipping as my eyes
strained to make it out. It was the form of Honey, it was the very figure which I had seen many years before. It flickered
and wavered in the heat as Merrick chanted:
  "Come, Honey, come closer, come in answer to me. Where is Claudia, daughter of Agatha? Bring her here to Louis de
Pointe du Lac, I command you. I cannot be denied."
  The figure was almost solid! I saw the familiar yellow hair, the candlelight behind it rendering it transparent, the white
dress more spectral than the solid outline of the body itself. I was too stunned to utter the prayers that Merrick had
forbidden. The words never formed on my lips.
  Suddenly Merrick laid down the skull. She turned and caught Louis's left arm with her bloodstained hand.
  I saw his white wrist above the cauldron. With a swift movement, she slashed at his wrist. I heard him gasp again, and I
saw the glittering vampiric blood gushing from the veins into the rising smoke. Again she gashed the white flesh and
again the blood flowed, thickly, freely, and more abundantly than her own blood before.
  In no way did Louis resist her. Mute, he stared at the figure of Honey.
  "Honey, my beloved sister," said Merrick, "bring Claudia. Bring Claudia to Louis de Pointe du Lac. I am Merrick, your
sister. I command you. Honey, show your power!" Her voice became low, crooning. "Honey, show your immense
strength! Bring Claudia here now."
  Again, she cut the wrist, for the preternatural flesh was healing just as soon as she opened it, and she again made the
blood flow.
  "Savor this blood which is shed for you, Claudia. I call your name and your name only now, Claudia. I would have you
here!" Once more the wound was opened.
  But now she gave over the perforator to Louis, and she lifted the doll in both her hands.
  I glanced from Merrick to the solid image of Honey, so dark, so distant, so seemingly without human movement.
  "Your possessions, my sweet Claudia," Merrick called out, snatching up a twig from the fire and lighting the clothes of
the unfortunate doll, which all but exploded in a draught of flames. The little face turned black in the blaze. Still Merrick
held it with both hands.
  The figure of Honey suddenly began to dissolve.
  Into the cauldron Merrick dropped the burning object, and then lifted the page of the diary, as she continued to speak.
  "Your words, my sweet Claudia, accept this offering, accept this acknowledgment, accept this devotion." She dipped the
page into the fire of the brazier, then held it aloft as it was consumed.
  The ashes fell into the cauldron. She took up the perforator once again.
  The form of Honey lingered only in shape and then appeared to be blown away by the natural breeze. Again the candles
blazed violently before the statues.
  "Claudia, daughter of Agatha," said Merrick, "I command you, come forward, become material, answer me from the
whirlwind, answer your servant Merrick--all you angels and saints, and Blessed Mother Ever Virgin compel Claudia,
compel her to answer my command."
  I couldn't take my eyes off the smoky darkness. Honey was gone but something else had taken her place. The very
gloom seemed to shape itself into a smaller figure, indistinct but gathering strength as it appeared to extend its small arms
and move towards the table behind which we stood. It was above the ground, this small being, the sudden glint of its eye
on our level and its feet walking on nothing as it proceeded towards us, its hands becoming clearly visible, as well as its
shining golden hair.
  It was Claudia, it was the child of the daguerreotype, it was whitefaced and delicate, its eyes wide and brilliant, its skin
luminous, its loose and flowing white garments soft and ruffled by the wind.
  I stepped backwards. I couldn't stop myself, but the figure had stopped; it remained suspended above the ground and its
pale arms relaxed and fell naturally at its sides. It was as solid in the dim light as Honey had been so many years before.
  Its small stunning features were filled with a look of love and quickening sensibility. It was a child, a living child. It was
undeniable. It was there.
  A voice came out of it, fresh and sweet, a girl's natural treble:
  "Why have you called me, Louis?" it asked with heartbreaking sincerity. "Why have you roused me from my wandering
sleep for your own consolation? Why wasn't memory enough?"
  I was weak almost to fainting.
  The child's eyes flashed suddenly on Merrick. The voice came again with its tender clarity:

  "Stop now with your chants and commands. I do not answer to you, Merrick Mayfair. I come for the one who stands to
the right of you. I come demanding why you've called me, Louis; what is it that you would have me give you now? In life
did I not give you all my love?"
  "Claudia," Louis murmured in a tortured voice. "Where is your spirit? Is it at rest or does it wander? Would you have
me come to you? Claudia, I'm ready to do it. Claudia I'm ready to be at your side."
  "You? Come to me?" the child asked. The little voice had taken on a dark deliberate coloration. "You, after all those
many years of evil tutelage, you think that I in death would be united with you?" The voice went on, its timbre sweet as if
saying words of love. "I loathe you, evil Father," it confided. A dark laughter came from the small lips.
  "Father, understand me," she whispered, her face infected with the tenderest expression. "I never could find words to tell
you truths when I was living." There was the sound of breath, and a visible despair seemed to wrap itself about the
creature. "In this measureless place I have no use for such curses," said the voice, with touching simplicity. "What is it to
me, the love you lavished on me once in a vibrant and feverish world?"
  On she went as if consoling him.
  "You want vows from me," she said with seeming wonder, her whisper growing softer. "And from the coldest heart
imaginable I condemn you--condemn you that you took my life--" the voice was fatigued, defeated "--condemn you that
you had no charity for the mortal I once was, condemn you that you saw in me only what filled your eyes and insatiable
veins ... condemn you that you brought me over into the lively Hell which you and Lestat so richly shared."
  The small solid figure moved closer, the luminous face of plump cheeks and lustrous eyes now directly before the
cauldron, the tiny hands curled but not raised. I lifted my hand. I wanted to touch this shape, so vivid was it. Yet I wanted
to back away from it, shield myself somehow from it, shield Louis, as if such a thing could be done.
  "Take your life, yes," she said with her relentless tenderness, her eyes large and wondering--"give it up in memory of
me, yes, I would have you do it, I would have you give over to me your last breath. Do it with pain for me, Louis, do it
with pain that I may see your spirit through the whirlwind, struggling to free itself from your tormented flesh."
  Louis reached out for her, but Merrick caught his wrist and pushed him back.
  The child continued, her words unhurried, her tone solicitous as she went on:
  "Oh, how it will warm my soul to see you suffer, oh, how it will speed me on my endless wanderings. Never would I
linger to be with you here. Never would I wish for it. Never would I seek you out in the abyss."
  Her face was stamped with the purest curiosity as she looked at him. There was nothing of visible hatred in her
expression at all.
  "Such pride,'' she whispered, smiling, "that you would call me out of your habitual misery. Such pride that you would
bring me here to answer your common prayers." There came a small chilling laughter.
  "How immense is your self-pity," she said, "that you don't fear me, when I--had I the power from this witch or any
other--would take your life with my own hands." She lifted her little hands to her face as if she would weep in them, and
then let them drop to her sides again.
  "Die for me, my doting one," she said tremulously. "I think I shall like it. I shall like it as much as I liked the sufferings
of Lestat, which I can scarce remember. I think, yes, that I might know pleasure once again, briefly, in your pain. Now, if
you are done with me, done with my toys and your memories, release me that I may return to forgetfulness. I cannot recall
the terms of my perdition. I fear I understand eternity. Let me go."
  All at once, she moved forward, her small right hand snatching up the jade perforator from the iron table, and with a
great lunge, she flew at Louis, thrusting the perforator into his chest.
  He fell forward over the makeshift altar, his right hand clutching at the wound in which she ground the jade pick, the
cauldron spilling over onto the stones beneath her, Merrick backing up in seeming horror, and I unable to move.
  The blood gushed out of Louis's heart. His face was knotted, his mouth open, his eyes shut.
  "Forgive me," he whispered. He gave a soft groan of pure and terrible pain.
  "Go back to Hell!" cried Merrick, suddenly. She ran at the floating image, arms out to reach over the cauldron, but the
child withdrew with the ease of vapor, and, still clutching the jade pick, she lifted her right hand and knocked Merrick
back with it, the frigid little face all the while quite still.
  Merrick stumbled on the back steps of the house. I caught her arm and lifted her back on her feet.
  Again, the child turned to Louis as she held the dangerous pick in both her small hands. Down the front of her sheer
white dress was the dark stain from the boiling fluids of the cauldron. It meant nothing to her.
  The cauldron, on its side, poured forth its contents onto the stones.
  "Did you think I wasn't suffering, Father?" she asked softly in the same small girlish voice. "Did you think that death
had freed me from all my pain?" Her small finger touched the point of the jade instrument. "That's what you thought,
wasn't it, Father," she spoke slowly, "and that, if this woman did your will, you'd take away some precious consolation

from my very lips. You believed that God would give you that, didn't you? It seemed so very right for you after all your
penitential years."
  Louis still held his wound, though his flesh was healing and the blood oozed more slowly out of his splayed hand.
  "The gates can't be locked to you, Claudia," he said, the tears rising in his eyes. His voice was strong and sure. "That
would be too monstrous a cruelty--."
  "To whom, Father?" she answered, cutting off his words. "Too monstrous a cruelty to you? I suffer, Father, I suffer and
I wander; I know nothing, and all I once knew seems illusory! I have nothing, Father. My senses are not even a memory. I
have nothing here at all."
  The voice grew weaker, yet it was clearly audible. Her exquisite face was infused with a look of discovery.
  "Did you think I'd tell you nursery stories about Lestat's angels?" she asked with a low kindly tone. "Did you think I'd
paint a picture of the glassy heavens with palaces and mansions? Did you think I'd sing to you some song learnt from the
Morning Stars? No, Father, you will not draw such ethereal comfort from me."
  On went her subdued voice:
  "And when you come following me I shall be lost again, Father. How can I promise that I shall be there to witness your
cries or tears?"
  The image had begun to waver. Her large dark eyes fixed upon Merrick, and then on me. Back to Louis she looked. She
was fading. The perforator fell from her white hand and struck the stones, breaking in two.
  "Come, Louis," she said faintly, the sound of her invitation mingling with the softly stirring trees, "come into this dreary
place with me, and leave behind your comforts--leave behind your wealth, your dreams, your blood-soaked pleasures.
Leave behind your ever hungry eyes. Leave it all, my beloved, leave it for this dim and insubstantial realm."
  The figure was rigid and flat, the light barely shining upon its uncertain contours. I could scarcely see the small mouth
as it smiled.
  "Claudia, please, I beg you," said Louis. "Merrick, don't let her go into uncertain darkness. Merrick, guide her!"
  But Merrick did not move.
  Louis turned frantically from Merrick to the fading image.
  "Claudia!" he cried out. With all his soul he wanted to say more, but there was no conviction in him. All was despair. I
could feel it. I could read it on his stricken face.
  Merrick stood back, staring through the gleaming jade mask, her left hand poised in the air as if to fend off the ghost if it
should strike again.
  "Come to me, Father," said the child, the voice toneless now, devoid of feeling. The image was transparent, dim.
  The outline of the small face slowly evaporated. Only the eyes held their luster.
  "Come to me," she whispered, her voice dry and thin. "Come, do it with deep pain, as your offering. You'll never find
me. Come."
  Only a dark shape remained for a few moments, and then the space was empty, and the yard with its shrine and with its
tall forbidding trees was still.
  I could see no more of her. The candles, what had happened to them? They had all gone out. The burning incense was
so much soot on the flagstones. The breeze had scattered it. A great shower of tiny leaves came down languidly from the
branches, and the air was full of a subtle yet biting cold.
  Only the distant gleam of the heavens gave us illumination. The dreadful chill lingered around us. It penetrated my
clothes and settled on my skin.
  Louis peered into the darkness with a look of inexpressible grief He began to shiver. The tears didn't flow; they merely
stood in his uncomprehending eyes.
  Suddenly Merrick ripped off the jade mask and overturned both tables, and the brazier, the contents smashing onto the
flags. The mask she cast into the shrubbery by the rear steps.
  I stared in horror at the skull of Honey lying in the heap of cast-off instruments. Bitter smoke rose from the wet coals.
The burnt remnants of the doll were visible in the flowing liquid. The jeweled chalice rolled on its golden rim.
  Merrick took hold of Louis by both arms.
  "Come inside," she said, "come out of this awful place now. Come inside with me, where we can light the lamps. Come
inside where we'll be safe and warm."
  "No, not now, my dear," he answered. "I must leave you. Oh, I promise, I'll see you again. Let me alone for now. Take
whatever promises I must give you, to quiet you. Take whatever thanks I can express from my heart. But let me go."
  He bent down and retrieved the little picture of Claudia from the wreckage of the altar. Then off he went down the
shadowy alley, pushing the young banana leaves out of his path, his steps growing ever faster, until he was gone
altogether, vanished on his own path in the familiar and unchanging night.

                                                                20

  I LEFT HER CURLED UP on Great Nananne's bed in the front room.
  I went back into the garden, picked up the broken pieces of the jade perforator, and found the mask broken in half. How
brittle was this strong jade. How bad had been my intentions, how evil the result.
  These things I brought with me into the house. I could not bring myself to lay my superstitious hands upon the skull of
Honey in the Sunshine.
  I put the collection of jade remnants on the bedroom altar, amid the glass-covered candles, and then I settled next to her,
sitting beside her, and I put my arm around her.
  She turned and laid her head on my shoulder. Her skin felt feverish and sweet. I wanted to cover her in kisses, but I
couldn't give in to this impulse, anymore than I could give in to the darker impulse to bring through the blood the rhythm
of her heart in time with my own.
  There was dried blood all over her white silk dress, and on the inside of her right arm.
  "I should never have done it, never," she said in a hushed and anxious voice, her breasts yielding softly against me. "It
was madness. I knew what would happen. I knew his brain would be fodder for disaster. I knew it. And now he's lost; he's
wounded and lost to us both."
  I lifted her so that I could look into her eyes. As always their brilliant green color startled me, and enthralled me, but I
couldn't concern myself with her charms now.
  "But you do believe that it was Claudia?" I asked.
  "Oh, yes," she said. Her eyes were still red around the edges from her crying. I saw the tears standing there. "It was
Claudia," she declared. "Or that thing which now calls itself Claudia, but the words it spoke? They were lies."
  "How can you know that?"
  "The same way I know when a human being is lying to me. The same way I know when someone's read another one's
mind and is preying upon that other's weakness. The spirit was hostile, once called into our realm. The spirit was
confused. The spirit told lies."
  "I didn't feel it was lying," I argued.
  "Don't you see," she said, "it took Louis's very, very worst fears and morbid thoughts for its matter. His mind was full of
the verbal instruments by which he could bring about his own despair. He's found his conviction. And whatever he is--
wonder, horror, damnable monster--he's lost now. Lost to us both."
  "Why couldn't it have been speaking pure truth?" I asked.
  "No spirit speaks pure truth," she insisted. She wiped at her reddened eyes with the back of her hand. I gave her my
linen handkerchief. She pressed it to her eyes. Then she looked up at me again. "Not when it's called, it doesn't. It speaks
truth only when it comes on its own."
  I took this idea into my thoughts. I had heard it before. Every member of the Talamasca had heard it. Spirits who are
called are treacherous. Spirits who come on their own possess some guiding will. But no spirit can in fact be trusted. It
was old knowledge. It gave neither comfort nor clarity to me just now.
  "Then the picture of eternity," I said, "it was false, that's what you're saying."
  "Yes," she said, "that's exactly what I'm saying." She wiped her nose with the handkerchief. She began to shiver. "But
he will never accept it." She shook her head. "The lies are too near to what he absolutely believes."
  I didn't speak. The words of the spirit were too nearly to what I actually believed as well.
  She rested her head on my chest again, her arm about me loosely. I held her, staring before me at the smaller altar
between the front windows, staring at the patient faces of the different saints.
  A quiet and dangerous mood fell over me, in which I saw rather plainly all the long years of my life. One thing
remained constant during this journey, whether I was the young man in the Candomble temples of Brazil, or the vampire
prowling the streets of New York in the company of Lestat. That constant thing was that, no matter what I'd said to the
contrary, I suspected there was nothing beyond this earthly life.
  Of course now and then I gladly "believed" otherwise. I made my case to myself with seeming miracles--spirit winds
and vampiric blood flowing. But in the final analysis, I feared there was nothing, nothing perhaps but the "measureless
darkness" which this phantom, this vicious and angry phantom, had described.

  Yes, I'm saying that I believe we might linger. Of course. Lingering after death for some while is not beyond the realm
of science to explain someday--a soul of definable substance detached from the flesh and caught in some energy field that
wreaths the planet. It is not beyond imagining, no, not at all. But it doesn't mean immortality. It doesn't mean Paradise or
an Inferno. It doesn't mean justice or recognition. It doesn't mean ecstasy or unending pain.
  As for the vampires, they were a flashy miracle, but consider how relentlessly materialistic and how very small that
miracle is.
  Picture the night when one of us is captured and carefully fastened to the table in the laboratory, housed perhaps in a
tank of aerospace plastic, safe from the sun, day and night beneath a flickering gush of fluorescent light.
  There he would lie, this helpless specimen of the Nosferatu, bleeding into syringes and test tubes, as doctors gave to our
longevity, our changelessness, our connection to some binding and ageless spirit--a long Latin scientific name.
  Amel, that ancient spirit said by the eldest of us to organize our bodies and connect them--it would one day be
classified as some force quite similar to that which organizes the tiny ant in its vast and intricate colony, or the marvelous
bees in their exquisite and impossibly sophisticated hive.
  If I died, there might be nothing. If I died, there might be lingering. If I died, I might never even know what became of
my soul. The lights around me--the warmth of which the child phantom had spoken so tauntingly--the warmth would
simply go away.
  I bowed my head. I pressed my left fingers hard to my temples, my right arm tightening against Merrick who seemed so
precious, so frail.
  My mind shot back to the dark spell and the luminous child phantom in the middle of it. It shot back to the moment
when her arm was lifted, when Merrick cried out and was thrown back. It shot back to the child's wonderfully realized
eyes and lips, and the low musical voice issuing from her. It shot back to the seeming validity of the vision itself.
  Of course, it could have been Louis's despair which fueled her fount of misery. It might well have been my own. How
much did I, myself, want to believe in Lestat's articulate angels or Armand's glimpse of crystalline celestial splendor?
How much did I myself project upon the seeming void my own late and grossly lamented conscience, straining again and
again to voice love for the maker of the wind, the tides, the moon, the stars?
  I could not end my own earthly existence. I was as fearful as any mortal that I might be resigning forever the only
magical experience that I'd been privileged to know. And that Louis might perish seemed a simple horror, rather like
seeing an exotic and poisonous flower, fallen from its secretive jungle perch and crushed underfoot.
  Did I fear for him? I wasn't certain. I loved him, I wanted him with us now in this room. I did. But I wasn't certain that I
had the moral stamina to coax him to remain in this world another twenty-four hours. I wasn't certain of anything at all. I
wanted him for my companion, mirror of my emotions, witness of my aesthetic progress, yes, all those things. I wanted
him to be quiet and gentle Louis, that I knew. And if he did not choose to go on with us, if he did in fact take his own life
by walking into the sunlight, then it would be all the harder for me to continue, even with my fear.
  Merrick had begun to shake all over. Her tears were not stopping. I gave in to my desire to kiss her, to breathe in the
fragrance of her warm flesh.
  "There, there, my darling," I whispered.
  The handkerchief clutched in her right hand was small and wet.
  I lifted her as I stood up. I pulled down the heavy white chenille spread and laid her on the clean sheets. Never mind her
soiled dress. She was cold and frightened. Her hair was tangled beneath her. I lifted her head and brought her hair up and
over the linen. I saw her sink into the down pillows, and I kissed her eyelids to bid them to close.
  "Rest now, precious darling," I said. "You only did what he asked."
  "Don't leave me just now," she said in a raw voice, "except if you think you can find him. If you know where he is, then
find him. Otherwise stay here with me, just for this little while."
  I went down the hall in search of a bathroom and found it to the very rear of the house, a spacious and somewhat lavish
arrangement with a little coal fireplace as well as a great claw-foot tub. There was the usual pile of clean white terry cloth
towels one expects amid such luxury. I moistened the end of one of these and brought it back to the front room.
  Merrick was on her side, knees curled up, her hands clasped together. I could hear a low whispering coming from her
lips.
  "Here, let me wipe your face," I said. I did it without any further concessions, and then I wiped the caked blood from
her inner arm. The scratches went clear from her palm to the inside of her elbow. But they were very shallow. One began
to bleed a little as I cleaned it, but I pressed on it for a moment and the blood ceased to flow.
  I found the dry clean end of the towel, and patted Merrick's face with it, and then the wounds, which were now
completely clean and healed.

   "I can't remain here like this," Merrick said. Her head went from side to side. "I have to get the bones from the rear yard.
It was a terrible thing to overturn the altars."
   "Be quiet now," I said. "I'll bring them in."
   It filled me with revulsion to do this. But I was as good as my word.
   I went back to the scene of the crime. The dark rear yard seemed uncommonly still. The dead candles before the saints
seemed negligent and evidence of grave sins.
   Out of the detritus fallen from the iron tables, I picked up the skull of Honey in the Sunshine. I felt a sudden chill run
through my hands, but I put it off to my imagination. I gathered up the rib bone, and I saw again that both of these bore all
kinds of deeply incised writing. I refused to read the writing. I brought them back with me into the house and into the
front room.
   "Put them on the altar," she said. She sat up, pushing the heavy covers off her.
   I saw that she had taken off her bloodsoaked dress of white silk, and that it lay in a heap on the floor.
   She wore only her silk petticoat, and I could see her large pink nipples through it. There was blood on the petticoat too.
Her shoulders were very straight and her breasts high set, and her arms were just rounded enough to be delicious to my
sight.
   I went to pick up the dress. I wanted to clean her up completely. I wanted her to be all right.
   "It's monstrously unfair that you're so frightened," I said.
   "No, leave the dress," she answered, reaching out for my wrist. "Let it go, and sit here, beside me. Take my hand and
talk to me. The spirit's a liar, I swear it. You must believe what I say."
   Once again, I sat down on the bed. I wanted to be close to her. I leant over and kissed her bowed head. I wished I
couldn't see so much of her breasts, and I wondered if the younger vampires knew--those brought over early in their
manhood--how such carnal details still distracted me. Of course the blood lust rose with this distraction. It was not an
easy thing to love her so terribly and not taste of her soul through her blood.
   "Why do I have to believe you?" I asked gently.
   She dug her fingers into her hair and swept it back behind her shoulders.
   "Because you must," she said urgently yet quietly. "You must see that I knew what I was doing, you must believe that I
can tell a truthtelling spirit from one who lies. That was something, yes, that being which pretended to be Claudia--
something very powerful that it could lift the pick and sink it into Louis's flesh. I'll wager anything that it was a spirit who
hated him due to his very nature, that he can be dead and still walk the earth. It was something deeply offended by his
very existence. But it was taking its verses from his own thoughts."
   "How can you be so sure?" I asked. I shrugged my shoulders. "God knows, 1 wish you were right. But you yourself
called on Honey; is not Honey lost in the same realm that this spirit of Claudia described? Doesn't Honey's presence prove
there's nothing better for either one of them? You saw the shape of Honey out there before the altar--."
   She nodded.
   "--and you went on to call Claudia from the same realm."
   "Honey wants to be called," she declared, looking up at me, her fingers driven into her hair, tugging it cruelly back,
away from her tormented face. "Honey's always there. Honey's waiting for me. That's how I knew for certain that I could
call on Honey. But what about Cold Sandra? What about Great Nananne? What about Aaron Lightner? When I opened
the door none of those spirits came through. They've long since gone on into the Light, David. If they hadn't they would
have long ago let me know. I would have felt them the way I feel Honey. I would have hints of them, as Jesse Reeves had
of Claudia when she heard the music in the Rue Royale."
   I was puzzled by this last statement. Very puzzled. I shook my head in an emphatic no.
   "Merrick, you're holding back from me," I said, deciding I must address it directly. "You have called Great Nananne.
You think I don't remember what happened only a few nights ago, the night we met in the café in the Rue St. Anne?"
   "Yes? What about that night?" she asked. "What are you trying to say?
   "Maybe you don't know what happened," I said. "Is that possible? You called down a spell and didn't know how strong
it was yourself?"
   "David, talk straight to me," she responded. Her eyes were clearing and she had stopped trembling. Of this I was glad.
   "That night," I said, "after we met and spoke together, you put a spell on me, Merrick. On my way back to the Rue
Royale, I kept seeing you everywhere; to the right of me, and to the left of me, Merrick. And then I saw Great Nananne."
   "Great Nananne?" she asked in a subdued voice, but one which couldn't conceal her disbelief. "What do you mean, you
saw Great Nananne?"
   "When I reached the carriageway of my town house," I said, "I saw two spirits behind the iron bars--one in the image
of you, a girl of ten, the way you were when I first met you, and the other, Great Nananne in her nightgown, as she was on

the only day I was ever to know her, the day of her death. These two spirits stood in the carriageway and spoke together,
intimately, tête a tête, their eyes fixed on me. And when I approached them, they disappeared."
  For a moment, she said nothing. Her eyes were narrow and her lips slightly parted, as if she was pondering this with
extreme concentration.
  "Great Nananne," she said again.
  "Just as I've told you, Merrick," I said. "Am I to understand now that you yourself didn't call her? You know what
happened next, don't you? I went back to the Windsor Court, to the suite where I'd left you. I found you dead drunk on the
bed."
  "Don't use such a charming expression for it," she whispered crossly. "You came back, yes, and you wrote me a note."
  "But after I wrote that note, Merrick, I saw Great Nananne there in the hotel, standing in the door of your bedroom. She
was challenging me, Merrick. She was challenging me by her very presence and posture. It was a dense and undeniable
apparition. It endured for moments--chilling moments, Merrick. Am I to understand this wasn't part of your spell?"
  Merrick sat silent for a long moment, her hands still splayed in her hair. She lifted her knees and drew them close to her
breasts. Her sharp gaze never left me.
  "Great Nananne," she whispered. "You're telling me the truth. Of course you are. And you thought that I called my
godmother? You thought I could call her and make her appear like that?"
  "Merrick, I saw the statue of St. Peter. I saw my own handkerchief beneath it with the drops of blood on it. I saw the
candle you'd lighted. I saw the offerings. You had cast a spell."
  "Yes, my darling," she said quickly, her right hand clutching mine to quiet me. "I fixed you, yes, I put a little fixing
spell on you to make you want me, to make you quite unable to think of anything else but me, to make you come back if
by the slightest chance you had decided never to come to me again. Just a fixing spell, David, you know what I'm saying. I
wanted to see if I could do it now that you were a vampire. And you see what happened? You didn't feel love or
obsession, David, you saw images of me instead. Your strength came to the fore, David, that's all that happened. And you
wrote your sharp little note to me, and when I read it, I think I might have even laughed."
  She broke off, deeply troubled, her eyes large as she stared in front her, perhaps into her own thoughts.
  "And Great Nananne? " I pressed. "You didn't call her?"
  "I can't call my godmother," she said, her tone serious, her eyes narrow as she looked at me again. "I pray to my
godmother, David, don't you realize that, as I pray to Cold Sandra, as I pray to Oncle Vervain. They're no longer near us,
any of them, my ancestors. I pray to them in Heaven as I would to the angels and the saints."
  "I'm telling you I saw her spirit."
  "And I'm telling you I've never seen it," she whispered. "I'm telling you I'd give anything I possess if only I could."
  She looked at my hand, the one which she held in her own, and then she pressed it warmly and she let it go. Her hands
went up to her temples again and her fingers found their way again into her hair.
  "Great Nananne's in the Light," she said, as though she were arguing with me, and perhaps she was. But her gaze was
lost to me. "Great Nananne's in the Light, David," she said again. "I tell you I know she is." She looked up into the airy
semi-darkness, and then her eyes drifted to the altar and the candles in their long flickering rows.
  "I don't believe she came," she whispered. "I don't believe they're all in some 'insubstantial realm!' No, I tell you, I don't
believe it," she said. She put her hands on her knees. "I don't believe anything so absolutely awful--that all the souls of
the 'faithful departed' are lost in darkness. No, I can't believe such a thing."
  "Very well, then," I said, wanting for the moment only to comfort her, and remembering too keenly the spirits at the
gate once more, old woman and young girl. "Great Nananne came of her own accord. It's as you indicated earlier--you
said that spirits only tell the truth if they come of their own accord. Great Nananne didn't want me near you, Merrick.
Great Nananne has told me that. And maybe she'll come again if I don't somewhat repair the damage I've done to you, and
leave you alone."
  She appeared to be thinking this over.
  A long interval ensued during which I watched her intently, and she gave me no clue of her feelings or her intentions,
and then finally, she took my hand again. She drew it up to her lips and she kissed it. It was painfully sweet.
  "David, my beloved David," she said, but her eyes were secretive. "Leave me now."
  "No, I won't even think of it, until I have to do it."
  "No, I want you to go," she said. "I'll be quite all right on my own."
  "Call the caretaker," I said. "I want him here before I leave the property at dawn."
  She reached over to the night table and produced one of those small modern cellular phones that is no bigger than a
man's wallet. She punched in a series of numbers. I heard the appropriate voice on the other end, "Yes, Ma'am, coming
directly."

  I was satisfied.
  I stood up. I took several steps towards the center of the room, and then the most desolate feeling descended upon me.
  I turned around and looked at her as she sat there, her knees up close to her breasts, her head resting on her knees, her
arms locked around her legs.
  "Am I fixed now with a spell, Merrick?" I asked her, my voice even more gentle than I meant for it to be. "I don't want
to leave you, my precious darling," I said. "I can't bear the thought of it, but I know that we have to part from one another,
you and I. One more meeting, perhaps two. No more than two."
  She looked up, startled, and her face was touched with fear.
  "Bring him back to me, David," she said imploringly. "In the name of God, you have to do that. I must see Louis and
talk to him again." She waited a moment, during which time I didn't answer her. "As for you and me, don't talk as if we
can simply say goodbye to one another. David, I can't bear that just now. You must assure me--."
  "It won't be abrupt," I said, cutting her off, "and it won't be without your knowledge. But we can't go on, Merrick. If we
try to go on, you'll lose faith in yourself and everything that matters to you. Believe me, I know."
  "But it never happened to you, dearest," she said, with strong confidence, as though she'd thought through this very
matter. "You were happy and independent when the Vampire Lestat brought you over. You told me so. Don't you give me
credit for that much, David? Each of us is different."
  "Know that I love you, Merrick," I said softly.
  "Don't try to say farewell, David. Come here and kiss me and come back to me tomorrow night."
  I went to the bed, and I took her in my arms. I kissed her on both cheeks. And then in a sinful, wretchedly strong-willed
manner, I kissed her unresisting breasts, kissed both her nipples, and I drew back, full of her scent and furious with
myself.
  "For now, darling," I said.
  And I went out and home to the Rue Royale.




                                                                21


  LOUIS WAS HOME when I reached the flat. I could sense his presence even as I came up the stairs. Only a few hours
remained of the night for both of us, but I was so glad to see him that I went directly into the front parlor where he stood
at the window, looking out over the Rue Royale below.
  The room was full of lighted lamps, and the paintings of Matisse and Monet seemed to be singing on the walls.
  He had taken off his bloodsoiled clothes, and wore now a simple turtleneck shirt of black cotton, and black pants. His
shoes were old and tattered, but had once been very fine.
  He turned as I entered the room, and I took him in my arms. With him, I could give vent to the affection I'd held so
severely in check with Merrick. I held him to myself and kissed him as men might do with other men when they are alone.
I kissed his dark black hair and kissed his eyes, and then I kissed his lips.
  For the first time in our existence together, I felt a great outpouring of affection from him, a deep affinity, yet something
else made him stiffen suddenly, against his will.
  It was the pain in his chest from the wound.
  "I should have come with you," I confessed. "I should never have let you go off, but I felt she needed me. And I
remained with her. It was what I had to do."
  "Of course, you did," he said, "and I wouldn't have allowed you to leave her. She needed you much more than I did.
Never mind this wound; it's already healing. I've decades enough behind me on the Devil's Road that it will heal in a few
nights."
  "Not so, and you know it," I said. "Let me give you my blood, my blood's infinitely stronger. Don't turn away from me,
man, listen to me. If you won't drink from me, then let me put my blood to the wound."
  He was deeply distressed. He sat down in a chair and put his elbows on his knees. I couldn't see his face. I took the chair
nearby and I waited.
  "It will heal, I told you," he said softly.

  I let the matter drop. What else could I do? Yet I could see that the wound was hurting him powerfully. I could tell it by
his slightest gestures--how they began in utter fluidity, and were suddenly cut short.
  "And the spirit, what did you make of it, yourself?" I asked. "Let me hear it from your lips before I tell you what
Merrick felt, and what I saw."
  "I know what you both think," he said. He looked up finally and sat back gingerly in the chair. For the first time I saw
the darkness of the blood on his shirt. The wound was wretched. I didn't like it. I didn't like seeing blood on him any more
than I liked seeing it on Merrick. It struck me hard how much I loved them both.
  "You both think the spirit preyed upon my fears," he said calmly. "I knew it was what you'd say even before we ever
began. But you see, I remember her too vividly. I know her French, I know her cadences, I know the very rhythm of her
speech. And it was Claudia, and she had come out of darkness just as she confided, she had come from a terrible place
where she's not at rest."
  "You know my arguments," I said, shaking my head. "What will you do now? Whatever your plan, you can't go forward
without telling me what it is."
  "I know, mon ami, I'm aware of that," he answered. "And you must know now I won't be with you for very long."
  "Louis, I beg you--."
  "David, I'm weary," he said, "and I would swap one pain for another. There was something she said, you see, which I
can't forget. She asked if I would give up my comforts for her? Do you remember?"
  "No, old man, you've got it wrong. She asked if you'd give up your comforts for death, but she never promised that she
would be there! That's just the point. She won't be. Good Lord, how many years in the Talamasca did I study the history
of apparitions and their messages, how many years did I pore over first person accounts of those who'd trafficked with
ghosts and recorded their wisdom. You can choose what you will believe about the hereafter. It doesn't matter. But once
you choose death, Louis, you can't choose life again. Belief ends. Don't make that choice, I implore you. Stay for me, if
you won't for any other reason. Stay for me, because I need you, and stay for Lestat, because he needs you as well."
  Of course my words didn't surprise him. He put his left hand to his chest and pressed on the wound lightly, and a
grimace, for one moment, disfigured his face.
  He shook his head.
  "For you and Lestat, yes, I've thought of that. And what of her? What of our lovely Merrick? What does she need from
me too?"
  It seemed he had a great deal more to say, but suddenly he fell silent, and his brows were knitted, and he looked young
and impossibly innocent as his head quickly turned to the side.
  "David, do you hear it?" he asked with mounting excitement. "David, listen!"
  I heard nothing but the noises of the city.
  "What is it, man?" I asked.
  "David, listen to it. It's all around us." He rose to his feet, his left hand still pressed to the pain he felt. "David, it's
Claudia, it's the music, it's the harpsichord. I hear it all around us. David, she wants me to come. I know it."
  I was on my feet in a second. I took hold of him.
  "You're not going to do it, friend, you can't do it without a farewell to Merrick, without a farewell to Lestat, and there
are not enough hours left in this night for that."
  He was gazing off, mesmerized and comforted, and his eyes were glazed and his face was softened and unchallenging.
"I know that sonata. I remember it. And yes, she loved it, she loved it because Mozart had written it when he was only a
child. You can't hear, can you? But you did once, think back on it. It's so very lovely, and how fast she plays, my
Claudia."
  He made a dazed laugh. The tears thickened; his eyes were veiled in blood.
  "I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others--all our kind who know of her--they think of her
as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed.
She knew secrets that only suffering can teach. . . ."
  His voice trailed off. He pulled back gracefully from my grasp and he walked to the center of the room. He turned about
as though the music were truly surrounding him.
  "Don't you see what a kindness she's done?" he whispered. "It's going on and on, David, it's getting all the more rapid.
Claudia, I'm listening to you." He broke off, and turned again, his eyes moving over everything yet seeing, nothing.
"Claudia, I'll be with you very soon."
  "Louis," I said, "it's almost morning. Come with me now."
  He stood still with his head bowed. His hands had dropped to his sides. He seemed infinitely sad and infinitely defeated.
  "Has it stopped?" I asked.

  "Yes," he whispered. Slowly he looked up, lost for the moment, then getting his bearings. He looked at me. "Two nights
won't matter, will it? And then I can thank Merrick. I can give her the picture. The Talamasca may want it." He gestured
to the nearby table, the low oval table which stood before the couch.
  I saw the daguerreotype open on the table. Claudia's image jarred me as I met its gaze. I wanted to close the little case,
but never mind. I knew that I could never allow the picture to fall into the hands of the Talamasca. I could never allow
such a contact, let alone the possession of such a potent object by seers as powerful as Merrick. I could never allow such
evidence to remain for the Talamasca to investigate whatever we had all seen this night.
  But I didn't say this thing.
  As for him, he stood as before, elegant in his faded black, a man dreaming, the blood dried in his eyes and giving him a
dreadful look, as he stared off again, distant from my heated compassion, cutting himself off from any solace I could
bring.
  "You'll meet me tomorrow," I said.
  He nodded. "The birds are gone now," he whispered. "I can't even hum the music inside my head." He seemed
unbearably distressed.
  "All is stillness in the place she described," I said rather desperately. "Think on that, Louis. And meet me tomorrow
night."
  "Yes, my friend, I've already promised," he said in a dazed manner.
  He frowned as if trying to remember something in particular. "I have to thank Merrick, and you of course, you, old
friend, who did everything that I asked."
  We went out of the town house together.
  He went off to the place where he lies by day, the location of which I didn't know.
  I had more time than he had. Like Lestat, my powerful maker, I was not hounded by the first hint of dawn to the grave.
The sun would have to come over the horizon for me to feel the paralytic vampire sleep.
  Indeed, I had an hour or more perhaps, though the morning birds were singing in the few trees of the Quarter, and when
I reached uptown the sky had turned from a deep dark blue to a faint purple twilight color, which I lingered to enjoy
before I went inside the dusty building and up the stairs.
  Nothing stirred in the old convent. Even the rats were gone from it. Its thick brick walls were chilly, though it was
spring. My footfalls echoed as always. I allowed that. It was respectful to Lestat to allow it, to mark my coming before I
entered his vast and simple domain.
  The great yawning courtyard was empty. The birds sang loudly in the lush trees of Napoléon Avenue. I stopped to
glance out from one of the upstairs windows. I wished I could sleep by day high in the branches of the nearby oak. What a
mad thought, but perhaps somewhere, far away from all the pain we'd experienced here, there was some deep uninhabited
forest where I could build a dark and thick cocoon for hiding among the branches, like an evil insect, dormant before it
rises to bring death to its prey.
  I thought of Merrick. I couldn't know what the coming day would be like for her. I feared for her. I despised myself.
And I wanted Merrick terribly. I wanted Louis. I wanted them as my companions, and it was utterly selfish, and yet it
seemed a creature could not live without the simple companionship which I had in mind.
  At last I went in the great white-walled chapel. All the stained-glass windows were still draped in black serge, as was
required now, for Lestat could no longer easily be moved to shelter with the rising sun.
  No candles burnt before these random and stately saints.
  I found Lestat as he always was, on his left side, a man resting, his violet eyes open, the lovely piano music pouring out
of the black machine which had been set to play the small disc recording over and over without end.
  The usual dust had settled on Lestat's hair and shoulders. It horrified me to see the dust, even on his face. But would I
disturb him if I sought to clean it away? I didn't know, and my sorrow was leaden and terrible.
  I sat down beside him.
  I sat where he might see me. And then boldly I turned off the music. And in a hurried voice, a voice more full of
agitation than ever I imagined it would be, I poured out the tale.
  I told him all of it--of my love for Merrick and of her powers. I told him of Louis's request. I told him of the phantom
that had come to us. I told him of Louis, listening to Claudia's music. I told him of Louis's resolve to leave us in a matter
of nights.
  "What can stop him now I don't know," I said. "He won't wait for you to wake, my dearest friend. He's going. And
there's nothing I can do really to change his mind. I can plead that he must wait until you've recovered, but I don't think he
wants to lose his nerve again. That's what it's all about, you see, his nerve. He has the nerve to end it. And that is what's
been lacking for so long."

  I went back over the details. I described Louis as he listened to the music that I couldn't hear. I described the seance
once more. Perhaps I told things now which I'd left out before.
  "Was it really Claudia?" I asked. "Who can tell us whether or not it was?"
  And then I leant over and I kissed Lestat and I said to him:
  "I need you so much now. I need you if only to say farewell to him."
  I drew back and inspected the sleeping body. There was no change in awareness or posture that I could detect.
  "You woke once," I declared. "You woke when Sybelle played her music for you, but then, taking the music back with
you, you returned to your selfish sleep. That's what it is, Lestat, selfish, because you've left behind those you made--
Louis and me. You've left us, and it's not fair of you to do it. You must come out of it, my beloved Master, you must rouse
yourself for Louis and for me."
  No change in the expression on his smooth face. His large violet eyes were too open for those of a dead man. But the
body gave no other sign of life.
  I leant down. I pressed my ear to his cold cheek. Though I couldn't read his thoughts as a fledging, surely I could divine
something of what went on in his soul.
  But nothing came to me. I turned on the music once more.
  I kissed him and left him there, and went to my lair, more ready for oblivion perhaps than I had ever been before.




                                                                 22


  THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, I went in search of Merrick.
  Her home in the derelict neighborhood was dark and uninhabited. Only the caretaker remained on the property. And it
was no problem for me to climb up to the second story window over the shed to see that the old fellow was contentedly
inside, drinking his beer and watching his monstrous color TV.
  I was dreadfully disconcerted. I felt that Merrick had all but promised to meet me, and where else if not in the old
house?
  I had to find her. I searched the city for her tirelessly, using every ounce of telepathic ability which I possessed.
  As for Louis, he was also absent. I returned to the flat in the Rue Royale more than four times during my search for
Merrick. And at no time did I find Louis or the simplest evidence that he'd been there.
  At last, very much against my better judgment, but desperate, I approached Oak Haven, the Motherhouse, to see if I
could spy Merrick within.
  The discovery took only a matter of minutes. As I stood in the thick oak forest to the far north of the building, I could
see her tiny figure in the library.
  Indeed Merrick sat in the very oxblood leather chair which she'd claimed for her own as a child when we first met.
Nestled in the cracked old leather, she appeared to be sleeping, but as I drew closer my fine vampiric senses confirmed
that she was drunk. I could make out the bottle of Flor de Caña rum beside her, and the glass. Both were empty.
  As for the other members, one was busy in the very same room, going over the shelves for some seemingly routine
matter, and several others were at home upstairs.
  I couldn't conceivably approach Merrick where she was. And I was keenly aware that Merrick might have planned this.
And if she had planned it, it might have been for her own mental safety, a cause of which I highly approved.
  Once released from that tidy little spectacle--Merrick out cold with no regard for what the other members thought of
her--I resumed my search for Louis from one end of the town to the next with no luck.
  The hours before dawn found me striding back and forth before the slumbering figure of Lestat in the darkened chapel,
explaining to him that Merrick had delivered herself into hiding and that Louis appeared to be gone.
  At last I sat down on the cold marble floor, as I had done the night before.
  "I'd know it, wouldn't I?" I demanded of my sleeping master. "If Louis has put an end to himself, isn't that so? I'd feel it
somehow, wouldn't I? If it happened at dawn yesterday, I would have felt it before I ever closed my eyes."
  Lestat gave no answer and there was no promise in his posture or facial expression that he ever would.
  I felt as if I were speaking fervently to one of the statues of the saints.
  When the second night went in exactly the same fashion, I was thoroughly unnerved.

  Whatever Merrick had done by day, I couldn't imagine, but once again she was drunk in the library, a slouched figure,
quite alone now, in one of her splendid silk shirtwaist dresses, this one a vivid red. While I watched from a safe distance,
one of the members, an old man whom I once knew and loved dearly, came into the library and covered up Merrick with a
white wool blanket that looked quite soft.
  I sped off lest I be detected.
  As for Louis, as I prowled those portions of the city which were always his favorites, I cursed myself that I'd been so
respectful of his mind that I'd never learnt to read it, so respectful of his privacy that I'd never learnt to scan for his
presence; cursed myself that I'd not bound him to a strong promise to meet me in the flat in the Rue Royale at a certain
time.
  At last the third night came.
  Having given up on Merrick to do anything but intoxicate herself thoroughly with rum in her typical fashion, I went
directly to the flat in the Rue Royale with the purpose of writing a note for Louis, should it be that he was stopping in
when I was not there.
  I was filled with misery. It now seemed entirely possible to me that Louis no longer existed in his earthly form. It
seemed entirely reasonable that he had let the morning sun cremate him precisely as he wanted, and that I was writing
words in this note that would never be read.
  Nevertheless, I sat down at Lestat's fancy desk in the back parlor, the desk which faces the room, and I wrote hastily.
  "'You must talk with me. You must let me talk with you. It's unfair for you not to do this. I am so anxious on your
behalf. Remember, L., that I did what you asked of me. I cooperated with you completely. Of course I had my motives.
I'm willing to admit them candidly. I missed her. My heart was breaking for her. But you must let me know how things go
with you.'"
  I had scarcely finished writing the initial "D," when I looked up and saw Louis standing in the hallway door.
  Quite unharmed, his black curly hair combed, he stood looking at me searchingly, and I, pleasantly shocked, sat back
and gave a deep sigh.
  "Look at you, and here I've been racing around like a madman," I said. I surveyed his handsome gray velvet suit, and the
dark-violet tie he wore with it. In amazement I noted the jeweled rings on his hands.
  "Why all this unusual attention to your person?" I asked. "Talk to me, man. I'm quite ready to go out of my mind."
  He shook his head, and gestured quickly with his longer slender hand for me to be quiet. He sat down on the couch
across the room and stared at me.
  "I've never seen you so fancily dressed," I said. "You're positively dapper. What's happened?"
  "I don't know what's happened," he said almost sharply. "You have to tell me." He gestured urgently. "Come here,
David, take your old chair here, sit close to me."
  I did as I was asked.
  He wasn't only handsomely turned out, he wore a faint masculine perfume.
  His eyes flashed on me with a nervous energy.
  "I can't think of anything but her, David. I tell you, it's as if I never loved Claudia," he confessed, his voice breaking. "I
mean it, it's as if I never knew love or grief before I met Merrick. It's as if I'm Merrick's slave. No matter where I go, no
matter what I do, I think of Merrick," he declared. "When I feed, the victim turns to Merrick in my very arms. Hush, don't
say anything till I'm finished. I think of Merrick when I lie in my coffin before the coming sunlight. I think of Merrick
when I wake up. I must go to Merrick, and as soon as I've fed, I go to where I can see her, David, yes, near the
Motherhouse, the place you long ago forbade us ever to trouble. I go there. I was there last night when you came to spy on
her. I saw you. The night before, I was there as well. I live for her, and the sight of her through those long windows only
inflames me, David. I want her. If she doesn't come out of that place soon, I tell you, whether I mean to or not, I'm going
in after her, though what I want of her, except to be with her, I swear to you, I can't say."
  "Stop it, Louis, let me explain what's happened--."
  "How the hell can you explain such a thing? Let me pour it out, man," he said. "Let me confess that it all began when I
laid eyes on her. You knew it. You saw it. You tried to warn me. But I had no idea that the feelings would become so very
intense. I was certain I could control them. Good Lord, how many mortals have I resisted over these two centuries, how
many times have I turned my back on some random soul who drew me so painfully that I had to weep?"
  "Stop it, Louis, listen to me."
  "I won't hurt her, David," he said, "I swear it. I don't want to hurt her. I can't bear the thought of feeding from her as I
once did from Claudia, oh, that awful awful mistake, the making of Claudia. I won't hurt her, I swear it, but I must see her,
I must be with her, I must hear her voice. David, can you get her out of Oak Haven? Can you make her meet with me?

Can you make her stop her love affair with her rum and come to her old house? You must be able to do it. I tell you, I'm
losing my mind."
  He had scarcely paused when I broke in and would not be silenced.
  "She's fixed you, Louis!" I declared. "It's a spell. Now, you must be quiet and listen to me. I know her tricks. And I
know magic. And hers is a magic as old as Egypt, as old as Rome and Greece. She's fixed you, man, made you fall in love
with her through witchcraft. Damn, I should have never let her keep that bloodstained dress. No wonder she wouldn't let
me touch it. It had your blood on it. Oh, what a fool I was not to see what she was doing. We even talked of such charms
together. Oh, she is beyond all patience. I let her keep that bloodstained silk dress, and she's used it to make an age-old
charm."
  "No, that's not possible," he said caustically. "I simply won't accept it. I love her, David. You force me to use the words
that will hurt you most of all. I love her, and I want her; I want her company, I want the wisdom and the kindness that I
saw in her. It's no spell."
  "It is, man, believe me," I said. "I know her and I know magic. She used your blood to do it. Don't you see, this woman
not only believes in magic, she understands it. Perhaps a million mortal magicians have lived and died during the past
millennia, but how many of them were the genuine article? She knows what she's doing! Your blood was in the weave of
her own garment. She's cast a spell on you that I don't know how to break!"
  He was silent but not for very long.
  "I don't believe you," he said. "No, it can't be true. I feel this too completely."
  "Think back, Louis, on what I told you of her, of the visions of her I had after our first contact only a few nights ago.
You remember, I told you I saw her everywhere--."
  "This is not the same. I'm speaking of my heart, David--."
  "It is the same, man," I insisted. "I saw her everywhere, and after we saw the vision of Claudia, Merrick admitted to me
that those visions of her were part of a spell. I told you all this, Louis. I told you about her little altar in the hotel room, the
way she'd gotten my handkerchief with my blood on it from the sweat of my brow. Louis, pay attention."
  "You're vilifying her," he said as gently as he could, "and I won't have it. I don't see her in that manner. I think of her
and want her. I want the woman I saw in that room. What will you tell me next? That Merrick wasn't beautiful? That
Merrick wasn't filled with innate sweetness? That Merrick wasn't the one mortal in thousands whom I might come to
love?"
  "Louis, do you trust yourself in her presence?" I demanded.
  "Yes, I trust myself," he answered righteously. "You think I would harm her?"
  "I think you have learnt the meaning of the word 'desire.'"
  "The desire is to be in her company, David. It's to be close to her. It's to talk with her about what I saw. It's . . ." His
voice trailed off. He shut his eyes tight for a moment. "It's unbearable, this need of her, this longing for her. And she hides
in that huge house in the country, and I can't be near to her without hurting the Talamasca, without rupturing the delicate
privacy on which our very existence depends."
  "Thank God you have that much sense," I said forcefully. "I tell you it is a spell, and if you trust yourself with her, then
as soon as she leaves that house, we'll go together and ask her! We'll demand the truth from her. Demand from her
whether or not this is nothing but a spell."
  "Nothing," he repeated the word contemptuously, "nothing, you say, nothing but a spell?" He peered into my eyes
accusingly. Never had I seen him so hostile. In fact, never had I seen him hostile at all. "You don't want me to love her, do
you? It's just as simple as all that."
  "No, it isn't, truly it isn't. But say for instance that you're right, that there is no spell, and only your heart's speaking to
you; do I want this love of her to increase in you? No, definitely not. We made a vow, you and I, that this woman wouldn't
be hurt by us, that we wouldn't destroy her fragile mortal world with our desires! Keep to that vow if you love her so
damned much, Louis. That's what loving her means, you realize. It means leaving her completely alone."
  "I can't do it," he whispered. He shook his head. "She deserves to know what my heart is telling me. She deserves that
truth. Nothing will ever come of it, nothing can, but she ought to know it. She ought to know that I'm devoted to her, that
she's supplanted a grief in me which could have destroyed me, which may destroy me still."
  "This is intolerable," I said. I was so angry with Merrick. "I propose we approach Oak Haven. But you must allow me to
direct what we do there. If I can, I'll draw close to the window, and I'll try to wake her. It's possible, in the small hours,
that she'll be alone on the main floor. I might possibly be able to go inside. Nights ago I would have considered such an
act unconscionable. But remember, you must leave such a gesture to me."
  He nodded. "I want to be near her. But I must feed first. I can't be thirsting when I see her. That would be foolish. Come
with me to hunt. And then, after midnight, well after midnight, we'll approach."

  It didn't take us long to find our victims.
  It was the hour of two a.m. when we drew close to Oak Haven, and, as I'd hoped, the house was darkened throughout.
No one remained awake. It took me only a few moments to survey the library.
  Merrick wasn't there. Her rum and her glass weren't there, either. And when I went along the upper galleries, as quietly
as I could, I did not find her in her room.
  I came back to Louis in the thick of the oaks, as he waited.
  "She's not at Oak Haven. I feel we've miscalculated. She must be at her home in New Orleans. She's probably there
waiting, waiting for her little spell to do its work."
  "You can't go on despising her for all this," Louis said angrily. "David, for the love of Heaven, allow me to go to her
alone."
  "Not a chance of it," I answered.
  We proceeded towards the city.
  "You can't approach her with this contempt for her," said Louis. "Let me talk to her. You can't prevent it. You have no
right."
  "I will be there when you talk to her," I said coldly. And I meant to keep my word.
  When we reached the old house in New Orleans, I knew immediately that Merrick was at home.
  Bidding Louis to wait, I went around the property, as I had several nights ago, made certain the caretaker had been sent
off, and indeed, he had been, and then I returned to Louis, and I said we could approach the door.
  As for Merrick, I knew she was in the front bedroom. The parlor didn't mean much to her. It was Great Nananne's room
that she loved.
  "I want to go alone," said Louis. "You can wait here, if you wish."
  He was on the porch before I'd moved, but I quickly caught up with him. He opened the unlocked front door, its leaded
glass glinting in the light.
  Once inside he went into the large front bedroom. I was just behind him.
  I saw Merrick, as lovely as ever in a dress of red silk, rise from her rocking chair and fly into his arms.
  Every particle of my being was on alert for danger, and my heart was breaking in two. The room was dreamy and sweet
with its vigilant candles.
  And they loved each other, this pair of beings, Louis and Merrick, there was no denying it. I watched silently as Louis
kissed Merrick repeatedly, as he ran his long white fingers through her hair. I watched as he kissed her long throat.
  He drew back and he let out a long sigh.
  "A spell, is it?" he asked her, but the question was really meant for me. "That I can think of nothing but you, no matter
where I go, or what I do? That in each victim I take, I find you? Oh, yes, think on it, Merrick, think on what I do to
survive, don't please live in dreams. Think of the awful price of this power. Think of the Purgatory in which I live."
  "Am I with you in that Purgatory?" asked Merrick. "Do I give you some consolation in the very midst of the fire? My
days and nights without you have been Purgatory. I understand your suffering. I did before we ever looked into each
other's eyes."
  "Tell him the truth, Merrick," I said. I stood apart from them, near the door. "Speak true words, Merrick. He'll know if
you're lying. Is this a spell you've put over him? Don't lie to me, either, Merrick."
  She broke away from him for the moment. She looked at me.
  "What did I give you with my spell, David?" she said. "What was it but random visions? Did you feel desire?" She
looked again at Louis. "What do you want from me, Louis? To hear that my soul is your slave as surely as your soul is
mine? If that's a spell, we've fixed each other with it, Louis. David knows I speak the truth."
  Try as I might, I could find no lie in her. What I found were secrets, and I couldn't crack them open. Her thoughts were
too well guarded.
  "You play a game," I said. "What is it you want?"
  "No, David, you mustn't speak to her in that manner," said Louis, "I won't tolerate it. Go now and let me talk to her.
She's safer with me than Claudia ever was or any mortal I've ever touched. Go now, David. Let me alone with her. Or I
swear, man, it will be a battle between you and me."
  "David, please," said Merrick. "Let me have these few hours with him; then the rest will be as you wish. I want him here
with me. I want to talk to him. I want to tell him that the spirit was a liar. I need to do that slowly, I need an atmosphere of
intimacy and trust."
  She came towards me, the red silk rustling as she walked. I caught her perfume. She put her arms around me and I felt
the warmth of her naked breasts beneath the thin cloth.
  "Go now, David, please," she said, her voice full of gentle emotion, her face compassionate as she looked into my eyes.

  Never in all my years of knowing her, wanting her, missing her--had anything hurt so much as this simple request.
  "Go." I repeated the word in a small voice. "Leave you both together? Go?"
  I looked into her eyes for a long moment. How she seemed to suffer, how she seemed to implore me. And then I turned
to Louis, who watched with an innocent anxious expression, as if his fate was in my hands.
  "Harm her and I swear to you," I said, "your wish for death will be granted." My voice was low and too full of malice.
"I tell you I'm strong enough to destroy you in precisely the way you fear."
  I saw the terrible dismay in his expression.
  "It will be by fire," I said, "and it will be slowly, if you harm her." I paused. Then: "I give you my word."
  I saw him swallow hard and then he nodded. It seemed there was much he wanted to say to me, and his eyes were sad
and eloquent of a deeper pain. At last he murmured in answer:
  "Trust me, my brother. You needn't make such terrible threats to one you cherish, and I needn't hear them, not when
both of us love this mortal woman so very much."
  I turned to her. Her eyes were on Louis. She was as distant from me in these moments as she had ever been. I kissed her
tenderly. She scarcely looked at me, returning my kisses as if she must remind herself to do it, as smitten with Louis as he
was with her.
  "Goodbye for now, my precious," I whispered, and I went out of the house.
  For one moment, I considered remaining, concealed in the shrubbery, spying upon both of them as they talked to each
other inside the front room. It seemed the wise thing to do, to remain nearby, for her protection; and it seemed the very
thing she would hate.
  She would know I was there more surely than Louis could ever know it--know as she had known that night when I
came to her window at Oak Haven, know with a witch's sensibility that was stronger than his vampiric powers, know and
condemn me utterly for what I tried to do.
  When I thought of the possibility of her coming out to accuse me, when I thought of the humiliation I might risk with
such a choice, I left the house behind me and walked fast, and alone, uptown.
  Once again, in the desolate chapel of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage, Lestat was my confidant.
  And once again, I was certain that no spirit occupied his body. To my woes he gave no ear.
  I only prayed that Merrick would be safe, that Louis would not risk my rage, and that some night Lestat's soul would
return to his body, because I needed him. I needed him desperately. I felt alone with all my years and all my lessons, with
all my experiences and all my pain.
  The sky was growing dangerously light when I left Lestat and made my way to the secret place, below an abandoned
building where I kept the iron coffin in which I lie.
  This is no unusual configuration among our kind--the sad old building, my title to it, or the cellar room cut off from the
world above by iron doors no mortal could independently seek to lift.
  I had lain down in the frigid darkness, the cover of the casket in its place, when I was suddenly overcome with the
strangest panic. It was as if someone were speaking to me, demanding that I listen, seeking to tell me that I had made a
dreadful error, and that I would pay for it with my conscience; that I had done a foolish and vain thing.
  It was too late for me to respond to this lively mixture of emotion. The morning crept over me, stealing all warmth and
life from me. And the last thought I remember was that I had left the two of them alone out of vanity, because they had
excluded me. I had behaved like a schoolboy out of vanity, and I would pay as the result.
  Inevitably the sunset followed on the sunrise, and, after some unmeasured sleep, I woke to the new evening, my eyes
open, my hands reaching at once for the lid of the coffin and then withdrawing and falling to my sides.
  Something kept me from opening the coffin just yet. Even though I hated its stifling atmosphere, I remained in this, the
only true blackness ever bequeathed to my powerful vampire eyes.
  I remained, because last night's panic had come back to me--that keen awareness that I'd been a proud fool to leave
Merrick and Louis alone. It seemed some turbulence in the very air surrounded me, indeed, penetrated the iron of the
coffin so that I might breathe it into my lungs.
  Something has gone horridly wrong, yet it was inevitable, I thought dismally, and I lay motionless, as if fixed by one of
Merrick's ruthless spells. But it was not a spell of her doing. It was grief and regretterrible, harrowing regret.
  I had lost her to Louis. Of course I'd find her unharmed, for nothing on earth could make Louis give her the Dark Blood,
I reasoned, nothing, not even Merrick's own pleas. And as for her, she would never request it, never be fool enough to
relinquish her brilliant and unique soul. No, it was grief because they loved each other, those two, and I'd brought them
together, and now they would have whatever might have belonged to Merrick and me.
  Well, I could not mourn for it. It was done, and I must go and find them now, I reasoned. I must go and find them
together, and see the manner in which they looked at each other, and I must wring more promises from them, which was

nothing more than a means of interposing myself between them, and then I must accept that Louis had become the
brilliant star for Merrick, and by that light I shone no more.
  Only after a long while did I open the coffin, the lid creaking loudly, and step out of it, and begin my assent, up through
the steps of the damp old cellar, towards the dreary rooms above.
  At last I came to a stop in a great unused brick-walled room which had once many years ago served as a department
store. Nothing remained now of its former glory except a few very dirty display cases and broken shelves, and a thick
layer of soil on its old uneven wooden floor.
  I stood in the spring heat and in the soft dust, breathing in the scent of the mold and the red bricks around me, and
peering towards the unwashed show windows, beyond which the street, now much neglected, gave forth its few persistent
and sorrowful lights.
  Why was I standing here?
  Why had I not gone directly out to meet Louis and Merrick? Why had I not gone to feed, if it was blood I wanted, and
indeed, I did thirst, I knew that much. Why did I stand alone in the shadows, waiting, as if for my grief to be redoubled, as
if for my loneliness to be sharpened, so that I would hunt with the fine-tuned senses of a beast?
  Then, gradually, the awareness stole over me, separating me totally from the melancholy surroundings, so I tingled in
every portion of my being as my eyes saw what my mind wanted desperately to deny.
  Merrick stood before me in the very red silk of last night's brief meeting, and all her physiognomy was changed by the
Dark Gift.
  Her creamy skin was almost luminous with vampiric powers; her green eyes had taken on the iridescence so common to
Lestat, Armand, Marius, yes, yes, and yes again, yes, all of the rest. Her long brown hair had its unholy luster, and her
beautiful lips their inevitable, eternal, and perfect unnatural sheen.
  "David," she cried out, even her distinctive voice colored by the blood inside her, and she flew into my arms.
  "Oh, dear God in Heaven, how could I have let it happen!" I was unable to touch her, my hands hovering above her
shoulders, and suddenly I gave in to the embrace with all my heart. "God forgive me. God forgive me!" I cried out even as
I held her tight enough to harm her, held her close to me as if no one could ever pry her loose. I didn't care if mortals
heard me. I didn't care if all the world knew.
  "No, David, wait," she begged as I went to speak again. "You don't understand what's happened. He's done it, David,
he's gone into the sun. He did it at dawn, after he'd taken me and hidden me away, and showed me everything he could,
and promised me that he would meet me tonight. He's done it, David. He's gone, and there's nothing left of him now that
isn't burnt black."
  The terrible tears flooding down her cheeks were glittering with unwholesome blood.
  "David, can't you do anything to rescue him? Can't you do anything to bring him back? It's all my fault that it happened.
David, I knew what I was doing, I led him into it, I worked him so skillfully. I did use his blood and I used the silk of my
dress. I used every power natural and unnatural. I'll confess to more when there's time for it. I'll pour it all out to you. It's
my fault that he's gone, I swear it, but can't you bring him back?"




                                                                23


  HE HAD DONE a most careful thing.
  He had brought his coffin, a relic of venerable age and luster, to the rear courtyard of the town house in the Rue Royale,
a most secluded and high-walled place.
  He had left his last letter on the desk upstairs, a desk which all of us--I, Lestat, and Louis--had at one time used for
important writings of our own. Then he had gone down into the courtyard, and he had removed the lid from the coffin,
and he had laid down in it to receive the morning sun.
  He had addressed to me his candid farewell.

     If I am correct I will be cremated by the sunlight. I am not old enough to remain as one severely burned, or young
  enough to bequeath bloody flesh to those who come to carry off what is left. I shall be ashes as Claudia once was ashes,
  and you, my beloved David, must scatter those ashes for me.

     That you will oversee my final release is quite beyond doubt, for by the time you come upon what is left of me, you
  will have seen Merrick and you will know the measure of my treachery and the measure of my love.
     Yes, I plead love in the matter of what I've done in creating Merrick a vampire. I cannot lie to you on this score. But if
  it matters at all, let me assure you that I imagined I meant only to frighten her, to bring her close to death so as to deter
  her, to force her to beg to be saved.
     But once begun, the process was brought by me to a speedy conclusion, with the purest ambition and the purest
  yearning I've ever known. And now--being the romantic fool I have always been, being the champion of questionable
  actions and little endurance, being quite unable as always to live with the price of my will and my desires, I bequeath to
  you this exquisite fledgling, Merrick, whom I know you will love with an educated heart.
     Whatever your hatred of me, I ask that you give to Merrick the few jewels and relics I possess. I ask that you give
  over to her also all those paintings which I have collected so haphazardly over the centuries, paintings which have
  become masterpieces in my eyes and in the eyes of the world. Anything of worth should be hers if only you concur.
     As for my sweet Master, Lestat, when he wakes, tell him that I went into the darkness without hoping for his
  terrifying angels, that I went into the darkness expecting only the whirlwind, or the nothingness, both of which he has in
  his own words so often described. Ask him to forgive me that I could not wait to take my leave of him.
     Which brings me now to you, my friend. I do not hope for your forgiveness. Indeed, I do not even ask.
     I don't believe you can bring me back from the ashes to torment me, but if you think you can, and you succeed with it,
  your will be done. That I have betrayed your trust is beyond doubt. No talk from Merrick of her potent spells can excuse
  my actions, though in fact, she does indeed claim to have brought me to her with magic I cannot understand.
     What I understand is that I love her, and cannot think of existence without her. Yet existence is no longer something
  which I can contemplate at all.
     I go now to what I regard as a certainty; the form of death which took my Claudia--relentless, inescapable, absolute.

  That was the letter, written in his archaic hand on new parchment paper, the letters tall yet deeply impressed. And the
body? Had he guessed correctly, and had he become ashes like the child he'd lost to bitter fortune so long ago? Quite
simply, no. In the lidless coffin, open to the night air, there lay a burnt black replica of the being I had known as Louis, as
seemingly solid as any ancient mummy stripped of its wrappings, flesh closed securely over all visible bone. The clothes
were severely scorched yet intact. The coffin was blackened around the gruesome figure. The face and hands--indeed, the
entire form--was untouched by the wind and included the most minute detail.
  And there beside it, on her knees on the cold paving stones, was Merrick, gazing down at the coal-black body, her hands
clasped in grief.
  Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached forward, and with her tender first finger touched the back of Louis's burnt hand. At
once, she drew back in horror. I saw no impression made in the blackened flesh.
  "It's hard as coal, David," she cried. "How can the wind scatter these remains unless you take them from the coffin and
trample them underfoot? You can't do it, David. Tell me you cannot."
  "No, I can't do it!" I declared. I began to pace frantically. "Oh, what a thankless and miserable legacy," I whispered.
"Louis, I would I could bury you as you were."
  "That could be the most dreadful cruelty," she said imploringly. "David, can he still be living in this form? David, you
know the stories of the vampires better than I do. David, can he still be alive in this form?"
  Back and forth I went past her, without answering her, past the lifeless effigy in its charred clothing, and I looked up
listlessly, miserably, to the distant stars.
  Behind me, I heard her crying softly, giving full vent to emotions which now raged inside her with a new vigor,
passions that would sweep over her so totally no human could gauge what she felt.
  "David," she called out to me. I could hear her weeping.
  Slowly I turned to look down on her as she knelt beside him, appealing to me as if I were one of her saints.
  "David, if you cut your wrist, if you let the blood flow down onto him, what will happen, will he come back?"
  "That's just it, my darling, I don't know. I know only he's done as he wished and he's told me what he would have me
do."
  "But you can't let him go so easily," she protested. "David, please.. . " Helplessly, her voice died away.
  A faint stirring of the air caught the banana trees. I turned and looked at the body in terror. All the garden around us
whispered and sighed against the brick walls. But the body remained intact, immobile, safe in its burnt sanctuary.
  But another breeze would come, something stronger. Maybe even the rain would come, as it did so often on these warm
spring nights, and it would wash away the face, with its closed eyes, which was so visible still.

  I couldn't find words to stop her crying. I couldn't find words to confess my heart. Was he gone, or was he lingering?
And what would he have me do now--not last night when in the safety of the morning twilight he'd written his brave
letter, but now, now, if he were locked in the form in the burnt wooden box.
  What had been his thoughts when the sun had risen, when he'd felt the fatal weakness and then the inevitable fire? He
hadn't the strength of the great ones to climb from his coffin and bury himself deep under fresh earth. Had he regretted his
actions? Did he feel intolerable pain? Could I not learn something merely from studying his still burnt face or his hands?
  I came back to the side of the coffin. I saw that his head was laid there as properly as that of any body to be formally
interred. I saw that his hands were clasped loosely over his chest, as an undertaker might have placed them. He had not
reached to shield his eyes. He had not tried to turn his back on death.
  But what did these aspects of the matter really mean?
  Perhaps he hadn't had the strength to do those things in the final moments. He had been numb with the coming of the
light until it filled his eyes and made him shut them. Did I dare to touch the fragile blackened flesh? Did I dare to see if
the eyes were still there?
  I was lost in these hideous thoughts, lost and wanting only some other sound except that of Merrick's soft tears.
  I went to the iron steps, which came down in a curve from the upstairs balcony. And I sat down on the step which
provided for me the most comfortable rest. I put my face in my hands.
  "Scatter the remains," I whispered. "If only the others were here."
  At once, as if in answer to my pathetic prayer, I heard the creak of the carriageway gate. I heard the low shriek of its old
hinges as it was thrown open, and then the click as it was closed once more, iron upon iron.
  No scent of a mortal signaled an intruder. In fact, I knew the step that was approaching. I had heard it so many times in
my life both mortal and preternatural. Yet I didn't dare to believe in such a rescue from my misery, until the unheralded
figure appeared in the courtyard, his velvet coat dusty, his yellow hair tangled, his violet eyes looking at once to the grim
and appalling visage of Louis:
  It was Lestat.
  With an awkward step, as though his body, so long unused, revolted against him, he made his way closer to Merrick,
who turned her tearstained face to him as if she too were seeing a Savior come in answer to her directionless prayers.
  She sat back, a low sigh escaping her lips.
  "So it's come to this, has it?" Lestat asked. His voice was hoarse, as it had been when he was waked by Sybelle's music,
the very last time he'd abandoned his endless sleep.
  He turned and looked to me, his smooth face devoid of warmth or expression, the thin light from the distant street
illuminating his fierce eyes as he looked away and back to the body in the coffin on the stones. I think his eyes quivered. I
think his whole body shivered ever so slightly as though the simplest movements were exhausting him, as if he longed to
rub the backs of his own arms and beat a hasty retreat.
  But he was not about to abandon us.
  "Come here, David," he said, appealing to me kindly in the same hoarse whisper. "Come, and listen. I can't hear him. I
made him. Listen, and tell me if he's there."
  I obeyed him. I stood beside him.
  "He's like coal, Lestat," I answered quickly. "I haven't dared to touch him. Should we do it?"
  Slowly, languidly, Lestat turned to look down again at the painful sight.
  "His skin feels firm, I tell you," Merrick said quickly. She rose to her feet and backed away from the coffin, inviting
Lestat to take her place. "Test it yourself, Lestat," she said. "Come, touch him." Her voice was full of suppressed pain.
  "And you?" Lestat asked reaching out for her, clasping her shoulder with his right hand. "What do you hear, chérie?" he
asked in his raw whisper.
  She shook her head. "Silence," she said, her lips trembling, the blood tears having left their streaks on her pale cheeks.
"But then he brought me over. I charmed him, I seduced him. He had no chance against my plan. And now this, this for
my interference, this, and I can hear the mortals whispering in the houses near to us, but I hear nothing from him."
  "Merrick," he pressed. "Listen as you've always been able to listen. Be the witch now, still, if you can't be the vampire.
Yes, I know, he made you. But a witch you were before that." He looked from one to the other of us, some little visible
emotion quickening in him. "Tell me if he wants to come back."
  The tears came to her eyes again. Grieving, miserable, she looked down at the seeming corpse.
  "He could be crying for life," she said, "but I can't hear it. The witch in me hears nothing but silence. And the human
being in me knows only remorse. Lestat, give your blood to him. Bring him back."
  Lestat turned from her to me.
  She reached out for his arm, and forced him to look again at her.

   "Work your magic," she said in a low heated and insistent tone. "Work your magic and believe in it as I worked mine."
   He nodded, covering her hand gently as if to soothe her, most certainly to soothe her.
   "Speak to me, David," he said in his roughened voice. "What does he want, David? Did he do this thing because he
made Merrick, and he thought for that he should pay with his life?"
   How could I answer? How could I be faithful now to all my companion had confided over so many nights?
   "I hear nothing," I said. "But then it is an old habit, not spying on his thoughts, not ravaging his soul. It is an old habit
letting him do what he wishes, only now and then offering him the strong blood, never challenging his weaknesses. I hear
nothing. I hear nothing, but what does it mean that I hear nothing? I walk in the cemeteries of this city at night and I hear
nothing. I walk among mortals and sometimes I hear nothing. I walk alone and I hear nothing, as if I myself had no inner
voice."
   I looked down at his blackened face again. I could see the perfect image of his mouth there. And now I realized that
even the hairs of his head remained intact.
   "I hear nothing," I said, "and yet I see spirits. Many a time I have seen spirits. Many a time they've come to me. Is there
a spirit lurking there in those remains? I don't know."
   Lestat appeared to stagger, as if from a constitutional weakness, then he forced himself to remain upright. I felt ashamed
when I saw the gray dust coating the velvet of his long sleeves. I felt ashamed when I saw the knots and dirt in his thick
flowing hair. But these things didn't matter to him.
   Nothing mattered to him but the figure in the coffin, and, as Merrick wept, he reached out almost absently and put his
right arm around her, gathering her against his powerful body, and saying in a hoarse whisper,
   "There, there, chérie. He did what he wanted."
   "But it's gone wrong!" she answered. The words spilled out of her. "He's too old for one day's fire to end it. And he may
be locked inside these charred remains in fear of what's to come. He might, like a dying man, hear us in his fatal trance
and be unable to respond." She moaned plaintively as she continued: "He may be crying for us to help him, and we stand
here and we argue and we pray."
   "And if I spill my blood down into this coffin now," Lestat asked her, "what do you think will come back? Do you think
it will be our Louis that will rise in these burnt rags? What if it's not, chérie, what if it's some wounded revenant that we
must destroy?"
   "Choose life, Lestat," she said. She turned to him, pulled loose of him, and appealed to him. "Choose life, no matter in
what form. Choose life and bring him back. If he would die, it can be finished afterwards."
   "My blood's too strong now, chérie," said Lestat. He cleared his throat and wiped at the dust on his own eyelids. He ran
his hand into his hair and pulled it roughly out of his face. "My blood will make a monster of what's there."
   "Do it! " she said. "And if he wants to die, if he asks again, then I will be his servant in his extremity, I promise you."
How seductive were her eyes, her voice. "I'll make a brew that he can swallow, of poisons in the blood of animals, the
blood of wild things. I'll feed him such a potion that he'll sleep as the sun rises." Her voice became more impassioned.
"He'll sleep, and should he live again to sunset, I'll be his guardian through the night until the sun rises again."
   For a long time, Lestat's brilliant violet eyes were fastened to her, as though he were considering her will, her plan, her
very commitment, and then slowly he turned his eyes to me.
   "And you, beloved one? What would you have me do?" he asked. His face had now a livelier aspect to it, for all his
sorrow.
   "I can't tell you," I said, shaking my head. "You've come and it's your decision, yours by right, because you are the
eldest and I'm thankful that you're here." Then I found myself prey to the most awful and grim considerations, and I
looked down at the dark figure again, and up once more to Lestat.
   "If I had tried and failed," I said, "I would want to come back."
   What was it that made me give voice to such a sentiment? Was it fear? I couldn't say. But it was true, and I knew it, as if
my lips had sought to instruct my heart.
   "Yes, if I had seen the sun rise," I said, "and I had lived past it, I might well have lost my courage, and courage he very
much required."
   Lestat seemed to be considering these things. How could he not? Once, he himself had gone into the sunlight in a distant
desert place, and, having been burnt again and again, without release, he came back. His skin was still golden from this
hurtful and terrible disaster. He would carry that imprint of the sun's power for many years to come.
   Straightaway, he stepped in front of Merrick, and as both of us watched, he knelt down beside the coffin, and he moved
very close to the figure, and then he drew back. With his fingers, quite as delicately as she had done it, he touched the
blackened hands, and he left no mark. Slowly, lightly, he touched the forehead, and once more, he left no mark.

   He drew back, kneeling up, and, lifting his right hand to his mouth, he gashed his wrist with his own teeth before either
Merrick or I knew what he meant to do.
   At once a thick stream of blood poured down onto the perfectly molded face of the figure in the coffin, and as the vein
sought to heal itself, again Lestat gashed it and let the blood flow.
   "Help me, Merrick. Help me, David!" he called out. "What I've begun I'll pay for, but do not let it fail. I need you now."
   At once, I went to join him, pushing back my awkward cotton cuff and tearing the flesh of my wrist with my eye teeth.
Merrick knelt at the very foot of the coffin, and from her tender fledgling wrist the blood had begun to flow.
   A pungent smoke rose from the remains in front of us. The blood appeared to seep into every pore of the figure. It
drenched the burnt clothing. And, tearing aside this fabric, Lestat gave yet another gush of blood to his frantic work.
   The smoke was a thick layer above the bloody remains before us. I couldn't see through it. But I could hear a faint
murmuring, a terrible agonized groan. On and on I let the blood flow, my preternatural skin seeking to heal and halt the
operation, and my teeth coming to my rescue again and again.
   Suddenly a cry came from Merrick. I saw before me in the haze the figure of Louis sitting up from the coffin, his face a
mass of tiny lines and wrinkles. I saw Lestat reach out for him and take hold of his head and press it to his throat.
   "Drink now, Louis," he commanded.
   "Don't stop, David," said Merrick. "The blood, he needs it, every part of his body is drinking it."
   I obeyed, only then realizing that I was growing weaker and weaker, that I could not remain steady, and that she herself
was tumbling forward yet still determined to go on.
   I saw below me a naked foot, and then the outline of a man's leg, and then, quite visible in the semi-darkness, the hard
muscles of a man's chest.
   "Harder, yes, take it from me," came Lestat's low insistent command. He spoke in French now. "Harder, more of it, take
it, take all that I have to give."
   My vision was hopeless. It seemed the entire courtyard was full of a pungent vapor, and the two forms--Louis and
Lestat--shimmered for a moment before I felt myself lie down on the cool soothing stones, before I felt Merrick's soft
body snuggled beside me, before I smelled the sweet lovely perfume of Merrick's hair. My head rolled on the stones as I
tried to raise my hands, but could not.
   I closed my eyes. I saw nothing, and then when I opened them, Louis stood there, naked and restored and gazing down
at me, his figure covered in a thin film of blood, as though he were a newborn, and I saw the green of his eyes, and the
white of his teeth.
   I heard Lestat's sore voice again. "More, Louis," he said. "More, take it."
   "But David and Merrick--," said Louis.
   And Lestat answered, "David and Merrick will be all right."




                                                               24


   WE BATHED HIM and dressed him, all of us together, in the upstairs rooms.
   His skin had a white sheen to it, due to the near omnipotent blood of Lestat which had so restored him, and it was plain
as we helped him with the smallest articles of clothing that he was not the same Louis whom we had so often dared to pity
in the strength of our love.
   At last, when he was comfortably covered in a loose black turtleneck shirt and cotton pants, his shoes tied, and his thick
black hair combed, he sat down with us in the back parlor--that gathering place which had been witness to so many
agreeable discussions in my brief preternatural life.
   His eyes would now have to be masked with sunglasses, for they'd taken on the iridescence which had always burdened
Lestat. But what of the inner being? What had he to say to us as we all looked at him, as we all waited for him to share his
thoughts?
   He settled more deeply into the dark velvet chair and looked about himself as if he were a monstrous newborn, dropped
whole and entire into life, by myth or legend. And only gradually did his sharp green eyes move to us.

  Lestat had by this time brushed off the cumbersome covering of dust he wore, and taken from his own closet a new coat
of dark-brown velvet, and fresh linen, so that he wore his usual thick and faintly discolored old lace. He had shaken out
his hair and combed it, and put on new boots.
  In sum, we made a fine picture, the four of us, though Merrick, in her customary shirtwaist of silk, bore some few stains
of blood. The dress was red, however, and showed little or nothing to the eye, and about her neck she wore--and had
worn all evening, of course--my gift to her of years ago, the triple-strand necklace of pearls.
  I suppose I found some solace in these details, and so I record them. But that detail which had the most salubrious effect
upon me was the calm, wondering expression on Louis's face.
  Let me add that Merrick had been greatly weakened by the blood she'd given to our communal effort, and I could see
that shortly she must go out to be the vampire in the most dark and dangerous streets of the city, and it was my vow that I
would go at her side.
  I had too well rehearsed in my imagination what it might mean to have her with us for me to claim now some rigid
moral shock. As for her beauty, Louis's gentle blood of nights past had greatly enhanced it, and her green eyes were all the
more vivid, though she could still pass for human with comparative ease.
  The resurrection of Louis had taken all of her heart's reserve, it seemed, and she settled on the settee beside the comely
figure of Lestat, as though she might like nothing better than to fall asleep.
  How well she concealed the thirst she must be feeling, I thought to myself, only to see her raise her head and glance at
me. She had read my thoughts.
  "Only a glimmer," she said. "I don't want to know more than that."
  I made a concerted effort to conceal whatever I was feeling, thinking it best for all of us to follow such a rule, as Louis
and Lestat and I had followed it in the past.
  At last it was Lestat who broke the silence.
  "It's not complete," he said, staring sharply at Louis. "It requires more blood." His voice was strong now and
wonderfully familiar to my ears. He was speaking his usual American English. "It requires," he said, "that you drink from
me, Louis, and that I give the blood back. It requires no less than that to give you all the strength that's mine to give and
not lose. I want you to take it now without argument, as much for my sake, perhaps, as your own."
  Just for a moment Lestat's face became haggard again, as if he were the sleepwalker he'd been when last he rose. But
within a split second his vitality returned, and he went on to the purpose, addressing me:
  "And you, David, take Merrick with you, and go out now and feed to replenish what you've lost. Teach her, David, what
she needs to know, though I think she is well versed in everything already. I think that Louis, in the little time he had last
night, has instructed her rather well."
  I was certain that Louis would rouse himself from his solemn silence and protest against Lestat's domination, but he did
nothing of the sort. In fact, I detected in him a visible self-confidence which he had not possessed in the past.
  "Yes, do it, give me all you can," he said in a low vigorous tone. "And what of Merrick? Will you give your potent
blood to her as well?"
  Lestat was even surprised at such an easy victory. He rose to his feet. I took Merrick by the hand and made to go.
  "Yes," Lestat answered, pushing back his blond hair from his face. "I'll give my blood to Merrick if Merrick wants it.
Merrick, it's what I want above anything else, I assure you. But it is your choice whether or not you take the Dark Gift
from me again. Once you drink from me, you'll be quite as strong as David and Louis. Once you drink from me, we will
all be fit companions for each other. And that's precisely my desire."
  "Yes, I want it," she answered. "But I need to hunt first, do I not?"
  He nodded, and made a small eloquent gesture for us to leave him with Louis alone.
  I took her with me quickly down the iron steps and out and away from the Quarter.
  We walked in silence except for the tantalizing click of her heels on the pavement. At once we came to the blighted and
shabby neighborhood where her old house stood.
  We did not go to her house, however. We pushed on.
  Finally a sweet laugh escaped her lips, and she stopped me long enough for her to deposit a kiss on my cheek. She had
things to say but she was cut off.
  A large American automobile came crawling close to us, and we could hear from behind its thick windows the deep
bass of the radio, and the nasty words of a hateful song. It seemed like so much of modern music, a din to drive human
beings mad.
  The car stopped only a few feet ahead of us, and we continued on. I knew the two mortals in the car meant to hurt us; I
sang their requiem. Perhaps I smiled. It is a sinister thing, but I believe I smiled.

  What I did not expect was the quick snap of a gun, and the shining streak of a bullet before my eyes. Merrick's laugh
came again, for she too had seen its brilliant arc before us.
  The door of the car opened, and a dark shape moved towards Merrick, and she turned, extending her slender arms in
welcome, and caught her victim in midstep. I saw the man freeze as she sank her teeth; I saw him go limp; I saw her arms
easily hold his bulk. I smelled the blood, and I was nothing if not the vampire.
  Out of the car came the driver, abandoning his running engine and outraged by the little scheme of rape or robbery gone
wrong. Once again the gun gave its loud crack, but the bullet was lost in the blackness.
  I rushed the assailant and caught him as simply as she had caught her prey. My teeth were swift and the taste of the
blood magnificent. Never have I drunk so greedily, so urgently. Never have I played it out, swimming for elastic moments
in the desperate memories and dreams of this sad individual before I quietly flung his remains away from me and out of
sight in the high grass of an abandoned lot.
  Swiftly, Merrick deposited her dying victim in the same overgrown patch of earth.
  "You healed the puncture wounds?" I questioned her. "You did it so as not to leave any trace of how he died?"
  "Of course I did," she answered.
  "Why didn't you kill him?" I asked. "You should have killed him."
  "Once I drink from Lestat, I can kill them," she answered. "Besides, he can't live. He'll be dead by the time we return to
the flat."
  We turned for home.
  She walked on beside me. I wondered if she knew what I felt. I felt that I had betrayed her and destroyed her. I felt that I
had done every conceivable evil to her that I had sworn to avoid. When I looked back on our plan, that she should raise a
ghost for me and for Louis, I saw there the seeds of all that had come to pass. I was broken, a man humiliated by his own
failure and enduring it with a vampire's cold passivity, which can coexist so dreadfully with human pain.
  I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that her full measure of mortal life had not been enjoyed. I wanted to tell her that
destiny had marked her for great things, perhaps, and I had broken that destiny with my careless selfishness, with an ego
that couldn't be restrained.
  But why spoil these precious moments for her? Why place a shroud over all the splendor she saw around her, her
vampire eyes feasting as surely as she herself had feasted, on all that we saw? Why take from her the few virgin nights in
which force and menace would seem sacred and righteous? Why try to turn it with grief and pain? They would come soon
enough.
  Perhaps she read my thoughts. I certainly didn't try to prevent it. But when she spoke, there was no evidence in her
words:
  "All my life," she said in a sweet confidential voice, "I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied
about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it
meant to be afraid.
  "And now, in this darkness, I fear nothing. If you were to leave me here, I would feel nothing. I would walk as I am
walking now. As a man, you can't know what I mean by what I say. You can't know a woman's vulnerability. You can't
know the sense of power that belongs to me now."
  "I think I know something of it," I answered in a conciliatory tone. "I was old, you must remember, and when I was old,
I knew a fear I'd never experienced when I was young."
  "Yes, then you do understand perhaps the wariness a woman carries always in her heart. Then you do know the force
which is so glorious to me now."
  I put my arm around her. I gently turned her to kiss me and I felt her cool preternatural skin beneath my lips. Her
perfume now seemed something alien to her, not belonging to her deeply, though it was sweet still, and abundantly caught
in the long dark tresses which I felt so lovingly with both hands.
  "Know I love you," I said, and I could hear the terrible remorse, the terrible plea for penance in my own voice.
  "Don't you understand, I'm with you now forever?" she asked. "Why should any one of us break away from the others?"
  "It happens. In time, it happens," I answered. "Don't ask me why."
  Gradually our wanderings led us to Merrick's house.
  She went inside alone, bidding me wait patiently for her, and came out carrying her old familiar canvas purse. My keen
senses detected a strange scent from it, something acrid and chemical, something utterly alien to all I knew.
  It did not really matter to me, this scent, and so as we walked on together, I forgot about it, or grew accustomed to it, or
stopped noticing it at all. I had no taste for lesser mysteries. My misery and my happiness were too immense.
  When we returned to the flat, we found Louis once more dramatically changed.

  Sitting quietly again in the rear parlor with Lestat beside him, he was now so bleached and sculpted by the increased
blood that he seemed, like his maker, a thing of marble rather than flesh and bone. He would have to crush ashes between
his palms and spread them over his skin if he wanted to walk in places of light.
  His eyes had an even greater luster than I'd observed before.
  But what of his soul? What had he to say to us? Was he the same being in his heart?
  I took a chair, as did Merrick, dropping her canvas bag near her feet. And I think we both agreed to wait until Louis
would speak.
  A long interval found us still together, still waiting, Lestat's eyes returning again and again to Merrick out of an
understandable fascination, and then Louis finally began to talk:
  "My heartfelt thanks go to all of you that you brought me back." It was the old cadence, the old sincerity. Maybe there
was something of the old timidity as well. "All my long life among the Undead, I searched for something which I had
come to believe I would never possess. Over a century ago, I went to the Old World in search of this. And after a decade,
found myself in Paris, searching for this thing."
  He continued, his tone rich with the old feeling.
  "What I searched for was a place, a place somewhere in which I would be a part of something greater than myself. It
was to be other than a perfect outcast. It was to be with those who would enclose me in a group to which I truly belonged.
But nowhere did I find this, until now."
  He looked at me pointedly and then to Merrick, and I saw the love come up warmly into his face.
  "I'm as strong as you are now, David. And soon Merrick will be the same." He turned his steady eyes on Lestat. "I'm
almost as strong as you are now, my blessed Maker. For better or for worse I feel that I am one of you all."
  There came from his glistening white face a long drawn-out sigh then, which was all too characteristic of him and had
always been.
  "Thoughts," he said, "I hear them. Music from faraway, I hear it. Those who come and go in the streets outside, I hear
them. I catch their scent and it's sweet and welcoming. I look out at the night and I see far."
  A great wondering relief came over me. I did my best to express it by my gestures and the warmth of the expression on
my face.
  I felt Merrick shared it. Her love for Louis was palpable. It was infinitely more aggressive and demanding than the love
she felt for me.
  Lestat, somewhat weakened perhaps from all he'd endured, and his long fast of the past months, merely nodded at these
words.
  He looked to Merrick as if he had a task before him, and I was eager myself for that task to be done. It would be
difficult for me to see Lestat take Merrick in his arms. Perhaps it would be private, as the blood exchange had been with
Louis. I was ready enough to be sent away again to walk, with only the comfort of my thoughts, in the night.
  But I sensed that our small company was by no means ready to disband.
  Merrick sat forward in her chair. She made it quite evident that she meant to address all of us.
  "I have something which must be said," she began, her eyes hesitating respectfully on me for a long moment before she
looked at the other two. "There is much guilt here on the part of Louis and David that I'm now one of you. And perhaps
there are questions in your mind, Lestat, as well.
  "Hear me out, then, for all your sakes, and decide what your feelings should be when you know the key parts of the tale.
I am here because I chose to be here a long time ago.
  "It has been years since David Talbot, our revered Superior General, disappeared out of the warm protective arms of the
Talamasca, and I was by no means mollified by lies about how he had come to the end of his mortal life.
  "As David knows, I learnt the secrets of the body switch that had removed David from the elderly body in which I'd
always loved him with all my heart. But I didn't need a secret narrative written by my friend Aaron Lightner to tell me
what had become of David's soul.
  "I learnt the truth when I flew to London, after the death of that elderly body, that body which we called David Talbot,
to pay my respects, alone with the body in the coffin before it was forever sealed. I knew when I touched the body that
David had not suffered death in it, and at that unique moment my ambitions began.
  "Only a short time later, I found Aaron Lightner's papers, which made it clear that David had indeed been the happy
victim of a Faustian Switch, and that something unforgivable in Aaron's mind had taken David, within the young body,
out of our world.
  "Of course I knew it was the vampires. I didn't need popular fictions masking facts to figure how Lestat had had his way
with David at last.

  "But by the time I read those curious pages, with all their euphemism and initials, I had already made a potent and
age-old spell. I had made it to bring David Talbot, whatever he was--young man, vampire, even ghost--back to me, back
to the warmth of my affection, back to his old sense of responsibility for me, back to the love we'd once shared."
  She stopped speaking, and reached down and drew up a small cloth-wrapped parcel from her bag. There came the acrid
smell again, which I could not classify, and then she opened the cloth to reveal what appeared to be a yellowish and
somewhat molded human hand.
  It was not that old blackened hand I had more than once seen on her altar. It was something altogether more recently
alive, and I realized what my nostrils had failed to tell me. Before it had been severed, it had been embalmed. It was the
fluid that caused the faint noxious odor. But the fluid had long since dried up and left the hand as it was, fleshly, shrunken,
and curled.
  "Do you recognize it, David?" she asked me gravely.
  I was chilled as I stared at her.
  "I took it from your body, David," she said. "I took it because I wouldn't let you go."
  Lestat gave a small laugh that was tender and full of easy pleasure. I think that Louis was too stunned to speak.
  As for me, I could say nothing. I only stared at the hand.
  In the palm was engraved a whole series of small words. I knew the tongue to be Coptic, which I could not read.
  "It's an old spell, David; it binds you to come to me, it binds the spirits who listen to me to drive you towards me. It
binds them to fill your dreams and your waking hours with thoughts of me. As the spell builds in power it presses out all
other considerations, and finally there is one obsession, that you come to me, and nothing else will do."
  Now it was Louis's turn for a small smile of recognition.
  Lestat sat back, merely regarding the remarkable object with a raised eyebrow and a rueful smile.
  I shook my head.
  "I don't accept it!" I whispered.
  "You had no chance against it, David," she insisted. "You're blameless, blameless, as Louis was blameless for what
ultimately happened to me."
  "No, Merrick," said Louis gently. "I've known too much genuine love in my years to doubt what I feel for you."
  "What does it say, this scribble!" I demanded angrily.
  "What it says," she answered, "is a particle of what I have recited countless times as I called my spirits, the very spirits I
called for you and Louis the other night. What it says is:
  "'I command you to drench his soul, his mind, his heart with a heat for me, to inflict upon his nights and days a
relentless and torturous longing for me; to invade his dreams with the images of me; to let there be nothing that he eats or
drinks that will solace him as he thinks of me, until he returns to me, until he stands in my presence, until I can use every
power at my command on him as we speak together. Do not for a moment let him be quiet; do not for a moment let him
turn away.'"
  "It wasn't like that," I insisted.
  She went on, her voice lower, kinder:
  "'May he be a slave to me, may he be the faithful servant of my designs, may he have no power to refuse what I have
confided to you, my great and faithful spirits. May he fulfill that destiny which I choose of my own accord.'"
  She let the silence fill the room again. I heard nothing for the moment, except a low secretive laughter from Lestat.
  But it was not mocking, this laughter. It was simply eloquent of astonishment, and then Lestat spoke:
  "And so you are absolved, gentlemen," he said. "Why don't you accept it, accept it as an absolutely priceless gift which
Merrick has the right to give?"
  "Nothing can ever absolve me," said Louis.
  "Let it be your choice, then, both of you," answered Merrick, "if you wish to believe you are responsible. And this, this
remnant of your corpse I'll return to the earth. But let me say, before I put a seal on the subject for both of your hearts, that
the future was foretold."
  "By whom? How?" I demanded.
  "An old man," she said, addressing me most particularly, "who used to sit in the dining room of my house listening to
Sunday Mass on the radio, an old man with a gold pocket watch which I coveted, a watch which he told me, simply, was
not ticking for me."
  I winced. "Oncle Vervain," I whispered.
  "Those were his only words on the matter," she said with soft humility. "But he sent me to the jungles of Central
America to find the mask I would use to raise Claudia. He had sent me earlier, with my mother and my sister, to find the

perforator with which I would slash Louis's wrist to get the blood from him, not only for my raising of a spirit, but for the
spell with which I brought Louis to me."
   The others said nothing. But Louis and Lestat understood her. And it was the pattern, the intricate pattern which won me
over to accept her utterly, rather than keep her at a remove, the evidence of my awful guilt.
   It was now close to morning. We had only a couple of hours left. Lestat wanted to use this time to give Merrick his
power.
   But before we disbanded, Lestat turned to Louis and asked a question which mattered to us all.
   "When the sun rose," he said, "when you saw it, when it burnt you before you were unconscious, what did you see?"
   Louis stared at Lestat for some few minutes, his face blank, as it always becomes when he is in a state of high emotion,
and then his features softened, his brows knitted, and there came the dreaded tears to his eyes.
   "Nothing," he said. He bowed his head, but then he looked up helplessly. "Nothing. I saw nothing and I felt that there
was nothing. I felt it--empty, colorless, timeless. Nothing. That I had ever lived in any shape seemed unreal." His eyes
were shut tight, and he brought up his hand to hide his face from us. He was weeping. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."




                                                               25


   NO AMOUNT of blood from Lestat could make Merrick his equal. No amount could make any of us his equal. But by
the relentless blood exchange, Merrick was immensely enhanced.
   And so we formed a new coven, lively, and delighted in each other's company, and excusing each other all past sins.
With every passing hour, Lestat became more the old creature of action and impulse which I had loved for so long.
   Do I believe that Merrick brought me to herself with a spell? I do not. I do not believe that my reason is so susceptible,
but what am I to make of Oncle Vervain's designs?
   Quite deliberately, I put the matter away from my thoughts, and I embraced Merrick as truly as I ever had, even though
I had to endure the sight of her fascination for Louis, and the fascination which he held for her.
   I had Lestat again, did I not?
   It was two nights later--nights of no remarkable events or achievements, except for Merrick's ever increasing
experience--that I put the question to him that had so troubled me about his long sleep.
   He was in the beautifully appointed front parlor in the Rue Royale, looking quite wonderful in his sleekly cut black
velvet, what with cameo buttons, no less, and his handsome yellow hair shimmering as it ought to do in the familiar light
of his numerous lamps.
   "Your long slumber frightened me," I confessed. "There were times when I could have sworn you were no longer in the
body. Of course I talk again of a form of hearing denied to me as your pupil. But I speak of a human instinct in me which
is quite strong."
   I went on telling him how it had so completely unnerved me to see him thus, to be unable to rouse him, and to fear that
his soul had taken to wandering and might not return.
   He was silent for some moments, and I thought for a split second that I saw a shadow fall over his face. Then he gave
me a warm smile and gestured for me to worry no more.
   "Maybe some night I'll tell you about it," he said. "For now let me say that there was some truth in your conjecture. I
wasn't always there." He broke off, thinking, even whispering something which I couldn't hear. Then he went on. "As for
where I was, I can't now explain it. But again, maybe some night, to you, above all others, I will try."
   My curiosity was dreadfully aroused and for a moment I was maddened by him, but when he began to laugh at me, I
remained silent.
   "I won't go back to my slumber," he said finally. He became quite sober and convincing. "I want you all to be assured of
it. Years have passed since Memnoch came to me. You might say it took all my reserve to weather that terrible ordeal. As
for the time when I was waked before by Sybelle's music, I was more nearly close to all of you than I came to be some
time later on."
   "You tease me with hints that something happened to you," I said.

   "Perhaps it did," he answered, his vacillations and his playful tone infuriating me. "Perhaps it did not. David, how am I
to know? Be patient. We have each other now again, and Louis has ceased to be the emblem of our discontent. Believe
me, I'm happy for that."
   I smiled and I nodded, but the mere thought of Louis brought to mind the gruesome sight of his burnt remains in the
casket. It had been the living proof that the quiet omnipotent glory of the daily sun would never shine upon me again. It
had been the living proof that we can perish so very easily, that all the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours
between dawn and dusk.
   "I've lost so much time," Lestat remarked in his habitual energetic fashion, eyes moving about the room. "There are so
many books I mean to read, and things I mean to see. The world's around me again. I'm where I belong."
   I suppose we might have spent a quiet evening after that, both of us reading, both of us enjoying the comfort of those
lushly domestic Impressionist paintings, if Merrick and Louis had not come so suddenly up the iron stairs and down the
corridor to the front room.
   Merrick had not given up her penchant for shirtwaisted dresses and she looked splendid in her dark-green silk. She led
the way, the more reticent Louis coming behind her. They both sat upon the brocade sofa opposite, and straightaway
Lestat asked:
   "What's wrong?"
   "The Talamasca," said Merrick. "I think it's wise to leave New Orleans. I think we should do it at once."
   "That's sheer nonsense," said Lestat immediately. "I won't hear of it." At once his face was flushed with expression.
"I've never been afraid of mortals in my life. I have no fear of the Talamasca."
   "Perhaps you should have," said Louis. "You must listen to the letter which Merrick has received."
   "What do you mean, 'received?'" asked Lestat crossly. "Merrick, you didn't go back to the Motherhouse! Surely you
knew such a thing couldn't be done."
   "Of course I didn't, and my loyalty to the rest of you is total, don't question it," she fired back. "But this letter was left at
my old house here in New Orleans. I found it this evening, and I don't like it, and I think it's time that we reconsider
everything, though you may lay it down as my fault."
   "I won't reconsider anything," said Lestat. "Read it."
   As soon as she drew it out of her canvas bag, I saw it was a handdelivered missive from the Elders. It was written on a
true parchment meant to stand the test of centuries, though a machine had no doubt printed it for when did the Elders ever
put their own hands to what they wrote?

     "Merrick,
       We have learnt with great dismay about your recent experiments in the old house in which you were born. We order
     you to leave New Orleans as soon as you possibly can. Have no further discourse with your fellow members in the
     Talamasca, or with that select and dangerous company which has so obviously seduced you, and come to us in
     Amsterdam directly.
       Your room is already prepared for you in the Motherhouse, and we expect these instructions to be obeyed.
       Please understand that we want, as always, to learn with you from your recent and ill-advised experiences, but there
     can be no miscalculation as to our admonitions. You are to break off your relations with those who can never have our
     sanction and you are to come to us at once."

   She laid it down in her lap.
   "It bears the seal of the Elders," she said.
   I could see this wax stamp plainly.
   "Why are we to care that it bears their seal," demanded Lestat, "or the seal of anyone else? They can't force you to come
to Amsterdam. Why do you even entertain such an idea?"
   "Be patient with me," she spoke up immediately. "I'm not entertaining any such idea. What I'm saying is that we've been
carefully watched."
   Lestat shook his head. "We've always been carefully watched. I've masqueraded as one of my own fictions for over a
decade. What do I care if I'm carefully watched? I defy anyone to harm me. I always have in my fashion. I've rarely ...
rarely ... been wrong."
   "But Lestat," said Louis, leaning forward and looking him directly in the eyes. "This means the Talamasca has made
what they believe to be a sighting of us--David and me--on Merrick's premises. And that's dangerous, dangerous because
it can make enemies for us among those who truly believe in what we are."

  "They don't believe it," declared Lestat. "No one believes it. That's what always protects us. No one believes in what we
are but us."
  "You're wrong," said Merrick before I could speak up. "They do believe in you--."
  "And so 'they watch and they are always here,'" said Lestat, mocking the old motto of the Order, the very motto printed
on the calling cards I once carried when I walked the earth as a regular man.
  "Nevertheless," I said quickly, "we should leave for now. We cannot go back to Merrick's house, any of us. As for here
in the Rue Royale, we cannot remain."
  "I won't give in to them," said Lestat. "They won't order me about in this city which belongs to me. By day we sleep in
hiding--at least the three of you choose to sleep in hiding--but the night and the city belong to us."
  "How so does the city belong to us?" asked Louis with near touching innocence.
  Lestat cut him off with a contemptuous gesture. "For two hundred years I've lived here," he said in a passionate low
voice. "I won't leave because of an Order of scholars. How many years ago was it, David, that I came to visit you in the
Motherhouse in London? I was never afraid of you. I challenged you with my questions. I demanded you make a separate
file for me among your voluminous records."
  "Yes, Lestat, but I think now things might be different." I was looking intently at Merrick. "Have you told us
everything, darling?" I asked.
  "Yes," she said, staring before her as if at the workings of the very problem. "I've told you everything, but you see, this
was written some days ago. And now everything's changed." She looked up at me, finally. "If we're being watched, as I
suspect we are, then they know just how much everything has changed."
  Lestat rose to his feet.
  "I don't fear the Talamasca," he declared with heavy emphasis. "I don't fear anyone. If the Talamasca had wanted me it
might have come for me during all the years I've slept in the dust at St. Elizabeth's."
  "But you see, that's just it," said Merrick. "They didn't want you. They wanted to watch you. They wanted to be close, as
always, privy to knowledge which no one else possessed, but they didn't want to touch you. They didn't want to turn your
considerable power against themselves."
  "Ah, that's well put," he said. "I like that. My considerable power. They'd do well to think on that."
  "Please, I beg you," I said, "don't threaten the Talamasca."
  "And why not threaten them?" he asked of me.
  "You can't think of actually doing harm to members of the Talamasca," I said, speaking a bit too sharply, in my concern.
"You can't do this out of respect for Merrick and for me."
  "You're being threatened, aren't you?" asked Lestat. "We're all being threatened."
  "But you don't understand," said Merrick. "It's too dangerous for you to do anything to the Talamasca. They are a large
organization, an ancient organization--."
  "I don't care," Lestat said.
  "--and they do know what you are," she replied.
  "Lestat, sit down again, please," said Louis. "Don't you see the point? It isn't merely their considerable age and power. It
isn't merely their resources. It's who they truly are. They know of us, they can resolve to interfere with us. They can
resolve to cause us great harm wherever we might go, anywhere in this world."
  "You're dreaming, handsome friend," Lestat said. "Think on the blood I've shared with you. Think on it, Merrick. And
think on the Talamasca and its stodgy ways. What did it do when Jesse Reeves was lost to the Order? There were no
threats then."
  "I do think of their ways, Lestat," Merrick said forcefully. "I think we should leave here. We should take with us all
evidence that would feed their investigation. We should go."
  Lestat glared at each and every one of us, and then stormed out of the flat.
  All that long night, we didn't know where he was. We knew his feelings, yes, and we understood them and we respected
them, and in some unspoken fashion we resolved that we would do what he said. If we had a leader, it was Lestat. As
dawn approached we took great care in going to our hiding places. We shared the common sentiment that we were no
longer concealed by the human crowd.
  After sunset the following evening, Lestat returned to the flat in the Rue Royale.
  Merrick had gone down to receive another letter from a special courier, a letter of which I was in dread, and Lestat
appeared in the front parlor of the flat just before her return.
  Lestat was windblown and flushed and angry, and he walked about with noisy strides, a bit like an archangel looking for
a lost sword.

  "Please get yourself in hand," I said to him adamantly. He glared at me, but then took a chair, and, looking furiously
from me to Louis, he waited for Merrick to come into the room.
  At last Merrick appeared with the opened envelope and the parchment paper in her hand. I can only describe the
expression on her face as one of astonishment, and she looked to me before she glanced at the others, and then she looked
to me again.
  Patiently, gesturing to Lestat to be still, I watched her take her place on the damask sofa, at Louis's side. I couldn't help
but notice that he made no attempt to read the letter over her shoulder. He merely waited, but he was as anxious as I.
  "It's so very extraordinary," she said in a halting manner. "I've never known the Elders to take such a stand. I've never
known anyone in our Order to be so very explicit. I've known scholarship, I've known observation, I've known endless
reports of ghosts, witchcraft, vampires, yes, even vampires. But I've never seen anything quite like this."
  She opened the single page and with a dazed expression read it aloud:

       "We know what you have done to Merrick Mayfair. We advise you now that Merrick Mayfair must return to us. We
    will accept no explanations, no excuses, no apologies. We do not mean to traffic in words with regard to this matter.
    Merrick Mayfair must return and we will settle for nothing else."

  Lestat laughed softly. "What do they think you are, cherie," he said, "that they tell us to give you over to them? Do they
think you're a precious jewel? My, but these mossbacked scholars are misogynist. I've never been such a perfect brute
myself "
  "What more does it say?" I asked quickly. "You haven't read it all."
  She seemed to wake from her daze, and then to look down again at the paper.

       "We are prepared to abandon our passive posture of centuries with regard to your existence. We are prepared to
    declare you an enemy which must be exterminated at all costs. We are prepared to use our considerable power and
    resources to see that you are destroyed.
       Comply with our request and we will tolerate your presence in New Orleans and its environs. We will return to our
    harmless observations. But if Merrick Mayfair does not return at once to the Motherhouse called Oak Haven, we will
    take steps to make of you a quarry in any part of the world to which you might go."

  Only now did Lestat's face lose its stamp of anger and contempt. Only now did he become quiet and thoughtful, which I
did not interpret altogether as a good sign.
  "It's quite interesting actually," he said, raising his eyebrows. "Quite interesting indeed."
  A long silence gripped Merrick, during which time I think Louis asked some question about the age of the Elders, their
identity, hitting upon things of which I knew nothing, and about which I had grave doubts. I think I managed to convey to
him that no one within the Order knew who the Elders were. There were times when their very communications had been
corrupted, but in the main they ruled the Order. It was authoritarian and always had been since its cloudy origins, of which
we knew so little, even those of us who had spent our lives within the Order's walls.
  Finally Merrick spoke.
  "Don't you see what's happened?" she said. "In all my selfish plotting I've thrown down a gauntlet to the Elders."
  "Not you alone, darling," I was quick to add.
  "No, of course not," she said, her expression still one of shock, "but only insomuch as I was responsible for the spells.
But we've gone so far in these last few nights that they can no longer ignore us. Long ago it was Jesse. Then it was David,
and now it's Merrick. Don't you see? Their long scholarly flirtation with the vampires has led to disaster, and now they're
challenged to do something that--as far as we know--they've never done before."
  "Nothing will come of this," said Lestat. "You mark my words."
  "And what of the other vampires?" said Merrick softly, looking at him as she spoke. "What will your own elders say
when they learn of what's been done here? Novels with fancy covers, vampire films, eerie music--these things don't rouse
a human enemy. In fact, they make a comforting and flexible disguise. But what we've done has now roused the
Talamasca, and it doesn't declare war on us alone, it declares war on our species, and that means others, don't you see?"
  Lestat looked both stymied and infuriated. I could all but see the little wheels turning in his brain. There crept into his
expression something utterly hostile and mischievous which I had certainly seen in years past.
  "Of course, if I go to them," said Merrick, "if I give myself over to them--."
  "That's unthinkable," said Louis. "Even they must know that themselves."
  "That's the worst thing you could do," I interjected.

  "Put yourself in their hands?" asked Lestat sarcastically, "in this era of a technology that could probably reproduce your
cells within your own blood in a laboratory? No. Unthinkable. Good word."
  "I don't want to be in their hands," said Merrick. "I don't want to be surrounded by those who share a life I've lost
completely. That was never, never my plan."
  "And you won't be," said Louis. "You'll be with us, and we're leaving here. We should be making preparations,
destroying any evidence with which they can back their designs for the rank and file."
  "Will the old ones understand why I didn't go to them," she asked, "when they find their peace and solitude invaded by a
new type of scholar? Don't you see what's involved?"
  "You underestimate us all," I said calmly. "But I think we are spending our last night in this flat; and to all these various
objects which have been such a solace, I'm saying my farewell, as should we all."
  We looked to Lestat, each of us, studying his knotted angry face. Finally, he spoke.
  "You do realize, don't you?" he asked me directly, "that I can easily wipe out the very members who made the
observations that are threatening us now."
  At once Merrick protested, and so did I. It was all a matter of desperate gestures, and then I gave in to a rapid plea.
  "Don't do this thing, Lestat," I said. "Let's leave here. Let's kill their faith, not them. Like a small retreating army, we'll
burn all evidence which might have become their trophies. I cannot endure the thought of turning against the Talamasca. I
cannot. What more can I say?"
  Merrick nodded, though she remained quiet.
  Finally, Lestat spoke up.
  "All right then," he said with vengeful finality. "I give in to you all because I love you. We'll go. We'll leave this house
which has been my home for so many years; we'll leave this city which we all love; we'll leave all this, and we'll find
someplace where no one can pick us out of the multitudes. We'll do it, but I tell you, I don't like it, and for me the
members of the Order have lost by these very communications any special protective shield they might have once
possessed."
  It was settled.
  We went to work, swiftly, silently, making certain that nothing remained which contained the potent blood which the
Talamasca would seek to examine as soon as it could.
  The flat was soon clean of all that might have been claimed as evidence, and then the four of us went over to Merrick's
house and carried out the same thorough cleansing, burning the white silk dress of the terrible seance, and destroying her
altars as well.
  I had then to visit my erstwhile study at St. Elizabeth's and burn the contents of my many journals and essays, a task for
which I had no taste at all. It was tiresome, it was defeating, it was demoralizing. But it was done. And so, on the very
next night, we came to leave New Orleans. And well before morning, the three--Louis and Merrick and Lestat--went
ahead. I remained behind in the Rue Royale, at the desk in the back parlor, to write a letter to those whom I had once
trusted so very much, those I had once so dearly loved. In my own hand I wrote it, so that they might recognize that the
writing was of special significance to me, if to no one else.

    To my beloved Elders, whoever you might truly be,
       It was unwise of you to send to us such caustic and combative letters, and I fear that some night you might--some
    of you have to pay dearly for what you've done.
       Please understand, this is no challenge. I am leaving, and by the time you claim this letter by means of your
    questionable procedures, I will be well beyond your reach.
       But know this. Your threats have greatly roused the tender pride of the strongest among us, one who had for some
    time now regarded you as quite beyond his eager reach.
       By your ill-chosen words and threats you have forfeited the formidable sanctuary which enshrined you. You are
    now as exquisitely vulnerable to those whom you thought to frighten as any other mortal woman or man.
       Indeed, you have made another rather grievous error, and I advise you to think on it long and well before plotting
    any further action in regard to the secrets we both share.
       You have made yourselves an interesting adversary to one who loves challenges, and it will require all of my
    considerable influence to protect you individually and collectively from the avid lust which you have so foolishly
    aroused.

  I had read this over carefully, and was in the act of affixing my signature when I felt Lestat's cold hand on my shoulder,
pressing firmly on my flesh.

  He repeated the words "an interesting adversary," and there came from him a sly laugh.
  "Don't hurt them, please," I whispered.
  "Come on, David," he said confidently, "it's time for us to leave here. Come. Prompt me to tell you about my ethereal
wanderings, or perhaps give you some other tale."
  I bent over the paper, completing my signature carefully, and it occurred to me that I had no count of the many
documents I had written for, and in, the Talamasca, and that once more, to one such document, a document which would
go into their files, I had put my name.
  "All right, old friend, I'm ready," I said. "But give me your word."
  We walked down the long corridor to the back of the flat together, his hand heavy but welcome on my shoulder, his
clothes and hair smelling of the wind.
  "There are tales to be written, David," he said. "You won't keep us all from that, will you? Surely we can go on with our
confessions and maintain our new hiding place as well."
  "Oh, yes," I answered. "That we can do. The written word belongs to us, Lestat. Isn't that enough?"
  "I'll tell you what, old boy," he said, stopping on the rear balcony and throwing a passing glance over the flat which he
had so loved. "Let's leave it up to the Talamasca, shall we? I'll become the very saint of patience for you, I promise, unless
they raise the stakes. Is that not fair enough?"
  "Fair enough," I answered.
  And so I close this account of how Merrick Mayfair came to be one of us. So I close the account of how we left New
Orleans and went to lose ourselves in the great world.
  And for you, my brothers and sisters in the Talamasca, as well as for a multitude of others, I have penned this tale.

4:30 p.m.
Sunday

July 25, 1999


                                            Blood and Gold

                                             Anne Rice



1


HIS NAME WAS THORNE. In the ancient language of the runes, it had been longer--Thornevald.
But when he became a blood drinker, his name had been changed to Thorne. And Thorne he
remained now, centuries later, as he lay in his cave in the ice, dreaming.
  When he had first come to the frozen land, he had hoped he would sleep eternally. But now and
then the thirst for blood awakened him and using the Cloud Gift, he rose into the air, and went in
search of the Snow Hunters.
  He fed off them, careful never to take too much blood from any one so that none died on account
of him. And when he needed furs anc boots he took them as well, and returned to his hiding place.
  These Snow Hunters were not his people. They were dark of skin and had slanted eyes, and they
spoke a different tongue, but he had known them in the olden times when he had traveled with his
uncle into the land to the East for trading. He had not liked trading. He had preferred war. But he'd
learnt many things on those adventures.
  In his sleep in the North, he dreamed. He could not help it. The Mind Gift let him hear the voices
of other blood drinkers.
 Unwillingly he saw through their eyes, and beheld the work as they beheld it. Sometimes he didn't
mind. He liked it. Modern things amused him. He listened to far-away electric songs. With the
Mind Gift he understood such things as steam engines and railroads he even understood computers
and automobiles. He felt he knew the cities he had left behind though it had been centuries since
he'd
forsaken them.
An awareness had come over him that he wasn't going to die. Loneliness in itself could not destroy
him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept.
  Then a strange thing happened. A catastrophe befell the world of the blood drinkers.
  A young singer of sagas had come. His name was Lestat, and in his electric songs, Lestat
broadcast old secrets, secrets which Thorne had never known.
  Then a Queen had risen, an evil and ambitious being. She had claimed to have within her the
Sacred Core of all blood drinkers, so that, should she die, all the race would perish with her.
Thorne had been amazed.
  He had never heard these myths of his own kind. He did not know that he believed this thing.
  But as he slept, as he dreamt, as he watched, this Queen began, with the Fire Gift, to destroy
blood drinkers everywhere throughout the world. Thorne heard their cries as they tried to escape;
he saw their deaths in so far as others saw such things.
  As she roamed the earth, this Queen came close to Thorne but she passed over him. He was
secretive and quiet in his cave. Perhaps she didn't sense his presence. But he had sensed hers and
never had he encountered such age or strength except from the blood drinker who had given him
the Blood.
  And he found himself thinking of that one, the Maker, the red-haired witch with the bleeding
eyes.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  The catastrophe among his kind grew worse. More were slain; and out of hiding there came blood
drinkers as old as the Queen herself, and Thorne saw these beings.
  At last there came the red-haired one who had made him. He saw her as others saw her. And at
first he could not believe that she still lived; it had been so long since he'd left her in the Far South
that he hadn't dared to hope she was still alive. The eyes and ears of other blood drinkers gave him
the infallible proof. And when he looked on her in his dreams, he was overwhelmed with a tender
feeling and a rage.
  She thrived, this creature who had given him the Blood, and she despised the Evil Queen and she
wanted to stop her. Theirs was a hatred for each other which went back thousands of years.
  At last there was a coming together of these beings--old ones from the First Brood of blood
drinkers, and others whom the blood drinker Lestat loved and whom the Evil Queen did not choose
to destroy.

Dimly, as he lay still in the ice, Thorne heard their strange talk, as round a table they sat, like so
many powerful Knights, except that in this council, the women were equal to the men.
  With the Queen they sought to reason, struggling to persuade her to end her reign of violence, to
forsake her evil designs.
  He listened, but he could not really understand all that was said among these blood drinkers. He
knew only that the Queen must be stopped.
  The Queen loved the blood drinker Lestat. But even he could not turn her from disasters, so
reckless was her vision, so depraved her mind.
  Did the Queen truly have the Sacred Core of all blood drinkers within herself? If so, how could
she be destroyed?
  Thorne wished the Mind Gift were stronger in him, or that he had used it more often. During his
long centuries of sleep, his strength had grown, but now he felt his distance and that he was weak.
  But as he watched, his eyes open, as though that might help him to see, there came into his vision
another red-haired one, the twin sister of the woman who had loved him so long ago. It astonished
him, as only a twin can do.
  And Thorne came to understand that the Maker he had loved so much had lost this twin
thousands of years ago.
  The Evil Queen was the mistress of this disaster. She despised the red-haired twins. She had
divided them. And the lost twin came now to fulfill an ancient curse she had laid on the Evil
Queen.
  As she drew closer and closer to the Queen, the lost twin thought only of destruction. She did not
sit at the council table. She did not know reason or restraint.
  "We shall all die," Thorne whispered in his sleep, drowsy in the snow and ice, the eternal arctic
night coldly enclosing him. He did not move to join his immortal companions. But he watched. He
listened. He would do so until the last moment. He could do no less.
  Finally, the lost twin reached her destination. She rose against the Queen. The other blood
drinkers around her looked on in horror. As the two female beings struggled, as they fought as two
warriors upon a battlefield, a strange vision suddenly filled Thorne's mind utterly, as though he lay
in the snow and he were looking at the heavens.
What he saw was a great intricate web stretching out in all direc-
tions, and caught within it many pulsing points of light. At the very
center of this web was a single vibrant flame. He knew the flame was




                                                                                                         2

                                            Blood and Gold

the Queen; and he knew that the other points of light were all the other blood drinkers. He himself
was one of those tiny points of light. The tale of the Sacred Core was true. He could see it with his
own eyes. And now came the moment for all to surrender to darkness and silence. Now came the
end.
  The far-flung complex web grew glistening and bright; the core appeared to explode; and then all
went dim for a long moment, during which he felt a sweet vibration in his limbs as he often felt in
simple sleep, and he thought to himself, Ah, so, now we are dying. And there is no pain.
  Yet it was like Ragnarok for his old gods, when the great god, Heimdall, the World Brightener,
would blow his horn summoning the gods of Aesir to their final battle.
  "And we end with a war as well," Thorne whispered in his cave. But his thoughts did not end.
  It seemed the best thing that he live no more, until he thought of her, his red-haired one, his
Maker. He had wanted so badly to see her again.
  Why had she never told him of her lost twin? Why had she never entrusted to him the myths of
which the blood drinker Lestat sang? Surely she had known the secret of the Evil Queen with her
Sacred Core.
  He shifted; he stirred in his sleep. The great sprawling web had faded from his vision. But with
uncommon clarity he could see the
red-haired twins, spectacular women.
  They stood side by side, these comely creatures, the one in rags, the other in splendor. And
through the eyes of other blood drinkers he came to know that the stranger twin had slain the
Queen, and had taken the Sacred Core within herself.
  "Behold, the Queen of the Damned," said his Maker twin as she presented to the others her long-
lost sister. Thorne understood her. Thorne saw the suffering in her face. But the face of the stranger
twin, the Queen of the Damned, was blank.
  In the nights that followed the survivors of the catastrophe remained together. They told their
tales to one another. And their stories filled the air like so
many songs from the bards of old, sung in the mead hall. And Lestat, leaving his electric
instruments for music, became once more the chronicler, making a story of the battle that he would
pass effortlessly into the mortal world.

Soon the red-haired sisters had moved away, seeking a hiding place where Thorne's distant eye
could not find them.
  Be still, he had told himself. Forget the things that you have seen. There is no reason for you to
rise from the ice, any more than there ever was. Sleep is your friend. Dreams are your unwelcome
guests.
  Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdall before the battle
call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep, and the grass grow far away in
the lands where the snow melts.
But more visions came to him.
  The blood drinker Lestat brought about some new and confusing tumult in the mortal world. It
was a marvelous secret from the
Christian past that he bore, which he had entrusted to a mortal girl.
  There would never be any peace for this one called Lestat. He was like one of Thorne's people,
like one of the warriors of Thorne's time.




                                                                                                     3

                                            Blood and Gold

  Thorne watched as once again, his red-haired one appeared, his lovely Maker, her eyes red with
mortal blood as always, and finely glad and full of authority and power, and this time come to bind
the unhappy blood drinker Lestat in chains.
Chains that could bind such a powerful one?
Thorne pondered it. What chains could accomplish this, he
wondered. It seemed that he had to know the answer to this question. And he saw his red-haired
one sitting patiently by while the blood drinker Lestat, bound and helpless, fought and raved but
could not get free.
  What were they made of, these seemingly soft shaped links that held such a being? The question
left Thorne no peace. And why did his red-haired Maker love Lestat and allow him to live? Why
was she so quiet as the young one raved? What was it like to be bound in her chains, and close to
her?
  Memories came back to Thorne; troubling visions of his Maker when he, a mortal warrior, had
first come upon her in a cave in the North land that had been his home. It had been night and he had
seen her with her distaff and her spindle and her bleeding eyes.
  From her long red locks she had taken one hair after another and spun it into thread, working with
silent speed as he approached her.
  It had been bitter winter, and the fire behind her seemed magical in its brightness as he had stood
in the snow watching her as she spun the thread as he had seen a hundred mortal women do.
"A witch," he had said aloud.

FROM HIS MIND HE BANISHED THIS memory.
  He saw her now as she guarded Lestat who had become strong like her. He saw the strange chains
that bound Lestat who no longer struggled.
At last Lestat had been released.
Gathering up the magical chains, his red-haired Maker had
abandoned him and his companions.
  The others were visible but she had slipped out of their vision, and slipping from their vision, she
slipped from the visions of Thorne.
  Once again, he vowed to continue his slumber. He opened his mind to sleep. But the nights
passed one by one in his icy cave. The noise of the world was deafening and formless.
  And as time passed he could not forget the sight of his long-lost one; he could not forget that she
was as vital and beautiful as she had ever been, and old thoughts came back to him with bitter
sharpness.
  Why had they quarreled? Had she really ever turned her back on him? Why had he hated so much
her other companions? Why had he begrudged her the wanderer blood drinkers who, discovering
her and her company, adored her as all talked together of their journeys in the Blood.
  And the myths--of the Queen and the Sacred Core--would they have mattered to him? He didn't
know. He had had no hunger for myths. It confused him. And he could not banish from his mind
the picture of Lestat bound in those mysterious chains.
Memory wouldn't leave him alone.
  It was the middle of winter when the sun doesn't shine at all over the ice, when he realized that
sleep had left him. And he would have no further peace.
  And so he rose from the cave, and began his long walk South through the snow, taking his time as
he listened to the electric voices of the world below, not certain of where he would enter it again.




                                                                                                     4

                                            Blood and Gold

  The wind blew his long thick red hair; he pulled up his fur-lined collar over his mouth, and he
wiped the ice from his eyebrows. His boots were soon wet, and so he stretched out his arms,
summoning the Cloud Gift without words, and began his ascent so that he might travel low over the
land, listening for others of his kind, hoping to find an old one like himself, someone who might
welcome him.
  Weary of the Mind Gift and its random messages, he wanted to hear spoken words.

2

SEVERAL SUNLESS DAYS and nights of midwinter he traveled. But it didn't take him long to
hear the cry of another. It was a blood drinker older than he, and in a city that Thorne had known
centuries before.
  In his nocturnal sleep he had never really forgotten this city. It had been a great market town with
a fine cathedral. But on his long journey North so many years ago, he had found it suffering with
the dreaded plague, and he had not believed it would endure.
  Indeed, it had seemed to Thorne that all the peoples of the world would die in that awful plague,
so terrible had it been, so merciless.
Once again, sharp memories tormented him.
He saw and smelled the time of the pestilence when children wandered
     aimlessly without parents, and bodies had lain in heaps. The smell of rotting flesh had been
everywhere. How could he explain to anyone the sorrow he had felt for humankind that such a
disaster had befallen them?
He didn't want to see the cities and the towns die, though he him self
was not of them. When he fed upon the infected he knew no infection
   himself. But he could not cure anyone. He had gone on North, thinking perhaps that all the
wondrous things that humankind had done would be covered in snow or vine or the soft earth itself
in final oblivion.
  But all had not died as he had then feared; indeed people of the town itself had survived, and their
descendants lived still in the narrow cobbled medieval streets through which he walked, more
soothed by the cleanliness here than he had ever dreamt he would be.
Yes, it was good to be in this vital and orderly place.
  How solid and fine the old timber houses, yet the modern machines ticked and hummed within.
He could feel and see the miracles that he had only glimpsed through the Mind Gift. The televisions
were filled with colorful dreams. And people knew a safety from the snow and ice which his time
had never given anyone.
  He wanted to know more of these wonders for himself, and that surprised him. He wanted to see
railroad trains and ships. He wanted to see airplanes and cars. He wanted to see computers and
wireless telephones.
  Maybe he could do it. Maybe he could take the time. He had not come to life again with any such
goal, but then who said that he must hurry upon his errand? No one knew of his existence except
perhaps this blood drinker who called to him, this blood drinker who so easily opened his own
mind.
  Where was the blood drinker--the one he had heard only hours ago? He gave a long silent call,
not revealing his name, but pledging only that he offered friendship.
  Quickly an answer came to him. With the Mind Gift he saw a blond-haired stranger. The creature
sat in the back room of a special tavern, a place where blood drinkers often gathered.



                                                                                                     5

                                            Blood and Gold

Come join me here.
  The direction was plain and Thorne hastened to go there. Over the last century he had heard the
blood drinker voices speak of such havens. Vampire taverns, blood drinker bars, blood drinker
clubs. They made up the Vampire Connection. Such a thing! It made him smile.
  In his mind's eye, he saw the bright disturbing hallucination again of the great web with so many
tiny pulsing lights caught within it. That vision had been of all the blood drinkers themselves
connected to the Sacred Core of the Evil Queen. But this Vampire Connection was an echo of such
a web, and it fascinated him.
  Would they call to each other on computers, these modern blood drinkers, forsaking the Mind
Gift altogether? He vowed that nothing must dangerously surprise him.
  Yet he felt shivers through all his flesh remembering his vague dreams of the disaster.
  He hoped and prayed that his newfound friend would confirm the things he'd seen. He hoped and
prayed that the blood drinker would be truly old, not young and tender and bungling.
He prayed that this blood drinker would have the gift of words. For he wanted to hear words more
than anything. He himself could seldom find the right words. And now, more than anything, he
wanted to listen.
  He was almost to the bottom of the steep street, the snow coming down lightly around him, when
he saw the sign of the tavern: The Werewolf.
It made him laugh.
  So these blood drinkers play their reckless games, he mused. In his time it had been wholly
different. Who of his own people had not believed that a man could change into a wolf? Who of his
own people would not have done anything to prevent this very evil from coming upon him?
  But here it was, a plaything, the concept, with this painted sign swinging on its hinges in the cold
wind, and the barred windows brightly lighted beneath it.
  He pulled the handle of the heavy door and at once found himself in a crowded room, warm, and
full of the smell of wine and beer and human blood.
  The warmth alone was overwhelming. In truth, he had never felt anything quite like it. The
warmth was everywhere. It was even and wondrous. And it crossed his mind that not a single
mortal here realized how truly marvelous this warmth was.
  For in olden times such warmth had been impossible, and bitter winter had been the common
curse of all.
There was no time however for such thinking. He reminded himself,
Do not be surprised.
  But the inundating chatter of mortals paralyzed him. The blood around him paralyzed him. For
one moment his thirst was crippling. In this noisy indifferent crowd he felt he would run rampant,
taking hold of this one and that one, only to be discovered, the monster among the throng who
would then be hounded to destruction.
  He found a place against the wall and leant against it, his eyes closed.
He remembered those of his clan running up the mountain, searching
   for the red-haired witch whom they would never find. Thorne alone had seen her. Thorne had
seen her take the eyes from the dead warrior and put them into her own sockets. Thorne had seen
her return through the light snow to the cave where she lifted her distaff. Thorne had seen her
winding the golden red thread on the spindle.
And the clan had wanted to destroy her, and wielding his ax he had been among them.




                                                                                                     6

                                            Blood and Gold

  How foolish it all seemed now, because she had wanted Thorne to see her. She had come North
for a warrior such as Thorne. She had chosen Thorne, and she had loved his youth and his strength
and his pure courage.
He opened his eyes.
  The mortals in this place took no notice of him, even though his clothes were badly worn. How
long could he go unseen? He had no coins in his pockets to purchase a place at a table or a cup of
wine.
But the voice of the blood drinker came again, coaxing him, reassuring him.
   You must ignore the crowd. They know nothing of us, or why we keep this place. They are
pawns. Come to the rear door. Push it with all your strength and it will give for you.
It seemed impossible that he could cross this room, that these
mortals wouldn't know him for what he was.
  But he must overcome this fear. He must reach the blood drinker who was summoning him.
  Bowing his head, bringing his collar up over his mouth, he pushed through the soft bodies, trying
not to meet the gaze of those who glanced at him. And when he saw the door without a handle, at
once he pushed it as he'd been told to do.
  It gave upon a large dimly lighted chamber with thick candles set upon each of its scattered
wooden tables. The warmth was as solid and good as that of the outer room.
And the blood drinker was alone.
  He was a tall fair creature whose yellow hair was almost white. He had hard blue eyes, and a
delicate face, covered with a thin layer of blood and ash to make him look more human to the
mortal eye. He wore a bright-red cloak with a hood, thrown back from his head, and his hair was
finely combed and long.
  He looked most handsome to Thorne, and well mannered, and rather like a creature of books than
a man of the sword. He had large hands but they were slender and his fingers were fine.
  It occurred to Thorne that he had seen this being with the Mind Gift, seated at the council table
with the other blood drinkers before the Evil Queen had been brought down.
Yes, he had seen this very one. This one had tried so hard to reason
with the Queen, though inside him there lurked a dreadful anger and an unreasonable hate.
  Yes, Thorne had seen this very one struggling with words, finely chosen words, to save everyone.
  The blood drinker gestured for him to take a seat to the right, against the wall.
  He accepted this invitation, and found himself on a long leather cushion, the candle flame
dancing wickedly before him, sending its playful light into the other blood drinker's eyes. He could
smell blood now in the other blood drinker. He realized that the blood drinker's face was warm with
it, and so were his long tapering hands.
Yes, I have hunted tonight, but I will hunt with you again. You need this.
  "Yes," said Thorne. "It's been so long you can't imagine it. To suffer in the snow and ice was
simple. But they're all around me now, these tender creatures."
"I understand," said the other blood drinker. "I know."
  These were the first words Thorne had spoken aloud to anyone in years and years, and he closed
his eyes so that he might treasure this moment. Memory was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was
also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything.
  A bit of his old religion came back to him--that for memory, the god Odin had given his eye, and
hung upon the sacred tree for nine days. But it was more complex than that. It was not only
memory which Odin gained, it was the mead which enabled him to sing poetry.




                                                                                                   7

                                            Blood and Gold

  Once years ago Thorne had drunk that poet's mead, given him by the priests of the sacred grove,
and he had stood in the middle of his father's house singing the poems about her, the red-haired
one, the blood drinker, whom he had seen with his own eyes.
  And those around him had laughed and mocked him. But when she began to slay the members of
the clan they mocked him no more. Once they had seen the pale bodies with their eyes plucked out,
they had made him their hero.
  He shook himself all over. The snow fell from his hair and from his shoulders. With a careless
hand he wiped the bits of ice from his                                              eyebrows. He saw
the ice melt on his fingers. He rubbed hard at the frost on his face.
  Was there no fire in this room? He looked about. The heat came magically through small
windows. But how good it was, how consuming.
He wanted to strip off his clothes suddenly and bathe in this heat.
I have a fire in my house. I'll take you there.
  As if from a trance, he woke to look at the blood drinker stranger. He cursed himself that he had
been sitting here clumsy and mute.
  The blood drinker spoke aloud: "It's only to be expected. Do you understand the tongue I speak?"
  "It's the tongue of the Mind Gift," said Thorne. "Men all over the world speak it." He stared at the
blood drinker again. "My name is Thorne," he said. "Thor was my god." Hastily he reached inside
his worn leather coat and pulled out from the fur the amulet of gold which he wore on a chain.
"Time can't rust such a thing," he said. "It's Thor's hammer."
The blood drinker nodded.
  "And your gods?" Thorne asked. "Who were they? I don't speak of belief, you understand, I speak
of what we lost, you and I. Do you catch my meaning?"
  "The gods of old Rome, those are the gods I lost," said the stranger. "My name is Marius."
  Thorne nodded. It was too marvelous to speak aloud and to hear the voice of another. For the
moment, he forgot the blood he craved and wanted only a flood of words.
  "Speak to me, Marius," he said. "Tell me wondrous things. Tell me all that you would have me
know." He tried to stop himself but he couldn't do it.
  "Once I stood speaking to the wind, telling the wind all things that were in my mind and in my
heart. Yet when I went North into the ice, I had no language." He broke off, staring into Marius's
eyes. "My soul is too hurt. I have no true thoughts."
  "I understand you," said Marius. "Come with me to my house. You're welcome to the bath, and to
the clothes you need. Then we'll hunt and you'll be restored, and then comes talk. I can tell you
stories without end. I can tell you all the stories of my life that I want to share with another."
  A long sigh escaped Thorne's lips. He couldn't prevent himself from smiling in gratitude, his eyes
moist and his hands trembling. He searched the stranger's face. He could find no evidence of
dishonesty or cunning. The stranger seemed wise, and simple.
  "My friend," Thorne said and then he bent forward and offered the kiss of greeting. Biting deep
into his tongue, he filled his mouth with blood, and opened his lips over those of Marius.
The kiss did not take Marius by surprise. It was his own custom. He received the blood and
obviously savored it.
"Now we can't quarrel over any small thing," said Thorne. He settled
   back against the wall greatly confused suddenly. He wasn't alone. He feared that he might give
way to tears. He feared that he hadn't the strength to go back out into the dreadful cold and
accompany this one to his house, yet it was what he needed to do so terribly.
"Come," said Marius, "I'll help you."



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                                             Blood and Gold

They rose from the table together.
  This time the agony of passing through the crowd of mortals was even greater. So many bright
glistening eyes fastened on him, though it was only for a moment.
  Then they were in the narrow street again, in the gentle swirling snow, and Marius had his arm
tight around him.
  Thorne was gasping for breath, because his heart had been so quickened. He found himself biting
at the snow as it came in gusts into his face. He had to stop for a moment and gesture for his new
friend to have patience.
  "So many things I saw with the Mind Gift," he said. "I didn't understand them."
  "I can explain, perhaps," said Marius. "I can explain all I know and you can do with it what you
will. Knowledge has not been my salvation of late. I am lonesome."
  "I'll stay with you," Thorne said. This sweet camaraderie was breaking his heart.
A long time they walked, Thorne becoming stronger again,
forgetting the warmth of the tavern as if it had been a delusion.
  At last they came to a handsome house, with a high peaked roof, and many windows. Marius put
his key into the door, and they left the blowing snow behind, stepping into a broad hallway.
  A soft light came from the rooms beyond. The walls and ceiling were of finely oiled wood, the
same as the floor, with all corners neatly fitted.
  "A genius of the modern world made this house for me," Marius explained. "I've lived in many
houses, in many styles. This is but one way. Come inside with me."
The great room of the house had a rectangular stone fireplace built into its wooden wall. And there
the fire was stacked waiting to be lighted. Through glass walls of remarkable size, Thorne saw the
lights of the city. He realized that they were on the edge of the hill, and that a valley lay below
them.
  "Come," said Marius, "I must introduce you to the other who lives here with me."
  This startled Thorne, because he had not detected the presence of anyone else, but he followed
Marius through a doorway out of the great room into another chamber on the left, and there he saw
a strange sight which mystified him.
  Many tables filled the room, or perhaps it was one great broad table. But it was covered all over
with a small landscape of hills and valleys, towns and cities. It was covered with little trees, and
even little shrubbery, and here and there was snow, as if one town lay under winter and another lay
under spring or summer.
  Countless houses crowded the landscape, many with twinkling lights, and there were sparkling
lakes made of some hard substance to imitate the gleam of water. There were tunnels through the
mountains.
    And on curving iron tracks through this little wilderness there ran little railroad trains,
seemingly made out of iron, like those of the great modern world.
  Over this tiny world, there presided a blood drinker who didn't bother to look up at Thorne as he
entered. The blood drinker had been a young male when he was made. He was tall, but very slight
of build, with very delicate fingers. His hair was the faded blond more common among Englishmen
than Norsemen.
  He sat near the table, where before him was a cleared space devoted to his paintbrushes, and to
several bottles of paint, while with his hands he painted the bark of a small tree, as if in readiness to
put it into the world that stretched out all over the room, surrounding and almost enclosing him.
  A rush of pleasure passed through Thorne as he looked over this little world. It struck him
suddenly that he could have spent an hour



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                                            Blood and Gold

inspecting all of the tiny buildings. It was not the harsh great world
outside, but something precious and protected, and even slightly enchanting.
  There was more than one small black train which ran along upon the wandering tracks, and a
small droning noise came from these trains as if from bees in a hive. The trains had lights inside
their tiny windows.
  All the myriad details of this small wonderland seemed to be correct.

"I feel I'm the frost giant in this room," Thorne whispered reverently.
It was an offering of friendship to the youngish male who continued
   to apply the brown paint to the bark of the tiny tree which he held so delicately between his left
fingers. But the youngish male blood drinker did not respond.
  "These tiny cities and towns are full of pretty magic," Thorne said, his voice a little more timid.
The youngish male seemed to have no ears.
  "Daniel?" said Marius gently to his friend, "do you want to greet Thorne who is our guest
tonight?"
  "Welcome, Thorne," said Daniel without looking up. And then as if neither Thorne nor Marius
were there, Daniel stopped the painting of his tree, and dipping another brush into another bottle, he
made a dampened spot for the tree in the great world before him. He set the tree down hard upon
that spot and the tree stood firm as though rooted.
  "This house is full of many rooms like this," said Marius in an even voice, his eyes looking at
Thorne gently. "Look below. One can purchase thousands of little trees, and thousands of little
houses." He pointed to stacks upon stacks of small containers on the floor beneath the table.
"Daniel is very good at putting together the houses. See how intricate they are? This is all that
Daniel does now."
  Thorne sensed a judgment in Marius's voice but it was soft, and the youngish blood drinker paid
no attention. He had taken up another small tree, and was examining the thick green portion which
made up its leafy upper limbs. To this he soon applied his little paintbrush.
  "Have you ever seen one of our kind under such a spell?" Marius asked.
  Thorne shook his head, No, he had not. But he understood how such a thing could happen.
   "It occurs sometimes," said Marius. "The blood drinker becomes enthralled. I remember
centuries ago I heard the story of a blood drinker in a Southern land whose sole passion was for
finding beautiful shells along the shore, and this she did all night long until near morning.
   She did hunt and she did drink, but it was only to return to the shells, and once she looked at
each, she threw it aside and went on searching. No one could distract her from it.
Daniel is enthralled in the same way. He makes these small cities.
He doesn't want to do anything else. It's as if the small cities have caught him. You might say I look
after him."
  Thorne was speechless, out of respect. He couldn't tell whether Marius's words affected the blood
drinker who continued to work upon his world. Thorne felt a moment of confusion.
Then a low genial laugh came from the youngish blood drinker. "Daniel will be this way for a
while," said Marius, "and then his old faculties will come back to him."
  "The ideas you have, Marius," Daniel said with another little easy laugh. It was hardly more than
a murmur. Daniel dipped the brush again into the paste that would make his little tree stick to the
green grass, and he pressed the tree down with appropriate force. Then out of a box beside him, he
drew another.




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All the while the small railroad trains moved on, winding their way noisily through hill and valley,
past snow-covered church and house. Why, this tiny world even contained small detailed people!
"Might I kneel to look at this?" asked Thorne respectfully. "Yes, please do," said Marius. "It would
give him pleasure." Thorne went down on both knees and drew himself up to the small village with
its cluster of little buildings. He saw delicate signs on them but he didn't know the meaning of
them.
He was struck dumb by the wonder of it--that rising and confronting
the great world, he was to come here and stumble upon this
little universe.
A finely made little train, its engine roaring, its cars loosely connected,
came rattling past him on the track. He thought he glimpsed
small figures inside it.
  For a second, he forgot all else. He imagined this handmade world to be real, and understood the
spell, though it frightened him.
"Beautiful," he said in thanks. He stood up.
The young blood drinker neither moved nor spoke in acknowledgment.
"Have you hunted, Daniel?" asked Marius.
  "Not tonight, Marius," said the youngish one without looking up, but then suddenly his eyes
flashed on Thorne, and Thorne was surprised by their violet color.
  "Norseman," Daniel said with a little note of pleasant surprise. "Red hair like the hair of the
twins." He laughed, a light laugh as if he were a little mad. "Made by Maharet. Strong one."
The words caught Thorne completely off guard. He reeled, scarcely able to keep his balance.
  He wanted to strike the careless young one. He almost lifted his fist. But Marius held his arm
firmly.
  Images crowded into Thorne's mind. The twins--his beloved Maker and her lost sister. He saw
them vividly. The Queen of the Damned. Once more he saw the helpless blood drinker Lestat with
the chains around him. Chains of metal could never have held him. From what had his red-haired
Maker created those chains?
He tried to banish these thoughts, and anchor himself within the
moment.
Marius held tight to his arm, and went on speaking to the blood
drinker Daniel:
"Let me guide you, if you want to hunt."
  "I have no need," said Daniel. He had gone back to his work. He drew a large bundle from
beneath the table, and he held it up for Marius to see. On the cover was painted, or printed, Thorne
could not tell, the picture of a house with three stories and many windows. "I want to assemble this
house," Daniel said. "It's more difficult than anything you see here, but with my vampiric blood it
will be simple."
  "We'll leave you now," said Marius, "but don't try to leave here without me."
  "I would never do that," said Daniel. He was already tearing at the sheer wrapping of the bundle.
Bits and pieces of wood were inside. "I'll hunt with you tomorrow night and you can treat me as
though I am a child as you love to do."
  Marius kept his friendly grip on Thorne's arm. He led him out of the room and closed the door.
  "When he wanders by himself," said Marius, "he gets into trouble. He gets lost, or thirsty beyond
the point where he can hunt on his own. I have to search for him. He was that way as a man before
he was ever made a blood drinker. The blood didn't change him except for a little while. And now



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                                            Blood and Gold

he's enslaved to these tiny worlds he creates. All he requires is space for them, and the packages of
buildings and trees and such which he purchases through the computer."
Ah, you have those strange engines of the mind," said Thorne. Yes, under this roof there are very
fine computers. I have all I need," said Marius. "But you're tired. Your clothes are old. You need
refreshment. We'll talk of all this later."

  He led Thorne up a short echoing wooden staircase and into a large bedchamber. All the wood of
the walls and the doors was painted here in colors of green and yellow, and the bed itself was fitted
into a great carved cabinet with only one side open. It struck him as a safe and curious place
without a surface untouched by human hands. Even the wooden floor was polished.
  Through a broad door they entered an immense bath which was paneled in roughened wood with
a floor of stone, and many candles for its illumination. The color of the wood was beautiful in the
subtle light and Thorne felt himself becoming dizzy.
  But it was the bath itself which amazed him. There before another glass wall stood a huge
wooden tub of steaming hot water. Made like a great cask, the tub was easily big enough for several
to bathe together. On a small stool beside the tub there stood a stack of what appeared to be towels.
On other stools there stood bowls of dried flowers and herbs which Thorne could smell with his
acute blood drinker senses. There were also bottles of oil and jars of what might have been
ointments.
That Thorne might wash himself in this seemed to him a miracle.
  "Take off the soiled clothes," said Marius. "Let me discard them. What else do you have that you
would save other than your necklace?"
"Nothing," said Thorne. "How can I ever repay you for this?"
  "But you already have," said Marius. He himself removed his leather coat, and then pulled off his
wool tunic. His naked chest was without hair. He was pale as all old blood drinkers are pale. And
his body was strong and naturally beautiful. He'd been taken in the prime of his life, that was plain.
But his true age, either in mortal life long ago, or in blood drinker time now? Thorne could not
guess it.
  Marius took off his leather boots and his long wool pants, and not waiting for Thorne--only
making a gesture that Thorne should follow--he stepped into the huge tub of hot water.
  Thorne ripped at his fur-lined jacket. He tore it in his haste. His fingers trembled as he stripped
away the pants that were almost ragged. In a moment he was as naked as the other, and in awkward
haste he gathered the ruin of his clothes in a small bundle. He looked about.
"Don't worry about such things," said Marius. The steam was rising all around him. "Come into the
tub with me. Be warm for now." Thorne followed, first stepping into the tub and then sinking down
in the hot water on his knees. He finally seated himself so that the water came to his neck. The
shock of the heat was overwhelming and utterly blessed. He uttered a little prayer of thanks,
something old and small which he had learnt as a child to say when something purely good
happens.
  Marius put his hand into the bowl of dried flowers and herbs, and gathering up quite a bit of this
mixture he let it loose into the hot water.
It was a deep good perfume of the outdoors in summer.
  Thorne closed his eyes. That he had risen, that he had come this far, that he had found this pure
and luxurious bath seemed almost impossible to him. He would wake soon, a victim of the Mind
Gift, back in his hopeless cave, prisoner of his own exile, only dreaming of others.




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                                             Blood and Gold

Slowly he bowed his head and lifted a double handful of the cleansing hot water to his face. He
lifted more and more of the water, and then finally as if it required courage, he dipped his head into
the tub completely.
  When he rose again he was warm as if he'd never been cold, and the sight of the lights beyond the
glass amazed him. Even through the steam, he could see the snow falling beyond, and he was
deliciously conscious that he was so near and yet so far from it.
Suddenly he wished that he had not risen for such a dark purpose. Why could he not serve only
what was good? Why could he not live for what was pleasurable? But that had never been his way.
  No matter, it was important to keep that secret to himself for now. Why trouble his friend with
dark thoughts? Why trouble himself with guilty confessions?
He looked at his companion.
  Marius sat back against the side of the wooden tub with his arms out resting upon the edge. His
hair was wet and clinging to his neck and shoulders. He didn't stare at Thorne, but he was obviously
conscious of him.
Thorne dipped his head again; he moved forward and lay down in the water, rising suddenly and
turning over, letting the water run off him. He gave a little laugh of delight. He ran his fingers
through the hair on his own chest. He dipped his head back until,the water lapped at his face. He
rolled over again and again to wash his full head of hair before he rose and sat back contented.

  He took the same posture as Marius and the two looked at each other.
  "And you live this way," said Thorne, "in the very midst of mortals, and you are safe from them?
"
  "They don't believe in us now," said Marius. "No matter what they see they don't believe. And
wealth buys anything." His blue eyes seemed earnest and his face was calm as if he had no evil
secrets inside, as though he had no hatred for anyone. But he did.
  "Mortals clean this house," said Marius. "Mortals take the money I give them for all that's needed
here. Do you understand enough of the modern world to grasp how such a place is heated and
cooled and kept safe from intruders?"
  "I understand," said Thorne. "But we're never safe as we dream, are we? "
  A bitter smile came over Marius's face. "I have never been harmed by mortals," he said.
"You speak of the Evil Queen and all those she's slain, don't you?"
"Yes, I speak of that and other horrors," Marius answered.
  Slowly without words Marius used the Mind Gift to let Thorne know that he himself hunted only
the Evil Doer.
  "That is my peace with the world," he said. "That is how I manage to go on. I use the Mind Gift
to hunt those mortals who kill. In the big cities I can always find them."
  "And mine is the Little Drink," said Thorne. "Be assured. I need no greedy feast. I take from
many so that no one dies. For centuries I've lived this way among the Snow People. When I was
first made I hadn't the skill. I would drink too fast and too recklessly. But then I learned. No one
soul belongs to me. And I could go like the bee goes from flower to flower. It was my habit to enter
into taverns where many are close together, and to take from one after another."
  Marius nodded. "That's a good style," he said with a little smile. "For a child of Thor, you're
merciful." His smile broadened. "That's merciful indeed."
"Do you despise my god?" asked Thorne politely.
  "I don't think that I do," said Marius. "I told you that I lost the gods of Rome, but in truth I never
had them. I was too cold of temperament to have gods. And not having had any true gods of my



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                                             Blood and Gold

own, I speak of all gods as if they were poetry. The poetry of Thor was a poetry of war, was it not,
a poetry of battles without cease, and of noise in Heaven?"
  This delighted Thorne. He couldn't conceal his pleasure. The Mind Gift never brought this kind of
keen communication with another, and the words that Marius spoke were not only impressing him,
they were confusing him slightly, which was wonderful.
  "Yes, that was Thor's poetry," he said, "but nothing was as clear and certain as the sound of the
thunder in the mountains when he wielded his hammer. And alone at night when I went out of my
father's house into the rain and wind, when I climbed the wet mountain fearlessly to hear that
thunder, I knew the god was there, and I was far from poetry." He stopped. He saw his homeland in
his mind. He saw his youth. "There were other gods I heard," he said quietly. He didn't look at
Marius. "It was Odin leading the Wild Hunt through the skies that made the loudest noise; and I
saw and heard those spirits pass. I never forgot them."
  "Can you see them now?" asked Marius. It was not a challenge. He spoke only with curiosity.
Indeed it had a bit of respect in it. "I hope you can," he hastened to add as if there might be some
doubt as to the interpretation.
  "I don't know," said Thorne. "It was so long ago. I never thought that I might recover those
things."
  But they were keen in his mind now. Though he sat in this warm bath, his blood soothed, all the
cruel cold driven from his limbs, he could see the wintry valley. He could hear the storm, and see
the phantoms flying high above, all those lost dead following the god Odin through the sky.
  Come," Thorne had said to his companions, the young ones, who'd crept out of the hall with him,
"let's go to the grove, let's stand in the very grove as the thunder rolls on." They'd been frightened
of the holy ground, but they couldn't show it.
"You were a Viking child," said Marius quietly.
  "Oh, so the Britons called us," said Thorne. "I don't think we used that name for ourselves. We
learnt it from our enemies. I remember their screams when we climbed their walls, when we stole
the gold from the altars of the churches." He paused. He let his eyes rest calmly on Marius for a
moment. "What a tolerant one you are. You truly want to listen."
Marius nodded. "I listen with my whole soul." He gave a little sigh
and he looked out through the immense glass. "I'm weary of being
alone, my friend," he said. "I cannot bear the company of those whom I know most intimately. And
they cannot bear mine on account of things I've done."
  Thorne was surprised by this sudden confession. Thorne thought of the blood drinker Lestat and
his songs. He thought of all those gathered at the council when the Evil Queen had come. He knew
all had survived. And he knew that this blond one, Marius, had talked with reason more potently
than any other.
  "Go on with your story," Marius said. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. You meant to make a
point."
  "It was only that I slew many men before I ever became a blood drinker," said Thorne. "I swung
Thor's hammer as well as my sword and my ax. I fought as a boy at my father's side. I fought after I
buried him. And he died no straw death, I can assure you, but with his sword in his hand as he
wanted it." Thorne paused. "And you, my friend?" he asked. "Were you a soldier?"
  Marius shook his head. "A Senator," he said, "a maker of laws, something of a philosopher. I
went to war, yes, for some time because my family wished it, and I had a high place in one of the
legions, but my time wasn't very long and I was home and back in my library. I loved books. I still




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                                           Blood and Gold

do. There are rooms of this house which are full of them, and I have houses elsewhere that are full
of them. I never really knew battle."
  Marius stopped. He leant forward and brought the water up to his face as Thorne had done before,
and he let the water run down over his eyelids.
  "Come," he said, "let's be done with this pleasure and go for another. Let's hunt. I can feel your
hunger. I have new clothes for you here. I have all you need. Or would you stay longer in this warm
water?"
  "No, I'm ready," said Thorne. It had been so long since he had fed that he was ashamed to admit
it. Once again he rinsed his face and hair. He ducked down into the water, and came up, pushing his
wet hair back from his forehead.
Marius had already climbed out of the tub, and held out for Thorne
a large white towel.
  It was thick and roughened and perfect for mopping the water off his blood drinker skin which
never absorbs anything. The air of the room seemed chilled for one moment as he stood on the
stone floor, but very soon he was warm again, rubbing fiercely at his hair to press the last droplets
out of it.
  Marius had finished with the task and now took a fresh towel from the stack and began to rub
Thorne's back and shoulders. This familiarity sent the chills through Thorne's limbs. Marius rubbed
hard at Thorne's head, and then he began to comb the wet hair free of tangles.
  "Why is there no red beard, my friend?" asked Marius, as the two faced each other. "I remember
the Norsemen with their beards. I remember them when they came to Byzantium. Does that name
mean anything to you?"
  "Oh, yes," said Thorne. "I was taken to see that wondrous city." He turned around and accepted
the towel from Marius's hands. "My beard was thick and long, even when I was very young, let me
assure you, but it was shaved the night that I became a blood drinker. I was groomed for the
magical blood. It was the will of the creature who made me."
  Marius nodded. But he was far too polite to say her name, though the other young one had
brashly spoken it.
  "You know it was Maharet," said Thorne. "You didn't need to hear it from your young friend.
You caught it from my thoughts, didn't you?" Thorne paused, then went on. "You know it was the
vision of her that brought me out of the ice and snow. She stood against the Evil Queen. She bound
the vampire, Lestat, in chains. But to speak of her just now takes the breath out of me. When will I
ever be able to speak of her? I can't know now. Let's hunt, and then we can really talk to one
another."
  He was solemn, holding the towel against his chest. In his secret heart, he tried to feel love for the
one who made him. He tried to draw from the centuries a wisdom that would quench anger. But he
couldn't do it. All he could do was be silent, and hunt with Marius now.

3

IN A LARGE PAINTED WOODEN ROOM full of many painted cabinets and chests, Marius
offered the clothes--fine leather jackets with small buttons of bone, many lined with silvery fur,
and close-fitting pants of wool so soft Thorne couldn't see the weave of it.
  Only the boots were a little too small, but Thorne felt he could endure this. How could such a
thing matter? Not satisfied, Marius continued to search until he found a large pair, and these proved
more than serviceable.



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  As for the costume of the times it wasn't so different from Thorne's old habit of dress--linen for
the fine shirt next to the skin, wool and leather for the outer garments. The tiny buttons on the shirt
intrigued Thorne, and though he knew that the stitching had been done by machines and was a
common thing, nevertheless it delighted him.
  He had a dawning sense of how much delight awaited him. Never mind his dark mission.
  As Marius dressed, he chose red once more for his jacket and for his hooded cloak. It intrigued
Thorne, though he had seen garments such as these on Marius in the vampire tavern. Nevertheless
the colors seemed bright for hunting.
"It's my common way to wear red," Marius said to Thorne's unspoken interest. "You do as you
like. Lestat, my sometime pupil, also loves it which annoys me mightily but I endure it. I think we
appear to be Master and Apprentice when his shade of clear red comes so close to mine."
"And so you love him as well?" Thorne said.
Marius said nothing. He gestured to the clothes.
For Thorne, it was dark brown leather, more concealing, yet silken to the touch, and his feet went
naked into the fur-lined boots on account of the size of them. He needed no cloak. He felt it would
encumber him.
  From a silver dish on a cabinet, Marius took ashes on his fingertips, and mingling these with
blood from his mouth, he made the thin paste to cover his face entirely. It darkened him; it made
the old lines of his face appear. It gave a graven character to his eyes. In fact, it rendered him
entirely more visible to Thorne while no doubt disguising him for mortals.
Marius made a gesture that Thorne might do as well, but something
    prevented Thorne from accepting. Perhaps it was merely that he had never done this.
  Marius offered him gloves, but these he refused as well. He did not like the feel of things through
gloves. After so long in the ice, he wanted to touch everything.
  "I like gloves," said Marius. "I'm never without them. Our hands frighten mortals when they take
the time to look. And gloves feel warm which we never do."
  Marius filled his pockets with paper money. He offered handfuls of this to Thorne, but Thorne
refused, thinking it greedy to take this from his host.
  Marius said, "It's all right. I'll take care of you. But if we become separated somehow, simply
return here. Come round to the back of the house, and you'll find the door there open."
  Separated? How might that happen? Thorne was dazed by all that was taking place. The smallest
aspect of things gave him pleasure.
  They were all but ready to take their leave when the young Daniel came in and stared at both of
them.
  "Do you want to join us?" Marius asked. He was pulling his gloves very tight so that they showed
his very knuckles.
Daniel didn't answer. He appeared to be listening, but he said nothing. His youthful face was
deceiving, but his violet eyes were truly wonderful.
" You know that you can come," said Marius.
     Within minutes they were on their way in the falling snow, Marius 's arm around Thorne as
though Thorne needed the reassurance. And I shall drink soon.
  The younger one turned and went back, presumably to his small kingdom.
  When they came at last to a large inn, it was into a cellar that they went where there were
hundreds of mortals. Indeed the size of the room overwhelmed Thorne.
  Not only did glittering noisy mortals eat and drink in this place, in dozens of little groups, they
danced to the music of several diligent players. At big green tables with wheels they played at



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                                            Blood and Gold

games of chance with loud raucous cries and easy laughter. The music was electric and loud; the
flashing lights were horrid, the smell of food and blood was overpowering.
  The two blood drinkers went utterly unnoticed, except for the tavern girl who accompanied them
unquestioningly to a small table in the very midst of things. Here they could see the twisting
dancers, who seemed one and all to be dancing alone rather than with anyone else, each moving to
the music in a primitive way as though drunk on it.
  The music hurt Thorne. He didn't think it beautiful. It was like so much confusion. And the
flashing lights were ugly.
Marius leant over to whisper in Thorne's ear:
  "Those lights are our friend, Thorne. They make it difficult to see what we are. Try to bear with
them."
  Marius gave an order for hot drinks. The little tavern girl turned her bright flirtatious eyes on
Thorne. She made some quick remark as to his red hair and he smiled at her. He wouldn't drink
from her, not if all the other mortals of the world were dried up and taken away from him.
  He cast his eyes around the room, trying to ignore the din that pounded at his ears, and the
overwhelming smells that almost sickened him.
  "The women, see, near the far wall," said Marius. "They want to dance. That's why they're here.
They're waiting to be asked. Can you do it as you dance?"
  "I can," said Thorne almost solemnly, as if to say, Why do you ask me? "But how do I dance?" he
asked, watching the couples who crowded the designated floor. He laughed for the first time since
he'd ever gone North. He laughed, and in the din he could barely hear his own laughter. "I can
drink, yes, without any mortal ever knowing it, even my victim, but how can I dance in this strange
way?"
  He saw Marius smile broadly. Marius had thrown his cloak back over the chair. He appeared so
calm amid this awful unendurable
combination of illumination and music.
  "What do they do but move about clumsily together?" Thorne asked.
  "Do the same," said Marius. "Move slowly as you drink. Let the music and the blood talk to you."
  Thorne laughed again. Suddenly with a wild bit of nerve he rose and made his way around the
edges of the crowded dance floor to the women who were already looking eagerly towards him. He
chose the dark-haired of the three, because women with dark eyes and dark hair had always
fascinated him. Also she was the eldest and least likely to be chosen by a man, and he did not mean
to leave her harmed by his interest.
At once she rose, and he held her small limp hands in his and guided her out onto the polished
floor, the relentless music suggesting nothing but an easy senseless rhythm, which she took up
immediately and awkwardly, her fine delicate shoes clicking on the wood. "Oh, but your hands are
cold!" she said.
  "I'm so sorry!" he declared. "You must forgive me. I've been in the snow too long."
  Yea gods, he must be careful not to hurt her. What a simple trusting being she was, with her eyes
and mouth sloppily painted, and her cheeks rouged, her breasts thrust forward and held in place by
tight straps beneath her black silk dress.
  Boldly she pressed against him. And he, enfolding her as gently as he could, bent down to sink
his tiny fangs most secretively into her neck. Dream, my precious one. dream of beautiful things. I
forbid you to be afraid or to remember.
  Ah, the blood. After so long, it came, the blood pumped by her urgent little heart, her defenseless
little heart! He lost the thread of her swoon and entered his own. He saw his red-haired Maker. And



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                                             Blood and Gold

in a hushed moan he actually spoke aloud to the woman in his grip. Give me all. But this was
wrong and he knew it.
  Quickly he pulled away, only to find that Marius stood beside him with a hand on his shoulder.
  As he let the woman go, she looked at him with glossy drowsy eyes, and he turned her in a rapid
circle, laughing again, ignoring the course of blood through his veins, ignoring the weakness for
more blood that overtook him. On and on they danced, as clumsy as the other couples. But he was
so thirsty for more.
  At last she wanted to return to her little table. She was sleepy. She Wouldn't think why. He must
forgive her. He bowed and nodded, and he kissed her hand innocently.
  Only one woman of the trio remained. Marius was now dancing with the other. Thorne offered
his hand to that last of the three women, and vowed that this time he would need no guardian.
  She was stronger than her friend. Her eyes were lined in black like an Egyptian, and she wore a
deeper red on her lips, and her blond hair was full of silver.
  "Are you the man of my dreams?" she asked him, raising her voice boldly over the music. She
would have taken him with her upstairs in the inn at this moment.
  "Perhaps so," he said, "if you let me kiss you," and caressing her tightly, he sank his teeth quickly
into her neck, drinking hard and fast, and then letting her go, watching her drift and smile, cunning,
yet sweet, unaware of what had happened to her.
  There was no getting much blood from these three. They were too gentle. Round and round he
turned her in the dance, wanting desperately to steal another drink but not daring to do it.
  He felt the blood pounding inside him, but it wanted more blood. His hands and feet were now
painfully cold.
  He saw that Marius was seated again at their table and talking to a hulking heavily dressed mortal
who sat beside him. Marius had his arm over the creature's shoulder.
Finally Thorne took the pretty woman back to her place. How tenderly
she looked at him.
"Don't go," she said. "Can't you stay with me?"
  "No, my dearest," he said. He felt the monster in him as he gazed down at her. And backing
away, he turned and made his way to Marius.
  The music made him wobbly on his feet. How dreary it was, how persistent.
  Marius was drinking from the man as the man bent over near him as if listening to whispered
secrets. At last Marius released him and righted him in his chair.
"It will take too many here," said Thorne.
  His words were inaudible in the din of the electric music but he knew that Marius could hear him.
  Marius nodded. "Then we seek the Evil Doer, friend, and we feast," said Marius. He sat still as he
scanned the room, as if listening to each and every mind.
  Thorne did the same, probing steadily with the Mind Gift, but all he could hear was the electric
confusion of the music makers, and the desperate need of the pretty woman who still looked at him.
How much he wanted her. But he could not take such an innocent creature, and his friend would
forsake him if he did, and that was more important perhaps than his own conscience.
"Come," said Marius. "Another place."
  Out into the night they went again. It was only a few short paces to a large gambling den, this one
rilled with the green tables on which men play the game of craps, and on which the wheels spun for
the all-important winning numbers.




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                                           Blood and Gold

  "There, you see," said Marius, pointing with his gloved finger at a tall gaunt black-haired young
man who had withdrawn from the game, holding his cold glass of ale in his hand, only watching.
"Take him into the corner. There are so many places along the wall."
  Immediately Thorne went to it. With a hand on the young man's shoulder he looked into his eyes.
He must be able now to use the old Spell Gift which so many blood drinkers were lacking. "You
come with me," he said. "You've been waiting for me." It reminded him of old hunts and old
battles.
He saw the mist in the young man's eyes, he saw the memory vanish. The young man went with
him to the bench along the wall, and there they sat together. Thorne massaged the neck with thumb
and fingers before he drank, thinking quietly within himself, Now your life will be mine, and then
he sank his teeth deep and he drew easily and slowly with all his power.
  The flood poured into his soul. He saw the dingy images of rampant crime, of other lives snuffed
out by his victim with no thought of judgment or punishment. Give me only your blood. He felt the
heart inside the man burst. And then he released the body, and let it lie back against the wall. He
kissed the wound, letting a bit of his own blood heal it.
  Waking from the dream of the feast, he gazed about the dim smoky room, so full of strangers.
How alien all humans seemed, and how hopeless their plight. Cursed as he was, he could not die,
but death was breathing on all of them.
Where was his Marius? He couldn't find him! He rose from the
bench, eager to get away from the victim's soiled and ugly body, and he
moved into the press again, stumbling full on a hard-faced, cruel man
who took the nudge as an opportunity for a quarrel.
"You pushing me, man?" said the mortal with narrow hateful eyes as he gazed at Thorne.
  "Come now," said Thorne, probing the mind, "have you killed men just for pushing you?"
  "I have," said the other, his mouth in a cruel sneer. "I'll kill you too, if you don't get out of here."
  "But let me give you my kiss," said Thorne, and clutching this one by the shoulders he bent to
sink his teeth as the others aroun him, totally unaware of the secret fangs, laughed at this intimate
and puzzling gesture. He drew a rich draught. Then licked the place artfully bite.
  The hateful stranger was baffled and weakended, and tottered on his feet. His friends continued to
laugh.
  Quickly Thorne made his way out of the place and into the snow and there he found Marius
waiting for him. The wind was stronger than before, but the snow itself had stopped falling.
  "The thirst is so strong now," said Thorne. "When I slept in the ice, I kept it like a beast chained
up, but now it rules me. Once begun, I can't stop. I want more even now."
  "Then more you'll have. But kill you can't. Not even in such a city as large as this. Come, follow
me."
Thorne nodded. He had already killed. He looked at Marius, confessing this crime silently. Marius
shrugged his shoulders. Then he put his arm around Thorne as they walked on.
"We've many places to visit."
It was almost dawn when they returned to the house
  Down into the wood-lined cellar the went, and there Marius showed Thorne to a chamber cut into
into the stone. The walls of it were cold, but a large sumptuous bed had been made inside the
chamber, hung with brightly colored linen drapperies, and heaped with intricately sewn covers. The
mattress looked thick andd so did the many pillows.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  It was startling to Thorne that there was no crypt, no true hiding place. Anyone could find him
here. It seemed as simple as his cave in the North, but far more inviting, far more luxurious. He was
so tired in all his limbs that he could scarce speak. Yet he was anxious.
  "Who is to disturb us here?" asked Marius. "Other blood drinkers go to their rest in this strange
darkness just as we do. And there is no mortal who can enter here. But if you are afraid, I
understand if we must seek some other shelter for you."
"Do you sleep in this way, unguarded?" Thorne asked.
  "Even more so, in the bedroom above, like a mortal man, sprawled on my mattress in the cabinet
bed mong my comforts. The only enemy who has ever harmed me was a swarm of blood drinkers.
They came when I was fully awake and aware as must needs be. If you like, I shall tell you that
awful story."
  Marius's face had gone dark, as though the mere mention of this disaster was evocative of terrible
pain.
  And Thorne understood something suddenly. It was that Marius wanted to tell this story. Marius
needed to speak in a long flow of words as much as Thorne needed to hear words. Marius and
Thorne had come upon each other in the proper moment.
But that would be tomorrow night. This night was ended.
Marius drew himself up and went on with his reassurance.
  "The light won't come as you know, and no one will trouble you here. Sleep and dream as you
must. And we'll talk on the morrow. Now let me take my leave. Daniel, my friend, is young. He
falls on the floor by his little empire. I have to make him retire to a comfortable place, though I
wonder sometimes if it matters."
"Will you tell me one thing before you go? " asked Thorne.
"If I can," said Marius gently, though suddenly he looked overwhelmingly hesitant. He looked as
though he contained heavy secrets which he must tell and yet he feared to do it.
  "The blood drinker who walked on the seashore," said Thorne, "looking at the pretty shells one
by one, what became of her?"
Marius was relieved. He gave Thorne a long look and then in carefulwords he answered.
  "They said that she gave herself up to the sun. She was not so old. They found her one evening in
the moonlight. She'd drawn a great circle around herself of shells so they knew that her death was
deliberate.
   There were only ashes there, and in fact, some had already been scattered by the wind. Those
who loved her stood nearby and they watched as the wind took the rest. It was all finished by
morning."
  "Ah, what a dreadful thing," said Thorne. "Had she no pleasure in being one of us?"
Marius seemed struck by Thorne's words. Gently he asked:
Do you take any pleasure in being one of us?"
"I think ... I think I do again," said Thorne hesitantly.

4

HE WAS AWAKENED by the good smell of an oak fire. He turned over in the soft bed, not
knowing where he was for the moment, but completely unafraid. He expected the ice and the
loneliness. But he was someplace good, and someone was waiting for him. He had only to climb to
his feet, to go up the steps.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  Quite suddenly it all came clear. He was with Marius, his strange and hospitable friend. They
were in a new city of promise and beauty built upon the ruins of the old. And good talk awaited
him.
  He stood up, stretching his limbs in the easy warmth of the room, and looked about himself,
realizing that the illumination came from two old oil lamps, made of glass. How safe it seemed
here. How pretty the painted wood of the walls.
  There was a clean linen shirt for him on the chair. He put it on, having much difficulty with the
tiny buttons. His pants were fine as they were. He wore woolen stockings but no shoes. The floors
were smooth and polished and warm.
  He let his tread announce him as he went up the stairs. It seemed very much the proper thing to
do in this house, to let Marius know that he was coming, and not to be accused of boldness or
stealth.
  As he came to the door to the chamber where Daniel made his wondrous cities and towns, he
paused, and very reticently glanced inside to see the boyish blond-haired Daniel at his work as
though he had never retired for the day at all. Daniel looked up, and quite unexpectedly, gave
Thorne an open smile as he greeted him.
  "Thorne, our guest," he said. It had a faint tone of mockery, but Thorne sensed it was a weaker
emotion.
"Daniel, my friend," said Thorne, glancing again over the tiny mountains and valleys, over the fast-
running little trains with their lighted windows, over the thick forest of trees which seemed Daniel's
present obsession.
Daniel turned his eyes back to his work as though they hadn't spoken.
It was green paint now that he dabbed onto the small tree.
Quietly, Thorne moved to go but as he did so, Daniel spoke:
"Marius says it's a craft, not an art that I do." He held up the tiny tree.
Thorne didn't know what to say.
  "I make the mountains with my own hands," said Daniel. "Marius says I should make the houses
as well."
Again Thorne found himself unable to answer.
Daniel went on talking.
"I like the houses that come in the packages. It's difficult to assemble them, even for me. Besides, I
would never think of so many different types of houses. I don't know why Marius has to say such
disparaging things."
Thorne was perplexed. Finally he said simply,"I have no answer."
Daniel went quiet.
  Thorne waited for a respectful interval and then he went into the great room.
  The fire was going on a blackened hearth within a rectangle of heavy stones, and Marius was
seated beside it, slumped in his large leather chair, rather in the posture of a boy than a man,
beckoning for Thorne to take his place on a big leather couch opposite.
  "Sit there if you will, or here if you prefer," said Marius kindly. "If you mind the fire, I'll damp it
down."
  "And why would I mind it, friend?" asked Thorne, as he seated himself. The cushions were thick
and soft.
  As his eyes moved over the room, he saw that almost all the wood paneling was painted in gold
or blue, and there were carvings on the ceiling beams above, and on the beams over the doorways.




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                                             Blood and Gold

These carvings reminded him of his own times. But it was all new -- as Marius had said, it was
made by a modern man, this place, but it was made well and with much thought and care to it.
 Sometimes blood drinkers fear the fire," said Marius, looking at the flames, his serene white face
full of light and shadow. "One never knows. I've always liked it, though once I suffered dreadfully
on account of it, but then you know that story."
  "I don't think I do know it," said Thorne. "No, I've never heard it. If you want to tell it, I want to
hear."
"But first there are some questions you want answered," said Marius. "You want to know if the
things you saw with the Mind Gift were entirely real."
  "Yes," said Thorne. He remembered the net, the points of light, the Sacred Core. He thought of
the Evil Queen. What had shaped his vision of her? It had been the thoughts of the blood drinkers
who had gathered around her council table.
  He realized he was looking directly into Marius's eyes, and that Marius knew his thoughts
completely.
Marius looked away, and into the fire, and then he said offhandedly:
"Put your feet up on the table. All that matters here is comfort."
  Marius did this with his own feet, and Thorne stretched his legs out, crossing his feet at his
ankles.
  "Talk as you please," said Marius. "Tell me what you know, if you wish; tell me what you would
know." There seemed a touch of anger in his voice but it wasn't anger for Thorne. "I have no
secrets," Marius said. He studied Thorne's face thoughtfully, and then he continued: "There are the
others--the ones you saw at that council table, and even more, scattered to the ends of the world."
  He gave a little sigh and then a shake of his head, then he went on speaking.
"But I'm too alone now. I want to be with those I love but I cannot." He looked at the fire. "I come
together with them for a short while and then I go away . .
  "... I took Daniel with me because he needed me. I took Daniel because it's unendurable to me to
be utterly alone. I sought the North countries because I was tired of the beautiful South lands, even
tired of Italy where I was born. I used to think no mortal nor blood drinker could ever grow tired of
bountiful Italy, but now I'm tired, and want to look on the pure whiteness of snow."
  "I understand," said Thorne. The silence invited him to continue. "After I was made a blood
drinker," he said, "I was taken South and it seemed Valhalla. In Rome I lived in a palace and
looked out on the seven hills each night. It was a dream of soft breezes and fruit trees. I sat in a
window high above the sea and watched it strike the rocks. I went down to the sea, and the sea was
warm."
  Marius smiled a truly kind and trusting smile. He nodded. "Italy, my Italy," he said softly.
  Thorne thought the expression on his face was truly wondrous, and he wanted Marius to keep the
smile but very quickly it was gone.
  Marius had become sober and was looking into the flames again as though lost in his own
sadness. In the light of the fire, his hair was almost entirely white.
  "Talk to me, Marius," said Thorne. "My questions can wait. I want the sound of your voice. I
want your words." He hesitated. "I know you have much to tell."
  Marius looked at him as if startled, and warmed somewhat by this. Then he spoke.
  "I'm old, my friend," he said. "I'm a true Child of the Millennia. It was in the years of Caesar
Augustus that I became a blood drinker. It was a Druid priest who brought me to this peculiar
death, a creature named Mael, mortal when he wronged me, but a blood drinker soon after, and one




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                                            Blood and Gold

who still lives though he tried not long ago to sacrifice his life in a new religious fervor. What a
fool.
  "Time has made us companions more than once. How perfectly odd. It's a lie that I hold him high
in my affections. My life is full of such lies. I don't know that I've ever forgiven him for what he
did-- taking me prisoner, dragging me out of my mortal life to a distant grove in Gaul, where an
ancient blood drinker, badly burnt, yet still imagining himself to be a god of the Sacred Grove, gave
me the Dark Blood."
Marius stopped. "Do you follow my meaning?" "Yes," said Thorne. "I remember those groves and
the whispers among us of gods who had lived in them. You are saying that a blood drinker lived
within the Sacred Oak." Marius nodded. He went on.
    'Go to Egypt,' he charged me, this badly burnt god, this wounded god, 'and find the Mother. Find
the reason for the terrible fire that has come from her, burning us far and wide.' "
And this Mother," said Thorne. "She was the Evil Queen who carried within her the Sacred Core."
   Yes," said Marius, his steady blue eyes passing over Thorne gently. "She was the Evil Queen,
friend, no doubt of it...
"· · · But in that time, two thousand years ago, she was silent and still and seemed the most
desperate of victims. Four thousand years old they were, the pair of them--she and her consort
Enkil. And she did possess the Sacred Core, there was no doubt of it, for the terrible fire had come
to all blood drinkers on the morning when an exhausted elder blood drinker had abandoned the
King and Queen to the bright desert sun.
  "Blood drinkers all over the world--gods, creatures of the night, lamias, whatever they called
themselves--had suffered agony, some obliterated by terrible flames, others merely darkened and
left with a meager pain. The very oldest suffered little, the youngest were ashes.
  "As for the Sacred Parents--that is the kind thing to call them, I suppose--what had they done
when the sun rose? Nothing. The Elder, severely burnt for all his efforts to make them wake or
speak or run for shelter, found them as he had left them, unmovable, heedless, and so, fearing more
suffering for himself he had returned them to a darkened chamber, which was no more than a
miserable underground prison cell."
Marius stopped. He paused so completely it seemed that the memories were too hurtful to him. He
was watching the flames as men do, and the flames did their reliable and eternal dance.
  "Please tell me," said Thorne. "You found her, this Queen, you looked upon her with your own
eyes that long ago?"
  "Yes, I found her," Marius said softly. His voice was serious but not bitter. "I became her keeper.
'Take us out of Egypt, Marius,' that is what she said to me with the silent voice--what you call the
Mind Gift, Thorne--never moving her lips.
  "And I took her and her lover Enkil, and sheltered them for two thousand years as they remained
still and silent as statues.
  "I kept them hidden in a sacramental shrine. It was my life; it was my solemn commission.
  "Flowers and incense I put before them. I tended to their clothes. I wiped the dust from their
motionless faces. It was my sacred obligation to do these things, and all the while to keep the secret
from vagrant blood drinkers who might seek to drink their powerful blood, or even take them
captive."
His eyes remained on the fire, but the muscles in his throat tightened, and Thorne could see the
veins for a moment against the smoothness of his temples.
  "All the while," Marius went on, "I loved her, this seeming divinity whom you so rightly call our
Evil Queen; that's perhaps the greatest lie I've ever lived. I loved her."



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                                           Blood and Gold

  "How could you not love such a being?" Thorne asked. "Even in my sleep I saw her face. I felt
her mystery. The Evil Queen. I felt her hell And she had her silence to precede her. When she came
to life it ust have seemed as if a curse were broken, and she was at last released."
These words seemed to have a rather strong effect on Marius. His eves moved over Thorne a bit
coldly and then he looked back at the fire.
  "If I said something wrong I am sorry for it," Thorne said. "I was only trying to understand."
  "Yes, she was like a goddess," Marius resumed. "So I thought and so I dreamt, though I told
myself and everyone else otherwise. It was part of my elaborate lie."
  "Do we have to confess our loves to everyone?" asked Thorne softly. "Can we not keep some
secrets?" With overwhelming pain he thought of his Maker. He did nothing to disguise these
thoughts. He saw her again seated in the cave with the blazing fire behind her. He saw her taking
the hairs from her own head and weaving them into thread with her distaff and her spindle. He saw
her eyes rimmed in blood, and then he broke from these memories. He pushed them deep down
inside his heart.
He looked at Marius.
Marius had not answered Thorne's question.
  The silence made Thorne anxious. He felt he should fall silent and let Marius go on. Yet the
question came to his lips.
  "How did the disaster come to pass?" Thorne asked. "Why did the Evil Queen rise from her
throne? Was it the Vampire Lestat with his electric songs who waked her? I saw him in human
guise, dancing for humans, as if he were one of them. I smiled in my sleep, as I saw the modern
world enfold him, unbelieving, amused, and dancing to his rhythms."
  "That's what happened, my friend," said Marius, "at least with the modern world. As for her? Her
rising from her throne? His songs had much to do with it.
For we have to remind ourselves that for thousands of years she had existed in silence. Flowers and
incense, yes, these things I gave her in abundance, but music? Never. Not until the modern world
made such a thing possible, and then Lestat's music came into the very room where she sat
shimmering in her raiment. And it did wake her, not once, but twice.
"The first time was as shocking to me as the later disaster, though it was mended soon enough. It
was two hundred years ago--on an island in the Aegean Sea--this little surprise, and I should have
taken a hard lesson from it, but this in my pride I failed to do."
"What took place?"
  "Lestat was a new blood drinker and having heard of me, he sought me out, and with an honest
heart. He wanted to know what I had to reveal. All over the world he'd sought me, and then there
came a time when he was weak and broken by the very gift of immortality, a time of his going into
the earth as you went into the ice of the Far North.
  "I brought him to me; I talked with him as I'm talking to you now. But something curious
happened with him which caught me quite off guard. I felt a sudden surge of pure devotion to him
and this combined with an extraordinary trust.
"He was young but he wasn't innocent. And when I talked, he listened perfectly. When I played
the teacher, there came no argument. I wanted to tell him my earliest secrets. I wanted to reveal the
secret of our King and Queen.
  "It had been a long, long time since I'd revealed that secret. I'd been alone for a century among
mortals. And Lestat, so absolute in his devotion to me, seemed completely worthy of my trust.
  "I took him down to the underground shrine. I opened the door upon the two seated figures.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  "For the first few moments, he believed the Sacred Parents were statues, but quite suddenly he
became aware that both were alive. He realized in fact that they were blood drinkers, and that they
were greatly advanced in age, and that in them, he could see his destiny were he to endure for so
many thousands of years.
  "This is a terrifying realization. Even to the young who look on me, it is a difficult realization that
they might become as pale and hard as I am. With the Mother and Father, it was horrifying, and
Lestat was overcome with fear.
  "Nevertheless, he managed to bridle his fear and approach the Queen, and even to kiss her on the
lips. It was a bold thing to do, but as I watched him I realized it was quite natural to him, and as he
withdrew from her, he confessed to me that he knew her name.
  "Akasha. It was as if she'd spoken it. And I could not deny that she had given it to him through
his mind. Out of her centuries of silence had come her voice once more with this seductive
confession.
  "Understand how young he was. Given the blood at twenty, he had been a blood drinker for
perhaps ten years, no more than that.
"What was I to make of this kiss and this secret revelation?
"I denied my love and my jealousy completely. I denied my crushing disappointment. I told
myself, 'You are too wise for such. Learn from what's happened. Maybe this young one will bring
something magnificent from her. Is she not a goddess?'
  "I took Lestat to my salon, a room as comfortable as this, though in another style, and there we
talked until early morn. I told him the tale of my making, of my journey to Egypt. I played the
teacher with great earnestness and generosity, and something of pure self-indulgence. Was it for
Lestat or for me that I wanted him to know everything? I don't know. But those were splendid
hours for me, I know that much.
  "The following night, however, while I was about tending to the mortals who lived on my island
and believed me to be their lord, Lestat did a dreadful thing.
  "Taking from his own luggage a violin which was most precious to him--a musical instrument of
uncanny power--he went down into the shrine.
  "Now it is plain to me, as it was then, that he could not have done this without the aid of the
Queen, who with the Mind Gift opened the many doors for him that lay between him and her.
  "Indeed as Lestat tells it, she may have even put the very idea of playing the instrument into his
mind. I don't think so. I think she opened the doors and summoned him, but it was he who brought
the violin.
  "Calculating that it would make a sound totally unfamiliar and quite wonderful to her, he set out
to mimic those he'd seen playing the instrument, because in fact he didn't know how to play it.
  "Within moments, my beautiful Queen had risen from the throne and was moving towards him.
And he in his terror had dropped the violin which she crushed with her foot. No matter. She took
him in her arms. She offered her blood to him, and then there happened something so remarkable
that it's painful for me to reveal it. Not only did she allow him to drink from her, she also drank
from him. "It seems a simple thing, but it is not. For in all my centuries of coming to her, of taking
blood from her, I had never felt the press of her teeth against me.
"Indeed, I know of no supplicant whose blood she ever drank. Once there was a sacrifice, and yes,
she drank from that victim, and that victim was destroyed. But from her supplicants? Never. She
was the fount, the giver, the healer of blood gods, and burnt children, but she did not drink from
them.
"Yet she drank from Lestat.



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                                             Blood and Gold

  "What did she see in those moments? I cannot imagine, yet it must have been a glimpse into the
years of that time. It must have been a glimpse into Lestat's soul. Whatever it was, it was
momentary, for her consort Enkil soon rose and moved to stop it, and by this time, I had arrived,
and was trying desperately and successfully to prevent Lestat from being destroyed by Enkil who
seemed to have no other purpose.
  "The King and Queen returned to their throne, besmirched and bloody and finally silent. But for
the rest of the night Enkil was restless, destroying the vases and braziers of the shrine.
  "It was a terrifying display of power. And I realized that for his safety, indeed, even for my own, I
must say farewell at once to Lestat, which caused me excruciating pain, and so we parted the
following night."
  Marius fell silent again, and Thorne waited patiently. Then Marius began to speak once more.
  "I don't know what caused me the worst pain--the loss of Lestat, or my jealousy that she had
given and taken with him. I'm unable to know my own mind. You understand I felt I possessed her.
I felt she was my Queen." His voice dropped to a whisper. "When I revealed her to him, I was
displaying a possession! You see what a liar I was?" he asked. "And then to lose him, to lose this
young one with whom I felt such utter communion. Ah, that was such rich pain. Rather like the
music of the violin, I think, just as deeply colored, such terrible pain."
  "What can I do to ease your sorrow now?" asked Thorne. "For you carry it, as if she were here
still."
  Marius looked up, and suddenly an expression of pure surprise brightened his face. "You're
right," he said. "I carry the obligation, as if she were still with me, as if even now I had to go and
spend my hours in her shrine."
  "Can't you be glad that it's over?" asked Thorne. "It seemed when I lay in my cave of ice, when I
saw these things in dreams that there were others who were at peace when it was finished. Even the
red-haired twins whom I saw standing before everyone seemed to have a sense that it was done."
Marius nodded. "They do all share this," said Marius, "except perhaps for Lestat." He looked
wondering at Thorne.
 "Tell me now how she was wakened finally," said Thorne, "how she became the slayer of her
children. I felt her pass me, close and with a searching eye, yet somehow I was not found."
 "Others as well escaped her," said Marius, "though how many no one knows. She tired of her
slaughter and she came to us. I think she thought that she had time to finish. But her end came
swiftly enough.
  "As for the second resurrection, it was Lestat again, but I am as much to blame myself.
  "This is what I believe happened. I brought the inventions of the modern world to her as
offerings. At first it was the machines that played music, and then came those which would show
moving pictures.
    At last, I brought the most powerful of all, the television that would play constantly. I set it in
her shrine as though it were a sacrifice."
  "And she fed upon this thing," said Thorne, "as gods are wont to do when they come down to
their altars."
  "Yes, she fed upon it. She fed upon its terrible electric violence. Lurid colors flashed over her
face, and images accosted her. It might have wakened her with the sheer clamor. And I wonder
sometimes if the endless public talk of the great world could not have in itself inspired an imitation
of a mind in her."
"An imitation of a mind?"
  "She awoke with a simple ugly sense of purpose. She would rule this world."



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                                              Blood and Gold

Marius shook his head. His attitude was one of profound sadness.
  "She would outwit its finest human minds," he said sorrowfully. "She would destroy the vast
majority of this world's male children. In a female paradise, she could create and enforce peace. It
was nonsense-- a concept drenched in violence and blood.
   And those of us who tried to reason with her had to take great care with our words not to insult
her. Where could she have gotten these notions, except from the bits and pieces of electric dreams
that she watched on the giant screen I'd provided for her? Fictions of all kinds, and what the world
calls News, all this had inundated her. I had loosed the flood."
Marius's gaze flashed on Thorne as he continued: "Of course she saw the vivid video songs of The
Vampire Lestat." Marius smiled again, but it was a sad smile, and it brightened his face as sad
songs brighten a face. "And Lestat presented in his video films the very image of her on her throne
as he had seen her centuries ago. Breaking faith with me, he told the secrets I had confided to him."
  "Why didn't you destroy him for this!" said Thorne, before he could stop himself. "I would have
done so."
Marius only shook his head.
"I think I've chosen to destroy myself instead," he said. "I've chosen to let my heart break inside
me."
"Why, explain this thing to me."
"I can't, I can't explain it to myself," said Marius. "Perhaps I understand
Lestat only too well. He couldn't endure the vow of silence he'd given me. Not in this world you
see around you with all its wonders. He felt driven to reveal our history." The heat danced in
Marius's face. His fingers gripped the arms of his chair with only a little restlessness. "He tore loose
from all bonds that connected us," he said, "friend and friend, teacher and student, old and young,
watcher and searching one."
"Outrage," said Thorne, "what else could you feel but fury?"
"Yes, in my heart I did. But you see, I lied to them, the other blood drinkers, our brothers, our
sisters. Because once the Queen had risen, they needed me...."
"Yes," said Thorne, "I saw it."
"They needed the wise one to reason with her, and deflect her from her course. There was no time
for quarreling. Lestat's songs had brought her forth a monster. I told the others there was no wound.
I took Lestat in my arms. And as for my Queen, ah, my Queen, how I denied that I had ever loved
her. And all this for the company of a small band of immortals. And I tell the truth to you."
"Does it feel good to you to say it?"
"Oh, yes, it feels good," Marius answered.
"How was she destroyed? "
"Thousands of years ago a curse had been put on her by one whom she had treated with cruelty and
that one came to settle the score. A single blow decapitated our beautiful Queen, and then from her
body the Sacred Core of the blood drinkers was promptly taken into the avenger, either from brain
or heart, I know not which, for during those fatal moments I was as blind as all the others.
"I know only the one who slew the Queen now carries the Sacred Core within her and where she's
gone or how I can't tell you."
"I saw the red-haired twins," said Thorne. "They stood beside her body. 'The Queen of the
Damned,' said my Maharet. I heard those words. I saw Maharet with her arm around her sister."
Marius said nothing.
Again Thorne felt himself become agitated. He felt the beginnings of pain inside. In memory, he
saw his Maker coming towards him in the snow. What fear did he have then, a mortal warrior



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facing a lone witch whom he could destroy with sword or ax? How frail and beautiful she had
seemed, a tall being in a dress of dark-purple wool, her arms out as if welcoming him.
But I have come here for you. It is for you that I linger.
He wouldn't fall under her spell. They wouldn't find his body in the snow, the eyes torn out of his
face, as they had found so many others. He wanted the memory to go away. He spoke.
"She is my Maker, the red-haired one," he said, "Maharet, the sister of the one who took within
herself the Sacred Core."
He paused. He could scarcely breathe he felt such pain.
Marius stared at him intently.
"She had come North to find a lover among our people," Thorne said. He paused, his conviction
wavering. But then he continued. "She hunted our clan and the others who lived in our valley. She
stole the eyes from those whom she slew."
"The eyes and the blood," said Marius to him softly. "And when she made you a blood drinker, you
learnt why she needed the eyes."
"Yes, but not the true story--not the tale of the one who had taken her mortal eyes. And of her
twin, I knew not an inkling. I loved her completely. I asked few questions. I could not share her
company with others. It made me mad."
"It was the Evil Queen who took her eyes," said Marius, "when she was still human; and from her
twin sister, the tongue. That was a cruel injustice, that. And one who also possessed the Blood
could not endure it, and so he made them both blood drinkers before the Evil Queen divided them
and sent each twin to a different side of the world."
Thorne gasped as he though of it. He tried to feel love inside himself
He saw his Maker again in the brightly lighted cave with her thread and her spindle. He saw her
long red hair.
"And so it was finished," said Thorne, "the catastrophe I beheld as I
slept in the ice. The Evil Queen is gone, punished forever, and the twins took the Sacred Core, yes,
but when I search the world for the visions or the voices of our kind I can't find the twins. I hear
nothing of them, though I want to know where they are."
"They have retreated," said Marius. "They know they must hide, They know that someone may try
to take the Sacred Core from them. They know that someone, bitter and finished with this world,
may seek to destroy us all."
"Ah, yes," said Thorne. He felt a chill come over his limbs. He wished suddenly that he had more
blood in his veins. That he could go out and hunt--but then he didn't want to leave this warm place
and these flowing words, not just now. It was too soon.
He felt guilty that he had not told the whole truth of his suffering and his purpose to Marius. He
didn't know if he could, and it seemed a terrible thing now to be under this roof, yet he remained
there.
"I know your truth," said Marius gently. "You've come forth with one vow and that is to find
Maharet and do harm to her."
Thorne winced as though he'd been struck hard in the chest. He made no answer.
"Such a thing," said Marius, "is impossible. You knew it when you left her centuries ago for your
sleep in the ice. She is powerful beyond our imagining. And I can tell you, without doubt, that her
sister never leaves her."
Thorne could find no words. At last he spoke in a tense whisper.
"Why do I hate her for the form of life she gave me, when I never hated my mortal mother and
father?"



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Marius nodded and gave a bitter smile.
"It's a wise question," Marius said. "Abandon your hope of harming her. Stop dreaming of those
chains in which she once bound Lestat unless you truly wish for her to bind you in them."
It was Thorne's turn to nod.
"But what were those chains?" he asked, his voice tense and bitter as before, "and why do I want to
be her hateful prisoner? So that she can know my wrath every night as she keeps me close to her?"
"Chains made of her red hair?" Marius suggested, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, "bound with
steel and with her blood?" he mused. "Bound with steel and with her blood and gold, perhaps. I
never saw them. I only knew of them, and that they kept Lestat helpless in all his anger."
"I want to know what they were," said Thorne. "I want to find her."
"Forswear that purpose, Thorne," said Marius. "I can't take you to her. And what if she beckoned
for you as she did so long ago, and then she destroyed you when she discovered your hatred?"
"She knew of it when I left her," said Thorne.
"And why did you go?" Marius asked. "Was it the simple jealousy of others which your thoughts
reveal to me?"
"She took them in favor one at a time. I couldn't endure it. You speak of a Druid priest who became
a blood drinker. I know of such a one Mael was his name, the very name you've spoken. She
brought him into her small circle, a welcome lover. He was old in the Blood and had tales to tell,
and she longed for this more than anything. I turned away from her then. I scarce think she saw me
retreat. I scarce think she felt my hatred."
Marius was listening intently. Then he spoke.
"Mael" he said, his words gentle and patient. "Tall and gaunt always, with a high bridged nose and
deep-set blue eyes and long blond hair from his servitude in the Sacred Grove. That's the Mael who
lured your sweet Maharet from you?"
"Yes," said Thorne. He felt the pain in his chest slacken. "And she was sweet, that I can't deny, and
she never spurned me. It was I who wandered away, towards the North land. It was I who hated
him for his flattery of her and his clever stories."
"Don't seek a quarrel with her," Marius said. "Stay here with me, and by and by, she may come to
know that you're here, and she may send you her welcome. Be wise then, I beg you."
Thorne nodded again. It was as if the terrible battle was over. He had confessed his wrath and it
was gone, and he sat still and simple near the fire, the warrior no longer. Such was the magic of
words, he thought.
Then memory came again. Six centuries ago. He was in the cave, and could see the flicker of the
firelight. He was bound and couldn't move. She lay beside him, peering down into his eyes and
whispering to him. He couldn't remember those words, because they were part of something larger
and more terrible, something as strong as the threads that bound him.
He could break those threads now. He could cut loose of the memories and lodge himself firmly in
this room. He could look at Marius.
He gave a long slow sigh.
"But return to your tale, if you will," he asked. "Why after the Queen
was destroyed, and after the twins were gone, why then didn't you reveal
your rage to the blood drinker Lestat, why didn't you take your
vengeance? You'd been betrayed! And disaster had followed upon it."
"Because I wanted to love him still," said Marius, as though he had
long known the answer, "and I wanted to be loved, and I could not




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forfeit my place as the wise and patient one, as I've said. Anger is too painful for me. Anger is too
pathetic. I cannot bear it. I cannot act upon it."
"Wait for one moment," said Thorne. "Say this again?"
"Anger is too pathetic," Marius repeated. "It's too much at a disadvantage always. I can't act upon
it. I can't make it mine."
Thorne gestured for quiet. He sat back considering, and it seemed a cold air settled on him in spite
of the fire.
"Anger is weak," Thorne whispered. It was a new idea to him. In his mind anger and rage had
always been akin. And rage had seemed something akin to Wodin's fury. One summoned rage
before going into battle. One welcomed rage into one's heart. And in the ice cave, he had let an old
rage awaken him.
"Anger is as weak as fear," said Marius. "Can either of us endure fear?"
"No," said Thorne. "But you're speaking of something inside you that's heated and strong."
"Yes, there is something brutal and hurt inside of me, and I wander alone, refusing the cup of anger,
choosing silence rather than angry words. And I come upon you in the North land, and you're a
stranger to me, and I can bare my soul to you."
"Yes, that you can do," said Thorne. "For the hospitality you have given me, you can tell me
anything. I will never break your trust, that I promise. No common words or songs will ever come
from me. Nothing can make such a thing happen." He felt his voice grow strong as he spoke. It
was because he was honest in what he said. "What has become of Lestat? Why is he silent now? I
hear no more songs or sagas from him."
"Sagas, ah yes, that's what he wrote, sagas of our kind," said Marius and again he smiled, almost
brightly. "He suffers his own terrible wounds," said Marius. "He's been with angels, or with those
beings who claim to be such and they have taken him to Hell and to Heaven."
"You believe these things?"
"I don't know. I can tell you only he wasn't on this Earth while these creatures claim to have had
him. And he brought back with him a bloody Veil with the Face of Christ quite beautifully
blazoned upon it." "Ah, and this you saw? "
"I did," said Marius, "as I have seen other relics. It was to see this Veil and to go into the sun and
die that our Druid priest Mael was nearly taken from us."
"Why didn't Mael die," asked Thorne. He couldn't conceal his own emotion when he said this
name.
"He was too old for such a thing," said Marius. "He was badly burnt and brought low, as can
happen with those of us who are very old, and after one day in the sun, he hadn't the courage for
more suffering. Back to his companions he went and there he remains."
"And you? Will you tell me now with your full heart; do you truly despise him for what he did to
you? Or is it your distaste for anger which makes you turn away from this thing?"
"I don't know. There are times when I can't look on Mael's face. There are times when I want to be
in his company. There are times when I can't seek out any of them. I've come here with Daniel
alone. Daniel always needs someone to look after him. It suits me to be near Daniel. Daniel doesn't
have to speak. That he is here is sufficient."
"I understand you," said Thorne.
"Understand this as well," said Marius. "I want to continue. I am not one who wishes to go into the
sun or seek some other form of obliteration. If you have truly come out of the ice to destroy
Maharet, to anger her twin--."
Thorne lifted his right hand, gesturing for patience and silence.



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Then he spoke:
"I have not," he said. "Those were dreams. They've died in this very place. It will take longer for
memory to die--."
"Then remember her beauty and her power," Marius said. "I asked her once why she had never
taken a blood drinker's eyes for her own. Why always the weak and bleeding eyes of a mortal
victim? She told me she had never come upon a blood drinker whom she would destroy or even
hurt, save for the Evil Queen herself and the Queen's eyes she couldn't take. Pure hatred prevented
it."
Thorne thought on this for a long time without replying.
"Always mortal eyes," he whispered.
And with each pair, as they endure, she sees more than you and I can see," said Marius.
"Yes," said Thorne, "I understand you."
"I want the strength to grow older," Marius said. "I want to find wonders around me as I always
have. If I don't, I'll lose the strength to continue and that is what bites into me now. Death has put
its hand on my shoulder. Death has come in the form of disappointment and fear of scorn"
"Ah, these things I understand, almost perfectly," said Thorne. "When I went up into the snow, I
wanted to flee from these things. I wanted to die and not die, as so many mortals do. I don't think I
thought I would endure in the ice or snow. I thought it would devour me, freeze me solid as it
would a mortal man. But no such thing ever happened. And as for the pain of the cold I grew used
to it, as if it were my daily portion, as if I had no right to anything else. But it was pain that drove
me there, and so I understand you. You would fight pain now rather than retreat."
"Yes, I would," said Marius. "When the Queen rose from her underground shrine, she left me
buried in ice and indifference. Others came to rescue me and bring me to the council table where
we sought to reason with her. Before this happened, I could not have imagined such contempt from
the Queen or such injury. I could not have imagined my own patience and seeming forgiveness.
  "But at that council table, Akasha met her destruction. The insult to me was avenged with utter
finality. This creature whom I had guarded for two thousand years was gone from me. My Queen,
gone from me . . .
"And so I can see now the larger story of my own life, of which my beautiful Queen was only a
part, even in her cruelty to me. I can see all the stories of my life. I can pick and choose from
among them."
"Let me hear these stories," said Thorne. "Your words flow over me like warm water. They bring
me comfort. I hunger for your images. I hunger for all you might say."
Marius pondered this.
"Let me try to tell my stories," Marius said. "Let my stories do what stories always do. Let them
keep you from your darker dreams and from your darker journey. Let them keep you here."
Thorne smiled.
"Yes," he said, "I trust in you. Go on."

THE STORY

5

As I HAVE TOLD YOU, I was born in the Roman times, in the age of Augustus when the Roman
Empire was immense and powerful, though the Northern tribes of barbarians who would eventually
overrun it had long been fighting on its Northern frontiers.



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Europe was a world of big and powerful cities just as it is now.
As for me, as I've said I was a bookish individual, and it had been my bad luck to be stolen from
my world, taken into Druid precincts and there delivered to a blood drinker who believed himself to
be a sacred God of the Grove and gave me nothing but superstition along with the Dark Blood.
My journey to Egypt to find the Mother was for myself. What if this fire described by the
blackened and suffering god should come again?
Well, I found the Divine Pair and I stole them from those who had long been their guardians. I did
it not only to possess the Sacred Core of the Divine Queen but because of my love of Akasha, my
belief that she had spoken to me and commanded me to rescue her, and because she had given me
her Precious Blood.
Understand there was nothing as strong as that primal fount. The blood rendered me a formidable
blood drinker who could fight off any of the old burnt gods who came after me in the years to
come.
But you must also understand: no religious impulse guided me. I had thought the "god" of the
Druid woods to be a monster. And I understood that in her own way Akasha was a monster. I was a
monster as well. I had no intention of creating a devotion for her. She was a secret. And from the
moment she came into my hands she and her consort were most truly Those Who Must Be Kept.
This did not stop me from adoring her in my heart, and creating the most lavish shrine for her, and
dreaming that, having spoken to me once with the Mind Gift, she would speak to me again.
The first city to which I took the mysterious pair was Antioch, a most marvelous and interesting
place. It was in the East as we said in those days, yet it was a Roman city and had been shaped by
the tremendous influence of Hellenism--that is, the philosophy and ideas of the Greeks. It was a
city of new and splendid Roman buildings, and it was a city of great libraries and schools of
philosophy, and though I haunted it by night, the ghost of my former self, there were brilliant men
to be spied upon and wondrous things to be heard.
Nevertheless my first years as the keeper of the Mother and the Father were bitter in my loneliness,
and the silence of the Divine Parents struck me often as particularly cruel. I was pitifully ignorant
as to my own nature, and perpetually brooding on my eternal fate.
Akasha's silence struck me as terrifying and confusing. After all, why was I asked by Akasha to
take her out of Egypt if she meant only to sit upon her throne in eternal stillness? It seemed
sometimes that self-destruction was preferable to the existence I endured.
Then came the exquisite Pandora into my midst, a woman I'd known since her girlhood in Rome.
Indeed, I'd once gone to her father to seek her hand in marriage when she'd been only a precocious
child. And here she was in Antioch, as lovely in the prime of life as she'd been in her youth,
flooding my thoughts with impossible desire.
Our lives became fatally intertwined. Indeed the speed and violence with which Pandora was made
a blood drinker left me weak with guilt and confusion. But Pandora believed that Akasha had
willed our union; Akasha had hearkened to my loneliness; Akasha had drawn Pandora to me
If you saw our council table, round which we sat when Akasha rose, then you have seen Pandora,
the tall white-skinned beauty with the distinct rippling brown hair, one who is now a powerful
Child of the Millennia just as you are and just as I am.
Why am I not with her now, you may ask? What is it in me that will not acknowledge my
admiration for her mind, her beauty, her exquisite understanding of all things?
Why can't I go to her!
I don't know. I know only that a terrible anger and pain divides us just as it did so many years ago. I
cannot admit how much I have wronged her. I cannot admit how much I have lied about my love of



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her and my need of her. And this need, perhaps this need is the thing which keeps me at a distance,
where I am safe from the scrutiny of her soft and wise brown eyes.
It's also true that she judges me harshly for things I have lately done. But this is too difficult to
explain.
In those ancient times, when it was scarce two centuries that we lived together, it was I who
destroyed our union in a foolish and dreadful way. We had spent almost every night of our lives
quarreling, and I could not admit her advantages, and her victories, and it was as the result of my
weakness that I foolishly and impetuously left her when I did.
This was the single worst mistake of all my long years.
But let me tell quickly the little tale of how we came to be divided by my bitterness and pride.
Now as we kept the Mother and the Father, the old gods of the dark groves of the North woods died
out. Nevertheless an occasional blood drinker would discover us and come to press his suit for the
blood of Those Who Must Be Kept.
Most often such a monster was violent and easily dispatched in the heat of anger, and we would
return to our civilized life.
One evening, however, there appeared in our villa outside Antioch a band of newly made blood
drinkers, some five in number, all dressed in simple robes.
I was soon amazed to discover that they perceived themselves as serving Satan within a Divine
Plan that held the Devil to be equal in power to the Christian God.
They did not know of the Mother and the Father, and understand, the shrine was in that very house,
down, beneath the floor. Yet they could hear no inkling of the Divine Parents. They were far too
young and too innocent. Indeed, their zeal and sincerity was enough to break one's heart.
But though deeply touched by their mishmash of Christian and Persian ideas, of their wild notions,
and by their curious appearance of innocence, I was also horrified by the fact that this was a new
religion among the blood drinkers, and they spoke of other adherents. They spoke of a cult.
The human in me was revolted; and the rational Roman was more confused and alarmed than I can
express.


It was Pandora who quickly brought me to my senses and gave me to know that we must slaughter
the whole band. Were we to let them go, others would come to us, and soon the Mother and Father
might fall into their hands.
I, who had slain old pagan blood drinkers with ease, seemed somehow unable to obey her, perhaps
because I realized for the first time that if we remained in Antioch, if we maintained our household
and our lives, more and more blood drinkers would come and there would be no end to killing them
in order to protect our fine secret. And my soul suddenly could not endure this possibility. Indeed I
thought once more of death for myself and even for Those Who Must Be Kept.
We slaughtered the zealots. It was a simple thing to do for they were so young. It took only
moments with torches and with our swords. We burnt them to ashes and then scattered those ashes
as, I'm sure you know, must be done.
But after it was over, I lapsed into a terrible silence and for months would not leave the shrine. I
abandoned Pandora for my own suffering.
I couldn't explain to her that I had foreseen a grim future, and when she had gone out to hunt the
city or to do whatever amused her, I went to Akasha.
I went to my Queen. I knelt before her and I asked her what she meant for me to do.




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"After all," I said, "these are your children, are they not? They come in new battalions and they
don't know your name. They likened their fangs to those of serpents. They spoke of the Hebrew
prophet Moses, holding up the serpent staff in the desert. They spoke of others who might come."
No answer came from Akasha. No real answer was to come from Akasha for two thousand years.
But I was only beginning my awful journey then. And all I knew in those anxious moments was
that I had to conceal my prayers from Pandora, that I couldn't let her see me--Marius, the
philosopher--on bended knee. I went on with my praying, I went on with my feverish worship.
And as always happens when one prays to an immobile thing, the light played upon the face of
Akasha; the light gave some
semblance of life.
Meantime, Pandora, as embittered by my silence as I was by Akasha's silence, became utterly
distraught.
And one night she hurled at me a simple household insult, "Would that I were rid of them and rid of
you."
She left the house and she did not return the next night or the night after that.
As you can see, she was merely playing the same game with me that I had played with her. She
refused to be a witness to my hardness. But she could not understand how desperately I needed her
presence, and even her vain pleas.
Oh, it was so shamefully selfish of me. It was such a needless disaster
but powerfully angry with her, I took the irrevocable step of arranging for my departure from
Antioch by day.
Indeed, by the light of the dim lamp, so as not to arouse my mortal agents, I gave orders for myself
and Those Who Must Be Kept to be transported in three immense sarcophaghi to Rome by sea. I
abandoned my Pandora. I took with me all that was mine and left her only the empty villa, with her
own possessions strewn rather carelessly and insultingly around it. I left the only creature in the
world who could have patience with me, who could give me understanding, and who had done so,
no matter how often or how hard we had fought. I left the only being who knew what I was!
Of course I didn't know the consequences. I didn't realize that I would not find Pandora for
hundreds of years. I didn't know that she would become a goddess in my mind, a being as powerful
in my memory as Akasha was to me night after night.
You see, it was another lie, like unto the lie I've told about Akasha. I loved Pandora and I needed
her. But in our verbal combat, I had always, no matter how emotional, played the role of the
superior mind who was in no need of her seemingly irrational discourse and always evident
affection. I remember the very night that I gave her the Dark Blood how she had argued with me.
She said, "Don't make a religion of reason and logic. Because in the passage of time reason may
fail you and when it does, you may find yourself taking refuge in madness." I was so offended by
these words coming from the mouth of this beautiful woman whose eyes so entranced me that I
could scarce follow her thoughts.
Yet in those months of silence, after we had slain the New Believers,
this was precisely what had happened. I had lapsed into a form of badness and refused to speak a
word.
And only now can I admit the full folly of it, that my own weakness was unsupportable to me, and
that I could not endure having her as the witness of the melancholy which shrouded my soul.
Even now, I cannot have her as a witness to my suffering. I live here alone, with Daniel. I speak to
you because you are a new friend and can take from me fresh impressions and fresh suggestions.
You don't look at me with old knowledge and old fear. But let me go on with my tale.



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Our ship arrived at the port of Ostia in good order, and once we had been transported in three
sarcophaghi to the city of Rome, I rose from my "grave," made arrangements for an expensive villa
just outside the city walls, and arranged an underground shrine for Those Who Must Be Kept in the
hills well away from the house.
A great guilt weighed me down that I had placed them at such a distance from the place in which I
lived, read my books, and took to my crypt at night. After all, they had been within my very house
in Antioch, though safely beneath it, and now they were some miles away.
But I wanted to live close to the great city, and indeed within a few short years, the walls of Rome
were built out and around my house so that Rome enclosed it. I had a country villa in town.
It was no safe place for Those Who Must Be Kept. So it proved most wise that I had created their
shrine well away from the burgeoning city, and settling into my villa, I played "a Roman
gentleman" to those around me, the loving master of several simple-minded and gullible slaves.
Now understand that I had been away from Rome for over two hundred years.
Glorying in the cultural riches of Antioch, a Roman city, yes, but an Eastern city, listening to her
poets and teachers in the Forum, roaming her libraries by torchlight, I had been horrified by
descriptions of the latest Roman Emperors who had disgraced the title altogether by their antics and
inevitably been murdered by their bodyguards or their troops.
But I was far wrong that the Eternal City had fallen into degradation.
Great Emperors of the past hundred years there had been such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, and
Septimius Severus, and there had been an enormous number of monumental buildings added to the
capital as well as a great increase of population. Not even a blood drinker such as myself could
have inspected all of Rome's temples, amphitheaters and baths.
Indeed Rome was more than likely the largest and most impressive city in the world. Some two
million people made up the populace, many of the plebs, as the poor were called, receiving a daily
ration of corn and wine.
I yielded to the spell of the city immediately. And shutting out the horrors of the Imperial quarrels
and continuous war along the frontiers
I diverted myself by studying the intellectual and aesthetic handiwork of mankind as I've always
done.
Of course I went immediately to play the hovering ghost about the town houses of my descendants,
for I had kept some track of them, though never admitting it to Pandora, and I found them to be
good members of the old Senatorial class, striving desperately to maintain some order in
government, while the army elevated Emperor after Emperor in a desperate attempt to secure
power for this or that faction in this or that far-flung place.
It broke my heart actually to see these young men and women whom I knew to have come down
from my uncles and aunts, from my nieces and nephews, and it was during this period that I broke
my record of them forever, though why precisely I cannot say.
It was a time for me of breaking all ties. I had abandoned Pandora. I had put Those Who Must Be
Kept at some remove from me, and now I came home one night, from spying upon a supper party
at the house of one of my many descendants, and I took out of a wooden chest all the scrolls in
which I had written the names of these young people, gleaned from letters to various agents, and I
burnt them, feeling rather wise in my monstrosity, as though this would prevent me from further
vanity and pain.
After that, I haunted the precincts of strangers to gain knowledge. With vampiric dexterity I slipped
into shadowy gardens and listened at the open doorways of the dimly lighted villas as those inside




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talked softly over dinner or listened to the delicate music of a young boy accompanying himself
with a lyre.
I found the old conservative Romans very touching, and though the libraries were not as good here
as they had become in Antioch, I found much to read. There were of course schools of philosophy
in Rome, and though they too were not as impressive as those in Antioch, I was interested in
listening to what I could.
But understand, I did not really enter into the mortal world. I made no friendships with mortals. I
did not converse with them. I only watched them, as I had always done in Antioch. I did not believe
then could penetrate with any true success into their natural realm.
As for my blood thirst, I hunted furiously in Rome. I kept to the Evil Doer always, which was a
simple matter, I can assure you, but I fed my hunger far more than I needed to feed it. I bared my
fangs cruelly to those I killed. The huge population never left me hungry. I was more the blood
drinker than ever in my existence up to that time.
It was a challenge to me to do it properly, to sink my teeth but once and cleanly, and to spill not a
drop as I took the death along with the blood.
There was no need in such a place as Rome of those times to hide the bodies for fear of discovery.
Sometimes I threw them in the Tiber. Sometimes I did nothing but leave them in the street. I loved
particularly to kill in taverns which is something I like even now, as you know.
There is nothing like the long passage through the damp dark night, and then the sudden opening of
the door of the tavern upon an entire little universe of light and warmth and singing and laughing
humans. I found taverns very enticing indeed. Of course, all this ravening, this endless killing--it
was on account of my grief for Pandora, and it was because I was alone. Who was there to restrain
me? Who was there to outdo me? No one at all.
And understand, during the first few months, I might have written to her! There was surely a
chance that she had remained in Antioch, in our house, waiting for me to come to my senses, but I
did no such thing.
A fierce anger, the very anger I fight now, welled up in me, and it made me weak, as I've already
told you. I couldn't do what I had to do--bring her back to me. And sometimes my loneliness
pushed me to take three and four victims in a night, until I was spilling blood I couldn't drink.
Sometimes in the early hours of the morning my rage was quieted, and I went back to my historical
writing, something which I had begun in Antioch and never revealed to a single soul.
I described what I saw in Rome of progress or failure. I described the buildings in ponderous detail.
But then there came nights when I thought that everything I'd written was useless. After all, what
was the purpose? I could not enter these descriptions, these observations, these poems, these essays,
into the mortal world!
They were contaminated in that they came from a blood drinker, a monster who slew humans for
his own survival. There was no place for the poetry or history which had come from a greedy mind
and heart. And so I began to destroy not only my fresh writings, but even the old essays which I
had written in Antioch in the past. I took the scrolls out of the chests one by one and burnt them as I
had burnt the records of my family. Or I merely kept them, locked up tight, and away from my
eyes, so that nothing I'd written could spark in me anything new.
It was a great crisis of the soul. Then something happened which was totally unforeseen.
I came upon another blood drinker--indeed I came upon two of them in dark streets of the late
night city as I was coming down a hill. The moon had gone behind the clouds at that moment, but
naturally I could see quite perfectly with my preternatural eyes. The two creatures were




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approaching me rapidly with no knowledge that I stood against the wall, trying not to block their
path.
At last the first of the pair lifted his head and I recognized the face at once. I knew the hawk nose
and deep-set eyes. I knew the gaunt cheeks. In fact I recognized everything about him, the slope of
his shoulders, his long blond hair, and even the hand that held the cloak at his throat.
This was Mael, the Druid priest who had long ago captured me and taken me prisoner, and fed me
alive to the burnt and dying God of the Grove. This was Mael who had kept me in captivity for
months as he prepared me for the Dark Magic. This was Mael, the pure of heart, and the fearless
one, whom I had come to know so very well.
Who had made Mael a blood drinker? In what grove had Mael been consecrated to his old religion?
Why was he not shut up in some oak tree in Gaul, there to preside over the feasts of his fellow
Druids? Our eyes met, but I experienced no alarm. In fact, I had assessed his strength and found it
wanting. He was as old as I was, yes, that was plain, but he had not drunk as I had from Akasha. I
was by far the stronger. There was nothing he could do to me.
And so at this moment, I looked away and to the other blood drinker who was much taller, and
infinitely stronger, and whose skin was a dark-brown color, surely from having been burnt in the
Terrible Fire.
This one had a large face of rather agreeable and open features, with large questioning black eyes, a
thick and well-proportioned mouth, and a head of wavy black hair. I looked back to this blond-
headed one who had taken my mortal
life with such religious conviction. It occurred to me that I could destroy him by ripping his head
from his body, and by keeping possession of his head and then placing it somewhere in my garden
where the sun would inevitably find it and burn it black. It occurred to me that I ought to do this,
that this creature deserved no better. Yet there were other thoughts working in my mind.
I wanted to talk to this being. I wanted to know him. I wanted to know the other being with him,
this brown-skinned blood drinker who stared at me with such a mixture of innocence and warmth.
This blood drinker was much older. This blood drinker was like no being who had ever come at me
in Antioch, crying for the Mother and Father. This being was an entirely new thing.
It was in this moment that I understood perhaps for the first time that anger was weak. Anger had
robbed me of Pandora over a sentence of less than twenty words. Anger would rob me of Mael if I
destroyed him. Also, I thought, I can always delay the murder. I can talk with Mael now. I can let
my mind have this company it craves and I can always kill him later on. But I'm sure you know
such reasoning is false, because once we grow to love a person we are not likely to want that
person's death.
As these thoughts raced through my mind, words suddenly spilled from my lips.
"I'm Marius, don't you remember me?" I said. "You took me to the Grove of the Old God, you gave
me to him, and I escaped." I was appalled at the hostility with which I'd spoken.
He cloaked his thoughts completely, and I couldn't tell whether he had known me by my
appearance or not. He spoke quickly in Latin.
"Yes, you abandoned the grove. You abandoned all those who worshiped you. You took the power
given you, and what did you leave for the Faithful of the Forest? What did you give back?"
"And you, my precious Druid priest," I said, "do you serve your old gods? Is that what has brought
you to Rome?" My voice was quaking with anger, and I felt the weakness of it. I struggled to regain
clarity and strength. "When I knew you, you were pure of heart. Seldom have I ever known any
creature more deluded, more given over to comforts and illusions of religion as you were." I
stopped. I had to check myself, and I did.



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"The old religion is gone," he said furiously. "The Romans have taken even our most secret places.
Their cities are everywhere. And thieving barbarians swoop down upon us from across the Danube.
And the Christians, the Christians come into places where the Romans are not. There is no stopping
the Christians."
His voice grew louder, even though it had taken on the tone of a whisper.
"But it was you, Marius," he said, "you, who corrupted me. It was you, Marius, who poisoned me,
it was you who divided me from the Faithful of the Forest, you who gave me dreams of greater
things!"
He was as angry as I was. He was trembling. And as often happens with two people who are
quarreling, this anger produced a good calm in me. I was able to sink my enmity down into myself
with that little resolve, You can always kill him later, and so I went on. The other creature looked
quite surprised by all this and fascinated with an almost childlike expression on his face.
"What you're saying is nonsense," I answered. "I ought to destroy you. It would be an easy thing for
me to do."
"Very well then, try," he answered.
The other one reached from behind and put his hand on that of Mael.
"No, listen to me, both of you," he said in a kindly rather deep voice. "Don't go on with this quarrel.
However we came to the Dark Blood, either through lies or violence, it has made us immortal. Are
we to be so ungrateful?"
"I'm not ungrateful," I said, "but I owe my debt to fate, not to Mael. Nevertheless, I'm lonely for
your company. That's the truth of it. Come to my house. I'll never harm anyone who comes as a
guest under my roof."
I had quite surprised myself by this little speech but it was the truth. "You have a house in this
city?" asked Mael. "What do you mean by a house?"
"I have a house, a comfortable house. I bid you to come and talk to me. I have a pleasant garden
with beautiful fountains. I have slaves. They are simple-minded. The light is pleasant. The garden
is full of night-blooming flowers. Come."
The one with the black hair was openly surprised as he had been before.
"I want to come," he said, glancing at Mael, though he still stood behind him. His voice had an
authority to it, a pure strength, though it was soft.
Mael was rigid and helpless in his anger. With his hawk nose and frightful eyes, he reminded me of
a wild bird. Men with such noses always do. But in truth, he possessed a rather unusual beauty. His
forehead was high and clear, and his mouth was strong.
But to go on with my tale, it was only now that I noticed that both men wore rags like beggars.
They were barefoot, and though blood drinkers are never truly soiled, for no soil clings to them,
they were unkempt.
Well, I could soon remedy that if they would allow. I had trunks of garments as always. Whether I
went out to hunt or to study some fresco in a deserted house, I was a well-dressed Roman, and
often carried dagger and sword.
At last they agreed to come, and with a great act of will, I went ahead, turning my back on them to
lead them, using the Mind Gift to maximum effect to watch over them that neither tried to strike
out at me. Of course I was profoundly grateful that Those Who Must Be Kept were not in the
house where either of these two might have detected their powerful heartbeats, but I could not
allow myself to visualize these beings. On we walked. Finally, they came into my house, looking
about themselves as though they were among miracles when all that I possessed were the simple




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furnishings of a rich man. They gazed hungrily at the bronze oil lamps that filled the marble-
floored rooms with brilliant light, and the couches and chairs they hesitated to touch.
I cannot tell you how often this has happened me over the centuries, that some wandering blood
drinker, bereft of all human attachments, has come into my house to marvel at simple things. This
is why I had a bed for you when you came here. That is why I had clothes.
"Sit down," I said to them, "there's nothing here that can't be cleaned or thrown away. I insist that
you be comfortable. I wish we had some gesture that I might give, equal to that which mortals
make when they offer guests a cup of wine."
The larger taller man was the first to be seated in a chair, rather than a couch. Then I followed
taking a chair as well, and bidding Mael please to be seated to my right. I could see now quite
clearly that the bigger blood drinker possessed infinitely more power than Mael. Indeed he was
much older. He was older than me. That was why he had healed after the Terrible Fire, though that
had been two hundred years ago, I had to admit. But I sensed no menace from this creature, and
then quite unexpectedly, indeed, silently, he gave me his name.
"Avicus."
Mael gazed at me with the most venomous expression. He did not sit back as he might have done,
but kept himself bitterly erect and ready as if for a brawl.
I sought to read his mind but this was useless. As for me, I considered myself the consummate
master of my hatred and my rage, but when I saw the anxious look on the face of Avicus I thought
perhaps I was wrong. Suddenly, this blood drinker spoke.
"Lay down your hatred, each for the other," he said in Latin, though he spoke with an accent, "and
perhaps a battle of words will put all to right."
Mael didn't wait for my agreement to this plan.
"We brought you to the grove," he told me, "because our god told us we must do this. He was burnt
and dying, but he would not tell us why. He wanted you to go to Egypt, but he wouldn't tell us why.
There must be a new god, he said, but he didn't tell us why."
"Calm yourself," said Avicus softly, "so that your words truly speak for your heart." Even in his
rags he looked rather dignified and curious as to what would be said.
Mael gripped the arms of the chair and glared at me, his long blond hair hanging over his face.
"Bring a perfect human for the old god's magic, we were told. And that our legends told us was
true. When an old god is weak there must be a new one. And only a perfect man can be given over
to the dying god for his magic in the oak."
"And so you found a Roman," I said, "in the prime of life, happy and rich, and dragged him off
against his will. Were there no men among you who were fit and right for your own religion? Why
come to me with your wretched beliefs? "
Mael wasn't slowed in the slightest. At once he continued.
"Bring me one who is fit,' said the god, 'one who who knows the languages of all kingdoms!' That
was his admonition. Do you know now long we had to search for such a man as you? "
"Am I to feel sorry for you? " I said sharply and foolishly.
He went on. We brought you to the oak as we were told to do. Then when you came out of the oak,
to preside over our great sacrifice, we saw that you a been made into a gleaming god of shimmering
hair and eyes that frightened us.
"And without a word of protest, you raised your arms so that the Great Feast of Sanhaim could
begin. You drank the blood of the victims given you. We saw you do it! The magic was restored in
you. We felt we would prosper, and it was time to burn the old god as our legends told us we must
do.



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"It was then that you fled." He sat back in his chair as though this long speech had taken the
strength out of him. "You didn't return," he said disgustedly. "You knew our secrets. But you didn't
return." A silence fell. They didn't know of the Mother and the Father. They knew nothing of the
old Egyptian lore. I was too relieved for a long moment to say anything. I felt more calm and
controlled than ever. Indeed, it seemed rather absurd that we were having this argument, for as
Avicus had said, we were immortal.
But we were human still, each in his own way. Finally I realized that Mael was looking at me, and
his eyes were as charged with rage as before. He looked pale, hungry, wild as I've said. But both of
these creatures were waiting upon me to speak or do something, and it did seem the burden lay with
me. At last, I made a decision which seemed to me to be its own form of reckoning, and its own
form of triumph.
"No, I didn't come back," I said to Mael squarely. "I didn't want to be the God of the Grove. I cared
nothing for the Faithful of the Forest. I made my choice to wander through time. I have no belief in
your gods or your sacrifices. What did you expect of me?"
"You took the magic of our god with you."
"I had no choice," I said. "If I had left the old burnt god without taking his magic, you would have
destroyed me, and I didn't want to die. Why should I have died? Yes, I took the magic that he gave
me and yes, I presided over your sacrifices and then I fled as anyone of my nature would do."
He looked at me for a long time, as if trying to decide whether or not I wanted to quarrel further.
"And what do I see now in you?" I demanded. "Haven't you fled your Faithful of the Forest? Why
do I come upon you in Rome? " He waited a long moment.
"Our god," he said, "our old burnt god. He spoke of Egypt. He spoke of our bringing him one who
could go down into Egypt. Did you go to Egypt? Did you seek there the Good Mother?"
I cloaked my mind as best I could. I made my face severe, and I tried to figure how much I should
confess and why.
"Yes I went to Egypt," I said. "I went to find the cause of the fire that had burnt the gods all through
the North lands."
"And what did you find?" he demanded.
I glanced from him to Avicus and I saw that he too waited upon my answer.
"I found nothing," I responded. "Nothing but burnt ones who pondered the same mystery. The old
legend of the Good Mother. Nothing further. It is finished. There is no more to tell."
Did they believe me? I couldn't tell. Both seemed to harbor their own secrets, their own choices
made long ago. Avicus looked ever so slightly alarmed for his companion. Mael looked up slowly
and said with anger,
"Oh, that I had never laid eyes upon you. You wicked Roman, you rich Roman with all your
splendor and fine words." He looked about the house, at its wall paintings, at its couches and tables,
at the marble floors.
"Why do you say this?" I asked. I tried not to despise him but to see him, and understand him, but
my hatred was too great.
"When I took you prisoner," he said, "when I sought to teach you our poetry and our songs, do you
remember how you tried to bribe me? You spoke of your beautiful villa on the Bay of Naples. You
said that you would take me there if only I would help you escape. Do you remember these awful
things?"
  "Yes, I remember," I said coldly. "I was your prisoner! You had taken me deep into the forest
against my will. What did you expect of me? And had you let me escape, I would have taken you to




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my house on the Bay of Naples. I would have paid my own ransom. My family would have paid it.
Oh, it's too foolish to speak of these things."
I shook my head. I grew too agitated. My old loneliness beckoned to me. I wanted silence in these
rooms again. What need had I of these two? But the one called Avicus appealed to me silently with
his expresssion. And I wondered who he might be.
"Please, keep your temper," said Avicus. "I'm the cause of his suffering."
"No," said Mael quickly. I glanced at his companion.
"That can't be."
"Oh, but it is," declared Avicus, "and always has been, ever since I have you the Dark Blood. Gain
the strength either to remain with me or to leave me. Things cannot remain as they are."
He reached out and put his hand on his companion's arm. "You've found this strange being,
Marius," he said, "and you've told Marius of the last years of your strong belief. You've relived that
awful misery. But don't be so foolish as to hate him for what happened. He was right to seek his
freedom. As for us, the old faith died. The Terrible Fire destroyed it, and nothing more could be
done." Mael looked as dejected as any creature I've ever seen. Meantime my heart was fast catching
up with my mind. I was thinking:
Here are two immortals but we cannot solace one another; we cannot have friendship. We can only
part after bitter words. And then I'll be alone again. I'll be proud Marius who left Pandora. I shall
have my beautiful house and all my fine possessions to myself.
I realized Avicus was staring at me, trying to probe my mind, but failing though his Mind Gift was
quite terrifically strong. "Why do you live as vagabonds? " I asked.
"We don't know how to live as anything else," said Avicus. "We've never tried. We shy away from
mortals, except when we hunt. We fear discovery. We fear fire." I nodded.
"What do you seek other than blood?"
A miserable expression passed over his face. He was in pain. He tried to hide it. Or perhaps he tried
to make the pain go away.
"I'm not sure that we seek anything," he said. "We don't know how."
"Do you want to stay with me," I asked, "and learn? " I felt the boldness, the presumptuousness of
this question, but the words had already been said.
"I can show you the Temples of Rome; I can show you the big palaces, the houses that make this
villa appear quite humble indeed. I can show you how to play the shadows so that mortals never see
you; how to climb walls swiftly and silently; how to walk the roofs at night all over the city, never
touching the ground." Avicus was amazed. He looked to Mael. Mael sat slumped, saying nothing.
Then he pulled himself up. In a weak voice he continued his condemnation. "I would have been
stronger if you hadn't told me all those marvelous things," he said, "and now you ask if we want to
enjoy the same pleasures, the pleasures of a Roman."
"It's what I have to offer," I said. "Do what you wish."
Mael shook his head. He began to speak again, for the benefit of whom I don't know.
"When it was plain that you wouldn't return," he said, "they chose me. I was to become the god.
But for this to happen we had to find a God of the Grove who had not been burnt to death by the
Terrible Fire. After all, we had destroyed our own gentle god foolishly! A creature who had had the
magic to make you."
I gestured as if to say, It was indeed a shame.
"We sent word far and wide," he said. "At last an answer came from Britain. A god survived there,
a god who was most ancient and most strong."
I looked to Avicus, but there was no change in his expression.



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"However we were warned not to go to him. We were told that it was perhaps not something we
should do. We were confused by these messages, and at last we set out for we felt that we must
try."
"And how did you feel," I asked cruelly, "now that you had been chosen, and you knew that you
would be shut up in the oak, never to see the sun again, and only to drink blood during the great
feasts and during the full moon?"
He looked straight ahead as if he couldn't give me a decent answer to this, and then he replied.
"You had corrupted me as I told you."
"Ah," I said, "so you were afraid. The Faithful of the Forest couldn't comfort you. And I was to
blame."
"Not afraid," he said furiously, clenching his teeth. "Corrupted as I said." He flashed his small
deep-set eyes on me. "Do you know what it means to believe absolutely nothing, to have no god, no
truth!"
"Yes, of course I know," I answered. "I believe nothing. I consider it wise. I believed nothing when
I was mortal. I believe nothing now."
I think I saw Avicus flinch.
I might have said more brutal things, but I saw that Mael meant to go on.
Staring forward in the same manner he told his tale: "We made our journey," he said. "We crossed
the narrow sea to Britain and went North to a land of green woods and there we came upon a band
of priests who sang our hymns and knew our poetry and our law. They were Druids as we were
Druids, they were the Faithful of the Forest as were we. We fell into each other's arms."
Avicus was watching Mael keenly. My eyes were more patient and cold, I was sure. Nevertheless
the simple narrative drew me, I have to confess.
"I went into the grove," said Mael. "How huge the trees were. How ancient. Any one of them might
have been the Great Tree. At last I was led to it. And I saw the door with its many iron locks. I
knew the god was inside."
Suddenly Mael glanced anxiously to Avicus, but Avicus gestured for him to go on.
"Tell Marius," he said gently, "and in telling Marius, you tell me." It had such a soft sound to it, this
utterance. I felt a shiver on the surface of my skin, my lonely and perfect skin.
"But these priests," said Mael, "they warned me. 'Mael, if there is any lie or imperfection in you,
the god will know it. He will merely kill you and you will be a sacrifice and nothing more than that.
Think deep because the god sees deep. The god is strong but the god would be feared rather than
adored and takes his vengeance, when aroused, with great pleasure.'
"The words shook me. Was I truly prepared for this strange miracle to come upon me?" He glared
savagely at me.
"I thought over everything. Your word pictures came back to me! The beautiful villa on the Bay of
Naples. How you had described your rich rooms. How you had described the warm breezes and the
sound of the water on the rocky shore. How you had described your gardens. You had spoken of
gardens. Ah, could I endure the darkness of the oak, I thought, the drinking of blood, the starvation
between sacrifices, for what would this be?"
He paused as if he couldn't continue. Again he glanced at Avicus. "Go on," said Avicus calmly in
his deep voice. Mael continued:
"Then one of these priests accosted me and took me aside and he said, 'Mael, this is an angry god.
This is a god who begs for blood when he shouldn't want it. Do you have the strength to present
yourself to him?'




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"I had no chance to answer him. The sun had just gone down. The grove was full of lighted torches.
The Faithful of the Forest had assembled. All my fellow priests who had come with me surrounded
me. They were pushing me towards the oak.
"When I reached it, I insisted that they free me. I put my hands upon the bark, and I closed my eyes
and in the silent voice, as I had prayed in my home grove, I prayed to this god. I said 'I am of the
Faithful of the Forest. Will you give me the Sacred Blood so that I might return home and do what
my people wish me to do?' "
Again he stopped speaking. It was as if he was staring at something dreadful that I could not see.
Avicus spoke up again. "Continue," he said.
Mael sighed.
"There came a silent laugh from inside the oak, a silent laugh and an angry voice! It went inside my
head, and I was shaken by it. And the god said to me, 'Bring me a blood sacrifice first. Then and
only then will I have the strength to make you a god.' "
Again Mael broke off. Then, "Surely you know, Marius," he said, "how gentle our god was. When
he made you, when he spoke to you there was nothing of anger or hate in him, but this god was full
of wrath."
I nodded.
"I told the priests what the god had said to me. They drew back in a group, all afraid and
disapproving.
" 'No,' they said, 'he has been asking for blood too much. It is not fitting that he should have it. He
is to starve now as always between each full moon and until the yearly rituals so that he comes
from the oak thin and ravenous, like the dead fields, ready to drink the blood of sacrifice and
become plump with it, like the bounty of the coming spring.'
"What was I to say?" asked Mael. "Finally I tried to reason with some of them. 'To make a god,
surely he needs strength,' I explained. 'And he himself is burned from the Terrible Fire, and perhaps
the blood helps him and heals him. Why not give him sacrifice? Surely you have a condemned man
in one of the villages or settlements who can be brought to the oak?'
"They drew back altogether, and they stared at the tree and its door and its locks. And I realized
they were afraid. Then a dreadful thing occurred, which changed me utterly. There came from the
oak a stream of enmity that I could feel as though someone full of rancor were staring at me!
"I could feel it as though the being looked upon me with all his rage, his sword raised to destroy
me. Of course it was the power of the god, using his mind to flood mine with his hatred. But so
strong was it that I could not think of what it was, or what to do.
"The other priests ran. They had felt this anger and hatred as well. I couldn't run. I couldn't move. I
stared at the oak. I think the old magic had caught me. God, poems, songs, sacrifice--those things
did not matter to me suddenly. But I knew a powerful creature was inside the oak. And I didn't run
from it. And at that moment my evil plotting soul was born!"
Mael gave another very dramatic sigh. He was silent, his eyes fixed
on me.
"How so?" I asked. "What did you plot? You had spoken through the mind with the gentle god of
your own grove. You had seen him at the full moon take sacrifice, both before and after the
Terrible Fire. You saw me when I was changed. You've just said so. What struck you so about this
god?"
He looked overwhelmed for a moment.
Finally, gazing ahead of him again as if he had to, he continued.
"This god was more than angry, Marius. This god meant to have his way!"



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"Then why weren't you afraid?"
A silence fell in the room. I was truly a bit perplexed.
I looked at Avicus. I wanted to confirm: Avicus was this god, no? But to ask such a question was
crude. It had been said earlier that Avicus gave the Dark Blood to Mael. I waited, as it was proper
for me to do.
Finally Mael looked at me in the most sly and strange fashion.
His voice dropped, and he smiled venomously.
"The god wanted to get out of that oak," he said, glaring at me, "and I knew that if I helped him, he
would give me the Magic Blood!"
"So," I said smiling, because I couldn't help it. "He wanted to escape the oak. But of course."
"I remembered you when you escaped," Mael said, "the mighty Marius, blooming from blood
sacrifice, running so speedily from us! Well, I would run like you! Yes, and yes, and as I thought
these things, as I plotted, as I thought, I heard the voice from the oak again, directed soft and
secretive, only to me:
" 'Come closer,' it commanded me, and then as I pressed my forehead
to the tree it spoke. 'Tell me of this Marius, tell me of his escape,'
it said. 'Tell me and I will give you the Dark Blood and we will flee this place together, you and I.' "
Mael was trembling. But Avicus looked resigned to these truths as though he had pondered them
many times.
"It does become clearer," I said.
"There is nothing that is not connected with you," Mael said. He shook his fist at me. It reminded
me of a child.
"Your own doing," I said. "From the moment you stole me from the tavern in Gaul. You brought us
together. Remember that. You kept me prisoner. But your unfolding story calms you. You need to
tell us. Tell more."
It seemed for a moment he would fly at me, desperate in his rage, but then there came a change in
him. And shaking his head a little, he grew calm, scowling and then went on:
"When this confirmation came to me from the god's own mind," he said, "I was fatally set upon my
course. I told the other priests immediately that they were to bring a sacrifice. We had no time for
quarreling, and that I should see that the condemned man was given to the god. I should go into the
tree with the condemned man. I had no fear to do it. And they must hasten with all things, as the
god and I might need the night for our magic to be done.
"It seemed an hour passed before they found the wretched man who was to die in the tree, but at
last they brought him forward, bound and weeping, and very fearfully they unlocked the mighty
door.
"I could feel the mounting rage of the god inside. I could feel his hunger. And pushing this poor
condemned wretch before me, I entered, torch in hand to stand inside the hollowed chamber of the
tree."
I nodded with a small smile to say only I know.
Meantime Mael's eyes had shifted to Avicus.
"There stood Avicus much as you see him now," Mael said, still looking at his companion. "And at
once, he fell upon the condemned man. He drank the blood of this piteous victim with merciful
speed, and then he cast the body away.
"Then Avicus fell upon me, taking the torch from me, hanging it up on the wall so that it seemed
dangerously near the wood, and grasping me tight by the shoulders he said," 'Tell me of Marius, tell
me how he escaped the Sacred Oak. Tell me the story or I'll kill you now.' "



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Avicus listened to all this with a calm face. He nodded as if to say, That was how it took place.
Mael turned away from him and looked forward again. "He was hurting me," Mael said. "If I hadn't
said something quickly he would have broken my shoulder, so I spoke up, knowing how well he
might search my thoughts, and I said, 'Give me the Dark Blood and we shall escape together as you
have promised. There is no great secret to what I know. It is a matter of strength and speed. We
take to the tree limbs, which they cannot do so easily who follow us, and then we move through the
trees.'
" 'But you know the world,' he said to me. 'I know nothing. I have been imprisoned for hundreds of
years. I only dimly remember Egypt. I only dimly remember the Great Mother. You must guide me.
And so I'll give you the magic and do it well.'
"He was true to his promise. I was made strong from the start. Then together, we listened with
minds and ears for the gathered Faithful of the Forest and the Druid priests, and finding them quite
unprepared for our departure, we forced the door with our united strength.
  "At once we took to the treetops, as you had done, Marius. We put our pursuers far behind us,
and before dawn we were hunting a settlement many many miles away."
He sat back as though exhausted by his confession. And as I sat there, still too patient and too
proud to destroy him, I saw how he had woven me into all of it, and I wondered at it, and I looked
to Avicus, the god who for so long had lived in the tree. Avicus looked calmly at me.
"We have been together since that time," Mael said in a more subdued voice. "We hunt the great
cities because it is simpler for us, and what do we think of Romans who came as conquerors? We
hunt Rome because it is the greatest city of all." I said nothing.
"Sometimes we meet others," Mael continued. His eyes shot towards me suddenly. "And
sometimes we are forced to fight them, for they will not leave us in peace."
"How so? "I asked.
"They are Gods of the Grove, the same as Avicus, and they are badly burnt and weak and they want
our strong blood. Surely you've seen them. They must have found you out. You cannot have been
hiding all these years." I didn't answer.
"But we can defend ourselves," he went on. "We have our hiding places, and with mortals we have
our sport, our games. What more is there for me to say?"
He had indeed finished.
I thought of my own existence, my life crowded with so much reading and wandering and with so
many questions, and I felt utter pity for him along with my contempt. Meanwhile the expression on
the face of Avicus touched me.
Avicus looked thoughtful and compassionate when he looked at Mael; but then his eyes fell on me
and his face quickened.
"And how does the world seem to you, Avicus?" I asked.
At once Mael shot me a glance and then he rose from his chair and came towards me, bending over
me, his hand out as if he would strike me.
"This is what you have to say to my story?" he demanded. "You ask of him how he sees the
world?"
I didn't answer. I saw my blunder, and had to admit to myself that it wasn't deliberate. But I did
wish to hurt him, there was no doubt of it. And this I had done. Avicus had risen to his feet. He
came to Mael and guided him back, away from me.
"Quiet, my beloved one," he said gentry to Mael. He drew Mael back to his chair. "Let us talk some
more before we part with Marius. We have till morning. Please, be calm."




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I realized then what had so infuriated Mael. It was not that he thought I had ignored him. He knew
better. It was jealousy. He thought that I was trying to woo away from him his friend. As soon as
Mael had taken his chair again, Avicus looked to me almost warmly.
"The world is marvelous, Marius," he said placidly. "I come to it as a blind man after a miracle. I
remember nothing of my mortal life except that it was in Egypt. And that I was not myself from
Egypt. I am afraid now to go there. I am afraid old gods linger there. We travel the cities of the
Empire, except for the cities of Egypt. And there is much for us to see."
Mael was still suspicious. He drew his ragged and filthy cloak up around him as though he might at
any moment take his leave. As for Avicus he looked more than ever comfortable, though he was
barefoot and as dirty as Mael. "Whenever we have come upon blood drinkers," said Avicus, "which
isn't often, I have feared them, that they would know me for a renegade god."
He said this with considerable strength and confidence so it surprised me.
"But this is never the case," he continued. "And sometimes they speak of the Good Mother and the
old worship when the gods would drink the blood of the Evil Doer, but they know less of it than
me." "What do you know, Avicus?" I asked boldly. He considered as if he weren't quite sure that he
wanted to answer me with truth. Then he spoke.
"I think I was brought before her," he said, his dark eyes rather open and honest.
Mael turned to him sharply, as if he meant to strike him for his frankness, but Avicus went on.
"She was very beautiful. But my gaze was lowered. I couldn't really see her. And they were saying
words, and the chanting was frightening to me. I was a grown man, that much I know, and they
humiliated me. They spoke of honors that were curses. I may have dreamt the rest."
"We've been here long enough," said Mael suddenly. "I want to go."
He rose to his feet and quite reluctantly Avicus followed. There passed between us, Avicus and me,
something silent and secretive, which Mael could not interrupt. Mael knew it, I think, and he was in
a sustained fury, but he couldn't prevent it. It was done.
"Thank you for your hospitality," said Avicus, reaching out to take my hand. He looked almost
cheerful for a moment. "Sometimes I remember little mortal customs. I remember touching hands
in this way."
Mael was in a pale rage. Of course there was much I wanted to say to Avicus but I knew now that
such was very simply impossible.
"Remember," I said to both of them, "I live as a mortal man lives, with the same comforts. And I
have my studies always, my books here, you see. Eventually I will travel the Empire, but for now
Rome, the city of my birth, is my home. What I learn is what matters to me. What I see with these
eyes."
I looked from one to the other of them.
"You can live in this way if you like," I said. "Surely you must take fresh garments from me now. I
can so easily provide them. And fine sandals for your feet. If you would have a house, a fine
dwelling in which to enjoy your leisure hours, I can assist you in obtaining it. Please take this from
me."
Mael's eyes were blazing with hatred.
"Oh, yes," he whispered at me, too angry for a full voice. "And why not offer us a villa on the Bay
of Naples, with marble balustrades overlooking the blue sea!"
Avicus looked directly at me. He appeared quiet in his heart and genuinely moved by my words.
But what was the use? I said no more.




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My proud calm was suddenly broken. The anger returned along with its weakness. I remembered
the hymns of the grove, and I wanted to move against Mael, for all the ugliness of it, to quite
literally tear him limb from limb.
Would Avicus move to save him? It was likely. But what if he did not? And what if I proved
stronger than both of them, I who had drunk from the Queen?
I looked at Mael. He wasn't afraid of me, which I found interesting.
And my pride returned. I could not stoop to a common physical battle, especially one which might
become hideously awkward and ugly, one which I might not win.
No, I was too wise for it. I was too good of heart. I was Marius, who slew the Evil Doer, and this
was Mael, a fool.
They made to walk away through the garden and I could find no words to say to them, but Avicus
turned to me and said quickly, "Farewell, Marius. I thank you and I will remember you."
And I found myself struck by the words.
"Farewell, Avicus," I answered. And I listened as they disappeared into the night. I sat there,
feeling a crushing loneliness. I looked at my many bookcases, and at my writing table. I looked at
my inkstand. I looked at the paintings on the walls. I should have tried to make peace with Mael,
surely, to have Avicus as my friend. I should go after them both. I should implore them to remain
with me. We had so much more to say to one another. I needed them as they needed each other. As
I needed Pandora. But I lived the lie. I lived it out of anger. This is what I'm trying to tell you. I
have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of
anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.
Oh, the lies that I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

FOR A FULL MONTH, I didn't dare to go to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept. I knew that
Mael and Avicus still hunted Rome. I caught glimpses of them with the Mind Gift and occasionally
I even spied upon their very thoughts. Sometimes I heard their steps.
Indeed it seemed to me that Mael was actually tormenting me with his presence, attempting to ruin
my tenure in the great city, and this made me bitter. I contemplated attempting to drive him and his
companion away.
I also suffered considerable preoccupation with Avicus, whose face I could not forget. What was
the disposition of this strange being, I thought. What would it mean for him to be my companion? I
feared I would never know.
Meantime, other blood drinkers occasionally hunted the city. I felt their presence immediately, and
there was no doubt on one particular night that a skirmish occurred between a powerful and hostile
blood drinker and Avicus and Mael. With the Mind Gift I knew all that took place. Avicus and
Mael so frightened the visitor that he was gone before morning, and had even given word in a
lowly voice that he would never come to Rome again.
This put me to pondering. Would Avicus and Mael keep the city clean of others, while leaving me
alone? As the months passed this seemed to be the case.
A small band of Christian blood drinkers tried to infest our hunting ground. Indeed they came from
the same tribe of snake worshipers who had come to me in Antioch insisting that I had old truths.
With the Mind Gift I saw them fervently setting up their temple where they meant to sacrifice
mortals. I was deeply repelled.
But once again Avicus and Mael put them to rout, apparently without being contaminated by their
extravagant ideas about us serving Satan--a personage for whom Avicus and Mael would have had
no use as they were pagans. And the city was ours again. I did note in watching these activities



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from afar, however, that neither Mael nor Avicus seemed to know his own strength. They might
have escaped the Druids of Britain by using their supernatural skills, but they were unaware of a
secret which I had already learnt--that their powers increased with time.
Now I had drunk the blood of the Mother so I fancied myself much stronger than either of them on
that account. But quite apart from that, my strength had increased with the centuries. I could now
reach the top of a four-story tenement--of which there were many in Rome--with comparative
ease. And no band of mortal soldiers could have ever taken me prisoner. My speed was far too
great for that.
Indeed when I took my victims, I already faced the problem of the old ones, to restrain my
powerful hands from crushing out the life that pumped the blood into my mouth. And oh, was I
ever still thirsty for that blood!
But as I spied upon these various activities--the routing of the Satanic vampires--I stayed away
from the shrine of Akasha and Enkil for too long.
Finally one early evening, using my skills at their most powerful to cloak my presence, I did go out
into the hills and to the shrine.
I felt that I had to make this visit. Never had I left the Great Pair alone for such a period, and I did
not know whether or not there might be consequences for such neglect.
Now I realize such a fear was utterly ridiculous. As the years passed I could neglect the shrine for
centuries. It was of no consequence whatsoever. But then I had only begun to learn.
And so I came to the new and barren chapel. I brought with me the requisite flowers and incense,
and several bottles of scent with which to sprinkle Akasha's garments, and once I had lighted the
lamps and set the incense to burning, once the flowers were in their vases, I felt an overall
weakness and went down on my knees.
Let me remind you again that during my years with Pandora, I almost never prayed in this mariner.
But now Akasha belonged only to me. I looked up at the unchanged couple, with their long black
plaited hair, seated on the throne as I had left them, both freshly dressed in their Egyptian clothes of
fine linen, Akasha in her pleated gown, the King in his kilt. Akasha's eyes still wore the
imperishable black paint which Pandora had so carefully applied. And around Akasha's head was
the glistening gold diadem with its rubies which Pandora had placed there with loving hands. Even
the gold snake bracelets on her graceful upper arms had been the gift of Pandora. And on the feet of
the two were the sandals which Pandora had fastened with care.
It seemed in the wealth of light that they had grown paler in complexion
and I know now, centuries later, that I was right. They were healing rapidly from the Terrible Fire.
On this particular visit, I also paid keen attention to the expression of Enkil. I was too aware of the
fact that he did not and had never incited my devotion, and I thought this was unwise. In Egypt
when I had first come to find them -- a zealous new blood drinker, inflamed by Akasha's plea to
take them out of Egypt -- he had moved to block my path to the Queen.
Only with difficulty had he been made to return to his posture of seated King. Akasha had
cooperated in that all-important moment, but the movements of both of them had been sluggish and
unearthly and dreadful to behold.
That had been three hundred years ago, and the only gesture from either of them since had been the
open arm of Akasha to welcome Pandora to herself.
Oh, how Pandora had been blessed in that gesture from Akasha! I would never forget it all my long
years.




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What were Enkil's thoughts, I asked myself. Was he ever jealous that I addressed my prayers to
Akasha? Did he even know? Whatever the case, I told him in a silent voice that I was devoted to
him, that I would always protect him and his Queen. At last, reason left me as I gazed on them.
I let Akasha know how much I revered her and how dangerous it had been for me to come. Only
out of caution had I remained away. I would never on my own have left the shrine deserted. Indeed,
I should have been here, using my vampiric skill to create paintings for the walls or to make for
them mosaics-- for though I never thought of myself as having possessed any skill in this regard--
I had used my powers to make passable decorations for the shrine in Antioch, indeed very good
ones, whiling away the lonely hours of the night.
But here the walls were simply whitewashed and the abundant flowers I'd brought seemed welcome
color indeed.
"My Queen, help me," I prayed. And then as I meant to explain how miserable I was over the
nearness of these two fellow blood drinkers, a dreadful and obvious thought came to my mind. I
could never have Avicus for a companion. I could never have anyone. For any blood drinker of
even passable skill could learn from my mind the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept.
It had been vain and foolish for me to offer clothing and lodging to Avicus and Mael. I was doomed
to be alone. I felt sickened and cold in my misery. I looked up to the Queen and I could form no
prayers with words.
Then quite helplessly I begged: "Bring Pandora back to me. If ever you brought her to me in the
first place, bring her back, I beg you, I'll never quarrel with her again. I'll never abuse her again.
This is unendurable, this loneliness. I need to hear the sound of her voice. I need to see her."
On and on I went in this manner, until suddenly I became alarmed that Avicus and Mael might be
near to me, and I rose to my feet, straightened out my garments and made to take my leave.
"I'll return," I told the Mother and Father. "I'll make this shrine beautiful like the one in Antioch.
Only let us wait until they've gone." I was about to go out when abruptly the thought occurred to
me--I needed more of Akasha's powerful blood. I needed it to be stronger than my foes. I needed it
to endure what I had to endure. Now understand, never since the first night that I had drunk from
Akasha, had I taken more of her blood. That first night had been in Egypt when she told me with
the Mind Gift to take her out of the land. Then and only then had I experienced the blood. Even
when Pandora was made a blood drinker, and she drank from Akasha, I had not dared to approach
the Mother. In fact, I knew well how the Mother might strike down those who came by force to
steal the Sacred Blood from her, for I'd witnessed such an aborted crime.
Now as I stood before the small dais with its seated royalty, the idea obsessed me. I must again take
the Mother's blood. In silence I begged permission. I waited for a sign. When Pandora had been
made, Akasha had lifted her arm to beckon. I had seen it and marveled at it. I wanted such a thing
to happen now.
No such sign came to me, however, and yet the obsession raged within me, until I moved forward,
quite determined to drink the Divine Blood or die. I found myself suddenly embracing my cold and
lovely Akasha with one arm behind her and the other lifted so that my hand held her head.
Closer and closer I came to her neck.
At last my lips were pressed against her cool unresponsive flesh and she had made no move to
destroy me. I felt no fatal clasp on the back of my head. Silent as ever she remained in my arms.
Finally my teeth broke the surface of her skin and the thick blood, blood like that of no other
among us, came into my mouth. At once I found myself dreamy and cast adrift in an impossible
paradise of sunshine and green grass and flowering trees. What a comfort it was, what a balm. It




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seemed a garden of old Roman myth, one somehow familiar to me, protected forever from winter,
and full of the most blessed blooms.
Yes, familiar and forever safe, this verdant place.
The blood ravaged me, and I could feel it hardening me, as it had the very first time it had come
into my veins. The sun of the familiar garden grew brighter and brighter until the flowering trees
began to disappear in the light. Part of me, some very small and weak part of me was afraid of it,
this sun, but the larger part relished it, relished the warmth that was passing into me, and the
comfort of what I beheld, and then all at once, as quickly as it had begun, this dream was ended.
I lay on the cold hard floor of the shrine, several yards away from the foot of the dais. I was on my
back. For a moment I was uncertain of what had happened. Was I injured? Was there to be some
terrible justice in store? But within seconds, I realized I was as sound of limb as ever, and that the
blood had greatly invigorated me just as I'd supposed. I rose to my knees, and made certain with
quick eyes that the Royal Pair remained as before. Why had I been thrown away from Akasha with
such violence? Nothing was changed.
Then for a long time I gave my silent thanks for what had taken Place. Only when I was certain that
nothing further was to happen, I rose to my feet, and declaring that I would be back soon to begin
my decorations of the shrine, I left. I was enormously excited as I returned to my house. My
increased agility, and keenness of mind were more than welcome. I determined to test myself, and
taking my dagger, I plunged it all the way through my left hand, and then withdrew it, watching the
wound as it immediately healed.
At once I spread out a scroll of the finest parchment and I began to write in my personal code
which no other could read, of what had taken place. I didn't know why, after taking the Sacred
Blood, I had found myself on the floor of the chapel.
"The Queen has allowed me to drink again from her, and if this is to happen often, if I can take
nourishment from our mysterious majesty, I can attain enormous strength. Even the blood drinker
Avicus will be no match for me, though this might have been the case before this night."
Indeed, as it turned out I was precisely right about the implications of this incident, and during all
the centuries to come, I approached Akasha again and again.
I did this not only when severely injured--a tale I mean to tell you--but I did it at times when the
fancy caught hold of me as if she had put it in my mind. But never, never, as I have confessed with
bitterness, did she ever press her teeth to my throat and take from me my own blood. No, that
distinction was left for the blood drinker Lestat, as I have said.
In the following months, this new blood served me well. I found that the Mind Gift was stronger in
me. I could well detect the presence of Mael and Avicus when they were quite far away, and
though such spying opens a mental passage as it were by which they could see me as their observer,
I was able, after seeing them, to quickly close myself off.
I was also able to tell quite easily when they were searching for my presence, and of course I heard,
positively heard, their footsteps when they were in the precincts of my house. I also opened my
house to humans!
The decision came to me one evening as I lay on the grass in my own garden dreaming. I would
have regular banquets. I would invite the notorious and the slandered. I would have music and dim
lamps.
I considered the matter from every perspective! I knew that I could arrange it. I knew that I could
fool mortals as to my nature; and how their company would soothe my lonely heart! I did not go to
my daily rest in my house, but in a hiding place far from it, so what danger could there be in this
new decision? None whatsoever!



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It could easily be done.
Naturally, I would never feed upon these guests. They would enjoy complete safety and hospitality
under my roof, always. I would hunt in far precincts and under cover of darkness. But my house,
my house would be full of warmth and music and life.
Well, I went about it, and it proved far simpler than I had ever dreamt.
Having my sweet and good-natured old slaves lay out tables rich with food and drink, I brought in
the disreputable philosophers to talk away the night to me, and I listened to them in their rambling,
as I did to the old and neglected soldiers who had tales of war to tell which their own children did
not want to hear.
Oh, this was a miracle, the admission of mortals to my very rooms, mortals who thought me to be
alive as I nodded and coaxed them in their wine-fed stories. I was warmed by it, and I wished that
Pandora were here with me to enjoy it for it was precisely the sort of thing which she would have
wanted us to do.
Soon my house was never empty, and I made the amazing discovery that should I become bored in
the midst of this heated and drunken company it was a simple matter for me to get up and go into
my library and begin writing, for all the drunken guests simply went on with each other, hardly
noticing what I did and only rousing themselves to greet me when I returned.
Understand, I did not become a friend to any of these dishonorable or disgraced creatures. I was
only a warm-hearted host and spectator who listened without criticism and never--until dawn--
turned anyone away.
But it was a far cry from my former solitude, and without the strengthening blood of Akasha, and
perhaps without my quarrel with Avicus and Mael, I would never have taken this step.
And so my house became crowded and noisy, and wine sellers sought me out to offer their new
vintages, and young men came to me, begging me to listen to their songs.
Even a few fashionable philosophers appeared at my door from time to time, and once in a while a
great teacher, and these I enjoyed immensely, making very certain that the lamps were very dim
and that the rooms were most shadowy, so frightened was I that the sharp-minded might discover
that I was not what I pretended to be.
As for my trips to the shrine and Those Who Must Be Kept, I knew A traveled in total secrecy for
my mind was more securely cloaked.
And on certain nights--when the banquet in my house could well do without me--and I held
myself to be entirely safe from all intrusion, I went to the shrine and did the work which I supposed
would comfort my poor Akasha and Enkil.
During these years, rather than undertake mosaics which had proved very difficult for me in
Antioch, though I had succeeded, I made murals on the walls of the common kind seen in so many
Roman houses, of frolicking gods and goddesses in gardens of eternal springtime and bounteous
flowers and fruit.
I was hard at work one evening, singing to myself, happy among all the pots of paint when I
suddenly realized that the garden I was faithfully rendering was in fact the garden I had seen when I
drank Akasha's blood.
I stopped, sat still on the floor of the shrine, as if I were a child, with crossed legs, and looked up at
the venerable Parents. Was it meant to be?
I had no idea. The garden looked vaguely familiar. Had I seen such a garden long before I had
drunk Akasha's blood? I couldn't remember. And I, Marius, prided myself upon my memory. I went
on with my work. I covered over a wall and started all over again to render it more nearly perfect. I
made better trees and shrubbery. I painted the sunlight and the effects of it upon green leaves.



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When inspiration left me, I would use my blood drinker delicacy to creep into some fashionable
villa outside the walls of the enormous and ever expanding city, and by the faintest light peruse the
inevitably lush murals for new figures, new dances, new attitudes and smiles.
Of course I could do this easily without waking anyone in the house, and sometimes I need have no
worry of waking anyone, for no one was there.
Rome was immense, busy as ever, but with all the wars, with all the shifting politics and scheming
plotters and passing Emperors, people were being banished and recalled regularly, and great houses
were often empty for me to quietly wander and enjoy.
Meanwhile, in my house, my banquets had become so famous that my rooms were always full. And
no matter what my goal for any night, I commenced it among the warm company of drunkards
who'd begun their feasting and quarreling before I ever arrived.
"Ah, Marius, welcome!" they would cry out as I came into the room.
How I smiled at them all, my treasured company. Never did anyone suspect me of anything, and I
did grow to love some of these delightful creatures, but always I remembered that I was a predator
of men, and could not therefore be loved by them, and so I kept my heart covered as it were.
And so with this mortal comfort, the years passed, whilst I kept myself busy with the energy of a
madman, either writing in my journals and subsequently burning them, or painting on the walls of
the shrine.
Meantime, the wretched serpent worshiping blood drinkers came again, attempting to establish
their absurd temple within one of the neglected catacombs where mortal Christians no longer
gathered, and once again, Avicus and Mael drove them away.
I observed all this, immensely relieved that I had not been called upon to do anything, and painfully
remembering when I had slaughtered such a band in Antioch and subsequently fallen into the
piteous madness that had cost me the love of Pandora apparently for all time. But no, not for all
time; surely she would come to me, I thought. I wrote about it in my journals.
I put down my pen; I closed my eyes. I longed for her. I prayed that she would come to me. I
envisioned her with her rippling brown hair and melancholy oval face. I tried to remember with
exactitude the shape and the fine color of her dark eyes.
How she had argued with me. How she had known the poets and philosophers. How she had been
able to reason. And I, I had mocked her all too much. I cannot tell you how many years passed in
this fashion.
I was aware that even though we did not speak to one another, or even face each other in the street,
Avicus and Mael had become companions to me by their very presence. And as for their keeping
Rome clean of other blood drinkers, I was in their debt. Now, I didn't pay much attention to what
was happening with the
government of the Empire as I think you can ascertain from all I've said.
But in truth I cared passionately about the fate of the Empire. For the Empire to me was the
civilized world. And though I was a secret hunter by night, a filthy killer of humans, nevertheless I
was a Roman, and I lived in all other ways a civilized life.
I suppose that I assumed, much like many an old Senator of the time, that sooner or later the
endless battles of the Emperors would sort themselves out. A great man, with the strength of
Octavian, would rise to unite the entire world once again. Meantime the armies would patrol the
borders, endlessly driving back the barbarian menace, and if the responsibility fell, over and over
again to the armies to choose an Emperor, so be it, as long as the Empire remained intact.




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As for the Christians who existed everywhere, I did not know what to make of them at all. It was a
great mystery to me that this little cult, which had begun in Jerusalem of all places, could have
grown to such tremendous size.
Before I'd left Antioch, I'd been amazed by the success of Christianity, of how it was becoming
organized, and how it seemed to thrive on division and dissent.
But Antioch was the East as I have said. That Rome was capitulating to the Christians was beyond
my wildest dreams. Slaves had everywhere gone over to the new religion, but so had men and
women of high position. And persecutions had no effect at all. Before I continue, however, allow
me to point out what other historians have also pointed out, that before Christianity, the entire
ancient world lived in a kind of religious harmony. No one persecuted anyone else for religion.
Even the Jews who would associate with no one else were easily infolded by Greeks and Romans
and allowed to practice their extremely anti-social beliefs. It was they who rebelled against Rome,
not Rome which sought to enslave them. And so this harmony was worldwide.
Of course all of this led me to believe, when I first heard Christians preaching, that there was no
chance of this religion gaining ground. It placed far too much responsibility upon the new members
to avoid all contact with the revered gods of Greece and Rome, and so I thought the sect would
soon die out.
Also there was the constant strife among the Christians as to what they really believed. Surely they
would destroy one another, I thought, and the whole body of ideas, or whatever it could be called,
would dissolve.
But no such thing happened, and the Rome in which I lived in the three hundreds was thronged
with Christians, as I've said. For their apparently magical ceremonies, they met in the catacombs
and also in private homes.
Now as I went along, watching all this, and yet ignoring it, there me a couple of events which
stunned me out of my dreams. Let me explain.
As I have said, the Emperors of Rome were constantly at war. No sooner had the old Roman Senate
ratified the appointment of one than he was murdered by another. And troops were always
marching across the far-flung provinces of the Empire to establish a new Caesar where another had
been put to rout.
In the year of 305, there were two of these sovereigns known as Augusti, and two known as
Caesars, and I myself did not know precisely what these titles meant. Or shall I say, I had too much
contempt for all involved to know what they meant.
Indeed these so-called "Emperors" more often than I liked were invading Italy and one by the name
of Severus in the year 307 had come all the way to the gates of Rome.
Now I, with little more than the greatness of Rome to keep me company, did not want to see my
native city sacked!
It soon became clear to me when I started to pay attention that all of Italy as well as Sicily, Corsica,
Sardinia and North Africa were all under the rule of the "Emperor" Maxentius, and it was he who
had -repelled Severus and was now repelling yet another invader, Galerius, whom he chased away
in defeat.
This Maxentius who lived only six miles from the city walls was himself a beast. At one extremely
unhappy event, he allowed the praetorians, that is, his personal guards, to massacre the people of
Rome. And he was very against the Christians whom he persecuted needlessly and cruelly; and the
gossip had it that he debauched the wives of outstanding citizens, thereby giving the greater
offense. In fact, the Senators suffered a great deal of abuse at his hands, while he let his soldiers
run riot in Rome.



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None of this meant much to me, however, until I heard that one of me other Emperors--
Constantine--was marching on Rome. This was the third threat in recent years to my beloved city;
and I was much relieved when Maxentius went out to fight the important battle a great distance
from the walls. Of course he did this because he knew the Romans would not support him.
But who could have known that this was to be one of the most decisive battles in the history of the
Western world? Of course the battle occurred in the day so that I could know nothing of it until I
waked with the setting sun. At once, I rushed up the stairs from my underground hiding place and,
coming to my house, I found all my regular philosopher guests drunk, and I went out into the
streets to learn what I could from the citizenry of what had taken place. Constantine was
completely the victor. He had massacred the troops of Maxentius and the latter had fallen into the
Tiber and drowned. But what was most significant to those congregating everywhere was the rumor
that before Constantine went into battle he had seen a sign in the sky which had come from Jesus
Christ.
Indeed the sign had been made manifest right after noon when Constantine had looked up and
beheld just above the declining sun, the sign of the cross with the inscription "Conquer with This."
My reaction was incredulity. Could a Roman Emperor possibly have seen a Christian vision? I
went rushing back to my desk, wrote down all these particulars in my precarious journal of events
and waited to see what history would reveal. As for the company in my banquet room they were
now all awake and arguing about the whole matter. None of us believed it. Constantine a Christian?
More wine, please.
At once, to everyone's amazement, but without doubt, Constantine revealed himself to be a
Christian man. Instead of endowing temples to celebrate his great victory, as was the custom, he
endowed Christian churches, and sent out word to his governors that they should behave in the
same manner as he had done. Then he presented the Pope of the Christians with a palace on the
Coelian Hill. And let me point out that this palace was to remain in the hands of the Popes of Rome
for a thousand years. I had once known those who lived in it, and I went myself to see the Vicar of
Christ ensconced in it, and speculated as to what all this would mean.
Soon laws were passed which forbade crucifixion as a form of execution, and also forbade the
popular gladiatorial games. Sunday became a holiday. And the Emperor extended other benefits to
the Christians, and very soon we heard that Christians were petitioning him to take part in their
doctrinal disputes!
Indeed, their arguing over matters of doctrine became so serious in African cities that riots broke
out in which Christians murdered each other. People wanted the Emperor to intervene.
I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very
beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal
authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many
arguments.
All this I watched with amazed eyes. Of course my guests argued furiously about it. It seemed
some who were dining at my table were Christians and had been all along. Now it was out in the
open, yet the wine flowed and the music went on.
Understand, I had no real fear of or inherent distaste for Christianity. As I have said, I witnessed its
growth with amazement.
And now--as ten years or more passed during which Constantine shared the Empire uneasily with
Lacinius, I saw changes that I did not believe would ever take place. Obviously the old persecutions
had been utter failures. Christianity was a marvelous success.There seemed to me to be a blending




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of Roman thinking with Christian ideas. Perhaps one should say it was a blending of styles, and
ways of looking at the world.
Finally--when Lacinius was gone, Constantine became the sole ruler of the Empire and we saw all
of its provinces united once more. He became obviously more concerned with the disunity of the
Christians and we heard word in Rome of huge Christian councils in the East. The first took place
at Antioch where I had lived with Pandora and which was still a great city, perhaps in many
respects more lively and interesting at this point than Rome.
The Arian heresy was the cause of Constantine's discontent. And the whole thing had to do with
something extremely small in the Scriptures which seemed to Constantine to be hardly worth the
dispute. Nevertheless certain Bishops were excommunicated from the growing Church, and another
more important council was held in Nicaea only two months later, where Constantine presided
again.
There the Nicene Creed was adopted, which is recited by Christians even in the present time. The
Bishops who signed this Creed effectively again condemned and excommunicated the theorist and
Christian writer Arius as a heretic and doomed his writings to be burnt. He himself was to be shut
out of his native Alexandria. The Judgment was absolute.
But it is worth noting, and I did, that Arius continued his struggle for recognition, even though the
council had cast him out. The other great affair of this council, and a matter which is still rather
confusing in Christianity, was the question of the true date of Easter, or the anniversary of the
resurrection of Christ. A determination was made as to how this date would be calculated, and it
was based upon a Western system. And then the council
came to an end.
Now the Bishops who had come to the council were asked to stay and help the Emperor celebrate
his twenty years on the throne, and of course they did so, for how could they refuse? But as soon as
word reached Rome of these elaborate festivities, there was much jealousy and discontent. Rome
felt ignored in all these goings-on. And so there was considerable relief and happiness when in
January of 326, the Emperor headed for our city once again.
Before his arrival, however, terrible deeds became attached to Constantine's name. For reasons
nobody could discover, he stopped along the way to put to death both his son Crispus and his
stepson, Licinianus, and his own wife, the Empress Fausta. Historians can speculate forever as to
why all this happened. The truth is, nobody knows why Constantine committed these acts. There
may have been a plot against him. Perhaps there was not.
Let me say here that it cast a cloud over his arrival among the Romans, and that when he did come,
it was no great consolation to the old ruling class, because he dressed very much in the extravagant
Eastern style, with silk and damask, and would not be part of the important procession to the
Temple of Jupiter, as the people had expected him to do.
Of course the Christians adored him. Rich and poor they flocked to see him in his Eastern robes
and jewels. They were overwhelmed with his generosity as he laid the ground for more churches.
And though he had spent almost no time in Rome, he had over the years allowed for the completion
of secular buildings begun by Maxentius, and he built a large public bath under his own name.
  Then came appalling rumors. Constantine had plans for an entirely new city. Constantine found
Rome old and decayed and lacking as a capital. Constantine meant to make a new city for the
Empire; he meant to make it in the East, and it would honor his name!
Imagine it, if you can.




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Of course the Emperors of the last century had moved all over the provinces of the Empire. They
had fought each other, breaking into pairs and tetrarchies, and meeting here and murdering one
another there.
But to give up Rome as the capital? To create another great city to be the center of the Empire?
It was unthinkable to me.
I brooded in hatred. I knew despair.
All of my nightly guests shared my misery. The elderly soldiers were broken by the news and one
of the old philosophers wept bitterly. Another city to be the capital of the Roman Empire? The
younger men were furious, but they could not hide their bitter curiosity, or their grudging guesses
as to where this new city might be. I could not dare weep as I wanted to for my tears would have
been full of blood.
I asked the musicians to play old songs, songs I had to teach them for they had never heard them,
and there came a strange moment when we sang together--my mortal guests and me--a slow
mournful song about Rome's tarnished glory which we would not forget.
The air was cool on that evening. I went out into the garden and looked down over the side of the
hill. I could see lights here and there in the darkness. I could hear laughter and conversation from
other houses.
"This is Rome!" I whispered.
How could Constantine abandon the city which had been the capital of the Empire for a thousand
years of struggle, triumph, defeat, glory? Couldn't someone reason with him? This simply could not
come to pass.
But the more I roamed the city, the more I listened to talk both far and wide, the more I roamed
outside the walls and into the towns thereabout, I came to see what had motivated the Emperor.
Constantine wanted to begin his Christian Empire in a place of incredible advantage, and could not
retreat to the Italian peninsula when so much of the culture of his people lay to the East. Also he
had to defend his Eastern borders. The Persian Empire of the East was always a threat. And Rome
was not a fit place for a man in supreme power to reside.
Thus Constantine had chosen the distant Greek city of Byzantium to be the site of Constantinople,
his new home.
And I should see my home, my sacred city, become now a castoff of a man whom I, as a Roman,
could not accept.
There were rumors of the incredible if not miraculous speed with which Constantinople had been
mapped out, and with which building was being done.
At once many Romans followed Constantine to the burgeoning new city. At his invitation perhaps,
or simply on their own impulse. Senators decamped with their families and their wealth to live in
this new and shining place, a subject on everyone's lips.
Soon I heard that Senators from all the cities of the Empire were being drawn to Constantinople,
and indeed, as baths and meeting halls and circuses were erected in the new capital, beautiful
statues were being looted from cities throughout Greece and Asia to adorn the new architectural
works.
Rome, my Rome, what will become of you, I thought. Of course my evening feasts were not really
deeply affected. Those who came to dine with Marius were poor teachers and historians who had
no means of moving to Constantinople, or curious and reckless young men who had not made the
clever choice as yet.
I had plenty of mortal company as always, and indeed, I had inherited a few very quick-witted
Greek philosophers who had been left behind by families who had gone to Constantinople where



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they would no doubt find more brilliant men to tutor their sons. But this, the company in my house
was a small matter. In truth, as the years passed, my soul was crushed. And it struck me as more
than ever dreadful that I had no other immortal companion who might understand what I felt. I
wondered if Mael or Avicus could possibly comprehend what was going on. I knew they still
haunted the same streets as I did. I heard them.
And my need of Pandora became so terrible that I could not envision her or think of her anymore.
But still, I thought desperately, if this man Constantine can
preserve the Empire, if Christianity can bind it and prevent it from breaking apart, if its disparate
provinces can be united, if Constantine can keep back the barbarians who forever pillage without
building or preserving anything, who am I to judge him, I, who am outside of life?
I went back to my scribbling on the nights when my mind was feverish. And on those when I was
certain that Mael and Avicus were nowhere in the vicinity I went out into the country to visit the
shrine. My work on the walls of the shrine was continuous. As soon as I finished painting the walls
of the entire chapel, I covered over a wall and began painting again. I could not make my nymphs
and goddesses to suit my standards. Their figures were not slender enough for me, and the arms not
graceful enough. Their hair was not right. And as for the gardens I rendered, there were not enough
kinds of flowers for me to
include.
Always, there was that sense of familiarity--that I had seen this garden
that I had known it long before I was allowed by Akasha to drink her blood. I had seen the stone
benches in it, I had seen the fountains.
I couldn't shake the sensations of being in it as I painted, so strong was the feeling. I'm not sure it
aided me in my work. Perhaps it hurt.
But as I gained skill as a painter, and I did indeed gain skill, other aspects of the work disturbed me.
I was convinced that there was something unnatural in it, something inherently ghastly in the
manner with which I drew human figures
so nearly perfectly, something unnatural in the way I made the colors so unusually bright, and
added so many fierce little details. I was particularly repelled by my penchant for decorative
details.
As much as I was driven to do this work, I hated it. I composed whole gardens of lovely mythic
creatures only to rub them out. Sometimes I painted so fast that I exhausted myself, and fell down
on the floor of the shrine, spending the paralytic sleep of the whole day there, helpless, rather than
going to my secret resting place--my coffin-- which was hidden not far from my house.
We are monsters, that is what I thought whenever I painted or looked on my own painting, and
that's what I think now. Never mind that I want to go on existing. We are unnatural. We are
witnesses with both too much and too little feeling. And as I thought these things, I had before me
the mute witnesses, Akasha and Enkil. What did it matter to them what I did?
Perhaps twice a year I changed their fancy garments, arranging Akasha's gown with fastidious care.
I brought new bracelets for her more often and put these on her cold sluggish arms with slow tender
movements so as not to insult her by what I did. I fussed with the gold in the black plaited hair of
both Parents. I arranged a handsome necklace around the naked shoulders of the King.
I never spoke to either of them idly. They were too grand for that. I addressed them only in prayer.
I was silent in the shrine as I worked, with my paint pots and brushes. I was silent as I sat there
peering in frank disgust at what I'd done. Then one night, after many years of diligence in the
shrine, I stood back and tried to see the whole as never before. My head was swimming.




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I went to the entrance to take the stance of a man who was new the place, and forgetting utterly the
Divine Pair, I merely looked at the walls.
A truth came clear to me in painful clarity. I had painted Pandora. I had painted her everywhere.
Each nymph, each goddess, was Pandora. Why hadn't I known?
I was amazed and defeated. My eyes are playing tricks on me, I thought. I wiped them, actually
wiped them as a mortal might do, to see all the better and looked again. No. It was Pandora,
rendered beautifully everywhere that I looked. Dresses changed and style of hair, yes, and other
adornments but these creatures were all Pandora, and I had not seen it until now.
Of course the never ending garden looked familiar. Never mind that. Pandora had little or nothing
to do with those feelings. Pandora was inescapable and came from some different fount of
sensations. Pandora would never leave me. That was the curse. I concealed all my paints and
brushes behind the Divine Parents as I always did--it would have been an insult to the Father and
Mother to leave them--and I went back to Rome. I had before me several hours before dawn in
which to suffer, in which to think of Pandora as never before.
The drunken party was winding down a bit as it always did in the small hours, with a few guests
asleep in the grass outside, and others singing together in a small group, and no one took notice of
me as I went into my library, and sat at my desk. Through the open doors I looked out at the dark
trees and wished that my life were at an end.
It seemed I lacked the courage to go on in the existence which I'd made for myself, and then I
turned and decided--simply out of desperation--to look at the paintings on the walls of the room. I
had of course approved these paintings and paid to have them refreshed and changed many a time.
  But now I took stock of them from my point of view not as Marius the rich man who can have
whatever he wishes, but as Marius the monster painter who had rendered Pandora twenty-one
times on the four walls of Akasha's shrine.
  I saw suddenly how inferior were these paintings, how rigid and pallid the goddesses and nymphs
who peopled this world of my study, and quickly I woke my day slaves and told them that they
must have everything covered over with fresh paint the following day. Also an entire supply of the
best paints must be purchased and brought to the house. Never mind how the walls were to be
redecorated. Leave that to me. Cover up all that was there.


  They were used to my eccentricities, and after making certain that they understood me, they went
back to their sleep.
I didn't know what I meant to do, except I felt driven to make
pictures, and I felt if I can cling to that, if I can do that, then I can go on.
My misery deepened.
  I laid out vellum for an entry in my erstwhile journal and began to describe the experience of
discovering my beloved everywhere around me, and how it seemed to contain an element of
sorcery when
suddenly I heard an unmistakable sound.
Avicus was at my gate. Indeed he was asking me with a strong current of the Mind Gift whether or
not he might corne over the wall and in to visit me.
  He was leery of the mortals in my banquet room and in my garden. But might he come in?
At once I gave my silent answer that he could.




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  It had been years since I had so much as glimpsed him in the back streets, and I was not entirely
surprised to see him dressed as a Roman soldier, and to see that he had taken to carrying a dagger
and a sword.
He glanced fretfully at the door to the banquet room, but I gestured
that he must pay the guests no attention at all.
  His rich curling dark hair was well groomed arid clean and he had about him an attitude of
prosperity and well-being, except that his clothes were dreadfully stained with blood. It was not
human blood. I would have srnelled human blood. He soon gave me to know by a
simple facial expression that he was in dire distress.
  "What is it? What can I do for you?" I asked. I tried to cloak rny pure loneliness, my pure need to
touch his hand.
  You are a creature like me, I wanted to say. We are monsters and we can put our arms around
each other. What are they, my guests, but tender things? But I said nothing at all.
It was Avicus who spoke.
  "Something dreadful has happened. I don't know how to correct it, or even if it can be corrected. I
beg you to come."
"Come where, tell me," I said sympathetically.
  "It's Mael. He's been grievously wounded and I don't know if the damage can be repaired."
We went out at once.
   I followed him into a very crowded quarter of Rome where the newer buildings faced one
another sometimes with no more than two

feet in between. At last we came to a substantial new house on the outskirts, a rich dwelling, with a
heavy gate, and he took me inside, through the entranceway and into the broad beautiful atrium or
courtyard within the house.
  Let me note here that he was not using his full strength during this little journey, but I did not
want to point this out to him, and so at his slow pace, I had followed his lead.
  Now, through the atrium, we passed into the main room of the house, the room where mortals
would have dined, and there by the light of one lamp, I saw Mael lying in seeming helplessness on
the tiled floor.
The light was glinting in his eyes. I knelt beside him at once.
  His head was twisted awkwardly to one side, and one of his arms was turned as though the
shoulder were out of joint. His entire body was hideously gaunt, and his skin had a dreadful pallor
to it. Yet his eyes fixed on me with neither malice nor supplication.
  His clothes, very much like those of Avicus, hung loose on his starved frame, and were deeply
soaked with blood. As for his long blond hair it was clotted with blood also, and his lips shivered as
if he were trying to speak but could not.
Avicus gestured to me helplessly with both hands. I bent closer to have a better look at Mael, while
Avicus brought the oil lamp near and held it so that it cast a warm bright light.
  Mael made a low, harsh sound, and I saw gradually that there were horrid red wounds on his
throat, and on his naked shoulder where the cloth of his tunic had been pushed out of the way. His
arm was at the wrong angle to his body, most definitely, and his neck had been
horribly twisted so that his head was not right.
  In a moment of exquisite horror, I realized that these parts of him-- head and arm--had been
shifted from their natural place.
"How did this happen?" I asked. I looked up at Avicus. "Do you know?"



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  "They cut off his head and his arm," said Avicus. "It was a band of soldiers, drunk and looking
for trouble. We made to go around them, but they turned on us. We should have gone up over the
roofs. We were too sure of ourselves. We thought ourselves so superior, so invincibly strong."
"I see," I answered. I clasped the hand of Mael's good arm. At once,he pressed my hand in return.
In truth I was deeply shocked. But I could not let either of them see this, for it would only have
made them more afraid.
  I had often wondered if we could be destroyed by dismemberment, and now the awful truth was
plain to me. It was not sufficient alone to release our souls from this world.
  "They surrounded him before I knew what to do," said Avicus. "I fought off those who tried to
harm me, but look what they have done to him."
  "And you brought him back here," I said, "and you tried to replace both head and arm."
  "He was still living!" said Avicus. "They had run off, drunken, stumbling miscreants. And I saw
at once that he was still alive. There in the street, though the blood poured out of him, he was
looking at me! Why, he was reaching with his good arm for his own head."
He looked at me as though begging me to understand him, or perhaps forgive him.
  "He was alive," he repeated. "The blood poured out of his neck, and it poured out of his head. In
the street, I put the head on the neck. It was here that I joined the arm to the shoulder. And look
what I have done."
Mael's fingers tightened on my hand.
  "Can you answer me?" I said to Mael. "Make only a sound if you cannot."
  There came that harsh noise again but this time I fancied I heard the syllable Yes.
"Do you want to live? " I asked.
  "Oh, don't ask him such a thing," Avicus begged.. "He may lack courage just now. Only help me
if you know what to do." He knelt down beside Mael and he bent over, carefully holding the lamp
to one side, and he pressed his lips to Mael's forehead. From Mael there had come that same
answer again: Yes. "Bring me more light," I said to Avicus, "but understand before you do. I
possess no extraordinary magic in this matter. I think I know what has happened and I know how to
undo it. But that is all."
At once Avicus gathered up from about the house a number of oil lamps and lighted them and set
them down in an oval around Mael. It looked strangely like the work of a sorcerer marking off a
place for magic, but I didn't let my thoughts become distracted by that annoying

fact, and when I could finally see with the very best advantage I knelt down and looked at all the
wounds, and I looked at the sunken, bloodless and skeletal figure of Mael.
  Finally I sat back on my heels. I looked at Avicus who sat opposite me on the other side of his
friend.
"Tell me precisely how you accomplished this," I said. "I fixed the head to the neck as best I could
do it, but I was wrong, you see, I did it wrong. How can we know how to do it right?" he
demanded. "Do you know?"
"And the arm," I said, "it's badly joined as well." "What shall we do?" "Did you force the joining?"
I asked.
  He reflected before answering me. And then he said, "Yes, I think I did. I see your meaning. I did
it with force. I meant these parts to adhere once more. I used too much force."
  "Ah, well, we have one chance to repair this, I think, but understand again I possess no secret
knowledge. I take my lead from the fact that he is still living. I think we must pull off both head




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and arm and see if these parts, when placed in correct proximity to the body, will not join at the
right angles as they should."
His face brightened only as he slowly understood what I had said. "Yes," he said. "Perhaps they
will join as they are meant to join! If they can join so poorly, they can join in a way that is perfect
and right." "Yes," I said, "but you must do this act. You are the one he trusts." He looked down at
his friend and I could see that this task would be no easy tiling. Then slowly he looked up at me.
"We must give him our blood first to strengthen him," he said. "No, after it's done," I said, "he'll
need it for healing. That's when we'll give it." I disliked that I had given my word in this, but I
realized quite abruptly that I didn't want to see Mael die. Indeed, so much did I not want to see it
that I thought perhaps I ought to take over the entire operation myself.
But I could not step in. It was up to Avicus how the matter went forward.
  Quite abruptly, he placed his left hand firmly on Mael's shoulder and pulled Mael's badly joined
arm with all his strength. At once the arm was free of the body with bloody ligaments trembling
from it rather like the roots of a tree.
  "Now, place it close to him, there, yes, and see if it does not seek its own place."

He obeyed me, but my hand was out to guide the arm quickly, not letting it get too close, but
waiting for jt to begin to move on its own. Abruptly I felt the spasm in the arm and then let go of it,
and saw it quickly joined to the shoulder, the flying ligaments moving as so many little serpents
into the body until the rupture was no more.
  Alas, I had been right in my suspicions. The body followed its own supernatural rules.
  At once, I cut my wrist with my teeth and I let my blood pour down on the wound. I saw it heal
before my eyes.
  Avicus seemed rather amazed by this simple trick, though surely he must have known it, for this
limited curative property of our blood is almost universally known among our kind.
  In a moment, I had given all that I wanted to give and the wound had all but disappeared.
  I sat back to see Mael's eyes fixed on me as before. His head looked pathetic and grotesque at its
incorrect angle. And his expression was hideously empty.
I felt his hand again, and the pressure was returned.
"Are you prepared to do it?" I asked Avicus.
  "Hold him well by the shoulders," Avicus answered. "For the love of Heaven, use all your
strength."
  I put my hands up, and caught Mael as firmly as I could. I would have rested my knees on his
chest but he was far too weakened for such a weight and so I kept to one side.
  Finally with a loud moan, Avicus pulled on Mael's head with both his hands.
  The gush of blood was appalling, and I could swear that I heard the ripping of preternatural flesh.
Avicus fell back with the gesture, and toppled to one side, holding the helpless head in his hands.
  "At once, place it near to the body!" I cried. I held the shoulders still, though the body had
suddenly given a dreadful lurch. Indeed the arms flew up as if in search of the head.
  Avicus laid the head down in the gushing blood, pushing it ever closer to the gaping neck, until
suddenly the head seemed to move of its own volition, the ligaments once more like so many little
snakes as they made to meet with those of the trunk, and the whole body gave another lurch and the
head was firmly fixed as it should have been.
  I saw Mael's eyes fluttering, and I saw his mouth open, and he cried out,
"Avicus," with all his strength.




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  Avicus bent over him, cutting his wrist with his teeth as I had done before, only this time it was to
let the stream come down into Mael's mouth.
  Mael reached for the arm above him, and he brought it down to him, drinking fiercely as his back
arched, and his thin miserable legs quivered and went straight.
  I drew away from the pair, out of the circle of light. I sat still for a long while in the shadows, my
eyes fixed on them, and then when I could see that Avicus was exhausted, that his heart was tired
from giving so much blood, I crept to join the two, and I asked if I might give Mael to drink from
me as well.
  Oh, how my soul revolted against this gesture. Why ever did I feel compelled to do it? I can give
no answer. I don't know any more now than I knew at the time.
Mael was able to sit up. His figure was more robust, but the expression
   on his face was too dreadful to behold. The blood on the floor was dried and glittering as our
blood always is. It would have to be scraped
up and burnt.
Ala el leant forward and put his arms around me in a terrible intimacy
and kissed me on the neck. He didn't dare to sink his teeth.
  "Very well, do it," I said, though I was dreadfully hesitant, and I put in my mind images of Rome
for him to see as he drank, images of beautiful new temples, Constantine's amazing triumphal arch,
and all the wondrous churches which were now erected far and wide. I thought of Christians and
their magical ceremonies. I thought of
anything to disguise and obliterate all the secrets of my entire life.
  A miserable revulsion continued in me as I felt the pull of his hunger and his need. I refused to
see anything of his soul with the Mind Gift, and I think my eyes met those of Avicus at one
moment, and I was struck by the grave, complex expression on his face.
  Finally, it was all finished. I could give no more. It was almost dawn and I needed what strength I
had to move quickly towards my hiding place. I rose to my feet.
Avicus spoke up.
"Can we not be friends now?" he asked. "We have been enemies for
so many, many years."
  Mael was still wretchedly afflicted from what had befallen him, and in no state perhaps to declare
on the matter one way or the other, but he looked up at me with his accusing eyes, and said:
"In Egypt you saw the Great Mother, I saw her in your heart when I drank your blood."
I went rigid with shock and fury.
  I thought I should kill him. He has been good only for learning-- how to put together again blood
drinkers who had been dismembered-- and it was time now to finish what the drunkards only
started earlier this night. But I said and did nothing.
Oh, how cold was my heart.
Avicus was dreadfully disappointed and disapproving.
  "Marius, I thank you," he said, sad and weary as he walked me to the gate. "What could I have
done if you had refused to come to us? I owe you an immense debt."
"There is no Good Mother," I told him. "I bid you farewell."
  As I hurried back over the rooftops of Rome, towards my own house, I resolved in my soul that
I'd told them the truth.




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7

I WAS VERY SURPRISED the next night to find the walls of my library completely painted over.
I had forgotten that I'd given such a command to my slaves. As soon as I saw all the pots of fresh
paint in any number of colors, I then remembered what I had
told them to do.
  Indeed, I couldn't think of anything but Alael arid Avicus and must confess I was more than
fascinated by the mixture of civilized manners and quiet dignity which I found in Avicus and not at
all in Mael.
  Mael would always be for me a barbarian, unlettered, unrefined, and above all fanatical, for it
was due to his fanatic belief in the Gods of the Grove that he had taken my life.
  And realizing that the only way I could escape my thoughts of the pair was to paint: the newly
prepared walls, I set to work at once.
  I took no notice of my guests who were already dining of course, and of those going and coming
through the garden and the open gate.
  Realize, if you will, that by this time I did not have to hunt for blood that often, and though I was
still much too much the savage in this respect, I often left it till late in the evening or early in the
morning,
or did not hunt at all.
  So to the painting, I went. I didn't stand back and take stock of what I meant to do. Rather I went
at it fiercely, covering the wall in great glaring patches, making the usual garden which obsessed
me, and the nymphs arid goddesses whose forms were so familiar to my
mind.
  These creatures had no names for me. They might have come from any verse in Ovid, or from the
writing of Lucretius, or indeed from the blind poet, Homer. It was no matter to me. I lost myself in
depicting uplifted arms and graceful throats, in painting oval faces and garments blowing gently in
the breeze.
  One wall I divided with painted columns, and around these I painted vines. Another wall, I
worked with stiff borders of stylized greenery. Arid the third wall I allotted into small panels in
which I would feature various gods.
  Meantime, the house grew crowded with the ever noisy party, and some of my favorite drunkards
drifted inevitably into the library and watched me at work.
  I knew enough to slow my pace somewhat so as not to scare them with my unnatural speed. But
otherwise, I took no notice, and only when one of the lyre players came in to sing for me did I
realize how mad the house must seem.
  For there were people dining and drinking everywhere now, and the master of the house in his
long tunic stood painting a wall, the proper work for craftsmen or artists, not Patricians you
understand, and there seemed no decent boundary of any kind.
I began to laugh at the absurdity of it.
One of the young guests marveled at my talent.
"Marius, you never told us. We never imagined."
  "Neither did I," I said dully, going on with my work, watching the white paint disappear beneath
my brush.
For months I went on with my painting, even moving into the banquet




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   room where the guests cheered me on as I worked. Whatever I accomplished it did not please
me and it certainly did not amaze them.
They thought it amusing and eccentric that a rich man should decorate his own walls. And all the
drunken advice I received did not amount to very much. The learned men knew the mythic tales I
depicted and they enjoyed diem, and the young men tried to get me in arguments which I refused.
  It was the spacious garden I loved to paint above all, with no painted frame to set it apart from
our world with its dancing figures and bending laurels. It was the familiar garden. For I imagined
that I Could escape into it with my mind.
  And during that time I did not risk attending to the chapel. Rather I painted all the rooms of my
house.
  Meantime, the old gods whom I painted were fast disappearing from the Temples of Rome.
At some point or other, Constantine had made Christianity the legal religion of the Empire, and
now it was the pagans who couldn't worship as they chose.
I don't think Constantine himself was ever in favor of forcing
anybody in religious matters. But that's what had come about.
  So I painted poor old Bacchus, the god of wine, with his cheerful followers, and the brilliant
Apollo chasing the desperate and lovely Daphne who turned into a laurel tree rather than allow the
godly rape.
  On and on I worked, happy with mortal company, thinking, Mael and Avicus, please do not
search my mind for secrets.
  But in truth all during this time I could hear them very near me. My mortal banquet parties
puzzled them and frightened them. I could hear them approach my house and then go away every
night.
Finally the inevitable night came.
They stood at my gate.
  Mael was for coming in without permission, and Avicus kept him back, begging me with the
Mind Gift to admit them once more.
I was in my library, painting it over for the third time, and the
dinner party that night, thank the gods, had not spilled over into the
room.
  I put down my brush. I stared at my unfinished work. It seemed another Pandora had emerged in
the unfinished Daphne and it struck a tragic chord in my heart that Daphne had eluded her lover.
What a fool I'd been to escape mine.
  But for a long self-indulgent moment I looked at what I had painted--this unearthly creature with
her rippling brown hair.
  You understood my soul, I thought, and now others are coming only to sack my heart of all its
riches. What am I to do? We argued, yes, you and I, but it was with loving respect, was it not? I
cannot endure without you. Please come to me, from wherever you are.
  But there was no time for my solitude. It suddenly seemed rather precious, no matter how much
of it I had had in the past years.
  I closed off my happy human guests from the library, and then silently, I told the blood drinkers
that they might come in.
  Both were richly dressed, and their swords and daggers were encrusted with jewels. Their cloaks
were fixed at the shoulder with rich clasps and even their sandals were ornamented. They might
have been preparing to join the opulently clad citizens of the new capital, Constantinople, where
great dreams were still being realized though Constantine was now dead.



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It was with mixed feelings that I gestured for them to sit down.


  However much I wished that I had allowed Mael to perish, I was drawn to Avicus--to his keen
expression and the friendly way in which he regarded me. I had time to observe now that his skin
was a lighter brown than it had been, and that its dark tone gave a rather sculpted quality to his
strong features, especially his mouth- As for his eyes they were clear and held no cunning or lie.
  Both remained standing. They looked anxiously in the direction of the mortal banquet room.
Once again, I urged them to be seated.
  Mael stood, quite literally looking down his hawk nose at me, but Avicus took the chair.
  Mael was still weak and his body emaciated. Quite obviously, it would take many nights of
drinking from his victims before the
damage done him would be completely healed.
"How have things been with you?" I asked, out of courtesy.
And then out of private desperation I let my mind envision Pandora.
    I let my mind completely recall her in all her splendid details. I hoped thereby to send the
message of her to both of them, so that she, wherever she was, might receive this message
somehow, a message which I, on account of the blood I had given her in her making, could not
send on my own.
I don't know that either received any impression of my lost love.
Avicus answered my question politely but Mael said not one word.
"Things are better for us," said Avicus. "Mael heals well."
  "I want to tell you certain things," I commenced without asking whether or not they wanted such
knowledge. "I don't believe from what happened that either of you know your own strength. I know
from my own experience that power increases with age, as I am now more agile and strong than I
was when I was made. You too are quite strong, and this incident with the drunken mortals need
not have ever taken place. YOU could have gone up the wall when you were surrounded." "Oh,
leave off with this!" said Mael suddenly.
I was aghast at this rudeness. I merely shrugged.
 "I saw things," said Mael in a small hard voice, as though the confidential manner of it would
make his words all the more important. "I things when I drank from you which you could not
prevent me from seeing. I saw a Queen upon a throne."
I sighed.
His tone was not as venomous as it had been before. He wanted the
truth and knew he could not get it by hostile means.

  As for me I was so fearful that I dared riot move or speak. Naturally I was defeated by this news
from him, dreadfully defeated, and I didn't know what chance I had of preventing everything from
becoming known. I stared at my paintings. I wished I had painted a better garden. I might have
mentally transported myself into a garden. Vaguely I came to thinking, But you have a beautiful
garden right outside through the doors.
  "Will you not tell me what you found in Egypt?" Mael asked. "I biow that you went there. I know
that the God of the Grove wanted to send you there. Will you not have that much mercy as to tell
me what you found? "
  ''And why would I have mercy?" I asked politely. "Even if I had found miracles or mysteries in
Egypt. Why would I tell you? You won't even be seated under my roof like a proper guest. What is



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                                            Blood and Gold

there between us? Hatred and miracles?" I stopped. I had become too heated. It was anger. It was
weakness. You know my theme.
  At this, he took a chair beside Avicus and he stared before him as he had done on that night when
he told me how he'd been made.
  I saw now as I looked at him more closely that his throat was still bruised from his ordeal. As for
his shoulder, his cloak covered it but I imagined it to be the same.
  My eyes moved to Avicus and I was surprised to see his eyebrows knit in a strange little frown.
Suddenly he looked to Mael and he spoke.
  "The fact is, Marius can't tell us what he discovered," he said, his voice calm. "And we mustn't
ask him again. Marius bears some terrible burden. Marius has a secret which has to do with all of
us and how long we can endure."
  I was dreadfully aggrieved. I'd failed to keep my mind veiled and they had discovered all but
everything. I had little hope of preventing their penetration into the sanctum itself.
  I didn't know precisely what to do. I couldn't even consider things in their presence. It was too
dangerous. Yes, dangerous as it was, I had an impulse to tell them all.
Mael was alarmed and excited by what Avicus had said.
"Are you certain of this?" he asked Avicus.
  "Yes," Avicus answered. "Over the years my mind had grown stronger. Prompted by what I've
seen of Marius, I've tested my powers. I can penetrate Marius's thoughts even when I don't want to
do it. And on the night when Marius came to help us, as Marius sat beside you, as he watched you
heal from your wounds as you drank from me, Marius thought of many mysteries and secrets, and
though I gave you blood, I read Marius's mind."
  I was too saddened by this to respond to anything said by either of them. My eyes drifted to the
garden outside. I listened for the sound of the fountain. Then I sat back in my chair and looked at
the various scrolls of my journal which lay about helter-skelter on my desk for anyone to pillage
and read. Oh, but you've written everything in code, I thought. And then again, a clever blood
drinker might decipher it. What does it all matter now?
Suddenly I felt a strong impulse to try to reason with Mael.
  Once again I saw the weakness of anger. I had to put aside anger and contempt and plead with
him to understand.
  "This is so," I said. "In Egypt, I did find things. But you must believe me that nothing I found
matters. If there is a Queen, a Mother as you call her, and mind you, I don't say she exists, imagine
for the moment that she is ancient and unresponsive and can give nothing to her children any
longer, that so many centuries have passed since our dim beginnings that no one with any reason
understands them, and the matter is left quite literally buried for it matters not one jot."
  I had admitted far more than I intended, and I looked from one to the other of them for
understanding and acceptance of what I'd said.
  Mael wore the astonished expression of an innocent. But the look on the face of Avicus was
something else.
  He studied me as if he wanted desperately to tell me many things. Indeed his eyes spoke in
silence though his mind gave me nothing and then he said,
  "Long centuries ago, before I was sent to Britain to take up my time in the oak as the god, I was
brought before her. You remember I told you this."
"Yes," I said.
  "I saw her!" He paused. It seemed quite painful for him to relive this moment. "I was humiliated
before her, made to kneel, made to recite my vows. I remember hating those around me. As for her,



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                                              Blood and Gold

I thought she was a statue, but now I understand the strange words that they spoke. And then when
the Magic Blood was given me, I
surrendered to the miracle. I kissed her feet."
   "Why have you never told me this!" begged Mael. He seemed more injured and confounded than
angry or outraged.
"I told you part of it," said Avicus. "It's only now that I see it all. My existence was wretched, don't
you understand?" He looked to me and then to Mael, and his tone became a little more reasonable
and soft. "Mael, don't you see?" he asked. "Marius is trying to tell you. This path in the past is a
path of pain!"
"But who is she and what is she?" Mael demanded. In that fatal instant my mind was decided.
Anger did move me and perhaps in the wrong way.
  "She is the first of us," I said in quiet fury. "That is the old tale. She and her consort or King, they
are the Divine Parents. There's no more to it than that."
  "And you saw them," Mael said, as if nothing could make him pause in his relentless questioning.
  "They exist; they are-safe," I said. "Listen to what Avicus tells you. What was Avicus told? "
  Avicus was desperately trying to remember. He was searching so far back that he was
discovering his own age. At last he spoke in the same respectful and polite voice as before.
  "Both of them contain the seed from which we all spring!" he answered. "They cannot be
destroyed on that account for if they were, we would die with them. Ah, don't you see?" He looked
at Mael. "I know now the cause of the Terrible Fire. Someone seeking to destroy us burnt them or
placed them in the sun."
  I was utterly defeated. He had revealed one of the most precious secrets. Would he know the
other? I sat in sullen silence.
  He rose from the chair and began to walk about the room, incensed by his memories,
"How long did they remain in the fire? Or was it only one day's
passage in the desert sand?" He turned to me. "They were white as marble when I saw them. 'This
is the Divine Mother,' they said to me. My lips touched her foot. The priest pressed his heel to the
back of rny neck. When the Terrible Fire came I had been so long in the oak I remembered nothing.
I had deliberately slain my memory. I had slain all sense of time. I lived for the monthly blood
sacrifice and the yearly Sanhaim. I starved and dreamed as I'd been commanded to do. My life was
in rising at Sanhaim to judge the wicked, to look into the hearts of
those who were accused and pronounce on their guilt or innocence.
  "But now I remember. I remember the sight of them--the Mother and the Father--for I saw both
of them before they pressed my lips to her feet. How cold she was. How awful it was. And I was
unwilling. I was so filled with anger and fear. And it was a brave man's fear."

I winced at his last words. I knew what he meant. What must a brave general feel when he knows
the battle has gone against him and nothing remains but death? Mael looked up at Avicus with a
face full of sorrow and sympathy.
  But Avicus was not finished. On he went with his walking, seeing nothing before him but
memory, his thick black hair falling forward as he dipped his head under the weight of memories he
bore.
  His black eyes were lustrous in the light of the many lamps. But his expression was his finest
feature.




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                                           Blood and Gold

  "Was it the sun, or was it a Terrible Fire?" he asked. "Did someone try to burn them? Did
someone believe such a thing could be done? (Oh, it's so simple. I should have remembered. But
memory is desperate to leave us. Memory knows that we cannot endure its company.
                                          Memory would reduce us to fools. Ah, listen to old mortals
when they have nothing but memories of childhood. How they go on mistaking those around them
for persons long dead, and no one listens. How often I have eavesdropped on them in their misery.
How often I have wondered at their long uninterrupted conversations with ghosts in empty rooms."
Still I said nothing.
But he looked at me at last, and asked rne:
"You saw them, the King and Queen. You know where they are?"
  I waited a long moment before answering. I spoke simply when I answered.
  "I saw them, yes. And you must trust rne that they are safe. And that you don't want to know
where they are." I studied both of them. "If you were to know, then perhaps some night other blood
drinkers could take you prisoner and wring the truth from you, and they might strive to claim the
King and Queen."
  Mael studied me for a long while before he responded. "We fight others who attempt to take
Rome from us. You know we've done this. We force them to leave."
  "I know you do," I said. "But the Christian vampires continue to come, and they come in
numbers, and those numbers grow larger all the time. They are devoted to their Devil, their Serpent,
their Satan. They will come again. There will be more and more,"        "They mean nothing to us,"
said Mael disgustedly. "Why would they want this Holy Pair?"
For a moment I said nothing. Then the truth broke from me hatefully,
as though I couldn't protect them from it, nor protect myself.


  "All right," I said. "Since you know so much, both of you, let me explain the following: many
blood drinkers want the Mother and the Father. There are those who come from the Far East who
know of them. They want the Primal Blood. They believe in its strength. It's stronger than any other
blood. But the Mother and Father can move to defend themselves. Yet still thieves will always be
in search of them, ready to destroy whoever keeps them in hiding. And such thieves have in the
past come to me."
Neither of them spoke. I went on.
  "You do not want, either of you," I said, "to know anything further of the Mother and the Father.
You do not want rogues to come upon you arid try to overpower you for your knowledge. You do
not want secrets which can be ripped from your heart."
I glared at Mael as I said these last words. Then I spoke again.
"To know of the Mother and the Father is a curse."
  A silence fell, but I could see that Mael would not allow for it to be very long. A light came into
his face, and he said to me in a trembling voice:
  "Have you drunk this Primal Blood?" Slowly he became incensed. "You have drunk this blood,
haven't you?"
"Quiet, Mael," said Avicus. But it was no use.
  "You have drunk it," said Mael in fury. "And you know where the Mother and Father are
concealed."
  He rose from the chair and rushed at me, and suddenly clamped his hands on my shoulders.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  Now, I am by nature not given to physical combat, but in a rage I pushed him off me with such
force that he was thrown across the floor and back against the wall.
  "How dare you? " I asked fiercely. I struggled to keep my voice low so as not to alarm the
mortals in the banquet room. "I ought to kill you. What peace of mind it would give me to know
you were dead. I could cut you into pieces that no sorcerer could reassemble. Damn
you."
I was trembling with this uncharacteristic and humiliating rage.
  He gazed at me, his mind unchanged, his will only slightly chastened and then he said with
extraordinary fervor:
  "You have the Mother and the Father. You have drunk the Mother's blood. I see it in you. You
cannot hide it from me. How will you ever hide it from anyone else? "

I rose from my chair.
  "Then you must die," I said, "isn't that so? For you know, and you must never tell anyone else." I
made to advance on him.
  But Avicus who had been staring at all this in shock and horror rose quickly and came between
us. As for Mael, he had drawn his dagger. And he seemed quite ready for the brawl.
  "No, Marius, please," said Avicus, "we must make peace with each other, we cannot keep up this
struggle. Don't fight with Mael. What could be the outcome, but two wounded creatures hating each
other even more than now?"
  Mael was on his feet. He held his dagger ready. He looked clumsy. I don't think he knew
weapons. As for his supernatural powers, I didn't think either of them understood fully what they
might do. All this, of course, was defensive calculation. I didn't want this battle any more than
Avicus wanted it, yet I looked to Avicus now and said coldly:
"I can kill him. Stay out of the way."
  "But that is the point," said Avicus, "I cannot do this, and so you will be fighting the two of us,
and such a fight you can't win."
  I stared at him for a long moment during which words failed me completely. I looked to Mael
with his uplifted dagger. And then in a moment of utter despair I went to my desk and sat down and
rested my head on my elbows.
I thought of the night in the far city of Antioch when Pandora and I had slaughtered that bunch of
Christian vampires who had come so foolishly into our house talking about Moses in the desert
lifting the Serpent, and secrets from Egypt, and all such seemingly marvelous things. I thought of
all that blood and the burning afterwards. And I thought also how these two creatures, though we
didn't speak or see each other, had been my only companions all these years in Rome. I thought of
everything perhaps that mattered. My mind sought to organize itself round Mael and Avicus, and I
looked up from to the other, and then out to the garden again.
   "I'm ready to fight you," said Mael with his characteristic impatience.
    And what will you achieve? You think you can cut out the secret of the Mother and the Father
from my heart?"
 Avicus came to my desk. He sat down in the nearest chair before me and looked to me as if he
were my client or friend.
Marius, they are close to Rome. I know it. I have known it for a long time. Many a night you have
gone out into the hills to visit some strange and lonely place, and with the Mind Gift I have
followed you, wondering what could take you to such a distant spot. I believe now that you go to




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                                             Blood and Gold

visit the Mother and the Father. I believe you took them out of Egypt. You can trust me with your
secret. You can also trust me with your silence if you wish."
  "No," said Mael, coming forward immediately. "Speak, or I'll destroy you, Marius, and Avicus
and I will go to the very spot and see the Mother and Father for ourselves."
  "Never," said Avicus, becoming for the first time angry. He shook his head. "Not without Marius.
You're being foolish," he said to Mael.
  "They can defend themselves," I said coldly. "I've warned you. I've witnessed it. They may allow
you to drink the Divine Blood. They may refuse you. If they refuse, you will be destroyed." I
paused for emphasis then went on.
  "Once a strong god from the East came into my house in Antioch," I said. "He forced his way into
the presence of the Mother and the Father. He sought to drink from the Mother. And when he made
to sink his fangs into her neck, she crushed his head, and sent the lamps of the room to burn his
flailing body till there was nothing left. I don't lie to you about these things." I gave a great sigh. I
was tired of my own anger. "Having told you that, I'll take you there if you wish."
"But you have drunk her blood," said Mael.
  "You are so very rash," I answered. "Don't you see what I'm saying? She may destroy you. I
cannot say what she will do. And then there is the question of the King. What is his will? I don't
know. I'll take you there, as I've said."
  I could see that Mael wanted to go. Nothing would stop him from this, and as for Avicus, he was
very fearful and very ashamed of his own fear.
  "I must go," said Mael. "I was her priest once. I served her god in the oak. I have no choice but to
go." His eyes were brilliant with his excitement. "I must see her," he said. "I cannot take your
warnings. I must be taken to this place."
  I nodded. I gestured for them to wait. I went to the doors of the banquet room and opened them.
My guests were happy. So be it. A couple of them cheered my sudden presence, but quickly forgot
me. The drowsy slave poured the fragrant wine.
I turned and went back to Avicus and Mael.
We went out into the night, the three of us, and as we made for the shrine, I learnt immediately that
neither Mael nor Avicus moved at the speed which their strength allowed. I told them both to walk
faster, especially when there were no mortals to watch, and very soon I had them silently
exhilarated that they were more in possession of their true gifts.
  When we came to the granite door of the shrine, I showed them how it was quite impossible for a
team of mortals to open it and then I lighted the torch and took them down the stone steps.
  "Now, this is Holy Ground," I remarked before opening the bronze doors. "You do not speak
irreverently or idly and you don't speak of them as if they cannot hear."
The two were enthralled.
  I opened the door, lighted the torch within, and then let them enter and stand before the dais. I
held the torch high.
  All was perfect as I had assumed it would be. The Queen sat with her hands on her thighs as she
always did. Enkil took the same posture. Their faces, framed so beautifully in their black plaited
hair, were beautifully empty of thought or woe.
  Who could have known from the sight of them that life pumped inside them?
  "Mother and Father," I said distinctly, "I have brought two visitors who have begged to see you.
They are Mael and Avicus. They've come in reverence and respect."




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  Mael went down on his knees. He did it as naturally as a Christian. He held out his arms. He
began to pray in the language of the Druid priesthood. He told the Queen she was most beautiful.
He told tales of the old gods of the oak. And then he begged her for her blood.
Avicus winced, and I suppose, so did I.
  But I was sure something quickened in Akasha. Then again perhaps not.
All of us waited in uneasy stillness.
Mael rose and walked towards the dais.
  "My Queen," I said calmly, "Mael asks with all respect and all humility, if he may drink from the
primal fount."
  He stepped up, bent over the Queen lovingly and daringly and bent to drink from her throat.
  It seemed nothing would happen. She would allow it. Her glassy eyes stared forward as if it were
of no import. Her hands remained on her thighs.
But all of sudden, with monstrous speed, the heavy boned Enkil turned sideways, as if he were a
wooden machine worked by wheels and cogs, and he reached out with his right hand.
I sprang forward, threw my arms around Mael and drew him
   backwards just under the descending arm arid all the way to the wall. I flung him into the corner.
"Stay there!" I whispered.
  I stood up. Enkil remained turned, his eyes empty, as if he could not find the object of his rage,
his hand still poised in the air. How many times, when I'd dressed them or cleaned them, had I seen
them in the same attitude of sluggish inattention?
  Swallowing my terror, I mounted the dais. I spoke to Enkil coaxingly.
  "My King, please, it's finished," I said. I put my trembling hands on his arm, and I gently returned
him to his proper place. His face was hideously blank. Then I put my hands on his shoulders and I
turned him until he was staring forward as before. Gently I attended to his heavy golden necklace. I
arranged his fingers carefully. I smoothed his heavy kilt.
  As for the Queen she remained undisturbed. It was as if none of it had ever taken place, or so I
thought, until I saw the droplets of blood on the shoulder of her linen gown. I should have to
change it when I could.
But this was evidence that she had allowed the kiss, and he had forbidden it. Well, this was most
interesting, for I knew now that when I had last drunk from her, it was Enkil who had thrown me
back on the chapel floor.
  There was no time to ponder it. I had to get Avicus and Mael away from the shrine.
  Only when we were back within the confines of my brightly lighted study did I turn my fury on
Mael.
  "Two times I've saved your miserable life," I said. "And I will suffer for it, I'm sure of that. For
by all rights, I should have let you die the night Avicus sought rny help for you, and I should have
let the King crush you as he would have done tonight. I despise you, understand it. No end of time
will change it. You are rash, willful arid crazed with your own desires."
Avicus sat with his head down nodding as if to say he agreed.
As for Mael he stood in the corner, his hand on his dagger, regarding
me with begrudging silence.

"Get out of my house," I said finally. "And if you want to end your life, then break the peace of the
Mother and the Father. For ancient as they are and silent as they are, they will crush you as you
have seen for yourself. You know the location of the shrine."




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "You don't even know the measure of your crime," Mael answered. "To keep such a secret. How
could you dare!"
"Silence, please," said Ayicus.
  "No, I won't keep silent," said Mael. "You, Marius, you steal the Queen of Heaven and you keep
her as if she were your own? You lock her up in a painted chapel as if she were a Roman goddess
made of wood? How dare you do such a thing?"
  "Fool," I said, "what would you have me do with her! You spit lies at me. What you wanted is
what they all want. You wanted her blood. And what would you do now that you know where she
is? Do you mean to set her free and for whom and how and when?"
  "Quiet, please," said Avicus again. "Mael, I beg you, let us leave Marius."
  "And the snake worshipers who have heard whispers of me and my secret, what would they do?"
I demanded, now quite lost in my fury. "What if they were to gain possession of her and take the
blood from her, and make themselves an army stronger than us? How then would the human race
rise up against our kind with laws and hunts to abolish us? Oh, you cannot begin to conceive of all
the ills that would be loosed upon this world were she known to all our kind, you foolish, mad, self-
important dreamer!"
  Avicus stood before me, imploring me with his upraised hands, his face so sad.
I wouldn't be stopped. I stepped aside and faced the furious Mael.
  "Imagine the one who would put them both in die sun again," I declared, "bringing fire on us like
the fire which Avicus suffered before! Would you end your life's journey in such agony and by
another's hands?"
  "Please, Marius," said Avicus. "Let me take him away with me. We will go now. I promise you,
no more trouble from us."
  I turned my back on them. I could hear Alael leaving, but Avicus lingered. And suddenly I felt his
arm enclose me and his lips on my cheek.
  "Go," I said softly, "before your impetuous friend tries to stab me in base jealousy."

the garden, arid so the house seemed mad with all its lamps and the master filling walls with his
illusions, and the guests laughing at him and raising their cups to him, and the music strumming on
unto the dawn.
  At first I thought it would be a distraction to have Avicus spying upon me, but I grew used to
hearing him slip over the wall and come into the garden. I grew used to the nearness of someone
who shared these moments as only he could.
  I continued to paint my goddesses--Venus, Ariadne, Hera--and gradually I grew resigned that
the figment of Pandora would dominate everything I did in that particular, but I worked on the gods
as well. Apollo, above all, fascinated me. But then I had time to paint other figures of myth, such
as Theseus, Aeneas, and Hercules, and sometimes I turned to reading Ovid or Homer or Lucretius
directly for inspiration. Other times, I made up my own themes.
But always the painted gardens were my comfort for I felt I was living in them in my heart.
  Over and over again I covered all the rooms of my house, and as it was built as a villa, not an
enclosed house with an atrium, Avicus could wander the garden all around it, seeing all that I did,
and I couldn't help but wonder if my work was changed by what he saw.
  What moved me more than anything perhaps was that he lingered so faithfully. And that he was
silent with so much respect. Seldom did a week pass that he did not come and stay almost the entire
night. Often he was there for four or five nights in a row. And sometimes even longer than that.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  Of course we never spoke to each other. There was an elegance in our silence. And though my
slaves once took notice of him and annoyed me with their alarm, I soon put a stop to that.
  On the nights when I went out to Those Who Must Be Kept Avicus didn't follow me. And I must
confess that I did feel a sort of freedom when I painted alone in the shrine. But melancholy was
also coming down upon rne, harder than ever in the past.
  Finding a spot behind the dais and the Precious Pair, I often sat dejected in the corner, and then
slept the day and even the next night without going out. My mind was empty. Consolation was
unimaginable. Thoughts of the Empire and what might happen to it were unspeakable.
  And then, I would remember Avicus, and I would rise, shaking off my languor and go back into
the city and begin painting the walls of my rooms again.

How many years passed in this way, I can't calculate.
  It is far more important to note that a band of Satanic blood drinkers again took up their abode in
an abandoned catacomb and began to feast upon the innocent which was their custom, being
desperately careless so as to scare humans and to cause tales of terror to spread.
  I had hoped that Mael and Avicus would destroy this band, as they were all very weak, and
blundering, and it wouldn't have been hard at all.
  But Avicus came to me with the truth of the matter which I should have seen long before.
  "Always these Satan worshipers are young," he said to me, "and never is there one who is more
than thirty or forty years from his mortal life. Always from the East they come, speaking of how the
Devil is their Ruler and how through serving him, they serve Christ."
  "I know the old story," I said. I was going about my painting, as if Avicus was not standing there,
not out of rudeness, but out of
weariness with the Satan worshipers, who had cost me Pandora so long ago.
  "But you see, Marius, someone very old must surely be sending these deadly little emissaries to
us, and it is this old one whom we must destroy."
''And how will you do that?" I asked.
  "We mean to lure him to Rome," said Avicus, "and we've come to ask you to join us. Come down
into the catacombs with us tonight and tell these young ones that you are a friend."
  "Ah, no, you are rnad to suggest this!" I said. "Don't you realize they know about the Mother and
the Father? Don't you remember all I've told you?"
  "We mean to destroy them to a one," said Mael who stood behind me. "But to make a fine finish
we must lure the old one here before the destruction."
  "Come, Marius," said Avicus, "we need you and your eloquence. Convince them that you are
sympathetic. That they must bring their leader here, and then and only then will you allow them to
remain. Mael and I cannot so impress them as you can. This is no vain flattery, be assured."
For a long time I stood with my paintbrush in hand, staring, thinking,
 Should I do this, and then finally, I confessed that I could not. "Don't ask it of me," I said to
Avicus. "Lure the being yourselves.


And when he comes here, let me know of it, and then I promise I will come."
The following night, Avicus returned to me.
  "They are such children, these Satanic creatures," he said, "they spoke of their leader so willingly,
admitting that he resides in a desert place in the North of Egypt. He was burnt in the Terrible Fire,




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                                            Blood and Gold

no doubt of it, and has taught them all about the Great Mother. It will be sad to destroy them, but
they rampage about the city, seeking the sweetest mortals for their victims, and it cannot be borne."
  "I know," I said quietly. I felt ashamed that I had always allowed Mael and Avicus to drive these
creatures from Rome on their own. "But have you managed to lure the leader out of his hiding
place? How could such a thing be done?"
  "We have given them abundant riches," said Avicus, "so that they may bring their leader here.
We have promised him our strong blood in return for his coming, and that he sorely needs to make
more priests and priestesses of his Satanic cause."
  "Ah, your strong blood, of course," I said. "Why did I not think of it? I think of it in regard to the
Mother and Father, but I did not think of it in relation to us."
  "I cannot claim to have thought of it myself," said Avicus. "It was one of the Satanic children
who suggested it for the leader is so weak that he can never rise from his bed, and survives only to
receive victims and to make followers. Of course Mael and I immediately promised. For what are
we to these children with our hundreds of years? "
  I heard nothing further of the matter for the next several months, except I knew through the Mind
Gift that Avicus had slain several of die Satan worshipers for their public crimes which he
considered to be so dangerous, and on one mild summer night, when I stood in my garden looking
down over the city, I heard Mael rather distantly arguing with Avicus as to whether they should
slay all the rest.
  At last the band was slain, and the catacomb was empty, and drenched in blood, and Mael and
Avicus appeared at my house and begged me to come to it for those returning from Egypt were
expected within the hour and we must strike fast.
  I left my warm happy room, carrying my finest weapons, and went with them as I had promised.
  The catacomb was so small and tight, I could scarce stand up in it. And I knew it at once to be the
burial place of mortal Christians and a place where they had sometimes gathered in the very first
years of the sect.
  We traveled through it some eighty or ninety feet before we came into an underground place, and
there found the old Egyptian blood drinker on his bier, glaring at us, his youthful attendants
horrified to find their abode empty and full of ashes of their dead.
  The old creature had suffered much. Bald, and thin, black from the Great Fire, he had given
himself up utterly to the making of his Satanic children, and so never healed as another blood
drinker might. And now he knew himself to be tricked. Those he had sent on to Rome were gone
forever, and we stood before him, looking down upon him in judgment, blood drinkers of
unthinkable power who felt no pity for him and his cause.
  Avicus was the first to raise his sword, but he was stopped as the old creature cried out,
"Do we not serve God?"
  "You'll know sooner than I will," Avicus answered him, and with the blade, cut off his head.
  The remaining band refused to run away from us. They fell on their knees and met our heavy
blows in silence.
And so too it was with the fire that engulfed them all.
  The next night and the night after that we went back, the three of us, to gather the remains and
burn them over again, until it was finished and we thought that had put an end to the Satanic
worshipers once and for all.
Would that it had been so.
  I can't say that this awful chapter of our lives brought me together with Avicus and Mael. It was
too dreadful, too against my nature, and too bitter for me.



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                                             Blood and Gold

I went back to my house, and gladly resumed my painting.
  I rather enjoyed it that none of my guests ever wondered as to my true age, or why I didn't grow
old or die. I think the answer lay in the fact that I had so very much company that no one couH pay
attention to any one thing for very long.
  Whatever it was, after the slaughter of the Satanic children, I wanted more music than before, and
I painted more relentlessly and with greater invention and design.
  Meantime the state of the Empire was dreadful. It was now quite totally divided between East and
West. In the West, which included


Rome, of course, Latin was the language; while in the East the common language was Greek. The
Christians too felt this sharp division and continued to quarrel over their beliefs.
Finally the situation of my beloved city became intolerable. The Visigoth Ruler Alaric had taken
the nearby port of Ostia, and was threatening Rome itself. The Senate seemed powerless to do
anything about the impending invasion, and there was talk throughout the city that the slaves would
side with the invaders, thereby bringing ruin on us all.
At last, at midnight, the Salarian gate of the city was opened. There was heard the horrifying sound
of a Gothic trumpet. And in came the rapacious hordes of Goths and Scythians to sack Rome
herself. I rushed out into the streets to see the carnage all around rne. Avicus was immediately at
my side.
  Hurrying across the roofs, we saw everywhere that slaves had risen against their masters, houses
were forced open, jewels and gold were offered up by frantic victims, who were nevertheless
murdered, rich statues were heaped upon wagons in those streets large enough to allow such, and
bodies soon lay everywhere as the blood ran in the gutters and as the inevitable flames began to
consume all that they could. The young and the healthy were rounded up to be sold into slavery, but
the carnage was often random, and I soon realized I could do nothing to help any mortal whom I
saw.
  Returning to my house, I discovered with horror that it was already in flames. My guests had
either been taken prisoner or had fled. My books were burning! All my copies of Virgil, Petronius,
Apuleius, Cicero, Lucretius, Homer, Pliny were lying helpless amid the flames. My paintings were
blackening and disintegrating. Foul smoke choked my lungs.
  I had scarce time to grab a few important scrolls. Desperately I sought for Ovid, whom Pandora
had so loved, and for the great tragedians of Greece. Avicus reached out his arms to help me. I took
more, seeking to save my own diaries, but in that fatal instant Goth soldiers poured into my garden
with loud shouts, their weapons raised.
  At once I pulled my sword and began with fierce speed to decapitate them, shouting as they
shouted, allowing my preternatural voice to deafen them and confuse them, as I hacked off random
limbs.
  Avicus proved even more fierce than I was, perhaps being more accustomed to this kind of battle,
and soon the band lay dead at our feet.

  But by now my house was completely engulfed in flames. The few scrolls we'd sought to save
were burning. There was nothing more to be done. I could only pray that my slaves had sought
some refuge, for if they hadn't they would soon be taken for loot.
  "To the chapel of Those Who Must Be Kept," I said. "Where else is there to go?"




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                                            Blood and Gold

  Quickly, we made to the roofs again, darting in and out of the blazes which everywhere lighted
up the night sky. Rome was weeping; Rome was crying out for pity; Rome was dying. Rome was
no more.
We reached the shrine in safety, though Alaric's troops were pillaging the countryside as well.
  Going down into the cool confines of the chapel, I lighted the lamps quickly and then I fell down
on my knees before Akasha, uncaring of what Avicus might think of such a gesture, and I poured
out for her in whispered words the nature of this tragedy which had struck my mortal home.
  "You saw the death of Egypt," I said reverently. "You saw it become a Roman province. Well,
now Rome dies in its turn. Rome has lasted for eleven hundred years and now it's no more. How
will the world survive? Who will tend the thousands of roads and bridges that
everywhere bring men and women together? Who will maintain the fabulous cities in which men
and women thrive in safe houses, educating their youth to read and write and worship their gods
and goddesses with ceremony? Who will drive back these accursed creatures who cannot farm the
land which they have burnt and who live only to destroy!"
Of course there was no response from the Blessed Parents.
  But I fell forward and my hand wrent out to touch Akasha's foot. I breathed a deep sigh.
  And finally, forgetting all formality, I crept into the corner and sat rather like an exhausted boy.
Avicus came to sit beside me. He clasped my hand.
"And what of Mael?" I asked softly.
  "Mael is clever," said Avicus. "Mael loves to fight. He has destroyed many a blood drinker. Mael
will never allow himself to be wounded as he was on that long ago night. And Mael knows how to
hide when all is lost."
For six nights we remained in the chapel.
  We could hear the shouts, the crying, as the looting and pillaging went on. But then Alaric
marched out of Rome to wreak havoc on the countryside to the South.

  Finally the need for blood caused both of us to go back to the world above.
  Avicus bid me farewell and went in search of Mael, while I found myself in the street near my
house, coming upon a soldier who was dying with a spear through his chest. He was no longer
conscious. I removed the spear, which caused him to moan in his sleep, and then lifting him I
opened my mouth over the gushing wound.
  The blood was full of scenes of the battle, and quite soon I had enough. I laid him aside,
composing his limbs artfully. And then I
discovered I was hungry for more.
  This time a dying man would not do. I walked on, stepping over rotted and stinking bodies, and
passing the gutted ruins of houses, until I found an isolated soldier with a sack of loot over his
back. He made to draw his sword, but quickly I overcame him, and bit into his throat. He died too
soon for me. But I was satisfied. I let him fall at my feet.
I then came upon my house utterly destroyed.
  What a sight was my garden where the dead soldiers lay swollen and reeking.
Not a single book remained unburnt.
  And as I wept I realized with a cruel shock that all the Egyptian scrolls I possessed--all the early
tales of the Mother and the Father-- had perished in the fire.
  These were scrolls I had taken from the old temple in Alexandria on the very night I took the
Mother and Father from Egypt. These were scrolls which told the old tale of how an evil spirit had
entered into the blood of Akasha and Enkil, and how the race of blood drinkers had come about.



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                                             Blood and Gold

  All this was gone now. All this was ashes. All this was lost to me along with my Greek and
Roman poets and historians. All this was gone along with all that I had written myself.
  It seemed quite impossible that such a thing had happened, and I faulted myself that I had not
copied the old Egyptian legends, that I had not saved them in the shrine. After all, in some foreign
marketplace I could find Cicero and Virgil, Xenophqn and Homer.
But the Egyptian legends? I would never recover the loss.
I wondered: Would my beautiful Queen care that the written stories
    of her had perished? Would she care that I alone carried the tales in my mind and heart?
I walked into the ruin of my rooms, and looked at the little that did still appear visible of the
paintings on the blackened plaster walls. I looked up through the black timbers which might at any
moment fall on me. I stepped over piles of burnt wood.
  At last I left the place where I had lived for so long. And as I went about, I came to see that the
city was already rising from its punishment. Not all had been put to the torch. Rome was far too
huge, with far too many buildings of stone.
  But what was it to me, this piteous sight of Christians rushing to help their brethren, and naked
children crying for parents who were no more? So Rome had not been razed to the ground. It did
not matter. There would come more invasions. These people who remained in the city, struggling to
rebuild it, would endure a humiliation which I could not endure.
  I went back out to the chapel again. Arid going down die stairs, and into the sanctum, I lay in the
corner, satiated and exhausted, and I closed my eyes.
It was to become my first long sleep.
  Always in my life as an immortal I had risen at night and spent the allotted time which the
darkness gave to me, either to hunt, or to enjoy whatever distractions or pleasures that I could.
  But now I paid no attention to the setting of the sun. I became like you, in your cave of ice.
  I slept. I knew I was safe. I knew Those Who Must Be Kept were safe. And I could hear too
much of the misery from Rome. So I resolved that I would sleep.
  Perhaps I was inspired with the story of the Gods of the Grove, that they could starve in the oak
for a month at a time, and still rise to receive the sacrifice. I'm not sure.
  I did pray to Akasha. I prayed, "Grant me sleep. Grant me stillness. Grant me immobility. Grant
me silence from the voices that I hear so strongly. Grant me peace."
  How long was my slumber? Many months. And I began to feel the hunger terribly and to dream
of blood. Yet stubbornly I lay on the floor of the shrine, eyes closed during die night when I might
have
wandered, deaf to intelligence of the outside world.
  I could not bear to see my beloved city again. I could think of nowhere to go.
Then a strange moment came. In a dream, it seemed, Mael and Avicus were there, urging me to
rise, offering me their blood for strength.
"You're starved, you're weak," said Avicus. How sad he looked. And how gentle he was. "Rome is
still there," he maintained. "So it is overran with Goths and Visigoths. The old Senators remain as
always. They humor the crude barbarians. The Christians gather the poor to them and give them
bread. Nothing can really kill your city. Alaric is dead, as if he succumbed to a curse for what he
did, and his army long gone."
  Was I comforted by this? I don't know. I couldn't allow myself to wake. I could not open my
eyes. I wanted only to lie where I was and be alone.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  They went away. There was nothing more for them to do. And then it seemed that they came at
other times, that I would see them by the light of a lamp and that they would talk to me, but it was
dreamlike and did not matter at all.
  Surely months passed, and then years. I felt light in all my limbs and only the Mind Gift seemed
to have strength.
  A vision took hold of me. I saw myself lying in the arms of a woman, a beautiful Egyptian
woman with black hair. It was Akasha, this woman, and she comforted me, she told me to sleep,
and that nothing could hurt me, not even the thirst, because I had drunk her blood. I was not like
other blood drinkers. I could starve and then rise again. I would not become fatally weak.
  We were in a splendid chamber with silk hangings. We lay on a bed, draped with silk so fine I
could see through it. I could see golden columns with lotus leaves at their crowns. I could feel the
soft cushions beneath me. But above all I could feel my comforter who held me firmly and warmly
and told me to sleep.
  After a very long while I rose and went out into the garden and saw that, yes, it was the garden I
had painted, only it had been perfected, and I turned round, trying to see the dancing nymphs only
they were too quick for me. They were gone before I could see them, and in the distance the
singing was too soft for me to hear.
  I dreamed of colors. I wanted the pots of paint before me, the pure colors so that I could make the
garden come alive.

Yes, sleep.
  At last a divine blackness settled over my mind and no thoughts whatsoever could penetrate. I
knew that Akasha still held me because I could feel her arms around me and feel her lips against
my cheek. That was all I knew.
And the years passed.


The years passed.
Quite suddenly my eyes opened.
  A great sense of alarm came over me, giving me to know that I was a living being with a head
and arms and legs. I didn't move, but I stared up into the darkness, and then I heard the sound of
sharp footfalls, and a light blinded me for a moment.
A voice spoke. It was Avicus.
"Marius, come with us," he said.
  I tried to rise from the stone floor but I couldn't do it. I couldn't lift my arms.
  Be still, I told myself and think on this matter. Think on what has happened.
  In the lamplight, Avicus stood before me once more holding the small flickering bronze lamp. He
was dressed in a rich double tunic with an overshirt, rather like a soldier, and the trousers of the
Goths.
  Mael stood beside him, finely dressed in similar garments, his blond hair swept back and cleanly
combed, and all malice was gone from Mael's face.
  "We're leaving, Marius," said Mael, his eyes wide and generous. "Come with us. Stop this sleep
of the dead and come."
  Avicus came down on one knee and put the light behind me so it wouldn't hurt my eyes any
longer.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Marius, we're going to Constantinople. We have our own ship for this journey, our own galley
slaves to row it, our own pilot, and well-paid attendants who will not question our nocturnal
disposition. You must come with us. There is no reason to remain."
  "We must go," said Mael. "Do you know how long you've lain here?"
  "Half a century," I said in a small whisper, "and during that time Rome has been laid waste
again."
  Avicus shook his head. "Far longer than that, old friend," he said, "I can't tell you how many
times we've tried to wake you. Marius, the Western Empire is truly no more."
  "Come with us to Constantinople," said Mael. "She is the richest city in the world."
  "Take rny blood," said Avicus and he moved to bite into his wrist to give me to drink. "We can't
leave you behind."
  "No," I said. "Let me rise of my own accord." I wondered if they could hear my words, so softly
were they spoken. I rose slowly on my elbows, and then I realized I was sitting up, and then I rose
to my knees and to my feet. I was dizzy.
  My radiant Akasha, so erect on her throne, stared blindly past me. My King was unchanged.
However both were covered with a layer of dust, and it seemed a crime unimaginable that they had
been so neglected. The withered flowers were like so much hay in their dried vases. But for this
who was to blame?
  Hesitantly I made my way to the dais. And then I closed my eyes. I felt Avicus catch me as
obviously I'd been about to fall.
  "Leave me, please," I said quietly. "Just for a little while. I must say my prayers for the comforts
I've received while sleeping. I'll join you soon." And vowing to stand more firmly I closed my eyes
again.
At once there came into my mind the vision of myself on the opulent bed within the extraordinary
palace and Akasha, my Queen, embracing me.
  I saw the silk hangings wavering in the breeze. It was not my vision. That is, it had not come
from me. Rather it had been given, and I knew it could only have come from her.
  I opened my eyes again and stared at her hard perfect face. Surely a woman less beautiful could
never have endured so long. No blood drinker had ever had the courage to really destroy her. No
blood drinker ever would.
  But my thoughts were confused suddenly. Avicus and Mael were still there.
  "I'll come with you," I said to them, "but for now, you must leave me here. You must wait for me
above."
At last they obeyed. I heard their steps as they went up the stairs. And then I mounted the steps of
the dais and bent over my seated Queen once more, as reverently as ever, as bravely as ever, and I
gave the kiss that might soon mean my death.
Nothing stirred in the sanctuary. The Blessed Pair remained quiet. Enkil did not raise his arm to
strike. I felt no motion in Akasha's body. I sank my teeth quickly. I drank deep draughts of the thick
blood as fast as I could, and there came the vision of the sunlit garden again, lovely, full of
flowering trees and roses, something made for a palace, where every plant is a part of an imperial
design. I saw the bedchamber. I saw the golden columns. It seemed I heard a whisper: Marius. My
soul expanded.


  I heard it again as if it were echoing through the silk-hung palace. The light in the garden
brightened.



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  Then, with a violent throb I realized I could take no more. I drew back. I saw the tiny puncture
wounds contract and vanish. I pressed my lips to them and held the kiss for a long moment.
  On my knees I thanked her with my whole heart. I had not the slightest doubt that she had
protected me in my sleep. I knew that she had. I knew also that she had caused me to wake. Avicus
and Mael could have never done it without her divine intervention. She belonged to me more surely
than when we had left Egypt. She was my Queen.
  And then I withdrew, powerful, clear-eyed, and ready for the long journey overseas to
Byzantium. After all, I had Mael and Avicus to help me with the Divine Parents who must be
secured in stone sarcophagi; and there would be many a long night at sea ahead of us during which
I could weep for my beautiful Italy, my Italy which was lost.



9

IN THE NIGHTS that followed I could not resist visiting Rome, though Avicus and Mael both
advised me not to do it. They feared that I did not know how long I had slept, but I knew. Almost a
hundred years had passed.
  I found the grand buildings of Imperial glory fallen to ruin, overrun with animals, and being used
as quarries for those who came to take the stone. Huge statues had been toppled over and lay in the
weeds. My old street was unrecognizable.
  And the population had dwindled to no more than a few thousand souls.
  Yet, the Christians ministered to their own, and their virtue was most inspiring. And because the
invaders had been in some cases Christians, many of the churches had gone unharmed. The Bishop
of Rome sought to defend them against their overlords, and maintained strong ties with
Constantinople, the city that ruled both East and West.
But for the few old families who remained, there was only humiliation
   as they sought to serve their new barbarian masters, and to tell themselves that somehow the
crude Goths and Vandals could acquire some polish and love of literature and some appreciation of
Roman law.
  Once again I marveled at the pure resistance of Christianity, that it seemed to feed upon disaster
as it had fed upon persecution, and as it prospered during interludes of peace.
  I also marveled at the resilience of the old Patricians, who as I said, did not withdraw from public
life, but strove to inculcate the old values as best they could.

Everywhere one saw barbarians with mustaches, wearing crude trousers, their hair greasy and
unkempt. Many were Arian Christians, holding different ceremonies from their "orthodox" Catholic
brothers and sisters. What were they? Goths, Visigoths, Alemmani, Huns? Some I couldn't
recognize at all. And the ruler of this great state lived not at Rome but at Ravenna in the North.
  I was also to discover that a new nest of the Satanic vampires had settled in a forgotten catacomb
of the city, where they held ceremonies to their Serpent Devil before going out to prey upon the
innocent and the guilty alike.
  Avicus and Mael, puzzled as to the origins of these new zealots, and most weary of them, had
resolved to leave them alone.




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  As I walked through ruined streets and through empty houses, these zealot creatures spied upon
me. I loathed them. But I hardly considered them a danger. In my starvation I had grown strong.
Akasha's blood was in my veins.
  But how wrong I was in my judgment upon the Satanic vampires, oh, how very wrong indeed.
But I will come to that in time.
Let me return to those nights when I wandered the broken fragments of classical civilization.
  I was not as embittered by it as one might think. Indeed Akasha's blood had not only given me
great new physical power, it had enhanced the clarity of my mind, my ability to concentrate, to take
to myself what I prized, and to dismiss what was no longer good.
  Nevertheless the state of Rome was demoralizing, and it was only likely to get worse. I looked to
Constantinople to preserve what I called civilization and I was all too ready for the voyage ahead.
  Well, it was time to help Avicus and Mael with the last preparations. And they assisted me in
carefully wrapping the Divine Pair as mummies, with all reverence, and placing them in granite
sarcophagi which no team of men could open, as had been done in the past by me, and would be
done in the future every time that the Divine Parents had to be moved.
  This was most frightening for Avicus and Mael--to see the pair moved and then so completely
covered with the white strips of linen. They knew nothing of the old prayers in Egyptian which I
recited, which were charms for the safety of the journey scavenged from my years of reading, and I
don't think this comforted them. But the Divine Couple were my concern.


  As I moved to wrap the eyes of Akasha, she closed them, and with Enkil there occurred the same
thing. What a strange and momentary indication of consciousness. It sent a chill through me. Yet
still I went about my duty, as if I were an old Egyptian wrapping a deceased Pharaoh in the Sacred
House of the Dead.
  At last Mael and Avicus accompanied me down to Ostia, the port from which we would sail, and
we boarded the vessel, having the Divine Parents placed below deck.
  As for the slaves that Avicus and Mael had purchased I found them most impressive, all
handpicked and excellent even to the galley slaves who knew that they worked for future freedom
in the East and rich rewards.
  A strong band of soldiers were to sail with us, each heavily armed, highly skilled and quite
convinced of the same promise, and I was particularly impressed by the captain of this vessel, a
Christian Roman by the name of Clement, a man of cleverness and wit, who would maintain the
faith of the others in the final rewards as we made the long voyage.
  The ship itself was the largest galley I had ever beheld, with an immense and colorful sail, and it
contained a massive and impregnable cabin containing three long chests modestly made of bronze
and iron in which Mael, Avicus and I would sleep by day. These chests, like the sarcophagi, were
impossible for mortals to open without enormous difficulty and also they were far too heavy for
even a gang of men to lift.
  At last everything was in readiness, and armed to the teeth against pirates, we set out by night,
guiding the ship with our supernatural eyes from floundering on any rocks as we moved swiftly
along the coast.
  This frightened our crew and our soldiery somewhat as can be imagined, for in those times ships
almost invariably proceeded only by day. It was too dangerous for them to do otherwise, for they
couldn't see the coast or the rocky islands they might encounter, and even though they might have




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good maps and skilled navigators, there was still the danger of a dreadful accident occurring in the
dark.
  We reversed this age-old wisdom, and by day, our ship was in port so that those who served us
might enjoy what the local town had to offer, and our slaves and soldiers were made all the more
happy by this, and all the more devoted, while the captain kept a firm grip by allowing only some
to go ashore at certain times, and insisting that some remain and keep watch or sleep.
  Always we woke and emerged from our cabin to find our servants in high good humor, musicians
playing under the moon for the soldiers, and Clement, the captain, delightfully drunk. There was no
suspicion among them that we were other than three extremely bizarre human beings of immense
wealth. Indeed, sometimes I eavesdropped on their theories about us--that we were Magi from the
Far East like unto the Three Kings who had come to lay gifts before the Christ Child* and I was
most amused.
  Our only real problem was an absurd one. We had to ask for meals to be brought to us, and then
to dispense with the food through the windows of our cabin, directly into the sea.
It sent us into peals of laughter, yet I found it undignified.
  We did periodically spend a night on shore so that we might feed. Our years had given us great
skill in this matter. And we might even have starved for the entire journey, but this we chose not to
do.
  As for our camaraderie aboard the ship, it was most interesting to me.
  I was living more closely with mortals than ever before. I talked with our captain and our soldiers
by the hour. And I found I enjoyed it tremendously, and I was very much relieved that, in spite of
my very pale skin, it was so easy to do.
  I found myself passionately attracted to our Captain Clement. I enjoyed the tales of his youth
spent on merchant ships throughout the Mediterranean, and he amused me with descriptions of the
ports he'd visited, some of which I had known hundreds of years before, and some of which were
wholly new.
  My sadness was lifted as I listened to Clement. I saw the world through his eyes, and knew his
hope. I looked forward to a lively household in Constantinople where he could call upon me as his
friend.
Another great change had taken place. I was now definitely an intimate companion to both Avicus
and Mael.
  Many a night we spent alone in the cabin, with the full wine cups before us, talking about all that
had occurred in Italy and other things as well.
  Avicus was of a keen mind as I had always imagined him to be, eager for learning and reading,
and had over the centuries taught himself both Latin and Greek. But there was much he didn't
understand about my world and its old piety.
  He had with him histories by Tacitus, and Livy, and also the True Tales of Lucian, and the
biographies written in Greek by Plutarch; but he was not able to understand this work.
  I spent many happy hours reading aloud to him as he followed along with me, explaining to him
how the text could be interpreted. And I saw in him a great absorption of information. He wanted to
know the world.
  Mael did not share this spirit; but he was no longer against it as he had been a very long time ago.
He listened to all we discussed, and perhaps he profited somewhat from it. It was plain to me that
the two-- Avicus and Mael--survived as blood drinkers because of each other. But Mael no longer
regarded me with fear.




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  As for me, I rather enjoyed the role of teacher, and it gave me new pleasure to argue with
Plutarch as if he were in the room with me, and to comment on Tacitus as if he were there as well.
  Both Avicus and Mael had grown paler and stronger with time. Each had, he confessed, at some
moment or other felt the threat of despair.
  "It was the sight of you, asleep in the shrine," Mael said without enmity, "that kept me from going
down into some cellar and resigning myself to the same slumber. I felt I should never awake from
it, and Avicus, my companion Avicus, would not allow me to go."
  When Avicus had felt weary of the world and unable to continue, it had been Mael who kept him
from the fatal sleep.
  Both had suffered extreme anguish over my condition, and during the long decades when I lay
unresponsive to their pleas, they had been too afraid of the Noble Parents to lay before them
flowers, or to burn incense or to do anything to tend the shrine.
  "We feared they would strike out at us," said Avicus. "Even to look at their faces filled us with
dread."
I nodded to all this.
  "The Divine Parents," I said, "have never showed a need of those things. I am the author of such
devotions. Darkness may please them as well as burning lamps. Look how they slumber now in
their
wrappings and in their coffins, side by side beneath the deck."
  I felt emboldened by the visions I had had to say these things, though I never spoke of those
visions or bragged that I had drunk the Sacred Blood.

All the while we sailed there was the prospect of one great horror which hung over the three of
us--that our ship might be attacked either by day or night, and that the Divine Parents might be
sunk into the sea. It was far too awful for us to talk of it, and that, perhaps, is why we did not. And
whenever I brooded over this, I realized that we should have taken the safer route over land.
  Then in the small hours a terrible truth became known to me--that if we did meet disaster, I
might rise from the sea, and Those Who Must Be Kept might not. In the mysterious bottom of the
great ocean what would become of these Parents? My agony of mind grew too great.
I put aside my anguish. I continued the pleasant talk with my companions. I went out on deck and
looked upon the silvery sea and sent my love to Pandora.
  Meantime I did not share the enthusiasm of Mael and Avicus for Byzantium. I had lived in
Antioch a long time ago, and Antioch was an Eastern city but with great Western influence, and I
had left it to return to Rome, for I was a child of the West.
Now we were heading to what I thought to be a purely Eastern capital, and I was afraid that in its
great vitality I would find only what I could not possibly embrace.
  One must understand: from the Roman point of view, the East-- that is, the lands of Asia Minor
and Persia--had always been suspect, for their emphasis on luxury and their general softness. It
was believed by me and by many Romans that Persia had softened Alexander the Great thereby
softening Greek culture. Then Greek culture with its Persian influence had softened Rome.
  Of course immense culture and art had come with this softening. Romans embraced Greek
knowledge of all sorts.
  Nevertheless, I felt, deep in my soul, this age-old suspicion of the East.
  Naturally I said nothing to Avicus and Mael. Their enthusiasm for this mighty seat of the Eastern
Emperor was something not to be spoilt.




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  At last after our long voyage, we came early one evening into the shimmering Sea of Marmara
and beheld the high ramparts of
Constantinople with their myriad torches, and for the first time, I understood the glory of the
peninsula which Constantine had chosen so long ago.
Slowly our ship made its way into the magnificent harbor. And I was chosen to be the one to use
his "magic" upon the officials of the dock to arrange our arrival and give us time within the port to
find some proper lodgings before removing the sacred cargo which we carried, the sarcophagi of
venerable ancestors brought back to be buried in their native land. Of course we had mundane
questions as to where we might find an agent to help us with our lodgings, and more than one
mortal was called to give us advice.
  It was a matter of gold and the Spell Gift, and I had no difficulty. And soon we were onshore and
ready to explore this mythic place where God had directed Constantine to create the greatest city in
the world.
I cannot say I was disappointed that night.
Our first extraordinary surprise was that the merchants of Constantinople were required to put up
torches outside their shops so that the streets were beautifully illuminated. And we at once realized
that there was a wilderness of great churches for us to explore.
  The city held some million inhabitants, and I sensed at once an immense vigor that had gone out
of Rome.
  I went immediately--leading my two agreeable companions with me--to the great open square
called the Augusteum, and where I could gaze on the facade of Hagia Sophia--the Church of the
Holy Wisdom--and upon other immense and regal buildings including the splendid public baths of
Zeuxippus, which had been decorated with beautifully executed pagan statues taken from various
cities of the world.
  I wanted to go in all directions at the same time. For here lay the great Hippodrome in which by
day thousands witnessed chariot races which were the passion of the populace, and there the
indescribably huge and complex royal palace into which we could easily have crept without being
seen.
  A great street led westward from this square, and constituted the main thoroughfare of the city, in
that there were other squares which opened off it, and also other streets, which fed, of course,
innumerable lanes.
  Mael and Avicus continued to follow me politely as I led them hither and thither, and into the
interior of Hagia Sophia to stand between its magnificent walls and beneath its immense dome.
  I was overcome by the beauty of the church with its myriad arches and the high ornate and
detailed mosaics of Justinian and Theodora which were unbelievably splendid and glittering in the
light of countless lamps.
In the nights to come, there would be no end of splendid adventures.
My comrades might tire of this, but I would not. I would penetrate
   the Imperial Court very soon, using my swiftness and cleverness to go about the palace. And for
better or for worse I was in a city that was thriving where I would know the comfort of the
proximity of many many human souls.
  In the weeks that followed we purchased for ourselves a splendid house, quite well fortified, its
garden entirely enclosed, and made for ourselves a secret and safe crypt beneath the mosaic floor.
  As for the Divine Parents, I was adamant that they must be hidden some distance from the city. I
had already heard plenty about the riots in Constantinople and I wanted the chapel to be safe.




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  However I could find no old vaults or tombs in the countryside like the old Etruscan tomb I had
used outside of Rome. And finally I had no choice but to have a sanctuary built beneath our house
by a gang of slaves.
  This unnerved me. In Antioch and in Rome, I had created the chapels. Now I must rely upon
others. At last I pursued an intricate plan.
  I designed a series of overlapping passages leading deep down to a large chamber which would
require anyone going there to turn first right, then left, then right, then left again with exceedingly
debilitating affect. Then I set pairs of heavy bronze doors at certain intervals, each pair having a
heavy bolt.
  The thick stone blocking the entrance to this winding and doubling passage was not only
disguised as part of the mosaic flooring of the house, but was, as I so often say when describing
such things, far too heavy for even a team of mortals to lift. Even the iron grips were so numerous
and intricately designed as to seem part of the
ornamentation of the overall floor.
Mael and Avicus thought all this quite extreme, but said nothing.
They approved, however, when I had the walls of the chapel covered with gold mosaic of the very
kind I saw in all the splendid churches, and the floor laid with the finest marble tile. A broad and
gorgeous throne of hammered gold was prepared for the Royal Couple.
And lamps were hung from the ceiling on chains.
How was all this work done, you might ask, without compromising the secret of the underground
chamber? Did I murder all those who had participated in the creation of this chapel?
  No. It was by use of the Spell Gift to confuse those brought to their labor, and by the use at times
of simple blindfolds of which the slaves and even the artists could not complain. Gilded words as to
"lovers and brides" smoothed over any mortal objections. And money did the rest.
  At last came the night when I must take the Royal Parents to their chapel. Avicus and Mael
politely confessed that they thought I would want to do this alone.
  I had no objections. Like a powerful Christian Angel of Death, I carried first one sarcophagus and
then the other down to the fine chapel and set them side by side.
  I took the linen wrappings from Akasha first, holding her in my arms as I knelt on the floor. Her
eyes were closed. Then quite suddenly, she opened them, looking past me, her expression
meaningless and simple as before.
  I think I felt a curious deadening disappointment. But I whispered prayers to her to conceal it, as I
cleaned away the linen and lifted her, and carried her, my silent bride, and seated her on the throne.
There she rested, her clothes rumpled and incomplete, blind as ever, as I took the wrappings from
Enkil.
  There came the same strange moment when his eyes opened as well.
I dared say nothing aloud to him. I lifted him, found him more pliant,
   and even almost light, and placed him on the throne beside his queen.
  Several nights passed before I could complete their raiment, but it must look perfect to the
memories I still had of fine Egyptian garments,
     and then I sought to locate for them new and interesting jewels. Constantinople was full of
such luxuries, and the craftsmen who dealt in them. All of this I did alone and with no difficulty,
praying all the while in the most respectful tone.
  Finally the chapel was even more beautiful than the first one which I had made in Antioch, and
far more lovely than that which had existed outside of Rome. I put in place the usual braziers in
which I would burn incense, and I filled the many hanging lamps with sweet-smelling oil.



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  Only when all this was done did I go back to the matter of the new city, and how things were to
be in it, and whether or not Akasha and Enkil were truly safe.

I was very uneasy. I didn't even know the city yet, I realized. I was preoccupied. I wanted to
continue visiting the churches and feasting off the beauty of the city; but I did not know whether or
not we were the only vampires here.
  It seemed extremely doubtful to me. After all, there were other blood drinkers in existence. Why
wouldn't they come to the most beautiful city in the world?
  As for the Greek quality of Constantinople, I didn't like it. I am rather ashamed to say it, but it
was true.
  I didn't like that the populace spoke Greek instead of Latin, though I myself could speak Greek
very well, of course. And I didn't like all the Christian monasteries in which there seemed a deep
mysticism that was more Oriental than Western.
  The art I found everywhere was impressive, yes, but it was losing all ties to the classical art of
Greece and Rome.
  New statues presented men as stocky and crude with very round heads. Eyes were bulbous, faces
without expression. And the Ikons or Holy Pictures which had become so common were highly
stylized, with scowling faces.
  Even the splendid mosaics of Justinian and Theodora--the figures in their long robes floating
against the walls of the church--were rigid and dreamlike rather than classical, or beautiful
according to standards that I had not learnt.
This was a magnificent place but it was not my place.
  For me, there was something inherently repulsive in the gigantic royal palace with its eunuchs
and its slaves. When I crept into it and roamed about, visiting its throne rooms, audience halls,
gorgeous chapels, immense dining room, and many bedchambers, I saw the licentiousness of
Persia, and though I couldn't blame anyone for it, I felt ill at ease.
  And the population, though it was huge and vital, could brawl in the streets over the outcome of
the chariot races in the Hippodrome, or riot in the very churches, killing one another, over matters
of religion
   as well. In fact, the endless religious quarrels bordered on sheer madness. And doctrinal
differences kept the entire Empire in upheaval most of the time.
As for the problems of the Empire's borders they were as continuous
as they had been in the time of the Caesars. The Persians perpetually
   threatened the East and there was simply no end to the barbarians who poured down into the
Empire from the West.

  Having long identified my own soul with the salvation of the Empire, I felt no consolation in this
city. I felt suspicion and profound distaste.
I did however often roam into Santa Sophia to marvel at the enormous
    dome which seemed to float above with no means of support. Something ineffable had been
captured in that grand church which could humble the most proud spirits.
  Avicus and Mael were quite happy in this new city. And both seemed absolutely determined that
I be their leader, and as I shopped the marketplace for books in the evening, Avicus was eager to
join me, and eager for me to read to him what I found.




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  Meantime I furnished our house comfortably, and hired artisans to paint the walls. I did not want
to become lost in my painted gardens again, and when I thought of my lost Pandora my anguish
was worse even than before.
  Indeed I searched for Pandora. I told Avicus and Mael a few little stories, harmless and
unimportant, of my nights with her, but principally of how I had loved her, so that images of her
might exist in their minds in so far as they had the power to keep such images alive.
  If Pandora roamed these streets, if she came upon my companions perhaps she could divine from
them that I was here and wanted so
desperately to be reunited with her.
  At once I began to acquire a library, buying whole caskets of scrolls and going through them at
my leisure. I set up a fine writing desk and began a rather neutral and impersonal diary of my
adventures in the old code I had invented before.
  We had been in Constantinople less than six months when it became clear to us that other blood
drinkers were coming near to our house.
  We heard them in the early morning. They came, apparently to hear of us what they could with
the Mind Gift and then they rushed away.
  "Why have they taken so long?" I demanded. "They've watched us and they've studied us."
  "And perhaps they are the reason," said Avicus, "that we've found no Devil worshipers here."
  This was perhaps true, for those who spied on us now were not Devil worshipers. We could tell
by the bits and pieces of mental imagery which we were able to glean from their minds.

At last they came at early evening and there was no mistaking their polite invitation to us to come
with them to visit their mistress.
  I went out of our house to greet them and discovered that there were two of them and that they
were pale and beautiful boys.
  They couldn't have been more than thirteen when they were made, and they had very clear dark
eyes, and had short curly black hair. They were dressed in long Eastern robes of the finest
decorated cloth, trimmed in a fringe of red and gold. Their under tunics were of silk, and they wore
ornate slippers and many jeweled rings.
  Two mortals carried the torches for them, and they appeared to be simple and expensive Persian
slaves.
  One of the radiant young blood drinker boys placed a small scroll in my hands, which I at once
opened to read the beautifully written Greek.
  "It is the custom before hunting my city to ask permission of me," it said. "Please come to my
palace." It was signed, "Eudoxia."
  I did not care for the style of this any more than I had cared for the style of anything else in
Constantinople. And I cannot say that it surprised me, but then here was an opportunity to speak
with other blood drinkers who were not the fanatical worshipers of the Snake and that opportunity
had never come before.
  Also allow me to note that in all my years as a blood drinker, I had not seen any two others who
were as fine and elegant and beautiful as these boys.
  No doubt the groups of Satan worshipers contained such blood drinkers, with fine faces and
innocent eyes, but for the large part, as I have described, it was Avicus and Mael who slew them or
came to terms with them, not me. Besides they had always been corrupted by their zeal.
There was something else here.




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  These boys seemed infinitely more interesting by virtue of their dignity and their adornments, and
the courage with which they looked at me. As for the name Eudoxia, I was ultimately more curious
than afraid.
  "Let me go with you," I said immediately. But the boys gestured that Avicus and Mael should
come as well.
"Why is this?" I asked protectively. But at once my companions let me know that they wanted to go
too. "How many are you?" I asked the boys.


  "Eudoxia will answer your questions," said the boy who had given me the scroll. "Please do come
with us without further conversation. Eudoxia has been hearing of you for some time."
  We were escorted a long way through the streets, until finally we came to a quarter of the city
even richer than that in which we lived, and to a house much larger even than our own. It had the
usual harsh stone facade, enclosing no doubt an inner garden and rich rooms.
  During this time, the boy blood drinkers cloaked their thoughts very well, but I was able to
divine, perhaps because they wanted me to do, that their names were Asphar and Rashid.
  We were admitted to the house by another pair of mortal slaves who guided us into a large
chamber completely decorated with gold.
  Torches burned all about us, and in the center of the room, on a gilded couch with purple silk
pillows there reclined a gorgeous blood drinker woman, with thick black curls not unlike those of
the boys who had come to us, though she wore them long and fretted with pearls, her damask robe
and under dress of silk as fine as anything I'd seen in Constantinople so far.
  Her face was small, oval, and as close to perfection as anything I've ever beheld, even though she
bore no resemblance to Pandora who was for me perfection itself.
  Her eyes were round and extremely large. Her lips were perfectly rouged, and there came a
perfume from her that was no doubt made by a Persian magician to drive us out of our wits.
  There were numerous chairs and couches scattered about on the mosaic floor where rampant
Grecian goddesses and gods were as tastefully represented as they might have been some five
hundred years before. I saw similar images on the walls surrounding us, though the slightly crude
but ornate columns seemed of later design.
  As for the vampire woman's skin it was perfectly white, and so totally without a touch of
humanity that it sent a chill through me. But her expression, which manifested itself almost entirely
by a smile, was cordial and curious in the extreme.
  Still leaning on her elbow, her arm covered in bracelets, she looked up at me.
  "Marius," she said in cultured and perfect Latin, her voice as lovely as her face, "you read my
walls and floor as though they were a book."
  "Forgive me," I said. "But when a room is so exquisitely decorated, it seems the polite thing to
do."


  "And you long for old Rome," she said, "or for Athens, or even for Antioch where you once
lived."
  This was a formidable blood drinker. She'd plucked this knowledge of me from the deepest of my
memories. I closed my mind. But I didn't close my heart.
  "My name is Eudoxia," she said. "I wish I could say that I bid you welcome to Constantinople,
but it is my city and I am not altogether pleased that you are here."



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  "Can we not come to some understanding with you?" I asked. "We've made a long and arduous
journey. The city is vast."
  She made some small gesture, and the mortal slaves withdrew. Only Asphar and Rashid
remained, as if waiting for her command.
  I tried to tell if there were other blood drinkers in this house, but I couldn't do this without her
knowing I was doing it, and so my attempt was rather weak.
  "Sit down, all of you, please," she said. And at that invitation, the two beautiful boys, Asphar and
Rashid, made to bring the couches in closer so that we might gather in a natural way.
  At once I asked if I might have a chair. And Avicus and Mael in an uncertain whisper echoed the
same request. It was done. We were seated.
"An old Roman," she said with a sudden luminous smile. "You disdain
a couch, and would have a chair."
I laughed a small courteous laugh.
  But then something quite invisible yet strong caused me to cast a glance at Avicus and to see that
he was staring at this splendid female blood drinker as though Cupid had just sent an arrow right
into his heart.
  As for Mael, he glared at her as he had glared at me in Rome many centuries before.
  "Don't worry about your friends," said Eudoxia suddenly, startling me completely. "They're loyal
to you and will follow you in whatever you say. It's you and I who must talk now. Understand that
though this city is immense and there is blood enough for many, rogue blood drinkers come here
often and must be driven away."
"Are we rogues? " I asked gently.
I couldn't help but study her features, her rounded chin with its single
   dimple, and her small cheeks. She appeared as young in mortal years as the two boys. As for her
eyes they were jet black, with such a fringe of lashes that one might suspect there was Egyptian
paint on her face when in fact there was none.
  This observation put me suddenly in mind of Akasha, and I felt a panic as I tried to clear my
mind. What had I done bringing Those Who Must Be Kept here? I should have stayed in the ruins
of Rome. But again, I could not think on this matter now.
  I looked directly at Eudoxia, a bit dazzled by the countless jewels of her robe, and the vision of
her sparkling fingernails, far brighter than any I'd ever beheld except those of Akasha, and I
gathered my strength again and tried to penetrate her mind.
  She smiled sweetly at me, and then she said, "Marius, I am far too old in the Blood for what you
mean to do, but I will tell you anything you want to know."
"May I call you by the name you've given us?" I asked.
  "That was my intent," she replied, "in giving you the name. But let me tell you, I expect honesty
from you; otherwise, I will not tolerate you in my realm."
  I suddenly felt a wave of anger emanating from Mael. I threw a warning glance to him, and once
again I saw that totally entranced expression on the face of Avicus.
  I realized suddenly that Avicus had probably never beheld such a blood drinker as this. The
young women blood drinkers among the worshipers of Satan were deliberately dirty and
disheveled, and here, reclining on her magnificent couch lay a woman who looked like the Empress
who reigned over Byzantium.
Indeed, perhaps this was how this creature perceived herself.
  She smiled as though all these thoughts were transparent to her, and then with a little movement
of her hand she told the two blood drinker boys, Asphar and Rashid, to withdraw.



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Then her eyes passed very calmly and slowly over my two companions as though she were drawing
from them every single coherent thought which had ever passed through their minds.
  I continued my study of her, of the pearls in her hair, and the ropes of pearls about her neck, and
the jewels that adorned her naked toes as well as her hands.
  At last, she looked to me, and a smile spread itself once more on her features, brightening her
entire countenance.
  "If I grant you permission to stay--and I am not at all sure that I mean to do it--you must show
me loyalty when others come to break the peace that we share. You must never side with them
against me. You must keep Constantinople only for us."
  "And just what will you do if we don't show you loyalty?" asked Mael with his old anger.
  She remained staring at me for a long moment, as though to insult him, and then as though
rousing herself from a spell, she looked at Mael.
  "What can I do," she asked Mael, "to silence you before you say something foolish again?" Then
her eyes returned to me. "Let me make this known to you all. I know that you possess the Mother
and the Father. I know that you brought them here for safekeeping and that they are in a chapel
deep beneath your house."
I was brutally stunned.
  I felt a wave of grief. Once again, I had failed to keep the secret. Even in Antioch long ago, I had
failed to keep the secret. Would I not always fail to keep the secret? Was this not my fate? What
was to be done?
  "Don't be so quick to draw back from me, Marius," said Eudoxia. "I drank from the Mother in
Egypt centuries before you took her away."
  This statement stunned me all the more. Yet it held some strange promise. It cast a small light
into my soul.
I was wondrously excited suddenly.
Here was one who understood everything about the ancient mysteries, just as Pandora had
understood. This one, delicate of face and speech, was a world apart from either Avicus or Mael,
and how gentle and reasonable she seemed.
  "I'll tell you my story if you want it, Marius," she said. "I have always been a worldly blood
drinker, never one given to the old religion of the Blood Gods of Egypt. I was three hundred years
old in the Blood before you were born. But I'll tell you all you want to know. It is plain that you
move through the world by means of questions."
  "Yes," I said. "I do move through the world by means of questions, and too often I've asked those
questions in utter silence, or long centuries ago of people who gave me answers that were
fragments which I had to piece together as though they were bits of old papyri. I hunger for
knowledge. I hunger for what you mean to say to me."
She nodded and this seemed to give her extraordinary pleasure.
  "Some of us don't require intimate understanding," she said. "Do you require it, Marius? I can
read much in your thoughts, but this is a puzzle. Must you be understood?"

I was baffled.
  "Must I be understood," I said, thinking it over, as secretly as I might. Did either Avicus or Mael
understand me? No, they did not. But once long long ago the Mother had understood me. Or had
she? Just possibly when I'd fallen so in love with her, I had understood her.
  "I don't have an answer for you," I said softly. "I think I have come to enjoy loneliness. I think
when I was mortal I loved it. I was the wanderer. But why do you put this question to me?"



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  "Because I don't require understanding," she said, and for the first time there came a cold tone
into her voice. "But if you wish it, I'll tell you about my life."
  "I want so much to hear your story," I answered. I was infatuated. Again, I thought of my
beautiful Pandora. Here was an incomparable woman who seemed to have the same gifts. I wanted
so to listen to her, and it was more than essential for our safety that I listen to her. But how could
we deal with the uneasiness of Mael, and the obvious
obsession of Avicus?
She took the thought from me immediately, looking at Avicus gently and then turning her attention
for a long sober moment on the infuriated Mael.
  "You were a priest in Gaul," she said calmly to him, "yet you have the attitude of a dedicated
warrior. You would destroy me. Why is this so?"
  "I don't respect your authority here," Mael answered, trying to match her quiet tone. "Who are
you to me? You say you never respected the old religion. Well, I respected it. And Avicus
respected it. Of this we're proud."
  "We all want the same thing," she answered. She smiled, revealing her fang teeth. "We want a
hunting ground which is not overcrowded. We want the Satanic blood drinkers to be kept out for
they multiply insanely and seek to foment trouble in the mortal world. My authority rests on my
past triumphs. It's no more than habit. If we can make a peace ..." She broke off and in the manner
of a man she shrugged her shoulders and opened her hands.
Suddenly Avicus broke in.
  "Marius speaks for us," he said. "Marius, make the peace with Eudoxia, please."
  "We give you our loyalty," I said, "in so far as we do want the same things, as you've described.
But I want very much to speak with you. I want to know how many blood drinkers are here now.
As for your history, let me say again that I do want to hear it. One thing we can give to each other
is our history. Yes. I want to know yours."
  She rose from the couch very gracefully, revealing herself to be a little taller than I had supposed.
She had rather broad shoulders for a woman, and she walked very straight, her bare feet not making
the slightest sound.
  "Come into my library," she said, leading us into a chamber off the main room. "It's better for
talking, I believe." Her hair was long down her back, a heavy mass of black curls, and she moved
gracefully despite the weight of her beaded and decorated robes.
  The library was immense, with shelves for scrolls and codexes, that is, bound volumes such as we
have today. There were chairs here and there, and some gathered in the center, and two couches for
reclining and tables on which to write. The golden lamps looked Persian to me in their heavy
worked designs, but I couldn't be certain of it.
  The carpets strewn about were definitely Persian, that much I knew.
Of course the moment I saw the books, I was overcome with pleasure. This always happens with
me. I remembered the library in old Egypt in which I had found the Elder who had put the Mother
and Father into the sun. I feel foolishly safe with books which can be a mistake.
  I thought of all that I had lost in the first siege of Rome. I couldn't help but wonder what Greek
and Roman authors were here preserved. For the Christians, though they were kinder to the
ancients than people
now believe, did not always save the old works.
  "Your eyes are hungry," she said, "though your mind is shut. I know you want to read here.
You're welcome. Send your scribes to copy what you will. But I go ahead of myself, don't I? We
must talk. We must see if we can achieve an agreement. I don't know that we can."



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She turned her eyes to Avicus.
  "And you, you who are old, you who were given the Blood in Egypt, you are only just learning to
love the realm of letters. How strange that it would take you so long."
I could feel his immense excitement and tender confusion.
  "I'm learning," he said. "Marius is teaching me." And then the flame rose in his cheeks.
As for Mael, I couldn't help but note his quiet fury, and it struck me that he had for so long been the
author of his own unhappiness, but now something was truly happening which might be a
legitimate cause
of his pain.
Of course it greatly distressed me that neither of them could keep their minds secret. Long ago in
Rome when I had sought to find them they had done a better job of it.
"Let's be seated," said Eudoxia, "and let me tell you who I am." We took the chairs, which brought
us closer together, and she
began to tell her story in a quiet tone.


10

MY MORTAL LIFE isn't very important," she said, "but I'll pass over it quickly. I was from a fine
Greek family, one of the first wave of settlers to come from Athens to Alexandria
    to make it the great city that Alexander wanted when he founded it three hundred years before
the birth of the Christ.
  "I was brought up like any girl in such a Greek household, extremely protected, and never leaving
the house. I did however learn to read and write, because my father wanted me to be able to write
letters to him after I was married and he thought that I might read poetry to my children later on.
"I loved him for it, though no one else did, and I took to my education with a passion, neglecting all
else.
  "An early marriage was prepared for me. I wasn't fifteen when I was told of it, and frankly I was
rather happy about it because I had seen the man, and I'd found him intriguing and somewhat
strange. I wondered if marriage to him wouldn't bring a new existence for me, something more
interesting than what I'd had at home. My real mother was dead and I didn't care for my
stepmother. I wanted to be out of her house."
  She paused for a moment and I was of course calculating. She was older than me by many years,
she was making that plain to me, twice over, and that is why she appeared so utterly perfect. Time
had done its work on the lines of her face, as it was doing its work on my own.
She watched me and hesitated for a moment, but then she went on:
  ' A month before the nuptials, I was abducted right out of my bed at night, and taken over the
walls of the house to a dark and filthy place where I was flung down in the corner, to cower on the
stone floor while several men carried on a crude argument, as to who would be paid how much for
having stolen me.
"I expected to be murdered. I also knew that my stepmother was behind my ruin.
  "But there came into the place a tall thin man with a head of shaggy black hair, and a face and
hands as white as the moon, who murdered all of these men, throwing them about as if they were
weightless, and holding the last up to his mouth for a long time, as though he were drinking blood
from the corpse, or eating part of it.
"I thought I was on the verge of madness.



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  "As he dropped the body, the white-faced being realized that I was staring at him. I had nothing
but a torn and dirty night dress to cover me. But I rose to my feet to face him bravely.
" 'A woman,' he said. I shall never forget. 'A woman' as if that were remarkable."
"Sometimes, it is," I said.
She smiled at me rather tolerantly. She went on with the story.
"After this remark, he gave a strange little laugh and then he came
for me.
  "Once again, I expected to be murdered. But he made me a blood drinker. There was no
ceremony to it, no words, nothing. He simply did it, right then and there.
  "Then ripping off the tunic and sandals from one of the men, he dressed me crudely as a boy and
we hunted the streets together for the rest of the night. He handled me roughly as we went along,
turning me this way and that, pushing me, instructing me as much with shoves as
with crude words.
  "Before dawn, he took me back to his curious dwelling. It wasn't in the elite Greek quarter where
I had been brought up. But I didn't know that at the time. As a matter of fact, I'd never been out of
my father's house. My first experience of the city streets had been frankly
enthralling.
  "Now here I was being carried up the high wall of a three-story dwelling and then brought down
into its barren courtyard.
  "The place was an immense and disorderly treasure house. In every room there were riches
unimaginable.
" 'See, all this!' the blood drinker said to me proudly.
  "There was chaos everywhere. There were silk draperies in heaps and beautiful cushions, and
these he brought together to make a kind of nest for us. He put heavy necklaces on me and said,
'These will lure your victims. Then you can quickly take hold of them.'
"I was intoxicated and afraid.
  "Then he took out his dagger and, grabbing me by the hair, he cut it off, almost all of it, and that
sent me into wailing like nothing that had gone before. I had killed. I had drunk blood. I had run
through the streets half mad. That did not make me bellow, but the cutting of my hair was too
much.
  "He didn't seem at all disturbed by my crying, but quite suddenly he snatched me up, and threw
me down into a large casket on a hard bed of jewels and gold chains and he shut the lid on me.
Little did I know the sun was rising. Again, I thought I would die.
  "But next I opened my eyes, he was there, smiling, and in a gruff voice, with no real wit or talent
for a turn of phrase he explained that we must sleep all day away from the sun. It was our nature.
And we had to drink plenty of blood. Blood was the only thing that mattered to us.
"Maybe to you, I thought, but I didn't dare argue with him.
  "And my hair of course had all grown back as it would every day forever, and he once again
hacked it off. Within a few nights, to my relief he did acquire an expensive scissors to make this
operation easier, but he, no matter what we had to do, would never tolerate my long locks.
"I was with him several years.
  "He was never civil or kind, but never terribly cruel either. I was never out of his sight. When I
asked if we might acquire better clothes for me, he agreed, though he obviously didn't care too
much about it. As for himself, he wore a long tunic and a cloak, changing only when these became
worn, stealing the fresh clothing from one of his victims.




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  "He often patted me on the head. He had no words for love, and he had no imagination. When I
brought back books from the market to read poetry, he laughed at me, if you can call the toneless
noise he made a laugh. I read the poetry to him nevertheless, and much of the time after the initial
laugh he simply stared at me.
  "Once or twice I asked him how he'd been made a blood drinker, and he said it was by a wicked
drinker of the blood who had come out of Upper Egypt. 'They're all liars, those old ones,' he said. 'I
call them the Temple Blood Drinkers.' And that constituted the entire history he bequeathed to me.
'If I went against him in any particular, he hit me. It wasn't a terribly hard blow, but it was enough
to stop me from ever opposing him on any count.
  "When I tried to put the household in some sort of order, he stared at me dully, never offering to
help but never striking me either. I rolled out some of the Babylonian rugs. I put some of the
marble
statues along the wall so that they looked respectable. I cleaned up the
courtyard.
  "Now during this time, I heard other blood drinkers in Alexandria. I even glimpsed them, but
never did they come very close.
  "When I told him about them, he only shrugged and said that they were no worry of mine. Tm too
strong for them,' he told me, 'and besides they don't want any trouble. They know that I know too
much about them.' He didn't explain further, but he told me I was very blessed in that he'd given me
old blood.
  "I don't know what kept me so happy during that time. Perhaps it was hunting different parts of
Alexandria, or just reading new books, or swimming in the sea. He and I did go out together and
swim in the sea.
  "I don't know if you can imagine this--what the sea meant to me, that I might bathe in it, that I
might walk along the shore. A closeted Greek housewife would never have that privilege. And I
was a blood drinker. I was a boy. I hunted the ships in the harbor. I walked with brave and evil
men.
  "One night my Maker failed to cut off my hair, as was the evening custom, and he took me to a
strange place. It was in the Egyptian quarter of the city, and once we opened the door, we had to
follow a long descending tunnel, before we came into a great room covered with the old picture
writing of Egypt. There were huge square pillars
supporting the ceiling. It was rather an awe-inspiring place.
  "I think it brought to memory a more refined time to me, when I had known things of mystery
and beauty, though I cannot now really say.
  "There were several blood drinkers there. They were pale and appeared extremely beautiful, but
nothing as white as my Maker and they were clearly afraid of him. I was quite astonished to see all
this. But then I remembered his phrase, 'Temple Blood Drinkers,' and I thought, So we are with
them.
  "He pushed me forward as a little miracle which they had not beheld. There was a quarrel then in
their language, which I could just barely understand.

"It seemed they told him that the Mother would make the decision, and then and only then could he
be forgiven for his ways. As for him, my Maker, he said that he didn't care whether or not he was
forgiven, but he was going off now, and he wanted to be rid of me and if they would take me, that
was all he wanted to know.




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                                              Blood and Gold

  "I was terrified. I didn't entirely like this gloomy place, grand though it was. And we had spent
several years together. And now he was leaving?
  "I wanted to ask him, What had I done? I suppose I realized in that moment that I loved him. I
would do anything if he would only change his mind.
  "The others fell upon me. They took hold of me by both arms and dragged me with unnecessary
force into another gigantic room.
  "The Mother and the Father were there, resplendent and shining, seated on a huge throne of black
diorite, above some six or seven marble steps.
  "This was the main room of a temple, and all its columns and walls were decorated beautifully
with the Egyptian writing, and the ceiling was covered with plates of gold.
  "Naturally I thought, as we all do, that the Mother and the Father were statues, and as I was
dragged closer to them, I was mad with resentment that such a thing was taking place.
  "I was also curiously ashamed, ashamed that I wore old sandals and a dirty boyish tunic, and that
my hair was tumbled down all around me--for on this one night my Maker had failed to hack it
off--and I was in no way prepared for what ritual was to take place.
  "Akasha and Enkil were of the purest white, and they sat as they have always done, since I have
come to know them--as they sit in your underground chapel now."
Mael broke the narrative with an angry question:
  "How do you know how the Mother and Father appear in our underground chapel?"
I was deeply disturbed that he had done this.
But Eudoxia remained utterly composed.
  "You have no power to see through the minds of other blood drinkers?" she asked. Her eyes were
hard, perhaps even a little cruel.
Mael was confused.
  And I was keenly aware that he had given away a secret to Eudoxia, the secret being that he didn't
have such a power, or that he didn't know that he did, and I wasn't quite sure what I should do.


  Understand he knew that he could find other blood drinkers by hearing their thoughts, but he
didn't know how to use this power to even greater advantage, seeing what they saw.
  Indeed, all three of us were uncertain of our powers. And I realized how foolish this was.
  At this moment, when Eudoxia received no answer to her question, I tried vainly to think of some
way to distract her.
  "Please," I said to Eudoxia, "will you continue? Tell us your story." I didn't dare to apologize for
Mael's rudeness because that might have made him furious.
  "Very well," said Eudoxia looking straight at me as though she were dismissing my companions
as impossible.
  "As I was telling you," she said, "My Maker pushed me forward and told me to kneel before the
Father and the Mother. And being exceedingly frightened, I did as I was told.
  "I looked up at their faces, as blood drinkers have done since time immemorial and I saw no
vitality, no subtlety of expression, only the relaxation of dumb animals, no more.
  "But then there came a change in the Mother. Her right hand was raised ever so slightly from her
lap and it turned and thereby made the simplest beckoning gesture to me.
  "I was astonished by this gesture. So these creatures lived and breathed? Or was it trickery, some
form of magic? I didn't know.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "My Maker, ever so crude even at this sacred moment, said, 'Ah, go to her, drink her blood. She
is the Mother of us all.' And with his bare foot, he kicked me. 'She is the First One,' he said. 'Drink.'
  "The other blood drinkers began to quarrel with him fiercely, speaking the old Egyptian tongue
again, telling him that the gesture wasn't clear, that the Mother might destroy me, and who was he
to give such a command, and how dare he come to this temple with a pitiful female blood drinker
who was as soiled and untutored as he was.
  "But he overrode them. 'Drink her blood and your strength will be beyond measure,' he said. Then
he lifted me to my feet and all but threw me forward so that I landed with my hands on the marble
steps before the throne.
  "The other blood drinkers were shocked by his behavior. I heard a low laugh from my Maker. But
my eyes were on the King and the Queen.
"I saw that the Queen had moved her hand again, opening her fingers, and though her eyes never
changed, the beckoning gesture was certain.
  " 'From her neck,' said my Maker. 'Don't be afraid. She never destroys those whom she beckons.
Do as I say.' And I did.
   "I drank as much from her as I was able to drink. And mark my words, Marius, this was over
three hundred years before the Elder ever put the Mother and Father in the Great Fire. And I was to
drink from her more than once. Heed my words, more than once, long before you ever came to
Alexandria, long before you took our King and Queen."
  She raised her dark black eyebrows slightly as she looked at me, as though she wanted me to
understand her point most keenly. She was very very strong.
  "But Eudoxia, when I did come to Alexandria," I answered her. "When I came in search of the
Mother and Father, and to discover who had put them in the sun, you weren't there in the temple.
You weren't in Alexandria. At least you didn't make yourself known to me."
  "No," she said, "I was in the city of Ephesus where I had gone with another blood drinker whom
the Fire destroyed. Or I should say, I was making my way home to Alexandria, to find the reason
for the Fire, and to drink of the healing fount, when you took the Mother and Father away."
She gave me a delicate but cold smile.
  "Can you imagine my anguish when I discovered that the Elder was dead and the temple was
empty? When the few survivors of the temple told me that a Roman named Marius had come and
stolen our King and Queen?"
  I said nothing, but her resentment was plain. Her face displayed its human emotions. A shimmer
of blood tears rose in her round dark eyes,
  "Time has healed me, Marius," she said, "because I contain a great deal of the Queen's blood, and
was from the moment of my making very strong. Indeed, the Great Fire only turned me a dark
brown color, with small pain. But if you hadn't taken Akasha away from Alexandria, she would
have let me drink her blood again, and I would have been healed quickly. It would not have taken
so long."
  "And would you drink the Queen's blood now, Eudoxia? " I asked. "Is that what you mean to do?
For surely you know why I did what I did. Surely you know it was the Elder who put the Mother
and the Father in the sun."


  She didn't answer. I couldn't tell whether this information surprised her or not. She was perfectly
concealed. Then she said:
"Do I need the blood now, Marius? Look at me. What do you see?"



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I hesitated to answer. Then I did:
  "No, you don't need it, Eudoxia," I said. "Unless such blood is always a blessing."
  She looked at me for a long moment and then she nodded her head slowly, almost drowsily and
her dark eyebrows came together in a small frown.
  "Always a blessing?" she asked, repeating my words. "I don't know if it is always a blessing."
  "Will you tell me more of your story? What happened after you first drank from Akasha? After
your Maker went his way?" I put these questions gently. "Did you reside in the temple once your
Maker had left?"
  This seemed to give her the moment of recollection that she required.
  "No, I didn't remain there," she said. "Though the priests coaxed me, telling me wild stories of old
worship, and that the Mother was imperishable, save from the sunlight, and should she ever burn,
so would we all. There was one among them who made quite a point of this warning, as though the
prospect tantalized him--."
"The Elder," I said, "who eventually sought to prove it."
  "Yes," she said. "But to me he was no Elder, and I did not heed his words.
"I went out, free of my Maker, and, left with his house and his treasure, I decided upon another way
of life. Of course the temple priestsoften came to me and harried me that I was profane and
reckless, but as they did no more than that, I paid them no heed.
  "I could easily pass for human then, especially if I covered my skin with certain oils." She sighed.
"And I was used to passing for a young man. It was a simple matter for me to make a fine
household, to acquire good clothes, that is, to pass from poor to rich in a matter of nights.
  "I gave out word in the schools and in the marketplace that I could write letters for people, and
that I could copy books, and all this by night when the other copyists had quit and gone home. And
arranging a big study in my house, with plenty of light, I set to doing this for human beings, and
this was how I came to know them, and came to know what the teachers were teaching by day.

"What an agony it was that I couldn't hear the great philosophers who held forth in the daylight
hours, but I did very well with this nocturnal occupation, and I had what I wanted, the warm voices
of humans speaking to me. I befriended mortals. And on many an evening my house was filled with
banqueting guests.
  "I learned of the world from students, poets, soldiers. In the small hours, I slipped into the great
library of Alexandria, a place that you should have visited, Marius. It is a wonder that you passed
over such a treasure house of books. I did not pass it over."
  She paused. Her face was horridly blank, and I knew it was from an excess of emotion. She did
not look at any of us.
  "Yes, I understand this," I said, "I understand it very very deeply. I feel the same need for mortal
voices near me, for mortals smiling on me as though I were their own."
  "I know your loneliness," she said in a rather hard voice. And for the first time I had the feeling
that the passing expressions on her face were hard as well, that her face was nothing but a beautiful
shell for a disturbed soul inside her, of which I knew little from her words.
  "I lived well and for a long time in Alexandria," she said. "What greater city was there? And I
believed as many blood drinkers do that knowledge alone would sustain me over the decades, that
information could somehow stave off despair."
I was quite impressed with these words, but I didn't respond.
  "I should have remained in Alexandria," she said, looking off, her voice low and suddenly full of
regret. "I began to love a certain mortal, a young man who felt great love for me. One night he



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                                           Blood and Gold

made his love known to me, that he would give up all for me--his proposed marriage, his family,
all--if only I would go away with him to Ephesus, the place from which his family had come, and
where he wanted to return."
She broke off as if she did not mean to go on.
  "It was such love," she said, her words coming more slowly, "and all this while he believed that I
was a young man."
I said nothing.
  "The night he declared his love, I revealed myself. He was quite horrified by the pretense. And I
took my revenge." She frowned as though she wasn't quite sure of the word. "Yes," she said, "my
revenge."
"You made him a blood drinker," I said softly.
"Yes," she said, still looking off as though she were back in those times. "I did, and by the most
brutal and ungraceful force, and once that was done, he saw me with naked and loving eyes."
"Loving eyes?" I repeated.
  She looked pointedly at Avicus and then back to me. Then she looked at Avicus again.
I took my measure of him. I had always thought him rather splendid,
   and assumed from his beauty that the Gods of the Grove were chosen for their beauty as well as
their endurance, but I tried to see him as she saw him now. His skin was golden now, rather than
brown, and his thick black hair made a dignified frame for his unusually beguiling face.
I looked back to Eudoxia and saw with a little shock that she was looking at me.
  "He loved you again?" I asked, locking in immediately upon her story and its meaning. "He loved
you even when the Blood flowed in his veins?"
I could not even guess her inner thoughts.
  She gave me a grave nod. "Yes, he loved me again," she said. "And he had the new eyes of the
Blood, and I was his teacher, and we all know what charm lies in all that." She smiled bitterly.
  A sinister feeling came over me, a feeling that something was very wrong with her, that perhaps
she was mad. But I had to bury this feeling within me and I did.
  "Off we went to Ephesus," she said, going on with her story, "and though it was no match for
Alexandria, it was nevertheless a great Greek city, with rich trade from the East, and with pilgrims
always coming for the worship of the great goddess Artemis, and there we lived until the Great
Fire."
Her voice became small. Mortals might not have heard it.
  "The Great Fire destroyed him utterly," she said. "He was just that age when all the human flesh
was gone from him, and only the blood drinker remained, but the blood drinker had only just begun
to be strong."
She broke off, as though she could not continue, then she went on:
"There were only ashes left to me of him. Ashes and no more."
She fell silent and I dared not encourage her.
Then she said:
"I should have taken him to the Queen before I ever left Alexandria. But you see, I had no time for
the temple blood drinkers and

when I had gone to them, it was as a rebel, talking my way in proudly with tales of the Queen's
gestures to me so that I might lay flowers before her, and what if I had brought my lover, and the
Queen had made no such gesture as that which she had made to me? And so, you see, I had not
brought him, and there in Ephesus, I stood with the ashes in my hands."



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  I remained silent out of respect for her. I couldn't help but glance at Avicus again. He was all but
weeping. She had possession of him, heart and soul.
  "Why did I go back to Alexandria after this terrible loss?" she asked wearily. "Because the temple
blood drinkers had told me that the Mother was the Queen of all. Because they had spoken of the
sun and of our burning. And I knew that something must have befallen our Mother, something had
caused this Great Fire, and that only those in the temple would know what it was. And there was a
pain in my flesh, by no means unbearable, but something which I would have healed by the
Mother, if I had found her there."
I said nothing.
  In all the years since I'd taken Those Who Must Be Kept, I had never come upon such a creature
as this woman. And I should say as well that never had such a blood drinker come upon me.
  Never had anyone come armed with such eloquence, or history, or old poetry such as this.
  "For centuries," I said, my voice low and gentle, "I kept the Mother and Father in Antioch. Other
blood drinkers found me--warlike and violent creatures, creatures badly burnt and bound upon
stealing the strong blood. But you, you never came."
She shook her head in negation.
  "Never did Antioch enter my thoughts," she confessed. "I believed that you had taken the Mother
and Father to Rome. Marius, the Roman, that is what they called you. Marius, the Roman, has
taken the Mother and the Father. And so you see, I made a severe error in going to the Imperial
City, and after that I went to Crete, and I was never to be close to you, never to find you by the
Mind Gift, never to hear tell of where you might be.
  "But I was not always searching for the Mother and Father," she said. "I had my passions. I made
blood drinkers to be my companions. The centuries healed me as you have seen. I am now far
stronger than you are, Marius. I am infinitely stronger than your companions. And

though touched by your fine Patrician manners and your old-fashioned Latin, and by the devotion
of your friend, Avicus, I must lay down for you some hard terms."
"How so, Eudoxia?" I asked calmly.
Mael was in a rage.
  She was quiet for a long moment, during which her small delicate features wore nothing but an
expression of sweetness and kindness, and then she said with courtesy:
  "Give over the Mother and Father to me, Marius, or I shall destroy you and your companions.
You will not be allowed either to stay or
to go."
I could see the shock in Avicus. As for Mael he was, thank the gods, dumbfounded. And as for me,
I was again stunned. I waited several moments, and then I asked: "Why do you want the Mother
and Father, Eudoxia?" "Oh, Marius," she shook her head crossly, "don't play the fool. You know
the Mother's blood is the strongest. I've already told you that every time I ever appealed to her, she
gave me the welcoming gesture, and allowed me to drink. I want her because I want the power in
her. And also because I would not have this King and Queen, who can be burnt again or put in the
sun, given over to others who might do such rash things."
  "Have you thought this through?" I asked coldly. "How would you keep the shrine secret? From
what I've seen of your blood drinker companions, they are almost children both in mortal years and
in the Blood. Do you know the weight of this burden?"




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  "I knew it before you ever existed," she said, her face suffused with anger. "You play with me,
Marius. And I won't have it. I know what's in your heart. You won't give up the Mother because
you won't give up the blood."
  "Perhaps so, Eudoxia," I said, straining to remain civil. "I want time to consider what has been
said here."
  "No, I give you no time," she said, her voice angry, a blush coming to her cheeks. "Answer me
now, or I destroy you."
  Her rage was so sudden it caught me off guard. Yet quickly, I recovered.
"And how do you mean to do this?" I asked.
  Mael jumped to his feet, and moved behind his chair. I gestured for him to be still. Avicus sat in
mute despair. The blood tears had begun


to flow from him, and they moved down his face. He was far more disappointed than fearful. In
fact, he seemed rather solemnly brave.
Eudoxia turned to Avicus, and at once I sensed a threat in her
posture. Her limbs stiffened, and it seemed that her eyes became unusually hard. She meant to do
something evil to Avicus, and there was no time for me to wait and see what that might be.
  I rose, and rushing at her, took hold of her by both wrists, turning her so that inevitably and
furiously she looked up at me.
  Of course this physical strength could accomplish little here, but what more could I do? What had
my powers become over these years? I didn't know. But there was no time to ponder or experiment.
I summoned, from the very depths of my being, all the destructive force I might possess.
  I felt a pain in my belly and then in my head, and while Eudoxia went limp in my grasp, with her
eyes closed, I felt a dreadful heat come full force against my face and chest. But I was not burnt by
it. I repelled it and drove it back whence it had come.
  In sum, this was a battle, and I had no idea who might win it. I sought again to bring all the force
that I could command into action and again I saw her weaken, felt her weaken, and yet there came
the heat once more against me but it had no effect.
I threw her down on the marble floor and I stood over her, gathering the force with all my will and
directing it towards her, and she writhed on the marble, her eyes closed, and her hands shuddering.
My force held her pinioned. My force would not let her rise.
  At last she went still. She breathed deeply and then she opened her eyes, and she looked up at me.
  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her acolytes Asphar and Rashid coming to assist her. Both
brandished huge glittering swords. I looked desperately about for one of the oil lamps in the hope
that I could burn one of them with flaming oil, but then my thoughts went before me with all my
strength and with utter rage: Oh, if I could only burn you! And Rashid stopped, cried out, and then
burst into flames.
  With utter horror, I beheld this. I knew I had done it. And so did all present. The boy's bones were
visible but for an instant and then they collapsed and the flames leapt and danced on the marble
floor.
I had no choice but to turn to Asphar. But Eudoxia cried out.
  "Enough." She struggled to rise but she couldn't do it. I took both her hands and lifted her to her
feet.

  With her head bowed she backed away from me. She turned and looked at the remains of Rashid.



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  "You've destroyed one who was dear to me," she said, her voice quivering. "And you didn't even
know you had the power of Fire."
  "And you meant to destroy my Avicus," I said, "and you meant to destroy me." I sighed as I
looked at her. "What choice did you give me? You have been my teacher in regard to my powers." I
trembled with exhaustion and fury. "We might have all lived here in accord."
  I looked at Asphar who didn't dare to come any closer. I looked at Eudoxia who sat weak and
useless in her chair.
  "I mean to leave now," I said, "and take my two companions with me. If you try to harm any of
us, I'll turn my full power on you. And as you said, I do not even know what it is myself."
  "You threaten from fear," she said wearily. "And you won't leave here without giving me a life
for a life. You burnt Rashid. Give me
Avicus. Give him to me now of your own free will."
  "I will not," I said coldly. I felt my power gathered inside me. I glared at Asphar. The poor child
blood drinker quivered in terror.
Eudoxia sat sullenly in her chair, her head still bowed.
  "What a loss there has been here, Eudoxia," I said. "We could have given such riches of mind to
each other."
  "Stop your golden talk, Marius," she said, looking up angrily, her eyes full of blood tears. "You
still fear me. Bring me to the Mother and the Father, and let the Mother decide who shall be her
keeper, you or I."
I answered quickly,
"I won't have you under my roof, Eudoxia. But I will take the matter
   before the Mother and the Father. And after they speak to me, I will speak to you."
I turned to Asphar.
  "Lead us out of this place now," I said, "or I'll burn you as I did your companion."
  He obeyed without hesitation, and once he had led us speedily to the street, we fled.



11


WE FLED.
    There is no other way to describe it. We were in terror
           and we fled. As soon as we reached our house we closed off every window and door with
its heaviest shutters.
  But what did all this matter against a power such as Eudoxia possessed?
  Gathering in the inner court, we took stock of the situation. We must discover our own powers.
We must know what had been given us by time and blood.
Within a few hours, we had some answers.
  Avicus and I could move objects easily without touching them. We could make them fly through
the air. As for the Fire Gift, I alone possessed it and we could find no limit to my gift in terms of
the space of our house. That meant I could burn wood no matter how far it was from me. And as for
living things, I chose the unfortunate vermin for my victims, and ignited them from a great distance
with ease.




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As for our physical strength it was far greater than we had ever supposed. Again, I excelled in this
as in everything. Avicus was second to me, and Mael was third.
  But I had sensed something else when I was with Eudoxia, and I tried to explain it to Avicus and
Mael.
  "When we fought, she sought to burn me with the Fire Gift. (And we did use those words then in
one form or another.) Of this I'mcertain. I felt the warmth. But I was confronting her with a
different power. I was using a pressure against her. And that is something I must come to
understand."
Once again, I chose the unfortunate rats of our dwelling for my exercise, and holding one of these, I
exerted the same force I had used when struggling with Eudoxia in my arms. The creature virtually
exploded, but there was no fire involved.
  I knew then that I possessed a power different from the Fire Gift, which I might call the Killing
Gift, which I had used in my defense. Should I use this pressure against a mortal, and I didn't intend
to, the mortal's internal organs would be exploded and the poor creature would die.
  "Now Avicus," I said, "you being the eldest of us, see if you possess this Killing Gift, for you
very well might."
  Having caught a rat, I held it as Avicus directed his thoughts with all due concentration, and
within seconds the poor creature bled from its ears and mouth and was quite dead.
This had a sobering effect upon Avicus.
  I insisted that Mael attempt the same thing. This time the rat squirmed furiously, letting out
terrible little squeaks or cries, but did not die. When I put the little creature down on the mosaic
floor of the court, it could not run, or even climb to its small feet, and I, out of mercy for it, put it to
death.
I looked at Mael. "The power is growing in you," I said. "The powers
   are increasing in all of us. We have to be more clever, infinitely more clever, as we face our
enemies here."
Mael nodded. "It seems that I might cripple a mortal."
  "Or even make him fall," I answered. "But let us turn our attention now to the Mind Gift. We've
all used it to locate each other, and sometimes to communicate a silent question or thought, but
only in the simplest most self-defensive ways."
  We went into the library and seated ourselves in a small triangle, and I sought to put into the
mind of Avicus images of what I had seen in the great church of Hagia Sophia, specifically the
mosaics which I had most loved.
He was at once able to describe them to me, even down to detail.
  Then I became a recipient of his thoughts, which were memories of the long ago year when he
was brought North out of Egypt, and up to Britain, to take up his long service in the Grove of the
Druids. He had been in chains.
  I was shaken by these images. Not only did I see them, I felt a deep physical response. I had to
clear my eyes as well as my head. There was something overpoweringly intimate about them, yet
something indistinct at the same time. I knew that I would never feel quite the same about Avicus
again.
  Now it was my turn with Mael. I tried to send him vivid pictures of my former house in Antioch,
where I had been so happy--or unhappy--with Pandora. And again, he was able to describe in
words the images I'd sent.
  When it came his turn to send me images, he allowed me to see the first night in his youth that he
had ever been allowed to join the Faithful



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  of the Forest in the ceremonies of the God of the Grove. I disliked these scenes, for obvious
reasons, and again I felt jarred by them, and that I knew him now a little better than I desired.
  After this, we tried to eavesdrop upon each other mentally, a skill we had always known we
possessed. We proved far stronger in this than we had anticipated. And as for cloaking our minds,
we could all do it quite near to perfection, even Mael.
  We resolved then that we would strengthen our powers in so far as we could do this for ourselves.
We would use the Mind Gift more often. We would do all that we could to prepare for Eudoxia and
what she meant to do.
  At last, having completed our lessons, and having heard no more of Eudoxia or her household, I
resolved to go down into the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept.
  Avicus and Mael were hesitant to remain upstairs without me, so I allowed them to come down
and wait near the doorway, but I insisted that I go into the shrine alone.
  I knelt down before the Divine Parents, and in a low voice I told them what had taken place.
Naturally there was an absurdity to this, for they probably already knew.
  Whatever the case, I spoke frankly to Akasha and Enkil of all that Eudoxia had revealed to me, of
our terrible struggle, and I told them that I didn't know what to do.
  Here was one who laid claim to them, and I did not trust Eudoxia, because she had no respect for
me and those I loved. I told them that if they wished to be given over to Eudoxia, all I needed was a
sign, but I begged that I and my companions would be saved.
  Nothing broke the silence of the chapel except my whispers. Nothing changed.
  "I need the blood, Mother," I said to Akasha. "Never have I needed it more. If I am to defend
myself this time, I need the blood."

  I rose. I waited. I wished that I would see Akasha's hand rise as it had for Eudoxia. I thought of
the words of her Maker, "She never destroys those she beckons."
  But there was no warm gesture for me. There was only my courage, as I once more embraced
Akasha, and pressed my lips to her neck, and then pierced her skin and felt the delicious
indescribable blood.
What did I see in my ecstasy? What did I see in this sublime satisfaction? It was the lush and
beautiful palace garden, full of carefully tended fruit trees, and the soft dark grass, and the sun
shining through the branches. How could I ever forget that fatal and supremelybeautiful sun?
Beneath my naked foot, I felt the soft waxy petal of a flower. Against my face, I felt soft branches.
I drank and drank, slipping out of time, and the warmth paralyzed me.
  Is this your sign, Mother? I was walking in the palace garden, and it seemed I held a paintbrush
in my hand, and when I looked up, I was painting the very trees that I saw above me, creating the
garden on the wall of my house, the garden in which I walked. I understood this paradox perfectly.
This was a garden which I had once painted on the walls of the shrine. And now it was mine to
have both on a flat wall, and also surrounding me, as if it really existed. And that was the omen.
Keep the Mother and the Father. Do not be afraid.
  I drew back. I could take no more. I clung to Akasha like a child. I held to her neck with my left
hand, my forehead against her heavy black plaits, and I kissed her, over and over again, I kissed
her, as though that and only that were the most eloquent gesture in the world.
  Enkil did not stir. Akasha did not stir. I sighed and that was the only sound.
  Then I withdrew and knelt down before both of them, and I gave my thanks.
  How completely and totally I loved her, my shimmering Egyptian goddess. How I believed that
she belonged to me.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  Then for a long time I pondered this problem with Eudoxia, and I saw it a little more clearly.
  It occurred to me that in the absence of a clear sign to Eudoxia, my battle with her would be to
the death. She would never allow me to remain in this city, and she meant to take Those Who Must
Be Kept from me, so that I would have to use the Fire Gift against her as best I could. What had
happened earlier this night was only the beginning of our little war.

It was dreadfully sad to me, because I admired Eudoxia, but I knew that she had been far too
humiliated by our struggle ever to give in.
  I looked up at Akasha. "How do I fight this creature to the death? " I asked. "This creature has
your blood in her. I have your blood in me. But surely there must be a clearer sign of what you
mean for me to do?"
I stayed there for an hour or more, and then finally I went out.
I found Avicus and Mael waiting where I had left them.
  "She's given me her blood," I said. "This isn't a boast. I only mean for you to know it. And I
believe that that is her sign. But how can I know? I believe that she does not want to be given over
to Eudoxia, and she will destroy if provoked."
Avicus looked desperate.
  "In all our years in Rome," he said, "we were blessed that no one of great strength ever
challenged us."
  I agreed with him. "Strong blood drinkers stay away from others like them," I said. "But you must
see, surely, that we are challenging her. We could leave as she has asked us to do."
  "She has no right to ask this of us," said Avicus. "Why can't she try to love us? "
  "Love us?" I asked, repeating his words. "What makes you say such a strange thing? I know that
you're enamored of her. Of course. I've seen this. But why should she love us?"
  "Precisely because we are strong," he responded. "She has only the weakest blood drinkers
around her, creatures no more than half a century in age. We can tell her things, things she may not
know."
  "Ah, yes, I thought the same things when I first laid eyes on her. But with this one it's not to be."
"Why?" he asked again.
  "If she wanted strong ones like us, they would be here," I said. And then I said dejectedly, "We
can always go back to Rome."
He had no answer for that. I didn't know whether I meant it myself.
  As we went up the steps and through the tunnels to the surface, I took his arm.
  "You're mad with thoughts of her," I said. "You must regain your spiritual self. Don't love her.
Make it a simple act of will."
He nodded. But he was too troubled to conceal it.
  I glanced at Mael, and found him more calm about all this than I had imagined. Then came the
inevitable question:


  "Would she have destroyed Avicus if you hadn't opposed her?" Mael asked.
  "She was going to give it a very good try," I said. "But Avicus is very old, older than you or me.
And possibly older than her. And you've seen his strength tonight."
  Uneasy, filled with misgivings, and bad thoughts, we went to our unholy rest.
  The following night, as soon as I rose, I knew that there were strangers in our house. I was
furious, but had some sense even then that anger renders one weak.



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                                           Blood and Gold

  Mael and Avicus came to me immediately, and the three of us went to discover Eudoxia and the
terrified Asphar with her, and two other young male blood drinkers whom we had not see before.
All were settled within my library as if they were invited guests.
  Eudoxia was dressed in splendid and heavy Eastern robes with long bell sleeves, and Persian
slippers, and her thick black curls were gathered above her ears with jewels and pearls.
  The room was not as fine as the one in which she had received me, as I had not finished with my
furnishings and other such things, and therefore she appeared the most sumptuous ornament in
view.
  I was struck once more by the beauty of her small face, especially I think by her mouth, though
her cold dark eyes were as mesmerizing as before.
  I felt sorry for the miserable Asphar who was so afraid of me, and as for the other two blood
drinkers, both boys in mortal life, and young in immortality, I felt rather sorry for them too.
  Need I say that they were beautiful? They had been grown children when they were taken, that is,
splendid beings with adult bodies and chubby boyish cheeks and mouths.
  "Why have you come without an invitation?" I asked Eudoxia. "You sit in my chair as though
you're my guest."
"Forgive me," she said gently. "I came because I felt compelled to come. I've searched your house
through and through." "You boast of this? "I asked.
  Her lips were parted as though she meant to answer but then the tears rose in her eyes,
"Where are the books, Marius?" she said softly. She looked at me. "Where are all the old books of
Egypt? The books that were in the temple, the books that you stole?" I didn't answer. I didn't sit
down.


  "I came because I hoped to find them," she said, staring forward, her tears falling. "I came here
because last night I dreamed of the priests in the temple, and how they used to tell me that I ought
to read the old tales."
Still I didn't answer.
  She looked up, and then with the back of one hand, she wiped at her tears. "I could smell the
scents of the temple, the scent of papyrus," she said. "I saw the Elder at his desk."
  "He put the Parents in the sun, Eudoxia," I said. "Don't slide into a dream that makes him
innocent. The Elder was evil and guilty. The Elder was selfish and bitter. Would you know his
ultimate fate?"
  "In my dream, the priests told me that you took the books, Marius. They said that, unopposed,
you came into the library of the temple and took all the old scrolls away."
I said nothing.
But her grief was heartrending.
  "Tell me, Marius. Where are those books? If you will let me read them, if you will let me read the
old stories of Egypt, then my soul can find some peace with you. Can you do that much for me?"
How bitterly did I draw in my breath.
  "Eudoxia," I said gently. "They're gone, those books, and all that remains of them is here, in my
head." I tapped the side of my forehead. "In Rome, when the savages from the North breached the
city, my house was burnt and my library destroyed."
  She shook her head and put her hands to the side of her face as though she could not bear this.
  I went down on my knees beside her and I tried to turn her to me, but she would have none of it.
Her tears were shed quietly.



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                                              Blood and Gold

  "I'll write it all out, all that I remember, and there is so much that I remember," I said. "Or shall I
tell it aloud for our scribes? You decide how you will receive it, and I'll give it to you, lovingly. I
understand what you desire."
  This was not the time to tell her that much of what she sought came to nothing, that the old tales
had been full of superstition and nonsense and even incantations that meant nothing at all.
Even the wicked Elder had said so. But I had read these scrollsduring my years in Antioch. I
remembered them. They were inside my heart and soul.
  She turned to me slowly. And lifting her left hand, she stroked my hair.

  "Why did you steal those books!" she whispered desperately, her tears still flowing. "Why did
you take them from a sanctum where they had been safe for so long!"
  "I wanted to know what they said," I answered candidly. "Why didn't you read them when you
had a lifetime to do it? " I asked gently. "Why didn't you copy them when you copied for the
Greeks and the Romans? How can you blame me now for what I did? "
"Blame you?" she said earnestly. "I hate you for it."
  "The Elder was dead, Eudoxia," I said quietly. "It was the Mother who slew the Elder."
Her eyes suddenly, for all their tears, grew wide.
"You want me to believe this? That you didn't do it? "
  "I? Slay a blood drinker who was a thousand years old, when I was just born?" I gave a short
laugh. "No. It was the Mother who did it. And it was the Mother who asked me to take her out of
Egypt. I did only what she asked me to do."
  I stared into her eyes, determined that she must believe me, that she must weigh this final and all-
important piece of evidence before she proceeded in her case of hatred against me.
  "Look into my mind, Eudoxia," I said. "See the pictures of this for yourself."
  I myself relived the grim moments when Akasha had crushed the evil Elder underfoot. I myself
remembered the lamp, brought magically from its stand, to pour its naming oil upon his remains.
How the mysterious blood had burnt.
  "Yes," Eudoxia whispered. "Fire is our enemy, always our enemy. You are speaking the truth."
  "With my heart and soul," I said. "It's true. And having been charged with this duty, and having
seen the death of the Elder, how could I leave the books behind? I wanted them as you wanted
them. I read them when I was in Antioch. I will tell you all they contained."
She thought on this for a long time and then nodded.
  I rose to my feet. I looked down at her. She sat still, her head bowed, and then she drew a fine
napkin from inside her robes, and she wiped at her blood tears.
Once again, I pressed my promises.
  "I'll write down all I remember," I said. "I'll write down all that the Elder told me when first I
came to the temple. I'll spend my nights in this labor until everything is told."

She didn't answer me, and I couldn't see her face unless I knelt down again.
  "Eudoxia," I said. "We know much that we can give to each other. In Rome, I grew so weary that
I lost the thread of life for a century. I am eager to hear all you know."
Was she weighing this? I couldn't tell.
Then she spoke, without raising her face to me.
  "My sleep this last day was feverish," she said. "I dreamed of Rashid crying out to me."
What could I say? I felt desperate.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "No, I don't ask for placating words from you," she said. "I only mean to say, my sleep was
miserable. And then I was in the temple and the priests were all around me. And I had an awful
sense, the purest sense, of death and time."
I went down on one knee before her. "We can conquer this," I said.
  She looked into my eyes as though she were suspicious of me and I were trying to trick her.
  "No," she said softly. "We die too. We die when it is right for us to die."
  "I don't want to die," I said. "To sleep, yes, and sometimes to sleep almost forever, yes, but not to
die."
She smiled.
  "What would you write for me?" she asked, "if you could write anything at all? What would you
choose to put down on parchment for me to read and know?"
  "Not what was in those old Egyptian texts," I said forcefully, "but something finer, more truly
universal, something full of hope and vitality that speaks of growth and triumph, that speaks--how
shall I put it any other way?--of life."
She nodded gravely, and once again she smiled.
She looked at me for a long and seemingly affectionate moment.
  "Take me down into the shrine," she said. She reached out and clasped my hand.
"Very well," I said.
  As I rose, so did she, and then she went past me to lead the way. This might have been to show
me that she knew it, and, thank the gods, her retinue stayed behind so that I did not have to tell
them to do so.
  I went down with her, and with the Mind Gift I opened the many doors without touching them.


  If this made an impression upon her she didn't acknowledge it. But I didn't know if we were at
war with each other any longer. I couldn't gauge her frame of mind.
  When she saw the Mother and the Father in their fine linen and exquisite jewelry she let out a
gasp.
  "Oh, Blessed Parents," she whispered. "I have come such a long way to this."
I was moved by her voice. Her tears were flowing again.
  "Would that I had something to offer you," she said, gazing up at the Queen. She was trembling.
"Would that I had some sacrifice, some
gift-"
I didn't know why but something quickened in me when she said
those words. I looked at the Mother first and then at the Father, and I detected nothing, yet
something had changed within the chapel,
something which Eudoxia perhaps felt.
  I breathed in the heavy fragrance rising from the censers. I looked at the shivering flowers in their
vases. I looked at the glistening eyes of my Queen.
"What gift can I give you?" Eudoxia pressed as she stepped forward. "What would you take from
me that I could give with my whole soul?" She walked closer and closer to the steps, her arms out.
"I am your slave. I was your slave in Alexandria when first you gave me your blood, and I am your
slave now."
  "Step back," I said suddenly, though why I didn't know. "Step back and be quiet," I said quickly.
  But Eudoxia only moved forward, mounting the first step of the dais.




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  "Don't you see I mean what I say?" she said to me without turning her head away from the King
and Queen. "Let me be your victim, most holy Akasha, let me be your blood sacrifice, most holy
Queen."
  In a flash Akasha's right arm rose and pulled Eudoxia forward in a brutal and tight embrace.
An awful groan rose from Eudoxia.
  Down came the reddened mouth of the Queen, with only the slightest move of her head, and I
saw the sharp teeth only for an instant before they penetrated Eudoxia's neck. Eudoxia was
helpless, head wrenched to one side, as Akasha drank from her, Eudoxia's arms hanging limp as her
legs, Akasha's face as blank as ever, as the grip tightened and the drinking went on.
I stood horrified, not daring to challenge anything that I beheld.


  No more than a few seconds passed, perhaps half a minute before Eudoxia gave a raw and terrible
scream. She tried desperately to raise her arms.
  "Stop, Mother, I beg you!" I cried out and with all my might I took hold of the body of Eudoxia.
"Stop, I beg you, don't take her life! Spare her!" I pulled on the body. "Spare her, Mother!" I cried. I
felt the body shift in my grasp and quickly I drew it back from the curved arm which remained
poised in space.
Eudoxia still breathed, though she was livid, and groaning miserably,
   and we both fell back off the dais, as the arm of Akasha returned to its age-old position, at her
side, fingers laid on her thigh as though nothing had occurred.
Sprawled on the floor I lay with the gasping Eudoxia.
"Did you want to die!" I demanded.
  "No," she said desperately. She lay there with her breast heaving, her hands shuddering,
seemingly unable to rise to her feet.
I looked up searchingly into the Queen's face.
  The sacrifice had given no blush to her cheeks. And on her lips there was no red blood.
  I was stupefied. I picked up Eudoxia and rushed to get her out of the shrine, up the steps, through
the various tunnels, and finally into the house above ground.
  I ordered all the others out of the library, slamming tight the doors with the Mind Gift, and there I
laid her down on my couch so that she might at least catch her breath.
  "But how?" she asked me, "did you ever have the courage to take me from her? " She clung to my
neck. "Hold tight to me, Marius, don't let me go just yet. I cannot. ... I do not. . . . Hold tight to me.
Where did you get the courage to move against our own Queen?"
  "She was about to destroy you," I said. "She was about to answer my prayer."
"And what prayer was that?" she asked.
She let me go. I brought up a chair to sit beside her.
  Her face was drawn and tragic, her eyes brilliant. She reached out and clung to my sleeve.
  "I asked for a sign of her pleasure," I said. "Would she be given over to you or remain with me?
She's spoken. And you see how it is."
  She shook her head, but it was not a negation to anything that I'd said. She was trying to recover
her clarity of mind. She tried to rise from the couch and then fell backwards.


  For a long time, she merely lay there, staring at the ceiling and I couldn't know her thoughts. I
tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it from me.



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Then in a low voice, she said:
  "You've drunk her blood. You have the Fire Gift, and you've drunk her blood. And this she has
done in answer to your prayer."
  "Tell me," I said. "What prompted you to offer yourself to her? Why did you say such words?
Had you ever spoken them in Egypt? "
  "Never," she said in a heated murmur. "I had forgotten the beauty." She looked confused, weak.
"I had forgotten the timelessness," she whispered. "I had forgotten the silence gathered around
them--as if it were so many veils."
  She turned and looked at me languidly. She looked about her. I sensed her hunger, her weakness.
  "Yes," she sighed. "Bring my slaves to me," she said. "Let them go out and obtain for me a
sacrifice, for I'm too weak from having been the sacrifice myself."
I went into the courtyard garden and told her little gang of exquisite
  blood drinkers to go to her. She could give them this disagreeable order on her own.
  When they had gone on their dismal errand, I returned to her. She was sitting up, her face still
drawn and her white hands trembling.
  "Perhaps I should have died," she said to me. "Perhaps it was meant to be."
  "What's meant?" I asked scornfully. "What's meant is that we must both live in Constantinople,
you in your house with your little companions and I here with mine. And we must have a
commingling of households from time to time that is agreeable. I say that is what is meant."
  She looked at me thoughtfully as if she were pondering this as much as she could ponder
anything after what had befallen her in the shrine.
  "Trust in me," I said desperately in a low voice. "Trust in me for some little while. And then if we
should part, let it be amicable."
She smiled. "As if we were old Greeks?" she asked.
  "Why must we lose our manners?" I said. "Weren't they nourished in brilliance, like the arts
which still surround us, the poetry that still comforts us, and the stirring tales of heroism which
distract us from the cruel passage of time? "

"Our manners," she repeated thoughtfully. "What a strange creature
you are."
Was she my enemy or my friend? I didn't know.
  All too quickly, her blood drinker slaves appeared with a miserable and terrified victim, a rich
merchant who glared at all of us with bulbous eyes. Frankly he offered us money for his life.
  I wanted to stop this abomination. When had I ever taken a victim under my roof? And this was
to happen within my house to one who appealed to me for mercy.
  But within seconds, the man was forced down upon his knees and Eudoxia then gave herself over
to drinking blood from him with no regard for my standing there and watching this spectacle, and I
turned on my heel and went out of the library and remained away, until the man was dead, and his
richly dressed body was taken away.
  At last I came back into my library, exhausted, horrified and confused.
  Eudoxia was much better for having feasted on the poor wretch and she was staring at me
intently.
  I sat down now, for I saw no reason to stand indignantly with regard to something that was
finished, and I felt myself plunged into thought.
  "Will we share this city?" I asked calmly. I looked at her. "Can that be done in peace?"




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "I don't know the answer to your questions," she said. There was something wrong in her voice,
wrong in her eyes, wrong in her
manner. "I want to leave you now. We will talk again."
  She gathered her band of followers and all of them left quietly, by request, through the rear door
of the house.
I sat there very still and weary from what had taken place, and wondering if there would be any
change in Akasha who had moved to drink Eudoxia's blood.
  Of course there would be no change. I thought back to my first years with Akasha, when I'd been
so certain that I could bring her back to life. And here, she had moved, yes, she had moved, but
how ghastly had been the expression on her smooth innocent face, more blank than the faces of
mortals after death.
  An awful foreboding came over me, in which the subtle force of Eudoxia seemed both a charm
and a curse.
And in the midst of this foreboding I came to know a terrible
temptation, a terrible rebellious thought. Why hadn't I given over tie


Mother and Father to Eudoxia? I would have been rid of them, rid of this burden which I had
carried since the earliest nights of my life among the Undead? Why hadn't I done it?
It would have been so simple. And I would have been free.
  And as I recognized this guilty desire inside of me, as I saw it flare up like a fire fed by the
bellows, I realized that during those long nights at sea, on the voyage to Constantinople, I had
secretly wished that our ship would meet with misadventure, that we would be sunk and Those
Who Must Be Kept would have gone down to the bottom of the ocean, never to surface again. I
could have survived any shipwreck. But they would have been buried just as the Elder in Egypt had
long ago mentioned to me, cursing and carrying on, saying, "Why do I not sink them into the sea? "
  Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Akasha? Had I not pledged my soul?
  I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the Queen would know my petty secret--that I
wished to be rid of her, that I wished to be rid of all of them--Avicus, Mael, Eudoxia most
certainly--that I wished--for the very first time--to wander a vagabond like so many others, that I
wished to have no name and no place and no destination, but to be alone.
  These thoughts were too dreadful. They divided me from all that I valued. I had to banish them
from my mind.
  But before I could get my wits about me, Mael and Avicus came rushing into the library. There
was some sort of disturbance outside the house.
"Can you hear it? " Avicus said frantically.
  "Yea gods," I said, "why are all those people shouting in the streets?"
  I realized there was a great clamor, and that some of these people were beating on our windows
and doors. Rocks were being thrown at our house. The wooden shutters were about to be broken in.
  "What is happening? What is the reason for this?" Mael asked desperately.
  "Listen!" I said desperately. "They're saying that we seduced a rich merchant into the house, and
then murdered him, and threw his corpse out to rot! Oh, damn Eudoxia, don't you see what she's
done, it was she who murdered the merchant! She's caused a mob to rise against us. We have only
time to retreat to the shrine."




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  I led them to the entrance, lifted the heavy marble door, and we were soon inside the passage,
knowing full well that we were
protected, but unable to defend our house.
  Then all we could do was listen helplessly as the mob broke in and sacked our entire dwelling,
destroying my new library and all I possessed. We did not have to hear their voices to know when
they had set the house ablaze.
  At last, when it was quiet above, when a few looters picked their way through the smoldering
rafters and debris, we came up out of the tunnel, and stared at the ruins in utter disgust.
  We scared off the riffraff. Then we made certain that the entrance to the shrine was in fact secure
and disguised, which it was, and finally, we went off to a crowded tavern, where, huddled at a table
amid mortals, we could talk.
  Such a retreat was, for us, quite incredible, but what else could we do?
  I told Avicus and Mael what had happened in the shrine, how Eudoxia had been nearly drained of
all blood by the Mother and how I had intervened to save Eudoxia's life. I then explained with
regard to the mortal merchant, for they had seen him brought in, and seen him removed, but had not
understood.
  "They dumped his body where it would be found," said Avicus. "They baited the crowd to gather
as it did."
  "Yes. Our dwelling is gone," I said finally, "and the shrine will be lost to us until such time as I
go to bizarre and complex legal measures to purchase under a new name what already belongs to
me under an old one, and the family of the merchant will demand justice against the unfortunate
individual, whom I was before, if you follow me, so that I might not be able to buy the property at
all."
"What does she expect of us?" asked Avicus.
  "This is an insult to Those Who Must Be Kept," Mael declared. "She knows the shrine is under
the house, yet she incited a riot to destroy it."
  I stared at him for a long moment. I was too ready to condemn him for his anger. But quite
suddenly I had a confession to make.
  "That thought had not occurred to me," I said. "But it seems to me that you are precisely right. It
was an insult to Those Who Must Be Kept."
"Oh, yes, she has done an injury to the Mother," said Avicus.


"Surely she has done that. By day, thieves may chip at the very floor that blocks the passage to the
shrine below."
  A dreadful gloom took hold of me. A pure and youthful anger was part of it. The anger fed my
will.
  "What is it?" Avicus demanded. "Your entire countenance is changed. Tell us your thoughts, right
now, from your soul."
  "I'm not so certain I can voice my thoughts," I said, "but I know them, and they don't bode well
for Eudoxia or those whom she claims to love. Both of you, seal your minds off from everything so
that you give no hint of your whereabouts. Go to the nearest gate of the city, and leave it, and hide
yourselves for the coming day in the hills. Tomorrow, come immediately to meet me here at this
tavern."
  I walked with them part of the distance to the gate, and seeing them safely on their way, I went
directly to Eudoxia's house.



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  It was a simple matter to hear her blood drinker slaves within, and I commanded them brusquely
to open the door.
  Eudoxia, ever the arrogant one, commanded them to do as I had requested, and once inside,
seeing the two young blood drinkers, I began to tremble with anger, but I could not hesitate, and
with all my force, I burnt them both at once.
  It was appalling to watch, this violent fire, and it set me to gasping and to shaking, but I had no
time for observation. Asphar ran from me, and Eudoxia shouted to me fiercely to stop, but I burnt
Asphar, wincing as I heard his piteous screams, all the while fighting Eudoxia's enormous powers
with all the might I could command.
  Indeed so hot was the fire against my chest that I thought I would die, but I hardened all my body,
and hurled my own Fire Gift against Eudoxia with full force.
Her mortal slaves were fleeing out every door and window.
She rushed at me, fists clenched, her face a picture of rage.
"Why do you do this to me!" she demanded.
I caught her up in my arms as she fought me, the waves of heat passing over me, and I carried her
out of her house and through the dark streets towards the smoking ruins above the shrine.
  "So you would send a mob to destroy my house," I said. "So you would do this after I saved you,
so you would do this while deceiving me with your thanks."
  "I gave you no thanks," she said, twisting, turning, struggling against me, the heat exhausting me
as I fought to control her, her

hands pushing me with stunning force. "You prayed for my death, you prayed to the Mother to
destroy me," she cried. "You told me yourself."
  At last I came to the smoking heap of wood and rubble, and finding the mosaic covered door, I
lifted it with the Mind Gift, which gave her just time enough to send a scorching blast against my
face.
  I felt it like a mortal might feel scalding water. But the heavy door was indeed opened, and I
protected myself once more against her, as pulling the giant stone down behind me with one arm, I
held her with the other, and started to drag her through the complex passages to the shrine.
  Again and again, the heat came to burn me, and I could smell my hair scorched by it, and see the
smoke in the air around me, as she made some victory no matter how great my strength.
  But I fended her off, and I never let go of her. Clutching her with one arm, I opened the doors,
one after another, pushing back her power, even as I stumbled. On and on I dragged her towards the
shrine. Nothing could stop me, but I could not hurt her with all my force.
No, that privilege was reserved for one far greater than me.
  At last we had reached the chapel, and I flung her down on the floor.
  Sealing myself off from her with all my strength I turned my eyes to the Mother and Father, only
to see the same mute picture which had always greeted my gaze.
And having no further sign than that, and fighting off another crippling
    wave of heat, I picked up Eudoxia before she could climb to her feet and holding her wrists
behind her back, I offered her to the Mother as closely as I dared without disturbing the garments of
the Mother, without committing what for me was a sacrilege in the name of what I meant to do.
  The right arm of the Mother reached out for Eudoxia, detaching itself, as it were, from the
Mother's tranquility, and once again, Akasha's head made that slight, subtle and utterly grotesque
movement, her lips parting, fangs bared. Eudoxia screamed as I released her body and stepped
back.



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                                            Blood and Gold

A great desperate sigh came out of me. Ah, so be it!
And I watched in quiet horror as Eudoxia became the Mother's
victim, Eudoxia's arms flailing hopelessly, her knees pushing against the Mother, until finally the
limp body of Eudoxia was allowed to slip from the Mother's embrace.
  Once fallen onto the marble floor, it looked like an exquisite doll of white wax. No audible breath
came from it. Its round dark eyes did not move.
  But it wasn't dead, no, not by any means. It was a blood drinker's body with a blood drinker's
soul. Only fire could kill it. I waited, keeping my own powers in check.
  Long ago, in Antioch, when unwelcome vampires had assaulted the Mother, she had used the
Mind Gift to lift a lamp to burn their remains with fire and oil. So she had done with the remains of
the Elder in Egypt, as I have already described. Would she do this now?
Something simpler happened.
  Quite suddenly I saw flames erupt from Eudoxia's breast, and then flames run riot through her
veins. Her face remained sweet and
unfeeling. Her eyes remained empty. Her limbs twitched.
  It was not my Fire Gift that had brought about this execution. It was the power of Akasha. What
else could it have been? A new power, lain dormant in her for centuries, now known to her on
account of Eudoxia and me?
I dared not guess. I dared not question.
  At once the flames rising from the highly combustible blood of the preternatural body ignited the
heavy ornate garments and the whole form was ablaze.
  Only after a long time did the fire die away, leaving a glittering mass of ash.
  The clever learned creature who had been Eudoxia was no more. The brilliant charming creature
who had lived so well and so long was no more. The being who had given me such hope when first
I saw her and heard her voice was no more.
  I took off my outer cloak and, going down on my knees like a poor scrubwoman, I wiped up this
pollution of the shrine and then I sat down exhausted in the corner, my head against the wall. And
to my own surprise, and who knows?--perhaps to the surprise of the Mother and Father--I gave
way to tears.
  I wept and wept for Eudoxia, and also for myself that I had brutally burnt those young blood
drinkers, those foolish unschooled andundisciplined immortals who had been Born to Darkness as
we say now, only to be pawns in a brawl.
I felt a cruelty in myself which I could only abhor.
  Finally, being quite satisfied that my underground crypt remained impregnable--for looters were
now thick in the ruins above--I laid down for the sleep of the day.
  I knew what I meant to do the following night and nothing could change my mind.



12

IN THE TAVERN, I met with Avicus and Mael the following night. They were filled with fear and
they listened with wide eyes as I told them the tale.
Avicus was crushed by this knowledge, but not Mael.
"To destroy her," said Avicus, "why did it have to be done?"
  He felt no false manly need to disguise his grief and sadness and was weeping at once.



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                                             Blood and Gold

  "You know why," said Mael. "There would have been no stop to her enmity. Marius knew this.
Don't torment him now with questions. It had to be done."
  I could say nothing, for I had too many doubts as to what I'd done. It had been so absolute and so
sudden. I felt a tightening of my heart and chest when I thought about it, a sort of panic which
resides in the body rather than the brain.
  I sat back, observing my two companions and thinking hard on what their affection had meant to
me. It had been sweet and I did not want to leave them, but that was precisely what I intended to
do.
  Finally after they had quietly quarreled for some time, I gestured for silence. On the matter of
Eudoxia I had only a few things to say.
  "It was my anger which required it," I said, "for what other part of me, except my anger, had
received the insult of what she had done to us through the destruction of our house? I don't regret
that she is gone; no, I cannot. And as I've told you, it was only done by means of an offering to the
Mother, and as to why the Mother wanted or took such an offering, I can't say.
  "Long ago in Antioch, I offered victims to the Divine Parents. I brought the Evil Doers, drugged
and unknowing, into the shrine. But neither the Mother or the Father ever took this blood.

"I don't know why the Mother drank from Eudoxia except that Eudoxia offered herself, and I had
prayed for a sign. It's finished, this matter of Eudoxia. She is gone, with all her beauty and her
charm.
  "But listen hard to what I must tell you now. I'm leaving you. I'm leaving this city, which I detest,
and I will take the Mother and the Father with me, of course. I'm leaving you, and I urge you to
remain together, as I'm sure you mean to do, for your love for one another is the source of your
endurance and your strength."
  "But why leave us!" demanded Avicus. His expressive face was charged with emotion. "How can
you do such a thing? We've been happy here, the three of us, we've hunted together, we've found
Evil Doers aplenty. Why would you go now?"
"I must be alone," I said. "It was so before and it's so now."
  "Marius, this is folly," said Mael. "You'll end up in the crypt again with the Divine Parents,
slumbering until you're too weak to be
awakened on your own."
  "Perhaps, but if such a thing happens," I said, "you can be more than certain that Those Who
Must Be Kept will be safe."
  "I can't understand you," said Avicus. He began to weep again. He wept as much for Eudoxia as
for me.
  I didn't try to stop him. The tavern was dim and overcrowded and no one took notice of one
being, albeit a splendid figure of a male with a white hand covering his face, drunk perhaps over his
cup of wine for all anyone knew, weeping into it, and wiping at his tears.
Mael looked dreadfully sad.
  "I must go," I tried to explain. "You must realize, both of you, that the secret of the Mother and
the Father must be kept. As long as I remain with you, the secret isn't safe. Anyone, even those as
weak as Eudoxia's slaves, Asphar and Rashid, can pick it out of your minds."
"But how do you know they did!" Mael protested.
Oh, it was all too sad. But I couldn't be deterred.




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  "If I am alone," I said, "then I alone possess the secret of where the Divine Parents sit in state, or
lie in sleep." I paused, quite miserable and wishing that all of this could have been done simply, and
despising myself as much perhaps as I ever have.
  I wondered again why I had ever fled Pandora, and it seemed, quite suddenly, that I had put an
end to Eudoxia for the same reason--that these two creatures were more surely linked in my mind
than I was willing to admit.
But no, that wasn't true. Rather I didn't know it for certain. What I knew was, I was a weak being as
well as a strong being and I could have loved Eudoxia, perhaps as much as I'd loved Pandora, if
time had given me the chance.
  "Stay with us," Avicus said. "I don't blame you for what you did. You mustn't leave because you
think I do. I was caught by her spell, yes, I admit it, but I don't despise you for what you did."
  "I know that," I said, taking his hand and seeking to reassure him. "But I have to be alone." I
couldn't console him. "Now listen to me, both of you," I said. "You know well how to find
concealment for yourself. You must do it. I myself will go to Eudoxia's old house to make the plans
for my departure, as I have no other house in which I can work. You may come with me if you like
and see what crypts there might be beneath the structure but such is a dangerous thing to do."
Neither of them wanted to go near the house of Eudoxia.
  "Very well then, you're wise, you always have been. I'll leave you now to your own designs. I
promise I won't leave Constantinople for some nights. There are things I want to revisit again,
among them the great churches and even the Imperial palace. Come to me at the house of Eudoxia,
or I'll find you."
I kissed them both, as men kiss, roughly, with gruff and heated gestures and tight embraces, and
then I was off on my own as I so longed to be.
  Eudoxia's house was utterly deserted. But some mortal slave had been there, for lamps were
lighted in almost every room.
  I searched these palatial chambers most carefully and found no trace of any recent occupant.
There were no other blood drinkers to be discovered. The sumptuous sitting rooms and spacious
library all lay under a thin blanket of silence, the only sound being the several fountains in her
lovely inner garden into which the sun might penetrate by day.
  There were crypts beneath her house with heavy bronze caskets, and I made a count of these to
confirm that I had, indeed, destroyed all her blood drinker slaves.
Then, without difficulty I found the crypt where she had lain during
  the sunlight hours, with all her treasure and wealth hidden there, and two gorgeous sarcophagi
decorated thickly with gold and silver and rubies and emeralds and large, perfect pearls.
Why two? I didn't know, except perhaps that she had had a companion once who was now gone.
  As I studied this magnificent chamber, a harrowing pain gripped me, a harrowing pain rather like
the grief I felt in Rome when I realized that I had utterly lost Pandora, and that nothing could bring
her back. Indeed, it was worse than that, for Pandora might surely exist somewhere, and Eudoxia
did not.
  I knelt beside one of the sarcophagi and I folded my arms beneath my head and, wearily, I shed
tears as I had last night.
  For little more than an hour I'd been there, wasting the night away in morbid and miserable guilt,
when suddenly I was aware of a footfall on the stairs.
  It wasn't a mortal, I knew that immediately, and I knew as well that it was no blood drinker whom
I'd seen before.




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  I didn't bother to move. Whoever it was, it wasn't a strong one, and in fact, the creature was so
weak and young as to let me hear its bare feet.
  Quietly there appeared in the torchlight a young girl, a girl perhaps no older than Eudoxia when
she'd been taken into Darkness, a girl with black hair parted in the middle and streaming down over
her shoulders, her clothes as fine as those of Eudoxia had been.
  Her face was unblemished, her troubled eyes gleaming, her mouth red. She was blushing with the
human tissue which she still possessed. And the painful seriousness of her expression gave a
sharpness to all her features and to the strong line of her full lips.
  Of course I must have seen someone somewhere who was more beautiful than this child, but I
could not think of that one. I was so humbled, indeed, so astonished by this beauty that I felt a pure
fool.
  Nevertheless I knew in an instant that this girl had been the blood drinker lover of Eudoxia, that
this girl had been chosen because she was incomparably beautiful, as well as extremely well
educated and clever, and that before Eudoxia's summoning of us, she had closeted this girl away.
  The other sarcophagus in this chamber belonged to this young one. This one had been deeply
loved.
  Yes, all that was logical and evident and I didn't have to speak for the moment. I had only to gaze
at this radiant child who stood in the door of the crypt, the torch blazing above her, her tormented
eyes on me.
Finally in a hushed whisper she spoke.
"You've killed her, haven't you?" she said. She was fearless, either out of simple youth or
remarkable bravery. "You've destroyed her. She's gone."
  I rose to my feet as if a queen had ordered me to do it. Her eyes took my measure. And then her
face became completely and utterly sad.
It seemed she would fall to the floor. I caught her just before it happened, and then I lifted her, and
carried her slowly up the marble stairs.
She let her head fall against my chest. She gave a deep sigh.
  I brought her into the ornate bedchamber of the house and laid her down on the huge bed. She
wouldn't remain on the pillow however. She wanted to sit there and I sat beside her.
  I expected her to question me, to become violent, to turn her hatred on me, though she had hardly
any strength. She couldn't have been made ten years ago. And if she'd been fourteen when it
happened, I would have been surprised.
"Where were you hiding?" I asked.
  "In an old house," she said softly. "A deserted place. She insisted I stay there. She said she would
send for me."
"When? "I asked.
  "When she had finished with you, when you were destroyed or driven away." She looked up at
me.
  She was no more than an exquisite baby of a woman! I wanted so to kiss her cheeks. But her
sorrow was terrible.
  "She said it would be a battle," she said, "that you were one of the strongest who had ever come
here. The others had been simple. But with you, she wasn't sure of the outcome, and so she had to
hide me away."
  I nodded. I didn't dare to touch her. But I felt nothing but a desire to protect her, to enfold her in
my arms, to tell her that if she meant to pound her fists on my chest and curse me she should do it,
that if she meant to weep she might do that as well.



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  "Why don't you speak?" she asked me, her eyes full of hurt and wonder. "Why are you so quiet?"
I shook my head. "What can I say?" I asked. "It was a terrible quarrel.
I didn't want it. I thought that we could all exist here in peace."
  At this she smiled. "She would never have allowed that," she said to me quickly. "If you knew
how many she's destroyed ... but then I don't know myself."


  This was a small comfort to my conscience, but I didn't seize upon it. I let it go.
  "She said that this city belonged to her, and that it took the power of an empress to protect it. She
took me from the palace, where I was a slave. She brought me here by night and I was so
frightened. But then I came to love her. She was so certain that I would. She told such stories of her
wanderings. And then when others came, she would hide me, and she would go against them until
the city was hers again."
  I nodded, listening to all this, sad for her and the drowsy sorrowful manner in which she spoke. It
was no more than I'd supposed.
"How will you exist if I leave you here?" I asked.
  "I can't!" she answered. She looked into my eyes. "You can't leave me. You must take care of me.
I beg you. I don't know what it means to exist alone."
  I cursed under my breath. She heard it, and I saw the pain in her expression.
  I stood up and walked about the room. I looked back at her, this baby woman, with her tender
mouth and her long loose black hair.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
  "Zenobia," she replied. "Why can't you read it from my mind? She could always read my
thoughts."
  "I could do it," I said, "if I wanted to do it. But I would rather talk to you. Your beauty confuses
me. I would rather hear your voice. Who made you a vampire?"
  "One of her slaves," she said. "The one named Asphar. He's gone too, isn't he?" she asked.
"They're all gone. I saw the ashes." She
gestured vaguely to the other rooms. She murmured a string of names.
"Yes," I said, "they're all dead."
  "You would have slain me too if I'd been here," she said, with the same wondering and hurt-filled
expression.
  "Perhaps," I said. "But it's over now. It was a battle. And when a battle is finished, everything
changes. Who else has been hidden away?"
  "No one," she answered truthfully, "only me, with one mortal slave, and when I woke tonight, he
was gone."
I must have looked very dejected for surely I felt that way.
  She turned and with the slowness of a dazed person, reached under the heavy pillows at the head
of the bed, and withdrew a dagger.
Then she rose and made her way to me. She held up the dagger

with two hands, the tip pointed at my chest. She stared before her, but not into my eyes. Her long
wavy black hair fell down around her on both sides of her face.
  "I should take vengeance," she said quietly, "but you will only stop me if I try."
  "Don't try it," I said in the same calm voice I had used for her all along. I pushed the dagger away
gently. And putting my arm around her, I led her back to the bed.



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"Why didn't she give you the Blood?" I asked.
  "Her blood was too strong for us. She told us so. All her blood drinker slaves were stolen or made
one by another under her direction. She said that her blood was not to be shared. It would come
with strength and silence. Make a blood drinker and you cannot ever hear his thoughts afterwards.
That's what she told us. So Asphar made me and I was deaf to Asphar and Asphar was deaf to me.
She must keep us all in obedience and that she could not do if we were made from her powerful
blood."
  It pained me now that Eudoxia was the teacher, and Eudoxia was dead.
This one was studying me, and then she asked in the simplest voice:
  "Why don't you want me? What can I do to make you want me?" She went on speaking tenderly.
"You're very beautiful," she said, "with your light yellow hair. You look like a god, really, tall as
you are and with your blue eyes. Even she thought you were beautiful. She told me you were. I was
never allowed to see you. But she told me that you were like the North men. She described you as
you walked about in your red robes--."
  "Don't say any more, please," I said. "You don't have to flatter me. It won't matter. I can't take
you with me."
  "Why?" she asked. "Because I know about the Mother and the Father?"
I was shocked.
  I should read her thoughts, all her thoughts, ransack her soul for everything she knew, I thought,
but I didn't want to do it. I didn't want that feeling of intimacy with her. Her beauty was too much,
there was no denying it.
  Unlike my paragon, Pandora, this lovely creature had the promise of a virgin--that one could
make cf her what one wanted while losing nothing--and I believed that promise to contain a lie.

I answered her in a warm whisper trying not to hurt her.
  "That's precisely the reason I can't take you, that, and because I must be alone."
  She bowed her head. "What am I to do?" she asked. "Tell me. Men will come here, mortal men,"
she said, "wanting the taxes on this house or some other triviality and I shall be discovered and
called a witch or a heretic and dragged into the streets. Or during the day they will come and find
me sleeping like the dead beneath the floor, and lift me,
hoping to revive me, into the certain death of the sun's light."
  "Stop, I know it all," I said. "Don't you see, I'm trying to reason! Leave me alone for now."
  "If I leave you alone," she said, "I'll start weeping or screaming in my grief, and you won't be able
to bear it. You'll desert me."
"No, I won't," I said. "Be quiet."
  I paced the floor, my heart aching for her, and my soul hurting for myself that this had fallen to
me. It seemed a terrible justice for my slaughter of Eudoxia. Indeed this child seemed some
phantom risen from Eudoxia's ashes to haunt me as I tried to plan my escape from what I'd done.
  Finally, I quietly sent out my call to Avicus and Mael. Using my strongest Mind Gift, I urged
them, no, commanded them, to come to me at Eudoxia's house and to let nothing keep them from it.
I told them I needed them and I would wait until they arrived.
  Then I sat down beside my young captive and I did what I had been wanting to do all along: I
moved her heavy black hair back behind her shoulders and I kissed her soft cheeks. These were
rapacious kisses and I knew it. But the texture of her baby soft skin and of her thick wavy hair
drove me to quiet madness, and I wouldn't stop.
This intimacy startled her but she did nothing to drive me away.



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"Did Eudoxia suffer?" she asked me.
  "Very little, if at all," I said. I drew back from kissing her. "But tell me why she didn't simply try
to destroy me," I said. "Why did she invite me here? Why did she talk with me? Why did she give
me some hope that we could come to an understanding of the mind?"
She pondered this before she answered.
  "You held a fascination for her," said Zenobia, "which others had not. It wasn't only your beauty
though that was a large part of it. Always for her a large part of it. She said to me that she had heard
tell of you from a woman blood drinker in Crete long ago."


I dared not interrupt her! I stared with wide eyes.
  "Many years ago," she said, "this Roman blood drinker had come to the isle of Crete, wandering,
looking for you, and speaking of you-- Marius, the Roman, Patrician by birth, scholar by choice.
The woman blood drinker loved you. She didn't challenge the claim of Eudoxia to all of the island.
She searched only for you, and when she found that you weren't there, she moved on."
  I couldn't speak! I was so miserable and so excited that I couldn't answer her. It was Pandora!
And this was the first that I had heard of her in three hundred years.
  "Don't weep over this," she said gently. "It happened in ages past. Surely time can take away such
love. What a curse if it can't."
  "It can't." I said. My voice was thick. The tears were in my eyes. "What more did she say? Tell
me, please, the tiniest things you might remember." My heart was knocking in my chest. Indeed it
seemed as if I'd forgotten that I had a heart and must now find out.
  "What more. There is no more. Only that the woman was powerful and no easy enemy. You
know Eudoxia always spoke of such things. The woman could not be destroyed, nor would she tell
the origin of her great strength. To Eudoxia it was a mystery--until you came to Constantinople,
and she saw you, Marius, the Roman, in your brilliant red robes, moving through the square at
evening, pale as marble, yet with all the conviction of a mortal man."
She paused. She put her hand up to touch the side of my face.
  "Don't cry. Those were her words: 'with all the conviction of a mortal man.' "
  "How then did you learn of the Mother and the Father?" I asked, "and what do such words mean
to you?"
  "She spoke of them in amazement," she said. "She said you were rash if not mad. But you see,
she would go one way and then the other, that was always in her nature. She cursed you that the
Mother and the Father were in this very city, and yet she wanted to bring you here to her house. On
account of this, I had to be hidden. Yet she kept the boys for whom she cared so little. And I was
put away."
  "And the Mother and the Father?" I asked. "Do you know what they are?"
  She shook her head. "Only that you have them, or had them when she spoke of it. Are they the
First of us?"
I didn't answer her. But I believed her, that this was all she knew, extreme as it was.


  And now I did penetrate her mind, calling on my power to know her past and present, to know
her most secret and casual thoughts.
  She looked at me with clear unquestioning eyes, as if she felt what I was doing to her, or trying to
do, and it seemed that she would not hold anything back.



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  But what did I learn? Only that she had told me the truth. / know no more of your beautiful blood
drinker. She was patient with me, and then there came a wave of true grief. / loved Eudoxia. You
destroyed her. And now you cannot leave me alone.
I stood up and went again to walking about the room. Its sumptuous
   Byzantine furnishings stifled me. The thick patterned hangings seemed to fill the air with dust.
And nowhere could I glimpse the night sky from this chamber, for we were too far from the inner
garden court.
  But what did I want just now? Only to be free of this creature, no, free of the whole knowledge of
her, of the whole awareness of her, free of ever having seen her, and that was quite impossible, was
it not?
  Suddenly a sound interrupted me and I realized that at last Avicus and Mael had come.
  They found their way through the many rooms to the bedchamber, and as both of them entered,
they were astonished to see the gorgeous young woman seated on the side of the immense heavily
draped bed.
I stood silent while the two of them absorbed the shock. Immediately
   Avicus was drawn to Zenobia, as drawn to her as he had been to Eudoxia, and this creature had
yet to speak a single word.
  In Mael I saw suspicion and a bit of concern. He looked to me searchingly. He was not
spellbound by the young woman's beauty. His feelings were under his command.
  Avicus drew near to Zenobia, and as I watched him, as I watched his eyes fire with a passion for
her, I saw my way out. I saw it plainly, and when I did, I felt a terrible regret. I felt my solemn vow
to be alone weigh heavily upon me, as if I had taken it in the name of a god, and perhaps I had. I
had taken it in the name of Those Who Must Be Kept. But there must be no more thoughts of them
now, not in Zenobia's presence.
  As for the child woman herself, she was far more drawn to Avicus, perhaps because of his
immediate and obvious devotion, than she was to the distant and somewhat suspicious Mael.
  "Thank you for coming," I said. "I know it was not your choice to set foot in this house."

"What's happened?" Mael asked. "Who is this creature?"
  "The companion of Eudoxia, sent away for her own protection until the battle with us could be
finished, and now that it is finished, here is the child."
"Child?" asked Zenobia gently. "I am no child."
  Avicus and Mael both smiled indulgently at her, though her look was grave and disapproving.
  "I was as old as Eudoxia," she said, "when the Blood was given to her. 'Never make a blood
drinker of a greater age,' said Eudoxia. 'For a greater mortal age can only lead to misery later on
from habits learned in mortal life.' All of Eudoxia's slaves received the Blood at my age, and were
therefore no longer children, but blood drinkers prepared for eternal life within the Blood."
  I said nothing to this, but I never forgot it. Mark me. I never forgot it. Indeed, there came a time a
thousand years after, when these words meant a great deal to me, and they came to haunt my nights
and to torture me. But we will come soon enough to that, for I mean to pass over that thousand
years very quickly. But let me return to my tale.
  This little speech from Zenobia was spoken tenderly as all her words had been spoken, and when
she finished it I could see that Avicus was charmed. This did not mean that he would love her
completely or forever, mind you, I knew that. But I could see that there was no barrier between the
child and himself.




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  He drew closer still and seemed at a loss to express his respect for her beauty, and then,
surprising me completely, he spoke to her:
  "My name is Avicus," he said. "I am a long-time friend of Marius." Then he looked at me, and
then back to Zenobia. He asked: "Are you alone?"
  "Quite alone," said Zenobia, though she did glance at me first to see if I meant to silence her,
"and if you -- all of you or perhaps one of you -- do not take me with you out of here, or remain
with me in this house, I'm lost."
I nodded to both my long-time companions.
  Mael gave me a withering look and shook his head in negation. He glanced at Avicus. But Avicus
was still looking at our child.
"You won't be left here unprotected," said Avicus, "that's unthinkable.
    But you must leave us alone now, so that we may talk. No, you remain where you are. There
are many rooms in this house. Marius, where can we gather? "

"The library," I said at once. "Come, both of you. Zenobia, don't be afraid, and don't try to listen,
for you may hear only parts of what we say, and all is what matters. All is what will contain the
true sentiments of the heart."
  I led the way, and we quickly seated ourselves in Eudoxia's fine library just as we had only a
short time before.
  "You must take her," I said. "I can't do it. I'm leaving here and I'm taking the Mother and the
Father, just as I've told you. Take her under your wing."
  "This is impossible," Mael declared, "she's far too weak. And I don't want her! I tell you that
plainly, I don't want her!"
Avicus reached out and covered Mael's hand with his own.
  "Marius can't take her," said Avicus. "He's speaking the simple truth. It's not a choice. He cannot
have such a little creature with him."
  "Little creature," said Mael disgustedly. "Say what's really the truth. She is a frail creature, an
unknowing creature, and she will bring us harm."
  "I beg you both, take her," I said. "Teach her all that you know. Teach her what she needs to be
on her own."
  "But she's a woman," said Mael disgustedly. "How could she ever be on her own?"
  "Mael, when one is a blood drinker such a thing doesn't matter," I said. "Once she is strong, once
she truly knows everything, she can live like Eudoxia once lived if she chooses. She can live any
way that she likes."
  "No, I don't want her," said Mael. "I will not take her. Not for any price or on any terms."
  I was about to speak but when I saw the look on his face, I realized he was telling the truth more
completely than he knew himself. He would never be reconciled to Zenobia, and if I did leave her
with him, I would be leaving her in danger. For he would abandon her or desert her, or even worse.
It would only be a matter of time.
  I looked to Avicus only to see that he was miserably at the mercy of Mael's words. As always he
was in Mael's power. As always he could not break free of Mael's anger.
  Avicus pleaded with him. Surely it would not change their lives so very much. They could teach
her to hunt, could they not? Why, surely she knew already how to hunt. She wasn't so very human,
this lovely little girl. It wasn't hopeless, and shouldn't they do what I had asked?




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  "I want her to be with us," said Avicus warmly. "I find her lovely. And I see in her a sweetness
that touches my heart."
"Yes, there is that," I said. "It's very true, this sweetness."
  "And why is such a thing of use in a blood drinker?" asked Mael. "A blood drinker should be
sweet?"
  I couldn't speak. I thought of Pandora. The pain in me was simply too intense for me to form
words. But I saw Pandora. I saw her, and I knew that she had always combined both passion and
sweetness, and that both men and women can have such traits, and this child,
Zenobia, might grow in both.
  I looked off, unable to speak to either of them as they argued, but I realized suddenly that Avicus
had grown angry, and that Mael was
boiling to a rage.
  When I looked back to them, they fell silent. Then Avicus looked at me as if for some authority
which I knew that I did not possess.
  "I can't command your future," I said. "I'm leaving you as you know."
"Stay and keep her with us," said Avicus.
"Unthinkable!" I said.
  "You're stubborn, Marius," said Avicus softly. "Your own strongest passions frighten you. We
could be the four of us in this house."
  "I've brought about the death of the owner of this house," I said, "I cannot live in it. It is
blasphemy against the old gods that I linger this long. The old gods will bring about vengeance not
so much because they exist but because I once honored them. As for this city, I've told you, I must
leave it, and I must take Those Who Must Be Kept to where they are truly secret and safe."
  "The house is yours by right," said Avicus. "And you know this. You've offered it to us."
  "You didn't destroy her," I said. "Now let us return to the question at hand. Will you take this
girl? "
"We will not," said Mael.
Avicus could say nothing. He had no choice.
  I looked away once more. My thoughts were purely and completely with Pandora on the isle of
Crete, something which I could not even envision. Pandora, the wanderer. I said nothing for the
longest while.
  Then I rose without addressing either one of them, for they had disappointed me, and I went back
into the bedchamber where the lovely young creature lay on the bed.
Her eyes were closed. The lamplight was soft. What a lush and passive being she seemed to be, her
hair cascading over the pillow, her skin flawless, her mouth half closed.
I sat down beside her.
  "Besides your beauty, why did Eudoxia choose you?" I asked. "Did she ever say?"
  She opened her eyes as if startled, which could be the case with one so young, and then she
reflected before answering, to say finally in a soft voice:
  "Because I was quick of wit and knew whole books by memory. She had me recite them to her."
Without rising from the pillows, she held her hands as if she had a bound book in them. "I could
but glance at a page and remember all of it. And I had no mortals to grieve for. I was but one of a
hundred attendants to the Empress. I was a virgin. I was a slave."
"I see. Was there anything more?"
  I was aware that Avicus had come to the door, but I said nothing to acknowledge him.
Zenobia thought for a moment, then answered:



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"She said my soul was incorruptible, that though I'd seen
wickedness in the Imperial palace, I could still hear music in the rain."
I nodded. "Do you still hear it, this music?"
  "Yes," she said. "More than ever, I think. Though if you leave me here, it won't sustain me."
"I'm going to give you something before I leave you," I said.
  "What is that? What can it be?" She sat up, pushing herself back against the pillows. "What can
you give me that will help me?"
"What do you think?" I asked gently. "My blood."
  I heard Avicus gasp at the doorway, but I paid no attention to it. Indeed, I paid no attention to
anything but her.
  "I'm strong, little one," I said, "very strong. And after you've drunk from me, as long as you wish
and however much you wish, you'll be a different creature from the one you are now."
  She was mystified and drawn by the notion. Timidly she lifted her hands and placed them on my
shoulders.
"And this I should do now?"
  "Yes," I said. I was seated firmly there, and I let her take hold of me, and as I felt her teeth go into
my neck, I gave out a long sigh. "Drink, precious one," I said. "Pull hard to take as much blood
from me as you can."
My mind was flooded with a thousand tripping visions of the Imperial palace, of golden rooms, and
banquets, of music and magicians, of the daylight city with its wild chariot races crashing through
the Hippodrome, of the crowd screaming with applause, of the Emperor rising in his Imperial box
to wave to those who worshiped him, of the huge processions passing into Hagia Sophia, of candles
and incense, and once again of palatial splendor, this time beneath this roof.
  I grew weak. I grew sick. But it didn't matter. What mattered was she must take all that she could.
  And at last, she fell back on the pillows, and I looked down at her, and I saw her cheeks stark
white with the Blood.
  Scrambling to sit up, to look at me, she stared like a newborn blood drinker as if she'd never had
the true vision of the Blood before.
  She climbed off the bed and walked about the room. She made a huge circle, her right hand
clenching the fabric of her tunic, her face shining with its new whiteness, her eyes wide and
swimming and bright.
  She stared at me as if she'd never seen me before. Then she stopped, obviously hearing distant
sounds to which she'd been deaf. She put her hands to her ears. Her face was full of quiet awe and
sweetness, yes, sweetness, and then her eyes played over me.
  I tried to climb to my feet but I was too weak for it. Avicus came to help me but I waved him
away.
"What have you done to her!" he said.
  "You see what I've done," I answered. "Both of you, you who wouldn't take her. I've given her
my blood. I've given her a chance."
I went to Zenobia and made her look at me.
  "Pay attention to me," I said. "Did Eudoxia tell you of her early life?" I asked. "Do you know that
you can hunt the streets as a man?"
She stared at me with her new eyes, too dazzled, uncomprehending.
  "Do you know that your hair, if cut, will grow back in the space of one day, and be as long and
full as before?"




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  She shook her head, her eyes passing over me and over the myriad bronze lamps of the room, and
over the mosaics of the walls and the floor.
  "Listen to me, lovely creature, I don't have that much time to teach you," I said. "I mean to leave
you armed with knowledge as well as strength."
  Assuring her again that her hair would grow back, I cut it off for her, watching as it fell to the
floor, and then taking her to the rooms of the male blood drinkers, I dressed her in male clothes.

  Then ordering Mael and Avicus sternly to leave us, I took her out with me into the city, and tried
to show her the manner in which a man would walk, and how fearless he might be, and what was
the life of the taverns, which she'd never even dreamt of, and how to hunt on her own.
  All the while I found her enchanting as I had before. She seemed now to be her own older, wiser
sister. And as she laughed over the usual wasted cup of wine at the table in the tavern, I found
myself half resolving that I would urge her to come with me, but then I knew I could not.
  "You don't really look like a man, you know," I said to her, smiling, "hair or no hair."
  She laughed. "Of course, I don't. I know it. But to be in such a place as this, a place I'd never see
if it weren't for you."
  "You can do anything now," I told her. "Merely think on it. You can be male. You can be female.
You can be neither. Seek the Evil Doer as I do and you will never choke on death. But always,
whatever your joys, whatever your misery, don't put yourself in danger of the judgment of others.
Measure your strength and take care."
  She nodded, her eyes wide with fascination. Of course the men in the tavern shot glances at her.
They thought I had brought my pretty boy out drinking with me. Before things got out of hand, I
left with her, but not before she had tested her powers to read the minds of those around her, and to
daze the poor slave boy who had brought our wine.
  As we walked through the streets, I gave her random instructions in the ways of the world which I
thought she might need. I enjoyed doing this far too much.
  She described for me all the secrets of the Imperial palace so that I might better penetrate it to
satisfy my curiosity, and then we found ourselves in a tavern again.
I warned her,
  "You'll come to hate me for what I did to Eudoxia, and for what I did to the other blood drinkers
as well."
  "No, that's not so," she said plainly. "You must understand that Eudoxia never allowed me one
moment of freedom, and as for the
others they felt only contempt for me or jealousy, I never knew which."
I nodded, accepting this, but then I asked her,
  "Why do you think that Eudoxia told me the story of her life, of how she herself had once
wandered in a boy's clothing in Alexandria, when she never told you such things? "

"She had some hope of loving you," Zenobia answered. "She
confided this to me, not directly you understand, but through her descriptions of you and her
enthusiasm for seeing you. But these emotions were mixed up in her mind with wariness and
cunning. And I think that her fear of you won out."
I was quiet, thinking it over, the tavern noises like music.
Zenobia was watching me and then she said,
"From me, she wanted no such knowledge of herself or understanding.




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       She was content to have me as a plaything. And even when I read to her or sang for her, she
would not really look at me, or care for me. But you? You, she saw as a being who was worthy of
her. When she spoke of you, it was as if no one was listening. She went on and on, making her plan
to summon you to her house and speak with you. It was an obsession full of fear. Don't you see?"
  "It went so wrong," I said. "But come, there are many things I must teach you. We have only so
many hours before dawn."
  We went out into the night, holding fast to each other. How I loved teaching her! There was such
a spell to it for me.
  I showed her how she might climb walls effortlessly, and how easy it was to get past mortals in
the shadows, and how she could draw mortal victims to herself.
  We crept into Hagia Sophia, a thing she believed to be impossible, and for the first time since
she'd been given the Blood she saw the great church she'd known so well when she was alive.
  Finally, after we'd both claimed victims in the back streets for the night's thirst, at which time she
learnt of her considerable new strength, we returned to the house.
  There I found the official documents pertaining to its ownership, and I examined these with her,
and suggested how she might maintain the house of Eudoxia for her own.
  Avicus and Mael were both there. And as it came near to sunrise they asked if they might remain.
  "That question you must put to Zenobia," I said. "This house belongs to her."
  Immediately, in her kindness of heart she told them to remain. They could take the hidden places
that had belonged to Asphar and Rashid.
  I could see that she found the well-built Avicus with his finely molded features quite handsome,
and she also seemed to look far too kindly and guilelessly upon Mael.

I said nothing. But I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. I didn't want to be separated
from her. I wanted to lie down in the
darkness of the crypt with her. But it was time for me to take my leave.
  Being very weary, no matter how good the hunting had been, and it had been marvelous, I went
back to the ashes of my house, and down into the shrine of the Divine Parents and lay down to
sleep.



13

I AM NOW at an important point in my story, for I mean to come forward in time towards the
present by something slightly near to a thousand years.
  I cannot say exactly how much time had passed for I am not sure when I left Constantinople, only
that it was well after the reign of the Emperor Justinian and Theodora, and before the Arabs had
risen with the new religion of Islam and begun their swift and remarkable
conquest from East to West.
  But the important matter here is that I cannot tell you all my life, and that I choose now to pass
over those centuries which history has seen fit to call the Dark Ages, and during which I did in fact
live through many small stories which I might confess or make known at a later date.
  For now, let me say only that as I left Zenobia's house that night, I was greatly agitated for the
safety of Those Who Must Be Kept.




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  The attack of the mob on our house had left me almost terror stricken. Those Who Must Be Kept
had to be taken to safety well away from any city and any lodging of mine within a city. They had
to be unreachable save by me.
Where could I take them, that was the question.
  I could not go East due to the warring Persian Empire, which had already taken Asia Minor
whole and entire from the Greeks, and had even captured the city of Alexandria.
  As for my beloved Italy, I wanted to be near it, but not in it as the turmoil there was unendurable
for me to behold.
But I did know of a very good place.
The Italian Alps, or the mountain range to the North of the Italian peninsula, was an area I had
known in my mortal years. Several passes had been built through the mountains by the Romans,
and I myself when young and fearless had traveled the Via Claudia Augusta, and I knew the
character of the land.
  Of course the barbarians had frequently swept through the Alpine valleys, both as they went
down to attack Italy, and as they withdrew. And there was a great deal of Christianity in those lands
now, with churches, monasteries and the like.
But I would not be seeking a fertile and populated valley, and certainly not a mountaintop on
which a castle or church or monastery had been built.
  I needed only the seclusion of a small, high and completely hidden valley that only I could reach.
And I would perform the arduous task of climbing, digging, clearing and creating a vault, and then
bringing the Mother and the Father to this safe place. Only a superhuman creature could do this, but
I could do it. I had to do it.
There was truly no other path for me.
  All the while, as I thought this over, as I hired slaves and purchased wagons for my journey, as I
made my preparations, Zenobia was my companion, though Avicus and Mael would have joined us
if I had allowed. I was too angry with them still for their early refusal to protect
    Zenobia. And it did not assuage my anger that they wanted to remain with Zenobia now.
  Zenobia sat with me long hours in this tavern or that one, as I made my plan. Did I care that she
might read from my mind my thoughts on where I was going? Not at all, for I had only a dim
scheme of it myself. The final location of the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept would be known
to no one but me.
  From such a safe place, in the Alpine regions, I could venture out to feed upon the populace of
any number of different towns. Indeed there had been a great deal of settlement in the land of the
Franks, as they were called, and I could even venture into Italy if I wished, for it was very plain
now to me that Those Who Must Be Kept did not require my daily vigilance or attendance by any
means.
  At last the final night came. The wagons had been loaded with their precious sarcophagi, the
slaves had been dazed and mildly threatened and wantonly bribed with luxuries and money, the
bodyguards were ready for the journey, and I was ready to set out.


I went to the house of Zenobia and found her crying bitterly. "Marius, I don't want you to go," she
declared. Avicus and Mael were there, staring at me fearfully, as if they didn't dare say what was in
their hearts.
  "I don't want to go either," I declared to Zenobia, and then I embraced her as warmly as I had
ever done and I kissed her all over as I'd kissed her the first night I found her. I could not get



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enough of her tender baby woman flesh. "I have to go," I said. "My heart will stand for nothing
less."
  Finally, we broke off, both exhausted with crying, and no better for it, and I turned to the other
two.
"You will take care of her," I said sternly to both of them. "Yes, we mean to remain together," said
Avicus. "And I don't understand why you can't remain with us."
  As I looked at Avicus, an awful love welled up in me, and I said softly, "I know I have done you
wrong in all this. I have been too harsh, but I can't remain."
  Avicus gave way to tears now, with no regard for the disapproving looks of Mael.
"You had only begun to teach me so much," he said. "You can learn it from the world around you,"
I answered. "You can learn from the books in this house. You can learn from . . . you can learn
from those you might some night transform with the Blood." He nodded. What more was there to
say.
  It seemed the moment for me to turn and go, but I could not. I walked into the other room, and I
stood there, my head bowed, feeling perhaps the worst pain I had ever known.
  I wanted desperately to remain with them! There was no doubt of it. And all my plans gave me no
strength just now. I put my hand to my waist and I felt of the pain inside me as if it were fire. I
couldn't speak. I couldn't move.
  Zenobia came to me. And so did Avicus. They put their arms around me, and then Avicus said,
"I understand that you must go. I do. I understand." I couldn't answer him. I bit down hard on my
tongue to make the blood flow and, turning, I put my lips over his and let the blood pass into his
mouth. He shivered with this kiss, and his grip tightened
on me.
Then I brought the blood up in my mouth again and I kissed Zenobia in the same manner and she
held me fast. I picked up her long light perfumed hair, and buried my face in it, or rather brought it
as a veil over my face and I could scarce breathe for the pain I felt.
"I love you both," I whispered. I wondered if they could hear.
  Then with no more words, and no more gestures, I bowed my head and found my way, somehow,
out of the house.
  An hour later, I was outside Constantinople, on the well-traveled route to Italy, seated at the front
of the first of the wagons where I might talk with the head of my guard who held the reins.
  I was playing the mortal game of conversation and laughter, when my heart was broken, and I
played it for many nights to come.
  I don't remember how long we traveled, only that there were numerous towns in which we might
stop, and the roads were nothing as bad as I had feared. I kept a close eye on my bodyguards and
gave out the gold generously to buy loyalty and on we went.
  After I reached the Alps it took me some time to find the very secluded spot where I would build
the shrine.
  But finally one evening when the winter was not so cold and the sky very clear, I did spy above
me a steep series of unpopulated slopes, just off the main road, that looked more than perfect for
my plan.
  Taking my caravan into the nearest town, I came back alone. I climbed over rough terrain which
would have defeated any mortal, and found the very spot, a tiny valley above which I could build
the shrine.




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  Going back to the town, I purchased a dwelling for myself, and for Those Who Must Be Kept,
and then I sent my bodyguards, with my slaves, back to Constantinople, with great rewards for all
they'd done.
  There were many warm farewells from my confused but amiable mortal companions, and very
cheerfully they set out with one of the wagons which I gave them to make their way back home.
  As the town where I was lodged was not safe from invasions, no matter how contented its
Lombard inhabitants, I set about my work the following night.
  Only a blood drinker could have covered the distance with such speed that separated my town
dwelling from the final location of the shrine. Only a blood drinker could have dug through hard-
packed earth and rock to create the passages that led eventually to the square room of the vault, and
then made the ironbound stone door which would separate the King and the Queen from the light of
day.
Only a blood drinker could have painted the walls with the old Greco-Roman gods and goddesses.
Only a blood drinker could have made the throne of granite with such skill and in such time.
  Only a blood drinker could have carried the Mother and Father one by one up the mountain and
into the finished resting place. Only a blood drinker could have set them side by side on their
granite throne.
  And when it was finished, who else would have lain down in the coldness to weep again out of
some habitual loneliness? Who else could have lain for some two weeks in quietude and
exhaustion,
refusing to move?
  It was no wonder that in those first few months I tried to prompt some vitality from Those Who
Must Be Kept by bringing to them sacrifices, like unto Eudoxia, but for these poor wretched
mortals--Evil Doers, I quite assure you--Akasha refused to move her all-powerful right arm. And
so I must finish with these miserable victims and carry their remains high into the mountains where
I flung them on jagged peaks as so many offerings to cruel gods.
In the following centuries, I did hunt the nearby towns most carefully,
drinking a little from many so as never to rouse a local population,
    and sometimes I did travel a great distance to discover how things were in the cities I'd once
known.
  I visited Pavia, Marseilles, and Lyons. There I visited the taverns as had always been my custom,
daring to draw mortals into conversation, plying them with wine to tell me all that went on in the
world. Now and then I explored the very battlefields where the Islamic warriors achieved their
victories. Or followed the Franks into battle, easily using the darkness as my shield. And during
this period--for the first time in my immortal existence--I made close mortal friends.
  That is, I would choose a mortal, a soldier for instance, and meet with him often in his local
tavern to talk about his view of the world, about his life. Never were these friendships very long or
very deep, for I wouldn't allow them to be so, and if ever the temptation came over me to make a
blood drinker, I would swiftly move on.
  But I came to know many mortals in this way, even monks in their monasteries, for I had no
shyness about accosting them on the road, especially when they passed through dangerous territory,
and accompanying them for some time while asking them polite questions about how it went with
the Pope and the church and even the small
communities in which they lived.
There are stories I could tell of these mortals, for sometimes I couldn't guard my heart so very well.
But there is no time now for that. Let me only confess that I made the friendships, and when I look



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back on it, I pray to some god who might be willing to answer me, that I gave as good a consolation
from this as I received.
  When I was most courageous of heart, I went down into Italy as far as Ravenna to see the
marvelous churches which possessed the same magnificent mosaics as I had seen in
Constantinople. But never did I dare to go further into my native land. I was too afraid to see the
destruction of all that had once been there.
  As for the news of the world which I learnt from those I befriended, in the main it broke my
heart.
  Constantinople had abandoned Italy, and only the Pope of Rome stood firm against its invaders.
Islamic Arabs conquered all the world it seemed, including Gaul. Then Constantinople became
involved in a terrible crisis over the validity of Holy Pictures, condemning them out of hand, which
meant the wholesale destruction of mosaics in churches as well as ikons--a horrid war against art
which scorched my soul.
  The Pope of Rome would have no part of it, thank Heaven, and turning his back officially on the
Eastern Empire, he made alliances with the Franks.
  This was the end of the dream of the great Empire that included both East and West. It was the
end of my dream that Byzantium would somehow preserve the civilization which Rome had once
preserved.
  But it did not mean the end of the civilized world. Even I, the bitter Roman Patrician, had to
admit to that.
  There soon rose among the Franks a great leader, eventually to be called Charlemagne, and his
victories were many in maintaining some sort of peace in the West. Meantime there gathered
around him a court where some of the old Latin literature was encouraged like a fragile flame.
  But in the main it was the church which now kept alive the aspects of culture which had been part
of the Roman world to which I'd been born. Ah, such an irony, that Christianity, this rebel religion,
born of martyrdom during the Pax Romana, now preserved the old writings, the old language, the
old poetry, and the old speech.
  As the centuries passed, I grew stronger; every gift I possessed was enhanced. While lying in the
vault with the Mother and the Father, I could hear the voices of people in towns far away. I could
hear an
occasional blood drinker pass close to me. I could hear thoughts or prayers.


  At last the Cloud Gift came to me. I needn't climb the slope to the vault any longer. I had only to
will myself to rise from the road and I stood before the hidden doors to the passage. It was
frightening, yet I loved it for I could travel even greater distances when I had the strength for it,
which was less often as time went on.
  Meantime castles and monasteries had come to appear in this land which had once been the
territory of warring barbarian tribes. With the Cloud Gift I could visit the high peaks upon which
these marvelous structures were created and sometimes slip into their very rooms.
  I was a drifter through eternity, a spy among other hearts. I was a blood thing who knew nothing
about death and finally nothing about time.
Sometimes on the winds I drifted. Always through the lives of others I drifted. And in the mountain
vault I did my usual painting for Those Who Must Be Kept, covering their walls this time with old
Egyptians come to make sacrifice, and I kept my few books there that comforted my soul.




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  In the monasteries I often spied upon the monks. I loved to watch them writing in their
scriptoriums, and it was a comfort to me to see that they kept the old Greek and Roman poetry safe.
In the small hours, I went into the libraries, and there, a hooded figure, hunched over the lectern, I
read the old poetry and history from my time.
  Never was I discovered. I was far too clever. And often I lingered outside the chapel in the
evening, listening to the plainsong of the monks, which created a peace inside of me, rather like
walking the cloisters, or listening to the steeple bells.
  Meantime the art of Greece and Rome which I had loved so much completely died away. A dour
religious art took its place. Proportion and naturalism were no longer important. What mattered was
that those images which were rendered be evocative of devotion to God.
  Human figures in paintings or in stone were often impossibly gaunt, with bold staring eyes. A
dreadful grotesquery reigned. It was not for want of knowledge, or skill, for manuscripts were
decorated with tremendous patience, and monasteries and churches were built at great cost. Those
who made this art could have made anything. It was a choice. Art was not to be sensual. Art was to
be pious. Art was to be grim. And so the classical world was lost.
  Of course I found wonders in this new world, I cannot deny it. Using the Cloud Gift, I traveled to
the great Gothic cathedrals, whose high arches surpassed anything I'd ever beheld. I was stunned by
the beauty of these cathedrals. I marveled at the market towns which were growing up all over
Europe. It seemed that commerce and crafts had settled the land which war could not settle alone.
  New languages were spoken everywhere. French was the language of the elite. But there was
English and German and Italian as well.
I saw it all happening, and yet I saw nothing. And then finally, perhaps in the year 1200--I am
uncertain--I lay down in the vault for a long sleep.
  I was weary of the world and quite impossibly strong. I confessed my intentions to Those Who
Must Be Kept. The lamps would eventually
   burn down, I told them. And there would only be darkness, but please, would they forgive me. I
was tired. I wanted to sleep for a long, long time.
  As I slept, I learnt. My preternatural hearing was too strong now for me to lie in silence. I could
not escape the voices of those who cried out, be they blood drinkers or humans. I could not escape
the drifting history of the world.
  And so it was with me in the high Alpine pass where I was hidden. I heard the prayers of Italy. I
heard the prayers of Gaul which had now become the country known as France.
I heard the souls suffering the terrible disease of the thirteen
hundreds known now most appropriately as the Black Death.
In the darkness I opened my eyes. I listened. Perhaps I even studied.
   And then finally I roused myself and went down into Italy, afraid for the fate of all the world. I
had to see the land I loved with my own eyes. I had to go back.
  The city that drew me was one I had not known before in my life. It was a new city, in that it had
not existed in the ancient time of the Caesars, and was now a great port. In fact, it was very likely
the greatest city of all Europe. Venice was the name of it, and the Black Death had come to it by
way of the ships in its harbor, and thousands were
desperately sick.
  Never had I visited it before. It would have been too painful, and now as I came into Venice, I
found it a city of gorgeous palaces built upon dark green canals. But the Black Death had ahold of
the populace who were dying in huge numbers daily, and ferries were taking the bodies out to be
buried deeply in the soil of the islands in the city's immense lagoon.



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  Everywhere there was weeping and desolation. People gathered together to die in sickrooms,
faces covered in sweat, bodies tormented by incurable swellings. The stench of the dead rose
everywhere. Some were trying to flee the city and its infestation. Others remained with their
suffering loved ones.
  Never had I seen such a plague. And yet it was amid a city of such remarkable splendor, I found
myself numb with sorrow and tantalized by the beauty of the palaces, and by the wonder of the
Church of San Marco which bore exquisite testament to the city's ties with Byzantium to which it
sent its many merchant ships.
  I could do nothing but weep in such a place. It was no time for peering by torchlight at paintings
or statues that were wholly new to me. I had to depart, out of respect for the dying, no matter what I
was.
  And so I made my way South to another city which I had not known in my mortal life, the city of
Florence in the heart of Tuscany, a
beautiful and fertile land.
  Understand, I was avoiding Rome at this point. I could not bear to see my home, once more in
ruin and misery. I could not see Rome
visited by this plague.
  So Florence was my choice, as I have said--a city new to me, and prosperous, though not as rich
as Venice perhaps, and not as beautiful, though full of huge palaces and paved streets.
And what did I find, but the same dreadful pestilence. Vicious bullies
  demanded payment to remove the bodies, often beating the dying or those who tried to tend
them. Six to eight corpses lay at the doors of various houses. The priests came and went by
torchlight, trying to give the Last Rites. And everywhere the same stench as in Venice, the stench
that says all is coming to an end.
  Weary and miserable, I made my way into a church, somewhere near the center of Florence,
though I cannot say what church it was, and I stood against the wall, gazing at the distant tabernacle
by candlelight, wondering as so many praying mortals wondered: What would become of this
world?
  I had seen Christians persecuted; I had seen barbarians sack cities; I had seen East and West
quarrel and finally break with each other; I had seen Islamic soldiers waging their holy war against
the infidel; and now I had seen this disease which was moving all through the world.
  And such a world, for surely it had changed since the year when I had fled Constantinople. The
cities of Europe had grown full and rich as flowers. The barbarian hordes had become settled
people. Byzantium still held the cities of the East together.
And now this dreadful scourge--this plague.
  Why had I remained alive, I wondered? Why must I endure as the witness to all these many tragic
and wonderful things? What was I to make of what I beheld?
  And yet, even in my sorrow, I found the church beautiful with its myriad lighted candles, and
spying a bit of color far ahead of me, in one of the chapels to the right side of the high altar, I made
my way towards it, knowing full well that I would find rich paintings there, for I could see
something of them already.
  None of those ardently praying in the church took any notice of me, a single being in a red velvet
hooded cloak, moving silently and swiftly to the open chapel so that I might see what was painted
there.




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  Oh, if only the candles had been brighter. If only I had dared to light a torch. But I had the eyes of
a blood drinker, didn't I? Why complain? And in this chapel I saw painted figures unlike any I had
seen before. They were religious, yes, and they were severe, yes, and they were pious, yes, but
something new had been sparked here, something that one might almost call sublime.
  A mixture of elements had been forged. And I felt a great joy even in my sorrow, until I heard a
low voice behind me, a mortal voice. It was speaking so softly that I doubt another mortal would
even have heard.
  "He's dead," said the mortal. "They're all dead, all the painters who did this work."
I was shocked with pain.
"The plague took them," said this man.
  He was a hooded figure as I was, only his cloak was of a dark color, and he looked at me with
bright feverish eyes.
  "Don't fear," he said. "I've suffered it and it hasn't killed me and I can't pass it on, don't you see?
But they're all dead, those painters. They're gone. The plague's taken them and all they knew."
"And you? " I asked. "Are you a painter? "
  He nodded. "They were my teachers," he said as he gestured towards the walls. "This is our work,
unfinished," he said. "I can't do it alone."
  "You must do it," I said. I reached into my purse. I took out several gold coins, and I gave them to
him.
  "You think this will help?" he asked, dejectedly.
  "It's all I have to give," I said. "Maybe it can buy you privacy and quiet. And you can begin to
paint again."
I turned to go.
"Don't leave me," he said suddenly.
  I turned around and looked at him. His gaze was level with mine and very insistent.
  "Everyone's dying and you and I are not dying," he said. "Don't go. Come with me, have a drink
of wine with me. Stay with me."
  "I can't," I said. I was trembling. I was too charmed by him, much too much. I was so close to
killing him. "I would stay with you if I could," I said.
  And then I left the city of Florence, and I returned to the vault of Those Who Must Be Kept.
  I lay down again for a long sleep, feeling the coward that I had not gone to Rome, and thankful
that I had not drunk dry the blood of the exquisite soul who had approached me in the church.
But something had been forever changed in me.
  In the church in Florence I had glimpsed new paintings. I had glimpsed something which filled
me with hope.
Let the plague run its course, I prayed, and I closed my eyes.
And the plague did finally die out.
All the voices of Europe sang.
  They sang of the new cities, and great victories, and terrible defeats. Everything in Europe was
being transformed. Commerce and prosperity bred art and culture, as the royal courts and
cathedrals and monasteries of the recent past had done.
  They sang of a man named Gutenberg in the city of Mainz who had invented a printing press
which could make cheap books by the
hundreds. Common people could own their own copies of Sacred Scripture, books of the Holy
Hours, books of comic stories and pretty poems. All over Europe new printing presses were being
built.



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  They sang of the tragic fall of Constantinople to the invincible Turkish army. But the proud cities
of the West no longer depended upon the far-away Greek Empire to protect them. The lament for
Constantinople went unheeded.
  Italy, my Italy, was illuminated by the glory of Venice and Florence and Rome.
It was time now for me to leave this vault.


I roused myself from my excited dreams.
  It was time for me to see this world which marked its time as the year after Christ 1482.
  Why I chose that year I am uncertain except perhaps that the voices of Venice and Florence
called me most eloquently, and I had earlier beheld these cities in their tribulation and grief. I
wanted desperately to see them in their splendor.
But I must go home first, all the way South to Rome.
  So lighting the oil lamps once more for my beloved Parents, wiping the dust from their ornaments
and their fragile robes, praying to them as I always did, I took my leave to enter one of the most
exciting times which the Western world had ever seen.



14

I WENT TO ROME. I could settle for nothing less. What I found there was to sting my heart, but
also to astonish me. It was an enormous and busy city, determined to rise from layers upon layers
of ruin, full of merchants and craftsmen hard at work on grand palaces for the Pope and his
Cardinals and for other rich men.
  The old Forum and Colosseum were still standing, indeed there were many many recognizable
ruins of Imperial Rome--including the Arch of Constantine--but blocks of ancient stone were
constantly being pilfered for new buildings. However scholars were everywhere studying these
ruins, and many argued for their maintenance as they were.
  Indeed the whole thrust of the age was to preserve the remnants of the ancient times in which I'd
been born, and indeed to learn from them, and imitate the art and the poetry, and the vigor of this
movement surpassed my wildest dreams.
  How can I say it more lucidly? This prosperous era, given over to trade and banking, in which so
many thousands wore thick and beautiful clothes of velvet, had fallen in love with the beauty of
ancient Rome and Greece!
  Never had I thought such a reversal would occur as I had lain in my vault during the weary
centuries, and I was at first too exhilarated by all I saw to do much but walk about the muddy
streets, accosting mortals with as much graciousness as I could muster, asking them questions about
what was going on about them, and what they thought of the times in which they lived.
Of course I spoke the new language, Italian, which had grown up from the old Latin, and I soon
became used to it on my ears and on my tongue. It wasn't such a bad language. Indeed it was
beautiful, though I quickly learnt that scholars were well versed in their Latin and Greek.
  Out of a multitude of answers to my questions I also learnt that Florence and Venice were
deemed to be far ahead of Rome in their spiritual rebirth, but if the Pope were to have his way that
was soon to change.




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  The Pope was no longer only a Christian ruler. He had made up his mind that Rome must be a
true cultural and artistic capital, and not only was he completing work upon the new St. Peter's
Basilica but he was working as well upon the Sistine Chapel, a great enterprise within his palatial
walls.
  Artists had been brought from Florence for some of this painting, and the city was much intrigued
as to the merits of the frescoes which had been done.
I spent as much time as I could in the streets and in the taverns listening to gossip of all this, and
then I made for the Papal Palace determined to see the Sistine Chapel for myself.
What a fateful night this was for me.
  In all the dark centuries since I had left my beloved Zenobia and Avicus, I had had my heart
stolen by various mortals and various works of art, but nothing I had experienced could quite
prepare me for what I was to see when I entered the Sistine Chapel.
  Understand, I do not speak of Michelangelo, so well known to all the world for his work there,
for Michelangelo was but a child at this time. And his works in the Sistine Chapel were yet to
come.
  No, it was not the work of Michelangelo that I saw on this fateful night. Put Michelangelo out of
your thoughts.
It was the work of someone else.
  Getting by the palace guards easily enough, I quickly found myself within the great rectangle of
this august chapel, which though not open to the public at large was destined to be used for high
ceremonials
whenever it should be complete.
And what caught my eye immediately among any number of frescoes was an enormous one filled
with brilliantly painted figures, all involving, it seemed, the same dignified elder with golden light
streaming from his head as he appeared with three different groupings of those who responded to
his command.
Nothing had prepared me for the naturalism with which the multitudinous figures were painted, the
vivid yet dignified expressions on the faces of the people, and the gracefully draped garments with
which the beings were clothed.
  There was great turbulence among these three exquisitely rendered groups of persons as the
white-haired figure with the gold light streaming from his head instructed them or upbraided them
or
corrected them, his own face quite seemingly stern and calm.
  All existed in a harmony such as I could never have imagined, and though their creation alone
seemed enough to guarantee that this painting should be a masterpiece there was beyond the figures
a
marvelous depiction of an extravagant wilderness and an indifferent world.
Two great ships of the present period were anchored in the faraway
    harbor, and beyond the ships there loomed layers of mountains beneath a rich blue sky, and to
the right there stood the very Arch of Constantine which still stood in Rome to this day, finely
detailed in gold as if it had never been ruined, and the columns of another Roman building, once
splendid, now a fragment standing high and proud, though a dark castle loomed beyond.
  Ah, such complexity, such inexplicable combinations, such strange matter, and yet every human
face so compelling, every hand so exquisitely wrought.
  I thought I would go mad just looking at the faces. I thought I would go mad just looking at the
hands.



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I wanted nights to memorize this painting. I wanted at once to listen at the portals of scholars who
could tell me what it was about, for I myself couldn't possibly decipher it! I needed knowledge for
this. And more than anything, its sheer beauty spoke to my soul.
  All my gloomy years were gone as if a million candles had been lighted in this chapel.
  "Oh, Pandora, that you could see this!" I whispered aloud. "Oh, Pandora, if only you knew of
this!"
  There were other paintings in the unfinished Sistine Chapel. I gave them a passing glance until
my eyes hit upon two others by this same Master, and these were as magical as the first.
  Once again there was a multitude of persons, all with the same divine faces. Garments were
rendered with sculptural depth. And though I recognized the Christ with his winged angels
appearing in more than one place in this exquisite fresco, I could not interpret these paintings any
more than I could the first.


  It didn't matter finally what these paintings meant. They filled me utterly. And in one, there were
two maidens rendered so sensitively and yet so sensuously that I was amazed.
  The old art of the churches and the monasteries would never have allowed such a thing. Indeed it
had banished such carnality completely.
  Yet here in the Pope's chapel were these damsels, one with her back to us, and the other facing us,
a dreamy expression in her eyes.
  "Pandora," I whispered. "I have found you here, found you in your youth and in your eternal
beauty. Pandora, you are here on the wall."
  I turned away from these frescoes. I paced the floor. Then I went back to them, studying them
with my uplifted hands, careful not to touch them, just moving my hands over them, as if I had to
look through my hands as well as through my eyes.
  I had to know who this painter was! I had to see his work. I had fallen in love with him. I had to
see everything ever done by him. Was he young? Was he old? Was he alive? Was he dead? I had to
know.
  I went out of the chapel, not knowing whom to ask about these marvelous achievements, for
surely I could not wake the Pope in his bed and ask him, and in a dark street at the very top of a
hill, I found an Evil Doer, a striding drunkard with a dagger ready for me, and I drank my fill of
blood in a rush of eagerness that I had not felt in years.
  Poor sad victim. I wonder if in my taking of him I gave him some glimpse of those paintings.
  I remember so well the moment, for I stood as the top of a narrow stairs which went down the hill
to the piazza below me, and I thought only of those paintings as the blood warmed me and I wanted
to go back to the chapel at once.
  Something interrupted me at that moment. I heard the distinct noise of a blood drinker near me,
the bumbling step of one who was young. One hundred years? No more than that, that was my
calculation.
The creature wanted me to know he was there.
I turned around and saw a tall, well-muscled and dark-haired figure,
   clothed in the black robes of a monk. His face was white and he did nothing to disguise it.
Around his neck he wore a glittering golden crucifix upside down.
"Marius!" he whispered.
  "Damn you," I said in answer. Yea gods, how could he know my name! "Whoever you are. Leave
me. Get away from me. I warn you. Don't remain in my presence if you want to live."



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  "Marius!" he said again and he came towards me. "I have no fear of you. I come to you because
we need you. You know who we are."
"Worshipers of Satan!" I said in disgust. "Look at that fool ornament
    around your neck. If the Christ exists, do you think He pays any attention to you? So you still
have your foolish little gatherings. You have your lies."
  "Foolish?" he said calmly. "We have never been foolish. We do the work of God as we serve
Satan. Without Satan, how could there have been the Christ?"
I made a dismissive gesture.
  "Get away from me," I said. "I want no part of you." In my heart was locked the secret of Those
Who Must Be Kept. I thought of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. Oh, those lovely figures, those
colors . ..
  "But don't you see?" he replied. "If one so old and powerful as you were to become our leader, we
could be a legion in the catacombs of this city! As it is, we are a dreadful few."
  His large black eyes were fall of the inevitable zeal. And his rich black hair shimmered in the dim
light. He was a comely creature, even coated with dust and dirt as he was. I could smell the
catacombs on his garments. I could smell death on him as though he had lain down with mortal
remains. But he was handsome, fine of build and proportion as Avicus had been, not unlike Avicus
at all.
  "You want to be a legion?" I asked him. "You talk nonsense! I was alive when no one spoke of
Satan and no one spoke of a Christ. You're merely blood drinkers, and you make up stories for
yourselves. How could you believe that I would come to you and lead you?"
  He drew closer so that I could all the better see his face. He was full of exuberance and honesty.
He held his head proudly.
  "Come to us in our catacomb," he said, "come and see us and be a part of our ritual. Sing with us
tomorrow night before we go out to hunt." He was passionate and he waited in silence for my reply.
He was not a stupid creature by any means, and he did not seem callow like the other followers of
Satan whom I had glimpsed in centuries past.
I shook my head. But he pressed on.
  "My name is Santino," he said. "I have heard of you for a hundred years. I have dreamt of the
moment when we would come upon each other. Satan has brought us together. You must lead us.
Only to you would I give up my leadership. Come see my lair with its hundreds of skulls." His
voice was refined, well modulated. He spoke a beautiful Italian. "Come see my followers who
worship the Beast with all their hearts. It's the wish of the Beast that you should lead us. It's the
wish of God."
  How disgusted I was, how much I deplored him and his followers. And I could see the intellect in
him. I could see the cleverness and the hope of understanding and wit.
  Would that Avicus and Mael were here to put an end to him and all his kith and kin.
  "Your lair with its hundreds of skulls?" I repeated. "You think I wish to rule there? Tonight I've
seen paintings of such beauty I can't describe them to you. Magnificent works rich in color and
brilliance. This city surrounds me with its beautiful allurements."
"Where did you see such paintings?" he asked.
"In the Pope's chapel," I declared.
"But how did you dare to go there?"
  "It was nothing for me to do such a thing. I can teach you how to use your powers--."



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  "But we are creatures of the dark," he said in all simplicity. "We must never go into places of
light. God has cursed us to the shadows."
  "What god?" I asked. "I go wherever I will. I drink the blood of those who are evil. And the world
belongs to me. And you ask me to come down into the earth with you? Into a catacomb full of
skulls? You ask me to rule blood drinkers in the name of a demon? You're too clever for your
creed, my friend. Forsake it."
  "No," he said, shaking his head and stepping backwards. "Ours is a Satanic purity!" he said. "You
can't tempt me from it, not with all your power and your tricks, and I give my welcome to you."
  I had sparked something in him. I could see it in his black eyes. He was drawn to me, drawn to
my words, but he couldn't admit it.
  "You'll never be a legion," I said. "The world will never allow it. You're nothing. Give up your
trappings. Don't make other blood drinkers to join this foolish crusade."
  He drew closer again, as if I were a light and he wanted to be in it. He looked into my eyes, trying
no doubt to read my thoughts of which he could get nothing except what I had said in words.
  "We are so gifted," I said. "There is so much to be observed, to be learnt. Let me take you back
with me into the Pope's chapel to see the paintings I have described."
He drew even closer and something changed in his face.
"Those Who Must Be Kept," he said, "what are they?"


It was like a harsh blow--that once again another knew the secret, a secret I had guarded so well
for a thousand years. "You will never know," I responded.
  "No, listen to me," he said. "Are they something profane? Or are they holy?"
  I clenched my teeth. I reached out for him, but with a swiftness that surprised me, he escaped me.
  I went after him, caught him, and spinning him around, I dragged him to the head of the narrow
stone stairs that went down the hill.
"Never come near me again, do you hear?" I said to him. He struggled desperately against me. "I
can kill you by fire with my mind if I choose it," I said. "And why don't I choose it? Why don't I
choose to slaughter you all, you miserable vermin? Why don't I do it? Because I loathe the violence
of it and the cruelty, even though you're more evil than the mortal whom I killed for my thirst
tonight."
  He was frantically trying to get loose from me, but of course he had not the slightest chance.
Why didn't I destroy him? Was my mind too filled with the beautiful
paintings? Was my mind too attuned to the mortal world to be dragged back into this abysmal
filth? I don't know.
  What I know is that I threw him down the stone stairway so that he tumbled over and over again,
clumsily, miserably, until he finally scrambled to his feet below.
He glared at me, his face full of hatred.
"I curse you, Marius!" he said with remarkable courage. "I curse you and your secret of Those Who
Must Be Kept." I was taken aback by his defiance.
  "I warn you, stay away from me, Santino!" I said as I looked down at him. "Be wanderers through
time," I said. "Be witnesses of all splendid and beautiful things human. Be true immortals. Not
worshipers of Satan! Not servants of a god who will put you in a Christian Hell. But whatever you
do, stay clear of me for your own sake." He was planted there, looking up at me in his fury. And
then it occurred to me to give him a small warning, if only I could do it. And I meant to try.




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  I brought up the Fire Gift inside of me, feeling it grow powerful and I quelled it ever so carefully
and I sent it down towards him, and willed it to kindle only the edge of his black monkish robes.
At once the cloth around his feet began to smoke and he stepped back in horror.
I stopped the power.
  He turned round and round in panic and tore the scorched robes off himself, standing there in a
long white tunic staring at the smoking cloth that lay on the ground.
  Once again he looked at me, fearless as before, but enraged in his helplessness.
  "Know what I could do to you," I said, "and never come near to me again."
And then I turned my back on him. And off I went.
  I shivered even to think of him and his followers. I shivered to think that I should have to use the
Fire Gift again after all these years.
I shivered remembering the slaughter of Eudoxia's slaves.
It wasn't even midnight.
  I wanted the bright new world of Italy. I wanted the clever scholars and artists of these times. I
wanted the huge palazzi of the Cardinals and the other powerful inhabitants of the Eternal City
which had risen after all the long miserable years.
  Putting the creature named Santino out of my mind I went near to one of the new palazzi in which
there was a feast in progress, a
masquerade with much dancing and tables laden with food.
  It was no problem to me to gain entry. I had equipped myself with the fine velvet clothes of this
period, and once inside among the guests, I was welcomed as was everyone else.
  I had no mask, only my white face which seemed like one, and my customary red velvet hooded
cloak which set me apart from the guests and yet made me one of them at the same time.
The music was intoxicating. The walls were ablaze with fine paintings,
    though none as magical as what I had seen in the Sistine Chapel, and the crowd was huge and
sumptuously dressed.
  Quickly, I fell into conversation with the young scholars, the ones who were talking hotly of
painting as well as poetry and I asked my dumb question: Who had done the magnificent frescoes
in the Sistine Chapel which I had just beheld?
  "You've seen these paintings?" said one of the crowd to me. "I don't believe it. We haven't been
allowed in to see them. Describe to me again what you saw."
I laid out everything, very simply as though I were a schoolboy.

  "The figures are supremely delicate," I said, "with sensitive faces, and each being, though
rendered with great naturalness, is ever so slightly too long."
The company around me laughed good naturedly.
"Ever so slightly too long," repeated one of the elders.
  "Who did the paintings?" I said, imploringly. "I must meet this man."
  "You'll have to go to Florence to meet him," said the elder scholar. "You're talking about
Botticelli, and he's already gone home."
  "Botticelli," I whispered. It was a strange almost ridiculous name. In Italian it translates to "little
tub." But to me it meant magnificence.
"You're certain it was Botticelli," I said.
"Oh, yes," said the elder scholar. The others with us were also nodding. "Everyone's marveling at
what he can do. That's why the Pope sent for him. He was here two years working on the Sistine
Chapel. Everyone knows Botticelli. And now he's no doubt as busy in Florence as he was here."



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"I only want to see him with my own eyes," I said.
"Who are you?" asked one of the scholars.
"No one," I whispered. "No one at all."
  There was general laughter. It seemed to blend rather bewitchingly with the music around us, and
the glare of so many candles.
I felt drunk on the smell of mortals, and with dreams of Botticelli.
  "I have to find Botticelli," I whispered. And bidding them all farewell I went out into the night.
  But what was I going to do when I found Botticelli, that was the question. What was driving me?
What did I want?
  To see all of his works, yes, that much was certain, but what more did my soul require?
My loneliness seemed as great as my age and it frightened me.
I returned to the Sistine Chapel.
I spent the remainder of the night perusing the frescoes once more.
  Before dawn a guard came upon me. I allowed it to happen. With the Spell Gift I gently
convinced him that I belonged where I was.
  "Who is the figure here in these paintings? " I asked, "the elder with the beard and the gold light
streaming from his head? "
  "Moses," said the guard, "you know, Moses the prophet. It all has to do with Moses, and the other
painting has to do with Christ." He pointed. "Don't you see the inscription? "

  I had not seen it but I saw it now. The Temptation of Moses, Bearer of the Written Law.
I sighed. "I wish I knew their stories better," I said. "But the paintings are so exquisite that the
story doesn't matter."
The guard only shrugged.
"Did you know Botticelli when he painted here?" I asked.
Once again, the man only shrugged.
  "But don't you think the paintings are incomparably beautiful?" I asked him.
He looked at me somewhat stupidly.
  I realized how lonely I was that I was speaking to this poor creature, trying to elicit from him
some understanding of what I felt.
"Beautiful paintings are everywhere now," he said.
"Yes," I said, "yes, I know they are. But they don't look like this."
I gave him a few gold coins, and left the chapel.
  I had only time enough to reach the vault of Those Who Must Be Kept before dawn.
  As I lay down to sleep I dreamt of Botticelli, but it was the voice of Santino that haunted me. And
I wished that I had destroyed him, which, all things considered, was a very unusual wish for me.



15

t
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT I went to the city of Florence. It was of course splendid to see it quite
recovered from the ravages of the Black Death, and indeed a city of greater prosperity and greater
ingenuity and energy than Rome.




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  I soon learnt what I had suspected--that having grown up around commerce, the city had not
suffered the ruin of a classical era, but had rather grown progressively strong over the centuries, as
its ruling family, the Medici, maintained power by means of a great international bank.
  Everywhere about me there were elements of the place--its growing architectural monuments, its
interior paintings, its clever scholars--that drew me fiercely, but nothing really could keep me
away from discovering the identity of Botticelli, and seeing for myself not only his works, but the
man.
  Nevertheless, I tormented myself slightly. I took rooms in a palazzo near the main piazza of the
city, hired a bumbling and remarkably gullible servant to lay in lots of costly clothes for me, all
made in the color red as I preferred it, and still do to any other, and I went at once to a bookseller's
and knocked and knocked until the man opened his doors for me, took my gold, and gave me the
latest books which "everyone was reading" on poetry, art, philosophy and the like.
  Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my
century's thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the floor, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the
vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman
poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold.

  Let me note here that some of these books were printed books, thanks to the miraculous invention
of the printing press, and I was quite amazed by these though I preferred the beauty of the old
handwritten codexes, as did many men of the time. In fact, it is an irony that even after the printing
press was very well established, people still boasted of having handwritten libraries, but I digress.
  I Was talking of the return to the old Greek and Roman poets, of the infatuation of the era with
the times of my birth.
  The Roman church was overwhelmingly powerful as I have suggested.
  But this was an age of fusion, as well as inconceivable expansion-- and it was fusion which I had
seen in the painting of Botticelli--so full of loveliness and natural beauty though created for the
interior of the Pope's,own chapel in Rome.
  Perhaps near to midnight, I stumbled out of my quarters, finding the city under curfew, with the
taverns which defied it and the inevitable ruffians roaming about.
  I Was dazed as I made my way into a huge tavern full of gleeful young drunkards where a rosy-
cheeked boy sang as he played the lute. I sat in the corner thinking to control my overwrought
enthusiasms, my crazed passions, yet I had to find the home of Botticelli. I had to. I had to see more
of his work.
  What stopped me from it? What did I fear? What was going on in my mind? Surely the gods
knew I was a creature of iron control. Had I not proven it a thousand times?
  For the keeping of a Divine Secret had I not turned my back on Zenobia? And did I not suffer
routinely and justly for having
abandoned my incomparable Pandora whom I might never find again?
  At last I could endure my confused thoughts no longer. I came close to one of the older men in
the tavern who was not singing with the younger ones.
"I've come here to find a great painter," I told him.
He shrugged and took a drink of his wine.
  "I used to be a great painter," he said, "but no more. All I do is drink."
  I laughed. I called for the tavern maid to serve him another cup. He gave a nod of thanks to me.
"The man I'm looking for--he's called Botticelli, or so I'm told."
Now it was his turn to laugh.



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  "You're seeking the greatest painter in Florence," he said. "You won't have any trouble finding
him. He's always busy, no matter how many idlers hang about in his workshop. He may be painting
now."
"Where is the workshop?" I asked.
"He lives in the Via Nuova, right before the Via Paolino."
   "But tell me--." I hesitated. "What sort of man is he? I mean to you?"
  Again, the man shrugged. "Not bad, not good, though he has a sense of humor. Not one to make
an imprint on your mind except through his painting. You'll see when you meet him. But don't
expect to hire him. He has much work already to do."
  I thanked the man, laid down money for more wine if he wanted it, and slipped out of the tavern.
  With a few questions I found the way to the Via Nuova. A night watchman gave me the way to
the home of Botticelli, pointing to a sizable house, but not a great palazzo, where the painter lived
with his brother and his brother's family.
  I stood before this simple house as if it were a shrine. I could see where the workshop most
certainly was by its large doors to the street which were inevitably open by day, and I could see that
all the rooms both on the main floor and above it were dark.
  How could I go into this workshop? How could I see what work was being done there now? Only
by night could I come to this place. Never had I cursed the night so much.
  Gold had to do this for me. Gold and the Spell Gift, though how I would dare to daze Botticelli
himself I had no idea.
  Suddenly, unable to control myself any longer I pounded on the door of the house.
Naturally enough, no one answered, so I pounded again.
  Finally a light brightened in the upstairs window, and I could hear footfall within.
At last a voice demanded: Who was I, and what did I want?
  What was I to answer to such a question? Was I to lie to someone whom I worshiped? Ah, but I
had to get in.
  "Marius de Romanus," I answered, making up the name at that very moment. "I've come with a
purse of gold for Botticelli. I've seen his paintings in Rome, and I greatly admire him. I must put
this purse into his own hand-"
  There was a pause. Voices behind the door. Two men conferring with each other as to who I
might be, or why such a lie might be told.

  One man said not to answer. The other man said it was worth a brief look, and it was he who
pulled back the latch and opened the door. The other held the lamp behind him, so I saw only a
shadowy face.
  "I am Sandro," he said simply, "I'm Botticelli. Why would you bring me a purse of gold?"
  For a long moment I was speechless. But in this speechlessness, I had the sense to produce the
gold. I handed the purse over to the man, and I watched silently as he opened it and as he took out
the gold florins and held them in his hand.
"What do you want?" he asked. His voice was as plain as his manner. He was rather tall. His hair
was light brown and already threaded with gray though he was not old. He had large eyes that
appeared compassionate, and a well-formed mouth and nose. He stood looking at me without
annoyance or suspicion, and obviously ready to return my gold. I didn't think he was forty years
old.
I tried to speak and I stammered. For the first time in all my memory



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I stammered. Finally I managed to make myself plain:
  "Let me come into your workshop tonight," I said. "Let me see your paintings. That's all I want."
  "You can see them by day." He shrugged. "My workshop's always open. Or you can go to the
churches in which I've painted. My work is all over Florence. You don't have to pay me for such a
thing." What a sublime voice; what an honest voice. There was something patient and tender in it.
I gazed upon him as I had gazed on his paintings. But he was waiting
for an answer. I had to pull myself together.
  "I have my reasons," I said. "I have my passions. I want to see your work now, if you'll let me. I
offer the gold."
  He smiled and he gave a little even laugh. "Well, you come like one of the Magi," he said. "For I
can certainly use the payment. Come inside."
That was the second time in my long years that I had been compared to the Magi of Scripture and I
loved it.
  I entered the house which was by no means luxurious, and as he took the lamp from the other
man, I followed him through a side door into his workshop where he put the lamp on a table full of
paints and brushes and rags.
  I couldn't take my eyes offhim. This was the man who had done the great paintings in the Sistine
Chapel, this ordinary man.


  The light flared up and filled the place. Sandro, as he had called himself, gestured to his left, and
as I turned to my right, I thought I was losing my mind.
  A giant canvas covered the wall, and though I had expected to see a religious painting, no matter
how sensual, there was something else there, altogether different, which rendered me speechless
once more.
  The painting was enormous as I've indicated, and it was composed of several figures, but whereas
the Roman paintings had confused me in the question of their subject matter, I knew very well the
subject matter of this.
  For these were not saints and angels, or Christs and prophets--no, far from it.
  There loomed before me a great painting of the goddess Venus in all her glorious nudity, feet
poised upon a seashell, her golden hair torn by faint breezes, her dreamy gaze steady, her faithful
attendants the god Zephyr who blew the breezes which guided her landward, and a nymph as
beautiful as the goddess herself who welcomed her to the shore.
  I drew in my breath and put my hands over my face, and then when I uncovered my eyes I found
the painting there again.
  A slight impatient sigh came from Sandro Botticelli. What in the name of the gods could I say to
him about the brilliance of this work? What could I say to him to reveal the adulation I felt?
  Then came his voice, low and resigned. "If you're going to tell me it's shocking and evil, let me
tell you, I have heard it a thousand times. I'll give you back your gold if you want. I've heard it a
thousand times."
  I turned and went down on my knees, and I took his hands and I kissed them with my lips as
closely as I dared. Then I rose slowly like an old man on one knee before the other and I stood back
to gaze at the panel for a long time.
  I looked at the perfect figure of Venus again, covering her most intimate secret with locks of her
abundant hair. I looked on the nymph with her outstretched hand and her voluminous garments. I




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                                             Blood and Gold

looked on the god Zephyr and the goddess with him, and all of the tiny details of the painting came
to reside in my mmd.
  "How has it come about? " I asked. "After so long a time of Christs and Virgins, that such a thing
could be painted at last? "
  From the quiet figure of the uncomplaining man there came another little laugh.
  "It's up to my patron," he said. "My Latin is not so good. They read the poetry to me. I painted
what they said to paint." Fie paused. He looked troubled. "Do you think it's sinful?"
  "Certainly not," I responded. "You ask me what I think? I think it's a miracle. I'm surprised that
you would ask," I looked at the painting- "This is a goddess," I said. "How could it be other than
sacred? There was a time when millions worshiped her with all their hearts. There was a time when
people consecrated themselves to her with all their hearts."
  "Well, yes," he answered softly, "but she's a pagan goddess, and not everyone thinks that she is
the patron of marriage as some say now. Some say this painting is sinful, that I shouldn't be doing
it." He gave a frustrated sigh. He wanted to say more, but I sensed that the arguments
were quite beyond him.
  "Don't listen to such things," I said. "It has a purity I've almost never seen in painting- Her face,
the way you've painted it, she's newborn yet sublime, a woman, yet divine. Don't think of sin when
you work on this painting. This painting is too vital, too eloquent. Put the struggles of sin out of
your mind."
  He was silent but I knew he was thinking. I turned and tried to read his mind. It seemed chaotic,
and full of wandering thoughts and guilt.
  He was a painter almost entirely at the mercy of those who hired him, but he had made himself
supreme by virtue of the particularities that all cherished in his work. Nowhere were his talents
more fully expressed than in this particular painting and he knew this though he couldn't put it into
words. He thought hard on how to tell me about his craft and his originality, but he simply couldn't
do it. And I would not press him. It would be a wicked thing to do.
  "I don't have your words," he said simply. "You really believe the painting isn't sinful?"
  "Yes, I told you, it's not sinful. If anyone tells you anything else they're lying to you." I couldn't
stress it enough. "Behold the
innocence in the face of the goddess. Dori't think of anything else."
He looked tormented, and there came over me a sense of how fragile he was, in spite of his
immense talent and his immense energy to work. The thrusts of his art could be utterly crushed by
those who criticized him. Yet he went on somehow every day painting the best pictures that he
knew how to paint.
"Don't believe them," I said again, drawing his eyes back to me.


  "Come," he said, "you've paid me well to look at my work. Look at this tondo of the Virgin Maty
with Angels. Tell me how you like this."
  He brought the lamp to the far wall and held it so that I might see the round painting which hung
there.
  Once again I was too shocked by the loveliness of it to speak. But it was plainly obvious that the
Virgin was as purely beautiful as the goddess Venus, and the Angels were sensual and alluring as
only very young boys and girls can be.
  "I know," he said to me. "You don't have to tell me. My Venus looks like the Virgin and the
Virgin looks like the Venus and so they say of me. But my patrons pay me."



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  "Listen to your patrons," I said. I wanted so to clasp his arms. I wanted to gently shake him so
that he would never forget my words. "Do what they tell you. Both paintings are magnificent. Both
paintings are finer than anything I've ever seen."
  He couldn't know what I meant by such words. I couldn't tell him. I stared at him, and for the first
time I saw a little apprehension in him. He had begun to notice my skin, and perhaps my hands.
  It was time to leave him before he became even more suspicious, and I wanted him to remember
me kindly and not with fear.
  I took out another purse which I had brought with me. It was full of gold florins.
  He gestured to refuse it. In fact, he gave me a very stubborn refusal. I placed it on the table.
For a moment we merely looked at each other.
"Good-bye, Sandro," I said.
"Marius, was it? I'll remember you."
  I made my way out the front door and into the street. I hurried for the space of two blocks and
then I stopped, breathing too hurriedly, and it seemed a dream that I had been with him, that I had
seen such paintings, that such paintings had been created by man.
I didn't go back to my rooms in the palazzo.
  When I reached the vault of Those Who Must Be Kept, I fell down in a new kind of exhaustion,
crazed by what; I had beheld. I couldn't get the impression of the man out of my mind. I couldn't
stop seeing him with his soft dull hair and sincere eyes.
  As for the paintings, they haunted me, and I knew that my torment, my obsession, my complete
abandonment to the love of Botticelli had only just begun.



16

IN THE MONTHS that followed I became a busy visitor of Florence, slipping into various palaces
and churches to see the work that Botticelli had done.
  Those who praised him had not lied. He was the most revered painter in Florence, and those who
complained of him were those for whom he had no time, for he was only a mortal man.
  In the Church of San Paolino, I found an altarpiece which was to drive me mad. The subject of
the painting was a common one, I had discovered, usually called The Lamentation, being the scene
of those weeping over the body of the dead Christ only just taken down from the Cross.
  It was a miracle of Botticelli's sensuality, most specifically in the tender representation of Christ
himself who had the gorgeous body of a Greek god, and in the utter abandon of the woman who
had pressed her face against that of his, for though Christ lay with his head hanging downward, she
knelt upright and her eyes were therefore very near to Christ's mouth.
  Ah, to see these two faces seamlessly pressed to each other, and to see the delicacy of every face
and form surrounding them, it was more than I could endure.
  How long would I let this torture me? How long must I go through this wanton enthusiasm, this
mad celebration before I retreated to my loneliness and coldness in the vault? I knew how to punish
myself, didn't I? Did I have to go out of my way to the city of Florence for this?
There were reasons to be gone.
  Two other blood drinkers haunted this city who might want me out of it, but so far they had left
me alone. They were very young and




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hardly very clever, nevertheless I did not want them to come upon me, and spread "the legend of
Marius" any further than it had already gone.
  And then there was that monster I had encountered in Rome--that evil Santino who might come
this far to harry me with his little Satan worshipers whom I so desperately deplored.
But these things didn't really matter.
I had time in Florence and I knew it. There were no Satan worshipers
here and that was a good thing. I had time to suffer as much as
I chose.
  And I was mad for this mortal, Botticelli, this painter, this genius, and I could scarce think of
anything else.
  Meantime, there came from Bpttieelli's brilliance yet another immense pagan masterpiece which I
beheld in the palazzo to which it was sent upon being finished--a place into which I crept in the
early hours of the morning to see the painting while the owners of the
building slept.
  Once again, Botticelli had used Roman mythology, or perhaps the Greek mythology that lay
behind it to create a garden--yes, of all things, a garden--a garden of eternal springtime in which
mythical
   figures made their sublime progress with harmonious gestures and dreamy expressions, their
attitudes exquisitely gentle in the extreme.
  On one side of the verdant garden danced the youthful and inevitably beautiful Three Graces in
transparent and billowing garments while on the other side came the goddess Flora, magnificently
clothed and strewing flowers from her dress. The goddess Venus once more appeared in the center,
dressed as a rich Florentine woman, her hand up in a gesture of welcome, her head tilted slightly to
one side.
  The figure of Mercury in the far left corner, and several other mythic beings completed the
gathering which entranced me so that I stood before the masterpiece for hours, perusing all the
details, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, wiping at my face, and eyen now and then
covering my eyes and then uncovering them again to see the vivid colors and the delicate gestures
and attitudes of these creatures-- the whole so reminiscent of the lost glory of Rome, and yet so
utterly new and different from it that I thought, for loving all this, I will lose
my mind.
Any and all gardens which I had ever painted or imagined were obliterated by this painting. HOW
would I ever rival, even in my dreams, such a work as this?
How exquisite here to die of happiness after being so long miserable and alone. How exquisite to
see this triumph of form and color after having studied with bitter sacrifice so many forms I could
not understand.
  There is no despair in me anymore. There is only joy, continuous restless joy.
Is that possible?
  Only reluctantly did I leave this painting of the springtime garden. Only reluctantly did I leave
behind its dark flower-rich grass and overhanging orange trees. Only reluctantly did I move on to
find more of Botticelli where I could.
  I might have staggered around Florence for nights on end, drunk on what I'd seen in this painting.
But there was more, much more, for me to see.
  Mark, all this time, as I slipped into churches to see more works by the Master, as I crept into a
palazzo to see a famed painting by the Master of die irresistible god Mars sleeping helplessly on the



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grass beside a patient and watchful Venus, as I went about clasping my hands to my lips so as not
to cry out crazily, I did not return to the workshop of the genms. I held myself back.
  "You cannot interfere in his life," I told myself. "You cannot come in with gold and draw him
from his paintings. His is a mortal destiny. Already the entire city knows of him. Rome knows of
him. His paintings will endure. He is not someone you need save from a gutter. He is the talk of
Florence. He is the talk of the Pope's Palace in Rome. Leave him alone."
  And so I did not go back, though I was starving just to look at him, just to talk to him, just to tell
him that the marvelous painting of the Three Graces and the other goddesses in the springtime
garden was as glorious as anything that he had done.
  I would have paid him just to allow me to sit in his shop in the evening, and to watch him at his
work. But this was wrong, all of it.
  I went back to the Church of San Paolino, and I stayed for a long time, staring at The
Lamentation.
It was far more stiff than his "pagan" paintings. Indeed, he had seldom
    done something quite this severe. And there was much darkness to the painting, in the deeply
colored robes of the various figures, and in the shadowy recesses of the open tornb. But even in this
severity there was a tenderness, a loveliness. And the two faces--that of Mary and Christ--which
were pressed together--drew me and would not let me look away.
  Ah, Botticelli. How does one explain his gift? His figures though perfect were always slightly
elongated, even the faces were elongated, and the expressions on the faces were sleepy and perhaps
even ever so slightly unhappy, it is so difficult to say. All the figures of any one painting seemed
lost in a communal dream.
  As for the paint he used--the paint used by so many in Florence--it was far superior to anything
we had had in the ancient days of Rome, in that it mixed simple egg yolk and ground pigment to
achieve the colors and the glazes and the varnishes to make an application of unsurpassed brilliance
and endurance. In other words, the works had a gloss that seemed miraculous to my eyes.
  So fascinated was I by this paint that I sent my mortal servant to procure all the available
pigments for me, and the eggs, and to bring me by night an old apprentice who might mix up the
colors for me, exactly to the right thickness, so I might paint a bit of work in my rented rooms.
It was only an idle experiment, but I found myself working furiously
    and soon covering every bit of prepared wood and canvas which my apprentice and my servant
had bought.
  They were, of course, shocked by my speed, which gave me pause. I had to be clever, not
fantastical. Hadn't I learnt that long years ago when I'd painted my banquet room as my guests
cheered me on?
  I sent them away with plenty of gold, telling them to come back to me with more materials. As
for what I had painted? It was some poor imitation of Botticelli, for even with my immortal blood I
could not capture what he had captured. I could not make faces like those he had rendered, no, not
by a very long way. There was something brittle and hopeless in what I painted. I could not look at
my own work. I loathed it. There was something flat and Accusatory in the faces I had created.
There was something ominous in the expressions that looked back at me from the walls.
  I went out into the night, restless, hearing those other blood drinkers, a young pair, fearful of me
and rightly so, yet very attentive to what I did, for what reason I was unsure. I sent a silent message
to all the immortal trash that might perturb me: Do not come near me for I am in a grand passion
and will not tolerate being interrupted now.




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  I crept into the Church of San Paolirio and knelt down as I looked at The Lamentation, I ran rny
tongue against my sharp teeth. I hungered for blood a^s the beauty of the figures filled me. I could
have taken a victim in the very church.
  And then the most evil idea came to me. It was purely evil just as the painting was purely
religious. The idea came to me unbidden as if there really were a Satan in the world and that Satan
had come
crawling along the stone floor towards me and put the idea in my mind.
  "You love him, Marius," said this Satan. "Well, bring him over to you. Give Botticelli the Blood."
  I shivered quietly in the church. I slipped down, sitting against the stone wall. Again I felt the
thirst. I was horrified that I had even thought of it yet I saw myself taking Botticelli in my arms. I
saw myself sinking my teeth into Botticelli's throat. The blood of Botticelli. I thought of it. And my
blood, my Hood given to him.
  "Think how you have waited, Marius," said the evil voice of Satan. "All these long centuries you
have never given your blood to anyone. But you can give it to Botticelli! You can take Botticelli
now."
  He would go on painting; he would have the Blood and his painting would be unparalleled. He
would live forever with his talent--this humble man of some forty years who was grateful for a
mere purse of gold--this humble man who had done the exquisite Christ I stared at, his head
thrown back in the hand of Mary, whose eyes were pressed to his mouth.
  This was not something that would be done. No, this must never be done. I could not do it. I
would not do it.
  Yet I rose slowly to my feet and I left the church and began walking through the dark narrow
street, towards Botticelli's house.
  I could hear my heart inside me. And my mind seemed curiously empty, and my body light and
predatory and full of evil, an evil which I freely admitted and totally understood. A high excitement
filled me. Take Botticelli in your arms. Forever in your arms.
  And though I heard those other blood drinkers, those two young ones who followed me, I did not
pay it any mind. They were far too fearful of me to come close to me. On I went for what I would
choose to do.
It was no more than a few blocks and I was there at Sandrp's door and the lights were burning
inside, and I had a purse of gold. Drifting, dreaming, thirsting, I knocked as I had the first time.


  No, this is something you will never do, I thought. You will not take someone so vital out of the
world. You will not disturb the destiny of one who has given others so much to love and enjoy.
  It was Sandro's brother who came to the door, but this time he was courteous to me and he
showed me into the shop where Botticelli was alone and at work.
He turned to greet me as soon as I entered the spacious room.
  There loomed behind him a large panel, with a shockingly different aspect to it from any of his
other work. I let my eyes drift over it for I thought this was what he wanted me to do, and I don't
think I could hide from him my disapproval or fear.
  The blood hunger surged in me, but I put it away and stared only at the painting, thinking of
nothing, not of Sandro, not of his death and rebirth through me, no, of nothing but the painting as I
pretended to be human for him.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  It was a grim and chilling painting of the Trinity, with Christ on his Cross, the full figure of God
the Father behind him, and a dove representing the Holy Spirit, just above the head of the Christ.
On one side stood St. John the Baptist opening the scarlet robe of God the Father, and on the other,
the penitent Magdalene, her long hair her only clothing as she stared grieving at the crucified Lord.
  It seemed a cruel use of Botticelli's talent! It seemed a ghastly thing. Oh, it was expertly done,
yes, but how merciless it seemed.
  Only now did I know that in The Lamentation I had seen a perfect balance of light and dark
forces. For I did riot see that balance here. On the contraiy, it was astonishing that Botticelli could
have done
something as wholly dark as this. It was a harsh thing. Had I seen it elsewhere I would not have
thought it was his work.
  And it seemed a profound judgment on me that I had thought for one moment of giving Botticelli
the Dark Blood! Did the Christian God really live? Could he deter me? Could he judge me? Is that
why I had come face to face with this painting with Botticelli standing beside it looking into my
eyes?
  Botticelli was waiting for me to speak to hirn on account of this painting. He was waiting
patiently to be wounded by what I meant to say. And deep inside me there was a love of Botticelli's
talent which had nothing to do with God or the Devil or my own evil or power. That love of
Botticelli's talent respected Botticelli and nothing mattered just now but that.


I looked up again at the painting.
  "Where is the innocence, Sandro?" I asked him, making my tone as kind as I could.
  Again I fought the blood hunger. Look how old he is. If you don't do it Sandro Botticelli will die.
  "Where is the tenderness in the painting?" I asked. "Where is the sublime sweetness that makes us
forget everything? I see it only a little perhaps in the face of God the Father, but the rest--it's dark,
Sandro. It's so unlike you, this darkness. I don't understand why you do it when you can do so much
else."
  The blood hunger was raging but I had control of it. I was pushing it deep inside me. I loved him
too much to do it. I could not do it. I could not endure the result if it were to be done.
  As for my remarks, he nodded. He was miserable. A man divided wanting to paint his goddesses
on the one hand, and the sacred
paintings as well.
  "Marius," he said. "I don't want to do what's sinful. I don't want to do what's evil, or what will
make another person, simply by looking at a painting, commit a sin."
  "You're very far from ever doing that, Sandro," I said. "That's my view of it--that your goddesses
are glorious as are your gods. In Rome, your frescoes of Christ were filled with light and beauty.
Why journey into the darkness as you have done here?"
  I took out the purse and put it on the table. I would leave now, and he would never know what
true evil had come close to him. He would never dream of what I was and what I had meant,
perhaps, perhaps to do.
He came to me and picked up the purse and tried to give it back.
  "No, you keep it," I said. "You deserve it. You do what you believe you should do."
  "Marius, I have to do what is right," he said simply. "Now look at this, I want to show you." He
took me to another part of the workshop away from the large paintings.
  Here was a table and on it were several pages of parchment covered with tiny drawings.



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  "These are illustrations for Dante's Inferno" he told me. "Surely you've read it. I want to do an
illustrated version of the entire book."
  My heart sank when I heard this, but what could I say? I looked down at the drawings of die
twisted and suffering bodies! How could one defend such an enterprise on the part of the painter
who had rendered Venus and the Virgin with miraculous skill?
Dante's Inferno. How I had despised the work while recognizing its brilliance.
  "Sandro, how can you want to do this?" I asked. I was shaking. I didn't want him to see my face.
"I find glory," I said, "in those paintings
that are filled with the light of paradise, whether it is Christian or pagan. I find no delight in the
illustrations of those who suffer in Hell." He was plainly confused and perhaps he always would be.
It was his fate. I had only stepped into it, and perhaps fed a fire that was already top weak to
survive.
I had to go now. I had to leave him now forever. I knew it. I could not come again to this house. I
could not trust myself with him. I had to get out of Florence or my resolve would break. "I won't be
seeing you again, Sandro," I said. "But why?" he said. "I've been looking forward to seeing you.
Oh, it's not because of the purse, believe me."
  "I know, but I must leave. Remember. I believe in your gods and goddesses. I always will."
I went out of his house, and only as far as the church. I was so overcome with the desire for him, to
bring him over to me, and visit upon him all the dark secrets of the Blood, that I could scarce catch
my breath or see the street before me, or even feel the air in my lungs.
I wanted him. I wanted his talent. I dreamt dreams of the two of us--Sandro and me--together in a
great palazzo, and from there wo\ild come paintings tinged with the magic of the Blood. It would
be a confirmation of the Blood.
After all, 1 thought, he is ruining his own talent, is he not, by turning
   to what is dark? How can one account for it that he would turn from his goddesses to a poem
called the Inferno^ Can I not turn him back to his celestial visions with the Blood?
  But none of this must happen. I knew it even before I'd seen his cruel crucifixion. I had known it
before I went into his house.
  I must find a victim now; I must find many. And so I hunted cruelly, until I could take no more
blood from the few doomed souls I found in the streets of Florence.
  At last an hour or so before dawn, I found myself sitting against a church door in a small piazza,
looking like a beggar perhaps if beggars fit themselves out with crimson cloaks.


  Those two young vampires whom I had heard following me came with fearful steps towards me.
I was weary and impatient.
"Get away from me," I said. "I'll destroy you both if you don't."
A young male, a young female, each taken in youth and both trembling,
     they would not retreat. At last the male spoke for them, his courage tremulous but real.
  "Don't you harm Botticelli!" he declared. "Don't you hurt him! Take the dregs, yes, you're
welcome, but not Botticelli, never Botticelli."
  Sadly I laughed. My head fell back and very softly I laughed and laughed.
  "I won't do it," I said. "I love him as much as you do. Now get away from me. Or believe me,
there will be no more nights for either one of you. GO."
Returning to the vault in the mountains, I wept for Botticelli.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  I closed my eyes, and I entered the garden where Flora dropped her tender roses to the carpet of
grass and flowers. I reached out to touch the hair of one of the young Graces.
  "Pandora," I whispered. "Pandora, it's our garden. They were all beautiful like you."



17

IN THE WEEKS that followed, I filled the shrine in the Alps with many new riches. I bought new
golden lamps, and censers. I bought fine carpets from the markets in Venice, and golden silks from
China as well. From the seamstresses of Florence I
commissioned new garments for rny Immortal Parents, and then carefully dressed them, relieving
them of rags which should have been burnt long ago.
  All the while I spoke to them in a consoling voice of the miracles I had seen in the changing
world.
  I laid before them fine printed books as I explained the ingenious invention of the printing press.
And I hung over the doors to the shrine a new Flemish tapestry, also bought in Florence which I
described to them in detail, so they might choose to look with their seemingly blind eyes.
Then I went to die city of Florence and gathering up all the pigment
    and oil and other materials which my servant had procured for me, I brought it to the mountain
shrine, and I proceeded to paint the walls in the new style.
  I did not seek now to imitate Botticelli. But I did return to the old motif of the garden which I had
so loved centuries ago, and I soon found myself rendering my Venus, my Graces, my Flora, and
infusing into the work all the details of life which only a blood drinker can behold.
Where Botticelli had painted the dark grass rich with varied flowers,
   I revealed the small insectile creatures inevitably concealed there, and then the most flamboyant
and beautiful of creatures, the butterflies
   and the varicolored moths. Indeed my style ran to frightening detail in every respect, and soon
an intoxicating and magic forest surrounded the Mother and Father, the egg tempera lending a
gleam to the whole which I had never achieved in the past.
When I studied it, I became ever so slightly dizzy, thinking of Botticelli's
    garden, indeed, thinking even of the garden I had dreamt of in old Rome, of the garden I had
painted--and soon I had to shake myself and collect myself because I did not know where I was.
  The Royal Parents seemed more solid and remote than ever. All trace of the Great Burning was
now gone from them in that their skin was purely white.
  It had been so long since they had moved that I began to wonder if I had dreamt those things
which had happened--if I had imagined the sacrifice of Eudoxia--but now my mind was very
much intent upon escaping the shrine for long periods of time.
  My last gift to the Divine Parents--after all my painting was done, and Akasha and Enkil were
decked out with all new jewels--was a long bank of one hundred beeswax candles which I lighted
for them all at once with the power of my mind.
  Of course I saw no change in the eyes of the King and Queen. Nevertheless, it gave me great
pleasure to offer this to them; and I spent my last hours with them, letting the candles burn down as
I told them in a soft voice of all the wonders of the cities of Florence and Venice which I had come
to love.




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                                              Blood and Gold

I vowed that every time I came to them I would light the one hundred candles. It would be a small
proof of my undying love.
  What caused me to do such a thing? I have no true idea. But after that I kept a great supply of
candles always in the shrine; I stored them behind die two figures; and after the offering, I would
replenish the bronze holder and take away all melted wax.
  When all this had been done, I returned to Florence and to Venice, and to the rich high-walled
little city of Siena, to study paintings of all sorts.
  Indeed, I wandered through palaces and churches throughout Italy, quite drunken on what I
beheld.
As I have described, a great fusion had taken place between Christian themes and ancient pagan
style, which was developing everywhere. And though I still perceived Botticelli to be die Master, I
was taken aback by the plasticity and wonder of much of what I saw.
  The voices in die taverns and in the wine shops told me I ought to go North to see paintings as
well.



  Now this was news to me, for North had always meant the land of the less civilized, but so great
was my hunger for the new styles that I did as I was told.
  I found throughout all of northern Europe an intense and complex civilization which I had surely
underestimated, most particularly I think in France. There were great cities in existence and Royal
Courts which supported painting. There was much for me to study.
But I did not love the art which I saw.
  I respected the works of Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden, of Hugo van der Goes, and
of Hieronymus Bosch and many other nameless masters whom I beheld, but their work did not
delight me as did the work of the Italian painters. The Northern world was not as lyrical. It was not
as sweet. It still bore the grotesque stamp of the work of purely religious art.
  So I soon returned to the cities of Italy where I was richly rewarded for my wanderings with no
end in sight.
  I soon learnt that Botticelli had studied with a great master, Filippo Lippi, and that this one's son,
Filippino Lippi, was working with Botticelli right now. Other painters whom I loved included
Gozzoli and Signorelli, and Piero della Francesca and beyond that so many that I do not want to
mention their names.
  But all during my study of painting, my little travels, my long nights of adoring attention to this
or that wall, or this or that altarpiece, I did not let myself dream of bringing Botticelli to me, and I
never lingered long near any place where he was.
  I knew that he prospered. I knew that he painted. And that was quite enough for me.
But an idea had come to brew in me--an idea as strong as the
earlier dream of seducing Botticelli had been.
  What if I were to reenter the world again, and to live in it as a painter? Oh, not a working painter
who took commissions, that would be nonsense, but an eccentric gentleman who chose to paint for
his own pleasure, admitting mortals to his house to dine at his table and drink his wine.
  Had I not done so in a bumbling way in the ancient nights before the first sack of Rome? Yes, I
had painted my own walls with crude, hasty images, and I had let my good-natured guests laugh at
me.




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  Oh yes, a thousand years had passed since then, more in fact, and I could no longer easily pass for
human. I was too pale and too dangerously strong. But was I not more clever now, more wise, more
practiced with the Mind Gift, and more willing to mask my skin with whatever emollients were
required to dim its preternatural gleam?
I was desperate to do it!
  Of course it would not be in Florence. That was far too close to Botticelli. I would attract his
notice and were he to set foot under my roof, I would be driven to extremes of pain. I was in love
with the man. I could not deny it. But I had another, most marvelous choice.
  It was the gorgeous and glittering city of Venice which drew me with its indescribably majestic
palaces, their windows open to the
constant breezes of the Adriatic, and its dark winding canals.
  It seerned I should make a new and spectacular beginning there, purchasing for myself the finest
house available, and acquiring a bevy of apprentices to prepare my paints for me, and the walls of
my own house which would eventually receive my best efforts after I had done some panels and
canvases to once again learn my craft.
As for my identity I would be Marius de Romanus, a man of mystery
    and incalculable wealth. Simply put, I would bribe those I had to bribe to obtain the right to
remain in Venice, and thereafter spend freely among those who came to know me in the smallest
capacity, and give generously to my apprentices who would be recipients of the finest education I
could obtain for them.
  Understand please that in this time the cities of Florence and Venice were not part of one country.
Far from it. Each was a country unto itself. And so being in Venice I was quite removed from
Botticelli, and would be subject to very important laws which the citizens of Venice were required
to obey.
  Now as to the matter of my appearance I intended to be careful in the extreme. Imagine the effect
upon a mortal heart were I to reveal myself in all my coldness, a blood drinker of some fifteen
hundred years in age with purely white skin and flashing blue eyes. So the
matter of emollients was no small thing.
  Renting rooms in the city, I purchased from the perfume shops the very finest tinted salves I
could find. Then to my skin I applied these ointments, carefully inspecting the results in the finest
mirrors which could be had. I soon made a blending of salves which was most perfect for not only
darkening my cold complexion, but for bringing back to visibility in it the finest little wrinkles or
lines.
I myself had not known that these lines of human expression still


remained to me, and I was most happy to discover them, and I rather liked the image that I
presented to the glass. As for the perfume, it was pleasing, and I realized that once settled in my
own house, I could have the proper salves made for me arid have them always on hand.
It took some months to complete my entire plan.
  And this was largely because I had fallen in love with one particular palazzo, a house of great
beauty, its facade covered in glistering marble tiles, its arches in the Moorish style, and its immense
rooms more luxurious than anything I had ever beheld in all my nights, and even my long ago
days. The lofty ceilings amazed me. We had known nothing like them in old Rome, at least not in a
private house. And on top of the immense roof was a carefully arranged roof garden from which
one could view the sea.



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  Once the ink was dry upon the parchment, I set out to purchase for myself the finest furnishings
imaginable--coffered beds, desks, chairs, tables, all the usual appointments including gold-
threaded draperies for every window--and I set to the task of managing all this a clever and genial
old man named Vincenzo, a creature of extremely solid health, whom I had bought almost as if he
were a slave from a family who had no more use for him and kept him about in shameful neglect
because he had once educated their sons.
  I saw in Vincenzo just the sort of governor I would need for all the apprentices I meant to buy
from their Masters, boys who would bring some skill already learnt to the tasks they had to do for
me. I was also pleased with the fact that the man was already old which meant I did not have to be
tormented by the spectacle of youth dying in him. Rather I could pride myself, perhaps foolishly,
on visiting upon him a rather splendid old age.
How did I find the creature? I went about reading minds to discover what I wanted.
  I was now more powerful than ever, I could find the Evil Doer effortlessly. I could hear the secret
thoughts of those who sought to cheat me or those who loved the mere sight of me. And the latter
was a dangerous thing.
  Why dangerous, you might ask? The answer is that I was now more than ever susceptible to love,
and when seen with loving eyes I knew it and I slowed my pace.
  What a strange mood would descend upon me while walking in the arcade along San Marco if
someone should be looking at me admiringly.


    I would turn about, taking my time, and double back perhaps, and only reluctantly move away,
rather like a bird in some northern clime enjoying the warmth of the sun on its wings.
  Meantime, with gold in his hands, Vincenzo was sent to buy fine clothes for himself. I would
make a gentleman of him, in so far as the sumptuary laws allowed.
  And seated at my new desk in a spacious bedchamber floored in marble with windows open to
the winds off the canal, I wrote out lists of those additional luxuries which I desired.
I wanted a lavish old Roman-style bath built for me in this bedchamber, so that I could enjoy the
warm water whenever I wished. I wanted shelves for my books, and a finer chair for this desk. Of
course there should be another library. What was a house to me if it did not possess a library? I
wanted the finest clothing, the fashionable hats and leather shoes.
I drew pictures to guide those who would carry out my designs.
  These were heady times. I was a part of life once more and my heart was beating to a human
pace.
Hailing a gondola at the quais, I traveled the canals for hours looking
  up at the spectacular facades which made up the waterways of Venice. I listened to the voices
everywhere. I lay back sometimes on my elbow and gazed up at the stars.
  At various goldsmith shops and painters' workshops I chose my first gathering of apprentices,
taking every opportunity to select the brilliant ones who were for various reasons among the
wronged, and neglected, and abused. They would show me profound loyalty and untapped
knowledge, and I sent them off to their new home with gold coins in their hands.
  Of course I procured clever assistants because those were necessary, but I knew I would be very
successful with the poorlings. Force was riot required.
  Meantime, it was my wish that my boys should be educated for the university--not a customary
thing with a painter's apprentice--so I chose tutors for them and arranged for these men to come to
my house in the daylight hours to perform instruction as required.



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  The boys would learn Latin, Greek, philosophy, the newfound and much valued "classics," some
mathematics and whatever they needed to proceed in life. If they excelled in painting and they
chose it, they could of course forget the university and follow the painter's path.


  Finally I had a houseful of healthy and noisy activity. There were cooks in the kitchen, and
musicians teaching my boys to sing and play the lute. There were dancing instructors and there
were fencing matches over the marble floors of the great salons.
  But I did not open my doors to the populace as I had done in long ago Rome.
  I was too wary to do such a thing in Venice, too unsure of my ruse, too uncertain of what
questions my mad painting might arouse.
  No, I need only have my young male assistants, I fancied, both to keep me company and to help
me, for there was much to be done preparing the walls for my frescoes and covering my panels and
canvases with the proper varnishes for my work.
  As it turned out, there was not much for anyone to do for some weeks, for during that period I
wandered the local workshops and studied the painters of Venice as I had studied the painters of
Florence not long before.
  There was no doubt in my mind, after this studious examination, that I could mimic mortql work
to some extent, but I could not hope to surpass it. And I feared what I would accomplish. And I
resolved to keep my house closed to all but the boys and their instructors as arranged.
  Taking to my bedroom study, I began a journal of my thoughts, the first I had ever kept since the
nights in old Rome.
  I wrote of the comforts I enjoyed. And I chastised myself with more clarity than I did in my mind.
"You have become a fool for the love of mortals," I wrote,
far more than you ever did in the ancient nights. For you know you have chosen these boys so that
you might instruct them and mold them, and there will be loving in it and hope in it, and the
intention of sending them on to be educated at Padua, as though they were your mortal children.
  But what if they should come to discover that you are a beast in heart and soul, and they run from
your touch, what then? Will you slaughter them in their innocence? This is not ancient Rome with
its nameless millions. This is the strict Republic of Venice where you play your games, and for
what?
  For the color of the evening sky over the piazza that you see when you are first risen, for the
domes of the church beneath the moon? For the color of the canals that only you can behold in the
starlight? You are a wicked and greedy creature.
  Will art satisfy you? You hunt elsewhere, in the surrounding towns and hamlets, or even in
distant cities, for you can move with the speed of a god. But you bring evil tp Venice because you
are evil, and in your fine palazzo, lies are told, lies are lived, lies may fail.
  I put down the quill. I read over my words, forever memorizing them, as if they were a foreign
voice speaking to me, and only when I'd finished did I look up to see Vincenzo, so polite and
humble, and so dignified in his new clothes, waiting to speak to me.
"What is it?" I asked gently so as not to make him think I disapproved of him for coming in.
  "Master, only let me tell you . . ." he said. He looked quite elegant in his new velvet, rather like a
prince at court.
"Yes, do tell me," I said.
  "It's only that the boys are so happy. They are all in bed now and sleeping. But do you know what
it means to them that they have plenty to eat and decent clothes, and are learning their lessons with



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a purpose? I could tell you many stories, too many I think. There's not a dullard among them. It's
such luck."
I smiled.
  "That's very good, Vincenzo," I said. "Go have your supper. Enjoy as, much wine as you wjsh."
I sat in the stillness after he had left me.
  It seemed quite impossible that I had made this residence for myself, and that nothing had
stopped me. I had hours before dawn during which I might rest on my bed, or read among my new
books before making the short journey to another place within the city where a sarcophagus had
been hidden in a gold-lined chamber in which I would sleep by day.
  But I chose instead to go to the great room which I had designated as my studio, and there I found
the pigments and other materials ready for me, including several wooden panels which my young
apprentices had prepared as directed for me to paint.
  It was a small matter to blend the tempera and I did it quickly so that I had a wealth of colors at
my command, and then glancing over and over again into a mirror which I had brought into the
room with me, I painted my own portrait in quick exact strokes with little or no correction until it
was complete.
  A.s soon as I was finished, I stood back from my creation, and I found myself staring into my
own eyes. It wasn't the man of long ago who had died in the northern forest, or the frantic blood
drinker who had taken the Mother and the Father out of Egypt. Nor was it the starved and dogged
wanderer who had slipped soundlessly through time for so many hundreds of years.
  It was a bold and proud immortal who looked at me, a blood drinker who demanded that the
world at last give him some quarter, an aberrant being of immense power who insisted that he
might have a place among the human beings of which he had in former times been one.
  As the months passed, I discovered that my plan was working quite well. In fact it was working
marvelously!
  I became obsessed with my new clothing of the period, velvet tunics and stockings, and
marvelpus cloaks trimmed in rare fur. Indeed mirrors were an obsession with me now as well. I
could not stop looking at my own reflection. I applied the salves with great care.
  Each evening, after sunset, I arose fully dressed with the requisite disguise on my skin, and I
arrived at my palazzo to a warm greeting from all my children, and then dismissing the many
teachers and tutors, I presided over a good banquet with my children where all were delighted to
have the rich food of princes, as music played.
  Then in a mild manner I questioned all my apprentices as to what they had learnt that day. Our
conversations were long, complex, and full of wonderful revelations. I could easily surmise which
teacher had been successful, and which had not wrought the effects I desired.
  As for the boys themselves, I soon saw which of the boys possessed the greater talent, who
should be sent off to the University of Padua, and who should be schooled as a goldsmith or a
painter. Of failures we had none.
  You understand, this was a transcendent enterprise. To repeat, I had chosen all of these boys by
means of the Mind Gift, and what I offered them in these months, which soon stretched to years,
was something they would never have had if I had riot intervened.
I had become a magician for them, aiding them to realize accomplishments of which they hadn't
ever} dreamt.
And there was no doubt that I found immense satisfaction in this achievement, for I was a teacher
of these creatures, just as I had long ago wanted to be the teacher of Avicus and Zenobia, and




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during all this time I thought of Avicus and Zenobia. I could not help but think of them and wonder
what had become of them.
Had they survived?
I could not know.
  But I knew this about myself: I had loved both Zenobia and Avicus because they allowed me to
be their teacher. And I had fought with Pandora because she would not. She was far too finely
educated and clever to be anything but a fierce verbal and philosophical opponent and I had left
her, stupidly, on that account.
  But no amount of such self-knowledge caused me to not long for my lost Zenobia and for Avicus,
and to wonder what paths they'd taken through the world. Zenobia's beauty had struck a deeper note
in me than the beauty of Avicus, and I could not relinquish the simple recollection of the softness
of Zenobia's hair.
  Sometimes, when I was alone in my bedroom in Venice, when I sat at my desk watching the
curtains blow out from the windows, I thought of Zenobia's hair. I thought of it lying on the mosaic
floor in Constantinople, after she had cut all of it so that she might travel the streets as a boy. I
wanted to reach back over a thousand years and gather it up in my hands.
  AS for my own blond hair, I could wear it long now for this was the style of the period, and I
rather enjoyed it, brushing it clean without resentment, and going out to walk in the piazza while
the sky was still purple knowing people were looking at me, wondering just what sort of man I was.
  As for my painting, I went about it using a few wooden panels with only a handful of apprentices
in my studio, locked off from the world. I created several successful religious pictures--all of the
Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel appearing to her, because this theme--The Annunciation--
appealed to me. And I was rather amazed at how well I could imitate the style of the times:
  Then I set upon a major undertaking which would be a true test of my immortal skill and wits.


18

LET ME EXPLAIN what this undertaking was to be: There was a chapel in Florence that existed
within a Medici palazzo, and on the walls of this chapel was a great painting by a painter named
Gozzoli of the Procession of the Magi--the three wise men of Scripture--coming to visit the Christ
Child with their precious gifts.
  Now it was a marvelous painting, full of rampant detail. And it was worldly in the extreme, in
that the Magi themselves were clothed as wealthy Florentine citizens and there followed behind
them a huge gathering of similarly clothed men and churchmen so that the whole was a tribute to
the Christ Child and to the times in which the painting had been done.
  This painting covered the walls of this chapel, along with the walls of the recess for the place
where its altar stood. And the chapel itself was quite small.
  Now I was taken with the painting for many reasons. I had not fallen deeply in love with Gozzoli
as I had with Botticelli, but greatly admired him, and the details of this painting were fantastic in
die extreme.
  Not only was the Procession itself enormous, if not actually never ending, but the landscape
behind it was wondrous, filled with towns and mountains, with men hunting and animals running,
with
beautifully realized castles and delicately shaped trees.




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  Well, choosing in my palazzo one of the largest rooms, I set out to duplicate this painting in the
flat mode on one wall. What this meant was that I had to travel back and forth between Florence
and Venice, memorizing parts of this painting, and then render it with all my supernatural skill.
To a very large part I succeeded in my task.
  I "stole" the Procession of the Magi--this fabulous depiction of a procession so important to the
Christians and especially to the Florentines and I laid it out in vivid and exact color on my wall.
  There was nothing original to it. But I had passed a test which I had set for myself, and as no one
was to be admitted to this chamber, I did not fancy that I had truly robbed Gozzoli of anything he
possessed. Indeed if any mortal had found his way into this chamber which I kept locked, I would
have explained that the original of this painting was done by Gozzoli, and indeed when the time
came for me to show it to my apprentices, for the lessons it contained, I did so explain.
  But let me return for a moment to the subject of this stolen work of art. Why did it appeal to me?
What in it made my soul sing? I don't know. Except that it had to do with the three kings giving
gifts, and I fancied that I was giving gifts to the children who lived in my house. But I'm not sure if
that is why I chose the painting for my first
excursion into true work with the brush. I'm not sure at all.
Perhaps it was only that all the details of the work were so fascinating.
   One could fall in love with the horses in the Procession. Or with the faces of the young men. I
shall now leave the subject as puzzled about it as I tell my story, as I was then.
  Immediately after confirming my success with the copy, I opened a spacious painting studio in
the palazzo and began to work on large panels late at night while the boys slept. I did not really
need their help and I did not want them to see the speed or the determination with which I worked.
  My first ambitious painting was dramatic and strange. I painted a gathering of my apprentices in
full fancy dress listening to an old Roman philosopher who wore only his long tunic and cloak and
sandals, and this against a backdrop of the ruins of Rome. It was full of vivid color and my boys
were well rendered, I give myself that. But I didn't know if it was any good. And I didn't know if it
would horrify.
  I left the door open to the studio in the hope that the teachers might wander in there by day.
As it turned out they were far too timid to do it.
  I proceeded to create another painting, and this time I chose the Crucifixion--an approved theme
for any artist--and I rendered it with tender care--and once again I used the backdrop of the ruins
of Rome. Was it sacrilege? I couldn't guess. Once again, I was sure of my colors.

Indeed, this time I was sure of my proportions, and of the sympathetic expression on Christ's face.
But was the composition itself somehow something that should not be?
  How was I to know? I had all this knowledge, all this seeming power. Yet I didn't know. Was I
creating something blasphemous and monstrous?
  I returned to the subject of the Magi. I knew the conventions. Three kings, the stable, Mary,
Joseph, the Infant, Jesus, and this time I did them freely, imputing to Mary the beauty of Zenobia,
and glorying in the colors as before.
Soon my giant workroom was full of paintings. Some were correctly hung. Others were simply
propped against the wall.
  Then one night, at supper to which I'd invited the boys' more refined instructors, one of them, the
Greek teacher, happened to
mention that he had seen into my workshop through an open door.
"Oh, please, tell me," I said, "what did you think of my paintings?"



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  "Most remarkable!" he said frankly. "I've never seen anything like them! Why, all of the figures
in the painting of the Magi..." He broke off, afraid.
"Please go on," I said instantly. "Tell me. I want to know."
  "All of die figures are looking out at us, including Mary, and Joseph, and the three kings. I have
never seen it done in that way."
"But is it wrong?" I asked.
  "I don't think so," he said quickly. "But who's to say? You paint for yourself, don't you?"
  "Yes, I do," I answered. "But your opinion matters to me. I find at moments I'm as fragile as
glass."
  We laughed. Only the older boys were interested in this exchange, and I saw that the very oldest,
Pierp, had something to say. He too had seen the paintings. He had gone inside the room.
  "Tell me everything, Piero," I said, winking at him, and smiling. "Come on. What do you think?"
  "The colors, Master, they were beautiful! When will it be time for us to work with you? I'm more
skilled than you might think."
  "I remember, Piero," I said, referring to the shop from which he'd come. "I'll call upon you soon
enough."
In fact, I called upon them the very next night.
  Having severe doubts about subject matter more than anything else, I resolved to follow Botticelli
in that regard.
  I chose the Lamentation for my subject matter. And I made my Christ as tender and vulnerable as
I could conceivably do it, and I surrounded him with countless mourners. Pagan that I was, I didn't
know who was supposed to be there! And so I created an immense and varied crowd of weeping
mortals--all in Florentine dress--to lament the dead Jesus, and angels in the sky torn with anguish
much like the angels of the painter Giotto whose work I had seen in some Italian city the name of
which I could not recall.
  My apprentices were quite astonished by the work and so were the teachers, whom I invited into
the huge workroom for the initial view. Once again the faces I painted elicited special comment but
so did the bizarre qualities of the painting--the inordinate amount of color and gold--and small
touches I had added, such as insects here and there.
  I realized something. I was free. I could paint what I wanted. Nobody was going to be the wiser.
But then again, I thought, perhaps dial's not true.
  It was desperately important for me to remain in the middle of Venice. I did not want to lose my
foothold in the warm, loving world.
  I drifted out in the following weeks to all the churches once more in search of inspiration for my
paintings, and I studied many a grotesque and bizarre picture which amazed me almost as much as
my own work.
An artist by the name of Carpaccio had created a work called Meditation on the Passion which
revealed the body of the dead Christ endironed against a fantastical landscape, and flanked by two
white-haired saints who peered at the viewer as if Christ were not there!
  In the work of a painter named Criyelli, I found a truly grotesque picture of die dead Savior,
flanked by two angels who looked like monsters. And the same painter had done a Madonna
almost as lovely and lifelike as Botticelli's goddesses or nymphs.
  I arose night after night hungry not for blood, though I certainly fed when I had to feed, but for
my time in thie workshop, and soon my paintings, all of them on large wooden panels, were
propped all over the enormous house.




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  Finally, because I could keep track of them no longer, and went on to tilings new, rather than to
perfect die old, I gave in to Vincenzo that he might have these works properly mounted as he
wished.
  Meanwhile our whole pajazzo, though it had become famous in Venice as "a strange place,"
remained somewhat closed to the world.
Undoubtedly my hired teachers spoke of their days and evenings in the company of Marius de
Romanus, and all our servants gossiped, no question of it, and I did not seek to put an end to such
talk.
  But I did not admit the true citizens of Venice. I did not lay put the banquet table as I had done in
the old nights. I did not open the doors.
  Yet all the while I was longing to do it. I wanted the fashionable world of the city to be received
under my ropf.
  What I did instead of extending invitations was to accept those I received.
Often in the early evening, when I didn't want to dine with my children,
    and long before I needed to begin painting furiously, I went tP other palaces where feasting was
in progress, and I entered, whispering my name when asked, but more often being received without
question and discovering that the guests were eager to have me among them and had heard of my
paintings and of my famous little school where the apprentices hardly did any work at all.
  Of course I kept to the shadows, spoke in vague but gentle words, read minds well enough to
make the most clever conversation and in general almost lost my wits so great was this love to me,
this convivial reception of me which was nothing more than most of the noblemen of Venice took
for granted every night of their lives.
I don't know how many months passed in this way. Two of my students
    went on to Padua. I went out into the city and found four more. Vincenzo shpwed no signs of ill
health. I hired new nid better teachers from time to time. I painted fiercely. So on it went.
  Let me say a year or two had gone by before I was told of a very lovely and brilliant young
woman who maintained a house always open to poets and playwrights and clever philosophers who
could make their visits worth her while.
  Understand the payment in question was not a manner of money; it was that one had to be
interesting to be admitted to this woman's
company; poems had to be lyrical and meaningful; there had to be wit in
conversation; one could play the virginal or the lute only if one knew how.
  I was fiercely curious as to the identity of this creature, and the general sweetness of the reports
of her.
And so passing her house, I listened, and I heard her voice threading through the voices of those
around her, and I knew her to be a mere child, but one filled with anguish and secrets, all of which
she concealed with immense skill behind a graceful manner and a beautiful face.


  How beautiful, I had no idea, until I mounted the steps, entered her rooms boldly and saw her for
myself.
  When I came into the room, she had her back to me, and turned as if my arrival had made some
noise which it had not. I saw her in profile and then completely as she rose to greet me, and I could
not speak for a moment, so great was the impression on my mind of her form and face.
  That Botticelli hadn't painted her was a mere accident. Indeed he might well have done so. She
looked so very like his women that all other thoughts left my mind. I saw her oval face, her oval



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eyes, and her thick wavy blond hair, interwound with long strings of tiny pearls, and the fine shape
of her body with exquisitely molded arms and breasts.
"Yes, like Botticelli," she said, smiling as if I'd spoken it.
 Again, I could say nothing. I was the one who read minds, and yet this child, this woman of
nineteen pr twenty years seemed tp have read mine. But did she know how much I loved Botticelli?
That she could not know.
She went on gaily, reaching out for my hand with both of hers.
 "Everyone says it," she said, "and I'm honored. You plight say I dress my hair this way on
account of Botticelli. You know I was born in Florence, but that's not worth talking about here in
Venice, is it? You're Marius de Romanus. I was wondering how long it would be before you came."
 "Thank you for receiving me," I said. "I fear I come with nothing." I was still shocked by her
beauty, shocked by the sound of her voice. "What have I to offer you?" I asked. "I have no poems,
nor clever stories about the state of things. Tomorrow, I shall have my servants bring you the best
wine I have in my house. But what is that to you?"
"Wine?" she repeated. "I don't want gifts of wine from you, Marius.
  Paint my picture. Paint the pearls interwound in my hair, I should love it."
 There was soft laughter all around the room. I gazed musingly at the others. The candlelight was
dim even for me. How rich it all seemed, these naive poets and students of the classics, this
indescribably beautiful woman, and the room itself with all the usual splendid trappings, and time
passing slowly as though the moments had some meaning and were not a sentence of penitence and
grief.
 I was in my glory. I realized it quite suddenly and then something else struck me.
This young woman was in her glory too.
 Something sordid and evil lay behind her recent fortunes here, yet she displayed nothing of the
desperation she must surely feel.
 I tried to read her mind and then I chose not to do it! I didn't want anything but this moment.
 I wanted to see this woman as she wanted me to see her--young, infinitely kind, yet utterly well
defended--a companion for the night's cheerful gatherings, mysterious mistress of her own house.
 Indeed, I saw another great drawing room adjacent to this one, and beyond it a marvelously
decorated bedroom with a bed made of golden swans and gold-threaded silk.
 Why this display if not to tell everyone that in that bed, this woman slept alone? No one was ever
to presume to cross that threshold, but all might see where the maiden retired of her own accord.
 "Why do you stare at me?" she asked me. "Why do you look about yourself as if this is a strange
place to you when surely it's not? "
 "All of Venice is lovely to me," I answered, making my voice soft and confidential so that it
would not be for the whole room.
 "Yes, isn't it?" she said, smiling exquisitely. "I too love it. I'll never return to Florence. But will
you paint a picture of me?"
"Perhaps I will," I answered. "I don't know your name."
 "You're not serious," she said, smiling again. I realized suddenly how very worldly she was. "You
didn't come here not knowing my name. How could you want me to believe such a thing?"
 "Oh, but I don't know it," I said, because I had never asked her name, and had learnt of her
through vague images and impressions and fragments of conversation overheard by me as a blood
drinker, and I stood at a loss because I wouldn't read her mind.
 "Bianca," she said. "And my rooms are always open to you. And if you paint my picture, I'll be in
your debt."



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  There were more guests coming. I knew that she meant to receive them. I backed away from her
and took a station, so to speak, in the shadows well away from the candles, and from there I
watched her, watched her infallibly graceful movements and heard her clever, ringing voice.
Over the years, I had beheld a thousand mortals who meant nothing
   to me, and now, gazing at this one creature I felt my heart tripping as it had when I had entered
Botticelli's workshop, when I had seen his paintings and seen him, Botticelli, the man. Oh, yes, the
man.
I stayed in her rooms only for a short time that night.
  But I returned within the week with a portrait of her. I had painted it on a small panel and had it
framed with gold and jewels.
I saw her shock when she received it. She had not expected something so exact. But then I feared
she might see something wrong.
  When she looked at me, I felt her gratitude and her affection and something greater collecting
inside her, an emotion she denied in dealing with others.
"Who are you ... really?" she asked me in a soft, lilting whisper.
"Who are you ... really?" I repeated, and I smiled.
  She looked at me gravely. Then she smiled too but she didn't answer, and all her secrets folded
inside her--the sordid things, things to do with blood and gold.
  For a moment, I thought my powerful self-control would be lost. I would embrace her, whether or
not she would have it, and take her rapidly by force from the veiy middle of her warm and safe
rooms to die cold and fatal domain of my soul.
  I saw her, positively saw her as if the Christian Satan were giving me visions once more--I saw
her transformed by the Dark Blood. I saw her as if she were mine, and all her youth burnt out in
sacrifice to immortality, and the only warmth or riches known to her those which came from me.
  I left her rooms. I couldn't remain there. For nights, no, months I did not return. In that time a
letter came to me from her. I was quite astonished to receive it and I read it over and over and then
put it in a poqket inside my tunic next to my heart.
My dear Marius,
  Why leave me with only a brilliant painting when I would have your companionship as well? We
are always seeking for amusement here, and there is much kind talk of you. Do come back to me.
Your painting occupies a position of honor on the wall of my salon so that I might share the
pleasure of it with all who come.
How had this happened, this craving to make a mortal my companion?
After so many centuries, what had I done to bring it on?
  I had thought that, with Botticelli, it had to do with his remarkable talent, and that I, with eyes so
sharp and heart so hungry, had wanted to mingle the Blood with his inexplicable gift.

  But this child, Bianca, was no such seeming miracle, no matter how precious I found her to be.
Oh, yes, she was to my taste as if I'd made her--the daughter of Pandora--it was as if Botticelli
had created her, even to the somewhat dreamy expression of her face. And she did have a
seemingly impossible mingling of fire and poise.
  But I had in rny long miserable years seen many beautiful humans, rich and poor, younger and
older, and I had not felt this sharp, near uncontrollable desire to bring her to me, to take her to the
shrine with me, to spill out to her whatever wisdom I possessed.




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  What was I to do with this pain? How should I be rid of it? How long would it torment me right
here in the city of Venice where I had chosen to seek comfort from mortals and give back to the
world in secret payment my blessed and well-educated boys?
  On rising, I found myself shaking loose light dreams of Bianca, dreams in which she and I were
sitting in my bedroom and talking together as I told her of all the long lonely paths I'd trod, talking
together as she told me of how she had drawn from common and filthy pain her immeasurable
strength.
  Even as I attended the feast with my students I couldn't shake off these dreams. They broke in on
me as if I were falling asleep over the wine and meats. The boys vied for my attention. They
thought they had failed the Master.
  When I went to my rooms to paint, I was equally confused. I painted a large picture of Bianca as
the Virgin Mary with a chubby Infant Jesus. I laid down the brushes. I wasn't content. I couldn't be
content.
  I went out of Venice into the countryside. I searched for the Evil Doer. I drank blood until I was
glutted. And then I returned to my rooms, and I lay down on my bed and I dreamt of Bianca again.
At last before dawn I wrote my admonitions down in my diary:
This desire to make an immortal companion is no more justified
    here than it was in Florence. You have survived all your long life without ever taking this evil
step, though you know well how to do it--the Druid priest taught you how to do it--and not doing
it, you will continue to survive. You cannot bring over this child to you, no matter how you
envision it. Imagine her to be a statue. Imagine your evil to be a force that would shatter that statue.
See her then in fragments. Know that that is what you would do.

I went back to her rooms.
  It was as if I'd never seen her before, so great was her impression upon me, so soft and
compelling her voice, so radiant her face and her worldly eyes. It was an agony and also an
immeasurable consolation to be near her.
  For months I came to her rooms, pretending to listen to the poems recited, sometimes forced to
answer in the gentle discussions regarding the theories of aesthetics or philosophy, but all the
while simply wanting to be near her, studying the minutia of her beauty, closing my eyes now and
then as I listened to the song of her voice.
  Visitors came and went from her famous gatherings. No one dared question her supremacy within
her own domain. But as I sat, as I observed, as I let myself dream in the candlelight, there came to
my observation something subtle and dreadful as ever I had beheld.
  Certain men who came into these rooms were marked for a dark and specific purpose. Certain
men, well known to the divinely alluring mistress, received in their wine a poison which would
follow them as they left the genial company and soon accomplish their"deaths!
  At first, when I with my preternatural senses had smelled this subtle but certain poison I thought I
had imagined such a thing. But then with the Mind Gift, I saw into the heart of this enchantress, and
how she lured those whom she must poison, knowing little or nothing of why they had been
condemned to death.
  This was the sordid lie I had first perceived in her. A kinsman, a Florentine banker, kept her in
terror. Indeed it was he who had brought her here, provided her with her nest of lovely chambers
and ever playing music. It was he who demanded of her that the poison be placed in the proper cup
to do away with those he chose.




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  HOW calmly her blue eyes passed over those who drank the fatal potion. How calmly she
watched as the poetry was read to her. How calmly she smiled at me when her eyes happened to
fall upon the tall blond-haired man who observed her from the corner. And how deep her despair!
  Armed with this new knowledge, no, driven to distraction by it, I went out into the night roaming,
for now I had the proof on her of guilt immeasurable! Was this not sufficient to bring her over, to
force the Dark Blood upon her, and then say, "No, my darling, I haven't taken your life, I've given
you eternity with me!"
  Beyond the city I walked the country roads for hours, sometimes pounding my forehead with the
heels of my palms.

  I want her, I want her, I want her. But I could not bring myself to do it. At last I went home to
paint her portrait. And night after night, I painted her portrait again. I painted her as the Virgin of
the Annunciation, and the Virgin with Child. I painted her as the Virgin in the Lamentation. I
painted her as Venus, as Flora, I painted her on small panels that I brought to her. 1 painted her
until I could endure it no longer. I slumped on the floor of rny painting room, and when the
apprentices came to me in the dark hours of the dawn, they thought me sick and cried out.
  But I couldn't bring harm to her. I couldn't bring my Evil Blood to her. I couldn't take her over to
me, and now a most great and grotesque quality attached itself to her in my eyes.
  She was evil as I was evil, and when I watched her from the corner of her room, I fancied that I
studied a thing which was like unto myself.
  For her life, she dispatched her victims. For my life, I drank human blood.
  And so this tender girl, in her costly gowns with her long blond locks and soft cheeks, took on a
dark majesty for me; and I was fascinated by her more than ever before.
  One night, so great was my pain, so dire was my need to separate myself from this young woman,
that I went alone in my gondola, telling my oarsman to row back and forth through the smallest
canals of the city and not bring me back to the palazzo until I gave the command.
  What did I seek? The smell of death and rats in the blackest waters, The occasional merciful
flashes of the moon.
  I lay down in the boat, my head on my pillow. I listened to the voices of the city so that I would
not hear my own.
  And quite suddenly, as we came into the wider canals again, as. we came into a certain district of
Venice, there came a voice quite different from all the others, for it was speaking from a desperate
and deranged mind.
  In a flash I saw an image behind the cry of this voice, the image of a painted face. Indeed, I saw
the paint laid on in marvelous strokes. I knew the painted face. It was the face of Christ!
  What did this mean? In a solemn silence, I listened. No other voice mattered to me. I banished a
city full of whispers.
  It was a woeful crying. It was the voice of a child behind thick walls who on account of the recent
cruelties done him could not remember his native language or even his name.
Yet in that forgotten language he prayed to be delivered from those who had cast him down in
darkness, those who had tormented him and jabbered at him in a tongue he didn't know.
Once again there came that image, the painted Christ staring forward. The painted Christ in a time-
honored and Greek style. Oh, how well I knew this fashion of painting; oh, how well I knew this
countenance.
     Had I not seen it a thousand times in Byzantium, and in all those places East and West to
which its power had reached?



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  What did this mean, this mingled voice and imagery? What did it mean that the child thought
again and again of an ikon and did riot know that he prayed?
  Once again there came the plea from one who thought himself to be utterly silent.
  And I knew the language in which he prayed. It was no matter to me to disentangle it, to put the
words in order, having as I did such a knowledge of languages the world wide. Yes, I knew his
tongue and I knew his prayer. "Dear God, deliver me. Dear God, let me die."
A frail child, a hungry child, a child who was alone.
  Sitting up in the gondola, I listened. I delved for the images locked away inside the child's most
wordless thoughts.
  He had once been a painter, this bruised and young one. The face of Christ had been his work. He
had once mixed the egg yolk and the pigment just as I mixed them. He had once painted the face of
Christ, again and again!
Whence came this voice? I had to discover the source of it. I listened with all my skill.
  Somewhere very near, this child was imprisoned. Somewhere very near, he offered up his prayer
with his last breath.
He had painted his precious ikons in the far country of snowy Russia.
   Indeed, this child had been supremely gifted in the painting of ikons. But he could not remember
that now. That was the mystery. That was the complexity! He could not even see the images which
I was seeing, so broken was his heart.
  I could understand what he himself could not understand. And he was pleading silently with
Heaven in a Russian dialect to be delivered from those who had made him a slave in Venice and
sought to make him serve others in a brothel through acts which to him were sins of the flesh which
he could not abide!
I told my oarsman to stop.
  I listened until I had found the exact source. I directed the boat to go back only a few doors until I
found the precise place.

  The torches were burning brightly before the entrance. I could hear the music inside.
  The voice of the child was persistent, and yet there came that clear understanding on my part that
the child did not know his own prayers, his own history, his own tongue.
  I was greeted by the owners of the house with great fanfare. They knew of me. I must come in. I
could have whatever I wanted under their roof. Just beyond the door lay paradise. Listen to the
laughter, and the singing.
  "What do you desire, Master?" a pleasant-voiced man asked of me. "You can tell me. We have no
secrets here."
  I stood listening. How reticent I must have seemed--this tall, blond-haired man with such a chilly
manner, who cocked his head to one side and looked away wifh his thoughtful blue eyes.
  I tried to see the boy, but I could not. The boy was locked away where no one saw him. How
would I proceed? Ask to see all of the boys of the house? That would not do it, for this one was in a
chamber of punishment, cold arid quite alone.
  Then suddenly the answer came to me as though angels had spoken it, or was it the Devil? It
came swiftly and completely.
  "To purchase, you understand," I said, "with gold of course, and now, a boy you want to be rid of.
One recently arrived here who will not do as he's told-"
  In a flash I saw the boy in the man's eyes. Only it could not be true. I could not have such luck.
For this boy had beauty as bountiful as Bianca's. I did not count upon it.



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  "Recently come from Istanbul," I said. "Yes, I think that is correct, for the boy was no doubt
brought from Russian climes."
  I need say no more words. Everyone was scurrying about. Someone had put a goblet of wine into
my hands. I smelled the lovely scent of it, and set it down on the table. It seemed a flood of rose
petals descended. Indeed there was everywhere the perfume of flowers. A chair was brought for
me. I did not sit on it.
Suddenly the man who had greeted me returned to the room.
  "You don't want that one," he said quickly. He was greatly agitated. And once again, I saw a clear
image of the boy lying on a stone floor.
  And I heard the boy's prayers: "Deliver me." And I saw the Face of Christ in gleaming egg
tempera. I saw the jewels set into the halo. I saw the egg and pigment mixing. "Deliver me."
  "Can't you understand me?" I asked. "I told you what I wanted. I want that boy, the one who
won't do what you try to force him to do."
Then I realized it.
  The brothel keeper thought the boy was dying. He was afraid of the law. He stood before me in
terror.
  "Take me to him," I said. I pressed him with the Mind Gift. "Do it now. I know of him and won't
leave here without him. Besides, I'll pay you. I don't care if he's sick and dying. Do you hear me?
I'll take him away with me. You'll never have to worry about him again."
  It was a cruel small chamber in which they'd locked him, and into that chamber the light of a
lamp flooded upon the child.
  And there I saw beauty, beauty which has always been my downfall, beauty as in Pandora, as in
Avicus, as in Zenobia, as in Bianca, beauty in a new and celestial form.
  Heaven had cast down upon this stone floor an abandoned angel, of auburn curls and perfectly
formed limbs, of fair and mysterious face.
  I reached down to take him by the arms and I lifted him, and I looked into his half-opened eyes.
His soft reddish hair was loose and tangled. His flesh was pale and the bones of his face only
faintly sharpened by his Slavic blood.
  "Amadeo," I said, the name springing to my lips as though the angels willed it, the very angels
whom he resembled in his purity and in his seeming innocence, starved as he was.
  His eyes grew wide as he stared at me. In majesty and golden light, I saw again in his mind those
ikons which he had painted. Desperately he struggled to remember. Ikons. The Christ he had
painted. With long hair and burning eyes, I resembled the Christ.
  He tried to speak, but the language had left him. He tried to find the name of his Lord.
  "I'm not the Christ, my child," I said, speaking to that part of him deep within the mind of which
he knew nothing. "But one who comes with his own salvation. Amadeo, come into my arms."



19

I LOVED HIM INSTANTLY and impossibly. He was fifteen years old at the most when I took
him out of the brothel that night and brought him to live in the palazzo with my boys.
  As I held him close to me in the gondola, I knew him certainly to have been doomed--indeed,
snatched at the last moment from an inconsequential death.




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  Though the firmness of my arms comforted him, the beat of his heart was barely sufficient to
drive the images which I received from him as he lay against my chest.
  Reaching the palazzo, I refused Vincenzo's assistance, sending him off for food for the child, and
I took my Amadeo into my bedchamber alone.
  I laid him upon my bed, a wan and ragged being, amid the heavy velvet hangings and pillows,
and when the soup at last came, I forced it through his lips myself.
  Wine, soup, a potion of honey and lemon, what more could we give him? Slowly, cautioned
Vincenzo, lest he take too much after the starvation, and his stomach suffer as the result.
  At last I sent Vincenzo away from us, and I bolted the doors of my room.
  Was that the fateful moment? Was it the moment in which I knew my soul most completely, the
moment in which I acknowledged that this would be a child of my power, my immortality, a pupil
of all I knew?
  As I looked at the child on the bed, I forgot the language of guilt and recrimination. I was Marius,
the witness of the centuries, Marius, the chosen one of Those Who Must Be Kept.


  Taking Amadeo into the bath, I cleansed him myself and covered him with kisses. I drew from
him an easy intimacy which he had denied all those who had tormented him, so dazzled and
confused was he by my simple kindnesses, and the words I whispered in his tender ears.
  I brought him quickly to know the pleasures which he had never allowed himself before. He was
dazed and silent; but his prayers for deliverance were no more.
  Yet even here in the safety of this bedroom, in the arms of one he saw as his Savior, nothing of
his old memory could move from the recesses of his mind into the sanctum of reason.
  Indeed, perhaps rny frankly carnal embraces made the wall in his mind, between past and present,
all the more strong.
As for me, I had never experienced such pure intimacy with a mortal, except with those I meant to
kill. It gave me chills to have my arms around this boy, to press my lips to his cheeks and chin, his
forehead, his tender closed eyes.
  Yes, the blood thirst rose, but I knew so well how to control it. I filled my nostrils with the smell
of his youthful flesh.
  I knew that I could do anything I wanted with him. There was no force between Heaven and Hell
that could stop me. And I did not need a Satan to tell me that I could bring him over to me and
educate him within the Blood.
Drying him gently with towels, I returned him to the bed.
  I sat down at my desk, where turning to the side I might look directly at him, and there came the
full-blown idea of it, as rich as my desire to seduce Botticelli, as terrible as my passion for the
lovely Bianca.
  This was a foundling who could be educated for the Blood! This was a child utterly lost to life
who could be reclaimed specifically for the Blood.
  Would his training be a night, a week, a month, a year? Only I need decide it.
Whatever it was, I would make of him a child of the Blood.
  My mind went back swiftly to Eudoxia and how she had spoken of the perfect age for the Blood
to be received. I remembered Zenobia and her quick wits and knowing eyes. I remembered my own
long ago reflection on the promise of a virgin, that one could make of a virgin what one wished
without price.




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And this child, this rescued slave, had been a painter! He knew the magic of the egg and the
pigments, yes, he knew the magic of the color spread upon the wooden panel. He would remember;
he would remember a time when he cared about nothing else.
  True it had been in far-away Russia, where those who worked in monasteries limited themselves
to the style of the Byzantines which I had long ago rejected as I turned my back on the Greek
Empire and came to make my home amid the strife of the West.
  But behold what had happened: the West had had its wars, yes, and indeed, the barbarians had
conquered all it did seem. Yet Rome had risen again through the great thinkers and painters of the
1400s! I beheld it in the work of Botticelli, and Bellini and Filippo Lippi and in a hundred others.
  Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Plutarch--they were all being studied once again. The scholars
of "humanism" sang songs of
"antiquity."
  In sum, the West had risen again with new and fabulous cities, whereas Constantinople, old
golden Constantinople, had been lost to the Turks who had made it Istanbul.
  But far beyond Istanbul, there lay Russia from which this boy had been taken prisoner, Russia
which had taken its Christianity from Constantinople so that this boy knew only the ikons of strict
somber style and rigid beauty, an art which was as remote from what I painted as night from day.
  Yet in the city of Venice both styles existed: the Byzantine style and the new style of the times.
How had it come about? Through trading. Venice had been a seaport since its beginnings. Its great
fleet had gone back and forth between East and West when Rome was a ruin. And many a church
in Venice preserved the old Byzantine style which filled this boy's
tortured mind.
  These Byzantine churches had never much mattered to me before, I had to admit. Not even the
Doge's chapel, San Marco, had much mattered to me. But they mattered now, because they helped
me to understand again and all the better the art which this boy had loved.
I stared at him as he slept.
  All right. I understood something of his nature; I understood his suffering. But who was he
really? I posed the same question which Bianca and I had exchanged with each other. The answer I
did not have.
  Before I could think of moving forward with my plan to prepare him for the Blood I must know.
  Would it take a night, or a hundred nights? Whatever the time, it would not be endless.
Amadeo was destined for me.
  I turned and wrote in my diary. Never had such a design occurred to me before, to educate a
novice for the Blood! I described all the events of the night so that I might never lose them to
overwrought memory. I drew sketches of Amadeo's face as he slept.
  How can I describe him? His beauty did not depend on his facial expression. It was stamped
already on the face. It was all wrought up with his fine bones, serene mouth, and his auburn curls.
I wrote passionately in my diary.
  This child has come from a world so different from our own that he can make no sense of what
has happened to him. But I know the snowy lands of Russia. I know the dark dreary life of Russian
and Greek monasteries, and it was in one of these, I am quite convinced, that he painted the ikons
which he cannot speak of now.
  As for our tongue, he's had no experience with it except in cruelty. Perhaps when the boys make
him one of them, he will remember his past. Pie will want to take up the paintbrush. His talent will
come forth again.




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  I put the quill aside. I could not confide everything to my diary. No, not everything by any means.
Great secrets I sometimes wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but even in Greek I could not say all
that I thought.
  I looked at the boy. I took up the candelabrum and I approached the bed and I looked down at
him as he slept there, easy at last, breathing as though he were safe.
  Slowly his eyes opened. He looked up at me. There was no fear in him. Indeed, it seemed that he
still dreamed.
I gave myself over to the Mind Gift.
Tell-me, child, tell me from your heart.
  I saw the riders of the Steppes come down upon him and a band of his people. I saw a bundle
drop from the boy's anxious hands. The cloth wrapping fell away from it. It was an ikon, and the
boy cried out


fearfully, but the evil barbarians wanted only the boy. They were the same inevitable barbarians
who had never ceased to raid along the Roman Empire's long-forgotten Northern and Easterri
frontiers. Would the world never see an end to their kind?
  By those evil men, this child had been brought to some Eastern marketplace. Was it Istanbul?
And from there to Venice where he fell into the hands of a brothel keeper who had bought him for
high
payment on account of face and form.
  The cruelty of this, the mystery of it, had been overwhelming. In the hands of another, this boy
might never be healed.
Yet in his mute expression now I saw pure trust.
"Master," he said softly in the Russian tongue.
  I felt the tiny hairs rise all over my body. I wanted so to touch him once more with my cold
fingers but I did not dare. I knelt beside the bed and leant over and I kissed his cheek warmly.
"Amadeo," I said to him so that he might know his new name.
  And then using the very Russian tongue he knew, but did not know, I told him that he was mine
now, that I was his Master just as he had said. I gave him to know that all things were resolved in
me. He must never worry, he would never fear again.
It was almost morning. I had to leave.
  Vincenzo came knocking. The eldest among the apprentices were waiting outside. They had
heard that a new boy had been brought into the house.
  I admitted them to the bedroom. I told them they must take care of Amadeo. They must acquaint
him with all our common wonders. They must let him rest for a while, surely, but they could take
him out into the city. Perhaps it was the perfect thing to do.
"Riccardo," I charged the eldest. "Take this one under your wing."
  What a lie it was! I stood thinking of it. It was a lie to give him over to the daylight, to
companionship other than my own.
  But the rising sun gave nie no more time in the palazzo. What else could I do?
I went to my grave.
I lay down in darkness dreaming of him.
  I had found an escape from the love of Botticelli. I had found an escape from the obsession with
Bianca and her tantalizing guilt. I had found one whom death and cruelty had already marked. The
Blood would be the ransom. Yes, all things were resolved in me.



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                                           Blood and Gold


  Oh, but who was he? What was he? I knew the memories, the images, the horrors, the prayers,
but not the voice! And something tormented me savagely, even in my avowed certainty. Did I not
love this child too much to do what I planned to do?
The following night a splendid surprise awaited me.
There was my Amadeo at supper gorgeously turned out in blue velvet, as splendidly clothed as the
other boys!
  They had hastened to complete the tailoring of his clothes to make me happy and indeed I was,
almost to the point of being stunned.
  As he knelt to kiss my ring, I was speechless, and with both my hands I bid him rise, and I
embraced him, kissing him quickly on both cheeks.
  He was still weak from his ordeals, I could see it, but the other boys as well as Vincenzo had
gone a long way to put some color into his face.
  As we sat down to supper, Riccardo explained that Amadeo could paint nothing. Indeed, Amadeo
was afraid of the brushes and the pots of paint. And that he knew no language but he was picking
up with amazing quickness our own tongue.
  The beautiful boy with the auburn hair who was Amadeo gazed at me calmly as Riccardo spoke.
And once again he said in the soft Russian tongue: Master, which the other boys did not hear.
   You are for w,e. That was my answer for him. The soft words in Russian that I gave to him
through the Mind Gift. Remember. Who were you before you came here? Before they hurt you? Go
back. Go back to the ikon. Go back to the Face of Christ if need be.
A look of fear passed over him. Riccardo, not dreaming of the reason
   why, quickly took his hand. Riccardo began to name the simple objects of the supper table for
him. And Amadeo as if waking from a nightmare smiled at Riccardo and repeated the words.
  How sharp and fine his voice. How sure the pronunciation. How quick the look of his brown
eyes.
  "Teach him everything," I said to Riccardo and to the teachers assembled. "See to it that he
studies dancing, fencing, and most of all painting. Show him every picture in the house, and every
sculpture. Take him everywhere. See that he learns all there is to know about Venice."
Then I retired to the painting room alone.
Quickly I mixed up the tempera, and I painted a small portrait of

Amadeo as I'd seen him at supper, in his fine tunic of blue velvet with his hair shining and combed.
  I was weak from the heat of my own miserable thoughts. The fact was, my conviction had left
me.
  How could I take from this boy the cup he'd barely tasted? He was a dead creature brought back
to life. I had robbed myself of my own Child of the Blood by my own splendid designs.
  From that moment afterwards for months to come, Amadeo belonged to daylight. Yes, he must
have every chance in the daylight to make of himself whatever he would!
  Yet in his mind, unbeknownst to the others in any material way, Amadeo perceived himself, at
my behest, as secretly and completely belonging to me.
It was for me a great and terrible contradiction.
  I relinquished my claim upon the child. I couldn't condemn him to the Dark Blood, no matter how
great my loneliness or how great his former misery had been. He must have his chance now among
the apprentices and scholars of my household, and should he prove to be a princeling as I fully




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                                           Blood and Gold

expected from his immediate brightness, he should have his chance to move on to the University of
Padua or the
                                         University of Bologna where my students were now going
one after the other as my myriad plans came to fruition beneath my all-encompassing roof.
  Yet in the late evenings, when the lessons had ceased and the little boys had been put to bed, and
the older boys were finishing tasks in my studio, I couldn't stop myself from taking Amadeo into
my bedroom study, and there I visited on him my carnal kisses, my sweet and bloodless kisses, my
kisses of need, and he gave himself to me without reserve.
  My beauty charmed him. Is it pride to say so? I had no doubt of it. I need not work the Mind Gift
to render him spellbound. He adored me. And though my paintings terrified him, something in his
deep soul allowed him to worship my seeming talent--the deftness of my
composition, my vibrant colors, my graceful speed.
  Of course he never spoke of this to the others. And they, the boys, who surely must have known
that we spent hours together in the
bedroom, never dared think of what happened between us. As for Vincenzo, he knew better than to
acknowledge this strange relationship in any respect.

  Meanwhile, Amadeo recovered nothing of his memory. He could not paint, he could not touch
the brushes. It was as if the colors, when raw, burnt his eyes.
  But his wit was as sharp as any among the other boys. He learnt Greek and Latin quickly, he was
a wonder at dancing, he loved his lessons with the rapier. He absorbed readily the lectures of the
brighter teachers. He was soon writing Latin in a clear and steady hand.
  In the evening he read aloud his verses to me. He sang to me, softly accompanying himself on the
lute.
  I sat at my desk, leaning upon my elbow, listening to his low and measured voice.
  His hair was always beautifully combed, his clothes elegant and immaculate, his fingers, like
mine, covered in rings.
  Didn't everyone know he was the boy I kept? My minion, my lover, my secret treasure? Even in
old Rome, amid a wilderness of vices, there would have been whispers, low laughter, some bit of
mockery.
  Here in Venice for Marius de Romanus, there was none. But Amadeo had his suspicions, not as
to kisses that were fast becoming all too chaste for him, but as to the man of seeming marble, who
never supped at his own table, nor took a drop of wine from a goblet, or ever appeared beneath his
own roof during the light of day.
  Along with these suspicions, I saw in Amadeo a growing confusion as memories tried to make
themselves known to him and he would deny them, sometimes waking beside me as we dozed
together, and tormenting me with kisses when I would rather dream.
  One evening, in die early and beautiful months of winter when I came in to greet my eager
students, Riccardo told me that he had taken Amadeo with him to visit the lovely and gracious
Bianca Solderini, and she had made them welcome, delighted by Amadeo's poetry and the manner
in which he could pen tributes for her on the very spot.
  I looked into the eyes of my Amadeo. He had been enchanted by her. How well I understood it.
And how strange a mood descended upon me as the boys talked of her pleasant company and the
fascinating English gentlemen now visiting her house.
Bianca had sent a small note to me.




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  "Marius, I miss you. Do come soon and bring your boys with you. Amadeo is as clever as
Riccardo. I have your portraits everywhere. All are curious about the man who painted them, but I
say nothing, for in truth I know nothing. Lovingly, Bianca."

  When I looked up from the note, I saw Amadeo watching me, probing me as it were with his
silent eyes.
"Do you know her, Master?" he asked me soberly, surprising Riccardo, who said nothing.
  "You know I do, Amadeo. She told you I had come to visit her. You saw my portraits on her
walls."
  I sensed a sudden and violent jealousy in him. But nothing changed in his face. Don't go to her.
That's what his soul said to me. And I knew he wished that Riccardo would leave now and we
could have the shadowy bed, with its concealing velvet curtains, to ourselves.
  There was something stubborn in him, something directed entirely towards our love. And how it
tempted me, how it drew from me the most complete devotion.
"But I want you to remember," I said to him suddenly in his Russian tongue.
It was a shock to him but he didn't understand it.
  "Amadeo," I said in the Venetian dialect, "think back to the time before you came here. Think
back, Amadeo. What was your world then?"
  A flush came to his cheeks. He was miserable. It was as if I'd beaten him.
  Riccardo reached out for him with a consoling hand. "Master," he said, "it's too hard for him."
  Amadeo seemed paralyzed. I rose from my chair at the desk and I put my arm around him where
he sat and I kissed the top of his head.
  "Come, forget everything. We'll go to see Bianca. This is die time of night which she likes the
best."
  Riccardo was amazed to be permitted out at this hour. As for Amadeo he was still dazed.
  We found Bianca thickly surrounded by her chattering guests. There were Florentines among
them, and Englishmen as I'd been told.
Bianca brightened as she saw me. She took me away from the others, towards her bedchamber
where the elaborate swan bed was exquisitely adorned as if it were something on a stage.
  "You've come at last," she said. "I'm so glad to see you. You don't know how I've missed you.''
How warm were her words. "You are the only painter who exists in my world, Marius." She
wanted to kiss me but I couldn't risk it. I bent to press my lips to her cheek quickly and then I held
her back.
Ah, such radiant sweetness. Gazing into her oval eyes, I stepped into the paintings of Botticelli. I
held in my hands, for reasons I could never know, the dark perfumed tresses of Zenobia, gathered
up in memory from the floor of a house on the other side of the world.
  "Bianca, my darling," I said to her. "I'm ready to open my house if you will receive for me." What
a shock it was to hear these words come from my own lips. I had not known what I meant to say.
Yet on I pressed with my dream. "I have neither wife nor daughter. Come, open my house to the
world."
The look of triumph in her face confirmed it. I would do it.
  "I shall tell everyone," she said immediately. "Yes, I'll receive for you, I shall do it proudly, I
shall do it gladly, but surely you'll be there yourself."
"May we open the doors in the evening?" I asked her. "It's my custom
   to come in the evening. The light of candles suits me better than the light of day. You set the
night for it, Bianca, and I shall have my servants make everything ready. The paintings are



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everywhere now. You do understand I offer nothing to anyone. I paint for my pleasure. And for my
guests I'll have food and drink as you say."
  How happy she looked. Off to one side I saw Amadeo gazing at her, loving her somewhat and
loving the sight of us together though it gave him pain.
  Riccardo was being drawn into conversation by men who were older than he and flattered him
and loved his handsome face.
  "Tell me what to lay out on my tables," I said to Bianca. "Tell me what wines to serve. My
servants shall be your servants. I shall do everything as you say."
  "It's too lovely," she answered. "All of Venice will be there, I promise you, you'll discover the
most wonderful company. People are so curious about you. Oh, how they whisper. You can't
imagine what a supreme delight this will be."
It came about as she described.
  Within the month I opened the palazzo to the whole city. But how different it was from those
drunken nights in old Rome when people laid about on my couches and vomited in my gardens and
I painted madly away on the walls.
  Oh, yes, when I arrived, how proper were my finely clad Venetian guests. Of course I was asked
a thousand questions. I let my eyes mist over. I heard the mortal voices around nje as if they were
kisses. I thought; You are among them; it is truly as if you were one of them. It is truly as if you are
alive.

  What did it matter their little criticisms of the paintings? I would strive to make my work the
finest, yes, truly, but what counted was the vitality, the momentum!
  And here amid my best work stood my lovely fair-haired Bianca, free for the moment from those
who put her up to her wrongdoings, recognized by all as the Mistress of my house.
  Amadeo watched this with silent grudging eyes. The memories inside him tormented him like a
cancer, yet he could not see them and know them for what they were.
  Not a month after, at sunset, I found him sick in the grand church on the nearby island of Torcello
to which he had wandered, apparently on his own. I picked him up from the cold damp floor and
took him home.
  Of course I understood the reason. There he had found ikons of the very style he had once
painted. There he had found old mosaics from centuries past, similar to those he had seen in
Russian churches as a child. He had not remembered. He had merely come upon some old truth in
his wanderings--the brittle, stark Byzantine paintings--and now the heat of the place had left him
with a fever, and I could taste it on his lips and see it in his eyes.
  He was no better at sunrise when, half mad, I left him in the care of Vincenzo, only to rise again
at sunset and hurry back to the side of his bed.
  It was his mind that stoked the fever. Bundling him like a child I took him into a Venetian church
to see the wondrous paintings of robust and natural figures that had been done in these last few
years.
  But I could see now it was hopeless. His mind would never be opened, never truly changed. I
brought him home, and laid him down on the pillows once more.
I sought to better understand what I could.
  His had been a punitive world of austere devotion. Painting for him had been joyless. And indeed
all of life itself in far-away Russia had been so rigorous that he could not give himself over to the
pleasure that awaited him now at every turn.
  Beset by the memories, yet not understanding them, he was moving slowly towards death.



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  I would not have it. I paced the floor, I turned to those who attended him. I walked about,
whispering to myself in my anger. I would not have it. I would not let him die.
Sternly, I banished others from the bedchamber.
  I bent over him, and biting into my tongue I filled my mouth with blood and then I loosed a thin
stream of it into his mouth.
  He quickened, and licked his lips after it, and then he breathed more easily and the flush came to
his cheeks. I felt of his forehead. It was cooler. He opened his eyes and he looked at me, and he
said as he did so often, "Master," and then gently, without memories, without terrible dreams, he
slept.
  It was enough. I left the bed. I wrote in my thick diary, the quill scratching as I quickly inscribed
the words:
"He is irresistible, but what am I to do? I claimed him once, declaring him my very own, and now I
treat his misery with the blood I wish that I could give him. Yet in treating his misery, I hope to
cure him not for me but for the wide world."
  I closed the book, in disgust with myself for the blood I'd given him. But it had healed him. I
knew it. And were he ill, I would give him blood again.
Time was moving too swiftly.
  Things were happening too fast. My earlier judgments were shaken, and the beauty of Amadeo
increased with every passing night.
  The teachers took the boys to Florence that they might see the paintings there. And all came
home more truly inspired to study than before.
  Yes, they had seen the work of Botticelli, and how splendid it was. Was the Master painting?
Indeed, so, but his work had become almost entirely religious. It was due to the preaching of
Savonarola, a stringent monk who condemned the Florentines for their worldliess. Savonarola had
great power over the people of Florence. Botticelli believed in him, and was thought to be one of
his followers.
  This saddened me greatly. Indeed it damn near maddened me. But then I knew that whatever
Botticelli painted it would be magnificent. And in Amadeo's progress I was comforted, or rather
pleasantly
confused as before.
  Amadeo was now the most brilliant of all my little academy. New teachers were required for him
in philosophy and law. He was outgrowing his clothes at a marvelous rate, he had become quick
and charming in conversation, and he was the beloved of all the younger boys.
Night after night we visited Bianca. I became accustomed to the company of refined strangers, the
eternal stream of northern Europeans who came to Italy to discover its ancient and mysterious
charms.
  Only occasionally did I see Bianca hand the poisoned cup to one of her ill-fated guests. Only
occasionally did I feel the beat of her dark heart, and see the shadow of desperate guilt in the very
depth of her eyes. How she watched the unfortunate victim; how she saw him out of her company
at last with a subtle smile.
  As for Amadeo, our private sessions within my bedchamber became ever more intimate. And
more than once, as we embraced, I gave the Blood Kiss to him, watching his body shiver, and
seeing the power of it in his half-lidded eyes.
What was this madness? Was he for the world or for me?
  How I Hed to myself about it. I told myself the boy might still prove himself and thereby earn his
freedom to leave me, safe and rich, for accomplishments beyond my house.



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  But I had given him so much of the Secret Blood that he pushed me with questions. What manner
of creature was I? Why did I never come by day? Why did I take no food or drink?
  He wrapped his warm arms around the mystery, He buried his face in the monster's neck.
  I sent him off to the best brothels to learn the pleasures of women, and the pleasures of boys. He
hated me for it, and yet he enjoyed it, and he came home to me eager for the Blood Kiss and
nothing else.
  He taunted me when I painted alone, except for him, in my studio, working furiously, creating
some landscape or gathering of ancient heroes. He slept beside me when I collapsed in my bed to
sleep the last few hours before dawn.
  Meantime, we opened the palazzo again and yet again. Bianca, ever the clever and poised one,
had outgrown her early beauty, and preserving her delicate face and manner, had now the polish of
a woman rather than the promise of a girl.
  Often I found myself staring at her, wondering what would have happened if I had not turned my
attention to him. Why after all had I done it? Could I not have wooed her and persuaded her; and
then, thinking these thoughts, I realized, foolishly, that I might still choose to do so, and cast him
off, with wealth and position, to mortality with all the rest of my boys.
No, she was saved.
Amadeo was the one I wanted. Amadeo wag the one I was educating, training Amadeo was the
precious student of the Blood.
The nights passed swiftly, as if in a dream. Several boys went off to university. One of the teachers
died. Vincenzo took to walking with a limp, but I hired an assistant to fetch for him. Bianca
rearranged several of the large paintings. The air was warm and the windows were open. On the
roof garden we gathered for a great banquet. The boys sang.
  Never once in all this time did I fail to apply the salve to my skin to darken it and make me
appear human. Never once did I fail to work it into the flesh of both my hands. Never once did I
fail to dress with fine jewels, and wear rings that would distract everyone. Never once did I move
too close to a grouping of candles, or a torch at a doorway or on the quais.
  I went to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept and remained there in meditation. I laid the case
before Akasha.
  I wanted this child--this boy who was now two years older than when I'd found him--and yet I
wanted everything else for him, and my soul was torn, just as his heart was torn.
  Never before had I wanted such a thing, to make a blood drinker for my own companionship,
indeed to educate a mortal youth for this very purpose, and to groom him expertly that he might be
the finest choice.
  But I wanted it now and it filled my thoughts during eveiy waking hour, and I found no
consolation looking at my cold Mother and Father. I heard no answer to my prayer.
  I lay down to sleep in the shrine and knew only dark and troubled dreams.
  I saw the garden, the very one I had painted on the walls eternally, and I was walking in it as
always, and there was fruit on the low-hanging trees. There came Amadeo walking near me, and
suddenly there came from his mouth a chilling cruel laughter.
"A sacrifice?" he asked, "for Bianca? How can such a thing be?"
  I woke with a start, and sat up, rubbing the backs of my arms, and shaking my head, trying to free
myself from the dream.
  "I don't know the answer," I whispered, as though he were there near me, as though his spirit had
traveled to die place where I sat.




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  "Except she was already a young woman when I came upon her," I responded, "educated and
forced into life, indeed a murderess; yes, indeed, a murderess, a child woman guilty of dreadful
crimes. And you, you were a helpless child. I could mold you and change you, all of which I've
done.
  "It's true, I thought you were a painter," I continued, "that you had the gift for painting, and I
know that it's still in you, and that did sway me, too. But when all is said and done, I don't know
why you distracted me, only that it was done."
I lay back down to sleep once more, lying on my side rather carelessly,
     staring up at the glimmering eye of Akasha. At the harsh lines of the face of Enkil.
  I thought back over the centuries to Eudoxia. I remembered her terrible death. I remembered her
burning body as it lay upon the floor of the shrine in the very place where I lay now.
  I thought of Pandora. Where is my Pandora? And then finally I drifted into sleep.
  When I returned to the palazzo, coming down from the roof as was always my custom, things
were not as I would have them, for all the company was solemn at supper, and Vincenzo told me
anxiously that a "strange man" had come to visit me, and that he stood in the anteroom and would
not come in.
  The boys had been finishing one of my murals in the anteroom, and they had hastily left this
"strange man" to himself. Only Amadeo had remained behind, doing some small work with little
enthusiasm, his eyes upon this "strange man" in a manner which gave Vmcenzp concern.
As if that were not enough, Bianca had been to visit, indeed to give me a gift from Florence, a
small painting by Botticelli; and she had had "uneasy" conversation with this "strange man" and
had told Vincenzo to keep watch on him. Bianca was gone. The "strange man" remained. I went
into die anteroom immediately, but I had felt the presence of this creature before I saw who it was.
It was Mael.
  Not for a single second did I not know him. He was unchanged just as I am unchanged, and he
had not paid much attention to the fashion of these times, any more than he had paid attention to the
fashion of times in the past.
  He looked dreadful in fact in a ragged leather jerkin and leggings with holes in them and his
boots were tied with rope.
His hair was dirty and tangled but his face wore an amazingly pleasant

expression, and when he saw me he came at once to me and embraced me.
  "You're really here," he said in a low voice, as though we had to whisper under my roof. He
spoke the old Latin. "I heard of it but I didn't believe it. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. I'm glad you're
still. . ."
  "Yes, I know what you mean to say," I said. "I'm still the watcher of the years passing; I'm still
the witness surviving in the Blood."
  "Oh, you put it far better than I could," he answered. "But let me say it again, I'm so happy to see
you, happy to hear your voice."
  I saw that there was dust all over him. He was looking about the room, at its fancy painted ceiling
with its ring of cherubs and its gold leaf. He stared at the unfinished mural. I wondered if he knew
it was my work.
  "Mael, always the astonished one," I said, moving him gently put of the light of the candles. I
laughed softly. "You lopk like a tramp."




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  "Would you offer me clothes again?" he asked. "I cannot really, you know, master such things. I
am in need, I suppose. And you live so splendidly here as you always did. Is nothing ever a mystery
to you, Marius?"
  "Everything is a mystery, Mael," I responded. "But fine clothes I always have. If the world comes
to an end, I shall be well dressed for it, whether it is by the light of day or in the dark of night."
  I took his arm and guided him through the various immense rooms that lay between me and my
bedchamber. He was suitably awed by the paintings everywhere and let me lead him along.
  "I want you to stay here, away from my mortal company," I said. "You'll only confuse them."
  "Ah, but you've worked it all so well," he said. "It was easier for you in old Rome, wasn't it? But
what a palace you have here. There are kings who would envy you, Marius."
"Yes, it seems so," I answered offhandedly.
  I went to the adjacent closets, which were small rooms actually, and pulled out clothes for him,
and leather shoes. He seemed quite incapable of dressing himself but I refused to do it for him, and
after I had put out everything, on the velvet bed in the correct order, as if for a child or an idiot, he
began to examine various articles as if he might manage alone.
"Who told you I was here, Mael?" I asked him.
He glanced at me, and his face was cold for a moment, the old hawk nose as disagreeable as ever,
the deep-set eyes rather more brilliant than I'd remembered and the mouth far better shaped than I'd
recalled. Maybe time had softened the set of his lips. I'm not certain that such things can happen.
But he did seem an interesting-looking immortal male.
  "You told me you had heard that I was here," I said, prompting him. "Who told you?"
  "Oh, it was a fool of a blood drinker," he said with a shudder. "A maniacal Satan worshiper. His
name was Santino. Will they never die out? It was in Rome. He urged me to join him, can you
imagine?"
  "Why didn't you destroy him?" I asked dejectedly. How grim was all this, how distant from the
boys at their supper, from the teachers speaking of the day's lessons, from the light and music to
which I longed to return. "In the old times when you encountered them, you always destroyed
them. What stopped you now? "
  He shrugged his shoulders. "What do I care what happens in Rome? I didn't stay one night in
Rome."
  I shook my head. "How did this creature discover I was in Venice? I've never heard a whisper of
our kind here."
  "I'm here," he answered sharply, "and you didn't hear me, did you? You're not infallible, Marius.
You have about you many worldly distractions. Perhaps you don't listen as you should."
"Yes, you're right, but I wonder. How did he know?"
  "Mortals come to your house. Mortals speak of you. Possibly those mortals go on to Rome. Don't
all roads lead to Rome?" He was mocking me naturally. But he was being rather gentle, almost
friendly. "He wants your secret, Marius, that Roman blood drinker. How he begged me to explain
the mystery of Those Who Must Be Kept."
  "And you didn't reveal it, did you, Mael?" I demanded. I began to hate him again, hotly, as I had
in nights past.
  "No, I didn't reveal it," he said calmly, "but I did laugh at him, and I didn't deny it. Perhaps I
should have, but the older I get the harder it is to lie on any account."
"That I understand rather well," I said.
  "Do you? With all these beautiful mortal children around you? You must lie with every breath
you take, Marius. And as for your paintings, how dare you display your works amongst mortals



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who have but brief lifetimes with which to challenge you? It seems, a terrible lie, that, if you ask
me."


I sighed.
He tore open the front of his jerkin and then took it off.
  "Why do I accept your hospitality?" he asked. "I don't know the answer. Perhaps I feel that
having helped yourself to so many mortal delights, you owe some help to another blood drinker
who is lost in time as always, wandering from country to country, marveling
sometimes and at others merely getting dust in his eyes."
  "Tell yourself anything you like," I said. "You are welcome to the clothes and to shelter. But tell
me at once. What's happened to Avicus and Zenobia? Do they travel with you? Do you know where
they are?"
  "I have no idea where they are," he said, "and surely you sensed it before you asked- It has been
so long since I saw either of them that I cannot reckon the years or the centuries. It was Avicus who
put her up to it, and off they went together. They left me in Constantinople, and I can't say that it
came to me as a dreadful surprise. There had been terrible coldness between us before the parting.
Avicus loved her. She loved him more than me. That was all that was required."
"I'm sad to hear it."
  "Why?" he asked. "You left the three of us. And you left her with us, that was the worst of it. We
were two for so long, and then you forced Zenobia into our company."
  "For the love of Hell, stop blaming me for everything," I said under my breath. "Will you never
cease with your accusations? Am I the author of every evil that ever befell you, Mael? What must I
do to be absolved so that there might be silence? It was you, Mael, you," I whispered, "who took
me from my mortal life by force and brought me, shackled and helpless, into your accursed Druid
grove!"
The anger spilled from me as I struggled to keep rny voice down.
He seemed quite amazed by it.
  "And sp you do despise me, Marius," he said, smiling. "I had thought you far too clever for such a
simple feeling- Yes, I took you prisoner, and you took the secrets, and I've been cursed one way or
the other, ever since."
  I had to step back from this. I did not want it. I stood calmly until the anger left me. Let the truth
be damned.
  For some reason this brought out the kindness in him. As he removed his rags, arid kicked them
away, he spoke of Avicus and Zenobia.
"The two of them were always slipping into the Emperor's palace where they would hunt the
shadows," he said. "Zenobia seldom dressed as a boy as you taught her. She was too fond of
sumptuous clothes, You should have seen the gowns she wore. And her hair, I think I loved it more
than she did."
  "I don't know if that's possible," I said softly. I saw the vision of her in his mind, and confused it
with the vision of her in my own.
  "Avicus continued to be the student," he said with slight contempt. "He mastered Greek. He read
everything he could find. You were always his inspiration. He imitated you. He bought books
without knowing what they were. On and on, he read."




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"Maybe he did know," I suggested. ''Who can say?" "I can say," Mael answered. f'I've known you
both, and he was an idiot gathering poetry and history for nothing. He wasn't even looking for
something. He embraced words and phrases on account of how they felt."
  "And where and how did you spend your hours, Mael?" I asked, my voice far more cold than I
had hoped.
  "I hunted the dark hills beyond the city," he responded. "I hunted the soldiery. I hunted for the
brutal Evil Doer, as you know. I was the vagabond, and they were dressed as though they were part
of the Imperial Court."
"Did they ever make another?" I asked. "No!" he said, scoffing. "Who would do such a thing?" I
didn't answer.
"And you, did you ever make another? " I asked. "No," he responded. He frowned- "How would I
find someone strong enough?" he asked. He seemed puzzled. "How would I know that a human had
the endurance for the Blood?" "And so you move through the world alone." "I'll find another blood
drinker to be a companion," he said. "Didn't I find that cursed Santino in Rome? Maybe I'll lure one
from among the Satan worshipers. They can't all like a miserable life in the
catacombs, wearing black robes and singing Latin hymns."
  I nodded. I could see now that he was ready for the bath. I didn't want to keep him any longer.
When I spoke it was in a genial manner.
  "The house is enormous as you see," I said. "There is a locked room on the first floor to the far
right side. It has no windows. You may sleep there by day if you like."

  He gave a low contemptuous laugh. "The clothes are quite enough, my friend, and perhaps just a
few hours during which I might rest."
  "I don't mind. Stay here, out of sight of the others. See the bath there. Use it. I'll come for you
when all the boys are asleep."
When next I saw him it was all too soon.
  He came out of the bedroom and into the large salon in which I stood relinquishing my hold on
Riccardo and Amadeo with the strong admonition that they could go to Bianca's for the evening
and nowhere else.
  Amadeo saw him. Again, for several fatal moments, Amadeo saw him. And I knew that
something deep inside Amadeo recognized Mael for the creature that he was. But like so many
things in the mind of Amadeo, it wasn't conscious, and the boys left me with quick kisses, off to
sing their songs to Bianca, and be flattered by everyone there.
  I was impatient with Mael that he had come out of the bedchamber, but I didn't say it.
  "So you would make a blood drinker of that one," he said, pointing to die door through which the
boys had left us. He smiled.
  I was in a silent fury. I glared at him, as always in such situations, quite unable to speak.
He stood there smiling at me in sinister fashion arid then he said,
"Marius of the many names and the many houses and the many lifetimes. So you have choseri a
lovely chilfL"
  I shook it off. How had he read from my mind my desire for Amadeo?
  "You've grown careless," he said softly. "Listen to me, Marius. I don't speak to insult you. YOU
walk with a heavy step among mortals,. And that boy is very young."
  "Don't speak another word to me," I answered, pulling hard on my anger to rein it in.
"Forgive me," he said,. "I only spoke my mind."
"I know you did, but I don't want to hear any more."



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  I looked him over. He was rather handsome in his new attire, though a few little details were
absurdly crooked and not tucked properly, but I was not the one to make them right. He struck me
as not only barbaric, but comical. But I knew that anyone else would think him an impressive man.
  I hated him, but not completely. And as I stood there with him, I almost gave way to tears. Quite
suddenly, to stem this emotion, I spoke.

" What have you learnt in all this time?" I asked.
  "That's an arrogant question!" he said in a low voice. "What have you learnt?"
  I told him my theories, about how the West had risen again, once more drawing upon the old
classics which Rome had taken from Greece. I spoke of how the art of the old Empire was re-
created now throughout Italy and I spoke of the fine cities of the North of Europe, prosperous as
those of the South. And then I explained how it seemed to me that the Eastern Empire had fallen to
Islam and was no more. The Greek world had been irrevocably lost.
"We have the West again, don't you see?" I asked.
He looked at me as though I were perfectly mad.
"Well? "I responded.
There came a slight change in his face.
  "Witness in the Blood," he said, repeating the words I'd spoken earlier, "watcher of the years."
  He put his arms forward as though to embrace me. His eyes were clear and I could sense no
malice at all.
"You've given me courage," he said.
"For what, may I ask?" I responded.
"To continue my wandering," he said. He let his arms slowly drop.
I nodded. What more was there for us to say?
  "You have all you need?" I asked. "I have plenty of Venetian or Florentine coin. You know that
wealth is nothing to me. I'm happy to share what I have."
  "It's nothing to me either," he said. "I shall get what I need from my next victim, and his blood
and wealth will carry me to one after that."
  "So be it," I said, which meant that I wanted him to leave me, But even as he realized it, as he
turned to go, I reached out and took him by the arm. "Forgive me that I was cold to you," I said.
"We've been companions in time."
It was a strong embrace.
  And I walked with him down to the front entrance where the torches shone too brightly on us for
my taste, and saw him virtually disappear into the dark.
  In a matter of seconds, I could hear no more of him. I gave silent thanks.
  I reflected. How I hated Mael. How I feared him. Yet I had loved him once, loved him when we'd
been mortals even, and I'd been his prisoner and he had been the Druid priest teaching me the
hymns of the Faithful of the Forest, for what purpose, I didn't know.
  And I had loved him on that long voyage to Constantinople, surely, and in that city when I'd
given over Zenobia to him and Avicus,
wishing them all well.
But I did not want him near me now! I wanted my house, my children, Arnadeo, Bianca. I wanted
my Venice. I wanted my mortal world.
  How I would not risk my mortal home even for a few hours longer with him. How I wanted so to
keep my secrets from him.
  But here I was standing in the torchlight, distracted, and something was amiss.



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Vincenzo wasn't very far away, and I turned and called to him.
  "I'm going away for a few nights," I told him. "You know what to do. I'll be back soon enough."
"Yes, Master," he said.
  And I was able to assure myself that he'd sensed nothing strange in Mael whatsoever. He was as
always ready to do my will.
But then he pointed his finger.
"There, Master, Amadeo, he's waiting to talk to you," I was astonished.
  On the far side of the canal, Amadeo stood in a gondola, watching me, waiting, and surely he'd
seen me with Mael. Why had I not heard him? Mael was right. I was careless. I was all top softened
by human emotions. I was too greedy for love.
Amadeo told his oarsman to bring him alongside the house.
  "And why didn't you go with Riccardo?" I demanded. "I expected to find you at Bianca's. You
must do as I say."
  Quite suddenly Vincenzo was gone, and Amadeo had stepped up onto the quais, and he had his
arms around rne, pressing my hard unyielding body with all his strength.
  "Where are you going?" he demanded in a rushed whisper. "Why do you leave me again?"
  "I must leave," I said, "but it's only for a few nights. You know that I must leave. I have solemn
obligations elsewhere, and don't I always return?"
"Master, that one, the one who came, the one who just left you--."
  "Don't ask me," I said sternly. How I had dreaded this. "I'll come back to you within a few
nights."
"Take me with you," Amadeo begged.
The words struck me. I felt something within loosened.
  "That I cannot do," I answered. And out of my mouth there came words I thought I'd never speak.
"I go to Those Who Must Be Kept," I said as if I couldn't hold the secret within me. "To see if they
are at peace. I do as I have always done."
What a look of wonder came over his face.
"Those Who Must Be Kept," he whispered. He said it like a prayer.
I shivered.
  I felt a great release. And it seemed that in the wake of Mael I had drawn Amadeo closer to me. I
had taken another fatal step.
The torchlight tormented me.
  ''Come inside," I said. And into the shadowy entranceway we stepped together. Vmcenzo, never
very far off, took his leave.
I bent to kiss Amadeo, and the heat of his body inflamed me.
  "Master, give me the Blood," he whispered in my ear. "Master, tell me what you are."
  "What I am, child? Sometimes I think I know not. And sometimes I think I know only too well.
Study in my absence. Waste nothing. And I'll be back to you before you know the hour. And then
we'll speak of Blood Kisses and secrets and meantime tell no one that you belong to me."
  "Have I ever told anyone, Master?" he responded. He kissed my cheek. He placed his warm hand
on my cheek as if he would know how inhuman I was.
  I closed my lips over his. I let a small stream of blood pour into him. I felt him shudder.
I drew back from him. He was limp in my arms.
  I called for Vincenzo and I gave Amadeo over to him, and off I went into the night.
  I left the splendid city of Venice with her glistering palaces, and I withdrew to the chilly
mountain sanctuary, and I knew that the fate of Amadeo was sealed.



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20


HOW LONG I WAS with Those Who Must Be Kept, I don't know. A week, perhaps more. I came
into the shrine, confessing my astonishment that I had confided the mere phrase "Those Who Must
Be Kept" to a mortal boy. I confided again that I wanted him, I wanted him to share my loneliness.
I wanted him to share all that I could teach and give.
Oh, the pain of it! All that I could teach and give!
  What was this to the Immortal Parents? Nothing. And as I trimmed the wicks of the lamps, as I
filled them with oil, as I let the light grow bright around the eternally silent Egyptian figures, I
knew the same penance I had always known.
  Twice with a gust of the Fire Gift, I lighted the long bank of one hundred tall candles. Twice I let
it burn down.
  But as I prayed, as I dreamt, one clear conclusion did come to me. I wanted this mortal
companion precisely because I had put myself into the mortal world.
  Had I never stepped into Botticelli's workshop this mad loneliness would not have come over me.
It was mixed up with my love of all the arts, but most particularly painting, and my desire to be
close to those mortals who nourished themselves gracefully upon the creations of this period as I
fed upon blood.
I also confessed that my education of Amadeo was almost complete.
  On waking I listened with the powerful Mind Gift to the movements and thoughts of Amadeo
who was no more than a few hundred miles away. He was obedient to my instructions. In the night
hours he kept to his books, and did not go to Bianca. Indeed he kept to my bedchamber, for he no
longer knew simple camaraderie with the other boys.


What could I give this child that would prompt him to leave me?
What could I give him to more purely train him to be the companion
I wanted with all my soul?
Both questions tormented me.
  At last a plan came to me--one last trial must be passed by him, and should he fail it, I would
commit him with irresistible wealth and position to the mortal world. How that might be done, I
did not know, but it did not strike me as a difficult thing.
I meant to reveal to him the manner in which I fed.
  Of course this was a lie, this question of a trial; for once he had beheld me in the act of feeding, in
the act of murder, how then could he pass unscathed into a productive mortality, no matter how
great his education, his refinements and his wealth?
  No sooner had I put that question to myself than I remembered my exquisite Bianca, who
remained quite steadily at the helm of her ship in spite of the poisonous cups she had passed.
  All this, evil and cunning, made up the substance of my prayers. Was I asking permission of
Akasha and Enkil to make this child a blood drinker? Was I asking permission to admit Amadeo to
the secrets of this ancient and unchangeable shrine?
If I did ask, there came no answer.



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  Akasha gave me only her effortless serenity, and Enkil his majesty. The only sound came from
my movements as I rose from my knees, as I laid my kisses at the feet of Akasha, as I withdrew and
closed behind me the immense door, and bolted it shut.
  There was wind and snow in the mountains on that evening. It was bitter and white and pure.
  I was glad to be home in Venice within minutes, though my beloved city was also cold.
  No sooner did I reach my bedchamber than Amadeo came into my arms.
  I covered his head with kisses and then his warm mouth, taking the breath from him, and then
with the smallest bite, giving him the Blood.
  "Would you be what I am, Amadeo?" I asked. "Would you be changeless forever? Would you
live a secret for eternity?"
  "Yes, Master," he said with a feverish abandon. He laid both his warm hands on the sides of my
face. "Give it to me, Master. Do you think I've not brooded upon it? I know that you fathom our
minds. Master, I want it. Master, how is it done? Master, I'm yours."

  "Find the heaviest cloak to protect you against the winter," I said, "And then come up to me on
the roof."
  It seemed scarcely a moment before he joined me. I looked out towards the sea. The wind was
strong. I wondered if it hurt him and I did fathom his mind, and I measured his passion.
  And looking into his brown eyes I knew that he had left the mortal world behind him more
effortlessly perhaps than any other mortal I might have plucked from my garden, for those
memories still festered within him, though he was disposed completely to believe in me.
  I wrapped him in my arms and, covering his face, I carried him with me down into a wretched
district of Venice, in which thieves and
beggars slept where they could. The canals reeked of refuse and dead fish.
  There I found a mortal victim within minutes, and to Amadeo's amazement caught the miserable
fellow with preternatural speed as he sought to stab me, and brought him up to my lips.
  I let Amadeo see the cunning teeth with which I pierced the throat of the wretch, and then my
eyes closed and I became Marius, the blood drinker, Marius, the slayer of the Evil Doer, and the
blood flowed into me, and it did not matter to me that Amadeo was witness, that Amadeo was
there.
  When it was finished, I dropped the body silently into the filthy water of the canal.
  I turned, feeling the blood in my face and in my chest and then slowly moving into my hands. My
vision was dim, and I knew that I was smiling--not a vicious smile, you understand, but something
secretive and beyond anything the child had ever beheld.
When at last I looked at him, I saw only amazement.
  "Have you no tears for the man, Amadeo?" I asked. "Have you no questions as to the disposition
of his soul? Without Sacred Rites, he died. He died only for me."
  "No, Master," he answered, and then a smile played on his lips as though it were a flame which
had sprung from mine. "It's marvelous what I saw, Master. What do I care for his body or his soul?"
  I was too angry to respond. There had been no lesson in it! He was too young, the night too dark,
the man too wretched, and all that I had foreseen had come to nought.
  Once again, I wrapped him in my cloak, covering his face so that he could see nothing as I
traveled through the air silently, moving over the rooftops and then breaking deftly and silently
through an upper window that had been shuttered against the night air.




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  Through the rear chambers of the house, I moved from this breach till we stood together in the
shadowy and sumptuous bedroom of Bianca, and through the salons before us, I saw her turn from
her guests. I saw her coming to us.
  "Why are we here, Master?" asked Anmdeo. He looked towards the front rooms fearfully.
  "You would see it again to understand it," I said angrily. "You would see it among those whom
we claim to love."
  "But how, Master?" Amadeo demanded. "What are you saying? What do you mean to do?"
  'T hunt the Evil Doer, child," I said to him. "And you shall see that there is evil here as rich as
there was in that poorling whom I
committed to the dark water, unconfessed and unmourned."
  Bianca stood before us, asking us as gently as she could, How had we come to be in her private
rooms? Her pale eyes looked at me searchingly.
Quickly I accused her.
  "Tell him, rny beloved beauty," I said, my voice muted so that the company should take no
notice, "tell him what awful deeds lie behind your gentle composure. Tell him what poison guests
have drunk beneath your roof."
How calm she was as she answered me.
"You anger me, Marius. You come improperly. You accuse me without authority. Leave me and
come again in the gentle manner in which you have come so many times before."
  Amadeo was trembling. "Please, Master, let us leave here. We have nothing but love for Bianca."
  "Oh, but I would have more of her, rather than love of her," I said to hjm. "I would have her
blood."
"No, Master," Amadeo whispered. "Master, I beg you." "Yes, for it's evil blood," I said, "and it's all
the more savoiy to rne. I would drink the stuff of murderers. Tell him, Bianca, of wine laced with
potions, and lives forfeit for those who have made you the
instrument of their most wicked plans."
  "Leave me now," she said again without the slightest fear of me. Her eyes blazed. "Marius de
Romanus, you cannot judge me. Not you with your magician's powers, not you with your boys. I
will say nothing except that you must leave my house."
I moved to take her in my arms. I did not know when I would stop but only that I would reveal the
horror of it to him, that he must see it, he must see the suffering, he must see the pain.
  "Master," he whispered, struggling to come between us, "I will give up my petitions to you
forever, if only you do not harm her. Do you understand? Master, I will beg nothing further. Let her
go."
  I held her, looking down at her, smelling the sweetest perfume of her youth, her hair, her blood.
"Take her and I die with her, Master," said Amadeo.
It was enough. It was more than enough.
  I moved away from her. I felt a strange confusion. The music in the rooms became a noise. I
think I sat upon her bed. The blood thirst in me was terrible. I might have slain them all, I thought,
looking toward the crowd beyond, and then I believe I said:
"We are murderers together, you and I, Bianca."
I saw that Amadeo was weeping. He stood with his back to the company. His face was glistening
with tears.
  And she, she the fragrant beauty with her braided blond hair came to sit beside me, so boldly, and
to take my hand, my very hand.




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  "We are murderers together, my lord," she said, "yes, I can speak for myself as you demanded.
But understand that I am given the commissions by those who would as easily send me to Hell in
the same way. It is they who mix the potions for the fatal wine. It is they who mark those who
would receive it. And I know not the reasons. I know only that if I do not obey, I shall die."
  "Then tell me who they are, my exquisite darling," I said. "I am hungry for them. So hungry you
can't dream."
  "They are my kinsmen, sir," she said. "Such has been my heritage. Such has been my family.
Such have been my guardians here."
  She had begun to weep but she clung to me, as though rny strength were the only truth for her
suddenly and indeed I realized it was.
  My threats of moments ago had only bound her to me all the more firmly, and Amadeo drew
close, urging me to kill all those who kept her under their power, all those who made her wretched,
whatever the ties of blood.
I held her as she bowed her head. From her mind, so often confusing to me, I read the names as
though they were written in plain script.
  I knew the men, all Florentines who had come often to call on her. Tonight they held a feast in a
neighboring house. They were moneylenders, some might have called them bankers, but those they
murdered were those from whom they had borrowed and did not wish to repay.
  "You shall be rid of them, my beauty," I said to her. I touched her lightly with my lips.
She turned to me, and gave me countless and violent small kisses.
  "And what shall I owe for this? " she asked, even as she kissed me, even as her hands reached to
stroke my hair.
"Only that you say nothing of what you saw in me tonight."
  She gazed at me with her tranquil oval eyes, and her mind closed up, as though she would never
reveal to me her thoughts again.
  "You have my pledge, my lord," she whispered. "And so my soul grows ever more heavy."
"No, I shall take the weight from it," I said, as we made to go.
How sad seemed her sudden tears. I kissed her, tasting them,wishing they were blood and forever
forswearing the blood within her.
  "Don't weep for those who have used you," I whispered. "Go back to the gaiety and the music.
Leave the dark commissions to me."
  We found the Florentines drunk at their banquet, paying us no heed as we entered without
introduction or explanation and took our places at the overladen table. A noisy band of musicians
played. The floor was slippery witj spilt wine.
  Amadeo was eager for it, filled with excitement, attentive to my slow and methodical seduction
of each one of them, as I drank the blood lustily, and let the bodies tip forward upon the groaning
board. The musicians fled.
  Within an hour I had skin them all, these kinsmen of Bianca, and only for the very last of them,
he who had talked the longest with me, quite unawares of what was happening all about him--only
for him did Amadeo beg and weep. Was I to show this one mercy when his heart was as guilty as
all the rest?
  We sat alone in the ruined supper room, the dead bodies around us, the food cold upon its silver
and gold plates and platters, the wine
running from overturned goblets, and for the first time, as Amadeo cried and cried, I saw dread in
his eyes.




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  I looked at my hands. I had drunk so much blood that they looked human and I knew that were I
to look into a mirror, I would see a florid human face.
The heat in me was delicious and unendurable, and I wanted nothing more than to take Amadeo,
bring him over to me now, and yet there he sat before me, the tears streaming down his face.


  "They are all gone," I said, "those who tormented Bianca. You come with me. Let's leave this
gory scene. I would walk with you, before the sun rises, near the sea."
  He followed me as a child might, the tears staining his face as they ran still from his eyes.
  "Wipe your tears," I said firmly. "We're going out into the piazza. It's almost dawn."
He slipped his hand into mine as we went down the stone stairs.
I put my arm around him, sheltering him from the sharp wind.
  "Master," he pleaded, "they were evil men, weren't they? You were certain of it. You knew it."
  "All of them," I answered. "But sometimes men and women are both good and evil," I continued,
"and who am I to choose for my vicious appetite, yet I do. Is Bianca not both good arid evil?"
  "Master," he asked, "if I drink the blood of those who are evil, will I become like you?"
  We stood before the closed doors of San Marco. The wind came mercilessly off the sea. I drew
my cloak about him all the more tightly, and he rested his head against my chest.
"No, child," I said, "there's infinitely more magic in it than that."
  "You must give me your blood, isn't that so, Master?" he asked as he looked up at me, the tears
clear and glistening in the cold air, his hair mussed.
I didn't answer.
  "Master," he said, as I held him close to me, "long years ago, or so they seern to me, in some far-
away place, where I lived before I came to you, I was what they called a Fool for God. I don't
remember it clearly and never will as both of us well know.
"But a Fool for God was a man who gave himself over to God completely and did not care what
happened, whether it was mockery, or starvation, or endless laughter, or dreadful cold. That much I
remember, that I was a Fool for God in those times."
"But you painted pictures, Amadeo, you painted beautiful ikons--."
  "But listen to me, Master," he said firmly, forcing me to silence, "whatever I did, I was a Fool for
God, and now I would be a Fool for you." He paused, snuggling close to me as the wind grew
stronger. The mists moved in over the stones. There came noises from the ships.
  I started to speak but he reached to stop me. How obdurate and strong he seemed, how seductive,
how completely mine.

  "Master," he went on. "Do it when you will. You have my secrecy. You have niy patience. Do it
when and how you wilL"
I thought on what he'd said.
"Go home, Amadeo," I answered him. "You know the sun is
coming, and I must leave you with the arrival of the sun."
  He nodded, puzzling over it, as though for the very first time it mattered to him, though how he
couldn't have thought of it before I didn't know.
  "Go home, and study with the others, talk with them, and shepherd the little ones at their play. If
you can do that--go from the bloody banquet room to the laughter of children--then when 1 come
tonight, I shall do it. I shall bring you over to myself."




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  I watched him walk away from me in the mist. He went towards the canal where he would find
the gondola to take him back to our door.
  "A Fool for God," I whispered aloud so that my mind might hear it, "yes, a Fool for God, and in
some miserable monastery you painted the sacred pictures, convinced your life would mean
nothing unless it was a life of sacrifice and pain. And now, in my magic you see some similar
burning purity. And you turn away from all the riches of life in Venice for that burning purity; you
turn away from all that a human may have."
  But was it so? Did he know enough to make such a decision? Could he forsake the sun forever?
  I had no answer. It was not his decision that mattered now. For I had made mine.
  As for my radiant Biarica, her thoughts were forever after closed to me, as though she knew the
knack of it like a wily witch. As for her devotion, her love, her friendship, that was something else.



21

Now, WHERE I SLEPT in the daylight hours in Venice, was in a beautiful granite sarcophagus in a
hidden chamber just above the level of the water in an uninhabited palazzo which belonged to me.
  The room itself was lined with gold, a quite marvelous little cell, replete with torches, and a
stairway led up from this chamber to a door which only I could force back.
  On coming out of the palazzo one had to walk down a flight of steps to the canal--that is, if one
were walking at all, which I, of course, was not.
  Some long months ago I had arranged for the creation of another sarcophagus of the same beauty
and weight, so that two blood drinkers could have lain down together in this chamber, and it was
from this gilded resting place that I arose die following night.
  I knew at once that my true house was in an uproar. I could hear the distant wailing of the little
boys, and the frantic prayers of Bianca. Some carnage had taken place beneath my roof.
Of course I thought it had to do with the Florentines I had slaughtered,
     and as I rushed to my palazzo, I cursed myself that I had not taken greater care with this
spectacular deed.
But nothing could have been further from the truth.
  No one had to tell me, as I rushed down the stairs from the roof, that a drunken violent English
lord had come rampaging into my house in search of Amadeo for whom he harbored a forbidden
passion, which had been somewhat fed by Amadeo's dalliance on random nights when I had been
away.
And with the same knowledge, I quickly imbibed the horror that Lord Harlech, this Englishman,
had cruelly, wantonly slain children no older than seven before he met in combat Amadeo himself.
  Of course Amadeo knew how to use both sword and dagger and had swiftly fought this evil man
with both in hand. Indeed, he had slain Lord Harlech but not before Lord Harlech had slashed his
face and arms with a poisoned blade.
  I came into the bedchamber to find Amadeo in a fatal fever, his senses having left him, the priests
in attendance, and Bianca bathing him with a cool cloth.
  Everywhere there were candles. Amadeo lay in his clothes of last night with the sleeve cut away
where Lord Harlech had wounded his arm.
  Riccardo was weeping. The teachers were weeping. The priests had given Amadeo the Last Rites.
There was nothing more to be done.



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  At once Bianca turned to greet me. Her lovely dress was stained with blood. She came to me, her
face pale, her hands gripping my sleeves.
"For hours, he's struggled," she told me. "He's spoken of visions.
     He has crossed a great sea and seen a wondrous celestial city. He has seen that all things are
made of love. All things! Do you understand?"
"I dp," I said.
  "He has seen a city of glass as he described it," she said, "made of love as are all growing things.
He has seen priests from his homeland, and these priests have told him that it is not his time to
reach the city. They have sent him back."
She appealed to me.
  "They are right, are they not," she asked, "these priests he's seen? It is not his time to die."
I didn't answer her.
  She went to his side again and I stood behind her. I watched as she bathed his forehead again.
  "Amadeo," she said, her voice calm and strong, "breathe for me, breathe for your Master.
Amadeo, breathe for me."
I could see that he tried to obey her command.
  His eyes were closed and then opened, but they saw nothing. His skin was the color of old ivory.
His hair was swept back from his face. How cruel was the cut in his face made by Lord Harlech's
blade.
"Leave me with him now," I said gently to the entire company.
No one protested. I heard the doors close.

  I bent down and, cutting my tongue as I had so often done, I let the blood drip on the evil cut on
his face. I marveled silently as the flesh healed.
Once again his eyes opened. He saw me and then he spoke.
  "It's Marius," he said softly. He had never once in all our time together called me by name.
"Marius has come," he said. "Why didn't the priests tell me? They told me only that it wasn't my
time to die."
  I lifted his right hand. There too the blade of Lord Harlech had made a cut and now I kissed it
with the healing blood and watched the miracle once again.
  Amadeo shuddered. It was painful for him and his lips drew back for a moment and then he
settled as if into deeper sleep. The poison was eating inside him. I could see the cruel evidence of it.
  He was dying, no matter what his visions had told him, and no slight tender kiss of blood could
save him now.
  "Did you believe what they said?" I asked him. "That it was not your time to die?"
Reluctantly, painfully, his eyes opened.
  "Master, they returned me to you," he answered. "'Oh, if only I could remember all they told me,
but they warned me that I would forget. Why was I ever brought here, Master?" He struggled, but
he would not be quieted. He went on talking.
  "Why was I taken out of some distant land and brought to you? I remember riding through the
grasslands. I remember my father. And in my arms, as I rode, I held an ikon that I had painted, and
my father was a great horseman and a great fighter, and there came down on us the evil ones, the
Tatars, and they took me, and Master--the ikon, it fell into the tall grass. Master I know now. I
think they killed my father when they took me away."
"Did you see him, child?" I asked, "when you dreamt these things?"




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  "No, Master. But then again, I don't remember." He began to cough suddenly and then the
coughing stopped and he breathed deeply as if it were the only thing he had the strength to do.
  "I know I painted the ikon, and we were sent out in the grasslands to place the ikon in a tree. It
was a sacred thing to do. The grasslands were dangerous, Master, but my father always hunted
there. Nothing frightened my father, and I could ride as well as he. Master, I know now the story of
all my life, I know it yet I can't quite tell you--."
  His voice dried up suddenly, and his whole body shuddered once more.


  "This is death, Master," he whispered, "and yet they said it was not rny time."
  I knew his life was being measured now in moments. Had I ever loved anyone more than I loved
him? Had I ever revealed more of my soul to anyone than I had revealed to him? If my tears spilled
now, he would see them. If I trembled now, he would know.
  Long ago, I'd been taken prisoner, just as he had! Was that not why I had chosen him?--that
thieves had taken him from his life as I'd been taken from mine?
  And so I'd thought that I would give him this great gift which was eternity! Was he not worthy in
all things? Yes, he was young, but how would it harm him to be forever beautiful with the
countenance of a young man?
  He was not Botticelli. He was not a man of immense talent and fame.
  He was a boy dying here whom few would remember except for me.
  "How could they have said it?" he whispered, "that it was not my time?"
"They sent you back to me!" I gasped. I couldn't bear this. "Amadeo,
   did you believe these priests whom you saw? Did you believe in the glass city, tell me."
  He smiled. And it was never innocent, no matter how beautiful, his smile,
  "Don't weep for me, Master," he answered. He struggled to rise a little from the pillow, his eyes
very wide. " When the ikon fell, my fate was made, Master."
"No, Amadeo, I don't believe it," I said, But there was no more time.
  "Go to them, child, call to them!" I said. "Tell them to take you now."
  "No, Master. They may be insubstantial things," he said. "They may be dreams of the feverish
mind. They may be phantoms wrapped in the garments of memory. But I know what you are,
Master. I want the Blood. I've tasted it, Master. I want to stay with you. And if you refuse me, then
let me die with Bianca! Send back my mortal nurse to me, Master, for she comforts me far better
than you in your coldness. I would die with her alone."
He fell back exhausted on the pillow


  Desperately, I cut my tongue and filled my mouth with blood. I gave it to him- But the poison
was moving too fast.
  He smiled as the blood warmed him and a film of tears covered his eyes.
  "Beautiful Marius," he said, as if he were far older than I would ever be. "Beautiful Marius who
gave me Venice. Beautiful Marius, give me the Blood."
We had no more time. I was weeping miserably.
  "Would you truly have the Blood, Amadeo?" I asked. "Say it to me, that you forsake the light of
the sun forever, and forever you will thrive on the blood of the Evil Doer as I thrive."
"I vow it, I will it," he answered.




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  "You'll live forever, unchanging?" I asked, "feeding upon mortals who can be your brothers and
sisters no more?"
  "Yes, forever unchanging," he answered, "among them, though they are my brothers and sisters
no more."
  Once again, I gave him the Blood Kiss. And then I lifted him and carried him to the bath.
  I stripped off his thick and soiled velvet clothes. And into the warm water I placed him, and there
with the blood from my mouth I sealed all the cuts in the flesh made by Lord Harlech. I shaved off
for all time any beard that he might have.
  Now he was ready for the magic as one who had been prepared for sacrifice. And his heart beat
slowly and his eyes were too heavy to open anymore.
  And in a simple long silk shirt I clothed him and carried him out of the room.
  The others were waiting anxiously. What lies I told them I do not know. How mad I was in these
moments. To Bianca I gave some solemn charge that she must comfort and thank the others, and
that Arnadeo's life was safe in my hands.
  "Leave us now, my beauty," I said to her. Even as I held him, I kissed her. "Trust in me, and I
shall see that you never come to harm."
I could see that she believed in me. All fear was gone from her.
Within moments Amadeo and I were alone.
  Then into my grandest painted salon I took him. It was the room into which I'd copied Gozzoli's
magnificent painting The Procession of the Magi, stolen from the original in Florence as a test of
my memory and skill.


  Into this intense color and variation, I plunged him, setting him down on his feet on the cold
marble, and then giving him through the Blood Kiss, the greatest draught of blood which I had
given so far.
  With the Fire Gift I lighted the candelabra up one side of the chamber and down the other. The
painting was bathed in light.
  "You can stand now, my blessed pupil," I told him. "My blood runs through you after the poison.
We have begun."
  He trembled, fearing to let go of me, his head hanging heavily, his luxuriant hair soft against my
hands.
  "Amadeo," I said, kissing him once again as the blood flowed over my lips and into his mouth,
"what was your name in that lost land?" Again I filled my mouth with blood and I gave it to him.
"Reach back for the past, child, and make it part of the future."
His eyes opened wide.
I stepped away from him. I left him standing. I let loose my red
velvet cloak and pushed it away from me.
"Come to me," I said. I held out my arms.
  He took the first steps, unsure of himself, so full of my blood that surely the light itself must have
amazed him, but his eyes were moving over the multitude of figures painted on the wall. Then he
looked directly at me.
  How knowing, how clever was his expression! HOW full of triumph he seemed suddenly in his
silence and patience. How utterly damned.
  "Come, Amadeo, come and take it from me," I said, my eyes full of tears. "You are the victor.
Take what I have to give."



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                                             Blood and Gold

  He was in my arms instantly, and I held him warmly, whispering close to his ear.
  "Don't be afraid, child, not even for a moment. You'll die now to live forever, as I take your blood
and give it back to you. I won't let you s).ip away."
  I sank my teeth into his throat and tasted the poison in his blood as soon as it flowed into me, my
body destroying the poison, my body consuming his blood effortlessly, as it might have consumed
a dozen such young ones, and into my mind there c^rne the visions of his childhood--of the
Russian monastery where he had painted his
flawless ikons, of the cold chambers in which he'd lived.
  I saw monks half walled up alive as they fasted, eating only what would sustain them. I smelled
the earth. I smelled decay. Oh, how ghastly was this passage to salvation. And he had been part of
it, half in


love with the sacrificial cells and their starving inhabitants, save for his gift: that he could paint.
  Then for one instant I saw nothing but his paintings, one image tumbling upon another, rapt faces
of Christ, the Virgin--I saw the halos studded with costly jewels. Ah, such riches in the dark,
cheerless monastery. And then came the rich bawdy laughter of his father, wanting him to leave the
monastery, to ride out with him into the grasslands where the Tatars rode.
  Prince Michael, their ruler, wanted to send Amacleo's father into the grasslands. It was a foolish
mission. The monks railed against it, that Amadeo's father would take him into such danger. The
monks wrapped the ikon and gave it to Amadeo. Out of the darkness and
bitter earth of the monastery, Amadeo came into the light.
  I stopped; I drew back from the blood and the visions. I knew him. I knew the relentless and
hopeless darkness inside of him. I knew the life that had been forecast in hunger and bitter
discipline.
  I cut the flesh of my throat and I held his head near me. "Drink," I said. I pushed his head
forward. "Put your mouth to the wound. Drink."
  At last, he obeyed me, and suddenly with all his force he drew on the blood. Had he not tasted it
enough to crave it? And now it came without measure, and he was passionate for it, and I closed
my eyes, and felt an exquisite sweetness that I had not known since the long ago night when I had
given my blood to my blessed Zenobia to make her all the more strong.
  "Be my child, Amadeo," I whispered in this sweetness. "Be my child forever," I said. "Have I
ever loved anyone more than you?"
  I drew him back away from the wound, and as he cried out I sank my teeth into his throat again.
This time it was my blood mingled with his that flowed into me. The poison was no more.
  Again, I saw the ikons. I saw the dim corridors of the monastery, and then in the falling snow, I
saw the two on their horses, Amadeo and his father. Amadeo held the ikon, and the priest ran
beside him, telling him that he must place the ikon in a tree, that the Tatars wquld find it and count
it as a miracle, and Amadeo, how innocent he looked to be such a bold rider, to be chosen to ride
with his father for Prince Michael's mission, as the snow came down heavily, as his hair was
whipped by the wind.
And so it was your undoing. Turn your back on it now. You have seen it for what it was. Look to
the fabulous painting on the wall, Amadeo. Look to the riches which 1 have given you. Look to the
glory and virtue which lie in beauty as varied and magnificent as what you see here.
  I let loose of him. He gazed at the painting. I pressed his lips to my throat again.
  "Drink," I said. But he needed no counsel. He held fast to me. He knew the blood, as I knew him.



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  How many times did we do it, the passing of blood from one to the other? I know not. I know
only that never having done it completely since that long ago night in the Druid grove, I trusted to
nothing, and made of him the strongest fledgling that I could.
  And as he drank from me, I gave him my lessons, my secrets. I told him of the gifts that might
one night come to him. I told him pf my long ago love for Pandora. I told him of Zenobia, of
Avicus, of Mael. I told him all but the final secret. That I kept from him.
Oh, thank the gods that I kept it. I kept it close in my heart!
  Well before morning it was finished. His skin was wondrously pale, and his dark eyes fiercely
bright. I ran my fingers through his auburn hair. Once again, he smiled at me so knowingly, with
such a quiet air of triumph.
  "It's complete now, Master," he said, as if he were speaking to a child.
  And together we walked back to the bedchamber where he put on his handsome velvets, and we
went out to hunt.
  I taught him how to find his victims, to use the Mind Gift to make certain that they were Evil
Doers, and I also remained with him through the few hours of his mortal Death.
  His powers were very simply enormous. It would not be long before he could use the Cloud Gift;
and I could not find a test to outdo his strength. He could not only read the minds of mortals, he
could make spells as well.
  His mind, quite naturally, was closed to me, though this was still something I did not completely
accept. Of course it had happened with Pandora, yet I hoped that it would not happen with Amadeo
and only reluctantly explained it to him.
  Now I must read his facial expressions, his gestures, the depth of his secretive and faintly cruel
brown eyes.
Never had he been more beautiful, of course.
And having done all this, I took him with me to my very grave, as one says, to the gilded room of
the two stone sarcophagi which awaited us, and I showed him how he must sleep by day.
It didn't frighten him. Indeed, nothing frightened him.
  " What of your dreams now, Amadeo?" I asked him as I held him jn my arms. "What of your
priests and the distant glass city?"
  "Master, I've reached paradise," he answered. "What has Venice in all her beauty been to me but
a prelude for die Blood?"
  As I had done a thousand times, I gave him the Blood Kiss and he received it and then drew back
smiling.
"How different it is now," he said.
"Sweet or bitter?" I asked.
  "Oh, sweet, very sweet, for you've fulfilled my heart's desires. You don't pull me heartlessly after
you by a bloody thread."
I crushed him in my warm embrace,
  "Amadeo, my love," I whispered, and it seemed the long centuries I had endured had been but
preparation for this. Old images came to me, bits and pieces of dreams. Nothing was substantial but
Amadeo. And Amadeo was here.
  And so we went to our separate sleep, and as I closed my eyes I feared only one thing in the
whole world--that this bliss should not last.

22




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                                           Blood and Gold

THE NEXT FEW MONTHS passed in freedom and pleasure such as I could have never imagined.
Amadeo was truly my companion and also my pupil, and I forced him with gentle discipline to
learn all that I thought he should know. This included his lessons in law and government, in history
and philosophy, and also his lessons with me in being a blood drinker, to which he gave himself
with a cheerful willingness that surpassed my dreams.
  I had thought that, being young, he might want to feed on the innocent, but when I instructed him
as to how guilt would soon destroy his soul if he did this, I found that he listened; and he took my
instructions in how to feed upon evil without allowing it to darken his own soul.
  He was also my eager pupil in the lessons on how to be in mortal company, and he soon felt
strong enough to have some conversation with the mortal boys. Indeed, he was soon expert in
deceiving them, just as I was, and though they sensed that something had changed with Amadeo
they did not know what, and they could not know, and they dared not risk the peace of our
wondrous house with even theirslightest doubts.
  Even Riccardo, the eldest of my apprentices, suspected nothing really, except that his Master was
somehow a powerful magician and the magic had saved Amadeo's life.
  But now we had to deal with our beloved Bianca, whom we had riot seen since the night of the
terrible illness, and I knew that this would be Amadeo's most arduous trial.
What was she to make of Amadeo's swift recovery from his terrible battle with Lord Harlech, and
what did she think when she laid eyes upon Amadeo with his luminous skin and shimmering hair?
What was he to think when he looked into her eyes?
  It was no secret to me that he adored her, indeed, that he had loved her as I had loved her. And so
we must go to her. Indeed, we had put it off for too long.
  Abruptly one evening, we went to visit her, having fed well on dais night so that we might feel
and appear quite warm.
  As soon as we came into her room, I saw immediately the strain in Amadeo, that he could not tell
her of what had happened to him, and only in that moment did I realize how difficult this secrecy
was for him, and how in spite of all his strength, he was still quite young and even weak.
  Indeed, Amadeo's frame of mind was far greater cause for alarm dian that of Bianca, who seemed
only happy to see Amadeo restored.
  They were like a brother arid sister together, and I thought of course of the vow I had extracted
from him when I made him, and I wished I could take him aside and remind him of it now. But we
were in her drawing room and there were many other visitors, with all the usual music and talk
going on.
  "Come into my bedroom," she said to both of us. Her lovely oval face was beaming. "I am so
very glad to see you. Why didn't you come before now? Of course everyone in Venice knew that
Amadeo was recovered, and that Lord Harlech had gone back to England, but you should have
written to me if you couldn't come."
  I showered her with my apologies. It was my thoughtlessness. And indeed I should have written a
letter. What had blinded me on such a score was my love for Amadeo. I had cared for nothing else.
  "Oh, I forgive you, Marius," she declared. "I would forgive you anything, and look at Amadeo.
It's as if he were never sick at all."
  Gratefully I accepted her embrace, but I could see how Amadeo suffered when she kissed him,
when she clasped his hand. He could not endure the gulf which separated them, but he must endure
it, and so I did not move to leave.
  "How goes it widi you, my beautiful nurse," I said to her, "you who kept Arnadeo by a thread
until I could come to him. You and your kinsmen? Are you a happy lot? "



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                                           Blood and Gold

 She gave a soft gentle laugh. "Oh, yes, my kinsmen, some of them have met widi die most
unfortunate end. Indeed, it is my understanding that the Grand Council of Venice believes they
were murdered by those from whom they exacted heavy payments. My kinsmen should have never
come to Venice with their evil designs. But I am blameless as everyone knows. Members of the
Grand Council of Venice have told me as much. And you would not think it but I am now richer on
account of all this."
 Of course I saw it in a moment. Those who had owed money to her miserable kinsmen had, after
their murders, given her costly gifts. She was richer than she had ever been.
 "I am a happier woman," she said softly, looking at me. "Indeed, I am someone altogether
different, for I know a freedom now that was inconceivable before."
 Hungrily her eyes moved over me and over Amadeo. I felt a desire emanating from her. I felt it as
she looked at both of us, that she wanted a new familiarity, and then she came to me, and putting
her arms around me, she kissed me.
 Quickly, I held her back and away from me, but this only impelled her to embrace Amadeo, and
she kissed him on his cheeks and on his mouth.
She gestured towards the bed.
 "All of Venice wonders about my magician and his apprentice," she said warmly. "And they
come to me, only to me."
 With my eyes, I let her know my love for her, that I would trespass now if she didn't strictly
forbid it, and moving past her, I seated myself on her bed.
 Never had I taken such a liberty with her, but I knew her thoughts. We dazzled her. She idolized
us.
And how lovely she was in her luminous silk and jewels.
 She came and took her place beside me, nestled close, and unafraid of whatever she saw when
she looked into my eyes.
 Amadeo was astonished and soon sat beside her on her right. Though he'd fed well, I could sense
his blood hunger, and that he fought bravely to keep it down.
 "Let me kiss you, my exquisite one," I said. And I did so, counting upon the dim light and my
sweet words to bedazzle her, and then of course she saw what she wanted to see--not some
dreadful thing quite beyond her comprehension, but a mysterious man who had rendered her an
invaluable service and left her wealthy and free.
"You will be safe always, Biarica," I said to her. "As long as I am here." Twice and once more I
kissed her. "Help me open my house again, Bianca, with even more splendid food and
entertainments. Help me prepare a greater feast perhaps than Venice has ever seen. We'll have
wondrous theatricals and dancing. Help me fill my many rooms."
 "Yes, Marius, I shall do it," she answered drowsily, her head leaning against me. "I shall be so
happy."
 "I shall give you all the money you require for it. And Vincenzo will carry out your instructions.
Only tell me when you would have this take place."
 I looked into her eyes as I spoke and then I kissed her, and though I did not dare to give her the
smallest taste of my blood, I breathed my cold breath into her, and I pierced her mind with my
desire.
 Meantime, with my right hand I reached beneath her skirts and found her sweet naked secrets and
easily moved them with my fingers, which inflamed her with immediate and undisguised desire.
Amadeo was confused.
"Kiss her," I whispered. "Kiss her again."



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                                             Blood and Gold

He obeyed me, and soon had her ravished with his kisses.
  And as my fingers tightened and caressed her, as his kisses grew more fervent, she grew bloodred
with her cresting passion and fell softly against Amadeo's arm.
I withdrew, kissing her forehead as though she were chaste again.
  "Rest now," I said, "and remember you are safe from those evil kinsmen, and that I am in your
debt forever because you kept Amadeo alive until I could come."
  "Did I, Marius?" she asked me. "Wasn't it his strange dreams?" She turned to Amadeo. "Again
and again you spoke of wondrous places, of those who told you that you must return to vis."
  "Those were but memories caught in a web with fear," said Amadeo softly. "For long before I
was born again in Venice, I knew a harsh and pitiless life. It was you who brought me back from
some thick margin of consciousness which lies just this side of death,"
She gazed at him, wondering,
How he was suffering that he could not tell her what he was.
  But having accepted these words from him, she allowed us to, in the manner of common
attendants, help her with her disheveled dress and hair.
  "We'll leave you now," I said, "and of the feast we'll make our plans at once. Allow me to send
Vincenzo to you."


  "Yes, and on that night I promise you," she said, "your house will be more splendid than even the
Doge's palace, you will see."
"My princess," I said as I kissed her.
Back to her guests she went, and off we hurried down the stairs.
In the gondola, Amadeo began his entreaties.
  "Marius, I can't bear it, this separation from her, that we can't tell her."
"Amadeo, say nothing more to me of this!" I cautioned.
  When we reached the bedchamber and locked the door, he gave way to terrible tears.
  "Master, I could tell her nothing of what had happened to me! And to Bianca I would always tell
all. Oh, not the secrets of you and me or the Blood Kisses, no, but of other things. How often I sat
with her, and talked with her. Master, I went to her so often by day and you didn't know it. She was
my friend. Master, this is unendurable. Master, she was my sister." He sobbed like a small boy.
  "I cautioned you on this, did I not?" I said furiously. "And now you weep like a child?"
In a rage, I slapped him.
And in shock he fell back away from me, but his tears flowed all the more
  "Master, why can we not make her one of us! Why can we not share the Blood with her?"
  I took him roughly by the shoulders. He didn't fear my hands. He didn't care.
  "Amadeo, listen to me. We cannot give way to this desire. I have lived a thousand years and more
without making a blood drinker, and now you, within months of your own transformation, would
make the first mortal for whom you feel inordinate love?"
  He was crying bitterly. He tried to free himself from me, but I would not allow it.
  "I wanted so to tell her of the things I see with these new eyes!" he whispered. The blood tears
spilled down his boyish cheeks. "I wanted so to tell her how all the world is changed."
  "Amadeo, know the value of what you possess and the price of what you give. Two years I
prepared you for the Blood, and even so the giving of it was too rapid, spurred on by Lord
Harlech's poisoned blade. Now you would visit this power upon Bianca? Why? Because you would
have her know what has befallen you?"



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                                             Blood and Gold

  I released him. I let him fall on his knees beside the bed, spilling his tears as he cried.
I sat at the desk.
  "How long do you think I've wandered this Earth?" I asked. "Do you know how many times it
had crossed my mind in carelessness and wanton temper to make another blood drinker? But I did
not do it, Amadeo. Not until my eyes fell upon you. I tell you, Bianca is not to be what we are."
  '^She'll grow old and die!" he whispered. His shoulders moved with his sobs. ".Are we to see it?
Are we to watch this happen? And what will she think of us as the years pass?"
  "Amadeo, stop with this. You cannot make all of them what we are. You cannot make one after
another without conscience or imagination. You cannot! For everyone there must be preparation,
learning, discipline. For everyone there must be care."
  Finally he dried his tears. He stood up and he turned to face me. There seemed an awful calm in
him, an unhappy and grim calm.
And then there came a solemn question from his lips.
"Why did you choose me, Master?" he asked.
  I was frightened at this question, and I think he saw it before I could hide it. And I marveled that I
had been so unprepared to answer such a thing.
  I felt no tenderness for him suddenly, for he seemed so strong as he stood there, so very certain of
himself and of the question which he had just put to me.
  "Did you not ask me for the Blood, Amadeo?" I responded, my voice cool. I was trembling. How
deeply I loved him, and how I didn't want him to know.
  "Oh, yes, sir," he responded in a small, calm voice, "indeed I did ask you but that was after many
a taste of your power, was it not?" He paused, then continued. "Why did you choose me for those
kisses? Why did you choose rne for the final gift?"
"I loved you," I said without further ado.
He shook his head.
"I think there's more to it," he answered.
"Then be my teacher," I answered.
  He came closer to me, and looked down at me as I remained seated at my desk.
"There's a bitter cold in me," he said, "a cold which comes from a

distant land. And nothing ever really makes it warm. Even the Blood did not make it warm. You
knew of this cold. You tried a thousand times to melt it, and transform it to something more
brilliant, but you never succeeded. And then on the night that I came near to death--no, was, in
fact, dying--you counted upon that cold to give me the stamina for the Blood."
I nodded. I looked away, but he put his hand on my shoulder.
"Look at me, please, sir," he said. "Isn't it so?" His face was serene.
"Yes," I said, "it's so."
"Why do you shrink from me as I ask this question?" he pressed.
"Arnadeo," I said, speaking firmly, "is this a curse, this Blood?"
"No," he answered quickly.
"Think on it before you answer. Is it a curse!" I declared.
"No," he said again.
  "Then cease your questions. Don't seek to anger me or embitter me. Let me teach you what I have
to teach."
  He had lost this little battle and he walked away from me, looking once more like the child,
though his full seventeen years as a mortal had rendered him more than that.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  He climbed upon the bed, and curled his legs beneath him, sitting there motionless in the alcove
of red taffeta and red light.
  "Take me back to my home, Master," he said. "Take me back to Russia where I was born. Yo]i
can take me there, I know you can. You have that power. You can find the place."
"Why, Amadeo?"
  "I must see it to forget it. I must know for certain that it was . . . what it was."
J thought on this for a long time before I answered.
  "Very well. You will tell me all you remember and I will take you where you want to go. And
into the hands of your human family you can place whatever wealth you wish."
He said nothing to this.
  "But our secrets will be kept from them, as our secrets are kept from everyone."
He nodded.
"And then we shall return."
Again he nodded.
  "All this will happen after the great feast that Bianca will start preparing. On that night, here, we
will dance with our invited guests.


Over and over again, you will dance with Bianca. We will use our greatest skill to pass among our
guests as human. And I shall count upon you as much as I count upon Bianca or Vincenzo. And the
feast will leave all of Venice in awe."
A faint smile came over his face. Again he nodded.
  "Now you know what I want of you," I declared. "I want that you befriend the boys all the more
lovingly. And I want that you go to Bianca all the more often, after you've fed of course, and your
skin is ruddy, and that you tell her nothing, nothing of the magic by which you were saved."
He nodded.
"I thought..." he whispered.
"You thought? "I asked.
  "I thought if I had the Blood I would have all things," he said. "And now I know that it's not so."

23

No MATTER how long we exist, we have our memories-- points in time which time itself cannot
erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield
nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
  So it is with me and the night of Bianca's most supreme feast, and indeed I call it that because it
was Bianca who created it, merely using the wealth and rooms of my palazzo for her finest
achievement in which all the apprentices participated and in which even humble Vincenzo was
given a dramatic role.
  All of Venice did come to partake of our never ending banquet, and to delight in the singing and
the dancing, whilst the boys performed in numerous and grandly staged tableaux.
  It seemed that every room had its own singers or divine pageants. The music of the lute, the
virginal, and a dozen other instruments blended to make die lovely songs that lulled and enchanted
everyone, as die younger boys, royally costumed, went about filling cups from golden pitchers of
wine.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  And Amadeo and I did dance ceaselessly, stepping carefully and gracefully as was the fashion
then--one walked to music, really-- clasping hands with many a Venetian beauty as well as our
beloved genius of the whole affair.
Many a time, I snatched her away from die illumination of the candles and told her how dear to me
she was that she could bring about such magic. And I begged from her a promise that she might do
it again and again.
But what could compare to this night of dancing and wandering amid mortal guests who
commented gently and drunkenly on my paintings, sometimes asking me why I had painted this or
that? As in the past, no critical word struck my heart deeply. I felt only the loving heat of mortal
eyes.
  As for Amadeo, I watched over him constantly, and saw only that he was divinely happy, seeing
all this splendor as a blood drinker, divinely thrilled by the theatricals in which the boys played
wonderfully designed roles.
  He had taken my advice and continued in his love of them, and now amid the blazing candelabra
and the sweet music, he was radiant with happiness and whispered in my ear when he could that he
could ask for nothing finer than this night.
  Having fed early, and far away, we were warm with blood and keen of vision. And so the night
belonged to us in our strength and in our happiness, and the magnificent Bianca was ours and ours
only as all men seemed to know.
  Only as sunrise approached did the guests begin to take their leave, with the gondolas lined up
before the front doors, and we had to break from the duty of accepting farewells to find our own
way to the safety of our gold-lined grave.
Amadeo embraced me before we parted to lie in our coffins.
  "Do you still want to make the journey to your homeland?" I asked him.
  "Yes, I want to go there," he said quickly. He looked at me sadly. "I wish I could say no. On this
night of aH nights, I wish I could say no." He was downcast, and I would not have it.
"I'll take you."
"But I don't know the name of the place. I can't--."
     f'You needn't torture yourself on that account," I said. "I know it from all you've told me. It's the
city of Kiev, and I shall take you there very soon."
  There came a look of bright recognition to his face. "Kiev," he said and then he said it in Russian.
He knew now it was his old home.
The following night I told him the story of his native city.
  Kiev had once been magnificent, its cathedral built; to rival Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from
which its Christianity had corne. Greek Christianity had shaped its beliefs and its art. And bodi had
flourished beautifully there in a wondrous place. But centuries ago, the Mongols had sacked this
grand city, massacred its population, destroying forever its power, leaving behind some accidental
survivals, among them monks who kept to themselves.
  What remained of Kiev? A miserable place along the banks of the Dnieper River where the
cathedral still stood, and the monks still existed in the famous Monastery of the Caves.
  Quietly, Amadeo listened to this intelligence and I could see the pure misery in his face.
"All through my long life," I said, "I have seen such ruin. Magnificent
    cities are created by men and women with dreams. Then there come the riders of the North or
the East and they trample and destroy the magnificence; all that men and women have created is no
more. Fear and misery follow this destruction. And nowhere is it more visible than in the ruins of
your home--Kiev Rus."



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  I could see that he was listening to me. I could sense that he wanted me to continue to explain.
  "There exists now in our beautiful Italy a land that will not be sacked by those warriors, for they
no longer menace the northern or eastern borders of Europe. Rather they long ago settled into the
continent and became the very population of France and Britain and Germany today. Those who
would still pillage and rape have been pushed back forever. Now throughout Europe what men and
wromen can do in cities is being discovered again.
"But in your land? There is still sorrow, and bitter poverty. The fertile
   grasslands are useless--thousands of miles of them are useless! save for the occasional hunter as
mad as your father must have been. That is the legacy of Genghis Khan--a monster." I paused. I
was becoming too heated. "The Golden Horde is what they call that land, and it is a wasteland of
beautiful grass."
  He nodded. He saw the sweep of it. I knew this from his solemn eyes.
  "Would you still go?" I pressed him. "Would you still revisit the place where you suffered so
much?"
  "Yes," he whispered. "Though I do not remember her, I had a mother. And without rny father,
there might be nothing for her. Surely he died that day when we rode out together. Surely he died in
the hail of arrows. I remember the arrows. I must go to her." He broke off as though struggling to
remember. He groaned suddenly as though some sharp physical pain had humbled him. "How
colorless and grim is their world."

"Yes," I said.
"Let me take them only a small amount--."
"Make them rich if that's your wish."
  For a long moment, he was silent and then he made a small confession, murmuring it as though
he were communing with himself:
  "I must see the monastery where I painted the ikons. I must see the place where at times I prayed
I would have the strength to be walled up alive. You know it was the way of the place, don't you? "
  "Very well, I know it," I answered. "I saw it when I gave you the Blood. I saw you moving down
the corridors, giving sustenance to those who still lived in their cells, half immured and waiting for
the will of God to take them as they starved themselves. They asked you when you would have the
courage for it, yet you could paint ikons that were magnificent."
"Yes," he said.
  "And your father hated them that they did not let you paint, that they made you a monk above all
things."
  He looked at me as if he had not truly understood this until now, and perhaps he had not. And
then came from his lips a stronger statement.
  "So it is with any monasteiy, and you know it, Master," he retorted. "The will of God comes
first."
  I was faintly shocked by the expression on his face. Was he speaking to his father or to me?
It took us four nights to reach Kiev.
  I could have made the journey much more quickly had I been on my own, but I carried Arnadeo
close to me, his head bowed, his eyes closed, my fur-lined cloak wrapped around him to shelter him
from the wind as best I could.
  At last on the sunset of the fifth night, we reached the ruins of the city which had once been Kiev
Rus. Qur clothes were covered in dirt and our fur cloaks dark and nondescript, which would help to
render us unremarkable to mortal eyes.



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  A thick snow lay over the high abandoned battlements, and covered the roofs of the Prince's
wooden palace, and beneath the battlements simple wooden houses that ran down to the Dnieper
River--the town of Podil. Neyer have I seen a place more forlorn.
  As soon as Amadeo had penetrated the wooden dwelling of the European ruler, and glimpsed to
his satisfaction this Lithuanian who paid tribute to the Khan for his power, he wanted to move on to
the monastery at once.
  And into it he slipped using his immense blood drinker's skill to play the shadows and confuse
those who might have seen him as he cleaved to the mud walls.
  I was near to him always but it was not my place to interfere or instruct. Indeed, I was gripped
with horror, for the place seemed infinitely worse than I had ever guessed from the probing of his
fevered mind.
  With quiet misery, he saw the room in which he'd made ikons with its tables and pots of paints.
He saw the long mud corridors through which he'd walked once as a young monk, giving food and
drink to those half buried alive.
At last he came out of it, shivering, and he clung to me.
  "I would have perished in a mud cell," he whispered, looking at me, begging me to understand the
import of it. His face was twisted with pain.
  Then turning away swiftly, he went down towards the half-frozen river, searching for the house in
which he'd been born.
  With no difficulty he found it, and he entered it--the splendid Venetian, dazzling and confusing
the family gathered there.
  Once again I kept my distance, settling for the silence and the wind, and the voices I could hear
with preternatural ears. Within moments he had left them with a fortune in gold coin and come out
again into the falling snow.
  I reached out to take his arm and comfort him. But he turned away. He wouldn't look at me.
Something obsessed him,
  "My mother was there," he whispered, as he looked down once more towards the river. "She
didn't know me. So be it. I gave them what I had to give."
Again I tried to embrace him, but he shook me off.
  "What's wrong then?" I asked. "Why do you stare? Why do you look that way towards the river?
What would you do? "
  How I wished I could read his mind! His mind, and his alone, was shut to me! And how angry
and determined he looked.
"My father wasn't killed in the grasslands," he said, his voice quavering, the wind whipping his
auburn hair. "My father is alive. He's in the tavern down there."
"You want to see him?"


"I have to see him. I have to tell him that I didn't die! Didn't you listen to them talking in my house
to me?"
"No," I said- "I gave you your time with them. Was I wrong?"
  "They said he'd become the drunkard because he had failed to save his son." He glared at me as if
I had done him some dreadful wrong. "My father, Ivan, the brave one, the hunter. Ivan, the warrior,
the singer of songs whom everyone loved--Ivan is the drunkard now because he failed to save his
son!"
  "Be calm. We'll go to the tavern. You can tell him in your own way---."



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  He waved me off as though I were annoying him, and he set off down the street with a mortal
tread.
  Together we entered the tavern. It was dark and full of the scent of burning oil. Fishermen,
traders, killers, drank here together. Everyone took notice of us for a moment and then ignored us,
but Arnadeo at once spied a man lying on a bench to the back of the rectangular room which made
up the place.
  Again, I wanted to leave him to what he meant to do, but I feared for him and I listened as he sat
down now close to this sleeping man.
  It was the man of memory and the man of visions, that I knew, as soon as I studied him. I
recognized him by his red hair and red mustache and beard. Amadeo's father, the hunter who had
taken him out of the monastery that day for a dangerous mission, to ride out in search of a fort
which the Mongols had already destroyed.
  I shrank back into the shadows. I watched as the luminous child removed his left glove and laid
his chill supernatural hand upon the forehead of the sleeping father. I saw die bearded man wake. I
heard them speak.
  In rambling drunken confession, the father gave forth his guilt in abundance as though it
belonged to anyone who roused him.
  He had shot arrow after arrow. He had gone after the fierce Tatars with his sword. Every other
man in the party had died. And his son, my Amadeo, stolen, and he was now Ivan the Drunkard,
yes, he confessed it. He could scarcely hunt enough to buy his drink. He was a warrior no more.
Patiently, slowly, Amadeo spoke to him, pulling him out of his ramblings, revealing the truth with
carefully chosen words.
  "I am your son, sir. I did not die that day. Yes, they took me. But I am alive."


  Never had I seen Amadeo so obsessed with either love or misery, with either happiness or grief.
But the man was stubborn, the man was drunk, and the man wanted one thing from this strange
person prodding him and that was more wine.
  From the proprietor I bought a bottle of sack for this man who wouldn't listen, who wouldn't look
at this exquisite young one who sought to claim his attention now.
I gave the bottle of sack to Amadeo.
  Then I moved along the wall so that I might better see Amadeo's face, and all I saw there was
obsession. He must make this man understand.
  Patiently, he spoke until his words had penetrated the drunken haze from which the man stared at
him.
  "Father, I've come to tell you. They took me to a far-away place, to the city of Venice, and I fell
into the hands of one who made me rich, Father, rich, and gave me learning. I'm alive, sir. I'm as
you see me now.
  Oh, how strange was this speech coming from one infused with the Blood. Alive? How so, alive,
Amadeo?
  But my thoughts were my own in the darkness. I had no role in this reunion.
At last, the man, sitting up to face his son, began to understand.
Amadeo was trembling, his eyes fixed on those of his father.
  "Forget me now, please, Father," he begged. "But remember this, for the love of God. I shall
never be buried in the muddy caves of the monastery. No. Other things may happen to me, but that,




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I won't suffer. Because of you, that you wouldn't have it, that you came that day and demanded I
ride out with you, that I be your son!"
What on earth was Amadeo saying? What did these words mean?
  He was on the verge of crying the terrible blood tears which we can never really hide. But as he
rose from the bench where his father sat, the elder caught him tightly by his hand.
  He knew his son! Andrei, he called him. Fie had recognized him for who he was.
  "Father, I must go," said Amadeo, "but you must never forget that you saw me. You must never
forget what I said, that you saved me from those dark and muddy caves. Father, you gave me life,
not death. Don't be the drunkard anymore, Father. Be the hunter again. Bring the Prince meat for
his table. Be the singer of songs. Remember that I came to tell you this myself."


"I want you, my son, stay with me," said the man. His drunken languor had left him, and he held
tight to Amadeo's hand. "Who will ever believe that I saw you?"
Amadeo's tears had risen. Could the man see the blood?
  At last Amadeo pulled back, and removing his glove, he pulled off his rings, and he placed these
in his father's hands.
  "Remember me by these," he said, "and tell my mother that I was the man who came to see her
tonight. She didn't know me. Tell her the gold is good gold."
  "Stay with me, Andrei," said the father. "This is your home. Who is it that takes you away now? "
It was more than Amadeo could bear.
  "I live in the city of Venice, Father," he said. "It's what I know now I have to go."
  He was out of the tavern so quickly his father could not see it, and I, once seeing what he meant
to do, had preceded him, and we stood in the snow-covered muddy street together.
  "It's time for us to leave this place, Master," he said to me. His gloves were gone, and the cold
was fierce. "Oh, but that I had never come here and never seen him and never known that he
suffered that I had been lost."
  "But look," I said, "your mother comes. I'm sure of it. She knew you and there, she cornes," I
pointed at the small figure approaching who held a bundle in her arms.
  "Andrei," she said as she drew closer. "It's the last one you ever painted. Andrei, I knew it was
you. Who else would have come? Andrei, this is the ikon your father brought back on the day you
were lost."
Why didn't he take it from her hands?
  "You must keep it, Mother," he said of this ikon which he had once linked to his destiny. He was
weeping. "Keep it for the little ones. I won't take it, no."
Patiently, she accepted this.
  And then another small present she entrusted to him, a painted egg--one of those treasures of
Kiev which mean so much to the people who decorate them with intricate designs.
  Quickly, gently, he took it from her, and then he embraced her, and in a fervent whisper assured
her that he had done nothing wicked to acquire his wealth and that he might some night be able to
come again. Oh, what lovely lies.


But I could see that this woman, though he loved her, did not matter to him. Yes, he would give her
gold, for that meant nothing. But it was the man who had mattered. The man mattered as the monks




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had mattered. It was the man who had wrung the strong emotions from him. The man had brought
from him bold words.
  I was stunned by all. But wasn't Amadeo stunned by it himself? He had thought the man dead,
and so had I.
  But finding him alive, Amadeo had revealed the obsession--the man had fought the monks for
Amadeo's very soul.
  And as we made our journey back to Venice, I knew that Amadeo's love for his father was far
greater than any love he had ever felt for me.
  We did not speak of it, you understand, but I knew that it was the figure of his father who reigned
in Amadeo's heart. It was the figure of that powerful bearded man who had so vigorously fought for
life rather than death within the monastery who held supremacy over all conflicts that Amadeo was
ever to know.
  I had seen it with my own eyes, this obsession. I had seen it in a matter of moments in a riverfront
tavern, but I had known it for what it was.
  Always before this journey to Russia I had thought the split in Amadeo's mind was between the
rich and varied art of Venice and the strict and stylized art of old Russia.
But now I knew that was not so.
  The split in him was between die monastery with its ikons and its penance on the one hand, and
his father, the robust hunter who had dragged him away from the monastery on that fateful day.
  Never again did Amadeo speak of his fadier and mother. Never agajn did he speak of Kiev. The
beautiful painted egg he placed within his sarcophagus without ever explaining its significance to
me.
  And on certain nights when I painted in my studio, working fiercely on this or that canvas, he
would come to keep me company, and it seemed he perused my work with new eyes.
  When would he finally pick up the brushes and paint? I didn't know, but such a question didn't
matter anymore. He was mine and mine forever. He could do what he pleased.
  Yet silently in my secret soul, I suspected that Arnadeo held me in contempt. All I taught of art,
of history, of beauty, of civilization--all this was meaningless to him.
  When the Tatars captured him, when the ikon fell from his arms into the grass, it was not his fate
that was sealed; it was his mind.


  Yes, I could dress him in finery and teach him different languages, and he could love Bianca, and
dance with her exquisitely to slow and rhythmic music, and he could learn to talk philosophy, and
write poetry as well.
  But his soul held nothing sacred but that old art and that man who lay drinking out his nights and
days by the Dnieper in Kiev. And I, with all my power, and all my blandishments, could not replace
Amadeo's father in Amadeo's mind.
Why was I so jealous? Wliy did this knowledge sting me so much?
  I loved Amadeo as I had loved Pandora. I loved him as I had loved Botticelli. Amadeo was
among these, the great loves of my long life.
  I tried to forget my jealousy or ignore it. After all, what was to be done about it? Should I remind
him of this journey and torment him with questions? I could not do such a thing.
  But I sensed that these concerns were dangerous to me as an immortal, and that never before had
anything of this nature so tortured me or made me weak. I had expected Amadeo, the blood drinker,
to look upon his family with detachment and no such thing had taken place!



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                                           Blood and Gold

  I had to admit that my love for Amadeo was all caught up with my involvement with mortals, that
I had plunged myself into their company, and he himself was still so very hopelessly close to them
that it would take him centuries to gain the distance from mortals which I had experienced on die
very night when I was first given the Blood.
  There had been no Druid grove for Amadeo. There had been no treacherous journey to Egypt;
there had been no rescue of the King and Queen.
  Indeed, as I mulled this over quickly I resolved I would not entrust him with the mystery of Those
Who Must Be Kept even though the words had once or twice passed my lips.
  Perhaps before the making of him, I had thought idly that I would take him to the shrine at once. I
would beg Akasha to receive him, as she had once received Pandora.
  But now I thought otherwise. Let him be more advanced; let him be more nearly perfected. Let
him become more wise.
  And was he not company and consolation for me now more than I ever dreamt? Even if a bad
mood overtook him he remained with me. Even if his eyes were dull as though the dazzling colors
of my paintings did not matter to him, was he not near at hand?

  Yes, he was quiet for a time after the journey to Russia. But I knew his frame of mind would
pass. And indeed it did.
  Within a few short months, he was no longer aloof and moody but had come back to be my
companion, and was once again visiting the various feasts and balls of the great citizens which I
attended regularly, and writing short poems for Bianca, and arguing with her about various
paintings which I had done.
  Ah, Bianca, how we loved her. And how often did I search her mind to make certain that she had
no inkling even now that we were not human beings.
  Bianca was the only mortal I admitted to my studio, but naturally I could not work with my full
speed and force when she was there. I had to lift a mortal arm to hold the paintbrush but it was
rnore than worth it to hear her pleasant commentary with Amadeo who also perceived in rny works
some grand design which was not there.
  All was going well when, one night as I came down upon the roof of the palazzo, quite alone, for
I had left Amadeo in the company of Bianca, I sensed that a very young mortal was watching me
from the roof of the palazzo across the canal.
  Now I had come down so swiftly that not even Amadeo could have seen it had he been watching,
yet this distant mortal marked my
presence and when I realized it, I realized quite a deal more as well.
  Here was a mortal spy who suspected me to be other than human. Here was a mortal spy who
had been observing me for some time.
  Never in all my years had I known any such a threat to my secrecy. And naturally I was tempted
to immediately conclude that my life in Venice had failed. Just when I thought I had fooled an
entire city, I was to be caught for what I was.
  But this young mortal had nothing to do with the grand society in which I moved. I knew it die
moment I penetrated his mind. He was no great Venetian, no painter, no cleric, no poet, no
alchemist, and certainly no member of the Grand Council of Venice. On the contrary, he was a
most strange sort of being, a scholar of the supernatural, a spy upon creatures such as me.
What could this mean? What could this be?




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  At this point, meaning to confront him and terrify him, I came to the very edge of the roof garden
and peered across the canal at him, and there I made out his stealthy shape, and how he meant to
cloak himself, and how fearful yet fascinated he was.


  Yes, he knew me to be a blood drinker. Indeed, he had some name for me: vampire. And he had
been watching me for several years! He had in fact glimpsed me in grand salons and ballrooms, so I
might indeed write this off to my carelessness. And on the night that I had first opened rny house to
the citizens of Venice, he had come.
  All this his mind gave me rather easily without the young man realizing it, obviously, and then
using the Mind Gift I sent a very direct message to him.
   This is folly. Interfere with me and you will surely die. I won't give you a second warning. Move
away from my household. Leave Venice. Is it worth your life to know what you want to know of
me?
  I saw him visibly startled by the message. And then to my pure shock I received a distinct mind
message from him:
   We mean you no harm. We are scholars. We offer understanding. We offer shelter. We watch
and we are always here.
Then he gave way to utter fear and fled the roof.
  With little difficulty I heard him make his way down the staircases through the palazzo and then I
saw him come out into the canal arid hail a gondola which took him away. I had caught a good look
at him as he stepped into the boat. He was a tall man, lean and fair of skin, an Englishman, and he
was dressed in severe clothes of black. He was very frightened. He did not even look up as the boat
took him away.
  I stood on the roof for a long time, feeling the blessed wind, and wondering in its silence, what I
should do about this strange discovery. I thought over his distinct message and the power of mind
with which he'd sent it to me.
  Scholars? What sort of scholars? And the other words. How very remarkable indeed.
I cannot exaggerate how odd this was.
  It struck me with full force that there had been moments in my long life when I would have found
his message irresistible, so great had been my loneliness, so great had been my longing to be
understood.
  But now, with all of Venice receiving me into its finest company, I did not feel such a thing. I had
Bianca when I wanted to ramble on about the work of Bellini or my beloved Botticelli. I had
Amadeo with whom to share my golden tomb.
  Indeed, I was enjoying a Perfect Time. I wondered if for every immortal there was a Perfect
Time. I wondered if it corresponded to the prime of life in mortals--those years when you are
strongest and

can see with the greatest clarity, those years when you can give your trust most truly to others, and
seek to bring about a perfect happiness for yourself.
  Botticelli, Bianca, Amadeo--these were the loves of my Perfect Time.
  Nevertheless, it was a stunning promise, that which the young Englishman had made. "We offer
understanding. We offer shelter. We watch and we are always here."
  I resolved to ignore this, to see what came of it, not to allow it to impede me in the slightest as I
enjoyed my life.



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  Yet in the weeks that followed I listened for this strange creature, this English scholar, and
indeed, I kept a sharp lookout for him as we made our way through the usual lavish and dizzying
social events.
  I also went so far as to question Bianca about such a person, and to warn Vincenzo that such a
man might attempt to engage him in
conversation and that he must be very wise on that account.
Vincenzo shocked me.
  The very fellow--a tall lean Englishman, young, but with pale gray hair--had already come
calling. He had questioned Vincenzo, Would his Master wish to purchase certain unusual books?
  "They were books of magic," said Vincenzo, frightened that I would be angry. "I told him that he
must bring the books if he meant to offer them to you, and leave them here for you to see."
"Think back on it. What more was said between you?"
  "I told him you had many, many books already, that you visited the booksellers. He ... he saw the
paintings in the portego. He asked if these had been done by you."
I tried to make my voice comforting.
  "And you told him that the paintings had been done by me, didn't you?"
  "Yes, sir, I'm sorry, so very sorry if this was more than I should have said. He wanted to purchase
a painting. I told him that no purchase could be made."
  "It doesn't matter. Only be careful on account of this man. Tell him nothing further. And when
you see him, report it at once to me."
  I had turned to go when a question came to me and I turned to see my beloved Vincenzo in tears.
Of course I reassured him at once that he had served me perfectly, and told him he must wony
about nothing. But then I asked him:


"Give me your impression of this man. Was he good or bad?"
  "Good, I think," he said, "though what sort of magic he meant to sell, I don't know. Yes, good, I
would say so, very good, though why I say it I can't tell. He had a kindness to him. And he liked the
paintings. He praised them. He was most polite and rather serious for one so young. Rather
studious."
"It's quite enough," I said. And indeed it was.
I did not find the man though I searched the city. And I had no fear.
  Then two months later, I met, in the most auspicious circumstances, with the man himself.
  It was at a luxurious banquet and I was seated at the table, among a great number of drunken
Venetians watching the young people before us in their measured and leisurely dance.
  The music was poignant, and the lamps were just brilliant enough to give the vast room the most
enchanting glow.
  There had been several fine spectacles before with acrobats and singers, and I think I was faintly
dazed.
  I know I was thinking again that this was my Perfect Time. I meant to write it in my diary when I
returned home.
  As I sat at the table, I leant on my right elbow, my left hand playing idly with the rim of a cup
from which I now and then pretended to drink.
  And then and there appeared this Englishman, this scholar, at my left side.
  "Marius," he said softly, and in full command of classical Latin: "Count me a friend and not a
meddler, I beg you. I have watched you for a long time from afar."



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  I felt a deep shiver. I was startled in the purest sense of the word. I turned to look at him, and saw
his sharp clear eyes fixed fearlessly on me.
  Again there came that message, mentally, without words, from his mind quite confidently to my
own:
   We offer shelter. We offer understanding. We are scholars. We watch and we are always here.
  Once again a deep shiver stole over me. All the company round was blind to me, but this one
saw. This one knew.
  Now he passed to me a round gold coin. On it was stamped one word:
Talamasca


  I looked it over, concealing my complex shock, and then I asked politely in the same classical
Latin:
" What does it mean?"
  "We are an Order," he said, his Latin effortless and charming. "That is our name. We are the
Talamasca. We are so old we don't know our origins and why we are so called." He spoke calmly.
"But our purpose in eveiy generation is clear. We have our rules and our traditions. We watch those
whom others despise and persecute. We know secrets that even the most superstitious of men
refuse to believe."
  His voice and his manners were very elegant, but the power of the mind behind his words was
quite strong. His self-possession was stunning. He could not have been more than twenty.
"How did you find me?" I demanded.
  "We watch at all times," he said gently, ''and we saw you when you lifted your red cloak, as it
were, and stepped into the light of torches and the light of rooms such as this."
"Ah, so, it began for you then in Venice," I said. "I have blundered."
  "Yes, here in Venice," he said. ''One of us saw you and wrote a letter to our Motherhouse in
England, and I was dispatched to make certain of who and what you were. Once I glimpsed you in
your own house I knew it to be true."
  I sat back arid took his measure. He had put on handsome velvet of a fawn color, and wore a
cloak lined with miniver, and there were simple silver rings on his hands. His pale ashen hair was
long and combed plainly. His eyes were as gray as his hair. His forehead was high and bare of
lines. He seemed to be shining clean.
  "And what truth is this that you speak of?" I asked as gently as I could. "What is it that you know
to be true of me?"
  "You are a vampire, a blood drinker," he said without flinching, his voice as polite as ever, his
manner composed. "You've lived for centuries. I can't know your age. I don't presume to know. I
wish that you would tell me. You have not blundered. It is I who have come to greet you."
  It was charming to be speaking in the old Latin. And his eyes, reflecting the light of the lamps,
were full of an honest excitement tempered only by his dignity.
  "I have come into your house when it was open," he said. "I have accepted your hospitality. Oh,
what I would give to know how long you've lived, and what you have seen."

  "And what would you do with that intelligence?" I asked him, "if I did tell you such things?"
  "Commit it to our libraries. Increase the knowledge. Let it be known that what some say is legend
is in fact truth." He paused and then he said: "Magnificent truth."




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Ah, but you have something to record even now, don't you?" I asked. "You can record that you
have seen me here."
  Quite deliberately I looked away from him and towards the dancers before us. Then I looked back
at him to see that he had followed,
obediently, the direction of my gaze.
He watqhed Bianca as she made her circle in the carefully modulated dance, her hand clasped by
that of Amadeo who smiled at her, the light glimmering on his cheek. She seemed the girl again
when the music played so very sweetly, and when Amadeo gazed on her with such approving eyes.
  "And what else do you see here?" I asked, "my fine scholar of the Talamasca?"
  "Another," he answered, his eyes returning to me without fear. "A beautiful boyish one, who was
human when I first laid eyes on him, and now he dances with a young woman who may soon be
transformed as well."
  My heart beat furiously as I heard this. My heart beat in my throat and in my ears.
  But he laid no judgment down upon me. On the contrary, he was without all judgment and for a
moment I could do nothing but search his young mind to make certain this was true.
He shook his head gently.
  "Forgive me," he said. "I have never been close to one such as you." He was flushed suddenly. "I
have never spoken to one such as you. I pray I shall have time to commit to parchment what I've
seen tonight, though I swear to you on my honor and on the honor of the Order that if you let me go
from here alive I will write nothing until I reach England, and the words will never do you harm."
  I shut the soft seductive music out of my hearing. I thought only of his mind, and I searched it
and found there nothing but what he had just said to me, and behind it, an Order of scholars as he
had described it, a seeming wonder of men and women who wanted only to know, and not to
destroy.
Indeed a dozen marvels presented themselves of shelter given to those who could genuinely read
minds, and others who from the cards could somehow with uncanny accuracy predict fortunes, and
some who might have been burnt as witches, and behind it libraries in which time-honored books
of magic were stored.
  It seemed quite impossible that in this Christian era, such a secular force could exist.
  I reached down and picked up the gold coin with the engraved word, Talamasca. I put it in one of
my pockets, and then I took his hand.
He was fiercely afraid now.
"Do you think I mean to kill you?" I asked gently.
"No, I don't think you will do it," he said. "But you see, I have studied
you so long and with such love, I can't know."
"Love, is it?" I asked. "How long has your Order known of creatures like us?" I asked. I held his
hand firmly.
His high clear forehead was suddenly creased by a small expressive frown.
"Always, and I told you we are very old."
  I thought on it for a long moment, holding on to his hand. I searched his mind again, and found
no lie in it. I looked out at the young dancers moving decorously, and I let the rnusic fill me once
more as though this strange disturbance had never corne about.
Then I released his hand slowly.
  "Go then," I said, "leave Venice. I give you a day and a night to do it. For I would not have you
here with me."
"I understand," he said gratefully.



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  "You have watched me too long," I said reprovingly. But the reproof was really for myself. "I
know that you have already written letters to your Motherhouse describing me. I know because I
would have done so if I were you."
  "Yes," he said again, "I have studied you. But I have done it only for those who would know
more of die world and all its creatures. We persecute no one. And our secrets are well kept from
those who would use them for harm."
  "Write what you will," I said, "but go, and never suffer your members to come to this city again."
  He was about to rise from the table when I asked him his name. As so often happened with me, I
had not been able to take it from his mind.
  "Raymond Gallant," he responded softly. "Should you ever want to reach me--."


"Never," I said sharply under my breath.
  He nodded, but then refusing to go with that admonition he stood his ground and said: "Write to
the castle, the name of which is engraved on the other side of the coin."
  I watched him leave the ballroom. He wasn't a figure to attract attention, and indeed one could
picture him working with quiet
dedication in some library where everything was splattered with ink.
But he did have a marvelously appealing face.
  I sat brooding at the table, only talking now and then to others when I had to, wondering on it,
that this mortal had come so close to me.
  Was I too careless now? Too absolutely in love with Amadeo and Bianca to be paying attention
to the simplest things that should have sounded an alarm? Had the splendid paintings of Botticelli
separated me too much from my immortality?
  I didn't know, but in truth what Raymond Gallant had done could be explained fairly well.
I was in a room full of mortals and he was but one of them, and perhaps he had a way of
disciplining his mind so that his thoughts did not go out before him. And there was no menace to
him in gesture or face.
  Yes, it was all simple, and when I was home in my bedchamber I felt much more at ease about it,
even enough to write several pages about it in my diary as Amadeo slept like a Fallen Angel on my
red taffeta bed.
  Should I fear this young man who knew where I dwelt? I thought not. I sensed no danger
whatsoever. I believed the things that he said.
  Quite suddenly, a couple of hours before dawn a tragic thought crossed my mind.
  I must see Raymond Gallant once more! I must speak to him! What a fool I had been.
I went out into the night, leaving the sleeping Amadeo behind.
And throughout Venice I searched for this English scholar sweeping this and that palazzo with the
power of my mind.
  At last I came upon him in modest lodgings very far from the huge palaces of the Grand Canal. I
came down the stairway from the roof, and tapped on his door.
  "Open to me, Raymond Gallant," I said, "It's Marius, and I don't mean you any harm."
No answer. But I knew that I had given him a terrible start.
  "Raymond Gallant, I can break the door but I have no right to do such a thing. I beg you to
answer. Open your door to me."




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                                            Blood and Gold

  Finally he did unfasten the door, and I came inside, finding it to be a little chamber with
remarkably damp walls in which he had a mean writing table, and a packing case and a heap of
clothes. There stood against the wall a small painting which I had done many months ago and
which I had, admittedly, cast aside.
  The place was overcrowded with candles, however, which meant that he had a rather good look at
me.
He drew back from me like a frightened boy.
  "Rayrnond Gallant, you must tell me something," I said at once, both to satisfy myself and to put
him at his ease.
  "I will do my best to do this, Marius," he answered, his voice tremulous. "What can you possibly
want to know of me?"
  "Oh, surely it's not so hard to imagine," I responded. I looked about- There was no place to sit. So
be it. "You told me you have always known of our kind."
  "Yes," he answered. He was shaking violently. "I was ... I was preparing to leave Venice," he
volunteered quickly. "As you advised."
  "I see that, and I thank you. But this is my question," I spoke very slowly to him as I went on.
  "In all of your study, did you ever hear tell of a woman blood drinker, a woman vampire as you
call it--a woman with long rippling brown hair . . . rather tall and beautifully formed, a woman
made in the full bloom of life rather than in the budding flower of youth . . . a woman with quick
eyes, a woman who walks the night streets alone,"
  All this quite impressed him and for a moment he looked away from me, registering the words,
and then he looked back.
"Pandora," he said.
  I winced. I couldn't prevent it. I couldn't play the dignified man with him. I felt it like a blow to
the chest.
  I was so overcome that I walked a few paces away from him, and turned my back on him so that
he could not see the expression on my face.
He knew her very name!
  Finally I turned around. "What do you know of her?" I said. I searched his mind as he spoke for
the truth of every word.
  "In ancient Antioch, carved in stone," he said, "the words, 'Pandora and Marius, drinkers of the
blood, once dwelt together in happiness in this house.' "
I could not answer him. But this was only the past, the bitter sad past in which I'd deserted her. And
she, full of hurt, must have inscribed the words in the stone.
That he and his scholars had found such a remnant left me humbled
and respecting of what they were.
  "But now," I declared, "do you know of her now? When did you learn of her? YOU must tell me
all."
  "In the North of Europe now," he said, "there are those who say they have seen her." His voice
was growing stronger, but he was still quite afraid. "And once a young vampire, a young blood
drinker, came to us, one qf those who cannot bear the transformation. . . ,"
  "Yes, go on," I said. "I know. You say nothing that is offensive to me. Continue, please."
  "The young one came, hoping we held some magic by which he might reverse the Blood and give
him back his mortal life and his immortal soul...."
"Yes, and he spoke of her? That's what you mean to say?"




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Precisely. He knew all about her. He told us her name. He counted her a goddess among
vampires. It was not she who made him. Rather coming upon him, she had pity on him, and often
listened to his ravings. But he described her as you did. And he told us of the ruins in Antioch
where we would find the words she'd written in the stone.
  "It was she who spoke to him of Marius. And so the name came to be known to us. Marius, the
tall one with the blue eyes, Marius whose mother came from Gaul and whose father was a Roman."
He stopped, plainly afraid of me.
"Oh, go on, please, I beg you," I said.
"This young vampire is gone now, destroyed by his own will without our compliance. He went out
into the morning sun."
  "Where did he come upon her?" I asked. "Where did she listen to his ravings? When did this take
place?"
  "Within my lifetime," he said. "Though I myself did not see this blood drinker. Please, do not
press me too hard. I am trying to tell you all I know. The young vampire said that she was ever on
the move, through the northern countries as I told you, but in the disguise of a rich woman, and
with an Asian companion, a blood drinker of very great beauty and abrupt cruelty who seemed to
oppress her nightly and force her into what she did not want to do."
"I can't bear it!" I declared. "Go on, tell me--what northern countries?
     I can't read from your mind any faster than I can hear your words. Tell me all that the young
one said."


"I don't know the countries in which she traveled," he answered.
My passion was unnerving him.
  "This young one, he loved her. He imagined that she would repel the Asian. But she would not. It
drove him mad, this failure. And so, feeding upon the populace of a small German town, the young
one soon blundered into our arms."
  He paused, to gather his courage and to make his voice steady as he went on.
  "Within our Motherhouse he talked incessantly of her, but it was all the same theme--her
sweetness, her kindness and the cruelty of the Asian from whom she would not break away."
  "Tell me the names under which they traveled," I said. "There must have been names, names they
used as mortals, for how else could they have lived as rich mortals? Give me the names."
  "I don't know them," he said. He gathered all his reserve now. "Give me time and perhaps I can
obtain them. But I do not in truth think the Order will give me such information to give to you."
  Again I turned away from him. I put my right hand up to shield my eyes. What gestures does a
mortal man make at such a moment? I made of my right hand a fist, and held my right arm firmly
with my left hand.
  She lived. Was I not content with that? She lived! The centuries had not destroyed her. Was that
not enough?
  I turned around. I saw him standing there, so very bravely, though his hands trembled at his sides.
  "Why are you not terrified of me?" I whispered, "terrified that I may come to your Motherhouse
and find this information for myself?"
"Perhaps no such action is necessary," he responded quickly. "Perhaps I can obtain it for you, if you
must have it, for it breaks no vows we've taken. It was not Pandora herself who sought shelter with
us."




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                                             Blood and Gold

  "Ah, yes, you make a lawyer's point on this score," I answered. " What more can you tell me?
What more did Pandora tell this young one of me?"
"No more," he answered.
  "Of Marius, this young one spoke, having heard the name from Pandora--." I repeated.
  "Yes, and then here we discovered you in Venice. I have told you all!"


I drew back once more. He was exhausted with me and so frightened of me that his mentality was
almost to the point where it might break.
"I have told you all," he said again gravely.
  "I know you have," I said. "I see that you are capable of secrecy but quite incapable of a lie."
He said nothing.
  I took the gold coin from my pocket, the one which he had given me. I read the word:
Talamasca
I turned it over.
  There imprinted on it was the picture of a high and well-fortified castle, and beneath it the name:
Lorwich, East Anglia.
I looked up.
"Raymond Gallant," I said. "I thank you."
He nodded.
  "Marius," he said suddenly, as though screwing up his courage, "can you not send out some
message to her over the miles?"
I shook my head.
  "I made her a blood drinker, and her mind has been closed to me from the beginning. So it is with
the beautiful child you saw dancing this very night. Maker and offspring cannot read each other's
thoughts."
  He mulled this over as though we were speaking of human things, just that calmly, and then he
said:
  "But surely yoij can send the message with your powerful mind to others who may see her and
tell her that you search for her, and where you are."
A strange moment passed between us.
  How could I confess to him that I could not beg her to come to me? How could I confess to
myself that I had to come upon her and take her in my arms and force her to look at me, that some
old anger
separated me from her? I could not confess these things to myself.
  I looked at him. He stood watching me, growing ever more calm, but certainly enrapt.
  "Leave Venice, please," I said, "as I have asked you to do." I untied my purse and I put a good
many gold florins on his desk, just as I had done twice with Botticelli. "Take this from me," I said,
"for all your trouble. Leave here, and write to me when you can."


  Again he nodded, his pale eyes very clear and determined, his young face rather willfully calm.
  "It will be an ordinary letter," I said, "come to Venice by ordinary means, but it will contain the
most marvelous information, for I may find in it intelligence of a creature whom I have not
embraced in over a thousand years."




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                                           Blood and Gold

  This shocked him, though why I did not understand. Surely he knew the age of the stones in
Antioch. But I saw the shock penetrate him and course through his limbs.
  "What have I done?" I said aloud, though I wasn't speaking to him. "I shall leave Venice soon, on
account of you and on account of many things. Because I do not change and therefore cannot play
the mortal for very long. I will leave soon on account of the young woman you saw dancing tonight
with my young apprentice, for I have vowed that she shall not be transformed. But oh, I have
played niy role most splendidly here. Write it in your histories. Describe my house as you saw it,
full of paintings and lamps, full of music and laughter, full of gaiety and warmth."
  His expression changed. He grew sad, agitated, without moving so much as a muscle and the
tears came up in his eyes. How wise he seemed for his years. How strangely compassionate.
  "What is it, Raymond Gallant?" I asked. "How can you weep for me? Explain it to me."
  "Marius," he said. "I was taught in the Talamasca that you would be beautiful and you would
speak with the tongue of an angel and a demon."
"Where is the demon, Raymond Gallant?"
  "Ah, you have me. I have not heard the demon. I have struggled to believe in it. But I have not
heard it. You are right."
"Did you see the demon in my paintings, Raymond Gallant?"
"No, I did not, Marius."
"Tell me what you saw."
"Fearful skill and marvelous color," he answered, not even
hesitating a moment, as though he had thought it through. "Wondrous
figures and great invention, which gave everyone utter delight."
"Ah, but am I better than the Florentine Botticelli?" I asked him.
His face darkened. There came a small frown to him.
"Let me answer for you," I said, "I am not."
He nodded.


  "Think on it," I said. "I am an immortal, and Botticelli is a mere man. Yet what are the wonders
which Botticelli has done?"
It was too painful for me to be here any longer.
  I reached out with both hands and gently took hold of his head before he could stop me. His
hands rose and they gripped mine but they could do nothing of course to soften my own grip.
I came close to him, arid I spoke in a whisper.
  "Let me give you a gift, Raymond. Now pay attention to me. I will not kill you. I will not harm
you. I want only to show you the teeth and the Blood, and if you will allow--and mark, I ask for
your permission--I shall give you a drop of the Blood on your tongue,"
  I opened my mouth so that the fang teeth were visible to him and I felt his body stiffen. He
uttered a desperate prayer in Latin.
  Then I cut my tongue with my teeth as I had done a hundred times with Amadeo.
"Do you want this blood?" I asked.
He closed his eyes.
  "I will not make this decision for you, scholar. Will you take this lesson?"
"Yes!" he whispered when in fact his mind said No.
  I clamped his mouth in an ardent kiss. The blood passed into him, and violently, he convulsed.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  As I let him go, he could scarcely stand. But he was no coward, this man. And he bowed his head
for only an instant and then he looked at me with clouded eyes.
  He was enchanted for these small moments, and patiently, I let them pass.
  "My thanks to you, Raymond," I said. I prepared to take my leave through the window. "Write to
rne with all you know of Pandora, and if you cannot I will understand."
"Don't ever see an enemy in us, Marius," he said quickly.
  "Don't fear it," I said. "I never really forget anything that happens. I will always remember that
you spoke to me of her."
And then I was gone.
  I came back to my bedroom study, where Amadeo still slept as though wine had drugged him
when it had only been mortal blood.
  For a little while I wrote in my diary. I tried to describe sensibly the conversation which had just
taken place. I tried to describe the
Talarnasca from all that Raymond Gallant had revealed to me.


  But at last I gave in to writing the name Pandora over and over, foolishly, Pandora, and then I put
my head down on my folded arms and dreamt of her, and whispered to her in my dreams.
  Pandora in the northern countries, what countries, what could this mean?
  Oh, if I were to find her Asian companion, how I would deal with him, how quickly and brutally
would I free her from such oppression. Pandora! How could you let such a thing happen? And no
sooner had I asked such a question than I realized I was quarreling with her as I had done so often
of old.
  When it came time to leave the house that night to find our resting place. I discovered Bianca
asleep in my studio on a long silken couch.
  ''Oh, but you're too lovely," I said to her, kissing her hair tenderly and squeezing her beautifully
curved arm.
  "I adore you," she whispered, then went on with her dreaming-- my fine and wonderful girl.
  On we went to the golden room in which our coffins awaited us. I helped Amadeo lift the lid of
his coffin before I lifted my own.
  Amadeo was tired. The dancing had wearied him. But he whispered something sleepily to me.
"What is it? "I said.
  "When the time comes, you will do it, you will give Bianca the Blood."
"No," I said, "stop speaking of that, you're infuriating me."
  He laughed his cold uncompassionate little laugh. "I know you will. You love her too much to see
her begin to wither."
I told him No.
  And then I went to my rest, never dreaming that it was the last night of our life together, the last
night of my supreme power, the last night of Marius de Romanus, citizen of Venice, painter and
magician, the last night of my Perfect Time.



24




                                                                                                    213

                                            Blood and Gold

ON THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I rose as was my custom and waited the hour or so for Amadeo to
open his eyes. Being young he did not follow the sunset so quickly as I did, and the time of rising
differs among blood drinkers even when age is not a question at all.
  I sat in the gold-lined chamber, deep in my thoughts about the scholar named Raymond Gallant,
and wondered if he had left Venice as I had advised him to do. What danger could he bring to me, I
thought, even if he meant to do it, for whom would he Incite against me and on what charge?
  I was far too strong to be overcome or imprisoned. Such a thing was preposterous. The very worst
that could happen was that if this man marked me as some sort of dangerous alchemist, or even a
demon, I should have to take Amadeo and go.
  But I did not like these thoughts, and so I chose during these quiet moments to believe in
Raymond Gallant, to be fond of him and to trust in him, and to let my mind search the city around
me to see if I might find a trace of his presence, which would displease rne in the extreme.
I had only started this search when something utterly ghastly blotted
put my reason.
  I heard screams coming from my own house. And I heard the cry of blood drinkers! I heard the
cry of Satan worshipers--the chant of condemnations--and in my mind's eye I saw rny rooms
filled with spreading fire.
  I beheld Bianca's face in the minds of others. I heard the cries of my boys.


Quickly I threw off the cover of Amadeo's coffin.
  "Come, Amadeo, I need you," I cried in this frantic, foolish moment. "They're burning the house.
Bianca is in danger. Come."
  "Who is it, Master," he said, flying up the steps beside me. "Is it Those Who Must Be Kept?"
  "No, Amadeo," I said, taking him under my arm and flying to the roof of the palazzo, "It's a band
of demon-worshiping blood drinkers. They're weak. They will burn by their own torches! We must
save Bianca. We must save the boys."
  As soon as I reached the house, I realized that they were attacking it in unimaginable numbers.
Santino had realized his crazed dreams. In every room there was a zealous assailant putting to the
torch whatever he could.
The entire house was filled with fire.
  As I rushed to the top of the main stairs I saw Bianca far below me, surrounded by the black-
cloaked demons, who tormented her with torches as she screamed. Vincenzo lay dead before the
open front doors.
  I could hear the shouts of the gondoliers pleading with those inside to come out.
  I dropped to the bottom of the stairway, and with the Fire Gift burnt Bianca's young and
blundering attackers, who all but tripped on their black robes as they went up in flames. Some I
could only force away with physical blows because I had no time to direct my powerful gifts.
  Quickly I carried Bianca through the thick smoke and out onto the quais. I heaved her into the
arms of a boatman who at once moved to take her away.
  As soon as I turned back to save the screaming boys, a host of black-clad monsters surrounded
me and again I burnt them with the Fire Gift, battering at their torches clumsily as I did.
  The house was everywhere in chaos. Statues fell over the railings. Tapestries were set ablaze and
paintings smoldered, but the boys, what could I do to protect the boys?
  As soon as I burnt one ring of monsters there came another, and from all sides the
condemnations:



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                                           Blood and Gold

  "Heretic, blasphemer, Marius, the idolater, Marius, the pagan. Santino condemns you to burn."
  Again and again I knocked the torches aside. Again and again I burnt the intruders. Again and
again I heard their dying cries.
The smoke blinded me as it might have a mortal. The boys were roaring in panic as they were
carried out of the house and over the rooftops.
"Amadeo!" I called out.
From above, I heard him desperately call to me.
  I ascended, yet at every landing they accosted me and I found myself whipping around and
playing the same game of force and Fire Gift as rapidly as I could.
  "Amadeo, use your strength," I called out to him. I could not see him. "Use the gifts I've givei>
you." I could only hear his cries.
  I set ablaze those who crowded close to me. I could see nothing but the creatures burning, and
then more torches thrust towards me as I hurled them back.
  "Do you want to burn!" I declared, seeking to threaten them but no lesson of power stopped them.
In their fervor they came on.
  "Santino sends you his holy fire. Santino sends you his justice. Santino claims your pupils.
Santino claims your fledglings. Now it is time for you to burn."
  AH of a sudden and indeed, it was all of sudden--there did come the fatal circle of some seven or
eight of them swift enough to plunge the fire at me so that it caught all of my garments and my hair.
  Against my body itself this fire burnt, swallowing my head and all of my limbs.
  For one slight moment I thought I shall survive this, this is nothing, I am Marius, the Immortal
One, and then there came to me in a fury the horrid memory of the blood of the Elder in Egypt set
afire by a lamp, burning with lurid smoke on the floor of rny room.
  There came a memory of the blood of Euxodia in Constantinople, bursting into flame on the floor
of the shrine.
  There came the memory of the Druid god in the grove with his black burnt skin.
  And I knew in the next instant, without memory or thought, that my blood had been fatally
ignited--that no matter how strong my skin or my bone, or my will, I was now burning, burning
with such pain and such speed that nothing could keep me from being destroyed.
  "Marius," Amadeo cried out in terror. "Marius." I heard his voice like a bell.
I cannot say reason drove me in any direction.
  I did know I had reached the rooftop, and the cries of Amadeo and the boys were moving far off.
  "Marius," cried Amadeo one more time.
  I was blind to all who still tormented me. I was blind to the sky. In my ears, I heard the old God
of the Grove on the night of my making telling me that I was immortal, that I could only be
destroyed by the sun or by fire.
  For life, I reached with all my remaining power. And in this state, I willed myself to reach the
proper railing of the roof garden and to plummet down into the canal.
  "Yes, down, down, into the water, under the water," I said aloud, forcing myself to hear the
words, and then through the fetid waters I swam as fast as I could, clinging to the bottom, cooled
and soothed and saved by the filthy water, leaving behind the burning palazzo from which my
children had been stolen, in which my paintings had been destroyed.
An hour, perhaps longer, I remained in the canal.
  The fire in my veins had been quenched almost immediately, but the raw pain was almost
unendurable, and when at last I rose it was to seek that gold-lined chamber where my coffin lay.
I was unable to walk to this room.



                                                                                                  215

                                            Blood and Gold

  Fearfully, on hands and knees, I sought the back entrance of the house, and managed by means of
both the Mind Gift and my fingers to unlatch the door.
  Then moving slowly through the many chambers I came at last to the heavy barrier which I had
made to my tomb. For how long I struggled with it I do not know, only that it was the Mind Gift
which finally unfastened it, not the strength of my burnt hands.
At last I crept down the stairs to the dark quiet of the golden room.
  It seemed a miracle when at last I lay beside my coffin. I was too exhausted to move further, and
with every breath I felt pain.
  The sight of my burnt arms and legs was stultifying. And when I reached to feel my hair, I
realized that most of it was gone. I felt my ribs beneath the thickened black flesh of my chest. I
needed no mirror to tell me that I had become a horror, that my face was gone.
  But what grieved me far worse was that when I leant against my coffin and listened, I could hear
the boys wailing, wailing as a ship took them to some distant port, and I could hear Amadeo
pleading with his captors for some kind of reason. But no reason came. Only the chants of the Satan
worshipers were sung to my poor children. And I knew these Satan worshipers were taking my
children South to Rome, South to Santino, whom I had foolishly condemned and dismissed.


  Amadeo was once more a prisoner, once more a captive of those who would use him for their evil
ends. Amadeo had once more been stolen from a way of life to be taken to another inexplicable
place.
  Oh, how I hated myself that I had not destroyed Santino! Why had I ever suffered him to live!
  And even now, as I tell you this story, I despise him! Oh, how heartily and eternally I despise him
because he destroyed, in the name of Satan, all that I held precious, because he took my Amadeo
away from me, because he took those whom I protected, because he burnt the palazzo which
contained the fruits of my dreams.
  Yes, I repeat myself, don't I? You must forgive me. Surely you must understand the pure
arrogance and utter cruelty of what Santino did to me. Surely you must understand the pure
destructive force with which he changed the course of Amadeo's journey....
And I knew that this journey would be changed.
  I knew it as I lay against the side of my coffin. I knew it because I was too weak to recover my
pupil, too weak to save the wretched mortal boys who would suffer some unspeakable cruelties,
too weak even to hunt for myself.
And if I could not hunt, how would I gain the blood to heal?
  I lay back on the floor of the room and I tried to quell the pain in my burnt flesh. I tried only to
think and to breathe.
I could hear Bianca. Bianca had survived, Bianca was alive.
  Indeed, Bianca had brought others to save our house, but it was far beyond saving. And once
again, as in war and pillage, I had lost the beautiful things I cherished; I had lost my books; I had
lost my writings,
such as they were.
  How many hours I lay there I don't know, but when I rose to take the lid from my coffin I found
that I still could not stand. Indeed, I could not remove the lid with my burnt arms. Only with the
Mind Gift could I push it and then not very fan
I settled back down on the floor.
I was too full of pain to move again for a long tinie.



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  Could I hope to travel over the miles to reach the Divine Parents? I didn't know. And I couldn't
risk leaving this chamber to find out.
  Nevertheless I pictured Those Who Must Be Kept. I prayed to them. Deeply, vividly I envisioned
Akasha.
  "Help me, my Queen," I whispered aloud. "Help me. Guide me. Remember when you spoke to
me in Egypt. Remember. Speak to me now. I have never suffered before as I am. suffering now."

  And then an old taunt came back to me, a taunt as old as prayers themselves.
  "Who will tend your shrine if I am not restored?" I demanded. I trembled in my misery. "Beloved
Akasha," I whispered. "Who will worship you if I am destroyed? Help me, guide me, for some
night in these passing centuries you may have need of rne! Who has cared for you for so long!"
But what good is it ever to taunt the gods and the goddesses?
  I sent out the Mind Gift with all its strength to the snowy Alps in which I had built and concealed
the chapel.
  "My Queen, tell me how I may come to you? Could something as dreadful as this draw you from
your solitude, or do I ask too much? I dream of miracles but I cannot imagine them. I pray for
mercy, yet I cannot envision how it would come about."
  I knew it was vain, if not blasphemy, to beg her to rise from her throne for me. But was she so
powerful that she could give some
miraculous strength over the miles?
  "How will I return to you?" I prayed. "How will I ever fulfill again my duties if I am not healed?"
  The silence of the golden room answered. It was as cold as the shrine in the mountains. I
imagined I could feel the snow of the Alps on my burnt flesh.
But slowly the horror gunk in.
I think I gave a soft, sad little laugh.
  "I can't reach you," I said, "not without assistance, and how can I obtain that assistance unless I
forsake the secret of what I am? Unless I forsake the secret of the Chapel of Those Who Must Be
Kept?"
  At last I climbed to my knees and struggled up the stone stairs very slowly; and painfully, I
managed to stand, and with the Mind Gift, fasten the bronze door.
  Safety, that was important, very important. I must survive this, I thought. I must not despair.
  Then collapsing again and crawling down the stairs to the golden chamber, in the manner of
something loathsome and lurid, I pushed doggedly against the lid of my coffin until it was open
sufficiently for me to go to my rest.
Never had I known such injury, never had I known such pain.
  A monstrous humiliation was mingled with the torture. Oh, there was so much I had not known
about existence, so much I had not understood about life.


  Soon the cries of the boys were gone from my ears, no matter how keenly I listened. The boat had
carried them over the waters.
But I could still hear Bianca.
Bianca wept.
In misery and pain, my mind searched Venice.
  "Raymond Gallant, member of the Talaniasca," I whispered, "I need you now. Raymond Gallant,
pray you haven't left Venice. Raymond



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Gallant of the Talamasca, please hear my prayers."
  I could find no trace of him, but who knew what had happened to my powers? Perhaps all had
dwindled. I could not even remember clearly his room or where it had been.
  But why did I hope to find him? Had I not told him to leave the Veneto? Had I not impressed
upon him that he must leave? Of course he had done as I had told him to do. No doubt he was miles
beyond the point where he might hear my call.
  Nevertheless I continued to say his name over and over as if it were a prayer.
"Raymond Gallant of the Talamasca, I need you. I need you now."
  Finally, the approaching dawn brought a frigid relief to me. The roaring pain subsided slowly and
my dreams began as they will do if I sleep before the rise of the sun.
  In rny dreams, I saw Bianca. She had her servants about her, and they comforted her, and she
said:
  "They are dead, both of them, I know it. They have died in the fire."
  ''No, my sweet one," I said. With all the power of the Mind Gift I called to her:
   Bianca, Amadeo is gone, but I live. Do not fear me when you set eyes upon me, for I am badly
burnt. But I live.
  In the eyes of the others, I saw a mirror of her as she stopped and turned away from them. I saw
her rise from her chair and move towards the window. I saw her open it arid peer out into the
dampness at the approaching light.
   Tonight, when the sun sets, I will call to you. Bianca. I am a monster now in my own eyes and
will be a monster in yours. But I will endure this
suffering. I will call to you. Don't be afraid.
  "Marius," she said. The mortals who gathered around her heard her speak my name.
  But the sleep of the morning had come over me. I couldn't resist it. The pain was at last gone.

25


wHEN I AWOKE the pain was excruciating. I lay for an hour or more without moving. I listened to
the voices of Venice. I listened to the movement of the waters beneath my house and all around it,
and through the canals and into the sea.
  I listened for Santino's miscreants, in quiet dignified terror that they might yet be abroad in search
of me. But they were gone
completely, at least for now.
  I tried to lift the marble lid of the sarcophagus and I couldn't do it. Once again, with the Mind Gift
I pushed against it, and then, with the aid of my feeble hands I was able to push it aside.
  Most strange and wondrous, I thought, that the power of the mind was greater than the power of
the hands.
  Slowly, I managed to rise from this cold and handsome grave which I had fashioned for myself,
and I did at last, after great effort, sit on the cold marble floor, seeing the glint of the golden walls
through a bit of light that seeped into the chamber around the edges of the upper door.
  I felt a terrible agony and weariness. A sense of shame overcame me. I had imagined myself
invulnerable, and oh, how I had been
humbled, how I had been dasjied against the stones of my own pride.
  The taunts of the Satan worshipers came back to me. I remembered Amadeo's cries.
  Where was he now, my beauteous pupil? I listened but I heard nothing.



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  I called to Raymond Gallant once more, though I knew it was in vain. I pictured him traveling
overland to England. I called his name aloud so that it resounded off the walls of the golden
chamber, but I could not find him. I knew that I would not find him. I did it only to be certain that
he was far beyond my reach.
  And then I thought of my precious and fair Bianca. I sought to see her as I had last night, through
the minds of those around her. I sent the Mind Gift wandering to her fashionable rooms.
  Into my ears there came the sound of playful music; and at once I saw her many regular guests.
They drank and talked as though rny house had not been destroyed, or rather as if they knew
nothing of it, and I had never been one of them; on they went as the living do, after a mortal is
taken away.
But where was Bianca?
  "Show me her face," I whispered, directing the mysterious Mind Gift by the sheer simplicity of
my voice.
No picture came to me.
  I shut my own eyes, which gave me exquisite pain, and I listened, hearing the hum of the entire
city, and then begging, begging of the Mind Gift that it give me her voice, her thoughts.
  Nothing, and then at last I hit upon it. Wherever she was, she was alone. She was waiting for me,
and there were none around her to look upon her, or talk to her, and so I must find her in her silence
or
solitude, and at last I sent out my call to her.
  Bianca, I am living. I am monstrously burnt as I've told you. As you once nursed Amadeo, can
you extend your great kindness to me?
Scarcely a moment passed before I heard her distinct whisper.
  "Marius, I can hear you. Only direct me. Nothing will frighten me. I will bind up your burnt skin.
I will bind up your wounds."
  Oh, this was wondrous comfort, but what was I planning here? What did I mean to do?
  Yes, she would come, and would bring to me fresh garments with which I could conceal my
miserable flesh, and perhaps even a hooded cloak that my head should be concealed, and even a
Carnival mask for my face.
  Yes, all that was most true, she would do it, but what then when I found I could not hunt in this
miserable state? And what if, hunting somehow, I discovered that the blood of one or two mortals
meant nothing to me, that my injuries had been too great?
  How then should I depend upon this tender darling to assist me? How deep into the horrors of my
debility should I allow her to come?
Again I heard her voice.

  "Marius," she pleaded with me. "Tell me where you are. I'm in your house, Marius. It is much
destroyed but not entirely. I wait for you in your old bedchamber. There is clothing here that I have
gathered for you. Can you come?"
  For a long while I did not answer her, not even to comfort her. I thought upon it in so far as one
can think when one is feeling such pain. My mind was not my mind. Of that, I was certain.
  And it did seem to me that in this great distress I could betray Bianca. I could betray her utterly
were she to allow. Or I might only take from her some mercy, and leave her finally with a mystery
which she would never understand.
The betrayal would be the more simple thing, obviously. The alternative, to take her mercy and
leave her with a mystery, that would demand immense self-control.



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  I did not know whether or not I had such self-control. I did not know anything about myself in
my misery. I remembered my long ago vow to her, that she would always be safe as long as I was
in Venice, and I shuddered in agony envisioning the strong creature I had been on that night. Yes, I
had vowed forever to protect her for the care she had given Amadeo, that she had saved him from
death until I could come at sunset and take him out of her arms.
  What did it all mean now? Was I to break that vow as though it were nothing?
  And on and on there came her calls like prayers. She called to me as I had called to Akasha.
  "Marius, where are you? Surely you can hear me. Marius, I have soft clothing for you that will
not harm you. I have linen for your bandages.
     I have soft boots for your feet." She wept as she spoke. "Marius, I have a soft tunic of velvet
for you. I have one of your many red cloaks. Let me bring these things and come to you, and I shall
bandage you and assist you. You are no horror to me."
  I lay there listening to her weeping, and then finally, I made up my mind.
   You must come to me, precious one. I cannot move from where I am. Bring the clothing which
you described, but bring also a mask, and you will find plenty of these in my closets. Bring one that
is made of dark leather and decorated with gold.
  "Marius, I have these things," she answered. "Tell me where I must come."


  I then sent her another strong message, quite infallibly identifying the house in which I lay, and
told her how she must come inside, find the door made of plated bronze, and then knock.
  I was exhausted from the exchange. And once again, I listened in quiet panic for the sound of
Santino's monsters, wondering if and when they would return.
  Yet in the eyes of Bianca's boatman I soon caught an image of her coming out of the burnt ruin of
my house. The gondola was on its way to me.
At last, there came the inevitable knock on the bronze door.
With all my strength I began my slow progress up the stone stairs.
I placed my hands upon the door.
"Bianca," I said. "Can you hear me?"
   "Marius!" she cried out. She began to sob. "Marius, I knew it was you It was no trick of my
mind. You're truly alive, Marius. You're here."
I was aroused by the scent of her blood.
  "Listen to me, precious darling," I said. "I was burnt as you cannot imagine. When I open this
door a very small space, you must give over to me the clothing and the mask. Do not seek to look at
me no matter how curious you may be."
  "No, Marius," she answered, her tone resolute. "I love you, Marius. I'll do what you say."
  How plaintive were her sobs as they suddenly broke through. And how strong the smell of blood
inside her. How hungry I was.
  With all my strength, my blackened fingers managed to loosen the latch, and then I opened the
door a small space.
  The scent of her blood was as painful as all else that I suffered. I thought for a moment I cannot
go on.
  But the badly needed clothes were thrust at me, and I knew I must take them. I must somehow
move to my restoration. I could not sink back in agony for that would breed but more agony. I must
go on. Here was the mask of black leather, decorated in gold. Garments for a ball in Venice, not for
one so miserable and ghastly as I.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  Leaving the door with its small opening, I managed to dress myself fairly well.
  She had brought a long tunic rather than a short one, and this was wise, for the stockings I might
never have managed to put on. As for the boots, I was able to slip my feet inside them, much as this
pained me, and the mask I tied to my face.

  The cloak was of generous proportions and with a hood, which I cherished. I was soon covered
from head to toe.
  But what must I do now? What should I tell this angel of a young woman who stood in the chilled
and dark corridor outside?
"Who has come with you?" I asked her.
"Only the boatman," she said. "Did you not say come alone?"
"Perhaps I said it," I answered. "My mind is clouded by pain."
I heard her crying.
I struggled to think. I realized a harsh and terrible truth.
I could not hunt on my own because I wasn't strong enough to venture forth from this place with
any of my old gifts of speed or ascent and descent.
  I could not rely upon her strength to help me in the hunt because she was entirely too weak for it,
and to use her boatman was foolish if not downright impossible. The man would witness what I
did, and he knew that I resided in this house!
  Oh, how mad it all was. How weak I was. How very possible it was that Santino's monsters might
return. How important it was for me to leave Venice and seek the shrine of Those Who Must Be
Kept. But how could this be done?
  "Marius, please let me in," she said softly. "I'm not afraid to see you. Please, Marius. Let me
come in."
  "Very well," I said. "Trust in me that I won't harm you. Come down the stairs. Make your way
carefully. Trust in me that whatever I tell you is the truth."
  With agonizing effort, I pushed the door open sufficiently so that she might come inside. A faint
light filled the stairway and the chamber below. It was enough for my eyes. But not for hers.
  With her delicate pale hand she groped her way after me, and she could not see how I crawled
with my hands resting heavily again and again against the wall.
  At last we had come to the bottom of the steps, and there she struggled to see, but she could not.
"Marius, speak to me," she said.
"I'm here, Bianca," I said.
  I knelt down, then seated myself on my heels, and gazing up at the torches that hung on the walk,
I tried to light one of them with the Fire Gift.
I directed the power with all my strength.
  I heard a faint crackling and then the torch kindled and the light exploded, hurting my eyes. The
fire made me shiver, but we could not endure without it. The darkness had been worse.
  She raised her tender hands to shelter her eyes from the brightness. Then she looked at me.
What did she see?
She covered her mouth and gave a muffled scream.
"What have they done to you?" she asked. "Oh, my beautiful Marius.
Tell me how to remedy this and I will."
  I saw myself in her gaze, a hooded being of burnt black sticks for neck and wrists with gloves for
hands and a floating leather mask for a face.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  "And how do you think that can be done, my beautiful Bianca?" I asked. "What magic potion can
bring me back from what I am now?"
  Her mind was in confusion. I caught a tangle of images and memories, of misery and hope.
  She looked about herself at the glittering golden walls. She stared at the shining marble
sarcophagi. Then her eyes returned to me. She was aghast but unafraid.
  "Marius," she said, "I can be your acolyte as surely as Amadeo was. Only tell me how."
  At the mention of Amadeo's name my eyes filled with tears. Oh, to think this burnt body had
within it the blood of tears.
  She dropped to her knees so that she might look directly into my eyes. Her cloak fell open and I
saw the rich pearls around her throat and her pale breasts. She had worn one very fine gown for this
enterprise, not caring how its hem would catch the dirt or the damp.
  "Oh, my lovely jewel," I said to her, "how I have loved you both in innocence and guilt. You
don't know how much I have lusted after you, both as monster and man. You don't know how I've
turned my hunger from you when it was something I could scarce control."
  "Oh, but I do know," she said. "Do you not remember the night you came to me, accusing me for
the crimes I'd committed? Do you not remember how you confessed your thirst for my blood?
Surely I have not become since then the pure and simple damsel of a children's tale."
  "Perhaps you have, my pretty one," I said. "Perhaps you have. Oh, it's gone, isn't it? My whole
world. It's gone. I think of the feasts, the masquerades, the dancing, it's gone, all my paintings
burnt."

She began to cry.
  "No, don't cry. Let me cry for it. It was all my doing. Because I didn't slay one who despised me.
And they have taken Amadeo prisoner. Me, they burnt because I was too strong for their designs,
but Amadeo they took!"
  "Stop it, Marius, you rave," she said fearfully. She put out her hand and touched my gloved
fingers.
  "Oh, but I must rave just for a moment. They took him and I could hear him begging them for
explanations, and all the boys, they took the boys too. Why did they do this?"
  I stared at her through the mask, unable to imagine what she saw or read from this strange
artificial countenance in her heated mind. The scent of her blood was almost overpowering and her
sweetness seemed part of another world.
  "Why did they let you live, Bianca, for surely I had not come in time?"
  "Your pupils, those were the ones they wanted," she answered, "they captured them iri nets. I saw
the nets. I screamed and screamed and screamed out of the front doorway. They did not care about
me except to draw you on, and what could I do when I saw you but cry out for your help against
them? Did I do wrong? Is it wrong that I'm alive?"
  "No, don't think such. No." I reached out as carefully as I could and squeezed her hand with my
gloved fingers. "You must tell me if this grip is too strong."
  "Never too strong, Marius," she said. "Oh, trust in me as you ask that I trust in you."
  I shook my head. The pain was so terrible I couldn't speak for a moment. My mind and body both
were pain. I could not endure what had befallen me. I could not endure the hopeless climb which
stood before me and my future self.
  "We remain here together, you and I," she said, "when surely there is much to be done to heal
you. Let me serve your magic. I have already told you that I will."
  "But what do you truly know of it, Bianca? Have you truly understood? "



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Is it not blood, my lord?" she asked. "Do you think I cannot remember when you took Amadeo,
dying, into your own arms? Nothing could have saved him such as that transformation which I saw
forever after in him. You know that I saw it. I knew. You know that I did."


  I closed my eyes. I took my breaths slowly. The pain was terrible. Her words were lulling me and
making me believe that I was not miserable, but where would this path lead?
I tried to read her mind but in my exhaustion I could not.
  I wanted so to touch her face, and then believing in the softness of the glove, I did it, stroking her
cheek. The tears welled in her eyes.
"Where is Amadeo gone?" she said desperately.
  "South by sea," I confessed, "and to Rome, that is my belief on it, but don't question me now as to
why. Let me say only that it was an enemy of mine who made this siege upon my house and those I
love, and in Rome is where he dwells, and those he sent to harm me and Amadeo come from Rome.
  "I should have destroyed him. I should have foreseen this. But in vanity I displayed my powers to
him, and brushed him aside. And so he sent his followers in great numbers so that I couldn't
overcome them. Oh, how foolish I was not to divine what he would do. But what is the use of
saying it now? I'm weak;, Bianca. I have no means to reclaim Amadeo. I must somehow regain my
own strength."
"Yes, Marius," she said. "I understand you."
  "I pray with all my heart that Amadeo uses the powers I gave him," I confessed, "for they were
great and he's veiy strong."
"Yes, Marius," she said. "I understand what you say."
  "It's to Marius that I look now," I said again guiltily and sadly. "It's to Marius that I look, for I
must."
  A silence fell between us. There was no sound except the crackling of the torch in its sconce high
on the wall.
  Again I tried to read her mind, but I could not. It was not only my weakness. It was a resolute
quality in her just now. For though she loved me, there were thoughts conflicting in her, and a wall
had been thrown up to keep me from knowing what they were.
  "Bianca," I said in a low voice, "you saw the transformation in Amadeo, but did you really
understand?"
"I did, my lord," she said.
"You can guess the source of his strength forever after that night?"
"I know it, my lord," she answered.
  "I don't believe you," I said gently. "You dream when you say you know."
  "Oh, but I do know, Marius, As I have only just reminded you, I recall only too well how you
came into my very bedchamber thirsting for my blood."


She reached out to touch the sides of my face in consolation. I put up my gloved hand to stop her.
  "I knew then," she said, "that you fed upon the dead somehow. That you took their souls, or
perhaps only their blood. I knew then it was one or the other, and the musicians who fled that
banquet at which you'd slain my kinsmen--they spoke of your giving my unfortunate cousins a kiss
of death."
I gave a low soft laugh.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "How veiy careless I was, and believed myself to be so masterly. What a strange thing. And no
wonder is it that I have fallen so far."
  I took again a deep breath, feeling the pain all through me, and the thirst unbearably. Had I ever
been that powerful creature who so dazzled many that he could slaughter a gathering of mortals
and no one would dare accuse save in whispers? Had I ever. . . ? But there was too much to
remember, and for how long would I remember before even the smallest part of my power was
restored?
But she was staring at me with brilliant inquisitive eyes.
Then came from my lips the truth which I could no longer hide.
  "It was the blood of the living, beautiful girl, always the blood of the living," I said desperately.
"It is the blood of the living and only the blood of the living and must be the blood of the living, do
you understand? It's how I exist and always have existed since I was taken out of mortal life by
malicious and disciplined hands."
  She made a small frown as she stared at me, but she did not look away. Then she nodded as if to
tell me that I might go on.
  "Come close to me, Bianca," I whispered. "Believe me when I tell you that I existed when Venice
was nothing. When Florence had not risen, I was alive. And I cannot linger long here suffering. I
must find blood to restore me. I must have it. I must have it as soon as I can."
  Again she nodded. She stared at me as firmly as before. She was shivering, and she brought up
out of her clothes a linen handkerchief and wiped at her tears.
  What could these words mean to her? They must have sounded like old poetry. HOW could I
expect her to grasp what I had said?
Her eyes never wavered.
  "The Evil Doer," she confessed suddenly. "My lord, Amadeo told me," she whispered. "I cannot
play the game any longer that I don't know. You feed upon the Evil Doer. Don't be angry. Amadeo
confided his secret a long time ago."
  I was angry. Instantly and completely, I was angry, but what did it matter? Hadn't this dreadful
catastrophe swept everything in its path?
  So Amadeo had confided the secret to our beauteous Bianca after all his tears and promises to
me! So I had been the fool for confiding in a mere child. So I had been the fool to let Santino live!
What did it matter now?
  She had grown still and was staring at me yet, her eyes full of the fire of the torch, her lower lip
trembling, and a sigh coming out of her as though she was about to cry again.
  "I can bring the Evil Doer here to this chamber," she said, her face quickening. "I can bring the
Evil Doer down these very steps."
  "And suppose such a being should overpower you before you have reached this place," I said in a
low voice, "how then should I establish any justice or revenge? No, you cannot take such a risk."
  "But I will do it. Rely upon me." Her eyes grew brighter and it seemed she looked about, as
though absorbing the beauty of the walls. "H[ow long have I kept your secret? I don't know, only
that nothing could pry it from me. And no matter what others suspected never did I betray you with
one word."
  "My precious, my darling," I whispered. "You will not take such risks for me. Let rne think now,
let me use whatever powers of mind still remain to me. Let us sit here in quiet."
She seemed perturbed and then her face hardened.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Give me the Blood, my lord," she said suddenly, her voice low and quick. "Give it to me. Make
me what you made Amadeo. Make me a blood drinker, and then I will have the strength to bring
the Evil Doer to you. You know it is the way."
I was completely caught off guard.
  I cannot say that in my burnt soul I had not thought of this very action--I had thought of it
immediately when I had heard her weeping--but to hear it come from her own lips, and with such
spirit, that was more than I had ever expected, and I knew as I had known from the beginning that it
was the perfect plan.
  But I must think on this! Not only for her sake, but for my own. Once the magic had worked in
her--assuming that I had the strength to give it--how then would we, two weak blood drinkers,
hunt the city of Venice for the blood we needed and then make the long journey North?
As a mortal she might have brought me to the Alpine pass of Those Who Must Be Kept by means
of a wagon and armed guards, whom I might have left in the small hours to visit the chapel alone.
  As a blood drinker, she would have to sleep by day with me, and therefore we would both be at
the mercy of those who transported the sarcophagi.
In my pain, I could not imagine it.
  I could not take all the steps necessary. Indeed, it seemed suddenly that I could think of nothing,
and shaking my head, I tried to prevent her from embracing me, from frightening herself all the
more by embracing me and feeling the stiff dried creature that I had become.
  "Give me the Blood," she said again with urgency. "You have the strength to do it, don't you, my
lord? And, then I shall bring here all the victims you require! I saw the change in Amadeo
afterwards. He didn't have to show me. I will be that strong, will I not? Answer me, Marius. Or tell
me, tell me how else I may cure you, or heal you, or bring you comfort in this suffering that I see."
  I could say nothing. I was trembling with desire for her, with anger at her youth -- at the
conspiracy of her and Amadeo against me that he had told her -- arid consumed with desire for her
here and now.
  Never had she seemed more alive, more purely human, more utterly natural in her rosy beauty --
a thing not to be despoiled.
  She settled back as if she knew that she had pushed me a little too hard. Her voice came softer,
yet still insistent.
  "Tell me again the story of your years," she said, her eyes blazing. "Tell me again of how it was
that Venice did not exist or Florence either when you were already Marius, tell me this story once
more."
I went for her.
She couldn't have escaped.
In fact I think that she tried to escape. Surely she screamed.
  No one outside heard her. I had her too quickly for that, and we were too deep in the golden
room.
  Pushing the mask a.side and covering her eyes with my left hand, I sank my teeth into her throat,
and her blood came into me in a rush. Her heart pounded faster and faster. And just before it made
to stop I drew back from her, shaking her violently and crying out against her ear
"Bianca, wake!"
  At once I slashed my tight dried wrist until I saw the seam of blood and this I forced across her
open mouth against her tongue.




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  I heard her hiss and then she clamped her mouth, only to moan hungrily. I drew back the burnt
unyielding flesh and cut it open once again for her.
  Oh, it was not enough for her--I was too burnt, too weak--and all the while her blood went on a
rampage through me, forcing its way into the collapsed and burnt cells that had once been alive.
  Again and again I cut my twisted bony wrist and forced it against her mouth, but it was useless.
  She was dying! And all the blood she'd given me had been devoured.
  Oh, this was monstrous. I couldn't endure it--no, not to see the life of my Bianca snuffed out like
one small candle. I should go screaming mad.
  At once I stumbled up the stone steps, not caring what rny pain or weakness, forging my mind
and heart together, and rising up, I opened the bronze door.
Once at the head of the steps above the quais I called to her boatman:
  "Hurry," and then went back inside that he should follow me, which he did.
  Not one second after he entered the house did I fall upon the poor unfortunate innocent and drink
all the blood from him, and then, scarce able to breathe for the comfort and soothing pleasure it
gave me, I made my way back to the golden room, to find her where I had left her, dying still, at the
foot of the stairs.
  "Here now, Bianca, drink, for I have more blood to give," I said against her ear, my cut wrist on
her tongue once more. This time the blood flowed from it, scarce a deluge but what she must have
and her mouth closed over the fount and she began to pull against my heart.
  "Yes, drink, my Bianca, my sweet Bianca," I said, and she in her sighs answered me.
The Blood had imprisoned her tender heart.
  The night's dark journey had only begun. I could not send her in search of victims! The magic in
her was scarce complete.
  Bent over like a hunchback in my weakness, I carried her put and into the gondola, each step
achingly painful, my movements slow and unsure.
  And, once I had her seated against the cushions, half awake and answering me, her face never
more beautiful, never more pale, I took up the solitary oar.


  Into the darker regions of Venice I traveled, the mist hanging thick over the canals, to those dimly
lighted places where ruffians abound.
  "Wake, princess," I said to her, "we are on the silent battlefield, and very soon will see our
enemy, and the little war we love so much will begin."
  In my pain I could scarcely stand upright, but as always happens in such situations, those we
sought came out to do harm to us.
  Sensing in my posture and her beauty the very shape of weakness, they forfeited their strength at
once.
  Into her arms, I easily enticed a proud and youthful victim, "who would pleasure the lady if that's
what we wished" and from this one she easily consumed a fatal draught, his dagger falling into the
bottom of the boat.
  The next victim, a swaggering drunkard who hailed us down with promises of a nearby banquet
to which we'd all be admitted, stepped fatally into my grasp.
  I had barely the strength for it, and once again die blood ran riot within me, healing me with such
violent magic that it bordered upon an increasing pain.
  The third who came into our arms was a vagabond, whom I enticed with a coin I did not possess.
Bianca took him, her words slurred,



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disappointed that he had been so frail.
  And all of this, beneath the veil of the ink-black night, and far away from the lights of the houses
such as our own.
  On and on we went. The Mind Gift in me grew stronger with each kill. My pain was eased with
each kill. My flesh was more fully restored with each kill.
But it would take a wilderness of kills to restore me, an inconceivable wilderness of victims to
bring back to me the vigor which I had possessed before.
  I knew that beneath my clothes, I appeared as one made of ropes dipped in pitch, and I could not
imagine the dreadful terror that my face had become.
  Meantime, Bianca waked from her daze and suffered the pains of her mortal death, and now
longed to return to her rooms for fresh clothing so that she might return with me to the golden lined
room, in garments fit for her to be my bride.
  She had had all too much of the blood of the victims and needed more of mine, but she did not
know this, and I did not tell her as much.
  Only reluctantly did I concede to her request, taking her back to her palazzo, and waiting uneasily
in the gondola until she came,
marvelously dressed, to join me, her skin like her purest white pearls.
  Forsaking forever her many rooms, she brought with her many bundles, indeed all the clothes she
wished to take with her, and all her jewels, and many candles, that we might be together in our
hiding place without the roar of the torch.
  At last we were in the golden chamber by ourselves, and she was brimming with happiness as she
gazed at me, her secretive and silent masked bridegroom.
And only a single candle gave its slender light for us both.
  She had spread out a cloak of green velvet that we might sit on it, and so we did.
  My legs were crossed, and she leant back on her ankles. My pain was quiet in me yet terrible.
Quiet in that it did not lurch with each breath I took but remained steady and allowed me to breathe
as I would.
  Out of her many bundles she produced for me a polished mirror with a bone handle.
  "Here, take the mask off, if you wish," she said, her oval eyes very brave and hard. "You will not
frighten me!"
  I looked at her for a long moment, cherishing her beauty, studying all the subtle changes which
the Blood had worked in her--how it had made her so extravagantly and richly the replica of her
former self.
"You find me pleasing, do you not?" she asked.
  "Always," I said. "There was a time when I wanted so to give you the Blood that I couldn't look
at you. There was a time when I would not go to your rooms for fear that I should lure you to the
Blood with all my charms, such as they ever were."
She was amazed. "I never dreamt it," she said.
  I looked into the mirror. I saw the mask. I thought of the name of the Order: Talamasca. I thought
of Raymond Gallant.
"You can read nothing of my mind now, can you?" I asked her.
"No," she said, "nothing." She was most puzzled.
  "It's the way," I said. "Because I made you. You can read the minds of others, yes.. . ."
  ". . . yes," she answered. "The minds of our victims, yes, and when the blood flows, I see things. .
· ·"
"... yes. And always you will see things, but never with that tool fall



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for the allure of the innocent, or the blood you drink will suddenly appear on your hands."
  "I understand it," she answered too quickly. "So Amadeo told me all that you'd taught him. Only
the Evil Doer. Never the innocent, I know."
  Again, I felt a terrible anger, that these two, these blessed children, had shut me out. I wondered
when and how Amadeo had told her these secrets.
But I knew that I should put such jealousy aside.
  The awful, awful sadness was that Amadeo was gone from me. Gone. And I could not possibly
bring him back. Amadeo was in the hands of those who meant to do unspeakable things. I could not
think of it. I could not. I would go mad.
"Look into the mirror," she said again.
I shook my head.
  I removed my left glove and stared at my bony fingers. She gave an awful little cry and then she
was ashamed.
"Would you still see my face?" I asked.
  "No, not for both our sakes," she said. "Not till you've hunted more and I have traveled with you
more and am stronger, the better to be your pupil as I promised, as I will be."
She nodded as she spoke, her voice quite determined.
  "Lovely Bianca," I said softly, "meant for such harsh and strong things."
  "Yes, and I shall do them. I will always be with you. You will come in time to love me as you
loved him."
  I didn't answer. The agony of losing him was monstrous. How could I deny it with a single
syllable?
  "And what is happening to him?" I asked, "or have they merely destroyed him in some hideous
fashion, for you know of course that we can die by the light of the sun, or by the heat of a terrible
fire."
"No, not die, only suffer," she said quickly, looking at me
questioningly. "Are you not the living proof?"
  "No, die," I said. "With me it's what I told you, that I have lived for over a thousand years. But
with Amadeo? It could be death very easily. Pray that they do not design cruelties but only horrors,
that whatever they do, they do it quickly or not at all."
  She was filled with fear, and her eyes were watching rne as if there were an actual expression on
the leather face mask that I wore.

"Come now, you must learn to open this coffin," I said to her. "And before that, I must give you
more of my blood. I've taken so many
                                              victims, I have more now to give and you must have it or
you won't be strong as Amadeo, not at all."
  "But . . . I've changed rny clothes," she said. "I don't want to get them bloody."
  I laughed. I laughed and laughed. The whole golden chamber echoed with my laughter.
She stared at me blankly.
"Bianca," I said gently. "I promise you, I won't spill a drop."


26



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wHEN I AWOKE, lay quiet for an hour, weak and keenly in pain. So bad was the pain, in fact, that
sleep seem preferable
             to wakefulness, and I dreamt of tilings long ago, times when Pandora and I had been
together and when it had not seemed possible that we would ever part.
  What finally jarred me from my uneasy slumber was the sound of Bianca screaming.
Over and over in terror she screamed.
  I rose, somewhat stronger than the night before, and then once I was certain that I had my gloves
and mask in place, I crouched beside her coffin and called out to her.
  At first she couldn't hear me, so loud were her frantic screams. But at last, she grew quiet in her
desperation.
  "You have the strength to open the coffin," I said. "I revealed this to you last night. Put your
hands against the lid and move it."
"Let me out of it, Marius," she pleaded, sobbing.
"No, you must do it for yourself."
  Softer sobs came from her, but she followed my instructions. There came a grinding noise from
the marble and the lid moved to one side, and then she rose, pushing the lid out of her way, and she
freed herself from the box altogether.
"Come here to me," I said.
  She obeyed me, shivering with sobs, and with my gloved hands I stroked her mussed hair.
  "You knew you had the strength," I said- "I showed you that even with your mind you could
move it."
"Please light the candle," she begged. "I need the light."

I did as she asked rne to do. " You must try to quiet your soul," I said. I took a long deep breath.
"You're strong now, and after we hunt tonight you'll be even stronger. And as I grow ever more
strong, I will give you more of my blood."
"Forgive me for my fear," she whispered.
  I had little strength myself to comfort her, but I knew that she needed what little strength I had. It
was hitting me again like so many violent blows that my world was dashed, that my house was
ruined, that Amadep was stolen from me.
  And then in a half swoon I saw Pandora of long ago, smiling at me, not recriminating me or
tormenting me, but only speaking with me, as though we were in the garden together, at the stone
table, and talking as we used to do of so many things.
  But that was gone. All was gone. Amadeo was gone. My paintings were gone.
And there came again the desperation, the bitterness, the humiliation. I had not thought that such
things could be done to me. I had not thought that I could be so miserable. I had believed myself so
powerful, so very clever, so very beyond this abject grief.
  "Come now, Bianca," I said. "We must go out, we must seek the blood. Come." I consoled her as
I consoled myself. "Here, where is your mirror? Where is your comb? Let me comb your pretty hair
for you. Look at yourself in the mirror. Did Botticelli ever paint a woman more beautiful?"
She wiped at her red tears.
  "Are you happy again?" I asked. "Reach into the depths of your soul. Tell yourself that you are
immortal. Tell yourself that death has no power over you. A glorious thing has befallen you here in
the



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darkness, Bianca. You have become forever young, forever beautiful."
  I wanted so to kiss her, but I couldn't do this, and so I labored to make my words so many kisses.
  She nodded, and as she looked at me a lovely smile broke over her face, and for one moment she
fell into a dreaminess which brought back all my memories of Botticelli's genius, and even of the
man himself so safely away from all these horrors, living out his life in Florence beyond what I
might ever do.
  I took the comb from her bundle. I ran it through her hair. I watched her stare at the mask that
was my face.
"What is it?" I asked of her gently.


"I want to see how badly--"
"No you don't," I said.
  She began to cry again. "But how will you ever be healed? How many nights will it take?"
All her happiness of last night was shattered.
  "Come," I said. "We go to hunt. Now put on your cape, and follow me up the steps. We do as
we've done before. And don't for a moment doubt your strength, and do always as I tell you."
  She would not do as I asked her. She hovered near the coffin, her elbow on the lid, her face
stricken.
  At last I settled near to her, and I began to speak words I never thought I would hear myself utter
  "You must be the strong one, Bianca," I said, "you must lead us. I haven't the strength for two just
now and that is what you are demanding of me. I am ruined inside. I am ruined. No, wait, don't
interrupt what I mean to say. And don't shed tears. Listen to me. You must give to me your small
reserve of strength for I require it. I have powers quite beyond your imagining. But those powers I
cannot reach just now. And until I can reach them, you must lead us forward. Lead us with your
thirst and lead us with your wonder, for surely in this state you do see things as never before and
you are filled with that wonder."
  She nodded her head. Her eyes grew colder and more beautifully calm.
  "Don't you see?" I asked. "If you can only come with me through these few nights, you do indeed
have immortality?"
  She closed her eyes and moaned. "Oh, I love the very sound of your voice," she said, "but I am
afraid. In the coffin in the dark when I awoke, it all seemed a poisoned dream, and I fear what they
may do to us if they discover what we are, if we fall into their hands, and if... if..."
''Yes, if?"
"If you cannot protect me."
"Ah, yes, if I cannot protect you."
I fell into a silence, sitting there.
  Again, it did not seem possible that this had happened to me. My soul was burnt. My spirit was
burnt. My will was scarred and my happiness ruined.
  I remembered the very first ball, the ball which Bianca had given at our house, and I remembered
the dancing and the tables with their


golden platters of fruit and spiced meats, the smell of the wine, and the sound of the music, and the
many rooms so filled with contented souls, and the paintings looming over all, and it did not seem




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possible that anyone could bring me down from that when I was so firmly placed in the realm of
unsuspecting mortals.
Oh, Santino, I thought, how I do hate you. How I do despise you.
  I pictured him again as he had come to me in Rome. I pictured him in his black robes smelling of
the earth, his black hair rather vainly clean and long, and his face so very expressive with its large
dark eyes, and I hated him.
  Would I ever, I thought, have the chance to destroy him? Oh, surely there would come a time
when he was not surrounded by so many numbers, when I might have him firmly in my hands and
with the Fire Gift make him pay for what he'd done to me.
  And Amadeo, where was my Amadeo, and where were my boys who had been so brutally yet
carefully taken? I saw again rny poor Vincenzo murdered on the floor.
  "Marius, my Marius," Bianca said suddenly. "Please, don't sit in such quiet with me." She reached
out, her hand pale and fluttering, not daring to touch me. "I am sorry for being so weak. Believe
me, I am. What is it that makes you so silent?"
  "Nothing, my darling, only the thoughts of my enemy, the one who brought those brandishing the
fire, those who destroyed me."
  "But you're not destroyed," she said, "and I will somehow get the strength."
  "No, stay here for now," I said. "You have done enough. And your poor gondolier, he gave his
life for me last night. You stay here now until I return."
She shuddered and reached out as if to take hold of me.
I forced her to remain at a distance.
  "You cannot embrace what I am just yet. But I will go out and I will hunt until I am strong
enough to take you from this place and to one that is safe and one where I will be healed
completely."
  I closed my eyes, though of course she could not see it on account of the mask, and I thought of
Those Who Must Be Kept.
  My Queen, I pray to you, and I arn coming arid when I do you will give me the Blood, I thought,
but could you not have given me one small vision of warning?
Oh, I had not even thought of this before and now it exploded in my mind. Yes, from her distant
throne she could have done it, she could have warned me, could she not?
  But how could I ask such a thing from one who for a thousand years had not moved or spoken?
Would I never learn?
  But what of Bianca who was trembling and begging me to pay attention to her now? I waked
from my sleep.
  "No, we'll do it as you wanted, I'll go with you," she said piteously. "I'm sorry I was weak. I
promised you I would be as strong as Amadeo. I want to be. I'm ready now to go with you."
  "No, you aren't," I responded. "You're only more afraid of being left here alone than you are of
going. You're afraid that if you stay behind I'll never come back to you."
  She nodded her head as if I had forced her to admit it when I had not.
  "I'm thirsting," she said softly. She said it with an elegance. And then in wonder. "I'm thirsting for
blood. I must go with you."
  "Very well then," I answered. "My lovely sweet companion. Strength will come to you. Strength
will take up its abode in your heart. Don't fear. I have so much to teach, and as these nights pass,
when you and I are comforted, I'll tell you of the others I've known, of their strength and of their
beauty."
She nodded again, her eyes widening.



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  "Do you love me the most," she asked, "that is all I want to know for now and you may lie to
me." She smiled, even as the tears stained her cheeks.
  "Of course I do,'' I said. "I love you more than anyone. You're here, are you not? And finding rne
crushed, you gave your strength to save me."
  It was a cold answer, lacking in flattery or kindness, yet it seemed quite enough for her, and it
struck me how very different she was from those I had loved before, from Pandora in her wisdom,
or Amadeo in his cunning. She seemed endowed with sweetness and intellect in equal measure.
  I brought her up the steps with me. We left the small candle behind as if it would be a beacon for
our return.
  Before I opened the door I listened carefully for the sound of any of Santino's brood. I heard
nothing.
  We made our way silently through the narrowest canals of the most dangerous portions of the
city. And there we found our victims again,


Struggling little, drinking much. Into the dirty water we released them afterwards.
  Long after she was fragrant and warm from her many kills, a sharp observer of the dark and
shining walls, I was still parched and burning. Oh, how dreadful was the pain. How soothing the
blood as it flooded my arms and legs.
  Near dawn we returned. We had encountered no danger. I was much healed but my lirnbs were
still like sticks, and when I reached beneath my mask, I felt a face which seemed irreparably
scarred.
  How long would this take? I could not tell Bianca. I could not tell myself.
  I knew that in Venice we could not reckon upon too many such nights. We would become known.
Thieves and killers would begin to watch for us--the white-faced beauty, the man with the black
leather mask-
  I had to test the Cloud Gift. Could I carry Bianca with me towards the shrine? Could I make the
full journey in one night or would I blunder and leave us scrambling desperately before dawn for
some hiding place?
  She went to her sleep quietly, with no fear of the coffin. It seemed she would show me her
strength to comfort me, and though she could not kiss my face, she put a kiss on her slender fingers
and gave it to me with her breath.
  I had an hour then until the sunrise, and slipping out of the golden room, I went up and out over
the rooftop and lifted my arms. Within moments I was high above the city, moving effortlessly, as
though the Cloud Gift had never been harmed in me, and then I was beyond Venice, far beyond it,
looking back at it with its many golden lights, and at the satin glimmer of the sea.
  My return was swift and accurate, and I came down silently to the golden room with ample time
to go to my rest.
The wind had hurt my burnt skin, But it was no matter. I was overjoyed with this discovery, that I
could take to the air as well as I had ever done. I knew now that I could soon attempt the journey to
Those Who Must Be Kept.
  On the next night, my beauty did not wake screaming as she had before.
  She was far more clever and ready for the hunt and full of questions.

  As we made our way through the canals, I told her the old story of the Druid grove and how I'd
been taken there. And how the magic had been given me in the oak. I told her of Mael and how I



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despised him still and how he had come once to visit me in Venice, and how very strange it had all
seemed.
"But I saw this one," she said in a hushed voice, her whisper nevertheless echoing up the walls. "I
remember the night that he came to you here. It was the night that I came back from Florence."
  I could not think clearly of these things. And it was soothing to me to hear her talk of them.
  "I had brought you a painting by Botticelli," she said. "It was small and very pretty and you later
thanked me for it. This tall blond one was waiting upon you when I came, and he was ragged and
dirty."
These things came clear to me as she spoke. The memories enlivened me.
  And then came the hunt, the gush of blood, the death, the body dropped into the canal, and once
more the pain rising sharp above the sweetness of the cure, and I fell back into the gondola, weak
from the pleasure of it.
  "Once more, I have to do it," I told her. She was satisfied, but on we went. And out of another
house I drew yet another victim into my arms, breaking his neck in my clumsiness. I took another
victim and another, and finally it was only exhaustion which stopped me, for the hurt in me would
have no end of blood.
  At last when the gondola was tethered, I took her in my arms and wrapping her close to my chest
as I had so often done with Amadeo, I rose above the city with her, and flew out and high until I
could not even see Venice at all.
  I heard her small desperate cries against me, but I told her in a low whisper to be still and trust in
me, and then bringing her back, I set her down on the stone stairs above the quais.
"We were with the clouds, my little princess," I said to her. "We were with the winds, and the
purest things of the skies." She was shivering from the cold. I brought her down with me into the
golden room.
  The wind had made a wild tangle of her hair. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips bloodred.
  "But what did you do?" she asked. "Did you spread wings like a bird to carry me? "

"I had no need of them," I said, as I lighted the candles one by one until we had many and the room
seemed warm.
  I reached up beneath my mask. And then I took it off and turned to look at her.
  She was shocked, but only for a moment, and then she came to me, peering into my eyes, and she
kissed my lips.
"Marius, I see you again," she said. "You are there."
I smiled. I went past her and lifted the mirror.
  I couldn't see myself in this monstrosity. But my lips did cover my teeth at last, and my nose had
taken some shape, and my eyes once again had lids. My hair was thick and white and full as it had
been before and it hung to my shoulders. It made my face all the more black. I put aside the looking
glass.
  "Where will we go when we leave here?" she asked me. How steady she seemed, how unafraid.
  "To a magical place, a place you would not believe if I told you of it," I answered. "Princess of
the skies."
"Can I do this?" she asked. "Go up into the heavens?"
  "No, darling one," I said, "not for centuries. It takes time and blood to make such strength. Some
night however it will come to you, and you'll feel the strangeness, the loneliness of it."
"Let me put my arms around you," she said.
I shook my head.



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"Talk to me, tell me stories," she said. "Tell me of Mael."
We made a place to sit against the wall, and we were warm together.
I began to talk, slowly I think, pouring out old tales.
  I told her of the Druid grove again, and how I had been the god there and fled those who would
have entrapped me, and I saw her eyes grow wide. I told her of Avicus and Zenobia, of our hunting
in the city of Constantinople. I told her of how I cut Zenobia's beautiful black hair.
  And telling these tales, I felt calmer and less sad and broken and able to do what I must do.
  Never in all my time with Amadeo had I told such stories. Never with Pandora had it been so
simple. But with this creature it seemed only natural to talk and to find consolation in it.
  And I remembered that when first I had set eyes upon Bianca I had dreamt of this very thing, that
she would be with me in the Blood and that we should speak together so easily.

  "But let me tell you prettier stories," I said, and I talked of when I had lived in old Rome, and I
had painted on the walls, and my guests had laughed and drunk their wine, and rolled about on the
grass of my garden.
  I made her laugh and then it seemed my pain was gone for a moment, gone in the sound of her
voice.
"There was one I loved very much," I said.
"Tell me of him," she said.
  "No, it was a woman," I replied. I amazed myself to speak of such a thing. Yet I went on
speaking. "I knew her when we were mortals together. I was a young man and she was a child. In
those times, as now, marriages were made when women were but children but her father refused
me. I never forgot her.
  "And then later, after the Blood was in me, we came together she and I.. . ."
"Go on, you must tell me. Where did you come together?"
  "And the Blood went into her," I said, "and the two of us were together. We were together for two
hundred years."
"Oh, such a long time," she said.
  "Yes, it was a long time, though it did not seem so then. Every night was new and I loved her and
she loved me, of course, and we quarreled so often...."
"But was it a good quarreling?" she asked.
  "Yes, it was, how very right of you to ask that question," I said. "It was a good quarreling until
the last."
"What was the last?" she asked gently.
  "I did a cruel and mistaken thing to her. I did a wrong thing. I left her without warning and
without recourse, and now I can't find her."
"You mean you search for her even now?"
  "I don't search because I don't know where to search," I said, lying just a little, "but I look
always...."
  "Why did you do it?" she asked. "Why did you leave her as you described?"
  "Out of love and anger," I said. "And it was the first time that the Satan worshipers had come,
you see. Those of the very same ilk that burnt my house and took Amadeo. Only it was centuries
ago, can you understand? They came. Oh, not with my enemy, Santino. Santino didn't exist then.
Santino is no ancient one. But it was the same tribe, the same ones who believe they are put here on
Earth as blood drinkers to serve the Christian God."




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  I could feel her shock, though for a moment she said nothing, and then she spoke.
"So this was why they cried out about blasphemy," she said.
  "Yes, and long long ago, they said similar things as they came to us. They threatened us, and they
wanted, they wanted what we knew."
"But how did this divide you and the woman?"
  "We destroyed them. We had to. And she knew that we had to do it, and afterwards, when I fell
sullen and listless and would say nothing, she was angry with me, and I grew angry with her."
"I see," she answered.
  "It didn't have to be, this quarrel. I left her. I left her because she was resolute and strong and had
known that the Satan worshipers had to be destroyed. And I had not known and even now, all these
many centuries later, I have fallen into the same error.
"In Rome, I knew they existed, these creatures; in Rome, this Santino came to me. In Rome, I
should have destroyed him and his followers. But I would have no part of it, you see, and so he
came after me, and burnt my house and all I loved."
She was shocked and for a long time said nothing.
"You love her still, this woman," she said.
"Yes, but you see, I never stop loving anyone. I will never stop
loving you."
"Are you certain of it?"
  "Completely," I answered. "I loved you when first I saw you. Haven't I told you?"
"In all these years, you've never stopped thinking of her?"
  "No, never stopped loving her. Impossible to stop thinking of her or loving her. Even the details
of her remain with me. Loneliness and solitude have imprinted her most strongly on my mind. I see
her. I hear her voice. She had a lovely clear voice." I mused. I went on.
  "She was tall; she had brown eyes, with thick brown eyelashes. Her hair was long and rippling
and dark brown. She wore it loose when she wandered. Of course I remember her in the softly
draped clothes of those ancient times, and I cannot envision her as she might be in these years. And
so she seems some goddess to me or saint, I'm not certain which. . . ."
She said nothing. Then finally she spoke.
"Would you leave me for her if you could?"
"No, if I found her, we would all of us be together."
"Oh, that's too lovely," she said.


  "I know it can be that way, I know it can and it will be, all of us together, you and she and I. She
lives, she thrives, she wanders, and there will come a time when you and I will be with her."
  "How do you know that she lives? What if... but I don't want my words to hurt you."
"I have hope that she lives," I said.
"Mael, the fair one, he told you."
  "No. Mael knows nothing of her. Nothing. I don't believe I ever spoke one sacred word of her to
Mael. I have no love for Mael. I have not called out to him in these terrible nights of suffering to
aid us. I would not have him see me as I am now."
  "Don't be angry," she said soothingly. "Don't feel the pain of it. I understand. You were speaking
softly of the woman...."




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  "Yes," I said. "Perhaps I know that she lives because I know that she would never destroy herself
without first finding me and making certain that she had taken her leave of me, and not having
found me, and having no proof that I am lost, she can't do it. Do you understand me?"
  "Yes, I do," she said. She crept closer to me, but she understood when with my gloved hand I
touched her gently and moved her away.
"What was the woman's name?" she asked.
"Pandora," I said.
"I shall never be jealous of her," she said softly.
  "No, you must never but how can you say such a thing so quickly? How do you know? "
She answered calmly, sweetly.
  "You speak too reverently of her for me to be jealous," she said, "and I know that you can love
both of us, because you loved Amadeo and me. I saw this with my own eyes."
  "Oh, yes, you are so right," I said. I was almost weeping. I thought in my secret heart of
Botticelli, the man himself standing in his studio staring at me, wondering helplessly what sort of
strange patron I was, and never dreaming that my hunger and adoration were commingled, never
dreaming of a danger which had come so close.
  "It's almost dawn," she said. "I feel cold now. And nothing matters. Do you feel the same way?"
  "Soon we will leave here," I said in answer, "and we will have golden lamps around us. And a
hundred fine candles. Yes, one hundred white candles. And we'll be warm where there is snow."
"Ah, my love," she said softly. "I believe in you with my soul."


  The next night we hunted once more and this time as if it were to be our last in Venice. There
seemed no end to the blood I could imbibe.
  And without confiding it to Bianca, I was eternally listening for Santino's brigands, quite certain
that at any moment they might return.
  Long after I had brought her back for safekeeping in the golden room, and seen her nestled there
amid her bundles of clothes and soft burning candles, I went out to hunt again, moving swiftly over
the rooftops, and catching the worst and strongest of the killers of the city.
  I wondered that my hunger did not bring some reign of peace to Venice, so savage was I in
cleaning out those bent upon evil. And when I was done with blood I went to the secret places in
my burnt-out palazzo and gathered the gold which others hadn't been able to find.
  Finally, I went to the very highest roof that I could discover and I looked out over Venice, and I
said my farewell to it. My heart was broken and I did not know what would restore it.
  My Perfect Time had ended for me in agony. It had ended for Amadeo in disaster. And perhaps it
had ended for my fair Bianca as well.
  At last I knew from my gaunt and blackened limbs--so little healed by so many kills--that I must
press on to Those Who Must Be Kept, and I must share the secret with Bianca, for young as she
was, I had no real choice.
  It faintly excited me in my crushing misery that I could share the secret at last. Oh, what a terrible
thing it was to put such a weight upon such tender shoulders, but I was weary of the pain and the
loneliness. I had been conquered. And I only wanted to reach the shrine with Bianca in my arms.

27




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AT LAST it was time for the journey. It was far too dangerous for us to remain in Venice, and I
knew that I could carry us to the shrine.
  Taking one bundle of clothing with us, and as much of my gold as I could carry, I wrapped
Bianca tightly against me and in less than half of one night, crossed the mountains, in bitter winds
and snow.
  By now Bianca was accustomed to certain wonders, and to be set down in a snow-filled mountain
pass did not alarm her.
  But within moments we were both painfully aware that I had made a desperate error in judgment.
I was not strong enough in my present state to open the door of the shrine.
  It was I, of course, who had created this ironbound stone door to block any human assault, and
after several pathetic attempts to open it, I had to confess that it was not within my power, and we
must find some other shelter before dawn.
  Bianca began to weep, and I became angry with her. I made another assault upon the door just to
spite her, and then stood back and bid the door open with all the power of my mind.
  There was no result, and the wind and the snow beat down hard against us, and Bianca's weeping
infuriated me to where I spoke words that weren't true.
  "I made this door and I shall open it," I declared. "Only give me time to determine what I must
do."
  She turned away from me, visibly hurt by my anger, and then in a miserable yet humble voice she
asked me,
  "What is inside this place? I can hear a dreadful sound from beyond the door, all too like the
sound of a heartbeat. Why have we come here? Where shall we go if we cannot find shelter here?"


  All of these questions angered me, but when I looked at Bianca, when I saw her sitting on the
rock where I had placed her, the snow falling on her head and shoulders, her head bowed, her tears
glistening and red as always, I felt ashamed that I had so used her in my weakness and that I needed
so to be angry with her now.
  "Be still and I shall open it," I said to her. "You have no knowledge of what lies within. But you
will in time."
  I gave a great sigh and stood back from the door, my burnt hand still tightened on the iron handle
and with all my strength I pulled, but I could not make the door budge.
  The absolute folly of it gripped me. I could gain no admittance! I was too weak, and for how long
I would be too weak I didn't know. And yet I made one attempt after another, only so that Bianca
would believe that I could protect her, that I could gain entry to this strange place.
  Finally I turned my back on the Holy of Holies, and I went to her, and gathered her to me, and
covered her head and tried to warm her as best I could.
  "Very soon, I shall tell you all," I said, "and I shall find us shelter this night. Don't doubt. For
now, let me say only that this is a place which I built and which is known to me only and which I'm
too weak now to enter as you can see."
  "Forgive me that I cried," she said gently. "You won't see tears from me again. But what is the
sound I hear? Can't humans hear it?"
  "No, they cannot," I answered. "Please be still for now, my brave darling."
  But at that moment, that very single moment, another new and altogether different sound caught
my ear, a sound which could have been heard by anyone.




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  It was the sound of the stone door opening behind me. I knew the sound infallibly and I turned
around, unbelieving and as fearful as I was amazed.
  Quickly I gathered Bianca to me, and we stood before the door as it opened wide.
My heart was racing. I could hardly fill my lungs with air.
  I knew that only Akasha could have done this, and as the door fell all the way back, I perceived
another miracle of equal kindness and beauty of which I'd never dreamt.
  A rich and abundant light poured forth from the door of the stone passage.
For a moment I was too stunned to move. Then pure happiness descended upon me as I gazed upon
this flood of beautiful light. And it seemed I could not possibly fear it or doubt its meaning.
"Come now, Bianca," I said to her, as I guided her forward at my side.
  She clutched her bundle to her chest as though she would die if she let go of it, and I held her as
though without her to witness with me I would fall.
  We stepped into the stone passage and made our way slowly into the bright and flickering light of
the chapel. All its many bronze lamps were aglow. Its one hundred candles blazed exquisitely. And
no sooner had I taken note of these things, amid a subdued glory that filled me with joy, than the
stone door was closed behind us with a crushing sound as rock sounded against rock.
  I found myself staring over the row of one hundred candles up into the faces of the Divine
Mother and Father, seeing them as perhaps Bianca would see them, and certainly with refreshed
and grateful eyes.
  I knelt down, and Bianca knelt at my side. I was trembling. Indeed my shock was so great that I
could not for a moment fill my lungs with air. There was no way that I could explain to Bianca the
full import of what had taken place. I would only frighten her if I tried to do so. And careless words
spoken before my Queen would be unforgivable.
  "Don't speak," I finally said in a whisper. "They are our Parents. They have opened the door,
when I could not. They have lighted the lamps for us. They have lighted the candles. You cannot
imagine the worth of this blessing. They have welcomed us inside. We can answer them only with
prayers."
  Bianca nodded. Her face was full of piety and wonder. Did it matter to Akasha that I had brought
to her feet an exquisite blood drinker?
  In a low reverent voice I recounted the story of the Divine Parents but only in the simplest and
grandest terms. I told Bianca how they had come to be the very first blood drinkers thousands of
years ago in Egypt, and that now they no longer hungered for blood or even so much as spoke or
moved. I was their keeper and their guardian and had been so for all of my life as a blood drinker
and so it would always be.
  I said these things so that nothing would alarm Bianca and she would feel no dread of the two still
figures who stared forward in horrifying silence, and did not seem even to blink. And so it was that
tender Bianca was initiated into these powerful mysteries with great care and thought them
beautiful and nothing more.
  "It was to this chapel," I explained, "that I would come when I left Venice, and I would light the
lamps for the King and the Queen, and bring fresh flowers. You see, there are none now. But I will
bring them when I can."
  Once again, I realized that in spite of my enthusiasm and gratitude, I couldn't really make her
know what a miracle it was that Akasha had opened the door for us, or lighted the lamps. Indeed, I
didn't dare to do it, and now that I had finished this respectful recital, I closed my eyes, and in
silence I thanked both Akasha and Enkil that they had admitted me to the sanctuary, and that they
had greeted us with the gift of light.



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                                              Blood and Gold

  Over and over I offered my prayers, perhaps unable myself to grasp the fact that they had so
welcomed me, and not too certain of what it really meant. Was I loved? Was I needed? It seemed I
must accept without presumption. It seemed I must be grateful without imagining things that
weren't so.
  I knelt in quietude for a long time and Bianca must surely have observed me for she too was
quiet, and then I could bear the thirst no longer. I stared at Akasha. I desired the Blood. I could
think of nothing but the Blood. All my injuries were as so many open wounds in me. And my
wounds bled for the Blood. I had to attempt to take the all-powerful Blood from the Queen.
  "My beauty," I said, placing my gloved hand on Bianca's tender arm. "I want you to go to the
corner there and to sit quiet, and to say nothing of what you see."
  "But what will happen?" she whispered. For the first time she sounded afraid. She looked about
herself at the shivering flames of the lamps, at the glowing candles, at the painted walls.
  "Do as I tell you," I said. I had to say it, and she had to do it, for how was I ever to know whether
the Queen would let me drink?
  As soon as Bianca was in the corner with her heavy cloak wrapped around her and as far away as
possible, for whatever good it would do, I prayed in silence for the Blood.
  "You see me and what I am," I said silently, "you know that I have been burnt. This is why you
opened the door for me and admitted me, because I could not do it, and surely you see what a
monster I have become. Have mercy on me and let me drink from you as you have done in the past.
I need the Blood. I need it more than I have ever needed it. And so I come to you with respect."
I removed my leather mask and laid it aside. I was as hideous now as those old burnt gods whom
Akasha had once crushed when they came to her. Would she refuse me in the same manner? Or had
she known all along what had befallen me? Had she understood completely all things before the
door was ever opened?
  I rose slowly until I knelt at her feet and I could put my hand upon her throat, all the while tensed
for the threat of Enkil's arm, but it did not come.
  I kissed her throat, feeling her plaited hair against me and looking at her white skin before me,
and hearing only Bianca's soft tears.
"Don't cry, Bianca," I whispered.
  Then I sank my teeth suddenly, viciously, as I had so often done, and the thick blood flooded into
me, brilliant and hot as the lamplight
    and the light of the candles, pouring into me as if her heart were pumping it willingly into me,
racing the beat of my own heart. My head grew light. My body grew light.
Far away Bianca wept. Why was she afraid?
  I saw the garden. I saw the garden I had painted after I had fallen in love with Botticelli, and it
was filled with his orange trees and with his flowers and yet it was my garden, the garden of my
father's house outside Rome long long ago. How could I ever forget my own garden? How could I
ever forget the garden where I had first played as a child?
  In memory I went back to those days in Rome when I had been mortal, and there was my garden,
the garden of the villa of my father, and I was walking in the soft grass and listening to the sound of
the fountain, and then it seemed that all through time, the garden changed but never changed, and it
was always there for me.
  I lay down on the grass, and the branches of the trees moved above me. I heard a voice speaking
to me, rapidly and sweetly, but I didn't know what it was saying, and then I knew that Amadeo was
hurt, that he was in the hands of those who would bring pain and evil to him, and that I could not go
to him now, I would only stumble into their snares if I did, and that I must stay here.



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  I was the Keeper of the King and the Queen as I had told Bianca, yes, the Keeper of the King and
the Queen, and I must let Amadeo go in Time, and perhaps were I to do as I should, perhaps
Pandora would be returned to me, Pandora who traveled the northern cities of Europe now, Pandora
who had been seen.
  The garden was verdant and fragrant and I saw Pandora clearly. I saw her in her soft white dress,
her hair loose as I had described it to Bianca. Pandora smiled. She walked towards me. She spoke
to me. The Queen wants us to be together, she said. Her eyes were large and wondering and I
knew she was very close to me, very close, so close that I could almost touch her hand.
  I can't be imagining this, no, I cannot, I thought. And there came back to me again vividly the
sound of Pandora's voice, as she quarreled with me on our first night as bride and groom: Even as
this new blood races through me still, eats at me and transforms me, I cling to neither reason nor
superstition for my safety. I can walk through a myth and out of it! You fear me, because you don't
know what I am. I look like a woman, I sound like a man, and your reason tells you the sum total is
impossible.
  I was looking into Pandora's eyes. She sat on the garden bench, pulling the flower petals out of
her brown hair, a girl again in the Blood, a woman-girl forever, as Bianca would be a young
woman forever.
  I reached out on either side of me and felt the grass beneath my hands.
Suddenly I fell backwards, out of the dream garden, out of the illusion
   and found myself lying quite still on the floor of the chapel, between the high bank of perfect
candles, and the steps of the dais where the enthroned couple kept their ancient place.
  Nothing seemed changed about me. Even Bianca's crying came as before.
  "Be quiet now, darling," I said to her. But my eyes were fastened to the face of Akasha above me,
and to her breasts beneath the golden silk of her Egyptian dress.
  It seemed that Pandora had been with me, that she had been in the very chapel. And the beauty of
Pandora seemed bound up with the beauty and presence of Akasha in some intimate way which I
could not understand.
  "What are these portents?" I whispered. I sat up and then rose to my knees. "Tell me, my beloved
Queen. What are these portents? Did you once bring Pandora to me because you wanted us to be
together? Do you remember when Pandora spoke those words to me? "
  I fell silent. But my mind spoke to Akasha. My mind pleaded with her. Where is Pandora? Will
you bring Pandora to me again?
A long interval passed and then I rose to my feet.
I went round the bank of candles and found my precious companion
  quite distraught over the simple wonder she had beheld of me drinking from the immobile
Queen.
  "And then you fell back, as though you were lifeless," she recounted. "And I didn't dare to go to
you, as you'd said that I mustn't move."
I comforted her.
  "And then finally you waked, and you spoke of Pandora, and I saw that you were so ... so much
healed."
  This was true. I was more robust all over, my arms and legs thicker, heavier, and my face had
more of its natural contour. Indeed, I was still badly burnt, but a man of some stature and seeming
strength now, and indeed I could feel more of the old strength in my limbs.




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  But it was now only two hours from dawn, and being quite unable to open the door, and not in
any mood to pray that Akasha work common miracles for anyone, I knew I had to give my blood
to Bianca, and so this is what I did.
  Would it offend the Queen, that I, having just drunk from her would offer this powerful blood to
a child? There was nothing to do but find out.
  I didn't frighten Bianca with any warnings or doubts on the matter. I beckoned to her that she
should come to me and lie in my arms.
  I cut my wrist for her and told her to drink. I heard her gasp with the shock of the powerful blood
and her delicate fingers stiffened to make her two hands into claws.
  At last of her own volition she drew back and sat up slowly beside me, her eyes vague and full of
reflected light.
I kissed her forehead.
"What did you see in the Blood, my beauty?" I asked.
  She shook her head as though she had no words for it, and then she laid her head on my chest.
  There was only serenity and peace in the chapel, and as we lay down to sleep together, the lamps
slowly burnt out.
  At last the candles were down to a few, and I could feel the dawn coming, and the chapel was
warm as I had promised, and glittering with its riches, but above all with its solemn King and
Queen.
  Bianca had lost consciousness. I had perhaps three quarters of an hour before the day's slumber
would come for me as well.
  I looked up at Akasha, delighting in the last shimmer of the dying candles in her eyes.
  "You know what a liar I am, don't you?" I asked her. "You know how wicked I have been. And
you play my game with me, don't you, my Sovereign?"
Did I hear laughter?
  Maybe I was going mad. There had been enough pain for it and enough magic; there had been
enough hunger, and enough blood.
I looked down at Bianca who rested so trustingly on my arm.
  "I have planted in her mind the image of Pandora, haven't I?" I whispered, "so that wherever she
goes with me she will search. And from her angel mind, Pandora cannot fail to pluck my image.
And so we may find each other, Pandora and I, through her. She doesn't dream of what I've done.
She thinks only to comfort me with her listening, and I, though loving her, take her North with me,
into the lands where Raymond Gallant has told me that Pandora was last seen.
  "Oh, very wicked, but what does it take to sustain life when life is bruised and burnt as badly as
my life has been? For me it is this extravagant and slender ambition, and for it I abandon Amadeo
whom I should rescue as soon as my strength is restored."
  There was a sound in the chapel. What was it? The sound of the wax of the last candle?
It seemed a voice was speaking to me soundlessly.
   You cannot rescue Amadeo. You are the keeper of the Mother and the Father.
  "Yes, I grow sleepy," I whispered. I closed my eyes. "I know such things, I have always known
them."
   You go on, you seek Raymond Gallant, you must remember. Look at his face again.
  "Yes, the Talamasca," I said. "And the castle called Lorwich in East Anglia. The place he called
the Motherhouse. Yes. I remember both sides of the golden coin."
  I thought dreamily of that supper when he had come upon me so stealthily and stared at me with
such innocent and inquisitive eyes.



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                                           Blood and Gold

  I thought of the music and the way Amadeo smiled at Bianca as they danced together. I thought
of everything.
  And then in my hand I saw the golden coin and the engraved image of the castle, and I thought,
Am I not dreaming? But it seemed that Raymond Gallant was talking to me, talking very distinctly:
   "Listen to me, Marius, remember me, Marius. We know of her, Marius. We watch and we are
always here."
"Yes, go North," I whispered.
  And it seemed that the Queen of Silence said without a word that she was content.

28

AS I LOOK BACK NOW,! have no doubt that Akasha turned me away from the rescue of
Amadeo, and as I consider all that I have revealed here I have no doubt of her intervention in my
life at other periods.
  Had I attempted to go South to Rome, I would have fallen into Santino's hands and met with
destruction. And what better lure was there than the promise that I might soon meet with Pandora?
  Of course my encounter with Raymond Gallant was quite real, and the details of this were vivid
within my mind, and Akasha no doubt subtracted these details by virtue of her immense power.
  The description of Pandora which I had confided to Bianca was also quite real, and this too might
have been known to the Queen had she opened her ears to listen to my distant prayers from Venice.
  Whatever the case, from the night we arrived at the shrine I was set upon a course of recovery
and of a search for Pandora.
  If anyone had told me that both would take some two hundred years, I might have met with
despair, but I did not know this. I knew only that I was safe within the shrine, and I had Akasha to
protect me, and Bianca to content me.
  For well over a year I drank from the fount of the Mother. And for six months of this time, I fed
my powerful blood to Bianca.
  During those nights, when I could not open the stone door, I saw myself grow more robust in
appearance with each divine feast, and I spent the long hours talking in respectful whispers with
Bianca.
  We took to conserving the oil for the lamps, and the fine candles which I had stored behind the
Divine Parents, for we had no inkling of how long it would be before I could open the door and
take us to
hunting in the distant Alpine towns or cities.

At last there came a night when it occurred to me most strongly to venture out, and I was clever
enough to know that this thought had not come to me at random. It had been suggested to me by a
series of images. I could open the door now. I could go out. And I could take Bianca with me.
  As for my appearance to the mortal world, my skin was coal black, and heavily scarred in places
as though from the stroking of a hot poker. But the face I saw in Bianca's mirror was fully formed,
with the serene expression that has always been so familiar to me. And my body was strong once
more, and my hands of which I am so vain were a scholar's hands with long deft fingers.
  For another year, I could not dare to send to Raymond Gallant a letter.
  Carrying Bianca with me to far-flung towns, I searched hastily and clumsily for the Evil Doer. As
such creatures often run in packs, we would enjoy a gluttonous feast; and then I would take such
clothes and gold as needed from the dead; and off we would go to the shrine well before daylight.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  I think when I look back on it that ten years at least went by in this fashion. But time is so strange
with us, how can I be certain?
  What I remember was that a powerful bond existed between me and Bianca that seemed
absolutely unshakable. As the years passed, she was as much my companion in silence as she had
ever been in conversation.
We moved as one, without argument or consultation.
  She was a proud and merciless hunter, dedicated to the majesty of Those Who Must Be Kept, and
always drank from more than one human victim whenever possible. Indeed, there seemed no limit
to the blood she could imbibe. She wanted strength, both from me and the Evil Doer whom she
took with righteous coldness.
Riding the winds in my arms, she turned her eyes to the stars fearlessly. And often she spoke to me
softly and easily of her mortal life in Florence, telling me the stories of her youth, and of how she
had loved her brothers who had so admired Lorenzo the Magnificent. Yes, she had seen my
beloved Botticelli many a time and told me in detail of paintings which I had not seen. She sang
songs to me now and then which she composed herself. She spoke in sadness of the death of her
brothers and how she had fallen into the power of her evil kinsmen.
  I loved listening to her as much as I loved talking to her. Indeed, it was so fluid between us that I
still wonder at it.


  And though on many a morn, she combed out her lovely hair and replaited it with her ropes of
tiny pearls, she never complained of our lot, and wore the cast-off tunics and cloaks of the men we
slew as I did.
  Now and then, slipping discreetly behind the King and Queen, she took from her precious bundle
a gorgeous gown of silk and clothed herself with care in it, this to sleep in my arms, after I had
covered her with warm compliments and kisses.
  Never had I known such peace with Pandora. Never had I known such warm simplicity.
  Yet it was Pandora who filled my mind--Pandora traveling the cities of the North, Pandora with
her Asian companion.
At last there came an evening when, after a furious hunt, in exhaustion
    and satiation, Bianca asked to be returned early to the shrine, and I found myself in possession
of a priceless three hours before dawn.
  I also found myself in possession of a new measure of strength which I had perhaps unwittingly
concealed from her.
  To a distant Alpine monastery I went, one which had suffered much due to the recent rise of what
scholars call the Protestant Reformation. Here I knew I would find frightened monks who would
take my gold and assist me in sending a letter to England.
  Entering the empty chapel first, I gathered up every good beeswax candle in the place, these to
replenish those of the shrine, and I put all of the candles into a sack which I had brought with me.
  I then went to the scriptorium where I found an old monk who was writing very fast by his single
candle.
He looked up as soon as he found me standing in his presence.
  "Yes," I said at once, speaking his German dialect. "I am a strange man come to you in a strange
way, but believe me when I say that I am not evil."
  He was gray-haired, tonsured, and wore brown robes, and he was a bit cold in the empty
scriptorium. He was utterly fearless as he gazed at me.



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  But I told myself that I had never looked more human. My skin was as black as that of a Moor
and I wore the rather drab gray garments which I had taken from some doomed miscreant.
  Now as he continued to stare, quite obviously not in any mood to sound a general alarm, I did my
old trick of placing before him a purse of gold coins for the good of the monastery which needed it
badly.
  "I must write a letter," I said, "and see that it reaches a place in England."


  "A Catholic place?" he asked as he looked at me, his gray eyebrows thick and arched as he raised
them.
  "I should think so," I said with a shrug. Of course I couldn't describe to him the secular nature of
the Talamasca.
"Then think again," he said. "For England is no longer Catholic."
  "What on earth do you mean?" I asked. "Surely the Reformation has not reached such a place as
England."
  He laughed. "No, not the Reformation precisely," he said. "Rather the vanity of a King who
would divorce his Spanish Catholic wife, and who has denied the power of the Pope to rule against
him."
  I was so dejected that I sat down on a nearby bench though I'd been given no invitation to do it.
  "What are you?" asked the old monk. He laid down his quill pen. He stared at me in the most
thoughtful manner.
  "It's no matter," I said wearily. "Do you think there's no chance that a letter from here could reach
a castle called Lorwich in East Anglia? "
  "I don't know," said the monk. "It might well happen. For there are some who oppose King Henry
VIII and others who do not. But in general he has destroyed the monasteries of England. And so
any letter you write from me cannot go to one of them, only directly to the castle. And how is that
to happen? We have to think on it. I can always attempt it."
"Yes, please, let us attempt it."
  "But first, tell me what you are," he asked again. "I won't write the letter for you unless you do so.
Also I want to know why you stole all the good candles in the chapel and left the bad ones."
  "You know I did this?" I asked. I was becoming extremely agitated. I thought I had been silent as
a mouse.
  "I'm not an ordinary man," he said. "I hear things and see things that people don't. I know you're
not human. What are you?"
  "I can't tell you," I said. "Tell me what you think I am. Tell me if you can find any true evil in my
heart. Tell me what you see in me."
  He gazed at me for a long time. His eyes were deeply gray, and as I looked at his elderly face I
could easily reconstruct the young man he had been, rather resolute, though his personal strength of
character was far greater now even though he suffered human infirmity.
  At last he turned away and looked at his candle as though he had completed his examination of
me.
  "I am a reader of strange books," he said in a hushed but clear voice. "I have studied some of
those texts which have come out of Italy pertaining to magic and astrology and things which are
often called forbidden."
  My pulse quickened. This seemed extraordinary good fortune. I did not interrupt.




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                                              Blood and Gold

  "I have a belief that there are angels cast out of Heaven," he said, "and that they do not know
what they are any longer. They wander in a state of confusion. You seem one of those creatures,
though if I am right, you will not be able to confirm it."
I was so struck by the curiosity of this concept that I could say
nothing. At last I had to answer.
  "No, I'm not such. I know it for certain. But I wish that I were. Let me confide in you one terrible
secret."
  "Very well," he said. "You may go to Confession to me if you like, for I am an ordained priest,
not simply a monk, but I doubt I shall be able to give you Absolution."
  "This is my secret. I have existed since the time when Christ walked the Earth though I never
knew of him."
  He considered this calmly for a long time, looking into my eyes and then away to his candle, as if
this were a little ritual with him. Then he spoke:
  "I don't really believe you," he said. "But you are a mystifying being, with your black skin and
blue eyes, with your blond hair, and with your gold which you so generously put before me. I'll
take it, of course. We need it."
  I smiled. I loved him. Of course I wouldn't tell him such a thing. What would it mean to him?
"All right," he said, "I'll write your letter for you."
  "I can write it myself," I said, "if only you give me the parchment and the pen. I need for you to
send it, and establish this place for the receipt of an answer to it. It's the answer which is so
important."
  He obeyed me at once, and I turned to the task, gladly accepting the quill from him. I knew he
was watching me as I wrote but it didn't matter.
Raymond Gallant,
  I have suffered a dreadful catastrophe, following upon the very night which I met with you and
talked to you. My palazzo in Venice was destroyed by fire, and I myself injured beyond my own
imagining. Please be assured that this was not the work of mortal hands, and some night should we
meet I shall most willingly
    explain to you what happened. In fact, it would give me great satisfaction to describe to you in
detail the identity of the one who sent his emissaries to destroy me. As for now, I am far too
weakened to attempt vengeance either in words or actions.
  I am also too weakened to journey to Lorwich in East Anglia, and thanks to forces which I cannot
describe I do have shelter similar to that which you offered me.
But I beg you to tell me if you have had any recent intelligence
of my Pandora. I beg you to tell me if she has made herself known to you. I beg you to tell me if
you can help me to reach her by letter. Marius.
  Having finished the letter, I gave it over to the priest who promptly added the proper address of
the monastery, folded the parchment and sealed it.
We sat in silence for a long moment.
"How shall I find you," he asked, "when an answer reaches here?"
  "I'll know," I said, "as you knew when I took the candles. Forgive me for taking them. I should
have gone into a city and bought them from a proper merchant. But I have become such a traveler
of the sleepy night. I do things far too much at random."
  "So I can see," he answered, "for though you began with me in German, you are now speaking
Latin in which you wrote your letter. Oh, don't be angry. I didn't read a single word, but I knew it
was Latin. Perfect Latin. A Latin such as no one speaks today."



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Is my gold recompense enough? " I asked. I rose from the bench. It was now time for me to be
off.
  "Oh, yes, and I look forward to your return. I'll see the letter is sent tomorrow. If the Lord of
Lorwich in East Anglia has sworn his
allegiance to Henry VIII, you'll no doubt have your answer."
  I was off so swiftly that to my new friend, it no doubt seemed that I had disappeared.
  And as I returned to the shrine, I observed for the first time the beginnings of a human settlement
all too close to us.
  Of course we were concealed in a tiny valley high upon an ominous cliff. Nevertheless, a small
group of huts had caught my eye far below at the foot of the cliff, and I knew what was going to
happen.

  When I entered the shrine I found Bianca sleeping. No question came from her as to where I had
been, and I realized the lengths I had gone to avoid her knowledge of my letter.
  I wondered if I might reach England were I to travel the skies alone. But what would I say to her?
I had never left her alone and it seemed wrong ever to do so.
  Little less than a year went by during which time I passed nightly within hearing distance of the
priest to whom I had entrusted my letter.
  By this time, Bianca and I had frequently hunted the streets of small Alpine cities in one guise,
while buying from their merchants in another.
  Now and then we rented rooms for ourselves so that we might enjoy common things, but we were
far too fearful to remain anywhere but in the shrine at morning.
  All the while, I continued to approach the Queen at intervals. How I chose my moments, I do not
know. Perhaps she spoke to me. All I can avow is that I knew when I might drink from her and I
did it, and always there came the rapid healing afterwards, the renewal of vigor, and the desire to
share my replenished gifts with Bianca.
  At last there came a night, when having left a weary Bianca in the shrine once more, I came near
to the Alpine monastery and saw my monk standing in the garden with his arms out to the sky in a
gesture of such romance and piety that I almost wept to see it.
Softly, without a sound, I entered the cloister behind him.
  At once he turned to face me, as if his powers were as great as mine. The wind swept his full
brown robes as he came towards me.
  "Marius," he said in a whisper. He gestured to me to be quiet, and led me into the scriptorium.
  When I saw the thickness of the letter he drew from his desk I was astonished. That it was open,
that the seal was broken, gave me pause.
I looked at him.
"Yes, I read it," he said. "Did you think I would give it to you without
doing so?"
  I couldn't waste any more time. I had to read what was inside the letter. I sat down and unfolded
the pages immediately.

----------

Marius,




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                                             Blood and Gold

  Let these words not move you to anger or to hasty decision. What I know of Pandora is as
follows. She has been seen by those of us who are knowledgeable in such things in the cities of
Nuremberg, Vienna, Prague and Gutenberg. She travels in Poland. She travels in Bavaria.
  She and her companion are most clever, seldom disturbing the human population through which
they move, but from time to time they set foot in the royal courts of certain kingdoms. It is believed
by those who have seen them that they take some delight in danger.
  Our archives are filled with accounts of a black carriage that travels by day, comporting within
two huge enameled chests in which these creatures are presumed to sleep, protected by a small
garrison of pale-skinned human guards who are secretive, ruthless and devoted.
  Even the most benign or clever approach to these human guards is followed by certain death as
some of our members have learnt for themselves when seeking to penetrate the mystery
of these dark travelers.
  It is the judgment of some among us here that the guards have received a small portion of the
power so generously enjoyed by their master and mistress, thus binding them irrevocably
to Pandora and her companion.
  Our last sighting of the pair was in Poland. However these beings travel very fast and remain in
no one place for any given length of time, and indeed seem more than content to move back and
forth across the length and breadth of Europe
ceaselessly.
  They have been known to go back and forth in Spain and to travel throughout France, but never
to linger in Paris. As regards this last city, I wonder if you know why they do not stay there long, or
if I must be the one to enlighten you.
  I shall tell you what I know. In Paris, now, there exists a great dedicated group of the species
which we both understand, indeed, so large a group that one must doubt that even Paris can content
them. And having received into our arms one desperate infidel from this group we have learnt
much of how these unusual Parisian creatures characterize themselves.
  I cannot commit to parchment what I know of them. Let me only say that they are possessed of a
surprising zeal, believing themselves to serve God Himself with their strenuous appetite. And
should others of the same ilk venture into their domain they do not hesitate to destroy them,
declaring them to be blasphemers.
  This infidel of which I speak has averred more than once that his brothers and sisters were among
those who participated in your great loss and injury. Only you can confirm this for me, as I do not
know what is madness here or boasting, or perhaps a blending of the two, and you can well imagine
how confounded we are to have one so loquacious and hostile beneath our roof, so eager to answer
questions and so frightened to be left unguarded.
  Let me also add that piece of intelligence which may matter to you as much now as any which I
have pertaining to your lost Pandora.
  He who guides this voracious and mysterious band of Paris creatures is none other than your
young companion from Venice.
  Won over by discipline, fasting, penance and the loss of his former Master--so says this young
infidel--your old companion
   has proved to be a leader of immeasurable strength and well capable of driving out any of his
kind who seek to gain a foothold in Paris.
  Would that I could tell you more of these creatures. Allow me to repeat what I have suggested
above. They believe themselves to be in the service of Almighty God. And from this principle, a
considerable number of rules follow.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  Marius, I cannot imagine how this information will affect you. I write here only that of which I
am most certain.
  Now, allow me to play an unusual role, given our respective ages.
  Whatever your response to my revelations here, under no circumstances travel overland North to
see me. Under no circumstances travel overland North to find Pandora. Under no circumstances
travel overland North to find your young companion.

  I caution you on all these accounts for two reasons. There are at this time, as you must surely
know, wars all over Europe. Martin Luther has fomented much unrest. And in England, our
sovereign Henry VIII has declared himself independent of Rome, in spite of much resistance.
Of course we at Lorwich are loyal to our King and his decisions earn only our respect and honor.
But it is no time to be traveling in Europe.
  And allow me to warn you on another account which may surprise you. Throughout Europe now
there are those who are willing to persecute others for witchcraft on slender reasons; that is, a
superstition regarding witches reigns in villages and towns, which even one hundred years ago
would have been dismissed as ridiculous.
  You cannot allow yourself to travel overland through such places. Writings as to wizards, Sabbats
and Devil worship cloud human philosophy.
  And yes, I do fear for Pandora that she and her companion take no seeming notice of these
dangers, but it has been communicated to us many times that though she travels overland, she
travels very swiftly. Her servants have been known to purchase fresh horses twice or three times
within a day, demanding only that the animals be of the finest quality.
  Marius, I send you my deepest good wishes. Please write to me again as soon as possible. There
are so many questions I wish to ask you. I dare not do so in this letter. I do not know if I dare at all.
Let me only express the wish and hope for your invitation.
  I must confess to you that I am the envy of my brothers and sisters that I have received your
communication. I shall not let my head be turned by this. I am in awe of you and with justification.
Yours in the Talamasca,
Raymond Gallant.

-----------

  At last I sat back on the bench, the many sheaves of parchment trembling in my left hand, and I
shook my head, hardly knowing what I might say to myself, for my thoughts were all a brew.
  Indeed, since the night of the disaster in Venice, I had frequently been at a loss for private words,
and never did I know it as keenly as now.
  I looked down at the pages. My right fingers touched various words, and then I drew back,
shaking my head again.
  Pandora, circling Europe, within my grasp but perhaps eternally beyond it.


  And Amadeo, won over to the creed of Santino and sent to establish it in Paris! Oh, yes, I could
envision it.
  There came back to me once more the vivid image of Santino that night in Rome, in his black
robes, his hair so vainly clean as he approached me and pressed me to come with him to his
wretched catacomb.



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                                              Blood and Gold

  And here lay the proof now that he had not destroyed my beautiful child, rather he had made of
him a victim. He had won him over; he had taken Amadeo to himself! He had more utterly defeated
me than ever I had dreamt.
  And Amadeo, my blessed and beautiful pupil, had gone from my uncertain tutelage to that
perpetual gloom. And yes, oh, yes, I could imagine it. Ashes. I tasted ashes.
A cold shudder ran through me.
I crushed the pages to myself.
  Then quite suddenly I became aware that, beside me sat the gray-haired priest, looking at me,
very calm as he leaned on his left elbow.
  Again I shook my head. I folded the pages of the letter to make of them a packet that I might
carry with me.
I looked into his gray eyes.
  "Why don't you run from me?" I asked. I was bitter and wanted to weep but this was no place for
it.
  "You're in my debt," he said softly. "Tell me what you are, if only so that I may know if I've lost
my soul by serving you."
  "You haven't lost your soul," I said quickly, my wretchedness too plain in my voice. "Your soul
has nothing to do with me." I took a deep breath. "What did you make of what you read in my
letter?"
  "You're suffering," he said, "rather like a mortal man, but you aren't mortal. And this one in
England, he is mortal, but he isn't afraid of you."
  "This is true," I said. "I suffer, and I suffer for one has done me wrong and I have no vengeance
nor justice. But let's not speak of such things. I would be alone now."
  A silence fell between us. It was time for me to go but I had not the strength quite yet to do it.
  Had I given him the usual purse? I must do it now. I reached inside my tunic and brought it out. I
laid it down, and spilled the golden coins so that I might see them in the light of the candle.
Some vague and heated thoughts formed in my mind to do with Amadeo and the brilliance of this
gold and of how angry I was, and of how I seethed for vengeance against Santino. I saw ikons with
their halos of gold; I saw the coin of the Talamasca made of gold. I saw the golden florins of
Florence.
  I saw the golden bracelets once worn by Pandora on her beautiful naked arms. I saw the golden
bracelets which I had put upon the arms of Akasha.
Gold and gold and gold.
And Amadeo had chosen ashes!
  Well, I shall find Pandora once more, I thought. I shall find her! And only if she swears against
me will I let her go, will I let her remain with this mysterious companion. Oh, I trembled as I
thought of it, as I vowed, as I whispered these wordless thoughts.
  Pandora, yes! And some night, for Amadeo, there would be the reckoning with Santino!
A long silence ensued.
  The priest beside me was not frightened. I wondered if he could possibly guess how grateful I
was that he allowed me to remain there in such precious stillness.
At last, I ran my left fingers over the golden coins.
  "Is there enough there for flowers?" I asked, "flowers and trees and beautiful plants in your
garden?"
  "There is enough there to endow our gardens forever," he answered.
"Ah forever!" I said. "I have such a love of that word, forever."



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Yes, it is a timeless word," he said, raising his mossy eyebrows as he looked at me. "Time is
ours, but forever belongs to God, don't you think?"
  "Yes, I do," I said. I turned to face him. I smiled at him, and I saw the warm impression of this on
him just as if I'd spoken kind words to him. He couldn't conceal it.
"You've been good to me," I said.
"Will you write to your friend again?" he asked.
  "Not from here," I answered. "It's too dangerous for me. From some other place. And I beg you,
forget these things."
He laughed in the most honest and simple way. "Forget!" he said.
I rose to go.
  "You shouldn't have read the letter," I said. "It can only cause you worry."


"I had to do it," he answered. "Before I gave it to you."
  "I cannot imagine why," I answered. I walked quietly towards the door of the scriptorium.
He came beside me.
"And so you go then, Marius?" he asked.
I turned around. I lifted my hand in farewell.
  "Yes, neither angel nor devil, I go," I said, "neither good nor bad. And I thank you."
  As I had before, I went from him so swiftly he couldn't see it, and very soon I was alone with the
stars, and staring down on that valley all too near to the chapel where a city was forming at the foot
of my high cliff which had been neglected by all mankind for over a millennium.


28

I WAITED ALONG TIME before showing the letter to Bianca. I never really concealed it from
her, for I thought such a thing was dishonest. But as she did not ask me the meaning of the pages
which I kept with my few personal belongings, I did not explain them to her.
  It was too painful for me to share my sorrow with regard to Amadeo. And as for the existence of
the Talamasca, it was too bizarre a tale, and too fully interwoven with my love for Pandora.
  But I did leave Bianca alone in the shrine more and more often. Never of course did I abandon
her there in the early part of the evening when she depended upon me totally to reach those places
where we might hunt. On the contrary, I always took her with me.
  It was later in the night--after we had fed--that I would return her to safety and go off alone,
testing the limits of my powers.
  All the while a strange thing was happening to me. As I drank from the Mother my vigor
increased. But I also learned what all injured blood drinkers learn--that in healing I was becoming
stronger than I had been before my injury.
  Of course I gave Bianca my own blood, but as I grew ever stronger the gap between us became
very great and I saw it widening.
  There were times, of course, when I put the question in my prayers as to whether Akasha would
receive Bianca. But it seemed that the answer was no, and so in fear I didn't dare to test it.
  I remembered only too well the death of Eudoxia, and I also remembered the moment when Enkil
had lifted his arm against Mael. I could not subject Bianca to possible injury.




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                                             Blood and Gold

Within a short time, I was easily able to take Bianca with me through the night to the nearby cities
of Prague and Geneva, and there we indulged ourselves with some vision of the civilization we had
once known in Venice.
  As for that beautiful capital, I would not return to it, no matter how much Bianca implored me. Of
course she possessed nothing of the Cloud Gift herself, and was dependent upon me in a manner
which neither Amadeo nor Pandora had ever been.
  "It is too painful to me," I declared. "I will not go there. You've lived here so long as my beautiful
nun. What is it you want?"
  "I want Italy," she said in a soft crestfallen voice. And I knew only too well what she meant, but I
didn't answer her.
"If I cannot have Italy, Marius," she said at last, "I must have somewhere."
  She was in the front corner of the shrine when she spoke these all too significant words, and they
were in a hushed voice, as if she sensed a danger.
  We were always reverent in the shrine. But we did not whisper behind the Divine Parents. We
considered it ill-mannered if not downright disrespectful.
  It's a strange thing when I think of it. But we could not presume that Akasha and Enkil did not
hear us. And therefore we often spoke in the front corner, especially the one to the left, which
Bianca favored, often sitting there with her warmest cloak about her.
  When she said these words to me, she looked up at the Queen as though acknowledging the
interpretation.
  "Let it be her wish," she said, "that we not pollute her shrine with our idleness."
  I nodded. What else could I do? Yet so many years had passed in this fashion that I had grown
accustomed to this place over any other. And Bianca's quiet loyalty to me was something I took for
granted.
I sat down beside her now.
  I took her hand in mine, and noticed perhaps for the first time in some while that my skin was
now darkly bronzed rather than black, and most of the wrinkles had faded.
  "Let me make a confession to you," I said. "We cannot live in some simple house as we did in
Venice."
She listened to me with quiet eyes.
I went on.
"I fear those creatures, Santino and his demon spawn. Decades have passed since the fire, but they
still threaten from their hiding places."
  "How do you know this?" she said. It seemed she had a great deal more to say to me. But I asked
for her patience.
I went to my belongings and took from them the letter from Raymond Gallant.
  "Read this," I said. "It will tell you, among other things, that they have spread their abominable
ways as far as the city of Paris."
For a long time I remained silent as she read, and then her immediate sobs startled me. How many
times had I seen Bianca cry? Why was I so unprepared for it? She whispered Amadeo's name. She
couldn't quite bring herself to speak of it.
  "What does this mean?" she said. "How do they live? Explain these words. What did they do to
him?"
  I sat beside her, begging her to be calm, and then I told her how they lived, these Satan
worshiping fiends, as monks or hermits, tasting the earth and death, and how they imagined that the
Christian God had made some place for them in his Kingdom.



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                                             Blood and Gold

  "They starved our Amadeo," I said, "they tortured him. This is plain here. And when he had given
up all hope, believing me to be dead, and believing their piety to be just, he became one of them."
She looked at me solemnly, the tears standing in her eyes.
  "Oh, how often I've seen you cry," I said. "But not of late, and not so bitterly as you cry for him.
Be assured I have not forgotten him either."
  She shook her head as if her thoughts were not in accord with mine but she was not able to reveal
them.
  "We must be clever, my precious one," I said. "Whatever abode we choose for ourselves, we
must be safe from them, always."
Almost dismissively she spoke now.
  "We can find a safe place," she said. "You know we can. We must. We cannot remain as we are
forever. It is not our nature. If I have learnt nothing from your stories I have learnt that much, that
you have wandered the Earth in search of beauty as well as in your search for blood."
I did not like her seriousness.
  "We are only two," she went on, "and should these devils come again with their fiery brands, it
will be a simple thing for you to remove me to some lofty height where they can't harm me."


  "If I am there, my love, if I am there," I said, "and what if I am not? All these years, since we
have left our lovely Venice behind, you have lived within these walls where they can't harm you.
Now, should we go to some other place, and lodge there, I shall have to be on guard always. Is that
natural?"
  This felt dreadful to me, this talk. I had never known anything so difficult with her. I didn't like
the inscrutable expression on her face, nor the way her hand trembled.
  "Perhaps it is too soon," she said. "But I must tell you a most important thing, and I cannot keep it
from you."
I hesitated before I answered.
  "What is it, Bianca?" I asked. I was fast becoming miserable. Utterly miserable.
"I think you have made a grievous error," she said.
  I was quietly stunned. She said nothing more. I waited. Still there came this silence commingled
with her sitting back against the wall, her eyes fixed upwards on the Divine Parents.
  "Will you tell me what this error is?" I asked. "By all means, you must tell me! I love you. I must
hear this."
  She said nothing. She looked at the King and Queen. She did not appear to be praying.
  I picked up the parchment pages of the letter. I moved through them and then looked at her again.
  Her tears had dried, and her mouth was soft, but her eyes were filled with some strange look that I
could not explain to myself.
  "Is it the Talamasca that causes you fear?" I asked. "I shall explain all this to you. But see here
that I wrote to them from a distant monastery. I left few footprints there, my beauty. I traveled the
winds while you were sleeping here."
  There followed nothing but her silence. It seemed not dark or cold but merely reserved and
thoughtful. But when she moved her eyes to me, the change in her face was slow and ominous.
  With quiet words I hastened to explain to her my strange meeting with Raymond Gallant on my
last night of true happiness in Venice. I explained in the simplest manner how he had sought
knowledge of us, and how I had learnt from him that Pandora had been seen in northern Europe.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  I talked of all the things contained in the letter. I talked of Amadeo once more. I spoke of my
hatred of Santino, that he had robbed me of all I loved save her, and how on that account she was,
of all things, most precious to me.
  At last I was willing to say no more. I was growing angry. I felt wronged and I couldn't
understand her. Her silence hurt me more and more, and I knew that she could see this in my face.
  Finally, I saw some change in her. She sharpened her gaze and then she spoke:
  "Don't you see the grievous error you've made?" she asked. "Don't you hear it in the lessons
you've made known to me? Centuries ago, the young Satan worshipers came to you for what you
could give when you lived with Pandora. You denied them your precious knowledge. You should
have revealed to them the mystery of the Mother and the Father!"
"Good Lord, how could you believe such a thing?"
  "And when Santino asked you in Rome, you should have brought him to this very shrine! You
should have shown to him the mysteries you revealed to me. Had you done it, Marius, he would
never have been your enemy."
I was enraged as I stared at her. Was this my brilliant Bianca?
  "Don't you see!" she went on. "Over and over, these unstoppable fools have made a cult of
nothing! You could have shown them something!" She gestured towards me dismissively as
though I disgusted her. "How many decades have we been here? How strong am I? Oh, you needn't
answer. I know my own endurance. I know my own temper.
"But don't you see, all my understanding of our powers is reinforced by their beauty and their
majesty! I know whence we come! I have seen you drink from the Queen. I have seen you wake
from your swoon. I have seen your skin healing.
  "But what did Amadeo ever see? What did Santino ever see? And you marvel at the extent of
their heresy."
  "Don't call it heresy!" I declared suddenly, the words bursting from my lips. "Don't speak as if
this were a worship! I have told you that yes, there are secret things, and things which no one can
explain! But we are not worshipers!"
  "It is a truth you revealed to me," she said, "in their paradox, in their presence!" Her voice rose,
ill-tempered and utterly alien to her. "You might have smashed Santino's ill-founded crusade with a
mere glimpse of the Divine Parents."


I glared at her. A madness took hold of me.
I rose to my feet. I looked about the shrine furiously.
  "Gather up all you possess," I said suddenly. "I'm casting you out of here!"
  She sat still as she had been before, gazing up at me in cold defiance.
  "You heard what I said. Gather your precious clothes, your looking glass, your pearls, your
jewels, your books, whatever you want. I'm taking you out of here."
  For a long moment she looked at me, glowering, I should say, as if she didn't believe me.
Then all at once she moved, obeying me in a series of quick gestures.
     And within the space of a few moments, she stood before me, her cloak about her, her bundle
clasped to her chest, looking as she had some countless years before when first I had brought her
here.
  I don't know whether she looked back at the face of the Mother and the Father. I did not. I did not
for one moment believe that either would prevent this dreadful expulsion.
  Within moments, I was on the wind, and I didn't know where I would take her.



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  I traveled higher and faster than I had dared to do before, and found it well within my power.
Indeed, my own speed amazed me. The land before me had been burnt in recent wars and I knew it
to be spotted here and there with ruined castles.
  It was to one of these that I took her, making certain that the town all around had been pillaged
and deserted, and then I set her down in a stone room within the broken fortress, and went in search
of a place where she might sleep by day in the ruined graveyard.
  It did not take me long to be confident that she could survive here. In the burnt-out chapel there
were crypts beneath the floor. There were hiding places everywhere.
  I went back to her. She was standing as I had left her, her face as solemn as before, her brilliant
oval eyes fixed on me.
  "I want no more of you," I said. I was shuddering. "I want no more of you that you could say such
a thing, that you could blame me that Santino took from me my child! I can have no more of you.
You have no grasp of the burden I have carried throughout time or how many times I have
lamented it! What do you think your precious Santino would do had he the Mother and the Father
in his possession? How many demons could he bring to drink from them? And who knows what the
Mother and Father might permit in their silence? Who knows what they have ever wanted?"
  "You are an evil and negligent brother to me," she said coldly, glancing about herself. "Why not
leave me to the wolves in the forest? But go. I want no more of you either. Tell your scholars in the
Talamasca
     where you have deposited me and perhaps they will offer me their kind shelter. But be gone.
Whatever, be gone! I don't want you here!"
  Though up to that second I had been hanging upon her every word, I abandoned her.
Hours passed. I traveled the skies, not knowing where I went,
marveling at the blurred landscape beneath me.
  My power was far greater than it had ever been! Would I to try it, I could easily reach England.
  I saw the mountains and then the sea, and then suddenly my soul ached so completely that I could
do nothing but will myself to go back to her.
Bianca, what have I done?
Bianca, pray that you have waited for me!
  Out of the deep dark heavens I somehow returned to her. I found her in the stone room, sitting in
the corner, collected and still, just as if she had been in the shrine, and as I knelt before her, she
reached up and threw her arms about me.
I sobbed as I embraced her.
  "My beautiful Bianca, my beautiful one, I am so sorry, so sorry, my love," I said.
  "Marius, I love you with my whole heart eternally." She cried as freely and completely as I did.
"My precious Marius," she said. "I have never loved anyone as I love you. Forgive me."
  We could do nothing but weep for the longest time and then I took her home to the shrine, and
comforted her, combing her hair as I so loved to do and trimming it with her slender ropes of pearls
until she was my perfect lovely one.
  "What did I mean to say?" she implored. "I don't know. Of course you could not have trusted any
of them. And had you shown them the Queen and the King some horrid anarchy might well have
come from it!"
"Yes, you have said the perfect word," I answered, "some awful anarchy." I glanced quickly at the
still impassive faces. I went on. "You must understand, oh, please, if you love me at all, understand
what power exists within them." I stopped suddenly. "Oh, don't you see, as much as I lament their
silence, perhaps it is for them a form of peace which they have chosen for the good of everyone."



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This was the very essence of it and I think we both knew it.
  I feared what might happen if Akasha were ever to stand up from her throne, if she were ever to
speak or move. I feared it with all my reason.
  Yet still, that night and every night I believed that if and when Akasha were ever waked, a divine
sweetness would pour forth from her.
  Once Bianca had fallen asleep, I knelt before the Queen in the abject manner which was so
common to me now, and which I would never have revealed to Pandora.
  "Mother, I hunger for you," I whispered. I opened my hands. "Let me touch you with love," I
said. "Tell me if I have been in error. Should I have brought the Satan worshipers to your shrine?
Should I have revealed you in all your loveliness to Santino?"
I closed my eyes. I opened them.
"Unchangeable Ones," I said in a soft voice, "speak to me."
  I approached her and laid my lips on her throat. I pierced the crisp white skin with my teeth, and
the thick blood came into me slowly.
  The garden surrounded me. Oh, yes, this I love above all. And it was the garden of the monastery
in spring, how wondrous, and my priest was there. I was walking with him in the clean swept
cloister. This was the supreme dream, for its colors were rich and I could see all the mountains
around us. I am immortal, I said.
The garden dissolved. I could see colors washed from a wall.
  Then I stood in a midnight forest. In the light of the moon, I beheld a black carriage coming down
the road, drawn by many dark horses. It passed me, its huge wheels stirring up the dust. There came
behind it a team of guards all clothed in black livery.
Pandora.
  When I woke, I was lying against Akasha's breast, my forehead against her throat, my left hand
clasping her right shoulder. It was so sweet that I didn't want to move, and all the light of the shrine
had become one golden shimmer in my eyes, rather the way that light would become in those long
Venetian banquet rooms.


  At last I kissed her tenderly and withdrew and then lay down and placed my arms around Bianca.
  My thoughts were troubled and strange. I knew it was time to find some habitat other than the
shrine itself, and I knew as well that strangers were coming into our mountains.
The small city at the foot of our cliff was now thriving.
  But the most dreadful revelation of this night was that Bianca and I could quarrel, that the solid
peace between us could be violently and painfully ruptured. And that I, at the first hard words from
my jewel, could crumple into mental ruin.
  Why had I been so surprised? Could I not remember my painful quarrels with Pandora? I must
know that in anger, Marius is not
Marius. I must know and never forget it.

30


THE FOLLOWING NIGHT we hunted down a pair of brigands who were traveling the lower
passes of our mountains. The blood was good, and from this small feast we went on to a little
German town where we could find a tavern.



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  Here we sat, a man and his wife, one might presume, and over our mulled wine we talked for
hours.
  I told Bianca all I had ever known of Those Who Must Be Kept. I told her the legends of Egypt--
of how the Mother and Father had centuries ago been bound and ill used by those who would steal
their Precious Blood. I told her of how Akasha herself had come to me in a vision begging me to
take her out of Egypt.
  I told her of the few times Akasha had ever spoken to me in the Blood. And I told her finally,
finally, of what a pure miracle it had been that the Divine Parents had opened the door of the
Alpine shrine when I had come to them too weak to budge it.
  "Do they need me?" I asked. I looked into Bianca's eyes. "I can't know. That's the horror. Do they
want to be seen by others? I am in ignorance.
  "But let me make my final confession. I became so angry last night because centuries ago when
Pandora first drank the Mother's blood, she was full of dreams of bringing back to the Divine
Parents the old worship. By that I mean, a worship that included the Druidic Gods of the Grove, a
religion that went back to the temples of Egypt.
  "I was furious that Pandora could believe in such a thing, and on the very night of Pandora's
making I broke her dreams with my forceful logic. And I went beyond that. I pounded with my fist
upon the Mother's very breast and demanded that she speak to us."
Bianca was amazed.
"Can you guess what happened?" I asked.
"Nothing. The Mother gave no answer."
I nodded. "And there came no rebuke or punishment either. Perhaps
   the Mother had brought Pandora to me. We could never know. But please understand how I fear
the very notion that the Divine Parents
might ever be worshiped.
  "Bianca, we are immortals, yes, and we possess our King and Queen, but we must never for a
moment believe that we understand them."
  To all this she nodded. She weighed it all for a long time and then she spoke:
"I was very simply wrong in what I said to you," she told me.
  "Not in all of it," I answered. "Perhaps if Amadeo had seen the King and Queen, he would have
escaped the Roman blood drinkers and come back to us. Yet there is another way of looking at it."
"Tell me."
  "If he had known the secret of the Mother and the Father, he might have been forced to reveal it
to Santino, and the demons would have returned to Venice, searching for me. They might have
found both of us."
"Ah, yes, all this is true," she said. "I begin to see all of it."
  We were easy now with each other in the tavern. The mortals around us took no notice. I talked
on in a soft voice, telling her the story of how Mael had once tried, with my permission, to drink
Akasha's blood and Enkil had moved to stop him.
  I told her the dreadful tale of Eudoxia. I told her of how I had left Constantinople.
  "I don't know what it is with you, my love," I said, "but somehow I can tell you everything. It was
never so with Pandora. It was never so with Amadeo."
She reached out and put her left hand on my cheek.
  "Marius," she said. "Speak freely always of Pandora. Don't ever think that I shall fail to
understand your love for Pandora."
  I thought this over for many long moments. I took her right hand in mine and I kissed her fingers.



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Listen to me, my love," I said. "With every prayer, I ask the Queen if you might drink. But I gain
no clear answer. And after what I witnessed with Eudoxia and Mael, I cannot take you to her. And
so I shall continue to give you my blood in so far as it will make you strong, but--."
"I understand you," she said.
I leant across the table and kissed her.
  "Last night in my anger I learnt many things. That I cannot live without you was one. But I learnt
another. I can now cover greatdistances with ease. And I suspect my other powers have also
increased beyond recent measure. I must test these powers. I must know how easily I can defeat
those demons if ever they come near to me. And tonight I want to test my power of flight more than
any other."
  "And so you are telling me that you want to take me back to the shrine now, and go off to
England."
  I nodded. "The moon is full tonight, Bianca. I must see the isle of Britain in the light of the moon.
I must discover this Order of the Talamasca with my own eyes. It's scarcely possible to believe in
such purity."
"Why don't you take me with you?"
  "I must be swift," I answered. "And if there's danger I must be swifter still to escape it. These are
mortals after all. And Raymond Gallant is only one of them."
  "You will be careful then, my love," she said. "You know now more than ever that I very simply
adore you."
  It seemed then we would never quarrel again, that such a thing was impossible. And it seemed
imperative that I never lose her.
  As we went out into the darkness, as I wrapped her in my cloak, I pressed my lips to her forehead
as I took her into the clouds and homeward.
  When I left her, it was two hours before midnight, and I meant to see Raymond Gallant before
morning.
  Now, it had been many years since my meeting with him in Venice. He had been a young man
then, and perhaps middle-aged at the time that I wrote my letter to him.
  So it did occur to me as I set out on my journey that he might no longer be living.
Indeed, it was a terrible thought.
  But I believed in all he had told me about the Talamasca and so I was determined to approach
them.
  As I moved towards the stars, the pleasure of the Cloud Gift was so divine that I almost lost
myself in the rapture of the skies, dreaming above the isle of Britain, plunging to where I could see
the land perfectly against the sea, not wanting to touch the solid Earth so soon or roam it so
clumsily.
  But I had consulted many a map in recent years to find the location of East Anglia, and I soon
saw below me an immense castle with ten rounded towers which I believed to be the very one
engraved upon the gold coin which Raymond Gallant had long ago given me.
  The sheer size of the castle gave me doubts, however, but I willed myself to set foot on the steep
hillside quite close to it. Some deep preternatural instinct told me that I had reached the right place.
  The air was cold as I began to walk, indeed as cold as it had been in the mountains which I had
left behind me. Some of the woods had come back, which had no doubt been cut down once upon a
time for the safety of the castle, and I rather liked the terrain and I enjoyed walking in it.
I wore a full fur-lined cloak which I had taken from one of my victims.




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    I had my customary weapons, a thick short broadsword, and a dagger. I wore a longer velvet
tunic than was favored at the time, but this did not matter to me. My shoes were new and I had
bought them from a cobbler in Geneva.
  As for the style of the castle, I figured it to be some five hundred years old, built in the time of
William the Conqueror. I surmised that it had once had a moat and drawbridge. But these elements
had long been abandoned, and I could see a great door before me, flanked by torches.
  At last I reached this door, and pulled the bell, hearing a loud clang deep within the courtyard.
It did not take long for someone to come, and only then did I realize
   the curious propriety of what I'd done. In my reverence for this Order of Scholars I had not
"listened" outside to discover who they were. I had not hovered near their lighted tower windows.
  And now I found myself, a curious figure no doubt with my blue eyes and dark skin, standing
before the porter.
  This young man couldn't have been more than seventeen, and he seemed both sleepy and
indifferent as though my clarion had awakened him.
  "I've come in search of Lorwich," I said, "in East Anglia. Have I reached the right place? "
  "You have," said the boy, wiping at his eyes and leaning upon the door. "Can I say for what
reason?"
"I seek the Talamasca," I replied.


  The young man nodded. He opened the door widely, and I soon found myself in a great
courtyard. There were wagons and coaches parked within. I could hear the faint sound of the horses
in the stables.
"I seek Raymond Gallant," I said to the boy.
  "Ah," he replied, as if these were the magic words that he needed from me. And then he led me
further inside and shut the giant wood door behind us. "I'll take you where you might wait," he said.
"I think that Raymond Gallant is sleeping."
   But he's alive, I thought. That's what matters. I caught the scent of many mortals in this place. I
caught the scent of food that had recently been cooked. I caught the scent of oak fires and as I
looked up I saw the faint smoke of chimneys against the sky which I had not perceived earlier.
  With no further questioning, I was soon led by torchlight up a winding stone stairway in one of
the many towers. Over and over again I looked out of small windows at the bleak land. I saw the
dim outline of a nearby town. I could see the patches of the farmers' fields. All looked so very
peaceful.
  At last the boy anchored his torch, and, lighting a candle from it, opened two heavily carved
doors to reveal a huge room with sparse but beautiful furnishings.
  It had been a long time since I had seen heavily carved tables and chairs, and fine tapestries. It
had been a long time since I had seen rich golden candlesticks and handsome chests with velvet
draperies.
  It all seemed a feast for the eyes, and I was about to sit down when there came rushing into the
room a spry elderly man with streaming gray hair in a long heavy white nightshirt who gazed at me
with
brilliant gray eyes, crying out:
"Marius!"
  It was Raymond Gallant, it was Raymond in his final years, and I felt a terrible shock of pleasure
and pain as I looked at him.



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  "Raymond," I said, and I opened my arms, and gently enfolded him. How frail he felt. I kissed
him on both cheeks. I held him back tenderly that I might look at him.
  His hair was still thick and his forehead smooth as it had been so long ago. And when he smiled,
his mouth seemed that of the young man I remembered.
  "Marius, what a wonder it is to see you," he cried. "Why did you never write to me again? "
  "Raymond, I've come. I can't account for time and what it means to us. I've come, and I'm here,
and I'm glad to be with you."
  He stopped, turning from right to left suddenly and then he cocked his head. He seemed as agile
and quick as he had ever been. He was listening.
  "They're all aware that you're here," he said, "but don't worry. They won't dare to come into this
room. They're far too disciplined for that. They know I will not permit it."
  I listened for a moment, and I confirmed what he had said. Mortals throughout the immense
sprawling castle had sensed my presence. There were mind readers among these mortals. Others
seemed to
possess some keen hearing.
  But I distinguished no supernatural presence here. I caught no inkling of the "infidel" he had
described in his letter.
  And I caught no menace from anyone either. Nevertheless, I marked the nearby window, and
noting that it was heavily barred though otherwise open to the night, wondered if I could easily
break through it. I thought that I could. I felt no fear. In fact, I felt no fear of this Talamasca
because it seemed to feel no fear of me and had
admitted me so guilelessly.
  "Come, sit down with me, Marius," Raymond said. He drew me near to an immense fireplace. I
tried not to gaze with concern at his thin palsied hands, or his thin shoulders. I thanked the gods
that I had come tonight, and that he was still here to greet me.
He called out to the sleepy boy who remained still at the door.
  "Edgar, build the fire and light it, please. Marius, you will forgive me," he said. "I'm very cold.
Do you mind it? I understand what
happened to you."
  "No, not at all, Raymond," I said. "I can't fear fire forever on that account. Not only am I healed
now, I'm stronger than ever I was before. It's quite a mystery. And you, how old are you? Tell me,
Raymond. I can't guess it."
  "Eighty years, Marius," he said. He smiled. "You don't know how I've dreamed of your coming. I
had so much more to tell you. I didn't dare to write it in a letter."
  "And rightly so," I said, "for the letter was read, and who knows what might have happened? As
it was, the priest who received it for me could not make much of it. I understand everything,
however."
He motioned to the door. Two young men at once entered the room, and I made them out to be the
simple sort rather like the busy Edgar who was piling up the oak in the fireplace. There were richly
carved stone gargoyles above the fire. I rather liked them.
  "Two chairs," said Raymond to the boys. "We'll talk together. I'll tell you all lean."
  "Why are you so generous to me, Raymond?" I asked. I wanted so to comfort him, to stop his
agitation. But as he smiled at me, as if to reassure me, as he put his hand gently on my arm, and
urged me towards the two wooden chairs which the boys had brought to the hearth, I saw that he
did not need my comfort.




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                                             Blood and Gold

  "I'm only very excited, my old friend," he said. "You mustn't be concerned for me. Here, sit
down. Is this comfortable enough for you?"
  The chairs were as heavily carved as every bit of ornament in the room, and the arms were the
paws of lions. I found them beautiful as well as comfortable. I looked about myself at the many
bookshelves, and mused as I have often done on how all libraries subdue me and seduce me. I
thought of books burnt and books lost.
May this be a safe place for books, I thought, this Talamasca.
  "I have been decades in a stone room," I said in a muted voice. "I am quite comfortable. Will you
send the boys away now?"
  "Yes, yes, of course, only let them bring me some warm wine," he replied. "I need it."
"Please, how could I be so inconsiderate?" I replied.
  We were now facing each other, and the fire had begun with a riot of deep good fragrance coming
from the burning oak, and a warmth that I even enjoyed, I had to admit it.
  One of the boys had brought Raymond a red velvet dressing gown, and once he was clothed in
this, and settled in his chair, he did not seem so fragile. His face was radiant after all, his cheeks
actually rosy, and I could easily see the young man in him that I had once known.
  "My friend, should anything come between us," he said, "let me give you to know that she still
travels in her old way, rapidly through many European cities. Never to England, for I don't think
they want to cross the water, though no doubt they can, contrary to folklore."
I laughed. "Is that the folklore? That we can't cross water? It's
nonsense," I said. I would have said more, but I wondered if it were wise.
He apparently took no note of my hesitation. He plunged on:
  "She has for the last few decades traveled under the name of the Marquisa De Malvrier, and her
companion the Marquis of the same name, though it is she who goes to Court more often than he
does. They're seen in Russia, in Bavaria, in Saxony--in countries in which old ceremony is
honored, seeming from time to time to need the courtly balls and the immense Roman church
ceremonies. But understand, I have gleaned my account of this from many different reports. I'm
sure of nothing."
  The warm wine was being set upon a small stand beside him. He took the cup in his hands. His
hands were shaking. He drank from the wine.
  "But how do such reports come to you?" I asked. I was fascinated. There was no doubt he was
telling me the truth. As for the rest of the house, I could hear its many inhabitants all around us,
waiting in silence it seemed for some kind of summons.
  "Forget them," he said. "What can they learn from this audience?" he asked. "They are all faithful
members. To answer your questions, we go out sometimes in the guise of priests seeking
information about those whom we call vampires. We inquire as to mysterious deaths. And so we
gather information which is meaningful to us when it may not be meaningful to others."
  "Ah, of course. And you take note of the name when it is mentioned in Russia or Saxony or
Bavaria."
  "Exactly. I tell you it is De Malvrier. They have a liking for it. And I shall tell you something
else."
"Please, you must."
  "Several times we have found upon the wall of a church inscribed the name, Pandora."
"Ah, she's done this," I said, desperately trying to conceal my emotion.




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                                           Blood and Gold

    "She wants to be discovered by me." I paused. "This is painful for me," I said. "I wonder if the
one who travels with her even knows her by that name. Ah, this is painful, but why do you assist
me?"
  "By my very life, I don't know," he said, "except somehow I believe in you."
  "What do you mean believe, believe that I'm a wonder? That I'm a demon? Believe what,
Raymond, tell me? Oh, never mind, it doesn't matter, does it? We do things because our hearts
impel us."
  "Marius, my friend," he said, leaning forward and touching my knee with his right hand, "long
ago in Venice when I spied upon you, you know that I spoke to you with the purity of my mind. I
read your thoughts also. I knew that you slew only those who were the degraded killers of their
own sisters or brothers."

  "That's true, Raymond, and it was that way with Pandora. But is it now?"
  "Yes, I think so," he said, "for every ghastly crime imputed to the vampires whom these creatures
may in fact be is connected to one who was known to be guilty of many murders. So you see it's not
difficult for me to help you."
  "Ah, so she is true to our vow," I whispered. "I didn't think so, not when I heard of her harsh
companion."
  I looked intently at Raymond, seeing with every passing moment more of the young man I had
once known so briefly. It was saddening to me. It was dreadful. And the more I felt it, the more I
tried to conceal it.
What was my suffering to this, the slow triumph of old age? Nothing.
"Where was she seen last?" I asked.
  "On that point," he said, "allow me to give you my interpretation of her behavior. She and her
companion follow a pattern in their roam-ings. They go in rude circles, returning over and over
again to one city. Once they have been some time in that city they begin their circles once more
until they have gone as far afield as Russia. The central city of which I speak is Dresden."
"Dresden!" I said. "I don't know the place. I've never been there."
  "Oh, it cannot rival your gorgeous Italian cities. It cannot equal Paris or London. But it is the
capital of Saxony and it lies on the Elbe River. It has been much adorned by the various Dukes who
have ruled there. And invariably, I say invariably, these creatures--Pandora and her companion--
return to Dresden. It may not be for twenty years, but they come back to Dresden."
  I fell silent in my excitement. Was this some pattern meant for me to interpret? Was this pattern
meant for me to discover? Was it like a great round spiderweb meant sooner or later to ensnare me?
  Why else would Pandora and her companion follow such a life? I couldn't imagine it. But how
did I dare to think Pandora even remembered
     me. She had written her name in the stone of the church wall, not mine.
At last I heaved a great sigh.
  "How can I tell you what all this means to me?" I asked. "You have given me marvelous news. I'll
find her."
  "Now," he said in the most confident manner, "shall we take up the other matter which I
mentioned to you in my letter?"
"Amadeo," I whispered. "What happened to the infidel? I sense no blood drinker in this place. Am I
deceived? The creature's either very far afield or he's left you."




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  "The monster left us soon after I wrote to you. When he realized he could hunt for his victims
throughout the countryside, he was gone. We could do nothing to control him. Our appeals to him
that he feed only on evil men meant nothing to him. I don't even know if he still exists."
  "You must guard yourselves against this individual," I said. I looked about myself at the spacious
stone room. "This seems a castle of remarkable size and strength. Nevertheless, we speak of a
blood drinker."
He nodded.
  "We are well protected here, Marius. We do not admit everyone as we admitted you, take my
word for it. But would you hear now what he told us?"
I bowed my head. I knew what Raymond would tell me.
  "The Satan worshipers," I said, using the more specific words, "the very ones who burnt my
house in Venice, they prey upon humans in Paris. And my brilliant auburn-haired apprentice,
Amadeo, is still their leader?"
  "As far as we know," he said. "They are very clever. They hunt the poor, the diseased, the
outcast. The renegade who told us so much explained that they fear 'places of light,' as they call
them. They have taken to believing that it is not God's will for them to be richly clothed, or to enter
churches. And your Amadeo now goes by the name of Armand. The renegade told us that Armand
has the zeal of the converted."
I was too miserable to say anything.
  I shut my eyes, and when I opened them I was looking at the fire which was burning very well in
the deep fireplace.
  Then slowly my gaze shifted to Raymond Gallant who was staring at me intently.
"I have told you everything, really," he said.
I gave him a faint, sad smile and I nodded.
  "You've been generous indeed. And many a time in the past when one was generous to me, I took
from my tunic a purse of gold. But is such needed here? "
"No," he said agreeably, shaking his head. "We need no gold, Marius. Gold we have always had in
great abundance. What is life without gold? But we have it." "What can I do for you,
then?" I asked. "I'm in your debt. I've been in your debt since the night we spoke in Venice."
  "Talk to several of our members," he replied. "Let them come into the room. Let them see you.
Let them ask you questions. That is what you can do for me. Tell them only what you will. But
create a truth for them which can be recorded for study by others."
  "Of course. I'll do this willingly, but not in this library, Raymond, beautiful as it is. We must be in
an open place. I have an instinctive fear of mortals who know what I am." I paused. "In fact, I'm not
sure I've ever been surrounded by such."
He thought on this for a moment. Then he spoke:
  "Our courtyard is too noisy, too close to the stables. Let it be on one of the towers. It will be cold,
but I shall tell them all that they must dress warmly."
  "Shall we elect the South Tower for our purpose?" I asked. "Bring no torches with you. The night
is clear and the moon is full and all of you will be able to see me."
  I slipped out of the room then, hurrying down the stairs, and easily passing through one of the
narrow stone windows. With preternatural speed I went to the battlements of the South Tower, and
there waited in the mild wind for all of them to gather around me.
  Of course it seemed I had traveled by magic, but that I had not was one of the things which I
meant to tell them.




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  Within a quarter of an hour they were all assembled, some twenty well-dressed men, both young
and old, and two handsome women, and I found myself in the midst of a circle.
No torches, no. I was not in any conceivable danger.
For a long moment I allowed them to look at rne, and form whatever conception they desired, and
then I spoke:
  "You must tell me what you want to know. For my part, I tell you plainly that I am a blood
drinker. I have lived for hundreds of years, and I can remember clearly when I was a mortal man. It
was in Imperial
  Rome. You may record this. I have never separated my soul from that mortal time. I refuse to do
it."
  For a moment only silence followed, but then Raymond began with the questions.
  Yes, we had a "beginning," I explained but I could say nothing of it. Yes, we became much much
stronger with time. Yes, we tended to be lone creatures or to choose our companions very carefully.
Yes, we

could make others. No, we were not instinctively vicious, and we felt a deep love for mortals which
was often our spiritual undoing.
  There were countless other little questions. And I answered them all to the best of my ability. I
would say nothing of our vulnerability to the sun or fire. As for the "coven of vampires" in Paris
and Rome, I knew little.
At last I said:
  "It's time for me to leave now. I will travel hundreds of miles before dawn. I lodge in another
country."
"But how do you travel?" one of them asked.
"On the wind," I said. "It's a gift that has come to me with the passing centuries."
  I went to Raymond and I took him in my arms again, and then turning to several of the others I
bade them come and touch me so that they could see I was a real being.
  I stood back, took my knife and cut my hand with it, and held out my hand so that they could see
the flesh heal.
There were gasps from them.
"I must be gone now. Raymond, my thanks and my love," I said.
  "But wait," said one of the most elderly of the men. He had been standing back all the while,
leaning on a cane, listening to me as intently as all the others. "I have one last question for you,
Marius."
"Ask me," I said immediately.
"Do you know anything of our origins?"
  For a moment I was puzzled. I couldn't quite imagine what he meant in this question. Then
Raymond spoke:
  "Do you know anything about how the Talamasca came to be? That is what we are asking you."
"No," I said in quiet astonishment.
A silence fell over them all, and I realized quickly that they themselves
     were confused about how the Talamasca had come about. And it did come back to me that
Raymond had told me something of this when first I met him.
"I hope you find your answers," I said.
Then off I went into the darkness.




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  But I didn't stay away. I did what I had failed to do on my arrival. I hovered quite close but just
beyond their hearing and their vision. And with my powerful gifts, I listened to them as they
roamed their many towers and their many libraries.

How mysterious they were, how dedicated, how studious.
  Some night in the far future perhaps I would come to them again, only to learn more of them. But
just now, I had to return to the shrine and to Bianca.
  She was still awake when I came into the blessed place. And I saw that she had lighted the
hundred candles.
  This was a ceremony that I sometimes failed to do, and I was pleased to see it.
  "And are you happy with your visit to the Talamasca?" she asked in her frank voice. She had that
beguiling look of simplicity on her face which always prompted me to tell her everything.
"I was most pleased. I found them the honest scholars they professed
     to be. I gave them what knowledge I could, but by no means what I might, for that would have
been too foolish. But all they seek is knowledge and I left them more than happy."
  She narrowed her eyes as if she could not quite imagine what the Talamasca was and I
understood her.
  I sat down beside her, folded her close and wrapped the fur cloak around us both.
  "You smell of the cold, good wind," she said. "Perhaps we are meant to be creatures of the shrine
only, creatures of the cold sky and the inhospitable mountains."
  I said nothing, but in my mind I thought of only one thing: the far-off city of Dresden. Pandora
sooner or later always returned to Dresden.


31


A
HUNDRED YEARS would pass before I found Pandora. During that time my powers increased
enormously. That night after my return from the Talamasca in England, I tested all of them and
made certain that, never again would I be at the mercy of Santino's miscreants. For many nights I
left Bianca to herself as I made certain of my advantages.
  And once I was utterly sure of my swiftness, of the Fire Gift, and of an immeasurable power to
destroy with invisible force, I went to Paris with no other thought but to spy upon Amadeo's coven.
  Before I left for this little venture, I confessed my goals to Bianca and she had at once beseeched
me not to court such danger.
  "No, let me go," I responded. "I could hear his voice now over the miles perhaps if I chose to do
it. But I must be certain of what I hear and what I see. And I shall tell you something else. I have no
desire to reclaim him."
  She was saddened by this, but she seemed to understand it. She kept her usual place in the corner
of the shrine, merely nodding to me and exacting the promise from me that I would be most careful.
As soon as I reached Paris, I fed from one of several murderers, luring
   him by the powerful Spell Gift from his place in a comfortable inn, and then I sought refuge in a
high bell tower of Notre Dame de Paris itself to listen to the miscreants.
  Indeed, it was a huge nest of the most despicable and hateful beings, and they had sought out a
catacomb for their existence in Paris just as they had in ancient Rome centuries ago.



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  This catacomb was under the cemetery called Les Innocents, and those words seemed tragically
apt when I caught their addle-brained vows and chants before they poured out into the night to
bring cruelty as well as death to the people of Paris.
  "All for Satan, all for the Beast, all to serve God, and then return to our penitential existence."
  It was not difficult for me to find, through many different minds, the location of my Amadeo, and
within an hour or so of my arrival in Paris, I had him fixed as he walked through a narrow medieval
street, never dreaming that I watched him from above in bitter silence.
  He was dressed in rags, his hair caked with filth, and when he found his first victim, he visited
upon her a painful death which appalled me.
  For an hour or more my eyes followed him as he proceeded on, feeding on another hapless
creature, and then circling back to walk his way to the enormous cemetery.
  Leaning against the cold stone of the tower room, I heard him deep in his underground cell
drawing together his "coven" as he himself now called it and demanding of each how he or she had
harried, for the love of God, the local population.
  "Children of Darkness, it is almost dawn. Each of you shall now open his or her soul to me."
  How firm, how clear was his voice. How certain he was of what he said. How quick he was to
correct any Child of Satan who had not slain mortals ruthlessly. It was a man's voice I heard
coming from the lips of the boy I once knew. It was chilling to me.
  "Why were you given the Dark Gift?" he demanded of a laggard. "Tomorrow night you must
strike twice. And if all of you do not give me greater devotion, I shall punish you for your sins, and
see that
others are brought into the coven."
At last I couldn't listen anymore. I was repelled.
  I dreamt of going down into his underground world, of pulling him out of it as I burnt his
followers, and forcing him into the light, of taking him with me to the shrine of Those Who Must
Be Kept, and pleading with him to renounce his vocation.
But I didn't do it. I couldn't do it.
  For years and years, he had been one of them. His mind, his soul, his body belonged to those he
ruled; and nothing that I had taught him had given him the strength to fight them.
  He was not my Amadeo anymore. That is what I had come to Paris to learn and now I knew the
truth of it.
I felt sadness. I felt despair. But maybe it was anger and revulsion which caused me to leave Paris
that night, saying to myself in essence that he must free himself from the dark mentality of the
coven on his own. I could not do it for him.
  I had labored long and hard in Venice to erase his memory of the Monastery of the Caves. And
now he had found another place of rigid ritual and denial. And his years with me had not protected
him from it. Indeed, a circle had long ago closed for him. He was the priest once more. He was the
Fool for Satan, as he had once been the Fool for God in far-away Russia. And his brief time with
me in Venice had been nothing.
  When I told these things to Bianca, when I explained them as best I could, she was sad but she
didn't press me.
  It was easy between us as always, with her listening to me, and then offering her own response
without anger.
  "Perhaps in time, you'll change your mind," she said. "You are the one with the power to go there,
to fight those who would restrain him if you tried to take him. And that is what it would require, I
think, that you would have to take him by force, insist that he come here to be with you, and see the



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Divine Parents. I don't possess the power to do these things. I ask only that you think on it, that you
make no bitter iron resolve against it."
  "I give you my word," I said, "I have not done that. But I do not think the sight of the Divine
Parents would change the heart of Amadeo." I paused.
  I thought on all this for a long moment and then I spoke to her more directly:
  "You've only shared this knowledge with me for a brief time," I said. "And in the Divine Parents
we both see great beauty. But Amadeo might well see something different. Remember what I've
told you of the long centuries that lie behind me. The Divine Parents do not speak. The Divine
Parents do not redeem. The Divine Parents ask for nothing."
"I understand," she said.
  But she didn't. She had not spent enough years with the King and Queen. She couldn't possibly
comprehend the full effect of their passivity.
But I went on in a mild manner:
  "Amadeo possesses a creed, and a seeming place in God's plan," I said. "He might well see our
Mother and Father as an enigma belonging to a pagan era. That wouldn't warm his heart. That
wouldn't give him the strength which he derives now from his flock, and believe you me, Bianca,
he is the leader there. Our boy of long ago is old now; he is a sage of the Children of Darkness as
they call themselves." I sighed.
  A little flash of bitter memory came back to me, of Santino asking me when we met in Rome if
Those Who Must Be Kept were holy or profane.
I told this to Bianca.
"Ah, then you spoke to this creature. You've never told me this."
  "Oh, yes, I spoke to him and spurned him and insulted him. I did all of these foolish things when
something more vicious was required. Indeed, when the very words 'Those Who Must Be Kept' had
come from his lips, I should have put an end to him."
  She nodded. "I come more and more to understand it. Yet still I hope in time that you will return
to Paris, that you will at least reveal yourself to Amadeo. They are weak ones, are they not, and you
could come upon him in some open place where you could--."
  "I know well what you mean to say," I answered. "I wouldn't allow myself ever to be surrounded
by torches. Perhaps I will do as you suggest. But I've heard Amadeo's voice, and I don't believe he
can be changed now. And there is one thing more which is worth mentioning. Amadeo knows how
to free himself from this coven."
"Are you sure?"
  "Yes, I am. Amadeo knows how to live in the lighted world, and he is ten times stronger by virtue
of my old blood than are those who listen to his commands. He could break away. He chooses not
to do it."
  "Marius," she said plaintively, "you know how much I love you and how loath I am to contradict
you."
"No, say what you must say," I urged her at once.
  "Think of what he suffered," she said. "He was but a child when it happened."
I agreed to all this. Then I spoke again:
  "Well, he's no child now, Bianca. He may be as beautiful as he was when I made him through the
Blood, but he is a patriarch in the dust. And all of Paris, the wondrous city of Paris, surrounds him.
I watched him move through the city streets alone. There was no one there to restrict him. He might
have sought the Evil Doer as we do. But he did not. He drank deep of innocent blood, not once but
twice."



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"Ah, I see. This is what has so embittered you."
I thought on it.
"Yes, you're right. It's what turned me away, though I didn't even know it. I thought it was the
manner in which he spoke to his flock. But you are right. It was those two deaths, from which he
drew his hot red feast, when Paris swarmed with mortals steeped in murder who might easily have
been slain by him."
She laid her hand on mine.
  "If I choose to snatch any one of these Children of Darkness from his lair," I said, "it is Santino."
  "No, but you mustn't go to Rome. You don't know whether or not there are old ones among that
coven."
  "Some night," I said, "some night I shall go there. When I am more certain of immense power,
and when I am more certain of the ruthless rage it requires to destroy many others."
"Be still now," she said. "Forgive me."
I was quiet for a moment.
  She knew how many nights I had wandered alone. I had now to confess what I had been doing on
those nights. I had now to begin my secret plan. I had now--for the first time in all our years
together--to drive a wedge between her and me, while giving her precisely what she wanted.
  "But let's leave talk of Amadeo," I said. "My mind is on happier things."
  She was immediately interested. She reached out and stroked my face and hair as was her custom.
"Tell me."
  "How long has it been since you asked me if we could have our own dwelling?"
"Oh, Marius, don't tease me on this account. Is it possible!"
"My darling, it's more than possible," I said, warmed by her beaming smile. "I have found a
splendid place, a lovely little city on the Elbe River in Saxony."
For this I received the sweetest kiss.
  "Now in these many nights when I have been off on my own, I have taken the liberty of acquiring
a castle near the city, a much decayed place, and I hope you'll forgive me--."
"Marius, this is momentous news!" she said.
  "I have already spent a considerable sum for the repairs--the new wooden floors and stairs, glass
windows, and abundant furnishings."
  "Oh, but this is wonderful," she said. She put her arms around me.
"I'm relieved that you're not angry with me," I said, "for moving so quickly without you. You might
say I fell in love with the place, and taking several drapers and carpenters there I told them my
dreams and now all is being done as I have directed."
"Oh, how could I be angry?" she said. "I want it more than anything
in the world."
  "There is one more aspect to this castle which I should disclose," I said. "Though the more
modern building above is more like a palace than a castle, its foundations are quite old. Indeed, a
major part of the foundations were built in early times. And there are huge crypts beneath it, and a
true dungeon."
"You mean to move the Divine Parents?" she asked. "I do. I think it's time for it. You know as well
as I that there are small cities and towns springing up all around us. We aren't isolated here. Yes, I
want to move the Divine Parents."
"If you say, of course, I go along with you." She was too happy to conceal it. "But is it safe there?
Didn't you remove them to this remote place so that you never had to fear their discovery?" I
thought on this for a while before answering. At last I said:



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "It is safe there. And with the passing centuries, the world of the Undead changes around us. And
I can't endure this place any longer. And so I take them to a new place. And there are no blood
drinkers in it. I have searched far and wide for them. They aren't there. I hear no young ones. I hear
no old ones. I believe it's safe. And perhaps the most true answer to that logic is this: I want to
bring them there. I want a new place. I want new mountains and new forests."
  "I understand," she said. "Oh, I do understand," she said again. "And more than ever, I believe
that they can defend themselves. Oh, they need you, I don't doubt it, and that's why on that long ago
night they opened the door for you and lighted the lamps. I can still remember
  it so vividly. But I spend long hours here simply gazing at them. And I have many thoughts
during these hours. And I believe that they would defend themselves against any who sought to
hurt them."
  I didn't argue with her. I didn't bother to remind her that centuries ago they had allowed
themselves to be placed in the sun. What was the purpose? And for all I knew she was right. They
would crush anyone who tried to subject them to such injury.
  "Come now," she said, seeing me fallen into a mood. "I'm too happy with this good news. Be
happy with me."
  She kissed me as if she couldn't stop herself. She was so innocent in those moments.
  And I, I was lying to her, truly lying to her for the first time in all our years together.
  I was lying because I hadn't told her a word of Pandora. I was lying because I didn't truly believe
that she could harbor no jealousy of Pandora.
    And because I couldn't tell her that my love for Pandora lay at the very heart of what I did.
What creature would want to reveal such a scheme to a lover?
  I meant to place us in Dresden. I meant to remain in Dresden. I meant to be near Dresden at every
sunset of my existence until such time as Pandora came again. And I could not tell this to Bianca.
And so I pretended that it was for her that I had chosen this beautiful
  home, and indeed it was for her, there is no doubt of it. It was for her to make her happy, yes.
But that was not all of it.
Within the month, we began work on the new shrine, utterly transforming the castle dungeon in
Saxony into a fit place for the King and Queen.
  Goldsmiths and painters and stone masons were brought down the many flights of stone steps to
enhance the dungeon until it was the most marvelous private chapel.
The throne was covered in gold leaf as was the dais.
  And once again, the proper bronze lamps were found, fresh and new. And there were rich
candelabra of gold and silver.
  I alone labored on the heavy iron doors and their complex fastenings.
  As for the castle, it was more of a palace than a castle, as I've said, having been rebuilt several
times, and it was charming in its placement above the banks of the Elbe, and it had around it a
lovely forest of beech, oak and birch trees. There was a terrace from which one could look down at
the river, and from many large windows, one could see the distant city of Dresden.
  Of course we would never hunt in Dresden or in the surrounding hamlets. We would go far afield
as had always been our custom. And we would waylay the forest brigands, an activity which had
become a regular sport for us.
  Bianca had some concerns. And only reluctantly she confessed to me that she had some fear of
living in a place where she could not hunt for herself without me.




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  "Dresden is big enough to serve your appetite," I said, "if I were not able to carry you elsewhere.
You'll see. It's a beautiful city, a young city I should say, but under the Duke of Saxony it's coming
along magnificently."
"You're sure of this," she asked.
  "Oh, yes, I'm sure of it, and as I've told you, I'm also sure that the forests of Saxony and nearby
Thuringia contain their number of murderous thieves who have always been such a special repast
for us."
She thought on all this.
  "Let me remind you, my darling," I said, "you can on any night cut your beautiful blond hair with
the full confidence that it will grow back by day, and you can go out clothed as a man, traveling
with preternatural
  speed and strength to hunt your victims. Perhaps we should play at this very soon after our
arrival."
"Yes, would you allow me this?" she asked.
"Of course, I shall." I was astonished by her gratitude.
Again she showered me with grateful kisses.
  "But I must caution you on something," I said. "The area to which we move has many small
villages, and in these the belief in witchcraft and vampires is quite strong."
  "Vampires," she said. "This is the word used by your friend in the Talamasca."
  "Yes," I replied. "We must always cover the evidence of our feast, lest we become an immediate
legend."
She laughed.
  Finally the castle or schloss as they were called in that part of the world was ready, and it was
time for us to make preparations.
But something else had come to my mind, and I was haunted by it.
Finally there came a night when as Bianca slept in her corner, I proposed to deal with this matter.
  I knelt down on the bare marble and prayed to my motionless and beautiful Akasha and asked her
in most specific words if she would allow Bianca to drink from her.
  "This tender one has been your companion these many years," I said, "and she has loved you
without reserve. I give her my strong blood over and over again. But what is my blood in
comparison to yours? I fear for her, if ever we were to be separated. Please let her drink. Give her
your precious strength."
Only the sweet silence followed, with the shimmering of so many tiny flames, with the scent of
wax and oil, with the glitter of light in the Queen's eyes.
  But I saw an image in answer to my prayer. I saw in my mind my lovely Bianca lying on the
breast of the Queen. And for one divine instant we were not in the shrine but in a great garden. I
felt the breeze sweeping through the trees. I smelled flowers.
Then I was in the shrine again, kneeling, with my arms out.
  At once I whispered and gestured for Bianca to come to me. She obeyed, having no idea of what
was in my mind, and I guided her up close to the throat of the Queen, covering her as I did so that if
Enkil were to lift his arm I would feel it.
"Kiss her throat," I whispered.
  Bianca was shivering. I think she was on the verge of tears, but she did as I told her to do, and
then I saw her sink her small fang teeth into the skin of the Queen, and I felt her body become rigid
beneath my embrace.
It was being accomplished.



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  For several long moments she drank, and it seemed I could hear their heartbeats struggling
against each other, one great and one small, and then Bianca fell back, and I gathered her up in my
arms, seeing the two tiny wounds heal in Akasha's throat.
It was finished.
Withdrawing to the corner, I held Bianca close to me.
  She gave several sighs and undulated and turned towards me and snuggled against me. Then she
held out her hand and looked at it, and we could both see that it was whiter now, though it still had
the color of human flesh.
My soul was wondrously soothed by this event. I am only confessing now what it meant to me. For
having lied to Bianca I lived with an unbearable guilt, and now, having given her this gift of the
Mother's blood I felt a huge measure of relief from it.
  It was my hope that the Mother would allow Bianca to drink again, and in fact this did happen. It
happened often. And with every draught of the Divine Blood Bianca became immensely stronger.
But let me proceed with the tale in order.
  The journey from the shrine was arduous. As in the past I had to rely on mortals to transport the
Divine Parents in heavy coffins of stone, and I experienced some trepidation. But not as much as in
former eras. I think I was convinced that Akasha and Enkil could protect themselves.

  I don't know what gave me this impression. Perhaps it was that they had opened the shrine for
me, and lighted the lamps when I had been so weak and miserable.
Whatever the case, they were carried to our new home without difficulty,
     and as Bianca gazed on in complete awe, I took them out of their coffins and placed them on
the throne together.
  Their slow obedient movements, their sluggish plasticity--these things faintly horrified her.
But as she had now drunk the Mother's blood, she was quick to join
me in adjusting her fine spun dress and Enkil's kilt. She helped me to
smooth the plaited hair. She helped me to adjust the Queen's bracelets.
When it was all done, I myself tended to the lamps and the candles.
Then we both knelt down to pray that the King and the Queen
were content to be in this new place.
  And after that we were off to find the brigands in the forest. We had already heard their voices.
We quickly picked up their scent, and soon it was fine feasting in the woods, and a stash of stolen
gold to make it all the more splendid.
We were back in the world, Bianca declared. She danced in circles in the great hall of the castle.
She delighted in all the furnishings that crowded our new rooms. She delighted in our fancy
coffered beds, and all the colored draperies. I too delighted in it.
  But we were in full agreement that we would not live in the world as I had lived in Venice. Such
was simply too dangerous. And so having but few servants, we kept entirely to ourselves, and the
rumors in Dresden were that our house belonged to a Lady and Lord who lived elsewhere.
  When it pleased us to visit great cathedrals--and there were many--or great Royal Courts, we
went some distance from our home--to other cities such as Weimar, or Eisenbach, or Leipzig-and
cloaked ourselves in absurd wealth and mystery. It was all quite comforting after our barren life in
the Alps. And we enjoyed it immensely.
  But at every sunset my eyes were fixed on Dresden. At every sunset I listened for the sound of a
powerful blood drinker--in Dresden.
And so the years passed.



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  With them came radical changes in clothes which greatly amused us. We were soon wearing
elaborate wigs which we found ridiculous. And how I despised the pants which soon came into
style, as well as the high-heeled shoes and white stockings which came into fashion with them.
  We could not in our quiet seclusion include enough maids for Bianca, so it was I who laced up
her tight corset. But what a vision she was in her low-breasted bodices and her broad swaying
panniers.
  During this time, I wrote many times to the Talamasca. Raymond died at the age of eighty-nine,
but I soon established a connection there with a young woman named Elizabeth Nollis who had for
her personal review my letters to Raymond.
  She confirmed for me that Pandora was still seen with her Asian companion. She begged to know
what I might tell of my own powers and habits, but on this I was not too revealing. I spoke of mind
reading and the defiance of gravity. But I drove her to distraction with my lack of specifics.
  The greatest and most mysterious success of these letters was that she told me much of the
Talamasca. They were rich beyond anyone's dreams, she said, and this was the source of their
immense freedom. They had recently set up a Motherhouse in Amsterdam, and also in the city of
Rome.
I was quite surprised by all this, and warned her of Santino's "coven."
She then sent me a reply that astonished me.
  "It seems now that those strange ladies and gentlemen of which we have written in the past are no
longer within the city in which they dwelt with such obvious pleasure. Indeed it is very difficult for
our Motherhouse there to find any reports of such activities as one might expect from these
people."
  What did this mean? Had Santino abandoned his coven? Had they gone on to Paris en masse?
And if so, why?
  Without explaining myself to my quiet Bianca--who was more and more hunting on her own--I
went off to explore the Holy City myself, coming upon it for the first time in two hundred years.
  I was wary, in fact, a good deal more wary, than I should want to admit to anyone. Indeed, the
fear of fire gripped me so dreadfully that when I arrived I could do nothing but keep to the very top
of St. Peter's Basilica and look out over Rome with cold, shame-filled eyes; unable for long
moments to hear with my blood drinker's ears no matter how I struggled to gain control of myself.
  But I soon satisfied myself, through the Mind Gift, that there were only a few blood drinkers to
be found in Rome, and these were lone hunters without the consolation of companions. They were
also weak. And as I raped their minds, I realized they knew little of Santino!
  How had this come about? How had this one who had destroyed so much of my life freed himself
from his own miserable existence?
  Full of rage, I drew close to one of these lone blood drinkers, and soon accosted him, terrifying
him and with reason.
"What of Santino and the Roman coven?" I demanded. "Gone, all gone," he said, "years ago. Who
are you that you know of such things?"
"Santino!" I said. "Where did he go! Tell me." "But no one knows the answer," he said. "I never
laid eyes on him." "But someone made you," I said. "Tell me."
  "My maker lives in the catacombs still where the coven used to gather. He's mad. He can't help
you."
"Prepare to meet God or the Devil," I said. And just that quick I put an end to him. I did it as
mercifully as I could. And then he was no more but a spot of grease in the dirt and in this I rubbed
my foot before I moved towards the catacombs. He had spoken the truth.



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  There was but one blood drinker in this place, but I found it full of skulls just as it had been over
a thousand years ago.
The blood drinker was a babbling fool, and when he saw me in my fine gentleman's clothes, he
stared at me and pointed his finger. "The Devil comes in style," he said.
  "No, death has come," I said. "Why did you make that other one whom I've destroyed this night?"
My confession made no impression on him.
  "I make others to be my companions. But what good does it do? They turn on me."
"Where is Santino?" I demanded.
"Long gone," he said. "And who would have ever thought?" I tried to read his mind, but he was too
crazed and full of distracted thoughts. It was like chasing scattered mice. "Look at me, when did
you last see him!"
   "Oh, decades ago," he said. "I don't know the year. What do years mean here?"
  I could get nothing further from him. I looked about the miserable place with its few candles
dripping wax upon yellowed skulls, and then turning on this creature I destroyed him with the Fire
Gift as mercifully as I had destroyed the other. And I do think that it was truly a mercy.

  There was but one left, and this one led a far better existence than the other two. I found him in
handsome lodgings an hour before sunrise. With little difficulty I learnt that he kept a hiding place
beneath the house, but that he spent his idle hours reading in his few well-appointed rooms, and
that he dressed tolerably well.
  I also learnt that he couldn't detect my presence. He cut the figure of a man of some thirty mortal
years, and he had been in the Blood for some three hundred.
  At last I opened his door, breaking the lock, and stepped before him as he stood up, in horror,
from his writing desk.
"Santino," I said, "what became of him?"
  Though he had fed like a glutton, he was gaunt with huge bones, and long black hair, and though
he was very finely dressed in the style of the i6oos, his lace was soiled and dusty.
  "In the name of Hell," he whispered, "who are you? Where do you come from?"
  Again there came that terrific confusion of mind which defeated my ability to subtract thoughts or
knowledge from it.
  "I'll satisfy you on those points," I said, "but you must answer me first. Santino. What happened
to him."
  I took several deliberate steps towards him which put him into a paroxysm of terror.
  "Be quiet now," I said. Again I tried to read his mind, but I failed. "Don't try to flee," I said. "You
won't succeed with it. Answer my questions."
"I'll tell you what I know," he said, fearfully.
"That ought to be plenty."
He shook his head. "I came here from Paris," he said. He was quaking. "I was sent by a vampire
named Armand who is the leader of that coven."
  I nodded as though all this were quite intelligible to me, and as though I weren't experiencing
agony.
  "That was a hundred years ago, maybe more. Armand had heard no word from Rome in a long
time. I came to see the where and why of it. I found the Roman coven in complete confusion."
He stopped, catching his breath, backing away from me.
"Speak quickly and tell me more," I said. "I'm impatient."




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  "Only if you swear on your honor that you won't harm me. I've done you no harm after all. I was
no child of Santino."
"What makes you think I have honor?" I asked.
  "I know you do," he said. "I can sense such things. Swear on your honor to me and I'll tell you
everything."
  "Very well, I swear. I'll leave you alive which is more than I've done with two others tonight who
haunted the Roman streets like ghosts. Now talk to me."
  "I came from Paris as I told you. The Roman coven was weak. All ceremony had fallen away.
One or two of the old ones had deliberately gone into the fire. Others had simply run away, and
Santino had made no move to catch them and punish them. Once it was known that such escape
was possible many more fled, and the coven was in a state of disaster."
"Santino, did you see him?"
  "Yes, I saw him. He had taken to dressing in fine clothes and jewels, and he received me in a
palazzo much larger than this one. He told me strange things. I can't really remember all of them."
"You must remember."
  "He said he had seen old ones, too many old ones, and his faith in Satan had been shaken. He
spoke of creatures who seemed to be made of marble, though he knew they could burn. He said he
could no longer lead. He told me not to return to Paris, to do as I pleased, and so I have."
  "Old ones," I said, repeating his words. "Did he tell you nothing of these old ones?"
  "He spoke of the great Marius, and of a creature named Mael. And he spoke of beautiful women."
"What were the names of these women?"
  "He didn't say their names to me. He said only that one had come to the coven on the night of its
ceremonial dance, a woman like a living statue, and she had walked through the fire to show that it
was useless against her. She had destroyed many of the fledglings who attacked her.
  "When Santino showed attention and patience, she talked with him for several nights, telling him
of her wanderings. He had no taste for the coven after that...
"... But it was the other woman who truly destroyed him."
  "And who was this?" I demanded. "You can't speak fast enough forme."
  "The other woman was of the world, dressing in high style, and traveling by coach in the
company of a dark-skinned Asian."
I was dumbstruck, and maddened that he said nothing more.


  "What happened with this other woman?" I finally asked, though a thousand other words flooded
my mind.
  "Santino wanted her love most desperately. Of course the Asian threatened him with pure
destruction if he didn't give up this course, but it was the woman's condemnations that ruined him."
"What condemnations, what did she say and why?" I demanded.
  "I'm not certain. Santino spoke to her of his old piety and his fervor in directing the coven. She
condemned him. She said time would punish him for what he'd done to his own kind. She turned
away from him in disgust with him."
I smiled, a bitter smile.
  "Do you understand these things?" he asked. "Are they what you wanted?"
"Oh, yes, I understand them," I said.
  I turned and went to the window. I unfastened the wooden shutter, and stood looking down into
the street.



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I saw nothing, but I couldn't reason.
"What became of the woman and her Asian companion?" I asked.
   "I don't know. I have seen them in Rome since. Maybe it was fifty years ago. They are easy to
recognize, for she is very pale and her companion has a creamy brown skin and while she dresses
always as the great lady, he tends toward the exotic."
I took a deep easy breath.
"And Santino? Where did he go?" I demanded.
  "That I can't tell you, except that he had no spirit for anything when I talked to him. He wanted
her love, and nothing else. He said the ancient ones had ruined him for immortality and frightened
him as to death. He had nothing."
  I took another deep breath. Then I turned around and fixed this vampire in my gaze with all his
considerable details.
  "Listen to me," I said. "If you ever see this creature again, the great lady who travels by coach,
you must tell her one thing for me and one thing alone."
"Very well."
"That Marius lives and Marius is searching for her."
  "Marius!" he said with a gasp. He looked at me respectfully, though his eyes measured me from
head to foot, and then hesitantly he said, "But Santino believes you to be dead. I think that this is
what he told to the woman, that he had sent the coven members North to hurt you."

  "I think it's what he told her too. Now you remember that you saw me alive and that I search for
her."
"But where can she find you?"
  "I can't entrust that knowledge to you," I said. "I would be foolish to do it. But remember what I
have said. If you see her speak to her."
"Very well," he answered. "I hope that you find her."
With no further words, I left him.
  I went out then into the night and for a long time I roamed the streets of Rome, taking stock of
how it had changed with the centuries and how so much had remained the same.
  I marveled at the relics from my time which were still standing. I treasured the few hours I had to
make my way through the ruins of the Colosseum and the Forum. I climbed the hill where I had
once lived. I found some blocks still from old walls of my house. I wandered in a daze, staring at
things because my brain was in a fever.
  In truth I could hardly contain my excitement on account of what I had heard, and yet I was
miserable that Santino had escaped me.
  But oh, what a rich irony it was that he had fallen in love with her! That she had denied him! And
to think he had confessed to her his murderous deeds, how loathsome. Had he been boasting when
he spoke with her?
  Finally my heart was under my control. I could endure with what I had learnt from the young
vampire. I would soon come upon Pandora, I knew it.
  As for the other ancient one, she who had walked through the fire, I could not then imagine who
it was though I think I know now. Indeed, I'm almost certain of it. I wonder what pulled her out of
her secretive ways to visit some merciful release upon Santino's followers.
  At last the night was almost spent, and I went home to be with my ever patient Bianca.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  When I came down the stone steps of the cellar, I found her asleep against her coffin as if she'd
been waiting for me. She was in a long nightgown of sheer white silk, tied at the wrists, and her
hair was glossy and flowing.
  I lifted her, kissed her closing eyes, and then put her down to her rest, and kissed her again as she
lay there.
"Did you find Santino?" she asked in a drowsy voice. "Did you
punish him?"
  "No," I said. "But I will some night in the years to come. Only time itself can rob me of that
special pleasure."


32


IT WAS BIANCA who gave me the news. It was early evening, and I was writing a letter which I
would later send to my latest confidante in the Talamasca. The windows were open to the breeze
off the Elbe.
Bianca rushed into the room and told me immediately.
"It's Pandora. I know it. I've seen her."
I rose from the desk.
I took her in my arms.
"How do you know?" I asked.
  "They're dancing now at the Court Ball, she and her Asian lover. Everyone was whispering about
them, how beautiful they are. The Marquis and the Marquisa De Malvrier. I heard their heartbeats
as soon as I entered the ballroom. I caught their strange vampiric scent. How can one describe it?"
"Did she see you?"
  "Yes, and I put a portrait of you in my mind, my love," she said. "We locked eyes, she and I. Go
to her. I know how much you want to see her."
  I gazed down at Bianca for a long moment. I peered into her lovely oval eyes and then I kissed
her. She was exquisitely dressed in a charming ball gown of violet silk and never had she looked
more splendid. I kissed her as warmly as I have ever done.
  After that, I went at once to my closets and dressed for the ball, putting on my finest crimson
frock coat and all the requisite lace, and then the large curly wig which was the fashion then.
  I hurried down the steps to my carriage. When I looked back I saw Bianca on the pavilion above
gazing down at me. She lifted her hand to her lips, and blew a kiss to me.
    As soon as I entered the Ducal Palace I sensed the presence of the Asian, and indeed before I
ever reached the doors of the ballroom, he emerged from the shadows of an anteroom and put his
hand on my arm.
Oh, for so long I had heard about this evil being, and now I confronted him. From India, yes, and
most beautiful with large liquid black eyes, and a creamy brown skin that was flawless. He smiled
at me with his smooth, enticing mouth.
  His satin frock coat was a dark blue, and his lace was intricate and extravagant. It seemed he was
studded with immense diamonds, diamonds from India where diamonds are worshiped. He had a
fortune in rings on his hands. He wore a fortune in buckles and buttons.
  "Marius," he said. He gave me a small formal bow, as though he were doffing his hat when in fact
he wore none. "Of course," he said, "you are going to see Pandora."



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"You mean to stop me?" I asked.
  "No," he said with an idle shrug. "How could you imagine such a thing?" His tone was courteous.
"Marius, I assure you, she has cast off many another." He seemed perfectly sincere.
  "So I've been told," I said. "I must see her. You and I can speak later on. I must go to her."
  "Very well," he said. "I am patient." He shrugged again. "I am always patient. My name is Arjun.
I'm glad that we've finally come together. Even with the Roman rogue, Santino, who claimed to
have annihilated you I was patient. She was so miserable then and I wanted to punish him. But I did
not. I followed her wishes and left him unharmed. What a dejected creature he was. How he loved
her. I followed her wishes as I've said. I'll follow her wishes tonight, as I always do."
  "That's very good of you," I replied, my throat so tight I could scarcely utter the words. "Let me
go now. I have waited longer than you can possibly imagine for this moment. I can't stand here and
converse with you as though she weren't steps away from me."
  "I can imagine how long you've waited," he said. "I am older than you think."
I nodded, and I slowly withdrew from him.
I couldn't bear it anymore.
Immediately I entered the immense ballroom.
The orchestra was playing one of the soft fluid dances so popular in those times, nothing as spirited
as music would later become, and the lavish room was full of radiant faces and busy dancing
figures, and myriad colors.
  I peered through the happy crowd, moving slowly along one wall and then another.
Quite suddenly I saw her. She didn't know I was there. Her companion had sent her no mental
warning.
  She was sitting alone, artfully dressed in her fashionable clothes, her satin bodice very tight and
graceful, her ornate skirts huge, and her lovely white face framed by her natural brown hair drawn
back and up in a fancy style with rubies and diamonds.
  I leant against the clavichord, smiling benevolently at the musician who played it with such skill,
and then I turned to gaze at her.
How sad was her expression, how remote, how unutterably beautiful.
   Was she watching the colors of the room as I watched them? Did she feel the same gentle love
for mortals which I felt? What would she do when she realized I was watching her?
  I didn't know. I was afraid. I couldn't know anything until I heard the sound of her voice. I
continued to look. I continued to savor this moment of bliss and safety.
  Suddenly, she saw me. She picked me out of the hundreds of faces. Her eyes fixed on me, and I
saw the blood rush into her beautiful cheeks and her mouth opened to speak the name Marius.
I heard it over the thin sweet music.
  I raised my fingers to my lips, just as Bianca had done only a little while ago, and I blew a kiss to
her.
  How sad and happy at once she seemed, her mouth opened in a half smile as she gazed at me. She
seemed as frozen in her place as I was.
  But this was intolerable. What were these volumes of silence which divided us!
  Quickly I crossed the dance floor and bowed before her. I lifted her cold white hand, and led her
out and into the dance, and would take no resistance from her.
  "No, you're mine, you're mine, do you hear?" I whispered. "Don't pull away from me."
  "Marius, I fear him and he is strong," she whispered in my ear. "I must explain to him that we've
found each other."
"I don't fear him. Besides he knows. What does it matter?"



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                                            Blood and Gold

We were dancing as if we said no such things to one another. I held her tight and kissed her cheeks.
I didn't care what the mortals around us might think of this impropriety. How very absurd was the
whole notion.
  "Pandora, my blessed love, if only you could know how long I've waited. What use is it to tell
you now that from the very beginning I have missed you in pure agony? Pandora, listen to me, don't
close your eyes, don't look away. I knew within the year, the very year, that I had made a dreadful
error!"
  I realized that I was turning her too violently: I was pressing her hand too hard. I had lost the
cadence of the dance. The music was a strange shrill noise in my ears. I had lost control of
everything.
She pulled back to look into my eyes. "Take me out on the pavilion," she said. "We can talk in the
river breeze. The music makes me dizzy." Immediately I led her through a huge pair of doors and
we found ourselves on a stone bench overlooking the river.
  I shall never forget how clear it was that night, how much the stars seemed in my favor, and how
brilliant the light of the moon on the Elbe. All around us were pots of flowers, and other couples or
groups of mortals who had come to gain a little air before returning to the ballroom.
  But in the main we had the shadows to ourselves and I gave way to kissing her. I felt her perfect
cheeks beneath my lips. I kissed her throat. I felt her brown hair with its tight waves, which I had so
often painted on my wild nymphs as they ran through my thick gardens. I wanted to pull it loose.
  "Don't leave me again," I said. "No matter what is said between us tonight. Don't leave me."
  "Marius, it was you who left me," she said, and I heard a tremor in her voice which frightened
me. "Marius, that was so long ago," she said sadly. "Marius, I wandered so far and wide searching
for you."
  "Yes, yes, I admit to all," I said. "I admit to every error. How could I guess what it meant to break
the tie? Pandora, I didn't know! Yea gods, I didn't know! Believe me, I didn't know. Tell me you
will leave this creature, Arjun, and come back to me. Pandora, I want nothing short of this! I can't
make pretty words. I can't recite old poems.
Pandora, look at me."
  "I am looking at you!" she declared. "Don't you see, you blind me! Marius, don't think I too
haven't dreamt of this reunion. And now you see me in this shame, this weakness."
"What? I don't care! What shame and weakness?"
  "That I'm a slave to my companion, Arjun, that I let him move me through the world, that on my
own, I possess no will, no momentum. Marius, I am nothing now."
  "No, that's not true, and besides it doesn't matter. I'll free you from Arjun. I have no fear of him
whatsoever, and then you'll be with me and all your old spirit will come back to you."
  "You dream," she said and the first coldness came into her face and into her voice. It was in her
brown eyes, a coldness that comes from sorrow.
  "Are you telling me," I demanded, "that you mean to leave me again for this creature? You think
I will stand for it?"
  "And what are you saying to me, Marius, that you will force me?" Her voice was low, distant.
  "But you've told me you're weak, you've told me you're a slave. Is this not asking for me to force
you?"
  She shook her head. She was ready to weep. Again I wanted to pull down her hair, to see it loose,
to take the jewels out of it. I wanted to take her face in my hands.
I did it. I held her face too roughly.




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                                              Blood and Gold

  "Pandora, listen to me," I said. "One hundred years ago, I learnt from a strange mortal that in your
wanderings with this creature you circled again and again the city of Dresden. And learning this, I
moved myself to this city to wait for you. Not a night has passed that I have not awakened to look
through Dresden to find you.
   "Now that I have you in my arms I have no intention of abandoning you."
  She shook her head. She seemed for a moment incapable of speech. I felt that she was imprisoned
in her strange fashionable garments and lost in some painful reverie.
  "But what can I give you, Marius, but what you've already learnt? The knowledge that I live still,
that I endure, that I wander? With or without Arjun, what does it matter?"
She turned her eyes to me, wondering.
  "And what do I learn from you except that you go on, and that you endure--that those demons in
Rome did not destroy you as they claimed, that you were burnt, yes, I can see that in the color of
your skin, but you survive. Marius, what more is there?"
"What on Earth are you saying!" I demanded. I was suddenly furious. "Pandora, we have each
other! Good Lord. We have time. As we come together now, time begins for us all over again!"


  "Does it, Marius? I don't know," she replied. "Marius, I'm not strong enough."
"Pandora, that's mad!" I said.
"Oh, you are so angry and it is so like our quarrels of old."
  "No, it's not!" I declared. "It's nothing like our quarrels of old because it's about nothing. Now I'm
taking you from here. I'm taking you to my palace, and I shall deal with Arjun as best as I can
afterwards."
  "You can't do such a thing," she said sharply. "Marius, I've been with him for hundreds of years.
You think you can simply come
between us?"
  "I want you, Pandora. I shall settle for nothing else. And if such a time comes that you want to
leave me--."
  "Yes, and what if it does come," she said angrily, "then what shall I do when there is no Arjun on
account of you!"
  I fell silent. I was in a rage. She was staring at me intently. Her face was full of feeling. Her
breast heaved under the tight satin.
"Do you love me?" I demanded.
"Completely," she said in her angry voice.
"Then you are coming with me!"
I took her by the hand.
No one moved to stop us as we left the palace.
  As soon as I had her in the carriage, I kissed her wantonly as mortals kiss and wanted to sink my
teeth into her throat but she forbade it.
  "Let me have that intimacy!" I begged. "For the love of Heaven, Pandora, it's Marius who is
speaking to you. Listen to me. Let us share blood and blood."
"Don't you think I want to?" she asked. "I'm afraid."
  "Afraid of what?" I demanded. "Tell me what you fear. I'll make it vanish."
  The carriage rolled on out of Dresden and through the forest towards my palace.




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Oh, but you won't," she replied. "You can't. Don't you understand, Marius, you're the same being
you were in those times when we were first together. You're strong and spirited as you were then,
and I'm not. Marius, he takes care of me."
  "Takes care of you? Pandora, this is what you want! I'll do it. I shall take care of every tiny detail
of your entire existence as though you were my daughter! Only give me the chance. Give me the
chance to restore in love what was lost to us."
  We had reached my gates, and my servants were opening them. We were about to enter when she
signaled to me that I must hold the coach. She was looking out the window. She was looking up at
the
windows of the palace. Perhaps she could see the pavilion.
  I did as she asked. I saw that she was paralyzed with fear. There was no disguising it. She stared
at the palace as though it were full of menace.
  "What in the name of Heaven can it be?" I asked. "Whatever it is that frightens you, tell me.
Pandora, there is nothing that can't be changed. Tell me."
  "Oh, you are so violent in your temper," she said in a whisper. "Can't you guess what reduces me
to this abominable weakness?"
  "No," I said. "I know only I love you with my whole heart. I've found you again and I'll do
anything to keep you."
Her eyes remained fixed on the palace.
  "Even give up the female companion," she asked, "who is inside this very house waiting for
you?"
I didn't answer.
  "I saw her at the ball," she said, her eyes glassy, her voice quivering. "I saw her and knew what
she was, quite powerful, quite graceful. I never guessed she was your lover. But now I know that
she is. I can hear her inside. I can hear her hopes and dreams and how they are pinned on you."
  "Stop it, Pandora. It isn't necessary that I give her up. We are not mortals! We can live together."
  I took her by the arms. I shook her. Her hair did come loose and then violently and cruelly I
pulled at it, and I buried my face in her hair.
  "Pandora, if you require this of me, I'll do it. Only give me time, give me time to make certain
that Bianca is where she might survive well and happy. I'll do it for you, do you understand, if only
you'll stop fighting me!"
  I drew back. She appeared dazed and cold. Her lovely hair spilled down on her shoulders.
  "What is it?" she asked in a low sluggish voice. "Why do you look at me this way?"
I was on the edge of tears, but I stopped them.
  "Because I imagined," I said, "that this meeting would be so very different. And I did think that
you would come with me willingly. And I did think that we two could live in harmony with Bianca.
I believed these things. I believed them for a long time. And now I sit with you here and all is
argument and torment."
  "That's all it ever was, Marius," she replied in her low sad voice. "That's why you left me."
  "No," I said. "That's not so. Pandora, ours was a great love. You must acknowledge it. There was
a terrible parting, yes, but we had a great love, and we can have it again if we reach for it."
She gazed at the house, then back at me almost furtively. Something quickened in her and she
suddenly gripped my arm with white knuckles. There came that look of terrible fear again.
  "Come into the house with me," I said. "Meet Bianca. Take her hands in yours. Pandora, listen to
me. Stay in the house while I go to settle things with Arjun. I won't be long, I promise you."




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                                            Blood and Gold

  "No," she cried. "Don't you understand? I can't go into this house. It has nothing to do with your
Bianca."
"What then? What now? What more!" I demanded.
"It's the sound I hear, the sound of their hearts beating!"
  "The King and the Queen! Yes, they are inside. They are deep within the Earth, Pandora. They
are as still and silent as always. You need not even see them."
  A look of pure terror infected her features. I put my arms around her, but she only looked away.
  "As still and silent as always," she gasped. "Surely that can't be. Not after all this time. Marius!"
  "Oh, but it is," I said. "And to you it should be nothing. You needn't go down the steps to the
shrine. It is my duty. Pandora, stop looking away."
  "Don't hurt me, Marius," she cautioned. "You're rough with me as though I were a concubine.
Treat me with grace." Her lips trembled. "Treat me with mercy," she said sadly.
I started to weep.
  "Stay with me," I said. "Come inside. Talk to Bianca. Come to love us both. Let time begin from
this moment."
  "No, Marius," she said. "Take me away from that awful sound. Take me back to the place where I
am living. Take me back, or I shall go on foot. I can't bear this."
  I obeyed her commands. We were silent as she traveled to a large handsome house in Dresden
whose many windows were dark, and there I held her still, kissing her, refusing to let her go.

  Finally, I drew out my handkerchief and wiped my face. I drew in my breath and tried to speak
calmly.
  "You are frightened," I said, "and I must understand it and be patient with it."
  She had that dazed cold look in her eyes, a look I had never seen in the early years, a look that
now horrified me.
  "Tomorrow night, we shall meet again," I said, "here perhaps in this house where you are
dwelling, where you are safe from the sound of the Mother and the Father. Wherever you wish. But
wherever you can get used to me."
  She nodded. She lifted her hand and stroked my cheek with her fingers.
  "How well you pretend," she whispered. "How very fine you are, and always were. And to think
those demons in Rome thought they had put out your brilliant light. I should have laughed at them."
  "Yes, and my light shines only for you," I said, "and it was of you I dreamt when I was burnt
black by the fire sent from that demon blood drinker Santino. It was of you I dreamt as I drank
from the Mother to regain my strength, as I searched for you through the countries of Europe."
  "Oh, my love," she whispered. "My great love. If only I could be again the strong one whom you
remember."
  "But you will be," I insisted. "You are. I shall take care of you, yes, just as you wish. And you
and Bianca and I--we shall all love one another. Tomorrow night, we'll talk. We'll make plans.
We'll speak of all the great cathedrals we must see, the windows of colored glass, we'll speak of the
painters whose fine work we have yet to study. We'll speak of the New World, of its forests and its
rivers. Pandora, we will speak of everything."
I went on and on.
"And you will come to love Bianca," I said. "You will come to treasure her. I know Bianca's heart
and soul as ever I knew yours, I swear to you. We will exist together in peace, believe me. You
have no idea of the happiness that awaits you."




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  "Happiness?" she asked. She looked at me as though she hardly understood the words I had
spoken. Then she said:
"Marius, I leave this city tonight. Nothing can stop it."
  "No, no, you can't say this to me!" I declared. I grabbed her by the arms again.


  "Don't hurt me, Marius. I leave this city tonight. I told you. Marius, you've waited for one
hundred years to see one thing, and one thing only--that I live. Now leave me to the existence I've
chosen."
"I won't. I won't have it."
"Yes, you will," she whispered. "Marius, don't you see what I'm trying to tell you. I haven't the
courage to leave Arjun. I haven't the courage to see the Mother and the Father. Marius, I don't have
the courage to love you anymore. The very sound of your angry voice frightens me. I don't have the
courage to meet your Bianca. The very thought that you might love her more than me frightens me.
I am frightened of it all, don't you see? And even now, I am desperate for Arjun that he may take
me away from all of this. With Arjun there is for me a great simplicity! Marius, please let me go
with your forgiveness."
  "I don't believe you," I said. "I told you I will give up Bianca for you. Good God, Pandora, what
more can I do? You can't be
leaving me."
  I turned my back on her. The expression on her face was too strange. I couldn't endure it.
  And as I sat there in the darkness, I heard the door of the carriage open. I heard her quick step on
the stones, and she was gone from me.
My Pandora, utterly gone from me.
I don't know how long I waited. It was not a full hour.
  I was too distressed, too perfectly miserable. I didn't want to see her companion, and when I
thought of banging on the doors of her house, I found it too utterly humiliating.
  And in truth, in pure truth, she had convinced me. She wouldn't remain with me.
  I was about to tell my driver to take us home when a sound came to me. It was of her howling and
crying, and of objects within the house being broken.
  It was all I needed to push me into action. I left the carriage and ran to her door. I shot an evil
glance at her mortal servants, which
rendered them virtually powerless, and threw open the doors for myself.
  I rushed up the marble steps. I found her going madly along the walls, pounding the mirrors with
her fists. I found her shedding blood tears and shivering. There was broken glass all around her.
I took her wrists. I took them tenderly.
"Stay with me," I said. "Stay with me!"


  Quite suddenly behind me, I heard the presence of Arjun. I heard his unhurried step and then he
entered the room.
She had collapsed against my chest. She was shaking.
  "Don't worry," said Arjun in the same patient tone he had used with me in the Duke's palace. "We
can talk of all these things in a courteous way. I am not a wild creature, given to acts of
destruction."




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  He seemed the perfect gentleman with his lace handkerchief and high-heeled shoes. He looked
about at the broken pieces of mirror which lay on the fine carpet, and he shook his head.
"Then leave me alone with her," I said.
"Is this what you wish, Pandora?" he asked.
She nodded. "For a little while, my darling," she said to him.
  As soon as he had left the room, and shut the tall double doors behind him, I stroked her hair, and
I kissed her again.
"I can't leave him," she confessed.
"And why not? " I asked.
  "Because I made him," she answered. "He is my son, my spouse, and my guardian."
I was shocked.
I had never supposed such a thing!
  In all these years I had thought him some dominating creature who kept her in his power.
  "I made him so that he would take care of me," she said. "I took him from India where I was
worshiped as a very goddess by those few who had set eyes upon me. I taught him European ways.
I placed him in charge of me so that in my weakness and despair, he would control me. And it is his
hunger for life which drives us both. Without it I might have languished in some deep tomb for
centuries."
"Very well," I said, "he is your child. This I understand, but Pandora,
    you are mine! What of this! You are mine, and I have you in my possession again! Oh, forgive
me, forgive that I speak so harshly, that I use words such as possession. What do I mean to say? I
mean to say I can't lose you!"
  "I know what you mean," she said, "but you see, I can't turn him away from me. He has done far
too well in what I have asked of him, and he loves me. And he cannot live under your roof, Marius.
I know you only too well. Where Marius lives, Marius rules. You will never suffer a male such as
Arjun to dwell with you on my account or for any other reason."


  I was so deeply wounded that for one moment I couldn't answer her. I shook my head as though
to deny what she had said, but in truth I didn't know whether or not she was wrong. I had always,
always thought only of destroying Arjun.
  "You can't deny it," she said softly. "Arjun is too strong, too willful, and has been too long his
own master."
"There must be some way," I pleaded.
  "There will come a night, surely," she said, "when it is time for Arjun to part from me. The same
may happen with you and your Bianca. But this is not the time. And so I beg you, let go of me,
Marius, say farewell to me, and promise me that you will eternally persevere and I shall give you
the same promise."
  "This is your vengeance, isn't it?" I asked quietly. "You were my child and within two hundred
years I left you. And so you tell me now that you won't do the same to him--."
  "No, my beautiful Marius, it isn't vengeance, it is only the truth. Now, leave me." She smiled
bitterly. "Oh, what a gift to me this night has been, that I have seen you alive, that I know the
Roman blood drinker Santino was wrong. This night will carry me through
centuries."
"It will carry you away from me," I said, nodding.




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  But then her lips caught me by surprise. It was she who kissed me ardently, and then I felt her
tiny sharp teeth pierce my throat.
  I stood rigid, eyes closed, letting her drink, feeling the inevitable pull on my heart, my head
suddenly full of visions of the dark forest through which she and her companion so often rode and I
couldn't know whether these were her visions or mine.
  On and on she drank, as though she was starving, and deliberately I created for her the luscious
garden of my most cherished dreams, and in it I envisioned the two of us together. My body was
nothing but desire for her. Through every sinew I felt the pull of her drinking and I gave no
resistance. I was her victim. I held to no caution.
  It seemed I was not standing any longer. I must have fallen. I didn't care. Then I felt her hands on
my arms, and I knew I was on my feet.
  She drew back, and with blurred eyes I saw her gazing at me. All of her hair had spilled down on
her shoulders.
"Such strong blood," she whispered. "My Child of the Millennia."
  It was the first time I had heard such a name for those of us who have lived so long and I was
faintly charmed by it.


  I was groggy, so strong had she been, but what did it matter? I would have given her anything. I
steadied myself. I tried to clear my vision.
She was far away across the room.
"What did you see in the blood?" I whispered.
"Your pure love," she answered.
  "Was there any doubt?" I asked. I was growing stronger by the moment. Her face was radiant
with the blood flush and her eyes were fierce as they had always been when we quarreled.
"No, no doubt," she said. "But you must leave me now."
I said nothing.
"Go on, Marius. If you don't, I can't bear it."
  I stared at her as if I were staring at a wild thing of the wood, and so she seemed to be, this
creature whom I had loved with all my heart.
And once again, I knew it to be finished.
I left the room.
  In the grand hallway of the house, I stood stunned, and there Arjun was standing in the corner,
staring at me.
"I am so sorry, Marius," he said, as if he meant it.
  I looked at him, wondering if anything could work me into a rage to destroy him. Were I to do
that, she would have to stay with me. And oh, how the thought of it blazed in my mind. Yet I knew
she would utterly and completely hate me for it. And I would hate myself. For what did I have
against this creature who wasn't her vile master as I'd always supposed, but her child!--a fledgling
vampire of some five
hundred years or less, young in the Blood and full of love for her.
  I was far far from such a possibility. And what a sublime being he was as he surely read these
thoughts in my desperate and unveiled mind and yet stood his ground with such poise, merely
looking at me.
"Why must we part!" I whispered.
He shrugged. He gestured eloquently with his hands.



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  "I don't know," he said, "except she wants it so. It is she who wants ever to be on the move; it is
she who draws designs upon the map. It is she who draws the circles in which we travel, now and
then making Dresden the center of our roamings, now and then choosing some other city, such as
Paris or Rome. It is she who says we must go on and on. It is she. And what can I say, Marius,
except that it delights me."
  I went towards him and for one moment he thought I meant to harm him and he stiffened.


  I took his wrist before he could move. I studied him. What a noble being he was, his grand white
wig in sharp contrast to his lustrous brown skin, his black eyes staring at me with such earnestness
and seeming comprehension.
  "Stay with me here," I said. "Both of you. Remain with me. Stay with me and my companion,
Bianca."
  He smiled and shook his head. There was no contempt in his eyes. We were male to male and
there was no contempt. He told me only No.
  "She will not have it," he said, his voice very placating and calm. "I know her. I know all her
ways. She brought me to herself because I worshiped her. And once having her blood I have never
ceased in that worship."
  I stood there, clutching his wrist still, and staring about me as if I were ready to cry out to the
gods. And it seemed my cry would break the very walls of this house if I let it loose.
  "How can this be!" I whispered. "That I should find her and know her only for one night, one
precious night of quarreling."
"You and she are equals," he said. "I am but an instrument."
I closed my eyes.
  Quite suddenly I could hear her weeping, and when this sound came to my ears, Arjun gently
freed himself from me and said in his soft gentle voice that he must go to her.
  I walked slowly out of the hallway, and down the marble steps and into the night, ignoring my
carriage.
I walked home through the forest.
  When I reached my house, I went into my library, took off the wig which I had worn to the ball,
threw it across the room and sat in a chair at my writing table.
  I put my head down on my folded arms and silently wept as I had not wept since the death of
Eudoxia. I wept. And the hours passed, and at last I realized that Bianca was standing beside me.
She was stroking my hair with her hand, and then I heard her whisper.
  "Time to come down the steps to our cold grave, Marius. It is early for you, but I must go and I
can't leave you this way."
  I rose to my feet. I took her in my arms and gave way to the most awful tears, and all the while
she held me silently and warmly.
And then we went down to our coffins together.
  The following night, I went immediately to the house where I'd left Pandora.


  I found it deserted and then I searched all of Dresden and the many palaces or schlosses around it.
  She and Arjun were gone, there was no doubt of it. And going up to the Ducal Palace where there
was a little concert in progress I soon learned the "official" news of it, of how the handsome black
coach of the Marquis and the Marquisa De Malvrier had left before dawn for Russia.



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Russia.
  Being in no mood for the music, I soon made my apologies to those gathered in the salon and I
went home again, as miserable as I have ever been in my existence. As heartbroken.
  I sat down at my desk. I looked out over the river. I felt the warm spring breeze.
  I thought of all the many things she and I should have said to each other, all the many things I
might have said in a calmer spirit to persuade her. I told myself she wasn't gone beyond reach. I
told myself that she knew where I was, and that she could write to me. I told
myself anything I needed to keep my sanity.
  And I did not hear it when Bianca came into the room. I did not hear it when she sat down in a
large tapestried armchair quite near to me.
  I saw her as if she were a vision when I looked up--a flawless young boy with porcelain cheeks,
her blond hair pulled back in a black ribbon, her frock coat embroidered in gold, her shapely legs in
spotless white hose, her feet in ruby buckled shoes.
  Oh, what a divine guise it was--Bianca as the young nobleman, known to the few mortals who
mattered as her own brother. And how sad were her peerless blue eyes, as she looked at me.
"I feel sorry for you," she said quietly.
  "Do you?" I asked. I said these words with my broken heart. "I hope you do, my precious darling,
because I love you, I love you more than I have ever loved you, and I need you."
  "But that's just the point, you see," she said in a low compassionate voice. "I heard the things you
said to her. And I'm leaving you."

33

FOR THREE EONG NIGHTS I pleaded with her not to go as she made her preparations. I went
down on my knees. I swore to her that I had said only what needed to be said to make Pandora
remain with me.
  I told her in every way I knew how that I loved her, and would never have abandoned her.
  I told her that she would never be able to survive alone, and that I feared for her.
But nothing would turn her from her decision.
  Only on the beginning of the third night did I realize that she was really going. Up until then, I
had thought that such was absolutely inconceivable. I couldn't lose her. No, such a thing could not
happen.
  At last, I begged her to sit down and listen to me as I poured out my honest heart, confessing
every bad thing which I had said, every cheap denial of her which had come from my lips, every
desperate foolish thing I'd said to Pandora.
  "But what I want now is to talk of you and me," I said, "and how it's always been between us."
  "Yes, you may do that if you wish," she said, "if it makes the pain less for you, but Marius, I am
going."
  "You know how it was with me and Amadeo," I said. "I took him into my house when he was
very young and gave him the Blood when mortality gave me no quarter. We were Master and pupil
always, and there was mockery and a dark division. Perhaps you never saw this, but it was there, I
assure you."
"I saw it," she said. "But I knew your love was greater."
"And so it was," I said. "But he was a child, and my man's heart always knew there was something
finer and greater. Much as I cherished him, much as the mere sight of him delighted me, I could




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not confide to him my worst fears or pains. I could not tell him the tales of my life. They were too
big for him."
"I understand you, Marius," she said gently. "I always have."
  "And Pandora. You saw it with your own eyes. The bitter quarrel again, just as it had been so
many centuries ago, the bitter fighting in which no real truth can be discovered."
"I saw it," she said in her quiet way. "I follow your meaning."
  "You saw her fear of the Mother and the Father," I pleaded. "You heard her say that she couldn't
come into the house. You heard her speak of her fear of everything."
"I did," she answered.
  "And what was this one night between me and Pandora but misery, as it had been long ago,
misery and misunderstanding."
"I know, Marius," she answered.
"But Bianca, what has it always been with you and me but harmony?
     Think of our long years when we dwelt in the shrine, and went out on the night winds where I
could carry us. Think of the quiet between us, or the long conversations in which I talked of so
many things and you listened. Could two beings have been closer than we were?"
She bowed her head. She didn't answer.
  "And these last years," I pleaded. "Think of all the pleasures we have shared, our secretive
hunting in the forests, our visits to the country festivals, our quiet attendance in the great cathedrals
when the candles burn and the choirs sing, our dancing at the Court Balls. Think of all of it."
  "I know, Marius," she said. "But you lied to me. You didn't tell me why we were coming to
Dresden."
"I confess, it's true. Tell me what I can do to make up for it?"
"Nothing, Marius," she answered. "I'm going."
  "But how will you live? You can't live without me. This is madness."
  "No, I shall live quite well," she said. "And I must go now. I must travel many miles before
dawn."
"And where will you sleep? "
"That is my worry now."
I was almost on the point of frenzy.

"Don't follow me, Marius," she said, as if she could read my mind which she could not.
"I can't accept this," I responded.
  A silence fell between us, and I realized she was looking at me, and I looked at her, unable to
hide a particle of my unhappiness.
"Bianca, don't do this," I pleaded.
  "I saw your passion for her," she whispered, "and I knew that in a moment you would cast me
aside. Oh, don't deny it. I saw it. And something in me was crushed. I couldn't protect that thing. I
couldn't prevent its destruction. We were too close, you and I. And though I have loved you with
my whole soul, so I believed I knew you completely, I didn't know the being you were with her. I
didn't know the being whom I saw in her eyes."
  She rose from the chair and moved away from me. She looked out the window.
  "I wish I had not heard all those many words," she said, "but we have such gifts, we blood
drinkers. And do you think I don't realize that you would never have made me your child except for
the fact that you needed me? Had you not been burnt and helpless, you would never have given me
the Blood."



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                                            Blood and Gold

  "Will you listen to me when I tell you that's not so? When first I saw you I loved you. It was only
out of respect for your mortal life that I didn't share these cursed gifts with you! It was you who
filled my eyes and heart before I ever found Amadeo. I swear this to you. Don't you remember the
portraits I painted of you? Do you remember the hours I spent in your rooms? Think now on all that
we've given each other."
"You deceived me," she said.
  "Yes, I did," I said. "And I admit it, and I swear that I shall never do it again. Not for Pandora or
for anyone."
On and on I pleaded.
"I can't stay with you," she said. "I must go now."
  She turned around and looked at me. She seemed wrapped in quiet and resolution.
  "I'm begging you," I said again. "Without pride, without reserve, I'm begging you, don't leave
me."
  "I must go," she said. "And now, please, let me go down to take my leave of the Mother and the
Father. I would do this alone if you would allow it."
I nodded.


  It was a long time before she came up from the shrine. She told me quietly that she would leave
on the following sunset.
  And true to her word, she did, her coach and four pulling out of the gates, as she began her
journey.
  I stood at the top of the stairs watching her go. I stood listening until the coach was deep into the
forest. I stood unbelieving and unable to accept that she was gone from me.
  How could this horrid disaster have occurred--that I lose Pandora and Bianca both? That I should
be alone? And I was powerless to stop it.
  For many months after that, I could scarcely believe what had befallen me.
  I told myself that a letter would soon come from Pandora, or that she herself would return with
Arjun, that Pandora would will it so.
I told myself that Bianca would realize that she could not exist without
   me. She would come home, eager to forgive me, or she would send some hasty letter asking me
to come to her.
But these things did not happen.
A year passed and these things did not happen.
And another year and then fifty. And these things did not happen.
And all the while, though I moved deeper into the woods surrounding
   Dresden, in another more fortified castle, I remained near at hand in the hopes that one or both of
my loves would come back to me.
  For a half century I remained, waiting, not believing, and weighed down with a sorrow I couldn't
share with anyone.
I think I had ceased to pray in the shrine though I tended it faithfully.
    And I had begun, in a confidential manner, to talk to Akasha. I had begun to tell her my woes in
a more informal manner than before, to tell her of how I had failed with those whom I had loved.
  "But I shall never fail with you, my Queen," I said, and I said it often.




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  And then as the 17008 commenced, I prepared to make a daring move to an island where I would
rule supreme in the Aegean Sea, surrounded by mortals who would easily accept me as their lord,
in a stone house which I had prepared for me by a host of mortal servants.
  All who have read The Vampire Lestat's tale of his life know of this immense and unusual place
because he vividly described it. It far exceeded in grandeur any other palace in which I had ever
lived, and its remoteness was a challenge to my ingenuity.
   But I was most purely alone now, alone as I had ever been before the love of Amadeo, or Bianca,
and I had no hope of an immortal companion. And perhaps in truth I wanted none.
  It had been centuries since I had heard of Mael. I knew nothing of Avicus or Zenobia. I knew
nothing of any other Child of the Millennia.
  I wanted only a great and gorgeous shrine for the Mother and Father, and as I have said, I spoke
to Akasha constantly.
  But before I go on to describe this last and most important of all my European dwellings, I must
include one last tragic detail in the story of those who were lost to me.
  As my many treasures were moved to this Aegean palace, as my books, my sculptures, my fine
tapestries and rugs and other such were shipped and uncrated by unsuspecting mortals, there came
to light one final piece of the story of my beloved Pandora.
  In the bottom of a packing case, one of the workers discovered a letter, written on parchment, and
folded in half, and addressed quite simply to Marius.
  I was on the terrace of this new house, gazing out at the sea and over the many small islands that
surrounded me, when the letter was brought to me.
  The page of parchment was thick with dust, and as soon as I opened it, I read a date inscribed in
old ink which affirmed that it had been written the night I parted with Pandora.
  It was as if the fifty years separating me from that pain meant nothing.
My beloved Marius,
  It is almost dawn and I have only a few moments in which to write to you. As we have told you,
our coach will leave within the hour carrying us away and towards the eventual destination of
Moscow.
  Marius, I want nothing more than to come to you now, but I cannot do it. I cannot seek shelter in
the same house with the Ancient Ones.
  But I beg you, my beloved, please come to Moscow. Please come and help me to free myself
from Arjun. Later you can judge me and condemn me.
  I need you, Marius. I shall haunt the vicinity of the Czar's palace and the Great Cathedral until
you come.
  Marius, I know I ask of you that you make a great journey, but please come.
  Whatever I have said of my love of Arjun, I am his slave now too completely, and I would be
yours again.
Pandora.
  For hours I sat with the letter in my hand, and then slowly I rose and went to my servants and
asked them that they tell me where the letter had been found.
It had been in a packing case of books from my old library.
  How had I failed to receive it? Had Bianca hidden this letter from me? That I couldn't believe. It
seemed some simpler more haphazard cruelty had taken place--that a servant had laid it on my
desk in the early hours, and I myself had swept it aside into a heap of books
without ever seeing it.
But what did it matter?



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The awful damage was done.
 She had written to me, and I had not known it. She had begged me to come to Moscow and I, not
knowing, had not gone. And I did not know where to find her. I had her avowal of love, but it was
too late.
 In the following months I searched the Russian capital. I searched in the hope that she and Arjun
had for some reason made their home there.
 But I found no trace of Pandora. The wide world had swallowed her as it had swallowed my
Bianca.
 What more can I say to reveal the anguish of these two losses--that of Pandora whom I'd sought
for so long, and my sweet and lovely Bianca?
With these two losses my story comes to a close.
Or rather I should say we have come full circle.
 We now return to the story of the Queen of the Damned and of The Vampire Lestat who waked
her. And I shall be brief as I revisit that story. For I think I see most clearly what it is that would
heal my miserable
   soul more than anything. But before I can move on to that, we must revisit Lestat's antics and
the story of how I lost my last love, Akasha.

34

The Vampire Lestat

AS ALL KNOW, who follow our Chronicles, I was on the island in the Aegean Sea, ruling over a
peaceful world of mortals when Lestat, a young vampire, no more than ten years in the Blood,
began to call out to me.
 Now I was most belligerent in my solitude. And not even the recent rise of Amadeo, out of the
old coven in Paris, to become the Master of the new and bizarre Theatre des Vampires, could lure
me from my solitude.
For though I had spied upon Amadeo more than once, I saw nothing
  in him, but the same heartbreaking sadness that I had known in Venice. I preferred loneliness to
courting him.
 But when I heard the call of Lestat, I sensed in him a powerful and unfettered intelligence, and I
went to him at once, rescuing him from his first true retreat as a blood drinker and I brought him to
my house, revealing its location to him.
 I felt a great outpouring of love for Lestat, and impetuously perhaps, I took him down to the
shrine immediately. I watched transfixed as he drew close to the Mother, and then in amazement as
he kissed her.
 I don't know whether it was his boldness or her stillness which so mesmerized me. But you can be
certain I was ready to intervene if Enkil should try to hurt him.
When Lestat drew back, when he told me that the Mother had confided to him her name, I was
caught off guard and a sudden wave of terrible jealousy took hold of me.
 But I denied this feeling. I was too in love with Lestat and I told myself that this seeming miracle
in the shrine meant only good things--that this young blood drinker might somehow spark life in
the two Parents.




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  And so I took him to my salon, as I have described--and as he has described--and I told him the
long tale of my beginnings. I told him the tale of the Mother and Father and their unending
quietude.
  He seemed a splendid pupil during all the hours that we talked together. Indeed, I don't think I
had ever felt closer in my life to anyone than I did to Lestat. I was never closer even to Bianca.
Lestat had traveled the world in his ten years in the Blood; he had devoured the great literature of
many nations; and he brought to our conversation
   a vigor I had never seen really in anyone I had loved, not even in Pandora.
  But the following night, as I was out tending to affairs with my mortal subjects, of whom there
were many, Lestat went down to the shrine, taking with him a violin which had once belonged to
his friend and fellow blood drinker, Nicolas.
  And mimicking the skill of his lost friend, Lestat played the violin passionately and wondrously
for the Divine Parents.
  Over the short miles I heard the music. And then I heard a high-pitched singing note such as no
mortal could ever have made. Indeed, it seemed the song of the Sirens of Greek mythology, and as
I stood wondering what this sound could be, it died away in silence.
  I tried to bridge the gap which separated me from my house, and what I saw through the unveiled
mind of Lestat defied my belief.
  Akasha had risen from her throne, and held Lestat in her embrace, and as Lestat drank from
Akasha, Akasha drank from Lestat.
  I turned and sped back towards my house and towards the shrine. But even as I did so, the scene
shifted fatally.
  Enkil had risen and had ripped Lestat loose from the Mother and she stood screaming for Lestat
in tones that could deafen any mortal.
Rushing down the stone steps I found the doors of the shrine deliberately
      shut against me. I commenced to pound on them with all my force. And all the while I could
see within, through Lestat's eyes, that Enkil had forced Lestat down on the floor, and Enkil, despite
Akasha's screams, meant to crush him.
Oh, how plaintive were her screams for all their volume.
Desperately, I called out to him:

  "Enkil, if you harm Lestat, if you kill him, I shall take her away from you forever and she will
help me to do it. My King, this is what she wants!"
  I could scarcely believe that I had shouted these words, but they had come to my mind
immediately and there was no time to ponder them.
  The doors of the shrine were at once opened. What an impossible and terrifying sight it was, the
two stark white creatures standing there, in their Egyptian raiment, she with her mouth dripping
with blood, and Enkil, standing there, yet as though he were in deep slumber.
  In horror, I saw that Enkil's foot was resting against Lestat's chest. But Lestat still lived. Lestat
was unharmed. Beside him lay the violin, smashed to pieces. Akasha stared forward as though she
had never waked, looking past me.
I moved quickly and put my hands on Enkil's shoulders.
  "Go back, my King," I said. "Go back. You have accomplished your purpose. Please, do as I beg
you. You know how I respect your power."
  Slowly he removed his foot from Lestat's chest, his expression blank, his movements sluggish as
they always were, and gradually I was able to move him to the steps of the dais. Slowly he turned



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to make the two steps, and slowly he sat down on his throne, and I with quick hands arranged his
garments carefully.
  "Lestat, run," I said firmly. "Don't for a moment question me. Run from here."
And as Lestat did as he was told, I turned to Akasha.
She was standing as if lost in a dream, and I put my hands very
carefully on her arms.
  "My beautiful one," I whispered, "my Sovereign. Let me return you to the throne."
As she had always done in the past, she obeyed me.
  Within a few moments, they were as they had always been, as if it had been a delusion that Lestat
had come, a delusion that his music had waked her.
  But I knew it was no delusion, and as I stared at her, as I spoke to her in my intimate way, I was
filled with a new fear that I did not express to her.
  "You're beautiful and unchangeable," I said, "and the world is unworthy of you. It's unworthy of
your power. You listen to so many prayers, don't you? And so you listened to this beautiful music
and it delighted you. Perhaps I can some time bring music to you . . . bring those who can play it
and believe that you and the King are but statues--."
I broke off this mad speech. What was I trying to do?
  The truth is, I was terrified. Lestat had accomplished a breach of order of which I'd never dreamt,
and I wondered what might lie ahead if anyone else attempted such!
  But the main point, the point to which I clung in my anger, was this: I had restored the order. I
had, by threats to my Royal Majesty, made him move back to the throne, and she, my beloved
Queen, had followed him.
  Lestat had done the unthinkable. ButMarius had accomplished the remedy.
  At last when my fear and my temper were better, I went down on the rocks by the sea to meet
with Lestat and to chastise Lestat and I found myself more out of control than I imagined.
  Who, but Marius, knew how long these Parents had sat in silence? And now this young one
whom I had wanted so to love, so to instruct, so to enfold--this young one had brought out of them
a movement which only further emboldened him.
  Lestat wanted to free the Queen. Lestat thought we ought to imprison Enkil. I think I must have
laughed. Surely I couldn't put into words how much I feared both of them.
  Later that night, as Lestat hunted in the far islands, I heard strange sounds from the shrine.
  I went down and discovered that various objects were shattered. Vases, lamps, lay broken or on
their sides. Candles had been flung here and there. Which of the two Parents did these things?
Neither moved. I couldn't know, and once again the fear in me increased.
  For one desperate selfish moment, I looked at Akasha and I thought, I shall give you over to
Lestat if that is what you wish! Only tell me how to do it. Rise against Enkil with me! But these
words didn't really form in my mind.
In my soul I felt a cold jealousy. I felt a leaden sorrow.
  But then I could tell myself it was the magic of the violin, was it not? For when in ancient times
had such an instrument been heard? And he, a blood drinker, had come before her to perform, in all
probability twisting and turning the music madly.
  There was no consolation in this for me, however. She had waked for him!


  And as I stood in the silence of the shrine, staring at all the broken objects, a thought came into
my mind as though she had put it there.



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  I loved him as you loved him and would have him here as you would have him. But it cannot be.
I was transfixed.
  But then I moved towards her as I had done a hundred times, advancing slowly so that she might
refuse me if she wished, so that he might deny me with even the smallest show of power. And at
last I drank from her, perhaps from the very same vein in her white throat, I didn't know, and then I
moved back, my eyes on Enkil's face.
His cold features registered nothing but listlessness.
  When I woke the following night I heard noises from the shrine. I found more of the many fine
objects broken.
  I felt I had no choice but to send Lestat away. I knew of no other remedy.
  It was another bitter terrible parting--as miserable as my parting with Pandora, or my parting
with Bianca.
  I will never forget how comely he appeared, with his fabled yellow hair and his fathomless blue
eyes, how eternally young, how full of frenetic hope and marvelous dreams, and how wounded and
stricken he was to be sent away. And how my heart ached that I must do it. I wanted only to keep
him close--my pupil, my lover, my rebel. I had so loved his rippling speech, his honest questions,
his daring appeals for the Queen's heart and freedom. Could we not save her somehow from Enkil?
Could we not somehow enliven her? But it was oh, so dangerous
even to talk of such things, and Lestat could not grasp it.
  And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how
broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.
  But I was now truly afraid of what Akasha and Enkil might do if they were aroused again, and I
could not share that fear with Lestat, lest I frighten him or even incite him further.
  You see, I understood how restless he was even then, and how unhappy in the Blood, and how
eager for a purpose in the mortal world, and keenly aware that he had none.
  And I, alone in my Aegean paradise after he left, truly pondered whether I should destroy the
Mother and Father.
  All who have read our Chronicles know that the year in which this happened was 1794, and the
world was rich in marvels.
  How could I continue to harbor these beings who might menace it? But I didn't want to die. No, I
have never really wanted to die. And so I did not destroy the King and the Queen. I continued to
care for them, to shower them with the symbols of worship.
  And as we moved into the multitudinous wonders of the modern world, I feared death more than
ever.

35

The Rise and Fall of Akasha

IT WAS PERHAPS twenty years ago that I brought the Mother and Father across the sea to
America and to the frozen wastes in the North where I created beneath the ice my fine
technologically splendid house described by Lestat in The Queen of the Damned and from which
the Queen rose.
  Let me pass over quickly what has been mentioned here before-- that I made a great modern
shrine for the King and Queen with a television screen that might bring them music and other forms
of entertainment and "news" from all over the planet.



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  As for me, I was living alone in this house, enjoying a whole string of well-warmed rooms and
libraries as I did my eternal reading and writing, as I watched films and documentaries which
intrigued me mightily.
  I had entered the mortal world once or twice as a filmmaker, but in general I had lived a solitary
life, and I knew little or nothing of the other Children of the Millennia.
  Until such time as Bianca or Pandora should want to join me again, what did I care about others?
And as for The Vampire Lestat, when he came forth with his mighty rock music I thought it
hysterically funny. What more perfect guise for a vampire, I thought, than that of a rock musician?
  But as his many short rock video films appeared, I realized that he was putting forth in that form
the entire history which I had revealed to him. And I realized as well that blood drinkers all over
the world were setting their cannons against him.


  These were young beings of whom I had taken no notice, and I was quite amazed now to hear
their voices lifted in the Mind Gift, searching diligently for others.
  Nevertheless, I thought nothing of it. I did not dream his music could affect the world --not the
world of mortals or our world-- --not until the very night that I came down to the underground
shrine and discovered my King, Enkil, a hollow being, a mere husk, a creature drained of all blood,
sitting so perilously on the throne that when I touched him with my fingers, he fell onto the marble
floor, his black plaited hair breaking into tiny splinters.
  In shock I stared at this spectacle! Who could have done such a thing, who could have drained
him of every drop of blood, who could have destroyed him!
  And where was my Queen, had she met the same fate, had the whole legend of Those Who Must
Be Kept been a deception from the beginning?
  I knew that it was not a lie, and I knew the one being who could have visited this fate upon Enkil,
the only being in all the world who had such cunning, such intimacy, such knowledge and such
power.
  Within seconds, I turned from the fallen husk of Enkil to discover her standing not three inches
from me. Her black eyes were narrowed and quickened with life. Her royal raiment was the
clothing I had placed upon her. Her red lips formed a mocking smile, and then there came from her
a wicked laughter.
I hated her for that laughter.
I feared her and hated her that she laughed at me.
  All my sense of possession came to the fore, that she was mine and that she now dared to turn on
me.
  Where was the sweetness of which I had dreamt? I stood in the midst of a nightmare.
  "My dear servant," she said, "you have never had the power to stop me!"
  It was inconceivable that this creature whom I had so protected throughout time could turn on me.
It was inconceivable that this one whom I so completely adored now taunted me.
Something hasty and pathetic came from my lips:
  "But what do you want? " I asked, as I tried to grasp what was taking place. "What do you mean
to do?"
It was a wonder that she even gave some mocking answer to me.




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  It was lost in the sound of the television screen exploding, in the sound of metal ripping, in the
sound of the ice falling.
  With incalculable power she rose from the depths of the house, sending its walls, its ceilings, and
its surrounding ice down upon me.
I found myself buried, calling for help.
  And the reign of the Queen of the Damned had commenced, though she had never taken that
name for herself.
  You saw her as she moved through the world. You saw her as she slew blood drinkers all around
her, you saw her as she slew blood drinkers who would not serve her purpose.
  Did you see her as she took Lestat as her lover? Did you see her as she sought to frighten mortals
with her petty displays of old-fashioned power?
  And all the while I lay crushed beneath the ice--spared for what purpose I could not imagine--
sending out my warning to Lestat that he was in danger, sending out my warning to all that they
were in danger. And pleading as well with any Child of the Millennia who might come to help me
rise from the crevasse in which I'd been buried.
  Even as I called in my powerful voice I healed. I began to move the ice around me.
  But at last two blood drinkers came to assist me. I caught the image of one in the mind of the
other. And it seemed impossible to me, but the one whom I saw so radiantly in the other's vision
was none other than my Pandora.
At last, with their help, I broke the ice that kept me from the surface,
    and I climbed free under the arctic sky, taking Pandora's hand, and then gathering her in my
arms, refusing for a moment to think of anything, even of my savage Queen and her deadly
rampage.
  There were no words now, no vows, no denials. I held Pandora in love and she knew it, and when
I looked up, when I cleared my eyes of pain and love and fear, I realized that the blood drinker who
had come North with her, he who had answered my summons, was none other than Santino.
  For a moment, I was filled with such hatred I meant to destroy him completely.
  "No," Pandora said, "Marius, you can't. All of us are needed now. And why do you think he has
come if not to repay you?"
  He stood there in the snow in his fine black garments, the wind whipping his black hair and I
could see he was consumed with fear, but he would not confess it.
  "This is no repayment for what you did to me," I said to him. "But I know Pandora is right, we're
all needed, and for that reason, I spare you."
I looked at my beloved Pandora.
  "There is a council forming now," I said. "It's in a great house in the coastal forest, a place of
glass walls. We'll go there together."
  You know of what happened then. We gathered at our great table in the redwood trees--as if we
were a new and passionate Faithful of the Forest--and when the Queen came to us with her plan to
bring harm to the great world, we all sought to reason with her.
  It was her dream to be the Queen of Heaven to humankind, to slay male children by the billions,
and make the world a "garden" of tender-spirited women. It was a horrific and impossible
conception.
  No one sought more diligently than your red-haired Maker Maharet to turn her from her goals,
condemning her that she would dare to change the course of human history.
  I myself, thinking bitterly of the beautiful gardens I'd seen when I had drunk her blood, risked her
deadly power over and over by



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pleading with her to give the world time to follow its own destiny.
  Oh, it was a chilling thing to see this living statue now speaking to me so coldly yet with such
strong will and contemptuous temper. How grand and evil were her schemes, to slay male children,
to gather women in a superstitious worship.
  What gave us courage to fight her? I don't know except that we knew that we had to do it. And all
along, as she threatened us repeatedly with death, I thought: I could have prevented this, I could
have stopped it from ever happening had I put an end to her and to all of us.
As it is, she will destroy us and go on; and who will prevent her?
  At one point she knocked me backwards with her arm, so quick was her rage at my words. And it
was Santino who came to my assistance. I hated him for this but there was no time for hating him
or anyone.
  At last she laid her condemnation down on all of us. As we would not side with her, we would be
destroyed, one after another. She would begin with Lestat, for she took his insult to her to be the
greatest. And he had resisted her. Bravely he had sided with us, pleading with her for reason.
  At this dreadful moment, the elders rose, the ones of the First Brood who had been made blood
drinkers within her very lifetime, and those Children of the Millennia such as Pandora and myself
and Mael and others.
    But before the murderous little struggle could begin, there came another into our midst,
approaching loudly up the iron steps of the forest compound where we met, until in the doorway we
beheld the twin of Maharet: her mute sister, the sister from whom Akasha had torn the tongue:
Mekare.
  It was she who, snatching the long black hair of the Queen, bashed her head against the glass
wall, breaking it, and severing the head from the body. It was she and her sister who dropped down
on their knees, to retrieve from the decapitated Queen, the Sacred Core of all the vampires.
  Whether that Sacred Core--that fatal root--was imbibed from heart or brain, I know not. I know
only that the mute Mekare became its new tabernacle.
  And after a few moments of sputtering darkness in which we all of us wondered whether or not
death should take us now, we regained our strength and looked up to see the twins standing before
us.
  Maharet put her arm around Mekare's waist, and Mekare, come from brutal isolation I know not
where, merely stared into space as though she knew some quiet peace but no more than that. And
from Maharet's lips there came the words:
"Behold. The Queen of the Damned."
It was finished.
  The reign of my beloved Akasha--with all its hopes and dreams-- had come abruptly to an end.
  And I carried through the world the burden of Those Who Must Be Kept no longer.



THE LISTENER

The End of the Story of Marius




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36


MARIUS STOOD at the glass window looking out at the snow. Thorne sat by the dying fire,
merely looking at Marius.
  "So you have woven for me a long, fine tale," said Thorne, "and I have found myself marvelously
caught up in it."
  "Have you?" said Marius quietly. "And perhaps I now find myself woven within my hatred of
Santino."
  "But Pandora was with you," said Thorne. "You were reunited with her again. Why is she not
with you now? What's happened?"
  "I was united with Pandora and Amadeo," said Marius. "It all came about in those nights. And I
have seen them often since. But I am an injured creature. And it was I who left their company. I
could go now to Lestat, and those who are with him. But I don't.
  "My soul still aches over the losses I've suffered. I don't know which causes me the greater
pain--the loss of my goddess, or my hatred of Santino. She is gone beyond my reach forever. But
Santino still lives."
  "Why don't you do away with him?" asked Thorne. "I'll help you find him."
  "I can find him," said Marius. "But without her permission I can't do it."
"Maharet?" Thorne asked. "But why?"
  "Because she's the eldest of us now, she and her mute twin, and we must have a leader. Mekare
cannot speak and might not have wits to speak even if she could. And so it's Maharet. And even if
she refuses to allow or judge, I must put the question to her."
"I understand," said Thorne. "In my time, we gathered to settle such questions, and a man might
seek payment from one who had injured him."
Marius nodded.
  "I think I must seek Santino's death," he whispered. "I am at peace with all others, but to him I
would do violence."
  "And very well you should," said Thorne, "from all that you've told me."
  "I've called to Maharet," said Marius. "I've let her know that you are here and that you're seeking
her. I've let her know that I must ask her about Santino. I'm hungry for her wise words. Perhaps I
want to see her weary mortal eyes gazing on me with compassion.
  "I remember her brilliant resistance of the Queen. I remember her strength and maybe now I need
it. ... Perhaps by now she's found the eyes of a blood drinker for herself, and need not suffer
anymore with the eyes of her human victims."
  Thorne sat thinking for a long moment. Then he rose from the couch. He drew close to the glass
beside Marius.
  "Can you hear her answer to you?" he asked. He couldn't disguise his emotion. "I want to go to
her. I must go to her."
  "Haven't I taught you anything?" Marius asked. He turned to Thorne. "Haven't I taught you to
remember these tender complex creatures with love? Perhaps not. I thought that was the lesson of
my stories."
  "Oh, yes, you've taught me this," said Thorne, "and love her I do, in so far as she is tender and
complex as you so delicately put it, but I'm a warrior, you see, and I was never fit for eternity. And
the hatred you harbor for Santino is the same as the passion I harbor for her. And
passion can be for evil or good. I can't help myself."



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Marius shook his head.
  "If she brings us to herself," he said, "I will only lose you. As I've told you before, you can't
possibly harm her."
  "Perhaps, perhaps not," said Thorne. "But whatever the truth, I must see her. And she knows why
I've come, and she will have her will in the matter."
  "Come now," Marius said, "it's time for us to go to our rest. I hear strange voices in the morning
air. And I feel the need of sleep desperately."


WHEN THORNE AWOKE he found himself in a smooth wooden coffin.
  Without fear, he easily lifted the lid, and then opened it to one side and sat up so that he might see
the room around him.
  It was a cave of sorts, and beyond he heard the loud chorus of a tropical forest.
  All the fragrances of the green jungle assaulted his nostrils. He found it delicious and strange, and
he knew it could only mean one thing: that Maharet had brought him to her hiding place.
  He climbed from the coffin as gracefully as he could and he stepped out into a huge room full of
scattered stone benches. On the three sides the jungle grew thick and lively against a fine wire mesh
and through the mesh above a thin rain came down refreshing him.
  Looking to his right and left, he saw entrances to other such open places. And following the
sounds and scents as any blood drinker could do, he moved to his right until he entered a great
room where his Maker sat as he had seen her at the very beginning of his long life, in a graceful
gown of purple wool, pulling the red hairs from her head and weaving them into thread with her
distaff and her spindle.
  For many long moments he merely stared at her, as if he could not believe this vision.
  And she in profile, surely knowing he was there, went on with her work, without speaking a word
to him.
Across the room, he saw Marius seated on a bench and then he realized that a regal and beautiful
woman sat beside him. Surely it was Pandora. Indeed, he knew her by her brown hair. And there on
the other side of Marius was the auburn-haired boy he had described: Amadeo.
  But there was also another creature in the room, and this without doubt was the black-haired
Santino. He sat not far from Maharet, and when Thorne entered, he appeared to shrink away from
Thorne, and then glancing at Marius to draw back again, and finally towards Maharet as if in
desperation.
Coward, Thorne thought, but he said nothing.
  Slowly Maharet turned her head until she could see Thorne, and so that he could see her eyes--
human eyes--sad and full of blood, as always.
  "What can I give you, Thorne?" she asked, "to make your soul quiet again?"

  He shook his head. He motioned for silence, not to compel her but merely to plead with her.
  And in the interval Marius rose to his feet, and at once Pandora and Amadeo on either side of
him.
"I've thought long and hard on it," Marius said, his eyes on Santino.
    "And I can't destroy him if you forbid it. I won't break the peace with such an action. I believe
too much that we must live by rules or we shall all perish."
  "Then it is finished," said Maharet, her familiar voice bringing the chills to Thorne, "for I'll never
grant you the right to destroy Santino.



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    Yes, he injured you and it was a terrible thing, and I have heard you in the night describing your
suffering to Thorne. I've listened to your words in sorrow. But you can't destroy him now. I forbid
it. And if you go against me, then there is no one who can restrain anyone."
  "That can't be," said Marius. His face was dark and miserable. He glared at Santino. "There must
be someone to restrain others. Yet I can't bear it that he lives after what he's done to me."
  To Thorne's amazement the youthful face of Amadeo appeared only puzzled.
  As for Pandora, she seemed sad and anxious, as though she feared that Marius wouldn't keep to
his word.
But Thorne knew otherwise.
  And as he assessed this black-haired creature now, Santino rose from the bench and backed away
from Thorne, pointing his finger at Thorne in terror.But it was not quick enough.
  Thorne sent all his strength at Santino and all Santino could do as he fell to his knees was cry out:
"Thorne," over and over again, his body exploding, the blood flowing from every orifice, the fire
finally erupting from his chest and head as he twisted and collapsed on the stone floor, the flames at
last consuming him.
  Maharet had let out a terrible wail of sorrow, and into the large room her twin had come, her blue
eyes searching for the source of pain in her sister.
  Maharet rose to her feet. She looked down on the grease and ash that lay before her.
  Thorne looked at Marius. He saw a small bitter smile on Marius's lips, and then Marius looked to
him and nodded.


"I need no thanks from you," Thorne said.
  Then he looked to Maharet who was weeping, her sister now holding tight to her arms, and
pleading mutely with her to explain herself.
  " Wergeld, my Maker," said Thorne. "As it was in my time, I exact the wergeld or payment for
my own life, which you took when you made me a blood drinker. I take it through Santino's life,
which I take beneath your roof."
"Yes, and against my will," Maharet cried. "You have done this terrible thing! And Marius, your
own friend, has told you that I must rule here."
  "If you would rule here, do it on your own," said Thorne. "Don't look to Marius to tell you how to
do it. Ah, look at your precious distaff and spindle. How will you protect the Sacred Core if you
have no strength to fight those who oppose you?"
  She couldn't answer him, and he could see that Marius was angered, and that Mekare looked at
him with menace.
  He came towards Maharet, staring intently at her, at her smooth face which now bore no trace
whatever of human life, the florid human eyes seemingly set within a sculpture.
  "Would I had a knife," he said, "would I had a sword, would I had any weapon I could use against
you." And then he did the only thing which he could do. He took her by the throat with both his
hands and tried to topple her.
It was like holding fast to marble.
  At once there came a frantic cry from her. He couldn't understand the words, but when her sister
drew him back gently he knew it had been a warning for his sake. He reached out still with both
hands, struggling to be free, but it was useless.
  These two were unconquerable, either divided or together, it did not matter.




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  "Put an end to this, Thorne," cried Marius. "It's enough. She knows what's in your heart. You
can't ask for more than this."
  Maharet collapsed to her bench and there she sat crying, her sister at her side, Mekare's eyes fixed
on Thorne warily.
  Thorne could see that all of them were afraid of Mekare, but he was not, and when he thought of
Santino again, when he looked at the black stain on the stones, he felt a good deep pleasure.
Then moving swiftly, he accosted the mute twin and whispered something hurried in her ear, meant
only for her, wondering if she would get the sense of it.
  Within a second he knew that she had. As Maharet watched in wonder, Mekare forced him down
on his knees. She clasped his face and turned it up. And then he felt her fingers plunge into the
sockets of his eyes as she removed them.
  "Yes, yes, this blessed darkness," he said, "and then the chains, I beg you, the chains. Otherwise
do away with me."
  Through Marius's mind, he could see the image of himself groping in blindness. He could see the
blood flowing down his face. He could see Maharet as Mekare put the eyes into her head. He could
see those two tall delicate women with their arms entangled, the one struggling but not enough and
the other pressing for the deed to be accomplished.
  Then he felt others gathered around him. He felt the fabric of their garments, he felt their smooth
hands.
And only in the distance could he hear Maharet weeping.
  The chains were being put around him. He felt their thick links and knew he could not break
loose from them. And being dragged further away, he said nothing.
  The blood flowed from his eye sockets. He knew it. And in some quiet empty place he was now
bound exactly as he had dreamt of it. Only she wasn't close. She wasn't close at all. He heard the
jungle sounds. And he longed for the winter cold, and this place was too warm and too full of the
perfume of flowers.
  But he would get used to the heat. He would get used to the rich fragrances.
"Maharet," he whispered.
  He saw what they saw again, in another room, as they looked at each other, all of them talking in
hushed voices of his fate and none fully understanding it. He knew that Marius was pleading for
him, and he knew that Maharet whom he saw so vividly through their eyes was as beautiful now as
she had been when she made him.
  Suddenly she was gone from the group. And they talked in shadows without her.
  Then he felt her hand on his cheek. He knew it. He knew the soft wool of her gown. He knew her
lips when she kissed him.
"You do have my eyes," he said.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I see wondrously through them."

"And these chains, are they made of your hair?"
  "Yes," she answered. "From hair to thread, from thread to rope, from rope to links, I have woven
them."
  "My weaving one," he said, smiling. "And when you weave them now," he asked, "will you keep
me close to you?"
"Yes," she said. "Always."




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                            Blood and Gold


9:20 p.m. March 19, 2000




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